290: An Insider's Look at Conservative Politics and Policy -with Michael Johns

All right. And with that, returning to The Brian Nichols Show from I think back in 2018. Michael John's welcome back to the program.

Wow. That's, that's amazing how time flies? I mean, a few years gone by in

2018. It was what, three years ago? It's already got quick. where's where's my comment?

We're in the middle of the what appear to be a blossoming and hugely successful Trump first term? Do you think about

what happened?

Well, we're gonna talk about that. A few things that you may have heard of have developed, and none of them are very positive. They're all very threatening, and, and I start, unlike some conservatives, not as much with rage. At the other side, I sort of have just come to expect the worst out of them. But I have great disappointment, frankly, in way, what I have always thought was a functioning conservative movement is handling what could not be greater threat to our sovereignty, to our electoral process, representative democracy, the things that are at the heart of our Constitution. And what I think is, you know, instinctually been more than instinctually, based on knowledge that I've that I've acquired for what that's worth with 20 years of healthcare experience, and considerable degree of knowledge of how the Chinese Communist Party operates, you know, an operating thesis that this pandemic undeniably came out of the Wuhan Institute of ideology. And, you know, the fact that we've been playing games on that fact for a year and a half is outrageous.

So Mike, let's let's kind of start here for because it's been, like I said before, a while since we last spoke for the the new audience members who aren't familiar with your past, let's go and do a quick sparknotes in terms of your history, and then let's dig into, I would love to start off, we'll talk about

COVID logically, because I don't really know how else go for it directly. You know, they tell people to write resumes dramatically, I suppose maybe you could do that with me. Because I would say it's not just the duration of time that I've been doing these things, but the versatile range of so here's how it started, essentially, I grew up in Lehigh Valley area of Pennsylvania, which, you know, well, being a resident of, you know, the greater fantastic city of Philadelphia, loved by me, beloved by you, not beloved by anyone else, it's always Philly, against the world, right with the Eagles. But, you know, I, around 11th grade or so he started to sort of awaken from my juvenile slumber and pay attention of the world. And one of the things that happened most immediately and significantly, right around me, was, you know, the multi year closure of bethlem steel, which was then one of the largest if not the largest employer in the region, providing really, you know, well paying jobs for hard working blue collar you know, American patriots mostly, and blue and, you know, that company built some of the most iconic infrastructure in this country and including some of the, you know, Golden Gate Bridge Verizon, Oh, wow. You know, many of the the much of the military equipment cleaning that we utilize to win World War Two, you know, if you ever listen that song, Youngstown, by Bruce Springsteen, where he talks about, you know, the lyrics, the the the verbiage of, you know, working to make the bombs that one our country's war, and then returning to find a country that had sort of forgotten them. And so this was long before young I think, I don't think youngest I don't know if youngest comes out yet. But I anyway, this was sort of my experience with Youngstown and in Allentown, which itself got a groovy Billy Joel song, around around the same theme and I watched the impact this had it did not Fortunately, it affect me immediately in any, in any significant way, my parents were always at my sporting events. And, you know, my, my mom was a middle school school, then junior high, they called it, but teacher and my dad moved around between a bunch of jobs predominantly in publishing. You know, so I kind of identified as kind of a part of that demographic, you know, and both geographically and from growing up, and certainly not being, you know, I grew up in a rugged, rough kind of environment, that could have been a lot more rugged, a lot more rough and not, you know, trying to make it more than it is, but, and I played sports and all those things. And we, I started to just look at this bethlem steel situation, let me understand this. So we have Asian economies that are assisting their steel companies, which was then identified and still shouldn't be identified as a, as a blossoming industry, crucial infrastructure or end to the future. And we're doing what nothing, we're just kind of wishing these people well, or, you know, telling them maybe let some reeducation program or, I mean, honestly, they always try to, you know, put on, you know, a nice look and appearance to these closures, but you never get these companies jobs, or that sort of compensation back. And this hits hard. I mean, so you take a typical family, you know, that grew up around where I was, who may have had, you know, maybe a dad working there, and, you know, all of a sudden, the mom's got to go look for work, which maybe she didn't really want to do, maybe she wanted to be more of a full time parent, at home, or,

