It s another busy week in the world of politics, and it s never ending. As the Democrats make their vice presidential choice, we ve been sold a bunch of nonsense, and when the news broke that Kamala Harris had chosen Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, we brought on Rich Lowry and Bhatia Angersargan to give instant analysis about this guy s truly radical policies. And this week we also had on the veteran who replaced Tim Walls in what should have been Walls' 2005 combat deployment to Iraq, but wasn t because Walls quit the National Guard knowing that they were getting deployed.
00:03:58.880They talk about America and their love of country at every turn.
00:04:02.660And so I do see this dividing pretty quickly into the pair that loves America and what it stands for and the pair that doesn't.
00:04:13.480Yeah, on the policy front, it really is amazing.
00:04:16.280Of course, which policies should she put on her website?
00:04:18.880The ones that she held a year ago or five years ago or 20 years ago or five minutes ago, right?
00:04:23.360She's such a flip flopper that it would be very hard to pin her down.
00:04:26.540The split screen is very, very significant here.
00:04:30.320You have Kamala Harris reportedly choosing the less charismatic, less challenging of the potential mates, whereas Donald Trump went for a man who is clearly going to be the standard bearer for the future of the MAGA movement.
00:04:46.140You have the Harris agenda, which amounts to basically a yossification campaign, right?
00:04:52.860A yossqueening, right, to the top with no actual policy.
00:04:56.820And then you have Donald Trump's record on the economic front that really made working class Americans feel like they had a shot at the American dream again.
00:05:06.500You have the Democrats caving to the elites in their party, you know, President Obama, George Clooney, Nancy Pelosi effectively choosing the next president on their ticket as opposed to the voters.
00:05:19.940And then you have Donald Trump again and again sidelining the elites in his party, whether it's Project 2025 or whether it's the donor class who picked Nikki Haley, right?
00:05:30.320There are really two visions for the future of America at stake here.
00:05:35.540One of them says, I'm going to be a perfect reflection of my voter base.
00:05:40.520I'm going to represent the multi-ethnic, multi-racial working class.
00:05:44.260And they're shot at the American dream.
00:05:46.440And the other side says, no, I'm going to reflect no policy.
00:05:49.900I'm simply going to be a reflection of, you know, elite energy, right?
00:07:21.540He signed an executive order that says the state can take your child away from you, away from you.
00:07:29.980Um, if you don't quote, affirm their gender identity, meaning they say they're a girl when they're really a boy.
00:07:37.380And make sure they can get access to puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and surgeries, chopping off their healthy body parts.
00:07:46.620If your 13 or 14-year-old comes home and says, I want to be castrated, and you say no, Tim Waltz wants the state to take your kid away from you.
00:07:57.200That's as radical as we have anywhere in the world on this issue, Rich.
00:08:05.540And to the 2019 point, Tim Waltz would have been totally comfortable in that primary, right?
00:08:11.140He wouldn't have had to change any of the positions he has now, right?
00:08:13.860Kamala became more left, and now she's telling she isn't anymore.
00:08:17.760Waltz is still with all those 2019 positions.
00:08:21.180And ultimately, you know, it's Kamala's positions that matter more, but the case you can make against her is that this reflects her values, this reflects where she really is.
00:08:30.140And the idea that the state is going to be weaponized against parents who want their disturbed or ill children who have gender dysphoria to be treated in a rational way where you try to wait it out and hope it's a phase that passes rather than introducing these radical measures that, you know, Western Europe, UK are now rejecting because there's no science behind them whatsoever.
00:08:54.940And we still have it in America and in the heartland.
00:09:29.700He really has that perfect back story.
00:09:31.700He's the one, George, remember, who labeled J.D. Vance and his Republican allies as, quote, weird, which gained a lot of steam with the Harris campaign.
00:09:39.120He has this folksy, personal, informal vibe that has really appealed to a lot of Democrats.
