Published Feb. 11, 2025, 9:01 a.m.
9am John Tatar - Lawful Defense Tatar Tuesday with John Tatar. Studying the Constitution. Know the law and use the law - using the law to defend yourself. All things Constitution and Lawful Process. Tatar Tuesday with John Tatar 10am Meghan Reckling Co-Founder & CEO of Victory Field Operations. X/Twitter: https://x.com/i/broadcasts/1dRKZYzvDWDxB Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/636616148890812/videos/583138577881573 Rumble: https://rumble.com/v6jhgcg-bnn-brandenburg-news-network-2112025-lawful-defense-john-tatar-and-meghan-r.html https://rumble.com/v6jhgus-bnn-brandenburg-news-network-2112025-lawful-defense-john-tatar-and-meghan-r.html Odysee: https://odysee.com/@BrandenburgNewsNetwork:d/bnn-2025-02-11-lawful-defense-john-tatar-and-meghan-reckling:6 https://Live.BrandenburgNewsNetwork.com BrandenburgNewsNetwork.com Guests: Donna Brandenburg, John Tatar, Meghan Reckling
Good morning and welcome to Brandenburg News Network. I am Donna Brandenburg and it is the eleventh day of February twenty twenty five. Welcome to our show today. And we have lots to talk about again, as usual. I'm going to have John Tater on for legal lawful defense. And then after John, we have Megan Reckling on, who's the co-founder and CEO of Victory Field Operations. And she was a county director. chair for the republican party and I believe levinston county at one point in time but we're going to be talking with her because she's got a great tick tock account or not tick tock x account and I liked what she's been throwing out there lately so we're going to talk about what she has investigated and such so let's bring on john how you doing sir I'm doing very well awesome what's happening in tater land Oh, my lawsuit is still cooking. I haven't heard anything back from those public functionaries I've been suing. Let's say individuals I've been suing, judges. But the excitement is that there are a lot of other judges out there that are doing stupid things as far as Trump goes, trying to stop Trump here and there. And they're talking about judge impeachment. So that'll all play out. Yeah. Those judges, because they're really nobodies. In fact, my feeling is that once Obama and Biden and Clinton and all of those people are found guilty of crimes, then everything that they did will be unraveled. In fact, all of those judges that are sitting in the benches thinking that they're protected because such and such a president put them in office they're going to be gone because god vitiates everything Yeah, there you go. So it's really an amazing time to be alive and watch the panic in D.C. happening right now. But it's not just in D.C., it's everywhere. So this morning I wanted to talk a little bit about political parties because I've been on a little bit of a rampage lately. Most of us took an oath at one point in time to defend the United States against all threats, both foreign and domestic. And I'm going to just lay it out there that I really do believe that the political parties at this point in time, which the ones that have taken PAC money as well as dark money, are both a domestic and a foreign threat because they're taking money from entities to steer the United States of America rather than for special interests, rather than for we, the people. So I think we're going to have to address this because, so the last few days I got into a little bit of a, of a, I don't know how to say this delicately, but, but into an, a bantering with Michonne Maddock on Sunday. And I threw out the fact that she's got a bunch of, of registered entities under lara with her name spelled differently and that's exactly what james comey did he did comey corny whatever the heck you know but you can see you can see the patterns here guys and then not only that you've got scott greenlee who is a consultant and all these people that are running They're all part of the system underneath the parties. If you are not part of the system, you are going to get kicked to the side, and maybe you can just pop up under the actual Constitution Party in the state of Michigan, which is the U.S. Taxpayers Party, which would be Donna Brandenburg and John Tater, right? The misfits. We're the misfits, right? We won't capitulate to them. We won't buy into their nonsense, and we'll call them up when they're wrong. The entire money game that's going on there within the parties is buying our elections and it's cutting the American people out. I think that this is going to have to be addressed in a legal way. But we also have to call these parties out for what they are. The political parties have become so corrupt. Let's just say... They're always corrupt. They're always corrupt. They've been corrupt from the beginning. But we have to call it out as such. And that means that every single person involved in these political parties, which has taken foreign money, they have... and they've been involved in smurfing, they have, and you know, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. We have to call them out. And if you're involved in them, you're part of the problem. Now you may not be directly involved in the crime, but You could say the same thing about the nurses and the doctors that were given the clot shots and saying they were just doing their jobs. They were doing what they thought made things better. But the crimes were only committed at the top. But it takes useful idiots to make these things run. So we have from top to bottom. They use people who have good intentions in order to carry the ball forward of their actions. Evil plans. What say you? And I think we really need to address this and throw it out there. And it's going to make a lot of people mad. But when you look at the fight going on between all the hookster crowd and the Caramo crowd, none of them are any good. They all made their they're all they they're all part of the problem. There was no heroes there. And you can't tell me that they can't find one person that wants to run this state that's willing to run to back. Well, they wouldn't back them anyway. And so welcome to the Constitution Party of Michigan, the U.S. Taxpayers Party. We do not take money the way that they do. It's like we have no money. We don't take money. We're not going to take that kind of money. And we're going to fight the way it's supposed to be done, even if we're the only ones. What say you? First of all, I took two oaths of office. I took one as a soldier, and I took one as a teacher. So I don't know if they still do oaths of office for teachers. I know they do it for the military. They should. I suspect they still do. So I did take two oaths. And so, yes, I stand by those oaths a hundred percent. As far as political parties go, the political parties are set up in such a way that only morons follow the political party. Only morons follow the political party because they have no brains to think for themselves. They don't want to spend the time learning. don't want to spend the time figuring it out they think well you know I got my four-year college degree and therefore I'm as smart as I'll ever be and a lot of them are that way and so whatever the case may be they don't do what they're supposed to do and figure out who these uh people that are running for office run for office why somebody would take on a job that makes, we're talking about federal Congress, makes a hundred and seventy-three thousand dollars a year and end up leaving the political arena as a, you know, thirty million dollars richer. And there's a whole bunch of them. Waters, Waters is as dumb as a rock. Anybody listens to her, she doesn't know what she's talking about. Pelosi is dumber than she is, or as dumb as she is anyway. schumer he is really an idiot and he these guys are millionaires and where are they getting this money from it's not coming from the taxpayer directly it's coming from the corporations that's where it's coming from it's the money laundering system that they're connected with buying another one Biden is worth what? Seventeen million? How to get that money? Running in Congress as a congressman? Those people were supposed to be our servants and yet we're paying them millions of dollars while some of us are sitting there working sixty hours a week to make ends meet. Something wrong with that picture. Well, and look at the DeVosses in Michigan. The DeVosses, if you look at the oligarch families in Michigan, there's just a few of them that actually are running politics in Michigan. When you look at the political parties, even how that works, the precinct delegates at this point in time are still voting. They're trying. I'll give them... Credit for trying. But by and large, they're still not able to overcome what is there. And they're choosing basically from the same pool. The good ones are being kind of used in a way from what I can see. But you look at DeVos's. How come DeVos's are putting fifty nine million dollars into politics? Who does this? Why are they doing this? And they've been putting that kind of money into years. And then all of a sudden, well, Betsy DeVos is putting Tudor Dixon up, who is part of the global crime family at this point in time, because her family was selling, selling from what it looks like at any rate, her family was selling information. in, you know, global information, people's personal information. DeVos's were putting Tudor Dixon up. They broke her out at RVD, RDV building at the Econ Club with Oprah Winfrey, I was told. And then at the same time, there was secret meetings going on with the oligarch families right before they started. And it was DeVos's that started Republicans for Whitmer. I don't know if people are getting their arms around this and picking up here what I'm putting out there, which is the fact that they're all involved. And if you follow these people, you are now involved as a useful idiot. You've got to get off this mind plantation here that they've got everybody on. and stop assisting them in their subversion of the United States. The parties right now are absolutely guilty as hell of being involved with foreign money as well as uh, dirty money. There's all kinds of dirty money that was going on. You can prove it by what happened with FTX with, with that Sam Bankman freed that this is all tied in together. And they're, they know that you gotta be sitting under a rock, not to know it and not to have seen what's going on. Yep. I agree. And with that, I would like to invite anybody that's out there to come to our, to any of our meetings or reach out to me as the first vice chair of the taxpayers party, which is a constitution party. They will not allow us to use our name because our public officials here are not officials. John's going to ding me for that. Public functionaries want to suppress the fact that we're actually the Constitution Party. So they have been decided to sue the secretary of state. And you can do that. I wrote a letter some time ago to try to get this changed. But nobody in the in the taxpayer party wanted to do anything about it. Well, I do. Why don't you write up a... I wrote the letter. I'll send you a copy of it. Send me the copy and then help me write up a lawsuit and I'll file it. First of all, you got to write the letter to the public functionaries and tell them that they better get off the dime because they're going to be sued. And we haven't done that. I mean, I sent the letter out through Mark to go to the board. For some reason, the board didn't want to do it. So... well I don't know if the board needs to personally if we need to I'll do it personally well you gotta you gotta do it as a party I think I mean everybody in the party has to do it well they're violating my individual rights to want to have the organization that I'm involved in have to be able to change their names they're misrepresent they're allowing a misrepresentation of the party to go on that's why that's why you got to do it as a party individuals in the party would be great. If you had five, six, seven individuals in the party that wanted to do the lawsuit, that'd be great. I think we could find that. Well, I'll send you a copy of that letter that I wrote. It was probably dated two or three years ago. Okay, well, help me with this because Benson, we're going to be talking about Benson in the second hour with Megan and why she's unqualified to be Secretary of State as well as governor. She's unqualified for everything. She's going to make governor. Nobody's going to vote for her. She's a jokester. Everybody keeps asking me, who do you back? Who are you back? I'm like, you want a straight answer on that? Who's running? Well, we've got the chair, the Michigan chair, and then we've got different people popping up. We've got Chris Swanson that is announced. We've got, he's a Democrat. We've got, he's a sheriff, but he's a Democrat. Here you go. He might be a nice guy, but as a sheriff, why didn't he start, you know, he's been working on child trafficking, but why hasn't he started with, with the people that are enabling all of this and, and investigating and pushing the investigations forward to remove these people. It's great if you have one focus. I stand with anybody fighting child trafficking. However, what broad base does he have to represent the state? Is he a constitutional sheriff? Well, at this point in time, why did he not go after Whitmer, Benson, and Nessel and arrest them? Has he read the Constitution? What? Has he read the Constitution? Don't know. Yeah, exactly. These guys call themselves sheriffs. What are they sheriffs of? And I'm not going to – he's probably – a lot of people like him. He's probably a very good person and a nice person. That's not it. But the point being is that, you know, we need to find out. And I asked every sheriff that I interviewed, which I didn't interview the entire state, but I interviewed probably somewhere between a third and a half of the state's sheriffs. And the questions I asked them is why didn't you arrest Whitmer? You have the ability to do that. And I got not really one satisfactory answer out of them. I had a couple of satisfactory answers coming down the pike, but there's only a couple of them that I believe are constitutional sheriffs. They don't understand. They don't understand their jobs. They don't understand. They're like, well, you know, I'm just doing what I can in my own area. I'm like, really? Wear the badge and collect the money. It appears that way. You want a song? Yes. Of course I do. Because this guitar is getting heavy. No, I'm kidding. Oh, sorry. By the way, this song is, I think, related to what we're talking about. There once was a musical troupe, a picking, singing folk group. They sang the mountain bells and the folk songs of our land. They were long on musical