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July 5, 2024 - The David Knight Show

03:21:05

The David Knight Show - 07/05/2024 - Rebroadcast

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	using free speech to free minds You're listening to The David Night Show.
	Welcome to The David Night Show.
	you you Thank you. Well, joining us now is John Cox.
	As I said, he's a CPA, he's an attorney, and he has been a candidate for California governor.
	And he's written a book about Gavin Newsom, Newsom's Nightmare.
	And so it's good to have you on, John.
	I'm so sorry that you live in California.
	Thank you. Thank you.
	Well, you know, the weather's pretty darn good, David.
	That's why I stay out there, and that's why there's a whole bunch of great companies that are out there, despite Gavin Newsom.
	And that's, I think, the message of the book.
	The book is called, by the way, The Newsom Nightmare.
	So it's available on Amazon and anyplace good books are sold.
	And I hope people get a chance to read it because I think Mr.
	Newsom is going to make a play to be the President of the United States.
	If not in 24, it'll be 28.
	I agree. People ought to know about his record.
	They ought to know about his background.
	They ought to know about what he will do to the country or how he will lead the country.
	And I think that's very germane.
	I agree. And, of course, we all know that even if he doesn't run for president, even if he doesn't get elected president or whatever, what he does there as governor of California has a tremendous impact across the country.
	We'll talk about that in a moment. Let's talk a little bit about his possible presidency this year, for example.
	You know, Biden is 81, and he's not a young 81 either.
	Oh, no. Do you feel the full effect of all those years?
	No. He'll be 86 by the end of the term.
	And so, you know, people are looking at this.
	I look at even his running mate, Lala Harris, I call her, because she's kind of in la-la land.
	But she's, you know, I look at this.
	They might replace her. They might replace both of them.
	And, you know, Trump is also getting pretty old.
	He's 77. He'll be 81 by the end of this next term.
	So he would end up the same age as Biden, but he seems to be physically in better shape.
	And so when you look at this, if they get rid of Biden, and a lot of people in the Democrat Party are really pushing for that, the likely candidates, I think, to replace Biden would be either Michelle Obama or Gavin Newsom.
	But Gavin Newsom is in office, and he is having an effect as he is.
	The things that he's doing right now are having an effect right now on everybody across the country.
	How did you think he did in terms of the debate that he had with Hannity?
	And DeSantis on Fox News.
	I think he did what he wanted to do, and that is he wanted to introduce himself more to the nation, to a different audience, frankly.
	I mean, he's been on MSNBC and CNN quite a bit, so he doesn't need to introduce himself to those audiences.
	The Fox audience, obviously, are different people that don't ordinarily see what he's doing.
	They see a lot of the criticisms, but Newsom came off glib, came off well-spoken.
	He came off citing a whole bunch of Statistics that sound great.
	Gee, it's no revelation that a lot of great companies have started in California.
	Salesforce, Apple, Google, all these great trillion-dollar-plus companies base themselves in California, and who wouldn't?
	You know, I live in California because I just love the weather and the ocean and the natural beauty, and If you're a smart guy with a great business idea, sure, you're going to want to start your business where you can live the best life you can, and that's the place for the best weather.
	But they quickly discover, however, that the government that Newsom leads is nothing short of spectacularly involved in your life.
	They want to tax you to death.
	And so a whole bunch of those companies have decided to ultimately leave, like Tesla, but Nestle, Toyota, you know, I could name a whole bunch of companies.
	And people that have left, they've moved to Tennessee or Florida or Texas, where there's obviously zero tax and where regulation is not going to strangle their future.
	And, you know, they may still keep their homes, by the way, in California.
	I'm certain that most of them do.
	But the government of California does its best to chase productive people out of the state or productive businesses and also make it very, very difficult for the rest of the people.
	If you're not in the top 1% in California, you're living a very difficult life.
	The cost of living, shortages of energy, water, housing, homelessness all over the place, wildfires, crime.
	Yeah, that's what I think of when I look at the home issue, right?
	The homelessness, but even the fact that people can't afford to buy a home.
	And this is absolutely amazing, the pictures of people that you see living out of RVs and just lining the road, as far as you can see, living out of their RVs.
	And then the homeless people who don't even have an RV.
	And all of that is really a function of when you've got a state that is as prosperous as that, and you see that kind of abject poverty contrasted with amazing amounts of wealth, that happens because of government policies and because the government is doing that.
	That's not a natural situation.
	I'm in the housing industry, David.
	That's my business. I build and manage apartments.
	I don't own anything in California.
	Right now I'm building about 1,200 units outside of Indianapolis.
	Indiana is a great example of a state that treats business well, that isn't owned by trial lawyers, that doesn't have huge deficits or pension deficits.
	And I can build wonderful apartments in Indiana for under $200,000 a unit.
	Just gorgeous.
	Granite countertops, beautiful appliances.
	Those same units in California, David, would be $500,000, $600,000 in most of the state.
	And, you know, that's a very big difference in terms of your lifestyle and what you're able to afford and how competitive you are in the rest of the country.
	It's just... So sad.
	And it's mostly, as you said, government that drives up that cost difference.
	And, you know, lumber and windows don't cost a whole lot more in Indiana than they do in California.
	It's the other things.
	Yeah. And it's stuff like fuel, right?
	Fuel is more expensive.
	In California than it is in other places, they've got their own special.
	It's like having their own special wood or something, right?
	They have to have bespoke gasoline, so they've got some refineries that only produce the special blend that California demands.
	And so between that and the really high taxes, as I've reported on the prices of gasoline going up and everything, California is way ahead of even the number two.
	And so it's even more than the taxes.
	is it's also the regulations that he has on the formulation of the fuel there.
	This gets to the essence of Gavin Newsom, and that is he appeals to people on a gut level on some very high emotional issues, like abortion, guns, and climate change.
	It's part of this whole thing to scare the bejesus out of people. You know, the gasoline formulation that California uses, David, makes the tiniest little bit of difference in the total pollution of the world.
	I mean, it is a fraction of a fraction of a fraction.
	India and China are spewing carbon into the atmosphere like nobody's business these days.
	And the tiny little difference that California makes is ridiculously small.
	Yet, this is what drives Gavin Newsom, and this is what the media loves.
	The media loves to herald this stuff, and why?
	Because it gets clicks, and it gets eyeballs, and this is the essence of Gavin Newsom's entire political agenda, and that is, focus on these emotional scare tactics and highly emotional social and other issues that Ignore the stuff that truly makes a difference in people's lives,
	like energy, water, housing, safety, cleanliness, homelessness, all these things that really have an effect on people's lives.
	And he's able to roll to electoral victories because so many people just pay attention to these highly emotional issues and they don't think that you can do anything We're good to go.
	It is so hard to get people to focus, though, on their policy and on their records.
	And I beat my head against the wall trying to get Republicans to do the same thing.
	It's like, okay, you hate this policy.
	You hated the lockdown, but you're supporting the guy that did the lockdown.
	What is going on with all this?
	And of course, you know, with Gavin Newsom, he's very telegenic.
	You know, he looks like he came out of central casting there in Hollywood.
	And, you know, he and his wife.
	And yet, you know, when you start looking at what he did, it's like, whoa, I was so disappointed to see, you know, in California, the people voted him in again, even with everything that had happened there.
	And yet it's not surprising because the Republicans are doing the same thing.
	They don't want to hold anybody accountable for anything that happened in the last three years or even before that.
	And why is that, David?
	The reason is that most voters don't watch your podcast.
	They don't get any kind of a glimpse of the detailed issues that they ought to be focused on.
	All they get fed is a steady diet of 20- or 30-second ads or memes on social media.
	They never have a chance to have a conversation like you and I are having right now.
	They just sit there and they mindlessly look at their phones and they see something and they say, oh gee, I don't like that.
	And they vote for a guy based upon what his opponent says.
	They don't get a chance to actually discuss issues.
	So what I'm proposing in my book, and this is really important, David, is a revolution in how we elect our elected leaders.
	I'm proposing that we change, that we tweak our election processes with regard to Congress especially to get people more involved in getting to the essence of a lot of these issues where it's more than just a 30 second TV ad and it's more than just a meme.
	It's an actual conversation that every voter can have with their representative, which they don't get a chance to now.
	That's the key thing because you lay out the problems but you know unlike, we've got to get past the point of just laying out problems.
	We've got to have some solutions, because things are changing very quickly.
	So that's one of the reasons I wanted to talk to you about that.
	You've got an organization, hearthepeople.org.
	Tell us your vision for how that would change the electoral process.
	The essence of this is the People's House, David, the Congress.
	It was intended by our founders to be the People's House.
	But because they limited the number to 435 about a century ago, the average congressional district is 750,000 people now.
	It's just impossible for people to actually know their congressmen.
	And they don't. They only see them on TV. That's right.
	Let me just interject.
	Even 35 years or so ago, when I ran for Congress, it was about a half a million.
	And now it's gone to 750,000.
	And so you're getting less and less representation, as you will.
	Sorry. So the idea is very simple, David.
	Plice that big district into a hundred little tiny districts.
	Yes. So that each district's only 7,500 people.
	You're not going to use television to reach those 7,500 people.
	You're not going to use social media.
	You're not going to blast radio ads to all of them.
	What you're going to be forced to do is actually go and have a conversation.
	Because 7,500 people is only about 3,000 households.
	Mm-hmm. And you can have a conversation with a couple thousand people.
	You just have to spend a few weekends doing it.
	But you can actually get to know your constituents.
	And more importantly, your constituents can know who you are.
	And they can know what your background is.
	And they can know that you have the character and the confidence and the leadership ability to actually do something.
	Now... As a practical fact, what ends up happening is that these hundred people who were elected in these little tiny districts, they get together at a meeting, and they select one person to go to Washington.
	The other 99 stay home, and they don't have an office, they don't have a pension, they don't have a staff.
	Their entire job is to get together every two years and decide on the guy to go to Washington.
	And then they monitor what that guy does in Washington.
	But you know what that guy in Washington is not going to do, David?
	He's not going to spend six hours of every day on the telephone begging for money.
	That's right. He's going to study the issues.
	He's going to communicate with his constituents.
	He's going to communicate with the 99 people back home who sent him there because he's got to get re-elected and those 99 hold the keys to that, right?
	That's right. So he's going to keep them informed and each of those are going to, in turn, keep their own constituents informed.
	What this does, David, is it really puts the people back in charge of the people's house.
	And I think it would change politics up and down the political spectrum because people then would feel like their voice would be heard and their elected leaders would actually respond to their voice and would have an interest in doing that.
	And it wouldn't be in through the media.
	I think the media has gotten way too much power in this country.
	I hope you agree with that, even though you're a member.
	Yeah. Oh, yeah. No, I don't consider myself to be a member of the media, and they don't consider me either to be that.
	And what you're saying is so true.
	And I remember in the early 90s, we talked about the New Hampshire state legislature.
	Yes, that's where I got this idea.
	That's where I got this idea.
	In the early 90s, I don't know what it is right now, but they said if you spent more than $1,000 running for office, it'd accuse you of trying to buy the election.
	And yet at that time, it was routine for people to spend over $100,000 running for Congress at that time.
	And that's the problem, is that we've allowed this, if you look at the Constitution, it said, well, we're going to have like 30,000 people, one representative for every 30,000 people, we're not going to go past 50.
	And then they just, they didn't even go with that at the very beginning of We just kind of threw that away.
	And then they fixed it and said, we don't care how rapidly the population grows, and we don't care about any of this except we're going to have this fixed number of representatives.
	And I think you're exactly right.
	That's one of the ways that we actually get a representative government is to increase the number of people.
	And when we would talk about this 30 years ago, people would say, well, it's just not practical to do it.
	And it's like, no, you could do it today.
	And you could certainly do it today now that you've got the Zoom technology and all the rest of the stuff that That everybody had to live by over the last three years.
	There's not even a question as to whether or not that'd be a viable way to do it.
	And you'd have the people living in their district instead of maybe traveling to Washington.
	You know, they could still do their work by telecommuting or something like that.
	You're so right.
	The Internet actually multiplies the opportunity for this because...
	Let's say I'm the representative of my own little tiny district of 7,500 people.
	It's a few thousand households.
	You know once I've met every one of those people they know me they trust me. I'll be able to send them emails I'll be able to ask them questions They'll be able to ask me questions if any of them as a crackpot and it asked me wild idiotic questions I can certainly put them in the background But I'll be able to focus on the people of my district who have real concerns And I'll be able to then communicate those concerns to the guy that we sent to Washington that guy that we send to Washington
	and he's gonna listen to me because I'm one of the 99 who sent him there.
	And it won't be because I gave him a whole bunch of money, right?
	Like a union boss or a big corporation or something like that.
	He'll listen to me because he knows I'm one of those 99 and I can unelect him as much as I can elect him.
	And that's really a countable We're a representative Republican democracy, which means that we vote for people to represent us.
	But that only works, David, if those people are actually responsive to us.
	If they're only responsible to the people that give them money for their campaigns, which we know they are, we've lost our representative republic.
	We really have. And my goal here is to get it back.
	Yeah, it's interesting, you know, when we look at what has happened to the government, it has so rapidly distanced itself from us.
	And I think about, you know, we're just watching some old movies for Christmas, and you have these situations where you've got, you know, the cop on the beat, and he would walk the beat, and he knew everybody.
	You know, he knew the grocer, this person, and he knew people on the street, he knew them.
	And so, you know, he and if he sees somebody that he doesn't know, he's kind of keeping an eye on this. Who's this guy? You know, that type of thing. But we've lost that personal touch with everything, but nowhere more so than with the congressional representatives. We don't know these guys.
	They don't know us. And that's why it is so amazing when you see the details of these people's lives that are running for office that you don't know these people at all. They're so distant from you.
	And what do they focus on?
	Each of these people that runs for office, what they focus on is getting on television, getting famous.
	I mean, look at California right now.
	I'm supporting them because I want to support a Republican.
	But, you know, Steve Garvey, a former baseball player, is running for the U.S. Senate.
	God love him.
	He'll be a million times better than Adam Schiff or Barbara Lee or Katie Porter, okay?
	Right. But why is he running?
	Why is he the main candidate on the Republican side?
	Well, because he was in baseball for 30 years or 25 years.
	He got name recognition being in baseball, and so that all of a sudden makes him a great candidate for the Senate.
	I'm sorry. He's a celebrity.
	Probably a celebrity.
	And you know what? We need people who are true leaders.
	Look at Gavin Newsom and, frankly, Donald Trump are the same kind of person.
	They really manipulate the media.
	Why do we know Donald Trump so much?
	Because he's been in the media for 40 years.
	Gavin Newsom grew up with the media.
	His family goes back to governors in California and being part of that whole media thing.
	So, But do they really have the leadership qualities that we look to to be real leaders and real truth-tellers and real, competent, character-filled leaders?
	I'm sorry. We need good leaders.
	Good leaders.
	We need people of good character.
	We need people who can empathize and communicate with us and give us the background of why these policies are important.
	Not just saying close the border, but tell us why that's important.
	Tell us how we're going to do that.
	Tell us the benefits and the burdens of doing all these things.
	We don't get those kinds of discussions, David.
	We just get some soundbite somewhere.
	And And I think that's really damaged our democracy and damaged our country.
	And I think it's one of the reasons why, you know, when you look at Iowa and New Hampshire, they don't necessarily have great track records in terms of picking who's going to go on to win, even the nomination.
	But in those environments, you have a situation where they go into a pizza ranch and they talk to people one-on-one.
	Or they have, you know, even the caucuses or the voters interacting with each other.
	Or in New Hampshire, you know, again, it's that retail touch that you can have.
	And that just doesn't happen anywhere else.
	Everywhere else, it becomes about the advertising budget.
	And I know when I ran, the first question that anybody in the media would ask me was, what's your budget?
	How much money? Yeah, exactly.
	How much money can you raise?
	I'm not interested, because you're not going to be running ads on my TV show, you know, so I'm not interested in you anymore.
	I can get the money somewhere else.
	But, you know, that's what, it's all about the money, and it's about the fundraising, with the exception of those two places.
	But we can see that you've got to have that personal touch.
	People have to know you, but when you've got a celebrity like Steve Garvey, or you've got somebody like Donald Trump, because I've watched them for years on a program, and even if it's not a reality program, even if it's not sports, even if it is like some scripted TV show, they think they know that person.
	They think they know them.
	Exactly. You see, when the person dies, everybody's like, oh, I'm in mourning for this guy that was in Friends or whatever.
	And it's like, you don't know anything about him.
	But they get as upset about that as they do over their friends dying or something.
	Because they do think that they're friends with these people on TV. And that's very true with Gavin Newsom.
	People think that they know this guy.
	They really don't.
	They don't know anything about his background.
	His grandfather helped Pat Brown get elected governor.
	His father helped Jerry Brown get elected governor.
	They have fed at the trough of state politics for 40 years.
	The Newsom family goes back...
	Oh gosh, actually more than 60 years at the power table, feeding off of government in California.
	Squaw Valley, which is now called the Palisades, a big ski area, used to be owned by the Newsom family.
	And why? Because they leveraged their political connections.
	Newsom's father, Gavin Newsom's father, was the lawyer for J. Paul Getty, the first billionaire.
	And he opened doors and he maneuvered the legal system to help the Getty family get, you know, and keep their money.
	So, you know, there's so many connections here, but people don't know that.
	They just think that Gavin Newsom's this good-looking guy with great teeth and great hair, and he spouts statistics that sound good.
	Yeah. I mean, if you look through those statistics, by the way, I mean, I think he said a whopper during the DeSantis debate.
	He said somehow California's middle class pays lower taxes than Florida.
	You know, I heard this, and I say, what planet is he on?
	I mean, this is...
	Nobody would believe that.
	Property taxes, they've got to be the same.
	You know, I know Florida's property taxes are a little bit higher because they don't have an income tax, but they don't have an income tax, and I don't think that even their property taxes are as high as California.
	I may be wrong about that. Not when you look at the cost of housing in California.
	I mean, our tax rate is only 1%, but the average house here costs $2 million versus $1 million in Florida or Texas.
	So, I mean, that means your taxes are still 1% of $2 million, which is $20,000.
	In Texas, it might be 2% of $1 million, which is still $20,000.
	So you're not going to be paying much of a different tax bill, but You know, that's kind of lost on Gavin Newsom.
	I guess, you know, he doesn't expect people to look beyond the headlines there.
