Political Operative Roger Stone & CIA Agent Ric Prado | PBD Podcast | Ep. 166
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PBD Podcast Episode 166. In this episode, Patrick Bet-David is joined by Roger Stone, Ric Prado, and Adam Sosnick.
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About Roger:
Roger Jason Stone is an American conservative political consultant and lobbyist. Since the 1970s, Stone has worked on the campaigns of Republican politicians, including Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, Jack Kemp, Bob Dole, George W. Bush, and Donald Trump.
About Ric: Enrique "Ric" Prado is a paramilitary, counter-terrorism, and special/clandestine operations specialist, with a focus on international training operations and programs. Mr. Prado is a twenty-four-year veteran of the Central Intelligence Agency where he served as an Operations Officer in six overseas posts. He was Deputy Chief of Station and "Plank Owner" of the original Bin Laden Task Force/Issues Station under Senior Analyst, Michael Scheuer, as well as Chief of Station in a hostile Muslim country.
Patrick Bet-David is the founder and CEO of Valuetainment Media. He is the author of the #1 Wall Street Journal bestseller Your Next Five Moves (Simon & Schuster) and a father of 2 boys and 2 girls. He currently resides in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida.
To reach the Valuetainment team you can email: booking@valuetainment.com
0:00 - Intro
9:31 - Is Ron DeSantis running for president in 2024?
19:33 - Could Dwayne Johnson be the next president?
24:41 - Reaction to people saying Roger Stone is polarizing
27:52 - CIA and FBI's involvement in politics
35:37 - Bill Maher claims Trump will win easily if he runs in the next election
39:37 - More than a million voters have shifted to the republican party.
53:06 - People are scared to say what they feel
57:28 - Joe Biden's gun reform bill
1:15:04 - Putin's goals of expansion
1:34:46 - Reaction to Roe v Wade
With two special guests today with a lot of topics to discuss.
We have potentially the greatest marketer ever in politics.
He could have been a CMO at a Fortune 100 company.
And if his father was a gangster from an Italian family, he could have been a boss.
And that's Roger Stone.
But many call him one of the greatest political lobbyists of all time, whether you love him or hate him.
He's very, very good at what he does, an absolute strategist.
Roger, it's good to have you here.
Great to be back.
And we also have Rick Prado here with us.
For those of you that don't know who Rick Prado is, 24-year vet with the CIA.
He served in the operations officer in six overseas posts.
He was a deputy chief of station and plank owner of the original Bin Laden Task Force Issues station under senior analyst Michael Schur.
And he was also chief operations in the CIA Counterterrorist Center, CTC, during the September 11 attacks, 9-11 attacks where Prado helped coordinate CIA special operations activities with the National Security Council and the FBI, as well as the elite, U.S. military representatives from Delta Force, SEAL Team 6, then detailed to CTC.
Thank you for being on as well.
And you run a company today, right?
Co-owner of Kemp X.
Yeah, this is a training facility for our special operations forces.
Yeah, so there's a lot of things going on that we can cover today that has to do with your background and as well as has to do with your background.
I'm curious to know what your positions have changed with presidency coming into 2023, 2024.
If you were the people in Vegas who are looking at odds on who could be the president, they're probably curious to know who you think has a shot at being president.
You saw Trump years ago when he was in his 40s and you said, this guy's got what it takes to be a president one day.
You ended up being right.
People thought you were crazy, but it is what it is.
And one of Roger's favorite lines that stuck with me after the first time we did an interview, I love what you said.
You said there is four phases we all go through, right?
Who is Roger Stone?
Okay.
Get me Roger Stone.
Get me someone like Roger Stone.
And then who is Roger Stone, right?
We all kind of go through that phase and we'll process that.
But folks, if you're on here, we got a lot of topics to cover.
Let me kind of give you an idea of what topics we're going to be discussing today before we go through our first sponsorship and then we'll get right into it.
First topic we'll get into is I just put it as Clarence Thomas.
I mean, obviously, I know it's Supreme Court.
I know it's Roe v. Wade, but it's, you know, Clarence Thomas has done a lot of things in the last headlines, and he's not slowing down.
He seems like he wants to go after the LGBT, you know, the same-sex marriage.
He's talking about morning after pill.
People are losing their minds.
Riots protesting all over the country.
We'll talk about that.
Number two, we'll talk about what happened with Russia going into default mode.
And then at the same time, G7 Nations to announce ban on Russian gold as Moscow sanctions widen.
And then Putin says warns London will be bombed first if a World War III was to break out.
And then topic number three will be Trump.
Bill Maher claims Trump could win easily because of drag queens, but he can't let go of the election.
Curious to know what you think about that.
More than a million voters have switched to Republican Party in the last year.
That's a New York Post story.
And then apparently a big fistfight broke out with Rudy Giuliani.
I don't know if you guys saw it, but apparently a big fist fight broke out with Rudy Giuliani.
I don't know if you guys saw that or not.
It's something that happened.
Tough guy, Rudy Gianni.
He took it, though.
I don't know how he did it.
By the way, it's either Nancy Pelosi's elbow or Rudy getting patted in the back.
We've got to talk about that.
And then Biden says we have to prepare for the next pandemic.
We need funding for the next pandemic, which maybe a former CI agent has some information we don't know about.
And last but not least, retirement savers have lost $3 trillion in the stock market.
That's $3 trillion in the stock market that's been lost.
We'll cover all that and some more stories.
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Having said that, let's get right into it.
I figured the first topic, we could go to Roe v. Wade, but I figured it's appropriate for us to go maybe into the Trump topic first and address that.
Because, you know, Roger, if you don't mind, most of the world who's in the political world knows who you are, but some don't.
Can you take a minute and give everyone your background of what you've done in politics the next 30, the last 30, 40 years?
Wow.
Well, I have worked on 11 national presidential campaigns, starting with Richard Nixon, three campaigns for Governor Ronald Reagan, later President Ronald Reagan, worked in the U.S. Senate for Senator Bob Dole, one of the greatest men of the 20th century, did service for George W. Bush, and then, of course, Donald Trump.
I'm a Trump supporter.
I make that very clear.
I think I may have been among the earliest people in the country to see his potential as not only a great presidential candidate, but a great president.
He certainly changed history in many ways.
I do think people underestimate the extent to which he dominates the Republican Party at the grassroots level.
Not among the party leaders.
Those are the guys who, like with Reagan, had to pretend they liked him because he was so popular among their voters.
But this is still his party.
He has transformed the party from being the party of country club elites to being the party of working class people based largely on his economic record.
And therefore, I think he's in a commanding position if he wants to run again.
I think he does want to run again.
I actually think his announcement of candidacy may come as early as July, this July, for a couple of reasons.
One, of course, is the ongoing effort by the Democrats to disqualify him, fabricate some crime that would prevent him from running, clearly what they're trying to do in connection to January 6th.
And also, there are, you know, he has a rival out there, our own governor, Ron DeSantis, who's made it pretty clear that he might want to try to take on the champ.
The national polls show that Trump would prevail in that contest as well.
But I think he's highly likely to run again.
He's highly likely to run again.
I believe so.
And there's two camps.
There's a camp that says DeSantis won't run directly against Trump, and there's a camp that says, no, he's going to run because the opportunity is so hot right now for DeSantis with the record he's had in Florida the last two years.
This is a perfect time for him to run.
Where do you stand with that?
First of all, he needs to get himself re-elected.
He's got a contest this November.
He should not take that for granted.
I think he's favored.
But Florida's not a red state, and it's not a blue state.
It's a purple state.
And the governor is very popular.
I'm certainly going to vote for his reelection, but he's also very polarizing.
So, you know, Richard Nixon lost the presidency in 1960, decided to run for governor in 1962 on his way to the 64 nomination.
Something went wrong.
He didn't get elected governor, and that was the end of that comeback attempt.
Interesting.
DeSantis, I think, would be wise to pay attention to the contest before him, before he gets ahead of himself.
He would be a formidable candidate.
I don't deny that.
But he doesn't have the charismas that Trump has.
He doesn't have the presence that Trump has.
The governor is very good in a controlled atmosphere.
When he has the microphone and nobody else does, he does great.
But he's not self-deprecating.
He's not funny.
He's not entertaining.
He's kind of stiff.
You said Trump's self-deprecating?
All the time.
Yeah, absolutely.
Trump makes jokes about himself.
And you say DeSantis is kind of a stiff.
Kind of a stiff.
I mean, he's very focused.
He's very disciplined, which is a key factor in politics.
But he's not very charismatic.
He's a little boring.
Is charisma the most important quality a president could have?
We live in the television age.
You know, they asked Ronald Reagan, do you think it was detrimental to your prospects to be president that you were an actor?
And he said, you know, I don't see how a guy who wasn't an actor could ever do this job.
This is in 1980 or part of that?
When he was president.
I don't see someone who's not an actor can do this job.
Can you imagine that line for Reagan to say, which makes sense?
Okay.
Is Rick in the Trump camp?
Where do you stand on this?
You live in Florida, so you probably have strong opinions on DeSantis, Trump, all that.
Well, I voted for Trump both times.
I think that he has put together the best policies for this country.
I love his patriotism.
I love his support for law enforcement and, of course, for our military, special military and law enforcement and federal agencies.
I also like DeSantis.
I think that he's done an incredible job here in Florida.
And I've talked to a lot of people about this.
A lot of people don't want DeSantis to run because they don't want him to leave Florida.
It's a very selfish panel.
He has been very vocal about that.
That's a big concern a lot of Floridians have.
But I think the biggest question is the following.
And I'm curious to know what you say about this.
So, you know how in MMA or unboxing, certain people that come from the same camp, you know, they don't fight each other.
And then if they do, there's a big, you know, rift.
There's a big follow-up between the two.
Yet, Masvedal had a follow-up with Kobe.
They come from the same camp.
So if you follow MMA, they're both, you know, you so you hear stories like that.
So visualize the stage, which is what everybody is wanting to see if it's going to happen or not.
Oh, first Republican, you know, presidential debate on the Republican side.
Okay, so we're looking at all the candidates on stage.
You're going to see, say, Rubio, maybe Cruz.
You see all the candidates that we see, right?
They're on the stage.
Maybe Mayor Suarez.
I don't know.
But you got these names on the stage, right?
They're debating.
Everybody knows it's really two names.
It's not any other names.
The other guys are up there just to kind of be up there, but we know it's only two names.
Do you remember the scene when Kamala Harris went right after Biden?
Do you remember that one scene when Kamala Harris went after Biden?
She was busing back in the 80s.
And then surprisingly, she ends up becoming a VP, which is a very weird thing that happens.
But what happens when these two go at it?
You know, what happens when they call each other out?
Who calls who out first?
How is the market going to take it?
How are Republicans going to take it?
How are Democrats going to use it?
How are the other side going to be prepared?
Let's just say Trump takes a shot at DeSantis.
Is DeSantis going to come out strong towards Trump?
If DeSantis comes out first and takes a shot at Trump, is Trump going to come out and bully him like he typically does?
Is that good for the party?
Have they spoken prior?
Are they going to call each other out and say, listen, hey, DeSantis, we know it's you and I. Let's take it easy on each other.
Is that going to be the conversation?
Or is Trump going to say, no, I'm not going to do that.
We're going at it to see who's going to win.
How do you see this happening?
Boy, there's not too many questions there.
First of all, it's two years from now, and two years is a lifetime in politics.
A month is a lifetime in politics.
Governor Santis did not fare very well in his two debates with Mayor Gillum.
Again, an uncontrolled atmosphere.
He does very well in a controlled atmosphere where he has the podium and the microphone.
Trump will be entertaining, always entertaining.
And that's very important in our culture.
I mean, politics is entertainment.
The worst thing in politics to be is boring.
Trump is never boring.
But to handicap something that's two years from now is extraordinarily different.
Difficult.
But you did that 30 years, though.
You handicapped 30 years prior to Trump being president.
I was just able to see that.
That's even more difficult.
I was just actually able to see a prime piece of political horse flash.