ability and folks thought they would go far. But political incompatibility led to this downfall. Well, the one on the right was on the left and the one in the middle was on the right. And the one on the left was in the middle and the guy in the rear. was a Methodist. The musical aggregation turned the entire nation singing traditional ballads They performed with great virtuosity, and soon they were the great, but political animosity prevailed upon the stage. Well, the one on the right was on the left, and the one in the middle was on the right, and the one on the left was in the middle, and the guy in the rear burned his tripus. And the hush fell on the ground. Some thousands, they were gathered to hear the folks' song. the concert hall while the audience watched deliriously they had a freeze for all and the one on the right was on the bottom and the one in the middle was on the top and the one on the left one had a broken arm and the guy in the rear said oh dear If you plan to start a folk group, don't go mixing politics with the folk songs of our land. Just work on harmony and diction and play your banjo well. And if you have any political convictions, Keep them to yourself. For the one on the left works in the bank, and the one in the middle drives the truck. And the one on the right's an all-night DJ, and the guy in the rear got drafted. Woo! Bravo! How fun. Too fun. I love your songs. Well, they're not all my sons. I do steal them from people. Yeah, that's all right. You're just giving them advertising. How's that? Yeah, that's right. So let's talk about the basis for the political parties and why they are, because you and I kind of both agree on this. And so let's go back and do a little history lesson on them. Well, George Washington did not like political parties. And his attitude for political parties was that people don't think for themselves when you have a political party. Somebody's doing the thinking for you. And that seems to be the case today, even probably worse than it was back in the eighteen hundred seventeen hundreds that people in the system today. I've heard people say, you know, I'm a I'm a delegate for the Republican Party and I'm proud of it. What's to be proud of? What are you doing in that? What do you do there? Well, I get to meet all these celebrities. Well, they don't call them celebrities, these public functionaries who are running for office. And a lot of them that are in those positions as delegates are starstruck when they see these, you know, whoever's walking down the aisle. You can name whoever they are. that, oh my God, these people, they're close to God, they do all of this stuff for us. They don't do anything for us, they do it for themselves. But the whole idea of the delegates are to actually pick the best candidates out to run for office. That's their job. They're supposed to do the vetting of these public functionaries. They're supposed to know everything there is about, you know, pick a name, I don't care, Bob, Billy Clinton, before Billy Clinton ever gets to be president, they ought to know everything about him, his background. And then based on all of that, decide whether he is a good candidate for that position. But nobody does that. They go there and they say, oh, Billy Clinton, oh, my God, how wonderful. I get to see him. I get a picture of him. I get a picture with myself with him. This is absolutely ignorant. Who would want a picture with any of these public functionaries? Just to, you know, hang it on your wall? For what purpose? So that's the problem that we have. They're supposed to pick the candidate based on the candidate's abilities, based on the candidate's intelligence, and based on the candidate's background and philosophy. What's he there for? I'll bet there's not one person in the delegation system that says to a public functionary, did you read the Constitution? Do you know what it says? Do you know your job, what your job is? Can you tell me, you're running for Congress, can you tell me what the eighteen, first of all, you might want to ask him that question, can you tell me how many functions the Congress has? Give me a number. And if they say eighteen, can you name five of them? Five functions of which Congress is supposed to do. I'll bet you they can't do it. I'll bet you ninety percent. I'll bet even higher than that number. Ninety five percent of the public functionaries that are in Congress do not know their job. And that goes for a lot of the people in the judicial system. That's why we got the corrupt, the bottom of the barrel system. That's why I'm suing three judges because they're the bottom of the barrel. They don't know what the law is. They knew what the law was. We wouldn't have a lawsuit because they would be following their law and their oath of office, but they're not doing that. Why? Because they were either put in that office and they owe somebody for that position. So they're compromised and they play the game with the system. And that's the same stuff that we've got going on in Michigan. You told me about DeVos supporting Republicans for Whitmer. He supported it. That makes absolutely no sense. So these are the people that the Republicans are standing by. I posted something a few days ago, and it was, I'll see if I could find it here, about the oligarch families in Michigan. And honestly, how much money these people are pouring into our elections. But the PAC money, you know, it's like I'm telling everybody, keep your money. If you're going to support a candidate that you know and that's one thing, they don't need your money. They're laughing at you and anybody else that is out there. They don't need your money because they're stealing it from you. They're already stealing it. They don't need your money. You want to break the system? Keep your own money. Keep your money. Don't put it out there. It's ridiculous. So this is a beautiful system they have set up. Al Capone couldn't have done this good. They have a system where they set up the political parties. They get the most ignorant, malleable people to run for those positions, and they do get them. They get them in position, and then they control them like a puppet. And then they steal the money through an organization called the IRS, which has abusive black boot thug power that if you don't pay them, they knock on your door and they steal your property. And then they go back and they pay these public functionaries this money. And it's a big vicious cycle and you got to go to work sixty hours a week to make ends meet. There's something wrong with this picture. Yes, huge. And, you know, it's like any of these people in office could be, you know, fighting the problems that are out there. Why are they not? Why are all these people just going along to get along? And they're like volleying the ball back and forth constantly, but nobody ever wins the game. It's not volleying the ball back and forth because they have control of the system. They have a political, and if you're listening to anything with X-Twenty-Two or any of those other programs that are out there that talk about the corruption that's going on, they have the system so many tentacles in the system that it's hard to follow where the money is. I haven't listened to Dave in a while, but I like Dave. Yesterday and today, we're pretty good about the system, talking about going after the Pentagon, who's lost billions of dollars. I've lost a billion dollars. Somehow a billion dollars just escaped us. We don't know where it went. And this was during the nine eleven time. We lost a half a billion dollars and they were going to do a a audit of the Pentagon, but we had nine-eleven. And once nine-eleven happened, who ever thought about the half a billion? No big deal. It's just money gone and we don't care. So this is what's going on. They have an event and that takes away from what the real issues are. And the public buys into this stuff. They follow along. They don't want to know who really did nine eleven. They all put their American flags on. They wanted to go to war and bomb Iraq. whether they knew it or not. And in fact, when I was teaching school back then, I had political comments on my bulletin board that were made by patriots of the past because I was teaching the Revolutionary War. And the other teacher that was sharing the room with me walked in, saw these and took them all down, took them to the principal. Because she says, you can't have this stuff on the wall when we have nine eleven. And I explained to her this nine eleven is nothing but another issue like brought us into the Vietnam War. And here we're going to be in a quagmire of nonsense. And that was back in what, ninety one, ninety, ninety, ninety, ninety one. When when nine eleven happened. No. Yeah. No. It was after that, it was two thousand. I'm thinking about Desert Storm. Same thing, same thing. When Desert Storm happened, there was the same arguments that we're going into a war that we should never be involved in. We were set up by the public functionaries to go to war. The Vietnam War was supposed to be a war that never ends. And so here's the battles that we are facing. They don't go to war. The public functionaries don't go to war. They send us to war. Here's a chart that I put up and I just reposted it again. The Michigan Oligarch Reportable Donations. DeVos family has fifty nine million dollars that they have contributed. Think about this. Do you think that they're spending their own money? Not a chance. I'd like to see where some of this is coming from and going. And why would anyone in their right mind put that kind of money into it? So we got the McKee family at one hundred thousand. Corpy, one, one hundred forty two thousand. Reimer, one hundred fifty three thousand. Then we're just going to skip down here a little bit until we get into the Seki family. Two million cotton family. Two million cotton. Marone, two point six. Huizinga. Huizinga. Think about this. All of you out there that I've said before, and I'm part Dutch in the Dutch mafia here. We've got Huizinga, two point eight million. Nicholson, two point nine. Weiser family. Weiser. Weiser and DeVos. Weiser was the chair of the Republican Party. Six point nine million dollars. Think about what's that? Where'd he get that? Six point nine million from the Republican party. I'm not just pointing out the Republican Party, honestly. This is the one that most of my followers, I'm sure, they align with Republican values. I align with the Republican values, too. I uphold the Republican form of government. We're all Republicans if we support the Republic. Don't mix those two. The Constitution Party, right, you can't mix them because one's a label and one is what it is. But the Constitution Party is actually the more conservative branch of the Republican Party, if you really want to call it that. It's more conservative, which means you go back and you stick to the Constitution, which is you stick to the law. That's what we're missing here is sticking to the law and going back to what works. You can't mix the Republicans and Republican Party. Republican, Republican Party. They're not the same. I agree. I agree. We need to clarify that enough. But one is a label. And, you know, the Republican form of government is a supporting as a Republican representational form of government, which at this point we don't have at the Republican Party because it's upside down and they're taking foreign money. So they're a foreign slash MSP. Those people that don't know the difference between a democracy and a republic should go to our website, magnificentrepublic.com. There's an Ayn Rand video that tells the difference between a democracy and a republic. And they should learn that. What's the difference? Because most people out there have no clue what those are. They don't know what their terms are. They've used terms that, and I've been guilty of it when I was younger, didn't know any better. The one that comes to mind all the time is the Fifth Amendment, where people use it because they don't want to incriminate themselves. That's incorrect. But that's what the public functionaries put out there. So they make it feel that if you plead the fifth, you're a criminal because you don't want to incriminate yourself. What it really says is bear witness against yourself. And people don't understand the language. like they don't understand Republican Party and Republic, and they don't understand democracy and Democratic Party. They think they're aligned with each other. They're not. One thing has nothing to do with the other. That's just the label put on these parties to make it sound like they are for democracy, which we should not have in America. It should be annihilated. That's a buzzword that they're all using, but what they're saying is mob rule. And it's unstable. It's the most unstable form of government is a democracy. Because let's just say that all the men decide they hate women. Okay? And... And or something like that. And they say women should have no rights. And the men have a majority or whatever. I mean, I'm just using this example. And I know that that's probably a bad example. But they could literally take all the rights away in a democracy. Or if people want to ban the color red on anything. Let's just say we don't like red. We don't want to see red on anything or product or anything. They can vote that in and all of a sudden that goes away. That's a democracy. And it does not uphold the right of all people. That's a very simplistic argument. It was meant to be, but yes. And I would like to ask you, would you promise to go to our website this week and watch the Ayn Rand video? It's short. It's not very long. Why don't we just do that right now, sir? I can do that. Okay. Because I think it's important for people to really understand the difference between the two. And they don't. And if they knew the difference, really understood the difference between the two, they would never want a democracy. Never. Where's the video? It should be on that page. Okay, hang on a minute. Oh, here we go. Got it. takes a minute this is that's okay my computer crashed a couple days ago so all right I think if you go down a little bit you'll see her the video actually and you can click on it maybe nope maybe that was it I'm sorry I think that's it click on that and see what happens whoops By the magic of let's see what happens. Let's see. Oh, click on the blue. There you go. All right. If it's YouTube, I got to stop once in a while or else we'll get dinged for a copyright. Just got to talk over it a little bit once in a while. And that seems to derail it. You know, this does this once in a while where the sound, I can't, the sound that comes through. We have to define our concepts clearly. A