Political Hit List

eight four four nine hundred Buck. That's eight four four nine hundred to eight to five the future of talk radio. Buck Sexton, Welcome to Buck Sexton Show. Everybody, great to have you with me. Thank you so much for joining. An honor and a privilege to have you with me here in the Freedom Hum We've got quite a show plan for you. Eight four four eight four eight two five. Big story everyone's talking about today is the tariffs, the

steel tariffs. So Trump and trade and China, it's all happening just like just like he said it would, and now people are getting upset about it. And here's what the President said. We'll be in imposing tariffs on steel imports and tariffs on aluminum imports, and you're gonna see a lot of good things happen. You're gonna see expansions

of the companies. I know that, David, you said you'd be expanding, Tim, I know you said you were expanding it all pretty much all of them of you will immediately be expanding if we give you that level of playing field and we give you that help. So we will see how this works out. Now, we'll see if in fact the President's assessment of the situation with China and what should be done about it is correct. We've got Gordon Chang joining us later to discuss that in

more detail. Look, a part of this is that up until this point, it's been mostly US administrations concerned with upsetting China, doing anything that would rock the boat on trade with China. And Trump even pointed out that there have been some some who came before him in the White House who really just they didn't have a clue.

People have no idea how badly our country has been treated by other countries by people representing US that didn't have a clue, Or if they did, then they should be ashamed of those guys, because they've destroyed the stale industry, They've destroyed the illuminum industrict and other industries strictly when you look at all the lands to car plants, automobile plants that moved down to Mexico for no reason whatsoever except we didn't know what we were doing, so we're

bringing it all back. We will see. There are plenty of conservatives that I'm sure some of you will be hearing from in the days and weeks ahead. We will argue that tariffs are inherently state action that favors some industry at the expense of everyone not in that industry. Now, in this case, you have the national security considerations of a domestic steel industry. I get that, some say that's overblown.

With aluminum. Uh, you have some companies that are going to be upset by this, clearly right, and this will just be one example of many, But aluminum producers, I think this is great domestic alumen bruisers. But if you're Anheuser, Bush or Coca Cola, you will not think this is great because your cost of business is going to go

up as a result of it. Um interesting though, that those who will always claim that the government shouldn't be picking winners and losers often failed to take into account. This is just my feeling on these things. Well, I guess I'm doing a radio show, so all this is my feeling on things. Um. But the government is already always picking winners and losers with the way that it regulates and manages the economy. It's a question how much and who the winners are, who the losers are with

regard to a global marketplace. Now, so this will now be put to the test because the market dropped four hundred plus points or so. People are concerned about this one but one one day market dropped because people get spooked about what's going to happen in a possible trade war with China. You can't you can't take too much away from just what the market does on anyone given day.

But Trump is hey, he's keeping promises, folks. To those of you who are like I want I want the Trump agenda, I want him to do what he said he was going to do. That is certainly that is certainly happening right now. This is part of what he has been pushing for for quite some time. But I want to revisit something from yesterday now as well as you have the departure, And I was joking around a little bit about how I'm pro hope and we should give Hope a chance and don't don't let don't let

Hope disappear and all that. I've never heard her speak, and I don't know her, um I. All I know about her is what I've read. I do know, however, that there was something something funky about the whole situation. There was something wrong with what had gone on in this case, and none other other than than than the mooch. A the mooch. He was over at CNN and he's had the following. The current situation and the current culture inside the administration stays exactly the way it is. There's

literally no change. There will be a lot more departures. Yeah, the morale is at an all time low, and it's trending lower now. I know a lot of people will say that the problems in the White House are of dysfunction of the people they've brought in. Some of them lack necessary government experience, which that that has been true in some cases, folks. I'm not gonna lie to you. There have been some people brought in with this administration who just couldn't do it. They were the wrong choice.

And I don't think that now the administration is not going to publicly kick people after you kick people in the butt once they've already been shown the door, right, So there's no point in saying that. But there have been people that were not up for the task they were initially assigned. That is just a fact. Uh. That's said. If the morale is so low on the White House, if things are so bad, it's not just because or even primarily because of decision making much John Kelly anyone else.

It is because it has become a clear plan, a clear plot in the media. Two as I was saying yesterday, isolate and destroy each and every person in the trump Ward bit. And that is why they love the Mueller probe so much. That is also a major major issue here. They're never gonna find this Russia collusion because it didn't exist. The whole thing is preposterous. But I can't call it a joke because it's a very effective tool of politics

for the Democrats. The process is the punishment it costs for some people tens of thousands of dollars just for one appearance in terms of legal fees, which some folks brought into this have to pay themselves to sit before Mueller, to sit before you know, House Intelligence Committee or whatever the case may be. Um, that's a big that's a

big problem. That's something that doesn't get factored into much of the analysis on TV about whether or not this was This whole Mueller probe is ethical, whether it's justified or not. Democrats love it because how how would you like to be somebody in the White House right now who has any relevant knowledge whatsoever of the Trump campaign and Trump situation. You may get called behind closed doors, as Hope Picks did, and it seems to me ambushed.

I thought this was the case as soon as I saw the initial reporting, but she was testifying before the House Intelligence Committee, I think, for nine hours. And this was a setup, folks. It was a setup, just like remember how they got Flynn was a leak, and now we're finding out that some people in the FBI didn't even think he lied. So someone broke the law to

leak to get Flynn. And then we're seeing, well, I don't have tant to go through every administration figure that's been pushed out by in one way or another, but look at how many other departures have had a at least the media's fingerprints on them. If not, they were the whole thing, right, they will. They were the fuse and the charge. They were the ones that initiated the series of events or the political news cycle that got the departure going. And with Hope Pix, what we saw

was based on the reporting today. You had a Democrat. Democrats on the House Intellience Committee, we're asking, asked a question after nine hours of interrogation. Okay, after nine hours, Democrats asked, what have you ever had? Has your boss, the president, ever told you to lie? And she conferred with her Look, I just read this assessment of today. She conferred with her lawyer, and sure enough, the response that she gave or initially was well, are we talking

about any kind of lie? Like if if Trump says, do I look fat in this? Do I have to give him an honest answer? If someone says is the President busy and I had to lie to protect his time? Does that does that count? I mean, this is what I read today. It was the other part of the story that initially wasn't wasn't shared. And to give an answer so as not to lie in her own she said, well, yeah, sometimes, I mean I've told little I've told white lies. And

they pounced on this. They leaked it right away to the media. They pounced on it. Oh she's a liar. Trump's a liar. They're all liars. Lie lie, lie. And she was planning on leaving anyway because of the pressure.

Maggie Haberman of The New York Times was reporting that despite everything everyone saying about the Russia probe, but even apart from whether it instigated her to this specific incident instigated her departure, It just goes to show you what is going on here, whether it's the Democrats in Congress or the media, which is really just the public extension of the Democrat agenda, they are taking people out. They have a political hit list, and they are removing people

from this administration as quickly as they can. It is an embattled, an embattled White House, and not because of the leunges of global national security policy, not because they can't handle the economy. No, not that that stuff is actually going pretty well. Seeing some of the successes flashing on the screen of Fox News a second ago, you know, tax reform, keyston XL pipeline, Neil Gorcich, right, Trump is getting regardless of the process and what is expected when

we're talking about things like the personnel around him. Trump is getting it done, and yet they just think if they can isolate him enough and make it as uncomfortable as possible to be an employee of this White House, to serve your country as an employe of this White House, that is a victory for the left. It's a shame.

It's a shame. But but more to the point, also this Muller stuff, this investigation now, whether it's Muller or the Democrats in the House Intelligence Committee, it seems to me that it exists mostly for leaks to see an N and MSNB and the major newspapers, The Times, Washington Post, that's become the m O and it it maybe now is really the only reason for their existence. It is the rat is the reason for being of these investigations, so that we can read day in and day out.

Oh they're looking at Kusher now. Oh they're talking to Ivanka now, Oh they're talking just all these leaks to feed this insanity. I was just speaking to a friend yesterday affair of a very good buddy, but just speaking to him about what's going on, and and he came, I mean he's kind of a he's a centrist who leans right. I'd say he's a right leaning centrist, not a not a staunch Republican, not a you know, I guess he would say I'm a hardcore conservative. I think

I'm just buck. I'm kind of an odd duck. But he's just like, you know, I'm really noticing something among my friends and among people. He went to a very fancy school. He's an Ivy League guy, noticing people, noticing something among people that when it comes to Trump, they've really lost their minds, and very educated, very um well respected people within different communities have just lost it. And I think that's true of a lot of journalists. We

discussed Trump arrangement syndrome. It's a real thing. It's a real thing, and it's troubling to me the glee with which the media greets every departure now from this White House, because whether like it or not, Trump is still the president and we want there to be very good people in roles like well National Security Council and National Security Advisor and all all that, all that White House communications, all the things that need to get staffed at that level.

But they're making it hard. It's part of the obstruction, it's part of the never Trump is um and hashtag resistance mentality, and it's just we're gonna suffer because of it. It's a shame, it really is um. By the way I I had, I'm gonna try hard today to get us on a whole bunch of topics, including China Russia putin saying that there are invincible nuclear missiles that they have.