	Well, certainly he can get away with it.
	And again, it's because, you know, he's been trained and he's slick.
	Now, did you run for governor?
	Are you going to run for governor?
	No, I did.
	The seat was open in 2018 after Jerry Brown left, and I figured people were going to be sick of Democratic policies, and so I jumped into the race.
	I had an idea about remaking the California legislature in the same way that I'm talking about the Congress here, and Unfortunately, people just didn't pay attention, and the media, and Newsom raised millions, tens of millions of dollars from the unions, from Hollywood, from Silicon Valley, and the people that feed at the trough, and he buried me, but I'm staying involved, and I think this is the right thing.
	Well, that's really good.
	Absolutely, and I've I've mentioned this many times over the years.
	That is the path. And when you talk about doing that in California, it needs to be done at the state levels as well.
	Because the same thing happened at the state levels.
	We've frozen the number of representatives to the state house and the state senate and that type of thing as a population everywhere.
	I mean, you go back and you look at the, you know, 1776 and you look at what the population was.
	It was just like three or four million or something like that.
	And, you know, and there was real representation because people really did know other people.
	And that's the key thing.
	If it gets really big...
	As you pointed out, it's just going to be the people with lots of money and organizations that are going to manipulate them.
	That's who they're going to answer to.
	They don't know us. They don't share our concerns.
	They don't live in our area.
	And as I've said many times, even if you were to go back and say, we're going to limit it to 50,000 people, you'd wind up with like 8,000 congressional representatives.
	Yeah, and that's unwieldy.
	Yeah, yeah. Yeah, but that would be unwieldy.
	I mean, people would look at that and they would say, gee, a body of 8,000 congressmen would be just, you'd never get anything done.
	You know, there'd be just too much stuff.
	That might be a nice feature.
	That might be a nice feature.
	I get that. But, you know, the structure that we've come up with here, where you have 100 sub-districts and then you send one person who's responsive, I think that probably works in a higher population area.
	People can learn about this, by the way, by going to hearthepeople.org.
	We're going to try to get this done in a couple of states.
	I think we're going to start maybe with Arizona.
	And we're going to try to get the state legislature to enact this.
	By the way, that's an important thing, David.
	I'm sure you're a constitutionalist.
	But you realize the Constitution in Article I gives each state the ability to decide how to elect their congressmen.
	Yes. So this is entirely constitutional, and a state, all the state legislature has to do is enact this, and it will be done for the next election.
	So that's what I like about your plan there, because, you know, if you wanted to say, well, we're going to go back...
	And we're going to have, you know, let's say, maybe not 8,000.
	We're going to have, you know, 2,000 members of Congress.
	Well, they determine right now, they said, that's our determination, how many are going to be there.
	But with your system, it spreads out the representation in a hierarchical way, right?
	Instead of saying, well, now we're going to send more people to Washington, which they can't do, you still wind up getting that representation, but in a hierarchical way.
	That's great. In your example, it would be up to the Congress itself to change, to go to 2,000 or 3,000 people.
	And they're not going to do that.
	And why wouldn't they do that?
	Because it would dilute their power, right?
	Yeah. If you're one of 2,000, you're going to have a lot less power than one of 435.
	So that's the last thing they're going to do.
	You're absolutely right.
	They're the ones that froze it at 435 to begin with, you know, back in 1920 or so.
	So what this is going to be required to do is each state legislature is going to have to meet and enact this statute.
	We have a model statute.
	We've had drafts. So it's very easy to do.
	And you know, think about it a second.
	We're going to be able to make an argument that who doesn't want this change?
	The people who will fight this are the media and the lobbyists because they stand to lose that measure of power.
	I think people will look at that and say, hmm, who do we want to have the power?
	Do we want the people to have the power or do we want media and the lobbyists to have power?
	I think the people are going to say, gee, I like this idea because it gives me a greater say over my future and about our leaders, not the media or the lobbyists.
	And that's, I think, long overdue.
	So we're going to start in one state.
	We think that once one or two states does this and the rest of the country hears about it, Every state is going to say, hey, why don't we do this in our state?
	This makes a bunch of sense.
	I think this is a perfect time for this as well.
	Because we're at a time right now where everybody's looking at the institutions and they're saying, you know, this just isn't working.
	I subscribe to the...
	The idea is Strauss and Howe on the fourth turning.
	This type of thing happens like every 80 years.
	But whether you see this as a cycle or not, you can see that this is really what is happening, that everybody is questioning the institutions.
	And we're seeing at the state level a lot of innovative approaches to change certain things.
	Let's come up with some different ways to – it's kind of a backstop of the financial system in case the Federal Reserve really screws up it.
	As many people are worried that it's going to do.
	So you're seeing moves in terms of like a financial backstop to what Washington is doing.
	And many other things like that to nullify what they're doing.
	And so I think the time is ripe for people to look at this and say, wait a minute, let's change the way that we select the congressmen.
	We may not be able to change the number of congressmen that we have, but we can certainly change the way they're selected to make it more representative.
	And there's one word in all this, David, and that word is accountability.
	People don't trust the major institutions.
	And why? Because they don't believe that they're accountable when they mislead us or when they give us bad information or when they give us half the story.
	The big deal with Hear the People is that you're going to have a guy or a girl in your district, 7,500 people who you know, and if that person gives you bad information or gives you information that you know is not true or doesn't pass the smell test or just lacks common sense, you're going to be able to hold that person accountable and you're never going to believe them again.
	What that means is that the person who you interact with, you're going to be able to hold accountable.
	And the 99 are going to be able to hold accountable that person that they've sent to Washington DC at the same time.
	And they're going to be able to hold that Congress accountable.
	That's a really big thing.
	We've lost accountability because it's all about media, it's all about these sound bites, and it's all about lobbyists and how you shade the truth and telling half the story.
	That's right. We've got to do away with that.
	We've got to make our leaders accountable to each one of us, and I think this is a step in that direction.
	Yeah, that's absolutely right.
	Yeah, when you look at the presidential debates are a good example.
	When they get together they talk about the same issues even though the issues have changed significantly.
	Same issues that they talked about for decades.
	They skirt around the issues, they talk past each other as we saw with Newsom and DeSantis.
	And then they get away with this because you've only got two choices.
	And it's like, well I don't like either one of these guys but I really can't stand that guy.
	Because I've seen all these negative ads on him.
	So I'll go for this guy, even though I don't really like him.
	And so all of these things combined together, we've got to find a way to break through that.
	And I like the bottom-up approach that you've got, because we've really got to take this back from the bottom-up.
	We can't take it back from the top-down.
	It's too corrupt. As you just pointed out, the Congress isn't going to loot their power.
	They're not going to do anything to change What they're doing instead, they're trying to put these tentacles further into our lives and to micromanage more and more aspects of our life at the local level.
	And that's why I think you're starting to see these approaches rising up at the state level and below that are saying, no, we're not going to do that.
	We're going to start taking back some of our rightful power in all this.
	And you're absolutely right, by the way.
	The answer to all this is not media that's telling us what we want to hear in soundbites.
	It's to get the people back involved.
	You know, Fox News was created as a reaction to the liberal bent of ABC, CBS, and NBC, right?
	Mm-hmm. But now we've gone to the Fox News silo and we only hear certain things there and then we don't hear over here on the major networks.
	So we're kind of buffeted back and forth.
	And, you know, the people's reaction to all this, David, is to just turn off.
	I mean, you've seen those interviews that they do on the street, you know, Jesse Waters or Jay Leno or one of these.
	They go up and they ask people, you know, name the Supreme Court justices or name your U.S. Senator.
	Most people can't do it.
	Yeah. Most people...
	They have no knowledge of politics.
	And why? Because they're so detached from it.
	They've gotten moved so far away from it that they just don't even want to get involved anymore.
	And you can't blame them because they don't have really any input into it, right?
	It's become so distant from us.
	It doesn't really matter. And I look at it even from that standpoint.
	I got to the point where it's like, I'm trying to focus on my local elections and things like that, even to the extent that, you know, I look at the national elections and there's lessons to be learned there about the directions that they're going to come at us with.
	But I'm, you know, for the real practical stuff, you got to focus on what's local.
	And so we got to grow this from the bottom up.
	That is a great idea.
	I love that. And so that is also discussed in your book about Newsom?
	Yes. Good.
	And there's also a website there as well.
	Hearthepeople.org.
	Hearthepeople.org is the plan laid out there.
	People can see what that looks like.
	But before we leave, tell us a little bit more about, just talk about how California, whether or not Newsom runs for president or God forbid, gets elected president.
	The impact that he has on all of us, whether it is the kind of car that we drive or the appliances that we have, it falls back to the activist government in California and just how big they are compared to other states and how they can throw that weight around, isn't it? Well, listen, Gavin Newsom will survive Gavin Newsom if he gets to be president.
	We survived Barack Obama.
	I think our system is strong enough.
	But you know what? We won't make the same amount of progress.
	People won't have the same opportunities.
	And I think our country will get weaker.
	And if our country gets weaker, I think the world is worse off for that reason.
	I'm involved in a movie about Ronald Reagan right now.
	It's going to come out in a couple of months.
	And Reagan took over for Jimmy Carter.
	We were a weak nation made weaker by Jimmy Carter.
	We had inflation. We had an oil crisis.
	We had threats from the Soviet Union.
	Reagan turned us around and said that we could do better and we could grow and give more people opportunity.
	We just got to get government out of the way.
	Well, you're absolutely right.
	Gavin Newsom is one of those that wants to empower government.
	You know, Hugo Chavez was the same in Venezuela.
	He promised people better stuff through the government.
	You know, Castro did the same for Cuba.
	Oh, you're going to get better health care.
	You're going to get better this and that.
	And guess what? Spectacular failures. I don't want to see the United States go down that route.
	And let me tell you, Joe Biden has taken us down that route.
	Jimmy Carter tried to. Ronald Reagan saved us. I don't necessarily see another Reagan on the horizon to save us from Joe Biden.
	And if it turns out to be Gavin Newsom, I think that could lead us further down this road to more government, more mismanagement, a lower standard of living, a weaker country, a weaker, more dangerous world I don't want to see that happen.
	I want to see us become a better country, and that's why I'm warning people about Gavin Newsom.
	That's why I'm publishing this book.
	That's why I'm appearing with you and getting this idea out.
	I talk about this a great deal on this program, you know, his energy policies, his car policies and things like that that have an effect on other people, but also the immigration policy that he has there.
	You know, you come in as an illegal immigrant, as you pointed out, you've got Hugo Chavez and you've got Castro promising all this free stuff to everybody, which is what the socialists and the Marxists do.
	But now we've got Gavin Newsom and other people like him promising it to people in other countries.
	Yeah. At least Hugo Chavez was promising it to the Venezuelans.
	He wasn't promising it to, you know, the people from El Salvador or Peru or Mexico or whatever.
	But, you know, Gavin Newsom is promising it to the world.
	Just come here, get across that finish line, and you're done.
	You can collect unemployment.
	You get free medical care and all the rest of this stuff.
	And, of course, that's going to bankrupt us very rapidly.
	I think that was the plan.
	You know, Cloward and Piven economists talked about this years ago, said the welfare state.
	It's not growing quickly enough, and we can make it grow even faster and make people even more poor and more dependent on government if we can do this.
	And I think that's the real strategy that's there.
	Talk about what is happening with the immigration issues with Newsom.
	Yeah, the border. Well, this is a prime example of a false choice that gets demagogued all the time, David.
	I'm a Jack Kemp Republican.
	I believe that the United States has benefited tremendously from bringing people who want to contribute to us into the country.
	Most other countries do the same thing.
	They have a very strong immigration policy that welcomes people who want to contribute to our growth and our opportunity.
	That's not what's happening with our southern border.
	Anybody and anybody can come across that border without any restrictions and without any knowledge of who they are or what they're planning to do.
	That's just as wrong as a total closing of every input to our country.
	We need to certainly get more people.
	Our kids are not having enough kids.
	I don't want to see us end up like Japan, which has a no-growth economy and has terrific problems caring for its elderly.
	We need to have Some growth.
	We need to have controlled immigration.
	We need to know who's coming into the country.
	This is a false choice.
	The Democrats are just letting the borders completely open, which is just so incredibly wrong for our future.
	And frankly, it's misleading to everybody who's coming in as well.
	They think they're going to come here and live a wonderful life.
	And a lot of them discover that they're just not going to be able to.
	We need to make sure that our borders are secure.
	You can't have a secure country without it.
	And this is another example of politicians who just aren't leading.
	They're just not leveling with the people on both sides, frankly.
	I agree. I agree, yeah, because there's a lot of, you know, again, I should point out, legal immigration, knowing who the people are, that's one thing.
	But no matter what they do at the border, if they've got this massive welfare magnet pulling people across and promising them free stuff, that's the real issue.
	And we shouldn't have a problem with people who want to work and people who want to be contributing to the economy, but we ought to know who's coming in.
	You just had this massive...
	And Ecuador. Just massive prison breaks and drug cartels and everything.
	So what are they doing in neighboring Peru and other countries?
	They're saying, well, we sent police to the borders and we said, you're not coming in here unless you've got some kind of paperwork from your government showing you don't have a criminal record.
	We don't do any of that stuff.
	They'll just come up here, you know, and come in.
	And they are. Yeah. And they are.
	Yeah. Yeah, they are coming up here.
	And, you know, again, the politicians just jither and demagogue, and they don't get the job done.
	They need to be securing the border.
	But then they need to make it easier for quality people, for people who are interested in working hard and contributing to America.
	And you're absolutely right, by the way, the welfare state in America is what's going to destroy us.
	I mean, we have got, we're spending, what, six and a half trillion dollars this year.
	We're only, and I say only, raising $4.5 trillion from the tax revenue, which, by the way, is a record.
	That's a record amount of tax revenue.
	But the politicians in Washington are spending it.
	And what are they doing? They're maintaining a welfare state.
	You know, something like 80% of the people now are on Medicaid.
	They've expanded that all the way through all the states.
	And governors like Newsom have willingly taken this money.
	Interestingly, of course, you know, DeSantis, Abbott, a lot of red state governors have refused it.
	And why? Because they know it's a drug.
	It's going to be there for one or two years, and then it's got to go because it's unsustainable.
	And they don't want to get, you know, tied into this drug.
	They don't want to you know balance their budgets on Medicaid. They want to make sure that they're sustainable And and it's not sustainable for the government to have our entire medical system supported by the government our medical system should be free market just like Cars just like energy just like every other good or service It ought to be free market ought to be driven by the private sector. It ought to be driven by innovation It ought to be driven by competition
	Putting it in the hands of the government is the surest way to destroy it.
	Well, I agree. And yet, you look at these last three years, they don't want your physician to even have a say-so in your healthcare, let alone you.
	And when you look at the strings that come attached to this money that they give you, That was kind of the way they rolled this thing out.
	First, they gave them massive bonuses, you know, to follow the Fauci protocols in the hospitals.
	You diagnose somebody as a COVID patient, we'll give you a 20% bonus.
	And then the next year, after the bribery, what follows is the blackmail.
	We're not only going to take away that bonus, but we're going to take away all your Medicare and Medicaid patients and bankrupt you if you don't get all your staff shot, you know, with a vaccine.
	And guess who... And guess who are some of the biggest supporters of Gavin Newsom in California?
	Healthcare entities.
	Yeah, that's one thing we should talk about is how they rolled out the vaccine mandates in California.
	And I believe that was under Newsom, wasn't it, where they started saying, you're not going to have any religious or medical exemptions for any of these childhood vaccines.
	They've been laying the groundwork for this kind of stuff for a long time.
	And I think it's one of the reasons why Washington is pushing so hard to get everybody addicted to this Medicare, because that's going to be one of the most effective ways that they can use to control us and say, well, now you're going to have to get the ID, or you're not going to get any medical care.
	We've already seen that done by Gates in India with the Adhar system.
	We'll give you welfare, we'll give you medical care, but you're going to have to take the digital ID. And so there's all these strings that are attached to it, but they begin by bribing people.
	It's always... And guess what, David?
	Everybody is going to need health care at some point in their lives.
	And so the more government can control a service like that that almost everybody's going to need, the more that government then control your life.
	This is an old playbook.
	And Hugo Chavez used it.
	Castro used it.
	You know, you promise people something that they know they're going to need and you tell them that government's going to provide it and they'll give you their power.
	And that's what this is all about, David.
	It's about a small group of people trying to control the population.
	And it's the story of human history.
	You go back to the pharaohs.
	It's the story of human history.
	The United States has stood out among all the countries that ever existed as a place where government was limited.
	The Constitution was about limiting the scope and size of government.
	And along the way, we really have lost that idea.
	We really let that idea slip.
	And I think it's time to bring it back.
	That's what our proposal is all about with Hear the People.
	Putting those limits back on government, and I think the people, you know, they do want to run their own lives.
	They don't want government telling them how to live.
	That was Ronald Reagan's plea to us.
	That was the key to his success and appeal.
	We need another Ronald Reagan, and that's in the book, too, by the way, so you'll get the chance to read that.
	Well, you know, when you look at the rights, and as you correctly pointed out, it was about prohibiting government from interfering with our God-given rights.
	That's what the Bill of Rights was about.
	It's very clever. I remember when Obama was running for president, or shortly after he got elected, I can't remember exactly when he said it.
	It was at the very beginning. And he said, and he had taught this, and he knew exactly what he was doing, but they control the way that you perceive things by the terminology.
	And so he said, well, you know, I know that this was set up, and we got prohibitions there for government.
	We call that negative rights.
	But, you know, a positive right is your right to health care, or your right to an education, or to housing, or to this.
	And it's like, oh, whoa, I want the positive stuff.
	I don't want the negative stuff any completely.
	Completely turned it upside down by using those labels, and it had absolutely nothing to do with the Constitution.
	He knew that, but he's great at selling stuff, isn't he?
	I knew Obama very well.
	I'm from Illinois. I'm from Chicago.
	And I ran for the U.S. Senate, and I once debated Obama for an hour and a half just on those ideas, education and health care.
	And you know, David, you know what his big...
	Response to me was, we need government to help people with education and healthcare.
	We can't let people, and these are his words, fend for themselves.
	We can't let people, people are too stupid in his world, people are too stupid to choose their own healthcare or their own education.
	Government has to do it for them.
	And darned if that wasn't his program on becoming President of the United States, We're good to go.
	But Obama didn't want to hear that.