00:09:44.740And they believe that his rural back story, the fact that he was a former member of the NRA, as you say, he is this high school, former high school teacher, he was a football coach, that this can help appeal to those independent swing state voters.
00:09:58.700Independent swing state voters, Batya, they're going to love him because he's folksy and was once a member of the NRA.
00:10:06.080The media thinks that because they don't care about policy, because they are rich and elites and don't have to worry about pocketbook issues or issues like, you know, what's going on with their kids in public schools because their kids are on private school.
00:10:25.480Right. Therefore, the only thing that matters is, does somebody give off a folksy vibe?
00:10:41.140Right. They only care about the story because they are not facing the kinds of struggles that average Americans are struggling with every single day.
00:10:50.540Now, Walls did do some things that are, you know, pretty good for working class Americans.
00:10:55.660You know, he established a standard for nursing homes.
00:11:01.860Very important for working class Americans.
00:11:03.460And he also required a certain level of transparency in warehousing, which is really important for Amazon workers.
00:11:10.580This is all stuff that really matters and stuff that, you know, Republicans really need to be paying attention to because that is the only threat that he actually represents.
00:11:18.780And honestly, it's clear that that is not what they are putting.
00:11:22.880That is not the basket they're putting their eggs in.
00:11:25.080Right. He's not being trotted out as somebody who's good for workers.
00:11:28.240He's not being trotted out at someone who can restore the American dream for the struggling working class.
00:11:33.680He's being trotted out as someone who can support, you know, the Yoss Queen-ification of Kamala Harris.
00:11:40.380And on that front, obviously, that split screen we've been talking about, I mean, how could he possibly compare to someone like J.D. Vance, one of the only people in the elites who cares about the forgotten American?
00:11:58.100It's 2005. Instead of going with the unit and being the command sergeant major in Iraq, he quits.
00:12:05.860And what happens next to you and the other guys you're serving with?
00:12:11.800Well, in the fall of 2004, just stepping back a little bit, when the selection process was done, I was selected to a position in DeVardy, which is Division Artillery, which is, you know, he was selected into the one of the 125 Field Artillery Battalion, which I was a member.
00:12:32.240But we were both first sergeants together. So, you know, I went one way.
00:12:36.720I went to DeVardy to Division. He stayed in the 125.
00:12:39.640And when the warning order came out, the 125 ended up being part of the first brigade.
00:12:45.720So they were the ones that were after notified that they were going to war.
00:12:50.260And I was at Division and Division wasn't notified.
00:12:53.720So I was kind of like, well, it must not be my time.
00:12:57.400You know, I'm in Division. I'm I'm here.
00:13:22.900The warning order was out there from March until May.
00:13:25.820And May rolled around and the rumor came out across the state that he had he had quit, turned his stuff in and and slithered down the steps out of the armory and had quit and retired.
00:13:39.680And and everybody was in shock because senior NCOs don't do that.
00:13:45.920I mean, that you basically train for years and years.
00:14:33.760And then they, you know, they my colonel called and, you know, it was just weird.
00:14:38.360I was out in one of my farm fields and I'm talking to him and he's like, well, you know, you're we're asking you to go.
00:14:44.500And then there was a horseshoe laid on the ground.
00:14:46.560And I always call it my lucky horseshoe, but other people said, how can you say that's lucky you went to war?
00:14:51.360And I was like, oh, I got to serve my country in a greater capacity.
00:14:55.000And I got to help protect my soldiers and do whatever I could to make the deployment as as good as it could be, because it was, you know, like you said, it was a tough time in the country.
00:15:08.140So you went and how long was the unit deployed for?
00:15:11.880We were gone all the way until July of 2007.
00:15:17.520So when we started in, it was 22 months total, we had a six month train up at Camp Shelby, Mississippi, and then we ended up, we're supposed to be a year in country, we're supposed to be an 18 month deployment.
00:15:29.800But then all the sectarian violence started in, you know, in 06, late 06, and in January of 7, and we got extended to help out.
00:15:42.600We were involved in the surge, basically, but we were already in country.