I was prepared to see a guy who I thought had the size, I don't mean the physical size, but the presence and the courage and the stamina and the willingness to say anything to be an interesting and provocative, not only candidate, but then have the courage to be a strong president.
Trump broke the mold.
I mean, before Trump, we had no president who wasn't a general or a senator or a governor.
We never had a business person as president.
So on paper, Trump shouldn't have been able to win.
He broke all of the rules.
Didn't spend millions of dollars on network television advertising.
Still got elected president.
So I still think he's the favorite.
On the other side of the coin, not to shock you, but my prediction on the Democratic nominee for president in 2024, Michelle Obama.
Almost certainly.
I agree.
You're saying most certainly.
Yeah, I mean, this book tourists are going to be a little bit more.
You see what she said yesterday.
Yeah, she's.
Yeah, she's out there being very.
Go ahead.
She's very active right now.
I mean, she's out doing this book tour, these voter registration drives, and so on.
She's certainly not doing for the money.
So, no, I think she's positioning herself.
And by the way, I think she'll be a very formidable candidate.
Do you think she could beat Trump?
Too far away.
Are gas prices the same as they are today?
Do we have food shortages?
Are we still dying from this rampant inflation?
Are we shipping $40 billion to Ukraine when we can't spend $59.7 billion to seal our southern border?
I mean, the issue situation today would favor any Republican at least in the next election round and perhaps the following round.
But again, Reagan had a sour economy in the middle of his first term.
The economy was roaring by the end of his first term, and he got re-elected.
So meaning if things change and Powell increasing the rates, doing what he does, maybe flattens inflation, and then he can lower interest rates a little bit.
So then we go back to having a decent economy and gas prices go lower, everything is now a little bit more settled.
You think the likelihood of Biden getting re-elected is higher?
Or you just don't think he's going to run against the city?
I don't see him running against the final announcement.
So no matter what on the left, it's going to be somebody else outside of Biden is what you're saying.
That is my belief.
Do you also agree?
Absolutely.
Who do you think it's going to be?
I don't know.
And the news of Michelle Obama scares me because she is, I consider her a very drastic left-wing individual.
You know, from my, and I'm not a politician, that's obvious.
But from my perspective, you know, the far right is always going to vote right, and the far left is always going to vote left.
So we need a candidate, especially in our Republican Party, somebody that could bring in that middle America, you know, that average American out there that finally cannot afford to be the silent majority anymore and become a not-so-silent majority.
Are you going to, when you said that, are you saying DeSantis?
Is that kind of where you were going with that?
No, neither one.
Either one.
I let the best men win, but I know which way I would be voting would be still that way.
But let me ask you a question, Roger, from your having done this for a while.
How often do candidates, leading candidates of the same party, talk to each other before the first debate?
Almost always.
And what does that call sound like?
What's that conversation sound like?
You know, it can be like the way off in a prize fight.
You know, they can trash talk each other.
But I think the president's kind of nonchalant about this.
He was quoting the New Yorker last week as saying, look, it's his prerogative.
If he runs, he runs.
I'll beat him.
I think that's the right attitude.
Got it.
But deals are not made pre, or are deals made pre first debate that takes place?
I don't think anybody makes a deal because everybody goes into that debate thinking, I'm the guy.
This is my opportunity to break through.
Maybe I'm back in the pack right now, but this is my opportunity to break through.
The field will winnow pretty quickly because Trump is so completely dominant.
The only one, as you correctly pointed out, who potentially is a challenger who can get anything together is Ron DeSantis.
I mean, Mike Pompeo, who out on the street in front of the studio, and that's the first seven people you see who Mike Pompeo is.
They don't even know who Marco Rubio is, and we live in Florida.
So this is a completely different question, but since we're on this year.
So so far, three names, which I fully agree on those three names.
Michelle Obama, you got Trump, you got DeSantis.
Great.
But let's talk about wild cards, okay?
And wild cards are somebody we least expect, okay?
There were talks of a rock saying, hey, one day, you know, he wouldn't mind becoming a president.
You hear Logan Paul and Jake Paul talk about they're going to be presidents.
Logan Paul, to me, I think that guy's got a big upside.
He's entertaining.
He's smart.
He's good looking.
He's a good talker.
He's a great marketer.
He's a good storyteller.
But he's young, right?
But in a setting where Dwayne Johnson, The Rock, My opinion, this is a perfect time for him to run if he wants to win.
Now, politically, whether you agree with him, or this is not about politics.
I'm not asking policies.
I'm asking timing-wise.
The left doesn't have an exciting candidate, okay?
The right is confused between two different candidates.
If there's ever been a time for a guy like that to jump in there, whether you like his policies or not, it's irrelevant.
Do you think this will be a good time for The Rock to make a move?
It's a tremendous advantage in American politics, particularly presidential pandemics, to begin well-known.
Ronald Reagan had a career before politics.
Donald Trump had a career before politics.
So they were both able, in a way, to skip the step, the first step of politics, which should become well-known.
Candidates like The Rock begin well-known.
Now, I'm not sure which party he's in.
I'm not really clear what his politics are, but it is not inconceivable that he could be a viable candidate because he has that elusive quality.
He's got celebrity quality.
He's extremely well-known.
That's an excellent leg up.
It's one of the principal reasons why Trump was able to be nominated.
So if we do matchups, we do matchups, you know how you see the boxing matchup, 74-inch rage versus 72.5, height, weight, 178.
Okay, let's assume that.
The tail of the table.
Exactly, right?
So you got The Rock versus Reagan.
Reagan was a B level actor.
He wasn't an A.
But he'd been governor, and he had a very successful governor.
Perfect.
So fair enough.
So that's the H.
So The Rock, somebody could say, highest paid actor, right?
He's made his money.
He's got God knows how many followers on social media.
He's an international figure, so he's got that part.
Then if you look at some of the other names, if you compare him to Trump, well, Trump wins on success of business, you know, what he's built, his brand, but The Rock may win for, you know, being more famous.
Policies.
Trump's been talking policies since the 80s.
I don't know if The Rock's been talking politics for 30 years.
So that's the one part where he has, even he himself said, this is not an area where I excel in.
But all I'm asking is, in a situation like this, if you got a call from one of these guys, from one of their handlers saying, hey, we want this thing to be, you know, we want you to sign an NDA and we don't want you to say this to anybody.
We are willing to hire you as a political strategist, but no one knows this.
If feedback was given to them, what would you say to some of these guys?
You want to be president?
Run for governor.
You want to be president?
Run for senator.
In other words, Trump would run on a four-year record of unprecedented economic growth, rebuilding of our military, appointments to scores of conservatives to the court.
He's got a record to run on.
I don't think you can go from actor to president without an intermediate step.
Reagan had two terms as governor of California, very successful terms.
That's what qualified him to be president.
His presence, obviously, his charisma made him a strong candidate, but it was the record that mattered.
Crazy question for you.
If Arnold was born in the U.S., could he have been a president?
He may have been.
Of course, his politics shifted over time.
So he started as a Reagan Republican.
He ended up as a Kennedy Democrat.
Right, right.
That's not too far removed, though, these days.
These days, yeah, that's true.
He went from 40-yard line to 40-yard line is the way I would.
Is there anybody else you see there that's a wild card that has a shot at shaking things up in 2024?
I don't see it.
But again, it's two years from now.
It's very hard to say.
Two years is a long time in politics?
It is.
Really?
A month is a long time in politics.
All right.
Well, listen, I'm talking to the guy that predicted things 30 years ago.
I thought maybe you had that mojo today.
You're going to tell us something, but we can go to Vegas.
We got some Vegas people on here.
What our friend Roger Stone is saying is that I think you once said it is better to be infamous than to never be famous at all.
I did say that.
And you are, is it fair to say that you are living in infamy?
I am today, yes, thanks to the folks at CNN.
You may have seen my early morning CNN TV show.
I had 29 FBI co-stars.
Yeah, it was a great show.
They were all carrying fully automatic M4 assault weapons to arrest a 68-year-old man with no priors for the white-collar crime of lying to Congress, which I wasn't even guilty of.
How do you lie about Russian collusion when there is no Russian collusion?
Not possible.
Did you have a follow-up?
I'm waiting for you to see if you have a question.
Where are you going somewhere with me?
I feel like there's many different directions.
I've asked many friends.
I got Roger Stone coming on.
You wouldn't believe the wildly different opinions I have.
I wrote some of them down.
Some of them said he's a national treasure and he's an American hero.
Some says that guy's not in jail.
Some says that guy is a treasonist and he should be locked up.
Why are you such a polarizing figure?
Because I tell you what I really think, because I've beaten a lot of Democrats in elections, because I believe in loyalty.
Look, I was charged for one reason, to pressure me to testify falsely against Trump.
I refused to do that.
That aggravated a lot of people, and I was marked for destruction.
It is only through an act of mercy and justice that the president pardoned me in my conviction.
But two years after I was convicted, by court order, Robert Mueller and the DOJ are forced to release the redacted section of the report in which they admit they never had any evidence against me of Russian collusion or WikiLeaks collaboration or any other criminal act.
So, no, I think that to half the people, I'm a hero.
To the half people, it's a villain.
I've at least made my mark.
It's better than being no one.
Yeah.
So you're comfortable being the villain to half of Americans?
I don't have any choice.
It's not a question whether I'm comfortable with it or not.
I do find it odd that violence has become acceptable.
If I went to a restaurant and I saw someone across the room that I disagree with politically, I wouldn't start screaming or throwing things at them or threatening them.
I'd ignore them.
But that is not the case today.
And public shaming and violence are all too common.
I can't leave South Florida without a professional security.
It's not viable.
Not viable.
Some may say that you were the head of the snake for how ugly politics is today.
You started what they call negative campaign advertising.
Did you feel any sort of like, I'm not going to say remorse, but like, or maybe it's pride that you were kind of the originator of how dirty politics is, or has it always been this dirty, but you've been sort of nicknamed this dirty trickster, even though that's not the terminology you use, but they use for you.
I think you once said on your tombstone, it's not going to say what you describe yourself as the agent provocateur.
You're certainly provocative.
But it'll likely say dirty trickster.
However, you don't use those words.
Correct.
So how would you explain that?
You know, Abraham Lincoln's opponents handed out leaflets saying that he was of mixed race.
I'm sorry, I didn't invent negative politics.
You weren't around in the Lincoln days, I was not the head of youth for Lincoln.
The point I'm making is that politics has always been a contact sport in America.
I didn't change that.
I'm not responsible for that.
I have always played the game by the rules and the laws by which it is regulated.
As politics has changed, you have to change.
Got it.
A question for you, and Roger, I'd like to get your commentary on this as well.
I was speaking to a friend of mine who's also a former CI agent yesterday when I got back.
And I asked him a question.
I said, so when it comes down to these agencies, FBI and CIA, right?
Where do they recruit from?
Did they recruit people from these big Yale schools?
Do they go to these big Ivy League schools and they're picking people up from there?
And if they do, most of them are indoctrinated in one side politically, but their job is to protect everybody.
How often did you see in the CIA or in the FBI the individual person's political leanings influence their decision-making and their job?
I never really saw it.
I think that that is a new trend.
Part of the issue that I have is, you know, our federal agencies need to be headed by people that were part of that agency.
Political appointees do not do well as a head of something that they don't understand.
If you've never been in a car meeting with a terrorist in a dark alley, how can you make decisions that affect me on the street?
So I think the politicization of our agency is part of the problem.
You have people that go in there, they're political appointees, they owe alliance to whoever allowed them to go in there rather than to those people that work for them or her.
Roger, what do you think about what Rick just said?
I think the vast majority of rank-and-file FBI and CIA employees and agents are honest people who have no politics.
The political corruption is at the top of those agencies.
When FBI agents are raiding the home of journalists to find out whether they have a copy of Joe Biden's daughter's diary, I think that's crossing a line.
When FBI agents are raiding the home of the number three guy at the Department of Justice because he held a different legal opinion than others, I don't think that's appropriate.
Yeah, you're talking about James O'Keefe when they – Yeah, O'Keefe and in this case Jeffrey Clark.
Jeffrey Clark, FBI director.
The DOJ.
