00:00:43.000We will not embrace the ideas that have destroyed countries, destroyed lives, and we are going to fight for freedom on campuses across the country.
00:01:18.000Curious, email me throughout the hourfreedom at charliekirk.com.
00:01:21.000Joining us now is Citizen Kane from citizenfreepress.com.
00:01:26.000Mr. Kane, thank you for taking the time.
00:01:28.000I think all eyes are on this funding fight.
00:01:30.000You guys at CFP Nation have been covering this.
00:01:33.000What are you hearing, Kane, frontlines, grassroots, as far as what are the expectations and demands going into the 930 funding fight?
00:01:42.000Well, expectations probably match up with the emails and responses you just got that you just mentioned, which is everyone is incredibly cynical.
00:01:53.000I put up a story in the stack yesterday that some members of the Freedom Caucus are looking for an 8% reduction in federal spending.
00:02:02.000And as one of my commenters pointed out, well, when you have a $2.2 trillion annual deficit and your budget is $7 trillion, 8% of $7 trillion is $560 billion.
00:02:14.000So even doing something as dramatic as an 8% cut in spending would still leave the deficit at $1.6 trillion.
00:02:22.000So getting a little deeper, I'm sure you saw the headlines.
00:02:28.000You know, I originally was drawn into politics because of the national debt years decades ago when it was crossing $1 trillion, $2 trillion.
00:02:38.000So that's always been an issue that I paid very close attention to.
00:02:42.000And as the debt balloon passed 15, the total national debt balloon passed 15 trillion, then 20, then 25, we weren't getting hit that hard, as you know, because interest rates were so low.
00:02:55.000And they were financing the debt on short-term, essentially three-month to one-year bills.
00:03:02.000So they were able to finance it at 1%, 2%, 3% for about 10 or 12 years.
00:03:07.000And I kept telling people: if you own gold, if you own silver, just wait because we will revert to the mean.
00:03:15.000We will get back to 5% interest rates.
00:03:18.000And a 5% interest rate, and this was the point of my post earlier in the week: a 5% interest rate on a $33 trillion national debt is $1.65 trillion every single year just for your interest payment.
00:04:53.000So we're seeing some people start to hold the line and potentially a government shutdown looming.
00:04:59.000So, Kane, it looks as if the weaponization of government is in full light.
00:05:04.000What we said last hour, they went after Menendez, in our opinion, because they wanted to try to send a message to the other 99 senators not to touch the FBI funding.
00:05:34.000I've got five headlines up on Menendez.
00:05:37.000400,000 in gold bars, running it through a halal meat company, giving information to the Egyptian intelligence that he should not have been providing involvement with New Jersey mob figures.
00:05:53.000I mean, it's the first thought, Charlie, and maybe you know, because I haven't had time to look at it.
00:06:02.000Because I remember the last Menendez trial, which was in New Jersey, and it was not guilty on all counts, even though his co-conspirator in the previous bribery, I think it was an ophthalmologist from Miami, that doctor had been convicted and sentenced to prison.
00:06:20.000And he watches the first Menendez trial in New Jersey and let him get off scot-free.
00:06:25.000So that was one of my thoughts this morning.
00:06:28.000Is this going to be a DC trial or is this going to be another New Jersey trial?
00:06:33.000No, I mean, it's a good question, but I think that there is this reminder, not so subtle reminder, that the administrative state wants those other 99 senators to know they're on watch and that the fourth branch of government runs the entire country.
00:06:46.000Look, the only difference between Bob Menendez and Joe Biden is just that Bob Menendez was sloppier.
00:06:51.000He didn't give the cokehead son all the, you know, a little bit of a distance and a little bit of the appearance of this.
00:06:57.000And I don't want to get people's hopes up too much because then this ties to another thing that you and I have been hitting, Kane, I think more so than anybody else, is that this all has to do with Trump, the not-so-buried lead is they're trying to create the appearance of impartiality so that they can go for the political kill against Donald Trump.
00:07:15.000Yeah, it was the first thing that I thought.
00:07:16.000I mean, they've been looking for these little small sort of shiny things that they can hang up and say, look, we're impartial.
00:07:44.000So I, you know, one of the things that you learn about how DOJ works is that they have a lot of investigations sort of percolating and they seem to be able to pull them out exactly when they need them.
00:07:56.000And this sort of feels like that's one of those cases.
00:08:00.000I mean, I imagine they could have brought this same case probably, you know, several months ago, or they could have delayed it for several months.
00:08:08.000And no one would know because DOJ operates in secrecy and we don't really know exactly what they're doing on a day-to-day basis.
00:08:15.000So they utilize issues like this, as well as the Hunter Biden, David Weiss, the sort of weak gun charges.
00:08:23.000They use those to sort of show people: look, we're completely impartial.