00:15:46.320So they just kept us in place and moved more soldiers in to try to call the violence.
00:15:52.260Can you can you just give us a feel for how rough that time was?
00:15:58.440I remember covering it as a reporter in 2006 was when the beheadings started.
00:16:02.620It just started to get very, very dark, even darker than you'd expect for war.
00:16:53.660And, you know, it was, it was, they are a thinking enemy.
00:16:58.440I mean, Iran was behind all of the crap that was shot at us.
00:17:01.340I mean, it was from the explosive form projectiles to the mortars to the Katusha rockets to the training of the people that went across the border
00:17:09.260and then came back and then used all those tactics, techniques, and procedures against us.
00:17:14.400I mean, they, they literally were the, you know, the, the people behind the scenes in our area.
00:18:03.200I know that you wrote in October of 18 on Facebook, you've been trying to raise this issue.
00:18:09.480I should point out, you've been trying to raise this issue since he first ran for Congress.
00:18:13.540So as he ran for governor, you, you tried to tell the media in Minnesota, you need to know the truth about him.
00:18:19.180That he left us, he quit and almost nobody picked up the story.
00:18:23.680The papers that you sent your letter to wound up endorsing him like the Star Tribune and ignoring you.
00:18:30.660And so this is the first time you're really getting, I think, a national audience to, to say what you say is the truth about Governor Walz and Alpha News confirms.
00:18:42.120You posted something in 2018 when he ran for governor along with two others, with, with another, another retired Army Command Sergeant Major who is named Paul Herr.
00:18:54.140And before posting the letter, you wrote a message on why you wanted to bring this story out.
00:19:02.040On 9-11, as I lowered the flags to half-staff at the Brewster Veterans Memorial, I gazed at the bronze likeness of Sergeant Kyle Miller, who was killed in action in Iraq on June 29, 2006, at age 19 while serving in the 125th Field Artillery Battalion.
00:19:20.420I wondered what that patriot thought that day in 2001, a teenager in school, and I wondered what all the other patriots who had joined the service after 9-11 thought on that day.
00:19:30.520When they joined, we were at war, which we still are, and getting the call to go is probably going to happen.
00:19:36.340What if everybody said, sorry, I've got better things to do.
00:19:41.760We are the land of the free because of the brave.
00:19:44.940We are not the land of the free because of those who ran.
00:19:49.100The citizens of the state of Minnesota deserve to hear this side of the story, not just a slithery politician's version of what he wants people to hear.
00:19:59.740Do you feel, Tom, that he cut and ran, that he abandoned the unit?
00:23:22.940And yeah, that's I'm not ashamed to call him a traitor or a deserter.
00:23:27.460We have got to get what's happened to what's happening over in Paris with the Olympics and this boxer.
00:23:37.180I don't know about you, but I was flabbergasted at the amount of gaslighting going on in the media and by the IOC about the true sex of these two boxers who are competing in women's boxing.
00:24:19.820OK, I'm going to I'm going to give you the facts you need to know.
00:24:21.860But a little bit of background for you.
00:24:24.140First, the IOC has been aware of this problem in women's boxing for years and it's done nothing because its number one goal is, quote, inclusion.
00:25:01.980This has been banned in sports like rugby because that's another combat sport.
00:25:07.140And the the entity that controls boxing for women, the International Boxing Federation, has also said this is a no go and disqualified these two athletes before.
00:25:19.720And they notified the IOC that these are males and the IOC ignored it.
00:25:25.940Its only response has been to attack the Boxing Federation and to say, you know, hands over the ears.
00:26:32.640It got to the point where the organization that oversees women's boxing, the International Boxing Association, felt the need to come out publicly and say the IOC is misleading you.
00:26:44.120And this just happened over the weekend.
00:26:46.260And they explained this past weekend that this thing started in Turkey in May of 2022 when they were in competition.
00:26:55.640Tests were taken and they said the results were inconsistent with femaleness.
