The Mar-A-Lago Raid w/ Stuart Kaplan, Ricardo Aguilar & Scott Perry | PBD Podcast | Ep. 187
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PBD Podcast Episode 187. In this episode, Patrick Bet-David is joined by Adam Sosnick, Ricardo Aguilar, Stuart Kaplan & Scott Perry.
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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.
0:00 - Start
20:37 - How the FBi has changed over time
31:15 - Former FBI agent explains the raid on Mar-A-Lago
42:38 - Is CNN going to drive Trump to the presidency in 2024?
56:41 - Representative Scott Perry details what happened when his phone was seized by the FBI
1:23:42 - Reaction to Bill Barr trashing Donald Trump
1:35:42 - Ben Shapiro says the GOP should ditch Trump in 2024
1:59:09 - Reaction to Putin claiming the threat of nuclear weapons 'isn't a bluff'
This world of entrepreneurs, we get no value to hate it.
Howdy, running, homie, look what I become.
I'm the one.
All right, episode 187, and it's a special one because of what happened yesterday after Attorney General Letitia Jackson, Letitia James, not LeBron James cousin.
No, Letitia James went after President Trump, a promise she made.
We'll cover that.
Civil fraud lawsuit.
Yeah, civil fraud lawsuit, talking about $250 million at best, if not at higher end of three to four times, and banning them from doing real estate and business in New York permanently.
And one of them was five years.
Anyways, we'll cover the details on that.
But we have a special show here because today's show, we have Stuart Kaplan on.
Let me tell you who Stuart Kaplan is, which the timing is, again, couldn't have been better.
He's a former FBI agent.
He received an appointment with the FBI as a special agent in 1995, was assigned to the New York FBI Special Operations Division and white-collar squad.
Then he worked on some of the most important cases in FBI history to include the centennial bombing and TWA Flight 800 investigation.
In 2001, he received a special transfer to Miami Division, where he was involved in the anthrax and 9-11 investigations.
In 2003, he was assigned to a long-term undercover operation, and he's now a criminal defense attorney.
And we also have Ricky Aguilar in the house.
He's back.
And we'll have Scott Perry at around 10 o'clock, Congressman, whose phone was seized, I think, just a few days ago to talk about how that just took place.
But with that being said, Stuart, Ricky, thank you for being on.
Thank you for having us.
Thank you.
Good morning.
Stuart, how you doing?
I'm doing fine.
Good morning.
So your accent sounds like you're Southern, like Texas.
Is it Texas accent?
Yeah, Southern, kind of like Cross Bronx Express.
Southern Bronx, South Bronx.
Yeah, I figured.
So, Stuart, when you see all this stuff that's going on right now, what are you thinking?
Like, half of this stuff, like one week it's Mar-a-Lago, next week is this.
What do you think is going on?
Well, first of all, you know, when I talk, I talk facts because, you know, there's a lot of speculation and rumors.
And so I tell people, when I go back to when I came out of the academy and I remember there were 48 of us in a graduating class back in 1995.
Most of the individuals, whether they were men or women, and by the way, I apologize.
I hope I can use intelligence.
Yes, there's still men and women in Mars.
Well, I just read in the newspaper, if you come out of the Navy now or the Air Force, you can't refer to mom and dad.
So I just want to make sure I don't piss.
What have you?
Seaman and not non-seamen or something like that.
But, you know, most of us were a personalities, played competitive sports, a lot of military guys, special force guys, real hard chargers.
And I saw quickly after 9-11, where the mission of the FBI changed drastically, where it became more of an intelligence gathering community, they started to recruit more intellectual type of individuals.
And the posturing, as I see today, for example, when I look at young kids going through athletics, my son plays organized sports.
In particular, at 12 years old, he plays football.
And they're more concerned about giving participation trophies.
Our society has changed.
We're soft now.
In fact, I remember when we went through defensive tactics and they asked everybody in the class to raise their hand and ask who's ever been involved in a fight, basically you saw about 50 or 60% of the people raised their hands.
I can tell you without a question, because I've been back to Quanticle many, many times, where you will see the same type of question being asked and no one will raise their hand.
Who's ever gotten punched in the face?
And you look around.
Are you being serious?
I'm dead serious.
Today.
Absolutely.
How's that even possible, though?
Because the mission of the Bureau has changed.
We as a society has changed.
Law enforcement, as in the practice of law, has become more of a sporting contest.
It's about winning at all costs.
Where when I came out of the academy, it was about the administration of justice.
It was about equal justice.
And it was about arresting bad people, going after top 10 fugitives, people that were murderers, bank robberies.
If I was to tell you that unless someone jumps the counter of a bank with a firearm, the FBI doesn't even respond.
That's today in 2022.
But if we have this political undercurrent where we want to go after a political figure, that seems to be the top of the priority at this point.
And so the complete mission, the complete priority, and of course, the mentality of the FBI.
And when I talk about the mentality, and I can talk because I still have one friend who is actually the second in charge, the seventh floor mentality, that's at FBI headquarters, has changed.
Its focus has changed.
I think that if there was any mistake that Donald Trump made when James Callman back in 2017 was escorted out of FBI headquarters, the one mistake he left is that he left the stench behind that continues to permeate.
And he should have cleaned out FBI headquarters from top to bottom.
And why do I say that?
Because 99% of the men and women who are in the field offices throughout the United States and throughout the world are incredible people and they do an incredible job.
But let's be honest, the mission or the signals are given from FBI headquarters.
And so what you see played out now is like a sporting contest because people interject their political views.
They interject their personal views.
And that's not the FBI that I know.
The FBI that I know looks at the facts.
We're facts-based.
We run out facts to their logical conclusions and we allow the facts to speak for themselves.
We don't come to the conclusion and work backwards and create a narrative.
And what you're seeing is now everybody has a foregone conclusion.
And just like you talk about the Attorney General in New York, who I know a lot about, she already said when she ran for office that this was going to be her conclusion.
She just needed now to write her narrative.
And so yesterday you see her get up in front of a podium and now she's going to talk about her narrative, but she had already reached her conclusions.
That's not what I'm all about, and that's not what the FBI should be all about.
We had a CIA agent here last week or two weeks ago, and maybe three weeks ago, Andy Bustamente, who's a former CIA guy, and I was asking a question about FBI, CIA, DEA, all these guys.
When was it?
You know how the whole approval rating with President is this, the whole bringing you.
When was FBI's approval rating by the populace the highest?
When did America trust FBI the most?
You know, I will tell you that sitting here today and I can talk to you about Waco, Ruby Ridge, the Centennial bombing, Flight TW800.
There were many times that there were isolated incidents that the FBI became front and center, where there was some criticism, but it was focused solely on decisions that were made at the time on the ground.
This is the first time, in my opinion, that the legitimacy or the integrity of the institution is now being challenged or being questioned.
And I do believe that in this particular situation, perception in the optics sometimes is our reality.
And so this is a different FBI, and you have to question what their motivation is.
I do not recall politics ever being interjected into any of the cases that I were involved in.
And that's not to say that I wasn't involved in public corruption cases, but the party affiliation of the individual was of zero consequence.
The only issue at hand was whether or not there was some facts that supported the hypothesis that this person may have engaged in criminal activity.
You run out those leads to its logical conclusion, not because the person was Republican or not because the person was Democratic, but because the person either did or did not commit a crime.
And if the person did not commit a crime, that was it.
The case died on the vine.
That's not the situation we have today.
Yeah, I wonder like, okay, so originally when FBI got started with J. Edgar Hoover, when you say not political, a lot of it with the stories you hear about them and Kennedy Kennedys coming over saying, hey, you better stay away from us because let me tell you what picture we got of you.
And, you know, whether it's true or not, you know, the cross-dressing back in the days was a big deal.
And if the world got out, so there was politics involved.
The mob was involved.
Now, how much of this is factual or not?
I wasn't there in the rooms to hear about it, but we've all read these stories and seen the movies.
What was the original outcome of why we started the FBI?
Well, look, the FBI was started because there was a need.
There was a, you know, we needed a federal law enforcement agency to oversee state and local agencies.
And that really was then the infancy or how the FBI was born to come.
I don't disagree with you.
Look, the director of the FBI, regardless of who the director is, he serves at the pleasure of the president of the United States.
And I am not going to say, I would be less than candid to say that if the president or one of his aides picks up the phone and calls the director and says, listen, I need you to do this, this, and this, I'm not going to say that the FBI director is not going to jump through hoops to try to satisfy the request of the president.
That's not what I'm talking about because that's in all life.
That's in corporate America.
That's in sports.
That's in anything.
You know someone, you reach out to them, you ask them to, you look, you get caught going down the turnpike and you get a speeding ticket and maybe you have a deputy friend and you call your deputy friend and say, hey, do you know this deputy?
He wrote me a ticket.
Can you make a phone call and tell him to take easy?
That's in all walks of life.
But that's not what I'm talking about.
This now is an FBI who's been an FBI agency that's been weaponized by the political incumbents, by the presidency, by the over office.
That's unprecedented in modern history.
If I could ask you a question.
I'm sorry, Pat.
When you say that, is that on both sides of the spectrum, both sides of the aisle?
Or is it just one?
Have you noticed it more recently in the past 10, 15 years?
When did you notice that shift?
And if so, has it been one side of the aisle more than the other?
So look, if we talk specifically about the then former president, Donald Trump, Donald Trump was an icon in New York City before he even thought about running for public office.
There were a lot of people that loved him, and there were a lot of people that hated him.
And that's because of his verbose, antagonistic, just bombastic type of attitude.
In fact, I was laughing last night.
He was on Sean Hannity.
And there's a perfect example where I can comment as a criminal defense attorney.
That's why sometimes he puts his foot in his own mouth because the lawyers have no client control.
There is no reason why he should have gone on that program yesterday, given what was said earlier in the afternoon.
But the bottom line is he was loved and he was hated at the same time.
When he then decided to enter into public service or to enter into the arena to run for president, no one really took him seriously.
I mean, that's the reality.
He was either the laughing stock or as you saw quickly, people said, wait a minute, this guy may be able to go to Washington, D.C. and shake things up.
And then all of a sudden, the fear started to permeate.
This could be real.
This could be real.
And for the first time, you have people like Pelosi or Chuck Schumer who've been there forever.
And by the way, they have taken full advantage.
And even Biden, who's been there forever.
And you know, the interesting thing is when you talk about Biden, why don't we talk about the last 40 years that he was in public office?
Let's talk about the lack of success.
He never did anything successful.
And the funny thing is, even when you talk about health care and, you know, he talks about we're going to try to bring down health care costs.
Well, how come no one ever refreshes his recollection when he stood up with Obama and they talked about you could keep your own, you know, keep your own health insurance and it's going to be a lot cheaper.
Well, all of a sudden that went out the door.
And so for the first time, the institution that was so ingrained and was untouchable started to get really nervous that this guy's going to come in and he's going to kick us in our rear end and he's going to expose us for what it is.
That's when you started to see people start to reach out and, for example, utilize the FBI.
And here's a perfect example, the Attorney General in New York.
This is such a meatball type of case.
I mean, it's really meatball.
Look, Donald Trump is a very successful businessman.
I don't know anybody at his level who doesn't have teams of lawyers, teams of firms who are embroiled in litigation.
That comes with success.
Whether you're Donald Trump or you're someone else, it just is amazing.
And by the way, those cases in New York, you would never hear about them.
They would be so quiet and they would all be resolved.
Maybe a fine would be paid.
Maybe there would be a disgorgement of some monies paid back.
It would fly under the radar.
But here's a perfect example of who here's a woman who took the platform now and she's going to run with it and make a, you know, making a nothing out of a federal case here now.
But I want to do this to finish this job, and then we're going to go into our friend James here.
We're going to go into it here.
This is what I want to ask.
We've all had investments before.
You've had investments.
You've had investments.
Tyler, I'm sure, has had investments, and you've had investments.
Okay.
At one point you sit there and you say, yeah, shoot, I mean, plus, minus, I'm not, there's no benefit to me.
I'm not making money on this thing here.
If we look at some of these agencies, ATF, which stands for Alcohol Tobacco Firearms, which all are like, what do you mean we need ATF employing 5,200 people?
How much money are taxpayers paying for ATF?
We can go away with ATF, okay?
DEA, FBI, CIA, which one of those organizations, and I kind of have an idea which way you're going to lean, but I want to hear what you're going to say about this.
Which one has done more harm than good for America?
If you had to choose one, let's put DEA aside.
Let's just do CI and FBI.
Which one's done more harm than good for America?
Well, look, the Central Intelligence Agency does not operate domestically.
They work strictly internationally, and they are a critical component of our national security.
The FBI is tasked with protecting our national security here domestically.
And so I'm not going to suggest that either one of them is not valuable because they both come with tremendous value.
And I will tell you, especially after 9-11, and especially when you see that when there are separations of state and local law enforcement and even separate from federal, state, and local, the only way we are going to be safe here in the United States is to have federal partners that work with our state partners that work with the local partners.
And I talk about terrorism matters.
Terrorism matters, believe it or not.
Police officers that work each and every day make contact with you and I, make contact with people all day long.
That potential crumb that may be picked up could be noted in a traffic stop, in a citation, in a police report, in an incident report.
And all of a sudden, that one thread of information a year, two, three, four, five years down the road may become a critical component in a federal investigation.
Our success, and I will say this, because we have been very fortunate since 9-11.
Leave out the active shooters and the mass shootings because we have failed miserably with that.
But when you talk about domestic terrorism, meaning on the national level with not having another repeat of 9-11, the success has come with the FBI and all of the other law enforcement agencies working so seamlessly together, jointly, and sharing information.
