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Doug speaks with Harmeet Dhillon, election integrity expert about what we can do to secure our future. (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 as our guest Harmeet Dhillon, one of the most recognizable and effective conservative lawyers in America. Harmeet is in the middle of nearly all hot button issues right now, Civil liberties, big tech, election integrity, and politics. It's our pleasure to get her perspective today. Welcome to the show, Harmeet. Harmeet Dhillon: My pleasure to be here. Doug Truax: So we've all had plenty of time now to take in what happened in 2020, the election, and you know, all the covid stuff and everything that happened. And I just want to get your assessment of how you feel about the people in power, what they might have done to twist the rules in their favor because of Covid. Harmeet Dhillon: Well, I think one of the biggest things that we saw during Covid that was fairly new to the election law world was the use of both the courts as well as collusive settlement agreements with attorneys general or secretaries of state to rapidly change election laws for the worst. So for example, this happened in Minnesota, a liberal group, Mark Elias or some other group would sue, and then the Secretary of State or the Attorney General would either enter into a settlement agreement to waive or expand election laws that provide integrity protections. Or in the case of Pennsylvania, the ca the Pennsylvania Supreme Court basically concocted new rules that were not passed by the legislature and are not part of Pennsylvania law to allow liberal absentee balloting and so forth. So all of these things were a one way ratchet, if you will. Now, in some cases, like in Minnesota, the court stepped in and said, this is entirely impermissible and it's a violation of the Constitutional elections clause. But in other cases, like in Pennsylvania, these loosening of rules we're allowed to stand and I believe change the outcome of the election in certain states. And so that's what we've been dealing with. And of course you might think covid is a one time deal, but if covid were successfully deployed to allow a handful of well funded special interest groups through the courts or otherwise to rapidly change our laws, you can imagine that this tactic will be used again. So that's really what we election lawyers have been gearing after, try to fight and prevent. Doug Truax: Yeah, that was leading into my next question, but I want to make a quick comment. And you first brought this to my attention a while back. It's such a sneaky trick when a democrat lawyer sues a Democrat politician and the politician says, Oh, I gotta just give this lawyer this thing a settlement. And, and lo and behold, they get what they want. And I'm glad, I'm glad you're watching all this like a hawk as we know you are. And, and that's really what I want to ask you next. And so what's your assessment of where we are going into this election? We've had time now, and what have Republicans been doing and and how does it shake out compared to what we went through last time? What, what, what's, what do you see coming? Harmeet Dhillon: Well, what I see coming is it was a big wake up, if you will, to Republicans to see how really a combination of a small number of lawyers and activists and a lot of money managed to flood our courts with this type of litigation. And, and on the Republican side, to be frank, in prior election cycles, they weren't well prepared for that either monetarily or even with the lawyers staffed up to be able to do it. And sort of a early warning system to look out for these lawsuits to look out for sneaky legislation passing its way through the legislative system. Today, I would say we were in a much better position than that on a number of fronts. First of all, just in the nuts and bolts of election administration, Republicans are very alert to those issues and now checking in more regularly with election officials, well before elections and going to court more quickly when we see problems. But also just in the nuts and bolts of winning elections, lawyers are an important ingredient and in many prior election cycles, Republicans have relied on lawyers like me to sort of quit their day job for two weeks or four weeks and do do this work for free political consultants don't do the work for free. The people who print the signs don't do the work for free. Campaign consultants don't do the work for free. But lawyers were expected to do that, and as a result, you weren't exactly getting necessarily either the volume or the quality of lawyers that you needed. And that dynamic has changed both the combination of party waking up and spending more money on these issues, the Senate and the congressional committees, but also importantly conservative donors stepping up and realizing that just like the left has been financing election litigation for some time in large numbers, we need to match that dollar for dollar or even outspend them in order to protect our elections. Doug Truax: Yeah, I'm, I'm so glad to hear you say that. And I'm in the same place. I think we were a little late to this party. They were, they got way out in front of us. We kind of year over year, Oh, maybe there's some fraud, some cheating, but we just need to beat 'em by enough. It'll be fine. And, and just kind of quickly move on to the next election. But there was really no moving on after the last when everybody stopped for a second and said, Okay, what, what have we got to do? And, and you were been on the forefront of that, so I really appreciate that. So, so we've made progress, but what would you say in your opinion, is now the most widespread objectionable thing out there when it comes to election fraud that's still kind of baked in the cake out there? Harmeet Dhillon: Well, I, I have a, some different views about this. There's, there's two issues. Number one, from the White House to the national news media, there has been a concerted effort to label anybody who talks about election irregularities or fraud using shorthand as, as you know, some kind of de you know, reality denier or criminal, when in fact it is entirely factual to point out that in multiple states, particularly the battleground states, there were election irregularities including, and I would include changes of laws that violate the constitution that affected the outcome of the election. You know, ballot harvesting where it's not legal affects the outcome of an election. Absentee balloting where it's not legal, refusing to allow observers in Philadelphia or Detroit to see how ballots are being counted, not only may affect the outcome, but more importantly undermines confidence of Americans in the outcome of an election, which is equally important because a lack of confidence means people don't vote. I'm concerned about that and I'm frankly concerned that with both misinformation on the Republican side as well as information on the conservative side, you have a lot of people who are disenchanted with our election system and they're being disenfranchised by, I would say first Amendment violations by threats by our government to try to shut people down for their speech. That is going on, and I'll talk about that more in a minute. But I think the other sort of systemic thing that I think is really affecting the outcome of elections is outside spending. Now the shorthand for that in the 2020 elections is, is zucker bucks a single wealthy donor through a pair of foundations. Mark