Yeah, I wonder when I think about the, by the way, the two parties.
Can you pull up to see which, which, not parties, the two agencies, which agency does America trust more, CIA or FBI?
I'm curious, who's trusted more?
Do you guys know these stats or no?
Are you familiar?
If I were to ask you, if I were to say, so you're not a part of it at all before they say anything, do you trust the CIA more?
Do you trust the FBI more?
Folks, if you're listening as well, I'm curious.
Comment below.
Do you trust the FBI more or the CIA more?
What would you say?
Just on the sheer fact that you've heard the CIA might have been responsible for the Kennedy assassination, just because of that, I would lean towards the FBI.
But I think they both these days have a damaged reputation.
Well, what is that?
Public holds positive views across 10 federal agencies, departments.
Number one is what?
Postal Service.
Favorable?
Seriously?
Have they been to the Post Office?
CDC?
This is positive or unfavorable?
78% of CIA.
Now this is 2018.
Keep in mind this is 2018.
It's quite sad.
Well, then if you look at this, FBI and CIA is pretty much around the same thing.
I'd love to see what this is in 2022 because the world has changed in four years.
This is nothing.
I actually think what you would find is that the public has a distrust of all political institutions, both parties, Congress, the FBI, the CIA, the media.
That's a fairly new development.
I think that there is a fundamental distrust of all of our institutions by the American people.
Do you have some thoughts on this?
Yeah, I do.
I really do.
You know, that is the reason why I wrote Black Ops, because I got so tired of my agency being maligned in Hollywood.
We're not Jason-born.
We're not American-made.
Those things, assassinating Kennedy, these are rumors and stuff that goes out there, part of the political game.
The agency is put together by literally from all the classes.
We recruit a lot from the military because former military has a lot more diversity.
They have languages.
Remember, we, the CIA, we do not operate in the United States.
We're not allowed to operate in the United States.
So all our work is done overseas.
So for that, you need people that can fit in in different geographical areas without causing attention because everything that we do is black ops under the shadow of darkness or that we cannot afford for our mission to be compromised.
Rick, you made a comment earlier.
You said, I'm uncomfortable with folks who are not from CIA or FBI to be directors of the CI or the FBI.
And if you've never sat there and negotiated with a terrorist, you don't know what it's like to sit there negotiating with a terrorist.
That statement means that you have.
You've sat there and negotiated with terrorists.
Yes, I have.
Are you able to name some of the folks you've sat down with and have negotiations with?
No.
I could tell you that I did recruit.
No one's watching this, by the way.
Yeah, I don't have such a short following.
No one's watching this content.
What you were saying.
No, I did recruit a terrorist in a Latin American country, which I wasn't allowed to say in the book.
But it was a member of a Maoist insurgency.
And I literally recruited this guy under coercion.
I had a police officer friend.
We busted him.
I had that alias documentation with me.
And the guy decided to cooperate because we made him an offer that he couldn't refuse.
He would be in jail for the rest of his life.
And I ran this guy for a good year, and he gave us some incredible information.
So, yeah, I have done that.
And my point is, the FBI should be led by a senior FBI individual that understands those laws, that understands the culture, and understands the trials that our officers go through.
Interesting.
Well, I never forget my dad pulled me aside eight years ago, seven years ago, something like that.
We have some people in our family who have done some work from Iran, so Iran had SAVAC and different kind of things that they were dealing with back in the days.
He says to me then, he winks at me, he says, you can tell me.
I said, I can tell you what that.
He says, you can tell me.
It's okay.
It's just you understand.
What do you mean to tell you?
He says, I know you're with the CIA.
Just wink.
Just say one thing.
But I know you are.
I said, dad, I'm just an insurance guy.
He says, no, you're not.
I don't believe you.
Yeah, we all saw true lies, buddy.
We all saw sports figure top lies.
How do you think the current director of the CIA, I believe his name is William Burns, how do you think he's doing?
You know, he has a good reputation as an ambassador, and he's always had a very cordial and supportive posture overseas when dealing with our chiefs of stations.
That's his reputation.
It's a guy that appreciates the CIA.
But you know, if you're going for eye surgery, you don't go to a knee doctor.
And that's my point.
You know, you've got to have somebody that has been there even half a degree to understand what our job is all about.
Roger, when's the last time you sat this close to someone affiliated with the CIA?
It's hard to say.
There might be shadowing.
There's no next to two potential CIA informants right now.
God, far from it.
Far from it.
I was kidding.
It was a joke.
So let me go through the story of Bill Maher said.
I want to get your commentary, your thoughts on this.
So Bill Maher claims Trump could win so easy because of drag queens, but he can't let go of the election.
This is a mediates story.
Comic and pundit Bill Maher claimed that the former President Trump could win easy because of drag queens, but can't let go of elections.
On Friday night edition of HBO's Real Time with Bill Maher, the host took a table bit about future headlines that included libraries in Texas to offer impotent gun nut story hour to banter with guests Andrew Sullivan and Katie Herzog about what a drag culture issues like a drag queen story hour are on Democrats.
Maher explained that poor Trump could easily win if he could let go to 2020 because of the drag queens.
Do you agree with him?
Well, I'm a little upset with Bill, first of all, because he had me on, maligned me as a Russian spy.
Now he himself admits there was no Russian collusion, but he won't have me back on.
You know why?
I'm way funnier than he is.
Way funnier than that.
You think you're funnier than Bill Maher?
Easy Roger Stone.
No, no, no.
When you go to Bill Maher's show, they take you in your dressing room, and his producer comes to you and says, well, great to have you.
Please give me one favor.
Don't try to be funnier than Bill.
I said, Bill's got an entire group of writers who are pranking out of stuff.
I'm all by myself.
They ask you to do that.
Oh, yeah, absolutely.
No, look, I've been on Bill's show several times, and it's always lively, and he's entertaining.
It's not the drag queens are the reason Trump can win.
It's gas prices, food shortages, inflation, leaving several billion dollars worth of equipment in Afghanistan, shipping $40 billion off to Ukraine when we can't spend the money to seal our own border.
Those are the reasons that he can win.
The 2020 election is kind of tricky.
It would be false to say that people are not concerned about it.
That doesn't mean it's going to get undone or redone.
That's not realistic.
But voter integrity, the integrity of the roles, that's a legitimate issue.
And I don't think Trump can stop talking about it in that sense.
You think he should?
In terms of the fact that our next election needs to be honest, fair, and transparent?
Yes, absolutely.
No, no, do you think he should stop bringing up that there was fraud in the last election?
Do you think he needs to just move on and focus on today's issue?
It's the precursor to insisting that there be no fraud in the next election.
So I don't think it should be the raisin and d'etre to his candidacy because politics is never about the past.
It's always about the future.
Let me ask you a question on Bill Maher because I watch his show religiously or, you know, you might say religiouslessly or whatever his thing is.
But when you sit down with him, you're not on the panel, typically.
The last time I saw you, you did the one-on-one.
Yes.
Sort of like the pregame to the show.
Yes.
And it's really almost like, I don't want to say an interrogation, but he's coming right at you.
And whatever your talking points are, he's going to dismiss them and get to his point.
So sitting down with Bill Maher, you must have seen how he's sort of, what does he famously say these days, Pat?
I haven't changed.
The Democratic Party has changed.
They've moved a little bit far left.
What have you seen him update his opinions?
What's your take on Bill Maher these days?
Because a lot of people are basically saying, hey, you know what?
This Bill Maher never really agreed with him.
It's kind of making sense these days.
Are you starting to see more of that?
On some issues, I think he's been very consistent, and I agree with him.
So, for example, he's always been a critic of radical Muslim.
He's always been cradical of Islamic terrorism.
He's always been pro-cannabis legalization, position I've held for 30 years.
He smokes joints on the regular.
As a libertarian.
I do think that he has come around on the hypocrisy of the American left.
So, yeah, a lot of my conservative friends are like have a new appreciation for Bill Maher.
Do you?
Yeah, I do.
I think he's being honest.
Why won't he have you back on?
Because he doesn't want to get bested again.
Oh, you think so?
Anytime, Bill.
I think Bill Maher can handle you, though.
Anytime.
You hear that, Bill Maher?
Roger Stone on the PBD podcast of Value Tainment is calling you out.
He wants to see you against the moment.
By the way, on top of that, more than a million voters have switched to the Republican Party in the last 12 months.
And that's a big number, including tens of thousands of swing voters and some declaring they can no longer support the Democratic Party policies.
According to a report Monday, the move to the GOP is occurring in every part of the country, in Democratic and Republican states and cities since President Biden defeated former President Trump.
An analysis of voter registration data by Associated Press found over the past year about two-thirds of 1.7 million voters who changed party affiliation shifted to the Republican Party, and overall more than 1 million people become Republicans compared to 630,000 who became Democrats.
Why do you think that is?
As I think it was James Carville who said, it's the economy, stupid.
I mean, yeah, it's gas.
I think it's that simple.
Yes, I really do.
You had a boom economy.
You had the most robust economy in our history under Trump.
You had record job growth, record wage growth, billions of dollars coming back in the country to be invested here.
You had an optimism in the country.
People's businesses at the small business level doing extraordinarily well.
Now you have apprehension about gas prices, about food shortages, rampant inflation.
I mean, I went to Publix the other day and I bought a steak.
The steak cost me seven and a half bucks.
It was four bites.
It was the smallest steak I've ever seen in my entire life.
So, yeah, I think that that has a lot to do with it.
I think that there are, there's no question that there are buyers' remorse, substantial number of people who voted for Biden because they didn't like Trump's style.
Oh, he's so crude.
His tweets are so crude.
Yeah, but how's your business?
Oh, my business is doing great.
So I think this is the manifestation of that.
You think people are starting to realize that and process it where they're saying, okay, listen, I can't publicly say this, but I kind of wish the other guy was president right now, you know, minus the stuff that he was doing on Twitter.
I'm willing to tolerate him more than I'm willing to tolerate Joe.
Or are people saying there's no way in the world I could support somebody like him?
They're both at this point extremely polarizing figures.
But I do think that there is certainly some nostalgia for Trump's economy.
That is for sure.
What would you say Biden has done right?
Has Biden gotten anything right since he became president?
Can't think of anything.
What about the new gun laws that have been passed?
What about the infrastructure bill?
None of that?
I think the infrastructure bill is, first of all, it has nothing to do with infrastructure.
It has to do with spending.
It's one of the reasons why we have the inflation we have today.
I think red flag laws are unconstitutional.
It's just my opinion.
You want to weigh in on this, Rick?
A little bit.
First of all, I totally agree with you.
I think the American people vote sometimes for charisma, but at the end of the day, you're going to vote with your wallet.
The average American cannot make ends meet anymore.
Whether they were Democrat or Republican before, this is something that, you know, our survival is our family.
And how do you take care of your family if gas is $5 a gallon?
So for that part, I totally agree with you.
On the gun stuff, that is such a political football, and it shouldn't be, because you've got to look at the real facts.
Every city that has the highest crime rate in the United States also has the strongest anti-gun laws.
Then you go to places like Wyoming, Montana, even Florida in some areas, and crime is down because people can defend themselves.
You know, that combination of, and you were talking about Biden doing something right.
Let me tell you something that I think borders on the ridiculous.
You go from saying that crime is rampant, you're allowing crime to go rampant, you're not persecuting criminals, you're releasing them.
It's catch and release like in fishing.
And how does that make sense to anybody?
Defund the police.
So you're telling me that you who do not like guns and are not willing or able to take care of yourself, who are you going to rely on?
The police.
And you're voting to defund your safety net.
That's like buying a parachute on eBay.
What about you, Pat?
Is there anything that you can find compelling with Biden these days?
I know you've been pretty vocal.
You're not exactly a Biden guy, but you do have the ability to reason.
You're not like set in your views.
I'll give an unbiased opinion.
So let me tell you how, and this is going to sound like this, but it's not.
The less I see the president, the more excited I am.
I don't want to see the president because to me it's like stay away.
Go to show up and lead.
Don't get up and complain.
So the benefit of him not being comfortable on state speaking is a good thing because we don't hear him often.
