Latest / The Stan R. Mitchell Show / A new warrior emerges for the Democrats. Is the political landscape changing?

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A new warrior emerges for the Democrats. Is the political landscape changing? · The Stan R. Mitchell Show

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[music]
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SPEAKER_01: What is going on everyone?
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SPEAKER_01: Welcome to The Stan R. Mitchell Show.
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SPEAKER_01: My name is Stan,
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SPEAKER_01: and this week we are talking about so many topics,
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SPEAKER_00: and I will have time stamps as always,
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SPEAKER_00: but before I start the show,
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SPEAKER_00: if I could just start with a point of privilege and just ask you guys,
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SPEAKER_00: if you have not left a review yet,
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SPEAKER_00: if you could be so kind as to do so,
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SPEAKER_00: either on Apple or Spotify or wherever you listen.
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SPEAKER_00: I think on Apple we've got 12 ratings,
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SPEAKER_00: 3 reviews,
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SPEAKER_00: Spotify's only got 2 ratings,
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SPEAKER_00: Those are kind of embarrassing numbers,
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SPEAKER_00: you know, and so if I could just ask a favor.
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SPEAKER_00: If you enjoy the show,
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SPEAKER_00: if you could just drop a rating on one of those two,
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SPEAKER_00: I would be so appreciative,
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SPEAKER_00: and hopefully that will help the algorithm tell others about the show.
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SPEAKER_00: Now, as I said earlier,
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SPEAKER_00: there were so many stories this week,
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SPEAKER_00: and I've got them condensed down into, I think, a pretty good show.
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SPEAKER_00: And I want to start with one that perhaps is not what you would expect.
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SPEAKER_00: With everything going on,
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SPEAKER_00: This is probably not the story that you would expect,
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SPEAKER_00: but at least for the moment, I believe it's the biggest story out there.
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SPEAKER_00: Despite the Iran War,
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SPEAKER_00: despite the Abraham Lincoln, etc.,
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SPEAKER_00: the biggest political story happening right now is that
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SPEAKER_00: a new political warrior has emerged for the Democrats,
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SPEAKER_00: and he's like a lion walking out on the Serengeti And not only is he roaring,
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SPEAKER_00: he is landing some heavy shots.
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SPEAKER_00: And maybe partly the country's just ready for it.
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SPEAKER_00: Maybe he's just a great political talent.
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SPEAKER_00: Maybe he'll burn out in two weeks.
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SPEAKER_00: Who knows?
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SPEAKER_00: You know,
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SPEAKER_00: a year ago,
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SPEAKER_00: Gavin Newsom was getting some traction for some of the hard shots he was throwing at
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SPEAKER_00: the president.
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SPEAKER_00: But you probably already know who I'm talking about.
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SPEAKER_00: But Senator John Ossoff down in Georgia is just throwing haymakers right now.
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SPEAKER_00: And they're landing to great effect.
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SPEAKER_00: And you can tell not only by the attention he's getting,
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SPEAKER_00: But also by the fact that the Republicans are reacting.
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SPEAKER_00: And they are, you know, the old saying in the South is, is like a hit dog will yelp.
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SPEAKER_00: And there's a lot of yelping going on right now.
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SPEAKER_00: Now Ossoff has been hitting some solid singles or doubles for a few weeks now.
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SPEAKER_00: But this week, you probably heard the clip...
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SPEAKER_00: But he hit one out of the park as far as Democrats go and as far as criticism
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SPEAKER_00: that has landed against the president.
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SPEAKER_00: I mean, the president has been given a jet.
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SPEAKER_00: He has been doing crypto deals.
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SPEAKER_00: He has been threatening media members.
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SPEAKER_00: He has threatened the Supreme Court.
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SPEAKER_00: He has done so many things and nothing has stuck to the president.
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SPEAKER_00: But Ossoff had this to say this week,
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SPEAKER_00: and I haven't heard anything stick to him the way this has.
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SPEAKER_02: And while the sailors on the Lincoln fight his war,
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SPEAKER_02: while he fruitlessly drains our munitions and oil reserves,
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SPEAKER_02: the president sleeps through his meetings.
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SPEAKER_02: He golfs and trades stocks.
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SPEAKER_02: See, he doesn't want to do the job.
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SPEAKER_02: He wants to build his ballroom and travel with Natalie
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SPEAKER_02: on their apparently defenseless flying palace gifted by the Emir of Qatar.
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SPEAKER_00: Well, as you can guess, the Republicans did not like that.
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SPEAKER_00: And I've got a link in the episode notes to like 10
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SPEAKER_00: or 15 big name Republicans saying,
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SPEAKER_00: Who just go off on John Ossoff and they say it was out of bounds
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SPEAKER_00: and he shouldn't bring up Natalie Harp and how dare he.
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SPEAKER_00: It's a little rich because we've watched the president
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SPEAKER_00: for 10 plus years disparage people with some of the worst insinuations.
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SPEAKER_00: But Republicans did not like that comment by John Ossoff at all.
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SPEAKER_00: And so they really come out against Trump.
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SPEAKER_00: The New York Times wrote a piece, The Wall Street Journal, other media organizations.
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SPEAKER_00: And through these articles,
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SPEAKER_00: the public has learned that Natalie Harp is one of the president's biggest fans.
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SPEAKER_00: She has said that her devotion is solely to him.
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SPEAKER_00: She has written about how she has lost sleep, skipped meals.
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SPEAKER_00: She is almost always by his side.
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SPEAKER_00: When he goes golfing,
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SPEAKER_00: according to the New York Times, she runs behind the golf cart to try to keep up.
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SPEAKER_00: When the president changed planes,
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SPEAKER_00: she went with him,
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SPEAKER_00: leaving people like Marco Rubio on the plane that could have been shot down.
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SPEAKER_00: So, I mean, is she more important than the Secretary of State?
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SPEAKER_00: People are asking questions.
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SPEAKER_00: The articles in various news outlets say that she is outside the chain of command.
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SPEAKER_00: She does not have to report to Suzy Wiles or any of the people that you would normally report.
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SPEAKER_00: And
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SPEAKER_00: so the articles and the media attention and the howling by those on the right
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SPEAKER_00: about the comments that Ossoff has said has just made this a story this week.
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SPEAKER_00: And perhaps just as crazy, Ossoff is not backing down.
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SPEAKER_00: He is not slowing down on his comments.
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SPEAKER_00: Take a listen to this.
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SPEAKER_02: Senator, it's great to see you caused quite a stir this weekend, I will say.
6:27
SPEAKER_02: So I just want to start by asking you about Donald Trump's comments in a moment, of course.
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SPEAKER_02: But obviously that speech you gave over the weekend...
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SPEAKER_02: Lots of people have questions about it.
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SPEAKER_02: Why did you decide to invoke Natalie Harp specifically in that speech?
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SPEAKER_02: Well, Jen, thank you for having me.
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SPEAKER_02: And here's the point.
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SPEAKER_02: We're in wartime.
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SPEAKER_02: The commander in chief has mired us in this geopolitical disaster.
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SPEAKER_02: People have lost their lives.
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SPEAKER_02: Our naval logistics are frayed.
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SPEAKER_02: The global energy system is in crisis.
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SPEAKER_02: And he retreats into this bubble.
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SPEAKER_02: Of West Wing aides who are his security blanket to make him feel good about himself,
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SPEAKER_02: to reassure him that he's doing a great job,
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SPEAKER_02: to help him while he designs his new ballroom and he adorns the Oval Office in gold
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SPEAKER_02: and picks the interior decorations on this new luxury flying palace he received from
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SPEAKER_02: a foreign prince.
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SPEAKER_02: When every single minute of every single day,
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SPEAKER_02: what the President of
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SPEAKER_02: the United States should be doing is bearing his most solemn burden of care for
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SPEAKER_02: the sailors and Marines and aviators and all service members deployed on his orders
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SPEAKER_02: on the basis of his lies to this disaster in the Middle East.
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SPEAKER_00: Again, as you can tell there, he is not...
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SPEAKER_00: Backing down.
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SPEAKER_00: Not even close.
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SPEAKER_00: Just throwing hard punches.
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SPEAKER_00: Throwing them, as we used to say, from the hip just as hard as he can.
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SPEAKER_00: And they seem to be landing.
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SPEAKER_00: Now, the main criticism they've tried to use against him is
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SPEAKER_00: that this guy is clearly running for president.
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SPEAKER_00: But John Ossoff had one of the best replies I have heard in many years,
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SPEAKER_00: maybe ever, about whether he's running for president and why he's doing this.
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SPEAKER_00: Now, again, he's running for senator now.
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SPEAKER_00: In Georgia this year, it's obviously a close state.
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SPEAKER_00: It's a swing state.
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SPEAKER_00: He has to win.
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SPEAKER_00: But here was his answer about whether he's running for president in 2028.
8:53
SPEAKER_02: Jen, let me reiterate.
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SPEAKER_02: I have zero interest in running for president in 2028.
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SPEAKER_02: And frankly, zero interest in the 2028 fantasy football right now.
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SPEAKER_02: And I would note that Senator Kelly is going to be here in I don't know that we have
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SPEAKER_02: a free and fair election in 2028 unless we restore checks and balances
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SPEAKER_02: in these 2026 midterm elections.
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SPEAKER_00: So again, pretty strong answer.
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SPEAKER_00: And as I said earlier, to me,
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SPEAKER_00: the big story this week is the Democrats have a new,
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SPEAKER_00: just a really strong, tough fighter.
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SPEAKER_00: At least it appears so far.
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SPEAKER_00: And he's been through a pretty tough campaign six years ago.
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SPEAKER_00: So I'm not sure that the Republicans are going to find a lot of dirt on him.
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SPEAKER_00: So he may be a problem, I mean a real problem, for the President for some time to come.
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SPEAKER_00: Now last week we talked about the USS Abraham Lincoln.
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SPEAKER_00: I even talked about some of my personal time being on ship for six months
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SPEAKER_00: and just how I mean,
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SPEAKER_00: let's be real,
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SPEAKER_00: being on ship is absolutely terrible,
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SPEAKER_00: unless you're just wired for that and want to be one of those folks who join
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SPEAKER_00: the Navy.
