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Aug. 24, 2025 - The Political Cesspool - James Edwards
54:46
Radio Show Hour 1 – 2025/08/23

We revisit the Battle of Charlottesville with Eddie “The Bombardier” Miller and others who were there on that fateful day eight years ago.

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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.
Another live broadcast tonight, back-to-back special weeks of programming, special insomuch as we are going to be focusing on a singular topic this evening rather than our normal variety show.
Welcome to the show.
I'm James Edwards, along with Keith Alexander this Saturday evening, August the 23rd.
Tonight, we are going to be looking back on the Battle of Charlottesville at length with people who were there on that faithful day, a little more than eight years ago.
The actual anniversary of the Battle of Charlottesville was August 12th, of course, 2017.
We were going to do this show last week, which would have been a little closer to that date, but Eric Orwald's schedule, what worked best for him to come into Memphis and do that three-hour special broadcast on the Return to the Land Project, which we aired last week.
Last week's show, the show for the 16th, worked best for him.
So we just sort of shuffled the deck a little bit, and we did him last week.
We're doing Charlottesville tonight.
But we're not just doing another Charlottesville show.
I mean, we are.
We have covered it before.
We don't cover it every year on the anniversary, but it is something that we cover because, well, for a lot of reasons.
It's very interesting.
So many things happened and changed as a result of that day.
But as far as TPC is concerned and our vast library of archives, I still think in a way, if you go in a big way, if someone asked you, show me one show that you think is TPC at its finest, where you worked best, where you just did something that was special,
and that this is the show that of all the shows that you could point to, you know, give me one.
What's one that stands out in your mind?
It's got to be that show we did that night because August the 12th, 2017 was a Saturday.
We were live that night and getting the raw eyewitness testimony of the people that were in that melee just minutes prior to that, just hours before that afternoon.
And the man who made that possible for us, if you'll remember that show, was a guy by the name of Eddie the Bombardier Miller, longtime co-host of TPC.
And I first met Eddie years before the show even first got started, back when I was running for the state house in 2002.
So I've known Eddie for right at a quarter of a century.
And for so many years, he was on with us as a co-host.
And still at that time, of course, he was.
And now he's doing his own program that precedes this one every Saturday, the Blood River Radio here on the Liberty News Radio Network.
But Eddie went to Charlottesville on behalf of the program, and he was our host on the scene there.
And we interspersed, or rather, we had alternating segments that night with guests who had regularly appeared on the program.
And then we would go to Eddie with a phone in hand, and he was just pulling in people from the event, people that had never been on radio before, just raw, unrehearsed, unscripted live reaction to that from the people who were there.
I don't want to say the nameless people who were there, but just the rank and file participants.
And so we alternated segments.
We had Michael Hill one segment.
Then we would go to Eddie live on the streets.
Of course, Michael Hill was there too, but at a different location.
Eddie live on the street.
He would pull in a young man to talk about it.
Then we would have Gene Andrews was on that night.
Brad Griffin, Simon Roche, David Duke, Henrik Palmgren.
And we would alternate between these guests you know and then Eddie every other segment.
And it was just the most amazing program.
And Wilson Smith, who wrote the first of several books from our side about Charlottesville, heavily cited that particular program in her work.
And again, it wouldn't have been possible without Eddie having been there.
And with that having been said, and that introduction having been made, and you getting a little bit of an idea about what we're going to be talking about tonight and why, let's welcome back a man to the program for the first time in a long time.
Too long, indeed.
Eddie the Bobader Miller is here with us tonight on TPC.
And it's so good to have you back.
We have had such a great time the last couple of weeks getting back together.
God, I'll tell you what, it's unbelievable if I can keep from crying.
A lot of people don't know about me.
Well, I know you know, and I know Keith Alexander here knows that I'm an emotional SOP.
But yeah, you know what?
I agree of all the radio programs I've even heard of before or since then, I think that was a defining moment in not only media or radio history, any type of media.
That was a defining moment in history in the United States as far as to white Christian patriots.
And I'll tell you what, the political suspool did it.
I could not have gone there without the political suspo, without Sam Bushman.
You and Sam supplied the money.
And I guess I should be ashamed to say I spent every nickel.
Wasn't a lot, and it doesn't go very far.
That's touch.
That was the most amazing program.
I still get chills thinking about it.
I can't believe it's been eight years.
But, you know, I'd like to cite some of these people.
You mentioned pulling people right off the street.
You know what?
I remember telling you, James, one of these kids, he was younger than my grandson.
We had guys from 16 years old that fought those godless communists up there all the way up to guys as old as I am.
And you know what?
I had a political cesspool t-shirt on.
I know what you're going to say about it.
I know what you're going to say.
And I wore that political cesspool t-shirt all over creation.
I wore it to the top of the Empire State Building and talked to two of our Jewish brethren up there.
They were asking me about political cesspool.
I said, well, what you get back?
You ought to go ahead, pull up on your computer, research political cesspool.
But that night in Charlottesville, there was this kid.
