When the transcript becomes available, we will include it here. -Thank you!

David Blackmon [00:00:01] There we go. We’re live now. Hey, everybody, welcome to the podcast today. I’m David Blackmon. I’ll be your host. Stu Turley here is with us from the CEO of the Sandstone Group and our wonderful producer of this podcast, Larry Schweikert is our special guest today. Larry and I go way back to 2015. We were both early adopters of the belief that Trump was going to win the 2016 election. We stumbled across each other on the internet, back when I was running my own website and, and, we recently reconnected after having lost each other for a few years. And, Larry, so good to see you, man.

Larry Schweikart [00:00:39] Good. David. Well, good to see you and Stu. Yeah. Dave and I go way back, and I’ve come to to call David the Rush Limbaugh of energy in my newscast.

Stuart Turley [00:00:50] Nice.

David Blackmon [00:00:51] I wish I was that big. That’d be awesome. And Larry, of course, is America’s history teacher. He’s, an author of a series of wonderful books, the most recent of which is usually you can see in the background is a Patriots history of globalism. And on the right hand side is a Patriot’s history of the United States, with which Larry told us before we start recording is in its 41st printing, 500,000 copies. These are great books. He’s a great writer and a terrific, political mind. And, Larry, I wanted to start by talking about my belief that, over the last 50 days, we have experienced more major events of American history than we had probably experienced over the previous 50 years. And I wonder about your views on that.

Larry Schweikart [00:01:38] I think it was Lenin that said there are centuries in which nothing happens, and there are weeks in which centuries happen. Yeah. And we’ve we’ve occurred we’ve happened to come into one of those times, who ever would have thought that a, sitting president would have been forcibly evicted by his own party now Lyndon Johnson, it was understandable. He quit because he wasn’t popular. The war wasn’t going anywhere. He knew it wasn’t going anywhere. So he just said, I’m going to hand this in this dog excrement off to somebody else and get out of here. But with with, Biden or rutabaga, as I affectionately call him. He was forcibly ejected. And the word is I haven’t confirmed this in any written source other than the hoax news, which, you know, is not reliable at all. But, the plan was that either he, resign as the candidate or they would 25th him out and force him out as the president. And so, Doctor Jillie, who is his main handler, said, Joe, we’re gotta go.

David Blackmon [00:02:49] Well, and, of course, that’s what Seymour Hersh wrote in his write up on it in about, you know, and, I like Mr. Hersh, and respect him, but his, his reporting is also not the best sourced stuff. And you, you you were left wondering what really is real and what may be his suppositions.

Larry Schweikart [00:03:09] And, was he the guy who said that George H.W. Bush climbed into an SR 71 and flew to Iran just prior to his inauguration? He was the guy. Yeah. Have you seen an SR 71?

David Blackmon [00:03:22] Yeah, no, I don’t I.

Larry Schweikart [00:03:23] Don’t want to see a vice president climb into one of those.

Stuart Turley [00:03:26] You know what it takes to fly one of those things. Holy smokes. You got to be an ally.

Larry Schweikart [00:03:31]  Not. I have flown the x 30, research plane, which was a hypersonic jet that the Air Force was developing from 1988 to 1995, supposedly to go 18,500 miles an hour through the atmosphere and then shoot up, into space so that you could take it off and land it like a regular airplane. And so I flew the simulator down there in Fort Worth at General Dynamics, and I can proudly say, I’m the only person in America who’s crashed and X30 simulator three times before they kicked me out. It didn’t take long either. Okay.

Stuart Turley [00:04:15] That is fantastic. The simulators are really, really good. And, I have successfully launched a Black Hawk helicopter, off of a cliff in Wiesbaden, Germany, taking Hellfire missiles to the forward farm and, successfully land and exceeded the flight envelope of a Black Hawk. So, yes, they are fabulous.

Larry Schweikart [00:04:40] Well, back to us 30. Well, we’ll get to politics, but you got to understand this because I know you’re going to love this. The X30, was radical in every single way. It combined five different, major aircraft manufacturers, which was Rockwell Rocketdyne, General Dynamics. Lockheed and McDonnell Douglas competitors, and they had what was called an open kimono, where they all shared their secret data with each other on this particular project. And it needed radical new materials in order to fly materials that could sustain these kinds of incredible heat. It needed, obviously, a scramjet. That was the big failure. We never got the scramjet. It needed radical new fuel. And this is where you come in. Because we were able we the program was able to manufacture, pump, store and burn hydrogen, slush, hydrogen fuel for the airplane, which was super cool in order to cool the airplane in what was called active cooling as you flew it through the atmosphere.

Stuart Turley [00:05:45] Wow.

David Blackmon [00:05:47] Wow. Amazing what you can do when you put your mind to it. Five. Five. Defense contractors minds. Do it.

Larry Schweikart [00:05:52] Yeah.

David Blackmon [00:05:53] Actually sharing information, which has to be incredibly rare between those extremely competitive companies.

Larry Schweikart [00:06:00] Exactly. Yeah.

David Blackmon [00:06:02] Well, let’s go to. So government they’re all government contractors. And we’re talking about government and the future of our government. And boy, have we got a hell of a match up in this election between Donald Trump and JD Vance and Kamala Harris. And really, probably the most radical left wing, vice presidential candidate we’ve ever had, Tim Walz, who was picked yesterday. Despite the fact that he’s the governor of a state. Kamala Harris was probably going to win in any event. If she’s the ultimate nominee, which you’ll get to in a little while. And, over Josh Shapiro, my theory is that literally the only reason why Wallace was picked instead of Shapiro’s, because Shapiro happens to be Jewish in the Democratic voter base, is increasingly anti-Semitic. You know what your view on that is?