you know, or the, or the dad's got to kind of like, try to find some other type of work. And, you know, the steel industry is really complex. I mean, people don't study it, don't know that, but it's not the sort of thing you just kind of wake up and start doing. And it's been a long time learning it, it's hard work. But once these people wanted to do it, and became good at it, and it became part of their like DNA. So that was the first time I said, What is our government doing? And I know that as a libertarian, you might believe that nothing, maybe it was, you know, or, or maybe it's just one of those difficult questions. But so then that's experience one experience to in, I then attended the University of Miami, in Coral Gables, Florida, completely different environment. I mean, night and day, really, you know, South Florida was doing very well, back then. It had, you know, real blossoming Center City in Miami. And it also had many Cuban Americans Cuba being obviously an issue, right back in the news over the last few days. And I would, you know, kind of some of my better friends and I would just, you would sort of have a fraternity party, small talk and things like that. And inevitably, especially get it was my first exposure, really, to people that came from such dramatically different background than then I had, and it's certainly an argument in support of diversity being a valuable trait. At least in this case, I I was just glued to it. I could not, you know, I knew communism was bad. I never had read about it, but I certainly never recall any courses on it. I never could have said if you told me that the communism and killed 100 million people. You know, I'm back in my freshman year of college, I'm quite sure I would not have had any idea of the magnitude of human cost that it this perverse system of government has imposed on people who world. So when I heard these stories, you know, which included both the downside of having, you know, generations of lands stolen, of people being deceived and lied to by Castro or the violence that was inherent in Castro. The Revolution and the way he use propaganda to bring people to this ideology which no one in the right mind would have done voluntarily. I again started to ask myself the same question on a very different issue. Wasn't government doing something about this? Why are we just letting you know, these millions of people 90 miles off our shores suffer under this tyranny that we all viewed, I think correctly, that none as a threat, in the sense that everyone knew of the Cuban Missile Crisis, and everyone knew of the Soviet Union's aggressive behavior in our hemisphere. So I dived right into things. I mean, I did, I went through the National journalism center program program that I have routinely spoken very highly of that is in Northern Virginia. Now, it used to be on Capitol Hill for aspiring, I guess, I don't want to call them conservative journalists, but non progressive journalists, people who are going to actually do the job not to impose their ideology and others work, you know, there was Stan Evans, and Stanton Evans, who was a big conservative author. Through the intercollegiate Studies Institute, I ultimately went out to mocassin, Michigan met Russell Kirk, who was one of the leading paleo conservative thinker that time, came in contact and was reading, start reading like commentary magazine and Norman Podhoretz, probably the leading neoconservative at that time, and I didn't graduate immediately to any niche of conservatism. But I immediately grip it decided that I was enhanced by communist