00:11:39.000One of the most frustrating stories that I see happening, Citizen Kane, is how Governor Ron DeSantis, who I believe is America's greatest governor, is becoming less popular because he continues in this political race of which he will not be successful, absent something that none of us see coming.
00:11:56.000When I mean none of us, it's got to be quite a black swan event.
00:11:59.000But the chances are that Ron DeSantis will finish second or third in Iowa or third and fourth in New Hampshire, which is a shame.
00:12:05.000It is a heavy shame, I got to be honest, Kane, because he is a great governor who has done great things in the fabulous and free state of Florida.
00:12:14.000But he's in fifth place in New Hampshire, according to Gateway Pundit.
00:13:02.000His, you know, the path, the carpet was laid.
00:13:05.000The beautiful red carpet was laid for him for 2028.
00:13:08.000He needed to stand back and stand by, as Trump actually told the Proud Boys.
00:13:13.000You know, DeSantis did not, he should not have entered the race.
00:13:16.000The problem was donors got in his head.
00:13:18.000They got in his head too early, almost 10, 11 months ago, November, October of last year, and they were giving him money and telling him that Trump, you know, that we needed an alternative to Trump.
00:13:28.000And he believed that and he accepted the money.
00:13:30.000And then I feel like he was locked in.
00:13:32.000There needed to be an off-ramp button somewhere before he announced.
00:13:37.000You and I could have told him, this is what is going to happen to you.
00:13:40.000The Trump influencer armies, you know, it's too strong.
00:13:44.000DeSantis was polling even with Trump last November.
00:13:53.000I think all the time about whether or not he's going to be able to sort of slip off into the sunset and rescue himself for 2028 or if he's damaged that.
00:14:03.000But we knew, we sort of warned him that was his danger.
00:14:07.000You enter this race and you're going to, you know, you're going to put yourself at risk for your future.
00:14:13.000And now, you know, his governorship ends in 2026 and he may not have anything to do.
00:15:40.000I want people to go to Citizen Free Press, scan down to about the fifth link on the stack.
00:15:45.000There's a fantastic five-minute segment of Charlie yesterday with Roseanne Barr doing name association with Hillary Clinton and Zelensky and plenty of others.
00:17:14.000Well, as many of listeners might know by now, Ray Epps was indicted finally by the DOJ in what is maybe one of the most bungling and inept efforts to salvage the crumbling narrative surrounding Ray Epps and the Fed surrection more generally.
00:17:34.000This is over two and a half years after January 6th, and the Feds perfunctorily, weekly slap him with a singular misdemeanor charge for disorderly conduct.
00:17:51.000At this point, it's simply too little, too late, and people see it for the desperate attempt that it is.
00:17:58.000And so we have two brand new pieces on Revolver.news addressing this and analyzing it.
00:18:03.000The one at the very top that you mentioned sort of looks at the statement of offense.
00:18:08.000Basically, they gave Ray Epps a really sweet, guilty plea deal, and he's agreeing to having done a certain number of things that amount to this misdemeanor charge.
00:18:20.000So we go through the statement of offense and its description of his behavior on the fifth and the sixth, and we compare it to what we have documented on video of him doing.
00:18:32.000And we show what an absolute sham this statement of offense, this plea deal actually is.
00:18:40.000And in this particular piece at Revolver.news, there's some very rare, some very amusing, and all very damning footage of Ray Epps' involvement on the fifth and on the sixth.
00:18:54.000So then, how do you see this playing out?
00:18:57.000Is there any way where we can ever get the truth about Ray Epps's involvement?
00:19:02.000Because, I mean, again, the piece at Revolver.news is that Merrick Garland shoots himself in the foot with sloppy Ray Epps plea deal.
00:19:10.000Earlier this week, DOJ charged the infamous Fed Surrection Provocateur Ray Epps.
00:19:15.000Give us some examples, Darren, of other people that have experienced serious indictments for things that Ray Epps also did.
00:19:24.000Well, in many cases, Ray Epps actually did more.
00:19:27.000But just to provide a bit of context, you know, people are saying, well, Ray Epps didn't go into the Capitol.
00:19:32.000That completely leaves out the fact that Enrique Tario, who's to date has gotten the most severe sentence of all January 6th defendants at 22 years, not only was he not in the Capitol on the 6th, he wasn't even in DC.
00:19:48.000The reason he got this ridiculous 22-year charge is he was charged with and convicted of seditious conspiracy.
00:19:56.000All of the severe charges are conspiracy charges.
00:20:00.000And even though seditious conspiracy is the most serious, just about everyone remotely in Ray Epps' position would have got obstruction of an official proceeding.
00:20:10.000But the amazing thing is, I've looked at the documents related to Tario.
00:20:15.000It's a very flimsy case for conspiracy in his case.
00:20:18.000But in Ray Epps's case, Epps literally acknowledges that he was involved in the conspiracy insofar as he texted his nephew saying of his involvement in January 6th, I orchestrated it.
