Restoration of America

Dr. Robert Epstein is a distinguished psychologist, researcher, author, and professor who is passionate about educating the public about advances in mental health and behavioral sciences. Through his discovery of Search Engine Manipulation Effect (SEME), Dr. Epstein uncovered how Big Tech companies manipulate opinions, decisions, and votes through surveillance and censorship. We’re handing our data and democracy to the tech lords, and Dr. Epstein is determined to stop the Big Tech threat. Watch now to learn more about how you can fight back! Want to minimize your digital footprint? Read Dr. Epstein’s 7 Simple Steps Toward Online Privacy here: https://medium.com/@re_53711/seven-simple-steps-toward-online-privacy-20dcbb9fa82 Want daily news without the liberal slant? Subscribe to First Right here:https://www.restorationofamerica.com/first-right/

First Right welcomes Kimberly Fletcher, founder and president of Moms for America, a national organization of moms who stand for truth, family, freedom, and the constitution. Kimberly talks about the importance fighting back on woke culture, the indoctrination of our children, and the attack on our liberty. It’s up to you to reclaim American values for your community, and Moms for America can help. Watch now and learn more about these freedom fighting moms! Want daily news without the liberal slant? Subscribe to First Right here: https://www.restorationofamerica.com/first-right/

First Right welcomes Frank Gaffney, foreign policy expert and former Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Policy for President Reagan. Frank is here to share truth about America’s greatest threat: The Chinese Communist Party. With the help of the elites, the CCP is weakening our military, taking down our energy sector, installing cultural Marxism, and destroying our constitutional rights. Can this unrestricted warfare against our country be stopped? Watch now to learn more! Order Frank Gaffney’s book 'The Indictment' here: https://www.amazon.com/Indictment-Prosecuting-Chinese-Communist-Friends/dp/164821004X Tune into his show Securing America here: https://www.securingamerica.tv/ Want daily news without the liberal slant? Subscribe to First Right here: https://www.restorationofamerica.com/first-right/

John Solomon, editor-in-chief of Just the News, is back to discuss everything from the Biden crime family to CIA/FBI corruption to the Durham Report. The elites are hanging on for dear life as new information breaks their narrative, and John is ready to report news as soon as it breaks. Don't miss this informative episode! You can read John Solomon Reports at https://justthenews.com/podcasts/john-solomon-reports and watch his podcast "Just the News, No Noise" every weeknight on Real America’s Voice: https://americasvoice.news/playlists/just-the-news-no-noise/ Want daily news without the liberal slant? Subscribe to First Right at https://www.restorationofamerica.com/first-right/

Our government is taking steps to describe political opposition as domestic terrorists and Brian Burch, president and co-founder of Catholic Vote, is fighting back. Brian talks about the newly filed lawsuit against the FBI for refusing to turn over documents on the targeting of American Catholics. This is not just a Catholic issue. All conservatives should be alarmed that our government is using law enforcement to turn against pro-life and pro-family citizens. Watch now and learn more about what is happening and how you can fight back! Want daily news without the liberal slant? Subscribe to First Right: https://www.restorationofamerica.com/first-right/

Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold says expressing your opinion and asking questions is "desecrating the halls of Congress." She made the remarks at a leftist "democracy summit" in Washington sponsored by the liberal organization Center for Election Innovation and Research (CEIR).

The left-wing Center for Election Innovation and Research held an election meeting in Washington recently where leftist public officials called Americans names for daring to question any questionable election. Ironically, they called it a "democracy summit." Here, AZ Secretary of State Adrian Fontes calls curious Americans "fascists."

Sean Spicer won't be silenced. As a former press secretary under Trump, Newsmax host, and top political strategist, few are as well-equipped as Sean to pull back the curtain and dissect what’s really happening in the nation’s capital. Watch now for Sean's take on Tucker Carlson, our collapsing media, the 2024 election, and more! Join Sean's email list and order his latest children's book "The Parrots Go Bananas" here: https://seanspicer.com/ Want daily news without the liberal slant? Subscribe to First Right here: https://www.restorationofamerica.com/first-right/

