Stanley Roberts on People Misbehaving 55:53

Welcome to Broken Potholes. I'm your host, Sam Stone. On the line, Chuck Warren, my co-host. And in studio with us today, Stanley Roberts. Hello. Stanley, welcome to the program. Thank you for inviting me. For folks who don't know him, and you should be following this gentleman, he's got some fantastic content out there. Thank you. He's doing some pretty good work, some independent journalism. It's one of the things we love on this program.

Stanley is the home of Mr. Badly Productions LLC, an independent journalist franchise founded by Stanley with the goal of educating the public. The rules of the road and basic human etiquette. Chuck, those are some things we are seriously missing today as I drove here dodging people trying to kill me.

Oh, my God. You know what's funny about Arizona and Phoenix is that if the light changes, wait 10 seconds because somebody will run it.

You know, we actually – and one of the things that kills me around here is that all the various valley cities have different setups for their lights, their rules, all that sort of thing. So it is actually really difficult. Some do a leading left. Some do a trailing left. Some have a delay after the red to the next green. Some do not. It's crazy. And something else I noticed. So in the Bay Area, they have bike lanes. And they have bike lanes here.

But they teach you in the Bay Area, don't do left hooks, don't do right hooks because you end up killing bicyclists. But out here, they make it so you have to make a left hook or have to make a right hook because what that means is you have to go up past the lines and then make the turn. But then the bike hits you and I'm like, wait a minute, that's wrong. So...

Stanley, before we get to some of the stuff you're doing right now, I just want to talk about you are the creator of People Behaving Badly. Yes, I started that back in 2006 in San Francisco. Yes, I created that. It was an idea I came up with. What spurred that? Was there one incident that you saw in the news? Because you're a news guy. Your background's in the news. 30 years in the news business. Yes, I'm old. Sorry.

And what sparked it was literally trying to avoid having to do work for a living. And who knew that it would turn out to be a lot more work. So our old station decided to go to a VJ program. No good deed goes unpunished, Stanley. No good deed goes unpunished. My favorite line.

So they wanted to make a VJ program. They wanted me to be point of view photographer. So I go out and show you a fire, fire, fire, fire trucks, people. That's a story. And I said, I want to do I want to up the ante. I want to do something called people behaving badly. And they go, well, I don't know if we can use the name, but what is it about? Just go out and show people doing stuff they shouldn't be doing and talk about it. And I really had no real rhythm to what I was going to do. It was just an idea. And I've been an idea person a long time ago. I created WeAteThere.com with the number eight.

Okay, so and it was like oh my god, this is gonna be great And so I'm always creating things and I love to write I love the do so this was my creation and I had a chance to go out there and show stuff and I was surprised at the amount of Stuff that happened and one of the biggest events I ever had was when I found Carlos Santana's bandmate digging through garbage He had spent 20 30 years in prison and it turns out that he was part of Santana's band, but he went to prison so Carlos got famous and you know, he was living in a camper in Oakland and

Oh, my goodness. You never know who you're going to run into. And this became a major story. And so this guy's basically homeless digging through the trash for food or for, I mean, for. Well, I asked him why. And I don't normally ask people, why are you digging through the trash? I don't. I just record what I'm showing you, all the illegal dumping. And I asked him. And he said, well, I was looking for, you know, I found $800 in cash once, he said. I said, what did you do with the money? I'm thinking drugs or whatever. He goes, no, I brought equipment so I can do music. And I go, well, what kind of music? He goes, well, I used to be with the Santana Blues Band.

And I'm like, Santana Blues Band? I never heard of that. Now, his name was Marcus Malone. He passed away just a couple months ago. May he rest in peace. But he went through a lot. And he was in prison for it because he got into a fight protecting another woman and beat the guy up. And the guy subsequently died a few months later. So he was charged and he was sent to prison. That was a Nick Cage movie, right? Yeah, well, apparently. And I linked the two together. And it was a Christmas movie.

Just before Christmas, those two came together and it became a huge story. So you reconnected Santana and this guy? I did. Wow. And they hadn't talked all this time after he'd gone to prison? The irony of this was that I didn't believe the guy at first, you know, because people tell you stories all the time. But I still put it in my story because it just, for some reason, I put it in the story. And then I get a call from the desk and go, hey, there's somebody claiming to be Carlos Santana on the phone.

And I get the phone call, and it goes, hey, we've been trying to track him down for years. Can you tell me where he is? Wow. And so I went back over there where the last place I saw him at, and it turned out he was living in a camper. He had just been through a lot. And, you know, he had been disheveled and everything else, and the system just chewed him out.

That's one of the things we get wrong, right, is when people get out of prison, the support system, the systems to get them back into life, and frankly, the preparation they get in prison, it's nonexistent. Well, it depends on who you are. Some people go to prison and come out and they become millionaires. We've seen it happen. They spent six, seven years in prison. They come out and they write a book, and all of a sudden now they're living high off the hog off of millions of dollars. Then some people come out of the prison system, and they're just thrown into the street.

