Fighting the Shutdown and the ‘Lawfare’ Against Trump (10-30-25)

Well, we have the PetroServe USA microphones in the Puklice GMC Sierra Denali mobile studio today, Kev. How's that for two sponsors coming together to power us across Minnesota? Going mobile. 10,000 regulations.

Yeah, going mobile today. And we're escaping Minnesota for now. We did do our part last night, just so you know, to try and get this back to the land of 10,000 lakes.

Rather than 10,000 laws and regulations designed to stifle everything and send people to freedom states. So we're doing our part for your good state, just so you know. And I had a wonderful time last night at the invite of a good guy by the name of Ben Golnick.

Ben is a longtime political figure in Minnesota and has helped folks like Tim Pawlenty and others over the years govern effectively. Unfortunately, there's too few of him and good Republicans left anymore. But we did meet some folks that are kicking some tires on some opportunities last night to run for office in Minnesota.

That would be a breath of fresh air. So pretty amazing. One of them, by the way, is a candidate for governor.

We're going to watch that close because we got a lot of folks in that race. Kendall Qualls, you and I have talked to before. Scott Jensen would be another one.

There's a woman whose name escapes me in the state legislature. She was just another one. Yeah, there you go.

There you go. I don't remember what Jensen maybe. I don't remember last name, but not Jensen.

That's Scott. Anyway, so, yeah, interesting for sure. And just some really good people, really good people that were interested.

And a guy by the name of Tommy Miracle is Glenn Taylor's longtime right hand guy. And he's a Wadena product that his son's one of the sons works with the Timberwolves and met him last night and another younger son. They spent a lot of time growing up in Otter Tail on, you know, on Otter Tail Lake with the family roots back there.

So just a delightful family. And they were our hosts last night. So we had a great time.

Kristen, we watched a little bit of basketball. Excuse me, Kristen. What's your last name? Kristen Robbins.

Kristen Robbins. Yeah, she's another one, I believe that's announced. Yeah.

Philip Parrish, Brad Kohler, Jeff Johnson. You mentioned Scott Jensen and Tom Evenstad is another one. So there's a big field in the Republican.

Yeah, I didn't actually mention Jeff Johnson. Is he back in the, because he's run before. Yeah, he's run before.

DL guy, yep, he's back in it. But I think Kendall's the guy. I don't know.

We'll see. I like Kendall a lot. The only thing that worries me a little bit, and this sort of goes to the Royce White and a few others.

There gets to be a point when you run so many times that people kind of yawn. You know what I mean? Now, the thing I can't wrap my arms around related to Minnesota is just how much has Tim Walz damaged the Democratic Party that there's an opportunity for the Republican Party. I also believe if we can crack the code of getting Western Minnesota voters, who I don't know why, are sometimes low propensity voters.

I think it's partly like why bother, right? I'm not going to affect anything, so why would I bother? So if you can find those why would I bother folks, and then also the Trump walk on broken glass folks. Because again, we talked to Karl Rove about this. Trump voters that are most passionate about Trump are, I mean, a lot percentage less likely to vote when Trump isn't on the ballot.

Can you explain that to me, Kevin? Can you help me understand why that would be? Let's just talk about congressional races. So Donald Trump's presidency will end in November of 2026 if there is a Democratic majority in either the House or the Senate. It will end.

It's over. It'll be a two-year presidency because Hakeem Jeffries will be running impeachment inquiries. And they'll want to throw him in jail for improving the White House.

It'll be just all kinds of crazy. So I think if they get that out, even in a race like for governor and other down-ballot races in Minnesota, and with the legislature, and then you change things a lot. Coming up on the program, we're going to talk with Fargo Police Chief Dave Zabolsky.

Fargo City Commissioner on with us yesterday had some concerns about reducing the items that the police department will engage in related to calls of service. Chief Zabolsky does not agree. He wants to respond.

The mayor, who you heard yesterday as well, same boat. Alex Marlow will be here from Breitbart. Love the guy.

Love Breitbart. Wrote a great book about the weaponization of government that everybody's forgotten about. Russia, Russia, Russia, and all that.

I mean, we're getting a little blip here and there, but not much. Congressman Dusty Johnson in South Dakota. He's South Dakota.

He wants to be your governor. And he's trying to save us from the Democrats and all the things that are happening in the government shutdown. Also going to talk to Hayden Smith.

Hayden is the NDSU president of Turning Point USA. They have somebody coming to town that I think, Kevin, you're going to like a lot. Got a great story.

We always love the Turning Point USA peeps. Stay tuned. Mobile edition.

Heading westward. Freedom. Go west, young man.

I'm on my way. Back to North Dakota on What's on Your Mind today. Don't touch that dial.

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Chose Investments, KJOSinvestments.com. Fargo Police Chief Dave Zabulski joins us now on the program. Always appreciate our chance to chat with the chief. Dave, welcome back.

Hi, Scott. Yeah, thank you. I want to ask you first a little bit about the recent Fargo City Commission meeting related to solutions that are being offered up downtown.

Just give me your first top-line view of what you saw, what you heard, and what's workable, what concerns you. Just lay it all out for me. Sure.

Well, I mean, I think the commission is attempting to address the issue of location and services and all of that. So, I mean, if you recall, the deck came about during COVID as kind of an emergency type of operation. And over the, you know, subsequent years, I don't know that there just hasn't been that long-term strategic plan about what are we doing with it, what do we intend to do.

And I think that's what's been getting worked on in at least the last year or more with public health, et cetera, to try and address homelessness, mental health, and addiction. They're kind of all inextricably connected. And, you know, they have an impact on how people feel about their safety and other attributes of the city.

So, I think in terms of moving it to the location on 1st Avenue, I think that as a, not as a permanent, and I think that's exactly what they said, more as a first step or temporary type of move while they work on the rest of the plan. I think that that's positive for the downtown area because there is a, you know, a very big impact perceptually on downtown because of the location of the engagement center. And I understand there's some resources down there as well, but there's still, you know, that's just an issue that we know we've all been dealing with.

So, I'm hopeful that this relocation will at least assuage some of that while I think public health and we'll certainly partner with them as well and city administration work on a really longer-term plan to address these issues. I remember at an event Fargo-Moorhead-West Fargo Chamber held a couple years ago now, and it was about law enforcement. And I spoke with you there.

I spoke with Jesse Johnner, the sheriff of Cass County, as well as your counterparts in Moorhead and in West Fargo. And to a person not knowing what the others said, I said, if you had a magic wand, what would you deploy it to accomplish? And you all said some version of mental health help because of the amount of recurring interaction that law enforcement was having with, you know, people in a state. Yes, some homelessness.

Yes, some, you know, crime issues, whatever. But it all was, you know, most of it came back to that root cause and repeat offenders. You obviously have limited resources, limited amount of officers.

You know, give me an update on that issue of how many interactions and what sort of percentage bandwidth-wise that you're dealing with. You know, I don't want to say that element. It's just reality of people in a very bad state, and you need resources beyond, obviously, a jail cell and city ordinances.

Just give me the lay of the land there a little bit. Sure. Yeah, no, I would agree with that.

I think still mental health is a big driver in terms of consumption of police resources and I'm sure other hospital, et cetera, public health resources. I don't have the numbers in front of me, but I certainly can get those to you. But I think last year, off the top of my head, I think we had something close to 3,500 calls for service that were purely mental health-related.

Those calls take significant time, usually several officers, depending on how they play out, or the officer's ability to help de-escalate and get them into the right state of mind. We have a group that is very repetitive and very chronic in their issues. We don't have a sufficient mid- to long-term mental health care in our region.

However, there is a couple through the last legislative session the state has awarded. It's called a community, I'm going to get this a little bit wrong, community-based mental health facility, but it's probably not 100% accurate in the title. And Southeast Human Services is the entity that's going to be implementing that.

So I think we're hopeful that as that comes off the ground, that will result in some bed space. We were successful last legislative session. I testified on this bill as well to extend the mental health hold period from 24 hours to 72 hours to allow a more thorough and complete mental health evaluation and then allow for placement.

But then once you get to that point, you have to have a place to put them. So we're still short there. That's being worked on, I guess, at the Southeast level.

I know that there's some other entities in Fargo that have applied for grant awards to assist with treating those with mental health issues from that perspective as well. So it's moving in the right direction, but the problem is we'd all like it to move last year or sooner. And it's just been a very, unfortunately, slow, I guess, bureaucratic process, but I think we're making some headway.

I want to talk a little bit about the City Commission meeting and a conversation that I had with a PEPFAR and Fargo City Commission member yesterday. And everything you just described, he said, is causing you and the leadership of the police department to say we've got to be more selective about where we deploy our officers related to calls for service. He implied that you have reduced the amount of things that you'll respond to.

Has that happened in any way, shape, or form? No, we have changed the way that we respond. And so I don't 100% agree with that. I didn't hear the statement that he made, but as you're describing it, we respond to all of the calls for service.

They're prioritized in that thing. But if you recall back in 2022, because we don't have enough officers overall, we've created many efficiencies in the department over the last five years to help with that. One of the things that we set up in 2022 was an online reporting system where we were able to identify certain crimes that didn't necessarily require an officer's presence to have the report filed and have it followed up on.

And so our online reporting system since 2022 has taken nearly 7,500 crime reports online. People can submit video and photos if they've got any of that, and that's been very successful. And we've cleared crimes from them as well.

So what we've been doing is also using injured officers to monitor that online system to ensure that things are reviewed and that follow-up is passed along. So if you do the math on that, 7,500 calls, you're at almost 1,500 hours of person time. Basically, over each year, they've taken enough calls that would offset two full-time officer positions each year just based on the average amount of time these calls would take, et cetera.

So, yes, we've created some efficiencies, but in no way are we not handling calls or filing criminal reports or any of that stuff. But certainly we've changed the response mode because we have to. We still have enough people.

Yeah, and I think the wrap on that, I think it's a brilliant idea, obviously, because you get all the information rather than an officer writing pen and pad. You know, all of it's there. Like you say, photos, whatever.

I think the wrap sometimes is, well, they get blown off or it's not a big enough deal. What would you say to that? Yeah, no, I think definitely not. We take all of these seriously.

We 100 percent encourage people to report them. But it's really just we have to have an alternative response mode. And this is done in many other cities as well for many of the same reasons.

And we have people following up on this. We've cleared crimes as a result of these. Our intel analysts also get this data, so it's extremely helpful for us in identifying crime trends that maybe the theft report that you're reporting online is connected to something else in that same area, and they're able to identify that.

So if we make an arrest, we can connect all of that stuff. So we wholeheartedly encourage people to report that, and it doesn't mean that their crime is any less important to them. We have to come up with alternative methods to handle these calls.

Again, just from a staffing perspective, we have to use our resources as efficiently as possible. Is there any kind of a threshold on that where, no, at this level I need an officer out there versus reporting? Like where is that line drawn? Yeah, if you go on our online reporting link on our website, it will explain all those parameters. But certainly if anyone feels that they are in any way in danger, any active crime in progress, that's a 911 call.

And sometimes they may call 911 on a theft report that that doesn't pertain to, and they'll be directed to the online reporting. But by all means, if there's any danger, threats, concerns from the community member, someone's going to be sent out there. So that option is there, and that's done at the dispatch center as they vet the call.

We only have about 30 seconds left. Anything related to this you want to tell us? No, I think just really letting the community know about it. I encourage folks to go on our website and check these options out.

We've got our crime data on there as well. Our team here is doing everything that they can with the resources available to make sure that Fargo stays safe. And we're working, as you mentioned earlier, on a lot of these other fronts, mental health, addiction.

All those things are part of that overarching issue, and we're trying to be part of the solution. Chief Dave Zabolsky, Fargo Police Department. We back the blue around here.

Appreciate you and the whole rank and file. Thank you, sir. Thanks, Scott.

Have a good day. More after this. All right, we packed up those PetroServe USA microphones and decided Clearwater, Minnesota is where we are currently at.

And power us all the way home in a beautiful Pucklidge GMC Sierra 2026. Still smells new. Can you smell that, Kemp? It's got that new car smell.

Oh, baby. Nothing better. Put a nice bed topper on this thing for me so I can load up the gear and head out and have a grand old time.

Heading back to North Dakota from Minnesota. I didn't get any on me, so that's good. I did go to the Timberwolves game last night.

And I did something you should never do. I bet Dean Wysocki, our chief meteorologist, has never done this. Don't be so sure.

It was a close game. It was a close game, Lakers and Timberwolves, okay? And the superstars were all hurt. I don't know how they're hurt.

I don't watch NBA at all and consider it to be subpar in the way of pro athletics. But it was the Lakers. It was the late game.

It was at Timberwolves' nice renovated Target Center. And so, you know, whatever. Fun.

And it was mainly a business reason to be there. But the game was closed a couple times. Timberwolves started with a little lead.

Lakers came back. Then it kind of grew in the fourth quarter to being gross. That could be the wrong word.

Just boring. And we leave, and I don't know, five minutes left, maybe four minutes left in the game. And then Timberwolves almost won it.

They came back, and the Lakers had a buzzer beater. And we were walking to our hotel. So we missed it all.

So you should never, ever, ever. I mean, first of all, it's kind of dumb. You pay money to go to a game.

And, you know, if you do the math, per minute it costs you a fortune. If you buy brats and, you know, soda and maybe a beer, you've got to take out a loan. So why would you leave early for crying out loud? But we did.

To beat traffic. That's what we used to do. Yeah, exactly.

That's such a my dad thing. Oh, I've got to beat the traffic. And they do this at UND hockey games, too.

I've got to beat the traffic. Well, you lost. You missed an overtime game that was spectacular, right? To beat the traffic.

What's the rush? I'll tell you. The Target Center gets you out of there pretty quick. They're pretty good.

They do. They got it down. Partly because Target Field's right there, obviously.

Literally within spitting distance. So the Target Field, Target Center mojo, related to in and out and the parking ramps and everything else. You're right, Kev.

They got it figured out. They didn't even block the hotel or whatever. Anyway, have you ever left a Bears game or Huskers game early? Bears game, yes.

Huskers game, no. Because we always tailgated after the game. So there was no rush to leave.

There's a shocker. Wysocki is tailgating. Kev, I'm shocked.

I'm clutching my pearls as we speak. Yeah, after the game. That's a special kind of fun right there.

I love it. Dean Wysocki, our chief meteorologist, is here as we roll closer to November. We've been pretty darn lucky.

Traveling night, 94 today. And the leaves are turning. And fall's in the air.

And what's the next couple of days into the weekend look like? Well, I'll tell you what. It's going to feel more like fall for the next couple of days. But then after that, conditions change quite quickly.

That's kind of been the trend. Up and down, up and down this fall. And today we've seen a few light showers press through the FM area.

That's moving east now into Lakes Country. If you look out west, you're seeing some clearing skies. So we'll call it partly cloudy for the afternoon.

And then more clouds come back as we head towards evening across the state. Now, highs today out in the west only in the 40s. And we're not going to be far behind in the central and east either.

Upper 40s to right around 50 degrees. And, again, partly cloudy skies throughout the state. But then as we head into Friday, a clipper system dives in from Canada.

That will cloud us up and give a few rain and snow showers to the central and east while it remains dry out west. Highs only in the upper 30s tomorrow out west. And in the low 40s in the central and east.

We're not looking at any accumulating snow. So it's not going to be a problem for the trick-or-treaters across the state. It'll just be a little bit on the chilly side.

But nothing we haven't seen before on Halloween. And then the weekend does improve. The sunshine returns.

Highs on Saturday in the low 50s out west. Mid and upper 40s in the central and east. And then statewide on Sunday, sunny and windy conditions with highs right around 60 across the state on Sunday.

And then next week we're kind of up and down. We've got a couple of fast-moving clipper systems moving through. But generally 40s and 50s it looks like for all next week.

I mean, as we turn the corner into November and we're still looking at 50s in the forecast, wow. Let's take it while we can get it. Because you know the other shoe is eventually going to drop.

Shush. Right. Shush about the other shoe.

We'll hold it off as long as we can. Speaking of which, when do you see our first opportunity for mega snowstorm kind of road closure stuff? I'm not seeing anything, Scotty. Nothing.

Our models were trying to hint at something in about 10 days. But they backed off on that now. We are getting into a little more active pattern in these first couple of weeks of November.

But by active, they're quick-moving systems. I'm still not seeing any big storm system just yet. That will eventually change.

But over the next 10 days or so, I'm not seeing anything big. Interesting. How's the hurricane thing coming? Is that thing petered out yet? It's moving towards Bermuda in a weakening fashion, yes.

So I was just reading some newly released data as this went ashore in western Jamaica. Now, what they calculated was 185 mile-an-hour wind gusts. Now, satellite, and they still have more research to do, satellite imagery was indicating over 200, like more like 215 for peak wind gusts as the eyewall made landfall.

So it'll be interesting to see once they comb through the data, does this end up being the strongest hurricane in the Atlantic Basin, or will it be number two? Either way, it did a lot of devastation to Jamaica, especially the western third. Now, the last report I saw, and hopefully this doesn't climb, I mean, any fatalities are bad, but only 30 fatalities on the island thus far. And if it stays like that, that's literally a miracle because this thing was an absolute monster without a doubt.

All right, got to watch that, pray for that. Appreciate the update, Dean, as always. Thank you.

You got it. Welcome to a Thursday edition of What's On Your Mind. I'm Scott Hannon.

Kevin Flynn is here piloting this ship. We're going to talk to Alex Marlow, a Breitbart, coming up in a little bit. Got a great new book.

Dusty Johnson, South Dakota congressman. I understand, I know this will shock you, Kevin, but there's a little bedwetting going on among some House Republicans. I heard last night a little bit of intel that Donald Trump had to do while he's trying to save the world in China, a little damage control.

He's not in China, but he's dealing with China, South Korea, and the other sticky wickets related to trade deals that he had to get on the phone and calm some folks down. Do you want him to cave? Do you think that, you know, this whole thing over Medicaid and law enforcement and military not being paid, and you should know this, and if you don't, everybody I see commenting on social media is obviously watching MSNBC or, you know, fake news outlets everywhere. They're regime media.

They get up every day and say, how do we make the Democrats and their woke agenda more successful, and how do we lie about Republicans? That's the vast majority of the media I just described. So believe nothing they say. Okay? So they like to say, oh, Republicans wouldn't open the government, or even if they leave the government shut down, they're not going to give poor people their food stamps.

Absolutely not true. 13, 17, I forget how many times they've said, fine, let's battle on the government shutdown. It'll remain, but let's pay these people, Capitol Police and all the rest.

They don't care. They do not care. They say out loud the quiet part now.

They say this is about leverage, and we're winning every day we win a little more. It's all leverage to them. It's just disgusting.

Well, they voted for the thing 13 times or whatever because, remember, they always put it in the last minute, all kinds of pork. They load these CRs up, and they always, you know, well, we fought against it, and now, I mean, they really took the casino away from the grifters here. USAID gone.

Medicaid for illegals gone. The PBS, the propaganda radio network that they were funding all gone, which to the Democrats, to me, brother, says they're just getting rid of our voters and our grift. So that's why they're fighting so hard.

Maybe I'm wrong. No, I don't think you're wrong. And, of course, the ironic thing here is that the Democrats required these continuing resolutions to be clean, as they called them, in other words, no goodies in them.

They do goodies in other things, but the continuing resolution was always, no, nothing in there, and that's how they get to 60 votes. Now the Democrats are saying we want goodies in it. Yep.

And even things that have been voted on in the one big, beautiful bill already, they want to relitigate in this bill. Well, you lost. It doesn't work like that.

Now, there's going to be some deal-making to say, fine, let's give you a vote on leaving Obamacare premiums artificially low so the rest of us have to pay for them. No, we want illegal immigrants, criminals to get health insurance. That's what they're fighting for.

And the Republicans are even offering separate votes on that. They don't care. Should they cave is the question.

More after this. All right. Back on Wellesley on your mind.

Get to some texters here as well. Besides Dusty Johnson of South Dakota on all this, Hayden Smith will be here too. NDSU president of Turning Point USA.

Boy, oh, boy. A mega event. Last night, Vice President J.D. Vance headlining an event for Turning Point USA.

Erica Kirk as well. One strong woman. I mean, a force of nature.

How do you lose your husband September 10th and you sit here at the end of October continuing to motivate that team to keep going, to be a mother, to now lead this organization, and they're all going through a ton of crap. I think I mentioned this week that one of Charlie's key lieutenants was in town. Marie and I bumped into him last week at the airport.

We're like, what the heck is John doing here in North Dakota? He came up to pheasant hunt and meet with some supporters of Freedom Matters USA and Turning Point USA. And, you know, we had lunch with him. And the stories he told me curdled my blood related to the hate, the death threats, the social media mob, the whole Candace Owens thing, the whole, you know, Charlie was a hater thing.

These people in the middle of grieving are being put through the meat grinder. It is disgusting. It's just an example of everything that's bad about America right now.

So just pray for these people. And yet through all that, here is Erica being Erica. It's amazing.

Before I play some of the clips, Kev's got a couple of things that J.D. Vance and Erica said last night in case you missed them. I want to remind you that on November 15th, now just a little better than three weeks away, it's three weeks from Saturday, we have a Freedom Matters USA event. Again, Freedom Matters USA, long supportive of Turning Point USA and Charlie, brought Charlie up here many times.

And Brian Kildman from Fox and Friends, as well as Jimmy Fala, are going to be doing a wicked good event on Saturday, November 15th. Tickets start literally at $20 on up to $25,000 sponsorship opportunities for lifetime membership to help us do this over and over and over again. Pete Hegseth is going to come in and talk about the battle for the American mind and education.

The government shutdown has pushed that back. We were thinking we'd have that done by the end of the year. But he's committed to come, wants to do it, very gratified we've been asked.

And a whole bunch of America 250 events to celebrate America. We've got a real concern on the dashboard of North Dakota related to keeping ourselves the best-governed state in the United States for sure, and maybe around the world. So a lot of work to do.

We're fighting on that front. Classical education, everything they're doing at Capstone Classical Academy, soon coming to Stanley, North Dakota. Just a lot of those fronts that are very Charlie-like.

And most importantly, standing up Turning Point USA chapters per capita, number one, high schools, colleges, if you hear the sound of my voice. We want to make that happen fast, quickly. And we do that with your support.

Freedommattersusa.com for all the details on the event November 15th. Roundtable opportunities, VIP opportunities, break a little bread with the boys. Going to be a great time.

Eventbrite is where you can get your tickets right now. Eventbrite or go to freedommattersusa.com. Mark my word, there will be a point when I'll come on the air, just like we did with the Washington, D.C., trip. This happens with our listeners.

They sell out. We're going to come on the air and say there are not any tickets left for this event. So don't do the North Dakota, Minnesota thing, I'll decide on the 13th.

You can't. The tickets will be gone because this is November 15th. All right, the techs are pouring in, but play a couple of these clubs, Kev, because it was just like bucket-filled time yesterday.

It was amazing. You are living in one of the most defining moments in American history. And we are all witnessing in real time the battle that is raging for the soul of your generation.

We will not apologize for loving our country first. We will not be silent about our faith. We will not back down when the world tells us to kneel.

Because we bow only to the king of kings. Charlie's murder might seem like we're standing in a shadow, as if death was the victory meant for the enemy, but looking around in this arena, you are proof that this light of truth burns so brightly. So brightly.

Wow. Right? And that bright light is shining right here. You know, Kevin and I have said from the moment this happened, our whole company has, my wife and I have, our kids have, all right, what do we pick up in the way of signal through this noise, and what is our lane? I'll never forget the call we got from Williston shortly after this happened.

A sweet mom whose kids were saying, now, mom, don't go on social media and say stuff. She said, no, no, no. I'm going to be Charlie-like.

She was furious about this bee bunny loser that's going to be performing. I don't know if you call it performing. I would say destroying minds at the Super Bowl.

And she said, I want to do a wholesome Super Bowl and get people to turn the channel. And the Turning Point USA picked up that mantle. They're doing it.

So we all got to find our lane here for sure. Do you have any J.D. Vance at all, Kev? Charlie wasn't just a political figure. He wasn't just a guy who went around campus and said very interesting things and hosted all of these debates.

He was a person who, particularly to the young people of this country, to all of you, he had the very best advice. We have got over 10,000 students from across Mississippi. We are proud to have you.

And we know that you are the future of Charlie Kirk's legacy. So thank you for being here. Unreal.

Packed, by the way. An arena. An arena packed.

Yeah, that one wasn't the Chesterfield Auditorium with 2,300 people. I hope we're filled up to the rafters November 15th as well. So very interesting.

Let me take some text here. 701-271-1100 to call us. Text us 701-237-1590.

Listener says, I think the question of the day is, will Trump confront Xi about the Wuhan lab and China being responsible for unleashing COVID? China owes us like $10 trillion. Maybe the Democrats can ask China for their continuation of COVID subsidies for failed Obamacare. I get conflicting thoughts on that.

First of all, it is what it is. And it was what it was. And it is awful.

And we should hold them accountable and make sure it never, ever happens again. And, by the way, the biggest culprits from what happened because of COVID was us. Saying, oh, okay, we won't go to church.

Okay, dear leader, we'll put a mask on. Okay, we'll vax our kids. Oh, let's shut down schools because kids will be super spreaders.

That was us. We did that. Conversation last week with Ross Perot, Jr. about all this and what would his dad think.

He said there had been no COVID. And I said to him, let's talk about COVID a minute. You know, did it come as a bioweapon to us? Do they know exactly what they're doing? He didn't believe so.

He said, came from a lab, really dumb oversight. Maybe they didn't care if it got unleashed, but it got out of control for them in a way that destroyed their economy. And our economy is so resilient that it obviously has bounced back thanks to Donald Trump.

So I don't know if I'd waste political capital on that particular track is what I'm saying. But I hear you. We ought not forget for sure.

I want to make them feel the pain. I want them to feel the pain and have to do so many deals to revive their economy, which is making everything they're trying to do to destroy us more difficult and gain for the U.S. farmer and for our economy and stop buying their cheap crap. And back on What's On Your Mind, cranking away on a Thursday edition of the show.

So much going on. All fun, of course. I think this is fun.

We're winning. We're winning, winning, winning, winning on so many fronts. So we just got to keep going.

Our next guest is Alex Marlow from Breitbart. Breitbart is the vision of Andrew Breitbart, who was a friend of mine and a regular guest on this program and loved North Dakota and did so many things so well. We lost him way too early.

But his legend lives on in the form of this news organization that could use our help because little known secret regime media more and more is being funded by these co-ops and shadowy money and 501C3 foundations. And George Soros is writing a lot of the checks. It's happening in North Dakota.

Newsrooms are going broke, so they take the content of these people, and they don't care if they have a hidden agenda because it fills papers. It's just disgusting. Meanwhile, if somebody like Alex comes along and says, well, we have a conservative version of this and you take our content, they wouldn't do it on a bet.

So you've got to applaud groups like Breitbart, and it's what Elon Musk calls philanthropic journalism sometimes. We've got to get into that game. Somebody told me somewhere, I'm going to ask Alex this question, by the way, Alex Marlow from Breitbart, author of Breaking the Law, Exposing the Weaponization of America's Legal System in a Way the Regime Media Won't, is my add-on subtitle, sub-sub-subtitle.

How are you, Alex? I'm doing great. Thanks for having me on the program. Yeah, glad to have you.

The question I was going to ask related to sort of the need for conservative outlets, especially in the media, to have nontraditional revenue, if I remember correctly, a friend of mine, Jane Nordlinger from the National Review, told me that a big part of their job, even as journalists, was with meeting with donors, and the National Review, under the infamous William F. Buckley, would never have existed without donors. There was no business model for National Review. Do you know that to be true? Yeah, it makes a lot of sense to me because good journalism is not, it's very hard to monetize it in our modern times, and Breitbart's a part of this history because after Donald Trump won, and people were so shocked that new media could beat the establishment media, not just in terms of power, but also in terms of page views, traffic, and Breitbart was at the front and center of this.

I remember seeing data from Harvard and MIT right after the 2016 election, and the top three web outlets on social media were the Huffington Post, New York Times, and Breitbart. I think Breitbart might have been number one, actually, and this was deemed completely unacceptable to the political establishment because they thought that we had just been able to use their platforms that they built, the left, and beat them with them. And so they went on this huge boycott, advertiser boycott, to try to get advertisers not to put advertising on Breitbart, but what ended up happening is it reset the entire digital ad market, and people didn't want to put content on anything that had to do with war or viruses, and then all of a sudden there were basically no ads worth any value on the web in general, which makes it virtually impossible to do business just on web advertising.

And it's a remarkable thing because it makes it so that the powers that be have fewer journalists sniffing around to figure out what they're doing because it's hard to make money. Yeah, that is like, you know, that requires a Glenn Beck chalkboard to just do what you did, and he used to do this so well because there are so many tentacles to that, and they're very smart. They're very, very good at this, aren't they? Yeah, it's an interesting moment we're in because it feels like the model to do media is moving towards it's going to be a donor-driven thing.

At Breitbart, we're so big and we're so lean and mean that we make ends meet from web traffic, but I would never recommend starting a business just based off of web traffic. You really do need that backwards. And so we've launched a foundation, so if people want to support us, we have the Breitbart News Foundation, which is going to fund some of our longer-form stuff that is just, you know, things that take months, weeks or months to do.

It's hard to pay a good salary and then you get one story in the end at that rate. It doesn't make any sense financially. So we are starting to go down that road, but a lot of people were there years ago, and I didn't know the Buckley quote, but it makes sense to me.

Yeah, and, you know, what you just described I think is so important because it doesn't exist. You're talking about doing what literally doesn't exist. I don't know what journalism schools teach anymore, but they come out wanting to save the world.

Yeah, I don't want them to save the world. I just want them to call balls and strikes, and they don't do it anymore. And ironically, everybody on the left would say, oh, Breitbart, like you can't even, like, come on.

That's a bunch of right-wing crap. You're actually doing journalism, Alex, right? Yeah, absolutely. And I don't know what journalism schools teach either, but I do think they probably have a lot of this is what you do to save the world vibe to it.

And that's just not really what media should be about. It should be about just reporting on what's going on and making it so that the public, which is interested in how the world works, helping them understand it by dedicating time and resources to it, that seems to be the most fundamental thing. But it does feel like what happened is that there were a lot of people who were trying to become heroes as journalists.

And even the media plays them up, and they make movies about portraying journalists as heroes. So what ended up happening is that every establishment journalist was just trying to take on the man, and the man being Republicans, Donald Trump, whoever's the standard bearer at the time. And it got them into a lot of trouble, and it made it so they're the most distrusted profession on the planet pretty much.

And that creates a huge void for truth tellers, which is what we're doing at Breitbart, and it's why we've had such longevity and support. Let's talk about your book. Glad you wrote it.

It could be easy to move on. Thank you. And just say, you know what? It is what it is, Russia, Russia, Russia.

And I have to admit, I think I was a little naive as well in just saying, you know, litigating the past is full of peril, and it causes people that are important to us to win, suburban moms and some of those squishy middle folks, to say, you know, why is he going after so-and-so? John Bolton, who cares? On the other hand, if you don't cut the head of the snake off, you're done. Now, I've said many times, we have to win the midterms. We absolutely have to win the midterms.

And so I don't want anything in the way of contagion, because the Trump administration will be two years long if we allow Democrats to take the House or the Senate. On the other hand, I'm going to argue with myself, I believe Donald Trump won in 2024 because the left, the regime, all the corruption deep staters went too far. And people said, this is ridiculous.

That's right. You're suing him because he took two ham sandwiches out of the buffet line rather than one. This is just getting so dumb.

You have done something so important here by getting under the hood and reporting something that wasn't. Bring us inside the covers of your book. Yeah, thank you.

And we're on the same page here. One of the reasons why I felt like this was important is, first of all, I think people need to understand that there were six major cases against Donald Trump. And I also get into some of the other cases against some of the J6 prisoners, things like that.

But the centerpiece of the book, you know, 50%, 60% of the book is dedicated to those six cases against President Trump. I'm editor-in-chief of Breitbart. I have been for, I think, 13 years now.

Even I couldn't keep up with all of the cases and keep them all straight in my head. And that shows you what an onslaught he was under, that if I can keep them straight, then I figure 99.999% of the population can't keep them straight. And not only does he need to try to win these cases or at least survive them, then he has to campaign from the courthouse for the highest office in the land, which is, of course, not just unprecedented.

It ought to be unacceptable in this country. And it felt like someone needed to dedicate some time mapping that out for people. But it also provides a roadmap for where we go from here.

And when you read the book, you see there is so much impropriety, such a miscarriage of justice, due process not applied to President Trump. And people do need to be held to account because if they don't, then they're going to feel like they got away with it. Maybe they lost the election, but they got away with it in their personal lives.

And that just can't be the case. And to your point about how we have to win the midterms, my number one prescription about how to move forward is something everyone in your audience can get involved in today. We can never lose another election because us spacing out on down ticket races and off years and in down ballot stuff, judgeships, things like that, that's how we got the lawfare mess that we got into.

And we need to be ever vigilant. And the left has been better traditionally about this than we on the right. And so that's one of the big warning I have is that all of you need to get fired up each and every year to go vote.

You're so right. And by the way, you're channeling Charlie Kirk there, right? I mean, I interviewed Charlie last and just kept pressing him to say, how do you repeat this, right? How do you do what you did in Arizona and all these other places, Wisconsin? How do we do it? How do we take your mantle? And he said, local, local, local. School board races.

To your point, judges. Yeah, I love it. How many people go into the voting place and they want to vote for president and a senator and a congressman and maybe a governor and they literally don't know the names of down ballot people? That's up to us.

That's in our hands. And if you want America to continue to go down the track now under Trump, that's the only way we do this. How do you think we do it, Alex? How do you think we get people to step up their game a little bit? Yeah, I think part of it is that we in the media, you and I have an opportunity here because if we tell compelling stories about the attacks we're under, I think that's really important.

I think we made a little bit of a mistake, and I'll say a huge mistake, that after President Trump's first election, I think there was some hope a lot of this emanated from the White House itself to just sort of normalize things. And I think that they tried to really co-opt the establishment. That was their first move.

They tried to co-opt the establishment media and work with the establishment media and break their stories within the establishment media, and that really failed because that just fed the beast, and it didn't keep conservative media strong. And I think Trump learned those lessons, and I think we in conservative media have learned some lessons that we need to tell the most compelling stories and keep people engaged and fired up on a civic level. In your personal lives, you all need to be evangelists for these values in your communities.

And you can start small, PTAs, school boards, homeowner associations, I don't care, local governance, but you all need to be involved at a certain level, even if it's just getting out the word in your communities about what's going on in this country. But the left is completely at war with us. All you need to do is see the reaction to the assassination of my friend, it sounds like our friend, Charlie Kirk, who I've known since he was a teenager.

He got his start writing for me at Breitbart. And to this day, the left is laughing about it. You're going to see at Halloween people dressing up as assassinated Charlie Kirk.

These are sick, demonic freaks who we're up against, and we cannot rest on our laurels ever again. So true. By the way, I've heard you on Charlie's platform many times and knew obviously that we had that connection, and now it's up to all of us.

That's what he's doing now. He's orchestrating this. A martyr goes immediately to the side of Jesus.

They just do. If you know anything about the Bible and the martyrs through history, Charlie was one, assassinated for what he believed and what he said and preaching the gospel. So he's still with us.

More with Alex Marlow after this. Don't go away. Oh, Kev's got a little toto going today, don't you? I love it.

There you go. Rosanna Annadanna. Isn't this? Is this Rosanna? I think it is.

Rosanna Annadanna. Oh, we love the 80s music here. Proves our age, but we love it.

Back on What's On Your Mind. Congressman Dusty Johnson of South Dakota coming up, trying to fix that dumpster fire that is the Democratic Party and the shutdowns. I have good intel that there are House Republicans that are bedwetting.

Trump had to get on the phone yesterday and knock some heads around because, you know, these nervous Nellies. I've got to run them. Not unimportant that we pay attention to the public opinion on this, but we need strength right now.

We've got the moral high ground. Don't cave to these leftists who are using this and the harm it is causing on the poorest among us, the people they used to claim to defend for leverage. That's what they're doing.

We'll have an update on that. Will Witt is coming to North Dakota for Turning Point USA. We're going to talk to the NDSU chapter president about that.

If you don't know who Will Witt is, he has a hilarious new book. It makes me laugh out loud. How to Win Friends.

Remember Dale Carnegie and that famous How to Win Friends book? That was famous. I'm trying to remember the name of the book. How to Win Friends and Influence Others or something like that? Influence People, yep.

So this Will Witt has a book called, are you ready, How to Win Friends and Influence Enemies. Yeah, so stick around for that. You're going to love that.

More of Alex Marlow from Breitbart today on the program as we talk about the innovative work they are doing in the media. I want to go back to the media thing for a minute before we finish on the book and the weaponization and all that and how that happened and how you're reporting it, Alex. You know, I know this was a COVID-era thing.

I know it was a Biden-era thing. We know now because of Michael Schellenberger and all the work on the Twitter files that, you know, they were taking platforms like yours and going, well, you're talking about Orange Man, so we're going to decrease your views and therefore you'll make less money. Is that gone now? Is that something we need to be wary of? Are they still doing this without saying they'll do it? Tell me a little bit about that.

Well, first of all, I've got to talk to you about the song Rosanna by Toto because Andrew Breitbart, who was my boss and mentor and close friend and I owe him everything. We all owe Andrew so much. He had a severe ADHD, and this was a huge advantage some days, but he also had to focus on the computer a lot.

In the early days of Breitbart, it was just me, Larry Solove, who's our CEO and president to this day, and Andrew. There was the three of us. We were the star of the company, and Andrew would be on the computer, and we'd all be in deep focus, and then he had a few go-to songs where he would just spontaneously start belting it out, out of nowhere, and then stop, and then he would do this so frequently that we wouldn't even acknowledge it at a certain point, and every so often we would all be in deep focus work, and we would hear, Meet you all the way.

And then he would stop. And it was just one of my favorite memories, and you had no idea when you guys played that bumper music that that's what you were going to remind me of. I completely forgot your question, but I've just been totally distracted now.

I'll circle back, and I'm not even sure it's important, but I loved his genius, and I interviewed him many times. I'd go to different events. I interviewed him, and he was just a sweet soul and brilliant.

I mean, I would talk to him on walks. I would talk to him. There was a deal you guys were doing where I forget which administration, but they did some deal with black farmers and tried to screw a bunch of other farmers, and so I connected him with our, at the time, Ag Secretary Ed Schaefer, and they did some really good reporting on all that.

Yeah, yeah. Andrew figured out an $8 million fund for black farmers or $8 billion fund for black farmers, was not necessarily going to blacks and not necessarily going to farmers, so that was a pretty good call. By the way, that was Doge and Elon Musk before there was Doge.

It really was. Yeah, and good reporting. Just good, solid reporting.

We could talk for hours, and I'd love to again and continue this conversation on everything we're talking about here and how we do media differently. I'd love to visit with you about a North Dakota bureau because a lot is happening here fast, and there's good people here, right? There's really good people. Just quickly, all the games, like what Twitter did before in the Biden administration, is that a chapter closed, or is this stuff still happening in the deep shadows of social media? Oh, yeah, this is a great question.

So there's always new battles, and the algorithm controls so much of our lives, and really, sometimes I feel like as powerful and as lucky as I've been to have a big megaphone at Breitbart, sometimes I feel like I got in the wrong business and I should be in the platform business because we're constantly having to dodge what these new media platforms are focused on. Like, for example, all my content gets censored on YouTube. It's all shadow banned, so they promote content they like.

It'll never be our content. Twitter has gotten markedly better, which is X now since Musk bought it, but that was terrible. They shadow ban all of my stuff, meaning that we put stuff out, it would not show up in people's feeds, even if you followed our accounts, and then they would lie about it to the public.

Facebook is constantly turning down the dials on all political content because the most popular political content is conservative. So now we're in an okay spot with Facebook, but part of it's just because Trump's president, Ian Zuckerberg, wants to kiss his butt. So we have to be ever vigilant in this regard.

You sure do. Alex, keep doing what you're doing at Breitbart, that legacy of Andrew Breitbart, and obviously we ought to do the same with Charlie Kirk. Every one of us, top-down, it'll transform this country.

God bless you. Keep up the great work. My pleasure.

Thanks for having me, and I'll come back. All right, friends, welcome back to What's On Your Mind? Scott Hinton live and on location, actually packed up the PetroServe USA microphones, and we have them mobile today, as a matter of fact. So I am... wait a minute, Alexandria here, I think? Yeah, Alexandria, Minnesota, heading for the West, trying to escape the contagion of Minnesota.

Try not to get any on me, because the state is emptying out now to North and South Dakota, which makes me weep because I'm a Minnesota kid. But it is what it is. It's a good example of how the laboratories of our republic are the states, and they are giving a freedom in our Constitution to be stupid.

And unfortunately, some are stupid. So it really is kind of sad to see all this happen. But I will say this.

There can be good examples. Best practice isn't bad. And maybe we need to show South Dakota the way.

So, I'm sorry, not South Dakota. That's another bastion of freedom, as our next guest knows. Dusty Johnson, congressman from South Dakota who wants to be your governor of South Dakota, and you ought to say yes.

Yes is the answer to that question. Dusty, welcome back to the show. How are you? Oh, I'm doing fine.

I mean, you know, government shutdowns are stupid, and we're into day 30 of this one, but I think we're starting to move toward you in the right direction. I want to talk to you about that and a couple other things related to the government shutdown. I believe, and I want you to tell me unvarnished your opinion on this, but also the data to back it up, I hope, is that I don't remember Republicans having the moral higher ground during a government shutdown in a long time.

And partly because Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries and the others are saying the quiet part out loud, that, hey, we go another day, we get more leverage. Right? And saying some really dumb things. They're literally trying to... Every day gets better for us.

In other words, the worse it gets for, you know, those we used to care for, Medicaid recipients and all that, the better it gets. Does the data support that U.N. Republicans are winning the moral high ground on this debate in this day? Yes, you're exactly right. In fact, just in the last week, according to a CNN poll, the numbers have shifted five points in the direction of Republicans.

And nobody wins a shutdown. I mean, yes, it is great that the American people are starting to see through this terrible Democratic tactic, but I'm not so interested in having Republicans win the shutdown as I am in just getting the damn government back open and making sure that we don't surrender to giving $1.5 trillion more of spending just to the people who are willing to take their entire country hostage. I mean, we know from the past, no party ever wins a big policy concession when they shut down the government.

And, Scott, that is a good thing, because if this tactic worked, we would get a lot more shutdowns. Yeah, and I want to just explain this for people that are still confused, most of whom don't care about the facts. They care about a political argument on social media.

But when I decide to play ping pong with them, when they say, well, Republicans are making sure we don't pay cops, Republicans are shutting down the Defense Department, I say, no, no, no. Actually, Democrats are. And the reason I say that is because, correct me if I'm wrong, number one, a lot of what they're trying to change has already been voted on.

So they fought a battle, and they lost. Now they see this as an opportunity to get what they couldn't get before and revisit those issues. But a clean, continuing resolution, just like it was under the Democratic regime, is not a place to try and get something done policy-wise.

You're trying to fund the government. And if I'm not mistaken, for a very short period of time, to sort of get to a bigger thing, and with all of Biden's spending. So they are now voting against Biden-era spending, and, you know, again, everything that they previously have done to say it needs to be a clean CR.

I mean, sometimes this gets in the weeds, and how does a bill become a law and all that, but this is really pretty simple, isn't it, Dusty? Oh, you are, listen, you said it exactly right. I mean, listen, if this was a big negotiation, like if somebody says, hey, I want to buy a big swath of your farmland, they could respond by saying, well, will you give me your house in town? All right, that's a big thing for a big thing. But all the Republicans wanted was a short-term continuing resolution so that we could finish these negotiations about funding government while the government was open.

This is not a big ask. Let's negotiate while the government is open. And so in essence, we're asking for like, hey, we got a mountain bike to sell, and they want our whole house.

They want $1.5 trillion of spending just for a six-week CR. That was never going to work. I'm not even sure that's what they wanted.

This feels like a base management exercise for Chuck Schumer. I mean, listen, I get it. They're really upset at Donald Trump.

They're really, really upset. But they are not going to get what they want by shutting down this government. And so let's end this charade.

Let's open up the government. And then let's do the big negotiations. And I get it.

Scott, the Democrats are going to get some of what they want. Republicans are going to get more of what they want. But we are not going to do that right now.

We cannot capitulate and let this shutdown win for the Democrats. So let's talk a little bit about the negotiation to come and the current position we're in. I won't tell you how I know this, but I understand a friend of mine who had a conversation, big ag guy, had a conversation planned with Brooke Rollins yesterday.

Brooke Rollins' team had to call and say, we're super sorry. She's got to cancel it. We're losing some House Republicans.

The president is in the middle of negotiations with Xi. Xi, you know, whatever, president, the crazy man in China, Xi. And so Brooke Rollins and others at the direction of the president have to call these House Republicans down who want to cave.

Is that happening? Are some of your members getting weak here? No, not on the shutdown. I do think the Argentinian beef deal plus the lack of soybean sales to Asia have spooked a lot of farmstay Republicans. And listen, all of that concern is legitimate, but now is not the time to go wobbly.

I don't love high tariffs as a permanent part of the economic landscape, but I understand what the president has been trying to do. I think that's why a lot of farm country was willing to give the president some time to negotiate these deals. I think yesterday was a validation of that approach.

Now we got all the Chinese feet to the fire. I don't really think we can trust Xi. I don't think we can trust the Chinese Communist Party, but at least with the deal, we have a chance to hold their feet to the fire.

And so, no, I think, I do not think House Republicans, any of us were getting wobbly on the shutdown. I do think some people really wanted to make sure the president had a plan with regard to tariffs and beans. And frankly, they are pretty irritated on the Argentinian beef deal.

I mean, I'm just, I'm not sure people understand the long-term strategy with that. I do understand what the president's trying to do, but fundamentally, I think the better way to reduce the price at the meat counter is through more American beef, not more Argentinian beef. Yeah, I think as usual, Trump's playing a different game there, but I hear you, and our ranchers like yours are concerned.

I want to come back to that in a minute. When you talk about negotiating, you're talking about, again, we're not going to do it during the government. What are we negotiating? Are we going to give them more freebies related to Obamacare for an extra year? You know, are we going to say, okay, you want to ensure illegal immigrants? We've done this for four years.

We'll do it another six months to shut you up. Like, what's the negotiating field right now? No, no, none of that's going to happen. I mean, I guess I can only speak for myself, but I'm certainly not going to vote for a deal that allows illegal immigrants to be able to continue to receive Medicaid through states like California.

That's a hard no, and I wouldn't do it for a six-month extension. I wouldn't do it for a one-year extension. I wouldn't do it, period.

Secondly, if this is about extending COVID-era health care subsidies to rich Americans making 600% or 700% of poverty or continue to continue to be able to sell, perhaps 40% of their policy. Are you getting the break up too, Kev? Dusty, I lost you for a second here. We're going to go to a break anyway.

We'll try and improve that connection. Kevin, are you hearing the same thing I am? Were we lost, Dusty, there for a moment? Yeah, a little bit, yep, working on it. All right, so you guys work on that.

We'll take a quick break and come back with more here in a second with Congressman Dusty Johnson, South Dakota. A lot to cover with him. Questions or comments, welcome, by the way.

It's 701-237-1590. You can also call us. Here's a text here and a question.

We have a smaller head of cattle in the United States than we've had in the past. That's the reason for high prices, all right? Listener's not wrong. And again, there's ebbs and flows outside of political things and trade deals that impact this as well, so I think that is important.

But we'll let him finish on what to negotiate on and where the playing field will be there when we come back. Don't go away. Stays like today.

I missed Charlie Kirk's voice on the radio, but his legend lives on. We are all Charlie now. Hayden Smith, president of NDSU, Turning Point USA chapter, is bringing another guest here for Turning Point USA, a guy by the name of Will Witt, who has a great media platform in Florida and has a book about winning friends and influencing enemies.

We're going to talk about it at the bottom of the hour. Stay tuned for that. Speaking of Charlie, Brian Kilmeade and Jimmy Thaler, two Fox News stories will be in Fargo on November 15th for Freedom Matters USA.

It's a fundraiser so that North and South Dakota, Minnesota, well at least western Minnesota and eastern Montana, will have the highest per capita participation of high school and college chapters and students in America. My promise to Charlie Kirk in the last interview I did with him. So that's dog-on-bone for me.

That's not going away. And you'll help that happen if you attend an event November 15th in Fargo with Brian Kilmeade and Jimmy Thaler. And you can go to FreedomMattersUSA.com to find out more about that.

Tickets at Eventbrite, they will sell out. Veterans and students tickets start at $20. Sponsorship opportunities up to a family membership for life with Freedom Matters USA as well available.

So check all that out at FreedomMattersUSA.com. Back with Dusty Johnson, congressman from South Dakota who we're rooting for to be governor. I want to talk about that in a moment. Let me finish on, where is the playing field related to negotiation? If you say, okay, we're going to negotiate on this and we're probably going to have some of our members go there and make that happen.

What is that after the government's reopened, Dusty? Yeah, great question. So first off, for people who might be concerned, the ACA health care tax credits are not going away. Those are not even debated.

Those are in permanent law. What we're talking about is the COVID era stuff that was layered on top of that. Back when the Democrats had concerns that nobody was going to be able to work during COVID and they weren't going to be able to pay any of their bills, they wanted to give a lot of people free health care.

Now, of course, COVID, now that was bad policy to start with, but COVID's five years in the rear view mirror. So those tax credits expire. They go to everybody who buys their insurance on the Obamacare exchange.

You can make $300,000 a year, Scott, and still get tax credits. And that is the piece that Republicans just don't understand. About 40% of these policies just end up being giveaways to the insurance companies.

Because so many of these policies were free policies, you had insurance companies signing people up, walking out of the subway station, hey, sign this and I'll give you a $25 gift card. The policies are auto-renewing, and they don't cost people anything. So some people have had a policy for five years they don't even know they've had.

40% of those policies have never had any claim on them whatsoever. And so I think you're asking where we're going to end up. I think there are going to be a group of Republicans who say, hey, listen, if you want to target narrowly some support to working class Americans, then we can talk.

But if this is about illegal immigrants, hard pass. If this is about phantom insured bodies, hard pass. If this is about writing a check to the insurance companies, hard pass.

If this is about borrowing more money from China so we can subsidize rich Americans' health insurance premiums, hard pass. And right now the Democrats say they will not accept that deal. They want a clean extension of these COVID-era subsidies, and that will not happen.

All right, a couple things I want to cover quickly. One on the Argentine beef deal. In my view, President Trump does 99% things well.

1% is this impulsivity, with true social being a little bit of a challenging communications platform. And some things were said about farmers and ranchers that weren't wise trying to explain Argentina. First of all, Argentina is all about beating Russia, and I do believe farmers and ranchers are patriots.

But I also believe their world has been disrupted a little bit, and you know better than me. Ranchers have had a big stretch of bad and a little stretch of good. And the President wants lower beef prices.

You said earlier there's a way to do that. Just tell ranchers and farmers, soybean farmers, what they need to hear in the way of what you know about what the President is trying to accomplish here. I think the President is trying to look at this comprehensively.

He does want to keep Argentina closer to America than to China. But Argentina has been making it a lot easier for China to draw a hard line against us, because Argentina has been selling them whatever they need whenever they've needed it. The President does like the President of Argentina.

I do too. He's a free market guy. We need more free market leaders in South America and elsewhere.

So I understand what the President is trying to do. But here's what I also know. If we want to grow the American herd size, and we do, ranchers have got to have a lot of money in their pocket, because it is expensive to go out and buy more cattle to be able to increase inventory.

It is expensive to be able to go out and buy more pasture land so you can keep more head. And, yes, ranchers have a pretty – it's not a great – I mean, the input costs are so high. They're not doing great.

They're doing good. They're doing real good, but they're not doing great. But that follows a pretty lousy cycle of bad prices.

And so I understand what the President is trying to do. I think there are other ways he could have gotten that done. I would just say to everybody who is listening that you've got to let markets work whenever you can.

Admittedly, this is a very small amount of beef, really, in the whole scheme of things. It's not even one week's slaughter in America. And then, by the way, crappy beef, nowhere near our beef.

So I don't see it as a big competitor, but I get why everybody is worried. If you look at prices, you know, pre the whole conversation, in the middle, when things were messy, and then now, they're not all that different, but I get it. Bankers are freaking out, everything else.

Let me talk about the overall farm economy in South Dakota, which is so integral to everything. I did an interview with Larry Roden early in his tenure as governor, after Christie left, and he told me, South Dakota is open for business. South Dakota doesn't change the rules in the middle of the game.

South Dakota loves its farmers, and the ethanol they produce is a value add. And then he proceeded to absolutely ignore all of that, and stick it to farmers. And a lot of that is related to the ethanol plants and CO2, and opportunities to raise the price of corn, that become, for some reason, this contagion in South Dakota of something President Trump wants in the way of energy infrastructure.

Am I wrong on any of this, and what do we do about it? Governor Roden and I go back 20 years, and I only want to say good things about my state, because, listen, I'm a booster. I love South Dakota, but South Dakota does not have a plan, a strategy for growth. We can say we're open for business, but the reality is, in the last six months, our economy has shrunk 3%, at a time when the rest of the country's economy has grown 3%.

South Dakota is in a technical recession by the numbers. North Dakota isn't. In fact, I've got some pretty high-placed sources within the North Dakota government that says South Dakota has become a huge source of economic development leads for your state, Scott.

We get it when Illinois and Minnesota companies want to move to North Dakota, but when we've got South Dakota companies nervous about our business environment, that is a real problem. South Dakota has slid down the rankings. We used to pride ourselves on being the best country, the best state in this country for business.

According to CNBC, we have slid all the way to 35th best. And you know what? That is the exact opposite of going way back to Larry Janklow years. I spent some time in South Dakota, so old Larry was a buddy of mine.

He was a beauty, and there's been some really good governors there that said, you know what? We have opportunity here. Think of the banks that moved to South Dakota because they said you're business friendly, and you can do so much so fast. How are you doing time-wise? Do you have a couple minutes to stay through the break, and we'll just give you a few more minutes to finish, Dusty? Absolutely.

You bet. Okay. I want to talk more about this farm economy in South Dakota because the farm economy is the key to everything down there.

It really is. They don't have oil and gas. They're going to be playing in the data center world a little bit if they do this right.

So there's a lot we could do together as the Dakotas. Talk more about it coming up. Little Dewey Brothers now.

You were doing the 80s jam today, Kevin. Yeah, kind of in the 80s vibe today. Yeah.

It was so fun to hear Alex Marlow from Breitbart tell that story about Andrew Breitbart and jamming to Toto and Rosanna. So cool. Back finishing up here with Dusty Johnson, next governor of South Dakota, now in Congress.

And Hayden Smith will be coming up in just a minute. Hayden is the NDSU Turning Point USA chapter president. He's got a great guest coming, so we want to tell you about that too.

He's in studio. Well, I'm literally in the truck from Puckledge, North Dakota. He's home for Chevy.

Heading west, young man. Coming back from the Twin Cities. Dusty, I spent time growing up in Minnesota, a little bit in Iowa.

Graduated from Huron High School in South Dakota in 1983. Bill Jankle, I said Larry earlier. I'm getting flooded with texts.

Who's Larry Jankle? I was thinking of Larry Pressler, actually, a former senator from South Dakota. But Bill Jankle walked into my high school in Huron, and I never forgot that, like, a governor is here? And then some friends of mine and I started a little radio show there talking politics, and we had Larry Pressler in studio one time. That's where I sort of got the, it was the Reagan era, and I got spun up about conservative politics and started a conservative chapter in the Huron High School.

And the access to people like that in South Dakota, and then later Iowa, Minnesota, and now North Dakota is what really inspired me. And this is the secret sauce we have, because people thinking about locating in South Dakota call you and others. Kelly Armstrong, your friend, former House member, Chris Wright, the Secretary of Energy, just said recently, North Dakota is the best-governed state in America.

And a lot of that becomes the fact that people have their cell phone numbers, they answer their phones, they get their staff working on these things. We really have something pretty special and unique, but I would agree, you know, Minnesota is hard to fix, and because I'm from there I still care, but that is the long game. South Dakota is going the wrong way fast.

So how do you fix that? Obviously you want to be governor, but there's a lot more layers there. What do you do? Well, I think one of the, you guys are incredibly well run. And listen, there are a lot of different ingredients for that, but a couple of them are, you've got a legislature that's really focused on the meat and potato issues.

They don't get distracted by howling at the moon and kind of the shiny, hot political objects, like they want to go govern a state. And then it helps you've got a governor with real vision. Those two things together make for a pretty potent brew.

You know, in South Dakota we have, I think, too many legislators who have more exotic political views. Sometimes I don't think they understand that this is not a reality TV show. They're the board of directors of a really, really important enterprise.

And I just hope we can bring a little more sanity to South Dakota because North Dakota is doing a lot of things very, very well. But we could align pretty well there as well, couldn't we? I know we talked to Casey Crabtree recently. What a great leader.

Wants to replace you in the House, I know. And, you know, he has a plan for getting South Dakota more business friendly as it relates to data centers, or as Doug Burgum insists, we call them intelligence factories, which is a good word because there's farm factories that pull wheat and corn and soybeans out of the ground. These guys are just mining data and they do it with power.

And that's where the future has to go related to that. Are you confident enough that you're in a good position on the data centers yet or more to do there too, Dusty? Well, South Dakota's way behind. Right now our tax structure means that we won't get any big data centers.

They're moving to North Dakota instead, Allendale, Jamestown, a bunch of other communities. We have a tax that almost nobody else has on the electronics that go into data centers. It makes us fantastically not competitive.

And there are some legitimate concerns about data centers. And rather than run away from them, we just need to address them. Hey, here's how you deal with the electricity situation.

Of course we want to make sure that South Dakota ratepayers are not hauling that burden. But there's a way to do that. We want to answer the questions about water.

We want to answer the questions about land use. All of that, you can deal with all of that. And so I've unveiled a plan called Data Centers Done Right that would make sure that our taxes are competitive with North Dakota and others, at the same time making sure that we protect South Dakotans first.

I just, we need to get this done. And I've been a little surprised we haven't seen leadership in the state to get it done before now. But we've got a good group of state legislators like Kent Rowe who are working with me to make sure we get this done now.

Last question I want to ask you is related to that. Because I believe your farmers and your ethanol producers have a way to get in the middle. It could actually put South Dakota in the oil and gas business.

Because if you take the blown-in-the-air industrial CO2, I'm not talking about the air we breathe. I'm talking about man-made CO2. You use it as a commodity, and then you put it in a pipe, and you allow more corn to go to local places.

Not to Warren Buffett on a rail car. To stay in South Dakota, give the farmer a better price, and his commodity that's now useless gets more energy generation. Now you're in the big business of energy in a big, big way.

Why is that so controversial in South Dakota? I can't figure it out. Well, I think we see this across the country. And in South Dakota, we were an oasis of sanity for a long time.

But, you know, things have gotten a little bit angrier and a little bit more populist. I mean, it's way too hard to build big things in this country anymore. I mean, we couldn't get the Eisenhower interstate system done today.

We couldn't get the Missouri River dams done today, rural electrification. And so we just have given too much power to the bananas to build absolutely nothing anywhere near anything crowd. And they're just real, real loud.

And I don't know what the role for South Dakota is going to be in something like sustainable aviation fuel. But I know Delta and American United want to buy it. And I know that they're willing to pay for it.

And I know that anything that is going to reduce basis and push up price should be the kind of thing that South Dakota should be hungry for. And I just wish we had that kind of vision. There's two ways to do that.

One is obviously up from Iowa in the pipeline. And the Summit Carbon Solution folks did so many things wrong. I can't even defend them when it comes to South Dakota, North Dakota, or Iowa.

They had investors that were greeniacs. They had investors that wanted EOR. You know, it was just a mess.

And then they have landmen that threaten people. Dumb, dumb, dumb. I don't care about them.

What I care about is farmers and the price of corn going up. So do you think that a smart pipeline, better dealing with landowners, who would then benefit from selling their corn to get that ethanol producer in a better position to get into the Deltas and the Unites that you talk about, or a federal permitting, still don't understand this either because CO2 is a gas. And right now natural gas can be permitted federally through FERC.

Do one of those two options, are they on the table if there's a Dusty Johnson governor? Well, I don't think. I mean, the Summit Pipeline is just not coming through South Dakota and any carbon pipeline, I think. I mean, right now our state law prohibits them from using eminent domain.

I don't see a realistic chance of getting that changed. And as long as that's the law, South Dakota is just going to be completely out of the CO2 pipeline game. Now, maybe you like that.

Maybe you don't. I would say this. I think we've got to be problem solvers.

I think we've got to figure out, all right, if the pipeline's not the solution, how else do we figure out how to make sure South Dakota can have a place in the sustainable aviation fuel, and just in the broader biofuels marketplace? I mean, let's go solve the problem. I am certainly hopeful that there's more than one way to skin a cat. And lastly, on federal permitting, is that something you would support to go that route to get, again, the opportunity to take that CO2? I agree with you, by the way.

There's other solutions. They're just slower. And then you lose the data center opportunity.

Then you lose the market opportunity for farmers, where FERC is already doing this. Do you support that with guardrails? I don't think that's going to happen. I think 60.

I mean, listen, they tried in the Senate real hard. I didn't really understand how hard they were working it until relatively late in the process, because at that point it was over in the Senate. But there were some folks who went all in.

I mean, they put all their chips into trying to get that done. And in the end, they just weren't even really close to getting the votes they needed. Even though the president seemed as though he was supportive of the concept, I just think we've got to look for, or the people who want the pipeline have got to look for other ways because that's not happening.

Well, keep leading on it. I think you're challenging everybody appropriately. I think you're the best choice for a business-friendly governor and really want to help you anyway in that regard.

Dusty, appreciate your time today, and we'll continue to stay in touch. You're a good man, Scott. Thanks much.

Thank you. You're a good man, and there's a darn few of us left, as we say. I want you to meet, well, you've met him before because he's been on the show before, but he's one of the lieutenants that is keeping Charlie Kirk's dream alive and the SU Turning Point chapter president, Hayden Smith, who is today.

Hayden, welcome back. How are you? I'm doing well. Thanks, Scott.

You inspire me every day because I know what you're doing, boots on the ground. You're obviously trying to get through college and go get a good career, but you're also devoting your time to keeping Charlie's vision alive. How is that effort going a month or so after his assassination? I would say things are definitely going good.

Things have definitely slowed down a little bit after the temperatures have cooled down, but definitely a lot more active than things had ever been in years prior. When we last talked, there were 20-some members or so of the Turning Point USA chapter, or other people saying, hey, Hayden, I want in, or more people interested specifically to the NDSU chapter? Yeah, we've had a lot of people join. As far as like before all this stuff with Charlie happened, we had about 70 registered members, like registered on my NDSU, which is how you register for clubs at NDSU.

Now we have like 120, 130. And then as far as meeting attendance, we had usually around 20 people. Now we're usually around the 35 to 40 people.

That's awesome. That's great. Yeah, it is.

I mean, think of that. That's good growth percentage-wise. Unbelievable.

You've got a guy coming to town by the name of Will Witt. Talk about him and why you're bringing him in with Turning Point USA. Yeah, so this is going to be our first speaking event of this school year, I mean this semester, and we're bringing in Will Witt.

He is most famous for the work he did with PragerU, which is a company run by Dennis Prager. He did a lot of the man-on-the-street things, going to college campuses, asking college students questions about what they believe, why they believe those things. The thing he went most viral for was he, quote-unquote, got in trouble for cultural appropriation things because he wore costumes of different ethnic groups on campuses and asked college students what they thought about that.

Yeah, isn't that terrible? Asking college students about, you know, let me role-play. That'd be like people like Kev going after our buddy Joe Wegan out in Medora because, well, wait a minute, you're acting like Teddy Roosevelt and he hated people and, you know, denigrated Indians. Why not bring history to life? My buddy Mark Skogarbo does a wicked good Abraham Lincoln replies.

Some people say, well, he's a Civil War guy. You know, I mean, and meanwhile, what this guy's trying to do is teach kids and even just have interaction with them. So more of what he's going to bring to NDSU when we come back with Hayden.

So good. I love it. Hey, slippers for my pillow, which are basically Uggs, were like $140.

They're $39.98 right now. Colors, sizes, check it out. You help the show go when you buy from MyPillow.

Promo code Scott. Really important at MyPillow.com or call 800-506-9028. More coming up.

Remind me on the artist. Great song. I might get it, but it'll take too long.

Sanford Townsend Band. Yeah, they didn't have many hits, right? No, just the one, yeah. This was it.

So good, though. Do I have them in my playlist? I kind of like the one-offs once in a while. You know, the folks that just had it, crushed it, and then just couldn't get the others across the finish line.

That's one of them, though. That's one of those top-down, driving-around summer songs. Isn't it, though? Free and easy down the road I go, I love that one.

There's a lot of them there where you just say, let her rip. Love it. All right, back with our friend Hayden Smith, president of NDSU Turning Point USA Chapter, which is growing like a weed.

If you have a son, daughter, grandson, granddaughter, family member, NDSU, get them there. Get them part of that. And all the bad stuff from Higher Ed goes away when you've got kids that come out of school participating and things like that, so it's darn important.

So back to Will Witt, Hayden. It's hard not to like this guy. Tell us about the new book, too.

So you said interacts with students well, which is obvious, and he's an older guy, right? He's got to be probably my age, 60-something, wouldn't you say? No, actually he's 29. Oh, no, Will's young, really young. You're thinking of the wrong guy.

Oh, okay, well, I saw a picture that we were playing earlier. I've never seen him before, and I thought it was an older guy. Maybe there was a guy introducing him.

Sorry, I just saw something on our Beck TV feed that made me think he was old. I see him now. Okay, I get it.

Oh, for funny. He's got the sombrero on and the fake mustache, and it's flying off, and he's talking about cultural appreciation. Oh, I love this.

This is so good. Anyway, tell me about his book, too. Well, I believe he's written two books.

I think the more popular of the two was he wrote one called How to Win Friends and Influence Enemies. It's not to be confused with Dale Carnegie's How to Win Friends and Influence People. But I believe the book is a very similar vein, but how to specifically engage with people who believe differently with you, because that was sort of his whole thing he did while he was working for PragerU.

And, by the way, the subtitle is taking on basically people you disagree with, with humor and wit and arguments, right? Just a little pun because his name is Will Witt. Oh, good point. I love that.

I didn't even catch that. See, that's why you're a college student. I'm a high school grad.

But taking on liberal arguments with logic and humor is a way to win them over in a very much Charlie Kirk kind of way. Will there be interaction like Charlie would do on campus with Will Witt when he's at NDSU? I don't believe there will be, like, a specific change my mind section, but there will be a Q&A that he does with the students and whatnot. We really like to do those.

It's funny that you mention how to engage with people, like, in a humorous way, because over this event I just recently received an e-mail from a gentleman very upset, just all the very mean things about how he's happy Charlie got shot and that we're all stupid and brainwashed. And the really funny thing about this guy was he was like, you guys are all stupid and the liberals are all wrong, too. So he was kind of like, everyone's wrong and I'm right.

And I didn't respond to him, but I wanted to respond with, like, well, I'm so glad that you, some random person in North Dakota, has figured it out and everyone else is wrong and you're right. How very smart and wise of you. So you're telling me this NDSU student sends you an e-mail.

He's not a student. He's just a random person from the community. Oh, okay.

Wow. What's his name? I mean, I guess his first name was Cody, but, yeah. His first name was Cody.

I didn't read too much into him. I'd love to know more. I wouldn't mind inviting them on because I think anybody, and I'm glad it's not a college student, but even worse it's an adult saying they're glad Charlie got shot.

Is that what you said he said? Yeah, he was like, Charlie was scum and he deserved it. Come on. That's ridiculous.

Which I can definitely. It's tough to see how you're the good guy when you're happy that people you disagree with are dead. Spot on, buddy.

Very well said. You lose the argument before it started. It's a great point.

Tell folks how they can participate in helping the Turning Point USA NDSU Chapter 1, which we're going to do with that event on November 15th, and I hope all 100 members of the Turning Point USA Chapter will join us on that day with Brian Kilmeade and Jimmy Fela. When is the Will Witt event and how can folks go? So the Will Witt event is next Wednesday. It's at 730 p.m. It's going to be in the Memorial Union in the big ballroom upstairs.

You can just show up, but ideally you would sign up. We have it on our social medias, our Instagram and Facebook. I believe it even got put on WDAY, but it'll just be like a sign-up.

It's all free. Just show up. But, yeah, it should be a really good time.

He'll give a speech and there'll be a Q&A afterwards. That's great. Uncle Kev, you're going to have to go represent me because I'm going to be in Washington, D.C. trying to save the world, but I hope folks go, and we'll put all that on our website, too.

You wanted to say one other thing, Hayden, quick? Yeah, and as far as just getting involved and helping out for students and whatnot, I mean, if you're coming into college, just go to our social medias or go on the MyNDSU. Sign up, show up to our events. If you're a high school student, there's high school chapters that can be started.

And if you're an adult, I mean, get involved in your local community politics. You can still do something even if it's not under the umbrella of Turning Point. You bet.

And, by the way, these events cost money. You've got to fly people in and all that, so you can help that way as well. And that's why FreedomMattersUSA.com is helping Turning Point USA.

So show your support. Let's all be Charlie now. Hayden, God bless you.

Keep fighting. See you tomorrow, folks. God bless you.

Thank you.