So he's not out there talking all the time, which is a good thing because when he does talk, America doesn't look good when he talks.
Would you be comfortable if you found out that maybe Susan Rice or Barack Obama are kind of pulling the strings behind the scenes?
Would you be comfortable with that?
So you're asking policies?
If you're asking policies, I don't support his policies.
I don't support what policies he's got in place because I don't think his policies are advancing people.
By the way, a million votes to voters to flip?
Flip from what?
That means Democrats became Republicans?
What are we talking about here?
I mean, that's not a small number, by the way.
Well, and Pat, if you think about that.
Break down that number.
That's just a broad number.
Where are they coming from?
They're coming from the Latino community and the black community.
Joe Biden is losing black support.
He is losing Latino support.
The base of the Democratic Party is flipping.
They are going to lose everything if they keep this up.
This is right.
This is the greatest significant realignment.
For the first time in the country ever, Hispanics say they split down the middle, Republican-Democrat.
That's never happened before.
And the reality is that under Trump, you had the highest rate of job growth and wage growth among African Americans, the lowest unemployment rates, and you had criminal justice reform, the First Step Act, the Second Chance Act.
So things that the Democrats had talked about but never enacted.
Look, the people I know who are Hispanic or African American, the parents of the people I knew when I was in the military, they were all conservative.
All of them were like, hey, son, are you reading the Bible?
Are you doing this?
Are you staying this?
Are you staying that?
They were very much conservatives who were expecting you to be a good man and not break the law and not do this stuff.
Same with Hispanics.
But some of them have been sold a bag of goods.
That's not working.
You know what I do like on what's going on is on the Roe v. Wade topic, which we'll get into here in a minute, is where people on the left got upset with Kamala Harris to say, this is why you need to vote for us and this is why elections matter.
And they said, wait a minute, you can do anything you want to do right now.
You're not.
So we voted for you to get things done and nothing's getting done.
So no, elections don't matter.
You keep telling us to give more money.
A Democrat was out there.
This was a video that went viral.
I don't know if you saw this or not.
She says, I'm out here protesting about Roe v. Wade, and this happened under the watch of a Democratic president who I voted for.
And five minutes before I came out here protesting, I got an email from Joe Biden and Kamala Harris telling me to give $15.
I've been given $15, but you're not doing anything with my money.
How much more money should I give you?
So when your own party turns against you, you got a big problem here.
And a million is a big number.
So if you're asking me that question, that's a big number we're talking about.
To address that, whatever that person is, they probably just don't understand how the Supreme Court works because Trump put in, what, three justices during his tenure?
Which is no one's ever done that.
It's not like Biden or Kamala have any control over the Supreme Court.
You're right, but what, okay, so go with that.
Go with that.
What did Biden promise to his voters?
Are you talking about packing the court?
No, no, no.
What did Biden, so people who voted for Trump, okay, what did Trump promise to people that he did?
What did Trump promise?
What was Trump's promise to his voters?
That he said, if you elect me, I'm going to do X, Y, Z. He's going to make America great again.
He's going to lock for us.
He's going to build the wall.
A lot of three-word phrases.
He's going to revive the economy.
He's going to rebuild our military.
He's going to point conservatives to the judiciary.
He's going to negotiate better trade deals.
Everything he said.
He said those things.
He did those things.
What did Biden say?
I'm going to raise taxes.
okay i'm gonna he hasn't raised taxes back better he's gonna be He hasn't built back better.
He's going to re-enter the Paris Accords.
He did that.
Okay, so you got one on his party.
I'm just thinking of whatever is going to be.
I get that.
If he wanted to increase multilateralism, re-engage with NATO.
Obviously, Trump wasn't a big fan of NATO, making them pay.
Clearly, things with NATO seem to be doing a little bit better these days, especially with the war in Ukraine.
I mean, at least the G7 is on the same page, it seems, against Russia.
What else?
Okay, so you got a party, another person's got a party.
You vote for your guy.
It's percentage, right?
If your policies, you say 10 things you're going to be doing, if 80% of them you do, then the other party elects a guy.
And out of 10 things he said he's going to do, he does three of them.
That's a free throw percentage.
80% wins.
Trump did more of what he said he was going to do than Biden did what he said he was going to do.
I agree with you.
And if we take COVID out, your president today is Trump.
By the way, you're not wrong.
I agree with you.
Here's the problem.
And I've said this a million times.
And Roger Stone maybe want to weigh in on this.
Trump didn't lose the election because of bad policies.
It was because of his bad personality.
And America was over it, straight up.
We can kind of tap dance around his personality all we want.
But what makes him charismatic to some makes him unappealing to others, not his policies.
You could go down the list, boom, boom, boom, boom.
And if you ask most Americans about policies, by the way, most Americans could not elaborate on most policies.
Like you said, James Carville, the racial mission.
Let me push you to the economy.
Let me challenge you on that real quick.
Okay, so this is the one.
So we're having dinner two nights ago with a guy, Hart.
You know who he is, Hart and his wife.
And we're having dinner with Gaines and Andrew and Jennifer.
And I'm sitting there and I'm bringing up issues to them.
So let me ask you a question.
With such and such thing that Clarence Thomas wants to do, how do you feel about it?
How do you feel about transgender?
How do you feel about this?
How do you feel about that?
Well, you know, Tuichazone and all this other stuff.
And I said, really?
Yeah.
I said, okay, cool.
I said, at what point did you form this opinion of Tuicha Zone?
I don't know.
I said, 20 years ago, would you have said Tuicha Zone?
Well, yeah, no, I don't know.
I said, look, look, here's what happens.
Do not let the majority of people, the minority of people who are allowed to convince you they're the majority.
So here's what happened.
The minority of people who are complainers, they're like this.
They come and fight you in the street and they go like this.
You want to fight?
Let me tell you who I got.
I got 200 people back there around the building.
If you want to fight, I'm going to come and kick your ass and they're going to come and whoop your ass.
And like, oh, shit, they got 200 people back there.
So what do you do?
You're like, dude, I don't want to fight these guys.
And you go home, right?
And you go around the corner.
They got nobody.
They convinced the world they had 200 people around the corner ready to fight for them.
So because they're louder complainers, they have convinced even Fox News to do a special on transgender, calling that family, what an honorable thing to do.
What a brave family here.
People are falling for all of these things to say, well, if everybody else says it's okay, maybe I should say this.
Well, where the hell is your backbone on?
Maybe you disagree.
And if you disagree, people may sit there and say, I can't believe you said this.
No problem.
Go for it.
You can come at me.
I'm totally okay with that.
But this is my position.
I'm uncomfortable with it.
Good for you with agreeing with the crowd.
I'm not agreeing with the crowd.
So if we do go back and we ask the question of many people didn't feel comfortable with Trump, okay, many people didn't feel comfortable with DeSantis.
Is it true many people didn't?
Or is it the fact that the people who said many people didn't are the loudest complainers and we believe that there are many people, but there's only a few?
That's the question.
And I think people are starting to realize when you see a million people flipping, maybe there were not many people.
Yeah, but you're not going to see 81 million people flipping.
So are you basically saying that?
But you don't need 81 million people.
You don't need 81 million people.
You need 1 million.
That's the point.
That's the point.
Totally.
That's the point.
But you're making the case that transgenderism, which less than 1% of America would even identify as.
2.1%.
Exactly.
I don't even know a transgender person.
You're not making the comparison that 50% of America who's turned off by Trump doesn't really feel that way.
Is that what you're saying?
You're saying people were convinced that they didn't like him?
So one of my guys asked a question.
He says, so Pat, this guy's running a real estate office and I'm consulting for him.
He says, Pat, I have two guys in my office that are trans.
I said, okay.
And how do I handle it?
I said, what do you mean, how do you handle it?
I'm in the state of California.
How do I handle it?
I said, what's your point?
He says, they're making other people feel uncomfortable.
And I have a couple people who quit who are my top producers.
And I'm worried if I say something, they could go and say something to the city.
And then I may get, and then I'm dealing with HR.
How do I handle this, right?
Okay.
So how do you handle that situation?
How does an operator handle that situation?
Does the operator go and say, hey, man, listen, this is too uncomfortable for us.
You're making people around you uncomfortable.
You got to leave.
But what are they doing that's making them uncomfortable?
Just being there is uncomfortable.
Just being there is uncomfortable because people are coming.
We live by, why do you have clothes on?
Why do I have clothes on?
Why does he have a nice, why do we, because we live by what?
First impression, right?
I walk into an office and my first impression is, oh, okay, huh.
Interesting.
What's going on?
So people, now, you may say, Pat, what's the big deal with that?
It doesn't matter what's a big deal or not.
We judge.
But here's the point.
Many people in America today are walking on eggshells.
People are afraid to say what they really feel because they may get in trouble for that.
And people are getting sick of that.
I agree with you.
The fact that yesterday, Johnny Depp's story, whether it's a true story or not, Disney may offer the guy $301 million to get him to play, what do you call it, Jack Sparrow, Pirates of the Caribbean, if they give this guy $301 million?
Guess what?
If he wins, guess who won?
Man's men won.
Men won.
This whole thing of trying to pansify all men to become softer and sissies.
I like the fact that a Johnny Depp stood up.
Now, if he didn't stand up, for the rest of us, our careers, we would have thought maybe he was a dirt back on what he did to Amber Heard.
And we're saying, ah, you know what?
The article on value attainment.
We wrote a great article on that.
$301 million.
Now, I hope it's a true story.
I don't know if it is or not.
Can I, maybe, and then this might be the perfect segue to Roger Stone.
I don't know if men won.
I think maybe being innocent until proven guilty won.
I think, you know, anti-cancel culture won.
I think stop judging, pre-judging anything before the facts come out, one.
Everyone basically, you know, did you see what Disney, we can go on value tame, but Disney basically gave an apology.
Like, we basically came down on one, down on bended knee and said, our bad, me, a culpa over here, because they, much like the Cantra culture warriors out there, were quick to dismiss him.
And now, you know, the reason they're offering him 301 million?
It's because he said, I would never play this again, even if they paid me 300 million.
Well, you know, here's a little 301 million there for you, buddy.
But, I mean, maybe you want to weigh in on what it feels like to do that.
I think I agree with your analysis.
You know, first of all, it was epically entertaining.
So you had to every night go see what was the latest in the truth.
But I think truth won, I think he acquitted himself well by presenting his side of the case and doing it compellingly.
There was a, I think, a preconceived judgment for her in the beginning.
What a horrible, toxic male he was, what an abusive individual he was.
I was glad to see the way it came out.
It did.
But Roger, you should believe all women, period.
Yeah, right.
Why don't you?
Yeah, right.
So you're being sarcastic?
No, well, I'm not being sarcastic.
But you're being sarcastic and you're saying this has nothing to do with men.
Of course it has to do with men, but it's more than men.
I said yesterday, I'm glad we're transitioning away from guilty until proven innocent instead of innocent until proven guilty.
I get that.
But the fact that you threw that sarcastic comment at the end means men get destroyed when it comes down to this topic.
And it's good to see men like him stand up.
If you screwed up, you deserved whatever you're getting.
If you didn't stand up, boom.
We're seeing progress.
So America is simply getting sick of it.
The more and more politics is getting involved, they're just getting sick of it saying, listen, let me be able to give my opinion without getting destroyed, my career, just because I disagree with you, which is good to see that.
And we'll go into that, Clarence Thomas, but what happened with that coach?
I made a couple of comments.
We'll go into that.
But okay, last one I want to read, because you brought up guns.
I was going to read this before we get into it.
So Congress passes most significant gun reform bill in decades, sends it to Biden.
CNBC story.
Scrambling to respond to a recent spat of bloody gun massacres.
U.S. lawmakers passed the most significant federal gun restrictions in decades on Friday following years of false starts and failures to tighten gun laws following Senate passage.
Late Thursday, the House passed a bipartisan bill that takes steps to restrict gun access to younger buyers, domestic violence offenders, and others who could pose a risk to their communities.
The Bipartisan Saver Communities Act also would fund the school safety and mental health programs.
The House approved it by 243 to 193 as 14 Republicans joined all Democrats.