00:27:01.440Next thing they knew, they had championships in 2023 in New Delhi, India, the world championships come in New Delhi, India, female world championships.
00:27:11.980There were 324 boxers from 64 nations.
00:27:16.740And Taiwan's Lin Yoteng and Algeria's Amin Khalif were two of those 324 boxers.
00:27:22.560Now, they and others, this is not that uncommon, it's not common, but it's not unheard of for people participating in this sport and others like it to be concealing that they suffer from what are called DSDs, suspected differences of sexual development, differences of sexual development.
00:27:45.040We used to use the term hermaphrodite.
00:27:51.820And what it means in this case is you're someone who's a male, you have XY chromosomes and testes, but you don't have descended testes and sometimes you don't have a penis.
00:28:01.700But then when you hit puberty, something might start growing.
00:28:05.520But there's no doubt that in the vast majority of these cases, the guy knows he's a guy, at least by the time he hits puberty.
00:28:11.940And certainly these two know because they had an XY chromosome test done repeatedly, including a blood test, according to the officials in that world championships that told them they're men.
00:28:21.080They know they, according to the experts, would not have any female interior, you know, internal organs, no uterus, no ovaries, no fallopian tubes.
00:28:34.540There'd be no period, no breasts would grow.
00:28:37.140And that's consistent with what our eyes show us when we see these two compete.
00:28:40.200But they do have male testes that usually are undescended.
00:28:43.340So when they are born, they may look female in the genitalia.
00:28:48.260And therefore, many of them are raised as girls in the beginning by well-meaning families who don't understand what they have here.
00:28:55.240And then it becomes apparent later on as they continue to look more and more like boys.
00:32:02.920And we have two boxers who are born as women, who have been raised as women, who have a passport as a woman, and who have competed for many years as women.
00:32:22.800And this is the clear definition of a woman.
00:32:29.680There was never any doubt about them being a woman.
00:32:35.120And how can somebody being born, raised, competed, and having a passport as a woman cannot be considered a woman?
00:32:45.300That man sitting there knows that they tested positive via blood test for XY chromosomes.
00:35:15.220The one woman who was defeated by one of these over the weekend, you saw her hold up the XX with the fingers, XX, trying to say, I'm a woman.
00:35:25.140And that's how it must remain if we are going to protect the safety of American women and all the other women who have to go into this already dangerous sport.
00:35:35.860This is not one of the risks they assume.
00:35:59.660I guess these women have to worry about blowback to themselves, but they should also be worrying about the women who come up behind them because they, too, are in danger and someone's going to get killed.
00:36:10.620The Boxing Federation and the boxing officials who have been polled, one of the old female world champions, former, said Imeen Khalif's not even a very good boxer.
00:36:46.720I'm Megan Kelly, host of The Megan Kelly Show on SiriusXM.
00:36:51.660It's your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations with the most interesting and important political, legal, and cultural figures today.
00:36:59.700You can catch The Megan Kelly Show on Triumph, a SiriusXM channel featuring lots of hosts you may know and probably love.
00:37:07.040Great people like Dr. Laura, Glenn Beck, Nancy Grace, Dave Ramsey, and yours truly, Megan Kelly.
00:37:13.540You can stream The Megan Kelly Show on SiriusXM at home or anywhere you are.
00:38:07.900So bring your own lunch and sure, we'll talk about everything from baseball to politics to when Justice Breyer is around, some pretty bad knock-knock jokes that he gets from his grandkids.
00:38:23.500Is it like when we all go home for Thanksgiving and we have leftists and rightists and conservatives, Republicans, everybody, liberals, you know, debating these kinds of things over the potato salad?
00:38:34.580Or is it, I would imagine it's a little bit more elevated than that.
00:40:12.140I think about it sometimes in church where, you know, it's time to say peace and make peace with your neighbors.
00:40:19.060And I appreciate the return of the handshake, a human touch in congregation with your neighbors, even strangers to you, but with whom you have a common belief.
00:40:55.260We don't know what our responsibilities and our rights are without laws.
