00:01:05.000We will not embrace the ideas that have destroyed countries, destroyed lives, and we are going to fight for freedom on campuses across the country.
00:03:31.000It says, you basically six presidents and their war with the swamp.
00:03:35.000So the way we define the swamp on this program is the fourth branch of government, the deep state, the unelected, right?
00:03:41.000Kind of the German historicist model of infiltrating the constitutional order with a subversive, suppressive group of people that are always trying to have their agenda implemented.
00:04:04.000It really starts with Martin Van Buren, one of the people who came out more than almost anybody else in history because he was the eighth president.
00:04:18.000And as I said, he stepped on the stage, just collapsed, had a massive financial panic the minute he became president.
00:04:26.000But he had created a spoil system to protect slavery.
00:04:31.000And this is why I try to insist to people, you know, the Democratic Party was created and founded and formed for one purpose only, and that was to protect and preserve slavery.
00:04:44.000That was the entire basis for which Van Buren and Andrew Jackson create the party.
00:04:49.000And to do so, they set up a system whereby loyalists to the party would be rewarded with jobs, what we call the spoil system or, you know, the administrative state, because you got to put these guys somewhere.
00:05:01.000So you put them in bureaus and agencies and so on and so forth.
00:05:06.000And up till the time of the Civil War, this wasn't a very big deal because the Democrats more or less had total control of government for about 30 years.
00:05:15.000But then Lincoln gets elected and everything changes because now it's sort of like Trump, the wrong guy's in charge of this giant apparatus that we built and could be a real threat with it.
00:05:27.000So I deal with Lincoln's war with the slave swamp, which was also known as the slave power conspiracy.
00:06:06.000So when we come out of Lincoln's time, we get to Grover Cleveland, whom I call the last good Democrat.
00:06:14.000And he's faced with this giant spoil system now that Lincoln created to run the war.
00:06:22.000And what you find is that people, especially in the Grand Army of the Republic and other veterans groups, are getting tons of money from the federal government, and they never even were in the war.
00:06:34.000I mean, you got guys claiming pensions that fell out of a tree two years after the war, right?
00:06:39.000And so Cleveland is amazing in that he steps in to attack this swamp.
00:06:47.000And next to Lincoln is the most successful of all of our presidents in dealing with it because he really cuts it down.
00:06:54.000They pass a bill called the Pendleton Civil Service Act, which, like most reforms, doesn't really fix the problem, just kind of shifts it to a different direction.
00:07:06.000But at least Cleveland fixed the notion that Congress and the president would get tens of thousands of these requests for bailouts and personal money and pensions and all this kind of stuff.
00:07:21.000So from Cleveland, we get to Teddy Roosevelt.
00:07:24.000And Roosevelt has a different kind of swamp that's been growing the whole time Cleveland is dealing with the spoil swamp, and that is these giant corporations.
00:07:37.000The reason Roosevelt was such a trust buster was that he felt he was protecting business in America from the media, the press, journalism, that he thought the journalism, the muckrakers were going to touch a war against business that they were going to burn down the whole capitalist system.
00:08:02.000And Roosevelt, right or wrong, truly believed that he was saving capitalism from this group of muckrapers.
00:08:10.000And of course, he was very successful in reining in the truly big corporations of the day.
00:08:16.000What he didn't do was rein in the media.
00:08:20.000And so we're going to pay a price for his failure today because he didn't put in place any measures to control the media, you know?
00:08:31.000Mark that up to nobody's perfect and nobody can see everything.
00:08:36.000So you don't have some of the other presidents I thought you would have.
00:08:43.000Well, Warren G. Harding had his own problems, but you don't have Calvin Coolidge and you kind of wait a little bit and then you get to Kennedy.
00:08:56.000Kennedy's problem was that while he felt he was being controlled and manipulated by the CIA and wanted to expose them, he needed them too much.
00:09:08.000And he needed them in Laos and Vietnam.