The legislation says to President Biden, who's expected to quickly sign it into law.
Is this progress?
I think that the passing of these laws, attacking not the problem, but the popularity of the shock of this thing.
You have securing schools.
That's a no-brainer.
We should have been doing that for the last 20 years.
My daughter is a school teacher.
I have done the security survey pro bono for every school that she ever worked or led.
And they're buttoned down, and you have police officers.
It's just, we're fighting a political battle where it should be a moral battle, in my opinion.
We have the right to defend ourselves.
I believe that investing in mental health, I think that that's a very important one.
What does that mean, though?
So that word, investing in mental health, unpacked.
We have to keep the see-something, say-something concept translated into this.
I don't remember where the place was, but the second to last incident that we had, the perpetrator, he went to school for a whole week wearing a hazmat suit.
I mean, is that a normal behavior or is that, should you not look into a pattern of behavior?
It's a thin line because you also have what you just said, which I totally agree with.
You're innocent until proven guilty.
So.
What do you think, Roger?
I'm afraid that, as he said earlier, I'm not sure any of those things are going to change anything.
Criminals will always find guns.
Absolutely.
And it is the cities with the most restrictive gun policies in the country where gun violence is the greatest.
In the case of the Parkland shooter, there were no less than seven calls to this guy's house.
That never seemed to get over to the FBI.
He had been baker acted.
He'd been taken involuntarily.
They gave him psychotropic drugs.
They put him back out on the street, and he killed people.
So I agree with what he said.
I think there has to be a greater emphasis on mental health.
Guns don't kill people.
People kill people.
Criminals, miscreants, will always get their hands on guns.
What does that mean?
Frances always say about gangsters and the mafia sometimes?
What just happened in the audio?
Yeah, exactly what he just said, the fact that they'll get their hands on guns.
But you know, like the left and the right has bullet points of three things that everybody says and everybody keeps saying it.
Invest into mental health.
Okay.
I've heard a billion people say invest into mental health.
You know, do this, do that.
The other day, we were talking with Michael Francis and we said, even if they raise the, what do you call it?
Age limit to 18 to 21.
Even if they make this, even if they do that, even if they do this, 90% of the, what do you call it, mass shootings would have been prevented.
Even if they do that, it would have been prevented because they still got some of them, their guns, they got it illegally, or some of them they got it.
Even the kid who got it, he wasn't on any kind of medication that's anxiety medication or anything like that.
So how much of that is, you know, deeper that's going on within America's values and principles and morals?
How much of that is the amount of drugs that's in the hands of kids with big pharma advertising the solution being take this medicine, take this medicine, take this medicine?
How much of it is the video games?
How much of it is us watching on TV that over and over and over again, they keep turning these guys that are doing mass shootings into heroes and we keep talking about them?
There has to be something because even this strategy on what they're going to be doing, 90-something percent of them would have been prevented.
So does anybody really know the solution or is it just pure political game that both sides are playing?
What do you think?
There's no question that had the police officers either in Texas or in Parkland done their jobs, that those mass shootings could have been prevented.
Ironically, here in Parkland, the officer in charge of school security trained others in crisis management, but then when the time came, he stepped down.
He didn't do his job.
So think about that.
So he did the training, and when it came down to it, still didn't do it.
He froze.
He froze.
So again, so then what is the solution?
Because if we say we need more training, okay, we did.
And even the training that was done, it still didn't happen.
So does anybody really have the solution that's going to help address this?
It has to be a combination of things.
Buttoning down the schools is something that is a reality.
You cannot, in good conscience, bring children and put them into that environment unless you're able to protect them.
But one thing that we haven't talked about here is how many police officers feel empowered under this administration, under this current culture, where they're being defunded.
They're always guilty until proving innocent, if at all possible.
Don't get me wrong, I've been in harm's way more than once, so I know what it is to go to a door and go, but I've gone through the door.
And that was their job to do.
But again, there's not 100% fix for any of this.
It's 5% here, 5% mental health, button down the schools, better training for the police, but also consequences.
There's got to be consequences.
These police officers that did not go in there should be kicked out of the force.
Because if you are in an airborne unit in the military and you decide not to jump on a combat, guess what?
You'll go to jail.
So we need to make them accountable for that mistake.
You know what I would love?
Here's what I would love.
If an actuary, if a BI is listening to this, if a business analyst is listening to this, if a guy that studied statistics can listen to this, take time and make this video.
This video can actually happen.
Take all the mass shootings of the last five, 10 years, okay?
Create the profile of everybody that did the mass shooting.
Put their age, how they got their weapon, if they were on medication, their background, put it all at the top and filter it out.
And then take the new policies and changes that's coming up and then red out the ones that could have been prevented and green out the ones that would have happened no matter what, right?
And kind of go through it.
And break down in a video what that percentage comes down to.
Because I think the way they're going, they're just plain politics.
And the American people are like, oh, awesome.
We passed something.
Yeah, it really didn't do anything.
No, no, but we did pass something.
No, it really didn't do anything.
I think we need data and we need somebody to analyze this like a statistician.
Somebody needs to do that.
Then we can say, kind of like where I'm going with this is Moneyball.
You know how in Moneyball, where the guy comes out and he says, look, the only stat that matters is what?
On-based percentage.
You don't win with home runs.
You win with unbased percentage.
This is the guy that we need to bring.
Okay, great.
Then we bring him in.
Then they interviewed that guy multiple times.
Multiple times.
I love that guy.
So I think a money ball concept needs to be applied to this for us to figure out what stat matters the most.
I don't think we're doing that.
That's why I don't think we're doing it.
I think we're just kind of all talking.
I'm sorry.
I would add one extra tick on there.
What's that?
And you touched on it, Roger, a little earlier on.
Make a study of how many of the criminal acts with a weapon, that weapon was a legally obtained weapon and in the hands of a legal carry individual.
That's a huge statistic.
When people quote gun violence, you have to at least be able to focus on where is the base of that violence.
And it is the criminal world.
And they don't have prosecution.
The police can't barely do the job as it is.
I would love to add that to your tickle for five years.
I mean, I get it that we have a campaign, you know, where the campaign, the manager may say, listen, when it comes down to gun violence, here's the three points that you have to hit.
Boom, boom, boom.
That's what you got to go.
And then just know these 22 statistics, see which one of these you can remember and recite.
But that's where you got to go.
But that's marketing.
That's not, we're not really, it's not really a solution.
We're just marketing and saying, hey, if they ask you to say that, I'd love to have somebody comes out and actually breaks this down and say, here's what it would have changed and not changed.
Well, you're going to have that opportunity.
We've now passed these laws.
There'll be an election in two years.
Let's watch the violent crime statistics for those two years and see if they really change anything.
Well, no, there's going to be an election in five months.
I understand.
That's probably not, in all fairness, and not enough time.
So let these policies be in place.
They're going to be in place because I don't see them being repealed.
And you'll know in two years whether they've made a meaningful change.
What needs to happen almost immediately is bail reform because right now we have a situation in almost every major city in the country which they've done away with bail and criminals, recidivist criminals are right back out on the street, many of them to hurt people again, particularly New York City.
So there's, I think, something that has to be reformed almost immediately.
So you know what I also would want to know?
Out of all these guys that did a mass shooting, what percentage is alive?
What percentage is on the street?
What percentage is serving a life sentence?
How bad was the, what do you call it, the price that they paid for it?
Is it purely all about a, what do you call it, a celebrity, you know, the 15 minutes of fame?
Is that really what it was all about?
Has somebody taken all of these guys and gone and done a documentary to interview every one of these guys to come out with an analysis to say, this is the similarity we notice?
Like the CI is ICI?
No, no, I don't think they're going to.
So even to pull up to see out of all these mass shooting guys, how many of them were from a single parent?
How many of them had a father?
I want all of those statistics to see what commonality do we see.
You can pull up that data.
Then we say, listen, these three that you guys keep talking about would only say 5%, but these two would have eliminated 42%.
Let's address these two.
We're just winging it.
It's just like a public company or a government agency would do it.
If I was a governor, if I was a governor of a state or if I was a president, I would go hire 10 engineers from Silicon Valley and I would bring them from Silicon Valley from the best places in the world.
And I would bring them that politically, I would interview them to make sure they're kind of like, you know, how you hire a jury and you make sure how they feel politically.
They're not linked or any way they don't have an opinion about the guy.
I would bring in, okay, you guys are neutral, perfect.
Here's $300,000 per year.
What's 10 times $300,000?
Nothing.
Chump change.
I want you to pull up every data, every stat, everything you can, and give us the exact reason why this is taking place.
If the stats are out there, you can pull it up from the FBI.
We can find that exactly.
This is not going to cost that much money to do.
It's $3 million, maybe a $10 million project.
Hire the best analyst guys, data guys, put them in a room, pull up all the data.
Within 30, 60, 90 days, we can figure this thing out.
But here's the problem with the data.
So the other day, you said we used this story.
There were 200 million.
What does that sound, by the way?
I keep hearing a sound like.
Go ahead.
I don't know.
Sorry.
So there were 226 mass shootings in the United States through whatever it was, six months.
Do you know what qualifies as a mass shooting?
It's four people.
If over four people were shot, not killed, were shot.
That qualifies as a mass shooting.
Where do you think the majority of that comes from?
Gang violence.
The majority of mass shootings in the United States aren't kids going and shooting up schools.
I mean, it's gang violence, one.
And most of the, again, we cover this.
Most of the mass shootings happen with a pistol, not an assault rifle or a rifle or anything like that.
By the way, all of that is part of the data.
Yes, but I think the data can be skewed.
But two, it's people don't want to address, first of all, mass shootings as they stand where it's gang violence as opposed to mass shootings of, like you say, mentally deranged people walking in, shooting people and those kinds of things.
So again, I think when we say use the data, again, we have to clarify what data are we using.
But Tyler, that's also in the insurance industry, actuaries actually do that as well.
They break down by age where you realize, you know, when we get table D rating on most of the people that are table D are 55 and up or live in this fuck place and a lot of them are from this, you can track nationality, you can track sex, you can track marriage, you can track the, you can track any of that stuff.
But with what you just said, I would add that to the data as well.
Yeah.
And I would say the mass shooting, you know what we would put on the mass shooting?
How many people were involved?
This one's four.
Well, 42% of them are only four.
Okay, let's put that in this category by itself.
10% is 10 or more.
Let's put that in the category by itself.
I don't think this is that complicated.
I don't know if they want to find the answer.
I don't know if they're willing to.
Well, no, because they want to manipulate it.
They want to tell you that there's 220.
Dude, it's going to take 10 million.
You just give 40 billion to Ukraine.
It would take you 10 million bucks to figure this thing out.
Put people in a room, get it funded within a three-month period, you get some answers.
Well, we haven't done that.
I don't know why we haven't done that.
Well, let me add on to what Tyler's saying, because you do bring up a good point.
If you saw on the headlines, four people shot in the streets of Chicago, you're like, all right, cool, next story, move on with life.
We're so desensitized to these types of stories.
Where America is at, where most Americans are yearning, are when we see dead six-year-olds, innocent, dead six-year-olds in a classroom, there's, I don't care if you're on the left, you're on the right, we are disgusted by this.
And that's what is grabbing the headlines.
And that's why literally Congress finally effing did something.
And I think it's about time.
Whether it's optics, whether it's the sizzle or the steak remains to be seen.
Like Roger said, we'll find out in two years if they've done anything, but we're fucking sick of it.
We're sick of dead kids in classrooms.
We're not sick of what Tyler's basically talking about, which is probably 90% plus percent of the mass murderers is just five people got shot on, it's going to happen on July 4th weekend.
You can book it down right now across America.
Someone in St. Louis shot five people, whatever.
Next story, keep it moving.
We are sick of the classroom shit, though.
My point on this, by the way, people have to take emotions out of these kind of decisions.
That's why I like your document and dissect.
Because if you look at, forget the four people that get shot in New York or whatever, that doesn't count.
But schools mass shootings in the last five years.
Give me those numbers.
That happens in New York in three months.