The breakdown prior to 9-11 is information was not flowing down.
It was attempted to be flow up to the FBI, but the FBI was very scarce or very resistant to share information downward.
We now work jointly.
We're mostly made-up task force agencies.
That's why, and I do applaud the FBI for keeping us safe when it comes to our national security.
So I don't think we could do away with the FBI.
But with saying that, do I believe it needs to be retooled?
And when I say retooled, retooled at the top, not necessarily at the field office level.
The challenge then becomes accountability.
Who holds who accountable?
And, you know, how do you prevent individual political affiliation and interests of getting in the way of what you do and what you look past of?
I mean, it's a very, very difficult thing to do on how you hire people.
Like a Peter Strzok, you sit there and say, you think this guy's going to take sides?
Of course he's going to take sides.
And yesterday, his tweet, you know, talking about all these other people, but behind closed doors, the tech's getting caught.
The concern for me becomes an organization that powerful with that much control to walk up to Scott Perry, Congressman, which we're going to have here in a minute.
I don't know the man.
I don't know what he stands for.
I don't think he's somebody that's on TV on a daily basis.
But with what happened here, we'll talk about him.
He's been on for the last few months.
You're seeing him regularly with the insurrection and these different things.
But to pull up, you're with your family, three kids, and like, hey, hand us your phone for what?
That's okay to do nowadays.
There's a part of that that's a little bit concerning where one side, that approach doesn't work and the other side, it does.
So it makes a lot of people a little bit uncomfortable to say, at what point can this happen to me, irregular?
Some of us are immigrants.
I was born and raised in Iran.
People can come and talk to you about a lot of different things at any time, right?
People can come and ask you for things and get away with a lot of stuff.
We saw what happened this last week with a lady in Iran who is 22 years old.
They're doing the anti-hijab movement and they don't want to wear their hair covers.
And 22 years old, they threw her in the bus.
Her head hits it.
She starts bleeding.
She dies the following day.
And then they say she died from a heart attack.
A 22-year-old dies from a heart attack.
But it's in Iran.
They control the media.
They control the story.
And people on the streets can do about it.
But in America, you wouldn't think America would get to that level.
So my only concern is: what can we do to be a little bit more accountable?
I know you say tools, but a level of accountability and trust to be increased.
If the FBI was a company and they had a review online right now and they had to fix their reputation, man, I got a lot of work to do to gain the trust of the American people today.
I agree.
100%.
But you have to understand, and I'm going to go back to a perfect example, just to put things in context as to why the FBI is not the same FBI that's recognizable not only to me, but a lot of people that are similarly situated that have retired and still are there.
When I got into the FBI, there was a fit test.
The fit test was you had to run a mile and a half.
You had to do sit-ups.
You had to do push-ups.
You had to do pull-ups.
Do you realize now that the FBI Academy has done away with quote-unquote the fit test?
Now, again, don't want to piss off any of the people that are listening, but let's be honest.
You have to be fit because the job should be very physically demanding at times.
And what happened was there was a person who couldn't pass the fit test.
They got recycled once.
They got recycled twice.
And then on the third time, when they couldn't pass the fit test, they terminated that person.
You know what that person did?
He probably sued them.
That's exactly what happened.
They sued.
And then you know what the FBI did?
They said, well, it's a disability.
The person's overweight.
Maybe we don't need to have the fit test.
So they did away with the fit test.
Exactly like I say when you have the participation trophies.
And now you have...
What year was that, by the way?
They did away with the fit test in 2004, 2006.
So this has been coming for decades.
No, that's new.
No, no, no.
This has been coming.
Correct.
And now we have, how does an FBI meet his criteria, his requirements?
Yeah, how do they do it?
When I did that, that was the success of your cases.
Meaning, you know, you worked cases.
You know, if you ended up arresting someone, you got a that a boy.
Now you have a checklist.
How many informants, how much restitution, how many seizures, how many warrants, how many felony convictions.
And so when you break it down into a checklist and you have a chance to go either way to arrest or not arrest someone, well, if you realize you're coming up with your performance appraisal and you need to arrest someone, you're going to arrest that person.
Why?
Because you got to check that box.
That's not the FBI that's recognizable to me.
But when you make it that way, and by the way, what the public doesn't understand, and here's a fact, true scenario.
If I come out of Podunk someplace in the United States out of the academy and I go to 26th Federal Plaza, which is where the FBI is located in New York City, you can imagine someone coming from a little place in Arkansas who now has to uproot his family of four and try to find a place to live within two hours of New York City because you're not going to be able to afford an apartment.
And now you're going to work at 26 Federal Plaza.
You can't find a legal parking spot and you're absolutely miserable.
Your kids are miserable.
Your wife is miserable.
Here's the reality.
After 18 months of coming out of the academy, I can raise my hand and take a specialty transfer to FBI headquarters.
What does that do?
Well, you'll spend the next 18 months at FBI headquarters.
And then when you come out of FBI headquarters, you're now a supervisor.
Now, think about this.
You're in the bureau less than four years, and you're going to come out into the field office and supervise guys that have 15, 20, 25 years.
That's not going to work.
But you have these young kids that are doing this.
And now you have this culture, this mentality.
Very weird.
This social media.
You know, you'll keep in mind the kids that are coming out of the academy are driven by social media.
By the way, when I went into the FBI, you couldn't have ever, listen, I'm 58 and I can say this.
I have never smoked marijuana.
And when I applied to the FBI, no drugs.
If you had done any drugs in your life prior to applying to the FBI, it was automatic disqualification, right?
In this day and age, it's now if you haven't done marijuana in the last three years.
Now, I'm not being critical.
I'm not taking a position on marijuana.
But what I'm saying is now we've changed the rules.
We've changed.
We've lax them.
The applicant, the type of individual.
See, you know, I want the FBI to have disciplined individuals.
And that's why I am the biggest advocate for people that come out of the military.
Why?
Because they are so disciplined and they don't ask why.
They just do it and they stand at attention.
They'll stand there for 16, 20, 24 hours, and they won't move.
They won't go to the bathroom.
They won't have to look at their cell phone.
You know, when I worked at the FBI, now keep in mind, cell phones were something you carried in a suitcase.
So not everybody had a suitcase, right?
At best, we had a beeper.
We had a pager.
You go into the FBI, you know, FBI agents, they all have cell phones.
Everybody's on social media.
Everybody's getting their media, their information through social media.
That's making us brain dead.
And I think there's a disconnect.
You know, the public thinks FBI, FBI agents are something above us being human.
No, the FBI is made up of human beings, men and women.
And the men and women that are coming out of college, coming out of graduate school, coming out into the world, have this demented, distorted view.
Why?
Because they're watching TikTok, Facebook, and all this garbage that's being fed.
That's the new and upcoming FBI agents.
We know the military just recently is their lowest ever recruiting shortage they've had in a long time to the point where now they're given $50,000 bonuses for six years just to join.
It's like, oh, you're physical, don't worry about you this, or don't worry about it.
It's a lot more don't worry, don't worry, don't worry than before.
I asked the question.
I think you posted something I thought.
Well, the military is not as attractive because now you can get your loan forgiveness.
You know, listen, when people went to the military, you went to the military because it deferred your expense to going to college, right?
Why do I have to do that?
Why do I have to need a six-year commitment to give back to Uncle Sam?
And by the way, I'm the biggest advocate and proponent.
Listen, you want to give forgiveness?
Give those people that raise their hand and volunteer, and God forbid they have to go over into unforsaken, god-awful countries to protect you and I.
And when they come back, give them a house, give them health care, give them loan forgiveness.
I'm good with that.
But now you just want to give loan forgiveness because I'm lazy and I don't want to get off the couch and go get a job.
I don't agree with that.
So there's where it's driving also the military.
Wow.
I never made that.
Let me ask you a point.
Because I don't think anybody listening to this is going to disagree with you.
I think you're making very valid points.
I think everything you say is accurate, accurate, accurate.
What I want to understand is why.
Like, what was the catalyst for this?
You basically started off the episode basically saying, we're getting soft, bro.
Straight up.
When I joined the FBI, I was a macho guy, played sports, competitive.
Now it's all intellectuals, almost bureaucrats that we talk about.
But what was the catalyst to this?
Because this isn't a Trump thing.
This is an Obama thing.
You're talking about this was late 90s, early 2000s.
So what happened?
Look, I saw quickly after 9-11 that the Bureau, and when we talk, when I say I'm talking about the FBI, the mission of the FBI completely changed.
After 9-11, we became an intelligence gathering agency.
We were no longer hands-on.
And by the way, for example, when I came into the FBI, I loved going after bank robbers.
And you had bank robbery duty, meaning that if there was a bank robbery and you happened to be on call, you went out and investigated bank robberies.
In this day and age, and here's a fact, unless there is a weapon used in connection with a takeover in a bank, the FBI does not even respond to a bank robbery.
So the mission changed.
We became more concerned about, you know, profiling individuals and less about arresting and investigating really bad people here who were incedent in our communities that were drug dealers and human trafficking.
And while you think that the FBI mission, those things are at the top, that wasn't the focus after 9-11.
And so that's where I started to see the mentality change, meaning from the mission of the Bureau and then the recruitment of individuals now who were coming into the FBI were different than I recognized when I came in.
And when did you retire from the FBI?
In 1990, I'm sorry, in 2006.
Okay, so you haven't been, so it's been 15 years plus years.
But I am hands-on there all the time, you know, still have people that are there.
And so I still have a pulse to understand because the older guys, you know, now I see what they're saying.
I hear what they're saying, and they are frustrated.
I bet.
Well, my next question was, how often do you interact with these younger guys?
Not the older guys, not the guys in their 60s, the 25-year-olds who might be saying, look, Stuart, I respect you, but you don't get it, man.
I'm 25 years old.
I was born with a phone in my hand.
How often do you interact with these younger people?
So on my lawyering side, all the time, every day.
In fact, I told you, I just came back from Dallas.
It's a case that's being investigated by the FBI.
Now, this agent, this case agent happens to be a 20, I think he's in 20, 22 years.
The guy is incredible.
But when you tackle and you bring in young agents that I interact with, first of all, they come in, they have zero people skills.
Like you and I can have a conversation.
I can meet someone without ever knowing them.
And they already know about my background.
I ask you about your background.
And we're just building a rapport.
These kids that are coming out, they're so fixated on the script.
And by way of example, criminal defense lawyers, they're evil.
They're the bad guys.
They're on the bad side.
Where I always looked at it when I engaged in meeting lawyers when I was with the FBI, that was an opportunity to develop a relationship, to develop a rapport.
And I've talked about this.
And let's talk about Mar-a-Lago.
And this is exactly where there's a disconnect and where I talk about facts.
When I was with the FBI and I would execute a search warrant, if there was a lawyer that showed up on scene, I loved that.
Why?
Because I would go up to the lawyer and say, hey, lawyer, I'm looking for X, Y, and Z. Can you talk to your client?
Because maybe you can make my life easier and make your client's life easier because I don't want to tear apart his house.
I don't want to disrupt his family.
I don't want to start ripping, going through drawers.
I'm just looking for X, Y, and Z.
And the lawyer inevitably would go, sure, agent, here's where you need to go.
Here it is.
And we would go, we'd get it and leave.
How often do that happen, Stuart?
That's the routine.
But if you did 10 warrants all the time.
And how many times would they say, here it is?
All the time.
Really?
If the object was there, it was just a matter of time because, you know, listen, first of all, when you talk about real search warrants and you talk about the contents of the affidavit in support of the search warrant, basically there's something that's called ripeness, meaning fresh information.
So someone apparently has reliability and credibility to attest that they have seen what we're looking for on that.
Oh, God.
So you guys already know it's there.
Of course.
And just like when they got to Mar-a-Lago, this was not by surprise that they didn't know they were going to find these boxes of documents.
Someone had already put their eyes on it, so they already knew that they were going to find it.
But this idea to wall off or keep out of lawyers, and the other thing is, if I was an agent, I invited lawyers to be a bird on a perch.
They couldn't interfere with the search, but I always liked that because they kept us honest, and they also prevented from anybody accusing us of misconduct, of either taking something or destroying something or going into something that may have made us look unprofessional.
Why would they do it without a lawyer being there, though?
That's very weird.
So my interpretation, in my opinion, is because they went in under the broadest pretext, knowing that they knew exactly where these boxes of documents were.
But they were also hopeful.
Again, the mentality is let's look everywhere because maybe it's not necessarily what's described in the warrant, but maybe we'll find other things maybe related to the January 6th situation, or maybe we'll find something else, some other smoking gun.
If, listen, here's the thing, Patrick.
If I'm Donald Trump's lawyer and I show up in Mar-a-Lago and they give me a copy of the warrant and I say, okay, you guys are looking for these boxes and these documents.
Come on in.
I'm going to walk you downstairs and say, here they are.
Now, you could say, well, Mr. Kappen, you know, you could keep documents somewhere else.
I'd be like, listen, let me escort you all through it, but I'm not going to let you start rifling through things and start looking at things that are not specified or articulated within the warrant.
And what I find so offensive is, look, and here's where the breach is and here's where the dishonesty is.
When you are an agent and your agent's going to execute a search warrant, there is an operation plan that is put in place days before the execution of the search warrant.
And there's an operational meeting and the rules of engagement are gone over.
And so when you go into someone's house or someone's office, you don't just grab stuff and throw it into a box.
You have to examine what you're looking at to ensure that you are legally entitled to take that.
You can't just grab documents and throw them into how do they.
But that's the whole point.