00:09:11.000And so you end up with a kind of view of Kennedy that he had to almost lie to himself to perpetuate the CIA and keep them going when on many occasions he says, you know, I need to get rid of these guys.
00:09:31.000And so there is a lot of different components to that.
00:09:34.000But if I remember correctly, he also kind of waged war on the fiat currency model as well, which was a whole separate issue of how kind of the banking system was going to be rigged against regular everyday Americans.
00:09:47.000So, and then you have Reagan and Trump.
00:09:49.000But I think that the thesis you're getting into is, you know, these six presidents more than any others, they made great attempts to actually rein in the unelected power structure.
00:10:01.000And I guess the question is how successful were they?
00:11:53.000I do want to mention Coolidge because you like Coolidge, and I have him as my fourth best president, Washington, Lincoln, Reagan, Coolidge, Trump.
00:12:04.000And Trump is not for only because he's so far only served one term.
00:12:07.000If he serves two terms, he'll be moved up to number four position.
00:12:12.000But the reason Coolidge didn't make the book is that, first of all, Harding did a lot of the heavy lifting when he came in.
00:12:21.000He dramatically scaled down the size of government, got rid of a lot of these agencies, cut a lot of government personnel, ended government-owned and run railroads and shipbuilding.
00:12:34.000So Coolidge, in a lot of ways, coasted on Harding's already very good record.
00:12:41.000He didn't need to do a lot when he came in.
00:12:44.000So after Kennedy's death, there was a major transformation in the swamp.
00:14:22.000But unfortunately, you know, Reagan, he lost plenty of battles, even though he won some, especially towards the later years in his presidency.
00:14:44.000He is probably the most federalist of all of our presidents going back to Washington.
00:14:51.000If you go back to all the debates, whether it's over the wall, whether it's over almost any of the policy issues, Trump would always say to Congress, pass a law.
00:15:07.000And the problem was, of course, Congress had no interest in solving these problems.
00:15:13.000And so, but Trump was constantly trying to hand over control to the legislative body, and they simply wouldn't take it.
00:15:21.000Now, the really horrible thing, and I think I came to some of this conclusion with new research after the book came out, but it was in the Chinavirus management.
00:15:35.000I'm convinced that Mike Pence and his deputy got to Trump and fed him a line about federalism.
00:15:45.000Mr. President, you're into federalism.
00:15:56.000It sounds reasonable, but you've got to go one step further and say, what does that mean?
00:16:00.000And what that meant was no state had a medical examiner or a head of medical policy within the state who could in any way compete with the CDC.
00:16:12.000So what that did, the quote, federalist approach to the China virus, was to hand authority of the China virus over to Dr. Fallacy.
00:16:23.000I'm going to ask you about that then, because in the longer segment, I want to ask how effective were these dragon slayers?
00:17:12.000I am invested personally and also through the Charlie Kirk show to try to do everything we possibly can to try and push back against these Democrats and their lies.
00:17:22.000And so look, you can get a signed picture by President Trump himself.
00:17:42.000Join me in standing up for President Trump and canceling the radical left.
00:17:46.000Look, here's what we're really doing, though.
00:17:47.000We're building a grassroots army to push back to try to win the Senate race in Georgia, try to win the Senate race in Arizona.
00:17:53.000This is paid for by the National Republican Senatorial Committee.
00:17:56.000And I could tell you this, we have got to retire Chuck Schumer.
00:17:59.000So text right now to win a signed picture with President Trump, V-I-C-T-O-R-Y 55404.
00:18:06.000Take out your phone right now, free of charge, V-I-C-T-O-R-Y 55404.
00:18:16.000So let me ask you, how successful or how effective was Trump in particular being a dragon slayer?
00:18:24.000Well, Trump came in wanting to drain the swamp, as he said, multiple times.
00:18:30.000What people missed was his definition of draining the swamp at that time was to get rid of the K-Street lobbyists.