Now will get into some of that. We've got some special guests joining us today in the third hour of the show, But I want to make sure that we mix up the topics a bit a bit here and not just get onto, you know, the latest with the campaign against the n RA and gun control. But there was a really interesting, worthwhile series of articles I've read in the last day or so on how when I talk about systemic law enforcement failure leading up to the

shooting in Florida, that's clearly true. But when you drill down into what's going on in Broward County, and I saw this a week ago, and I was trying to

verify it. When you drill down into what happened in Broward County specifically with that Sheriff's office and the policies in place, uh, it's a situation where I can tell you that with everything we know, FBI missing the tips, FBI missing the detailed explanation of the likelihood of Nicolas Cruz becoming a shooter, the dozens of calls to Nicolas Cruz house by for local law enforcement, and then the sheriff's deputies not entering the facility where the shooting was happening,

the building of shooting is happening at the very first opportunity. With all of that, I've said to you, I just don't know how it can get worse. You know what, it does get worse because when you look at what Broward Counties Sheriff Sheriff Scott Israel did as a matter of policy in that county, not only is it alone a scandal, but it may in fact have had a direct and negative impact on the likelihood of the Nicolas

Cruz shooting happening in the first place. I'll have to explain it a bit, and if you stay with me, I will, so don't go anywhere. I'll be right back. The second issue we identified is that even in law enforcement, school administrators or family members believe that an individual post is the risk of committing an act of violence they have very few options to prevent them from purchasing any

gun or taking the guns away that they already have. Therefore, I intend to present a new law, perhaps in coordination and others that are working on it now, that will lead to the creation of gun violence restraining orders, something that will give law enforcement and close family members the option of obtaining a court order to prevent gun sales or remove guns from individuals who pose a threat. I

have been a proponent of this from the beginning. I think that if we're going to try to take steps to mitigate the threat right to lessen the likelihood of a school shooting, gun violence restraining order is completely assuming it's crafted properly and there's there is due process. And I knew this, yes, Okay, Trump stumbled when he said we take the guns first. He got a little out of his skis, but obviously not going to do that. But a gun violence restraining order would be exactly what

it sounds like. If somebody like Nicholas Cruz is saying I'm going to go shoot people and I'm going to do bad things, um that that could be presented to a judge and then that individual could be both have his firearms taken from him or her, but pretty much always a him right or perhaps indefinitely banned from purchasing or getting a firearm, and there would be a legal process for those who go in front of a judge,

and you know that would be that. Um. I think this is a I think this is a good idea. I would also note that, as some others have been pointing out, and we're gonna get into this more right after the break, you know, threatened to kill somebody's actually a felony. And when we're looking at the law law force and not doing anything, I'm starting to wonder at what point his threats, his specific threats, Nicolas cruzes to commit violence, commit acts of violence, we're really not actionable.

Um I I wonder if that is really a fair assessment of what went on there, because I'm pretty sure that under different circumstances of somebody had posted at a threat and the FBI was called and they thought it was real, you'd be you'd be in a whole lot of trouble. Um, You've been a whole lot of trouble. So the gun Violence Restraining Order is I think the best single policy change that I've heard of um and and as you know, I'm I am skeptical of any of the actions that are really getting a lot of

attention right now preventing attacks, preventing school shootings. I also think that we are in a in a frenzy and a hysteria right now about school shootings that overstates the threat. I'm just gonna tell you, I think the threat is overstated right now when when people are telling me that we need to put highly trained armed security person, I'm hearing this from a lot of folks in over two

hundred thousand schools. Uh. I think that we've gone beyond what the threat what the threat is, and we are giving into an intentional campaign of fearmongering by the left. And I don't like it. I disagree with it. But there's another thing that I need to talk to you about on that is the Broward County school policy when it comes to policing schools in Broward County and what the Sheriff's department there got into and what it was up to. There's been some very interesting research done on this,

and here's the short version. Looks like the Broward County sheriff was even more responsible and more inept more responsible for the disaster than we thought. Team Early on in the aftermath of the Florida shooting, I saw the first of what seemed to be somewhat conspiratorial postings about the actions of the Broward County sheriff Department. Now they weren't unbelievable claims out of hand, but it seemed a little

little murky citations. The sources weren't great, but it was a narrative that struck me as plausible, and it was certainly one also that you couldn't turn to the mainstream outlets to put much time into uncovering because it would take away from their primary narrative, which is the n r A, which had nothing to do with the floor shooting. N RA is the bad guy here. I've heard more about the n r A than Nicholas Cruz at this point,

which is a disgrace, but that is true. I've heard more in the media about the n r A than the actual evil doer in this case who killed seventeen people. Ah. But this storyline that I came across, and actually it was brought to my attention by some of you, and I really do mean it when I say this is a team effort. I've gotten so much great information, both

personal information. Some of you have been you're listening, have been sources in the past, and some of you listening have pushed me to other sources and and places to get information that have been essential for this show. I had the advantage of not rushing on the air with just whatever everybody else is saying. I have the data to research and think and pull things together. You know, if you just want the kind of bare bones, superficial headlines, are plenty of places to give you that. I spend

all day. I marinate in my analysis if you will before I come on the air, and you are a very important part of that process. Team. You help spice it up, and sometimes you are absolutely essential with the information you bring to my attention. So don't ever feel like I and I know a lot of you semi stuff on Facebook, you semi stuff on Twitter. I read, I read it all. I can't always respond, especially if you're welcome to write. Some of you write twelve words

or more. Sometimes that's fine, I'll read it. I just can't respond with twelve hundred words or else. M Molly is She's not gonna be She's not gonna wait for a ring. She's gonna be com me so um. Here's the storyline, though for Broward County Sheriff's bark is very ah. It is a stunning indictment of what was really going

on there. The storyline was that the Sheriff's department, in cooperation with the school system there, had decided that it would be both serving the needs of social justice and serving their own parochial political needs right their own near term benefits and prospects if they were to find a way to make sure that there were less arrests of juveniles and Broward County, and that this became a policy that was agreed upon at the highest level, so at

the level of uh Sheriff Scott Israel himself and also brought together the chief of the Fort Lauderdale Police Department, the superintendent of schools, you know, a whole a whole bunch of different organizations here that decided that it would be best if they changed the way that policing was done when it came specifically to that's right, juveniles, teenagers. We're going back and looking at what happened with Nicholas Cruz. Why didn't they take more action why wasn't more going on? Well,

this is certainly one explanation for it. And like I said, I didn't until I saw the sourcing. And now it's come out because people have dug into Miami Herald articles and other other newspaper articles that weren't putting together all these pieces. But we're establishing some of the basic facts necessary for this theory to be true. So you had Sheriff Israel's department deciding that they would give a whole lot more citations and end the school to prison pipeline.

Less arrests of juveniles. This would serve a whole bunch of different purposes. Less arrests looks good for the school district, because why do you have so many kids who are either not just engaged in truancy, but also engaged in a legal activity outside of the schools. So that doesn't

look good. Schools, no surprise, our social justice factories in these are public schools in Broward County, and the administrators and the various superintendent and other school officials wanted to be able to say that there were less arrests of students. The Sheriff's department wanted to point to the drop in arrests and say, hold on a second, we're doing a great job. Here. See how many fewer arrests there are

of juveniles and Broward County. This is for those of you who remember the the incredible show The Wire, written by David Simon, right, executive reser. I think that's what it was. Uh, The Wire is a great show. I highly recommended if you haven't seen it. But this is a very similar to scheme to what you see in

The Wire. And it's true of a lot of different a lot of different government bureaucracies, including law, enforce and once across the country that the fastest way to show results is to change the data that gives you the results. Don't make don't make a county safer, just change the way you count safety in the county. Oh, I would note the Obama administration did this on immigration. Oh yeah,

that's right. There's Obama was the deporter in chief. They were saying, oh, he's deporting so many people, when in fact, what they did and this was a an active, active policy. This was a decision they made. If you were caught at the border and turned around, they were going to count that as a deportation. Whereas previously have been considered a denial of entry or I forget what the specific terminology was, but they made it so that the numbers

would look bigger. They're doing more deportations than they actually were. Similar thing at work here. You have far too many juveniles engaged in crime, and so what they decided to do, and you know gang activity, we're talking about sixteen seventeen

year olds. What they decided to do was tell the sheriff's department that they're gonna have a new approach to public safety and they're going to reduce the crime rate, the burglary rate, and the way to do that is by saying that kids stay in school, We're not going to arrest kids for violent behavior. We're just going to

issue citations. And they were going to push this notion of citations and then they would say, look look at how what a great job we're doing in Brower County because of the drop in violent crime, when in reality, they just were saying there were fewer arrests for burglary, larceny, assault because sheriffs are being told if seventeen year old, you know, punch of somebody or Rob's you know, Rob's a liquor store or something. Give him a citation, don't

arrest him and process him. You can imagine what that did to the actual crimes in the in the county. That is not That is not a good way to go about not a good way to go about your law enforcement tactics. It has also come out that Sheriff Israel was using the department as a it's just political machine, old school political machine. He was hiring people who are doing outreach, who were really just campaigning for him and creating deeper roots for him in the community for the

purposes of re election. Because he's an elected he's an elected official. I think people forget that that guy is an elected official, Sheriff Sheriff Israel. Uh. And now when people start to see this, and there have been a bunch of different websites that have pulled us together. Sarah rump Over at Red State did and Coulters syndicated column this week is just on this issue. Her columns held the school to mass murder pipeline and she's pointing it out and it's there. I saw it last week and

I was trying to track it down. Actually reach out to a friend of mine, a couple of friends of mine in Florida said, you know, do you no need journalists who could give me a little background on this or anyone who could add a little meet to the bones of these theories or of this theory. And sure enough others called called wind this as well, because this

was out there. This was out there, and no one wanted to run with it right away because it seemed like, well, there's some there's some elements in different stories that support this. But what end up happening was a sheriff's department became a social justice political organization that was much more concerned with the stats and the perception of safety than the actual implementation and of safety, particularly with regard to juveniles

teenage offenders. Why does that matter Because Nicholas Cruse was a multiple, multiple time, dozens of calls teenage offender, and it is it stands to me at least perfectly reasonable to believe that if they had had a different approach to dealing with possibly violent teenagers in Broward County, there may have been a different outcome with Nicholas Cruz. This has been the theory all along. Now there's evidence to

support it. Now there there's a lot of people have been going through the public documents and looking for that. As I mentioned, I think Sarah Rump a red state.

And Sheriff Israel was at one point bragging, bragging about telling his deputies that they were not to arrest juveniles, and he cited the quote dramatic drop in violent crime during his tenure and the issuing of thousands of all citations rather than arrest for juveniles specifically, So how do you how do you make people think you're doing a good job in Broward County? For Sheriff Israel, You change who you arrest and that's all you have to do.