That's what they did.
They came in with like a street sweeper and collected everything and figured, well, we'll go through it later.
The breaches and the offense to me is now we know that there are indisputable privileged documents, meaning a lawyer, attorney client privileged documents that in no way should have ever been seized.
And if they were even being considered to have been taken as a agent, I would have addressed it with Donald Trump's lawyers on scene and to either make an agreement on location.
We're going to take the documents.
They're going to go into a yellow envelope.
They're going to be specially marked.
They're going to go to a taint agent.
We will not look at them and they're going to be segregated.
But you see, none of that was done.
And whether it's one document or two documents, when you have that breach, when you have the violation, to me, it taints the integrity of the overall mission and it makes you look dishonest.
But to be able to do that, that means – so in FBI, there's got to be Democrats, Republicans, independents.
So right before they're about to do something, they came from Washington, D.C., Patrick.
They were flown down.
They had to leave their phones and they were flown in and then they were flown out.
What does that mean?
Okay.
So when I would execute, when I had a case that took me, let's say I'm down in Florida and I develop information that's going to lead to a search up in Atlanta or New York.
I'm going to notify that field office and they're going to work in concert with me.
When it comes time for me to execute that search warrant, I'm not bringing agents from the Miami division up to Georgia or up to New York.
Now, as a case agent, I will be there because it's my case, but I'm going to utilize the local FBI office just out of the economics of it, just out of just the mere manpower.
But that's not the case.
They used a squad out of FBI headquarters, men and women who were flown down specifically for this mission.
They did what they did, and then they were flown out.
And not only that, but they were walled off to communicate with anybody here.
Why?
Because there was a concern that either it was going to leak out or either that someone here would not be on board with what they were going to do.
Did you see the part when in 60 Minutes they asked Biden, hey, did you know about this investigation and what his answer was?
His answer was, I got it right here.
His answer was, you know, no, I was not aware of it, right?
But maybe one of my people is, look, here's what happens.
Between 4.30 a.m. and 7.30 a.m., depending on the president's schedule, and I know that, again, fact-based, his chief of staff or the president of the United States is debriefed each and every day on the major events that are either ongoing in the world or that are going to happen, which includes the FBI director or his elector of debriefing the president or his chief of staff.
There is absolutely no way that the president of the United States did not know on that particular day the FBI was going to Mar-a-Lago to execute a search.
How does somebody not push back and say, how's that possible?
Because to me, if you're the commander-in-chief, how do you not know that they're about to rate the guy that was your number one competitor?
How do you do they think the American people are this dumb?
And let me take it from a, obviously you saw what happened with Attorney General Letitia James yesterday, right?
It's a very interesting thing, Tyler.
I want you to pull up YouTube.
Go to youtube.com.
And here's what I want you to do.
So the things that she said, we don't have it written here because it was last minute.
I'll just kind of read some of the stuff here that audience, maybe you didn't see the whole thing.
So she called it a white-collar financial crime, which you used to be working on white-collar stuff when you were FBI.
Falsifying financial statements, insurance fraud, issuing false statement to financial institutions, more than 200 misleading asset statements those years.
Apartment was more than 30,000 square feet, he says, but it was only 10,000 square feet.
That's what she's claiming.
So he inflated the value of the apartment by $200 million.
Okay.
Then she says he received $150 million in favorable interest rates by showing that his net worth was higher.
Okay.
Mar-Lago should have been valued at $75 million, but it was valued at $739 because its top-line revenue of Mar-a-Lago is only $25 million.
By the way, if Mar-a-Lago is really worth only $75 million, on the record, I just made a $75 million offer to buy Mar-a-Lago.
If you're saying that's not a good idea.
And I'll go half-C with you.
You want to do that?
La-La-La-La-La-Lo-Ghazal.
You and I. We're running together.
Yes.
Yeah, it's a new location.
I'll take a room.
The complaint is a 280-page pages-long complaint.
And she's asking the court to bar the entire Trump family from conducting business in New York, increase net worth to get financing.
She doesn't want Trump to ever run a business in New York, et cetera, et cetera.
So $250 million fine.
And she's saying that's the bottom.
And even Michael Cohen yesterday is like, that's the, because I was involved.
I would sit there and he would, Trump would say, increase my net worth from three and a half to five and a half to seven and a half billion.
He says, I've never seen anybody get richer in 10 seconds like Trump would get richer just by telling us what to put for his net worth.
So they're going after him hard, right?
Who said that?
Michael Cohen?
Cohen said that yesterday on CNN.
And you realize now that the complete premise of the initiation of this woman doing this investigation was started by Michael Cohen, who has the credibility of zero.
On a scale of one to 10, we put him at zero.
There is not one.
Did you see anybody from JP Morgan or Bank of America or BB ⁇ T or SunTrust or any of these?
Those are the ones that should if they lost the money.
Right.
Well, but no one lost any money.
And by the way, when is the last time you could actually ask to be given money without an independent appraiser paid for by you, but done at the behest of a bank?
Because, I mean, you buy a house, you could tell them whatever you want, but the bank is not going to rely upon that.
They're going to send out an appraisal and they're going to ensure that the asset or the collateral, right, at least reaches or exceeds what they're going to lend you.
I mean, did you see any financial CEOs up there or board directors up there saying we got cheated or we lost money?
You know what's crazy, though?
Like, you know, I've raised a lot of money over the years and I've sold businesses.
And you can say when you're talking, you give them a little, you know, basic sims that you're giving it to them.
They're looking at it, right?
Okay.
So your EBITDA is this much.
Your diss is this much.
You can inflate as much as you want because what's next is, is a four-week process of quality of earnings done by third-party four accounting firms, KPMG, PWC.
You spend a few hundred thousand dollars to a million dollars to do quality of earnings.
And they're like, well, this was off.
No, this was right.
And the more your numbers are right, the more you're going to get a favorable valuation that they give you up front.
So that stuff, no one's going to give a few hundred million dollars without doing their own due diligence.
But here's the kicker.
This is the point I wanted to make when she does this.
FYI, she said she was going to do it and she did it.
So to the people that wanted her in there to go after Trump, guess what?
She kept her promises.
Okay.
But I want you to go on CNN and go on their YouTube channel.
Just go on YouTube channel.
When she first announces it, so go to videos.
Yeah, go to videos.
Zoom in a little bit so the audience can see it.
So go up, go up, go up, go up.
Keep going.
I'll show you.
I watched so much CNN today.
It was unbelievable.
There it is.
It's the one that says breaking.
That's the one.
Okay.
So click on that, but don't play the audio.
Click on that.
I want the audience to see this.
Okay.
So she is, they're doing what they're doing.
Turn off the audio and just press play.
What the lady is saying right now, she's saying breaking news.
Okay, press pause.
Okay.
So press pause.
Okay, so this is the first time on CNN, an anti-Trump camp is talking about Trump's entire family is getting sued in New York, okay?
On a 14 million subscriber channel.
Zoom in how many views this thing got.
Zoom in how many views this thing got so they can see it.
This should be 17 million views, 10 million views.
You know what the American people are saying?
We don't give a shit.
Yeah, we're over it.
But all I'm saying to you, if it was like when Russia happened and what was the guy's name on Russia, I know we have information on the, what was the guy's name?
Adam Schiff.
Adam Schiff, right?
Peter Schiff's last name.
Adam Schiff.
So when he got up, you know how many views it got?
Nearly 10 million views, 8 million views.
The American people simply are sitting there saying, listen, man, get over it, move on.
We understand you hate this guy.
We got it.
You hate this guy.
Okay.
And we're fine whether he wins or doesn't, you know, totally get it.
But this is a little bit too much.
Would you have guessed, Tyler?
Adam, would you have guessed for someone like this to get 341,000 views?
Breaking news.
Well, I just think it speaks to the credibility of CNN and what people are watching on there.
For instance, a clip came up on my YouTube.
Just a little perspective.
This is a million subscriber channel.
You familiar with this guy, Brian Tyler Cohen?
He speaks out against Trump.
He's proudly a Democrat.
He's got a million views.
Same story.
And a million subscribers.
That's what I'm saying.
Is that people are looking for other outlets that maybe are less biased or have more credibility?
You would think like this is a home run for CNN, breaking news.
This is what's about to happen.
And the American people are saying, let them just compete.
If he doesn't, when he doesn't.
How would you compare that to the two or three videos right before that or after that?
Is it all somewhere?
I watched all of them.
So zoom out.
Zoom out so he can see this.
Not even this story.
I'm saying in general.
Okay, zoom out.
Go back to the channel.
Yeah, just go back to the channel.
So zoom in a little bit so we can see all the views.
Zoom in, zoom in, zoom in, zoom in.
Okay, so 51,000.
It's voter stun.
Zoom in.
Okay, so Putin, people are interested in Putin more than they're interested in New York.
You got to be kidding me.
Trump's poll numbers are making things.
They're more interested in his poll numbers than they're interested.
So that's higher.
Biden responds to Putin.
Okay, they're interested in that.
Sweep in condemnation, Heron reacts to, okay, 589.
What's the next one?
A retired colonel on potential impact of 300,000 more Russian.
Yeah, exactly.
But Michael Cohen 599, okay?
Nothing is in the millions.
The voters are telling you, CNN, move on and let's see who's going to get elected.
What are your thoughts on this?
Just looking at the optics and the number, Stuart.
Yeah, no, listen, I agree.
I thought it was a non-factor.
In fact, generally speaking, the Attorney General of New York would have initiated a civil investigation, meaning they would have gotten a complaint through the channels and they would have investigated it.
And then if they would have realized that there may have been criminal conduct, they refer it to either the feds or to the county of which who would have jurisdiction.
In this case, and what is left out is that New York County and also the Southern District of New York had already investigated this and had already come to the conclusion that it was a non-issue, that there were no criminal violations.
So now this woman who all of a sudden has some, you know, the holy grail is trying to suggest now not only we can commence civil litigation, but we have the smoking gun to suggest that we have now evidence of some crime that has been committed.
It's hogwash.
It's nonsense.
As I told you off camera, I said, I bought a lot of popcorn.
I'm going to sit on my couch.
I'm going to eat the popcorn and watch this sideshow because it's ridiculous.
I think that as I watch the news, and obviously in the Hispanic community, everybody watches CNN, Telemundo, right?
And this is making news too.
And I think that the more I talk to the Hispanic community, like going back to what you were pointing about, 341,000 views, they have no idea, Pat, that they are pushing so many people to become Trump fans.
Well, when you push somebody so much, you get to wonder why do you hate him so much?
That's what ends up happening.
That kind of what happened with Andrew Tate.
A lot of people don't know who Andrew Tate was up until you canceled him.
Now everybody's looking him up, right?
And I think that's what's happening right now.
People are waking up and like wondering like, man, this guy scares you if you're doing that much.
You're sending the FBI to his house and you're doing everything.
Every time you turn on the news, Spanish too.
There's Jorge Ramos.
There's Paula Ramos, which is his daughter, which was part of a lot of people don't know Hillary Clinton's when she was running for president.
Jorge Ramos' daughter was part of that camp and she was going to have a position in the White House.
So a lot of people didn't know that.
So he was politically motivated to go against Trump.
But you turn on the news, everything's Trump.
Like, bro, he's been out of office for two years.
But the more they do this and they do things like this, it starts to push people towards him as opposed to against him.
And this is backfiring and it's backfiring nasty, especially in our community.
They just did a poll that 55% of Hispanics are now flipping to become to voting for Trump in 2024.
If he decides to run, if he's going to run or whatever.
55%.
55%.
He's at a 55% approval rating.
He was only at a 20 to 25% in 2016.
Yeah.
Interesting.
Is that Trump or the Republican Party?
No, Trump.
Specifically.
Bro, Mexicans don't know nothing about the Republican Party.
They only associate the Republican Party with Trump.
That's it.
They're not even maggots.
They're just like, this is ridiculous.
And they're seen, especially they're being affected with their income, with the gas pillars.
Did you watch the interview last night with Hannity?
Did you catch it?
I did.
I watched the whole thing.
Yeah, and you know what's interesting just listening to him and going back and forth.
And he's his usual self.
And Hannity took a shot at FBI, like not a shot shot, but he was kind of trying to set him up to take a shot at FBI.
And Trump's like, listen, there's a lot of great agents there.
Most of them are very respectful to me.
Most of them are very good.
Most of the FBI agents are great people.
I don't know if you caught that when he's, I'm sure you're not.
I did know I did because, like I said, when Donald Trump was a businessman in New York City, he did interact a lot, not only with the FBI, but all across local law enforcement.
And he was well respected and well liked by the law enforcement.
He probably even threw parties for them or something.
He was very ceremonial.
Very embracing.
He was.
And he said, look, and if you go back and listen, he said, the men and women in the field offices are not the problem.
It's the ivory tower, meaning it's the seventh floor mentality.
And that is where there is a disconnect.
These cases are being driven at a headquarters in a particular floor, not the field offices.
Can I give some stats to essentially what Ricky is showing?
So you see this one right here that says the point CNN, it's the bottom right.
It's probably the most viewed video on the page right there.
If you scroll in on that, okay, 699.
Exactly.
So I actually watched that, and this is 0% my opinion.
I'm just summarizing what this was, the most viewed video on CNN in the last 24 hours.
Aside from the Putin one.
Aside from Putin.
Okay, respect.
So what Ricky is saying is that he's been out of office for the last two years, which he has.
And essentially the story here is that most presidents, when they leave office, when they look back at the poll numbers or approval ratings, people will kind of say, all right, you know, George W. Bush has been out of office for a few years.
They forgive him.