00:18:38.000He wanted to get rid of the lobbying influence on DC.
00:18:43.000And, you know, I was pretty close at that time with Steve Bannon.
00:18:47.000I had worked with him in the 2016 campaign quite a bit.
00:18:50.000And they had no idea coming in that the Intel communities, the FBI, the CIA, the DOJ were so incredibly politicized.
00:19:04.000They really thought they were going to make inroads in attacking some of these problems.
00:19:08.000And they were, I think, taken a little bit aback by the fact that, first of all, Sessions' recusal just floored them.
00:19:18.000Don't let me go off on sessions because I could be here all hour on how he so damaged the country, not just in failing to oppose the Ma Russia thing, but he did nothing against sanctuary city mayors.
00:19:32.000He did nothing against governors who were opposing immigration laws.
00:19:40.000He did nothing about the protests by Antifa, nothing at all.
00:19:44.000In a dozen ways, even if you exclude the Russia hoax, Sessions was probably our worst attorney general ever.
00:19:52.000So I think all of that just really, I think that knocked him off guard for a good six or eight months before they figured out we're going to have to take a flamethrower to this.
00:20:03.000We're not going to be able to just replace people.
00:20:05.000This is an infestation that's going to require, you know, the Terminex people come out.
00:21:37.000Like I say, you can't expect these guys to be prophets and see everything.
00:21:41.000TR was extremely effective against big business, except when it came to the media and the power of the press, which is the entire reason he attacks big business.
00:21:52.000The latter three were largely ineffective.
00:22:47.000And like I say, I think his idea of what the swamp was when he came in was much different than when he left.
00:22:54.000And as Bannon said, I expect when he comes back, he's coming back with a flamethrower.
00:22:59.000So I suppose let's just focus on Lincoln in particular.
00:23:03.000You know, he was able to kind of marshal half the country together.
00:23:08.000What else, like tactically, can a second term Trump do to learn from Lincoln or these other presidents to remove this infestation?
00:23:17.000I mean, going at the flamethrower, I understand what that means, sort of, but how would you do it?
00:23:22.000I mean, like, you can't fire Fauci, or can you?
00:23:25.000I mean, what wisdom from the people that have fought these battles before can a future president apply to not just say it, but to actually win this fight?
00:24:18.000Okay, so five days a week, I do a news column: today's news on uncovereddc.com, and right at the bottom are all of the nicknames.
00:24:26.000And I've started using nicknames for cities like San Francisco is New Mogadishu, and Chicago has been ghazy by the lake, right?
00:24:37.000So, but what you could learn is that Trump has to go in next time, understanding he's going to need allies in the Senate and in the House.
00:24:47.000And I think he'll have far more this time than he had before.
00:24:50.000We got rid of, you know, McCain's gone and we got rid of a lot of these guys that Wicker and some of these people just were useless.
00:24:58.000But we've got to replace him in this Senate race and in 24 with MAGA people who are going to go in and support Trump.
00:25:07.000And by that, I mean not impeach him when he kicks out Christopher Wright and says, I'm sorry, we're going to put a head of the FBI in who's actually going to do something.
00:25:28.000But should he have been more embracing of executive power?
00:25:33.000Well, that's a good point because he would have followed everybody from FDR on in terms of embracing that power.
00:25:42.000With Trump, though, the problem was always he was walking this tightwire where if he stepped a little bit too far to one side, he was going to get impeached.
00:25:52.000And I don't mean just from Botoxic and her ilk.
00:25:55.000I mean from the Rhino Republicans and the Senate that was there.
00:26:01.000And so he had to walk a very fine line so as not to get removed from office by the Senate.
00:26:08.000And I think if we get five or 10 more MAGA people in in the next two years, that won't even be a consideration.
00:26:16.000And he will have considerable more authority to do as you say, to be more of a less of a federalist president and more of a TR type, which I wouldn't like to see, but different times call for different measures.