On this week’s First Right, Doug Truax speaks with serial entrepreneur, author, and publisher of American Greatness, Chris Buskirk. Chris visited our studio to discuss his latest book, America and the Art of the Possible: Restoring National Vitality in an Age of Decay, and share his thoughts on why there’s hope for national renewal. Don’t miss this conservative conversation about America’s current state-of-affairs and what it will take to restore our country back to greatness. Want daily news without the liberal slant? Subscribe to First Right here: https://www.restorationofamerica.com/first-right/ Visit our website: https://restorationofamerica.com/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/restorationamerica/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/Restoration_roa Instagram: https://instagram.com/restoration_pac/ GETTR: https://gettr.com/user/restorationpac (MACHINE GENERATED) Doug Truax: Hello, and welcome to the First Right podcast, a weekly conservative news show brought to you by Restoration of America. I'm your host, Doug Truax, founder and president of Restoration of America. Today we're excited to have a chance to connect with Chris Buskirk, the editor at American Greatness. Chris is a serial entrepreneur, author, and contributor to several conservative free thinking publications across the country. Welcome to the show, Chris. Thanks for coming On. Chris Buskirk: Well, I appreciate you having me. Doug Truax: So before we get into the book, great book. Yep. By the way, loved it. Just give our viewers a sense of, you know, your background, how you got to where you are today. It's, I know it's varied. There's a lot of cool stuff in here, and I, I definitely want them to hear it. Chris Buskirk: I, I can't help, I gotta tell you this, I always, I get asked this question in the beginning Sure. Of interviews all the, all the time. And I always think the exact same joke goes through my mind, which is the joke from the movie airplane from the eighties. In the beginning, the earth cooled and then there were the dinosaurs. I, I'm not that old, but the,. Doug Truax: Well, we're getting there! Chris Buskirk: But we're getting there like every day a little older. That's right. That's right. I don't, look, I grew up in Arizona. I went away to college, came back, and then I spent about 20 years as an entrepreneur in finance related businesses, you know, founded, biult, sold a couple companies. And then about 7 to 8 years ago, 2015, I made a decision that it was, after having sold a company, I made a decision I was gonna get much more heavily involved in politics. Why? People would always ask me, they'd say like, like, we always thought you were like, not insane. Like, why are you doing this here to yourself? Doug Truax: I get that sometimes. Chris Buskirk: Yeah. Right. And my answer was, my answer to everybody was, it sounded slightly crazy, but also totally true. And people I think either got it or, or didn't, which is, you know, I've got a family, I've got kids, and I felt like I had a responsibility to try and make the country better and leave it better than I found it. And there's a lot of, a lot of work to be done. And I've was fortunate to be in a position where I could do that. And so I got, have got very involved in political stuff back in 2015. It's just kind of grown and grown and grown and sort of that entrepreneurial, like instinct has, you know, is it's part of just who I am and what I do. So it's followed me into doing a lot of political projects. The, the first thing I ever did in politics at any sort of meaningful scale was a web magazine called American Greatness, which has sort of gone from strength to strength and Oh yeah, Doug Truax: We're gonna cover that today for sure. Yeah. Chris Buskirk: Good. Well, I'm, I'm in, I'm in favor of American Greatness, the institution, the journalistic enterprise, but also the concept and trying to, what would be a good phrase for this? Make America great again. Yeah, right. Doug Truax: How about it? Chris Buskirk: But yeah, so then that as one, as it does, like one thing led to another and I just got more involved in trying to like, not just come up with something that was like a temporary solution, but like, it was just, again, it sort of that business instinct. Like how do you build institutions that will, can get stronger and more effective over time and try and build those sorts of things. Like my kinda one of my running analogies on this stuff is a lot, I, I feel like a lot of pop people who grew up in politics, work in politics. It's always like, oh, we're thirsty. I'm gonna grab a bucket, I'm gonna run up the mountain to where the spring is, I'm gonna bring a bucket down and I'm gonna do that every time we get thirsty. Right. And like, my instinct is like, that's a really dumb way to do it. Why don't we just build an aqueduct and bring the water down here. Exactly. So it's just flowing to us. Sure, sure. And that's like, that's sort of the mentality and bring to trying to come up with and build solutions. Yeah. Get better. Doug Truax: Totally. In politics with the, with the on year off year concept, which, which definitely goes to this deal. Like, that's right. Wow. We're rebuilding again this year. It's like, well, didn't we just do this two years ago? It's like, well, we took a year off and now we're back at it again. Chris Buskirk: Right, right. St the style, I say this to, to like political consultants and people and people like that all the time. Like, we gotta stop thinking about politics is like a pop a pop-up restaurant. It's like, you know, it's on a food truck. You know, you've gotta trying to build something that's always on there are not off years if you wanna win. Doug Truax: That's right. That's right. Yeah. Couldn't agree more permanent assets Yeah. Is the way to do it. Chris Buskirk: Correct. Doug Truax: And, and you, I really love your background and I'm a business guy too, in coming into politics and having that concept around, well, if you are gonna build some permanent assets, then there's metrics, there's the way you normally track these things, there's donor accountability, there's all these things that kind of go into it, which is a lot of times, frankly, missing in the political world. Yeah. And so I think that guys like you are breath of fresh air to folks that are saying to themselves, why can't we keep this going? Because essentially the business community, you know, you do your thing quarter over quarter over quarter, but in politics, you're racing to a time. There's election. That's right. But if you kind of restart, you know, nine months out from the election every year, you're never gonna get there. So you gotta smooth it out in a, in a business sense. Chris Buskirk: Yeah, no, that's right. It's gotta be like, Democrats are very good at this. By the way. As, as you know, like. Doug Truax: Permanently organized! Chris Buskirk: Permanently organized. That's, you know, I, there's one part of this discussion which kind of goes to the book a little bit is like, this is where I feel like people who are a right of center need to update their priors, so to speak. Like there is a, a belief and, and a desire that the United States is basically sort of this like, almost like this Jeffersonian Republic or Jeffersonian democracy or whatever, in which it's like broadly middle class. And it's like you have small merchants, artisans, farmers over here, and everybody's kind of independent. And the, the, the political implication of that is politics is kind of back here. It kind of takes care of itself. And we're gonna get together at like the town hall, like every so often and we're gonna debate things out based on the merits. And somebody's gonna raise their hand and be like, okay, yeah. That that isn't it is that like, you know, there, look, there are more people in Phoenix where I live than there were in all 13 colonies at the time of the, of, of the founding. There's 330 million people in this country and it's a very, very different country than it was. It's some good, some bad, but then than it was 150 or 200 years ago. And we need to be thinking about things in, in that way. And one of the reasons I wrote the book is, you know, when you think about this sort of broadly middle class country in which you have these sort of independent, you have these people who are sort of independent because they're an artisan, they're a merchant, they're, you know, a business person, they're a farmer in the classical, you know, conception of it, that's also less true. There are a lot less of these. They're a lot less, well the first of all, the middle class keeps getting smaller. It's been shrinking for 50 years. It gets poorer, it gets less secure, you know, both physically and economically, but also there's a lot less independence. You know, I think about as a, just by way of example, we saw this in Covid in a, in a big way, right? People were forced to do things that they would not otherwise do. Those people who were solidly in the middle class or upper, upper middle class because they didn't have any independence. Like they didn't run their, like, I don't, whatever, three stores that were, I don't know, like it's all car areas, just whatever the generic business is. But because they were, yes, they were middle class on an economic scale, but they didn't have independence cuz they were working for, for Johnson and Johnson or for Amazon or whatever. And so the edict comes down, you've gotta do X, Y or, or z or you know, I think about the medical profession. My father-in-law's a recently retired surgeon, he had the classic sort of, you know, what you think of as like classic medical practice, small business. Yeah. He's independent. Yeah. He could do what he wanted to do. That's much, much less true in medicine now than, than it was I guess moved into. Doug Truax: Absolutely. Chris Buskirk: You know, it's moved into these big group practices. A lot of doctors work for hospital systems now, so those, they have less independence too. And I think for, for, for what the sort of country we want, I think requires more people to have more economic independence. Right. Because that, that's al that's really a predicate to political independence. Doug Truax: Oh, absolutely. Absolutely true, then we're gonna, so let's get into the book. This is good book. Chris is a super smart guy. We're gonna start with some of these things. It's, it's a good segue into what the heck is wrong, right? Yeah. There's a lot of things and you know, I, I would commend anybody to read this because it, it's super helpful the way you laid it out using stats and all your economic background and everything and say, this is what you're feeling. You know, I think you used the term at the end kind of a national entropy Yeah. Where it's like, what, everything's getting wobbly, right? Yep. And so, but you do a great job through the chapters of, of narrowing down and saying, this is how this is failing, so to speak. And this is, you know, and getting to what we need to do. But let's, let's get into more specifically, what do you see? What are the problems? Chris Buskirk: Yeah. So let me, let me say what I, the book focused on, as you say, I tried to be very concrete, in defining the problems where I could, where things could be measured. And I know sometimes people on our side, it makes 'em a little uncomfortable to talk about that. Just a little, not a lot, honestly. Because people want to say, and I addressed this earlier in the book, people wanna say it's a spiritual crisis. And I stipulate upfront I agree. Like I a hundred percent agree with that. But number one, that's not really a political problem that can be solved. Number two is, I just wanted to write a different book because there I wanted to address things that were, could be defined that could be really concretized and that were, I thought, susceptible to political solutions. I'm a hundred percent for the spiritual solution too, but this isn't that, this isn't that book. Doug Truax: Yeah. We're on the same page there. Yeah, yeah, for sure. Chris Buskirk: So what are, so my, what I was thinking through the book, in fact, it's funny, I, I sort of wrote almost like more than half of like quite a different book, which I wound up like tossing because I was like, you know, this is like, it's still like too com too much complaining really in the book. And that actually just became the first couple chapters when I condensed it down. I said, here, look, if we want to have a solution, we need to identify the problem in a very concrete, quantifiable way. And so what I wanted to focus on was, I thought the things that would define what we would think of as success, like what would, like, what's the country we want, like politics at its most basic route is about building the country you want to live in. Okay? And part of that is, you know, what is the average person? What, what's their experience of life? And I thought, well, okay, so what would be, what would be the things