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July 12, 2018 - Get Off My Lawn - Gavin McInnes
47:21
Ep 155 | Jolly Ranchers | Get Off My Lawn
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That's that Kid Rock song where he goes, I wanna be a cowboy.
I was into Kid Rock before anybody.
I was into Kid Rock in the early 90s when he was a rapper with a huge kid and play hairdo.
And he was in the Beastie Boys magazine Grand Player.
What the hell was that called?
Casino Royale, Grand Royal?
Yeah, that was it.
We got a special show for you today.
So the Hammond family was just pardoned.
That was Dwight and Steve Hammond.
They were ranchers who were accused of arson, what?
By the Bureau of Land Management.
The government terrorized these men, called them terrorists, ironically.
And I personally think Obama said when these guys were arrested and the Bundies showed up to have a standoff.
Sorry, I'm jumping ahead.
So a long time ago, the Hammond family, these are some ranchers in Oregon, they light brush fires.
That's what ranchers do.
This goes on and on, and the government hates them because the government wants that land, because the government says it's valuable.
It has water, and it's in a desert.
It's valuable land.
And the government has been torturing ranchers all over the country.
We remember the Bundy standoff, right?
The Bundy was the last family in that area.
They had squeezed dozens of rancher families to death out of that area and just taken it for themselves.
And they do a worse job than the ranchers do of preserving the land.
Everyone, the city folk are so apathetic about this.
And we're all ingrates.
These people make our cheeseburgers.
Cheeseburger is the best thing in the world.
I didn't say a cheeseburger.
Cheeseburgers, the whole cheeseburger as a concept is the greatest American thing ever outside of freedom and liberty.
And we let the government bully these people and arrest them and throw them in jail.
Anyway, there was the Bundy standoff, then there was the Hammonds.
Hammonds thrown in jail for lighting fires, which were mandatory fires you have to do as a rancher.
They were sentenced.
They went to prison.
And the Bundies went over from Nevada to Oregon and said, let's have a standoff.
I believe, now this is just my theory, that Obama said to the higher-ups at the feds, I don't want this standoff to be a thing.
I didn't like the way it went with the Bundies because they won.
You'll notice Occupy Wall Street and all these kids, they go somewhere and they stand and they say, I hate cops.
And they get pepper sprayed and they get beat up and they get sent home.
When the Bundies have a standoff, they have guns and they say, we don't approve of this tyranny.
And Obama goes, all right, well, we'll get out of here then.
So Obama had egg on his face after the Bundy Ranch thing.
So when the Oregon thing happened, he said, make sure that I don't get egg on my face and I don't care.
Well, I'm not going to say anything.
But if a-huh-huh was to phnie phnie in the and maybe huh, then I'm not going to be up all night worrying about it if you follow me, feds.
And so we had Lavoy Finnecum, who was part of the Hammond standoff, which was a very reluctant standoff.
The Hammonds are not standoff-y people.
They are very quiet Christian ranchers, not like the Bundies.
And so I don't think they were that enthusiastic about the whole standoff.
But anyway, they had the standoff.
The feds were there.
It looked like it was over.
Lavoy Finnecum gets out of his car after being chased by the Feds because they didn't want them to get to, I don't know, to have a city meeting or something.
Feds shot him dead.
Lavoie Finnecum should be a hero for all anarchists, all revolutionaries, but Antifa doesn't care about anyone who looks like a cowboy because it's not cool.
They want it to be a black kid.
They want Trayvon, not Lavoie.
So what we have on the show, I'm going to devote the entire show to this pardon because it's a big deal.
It's not just about the ranchers who were arrested, thrown in prison, then released from prison, and then dragged back into prison by the government.
And Trump just pardoned them.
It's not just about that.
It's about standing up to the government and winning.
And this is why, like, I don't think the far left understands that I can be anti-establishment, anti-government, and pro-Trump, because Trump is anti-government.
Inevitably, you have to have a president.
Don't you want the most anti-politician president you can get?
Where are the anarchists?
Where are the rebels?
Where are the kids who think they're tough and they want to break the rules when it comes to stuff like this?
This is fighting the man.
Anyway, I have Ruth Danielson coming on the show, right?
That's her name.
I know her as Ruthie.
I got Ruth Danielson on the show, and she is an incredible human being who, yeah, Ruth Danielson.
And then I have Josh Turnbau.
Now, Ruth Danielson, Ruthie, she always talks about humans all the time.