	I mean, he disagreed with me on that, and we debated on that.
	I wish I had a tape of that debate, by the way, because it was an hour and a half, and he and I were the only ones there.
	I wish you would have beat him.
	I wish you would have beat him in the election.
	I'm sure you beat him in the debate, but I wish you'd beat him in the election.
	It would have been a very different world, wouldn't it, if we'd had John Cox instead of Barack Obama.
	But you know, that is a very, that's the same kind of argument, John, that if you go back and you look at Civil War history, we talk about Civil War a lot, but everybody wants to talk about the Civil War now.
	Well, you go back and you look at it, and you've got a lot of people who were plantation owners and slave owners, and they said, well, we realize this really isn't a very good system, and we feel bad about the fact that we're controlling these people and enslaving them, but you know, it's for their own good.
	If we let them loose, they just wouldn't be able to survive.
	You know, it's the same kind of paternalism that Obama is selling.
	That's a slave plantation mentality, and it's actually the mentality of the plantation owners.
	Well, I have to enslave them for their own good.
	And that's why Reagan's message was so wonderful, because it was just so simple.
	You know, the eight most dangerous words in the English language is, I'm from the government, and I'm here to help you.
	You know, the stuff that Reagan said was so true to so many people.
	You've got to get government out of the way.
	Government can't be all things to all people.
	Government should do our defense, because we don't want people owning nuclear weapons and tanks and other things like that.
	So government... We should provide national defense, and that's what the Constitution specifically says.
	But on all these other things, healthcare, education, government shouldn't be providing those things.
	Government should create the avenues for private industry to be able to provide those things, and that's what we've got to get back to.
	And yet, as I'm sure you're aware, you know, you're talking about education.
	We just had Biden's education secretary.
	So, you know, that's our mission statement.
	I'm from the government. I'm here to help you.
	Totally oblivious to the fact that Reagan used that as the fearful words that everybody doesn't want to hear.
	I'm sure you're aware of that. It was really funny that he bought into that.
	And so few people called him on it.
	It truly is amazing to see that.
	Well, I think you've got a great plan.
	I'm sure that it's a very, well, I know that it is a very relevant book.
	Gavin Newsom, whether there's a presidential race or not, has a tremendous impact on everything across the country.
	People need to understand where he's coming from.
	A good example of an elitist politician that we don't want to keep promulgating that system.
	and it's great to see that in your book you have a plan for how we can start from the bottom up to reform this without having to beg Congress to reform themselves, which of course they will never do.
	Hearthepeople.org is where people can see that plan.
	I guess they can find your book on Amazon.
	You also sell it at hearthepeople.org?
	Yes.
	It was great talking to you, and I'm so grateful that you've come up with this plan.
	We need people to think outside of the box that they have put us into, and we need to look for state solutions, and we need to look for ways that we can...
	I look at this as essentially...
	A way of nullification, a positive way to nullify this calcified system that has become so self-interested that it won't respond to us and it can't be reformed.
	So I think that's a very important way to do it.
	And let me make this clear, by the way.
	Here the people is not partisan in any way.
	Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump would agree on the same thing in one sense.
	Bernie Sanders talks about corporations and millionaires and billionaires.
	Donald Trump talks about the deep state and the media and the fake news, right?
	Mm-hmm. Well, you know, here the people gets rid of both.
	Here the people puts the power back in the people's hands, gets rid of the media influence, and gets rid of the big corporations.
	And so I think people can look at it as a bipartisan, as a solution that both sides, that all the people can get around and believe is the right way for us to go.
	I agree. And even as we try to engage and debate ourselves on social media and they try to censor us, this is a way that people can get directly involved.
	And it is something that is a personal, direct person-to-person type of thing, grassroots, moving up.
	These are all the things that we need to be looking to.
	These are all elements of what I think are going to be any successful solution.
	So thank you so much for doing that again.
	HearThePeople.org. And the book is Newsom's Nightmare, The Newsom Nightmare.
	And you'll find that.
	Thank you, David.
	Really a pleasure to be with you.
	Thank you.
	Thank you.
	We've got just a little bit of time left and just enough time for me to thank Steven Patterson.
	Thank you again, Steven.
	That is very generous.
	I appreciate the tip on ROCFIN.
	And we're about ready to go out, so I'll just cut this short.
	Tomorrow we're going to talk a little bit more about the pharmaceutical stuff that I did not get to today, because there's some very important updates on that.
	Yes, Fox News is out there trying to sell measles panic again.
	And we shut that down once and for all.
	But that's always the way they begin, and they keep going back to that.
	That's their bread and butter. That's their pharmaceutical sponsors that they've got there.
	Thank you for joining us.
	Let me tell you, The David Knight Show, you can listen to with your ears.
	You can even watch it by using your eyes.
	In fact, if you can hear me, that means you're listening to The David Knight Show right now.
	Yeah, good job.
	And you want to know something else?
	You can find all the links to everywhere to watch or listen to the show at TheDavidNightShow.com.
	That's a website.
	I was hit by a jet ski and I was told by a doctor that I may have only five hours to live if my liver had been totally destroyed.
	And I was faced with all of a sudden this idea that in five hours I might be standing before the judgment seat of Christ.
	I was 30 years old.
	I knew the Bible very well.
	I was happily married. I had two kids.
	I was very much the epitome of a good American Christian.
	And I realized at that moment when it was real and I was laying on a gurney, I'm going to get before Christ and this is going to be inadequate.
	I will not go in with my head held high.
	What have I done to help all the hurting people out there?
	Not much. And I realized at that moment I never wanted to be in that situation again.
	Theology in books is one thing.
	Theology, when you're laying on a gurney realizing, I might be seeing Christ in the next couple of hours, is another.
	When I was on the Los Angeles Police Department and I saw a brutal, awful crime in a really horrific crime area, and then as I got into international business, I got to see that depravity is in $5,000 suits just like it's in do-rags and running around with AK-47s.
	We see over here on the nice Americanized Christianity that we have that some people do seem totally transformed and some not.
	Lots of people claim to be Christians, lots of people believe in Christ, but they don't seem that much different than some of the stuff I saw on the streets of Los Angeles.
	What's the difference?
	Jesus has given us the formula for that difference in the Sermon on the Mount.
	Jesus has this list of intense demands that he's put upon us.
	Those are the things that are the requirements for living out this life with great joy and power in him.
	Well, Christ has said, you can be my salt, you can be my light, you can be the change maker in this world if you follow me, deny yourself, pick up your cross daily.
	And by the way, when you're that person, I will shower you with great rewards in eternity when you get there and a content and joyful life here in this world where you're seeing change and transformation around you as people see you this great light of the Holy Spirit.
	Have you ever seen how some Christians are so filled with great joy because they have lived up to the Sermon on the Mount, and they're living out the life that Christ demands, not for salvation, but for all the promises after salvation.
	And so we want to walk through that in a daring faith in a cowardly world, realizing that the world is counting on us.
	To carry out the good works that Jesus laid down at the beginning of time for you and I to accomplish.
	And if we do that, we will reap great rewards from our master when we get to heaven.
	And say, Lord Jesus, I live for you.
	I gave all for you.
	And have him say, well done, my good and faithful servant.
	Okay, and that's our guest, Ken Harrison, and you saw the book there.
	This is his newest book, A Daring Faith in a Cowardly World.
	And so joining us now is Ken Harrison.
	He is volunteer chairman and CEO of Promise Keepers, and he's done a great deal of things in his life, but thank you for joining us, sir.
	Thanks, David. I appreciate it.
	It's really important for us to, I think Promise Keepers has a very important message, especially for these times that we live in.
	And it is very important for men to understand what their role is.
	And you put that out there in a very positive way.
	Tell us a little bit about the organization Promise Keepers.
	Well, Promise Keepers was the biggest men's movement in the history of the church back in the 90s under Coach Bill McCartney.
	So they were getting together, men filling up NFL stadiums, 60,000, 70,000 men at a time.
	I remember that, yeah.
	Yeah, and they actually had a gathering in Washington, D.C. in 97 called Stand in the Gap.
	Most people think it was called the Million Man March.
	It was called Stand in the Gap and they had 1.4 million men together to worship Christ for the day.
	It's the biggest gathering in the history of Washington, D.C. So it was a pretty impactful organization.
	It's sort of faded out of relevance for a while, but we've been coming back for the last few years.
	That's good. But yet, you know, as we see so many times in the cancel culture, what is surprising is to see that Christian venues are now canceling promise keepers because they don't like anything that is masculine, anything that talks to men about keeping their promises that they make.
	Tell us a little bit about that and what's been happening with that.
	It is truly amazing. I saw that and I just was really astounded because, as you point out, Promise Keepers was so big 20, 30 years ago.
	And now we've got liberal churches.
	Churches have gone so far to the left that they want to ban Promise Keepers for what they call their gender ideology.
	Yeah, and I've been as shocked as you have.
	We went to Dallas Cowboy Stadium two years ago.
	We had 30,000 men there.
	It was a huge event.
	And then we thought, well, let's do a bigger tour.
	We get letters from all over the world saying, could you come here?
	And we thought, well, instead of doing one huge event in one location, which takes so much, just a lot of stuff, let's just go to churches.
	Wouldn't that be great? And we'll go all over.
	And we have found we've been canceled and canceled.
	And a lot of times, David, it's not about ideology.
	A lot of times it's just plain about cowardice.
	So we had one church come to us.
	We met with the elders and they said, listen, we agree with you on everything.
	We're so sorry. We just don't want any protesters.
	We don't need anybody to think badly of us.
	We don't want to be occupied from our community.
	Right. And I mean, if you've read the Gospels, if you read the words of our Lord, you think, how in the world could you, as an elder of a church, literally say, I don't want to be unpopular?
	They need it worse than anybody at that church.
	That's absolutely amazing. And that's what's happened.
	That's what we see everywhere.
	That's why, you know, the church is just disappearing, because nobody will stand for the truth.
	And you look at that and you say, well, then maybe you don't really believe it.
	So why am I coming to your church?
	You know, A.R. Bernard is on our board.
	People think he's...
	I don't know if you know who A.R. Bernard is.
	He has a huge church in New York City.
	A lot of people say, oh, he's woke.
	He's not woke. He's an incredibly brilliant man.
	Huge church in New York City with 40,000 people.
	And he said something to me that I thought was so profound.
	He said, Ken, you know what the difference between a strong preference and a conviction is?
	No. When you think about that, everybody at Homeless, what is the difference between a strong preference and a conviction?
	A conviction is not negotiable.
	Yes. That struck me as so profound.
	Because when we see St.
	Jerome being barbecued face down in Rome, and after 15 minutes of him singing songs and laughing, he finally yells out, I'm done on this side, you can turn me over now.
	That's a guy with convictions, right?
	Now we have churches saying, well, we don't want protesters that might make us uncomfortable.
	And the ironic thing about it is our tour is called Daring Faith.
	Because what we're saying to men is, you started this at the beginning, what is our identity?
	Who are we? And as a church, we've gotten this wrong.
	And the greatest lie is the one that's closest to the truth that brings you to the wrong conclusion.
	And the lie that's been seeded throughout the evangelical church is that we're all sinners saved by grace.
	Well, that's true, but it's only half true.
	Because when you think you're a sinner saved by grace and you stop there, that becomes your identity.
	I guess I'm a sinner. Instead, we're sinners saved by grace made into new creations in Christ Jesus for good works, which were prepared beforehand that we should walk into Ephesians 2.10.
	We've been made new creatures that the Spirit of God has been deposited in each person who's put their faith in Christ.
	Now, we're sons and daughters of the Most High God, and we need to act like it.
	So... The identity is a problem because when men see, well, I'm just a sinner, then suddenly we see what we have today, which is, well, I struggle with porn, but I'm trying to do better.
	No. You're a new creature.
	You shouldn't be struggling with porn.
	What did John say when everyone showed up on the launch of Jesus' ministry?
	Jesus comes to get baptized.
	John looks up and looks at everybody and says, Repent.
	You brood of vipers, who told you to repent for the coming of the Lord?
	Repent and sow deeds.
	Consistent with your repentance.
	That's something we hear in the church a lot today.
	And that was the beginning of Jesus' ministry.
	That's right. Yeah, it's like, you know, if we're going to be witnesses to people, we've got to tell the truth, the whole truth.
	Nothing but the truth, right?
	I had George Barnard, and he was talking about how people were like, oh, yeah, you know, it's like a smorgasbord.
	We'll bring a little bit of this thing over there and a little bit of that thing over there.
	You know, so we add some things that aren't true to it, you know, but then the other part of it is that you're talking about is that we don't have the whole truth.
	You know, Jesus would constantly, you know, heal somebody and say, now go your way and sin no more.
	You know, you've been changed.
	And if we haven't been changed, and if we don't have that sense of transformation that changes, then we need to go back and we need to say, well, have I really been changed?
	Have I been saved? Is that something there?
	Because if you have, it's going to work itself out.
	And so we need to look at that and say, does my life really reflect what I say that it does?
	Am I really living that?
	And of course, today we're seeing this more and more.
	That's why, you know, talking about Promise Keepers, you were kicked out of a private Christian university in Nashville, out of a church in Cordova, Tennessee, out of a big church in Houston, and on and on.
	And I just looked at this. I was astounded.
	It's like, what is wrong with With telling people to keep their promises, you know, and be a good husband and a good father and that type of thing that you're encouraging men to take that role.
	You know, what have we gotten to in a society where that is something that people hate in churches or Christian universities or, as you pointed out, they're afraid of the criticism that's going to come their way?
	Yeah, I mean, the Bible says that in the last days, the love of many will grow cold.
	Why? Because of a lack of teaching doctrine.
	And, you know, when people listen to this, I think they think, well, am I getting the whole story?
	I mean, maybe this Ken Harrison guy's a real jerk, or maybe he promised.
	I mean, we're taught to think that way.
	Everybody, I'm not a jerk.
	And we really have gone with the grace of the Lord.
	We just teach God's Word.
	One of the criticisms we get from people, because, you know, when you have people who want to spread hatred, they're not bogged down by truth.
	You know, they say whatever they say.
	And one of them is, well, you know, we want to subjugate women.
	And I'm quoted all over the place as saying, my role is not to tell women how to behave.
	I stay out of it. I'm not a pastor.
	I run Promise Keepers.
	It's here to tell men how to behave.
	So I'm here to tell men how to be humble, gracious leaders in their home, biblically understand so they can raise their kids.
	We don't ever mention anything about women or anything like that.
	So it's all about humility.
	Who wouldn't want a husband who's humble and gracious and knows the Bible and raises his kids, right?
	So really, it's unbelievable when you look at the fact that churches are walking away from this.
	And it's terrifying.
	And I will say, I think that there is a welcome change in the church coming in that I think COVID changed a lot of things when people realized that they could sit in their robe and watch Francis Chan on YouTube instead of the world.
	Yeah.
	The megachurch movement has taken over starting in the 80s where, you know, a really good speaker with good music...
	I ended up with this massive campus and people all went there and it was nameless and faceless and they did their church thing and they went home.
	Well, culture no longer values going to church.
	And now I don't need to go to church and be nameless and faceless because I can watch it on YouTube.
	So I think what's church about?
	Church is about lifting brothers and sisters up in Christ and sharpening each other.
	So church is about relationship.
	teaching biblical doctrine. So for those churches that are teaching biblical doctrine and there's relationships and I'm telling you it starts with the men because women actually make relationships but men don't. Those churches are going to be the ones who flourish. I think we're going to go back more to a local church where people really know each other, they raise each other's kids instead of this nameless, faithless, mega church.
	And I tell you, that's going to be a welcome time.
	I agree. I agree. I've seen this in terms of silver linings and what happened in 2020 from the standpoint of, I've talked for the longest time to people about schools, and it's like, you know, be careful about what the institution is.
	Oh, it's not my school, or it's not our school here.
	And even if it is our school, it's not my classroom.
	And then they were able to see what was actually being taught in the classroom.
	And so that was a real, you know, wake-up moment for people, just like a lot of the Zoom church stuff was a wake-up, and churches that said, well, you know what, they've said that there's this sickness going around, so maybe we just, it's not important enough for us to get together, you know?
	So you see some things like this, and it's been really kind of an opportunity for For people to reevaluate the sincerity of the institutions and to reevaluate what is actually happening in their lives.
	And so I do agree with you. I think it's not going to be everybody, but it's going to be certainly a lot of people Have awakened to what was going on in their schools, what was going on in their churches, as they saw this stuff being locked down.
	And so that's the unintended positive consequences, I think, that God is using.
	Give us an idea. You mentioned a little bit of this, but, you know, tell us a little bit about what a Promise Keepers rally is about.
	So this is men talking to men like men.
	And so, you know, when you look at a marriage, you need to have a mother and a father for an optimal raising of a kid.
	It's not always possible. But when little Johnny skins his knee, he needs mom there to say, Johnny, it's okay.
	Let me put a band-aid on. Let me kiss it, make it better.
	Well, every once in a while, Johnny needs dad to go.
	You're not that hurt. Get up and get going.
	Right? That's right, yeah.
	In our society, we're lacking dads.
	And so what we have is so many victims running around.
	Well, my dad was mean, and so now I'm screwed up.
	And my coach didn't play me.
	And, you know, excuses.
	And so what we're here to say is, look, that may be true.
	You may have had a bad father or no father.
	It may be a lot of things.
	Now, what are you going to do about it?
	It's time to stand up and be counted as a man of God.
	Because your wife and your kids are counting on you to be a man.
	Exercise self-control.
	So that's what this is really about.
	So these are mini events.
	They're Friday night only. They go from, depending on the city, like 6 to 9.
	The first one will be New York City on December 1st.
	And it's going to be actually globally simulcast for free to the whole world.
	So anybody who's not near New York City can just go sign up at promisekeepers.org and get the simulcast.
	We're trying to do that through churches because, again, we want to drive a relationship amongst men.
	We don't want them sitting at home in the road.
	We want them out with other men.
	But we're going to take on real issues.
	We're going to have Becca Cook there, who was a major Hollywood presence homosexual who got saved and completely changed his life.
	Went to Talbot Seminary.
	So, Becca, tell us.
	We're going to have an interview. Tell us, how do you witness to homosexuals?
	How should we approach them?
	How did you get saved? What if our kid comes to us and says that they're struggling with this issue?
	Like, Real issues.
	We're going to deal with depression.
	You know, 80% of suicides in America are for middle-aged men.