that what was being done to these people was wrong, that the hard working people of the rust belt, where I grew up, seemed to not be being treated fairly. A term, Trump ended up using good pride when I would have used back then as well. And that led you know, in turn into me diving into things like I always do pretty aggressively. I, I went out with the Contras in Nicaragua, with a fellow student from George Washington University, is now a leading foreign policy expert in Washington, DC. And we spent a week out on the front lines to my knowledge to this day, and I just did an appearance a few months ago on one American news, really, for the first time talking about, you know, kind of like how we came to size. You know, I think I was 19 he was like, maybe 21, we concluded this was a good idea to do, and we had no fear whatsoever, you know, that we did it. And we came back and we told the story of the Reagan Doctrine, not in a hypothetical way, not in an academic way, you know, really relayed from the mouths of the people who lived it, and who were, you know, engaged in that conflict against the the Soviet and Cuban backed Sandinista dictatorship. Incredibly, then run by Daniel Ortega, and to this day still run by Daniel Ortega. And I didn't go out of the niche areas in Nicaragua, like the story of Violeta Chamorro and la prensa, which was one of their only independent newspapers, still publishing constantly harassed by the Marxists and I liberation theology, which I hadn't ever really come to know or pay much attention to. I dived into. And then yeah, there were just some really iconic names. active in that in that generation of of upcoming conservative activists, journalists, political leaders, etc. I did a second internship, then next summer with my congressman from Pennsylvania. A guy named Don Ritter, who was is just I think, all older than one of the gives you I think, at the time, the only scientist in the US Congress. He was immensely interested in the climate debate but wasn't like it for rhetoric or partisan points, like he really understood the science of it, and where some of the extremist positions on both sides were falling short, and he spoke Russian fluently and He also was a champion of the Reagan Doctrine. And was probably one if you saw the movie Charlie Wilson's war, which if you're interested in that era, it's a great movie to watch with. Tom Hanks playing congressman Charlie Wilson, in the sort of depicted is leading the charge to get us aid in the Mujahideen in Afghanistan after the Soviet invasion. But Ritter was, in my view, Justice is just as effective and and was on the frontlines that that battle. So let me run through this. So there I go, you know, I graduated with a degree in economics from University of Miami. I did a summer abroad at Cambridge University in the UK, where I was forced Darwin

impact on just about every conceivable academic discipline you could imagine, again, and even then, I'm not sure that I really thought through the broad ramifications of that. But you know, like these academics had, you know, felt the Darwin impacted everything. Darwin, you know, impacted the humanities Darwin impacted the economy. The survival of the fittest, it was, it was at the time, I could decide in an uneasy feeling about it. And yet, you know, I went to Darwin's house, a lot of the UK, so some Europe. So I graduated, and now it's, I'm pondering like, should I get into a few of schools, and I wasn't terribly enthusiastic about being an attorney. It seemed like a lot of time to spend a lot of money to spend to go do that and not be in love with it. But I was in love with Reagan. Who was then in his second term. I believed he had the country largely on the right course, but sort of like the Trump term. You know, he also had people in his administration didn't subscribe to his vision. And were there was, you know, an internal struggle and battle within the Republican Party itself that so if you go, I started looking around and dinesh d'souza, probably, I would suppose the, one of the best selling non fiction authors of our time at this point, and also a successful filmmaker, and now a podcaster, as well. So you have competition. He was someone I knew from when he was at Dartmouth, and I kind of reached out to him and somehow learned that there was an opening for an editor at policy review magazine, which the Heritage Foundation was then publishing was their flagship publication. And I was hired there as an editor. We had a great team, you know, so Dinesh is someone, many people have read and and I've heard speak. And you know, that was a great interaction. He and I were friends and always talking about these issues. And not from the same background. He was a guy from Mumbai, and I was a guy from outside downtown parts of India. So that was a little bit different than a few other people in there, who were just incredibly bright that I learned a lot from I started integrating in the heritage foundation with some other departments. I went to Africa a few times. And Asia, and the former Soviet Union during the Cold War, Moscow and what was in Leningrad, and I got one of the foreign policy analysts in the foreign policy and Defense Department left to go work for the bush quayle reelection campaign, and I applied for that job and got it, which was awesome. It was 111 of the most enjoyable jobs I've ever had. And I handled foreign policy for a considerable part of the world, like a lot of the parts that people didn't really want to want to work on South Asia, parts of Latin America, Caribbean and very heavy on Africa. I went out with Jonas and MD who was less than perfect but us dact We are in fighting our Cold War War vows and went out the CM forces in Cambodia. And, you know, started writing really extensively, the, you know, for their at its foundation policy papers that you use as a foreign policy analyst. And speaking on these issues, and you know, I just had boundless energy that time. So I thought which confuses me about today, because it seems to me and we have a lot of conservatives who sort of do just enough to get by, whereas I was always looking for what more could I do, who else can I help? It wasn't just about me, I loved the idea of feeling that I was part of a bigger movement, I feel that was part of the data.