Larry Schweikart [00:06:57] Well, I think there’s another reason. I think that, his pick shows they know they’re done. They know they weren’t going to win Pennsylvania with or without Shapiro. And that’s the election. Because they’re not winning. They’re not winning Arizona. They’re not winning Georgia. They’re not winning North Carolina. They sure as hell ain’t winning Florida or Texas, which are not even remotely competitive. So, once, once it became clear to them, I think, that Pennsylvania was off the table, it became a, matter of, you know, closing the hatches, trying to keep the ship afloat as long as you possibly can with as many electoral votes as you possibly can to save the electors who are still out there. And so basically, they said, we’re going to try to hang on to Minnesota. Now, I know everybody thinks Minnesota is out of reach. Barrus doesn’t. Barrus thinks that Minnesota is always over polled for Democrats. He himself over polled Biden by eight points in 2020. And, we’ve had some polls showing Trump up. Two tied tied down 6 or 8. So I think probably Trump is somewhere about down 1 or 2 in Minnesota. And so it always going to depend on all those Somali. So they’re going to stay home. Are they going to turn out. And if you put Shapiro on there it’s.

David Blackmon [00:08:20] You’re right. Exactly. Michigan do. I mean, Michigan would kill them. In Michigan too.

Larry Schweikart [00:08:24]  So they traded, Minnesota and they hope Michigan. I still don’t think they’ll win Michigan. They traded those two for Pennsylvania and the election.

David Blackmon [00:08:33] Yeah, yeah I mean, she has to win Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan all three to be able to win the Electoral College. I think that’s pretty clear at this point.

Larry Schweikart [00:08:44] And I think they know they’re going to lose Nevada this time around as well because of the Hispanic vote, and probably Nebraska too. I’ve seen, registration stats in 2020, Biden won Nebraska two, that single electoral vote by 22,000 votes. The recent registration changes are Republican plus 13,000. So that means that they are only down in Nebraska to Trump is by 9000, meaning you only have to flip 4500 people to win that electoral vote as well. Wow. So they’re running out of electoral votes.

David Blackmon [00:09:20] They really are. Yeah, they really are. And they’re you know, I mean, there’s scenarios in which New Mexico becomes very competitive as well. Even Virginia, under certain scenarios. And we’ve seen some polls before, while Biden was still the obvious nominee, that showed Trump actually leading in both of those states. And so, I mean, there’s a lot of time left. There’s a lot of room for this thing to move in a way that could create a pretty significant electoral landslide, even even though the the popular vote is going to be still around 5050.

Larry Schweikart [00:09:53] Well, I think I think Virginia moves and Maine moves before New Mexico does. And the reason is New Mexico, although it’s heavily Hispanic, which is trending toward Republicans very strongly, nevertheless, New Mexico is, U-shaped and it’s got a lot of rich and, and upper class people at Sandia and Los Alamos and Albuquerque. And it’s got a lot of really poor people throughout the rest of the state who are heavily dependent on government Dole and, the middle class, working class. And New Mexico is much smaller compared to similar states. So I think New Mexico be closer. There’s still a chance Trump can win it if the, if the landslide grows big enough and it can with Harrison or the or, she, she will be able to to turn a narrow, defeat into an absolute landslide with the right conditions. Virginia, is the kind of state that will really, appeal to Harris’s voters because they’re these upscale people who want to consider themselves liberated, woke, all the Nova people, and they’re going to turn out like crazy. The popular vote got closer. I still think Trump can win the popular vote, but it got closer because of Harris over Biden, only for the reason that she’s going to drive up the blue vote in California. Yes, Chicago and New York. And, those people are just going to go off the charts for her. Whereas it won’t change the electoral vote. If anything, it may may ding the election. Vote by a few more electoral.

David Blackmon [00:11:30] Yeah. I mean, I think it, and then that plus and other big states that are going to go Republican like Texas and Florida and Ohio, it’s going to increase the Republican margins in those states. Because, I mean, people in Texas are just going to completely reject, Harris Walls ticket. It’s it’s done. And, well, that’s why it’s involving Ted Cruz is done, too, as a result.

Larry Schweikart [00:11:56] Oh, yeah. Well, let me make this point about voter registrations, because, first of all, I’ll do a little ad here on election night. I’m going to be hosting a live election night webcast like we did in 2020. We had 800,000 viewers in 2020. We were sucking people off at Fox and CNN who are saying your your your coverage is better. We were honest. We didn’t call any state early. We actually had Kelly Ward, the GOP chairwoman, walk into the studio just as Faux News was calling Arizona. So we’re going to do that again. We did it last time on a budget of about $30,000 in two weeks notice. This year, we’re going to aim for a budget of 150,000. We’ve had about five months to prepare. So it’s me and Seth Castle. Seth has been doing a lot of work with voter registration in Arizona. In Maricopa County. They update the registration numbers daily, which is almost unheard of right now. And you’ve been seeing a shocking, steady movement to the GOP. So the Maricopa County is now about plus four are and the state of Arizona now at 6.6. it was plus 3 in 2020. Yeah. And the Republican actual advantage is 262,000 net votes over the Democrats. So that gives us room for some fraud. It gives us room for some of the McCain people who are just idiots. And we still got Trump winning by five times what he lost by in 2020. But