Stanley, when you talk about people behaving badly, I think there's been – I think you were kind of prescient with that because it seems like there is a shift going on in society where people are just not –

They get and start doing things out in public that just it blows me away sometimes. I mean, some of the stuff that you had on your site, some of the stuff we see from day to day, everything like these smash and grab group robberies that are going on, the road rage incidents, the Karens in the parks. I mean, all of it.

kind of reflects a degradation of our society, right? Well, as I said this morning to someone, I go, you know, I'm just waiting for the world to come to an end because it's just turned into such a cesspool of what's going on. I mean, you log on and you think the world is ending based on everything you see. The smashing grabs, the rampant theft in San Francisco where people are running through the streets and hitting the Louis Vuittons and the high-end stores. And then they're claiming that this is our reparations from what we've been through. But I'm going to say this. I grew up poor.

I mean, every dime I get is because I worked hard for it. And never once did I wake up and go, you know what, I think I'm going to go hit the Louis Vuitton store and steal everything they have inside. Never crossed my mind. And so I can't – and people get mad at me because I don't agree with that philosophy. But I don't believe that you should be out there robbing because you can't get something. I've learned that you have to work hard if you want to get something. Now, Stanley, let me ask this question. Stanley, do you think people's behavior is getting worse today?

I would like to believe that it's getting worse, but then you see some small inklings of people who are doing the right thing. And people who follow me... Obviously, we can't do a broad paint stroke. No, we can't. Because look, there's a lot of great people in this world. There's a lot of people that live with honor and dignity and chivalry and all those qualities that we read about as kids, right? Right. And so I don't want to take a broad stroke.

But do you sense an uptick of just, I guess it's almost obliviousness. You know, I mean, you go to a gym now, they have, they have, they have, you go to gym, there's framed pictures next to the urinal saying, hey, hit the toilet. Literally, that's in my gym. Hit the toilet, you know, clean, wash your hands. And just like a normal human being would think, you know, when I'm doing that, I need to make sure I hit my mark. And I don't know, people seem to be getting worse. You know what I say? And I've been saying this for the last few months is, um,

The pizza box. Hashtag the pizza box. And why do I say the pizza box? Have you ever seen some pizza boxes?

It literally has words on it, open box before eating pizza. I want you to think about that. If you have to tell someone to open the box before they eat the pizza, then we as human beings are doomed. Well, yeah, and the funny thing about that is they didn't make that up. There's a literal experience they had to deal with that someone ate the pizza before they opened the box. Every single rule you see out there is because somebody screwed something up somewhere along the line.

And it's sad that we have to tell people to wash your hands. But I saw a guy one day walk into a movie theater with a box of pizza into the bathroom. That is like the most disgusting thing I've ever seen. So,

Well, it's funny. I had actually a Red Bull energy drink. I was at the car wash a couple weeks ago, and I bought it, and I need to go to the restroom. So I asked the cash register, can I just leave this right here so I don't have to take it in the restroom? And she started laughing. She goes, you're the first person who's ever asked me that. Of course. We wish everybody would do it.

So here's this. Who takes food into the bathroom? So what's those gas stations? The pilot. So I'm at a pilot restaurant. And for some reason, there's big chunks of ice in the urinals. And so I'm at the urinal, and the guy next to me goes, why is there ice in the urinal? And, of course, my brain goes 1,000 miles a second, and I say, well, that's how they make the Mountain Dew. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha.

Sadly, Stanley, he probably told 20 people that. Well, he went and brought Mountain Dew after that, so apparently he didn't care. Yeah, apparently so. So, Stanley, tell us a little bit. You were...

You know, the one thing about independent journalism is that there's lots of great stuff coming out. But then there's also lots of blogs and things that take misinterpret something, don't have all the facts. And you were recently a recipient of that. Can you tell a little bit about the story? It's a little bit crazy. It's a little bit and it's a lot disgusting. So I call my stories boomerangs. And what I call them boomerangs because when I throw them out there, somehow or another, it always hits me back in the face.

This one was the boomerang that flew into the sky, and I said, there's no way this one's coming back. And then one day I'm sitting, and the story, let me go backwards a little bit. So the story was, I get a lot of tips, and people who don't want to be identified will send me the tip anonymously. So I will look into it to make sure it's verified.

Before I posted. And this story was about three San Francisco police officers who were kicked out of a restaurant called Hilda and Jesse. And that actually became kind of national news. It became a national story based on my... And you're the one that broke it. I broke that story. You know, I broke it. Stanley Roberts, I broke it. That was me. Boom. Right? What could possibly go wrong, right? You know, there'd be crowds of people. The first thing that happened was...

I'm always doubted. Oh, why'd you post this? How dare you post this? You know, you don't have any facts. You didn't post this. So and so what made it crazier was that I'm reading on the third day of posting it or the second day of posting it. Somebody says, Stanley Roberts, you're a piece of crap. And I'm like, it was on Facebook. And I'm like, why would they write that about me? I mean, all I did was post this story. And it says, because you're the co-owner of the restaurant. I'm like, wait, what? So it was funny.

Until it wasn't funny anymore. I mean, have you been getting your royalty checks or whatever? So this blog has 700,000 people that follow him on Facebook. And so they posted that, and it was up for 24 hours before I had a chance to try to get them to take it down. And imagine 700,000 people thinking I own a restaurant that hates police. Stanley, why did they make such a horrible assumption? Yeah.

Because people do not read. I did a story. I used to do segments. No, they don't read. I did a segment once, and a lady told me she was in a carpool lane, and it was real quick. She was in a carpool lane, and there was like 12 signs that said, do not go here unless you have three people in the car. I asked her, why did you drive through here and you missed all 12 signs? Her response was, you ready for this? Because if I read signs, I might crash. And we're on the road with this woman. And she drives. She's out there somewhere. We'll call her...