So, ultimately, the cold war ends. And, you know, I, those are some core issues of mine, I had an opportunity presented to go work with Governor Tom Kane, who you may recognize not just as, as a successful t term governor in New Jersey, and Republican who could win statewide there. But also, he went on to chair ultimately, the 911 Commission, and I did a lot of the outreach for him on his on a lot of his board memberships. He was chairing a innovative educational, generally pro choice pro charter school effort. He was involved in an environmental or a group that that I worked on each he believed chaired jack Kemp's low and Low Income Housing Commission. Everybody wants low income housing, but nobody wants to put it in their areas that it's an ongoing, real serious policy challenge that conservatives need to look more closely at. You know, like section eight housing and things like that. And then I helped get him on board of the National Endowment for Democracy, of which aside from the few trips that he had taken as governor for trade purposes was the first time he really dug into foreign policy. And when you think about just kind of being in the right place at the right time, I've thought about that, like, Well, you know, 911 happens, Kissinger gets appointed and ultimately is conflicted on it because of his business dealings with the Saudis. And they turned McCain and because he fortunately had this foreign policy experience, in addition to his overall political policy and organizational management skill sets. I read it an op ed for the New York Times for him on why I thought bush 41 deserves another four years. I wish I could find that piece. He's going to be in pretty crucial part of my life. I laid out like three main arguments, you know, as to why bush was better on these are important issues then Bill Clinton was and I think it was like the economy, national security foreign policy. And I think they might have looked at education and environment as third and maybe some of the the vast experience that bush had, I mean, because you know, whatever you think of him and he's obviously less popular in this era than it was back then. 90% prove we're heading after liberated Kuwait. He was an incredibly credentialed and skilled leader. Yeah, run the CIA run the RNC, one of the first envoys we had to China knew or what about China. And I was hired as a White House speechwriter to President Bush, who then goes on to lose to Clinton 93, I go to work for a place called the International republican Institute, which is funded by the US State Department, USAID agency for national development, I go all over the world, telling the emerging democracies in the post Cold War at structure civil society and how to build democracies, which seems pretty pompous and mean. Now, given what we've just gone through here on Nov. Three, it might be you, I look forward to hearing your view on that as well. But, you know, so I developed program ideas work a lot on empowering women's organizations, which women are suppressed in a lot of parts of the world and really in ways that are profoundly negative but on, obviously the individual basis but even in a collective You know, national and country races. And, you know, when elections themselves, I was in Nam Nubia for the first independent election that they had when they broke away from South Africa.

In fact, I wrote a big wall street journal. I bet on that. And john mccain was chairman of this thing at the time.

And he was very, like, bent on putting in the son of his Hanoi Hilton, for me to run the place, I guess. And I sort of had this other major opera. Finally, you know, the first one, I have heard from a corporate recruiter, about a job opportunity in the pharmacy in with Eli Lilly and company in Indianapolis. And that started kicked off my healthcare career. And I worked at some of the some of the more successful companies at a company called zentiva Health Services, which is with the fortune 1000, Aztec traded company, 1.5 billion in revenue, I ran industrial relations got all kinds of Wall Street coverage on the company handle crisis communications, and you can't believe how many crises there are in a big natural healthcare coming until you everyday stuff comes at you. And and then the investor relations out, retweeted, obviously sec obligations with quarterly earnings and filing of sec documentation and reports and then the the Battle of trying to sell people on the company, and its prospects and to do it within the parameters of law, and ladders, sec restrictions on what you can and can't do quiet periods. And anybody who has been through that understands how difficult that all becomes. And the outside world doesn't understand that well. So I'm pretty much I gotta say, you know, I'm still like, showing up in political gatherings and things. But, you know, a bush 43 comes in and a lot of my friends went into the administration that I kind of felt like I wanted to really do to help this healthcare career and, and I felt I was doing positive good things for people. That's so important to me. I'm not saying that to sound pretentious, or anything, it's just what I feel like I'm doing work that's not meaningful to people, or to others. It brings me down. And when I feel like I am doing that, I mean, I'm just really usually very effective at it. From there, I went down, I had just about I had a really good set of credentials in health care, both in pharmaceuticals and home health, specialty pharmaceuticals, which is like infusion and injectable therapies, which are very complicated, often administered by nursing aides, and their life dependent drugs in many, many cases. And I helped orchestrate a form $50 million division sale while I was there. I get hired by the National medical device company ran the division, their group from 3.8 million to 30 million. So I'm sort of like, feeling like a capitalist and starting to realize that entrepreneurship wasn't like, my earliest mindset. Back in those college days was a real skill set that I just sort of had. I mean, no one really unlike public policy, where I think I learned from other people, many of the things I did entrepreneurially just came to me. And a lot of them were never done before in some of the corporate entities that I was with. And that's always fun when you're trying to operate in those bureaucratic structures and sell people on the fact that they should have been doing something that they hadn't been for 20 or 30 years. Right. And I think everybody understands that. Then 2009, February, as I must have recalled, you've gone through now 1000 times. It's in 200 books and