She's like obsessed with animals.
I don't think she's a big fan of humans in general.
Or I think she just sees them as yet another animal.
And she bought land from the Hammonds and has been deeply, deeply involved in this from the beginning.
I personally believe that she is responsible for this pardon.
I think that it was her enthusiasm and her passion that kept this in the limelight and got it to Trump.
It's a phone call we have with her.
And usually for phone calls, because this is TV, I like to keep it to five minutes.
I let her take over the entire show.
We'll just show footage of other stuff while she talks and we'll have me nodding.
And then I have Josh Turnbow, who did a brilliant film that you can find.
It's been stolen a million times all over YouTube.
It's called American Standoff.
And it Documents the entire story I just told you, including the death of Lavoie.
And it shows you with beautiful footage and drone shots and stuff, the whole progression from the Hammonds first burn to them being sentenced to prison.
Now, it doesn't end with them being pardoned because this just happened yesterday.
So we'll talk to Josh at the end of the show.
But without further bleathering from this wannabe cowboy, let's talk to Ruthie and show you this incredible story, not just of two ranchers who were falsely accused of arson and eventually pardoned, but of real Americans, cheeseburger makers, who fought the law and eventually won.
Ruthie, are you there?
Yes, I am.
Good morning.
Good morning to you.
Now, you are sort of known as the lady the call when we're talking about the Hammond case, the ranchers over there in Oregon.
And I feel like we could get the best sort of who, what, when, where, why basic story from you, even more than calling the Hammonds themselves.
I don't know about that, but okay.
What happened?
Yeah, I've done quite a bit of research.
What happened, starting with the incarceration?
Yeah, that's correct.
The original indictment that the Hammonds received in 2010 had 22 counts.
It included fires that had occurred in the Steens Mountain area, in their ranching area, back 20 years, over 20 years.
And so they were indicted on those counts.
And then the superseding indictment, the one that they actually went to trial over, was dropped down to nine counts.
The first count being a fire that had occurred in 2001 in October.
That fire was a prescribed burn where Steve Hammond had actually called the BLM that day, that morning, and actually around noon to see if it was okay to burn some of their property in a prescribed burn.
The BLM had a prescribed burn going on at the same time to the south, and he could see the smoke.
It happened to also be the second day, I believe, of hunting season.
And so they had hunted that morning.
They were done with the hunts.
all headed back, and they got the okay from the BLM to go ahead and do the prescribed burn, which they did.
And just to start to interrupt you, but...
You're lighting up the forest, but it's an integral part of the survival of the forest.
It also helps prevent massive fires because they hit a dead end.
Yeah, and there's two differences, major differences, between a lightning strike wildfire that occurs in August versus a prescribed burn that occurs in the fall or early in the spring.
A prescribed burn, the reason that you do them is exactly as you stated.
It's to actually make better range land.
It doesn't burn as hot.
Each night, if you're starting a prescribed burn in the morning in October, you get, so you get, you have to actually start it not early in the morning.
The grass won't burn.
It's too wet.
There's too much moisture in the air that time of year, especially at these elevations.
We're not talking sea level.
We're talking 6,000 elevation in the mountains.
So you start the fire in mid-morning once you can get ignition.
And it burns gently, not massively, and it burns the grasses and gets rid of the invasive species and doesn't kill everything in its path, doesn't kill the seeds that happen in a normal wildfire.
It kills everything.
It kills the soil.
So the natural grasses have a hard time coming back, and it's only the weeds, the ones that really can survive all conditions that come back.
So that's why you do it at a certain time during the year.
So that's exactly what they did.
It burned their property that day.
And unfortunately, that night, usually fires will lay down.
They'll actually go out.
This one went beyond their land onto 138 acres of their BLM allotment land.
I'm sorry to interrupt again, but 138 acres sounds a lot to a city folk.
This is out of thousands and thousands of acres.
And many times the BLM will do burns, and they're amateurs, and they'll end up burning hundreds and hundreds of acres of ranchers' land with no repercussions whatsoever.
Yeah, actually, it's thousands and thousands of acres of ranchers' land.
And it's not uncommon for these ranchers to have tens of thousands of acres.
So yeah, it does seem like a lot.
For example, I own a property up there on the mountain right adjacent to where all this took place, and I have 172 acres.
Again, that's just a little eety, teeny tiny speck compared to the area.
And there's no Other humans, there's no other structures.
