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Aug. 1, 2023 - Dinesh D'Souza
49:53
WHO’S LAUGHING NOW? Dinesh D’Souza Podcast Ep633
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This episode is brought to you by my friend, Rebecca Walzer, a financial expert who can help you protect your wealth.
Book your free call with her team by going to friendofdinesh.com.
That's friendofdinesh.com.
Coming up, Hunter Biden was once laughing about the idea that he'd be busted for Biden family corruption.
but is he still laughing now? I'll expose the full extent of the collusion between the Biden regime and META, Facebook, to censor truthful information.
I'll compare my own campaign finance case to that of Sam Bankman-Fried. And Utah Mayor Trent Staggs joins me to make the case for why Mitt Romney deserves to get the boot in the next election. Hey, if you're listening on Apple, Google, or Spotify, please subscribe to the podcast.
And on Rumble, there's a little red join button.
If you click that, it'll take you to my locals channel and you can check that out as well.
This is the Dinesh D'Souza Show.
The times are crazy, and a time of confusion, division, and lies.
We need a brave voice of reason, understanding, and truth.
This is the Dinesh D'Souza Podcast.
Hunter Biden's friend and business partner, Devin Archer, testified before the House, before the oversight committee, and he made some remarkable disclosures or revelations.
He pointed out that Hunter Biden has met in person with Joe Biden And a number of Hunter and Joe's business associates.
And this has happened on multiple occasions.
It's estimated about 15 occasions.
And then separately from that, on about 20 occasions, at least 20 occasions that Devin Archer recalls, the actual number could be more, Joe Biden was sort of piped in, or Hunter Biden makes a call to Joe Biden, or Joe Biden makes a call to Hunter Biden.
They put Hunter Biden on speakerphone, and he's able to speak to Hunter, but also speak directly to Hunter's and Joe's business associates.
Now, all of this shows that Joe Biden's claim that he had nothing to do with his son, he was not involved in any way in his son's business dealings, is just factually false.
Joe Biden was prevaricating, he was lying, you call it whatever you want, he was not telling the truth.
He's in on this.
And to anyone who is...
Moderately intelligent looking at this, it's very obvious what's going on.
What's going on is not that Joe Biden is weighing in on the substance of the deal, but rather that Joe Biden is there to prove that the access that Hunter Biden is promising is real.
Hunter Biden isn't just some Billy Carter, some wayward brother or son who just says, oh, listen, I can get my dad to do this, I can get my dad to do that.
And Joe Biden's not even involved.
He's not part of the picture.
Joe Biden is calling in to say, hey, listen, guys, you know what?
The mafia boss is part of the operation.
Hunter is my bag man.
Hunter is my front man.
He's my collection man.
Send the money to him.
Then we'll put it through all the shell accounts.
It won't get to me except through a kind of intra-family distribution.
So, This is obviously what's going on.
And yet, the press, as well as defenders of Joe Biden, including Representative Dan Goldman of New York, let's remember Dan Goldman of New York is the same guy who led or was one of the key House impeachment managers for Trump's first impeachment.
So, let's refresh your memory.
Trump was impeached the first time.
He was impeached twice. The second one was January 6th related.
The first one, think about it.
What was he impeached first? What did Trump do that propelled this massive impeachment process, an impeachment trial in the House, then went over to the Senate?
Well, it was basically over Trump making a phone call.
Who was the phone call to?
Ukraine, to Zelensky.
What was it about?
Hey, you better look into this Hunter Biden, not Hunter Biden, Joe Biden corruption business.
And the corruption business here had to do with Joe Biden.
Getting a Ukrainian prosecutor fired, a prosecutor who was fired for looking into corruption at Burisma, and all this at a time when Burisma is paying large sums of money to Hunter Biden's company, to Hunter Biden, and to Hunter Biden's business partner, none other than one Devin Archer.
So this is what Trump was impeached for.
And so think of the irony of the situation.
Trump is wrongfully and preposterously impeached over making a legitimate phone call over real corrupt business dealings, corrupt business dealings that the Democrats at the time denied.
There's nothing here. This is all made up.
This is all nonsense. So that was the premise of the impeachment.
And ironically, the guy who really deserves to be impeached is Joe Biden.
The guy who's really selling U.S. influence abroad is Joe Biden.
That's the guy delivering influence in exchange for cash.
No one could even claim that was true of Trump.