that would, we'd all agree that we want, well people should be live longer, they should live, be healthier. They should have, they should have the ability to have a family and a stable one. If they want one, they should be able to raise children on a one single median income. In other, in other words, if people want to have both parents working, that's up to them. But economically it should be possible for, to raise a family on a single income. The United States had that basically from about the end of World War II until the late eighties and it became the kind of the default setting. Like this is like the American dream. And it is because that's historically really unusual, right. Especially like in the modern era. Doug Truax: You bet. You bet. Chris Buskirk: And we lost it the last, the last year it was possible to raise a single family on a median, on a on or a family, on a single median income was like 1989 defined. And just middle class, just what I say is you can own a house, you can own a car, you can send your kids to school just like nothing extravagant, but just what we think of in our mind as the conception of like just middle America. Sure. And that hasn't been possible for a long time. And that kind of plays out in a lot of different ways. This is, you see it where family formation is down total fertility rate, which is one of the things I talk about in the book. Total fertility rate is down like the, and this is again how I would define success, like a, a fertility rate that at least keeps up with the population. Like you, you may or may not be growing, but you shouldn't be shrinking. Like in fertility rate in this country is right now is about 1.7 for the replacement rate is 2.1. Sure. Roughly. Right. Doug Truax: And that's a problem. Chris Buskirk: That's a problem. Yeah. That's no, it's a problem. It's, it's, it's, it's a bigger problem. Like kind like if you look historically, and I talk about a little bit of this in the book, but is civilizations often go through periods of population growth and decline over over time. And they just sort of, you know, for various reasons. It, it, it fluxes we're definitely, we are in a period of organic decline, though it's sort of, it's stabilized and we grow a little bit because of, of net immigration. Sure. But the, the problem you have is you can't have a welfare state with a declining population. Like the math does not work. That's right. And so people wonder to themselves like, like why isn't there so much pressure for immigration? Well, I mean the people who are very pro like mass immigration are upfront about is like, we, we need more workers. Like we can't, we're not repopulating. They get, they get super, it's weird. They get super nervous when you talk about fertility and things like that. Like, I don't know why like having a family, having kids last time, my check should be pretty normal. Right, exactly. That's great. But yeah. Right. I mean, but that's, but that's one of the reasons that like, there's so much pressure for immigration, there's cultural reasons and all those sort and political reasons that people want mass immigration. But there is this fundamental reality that if we're, we just don't have that many workers because like median age in the United States has been growing since the seventies. It's like right now, like 38 years old. And as you get more people who are older who aren't working, and then you have also have this welfare system who's paying for it, right? Like this system we have right now is untenable except for the, you know, if we didn't have the dollar being the reserve currency, like we could not do what we're doing. Yeah. So, I dunno, those are some of the problems is that all of these metrics, and by the way, you know, there's other ones too, like crime ride has been rising, like violent crime ha has been on the increase. What are the weird, but in a way it's a good stat, but there's like a bad part of it too. Fewer people are, fewer people die from violent crime, like on a, on a per capita basis. But that's because of advances in wound care, like trauma care. Doug Truax: Right, right. That's not what you think. Yeah. Chris Buskirk: There's, there's like lots of stabbings and meetings and things like this. That's true. But like if you get to the hospital then, so look, we are advancing in trauma care, which is a good thing. Doug Truax: There's a positive. Chris Buskirk: Yeah. So I dunno, that's sort of like the overview is like, okay. And that's why thought like the, all the, these are all things that are definable. There's less social mobility also definable. You can see like if you were the child of like a parent in x like strata of society Yeah. Can you go up or down? It's much more, it, it is just much harder to go either up or down, Interestingly enough. And so that also is really, that's a, a stressor on, on the type of government we have. Like constitutional self-government is really hard to maintain. And when you have like a stratified society that's also stagnant in the sense of like lack of mobility, that gets to be a challenge for a lot, for a lot of reasons. People sort of in the middle and and below they sort of lose hope and say, well this is just, it's all rigged against me people at the top of society. And when they realize they can't, that it's really hard to move down, they're like, ah, that's because I have like access that other people don't have. And so then you start rent-seeking behavior and you just start to glomerate the, like the wealth and the power even more so to the top. So it accelerates. Doug Truax: That's right. The problem. Chris Buskirk: That's right. And all, all of this is from the way I think about this. It, it is, all of this is in the service of one big end, which is how do we, how are we able to perpetuate the sort of freedoms we have in this country based on constitutional self-government? And I think that you can't do that if you don't have a big self-sustaining middle middle class. Doug Truax: Oh, absolutely. And you do a really nice job of pointing out the potential around the unraveling of this. Chris Buskirk: Yeah. Doug Truax: Back to what you're saying about a whole lot of people in the country who think they can't advance and then it's rigged against them. What's the alternative? Right. And so, you know, you get into the French Revolution and resentment and everything Yeah. That, you know, remont and, and then you're going to, okay, well where are we today? What do we need to do? And so we'll segue into some solutions here. I think you did a great job though too of, I hear like a lot of people say, well, the Roman Empire, you know, they, they take, but you do a nice job of saying, well, it wasn't quite that simple. Yeah. They went down, like you said, they, they came back, Augustus made some, you know, real good changes and we, you know, they brought it back from where they were, can be done here if you do the right things going forward. And, and this gets into, okay, well Chris, tell us what you think we should do. You know, you've already mentioned some of the, the health things and I mean, it's really fascinating stuff here. Again, I'd recommend anybody read the book, but let's talk about, you know, what, what can we do? What, what are some of the Projects we can. Chris Buskirk: Yeah. The, so the book I told you that I, that I wrote and then basically tossed in the trashcan was the book of complaints. Doug Truax: Right. Right. It's like, It like we've all got that run in the background mind all the time. Chris Buskirk: Well, no, exactly. It's like we don't need another airing of grievances though. I, I tell you a I was talking to a friend who, like everybody who's watching this will definitely know who this person has written a few, a few very popular books for the Right. I, and I said this to him a couple weeks ago, he said, yeah, I don't wanna write this whole book of complaints. It just wasn't what I was Did. He goes, I don't know. It worked, it's been working for me. I haven't saw like a ton of those books. Yeah, right. Doug Truax: Exactly. Well sometimes it's just people going, Hey, the guy gets me. Right? Yeah. He hears what I'm complaining about and stuff. And I think that there's definitely a place for that because we do need to vent in some ways. I think it is a, it's a cathartic thing when you read, it's like, oh, I, he gets what I'm, what I'm feeling. Yeah. But you gotta get get to the other side of like, hey, how Do we get out of this? Right. Chris Buskirk: This goes back to like the, that sort of entrepreneurial mindset. Sure. It's like you see a problem and. Doug Truax: Yeah. That's like really, it makes you itch Right. Chris Buskirk: About like what's the solution? Right. Like it drives me crazy Exactly. To just complain about it. And so I, and so I I I thought the la the latter, I don't know what maybe third of the book is potential solutions and, and I'm quick to to point out like, none of these are a silver bowl. Like none of these are like aha. It's like kinda like those ads you see online, like one weird trick and you can save your country Doug Truax: Pull in. Yeah. Chris Buskirk: Yeah. But they're, but they're, I, what I, the way I think about it is that they're like, they're the things that where you plant some seeds and if they grow and they work, they point the way forward. Because the first thing is like, I had this sort of business mentor and he had an expression he always used, it wasn't original to him, but he said like, first rule of holes, stop digging. Yeah. Right, right. And so there's that, and then there's like, how do you, how do you get out? Yeah. And so, you know, some of the ideas that I talked about in there were really focused on decentralizing power and, and giving people power to, or more power over their own lives to build solutions. So one of the things I talked about in there was, it was what's sometimes called charter cities. Which like, I know some people like I roll at that because, but that is part of the problem. Right. What, let me say what a charter city is first. Sure. So a charter city would ex Doug Truax: Fascinating concept. Chris Buskirk: Yeah. So it would exist within obviously the physical United States, but it would exist basically under a different legal rubric. And under that rubric they would be given, like, it would be a de novo city. It's just like here's, I don't know, whatever, a thousand acres or 10,000 acres, whatever it takes, I guess it would be more like 10,000, not 1000, you know what I'm saying? A Doug Truax: Time land, right. Yeah. Chris Buskirk: Right. And they would basically be exempted from a lot of the existing rules still under the constitution, obviously. But basically they'd be giving a very broad charter to just experiment, build a new city, which is an audacious undertaking, which is by the way, one of my annoyances when people sort of eye roll this idea like, oh, what are you gonna do? Build a new city? Well, why not? Like we've built a ton of them in this country,. Doug Truax: Tell read Alice Shrug. Chris Buskirk: Yeah, right. Exactly. Doug Truax: Get there somehow. Chris Buskirk: I mean, but if you do that and you just allow the experimentation, I think a couple things happen. One is that the, the act of having to build something out of nothing is really unique. And that's why, and you, you know this from the book like this is, I think part of what kept America's dynamic is it was, is that it was a frontier country. And like innovation and dynamism always happen on frontiers. Like you, there's all these examples in history where frontiers are, where all these interesting things happen and solutions are formed. Why? Because they, if they you have to Yeah. If you don't, you fail and you die necessity. Doug Truax: Right. Necessity's mother of invention famously. And it draws in people that like that. Chris Buskirk: Correct. You know? That's correct. So you get, like, you get would get these sort of risk takers, innovators, you know, just serve of interesting people. They'd have a, they'd have a pretty big problem, which is, and the problem is you got a ton of land. Sure. What are you gonna do with it to make it work? And you know, but a couple years ago I was talking to some people about the, about something like this. They were like serious people looking at, well actually it's funny you mentioned Atlas shrug, like Ure Colorado is the place. Sure. That is, is supposed to be like gulch. They were actually looking like what would happen if we bought up like everything in Ure who had moved there. And one of the problems that you run into, if even if you were just doing like a thought experiment is well how do you, how does that sustain itself? Like how do, like how do people not just earn income, but like how do you just have the necessities right. Of life? And so that's, these are hard problems, but you know, look around, there's towns and cities every place. People have solved these problems before. And so I think like charter cities