You make the decision that you're going to release juveniles with just essentially a warning, right with a citation instead, I mean, I guess citation you gotta pay or show up, but no more arrests. And oh, you get to feel like a community leader and somebody who's socially justice aware because what else is a part of this, Oh, a disproportioned impact of juvenile arrests on minorities in the Broward community. So you looked like a social justice hero, you being

Sheriff Israel who was dropping the crime rate. Meanwhile people were actually suffering. Crime was happening. And oh, by the way, Nicholas Cruz was able to have the cops called to his house dozens of times without any real act and taken against him. And we are led to believe that there was nothing that law enforcem could have done the situation that was better or that could have stopped it. So this what started out as a conspiracy theory that

does make its way around the internet. Some of my fellow conservative analysts have looked at it, pulled together the data and it's it's true. It is true. There was cronyism, there was politicization and ineptitude lies at the Broward County Sheriff's Department that were it was a systemic issue, systemic. So I just wanted to add that to our discussion of everything that had happened in Florida. And with that, I will take if you want to, if you've got

any thoughts. Is, by the wayf any of you lived down in Brower. I know we've got a lot of Florida listeners and you live in Broward County, would really be curious to hear if you have any experience with this or if you live in a jurisdiction where you think something similar has a heard, where they've changed the way they count statistics about arrests or the way or

they change what they're willing to arrest people for. One of the big things that got me mad here in New York City reviously was I found out that, uh, build a Blasio. Who you guys, are anyone listening any of the country unless maybe you're in you're in Chicago, San Francisco or l A. I feel like we have a worse mayor than you. Um, I think we have

a worse mayor than you. The guy is a clown, but he made the decision that told the police department here on YPD that they're not going to arrest people for public urination anymore. I remember growing up and when the city in the bad old days, and it was

really bad. When I was growing up here. It was actually the worst in it ever was was in the early nineties when I was a kind of young teenager and people would just, you know, they would you'd come home and there'll be somebody who was you know, right on the front step and just what happened all the time. It was disgusting. It was disgrace and de Blasi. I was like, yeah, it's kind of mean to arrest people for for, you know, urinating on the street in public,

So we're not going to do that anymore. This is what social justice gets you, my friends, and this is what the left belief is going to advanced the common good. And in Broward it was I think disastrous. If any of you listening have any ideas on that, let me know eight four five eight four Buck gonna be a switching up topics here in just a second, so stay with me, all right, team, let's take some calls. We have Matthew in Nebraska. Hey Matthew, Hey Buck, thanks for

having me on. I've been listening to your podcast most of the time. I just wanted to mention that there's been a program in place since in a couple of different states including Ohio and Colorado and a few others that have not been named, called the Faster Program, and it trains teachers to confront an armed attacker and trauma

management to try and save as main kids lives as possible. Yeah, I'm I'm all, I'm all fine with the training, and I actually like the idea of concealed carry for personnel in schools who want to have it. I just think the notion of a of a uniformed defense force or some kind of official defense force for all schools based on the number of shootings and the number of honestly that the number of shootings are really talking about, is not the not the appropriate solution to the problem. Oh,

I totally agree. I I used to go to school ten years ago with the school that had a resource officer, and we all knew where their office was and their

rough schedule moving around the building. But having teachers who you don't know are armed are probably the best way to confront an attacker that slipped through every hole like we had in Partlet Yeah, and by the way, as as soon as you have the first teacher you have who has an a D and literally shoots some literally shoots himself and a foot, I mean, that'll be a national news story. And if you were to put thousands of teachers, you know it's gonna happen at some point.

I always remember that video of I forget I think it was a I forget, I think it was a D A agent. It was on YouTube where he's showing a class is glock. Do you know what I'm talking about and oh yeah, there's been many instances where somebody who should know what they do completely messes up and puts a shop somewhere they weren't put through his back and that guy pulling through his knee, I think in

a classroom full of kids. It's gotten millions and millions of views on YouTube, and they show it in gun safety class. I mean I was in a gun safety class and they showed that clip. So somebody told me that guy tried to sue. By the way, I tried to sue either the school or the news or somebody, but he didn't win. But Matthew, if they want to

get but federal, you know, federal air marshals. I don't believe a federal air marshal has actually foiled a terrorist or any kind of violent plot aboard an airplane since nine eleven. I don't think that's happened. True. But right now we have this program in place and it's a charity. So what's the name of the program again, the faster program. I have to look at this one. Yeah, yeah, Pastor Saves Lives dot org five or one three, and it trains teachers. It's been in place after the Sandy Hooks

shooting started out in Ohio. There's another version in Colorado, and they're even training teachers in other states. I'm in favorite say the same reason why, Matthew. You know, it's it's good to know how to defend yourself with you know, if you can, you know, with your hands. It's good to know some basic self defense skills. Martial arts might be at that's one way of saying it. But it's

it's good to not to defend yourself. It doesn't mean you have to get into fights, right, It's just a good thing to to know, and I think it instills a degree of of confidence and make somebody a little more uh, you know, self possessed when they're dealing with certain situations. And so I feel the same way about if adults want to get active shooter training, if adults want to conceal carry in schools, I'm all I'm for

it and fine with it. Um. So if this program maybe could be expanded, that's perhaps a way to to get us to a better place in all this. Thank you for calling Matthew from from Nebraska. Appreciate it. Yeah, you know this is it's been pretty amazing to see how quickly this issue was uh turned into well, how quickly all of a sudden we're being told that the solution is gun control. And I thought we had gotten a place where we were past this, but now here

we are. In fact, there's still you know, efforts at gun control and gun restrictions, but then also the notion of a massive force. I don't think that's the answer either, um, but not a lot of people want to hear the problem is not as bad as the meat is telling you. And that's what I'm telling you. The administration is going to be rolling out policy over the next three weeks, and it will be very, very strong. I've also spoken with Jeff about bringing a lawsuit against some of these

sopioid companies. I mean, what they're doing and the way the distribution, and you have people that go to the hospital with a broken arm and they come out in there addicted. You know. As you know, we've been I think we've been involved more than any administration by far.

President Trump earlier today at a White House summit on the opioid crisis, welcome to our to the buck sex and show everyone this is an issue that from the beginnings of this show I've tried to bring attention to this is an issue that I have to say, given the focus and and outrage and the national convulsion that we have just had because of the school shooting, I can't help but look at the lack of political momentum and media focus on this, which is also a life

or death issue, and in terms of scale, it is not even close when we look at the problem. Um. As I mentioned yesterday, the numbers are what they are. You have a few ousen people killed in school shootings in recent years. For twenty sixteen I think, or maybe it's seventeen, the numbers are in over sixty three thousand

people died of opioid over overdoses, sixty three thousand. To put that in perspective, you had a total in of seventeen thousand, two hundred fifty people were murdered in the United States, So you lost it's all murders, all cities, three million people, seventeen thousand, two hundred fifty murders in the US UH sixty three thousand people died of opiod overdoses. Now, I know with opioids people are there's differences here right there.

Taking them, they're becoming addicted. But this is an urgent national crisis, and it's affecting communities all across the country. And I think that this hits home, particularly with the President, because of what he went through with his brother, who, as is well known, has been described by the President

in some detail, drank himself to death. And this is I just I see these Look I'm not saying we can't handle more than one issue, but look at the the ferocity of the media's demands for urgent action and sweeping change on gun control because of school shootings, and the much more muted approach to dealing with a crisis that is it is a true pandemic. We have a pandemic of addiction in this country right now, particularly to these opioids and these different uh, these different chemical compounds

don't even have to necessarily grown anymore. But you've got a perfect storm of a number of factors that have come together. One of them is that people have been given a lot of prescription drugs for pain, and the prescription or the pharmaceutical companies seemed to be way too lax in their safeguards in selling enormous quantities of a whole bunch of different drugs OxyContin and and others into certain parts of the country, certain pharmacies, and that's very,

very bad. You have, as I've been telling you, the Mexican cartels more violent than they've ever been. I was just telling a friend this the other day. He said, no way. I said, look it up, and it came back to me, said, you're right. Most murders ever in Mexico because of the cartels right now, violence on a scale that is as bad as anything that we've seen in that country. Oh and by the way, they're now

vertically integrated as heroin growers and exporters and importers. I mean they're importing into the United States, exporting in from Mexico and growing it. And if you look at a map of Mexico, there's highlands that kind of form a backbone of spine of the country up starting up in the Durango and Sinaloa area, Cineloa highlands, and then you go all the way down and they can grow poppy up there, and they do. They're growing heroin now, I

mean they don't grow heroin. That heroin is a process that you you get it from the paste from the poppy plant. But they're doing that now in Mexico used to have to come all the way from South Asia

for the most part. Then you've also got large chemical factories, illegal ones operating in Mexico and in China, and they can bring pills into the US that are incredibly addictive, very very powerful, fentanel and others, these different chemical compounds that haven't that have addictive properties, that are just it

is very very hard to to break. I mean when you read the descriptions I have to give so I think it was seeing Inn in the New York Times was writing just about what addicts are like, what the It was profiles of different opioid addicts, and they are generally functioning people. We have this notion in the country, and I think that's part of why the media is not really focused on this issue. And you think about there's there were a lot of stories, stories about the

crack epidemics, stories about the AIDS epidemic. I mean, when when there's a national crisis like this, usually because it is both important and attention grabbing, media runs with it. I see very little coverage of opioids. It hasn't yet been addressed as something that needs a really a cultural shift and the mobilization of communities across the country to deal with it. And I'm not comparing to say that

one is important and one is into or something. But you look at the the the outpouring from both sides of the aisle to deal at school shooting, then you look at the opioid crisis. Government is not going to solve the opioid crisis, folks, governs all, I'm not gonna solve school shootings. But it's this is from us, this is at our level. And I've I've been around people, I've seen people in my life, even you know, growing up in New York City, there were a lot of

drugs here. In fact, one of the things I think that always surprises. It certainly surprised some of my my peers at Langley at the c i a UM. One of the things that always surprises was that when I tell them stories about and like I had very loving, supportive family, had great parents, I went to a great Jesuit school here and everything, but just being in the city and be you know, going we used to go

out very young age here. People had fake I d s. I think back to this now and it seems crazy, but everyone starting around fourteen or fifteen, would try to get a fake I d and they're going to bars, and there were nightclubs that we would go to here in New York. I mean, not me obviously, because I was not twenty one yet, but yeah, maybe, but you're just around and people started doing drugs that are very

young age. I think one of the things that's surprising for some of my my government friends when I said, well, how did you get a how did you get a clearance? You know, you know, and I said, I just never got mixed up in any of that stuff. It just never was for me. You know. I had a a big brother to look out for me, and a little brother and sister that I wanted to be proud of me, and parents that you know, in the same that I felt the same about. And it just never And I