All Trump does is make a phone call, looking into it, checking into something that turns out to have merit.
Now, another thing that Devin Archer said, which I think sums up the whole situation very clearly, is he says that the reason that Hunter Biden was added to the Burisma board is the brand.
That was his term, the brand.
Well, what's the brand?
Well, Hunter Biden doesn't have a brand.
He didn't start Nike or Microsoft.
Oh, it's my brand. No, the brand is the Biden brand.
The Joe Biden brand.
And that's what was for sale.
Just like when an athlete gets money for promoting a brand, the brand is giving money in exchange for something of value.
And here, what was of value is Joe Biden is selling Biden family legitimacy, Biden family influence.
See, if Hunter Biden is on the Burisma board, it signifies to all of Ukraine.
By the way, Ukraine is getting U.S. aid.
And in a very notorious...
Boast, you have Joe Biden on camera.
I mean, this is the smoking gun right here.
Joe Biden on camera saying, guess what?
I called up this guy.
I called up the Ukrainians and I told them, you better fire this prosecutor.
Which prosecutor? Shokin, who's looking into Burisma corruption.
You better fire him or we're not sending you $1 billion of money.
I'm going to block that money.
So, this is a clear case where Joe Biden is...
Essentially using his influence, showing the power of the brand.
It's not just a name.
Hey, listen, there's some abstract access that Joe Biden is giving you.
Joe Biden is performing a concrete task and then boasting about it on camera.
So you've got not only Burisma paying for something, But you've got Joe Biden himself, not Hunter Biden, but Joe Biden delivering what Burisma paid for.
So if you're looking to close the circle of corruption, there it is.
That's the basis for what should be the forthcoming impeachment of Joe Biden.
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I'm really interested in a cynical way in the evolving efforts on the part of the media and the left and the Democrats to defend Joe Biden.
The defense is going in multiple stages, and when each stage becomes impossible, indefensible, untenable, they move to the next one.
So here's the first stage.
There's nothing to see here.
Hunter did nothing wrong.
Stage number two.
Hunter is a private citizen.
His crimes aren't of public concern.
Yeah, he may have done something wrong, but what does this have to do with Joe Biden?
Joe Biden is not involved, and Hunter is a private citizen.
So let the process sort of take its course with Hunter.
Number three.
Whatever Hunter Biden did, Joe Biden is removed from that.
Joe Biden never talked to Hunter about any of this.
Joe Biden is isolated.
Go after Hunter Biden all you want, but leave Joe Biden alone.
Now we are at stage four.
Yes, Joe Biden was involved, but he didn't really discuss business per se.
He was just engaged in some niceties, some politeness, some, hey, kind of glad-handing, if you will, with these business partners.
He wasn't, in other words, directly involved, even though he was in fact involved.
Yes, he was on the calls.
Yes, he was in all these meetings.
But it wasn't his business.
It was Hunter's business. Joe and Hunter are not in business together.
And the only stage that's left, and I think we're going to be moving to this stage pretty soon.
In fact, I predict that this is the stage that we're going to be at once impeachment gets rolling.
And that is that, yeah, Joe was in fact selling out the country, but that's not that bad.
In other words, Joe was exchanging favors for cash, but you know what?
All politicians do it.
This is a certain kind of...
Unfortunately, this is the type of thing that has gotten common in America.
People exchange favors.
They do things in exchange for the people who give them money.
Joe Biden kind of fell into this.
He was a little blind to how it got out of hand.
Yeah, we need some strong ethics guidelines going forward to make sure this doesn't happen, Dinesh.
But... But in this case, we shouldn't impeach Joe Biden, at least not even at this late stage, over this.
So we're going to get there, but we're not there yet.
Let's focus on where we are now.
Here's Representative Dan Goldman.
He says, yeah, Joe Biden wasn't in all these meetings and he did make all these phone calls, but he was probably talking about the weather.
The weather. So are you telling me that Burisma was paying $160,000 a month to Hunter Biden shell companies for weather reports from Joe Biden?
Oh, it's a little hot here in D.C. No, they were paying for something very concrete.
And more importantly, they got that something.
This is the point. It's kind of like if I pay someone, I go, listen, I want to rob the bank.
I need you to open the front door.
I need you to give me the combination.
And you give me the combination.
Then I've got what I paid for.
And that's the case here.
So this is why this business from Dan Goldman is absurd.