00:26:32.000Yeah, I mean, I philosophically agree with you for sure, but I'm more open-minded to using executive power to get us back into alignment with constitutional principles than ever before.
00:26:44.000And I think that it's a dangerous precedent, but we're already kind of in wartime.
00:26:49.000We're already in a not-so-cold civil war happening.
00:26:53.000It's not kinetic, but definitely is heating up.
00:26:57.000Where, you know, when Trump actually started to embrace this, though, was when all of a sudden he realized he could get parts of the border wall in the Yuma sector by using the reappropriation of national defense funds, right?
00:27:09.000I think that Trump was embracing some of the, let's say, more Aggressive interpretations of Article II, you know, as he lost both chambers of Congress.
00:27:21.000And, you know, the left, they've always been willing to push, you know, boundaries that.
00:27:26.000But I want to ask you, with just a couple minutes remaining, wasn't Teddy Roosevelt a little bit embracing of that?
00:27:31.000Didn't he push the boundaries for executive power?
00:27:34.000Yeah, very much so, which is which is why he's not in my top five favorite presidents.
00:27:40.000And you can attribute all of Roosevelt's weakness in terms of his over-aggressiveness sometimes in going after business to the fact that of all the things TR did in his life, he never ran a business.
00:27:55.000He had this cattle ranch out there, but he never ran it.
00:29:03.000That's why I think Trump could do, or whomever is president in the future that believes in the Constitution.
00:29:11.000There is a fair amount that an executive can do.
00:29:14.000I mean, Lincoln, he was willing to use executive power, suspension of habeas corpus, amongst many other things, even without congressional approval at times.
00:29:25.000And so that's something that I want to explore with you a little bit.
00:29:29.000And I also have to ask you about a couple presidents you don't have on your list.
00:29:35.000One in particular that is one of my favorite presidents, and we might totally disagree on this.
00:29:39.000And you're the historian, so you're going to win the argument, but that's okay.
00:29:42.000I'll still believe it, which is someone who I think sent out one of the most clear, clarion calls of warning against a swamp or a deep state.
00:29:52.000You probably already might know who it is.
00:29:54.000Someone I have a great admiration for, and someone who I think actually had a lot in common with Donald Trump and why he didn't make your list and whether or not he was successful.
00:32:30.000So prior to that, you know, whether it be Washington, Adams, Jefferson, you know, Madison, Monroe, and the kind of, you know, ramping up, we do get to Jackson.
00:32:45.000I did a study that I never published on the size of population of government, the number of offices.
00:32:51.000So he caused government to grow, number one.
00:32:53.000Number two, he destroyed a perfectly good private institution called the Bank of the United States, only one-fifth public, and he divvied the money up among all of his pet bank cronies.
00:33:06.000Number three, he crushed the Indians, contrary to what the Supreme Court said.
00:33:11.000And, you know, he's a slave owner, and he's the part and parcel of that Democrat elite, the slave swamp that Lincoln's trying to fix.
00:34:16.000Historically, let me ask you with the six dragon slayers outside of Trump, is there usually a correlated grassroots populist movement alongside of it of people that are demanding it?
00:34:24.000Not populists, but you know what I mean.
00:34:27.000I mean, the Republicans and the free soilers in the North vastly outnumbered the slave owners in the South.
00:34:34.000I could go through each one of them, but yeah, there is a popular movement that helps mobilize everyone.
00:34:40.000And, you know, I think we're getting there.
00:34:45.000I mean, the tide has definitely turned since 2018 in a way I've never seen in American politics.
00:34:52.000I think the Democrats are in for a massive bloodbath in 20, only held back by the fact that we won 20 seats or so back in 2020.
00:35:03.000If not for that, you'd be looking at a shift of 60 or 80 seats.
00:35:07.000Yeah, I think it's a near-extinction event that the Democrats could be looking at.
00:35:11.000I think it could be a seismic generational change where they have to totally rebrand and reintroduce themselves to the American public over the next couple decades.