July 31, 2021 - The Political Cesspool - James Edwards
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You're listening to the Liberty News Radio Network, and this is the Political Cesspool.
The Political Cesspool, known across the South and worldwide as the South's foremost populist conservative radio program.
And here to guide you through the murky waters of the Political Cesspool is your host, James Edwards.
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the main event of tonight's live broadcast.
Welcome back to the program.
This Saturday evening, July the 31st, we have been teasing this appearance during the first two hours, and it is now here.
Our interview with Larry Ray Harden.
Larry Ray is a former special agent with the Drug Enforcement Administration, the DEA.
And after a 30-year career, he now teaches criminal law, runs his own private investigation firm, and is the author of three books that detail his life and experiences fighting organized crime and the so-called war on drugs.
You are in for a treat this hour.
And without further ado, we welcome now, making his debut appearance, Larry Ray Harden.
Larry Ray Hardin.
Yeah, thank you, James, for giving me this opportunity.
I'm looking forward to this.
I've done this several times before, but not at this level here.
Boy, it truly is.
It's an honor that I had some great support and for you to reach out and for us to talk here tonight.
I hope it really is.
Well, indeed, listen, my friend, the honor is entirely ours, and I want to thank a mutual friend who we won't name for putting us together.
But I had the opportunity to talk with you at length earlier this week over the phone, and it was just like old friends coming together, as it so often is with people who are doing the best they can with what they've got.
Well, welcome to the show, and I want to be sure to get this website out early and often.
Larry Ray Harden, that's H-A-R-D-I-N, LarryRayHarden.com.
There you can learn more about tonight's featured guest and learn more about his books.
And each of these books would be worthy of a full hour-long interview just based upon the contents thereof.
And while your first two books capture the trials and tribulations of your career as a DEA agent on the Arizona-Mexico border, your most recent book is an autobiography of your childhood growing up on Big Plum Creek Road in a poor and rural part of Kentucky.
And the name of that book is Home Is Never the Same.
And it delivers many stories of hard luck and tragic misfortune as well as several humorous moments and spiritual discovery.
We're going to talk about that later, but I love Larry.
I got to admit, we were talking about you being a native-born Southerner and what Southern heritage means to you and some of these other things, even after a lifelong career in the DEA.
And just you were so real and so candid about all of these things.
It just, I felt as though it was a great fit for this audience.
And if we don't cover it all tonight, we'll love to have you back for an encore interview.
But let's start at the beginning.
30 years in the DEA.
I mean, you've probably forgotten stories that would fill any given radio program.
Well, you know, James, everything you just said right there is very humble, I truly am, for you to even express where I came from, which your audience has to know that I came from, I call it Big Plum Creek.
But all those years in law enforcement, when I say DEA, I'm talking about all together with the military.
I put that in there with that.
I had like 24 years with DEA.
But through the partner about the military, and of course I worked with immigration, the old immigration, in the federal prison, and as adjudicator and so on.
But, you know, just for you to say that and for give me the opportunity to talk about where I'm from, from the Hollers of the Creeks.
I don't know if your audience or the public would know, but I can describe.
But it's just being from that location there.
And that's who I am today after all these years.
I haven't changed.
But thank you for that introduction there.
Well, thank you for, again, giving us the time and coming on to talk about it.
And I do want to focus over the course of the next couple of segments after we take this first break in a moment about, again, the DEA, what it's really like on the border, what the war on drugs, what that's all about, does it even truly exist.
We'll get into that.
And then I'm going to wrap up the interview later this hour by going back to your Kentucky roots.
And again, this is what we're talking about.
You started out living the simple rural life of the South.
You finished your career in a dangerous and unforgiving manner, fighting the drug cartels on the Arizona border and even in Columbia.
And you served your nation with honor.
And in retirement, you served your community by visiting bedridden veterans of foreign wars and cheering them up and thanking them for their service.
And it's been an adventurous life.
You've thoroughly documented it.
I think it could be something that could turn into a feature film.
But this was something you touched on during our phone conversation.
And you made mention of the fact that, hey, you know that a lot of good people out there, a lot of patriotic people, look at the Alphabet Soup law enforcement organizations with skepticism.
And rightly so.
But obviously, you came from that, and not all of them are like that.
What could you say about that?
Has it changed since your career ended?
And was the beginning of your career different than it is now?
I mean, are there truly good guys there?
Are there more good guys than bad guys?
When you're looking at the DEA, the FBI, the CIA, what are we dealing with now?
