Team,
It’s always a pleasure to talk with Will Cain. After a little football, we get down to it.
TRANSCRIPT
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I went to prison, so you won’t have to.
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It’s a new book out by White House Senior Counselor for Trade and Manufacturing.
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It is Peter Navarro, and he joins us now on the program.
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What’s up, Peter?
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Well,
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hey,
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I’m thinking you’re upset,
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man,
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but I’ve got to get condolences for your longhorns there,
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man.
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It’s like they should put you in for quarterback, I think.
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Can we have that controversy here?
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You want to talk—
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Policy.
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That’s my quick take.
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What’s going on behind it, man?
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You might have a job because, you know, this thing keeps running.
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This train doesn’t stay on the rails very well during quick takes.
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And so whenever you want to step down from negotiating trade deals with Belgium,
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you can come over here and hang out with us on Wilkane Country.
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And by the way, you want real politics, Peter?
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You want real politics?
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I mean,
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dealing with Xi Jinping or Vladimir Putin is probably nothing compared to what
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Steve Sarkisian is dealing with.
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Like, what do I do?
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I’ve got this five-star quarterback with a famous last name,
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and he’s not very good,
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and I can’t bench him.
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He has no idea how to deal with the politics of the situation for the Longhorns.
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I don’t know where that five stars came up.
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He does have a famous last name, but Sarkisian, I love that guy.
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It was back in Cali, and he was
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the coach at USC when he ran into his troubles there.
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And,
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you know,
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I just,
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it was so nice to see him kind of resurrect himself in Texas,
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but that’s painful to watch.
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It was very painful Saturday.
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Very painful, getting whooped by the Florida Gators.
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Peter’s got a new book out, as I mentioned.
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I went to prison, so you won’t have to.
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I want to get into some of the politics and really talk about the judicial system as well.
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But you spent a good portion of the book,
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Peter,
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talking about your experience in prison,
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and I found that fascinating.
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Share a little bit of that with us.
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Down in Miami, federal prison, that’s a new world you’ve got experience and exposure to.
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Yeah, no country for old men there, Will.
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I was in there with 200 felons, and I was the only guy that had committed a misdemeanor.
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I was the only guy who would wind up serving the full term of his sentence because
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of the politics of the whole damn thing.
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And it was tough.
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You go in there, there’s a little chapter, and I went to prison so you won’t have to.
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It’s a diary kind of on a daily basis.
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And it’s like the coldest summer I ever spent was,
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the coldest winter I ever spent was the summer in a Miami prison.
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And so I get in there the first day, you know, kind of looking around.
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I’m wondering what’s going on.
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And I get in there.
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It’s like 58 degrees, right?
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I’m going, what?
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It’s like an icebox.
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And a lightning bolt, like almost a year ago, it hit the electronics machine.
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of the air conditioner and wiped out the thermostat.
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So rather than put in like a $200 thermostat,
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they spent like three grand a month extra just running the thing full time.
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You know, it’s like freezing.
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But that day I learned that, you know, there’s humanity in prison.
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If you’re not a snitch, right, they’ll treat you good.
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So the first day they got all these leftover sneakers and shorts and stuff before
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you can actually get them yourself.
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And they give them to you.
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But but here’s what’s interesting.
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Like one of the first days I’m there, I go out in the yard.
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And these three guys from Puerto Rico surround me, right?
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About half the people there were Puerto Ricans.
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It’s an interesting story in and of itself.
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And one of the guys, I look at it, you know, what could go wrong here?
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And one of them says to me, I like you.
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I go, what’s that all about?
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Why?
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And he goes, you’re not a snitch.
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And I’m thinking to myself,
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okay,
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what’s the moral equivalence here between me standing up for the constitutional
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separation of powers and refusing a congressional subpoena,
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and these guys trusting themselves not to snitch,
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right?
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So funny stuff like that, but when any inmate that goes into prison
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They go on the legal database,
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this thing called PACER,
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and they can actually read the case and figure out whether the guy’s a snitch,
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depending on how he was treated and what his sentencing is.
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And man, if you’re a snitch, it’s not a place to be.
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But health-wise, not good.
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Food-wise, it’s not good.
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I did wind up,
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though,
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Will,
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in the experience that I documented,
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and I went to prison so you won’t have to.