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SPEAKER_00: I'd just say,
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SPEAKER_00: as a Marine,
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SPEAKER_00: and I had one of my buddies message me and say,
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SPEAKER_00: hey, heard what she said, totally agreed, but...
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SPEAKER_00: If you're on a ship, I mean, it's almost like being in jail.
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SPEAKER_01: You don't get to see much of the sky or outside,
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SPEAKER_01: especially if we were off the coast of what was Kosovo and Albania,
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SPEAKER_01: and we're in a heightened state of alert,
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SPEAKER_01: so you just can't go outside and get fresh air,
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SPEAKER_01: and you're eating these
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SPEAKER_00: rehydrated eggs and just terrible food.
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SPEAKER_00: It just really starts, and you're piled in like sardines.
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SPEAKER_00: Your racks, the cots are like four deep.
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SPEAKER_00: You've got about a foot and a half.
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SPEAKER_00: You have almost no privacy.
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SPEAKER_00: We had like 150 dudes sharing like eight showers, maybe eight toilets.
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SPEAKER_00: You have very little personal space.
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SPEAKER_00: You only have a little curtain you can pull.
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SPEAKER_00: So you just cannot get alone.
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SPEAKER_00: So it's not uncommon to have fights.
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SPEAKER_00: You just feel trapped.
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SPEAKER_00: And what you do all day, unless you're a sailor, but if you're a marine, like you...
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SPEAKER_00: Literally,
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SPEAKER_00: you wake up,
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SPEAKER_00: you go stand in line for like an hour and a half for food,
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SPEAKER_00: you clean,
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SPEAKER_00: you get inspected,
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SPEAKER_00: you go stand in line for an hour and a half for food,
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SPEAKER_00: you have some free time unless you're doing some weapons drills or something,
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SPEAKER_00: which is very difficult to do, and then you go stand in line again.
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SPEAKER_00: That is every single day,
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SPEAKER_00: seven days a week,
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SPEAKER_00: and without port calls,
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SPEAKER_00: you absolutely start to go nuts, and you do think very dark thoughts often.
12:04
SPEAKER_00: But the USS Abraham, the situation just blew up even bigger this past week.
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SPEAKER_00: And it blew up in part because the president said probably about
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SPEAKER_00: the dumbest thing you can say as a president while troops are serving overseas.
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SPEAKER_00: And just the lack of sensitivity in this comment.
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SPEAKER_00: I'm sure everyone heard it, but I have to play it.
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SPEAKER_03: I mean, that's a pretty incredible thing to
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SPEAKER_03: say.
13:00
SPEAKER_00: And since last week, the media has been just digging deeper and deeper into the story.
13:07
SPEAKER_00: And more parents have shared footage of flooded toilets and just various things
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SPEAKER_00: that have happened.
13:13
SPEAKER_00: And I'm not sure how out of the norm that is.
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SPEAKER_00: We had our toilets flood several times and they're nasty and you've got to do a ton of cleaning.
13:24
SPEAKER_00: But apparently they had a lot worse problems on that ship with some of their toilets
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SPEAKER_00: and the pipes and everything.
13:31
SPEAKER_00: But what really happened,
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SPEAKER_00: and more folks have been digging on this,
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SPEAKER_00: is that at the beginning of the war,
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SPEAKER_00: Iran essentially destroyed our resupply base in Bahrain.
13:46
SPEAKER_00: Now, it wasn't even big or new news, but I think the extent of the damage is what is news.
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SPEAKER_00: And The reality is that what used to be a 500-800 mile resupply trip for planes
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SPEAKER_00: and helicopters,
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SPEAKER_00: once that base got hit and destroyed to the degree that it did,
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SPEAKER_00: the Navy removed, except for a small skeleton crew, just pulled everyone out of it.
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SPEAKER_00: So now they're getting resupplied from Diego Garcia, which is...
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SPEAKER_00: A tiny island, 2200 miles from where the carrier is.
14:33
SPEAKER_00: And so the logistics are strained far worse than they've probably ever been.
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SPEAKER_00: And so these four poor folks on there are not only setting records,
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SPEAKER_00: but they're not getting in a lot of the
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SPEAKER_00: And so, because the president said that,
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SPEAKER_00: because more facts have emerged about that base being destroyed,
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SPEAKER_00: because initially CENTCOM was like,
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SPEAKER_00: there's no big deal, this story has just exploded.
15:11
SPEAKER_00: And so, after all of this happened,
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SPEAKER_00: Within just a couple of days, CENTCOM says it's no big deal.
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SPEAKER_00: The president makes the statement.
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SPEAKER_00: And then suddenly, a lot of things happen.
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SPEAKER_00: The head of CENTCOM flies in to meet with the crew.
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SPEAKER_00: The Navy acknowledges that there have been some mental health incidents on board.
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SPEAKER_00: The Navy announces the ship will be returned, is being sent home and replaced.
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SPEAKER_00: It's being replaced from a carrier from near Japan.
15:46
SPEAKER_00: This is one of the first times that the U.S. has had to pull a carrier from Asia.
15:50
SPEAKER_00: But again, the President's focused on Iran.
15:53
SPEAKER_00: So let's just hope the Chinese don't get any crazy ideas, I guess.
15:57
SPEAKER_00: But this is all...
15:59
SPEAKER_00: Big news stuff.
16:03
SPEAKER_00: And there's been a lot of arguing.
16:05
SPEAKER_00: There was an article actually in Newsmax where Admiral Mullen,
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SPEAKER_00: who isn't always a pro-Trump person,
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SPEAKER_00: said that the truth on the USS Lincoln is that the issues are kind of in the middle.
16:16
SPEAKER_00: There are some things that are absolutely true.
16:20
SPEAKER_00: And it's also true that during war,
16:22
SPEAKER_00: sailors have to go the extra mile,
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SPEAKER_00: serve longer, and go through things that probably no one would want to do.
16:31
SPEAKER_00: So, there are some folks who say, hey, this is what they signed up for, no big deal.
16:36
SPEAKER_00: There are also folks who are saying, like, this is pretty horrendous the amount of time.
16:41
SPEAKER_00: But the reality is,
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SPEAKER_00: is after this went public,
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SPEAKER_00: like, if this wasn't a big deal, why are they sending the ship back?
16:51
SPEAKER_00: I mean, if they should just stay longer like the President said,
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SPEAKER_00: if there's no problems with the ship,
16:58
SPEAKER_00: why, literally within days of all this, why are they sending it back?
17:06
SPEAKER_00: And I think it's because clearly there's some issues happening,
17:09
SPEAKER_00: and I'm glad they're sending it back, having, like I said, served on a ship.
17:13
SPEAKER_00: I know the mental strain, and these sailors on the USS Lincoln
17:21
SPEAKER_00: They have flown countless sorties.
17:27
SPEAKER_00: They have been prepared for ballistic missile attacks,
17:31
SPEAKER_00: which is something we never worried about off the coast of Kosovo or Albania.
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SPEAKER_00: The former Yugoslavia that fell apart into civil war,
17:41
SPEAKER_00: they didn't have ballistic missiles that could threaten our ship,
17:44
SPEAKER_00: but we were still at a heightened state of alert of general quarters and some of
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SPEAKER_00: the various alert levels that you have on ship.
17:53
SPEAKER_00: But if there was no story here, why is it suddenly happening?
17:58
SPEAKER_00: The Stan R. Mitchell Show.
18:13
SPEAKER_00: We appreciate your service and we know what you've gone through
18:17
SPEAKER_00: and we're very glad you're headed home.
18:19
SPEAKER_00: We thank you for what you've done.
18:38
SPEAKER_00: And not sure what else to say.
18:41
SPEAKER_00: This is just one of those complicated stories that happened during war.
18:45
SPEAKER_00: And I'm glad that we are bringing these folks home
18:48
SPEAKER_00: so they can get some much needed rest and get to see their family
18:52
SPEAKER_00: and feel what it feels like to be on land again.
18:58
SPEAKER_00: Alright, let's jump over and talk about politics for a minute.
19:02
SPEAKER_01: Not sure if you saw this, but CNN had a...
19:06
SPEAKER_01: Just brutal clip that
19:09
SPEAKER_00: should have Republicans,
19:13
SPEAKER_00: as the pollster said,
19:15
SPEAKER_00: Republicans should be running scared right now ahead of the midterms.
19:20
SPEAKER_00: Because as their pollster said, the numbers don't lie.
19:25
SPEAKER_00: So let's go back to 2018, the last blue wave.
19:30
SPEAKER_00: At that point, the Democratic primary turnout at the same point in time as now was 23 million.
19:38
SPEAKER_00: Fast forward to 2026 today.
19:42
SPEAKER_00: Democratic primary turnout is 25 million.
19:46
SPEAKER_00: It is higher than it was in 2018.
19:50
SPEAKER_00: So as CNN, you know, as their pollster says...
19:54
SPEAKER_00: The Republicans who have to run these House members,
19:59
SPEAKER_00: these Senators, these Senate candidates, they should be terrified.
20:05
SPEAKER_00: This is looking very bad for them.
20:09
SPEAKER_00: Now, as you guys know,
20:09
SPEAKER_00: one of my favorite political podcasts to listen to is Hacks on Tap,
20:14
SPEAKER_00: which has Axelrod and Murphy on it.
20:17
SPEAKER_00: So you've got a Democrat and a Republican.
20:21
SPEAKER_00: And they mention that these midterms are coming up fast.
20:24
SPEAKER_00: And the president is running out the clock and not in a good way.
20:29
SPEAKER_00: Take a listen to this.
20:32
SPEAKER_03: You know,
20:33
SPEAKER_03: he is talking about stuff that is so removed from people's experience,
20:39
SPEAKER_03: so foreign to people.
20:40
SPEAKER_03: There isn't a person in America,
20:43
SPEAKER_03: other than now perhaps the most loyal of MAGA supporters,
20:47
SPEAKER_03: who is saying, My God,
20:49
SPEAKER_03: if we only had a magnificent ballroom at the White House,
20:52
SPEAKER_03: our problems would be solved.