I think that's actually met two was was that conversation about the party?

Yeah, well, you know it what's, what's weird is when you're going through something historical, and you don't look I didn't I don't think any Anyone on that call felt that maybe some some did. I certainly didn't anticipate that we were going to develop what really ultimately became the largest and most politically effective grassroots movement in American history with, you know, 10s of millions of Americans who got involved in some way. And you know, so we had this call after the Rick's the famous Rick Santelli rant. And the idea, which we've worked out there, and the people on the call, we're almost all zero political experience, zero public policy experience, and very, not even really much in the way of traditional work experience. Nothing wrong with that they brought different they brought lots of passion. And, and we're really concerned as a lot of Americans are at this very moment about where Obama and Biden at the time had his head. no concern a whole bunch of issues, job security wages, what he was doing to health care. I mean, they everyone at bad sort of instinctual feeling that he was up to something sneaky and no good with with that, which generally turned out to be the case. So we decided we were which I thought seemed, you know, not terribly ambitious, but important to organize these rallies on April 15, tax day 2009. So we start setting him up, and the phone just starts ringing. I mean, like, like, people would find out that, that there was one and, you know, like, her like, Columbus, Ohio, but there was not one in Cincinnati. And why not? And you know, did they just blossom, it was really supply and demand. I mean, it. People wanted to be involved. And I thought a lot about a lot about it, I really believe there's even a psychological component to why they wanted to be involved. I think they sense that things were going in the wrong direction. And I think they literally couldn't sleep at night, knowing they hadn't done something. And hopefully, the best they could to do that. And the sad reality is you look at political engagement, even now, you know, in the three years since we've talked, it's still largely the same. There's not really a lot of opportunities, like the experiences I had, which seemed perfectly natural, you learn wholly unnatural, and totally like, but you know, impossible to even read, if I were going to go back and replicate it. I don't think I don't know if I could do it. If I had if I had the blueprint in front of me. You know, I mean,

you know, it's funny, Michael like, and I, unfortunately are already pressed for time, which is amazing. But this episode, we sat down before and we were texting and setting up what the agenda was gonna be out the window, because what this ended up being for the conversation was more so you know, but it felt like I almost like felt like a history of the conservative movement that we see today. Yeah, through through your lens. It's almost like it's funny, I just watched on netflix they just released it's a new series that it's actually Season Two of a series, and it's how they made like, I forget the name of the series, it's gonna drive me crazy, but it's like how they made the films that we loved or whatever they did Forrest Gump and like you see in Forrest Gump, like kind of his role in everything and you pretty much have had a role in I guess a significant