All right.
Obama's been out.
And if they leave office, their approval ratings maybe are at 50%.
And then in retrospect, you know what?
He wasn't so bad.
It goes up to 60%.
The challenge that Trump is having right now is he's never really left office.
When is he?
I mean, technically, I mean, I'm not going QAnon.
He's left office, okay?
But he's been in the news.
He's been campaigning.
January 6th, Mar-a-Lago.
He's not escaping the media attention.
So the poll numbers reflect exactly what they were the day that January 6th happened.
So if you want to, this is again, these numbers.
Now, I understand a million people have basically gone over to the Republican Party.
A lot of Latinos, everything you're saying is actually factual.
But if you take this at its word, and I'm going to read some poll numbers, and obviously I'll give the disclaimer.
I don't know if you can believe poll numbers.
How much are they right?
How much are they accurate?
So I'll just read you the numbers.
Nobody's asking me.
You can extrapolate.
Exactly.
I've never been asked the poll numbers.
But the poll numbers basically show that Trump still remains very unpopular.
Here are the numbers.
So this is NBC and also Coinipiak.
I don't know how much credibility you put there.
Again, not my opinion.
Like Stewart said, I'm just reading the facts that were given to me.
This is national voters.
34% have a positive outlook on Trump.
54% negative.
That's NBC.
That's national registered voters.
Now, according to Coinapiak, it's the same positive: 34% favorable, 57% unfavorable.
Essentially, one in five have a very positive outlook on Trump.
46% have a very negative outlook on Trump.
And the major, factor is all the January 6th coverage.
Again, I'm summarizing what he said there.
I think they're knowing who to ask.
Because if you ask 10 people that believe things like you, you're going to have 100% approval.
You're not asking us.
Nobody's asking us.
Nobody's going to control my community asking us or our communities.
Nobody's asking us.
If you want to dismiss the numbers, I can't tell you what is the problem.
I'm summarizing.
Let me tell you what I'm saying.
I don't trust.
I don't trust the Fox poll.
I don't trust the CNN poll.
I don't trust this NBC poll.
I don't trust an ABC poll.
I'll trust Pew Gallup-ish and maybe one other.
All the other stuff is going to be a little bit.
Like, who are they asking?
People in their office?
Yeah.
You see it in office?
I'm with you on this.
I've never been asked for a poll ever.
Okay, zero.
So I hear you on this.
But here's the anomaly, and this is something I talk about just talking to my neighbors, which is mind-battered.
When you go to the gas pump, they don't ask you before you put your ATM card in there.
Are you a Democrat or a Republican, right?
You pay the same ungodly amount.
I just filled up, I think it was $5.29 a gallon for premium.
It's $7 a gallon of premium in California.
Okay, so picked over.
You're not going to get any sympathy from Greenland.
So here's way worse out of it.
So here's what we're doing.
We've got a good in Florida.
So let's, whatever it is, here's what it is.
As Trump was asked last night by Hannity, gas prices were below $2 when he left office.
Prior to him leaving office, I think he said in November or October, they were like $1.89.
What is amazing to me is if I talk to someone who has so steadfast hatred for Donald Trump, this is unbelievable.
And this is where you have to say cuckoo.
They hate him so much.
They'd rather pay for the history.
Maybe they pay the $7 to $5 for gas than to have gas at $1.50 or $1.89.
Now, here's the other thing.
You go to the supermarket.
You know, groceries were very reasonable when Donald Trump was in office.
Now you go to buy a gallon of milk, it's like $6, right?
Everybody has to pay the same thing, whether you're Hispanic or African-American or whatever.
Everybody goes to the supermarket.
They don't ask for your voter registration card.
It's amazing, though, that Biden has been able to use as a scapegoat for his failures, placing it directly on Donald Trump.
Now, what is crazy about that is Donald Trump moved the meter and moved us so far ahead where we became so energy, you know, non-reliant upon independent and gas and food and employment and everything was so great.
And listen, I'm the first one to say if he only could have kept his obnoxious side closed behind closed doors and not have brought it in front of the podium, he would have been better received.
But the bottom line was he was no nonsense.
If he had to get from A to B, he's got there as quickly as possible.
He cut out all the bureaucratic nonsense.
He'll run away.
What's wrong with that?
Stuart, I agree with you, but I'm going to kind of circle back.
You're kind of proving my point, is that people will vote against their own self-interest.
I'll pay a dollar more for a hatred just to not see his face.
And that's essentially my point is that, yes, I agree with you.
Why wouldn't you want lower inflation, lower taxes, lower gas pumps, lower consumer price index?
Of course you want to pay lower, but to not see Donald Trump's face, I'll pay an extra dollar.
And that's the whole point of these polls.
You're essentially proving my point.
I agree with you.
I want to pay less than 10.
I want to pay less.
But he's not running.
But people are, Democrats, I don't know.
This is not breaking news.
I don't know if it's CNN.
Democrats tend to be a little bit more emotional than Republicans.
Yeah, no shit.
Okay, so they'll see it.
Thank you, Pat.
That smile means a lot to me.
They see Donald Trump and they get triggered.
Whether it's right or wrong, it's fact.
It happens.
Okay?
I'm learning.
I'm reading psoases.
I'm trying to be less emotional here.
But Democrats haven't come around.
Hold it together, buddy.
It's going to be a good thing.
Quick Woosa and we'll be all right.
Okay, if we can, we have a guest that just joined us here, Congressman, U.S. Representative Scott Perry from Pennsylvania's Tent District.
He's a retired Pennsylvania Army National Guard brigadier general who just recently, the FBI came up to him and asked him for his phone, and we'd like him to share that experience with us.
So Scott Perry, thank you for being a guest here on the podcast.
Well, thanks so much.
I sure appreciate it.
Look, it's not something you aspire to.
We get one month of the year that we can kind of plan to be with our family some of it.
And that month is August.
So my family, it's expensive, but we all pitch in and we rent a little house down at the beach, at the shore, down at the Jersey Shore.
And we spend time with the kids with their grandparents and their uncles and aunts and those type of things.
And of course, you don't expect to knock on the door at 9 o'clock in the morning at the shore house because you're there with people you know and people that know you don't knock on the, they just come in.
So I answered the door and of course I'm greeted by three guys in suits at the beach, which is kind of out of character.
So they said, good morning, Congressman.
We're here to take your phone.
I just happened to have the phone in my hand.
And I said, you know, I put it in my pocket and I said, you know, I'm not giving you anything until you prove that you have the authority to do that.
And of course, look, I looked through the paperwork.
I looked through their badges and so on and so forth.
And they started asking me questions.
And look, I'm a guy who grew up revering the FBI, the CIA, people in uniform.
So this is so out of character.
But of course, I'm living in the world of today in America.
So when they started asking me questions politely, I said, look, I got nothing to say to you people.
And so, you know, we went through the process.
They gave me a receipt, tell me they're bringing it back, you know, today when they're done taking an image of it.
And they said, do you have any questions for me?
And I said, yeah, I got a question for you.
How did you find me here?
Of course, I know how they found me there.
They're holding in their hands now how they found me there, but I wanted them to say it.
And the gentleman kind of got a smirk on his face and he said, it's just what we do.
And he said, we'll contact you when we're ready to give you your phone back.
And I said, well, I don't have a phone to contact me.
So can you call my chief of staff and let her know so she can let me know?
You know, call my wife or what have you.
But look, what I didn't want to have happen was have the FBI knock on the door and have my elderly, you know, in their 80s father-in-law and mother-in-law have to go to the door and deal with that.
It's just not, it's not appropriate.
And they said, well, what's her number?
I said, well, I don't know.
It's in my phone.
And the guy says to me, well, it's not like we're going to go rifling through your phone.
Like, you got to be kidding me.
I said, look, I don't give you authorization to do anything, but I give you authorization to get my number for my chief of staff out of my phone.
Hours and hours later, my father-in-law is calling my wife.
We're down at the beach with my kids.
And he says the FBI is here.
So, oh, great.
So I pack up.
Look, I'm a typical dad at the beach.
I got a cart with all the kids' toys, the blanket, the umbrellas, all that chairs, all that stuff, right?
I pack it up like a pack mule.
I send my kids back to the house and I start heading up the street.
You know what I'm looking for.
Not hard to find it, Deshore.
Black SUV parked on a side street.
I stop pushing my cart.
I walk over towards the vehicle.
Of course, all these guys jump out, walk up to me with paperwork, my phone.
I said to the gentleman, I said, sir, why could you not honor your commitment?
He said, what commitment was that?
I said, the commitment you made to call my chief of staff instead of bothering my father-in-law and my mother-in-law.
He said, well, we couldn't find her.
Oh, come on.
I thought that's what you do.
So that was my experience.
They took an image of the phone.
And I'm sure, look, I'm sure they're trying to do the paperwork to say they want to look inside the phone at this point.
But unfortunately, I'm a little skeptical living in the world today, watching what's happening.
I'm sure they have everything they need off the phone to start with.
Now, you said a lot of things there.
One, you said you asked them how they find you.
And you said, I'm sure I know how they found me.
I want to say, are you insinuating that the phone and working with an Apple or whoever the phone company is, they located you that way?
Is that kind of what you're thinking?
Yeah, that's exactly what I'm thinking.
It's not like I announce to the world, hey, I'm going to be at this address out of town on this day.
You know, we live in a dangerous world.
I got young children that I'm trying to shield from the rampant crime running across America right now, courtesy of the leftist Democrats.
So I don't announce those kind of things.
I tell people after the fact, hey, I was just at so-and-so.
But it's after the fact.
And so obviously, look, we're glad that they can go after terrorists and criminals and use technology to do that.
Unfortunately, this is now the new surveillance state where parents who have the gall to go to a school board meeting, a school that they pay for in their taxes under penalty of law, by the way, and have the gall to question what the school is teaching their children.
The FBI and the Department of Justice puts a threat tag on them.
That's the world we live in today.
Now, to follow up with that, are you Droid or are you Apple?
What kind of a phone?
I've got an iPhone.
Okay, so you got an iPhone.
I remember, you know, when the whole San Bernardino thing happened, I don't know if you remember how much heat Tim Cook got for not giving the information.
And recent book that just came out called After Steve, meaning after Steve Jobs, they specifically talked about how the government didn't like Tim Cook because he was close with Trump and he was close with both presidents.
And they're like, how is it that you're going to be close to a guy like that?
It's going to be, listen, this guy calls.
I deal with him.
So, and Tim Cook, most people don't even know he was a former Republican, is what he was, Tim Cook, growing up.
I know that's going to sound strange, but that's a completely different conversation.
The other part of it is: so, you know, they said they're going to bring the phone back.
I'm assuming they haven't yet brought the phone back.
No, they have.
They haven't.
And how much after did they bring you back?
How many days after did they bring you back?
Well, they said it was going to be a couple hours.
It was the length of the whole day, which, quite honestly, I didn't believe a couple hours.
But why say a couple hours?
It's going to take all day.
I mean, why not just be truthful about it?
So, how about this now?
Now that you experience that, have you changed your approach and philosophy on how you're handling your phones?
Because, you know, most of the time, a lot of people have two phones, especially people in your kind of a position.
You have to have two phones.
One is going to be working personal.
Has anything with your approach changed?
Quite honestly, it hasn't.
Look, my life's an open book.
I don't say anything on the phone that I wouldn't say publicly.
You know, yeah, I objected to the electors and I explained to the world why.
I called for investigations.
I called for audits.
I explained why.
Those positions haven't changed.
What my concern is, so I'm not concerned about what I've said on my phone, what I've said.
I can't control what other people send me, number one.
Number two, I absolutely can't control what the FBI, the Department of Justice, the CIA, the NSA, any of those three-letter alphabet organizations will put on my phone.
I can't control that.
And neither can anybody else.
Yeah, that's not comfortable for me because it's no one's business to see what I'm telling my wife, my kids, my that part.
There is zero, I am zero tolerance for that.
Now, let me ask you: what happens if you don't give the phones?
Let's just say the FBI does show up and you're like, I'm not giving it to you.
What would they do to you?
I think they would turn you around, put you in handcuffs, and haul you away.
I mean, look, that's the new police state that we live in.
Understand, on this phone is attorney-client privilege.
I asked them, I said, Look, if you wanted the phone, why don't you just contact my attorneys?
You know, I have attorneys now because of this whole J6 charade, right?
This so-called committee.
And that one agent said, Oh, you have so-and-so and so-and-so as your attorneys.
I said, Yeah, why don't you just call them?
No answer to that.
So, again, this is the world that we live in, and you just got to live that way, knowing that at any moment, this could happen.
Look, they're after me at this moment.
They're after Mike Lindell, Donald Trump, John Eastman, Jeffrey Clark.
You name it.
The list is long and distinguished.
But that's us today.
It's going to be everybody else.
And they just hired 87,000 or paid to hire 87,000 IRS agents.
Do you think they're going after the guy that owns Amazon, Jeff Bezos?
Do you think they're not going after Mark Zuckerberg?
They're coming after people that pay some guy 25 bucks to cut the lawn.
Some lady that's trying to work three jobs to pay for gas, food, and the cost of living right now, who then said, Well, I'm not at home, so I'm going to hire somebody for 20 bucks to clean the house.
That's who they're coming for.
So it's me today, it's you tomorrow.
Congressman Stuart Kaplan, former FBI, now practicing attorney.
Was the legal process to get your phone was a search warrant?
Yes, it was.
All right.
Now, Congressman, because I've been in that situation, I will assume the technology that's out there that the Bureau uses is called Celbright, and that's a software that would mirror your phone.