20:54
SPEAKER_02: It would change everything.
20:58
SPEAKER_03: So the question really is, you guys, Labor Day is right around the corner.
21:03
SPEAKER_03: The president's numbers, as you point out, are cratering.
21:06
SPEAKER_03: There was a Reuters poll this morning that had him at a 32% approval rate.
21:11
SPEAKER_03: I mean, these are disastrous numbers.
21:14
SPEAKER_02: What are the implications for these midterms?
21:18
SPEAKER_02: Well, two things.
21:20
SPEAKER_02: One, and just a parenthetical,
21:23
SPEAKER_02: my theory on all this is like most crazy people,
21:27
SPEAKER_02: Trump is really only talking to himself about things that he's interested in
21:32
SPEAKER_02: or he's feeling insecure.
21:34
SPEAKER_02: He's not trying to relate to voters on things that they care about.
21:38
SPEAKER_02: And it's kind of a feedback loop he gets into.
21:40
SPEAKER_02: But as far as the midterms are concerned,
21:42
SPEAKER_02: the big question is,
21:44
SPEAKER_02: And we've kind of been touching on it for the last,
21:46
SPEAKER_02: you know,
21:47
SPEAKER_02: 10 shows or so, is will anything change before the music stops on Election Day?
21:53
SPEAKER_02: You know,
21:54
SPEAKER_02: will the thing get off course in some way that Trump can make it about the Democrats
21:58
SPEAKER_02: or the Democrats make some foolish mistakes, which they've teetered around?
22:03
SPEAKER_02: But the answer is no.
22:04
SPEAKER_02: He's burning up the clock,
22:06
SPEAKER_02: getting closer and closer to the mark-to-market,
22:08
SPEAKER_02: as they'd say on Washington, reality of his political weakness.
22:12
SPEAKER_02: And if anything, he's making it worse.
22:14
SPEAKER_02: The trajectory is tightening down and,
22:16
SPEAKER_02: you know,
22:16
SPEAKER_02: with so much mail-in voting now,
22:19
SPEAKER_02: election day is two to three weeks long in a lot of places.
22:22
SPEAKER_02: So he's rapidly running out of time and there's no evidence that I can see
22:26
SPEAKER_02: that he's going to change anything up.
22:28
SPEAKER_02: Instead, he's going to just keep diving for the wood chipper.
22:33
SPEAKER_01: Now, if you're a Republican and you're looking for a brat spot,
22:37
SPEAKER_01: there are a couple of things that they have going
22:40
SPEAKER_00: for them.
22:41
SPEAKER_00: First of all,
22:42
SPEAKER_00: everything is so gerrymandered that the Republican Party probably picked up
22:46
SPEAKER_00: a few seats with some of the redistricting and the districts that remain are
22:52
SPEAKER_00: so Republican heavy that there won't be as many options.
22:56
SPEAKER_00: The other advantage they have is the president has a lot of money
22:58
SPEAKER_00: that has been raised in political donations that he is going to be able to drop
23:03
SPEAKER_00: on Democrats and deploy across the country.
23:25
SPEAKER_00: So just how big of an advantage do they have?
23:29
SPEAKER_00: I'm glad you asked.
23:31
SPEAKER_00: They have $500 million more to spend than the Democrats do.
23:38
SPEAKER_00: So half a billion dollars.
23:42
SPEAKER_00: Which is often the case,
23:43
SPEAKER_00: you know,
23:43
SPEAKER_00: when Obama was president,
23:44
SPEAKER_00: when you are in power,
23:46
SPEAKER_00: it is easier to get corporations and people who want legislation to donate
23:53
SPEAKER_00: to your party and to the super PACs and all the things that happen.
23:57
SPEAKER_00: But the question is,
24:01
SPEAKER_00: even with that much money,
24:04
SPEAKER_00: Will the Republicans, what message will they press home with?
24:10
SPEAKER_00: I'm assuming it'll be partly cultural war stuff, but...
24:14
SPEAKER_00: It is going to be tough because some of these rural red districts
24:20
SPEAKER_00: that Trump carried,
24:23
SPEAKER_00: like the price of diesel for truck drivers,
24:26
SPEAKER_00: for farmers, like, I mean,
24:29
SPEAKER_00: I heard one political analyst talk about the F-150 owners,
24:34
SPEAKER_00: like the people who drive F-150 trucks, you know, Ford F-150s, and I'm one of them.
24:42
SPEAKER_00: It's expensive to fill them up right now.
24:46
SPEAKER_00: And you do that about every week or two.
24:49
SPEAKER_00: So you notice gas prices.
24:52
SPEAKER_00: And these are folks who typically vote Republican.
24:57
SPEAKER_00: And they're probably not going to vote Democrat, but what they might do is stay home.
25:01
SPEAKER_00: And that's the big fear.
25:03
SPEAKER_00: So even if you attack Democrats with these ads,
25:07
SPEAKER_00: there's no guarantee that Republicans are going to show up in the kinds
25:11
SPEAKER_00: of numbers necessary.
25:15
SPEAKER_00: I heard another analyst mention a point that I think is pretty well said.
25:20
SPEAKER_00: And I need to mention this because in previous episodes I've been talking about that
25:24
SPEAKER_00: the left is divided between more progressive candidates and democratic socialists.
25:31
SPEAKER_00: I'm
25:38
SPEAKER_00: sorry, that unites the Democrats is that they cannot stand the president.
25:43
SPEAKER_00: And then when it really comes down to it,
25:45
SPEAKER_00: the Democrats believe that this election matters more than any other election
25:50
SPEAKER_00: that we've had in a long time.
25:51
SPEAKER_00: So the Democratic turnout,
25:54
SPEAKER_00: and we started the section by saying that there's a bigger turnout so far
25:57
SPEAKER_00: than there was in 2018.
26:00
SPEAKER_00: The turnout's going to favor the Democrats, and so this could be a rough year for Republicans.
26:06
SPEAKER_00: But if you're looking for some good news,
26:08
SPEAKER_00: if you're a Republican,
26:10
SPEAKER_00: you've got money on your side, and you've got fewer dispositions.
26:15
SPEAKER_00: But other than that,
26:19
SPEAKER_00: I'm not sure I've seen anywhere that doesn't believe,
26:22
SPEAKER_00: I mean, even folks on the right believe that Democrats are going to take the House.
26:27
SPEAKER_00: So it's really going to boil down to, will they take the Senate?
26:31
SPEAKER_00: And that's not as likely, but still a somewhat remote possibility.
26:37
SPEAKER_00: And if that happens, then the President is in for a very brutal two years.
26:43
SPEAKER_00: So what do you guys think?
26:44
SPEAKER_00: What am I missing?
26:45
SPEAKER_00: What am I overlooking?
26:47
SPEAKER_00: Where am I wrong?
26:48
SPEAKER_00: Let me know.
26:49
SPEAKER_00: I always like hearing you guys' comments.
26:52
SPEAKER_00: And if I'm wrong, I want to hear about it.
26:55
SPEAKER_00: That's just how I see it with how things stand right now.
26:59
SPEAKER_00: Let's move now.
27:00
SPEAKER_00: We need to cover the fact that South Korea, there's been some news there.
27:04
SPEAKER_00: As you guys probably heard,
27:06
SPEAKER_00: the president canceled the majority of pretty large operational military exercise
27:14
SPEAKER_00: where U.S. Army and Marines and Naval forces were training with South Korea.
27:21
SPEAKER_00: And the president ended up, again, drastically reducing that effort.
27:29
SPEAKER_00: And so there was lots of ink written about this.
27:35
SPEAKER_00: The Council on Foreign Relations said that South Korea increasingly fears that
27:41
SPEAKER_00: the U.S. is retreating from Asia.
27:45
SPEAKER_00: It didn't help that we were moving a carrier from that area toward Iran to replace
27:50
SPEAKER_00: the USS Abraham Lincoln, which I mentioned in the previous segment.
27:57
SPEAKER_00: Just as some background, the economists dug into this.
28:03
SPEAKER_00: And the United States and South Korea have conducted regular joint exercises since 1954.
28:12
SPEAKER_00: And as the economists termed it, these are important signaling devices.
28:18
SPEAKER_00: And that North Korea always regularly protests each time they are held.
28:24
SPEAKER_00: Now the president decided that this time it was not something that should be done.
28:30
SPEAKER_00: So obviously he again curtailed them.
28:34
SPEAKER_00: He...
28:36
SPEAKER_00: Perhaps wants the North Korean dictator to begin diplomatic engagement somehow
28:43
SPEAKER_00: or maybe some meetings.
28:46
SPEAKER_00: Clearly this happened during the first term, but South Korea is not happy about this.
28:55
SPEAKER_00: Now, the President says that South Korea has not taken part in the missions against Iran.
29:01
SPEAKER_00: In fact, I'll play some comments from him.
29:04
SPEAKER_00: But it is worth remembering that during the first term,
29:09
SPEAKER_00: President Trump actually tried to withdraw American troops from South Korea.
29:15
SPEAKER_00: But some of his advisors and also threats from Congress stopped him from doing so.
29:22
SPEAKER_00: So this isn't necessarily a new thing for the President.
29:25
SPEAKER_00: But I'll play what he had to say about the matter.
29:31
SPEAKER_02: Well, I don't want to talk about that, but I do have a good relationship with Kim Jong-un.
29:35
SPEAKER_02: As you know, you've seen.
29:36
SPEAKER_02: He didn't like Biden.
29:38
SPEAKER_02: He didn't like
29:54
SPEAKER_03: Obama, he didn't like anybody, but he likes me.
29:57
SPEAKER_03: And I just got along with him very good.
29:59
SPEAKER_03: We had great meetings.
30:00
SPEAKER_03: We speak.
30:02
SPEAKER_03: And I think our nation and I think other nations,
30:05
SPEAKER_03: frankly,
30:05
SPEAKER_03: whether it's Japan or South Korea,
30:08
SPEAKER_03: they're a lot safer if I'm president than somebody else is president.
30:11
SPEAKER_03: Now, I didn't like the fact that we're doing these massive military exercises really
30:16
SPEAKER_03: against North Korea.