It's not forest, it's high desert.
So you have a combination of sagebrush, juniper, and mountain mahogany that is in the area.
It's wide open spaces like you see in the movies.
I mean, it's just wide open spaces.
I think it's incredible that anyone can come along and make that arable land, that anyone can take that desert land and turn it into cheeseburgers.
I mean, we should be revering these people.
Yeah, actually, the desire to have grass-fed beef, beef that is raised on the land, is a good thing.
And that's exactly what they were doing, was keeping their own private property grazable.
And actually, not just grazable for the cows, but for elk and deer and all the other species that live there.
Yeah, it just makes the land better.
And so it's been a process that's been used by the ranchers for many, many, many, many, many years.
And it works.
So it burned onto the BLM land, and the fire went out by itself.
There was no firefighting.
There was no anything that happened.
It went out by itself that next morning.
Unfortunately, through the night, it had run up a draw, what's called, and burned the 138 acres, again, of their allotment land.
So it's public land, but they are, it's connected with the deed to their property that they're allowed to, at that time, graze their cattle on this adjacent land.
I see.
Anyway.
So they get arrested for that, thrown in jail.
Well, they, yeah, so that happened in 2001.
Then there was, so the indictment included the fire back over 10 years before, right?
So the indictment came in 2010.
So it was just after 10 years, they can't file against them.
So they actually filed before the 10-year was up on this 2001 fire.
Then there were fires that occurred in 2006.
And the 2006 fires happened in the summertime, and it was really, really hot, not when you want fires.
And there had been a massive lightning storm.
It was absolutely terrifying on the mountain.
I mean, there was, you know, over a thousand lightning strikes.
It was really, really scary.
And it had started fires all over the mountain.
Again, conditions are not moist, very dry, very bad for a fire to continue to run and just burn extremely hot.
and that's what happened in two thousand six well and and i think i had gotten it that was god The ranch had gotten a phone call from a man, Charlie Otley, one of the other ranchers that lives down in Diamond Valley.
And he had called up and saw smoke behind the Hammonds ranch house where they're at, which is about three miles off the main road, 205, at the base of the mountain.
And he told them, hey, do you see this smoke up on Moonhill Road up near, or no, I guess it was Crumbo Ridge?
And they said, no.
And so we hadn't.
And he said, well, I think you got a fire going there.
So Steve called into the BLM to see if they were aware if there was a fire in that area.
And Carla Bird said no, that she was unaware of that fire.
And so Steve went up to investigate and realized, oh my gosh, there was a fire that had started from a strike that they didn't know about yet.
And it was running down towards their winter feed and their home.
So he started what's called a backburn.
Again, it's what firefighters do all the time.
Yeah, that's the dead end I was talking about.
The fire reaches carbon and it can't go farther.
That's correct.
So he started, again, a fire on his land and it, in three different spots, it burned up and burned one acre, one acre of allotment land, of what is considered, you know, public land, BLM.
But again, their allotment land.
And that's it.
It went out.
And then during the indictments and during the trial, the prosecution charged them of, one, Steve burning, and then he had called the BLM after the fact the next day and let him know that he had started that.
They charged him with that fire of starting it maliciously, as well as a number of other fires on the mountain.
I mean, that had occurred from the lightning strikes.
In court testimony, yeah, in court testimony, the prosecution was trying to say that Dwight and Steve during those fires was going, you know, walking up through the area because they'd seen him numerous times lighting all of these fires, additional fires, to burn the mountain.
And the reason that they were on the mountain was to move their cows so their cows wouldn't be killed because they had, you know, hundreds of heads of cattle on the grazing allotments up there.
I'm sorry to interrupt again, but we're running out of time here.
I understand the government's motive here.
The ranchers have valuable land.
The Bundies have their case.
In this case, I think we were talking earlier, it's about water in a place that's a desert.
But what I don't understand is what's the government's argument for the ranchers' motive?
They're just vandals?
They just love seeing stuff burn?
It's a father-son arson team?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
That they were, The motive was that they were frustrated with the slow rate of which you would work with the BLM to do prescribed burns on the allotment land.
And so Dwight and Steve took it upon themselves to burn the mountain at the worst most possible time and all about their cattle and grazing.
So they tried to say that it was a personal motive for them to get better grazing.
But any rancher would know if you did that during that time of year, you're doing in August, you're actually killing the land.
You're doing way more damage to the land.
You're ruining your own career, you're ruining your own subsistence.