I assume the conversation went something like this: Listen, Congressman, let's make your life a lot easier.
Give us your password, because if you don't give us the password, we're going to keep your phone infinite.
It may take us up to a year or two to crack that code.
So I assume you realize that I would need my phone back, so you cooperated and gave your password.
Is that correct?
Essentially, yeah, I scripted almost exactly.
I mean, that's still a good thing.
And so, you realize, though, sir, and I would have counseled you, though, and that's only because I've been there.
I would have said, listen, agents, good to meet you.
Go pound sand.
Here's my phone, but I'm not giving you my password.
And good luck cracking that code.
By the way, I'm cracking an Apple iPhone probably a year, maybe even longer.
And by that time, you know, who knows what happens.
But listen, in any event, I just wanted to make sure I understand the legal process.
Now, I have a question for you because this will maybe cast some information that may assist the viewing audience.
You were left a copy of the warrant.
What district or what jurisdiction was that warrant issued out of?
I can't remember.
I don't know if it was in New Jersey or Washington, D.C. Actually, I think it was in Pennsylvania.
They went to where they were in Pennsylvania, got that warrant.
Okay, but you know.
I'm not a lawyer, so well, and I don't travel with a lawyer.
I appreciate your counsel now.
I wish that I'd have taken that.
Normally, they'll have a AUSA's number on it that if your lawyer has any questions, you can contact this AUSA.
I assume it was a 202 number, someone in D.C., someone out of justice.
Yeah, yeah, I think so.
And I guess I could have said, you know, before I hold, before I hand you the phone, let me contact my attorney.
I understand that.
No, and Congressman, and listen, again, because we're having open attorney-client communications at this point.
Now, I'm joking, but do I understand?
And this is what would begrudge me.
And again, this goes to my point where I think the Bureau has really taken a bad turn here.
Congressman, do and by the way, you don't have to answer this.
I'm making light of it because I probably already know the answer.
Do I understand that prior to the agent showing up at your beautiful vacation retreat, your lawyers or you had zero contact with anybody through DOJ telling you or asking their curiosity to just sit down and talk to you about what may be in your phone?
This was just off.
No contact whatsoever.
Yeah, so the day they showed up was the day I learned about it.
Right.
No, and there lies the rub with me.
And I will tell you that, you know, in addressing and investigating political figures such as yourself, it goes to the highest level up to the director of the FBI.
And when I say up to the director, there's got to be 20 Indian chiefs in between the director and who has to sign off on that.
And that's where, begrudgingly, I have a problem because so many eyes have to have seen this.
And the optics and the perception is so bad and just is so distasteful that someone like yourself who now has said, and I think I've heard you say this, I'm an open book.
Whatever I would say on camera or off camera is going to be the same.
So I assume, Congress, if anybody had any interest in talking to you, you would have sat down and told them what you would have answered their questions.
If the Department of Justice or FBI would have called my attorneys and said, look, we want to sit with the Congressman.
We want to look at his phone or whatever.
It's not the J6 so-called committee, which is a sham, right?
That's a one-sided star chamber that already has determined the outcome before they ever talk to anybody, right?
But this is different.
No, I'm not a good person.
The law was never made.
And if I can add this because this is something that you will find, I think, particularly interesting and egregious.
The Inspector General, we found out the Inspector General was involved in the decision to come seize my phone, the FBI and DOJ Inspector General.
And how do you like that?
Well, I'll tell you what the reason is.
The reason is because after the fiascos that have been going on and on and on, there is now an Inspector General investigation with respect to the ethics and the integrity of what's going on at the FBI headquarters.
Yeah, but this is the day after they raided the president's house.
The inspector general was involved in the seizure of a sitting member of Congress's phone.
And I don't say it that way because I'm better than anybody else.
I'm just citizen Perry, right?
But at the same time, they know that there's attorney-client privilege on this phone because they know it's my personal phone and they know I have an attorney.
So says the FBI agent that I spoke to on the street.
But also, I'm a sitting member of Congress.
And in the Constitution, there's this thing called speech and debate, which protects the legislature from the king, from the executive branch, because the king or the president isn't supposed to be able to intimidate or coerce legislators to do what he wants to bend to his will, to bend the knee and to not say things on behalf of their constituent, his constituents.
And of course, they're trying to pierce that veil right now.
And I'm alone out here in the world trying to hold back the kingdom of President Biden against a couple hundred years of courts and decisions and litigation that separates the legislative branch from the executive branch so that we don't have a kingdom.
Well, you know, the travesty and the concern, and listen, I'm sure you have very learned and experienced counsel, but my immediate concern, and which is serious, is this Selbright technology does not differentiate between attorney-client privileged communications and that that may just be not.
And the problem with that is you realize that a case agent or the evidence response team is going to go through each and every communication in that phone, whether it's privileged or not.
And there lies the rub where you would have and should have had the opportunity to have your lawyers say, look, I'll tell you what, we're going to segregate the congressman's phone.
We will download the phone mutually at a mutually agreeable time and location.
But we are going to, before we turn over, we're going to segregate that information that we know is attorney-client privileged and should not fall into the hands of the Department of Justice.
And there is where there's an agreement put in place to protect someone like himself and to protect all of us.
I got two questions for you.
about my conversations with my constituents that are that where they talk about their health issues or what about conversations with other legislators about whatever legislation president biden might not like or my opinions about it or strategies maybe to make sure that it doesn't pass or that we put some what about all of that Why is that not speech and debate?
And how does the executive branch now have entree to all that stuff and then use it not only against me, but every single member of my colleagues who I've had a conversation with?
So I got two questions for you.
So one is, so the part about you can hand the phone over and not give the password, what happens if I do that?
You're the FBI agent, you're not going to do it.
You're stuck.
I say, here's my phone.
You've complied with the warrant.
You asked me for a password.
If I say, I'm not going to give it to you, what can you do?
So what they can do is they could try to bring you before a court under a contempt threat of contempt and try to get you to compel to give you the password.
But those cases are limited to national security where there's imminent threat to national security.
Okay, so Peter.
So perfect.
So Peter struck yesterday, not yesterday, a couple of days ago, tweets this.
On September 14th, he tweets this, and I would share it, but I'm uncomfortable.
It may drop you, so we're not going to risk sharing it.
We'll share it afterwards.
He says at this point, FBI may have more cell phones than Verizon, okay?
Then a Verizon store.
Giuliani, Victoria Townz Inc., Michael McDonald, Scott Perry is referencing you.
John Eastman, Jeff Clark, Boris Epstein, Mike Roman, Mike Lindell.
And then this is the last sentence.
And this is a question for you and Congressman Perry.
The FBI can't seize any of them without probable cause.
They contain evidence of a crime.
Is he right about that last statement?
All right.
So the reason why I asked the Congressman now, it doesn't necessarily mean that the congressman, and by the way, again, I'm not trying to encroach your learned counsel, but that an affidavit in support of a search warrant does have to suggest that there's crime, there's criminal, there's fruits that may be borne out in seizing that item.
That doesn't necessarily mean the recipient of the search warrant is a target or a subject of the criminal activity.
The congressman could have been talking to or communicating with someone else who may be the subject and target.
And that begs a little bit of the rub here because generally speaking, in my world, they would be able to get that side of the conversation through that other individual, meaning serve the execute, execute the warrant against that other individual.
So if there's a search warrant that was executed for the seizure of the congressman's phone, there is an affidavit that's under seal, by the way, and this is different than Donald Trump.
His affidavit, he does not, and I will assume, Congressman, you haven't been given the affidavit, correct?
I have not.
I have not, but I generally.
But we confirmed that day with the Department of Justice.
My attorneys confirmed that I am not the target of this investigation.
So that tells me then someone that he was talking to, or allegedly, someone he was communicating with is a target or subject of a criminal investigation.
And either their content of that communication is unavailable or no longer available.
And the only way they were trying to then get that communication was through this witness.
So the congressman at best would be a witness.
So then this is the last question.
And then Congressman Perry, if you got any final thoughts for the audience or any rebuttal on what I'm asking here is.
So what if in that moment, the three FBI agents are standing in front of the New Jersey waterfront home that he's on vacation for a month in the month of August?
It's August 14th, I believe, is the date.
What if in that moment he says to one of his kids, hey guys, can you go to the garage, grab a hammer, bring the hammer out, and I start breaking the phone?
I think somebody's done this before in the past.
What if he starts breaking the phone right in front of the film?
You'd be immediately arrested and charged with obstruction of justice immediately.
How come that didn't happen in the past?
Well, look, the difference is, and I know who we're talking about in the sweetheart.
So she, listen, but she was not the recipient at the time she took chemicals and a sledgehammer to destroy a computer server.
Had she done that in realizing that a search warrant was imminently being served upon her and did that, that individual would be charged with obstruction and tampering and destroying of evidence.
I was trying to give you an idea, but apparently what she did in the past, that wouldn't work for you.
You had to hand the phone over.
Final thoughts, Congressman Perry, with everything that's going on right now, with what they did with Trump yesterday, I'm sure you saw that as well with Attorney General.
What are your thoughts with that taking place specifically last 24 hours?
Look, the tyranny is just going to ratchet up.
If people think that this is going to slow down, unfortunately, I think they're wrong.
This is just beginning.
And while today, you know, they're breathing easy because they're at work and it's Perry, it's Trump, it's Eastman, it's all the people, Victoria Tensing, all these people that you name, it's their problem.
Tomorrow, it's going to be your problem.
If you don't get it, this tyranny that is sweeping across the country, it is the Democrats, the leftist Democrats have now weaponized the instruments of federal power and are using them against their political rivals in the United States of America.
It's why people whisper when they give you their opinions.
It's why people don't want to be involved.
They don't want to come to events.
They don't want to be associated with political parties or political candidates.
This is a breathtaking departure from the First Amendment, the Fourth Amendment.
You name it.
The Constitution is being shredded before us.
And if we're going to save it, people of courage are going to have to be willing to stand up and prepare to take what's coming.
But we're all going to have to lock arms and fight this together.
Well, listen, next year in August, if we find out through our own Intel team, if we know where you are for vacation, we will send an Uber Eats to your front door with some lobsters, some bone and rubbines, some faux gras, and we won't be asking for your phone.
But Congressman Perry, thank you so much.
We're making the time for being a guest here on the podcast.
Thank you.
God bless you.
Keep fighting the fight.
Take care.
Bye-bye.
So literally, if they do come, I can say, here's the phone, but I'm not giving you the password and you're fine.
Fifth Amendment.
No entity, no one can compel you to give testimony against yourself.
Yeah, you can't self-criminalize it.
And it happens all the time.
And those smart individuals, those individuals that are informed, say, sure, go ahead and take my phone.
I'm not going to give you my password.
And I will tell you, it is extremely disruptive and frustrating to an investigator.
So you advise them not to give the password.
Listen, I'm not going to advocate anything, but I will tell you this from my own experience.
So listen.
So listen, now here's fact-based versus fiction.
I'm special ops, and I've been tasked by the FBI to surveil someone and capture that individual's password while he's entering that password or to see if I can obtain that password in a public view.
Meaning I'm not invasion of privacy.
I'm not violating the fourth or fifth or sixth amendment.
But maybe the congressman is in, you know, I make a phone call to the congressman when he's in the supermarket and he takes his phone out because I know I have someone giving him a ruse call and I'm looking over his shoulder and I can see what password he puts in.
Done all the time.
Can you carry cameras?
I can use anything I want as long as I'm not invading your legally protected right of privacy.
So hence, if you're in a place that has video surveillance, for example, this room.
You've got a couple audios in there.
Okay.
And I put my password in.
There is no expectation of privacy.
Now, I may think, you know, maybe, but if someone captures my password and listen, I need that password to get into your phone.
There you go.
Done all the time.
Now, Ricky's not going to under the table, Rick.
But let me just tell you how this plays out.
Okay.
Again, fact versus fiction.
Anytime we would target public officials in public corruption or high-profile cases, you understand, very different than a Donald Trump individual.
This congressman had away the equities of the optics himself and the perception onto himself.
if he did not cooperate with the FBI.
Because think of the headlines that would be across the CNN or the New York Times.
Congressman executed search warrant, but fails or refuses to give his password.
What's the conclusion then?
He's got something.
He's not the high.
Yeah, of course.
You see, but listen, I believe, I still believe in our forefathers, and I still believe that all men, all men and women, are innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.
And the fact that someone has a lawyer is in no way consciousness of guilt.
And especially with the way the landscape is, you should have lawyers to keep everybody above board and the landscape even.
That's why the scales of justice, by the way, have a blindfold.
The lady of justice, you know why she has a blindfold?
Because she doesn't look at the individual.
The scales are balanced because we're blinded.
We just follow the facts.
Well, listen, I have some people I've interviewed in the past before that would want to have you as their attorney.
Yeah, that's for sure.
So we may make an introduction.
But only if they can afford me.
What's the retainer?
It's going to be a decent-sized retainer.
He lives in Palm Beach.
You have to come.
So I want to play devil's advocate and go to a completely different side with stories.
One with Bill Barr, one with Ben Shapiro.
Let's start off with Bill Barr.
Okay.
So Bill Barr comes out and says the following.
He says, Trump likes to call anyone who disputes false election fraud claims as a rhino.
Former U.S. Attorney General Bill Barr was responding to a rant to Trump posted on Truth Social in, which the former president said he had no guts and was a weak, empathetic rhino who was so afraid of being impeached.
A rhino for him is anyone who disagrees with him with the election was stolen.
He rebuked.