Lady X. And there's a lot of Lady Xs on the road. Yep. Way too many of them. Stanley, real quick, we only have about 25 seconds. How do people follow you? I'm on Twitter at Stanley Roberts. I'm on Instagram at Stanley Roberts TV. And I'm on Facebook at Stanley Roberts News. Awesome. Folks, Broken Potholes will be coming right back. We've got more with Stanley. And we've got Quinn Hillier coming up from the Washington Examiner. Stay tuned.

The 2020 political field was intense, so don't get left behind in 2021. If you're running for political office, the first thing on your to-do list needs to be securing your name on the web with a yourname.vote domain from GoDaddy. Get yours now. Welcome back to Broken Potholes with your host, Chuck Warren. I'm Sam Stone. In the studio with us today, Stanley Roberts. Welcome, Mr. Badley Productions. Thank you.

Folks, if you're not following him, you should. He is breaking some news, but also it's good content. I mean, honestly, it's entertaining. Thank you very much. I appreciate that. And entertaining in that I've just watched a car crash kind of way. It's the same reason people watch NASCAR. Yep. It's like a train crash. You go, I know it's going to crash, but I'm going to watch it till the end. So you've done a ton of stories on these things.

What are one or a couple of the most egregious examples? So one of the ones that really caught my attention and apparently caught the attention of the world is another piece I did in San Francisco at the Golden Gate Bridge. And there was a gentleman, his name was Noah. I remember his name clearly because he emailed me a year later to tell me to go F myself even a year later.

So he's driving a motorcycle on a freeway with a helmet on, one of those helmets that is shielded, so you can't even see his face. The full face. Full face. You can't even see his face. And so he goes and bypasses the off-ramp and decides to make a U-turn, and that's the freeway. Yeah. That's Highway 101, so you don't make a U-turn on a freeway. And he goes down the wrong side of the road. He sees me recording him. He parks 50 yards away, gets off his motorcycle.

walks across two lanes of active roadway to tell me to get the camera out his face.

Wow. Think about that for a second. This is a man with a death wish, for one. Well, yeah, but he literally yelled at me and made homophobic statements to me. I'm not this man from a can of paint. He decides he's going to do all that to me in public. And so he was worried about my camera, but he didn't see the cameras for the bridge patrol. So the bridge patrol, they saw me. They all knew me and they knew that there was an issue going on because they saw him waving around violently with his with him in his hand. And I'm standing and I can't go nowhere because the freeway is behind me. So I'm stuck.

And the CHP shows up. And CHP actually does have a bridge patrol unit, right? Well, bridge patrol and CHP are two different things, but CHP patrols the bridge as well.

And so they came and grabbed the guy and said, hey, what's going on? And it turns out the dude didn't have a driver's license or insurance for this motorcycle that he came after me for. And so he walked home and his motorcycle got towed to, you know. And so it was like, and he worked for the U.S. Park Service. So not only did he get his car towed and made TV, which went national, and you can Google it anywhere, it's out there. He also had the nerve to email or send me a message a year later, basically the middle finger.

I'm like, what is dude? You know, it's funny, Stanley. I mean, I think this has a lot to do. People do not want to just accept that they did something that's silly or reprehensible. I'll give you an example. Years ago, my daughters were in bonnet ball. So I became bonnet ball president in that softball.

And, you know, I would go to the schools because we had to go and pay high schools for their softball fields. There were in our area, it's east side, probably too expensive for community stuff. So they had to use high schools. And I remember going to one, you know, you always have your officers on campus. And the first, you know, I always ask, you know, what is your biggest problem? And I'm expecting to hear some, yeah, the kids brought five cakes to the gym one night at one, you know, something like that, right? And he just said,

The parents not allowing the kids to take any responsibility for their actions. And then I went to another school that afternoon and talked to the principal, making the deal, like asking the same question, because I'm still hoping to hear about this 510 Kager in the high school gym or something, right? Right. And he just looked at me. He goes, it's the parents. He goes, I'll give you a perfect example. We had a student break into a locker. He was on video. It was better than my wedding picture.

We sat him down with his parents. His mom saw the video and goes, that's not my son. He goes, what are you talking about? She goes, it's not my son. And I think we have just, I think part of this is because maybe too much

I think there's just been some poor parenting, not allowing our kids to take responsibility. So now they become these dysfunctional, selfish. I don't care what anybody else is doing adults. And it's just it's weird. Well, I blame that a lot on our history because it became the point where you spank your child. Don't do this or I'm going to spank you. And then it became illegal to spank your child. You go to jail for spanking your child.

Which, I get it, because some people took it too far. They didn't just spank their child. Correct. They set their child on fire. To me, there's a difference between spanking your child and setting your child on fire. There's a huge difference. That's not disciplinary. No, look, I got three spankings growing up. I remember each of them, and boy, I deserve it. Oh, you only got three spankings? So that's the problem. I was a pretty careful kid. I got hundreds of those spankings. But I deserved every one of them. I deserved each of them. I got a spanking for getting a spanking. Yeah.