That's correct.
That's correct.
So that was ludicrous.
But, you know, for people that don't understand those details, you know, it's a reasonable argument if you don't understand, if you don't know the details.
And there's no rancher, no rancher that would put one, their cattle in harm's way, you know, burn up their, you know, completely burn up their livelihood and or damage their own rangeland.
I mean, you know, that might have happened in the 40s and 30s and stuff before people understood the science, but that doesn't happen now.
I mean, it's, you know, that's the stories of the past.
Yeah, we've done lots of horrible things in the past, but that doesn't happen anymore.
No, it's just so illogical.
And that's why I'm so frustrated by the general apathy you get from people who aren't directly involved.
They have this sort of like, well, shouldn't break the law.
If you don't like going to jail, then's the break.
Sorry, Hammonds.
And then you say, okay, okay.
What about the part where they serve their time, they're released, and then the government went, actually, I changed my mind.
You didn't finish your sentence.
And dragged them back into prison.
And they go, right.
Well, the original trial judge, unfortunately, well, they were charged with an anti-terrorism statute.
After Timothy McVeigh blew up the Oklahoma City building, they had added fire as a part of the statute in the anti-terrorism law so that you could not only be charged with blowing buildings up and killing people, but also arson, that arson connected with it.
So the feds used that law to charge the Hammonds.
Not 1855 Timber Set of Fire, not the other federal statutes that they have that they could have charged them that carries a maximum of five years, but they used the one that carries, like the conspiracy charge they charged them with, carries a minimum of 10 years.
So they were trying to inflict the absolute most pain to this family.
And so the first trial judge just sentenced, had heard all of the details of the case, had heard all of the details of what the Hammonds lawyers had shown, right?
All you read in the paper is what the prosecution said, not what the defense information was.
So he didn't believe that they had done this, but the jury found them guilty on the two counts that they admitted to starting, right?
And so, and the jury didn't know that this was an anti-terrorism statute because they're not allowed to know that.
And so they convicted them, and the judge sentenced them to three months for Dwight and one year for Steve.
And they served their sentence.
And the federal prosecutors came back and said the judge does not have the, can't do that.
He has to apply the mandatory minimum in this case.
And the judge.
Wasn't the judge.
Yes.
Yeah, he hated having to do this.
Right.
It would shock the conscience.
Yeah, that was.
Some of his.
Shocks the conscience was his quote during sentencing.
And so he used cruel and the Eighth Amendment, cruel and unusual punishment as his justification for not applying the mandatory minimum.
He just, you know, there was no harm done.
The BLM witnesses that were cross-examined said there was absolutely no damage done to the land at all.
It actually made it better.
So, yeah, so it is unbelievable.
Thank God that they were released.
We're out of time.
I could talk to you for, I feel like we could really get a handle on this if we sat in a hotel conference room for 13 hours with a laser pointer and some maps.
Yeah, it actually is pretty complicated, and it probably would take at least that amount of time.
It's a really complicated story, and there's a lot of science to it, and there's a lot of motivation to understand why it doesn't make any reasonable sense to reasonable humans why the Hammonds would have done it the way that the prosecution stated.
Well, the big picture I get from it is don't have faith in the government.
Don't assume the authorities know what they're doing and don't be a victim.
Yeah, a lot of the people that don't be a victim, unfortunately, the laws still don't exist to protect you, and that needs to be changed.
I mean, there was Walden had the representative in Oregon, he introduced a bill a couple years ago to make it so that the anti-terrorism statute couldn't be used against ranchers anymore, and that died in committee.
So this could happen again.
It isn't that, at least my personal opinion is, it isn't that the, you've got to look at the individuals in the individual area.
When I said don't be a victim, I kind of regretted that as it came out of my mouth.
I'm making Dwight and Steve look like wimps.
I meant, generally overall, we have to fight these kind of cases, but I'm not saying that they could have done better.
Yeah, that's correct.
And not only fight, but you need to do your own research.
You have to be suspect of stuff that you read.
You know, understand the law.
Go in and understand what you're being charged with.
That was some of the stuff where you have faith in people, but in reality, you really need to understand the statutes and how they apply and what your course might be to help protect yourselves.
And then, again, the local, you know, was it the local prosecutor, was it the local BLM?
Was it the BLM out of Portland?
I mean, why, who wanted to push this so hard and continue to push it?
Because remember, not only was there a criminal case, there was a civil one.