Zuckerberg poured over $400 million into election administration, again, focused on not just battleground states but democrat counties. And the idea was to make sure that more ballots were being returned than they would have been only in liberal areas to ju the overall statewide vote. Now, some states have taken action to pass laws to prevent this, but it's a system of whackamole really. And what we have replaced that with is the Biden administration has made vague pronouncements about how they're gonna be given grants to nonprofits to help combat election disinformation and provide information about elections. That's Orwellian speak for, doing the same thing with federal tax dollars. But they refused to respond in a timely manner to do public records act requests and tell us exactly who's getting that money, what is the process for applying for those funds, how that money is being spent. So that's going to be probably mired in some litigation for some time. But look, it's perfectly legitimate for groups to provide information. But what we are talking about in that election, and I don't know what's gonna happen in the 2022 election, included third party subsidized election workers opening up ballots and tabulating them and and chasing ballots and getting them returned. This is all illegitimate and outside our election system. So I think that's a huge problem that we have to deal with. And another problem we had, but now we're overcoming is, is the apathy. And I think that the situation in our country right now economically and politically is, is unrecognizable for many of us. I, I find it hard to believe that we're in a situation right now where we are, but I think that is causing a lot of people to wake up and see. You may not like or love every a hundred percent about a candidate, but this is a zero sum game. And so, you know, I think a combination of those factors means we have more enthusiasm on the conservative side at this point in time than we have in the past combined with resources. And so, but back to the issue I mentioned before about the free speech issue. I think it is absolutely chilling that the government has paid outside vendors to identify so-called election misinformation speech, and then gotten American citizens banned from the public square, from Twitter, from Instagram, from Facebook for speaking on election law issues. I have a long running lawsuit for a conservative activist lawyer named Brogan O'Hanley who posted accurate questions about election integrity and how the election was running California and also about whether Joe Biden got the most votes in history with a question mark and he was removed from social media and had, you know, millions of followers. So we now know that it wasn't just California doing this and John Solomon is the middle of some ongoing reporting about this that's being developed as we speak. But the government has drawn up through outside vendors lists of so-called misinformation spreaders. I'm on that list in the top 20 I think on that list. Basically anybody with a prominent voice who retweeted or shared information about concerns about the election in multiple states, Pennsylvania, Georgia, Wisconsin, Michigan, Arizona, they're being labeled as misinformation spreaders. This is a form of social credit like you have in China where you are labeled and your freedoms are curtailed on the basis of your views or your speech. This is incredibly dangerous, setting aside the election issue, this lens is being applied to issues like vaccines and covid and other issues. And so I think this is really one of the most important civil rights issues of our time. It's critical to elections, but it's critical to other issues Doug Truax: As well. Yeah, and I'm, I'm so thankful for lawyers like you that are brave. In my line of work, I come across a lot of lawyers and too many of 'em are weak in my opinion, because people, what's happening is just what you said, they're labeling people or they'll put this label on this law over here. If you do this this way, then you know we're gonna call that criminal when it's not at all. It's just that they're saying and they need people like you to come alongside of them and push back as hard as they possibly can. Otherwise, people do get to that place of saying, Well, you know what, I'm gonna kind of play along and I'm not gonna say anything about all this irregularity and you know, all these things that have happened. I'm just gonna keep my mouth shut cuz that's all they really want you to do. And you know, you said something a second about the whackamole piece and, and, and that's what I felt like when we've gone through this process over the last couple years is everywhere you look, there's some other thing that might be brewing and some other way to do it. And you know, they're tacked is to just, if they can do it and then get through the election, then they're on the other side of it and all they gotta do is call you a denier and then you're in trouble. Right. So that's, it's like a, it's like a broader strategy. So, you know, I I would like to, you know, you, you also said the, the confidence piece in the elections, you know, expound upon that a little bit. I we're in a place now where, like you said, both sides, you know, and obviously the conservative side this time is like, wow, that last election, there's a lot wrong with that. So what do you see coming down the road for the confidence that we either, you know, we, we need to have, but we don't have, It's such an important piece. How do you, how do you see it playing out over the next probably decade? Cuz it is this kinda whackamole concept in terms of just trying to keep up with what's coming next. How do you see that playing out? Harmeet Dhillon: Excuse me. So this has been a problem brewing for many years and it's going to take many years to fix the problem. But one problem I've complained about a lot, and I've been active not just as a lawyer in the courts but also in politics, I, I sit on the Republican National Committee, is that both donors as well as sort of party activists and consultants have been really, really focused on the big money races. President, Senate, Congress, maybe governor and virtually no attention has been placed on very important but less sexy, if you will, races including attorney general, secretary of state, and even lower level county election officials where those are elected or appointed. And really that's where the laws are made, that's where the outcomes are crafted. That's where, for example, if you don't have judges to rule on election contests or whether the poll should stay open for two hours longer in a place, or what happens if there's a disaster, if you don't have good judges who will rule fairly, or if you don't have good election officials who will be non corrupt in their motive and will be honest with the people about what's going on and how the ballots are being counted, you, you have a real recipe for disaster. This is entirely avoidable. You know, George Soros gets a lot of attention, rightfully so with relatively low dollars. He's managed to affect district attorney races in major American cities, San Francisco, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, and and others. And, and for, for a relatively low investment conservatives could have changed the outcome of those races. I I hope people are awake to that issue now. And I mean, it, it becomes as basic as getting parents to run for school board, School board is often the training ground for people to run