30:18
SPEAKER_03: It was an exercise against North Korea.
30:20
SPEAKER_03: When I'm friendly with him, when we have...
30:23
SPEAKER_03: I don't see anything happening for certainly two and a half years.
30:26
SPEAKER_03: It's not going to happen with me, but I don't see anything happening.
30:30
SPEAKER_03: And I was not happy when South Korea said,
30:32
SPEAKER_03: no, they're not interested in helping us with the Harmo Strait.
30:36
SPEAKER_03: And yet they get 60 percent of the royal from the Harmo Strait.
30:39
SPEAKER_03: I said, would you like to help us?
30:41
SPEAKER_03: He said, no, thank you.
30:42
SPEAKER_03: I said, that's nice.
30:43
SPEAKER_03: Please.
30:43
SPEAKER_03: Thank you.
30:44
SPEAKER_03: He made us a lot of money.
30:45
SPEAKER_03: I didn't like that.
30:46
SPEAKER_03: So I felt that to do a massive, we were doing a massive war exercise.
30:52
SPEAKER_03: I thought that was very insulting to somebody that frankly has been,
30:56
SPEAKER_03: during my term at least, very well behaved.
31:01
SPEAKER_00: So there you go.
31:02
SPEAKER_00: There's the position of the president on the maneuvers and drills that were underway.
31:12
SPEAKER_00: All right.
31:12
SPEAKER_00: So we got to talk about Iran and clearly it's toward the latter part of the show
31:17
SPEAKER_00: because not a lot has happened.
31:19
SPEAKER_00: As a matter of fact, J.D.
31:21
SPEAKER_00: Vance, I'm linking to a Newsmax article, J.D.
31:24
SPEAKER_00: Vance said on August 13th,
31:27
SPEAKER_00: about a week ago, that the top U.S. goal right now with Iran is low oil prices.
31:40
SPEAKER_00: So the top U.S. goal is low oil prices.
31:46
SPEAKER_00: And as I said on social media, whatever happened to winning?
31:51
SPEAKER_00: Whatever happened to stopping them from going nuclear?
31:55
SPEAKER_00: Whatever happened to regime change?
31:59
SPEAKER_00: I feel like these are relevant questions, but currently...
32:04
SPEAKER_00: The administration's top priority is low oil prices or obviously the price of gas.
32:13
SPEAKER_00: Now, there have been some additional articles out there that one of
32:19
SPEAKER_00: the president's new approaches is that his goal is to just disengage people.
32:26
SPEAKER_00: That he wants to essentially lower the temperature and just start to disengage with Iran.
32:36
SPEAKER_00: That was an article on CNN.
32:39
SPEAKER_00: Just throw a few numbers out there for you.
32:42
SPEAKER_00: This was shared on Blue Sky.
32:45
SPEAKER_00: It's pretty good though.
32:48
SPEAKER_00: The number of days since the war began, 172.
32:53
SPEAKER_00: Number of days since the USS Abraham Lincoln deployed, 271.
32:58
SPEAKER_00: Number of days since the USS George H. W. Bush deployed, 141.
33:05
SPEAKER_00: The number of days since CENTCOM released a war fact sheet, 135.
33:10
SPEAKER_00: That's over four months.
33:15
SPEAKER_00: Number of days since the Secretary of Defense briefed reporters on the Iran war, 104 days.
33:23
SPEAKER_00: The number of days since the Secretary of Defense offered an estimate of cost on
33:29
SPEAKER_00: the war's cost, and that's 59 days.
33:35
SPEAKER_00: The last known U.S. strike on Iran.
33:38
SPEAKER_00: We're now at 21 days.
33:41
SPEAKER_00: And Iran fired two ballistic missiles at Oman this week.
33:47
SPEAKER_00: And we didn't even do anything about it.
33:50
SPEAKER_00: So, you know, I'm not sure.
33:55
SPEAKER_00: In some ways, the news is even worse.
33:57
SPEAKER_00: There was a news report that President Trump said on Iran.
34:03
SPEAKER_00: Also this week,
34:03
SPEAKER_00: the President threatened to bomb Oman if it gets in the way of the Iran conflict.
34:23
SPEAKER_00: Now Iran is gloating, as you probably have heard.
34:26
SPEAKER_00: The Speaker of Iran's Parliament says, quote,
34:30
SPEAKER_00: I say with all my heart that we truly won this war, both militarily and politically.
34:37
SPEAKER_00: This does not mean that we destroyed the U.S. military.
34:41
SPEAKER_00: What I mean is that the United States and Israel attacked us
34:43
SPEAKER_00: with nine specific declared objectives,
34:47
SPEAKER_00: but failed to achieve any of those nine objectives at any level.
34:52
SPEAKER_00: This was the greatest absolute defeat for the United States and the Zionist regime.
34:58
SPEAKER_00: So that's what Iran is saying.
35:01
SPEAKER_00: Now I'll try to give a positive,
35:04
SPEAKER_00: you know,
35:05
SPEAKER_00: at least mention something positive from the U.S.
35:07
SPEAKER_00: perspective,
35:07
SPEAKER_00: which is that apparently There's some reporting in Axios that the U.S.
35:13
SPEAKER_00: has quietly opened a protected shipping corridor through the southern Strait
35:19
SPEAKER_00: of Hormuz, which is allowing about 15 to 20 tankers to transit nightly.
35:26
SPEAKER_00: So that could help global oil supply.
35:30
SPEAKER_00: So that is great news.
35:31
SPEAKER_00: And apparently they're able to do this because during some of the strikes that we
35:41
SPEAKER_00: I'll end on a somewhat positive note and say that I clearly don't know who's winning
35:47
SPEAKER_00: or who's losing right now.
35:48
SPEAKER_00: I don't feel like we're winning.
36:08
SPEAKER_00: I continue to say, as I said last week and in previous weeks, that I hope I'm wrong.
36:13
SPEAKER_00: I hope Iran's entire economy is about to collapse,
36:17
SPEAKER_00: that their entire government is about to fall through.
36:20
SPEAKER_00: They are a murderous regime.
36:24
SPEAKER_00: I would love it for the Iranian people to have freedom of religion and have
36:28
SPEAKER_00: the ability to worship as they wished for,
36:32
SPEAKER_00: to have the ability to vote, to dress the way they want.
36:37
SPEAKER_00: I wish all those things for them.
36:41
SPEAKER_00: But I continue to worry that that is not the case.
36:44
SPEAKER_00: Now again, I hope I'm wrong and I can't wait to say I was wrong if that's the case.
36:49
SPEAKER_00: Maybe there's something the Trump administration knows that we don't,
36:53
SPEAKER_00: but it's just not a good look from what I can tell.
37:00
SPEAKER_00: Now, this episode,
37:01
SPEAKER_00: I've been pretty hard on the president,
37:02
SPEAKER_00: so let me share some good news that happened,
37:05
SPEAKER_00: which is that a Marine has been released.
37:08
SPEAKER_00: Here's the reporting on that from PBS.
37:13
SPEAKER_02: Russia released Marine veteran Robert Gilman today.
37:16
SPEAKER_02: We reported on his story last night on this broadcast.
37:18
SPEAKER_02: Bring us up to speed.
37:19
SPEAKER_03: Russia released Gilman on humanitarian grounds.
37:22
SPEAKER_03: The 32-year-old is a former Marine who went to Russia to teach English.
37:27
SPEAKER_03: He was first arrested in 2022 for allegedly hitting a Russian police officer
37:31
SPEAKER_03: and was sentenced to four and a half years, but his sentence was expired.
37:34
SPEAKER_03: The Stan R.
37:35
SPEAKER_03: Mitchell,
37:36
SPEAKER_03: The Stan R.
37:36
SPEAKER_03: Mitchell,
37:37
SPEAKER_03: The Stan R.
37:38
SPEAKER_03: Mitchell, The Stan R. Mitchell, The Stan R. Mitchell, The Stan R. Mitchell,
37:49
SPEAKER_03: You see him there on the left with his mother right next to him on an American plane.
37:53
SPEAKER_03: Gilman's on his way now to a U.S. military.
38:04
SPEAKER_03: The Trump administration says,
38:19
SPEAKER_03: He says that there was no prisoner swap nor, quote, any other concessions given to Russia.
38:25
SPEAKER_03: But I did talk to U.S. officials today about one other aspect.
38:28
SPEAKER_03: They said that shortly before his release, he was declared wrongfully detained.
38:33
SPEAKER_03: That is something, of course, that you heard from last night.
38:36
SPEAKER_03: The family and advocates were complaining that that hadn't happened.
38:39
SPEAKER_03: They had not made that public for fear that it would imperil this release.
38:43
SPEAKER_03: But U.S. officials say, yes, he has been declared wrongfully detained.
38:46
SPEAKER_03: And that will open more treatment for him now that he's home and free.
38:51
SPEAKER_00: So obviously that is great news for that Marine and his family.
38:55
SPEAKER_00: Let's talk now about Ukraine.
38:57
SPEAKER_00: I want to just move quickly through a number of just little points.
39:04
SPEAKER_00: Obviously they are...
39:06
SPEAKER_00: Desperately in need of ballistic interceptor missiles like Patriots or something like that.
39:16
SPEAKER_00: There's even talk that Ukraine is discussing with They are reciprocating.
39:23
SPEAKER_00: In fact,
39:23
SPEAKER_00: there's a link in the episode notes where the capital of Russia,
39:27
SPEAKER_00: Moscow, was hit by hundreds of drones, depending on which source you believe.
39:32
SPEAKER_00: Somewhere between 400 to 600 drones.
39:51
SPEAKER_00: In fact, there's video.
39:53
SPEAKER_00: The capital of Russia was in a partial electrical blackout.
39:59
SPEAKER_00: At the same time,
40:01
SPEAKER_00: the occupied Crimean Peninsula,
40:04
SPEAKER_00: which Ukraine is trying to liberate,
40:08
SPEAKER_00: it is continuing to struggle to be resupplied with fuel.
40:14
SPEAKER_00: Also, electrical substations continue to be hit there.
40:18
SPEAKER_00: And so, the Russian authorities are warning the elderly to return to Russia.