You made me think you. This really seems to be a long-term effect of parenting. I just, and you see it more and more all the time. I mean, I've had

We have an autistic son, so we've had some caregivers. And the caregivers, you know, look, I mean, they're great. We've had wonderful success with these wonderful people. But I've had two women who've had their mom called to quit because they're going off to college or something. I mean, you know, I mean, all they have to do is say, hey, I'm going off to college. But they had their mom called. They're just unwilling to do adult type things anymore. Right.

Well, the parents teach their children. So they learn from example. So here's a good example. And I don't know if this person was a parent, but I'm assuming they were by their age. Usually you're a parent. So I used to stand on a corner in San Francisco and shoot people on their phones because people would know that if you're standing on a corner, you're probably homeless. So therefore, they would ignore you. So I would stand there with a $5,000 camera and shoot people in their cars. And usually while they're in their cars, they're like doing stuff on their phone they shouldn't be doing. So this one lady is playing Tetris on her phone.

And I'm standing there watching her play Tetris. And I'm like, so then I finally, well, the light's a long light. And I go, I tap on the window and I say, excuse me. And you can be on your phone if you're using it for, you know, trying to get traffic directions. I said, you're trying to get traffic directions, right? You're not playing a video game, are you? She goes, no, I would never play a video game. I'm like, she doesn't know I'm watching her play the video game. And then I asked her, are you playing a video game? And she said, no, I would never play a video game. That would be illegal. And I wouldn't want to be caught behaving badly.

I'm like, okay, so maybe I should tell you that I just caught you playing your video game. And they would deny it. And so kids learn from their parents that you can't deny it until someone can prove otherwise. So it's gotten to the point now where everybody just makes up their own story. And even on social media now, it's gotten so bad that you can't believe half the stuff you see. There's a video now that's viral going right. It's over a million views. It shows a guy with a diesel fuel pump

pumping gas on some people in the car. It's supposed to be in Brazil or somewhere. And my argument was shenanigans because I've never seen a gas pump shoot out gasoline with that much pressure. And it's diesel. So diesel doesn't even catch fire with a match. Right. So it's clearly made up, but we believe what we see. Right.

You know, there's a whole sort of genre of Facebook and YouTube videos that are sort of faked. Yeah. I tell someone, if you see someone doing something stupid and the person next to them is getting caught doing something stupid, think for a second. There's got to be somebody recording this. Now, what are the odds that that one person would just happen to be at that particular spot at that particular moment to record this whole dialogue with really good microphone sound?

Well, and Chuck, that actually brings up something. And I know we only have about one minute here before we have to go to break. But that brings up something that I think we've all been worried about in politics, which is you can fake almost anything. Anything. Anything.

I think it was the article. Yeah, no, it's it's it's become a real problem. I'd like to talk about when we get back from break, Stanley, why are you not doing this segment anymore? Why is not some loss? Why is some Phoenix news station not pick this up? This is a great segment. So we'll go backwards and we'll go back to Kron in San Francisco and then we'll come here and then we'll explain everything because there's a process. There's a process that needs to be explained. And that's one way to do it is start from the beginning.

Perfect. All right, folks, Broken Potholes coming right back with Stanley Roberts. Stay tuned. We've also got Quinn Hilliard from the Washington Examiner coming up. He's got some good stuff going on these days, too. Broken Potholes coming right back. 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.

Welcome back to Broken Potholes with your hosts Sam Stone and Chuck Warren. In the studio with us today, Stanley Roberts, creator of People Behaving Badly. And actually, when we went to a break real quick, Chuck, you had a question about why the local stations aren't carrying that segment. That's a good question. I'm glad you asked that question.

But we have to go backwards. Thank you for answering it. Let's do it. But let's try it. So let's go backwards. I don't have the appropriate time. So Benicron for 20 years. Started in August of 98, ended in August of 2018. So 20 years exactly.

And I had been trying to make this thing bigger, promote it in San Francisco, but people were behaving badly. But the cost of living got so bad that I could not afford it. And when I told the old station, hey, could you give me a little bit more money so I can afford to live here? Their response was move to Tracy and commute, which was a four-hour drive if you're stuck in traffic. Didn't make sense to me. So I finally got an agent, and we were trying to find something. And then we found something in Arizona that they were looking to replace, and they wanted to bring me in.

And the news director at that time was like, I think you'd be here forever. We love you. This will be great stuff. I love your work. So I got brought in as I brought in. But the station told me the old one in San Francisco said, give us a couple of weeks and we'll make a deal so you don't have to leave. And so the deal was I get a call from my agent goes, you know, they just trademarked the name People Behaving Badly. But they only trademarked it as Internet and News just to make sure. And they said to me, well, now that we own the name, I guess you can't leave.

And I said, the name doesn't dignify what I do. Or doesn't make up what I do. My stuff sells on its own. I don't need that. So I got the job. I took the job in Arizona. And it was a cut in pay, but the cost of living was considerably lower. So I could make ends meet. I wasn't renting a room anymore. I was renting an apartment. And frankly, I mean, let's be honest. This is a much better place to live right now. It's beautiful here, except for the summertime when Satan comes out and...