for higher office and ultimately become the senator, the governor and be the person who can affect those laws. And so I think that's very important. I think giving conservatives the backbone and not allowing ourselves to be bullied into silence over saying no, that election was irregular. It was irregular for Wisconsin to allow people to have absentee ballots returned even though they did not have a cause as defined in statute or it was illegal for ballot harvesting to occur in Georgia or it was illegal for Philadelphia and Pennsylvania in general to both change the laws regarding ballot absentee balloting as well as not allow observers. That not allowing observers thing is such a critical issue. And so I think sunlight is the best disinfectant for the process and I think we need to regain the confidence of voters in our system overall, regardless of the actual outcomes people need to be signing up to be election workers, poll workers, not just observers, but actually taking that minimum wage job to greet people and, and all of that. And even that's going by the wayside with so much vote by mail. In some states, like my state, California covid was used to effectively convert everybody into vote by mail and until, and unless we get back control of the state legislature, that's going to be a difficult thing to change. But in other states people could take notice and change that. And so I would finally add, don't ignore judicial races. Well fought improvements in election laws in some states are being overturned by politicized courts in those states. And that doesn't have to be the case. That could have gone the other way if we'd invested in judicial races as well. Doug Truax: Yeah, that's a great point about fighting for everything all the time. You never know where it's gonna be. And I, I've been so surprised too about the impact that, you know, in a state one county, if they have all the right people in place and they're willing to do all what they need to do, they can start to control things and finesse it, which then creates this, you know, whether they threw it or not, it creates the illusion or the impression I should say, that something went wrong in that county. And so I think the Democrats by and large are onto this concept that, all right, we have, we have control in certain counties, let's really focus in there and you're right, we gotta, we gotta win all those elections up and down no matter what. And the judicial races for sure. Cuz that's, that's obviously if they can't win at the ballot box, they're gonna try to take us to take it to the courts and get it done that way. So That's right. So what do you see taking off all your lawyer hat and everything, just talk pure politics. What do you see coming up with the elections? How are you feeling about it? Harmeet Dhillon: Well, this is gonna sound like a cop out, but in the closest races I think it's really too close to call. But the, you know, like for example, you would look at events that happen in Georgia over the last couple of days. And I think it's very easy to get distracted by hype from the fact that every election is a zero sum game and you know, whatever flaws our candidates may have or you know, we may or may not love them enthusiastically. Yeah. You gotta compare them to the other guy. And so I think it's just really critical that using that focus, we turn out the vote, but the economy is terrible. And of course now I live in San Francisco, which is the worst of the worst, but even in other states, every American going to fill up their gas tanks or seeing their grocery bill double you, you cannot avoid that. And so it's just gonna be critical to just avoid the noise, avoid the distractions, and keep hammering on our messages of where you better off two years ago than you are now and, and, and focusing on winning back the midterm so that we can block the Biden agenda and we can advance our agenda and then set up 2024. Absolutely. I don't think this country will survive another couple of years like the last two we've had. Absolutely. It's a nightmare, really. Doug Truax: Absolutely. And I think a lot of people in the in the middle are saying that to themselves now. So last question. So California, I, I grew up in New Mexico and we wanted to go on a big vacation, we went to California, I love this. Beautiful, but what a disaster now. And so what's your opinion of, is there some kind of political revolt on the way at some point? Is there a low that gets get reached? I mean, we've got all the energy problems that you're having, you alluded to a second ago. I mean, what's your opinion of the future of California? Harmeet Dhillon: You know, you, you look at similar problems happening in Europe and because there isn't as much mobility and let's say Italy or Germany or something because of language barriers, people aren't gonna go move to the next country across the border. And so they stay there and they elect better people. In California, our problem is people who have the ability to move, have moved out of California, conservatives have moved out of California. I feel like I'm one of the last people standing of my group of close friends who lives here. And it becomes increasingly difficult to justify that decision economically. And so the people who care about this place have reluctantly moved and we are becoming a tourism state for illegal aliens, people who wanna mutilate their children, transgender and, and abortion issues. And so it is a very dark time in California and there are pockets of light here or there. For example, we did recall our school board here and our district attorney, but our replacement district attorney is in a hard fought battle to keep that seat and well-funded opponents from the left are trying to take that back. So I I, I think that the good money I was on, frankly, leaving California and letting it collapse and have to re be rebuilt from the ashes. That's a multi decade project unfortunately. And it is really sad. I love waking up in the morning and seeing the ocean and, and I saw whales yesterday on my drive and so you don't get that in other parts of the country. And so, you know, I really, I hope I'm wrong, but I think California is not looking like it's going to turn around anytime soon. Doug Truax: Yeah, yeah. That's a shame. I'm glad you got those views. I live in Illinois, so I don't even have that, but so Well, you know, Harmit, I really appreciate your bravery, your courage and taking on all this stuff. I know you're doing a lot, a lot, a lot more than people recognize and super important work. The country is way too important to let it go. And, and you're right there in the fight. So thanks for all you're doing and thanks for coming on today. Harmeet Dhillon: It's my pleasure. Thank you so much for all that you do too, Doug. Doug Truax: All right. That's our show for today. Thank you so much for tuning in and for supporting conservative media. Don't 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.

Jerry speaks with Tiffany Justice, parent advocate and co-founder of Moms for Liberty. Please visit www.restorationofamerica.com

First Right welcomes Brian Gitt, an independent thinker in the energy arena.

Jerry speaks with Greg Stenstrom and Leah Hoopes, authors of The Parallel Election.

Jerry speaks with John Fund, one of the nation’s foremost experts on election integrity and voter fraud.

First Right welcomes Amanda Milius, producer and director of The Plot Against the President.

Jerry speaks with Kevin Tober, media analyst with NewsBusters.