Yeah, they wanted to name it.
What particular bureaucrat can I name?
Well, unfortunately, I don't personally know who within the BLM was pushing this so hard.
I know Papagne was the lead prosecutor.
I just don't know.
Was it the Portland office?
And that's some of the things that you never really know.
I know that there had been an ongoing struggle with a man named Forrest Cameron, and he was a part of between him and the BLM, between him and the Hammonds.
Yeah, and this goes back into the 90s.
So this wasn't the first time they had locked horns with the BLM.
This just was the last time so far.
I was so excited yesterday when we heard that they were pardoned.
I was shocked.
I'd almost forgotten about the case, out of sight, out of mind.
But the way it got to Trump was incredibly complicated and lucky, right?
Oh, yeah.
Oh, baby.
Yeah, we had filed the commutation paperwork because you can't file a pardon when the people are still in prison, for folks that don't know.
You've got executive clemency is the overarching term.
And then under executive clemency, you have pardon or commutation.
A pardon, which is what the president granted, actually cannot be applied for while the people are in prison.
The only thing you can apply for is a commutation, a reduction of sentence.
So we filed the commutation.
And the reason why is that they want to know that people after they get out of prison, you know, don't do anything to harm anybody and have lived good for three years, and then you can file.
So we filed a commutation with the Obama administration.
We had completed it in 2012 in August of 2012, and the Bundy trial was going on, and the lawyers advised us not to file it while that was politically charged.
So we waited and filed in October after the initial trials were over on the Bundy case.
Then it sat in the queue of with over 8,000 requests for commutation or pardon.
That's with the U.S. Pardon Attorney's Office.
So we had talked with different lawyers in D.C. on how if there's any way we could get it to the president's desk back door just so that he could see it.
And that was when we changed presidents, going from Obama to Trump.
So they had said, yeah, you possibly can through your congressmen and different people that you might know.
Well, we know Walden, but there isn't a whole lot of other folks that we know that have private jets and might run in those circles.
So fortunately, Protect the Harvest, Lucas, Forrest Lucas from Lucas Oil, had been following what was going on with Dwight and Steve and thought that what was happening with them was horrible, had sent notes to the family and called.
And he has an organization called Protect the Harvest.
And so through a course of many different iterations, we got connected with Dave Duquette from Protect the Harvest.
And they're politically connected.
They know the humans that you need to talk to.
And they were.
You sound like an alien when you say humans.
Well, I don't know.
Just a term I've used for years and years.
We're just another animal on the range.
That's correct.
The human ones are sometimes scarier than the other ones.
So we got it to Dave Duquette, the paperwork, additional background stuff that you can only find if you get onto this thing called PACER, Public Access to Court Records.
And so we got all of that information to him.
And he was able instrumental with Walden to get the information, I think, through Zinke and to the vice president's desk.
And from there, I believe the story I have, and this is just what I think I know, is that Forrest Lucas had called the Vice President's office and got it to the President's desk.
So you knew a rich guy.
You met a rich guy.
Well, I don't know him, but I'd like to say thank you.
That's wonderful and everything, and I'm excited.
But it also scares me'cause I think, well, not a lot of people know rich guys.
So, how many ranchers and how many innocent businessmen, innocent farmers are persecuted by the government where someone doesn't know a rich guy and can't get the message to Trump?
That's correct.
And that's a horrible, you know, that's a horrible reality of our system and of how things work.
So we just don't give up, I guess.
I mean, people got really dejected and you're in a queue of 8,000 and you've got a 76-year-old man who's in a federal prison.
You know, it's for something that he does not deserve to be, absolutely.
And what is your recourse?
So, you know, just don't give up.
And yeah, I don't know what the answer to that is.
It's unfortunate part of our reality.
Well, Ruthie, I think you should be under arrest for being too interesting.
This interview was only supposed to be five minutes long, and we've gone 25 minutes over.
Oh, you might go ahead and whack me off on the chopping board.
You know, it's all gold.
That's the problem.
There's no edits to be made.
It's all crucial information.
We got to go, but I can't thank you enough for giving us this big picture of the whole thing.
I don't think this is just about the Hammonds.
I think this is a really important story that represents all Americans and how dangerous it can be to be under the thumb of big government.
Yes.
Well, yeah, and local bureaucrats that aren't voted in position that hold positions of power and how they wield that power.
It's amazing what they can do to our lives.