He then recalled his childhood when he passed out leaflets supporting Barry Goldwater, the Arizona senator who was known as one of the forefathers of the modern conservative movement.
As someone who handed out Barry Goldwater literature when I was 14 years old on the Upper West Side, it's a little silly to say that.
What do you think about what Bill Barr is saying to Trump?
Look, personally, in 2022 or 21 or 20 or 19, in this day and age, it's unimaginable and it's unacceptable to me personally that quote unquote the legitimacy of any election by the casting of one invalid ballot should ever happen.
Meaning that if someone is filling out a ballot and is putting down information of a person who's deceased or knowingly is not here legally and not within their legal right to vote, and that vote is counted, to me personally, that makes the entire process illegitimate.
And whether it's the one vote to cause someone to win or lose or whether or not it's just one vote that should not have been counted is enough for me as being an American living here in the United States of America that should say that we don't accept the election as is and it needs to be redone.
And just by virtue of when you go to the airport, you have to show a passport, a photo ID, facial recognition, you know, this idea that I need to have an ID to prove who I am and that I am within my legal right as an American to cast a vote and this idea.
And again, please hold the hate mail, please, that in some way that's racist, I just can't accept that.
Everybody who lives in the United States should be fundamentally wanting that an election, whether you agree with it or not, needs to be legitimized by each and every vote that is cast.
That's just my personal opinion.
And I'm sorry.
And so I don't get into the weeds of whether there was enough votes that were illegitimate to have changed the outcome, but I do know, and by the way, it's indisputable, that there was at least one vote that was cast that was illegitimate, meaning that there were votes that were cast that happened to be people that were dead.
That to me illegitimizes the entire process.
That's offensive to me personally, and that's offensive to me as being an American.
But that's nothing new.
I mean, there's always going to be one vote.
But here's the thing.
If you're talking 160 million votes, the process.
You're going to throw away the whole election for one alleged vote.
We live here in the United States of America.
We are the richest nation on this planet.
We are the most sophisticated.
Listen, people are going to give their lives to come into this community, into this country, right?
We see what's going on at the border.
What other country in the world, by the way, what other country on the planet are people literally risking their lives to get into?
None.
Zero.
Only the United States of America.
So that should tell us as Americans that fundamentally we should ensure that each and every vote that is casted is legitimate and that person is legally entitled.
And by the way, here's where it offends me the most.
When you are born here in the United States, by virtue of being born here, you have citizenship.
You are an American.
But I go back to, and this is where I find that we have gotten so far removed.
My grandparents who immigrated from Russia and from Germany and fled, they spilt their blood.
They gave their blood, their sweat and tears to come to the United States, to work, live lawfully, contribute, and provide.
I think it's such a disrespect and such a slap in anybody's face who has come here legitimately and legally and who has gone through the process and waited the five, the six, the 10, the 20 years, whatever it took for them to get and obtain their citizenship.
Listen, someone that works for me just got their citizenship.
I am telling you, when they speak of it, you would think someone died.
You would think something horrible happened.
The emotion of the gratitude of what they exube and the feeling of appreciation to now saying they are a citizen is unbelievable, but it's so recognizable because you see the emotion coming out of these question about it.
And how disrespectful is it to allow someone who's not here legitimacy to be able to cast a vote and to then skew the election?
And so my long-winded response is, yes, it should not be acceptable.
We do it again.
I'm sorry.
Yeah, there's a part of it.
There's a part of it that I'll say to fun.
Remember back in the days, we would take a test and it was multiple choice, right?
And then they would put it through the scanning machine thing.
And you remember that whole channel?
78%, right?
I mean, you remember that, right?
Okay.
Al Gore.
And by the way, when I took my insurance license, I'll never forget this.
I took my insurance license in November, December, January, like November, December of 01 or January of 02, right?
When I went to California Department of Insurance and I took my insurance test, no joke.
On the test, they gave you a paper test.
Okay.
The answers were erased.
You know how you circle and you erase?
I don't know if you understand what I'm saying.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
They were circled and erased.
I'm like, I'm looking at the latest like, oh, don't worry about it.
We don't have any more tests.
Just take it.
So it's like, but it's your risk.
If you trust the guy that erased it, she sent it to me.
Maybe the guy failed.
So don't trust his answer.
I'm like, what is this all about?
So confusing.
I'm sitting.
I'm like, okay, shit.
I'm going to go here with this one.
It was such a weird scenario.
But back then, guess what?
was more opportunity for manipulation.
Today, go take your Serious 7.
When I took my Series 7, I sat in Culver City and everything was five cameras on you while you're taking your Series 7.
No joke.
I'm sitting there.
Everything was computerized.
They're watching exactly what you're doing.
They check the ID.
Everything was so detailed.
So let me get this straight.
If I can get my Series 7 and you're so concerned to see that it's really me.
taking my series, you mean to tell me we can't make it the same exact way?
And the level of insult to believe that immigrants are not intelligent enough or capable enough to go get a driver's license or an ID, that is an insult to all the smart immigrants living in America.
So it's a very, that's the part where it's a little wishy-washy.
Why protect?
So you're more worried about seven and a license.
Anyways, that's a part that's a little bit disturbing.
Meaning, I'm not sitting here saying yay or nay.
I'm part of your camp where I think it's always happened, right?
I think fraud, election fraud has always happened.
Do we, Mayor, do we, whatever.
We can go back and give a bunch of stories of all these 7,000 dead people in Chicago voted for, you know, Kennedy and they never need it in the first place.
However, that is not an excuse for us to use the type of technology we have.
I love global entry.
You know what I love about global entry?
Here's what I love about global entry.
Are you global entry or not?
I'm unclear now.
I love global.
I'm unclear and global entry.
I love global currently.
But I love global entry more because I just got back from Madrid a week ago or two weeks ago and I walk up and I just go global entry.
I have to go always down because they have it for five, eight heights or five.
So I went like this.
It sees my eyes.
Boom, go through.
I don't have to wait with 600 people.
So if I can get global entry and they are able to see my eyes and it takes a second, you mean to tell me we can't do voting where I go, boom, yep, it's Patrick B. David, vote.
This is what I want to go.
I think that is bullshit and that's an excuse.
I think we have plenty of capabilities right now, many different places to know exactly who's voting for what.
And I'd be so curious to know if we did that, how dramatic is that.
Well, the thing is, I think that what happens is that, you know, being part of Lexit, the Lexit, Latinos exiting the Democrat Party group, we have these conversations all the time.
And letting in, for example, they've let in 2 million record-breaking illegal immigrants to the country.
Now, we're immigrants.
My parents, both of them came here illegally at the beginning.
But now my dad's a citizen and my mom is a resident.
Everybody in my family has papers for the most part.
But the point is that if they push these laws like Georgia just did, then what they can do is that they're sending these immigrants to the states, like swing states, and they're trying to push the ID voter ID law, calling it racist, because now you have a whole new voting block.
So when you let in, like, for example, my grandpa talks about Ronald Reagan, like if he was almost like a god, because he's the one that gave amnesty.
My grandpa remembers that.
So there's a dynamic to some people don't understand.
Hispanics are very loyal, extremely loyal.
They're loyal to their church.
They're loyal to their pastors.
They're loyal to their parents.
And they're loyal to anybody that gives them some help.
Not all of them, but for the majority.
So much that you can literally, you can show them that the person that they've been helping them for 10 years or whatever the case may be is a fraud and they will not go against that person.
That's how deep that loyalty goes.
So when you're letting in so many Hispanics and you tell them, oh, Biden was president, Biden, Biden, all Democrats, Biden, Democrats, Biden, Democrats, their loyalty will be there.
So when it's time to go vote, and that's why they want to get rid of the voter IDs because they're illegal.
So if you're illegal and you don't have an ID, but you can still vote, that's a whole new voting block.
So that's kind of where, you know, from the conversations we're having with Lexit, is that's where this is going because they know you're going to use their emotions.
Hispanics are very emotional.
We have more soap poppers than any other, any other country in the world, any other race in the world.
We have more soap poppers.
We're emotional people.
Soccer, everything's emotional.
And so like when you go to the games, watch the games where people are fighting.
There's more fights in the Dodger Stadium than any other stadium in the country.
And it's always Hispanics.
When is it ever white guys or black guys fighting?
It's always Hispanic.
They're very emotional.
So you let them in, we let you in.
Oh, boom, you got a new voting block.
I would put Raiders in there as well, by the way.
Raiders and of course, it's Oakland.
It's Vegas.
But it's when you watch the, if you pay attention, Pat, you see the fights at the stadiums.
It's never whites or blacks.
It's always Hispanics.
Well, you know, one time we took about 100 people there.
A guy, I don't know, you would know this guy or not.
One of our guys, you definitely would know who this guy is and Hispanic.
He's Cuban, and I think he's Puerto Rican.
I think he's always.
I know exactly who it is.
Can't do a fight out of Dodgers.
No way.
But this is like, I want to say 15 years ago, 13 years ago, classic story.
Anyway, so, okay, so that's that part about the voting.
I don't think anybody disputes if we can use global entry eyes, if we can use Syria 7.
Why not apply some of that?
And if we did, let me put it to you this way.
If those, if my friends in my history class weren't sitting next to me when we're taking exams and I always took the test by myself, I don't know by how much my score would be low.
Do you understand what I just said?
So there's a part of it here that applies to this here as well.
Now, next story.
Ben Shapiro, got a big following, very loyal following.
Great communicator, Kai, CEO and founder of Daily Wire, said the following.
This is a New York Post story.
Ben Shapiro, GOP cruising for a bruising by sticking with Trump.
Prominent right-wing media personality, Ben Shapiro, called on the Republican Party to ditch former President Donald Trump to boost his chances of winning elections.
Shapiro suggested that GOP should nominate a non-Trump candidate in 2024 to make it harder for Democrats to appeal to independent voters.
There is a reason Democrats are eager to keep Trump at the center of the conversation.
Half of the independents say Trump is a major factor in their vote and they're breaking four to one for the Democrats if he runs.
Republicans shouldn't play that game if they do their cruising for a bruising.
Do you agree with them?
Yeah, so, you know, to some extent, I think one of the shortcomings of Donald Trump was it was too much about him and not enough about the team that he had assembled in achieving the success that he did.
Donald Trump did more for this country in the four years that he was in office politically, meaning in making our lives that much more prosperous than almost any other sitting president.
The problem is that there's such distaste, and we've talked about it, the hatred for the individual.
Had Donald Trump put his party first, meaning had given more credit to the Republican Party, I think people would be more willing to stick to voting Republican, meaning being against the Democratic Party or against the agenda as it is today with Biden.
And I do agree that it is a very savvy and smart strategy that any association and affiliation with Donald Trump will then cause even someone as we talked about the gas prices to say, I'd rather pay $7 than to see that guy back in office.
Had the Republican Party taken the credit for us making us energy independent, gas at $1.50, then they would vote for Republican.
The problem is tethered with the devil, they're not going to vote for the Republican Party.
I do believe there's some credence to that.
Yeah, the most important vote in the country is the independent vote by far and away.
We already know if you're a Trump fan, if you're a MAGA, you're going to vote that way.
You already know that if you're an Obama person, Democrat, you're going to vote that way.
Independent vote is the most important voting block in the country.
And they're typically in the Rust Belt, whether it's Ohio, Michigan, Iowa, you know, in that area.
Now, I can only take Ben Shapiro at his word.
And if we're going to take Ben Shapiro, who's a very educated, smart man, at his word, and he says Trump is a major factor, and independents are breaking four to one to the Democrats.
The alarm bell should be sounding for the Republican Party.
If you nominate Trump, you're going to get what's coming to you.
The independents are going to break towards whoever it is.
And I would hate for it to be freaking Gavin Newsom.
You're in California.
You get it.
And if I, I've said this loudly, proudly, I would vote for DeSantis in a heartbeat.
I'm not going to vote for Donald Trump.
Do you know, you know, the easiest ad ever?
The easiest ad ever the Democrats will do?
Just play January 6th, all throughout September, October, till voting day in November.
Do you want more of this?
And you're telling me, you're talking about emotional Latinos?
You're talking about Democrats?
Independents, they're going to see that and be like, yeah, I'll pay an extra dollar in gas.
I'm good on this.
Words of the wise.
Listen to Ben Shapiro, yo.
So here's the retort to that.
So you have a guy who walked into McDonald's in New York City last week and had an axe in his backpack.
Yeah, I see.
And he went and destroyed the McDonald's and obviously put the fear in all those patrons to think that they were within milliseconds of losing their life.
You know what his bail was?
Zero.
He signed himself out of jail.
And the mayor and the police commissioner said, well, he really wasn't intending on hurting anybody.
He was just, you know, destroying property.
Now, would you like to talk to the people that were in the McDonald's at the time this guy was wielding an axe and coming after them face to face?
So if that's true, then God bless New York City to have that type of political affiliation and that type of continuation because we're going to be the lawless nation.
We're right.
We are teetering.
It's happening.
And by the way, it's happening as we are watching it happen.
And again, it's unbelievable that people are embracing that it's okay.
Yeah.
Well, may I retort to your retort?
Yes.
Okay.
You're an FBI agent, so you should have done your reconnaissance.
Did you see what happened before that?
Four people were beating the shit out of him.
And he stood there getting pummeled.
And then he reached into his backpack after escaping the ass whooping and got his axe.
Okay, let's report that.
But I'm going to report that.
What does that have to do with Donald Trump?
They're not liking Donald Trump.
Because Donald Trump is about law and order and gave the deference and the respect to law enforcement.
If you go back to Barack Obama, two.
But that still doesn't answer what Ben Shapiro would say about independence.
