Twelve Day's of Preston: August

Well, good morning, everybody. Welcome to day number eight in the 12 days of Preston. I'm your host, Preston Scott. Jose and I are taking a little time away, but we didn't leave you completely. We're doing the 12 days of Preston, where we take one month of the year and recap what happened in that month. And so this is, though it's the 29th of December, and we're getting ready for a brand new year, can you believe that? We're really recounting the eighth month, which is the month of August, of course. But as we like to do, we want to begin with some scripture. And since it's the 29th, and we start a new year before you know it, Your 2026 sounds weird to even say that, doesn't it? I thought it would be good to reflect on Psalm 90. You know, in verse 10, it talks about the amount of time we have. That our days are numbered. They are going to come to an end at some point. And then it's all about eternity. But this is the end of another year. To me, it makes sense to reflect on the year that was and to be grateful, to be thankful for what God has done. It says at the end of Psalm 90, verses 16 and 17, let your work be shown to your servants and your glorious power to their children. Let the favor of the Lord our God be upon us and establish the work of our hands upon us. Yes, establish the work of our hands. So thankfulness and a prayer that God would bless what we put our hands to, what we're busy doing in the coming year, makes a lot of sense as we begin this program. Now, we've got a lot of things to talk about, but of course we always delve into history. And so taking a peek at this date in history, the 29th of December. In 1808, Andrew Johnson, the 17th U.S. president, is born in Raleigh, North Carolina. In 1845, Texas becomes the 28th state on this date. In 1851, the first young men's Christian association, otherwise known as the YMCA in the United States, is organized in Boston. In 1890, the U.S. Calvary massacres up to 300 Lakota Sioux at Wounded Knee in South Dakota. In 1913, filming begins on The Squaw Man about a British officer's adventures in the American West, reputedly the first feature-length movie made in Hollywood. And then on this date in 1940, FDR calls on the United States to become the great arsenal of democracy. Of course, I would amend that to being a constitutional republic. Oh, yeah. Love talking about our four-legged friends, members of the family. And joining me, Dr. Steve Stevenson, at the Bradfordville Animal Hospital. Good morning. Dr. Stevenson, how are you?

Hey, good morning, Preston. I'm doing well. How about yourself? I'm doing terrific. I came across an article back a few months ago that inspired me to ask you and that we would spend a little more time talking about dental hygiene for dogs and cats. How prevalent is the topic in practice? You know, it's huge, Preston. And we see pets every day that have significant tartar built up in gingivitis and all the periodonts disease problems that that creates. So this is a very, very big topic. We're doing dental procedures on pets practically every day. It's such a big issue in dogs and cats. When you say a procedure. That seems like it could be in a lot of things. Yeah. Well, you know, we can't just tell them to sit in a chair and say, oh, we can clean their teeth the way we do. So it requires some sort of anesthesia at some level to relax them so that we can open their mouth to clean their teeth and evaluate them. We take dental x-rays on dogs and cats' teeth, just like a dentist would do us. Looking for problems with the roots of the teeth. So it's, you know, dogs and cats, unless you brush their teeth daily, they build up a tremendous amount of tartar on their teeth. And that tartar has to be dealt with in some form or fashion, or it's going to create all kinds of problems down the road. What are treats? What are, I mean, you see the advertisements for those dental chews and so forth. First, are they actually useful? Yes, they are. You know, the next best thing to brushing your pet's teeth is to use some sort of a dental treat or dental chew. And so I highly recommend them. There's a handful that are very, very effective. The key is the chewing action. So you want to use something that your dog or cat is going to chew for several minutes. If they're going to take that treat and wolf it down in 30 seconds, well, it's probably not doing a lot of good with that chewing action on their teeth. So you want something that's going to take them a couple of minutes to chew before they finish it. And so Greenies is very, very popular. That's a very good one. Most dogs really, really like them, and they'll sit and chew on those very well as they consume them. There are CET is a company that has several types of dental treats for chews. They're also very, very good. And so there actually is a council, the V-O-H-C, Veterinary Oral Health Council, that approves these treats. And so you can look for a dog treat and look for that V-O-H-C approval seal on the package. to see if it's one that's been evaluated and studied to say, yes, this will do what it needs to do to clean your dog's teeth. How often should you be handing a treat like this to your dog and are cats the same with frequency? Yeah, they are. Both are the same. And probably once or twice a day is enough. Really? You know, too many treats. Oh, yeah. Too many treats is like us eating candy bars. Right. Usually they're very high in calories, so they're going to put on a lot of weight if they're eating too many treats. And a lot of times dogs really enjoy them and cats do, so they can use it as a training tool as well. You know, when they first go outside in the morning, go to the bathroom, and come back in, give them that treat as a reward. And a lot of times they'll look forward to it.

it's a win-win to do it that way. What if you see your dog chewing on one side of their mouth almost all the time? Is that an indicator of a dental problem? Absolutely, Preston. If that's the case, they should chew a little on one side, a little on the other side. So if they only chew on one side of their mouth, you want to have that checked out and see there's not a problem. Very often a dog or a cat can have a bad tooth, and they're not going to tell us. They just avoid that side. And so the dog will cat will come in and we'll look and there'll be an abscess or a bad tooth in there that's creating all their problems taken care of. So, yeah, absolutely. If they're chewing on one side of the mouth or you see food falling out of their mouth when they chew inappropriately, they can't keep the food in their mouth, big concern. Have your veterinary check them out. I suppose in closing, it's important that we not just kind of put food in front of our pets and set and forget, but now and then observe them actually eating. And that would include, observe them eating these pet chews, these dental chews. For sure, press. You want to observe them and watch them. Make sure there's nothing abnormal going on. They don't hesitate to eat their food. If they usually eat all of it, and also they're only eating a little bit of it, you need to be aware of that. Or if they have an odd behavior, they're grabbing the food, and sometimes owners will come in or tell us that the dog or the cat is kind of throwing the food to the back of their mouth and swalling it whole and not chewing it. Well, there's a problem there. We need to check that out. Always great spending time with you, Dr. Stevenson. Some very helpful things for pet owners out there. Thanks so much for the time. Great. Thanks, Preston. Dr. Steve Steven with the Bradfordville Animal Hospital in our cleverly titled twice a month segment, pause for thought. We do features that meet the needs of you, the listener. See, we even take care of your pets. All right, it's our year in review. It's the 12 Days of Preston Show number eight. When we come back, our visit with actor and I guess we would say activist, Kirk Cameron, here on the morning show with Preston Scott.

Back with the 12 days of Preston, we have some great guests over the course of a year, and I can't explain the favor other than God just gives us favor. We have some really amazing people that show up and are part of the radio program. And this particular guest was making a return visit to the morning show with Preston Scott. Back with me on the program this morning. I'm really excited to have this follow-up visit with actor, author, Kirk Cameron. And Kirk, good to have you back on the program this morning. How are you, sir? I'm doing great this morning. Thank you for having me. My pleasure. I want to go back to because I remember when you first rolled out this CU at the library, and it was kind of in response to what you were facing across the country. So take us back a little bit before we talk about where things are right now. How and why did CU at the library get started? Well... I wrote a children's book a couple of Christmases ago about faith, hope, and love, and I wanted to read it in some public libraries to children as part of a public story hour. And this was during the time when drag queens were reading inappropriate books to little kids in very leftist liberal areas. And I was denied by over 50 woke libraries. that had previously held drag queen story hours for children on what ground what controversial content could my book possibly be about and it was literally about compassion about togetherness about hope about love and fake and god and they said that you know they were they were inclusive and so they needed to exclude me they wanted a diverse message and so they said uh... you know your yours doesn't fit the mold and so on well i went on news and told Tucker Carlson and others at Fox and put them on blast. They changed their mind. They gave us a link to an invite to to sign up for a story hour. They gave us the back room in the place, but when we showed up, we had over 3,000 parents and grandparents who wanted to be a part of children learning values that lead to their blessing and their protection. And so that... spiraled into just a groundswell movement of grandparents and parents adopting their own story hours at libraries across the country and a national day called See You at the Library. So it's kind of like see you at the poll. Only we sing, pray, and read books at public libraries. And the tides have turned in two or three years. Three years ago, we were being locked out of libraries this year. We were invited by the Trump administration and the Department of Education to the largest library in the world, the Library of Congress. That happened this weekend with over 400 libraries participating across the country at the same time, singing, praying, thanking God, singing patriotic songs.

and reading stories of virtue and character to children. And I think this marks a shift in our culture and our values. And I'm hoping that these are the rumblings of a revival in our country of the things that made America great in the first place. And Kirk, it cannot overstate the importance of planting these kinds of ideals, virtues. timeless wisdom from God's Word in the hearts, minds, and spirits of children. Oh, yes. It's so important. I've been around long enough. I have a 55-year-old guy now with a grandchild to know how the media works and to know how cultures get built. And things don't get turned around and fixed long term by electing one guy in the White House. Right. And yet there are those who can provide air cover. like Trump is doing now. so that the family of faith and those of good American family values can advance what is true and what is good and beautiful. We couldn't do this stuff last year. I mean, the administration would never have let me in. And now we have opportunities to do more to protect the unborn, to secure our country, to help families to advance the values of faith that are indispensable. for a free republic like ours. And now the window of opportunity for us to do the most that we can. And if we don't, if we don't stand for our values and live for them with all the fire of our faith and the courage of our will, I believe in our lifetime we will experience either a great awakening or a rude awakening. Kirk, you were talking about the future and what it may or may not hold for us. I'm curious, do you think that what's happening right now is as a result of the pendulum swinging so far, so absurdly, demonic, satanically... off the hinge, that it's just pivoting back? Or do you sense that there's something deeper that's going on right now with a younger generation that's starting to, I guess, rekindle the faith that's buried inside of them? Short answer, time will tell. And I believe that we have been given an opportunity, a window of mercy from God. After all that has taken place over the last 40 years, 30 years, 20 years, 10 years, this is perhaps our Red Sea moment. I mean, we were backed up against the sea with the, you know, the purple-haired platoon coming down on us with a vengeance. And if we don't honor God now, when we have this opportunity to do so much, I mean, we just...