Doug speaks with Brian Burch president and co-founder of Catholic Vote, exposing the attack on churches. (MACHINE GENERATED) Doug Truax: 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 are blessed once again to have, as our guest Brian Burch, president and co-founder of Catholic vote, a strong and forceful advocacy organization that knows how to move the needle. The reason we were having Brian back so soon is Catholic Vote's important new ad campaign on church attacks in America. Welcome back to the show, Brian. Brian Burch: Great to be with you. Doug Truax: Well, let's just jump right into the ad and then we'll talk about it after that. Okay. Brian Burch: Sounds good. Voiceover: In the 1960s, when churches were burned, president Kennedy stepped up condemned it to burn churches. I consider that both cowardly as well as outrageous President Kennedy pledged justice. As soon as we are able to find out who did it we will arrest them. Now, churches are being burned again because they protect unborn babies and women in need. Our second Catholic president. Keep protesting because keep making your point. Doug Truax: So we're living through this time now where we've got Biden and the DOJ aggressively attacking conservatives through raids and other means, but there's all these things going on with pro-life Americans and nothing. So just talk us through what you're doing here with the ad. W what, what's your, what's the reasoning behind it, obviously. And then how do you anticipate it impacting the viewers? Brian Burch: Absolutely. Well, thank you again. You're absolutely right. We've seen the department of justice focus in very isolated ways on political opponents, whether it be parents who object to critical race theory or a radical gender ideology in their, in their schools, whether it be the recent raid on president Trump, or of course just in the last day or so, the department of justice announced that they are going to go after anyone criticizing a hospital that is bragging about doing pediatric gender reassignment surgeries. Meanwhile,over 200 Catholic churchest hat have been vandalized, desecrated, as well as over 65 pregnancy resource centers, just in the last three months. And we've seen absolutely nothing from the department of justice, no prosecutions, zero arrests, and frankly, Catholics are fed up and not just Catholics. Everybody's fed up. We're, we're sick of the department of justice being politicized in such a way to go after their political opponents while the rule of law is left on the sidelines. When it comes to people who believe in life, who are protecting vulnerable women and who simply want to go to church on Sunday without the threat of violence. Doug Truax: Yeah. How about it? And in this ad, you've got something that's really unique. I think here, you've got the footage of JFK, a Democrat president and what he would have done. So just talk us through the thinking on that and what you're trying to get across to the audience. Brian Burch: Yeah. Whether you're a Democrat or Republican, a lot of people still have some sort of respect and affinity for, for JFK and the way in which at least at a time in this country, it wasn't considered partisan to prosecute people that were burning churches. This clip comes from a press conference in the 1960s when there were voter registration efforts occurring and racist segregationists set fire to churches in the south and Kennedy rightly at the time said, we're going to find out who these people are. And when we find them, we're going to prosecute them. Contrast that to today. Again, I just explained we've had over 200 examples of churches being attacked, vandalized, including some burned just last week, a drive by shooter two days straight shot bullets into a Catholic church. What, what have we seen from the department of justice? Absolutely nothing. And so the ad is intended to contrast this, this, the needed leadership that JFK exhibited and president of Biden and Merrick Garland, the attorney general unfortunately, has been totally absent on. Doug Truax: Yeah. And I'm glad you're highlighting the pure number of these attacks. Cause you know, we live in an age right where they just don't, the media is not going to cover certain things. And you know, I didn't realize it was that many. I knew this. I knew it was going on, but that's a lot. And it's, it's, it's an epidemic. And you know, it's just common safety piece and it's just completely being ignored. So, you know, people watch this ad, what can Catholics do, what are other patriotic Americans that aren't Catholic? What, what can they do? How, how do we fight back on this, Brian? Brian Burch: Well, it's no coincidence ad campaign starting in the last a hundred days before the midterm election and our opinion, this issue is on the ballot. The question is whether or not both members of Congress and us senators who are up for reelection, whether they've spoken out on this, whether they have urged the justice department to equally enforce the law, or whether they've been silent in part as we, as we can surmise because their political opponents might benefit from calling out this violence. And so the most important thing is to spread the word you just said, you had no idea it was this large of number. We need to get that message out to everywhere that we have this escalating violence, an epidemic of violence, as you rightly described it with no response from our leadership's leadership in Washington. The second thing we need is we need pressure on the department of justice. We're seeing time and again, the politicization of justice from this administration. And they need to hear from every citizen in this country that we want to see the law enforced equally on everyone. The third thing is we need to pressure Republicans. If they in fact take control of the house, we want to see hearings. We wanna, we want to see what the left would do to on this. And that is let's connect the violence that we're seeing across the country to the kind of political rhetoric and the kind of example, being set by frankly, a lot of the leaders of the democratic party, who in some ways are winking and encouraging this type of, of activity on the part of, of their supporters. Doug Truax: Yeah, that's right. We got to push back. And I think that, you know, we're all hoping for the red wave and this could add to it. I know there's polling out there that says, sadly, these kinds of things, the raids and the politicization of the DOJ and the FBI, it can fall down party lines. When, you know, when your side's on the right side and your, your guys are pushing back against Trump or whoever else. And that's a sad statement, a commentary on where we're at as a country, however, the moderates and the independence, the folks in the middle are not okay with it. And so that's, you know, that's encouraging and we could see that play out, but we'll, we'll see what happens. What do you think about those folks in the middle? What's your take on them? Brian Burch: Well, you're right to point out. That's, who's going to decide this election, you know, hard left Democrats are not going to change their opinion, no matter how bad it gets, but the, the middle of the independent voters that do swing back and forth election to election, they're outraged by this. I just saw some polling in the last several days, over 70% of Democrats said that the refusal to prosecute violence against political opponents, what influenced their decision and how they vote. Now, of course, a lot of people are focused on January six. This is, you know, two three-year-old issue now. But the point being is that it actually is an issue according to polling, that Republicans and Democrats should be and are actually United on. And I think if we bring this