And equally absurd is the New York Times, which is quoting Democrats, saying that, quote...
Hunter Biden tried to sell the illusion that he was providing access to his powerful father when he was not, according to Democrats on the panel.
So this is the, let's call it, boastful Hunter Biden theory.
It was just saying, my dad can do this, my dad can do that, but his dad never did any of those things.
Well, let's look at it.
First of all, when you say, I have access to my father, and my father is in on this, and he is going to help you out— The way you demonstrate that access is you get the guy on the phone.
In other words, let's pipe in my dad.
And that's really what these bribe payers demanded.
Hey, get your dad on the phone.
And Hunter Biden would do it.
And then Joe Biden would come in and then be like, oh, okay, you do have access to your dad.
Your dad actually...
Because otherwise, Joe Biden could be like, why are you calling me in the middle of one of your business meetings?
You're not calling to discuss just family chat.
You're calling because you're...
Joe Biden knows full well why Hunter is calling.
He needs to be piped in so the business partners can all see, okay, we got Biden in on this.
The brand is part of what we're buying here.
Number two is the deliverables.
And the deliverables are key.
Now, let's look at a transaction involving the wife of the Moscow mayor.
There was a meeting in Georgetown.
Hunter Biden was there.
Joe Biden was there.
And shortly after this meeting, this mayor, the Moscow mayor's wife, wires $3.5 million to Hunter Biden.
And what was she buying? She didn't want to be on the US sanctions list.
And that was her demand.
And was she on the U.S. sanction list at a time when all the Russian oligarchs are on the U.S. sanction list?
Go look at the sanctions list.
She wasn't on it.
Joe Biden made sure that she was kept off the sanctions list so she got what she paid for.
So again, this is not a case where Hunter is selling the illusion.
He's selling the reality of of Joe Biden influencer reality manifested in the firing of the prosecutor in Ukraine, manifested in the leaving off of the Moscow mayor's wife and that family off the sanctions list.
The foreign people who are paying up The Chinese, the Ukrainians, the Russians.
I mean, by the way, this is the real Russia collusion, right?
There's actual collusion between Joe Biden and a top Russian oligarch to get a favor that the Russian oligarch wants in exchange for a substantial amount of cash.
These are the people that we're dealing with in the White House.
These are the people that the press and people like Dan Goldman are covering up for.
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It's time. Remember Sam Bankman Freed?
This is the disgraced cryptocurrency mogul.
And this was a guy who built a massive company, collecting huge amounts of money from investors.
And then as it turns out, scamming those investors.
And as a result, he's facing a number of federal charges related to wire fraud, securities fraud, money laundering, and also campaign finance violations.
Why? Because Sam Rankin-Fried was funneling a good deal of this money illegally into giving huge contributions, and the contributions were overwhelmingly to Democrats, to Democratic candidates, and to Democratic organizations.
To look at some totals here, he contributed more than $40 million to Democrats and liberal causes just in the 2022 election.
$6 million to the House Majority PAC, Democrats.
This was the main outside group supporting the House Democrats.
He gave $250,000 to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.
$66,500 to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.
And then here I see from social media a...
The source is the Federal Election Commission.
Just a kind of long list of his contributions.
And it would take me a whole segment just to read down the list.
Big amounts of money to the Colorado Democratic Party, Democratic Executive Committee of Florida, Nevada State Democratic Party, Bennett for Colorado, then various individual candidates.
Again, Democrats one on top of the other.
Gillibrand for Senate.
That's obviously New York.
Cory Booker for Senate.
That's obviously New Jersey.
Stabenow for U.S. Senate.
Manchin for West Virginia.
Montana Democratic Party.
Vermont Democratic Party.
And on and on and on and on.
And so you have this kind of treasure trove of illegal contributions.
And so Sam Bankman-Fried is facing campaign finance violations.
And guess what? The DOJ, in conjunction with the Southern District of New York, by the way, the same district that prosecuted me for a $20,000 contribution above the campaign finance limit, I was prosecuted to the full extent of the law.
I was prosecuted where no one else was prosecuted for doing this.
Such a small amount, first-time offense, no quid pro quo.
And so how does Sam Bankman-Fried, who's giving millions of dollars, give Well, you could say the answer is pretty simple.
And that is that Sam Bankman-Fried is giving money on the left.
And there's a kind of, you can say, almost legal immunity.