The door, the seed just parted. And we now get a chance as the family of faith, in my opinion, to begin ushering in a time of opportunity and liberty and freedom and blessing and protection for our children by doing the things that we have the freedom to do. But if we're so lazy-minded... If we're so apathetic and we say, nah, we'll just sort of, you know, we'll let the big guy with the orange face up at the top do all the things that we need and get the handouts from the government and all that kind of stuff. That's nonsense. I mean, that's what the Israelites did when they wanted a king to do all the stuff for them, rather than be responsible locally with their family and trust God to protect them. We've got to be the boots on the ground. army of compassion that's doing the things to build the culture we want for our children or others will build a different kind of culture for our children and they're happy to do it so what I hope is that the courage that we see from parents and grandparents that see you at the library, to take back education to their kids. The courage that we see with a political leader who is, in my opinion, probably not a born-again spirit-filled Christian, meeting with world leaders and taking economic risk and political risk to leverage the value that we have as a country and do amazing things that nobody else has seemed to be able to do for so long. If we can learn from that. leverage our own value as the family of faith and the dollars that we have and the time that we have and the hearts and minds of the children that we have created. And we can say, wait a minute, you don't just get all of this stuff for free. You have to invest in the future of the world for them, at least here in America, or we're not spending our money on your products. We're not voting for your people, and you're not going to educate our kids. We're going to homeschool them. We're going to create our own schools. We're going to have the church be the leader in all of this. We're not going to be the ghetto minority that's like towering in the corner. We're going to create the culture. And that's what I see people beginning to do. Stop begging for a seat at the table with the pagans. Build your own table, and then others will begin to pull up a chair. Because our table is better. That's what happened when we did see you at the library. And the Trump administration said, could we be a part of it? And we said, yes, please, we love this. You had over 200 story hours across the country on Saturday this past Saturday. Kirk, I imagine your goal would be to see those story hours happen all the time throughout the year. What would you advise people listening? Because the overwhelming majority of people listening to you right now think like you do. So what would you advise people to do to organize and get these kinds of things done? I would say get together. Find a band of brothers and sisters.

get together regularly and discuss these things. What could we do? What's on your heart? What is the Lord placed in your mind in terms of a burden for you to address, a problem to solve? What is it that is just in your bones? And find a way together to do something locally. Could be just in your family, could be in your community. And as you begin to solve one problem, it will give you the confidence and the courage and the experience and the wisdom to begin to scale that and do more and more. And as we do this together, not as lone soldiers, not as celebrities or star politicians who are... looking to get acclaim for themselves. Let's do this together as the family of faith will inspire one another. And we're millions and millions and millions strong. We can turn things around if we really want it as much as the radical pagans want it. He is actor, author, activist for the Lord Jesus Christ, Kirk Cameron. Kirk, thanks so much for making time for us. I appreciate it. And Godspeed, brother. Thank you so much. And if you don't mind, I want to just honor the guys over at Brave Books who put on, see you at the library, and continue to do these story hours and write books for parents. And if you'd like to support that movement, people can go to BraveBooks.com. Yeah, that's how we roll. Kirk Cameron, great television and movie career, now doing maybe more important things than ever. and a guest on the morning show. We've got news coming up next. Back with more on the 12 Days of Preston.

Some of your favorite segments here on the morning show with Preston Scott are those segments where we just throw up in the phone lines and talk about something. And we went back into the vault of August of 2025 for this little segment here on the 12 days of Preston. The question I'm taking calls about is this. Does the full moon change people's conduct and behavior? And not everybody. There are some people, doesn't change affect them at all. There's some, some evidence to suggest that the full moon does impact people with bipolar disorder. The fact of the matter is that our bodies are made up of, you know, depending on each person, 55 to 78% water. And given that the water is impacted dramatically by tides because of the lunar cycle, there's a lot of belief that it's got to have some effect on people. But what do you think? Before I get into what I've experienced in the last lunar cycle, which was Friday, Saturday, Sean, what do you think? Does it impact people? And why do you think it? Hey, Preston. Thanks so much for taking my call. Sure. I have a different theory, and I can go into why I believe this. But I think it's more that people are just able to see easily at night. So you get larger crowds out. And the more people congregate, especially at night, the more likely something weird happens. solve us a little bit with the military, you know, and the other side of it is just rule of correlation. Crime goes up during summer, so do ice cream sales. The two aren't correlated. It just happened to be more people who are out during summer. Yeah, but it's not just the summer. I mean, full moon's happened year-round. Yeah, no, that was just my example. Like, you know, the two are correlated. I mean... Like, at nighttime with the full moon, there's more light out. Yeah. Like, people will be out because they can see better. But that doesn't necessarily mean behavior. See, J.D., I'll tell you until he turns blue that there is an absolute change in the conduct of some people during a full moon. Yeah, I wouldn't have an answer to it. Maybe, I know you said it just before I jumped on, that it's potentially tied to some type of mental. change like ADHD, but I can't say that I've actually seen it firsthand myself, but you know, but grant assault, I'm not a great point of reference, I guess. I got you. Sean, thanks a lot. I appreciate it. And thanks for calling in. Let's go to Patricia. Hey. Well, I'm not really sure either like Sean, but I can tell you that years ago a doctor told me that they had a lot of, quote, bleaters in full moon cycles, that there was a lot of that going on. So I think that has a lot to do with emergency room issues on top of the fact that I do think that there are more people out because it's brighter outside and more likely that they're going to get into trouble.

I think that it's possible because of what you were saying about the tides and the water that all of that may have to do with the mental things that are going on with people and with leaders. Okay. Patricia, thank you. Appreciate you sharing your considerations with us. We got more calls coming in right now. 850-205 WFLA. You are welcome to join me. I can tell you that over the course of years, I'll find myself driving on the roads. And it's not necessarily at night. It's in that time period where it's like Friday morning, I came to work and I was like, okay, we're almost in a full moon here. And so Friday afternoon and early evening to the full moon cycle, which was that night and into Saturday morning. There was absolutely a change in the behavior of people on the roads. Driving is impacted to me dramatically to the point where I can look at a given day and go, there's got to be a full moon. And then sure enough, I'll look and, yep, full moon. It's just anecdotal to be sure. Kim, thanks for calling in. Good morning, Preston. Morning. First of all, yes, 100%. It does. I have worked in long-term care nursing rehab for 34 years, and it's kind of an ongoing, I wouldn't say joke, but running understanding that when there's a full moon or one that's about to be a full moon, like within like 24 to 48 hours a day or two. patients and residents will become unsettled, agitated, those that are diagnosed bipolar. It's even worse. Okay. So we kind of prep ourselves and pay attention to medications because, yeah, 100%. Absolutely. Tell me this. Yeah. In your profession, do you mark like the work calendar for the week when a full moon's coming? Do you make a note of it? Yep. Yep. How about that? We're hyper aware and vigilant with behaviors, residents that may wander, those that become combative or agitated. We keep a closer eye on them. So, yes, 100%. And my experience was just 34 years in long-term care and rehab centers. Yes, it does. Let me tell you what brought this all up. Friday, my wife and I are running some errands, and I'm noticing the drivers are just. Beyond crazy. Now again, not all. So clearly some people, in my opinion, are impacted by a full moon while a lot of others are not. Why? I don't know. Is it because the water in the brain and all of that gets affected differently in certain people that are wired a certain way or have a certain predisposition? I don't know. I do not know. But then this happened. We're leaving the grocery store. We're shopping's a pleasure. I'm walking towards my car. I hit the remote start. Get the air conditioning running a little early. Park next to me is, I'll say, a woman in her 30s. She was clearly befuddled by the fact that my car remote started.