It heats everything up to a million degrees. Other than that, I'm fine. I love the other time of year. That's what we have air conditioning for. I know, but getting from point A to point B, sometimes you melt. Well, see, that's why I'm not a fan of our illustrious mayor, Kate Gallego, and her demand that everyone give up their cars.

ride the train understood why they made Phoenix with no trees you know it's like and no covered parking yeah no what the hell who thought of that hey those are just fry you guys don't worry about it let's cover everything with black without getting too far off base and then we have short period of time so I got to Arizona and now station told told them that if they use people behaving or badly in the name they would sue them so we had to come up with a new name which was caught misbehaving and after coming up with names and one of the names we can't wait was you can't do that

Or that ain't right. And somebody complained that was racist, so we couldn't use that name. You know, imagine. Come on. That ain't right. They thought it might be racist, so let's not. Which was my first clue. I mean, that ain't right. I don't know. But what was the movie with Chris Rock, right? When he became president. Oh, yeah. Yeah. He's running around the country screaming, that ain't right. Yeah. So they thought it was racist, so we caught misbehaving.

And then the Bitmoji was Mr. Badly. I named him Mr. Badly. That was me. And so basically, to make a long story short, when COVID hit, because I was doing twice. In San Francisco, I was doing a story every single day, which was the reason why I had a stroke. It was just too much pressure. So I get here and I'm doing it three times a week, which was a lot better. More time to work on the story and make sure it ended up. You get better stories. Better stories when you have time to work on them. I even drove way out to Flagstaff to do a story. Climbed in a cave, you know, and do the whole story. It was great.

And then COVID hit. And then somebody was like, well, you can't go out there and tell people what they can't do with COVID. So stay home. I'm like, okay, well, that's not what you brought me here for. And then there's a out in my contract that says that you, after two years, they can cut out the third year. So they decided to opt on the contract, which is fine. And, you know, I got the money I paid, but so I decided that rather than, and one of the things was that I cannot produce this show in

I cannot produce this show in Arizona. And if you do know Arizona, there's only two markets, Phoenix and Tucson. And so I could not do it in the Arizona market at all. Okay. So the only option was, but I didn't want to, my daughter lives in California. My better half, her mom lives in San Francisco. I don't want to be in some other state. I want to be, you know, but I love it here too. Right. So how do you do both? How do you juggle both? So I ended up starting Mr. Batty Productions.

And what I did was, 2020, I created a GoFundMe so that I can raise money so that I can buy equipment and start doing this. But it's very expensive with everything the way it is. So I've been trying to raise money so that I can do it. And I put up $300,000 as a request. People are like, that's way too much money. I'm like, have you ever tried to produce a show? Equipment costs a ton of money. The camera alone is, oh, why don't you use your iPhone? I'm like, yeah, because I'm going to walk in there and go, hey, I'm always wanting to record this whole show on my iPhone. Do you mind? You know, I'm used to doing...

No, no, that's the broken potholes way of doing things because we're cheap. Yes, exactly, exactly. But, I mean, I've had – and I'm used to using high-end equipment. So if you don't know a little history about me, I did the LAPD series. I did a little bit of Sten on Cops, a little bit. I'm the guy who got – Oh, I do remember you from Cops. Yeah. Yeah, I'm the guy running, jumping the fence. Yeah. Oh, that's amazing. Yeah.

Did you ever hurt yourself jumping the fence? Yeah, you know, well, I'll tell you the funniest. How much time do we have? We have 30 seconds. So the whizzing sound one day working with LAPD TV series, I was like, what is that noise? I thought it was gunshots, but it wasn't. It was ropes from coatlines running through the hood, and I'm running low-key. I almost clotheslined myself like 100 times.

Awesome. Stanley Roberts, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you. When we come back, we're going to have Quinn Hilliard from the Washington Examiner on. And Stanley, if you want to stick around for our ending segment, please do so. All right. We'd love to keep you in the studio. I will stay here and we shall have fun. We shall dine. We'll come back.

It's the new year and time for a new you. You've thought about running for political office but don't know where to start. Before you start any planning, you need to secure your name online with a yourname.vote web domain. This means your constituents will know they are learning about the real you when they surf the web. Secure your domain from godaddy.com today.

Welcome back to Broken Potholes with your hosts Sam Stone and Chuck Warren. On the line with us right now, Quinn Hillier, senior commentary writer and editor for the Washington Examiner. Also contributing editor for National Review Online, former executive editor for the American Spectator, and he's served in senior roles for the Washington Times, the Mobile Register, Arkansas Democrat Gazette, and Gambit New Orleans Weekly. Frankly, he's been published in just about every major paper in the country.

and lives in Mobile, Alabama. Quinn, thank you so much for joining us today. Well, thanks for having me on, guys. I appreciate it. You had a piece recently about Senator Blumenthal. For folks here in Arizona, they may not know that well who he is, but I found this really interesting. This is just something you would never see of a U.S. senator, a Democrat, even a couple of years ago.

where he was actively involved with the Communist Party and with their awards presentation. Quinn, can you tell us a little bit about that? What

What is that about? Yes. This was the, uh, Connecticut affiliate of the communist party USA, literally openly affiliate. This isn't like saying, Oh, you know, we're making some allegation or some third hand connection. Uh, this was an open affiliate of the communist party USA. Haven't giving their annual award ceremony. And, uh, uh,

They had U.S. Senator Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut as their featured surprise speaker, and Blumenthal in turn...

didn't just praise the award winners, but presented them with special certificates of recognition, especially from the U.S. Senate itself, on U.S. Senate stationery, and spoke about how proud he was and enthusiastic he was, his own words, proud and enthusiastic to participate in this event. And this was at a

at an event where the two co-hosts repeatedly made reference to the fact that this was a Communist Party affiliated event. They were celebrating the 102nd founding of the Communist Party USA. They were recruiting people to join the Communist Party. And one of these mentions was even in the

direct introduction of Blumenthal literally exactly 60 seconds before Blumenthal took the microphone. So he can't say he was unaware. He just thought it was some progressive group honoring workers. He knew this was a Communist Party of Connecticut event, and he willingly, enthusiastically participated.