had friends who went to rehab. I knew people very well who went to rehab for serious drug addiction, and I'm glad that they got help, but some of them were never really the same afterwards. I was just speaking to a dear friend of mine a few weeks ago. We actually met up and had had dinner for the first time in a while. A guy I've known for decades at this point, and we we got into a lot of a lot of a lot of fun trouble

together back in the day. You know, we were kind of partners and uh and growing up together here in the city. And he said that we saw he saw another friend he saw in the street who we both knew and has been just been through it, addicted to the worst addicted to the worst stuff. And by the way, a privileged kid. You know, I grew up with a life of privilege here in the city, and but just

had the had multiple trips into rehab. And he said he saw him and they were really all friends, and he pretended not to see him, meaning the guy who had been to rehab tend not to see him, sped up and just walked past him and walked away. He said he couldn't even bring himself to be mad at him because he knew that he just it's just easier, it's easier not to get into it. You know, how are you doing? Oh? You know, I've you know, I'm I'm clean for x amount of days, and you know,

because we all know, we all know. I think I might have been mentioned before in the show. I had two friends growing up, both of whom died of drug overdoses, one of whom was actually a very very close friend of mine when I was on the very young, the

younger side. Um, Now they were prescription drug overdoses. I don't you know, And then you get into it was it was it just an of course, in these situations, you just respect the family's wishes and try to support them, and you know, you don't ask questions, right, But I knew that both of them died of drug overdose. Uh. And two people I knew, I knew well and spent a lot of time with, and also, by the way, very very privileged people here in the city. And I

just always stayed away from that stuff. I never healed me. But I'm telling you these stories just because I've I've seen it. I've seen what it does to people. I knew young women, I knew my peers. When I was in high school fifteen sixteen years old, going to rehab for cocaine, that was a big one. Um, some others would go for alcohol, but cocaine was particularly a big issue when I was growing up in the city. And

you know, that's a dangerous drug, terribly addictive ruins lives. Well, we're seeing now is a proliferation of these incredible potent pain killers that are even more addictive and more available and can come in all different kinds of forms. And

you've got the car. You can either get it from the cartels, which is coming to you from a street dealer, right, or you having an unethical doctor who's prescribing too many pain killers and not paying attention, or maybe just a doctor who doesn't really you know, people are doctor shopping, or the pharmacist is not paying attention. They are all these different ways to get this, right. That's that's part

of it too. People talk about gateway drugs. Well, if you're on pain medication for your back and it's an opioid, it is it is a gateway drug to then getting fenttal from so because you become addicted. I mean, I actually don't believe that marijuana is a gateway drug too. And I trust me more than I feel like more than half the people I knew growing up in New York City. I want to say we're like three quarters of a smoked marijuana way way less than that did

anything else in terms of drugs. And I couldn't give you a percentage. But the notion of it being a gateway, I've always thought was kind of a falsehood. But addiction is so debilitating and destructive, and the numbers don't lie. Sixty three thousand people died, sixty three thousand of our fellow Americans. Think of the holes that have been left in those families. These are sons and daughters and mothers

and fathers. And I just don't get any sense of the the urgency of national action from the opinion makers. I give Trump crad I think Trump is really looking at this and trying to tackle this, and I do believe it's because he has a personal connection to addiction, not to somebody has been affected. But I don't know.

Maybe he knows people have been affected by opioids too, but from my own life knowing some folks who have dealt with addiction to particularly to illegal substances, I mean, alcohol is debilitating too, but it is it is tough, it is uh, it is life shattering for a lot of a lot of people, destroy his families, destroy his careers. And this is if we're gonna start having a natural conversation about taking positive action at the most local level all the way up to the top of government. I

feel like this should be the priority. Um, It's only gonna get worse, by the way, and unless we start finding ways to address it and deal with it. And and I have I have theories, by the way, that aren't really based in the This is gonna sound bad like based in the science as I'm coming up with with quackery here. No, but I have my own inclinations

about why the opioid epidemic has gotten so bad. Why A lot of you listening, I know many of you across the country listening to show right now are saying, well, I know somebody who has been affected by it. You might know many people have been affected by it. Um. I think it's because of the way that we approach our datity lives now and pushing through pain and dealing and people are more are want to be active longer. People feel like they should be able to. And I

certainly encouraged that. Right. You want to be as physically active as you can as long as you can, but you can agging injuries, back pain. A lot of physical pain actually comes from stress and from lifestyle issues that are just a part of what it is to be grinding and out, trying to pay bills, trying to support a family, trying to keep the mortgage paid. All of that, right, there are physical manifestations of that pain. If you can

escape it with a pill, that becomes very potent. That's hard to that's hard to pass up for a lot of people. And it also affects different It affects people differently, meaning for some and they're starting to to look at the genetics of this more. They're starting to look at

the biochemistry much more rigorously. Some people. Yeah, I mean, I remember I had a it's gonna sound like ridiculous, but a long time ago I had the first time I was ever given real prescription painkillers was because I was doing some cliff jumping and managed to give myself an ear infection, which, when you're an adult sounds sounds. An ear infection is maddening lye painful. If it gets

into your inter ear, it's terrible. It's the worst. It Literally, the guy the doc had to give you pain killers. I took it. I remember feeling kind of, you know, a little woozy. It's kind of I remember, and I didn't have any inclination afterwards to you know, I remember I had leftovers and I just you know, I threw

them out, right? Who cares? For some people, they're finding now that their biochemistry, they're actually the way that their brain functions is that once they take it, it's like this is all that they this is all that they want. They want to read, they want to achieve that feeling again. And then once they get in that cycle on opioids

and they try to withdraw. Opioid withdrawal is described by people in a lot of different ways, but the most common way is think of the worst flu you've ever had and multiplied by a hundred, and that's what that's what opioid with all feels like. And that's why people make the terrible decisions they do once they become addicted. But this is a national this is a true national crisis.

People are dying in vast numbers, many more than are dying from car accidents, many more than are dying from any kind of violence, not just gun violence, hammers and sharp objects too. And yet you know that you're not seeing the pundit class because you know what, on this one, this is just about us. Harder for them to find a bad guy. You know there's there's no there's no n r A for the left to beat up on when it comes to opioids. I mean, I guess maybe

they're trying to make it the pharmaceutical industry. But here's the thing. You beat up on the farm on big farmer too much. Guess what people need pain pills too, right, family members who have been through surgeries recently. You're gonna need pain pills sometimes. So it's not not as easy as just oh, the big bad farmers the problem we have here. So I just think this is she deserves a lot more, uh, not just attention, right, that's one

part of it, but action. We've we've spent a couple of weeks there's a country convulse by discussion over how to stop uh terrible murders that should never happen but are in the dozens, and we've spent far too little of our time also thinking about how we can stop murders that are in the tens of thousands, over sixty three thousand last year. Had a quick break here, We'll be right back. Some countries have a very very tough penalty, the ultimate penalty, and by the way, they have much

less of a drug problem than we do. So we're gonna have to be very strong on penalties. Hopefully we can do some litigation against the the opioid companies. I think it's very important because a lot of states are doing it. But I keep saying, if the states are doing it, why isn't the federal government doing it? I think the President's got an interesting point whenever he talks

about more concerted action on opioids. I don't think that currently any there's I think US law is pretty clear that you can only be killed if you kill someone, meaning you can only be put to death if you cause if you cause death, um, except for treason, and uh yeah, I think that's it. I think I think the only crime you can be put to death for that does not involve that does not involve killing somebody or are you being responsible for someone's death, is treason.

I think that's correct. John in Whitesboro, New York, Hey, what's up, John. I'll be real quick. I used to work as a transit company and you can't get a bigger in New York City, and you can't get a bigger journal than the subway system, and I quote more females urinating and guys. But trust me, I would never lock anybody up for that at worst, or I throw

them off the subway system. But I was telling your screener that I actually one time got urinated on on the Jay train at Lormer Avenue when uh, I guess that's like like two stops away from the Williamsburg Bridge. Were you in uniform? Yeah, I was hiding in a room looking for fair beaters. Two guys came through, one one up up onto the platform and the other was on the mezzanine. So I stopped the messanine guy I said he wanted to use the phone, so I let

him go. I started going upstairs, and you know how like on the elevated lines, was like a landing halfway up. As soon as I got the landing, I felt something hit my hat, so I stopped, you know, because I was wondering what it was. And then all of a

sudden I got port on by urine. So I continued going up the stairs and around, like you know, when you get up to the platform you could walk around, and the guy was in the corner there at the thing that goes around the stairway, and he was urinating and it came down on me and he was drunk and stuff. But you know, I think I wrote him with summons, but he didn't have good idea. He was drunk. But I tell me I I he got smacked around a little bit and I threw him both the up.

But no one would lock you up with that buck. Okay, Officer John, thank you. I got nothing. Man, I got nothing after that. You know I needed I actually really needed that car. Thank you, Officer John Eggs. All right, everybody, I'll be right back. We should be looking for bipartisan solutions to revise the FISA process so that what happened to President Trump never happens to a future American president.

So I went looking for solutions, and I found that in the gentleman from California, the ranking member of the Intelligence Committee, wanted to give the President of the United States the power to appoint FISA judges. He argued that then judges would be more ideologically diverse, they'd come from different areas in the United States, and they would be

subject to Senate confirmation. Today, I filed that legislation, and I would encourage the Gentleman from California to join me as a co sponsor so that we can advance bipartisan legislation. Who wants to guess whether she have joined in that legislation.

Who wants to guess the answer? Of course you already know. Look, this is this is a process that I think, unfortunately, we'll go out with a whimper and not a bang, meaning there's not going to be any day, or I can come on the show and they see it's all over. We have our answers. And part of the problem here is that while some who are opponents of the administration pretend that that's the only thing that will that's the only thing they want. They want the truth, just the truth,

nothing but the truth. They know that every day that this goes on is a day that slows down the administration from building a wall, slows down the administration from trying to help with the economy, allows things like this to go on challenge and of course I'm just closed with talking about the GOP tax scam. Every day that goes by, we see more evidence that it is exactly

that a tax scam. We continue to put out the truth on the tax scams, massive giveaways to corporations and the wealthy, and its consequences for workers, seniors, and families. Every day we see more corporations announcing stuck buy backs to enrich their executives and investors instead of increasing the wages an ongoing basis of workers. I see. So now it has to be a wage increase, A bonus of a thousand dollars to employees from all these different companies.

