Twelve Day's of Preston: January

Welcome, friends, and so we begin. A look back. Can you believe it? Already? At another year. It's the 12 days of Preston. That's right. And if you're brand new to this little adventure, when we take time away for the holidays, we don't want to leave you. In the hands of shabby, faulty programming, nay, nay. And so we have spent the year producing for you our gift. It's a look back at the year. And the news, as we talked about it on the morning show with Preston Scott, in order. And we simply call it the 12 days of Preston. And so this is show number one, which means we are covering the month of January 2025. What a month. Oh, my goodness. And we'll reset all of that in the coming three hours. But just so you know. We don't deviate from what we do here on the program. And so we start each and every show with some scripture. Look back in history, a few little odds and ends, and then we'll start unpacking the month of January for our first of the 12 days of Preston. But let's get to the season. We will, by the way, be on the air for Christmas. And so we're going to take you all the way through the rest of the year and into the new year until we're back doing live shows. But this is Thursday, December the 18th, more on that in mere moments. But, you know, Jesus is a person of history. His importance is marked by the simple division of time, right? I mean, if nothing else. The world determined that the birth of Christ was significant enough that we started counting years differently. We, instead of counting down, we started counting up. And so this is the year 2025 of our Lord because we started counting roughly based on the birth of Christ. Christ, a person of history. It says in Luke 135, that the Holy One who is to be born will be called the Son of God. Jesus wasn't born from this world. He was born into it. And just as God loves to do, God brought redemption through his son, through the birth of a woman who was a virgin. Jesus was conceived by the Holy Spirit, fully man, fully God. Now, for some of you, you're struggling with that. That's like really, really difficult for you to get your arms around. Well, you'll hear me talk about this from time to time in the course of a year, and I'm sure you've heard me mention this from time to time. Faith is something that every single person lives with.

I once saw an apologist doing a open forum at a major university. And if I'm not mistaken, it was the University of Florida. And this campus preacher is just preaching, and he's taking questions from people coming up. And he had one antagonistic young man. And I was fascinated because this guy, this street preacher, took the exact angle I'm about to describe to you. He talked about the number of times in the course of one's day, let alone your life, that you live by faith. When you're in school, he said to this young man, you have faith that you're going to be graded fairly. You have faith that your professors are teaching you faithfully. And honestly, and for the benefit of your knowledge. He said, when you drive through an intersection, you have faith. Now, that rung very familiar because I've used these same arguments for years. But that one in particular, you have faith that others are going to stop or follow the laws as revealed through the lights on the stoplight or at the stop sign. You have faith that your brakes are going to work. You have faith that the guy cooking your food didn't spit in it. You have faith all day long for any number of things. So it's not a question of whether we have faith. It's a question of where we place our faith. And the best thing that I can do for you as we approach Christmas this year is for those of you that might be doubting, maybe lacking the, quote, faith to embrace and believe the truth of Christ. is ask yourself, what do you place your faith in? Because once you strip it all away and you recognize the amount of faith that you live with every single day, you begin to realize that you are a person of great faith. Now all we're asking is, what do you believe in? And I submit that believing in the historical person of Jesus who evidenced his divine nature in front of hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands of witnesses, look, you take it by faith that Abraham Lincoln exists because there's a written record. You weren't there. That's how I look at the Bible. All right. Let's take a look at this date in history. The 18th of December. 1777, Americans observed the first national day of Thanksgiving. Interesting. To celebrate the surrender of the British at Saratoga, two months earlier. In 1787, New Jersey becomes the third state to ratify the Constitution. In 1813, during the war, during the war, sorry, of 1812, the British capture Fort Niagara. 1932 in Chicago, the Bears defeat the Portsmouth Spartans 9-0 in the first ever NFL playoff game. Somehow they figured out a way to play that thing indoors because of a blizzard. Where did they find a space big enough in 1932? And in 1943, the 99th Fighter Squadron.

A unit of the Tuskegee Airmen flies almost every day during December 1943 in support of Allied bombers based in Italy. And, oh, by the way, achieved great success. All right, today is National Twin Day. Not a lot of people celebrating that by comparison, I suppose. And today is answer the telephone like Buddy the Elf Day. I have yet to watch all of Elf in its entirety. So I'm not quite sure what to say with that one. But I guess it's... There you go. It's national answer the phone like Buddy the Elth Day. So you have... Did I say Elf? Elf. You have fun with that. All right. When we come back, we begin to unpack the month of January as our year in review begins the 12 days of Preston here on the morning show with Preston Scott. So don't leave us. Some of your favorite segments and interviews, even calls, are coming up this morning. And it's going to be a lot of fun sharing the year in review over these next 12 days. So settle in and enjoy the 12 days of Preston.