That happens. People are befuddled by that. I was befuddled by that when I first did it. So she's loading up her groceries. My wife said, I'm going to take the cart and put it in the cart caddy while you put the groceries in the back of the car. So I'm putting the groceries in the back of the car. And the ladies on. You know, we're parked and she's to my right and she's got her doors open in the back seat to load her groceries on that same side where my wife would normally get in. So there's no interaction of any kind. No one's doors are back. Nothing. Nothing. I get in my car and she shoots me a look and mutters profanities. And it was to the point where I was like, excuse me type interaction. I'm getting the side eye and a bunch of profanities for what I'm trying to figure out. And I mean, it was just, and all of a sudden it was like, remember now press, full moon. It was just so bizarre and over the top. She never got a good enough look at me. for me to think that she's an illiberal who hates my radio program, just happens to know who I am and hates me. She didn't look at me enough for that. She just, it was like, you know, there are urban legends and myths that state that werewolves come out during full moons. Maybe she was in the beginning of her transformation. I don't know. But the only way I could describe the look that went with the profanities was, and I didn't even do anything to deserve it. I didn't happen. I got inside my car is what I did. That's all I did. I was just dumbfounded. Oh, you just got to love people, don't you? What a full moon brings out. All right, back with more of the 12 Days of Preston here on the morning show with Preston Scott.

Welcome back to the 12 Days of Preston, the morning show with Preston Scott, the month of August. And we introduced you to a new friend of, well, of all of ours. Dr. Ryan Owens is a professor at Florida State University's director of the Florida Institute of Governance and Civics. And he is my guest in studio. How are you, sir? Hey, I'm doing good. Good Thursday to you. Yeah. I have to start this by asking, what prompted you? to reach out and engage with the show. Write me a note. I love what you're doing, and I love what I'm doing, and I want people who love what both of us are doing to hear about it. So, you know, I am the director of the Institute for Governance and Civics. We're trying to resurrect an appreciation for liberty on college campuses, particularly here at FSU. Came down here from Wisconsin about a year ago to direct this thing. Just a moment there, please. Just a moment. to acknowledge the green and gold, where you do hold season tickets. Oh, you're better believe it. Oh, come on. Come on. Tell me that he's not my new best friend in the world. Gold Packers. Oh, yeah. Goldpack goal. Come on, gold pack goal. Okay. You can slip into that real easy, can't you? Oh, my goodness, yeah. I can do it in a minute. How'd you end up at Florida State University? This position opened up. And it was really appealing to me. I believe pretty strongly in what we're doing. I don't mean to be hyperbolic, but I do think that the future of the country is really at issue. It's at risk right now. If we have people who don't understand how the American government works, their roles as citizens, what does it mean to be a citizen? We're going to have a heck of a problem on our hands in the future. We're starting to see that right now. And so for me, the ability to come down and take this thing over, like just start it up from the ground up. We are literally building this from scratch. Okay. And, you know, there's a lot of flexibility there and an opportunity to build a vision. And that's what we want to do. We're here to help. We're here to promote civic literacy, civic awareness, civic thought, wherever we can. When you were brought into Florida State, the hiring process is going on, what were you told about the goals, the purpose of this department? Yeah. Well, what I was told basically was here's the statutory mission that we have, right? And there are six or seven bullet points within that statute. And they're general. They all kind of point towards the same thing. And, you know, the direction that I had was lean into this. Make your vision. fit with what we want to do here. And so I had, I don't want to say carte Todd Blanche, that's not right, but I had a lot of flexibility to kind of bring in my expertise. My background is in law and politics. I'm an empirical social scientist, but I also understand that you can run as many statistical models as possible, but if they're not answering important normative questions, they're meaningless. So what we're trying to do here is just a number of things. I'm building a civics degree program at FSU that is part social science, part C. civic thought so that we teach people what it means to be an American, but then give them the tools to go out on the job market later to get good jobs and make an impact in their community. We created a First Amendment law clinic at the College of Law so that students can learn the importance of free speech, conscience, liberty, and go out and learn how to defend them.

What was the reception as you got, first, how long has this process been underway? One year. One year. As you began, obviously, we've seen a lot of tumult on college and university campuses across the country. What kind of reception did you get at Florida State? It's been positive. I've been pleased with the reception that we've had from leadership, and there are a lot of people on campus who recognize the value of intellectual diversity and understand that student success is tied to an understanding of American civics and an ability to comprehend other people's viewpoints and have some political tolerance. So it's not without its obstacles to be sure in any organization is going to be that way. But I am very, very supportive of what we've got going on here and the relationship that we have with leadership on campus. Because generally speaking, broadly speaking, we paint with a big brush around here. There are always exceptions. Broadly speaking, diversity means as long as you agree. Yeah, we see that sort of alarmingly in the data, particularly among the 18 to 24 or 29-year-olds. One of the things that we do at the IGC as well as teaching and the clinic and things like that is we do a lot of polling. And we've conducted a handful of polls so far in our existence. And the data are... Somewhat frightening. Among 18 to 24 or 29-year-olds, there is a real strong creeping intolerance that exists, such that we're seeing data now where younger people are saying they're not even willing to date. people who have opposing political views. And in fact, some of the data show that sort of younger progressives are over two times more likely to date an ex-felon than they are to date a conservative, right? Just a moment of silence here for decency. Thank you. Yeah, and we see some similar data on the other side of the spectrum, too. It's not all just the left, although the data are a little bit more troublesome on that side of the spectrum. So, you know, what are we going to do in this country in the future if we're only dating, marrying, procreating with people who believe like we do, then we're raising kids who only believe what we do. Pretty soon, the polarization that we see, I mean, is going to be one heck of a problem.

Back with Dr. Ryan Owens, professor Florida State University. We're talking about the Institute of Governance and Civics. How does this play out day to day on campus? It's a lot of work. Yeah. Yeah, it's a lot of work. But we're doing the Lord's work, as they say, right? So what we're doing a handful of things, we are helping to hire faculty. and work with existing departments to place faculty in those units. We are working to create a degree program that I'm really, really excited about. I think it's going to do some wonderful things. We bring in speakers and we put on programs regularly. We've got some fantastic speakers coming up. I'd be happy to talk about them here in a bit. But we're doing all of that. We do a lot of polling, data analysis, working with students. We've got book clubs for undergraduate students. We're really firing on multiple cylinders. Does a student sign up for specific courses? Do they take coursework and then affiliate with the Institute? How does that work? Yeah. So the way the degree program will work, we are in the process right now of getting that up and running and seeking the approvals from the state university system, the Florida Bog and others. So that should be ready to rock and roll in fall of 2026. So students will come and they can commit to this as a major just like they would any other major on campus. We're also working to get some certificate. programs and things like that. So once students get on campus, We will advertise this program to them. We'll advertise this to them as they're applying so that people know what we're doing, what we're up to. Parents will feel comfortable, you know, sending their kids to come work with us. We also have, you know, the book clubs and things like that. So students will see advertisements for what we're doing. They can join us. They can, you know, see the flyer come to our website, which is igc.fsu.edu. They can learn more about us that way. We're on socials a lot. So there's a lot of information that they can obtain, and we're reaching out today. for all of these matters. Are you teaching courses specifically yourself? Yeah, I've got a couple of courses. My background is in law and politics. I was a practicing lawyer for a couple of years and realized that that wasn't what I wanted to do. So I teach classes on the United States Supreme Court. I do a class every year on the Supreme Court's current term, which is really cool. Students love it. It's a hands-on course. We take six or seven cases currently before the U.S. Supreme Court. We read the briefs. We listen to oral arguments. class of the semester. We go to the Florida Supreme Court. We do mock oral arguments in there. It's a great class. Students learn what it means to argue both sides of the positions. And they get some writing skills. They get some oral presentation skills. It's a fun course. Talk us through the logistics of what you're doing. Yeah. Well, my vision, if we just want to back this up, I mean, my vision for this thing is for us to be the nation's premier policy institute in creating the next generation of effective citizens and responsible leaders. And the way that we do this structurally is we focus on four pillars of liberty. We're focused on constitutional liberty, economic liberty, conscience liberty, and educational liberty. So I talked about that degree program. Students come in, they'll take a core set of courses, and then they can concentrate in one of these four areas. We've got four branches.

heads who are, they report to me and they are pursuing those goals in each of those four pillars of liberty. The speakers that we bring in, right? They fit within that. So our goal is that within, you know, five years or so, we want the First Amendment Law Clinic to have some cases at the Supreme Court. We want to have a number of students in the program and lots of speakers. And finally, we want to become the nation's data hub for all things civic awareness and civic related. I said at the beginning, a friend of all of ours because you've got a guy like that teaching at Florida State University heading up a department. Oh, come on. Yeah, we're going to support that. Thrilled to have him on board as a friend of the show. All right, back with our number two of the 12 days of Preston. Welcome back. It's the second hour of the 12 Days of Preston on the morning show with Preston Scott. And this is a visit from August with Justin Haskins of the Heartland Institute. Did you ever think stopping socialism.com would become so crucially important to a mayoral election in maybe the largest city in America? Yeah. Yeah, I did. I actually saw all of this coming many years ago, not specifically in New York City, although the whole project for stopping socialism, we have a stopping socialism TV channel, by the way, on YouTube as well. You can check that out. Okay. The whole project was started as a reaction to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez winning her primary way back in 2018. That was sort of the genesis of this idea. And it was because we saw when you actually, it wasn't just a New York thing, it was everywhere. When you actually start looking at polling data, especially among younger people, socialism, it depends on how you ask the question, but it's very clear when you try to get to the heart of it, socialism is very popular. amongst younger people and the next generation when they become the primary voting generation It's going to be a huge problem for this country. And that was the idea behind stopping socialism and the whole project that we built around it. Like I said, the videos, the website, we've done a lot of speeches and books and all kinds of stuff. So it's vitally important. I mean, just absolutely vitally important. Has visitation to the website gone up since Zohran Mamdani won the primary? I don't know if we'll ever reach the heights of the Bernie Sanders, near presidential win. I think that was probably the height of it. But I think we're going to see it skyrocket even more than what we've seen in the past in this next upcoming presidential election because I think the socialists are going to make a real play for the Democratic Party primary.