democracy in the political meaning of the word, the original meaning, defining a specific political system, means a country governed by unlimited majority rule. A democracy is a form of government in which the majority has the right to vote on anything and to pass any laws they see fit the sole standard of legality being a majority vote that is counting of numbers. Democracy is incompatible with the Constitution because the principle there is that the sole standard of right or wrong in politics is the counting of noses, a majority rule. The best example of that system are the original city-states of Greece, where, if you remember, the majority have... Okay, let's pause a second. You have any comments on this? Well, yeah, I think you got to let it go to the end of this part. I got to break it up or we'll get a YouTube or a Facebook strike. So that's why I paused. Majority rights means that if you have a group of people, and this is the problem with groups of people. We have groups of people in our country. We have the blacks. uh we have the hispanics we have the chinese we have the american caucasians and we all then they divide us into these little groups and these little groups and this is the people in office this is this is our democratic uh people in Lansing and in Washington that want to keep these groups out there and want to keep these groups divided against each other. So they fight for their group rights. We don't have group rights, we have individual rights. Okay, let's go. ...the right to vote a death sentence for a man if they disapprove of his ideas. Socrates is the best example. most famous one, of what is wrong with the system of democracy. Socrates was condemned to death because the majority of the citizens found that his ideas were subversive to the use of Athens. And he refused to escape, though he had a chance. He declared that his fellow citizens were wrong in their decision, but they had the right to vote away his life. which is a ghastly example of the sanction of the victim and a perfect example of the nature of a democracy as a political system of government. That is really frightening. I hope this sinks into everybody watching this, how scary a democracy is. It's very scary. That's right, and this is what's going on right now. Public, properly, is a system of government which is limited by the individual rights of men, which means that the majority may vote, but only in a strictly limited and defined political sphere and that the individual rights of men are not subject to majority vote, not to government legislation. All that the government can and should do in regard to rights is protect them. Well said. yes well said declaration of independence states that very clearly uh right to life liberty and property and is to be protected by the government that's their function but government cannot infringe them that is in essence the nature of a proper republic I would say worsening them, if anything. If I represent democracy, you mean a system which is based on the democratic principle of unlimited majority rule, but merely delegates that power to the chosen representatives rather than to the direct vote of the citizens. Is that what you mean? No, that would be even worse. Because for a large country, a majority would not be likely to agree on some vicious legislation, whereas a small chosen body of representatives, unguided and unlimited by any restricting principle, is the pattern of a tyranny. And that's what we kind of have right now. I hate to say it. Exactly what we have right now. Exactly. She was so wise. And ahead of her time, or maybe she wasn't ahead of her time, maybe this is just a system that's repeated itself over and over again, but she articulates it so well. Yes, I agree. She does put out very good information. I think it would be great for everybody to read Atlas Shrugged. representatives in the name of the alleged majority may be guilty of any form of violating individual rights or establishing complete status tyranny, yet it would be consistent with your principle if the principle is unlimited majority rule. I think that's the end. Got it. So well said by her. So we need to define our terms as we speak because we need to understand and control the narrative. This is absolutely critical that if we follow the principles of our country and the language of our country, we will get a better grasp of what's going on because, again, Public functionaries in office do not overreach, which there is no legal term for overreach. They usurp authority. And it is critical that we get to those philosophies of usurping the same things that Norton versus Shelby County speak of. Because once we get a control of the terminology, then we will have control of the narrative and we will be able to change what's going on in our country. Until we do that, we will have a very difficult time because Plausible deniability is what these public functionaries try to get away with. They say, well, you know, I really didn't know that. Yes, you did. You were involved in it. You made the half a million dollars and you didn't know where that half a million dollars came from. You usurped authority never granted. You didn't overreach and steal money. You usurped authority, which was within your job description. Trump is talking about going after the judges that are stepping outside their job description. That's usurping authority. If you step outside your job description and you don't follow your oath of office, then you are liable for usurpation of your authority and you shall be, number one, removed from office, number two, held liable. Though we citizens cannot criminally hold these judges liable, but we certainly can go after them for money damages in the civil side of the judicial system, which is what I'm doing. I'm going after three judges for four million apiece. I've had it with them and I'm writing a second lawsuit now for another judge and attorney who have usurped authority never granted. And hopefully that lawsuit will be done in a month or so because it takes time to put all the facts and figures together and and be sure I got all my Ts crossed and Is dotted because they find hundreds of different ways of dismissing cases, which is what brought- What are some of the examples of that? Of? Dismissing a case. You said hundreds of examples of reasons. Well, the one judge, I was suing Batani and Linda Parker. Linda Parker is still on the bench. I think Batani is not, but I don't know that for a fact. So I was suing those two plus two IRS agents and a couple others. And it went to the U.S. District Court, downtown Eastern Division. And they shipped it off to Cleveland to Nugent. uh chuck new chuck charles nugent I don't know remember his first name off the top of my head but they shipped it off to nugent who said that I was incarcerated there's no proof that I was incarcerated there's no evidence and and of course he's a judge he should be able to look at my record and see was tater ever in jail and of course the answer is no But he did use that as an excuse to dismiss my case. And he said, further, you did not pay your filing fee, which was also a lie because I produced the check for him in a reconsideration. And he ignored that. So, number one, I said, okay, I was never incarcerated, number one. Number two, I did make a payment. You've usurped authority never granted to you, and you dismissed my case based on that. That's a usurpation of authority. And then it goes to Yonker, who's your judge in Grand Rapids over there. And Yonker says, well, you know, you never stated a federal question, and therefore I'm dismissing your case. What's the federal question that they were looking for? Well, I don't know what he was looking for, but violating the Constitution isn't a federal question. Violating your oath of office is not a federal question. Saying something, lying on the record, committing perjury is not a federal question in a federal court. This is what Yonker was using to dismiss my case. He dismissed my case. So he's being sued too. Simple stuff. These judges. And so they're doing the same thing now on the federal level against Trump. They're making stuff up. They just make it up as they go. Most of the legislation we have on the books is pretended legislation. It doesn't even really exist. It's just somebody decided to make a bad decision and say, I guess we're going to do this. Okay, guys, let's just do this. They'll never catch on. As my partner says, it's fake. It's all fake. Everything's fake. It's not constitutional. It's fake. If you have an office that is not in the Constitution, IRS, DOJ, CIA, it's fake. It's all fake. And they've been using these fake organizations to keep their thumb on the public. What do you think about USAID having a fifty billion dollar budget? They're fake too. Yeah, well, which was way more than the CIA. So they were actually the funding mechanism for the CIA and everything else, what I'm seeing happening here. Absolutely, absolutely. I think we're going to find more of these type of organizations, too. I think it's going to keep coming out. Schumer's fake. Clinton's fake. Obama's fake. Waters' fake. Pelosi's fake. It's fake. Whitmer's fake. Whitmer didn't win office by proper election. She was fake. She was put in office. Whitmer's fake. Nestle's fake. And so is... And Nestle doesn't do her job at all because she should be stopping the... governor and or the secretary of state when they step outside the constitution she's fake she doesn't know what she's doing she's put in office to collect money and pat her pockets that's it she's another fake one along with uh uh benson and benson's now running for governor she's fake she's fake people need to wake up these people are fake these people are put in office To steal from the public. Really interesting this week because I was like looking into Nestle and her wife, Alana McGuire's nonprofit that they funded the signature gatherers over. She funded the signature gatherers over a million dollars. Yeah. And I mean, there's a lot of questions there. And it went back when I looked at their filings, it actually went back to a company. It took me a few jumps to get there to an address in New York City, which is tied to the London Stock Exchange. Interesting. Yeah, there's a lot. They're all profit companies. That's the problem is that that they say, oh, we're nonprofit. We're nonprofit. Sure, they are. Sure, they're nonprofit. They're just they're just hiding the profit company behind them. That's the the web that they weave. so here's the shell games so you you know if you find one company it doesn't it's not the answer there's another company and another company involved in another company before it gets the biden's pocket so that's the game that they've been playing all these years upon us and they use the federal reserve uh open bank account to steal the money from us the only way we're going to fix this is to shut off the spigot get rid of the Federal Reserve, get rid of the funny money system, the fake money system that we have, and go back to real money. And then we will be able to be successful in our endeavors to stop this illegal behavior of this criminal syndicate that now runs DC. People need to wake up. Yep. I wanted to show you something else that I think is kind of interesting and it starts with political. Uh, this is kind of interesting. I'm going to try to try to, uh, explain how this happens. And this is in the state of Michigan. And this is, I'm going to connect the dots here a little bit. This is rural AM FM. And when we look at the political consultants and how this works, John, you have company strategic national campaign management has a resident agent named Dave to shop works for the political party here. And here's this filing and Laura strategic national has Dave to shop on as the resident agent. But oh my goodness, look, Dave DeShaw is also the resident agent for Rural AMFM. LLC. Dave DeShaw, because he works for this company, Strategic National, works for John Yap. And here's the contract and how they move the money back and forth and how they're actually taking the money off the top of these things. And so all the Republicans that are like, oh, Dave DeShaw, Dave DeShaw, it's like, do you understand how this is actually working? Dave DeShaw is working for As a resident agent, John Yobb, a political consultant who Mashaun Maddox said would hire him in a video. I played it. She said, yes, she would contract with him. And you've got people that are downstream from this. I don't, I can't explain it any better than this. Then they're all tied into grift off the system and they take a cut here, there, and everywhere. It's amazing. So it's a, you, you, when people say these people are dumb, they're not dumb. They, they, they are, are criminally. mind it I'll give you that they get away with it but it's like it's like they're not dumb but they know how to work the system who and let's not let's not give them the credit they came into a system they learned how the system operates they were groomed for it that's all they are they're not that intelligent I don't give them that credit that they're intelligent people. Well, the Republicans were all losing their mind when Mashaun Maddock called me stunningly stupid and then quoted a fake account on Twitter for me rather than my actual account. Well, they do that. That's the wrap-up smear campaign that they've been pulling off on all of these people. I laughed all day. I thought it was funny. I mean, it's like stunningly stupid, hon. You quoted a fake account. Okay, good, good, great. Except it ends up on the news, and how are you fighting that? You've got to sue them for slander. Is it worth the fight to go after them for slander? Sometimes it is. If you have no other fight to go after, it would be good to go after them for slander. Well, I think it's just funny at this point in time because what are you going to do? Because no matter what you do, the court system is being rigged. You've got to sue them. You've got to sue them. This whole thing is going to be you've got to sue them, you've got to sue them, you've got to sue them. Because that's the only language they understand. They don't understand right or wrong. They're all wrong. They're all criminals. So the only way you can go after them is to tie them up in court, if that's what it takes. I'll tie these judges up for a long time. If I lose this one, I'm going to take it to the Supreme Court. I'm going to tie them up and let them chase after their tail for a long time. And if they don't answer my argument, they're going to be in default. And we'll see how our, whoever the judge is that's assigned right now to Stephen Murphy, in downtown. We'll see if he's got integrity or