where you give people latitude in order to do things, I think that is a place where you say, okay, we're just gonna agree to experiment. Right. And see what happens. Yeah. And you know, I guess my other retort to the people who kind of eye roll at this is like, there is actually an example of this in the United States. It's not, it's not a perfect example, but it it, it is an example. And that's Puerto Rico. Puerto Rico exists in a kind of a strange, like another world legally it's part of the United States. Obviously it's not a state, but they are, like for instance, they don't pay federal income tax. Like they, they, or I think they pay like a very low rate of federal income tax. But they have, but they exist like in the United States for like citizenship purposes, they're obviously under the military protection of the United States. But there are a bunch of regulations and rules that if you are a state apply, but if you are Puerto Rico do not apply. Right. I've actually looked at Puerto Rico quite a bit and one of the things I have realized is that like there's a lot of things that could be happening in Puerto Rico that aren't like, there, there like more imagination needs to be shown. Sure. In Puerto Rico. And I know like banking people and crypto people have done some stuff down there, but I think there's actually a lot more Yeah. That could be done. So it's not something that's unprecedented. Right. Hong Kong in a way kind of played that role Sure. In, in Asia as being sort of a gateway between, between China, you know, the PRC and between basically the rest of the world and Hong Kong until it was taken over, it was a very dynamic Yeah. Place. So that's one of the, that's one of the areas. Another area that that's pretty like, it's kind of important to me is like, I call, I called it America 100. Like we should like state a goal of the median lifespan in the United States being becoming 100 Sure. Over a couple generations. Sure, sure. And not just that, but that people are living healthier. Yeah. Like you could this, we don't want something where we just just have like rows of people in beds to get hooked up to things. Doug Truax: That's right. Well, and then they have an opportunity to have a second career, career Chris Buskirk: All kinds of stuff if they're not, you know, if they're still healthy and making things happen. So this is a bit of an obsession Yeah. Of mine is that like the United States, our, the median lifespan in the United States has been declining for 12 years. It is presently around 74 and a half years old. And as I say, the trajectory is all wrong and people will would say, well, I don't know, maybe that doesn't sound good, but it's a blip. It's not a blip. I mean it's been happening for more than a decade. Also we're going the opposite direction of our peer countries. Like for instance, in Western Europe, I mean take France as an example. They, in the same time period, life's immediate life expectancy in France has been increasing. It's now of 84 point something. Yeah. So basically about 10 years longer than the United States. And they're like this going like this and we're going like that. Right. That's bad, bad. When you look at the other metrics of not just lifespan but health getting worse in the United States, getting better in a place like for instance, France, which drives Americans crazy. What do you mean French? Come on. Doug Truax: That's Right. Well that's how they live. Yeah. Chris Buskirk: Well Seriously what they eat. Doug Truax: Right. And what the, the drugs they take and all that stuff. Chris Buskirk: So, so by super provocative hot take of this, which is, I don't know if it's true or not, but I like it because it's got, it's got like a, it's just cuz it's a provocation a little bit, is that about 35% of French people are daily smokers. Okay. And that's, it's something like 12 or 13% sure in the United States. The, the French lifespan is higher, but also their incidence of heart disease, diabetes, all kinds of inflammatory disease is about, you know, 12 to 15% lower than in the United States. And is it because of the smoking? Right. Is like, is is there actually like a prom smoking roof here? I think there, I think there actually it, this part I'm serious, but I think there, I I think there is a little bit, and it's not the smoking so much, it's the nicotine, which I think because of the obesity rate in France is quite a bit lower. The United States. And so what I think it actually is, is that there's a link between nicotine and eating and obesity and it's actually the lower incidence of obesity versus the United States. Doug Truax: You're smoking and not eating. Well and I also think that this French thing, there's that book called French Don't Diet. Have you seen this? The same con? Well a little bit of like well how does that happen? Ton of it is natural food. I mean we have a real problem in this country with all the processed food and where we've kind of gone over the, the decades of like, oh, just eat that. It's fine. No, the pyramid, Chris Buskirk: We're making another podcast just on that. Doug Truax: Yeah. Right. Yeah. The pyramid. That's all wrong now we, we've got sold that bill of goods and I think that it's really catching up with people in the inflammation. And you even make the point too in your book, it's really funny, sad, but you know, there's all these medications now to fix these things that are mostly fixable if you care careful what you eat, but the side effects. Chris Buskirk: Right Oh my gosh! Doug Truax: But the effects, like, okay, so this is going to fix me a little bit, but then I got all this other stuff to worry about too, too. It's like we're living in this Yeah. Alternate reality Now about. Chris Buskirk: Well it's, it's totally, it's totally insane. I'm just, I've gotta do like the, the shadow, like the seed oils in the in in food are like insanely bad for you. Like poly anda and fats are just bad for you. Which will drive like, I don't know if Anthony fauci insane to hear anybody say that there'll probably be a swat team here in a few minutes, but like, like they are an inflammatory agent. And inflammation causes all of these bad health. That's outcomes, right. That we're talking about diabetes and heart disease and so forth. Arthritis. Yeah. Yeah. That we see a lot of and when you are eating natural naturally produced foods and you re and you have the like for instance, mono and saturated fats that you would see like in, you know, in grassroot, grass fed beef or whatever. Yeah. Those are actually good for you. That's right. You need those things. That's right. There's, there's this show, you may have seen it. Do you know the show alone to Like a reality? Yeah, Doug Truax: Yeah. I saw, I watched the one first came out. Chris Buskirk: Oh, you did? Oh Doug Truax: My gosh. Yeah. Like I'm obsessed with the show. Yeah, Chris Buskirk: Yeah. Right. So what is the one thing that everybody realizes and they say it in like every episode, the competitors, for people who don't know like alone is they, you take a person who is alone and they stick 'em out in the wilderness and there's like 10 of 'em and whoever can survive longest with like a pocket knife and you know, whatever. Sure, sure. Yeah. They win a flint. Yeah. Flint. They win like half million dollars. Yeah. They always say the same thing, which is, I am not, I gotta get enough fat in my diet, I gotta get more fat in my diet, I gotta get more fat in my diet. That's right. Or, and that, but they, some of 'em then like by midway through the seasons are always like, I gotta get more fat in my diet, I'm gonna die. Yeah. Right. Yeah. And Doug Truax: The fat, well the guy who won first, he was like super overweight. I think I Chris Buskirk: Was gonna make heavy. I was gonna make up on one of the No, because it's so true because with the facts that they're reading are like, they, they would be getting are animal fats, right. Which are good for you and necessary for your body. The, there is a funny strategy that you're alluding to. Some people go on the show and what they do is they try and they bulk up and try and get really obese before they're like, I don't have to do anything. Wait. Yeah. No, no. I think one person, I think one guy actually won doing That. Right? Doug Truax: Yeah. Yeah. And then so I think he spurred a whole movement in that show. But that's a Yeah, that's, that's, that's right. I mean it's just like the foods that we eat, it's like we have gotten, so some of this is just, you know, big country and Yeah. Goes back to all, you know, the original point that you were bringing up about the lack of economic growth that we're experiencing. Then it, then you have all these other factors coming that basically shrinking your income, which then shrinks your ability to go by necessities. Chris Buskirk: Anything else? Yeah. Doug Truax: So then you do buy the stuff that's more processed. I mean, it's a terrible cycle that we're in and we just have to get back to the economic growth. Chris Buskirk: I mean that's what economic growth thing I, and I just wanna make this point is, is because it's actually did a lot of it in the book, but, you know, look the what, what, what economists call total factor productivity. It, which is ba it's just doing more with less. Yeah. Like you think about, you know, the change between plowing a field with like a donkey and a, and a hand plow versus doing it with like a, a combustion engine and a tractor. Like the one guy can do, you know, 10 x or you know, orders of magnitude more than one guy could before. Or you think about the change when, when we electrified the country, you know, before there was no electricity. Now you have all this access to power and all kinds of other things become possible and one person can do a lot more than they could. That's what drives that productivity growth is what drives rising living standards. Yep. When productivity growth stagnates, then everything becomes, becomes zero sum. That's right. And that's the situation we're in now. Productivity growth has basically flatlined or it's been very slowly growing since about the early seventies we'd been on, I say we, but like, you know, basically western civilization had been on like a 200, 250 year up curve from the beginning of the industrial revolution until the early seventies. And then when, then it just dramatically Yeah. Slowed down like it did. Most of the productivity growth in the past 50 years has been like an information technology and that's been real. But even that, a lot of the juice has been squeezed out of that ar at that arch ca you know, the caveat I guess as we'll see what AI can do for good or ill. And maybe that is a huge catalyst for productivity growth. Oh. Going forward. The point is, is that we need to innovate more on basic science and technology. In order to increase productivity, build more because that is the driver. Doug Truax: That's right. Chris Buskirk: For rising living Standards. Totally, totally gotta build. What's that? You've gotta build stuff, you gotta have to build things and you've gotta be good at doing Doug Truax: It. That's right. That's right. Yeah. You make the point too. Last thing before we go the financialization of everything. Yeah. And, and your friend Peter Thiel, you know what, something I make sure I get this right. If your only job is to make a small piece of paper that says you owe me money on it, it's probably not a good sign. Right. I'm like, I'm thinking, man, a lot of people in this country, you know? Right. Because this whole, you know, it's like this mindset now around this financialization, which then steers everything up to Wall Street and it creates this growing gap and we have got to have a different society going forward, different society going forward. Chris Buskirk: I heard Peter say that years ago when he says, like he says in New York, it's like, it's like all these towers full of people whose only job is to write out little pieces of paper I owe use that they give to other people that say, you owe me money. Doug Truax: It's crazy! Chris Buskirk: That's the financial industry. But I read that I can't now every time I'm thinking about the New York or Wall Street or whatever, that's all I think about, about I know. Same here. It makes me Look at things Differenty. Yeah. It's just massive mal investment investment of that's right. Of, of, of, of human capital. Yeah. Doug Truax: Yeah. Absolutely. Well, lots of problems. Good solutions out there. Great book. Really appreciate what you did here. Again, a good summary, a a good fact-based data proven summary of the, of the things that are wrong and then some good solutions for it. So congratulations on the book and I really appreciate you coming on, Chris. Chris Buskirk: Thank you. Appreciate it. Doug Truax: Thanks. First Right. A new kind of new summary without the liberal slant every morning in your inbox, always free subscribe by texting first right to 3 0 1 61. That's FIRSTRIGHT. All caps one word to 3 0 1 61.