David Blackmon [00:13:30] I mean, do you think that the do you think it gets us out of the out of the realm or the, the, voter fraud margin that Trump would have to have in Maricopa County? Because, I mean, obviously there’s a 3 to 5% fraud factor. You got a. You know,

Larry Schweikart [00:13:45]  well, like I said, he lost Arizona by 11,000 votes. Yeah. And, so right now he could he could lose at three times over and still win Maricopa County and win Arizona by 100,000 votes. Yeah. But it’s not just Arizona. This is the point that section seven. Hard to say this time. Seth and I are making repeatedly. He’s a wherever you can track registration now, it’s important for your viewers to understand their states where they don’t register by party. One of them is Virginia. That’s why Virginia’s always iffy. You never know. One is Georgia, one is Texas. One is Wisconsin, and one is Michigan. Those are pretty big and pretty important states. There are states where you do track by Voter Ridge, Arizona, Nevada, New Mexico, Georgia, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Iowa, new Jersey, Maine, wherever we can track by voter registration. Republicans are net gaining across the board. Yeah, at shocking rates in Pennsylvania, I think in 2016, the Democrats had a margin of 600,000 registered voters. Now it’s down to 150,000. And remember, Trump won that state in 16 and probably won it and.

Stuart Turley [00:15:04] Now.

David Blackmon [00:15:04] Probably run it in 22.

Stuart Turley [00:15:06] Pressler is in Pennsylvania working away. And we’re closing the gap on Pennsylvania.

Larry Schweikart [00:15:13] Correct. Right. Which is why Barack’s, I think, has Trump winning Pennsylvania. I think most, most reliable pollsters, have. Oh, I don’t want to hear this, Pat. The Democrats illegal voters fraud. We got to quit being McClellan’s. We gotta quit being cowards. Our party is. So whether you’re just going to steal it, folks, if you believe they’re just going to steal it, stay home. If you really believe that, why bother to vote? If you really believe that, why even bother to register?

David Blackmon [00:15:42] I mean, they’re going to try to steal it, there’s no doubt.

Larry Schweikart [00:15:44] Of course they are. You know, the Prussians tried to beat Napoleon and kick their ass, right? So the goal here is not to hand-wringing, oh, they’re just going to steal it. They’re just going to add illegals. Here’s the thing about illegals, okay? Let’s say they do manage to get 100% of illegals driver’s licenses they want. Let’s say they get 80% of them out of that 80%, how many they’re going to actually get ballots for, let’s say 80% of those? Okay. So let’s say out of that, how many of them actually vote for Harris? Because remember there is a stats show that in Florida, I understand a lot of Haitians, a lot of Cubans, but Venezuelans and Colombians also do not like Democrats. Right. How many of those? Legal voters are actually going to vote for Democrats 50%. We win that game, all right? We win that game. So I say let them come. Let them come.

David Blackmon [00:16:39] Stu I want to turn this over to you, buddy? Talk about your conspiracy theory.

Stuart Turley [00:16:45] Well, I’ve got a couple ideas, and. And I just wanted to, ask your opinion because this is what I feel is going to happen on, when we go to the, Democratic convention here is coming up. Oh, no. Let me start this over again. Oh, no. I mean, I have a feeling I just had this gut feeling that she is actually going to get polled, and and I think that there is such a war for control in the Democrat Party that Obama wants her out. She picked, wants because she’s unhappy and wanted to prove that she can run her own campaign. And Obama is really upset that he may not get his fourth term. So, I think she may not make it past the, convention.

Larry Schweikart [00:17:44] Okay, so this is Larry schweikart. MythBusters. Myth number one, Obama has not been running rutabagas. Campaign has nothing to do with Harris. If there’s a book out there called The Truce, written by two Democrats about the Democrat, about Biden’s campaign in 2020. Okay. Obama’s name very seldom comes up. It’s almost always Anita Dunn, Jake Paul, Jill Biden and, Ron Klain. Those people were running his administration. And I’m not saying they’re the only one. You have these, cabals. His his presidency was being run by an inner green energy cabal, an illegal alien cabal, a war in Ukraine, cabal, a general, destroy the US cabal. He had all of these cabals that were influencing him. But those are the four main people identified in this book as really controlling his campaign and his presidency. Well, right. Three of them got fired two weeks before he left the presidency, and they were replaced by two other guys that I keep forgetting their names, but, their names are out there. They were replaced by two other insiders who are very close to Gilead, and obviously they fail now, I thought, and I predicted that he would hang on through the convention because, I thought, number one, they wouldn’t be so stupid as nominate Harris. But number two, anybody but Harris can’t get the money. And they’re already facing lawsuits against Actblue for transferring that money.

David Blackmon [00:19:11] Yeah, they really are. And

Larry Schweikart [00:19:12]  so they’ve got this problem here. But here, here’s the biggest mythbuster. They’re out of time. They start I don’t know what date your ballots go out in Texas. David. Your, early ballots in Arizona. Ohio?

David Blackmon [00:19:26] I’m not sure. Locked out.

Larry Schweikart [00:19:28] 1st of October. Okay. You got a print ballot, right? Yeah. You don’t just. And they appear.

Stuart Turley [00:19:34] Yeah. They got a reprint them since they’ve got to change. Getting beaten up.