	So we're going to deal with mental health, but it's all wrapped around Christ because that's all that really matters.
	How can we live our lives for Jesus Christ, abandon to Him?
	So it's going to be very interesting.
	This is not celebrity-driven.
	This is not come see the big speaker or the big singer, none of that.
	This is three hours of sober worship, sharpening each other, and real information that you just can't get anywhere else because we're not going to screw around.
	We're not going to tell you You're just so fine and everything is just so great.
	We're going to deal with the real issues as Christ did.
	Repent. The kingdom of God is at hand.
	That's right. Well, that's good.
	So promisekeepers.org, the first event is going to be December the 1st, in case your church is not telling you about it.
	But people can find the live stream there.
	And then what is, you've got events that are scheduled throughout the next year, I guess, as well, right?
	We should have a lot of them.
	I can't announce any of them yet because we have a whole bunch that are almost solidified.
	To be honest with you, I've learned that I have to make sure that everything is solid before I announce the big, unless we get to ask.
	Yeah, I know. Well, it's what we're seeing with the libraries.
	You know, libraries have been taking over the drag queen story time hours, and so you have, I mean, as you had...
	I can't think of his name. The actor who started...
	Kirk Cameron.
	As he started going around doing that, they started canceling him left and right.
	And then if they couldn't cancel it, they created disturbances there and everything.
	I mean, it truly is amazing.
	You know, the other people have beliefs that they hold very dear.
	And they will fight against those.
	I mean, we're even seeing now for the third time this woman who quietly goes to abortion clinic and prays silently for the third time she's been arrested.
	It's just amazing to see that level of persecution all over the place.
	But as you point out, it is everywhere we turn.
	Men are being denigrated, being mocked as Homer Simpsons with nothing at all to contribute, even to the extent they're replacing the caveman with a cavewoman.
	It's kind of ridiculous.
	But tell us a little bit about your books.
	Your first book was Rise of the Servant King, where the Bible says about being a man.
	Tell us a little bit about that, and we'll get into the newer book after that.
	But tell us first about the Rise of the Servant Kings.
	Yeah, that one is a really no-nonsense approach on being a godly man.
	It's full of L.A. cop stories because I was an L.A. policeman.
	As you said, I'd done a lot of things.
	And so there's some stories in there that the publisher was like, whoa, you don't see these in Christian books.
	And a lot of real positive feedback.
	In fact, I've gotten hundreds of letters from women who have read it and been blessed because it's really a discipleship book dressed up and then being a man because you've got to learn how to be a disciple of Jesus Christ to learn how to be a real man.
	That's right. So there's that one.
	And then the next one that came out recently is Daring Faith in a Cowardly World, which I love that title.
	I didn't come up with it.
	The publisher did. Thomas Nelson.
	But it basically says that, again, we talk about identity.
	people think that you said the prayer, you're saved, and now you just have yours.
	And it's time, there's nothing left to do.
	And instead, actually, when you read what Christ said over and over, in fact, his final words in Revelation 22, he says, behold, I'm coming quickly.
	And my reward is with me to give to each person according to what he has done.
	Yes.
	That we're Christians.
	So the idea here is there will be a judgment seat of Christ.
	Second Corinthians 5.10, that we'll all stand before.
	Jesus Christ doesn't care what we did before we were saved.
	We were dead in our sins.
	We're saved by grace through faith alone.
	However, after we were saved, our lives do matter and we will be judged.
	Jesus says, At the end of Matthew 24, he says that the servant I come to find serving me will be put in charge of many things.
	And so the idea here is there's a reason to have daring faith, because it will matter for a entire eternity.
	It will be rewarded for those who really walk with Christ and those who didn't.
	And just to put a cherry on that, you know, because of Promise Keepers, I get to talk to all these famous pastors and be friends with everything.
	And the famous theologian who called me up and said, Hey, man, I got to tell you, I read your book.
	I heard about it being about good works for Christians, and he goes, I sat down with a pen to shred it, and I was going to go on my radio show and tear you to pieces.
	And he goes, when I got done with your book, I was completely convinced, and now I can't unsee it.
	Every time I open my Bible, it's good works, rewards, good works, rewards.
	He goes, how did I miss this all these years?
	Yeah. That's what that book is about.
	And that's this challenge of this tourist.
	Men, your lives matter greatly.
	And because we think our lives don't matter is why we're dropping the ball.
	Because, David, and I know you talk about this, but think about it.
	What they're doing to our children.
	Here in Colorado, when you're six years old, you go to school, they want to know what gender you are.
	And I just had someone telling me their daughter went to school for her first day of first grade.
	Are you a boy or a girl?
	Well, I'm a girl. Are you sure you're a girl?
	Do you want to be a boy? I'm really trying to talk her into being something other than she is.
	Why are we not so outraged about what they're doing to our kids?
	Instead, to circle back, I see churches that are caught up in bureaucracy and money and not having protesters.
	Man, oh man, they're tearing at the core of who we are as a people.
	We, as the people of Christ, ought to just have our hearts being ripped out and in love.
	Doing everything we can.
	Because as you said, the other side actually believes this nonsense because they're deceived by the evil one.
	Our enemies are not flesh and blood, but they're the powers and the powers of darkness.
	We need to be waking people up to the truth because people know the truth when they hear it.
	And when they really hear truth, they're going to have one reaction or another.
	They're either going to repent or they're going to hate you.
	That's what happens because they're going to be utterly in their deception.
	2 Thessalonians 2 and Romans 1.
	Some people are just completely abandoned to their evil and they're going to hate you.
	You're promised. Jesus promises us that they're going to hate us.
	And some people we can rescue.
	And what a glorious day that is.
	That's why we're here in this world.
	I just want to wake Christians up.
	Stop being so dang comfortable.
	Stop looking for the approval of the world and start looking for the approval of the one who matters, Jesus Christ.
	If you have an audience of one, it's amazing how easy life gets because you don't care what anybody else thinks, right?
	It's a lot easier, more joyful.
	That's right. Such great advice.
	Yeah, you know, we look at things and it's so easy to fall off one side or the other and get things unbalanced.
	And so our response to a lot of people who think that they can earn their way into heaven is to say, no, you can't do that.
	There isn't any way that you can undo what has happened.
	Only Christ can undo that.
	But then as you point out, if we don't look at the fact that He's saved us to good works and to do good things, that's the other, you know, we can get on one side of the extreme or the other.
	You know, it can be all about works or we can all be about grace only.
	But it's the combination of those two things that are so important to try to get those in the proper understanding and to understand, you know, now that we're at this point, you know, I think of the, everybody's, everybody knows a parable of the talents.
	And we, that's now because of the way that was translated as a unit of silver.
	It was an amount of money that was given to these people in Jesus' parable.
	Now people have said, well, you know, you have certain talents, things that God has given you.
	What are you going to do with that? And when we look at that parable, The people who don't do anything with what they were given.
	They get strong condemnation from Jesus, right?
	And so that's the key thing.
	That's where we are right now. You know, look at all of the things that God has given us.
	He has given us not only forgiveness, but he's given us abilities.
	What are we going to do with that where we are?
	That's the key thing that Christians need to be asking themselves right now.
	And we have just stopped short of that in so many churches.
	That got the part of the gospel right, but they also just stop at that point and don't go any further.
	You know, that parable, I go into it in detail.
	But you'll notice the first two servants are given a certain amount of money and they go invest it and they take risks.
	The last servant doesn't do anything with it.
	And why not? He doesn't want to take any risk.
	And what does Jesus say?
	Throw him into the outer darkness.
	Okay, so number one, there's this contempt for him because he was a coward.
	And number two, what's the outer darkness?
	Because these guys are all Christians.
	They're in heaven. So did he lose his salvation?
	No. Actually, it's pretty clear as you look over and over again.
	What he's thrown out of is the wedding feast of the Lamb.
	That the wedding feast will be the great culmination of all of history.
	And all the saints are going to be there.
	And this is why he has weeping and gnashing of teeth.
	People think that's hell or pain.
	It isn't. In the Near East...
	Weeping means sorrow, and gnashing of teeth means anger.
	He's angry at his wasted life, and he's looking at the wedding feast of the Lamb, and he's not allowed in because he wasted what God gave him.
	And I want to wake people up and say, don't be that person.
	Be the first two servants who went and served the Lord with what they had.
	And that takes courage.
	And the other thing I want to wake people up to is we have swallowed another lie of intellectualism.
	Where we think if these guys who sit in their libraries surrounded by books and criticize other pastors, somehow this is the varsity level of Christ.
	Just look at the Bible. Everything is about courage.
	Everybody in the Bible, everything is confrontation.
	It's screwed up people who are giving all for Christ.
	They stood up for something. Hebrews chapter 11 is a great hall of faith.
	These are such screwed up people, but they just kept going.
	We're all going to screw up, but are we going to be courageous?
	Are we going to do everything it takes to raise godly kids and say, little Sam or little Jane, what are you learning in school?
	Let's look and see how that, what does scripture say about that?
	And getting a little more about our school board.
	What's going on? Just the gal at Starbucks with the tattoos and the nose ring with a dour look on her face and saying, hey, are you okay?
	Can I pray for you? Is there one thing I can pray for you today?
	I'm telling you, if you start doing that, I do it all the time.
	It's amazing how much of my day gets, quote, wasted.
	Because I'll spend the next two hours with someone crying on my shoulder with mascara all over my shirt about her life.
	And You try to walk her through Christ, try to find her a good church.
	Everywhere we go, it's a Promise Keepers thing that we always say, if there's one thing I could pray for you, what would it be?
	It's amazing what that unlocks with people.
	But you better be ready. And it's harder to get that with men.
	You know, a woman will tell you, you know, may tell you that, but it's going to be much harder to get that from a man, especially if you don't have a relationship already.
	Even with a relationship, it's harder to get men to talk, and that's why something like Promise Keepers is really important, because we're just not wired that way to, you know, to open up and to talk to other people.
	Well, the question here for Promise Keepers is we've got to teach men that being a man comes from your heart, your character, not from your performance.
	Say that again. It comes from your heart, your character, not your performance.
	We say, what is a man?
	Like, oh, a man is somebody who goes hunting and who can grow a great beard like David Knight or...
	It's tall, it has a deep voice, or it's a cop or a Navy SEAL. No, a man is someone with...
	It comes from inside. It's your integrity.
	It's who you are. It says, I will defend my family no matter what.
	I will provide for my family no matter what.
	If I get laid off from my job and times are tough, if I got to work at McDonald's, I'll work at McDonald's.
	Whatever it takes to stand by my kids and my wife.
	To guard my thoughts and my mind so that all of my sexual energy goes towards my wife and nobody else.
	These are things that we talk about come from the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ.
	You cannot do this through self-effort.
	You must do it. You're dying to self daily.
	And as you die to self daily, Matthew 5-7 is the whole core of being a disciple.
	Jesus there is not giving the recipe for salvation.
	He's giving the recipe for becoming a disciple.
	As we die to self daily, we can really become men.
	It comes from the inside and suddenly we find out that I don't care if you're 4'10 and 80 pounds, you have a heart of a lion and a heart of integrity and honesty and courage because you become a man of God.
	It's another thing we have to wipe out is this idea that masculinity is performance-driven.
	It's not. It's heart and integrity-driven.
	Yes, I agree. I couldn't agree with that more.
	Yeah, I've said many times that, you know, if you're looking to Christ, that is a leverage point, a fulcrum that's outside of this world, and that gives you a tremendous amount of leverage to change this world.
	And it's because it's coming from that.
	It's coming. Your focus is not even on changing the world.
	That's going to be an outcome that comes from your focus on Christ, having an eternal focus with that.
	But it is very important, as you point out, it's so difficult for men to see this.
	You know, women just naturally fall into this.
	They fall more into their relationships.
	They like school better than we like school.
	They like church better than we like.
	And it's just a natural thing for them.
	And so men need to have a little bit more of an encouragement, a counseling, and to understand the importance of the one another, helping one another.
	That's the key thing. And I think it's very important for Promise Keepers.
	So I'm glad that you're reviving this, that it is now coming back.
	It really isn't needed at this point in time.
	Here's why. Men have always done relationships by doing things together.
	Because if you look at the history of the world, you had to do things together to survive.
	So somebody was a hunter and somebody was a farmer and a rancher and a blacksmith and all that stuff.
	So you came together in communities and you had to share skills.
	And then we learned who we could trust and who we couldn't.
	We saw men in stressful situations.
	And if you were not a good guy, you were ostracized.
	And if you're a good guy, you're elevated in the town.
	Women make relationships by communicating.
	And so now what we see is because of all our technological advancements, the world today is all about communicating.
	It's all about Facebook and social media.
	None of that is masculine.
	In fact, it's demasculating.
	And our churches have gone into that, too.
	So you come to church and you have a chat and maybe you get together and have tea.
	If you're really godly, you get together and have a Bible study at 630 in the morning on a Friday.
	But there's nothing in that that's having to do with doing things together as men, and that's where pastors have to be intentional, get men together, because I can have lunch with you, David, for 20 years, once a week, but we won't really be friends.
	I'll tell you what, we go hunting for three days in the backwoods, and you shoot an elk that's 300 yards away across another mountain range.
	We've got to clean that thing and carry it out.
	Now we're friends. Because now I've seen what you really like under stress.
	And you've seen that I'm like under stress.
	You've seen how much we hold each other's work.
	That's what creates relationships amongst men.
	And so we have to be intentional about that now because we don't need each other anymore.
	I mean, I can order Uber Eats and I can get stuff delivered from the grocery store.
	And men are being more and more isolated.
	So it's fine.
	There's nothing wrong with women communicating naturally and men making relationships by doing.
	But then again, we have to be intentional.
	So what promise keepers, what we're trying to do is tell men, don't get together for Bible study, get together with guys who are golfers and golf or hunters and hot or fishermen or skiers, whatever it is that you do.
	And then Bible study will come from that.
	But if you try to get together and sit around, you'll just try to do a religious thing and it won't last, but get together and do something that matters and then have scripture and prayer out of that. And boy, you will become, you'll have true friends.
	That's a great idea.
	Yeah, absolutely. I think that's right.
	I see on your board, one name that sticks out to me is Randy Alcorn.
	And of course, I know Randy from his works, he's done a lot of fiction novels.
	He... That are very well written.
	He was a pastor who was at an abortion clinic, and they got a judgment against him.
	And for over 20 years, he didn't take a penny.
	He took like the minimum, which is like $8,000 a year.
	Said he didn't give any of the money to Planned Parenthood and just donated all the money from these novels, which were very successful.
	But he's also written about heaven, and he's very much focused on what—we're not going to be just doing nothing, floating around on clouds, contemplating our navel.
	It would be an opportunity for us to work and to create and get involved in a lot of things.
	I like his analysis and his way of thinking, but he also writes a lot about money, because Jesus talked a lot about money.
	And that's one of the key things with men as well.
	Talk a little bit about what you tell people about money with Promise Keepers because that's such a powerful drag on our lives, just like sex and many other things.
	But money has so much of a grip on our lives.
	Tell people what you tell men about money.
	When you think about the things in life that are the greatest blessing, they also could be the biggest curses.
	Sex. Sex is an incredible thing.
	It procreates species amongst marriage.
	I wrote in Rise of the Servant Kings that sex is the only thing that differentiates A marriage from any other relationship.
	Because anybody can share a bank account and raise kids together.
	That makes the 21 flush.
	It's extremely precious in this way.
	Sex outside of marriage is such a great sin.
	Fire. Think about fire.
	What a great blessing you need to survive.
	Think about how destructive. Water.
	You need water, but boy, water can do destruction.
	Money is freedom if you have a healthy attitude about it.
	It is the freedom to do what you'd like to do.
	Whenever I have some money and I'm going to spend it on something major, I think, okay, I'm going to go buy a new truck.
	I have $50,000 in my hand.
	I can do anything with this $50,000 I want to, from getting clean water in Africa to fighting AIDS to buying a big diamond ring.
	Whatever I want to do.
	Is this truck what I choose to give that to?
	And it's a healthy attitude when you actually think that way.
	Debt is bondage.
	Debt will destroy you.
	Especially today, we have a lot of people that are going to end up in massive, massive problems because interest rates have taken off.
	If you had a bunch of credit card debt or you hit floating interest rates with what's going on, people are going to get crushed.
	I know I'm not trying to be...
	Who's the money guy in Nashville?
	I forget his name now. Yeah, I've been talking about...
	He's always saying get out of debt.
	His name is escaping me as well, yeah.
	My wife loves him.
	If you're in debt, get out of debt.
	The thing about money, I actually had somebody come to me, he's an NFL football player, and he said, look, I have this love of money, I can't get over it.
	I said, you don't have a love of money.
	What do you mean? I go, money is a symptom.
	It's not the disease.
	If you have a love of money, there's something else.
	Why do you want money so bad?
	Is it because you lack faith and you think that I never have enough money?
	You know, I run a huge foundation and we had one woman Who we went to to give some of her money away.
	And she said, oh, no, I can't.
	I only have $100 million. I have to make sure I can pay the gas.
	I'm kidding you. She had inherited it from her husband.
	She didn't know what the value of the dollar was.
	So money is great freedom if you understand what to do with it.
	And it's a terrible curse because it shows who you are.
	So if you're a greedy person, why are you greedy?
	It's pride. So if I have a million dollars, what would I do with a million dollars?
	I want to go out and buy a Ferrari. Well, maybe I really like really fast cars, but probably I want the Ferrari so everybody will look at me and think how cool I am, right?
	I'm not going to judge that person, but what is it I want to do with money?
	So that's the thing we tell men.
	Cash, freedom.
	Debt, bondage.
	If you're trying to accumulate lots of money, why is that?
	Because there's people dying.
	There's people who need stuff.
	And I think it's okay to be comfortable.
	You know, there's a conversation you can have.
	I mean, I'll tell you that I used to run a huge company, as you think you all sort of from our resume.
	I used to have thousands of employees and made lots of money and created lots of jobs.
	And I don't take any money now.
	I think you know that from Promise Keepers.
	I get paid zero. But there's nothing wrong with having money because we can all judge, well, what is a lot of money?
	Well, one day I was in a meeting with a couple of major, major pastors, and I had to leave.
	And this guy said, well, you got to leave, Ken?
	Why do you have to leave? I go, well, I got a plane to catch.
	He said, yeah, a plane to catch.
	And the other pastor looked at him and he goes, yeah, Ken flies commercial.