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Michele Tafoya, former sideline reporter for NBC Sunday Night Football, loves this country and believes in the American Dream. That’s why she decided to leave her successful career and start bigger conversations about what’s going on in America. In addition to making TV appearances to discuss culture and politics, Michele brings a sane point-of-view and encourages people to have good faith conversations in her Sideline Sanity podcast: https://micheletafoya.com/category/full-episodes/ Watch now to learn more about her courage and how she works to ease political division through honest discussions about current issues and threats to American culture. Want daily news without the liberal slant? Subscribe to First Right here: https://www.restorationofamerica.com/first-right/

For thirty years, Sharyl Attkisson was a correspondent and anchor at CBS News, PBS, CNN, and in local news before she ended her mainstream career to become one of the few who remain true to her journalistic principles. Honest reporting and refusing to give into liberal bias led to being spied on by the Obama administration, and she's here to share her story and outlook for the future in journalism. In addition to her investigative reporting success, Sharyl is the NYT bestselling author of Slanted: How the news media taught us to love censorship and hate journalism; The Smear: How Shady Political Operatives and Fake News Control What You See, What You Think and How You Vote, and Stonewalled. Learn more about Sharyl and order her books here: https://sharylattkisson.com/ Want daily news without the liberal slant? Subscribe to First Right here: https://www.restorationofamerica.com/first-right/ (MACHINE GENERATED) Doug Truax: Welcome to the First Right podcast, a weekly conservative news show brought to you by Restoration of America. I'm Doug Truax, founder and president of Restoration of America. Today we are blessed to have legendary journalists and bestselling author Sharyl Attkisson as our guest. Sharyl spent years as an award-winning journalist at CBS News before her profession fell apart, and she became one of the scan few who remained true to their principles and continued to practice good journalism. Her courage is extraordinary and she deserves immense respect. Hi Sharyl, welcome to the show. Sharyl Attkisson: Thank you for having me. Doug Truax: Well, gosh, it's a real honor to have you on and, and even before I begin kind of going on and on about your great career, I just want to thank you personally for holding the line. I know it's not easy nowadays, but you definitely made the decision to stick to the truth and it has served you well and plus you've got this, this wonderful career to date. And so I guess I wanted to know if like you look back, if you think back way back before you got really going and became a big name, you're just getting going in journalism. Would you have ever thought back then that it would end up like it's ended, ended up now this profession of journalism? Sharyl Attkisson: No, in fact, I think I have a pretty good skillset toward looking down the road and seeing the impact of things. And I wrote about a lot of these and the books that I've written a lot of what the future may hold based on trends that we had seen. But if you had had me guess, I never would've thought even really 10, 15 years ago that we would get where we are so quickly with information so managed and with the public inviting it and with journalism organizations. So they used to be journalism organizations being party to the censorship and the shaping of information. I think it's just pure propaganda. I would not have guessed that. Doug Truax: Yeah, it's really crazy. And I, I think about, you know, your book Stonewalled from 2014 and you know, now we're, you know, you you've, you've said some years there going back a while how this has all transpired and I think a lot of this obviously got kicked off under Obama and the trend line has been nothing but negative, but, so let's just talk about that, about, you know, Obama was spying on your personal and work co computers. The administration was. Just give us some more detail on that and also wanna know where that stands as of today. Sharyl Attkisson: Well, people aren't too surprised when they hear today that the government is spying on them. They should be outraged. But the drip drip of information that that's happened over the past 10 years has numbed people to the outrage they should be feeling about it. So when I first was told by some sources back, I wanna say in the 2011 time period that I was likely being spied on or watched by the Obama administration because of the reporting that I was doing, it sounded far fetched and kind of crazy actually. And until I had had my computers looked at forensically, now we've had five different audits by independent auditors confirming these intrusions. I wouldn't have believed it myself. And I think the worst thing about it, they were coming in according to the forensics. We can tell dates and times and methods. They were using keystroke monitoring programs. They were activating Skype audio to listen in on my conversations when it didn't look like Skype was actually activated on the computer. They have the power to do that. They have the ability to operate your keyboard or your computer as if they're sitting at the keyboard, but they can do this remotely. They were in the c bs system. CBS issued a press release about the fact that the computers had it been intruded upon. So there's no doubt that that happened. And then looking at the capabilities they used and the the software abilities that they have to do all of this. And also now since then, the years since, we have sources who told us, of course this was the government that did it, but trying to sue and hold the government accountable is nearly impossible if they won't hold themselves accountable. And of course, the Department of Justice isn't prosecuting themselves or the FBI agent's responsible or the contractors they use. So yes, I'm in a lawsuit that's been going on years and years very uphill. We did win one small battle. One former agent used by the government acknowledged what he did and gave some other names. We're suing somebody else, but we've wanted clerks default against that one former agent for the government. We're suing a former secret service agent who is involved, who's been serving time in prison for other corruptions since this happened to me. But really what we need to do is go to the big guys who ordered it and stop it. But it's impossible really to prove their role without their cooperation. And so far, of course, they're not cooperating. Why is this matter in the big picture? I've said all along, it's not important that it happened to me. It's important that it's happening to a lot of people. And it was happening to other journalists who didn't have the context to let them know. And as long as we don't hold people accountable, we can't be surprised that they did what they did to Donald Trump in the 2016 time period. We can't be surprised that they're spying on both Democrat and Republican staffers and Congress and members of Congress themselves. These outrages will continue if nobody is held accountable. Doug Truax: Yeah, that's right. That's the most troubling thing is the trend line on all this. And I remember when this happened to you and, and it's, it's hard to say, well, I shouldn't be worried about that. If I, if I talk like that, I'm gonna sound like I'm paranoid or I'm just getting paranoid about this. But if you find yourself in these spots where, you know, you're, you're digging into things and people are looking around and you have people like the Obama administration and then obviously like what you said once Trump came in and then they're just a constant, basically coup against the guy built around these techniques. Probably you can't help but get a little, you know, more and more paranoid, especially if you're, if you're digging into the truth or if you're on the right like we are, it's like what's actually going on out there. And I feel like there's gotta be somewhere out there, to your point, a day of reckoning on all this. I mean, somebody's gotta like come in and say, no, that's it. We're gonna, we're gonna fix all this. We're gonna go back to the way it was. Rule of law. If you do that, you're gonna get in big trouble. Do you ever see that happening? Sharyl Attkisson: I don't, unfortunately. And here's why. I mean, it would take someone like Trump or an out political outsider because the others are co-opted by these federal agencies and the political and corporate interests that run them. If Congress were not corrupted at high levels, meaning the party leaders of both sides, there's no way knowing just a fraction of what we know the FBI has done, the CIA has done the c d C has done, there's no way those organizations would even exist in their current form. There's very little oversight being done. They should be blown up and rebuilt based on the corruption and the misinformation they've put out. But the fact that we have hearings and demands for documents and never really anything real shows that these federal agencies and those pulling strings in them, I think they're running the show. And when a president comes in, doesn't matter who it is, Democrat or Republic, maybe some of them may agree with these agencies more than others, but these agencies and those running in them and pulling strings, they just wait four years, you know, until the they could, they wait out whoever's president and do whatever they want. Doug Truax: Yeah, that's right. And the other day on that, the jfk, you know, assassination information that was, I think that was supposed to come out in 2017 and it didn't. And then, you know, it's not coming out for a reason. And I just feel like if we all look back, there's moments in time where these agencies started saying, oh, we can do whatever we want as we go forward because of what you just said. Sharyl Attkisson: You know, they don't wanna, let me get one current example that's huge. I asked for the after action report after the failed, that horrible pullout from Afghanistan. The military creates an after action report after every military action that gives some insight into what went wrong and what may have gone right. That's the purpose of the after action reports. They've never released the one from Benghazi. That's public information. We are allowed to see that we owe, but they just fla the law and withhold it and nobody holds them accountable. Likewise, I've asked for the after action report from Afghanistan. They've withheld it illegally for, you know, the whole time I've been asking for it. I haven't heard anybody in Congress ask for it. And quite frankly, if they did, I think unless they really pushed it together by, in a bipartisan basis, again, the Defense Department will just thumb their nose at Congress. But I don't know that anybody's asked for this. So these are really important things that are not happening. And unless those things were to happen, we can only expect more of the same. Doug Truax: Yeah, that's right. And, and it can be super discouraging because it is that concept of these people are in power, bureaucratic power, they figured out how to wait people out, and then you can't really, there's a lot of like red tape around getting anybody fired in the government, you know, and that's, and I think if there was a, if there was an easier way to come through and be like, oh, you don't want to gimme what, what I'm asking for, you're out, you're out, you're out. And then they don't, you know, the president or whoever feels like, well, they can't get that done. And plus it's just so huge now. But yeah, it's, it's a discouraging thing, but hopefully there will be a day of reckoning out there. I was gonna ask you too, was there a moment in time I, I think I had John Solomon on here, and I was asking about how, at what point did you realize that the, that the journalism, the journalists were, you know, basically turning into Democrat operatives and I think he was in his newsroom when Scooter Libby was convicted and they all were cheering and he was like, oh my gosh, this is out of control. Do you have any moments like that previously, even before you got, were spied upon that you're like, oh man, this is not, this is not looking good. Sharyl Attkisson: Well, a small moment, which I, I really stuck outta my mind when I went to work for CBS News. I came from CNN at the time. CNN was a news organization and worked very hard to not take sides on issues. I think that we did a pretty good job at it. No one had to tell us that, that was just assumed. That was how the news operated. I went to CBS News in New York and I'm not a political person and I guess I should be embarrassed to say I, I followed politics, so little national politics that I didn't know much about what was going on. And at the time, I believe it was the year that Newt Gingrich and the Republicans took over the house with the contract of Amer for America. I didn't really know that. I knew there was an election and I'm walking around sort of in the middle of the night cause it was the overnight shift and everybody I just sensed in the whole newsroom was just upset and depressed and kind of hanging sad. And I asked somebody, what's wrong? What's everybody so depressed about? And someone said, didn't you hear we lost the election? And I just was like, we, what are you, what are you talking about? So not only once I examined what they were talking about, not only were they calling themselves we meaning Democrats, they were also assuming I was a Democrat and felt the same way because there was such a monolithic opinion inside that news organization. So that stuck out. But I will say CBS did a very good job, at least with me for many years, telling me to, or encouraging me to cover stories independently and seek things out. It wasn't until the last few years before I quit CBS News that I started seeing this march, not just at cbs, but all the national news organizations where they were starting to censor and shape news in a way that was shocking, which led to my wanting to leave CBS ahead of my contract in 2014. Doug Truax: Yeah, yeah, I bet that was hard to take and hear that it just looks like a paradigm shift in your own mind. You're like, everybody's just out there for the truth and we're just trying to find the right thing and suddenly you realize they're actually not. And I, I was gonna ask you too, how's it been over time? You were, you're just really good at fighting these truth bombs and throwing 'em out there and, and you know, it's undeniable when you put this stuff out there. Any of your journalist friends from before that you stay in touch with that you're say to them, why aren't you covering this too? And they give you, or they avoid you. I don't guess I understand what happens when you put this stuff out and the rest of the journalists like, I'm not gonna look at it. Sharyl Attkisson: Well it's interesting because I used to run into journalists and we were all competing for the same stories. We wanted the whistleblower and we'd each try to be first to get a good one to verify their story and if warranted to put it on television or to break a big story and to get it out. And now I find I'm on, I have my independent show full measure, which feeds to 43 million households every Sunday on tv. Different affiliates, ABC n, nbc, CBSs Fox, and so on. I can just pluck stories out of thin air and I'm all alone. People don't want those whistleblower stories unless they're politically against a certain person, not the traditional whistleblower stories. They don't want the stories about the inside scoop happening. That's bad. Unless it's something against, let's say Donald Trump, they only want a specific kind. So it's easy to find really good, interesting stories that are undercover or not reported on at all. And to the extent I hear from some of my former colleagues, they say things like, how are you allowed to cover those stories? Because some of them were still trying to cover them, but they knew on up the line, you know, we stumble across the same story still. And I hear from people I interview, oh, so-and-so at ABC for example, wanted to do a story and the producer worked with me and then they cut the story out. So up the line, the journalists are learning, even when they wanna do the good stories, there's somebody in the editorial process that won't put them on TV or won't let them ultimately publish them in a fair and accurate way. So they kind of know to go in a different direction. And yeah, so I, I guess my main feedback I do hear from people is how do you get to cover the stories you do, which are just basic stories we all used to cover 10, 15 years ago, Doug Truax: Right? Yeah. They're just not allowed to, you know, the, the word's gone out, this is how, that's how we're gonna do it. Everybody's, you know, it's a very partisan country now in general and the, you know, the media's controlled by the Democrats and so this is only certain things you can cover. Do you think, last question for you. Do you, do you think that there's a, a way that this, the journalism profession ever does come back? Sharyl Attkisson: I think it comes back in a different form and people are trying to find out by contacted from time to time, probably by a half dozen entities so far that are looking to do a fair news organization that cuts down the middle on things. They just haven't figured out what platform they could use that can't be canceled, you know, when they're going against the narrative. But there are smart people trying to figure all that out. And I think CK is sort of an example of a transition a way that people on the left and right who are being canceled in other places can get their word out without being censored. But I think there will be something else that comes that's invented or created technically that allows this avenue to happen of something that's more fair. Cause I do think people, maybe they wanna see news that's right-leaning and left-leaning, but they know they're getting a view. They still, those same people, in my opinion, would like to have a neutral place they could go so they don't have to discount 20% off the top of what they heard because they know they're listening to right-leaning or left-leaning news. I think there's a huge market for it. And technically, well, one of the people, people trying to figure this out, for example, is the co-founder of Wikipedia, Larry Sanger, who left Wikipedia because it got, it's so taken over now by agenda editors, corporate pharmaceutical interests and critical interests who edit this a certain way, but he's trying to technically think of what is the next thing where information can be freer and more accurate. And so a lot of people are working on the problem. I think something will come of it, but I don't think we'll see the traditional news organizations go back to doing what we used to think of as news. Doug Truax: Yeah. Yeah, I think that's right. I i it is just this technology piece and the, and having something that can't be canceled, that's where it, where it comes down to it and finding enough people that'll play it straight down the middle too. That's gonna, that's always a tricky time, a tricky thing to do in this time that we're in, but it's doable for sure. Well, Sharyl, how can we, how can we help you more? I mean, obviously we're gonna get this out to our distribution network, but how, how can we support what you're doing? Sharyl Attkisson: Well, I try to cross publish my work at sharylattkisson.com, but my TV program, full measure.news, has just great neutral reporting on a variety of topics like you don't see anymore that nobody's, no propaganda interests are pushing real topics people are curious about. And I do have a GoFundMe started by Fourth Amendment Advocates cuz Press Advocates did not help me with my lawsuit at all against the government, but some Fourth Amendment advocates and legal scholars stepped up when they heard that. And you could always visit there if you're interested. And if you wanna read more about the lawsuit, I think it's fascinating if, if you wanna dig a little deeper, if you go to sharylattkisson.com and click under I think investigations, there's a whole sort of array of stories under a category that tells you what happened and the misinformation that was even put out about the case by propagandast like Media Matters who had experts commenting and putting out false information that knew nothing about the case. It kind of digs into all that. And some people, if they're interested, might find that a fun read. Doug Truax: Oh absolutely. And we gotta have a record of all this cuz hopefully there will be a reckoning and then we'll have the, everybody will be able to see the truth, you know, our kids and our grandkids and all this. They need to be looked back on this time and be like, wow, minute that was outta control. But the truth will still be there. So, hey again, thank you so much for your courage. I think you're just a great example for any, you know, wouldbe journalist out there to see how do I do this the right way? You know, that's you and just thankful for all you've done over the years. Sorry, some of these things have happened to you, but you're obviously using your platform to, you know, get the truth out there even more. And in some ways it's created some good fame for you that is, is well deserved. But really appreciate all that you're doing and we just want you to keep up the good work. And thanks for everything, Sharyl. Sharyl Attkisson: Well, thank you for having me and thanks to the support. Doug Truax: All right, that's our show for today. Thank you so much for tuning in and for supporting conservative media. Don't ever forget that by working together and staying diligent, we conservatives can bring our country back to true greatness. Until next week, let's all keep praying that God will continue to bless America First. Right? A new kind of new summary without the liberal slant every morning in your inbox, always free subscribe by texting first right to 3 0 1 61. That's FIRSTRIGHT All caps, one word to 3 0 1 61.