message to the voters, that's going to help shape how people decide what they do in November. Doug Truax: Absolutely. And speaking of last question, bringing messaging to voters. So it feels a lot like Republicans, aren't where they need to be right now on abortion post Dobbs. And we're, you know, they're getting attacked, you know, because, oh, you know, this is a terrible thing that's happened. And, but they're not fighting back, at least in my opinion, the way they should. I mean, how, how are you guys seeing that with the battle being waged right now with Republicans on the abortion side? Brian Burch: Well, we're Catholic vote. And we like to say, we're Catholics first, not Republicans or Democrats in almost every case. We're fighting Democrats, but sometimes we need to push back against Republicans too. And it's no secret among those that are involved with lobbying and efforts with the Republican party that were, were they a lot of reticence out there to touch this? You have abortion since Dobbs. And again, back to the polling, the majority of the countries on our side, when it comes to protecting unborn children, whether it be at heartbeat stage or whether at 12 or 15 weeks, not to mention, you know, late term abortions when babies feel pain and taxpayer funding of abortion. And we need to go on offense. We need to be asking senators and members of the house that are up for election. Where would you draw the line? And we know where they draw the line. They don't draw a line. They would support abortion up to the moment of birth, even after birth for any reason. And we need to put them on the defensive and stop pretending as if somehow this is a difficult political issue for our side and force them and expose their extreme position. And I think if we do that, we can, we can push even further and defending life and protecting women, which is what this is all about. Doug Truax: That's right. Amen to that. And that's so true. They have got to defend their sick and disgusting physician who were the ones, just with the common sense. So I, I just, I, I think we're possibly missing an opportunity here, but you know, we'll see, there's a lot of people doing a lot of great things like you guys are moving. The needle really love the new ad, wish you the best in the campaign. We're going to do our part to get it out and appreciate all you do and keep up the good work. Brian. Brian Burch: Thanks so much. Keep at it, everyone doing their part. We're going to keep moving the ball forward. Doug Truax: That's right. That's right. Have a good one. Brian Burch: Thanks Doug. Doug Truax: All right. That's our show for today. Thank you so much for tuning in and for supporting conservative media. Don't 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? 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Doug speaks with Dwight Chapin, special assistant to former President Richard Nixon. (MACHINE GENERATED) Doug Truax: Welcome to the First Right podcast, a weekly conservative new show brought to you by Restoration of America. I'm your host, Doug Truax, founder, and president of Restoration of America. Today. We're blessed to have a super interesting guest Dwight Chapin, longtime personal aide to former president Richard Nixon. Mr. Chapin witnessed a lot of history up close and has a new book out that tells that story. All right, Dwight, thanks so much for coming on and being on the show. Dwight Chapin: Well, terrific, Doug. Nice to be with you. Doug Truax: All right. So a great new book out a really good, interesting stuff before we get to that and your life as an aide and all the, all the time you had in the white house. Just give us an idea of what your life has been like after the white house up to now. What led to you writing the book? That kind of thing. Dwight Chapin: Okay. Terrific. Well, after leaving the white house, I went to the United Airlines and I was there and then ended up being indicted. So I had to leave. It was a public company after I took care of my obligation to the government and served my time in prison. I published a magazine. Believe it or not, the name of the magazine was success. It was located actually in Chicago and owned by w Clement stone, a philanthropist and w a wealthy insurance man there in Chicago. And I published that magazine for 13 years and then left and was moved out to Asia to run the Asian operations of hill and Knowlton, which was a huge public relations company. I did that for another six or seven years, and then decided to start my own business. I had my own company for 30 years and I did strategic marketing and counseling to corporations and to CEOs and, and anyone that wanted to use my services. I decided to write the book for a couple of reasons. Number one, I wanted my family to know and understand what had happened to me, why, why it was that I had to go to prison and what that was all about. And I also wanted to put down because I was one of the few remaining Nixon people from the white house years, I wanted to put down what I remembered about the man and about the era that we all live through. And it was important for me to do that because I, I had come to the conclusion that people thought there were only two things about Richard Nixon, either China or Watergate. And there was much more to the man and I wanted to get that onto the public record and do what I could to have him better understood by, by the population. Doug Truax: Wonderful. Now that's, that's really important to get down because you're right. So many people now it's all just Watergate. It's like, no, no, no. There was a lot of remarkable things about the man and I'm appreciative of you doing this. So if you go back, back back, how did you get to be his aide? How to tell us that story, how that came to be, that he picks you and there you are. Dwight Chapin: Yeah. Well, Doug, I was a young man at the university of Southern California. And between, you know, during the summer, the rule in my family was you always had a summer job and I didn't have to have one in 1962. And that was the year that Nixon was running for governor out in California. He had lost the Jack Kennedy in 1960. So he was back out in California in 62. And dad said, I know someone at the Nixon headquarters, maybe, maybe with your interest in politics, you could get some kind of a position there. And I went down and I was interviewed by a young brew cut guy, 32 years old, who was a campaign manager and his name was Bob Haldeman. And as you may know, Bob ended up eventually be Nixon's chief of staff. But that, that was the start of my association with Richard Nixon in 1962. Then I, I moved east and around 1965 and I volunteered to go down to his office in the evening. Of course he, I should say that he had lost to pat brown there in that race for the governorship. So he moved back to New York and I would go down after hours and help out at the law firm answering correspondence and the person teaching me how to do that was none other than Mrs. Nixon. And she really got to know me. And I think the key to how I ended up being Nixon's personal aid ties, right to Mrs. Nixon. She got comfortable with me. She trusted me. She had doubtedly passed that word onto her husband, Dick Nixon, and said, you know, maybe you ought to look at this man, young man as a possible aid. He did, he hired me and I started working for him in 1967. It was just the two of us traveling around the country. And then of course that matured into a, a presidential type campaign. And I served by his side all the way through the election itself and then up to the inauguration. And then he invited me to join the staff white house. Doug Truax: Wow. Great story. And so how often is it? It's the wife's influence sometimes, right? The spouse says if you get in good