really categorize this recently as related to to defending c pack which is you know, and sort of coming under some attack is not being as serious as it used to be and becoming, you know, a circus and sorts but I don't believe that you know, the first c pack back in 1974 was Reagan's iconic city on the hill speech and you can find the audio and I don't think there's video but audio that online. It's definitely worth listening to you just see the gift, the police oratorical political gift and leadership gift that he had back then, and he was bold, he attacked his his enemies he wasn't bad for that is nice of them and as he was, and then you think about like, I described that as sort of the Buckley era of conservatism, meaning we had this intellectual movement that was really formidable, kind of like blue, like I would say, the libertarian minutes today. I mean, no one can question that libertarianism is usually viable, large movement, it just hasn't resonated politically for a number of reasons. So that was the Buckley era that I'd Describe is sort of like 55 to 19, like 80. Or you could take up to maybe Reagan's first run, then we go through the Reagan era, which was one where we learned that conservative ideas didn't just work. We knew that in the Buckley era, but we didn't know if we were gonna have the opportunity to actually be able to apply them to practical challenges, problems and see them work. Reagan proved we could win politically. And 1980 was as big of a revolutionary victory as 2016 was, in my view. And those two terms were transformational, where a lot of Americans looked at public policy. But we along the way, and I, again, I don't want to say I told you so. But sometimes this type of weird, instinctual feeling about this, I was raising the human rights abuses in China, I was talking about as I did with the bethlem steel example, these trade issues. And I was talking to this immigrant the immigration problems, which, you know, look, Simpson is only seems like it was yesterday. And you know, that was like the whole gang of eight, that that were they were, you know, we were promised all this border security and exchange for him to stay in that this will be the last time the democrats ever asked for him to stay. And of course, the amnesty came in like five seconds, the border security never can. And now they're asking for more and more amnesty, and we've got an estimated 2 million illegals that are going to enter this country along with a lot of fentanyl. And, you know, a lot of bad things with this border. So So I go Buckley era is where the intellectual consolidation of ideas, and and i would say Russell Kirk was part of that too. And a lot of it was impact. Again, it was something it was, you know, don't push the country off the edge, it was kind of trying to set up some reasonable parameters for the radical 60s left, that like much of the radical left today has no such constraints. And they were very successful in doing that. And then 80 to 2016, Reagan proves we're not going to win every election. And there's ways to go about winning, and there's ways to go about losing, but our ideas are formidable. We've proven that they can work. And you know, it used to be when you recall the tax and spend liberal, it was a death sentence politically. But along the way, we overlooked the ccpa, China's Communist Party and what it's been doing the magnitude and we could talk for three hours or three hours about with him in immigration, but legal and illegal and the impact that it's had on this country. It is true. And you and anyone can say that we built this country as a country of immigrants with just because yeah, we were also once a country of slavery. I mean, just because something once was true, doesn't mean it's perpetually true. And when you have 10 million Americans at workforce, this is pandemic. And if you do right now, the last thing you need to be doing is bringing in another 2 million unskilled laborers, the majority of whom don't even speak the English language. So and then there was trade. You know, this trade was always described as free trade. And it was free trade on our side, but not on their side. And that was all the difference in the world. And we surrendered a lot of our manufacturing base. And we basically, as Trump correctly said, built the second largest economy in the world today in China