40:24
SPEAKER_00: They say there will not be electricity or heat there this winter.
40:29
SPEAKER_00: I will also mention that Russia,
40:32
SPEAKER_00: I had mentioned a few weeks ago that Ukraine had hit a bunch of Russian ships
40:37
SPEAKER_00: and really upped the ante as far as the level of economic pain and the ability
40:43
SPEAKER_00: for Russia to transport oil.
40:47
SPEAKER_00: Unfortunately,
40:48
SPEAKER_00: Russia has responded by hitting some ships that Ukraine was using
40:55
SPEAKER_00: to transport grain, one of the main exports of Ukraine.
41:03
SPEAKER_00: So, Russia has used cruise missiles to sink a Turkish-owned cargo ship,
41:10
SPEAKER_00: and so others are basically refusing to leave or go and arrive in Odessa.
41:17
SPEAKER_00: There's a port there, a major port in Odessa, and so...
41:21
SPEAKER_00: There's about 50 million tons of grain that cannot be moved.
41:27
SPEAKER_00: There are no clear alternative routes,
41:30
SPEAKER_00: according to one news source I saw,
41:33
SPEAKER_00: and if this year's grain cannot be saved,
41:36
SPEAKER_00: And so there is discussion about the two sides,
41:39
SPEAKER_00: essentially Ukraine and Russia, both agreeing not to attack each other's ships.
42:01
SPEAKER_00: But this is just a, this war is just a knockout, dragout fight.
42:05
SPEAKER_00: And neither side is, you know, it's just, it's an ugly, ugly fight.
42:12
SPEAKER_00: Alright, one additional thing is, I wanted to mention...
42:19
SPEAKER_00: Defense analyst Phillips O'Brien said that,
42:21
SPEAKER_00: you know, I mentioned a week ago that the Trump administration using J.D.
42:26
SPEAKER_00: Vance asked Ukraine to stop hitting Russian ships.
42:33
SPEAKER_00: And Phillips O'Brien out of the UK said,
42:36
SPEAKER_00: It's notable that the Trump administration is not asking Vladimir Putin
42:40
SPEAKER_00: to stop their attacks on these grain ships for Ukraine.
42:47
SPEAKER_00: He said,
42:47
SPEAKER_00: oh silly me,
42:48
SPEAKER_00: they only force Ukraine to back down,
42:51
SPEAKER_00: never Russia,
42:52
SPEAKER_00: which is of course something that we have seen over and over from the beginning.
43:01
SPEAKER_00: All right, so let's end with one final news section.
43:04
SPEAKER_00: I'm just going to call this winners and losers for the week.
43:08
SPEAKER_00: It's going to be something I try to do every week,
43:10
SPEAKER_00: and I do want to mention that I did not come up with a story of courage
43:15
SPEAKER_00: for this week, and I thought about it for about a week, and that's no lie.
43:18
SPEAKER_00: And I kept getting torn and I overthought it and so that's not happening.
43:22
SPEAKER_00: But at any rate, winners and losers for the week.
43:26
SPEAKER_00: These are just some things I'll try to say and somewhat keep them light and humorous.
43:33
SPEAKER_00: First, one big win for Republicans is that with the election this week in Florida...
43:43
SPEAKER_00: The Democrats picked a very liberal candidate.
43:48
SPEAKER_00: And the state of Florida has gone from likely Republican to safe Republican.
43:55
SPEAKER_00: So, win for the Republicans down there.
43:59
SPEAKER_00: Now, a lot of Democrats were saying, you know, don't waste your breath, no big deal.
44:06
SPEAKER_00: They still have a chance.
44:08
SPEAKER_00: And Tom Nichols said it best that the
44:12
SPEAKER_00: So, win for the Republicans down there.
44:39
SPEAKER_00: Now, there was a win for the Democrats.
44:41
SPEAKER_00: They did win in a MAGA plus 18 Trump district in the state of Pennsylvania.
44:49
SPEAKER_00: The Democratic candidate Brandon Dukes came up with a big win.
44:57
SPEAKER_00: So this district swung 19 points in favor of the Democratic candidate.
45:03
SPEAKER_00: It was a special election, and so...
45:07
SPEAKER_00: Again, Democratic candidate Brandon Dukes beat a Republican in a plus 18 Trump district.
45:15
SPEAKER_00: This should have Republicans absolutely just scared out of their mind for the midterms.
45:23
SPEAKER_00: This reinforces what I was saying earlier.
45:26
SPEAKER_00: Now one other big winner for the week is the public because there was
45:31
SPEAKER_00: a judge who's handling the Epstein case.
45:36
SPEAKER_00: The judge said to Justice Department lawyers who are trying to prevent the release
45:42
SPEAKER_00: of documents tied to Jeffrey Epstein,
45:46
SPEAKER_00: the judge said that if the Justice Department lawyers do not comply
45:52
SPEAKER_00: with court orders, that contempt proceedings could ruin their futures.
46:00
SPEAKER_00: So, maybe, finally, the public We'll find out more about what names are in the Epstein files.
46:09
SPEAKER_00: My position all along has been I don't care if it's Democrats or Republicans.
46:14
SPEAKER_00: I want the names out.
46:16
SPEAKER_00: I want all the terrible men and maybe somewhat small number of women,
46:22
SPEAKER_00: but probably mostly men who did horrific things to young girls.
46:27
SPEAKER_00: I want all of their names out.
46:30
SPEAKER_00: Now let's talk about losers for the week.
46:33
SPEAKER_00: Start with, uh, Darlene Graham down in South Carolina.
46:37
SPEAKER_00: Sister of, the sister of, uh, Lindsey Graham who recently passed.
46:43
SPEAKER_00: She had a rough week.
46:45
SPEAKER_00: Now she is the candidate that Trump wants to endorse,
46:48
SPEAKER_00: but local Republicans are like, uh, yeah, we're gonna run for Senate.
46:52
SPEAKER_00: That's an important position.
46:54
SPEAKER_00: So there are folks running against her.
46:57
SPEAKER_00: She had a debate and, uh, Just a brutal answer.
47:03
SPEAKER_00: Apparently, Darlene Graham does not know much about foreign policy.
47:06
SPEAKER_00: Let's listen to her in her own words.
47:12
SPEAKER_02: Senator, are Taiwan and the South China Sea national security issues for the United States?
47:18
SPEAKER_02: If so, why?
47:21
SPEAKER_02: I'm sorry, could you repeat the question?
47:22
SPEAKER_02: Are Taiwan and the South China Sea national security issues for the United States?
47:27
SPEAKER_02: And if so, why or how?
47:30
SPEAKER_02: I'm just going to be honest here.
47:32
SPEAKER_02: I'm not on national security.
47:34
SPEAKER_02: I'm not that informed on national security.
47:37
SPEAKER_02: But I do support the military.
47:41
SPEAKER_02: My brother was in the Air Force for 33 years.
47:45
SPEAKER_02: So I will do everything I can to support the military.
47:50
SPEAKER_02: My dad was in the Army.
47:51
SPEAKER_02: I'm not a Polish politician up here.
47:55
SPEAKER_02: National security is not my thing, not my area of expertise, but I do support the military.
48:00
SPEAKER_00: Oof.
48:04
SPEAKER_00: Man, like,
48:05
SPEAKER_00: one of the main jobs of the Senate is to be informed about world affairs
48:09
SPEAKER_00: and foreign relations and whether we should have our military involved in this or
48:15
SPEAKER_00: that country or hemisphere or theater.
48:19
SPEAKER_00: So, I'm gonna say that was not a good answer.
48:22
SPEAKER_00: Now, There is a chance that some folks hear that answer and they say,
48:26
SPEAKER_00: you know what,
48:27
SPEAKER_00: she's just like me, she doesn't know all this stuff and she's not deep state.
48:31
SPEAKER_00: So maybe that answer will play better than I'm thinking, but to me that was not a good answer.
48:38
SPEAKER_00: So I'm going to put her on top of the list of the loser for the week.
48:44
SPEAKER_00: Next I want to mention, as someone shared...
48:49
SPEAKER_00: So far to date,
48:51
SPEAKER_00: there have been six Trump-backed Republicans who have lost their primaries in
48:57
SPEAKER_00: the past two weeks,
48:59
SPEAKER_00: which brings the number to 10 Trump-backed GOP candidates for the year.
49:05
SPEAKER_00: And as the person said for the White House, that's not great.
49:09
SPEAKER_00: Because that means in the future,
49:11
SPEAKER_00: there's a chance more folks are going to stand up to the Trump administration
49:14
SPEAKER_00: who are Republicans.
49:16
SPEAKER_00: And then the final...
49:19
SPEAKER_00: Not so great loser of the week is our country.
49:24
SPEAKER_00: Because someone reminded me that,
49:27
SPEAKER_00: do we all remember back when Bill Clinton,
49:29
SPEAKER_00: this was back when Hillary was running,
49:32
SPEAKER_00: when Bill Clinton got off his plane and spoke to the Attorney General
49:38
SPEAKER_00: for five seconds, but five seconds is an exaggeration.
49:43
SPEAKER_00: It was a little longer than that, but it wasn't long.
49:46
SPEAKER_00: And that was like one of the biggest political issues for weeks.
49:51
SPEAKER_00: And now we fast forward to now.
49:54
SPEAKER_00: And in a country where the Attorney General at least kept the appearance
49:59
SPEAKER_00: of being fair and balanced and not serving at the President's wishes at all times,
50:07
SPEAKER_00: we now have the newly confirmed Attorney General Todd Blanche speaking at
50:11
SPEAKER_00: a Trump rally to endorse a candidate
50:17
SPEAKER_00: And just to think how far we've gone as a country where you can travel,
50:23
SPEAKER_00: the Attorney General can travel with the President,
50:26
SPEAKER_00: speak at the same rally, hang out with him, and no one says anything.
50:31
SPEAKER_00: It's not even that big a deal.
50:35
SPEAKER_00: And so our country is the final loser I will mention for the week
50:41
SPEAKER_00: because we have fallen far and we have a long way to go if we are going
50:47
SPEAKER_00: to get engaged and start once again putting our country and its government
50:52
SPEAKER_00: where it needs to be.
