The following is a transcript from the Pro America Report radio show.
Welcome, welcome, welcome. Ed Martin here on the Pro America Report. Great to be together. And I’m a little tired today. I’m not going to lie to you. I’m not going to lie to you. I’m not sure why. I just feel a little bit tired. I had a number of meetings today, some interesting ones. I’ll tell you one, I met with Craig Shirley.
Craig Shirley, who was… look, he’s had at least three careers. He was a very well known and successful political guy. Worked on the Reagan campaign, worked on a number of campaigns, worked at the RNC. Then he had a multi decade career, which continues, as a public affairs professional. And that’s been very successful. People know him. He’s helped all sorts of key people, helped promote authors or books by Laura Ingram and so many others.
Now, over the last, I don’t know, 25 years, 20 years, he’s developed a career as a historian. And he has written books. And I’ve had him on my show as a guy who has done great history books and been really interesting. And initially his books were on… One of his books that I’ve talked about a lot, it was on Ronald Reagan and his 1976 campaign, which was the unsuccessful campaign for President where he lost to Gerald Ford, the incumbent President. But the other one…
But now he’s moved off beyond just Reagan books, because he’s written a couple on Reagan, and he’s written a book that’s April 1945: The Hinge of History. That’s what I had him on the show to talk about. And he gave me an autographed copy today, which is fantastic. Anyway, he’s a wonderful guy and very interesting to talk to. And so we’ll have him back on the show very soon, too, I’m sure. Well, and today we’ll catch up with a couple more interviews.
As you know, I love the structure of the show. We open with the WYNK, what you need to know, then we talk to two different folks, and then we finish with a few tips if we have time. So we’ll talk today to our friend Selena Zito, the author of The Great Revolt, a book that came out almost five years ago that captured what she had written about in 2016. She was writing about how what she was seeing as a journalist among voters meant that Donald Trump would win. She was right.
Then she went off and paired off and wrote a book with Brad Todd. Brad Todd is an expert political type, a political pundit, a political pro, a guy that’s run campaigns and been involved. And he did the analysis of who was in this coalition that helped Trump win. And Selena Zito did the interviewing and they went around the country and they wrote this book, The Great Revolt. Very good. So we’ll talk with her.
And we’ll also catch up with John Schlafly, whose new column, point blank says stop trying to get us into World War III, and we’ll talk with him about that. And that’s what we need to get to. What you need to know. At a certain point, what does it mean when something that’s so obvious is not done? And here’s my two examples.
What you need to know today is there are two glaring examples, both of which will be the topics of our interviews in a few moments. Number one is the fentanyl opioid crisis, which at this point is killing approximately 5,000 to 10,000 Americans per month. It’s probably closer to 5,000, maybe 5-8,000. The number of people dying every year from overdose, especially fentanyl – just fentanyl – is between 80,000 and 100,000. So 5,000, more like 7,000 to 9,000 people per month are dying of fentanyl.
And here’s what we know: It’s being made primarily in China by the Communist regime or its constituent parts are being sent to Mexico and put together. In other words, in order to make fentanyl you need certain chemical products. That’s being made in China and sent to Mexico. And second, it’s coming into America through Mexico. It used to come in through ports and sometimes in planes, sometimes in the mail. That’s been mostly stopped. Certainly the mail has. But Selena Zito wrote a column in the Washington Examiner where she talks about this problem of opioid addiction.
And I just am saying this: It’s obvious that the open border, Mexican border, is bringing fentanyl and killing Americans by the tens of thousands. Okay?
Second obvious policy — The Biden administration has accurately felt the will of the American people to cut off Russian oil to America, to try to stop the Russians from making money while there’s a war going on. Whatever you think of that, that’s probably about a 75% American polling issue, that Americans say “I don’t mind if we have to cut off Russian oil if it affects us.”
But here’s the next obvious step. There are vast number of decisions that could be made to increase oil production and gas production, natural gas production, in America, like drilling on some of the lands that were available and changing some of the EPA requirements and changing some of the permit requirements and changing some of the rules so that in this crisis we don’t see the massive spike in oil prices that will cause us to have massive gas prices, which taxes the heck, in other words, costs the heck out of working class and middle class folks.
So both of these decisions: drill everywhere and anywhere, change the rules everywhere and anywhere because we’re in a war, or the world is in a war and that economics of that war is affecting us. And stop the border: stop the flow of fentanyl through the border. Both of those things are obvious. What you need to know is they’re obvious. They’re obvious decisions.
And even if you’re Joe Biden and you have to say to the Green New Deal folks or to anybody else. “Hey, we got to do this for a short period of time because we can’t afford to have oil go up and gas to cost too much.” “Hey, we got to close the borders right now. We’re interested in Amnesty if you’re the Biden administration. But we got to stop this. It’s killing too many American people.”
The fact that these two obvious examples are not being done leads to only one conclusion in my mind. And that is our system is corrupt and our individuals in the system are corrupt, too.
And when you watch that MMA fighter from Arkansas who was asked about whether, you know what about the war in Ukraine? And he said, I’ll dig my boots into the soil of Arkansas and defend our way of life, but I’m not going over there to fight. And everybody paid attention to that. I’m going to ask John Schlafly about this, but my point when I heard that was the next thing he said, because those politicians are corrupt.
And the rush by Republicans, along with Democrats, to spend more American tax dollars for more war to put us in more of a position where we could end up with a boots-on-the-ground war is a sign of corruption. It’s a sign of a corrupt system that is benefiting from this, as well as a sign of corrupt individuals, whether it’s Hunter Biden or the staff and families of elected officials, senators and congressmen, whoever it is.
I’m just telling you, the American people are so sick of this. And what you need to know is when obvious decisions — drill everywhere and anywhere, get any gas and oil we possibly can anywhere until we get through this crisis — when that’s not done, there’s corruption. When the reality is that men, mostly men, some women, and I’ll ask Selena Zito about this, I think her piece refers to the fact it’s no longer socioeconomically poor people that are hitting with the fentanyl and opioids. It’s everybody.
So it’s not just lower class, but still, it’s a lot of men, a lot of men that die of opioid addiction and fentanyl especially are men. We’re killing 100,000 Americans every year. And it’s coming through our border (which is wide open) from the Communist regime in China, and no one will do anything about it. What does that mean? Corruption. It means that we won’t stand up to China and the regime for some reason, and the reason must be corruption. It means that we won’t close the border to stop the flow for some reason. And the reason is corruption.
And the individuals who are in charge don’t get to say, “oh, the system is corrupt, but I’m not.” No, you run in the system. You’re corrupt, too. And what you need to know is the American people are not going to tolerate this. We’re sick of it. We’re sick of it.
All right, that’s what you need to know. We’ve got to take a break. We’ll be right back and talk with Selena Zito and John Schlafly. Ed Martin here in the Pro America Report, back in a moment.