not. If not, I'll put him on the list. He'll be another defendant. I'm not playing games with these guys. You're going to keep going after them, keep giving them a heartache. Maybe they'll have a heart attack in the process and then I can't get anything from them, but I'm going to continue to harass them like they've been harassing me over the years. And that's the only way we can do it, be on the offensive, go after them. They're not going to win. I think what we've been learning all along here, though, is how to do that and how to take our country back, which is a beautiful process because we haven't been in control of our country for decades and decades and decades. So now the structure is there. The structure is good. We just have to go back to that structure, go back to what works, and then peel all the layers off. You know, I'm going to talk about like Shrek, it's like layers. You got to take the layers off and take the layers off until you get down, get the rot peeled off the outside and, how it's been packaged to, you know, to snocker the American public into feeling like they can't do anything, that they have no power. We do have power. We just have to understand what the process is. Part of that is, you know, stop doom-scrolling, everybody. What a waste of time, doom-scrolling. for things, look at actual real information. And I was talking to a friend this morning who is pretty much like-minded with me on a lot of things. And the fact that we look at things and are able to see it for what it is, the doom scrolling on YouTube and on TikTok, wing, wing, wing, wing, wing, wing, do, do, do, do, do. You know how programming that is? That's like, like a zombie state right there, you know, and they're flashing images in front of your eyes that your brain is not going to differentiate between real and fake after a while. That's what TV has been all about since the inception of TV television. It is programming because they're literally programming. The only way to get off of this is you're going to have to go to source documents and and start thinking again. There was a book that we were reading when I was in eighth grade in literature class called A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine Lingo. And I really liked that book. And it's one of the few books that I can remember being sixty years old, you know, that I can remember specifically reading that book when I was in the eighth grade in literature class and how impactful that book was on me. The bad guy in there had red eyes and he was trying to, he was sending out like constant a constant beat of, of information or influence, which I think they're doing it through five G and everything else. I mean, it's, it's through, it's through the television, it's through the internet, it's everything. And we're constantly news cycle. It's over and over and over again, and it just keeps up. And then it increases the, the, it increases the, the, the, uh, of it. the frequency of it, right? And that we're getting fed this information. Nobody's been able to stand on solid ground that's watching that full time. And it's meant, it's designed to do that. So if I can give anybody good advice today, stop your doom scrolling. And stop the programming. Stop. Take a pause. Look around. Get your brains back together again. It's by design. And the political parties are doing it with their nonsense of fighting back and forth between this faction, that faction. They're bad guys. They're bad guys. They're working together. They're working together. It's the same people backing both sides. The same political parties. So we're going to have to start thinking and not reacting. If you haven't seen the movie The Network, you ought to see The Network. I haven't because I don't watch movies that often. That one you've got to watch. That one you've got to get. It's an old one. I watch nerd stuff like why bridges fail. You've got to see that movie because it talks about exactly what you're saying. And aircraft. Turn it off. Right in the middle of my speech. Turn it off. It's worth watching. Go get yourself a cup of coffee. Decide what good coffee is because good coffee is something you can touch. You can drink. You know it's real. Anything else out there? You could be watching CGI. You could be watching them spoof anything. You might be following fake accounts like the Sean Maddox quoted Brandon instead of Brandon. She couldn't even get that right. Oh, my God. I don't even know what to say. You know, we need to increase the IQ of this. Not even IQ. IQ is a bad measure. We need to increase the critical thinking of Americans to actually vet, understand good information, know where it's coming from and hold people accountable. Well, give yourself a plug here, John. The plug is we'll be on Zoom this week, Wednesday night, seven to nine. Learn the law, learn what your rights are. If you don't have any rights, if you don't know your rights, you don't have any. Learn how to deal with the court system, with the executive branch, talking about the police and all of the other public functionaries out there. Learn how to deal with these people because they work for you. So show up, or if you don't know how, you can call me at... You can go to the MagnificentRepublic.com. It'll give you a link to join our Zoom on Wednesday nights. Come and listen to what we have to say. I'll send you court cases free of charge. Just show up. Ask me for them. I'll send a whole bunch of them that we've been reading and going through so you understand the real law of this country. And you can start getting the public functionaries off your back. There you go. And with this, I'm going to take a quick thirty second break and I'll be on with Megan Reckling in just a minute. So have a stay tuned for this because we're going to be talking about our wonderful secretary of state who threatened every single one of us, which puts her in the criminal case. If I had a basket of criminals, basket of true deplorables, Benson would be in there. It's like, don't threaten me. or any other American out there because you're on the wrong side of a good decision right there, Benson. So anyhow, we'll be back in Thursday with Megan. Thanks, John. Bye. Bye. Good morning and welcome to the second hour of Brandenburg News Network. I am Donna Brandenburg and it is the eleventh day of February twenty twenty five and welcome to our show. Megan Reckling is going to be on next, co-founder and CEO of Victory Field Operations. And welcome to Brandenburg News Network. Megan, how are you? I think you're on. You're muted. Can you unmute? Well, how are you? I'm great. I'm great. It's so great to talk to you. I was I just came across your your ex account recently and I was watching what you were posting and I'm like, she's my girl here. She's putting out some hard truths. And I love that. I love researchers. You know, I research those in the Anon networks for for quite a while. And I like to research. I could do that all day long and just dig, dig, dig, dig, dig, dig, dig and bring the truth forward. Because, you know, you can't make a good decision unless you have good information. You know, garbage in, garbage out, you know. And it makes you look bad. Like Sean Maddock looked bad when she quoted a fake imposter account for me this weekend when she was, you know, decided to go on the attack dog campaign. process. That's okay. I can, you know, I kind of actually enjoy that sort of thing. So, so how are you today? Well, I'm excited to talk about my I'm going to call her my good friend in no certain terms. But, you know, Jocelyn Benson, I think it's really important that people understand what she's done as our secretary of state, just setting aside the administration of elections with election integrity. You know, I've really followed her for years now, going all the way back to the Independent Redistricting Commission when that was created in Michigan. And I've watched pretty much every single meeting of the commission. And how she has conducted herself as our Secretary of State is just something that should terrify everybody in Michigan, especially now that she wants to run for governor. And so I spend a lot of time trying to bring the truth to light about what she's done as our Secretary of State and just how dangerous she would be as our next governor. Well, you got the floor here because I'm waiting to hear what you have to say. I think that all of us can look at what's happening with Queen Gretch, her squire Nestle, and the court jester Jocelyn Benson, who honestly, it's a joke how they've run this state. If it weren't so sad in such a horrific situation, it would almost be funny if this was a sitcom. But this is real life, and that's – it's become such a problem, then we need to start thinking and truly investigating what they've done and throw it out there because we can't have these people in office anymore. Yeah, I mean, it would shock a lot of people to learn that the three of them don't actually like each other and they don't get along. I didn't know that, really. Yeah, yep. They do not like each other. They do not get along. They don't all politically align and they definitely don't hang out in the same factions. So it's... odd because you can kind of see how they want to work in tandem over the years. If you look back at COVID, if you look at some of the election stuff and you can, you know, you can see how when Nestle doesn't get or sorry, when Benson doesn't get what she wants, she'll have Nestle get involved to try to help her out. Sometimes she does, sometimes she doesn't. Whitmer, same thing. So yeah, it does actually shock most people that the three of them don't like each other and don't get along. But when we look at Jocelyn Benson, you have to go way back before the Most of us know she ran for Secretary of State against Ruth Johnson years ago, and she lost. And essentially what she did at that point was set out to eventually, almost a decade later, run and win the Secretary of State's office. And she never wanted to be Secretary of State because she believes in the administration of fair election laws, because she doesn't. She does not believe we should administer... Spare elections she believes we should administer elections in a way that gives Democrats and progressives advantage to winning elections and going back over a decade, almost two decades now from when she started to write her first book to lay the groundwork that she's an election expert. to spending time in Colorado, to helping behind the scenes, every step that she has taken has really been with the long-term goal of fundamentally transforming Michigan and our election system to look as close to and administer as best she can like Colorado does their elections. That's kind of what she views as the best of the best, right? Ballots get mailed to everybody. really nobody votes in person, all the things that Benson would want to happen here in Michigan. Our structure is a little bit different because of our levels. You know, we have the Bureau of Elections, we have county clerks, and then we have thousands of local township and city clerks that actually administer our elections. That's been her biggest roadblock is the you know, network of people in Michigan that actually administer elections, the decentralization of it. And that's caused her a lot of heartburn. It's caused her a lot of roadblocks. It's caused her to take longer to do things. It's why she tries to centralize things either to the county clerk's level or the Bureau of Elections as much as possible, because she's trying to claw as much of that power and centralize our elections. It's partly why I would argue I think she's a big reason why people on the right question our local clerks. If you really think about it, look at the map of Michigan and stop me if you have any questions, because I could ramble on and on about her forever. You know what? My best guess that I like the best are the ones that just talk. That way I can sit here. Somebody said the other day, they said, wow, you're just kind of like stone face. And you know, when you're listening to people, I'm like, I have like a laser ability to focus. So when somebody talks, I'm sitting here listening to every word you say. So just go right ahead. So when you think about it and you look at the map of our state, most of the map is red, right? We know that you have pockets in Southeast Michigan that are Democrat and we have the Ingham County area and you get over into Kent County and up towards Traverse City, there's some Democrat areas. But for the most part, our state is pretty conservative and it's pretty Republican, which means on a local level, Republicans are elected as our county clerks and as our township clerks. so they administer most of our elections but we have a huge issue on the right trusting the system rightfully so like we should question the system I believe that jocelyn benson has been part of an intentional I think she has intentionally started a chain of dominoes One, trying to lay and weave and sow distrust in local election officials. Two, trying to cause people to doubt the skills and ability of our local elected officials. And then three, because she refuses to provide training and tools and resources to ensure that those clerks can properly administer elections, it causes them to have issues. And therefore she can put her hands up and say, see, they don't know what they're doing. And in the end, this is all a plan. Her plan is that eventually she can say, you know what? It's not good. They don't know what they're doing. We need to centralize our elections. We shouldn't have our township clerks administering elections. We should have the county clerks do all of these things. what would that do well now benson wouldn't have to deal with over twenty four hundred township and city clerks that administer elections she'd have to deal with eighty three county clerks that's it so it shrinks that pool of people that she has to deal with and go through when it comes to picking which uh ballot uh devices we use picking who printers print Picking who does test decks, picking all these things. She would only have to deal with eighty three county clerks instead of all of the other local clerks that technically administer our elections. So. She has really started, you know, the minute she became secretary of state, she started to sew this web of. distrust in local election officials. She has been a pain in their ass. She has done everything she can to make sure that their job is as hard as possible. It's not easy being a local clerk. There's a lot of responsibilities. What I've heard, though, from the local clerks is that they're taking orders from the state instead of the local clerks running the elections