The April 4 Wisconsin Supreme Court race is one of the most important elections in the country, and Dan O'Donnell of News/Talk 1130 WISN Milwaukee explains why. It's a tight race between conservative Dan Kelly and soft-on-crime Janet Protasiewicz, and liberal groups and media are up to their usual tricks. Wisconsinites can keep both their courts and elections fair if conservatives get out and vote. Watch now to learn why everyone is talking about this race and why you, your family, and your friends need to VOTE NOW! Want daily news without the liberal slant? Subscribe to First Right here: https://www.restorationofamerica.com/first-right/ (MACHINE GENERATED) Doug Truax: Welcome to the First Right Podcast, a weekly conservative news show brought to you by Restoration of America. I'm Doug Truax, founder and president of Restoration of America. Today we were blessed to have a return guest from the all important state of Wisconsin. His name is Dan O'Donnell, host of a popular morning talk radio show on Milwaukee on W I S N 1130. Hey Dan, thanks so much for coming on the show. Dan O'Donnell: Well, the pleasure is all mine. Doug Truax: All right, good. So big stuff in Wisconsin. All right, big race. Everybody's talking about it. So just as a starting point, since we get this out around the country also in in Wisconsin, but around the country, just give the viewers a quick rundown on why everybody's talking about this race in Wisconsin. Dan O'Donnell: Well, because this is for control of the Wisconsin Supreme Court, there was a conservative justice, former Chief Justice, Patience Roggensack, who decided not to seek another 10 year term because she's 80 years old. So she's taking a much deserved retirement and that's opened up a seat. Now as things stand now with Roggensack's retirement, there are three conservatives and three liberals, the race that will be concluded on Tuesdays between a former justice named Dan Kelly, who's an ardent conservative. He unfortunately lost his seat on the court in 2020 and he's running against an Uber liberal Milwaukee County judge by the name of Janet Protasiewicz. And the reason that this is considered to be such a big race because it doesn't just impact things in Wisconsin. You might not know this, but there is a presidential race next year. I think people are starting to talk about that a little bit. Wisconsin, of course is and probably always will be considered one of the key swing states. Well, Wisconsin, with the conservative Supreme Court majority that we've had for about the last 15 years now has been able to pass under former Republican Governor Scott Walker, voter id. The Wisconsin Supreme Court with its conservative majority just banned ballot harvesting in the state of Wisconsin, just gave a definitive ruling that ballot harvesting is illegal. If conservatives lose the court on Tuesday, mark my words, voter ID will be gone. By the time that Americans are casting their ballots in 2024 ballot harvesting will again be legal. We may even have a challenge to Wisconsin's electoral maps, which could mean that the control of the United States House, if we lose two Republican Congressmen, Brian Steil and Derrek Van Orden here, that that Republican majority, which is razor thin as it is, could be gone. It, it's not just enough to say that Wisconsin is at stake. I don't think it's any hyperbole to say that the future of the country is at stake here. Doug Truax: Yeah, how about it? And Chuck, another one up. Lemme just put an ad in here. For Republicans doing a much better job as we go forward on advanced planning and being proactive as we see these things come because the left, they're all over it. They got the long-term plan, they got the organizations, they're working it. We're always a little late. I think we're doing much better in this race than we've probably ever been doing, but we gotta get better at this side of it and there's gonna be more super important races down the road. I couldn't agree with you more. This is, implications on this thing are huge. So, so when you talk about the race and, and the polling and, and there's a lot going on, I think Pro Seitz is pretty, when it all started, she was pretty far out front, but there's been other polling going on. Give us your sense of what you're seeing on the ground for the polling and not just the polling, but how you feel this is turning right now. Dan O'Donnell: Boy, anybody who thinks that anyone is going to win a race in Wisconsin by more than about five points nowadays is nuts. The last time we had really a, a runaway statewide winner was when Tammy Baldwin ran for reelection. She won by about I think eight or nine points in 2018. Outside of that, pretty much every statewide race in Wisconsin is within four or five points. The very good, very conservative senator Ron Johnson just won reelection by the skin of his teeth over a radical leftist, our former lieutenant governor. So I think this is going to come down to turnout. I I, I hate to sound cliche, but this is really anyone's race. And if you take a look at the, the sort of ads that Pro Seitz is running here in Wisconsin, especially in the Milwaukee and Madison media markets, the two biggest cities where she absolutely has to run up the score, she is not sounding like a candidate who thinks she's up by a lot. And what's telling me that she's a little nervous is that she's not pounding the table with abortion. Now of course, she's promised to be the deciding vote to legalize abortion again here in Wisconsin, but she's essentially with her advertising in the last days of this campaign, accusing Dan Kelly of being corrupt, like literally using the word corrupt to describe Dan Kelly in her advertising. That's not something to me that someone does when they think they're way ahead, when they bring out these wild allegations like this. So I think this is really anyone's race. My guess it's two points either way, but honestly this is the first time in a long time. I really don't have a sense of which way this one is going. Doug Truax: Wow. That's, that's surprising that you don't have that sense cuz you're the guy that usually does. And that just goes to show that, like you said, this is, this is always tight and you know, just it's an April election. There's a lot of nuance here around the turnout in general. It's, you know, potentially a low turnout race, but then now you have all this attention. So that's, so we're gonna see how that all those factors are gonna play in here in a couple days. And, and so, so thanks for, for sharing that. We're obviously pulling for all those, those republicans in Wisconsin that are getting the vote out and making sure everybody knows to go vote. So, so I wanna talk to you about the, about the media and, you know, their ability to ignore stories. You know, you've, you've broken a lot of good things over over time here. The vote buying scheme possible. Yep. Possible illegal registration, voter registration going on. And so tell us a little bit more about all that and, and where you think that stands. Will we get any traction on those issues now? Dan O'Donnell: Well, about a month ago I broke a, a scheme by a former member of the state Democratic party who has come up with what appears to be a scam pack called Wisconsin Takes Action. And what they're doing is paying people in the form of digital gift cards in order to text their friends and families about voting. And if you text 60 people, you get $60. So they're essentially paying a dollar per voter that you contact. Well, the problem with this is under Wisconsin's statutes, this falls under election bribery. It is illegal in Wisconsin to pay anything to any elector to cast a ballot to induce any other person to vote. What they're doing is a clear example of election bribery. I can tell you that there is almost certainly at least one investigation that's going on right now into this activity. But as far as how effective it is, let's face it, you know, your, your average liberal 20 something who is being targeted with this scheme isn't going to take the time to text 60 different people. I think you have to text them four or five different times right up to and including on election day to make sure that they voted in order to get like 150 or $250 in gift cards. It just seems like a lot of work in terms of what I believe to be unlawful voter registration. It seems like Milwaukee Public Schools, the state's largest school district is actually sharing student voter registration data with the League of Women Voters and other various third party liberal groups. Now, I just got an email back three weeks after I broke this story from Milwaukee Public Schools saying, no, we, we aren't doing anything illegal. Okay, well why did you wait three weeks before getting back to me after you've clearly done all of your get out the vote drives. So the status of that is a little less clear. I haven't heard if there are gonna be any lawsuits or anything about that. But what I have been using my platforms to do here in Wisconsin is to encourage conservatives to do the exact same thing to text friends and family about voting to now I obviously can't pay them in gift cards or anything like that, but to get out, out and vote early. Remember in 2022 in November the the places where conservatives where Republicans made big gains or in New York and California and of course Florida, all places were early voting and ballot harvesting are essentially being done as a matter of chorus. So the quicker that other conservatives in other states like Wisconsin hop on board, I think the better off that we're going to be. Doug Truax: Yeah, that's the one thing I keep saying a lot is that we actually, going forward now we have to have two thoughts in mind. We have to do everything we can to win and whatever that means, as long as it's legal, you know, the voting early, helping people get their ballots in all those types of things are different in different states. But if it's legal, let's do it to the best of our ability. Yep. And then when we win and we're back in power, then we can have that conversation about, okay, we need to go back closer to election day and fewer ballots in the mail, all those things that we wanna like, get it back to the way it should be so that there's less opportunity to cheat. But we gotta do, we gotta do both things. Dan O'Donnell: And, and the other thing, I'm, I'm sorry to cut you off, but this is the most important point that I'm stressing. If we can beat liberals at their own game of early voting and mail-in balloting, they will be begging us to change the law back to just election day. I promise you the best way to return to election day from what we have now, which is essentially election month, remember we're like the only first world country that does voting this way, where you essentially just, you know, send in your ballots like it's American idol for goodness ex every other country doesn't do mail-in balloting because of the potential for fraud. If conservatives master mail-in balloting, if conservatives start winning elections consistently using mail-in balloting, I promise you the left will want to return to one day only voting excuse only early or absentee voting and we'll get a victory without actually having to change laws over the objections of Democrats. Doug Truax: Yeah, no, that's a great point. You know, just gotta get good at it. You're right. And then they'll be like, ah, we can't do this anymore. We're getting beat. And cuz I think, you know, it's still a center right country and I, I think we just have to do a better job of getting our folks out and making it happen. It's just not been one of those things that we've been, you know, great at over the years is the voter registration drives and all these things that they're just killing us at now, but we're like waking up to it. One other thing I was gonna ask you about though too is like, you see all these things, like you're talking about the gift cards and the bribery and everything and you know, we're, we're very frustrated on the right with the lack of, it's just, it's just lawlessness and then there's a lack of enforcement. And so I think we're probably gonna start seeing, you know, I can get your opinion on this, start seeing more and more people that now have standing because their vote didn't count cuz somebody got bribed to vote over here they have standing filing, filing li civil lawsuits against these people on the ground ground that are actually doing these things because, you know, is is anybody, is any law enforcement official gonna go after 'em? I don't know in this environment. Probably not. It's super frustrating. They should, but if they don't, they'll take it in their own hands and get, get, you know, I hate to say it, get the lawyers out right. And go after some of these Dan O'Donnell: People. Well, yeah. Oh absolutely. Absolutely. That's what I've been telling people. Yeah. If you do believe you have standing, we have a great organization here in Wisconsin called Will the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty. I'm willing to wager that there are other groups in states that our viewers might be watching us in that do fundamentally the same thing that will take up lawsuits like this. If you believe you do have standing to sue over something that you believe was unlawful or something that might have in fact in essence disenfranchised, you absolutely get lawyers involved. Make sure that any sort of election irregularity is tied up in the courts. Try to get an injunction, at least a temporary injunction to stop it before election day. I mean, this is what the, the left has Mark Elias, who is a former Clinton lawyer, and he has been doing this sort of stuff for years. Every time Republicans try to put any sort of check on, you know, voter ID or anything like that, trying to verify who it is that's actually casting a ballot, Elias and the various law firms that he's been with will sue conservatives need to learn to play the left's game and play it better than them. And if we know anything about liberals is that as soon as you beat them, they will whine, they will cry and they will demand that the rules are, excuse me, that the rules are changed. Doug Truax: Absolutely. Yeah. Gotta go back at 'em as hard as we can. And I would just encourage all of our viewers too, if you know out there conservative lawyers who are willing to fight it out, praise them, encourage them, because this is another area too. I think that, you know, we, we don't wanna do frivolous things and we don't want lawyers get in trouble because they put out stuff that just has no real, you know, value or standing to it. But I do admire now these conservative lawyers around the country, they're like, you know what, we gotta fight this out. We gotta go after 'em. Because to your point about all Elias, I think they have a lot of their own people besides Elias that are willing to do this. We just have to go and, and and do it. Our our guys have to do it too. It's just a super heated environment, you know, the media's after you and everything else, but we just have to recognize this is what it is and, and we gotta be willing to fight it out. So yeah, those, those guys that will are, are great. So Totally agree. One last thing I want to ask you about. So on Restoration News, we, we've been reporting about Janet Zeitz is light sentencing and, and we've got this Perez case and the the most recent this murder, it's a terrible thing, all this stuff, and it plays into what's going on with the campaign and her light sentencing of this guy who may have done this thing, but they don't want to cover it. So, so talk to us a little bit about how the, you know, it looks like the media's in full lockdown mode to try to help her get over the finish line in spite of her light sentencing problems. Dan O'Donnell: Well, not only that, they actually, today the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel put out a story in which one of the victims of a rape in which protasiewicz give a whole lot of prison time to the defendant, to the rapist actually came out. She wasn't identified because she is a sexual assault victim, but she came out and blasted the use of her case as a political ad. So not only is the Journal Sentinel and the Wisconsin State Journal and TV stations and radio stations, Wisconsin Public Radio here in Wisconsin refusing to cover these light sentences, you now have the media actively seeking out a victim so that she can blast associates and allies of Dan Kelly for daring to highlight how lenient Janet protasiewicz I myself have broken at least four or five of these stories, these cases. I mean, there was one where a man raped his unconscious cousin, protasiewicz actually praised his character during the sentencing hearing, gave him 14 months after accepting a plea deal when he went from a maximum sentence of about 40 years in prison to 10. I, I mean, it is just case after case, after case after case, all saying the same thing. The media doesn't just refuse to report on it, but will actively attack anyone who daress to bring this sort of thing up. What this does tell me, however, is that pro se what's in her allies, i e the media think that this is an issue on which she is extremely vulnerable. You don't do a story like this unless you believe that the stories of what we are now calling her no jail Janet has been doing while on the bench in Milwaukee. You don't do these unless you believe that the no jail Janet nickname and the whole theme of her just being incredibly lenient is having an impact. I think it is. And that's why I think we're seeing this organized press blackout, which actually is kind of amazing. It, it, it, we never used to see this where the press would just pretend that something didn't exist. They would cover a story and try their best to minimize it. Now we're just seeing if there is a story that doesn't fit their narrative, it's gone. You just, you do not see it. For example, let me, let me, let me ask you this. Did you know that protasiewicz former stepson accused her of violently beating his father, her former husband who he, she was married to back in the 1990s when she was 34 and he was 70, and also he accused protasiewicz of using the n word to refer to people who came before her when she was an assistant district attorney. I'm willing to wager none of your viewers ever heard of that because the media simply refused to give it any oxygen after it was initially reported by a great website called Wisconsin right now.com. Doug Truax: Absolutely. No, I I I know what you're talking about, but you're right, it's not out there very much at all because they don't wanna talk about it. And it is the strangest thing now. I mean, it's a natural outcome. We kind of saw this coming, right, because it moved from what you said. Well, let's just, let's talk about it, let's put it on page six and let, let's put that there and don't talk and, you know, you kind of think it through. Well, if that's not working for 'em, they're just gonna go full lockdown and not even talk about it. I mean, there's, they're just total Democrat operatives and Oh yeah, yeah, they got a built in, they got a built in PR system that's working for 'em. So, yeah. Well, we're fighting back. And so I do have one more thing I wanna ask you. So what do you think Dan Kelly needs to do in the final days here to pull this off? Dan O'Donnell: Just keep encouraging people to get out and vote. And not only that text, like 10 20 of your right-leaning friends. I was actually shocked when talking to people who are actually making phone calls on behalf of Kelly at how many people in rural, northern and western Wisconsin don't even know that there's a Supreme Court race. Okay, you need to, if you are in Wisconsin, you're watching this, you're listening to this, whatever it is, text as many people as you know and make sure they vote. And don't just vote, vote early. We've got a couple more days of in-person absentee voting. There's still time to get your mail-in ballot back. Make sure you get out and vote. Don't leave it to chance by waiting for election day on Tuesday. Get out and vote now. Doug Truax: Yeah, amen. Gotta do it. We gotta tell each other what's going on, especially these small ra these off cycle races. Totally. We gotta let everybody know. Yeah, I, I see that too. It's, it's a little discouraging, but I do think there's enough heat on this whole thing and there's enough ads and there's a lot of money going into this, into the state right now. I think the awareness level's going up, which then goes back to center, right. People, people in the middle, they don't want to be attacked by somebody got a light sentence. I mean, you know, it starts to turn into like, well, this could happen to me. It's not just off someplace else. Right? So they're thinking, I gotta, I gotta do the right thing here. So I, I, you know, I'm always the eternal optimist. It's gonna go our way, but we'll see what happens. So, hey Dan, well thanks so much for all that you do and your courage and reporting all these things and breaking these stories and, and hang in there and let us know what, what we can do to help you out there. Okay? Dan O'Donnell: Absolutely. Doug Truax: Have a good one. All right. That's our show for today. Thank you so much for tuning in and for supporting conservative media. Don't ever forget that by working together and staying diligent, we conservatives can bring our country back to true greatness. Until next week, let's all keep praying that God will continue to bless America First. Right? A new kind of new summary without the liberal slant every morning in your inbox, always free subscribe by texting first right to 301 61. That's FIRSTRIGHT All caps, one word to 30 1 61.