I'm going to say he was somewhere between 19 and 22 years old.
And he kept looking at that t-shirt.
So what I did, I did the only thing I tend to say he could do, I pulled that t-shirt off.
He gave it to us, signed it, Eddie the Bomberderer.
He knew you.
He recognized you, and he knew the program.
Didn't you also have that happen at a random gas station back?
Where was that at?
I'll tell you what it was.
It's where you turn off to go to Dollywood off I-40.
This was a separate occurrence, of course, and a separate occasion, but Eddie getting recognized for his work on the radio program.
He said, he recognized your voice.
Look at my voice.
Yeah, well, it's radio, not television.
Yeah, really, Eddie Bomber.
I said, yeah, close celebrity, yeah.
But that fellow took that t-shirt, political cesspool t-shirt.
It's been top of the Rockefeller's top of this rock at the Rockefeller Center in New York, top of the Empire State Building.
I peeled that shirt off.
He gave it to the, I signed it, Eddie Bomberdear Miller.
I've talked to him.
I wish I kept track with him.
But he had kind of like a trophy case, a political suspect t-shirt.
So the DPC gets all over creation.
It goes all over the world.
Well, it was an amazing show.
Keith Alexander and I were, of course, in the studio.
And we'll talk a little bit more about that.
But let's just first, let's just give this segment to you, Eddie.
Then we'll bring Keith in.
We've only got a couple of minutes.
It is great to have you back.
You know, this work that we do is high risk.
You know, there's no financial reward to speak of.
The only reward you have is the currency that comes from the respect of your peers and the people that you are fighting with.
But it is also high pressure.
And, you know, it's just great to have you back tonight.
It's great to be back.
I can get a lot.
Everybody tells me I have to give a gap, but I'm going to say this.
Way before TPC even thought of it.
I'm going to bring this to the people's mind, how me and James met.
A guy named Austin Farley.
He was running for the 7th District, this Tennessee State House.
We had, of course, met before that.
Oh, yes.
I mean, back in, you know.
We met in New York, your Campbell.
Because I'd put a campaign brochure on your door.
Yes.
And you had come back, you had found the campaign headquarters, the address at the campaign headquarters, which was within walking distance of your house.
As big as that district was, the headquarters was a block away from where Eddie lived.
And we were working that neighborhood.
And I guess we missed Eddie that night because I don't remember talking to him when I was knocking on doors.
But for anybody who didn't answer the door, I would leave some campaign information.
Well, Eddie saw the address and went over to the campaign headquarters, which was locked because we were out knocking on doors.
And he just left it.
Just a note in between the slit of the door because it was two glass doors that opened up to go into this commercial real estate bay.
And a little note just said, I would like to help you.
It had your name and number.
And that was in the summer of 2002.
And then look at everything that's happened.
I mean, that was two years before the first show.
And it's just been, it's been, it's been a lot.
And we fought the campaign with Austin Farley.
Austin Farley was a guy who helped me get the radio show going in the first place.
And then he ran for the statehouse, the same statehouse seat in 2004.
And that was the year the radio show went on the air.
It's an amazing run.
We talked about the beanfield.
People heard me talk about the beanfill.
The beanfield is so special.
You can't even describe how special it was.
It's just an old concrete block house out in the middle of a beanfield on the edge of the house.
So this is the radio station AM 1380 WLRM, which was the first station we were on in Memphis.
And Eddie's describing what the radio station looked like.
And indeed, I mean, you know, people think when you go into a TV studio or radio studio, it's just this lavish thing and everything's high-tech.
And I mean, it was certainly not that.
It was just a concrete building with a tin roof in the middle of a beanfield with this big radio tower transmitter in the back.
And that was it.
Over the edge of the Wolf River.
That's where we started.
Started deer hunt and squirrel hunt.
That's where we started the show.
Cottonmouth.
That's right.
Sometimes they would get in the studio.
Anyway, we're not going to spend the whole time down memory lane, but anytime we get together, we certainly spend a moment there.
We are going to talk about Eddie's recollections from Charlottesville and talk with others who were there on that fake Western civilization.
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All right, we're going to bring Keith Alexander in on this, but I want to kind of work through just chronologically your Charlottesville experience.
We're going to hear from a couple of other people tonight.
I had thought about doing a full-on, I mean, it is the eighth reunion.
I think maybe for the 10-year reunion of Charlottesville, because I do think it is a historical moment.
I mean, this is something that'll be in the history books, and it changed a lot of things for a lot of people.
Obviously, in many ways, bad, but in some ways, it probably helped facilitate this shift.
I think it woke up a lot of people, and the credit for that will never be properly given.
But in any event, we will work through some of that.
I was thinking about having everybody who was on the show that original night, maybe having them.
We might do that the 10-year.
I just, with you being back tonight, I wanted to just kind of spend more time, you know, just us, but we are going to hear from a few other people in short one-segment cameo appearances.
But yeah, I mean, again, just very quickly to put a pin in this, I mean, we met in my campaign for the State House in 2002, which led to us, directly led to the beginning of TPC.