Actually, it probably happens in New York in two weeks.
You're saying just in the streets?
Just in the streets.
Just in the streets.
So we cannot focus on the problem emotionally.
Yes, I personally, I cannot.
If I was in that school, I would have had to go in.
I couldn't live with myself.
I could not live with myself if I didn't go in there and try to help them out.
But that is still a minority.
It is very serious.
And use that tipping point to make things make sense.
And I think that approach of statistics, not skew the statistics, I think would help create a real plan that they could implement.
I run one too many companies to do this.
I would have taken, I would have done this myself as a project just to turn it into a documentary to 60, even a 70-minute, 75-minute documentary just to go out there and say, let me tell you what approach we took this.
Here's the problem.
Here's the approach we took.
We wanted to find out what's going on.
This is the data we came up with.
And we brought five people from the left, five people from the right, five people in the middle.
They all have strong opinions.
We all want to find out.
We're all open to finding out what's going on, what the solution is.
Here's what we're proposing to the world.
I would take that approach.
Anyways, I hope somebody does it because I think it's that important of an issue that we need to invest that money into doing this.
If I have to choose between spending $40 billion into Ukraine and $40 billion into finding out why this is happening in our schools in America, what do you think we're doing with that $40 billion?
It's a lot better $40 billion spent into finding out why this is happening to our kids rather than why this is happening.
And nothing, Rohomi, listen, don't want to see anything happen to anybody, but this is our homeland.
If this is where we live and you're proud of where you are, let's invest that money into those resources into our country instead of others.
Okay, so next.
Did you have anything to say about this?
You know, when you heard it, were you like, you know, the paranoid side come out to say, why did he just make that comment when Biden went out there?
What page is this on?
Let me find this.
Page six.
So President Biden says U.S. needs more funding for the next pandemic.
Reuters, June 21st.
President Joe Biden said on Tuesday, the United States has enough COVID funding to get through at least this year, but it needs more money to plan for the next pandemic.
We need more money to plan for the next pandemic.
There's going to be another pandemic.
We have to think ahead, Biden said in remarks at the White House to mark availability of vaccines for young children, which he said, we are the first country in the world to have vaccines for kids under the age of six months, which he celebrated.
And the commentary, if you read it, it's actually 95% of people who commented on it was negative.
But are you reading into this comment, or is it just, no, we do need to prepare for the next pandemic?
First of all, how does he know we're going to have another pandemic?
Number one.
Number two, I'm not one who believes that the COVID-19 vaccination is necessarily safe nor effective.
But I also believe that if you decide you want to take it, that's fine.
That's up to you.
Nobody should be required to take it.
I believe in health freedom.
But I also wonder whether there is a political motivation.
In other words, if you wanted to say, for example, that going to the polls was too dangerous because of a pandemic and that all voting should be done by mail-in ballot, I think that's an open invitation for voter fraud.
Good point.
Any thoughts on your end or no?
No, you know, the one that I do have a comment on, because both of you have used the term a couple of times of giving money to Ukraine.
I have a slightly different ulterior motive for this, and that comes because of my background.
Russia, second only to China, is a problem that we have had since 1917 and we will continue to have as long as they're in power.
And if you look at history, Afghanistan war, we helping the Afghanis, and I know that with 2020 hindsight, we go, gee, we should have taken the missiles back before we left.
But the Ukraine can be the downfall of what the Soviet Union is trying to become.
Because when Russian bodybags start going back home, and let me tell you something.
The U.S. has been helping the Ukrainians, Ukrainians, since 2015.
They did not learn how to fight and how to run intelligence networks in the last three months.
Because there has been a big shift from fighting wars to taking steps to prevent wars.
And the only way you can do that is working with individuals in countries that are allies, fortifying them, and if there's an issue, let them fight that fight and you support it.
But I am all for keeping Ukraine as that thorn in the side of the Russians, besides the humanitarian part and the atrocities that are being committed.
This is where we're going to have to disagree.
We signed a treaty in 1994 promising not to have Ukraine join NATO, which is defined as putting missiles aimed at Russia in NATO.
We're now seeking to do that.
This is not different than 1962 when the Russians put missiles in Cuba and President Kennedy objected.
And that was resolved, thank God, diplomatically.
We do have bioweapons labs in Ukraine.
The silos are actually built.
We haven't just dropped the missiles in.
I think this could have been resolved diplomatically had the Ukrainians not agreed to join NATO, which is defined as putting Western missiles in their country.
The idea that Putin, who's not a good guy, I want to be very clear.
I mean, my family were mowed down by Russian tanks in Budapest.
I have no truck for the Russians.
He's a thug.
But at the same time, the idea that he just wants to occupy Ukraine, he can't even afford that.
His economy is a basket case.
So this is going to be a costly war for him, but I think it could have been resolved short of the carnage we see today.
I don't disagree with that, but the thing is that that ship has sailed.
We are at war.
And if you're going to get any silver lining out of this is let's really button that up.
You know, if the argument that Putin uses about Ukraine being a threat to them, well, why are we doing something against Cuba?
Cuba is the cancer of Latin America.
Nicaragua, Venezuela, Colombia now.
All these are funded and influenced and led.
There are more intel officers from the Cuban service in those kind of countries propping them up.
Didn't Colombia just get the first socialist Democratic president, which is the next Venezuela?
He was actually a former senior terrorist.
He was part of the guerrilla camp.
He was one of the commanders of guerrilla camps.
But you have to wonder why the U.S. Senate, on the one hand, votes to give $40 million in aid, mostly military, lethal aid, supposedly, to Ukraine, but then they vote down a motion to have an inspector general track where that money's going.
Why wouldn't you want to know where that money's going?
It makes no sense to me.
Somebody just commented, Inception Child said, what will it take to put Putin on a terrorist list like Biden, like Bin Laden was?
Or is he a terrorist only if he tax America?
So do you see Putin as somebody that should be on that list or no?
He shouldn't be on that list.
Well, you know, he should for different reasons, but you've got to understand that why are we surprised at what Putin is doing, the kind of person he is?
He's not the anomaly in Russian and Soviet government.
If you go back to Stalin and Khrushchev and everybody in between, the majority of those, the leaders of Soviet Union and now Russia are of that criminal bent.
They have that mentality.
The oligarchs that, you know, you've got 100 billionaires in Russia that are bleeding money.
All these things bad for Russia.
But he should, that would be another nail on his coffin, declaring him that because he is responsible for the acts that the military is committing in Ukraine.
Would he be held accountable for war crimes?
Is that what you're saying?
Absolutely.
Let me ask you to follow up on that, Rick.
You basically have said that Russians and communists are expansionists, right?
And then you followed up and you said, you know, regarding Putin's goals, and I want to ask you about Putin's goals.
You said that a terminology I used was creeping normalcy, which is basically, you know, you take a piece, you wait for a little bit, and then, you know, kind of wait for things to simmer down again, and then boom, you attack again.
So what do you think Putin's goals are?
He said it when he first took power.
I will reconstitute the Soviet Union to his previous glory.
That's a clue right there.
How do you create the Soviet Union again?
You take over Romania.
You take over Georgia.
You attack, you know take over the Ukraine.
They are inspectionistic.
I don't think the Russians are creeping normalcy types.
They're too blunt.
They're too blunt of an adject.
Koreans and Asian Chinese are extremely good at that.
That creeping normalcy.
And whereas we have barely three-year plans because of the fourth year, the president has to start focusing on the re-election, the Chinese or the Russians don't have that problem.
They can have a 50-year plan, a 100-year plan, and you tweak it according to what it is, but the end goal is still the same.
Our end goal as America should be to remain a republic.
Their goal is to world domination.
When you say they, who do you mean?
The Russians and the Chinese.
Do you agree?
We should stop pretending the Ukrainians are a democracy.
They're not a democracy.
They're not.
After the last election, Zelensky arrested the guy who ran second, closed down and arrested all the leaders of the opposition party, and closed down the three TV stations that supported his opponent.
This is not a democracy.
It's an epically corrupt government.
I'd like to know where the money's going.
Zelensky has it, by the way, a beautiful $3.5 million condominium right here in Miami Beach.
How did he get that?
He's an actor.
He was an actor prior to his public service.
So I think it's an epically corrupt government.
And I just don't think the issues that are being used to rationalize the war are accurate.
I think this could have been resolved by SARS simply agreeing to honor our commitment in 94 not to put missiles into Ukraine.
But Roger, you know how many wealthy Russian oligarch types have condos in sunny isles not too far from here.
They all do.
But they're not in government service, though.
And by the way, I'm not defending the Russians.
I just would like to see us not have a war.
I'm not for this becoming being conflagrated into World War III.
Let me ask you, we recently had on your old buddy Paul Manafort, who was very outspoken on what we should do with Ukraine.
Are you guys still in touch?
Do you guys have similar opinions on this matter?
He knows far more about the area than I do because he's worked there.
I never worked there.
And I'm not as familiar with the geopolitics of it as he is.
My views are formed by what I read.
So I can either, first of all, I didn't see your show, so I either agree or disagree.
We're in touch, and we're certainly friendly.
We've had a similar experience, shall we say.
Well, you guys used to have a lobbyist firm called Black Manafort and Stone.
Black Manafort and Stone.
30 years ago.
Yeah, exactly.
And he was very outspoken on Ukraine.
He was actually very informed.
So is that someone you consult with on Ukraine matters, or are you guys still friends?
First of all, he worked for the Ukrainians 20 years after that firm was dissolved.
So I've never, I was not involved in any of that, and I didn't have an international practice.
We haven't talked about this particular issue.
Our conversation is more about how my wife's doing, how his wife's doing.
I mean, his wife has had some health problems.
My wife has had some health problems.
So, no, we have a cordial relationship.
We're still friends.
Good to hear.
Well, but let's stay on this topic.
Let's stay on this topic because we kind of, this led into the challenges with Russia.
So three topics I'll read all together, and then I want to process all of it together on how bad things are in Russia.
You see one side where you hear the approval rating of Putin is, what, the highest it's ever been.
It's at the, what was the number we were looking at, Tyler, 83%.
Something like that.
Something like that.
That's high.
But at the same time, Russia sinks into historic default as sanctions, muddy next steps, tougher Western sanctions that shut down payment routes to overseas creditors.
For months, Russia had found paths around the penalties imposed after the Kremlin's invasion of Ukraine.
But at the end of the day, on Sunday, the grace period on about $100 million of a trapped interest payment due May 27 expired, a deadline considered as an event of default, if missed.
This is a Bloomberg story.
Then there was a G7 story with G7 Nations to announce import ban on Russian gold and Moscow sanctions widened.
The leaders of G7 Nation will announce that on ban for Russian gold imports, on unprovoked invasion of Ukraine, et cetera, et cetera.
So the move would add to a series of punitive penalties imposed by the West on Russia since its onslaught of Ukraine on February 24th.
And last but not least, which, you know, when a commentator says this, it is what it is.
When a writer says it, it is what it is.
When a leader of a superpower says this, you have to actually, you know, consider what he's saying.
Vladimir Putin ally warns London will be bombed first if World War III were to break out.
one of his allies that says this.
London will be the first strategic NATO target to hit by Russian missiles should a third world war erupt.
A close ally of Vladimir Putin has claimed speaking on the Russian state TV.
Andrei Groloyov on NMP who sits on Moscow Defense Committee described how possible full-scale invasion of NATO ballistic Baltic state members would work.
He, a former military commander, member of the pro-Putin United Russia party, said we'll destroy the entire group of the enemy space satellites during the first air operation.
No one will care if they are American or British.
We would see them all as NATO.
Second, we'll migrate the entire system of anti-missile defense everywhere and 100%.
Third, we certainly won't start from Warsaw, Paris, or Berlin.
The first to be hit will be London.
How much credence should we give to this?
I think that's political barking.
Look at the Russian army's performance in Ukraine.
They've had their asses handed to them.
They were bringing in these young, untrained, not well-prepared individuals, and it's been a massacre.
The might of the Soviet Union is part of the illusion.
Just like the statistics of Putin's popularity, when you control the media, look what's happening in this country, when you control the media, you control the minds of a lot of people, or at least what you're projecting out there.