Frank LaRose, Ohio Secretary of State and former Green Beret, is passionate about election integrity. His concerns with the ERIC voter database ultimately led to Ohio cutting ties ERIC, and now he's on the path to increase election transparency and restore voter confidence. Watch to learn more about Ohio's ERIC experience and the state's plan for election integrity going forward. Want daily news without the liberal slant? Subscribe to First Right here: https://www.restorationofamerica.com/first-right/

First Right welcomes Hayden Ludwig, director of policy research at Restoration of America. Hayden just released blockbuster research on ERIC, the supposedly neutral voter roll database that’s used for partisan purposes by Democrats. Don't miss this episode as he unveils shocking information about ERIC's shady origins. Read ERIC: The Best Data Money Can't Buy: https://www.restorationofamerica.com/restoration-news/eric-the-best-data-money-cant-buy-pt-1/ Want daily news without the liberal slant? Subscribe to First Right here: https://www.restorationofamerica.com/first-right/

Hayden Ludwig, Director of Policy Research with Restoration of America is a guest on The Absolute Truth with Emerald Robinson to discuss his investigative series "Inside Democrats Best Kept Secret." Restoration of America: https://www.restorationofamerica.com/uncategorized/inside-democrats-best-kept-secret-mass-nonprofit-voter-registration-pt-1/ www.restorationofamerica.com

Marxist, socialist, and communist ideologies are dominating public schools, and John Stamper is fighting back! Rather than continue working in the woke, ideological corridors of the Chicago Public Schools, John quit his job and began developing homeschool materials. He also wrote the book, Conflicted: Pulling Back the Curtain on Public Education, that outlines the indoctrination process through mandatory teacher training. Listen and learn how Critical Race Theory, Gender Theory, and other Godless ideas are being presented to students as facts. Purchase John's book here: https://www.amazon.com/Conflicted-Pulling-Curtain-Public-Education/dp/1683443241 Check out his podcast The State of State Schools for a recap on some of the most important headlines in education—from a Christian perspective: https://open.spotify.com/show/2dWKtwhdtVKTkSXACOVO4b?si=bA1LaZGIT3etk5yS8aKS4w&nd=1 Want daily news without the liberal slant? Subscribe to First Right: https://www.restorationofamerica.com/first-right/ Visit our website: https://restorationofamerica.com/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/restorationamerica/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/Restoration_roa Instagram: https://instagram.com/restoration_pac/ GETTR: https://gettr.com/user/restorationpac

Gabe Kaminsky, investigative reporter for the Washington Examiner, is hot on the trail of the Left’s latest scheme: using the phrase “disinformation” as a justification to censor conservative journalism. His Disinformation Inc series about conservative media blacklisting is exposing this attack on free speech, resulting in investigations and other actions. Watch now and learn more about actions taken to defund conservatives and suppress truth! Want daily news without the liberal slant? Subscribe to First Right here: https://www.restorationofamerica.com/first-right/

Former championship gymnast, author, and business executive Jennifer Sey spent decades growing her career at Levi Strauss, but when the company pressured her to stop tweeting about her opposition to school closings and CDC guidance, she quit and refused a million-dollar severance. Hear her story and more about how the woke mob took her job but gave her a voice. Follow Jennifer on her Substack: https://substack.com/profile/76478439-jennifer-sey and check out her latest book, Levi’s Unbuttoned https://www.levisunbuttoned.com/ Want daily news without the liberal slant? Subscribe to First Right here: https://www.restorationofamerica.com/first-right/

NCAA volleyball player and ambassador for Young Women for America Macy Petty is among a growing number of brave current and former women athletes speaking out against the insanity of allowing men to compete in women's sports. Female athletes are being outpaced by transgender competitors, and Macy sheds light on the biological advantages and special privileges these male players gain by playing against women. Watch now and learn about this attack on women and why more strong females must fight back on being excluded in their own sport. Want daily news without the liberal slant? Subscribe to First Right at https://www.restorationofamerica.com/first-right/

NCAA champ Marshi Smith is co-founder of The Independent Council on Women’s Sports (ICONS), an advocacy group of current and former collegiate and professional women athletes and supporters. Marshi knows firsthand how female athletes are being erased from record books in favor of transgender competitors, and she’s speaking up to protect women's sports from the onslaught of this gender insanity. Watch now to follow the science behind the sexes in athletics and learn why we must stand up for females to keep sports competitions fair. Want daily news without the liberal slant? Subscribe to First Right at https://www.restorationofamerica.com/first-right/

Sheriff Mark Lamb is nicknamed the American Sheriff for good reason. Every day, Sheriff Lamb protects the freedom and safety of the citizens he serves. He is determined to uphold the Constitution and fights against government overreach with courage and love for this country. Watch now for truth about the media, mandates, and the horror that’s happening on the southern border. Want daily news without the liberal slant? Subscribe to First Right at https://www.restorationofamerica.com/first-right/

First Right welcomes filmmakers Matthew Skow and Nicholas Stumphauzer, creators of the explosive documentary Died Suddenly, the story of those who died suddenly after taking the COVID shots. This is the film elites don’t want you to see, and Matthew and Nicholas are here to share information about globalist population plans, vaccination risks, and the COVID-19 fear campaign. Watch now to learn more about the film and the creators’ mission to wake people up with painful truths. Want daily news without the liberal slant? Subscribe to First Right here: https://www.restorationofamerica.com/first-right/