there, right Dwight Chapin: By, I mean, that's my theory on it. When you're working for people like this, the important thing is trust you, you have to be able to trust the people that are working with you. That's another thing about my book. I didn't, I didn't write my book 10 minutes after I left the white house, I've waited almost 50 years to write this book. It gives it a whole different perspective. And the, and the motivation of the individuals that are writing the books. I mean, when they do it immediately, it's either for profit or they're worried about, you know, using kind of using the book to land a job or something. Right. When I avoided all that by waiting so many or Doug Truax: Yeah. Good for you. I appreciate you doing that. I know our audience does as well. Cause that is in this day and age, it is getting very annoying. When you see somebody, like you said, quickly write the book so they could make a buck or whatever they're doing. They've got their vendetta or whatever. It's, it's, it's not, it's not good. So that's, it's good for you to be, be kind of old school this way, right? The way it used to be, you know, loyal and trustworthy and all that. So good for you on that. Dwight Chapin: Well, I may be old school, but you know, it's one of the things I think that we've got to be focusing on the country today and that's this whole level of trust. We've lost respect of our elected officials. We've w w th there is no trust factor, particularly among institutions. And this, this is huge. If we're going to make this democracy continue and work the way that the founders had in mind, one of the things we've got to be able to do is to trust not only the institutions, but the people that are in these leadership positions. Doug Truax: That's right. That's right. Well, we'll get to in a second, too, about the media back in your day, but I interview a lot of media people, you know, that are obviously conservative, but they can start to identify the moment when they realized that the most of the media was Democrat and running against, you know, the conservatives. And so we've had this, we, when we lose trust in the media, then it, then the accountability starts to slip all over the place. So it's, it's, I couldn't agree with you more. It's a, it's a difficult time. So w we'll hopefully get back to a better place on that. So if you're, so you're the aid and I was in the army for a while. I was an aid to a general for a year. And so I know a little bit about that, and I understand, you know, when you're an aid to a politician or a CEO or military officer, you're going through the day to day, and you're there, you know, bearing the brunt of the, of the difficult situations. I mean, there's some good things, obviously, but some the, the brunt of the difficult situations, and it can become quite a pressure cooker. So talk about that a little bit and how you, how you, how that, how you handled that was that different than you thought it was going to be. Any, anything you care to share about that side of the job? Dwight Chapin: Right. Well, first of all, I had no idea how it was going to be because I had never been there before, but I, the good Lord gifted me with a, an intuitive sense, I think, and I, as I got to know, Mr. Nixon better and better, I understood what it was that made him perform at his peak level. And my, my job really was to make sure that within the, I let's use the term bubble, that, that space immediately around him, as we travel wherever we went and so forth, that, that he w that he had everything he needed in order to perform at his highest, highest, possible level. So that meant managing everything from the phone calls to the visitors coming in to seam, and it meant making sure that he had all of his preparatory materials available. It meant sh it meant saying no to a lot of people that wanted to give him advice or come in to see him when we were on the road. So, but, but, but the idea in terms of the responsibility I had was his operation, making sure that he had everything that he needed. Some people in recent years, I noticed have referred to this more as a body man, or use that, that kind of terminology. I think I was fortunate. I got in ahead of that. I wasn't, I wasn't a senior advisor, anything like that, but I, I was given a lot of latitude to make determinations on what would be appropriate for him to do and a given situation, and to help shepherd him through that time. And I, I have nothing, but the fondest memories of, of the campaign time at it changed when we got to the white house, there's a heck of a difference between running for office and then government. So what once we made that transition into the governing haven't mined, this is a man that had been in the house of representatives, the Senate. He had been vice president under Eisenhower, great years. He knew what he wanted it and how he wanted things to work. Plus he had an incredible competent chief of staff and Bob Haldeman, who was a managerial genius. And so that really helped me kind of transition from the campaign type operation, into the governing type situation that we have. Doug Truax: Right. It's a good transition. Yeah. That's I can't, I, I can't imagine the difference between campaign to governing. And I've always thought that I see the, the ramp up in the campaign and it's so, you know, frenetic and everything. And then all of a sudden, not duration. Now you got to get to governing and it's just like a total. It seems like it'd be a total 180, but you know, you gotta be ready to handle it. You see these guys take that time to ramp up, right, until it to inauguration day, Dwight Chapin: It's a, it's about policy. And it's about getting a law. Let me make a point. I was watching the other day and preparation for the publicity side of my book. I was going back through all of the video of the China trip. I had been very involved with Dr. Kissinger and putting together the trip to China. And what I came across that really got my attention was that the day that Nixon left for Beijing, he walked out of the south protocol article of the white house toward the helicopter, and he stopped. And he said, he went up to the microphone and he said, I want to thank the majority leader, Mike Mansfield for being here this morning and speaker Carl Albert, and the other bipartisan members of Congress. And that reminded me that when he took office, he said that he wanted to have the bipartisan leaders of Congress come to the white house no less than once a week to meet with him on policy. And they did that for month in, month out, the leaders would come and they would meet with him and they got so much done the next and their accomplishments or the number are huge. How did he, why did that happen? Because these men talk to one another in today's world. If the bipartisan leaders go up to meet with the president of the white house, it's national news, right. We're back there. They were going every week, they were sitting down, they were talking about what was in the best interest of the country and they were acting on it. It was a hell of a different types of situations. Doug Truax: Yeah. Big changes. Absolutely. And I was going to ask you about the China piece. So you were heavily involved in planning that, and so what, what's your take then now on our relationship with China nowadays? Dwight Chapin: Well, I, I think if president Nixon were alive and with us, I mean, he, he let me make a point. He said 50 years ago in 1972, he said in 50 years, which is right now, we are going to be adversaries. And we have to be able to talk to one another. That was one of the reasons he stated that he went to China. So here we are 50 years later and we've gotta be able to talk to one another. The bottom line, I think though, is