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I was able to uncover, as in, like, I think investigative reporters, what I turned into.
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I uncovered this, like, $5 billion taxpayer scandal.
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where they weren’t properly enforcing the Trump First Step Act.
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And while I was inside, over time, I got everybody organized to figure all this out.
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And actually outside now, I’ve actually solved the problem.
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So, I mean, I actually go in there and I’m saving the taxpayers $5 billion as part of that.
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You know,
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the real story,
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apropos of what you were talking about earlier,
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Will,
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it’s like I’m an Old Testament guy,
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and we need Old Testament justice.
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We need Old Testament thinking in this country.
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And the whole point of I went to prison so you won’t have to, what does the title mean?
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It means that it’s a wake-up call.
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It’s they’re coming after you.
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If they can get me,
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If they can get Bannon, put us in prison.
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If they can try to put Donald Trump in prison, I come after you.
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And what I’m dedicating now is to make sure everybody who was part of the lawfare,
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weaponized justice against me and Bannon and Trump and everybody I served with,
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Will,
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Got to hold them accountable.
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So as the boss says, let’s see what happens.
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But it’s a fun book.
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It’s part Stephen King.
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It’s part Joseph Heller.
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It’s all Kafka.
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And I hope you folks out there in Will King can’t read it.
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Well,
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let’s return to the book in just a moment,
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but I want to take you up on sort of the larger lesson of being an Old Testament
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guy.
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I think that’s actually a really good analogy in that the entire justice system,
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to the extent it’s not driven by ideology,
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is driven by New Testament forgiveness.
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And look, forgiveness is an interesting concept.
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It’s an individual concept.
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I think a victim chooses whether or not to forgive, and ultimately God forgives.
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But –
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As a society,
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we have to focus on accountability,
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and you can forgive and hold accountable at the same time.
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And we just see this in story after story,
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I feel like,
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in the past 72 hours of judges,
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whether or not they be in Washington,
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D.C.
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when it comes to the attempted assassin of Brett Kavanaugh or in Kentucky of this
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monster let go after stabbing a 6-year-old boy to death.
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When you look at it,
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and by the way,
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for anybody listening and watching this week on The Will Kane Show,
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I’m going to be sharing another horrible story of a judge who did something here in
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Texas that defies your belief.
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And I just wonder,
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you know,
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Senator Tom Cotton was just on the Fox News channel,
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and he said,
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we’ve got to start talking about impeaching judges.
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What do you think about that?
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How do we deal with this lack of an Old Testament mindset when it comes to the judicial system?
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Well, look, it’s incompatible with economics.
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It’s incompatible with criminal justice thinking.
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I mean, if you don’t punish appropriately, it will happen again.
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I mean, it’s like the border.
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If they just come and you open it up, they’re going to come.
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If you give them free health care, even more of them will come.
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In the case of these judges, I mean, I’ve got a real bone to pick with my judges as I document
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and I went to prison so you won’t have to will.
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Every single person responsible for the long journey for me to getting arrested,
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to getting in prison,
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was a Democrat.
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And I think about that.
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In America, everybody involved in my incarceration
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was a Democrat.
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It was the Democrat congressman to start with on a majority party-line vote.
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And then it goes over to the Justice Department, such as it is.
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And you got Merrick Garland at the top, Matt Graves, and then even the attorneys.
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And then I get to a jury in DC.
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That was a joke.
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12 Democrats.
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You’re not going to get a fair trial there.
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But the judges.
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See, Will, this is insane.
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I never thought this could happen in America.
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By the time I got to the jury and the trial,
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Judge Ahmet Maida,
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Obama appointee,
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had stripped me of every single defense.
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I had no defense.
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He did that.
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And then, this will blow your mind, Will.
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There’s two judges on the appeals court in D.C., which is a cesspool.
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It’s Patricia Millett and Cornelia Hallard, okay?
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When I was convicted and sentenced,
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I appealed that because ordinarily,
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well,
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the standard procedure...
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is release pending appeal.
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In other words,
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don’t put me in a slammer until my appeal is heard,
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particularly when there’s huge constitutional questions involved.
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These two judges said there’s no issues involved in going to the slammer.
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Now, my appeal will be heard in oral arguments in December.