Yeah, some of the bad humans.
Bad humans versus good humans.
That's the new name of my show.
There you go.
Okay.
All right, Ruthie, thank you so much for coming on.
Oh, you're more than welcome.
Bye.
Josh, are you there, sir?
I'm here.
Now, you are the man behind a wonderful film, American Standoff, that discusses the Hammonds and the standoff they had there with the Bundies.
I've been talking to a lot of people involved on the Hammonds side, and maybe it's being a New Yorker, but my attitude when I first heard of the Hammonds is, let's do it.
Let's have a brawl.
Let's fight.
I don't know why I'm doing a southern accent for a New Yorker, but I immediately wanted to fight.
But I got the impression that the Hammonds weren't that excited about having the Bundies come by and turn this into a standoff.
No, they weren't.
But that has a lot to do with the history of they had already been dealing with almost 20 years of fighting back and forth with the land management groups that they have to literally live with as their property kind of crosses over into federal land.
It's kind of like looking at their property is kind of like a puzzle with missing pieces.
They couldn't buy land that was directly adjacent to theirs, so they bought the patch that was on the other side of federal land.
The way that federal land is dispersed and then sold is very strange.
Well, it seems to purposely be made to antagonize the ranchers.
I remember with the Bundies, they had a certain little peninsula of land that the government owned, and they had to cross that to get to their grazing area, and the government would torture them with taxes and other, and make it difficult for them to get to their cows.
Sometimes their cows would be stranded on a piece of land that they couldn't even get to.
That was the Bundies I'm talking about.
Yeah, no, that's a common experience for the ranchers that have land next to federal grazing land or have permits.
One example that the Hammonds had, this happened to them many times, is they would have to send a request for just a gate to be opened.
I mean, and this is just an aluminum gate, and it had to have a specific date, and then there would be a bunch of confusion when they bring like 3,000 cows to that gate, and no one was there to open it.
And they would open it themselves after standing there for a while.
And then they would receive harsh criticism from the BLM land managers there.
And they would just say, well, where was the ranger to open the gate?
And they would, you know, it was, it's the kind of bureaucracy that like we as normal people don't encounter.
It would be like every time you leave your driveway to drive to work, you'd be stopped by the officer on the corner and he'd say, like, what are you doing?
After years of that, you would be antagonized.
And I actually feel that's what happened with the Hammonds.
I think they were antagonized.
Yeah, I agree.
You know, not to be hyperbolic, but it kind of reminds me of South Africa in the sense that the government, and this is obviously a very exaggerated example, but the government is tormenting the citizens.
And what I get from the citizens sometimes is kind of, I don't know what the word is, but this sort of beaten down acquiescence where they say, all right, no, no, no, we'll do our time.
I sound like I'm criticizing the Hammonds and calling them wimps.
I don't want to do that.
But there's the Bundy attitude where you go, it's on, government.
And then there's the Hammond attitude, which is more like the Boer farmer, the South African farmer that's just like, well, we'll do our best.
We'll file a grievance and we'll try to make this work.
And I'm not sure which one is right.
Sure.
Well, like, a stable person will try to work through the avenues of against the authority, right?
And that's kind of what this, when I look back at what this is, this is like a clash of cultures.
That's The idea behind the film, right?
American standoff does not specifically mean the standoff at the Malher Refuge.
It means there's an American standoff of cultures.
Well, now, you know, two years out since we've done the film, that contrast of cultures and its standoff is everywhere.
But in this case of the film, it was the authoritative or the authoritarian, that's really kind of what it is, the authorities that control the land versus this other culture of ranchers, right?
They're naturally in conflict.
It's just, I would say by design, but I don't think it's that.
It's just the basics of when you have the control and someone else is always naturally in your way.
I think even the BLM people, not all of them can be horrible people.
That's not possible.
They were always frustrated because their job was to do something that was almost counter to what the ranchers are doing.
The difference is, is that they're supported by a government that literally has endless funds.
And ranchers don't have that, right?
They have their own reliance and their own back.
And if they don't have that, they go out of business.
The Bundies are the last family left in that area.
The government just squeezed and squeezed all the other ranchers until they went bankrupt or were bought out.
Yeah, and there's an attitude of a lot of people.
They'll tell you, these land conservation folks, they'll say, it would be better if there were not ranchers.
Well, some will admit that.
They'd say, no, that's like, we don't need it.
Cattle grown in the United States is a waste of money.