Larry Schweikart [00:19:39] Not just that. You have to sew back up at least ten days. Give it ten days to print ballots, you know, seven working days, right? Right. But you got to go back because before you can print the ballots, every single candidate on every single ballot and the ballots are printed. By who? The county’s right. Not the DNC, not the state in in Arizona, we got 18 counties, 14 counties, something like that. You got hundreds of counties in Texas, right? Right. All of those counties in printing, how many?

David Blackmon [00:20:11] Actually 254 counties.

Larry Schweikart [00:20:12] 254 Wow, all those counties, you’re going to have to be printing ballots. But before they can print the ballots, they have to print a proof ballot that they send to every single candidate in their county.

David Blackmon [00:20:25] Yeah.

Larry Schweikart [00:20:26] To have them check their name, say, yes, I am running for secretary of state, not dogcatcher. Right. So you have to then print those proof ballots. So that backs us up to right about the 1st of September.

David Blackmon [00:20:41] And then his ballots go out September 7th and they start.

Larry Schweikart [00:20:46]  when.

David Blackmon [00:20:47] September 7th. Two months early. Early two months of early voting in Pennsylvania.

Larry Schweikart [00:20:53] Okay, so now you got to back that up to now. Yeah, they basically have until the convention to start printing up the proofed ballots. So I see no way in Hades that they can flip her out, do all of the financial shenanigans they would have to do with somebody who isn’t Harris and still meet any of those deadlines. And if they send out early ballots? Yeah, really? If they send out early ballots with Harris’s name on it and they switch her out in some states in Ohio, I don’t know what it is in Texas, but in Ohio, they they won’t count the name that isn’t on the Election Day ballot. So you could conceivably have. 50%. Actually, it’s closer to 60, but 50% of your balance with Harris’s name on it and 50% with Gavin Newsom’s name on it. The Democrats would lose a 435 seat landslide.

Stuart Turley [00:21:50] Wow. Larry, let me ask this. What happens if we have Joe bumbling Biden walk up and is so mad at, Obama that he wants to claim it back? Is that a possibility?

Larry Schweikart [00:22:04] Fun. That. Wouldn’t it be so much? Oh, gosh, I can see him want. And of course, Gilead have to be out there pointing him in the right direction like a toddler. And he finally gets to the podium and he goes, hey, I know I’m not giving it up, all right, who’s gonna throw me out? But just tell me who, who, who, you know, and that would be fantastic.

David Blackmon [00:22:24] Yeah, and they already. Have a. Ballots with his name, right?

Stuart Turley [00:22:27] Exactly.

David Blackmon [00:22:29] And they’ve already got all those ballots printed up with Biden’s name on them.

Larry Schweikart [00:22:32] They have. They’ve had that.

David Blackmon [00:22:34] They also have Harris’s name as the running mate, who they would also have Kamala Harris, his name as the vice presidential.

Larry Schweikart [00:22:42] Right. And neither of them would be eligible to run. I mean, people forget that we do have a structure of elections and they’re just going to cheat. Of course they’re going to cheat. Oh, they’re just going to do this. We gotta quit acting like they’re gods or superheroes or Thor or Iron Man or something. They can’t just do what they want, and it’s not a matter of they won’t try. It’s a matter of there are structures in place that even they can’t change.

David Blackmon [00:23:06] Yeah, yeah. No, I think that’s right. And I think that, you know, it’s all difficult, but, you know, the shenanigans, nothing I what I told Steve before we started recording this morning is literally nothing would surprise me anymore. After the last 50 days, nothing that happens.

Larry Schweikart [00:23:25] We tried to kill a president.

David Blackmon [00:23:27] Right? I mean, and we haven’t even gotten to that yet. I mean, the Secret Service, I mean, what do you think of this? I mean, the it gets worse every day with the Secret Service scandal is not going away. No. Even though the media obviously is trying to make it go away at this point. But but the the scandal inside the Secret Service is, is so shocking. I just can’t see how it just gets buried, you know, a memory hold like the media is trying to do. What do you think?

Larry Schweikart [00:23:57] Well, can I take just a second since I’m a historian and explain to you. Yeah. The history and how the media got so biased.

David Blackmon [00:24:03] Oh, God.

Stuart Turley [00:24:04] Yeah, absolutely.

Larry Schweikart [00:24:05] They’ve always been biased.

David Blackmon [00:24:07] Yes, they have.