But of course, the Southern District of New York can't say, well, listen, he's a Democrat.
He's given all this money to Biden.
This is our team.
We don't prosecute members of our own team.
They can't say that. So they need to come up with some sort of a reason, a pretext, a justification.
And so they've come up with one that's actually pretty ingenious.
Sam Bankman Freed was in the Bahamas when the warrants went out for his arrest.
And since the Bahamas is technically not part of the United States, the Bahamas had to agree to extradite Sam Bankman Freed for warrants.
Now, the Bahamas is a tiny country.
If the United States leans on the Bahamas, they can get a guy like Sam Bankman-Fried extradited just like that.
But the U.S. in this case went through a certain type of a pretense, and that is, we're negotiating with the Bahamas over the extradition of Sam Bankman-Fried.
And now, as it turns out, what they're saying is, the Bahamas has sent us a letter saying, Well, you know, we did extradite him.
We've agreed to extradite him to undergo charges of wire fraud and bank fraud and securities fraud, but we did not agree to extradite him for campaign finance violations.
Now, you would expect... We expect the US government, if it was honest, if it was playing straight, if it was actually trying to go after a bad guy, to go, don't be ridiculous.
This guy is facing a slew of charges.
These are violations not of your laws, but of our laws.
And the US has enough dealings with the Bahamas that the Bahamas is going to do what the US wants in this particular case.
But the United States government is playing a game here.
It's a game in which the Bahamas sends a letter saying, we never understood we were sending him to be...
By the way, this letter could even have been orchestrated by Bankman Freed or by the U.S. government.
You can't... These guys are not above doing stuff like this.
So the Bahamas sends a letter.
Listen, we didn't think we were sending him to face charges on campaign finance law.
And so the U.S. government goes, oh, well, okay...
In that case, we will drop the charges connected with campaign finance law.
So this is, and I'm not even kidding you, the actual stated basis of them dropping the campaign finance charges.
It's because the Bahamas said no.
The Bahamas said this is not what we understood to be the case.
So, I smell a rat.
I see this as nothing more than an effort to say to Sam Bankman Freedia, listen, we really appreciate all the dough that you sent our way to our team, to our man Biden and all these Democrats.
We're not going to go after you for sending all this money because that might send a signal to a lot of other Democrats that are sending money under the table that they can't do this kind of stuff and we might even go after members of our own team because equal justice under the law, remember?
So, equal justice under the law is a myth.
It's an illusion. It's a mirage.
You only have to compare my case to the case of Sam Bankman Free to see that this is, in fact, the case.
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We've all heard about the Twitter files.
The Twitter files were the result of Elon Musk buying Twitter and then acknowledging publicly that Twitter is a kind of crime scene.
And so he authorized an excavation of what had been going on in Twitter under the previous regime, and the result was the Twitter files.
All these damning revelations about ways in which government agencies had colluded with Twitter, strong-armed Twitter.
But Twitter is alone in this regard.
We don't really have anything equivalent with YouTube and with Facebook.
Why? Because the top brass and We're good to go.
Essentially designate certain things as suspicious.
They farm them out to outside groups that have been coached and trained to declare these posts in violation of guidelines.
And then they go ahead and ban or shadow ban or restrict the distribution of these posts.
And all of this is done again in collusion with the Biden regime.
Now, recently, the Facebook files were released, but again, it was not the result of Facebook providing any kind of real internal investigation.
In fact, Facebook was for a long time, for years, refusing congressional demands to turn over files and information.
In fact, it was only when Congress threatened contempt of Congress citations and sanctions against Mark Zuckerberg and against Facebook or Meta That Facebook started saying, OK, fine, we'll start giving you the files.
They still haven't provided full disclosure, but they've provided some disclosure.
And what you see here is that, interestingly, number one, Facebook is engaged in censorship on its own.
They're doing it on their own accord.
But as a private company, they can do that.
However, there's also a good deal of collusion with the government.
The government is pressuring them to censor things, and at times, Facebook is pushing back.
Here, for example, is Nick Clegg, the president of global affairs for Meta.
Quote, can someone quickly remind me why we are removing rather than demoting labeling claims that COVID is manmade?
So first of all, they're removing these claims that COVID is manmade, even though it's an open question.
There's a legitimate debate at the highest levels of science about where does COVID come from?
Was it man-made? Was it natural?
And interestingly, notice what Nick Clegg is saying.