We can just import it.
I actually was told this by a professor, in fact, of land management.
And we don't need it.
And let's get our public lands back to the people.
The irony of that is like you go to a place like Harney County, and it's so massive.
You can drive for hours and there's nothing out there.
And like that's peaceful and serene, but you can't fault people for saying, hey, can I do something with this land?
And you're limited.
And they vastly improve the land.
It's not like the ranchers are parasites.
If you look at ranchers land and BLM land, the ranching land is always vastly superior.
It's more diverse.
It thrives.
Whereas the government land is desolate.
Okay, this is like a philosophical development question, right, for humans existing, too, on the earth.
What are you supposed to do as a person?
You tame the land.
We've always done it.
People that live in cities love to criticize a rancher, but they're literally standing on the most tamed land on the planet, right?
New York is concrete.
It's even underground.
It's tunnels.
Sure, there's a park, but that's the epitome of tamed land, you know, civilization.
Well, Ruthie likes to call us humans all the time.
And she's got a point in that we are part of nature.
And I do think we improve nature.
And I think that's part of God's plan.
And to just pull us out and play God.
That's what these bureaucrats are doing.
They're playing God.
And it's much more unnatural than letting these guys make us cheeseburgers.
And by the way, I don't want to import my cheeseburgers.
I want my cheeseburgers made in America.
Yeah, playing God is, that's an academic's favorite thing to do, right?
Yes.
They do it a lot.
How do you feel about the Bundies?
Do you think they should have gotten involved?
Do you think it was good or bad?
I think where they live, their people of action, and clearly Cliven, Clivin is, he's like an old soul in America, right?
He's just a hard-headed guy.
He's like, I'm going to do what I know is right, and I'll even go to jail for it.
Very few people have that kind of conviction for anything nowadays.
You know what I mean?
We just all like, oh, let's just find the middle ground.
Let's just all work together.
And that's always a formula for inaction and nothing ever changing.
So I think that they made some crazy moves, but I think they believe it.
I don't think their motivation is, you know, their motivation is not to control other people.
They just want to live.
Well, it's quite possible.
Sorry to interrupt, but it's quite possible that this standoff helped the publicity, helped it get it to that rich guy, helped it get it to Trump's desk, helped them get pardoned.
I'm a big believer in getting the word out.
Sunlight is the best disinfectant.
Yeah, yeah.
No, absolutely.
I think they somehow, I mean, think how incredible this is.
They broke through the traditional media, which had kind of already made up its mind mostly on that they were all just crazy and probably crazy Mormons.
There was all these added things.
That same media that's so fair with other groups that maybe don't even deserve it, we're so excited to go to find the worst thing about people that just live in the middle of nowhere and ranch.
Well, I think it's like some sort of anti-white, anti-American, anti-cowboy culture that goes back to some bullshit from the 1940s or something.
It's a problem with the left and the American psyche in general, where we don't respect the flyover countries.
We don't respect farmers.
We don't respect the people that bust their asses to provide us with food.
And it's just a really bad ingrate mentality.
And you've got Portland, Oregon.
You have this biggest Antifa community in the country, and they have two people who were falsely accused of terrorism and thrown in jail for fighting the government.
But Antifa doesn't care because they don't look right.
They have cowboy hats, and that doesn't fit the part.
And you realize this is just fashion to most people, and they don't really care about justice.
Yeah, I mean, how do you know where to start?
Portland is an interesting place.
Yeah.
It's a loony bin.
Well, Josh, we're out of time.
I want to thank you for doing that movie because it's really important that people recognize that there are victims out there that are not on the front page of the newspaper, and the government is tormenting its own citizens with reckless abandon, and for the most part, getting away with it.
Yeah, I mean, I think if people want to watch the film, can I say where they can find it?
Yes, please, please.
Yes, so it's still on.
It's on DirecTV.
It's on DirecTV now.
You can always get a free trial of DirecTV now.
It's called American Standoff.
And we may be working to change the ending or just add the new story elements.
I think the Hammonds are genuinely normal and good people.
I don't think they're bad folks.
So I'm really, really thrilled that the best scenarios happened for them.
Yeah, they're good humans.
As Ruthie would say.
Thanks, Josh.
Thanks, Gavin.
So what's the moral of the story?
The moral of the story here is don't let people tread on you.
Don't let anyone tread on you.
Not the system, not the government, not the feds.
No one.
America was built on people standing up for themselves.
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