That's crumbs. But it needs to be a wage increase for Nancy Pelosi to be happy. Nancy Pelosi is an economic illiterate. She has no idea what she's talking about and what's worse, in many ways, she does not care. Uh. She has no policy to put forward that would improve the economic situation of workers. But she knows that bashing Trump, bashing this administration is good politics for her base, and that is in fact what she is set on doing.

But you think that maybe we could spend more time explaining to the American people how Nancy Pelosi does not have well, she doesn't have a conceptual understanding of how wages would go up. So you start with that, but also get into why it matters that companies will have more cash what that will do for hiring. But know, instead of being able to engage there. I mean, we can write I just did, but instead of that being a focus of the narrative, it is so much more

on what the latest in the Muller probe is. I am so sick and tired of this Muller probe. I'm seeing now that there's a breaking news, if you want to call it, that, that there will be more indictments of Russians. Okay, great, what's that gonna do. These are Russians who will never stand trial. These are Russians who don't give a crap what Mueller says or thinks or does or the the d o J for that matter.

And this time around it may have to do with the theft of Hillary's emails, is what I'm being told. That's what I'm well, that's what I'm reading issue. I mean, uh so we'll see a hacking scheme to get at her emails. But you know, if it's not that, it's there's some other bit of leakage from the Muller probes. So much leaking it's really hard to feel like there's

political integrity in this. And I would also not that there was an article written by a former FBI agent who I think it was a Scarlet is still Read or something like that was the title, Or you're saying that Mueller has a long history of being one of these guys who in internal investigations, even at the FBI, would take the truth to an extreme, meaning that even if something was not particularly material, or if it could be said that you did not give the most specific

version of the truth possible, he would use that for leverage over people in investigations. I think we're certainly seeing that democrats are playing games. They're using the bureaucratic machinery of the d o J as a weapon against their ideological opponents. That's what is happening. Uh. And when they're not just grinding people through that process, they are also letting America believe because that's the whole purpose of these stories that data jar that Jared Kushner took bribes, that

that's the latest one. Last twenty four hours, he got loans because he met with the CEO Sans Companies and Kushner got loans, and you know they're going. Oh and also a CNN was running that Ivanka's international business transactions are under investigation. Another league, more leaks all the time. Do you think that they'll run stories at CNN when nothing comes of that investigation, when there are no charges and no no malfeasants found when they look into these transactions.

I saw yesterday they're going into Trump's finances. Now I'm familiar with the way these with these things actually work. And this is what everyone needs to remember. If they want to get you bad enough, and they have enough leeway and they have the resources, they'll get you. They'll find something. People always think. You know, there's actually a pretty interesting book. I think it's written by Harvey ever his name is Silverstein or Silvergate. I think it's Harvey

silver Gate, um. Three felonies a day. And it's just about how many Americans who because most people don't go to law school and don't really have a detailed understanding of criminal law and also the justice system like once you once they start poking around and asking questions, as we know, that becomes its own problem that people are committing to Harvey silver Gate. Yeah, Buck human google over here. Uh and I should never. I'm gonna make so many

mistakes tomorrow or probably the next hour. Thank you, John. I deserved that. I deserved that. That was I earned that one. UM. Anyway, the book that was about the accidental felonies that people commit that are look, they're more minor stuff, but you know, uh, you know, misuse of a computer program or exceeding your authority on a work computer. These are all like felonies that people could theoretically be charged for. They have no idea, no idea. I don't

even get me started on your taxes. And that's the way that they've been going after people for a long time. That was the old Clinton. That was the old Clinton move right, just get give somebody a real thorough audit. And as you know, if you've ever gone through that process, you've done nothing wrong. It's not like you get a prize at the end. You don't even get a high five from the I R. S. Afterward. It's like, oh wow,

yours there as clean as Clinton Bay. It's like on the onto the next, you know, poor soul, Onto the next person who gets to deal with our questioning and investigations and has their freedom and their property at risk. Well, we get paid, you know, we the bureaucracy, get paid to show up no matter what you got breaking news. Let's see n I see a right now, Kushner's business interest got millions in loans after a White House meetings? Did he did he do something? Did he violate ethics

or not? Because they're they're implying that he violated ethics and that he took a bride. If he did, that's really bad and you should be in trouble. But you know what, I'm willing to bet up. I'm willing to bet that no, he didn't. And when they find that out, they will not care, They will not cover that. They just keep reminding us of who is under investigation and what they are using this to sully individuals in the administration and as a form of taking out their ideological appeance.

That's what this all is. That's why I just I just don't have any respect for the Muller probe anymore. I don't want to hear it. You know, they have given me nothing so far other than you know, low level mickey mouse garbage to work with in terms of their prosecutions. And okay, they're going off to manage. We didn't need a special counsel to go after maniforts tax returns, folks. Any prosecutor could have done that right. We could have

brought our friend Annie McCarthy out of retirement. He probably could have figured out the manifort situation about five minutes in his pajamas. Is it's not that hard. You can pull the guy's bank records and you know that. That's it. That's all she wrote. So why do we have a special counsel? Why was it needed? The only reason we have a special counsel is because the media demanded one because of what Trump said in an interview with Lesser

Holt after firing James Comeey. Because they said that the Justice Department under this president could not be trusted to operate as it as it does, and now we're seeing that. Well, hold on a second, they're just this is operating as some some rogue entity that's running around wrapping people up for all kinds of things. This guy wasn't in London. It was like the married the daughter of a Russian oligarch or is he the son of a Russian art

I forget, but he was. He got nailed for lying to the FBI about a meeting five years ago or something. We're supposed to feel safer and better at night because of this. This is just it's just so frustrating, folks, because I was looking. We started out they are talking about a very real problem that no, doesn't just have live in the balances costing lives every single day, and and keep repeating the number sixty three thou dead last year.

That's a huge number. And people would rather bog the president down and all of his top advisors in minutia and garbage and nonsense then make some allowance for Okay, I mean, this is the president. This is the presidency. Maybe we should stop trying to starting, uh, stop trying to sabotage its functions because we don't like where it stands on some issues. Is another part of the whole Trump arrangement situation. What has Trump done that really upsets

these people so much? I think that's important. You have to remind yourself. You have to ask that question, you will, What has Trump done that makes them hate him so much? Now? They really were that excited about Hillary? Yes? Hello, I mean they really were just so set on a Hillary Clinton presidency. I find that hard to believe. And maybe they were so set on it, but that's what makes them so angry. They're so angry about the tax cat

like Nancy Nancy Pelosi, Oh, it's a corporate giveaway. It's just for the fat cats, you know, I mean talking about the pot, calling the kettle black right, Nancy Pelosi's huband's worth like fifty million. So what has he done that makes them so mad? The way that he speaks, the way that he is, the fact that he's not a social justice warrior. I guess, yeah, I guess so that is, in fact, what is so bothersome to them, and that he's a threat to their power and to

their stranglehold over the national narrative. The fact that he doesn't play by their rules, the fact that he calls them out, he slaps them around, and he wins. Because there's no there's nothing that he has done so far that I can look at and say, wow, that's really He's gonna really just stepping it with the liberals on that one. It's it's tone that they hate so much. It's stop ill. It's not the substance of the policies

that have been implemented maybe eventually. I mean, the idea of a wall, I know, keeps liberals up in line and makes them cry, makes them sad. What do we do? We'll see, I mean, the small thing they'll get ready for with the Russian the indictments of more Russians. It just feeds, right, and they're gonna be throwing a party over at CNN on that one. It just feeds in the narrative, Oh my gosh, the election conspiracy, the election conspiracy.

You'll you'll note that there are some very prominent left wing reporters with actual time on the ground in Russia. No they're talking about and they're not appearing on these big networks because other ones were saying, Okay, yeah, so they did this stuff. But this is this is like at the kiddie table, and this is nonsense, some social media maneuvering. He's information warfare and sock puppets and ah, people have lost it, folks, they've lost it. All we got,

We've got a lot more. Next hour, we are gonna be joined by our friend Gordon Chang to talk about the China tariff situation on steel and aluminum and also just what we should be prepared for when dealing in dealing with China going forward here this could be uh, some rocky times ahead. I'll talk to you about the Invincible, Invincible, the Invincible, the invincible missiles that Vladimir Putin says that

he has that can get past our radar. And you know they can't just nucas now, they can nucas into oblivion or something. I don't know. Well, I do know. I'll talk to you about it. And also we'll be joined by our our friends from Black Rifle Coffee. They're just gonna tell us a bit of the they've got. The company history is fasting. They've got some really cool stories. I'm excited to ask them about it. And then we've got a roll call coming. So we've got quite a

little show left for you, folks. Don't go anywhere. I'll be right back. I kind of like Goren Hatch a little bit more now. Uh. He is quoted here, Nail is saying, quote, obiolic Are supporters are the stupidest dumbass people. Well he's ever met, Uh like it. That's pretty funny. He later had a spokesperson say he said it in chess blah blah, but he said it. He said at the American Enterprisesitude this tupid as dumb ass people. That's well, we'll play at the word hatch Hat tipped to Orange

Hatch on that one. Pretty funny, all right, Joe in Wilmington, Delaware. Hey, Joe, I'm a huge fan. Thank you, sir. This tragedy that happened in Florida, you know, it says a lot about Republican leadership as well. Um for whatever reason, they just allowed that Democrats to control of the narratives. I mean, can you believe that instead of the story being Brower County Sheriff's Department doesn't protect the community from from people like this when when they had because the narrative is

that it's the n r A spot. I mean, it's just so logical and every since in the way, and true Republicans like myself, we're sticking tired of some Republican leaders just running with their heads between their tails. We're

ready to fight for our message. It's you know, when you have this sheriff that was told his department was told numerous of times, there was problems when you had the FBI notified, But yet the storyline is going to be the n r A. And you know, Buck, I expect young kids to react emostly, they're they're high school kids, are traumatops. But can somebody in the Republican community have the guts to really tell them what the heck is going on. I mean, you can be empathetic and yeah,

this this kid was a troubled kid. He gave every morning fight imaginable. It could have been a car he drove into the school. It could have been a bomb. The crime isn't the weapon. The crime is that your community, your Shares Department, was supports numerous times they did nothing to protect the public. That's what the true storyline is. Well, I look, I I agree that they're they're well, I agree with what you're saying here. And Joe, thank you very much for calling him body y. Thank you for

kind words about about the show as well. Look, Joe's only right. I mean a lot of Republicans have started running scared on this right away. You know, they've they've just been trying to appease the appease the rage mob, and that is never going to be successful. It's never a good idea. Daniel in Arkansas, Hey Daniel, Hey Buck, what's going on? Shield Dame? Not much shield time, My friend, I got a two part question for you. I'm gonna make it quick and then I'm gonna jump the line

so I can. Let's do you over the radio, Roger that Sir. As far as I'm I know, the president could only be impeached for high crimes and misdemeanors if he commits said high crimes and misdemeaners while he's president of the United States. So if they haven't found anything yet, unless they're a fortune teller, they can't charge him with anything.