	And they both went laughing.
	You don't have a private jet. I said, uh, no.
	And... And they're kind of mocking me.
	And I go, you know, there's something kind of telling about the fact that the two guys who live off the tithe money of others have private jets.
	And the guy who's created tens of thousands of jobs flies on Southwest.
	I'll leave that there. And they're both left.
	But boy, hey, that's between them and the Lord.
	I'm not going to condemn them for it.
	But I'm going to say for me...
	Southwest Airlines is just plain adequate, and flying somewhere for $400 is a lot different than flying there for $15,000 on a private plane.
	But everyone has to be their own judge and be convicted in their own heart by the Holy Spirit.
	Yeah. Oh, yeah. Dave Ramsey.
	I think it was Dave something.
	Yeah, eventually it gets there.
	It's a little bit slower now.
	But it's got all these extra paths that's got to go around blockages, I guess, to get there.
	The older we get, baby, the older we get.
	Dave Ramsey was always about staying out of debt, and that's really good advice.
	But again, with anything that we do, we can always become obsessive about it.
	I've seen people have gotten obsessive about getting out of debt and everything, but it is, as you point out, it is a bondage, and it's a very dangerous time to be in that kind of debt, especially.
	To me, it's just criminal what they're doing with the credit card rates now that they can get away with.
	Well, we've heard 29% recently.
	I know, I know. That's like the average.
	It's just astounding to me that we allow that to happen, but it's just another one of these things where everybody just passively accepted instead of trying to change it.
	Tell us what the seven promises of the Promise Keepers are.
	All right. I'm on vacation, and I cannot walk through all seven of them right now.
	Well, first one. I've got them in front of me, so I've got a cheat sheet here.
	Thank you. Honor God.
	Honor God. Tell us a little bit about that, and we'll do the next one.
	You know, honor God is the whole point of our lives, right?
	And how do we point that out?
	And one of the things I point out all the time is, honor God, we were just talking about how you can change things to a negative that are positive.
	One of those things is honoring the name of the Lord and not using the Lord's name in vain, right?
	And a lot of people think that means saying G-O-D for something.
	Oh, G-O-D, I can't believe you just did that.
	Mm-hmm. That's certainly not a healthy thing, but that is not using the Lord's name in vain.
	Using the Lord's name in vain is actually something much more nefarious and something done all the time in the church.
	And let me tell you right now, I cannot tell you, I speak all over the country, how many people walk up to me and say, the Lord told me that you...
	How many times have I said, I have a word from the Lord.
	I don't know this person.
	I have a word from the Lord. And my first response is, what verse is it?
	But people manipulate and use others with this business of putting things in the name of the Lord that are not in the name of the Lord.
	And I can keep going.
	People who come up with doctrinal points and say, well, God said this.
	Well, you shouldn't drink alcohol because when Jesus drank alcohol, it was really just grape juice.
	Well, maybe it was and maybe it wasn't, but you don't know that.
	Right? So, using the Lord's name in vain is attributing things to God that God didn't say.
	Right? And I use an example in Rise of the Sermon Kings on this.
	We talk about how somebody said...
	They gossiped about another person or slandered that person.
	And they said, even Ken Harrison agrees with me.
	Well, in fact, I didn't agree with him.
	His buddy called me up and said, hey, you agree?
	I said, actually, I don't. But he was using Ken Harrison's name in vain in that, right?
	Trying to give himself authority by attaching it to me.
	That's what we do to the Lord all the time.
	So honoring God...
	There's a lot I could go into on that, but rather than to preach the whole sermon, I just want to pull that one thing out.
	Don't concentrate on the little easy, obvious G-O-D as a little euphemism.
	Make sure that you look at your heart and you're not using and attributing things to God that are not God.
	They're really you, your opinion.
	And maybe your opinion's true, but it's better to say, in my opinion, or the way I read this passage, or my life experience has told me, right?
	But do not go around saying, thus says the Lord, if he didn't say it, that makes you a false prophet.
	Yeah, kind of a name-dropping that's out there.
	And, you know, I also look at it, I heard somebody say once, We call ourselves Christians.
	You know, that really comes from kind of a combined thing of Christ's men, right?
	And Jesus said, why are you calling me Lord, Lord, if you don't do what I say?
	And so we can, by calling ourselves Christians, we don't really care what Jesus says.
	That's a way, I think, of taking God's name in vain.
	But, you know, there are people who deliberately do it.
	And I find that that...
	I've told a story to my audience before, Karen and I, years ago, probably about 25 years ago.
	We went to see Penn and Teller perform.
	Yeah, and they're funny, but at the end of his, kind of towards the end of the thing, after they'd been there for a while, he starts talking about language.
	He says, you know, I really hate it when people use the F word.
	They use it for every form of speech.
	They use it as an adverb and an adjective and all the rest of the stuff.
	And he goes, it just makes you look stupid.
	Because you don't have any vocabulary.
	So I refuse to use that.
	He says, I deliberately take the name of Jesus in vain because I want to blaspheme.
	You know, I don't believe any of that stuff.
	And so, you know, my wife and I got up and walked out.
	But it was really, you know, very deliberate from him.
	A lot of people don't realize that they're doing that.
	But I think, as you point out, this name-dropping or to say that, you know, I'm a Christ follower when you're really not, that really is a very serious thing, I think, that we need to look at ourselves.
	And say, well, am I guilty of doing that in a different way?
	You mentioned your second promise is brotherhood.
	Tell us a little bit about that. Brotherhood is...
	One of the things that we hear so often now is about...
	We shouldn't let men get together unsupervised by women.
	Right? I didn't bring up a different church.
	There's another mega church that we've been having problems with right now that a bunch of major leaders have come together and said, we want you to go to this church.
	And the pastor of that church actually called me and said, I have a question for you.
	Yeah. Why are women allowed to Promise Keepers events?
	Because it's a men's ministry.
	No, because men... Well, I just don't think that's right.
	Well, I said, let me ask you, do you have women's gatherings?
	Well, yeah, all the time. So why do you have women's gatherings all the time and not men's gatherings?
	Why is it that you're only critical of men's gatherings?
	Well, that's a good point.
	Well, let me ask you this then.
	Why don't you have any women pastors preaching to the men?
	So let me ask you a point.
	Why are you so obsessed on that?
	If we have men talking to men like men, why would I want a woman there?
	Because when you put one woman in, it changes how men behave.
	Men will be authentic. You know, you go to Promise Keepers event, you'll see guys falling on their faces in tears.
	I mean, the stories that come out of these events have changed lives.
	But when there's a woman there, men feel like they need to change.
	Whether it's fair or not, I'm not saying it's fair, I'm just saying what it is.
	It was amazing to me that in our culture, another thing is somehow men are not allowed to get together.
	There must be something going on in there that we don't know about.
	It's an amazing thing. Again, I'm taking these things on...
	In a small way, but brotherhood is very important.
	Men need to get together with other men and just hang out, as we talked about a little bit.
	And sometimes women don't totally understand that, but I think when you put it the other way, one of the things I teach people, I was just asked this the other day, gee, you've been married for 33 years.
	What's the secret to having a great marriage?
	And I said, well, I got 30 seconds to answer that question.
	I will just say empathy. Empathy is the number one thing.
	Put myself in the shoes of my wife and say, how does what I just say sound to her?
	Right? Or anybody else in St.
	America. This thing here, too, for women to think, well, women get together and have tea, whatever, it's no big deal.
	Right? Same thing with men.
	And women need to stop and just go, you know what?
	For my husband to get together with godly men and go golfing and go fishing, those are important things.
	Because this is how men sharpen each other is by doing things together.
	So brotherhood is incredibly important.
	And again, the lies of Satan in the world are trying to keep men from getting together.
	Because if they do, they just might plot how to make the world a better place.
	That's great. I love that.
	Integrity. Another promise.
	Integrity. That is at the heart of a man.
	What will I compromise as we talked about?
	What's a conviction and what's a strong preference?
	Will I give all for the truth?
	You know that Revelation 21.8 has a list of eight sins It says, if you are typified by these sins, you are not saved.
	It literally says, here's eight sins.
	If you're an adulterer, a murderer, a sorcerer, an idolater, all liars will for sure have their share in the lake of fire that burns forever and ever.
	I left the first one out.
	You know what the first one on that list is?
	What's that? It's pretty shot. Cowards.
	Cowards. Coward is the thing that God says, I'm going to start this list off of people that shows for sure you're not a Christian.
	Coward, that doesn't mean if you've committed a cowardly act, because I think we all have.
	Yeah, if it defines you, just like lying, you know, if it defines you.
	So integrity, because so much of a lack of integrity comes from cowardice, right?
	I even say, it's funny because the list starts with cowardice and ends with all liars.
	Well, liars and cowards are kind of the same thing.
	I mean, why do most people lie because they're cowards, right?
	Right. Yeah. They're trying to create something that's not really true about themselves because they're afraid of something somewhere.
	Integrity is, I will not depart from the truth, no matter what the cost.
	And that takes great courage.
	Courage is, again, one of those things.
	All these are the things we can define.
	They mean something.
	I know what it means to be pious.
	I know what it means to be generous.
	But courage is sort of this all-encompassing thing.
	What is courage? And courage is integrity.
	It says, I will not bend, no matter the cost.
	What's that going to take?
	And I define courage and daring faith in the cowardly world as refusing to compromise no matter what the cost is, whereas cowardice is not doing the right thing because of fear for something, because we're all afraid.
	And the guy that charges the machine gun nest in the middle of a war...
	He's terrified. He just does what needs to get done.
	That's a great definition.
	Family. Talk about that.
	What is the promise of family?
	Malachi chapter 3.
	People like Malachi.
	What is that? Malachi is one of my favorite books in the Bible.
	Everybody listening, if you have a chance to read Malachi, it's the last book of the Old Testament, and it's absolutely fascinating.
	I preach whole messages on Malachi, but in Malachi chapter 3, God says, I hate divorce because, because why?
	Because I'm jealous for godly offspring.
	Family is the most important thing you can do as a man of God is to raise godly kids, to pass it on to the next generation.
	There's lots of things that we have to do.
	I'm not minimizing other things, but I am saying that being...
	Coach McCarty, who started Promise Keepers, used to say, the most loving thing that a man can do for his kids is love their mother.
	Mm-hmm. That's a hard statement, especially if you're divorced or had bowel problems.
	But literally, the most loving thing you can do for your kids is to love their mother.
	Godly man needs to be dedicated to his family because this is the building block of the church of community.
	If you have a strong family with godly kids, with a happy wife because she's cherished by her husband.
	Another free advice thing I'll give on family and marriage because I get asked about this a lot.
	The number one complaint you get from men is what?
	In marriage, a lack of intimacy.
	Then there's money and there's in-laws.
	Those are the three big things.
	But the lack of intimacy is number one by far.
	I tell guys, absent a whole long thing to tell them, usually a lack of intimacy is because your wife doesn't feel cherished.
	If your wife feels charged, that means she feels safe, protected.
	She is the apple of your eye.
	I'm telling you, it has a massive effect on the intimacy level of marriage.
	That's fantastic. Yeah, that's fantastic.
	Great advice. Serving.
	Serving. It's an amazing thing.
	The godliest person is always the one who serves the most, not the one who rules the most.
	And we really have power wrong when we look at Jesus Christ, right?
	So we have the ultimate power.
	Jesus said, I can call down angels and wipe all these people out right now if I want to.
	But instead, he lowered his head in humility, and he says, that's the person I'm going to elevate in the last days.
	See, Ephesians chapter 3 says that—it's a fascinating verse that I'd read a million times.
	A friend of mine, Tim Dunn, pointed out to me one day, and I'm like, how could I not have seen that?
	It says that God is teaching the full extent of his wisdom to the powers and the authorities in the heavens— From the church, which is you and me, David.
	Now, what world do you or I have to teach the angels that are around for millions of years?
	What's the one thing, what's the one experience that we have that they don't have?
	We live life by faith.
	This is our one chance.
	This lifetime that we have, the Bible says that the angels look on us with fascination.
	They can't understand it. They see things as they really are.
	We see things as through a glass darkly, it says.
	I think it's in James. So this is the one chance we have to make a massive impact for the rest of our lives.
	What will we do today?
	And this is why it's so important to not be tied into what does the world think?
	What's the world's opinion? Truth is eternal.
	It's not dictated on what the United States of America's culture happens to think.
	It's dictated on what does God say at the beginning and the foundations of time.
	This is truth. I have a very strong conviction on gravity, and therefore you won't find me walking up to a cliff and jumping off, right?
	Do I have that same conviction on the trust, on the promises that the Lord Jesus made in the Bible?
	Frankly, no, I don't.
	I have a lot of faith compared to most people, but Jesus isn't comparing me to most people.
	He's comparing me to the truth of heaven.
	How far am I in that conviction?
	Could you or I be like St.
	Jerome, being barbecued and singing songs and going, I can't wait to get to heaven because man, it's my reward.
	It's going to be great. I don't know that I ever will be, but I sure am striving towards that.
	That's fantastic. Number six, unity.
	Unity, really, a lot of that goes around racial reconciliation, which is something that Promise Keepers was really big in the 90s.
	Promise Keepers is actually kind of the originator of diversity and all this, bringing different races together.
	I do think, like we talked about earlier, it's one of those things that can become a god.
	It can take over where you're at.
	If you're saying, I'm just going to love a black man today because I'm white, well, that's not going to do anybody any good.
	Is it coming from the heart of Christ?
	So, unity is about unity in every aspect.
	If you look at our board, you started mentioning our board of directors, and Randy Elkort's on our pastor's board, and I've known Randy for, geez, 45 years.
	I've tried to get him on.
	When I reached out to him last time, his wife was dying of cancer, and I certainly understood he wasn't doing interviews at that point in time, yeah.
	He's a good guy.
	But if you look at our board, we have Senator Lankford, who's a Baptist pastor before he became a U.S. senator.
	And we have Sam Rodriguez, who's a Pentecostal pastor.
	And we have Pentecostals, Baptists, everybody around.
	We're unified around the cause of what we've been talking about, not around doctrinal differences.
	And we have great doctrinal differences.
	I mean, Sam Rodriguez and I... We've had some two-hour great debates on different doctrinal issues, and we love each other, and it never is their anger.
	So unity is around racial unity, around understanding, you know, other people have different experiences.
	It's also understanding theological differences.
	It's okay to disagree.
	It's okay if you believe in speaking to tongues and I don't.
	It's okay if you're Pre-trip and I'm post-millennial and all those things.
	These are things just to sharpen each other and have good conversations on.
	I just had a pastor of a small church but very intellectual.
	He gave a great podcast on post-millennial, which is something I really didn't understand.
	Called him up. Explain that to me.
	You know, here's how I see it.
	And he said, well, here's how I see it.
	He'd studied it. And we had a great conversation for an hour and a half around those issues.
	We need to come to each other in humility, but in unity and say, boy, you see this differently than I do.
	I really want to learn from you.
	I did have that majorly controversial issue in the church.
	And I went to a huge pastor and I sat down and I said, look, you believe this and I don't believe that.
	And I don't understand why you believe it.
	He goes, you really want to have this debate?
	And I go, I don't want to have a debate. I want to learn from you.
	I want to learn why you think that way.
	Because maybe I'm missing something, and after two hours I realized I wasn't missing anything.
	But this is the spirit with which we need to come together as Christians.
	Sure, sure. Yeah, you're not compromising on truth, but you want to understand where they're coming from and have that discussion.
	Promise 7, the final one here, obedience.
	Well, isn't that the foundation of everything I've just said, isn't it?
	I mean, Jesus said, if you love me, keep my commandments.
	I was in a major meeting of megachurch pastors, like 40 of them, and we were all sitting around on something, and I was invited.
	I don't know why I was invited, but I'm sitting there, and somebody was reading from Luke, and one of the pastors, and I realized afterwards, most of these were really, really liberal megachurch pastors, and he said...
	I don't believe in that Jesus.
	He said that Jesus was mean, and my Jesus was never mean.
	So I said to him, well, it says in Luke, you know, Jesus said, I came to set the world on fire and how I wish it was already a light.
	That sounds pretty mean to me.
	And Jesus said, well, I choose not to believe in that Jesus.
	And I said, well, if you don't believe in that Jesus, then you don't believe in Jesus.
	You believe in an idol called Jesus.
	And I think that's where we're at today, is a lot of people don't actually know Jesus.
	They don't know who he is.
	They have invented a God in their own heads, and they've slapped the name Jesus on them.
	Because if you read the Gospels, you'll see Jesus was extremely confrontational around truth, never around frivolous issues.
	God said to Jeremiah, if you speak noble words and not worthless ones, you will be my spokesman.
	So it is, as a Christian, we will be in confrontation all the time.
	It's upon us, though, to speak noble words and not worthless ones.
	It's not about whether we're getting in screaming arguments about who belongs in the national championship.
	Is it Oregon or is it Alabama?
	Or whether there should be a border wall.
	But we do be very diligent about all the issues we've talked about today.
	If you love me, keep my commandments.
	That defines a man or woman of God.
	Well, I'll tell you, there's a lot of wisdom in what you've had to say here, and I'm sure there's a lot of wisdom in your book, A Daring Faith in a Cowardly World.
	And I'll be picking that up.
	And it's available at Amazon and everywhere the books are sold.
	I'm assuming that it's at promisekeepers.org, and you've got a website as well.
	Tell us the address of your website.
	I had it here, but I lost it.
	Where can people find you in particular?
	KenRHarrison.com. KenRHarrison.
	Okay. Yeah, there's a whole lot of Ken Harrisons out there.
	One of them is a gay porn writer, so don't go to that.
	Oh, okay. That would not be me.
	So remember R. R. That's the one you want to go to.
	And someone who's had, you've had so much experience as a CEO of an international company, a Marine, a police officer, but I think that probably, I don't, you are definitely suited for what you're doing right now with Promise Keepers.
	Thank you so much for what you're doing.
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	It's the David Knight Show.
	Joining us now is Liz James.
	I've talked to her before about her, blessed by his blood as a cooperative.
	I want to get that out there again and get an update as to how she's doing because I know a lot of people who are concerned about contaminated blood, whether you're talking about transfusions, being able to stockpile your own blood or other things like that, even to the extent you've got the world's first unvaccinated dating service now launching in Hawaii.
	People understand the issue here and they're looking for some solutions.
	So I wanted to get an update to that.