51:07
SPEAKER_01: Before we wrap up, I want to take a minute to come back to something deeper.
51:12
SPEAKER_01: We spend a lot of time each week talking about the country,
51:15
SPEAKER_01: where we are, where we're headed, what's at stake.
51:19
SPEAKER_01: But if that's all we look at, it'll just wear you down.
51:24
SPEAKER_01: And the truth is,
51:25
SPEAKER_01: most of us don't think much about faith or even about what really matters
51:30
SPEAKER_01: until life forces us to.
51:32
SPEAKER_01: When we get that phone call,
51:34
SPEAKER_01: or that doctor's report,
51:36
SPEAKER_01: or the job that you thought was secure is suddenly gone,
51:40
SPEAKER_01: those are the moments that cut through the noise, that wake us up, that frighten us.
51:47
SPEAKER_01: So this is the part of the show where we step back,
51:50
SPEAKER_01: open scripture, and remind ourselves what actually matters.
51:55
SPEAKER_01: It's not politics.
51:57
SPEAKER_01: It's not personalities.
51:59
SPEAKER_01: It's something stronger than that.
52:01
SPEAKER_01: It's wisdom from God, carried across thousands of years.
52:06
SPEAKER_01: And I'll be honest, I haven't always believed it.
52:09
SPEAKER_01: But my life has gone better when I've turned to it, listened to it, and tried to follow its way.
52:17
SPEAKER_01: So if you don't care, I'm going to share a little from it.
52:21
SPEAKER_01: And I hope you'll stick around and listen.
52:26
SPEAKER_01: So this week I want to talk to the Christians out there.
52:29
SPEAKER_01: Now, I know you may be listening and you say,
52:31
SPEAKER_01: well, I'm not a Christian, or I was hoping to learn more, or, I mean, I get that.
52:37
SPEAKER_01: I do have a podcast called The Search for God,
52:40
SPEAKER_01: and I am someone who spent a lot of time searching various religions,
52:45
SPEAKER_01: and so there are plenty of episodes there that I think will meet some
52:50
SPEAKER_01: of what you're looking for,
52:51
SPEAKER_01: if that's what you're looking for,
52:52
SPEAKER_01: but this episode and this section, I'm going to speak mostly to the Christians.
52:59
SPEAKER_01: And I wanted to share something from Tim Tebow's devotional.
53:04
SPEAKER_01: He put out a one-year devotional called Mission Impossible.
53:09
SPEAKER_01: And part of that 365-day devotional is there is about a week or two worth of content
53:21
SPEAKER_01: about what he calls a Mission Mindset.
53:27
SPEAKER_01: Now the word mindset is a mnemonic,
53:31
SPEAKER_01: which if you need a refresher like I did,
53:34
SPEAKER_01: I couldn't remember exactly what that word was.
53:38
SPEAKER_01: But a mnemonic is when you have a word like mindset, and each letter stands for a word.
53:47
SPEAKER_01: And so in Tim Tebow's case, he came up with this mnemonic called mindset.
53:52
SPEAKER_01: And the M is maker mindset.
53:55
SPEAKER_01: The I is interruptible.
53:57
SPEAKER_01: N is now.
53:59
SPEAKER_01: D is different.
54:00
SPEAKER_01: S is suffer.
54:02
SPEAKER_01: E is excellence.
54:04
SPEAKER_01: And T is to the end.
54:06
SPEAKER_01: So let's just go through those real quick.
54:09
SPEAKER_01: And I thought this would be worth covering because I feel like he...
54:14
SPEAKER_01: This mnemonic came up with a pretty good description and overview of what
54:23
SPEAKER_01: the Christian life should be about.
54:25
SPEAKER_01: Once you have been saved or devoted your life to God,
54:30
SPEAKER_01: you obviously become a new creature,
54:33
SPEAKER_01: and this mindset is This mnemonic that he came up with I thought is really good.
54:39
SPEAKER_01: So let's just run through them real quick.
54:41
SPEAKER_01: Again, they're from the one year devotional Tim Tebow wrote called Mission Impossible.
54:47
SPEAKER_01: If you're intrigued by it,
54:47
SPEAKER_01: I got a link in the episode notes so that you can actually,
54:52
SPEAKER_01: you know, go grab the book off Amazon or wherever you prefer.
54:56
SPEAKER_01: So the first letter, M, or Maker.
55:00
SPEAKER_01: As Tim Tebow says, know your maker.
55:03
SPEAKER_01: Know that God was the grand designer.
55:07
SPEAKER_01: Everything from the stars in the sky to the crawling creatures on the ground.
55:13
SPEAKER_01: Everything was created by God and for God.
55:17
SPEAKER_01: And even though we're called to a mission,
55:20
SPEAKER_01: as he says throughout the book, the mission is not about us.
55:25
SPEAKER_01: It's about Him.
55:26
SPEAKER_01: It's about God.
55:28
SPEAKER_01: So it's with Him.
55:30
SPEAKER_01: It's through Him because He made us.
55:34
SPEAKER_01: He saved us.
55:36
SPEAKER_01: And so, M, know your Maker.
55:40
SPEAKER_01: Your mission is about Him, not you.
55:43
SPEAKER_01: Now let's go to the I in mindset.
55:46
SPEAKER_01: Interruptible, or as he said, be interruptible.
55:51
SPEAKER_01: And he describes it beautifully as, see people's needs.
55:55
SPEAKER_01: As you go through the day, as you go places, see people's needs and do something about them.
56:03
SPEAKER_01: For instance,
56:04
SPEAKER_01: today when I went to lunch during work,
56:07
SPEAKER_01: there was a guy that was asking for a little money outside the place I was stopping
56:10
SPEAKER_01: to eat.
56:12
SPEAKER_01: I ended up taking the guy in, buying him lunch and had lunch with him.
56:16
SPEAKER_01: I'd love to tell you that I enjoyed it.
56:20
SPEAKER_01: I'd love to tell you I said something very important to him.
56:24
SPEAKER_01: I mostly encouraged him.
56:25
SPEAKER_01: He was looking for jobs.
56:27
SPEAKER_01: We talked about God.
56:28
SPEAKER_01: He's the grandson of a preacher.
56:31
SPEAKER_01: I'd love to tell you that it was the most powerful thing I've done or that I do this a lot.
56:36
SPEAKER_01: That's not the case.
56:37
SPEAKER_01: But I know that when I did it,
56:39
SPEAKER_01: I was thinking of what Jesus teaches us in Matthew, that how you treat God.
56:46
SPEAKER_01: The hungry, the thirsty, the sick, strangers, prisoners, etc.
56:53
SPEAKER_01: How you treat those,
56:55
SPEAKER_01: that's how Jesus says,
56:56
SPEAKER_01: and in fact the verse is,
56:58
SPEAKER_01: Truly I tell you,
56:59
SPEAKER_01: whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine,
57:03
SPEAKER_01: you did for me.
57:06
SPEAKER_01: And so today, you know, And so, I sat across a guy from a guy that...
57:29
SPEAKER_01: Needed someone to talk to.
57:31
SPEAKER_01: Needed some encouragement.
57:33
SPEAKER_01: Needed just some practical advice on seeking employment.
57:38
SPEAKER_01: I actually, he had four different business cards.
57:41
SPEAKER_01: I actually knew the manager of the place I was eating
57:43
SPEAKER_01: because I've been eating there for almost two years and introduced him to her,
57:46
SPEAKER_01: tried to help him get a job.
57:48
SPEAKER_01: And I just was like, man, like God put that guy in, you know, in my path.
57:55
SPEAKER_01: But I needed to be, as Tim Tebow said, interruptible.
57:59
SPEAKER_01: As a Christian, you've got to be interruptible.
58:02
SPEAKER_01: You are a part of a much larger plan than what we can see with our very small eyes and mind.
58:12
SPEAKER_01: Again, I'm not saying any of this for attention.
58:14
SPEAKER_01: I don't do it a lot.
58:16
SPEAKER_01: I should do it far more.
58:17
SPEAKER_01: But one of the things I try to do is I try to see needs.
58:22
SPEAKER_01: Don't turn your eye from that homeless person.
58:25
SPEAKER_01: Don't turn your eye from that single motherhood.
58:27
SPEAKER_01: I love you.
58:42
SPEAKER_01: We are.
59:11
SPEAKER_01: Are called to be interruptible.
59:13
SPEAKER_01: It's a beautiful, just a beautiful thing that Tim Tebow lays out.
59:19
SPEAKER_01: Alright, next letter.
59:20
SPEAKER_01: N as in now, or act now.
59:25
SPEAKER_01: Tim Tebow cited the two-minute drill and went into that analogy,
59:30
SPEAKER_01: but my thought immediately jumped to the book of James,
59:34
SPEAKER_01: where in chapter 2, James says you should do things if you can.
59:40
SPEAKER_01: I'll read the verse.
59:41
SPEAKER_01: He says,
59:41
SPEAKER_01: What good is it,
59:42
SPEAKER_01: dear brothers and sisters,
59:44
SPEAKER_01: if you say you have faith but don't show it by your actions?
59:47
SPEAKER_01: Can that kind of faith save anyone?
59:50
SPEAKER_01: Suppose you see a brother or sister who has no food or clothing and you say goodbye
59:55
SPEAKER_01: and have a good day,
59:56
SPEAKER_01: stay warm and eat well, but then you don't give that person any food or clothing.
1:00:01
SPEAKER_01: What good does that do?
1:00:05
SPEAKER_01: James is even more direct in chapter 4.
1:00:08
SPEAKER_01: He says in verse 17, Remember, it is a sin to know what you ought to do and then not do it.
1:00:17
SPEAKER_01: It doesn't get more direct than that.
1:00:19
SPEAKER_01: I had money in my wallet.
1:00:22
SPEAKER_01: I have money in the bank.
1:00:24
SPEAKER_01: I have a great job.
1:00:26
SPEAKER_01: And to have walked by that guy and Seeing the look in his eyes in
1:00:33
SPEAKER_01: the unbelievable heat of the hot parking lot and to have not invited him in to sit
1:00:39
SPEAKER_01: at that table I think would have been a sin.