I think high crimes and misdemeanors are. It's a pretty broad range that even would include some people say argue would include even non criminal activity um so or or low level criminal activity, I should say, And it's really up to the Congress. That's that's the it's a political it's much more a political tool than it is a criminal justice tool, Daniel. So we'll see. And you want to ask if he pardoned everybody in the Rushi investigation, because we're going to run a break here in a second. Um,

he could. There's nothing that the president's pardon power is basically absolute, so he could pardon anyone if he just did a blanket pardon for anyone that saw on their list that they're going to call up, wouldn't they just have to end it? Uh No, I don't think he that's different than shutting down the investigation. But I have to think about that a little bit. But look, I'm I'm of the mind that he should pardon General Flynn. So I'll just go out there and say it. Daniel,

thank you for your caugh markets all, my friend. I appreciate it. We're going to talk about Russian nukes and Chinese trade war. You are now entering the Freedom Tactical Operations Center. All sensative programs must be cats strictly need to know team buckets cleared and ready for the buck brief. After the United States withdrew from the A b M Treaty unilaterally, we've been working hard to create new, promising, repreated systems and this enabled us to make a big

step forward creating new strategic arms. We have developed a new generation of missiles. But currently the Defense Ministry, who works together with the defense companies in the space industry, and they're testing a new missile system that uses a heavy I CBHM. Much scarier when putin saying it through a translator, but that was the Premier of Russia talking

or his translator telling us what he's saying. But he was talking about the announcement today from Russia from the official account of the President and the various news news agencies there that they have developed a new series of nuclear weapons, including an undersea drone that has nuclear capability and also a a nuclear device that can a missile that can go basically through our radar without us being

do anything about it. That's what they're claiming. Um, this is being taken by a lot of folks who watch Russia closely. Uh, with a grain assaults putin up there we go the little maybe you know, the hunt for Red October does come to mind with all of this, But the the realities here are this doesn't change the nuclear threat to United States from Russia, and it doesn't change that we would annihilate Russia in event of any kind of nuclear strike. We're still in the same place.

Does anyone really think of Russia fired all of its nukes at us, we'd be able to shoot them all down? No, of course not um. Same thing as to a Russia if we fire all our stuff, they couldn't shot them all down either. So this is a bit of bluster, a bit of chest thumping from Putin um, and it is in part, at least, I think, driven by the fact that one he's got his re election coming up

in a few weeks. The Russian president is expected to win, which is not surprising, but it's important for him for domestic political reasons to go out there and say that he's got invincible missiles. He is invincible. So that's what this is, at least in part, a reflection of right now that that's why he's running around talking about his invincible missiles that can get past our radar and do

all this stuff. Um, but this doesn't change our strategic calculation about nukes, and it also doesn't change that Russia's economy is smaller than Canada's. Okay, Russia is We're gonna talking about China in a few minutes. China is scary long term. China is a problem, folks, not one that has any easy answers, and not one that we can ignore.

Russia is a country with it's a very big military, with a very or at least a very powerful military, with a medium two small ish economy, especially given the side of the country. It's natural resources and everything else. So this is not something to be overly alarmed about. Seeing. People the immediate hot takes whenever Putin says anything, knows it is Trump gonna condemn it. Well, why should Trump condemn it when it's not as big of an issue

as Putin is claiming? Right, Well, what's the point of that? Why antagonize the Russian premier when he's talking about a threat that's not even as big of a threat as he is trying to lead us, lead us into thinking. So that's part of Oh, but but there's the election

in Russia. There's also what happened And if you listen to this show, you know in detail what happened some weeks ago in Syria where Russian paramilitaries fighting alongside the Assad regime went after a Kurdish base in eastern Syria and the Kurds called in artillery and air strikes and and it was a it was a blood bath. They lost. Estimates are in a couple of hundreds actually um for the losses, and it's a question of how many where

Syrians versus how many were Russians. But that didn't that didn't sit well with the Russian government even though they were they were paramilitaries, they were contractors working for saw, not Russian uniform military. But there are Russian military, uh

folks in Syria as well. And I mentioned. I think it was yesterday that we have our fighter planes coming into very close contact with their fighter planes in a way that some are saying is far too close for comfort and could lead to the shootdown of either a US or Russian plane, which would spiral US into a crisis, and a minimum and diplomatic, if not military crisis very quickly.

So look the Russians, they're they're talking about this this technology that's out there that people have discussing for some time, hyper hypersonic glide vehicles which go I think five times the speed of sound and or I could be wrong about that, and essentially would allow the Russians to fire

missile and hit anywhere in the world within a few hours. Now, the truth is that the Russians can already pretty much hit anywhere in the world in a few hours, so or at least they can hit anywhere in the world with their missiles, not necessarily as they can't do it at the speed of these hypersonic glide vehicles which I've been reading up on. I tell you this is where I am always very honest with you. I'm a a

Jehadis and car bombs students, you know. I am not a student of advanced missile defense and that that is really a sub that is really a specialty within the overall discipline of military and national security analysis. This is true. You know, if you're at the Pentagon is placed, the people that are the missile people are not the people that are the counterinsurgency and counter terroris and people generally. It's just there's not there's not as much and not

enough crossover on it. But I I've done research on it, and I wanted to just bring up the speed on what's going on with this whole Russia situation because the truth is that this is not anything to be overly

concerned about. People are talking about the various treaties that this may have implications for, But the Russians have already violated the uh sort of the medium range Missile Treaty that we have with them, the Intermediate Range Nuclear Treaty, and there's the Start Treaty, which has been updated a couple of times. There. I think there's an update that's supposed to happen at some point the pretty near future. UH. Ultimately, we have got two turns with them. This may in

fact be the nuclear turn is still in place. And this could be employed by the Russians to force us to the negotiating table to just talk about other things too, rite where they're gonna be a little more belligerent with the rhetoric on missiles, so that we come and talk them more about what's going on in Syria with Ukraine with the sanctions that they really do want sanctions gone, and we will see how that works out for them.

But I wouldn't worry about about Putin and as invincible missiles, we still sleep soundly despite the fact that there are more countries now that have missiles, nuclear missiles and nuclearar abilities than did decades ago, and the Russians still have a whole lot of nukes, Chinese of nukes. Is plenty of countries out there right now that we just assume they won't step out of line because they know that

the response from US would be annihilation. Uh. So we're gonna get Gordon Chang joining us you in a second. He's gonna weigh in on the tariffs in the steel industry. Uh, specifically that we'll deal with China um and some other aspects of US China foreign policy. So a lot of national security this hour, hour three of the Buck Sexton Show, and then later on we'll be joined by our friends from Black Rifle CEO and vice president. UM and that's

where we're heading, So stay with me. Big news about China coming in today and we want to talk to Gordon Chang about it. He is the author of the Coming Collapse of China and a Daily Beast columnist. Gordon, great to have you, Thank you so much. Buck. So first let's let's talk a bit about the tariffs, because that's getting a lot of attention because it has people are saying cause quite a dip in the stock market for the day, but it also could be a harbinger

of some economic troubles to come. What do you make of this? Is this long overdue? Or we play in high stakes poker we could lose. What do you think of the Trump move? Probably all of the above. UM. It's we have to remember that this was These tariffs are imposed under the authority of the Trade Expansion Act of nineteen sixty two. This is a national security measure. UM. These tariffs are set at levels so that the aluminum

industry and the steel industry can be self sustaining. Because we need to make sure that We've got a steel and aluminum industry that can supply defense needs, so that's important for US apart from trade. You know, when it comes to trade, we don't know the details. It's going to take about a week for the administration to negotiate with other countries and to come up with final rules,

and we'll just have to see how it goes. But I suspect that the harshest rules will be applied against China because China has been extremely predatory in flooding the world with excess steel and aluminum. They've been subsidizing producers in order to put our producers out of business. We got to do something. The Chinese may huff and puff, but we got to remember that we're the trade deficit country. Last year, we had a four d seventy billion dollar

trade merchandise trade deficit with China. That four billion, by the way, was eight point eight percent of China's overall trade surplus. We've got an enormous amount of leverage here. And what do you think the next moves on the Trump team should be Gordon with regard to to dealing with China. Mean Trump has been promising and this goes all the back to the campaign that he would get fair and smart trade with China. From your estimation, what

would that mean and how would that look? Well, I think the first thing that would mean is that we've first we've got to go against their theft of US intellectual property of the Chinese steel and estimated three hundred six hundred billion dollars a year in US i P. We've got to put a stop to that, and so Robert Lheiser, the US Trade Representative, has now got an ongoing investigation pursuingto Section three or one of the Trade Act of nineteen seventy four. We need to impose some

stiff penalties to get the Chinese to stop this. Also, we know that China has been engaged in increasingly predatory moves to close off their market, especially with their Made in China initiative. They've identified ten sectors that they want Chinese companies to dominate, and you know they're closing off their markets through various means. We can't allow this to continue. They can't be allowed to continue to close their market

while our market is open. That just doesn't work. What do you think the responses will be of the Chinese government to these actions? By the Trump administration. Well, you know they will. UM. They'll try to, for instance, um close off their markets even further to US agricultural products. Sorghum has been mentioned in this regard. But um, with the balance of trade. Um, you know, they could hurt

us a little bit, we could hurt them a lot. Um. We we actually as Americans should know this because in the World's Great Trade War in the nineteen thirties, the country that got hurt the most was US because we were the world's trade surplus country. Now it's China's turn to be the trade surplus country. So we shouldn't be afraid of trade friction. I'm not welcoming it, but I am saying that we've got to protect ourselves and we've got to insist on China's adherence to trade bargains that

it is made and so UM. At some point, you know, this has gone much too far. We've allowed the Chinese to take advantage of us. There are no longer any note cost solutions. Um. But you know, if people want to complain, they should be complaining about presidents named Clinton, Bush and Obama as much as Trump, because Trump inherited this situation. Gordon Chang's author of the Coming Collapse of China Gordon. There's also some news about consolidation of power

by Chinese Premier Shijin Ping. And there are some news reports just in the last twenty four hours about the banning of some words in China for public discourse that seemed like the kind of things that might be used to describe she that would not necessarily be to his liking.