by not paying close enough attention. And I'll give you one tangible example on this. I remember approaching Winston Lord, who was one of our ambassadors to China, he wrote kind of Scientologists of the Kissinger school of thought, and just saying, you know, why is it in our n m? Like, I'm I'm 30 years old at this point, you know, so it was easy to kind of ask provocative questions, and they could seem like it was innocent, but I meant it when I asked him, I'm like, why would we want to see a communist country become more economically powerful, again, enable them to build out their military to enhance their domestic and international surveillance, surveillance and Intel operations to build out their domestic human rights in abusing infrastructure. And it was it This was and of course, all those things have happened. And they're now an official genocidal regime labeled such by the US government. The response was no Michael Look, the key He goes to liberalization in China is the economy growing that'll build out the middle class, the middle class won't put up with this tyrannical behavior from the CCP will demand change either revolutionary revolutionary way or revolutionary way. And the country will assimilate as a good player among other countries in the world, and our relationship will be fine. And, boy, everybody in the field of psychology and everybody in foreign policy, it seems on both in both ideologies, and in both parties back in the 80s, and 90s. swallowed that fish, line, and sinker. I never did, that I was respectful of the people who were saying it. And I've watched it play out and then thankfully, Trump comes forward. And 16 says, Let me tell you what's really been going on here. You know, now he's got we got two issues got to get resolved, in my view, for us to move forward. Number one, is they need to be held accountable for the pandemic. I believe they were engaged in gain function. Research in that vital that we need is Fauci and a bunch of other names that people won't recognize. So I won't mention them need to be grilled on on? What were they doing funding this place? I mean, Congress clearly wasn't aware of it. Right. I mean, it was just like it didn't follow any of the traditional, constitutionally required methodologies for how federal monies are being spent. Congress seem to have no oversight on it. And here, we are funding this, he did this, this clip this biology, research, the most dangerous biology research you can do. And even the people in NIH are acknowledging the pandemic risk, but they're saying it's worth the risk, because the information that will be obtained, will largely offset, you know, losing a million or more people, which kind of gives you some insight of how they view individual rights and even in life. That's got to get resolved. And then you'd be held accountable. I think we're headed for I'm not optimistic about the future of our relationship. With CCP. I not optimistic about what I think that will be up to. In Taiwan, you clearly saw they broke their 50 year commitment with Hong Kong. Those I fear for those brave kids. I mean, you know, all the bold things they did, they did have so much admiration for I know they were inspired by our tea party movement, too many of them communicated that routinely. They admired the United States of America. And then and then and then November, you know, I don't know what your view is. But I've read here's what I've done. I've read the Navarro reports, three additions of it. I've read many of the affidavits I've spoken to people who filed affidavits. And in these six states, Nevada, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin, is it six? Think it's clear to me that you've got procedural violations and allegations of outright fraud and evidence. How many times do we keep hearing no evidence, no evidence, no evidence? No. What is an affidavit by the way with evidence were created as evidence? They're admitted as evidence under penalty of perjury, and there's 1000s of these things. So I'm pleased with that Maricopa County is hopefully going to be coming out with you know, their reports and results. I have every reason to believe that that's going to overturn Arizona.

I don't I know it's going to face a lot of opposition push back to Georgia is probably along with Pennsylvania, the two states that were the most corrupt, and were the most consciously manipulated. Pennsylvania is going now some good members of the state assembly at work on it. And Nevada, Michigan and Wisconsin. Got to get it going. I know there's members in each one of those state assemblies that are aware but like just Take the system, the simple thing. Let's close with this idea and ask this rhetorically, you know, because let's assume this audience is split. Some people just say, look, people were tired Trump and Biden really did get over $80 million, even though we can't get, you know, 200 people in a in a gymnasium tear. I mean, there's literally no no enthusiasm for this man. You look at the people who voted in Clark County in Nevada, who had moved out of Clark County. Right. This is all in one of our reports. DOJ, FBI, they're looking to do it. How is a matter of peace process and practice and commitment to represent democracy? Do we not, you know, go back to those votes, remove them? For starters, since they're fraudulent, and hold the people accountable by whatever, I don't know what the statute where the criminal penalty is, but it certainly is probably not jail time is probably more serious than a speeding ticket. How is it possible that the country's to sort of go on whatever drop boxes that are putting all these democrat areas, without state legislatures ever authorizing them? They have state constitutional authority over election processes. So, you know, you know, like your libertarian colleagues and friends, you probably didn't weren't crazy about Trump for other reasons, but are crazy about the Constitution. You can't pick your battles on this stuff. You know, and historically, we haven't we fought them the tiniest battles, because because of the symbolism involved. Now we got a knife right in the heart of the centerpiece of our Constitution, a government that's selected by the people not imposed on us. And I have discouraged disappointed. I don't get frightened, but I probably would be if I did, about how unserious flee. The country appears to be taking this even though the polling numbers show it despite the media blackouts and all the biased, providing corrupt coverage that you know, pushing up on half the country, Vice B understands it. So where's the action? Where's Ronna McDaniel with the RNC who had who raised I think $1.4 billion in this election cycle, and even the formal Trump legal process? Give me a call. I don't understand it. I mean, I don't know. I think $300 million was raised for that roughly. And and I don't understand why we got a guy running the pillow company. Basically, at the lead of it. I mean, that's, that is an incredible leap of faith. And, and this is a great American. But you could you ever imagine democrats or progressives letting that happen? And then, you know, I just, you know, and so, if anyone is out there, says Michael, John's gonna take one critical thing about Trump, I guess I probably didn't. And I'm not even Trump saying now, but at least procedurally are people looking at this? You know, it's the magga movement, which we need to keep together and spire and I'm supporting Trump, again. But But, you know, for him to be effective. You got to recognize some of these deficiencies. Is anyone looking at this processes and saying, Yeah, that's an acceptable way to go about it with the magnitude of stake