	But last time when I talked to Liz, she also talked about how she was very involved in raw milk, and that is also something that's very important.
	So I wanted to talk about that, the adulteration to our food supply.
	So joining us now is Liz James.
	Her organization is Blessed by His Blood.
	Tell us what the website is for that.
	Good morning. It's just www.blessedbyhisblood.com.
	Okay, good. And so tell us how this is going right now.
	Where are you right now? And are you working to try to get some legislation through in various places to have a right to make decisions about blood, you know, your own blood and what's going to happen in an operation or an emergency?
	Yes, sir. So the legislation that we've started actively working on, it's actually kind of interesting because designated donor or directed donor blood or autologous blood, which is meaning giving yourself your own blood if you have enough time to do so, both of those things are currently legal and have been around for decades.
	You know, when I was in my, I think, Very early 20s, I had a minor surgery that, you know, every time you have a surgery, they say, well, there's always a chance you might need blood.
	And so my mom and my brother both donated on my behalf back, you know, this was 30 something years ago.
	And so, but they've been doing this for just years and years and years and years.
	However, it is coming to our attention that a lot of hospitals are starting to deny patients the right to do this.
	Yeah. That's right.
	So our approach is this.
	We're just trying to defend our medical freedom.
	And basing that on the 14th Amendment, Section 1, where we have this is part of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
	There's not anything specifically in the Constitution that addresses medical freedom because that's part of the 14th Amendment.
	The other thing is there was a 1990 Patient Self-Determination Act, and that act protects the patient's right to do and say and request and have the authority of what does and does not occur in their own body.
	So that's something that when somebody is denied directed donor use, Mm-hmm.
	Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
	So that's another personal right that is being trampled on.
	I know that in Europe, I talked to a guy who was in Switzerland, and he was saying it's getting impossible for people to use their own blood or to have donors, people that they know, people in their family, set aside blood if they know that an operation is coming up.
	So we have these things that are on the books, you know, the Constitution, laws in Europe, and yet they're being disregarded in many ways.
	So it's important for us to strengthen that, isn't it?
	You know, and I'll bring this up.
	I mean, and George and I have been working together, his organization Safeblood, which is international, versus the United States.
	The United States actually has the strongest constitution in the world, right?
	I mean, it's a constitution that's been upheld for much longer than any other country's constitution.
	And the more that we allow it to be chiseled away, the closer we get to being like these other countries that are having so many difficulties.
	And the United States has, while he's having more difficulty in these other countries, the United States actually, even though we're having difficulty, there's less difficulty.
	And there are lots and lots of doctors who are standing beside us and saying, we will write for the order.
	Now, the problem is happening more so in the hospital, in the actual hospital, where they're saying, well, we won't do this.
	And... Because hospitals are being more and more driven by large corporations, a consolidation, and they're being driven by the accountants and that type of thing.
	And insurance.
	Yes, insurance companies.
	I had a listener who just sent me something, I think it was last week, said that he had to go in, he had a heart issue, and he said, the hospital nurse said, would you like to set aside your blood in case we have to do an operation some point in the future?
	He was okay. He was taken out, but they offered that to him to store his own blood.
	So he was excited about that, gave us the name of the hospital.
	You know, there are some hospitals out there because not all the hospitals have been subsumed into these giant corporate structures where they have a big network and they become all about money only.
	And that's exactly the type of hospital we're looking to work with, is the ones that are not corporately owned and are willing to work with the patients on a basis like that.
	And they are definitely out there.
	Even though we're not officially up and running, our soft launch is March 1st.
	But we have already done, we did one match already, and we were able to do that successfully in the Chicago area.
	So, and that's just with people who, you're talking to people who have reached out to us expressing an interest.
	We were able to find donors for this young family in need in the Chicago area.
	So, yeah. That's good.
	That's great. Yeah, it is interesting.
	I talked about this earlier. There's a study that just came out talking about how they have verified that they find mRNA in blood 28 days later.
	Dr. Peter McCullough has talked about it being found much later than that.
	And so this is not a theory.
	This is not a conspiracy theory.
	These are studies showing that this stuff persists.
	That's a whole other issue with the vaccines.
	But the reality is that it is there.
	There's a contaminant. We all know what the mRNA does in terms of creating the toxic spike protein that accumulates in your body that damages organs and all the rest of the stuff.
	So it is very important that we do have that kind of clean blood.
	And we know that the blood supply is not being screened for that, right?
	Very much so.
	And you may have seen, too, in the last couple of weeks, they've released some of the restrictions they had on blood donation, which makes it become all that much more interesting.
	One of them, I believe, that mad cow disease has been taken off as a problem.
	Number two, they've taken...
	It used to be gay men could not donate.
	Now, if they're in a quote-unquote monogamous relationship, you know, that...
	How do you screen for that at the Red Cross, right?
	Right. Well, and that's an interesting thing because, I mean, no matter if there's a homosexual relationship or a heterosexual relationship, you can never speak for the other party, right?
	That's right. So there's that to deal with.
	And then number three, the other interesting thing is, for the Red Cross, if a transgender individual comes in and says that they are, well, if they're a man and they say that they're a woman, they have to be identified as a woman, and therefore...
	That's an issue because then there's no...
	I guess there's no screening for whatever on that.
	Knowing that 4 out of 10 transgender men would test positive for HIV. Yeah, because as we say, it's all part of the...
	The Drag Queen Storytime Hour, what people are finally starting to come to their awareness about.
	It's a very, you know, as one person said, hey, look, heterosexual moms, I'm a conservative, but I'm a drag queen.
	And let me tell you, this is a highly charged community in terms of drugs and sex and all the rest of the stuff, and that's going to show up in the blood supply.
	Yeah, that's absolutely right.
	I guess maybe some of these people could come in and they could say, I'm...
	I may be a type A according to what your test is, but I identify as type B and you better put me down as that.
	You never know.
	You never know. I mean, it seems like anything is possible apparently in politics and in industry, right?
	That's right. Well, let's talk a little bit.
	That's good. So the organization is Blessed by His Blood and you're about to go live in March.
	And is it.com? Is that what you said?
	.com. Yes, sir.
	Okay, so blessedbyhisblood.com is about to go live in March.
	You've got legislative issues.
	We're trying to uphold our freedom to have informed consent to use our own blood or blood of people that we know, and it's not something we should take for granted.
	Because when you look at what is being done in the medical profession now, it's all being politicized.
	And it's a very dangerous situation.
	So we have to start to fight for our rights of medical freedom and choice.
	But let's talk a little bit about food.
	Because last time you were on, you talked about your involvement with raw milk.
	And, of course, it's something that's been going on for quite some time, as there's all these different regulations that some places will allow it to some degree, but they have restrictions even in the most liberal places.
	I know back in Texas when we were living there that you could buy raw milk, but they had to be very careful about how they sold it.
	You had to go to their place.
	They couldn't. You couldn't buy it in a supermarket, so you had to go to the farm or you had to be part of a cooperative.
	That's the way it operates in some states and things like that.
	So what has your experience been with the raw milk battles?
	You know, I think I should first give a little bit of my backstory on how I found raw milk because it really is pertinent to the conversation.
	You know, being trained classically as a pharmacist, you know, one of the things that they talk about is food safety, right?
	So when I graduated from pharmacy school, and in addition to that, I have a degree in animal science.
	So, again, we were trained the same in animal sciences as well, because that involves food science.
	And about 10 years after I graduated from pharmacy school and I was in practice, I had a little accident on our farm here, and I ended up breaking my wrist.
	And I had a cast on my wrist.
	I went back to work, just had the cast on my wrist, and I had two women come up to me, independent of one another, over the course of a couple weeks and say, oh, you have a broken bone, you really should look into drinking raw milk.
	And the first woman that said that, the back, you know, my little voice in my head was like, oh, she doesn't know what she's talking about.
	Raw milk is dangerous, you know?
	The second woman, you know, I believe that's the Holy Spirit.
	When you get affirmation, confirmation from a second independent source, that's something you really need to look into.
	And so I was like, okay, that's, you know, two messages that I need to look into this.
	And so I did a little digging and I found a book called The Untold Story of Milk by Ron Schmid.
	I don't know. It was probably written in the 80s.
	And I read it, and it reads like a textbook.
	And that led me to read a couple other books.
	But by the time I was done with The Untold Story of Milk, I had no doubt in my mind that we, the consumers, had been buffaloed by the American Dairy Association and the food industry in terms of milk.
	And it's quite an interesting story when you get into it.
	And I think you can never take a policy without first understanding the history behind the policy and how it got there.
	And so how did we end up with homogenized, pasteurized milk?
	You know, how did that actually come to pass?
	Right. So, a little history on that.
	When people started migrating to the United States and they started settling in large cities, you know, Chicago, Detroit, New York, all these big cities, they were living in tenement housing, the majority of them, you know, because these are poor people fleeing their country or looking for a new, better life and ending up in these, like, basically slums.
	And... The first thing that happens when you're in a slum situation is there ends up being a lot of despair and depression, right?
	And if you read any sort of history in that time period in that environment, you'll find there's a lot of alcohol.
	Right? I mean, because alcohol is used to escape and erase what's going on, you know?
	And so there were distilleries all over these large cities making a killing on alcohol.
	But they were bringing in grains to make the alcohol, right?
	Mm-hmm. Well, somebody got the bright idea of why don't we bring the cows into the city?
	So they bring cows into the city And have these indoor cow dairies slash feedlots that are inside buildings right next door to the distilleries with holes in the wall.
	And so after the grain is used, the mash is left over from making the whiskey, the bourbon, whatever.
	Then the mash is shoveled through the wall so they don't have to go on trains to go to cows or wherever.
	And these cows that have no sunlight, no grass, you know, that are living in filth in dark, unlit buildings, are eating the mash, which is not a healthy product, and they shouldn't be eating grains like that.
	Anyway, and then they were using those cows, milking those cows, to give milk to...
	The people. So as far as the people who were doing all of this, it was a win-win situation in terms of making quite a bit of money.
	For the people who were on the receiving end, the people who were living in the slums and the tenements, not so much so.
	I mean, they were drinking milk that was very unhealthy, you know, because the cows were not healthy themselves.
	They weren't in an environment that was healthy.
	And so Louis Pasteur, of course, and people were getting sick from the milk, you know, rightfully so, because the milk was not healthy.
	And Louis Pasteur came out with the pasteurization.
	And, of course, that's a whole other topic about, you know...
	Pasteur versus Beauchamp, right?
	You're probably aware of that.
	We won't go down that rabbit hole.
	But pasteurization, they started pasteurizing the milk so that people wouldn't get sick.
	Well, when you pasteurize milk, it does get rid of the bad bacteria.
	And in situations like I just described, that's not a bad thing because there is bad bacteria in unhealthy cows.
	However, if you have a healthy cow that lives outdoors in the sunshine, is drinking fresh water, eating good, clean grass, etc., you have milk that has the ability to, if you were to introduce a bacteria into a quart of milk, bad bacteria in a quart of milk and then go back and look for that bacteria later, you would not find it because the enzymes and the antibodies in
	that milk digest it and protect and keep the milk clean and healthy.
	So you know, we have the ability to do that, right?
	The disadvantage of pasteurization, too, is that when you heat up milk like that, you destroy the enzymes.
	You just destroy the good enzymes that we all need.
	We should all be eating enzyme-rich food.
	You're causing a tremendous drop in the vitamin C content of milk.
	Vitamin B6 and vitamin B12, that drops dramatically when you start heating up milk like that.
	You also change, and this is very important, you change the physical and chemical state of calcium and other minerals that are in that milk, which makes milk less valuable as a food.
	You know? Yeah. Oh, yeah.
	And, you know, you're talking about this, and I'm thinking of the giant pig skyscraper that they're building in China.
	It's called a pork scraper, you know?
	But, you know, just think about that.
	As we were talking about the implications of that, you know, putting pigs in a giant skyscraper, you know, what could possibly go wrong, you know?
	They were never meant to live like that.
	I know. And it kind of reminds me, you know, when you're talking about what happened in Chicago, that's kind of the early stages of big corporate food production today, where they don't really care what goes into it.
	I was early in the program, I talked about the fact that the FDA has approved all these...
	Heavy-duty chemicals that have been identified in other countries as carcinogenic, and they said, we don't care.
	So it's allowed in our bread, it's allowed in our food, and maybe they put it in because they want to try to strengthen or to stabilize dough so they can work with it better with their machines in terms of processing it.
	They don't care what the health effects are, and the FDA gives them a pass on all of this stuff.
	And that's really, you know, when we look at how the FDA has handled drugs, they're just as bad with the food stuff as well.
	I totally agree.
	And, you know, we were in Europe several years ago, and we went into a store that carried Americanized products.
	And it was very interesting because even things like, you know, Froot Loops, you looked at the Froot Loops in Holland, the dyes were natural dyes, like on the box.
	But if you look at the Froot Loops in the United States, You know, it's red dye, number four, you know.
	Yeah. We're looking at Mexican Coke, right?
	They use, instead of high fructose corn syrup, they use regular sugar, and then they've got it in a glass bottle instead of an aluminum can, and on and on.
	You know, it's like we get the worst of everything.
	But it's also the cities, like you're talking about there in Chicago, made me think of what Thomas Jefferson said about cities.
	He said, they're a threat to the health, the wealth, and the liberty of man.
	Yeah. That's right.
	You know, I think one of the most impactful books I read in high school was The Jungle by Upton Sinclair.
	Oh, yeah. And that book really emphasized the plight of these immigrants and the terrible situation that they lived in in this tenement housing.
	It was just awful. Mm-hmm.
	Back to the milk, so you have pasteurized milk, and so then the benefit of that is then they could sell rotten milk, really.
	I mean, they could sell milk that was full of...
	You know, pus and just really awful things that raw milk, you know, you can't do that with raw milk.
	But with pasteurized, you can.
	So you've increased your...
	You don't have to throw anything out, right?
	That's right. So...
	So there's that. Well, here's the problem.
	And it also has a longer shelf life.
	Well, as these milkmen were taking milk around to all the housewives and women, the cream, as it settled on the top, that's one of the ways housewives judged the The quality of the milk,
	the color, the texture, how old the milk was, because you know anything about milk and you let the cream rise to the top, if it sits there for a couple of days, even if it's good, it will turn into like a cheese product almost, like a thicker product.
	So you can really tell the age of the milk by the cream that's on top.
	Well, the housewives would say, I don't want this milk.
	It's old milk, you know?
	And so they invented the homogenization process.
	And the homogenization process is an interesting thing because people say, well...
	If my milk is flash pasteurized but not homogenized, is that okay to drink?
	And my answer is no to that because there's something that happens to the milk molecule as well in the homogenization process.
	In the homogenization process, they shoot whole milk through these little stainless steel tubules at a very high rate of speed, and it flips a leg on the milk molecule.
	In that process, then the cream no longer rises to the top.
	Now, those housewives cannot tell how old the milk is because it's scattered throughout the milk.
	They've got nothing to go by other than the date on the carton, which is where we live.
	Right. And that's the expiration date, not the date that it was retrieved from the cow, right?
	Right. So... But in the homogenization process, when you have that flip with the molecules or the leg on the molecule, it literally changes the structure of the milk molecule, which makes it turns it.
	The original milk molecule is actually cardioprotective and actually prevents the plaque buildup in your arteries and veins.
	And when you have homogenization of milk, it...
	It does the opposite and it causes inflammation in the arteries, which then causes plaque to start forming.
	And so it actually, with homogenization, it actually creates not just a neutral product, it actually creates a dangerous product.
	Yeah, wow. That is amazing.
	Yeah, it was fascinating to me, and I was like, oh my gosh, this is incredible.
	You know, and mind you, I was learning all of this before I ever even jumped into the truth about Big Pharma as I started to do.
	This was literally my gateway into learning the truth about the relationship between food and And big pharma and then later insurance and other things as well and how it all ties in together and these big industries just feed each other with no regard to the consumer.
	Yeah, you know, it's interesting. If we look at it, a lot of people, of course, raw milk is very expensive.
	But if you think raw milk is expensive, take a look at what your doctor charges or what the pharmaceutical companies charge when you get a problem with something.
	So instead of having something healthy, you can have something that is cheap and is going to endanger your health.
	That's really where we are. And there's a political aspect to this as well.
	There was an article that I just saw, and it was from actually PirateWires.com.
	I don't know how I found this. But it was talking about milk wars and how this has become a real fight, a real contention.
	You can see this in the Netherlands.
	First, they're coming for the cows, right?
	They want to shut down the cows, and then they're going to come for the rest of the—that's their point of attack— We're good to go.
	There's a very important political dimension to this in terms of milk wars.
	If we can push back against big pharma, big food, and the FDA on this raw milk thing, that's going to be a big win to protect our food supply, isn't it?
	Yeah. It's, you know, and these wars have been, the fight for food freedom has been going on for a long, long time.
	I mean, I've been involved with Weston A. Price I'm sure you're familiar with that organization, and the Farm and Ranch Freedom Alliance.
	That's another one for lots and lots of years, and it's so very important.
	Like you, I started out, I found a raw milk source, and we stood in line and bought raw milk.
	At drop-off locations for probably five or six years, and then we ended up getting our own cows.
	Because I was concerned about, what if they ever take this away from us, then what?
	And in other states, they have.
	I mean, for goodness sakes, it's legal to have marijuana in Colorado, but illegal to have raw marijuana.
	They've got our best interests at heart, don't they?
	It's just amazing how insanely stupid it is.
	What is the situation over the various states?
	I mean, you know... Do you have a general idea of what percentage or number of states allow raw milk and, you know, is there any place where they are really kind of laissez-faire about it or is it always under some sort of restriction and control?
	Well, it's interesting.
	I haven't looked at the states recently, and the laws are constantly changing.
	So there's been victories and there's been losses.
	I would say probably 20% of the states it's legal.
	And then I could be wrong on that.
	That's just an off-the-head guess based on my memory.
	But then there's other states where...
	It's legal, but very, very, very restricted.
	Interestingly, California is one of those states.
	I was listening at a conference in December, and they said, well, you can buy raw milk at a grocery store, but it's only one very, very, very, very large farm.
	Hmm. And authorized.
	Yeah. Kind of what you're seeing in a lot of these places where they quote unquote legalize marijuana, they'll have incredibly high taxes and it'll be restricted to their friends who are in the business.
	Correct. Correct. It's for the small person, it's still not feasible to do.