the way that it should be done. And the other thing that's disturbing about this entire thing is the fact that I think, to your point, is that she's distracting from the real problem. The real problem is that they've hacked her election with the absentee ballots and the machines, which I had a call last night that once again reaffirmed the fact that there's illegal programming on these machines. One of the lawsuits I was involved in was to prove the fact that the machines weren't even certified. So it's almost as ridiculous as using a credit card machine or a gas pump and never having them actually certified that they are putting out the gasoline for the amount of dollars that you're paying for it, that's unverifiable. And we had that with our machines in Michigan. We've also proven by AlienVault and some other methods that they're actually hacking our election systems at the programming level. So the fact that she's using this against the local clerks, it seems like a big distraction to me. It's all about checks and balances, right? I mean, if you go back to our founding fathers, they created three separate but equal branches of government to serve as a check and balance between the executive branch administering laws and the legislature creating laws and the judicial branch to kind of be there to wait out disputes. When it comes to election administration, you kind of want to think of the system as the same thing, right? We have programming of tabulators, but then who does that programming? And then who runs the test to verify it? When you have the fox guarding the hen house, you can't have trust that the checks and balances that should be done to make sure these things are being properly programmed, are being properly tested, and can be trusted are being done. There's no check and balance there. And so her entire goal is to centralize that, to bring it to a point where she is the fox guarding the hen house. And then she says, oh, it's okay. It's all okay. You know, we... You can look at her rhetoric every single day. She talks about being the defender of democracy. She touts and brags running for governor that she has administered the most fair elections in the country. You know, being in one of the five states for twenty twenty, she likes to use that as a bragging talking point. But at the end, people should be questioning and have the right to question because. a she is the fox guarding the hen house but b she refuses to be transparent and that's probably one of my biggest pet peeves about jocelyn benson especially when I saw her campaign announcement when she was touting her transparency as secretary of state and how she's going to bring transparency to the state I literally almost spit my coffee out I'm watching the ad laughing She is one of the most least transparent elected officials, especially as Secretary of State, that we have had in decades. Not only is she not transparent, she intentionally manipulates the FOIA process to hide information about elections or about the dealings specifically within the Bureau of Elections and the Independent Redistricting Commission that she does not want people to know or see. How is she doing it? So she does it very specifically. One of the things I always like to point out is I'll have a lot of people tell me often that they think there's a grand conspiracy or think a lot of this stuff is planned. I think by Benson it is. I think she does actually have plans. She knows what she's doing and she's marching forward. But if you look at the everyday staff that works in the Bureau of Elections or works for the Independent Redistricting Commission, I have always been mind blown as somebody who has worked in the legislature for years and the legislature in Michigan is not subjected to FOIA. But I'm not naive whether Republicans are in control or whether Democrats in control. At any point in time, the Senate majority leader can say, you know what, even though the legislature isn't subjected to FOIA, we're going to release every single email that a staffer or a legislator has written on their state system because they could, right? They have the authority to release those even though the law doesn't force them to. So I'm very cautious when I'm using my state device, when I am emailing on my state email, I don't write things that I would not want put on the front page of the Detroit Free Press because one day it could be on front of the Detroit Free Press. But as somebody that has read through thousands and thousands of pages of FOIA documents from COVID documents to stuff relating to the Independent Redistricting Commission to stuff related to Jocelyn Benson in the Bureau of Elections, I am always mind blown on what people will put in an email. especially people that know they're subjected to FOIA and their emails could become public. It is mind blowing the things they will write down. And basically what happens is Benson, all of a sudden somebody will catch on to something going on and she decides that she doesn't want these records to be released. So she does a couple of different things. One, she tries to charge exorbitant FOIA fees. That's her first line of defense. If she does not want you to obtain documents from her office, she is going to come back and she is going to issue a FOIA price quote that you're literally just going to fall out of your chair. And I've seen some really big prices. I mean, I've watched when people have gone after... documents for COVID from different executive branches, from DHHS, and there were really high fees related to those. And so I want to highlight, and I think this is the post on X that kind of you saw and I was highlighting. So I am I am very personally passionate about the Independent Redistricting Commission because nothing about them is independent. This is a progressive method to redraw Michigan lines for the House, the Senate, and the Congressional seat to ensure that Democrats can have a majority. They do the same thing in other states and they target states where I mean, look at Michigan, right? So we again, when you look at the map of Michigan, a lot of it's red and the Democrats live in pockets. Why? Democrats tend to live in cities and Republicans tend to live in the rural area. And we have more rural area in Michigan than we do cities. And so Democrats, when you get into Southeast Michigan, look at the state house, look at the state Senate. They are winning those seats by ninety two percent. I mean, a Republican may be lucky if they break the ten percent mark. They don't want to win seats by ninety percent. They want to win every seat by fifty one percent. That's it. Fifty percent plus one. So they need to drag those residents that live in the city out into rural districts. And under the new or under the old way that Michigan used to draw our lines, they couldn't do that. Right. They were forced to follow county lines and city lines. And so they had to find a way to help drag these people out into the rural areas of Michigan or drag them out into Oakland and Macomb counties to make seats more competitive. And so nothing about the Independent Redistricting Commission was done to benefit the residents of Michigan. It was all done in a way to try to manipulate the line-drawing process to ensure that Democrats could easily walk into a majority in the State House and in the State Senate. And so as you started to watch the Independent Redistricting Committee meetings, you started to get a feel for the fact that there were commissioners on there These are supposed to be everyday people, right? I mean, if you look at the criteria of what it takes to be a commissioner, they can't have been a precinct delegate. They can't be related to a candidate. There's a whole bunch of you can't be disqualified. And somehow under the independent label of the commissioners on the redistricting commission, there ended up being commissioners that were just disqualified. You could tell they were political. You could tell that they knew what they were doing and you could tell that they were manipulating the system. And then you started to watch who the advisers that were being recommended to the board, Bruce Adelson, who was being touted as an expert on the Voting Rights Act and majority minority districts on the federal level. who was a big factor in what had happened in previous states where he had worked in Arizona advising them to ignore the Federal Voting Rights Act to just get what they want. And that's exactly what he ended up doing here, advising the state redistricting commission. Well, once COVID hit and the commission was forced to go remote and all of their meetings became these remote meetings, you started to pick up things. So one of the things we started to notice was, that commissioners were asking questions of people who were testifying but you could tell they were coordinated right so like commissioner widgets would ask a question and commissioner ead would follow up and you could clearly tell they had coordinated like they knew what they were doing and they knew what they were asking I think we see that a lot right yeah but and we knew that but they're all remote right they're all sitting at home so it's not like they're sitting in the same room trying to coordinate these things we knew that they were sitting in remote places by themselves and so what we figured is there's no way that they're coordinating without using one of two methods one they're texting each other Or two, because you could tell on the Zoom that they didn't really have a phone device in their hands, like they weren't looking down like they were texting. They kept looking at their computer device. More than likely, what we thought is they're actually using the instant message feature and they're messaging each other. which should be considered part of the public record and should be playable, right? Like we should be able to pull their chat threads. And so that really kind of started this impetus because a lot of the questions they were asking were things that organizations like promote the vote. The unions, the ACLU, progressive organizations that were trying to manipulate the map drawing process that we knew because they supported like we knew who was trying to support a more Democrat leaning map to give Democrats an advantage on the House and the Senate and the congressional maps. It was the same questions and the same, you know, when you're around enough and you can be like, oh, that talking point sounds familiar. Oh, yeah, it's the same one that organization's using. That's interesting. And so they started to ask a lot of the same questions and push a lot of the same talking points that these groups were doing. So I worked with somebody to submit a FOIA request for emails and chat logs between certain commissioners and then between certain organizations. I knew when the FOIA was submitted that the price was going to probably come back close to six figures. I figured the Bureau was going to ask for about a hundred thousand dollars to issue all these documents. I think I about literally, I don't even think I fell out of my seat and had a heart attack. I just died laughing when I opened the FOIA quote and it was literally a million dollars. a million dollars for records that should be open to the public anyways. It's such a joke. And why they're doing it specifically to hide the information and make it difficult to be held accountable. In this age that we live in, to be able to have these documents and just being able to look it up and have it at the tip of our fingers is very not only possible it's easy to do correct so this has to be this has to be done with the intention of hiding things I mean if you look at the quote specifically that we got back so a majority of the cost nine hundred eighty four thousand six hundred eighty nine dollars and ninety two cents so nearly a million dollars it's labor cost it's cost of employees they said in what we asked for. So again, we asked for chats and then we asked for electronic emails between certain members. They came back that there was four hundred, basically four hundred and forty thousand pages of documents that would fall underneath our for you request. And somebody Xerox them off. Correct. And so they believe that it would take an employee eleven thousand hours to go through and redact information that they believe is eligible to be redacted so even if we decided okay we'll go ahead and pay your million dollar for your cost how long would it take the employee eleven thousand what am I gonna get the information back in twenty twenty eight You know, once she's well out of office, probably. And so, yes, she's hiding behind the labor cost of what it would take to have somebody go through these. You cannot tell me in the age of technology. First off, it's a keyword search. All of these emails, all of these chats, they're logged. It's keyword searches. Secondly, there is now AI technology and there's other technology that can be used to review for keywords that could be redacted. When you're talking about emails back and forth between the commissioners or chat logs, I'm not sure short of, but there's been a number of lawsuits. So off the top of my head, I can't think of information that would be eligible to be redacted in the emails that they just shouldn't have to give. And so that's what she does time and time again. Anytime a FOIA is issued, you can look at other people that have issued, you know, that have asked for FOIAs, go back to when Jocelyn Benson got elected in And her outside nonprofit corporate account was caught not only coordinating with her, but spent two point four million dollars on what they defined as issue ads, but ended up being direct elect ads because they advertised that she was a candidate for governor. benson barely fined them it was like six cents on the dollar where historically every group that has violated that statute was fined dollar per dollar of whatever they had spent mismanaged so they should have been fined two point four million and she fined them six cents on the dollar it was like thirteen thousand bucks And there were a number of FOIA requests that were filed related to the investigation and the settlement in that. And Benson withheld a significant number of records that were supposed to be released through FOIA. And the organization that had filed the FOIA ended up suing Benson and both the court of claims and then Benson appealed it to the Court of Appeals ruled that she unjustifiably redacted and withheld documents, hundreds of pages of documents that she should have released under the FOIA. But what did that take? Right. It took money to go to court. It took somebody who was willing to go to court. And as you know, from going through this, I