that as this whole relationship with China developed, we left the commerce side of things, the, the doing business side of things, the economics side of it take the lead with our business people and so forth. And we, we took and put into a second theory position, the strategic interests of the nation itself. And I think that needs to be flipped. There's no question that we can work with China. We can do, we can have trade with China and so forth. It's got to be on a level playing field and it's gotta be fair. And we gotta stick to that. But as a nation, we need to take and put our national interests ahead of the commercial entrance. And that just has to be a rule of thumb and our business people may not like that, but it's something that they've got to accept, because if we do not do that, we are going to see China, not only undermine us, but take over and large sectors of the world. And I don't believe we should do that because that's your is not in our national interests either, Doug Truax: Right. That's such a wise point about having the national interest first and what's happened. I think a lot of the, I'm a business guy myself too, in addition to politics, but watching the capitalists turn into, you know, such globalists in the sense that it feels like so many American business people would be willing to sell out their country to make an extra dollar and, you know, wherever that goes and whatever. And, you know, I think Trump tapped into this too, and it's a, it's a, that kind of sell out mentality and it's kind of the way it just was. It has been allowed to grow. And to your point, we need to go back to the days like, Hey, before we do anything, let's think about our own country and our own people first. It doesn't mean we're not going to go there and, and, you know, have a relationship with them and trade with them and all that. But let's begin in that spot because if we don't do that, then you're right. It just kind of takes on a life of its own. Dwight Chapin: Right. In a moment of frustration. One time I remember, and this is, this is an incredible quote. I, Nixon was so upset about the business person's interest in the almighty dollar. He said, Dwight, you know, there's no one as small as a big businessman. I mean, they do not get the big picture. If we do not keep this democracy in shape and having it operate and the free enterprise system operating in a fair way and so forth that they're, they're not going to have the profits and their mentality is going to shift. And I think we've seen part of that happened. Doug Truax: That's right. That's right. Yeah. It's been hard to watch in our country, especially the middle lower income, you know, the closed factories. I mean, here in Illinois alone, I mean, there's just all these great towns, Rockford, Decatur, they used to do great with manufacturing places. They're just devastated. Dwight Chapin: Yes. We have a lot tremendous amount of work to do in that area. And, and of course, as you know, Doug, there's, there's nothing that does a man good, better than the dignity of work for they, where they're providing for their family. And so for them, you know, our, our handout mentality is, is any thing. And that denominator, it just does not work and we can't afford it either. So we've got to shift that. And on that subject, I really feel that there's a tremendous amount of work that needs to be done in the school systems and that the educational side of this whole ledger we have got to, we've got to be teaching people why this is so, and we're not doing that. Doug Truax: That's right. There's a lot of things that are wrong today. We have a lot of, it's a difficult time, isn't it? Oh my gosh. Dwight Chapin: But, but let me say that there may be a lot of things wrong, but I wish I were 22. Again, I wish I was going to be around for the next segment. This, this ride that we're about ready to come in to, or approach has got all these challenges, but what a great time to be alive, what a great time to be solving these problems. Doug Truax: That's right. That's right. Amen to that. And I always tell people, no matter how bad it gets right now, would you rather live in this time in this country or some other time in some other country, you know, you go back a couple of centuries and you know, this is still pretty good deal. We just got to work it out, you know? Dwight Chapin: Yeah. Part, part, part of Nixon stump speech back in 1968 was, he said, folks, he says the traffic's all one way nobody's, nobody's trying to leave here. Doug Truax: That's right. That's right. You got that. Right. It's still the same situation. So, okay. Well, speaking of interesting times, so on the media piece, and then also the, the slanting of the media, and then also the slanting of the DOJ FBI. So we've got the Ray to Mar-a-Lago when you were in your boss was treated unfairly many times and there was, there was issues there as well. So what's your take on what's going on right now with the department of justice and where this is going with Trump and everything. Dwight Chapin: Yeah. So I, I really do not know. I don't believe any of us know as of this moment exactly what that warrant said. I happen to be a friend of David Varios. He was the former archivist of the United States, a Democrat, but a terrific guy. I had worked with him on the renovation of the Nixon library. And he, he's the kind of man that I, that I know that if there was a issue on getting the documents from, from president Trump, that, that he was the kind of man that would negotiate and have lawyers go meet with the lawyers. And eventually they would come to a conclusion. I think that if the attorney general and the director of the FBI went to that judge in Florida and, and pushed for this going after these documents at Mar-a-Lago and, and seize them just because there were documents there, it is, to me outrageous. Now it may have been wrong for president Trump to have those documents there. But, but again, that was a negotiation type thing. And you do not take and do an FBI raid on any former president. I don't care if he's a Republican Democrat or whatever. It's not what we should be doing. So a real critical eye has to be cast on this. We do need to know what happened, and we need to know the specifics. And I think the longer that the FBI takes and the department of justice of clarifying this, now I know when you're doing investigations, you, you need to keep them curtailed and confidential until you get to the end of the line. But this kind of qualifies for a special consideration in my mind, because the longer they leave the people out there speculating the worst. All of this speculation is going to get, and it does not work in the favor of our democracy. Doug Truax: That's right. It's a dangerous precedent. And we can not go down this path. I just, yeah. Nobody wants to see this. Even people on the left are saying now, you know, we, we need to be thinking about this and, and, and not doing anything like this again, but nobody nobody's really stopping them. So I don't know what they're gonna do next, you know? Dwight Chapin: All right. And I mentioned about the media side of this brochure, I gave a talk on it's part of you can get it on C-SPAN. I gave it on the, at the library of Congress on June 17th on the anniversary of the break and Watergate. And I said, Watergate could not happen today. I mean, back in the old days, when Watergate happened, we had ABC, CBS and NBC. We had Walter Cronkite, John chancellor and Howard K Smith. We had no blogs. We had no talk radio. We had no cable television systems. We had none of that. And I would venture to say that the reason that we have such a 50 50 in the country now is the least, the thing is competitive. At least the conservative side of this