Oh, you'd be surprised from my experience.
That's my phone.
You'd be surprised that even today, there are some really, really great people out there.
I worked very closely with the Border Patrol agents at that time and with a lot of FBI, of course, of other agencies.
And they are, I met some great people, but you always have those individuals that you just have to be very cautious with.
I'm talking about law enforcement brothers and sisters.
There's always that one or two or maybe that somehow went to that dark side.
And that dark side is money.
It's greed.
Or some cartel or someone got hold of their family first and threatened them to turn to take a look somewhere else.
It's a very violent and it's a very evil world.
And I had no intentions, James.
Not at all.
Not at all.
From my background, where I came from, it just seemed like whether you believe in God or not, it's just seemed like those doors open up for me.
And I say this.
I was very blessed.
Didn't realize how blessed I was to have an opportunity to work for DEA, which is the, as you mentioned, the Drug Enforcement Administration.
But now it was hard.
It was difficult for me to get there.
But at the same time, I think a lot has to do with my background.
I wouldn't take when someone said, well, you need to change your last name from a Hardin to your wife's last name, which I married a woman, beautiful, a flamingo dancer, a great cook, from the south of Spain.
And south of Spain is no different from the south of anywhere in the United States.
There's a big difference.
And the people from the south, that's, to me, people from the north might get upset with me.
But that was the heart of Spain.
Tradition Spanish, the flamingo dancing, the fighting of the bulls.
Even though the language is, you know, they really speak it fast like we do back home in Kentucky or whatever.
But it just seemed like one door just opened up for me.
And I did encounter corruption.
I mean, I was seeing things that I considered it was wrong.
It was wrong to do what they're doing.
Certain cops, that is, or certain law enforcement.
But I just didn't pay attention to it because as long as it didn't affect me, you know, I'm going to do my job the way I should do it, and that's with is treat everyone the same, no matter what.
Once you put the cuffs on them, the handcuffs, treat them the same.
But I was, my career was very short.
A year and a half when I got hard on it in San Diego.
I was transferred out to the southwest border.
And that was, to me, Arizona.
That's very conservative, but it's the wild west out there.
And you have to be very careful what you do, who you talk to.
I'm talking about people in law enforcement.
Hey, are you sure you're not an old hand at Ed Media because you segued perfectly into this first break of the hour and gave us a stopping point that will give me a perfect opportunity to do exactly what I was hoping to do, and that's come back and talk about the situation at the border.
You wrote books about it.
We'll find out what your experiences were there.
What is going on on the border now?
And why?
We'll ask Larry Ray Harden, LarryRayHarden.com.
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Thank you for sharing that with me.
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And now back to tonight's show.
Well, we're back for the full and complete third hour with our special guest of the night, former DEA agent Larry Ray Hardin.
And as I told you earlier in the broadcast, ladies and gentlemen, what he's seen, what he's experienced in 30 years, we couldn't cover in a single hour.
And we hope that this will be the first of more appearances to come.
But what we are going to do is try to paint in broad brushstrokes a picture of his career.
And what we're going to do over the course of this segment, the following segment, and the final segment this hour is focus on each of the three books he wrote that details his life and experiences.
But before we get into Path of the Devil, Larry Ray, let me just ask you very quickly a broad question of what's going on currently.
Because you mentioned in passing on our telephone conversation that, hey, the media is saying they're bringing, you know, these kids are coming over to the border.
A lot of them ain't kids.
So what is the situation on the border now and why, in your opinion?
It's not my opinion.
It's my professional experience.
And I tell people that all the time.
For example, you, James, of all people, when you give your opinion, it's not your opinion.
It's your experience of life, the ups and downs and loving this country and seeing what's happened to it.
And that's why you've got this very successful show that you're doing, because people are reaching out and they see this.
It's taking a turn.
These guys at the Port of Entries, on the border or throughout whatever, throughout our world, even the military, I have met a lot of military people when I'm in Europe, and I have met individuals over there that are willing to come back.
I mean, they say things to me that just shocks me, that they're willing to come back and they're ready to fight.
And I don't, for me personally, I don't want to ever see that in this country.
We went through a bad time with Civil War.
The generations of our young people today, they don't know anything about history.
Trust me.
And the college courses that I teach, I'm in the classroom, I have to explain to them our history and the difference in what happened because they don't know.
To get back to the border, there are a lot of problems, but it's not the men and women out there.
Sure, we have corruption, and I identified corruption, those people that worked at the Port of Entries.
And we'll talk a lot about it.