I don't know who that person is going to be. It could be Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, it could be somebody else. It could be a Bernie Sanders Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez ticket or something like that because Bernie's too old to be on the top of it. But I think we're going to see another chance for the Democratic Socialists to have a presidential candidate at top of that ticket. And I think we're going to see it really soon. Are there some deep pockets that would put some ads for your website on, say, oh, I don't know, the Times Square Electric Billboard? Well, we're working on it. We're working on it. And that would be awesome if we could pull that off. Yeah, it would. Yeah, it would. I just wanted to make sure we talked about that site because we haven't in a while. And it's a very, first of all, it's a very well-done site. It's a great site for parents to cruise around with their kids and start introducing them to the fundamental basic concepts of socialism and why it is so bad for our country. Yes, thank you very much. Yeah, we put a lot of work on it. There's hundreds of articles on there. Some of them are more news-oriented stuff, but a lot of it is articles about the basics of what socialism is, why it doesn't work. We don't use any straw manse. We use the arguments that real socialists make themselves, and we interact with those. Some of the articles are short, some are very long. And like I said, we've got a whole bunch of videos on YouTube as well, stopping socialism TV, where we deal with all kinds of different things, topical news of the day type stuff, but also, again, like the evergreen basics of combating against socialism. Now more than ever, this is a huge problem. I think a lot of Americans thought on the right that it was kind of dying out. after the last round of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez nonsense, you know, several years ago and the Green New Deal got rejected and all of that. But I don't think that's going to be the case, as we're seeing in New York City and elsewhere, Minneapolis and other places, this is a huge, huge problem moving forward. And it's only going to get worse. As the AI revolution starts to take more and more jobs, I think that's going to be a huge issue as well. What is the best thing that's... going to come out of or has come out of the one big beautiful bill i think the the easiest one that you could look to is the border security funding a massive amount of money for border security, more ICE agents, more border walls and things like that. I mean, I never thought that that was going to happen in my lifetime, to be totally honest. I just did not think it was ever going to happen. So I think that that's probably the one of the biggest things. Economically, the biggest victory was extending the tax cuts. That was so absolutely vital. I think they made a mistake actually putting that in the big beautiful bill. I think that just should have been a standalone thing on its own. But that was, if we hadn't, if the tax cuts from 2017 were not extended, the personal tax cuts, they were set to expire at the end of this year. If they were not extended in this bill, the economy would have for sure.

crashed. There's just no question about it. The economy would have crashed. Everyone's taxes would have gone up. It would have been catastrophic. So that was absolutely necessary. So to me, those are the two big victories. The border security and making sure that the tax cuts were extended. Is the border such an issue at this point, even with Democrats, except for the extreme loonies? Even with Democrats, though, that issue polls real strongly that we've got to control our border. Do you think that is sufficient enough to keep it that way, keep it secured even if Democrats were to control Congress in the White House? No. Okay. No, I don't think so. And the reason why is because a lot of the problems that we had on the border were not just... that there was not a lot of good security there at times in certain places. It was that the policies surrounding it with giving people, allowing people to claim asylum and say that they're being persecuted when obviously a lot of them were not really being persecuted. And then that being used as a way to just let people into the country, millions of people, even if they were caught, even if they went to the border. So under a Democratic president, that law is still an option for them. They can still interpret the law that way. The Trump administration is not, but the next president could. And in those cases, they literally will just let people in. It doesn't matter what the border security is. You just walk up to the border and you say, I claim asylum, and then they let you in. So that's a huge, a huge part of the problem. And some of that is... you know, hopefully going to be fixed. But really, I think that there are ways around all of these things. And Congress did not write ironclad protections. We still need an immigration reform bill. Badly. We really haven't gotten that. What's the worst that's come out of the first seven months of the Trump administration? What is the worst? Okay. Well, I think there's a couple of things. I think long term, I'm going to give you kind of an off-the-wall answer in a second. My short answer is... spending in government debt and all of that. That is a crisis that has not even, there's not even an attempt to try to solve it. And I'm not surprised because the Trump administration did not try to solve it the first time around either. They're not going to do it now. We need entitlement reforms in order to fix that problem. And Congress doesn't want to do that, both sides. And so we are going to continue going down this road. where our economy is going to becoming more and more dependent on debt. The debt affects the interest rates. It affects, you know, every, and the interest rates affect the housing market. It affects everything. And so this is a huge crisis-level problem for us. And there is no effort in Washington to fix it. So that's my short answer. Okay, we've got to get right to a break. Back with more of the 12 days of Preston.

Welcome back to the morning show with Preston Scott. This is the 12 Days of Preston, day number eight, which means the month of August. And boy, did we bring you a great guest. In fact, the great one. To read his entire resume, it would take the entire segment. I'll just simply say Mark Levin is a radio show host. He is a host on Fox News of Life, Liberty, and Levin, among many other things, and he's a very accomplished writer, several bestsellers, including the current book On Power. Mark Levin joins us once again. Mark, how are you? Good. How are you, my friend? I'm doing terrific. I am always fascinated by what causes someone to take on a topic. And in the case of On Power, That is a very difficult topic to put your arms around. First, what pushed you to do it? And secondly, how did you get your arms around it? That is a great question. My wife says the same thing. Why do you always write books about these tough, tough topics? And I said, that's the way my brain works. I can't help it. So this topic, the reason I decided to write it and get my hands around it is because I started to really think about. what I was hearing, what I've read over the years. You know, I've got a massive library, my home here as I collect books, not collect them, but read them and then put them on the shelf. And I started to think, what is politics, government, society, what's it all about? Fundamentally, it's about power. And power determines whether you live in a free society or whether you live in a tyranny. Power determines whether your voice is heard in a government or not. Power determines whether you're free speech or not. Power determines all of it. And then I went back and looked at, you know, the Revolutionary War. What was that about? Ultimately, it was about power. That is, representative government. They revolted against the monarchy because the monarchy did not listen to the voices of the people. And then I got to thinking, okay, well, really, what is the basis of our government? We talk about these things, you know, separation of powers and liberty, and it goes in one ear and out the other for a lot of people. And I thought, well, that's not exactly right. That's the end game. But what is it about? And it's this. When you go back and look at the founders, the revolution and the founders. They believed in the sovereignty of God. They believed in the Judeo-Christian belief system. That doesn't mean everyone else has to believe in it, but they did, and they believed God was sovereign. And when you read the declaration, God is mentioned in different iterations four different times in a document that is declaring why we're revolting. And why did they do that? Well, God is the sovereign and his children on earth, when it comes to governing and the civil society, they are the sovereign. So we the people that we talk about, we the people that are mentioned in our documents, we are the sovereign. That is where this comes from. And then when you look at the Constitution, why is it written the way it's written? Because they took the declaration and they said, what kind of government do we set up that creates this civil society that Locke talked about and yet respects the sovereignty of the individual and the community of individuals? And they looked at the Enlightenment.

And so our founding and our government is a fusion of this Judeo-Christian belief system and the Enlightenment. And what did the Enlightenment tell them? Among other things, it told them the power needs to check power. Power needs to check power. With the Enlightenment came the whole idea of Western democracy and so forth. So I talk about this word power. I break it down to a positive power. and a negative power. And then I compare it to Marxism and Islamism. Our is Americanism is the fusion of the sovereign in this belief system, our faith, with the Enlightenment. Marxism rejects our faith, rejects all faith. It's just coercion. Islamism is the fusion of a very radical view of Islam and coercion. And I go through it and break it down and apply to language, liberty, and rights, that sort of thing. How did you end up arriving at the chapters you did and tackling the... different iterations of power that you write of because it's expressed in so many different ways, so many different levels of humanity, society, and government in the world and in our history. What led you to this particular set of topics? No, Preston. It sounds to me like you've written a book or books because this is what goes through your head, actually. This is very interesting you raise these questions. Well, first of all, you have to decide what you want to prioritize, and then you have to decide what you're not going to expand on because, you know, the book could be a thousand pages long. And I decided in this book in particular, I wanted it to be very concise and readable and understandable and yet take on these very tough topics. And even at the end of the book, I say, look, I could have written about power and immigration, power and equality, power this side and the other, but this is really a journey of the mind. And so I write about power and language, power and rights and power and liberty. I bite off what I think are the toughest chunks. And I explain, among other things, that liberty without rights means nothing. And rights without power mean nothing. And I explain in the book, you look at the Stalin's constitutional in 1936. It's brilliant. He steals from our Bill of Rights. It even goes beyond it. And yet the next year, he was slaughtering the Ukrainians. He slaughtered about 7 to 8 million Ukrainians. So what is that all about? And what is that's all about is what I call the use of language and a negative language to support negative power. And I also explain that, you know, rights without power. Power the people, in this case, mean nothing. And I try to compare those and explain those. And I also explain in the book. It's not all philosophy. It's not all ancient history. It's not all American history. I bring it to today. The Democrat Party believes in an authoritarian democracy. And I know that sounds odd, but it's true, which means they basically go through the process of voting, and they go through the process of judging and all the rest of it.