And in those early, those early years, we were on 1380, this little tin radio studio out in a beanfield.
And then, of course, now we've been on AM 1600 for a long time, sister stations.
You know, just so thankful for all the people that have been a part of that journey that people never really know about, the producers, the engineers, the station managers, station owners.
Obviously, we talk about Sam Bushman a lot here with Liberty News Radio, but there's a lot of people on the local stations.
And, you know, not a lot of people have seen behind the curtain and actually been into these radio stations like the three of us have.
And anyway, it's just been unforgettable.
But let's go then and let's talk about how all this started.
So, you know, Keith, I think you and I were obviously in the studio, and we sent Eddie there because I thought it would be important to have somebody on the ground.
And he volunteered to go and was eager to do it.
And so he was there.
But I figured that it would probably be a little bit hotter than the things we'd seen before, but nobody could have anticipated what exactly happened.
And we're going to break all that down over the course of the next couple of hours.
But TPC had had experience on Matters pertaining to the preservation of Confederate monuments.
And because we'd had that experience, I was just thinking that it would be something a little similar to that, you know, certainly more heavily attended.
But, you know, we didn't expect it to be just an outright anarchy and that the police and the governor and the law enforcement would be in on it and to ensure that violence took place rather than working to prevent it.
But, you know, Eddie, you were there back in, when was it?
I'm finding it here now.
This was back in 2005.
Well, I'm going to read from our Wikipedia entry here.
Well, this actually goes back to 2005 because we'd had two instances where we got in on this.
But in 2005, well, I'll just read it here.
Half the thing in our Wikipedia entry is outdated, and the other half is also wrong.
But anyway, this is something that's almost right.
In 2005, the staff of the political cesspool organized at Confederate Park along with two other Confederacy-themed parks in downtown Memphis have been the subject of controversy for honoring Confederate soldiers and ideals.
And it talks about the people who had the local black politicians in Memphis who had been agitating against the parks to remove them and how they had brought in Al Sharpton to do a march in the summer of 2005.
And this article reads that Sharpton canceled the march after Edwards and the political cesspool staff obtained a permit to demonstrate in Confederate Park, which was located along Sharpton's planned march route.
This was something that Bill Rowland really organized, and he was the one that was the brain behind that.
And, you know, the show at large gets the credit for it.
Of course, he was the co-host of the show, and we did it through the show.
But it says that Sharpton canceled his march and settled for a protest at Forest Park.
He was going to march from Jefferson Davis Park past Confederate Park to Nathan Bedford Forest Park, all three of which existed in Memphis in 2005.
But he canceled the march because we had taken out a permit to hold what we called a vigil.
And I think, you know, terminology is important.
We're going to hold a vigil at Confederate Park.
And so, you know, this is, again, folks, the reason I'm telling you the story is because this involved Al Sharpton.
This made national news.
And the story continues here.
Estimates of attendance at the rallies vary.
According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, the political cesspool attracted 200 white counter demonstrators to the Confederate Park Vigil.
See, they used our word.
While Sharpton's protest at Forest Park attracted a few dozen black demonstrators whom Edwards referred to as rabble, the Memphis Flyer, which is an alternate newspaper here in Memphis, estimated that Sharpton had attracted slightly more than that.
In the aftermath of the city park controversy, the political cesspool won the Dixie Defender Award or received it from the Sons of Confederate Veterans.
So this was, we were only, we were not even on the air a year at this point, and we had already sort of flexed our muscles and helped stop a Sharpton march.
And we had 200 people there.
There were police protection.
I mean, they did rope off the park with, you know, police tape.
And the police made sure that the people coming into our vigil were supposed to be there.
They kept it safe.
Now, this was 2005, and this was in Memphis, a majority black city.
And then you fast forward to 2015, and this was in the aftermath of the Dylan Roof murders.
And we had organized another one working in cooperation with some SCV camps.
And we had 500 people in 2015.
And you remember that one because, Eddie, you held a flag at that particular event.
And the image of that was picked up by the Associated Press.
And I don't remember, I think it's at last count appeared in about 200 different newspapers around the world.
I remember that so well.
You know, in my opinion, we had more than 500 there, James.
It's just the second one.
The first one in 2005, we had 200.
We did it again in 2015, and that's at Forrest Park where Forrest was still buried there at the time, and that monument was still there.
At least 500 people.
That's what the media gave us credit for.
500 people.
You were there in a big way with the big flag.
I remember you and me.
You know what?
Prior to that, I remember you and me going out down there, and like a weirdo I am, I had those shorts, but I wear it a shirt and tie.
And you said that the Bobadier was the only person to get by wearing shorts, a shirt and tie.
But anyway, short-sleeve button-down shirt with a tie and shorts and a Confederate flag.
What were the dimensions of that Confederate flag you had that day?
I will say, what was it, six by four?
That's feet.
Six feet by four feet.
Yes.
And you know what?
Yeah.
Yeah, exactly.
I went all around that park with that flag, waving it back and forth, back and forth.