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Well, I haven’t given it up because of these big constitutional issues.
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Guess who’s on that appeals panel?
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the same two judges who said I had nothing to appeal will be the ones hearing my appeal.
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So when you say, do I think these judges should be impeached?
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Hell yes.
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I mean,
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these judges,
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like,
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Portland is like,
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that’s a really nice city,
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or at least it used to be.
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I don’t understand that place.
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But when I see ICE agents
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verbally assaulted and approached with people who have obvious weapons and they
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don’t have the ability to put them right to the ground and put them in a truck and
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take them off in a slammer,
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something’s wrong.
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And the fact that we can’t
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Send the National Guard in the Air Corps to some liberal judge.
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That’s crazy stuff.
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And so, no, I mean, these judges need to be held accountable.
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And we need to get back to an Old Testament world, Will, because it just doesn’t work.
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I mean, people are going to die.
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People are going to get raped.
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People are going to get robbed.
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And the judges, they don’t have to worry about it.
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They don’t have to worry about it.
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Unless you’re a Supreme Court judge like Brett Kavanaugh,
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and then a guy comes to kill you and wipe out your family,
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it’s like,
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oh,
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eight years in prison.
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I mean, I was serving with people.
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Well, I was serving with people.
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And at Miami federal prison,
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he had longer prison sentences for doing,
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like,
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I don’t know,
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1 20th of that.
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I mean, it’s crazy stuff.
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Right.
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You know,
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I know you believe in the separation of powers in the constitutional order,
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just like I do.
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The three co-equal each branches of the United States government.
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It has historically,
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ingeniously at its founding and historically at times served to limit the power of
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the federal government by design as drawn up in the Constitution.
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Elon Musk reposted on X somebody talking about what President Bukele did in El
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Salvador to sort of clean house with the judicial system that was stepping in the
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way of him getting El Salvador in order.
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That has left many on the left talking about the real constitutional crisis in
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America that – to the extent that Elon is in the administration.
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We know that Elon is not, but his influence, his power –
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that it is fulfilling the fever dreams that President Trump is forcing a constitutional crisis.
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You and I can acknowledge the problem we have,
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both in your personal situation,
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in these anecdotal cases across the country,
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and now as well stepping in the way of National Guard helping ICE agents protect
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their own security in the city of Portland.
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But the real question, beyond impeachment, Peters, what can you do about it?
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What can you do about it and avoid the constitutional crisis?
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It’s very difficult.
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And if you look at the lens of my own situation, I was a senior White House advisor.
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I was subpoenaed by Congress.
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According to the doctrine of executive privilege set forth by George Washington
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himself and enforced for the last 50 years by the Department of Justice,
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it was my duty not to honor that subpoena because of the separation of powers
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between the legislative
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and executive branches.
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As George Washington said back during the Jay Treaty when he started this,
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it’s like,
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I have no more power to command you to come to the White House than you,
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Congress,
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have to command me to come there,
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right?
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So what do you do, Will, when a Democrat Congress under Pelosi and under Benny Thompson
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decide to violate that separation of power, subpoena somebody, and actually put me in prison.
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What do you do?
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Well, the only thing I could do is go to prison, write a book, come out, fight the appeal.
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But I still got these liberal judges who just ignore the law and push their partisan agenda.
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So you’re asking the wrong guy, because I would say do whatever we have to in terms of
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challenging that up to the point of we don’t want to ruin it.
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We had a great system here, okay?
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I don’t want to provide any fodder whatsoever for the fantasies of the left.
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But I would say to the left, you’re screwing up.
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You’re screwing up here.
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With this kind of behavior, people are dying.
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People are getting raped.
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People are being burglared.
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You’re losing your job on the economic kind of point of view.
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Your wages are going down.
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all because of a progressive agenda,
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which is New Testament driven and has no concept of patriotism.
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I mean, they hate this country.
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They hate it.
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With a passion.
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And,
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you know,
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I mean,
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that’s why Texas is becoming the new Wall Street,
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because of guys like my mom,
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Donnie.
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I mean, who could have imagined that?
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So what do you do?
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I mean, what I’m doing is, you know, I write a book.
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I went to prison so you won’t have to.
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Wake up, America.
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They can come for you.