First Right welcomes Steve Friend, FBI agent and SWAT team member who was suspended for sounding the alarm on January 6. Steve exposes the politicization of the FBI against conservative Americans and shares truth about the FBI's handling of the J6 investigation. Listen to his firsthand account on FBI injustices happening now. Support Steve and other brave FBI whistleblowers by donating to their legal fund at https://www.givesendgo.com/KyleSeraphin) All funds will be used to support and defend the Constitution through legally guaranteed rights afforded to FBI Whistleblowers under 5 USC 2303. Want daily news without the liberal slant? Subscribe to First Right at https://www.restorationofamerica.com/first-right/ Machine Generated Transcript 00:00:11:10 --> 00:00:29:13 Doug Truax: Welcome to the First Riight Podcast, a weekly conservative news show brought to you by Restoration of America. I'm Doug Truax, founder and president of Restoration of America. Today we were blessed to have FBI whistleblower, Steve Friend, a brave patriot who's exposing politicization of the FBI against conservative Americans. Hi Steve. Welcome to the show. 00:00:30:10 --> 00:00:31:21 Steve Friend: Thank you very much for having me. 00:00:32:00 --> 00:00:39:05 Doug Truax: All right, so before we get into details, just give the audience a quick overview of, you know, what drove you to go to the FBI and your career and things like that. 00:00:40:16 --> 00:01:30:11 Steve Friend: Well, I was a police officer in Savannah, Georgia for a number of years. Eventually applied and was taken on by the FBI in 2014 because of my law enforcement background, I was assigned to Indian reservation work in northwest Iowa, northeast Nebraska for the first seven years of my career, which is really great. It's a small niche in the fbi. Got a chance to do a lot of case work, opened up about 200 cases, arrested, about 150 violent criminals, eventually transferred to Florida in the summer of 2021 with the understanding that I was gonna be working child exploitation, human trafficking cases. But after a couple months was reassigned to work domestic terrorism issues on the joint terrorism task force. And, and that point is when I was introduced to the January 6th investigations and, and some of the, the rule violations that have been going on with the fbi. 00:01:30:17 --> 00:01:50:13 Doug Truax: Yeah, so get into that a little bit more though. So what were you starting to see that really drove you to the point, I mean, you get there, you got good intentions about everything, you know, I, it's not a perfect organization, but I'm sure you had, you know, a favorable view of the FBI and then you start seeing certain things and then it drives you to this point. So help us understand what it was you were looking at that got you to the, got you to this point. 00:01:51:17 --> 00:02:38:02 Steve Friend: Well, the FBI has a rule book, essentially. It's called the diag, the Domestic Investigation Operations Guide. And it sort of spells out how to carry an investigation forward. I was very familiar with it, having done all the case work that I've done before, and that by, if you follow those rules, January 6th should be one case from Washington DC run by those agents. And if they need work done in the field, they would cut leads, essentially request work to be done by other agents, but the decision was made instead to open up separate cases for each individual person and spread those cases around the country and to assign them to the offices where those individuals lived. That is within the rules of the fbi. It's very atypical. But once that decision was made, the agents that had those cases and the offices that had those cases were solely responsible for bringing those cases forward. 00:02:38:07 --> 00:03:28:08 When I started to look at the January 6th cases though, and talking to my colleagues who had been doing it for a number of months, they were answering to Washington DC even though they were the case agents on those cases. So the question I asked was, why, what's the benevolent, benign reason for that? And they were told that it was to get buy-in from the field. And, and that could mean one thing being that the FBI doesn't believe its workforce is capable of taking on cases with the great gusto that's necessary unless their name's on it, which is kind of hollow. And the other reason could be because the FBI wanted each individual field office to meet its predetermined metrics on domestic terrorism for the year and create a statistical narrative that makes it look like domestic terrorism is on the rise around the country, when really all of those case numbers are stemming from one four hour incident at the capitol on January 6th, 2021. 00:03:29:11 --> 00:03:46:13 Doug Truax: So talk to that a little bit more in terms of this, it, it looks like this effort to inflate numbers around domestic terrorism. Like how does that, what does that look like typically in, you know, before January 6th and what is happening now that is, is starting to skew it at least as much as you know? 00:03:48:08 --> 00:04:50:10 Steve Friend: Well, in my experience, and, and I think anybody who's, who's a consumer of the news knows that the, the demand for domestic terrorism vastly outstripped to supply. I think that the, the focus on national security since September 11th has transitioned from potential threats to the homeland abroad to then transition to potential homegrown terrorists with sympathies to potential outside threats. And now we're digging into homegrown domestic terrorism, which have a certain ideology which is convenient for the administration that tends to be in ruling power. And in this case, they're pinning that on domestic terrorism of white nationalism. But if you actually examine the, the, the number of cases that are righteous versus all the cases that are sending from January 6th, which again should be one case, but is now a thousand if not Growing to 2000 cases, it just creates this false dynamic. It moves the Overton window over to the point where now we're saying half the country that votes for a particular candidate for president is a potential terrorist. 00:04:50:12 --> 00:05:24:19 Doug Truax: Yeah, yeah. So it looks like, so what is happening then is typically to your point, there's a lot of like decentralization based on geographies for the fbi, you know, makes sense, right? If the case happened here, this office handles it, things like that. But if you get to this place, we're the people that are overly politicized at the top of the FBI and out in DC and they want to drive this narrative that all the domestic terror is increasing so they can use it politically. This is the way to do it. You just get together and say, Hey, why don't we spread this out and just make all these new numbers, and then it supports what we're after, right. That's what's going on. 00:05:25:11 --> 00:05:56:04 Steve Friend: Yes. And, and the FBI has the reputation of being the, you know, the uniform aggregator of all statistics around the country are pertaining to crime. And it has that, you know, that FBI logo on there that gives it their righteous, you know, label. So everybody takes it with, you know, without having any sort of skepticism that, that anybody that's parroting those STA stats is, you know, taking them in good faith and that they're honest and, and in fact they're, they're really not. They're manipulative and they're creating this false impression and it, it's, it's just not honest. And, and folks need to be aware of 00:05:56:04 --> 00:06:48:02 Doug Truax: It. Yeah, absolutely. And, and so sad to watch this happen, you know, when I grew up and when you were growing up, everybody's like, oh, you know, the FBI integrity, we feel we felt good about it, but the longer this kind of stuff goes on, it's like you said, half the country for sure is going, what the heck has happened here? And the trust in the organization in general, it's getting to a really low level. And so I don't, you know, who knows what the future of portends here for the fbi, but, but this is really tough stuff. And also, I was gonna ask you about, you know, we watched these, these SWAT style raids on these, you know, Roger Stone and obviously Mar-a-Lago, but then just people that are just out there associated with January 6th and like possible misdemeanors and entire FBI SWAT looking team shows up at their house and does a raid. I mean, it's just unbelievable. Does what's the, what's the take over there at the FBI amongst the people you've talked to that, don't they see that that's just completely over the top? 00:06:50:00 --> 00:07:34:03 Steve Friend: Yes, and it's, it is derivative of a couple factors. One, I was on a SWAT team when I was in my assignment at the Omaha division, so I did for five years. I'm a believer in the, in in swat. I, I think it's a, a good tool in the, the tool belt for law enforcement, but the FBI's, a professional law enforcement organization prides itself on using the least amount of force necessary to bring somebody into custody safely. What's gone on though with these January 6th individuals and, and with folks, you know, that were preying outside of abortion clinics and when we're being arrested is the punishment is the process now at this point. So you can, there's a subjective spectrum for when it's appropriate to use swat, but it's pretty loose. You can, you can sort of contrive a way to use it. And I think that that's being used as a weaponization. 00:07:34:20 --> 00:08:33:03 And, and I also think that there's pressure to use SWAT because there's a, there's budgets attached to it. If, if it's a tool you have and you're not using it, your budget gets cut. And then, and the FBI is also fond of, of bringing everything that it possibly can to bear. You know, we'd rather have it, not need it than need it not have it. So, so many times on these arrests you'll see, you know, 30 agents when four would suffice just because, you know, we, we want to have that, that resource available if it's there. And a lot of these agents are brand new, they're probationary agents and they have to check the box on certain things in order to be, you know, a alpha probation and a regular agent. And if you work in a skiff and you work in national security and counterintelligence, you're just not gonna have the opportunity to participate in a lot of arrests. So a lot of times when there is an arrest, a lot of these new folks jump all over it and they're just walking around with their blueray coat or their, their brand new kit and that, and that's why whenever I see these videos, you can tell who the new agents are because they have the brand new kits that have no dust on 'em or anything like that, hasn't been sitting in the back seat of a car for very long. 00:08:33:03 --> 00:09:13:24 Doug Truax: Right, right. It's like at the end of the football game when they bring everybody and it hasn't played all season, right. It's like, ah, let those, let those guys, they get on the field. Right. So, but that's, that's interesting. Yeah. Right. So that, but that's a great point. I mean, I, I, I remember this before all this politicization happened that it was part of, with the fbi, it's like they were, you guys were always good about not losing any agents, you know, and, and operations because of this concept right here, here just, you know, you got the stuff, bring it with you, make sure there's no situation where you feel outgunned or whatever else. And so, but that was all well and good when it was just like, Hey, they're going after the criminals and that's important. But then you get into this politicization thing and they keep doing this, what they're doing, it turns into it makes everybody really nervous, like, what are these guys up to? 00:09:13:24 --> 00:09:47:01 So it's, it's totally get the concept, but yeah, using it this way is, is is scary stuff. And I was gonna ask you too about, about the January 6th in general. So, you know, we're kind of watching things, looking as much video as we can and stuff, and you see, so you see people being let through barricades and people say, Hey, you know, come over this way and go in here. And then there's the Ray Eps thing, and I mean, what, what's your take on the actual day and, and what you know about it now and, and as, as your thinking changed, as time has gone on based on some new evidence that maybe you're seeing? 00:09:48:21 --> 00:10:32:14 Steve Friend: Well, I've had conversations with some people that who were there and, and really their, their futures in jeopardy and, and worse for people that were not even entering the building as we found out a week ago, there's gonna be another thousand cases coming forward from the doj. They're gonna charge folks that were standing on the lawn outside the capitol. And, and I think that releasing the 14,000 hours of surveillance footage and allowing essentially a, you know, we're gonna crowdsource watching that, I don't think any individual's gonna be able to sit down and watch it all. But, but I think that a lot of insight as to what went on that day will, will come out and, and certainly it's the people's house. We should have access to that. That's not a, a security issue. Nobody's under any delusions that the, the, the US Capitol is not under surveillance at all times from all angles. 00:10:33:06 --> 00:11:15:14 And, and in talking to folks, you know, who, who were there and, and got permission from police officers to walk in it, it's, it's definitely, it, it raises my, my spider senses quite a bit. You know, I was on the, the take down aspect of the Gretchen Whitmer case and, and I saw the Venn diagram of that case as it's come out with a lot of overlap with the January 6th case. So I, I think that, you know, sunlight is the best disinfectant. There needs to be radical transparency with this. If it's the largest and most important case in the history of the fbi, as leadership has continued to hammer home in the media, then, then the full show should be seen. We should pull the curtain back. America should see, you know, all the details of it so we can all, you know, inform an in intelligent and, and informed decision on that's what's right. We went on that day. 00:11:15:16 --> 00:11:42:12 Doug Truax: That's right. That's so true about so much of what's going on in our country. We just need transparency. You know, we're not gonna take anybody's word for it right now, it's just the time we're in, in this country. You just gotta lay it all out there, especially if you think it's that important, like what you just said. It's just, they gotta put it out there. So. Well, hey, you know, I, I can speak on behalf of our audience. Thank you so much for your bravery and your courage in doing this. I understand you're still technically with the fbi but not getting paid. Is that right? How's that working right now? 00:11:43:10 --> 00:12:16:13 Steve Friend: Yes. Technical, I'm indefinitely suspended. My security clearance was suspended. They're doing an investigation, which from what and speaking to my attorneys, it's basically a process where they drag it out as long as as possible in the hope that you'll resign. My security clearance was suspended for, for basically raising the alarm on January 6th. And then also they told me that I improperly accessed the employee handbook. So it's securing whistleblower protection laws by weaponizing the security clearance revocation process. So that's an whole nother issue for maybe the new upcoming church committee to look at. Yeah. When they, when they finally convene. 00:12:16:21 --> 00:12:38:07 Doug Truax: Yeah. Yeah. Well, like you said a minute ago too, it's gonna be, I think your role going forward is gonna be even more important because like we see what you said, there's a thousand people standing on the lawn on January 6th that they're gonna come after, so this is only gonna get worse going forward. So really appreciate what you're doing. Is there someplace we could go to like help fund your deal? Like is a website or anything you got working? 00:12:39:01 --> 00:13:16:06 Steve Friend: Yeah, right now, you know, I've, I've sort of pooled my, my intellectual resources with Kyle Serafin, who's the, who's the other outspoken FBI whistleblower and a few others who have been anonymous. And we have opened up a, a Gs send go for folks who want to contribute. And all those go to wi other whistleblowers, not myself, we're collecting. And that's Kyle Seraphins Gs Send go page and people can follow me on social media. I'm on Twitter at real, Steve Friend, I'm on through social at real underscore Steve Friend, but it looks like I might be shadow banned on Twitter, so you might have to go directly to my page to see the content. 00:13:16:11 --> 00:13:59:09 Doug Truax: Shocking. Shocking. Well, you know, I think that's so important. I, I bring that up with giving you some, getting, getting you and the other guys some money because you know, often in this world we're living in, it just does come down to you get canceled. They come after you, you take, they take away your livelihood, right? And that's, that's a brutal thing to go through with, you know, you got a family, you got all these things, we all have our responsibilities. So it's super important that if people are brave like you and great patriots love the country more than you love anything else at this point in terms of your career, you come forward. The rest of us have gotta step up and, and help you get through it, and there will be a better day. Because being on side of truth is always better than anything else, man. So appreciate all you're doing and you hang in there, Steve, and we'll keep watching. Okay? 00:14:00:04 --> 00:14:02:24 Steve Friend: I will won't give up the fight ever, ever. God bless you. 00:14:03:00 --> 00:14:17:08 Doug Truax: All right. God bless you. All right. That's our show for today. Thank you so much for tuning in and for supporting conservative media. Don't ever forget that by working together and staying diligent, we conservatives can bring our country back to true greatness. Until next week, let's all keep praying that God will continue to bless America 00:14:20:07 --> 00:14:40:20 First Right A new kind of new summary without the liberal slant Every morning in your inbox, always free subscribe by texting first right to 3 0 1 61. That's FIRSTRIGHT All caps one word to 3 0 1 61.