00:20:34.000So the feds are throwing nearly two decade sentences and people with flimsy evidence of conspiracy.
00:20:41.000And the one guy who admits that he orchestrated it, and there's ample supporting evidence on video, is the one person that the DOJ has bent over backward to protect and that the media, for that matter, has aggressively defended singularly amongst all of the January 6th participants.
00:21:00.000So I got to be honest, Darren, I've had a change of opinion.
00:21:02.000For years, I thought, hey, it's good to have these head of these agencies publicly be asked questions in five-minute intervals.
00:21:11.000Darren, I saw this Merrick Garland clown show the other day, and they just lie and they give non-answers or they have a sudden case of, you know, forgetting like amnesia.
00:21:37.000I think, you know, as most of these things are, they're mainly useful for generating public awareness, which is not nothing, but it doesn't deliver accountability.
00:21:48.000And I think a general state of affairs that we're in now is at a very high level of public awareness.
00:21:54.000I think people are more aware than ever at how sordid and dirty and dark the regime actually is.
00:22:02.000And yet, notwithstanding this heightened awareness, there is very little, if any, a vehicle to deliver accountability for the malfeasance that we've increasingly learned about and we're learning about more and more each day.
00:22:22.000And if not paradox, certainly the frustration of our moment is we're learning more and more, and we have less and less that we're actually able to do about it in terms of real accountability.
00:22:36.000And unfortunately, as we've spoken about many times, there's such a tremendous demand for easy answers to that question, but there is no easy answer to that question as to how to deliver the infrastructure of accountability that we really need to correct what's going on in our country.
00:22:58.000So I want to play a piece of tape here.
00:23:02.000The idea that Merrick Garland doesn't know the answer to this question, he's a liar.
00:23:57.000And then, you know, basically saying it probably happened due to the relationship between, you know, the DOJ and the FBI, but it's certainly weaseling his way out of it.
00:24:07.000You know, he thinks he's untouchable and he may be right.
00:24:10.000And I think it's important to just remind ourselves of his history.
00:24:14.000You know, this is not his first rodeo.
00:24:17.000The system doesn't have that many people on which they can really rely who've been consistent players for the regime for decades, who know where the bodies are buried and are, you know, loyal janitors for the system.
00:24:31.000Merrick Garland is one of those people.
00:24:33.000You know, people forget he was a player as early as the 90s, and he actually ran the domestic extremism portfolio for Bill Clinton, where he was, you know, really spearheaded the attack on various militia movements that were emerging in the 90s.
00:24:52.000And, you know, much more controversially, he played a very, very disturbing role in covering up key aspects of the Oklahoma City bombing.
00:25:03.000So he's been around for a very long time.
00:26:02.000Of course, he's had these conversations.
00:26:05.000And either way, it's like if he hasn't, it's in some ways even more damning because it shows that he's asleep at the wheel and he's basically designated somebody to do his dirty work for him.
00:27:05.000Now, I find that very hard to believe, but it's remarkable that the head of the FBI's J-6 investigation.
00:27:13.000Remember, the FBI put Ray Epps as one of the first 20 people on his most wanted list due to how egregious his behavior was.
00:27:21.000There's a national conversation about the nature of Ray Epps' involvement that's very controversial.
00:27:27.000And here you have the head of the JSICS investigation saying, I feel awful for Epps and he hasn't even seen the video.
00:27:36.000Again, if he's lying, it's damning, but if he's not lying, it's even more damning because it shows how they're asleep at the wheel and they just designate underlings to do all the dirty work for them.
00:27:47.000Either way, it's totally damning to the functioning of our system.
00:28:12.000But it's not lost on anyone looking at this, the parallels and similarities between what Menendez is charged with and what the Biden family has been up to for a very long time.
00:28:26.000And so there's one theory that would say this is sort of escalating the pressure on the Bidens by creating an actual precedent for indictment, sort of teeing things up for Biden.
00:28:42.000Although, you know, the inside baseball could be such that there's something going on completely in parallel.
00:28:48.000I think generally speaking, what we can be assured of is these types of indictments don't happen because, oh, they just found out how they're, you know, these people are doing illegal things.
00:28:59.000This has been an open secret for a very, very long time.
00:29:02.000The fact that Menendez is being indicted now means that he's either expendable at this point or he's counterproductive or it's somehow useful to the regime for a larger purpose.
00:29:14.000For instance, maybe teeing up indictments for Biden or putting pressure, additional pressure on the Bidens to push them off of the table for 2024.
00:29:25.000Indictments like this are not what people think.
00:29:40.000Accountability from the regime's perspective is the collateral damage of a strategic move that will strengthen the regime's position in its own thinking.
00:29:50.000It is also a reminder to all other 99 senators that the administrative state runs the country, that the fourth branch of government is in charge.
00:30:00.000Darren, what should happen on 930 and what do you think is going to happen on 930?
00:30:06.000Well, I think it's just a matter of wait and see.