Larry Schweikart [00:24:08] the media as we know it today. Modern newspapers were created in the late 1820s by Martin Van Buren, whom I called the most important man in American history that nobody’s ever heard of. And he’s important not because he was president, but because he was a New York assemblyman who saw the Missouri Compromise as starting a Civil War, because he saw time based on the compromise that all those states above the Missouri Compromise line were going to be free states. And when they came in as free state, sooner or later they would vote to abolish slavery. And at that point you were going to have a civil war. So he starts a brand new political party called the Democrats. This is why I can say there’s no such thing as a good Democrat, because you cannot have good fruit from a bad tree. And Jesus said that I didn’t. And so the whole Democrat Party is a bad tree. It can never yield good fruit. And so Van Buren did, to ensure that slavery would be left alone. Was it to join his party? You had to agree to shut up about slavery, not introduce any legislation about it, not talk about it. They put a gag rule in the House to prevent people from talking about it. But he went further. He bought and created dozens and dozens of newspapers. But they were not newspapers. They were political agenda propaganda pieces. 85% of them by the 1850s were owned, owned by one party or the other. And back then they were honest. You had the, Alabama Democrat or the Richmond Whig. They told you right up front who they were for. So their goal was not to publish news. It was to get people elected, and they would only print speeches and so forth, good news about their guys, and they usually didn’t even waste time on the on the other party. That changed in the Civil War because of the demand for accurate information. Who won the battle? Did Johnny get killed? Right, right. And the penny press also came in at that time, in which advertisers started to make a very important push to be involved in newspapers, and they wanted to sell their products like Michael Jordan. You know, Republicans buy tennis shoes, too. They wanted to sell their products to everybody. So by the 1870s and 80s, for the most part, papers and wrote about a century long period of objectivity where they simply. Operated the opinion which is on the editorial page from the actual news, and they actually tried to report news. And so I interviewed a reporter from the Chicago Tribune, and he had reported in the 1950s, and he was just amazed at how far the standards had declined. He said, when I was a reporter, there were three main, rules of thumb that everybody had to follow. One, no. Unnamed sources. Yeah. Two every single important fact had to have two named sources. And three, you had to always tell the other side of the story. Now, that does not mean if you’re on Fox and you have a liberal on there, you don’t get Karl Rove to tell Donald Trump’s side of the story. Right? You get you don’t get Meghan McCain up there to tell the other side of the story. She is part of that other side, right? Yeah. So you have to get people who will explain your side of the story the way you would like it. Explain that held true until about the 1960s. And then, and I’ll give you, your viewers a book to look at is called Partizan Journalism by Jim Kiper’s QIP ers. And what he found in a detailed study was it very slowly but steadily in the 60s, all the papers began to abandon those standards and move hard left. And he attributed that we couldn’t prove it. But he attributed that to journalism schools and academia. So why has the media so left? Blame the universities?

David Blackmon [00:28:07] Yeah, no, I think I and I totally believe that, you know, I mean, yep, these these kids coming out of journalism school now are completely indoctrinated and have been for a long, long time.

Larry Schweikart [00:28:17] And there’s the.

Stuart Turley [00:28:17] Honest with you, that’s the only reason my podcast, because I went to Oklahoma State University, but I did I, you know, holy smokes Batman, our podcast with David and energy realities and the energy news beat is going crazy. People want real news. I’m not a journalist. I’m almost I’m a game show host, let alone you know what?

Larry Schweikart [00:28:40] What’s your background Stu? What what what did your parents do?

Stuart Turley [00:28:44] My dad retired as chief of staff of the Eighth Air Force in Vietnam. Flew, fighters. The F-4 Phantom brought him home.

Larry Schweikart [00:28:55] What did you do? Have you always.

Stuart Turley [00:28:57] Got to do, everything from worked at Intel, working with, the groups that sold supercomputers and the retail side, the chip side of things, and, then worked and worked, and, the oil field in oil field automation and, that kind of good stuff. So

Larry Schweikart [00:29:19] so you’re a white collar, middle class, kind of 60s era person, right? Yep. Okay. So another point that has been made quite recently, by Angelo Cody via is that not only are these reporters coming out from the graduate schools extremely left, but none of them have working class roots. And if you go back to the reporters who were active in the 50s, the early 60s, they were all working class guys. And Mike Royko, I mean, think of people like that, right?

David Blackmon [00:29:50] Cool. Yeah.

Larry Schweikart [00:29:51] And these guys who identified with longshoremen and with with steel union guys, not with the elite and the current class of journalists identify entirely with the elites.

Stuart Turley [00:30:04] Wow.

David Blackmon [00:30:06] And that’s that’s absolutely right. I you know, I mean, you’re right. And I’ve said it many times, too, that the the media has never been impartial. It’s only pretended to during certain periods of time. And, and, and I’m afraid what we’re in danger of now is, is, is what happened during the yellow journalism period of time in the 1890s, when literally newspapers in New York City basically got the United States involved in the Spanish-American War in literally the Yellow Journal newspapers of New York City involving the states in a shooting war.

Larry Schweikart [00:30:42] The world, the Hearst world, and and, but those were actual lectures. Paper was the those are real exceptions in this period, largely because what did newspapers need in order to stay alive at that time? Subscriptions. And after the Civil War, based on the penny press, they went from being party money dominated, where your only source of revenue was from the political parties to by the late 1800s, being entirely driven by subscriptions, which paid all your bills. Those subscriptions are gone now, almost no newspaper or news organization. And I’ll never forget this stunned me. In the mid 1980s, I was wrapping up my, PhD at UC Santa Barbara, and for some reason, because I was older, because I’d been playing rock and roll for ten years. Right. A school. They put me in charge of a William F Buckley fundraiser event. So we brought way Matt Buckley Jr to Santa Barbara, and, and I introduced him, and I had a chance to speak with him at length. And he said that National Review, that the only reason he did those speeches was to fund National Review, because he said it wouldn’t make it on subscriptions.

David Blackmon [00:32:01] Yeah.

Larry Schweikart [00:32:02] And 80s.

David Blackmon [00:32:03] Yeah. Yeah, I agree with that. And of course we’re seeing it now. I mean, the news media jobs are falling apart. Axios laid off 50 people yesterday.

Larry Schweikart [00:32:13] That was my feel good story of the day I knew it.

David Blackmon [00:32:16] I mean, I have no sympathy for any of them. I you know, I just have zero sympathy for it. Right. And, I mean, I hate I always have hated to see anyone lose their job, but in the, you know, make an exception in these propaganda media sites because that’s what. Yeah, they’re just

Stuart Turley [00:32:34] lying communists. You deserved to lose your job.