Why are we removing, quote, rather than demoting labeling?
So he's in favor of demoting them.
He's in favor of labeling them as problematic.
He just doesn't want to completely remove them.
So here you have a debate between, let's call it, should we push the guy or should we shove him?
Where shove is a more violent form of push, and Nick Clegg is for push, and Facebook is practicing shove.
Evidently, the Biden administration was also flagging jokes, laugh lines, and demanding that those be censored.
This is what the political scientist Jonathan Turley has called censorship by surrogate.
Censorship by surrogate because the government is doing the censoring.
They're just using an intermediary to carry it out.
Now, what are the topics that Facebook has now admitted to censoring?
We all know about COVID, but they're also censoring, quote, anti-Ukraine narratives.
So, notice that when you're talking about a narrative, it's not misinformation, it's not disinformation.
Let's just say, for example, that there are Nazi regiments in Ukraine fighting on the Ukrainian side.
Fact check, true.
But nevertheless, the left could argue, or the Biden regime could argue, well, this is misleading.
The Nazis don't control the Ukraine government.
They're just part of the government, but they're not necessarily running the place.
Well... This is a matter for argument, for public debate.
This is why you have free speech, to clarify what is the truth of what is being said on one side versus the other, and you match up the claims, the one against the other, and you arbitrate between them.
But see, Facebook doesn't allow this.
They don't want this, and neither does the Biden regime.
So it's an anti-Ukraine narrative.
The moment you label it that, you can now proceed to censor it.
Here's Facebook from Internal Communications revealing that Andy Slavitt, a senior advisor to Biden, by the way, the guy who was sort of in charge of COVID policy, and this is, I'm now quoting from an internal document, quote, was outraged, not too strong a word to describe his reaction, that Facebook did not remove this particular post.
So think of it, a government official is outraged.
Why didn't you remove this post?
And you can see from Facebook that there is a sort of scramble to satisfy the Biden regime.
And the Biden regime is saying that this, even a humorous post about COVID, quote, demonstrably inhibits confidence in COVID vaccines among those the Biden administration is trying to reach.
So we're trying to get a message out, guys.
In other words, our propaganda cannot be contradicted.
Even if someone is joking about it, it inhibits our ability to send a message, go ahead and censor that guy.
Here's a quote from Facebook.
This is from the COO Sheryl Sandberg, quote, We are facing continued pressure from external stakeholders, including the White House.
This is the Biden White House. So Facebook is treating the Biden White House as a stakeholder.
They have a stake in Facebook.
So we're getting continued pressure from these guys.
So these are open and shut violations of the First Amendment.
Here you have a private company under governmental pressure to censor American citizens on a wide range of topics.
My guess is that what's happening at YouTube and Meta, far worse, or at least as bad as what happened at Twitter, with the difference that only now are these violations coming to public attention.
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It's D-I-N-E-S-H, Dinesh.
Guys, I'd like to welcome to the podcast a new guest.
This is Mayor Trent Staggs.
He's the mayor of Riverton, Utah.
He's running for the U.S. Senate in Utah.
And in the Republican primary, he's going to be running against one Mitt Romney.
He was born and raised in Utah.
He's a successful entrepreneur, husband and father.
His website...
Trent Staggs, that's S-T-A-G-G-S dot com, and you can follow him on Twitter, at Mayor Staggs, S-T-A-G-G-S. Trent, welcome to the podcast.
This is very interesting.
You are challenging Mitt Romney for the Republican nomination, which very likely is going to be the winner in a Republican state, namely Utah.
Let's start talking about Romney.
Now, for a guy like me, it's a little hard to believe that this guy was, in fact, the Republican nominee for president at one time.
And yet since then, he appears to have...
I don't know what's happened to Mitt Romney or maybe this was always Mitt Romney and there was a kind of illusion of Romney that was created in the 2012 campaign against Obama.
Talk a little bit about, I mean, you've been able to watch Romney up close from inside of Utah.
What's the deal with Mitt Romney?
Yeah, I have.
And it's been very confusing.
I mean, I think most Utahns back in 2018, when he moved here and he decided to run for U.S. Senate, they took him at his word.
You know, he had said out there and we put in our launch video this 30-second spot that he said, if you elect me as your senator, I will put us on a path to a balanced budget.
I will end illegal immigration.
I'll stop federal spending and overreach.