1:00:43
SPEAKER_01: So, again, act now.
1:00:46
SPEAKER_01: That is the N. I've got to keep this thing moving.
1:00:49
SPEAKER_01: So the D, be different.
1:00:53
SPEAKER_01: He says, to make a difference, you must be different.
1:00:58
SPEAKER_01: In his book,
1:00:59
SPEAKER_01: he talks about Noah and how Noah was different from the rest of the world,
1:01:04
SPEAKER_01: how Noah himself found favor in the eyes of the Lord.
1:01:08
SPEAKER_01: So it's not about being popular.
1:01:11
SPEAKER_01: It's not about being liked or approved of by the world.
1:01:15
SPEAKER_01: Once you're a Christian,
1:01:16
SPEAKER_01: it's about being different,
1:01:18
SPEAKER_01: being a new creation,
1:01:19
SPEAKER_01: being transformed in the spirit of the Lord and becoming something that
1:01:25
SPEAKER_01: the Lord can use to reach other people.
1:01:29
SPEAKER_01: Alright, moving along to the S in mindset, in the mnemonic mindset.
1:01:35
SPEAKER_01: S is suffer.
1:01:37
SPEAKER_01: Tim Tebow says, be willing to suffer.
1:01:41
SPEAKER_01: He says, if you are passionate about something, you will suffer for it.
1:01:45
SPEAKER_01: Think about the injuries, the pain, the sweat that he put into football.
1:01:50
SPEAKER_01: And he says we should do the same for our faith.
1:01:54
SPEAKER_01: We should wake up a little earlier and desire to be in the Word.
1:02:00
SPEAKER_01: We should desire to be spending time with God in prayer.
1:02:04
SPEAKER_01: We should desire to be by ourselves at time,
1:02:07
SPEAKER_01: to recenter ourselves, to ask God what He wants you to do.
1:02:11
SPEAKER_01: But to do these things, you have to suffer.
1:02:15
SPEAKER_01: Moving along, let's get to the E. E is excellence, or pursue excellence.
1:02:21
SPEAKER_01: He says, whatever you do, do it well.
1:02:24
SPEAKER_01: And he quotes Dr.
1:02:26
SPEAKER_01: Martin Luther King Jr.,
1:02:28
SPEAKER_01: who back in 1956,
1:02:31
SPEAKER_01: while only 27 years old,
1:02:33
SPEAKER_01: gave a speech in Montgomery, Alabama, where he said, in part...
1:02:38
SPEAKER_01: Whatever your life's work is, do it well.
1:02:42
SPEAKER_01: If it falls your lot to be a street sweeper,
1:02:45
SPEAKER_01: sweep streets like Michelangelo painted pictures,
1:02:49
SPEAKER_01: like Shakespeare wrote poetry, like Beethoven composed music.
1:02:55
SPEAKER_01: Sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will have to pause
1:03:01
SPEAKER_01: and say, here lived a great sweeper who swept his job well.
1:03:09
SPEAKER_01: And Tim Tebow also quotes from 1 Corinthians 10, verse 31.
1:03:12
SPEAKER_01: It's a pretty popular verse.
1:03:14
SPEAKER_01: You've probably heard it,
1:03:15
SPEAKER_01: but it says,
1:03:16
SPEAKER_01: Whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do all things for the glory of God.
1:03:24
SPEAKER_01: Earlier this week,
1:03:25
SPEAKER_01: I came around the corner down the hallway and was smiling as someone approached me.
1:03:31
SPEAKER_01: And she's a newer employee.
1:03:33
SPEAKER_01: And she said, you're always smiling.
1:03:36
SPEAKER_01: Why are you smiling?
1:03:37
SPEAKER_01: And I just instantly answered what I often say.
1:03:42
SPEAKER_01: And I said, I have to.
1:03:43
SPEAKER_01: And she said, why?
1:03:44
SPEAKER_01: And I said, because I am an ambassador for God.
1:03:48
SPEAKER_01: And that's how I feel.
1:03:49
SPEAKER_01: That's how all Christians should feel.
1:03:52
SPEAKER_01: We should be different.
1:03:54
SPEAKER_01: People should want to know, like, why is that guy the way he is?
1:03:59
SPEAKER_01: Why is that woman the way they are?
1:04:01
SPEAKER_01: You should be different.
1:04:03
SPEAKER_01: How am I smiling while at work?
1:04:05
SPEAKER_01: Because I wake up like two hours before I need to and I do a devotional and I try
1:04:10
SPEAKER_01: to get my mind in the right place.
1:04:12
SPEAKER_01: Otherwise, I rush to work and I'm grumpy and I'm like everyone else.
1:04:17
SPEAKER_01: I don't want to be like everyone else.
1:04:19
SPEAKER_01: I don't know how many days I have.
1:04:21
SPEAKER_01: I have very few opportunities to impact people.
1:04:25
SPEAKER_01: The Bible is very clear that we do not know the number of our days,
1:04:30
SPEAKER_01: that our life is like a mist.
1:04:32
SPEAKER_01: It could be over tomorrow.
1:04:34
SPEAKER_01: And so I want to make that impact.
1:04:38
SPEAKER_01: You don't go through life with this.
1:04:40
SPEAKER_01: Before I reactivated my faith,
1:04:43
SPEAKER_01: life was drudgery and I cared about promotions at work or trying to promote my books
1:04:49
SPEAKER_01: or sell more.
1:04:50
SPEAKER_01: I was trying to climb some hill or whatnot
1:04:53
SPEAKER_01: and usually we don't do real well climbing these hills or getting those promotions
1:04:58
SPEAKER_01: and so we get depressed and we get angry and we turn to alcohol
1:05:02
SPEAKER_01: or maybe we'll work harder and we harm our families by spending even more time
1:05:08
SPEAKER_01: at work chasing this, chasing more money.
1:05:11
SPEAKER_01: There's just this,
1:05:13
SPEAKER_01: you're on like a treadmill,
1:05:15
SPEAKER_01: a rat race and it is miserable and He says live for today,
1:05:20
SPEAKER_01: tomorrow we'll have enough problems, and be content.
1:05:42
SPEAKER_01: We are literally the sons and daughters of God himself.
1:05:47
SPEAKER_01: And so God's going to provide.
1:05:50
SPEAKER_01: We don't have to rush after those promotions.
1:05:53
SPEAKER_01: We don't have to work a ton of extra hours because we are being looked out for.
1:05:59
SPEAKER_01: We are just sheep.
1:06:01
SPEAKER_01: We are literally something that the greatest,
1:06:05
SPEAKER_01: most powerful force in the world is looking out for.
1:06:08
SPEAKER_01: Our days are numbered.
1:06:10
SPEAKER_01: We have no reason to be as concerned as everyone else.
1:06:14
SPEAKER_01: Paul himself says in Philippians chapter 1 that for to me,
1:06:20
SPEAKER_01: living means living for Christ and dying is even better.
1:06:24
SPEAKER_01: Like either way, we're winners.
1:06:27
SPEAKER_01: We should have absolutely, I don't want to say no concern, but very few concerns.
1:06:32
SPEAKER_01: God is in control.
1:06:34
SPEAKER_01: We lean on an all-powerful force,
1:06:37
SPEAKER_01: and we should have a peace about us that other people cannot wrap their arms around.
1:06:44
SPEAKER_01: And now finally,
1:06:45
SPEAKER_01: to the final letter in the mnemonic of mindset, it is to the end, T, to the end.
1:06:54
SPEAKER_01: We are to move forward in faith to do what you are called to do.
1:06:59
SPEAKER_01: That could be anything from putting out a podcast that may not grow as fast
1:07:04
SPEAKER_01: as you wish on the side.
1:07:06
SPEAKER_01: It could be serving in your church,
1:07:10
SPEAKER_01: the kids ministry, or It could be a hundred different things.
1:07:14
SPEAKER_01: It could be visiting prisoners.
1:07:16
SPEAKER_01: It could be helping the homeless.
1:07:17
SPEAKER_01: It could be whatever it is that you feel called to do.
1:07:21
SPEAKER_01: Sometimes it's literally helping take care of a widow or someone that's alone
1:07:28
SPEAKER_01: or lonely in your neighborhood.
1:07:30
SPEAKER_01: Help and mow the grass of that person that's struggling.
1:07:33
SPEAKER_01: Whatever it is,
1:07:36
SPEAKER_01: do it for the glory of God and pursue this Christian life with just a smile
1:07:44
SPEAKER_01: on your face and an energy and a happiness that is different.
1:07:49
SPEAKER_01: So again, the mnemonic for mindset is maker.
1:07:54
SPEAKER_01: Know your maker.
1:07:55
SPEAKER_01: Interruptible is I.
1:07:57
SPEAKER_01: Be interruptible.
1:07:58
SPEAKER_01: N. Now.
1:08:00
SPEAKER_01: Act now.
1:08:01
SPEAKER_01: D. Different.
1:08:03
SPEAKER_01: Be different.
1:08:05
SPEAKER_01: S. Suffer.
1:08:06
SPEAKER_01: Be willing to suffer.
1:08:09
SPEAKER_01: E. Excellence.
1:08:10
SPEAKER_01: Pursue excellence.
1:08:12
SPEAKER_01: Pursue this life, this Christian life, in as excellent a way as possible.
1:08:16
SPEAKER_01: And then finally, T to the end.
1:08:18
SPEAKER_01: All the way to the end,
1:08:19
SPEAKER_01: we're going to run through the Love the Lord your God with all your heart,
1:08:22
SPEAKER_01: all your soul, and all your mind, and love your neighbor as yourself.
1:08:52
SPEAKER_01: But once again, all of that came from Tim Tebow's book.
1:08:55
SPEAKER_01: It's a one-year devotional called Mission Possible.
1:08:59
SPEAKER_01: And I've got a link to it in the episode notes if you want to go take a look at it.
1:09:04
SPEAKER_01: It's something I try to read every day before I go into work.
1:09:09
SPEAKER_01: And I assure you that my copy is covered in blue ink.
1:09:13
SPEAKER_01: And in fact, if you look in the episode notes, you'll see...