was just having this conversation with somebody else today. every single step that you take cost money it costs money to file the foyer I mean the foyer request is free to file but you have to pay to get the records there's they're not going to give you the records for free whether you're a parent who's advocating before a school board you're looking at what benson has done you're playing dhhs or who what the dnr they're going to charge you for records And the number one trick that they use is to make the FOIA fees exorbitantly high where they don't think you're going to pay for them. So then they get to just kind of toss their hands up and be like, well, it wasn't on us. We told them they could get the records. But what they're not telling you is that they're charging an obscene amount to give those records out because they don't want them out there. And so this is a common trick that they use. Benson's used it for years. And then, you know, let's say you do decide to pay. And then you realize there should be more records here. Like there was too much redacted. This doesn't, the story doesn't add up. You have to file a lawsuit. That takes an attorney. That takes money. That's right. And time, and at the same exact time, you have Benson and you have Nestle who are using state state resources and our tax dollars to fight against us to keep these documents hidden from public record. And they're doing it time and time and time and time again. It's absolutely amazing. how these people are so bold in not allowing the public to see information that we should have access to while at the same exact time standing in front of the microphone bragging about how transparent they are. So, you know, It drives me nuts. I mean, I saw the media this weekend start harping on, you know, Matt Hall and the House Republicans and like him or not, or, you know, set aside your personal feelings. The media is now blaming the House Republicans because, you know, a FOIA And they're running cover for Gretchen Whitmer. And I'm like, listen, you're missing the main point. The woman literally ran on saying she was going to be the most transparent governor in the history of Michigan. And she had this whole sunshine plan. She doesn't have to have a law to force her office to be transparent. All she has to do is stroke the same pen that she stroked during COVID to... let seniors die in nursing homes alone and let you know force kids out of school and force people to wear masks and grocery stores to shut us out of the c dial she could do the same exact thing today no questions asked and say I'm going to subject my office to foia every email from today moving forward is going to be open to the public all you have to do is ask for it she has the ability to do that that would be illegal that would be legal whereas the stuff she did during covid was illegal It was unconstitutional. So she only has jurisdiction to run the executive branch and to talk through through executive orders to her employees and how it runs. Correct. She has no jurisdiction over the people. That's that's a no, no. Absolutely. And so she doesn't. So she wanted to use the pen to stroke, you know, unconstitutional, illegal orders shutting Michigan down. But when it comes to transparency, she just wants to kind of shrug it off. And then she has her little minions in the media blame somebody else. And no, no, no. She could do this today. Jocelyn Benson could release records today related to a significant number of things about the election, related to a significant number of things about the Independent Redistricting Commission. Not only does she choose not to, she intentionally manipulates the current system to hide behind it because she thinks she can. She's gotten away with it. Why wouldn't she think this, right? For six years now, she's gotten away with everything that she's wanted to do. And she's running for a higher office. So to her, she's kind of invincible. Who's she being backed by? Because I've got some ideas of a lot of these people and who they're being backed by, but who is actually backing her and bankrolling her? I mean... Benson has been able to grow a network of some national donors that really care about election administration. Like it or not, the Democrats for a long time have recognized the importance of certain positions. If you go back to twenty eighteen, I specifically remember being incredibly vocal about the fact that I thought we were going to lose the governor's race. I did not see any path for Republicans winning that. I wasn't sure where we were going to go on the Attorney General's race as out there Dana Nessel is. I still thought there was a path for her to win. I was very vocal that I believed Republicans should hunker down and no matter what we do, do not lose the Secretary of State's race. I truly do believe that. the person who administers our election is one of the most important elected officials in the state of Michigan. And that has borne fruit over and over and over again, especially as we've had these major constitutional amendments that have changed our election laws. That she's had to implement and that's had such a big impact. And so Benson is really kind of coming out of the Soros, the major national donors who have installed. individuals into certain spots. You got to remember, Jocelyn Benson was not the pick for Secretary of State back in twenty eighteen. She was not the Democrats choice. Neither was Dana Nessel to come out of that convention. There was actually two other individuals. Don't even ask me who they are. That's how relevant they are now. But they were not the pick of the mainstream Democrat Party. That's partly why Dana and Jocelyn and Gretchen don't get along. is because they were not supposed to be running together. There were supposed to be other people that filled those positions. And they kind of came out of nowhere. They won the convention, then they won these seats. Since then, you know, Jocelyn Benson is, I'll phrase it in this way so I'm not liable, Jocelyn Benson is very close to a man named Stephen Ross. who has significant amounts of money and who will likely help with major donors and be a significant funder to her campaign. Well, what's really sad is that Ron Weiser was contributing, too, through U of M. So, I mean, all these people are tied in together. I believe there's a uniparty here and they're all tied in together. So you've got Stephen Ross and Dan Gilbert over there. I believe that they each made a five million dollar donation to Benson to to Benson in some form or another. And so we need to look we need to look through some of this some of this contribution stuff that's going on. And at the same time, let's look at DeVos, who put fifty nine million dollars into the race at the same time, having secret meetings and starting Republicans for Whitmer. The whole thing is so jumbled up that a normal, average, everyday person who looks at this political nonsense goes, we got nothing. We literally have nothing out there at this point in time. And when you have the political parties taking to pack money as well as dark money, the parties themselves are a domestic and foreign threat to the United States right now. They refuse to clean themselves up. and do the right thing and call them out for what it is and and and go after these people legally and it's left to the the rest of us out here going okay I guess let's see who can I sue and how do I how do I see how do I get into this and and exact some accountability because it is not self-patrolling it is not holding each other accountable And it's very disturbing to most of us that are out there because it just looks like one big political moron circus out there of people who are in it, who are placed, you know, who are placed and it's upside down. The state should only be there as a record keeper. That's it. They should be record keeping. But the power needs to come from the people. And the closer to the people we are, the better off we are. The whole thing is out of whack. I'm really hoping that this role that's happening federal is going to go through Michigan. And when it goes through Michigan, the shit's going to hit the fan because there's so much criminality that's going on from top to bottom there. that I think people are going to be literally shocked that these people they've been shaking hands with for years have been taking all this money and they're involved in it. I think there's just a level of, I think the level in the federal, to me, the federal government is putting on display what could happen here in Michigan. You know, I talked to some people and they're like, what do you think about what Trump's doing? And I'm like, well, I kind of elected him to cause chaos and mayhem. Frankly, like that's the only way. As somebody who has worked on the inside, as somebody who has been in the legislature, I made a post about this the other day and I'm a conservative and I'm a Republican, but my party has done, we've taken a lot of wrong turns and we are, you know, especially when it comes to fiscal issues, I genuinely believe that we are as responsible for the out of control spending on both the state and federal level as the Democrats are. I've never met a Republican that when push comes to shove, won't vote to raise our taxes instead of budget cuts because every single budget cut has a special interest group that's associated with it. I'm just giving you a high five right there for that statement because it's just like the Jay Sixers. Marjorie Taylor Greene is one that most of the Jay Sixers cannot stand her because she could have done something to stop it. And they all go along to get along and they slap the label on their face. And we're supposed to believe that these people are either Republicans or Democrats. I think they're straight up communists. I really do that have infiltrated our nation. Oh, I believe there are some. And so, yeah, I think problem. Yes. And so, you know, you look at what's happening and you look at the accountability that Trump and Musk are bringing to the federal level and they're shining a light on the spending. And I had somebody the other day, Saturday at my daughter's basketball game, come up to me and say, what do you think of all this, you know, USAID stuff? Do you really think the spending is as bad as they're telling us? And I said, if you want me to be honest with you, I think it's probably worse. I think it is absolutely worse than what is public. I think if the general public truly knew where their tax dollars were going, I think Americans would literally stop paying taxes for years and not giving the government another penny of my dollars. it is absolutely ridiculous where money has been going. So I do think it's worse. And I think there's, apart from the everyday people, like anybody watching this podcast is instantaneously a hundred times more educated than the everyday American that has their lives, trying to feed their family, trying to get kids to and from school. I mean, heck, I have two kids and it was hard enough for me just to respond back on a text for you to make sure that we were going to be on the same podcast on time. And I'm overly educated and involved and informed compared to most everyday Americans. And I think there's a part where it's like people don't want to genuinely believe that their government has done that much wrong or mismanaged money or could be that deceitful. So I think there is a part, it's like your natural human instinct, right? Like you don't want to believe that your government could have done all of these things. I believe that, especially on a federal level, they're doing all of that plus more. I made a quip and I was like, man, if people think the government having access to all your payment stuff for Social Security and Medicaid and Medicare was good, wait till they see what they did with those ancestry DNA tests that you guys have been taking. And that's a little bit of a quip, but it's not a little bit of a quip. I think if people generally knew how in our lives the federal government was, You would turn off your ring doorbell. You would cut off Alexa. You would close off your refrigerator and never buy. I mean, I remember six years ago we had to buy a new fridge and I'm standing in Lowe's and this one person was like, oh, let me show you this fridge. You can be standing in Meijer and you can Bluetooth right into your fridge and it's going to show you an inside live look of your fridge so you know what's in it. And they're like, isn't that great? And I was like, no. Because if I can Bluetooth into my fridge, the federal government, like, why would they care what's in my fridge? But, like, the intrusive nature, like, all of this opens a door for hackers, the government, the Chinese. You can think it sounds crazy, but I genuinely do believe everyday Americans underestimate what China is doing to us on a national security level with technology. And I think that plays in the election space as well. I think we have all witnessed, like it or not, that on both sides has been foreign interference in our elections. And that is a national security issue. Making sure that Americans can feel comfortable going to the ballot box, that our votes are being counted accurately, they're being counted fairly, and the results, whether we like them or not, were fairly and justly done, I think is an imperative part of our representative republic moving forward. We have to continue to feel that the election was done properly. Otherwise, the whole basis of what the founding fathers did is going to crumble before us. And to me, a big part of this has been Republicans who are just too nice. You see this time and time again, Republicans that are just nice because, you know, if we're nice, when the Democrats take power, they're going to be nice, right? No, when the Democrats take power, they literally run. They run as far to the left as they possibly can. Or even alive. I mean, there is that part of it, too, you know? Well, that's the whole part of it, right? They're going to lie about what they're doing. Democrats have no problem lying. They are going to say one thing and do another. They're going to pass legislation and give you the talking point that they want you to give. It's illegal when Donald Trump does something, but when Joe Biden ignores the U.S. Supreme Court and and does stuff with student loans, it's completely acceptable. We're not outraged at that point then, but JD Vance issued a tweet about the Supreme court and we're now, you know, our, what they call our democracy is now going to collapse tomorrow because, you know, Trump and his administration doesn't respect the Supreme court. Well, you guys didn't either. Let's just be real about that. And so I think