But they're in favor of a centralized power. They reject the whole notion of the American founding that God is the sovereign, and therefore the people are the sovereign. And so this is why they created this massive bureaucracy at the fourth branch of government. It's not in the Constitution. This is why they rely on these trial courts and judges. If they win elections, great. They try to make permanent changes to our system. If they lose elections, they turn to the permanent party government. So they're into what I call soft negative power. They are the progeny of Marx. I wrote a book called American Marxism. I don't need to get into that. And then I said, we, we spend our battle trying to preserve individual liberty and the separation of power. It's a completely different mindset. Our viewpoint is completely opposite of the view of the left or the Democrats or the Marxists or the Islamists, and they are absolutely incompatible. And I explained this is the battle of our time. Their ideology, which seeks to twist and turn our society and culture inside out, and our belief system, which is based in our founding and our Constitution. Mark, I look at the makeup of Congress and some of the newer elected members of Congress that are Republicans that seem to have that ethos, that ideal of what America was founded to be really part of their personal creed. Are there enough conservative Republicans and are there enough citizens of this country that are taking ownership of the apologetic to advance it and to secure our future? Well, here's the thing. When I write a book, I don't know the answer to those questions. I try to influence the outcomes. I try to, I'm on a mission. as an activist. I'm an activist first, a radio host, an author, and TV guy second. And so my view is to take these positions, push them out as much as I can because I know the media will not. And that's why I write books, because there's tens of millions of us who do, in fact, share these values and these belief systems. I want to encourage people to learn more about them, to expand on them, to discuss them at the dinner table, a church and synagogue, where they are, to have the Thomas Paines and the Paul Revere's out there to counter what is, I believe, is this growing darkness and it's very grave. of this Islamist Marxist ideology. I don't believe there are enough people speaking out about this. But again, tens of millions of us, we can circumvent the propaganda from the media and from politicians and demand of them what we want, demand of our teachers and our professors what we want and push this out, whether you're a truck driver, an electrician, a plumber, whether you're a surgeon or a lawyer, it doesn't matter.

These are ideas that we share as Americans. Mark, thanks for writing the book, and thanks for being you. I appreciate you very much. Well, thank you, brother. God bless. Take care of yourself. Thank you. Mark Levin with us this morning, and the book is on power. And you can get it everywhere. You can go to the bookstores. You can probably find this book at Target or Walmart, for that matter. Okay, maybe not Target. But Barnes & Nobles. Books a million. Amazon, of course. And you can order it from Simon & Schuster. Mark Levin, our guest here on the morning show with Preston Scott. You can see why this has really become kind of the best of the morning show. Only we do it month by month. It's the 12 days of Preston. Day number eight, we'll be back with more right after the news here on the morning show with Preston Scott. Welcome back to the 12 Days of Preston. And I wanted to make time for this segment from the month of August. This is the eighth show. And it's a segment that I entitled Obama, Clinton, and Soros. Oh, my. And I think the content will speak for itself. I wanted to make time to talk about the nexus that we now know exists between Barack Obama. Hillary Clinton, George Soros, and the attacks on Donald Trump preceding and during his first term. We've talked about the declassified annex of the 2023 Durham report. That's some of what was in the burn bags in a secret room in the FBI, documents found by Kash Patel, which, oh, by the way, the claim now is that all of those documents are Russian disinformation. Created by the Ruskis. Yeah. Yeah, they got all those documents inside those burn bags inside the FBI with all the signatures of all the key players. So let's go into it a little bit here. Information was released. This is related to the 2016 election. Revealing Al Hillary Clinton approved a plan from a campaign advisor to smear then candidate Donald Trump.

The idea, the game of it all, was Vladimir Putin's support for Trump and subsequently steering public opinion toward the notion that it needs to equate the influence of the campaign from Vladimir Putin with interference with the election. It is vitally important as you listen to the quotes from the documents. That you remember that this came after questions were being raised about Hillary Clinton's email scandal. That has yet to be investigated. Classified documents on personal servers, personal laptops, pay to play. I mean, you could just assemble the circumstantial evidence how donations to the... Clinton Foundation dried up and disappeared when she left office and was not elected president. Gone. So what? Did the mission change? Did the Clinton Foundation suddenly lose its benevolent direction? Or was it, in fact, pay to play all along? Inside the documents.

Listen to what he wrote, allegedly. The media, I want you to pay attention. This is an outside organization, not inside the government, that apparently was in on it as well. Were they funding it? Were they funding the money through the Democrat National Committee, through the Clinton campaign? Remember, Clinton's campaign and the Democrat National Committee funded the steel dossier. They funded all of this. The media analysis on the DNC hacking appears solid. It will be a long-term affair to demonize Vladimir Putin and Trump. Now it is good for a post-convention bounce. He cites communication with then Julius Smith, who we talked about. Later, the FBI will put more oil into the fire. Hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on. We have an email here that states, Wait a minute. Barack Obama's using levers at his disposal, meaning the FBI, the CIA. This guy outside of government working for George Soros writes, later the FBI will put more oil into the fire. Okay, what does oil do? Smoke. When you pour oil into fire, it smokes. Here's a guy who knows or is directing Obama. He either knows what Obama is doing or is directing what Obama is doing. Understand this. There is a massive tie between Barack Obama and George Soros. This should distract people from her own missing email, especially if the affair goes to the Olympic level. Wait, where did we hear that term? We heard that term from the advisor. to Hillary Clinton, who is allegedly the brain of this entire operation. Who came up with the term first? Soros or her? It's in the same email. One's inside the government. One's outside the government. You start connecting dots here, right? Goes on. The point is making the Russian play a U.S. domestic issue. Say something like a critical infrastructure threat for the election to feel manic since both POTUS and V-POTUS have acknowledged the fact I see would speed up searching for evidence that is regrettably still unavailable. There's no evidence of anything. That's regrettable. But we're going to do it anyway. It is as dirty as it comes. And that's why the silence on the other side. They're hoping it goes away. We cannot let that happen. Yeah, I think Barack Obama needs to have a trial. I think Hillary Clinton needs to be standing trial. I think James Comey. I think John Brennan. I think William Clapper. I think Adam Schiff. I think Chuck Schumer. I think all these people should be standing trial. Back with more of the 12 Days of Preston here on the morning show with Preston Scott. I know some of you are saying, hey, Christmas is in the rearview mirror. Well, maybe for you.

But I keep it in my heart the year round. It's the 12 days of Preston. Welcome back. We have another hour to go after this segment. But this segment now features something we do at the bottom of each hour, most days. It's called The Big Stories in the Press Box. And here's some big stories from August and beyond. But we go back now to the big story in the press box. How is it possible that Harjender Singh? who entered the country illegally obtained a commercial driver's license. Well, it's because California in 2013 passed a law that allows residents of California, I say in air quotes, to obtain driver's licenses regardless of their immigration status. W.T.H. question mark, exclamation point, And so, see, here's the thing. By now, you may have even seen what happened as three people lost their life because you watch it happen. Because this idiot, who, oh, by the way, has a camera on and he's videotaping himself, or maybe it's a camera that the company that he's driving for owns, I have no idea. So you've got who's, who's painting him? The employer. Who is employing an illegal immigrant to drive a truck? He's not in California. He's in Florida. He's not just anywhere. He's on the Florida turnpike. He doesn't just make a turn. He makes a U-turn on the turnpike where you're not allowed to. And in doing so, he brings his tractor trailer in front of a car ostensibly going 65, 70 miles an hour, and it literally decapitates the car, the minivan. As the lead research assistant of the program pointed out, if there's any mercy, it's that they likely died quickly, but one didn't. And this guy's on video going, He says nothing. He looks back like, oh. His partner looks a little panicked. This guy who's wearing the turban, probably a Sikh, is seemingly not affected by it all. He's videotaped on the side of the road as emergency workers. He has stopped all traffic on the turnpike.