David Blackmon [00:32:36] Yeah. Yeah. I mean,

Larry Schweikart [00:32:37]  well, and, you know, that brings us kind of to the universities. And what will it take to reform the universities? And I don’t think it’s possible. I think that if I did like the newspapers and the media, they need to be put out of existence. I need to put down, be put down like a horse, broken legs. Right. And we’re seeing a slow erosion between, 2020 and now about, university enrollments have declined by about 4%, but that’s not fast enough. We need them to decline by 40%. And I’m convinced that the quickest way to do that would be to do something with the college sports programs. If you can take away the big sports programs and their revenue, which funds the whole university. I mean, you know, it’s interesting, all the years I was in the history department, I never heard anybody complain about University of Dayton basketball and paying off coaches. Occasionally, they’d make a snide remark about how much money that coach get, but nobody ever complained about all the money was going to basketball because it was coming back to the history department many times over, as well as sociology and English and all these other things that nobody wanted to take. Right, right.

David Blackmon [00:33:45] Yeah. Most people think that, that the athletic departments are taking state money, you know, like at the University of Texas, the University of Texas athletics program is one of the biggest profit centers in the state of Texas and and is completely self-sustaining.

Stuart Turley [00:34:01] I think it’s going to get worse now that the, the NCAA athletes can make money. It’s just going to get absolutely worse.

David Blackmon [00:34:10] Yeah. It’s just they.

Larry Schweikart [00:34:11] Always should have been paid. I mean, these guys are, you know, they’re indentured servants or whatnot. Paul Westfall back in the day, had an interim thing where he wanted to do, college vouchers for all athletes. Right? You get a four year X number of credit hours voucher that is transferable. But, I think now you need to the best thing to do would be to start to pay him. That would be step one.

Stuart Turley [00:34:38] Well, even back then, even back when I was in school, Gundy was the coach at Oklahoma State University. Yeah. I mean, Gundy was the quarterback. I was a tutor, and I tutored Dexter Manley for, but he could not read. He stole my exam while I was sitting there, and he mis copied my answers, and we got our test back. I thought I was going to get fired and thrown out of school for for him cheating. And he got a higher score than I did because he missed copied my answers at a doctor Jackman’s law class. And Doctor Jackman goes, it’s okay, don’t worry about it. I’m not going to get thrown out.

Larry Schweikart [00:35:23] You know? And same thing happened to me. I was.

Stuart Turley [00:35:26] Doctor Jackman, almost three, you know,

Larry Schweikart [00:35:30] No, close. I was a student assistant at Arizona State when I was doing my masters there. And ASU. This is a great sports trivia question, by the way, and I it may be different now because I haven’t paid attention in the last 20 years, but up to about 2000, only two college teams, basketball teams had ever had their starting five and the first two off the bench not only be drafted by the NBA, but start by the NBA. I’ll give you one of them was Arizona State. Amazing. Yeah. Any idea of what the other one was?

David Blackmon [00:36:02] Maybe one of John Wooden’s UCLA teams.

Larry Schweikart [00:36:05] And you’re. Yeah, you’re warm. But think of another great coach.

David Blackmon [00:36:10] All over North Carolina. Dean. Dean Smith.

Larry Schweikart [00:36:13] Indiana.

David Blackmon [00:36:14] Oh, Indiana. Bob Knight. Yeah.

Larry Schweikart [00:36:15] University of Indiana had all five starters drafted and first two guys off the bench, and they all started in the NBA. Yeah. So as a student assistant, I was called in one day because we actually had a flood here in Arizona, took out our bridges. And, the, professor of African American studies could not get in to give his final. So I come in and I’d got all of the ASU basketball players and several of the football players in this class and given out the silence, the big room, you know, maybe 100 people in it and which is scary. And, the 100 people are taking African American history. Right. But none of em would show up for U.S. history anyway. They’re sitting there like this. Looking at each other’s pain. And I told him, like, I’m not going to confront Allen Lister, who’s seven foot two, you know, and thank you for your test, Mr. Lester. And I told the professor goes, oh, that’s okay. And every semester, my good friend was the dean of students at ASU. And every semester he he. Elton Lister isn’t going to make it through through this semester unless he gets five A’s. And and so any name all of these great basketball players that everybody knew football players so and so is not going to make it unless they get five A’s turn up next semester. There they are again. You’re not going to make unless he gets five A’s. There they are again. Yeah.

David Blackmon [00:37:39] Yeah. Well you know but that that was happening at every school still is probably.

Stuart Turley [00:37:45] But I Dexter was one of the nicest guys on the planet. And the school school failed him. Sure. Yeah. And that’s the sad part.

David Blackmon [00:37:53] Right. And so few of those guys actually do end up going pro and getting wealthy. You know, they it’s really a disservice to the athletes to to just push them through like they’ve done for all these.

Larry Schweikart [00:38:05] There’s a fantastic show on Netflix. I cannot remember the title of it, but you’d find out if you search and it’s about, athletes who have gotten a lot of money signed for millions and millions and or I think it’s called Broke and Bernie Kosar, for example. But many, many, many of them are just broke at the day their careers are over. And one of the things they didn’t understand, that they were only getting paid for the the months that they were playing. Yeah. And that the, the summer months, they weren’t getting a check and they didn’t understand what happened to my money.

David Blackmon [00:38:42] Yeah. No, it’s it’s terrible. I mean, and so many of them are just, they’re, they’re folks that are naive. They haven’t really lived outside very isolated young lives, when they go to college and then they get out of college, they don’t really understand how the world works. And, it’s really being tragic for many of them.