And I'll appoint conservative justices to the court.
And so we look at his record over these past five years that hasn't reflected that at all.
In fact, he's done just the opposite.
And Utahns are very frustrated with Mitt Romney.
We can see it. His poll numbers have gone down considerably.
He's far below a majority that view him favorably right now in this state.
And people are wanting to have a true conservative in the seat.
Utah deserves it.
Utah deserves to have a true conservative in the seat.
We're such a conservative state and to have another Mike Lee, if you will, representing us only makes sense.
Now, with regard to Romney, I mean, Romney had liberal elements in his record, even going back to Massachusetts.
But it seemed like in 2012 against Obama that he was on the balance running on a conservative platform.
And you say he did the same in 2018 when campaigning for the Senate.
He somehow convinced Utah that he was a conservative Republican.
Now, let's talk about where he hasn't delivered.
What has Romney done in terms of votes?
Has he voted to keep the border open?
Has he voted to confirm Biden justices?
Has he voted to increase spending?
Yeah. Unfortunately, he votes with Biden 60% of the time.
It's been shown. And that's what I've said is that, hey, look, Massachusetts doesn't need a third senator.
We need to have somebody that's really representing Utahns and actually do the things that he said he was going to do, and he just hasn't.
So to take them point by point, as you just delineated there, I mean, when it comes to Biden justices, the radical Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, he was one of just three Republicans to vote to confirm her, isn't it all in keeping with appointing conservative justices to the court?
He didn't help at all end illegal immigration.
He's been completely silent there.
He wouldn't support President Trump when he had the opportunity to on a border wall back in his first year in office, in Romney's first year in his Senate term. In fact, he was one of just a few Republicans that confirmed Secretary Mayorkas, who has been a complete disaster there on the border. He hasn't done anything with spending, interrane spending, and that is like he promised. In fact, he's voted for trillions more in Omnibus and many other spending projects. He hasn't been serious about getting us on a path to a balanced budget like he
said he would. In fact, he had a great opportunity here just in May, Dinesh. Senator Mike Lee, our great Senator here in Utah, put together a letter, sent it out to President Biden and said, look, we're not going to raise the debt ceiling unless we get substantial spending cuts and He had 42 other Republicans that signed that letter, to include Mitch McConnell, and we couldn't get Mitt Romney to put his name on that letter.
I mean, for somebody that purports that putting us on a path to a balanced budget is a key initiative and priority for him, that should have been a very easy thing to do, and he just hasn't done it.
Now... Every time I see Romney in the news, it's almost always making some derogatory comment about Trump.
We can't have Trump. We've got to make sure that Trump is no longer on the ticket.
So I wonder if that is the key to what broke Mitt Romney.
For some reason, I mean, generally when we think of Trump derangement syndrome, it's on the left.
But there are some Republicans who have Trump derangement syndrome.
Do you think Mitt Romney is one of them?
Yeah, no, I think you're right.
I mean, clearly, this guy is infatuated.
He is so preoccupied with Trump.
That's the only thing I've seen him get passionate about, right?
We want him to fight for Utahns and do these things he said he was going to do.
But the only thing I say that I've seen him get passionate about is fighting against President Trump.
And here's a guy who he excoriated him back in 2016.
He had this speech, Mitt Romney did.
And then he tried to curry favor with him after the presidential election.
Wanted to be the Secretary of State, got looked over, and since then, now, you just see this.
It seems so personal with him, and I've said in other interviews and things that it just, he allows personal beefs to get in the way of good governance.
governance. We've seen this with Mitt Romney and he is just on a one-track mind or mission to try to frustrate President Trump at every turn. And I think it's just futile. I think Romney doesn't understand. He's part of this bygone era of republicanism where they really did nothing for their constituents. They were more concerned about maintaining power. And what we see in President Trump is somebody who actually
acts, who gets things done. And that's what the Republican electorate wants. They don't just want somebody like a Mitt Romney that gets up there and pontificates and really doesn't do anything.
They want action. That's what President Trump's delivered, and I know he would do again.
Yeah, let's take a pause when we come back.
More with Mayor Trent Staggs.
Website is TrentStaggs.com.
You can follow him at Twitter, at Mayor Staggs.
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Use discount code AMERICA. I'm back with the mayor of Riverton, Utah.
His name is Trent Staggs.
His website, Trent Staggs, that's S-T-A-G-G-S dot com.