that, You know, when you just look at everything going on, Democrats have always used the leverage they've had to make policy movements and move the country as far to the left or move a state like they have Michigan as far to the left as they possibly can. And then when Republicans come into power, we're nice, right? I mean, no offense to some of the past Republican presidents, they've gotten in and they're just nice. It's like they hit a pause button. or when Republicans are criminal, I think they're criminal and they've taken it. They take, I think they're infiltrators. They infiltrate. And just like Bush, Bush was a criminal. He was absolutely as, as bad or worse than anyone sitting in the seats. But so was Carter to Carter set the, you know, you look at it, they're all in bed together. Carter's a Democrat sort of Bush is a Republican sort of neither one of them are. I think they're invading an infiltrating organization that takes, uh, the people's good intentions to align with those values and use it against them. Because once they say, Oh yes, we believe like you, the trust factor goes great. I've got somebody to follow and then watch them and going, Well, wait a minute, the Bushes funded both sides of World War II. Oh, wait a minute, the Bushes were involved in CIA. Oh, wait a minute, they were all involved in nine-eleven. That's pretty easy to see that little debacle that came through. And watch how they work together to mislead the American public under a label that they trust. I don't think we should trust anybody at this point in time. We need to make them prove themselves no matter what label they come under because the labels are misleading. And when I was in D.C. a few weeks ago, I saw a few people that were working there that I think they went there with the intention of doing the right thing. A couple of younger women that I got to talk to and they were afraid to talk to me. which kind of was shocking, but they did, but they did it by changing what they would say. And they were kind of like this going, well, that's not exactly what's happened. And I'm like, why are you afraid to talk to me and tell me what's going on here? And they were afraid and they were working for Republican. And so when we look at this, if they're afraid to say something that's true, why there's the question it's because things aren't what we think they are nor what we see and that should be disturbing to all of us on every level if they can't come out with a transparency and say what's going on I don't give a crap what what label they have republican democrat uh dog catcher it doesn't make any difference you know nobody should be afraid to say what's true right Yep, I agree. I would echo your, I would love to see almost, you know, what's happening on the federal level come to Michigan. I think people would be shocked. You know, I mean, here's Gretchen Whitmer yet again, wanting to raise taxes and charge us more to drive on the roads after she blew nine billion dollars on pet projects. After she maxed out the state credit cards, billions of dollars, you know, apparently to fix the roads. I don't know, but we're getting into pothole season now. My sister actually just moved back from D.C. and I was like, OK, welcome to Michigan. We're now in pothole season. So don't change lanes on the highway. She's like, what do you mean? And she, you know, about a week later, she called me. She's like, I get what you mean. Don't change lanes on the highway. Well, you know what the thing of it is that really makes me wonder a lot is that when you see these these construction projects going on all the time and I I kind of I've got a little construction knowledge, of course, you know. So one day I was across the state and I put the camera on the dashboard when when we were when we were moving across the state, twenty miles, we had four lanes of orange barrels. I know I know how the equipment fairly well. because of the businesses that I'm in. Right. And in that twenty miles of barrels, maybe the barrels were maybe thirty to forty feet apart in most areas, four lanes of them. There was approximately one hundred and seventy five probably a hundred and seventy five yards total where there was construction equipment out there and it wasn't even impressive equipment it was like junky crappy equipment and I'm like what do you guys do just park the equipment there to make people think you're doing something but I want to know who has bob's barrel company out there that's got the barrel contract for and I did That is the joke, right? Like, Whitmer didn't fix the road. All she did was put up a bunch of barrels to make you think she fixed the road. And on the interchanges, she'd tear up the interchanges to inconvenience people, to get it in our mind that they're doing something when they're not. You can't look at it at face value. The other thing is how many times they've used substandard equipment and things that have planned obsolescence in the construction contracts. All right, guys, we're not a bunch of dummies out here. We know what's going on. They could be using basalt rods instead of using the normal re-rod or rebar in the construction. But why are they doing that? Because they want them to fail. so that they can have more contracts to launder more money to their buddies out there that are getting the contracts. I mean, it's easy to see when you dig into it a little bit. And I'm not putting up with the shit. I'm calling it out. It's like, this is nonsense. We got an interchange over here on M six and one seventy six. Of course, they forgot to put an additive in it. So right after the warranty went out on it, Oh, no. However, could this have happened? It failed. We're going to have to redo the whole thing as soon as it was out of warranty. Oh, no. They forgot to put an additive in it so it would fail. There's a strip in ninety six right through Livingston County between Howell and Brighton where when they redid, they redid the Latson Road interchange and they redid the section of the highway. Within one year, like there wasn't, it wasn't even outside the warranty time, the road failed. And so they fixed it. And now that lane is almost utterly impassable. Like it's a new highway. I get it. We hear it all the time. I mean, you can pile up the excuses. We're a peninsula. We have the great lakes that freeze in our frost levels. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So does Canada. So does Minnesota. So does Wisconsin. These states have very similar climates. Out in Montana, where they have the freeze-thaw, freeze-thaw, freeze-thaw. we have technology and we have better ways to build the road. And we have refused to do it. And until we can buckle down and build our roads better, I don't really care how much she raises taxes. I think that's what ticks me off the most about every road plan is until we buckle down about actually building better roads, it doesn't matter how much money we continue to put into it. It's a perpetual problem. We're just fixing crappy roads. and fixing them with crappy roads that are going to need refixed again well it's planned obsolescence and it's like you ever go down the road and the roads are like like that because they've got the short pores they've done this has become a big deal where they cut out little short pores of four feet and they replace them those short pores are a moron's way of fixing the roads it doesn't work it's literally a band-aid It is a band-aid that is lacking any ability to produce anything of value. It's like putting scotch tape on a gaping wound. I was just about to say, it's like using gauze to... close your artery and you're like, it's not working. Well, no crap. It's not going to work. And you've got nothing to like help, you know, get the blood as it's bleeding. No, this is like scotch tape. This is a scotch tape fix right now. Exactly. And we have so much, we have so many better options. I mean, when you look. at some of the flexible stuff out there. I've worked with some of the flexible concrete products and such, and they're wonderful. I mean, how is it that they can keep runways up and running in Canada? Well, I know because they know the products that they use on this and it's got a eight hundred PSI at a quarter of an inch. We can't pour twelve inches of concrete and have that stuff, you know, remain viable because they don't want it to be viable. They just want to keep siphoning our eighty five percent tax rate, which everybody's paying. You know, I actually actually add them up. We're at eighty five percent tax rate in Michigan. And that doesn't even include when you look at the discretionary taxes, that doesn't even include like the the inflation rates. I've always said, if you want the American people to pay attention, take away automatic withholdings for one year and make people cut a check. If you really wanted to wake up people in how much money their government is taking. I might ask this today on Twitter. How many people actually look at their pay stubs? I think you would be amazed at how many people just don't. They're paid a salary. They don't look at their pay stubs. It's just their paycheck. They know what their net deposit is at the end of the day. I think if you generally made people... caught a check every other week to the state and to the federal government for the taxes they owed that are taken out of their paycheck, people would wake up really freaking quick. That's a really great point. That is a fantastic point and a method to actually wake people up. It's a criminal organization. And I'll go back to the fact the enemy of the people is our government. And it is. And the political parties are part of the problem because they're taking the foreign money and corporations. They are not serving we the people. Well, in the Founder Fathers, they knew that, right? Like they had came from a tyrannical government and they knew that the government is the enemy of the people. It's why they wanted a small. That's why there was the battle about having a smaller federal government. It's why they vested so much power in the people. And then unfortunately, our people's representatives over the year have defunct their power into the executive branch and into the judicial branch. And, you know, they've really done us a disservice because the power was supposed to be with the people at the end because everyone knew all of the founding fathers knew at the end of the day, the government is the enemy at the end of it. Like we, we, the people have to keep the government in check because a government will always become tyrannical. They always have. History has shown us that. Evil seeps in. Do you think there's a lot of people in Michigan? Cause you're like, you're the chief of staff for Alana Theis. Yes. Is that your job there? Your chief of staff? Yeah. So since I'm predisposed not to trust anybody in government, that's just my mindset right there. But I'm learning. I'm learning to talk to everybody. It's a difficult thing for me. But do you think that there are quite a few people that you know within the government that are actually fighting for the people because we're not seeing it? Yeah, I think that's a great question. Yes, I do think there are a number of people who genuinely want to fight for the people and they are doing what they can. But I think there's a significant number of them that don't know what they can do. They don't have the true ability to communicate what they're doing, or they lack the tools and resources to be really effective. Some people might throw food at your screen when I say this, but I think Previous to the ballot initiative that just passed changing term limits, I think the term limits that were adopted by the Michigan voter was one of the most detrimental things that happened to our state. Because serving six years in the House and serving two terms in the Senate, I have literally been in the room with lobbyists or other organizations that basically say, it's great that you oppose this. We will literally outweigh you. We will be here longer than you will, and we will outweigh you. I have also been in the room when organizations, I can think of one off the top of my head, the MEA, literally walked into a meeting, sat down, and flat out lied. And I was able to speak up because I was the chief of staff for the former state rep who actually made the deal with the MEA at the time when we were cutting budgets and we were and a two billion dollar deficit back during our rough times and I said I gotta speak up that is a fun that's a lie it is a flat out lie and I know it's a lie because I was in the room when the deal was made and they were trying to lie about what the deal was and how they had gotten screwed and this is how they needed help and they didn't really make the dealer agree to it They have, you know, people have no problem lying. There's not a lot of institutional knowledge around about deals that were made years ago. There's just not a lot of knowledge about issues in our state. And when you have a perpetual turnover of the elected official who is supposed to be your voice and they don't even know where the bathroom is or how to be your voice, I think that has caused an issue. I'm hoping the new term limits bill helps to write that. But you still, at the end of the day, have a fundamental thing where you have to elect the right people. You have to elect people that are going to go represent you either in Lansing or in Washington DC or on a state level here in Michigan that are going to try to do it right. And then you have to hope that the people you've elected are going to surround themselves with people that help and encourage them. I've also unfortunately witnessed a lot of times people come to Lansing, either in the House or the Senate or in other capacities, and they surround themselves with staff or with advisors who I mean, just look in the last couple of years, how many Republican staff now work for Dana Nessel, now worked for Joe Tate, now work for Jocelyn Benson, now run the department. I mean, Liz Hertel used to be a Republican policy staffer in the House Republican Policy Office and is now the Democratic director of DHHS. Is it true that the Speaker of the House picks the staff? Because that's what I've heard over and over, that honestly, you can go into Lansing, but it'll be the Speaker of the House that picks your staff and also will tell you. Because I was told flat out when I ran for governor, they're going to take you down in the basement and tell you how things are. And you're either going to fall in line or you will be relegated into having no voice, no committee assignments, and anything you bring up is going to get thrown in the trash. They'll silence you. so um sounds like a mafia right