Stuart Turley [00:39:01] Larry, what do you think the odds are in energy if, how this is going to turn out? Because I feel that David said it best, we saw in the last 50 days, more corruption that we would have not seen, if we did not have x, in the last 50 days. Where’s the next 50 days going to take us?

Larry Schweikart [00:39:31] In terms of energy or what?

Stuart Turley [00:39:33] I’m sorry, in terms of politics, because this is just absolutely crazy. I where do you think we’re going from here?

Larry Schweikart [00:39:41] Well, one of Harris’s problems is that she is tied to all of Biden’s policies. Yeah. Now, that said, clearly the hoax news media’s, strategy is to, not have her do any questions, except any questions. Not have to do any answers. Not ask her about any of her policies, to try to keep her out of that. Do do a Biden part to where she’s in a basement somewhere so people can’t see or cackle or dance. Two things you never want to see from her.

David Blackmon [00:40:15] Or speak without a script. Yeah.

Larry Schweikart [00:40:17] Yeah. Really? I mean, the question is, who makes more sense than Biden or Harris? But anyway, so are they going to be successful in being able to do this? She has had huge un, unpopularity numbers. Her numbers of disapproval are very high, higher than Trump’s. And this is without any media exposure. If she gets media exposure, where is she going to be? So one of the problems that Biden’s going to have and his advisers are going to have is what horrible things can they do that won’t sink her campaign even further if they want her to win? And I think you raise a good question, Stuart. Do they really want her to win? I think they probably be very happy to see her lose a landslide and lose the popular vote by ten points. But if they want her to win, they’ve got to be. They can’t start a war. You know, if they start a war, Trump walks in with almost every electoral vote. Because Americans today are not in a war like mood. Unless you’re in Minnesota.

David Blackmon [00:41:26] No, but I think Americans are in a you know, my theory is every election cycle, presidential cycle is either a status quo election or a change cycle. And I think this is clearly a change cycle. Yeah. And I think, one of the reasons why Harris probably picked Walsh yesterday is because her plan is to present change from the far left, right go even further left than Biden, which she clearly is, and which is hard to imagine, but she clearly is. And so she’s going to pretend to be a change agent, just like Trump is, and the voters are going to have to make a choice and figure out which one they prefer.

Stuart Turley [00:42:05] I think that that is her trying to stretch her wings. And in saying that she’s running her own campaign away from, Obama. And I think that that’s going to actually, come back. The Biden administration just put out, $4.3 billion in taxpayer funded grants through the EPA for green energy. That’s fair.

David Blackmon [00:42:30] Yeah, yeah.

Larry Schweikart [00:42:31] Well, I mean, let’s be realistic. None of that money will get into circulation before 2025. And the way government works and nobody’s going to be spending any of that money. It’s not going to affect the economy. It’s just going to run up the debt more. And when Trump comes in, I know in my book on Reagan, I came to this section where as soon as he was elected, in one of his first days in office, his staff brought him this giant binder of executive orders from Jimmy Carter. And they said, Mr. President, please read these over and let us know which ones you want to cancel. So they come back in a day and he hands him back a binder and they’re flipping through, and there’s no red marks on anything. You know what’s going on? They come to the last page and says, cancel them all. And I think that’s what you’re going to see with Trump. Oh, yeah. Bring him a binder of rutabagas, executive orders. And he’s just going say, cancel them. And these people have to know that these green energy idiots have to understand that they’re not going to see that money. It’s never really going to become clear.

David Blackmon [00:43:31] that this is a sustainable without.

Stuart Turley [00:43:33] And in relationship to the Biden administration and the Trump administration. President Trump had an executive order pulling grid components from China out. He pulled them out of the grid. There are 32 major interconnects from China that are huge that control huge chunks of our grid. Biden on day two put them back in the system. They are now, in my opinion, capable of being remotely controlled by China, thanks to the balloon and other technology that.

Larry Schweikart [00:44:09] Trump will call those back out.

Stuart Turley [00:44:11] I sure hope so, yeah. I am very hopeful.

David Blackmon [00:44:15] All right, Larry, last thing last time before we started recording. Stu And I were agreeing that, Elon Musk buying Twitter was probably the single most important event to preserve the First Amendment right to free speech in American history. What do you think?

Larry Schweikart [00:44:31] That would probably be very close. I’d have to look far.

David Blackmon [00:44:35] Into the Constitution was written. Yeah.

Larry Schweikart [00:44:38] Yeah. I mean, that was just huge. And it was almost unbelievable that he did that. And he said, you know, somebody has to make free speech free again. Yeah. And, he was the only person. Well, you think maybe Bezos and maybe gates and there’s Buffett, there’s 4 or 5 of them who could have done it. But he was the only one really, who, who was enough of a risk taker. Bezos isn’t a risk taker.

David Blackmon [00:45:02] No. And neither is Warren Buffett.

Larry Schweikart [00:45:04] Really? Yeah. Right. So yeah, I would agree with that.

David Blackmon [00:45:07] Yeah. Yeah, I, I just think it’s it’s it’s just the hallmark event of American history. And, we all should appreciate most for that, even if we do make fun of a Cybertruck from time to time.

Larry Schweikart [00:45:18] So, Dave, let me ask you a question. Where do you see, Europe, particularly, Germany and and some of these really, green invested Euro countries heading in the next five years?