But it's a carryover when I think four or five police officers were shot and killed in Houston or Dallas.
Which is disgusting.
And nobody sat on that.
Dallas, thank you.
And he sat on his hands and would not acknowledge the loss of life and how Obama.
Disgusting.
But that sent that set when you look back at how we got to where we are and you talk about all of these cases and all these high-profile cases, how do we get to the point where the general public, to a large extent, whether it's true or not, has such a distaste for law enforcement is such a lack.
I got a question.
Respect, I got a question.
I got to make a question.
Okay, two questions.
Okay, let's go through.
You know the whole question about if we were to start a country and we have to recruit people to come and live in our new country, what is the first thing a mother would be asking?
First question is what are my kids?
How safe are my kids?
Okay.
Do you think a mother feels safer the last two years or they felt the prior four years safer?
Do you think they feel safer going to movie theaters, going to dinner, their kids going to school?
Do you think they feel safer?
Country, war, all of that.
It's a purely safety.
Safer or not safer?
What do you think?
You're saying since COVID, pre-COVID, post-COVID?
So we're doing Biden, Trump.
Purely a question on Spotify.
I mean, COVID was the in-between on all that.
I don't know.
He's talking about violence type, violence.
Specifically, I'm talking about violence.
He's not talking about virus.
To have people going out there, not COVID.
Do you think families feel safer or less safer today?
I don't know.
I don't want to.
You know the answer to the question.
I don't.
So I'm not going to.
But you do.
I'm not going to give the answer you'd want to hear it.
They're safer under Trump.
You got to.
Let me ask you.
Is that what you want to hear?
It's not the point, though.
It's a fact, though.
It's a fact.
People are scared nowadays.
Okay.
Do you think people in the borders, 2 million the last 12 months, it's 2 million this year?
It's 4.9 million the last two years, by the way.
You're talking 2 million.
Do you think people on the southern border feel safer the last two years or prior to that?
Well, the southern border that's quote unquote open these days.
So I would assume people in the southern border feel that.
You're being fair with that.
Okay.
Do you think people are sitting their pockets because that's how people think as well?
People are sitting there feeling better about their net worth retirement today or they did two years ago.
Two years ago.
Okay, so now here's a question.
How many baby boomers who were relying on retiring their money, they just lost 20% in their portfolio are sitting there saying, I got to work till 70.
I got to work till 71.
More today or two years ago?
Yeah.
Two years ago.
However, we can't discount COVID for being a factor for the lawlessness that we've seen.
People have been locked up.
That's like saying this.
Were there more fights on airplanes two years ago or more recently?
I don't know any fights that were happening three years ago.
All of a sudden, all of a sudden, knuckleheads have been locked in their house are getting on fights in airplanes.
There's a lot of pension.
Joe Biden on 60 Minutes said COVID is over.
Fauci lost his mind, called the press conference saying it's not over.
What he was trying to say is this.
What he was trying to say this.
And the president just said COVID is over.
And everybody lost their mind.
No, no, you can't say that because we can't do this again.
We need people to still be scared of COVID.
He just said it's over.
Look, no one's wearing masks.
Look at the dealership.
Look at this.
No one's so the optics are.
Here's basic to me.
Safety, economy, finances.
People felt safer two years ago than today.
Having said that, having said that, Florida Republicans, watch what Florida Republicans said.
I don't know if you guys read this article or not.
Florida Republicans prefer Ron DeSantis for president over Donald Trump in the 2024 poll.
This is an insider article.
This is not a New York Post article.
This is an insider article, which kind of goes to a part of what you're saying.
You're saying I would much rather have a DeSantis over that.
So according to USA Today, again, this is a liberal poll, USA Today, a poll published Wednesday by Sioux Falk University.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis leads former President Donald Trump 48% to 40 in a hypothetical 2024 presidential primary.
There's a reversal from a similar poll in January in which Trump beat best its DeSantis 47 to 40.
So exact opposite.
The poll found a strong lead for DeSantis despite respondents reporting that they feel economic conditions in Florida were worsened.
Just 37% of voters said Florida's economy was excellent or good, down from 10% in January.
So again, what I'm saying is policies, optics, but still, even with that, more people agree with you today, where they're trying to say, if I can get the same policies without all the other stuff that's coming with it, so this kind of contradicts what Ben Shapiro said.
Because Ben Shapiro is saying, hey, they're kind of putting him up out there, so people are going to be wanting to have him.
But the reality is independent voters 4 to 1.
But USA Today is saying, no, people want DeSantis.
No, I don't think it's contradicting.
I think they're both saying the same thing.
Don't nominate Trump.
No.
Nominate DeSantis.
That's what both are saying.
Am I wrong?
I disagree.
The way I take it is the following.
He says there's a reason Democrats are eager to keep Trump at the center of the conversation, at a center of the conversation.
This USA today, if they're really trying to keep him at the center of conversation, they shouldn't show numbers like this because numbers like this is getting people to be convinced to say, well, I got to shift from Trump to DeSantis.
That's what I'm saying.
So I disagree with Ben in the area of the fact that Democrats are putting him in the center front.
I think they're putting him there because they're scared of the guy.
I think they're scared of him.
I think they know a guy like that getting elected.
Okay.
So who's going to be a more guy that's going to be vengeance?
Who's more about vengeance?
Trump.
Him or DeSantis?
Trump.
Trump.
Okay.
If he gets elected, what do you think he's going to do?
He's going to go after everybody.
I don't know what he's going to do.
Hard.
Now, but you said something.
You said something which was very powerful.
You said, you used the following words, collateral damage, right?
You said, I have never ever heard of Red Twice, Editorial Sounds or General Public on Fend the FBI.
So your worry is collateral damage.
My worry is this constant back and forth of revenge, Because we're the ones paying the price.
Guess who loses?
The kids, and when parents are constantly going at each other's throats, who cares who loses?
The kids are the ultimate losers of that situation.
So in this case, if it becomes revenge politics, the voters are going to get screwed.
My opinion, I may be wrong.
No, I agree.
The thing with Trump, and you know, there's a famous quote, hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, right?
So I'm not calling Trump a woman, but the guy feels fucking pissed.
Okay.
So if you're Trump and you do get re-elected, you don't think you're going to come after revenge?
Of course he is.
Okay.
And it's going to get very ugly.
DeSantis doesn't have that revenge factor.
I mean, he's a fighter, no doubt.
And I think that's fine.
I think we need a fighter.
I think we need a young, bold, youthful new spirit in the White House.
And that's why I would totally be an advocate for someone like a DeSantis.
But if Trump gets re-elected, you don't think he's going to just be pissed and just hell hath no fury like a scorned woman?
I'm not convinced.
That's what's going to happen.
I'm just not convinced that the media is putting up Trump and James, Letitia James, and all these guys are doing it because they want the Republicans to make him as their number one.
I'm convinced all this stuff they're doing is to eliminate the number one competitor.
That's what I'm convinced.
But you know what's funny, Pat?
It's interesting that Ben Shapiro said this because Ben also said in 2021 that the reason that there's more people voting for Trump is because the left media keeps putting him out there and they keep giving him more and more and more and more heat, which pisses off the voters, which makes them want to support him more.
But what I'm getting.
He pisses off people like you that already have this.
He doesn't piss off a whole bench.
Hold on.
What I'm getting at, though, is that this, what he said here, and I love Ben Shapiro.
I'm a huge Ben Shapiro fan.
He said the opposite just a year ago or two years ago.
He said when he was, I forgot who was interviewing him.
Oh, no, it was Don Lemon.
It was Don Lemon that was.
Lamont.
I want to respect Lamont.
I don't have any respect for him.
I could care less about him and all those guys at CNN.
But the point is this, that Don Lemon, he tells him, you guys keep doing this.
And that's why he keeps getting attention because you guys keep doing this.
And it's a bad strategy.
He's telling him as he's being interviewed on CNN.
So it's kind of like.
But what about what he's saying now, though?
That's just weird for him to switch up like that because it's a switch up.
Sentiment can change.
It can, but I just, I think it's a switch up.
I think what Pat's saying is right.
I think they're scared of him.
You know, they're scared.
So you got to keep talking.
By the way, I pay attention to what Ben is going to say because when I sat down with him in 18, Ben said, I asked him about Biden.
He says Biden's going to be the next president.
He said that in 18 when I sat down with him at the Daily Wire headquarters when they were off of Ventura, California, Sherman Oaks, or something like that.
What was his rationale with that?
Why did he say that?
He said Joe Biden's going to, we talk about rock, we talk about Trump, we talk about Biden, he says Biden's going to be the next, if he runs Biden once, those are his words.
Wow.
Yeah, you can actually.
So he predicted that.
Did he give any more context to that or why he thought that would happen?
Do you recall?
I mean, I don't know all the details if you can watch it.
There's a short club of it out there.
But look, I mean, it's like when Ann Coulter said Trump, everybody laughed.
You kind of have to pay attention to some of this stuff.
And nobody's 100%.
But, you know, some people have a better track record than others.
Can I ask Ricky a question?
Yeah, of course.
Why wouldn't if you're seeing, I'm not saying that you believe the poll numbers, but let's just play a game here.
And you see the unfavorable ratings around Trump and you see the favorable ratings that are trending in DeSantis' direction.
Why wouldn't you just embrace?
Let me finish.
Hold on.
I'm sorry.
Why wouldn't you just embrace someone like a DeSantis and get around him?
Oh, 100%.
100%.
I just, I just, I just don't think he's in a run.
What do you, what?
I don't think, I don't think this.
Did he say is he out already that he's in a run?
I think it's trending in that direction.
If you see these polls that he's already beating Trump.
But the thing is, here's the thing.
You got to remember, too.
So I said, on my following on my Instagram, when I talk to people, so many people have flipped.
I've had people like, bro, I hated you four years ago.
I've been following you.
I've been watching all your stuff and everything you said was true.
I can show you messages of people that are like, I can finally understand what you're talking about.
They hated Trump.
They said, Trump's a racist.
Trump's this.
And now they're like, bro, everything you said was right.
And I'm getting those messages every single day of the year.
I'm not even joking.
I'm not exaggerating one bit.
So when I read this, I'm like, that's that's it.
So you trust your own Instagram polls more than Quinn Piak or NBC.
I'm having conversations.
This is apart from obviously what I do with PHP.
This is the world I'm in.
I'm fully in it.
Like I'm in it all the way.
And apart with me with Lexit, when I go speak at the Republican, the Women's Republic, and I've spoken to two or three of them already.
I'm going to be speaking one next month.
Those rooms are getting bigger and bigger for people that were ex-Democrats.
80-year-old women invite him to be the guest speaker.
Yes.
It's very weird.
Golf, what are they called?
Golf?
Golf court.
Course?
No, country clubs.
Country clubs.
And these are rich athletes.
There is a new thing.
I understand.
Older, rich women going after young Hal Latino dudes, bro.
And that's all good.
And shout out to my wife.
But the point is, so shout out, babe.
But the point is, here's what I'm getting at, bro.
Those rooms are getting fuller and fuller every time I go.
And when I'm meeting them, because they walk me around.
And it doesn't fail that 50% of them.
No, I don't want to say 50.
I'd be exaggerating.
30% of the room, they're like, I used to vote Democrat, and now I'm a Republican.
And this is in Bakersfield, California.
Where is that?
Bakersfield.
Well, there's Bakersfield, Central Valley and Kern County.
And Kern County is one of the only conservative counties in the even if all those, even if 100% of the room was like, all right, I'm with you, Ricky.
You're still not going to flip California, bro.
And I respect what you're doing.
100% of what we're talking about.
But it's almost like a fruitless endeavor.
But we're talking about the polls.
I'm not talking about flipping California.
I'm talking about what you're saying there.
What I'm seeing boots on the ground is not to say that whatever that bullshit is.
I'm not saying that.
There it is.
There it is.
From now on, we're going to put Quinn at Piak, all right?
Pew, and then Ricky's Instagram polls at the top of the list.
Done.
But I think that really quick, there's two things that we're discounting here.
Trump hasn't been on Twitter since what, 2018?
2020?
What happens if Elon Musk buys Twitter and reinstates Trump and Trump is now tweeting daily?
Well, that's what he chooses to go back on Twitter and not embrace truth social.
Which far fresh.
Trump gets his voice back.
How many people does he turn off?
And secondly, let's say.
Turn off.
Turn off.
Because he's now tweeting daily again, which the whole big spiel was no more mean tweets, right?
People, fuck the policies, no more mean tweets.
Secondly, let's not forget what Trump did to everybody in the debates.
Destroyed everybody in the debates.
He called Ted Cruz's wife a dog.
I mean, just put off, right?
Little Marco Rubio.
Right.
So either Jeb Bush, whatever, low energy, what does he call him?
Right.
College-gramma lesbian, basically.
Let's say that Trump and DeSantis go at it, right?
And he now starts going to ad hominem attacks on Ron DeSantis and wins the primary.
Which he will, by the way, which he will.
I think it's up for debate.
He will do the ad hominem attacks on Ron DeSantis.
How many independent voters has he now turned off?
Yeah, he's going to lose them because he calls Ron DeSantis' wife a dog or calls him ugly or what happened.
You know how ugly that's going to get.
How many independent voters does he now turn off?
How many people that he has flipped has he now turned off?
Those 80-year-old women, they're saying, I'm a big fan of Trump, and they see this now.
Yeah, you're right.
It's a very interesting perspective, and it's not far-fetched.
It's very correct.
So, my take is he's 76 right now, Donald Trump.
He'll be 78 going into the election.