um so technically per the rules every employee of the house republican and democrat is an employee of the speaker of the house because the speaker of the house runs the house and every employee in the senate republican or democrat is an employee of the senate majority leader because the senate majority leader runs the senate now I had worked there nearly twenty three years now, and so I have seen a lot of speakers and I worked sixteen years in the House and now I've been in the Senate for that whole time. So I've served under a lot of speakers. Very rarely does a speaker ever interject themselves in office hirings of who a staff member or who an elected state representative wants to have work for them. There have been occasions where you've seen speakers say, no, for one reason or another, we're not going to allow that individual to come in. to the office and work. What you most commonly see, to be frank with you, if a member is complaining about not being able to hire their own staff This is not always, so don't take this as a blanket statement, but a significant amount of time, it's because that member has an issue keeping staff and they perpetually want to fire people. And so when somebody has constantly fired, fired, fired, fired, fired, fired, then you tend to have leadership step in and say, we obviously have a problem with keeping somebody in your office and we're going to have to be a little bit more hands on as to when somebody comes and goes. I have never passed that, really witnessed. I will give Matt Hall major credit when he publicly announced that he, and they changed the House rules, that staff were going to be, you know, he put it in the House rules that that member has direct supervisory hiring and firing over their office staff. So Speaker Hall took it to a next step that I've never seen happen before in Lansing. And so... I've never seen any member taken now. Again, I haven't been there the last six years in the House, so I can't speak to what's happened there. In the Senate, I've never seen a member not being able to hire a staff person that they wanted to bring in and hire So that's what I can personally attest to. Now, they do get to pick the central staff, right? Like the comms people, the policy people, those are picked by the caucus leader, either the minority or majority leader, whoever, which caucus ever they're working for. And I would argue, again, look at how many of those individuals have gone on to work for Democrats or gone on and worked in other areas. that's a large part of it like you can have a state senator and you can have a state representative but they're only going to be as effective as they want to be so long as they surround themselves with staff who know how to do their job as staff and believe in the same things that they do because if you have a staff that's working in opposition to you like I can't tell you how many times I've gone to work on what I would call a blatant conservative issue and I have had a republican staff person look at me and be like why do we even care about that why does it matter like what do you mean why does it matter especially when you're getting into a lot of the right to life areas you're getting into the second amendment areas you're getting into constitutional rights or things like property rights it's very important that the staff you surround yourself with has the same fundamental conservative perspective and fight that you do because if they don't I mean a member A member is only one person, and with the amount of work and things that they have to do, they can't single-handedly carry that load of getting something all the way through the legislative process. They have to have staff help them do that. And so I think to me, that's probably the number one flaw. If you see a good member that had good intentions that's tripping up, oftentimes it's just because they probably should surround themselves with people that are helping to push them in a different direction. or at least giving them better advice. I always say at the end of the day, I don't always agree with every vote and all of my bosses have worked for. I'm going to make my thoughts crystal clear. But at the end of the day, they were elected and I was not. And so they get to hit the button and they have to sleep well at night knowing with how they voted. And then I get the choice as to whether that's a decision as a staff person I can live with and stay, or I can move on and go work for somebody else at the end of the day. Well, is there anything else that you want to bring up that you've seen or that it's on your mind today? I'd love to have you back again. I enjoy talking to you a lot. Thank you. I would love that. No, just, you know, if people could follow me on X, that would be great because I have more coming on Benson. I'm really going to, I joked the other day and I'm like, I want to talk about Jocelyn Benton. I just don't even know where to start because there's so much. And so I'm really going to kind of start talking about the Independent Redistricting Commission and what a catastrophe that has been for our state. I think that will be very engaging to people that aren't. tapped into that area, just what an impact that's had and going to have on our state moving forward. And then, you know, I We hear it every cycle. It's such a cliche. This is the biggest election of our lives. Two thousand twenty six. I can't say it's the biggest election of our lives, but I can say that Michigan is the number one battleground state in the country between the open top three seats and open U.S. Senate seat, our Supreme Court races. What happens in twenty six is going to define Michigan's future for decades. And so it is it is definitely one of the most important elections for our state, for the direction of our state. And, you know, Republicans working in tandem and moving forward in twenty six, understanding the importance to me is just something I'm really passionate about, because if we allow somebody like a Jocelyn Benson to become governor, it's going to be really hard for me to start to see how we recover from that. I want to see people that aren't tied into the system money wise, who are in it, not for self gain, but as a, as a duty to write what has gotten so out of control. The only thing I'm interested in at this point in time is to see somebody that can run it like a, like a true CEO or business person and start cutting. And I mean, cutting deep, so much pretended legislation and rules and such that they just sort of like, I don't know, made up on the fly. And nobody called attention to it. And it's got to be nullified. I want to see people that are willing to nullify. That's the only thing I'm looking at right now. Our state budget is creeping upwards of a hundred billion. I mean, the state budget was like twenty seven billion dollars when I started. She just proposed an eighty three billion dollar budget. And that is for the second year in her third term. What most people don't even begin to recognize are things like the earned income tax credit and all these things she bragged about. She phased them in over a four year time period starting last year. So this year, you know, the first year it only took a twenty percent increase or a twenty five percent increase. And then the second year it was up to fifty percent. And then the third year, seventy five percent. It won't be until the year Whitmer is gone that a lot of these things take a hundred percent effect on our state budget. So the fact that she's already proposing tax increases, we're already having spending issues. She's already basically draining things down to leave no money on the balance sheet to say that Whitmer has created a catastrophic financial issue. And when she gets out, whoever wins their first year, God bless them. I mean, they are looking at a complete budget nightmare and she's going to look back and be like, not my fault. No, it is her fault. Well, it's just like what Nestle did with GBI strategies. I don't know. She acts like a little girl. I don't know. I gave the information to the state police. And then what? You walked away from it, child? Right. You know, it's like she just walked away from this and says, not my problem. I beg to differ with you. This was your problem. You don't just get to walk away from something and say, I don't know what happened. I turned it over to somebody else. Well, isn't that part of it to follow up on this and make sure that the crimes... on the election were actually brought forward and say, you know what, guys, there's so much overwhelming evidence on twenty two and twenty that we're going to have to deal with this. We cannot go forward because it's going to be the same thing over and over again, only it's going to get worse and harder to tear down because they have built such an integrated infrastructure of lies and pretended legislation that every day we let this go longer, it's getting worse and harder to write and remedy what they've done. The destruction of people, the third party murder that was going on, third party murder. There's no other way to look at it. Right. So it's like this is this is a critical mass here, guys. And I'm hoping, honestly, that there's a role plan for the state of Michigan that looks an awful lot like what's going on at the federal government. Because when we figure out how much money these people have laundered to themselves, their buddies, their future outside of the American, I think everybody is going to want to have a long, hard life. look at it and probably be ready to throw up a little bit in their mouths and such because it's so egregious, you know, but I, I, I don't know. I still believe that the good guys are in charge and they're letting them commit the crimes and you got to let people commit the crime sometime to see how bad it is and how far they will push this in order to go to the next level on criminal behavior. And when they do that, more rats get dragged out into the light and more rats and more rats. And until you clean the entire colony of rats out, they're going to keep going and they're going to groom people that are younger, that don't understand what's happening, get them caught up into the system. And it's going to repeat. It's got to be a top to bottom house cleaning of every single person who has violated the law, in my opinion. Yeah. Yeah. God bless anybody that's still left standing. That's good. Agreed. Well, thank you so much for having me on. I appreciate the opportunity to chat. Yeah, it's great. Well, I always end this with a prayer. And so let's say a prayer minute for this nation and for each other. Dear Heavenly Father, thank you so much for John and Megan and all the good people that are willing to step forward and actually step out in front of a camera and tell what they know. so that we can piece this together. I ask that you would guide and bless us every step of the way as we figure out what has happened and how things should be and the future that's laid before us. I do believe that you are guiding us and that you're showing us how to get out of this mess. We ask that you give us the feet to walk the path that you have in front of us that you would give us a true a true north here a true direction that that we walk away from as individuals anything that's corrupt that we think for ourselves that we do the right thing even in our own lives as well as in our public life that it's consistent that it's trustworthy and that it is incorruptible thank you so much for everything you've done for us the day ahead of us the opportunities that you give us on a daily basis to change the world just by an act of kindness, a smile, showing people what should be done and being the example, if we don't see one or have one, that we are the example of your presence here on earth. We are interested in one nation under you, indivisible with liberty and justice for all. And we ask that your favor be upon us in what we do as we try to unravel and get out of this mess that we're in right now. Thank you so much for loving us, for sending us your only begotten son to be our savior, for the guidance, direction, and provision that you give us every day and that we know that We can turn to you on every step of the way, and you will welcome us back in and say like good father will, come on, you can do it. Pick us back up, put us on our feet again, and we get right back into the fight again. Thank you so much for everything. In the name of Jesus Christ, we pray. Amen. And with that said, I'm going to go to that part of the show, boys and girls, where we go to ding, ding, ding, ding. This is my two thousand twenty two protest. Go to Brandenburg for governor dot com because I'm the best non-conceiver who has ever not conceded in history of the United States of America. And I'd like to have a discussion with President Trump, the rightful president of the United States, who has been the rightful president for for a very long time about what's going on in cowboy boots. We'll see who wears them better and then have a real discussion. Right. So with that said, everybody realize you're not alone. There's a lot of good people out there who are working to write this republic, not a democracy. Don't be stupid. It's not a democracy. It's a republic. And to write this and do the right thing in the eyes of God Almighty. That's what we're out here because there's only one perfect. And and he chose not to throw a stone. but we need to get in there and do the work. Not just go to the coffees, not just show up for coffee and cookies and such. We've got to be able to do the work. So, Figure out what it is that God's calling you to do and do it to the best of your ability, incorruptible and unwavering. So with that said, God bless you all. God bless all those whom you love. And God bless America. Make it a great day. It's a choice. It is a choice every day to rise above what we see and to be better than that. And we can be. We can be better than that. We are better than that. We're the American mutts. We're the toughest people on the globe. We're a great country. And guess what? We're going to make this thing happen. Just the only way we lose is by stopping. And that's not going to happen. So stay on the line a minute. I'm going to end the stream and we will not be on tomorrow, Thursday or Friday. I'm actually going to be elsewhere working very hard to write this nation. Lots of things on the on the burner, you know, lots of balls up in the air right now for Donna Brandenburg. And we're not going to stop. We're not going to stop. So I will see you Monday, next week, Monday. And I think Ryan Matt is going to be on with me Monday. So have a great week and weekend and we'll see you Monday. Stay on the line, Megan.