00:40:59.440But, you know, James Madison a long time ago asked the question, all right, some law is essential, but is there an irony in law?
00:41:07.080And can there be too much law in ways that actually hurt our freedoms and our aspirations for equality and our rights?
00:41:14.280And, you know, just as a judge now for about 18 years, I've just seen so many cases in which decent, hardworking Americans just trying to make their way, just getting overrun by laws that they didn't know about.
00:41:29.580And I felt it was important to take a moment to just tell their stories.
00:41:34.240I've reflected on it for a long time, and many of them were kind enough to share their stories with Janie, my co-author and former law clerk and me.
00:41:43.580And the book really is about them, and it's dedicated to them, and it's their stories mostly.
00:41:50.980It's incredible the way that you've chosen to approach it.
00:41:53.780And Janie, obviously, is brilliant because I'm sure she did the bulk of the research, and the stories are spectacular, the ones that you've chosen.
00:42:01.440Just to put a little, you know, header on it for the audience, you pose the central question of the book as follows.
00:42:07.740What happens, this is my phrase, to the little guy and their foundational freedoms, like the right to speak, the right to pray, the right to gather freely, when our laws increasingly restrict what we may say, they monitor what we do, and tell us how we may live.
00:42:26.380And you write in the book about how rich people, people with connections or popular people, they'll do okay.
00:42:33.020If you look at history, it's when the unpopular or unconnected, unwealthy guy or gal gets dragged into the courts, that all of this regulation becomes a problem.
00:42:45.400And you feature, front and foremost, the story of Sandra and John Yates.
00:43:50.400Well, when he gets back, the agent measures them again and finds 69 now, not 72 that are undersized, and he's suspicious.
00:43:58.720But John doesn't hear anything more about it for three years.
00:44:02.760When a group of agents surround his house, his wife's doing the laundry, and arrest him, take him two hours away, he has no idea what this is about.
00:44:12.200And he's charged with a violation of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, which was, as you know, adopted after the Enron accounting scandal.
00:44:21.460And it's designed to prevent people from destroying documents when there's a federal investigation.
00:44:27.040But the law reads, you can't destroy things like accounting records and spreadsheets and other tangible objects.
00:44:34.680And the government's Sarbanes-Oxley theory is that John had thrown overboard 72 undersized red grouper and replaced them with 69 still undersized red grouper.
00:44:48.000And John thought that was about the silliest thing he'd ever heard.
00:44:52.240But they pursued the case, even after the size limit for red grouper was dropped to 18 inches, and all of his fish, by anyone's estimation, were longer than that.
00:45:02.560They spent years pursuing him, secured a conviction.
00:45:06.380He spent 30 days in jail over Christmas when he and his wife were trying to raise two young grandchildren.
00:46:47.760She brought this case, notwithstanding the enormous challenges to doing that, when you don't have a lot of money.
00:46:53.760As you point out, it lasted eight years, three courts, 13 different judges.
00:46:58.120And John was forced to do the time and pay the price, even though he was ultimately successful at the U.S. Supreme Court.
00:47:06.960You point out in the book, all of this is very contrary to the founder's vision of what America would be about.
00:47:14.160And you say that one of the essential purposes in our founding documents, as recognized by Justice William O. Douglas, was to take government off the backs of the people and to keep it off.
00:47:26.940And somehow that's been turned on its head with the numbers that you just espoused, that by 100 years ago, all the federal government laws fit into a single volume.
00:48:14.780That was a novel idea in human history at the time.
00:48:18.400And it was designed to divide and check and balance power and make lawmaking difficult.
00:48:25.120We forget that they they saw law as restrictions on freedoms.
00:48:29.240And so they wanted lawmaking to be especially difficult task.
00:48:34.380And that's why we have two houses of Congress, why you have to then get the president to sign it or override his veto.
00:48:42.260And we've kind of taken that process where we're supposed to have the wisdom of the masses, all the people involved, their representatives coming together, compromising,
00:48:53.160working through problems and passing laws that we can all maybe understand and agree on.