That's the first book, how I was going after.
Actually, I got started with when two agents were left for dead.
I'm proud to mention their names, Don Ware and Roy Stevenson's.
That was years ago.
But since that book came out, I did get a reply from another, an agent from many years ago that worked in investigations telling me that I was quite wrong of some of the things they were saying.
But you have to understand why he said that, because in this investigation that got started, and we'll talk about it, but I started identifying corruption.
And I had two informants, I don't call them snitches, I call them confidence informants, that trust me, and I trust them with my life, and they sang with me.
And they got into that organization, and we identified exactly what took place and happened.
But today, James, and I hope everyone understands there are some great, great people out there that love this country like I do because I worked with them.
I worked with them closely.
But their hands are, in a way, they're tied.
This thing is out of control.
It's politics.
You know, with our first, when I say first, well, President Trump, he's always been the president that I have a tremendous amount of respect for.
And I say that, I don't tell your audience or anyone out there, I'm not, you know, whatever.
But I got to know him.
And the way I did that, that first book, I sent that book to him at the White House.
And I was enrolled in Spain teaching criminal justice.
And I got an official letter from the White House.
Now, did he read the book?
No.
But someone read that book and walked in there and told him about it.
And so then I knew I was on to something because I talked about corruption.
You know, when we talk about other countries as Mexico or Colombia, they're all beautiful countries.
But their way of life, that's why people want to come here to this country because their way of life is poor, it's corrupted, and there is no middle class.
And, believe it or not, they're not supposed to have any weapons.
Look at the European countries.
They have no way to protect themselves.
And same down in Mexico, but yet you can go down there and pretty well, you know, the cartels run the show.
But when people say the men in blue or the women, no, we do have some few that are out there, especially the very young that are coming in because they caught up in this political, this woke or whatever.
But most of these guys, no, they're good people.
And I feel very comfortable with them.
But once again, James, there are some that I would not turn my back on.
But you'll recognize them.
Well, let me ask you this.
So your first book is Path of the Devil.
And that's available at LarryRayharden.com, ladies and gentlemen.
And it's based on the true experiences of yourself and a couple of private investigators.
And it talks about your experiencing bringing down this major crime syndicate on the Arizona-Mexico border.
It was the MARAS organization.
I have three questions that I really want to ask you.
We only have about three or four minutes left this segment.
I want to try to work through these as quickly as possible.
Very quickly, maybe 30 seconds or less.
What was the MARAS organization?
They were, you've got to really break it down, but to make it simple, they were in charge of a certain port of entry.
Along the United States, whether it's north and south, primarily the south, southwestern, there's port of entries, and each one of them are controlled by like a subgroup.
You know, we have our cartels, we talk about our cartels, or we talk about the government of Mexico or Colombia or whatever.
But these port of entries on the side of Mexico, they are controlled by a group of people which are one step higher than your average drug trafficker.
You know, not the mules, what we call coming back and forth, but they are the ones that are in charge.
And their responsibility is get those drugs into the United States.
And the way they have done it, the way they have done it, okay, I mean, we spend millions of, billions of dollars, I know, but the way they've done it, they have provided their families, members of their families that came into the United States, not all of them, but some of them.
And now some of these family members are in law enforcement.
Oh, I know.
Oh, I know for a fact.
Okay, because I have a lot of stuff that was developed throughout the case, which we identified the members of the cartel's family working at the port of entries or somewhere throughout the United States and law enforcement.
You have to understand that once you're in law enforcement, especially working anywhere close to that border, we use our system to notify whoever, law enforcement, that we're going to be doing a case.
We're going to be working down towards that port of entry on the United States side, of course.
But then when we do, that information leaks out.
And did it leak down?
But that's nothing new.
That's nothing new.
It's just the way of life.
Well, pardon the interruption, Larry Ray, but perhaps, and I don't know for certain, but perhaps this would tie into my next question.
Is that why you decided in your campaign against the Maraz organization, why you decided to hire two private investigators instead of working with law enforcement communities?
Let me tell you, back up here, I never, we don't hire.
One thing about DEA, but people thought I was doing a lot of crazy stuff.
How the PIs got involved and PIs were, well, Jerry Pierce, Jerry Pierce ran the organization, but Jeff Pierce, and a young agent, 21 years old, out of military, was assigned to come out and help out.
The reason why is because Larry Ray Hardin was stopping these semi-tractor trailers.
I was doing this by myself.
It was a four-man office, but that way I kept control.
If I do something by myself, it's not going to be able to leak out.
And so, because I had to be very careful of that community.
But anyway, Jeff Kieris and then later Randy Turkeson.
Both these PIs started bringing me information about the skeletons and closet.
They were telling me who was corrupted in law enforcement.
And I didn't want to hear it because I knew these guys.
I knew some very personally.
And I knew exactly what's going on, but I didn't need two PIs to tell me that.
But these guys here, I develop a close relationship with them because I trust them throughout the next, what, four or five years.
I mean, they cover my back, you know, and I cover their back.
There's a loyalty there, okay?
And I felt that with these two guys.
But I knew what they were doing to me.
It was just too much.
I had to work in that small community.
I didn't want to get anybody hurt.
But towards the end of my, before I got transferred, things started, really happened, and they had to get me out of there because I was getting close.
I was getting so close that there was just so much that happened, James, throughout those five years.
A corrupted cop that knew the case, he was assigned to me towards the end of my transfer.
He threatened, he threatened, went down and threatened the United States.
Hold on right here.
Larry, Ray, pardon the interruption.
We've got to take a hard break.
We're going to come back.
We're going to let you pick up exactly where you're leaving off, and it's going to segue into your second book.
And it talks about the war on drugs, particularly at the birth.
Stay tuned.
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Unvaccinated people continue to fill hospitals around the country as the number of COVID cases rises.
Recent numbers suggest more people are getting vaccinated, though.
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Before recessing, yesterday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi swears in a new lawmaker, Texas Republican Jake Elzey, taking the oath of office after winning a runoff election this week.
Elzey on CBS News discussing his legislative priorities.
So as a congressman now from Texas, securing the southern border, which is a national security issue and a humanitarian issue, but I'm also a fiscal hawk, and I'd like to see a stop spending money that we don't have.
The 51-year-old Elzey defeats the widow of Ron Wright, who held the seat until his death in February.
Wright's widow was also endorsed by former President Trump.
While Trump didn't endorse him, Elzey says that you had a good phone call after Tuesday's election.
Another phone call President Trump made is under scrutiny.
New York Democratic Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney releasing notes yesterday from a call Trump had with Justice Department officials in December.
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Welcome back.
To get on the show, call us on James's Dime at 1-866-986-6397.
Well, we're back with Larry Ray Harden getting a lot of emails and correspondence already about this interview.
Again, ladies and gentlemen, some people are asking me.
We've mentioned it a couple of times already, but it's LarryRayHardin.com.
L-A-R-R-Y-R-A-Y-H-A-R-D-I-N.
LarryRayHarden.com.
And we are talking about his career, his fight on the border, and if she has it in her, and we'll see.
Larry Ray, I've done this for 17 years, and I can't even remember the last time my daughter asked to come into the studio.
But I told my wife and my family earlier this week, who we were going to be having on, that we're going to be having you on.
And my daughter asked to come in.
She said, Daddy, can I come with you so I can listen to the special agent?
And she wants to say hello very quickly.
Hi, it's great to listen to you, and thank you for keeping us safe.
Wow, young lady, you're so blessed to be in this country.
I know you're so young, but if you only seen the eyes that I've seen those young girls across that border, I don't want to say so much because she's there with you.
But I can tell you right now with all my heart, and I know this, a lot of them are not little girls.
When they come into this country, we think we believe in that.
But those little girls lost that, they lost their little girl.
Anyway, I've seen a lot of sadness, and they want to come to this country because we are a beautiful country.
At the heart of this country, it's been torn apart.
It is torn apart by these politics, and it's destroying.
I'm looking out the window right now, and I see the American flag.
And I see it.
And you don't know how many people that, and I visit Gettysburg.
I've been down to places that I've seen throughout the world where people died for their belief.
And now we have a group of whatever you want to call them, but they're no good.
I see it.
I hear the voices in politics.
And, you know, they can call them Democrats or Republicans, but they're not.
A lot of them are no good.
And we see that.
That January 6th, I knew people that were there, more or less.
You know, they talked about it.
I mean, everything was just incredible how it was just set up.
And, you know, I talk to people.
We sit down and we go through it.
And there's people out there still convinced that we need to change this country.
Perhaps we should because we do have a lot of evil in this country.
But, man, there's a lot of good people here.
And throughout the world.
There are, and at its heart, especially rural Red State America, there's some great people here.
But I'll tell you, I got to say, Larry Ray, the founding fathers are spinning in their graves so hard right now, they've probably drilled to the center of the earth.
But with that being said, let's get back to your second book.
Your second book, Fighting My Greatest Enemy, Myself.
That's the name of the second book.
And this is a story, again, about your experience with law enforcement.
And I'm reading right now from the description.
After serving over 30 years, you retired from the federal government with the United States Department of Justice as a special agent with the DEA.
And in this book, the second book you wrote, the second of three, you remind America that this dirty, deadly game is still very much alive and well, the so-called war on drugs.
And as a reader, you can be assured that you're not getting just another theory or opinion.
It's what you said earlier, but the truth of why there is no war on drugs.
And that's what your book covers.
So let's just go right there.
Describe how and where you found this corruption at the border and how this ultimately led you to the conclusion that there is no war on drugs.
Well, let me back up.
I know there's so much to cover and we have short time, but that first book was the foundation.
I am not a writer.
I'm an author now, but I'm not a writer.
I always write with the facts.
That's my whole career.
If I'm going to put you in jail or put you, you know, whatever, I have to write with facts.
So this book here, I was pushed by two PIs after I retired.
They said, Larry, you've got to tell the truth.
No, I just want to go away.
Most of us do.
But then we got lucky.
We found, I called her my agent, Diana DeMille.
She comes, she's got a good background, and she decided to go ahead and take this story.
We didn't know how to put this thing together.
And I said, okay, guys, let's go for it.
Let's just get them off my back.
Because you know what?
I did not want to do this.
But I did.
And so we did.
And the feedback I was getting, I mean, people wanted to get in touch with me.
And I thought maybe there is something there.
As long as they want to hear from me, I'll go ahead and talk about this book.
Now, this book here, there's over 35 people, more or less, that lost their lives, bad guys and some good guys.
And that first book, mention his name, a beautiful human being, Frank Moreno.
He took the round in the chest.
I spent about three days with him while everybody else was out there in Bogota, Columbia, looking for the individual that shot him.
And boy, I love, just when you read the book, it's the truth.
The one that shot Frank Marino, he's no longer in prison.
He's no longer in jail.
He got out.
He walked after we spent millions of dollars going after this guy and his family.
Half his family was up in Texas under the protection.
And by the way, don't get carried away, but most of these bad guys that do their killing, they're no longer living down in Medsville.
They're living up here.
They feel very, very protected up here, okay, because of our judicial system, believe it or not.
So they try to get up here and live in a community such as California.
Very open to the immigrant population here.
But the second book, because I realized my experience with God as growing up, my mama, yes, my mom, I might be getting up her name, but always my mama.
And mama always kept us close with eight of us.
I was the oldest.
My daddy always made sure that, boy, you take care of your brothers and sisters, okay, at school or whatever.
But mama always kept that Jesus in her heart, our father.
I have to interrupt you.
I have to interrupt you right now, and please pardon it, but I've just got to, I've got to accentuate the point you're making here.
Because, again, there's so much skepticism, and again, there's good reason for it in some regards with regards to law enforcement, just obeying orders, whatever a criminally corrupt government may tell them to do.
We're just going to follow orders no matter if it's doing our duty or whatever.
But you need to know, folks, that people like this, that you're hearing God-fearing Americans like Larry Harden have been a part of this too, and they've been fighting for the right reasons.
And this is actually something in his second book, Fighting My Greatest Enemy, Myself.
Every chapter of this book ends with your favorite quotes from scriptures.
So this is something that is just certainly a part of who you are and a part of the fabric of your being.
And it was something that you exhibited throughout life and in your books and certainly in your work as a law enforcement agent.
But if you don't mind, I really need to go back.
If we could talk about the war on drugs, you say it's an illusion.
There is no war on drugs.
Could you speak to that?
There is no war.
Listen to everybody out there who's listening to me now.
There is no war on drugs.
I learned that when I first got to Bogota, Colombia, when I had an individual, I cannot just briefly talk about, but he's higher up in the agency.
And he was showing me slides, showing me photographs, showing me where the coca leaves are and the poppy fields for their hair and so on.
And I thought, my gosh, we have the incredible military and the technology to just go in there and just finish this thing.
And I asked him, and he looked at me and he said, no, this is an agreement between Colombia and the United States.
We're talking about governments, okay, for us to go in there because it's agreement with what they call the FARC.
It's a revolutionary military that was protecting the fields there, and that way they leave the terrorism of terrorizing Colombia alone as long as we didn't go in there and destroy the cartels their drugs.
Let me tell you something.
When I was there, a kilo of Coke was $450-something, let's say $500.
Time it got to the border and got across, it got into thousands.
Now, I had an informant, and that he made it very clear that the Mexican government finally caught on.
You know, we're fighting the war, that we're targeting cartels.
We're targeting all these individual subgroups or whatever at the border.
But the problem lies with the government.
The government of Mexico, our government of Colombia, okay, that's where it is.
And government of the United States, that's where it is, too.
It's our politicians.
I don't see how in the world they tell the American people all these things, these problems, that we're going to finish this thing.
But yet, somehow, when they get elected, something happens.
I'm going to mention this here.
I know Senator McConnell, Mitch McConnell.
I can tell you now, as a person I like, but his politics were horrible.
I sit at the table and I watched him played a game back and forth with the ambassador.
I was sitting right there.
It was my brother that got that meeting for me.
And I sat there and I listened to politics.
These are lives.
I have seen Colombian young men lose their lives fighting this war on drugs for us.
They're young.
You know why they're young?
Because they haven't become corrupted.
And they were dying for the war.
And we will go out and we will give them some money, taxpayer dollars, okay?
And so on.
And that's all they get because they have no pension.
They have nothing.
But yet they were dying for this war on drugs.
And can we stop it?
Yes.
But I realized when Frank took that round in a chess and I couldn't wait to get out of Bogota anymore, my career was over with because I am not that kind of guy.
I just cannot sell my spirit or my soul.
And because I knew I had a great job, I had got a great pension.
I thank God for everything.
But now I'm in a position where I do believe.
And listen, guys, I'm not preaching or anything like that.
I experienced who God is the hard way.
And so, but with this second book, When the War on Drugs, I really start focusing on, you'll see that book.
You'll see a cross and you'll see a dove.
I do believe in that.
Let me tell you, as jaded as I have become, you have restored a modicum of my faith in, at least, I can't say government, but at least in some agents of our government, you namely.
We'll be right back with Larry Ray Harden.
Scott Bradley here.
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Okay, girls, about finished with your lesson on money?
Daddy, what is a buy-sell spread for gold coins?
Well, when you sell a gold coin to a coin shop that's worth, say, $1,200, you don't actually get $1,200.
But don't worry, we're members of UPMA now, so we don't have to worry about that.
Daddy, why does somebody seal that gold?
We don't have any gold at the house.
It's stored safely in the UPMA vault, securely and insured.
But the S ⁇ P 500 outperformed gold.
Daddy, gold is a bad investment.
Some people do think of it that way, but actually, gold is money.
And as members of the United Precious Metals Association, we can use our gold at any store, just like a credit card.
Or I can ask them to drop it right into Mommy and Daddy's bank account because we're a UPMA member family.
Find out more at UPMA.org.
That's upma.org.
Why don't we say to the government writ large that they have to spend a little bit less?
Anybody ever had less money this year than you had last?
Anybody better have it a 1% pay cut?
You deal with it.
That's what government needs, a 1% pay cut.
If you take a 1% pay cut across the board, you have more than enough money to actually pay for the disaster relief.
But nobody's going to do that because they're fiscally irresponsible.
Who are they?
Republicans.
Who are they?
Democrats.
Who are they?
Virtually the whole body is careless and reckless with your money.
So the money will not be offset by cuts anywhere.
The money will be added to the debt, and there will be a day of reckoning.
What's the day of reckoning?
The day of reckoning may well be the collapse of the stock market.
The day of reckoning may be the collapse of the dollar.
When it comes, I can't tell you exactly, but I can tell you it has happened repeatedly in history when countries ruin their currency.
Welcome back.
To get on the show, call us on James's Dime at 1-866-986-6397.
Folks, one website you need to remember above all others tonight is LarryRayharden.com.
You can get more information about each of his three books, Path of the Devil and Fighting My Greatest Enemy, the two we've been talking about for the last couple of segments.
We're going to talk this segment about his latest book, which just came out a couple of months ago, Home is Never the Same.
But check it out there at LarryRayharden.com.
Don't forget, he may be retired from the DEA now, but he is the head of his own private investigations firm.
If you have any need for such a service, I know a guy, LarryRayharden.com.
Larry Ray, I want to transition into this book.
We could have spent a full hour, really a full show, a full three hours on the war on drugs and your observations and your eyewitness testimony and all of that.
We're trying to cover elements of your career, your reflections, obviously the border and the cartels and all of that.
I want to transition into this last book, but if you could give us just two minutes more on the war on drugs, because it's so fascinating as a listener, as a host and as a listener and as this audience, let me ask you one more question about that.
And I want to cover your latest book, your memoirs, or I wouldn't be doing my job.
But do you think the so-called war on drugs, do you think that what's going on now will change?
And has it ever been different at any other time in American history?
No.
No, I wish we could spend so much time on a man-made drug.
I'm not talking about the virus.
I'm talking about the fentanyl.
I mean, this fentanyl, I can spend a lot of time with you on that.
It's manufactured.
They won't tell you where it, but it's been manufactured out of China.
I'm sorry, it's been produced, made, and sent right into Mexico.
When I went home to Kentucky several years ago, I told my dad, I said, Daddy, look what's going on.
He said, what?
Look at these.
I mean, they're from south of the border, and they're supposed to be cutting back tobacco.
We call it Backer.
I said, look at them out there cutting the backer.
I said, actually, they're not.
But they're driving brand new pickup trucks.
They're going behind buildings.
They're meeting with people.
I know what's going on.
But people don't, they don't look for those things.
But that was a drug deal, and drugs are moving in.
When you talk about heroin, the war on drugs, the heroin, black tire heroin, where do you think it comes from?
I keep thinking people need to know that the heroin is coming from Mexico.
It's coming from Mexico.
The marijuana, of course, is all over the United States.
The cocaine comes out of South America.
It's all been sold to the highest bidder.
You know, when the cartels now, they call it on.
They don't buy that dope.
They don't buy that cocaine.
What they tell the Clemens or whatever, they say, look, we'll take the 200 kilos that you're going to bring up, but we're not going to charge you for it because we're going to take 100 kilos from you.
Okay?
So now that's, I mean, it started years ago.
But the war on drugs, I don't mean, it's just so much here that you're asking me a question.
I have a lot of passion for it, and I teach criminal justice.
I talk to them about it.
I'm surprised that I'm still teaching because I tell the truth.
The truth, always the truth, no matter what happens.
And I do.
But politics, we're killing our country.
Our country is suffocating.
And American people knows this.
And we all know this.
But with the grace of God, we keep talking about God.
God, I do.
But you know what?
Moses had his warriors.
He did.
It was Joshua.
He had people.
They're spiritual, but they were warriors.
They believed in truth.
And we need warriors like that.
And they're out there.
And I think they're pushing us so hard that they want to run this country.
They want to snap.
They want us to go into a civil war.
Man, we don't want a civil war because of human life.
Life is precious.
But yet it seemed like, and those are, and they're Americans.
These guys are Americans.
And yet, they're trying to destroy our country.
And the war on drugs, we can't stop that.
The colleges, I know, I teach.
I can't mention these names, but they warn me many times.
I cannot call a woman a woman, a student a female.
I mean, in the classroom, I mean, mom and dad, well, they're dead and gone.
But, I mean, it's just, like I said, I grew up on the creeks.
And I love everybody.
My love.
I can't help it.
It's just love.
I love everybody.
Well, even the bad guys, after I put them in handcuffs, I don't mistreat them because I want to show them what kind of people we are that we love this country.
And you can't separate.
No, this is important.
And this actually sets up what I wanted to talk about in this, our fourth and final segment.
I say this all the time.
It's almost cliche on this program when you're rolling how fast the hours seem to go by.
And I marvel fairly often, wow, is it already the last segment of this hour?
How did that happen?
But I really mean it with this.
And you can't separate who you are from your upbringing.
And so you've come full circle.
Even after all those years in law enforcement, you never forgot who you were and where you came from and the impact that that upbringing had on you.
And so this is your most recent book that just came out in December of last year, so just seven or eight months ago.
Home is Never the Same, a family's strong spiritual connection with the place where they grew up.
And I'm looking at the cover of your book here.
And again, all of these books are available at LarryRayHarden.com.
But it reminds me of the place where my grandparents were from and where my great-grandparents, how my great-grandparents grew up.
And of course, you're a generation older than me.
And so this would be about the same type of thing we're talking about.
And you grew up, and this book talks about growing up in a poor farming community in Kentucky.
My people were from rural Mississippi.
You were from rural Kentucky.
You did dirty work, shoveling animal waste from barn floors, cutting cornstalks, tobacco, milking cows, hauling hay, all these chores.
Your father and your family raised you to honor a man's word and his handshake.
And duty trumped any materialism, recreation, and luxuries.
And so here's the question.
As we talk about this book, Home is Never the Same.
Do you feel that this type of upbringing, this traditional upbringing, this all-American upbringing, helped shape the character you needed to perform and survive in the dangerous environment of the drug cartels?