What's going on? Well, yeah, we need the pooh is is now banned, so is Disney UM, the words I disagree, I mean, there are more and more words that are being um taken off the Chinese Internet, and the reason is that the Communist Party on Sunday announced that it was recommending to the National People's Congress, which will meet on starting on the fifth of this month, that they will recommend the abolition of the two term term limit or President of the country. That's president of the state.

That's a relatively unimportant post. In China. They've got what's called the Trinity uh, and the presidency is only one of the trinity. The other two are General Secretary of the Communist Party and the chairman of the party's Central Military Commission. By far the presidency is the least important of the trinity, and what sign Ping has been showing the rest of the world is that although this is a ceremonial post, he is willing to go to any lengths to make sure that he can hang on to power.

And that's chilling. Um So, at this point, we've got to assume that Sijun Ping wants to be, as they say in China, emperor for life, and that's going to have consequences that are royal in the Chinese political system. At the moment um, people in China aren't very happy about this for the most part, and China is probably gonna end up with a much more coercive political system and probably a much more belligerent external policy. Um So,

this is bad news for everybody. That was the next question I was gonna ask you, Gordon, which is what becomes the external flash one of the most likely external flashpoints as she continues this consolidation of power over a country that you know, Russia gets a lot of talk these days, and we've been discussing Russian nukes even here on the show. But China is a long term, much bigger competitor to the United States. Both economically and militarily

well certainly. Um. You know, and the question is like where are we going to see this? I mean it could be anywhere. China is trying to grab territory from India and and you can see that there's an arc of instability to its south and to its east, UM, going all the way up to South Korea. In the north. UM, you have China engaging in all sorts of dangerous activities along that periphery. It's trying to spread into the Indian Ocean. It wants to actually establish a base on the Atlantic Ocean.

From what we can tell it Wallvis Bay in Namibia, they're snooping around the Azores. UM. You know, this is a country that just sort of thinks that it can take whatever it wants. And I can understand why they feel that way because we've had a succession of presidents who have not effectively opposed this expansion. Is UM. So we have emboldened the worst elements in the Chinese political system by showing everybody else that aggression works. You know,

when they look back at this period. I hope that things go away and we don't have a global conflict. But if we do, buck people are gonna look at the United States in the same way they looked at Britain and France in the nineteen thirties and just ask why didn't you use your power to protect yourself and the rest of the world. Um. So I think we're going to be vulnerable to that if, um, you know, the Chinese actually do something horrible, because we've shown them

that it's okay to be horrible. We complain about it, but we don't do anything about it. And that's for the reason why I think we've got to change our China policies quickly. Gordon, one more thing, if we let you go, tell me about broad coom and the possible takeover of Qualcomm and why that's something we should pay attention to. Yeah, broad Colm is a Singapore based company. Um, there's gonna be a proxy fight shareholder vote on Tuesday.

Broad Common will probably win. Um. What Broadcom has done in the past is it sells off parts UM and then ruthlessly controls costs. The reason why this is important to us is because there is a struggle now for setting five G standards for cellular communications. Whoever controls five G is going to control communications for the next decade or so. The only American company that has a chance of establishing and winning the five G race is qual Calm.

But there's no way Qualcom is gonna win if Broadcom takes it over, because they're just going to try to um sell it off. And so we have a national security issue here because we do not want the Chinese controlling self commune vacations for the rest of the world for about a decade. So it's in a sense the same reason we need a domestic steel industry for national security purpose. You're saying this is a commercial issue, but

it's also a communications and therefore security issue as well. Yeah, and and um, Qualcom is so much more important than the steel or aluminum industries. So um, this is this is the lifeblood of America. It's it's innovation technology. And you know, we can't allow a state backed Chinese enterprise, which is Laweit Technologies, to dominate global communications for obvious reasons. So much more important than stealer aluminum. All Right, Gordon Shank,

thank you so much for joining us. We appreciate it. Team. We're hitting a quick break. We'll be right back, uh and we'll have the folks from Black Rifle Coffee here in studio with us. We have the CEO, we have the vice president. They are veterans, they are great guys, and they're gonna tell us about the founding of their company and one of our a great a wonderful sponsor of the show, but also a great American story here

of veterans and entrepreneurship. So we're excited to have up their their wave and I say, and they're they're coming in. We got the guys coming in right now. We'll be right back. Welcome back, everybody in the Freedom Hut. Today. We have a couple of guests with us. I am very pleased to bring on Evan Hayfer, CEO and founder of Black Rifle Coffee, and Matt Best, vice president and chief of Happiness for all Things Black Rifle. We have them here with this. As you guys all know, Black

Rifle is a sponsor of the show. They also have a great backstory, a great message and mission, and so I want to bring them in to talk to everybody about how us all got started. Gentlemen, thank you for joining, Thanks for having us. Yeah, thanks for having us. We

appreciate the opportunity. Mike so as as we went on air, I told them that the one thing I have to do, and this is important for all of you listening if you're ever in an interview situation on radio or TV, the one trick, and I've been told this by some of the bigger anchors in the business. You have to write the name down in front of you, even if someone gives you a sheet of paper, because if you

get the name wrong, that's all anybody remembers. But you can call me whatever you want, because you guys are wonderful sponsors here of the show, and I'm really pleased to have you, Uh Evan tell me about how this all got started. I mean, a couple of spec ops guys. Coffee. It doesn't necessarily well, yeah, there's the first thing you think about. I'm just saying it's not. No, it doesn't, I think. And for years guys used to make fun

of me for being such a coffee head. I started roasting coffee ten years ago, but my love affair with coffee started twenty years ago. I was an analyst. I feel like I'm supposed to be the latte master, but apparently you're a time Yeah, I I was, you know, I I've spent some time behind an espresso machine. I've

spent some time on the roaster. For me, coffee started twenty plus years ago, you know, n with with falling in love with espresso and just diving into the art of it and deploying back and forth into Iraq in Afghanistan, well my entire adult life. Can you tell a little about your military? By the way, for a lot of the folks listening, they may not know that not just a guy who knows a lot about coffee. And then like, why is Buck saying he's such a renaissance man coffee?

Like there are reasons, Yeah, I I suppose so I've been called that before. I don't know if I necessarily weren't the title, but I was a Green Beret for well for several years, and then I transitioned over as a contractor to the CIA for a little while. I spent about five years on the ground in Iraq and another couple in Afghanistan. I did several trips as as you know how those trips go, uh, typically around ninety

twenty days. But I'd spend most of my time overseas in Iraq, Afghanistan, a few other places around the world. I found that having a great cup of coffee in the morning was was really important to me, and I started roasting coffee just for that because I couldn't find the coffee that I wanted. And you know, uh, and Matt knows, the coffee Overseas really just doesn't get it done. It's bad coffee. It didn't kind of what they call

it coffee ruble. I would just throw ice cubes in it and just throw it down as quick as possible because I didn't care about the taste. I just wanted caffeine. And I was the same way I I just I

fell in love with it. I started diving into the roast profiles really deeply around two thousand eight, and one of my bags I would take Overseas was full of fresh roasted coffee and the other was full of like kit So everybody knew when I was coming into the country, everybody knew what kind of coffee it was going to be bringing. And more importantly, it just it made me kind of immerse myself into something completely different than what

I was doing in in combat zones. It gave me kind of a recreational therapy in a way that I really could excel at something outside of combat, right, Matt, You also have a military background, and tell us a bit about that and how you guys linked up to start a veteran owned and operated business in this area. Absolutely.

I'm a form arm ranger, did five deployments with Second Range of Retalion, got out, didn't really like the civilian sector too much because I had a little difficult time assimilating back into you know, it's it's difficult especially be playing more for so many years. And then I started

contracting with the agency as well. And then during that time, which is actually really funny story, I was um an Afford operating base and there was an expresso machine and it had to be like fifteen thou dollars And I'm sitting there going why did the government waste that much money on an espresso machine? Will come to find out Evan head course, the uh the guys doing supply to purchase that machine just a couple of years before. So when I linked up with Evan with Black Rifle Coffee

is like, of course you did that. Evan. Of course you convinced the government to buy this amazing espresso machines so you could develop your roast profiles while you were playing more. It wasn't hard, It really wasn't. They came to me and asked me what kind of machine, and literally I was like, well, if you're gonna ask me, what kind of a budget do we have? And that's your taxpayer dollars hard at work, That's what they wanted. The first thing I do every day is drink coffee.

And as I say on the show constantly, first thing I do every day is in fact, to drink some black rifle coffee. So thank you, gentlemen very much for that. I'm a silencer smooth guy. For the most part. I mixed it up a little bit. I'm also freedom Blend, but I like the silence smooth. But I wanted you to tell me a little bit, Evan, about what you're

about the mission of hiring veterans. And you have one story in particularly really stuck out to me about how you don't just have veterans of the United States Armed Forces working for you, actually have some foreign auxiliaries who worked alongside US forces from Afghanistan who have immigrated to the United States. That's a pretty amazing story. Yeah, I think a lot of guys, you know, we're known for hiring veterans because we've we've got above fifty percent hiring

uh with veterans along our our entire workforce. We're rolling out a pretty big expansion over the next year. We're gonna try to maintain that fifty Obviously, it's all based on how many applicants we can get. So go to Black Rifle Coffee dot com and you can take a look at, you know, to take a look at the job openings that we have. Will be hiring people in Nashville, San Antonio, Sparks, Nevada. Uh, and the the Afghans, these guys that we actually worked with overseas in Cobba Province.