On downtown Memphis streets, Union Avenue.
Forest was buried, ironically, on Union Avenue.
But anyway, but we, so, and that, that, again, that is an iconic shot that an AP reporter got, and it went all over the world.
They actually used it to illustrate every story except, I think, that particular, you know, that particular event.
But the point is this.
The point is this.
We had had, you and I and Keith and the others associated with this radio program, had some pretty extensive experience organizing events in with the stated purpose of protecting and defending Confederate monuments in a majority black city, a big city like Memphis.
So when I heard about Unite the Right, which was only two years after, and by the way, of all the pro-Confederate rallies that happened in the aftermath, the immediate aftermath of the roof murders.
Now, you'll remember they used the roof murders as a cudgel to start destroying all these monuments.
And then there was a backlash to that.
And there were dozens and dozens of pro-Confederate rallies that took place in that period, the late summer of 2015.
Only one was bigger than the one we did, and it was in Ocala, Florida.
So again, we had some experience organizing this.
And when I heard about Unite the Right, and again, they're going to be removing this work of art, this Robert E. Lee monument.
And a group of people were getting together.
Jason Kessler was getting all these different people there for the purpose of defending the monument.
I just said, you know, okay, this will probably be a little bit bigger because there's so many different groups working.
I think they'll have a bigger turnout.
But, you know, I was proud of the 500 we had.
But we had done this in Memphis.
And this was going to be in Charlottesville, which I knew was a liberal city.
But I was just thinking, and that's what I was just thinking, it'll be okay.
And again, that was from a position of experience.
I mean, again, so when Keith and I stayed and you went, I was just thinking, well, we'll hear all about it.
It'll be sort of similar to what we did, but on a bigger scale.
And that'll be that.
I was wrong.
Keith, what do you remember about that show?
I remember Eddie being in the middle of, you know, everything.
We were the only radio program or television, any media, electronic media, that was actually had somebody right down there in the middle of the battle going on.
Doing it live.
We were talking with people that had just been attacked.
We were talking to people just before they got attacked.
Eddie had, he was not just trying to pick out big names.
He picked out people that were actually in the fray, and it was incredible.
It was the best coverage, I think, that I've ever seen on that.
And, you know, you were talking about that you thought this was just going to be another situation like the ones we had at Nathan Bedford Forest Park and, you know, Forest Park in Memphis and at Confederate Park.
I had a foreboding that the left was really gearing up for this thing.
And they were.
And they conspired with the government of the city of Charlottesville and the state of Virginia to basically trap people down there.
And to my mind, it's still amazing that Eddie did not get arrested down there.
But he was down there.
You know, he had a press pass and he did have his, you know, political cesspool t-shirt on, so he had some bona fides on that, but he was actually from the media, you know, the news media.
But Eddie was probably the only person on our side of the news media that was fighting there in that, you know, or, you know, giving our side of the story there.
And I think it's incredible.
He did the best job of anybody.
And we're going to get into that.
I didn't intend to take that long sort of setting the table, talking about those past experiences, but those past experiences that we had a hand in here in Memphis sort of informed what we were thinking and anticipating going into that.
And now we will talk to our man on those past appearances for the world.
With Eddie when we come back.
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A historic diplomatic meeting at the White House on Monday.
And now President Trump has started arranging a meeting between Ukraine's Zelensky and Russia's Putin in an effort to end the war between their two countries.
These are the heads of major countries.
President Trump hosting Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky and seven European leaders to discuss how to end the war with Russia.
All of us would obviously prefer an immediate ceasefire while we work on a lasting peace.
But he told them.
In a very significant step, President Putin agreed that Russia would accept security guarantees for Ukraine.
Adding, the European nations are going to take a lot of the burden.
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After the session, President Trump said he again spoke to Putin to begin arrangements for a face-to-face meeting between the Russian leader and Zelensky and Thomas Washington.
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Kim Jong-un has condemned South Korean U.S. military drills.
He was inspecting his most advanced warship being fitted with nuclear-capable systems as he vowed a rapid expansion of his nuclear forces to counter rivals.
Kim's visit to the western port of Nampo on Monday came as the South Korean and U.S. militaries kicked off their annual large-scale summertime exercise.
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Hey, friends, it's James.
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All right, and welcome back.
And so what we're going to do now is sort of transition into Keith and I doing a direct Q ⁇ A with Eddie on his recollections and remembrances.
We're going to take this sort of in chronological order now, starting with him preparing for the trip, driving out there, who he went with, what that experience was like, then getting there on the ground, and of course the events of the day itself and then the radio program that followed on TPC that night.
But I did think it was important to sort of just set the stage there and talk about the fact that we had had this experience at a pretty high level, you know, 200 and 500 people respectively over the course of a decade, two different events and obtaining a permit, holding a demonstration like that in a hostile city, and everything coming off just fine.
I don't think anybody else had done anything like that short of the SCV that got numbers like that.
And so we had done that.
And so, but of course, that was just TPC, and that was not people like Kessler working with a lot of different groups.
And then, well, we know what happened.