00:48:59.480We've outsourced a lot of that work to federal agencies where there are experts and they have very important contributions to make.
00:49:08.120But there aren't the kinds of checks and balances that Madison had in mind for us.
00:49:15.860And as you point out in the book, overruled, they often not only will be the promulgators of these basically criminal statutes that we're going to have to abide by.
00:49:25.840But then they're the judge and jury, too.
00:50:02.400They prosecute people for violations of those rules.
00:50:05.720And then in many cases, they serve as the judge for the case to Jonathan Turley, professor at George Washington, says that the average American is 10 times more likely to be brought before one of these administrative judges.
00:50:19.100They used to be called hearing officers, but now they call themselves administrative judges.
00:50:34.000Why do we write about this in the book?
00:50:36.100Well, when you're before a judge, you're before somebody who is pretty independent, who's been appointed and confirmed and been through that process.
00:50:45.320But after that doesn't owe anything to anybody.
00:50:49.660His only job or her job is to apply the law as faithfully and fairly as as they can.
00:50:55.800And you have a jury, a jury of your peers to decide your case before an agency, your administrative judge or administrative law judge is likely to be somebody who works for the very same agency that's bringing the charges against you.
00:51:12.640And many of the procedures that you'd get in court, including basic rights like cross-examination, are not always given to you the way they would be in court.
00:51:25.760And it's unsurprising as a result that agencies almost always win before their own judges in ways that they wouldn't win in court.
00:51:34.860That fierce independence of the judiciary is going to come back into this discussion as we get into some of the criticisms of the courts these days and the push to make them more accountable and whether that's also inconsistent with the founders' vision.
00:51:52.000And you go through, you do an excellent job of outlining the problem in terms of the volume of law, the impossibility of understanding the laws, real man and women stories of how it's impossible to navigate the system and how people have gotten caught in this web.
00:52:07.600But I do want to tick through a couple of the passing references because they bring it home.
00:52:12.560Justice Gorsuch goes through the six-year-old you may have heard of who landed in court for picking a tulip by the bus stop.
00:52:19.280A 10-year-old whose lemonade stand was shuttered for lack of a business license.
00:52:23.740We talked about those kids all the time when I was on Fox.
00:52:26.640It's a federal crime to enter a post office while intoxicated.
00:53:41.400That's the kind of thing we can put your company out of business.
00:53:43.740And it went through six years of those kinds of administrative law proceedings we talked about a moment ago, got to my court.
00:53:52.460And the three of us, we sit in panels of three on the courts of appeals, usually.
00:53:56.880We looked at each other and said, we think, gosh, I think they comply with all the rules that were in existence at the time they provided their services.
00:54:04.740And the government's accusing them of violating rules that it didn't even promulgate until years after they provided the services.
00:54:15.180And we got the government lawyer in front of us and heard argument.
00:54:18.700And it turned out the government had just become confused.
00:54:22.500It was producing so many rules so fast.
00:54:25.540It had no idea that it was accusing somebody for violating rules that didn't even exist at the time.
00:54:30.680The theme I see out of the book, again, overruled, is these government entities overreact to problematic behavior, minor problematic behavior, and they punish good or neutral behavior over and over and over.
00:54:54.640There are so many examples in the book, but one of them that our audience may be familiar with is Hemingway's cats down at his estate, which some regulator deemed a problem.
00:55:10.620But then they were once the regulators stepped in.
00:55:14.340Yeah, so there's this law that said that if you're an animal exhibitor, like a zoo or a circus, you have to have a federal license for your animals.
00:55:26.660Then the agency took that and kind of ran with it and said, basically, animal exhibitors include everybody from children's magician, Marty Hahn.
00:55:40.140Yeah, it's a crazy, that's a crazy story, but the Hemingway Museum, turns out they needed a federal license, and somebody from the U.S. Department of Agriculture went down there and said, okay, you have these cats.