I think my crystal ball is that I see his family paying a price, taking a toll, meaning the kids around him.
I see him at that point saying, Yeah, I'm tapping out.
I see him aligning himself with Ron DeSantis.
I see Ron DeSantis being more youthful, younger, has a little bit more energy.
The reality is, if anybody was to go back into office and take over Biden's presidency right now and just undo the executive office, executive orders, rescind them, we'd be basically hitting the reset button.
We'd be better off for that.
So, I think Donald Trump is probably going to have way too much baggage at that point that he himself is even going to recognize that I think it's one thing for him to take the hit, but I think now, as you're going to see things come through the funnel, and some of his kids and some of his real people that are not his hang-ons, but really his blood, I think he's going to take a little bit of a digression and step back.
So, you don't think he's going to run, is what you're saying?
I think it's going to pay, I think it's going to take a heavy toll on him and not the price of his children.
You're basically saying he'd be better served not trying to be the king, but the king maker.
Yes, sir.
But that's not in his DNA.
He views himself as the number one, as the king, and it's going to be hard.
You brought up his age, it's going to be hard at 76, 78.
Well, he said, And just say, you know what?
I don't want to be the man anymore.
But I have a hard time believing that.
And here's something interesting.
We talk about the personal vindictiveness.
How many of those Trump supporters are there that would not be willing to go over to Ron DeSantis, even though if they were equal, meaning the results will be the same, but they'd rather hang on to Trump because they want to see him get his revenge?
You're talking about in the primaries.
In the primary.
But in the general electorate, they're going to let DeSantis.
Ricky will take DeSantis over anyone.
I mean, come on.
Let's just say if you could foresee that the results, if DeSantis gets in or Trump gets in, we're all going to be better.
But there would be more Trump supporters that say, I want to see Trump get in because I want to see him pay these people back.
You know what I mean?
Well, that's a revenge factor.
The revenge.
The big thing in the movies.
Who would you vote for out of those two?
I like Donald Trump for the very reason that he's got that moxie and that he is no nonsense in your face.
Now, with that being said, I think he's the type of person that is hard to control and hard to rein in.
But I like him for getting results.
He's result-driven.
Last question for you, bro.
If you were his lawyer, I got one more topic I want to vote.
So to rein in, what advice would you give to Trump if you were his lawyer?
He gave it right off the bat.
I don't know if you caught it.
So I'm asking circling back for that.
He gave it right off the bat.
Look, listen, I have clients.
I tell each and every client that comes into the office, my job is to ensure and make sure you don't drive off that cliff.
That's why you're paying me to, you're hiring me to prevent you from driving off that cliff.
And if you're insistent in driving off that cliff, I'm going to tell you right now, I'm bailing on you.
I'm getting out of that car, and you can drive off that cliff by yourself.
I'm not your guy.
A lot of people look at me like, what do you mean?
You have to have that ability.
A good lawyer has to have client control.
Donald Trump is impossible to control because he believes in his own little way, he knows more than anybody.
He does.
He believes that.
And when you deal with someone who believes that, it's impossible to get them to take your advice.
Just as I said when he went on Sean Hannity last night, he said things that I even gasped at.
He talked about a form that's a page and a half.
If you remember, he talked about this page and a half of a disclaimer form where his company puts it out and they put everybody on notice.
Well, let me be honest with you.
The government, Department of Justice, they got that going right now.
And they have a transcription person that's transcribing that interview because he better make sure that everything he said to Sean Hannity does in fact play out.
As a lawyer, I would say, Donald, do me a favor, keep your mouth shut, take a back seat.
It's not going to happen.
It's not going to happen.
We go round and round in circles.
I wish he would listen to someone like you.
I really wish.
Not going to happen, though.
No, it's not going to happen.
Last thing here before we wrap up, Putin.
You guys saw the story about Putin with the back and forth with the threats about nuclear and then Biden also coming back when they were both speaking.
I want to read this and kind of get your commentary, and then we'll wrap up.
So Putin initiates conscription to bolster military invasion at the Ukraine Mount counteroffensive.
Russia, President Vladimir Putin, announced a partial mobilization of Russia, which will require citizens to join the war effort in Ukraine.
It's a fully adequate to the threats we face, namely to protect our homeland, its sovereignty and territorial integrity to ensure the security of our people.
And people in the liberated territories, we are talking about partial mobilization.
That is, only citizens who are currently in the reserve will be subject to conscription.
And above all, those who served in the armed forces have a certain military specialty and relevant experience.
And he warns the West, threat to resort to nuclear weapons.
This is not a bluff.
Putin issued a warning after accusing Western countries of resorting to nuclear blackmail, despite no NATO countries threatening to use nuclear weapons to those who allow themselves such statements regarding Russia.
I want to remind you, and he's only talking about one person, by the way, that our country also has various means of destruction and for separate components and more modern than those of NATO countries.
And when the territorial integrity of our country is threatened to protect Russia and our people, we will certainly use all the means at our disposal.
It's not a bluff.
The threat comes as Russia's prospects in Ukraine are grim with Putin's military losing thousands of square miles of territory to a Ukrainian counteroffensive.
And by the way, he's saying this.
This is my idea with this.
You know, we've talked about this before.
What'd you say?
I'll kick your ass.
Say that again.
Look what I'm going to do to you.
Maybe you can get away with it once, twice, three.
If you keep doing that, people are going to be like, dude, do something, right?
Okay.
So now, to flip that, is people are moving out of Russia at a record-breaking rate.
So earlier we were talking about, you're saying, tell me one other country that's getting the most people.
I wanted to kind of talk about this.
I said, let's just wrap up Marlago conversation.
Germany?
They're leaving Russia.
No, but I'm saying they're going into Germany?
They're going all over the place, but they're just leaving Russia.
They're worried, okay?
Like when we lived in Iran, the war was going on like, dude, this could get nuclear.
Our families were just worried about the safety of the kids.
So people were leaving.
No matter where they get a chance to go to, they're just leaving.
So he's in a very tough situation.
So now, you go and look at Pearl Harbor and then what happened, FDR, and then Truman goes and calls it.
And here, let's go do this and drop it.
And hey, we saw what happened to Hiroshima.
Do you take his threat as a bluff or do you take it as this guy's got his back so much against the wall right now that if there is a guy that would do it, it would be him?
I think he should be taken seriously, but I do believe that his own civil unrest within his own country is going to be his ultimate downfall, meaning his own people are turning on him and are going to continue to rise up.
I think that's where NATO, and especially with the United States, having their allies work on the Russian population to expose him for being just who he is, a madman, I think eventually will back him down and eventually create his downfall.
Now, with that being said, the reality is right now with him having the ability to push a button, you know, unfortunately, Ukraine, there's not much to destroy there, right?
I mean, it's basically a vast wasteland.
I mean, he's destroyed basically the entire country.
With respect to using nuclear weapons, my biggest concern, honestly, is not his ability to carry out that threat.
My biggest concern to myself and to my family and to my fellow Americans is honestly what would be the response if God help us all if he was to implement a nuclear attack?
Because we all know what will happen if he does it, or we can anticipate what would happen.
My biggest concern is what's the response?
Because once you light that fuse, we may be looking at a completely different world than we've ever known before.
You know the difference between the button and U.S. versus Russia?
Have you seen that article?
No.
Okay, so you know on U.S., the button is controlled by who?
President.
One person.
He can't push the button there.
He needs multiple, multiple approvals in Russia.
So Russia's situation is not like, what'd you say?
Boom.
That's U.S. That's not what it is in Russia.
So that gives a little bit of comfort to say you have to convince three or five people, whatever the amount of people is, for them to say, we agree that it's time to push the button.
So I think for the world that's a little bit worried, it's good that Russia's button to the nuclear bomb is a lot more regulated, believe it or not, as weird as it sounds than the button in the U.S. now.
Do you remember what Tate had to say about this?
No.
You asked Tate this question.
You said you're not.
Misunderstood man.
Exactly.
You said you live in Romania, which is on the border of Ukraine, a Ukraine war.
You're seeing this happening.
You know, this is when we were in Madrid doing the interview with Tate.
And obviously, we didn't talk about Putin for an extended period of time throughout that interview.
But basically, you brought up the term madman.
And he goes, I know that term gets thrown around a lot.
Putin's a madman.
He's a madman.
He's crazy.
And he goes, no, I think he's actually a rational actor, but he is there to serve his country, Mother Russia.
He's not worried about global agendas or poll numbers.
He's there for one reason only to take a term from your president or president, make Russia great again.
So I think, I don't think he's a bad man.
I think he's a rational actor.
I don't think he wants to blow up the world.
I don't think he wants to do that.
At the same time, what I do think he has is a massive ego, and I think he needs an off-ramp to save face.
Right now, he's not winning this war in Ukraine.
You know, the EU, the United States is throwing billions of dollars to prop up Ukraine and fight Russia, and they're doing a good job of it.
And I think if you're Putin and if you're the world and you want a safe world, you want to give at least Putin an opportunity to not look weak and to save face and give him an off-ramp so he doesn't do anything illogical and he maintains the rational actor status.
My take is, though, his DNA, because of where he came from, is all about deception and killing and murdering, KGB, and poisoning and doing things.
And accidentally jumping out of a window or doing the most barbaric things.
Of course.
I think that's his DNA.
And look, Madman is someone who's crazy.
I think he's very calculated.
No doubt.
No question, but very smart, very calculated.
My biggest, or my fear is because of his DNA, he does not have the ability to think beyond himself.
Meaning that just as Patrick said, there's a layer that insulates him from getting to that button.
My concern would be he'll start knocking off those people and putting in people in their place to ultimately get to that button.
Who's a bigger ego maniac, Putin or Trump?
Well, look, you see Trump in front of the camera a lot more than you see Putin, that's for sure.
So you're not.
Well, and we're all assuming that this is a big nuclear weapon.
He has targeted nuclear weapons.
He can launch very small nuclear attacks and create mass devastation.
And listen, I don't think he's a madman.
I think he's very calculated, but we are pushing him and pushing him and pushing.
Imagine how frustrated he has to be that he can't take over Ukraine because like Adam said, we're sending 50, 60, 70, 80, $100 billion.
What do you think he's going to do?
It's no secret that we are fighting a proxy war against Russia on behalf of Ukraine.
What do you expect him to do?
So what happens when you push a bully one too many times?
What happens?
The bully goes home, goes into his father's closet, gets out his assault rifle, puts it in his backpack, and comes to school the next day and say, okay, here's the great equalizer.
And that's what we see in these mass shootings.
And so be careful pushing Putin into that corner because that's what's happening.
That's not him being a madman.
That's not him being crazy.
That's our problem.
We did this.
We set this up.
This is our fault.
This is why I'm saying we need to give him an off-ramp and the opportunity to at least save face and not look weak.
There was a question by Hannity yesterday about Putin.
And he says, what did you say to Putin behind closed doors that got Putin to not want to attack Ukraine?
He says, I can't tell you that.
That's between me and him in the conversation.
But we did have a respectable, I don't know if you caught that one part.
Yeah.
So diplomacy is different.
You know, like in insurance, like having been in a sales organization for the last 20 years, there are guys, very few guys are good at two things.
There are guys that are very good from stage, very good from stage.
And it makes you believe they're better one-on-one, but they suck one-on-one.
Suck 101.
They're good stage, right?
So there's three levels to it.
There's stage, there's group setting UN5, and there's one-on-one, okay?
And then there are those guys that are very good one-on-one, but they suck on stage.
I used to think the guy on stage would build the biggest business, but it's the guy that was the best at one-on-one that built the biggest business because he knew how to get things done and he would move things forward.
So the one-on-one, unfortunately, none of us can gauge because there is no camera on one-on-one.
So we don't know how Biden is one-on-one.
We don't know how Trump is one-on-one.
But obviously, when Trump was doing 101, nothing was happening.
ISIS disappeared.
Putin was calm.
Nothing was going on there.
So the power of the one-on-one, unfortunately, we will never be able to gauge ever because there's no cameras in the one-on-one.
Having said that, quick shout out to a couple of the guys that gave the super chats.
Joseph Dekelaita, a Syrian guy.
You said there's only seven famous.
I'm one of seven famous Assyrians in the world.
He says, make me the eighth, because there's not too many Assyrians.
My man, appreciate you.
Prokantis says what his stances on Patriot Act.
We didn't get into the Patriot Act.
That's something we talked to Giuliani about.
When it comes to Trump, this is Paul, $20.
When it comes to Trump, the Democrats keep beating the same drum, hoping people will dance to the beat.
Unfortunately, they are tone deaf, and Trump will come out victorious once again.
We will see.
Then we had Andrew said, Adam, yes, there is that saying, but remember, Schumer said the intelligence agencies will get you six ways from Sunday about Trump.
Funny, it's happening now.
And then we have Jason said, Trump is a criminal.
He is finally held to the fire.
Okay.
And then we have Derek said, now they've changed it to hell has no fury like Adam scorn.
Adam has the emotions of a woman.
I'm offended by that one.
Anyway, okay, gang, the title, do we have something this week or this is the one?
And then later on today, Adam has a podcast with Ricky.
If you want to be entertained, don't miss that one on.
If you want to see Ricky and fireworks, tune into SOSCAST 4 p.m.
By the way, shout out to my driver, Julio.
I got a driver here in Florida now because he's sick.
Dominican Republic, big fan of the podcast.
He's like always like, he lives two minutes from you.
I see that you see what you're still right here.
I love it.
Well, gang, if you enjoyed Stuart as much as we did, give it a thumbs up and subscribe to the channel.
And hopefully we'll have him back on the podcast again.