Let's go back now, Eddie, to the beginning on that.
And you said you wanted to go, got a little bit of money, and the press credentials came in.
We taught you how to use a lanyard.
You remember that?
I never heard the term.
I didn't know what the hell the word Lanyard was until Sam and you, Tim said, you're going to have press credentials.
And Sam said something like, I don't want you to go up there and act a fool and get us kicked off the air.
Get me up there as a gentleman.
And I did.
I'll make this short.
I brought me a brand new white shirt.
You looked sharp that day in the parking garage.
And I had brand new pants, brand new, brand new leather made in the United States of America's shoes.
They fit me from Cabela's, and I'll be damned to leave me up there after the bathroom.
Well, there was a lot of, you know, no plan survives the battle.
And I'm sure there's a lot of things that didn't go according to plan that day.
Now, Keith said something in just a moment ago.
I mean, obviously there wasn't any reason for you to be arrested, but it was very arbitrary and it was very random.
Who got called into that civil suit, for instance, and who didn't.
I mean, it just didn't really make any sense.
But nevertheless, you were ready to go, and you didn't go alone.
You went with some of our comrades and compatriots.
And so talk about the trip over to Charlottesville, where you stayed that first night, the eve of August the 12th.
It was amazing.
It started when we did a broadcast with Tumpk, Alabama, and I met Rich Hamlin then there.
He kind of strong-armed me to get into all heck up.
Look at the South, yeah.
Look at the South.
But anyway, then we met later.
They kept talking about this place called Charlottesville.
So then we decided, I said, hey, I want to go, man.
That sounds like there's going to be some action there.
So what I did, I drove over to a place called Cookville, Tennessee, because most of these guys live in Nashville.
And I got there.
I didn't want to break that trip up a little bit where it wouldn't have to be so far.
You mentioned it was a hell of a long ways up there.
So the next morning, Friday morning, Rich Hamlin, Gene Andrews, Simon Rose of South Africa, Matt Goodwin picked me up there.
We instantly bonded and rode all the way up to Charlottesville.
Can you imagine this, folks?
I mean, imagine being in the car with Simon Roach, Gene Andrews.
Gene Andrews is a regular on TPC.
He's on with Eddie every week on Blood River in the third hour, almost every week.
Rich Hamblin, a great friend.
Simon Roach from South Africa.
And then, you know, the other gentleman you mentioned, he's a friend of ours as well.
That had to be just a fun bonding experience, just the car ride alone.
And of course, you know, when you go through great situations like this, that has a bonding effect as well.
Well, you know that better than anybody.
You're a Vietnam veteran, for God's sake.
So you know, you know, how when the heat gets turned on, it forges folks together.
But I would just imagine when it was all still ahead of you that Friday driving into Virginia with Rich and Simon and Gene, and that had to be a pretty hopeful and fun, good time.
It was.
It was.
You know, quickly, real quick, when we got to this place, it was out in the Blue Ridge Mountains, look like, and it was some type of religious retreat.
Where did you stay at?
And this is funny.
This was funny.
We had some of the roughest, toughest looking guys you ever seen in your life, you know, swatch tickets and all kinds of stuff from every kind of group you can imagine.
And we were all together trying to act like gentlemen, and they're giving us the rundown, what to expect when we went to Charlottesville.
Then they had the staff, I can hear it make this quick.
They had the staff member of this religious retreat, and he was talking to us.
I thought, who the hell do you think you're talking to?
He says, now you can go down to Serenity Pond, and you can take the path down there, and you can light candles.
If people don't know what you're explaining, this is where you were staying with a contingent associated with, loosely or otherwise, the League of the South.
And they had rented, yeah, and some other groups as well, as you just described, but they had rented out some sort of a campground, cabins-type, you know, rugged setting.
And the proprietor of this campground is saying if y'all wanted to go meditate or go by the pond of meditation.
They were guys with swat stickers and spikes gloves.
And I'm thinking, who the hell do you think you're talking to?
That was the funniest thing you'd ever seen.
But when they started with a guy named Ike Baker pills up this pick sticker, he says, this is illegal, but if they get me down there, if they're kicking me to death, I'm going to pull out with this right here.
It's illegal.
He was telling us what's illegal is not you.
In the state of Virginia, he said, you can't hit anybody above the shoulders with a club.
That's the penalty.
If you hit them below the shoulders, he went through all this stuff, and I'm thinking, well, how the hell is this guy missing all this?
Who does Hazy think he's talking to?
And then I started thinking, you know what?
This is going to get pretty rough in Charlottesville.
Ike Baker had, they had already, Ike Baker used to be like the second expand of the League of the South behind Dr. Hill.
They had already gone in and scouted out the places there, and they were telling us, it's going to get pretty rough.
You know, if they get you, he was telling you what to do if they get you down the ground, stomping you, et cetera, et cetera.
Now, again, all of this was purely defensive.
And I just need to be clear.
Nobody, even these rough riders that you ran into there sort of unexpectedly, nobody was planning to go in there and cause trouble, but they were expecting trouble.