For hours. Because you have a homicide and it crossed all lanes of the turnpike, except they might have gotten one lane going the other way near Fort Pierce. Democrats don't care about collateral damage and Republicans don't care much more. about collateral damage. Otherwise, Republicans in the state of Florida would be dealing with the employment of illegal immigrants. Three people are dead because an illegal immigrant was given the ability to hold a job. Boy, Preston, you sound a little angry. Yeah, you think? What astounds me is that Florida elected Republicans don't seem to give a crap about stuff like this. They care more about catering to petty politics and the big industries of the state. that don't want to be inconvenienced by saying, you can't employ illegals. You've got to run E-Verify on everybody going back however many years. If they work for you, it doesn't matter if they've worked for you for 15 years. Run E-Verify. If they're not here legally, they're out. They can file an appeal. They can do whatever they've got to do to do it legally. But they're out. Stop allowing people to sustain themselves when they're here illegally. But Preston, prices will go up. What's your point? What do you think it's worth to the family of the three people that lost their lives, the families? Three people are dead. How many have died since this, in the history of this debacle? Does it not matter? What's wrong with people? What's wrong with Florida Republicans? What's wrong with you? Deaths like this are as much on your hands as it is the lawmakers in California. This isn't just California's fault. This is Florida's fault. It's every state that turns a blind eye to the employment of illegal immigrants in this country. It's not just the immigrants. It's the employers. If you're an employer listening to me right now and you're just, well, you don't, screw that. You're wrong. You're illegally employing people. So charge more money. Hire the right people. I'm so grateful. that we haven't had more suffer. But how much does there need to be? How many Lake and Rilies do we need? How many of these families need to be killed? Oh, well, you know, he just made of the... While inventing a little bit here, just been shown documentation that this same driver caused a bridge to collapse in Arkansas on January 30th, 2019.

How was he still driving? And oh, by the way, to the reporters, he's on videotape driving the truck from inside the cabin when he makes the turn and the car drives into the back of his vehicle. He's not the alleged driver. He's the freaking driver. Stop it. Well, but he's the alleged. No, he's not. He's on tape. Stop being stupid. He's been charged with three counts of vehicular homicide. That's a charge. It'll be proven in court one way or the other, right? We all pretty well know where that's going to go because it's literally the crime is on tape. He videotaped himself on committing the crime. So stop with the alleged. You have to be careful of being sued. No, you don't. Not in that case. You do when you do not have physical evidence. He's on tape. His actions, everything, including the last known moment, split second, those three people were alive, is on tape. You can see the car. They didn't expect him to make that turn.

It wouldn't have mattered if the car slammed on its brakes, which it did at the last possible, it wouldn't matter. He thought he had an opening to make that turn, despite the fact that that turns illegal. The other big story is Judge Mark Walker being foolish again. I'm just saying that. I just have to get that out every hour because I know that he's got rabbit ears. The man listens to... and here's every criticism ever offered, but it's a foolish ruling. Now, I don't know how the argument was made by the state of Florida. What I know is he's saying that minors have a First Amendment right that, and it's about HB3, which prevents children 13 and younger from creating accounts on platforms. It's not just creating an account, it's entering a contract. It doesn't matter that, well, there's no money exchange. It doesn't matter. It's a contract. You're agreeing to things. Of course, minors can't do that and shouldn't be allowed. And minors 14 and 15 in the state of Florida under HB3 have to get parental permission. That's the way it should be. You could argue up to 17. You could argue that. I think Judge Walker is once again overstepped his bounds, and I think he's once again going to be overruled. But we'll see. All right, that puts a cap on this hour, the second hour. Show number eight. The eighth of the 12 days of Preston. Here on the morning show with Preston Scott. More great interviews, more great segments coming up next. So don't you leave us? Our number three awaits.

Welcome to the third and final hour, at least for today, of the 12 days of Preston, day number eight, show number eight, month number eight, the month of August. And sadly, we talk about things that sometimes aren't very pleasant or easy to talk about. And in August, we had definitely one of those stories. The story, of course, is the shooting yesterday morning at... Annunciation Church and its school. They have a K through eighth grade school. They were holding a mass, a service at the start of the school year. And a 23-year-old transgender shot and killed two children, wounded 14 more children, 17 people overall just indiscriminately shot through the windows of the church while they were in their mass. It was full. I went ahead and looked at the two videos before YouTube pulled him down that he left behind. This is a sick young man. Obviously the typical... hand-wringing is going on attacking the gun, not the person. And let me tell you something. The angst is going to change now that they've identified the shooter and we know that he's a tranny. It's going to change because they can't possibly allow it to be the actions of the transgender. It has to be the gun's fault. And it has to be our intolerance of transgenderism. He was armed with a rifle, a shotgun, and a pistol. He had a knife. The videos, one was a ridiculous rambling with virtually no sound whatsoever of about 20 minutes. Just a few profanities uttered here and there and kind of almost a maniacal, sick, twisted thing. And then in the other video, he revealed basically a manifesto. His journal. I screenshotted it. I want to share some excerpts from it. We're not going to talk about... name him. He's not going to be famous. He shot himself. He ended his own life. But I think that there are things inside here that are very useful. It's why that manifesto of the transgender shooter in Nashville or, yeah, I think is it Nashville at Covenant School is important to know, to see. And that was thousands of pages. We're going to get to some bottom lines here, but stay with me on this. This is a very, very important story. And at some point, we're going to talk about why transgender are targeting Christians, churches. And we're going to talk about the mental illness that is transgenderism. And does that disqualify someone from owning and having a firearm?

When I watched the video where he doesn't say very much, if anything, he just flips through the pages of his journal. And I paused it, I screenshotted it, and then I went to the next page, paused it, screenshot it, and I pulled some relevant portions here. This world has too much pain to deal out that I can't cover it up with the good sides of life. I hope you all can move on and forget the pain I've caused. I have wanted this for so long. I am not well. I am not right. I'm a sad person haunted by these thoughts that do not go away. I know this is wrong, but I can't seem to stop myself. I'm severely depressed. and have been suicidal for years. Only recently have I lost all hope and decided to perform my final action against this world. Now, let me back up for a second and remind you of my contention. He's 23. This was time to go live on his YouTube page. right after or right as he was committing the violence. In one of the videos, he had a diagram of the church that he drew from hand. I don't know if his mom worked at that church or at a church, but his mom worked for a church. But he had planned this out. But I wanted you to note that he is of that generation that has never learned how to cope with failure. Rejection. with not having things go your way. Because that's life. And I have told you for two plus decades that we were raising a generation incapable of handling and coping with the difficulties and challenges that life offers. Jesus said it, in this world you will have trouble. You're going to have it. We live in a sinful fallen world. He couldn't handle it. He didn't have the mechanisms. And so he lashed out. Notice he has been dealing with suicidal thoughts for years. But instead of just killing himself, no, no. He did what anyone would do. He decided he'd try to kill some children because it was mostly kids in that room. Out of the 17 victims, 16 of them were children. Two are dead, 8 and 10. I think I'm dying of cancer. It's a tragic end. It's entirely self-inflicted. I did this to myself as I cannot control myself, and I've been destroying my body through vaping and other means. I do not want to recover. I want to go out on my own means. Unfortunately, due to my depression, anger, and twisted mind, I want to fulfill a final act that has been in the back of my mind for years. The irony of all of this writing is his final page. Pray for the victims and their families.

He sends an I love you. In one of his pages, he wrote about how mom, dad, it's not your fault. You loved me. You are awesome. Brothers and sisters, not your fault. This is going to ruin your life. I know that. Some of you, you're not, sorry, but I'm going to do this anyway. He knew exactly what the consequences of his actions were going to be. He didn't care. Didn't matter. So transgenderism, as I've been saying, is a mental illness. For some, it is just a social media contagion. For others, it is a full-blown mental illness, and it needs to be diagnosed as such, and people need help. I'm curious at what point will anyone have the bravery to suggest that maybe people fighting this should not have a firearm. Now, I will also point out it wouldn't have mattered. People that want to commit an act of violence will find the means to do it, whether it's legal or not. This is the 12 Days of Preston. When we come back, our visit from the month of August with Dr. Bob McClure, the James Madison Institute, one of the good friends of our show and a very bright guy. All right, back with more of the morning show with Preston Scott. And day number eight of the 12 Days of Preston.

Welcome back to the 12 days of Preston. On the morning show with Preston Scott, show number eight, day number eight, month number eight, the month of August. And here's our visit with Dr. Bob McClure. He is the president and the head of the James Madison Institute, affectionately known as JMI. Let's talk about something that is going to impact every single person listening to us. Whether they own property or they rent, property taxes impacts everyone. The governor has taken a position that, frankly, I've advocated for 23 years on this show. Find a way to do away with property tax so people can own their own home. own their own property, not have to worry about losing it. In principle, before we get to the specifics of that idea and what it might mean and how it might look, your thoughts on the notion. I love the idea. I think it's important. I think you have been advocating it for 20 plus years. Marco Rubio, when he was Speaker of the House, when he was a young buck, advocated the same thing. Just nobody listened to him. Do you ever really own your house if you're paying government rent, right? And so I love the idea. I would love to get rid of property taxes for all the reasons that the flat tax, user tax crowd loves getting rid of the income tax. The reality is how are we going to do this? Because it's a very large state, local municipalities. The Floridians have said, They want to get rid of property taxes or at least reduce them significantly, but they don't want to lose services. I get it. You and I know most of the time, particularly the local level, but really at any governmental level, it's rarely, almost never about revenue. It's almost always about spending. So figuring out the spending needs at the local level, eliminating property taxes, and then what do you do instead? So there are a lot of options on the table. So I like the idea. I think we need to do it. But we also live in a state, Preston, where the largest county in Florida is larger than many states. Miami-Dade County has almost 3 million. It's got like 2.8 million people. The smallest county in Florida is Liberty County. It's got 11,000 people in the entire county. There's a big difference. Right. So these rural counties also have to be accounted for, no pun intended. And so. Figuring that out is going to be an issue. Now, you know, this is a self-served service announcement. JMI is going to come out in the fall for committee weeks with a huge study on what the options are, what we can do as a state, and why we, we're not going to say do this one thing. We're going to say here are the options. Pros and cons. Yes, but let's move towards getting rid of property taxes. I applaud the governor for beginning the discussion.