	And then there's other states that you can sell raw milk to be For pet consumption only, quote unquote.
	And, you know, what you do in your own house is your own business kind of thing.
	Yeah, we've got lots of dogs.
	I mean, I don't know.
	I haven't looked at the laws here in Tennessee.
	We have a friend who has a farm, and he's got a friend who's got raw goat milk.
	And that's really good stuff.
	But, you know, I haven't looked to see if we can find, you know, raw cow's milk here yet.
	I don't know what the laws are here.
	So in case that's against the law, that's just a hypothetical.
	Well, you know, the other interesting thing about cow milk is there's, maybe you've heard the discussion on it, it's, you know, A1 milk versus A2 milk, the genetics of milk.
	No, I haven't heard that. What is that?
	Okay, so in genetics, of course, there's A1A1, A2A2, and then there's A1A2. And A1 milk is, in people who understand milk, In terms of raw milk is considered inferior milk.
	And I shouldn't say in terms of raw milk.
	This is in terms of milk in general.
	And the reason it's considered inferior is because there are some components of A1 milk.
	And this is milk that comes from...
	It comes from cows predominantly in Canada, the United States, New Zealand, Australia, and Northern Europe.
	Those are predominantly A1, but to take it a little step further, it tends to be the Holstein cows that are A1, which is the predominant milk, the black and white cows.
	That's the predominant milk found in commercial milk.
	Because they're big producers and they can get a lot out of these cows for their money, right?
	So we should have a take on the Chick-fil-A sign.
	We should have the black and white cows eat more, drink more, A2. Leave me alone.
	Yeah. Well, kind of so.
	The Jerseys and Guernseys, which are like the brown cows that you see, those tend to, they're not always, but they tend to be the A2, A2 genetics, which is the good genetics for the milk.
	Now, here's the interesting part.
	These, if you are drinking A1, A1 milk, Aside from the pasteurization and the homogenization, which they can do to A1 or A2 milk, it doesn't really matter.
	You get the same effects on those.
	But with A1 milk, you are aggravating conditions such as heart disease, type 1 diabetes, autism, schizophrenia, allergies, intolerance, autoimmunity, or autoimmune situations, etc. So...
	You know, once you start diving down the rabbit hole of milk, you're like, oh, okay, so I want to drink raw milk, but then I want to find an A2A2 producer.
	Mm-hmm. That's interesting.
	For the healthiest milk.
	And interestingly, I just pulled this up a few days ago.
	There are a couple of companies that are now selling.
	It's just called A2 Milk.
	Like even Walmart and Costco, you can find it'll be labeled as A2 Milk.
	Really? Yes.
	Now, if you're going to buy...
	Commercial milk, that's better than, I mean, it's still pasteurized and homogenized in that form, but at least it's a healthier for your genes milk.
	I've never ever seen that. I guess that's something like an extra thing that they put on there saying, you know, if it's organic or something like that.
	Correct. I've not seen that.
	Now that your mind is aware to it, your eyes might see it when you're in the grocery store.
	That's interesting. Yeah, you know, I've talked in the past, I remember one case, I interviewed the guy at length.
	He was someone who did not start out in a family farm.
	He came to it later in his career because he wanted better food and things like that.
	And he started raising, he was in Michigan, and he started raising, A European brand of pig that could stay outside.
	It had hair.
	It wasn't hairless. But it was not a feral pig.
	But by the laws of Michigan, he wanted to be outside because he wanted to have it, you know, free ranging and things like that.
	But the industry had set things up and said, you know, if your pig has got, isn't hairless and, you know, it's going to be labeled as a feral pig and we're going to destroy them.
	And so he was in this big fight with the state of Michigan and trying to shut him down.
	His pork was not white meat.
	You know, it was like the other white meat.
	Well, it wasn't white meat.
	It was red meat.
	And he said it tasted very different.
	It's very good. But again, that's another example of how big food will operate with big government to shut people down.
	You know, it's... It is.
	But now I think the dairy thing, as we look at, you've always had this collusion between big food producers and industrial producers working with government regulatory agencies to get rid of their competition.
	That happens in every industry.
	You know, they regulatory capture and they use the government to get rid of their competition.
	But now we've got this other aspect of it, like we see now in the Netherlands, and at the forefront of all of that is the cows and dairy.
	And they want you to have zero dairy and zero meat and zero other things.
	And so they're using dairy and cows, they're using that now, the environmentalists are using that to shut down farms in general.
	That's the tip of the spear.
	Yeah.
	You know, and you know what's interesting?
	Of course, now they're wanting people to eat this synthetic meat, this fast-growing lab meat.
	Yeah, biopsy burgers, I call them.
	Well, that's exactly right.
	That's exactly right, David.
	I was just going to say, it's like, imagine eating a tumor.
	I mean, that's essentially what you're eating in this type of situation.
	Yeah, tumor kebab.
	Exactly, exactly.
	Well, it's very interesting.
	And again, it just shows how much corruption there is.
	But it's at the forefront of all this stuff, and it is very foundational.
	And as you point out, you can go from something that is harmful to your health to something that is beneficial to your health.
	I imagine vitamin D, when they keep the animals and the cows and these factory dairies, They probably don't get too much sunlight, so they probably don't have as much vitamin D in their milk either, do they?
	Correct, correct. And, you know, for the rest of my story, and this is where it gets really interesting, too, is at the time of my accident when I broke my wrist, I was 33 years old and I was diagnosed with osteopenia.
	I think I mentioned that in the first time we chatted.
	And... And tell people what that is.
	How is that different from osteoporosis or thin bones or fragile bones?
	Yeah, osteopenia is the precursor to osteoporosis.
	So it's basically I'm set up to be osteoporotic.
	And at that time, you know, 33 is pretty young to be told that.
	And I was told, well, you're probably just a few years away from needing to be on medication.
	And My pharmacist brain was like, oh no, I am not taking that medication, which was one of the reasons I was interested in finding an alternative solution and the beginning of the looking into drinking raw milk.
	Well, fast forward to 15 years when I was 48, I had an accident and it was a pretty significant accident.
	I nearly lost my left foot.
	Wow. Um, I was charged, I got charged by a bull and he hit me from the side, um, on below the knee, threw me in the air.
	And when I landed, um, the, my tibia, which is the, the bigger lower leg bone, it came out, it had come out of my leg and well, here's the thing, David.
	And the bone didn't break.
	It just came out of my leg.
	Wow. So you took care of that osteopenia issue, right?
	Correct. Yeah. So it wasn't a compound fracture.
	It just came out. Wow. That's amazing.
	Yeah. And now the fibula, the little tiny bone on the outside of the leg, that did break.
	And I did sever four tendons.
	So, I mean, it was a significant injury, but the fact that that tibia didn't break, the doctor was like, for a hit like that, for the bone not to break, we need to do another bone density scan.
	So we went back 15 years later.
	I did another bone density scan.
	And at that time, you know, the lady who was doing the scan, she's like, I'm not a doctor, so I can't tell you what your scan looks like.
	She said, but your bones are amazing.
	And she said, now, what are you taking?
	And I said, I just drink romp.
	I just drink raw milk because she's looking at my history, right?
	My history, osteopenia.
	And I said, I just drink raw milk and I do take magnesium too.
	And I'll touch on that in just a second.
	And she said, well, she said, my eyes say that you've got the bones of a healthy 18-year-old female.
	Wow. Wow.
	It doesn't have the side effects other than maybe a stray bull to drink raw milk than the medication does.
	What were some of the side effects of the medication if you've been taking that for 15 years?
	Jaw necrosis.
	You hear about that all the time.
	If you go to the dentist and they ask you if you're on Fosamax or bisphosphonate, You know, you've probably been asked that before.
	That's when your jawbone actually disintegrates.
	The same thing, it puts you at a higher rate.
	It's kind of interesting.
	It puts you at a higher risk for hip fractures, but what you're trying to prevent is hip fractures.
	Yeah, exactly.
	You see that all the time with pharmaceutical drugs, right?
	You take it for condition A, and one of the adverse effects is that it increases condition A. And you look at an aging population and how important it would be for people to have something that's going to help them with osteoporosis or osteopenia, something like that.
	Well, and not just that, like if you're drinking raw milk, raw milk will actually help lower your total overall cholesterol.
	You don't want your cholesterol to be too low, but what happens is it will increase your HDL, your good cholesterol, and start decreasing your LDL, conversely.
	So, and you don't want your cholesterol to be too low.
	I mean, people who have cholesterol under like 180, their total cholesterol, those are the ones who ends up in dementia units.
	So that's another topic for another day.
	Mm-hmm. Yeah, people have been able to help people with the beginning stages of dementia by giving them things like coconut oil and things like that.
	That's exactly right.
	I mean, our brains are 50% cholesterol, so imagine trying to deprive the brain of cholesterol and you can guess what will happen.
	Let's talk about, you said you also supplement with magnesium as well.
	So as raw milk and magnesium gave you, you know, you went from osteopenia precursor to osteoporosis to having, as one lady said, the bones of an 18-year-old.
	Tell us about magnesium.
	How does that do? So, you know, I'll preface this by saying not all magnesium is created equal.
	And there are different, like, there's...
	Magnesium citrate, glycinate, malate, orotate, chelated magnesium.
	There's magnesium gluconate, magnesium oxide.
	Those two are my least favorite, and those, unfortunately, are two of the most commonly found ones in, like, your mainstream nutritional products.
	They're just not well bioavailable.
	The malate and glycinate are much more highly bioavailable.
	The citrate is also highly bioavailable, but it's more likely to give you diarrhea.
	I mean, that's what you take for a prep.
	Some people need that because they're prone to constipation.
	And if that's the case, it's not a bad magnesium to take.
	But here's the issue.
	We should have a calcium to magnesium ratio that is close to 1 to 1 in the body.
	And because our diets are so low in magnesium...
	Our current farming practices have stripped the soil.
	There's not enough magnesium in the soil.
	Therefore, there's not going to be enough magnesium in our vegetables, which is where it predominantly comes from, fruits and vegetables.
	And then, of course, there's the standard American diet where people are just eating junk, which certainly doesn't have magnesium in it.
	It doesn't have any food in it.
	Yeah, exactly. But there's a lot of fortification of calcium in the diet, even in junk food, where they put calcium in.
	And then if you remember, you know...
	Once a woman gets older, they're like, make sure you take your calcium juice or make sure you're taking your calcium.
	So you end up with a calcium to magnesium ratio that's closer to three to one or four to one instead of one to one.
	And when that happens, then you actually have an increased brittleness of bones.
	And you also have an increased hardening of the vascular system, calcification of the vascular system.
	So the goal is to get your magnesium in and get your ratio closer to one to one instead of this three to one or four to one that is counterproductive.
	And, you know, I'm not a doctor.
	I'm a pharmacist. But it is a travesty that people are...
	to take more calcium with no regard to taking magnesium.
	They should be taking magnesium first.
	They're creating a problem or aggravating a problem that's already there by telling them to do more of something.
	They should be balancing it.
	It's about ratios.
	It's not about...
	And that's why it's important if you get vitamin D to make sure that you're also taking vitamin K.
	Some vitamin D's come with K as well.
	It can do the same type of thing.
	It can lead to calcification if you don't have the K with it.
	So the magnesium is very important.
	As you pointed out, tell us again the sources that you...
	the forms of it that you think...
	You said citrate is good, but it can cause you if you are...
	unless you are predisposed to constipation, it might cause some diarrhea.
	What are the other forms that you would recommend of magnesium?
	My preference is like malate or glycinate.
	There's another one that if somebody has needs to work on their their vasculature, the Orotate is a is a good one. Occasionally you can find magnesium products that contain Orotate, Glycinate and Malate all in the same cap capsule or tablet. That's great.
	Because you're hitting the body in a little bit different way all the way around.
	So that's my preference.
	I personally would stay away from magnesium oxide, magnesium gluconate.
	I mean, I don't find them very helpful.
	You know, it's interesting. I got a factoid here from this article talking about the milk wars.
	They said in 1945, Americans drank about 45 gallons of milk a year.
	Now they drink only about 11, most of it in their coffee.
	And they said that analysts are predicting that cattle farming will be obsolete by 2035.
	The reason they're predicting that, of course, is because that's what the globalists want.
	Yeah, they're pushing for that to happen.
	But again, I think it's interesting and probably we could go back and see the rise of osteoporosis in our society as well as we push these things out as we go into chemicals and adulterated food.
	Talk about what they're replacing it with in so many different ways is vegan milk.
	Soy milk, almond milk, cashew, all these different things.
	What is your take on those types of milk?
	Well, I'll... All of those milks are different, and so I can't really put them all in the same category.
	I mean, soy obviously is...
	It's probably my least favorite, number one, because it's genetically modified.
	Number two is because it is highly estrogenic, and it's called a phytoestrogen.
	And there is a reason we're losing...
	I mean, this is one of the reasons we're losing so much testosterone in our world, because we're...
	A lot of men, their estrogen has gotten so high, their testosterone can't compete.
	And soy is just so pervasive now in our diet.
	I remember years ago when I would watch the news shows and Archer Daniel Midland was always talking about soy being this and soy being that.
	I mean, they put it in everything. They put it in everything, and it's just not a healthy product, especially in the quantity that we're exposed to now.
	There's, you know, nut milk.
	I mean, some people cannot drink regular milk.
	I mean, that is true.
	I will say, though... Lactose intolerant, yeah.
	Well, yeah, but I will say this.
	I've had a number of quote-unquote lactose intolerant people in my house, and I've served them a glass of milk, and I have yet to have a lactose intolerant person be intolerant to raw milk.
	Yeah. Yeah. I've heard that before as well.
	Yeah. Yeah. So there is that.
	You know, we need the healthy fats that are in this kind of product.
	Healthy milk, raw milk product, goat milk is another one.
	I haven't done a lot of research, but I am very interested in a rarer milk called this Camel's Milk that I understand is very, very good for kids with autism.
	So, yep, yep.
	And there's a couple of farms and you can order Camel's Milk for kids with autism.
	That's very important. That's a real epidemic.
	As a matter of fact, we had a listener who, and I'll just mention his name again, Daniel Jeremiah.
	They're really struggling with their child, have been for years, damaged by vaccines, has autism.
	So he asked that we keep him in his prayers, but I'd not heard that about camel's milk.
	I hope he hears this. Yeah.
	But back to the nut milk, I think it's always important to think about where the initial product came from.
	If things are not treated organically, any milk that you make It's going to be concentrated.
	So if there were pesticides, herbicides, fungicides involved, you just got a hefty dose of all of the above, right?
	That's true. That's true.
	So that's something to think about.
	And almonds, from what I understand, unfortunately, even the organic ones are sprayed with some sort of chemical because they have...
	A problem with almonds across the board.
	So for that reason, I'm a little leery of almond milk in general.
	I guess my favorite or go-to would be oat milk or coconut milk.
	Well, that's interesting.
	And it really is the food wars in general.
	And the milk war in particular is at the forefront of this.
	Did you see the study that came out a few weeks ago?
	I say study.
	I should say the fake news, but it literally is a study by Tufts University that put Cheerios ahead of all beef patties in terms of nutrition.
	Yeah. Yeah, or maybe I think the best thing you could get would be a spoonful of Eerios from Mike Tyson.
	We're talking about that now. There was a joke about the Cheerios back when he bit the Evander Holyfield's ear, and now he's putting out pot candies and calling them Mike Tyson Bites.
	So I guess that'll be the next thing they advertise as being good for you, right?
	It combines everything. You've got the pot as well as kind of a Cheerio aspect to it.
	Yeah, that is amazing. It was probably paid for by General Mills, don't you think?
	Well, it actually was.
	It was paid for by several food companies.
	And that's the thing. That's why they do it.
	Whenever I read a study, the first thing I do is scroll to the end, and I look and see who paid for it.
	We've seen that over and over again.
	All the pharmaceutical companies, they've got three different pharmaceutical companies with competing products.
	They all do a study, and guess what?
	They're always the best and better than brand X and brand Y, each one of them.
	They can rig it for sure.
	Thank you so much, Liz James.
	Again, blessedbyhisblood.com.
	Look for it. That's going to be very important to fight for our purity of being able to get our blood as well as our food.
	Thank you so much, Liz. Appreciate it.
	Thank you, sir. Liberty,
	it's your move.
	And now, The David Knight Show!
	Kim Witsak She is someone who has worked and had a lot of experience, and we're going to talk about her own personal experience, with SSRIs.
	And she's had a tragic experience in her life, and she has worked very hard to try to make sure that this doesn't happen to other people.
	As she pointed out, she became an accidental advocate for Again, for people to be informed about the risks and dangers of SSRI and many other drugs that are out there.
	Her site is woodymatters.com.
	Woody was her husband.
	We're going to talk about that and about SSRIs.
	Thank you for joining us, Kim. Great.
	Thanks for having me. Thank you.
	Tell us a little bit about, you said you became an accidental advocate.
	Tell us a little bit about your story and your husband's story.
	Sure. Well, I like to call myself the accidental advocate because I certainly did not choose to do this work, but sometimes our greatest life purposes choose us.
	So I was married, it was almost, it'll be 20 years ago this August, but I was married on August 6, 2003.
	I'll never forget the phone call that changed the trajectory of my life.
	My dad called to tell me that my husband, Woody, was found hanging from the rafters of our garage dead at age 37.
	Woody was not depressed.
	Woody had no history of depression or any other mental illness.
	He had just started his dream job with a startup company and was having trouble sleeping, which is not really that uncommon for entrepreneurs.
	And so, but what he did is, you know, I always call Woody the athlete who, you know, used doctors because they put him back, Humpty Dumpty, you know, they put him back.
	So Woody went and saw his GP, somebody he's trusted for a long time and was given a three-week sample pack for Of Zoloft, which is an antidepressant for insomnia, and said it would take the edge off and help him sleep.
	And yeah, it's really crazy.
	And when I look back, and you know, I was out of the country the first three weeks he was on the drug.
	We both lived, we had very successful careers in advertising, so I was out of the country.
	It was our busy time in production.
	So I wasn't even there when he first got put on these drugs.
	And like I said, the three-week sample pack automatically doubled the dose.
	And so that's really the story.
	But what put, you know, like we never once, and I'll tell you one thing that happened right before Woody's death, um, I came home and Woody walked in the back door, completely sweat through his blue dress shirt, fell to the floor in a fetal position with his hands around his head like a vice.