1:09:16
SPEAKER_01: The mission mindset,
1:09:18
SPEAKER_01: I hand wrote the entire thing onto a note card and squeezed in lots of notes
1:09:23
SPEAKER_01: about it because I want to be reminded of it.
1:09:26
SPEAKER_01: As I flip through note cards pretty regularly,
1:09:28
SPEAKER_01: I want to be reminded of what the mission mindset is,
1:09:32
SPEAKER_01: what we are called for,
1:09:34
SPEAKER_01: what the race is that we're all trying to run as best as we can.
1:09:39
SPEAKER_01: Not because we're trying to earn salvation or do anything like that.
1:09:43
SPEAKER_01: We do it because Jesus loved us and gave his life for us.
1:09:49
SPEAKER_01: And it's just how we repay it.
1:09:52
SPEAKER_01: And we do it.
1:09:53
SPEAKER_01: You don't ever feel like you have to do these things out of compulsion anymore.
1:09:57
SPEAKER_01: You do them because they bring great joy.
1:10:01
SPEAKER_01: And once you have experienced this,
1:10:04
SPEAKER_01: I would much rather spend a little time in my devotional
1:10:08
SPEAKER_01: or doing what I feel God has called me to do than sitting there looking
1:10:14
SPEAKER_01: through social media,
1:10:15
SPEAKER_01: getting anxious and angry,
1:10:17
SPEAKER_01: or watching some video of some traumatic thing that gets in your head or something.
1:10:25
SPEAKER_01: Binging Netflix or whatever.
1:10:27
SPEAKER_01: We all have these terrible habits.
1:10:30
SPEAKER_01: That is not what we're called to do.
1:10:34
SPEAKER_01: And I just don't want to get to the end and have Jesus say,
1:10:38
SPEAKER_01: You knew all those sports stats and everything there was to know about
1:10:42
SPEAKER_01: that football team,
1:10:43
SPEAKER_01: but you didn't read half the Bible,
1:10:45
SPEAKER_01: or you didn't do this,
1:10:47
SPEAKER_01: or you walked by because you were in a hurry and you didn't help this person.
1:10:52
SPEAKER_01: I just don't want it to end that way.
1:10:56
SPEAKER_01: Take a look at the book.
1:10:58
SPEAKER_01: Hopefully some of this helped you in some way.
1:11:00
SPEAKER_01: I really hope and pray it did.
1:11:02
SPEAKER_01: It definitely has helped me.
1:11:06
SPEAKER_01: I like to end the faith section each week by saying that if you're skeptical
1:11:10
SPEAKER_01: or you're not sure if what I've shared is true or not,
1:11:14
SPEAKER_01: I'd like to encourage you to read the Bible for yourself.
1:11:17
SPEAKER_01: Not secondhand, not through headlines or arguments.
1:11:21
SPEAKER_01: Just open it and read.
1:11:24
SPEAKER_01: I've linked a Bible resource page in the episode notes that talk about translations
1:11:31
SPEAKER_01: and a good place to start.
1:11:33
SPEAKER_01: But if you don't want to click anything or take the time to read
1:11:36
SPEAKER_01: that short explanation I provide,
1:11:38
SPEAKER_01: just start with the book of Mark in the New Testament.
1:11:42
SPEAKER_01: And then read a little bit of Psalms or Proverbs each day.
1:11:46
SPEAKER_01: Let the text speak for itself.
1:11:49
SPEAKER_01: And if it's all a bunch of hooey or drivel...
1:11:53
SPEAKER_01: Then you'll know pretty quickly that I'm off my rocker.
1:11:57
SPEAKER_01: But if it's the Word of God, then I think God will speak to you through the text.
1:12:05
SPEAKER_01: And I think if you're unsure, you shouldn't be afraid to read something.
1:12:10
SPEAKER_01: I know I've read many texts about Buddhism,
1:12:13
SPEAKER_01: Islam, other faiths, Hinduism, and none of those texts spoke to me.
1:12:20
SPEAKER_01: But the Bible did speak to me.
1:12:23
SPEAKER_01: And so my challenge is, open the book yourself.
1:12:28
SPEAKER_01: Read it as a skeptic.
1:12:30
SPEAKER_01: And see if it's full of absolute truths and feels like the Word of God.
1:12:37
SPEAKER_01: If you don't own a Bible or don't have one handy, There are free apps on your phone.
1:12:42
SPEAKER_01: There are bazillions of websites that have the Bible on it.
1:12:47
SPEAKER_01: So you can read it from your phone.
1:12:51
SPEAKER_01: One final word.
1:12:52
SPEAKER_01: If you're a veteran and you're dealing with depression,
1:12:56
SPEAKER_01: PTSD, or thoughts of suicide, please check out the link in the resource notes.
1:13:03
SPEAKER_01: We need you in this fight.
1:13:06
SPEAKER_01: And you cannot give up.
1:13:09
SPEAKER_01: After all, who is going to take care of your family someday?
1:13:14
SPEAKER_01: Do you really want your military friends to feel guilty they didn't check on you more?
1:13:19
SPEAKER_01: I know it's taboo to say that it's selfish, but it is selfish.
1:13:25
SPEAKER_01: There is a purpose for your life,
1:13:27
SPEAKER_01: and you're just dealing with a lot of pain right now that feels overwhelming.
1:13:32
SPEAKER_01: It can get better.
1:13:34
SPEAKER_01: Just do not give up.
1:13:38
SPEAKER_01: Thanks for joining me this week.
1:13:40
SPEAKER_01: If you'd like to support the work, there's a link in the episode notes.
1:13:46
SPEAKER_01: I always like to end each episode by saying that as you head into the coming days,
1:13:51
SPEAKER_01: try to be just a little kinder, both online and also out in the world.
1:13:57
SPEAKER_01: Remember that most Americans are good people, even if they vote differently than you do.
1:14:03
SPEAKER_01: Aim to be a little bit more disciplined this week than you were last week.
1:14:08
SPEAKER_01: Mentally, physically, and spiritually, raise the bar just a little.
1:14:14
SPEAKER_01: You don't have to be perfect.
1:14:16
SPEAKER_01: You just need to aim to be a little better than you were last week.
1:14:20
SPEAKER_01: When you fall short, forgive yourself quickly.
1:14:23
SPEAKER_01: Start again.
1:14:25
SPEAKER_01: Now, when the news discourages you,
1:14:28
SPEAKER_01: and I believe it will,
1:14:30
SPEAKER_01: because even on the best of weeks, the media is looking for bad news.
1:14:35
SPEAKER_01: But when the news discourages you, Don't give up on this country.
1:14:41
SPEAKER_01: Try to remember that division weakens us.
1:14:46
SPEAKER_01: Unity strengthens us.
1:14:49
SPEAKER_01: This is wisdom.
1:14:51
SPEAKER_01: And it's also biblical.
1:14:54
SPEAKER_01: So guard what you feed your mind and your spirit.
1:14:58
SPEAKER_01: What you take in and absorb will shape what you become.
1:15:03
SPEAKER_01: Don't ingest poison.
1:15:07
SPEAKER_01: And that's mostly what cable news is.
1:15:11
SPEAKER_01: If you are a person of faith,
1:15:13
SPEAKER_01: make sure you make some time this week to spend time in your Bible.
1:15:18
SPEAKER_01: If you are not, try reading the Bible this week for the first time.
1:15:23
SPEAKER_01: Or for the first time in a long time.
1:15:26
SPEAKER_01: You know what kind of results you're getting with what you've been doing.
1:15:30
SPEAKER_01: It might be time to try something new.
1:15:33
SPEAKER_01: Now, before we leave,
1:15:35
SPEAKER_01: I need to mention on the off chance that you don't know I am an author in addition
1:15:41
SPEAKER_01: to being a podcaster.
1:15:43
SPEAKER_01: I like to say that I write compelling stories that matter about courage,
1:15:47
SPEAKER_01: faith, and the fight for what's right.
1:15:51
SPEAKER_01: I've written a dozen books to date.
1:15:54
SPEAKER_01: They include military thrillers,
1:15:56
SPEAKER_01: police detective mysteries, or whodunits, war literature, a western.
1:16:04
SPEAKER_01: One of them is even a motivational self-help book.
1:16:07
SPEAKER_01: And I've been fortunate to have sold more than 70,000 copies to date.
1:16:11
SPEAKER_01: So if you're one of those who have purchased one of my books, I really appreciate it.
1:16:16
SPEAKER_01: All of them can be found for sale on Amazon.
1:16:20
SPEAKER_01: And if you are one of those folks out there who are wondering if you might like one
1:16:24
SPEAKER_01: of my books,
1:16:25
SPEAKER_01: I will say that the military and political thrillers are very similar
1:16:30
SPEAKER_01: to books written by authors Vince Flynn and Jack Carr.
1:16:34
SPEAKER_01: And then The Crime Ones,
1:16:36
SPEAKER_01: if you enjoyed Robert B.
1:16:38
SPEAKER_01: Parker's Spencer series or any of his books,
1:16:41
SPEAKER_01: then I'm confident you will like The Crime Ones as well.
1:16:45
SPEAKER_01: Robert B. Parker was a huge influence on my writing.
1:16:49
SPEAKER_01: Now moving away from my books,
1:16:52
SPEAKER_01: I should also say before we end the show that if you believe in what I'm doing
1:16:56
SPEAKER_01: on this podcast,
1:16:58
SPEAKER_01: if you believe it matters in this moment for our country,
1:17:01
SPEAKER_01: you can partner with me on this mission to help keep the show independent and As
1:17:07
SPEAKER_01: the Bible teaches,
1:17:08
SPEAKER_01: God loves a generous giver,
1:17:09
SPEAKER_01: but I don't want anyone giving out of compulsion or out of guilt.
1:17:30
SPEAKER_01: At any rate, thanks in advance for all of you who are supporting the show.
1:17:35
SPEAKER_01: Until next time,
1:17:36
SPEAKER_01: please stay hopeful,
1:17:38
SPEAKER_01: stay humble, and keep working to be the light in your corner of the world.
1:17:44
SPEAKER_01: You've been listening to The Stan R. Mitchell Show.