And I don't want to say I was naive because, again, we established our bona fides there and organizing things somewhat similar.
I could have never foreseen that the law enforcement would be positioned in a ray like a Roman phalanx and just watching the Black Lives Matter and the antifa thugs just beat the hell out of people who had a permit to be there.
And of course, Jason Kessler, even at the 11th hour, the ACLU helped him win a decision in court to allow that thing to go on.
And then cops just watching people get pummeled and just watching from feet away.
Anyway, but people, I guess smarter than me, had anticipated that things, and so you had a little briefing there that night on if you do get attacked, this is how you defend yourself in a way that's legally sound.
As legally as possible.
But so in any event, that is the night before.
Keith, you got any questions before we move into the day itself?
Just listen.
So y'all are there, and then the next morning.
So again, you had been to a League of the South meeting not long before Charlottesville in June.
So this was just two months prior.
And so you had traveled with Rich and Gene, great guys.
It's the best that I have.
And Gene's another Vietnam vet just like you.
Gene, I'll tell you what, I was back.
Y'all both served Uncle Schmoo Mule.
Yes, we do.
Yeah, we both did our thing for Zionism.
I remember I remember you deadpanning years ago.
This is at least 10 years ago on the show.
The topic of Vietnam came up, and you don't talk about it a lot.
I mean, in terms of your personal experiences there.
But I remember it was a little bit of a flippant comment, but we were talking about, I can't remember who we were talking about.
We were talking about just wars and all these wars that America's been in that they shouldn't have been in.
And I said, Eddie, you were in Vietnam.
Who'd you fight for?
He said, the military industrial complex.
Yep, you got there, right?
Goldman Sox, you know, all the good, good, the, the men, the tiny, the men that wear tiny hats.
But these are the people that were there, though.
I mean, you know, again, I think Trump probably said it best.
There were good people on both sides.
I don't know if there were really good people on the other side.
In fact, I doubt that.
But I know there were good people on our side.
I know there were good people on our side.
Maybe a couple of bad ex too.
If you're going to have hundreds of people, and this whole thing about everybody was in conspiracy with one another, if you don't even know each other, had no communication with them, you were in conspiracy with them.
This whole crazy legal reality that came from Charlottesville by the time they got done with it.
But we're talking about people like you and Gene, okay?
Rich Hamblin.
I mean, these are people who are just great people.
I mean, you and Gene, veterans for, you know, the United States, for better or worse, and going there to defend the monuments to an American hero, okay, Robert E. Lee, one of the great American heroes of all time, and certainly one of the most Christ-like.
And so that's what we were there for and what you were there for, and what many were there for.
I can't speak for everybody, but certainly most people on our side were there for that.
The other side was there to harm, to cause trouble, and to use the criminally corrupt courts.
We didn't know it on the eve of Charlottesville, but all this was laying in wait.
All this was laying in wait.
But you get there the next morning, and as we were saying, you had traveled with members of the League of the South.
Yeah, go ahead.
Those people, in contrast to the good people you talked about, and I'm not saying we were saints, but by and large, most of the gals I rode with were hardcore Christians.
But you know what?
Those people, it didn't take you long at all.
I make this quick.
Those people there, most of those people I saw arrayed against us were there to hurt us.
They hated our guts.
They hated, even the white people there hated themselves for being white.
The hatred was this, you could touch it, you could smell it, you could feel it.
They wanted us dead.
Visceral hatred, palpable hatred.
And so the next morning, you are there with the League of the South, and we established why you were staying with them.
You had met.
And it's hard to believe now.
It just seems like all of us, now, I've known you and Keith, you know, for coming up on a quarter century now, but it seems like everybody we know, everybody would have always known them, but I guess you were just meeting some of these people for the first time.
I'm sure you hadn't met Simon, you know, before that summer and Rich and some of the others, even though they'd been around.
But that's why you traveled with that particular contingent.
And so the next morning, you go and you're looking sharp in your legitimate AM radio press credentials and your nice button-down shirt and your slacks.
And you're there.
There's a phenomenal picture right before the fray of you in a parking garage getting ready to walk down to the area where everybody, you know, I still to this day certainly expected even that morning, I thought we'd hear some pretty interesting stories, but I thought that we would talk with people who had given speeches.
I certainly thought that the event would have been allowed to take place.
So you're in the parking garage the morning of August the 12th, 2017 in downtown Charlottesville, and then you start walking.
What happens?
You know, immediately, immediately after we left the parking garage, we started catching a flak from the Antifa, the Black Lives Ladder, and the demon-infested people on either side of the street from us.
Do you believe it was a demonic element in play?
I could see it in their eyes.
There's one particular woman, and I've talked about this several times before.
She had war paint on her body.
I'm going to say she was probably approximately six feet tall.
She was big for a woman, athletic looking.
And her eyes, I saw directly into her eyes.
Her eyes were not, I'm not kidding.
You kidding you not.
She was not human.
Part of this is kind of a funny story.