So what are you saying?
In my particular case, I'm Cuban-born.
I lived under communism.
I saw what communism did to my country.
I fought it in Nicaragua.
I fought it in five different incarnations.
So I am a rabid anti-communist.
And if we have an opportunity to really hurt the Russians right now, I think that it's worth the money.
I agree that Ukraine is not the cleanest slate.
Well, neither was Afghanistan.
Neither was Iraq.
All the wars that we have spent, and by the way, guys, both my kids are military.
One of them has two combat tours, and I have been in harm's way.
So this is all, like it should be, I think, a personal thing.
I saw what communism is.
I know that it is.
They have the goal of destroying this country from within.
From within.
They don't need to attack us.
They're attacking us through the media and all this undermining that they're doing.
Let me ask you, what do you think about Yuri Bezmanov?
I don't know.
Okay, because if you're going that angle, maybe I thought you were going that angle.
Go ahead, Roger.
What do you think?
Well, I certainly share his anti-communism.
But the Chinese communists are a far bigger threat to our country than the Russians.
And the one thing the Ukraine conflict has done is to push the Russians and the Chinese together.
They have had a historical distrust of each other.
They share a common border.
Richard Nixon got us a strategic arms limitation agreement out of the Russians by playing them off against the Chinese.
But to the extent that the Russians have economic problems, they have a very wealthy neighbor willing to prop them up.
And Deng Xiaoping keeps sending that signal.
So I also don't think that the war is going swimmingly for the Ukrainians.
I think we're getting a lot of war propaganda.
And it appears to me that there are atrocities on both sides.
The Azov Brigade in all wars.
Well, and that's the most important part right there, is what Rogers has said, is that Russia's economy is smaller than South Korea's.
And to date, this is Reuters, June 27th, the ruble is still the world's strongest currency against the dollar.
The Russian economy has not tanked like people expected it to.
It's still smaller than South Korea.
But what Rogers said, we're pushing Vladimir Putin into the arms of Xi Jinping.
Xi Jinping is the threat.
We're sending $50 billion to Ukraine.
We're sending missile systems.
We're sending 100,000 troops.
We're not going to be able to defend ourselves in a couple months with the strongest nuclear power on the face of the earth.
Why are we worried about Russia?
Yes, I agree with an anti-communist stance.
But again, Russia isn't what we should be worried about.
What happens three steps down the road when China makes a move on Taiwan, when China eventually makes a move on Japan?
They're building islands in the South China Sea to use as airports.
Like, they're making serious moves.
And we're concerned with Vladimir Putin, who's, I mean, he's a bully.
He's nothing more than a bully.
But when you remove the sanctions against the Iranians, you're sending a signal to the Chinese that we won't stand up.
So, I mean, when your foreign policy exudes weakness, it's an open invitation for the Chinese to move on Taiwan.
It's an invitation for the world.
I mean, you've heard the comparison of Biden with Jimmy Carter.
Jimmy Carter was at least a very decent, moral man and not a corrupt man.
He was a very naive man.
But what happened as soon as he took over?
Russia takes over Afghanistan.
The Iranian hostage crisis, we had people there for 444 days.
Give away the Panama Canal, which is a huge strategic mistake.
But what happened when Reagan came in?
As soon as he swore in, the hostages were released.
So I totally agree with you.
We need to have leadership, and that was one of the beauties about Trump.
You don't mess with Trump because he is going to come at you, whether it's verbally, physically, or militarily, he is going to come at you.
You know, this meeting for you and I to be introduced to each other was set up by Carter.
I don't know if you know that or not.
Jimmy Carter set up this meeting for you and I to meet each other.
Because you're here in America because of Carter.
I'm here in America from Iran because of Carter.
So thank you, Jimmy, for introducing me to Rick.
And I would have recruited you for the agency 20 years ago if I would have come across you.
And then you could have winked to your dad.
Imagine a little peanut farmer would have brought you two guys together.
Going back to what you guys were saying.
So this is a concern I have, and I'm curious to know if you feel the same way as well.
Are the current actions we're taking causing China and Russia to get closer than they were pre to the Ukraine-Russia war?
There's every evidence that that is the case.
Yeah, absolutely.
But in the meantime, the Chinese are systematically buying up half of the country.
The world.
Real estate, farmland, ranchland across the United States.
I mean, there's 300,000 acres in Oklahoma alone.
Statistic I read yesterday.
That's phenomenal.
They're buying control of minerals, almost all natural everywhere across the globe.
They are a far greater threat to us than the Russians.
I totally agree.
I mean, look what happened when Afghanistan, the Taliban, declared themselves the legal government of the country.
China was the first one to recognize them.
Why?
Because a lot of those minerals that you just alluded to are in the underlands of Afghanistan.
And to go back to a question you asked earlier, in all honesty, Biden's decision to withdraw our troops from Afghanistan was not the wrong decision.
Trump had been withdrawing our troops.
It was how he did it.
It was how he did it, not using our drones, not using our technology to pin down the Taliban while we were to cover our back while we were leaving.
And the decision not to remove our equipment or destroy it, which was an option before we left.
Well, this is great commentary on this topic.
I want us to go to our last topic before we finish the podcast.
We'll spend the last 20 minutes on this topic here, and that's Clarence Thomas, Roe v. Wade, and all the other stories that come with it.
So Biden and other critics fear Thomas's extreme possession position on contraception.
Okay, if you go to page three, let me read this story here.
In an opinion concurring with his conservative colleagues on the Supreme Court to overturn the fundamental right on abortion, Justice Clarence Thomas wrote on Friday that striking down Roe v. Wade should also open up the high court to review other precedents that may be deemed demonstrably erroneous.
Amongst these, Thomas wrote, was the right for married couples to buy and use contraception without government restriction from the landmark 1965 ruling in Griswold versus Connecticut.
In future cases, we should reconsider all of this court substantive due process precedents, including Griswold Lawrence and others.
Thomas wrote on page 119 of the opinion in Dobbs versus Jackson Women's Health, also referring to the ruling that legalized same-sex marriage relationships, respectively, because any substantive due process decision is demonstrably erroneous.
We have a duty to correct the error established in those precedents.
Thomas added, after overruling these demonstrably erroneous decisions, the question would remain whether other constitutional provisions guarantee the myriad rights that our substantive due process cases have generated.
So obviously, we know what's happened the last week since this was announced.
Riots are everywhere.
Protesting is going on everywhere.
People are going berserk with this decision that's been made.
How much more do you think this is going to continue?
And how far along do you think Clarence Thomas is going to know, knowing that they have an advantage right now being 6'3?
Well, we can't assume that there's a 6'3 majority for everything that one justice said.
Sure.
I was surprised that Roe v. Wade was repealed, to be honest with you.
So I didn't, and I don't see those things happen, but I, of course, could be wrong.
The idea, of course, that saying the state should regulate abortion is extreme.
No, the idea of killing a fetus after there's a heartbeat, that's extreme to me.
So this, I think what we've done here is go back to democracy in its purest form.
I mean, abortion is going to be legal.
And in the states where it is legal, that'll be because the voters there want it to be legal.
If they don't like abortion restriction or they want more restrictions, the voters will have the opportunity to vote in people who will give them that.
But the idea that abortion will be unavailable, that's not accurate.
You know, it's a very personal item for me because my youngest, my oldest son, his wife is pregnant with the baby.
She's four months old.
And I saw the sonograms and the heartbeat of that kid in less than two months.
It is murder.
If a woman is raped or if giving birth to a child is going to cause her to die or for whatever reasons, then I totally also agree that the states, like every libertarian would, should be making the decisions for the people and the vote is the one that does it.
But I would go as far as if you, in a state where it's not legal, you do abortions, that should be murder.
The minute there's a heartbeat, as far as I'm concerned, you're killing something.
And it's very easy to say, I'm going to have an abortion, and you don't see what's going on.
But what would 99% of the women do?
They say, okay, abortions from now on is we will retact the fetus and before it's dead, you've got to kill it.
So there's a few different areas to go with this here, right?
One is the pro-choice, pro-life debate, okay, which that debate's being had 24-7 nonstop.
Let's set that aside.
I don't want us to go through that debate because we would need to have a panel with a couple other ladies to comment as well.
Let's set that part aside, okay?
The part that we were having this debate in Monaco was the following is do I want that decision to be made by the federal, by the state, or permanently making it illegal?
We got really three options if we look at it, right?
So the federal government makes it illegal to have an abortion in any state.
Let's say that's extreme, right?
Or the federal government makes it legal for anybody to have abortion in any state.
Let's say that's extreme to some people, right?
Why do you think some people are having a challenge with it being the state's decision to do so?
Is it because in case if I live in a state where I do want to have an abortion, I don't have the choice to do so, I move to another state.
Doesn't that sound like a reasonable thing to do to leave it to the states to make that decision?
What do you think, Roger?
That's why I agreed with this decision.
The decision will now go to the states, and the government that is closest to the people always makes the best decision.
If the people in Texas, Texas is now abortion's illegal in Texas.
If the people of Texas want to change that, they'll have ample opportunity to do that.
Whereas abortion is readily available in New York, you could probably have it in the late trimesters.
The voters there could also change that if they want to.
So I think this is actually the right solution.
If you look at it from a public opinion point of view, a slim majority of voters think that abortion should be legal, but they also support a number of restrictions on it.
They don't want it available on demand at any time for any reason.
The intensity on this issue is on the extremes.
Just prior to Roe, when people were asked in a Gallup poll, what are the most important issues facing the country, 4% said abortion rights, 4%.
So I don't believe this is going to be the issue for November that brings the Democrats back and lets them detract from gas bills.
You don't think so.
No, I think in the end it'll end up being a wash, actually.
Well, let me give you some stats because a majority of Americans do disagree with this Supreme Court decision.
Can I throw some stats out there?
If they understand it, yeah.
Overall, 56% of the American people disagree with this.
40% support it.
4% are still somehow unsure.
Biparty Democrats, 88% oppose this.
10% support it.
In the GOP, 77% support it.
Sorry, yes.
77% support this ruling.
20% oppose it.
Independents, and this is what we always talk about.
This is the people you got to pay attention to.
53% oppose this.
So a slim majority.
41% support.
By gender, male, 54% oppose this.
43% support.
53% of, sorry, 59% of females oppose this decision, and 38% support.
So there's a, we could all, you know, four dudes sitting around in a room, we can all give our opinions.
Who was that poll by?
I'm curious.
This is on NPR, your favorite people.
Well, that makes sense if it's NPR, but go ahead.
But they're polling the American people there, though.
So are you saying that it's far off?
I'm saying I can write a poll and make it say anything I want.
By the way, I word the questions.
That's a man.
Well, I think what's going to happen, I agree with you that the economy is going to be the number one issue in the midterms.
But this is going to be something that's going to get the American women to the poll.
I mean, we said that soccer moms control the votes, that it was the COVID moms.
Women are going to have a massive vote right here.
Here's some stats for you.
Where is it here?
78% of Democrats say Roe decision makes them more likely to vote in the midterm.
78% of Democrats say they are now more likely to vote in the midterms because of this, as opposed to 54% of GOP.
That's a 24% difference.
We talked about a million Americans now considering becoming a Republican versus a Democrat.
The number one issue for sure is the economy, but then you're going to have culture wars, guns, abortions, immigration.
This is no small thing.
Women are fucking pissed, okay?
And I don't have a horse in this race.
I'm not a woman.
I got a question.
I don't have any.
I got a question.
I got a question.
So this will be a strange metaphor to make, but to me, it kind of makes sense.
You know how we say, well, you know, we can make guns illegal, but the bad guy's always going to find the guns.
Okay, where's the bad guy going to buy the guns from?
Probably from another bad guy, right?
Let's just say if that's the case.
Okay.
So in these states where they can't do abortion and they want to get an abortion and they can't afford to go to another state to get the abortion, what do they do?
Is there going to be underground abortion operations being started?
Yes.
Is there going to be so much?