	Kim, you gotta help me.
	I don't know what's happening to me.
	My head's outside my body looking in.
	And I remember like, yeah, it was really, you know, and at that point, we've been married for 10 years.
	I've never seen this kind of behavior.
	And we calmed him down.
	He called his doctor and the doctor said, give him four.
	You got to give the drug four to six weeks to work.
	Wow. To kick in. Wow.
	Yeah. Give it time. Yeah. It's amazing when you look at this and you look up the definition of SSRI, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, what you will see on the internet, they'll say, well, it's the first line of pharmacotherapy for depression and And other psychological issues due to its safety, its efficacy, and its tolerance.
	It's amazing that they can put this message out there after all the stuff that's happened.
	And I've talked in the past, Kim, to people who have just started collecting SSRI stories.
	They call it SSRIstories.net.
	They've got over 7,000 of those, and we're trying to get this information out there.
	You know, when we look at this and how destructive this has become, how people will commit suicide, and how sometimes as part of that is mass murder.
	We've seen that being a factor in many of the shootings that are out there.
	And yet, the public doesn't really understand, and there's so much...
	Trust in the doctors and in the pills that people are taking.
	I imagine, as you talked about the dosages, when I've talked to the people at SSRIstories.net, they said where it gets really dangerous is when people are having negative effects and they decide that they're going to adjust the dosage, maybe even cutting it, not even taking more of it, but just changing the dosage one way or the other, more or less, can trigger these types of suicides or murder-suicide.
	Correct and it's like they always say you know we never like you just mentioned we never once questioned the drug because you know it's advertised safe and effective given to him by his doctor and the FDA and you know the most and at the time Woody's death there were no warnings so that became kind of our mission and the night that Woody was found the coroner gave us a gift and I call it a gift Because intuitively I knew like something didn't make sense.
	Like my husband who loved life, we just booked our 10 year anniversary trip.
	But that he took his life.
	But she asked one simple question.
	Was Woody taking any medication?
	Yeah. And the only medication he was taking was Zoloft.
	And she said to us that we are going to have to take it with us.
	It might have something to do with his death.
	So they took the bottle of Zoloft with her.
	So that became clue number one.
	Ironically, on the front page of our Minneapolis paper, they had an article that said the UK finds link between antidepressants and suicide in teens.
	Wow. So that was the same night, which is, you know, I... Look back now, and I feel like that was Woody's note because there was no note, right?
	And that became our mission and started to go out to D.C. So what a lot of families don't realize is before this time, when we Googled Zoloft and suicide, we had no idea that the FDA had hearings in 1991 on the emergence of violence and suicide with Prozac.
	And did nothing.
	And every, you know, did nothing.
	They never warned. And they said to study suicality that Eli Lilly never did.
	You know, the FDA never followed up.
	And meanwhile, here comes Zoloft from Pfizer, GlaxoSmithKline's Paxil.
	It gets approved for kids.
	And so that became our mission to get black box suicide warnings added to these drugs in 2004 for kids and then 2006 for adults.
	But, you know, a lot of people aren't really aware of that because, you know, they just assume and, you know, our commercials.
	I mean, the whole thing is just it is a very important topic that we must cover.
	Constantly keeping in front of people like you're doing with the show.
	Well, yeah. You got on your site, Woody Matters.
	Woody was your husband's name.
	WoodyMatters.com.
	You have some interesting factoids and graphics that are there.
	You say that there are $19 spent on ads by the pharmaceutical industry for every $1 that they spend on research.
	That's pretty astounding. And of course, that's the Ask Your Doctor commercials.
	And those things really exploded in the 90s.
	That's when that first phenomenon started happening.
	I've talked many times about how we had not seen it.
	We moved to an area where we didn't have TV reception.
	Then we're traveling a few years after this stuff happened.
	We're in a hotel and We turn on the TV and it's like, wow, this is just one pharmaceutical ad after another.
	I've never seen anything like that before.
	But $19 worth of ads for every $1 they spend on research.
	That's amazing. Yeah, it's a great, you know, that was a study that was done by a couple of researchers.
	And it's fascinating because it's not just, you know, advertising that we see on television, but it's all of this other marketing.
	You know, there's so much marketing.
	And I, you know, have been, the interesting thing is I'm still in advertising and marketing.
	So I have a lens that looks at everything through the marketing and advertising lens.
	And, you know, it's the perfect, especially when you look at this, it's, you know, the drug commercial, then we've created all these side industries, and then we've created the advertising with the media networks.
	All of this influences that.
	But then you look at I call it, like I said, the spider web.
	And it's all the trappings of marketing that doctors aren't even aware that they're being marketed to.
	Yeah, that's right. It can be very, very subtle.
	It can be very overt.
	And what we saw with the opioid industry, they were selling this as like the panacea for everything.
	Give it for every type of thing.
	Getting a lot of people addicted to it.
	And when they went back and they saw how they were influencing doctors and spending so much money on vacations and even on hookers with some of them, it was amazing what they were doing with that.
	And so you can imagine that if the...
	All the commercials that we see on television, on cable news especially, are just the tip of the spear.
	You know, how much is being spent with the rest of this stuff?
	And with free samples and all kinds of studies that they fund.
	But, of course, all those commercials guarantee that the news agencies, the big news agencies on cable, aren't really going to cover this topic.
	You talked about the fact that whenever the...
	When the coroner was looking at your husband, Woody, to ask you, you know, what kind of drugs is he?
	Oh, Zoloft. Okay, I'm going to take a look.
	Whenever we see some kind of a crazy mass shooting, that has been for the longest time what I try to get to.
	Oh, look, this person was under psychological evaluation and under medication, but they won't say, typically won't say what it is.
	They always still cover for the pharmaceutical companies.
	And if you dig far enough, you probably will find in almost all these cases that it is SSRIs that are something like that, that is a part of that, you know, as part of this medication.
	But it's very interesting to see how many of these shootings has been involved with and how the press now doesn't like to mention that whatsoever.
	Yeah, you know, again, I go back to the simple question of where was he on any drugs, right?
	So that gave me another insight.
	So every time there's a mass shooting, a lot of these shootings really started since the advent of antidepressants.
	And you look at whether, you know, there's some of the, there's a famous one that had the Donald Schell case down in Kentucky, right?
	And, you know, they actually settled with the company, settled, and so it became like so there wouldn't be a jury verdict when the drug was on the trial, right?
	And so these guys have known about it for a long time.
	It's a simple question.
	I have always, like, one of the things that we've been out there advocating for is anytime there's a shooting, we as the public, you know, your HIPAA rules no longer apply.
	That's right. We need to know what medications, again, It does not say it's causation, right?
	But is there a link?
	Is there a curiosity that we should be asking?
	We should be knowing what medications they were on.
	And their privacy doesn't really matter because we are all sitting ducks and we should, as a member of the public, We should be demanding that our legislators are pushing for, you know, information or this kind of information or investigations when we do have big shootings because we need to get to the bottom of, like, what's going on with this increase?
	Why are we seeing it? Again, I always say it's not causation, but is there a link?
	And we need to be curious.
	Yeah, they're going to great lengths to keep this manifesto from the shooter in Nashville under wraps, but I'd be as interested, if not more interested, in finding out what was going on with them, with her, with the evaluation, the treatment, the psychological treatment that she was undergoing.
	What kind of medication was she on?
	We need to take a look at that as well as a manifesto.
	Tell us a little bit about this Donald Schell case that you referred to, where they settled.
	Yes, sir. Donald Schell was in the 90s and he was a factory worker and he shot up some of the people.
	I think it was in Kentucky.
	I believe it was in Kentucky, Louisville.
	But anyways, the judge didn't know that there was a secret settlement.
	I actually just tweeted about it earlier in the month.
	But there was a secret settlement that the judge found out about.
	But it really gave, it let the drug company off We're good to go.
	Pfizer helped to create a prosecutor manual in the 90s.
	Now, I just have to say, why would a drug company help to create, or why would there need to be a prosecutor manual being helped for the, and it was called the Zoloft prosecutor manual, to be used for any time somebody used the Zoloft defense, or the drug made me do it.
	Again, that's from the 90s.
	Then you go back, and it's really crazy.
	They really war-game this. They war-game all this stuff.
	They war-game all the different stories about what they're going to tell people about the warp speed vaccines and everything.
	They've got it planned from the very beginning.
	So if somebody says that they were under the influence of Zoloft, here's what you do to take that away.
	Wow. Yeah, again from the 90s.
	And then, you know, what a lot of people also don't realize is, you know, Prozac in Germany was never approved for a couple of reasons initially.
	Risk of suicide, lack of efficacy.
	And eventually it did get approved, but with a tranquilizer.
	Hmm. Now, that idea of with a tranquilizer never got translated to our U.S., right?
	And so, you know, that is what we have to remember.
	There's that whole agitation and akathisia, which is the side effect that can cause, you know, when Woody was having that head outside the body, or it's this extreme agitation, this extreme psychosis, that actually Pfizer's chief medical officer said,
	Wrote an entire article about akathisia and if people would get experience akathisia, quote unquote, his words, not mine, death may be a welcome result.
	Wow. And so that journal article is public, right?
	But what wasn't public and came out in my documents was a letter that the chief medical officer wrote to his salespeople that said the attached journal article is not suitable for general practitioners, but may be for neurologically inclined psychiatrists.
	And I was like, they intentionally kept the side effect of akathisia from the GPs, but you know, 80%, 70-80% of these drugs are written by GPs and not by the psychiatrists.
	Wow. And akathisia, that was similar to what your husband Woody was experiencing with his mind outside of his body type of thing?
	Yep. And it's like an extreme agitation.
	It's like, you know, where you just want it out.
	You know, I just want it out.
	And that's the thing that they said would be, death would be considered to be preferable for many people like that.
	And of course, a lot of people, if you're having...
	Situations like that, and some people would alter their dosage for SSRIs because of physical things that were happening to them, right?
	Not just a mental thing that was happening to them.
	It might be doing other things to their body, and so they would adjust the dosage for that or get off of it.
	You weren't there when your husband committed suicide.
	So you're not sure if he was having this akathisia and it was driving him nuts.
	Maybe he made the connection and just didn't take it.
	Maybe that could have sent him over the edge as well because it will exacerbate changing your dosage.
	This is an important thing for people to know.
	Changing the dosage can really trigger this thing.
	And it's almost like taking an overdose for it.
	Many cases to even to reduce it a little bit.
	Tell people about the black box warning that is on these things that you were able to get put on, the FDA black box warning.
	So the black box warning is the most serious of all warnings.
	That means that there's some type of serious adverse event or death that can be associated with the drug.
	It is literally in a black box in your paperwork that you get from the pharmacist.
	But more importantly, it is a conversation that your doctors should be having with us.
	The patient or the caregiver at the time of prescribing.
	And there's also for kids, there's an FDA medication guide for parents that talks about the suicide, where the dangers are, also with some of the anxiety medications, how there's addictive qualities to them or that they're on the DEA schedule too.
	So these are all very, very important conversations.
	And, you know, it's funny.
	I always say when people are like, well, everybody, you know, the media sometimes will say, everybody knows that there's warnings on these drugs.
	They just have to put it on. I said, no, that's not true.
	If you, like, in 1991, I was a young kid.
	I didn't even know that the FDA was having hearings on Prozac and it was a big deal, Prozac and suicide and violence, right?
	So in 2004 or 2006, when I was in the thick of...
	Advocating for those and out in D.C. almost every other week.
	If you were like these parents now, if they were kids, they didn't know anything about this, right?
	That's right. So I think it's one of those things that we have to constantly be reminding people.
	And just recently, there was a study that was done by Dr.
	David Healy and Peter Getchy out of Copenhagen.
	And they got the data that was used to originally approve Prozac for kids.
	It's part of the reanalysis of the original clinical trial, and then they can look at what the data says and then compare it to what the journals say.
	say about the medication? Well, they just did and looked at Prozac approval that came out of the using the MRHA which is the UK version of the FDA regulatory body and they reanalyzed it and looked at what the data said that got was used to get approval and then what it looks like in the journal and how it got reported and they left out suicides. So they're actually calling for the journals to
	actually update their data because they've reanalyzed it.
	But you know, it's funny looking at what we've seen in the last couple years with just the you know the COVID vaccines and like, you know, all of the censoring and talking about it.
	We didn't have that same experience, meaning we didn't have social media and the media environment when we were trying to get the antidepressant black box warnings.
	But now I'm seeing anything to do with antidepressants, especially around the shootings, but also this reanalyzed study that just came out.
	The mainstream media has not touched it.
	And it should be one of those game-changing findings, this new study that is using old original data that was used to get the drug approved.
	So, you know, I feel like there's so many parallels between those two worlds.
	Oh, yeah. We are living in a different world and we have to, at the end of the day, it's you and I, the people who either are taking or we have loved ones or that we need to be the ones questioning and pushing our Officials, you know, I today sit on the FDA advisory board, the same advisory board that in 1991 didn't do their job and they all took money.
	So I have a very unique perspective also sitting on the psychopharmalogic drugs advisory committee, seeing how new drugs are coming to market using fast tracking and breakthrough.
	So I think there's just a lot of, you know, the system is not really built to protect you and I. It's really protecting others' interests, and a lot of interests are at play when it comes to the medications that we take.
	And it's an unbelievable amount of money that is involved.
	You know, I mean, people are willing to kill for billions of dollars.
	I mean, we've seen it, certainly corporations are.
	But tell us a little bit about that experience that you have sitting in there on the FDA committee, and your role in that is as a consumer advocate.
	Tell us what you're seeing. You mentioned that they're speeding things up, and of course now we're seeing that as they come out with one new vaccine after the other, they have established this paradigm.
	We heard Fauci talking about it in October 2019 at a Milken Institute thing.
	They said, you know, how do we get everybody to take a flu vaccine?
	Well, they have now established a protocol where they can just run through all these tests without waiting for a decade, as they were talking about.
	We're seeing one vaccine coming after the other with mRNA without really any testing.
	Is that what is happening to the psychological drugs that you're looking at in your committee?
	How are they speeding that up there?
	Or are they? Yes, they are.
	And so one of the things that Congress kind of granted is something called a breakthrough.
	There's all the fast-tracking mechanisms, because, you know, back in the, I think it was the 80s, with AIDS drugs, and you remember all the groups were saying, hey, it's taking you too long to approve these drugs, right?
	That was another Fauci thing. Yeah, it's taking too long.
	We've got to make it faster, right?
	So that was one thing with, like, you know, PDUFA. But then also with Congress, they started, they have...
	Different regulatory, like it's called breakthrough therapy, fast tracking.
	Everything is, if you start watching and listening to the drugs that we take, everything is an unmet need.
	And so when there's an unmet need, that means that you can bypass some of the more stringent, or what I used to think were gold standards with our clinical trials.
	Mm-hmm. So a lot of the drugs that are coming before my committee, and I've been on it, I've just been extended until the end of next year, which I still laugh because I tend to be the only one that votes no.
	And it's very interesting because I see it from a very different, like, it's not about just, I mean, market, you know, to get these drugs, you've got to remember what clinical trials are.
	The whole idea is that is there because they want to get it on the market for marketing purposes, right?
	Right. And so they can get it.
	So, you know, it's about getting, doing the data, getting the best, you know, like a lot of the clinical trials don't even, you know, aren't real world scenarios.
	They're the best case scenario for something.
	Then you have, and so that's one thing.
	But then if you don't have sheer volume or numbers, because like, you know, I had a couple of drugs and I just actually, it's an article that's coming out today.
	It was the Rixalti, which is an antipsychotic that's currently on the market.
	But the big unmet need right now is Alzheimer's dementia agitation.
	And so they have been for years with the elderly been using antipsychotics.
	But the government cracked down on it because they literally have been killing elderly people regardless.
	And so this company...
	The drug is already on the market, and they just got approval from the FDA, and I was the only...
	The data that they used was marginally beneficial for a patient.
	There was no... Or I should say, I almost think this was more for the caregivers or the nursing homes as opposed to the patient.
	There were no patient...
	You know, satisfaction type, you know, where a lot of those drugs can deaden somebody.
	As well as then it also had a four times rate of death over the other drugs.
	But this, I was the only one that voted no.
	And it's amazing to me.
	And I really, you know, I leave these meetings often thinking, am I the...
	Am I the only one that's seen this?
	You know, am I the only one?
	You know, I'm like, why bother?
	I want to hit my head against the, you know, the concrete.
	Like, it doesn't make a difference.
	But here's where I do think, you know, at least I'm on record.
	I get to challenge the drug companies.
	I get to challenge the FDA officials.
	And I come from a safety lens, and I will always come with a safety lens because, you know, these drugs are coming to market Really, with smaller clinical trials, and it ultimately is what happens when millions of people take the drugs, and then we start seeing, you know, the different issues happen.
	But, you know...
	More time. More time. And you point out on your website, I'd encourage people to go there, woodymatters.com.
	You say there have been no initiated drug studies by the FDA. They don't do the studies.
	It's the people who are going to sell you the stuff that do the studies, right?
	Exactly. I mean, that was shocking too.
	And then the other thing that I'll say that was also shocking to me when I got into this work, again, the accidental advocate work, I would have assumed that doctors learn about how the FDA works and how this works in med school.
	But I found out they don't learn how the FDA works.
	That is not part of all of this critical thinking kind of things that you've got to be aware of, of the marketing, the ugly side that's behind the scenes, just so that as a doctor you can be a little bit more aware versus You know, versus just being educated by pharma.
	So the idea that, you know, they're not learning about it was shocking.
	The idea that, wait, the FDA doesn't do the trials?
	You mean you're doing it?
	And you are the one that wants to sell the product to me?
	Of course. Like, we do this all the time in advertising.
	We know how to set up clinical trials.
	We know how to, like, play the game.
	That's right. So anyways. And you see that all the time.
	you'll have three different companies making a drug for the same thing at the same time right and they'll all run their own studies and they'll say well mine is better than brand X&Y and then brand X&Y will do it and theirs will win as well. They rig these studies so much it's such a rigged market and of course the real key is education and that's why what you're doing is so important at WoodyMatters.com Thank you so much, Kim.
	Kim Witsack, I'm so sorry about what happened to turn you into an advocate, but thank you for being an advocate, and thank you for being eyes and ears as to what is happening inside the FDA. We all need to understand what is happening with that.
	Thank you so much. Thank you so much for having me.
	Liberty. It's your move.

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