She came streaking out of the people, the populace on the sidewalk, out into the fray, into us, into the League of the South.
But she ran into the worst, one of the worst people she could possibly run into.
She ran into Ike Baker, all 350 pounds of him.
And she bounced off of him like a damn ping-pong ball.
And people proceeded to step on her accidentally, of course.
But people were screaming, and already the pepper spray was flying.
What saved me?
I had no helmet.
How long after you exited the parking garage and actually got on the city streets walking to war, what was then named Lee Park, Robert E. Lee Park, or that beautiful monument that has now been melted down by these people.
How long was it when you were out in the open on the open streets before they started attacking you with projectiles and urine and feces and everything else?
Almost weeks.
Almost immediately.
I say.
They were lying the street waiting for anybody that they thought were there to honor the Lee monument.
And they immediately, it wasn't just shouts.
It wasn't just cursing and chanting as they were want to do, but they were actually attacking, physically attacking, throwing.
They were throwing.
One of the things they threw, and I wouldn't have thought about this.
They took these like 12 to 16 ounce water bottles as you go by bottled water at Kmart, Walmart, what Kmart's not around anymore.
And they put them in deep freezes and froze them all night long.
Oh, God.
They were throwing bottles full of frozen water.
That's as hard as every bit as hard as a cement brick.
Yes.
And they were throwing bricks.
And they had clubs and they had CS.
If you ever smell CS gas, you'll never forget it.
I don't know where they got the CS gas.
They had gas everywhere.
My arms got burnt.
And the cops are just watching this.
Yes.
Never lifted a finger.
They never lifted a finger.
I think that's why we had to do this this year again, even eight years in.
It's just, it's a story that you have to continue to tell or people will forget.
That is just amazing.
Law enforcement, all the way up to the governor of Virginia, then Terry McCullough, then Governor McClure.
All of these people in collusion to allow this to happen.
Have you ever seen law enforcement watch people throw these things, launch gas, throw urine feet?
Well, I guess anybody who was around in the civil rights movement would have saw it because that's what the blacks were doing then, too.
This isn't new.
But have you ever seen it in person, ladies and gentlemen?
That's what I'm saying.
Well, a lot of people saw it in person that day.
And it was the good guys, by and large, and that was the people that were on our side.
But anyway, continue on, Eddie.
The experience there of what was happening.
You know, immediately, one of the saddest things I saw, I saw young men much younger than me, you know, 16, 18, 20, 22 years old.
The worst thing I saw, I just see people getting the hellbeat out of them, but the worst thing I saw was the chemicals thrown in our guys' eyes.
And I'm thinking, dear God, they're going to go blind.
And, you know, we had a medical establishment back in Lee Park.
Keep in mind, we hadn't got to Lee Park yet.
And people were just screaming in agony.
Kids had this crap, all kinds of crap in their eyes.
God only knows what it was, probably Clorox, Drano, all kinds of other chemicals, the regular dive store pepper spray, where he would get pepper spray never bought any.
That was horrible.
And when we finally could get, when we, I say we, when the medical people could finally get these guys in the park, they were pouring milk in their eyes, doing everything they could.
But yeah, people were getting the hell knocked out of them with clubs and bricks and being attacked by fists.
It was some of the worst crap I've ever seen.
But I'm so proud of being a white southerner.
And I'll say this, and I'm borrowing this phrase from Matt Goodwin.
Matt Goodwin was one of the guys I rode with the Charlottesville Road back.
He still comes on Bloodgirl Radio every now and then.
But he said, we marched over those southern bitches going into the park, and we marched over them out of the friggin' park against incredible odds.
We were outnumbered, God only knows, 10, 20, 30 to 1.
And we marched over their ass into the park.
We marched over their ass coming out of the park.
By God.
Well, I'd say one thing.
Do you have anything, Keith?
Just very, think about that.
Think about that.
So you had to march all the way to the park through this never-ending barrage of physical attack.
I mean, when people are throwing bricks at you, you could get hospitalized.
You could get killed.
Sure.
A lot of people got hurt that day.
The only people that they talk about being hurt were the people who were causing the trouble, but a lot of good people got hurt that day, too.
But they allowed you to fight all the way through that to the park, then canceled it.
Now, they knew they were going to cancel it.
That isn't just something that happened.
This whole plan had been thought out well in advance by the government and law enforcement of Charlottesville and the state of Virginia.
They let you go through all that to get to the park, and then they canceled it and said you have to disperse immediately and then go all the way back through it again, going through it.
They could have just canceled it before anybody arrived, and that would have saved all of that, but then they couldn't have laid the trap in the court, which they thought would They wanted us hurt.
They wanted us hurt and killed.
I guarantee WWT, make no mistake, people, the people that organized that rally against us, that riot against us, that attack against us, they wanted some of us dead, if not all.
The hatred was just palpable.
And you could hear the speeches they gave.
Other fellow white people talked about us like we were worsening Satan.
Well, they worship Satan, but I'll say this one more time.
I know I'm repeating myself, but they wanted as many of us people hurt as killed as possible.