David Blackmon [00:45:32] Well, I mean, they’re they’re headed for complete deindustrialization and fealty to China for their energy security. And that is not a workable situation. UK is in the same boat as Germany. And, particularly with the Communist Labor Party now or in, in the country, in the rest of Europe. You know, it’s kind of a mixed bag. France is probably going to be okay because they still rely heavily on nuclear and or going about, expanding that fleet again. Now, it’s all going to collapse the wind, solar, electric vehicles. I mean, really, in the United States, the electric vehicle industry is on the verge of collapse completely other than Tesla. And, yeah.

Larry Schweikart [00:46:13] There’s a guy I follow, Noah Smith. He’s a liberal half the time. He’s right on some economic stuff. He’s really, really good. He is a battery nut. He just he just thinks that batteries are going to save us, that we’re in a battery revolution. Well, what’s your take on where we are with batteries?

David Blackmon [00:46:30] Well, you know, I mean, and people have been saying that for 30 years that we’re going to have this step change in battery technology. It’s going to save the planet. And they’ve been saying it’s just around the corner for 30 years now. And, you know, I mean, if you could have that because right now the stationary backup batteries for electricity have a three hour cycle time, that’s essentially useless, any sort of long term weather event. So you have to have a solution that has a 72 hour cycle time at minimum, to really be a value on a power grid. And until you get to that point, you were just spending billions and billions of dollars on something that doesn’t really solve the problem. And then the problem doesn’t really exist in the first place because, you know, you could just build more nuclear and more natural gas and stop worrying about the rest of it. Right? Which is the sensible thing to do. And, but, you know, batteries, I’m, you know, I, I’m a skeptic on all of that because it can’t exist. It can’t happen. It can’t be funded without government subsidies and the nation is near bankruptcy.

Larry Schweikart [00:47:36] So where where would be our leapfrog if, if batteries are not really, feasible? And if it’s wind and solar, we’re not going to get wind powered cars or solar powered cars or wind powered planes or solar powered planes. What is the next fuel down the line in 50 or 60 years?

David Blackmon [00:47:56] This nuclear, it has to be nuclear. It’s the only way for.

Larry Schweikart [00:47:59] Cars and for cars and for planes and containers.

David Blackmon [00:48:03] Oh. You know, hydrogen, you know, but, but again, the technology they insist on and insist on it being green hydrogen made entirely with renewables. You’re never going to get there. You have to allow blue hydrogen to propagate. And you can run your automotive fleet largely on hydrogen. But the investment in the infrastructure for hydrogen is so enormous and cost prohibitive. I, I just think 50 years from now, 80% of the cars on the road are still going to be gas powered cars, because when we.

Larry Schweikart [00:48:36] When we return to muscle cars.

David Blackmon [00:48:39] Well, probably not probably. I mean, Dodge is about out of business already and but but companies are I mean, you see Ford now going back on all these battery electric investments and they’re starting to make hybrids and refocus on their gas powered SUV. So, I mean, to some extent they are going to come back because that’s what you know, consumers want. I mean, they don’t want an electric Vehicle.

Larry Schweikart [00:49:01]  In 69. I got my first real car. My parents said, if you just wait, don’t get it used car. You wait, we’ll get you a new car. They don’t trust you use car, right? Yeah. Probably new me. I can’t spend words together or change a spark plug so that. Anyway, I ended up with a 356 Camaro and that my friends, who are all absolute car nuts, they put in a tunnel, ram a 16.5 to 1 pistons with a cigaret and cam with 456 years. And I was turning, you know, fourteens in this, 350 Camaro, which, in a street race with one of my friends driving. Actually, he totaled, he flipped over a 446 barracuda and utterly wiped out. So being the smart guy I was, I took my insurance money, and I bought a 450 horsepower, 454 Chevelle.

David Blackmon [00:49:54] Oh my God, That’s a race car. That’s a.

Larry Schweikart [00:49:56] Somebody just saw one of those at a car show the other day, and it was half $1 million. If I still had that, I could celebrate $1 million. Yeah.

Stuart Turley [00:50:06] Wow.

David Blackmon [00:50:08] That’s insane. My mother, when I was in high school, bought a 1972 Pontiac Granville with 455 V8 in it, and that car was the fastest car in Beeville, Texas, and she didn’t even know it. I mean, the car was just a powerhouse.

Larry Schweikart [00:50:25] My friend, who I could never beat in either my Camaro or my 454, had a, old 440. That was an absolute sleeper. He had street slicks, he had a big, hydraulic cam, and he had a board to 480. You that thing that came out of the hole like a funny car. You never seen a car beat somebody out of the hole like that thing?

David Blackmon [00:50:48] Yeah. Hey, listen, I think we’re going to have to wrap up. Oh, you got to go. No, no, no, go ahead, go ahead.

Stuart Turley [00:50:55] I had an old Delta 88 that beat a Trans Am the. It’s amazing what all. In the head.

David Blackmon [00:51:01]  Well that had a 455 in it too.

Stuart Turley [00:51:03] It did.

David Blackmon [00:51:04] Yeah yeah.

Larry Schweikart [00:51:04] Talk all talk.

David Blackmon [00:51:06] Crazy. Crazy. Listen, I think Stu’s got 11:00 recording here. We’re going to write about it.

Larry Schweikart [00:51:12] Good to talk to you guys.

David Blackmon [00:51:13] We need to do this more.

Larry Schweikart [00:51:14] Sure. Any time.

David Blackmon [00:51:16] All right. Good deal. Hey. Thank you. Thanks, everybody, for joining us. Sorry we didn’t get to all the questions here.

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