Blazing Golea gets named CFO to replace Jimmy Petronus. A popular pick, I think you would say. Yeah, I like Blaze. Yeah. And one of the first things he does is he says, we're going to go around the cities and we're going to look into how everyone's spending the property tax money, the tax dollars that are coming in in each community. In general, is your thought that this is being done as a precursor to the discussion on property tax elimination? Well, I think it's good government for one thing, but I also know that this governor and Blaze are very interested in where the issues are at the local level. In a state like Florida, this is not always true in every other state, but in a state like Florida. We at the state level are very good about spending less money per se. I say very good. It's a government. It's the local municipalities where the real spending and the phantom tax increases are taking place. So for example, a Collier County, a Palm Beach County, some of those larger counties. Their budgets double for no reason other than property values increase about every six or seven years. They don't cut spending. There's no change there. There's no tax reduction. There's none of that. We know here in Tallahassee in Leon County how the local government uses the utility, right, to fund projects at the local level. Yeah. So what Blaze, I think, is going to do is to go in, I don't know how many and I don't know where, go into some of these local municipalities and say, how are you spending this money? And if we're spending this money here, here and here, We can certainly cut property taxes. Preston, you and I know that most government issues are about, not about revenue. They're about spending. Sure. And it's almost always true. God bless Rocky Hannah, but he's wrong about the financial situation for the county. And he backed off of it, if you notice. It's almost always about spending, not revenue. So Blaze, and I'm not speaking for Blaze, but my guess is the governor wants to have them open their books and see where the money's going and then say, here's why we can cut property taxes. And there are a lot of ways to do it. You can raise the homestead exemption.

You can eliminate it and raise a sales tax. I'm not advocating for that because there are a lot of issues with that. You can do like a levy cap where you essentially say to local governments, here's how much you can spend. You can spend it on whatever you want. You can spend it on pride parades. You can spend it on libraries. You can spend it on children's services, whatever you want. But here it's called a levy cap. This is how much you can spend. And then you index it to inflation and population growth. Okay. That way, you know, a lot of this preemption, and I understand at the local level, people get very frustrated about preemption at the state level, preempting a lot of local level stuff. So put a levy cap on it and say, here's what you can spend. I don't care how you spend it. You spend it any way you want, but you spend that money and then you index it to inflation with population growth. The problem is the rural counties. You know, like we said, you've got a Miami-Dade County of 2.8 million. Inflation plus population is going to mean growth. Liberty County has 11,000 people. Madison counties, you know, in the low 20s. You and I know we can drive 20 minutes outside of Tallahassee and you're in these rural counties. So. There are allowances that have to be made for those. I don't have an answer for you on that yet. But we can't just say eliminate all property taxes. Good luck, Madison County. Good luck, Liberty County. Is it fair to say that what ought to be taken completely off the table is the idea of lowering the sales tax? Because to me... You know, I appreciate let's have a bunch of ideas on the table and make them all better. But the idea of lowering the sales tax when we have so many visitors, not just foreign visitors, that use our infrastructure, that use our roads, but people that visit from across the country, that... paid the freight for things that we do here in Florida. That just seemed silly to me. Yeah. And the number that, you know, when Speaker Perez was talking about it, you're talking about, I think the number he proposed ended up saving Florida. He's like $300 a year. I mean, we're not, I mean, property taxes, people are paying thousands of dollars, right? So the sales tax should absolutely. We need to be careful about that. We have 140 million tourists that come to Florida. That's the entire country of Germany every year coming to Florida using our services, buying our gas, paying our sales tax, and then they go home. And so we need to be very careful about reducing the sales tax. Why not let other people pay? So what does your gut tell you is going to be the best possible solution for moving forward?

I don't, it's going to be interesting because the dynamic is, obviously, this is no secret, the House Speaker and the governor really had a difficult time getting along in the last legislative session, right? We have a Senate president who seems to be on board with looking at this property tax. You know, they were supposed to have the road show. The legislative road show was supposed to be all summer and never happened. No. And then they were going to start in September. And now they're going to just stay in Tallahassee, apparently. And if anybody cares around the rest of the state, you got to come to Tallahassee, which you and I know how hard it is to get here. And so I don't know what's going to happen. What we're going to do at the James Madison Institute is we're going to say here are your options. Okay, here's what you can do. I think the cleanest thing to do is the levy caps for local government, index to inflation and population growth because it allows you just spend the money the way you want. Where do they get the money to spend? Well, that's that's the question. The governor, if I understand him right, has said, um, Well, you can do a number of things. You can raise the sales tax. The state, and I don't know, don't quote me on this, but I think the governor has said that there is like a, this is my word, not his, like they would float revenue to some local counties at the state level. I think he said that. The smaller counties that don't generate revenue that don't have a population base to support sales. Right, right. That's an option on the table. And so it's kind of like things have to, it's like a compass. You know, if we're going to do this, this is very different. We have to have the data first, but you're at some point, the compass has to align to where you are in the forest, right? You have to, and at some point, you're going to have to have. This notion that if you cut property taxes, then those local municipalities, and I'm not talking about rural counties, but the ones who have a lot of money, which are a lot of counties, they're going to have to then align their revenues or their spending to the new reality. Well, the reality is we have the news, which is next here on the 12 Days of Preston, on the morning show with Preston Scott.

Welcome back to the 12 Days of Preston. This is show number eight, which is the month of August. And we pulled into the program Hans von Spakovsky. He is a constitutional law expert. He follows the Supreme Court of the United States, and we talked about the spring session. I think it was a very good session for Americans who believe in the rule of law and the Constitution. And frankly, folks who want to protect their children. I mean, look, two of the most important decisions that came out were the Scrimetti case, which was out of Tennessee, in which the Supreme Court said that a law that Tennessee passed along with, I think. almost two dozen other states saying you cannot surgically mutilate and do abusive drug treatments to children to supposedly change their gender, that that was perfectly acceptable and within the power of state government. That's a decision protecting kids all over the country. And then the other one, similar one. was a decision out of Maryland in which probably the most liberal school board in the country. had integrated basically transsexual and gay propaganda into the entire curriculum and told the parents, you can't opt your kids out of this. We're not going to allow that. And the Supreme Court said, you cannot do that. You cannot basically. infused sexual propaganda into kids. And we're not talking about high school kids. They were doing this all the way down to pre-kindergarten kids. But I think those two, in terms of protecting Americans and the family, were probably the two most important decisions they made. One of the things that we've paid attention to on this show is obviously district court rulings that created nationwide injunctions. But the Supreme Court ruled on it, yet we still see judges saying, ah, that doesn't apply to me. Well, the mistake that they made, and it was a huge mistake, and it was pointed out by Samuel Alito. You know, the Supreme Court came out 6 to 3 and said, universal or nationwide injunctions are outside the authority. of federal courts. There's one exception of that. And Samuel Alito said, well, we've ruled correctly, but we have failed to deal with that exception. The exception is if a judge determines that a particular group of plaintiffs are a class, that they represent an entire class of people across the United States. Now, there are very strict rules.