They warned the people that they wore the Robert E. Lee types, the Stonewall Jackson types.
They wanted the people that looked forward.
They wanted Christians hurt bad as possible, if not dead.
Well, what I recall is that you were having to pass not just through an angry mob of rabble, anti-fund people like this, but law enforcement was there to make sure that if there was a fight and if your guys got the better of it, they were going to come down on you.
So, see, there was no, you're in a head-zide wind until you lose a situation from the other side's vantage point.
Now, I was one of the people that's old enough to remember the civil rights movement, and I knew how these things operated.
Yeah, see, the thing is, in the civil rights movement, you saw when the police reacted to the demonstrators, how they tried to quell their activities and whatnot, but you never saw what provoked the police.
So I was expecting a scenario like that.
And quite frankly, it was as bad as any of the demonstrations and riots during the civil rights movement.
This is what, but see, the left has that down path.
They used to have this place called the Highlander Folk School in Mont Eagle, Tennessee, where they would run people like the Freedom Riders and whatnot and teach them how to manipulate the cameras and how to manipulate the news coverage so that they look good and their adversaries look bad.
Well, this is exactly what happened at Charlottesville as well.
And, you know, these people that were coming there just to protest, for example, on behalf of Robert E. Lee, they just, you know, they had no idea what they were walking into.
And at least most of them didn't.
Now, you had some people that had experience, but see, those people were in the minority.
A lot of people were just, like Eddie said, a bunch of nice Christian white people that were offended that Robert E. Lee's statue was going to be taken down.
Now, I remember shortly after this, there was a, I guess, a demonstration by our side at Shelbyville, Tennessee.
And nothing came of that.
And then nothing came of that because the police did their job and separated the two groups of protesters, the pro and the anti-protesters, and nothing happened.
On the other hand, I lay all of the violence, all of the damage, all of the injuries that happened at Charlottesville directly at the feet of the Charlottesville Police Department and the law enforcement from the state of Virginia.
This is, was it Ralph Northam?
Was that the guy that was the governor at the time, or was it McAuliffe?
Okay, well, all of these people were, you know, even the ones that were spot.
I think McAuliffe was a Democrat and Northam was a Republican, but no nearsighted man could tell any difference in the politics of the two.
This whole thing was a trap set in a college town, which is like somebody said that Charlottesville is like a little ivy-covered North Korea, like so many college towns are.
And I don't think that people who came there, like your friends, you know, had any idea what type of situation they were walking into.
They thought it was going to be just another small southern town.
Well, I think, you know, again, though, the Confederate monuments were not coming down in Corinth, Mississippi.
They weren't coming down in rural southern places.
This is where they were coming down.
So this is where the folks had to be.
And it was happening in Charlottesville exactly because of the reason you mentioned it's a liberal, left-wing college town.
But this was a beautiful monument to Lee, and that's where it was.
So you got to go to where the, you know, if you're going to fight, you got to go to where the battle is.
And it's like we said to Eric Orwald last week, if you base your decision to engage on only the worst possible outcome that could happen, nobody's ever going to do anything.
Although with Charlottesville, I think if you got all of our smartest people into a room and said, I want you to brainstorm the worst possible outcome that can come to this, they would have fallen short of what actually happened in the long run.
But Eddie, we've got about a minute left.
The music's about to start playing.
A final word on this.
We're going to continue this for the next two hours, deep dive into this, really taking our time, sinking our teeth into it.
Eddie's going to hear from a couple of people he traveled with before the end of the show.
Tonight, anything else you want to add?
You're still in that moment where you're marching towards the park.
You are being attacked.
Any other memory that you can recall just from that particular point of time during the day that you'd like to share that we haven't talked about yet?
I'd just like to say I knew immediately how proud I was of the people that I rode up there with and the people that we walked into the park with because nobody broke and run.
Nobody panicked.
You know, we tried to take direction for the police.
For instance, Gene Andrews had told the police that, you know, after the announcement had been made, the governor had declared a state of emergency.
They said we had to get out of the outside.
Governor McCullough, yeah.
And, you know, and Gene, and to show you how much vitriol there was against us, even the police were against us at that time.
Gene talked about not long ago how he was talking to, I think, a highway patrolman, and the guy was pretty nice.
And he said, Gene said, well, Will, once you lead us out of the park, we'll be glad to leave.
And he said, no, no, you get your FSF out of this park, and we'll go back to the LIBE to get you to be arrested.
That's what hate cops are saying.
Even the cops were hate this, Gene.
James.
Did you have any conversations with any of the law enforcement?
Because it was not just, I mean, it was all different kinds of law enforcement there.
I mean, all different agencies, state, local, local, state, and federal.
I spent my time talking.
Trying to survive.
And I interviewed a college professor up there.
I'll tell you about that later.
All right.
Well, listen, this is why, I hope you can see why, folks.
I hope you're enjoying this, of course.
This is why we're doing three hours on this.
One hour just isn't enough.
And Eddie's back tonight, and the spotlight is on him.
You can hear from some other people as well.
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