They were commandos that worked for the Americans alongside of them. One particular, Wally, We did a video on him. You could go to YouTube and check that out. But Uh, he was with us basically right after the invasion of Afghanistan all the way through fifteen. Um so he was with us basically for fourteen years, and he had been on thousands of direct action missions, which you know is

basically direct action meek. Yeah, he's a door kicker. Uh. He went from private to commander h throughout that fourteen years. He was having to move his family every six months to protect them, survived multiple ambushes, not only you know, with his unit, but with his family. Uh, he applied received refugee status. He immigrated into the United States. Um was working in a gas station when we when we got a hold of him, we my business partner and

I were talking. He actually thought he was killed a couple of years back. So when he reached out, we were not only like pleasantly surprised, but we were the first thing we said, we let's get him on a plan, lets get him out here. So uh, got him on a plane, got him a house, got him taking care of He's got six kids, so he just had another another little one actually. And now we've got a total of five Afghan former Afghan commanders that work for us

in our production shop. So they're printing T shirts and doing a bunch of things for us. But fantastic guys. And I think that's the thing that Americans really need to understand. Two is uh, you know, shoulder to shoulder, there's been a heavy burden placed on the American veteran but also there's a lot of Afghans and Iraqis that were heavy that we're carrying just as much of the combat load out there, and those guys were defending your freedom just as they were defending mine and defending us

down range. We do owe them an incredible amount of gratitude, and that's a debt that that I'm focused on repaying, not only to the veteran community, but in my lifetime. This is the single most uh prominent thing in my life, which was the American foreign wars that we've been involved in. Uh. My ethical responsibility to the nation is to make sure that I can primarily focus on the men and women that have been fighting the wars that we've been in for I mean, we invaded Iraq in two thousand one.

We can all do math. There's thousands of men and women out there, Americans and foreigners that need They don't need a hand out, they need an opportunity to hand up. And my responsibility as a business is to make sure that we're growing the company and maintaining that ethical orientation, to make sure that we're always making making sure that we can put the veteran first ahead of everything else. So that's that's the main mission in Black Rafic Coffee.

So we've got Evan hey for CEO of Black Rifle Coffee in studio with us right now, and Matt Best vice president uh and happiness Guru um, as well as just all all around, all around God takes care all kinds of things. Right. I've seen the videos, my friend, the videos are exceptionable. We we definitely have fun and it's obviously, say it's a statirical representation of my values.

You know, we're obviously constitutionalists and pre Second Amendment and we like to have fun with it and obviously be safe. Tell me a bit about the expansion though, what's going on now in eighteen you guys are I mean, I know a little bit about it because I'm actually gonna be with you in Savannah next week for the opening of it with your first brick and mortar store that

will be actually our third and mortar store, thank you. Um. Yeah, we're moving our headquarters down to San Antonio, Texas, so taking corporate there. There's just gonna be a lot of opportunity, and the veteran pool down there is significantly larger, so we hope to you know, employ a lot more vegans down there, and then we're gonna be rolling out brick and mortar and retail and just a lot of cool stuff. Expanding the company and just chasing opportunity and trying to

give it back to the community as well. Bernie folks listening, by the way, if they want to join in Savannah, how would they find out about the event? If they want to come buy some gear and check out the bounced castles, the gear or what else is gonna be there. Yeah, we're doing that with nine Lines. So nine Line Apparel is you know, we're opening a coffee shop in side of their business, so they can go check nine Line out. They can check us out on social media. We're gonna

be posting throughout that entire time. Uh, March ninth and tenth, and I'll be there, a bunch of other cool veterans will be there hanging out and shaking hands and just having a good time. Yeah, we've got helicopters to get all kinds of stuff going on out of the bounce castles. All right, bounce castles are fine, but helicopters that a little spice to things. Well, a right, everybody check them out.

Evan Hayfer CEO and Matt Best, vice president of Black Rifle Coffee and thank you John, by the way, for being wonderful sponsors of the show. We are very pleased and honored to have you, and thanks for coming in studio. Thanks well everyone. I hope you enjoyed our conversation with Evan and Matt from Black Rifle. They're they're great guys. I'm actually gonna be joining them right after the show here for some drinks out on the town, catching up

about things. And it's always fun to talk to some guys who worked on the national security side of things. So we can tell tell stories about well they can tell war stories about Iraq and Afghanist and I can tell uh memo, you know, and and analysis stories about a rocket Afghanistan. It's a good it's good time. Nonetheless good time. We get to rap on all that stuff. So, uh, this is where we get into, as you know, roll

call tea. So yesterday it was almost an accident. I was trying to download one song to use for roll call from my desktop and I pulled something that was not for roll Call. But what I noticed a lot of you were like, you know what, it's better, and so we've decided that instead of having the little like a little drummer boy thing there. Uh, Instead of that, we are gonna try to mix it up a little bit and and have a little more a little more

audio audio variety here on the show. And so we're gonna try to spice it up and surprise you with our role call tunes and and just in general, we're gonna try to mix up some of the what I call I guess they call it is imaging the correct term, John, right, the yeah, imaging, which is weird because an image is something you see, and yet in radio it's all audio.

But now now I'm talking nonsense. Who cares? All Right, these are your thoughts, your whimsical references, whatever you've got for me, and you can add to them of course at facebook dot com slash buck Sexton, Facebook dot com slashbuck Sexton, and let's send me your thoughts. Let's get into it. Uh. First up, Eric, I was catching up on your podcast and heard you are coming to Savannah. I am in charge of the Savannah Police Canine Unit.

It would be cool if we could meet you at nine line and get a picture with you and a couple of our canine handlers and their dogs. I would love to put it on our Facebook page. Savannah Police Canain Unit. If you don't mind what day you're gonna be here, Eric, not only or not mine? That sounds awesome. Count me in. I will be down in Savannah and I'll be hanging with Nine Line and Black Rifle on Friday. Um, not this Friday, the March nine, I think it is.

So I'll be and any of you, any of you listening, if you wanna, and it's not just me, you'll hang out with you know, Matt and Evan, the Black Rifle guys, the Nine Line guys. Tyler will be there, he's the CEO. His crew will be there. Uh. It should be a lot of fun and you can come check it out. It's just at the Nine Line apparel store and Black Rifles opening a franchise in this store. So it'll be

a great time down in Savannah. And yes, Eric of the Canine Unit, by all means, my friend, please do tell folks that I'll be there, and I'll be there probably around lunchtime during the day on Friday, and I'll just be hanging out for a few hours and I'll leave to do my radio show. That's the way it's gonna go. Next up here, Um, Frank writes hi Buck Trump, saying I like taking guns away first before due process.

It is is exactly what cops do or try to do every time they come upon somebody with a weapon who is obviously a threat. Um okay, Frank, I mean there's the there is something about officers safety that is actually a provisional law that officers have. This is why they can ask you have anything sharp on you, even if you haven't committed a crime. Do you have anything sharp on you? Do you have anything? And they can

take that for the purposes of the interaction. Now, like I was never uniformed officer or on patrol, So if I'm messing up any of the I had the patrol guy that I had to read it when I worked for the NYPD, But I was not the guy who was putting the bracelets on cool term for handcuffs. Uh. The other thing is I always like the some of the cop terminology that I picked up. Like in New York, whatever precinct you work in, somebody will ask you and you say, that's what I turn out of. What do

you turn out of? Turn out of the sixteenth I turn out of the nineteenth precinct. And if somebody ever says you know, I work for the twenty third precinct. It's like, no, you didn't, No, you didn't. By the way, this is also applies to a whole lot of c

I a lingo. I could always tell if somebody is either embellishing or not really what they say they are because of just certain things that people will say who worked in the agency versus people who maybe like showed up one day for a meeting's you know, as as a government counterpart or something. Anyway, Uh, let's see what we got here next in the inbox, Um, Mike, Uh, just laugh at a joke you talked about the other day.

I was in the county team meeting today and it was announced that we officially are no longer countering ISSL, but we will be defeating ISIS. I thought you would enjoy the humor in that distinction. Well, yes, I certainly do. And I was always on the right side of this issue. I was not saying IL because it was pedantic nonsense and there was just no reason because here's you don't you okay, let me explain, because that people say a

buckets about it. No, it's not about disrespect to Israel. Guys, Okay, it's it's because this Obama would say is because the same reason he it's a Pakistan and total Luban, because he thought it sounded more sophisticated. And Obama was the prophetsorial genius president, right, So that was what I was

all about. But levant, the purpose of an acronym is to simplify things, as you all know, and those of you who are military or former intel like me, now that you go through this whole period where you can have conversations, it just feels like one acronym after another. But levant is a term that that honestly, very few people know so to use an acronym, and one of the words in the acronym you're choosing to use is a complex term that isn't even really a geographic It

isn't really geographically defined. Uh. It's just bizarre. And I'm so glad that we finally got rid of it was just Obama, the White House and some of the Executive branch agencies because Obama random that we're doing that. So anyway, yes, it is. Isis the Islamic state of Iraq and Syria. I've been saying for a long time we should rebrand the al Qaeda franchise in which is obviously not ISIS,

but we should. It was jabbattal Nusra, and and now there's been some realignments and changes, and I forget what's going on with it. The I'm out up on the g hottest uh war lord is m that's going on inside of Syria right now, as as I have been in previous months. But I can tell you that we should have just called instead of jibbattal Nusra, which was the al Qaeda franchise, could have just called them al Qaeda in Syria? Why not a q s right there?

We do this everywhere else. A QUSA is al Qaida South Asia, a Qui al Qaeda Iraq, Like why everyone's're gonna go jabuttal Nusra? And then everyone's like, oh do I spell it with the apostrophes and it gets all complicated. So anyway, Um, I did not get through nearly enough of your thoughts today, folks. I promised you tomorrow will have a more robust roll call and we'll have cooler music too, all right, So John, hold me to it. We gotta have cool music tomorrow for a roll call,

because we're hit here in the Freedom Hunt. We know how to party. She'll tie h