that a judge is supposed to follow before he does that. But because the Supreme Court didn't talk about that, didn't emphasize that. What happened was that all these same judges now have been saying, oh, okay, well, all I have to do is certify the plaintiffs as a class, and boom, I can issue a nationwide injunction, and they've been doing it willy-nilly. without actually following the rules. That's not going to stop until the Supreme Court takes up this matter again. Aren't we treading on dangerous territory when courts seem to be just ignoring what the high court says? And that's what it appears. Oh, absolutely. Yes. What we're seeing is a judicial rebellion and judicial tyranny. The best example of that is the judge in Massachusetts. who recently after the big beautiful bill was passed by Congress, signed in law by the president, and you have a federal judge in Massachusetts saying, oh, no, you can't reduce or cut off money to plan parenthood. You can't do that. Mr. President, you have to keep funding them. Congress, no, you have to keep providing them with money. How in the world is a federal district court judge think that she's got the power to override the constitutional authority of Congress to decide how to spend taxpayer money? Now, fortunately, the Supreme Court recently stepped in and issued an emergency stay or suspension of her order. But the fact that you have a judge like that. in the federal court system is illustrative of the problem we have, unfortunately, throughout the judiciary branch. And, President, you know the reason for this. The reason for this is that Joe Biden, and this is a Biden judge. Joe Biden appointed to the federal judiciary, and Chuck Schumer got confirmed the most left-wing radical ideologues that have ever sat on the federal bench in the entire history of the United States. So what's the country to do about it? Well, the only thing that can be done is to make sure that... Donald Trump gets his judges confirmed and in particular gets them confirmed into open court of appeals slot so they can frankly overrule these nutty judges and we have got to maintain the majority on the Supreme Court. And listen, another great example of this is just within the last day or two.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, that's a great court. They cover Texas just throughout a absolutely nutty decision, again, by a federal district court judge who had said that the law that Texas passed, which said, hey, if you're going to vote by absentee ballot. You've got to provide a copy of either your ID or your driver's license number or the last four days. He said, oh, you can't do that. That's discriminatory. Well, fortunately, the Fifth Circuit just threw that out and said, of course, it's not discriminatory. And it's a way for the state to make sure that the person getting the ID is actually the registered voter. Hans Watskowski with us from the Heritage Foundation. We're talking about the U.S. Supreme Court and the federal court system in general, Hans, is there any provision that, and I'm going to put this in really simplistic terms, when a district judge is overruled multiple times that their judicial qualifications then come into question and they can be removed from the court? Unfortunately not. The only way a federal judge can be removed is if he is impeached. And in the entire history of the U.S., about a dozen federal judges have been impeached, but almost always it's been for things like... bribery and really serious crimes. Just being a bad judge who issues bad decisions, unfortunately, is not sufficient to get you impeached. What are a couple of cases that you think are very consequential in the upcoming fall winter term? Are they dealing with men and women's spaces? Are they dealing with elections? What are we talking about? Yeah, I think probably the most important cases that the Supreme Court accepted were cases out of Idaho and out of West Virginia. Those states, just like a lot of states, passed laws saying that if you're a biological male, no matter what kind of drugs you're taking, you cannot participate in women's sports. And unfortunately, you had federal courts. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, which is two of the worst courts of appeal in the country. Sure. Say that those laws violate equal protection. So hopefully the Supreme Court is going to come out and uphold states not allowing biological men and women from participating in women's sports. Very, very important case. There's also a big case coming up on... redistricting. As you know, that's a big issue right now in Texas. And they have a case out of Louisiana in which white voters actually sued and said when the state legislature drew up a second black district, a district in which black voters are majority.

They impermissibly and unconstitutionally used race. We've still got a couple special features to come, so don't leave us here on the 12 Days of Preston. We love to do some special features on the program. We started the program today with Pause for Thought. Welcome back to the 12 Days of Preston. This is Phoenix from Esposito's Garden Center, and we talked about plants. I was fascinated when I considered the topic of things that people can plant and grow in their yards that are actually useful for them. What is that called, that type of gardening? Really, it's, you know, the practice of herbalism, studying and practicing the medicinal properties of plants and plant materials such as the leaves, flowers, fruit, seed, bark roots, rhizomes. What is the most important, fundamental thing that a garden needs to have in order to pull this off? Really, you want to focus on soil and water anytime you're gardening just to make sure that the garden thrives. You know, and having certain plants to really help, for instance, I love having Yarrow in the garden. Latin name Achilleamillifolium. It's a perennial. It comes up every year. It has diaphoretic properties. It promotes sweating to help reduce fevers and eliminate toxins. You know, it's analgesic, it can stop pain and hemostatic, and it stops blood flow. So a plant like that is not only just beautiful in flowers every year, but it has so many benefits to it as well. People have yards that have different exposures. Some people grow stuff in their front yards, some in the back based on the orientation of their yard. Is there a specific orientation in North Florida along the panhandle that you need to have to be successful? Actually, we have really great soil here and a lot of plant varieties that are unique to our area because of the soil and the rains that we get and the tree canopy. So I think we actually have a great area for gardening and even some of the wild weeds that grow in our area, like the violets and the chickweed, and even pesty weeds like cleavers, you know, are actually medicinally. beneficial and have a history and of being beneficial medicinally. How many plants, I mean, if someone wanted to really go into this. How many plants are there to choose from? And are you picking plants based on a variety of different things that might come up in one's, you know, just annual living their life? They'll need this and they'll need that. They'll need a little aloe for a sunburn. You know, those are the go-toes that people like me think about. But how big of a field is this?

I mean, this is, we're talking conventional medicine really stems from the healing modalities of herbalism. You know, so willow bark, for instance, has a lot of the same properties that aspirin has. Or, you know, so there's so much benefit to all the different plants that you can grow. And there's such a wide variety, but you can do this in a small space. Even if you just had a balcony or a window with sunlight, you can grow some particular plant. A lot of things in the Lamy ACA family, which is the mint family, have a lot of healing properties, whether it's rosemary, basal, and you can get many varieties of basal alone. So there's... The range is so wide, and we're so limited to what we even know or even purchase at the grocery store, and there's so much out there. Even at an Asian market, you can go and get sweet potato leaves and eat the leaves, but we don't think about that when we're buying sweet potatoes at a conventional grocery store. No, not at all. How much is the minimum amount of sunlight that you need to pull this off to be able to grow most? Obviously, there may be some exceptions. And conversely, is there too much sunlight because we do get some heat? We definitely get heat, and, you know, our summers just seem hotter and hotter. So there are definitely things that grow, but sometimes I'll even just grow a field of flowers like Xenias or Mexican sunflowers and welcome the pollinators to my garden, the honeybees and the butterflies, you know, and things that thrive in this heat, that you're still... you know, getting that beneficial. And there's, you know, many tropicals that grow in our area that grow in other zones that we can bring up here. For instance, I have butterfly pea flower and also cassava yucca growing in my garden. And I didn't think after our snow this year, but it really, it came back even stronger. And I found that some of the plants came back stronger after the snow. If someone's listening and they're thinking of starting a garden like this, what's the minimum amount of sunlight exposure they need to have? Well, you can have partial sun, full sun. It really varies on the plant because even sweet potatoes like I was talking about, they grow in partial sun. They won't thrive in as much in full sun. So it really just depends on the plant variety. Let's try to target some optimum health naturally. And joining me, Dr. David Hartz, Dr. Hartz, the last time we visited, we started talking about chronic fatigue. People just... walking around constantly feeling tired and exhausted. What causes it? Well, there is a couple different things. I kind of put this in two different categories, Preston. It's kind of a simple fatigue or kind of transfer fatigue usually lasts less than a couple months or a month or even weeks. It comes and goes, but it's not something that lasts, you know, like over six months. And that's usually things that are in our everyday lifestyle. A lot of it can be poor sleep. It's amazing if you get a lot of the fatigue in the afternoon, like 2, 3 o'clock, and you start feeling very, very tired then, and then you can kind of come out of it later in the day or in the evening. That usually is sleep-related, and you're not getting enough ream sleep.

That's something that we can talk about another time, but there's several things you can do that increase sleep by increasing dark room, not eating within two or three hours before you go to sleep, things like that. It's usually more sleep related. Of course, good old diet. We talked about this for years and years. If you eat a lot of junk food, a lot of carbs, it can affect your energy. There's no doubt about it. Even individual substance that you're eating or drinking or... or using, sometimes can do that. Too much alcohol, too much, you know, THC, all these sort of things that are going on, they can do that. But then there's in this condition, and also physical activity, I mention that, because if you're really inactive, sometimes exerting a little bit of energy will give you more energy. It's amazing. And then we get to chronic fatigue. This is something that's much more serious. They call it myologic encephalomyelitis, which say that three times fast, right? But anyway, it's more of a medical condition that's more severe. It's when fatigue just doesn't go away when you, no matter what you're doing, it's really affecting your whole lifestyle. I mean, I had patients that basically are in the bed and get out of bed only three hours a day. This is obviously a more serious condition. And what can cause this can be like if you've had a history of any chronic infections, of course, almost all of America has had a history of COVID infection, so it could, you know, be a long COVID syndrome also. But Epstein, Barr, any of the type of chronic viral infections that just, or even bacterial infections that, you know, C. diff or anything else that you've had. And then since then you just haven't come around. Many times this can be just a chronic infection in your body where you don't have the severe manifestations of the infection, but you have a chronic infection. And it just wears on your body and drains all the energy out of you. And this is something that's very, very common and also can contribute to arthritic pain, many other types of symptoms also. And it also contributed to depression. things like that too. So the bottom line comes down to if you're having fatigue and it's transient and small, try to clean up your lifestyle, work on sleep, do these things to see how you respond. If it gets worse or if it doesn't respond, then you need to see your primary current. And there are medical conditions like diabetes and heart disease and all kinds of other types of kidney dysfunction and so forth. Medical conditions that can affect your overall health, those need to be eliminated. And then once those are eliminated, and if they come back with a good bill of health and yet you still feel terrible, the monster drink is not the answer. Yeah. Yeah. You probably need to go see maybe an integrator for a functional medicine practitioner, let them look at you a little bit differently, look for some of these other underlying causes, and see if you can find out what's going on and just get better. There's definitely help for this. You've got to search it out, though. I love the special features we do on the program. They just, I think they make a difference in your life. It's probably why you listen. All these little things that we do to try to make you better informed, feel better, have a better environment in your yard. I mean, come on. Hey, we're going to do it all again tomorrow. Day number nine of the 12 days of Preston. Friends, thanks for joining me. Have a great day.