Wow. I mean, has that happened literally since like the 1930s? I mean, I don't think so. This is this is astonishing. And it should be leading every single newscast for a week, just like.

Every major so-called establishment media outlet went nuts and had conniption fits, and rightly so. I'm sorry to say, rightly so, when Arizona's Paul Gosar spoke to the white supremacist group, when Iowa U.S. Representative Steve King spoke to white supremacist groups,

every media outlet in the country went nuts over it and

And yet when Blumenthal does this, I just checked, I did a web search, could not find a single mention of it on CNN, ABC, CBS, NBC, Washington Post and New York Times. Not one word about it. Chuck, had you heard of this? Because until I read this, I didn't know about this at all. No, I until I read it, I had not heard of it. And I'm still, as you saw me on camera here, shaking my head.

How this is not a story, a major story in the political sphere is incomprehensible.

I don't know what to say about it. Quinn, what has his office said about it? I imagine you tried to contact them. Actually, I have not had a chance to try to contact them because the video right now speaks for itself. I mean, the video is up. You can read a really good account. In addition to reading my column on the Washington Examiner, you can read a really good account at the site of the Yankee Institute, which is a conservative think tank in Connecticut and California.

If you follow links either there or from my piece, you can actually watch the whole video of the event. So the event speaks for itself. There's no denying that Blumenthal knew exactly what he was doing, and he was very happy to do it. Quinn, this is – I mean, we are not talking here about people who are promoting Northern European-style safety net, you know, calling it socialism. Right.

This is the Communist Party. This is the USSR. This is Cuba. This is Venezuela. This is not some benign Northern European vision of capitalism. No, or even socialism-like. Communist Party USA, which again...

the organizers specifically said we are celebrating the hundred and second birthday of the founding of Communist Party USA. Communist Party USA was a subversive organization. It took money directly for years and years and years from the Soviet Union. It helped the Soviet Union spy on the United States government. It was trying to

completely undermined the U.S. Constitution. That was its stated aims, and it was so radical and so hardline, pro-Soviet in all the gulag glory, that when Mikhail Gorbachev came along and

and tried at least to slightly reform it with his famous glasnost and perestroika, which were real reforms to actually treat human beings a little better, Communist Party USA opposed glasnost and perestroika.

Oh my goodness. That's how hardline murderous they were. And yet Blumenthal goes and speaks to them. International communism is responsible. This is well documented. This is not an exaggeration. Well documented for the deliberate death of 100 million people in the last century. I'm glad you brought that up. 100 million people.

I'm glad you brought that up because it is by far the most deadly ideology in modern history. Oh, in the history of the world. Yeah. Actually, in the history of the world. No other ideology has murdered 100 million people. What's troubling about this is, you know, when these senators appear at events like this.

that there was a process getting there this wasn't done willy-nilly he didn't do this without information his staff knew what was going on i mean that's what makes this even worse you know um you and i and sam and rodney here sometimes we invited things we don't go do all the due diligence sometimes but the senate staff due diligence was done

And they went and took the time to do this. And they probably knew this for six, eight weeks before they even did it. That's what's even more appalling about this. They took the time and effort to get these official U.S. Senate documents made up for the award recipients. Now, granted, the award recipients themselves...

might be merely progressive worker rather than communist. I'm not enough familiar with the three recipients. But the people giving them the awards and the ceremony that Blumenthal attended was openly communist. Openly communist. This is mind-boggling.

Well, it's a mind boggling. It's also an ideology directly opposed to the United States and what we stand for. And as you were saying about our Congress from Arizona, any appearance of groups like that that undermine the principles of this country should be avoided at all costs. And he just willy nilly went and did it.

Yeah. And you made the one of you made the good point that, you know, that's that there are times when state legislators who are driving back and forth between, you know, some remote town and and.

and their state capitol. And they have no staff. They have no aid. And they get a call on their car phone, and they said, hey, can you come speak to our event next week? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Why don't you text that to me, and I'll be there.

That's not what this was. This was a open, knowing, well-vetted thing, exactly as you say. And Blumenthal got up there 60 seconds after a lady introducing him made favorable reference to the Communist Party, USA.

And he said, I am enthusiastic and honored to be with you tonight. Sam, let's get Jamie and Kip to put that on our social media pages and website and boost it so people can see what's really going on. Absolutely. Absolutely. Quinn, before we spend the whole segment on this, you had another piece we wanted to talk about. Heritage voter integrity scorecard embarrasses both Trump and liberals. Can you tell us a little more about that?

Well, yeah, Heritage Foundation, who I tend to agree with almost all the time and who does rigorous work, when they do their research, they really do their research, they came up with an objective criteria, a whole set of objective criteria to determine how safe, how secure, how much integrity the voting systems of each state had.

And then not only did they go and they looked at the laws and looked at the practices, but then they checked their findings with state officials to say, are we interpreting the law right? Not are we. Not is our opinion.

about the effect of it, right? But are we interpreting how it works correctly? So they took feedback to make sure they had it right. They ranked all 50 states and Georgia came out on top. The best, most secure, fairest voting system in the country. This is the same Georgia that all the big corporations threatened to, and in some cases boycotted,

because they were, you know, because Georgia was supposedly suppressing the vote, etc. But it's also the state that Donald Trump said, oh, they will, you know, they had major rampant vote fraud. Well, no, how can you have major rampant vote fraud if you've got the most secure voting system in the country?

Wow. Heritage. So that's why I said heritage embarrassed both Trump and the liberal media, because Georgia is doing it right, even though from both sides, Georgia was coming under fire for supposedly doing it wrong. Well, and one of the things I think that's kind of gotten overlooked in all the debate about voting rights in various states is that, at least from what I've seen, Chuck, and you've been all over the country working on races, is

Red states actually tend to have more permissive voting systems than the blue states. In other words, in New York, there is no permanent early voter list. Same thing in a lot of other blue states where they still require in-person, in-prescient voting and all that kind of thing.

Joe Biden, who has represented Delaware since 1972, went nuts on Georgia's law saying this is suppressing the vote, etc., etc., even though Georgia's law, as passed, has more and easier voting opportunities than his own Delaware.

That's the hypocrisy there. Georgia did nothing wrong. And the left, the media are all lying about what Georgia did. Well, to be fair, the left, the media and the right are all lying about what Georgia did. I mean, well, that's true. I'm probably going to get myself in trouble for saying that. But it but it is a fact.

Yeah, well, look, there are voter regularities all over the country all the time when the media says that there's no vote fraud, the media's lying. But at the same time, to say that there was enough vote fraud in enough states to have stolen the last presidential election, that's also a lie. The truth is in between, just like Georgia hit the sweet spot and it's in between Georgia

what the left says about it and what Donald Trump says about it. Chuck, we only have one minute left. Did you have another question? And then Quinn, if we can, I'd love to keep you after the break. I have actually a question about the Washington examiner. I want to ask you. Okay, sure. No, Quinn, when we come back beside Sam's question, what I would like to ask is about the new, the city council in New York passing, allowing non-citizens to vote in local elections. Yeah.

I'd like to talk a little bit about that. And do you see that catching on in other states? It's been going on in some West and East Coast states, but do you see this becoming a bigger tactic, the progressives push? Brooklyn Poet House coming right back. It's the new year and time for the new you. You've thought about running for political office, but don't know where to start. Before you start any planning, you need to secure your name online with a yourname.vote web domain.

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In the on the line with us today, Quinn Hilliard from the Washington Examiner. Right when we went to break, Chuck, you had a kind of a great question about what New York City did recently. So, yeah. So, Quinn, the interesting thing about it is a mutual friend of Sam and I's pushed an initiative in Florida, Alabama and one other state of Colorado where it would prevent non-citizens from voting in state or local elections.

And they went through quite the harassment, frankly, from The Washington Post and The New York Times saying, you're making this up. You are racist. This is never going to this is never going to happen. And though at that time they had 13 examples of where noncitizens were able to vote in local elections, specifically school boards. And their philosophy was, well, if they're there and they're paying taxes, then why not?

So, you know, they were telling them they're just making something up. And now we saw that New York City City Council has passed and their their supreme leader, the mayor there, is probably going to sign it, probably going to sign it. Yeah. And it's probably going to sign it. Do you see this catching on with with the progressives?

Oh, the progressives are all for this. And this is a direct assault on

on U.S. citizenship, is what this is. It makes absolutely no sense to let somebody vote in a country in which that person is not a citizen. What this means is that citizens of other nations, it's not non-citizens, as my friend, the columnist, DeLore Murdoch, who lives in New York, points out. These aren't non-citizens. These are other people.

They are citizens of foreign entities voting in New York elections. There are tens of thousands, according to DeRoy, of Chinese citizens.

communist Chinese citizens that can now vote to influence our elections in New York. Well, and being Chinese citizens, what's the chances that the Chinese government doesn't ask them to demonstrate who and how they voted for and tell them what to do? That's

Exactly, exactly the point. And what's ridiculous about this is, you know, as our friend was relaying the questions they were being asked, you know, their premise is, look, if they're in the city, they're working, they're paying whatever taxes. Obviously, they're not paying federal income, but they're paying whatever.

And my comment is, well, that's the basis for voting that anybody who has a second home or a business that has another brick and mortar location in another state should be able to vote because in theory they're paying taxes. So they know that's not, you know, I mean, when they asked that question to the reporters, they just dismissed it. Well, I mean, either that's the logic or it's not. So it's not, you know, it's not the reason they're doing it. Look, Premier Xi of China could vote.

Take up residence in New York for six months and under this law, you can vote. I'm not exaggerating. That's what this means. I'm laughing because it's sad but true. I assume G would be voting for himself given his ego, but I mean... Well, Quinn, we sure hope you'll write a lot more about this. I hope somebody starts really pounding the pavement on it because it's amazing...

You know, and I'll just remit my, our friend telling us, he goes, they're just pounding us saying this is never going to happen. I mean, it's not even been 18 months.

No. What this is is openly subversive. This is openly subversive of the U.S. Constitutional Republic. Wow. And it's dangerous, and it's disgusting, and it's inexcusable. Quinn, I just have one last question before we let you go, and then we're going to continue on with Stanley Roberts from Mr. Badley Productions for a moment here. Sure.