that is at play here. And knowing how difficult it would be even if we had the best people in the world, right? If I had new information, like I had months ago, I'm not even sure who I would turn it over to. Who would you let's, let's assume you had, you had a lot of stuff down there. Bucks County, montgomery county, what is since you know, we still have this mysterious truck driver, who came from Long Island, you know, he was interviewed, by the way didn't care about the details. They just wanted to know how we, how we found Trump allies and why he was talking about it, which is pretty terrifying. But let's assume you found something down your way and was meaningful to the outcome, you know, of the election and it might even be suggested Other other national tactic that had broad ramifications, who's running this thing that you would hand it? Because Sidney Powell, who seem to add it up completely. I don't know what she's doing. I think she's writing a book. Jenna is like doing TV stuff. Rudy Giuliani, one of the greatest Americans and Icahn is back at W ABC. Doing a great podcast. It's worth listening to. But I mean, I don't get the sense really, that he's been given, you know, managerial oversight. who's managing this thing? I mean, it's like, I can't, there's not many people closer to it than me. There's one or two people. And they're so paranoid. They don't text you don't want to touch. There's a lot of paranoia out there right now, about what is going on. And I don't want to make light of any of this. I always hope for the best. I always thought back in Oh, nine, that things didn't look really bleak. But I felt it, you know, and it's all out there. I mean, I said, we're going to take our country back. How are you going to do that? They've got the White House, they've got the media, they've got the house, they've got this, I go, just trust me, we're going to do we're going to do it because I know we're going to do it for a whole bunch of reasons, including the fact that our ideas or our work and theirs don't. Right now is a frightening moment. And the way Trump described it at the in Tampa, at that TP USA gathering, I think it was down there, or one of these recent rallies where he started route for you get people in solitary confinement. I mean, for you know, walking into that building, they should never have done that. And I condemn it, but you know, and media being censored, nothing being done. So it's it's everything we've learned that is happening. What are we going to do about it? We need to figure it out. Good to see you, Michael. John's,

no, I appreciate the conversation. So what we're gonna do, because this is I think, a starting off point. And I really want to let you go there because this is how we're going to go ahead and I think maybe start off a conversation in when we're talking to folks more the right the conservative folk, who I don't think we really want I think want in the liberal Liberty world they say we don't want to talk to conservatives, we want to talk to liberals but at the same point in time right now majority of conservatives majority of liberals are the ones making the policy so we need to have the conversations but we need to know how we got here and we're going to go through an actual sales process you got to trace the history so that's why we want to go through the history but with that being said yes guest is in the queue for the next show. I got a run unfortunate but Michael John's we include all the links to your social media in the show notes. Easily the the starting off point for this conversation going forward. Thank you so much. I'm a

servant leader, if I can be helpful to anyone out there, you know, believes in our country. And you know, you're looking for guidance you struggling with what to do. One of the things I really take seriously is trying to be helpful to others. I'm team, we got to function as a team, you know, and more about that. We need a lot more of it. Good to see you, Brian.

Good to see you here, Michael. Thanks again for the program.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai