Life Liberty and the Pursuit
Welcome to the Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit podcast. Come join Eric and Matt who are freedom-loving, meat-eating, gun-shooting American guys as they discuss a broad spectrum of topics ranging from States' rights, culture, and the 2nd Amendment to scotch, bourbon, and cigars. Eric & Matt are both former US Army combat veterans who served together while deployed to Iraq during OIF III. Eric is most notable for his YouTube channel Iraqveteran8888 which has over 2.75 million subscribers currently as well as his outspoken and no-compromise stance regarding the 2nd amendment. Matt, founded Ballistic Ink, a branding and merchandising company that serviced 2A content creators and the firearms industry. He also is a partner of Alliance jiujitsu Roswell located in Roswell GA and trains daily and competes regularly. He is very passionate about the 2nd amendment and freedom. Come along for the ride!
Life Liberty and the Pursuit
LLP #116: Trump's First 100 Days In Office
Ask us a question. We will answer it on the podcast.
Show sponsors:
Choq
choq.com
25% off any subscription
Promo code: LLP
Strikeman
strikeman.com
20% off your order
Promo code: IV8888
Ever wonder what happens when patriots confront the machinery of power? This episode dives deep into America's current political climate through a uniquely personal lens, beginning with Eric's surprisingly contentious Disney World vacation (who knew Mickey Mouse could be so political?) before tackling the substantial question on everyone's mind: How effective has Trump's first 100 days actually been?
We examine the administration's approach to immigration enforcement with its triage strategy focusing on removing criminal elements first, while questioning whether the promised defense of Second Amendment rights has materialized beyond "the bare minimum." As Eric puts it, "I'm not going to say they've done a fantastic job, but they haven't done a terrible job either."
The conversation takes a fascinating turn as we explore what happens when vocal critics of government institutions suddenly find themselves running those very systems. Have figures like Kash Patel and Dan Bongino encountered realities behind the curtain that have tempered their reform ambitions? "Can you really go back to that world once you're inside the belly of that whale?" Eric wonders.
Perhaps most compelling is our examination of tribalism in American society—how ideology increasingly dictates reality rather than evidence, and how difficult conversations are shut down through accusations rather than engaged through reason. "Hate is a very low rent emotion," Eric observes, highlighting how easily legitimate questions about power and influence get dismissed through character attacks rather than addressed on substance.
As we navigate these complex waters, we ultimately circle back to personal accountability in an age where blaming faceless institutions has become the path of least resistance. Join us for this unfiltered, thought-provoking discussion that challenges both right and left while inviting listeners to question their own certainties in pursuit of a more nuanced understanding of American liberty.
Link to Article:
ATF lied to convict sailor now serving 20 years in prison for selling legal gun parts
https://saf.org/special-report-atf-lied-to-convict-sailor-now-serving-20-years-in-prison-for-selling-legal-gun-parts/
Welcome back everybody. This is Eric and Matt and this is Life, liberty and the Pursuit, your beacon of freedom and the American way of life. Tune in every Monday for a new episode as we dive into the world of liberty and what makes our country great.
Speaker 2:Boys and girls, welcome back. This is Matt and Eric here with LLP, and we're back with a brand new show this week. Today is April 28th and I hope you all are healthy and happy and doing well, and we are back.
Speaker 3:We are back and it's going to be a great episode. Guys, please watch this one, because this one is going to be great.
Speaker 2:Absolutely Well, I just got back from Disney World.
Speaker 3:I've been. It can be very challenging. When's the last time you went to Disney World? Probably, I think, about a year or two ago. We went as a family with our daughter. It was her first trip to disney and it was, you know, surprisingly, my first trip to disney as well as an adult. You know, growing up we didn't get to do those. It's really expensive, man. So we didn't get to go it was expensive.
Speaker 2:I was surprised how much it cost to get in the tickets. I was I was kind of blown away Like Whoa, holy moly. You know I I never really considered Disney world like something I wanted to ever like go and do. You know, I kind of did, kind of didn't, cause, you know, you got a universal studios down there and I guess that's more of an adult vibe Cause, you know, the roller coasters are scarier and it's just kind of more oriented towards just a wide, you know, group of people rather than than just children, where it seems like Disney's kind of geared towards towards kids. And it's crazy I caught so much flack on Twitter. I posted a picture of me at Disney World and everyone's like, oh, you're supporting the woke people and you're supporting this and that, and I'm thinking, gosh, I'm just trying to have a little fun, I mean.
Speaker 2:I don't get it but but look, you know, there it does have that vibe. It does have that kind of woke vibe. It's kind of weird dude, you know you're. I don't know about when you went, but but when I went down there this week, like I don't know, there was this kind of overbearing vibe, of sort of wokeness in a way. Like you know, the characters would walk around and have you know the some of them would have rainbow colored clothes on and things. So there was still some implication there that they're trying to kind of push that a little bit.
Speaker 3:You know, I went with my family before like any of that happened, or really before I got pushed out. I didn't recognize any of that. You definitely could tell that Disney wasn't really trying to push any of that DEI stuff, cause when you went to visit the princesses with my daughter, the princesses were ethnically correct. They didn't go out of their way to to make it to to make anything different, like guess what? Like those princesses were correct to like the skin color, hair color, you know. So everything was exactly what.
Speaker 2:You know it's funny. My girlfriend brought up a really good point when we were walking around and she she said do you notice how all the little girls are walking around done up like princesses and they just choose their favorite princess, you know, and you see, like a little black girl dressed up as Cinderella, or you see, you know white girl dressed up as as Jasmine, and you and you think, like they just they just going to pick the princess that they want to be, it doesn't matter, like anyone can just be whatever princess they wanted, and I thought that was kind of humbling. It was nice to see that. You know, children are not tarnished by the idea of hatred or violence or the you know they don't understand the world in the way of this overall worldview that we all get kind of biased by and we get, you know, we're thrown into this sort of trap of knowing and children don't know they're just innocent and pure and there's something so really cool about that to see that.
Speaker 2:You know, I was comparing it to Las Vegas because I actually came back with some crud yeah, I got sick on this trip. I, I mean I came back feeling like I was in the seventh circle of hell. I mean, I'm talking it could be the coup. There's no telling what, it could be the flu. But I felt like shit the first day I got back and um, anyway, I was making comparisons of Disney being like Las Vegas for kids, because you know the kids, you know, towards the end of the day they start getting tired and they're walking around looking like they're drunk, you know, and like in Vegas, you know, people are actually drunk. So it's like it's so weird to see that, like these, these young people, you know when, when they're kids, it's the same mannerisms like they're tired and they're going to kind of act tired. And you know, when they get old they get drunk and they act drunk.
Speaker 3:It's just it's interesting to observe the behavior of children compared to adults. Well, it's interesting because if you go to Epcot, you will see legitimately drunk people everywhere because they're drinking themselves around the world. So they have this challenge where you can stop at every country in Epcot and they sell beer from that country. So there will be people that will take it upon themselves to see if they can drink a beer from every single country represented epcot. I think it comes out to be like it's, it's I don't know the exact number, it's really hot, it's a lot. And people. They don't make it, man, like you see them like passed out, like they're walking.
Speaker 2:They get kicked out, not the first person that told me that epcot is kind of like the adult version it is.
Speaker 3:Epcot is totally the adult, is where the adults go.
Speaker 2:And actually go back down. I tell you I was pricing out the multi-park pass, right, yep, and to visit all the parks, and I think they kind of tried to trick you a little bit, dude, because they were wanting to charge I think it was like $500 for a pass for a single day for all the different parks. But there's no way that you can visit all those parks in a single day. We spent the entire day at the magic kingdom and it still really wasn't enough time. We could have spent another another day just there.
Speaker 3:So it just seems kind of there there is an art. There is an art to visiting disney, disney world. All right, like you have to pre-plan, you have to download the app, you have to get the Genie, the Lightning Lane Genie app. I'm telling you, man, if you have to plan for like a week and you can park, hop, you'll go.
Speaker 3:Hey, we're going to hit two rides at Magic Kingdom and while we're waiting for our Genie passes, or Lightning Lanes or whatever they call them now, we're going to hop over. We're going to take the tram, we're going gonna hop over. We're gonna take the tram, we're gonna hop over to, you know, epcot, have some beers, I grab lunch, ride a certain ride there and then hop back over to the animal kingdom and then we're gonna go like this. So there is an art to it. And if you plan accordingly and you are hustling because you did, you probably notice that guy, people are always running. They're always running when you're there, so they're hustling, they're moving real fast because they're trying to get to certain places I was really surprised how busy it was.
Speaker 2:I mean, there's a lot of people there and I know that, um, with you know it is a holiday week, you know easter was sunday and everything, so I would imagine there's probably a lot of people out of school or whatever. But you know, I was surprised how busy it was and it seemed like every time I would go to somewhere like universal, it just didn't seem like it was quite so busy.
Speaker 3:But anyway, it was a fun trip and I wanted to talk about it a little bit and um, before you get into the next one, I'm just going to say real quick um, for any type of veterans out there, you do have access to military discounts with those tickets. So, guys, if you're watching and you're a veteran, discounts with those tickets. So, guys, if you're watching and you're a veteran, go to Shades of Green, which is a DOD resort located on Disney property. It's the only DOD resort If you're disabled or service connected, you can apply. You can get discounted room rates, discounted tickets, everything. It's great, shades of Green.
Speaker 2:Nice, check it out, good to know out, good to know, good to know. Overall, it wasn't a bad experience, I would say. You know, the rides are not really as much of a thrill type of thing as orlando. It's really more geared for children, which, which obviously you know. And I was surprised at magic kingdom as well, I kind of expected the park to be larger. It really was not as big as I thought it would be like. You know, if you hustle and walk fast, you can walk a lap around that entire park and probably better park 15 minutes. It's not a real big park, I noticed.
Speaker 2:And yes, the lines were extremely long that's the lines and um, I just thought that the size of the park and the amount of people that were there, it just seemed like they were cramming a lot of people into a really small space. You know, it felt like I don't know, it was very crowded no, I agree overall it was a fun trip and I'm glad I went.
Speaker 2:And, um, you know, of course it's a, it's a gun-free zone. You can't carry firearms. And inside of disney which I mean with that many, you know children running around. I can certainly understand why you wouldn't want people running around with guns. But I mean, I'm of course of the mindset that if you can handle your stuff and keep yourself in order, you should be able to carry wherever you want. But in that type of situation I mean gosh, some of the adults I saw, I don't know if I'd want them having a gun, they seemed like they were a little on edge some of them. I don't know if I'd want them having a gun, they seemed like they were a little on edge some of them. But traveling down to Orlando, of course, I took my camper down and I haven't had that thing out in a while and that was fun and you can take whatever guns you want on the road. And I like taking the camper when I travel versus flying, because you can travel with whatever guns you want. You can take whatever food you want, I don't know, it's just a little more private. That's just my preference. But again, everyone's different in what they want.
Speaker 2:So today's episode y'all we are going to kind of dive into Trump's first hundred days. I know that's probably what some of you are here for. We're going to discuss a lot of stuff about guns as well on today's show, but I wanted to talk about my trip this week because that was just something that was going on. Before we get too far into today's show, I do want to give a shout out to our first sponsor of the day, and that is Chalk. Our country just witnessed Donald Trump overcome political persecution, an assassination attempt and the entire deep state to retake the presidency with a historic victory. There's one secret ingredient that allowed Trump to do this, and that's testosterone. What most people don't realize is that testosterone makes men willing and eager to take on challenges. Sadly, too many of us have lost our fight, and that's exactly how the globalists want it. They want us weak, out of shape and full of estrogen and microplastics with low T. That's why we're excited to partner with Chalk.
Speaker 2:Chalk offers a whole lineup of products formulated to increase your energy focus, detoxify your body and, clinically studied, boost testosterone. Ingredients in Chalk Male Vitality Stack have been clinically studied to boost free testosterone in 87% in just 21 days, unlike the gimmicky vegetable pills or powder. You will feel the difference and they have the clinical studies to back it up. Right now you can get 25% off your Chalk subscription for life. Just go to Chalkcom, spelled C-H-O-Qcom, and use the promo LLP. That's Lima, lima, papa. That's 25% off any subscription for life and you can cancel at any time. Chalk is made in America with an all-American customer service team standing by to assist you. It's time to make men's vitality great again. So get yourself some chalk today, all right, great sponsor. Yes.
Speaker 2:Anything that can increase your test is always a great thing, especially some of us as we've gotten older.
Speaker 3:It certainly can't hurt to have a little help. They also have some good pre-workout that's like dye free, natural. So like, yeah, let's check it out guys excellent.
Speaker 2:So, um, I know kind of the talk of the town, at least this week. Uh, today is the 28th of april. This week's talk has really been, uh, centered around trump's first hundred days and how things are going, and, um, the man is certainly drawing a lot of scrutiny from from many, which, of course, I mean he's Trump, he's going to, he's going to do that.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Just by nature of who he is. He's a very sort of go getter type of person, very aggressive personality, you know, and I think, especially for his age, he, he really does not give a crap and I kind of like that. I like Trump's sense of bravado. You know, he is very much a president's president, he's a people's president. He's the kind of guy that you know he marches to the beat of his own drum and he does what he wants and he projects power, and I think those are all positive traits in a president.
Speaker 2:And you know, there's a lot of things that have gone down in the first hundred days. I mean tons of executive orders signed, which, you know, matt, I don't know how I necessarily feel about the power of the pen being, you know, used so heavily, because it seems like it becomes this pendulum where the previous administration uses the power of the pen and then the incoming administration has to use the power of the pen even more to counteract some of the things that the previous administration used the power of the pen for. So at what point do we go? Hey, yeah, we understand that to undo a wrong, we have to sometimes do something to undo that wrong. But at what point do we say? You know, hey, this is not really how our country's designed to operate, this is not how we're meant to operate to just have this pendulum of the pen, so to speak. And that would be my first, not really criticism, but just point of contention to discuss the amount of executive orders that have been necessary for him to sign.
Speaker 3:Well, I mean, executive orders have always been a thing. Every president that has come in has started off with EOs or executive orders, and a lot of people get confused. They look at an executive order like it's gospel. As soon as that EO is signed, it is now in place and it's being executed. And that's not the way that it works. So an EO is basically the president saying this is what I would like to do. Now I'm signing this as a.
Speaker 3:I'm vouching that if you guys were to pass this in the House and the Congress, it would have my approval. I'm not going to veto. It is him saying if you were to pass this law or this executive order, I would not veto this. And that's fine. He's going to sign it and it still has to go to the House. It still has to go to pass the whole legislative and judicial system before it takes effect. And you could write a hundred EOs and it still has to go through the process. And he's just again. He is just saying that if this comes to my desk after it passes the house, the Senate, the judiciary, judiciary committee, all that, I will approve it.
Speaker 2:There's no worry of a veto. They are essentially directives. They are essentially directives that say hey, you who works for me, this is what I want you to do. For instance, we'll talk about Second Amendment for a minute, you know. So we discussed briefly in a previous show Well, actually this has been about a month ago or so that I did the episode on the regular Iraq veteran channel.
Speaker 2:If you guys don't know, we post this podcast in video form over on IRAC veteran 8888, the YouTube channel there. So if you want to see our ugly mugs, you can check that out if you wish. But also we post this podcast on everywhere you can find all of your podcast forms spotters, stitchify, apple podcasts, etc. And be sure to leave us a message if you have any questions as well. But but you know we, we put this up on video form over there and I made a video on the channel talking a little bit about, uh, trump's executive order on the second amendment and directing pam bondy, uh, our attorney general, our new ag, pam bondy, which you know people have some mixed feelings about pam bondy, which you know I made clear in that video right um to you to essentially have a look at all of the things that the Biden administration done for the Second Amendment against the Second Amendment, all of their directives, and go, hey, what can we scratch instantly, what can we just essentially ignore? And directed her to essentially put together a dream team, if you will, a document that kind of says, hey, this is what we're going to pull back on instantly.
Speaker 2:We saw that revocations were up an extreme amount for FFLs. That has been addressed. It looks like Pam Bondi has, you know, pressured whether pressuring Kash Patel or pressuring whoever to pull back a little bit on, obviously pull back on the revocations which you know they were hemming up FFLs for some of the stupidest things. So it looks like they've pulled back on that as well as some of this, the overall enforcement. I mean, when you look at all the things that have happened, I mean they went after Dexter Taylor over 3D printing, which he's still in prison right now, and that and that's terrible to me, like I think what they did to Dexter Taylor is absolutely egregious and terrible and there's no reason that man needs to be in prison. Why is he still in prison? Why hasn't the call been made to hey, we need to have a look at this and see if we can expunge this record and free this guy Because he didn't break any laws. You know Also that free this guy because he didn't break any laws.
Speaker 3:you know um also that other navy veteran that they hemmed up over having uh what, the rpg tube that was inert um and uh that and it was a bunch of like, uh, uh, like I think it was world war ii parts kits, um, like there were parts kits, essentially a completely normal thing.
Speaker 2:uh, there are websites uh that sell these parts kits and they're totally fine to order. You can build it into a SimAuto. If you're an SOT you can build it into a machine gun. There is nothing wrong with selling parts kits instead of saw cut and I think there's a. There's certain restrictions on the amount of saw cuts that have to be or the amount of torch cuts that have to be made and at certain angles, and they can't include the barrels. There's all these kind of dumb restrictions that they've placed on imports of parts kits that have made it a lot harder to build that gun out. I mean, the old school kits were saw cut kits and those saw cut kits you can just get a welding fixture, a jig, and just line the saw cuts back up and weld it back together and you have a live barrel and put it back together and you've got a functional machine gun, I mean. Or you could build it into a semi-auto closed bolt, like I know Pioneer Arms did with those PPSH-43s. That's a real popular closed bolt semi-auto that you can still get now because the parts kits are so prevalent and cheap and easy to build into a semi-auto. So just because someone has a parts kit doesn't mean they have to build it into a machine gun. They can build it into a semi-auto.
Speaker 2:From what I understand, with this RPG, the ATF was able to somehow fire a I think they fired a tracer round or, you know, a spotter round. Yeah, so, in case you guys don't know, um, the way this works is, um, an RPG does have a site on it. Okay, a lot of them have optical sites and the way that those sites are sort of calibrated and, um, zeroed, if you will Okay, they do require zeroing is with a spotter round. Okay, so, whether it's a recoilless rifle or even an AT4, okay, our own AT4 has a nine millimeter conversion device that fires nine millimeter tracer rounds. Okay, that's for training, just like that. The RPG also has the ability to fire a spotter tracer in order to, you know, help you verify where the sights are and things like that. Now also has the ability to fire a spotter tracer in order to help you verify where the sites are, and things like that.
Speaker 2:Now, will this RPG handle a full power warhead and not explode in the operator's face? That the ATF was able to cobble together? Highly doubtful, okay, it still had the weld broken. I think there's a spot in there that has to be demilled in order for it to not be able to fire a live round. If you fire a live RPG out of this RPG that the ATF claims they were able to make live again, you're going to kill the operator. The gas forces are going to come out of those spots that were torch, welded or torched in the tube and you're going to get a giant burst of fire in your neck and no telling what else. It's going to definitely harm you. Now, just because they were able to pop a little 762 by 39 tracer round out of there doesn't mean it would handle the power of an actual RPG nowhere near nowhere near it right.
Speaker 2:So that's what you know. It wasn't Matt Hoover, it was the other gentleman. I'll put that in the a link in the description box below to an article to give you more of an idea of what's going on with that particular sailor. But he was going to gun shows and selling parts, kits and things like that and wound up getting hemmed up and he's in jail now over this bull crap. So there's tons of things like this that are going on that you know.
Speaker 2:Here are gun owners, you know, going to the table and saying look, you know Trump claims to be a pro to a president. You know, if you look at his position on bump stocks, you know banning bump stocks. Of course people say, well, no one cares about bump stocks. But that's not true. You know it. It it opens the gate for other executive orders to be abused, which Biden did. Biden did the whole frame and receiver rule thing. He did the brace ban. I mean there were tons of things that Biden was able to do. He's like oh well, trump used the power of the pen. I'll just use the power of the pen.
Speaker 2:So right now, what we see in Trump's first hundred days is that you have to give credit where it's due. You know, pam Bondi, I don't really consider her to be an extremely strong 2A pick in terms of an AG, but she has pulled back on some things and you know they seem to be doing the best they can within the time frame so far to. You know, give at least some platitudes to gun owners, you know. So I'm not going to say they've done a fantastic job, but they haven't done a terrible job either. It's just kind of. It's like maybe they're doing the bare minimum is the kind of feeling I get out of it.
Speaker 3:I could see that. I could see that, um, and that's kind of how I felt as well, I would, I would say, the same exact feeling with Bongino, patel and Bondi. They're all just there right now. They're occupying a cabinet seat right now. That's about it. And I think that, and it's interesting, the two people that have done the most would probably be Musk and and gabbard. Those two have probably done more in the first hundred days that that uh trump appointed than bondi, patel and cash.
Speaker 3:I'm gonna go back real quick when, so, playing devil's advocate with the bump stock ban. Now we had the rise of frts. I find it interesting that when that happened, like which came first, the chicken or the egg scenario. So it's like, did the frt come out of the bump stock ban? So it's like, hey, you guys want to do the bump stock ban this is just me for just picking your brain for pure curiosity like, hey, we, they ban bump stocks. What's something else we can do? And then you had the rise of the frt and I mean the frt is no joke, man.
Speaker 2:I mean it does work, it definitely works well, one thing I'll say is that, um, all of this crap wouldn't be necessary if they just left us alone about this is true you know, I, I think that if a company decides to come out with a product, let's just say it skirts the edge of legality, whether you know?
Speaker 2:okay, the ATF has frowned upon the FRT for some time. They frowned upon bump stocks, they frowned upon braces, they frowned upon it, but they could never quite say that it was illegal in the sense of the way the laws are written, that it violates the NFA or anything Right. And they just tried to hem up some guy over a CC Scorpion with a brace on it and they're trying to say that it's simultaneously a rifle and a pistol. Yeah, that's not possible. You know, according to the GCA, according to all the rules that dictate these things, according to the GCA, according to all the rules that dictate these things, there is no way that you can, something can be a rifle and a pistol simultaneously. So the ATF, under Bondi's direction, they dropped that case. Of course, it did receive a lot of scrutiny from the media and from gun control pro-gun groups such as GOA and NRA and and so on and so forth.
Speaker 2:Okay, um, and you know many of us who are very vocal bringing this, this, uh, hypocrisy up, um, so, overall, I mean, I, I trust Patel. I do think that he is a good guy. I mean, you know, looking at some of his you know previous, you know things he's talked about a lot of the interviews he's given, I mean I at some of his previous things he's talked about a lot of the interviews he's given I mean I feel like he's a pretty base guy. I feel like he's pretty on our side overall. I mean he seems like the kind of guy that shares the same values as many of us and he seems to be very pro-gun. He did say that he wanted to turn the FBI into essentially a museum on the first day, a museum to the deep state. Has that happened? I mean, it's been 100 days now. That certainly has not happened. So I wonder and of course this is just you know the way my brain works, I try to think of these things, matt I wonder if he got behind the curtain and realized like, wow, there's some very powerful intelligence assets at our disposal here. Um, you know, maybe he realizes how deep the rot really is when you get inside of that system and you, you know what they know.
Speaker 2:Can you really go back to the world that you were in before? I mean, okay, so the cash Patel? Who was this? You know jovial. Hey, I'm pro gun, I'm, you know, I'm one of you, I'm wearing a ball cap and the interview, like you know, I'm, I'm this, I'm that. Hey, I'm going to turn and I'm jokingly going to turn the FBI into a museum to the deep state, the treachery of the deep state. Can you really go back to that world once you're inside the belly of that whale? Can you really deliver on what you promised you would deliver on? I don't believe.
Speaker 2:So thought, how do you reconcile the way you feel about what you see as a patriot, okay, someone who you convinced all of the people within your circle? I'm one of you, I'm a patriot, I love my country, I hate the corruption, I hate the deep state, I hate whatever it is. You think you're appealing to the masses, right? How do you reconcile telling them that you're going to do something and realizing just how deep the rot on the inside is and realizing, holy crap, this might be so much larger than me and so much larger than what I have the power to do that I might've actually made some promises that I might not be able to keep?
Speaker 3:I 100% believe that's the case. There is no way.
Speaker 3:And of course I'm playing devil's advocate, Of course, of course, but I think you nailed it. You get behind the curtain and you realize how large of a think about it. You're head of the FBI. You are head of the largest surveillance apparatus in the world. I mean, you have the ability to see, hear and do pretty much anything you want. There's a reason the building is named Hoover.
Speaker 3:The guy that made it famous did exactly that. He was able to grab and hold power over presidents and he didn't even have to worry about being the president. He could control world leaders. He could control the president, senators, everything. And I mean, I'm not a tinfoil hat kind of guy, but you're talking about guys that absolutely had disdain for the FBI. Both Kash Patel and Bongino both spoke about it. Bongino, most notably on his podcast, had disdain for the pretty much the entire government industry apparatus. We haven't heard anything out of either one of them for the first hundred days. And these are guys that were saying they're going to completely change the system, they're going to go in there and they're just going to wrecking ball the entire apparatus. No, I don't believe it.
Speaker 2:It I think it got good to them and it's going to be very interesting to see I think the the fact is is they got into that system and they didn't realize what they're really getting themselves into.
Speaker 3:And maybe that's you know the saying that absolute power corrupts absolutely call me a cynic, but we'll'll revisit this in a couple of years.
Speaker 2:We'll revisit it in a couple of years. But the point is I'm not saying the power is absolute. Let's talk about the use of some of the power that's been taken on in the first 100 days. One would be a really hot-button topic now is the deportations. Yes, sorry y'all, I'm a little sick.
Speaker 2:The mass deportations, ok, and Trump has run into some speed bumps and hurdles with these deportations. You know he wanted to. You know, deport I believe he was saying between eight and twelve thousand people per day under these policies. And, of course, you know various courts have tried to strike down his deportation orders. In fact, kash Patel just brought up in a tweet today that they arrested a judge who was found to be an obstruction of justice, of trying to get in the way of some of these deportation proceedings and things. So there are judges within the system who are essentially using their positions for political purposes. Right, they're not looking at it from the standpoint of, oh, I'm simply going to look at the law and decide if something's legal or not. No, no, they're going. I'm using my position as a political springboard to further my political goals. Or to, you know, exert my you know willingness, my political willingness, on the people that I'm over okay.
Speaker 2:And that becomes a big issue, right? Many people were looking at Amy Barrett and her appointment to the Supreme Court and like, okay, she's uber Christian, you know she, you know whatever. Okay, she's very Christian, she's very right-wing, you know she, you know whatever. Okay, she's, she's very Christian, she's very right wing. Um, you know, she adopted a bunch of children.
Speaker 3:So it's like, oh yeah she was warm on two way. She wasn't like super two way, but she was warm on two way.
Speaker 2:I think a lot of people were just kind of thinking oh boy, here we go. You know Amy Barrett is going to be this extreme right wing. You know every single thing the right wants. She's going to just be in step with it. That hasn't necessarily been the case. I mean, she's been a little flighty on a few issues, primarily, you know, 2a, which has a lot of people concerned, I mean. So you know it's just one of those kind of difficult things where you choose someone for an appointment like that, whether it's bringing in Gabbard and Bondi and Patel and all these other people thinking, okay, well, if we change the leadership, things are going to get better and there's going to be an actual change in the way that these organizations operate. Or saying, well, if we get in this Supreme Court justice who is, let's say, leaning this direction politically, well then, in theory, you know, we're not going to see any of this kind of egregious left-wing crap going through. That doesn't always hasn't been the case. You know Justice Roberts hasn't been incredibly.
Speaker 3:You know, dependable right Barrett hasn't been dependable well, I, I think, you know, I think barrett was was a a good I'm gonna say good choice, but she was a choice that was good enough at the time because she was, she wasn't super right wing she, she, she was somebody that trump could get through. That wasn't gonna get, wasn't going to be automatically written off, right. They were saying, okay, she's warm on two-way, but those that were in support of the two-way didn't expect her to just jump into dissent if anything came across the docket, like if a case came up, she wasn't going to just dissent with those that support the left. So that's what I mean by saying hey, she was good enough at the time. Has she done anything that really has brought any attention to herself? Not really, but that's who's to say what can happen?
Speaker 3:Like you said, we have a lot of immigration stuff coming up. They're trying to deport seven to 10,000 people. What? Trying to deport 7,000 to 10,000 people? What is it a day? 7,000 to 10,000 people a day? That's not nearly enough. At the highest point, 200,000, 300,000 people were coming across the border a day. Yeah, a day. 200,000 or 300,000 people a day coming across the border undocumented. And we're trying to stop 10,000 people a day coming across the border undocumented, and we're trying to stop 10 000 people a day. That's like that is insane, I mean. I mean I suppose you have to start somewhere. I I think it's awesome, dude.
Speaker 3:I think that if you were going to say, hey, what has trump done in the first hundred days that you support a hundred percent, I would say immigration. The way that he's towing the line on that. He's not letting the media or anybody try to sway him. He's making the right decisions on that. I believe it. You know everybody's screaming oh, they don't have due process when they're getting deported. They didn't use due process when they came in. If you didn't use due process to come in, you don't get it on the way out. That's reserved for American citizens, yeah.
Speaker 2:They don't have rights. As much as I hate to say that because what our country was founded under, you know the the overall principles of of how our country was founded. You know it it it is hard to to even make that statement as American to say, oh well, that person doesn't have rights. But the truth is, if you break the law coming here, you don't have rights, we're going to get you out of here If your first act is to break the law to come into America.
Speaker 3:That says something you don't get the privilege. Well, it's disrespectful to those that did choose the right path. And I mean, I have a ton of Spanish friends from all over, both Mexico, Central America, South America, and they get upset because they're like, hey, these people that are coming in they didn't go through the same process as we did and they get access to the same stuff. So I know a guy that spent $10,000. It's an expensive process. He spent, it cost him $10,000 and it took him, I want to say, seven or eight years to go through that process. And I mean, what does that say to him? I know, you know, he could have done it for free.
Speaker 2:I know, I mean my, my girlfriend's from Brazil. You know she's American citizen now and she went. She went through everything the right way, went through the correct process and, yeah, there's going to be some short-term pain involved in trying to go through the process the right way. Yes, it takes a lot of time. Yes, it's a lot of bullcrap, it's hard, it sucks and you know, for the people who do it the right way, it's a slap in the face to them, who you know they go through great personal risk and they take great personal financial risk, sacrifices and sacrifices in order to, you know, become a legitimate American citizen is not easy you know, so, you know, I think that the way that it's being handled is as good as Trump can do right now.
Speaker 2:I mean short of. I mean, and I think that they are sort of looking at this from a sense of triage and saying, okay, we're trying to find MS-13 gang members, it's like. So if you are going to be limited on the amount of people you can get out of here, at least make it the worst people you can find.
Speaker 3:That's right.
Speaker 2:So at least they're approaching it from a standpoint of triage. And I think that even something that the left is guilty of is that they're going to sit here and say well, this MS-13 gang leader or whatever he is I mean we're not talking just a rank and file soldier, we're talking some leader of a major player in this organization got rounded up and deported. And the left is crying their crocodile tears about oh, he didn't have due process, and yada, yada, yada. It's like wait a minute, wait a minute. So you're going to sit here and tell me that we rounded up the worst of the worst, first criminals. I mean, we're talking legit criminals and we need to talk just average every day.
Speaker 2:you know, thug, we're talking people with tattoos and all this sort of stuff. Not that tattoos mean you're a bad person or anything, but you know hey. I mean we're talking guys with hand tattoos, neck tattoos, tears.
Speaker 3:I mean come on Like royally terrible people that have meaning within the gang, Like they are gang affiliates.
Speaker 2:They have meaning within the game and they have skin in the game and they have done bad things. I mean, look at all those MS-13 guys that took over that apartment building. What is it? Colorado?
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's Colorado.
Speaker 2:Come on Like you're rounding those people up first. So at least they're approaching it from the standpoint of a reasonable amount of triage to say, hey, we're going to get the worst of the worst first. You know, get the worst actors out of here first, and I think that's a smart approach. If you are limited on how many you can get out, you need to get the worst out first. So I think overall they're handling it right.
Speaker 3:Doesn't Colorado have like pretty restrictive gun laws? They?
Speaker 2:just passed an assault weapons ban again. Well, they've been trying for a long time.
Speaker 3:They finally got it through. I would tell MS-13 to try to do that in Georgia and see what happens. They'll get annihilated.
Speaker 2:They always do it in a place that has strict gun law. Yeah man, it's just crazy. I mean, I could go on and on about immigration and about replacement theory and things like that, but that's not really what I want to talk about in the context of today's show, although I think it's important to touch on immigration and the deportation of these illegals.
Speaker 3:Well, I'm glad you brought up that. One particular case is Kilmar Garcia. This is who you're talking about. And yeah, he was not an American citizen, he was El Salvadorian. What is it?
Speaker 2:El.
Speaker 3:Salvadorian. Yes, that guy, and you know he had a deportation order. They sent him over, he got rounded up. He already had a final deportation order. He was already scheduled to be deported. They just kind of expedited that for him, at no charge, I might add, sent him over there.
Speaker 3:Bukele um said, hey, he's ours now, he's El Salvadorian. El Salvadorian, that guy um, and they put him in one of their super max gang prisons. And I don't know if you guys have ever seen those prisons, dude, they're not fun. Those things are crazy. They have cell, they have cell blockers, they're jammed. There's no cell service, signal, internet, nothing. It's like a black hole. You go in that place. It's a black hole. The guards wear masks so you don't know anybody Like super locked down. I mean Bukele has done a lot of things right but, brother, he's done a lot of things wrong in the way that he did it too. I mean it's, it's. It's a tough row to hoe as far as like how he got there, because he turned that country from being the most dangerous to one of the most safest, but the manner in which he did it was totally what you would see out of, like you, you know, a socialist dictatorship country. It's like it's hard to swallow, like the results are there, but I can't agree with the way that it went about.
Speaker 2:He had a very good meeting with Trump. I think it was last week or the week before. You know, last few weeks he had a meeting with Trump and, uh, and they seem to get along really well and, and that's the scary part, yeah, that's that's, I agree. I mean, the results are there, but, gosh, at what cost. I mean, I'm not saying these people aren't terrible, I'm not saying they shouldn't be locked away but, uh, a lot of good people got swept up in there as well.
Speaker 3:It is scary you know, but sometimes things are necessary that and that's the hardest thing to, that's the hardest thing to like. Grasp is like that, like uh, look at the results, like just look at it yeah, but man well, we'll see how it works out in the long term for el salvador, you know.
Speaker 2:And well, they're building more prisons, so they're building more prisons. You know, we're gonna see how that plays out, but um, overall I think that the way they're handling that is not too bad. The 2a stuff could be better, but at least we have a little bit to hang on to and, you know, we are getting some gains in the courts, which is great. You know, guns really are, in my opinion, the end-all do-all to everything that makes our political system operate even close to the way that it's supposed to operate. The First Amendment gives you the right to say what you want. The Second Amendment gives you the right to defend what you say, and without that defense, without us being able to stand toe to toe with the people who would oppress us, you're really nothing more than a subject, and I think that it really puts people in a dark state of mind to think of it in that way, because people are so blind to all the things that go on in the world around them that they just have their head in the sand and they keep their head down and do their job and they go and do whatever they got to do. And you know it's easy to just get wrapped up in the day-to-day minutia of survival and not think, wow, what is the greater political play that is unfolding here in front of us? We'll switch a little bit to this whole anti-Semitism thing and look, I've been catching a lot of flack on Twitter. Okay, I know I've been catching a lot of flack on Twitter for some of my you know views on Israel and some of the you know questions that I've asked about various things. Okay, and my concern and I believe is a very legit concern, a legitimate concern that I have every right to have, is that when we look at Trump, you know he has a very, very, you know, I believe, an unhealthy relationship with Israel. You know we're a little bit too deep in those folks' pockets and, again, not to put the conspiracy tinfoil hat on, that's never the goal, of course.
Speaker 2:I want to know, logically, data-wise, I want to know the real deal, I want to know exactly what's going on. Like, were all of these people compromised in some big Mossad honeypot operation, right? When you look at Epstein okay, bondi held back the Epstein report under concerns of national security, right? Okay, well, who's national security? Us or Israel, and who has their asses in the sling? Okay, who has the Americans' asses in the sling over this whole thing?
Speaker 2:Okay, I'm not going to sit here and point any fingers and say, oh, this person's compromised, that person compromised. But someone is, someone clearly is, and someone is clearly compromised at the level that our attorney general said, okay, we cannot release this information to the public because our very own leadership could possibly be implicated. Maybe themselves, maybe someone they know, maybe someone that they go. Well, we can't allow those people to get arrested or in trouble. Who knows, could it be some upper echelon of society who's pulling the strings, and maybe they're getting protected. And again, I hate to draw these conclusions, but the point that we have to kind of bring up with that is that, in the big scheme of things, at what point is our government actually being ran by us and not other governments around the world?
Speaker 3:Well, that's a great question to ask. And then you can also ask, like what is Israel providing the US that would cause us to provide so much support? Or what are they holding over our heads? Well, that's the question that would cause us to provide so much support. What are we getting? Or what are they holding over our heads? Well, that's the question.
Speaker 3:So you asked the first question, which was you know, why is this happening? What do they have over our heads? And then the second question is if you just use, you know, if you're just looking at the, let's just say, the Socratic method, and you start asking questions well, what are they giving us? We're not trading a tremendous amount with them. We're not importing a tremendous amount of anything from them. It's really a one-way street. It's us giving to them. So why such a good relationship? Why is the relationship so strong that it brings us to where we're at right now, when we have trading allies that have we trade more heavily with, say, japan, korea, taiwan, gdp-wise that we don't even treat them that great, we don't support them that much?
Speaker 2:Well, I think that I speak for a lot of people when I say this, and again not trying to draw a ton of scrutiny, but the point is is that I believe that all of this money that places like AIPAC are pumping into the US government to sort of buy these politicians should make a lot of people uncomfortable. I mean, trump was given $220 million by AIPAC. What does that, that buying Israel? I mean, look, I don't have a dog in this fight. My only dog in this fight is really trying to know, trying to discover why it seems that our government is being ran by these people. I mean, and if you start looking and again, if you start asking questions, oh yeah, all the bots come out and all of a sudden, you're the worst person. You're this, you're a Nazi. You know the government.
Speaker 2:You know, every day, it seems Bondi is making posts that involve anti-Semitism. You know, trump has talked about fighting anti-Semitism. Kash Patel has made posts about anti-Semitism. Kash Patel has made posts about anti-Semitism. But what about us? We're the people that voted. So what about the people? What about the people who live here, the inhabitants of this country? What about us? What about you know? How do you make amends with that, because it seems that this anti-Semitism is sort of the hot word. It's the escape clause of an argument where someone can just say well, instead of me bringing any data to the table or me bringing any type of consensual, real, you know thing of substance to this argument, I'm simply just going to label you as someone who hates me. But that's not logically profound at all. That doesn't help anyone. All that does is just deflect the lack of information they're giving you onto. Oh well, you simply have that view because you hate people like me.
Speaker 3:But that's not true, yeah, it's the easy out.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's an easy out. It's not coming from a place of hate, or oh, no one hates anyone. We just want to know. I just have questions, that's that's all.
Speaker 3:You have to think this country was founded on asking questions. Right, I have questions. Why do I have to pay this tax? That's all it is. Why am I paying more for this? Why? Why do I have to pay a tax? Why is this? You know, tea tax. Oh, we're going to throw this tea in the harbor Like that.
Speaker 2:The basis of our entire country was built around simply asking questions yeah, everyone wants to sort of convalate this whole thing to me being anti-semitic simply because I question israel. But but the the issue is is I still have questions that that are not, and just answer the question. Just answer the question. I'm not concerned about what you think, if I hate you or not. It's clearly. I don't hate anyone, I just have questions.
Speaker 2:Anyway, the point is, with everything that's going on in this sort of geopolitical situation, I mean I know we can talk about tariffs too. I mean, trump has been quite effective with using the strategy of tariffs and it is working Now there. Effective with using the strategy of tariffs and it is working. Now there's going to be some short-term pain from these tariffs and then we're seeing that Egg prices have gone up, not down. That was a huge thing.
Speaker 2:That Trump was running on was like oh, we've got to get the egg prices down. How do you appeal to the average person? Well, guess what? Everyone goes and buys eggs, right, I mean gosh. But then they say, well, well, egg prices aren't going down. So people go. Well, the tariffs aren't working. Trump's policies aren't working. He's, he's doing this, doing that, but the truth is there's gonna be some short-term pain that we're all gonna have to just bite off a piece of that shit sandwich and and deal with, unfortunately, and but we're all gonna have to suffer a little bit to really know if this plan has long term teeth or not.
Speaker 3:That's right.
Speaker 2:And you know that's part of it. Before we go any further in the show, I do want to give a shout out to another one of our sponsors of the show, and that's Strikemancom. All right, folks, listen up. If you're serious about improving your shooting skills, saving money on ammo and training anytime anywhere, then you need to check out Strikeman. This is the real deal for dry fire training. Look, we all know ammo prices aren't getting any cheaper and hitting the range as often as we'd like just isn't always practical. Whether it's time, money or just finding a good spot to train can be a hassle. But what if you could get in real practice reps from the comfort of your own home? That's where Strikeman comes in. It's a dry fire training system that lets you train with your actual firearm, no live ammo needed. Their laser cartridges drop right into your firearms chamber and every shot is tracked in real time. Through their app. You get instant feedback on accuracy, shot placement and reaction time. It's an absolute game changer for anyone looking to tighten up their skills, whether you're a first time gun owner or an experienced shooter. Check this out.
Speaker 2:Strikeman offers full training kits with everything you need, including targets, phone mounts and their precision laser cartridges. If you're a revolver guy, they even have a six-pack of their 38 special .357 Magnum laser cartridges so you can fully load your wheel gun and get that continuous trigger pull practice. Plus no subscription fees. Their app is totally free to use Train wherever and whenever you want. Here's the best part Because you're part of the IV88 family, you're going to be getting a solid discount over at Strykman. You're going to get 20% off with the promo code IV8888. Go to Strykmancom and use the promo code IV8888, and you'll get 20% off your order. Big thanks to Strikeman for supporting LLP here on our podcast.
Speaker 3:Yeah, great, great company, great product. Yeah.
Speaker 2:I mean, I'll begin getting back to the subject at hand by saying, matt, that the issue that our society is really going through the most is not okay, you know, let's say black and white people, or Christian and Jewish people, or people who are in disagreement with each other. The problem is this tribalism we discussed in our first show or it might have been the second show we did about tribalism. Tribalism is not a bad thing. Human beings for thousands of years have gathered together and shared common ideals and goals and adhered to those goals for their better survival. I mean, we know that that's not wrong, no one's wrong to band together and, you know, into their groups.
Speaker 2:But I think what society really does begin to fall victim to is there is so much information out there. You're on social media and there's just this constant barrage of stimulus, all the stuff coming across your feed all the time, and it's like you get this serotonin hit. You're getting this instant gratification of knowledge, what you think is knowledge, but the truth is it can be indoctrination, it can be false information, it can be a lie, it can be something that someone's trying to get you to feel hatred towards another person, and hate is a very low rent, a very low rent. Emotion. Hate is easy. Hate is really easy to just go. Well, I hate this. Therefore, I, you know I don't. I don't like doing math. Therefore, I don't want to learn how to do math. It's just easy to write that off. You don't want to receive new information because your brain has already made the decision that, whatever neural pathways are established, it's already going to. I already know this. This is my reality and I and I refuse to change my reality for anyone. And that's the issue, matt is people. They fall victim to their own brains, like they literally have an issue with receiving new information and going.
Speaker 2:You know, maybe my opinion on this has changed right, if you look at tweets of mine from two or three years ago, for instance, in relation to the Jews, let's say Israel, you know, I remember there was a tweet from a few years back where I said hey, the USS Liberty was an accident. They apologized for it. Why does everybody make a big deal about it? Okay, that's an astute observation for the present information that I have. But as I receive new information, I'm then forced to come to terms with my own views on the subject and go well, wait a minute we see all these documents from the CIA and the State Department. Now we have a greater picture of what's going on and we go. Well, wait a minute, they were warned. There was this prompt.
Speaker 2:So I'm not trying to just use that particular example as a scapegoat. I'm simply trying to say that as someone gets more information into their, into their, their database, you have to then kind of process that information and your mind has to change. You can't, you know, fall victim to complacency for your whole life. You, you know you're the person you are when you're 50 or 60 years old, is not going to be the same person you are when you were 20.
Speaker 3:Well, that that's true, but that would require you to be open minded, and most people, I would like to believe, are open minded. You're able to. You're able to receive new information and new facts and alter your opinion and change your opinion. But lots of times, just growing up in the social media realm, especially with younger generations, they're locked into not being able to change their opinion or not wanting to lose the argument. And what you'll see is, even if you bring to light information that genuinely contradicts their beliefs, they're going to say they're still going to disagree with it and that's because they don't want to quote, lose their argument.
Speaker 3:And you can see this when, um, if you're watching just regular, you know YouTube videos about, you know word on the street man on the street videos, you'll see that. You'll see that uh, host bait them by saying something so astronomical that it can't be true and they're going to disagree with it just for the fact that they don't want to lose the argument. And once you do that, you've already lost because you've shown and proven that you're not willing to accept reality, that you're just saying, you're just disagreeing with whatever that person said to toe the line to disagree with them, and that happens more often than not, especially when you start getting into the political realm. You could put all the facts on the table. Everything will contradict what they're saying and they won't believe it, even with the facts there, and you know. Unfortunately, that's the case right now.
Speaker 2:And with statistics it's very easy to manipulate data to come to a certain you know end goal of what you're trying to achieve with that data. You know a certain narrative, so to speak, and I think that the escape route again becomes, it becomes those hot, key terms when we say oh, you're a racist matt all the time well, if you you disagree with me because I'm different than you, you're a racist.
Speaker 2:Or if I'm jewish, you disagree with me, you're an anti-semite, there's always a label that they're going to place to attach hate to you. Because hate is the low rent emotion. Hate is easy for someone to go. Oh well, this is obviously coming from a place of hate. Therefore, everything you say is now null and void. Nothing you can say is going to have any logical bearing in my process for changing my mind here, because you're coming from a place of hate and that's always the low tier, smooth brain, low hanging fruit that someone is going to go for.
Speaker 2:And I think when you find the truly logical people out there who are willing to have a real conversation on very uncomfortable things, I think that's what our society has had a really big issue with is they're too comfortable. They are not capable of coming to the table and having a discussion about something that's very uncomfortable, something that's uncomfortable, something that makes them feel a certain way when they're even discussing it. To even say the word anti-Semitism, to even say the word Holocaust, to even say that any of those words elicits a feeling of immediate guilt or immediate oh my gosh, I'm not allowed to say that. I'm not allowed to speak that way. That's wrong. We should never put ourselves in a situation where we make others feel that they can't come to the table with a legitimate grievance and discuss what's on their mind. And hey, if I'm wrong about something, then by all means enlighten me. But no one's calling me wrong. No one's calling me a liar. All they say. All they can say is I hate people and you know that's just not good enough for me. I'm not willing to accept that as a reality of the conversation that's really happening here.
Speaker 2:And I think, when we look at Trump's 100 first days, the reality is that there's a lot of coping going on on both sides of the political equation. There are people on the left and right who are coping really hard. You know many on the right feel betrayed by some of the decisions that Trump has made. Some people on the left begrudgingly agree with Trump, but you'll never hear them say, oh, trump was right here or he wasn't. So there is a separation in people's minds.
Speaker 2:They will never want to admit when they're wrong. They never want to have the humility to admit that they made a mistake or maybe they had the wrong view on something, and I think, as Americans especially, we have to be more open-minded. We have to be willing to come to the table and go look, we are a multicultural, multifaceted country of mixing pot of different cultures and ideas and if you're truly going to consider yourself an American, you have to be willing to take those into account and say, okay, what's going on here, like I'm going to take all the information available to me and then I'm going to make a logical, educated decision based on the facts, the data, the statistics, the history, you know, the real reports, the black and white documents. I mean, that's the truth I care about. And I think that when we look at Trump's hundred first days and all the things that he's done, I think it's just important to kind of realize that you know he's not going to make everyone happy.
Speaker 3:It's impossible to make everyone happy. Well, it's impossible because there's a group of people that didn't support him when he became president that are actively rooting for him to fail. And when you look at it that way, when you say I'm actively rooting for someone to fail, that means you're rooting for the American economy to tank, you're rooting for the American tariffs to succeed and prices go up, inflation goes up, interest rates go up. That's what you're rooting for, all in the vein of saying see, I told you Trump is a bad president and now all this stuff proves it. So all along you were rooting for this to happen. Just again what we just talked about to hold your argument. So you didn't lose the argument. You can go back to your family members and say, see, I told you the government is in shambles, the economy is in shambles and Trump is a terrible president. I was right.
Speaker 2:That was the, that was the universe. And the thing is, is this not the gotcha moment that you think it is? Exactly Because here you are struggling to pay your bills? I mean, many people are struggling to even just pay their bills and they're living paycheck to paycheck. But yet do you think for one second that if things go completely to hell and back, that someone like Trump isn't going to be on his golf course smoking cigars and eating Wagyu steak and not having a care in the world and hanging out with his grandkids?
Speaker 2:I mean, come on, like the reality is, it doesn't absolve you from the actual task of surviving in this world. Like they are not responsible for your future. They're not responsible for your success or failures. You are and you can't blame someone for that. Yeah, they might be a contributing factor, obviously.
Speaker 2:Yes, the way your government operates is a huge contributing factor to how the world ultimately around you works, but it's still on you and I think that people should definitely have sort of a stoic view of their existence. I'm not saying give up and just crawl into a ball and die. I'm saying that stoicism requires us to. You know, we affect change on what we know we can affect change on and the things we can't affect change on. We're not going to let that occupy our. We're not going to let that occupy us. We're not going to let that stress us out and bother us Like we're going to. We're going to change what we can, what we know we can change, and then things we can't. Yeah, we'll work towards it, but we're not going to get blown out of proportion about it. We're going to be realistic about our expectations.
Speaker 3:Well as of right now, that first hundred days, trump is sitting right at around close to a 50, 50 approval rating. So whether it's 50% of the US approves, 50% disapproves, or whether it's like I think it's like 48, 52-ish around about there, we're just going to round it. You know it's going to be a little rough going forward, but I believe in what's going on. You know, I believe in the things that he has put in place and hopefully we can kind of turn the ship, because it's a big ship and it doesn't turn quick. You have to turn it and you have to wait, you have to try to maneuver it, we have to try to turn it, but the end result is we have to right the ship and that takes a little bit of sacrifice and a little bit of being uncomfortable.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and we're gonna have to throw some things over the side of the ship. Oh yeah, and that's a great analogy, because it it is so very true that that it is a slow ship to turn. We're talking generations, sometimes decades, I mean. However many amount of time. It could be 30 years, 40 years before you really see the true ramifications of a certain series of actions, and and when those actions are so far polar opposites of each other. It's like, oh, we overturned a little bit, well, let's overturn back, and now we just oh, we're just going back and forth. So you know, we have to avoid that.
Speaker 2:We want to make sure that, whoever we do elect, that we're all working towards some kind of a freaking common goal that we can all agree on and agree that this is the direction we need to go. And that can be hard. How do you do that in such a large multicultural society with so many different backgrounds, so many different religions? I mean, obviously, everyone has a different goal. Ultimately, everyone has a different goal.
Speaker 2:Think it's important to remember I think that people tend to lose sight of this that people we want to ultimately believe, matt, that people are good and humble, and they are In fact, I I just you know ran into a situation the other day when I was traveling. I forget what it was exactly, but you know, you're always, you know, reminded of the good that people can do in the smallest little ways. I'm not saying that people don't have good intentions overall, it's not about the intentions. But people ultimately only really care about the world they live in, their own little private world that they have a view of when the cards are on the table, y'all. That's what you have to kind of remember in the back of your mind. So when you see all of these tribes within the United States, these people who they all fall into their own little, you know, banner All right, oh, this person's, whatever Right, they all fall into their own banner.
Speaker 2:It's important to remember that ultimately, people are only going to really care about their own personal goals in life and in order for us to, you know, exist as a nation and try to have some form of concise and organized goal together. You know that's not a simple conversation, it's very difficult, and when you look at a president, I think everyone wants to point the finger. He's the person that someone can just go oh, all my problems are because of him. All my problems are because of Trump. But the reality is no. Your problems are a result of a lot of damn things that the average person probably won't ever even be able to make sense of. Even if you put it all on a giant whiteboard and said here's how all the dots connect your average person, they would not be able to recollect, they would not be able to make some form of concise decision.
Speaker 3:Well, it's easy to place blame on something that you can never change. So if somebody says, oh, it's because of Trump, well, that's easy to scapegoat somebody that you can never, you can't change that and nothing you say or do right now is going gonna change the fact that you're in a bad position because of your own decisions. Like you put yourself there, not Trump, but you're placing the blame on and I'm just using Trump as an example I don't, I mean not, but now you have a, you have a person you place the blame on that you know will forever be there and you can't change it.
Speaker 2:And place the blame on that. You know will forever be there and you can't change it. And you know, I think people you know try to use it as an attempt to wash their hands of the accountability.
Speaker 3:That's what it comes down to.
Speaker 2:That's really what it comes down to. No one wants to be accountable. No one wants to go. You know what? I struck up all that debt. I got that student loan. It was me that signed the paper and got the student loan. It was me who took out the credit card debt. It was me who bought a house I couldn't afford. It was me who bought too expensive of a car that I couldn't afford. No one wants to look themselves in the mirror and go. You know what? You put yourself in that situation to some degree and that's a very difficult thing, bro.
Speaker 3:Let me tell you real quick about that. The student loan forgiveness thing you want to talk about mad. You don't understand how mad I was. I worked so hard to pay those student loans off early. I was like I'm not going to live in debt, I just like sacrificed, I paid my student loans off and it was a sizable amount, all right. And then when Biden was like oh, we're going to forgive you, don't know I was ripping my hair out. I was like do you mean I could have just not done that and just not had to pay? So I was a little upset. I'm kind of glad they're backtracking on that. Now I understand there's people that are in a bad way. Again that now I understand there's people that are in a bad way again. They signed for those loans. I signed for my loans, I paid those loans off. But man, that was that pissed me off bad they.
Speaker 2:They could say tomorrow, matt, that we're gonna forgive all the credit card debt. And you better believe, if I had any credit card debt I'm not no way I'd still pay it because that that you know. If you you took that out, that you made that agreement, yeah, you're obligated to that You're a person of your word, you're going to pay that money back.
Speaker 2:It's just the right thing to do. Even if the government said, oh, we're just going to forgive this student loan. Oh, we're going to forgive the credit card debt, oh, we're going to forgive your mortgage, wouldn't matter I'd still, because you made that agreement, you agreed to it, you know. So this has been a great show. I really hope that you guys enjoyed today's show. We went a little bit over on time, but I tell you what. It was a fantastic show and let me know what you think.
Speaker 2:You know we dove into a lot of different topics. I know we kind of scratched on some different areas. Let me know what you think and you know, always make sure that you're leaving your comments for us. We'll read through them and try to answer some About every other show or so we'll dive into some comments and things. So we are looking to have some guests on the show eventually. We're kind of getting our workflow back in order and getting things with the show together, and I am still doing some work on the studio here, but we will eventually start bringing in some guests, which will be a lot of fun. And, matt, I really appreciate you and I know we've got another show to cut today. Sometimes we cut more than one show in a sitting. It just depends, but I always try to tell you off. We do, because I like to be transparent about that kind of stuff. But anything else, matt, before we leave today, any final thoughts.
Speaker 3:No, it was a great conversation. It's always exciting when we come off of a little mini break vacation and we have a lot of stuff built up that we want to talk about, and that's why I can see them a little scattered, cause we're all just kind of all over the place there's nothing wrong with that, but I really appreciate everybody's time.
Speaker 2:I hope you enjoyed today's show. We'll see you next week on LOP. Remember, every Monday on the Iraq veteran YouTube channel. Also, everywhere you can find all your favorite podcasts. We're everywhere. Make sure you leave us a good review. It helps us show up in the search results better. So thank you so much. Many more on the way. We'll see you soon. Bye everybody.
Speaker 1:Thanks for listening to Life, liberty and Pursuit. If you enjoyed the show, be sure to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, spotify and anywhere else podcasts are found. Be sure to leave us a five-star review are found. Be sure to leave us a five-star review. We'd really appreciate that you can support us over on Ballistic Inc by picking yourself up some merch and remember, guys, dangerous freedom. Have a good one.