I read the examiner. I get the examiner's email with the kind of, you know, here's what happened today every morning in my email box. And one of the things Chuck and I talk about all the time is that there's basically no source you can go to where you find the news and it's not slanted in one direction or another. But for the last few months in particular, tell me if I'm just crazy and I'm seeing this thing, maybe I'm just so right wing now that...

I don't see it anymore, but it seems like the examiner is making a really conscious effort to divest its news from

of the personal opinions. I read that stuff. I have no idea what the writer thinks about the issue. I get the who, what, when, where, why, a couple of quotes. Thank you. You're absolutely right. And I say that I'm on the opinion side of it. So, you know, obviously I do spout off. But the news coverage, they might choose stories that are of more interest to a conservative audience.

but they don't cover the stories with a conservative slant. They make rigorous attempts to take all opinion, all bias out of the actual wording of and presentation of the stories. And I'm proud of the new side for doing that. I think that's what every new side should do. And granted, we know we

we are serving a conservative audience which is why there are only conservatives on the opinion side but even on the opinion side

You have every breed of conservative. You have moderate conservatives. You have strong conservatives. You have pro-Trump. You have anti-Trump. So you've got a good mix of opinion there. And then the opinion does not, absolutely does not fade into the news side itself. The news side is entirely separate. I will say this. I am a big fan of fact-based journalism.

Because so many people nowadays will watch the news and assume that opinion is factual news when opinion is just that. It's like a newspaper. It says opinion up top before you read it so you know it's someone's idea, ideology. Which is fine. Which is fine. It's great. But news now has blurred the lines because they don't mention its opinion.

Almost all the news I read is opinion. Yeah, absolutely. You're so right. Thank you for saying that. Well, Quinn, thank you guys. Well, thank you for doing it. Yeah. Thank you for doing it. Chuck and Sam, thank both of you for having me on, and thanks for the compliments from my publication. Please pass it on to your newsroom because I am a big fan of the work they are doing, and thank you so much for joining us. We hope you'll join us again.

I'd be glad to. Thank you very much. Thank you, Quinn. Thank you. Fantastic. That was Quinn Hilliard from the Washington Examiner in the studio with us still. Stanley Roberts, Mr. Badley Production. You're in the news for a long time. I've been doing it for 30 years. I started in Salinas, California, and I've been riding with the police since 1990. So it's been a long time.

But when I hear a guy talk about that in this day and age, what he was just talking about, it stands out, doesn't it? It stands out because it's not cool to do stuff with police anymore. You have to be anti-police for it to stand out. And I'm not going to betray my beliefs based on what someone else's beliefs are. I have my own beliefs. I do fact-based journalism.

I just did a piece called Gotham by the Bay. It brought me out to look at the San Francisco opioid problem. And it's on my YouTube channel, Mr. Bailey Productions. And it's just crazy. There's three parts. Sorry, me. There's four parts. And they're there. You can watch it. It's great. You can also find me on Twitter at Stanley Roberts. You can see my check because people try to pretend I'm me all the time. And you still have that GoFundMe up. I have the GoFundMe. Now, the best way to find it is just go to Linktree.com.

And then put in Mr. Badly TV because I don't know the – Yeah, no. Have you looked at like Patreon? I know I have some friends who are doing that stuff. I have a Patreon where I'm putting stuff on there slowly. I have little groups that people can – because not everybody has a lot of money and I get that. No, but I mean, Chuck, one of the things that I really – I do appreciate in the modern media era is there's so much new diversity with these individual content creators. Me too, yeah.

But the craziest thing about what I do is that, as I said before, I do boomerang. I post it out there, and then it comes back and hits me in the face. And to your critics, I mean, it takes money to do this stuff. It takes a lot of money. Chuck and I know. It takes money to do this stuff to get this out there, and so you need people to support your program. Well, here's my biggest problem. Here's my biggest problem. Yeah.

If you go to Google and put in Stanley Roberts, it shows me as a basketball player, seven feet tall, 280 pounds. I remember Stanley Roberts. I love him. That's Stanley Roberts. I get his mail sometimes. Folks, fantastic program today. I want to thank Stanley Roberts for joining us in studio. Thank you. Quinn Hilliard from the Washington Examiner. He was fantastic. That's an amazing story about Richard Blumenthal, Chuck.

Oh, and I really do. We need to have Kip and Jamie put it up on our site and on our social media and boost it. People need to see this. It's insane. And as much as we are offended when our folks go to these idiotic conferences of white supremacists, the reverse is also true in our society.

People go to common as gatherings, which are a threat to democracy. I'm no more happy to see our folks out at, you know, the Proud Boys things than I am to hear about this with Blumenthal. But it needs to be treated the same. These are wackos. Yes. I mean, these are wackos. It's crazy. Yes. All right. Broken Potholes will be coming back next week. Be sure to join in for our Christmas special.

Actually, we have no idea what makes it special, but we'll try. We'll give away a trillion dollars. If I had a trillion dollars. If I had a trillion dollars, I'd wait a few days. Get Stanley off. Stanley's costing us more money. Every syllable out of that man's mouth, he's costing us more money. And that is the last word. Broken Puddle. That's what it is.

The 2020 political field was intense, so don't get left behind in 2021. If you're running for political office, the first thing on your to-do list needs to be securing your name on the web with a yourname.vote web domain from godaddy.com. Get yours now.