00:55:53.020They're all descendants of Ernest Hemingway's original six-toed cat that he got from a ship captain is good luck, and they've been taking care of them for years down there.
00:56:02.560They even stay during hurricanes to make sure the cats are okay, and they have a little cat cemetery with tombstones.
00:56:11.020I mean, these cats are loved, and they're all named like Marilyn Monroe and Cary Grant.
00:56:16.360Anyway, this person from the Department of Agriculture says, you've got a problem taking care of these cats because the wall isn't tall enough, so the cats kind of wander into town.
00:56:27.700People love them, but you've got to keep them in, and so you've got to put the wall higher.
00:56:33.100And the museum said, well, we'd love to, but there's another federal agency that says we're a historical site, and we can't change the wall.
00:56:40.280So, all right, then the agent said, well, maybe you need to put a hot wire on top of that wall.
00:56:48.920So they put the hot wire in, and, of course, that fried the cats, and the agency got very angry about that.
00:57:30.860And ultimately, of course, it got resolved.
00:57:33.400But the museum tried to fight it and said this regulation is too broad an interpretation of the statute.
00:57:39.920They fought it all the way to the 11th Circuit and lost.
00:57:43.180The 11th Circuit said, you got a pretty good reading of the statute there, but there's something called Chevron deference, which requires us to favor the agency when there's any question about how best to read the statute so you lose.
00:57:56.680And you point out, too, I want to get to Chevron, but in New York City, for an example, opening a restaurant in New York, citing a New York Times article.
00:58:05.340You'd have to go through 11 city agencies, often with conflicting regulations, get up to 30 permits, registrations, licenses, and certificates, and pass 23 different inspections.
00:58:16.340That's exactly the kind of bureaucracy that they were running into down at the Hemingway Museum, where they just wanted to love these cats and not electrify them or electrocute them.
00:58:26.100Same thing as the poor magician who had similar problems.
00:58:29.240You've got to read the book to find out his story, Marty Hain, where he's just trying to pull a rabbit out of a hat.
00:58:34.060And if he wanted to pull an iguana out of the hat, he could have done whatever he wanted to it.
00:58:37.380But ultimately, they were actually getting down to the nitty gritty of, well, if a tornado comes, the cat needs to go into the holding shelter first before the dogs and cats.
00:59:17.440And then later after Hurricane Katrina, they said, well, now you need to have an emergency preparedness plan for chemical spills and hurricanes and all manner of disasters.
00:59:29.940And he had to hire a disaster management expert to help him write a 28-page disaster management.
01:00:12.780And they said, no, you have to have one of those stickers that says this way up on it.
01:00:16.980And he said, well, where do I get some?
01:00:18.460And the agent said, well, I'll send you some.
01:00:20.640And two weeks later, he got 200 stickers in the mail thanks to your tax dollars.
01:00:25.860Hmm, it's so, we have to laugh because it's truly just absurd, but it's one of those laugh or cry situations.
01:00:34.000You know of all these cases because they wound their way through the judicial system.
01:00:39.000These people were forced to defend themselves against an overreaching federal government that does not understand those founding principles of how limited it was supposed to be and how we formed the whole country because we didn't want that boot on our neck inside of our homes.
01:00:55.860And when we do a magic show, not everything has to be overregulated.
01:01:01.000And one of the examples that's the most heartbreaking in the book, not the least of which because we actually went there for a short time during the COVID lockdown, was what happened in Butte, Montana.
01:01:11.240It's where you may not know this, Justice.
01:01:13.500Rob O'Neill, the guy who shot bin Laden, is from Butte, Montana.
01:01:16.980And boy, I've talked to him many times, but I've never talked to him about the history of his hometown and how this government overregulation stopped people from helping themselves.
01:01:31.420Yeah, so Butte, Montana, 100 years ago, 150 years ago, was one of the richest places on the planet.
01:01:39.960They discovered copper there and the wires for our telegraphs, our telephones, bullets for World War I.