He's running against Mitt Romney for the Senate in Utah.
Trent, let's talk about you.
You're a relatively new figure on the national scene, not necessarily on the Utah scene by any means.
And I have to say that Romney for all his absurdities and the indignities and flaws and failures is a sort of larger than life figure.
And by that, I just simply mean he's been around a long time.
He's been the GOP nominee for president 2012.
He's got a fairly large presence on the stage.
So talk about yourself.
Tell us a little bit more about your life and your career in politics.
And what made you take this fateful step of going, you know what, not only do I think that Romney is not the right guy, but I think that I am the right guy to replace him.
Well, I'm a lifelong Utahan.
I like to say from elementary school to graduate school.
I've attended Utah schools.
I've raised my family here.
My wife and I have been married since 2007.
We've got a 13-year-old son, 11-year-old daughter.
I've operated several businesses across the finance sector, also technology.
I've been on the board of directors of several companies and one most recently that we took public.
We got listed on NASDAQ last year in the energy space.
Energy independence is very important to me.
With these successes in businesses, I've also got a 10-year track record in elected office here in Utah.
In Riverton, in my city, we've been leading my community for the past 10 years.
I love it. I've been very impactful here working with my city council.
I've actually been one that's cut taxes.
I've lowered taxes. Spending, governmental spending, we've innovated to improve services as well.
And I haven't been shy to push back against the establishment.
That's typified my career, Dinesh.
I've said no to mask mandates and vaccine mandates.
I was one of the few mayors in this state that did that, that had the courage to stand up and call it out.
Again, I've cut taxes.
I've spoken out against inappropriate materials in schools, anti-ESG resolutions.
We've always supported life.
And so I've been one that's – I haven't been shy at all about standing up.
I come from a very – Humble beginning, modest beginning.
I'm one of 10 children.
My parents were not affluent.
My dad was a schoolteacher, started out that way, and a high school football coach.
And so I understand.
I have that life perspective.
And yeah, I think that's a stark contrast between someone like Mitt Romney, as you just articulated, who is very well known, has run for almost every political office in the country, a national stage, and he has very much typifies the establishment.
And that's not me.
And that's what I've noticed has been so refreshing as I've gone out there and campaigned across the state.
That's what people want. They want somebody who is authentic, who understands them, who is approachable.
And I've got that record as a mayor here.
And that's what we need more than ever in D.C. We need somebody who understands that.
Local governance, federalism, that balance that needs to be restored.
We have to have somebody with that perspective that's going to go back to DC and not just want to make friends and give great talking points, you know?
Trent, it strikes me that you're a fairly unassuming and modest guy.
I say this only because my experience of senators, they tend to be bombastic, self-referential, big talkers, and so on.
You're a low-key guy, and it comes through even in this conversation that we're having.
Do you think that Utah is ready to say, well, listen, you know what?
We'd rather have a quiet guy, an unassuming guy...
Who nevertheless is more congruent with what we believe and our values, instead of this sort of bombastic guy, Romney, who might try to cut a very stylish figure on the national stage, but doesn't really represent us when it comes down to it.
I think the answer to that is yes.
It's somewhat anecdotal as we're crossing the state and talking to so many people.
We've built up such a huge coalition, other mayors, other county commissioners.
We've got the Fraternal Order of Police that represents 70% of all law enforcement in the state that's already endorsed us.
We picked up the endorsements of great conservative commentators across the country.
People are taking notice just in these two months since we've announced that We're good to go.
We are on the front lines of pushing back on federal overreach.
I see it at the federal, state, and county level.
And people like that.
They love that record and they think that's who we need to send back to Washington to represent us.
Well, in my view, Romney is a complete disgrace, and I'm delighted you're making this effort.
I wish you all the best in your enterprise to unseat him.
I think you'd do a lot better job.
Guys, it's Trent Staggs, mayor of Riverton, Utah.
Check out his website, trentstaggs.com.
I'd like to talk about country music and what's happening inside country music as far as politics goes.
I've always liked country music.
I like it mainly because of its content, which strikes me as much more down-to-earth, more real, more emotionally honest, even though some of country music is a little bit stereotypical.
It's about trucks and trains and my wife who left me and here I am drinking booze in the salon and so on.
But nevertheless, despite all that, You have country songs that have the capacity to really take you by surprise and kind of move you in ways that I think rock music doesn't do, doesn't even attempt to do and certainly not other types of music, heavy metal rap and so on.