And would you share some of those highlights of growing up in the rural South with your family and friends?
Yes, I will.
I tell you, I have read, I've seen a lot, and there's a big difference between North and South always.
It's just the way it is.
And I read so much material on that because why are we that way that grew up on the creeks and hollers, whether it's in Mississippi, beautiful, or Alabama, or anywhere along the creeks and hollers and so on?
We got close to nature.
We know what it means to live on taters and potatoes and tomatoes.
We know all that.
We know that.
We know what outhouses, you know, we were very fortunate.
We had not only one outhouse, but we had a house that had two.
It had a two-seater.
Seriously.
Luxury.
We never used it.
I didn't use it.
But that house that you see on that cover, that's a house that 10 people lived in.
And that's a three-room house.
Wow.
We moved there.
Hey, folks, you've got to.
Pardon me, but for no other reason, ladies and gentlemen, you've got to go to LarryRayHarden.com to take a look at the cover of this book and imagine how 10 people could have lived in that.
Oh, we lived.
And we lived.
We were all so close to each other.
Now, daddy did some whipping.
I mean, there's a story of me which I finally learned how to do the elbow twist.
And it works.
When he takes a switch from all in all, seriously, or a belt, there's a way that you've got to move your feet and you've got to scream and everything else.
But I learned that really quick.
There's things in.
No, listen, when I wrote that book, it was a Christmas book.
It was Christmas for my family, for my brothers and sisters, and for people that I went to school with in Tatersville, Kentucky, and growing up on Plum Creek and Big Plum Creek and R.T. Jennings Country Store where everybody met for Christmas.
I mean, it was just something that, or yes, ma'am, and no, sir.
Thank God dad whipped me.
Thank God the principal at the high school whipped me.
But it's just so much there how we lived.
You know, we became snake fighters.
We lived near the creeks.
I mean, it's just so much there that mama, but mama always kept us close to her spiritual belief.
Mama strongly believed in that.
Dad did too.
But dad was always working 12 hours.
Dad had to work.
And you know what?
There was no welfare.
There was nothing like that.
We had a Dr. Clem, old Mr. Skaggs, or Skaggs at Tatersville, Kentucky.
He was a doctor that if we had any kind of major problem, we went there.
And this country store, we always bought rugby baloney.
That's what I call it.
But I loved it and throw mayonnaise on some white bread and some big red with peanuts.
We just grew up very close.
And my brothers and sisters, it's just so much there.
And for some reason, people are reading this book.
And they're coming back and they say they can relate to that.
And I just had a niece came down.
She's up towards L.A.
She came down, I hadn't seen her for years, and she told me, Larry Ray, she said, I wish.
She's never grew up in the South, never been near the South.
And she told me, she just looked at me and she said, wow, you know, you've been a really good father.
I said, well, if I did, I would spank you.
You know that, don't you?
She's, oh, yeah, I know you would.
But, James, I just want to tell you, listen, I've got to give you credit, too.
What you're doing, bringing this out there.
I'm not going to let you get by just talking about me, but you really have really brought this out there, and I listened to your commercials.
I can't stand abortion.
I'm just sorry.
Life is too precious.
And I've seen things in the classroom and slides.
I mean, there's so much I can talk to you, Dod.
There's something I said yesterday that still comes back to me or two days when you talk to me.
When I was in a classroom, and I was teaching organized crime, I'm teaching this to a bunch of students.
And they all know that I'm from Kentucky.
They know that I'm out towards Tatersville, Kentucky.
Not from Louisville or Louisville, but outside of Louisville.
We've got about 30 seconds remaining, Larry Ray.
Just want to give you a heads up.
30 seconds remaining.
They asked me to, when Mr. Medicine, huh?
Okay, listen, James, thank you very much.
I wish we could have gotten to the end of it.
I was a little bit off in my timing, but listen, we'll have you back.
I want to hear the rest of that story, and I want to share it with the audience.
This show, as always, sponsored by thekosherquestion.com, thekosherquest.com.
Larry Ray Harden, our featured guest for tonight.
Wow, what a fast hour.
Even I was wrong about how much time we had left.
We'll pick up where we left off next time, and I hope next time comes soon.
LarryRayharden.com.
Check him out.
Send him an email.
Buy a book.
Larry Ray, God bless you, my friend.
Godspeed.
Thank you for your service.
Thank you for your work, your example, and remembering who you are and where you came from and writing that late book on the South.