Yeah, so if there's a black market for it, where is the protection if that does happen for the woman that's going to do it, whether you let her or not, she's going to go find somebody in the black market, let's call it a black market in the states that don't allow it, to go get it done.
And maybe the black market's going to be ran by people who have done abortions professionally at a clinic at, you know, because Planned Parenthood essentially becomes a black market in those states that don't allow.
So maybe they start something on the side and they do it for $250 or whatever.
So they're going to provide some kind of protection.
But the safety of insurance will ensure.
So if somebody goes and does an abortion at an illegal place in the black market and something happens to her health, will health insurance not come in and protect them?
I don't think so because it is an illegal behavior that's taking place.
So that is a problem that those states have to address.
Now, I left, my position is slightly a different position to take with this.
I'm a staff guy, right?
I like data because data tells me a story.
So some are saying Clarence Thomas is saving more black lives than Black Lives Matter.
Because if you look at statistically, in the U.S. population, right, U.S. population, 60% are white.
The U.S. population, 60% is white.
Blacks is 12.2%.
Let me say that one more time.
Five times more is the population of whites versus blacks.
Meanwhile, 37% of all abortions are black, women versus 33% of abortions are white.
So even though whites are five times the amount of blacks, the abortion for blacks is higher than whites, which is six times the amount of abortions blacks get than whites.
So some people say, well, that's racist.
Well, the racist in that topic can be seen in two different ways because more black kids are being aborted than white kids are being aborted.
So who is the racist?
Does that decrease the chances of more blacks having a voice in the community make a difference if we're getting five times more the kids to be aborted?
And you know, back in the days, this was a conspiracy on the fact that they were doing this because with the whole crack, you know, all the stories that was going on, this is a way to eliminate from, hey, let's go out there and do this because this can help us with the amount of voice that they could have.
There is that topic that's coming up as well when you're looking at the stats in regards to what's going on with Clarence Thomas.
But if you break it down in the state, you're the governor.
Here's how the governor says, look, in our state, we don't want to do abortions.
You don't like it?
Guess what?
If a governor really supports this, this is how the governor's approach should be.
We don't, but there are 17 states you can go to where you can get it.
Okay?
Very simple.
Go to these 17 states.
Okay.
You know, if somebody protests and riots against somebody that doesn't allow same-sex marriage, guess what that state governor can say?
We don't.
But there's these 17 states that you can go to that does.
They support you.
Go to that state.
So now, Pat, that's racist.
Well, let me tell you what I did.
I'm in California and I'm against the 13.5% state taxes and the gas taxes and this taxes and regulation and all this other stuff.
And guess what Governor Newsom said?
He said to me indirectly, well, if you don't like it, there's these seven states that you don't pay taxes.
And guess what I said?
I said, you know what?
I appreciate the offer, Governor Newsom.
I moved to Texas.
I lived in Texas for five years.
And 18 months ago, we moved to Florida, right, to be in a state like this because I like the way the governor handled it.
So my position here to those that are losing their minds is the following.
The hypocrisy is when people are rioting and protesting in states where abortion hasn't changed.
California, you're fine.
You're fine.
Protesting in your state.
It's very weird that you're protesting.
You're not affected by this.
This is affected today.
Some other states that are doing it, I say, oh, I agree.
Go and protest.
That's one of the freedoms that we have in America.
But just like a business owner can choose to leave to another state because they have low regulation and lower taxes to allow them to hire more people, you also have the choice to move to a different state that gives you those freedoms to do whatever you want to do with your body.
Is that discriminatory?
I don't know.
I think you have a choice.
So if you're in a state that doesn't allow you and that really infuriates you, you have two choices.
Try to make the change in that state, which is kind of what you were talking about, right?
Or number two, go move to a state that allows you to do that.
You have a choice.
It's America.
You're not forced to stay there.
And you now have major employers saying that they will pay for the travel.
Now, are they really saying, well, paying for maternity leave is a lot more expensive than paying for an abortion.
But first of all, I would say two things.
Polling any question in the eye of the storm is very difficult.
You're going to get a skewed result.
Do you agree with the decision?
That implies people know what the decision means.
Many of my friends said, oh, abortion is now illegal everywhere.
Well, that's not what this decision says.
So what this looks like in three months could be very different than what it looks like today.
It depends on public understanding of the issue, which I'm not sure is there today.
I like what you said, polling in the eye of the storm is what?
How did you describe it?
Yes, exactly.
It's what?
Well, whenever you try to take a survey in the middle of a crisis, emotions play a huge role.
Right, until things settle down and public opinions are more set.
When you're in the middle of the controversy, it's not the time to measure the impact of people.
You're going to hear the sentiment of the country.
But even though recognizing it may be temporary.
Well, let me say one thing.
As always, just like in the economy, just everything with COVID, who's going to get hurt the most?
The poor.
Like, the poor don't have the luxury of just moving to another state or having their amazing Fortune 500 corporation pay for their abortion.
Who says?
Who says?
I was poor.
We moved to America.
Immigrants come to America.
They're rich.
I'm sorry.
Do immigrants who come to America are rich immigrants?
Poor immigrants come to America.
I'm talking from state to state, though.
No, but that's even easier.
It's easier to go to another state than to come to a country.
People are going to go move to another state.
Many want to get another government.
Many do.
Are you kidding me?
No, it's not.
They don't have to move.
It's not expensive.
No, they don't have to move.
They don't have to move.
They just have to go there for the procedure.
Yeah.
So if you're in the belly of Texas and you got to, what's the closest state to Texas that you can go get an abortion?
California.
Okay, so how long is that going to take?
I'm just saying, it's not as easy as you move to California.
No, but I tell you, I tell you, when I was in California and I was broke, guess where I went to a dentist?
Where?
Where?
Mexico.
Mexico.
Jesus.
Yes.
You know what the price is in Mexico compared to what it is in California?
I would drive five and a half hours to go to TJ to see my dentist that didn't speak English.
I went there and he got it done and it was good.
And I got your beautiful teeth these days.
The point I'm trying to make to you, I was poor.
I was 49K in debt and I had barely 500 bucks in a bank.
I had no money.
But I'm like, listen, my teeth are killing me.
I can't even state.
So I get what you're saying on the fact that you have the choice to go to another state.
Look, just like the rest of us move, if you don't like where you're living at, and 40 million immigrants are in America.
Where do they leave?
If the situation was so great, they would have never left.
They left because they were not happy with something.
If you're not happy living in a state that's red or purple and is disagreeing with your views, I highly recommend you move to Oregon, move to California, move to New York, move to Chicago.
It's more of people that agree with you.
Look, the story of Ayn Rand with Atlas Shrugged, what is the story?
You know, the story is there's a city that you go to where you're around like-minded people.
If you want to be around like-minded people and you afford this or any of this stuff, there's plenty of states for you.
Okay?
We came up.
I never said, hey guys, we should consider moving to Oregon.
Did you ever hear me say Oregon?
No.
Thank you.
Did I ever say Oregon?
Florida.
Illinois.
I said a couple states and we came here.
Can I make one quick point about our friend Clarence Thomas?
Yes.
This man does not represent America.
Okay.
And I'll tell you why.
And this is not my opinion, but I went on to Axios.
Are they a trustworthy source?
Anyone?
Maybe.
But they did a, they basically judged the political leanings of the Supreme Court.
And on the Supreme Court, you have someone that's on the very far left, Sodomayor, and someone who is on the extreme right, Clarence Thomas.
And they are both on, when you talk about the far left and the far right have the loudest voices, that's them.
So remove them.
Basically, they have a plus one, plus two, plus three, right?
If you're plus three, you're very extreme on the right.
That's where Clarence Thomas is.
Sodomayor is plus three on the left.
These are very extreme liberal and conservative voices.
That's not where America is.
You know where America is?
Everyone's going crazy over Gorsuch.
Everyone's going crazy over Amy Comey Barrett.
Everyone's going crazy over Kavanaugh, right?
But they're just plus ones.
They're right where John Roberts is.
They're not extremists, okay?
And just on the left, you have Kagan and Breyer.
This is where America is.
So five out of the seven justices, what I would say represent most Americans.
Clarence Thomas is an extremist.
Whether you agree with him or not, he is you talk about data.
Soda Mayor also an extremist?
That's exactly what I said.
She's extremely on the left.
That's true, but they were both appointed Supreme Court by duly elected presidents of different parties.
And we're supposed to believe in the rule of law.
They're the justices, whether you like or not.
I'm not saying that they should be unhinged or taken off the court.
I'm just saying Clarence Thomas's opinions are not what 90% of Americans agree with.
He is an extremist, just like she is.
Okay, but you also, this is the Supreme Court that upheld Obamacare, for example.
And those Republicans all swung for that.
Not him, though.
Not him.
Well, I understand that, but he's there for life.
Let me say something here that we all have learned the last six years.
Okay.
This is what we've all learned.
To flip three seats may be the biggest milestone.
If you can be a two-term president and flip no seats or be a one-term president and flip three seats, 10 out of 10 times, any party, left or right, would take a one-term president who flips three seats.
That may be the biggest milestone any president's ever done in mankind to favor their party.
You're talking about Trump.
Oh, Mike.
Well, do you remember his quote?
What's that?
Whether you love me or hate me, you got to vote for me because of the Supreme Court.
Yeah.
Remember he came out and said that?
Well, you see, he was upfront about what he was going to do.
It was interesting that in his comments, when Biden assailed the decision of the court, he attacked the three justices appointed by Trump.
He didn't mention the two appointed by Bush who voted the same way.
Didn't even mention them.
Yeah.
And by the way, if you go back and you study Clarence Thomas's history linked to Biden, your opinion about Clarence Thomas would be very different if you actually go back and see what this guy's done in his life.
He's got one of the best resumes on what he's done.
I don't know.
Especially where he came from.
I mean, he was raised by his grandfather in literal poverty.
He couldn't even speak English.
Let me tell you something.
I give two shits about, because I don't have an opinion on him.
I'm letting you know what the facts say.
But he also is extremely right Supreme Court justice.
The facts show that.
I'm not saying that I like him or not like him.
Yeah, but what are you saying?
That they're not collecting the data correctly?
Nowhere in the United States Constitution is Roe mentioned at all.
I'm not talking about Roe, Tyler.
I'm talking about Clarence Thomas specifically.
But this is the broader issue is everybody wants to talk about Roe right now.
Okay, you said 78% of Democratic women are more likely to vote in the midterms.
I said 78% of Democrats.
Yes, as they should.
If you want federally legal abortion, vote on it.
Tell your congresspeople to codify Roe in the Constitution.
Get two-thirds of the country to vote on a constitutional amendment.
It's not up to nine Supreme Court justices to make the rules.
I will say this to you.
If there is anybody in America right now that needs security around them, I know six people that do.
And I know one that needs a lot of people around him.
Because just the other day, I don't know if you guys saw or not, Jelaine Maxwell was put on Suicide Watch.
I don't know how they make the decision like that.
So that's another news that could be changing anytime soon.
Why she was put on that Suicide Watch, I don't know.
But I hope the right Secret Service, you know, security protection is around those people.
You're talking about Supreme Court justice.
Oh, my God.
Well, there's the story.
The guy who came by Kavanaugh's house, right?
They need protection like there is no tomorrow.
They need protection.
Anyways, great podcast.
Excited to do this again.
Roger, thanks for coming out.
Rick, thanks for coming out.
Thursday, we're doing it again.
I'm on this week twice.
And a massive thing happened.
The biggest exciting thing in business ever happened this week that we'll talk about on the 30th.
I'm excited for that.
And maybe you want to feel where you've been for the last 10 days.
But it's not just where we've been because people know where we've been.
It's what's happened when we've been away, which I can't wait for that.
Folks, to the members out there, the PBD podcast, love you.
You guys are constantly, we're reading your stuff, what you're saying.
To everybody that contributed today, thank you.
And if you enjoyed today's format with Rick Prattle and Roger Stone, CMO, aka, many different names we can give to the guests that we had on today.
Give us a thumbs up.
Subscribe to the channel and let us know if you want to back on because I know we're going to do this again because the next 12, 18 months is going to be crazy.
We're going to want to hear what they have to say.