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I’m hoping that translates into political action and that we elect Republicans.
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God help us, Will.
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God help us if we lose the House of Representatives in 2026 to the Democrats.
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God help us, because that is going to be impeachment subpoena chaos.
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Oh, yeah.
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It’ll be a revisit or worse of what you lived through and we lived through as a
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country there for four years during the first Trump presidency.
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Peter, what did you learn in prison?
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I’m just curious as a man.
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You dealt with things that most of us don’t see in our real world, in our real life.
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You saw – I believe you wrote about this.
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Ethnic tribalism, ethnic divide.
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You spent a lot of time on your own reflection.
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You had your freedom taken away.
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What did you learn as a man?
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Well, I think the bigger question is what I learned from the whole experience, including prison.
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And it’s simply that when you come to that crossroads and you have a decision to
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make as to whether you stand up
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for principle, for what’s right, for your duty to the country, your duty to your local office.
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You can choose to do that, which is what I did, or you can choose to bend the knee.
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And what I learned
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Will, is that doing the right thing is the right thing to do, very simply.
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And if it’s prison time that I had to deal with, so be it.
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But I don’t want to live on my knees.
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I don’t want to ever live on my knees.
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And if you go into prison with the right attitude, they can’t hurt you.
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And that’s the attitude I tried to take in.
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I went in there not knowing what to expect.
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It’s a dangerous place.
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but I’ve made the best of the time.
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There’s a story in the book about actually saved the guy’s life one day.
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He’d be dead right now if it hadn’t been for me being in there and be able to use
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my position,
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as it were,
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of power in some sense,
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where I could push the envelope at some risk,
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to ask for things that might otherwise have happened.
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So, you know, it’s like take every day and cherish it.
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Cherish your freedom.
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Cherish the next meal you have because you could be in prison eating cardboard.
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Love your family, love your wife, whatever, your kids.
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And just every day get up and help the world.
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be a better place to the extent you have the power to do that.
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And if you don’t have the power to do it,
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just make sure that your own family is taken care of in a way which helps the
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broader community.
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Well,
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a lot of what Peter just told you,
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as well as,
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by the way,
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his suggestion of love is part of this story.
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You should check it out.
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It’s I Went to Prison So You Don’t Have to by Peter Navarro,
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White House Senior Counselor for Trade and Manufacturing.
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We always enjoy having you on,
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Peter,
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on current events,
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but also on these bigger,
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broader topics that you not only know about,
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but that you’ve lived through.
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So there it is on screen.
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This is my girl, my fiancée.
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She stood by me.
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the whole time, and she was my rock, and I love her dearly, and I appreciate the time today.
(00:18:09):
It’s going to be the blockbuster news tomorrow,
(00:18:12):
I think,
(00:18:13):
coming out of Senator Chuck Grassley’s committee,
(00:18:16):
which pertains to my case,
(00:18:18):
so be sure and track that.
(00:18:20):
You might get a laugh out as well.
(00:18:23):
There’s your tease for tomorrow.
(00:18:26):
There’ll be a quick take tomorrow.
(00:18:27):
All right, big news for tomorrow.
(00:18:29):
No, no.
(00:18:30):
All right.
(00:18:31):
Thank you so much, Peter Navarro.
(00:18:33):
We’ll see you next time.
(00:18:35):
All right.
(00:18:36):
Quick takes for tomorrow.
(00:18:37):
If they come for me, they can come for you.
(00:18:40):
I think it’s a shame.
(00:18:41):
I think it’s a disgrace.
(00:18:44):
When former White House advisor Peter Navarro stood on principle,
(00:18:48):
he never imagined it would land him behind bars.
(00:18:51):
They demanded that I break the law.
(00:18:54):
But he refused to betray Donald Trump or the Constitution and paid the price as a
(00:19:00):
political prisoner.
(00:19:01):
Locked inside a Miami federal prison,
(00:19:03):
Peter found two lifelines,
(00:19:05):
postcards of hope to his fiancée Bonnie Pixie Brenner and a hidden multi-million
(00:19:10):
dollar prison scandal he’s now exposing.
(00:19:12):
Music
(00:19:13):
I went to prison so you won’t have to.
(00:19:14):
I went to prison so you won’t have to.
Enjoy this one.
Peter