equation is being heard. And, and, you know, you're part of that. And this is incredibly important. Back in the Nixon days, we didn't have that, right. We had to fight this thing all ourselves. And we were up against a democratic house, a democratic Senate demo, democratic oriented, investigated prosecutors, and a media that was slanted toward the Democrats. So we were really up against it. And I don't think if it happened, if Watergate were to happen in today's world, that Nixon would ever have to resign. Doug Truax: Oh, that's a really interesting point. And it goes to the perspective in your reference point to the time you're living in where we might think, oh, we got so bad, but like what you just said, there are a lot of emerging, you know, conservative, well already established conservative outlets and more emerging, which helps level the playing field, right, Dwight Chapin: Where we're fighting, we're finding, and as has been made by any intelligent conservatives, we, we need to be encouraging Republicans to get Republican in particularly conservatives to get involved, starting at the school board level, the local community level. We need to get in there and, and start weighing in. The Democrats are very good at that. They have done it for years. They, they make a profession out of it. Our people go to work and come home and are raising kids and so forth. And they don't have time to go to these civic events and these civic opportunities. And we can not afford not to do it. We've got to, we've got to become more involved. Doug Truax: That's right. Taking our own country back self-governance. Yeah. Cause you're right. It's like if you're busy raising a family, working hard, it's it, it falls down the list, but it should be going back up because of the importance of the time that we live in. So I, I totally encourage everybody I talked to in the same vein and we're doing our part to help people. Dwight Chapin: Yes. I mean, with the Democrats that they've always done, it's almost a, a second occupation with them. Right. And we, we have a paid attention with it. And I mean, parts of this routes itself back, I remember when there were 250,000 people demonstrating against the war on Vietnam, Baca the ellipse in the next 10 years. And a lot of those people went on to the universities and the higher institutions of learning and became professors and so forth. And they've propagated a, an ideology and to our young people and that's been absorbed and now they're raising their kids and teaching them, we have to get back to the fundamentals of what this nation was about. Doug Truax: That's right. Losing the fundamentals and the foundation of our Christian faith to, you know, we gotta get back to that. That's, you know, you have too many generations that don't even know what it, what it means to be a Christian. I think we fall, you know, the founder said you have to have good moral people to keep this thing running. And there's certain things we got, we got to keep an eye on that too. For sure. It's yeah. Dwight Chapin: I believe I don't mean to interrupt you. Go ahead. Yeah. I believe that translates into excellent candidates. I mean, I know you were a candidate out there in Illinois, but, and God only knows what your next steps going to be, but, but, but people need to get involved and good people eight to be running. Doug Truax: That's right. That's right. Absolutely. Yeah. Dwight Chapin: The good news is that the Republicans have a terrific bench. I mean, we've got some credibly, fine talent coming up. Doug Truax: Oh, that's right. That's right. And I I've often said that the upside for us is that we don't get a pass on anything. The left, the Democrats get a pass on everything, especially when it comes to mainstream media and we have to be super sharp and they don't, but it's going to catch up with you at some point because it makes you better and it makes you lazy, you know? So we're, we're on the better side. And so, yeah, I totally agree. We got a, we got a good slate coming up. So last question for you. So what are you looking for for people to learn about president Nixon as they go through your book? Maybe the good, some of the bad. So w what do you hope to have them learn about the man once they're done with your book? Dwight Chapin: we need to start off with the idea that, that president Nixon with human, you need to understand where he came from from Whittier, that he was a Quaker that he believed in peace at the center, that he was antiwar, that he, when he was young, lost two brothers to tuberculosis, here is a young man that got into Harvard, but he couldn't go to Harvard because his parents couldn't afford the train ticket. He did end up going to duke to law school. He worked his way up. This is a man that is a self-made man. It was a very brilliant man. As people read more about it, they will understand that, that he had an incredible grasp of what the United States was about. But as Tom Wicker, one of the Polish apprised, New York times authors wrote in his book, his book was entitled. One of our, and he wrote about the con the heritage of Richard Nixon, and the fact that he really truly was one of us. And, and that gave him a special mess. It gave him a sense of understanding what the American people were about. So you couple that, with his extraordinary sense of strategic visionary capabilities, I mean, he, he saw a way ahead of time, the opportunity to go to China and to open that up. And he did it only, only a conservative Republican would have been able to pull that off. He got the arms control, talks going and, and executed the solid agreement with the Russians. He brought about the clean air act, the clean water act, the all volunteer army title nine for women OSHA. I mean, a lot of stuff with was progressive. Maybe in today's current conservative world was a little too progressive, but it was things that he knew needed to happen. He took, he took the segregation south from an 80% segregated school systems down to 10% and most important of all he took. When he went into office, there were 510,000 troops in Vietnam. You would know this from your military background. When he left, there were 10,000 and they were on their way out. So this was a man who had a hell of a record of accomplishment. And I would give credit by saying not only was it Nixon's work, but I go back to that idea that he worked with CA Carl Albert. He worked with Mike Mansfield. He knew the other senators on both sides. And, and they were able to sit in the council, the high councils of government and make decisions and get things done and, and keep this nation as unified as possible, even under the cloud of Vietnam. Doug Truax: Yeah. Amazing accomplishments. He's remarkable, man, for sure. You, of all people know that. I think we've all, especially on the conservative side, read things here and there and said, wow, there's, there's always more to him than, than meets the eye, especially the further we get away from it. So what a credit to him and to our country that you wrote this book. So thank you for that. And we wish you the best as you roll it out. And, and we're going to encourage our audience to go get a copy and read up on it and make sure we have the correct memory of president Nixon. Thanks to you. So I appreciate you coming on the show. Dwight, Dwight Chapin: Doug, thank you. Very great meeting you. Nice being on the show. Doug Truax: I have a great day. All right. That's our show for today. Thank you so much for tuning in and for supporting conservative media. Don't forget that by working together and staying diligent, we can serve as 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 6 1 that's FIRSTRIGHT All caps. One word to, 3 0 1 6 1.

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