Now, admittedly, when I say I'm a fan of country music, I'm a fan of a probably older generation of country music.
Singers like Loretta Lynn or Reba McEntire, Larry Gatlin, and others.
And country music used to be conservative in the sense that it was for God and country and family.
even though it explored a lot of conflict within the family, nevertheless, at the end, it was affirming family values.
And the old country singers were, for the most part, conservative, maybe one or two exceptions, but in general.
And then we began to see country music pivot left, and prominent country artists, Garth Brooks maybe being the most notorious or the most famous, and embracing Biden, embracing Obama, pivoting to the left.
And so country music, I'm like, what's happening to country music?
Because it's bad enough that the left has taken over so many institutions, but its invasion of conservative institutions, country music notably, very disturbing.
But now it seems there are some signs that there is a pushback against leftism and wokeism coming from within country music.
I've seen country singers, well, first of all, The Controversy over Jason Aldean and his song Try That in a Small Town.
And you can see this is very much the old style of country music.
But with one modification, the old style of country music didn't have to defend itself against a sort of internal attack.
But now there's BLM, there's rioting, there's all this peaceful protest.
And Jason Aldean is like, listen, you may call it a peaceful protest, but I see fire behind you.
Try this in a small town.
In other words, it's not going to fly.
People in small towns aren't going to put up with the kind of nonsense that apparently city bureaucrats are willing to endure.
And the song had all this kind of imagery of the kind of unacceptable conduct in small towns, including a lot of the BLM riots and the Antifa.
Activism and Antifa rioting.
Now, after that came out, kind of oddly, the song was re-edited and some of the footage taken out and people were like, wait, has Jason Aldean, you know, surrendered?
Has he given in to the left?
Turns out, no. There were some copyright problems with some of the images that he imported into the song.
You have to get permission to use these images.
I know this as a guy who makes movies.
Can't put something on the screen that you haven't gotten permission to use.
In any event, there was something of that sort going on, so the song had to be edited, keeping its theme, keeping its imagery, but removing some of the footage, and so this wasn't a surrender of any kind.
And recently, Jason Aldean was in Massachusetts performing, and he said, listen...
If you want to know, he's talking to people in Boston, if you want to know what I'm talking about, think of something like the Boston Marathon bomber and the massive effort, which was coordinated with police, but also on the part of private citizens coming together, let's find this bad guy and let's go, like, get him. And Jason Aldean goes, hey, listen, if any of you guys would have found that guy before the cops did, I know what you would have done to him.
So in other words, you would have, you know, beaten the guy to a pulp.
And this is the mentality that he's evoking in the song, and I think what's interesting is he's trying to translate the meaning of that song even to an urban, in this case, Boston, audience.
And then Debbie showed me this.
This is actually from starsandstripes.com, and it has an interesting picture of this country singer, Craig Morgan, re-enlisting as a career in the Army at age 59.
Apparently, that's normally too old to re-enlist, but...
But Marsha Blackburn, Senator, who's on the Armed Services Committee, kind of cleared the way for him to do this.
He heard that there was a shortage of recruits from the Army.
Well, the reason for that is the horrible policies of the Biden administration, the sort of woke ideology that is inflicted upon the new recruits.
And so a lot of normal guys are like, listen, I don't want to be parading around in high heels.
I don't want to be doing the gay dance in purple underwear.
So the Army is having trouble recruiting people.
Frankly, if it were me, I'd stay away from this woke army.
But this guy, Morgan, is probably a better guy than me.
And so he's like, listen, I've got more to give.
That's his phrase. I've still got more to give.
So he was sworn into the Army Reserve last weekend at the Grand Old Opry, the kind of home of country music in Nashville, Tennessee.
This is a guy who had been previously in the Army, and he was in for 17 years.
He did 10 of them on active duty.
He was part of the U.S. invasion of Panama.
And he goes, listen, you know, I grew up poor.
The army showed me a better life.
It gave me a place to stay.
It showed me the world.
It gave me an appreciation both for America and for the small things in life.
And this is a guy over the years, even as a country singer, who has done concerts to benefit the troops.
He's gone to Afghanistan.
He's gone to Iraq.
So this is an all-around good guy.
Represents the old and the best of country music.
And I'm glad to have guys like this around at a time when country music seems to have lost its original sense of direction.
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