Welcome back to the 12 Days of Preston. I'm Preston, Scott. It's the morning show with Preston Scott. You know all that. And Jose and I are taking some time away from the program. As a result, the 12 days. We're recapping the month of January. We're fortunate. We've made friends with some unbelievable guests over the tenure of this show, which is now 23 and a half years. More than that, actually. One of them is the congressional representative for Florida and its third congressional district. And she is one of the best that's out there. Joining us on the program, as promised, U.S. Congresswoman Kat Cammack from Florida's third congressional district. Hope you had a wonderful holiday, Kat. How are you? Hey, friend, we had a great holiday, very low-key. I actually got to read all the books that I've been meaning to read. So it was great. How about you? Well, let's get to things that really matter. How late do Christmas decorations stay up in your home? Okay, this is how, this is pretty embarrassing. It used to be that we, I like to have a Christmas tree in every room, and so I've been working up to that, and it used to be that we would end up leaving a tree in a room for months and months and months. It got so crazy busy that this year, my husband got one of the trees out, up, and it never even got decorated. That's how bad it was. Oh, oh. Yeah, so I didn't even decorate the tree. And it came down immediately after Christmas because it was just embarrassing. Gotcha. So you need like one of those pop-up trees. Yeah, yeah. After the horrific year in Washington that we had, I got home and I took one look at the tree and I was like, I don't have it in me. I just wanted to put up. Since we're talking about depressing things. All right, tell me, give me the scoop on the vote for the Speaker of the House. What were your thoughts on Mike Johnson as Speaker and continuing forward? Well, listen, I mean, I've seen this song and dance on, you know, speaker drama going back to 2013, not as a member of Congress, but I was Ted Yoho's chief of staff. And I remember when we took on Boehner and we formed the Freedom Caucus and we did all these things. And the thing that I have learned over the years of trying to take speakers out and whatnot, especially in a majority of two, which is what we have. It's virtually impossible to get all of the A-type personalities on board because what it turns into is not a fight for the principles of certain policies and different positions. What it ends up turning into is people making demands for offices and capitals and an increased budget for staff and all kinds of ridiculous things. And no surprise.

That's what this turned into with Mike Johnson. And keep in mind, just a few months ago... No one stood up and voted against Mike Johnson in the closed vote, the closed door session where we make the decision of who we're picking for whip and majority leader and all that stuff. It was unanimous. But when there's a TV camera involved, all of a sudden people stand up and they're like, oh, I have something to say about this. Now, they'll say that it's because of this policy or that. But what they won't say is what they're doing behind closed doors. And there were demands made by people. for office space in the Capitol, for money, for staff, for committee assignments, for gavels of committees, and it doesn't work that way. So when it becomes a personal thing for yourself, and it's not about the mission, it's not about the country, that's when I get really irritated. And so do I think Mike Johnson is perfect? Absolutely not. No one is. But I think given the circumstances of what we're dealing with, he was the best choice. And we don't have any time to waste. We have very little time and a ton of work if we're going to do the America First agenda the way it needs to be done. So I thought it was important that we get it done on the first ballot. Both Nancy Mason and I, we worked. to get this done on the first ballot, working with the parliamentarian Nancy called Trump. And we worked with the holdouts in the speaker to try to get to a place that was okay. But in the end, it worked out. But, you know, it really doesn't matter who the speaker is ultimately because every single member of Congress at this point is like a senator and can stop a bill, can do whatever. At this point, the speaker is just trying to keep the... wheels on the bus, for lack of a better say. Kat, you mentioned the America First agenda. There's so much that we all agree on. We all voted for. We're all excited about. I think we're seeing north and south of the border, the chain reaction from Donald Trump's election. However, I have to ask you, because we've talked about it before, Donald Trump wants the debt ceiling lifted. Give me your thoughts on all of that because that is the one weakness in Donald Trump's agenda is not dealing with the debt. Well, and Preston, you know, I can't remember what I had for breakfast yesterday, so I can't remember if we talked. Since that vote right before Christmas on the debt ceiling, I was one of 38 members who voted against the package to suspend the debt ceiling indefinitely. And I took a lot of heat from that. I mean, heck, we got death threats from that. And people were saying, you're not supporting the Trump agenda. Well, the Trump agenda is the America First agenda. And America First means that we have to be strong.

militarily, we have to be strong economically. And if you raise the debt limit, what you're telling me is that you're not interested in cutting spending because never once in the history of the world, has anyone ever said, well, in order to cut the debt, we have to increase the debt limit. It doesn't work that way. And so what we had proposed was, listen, we know that there's going to need to be some flexibility here. But a blank check is not acceptable. And I don't care if you're a Republican or Democrat. I'm a fiscal conservative, a constitutional conservative. And I'm not going to watch as our country gets... spent into oblivion. And so we met with JD Vance the next morning after the vote with the speaker. And we said, listen, how about we start doing for every dollar that you want this increase? We do 2.5 in mandatory savings. Because it's the mandatory spending that is driving our debt. The interest on our debt has now outpaced what we spend on defense, which is insane. Yep. And we've crossed that tipping point where... No nation has ever been able to come back from this level of financial chaos ever. And so if we're not serious about cutting spending and reducing the size and scope of government, we're not going to be able to get the America First agenda done. And so we're continuing to have those conversations. We're continuing to get to a place where President Trump will feel comfortable as well as members of the House. But it's ridiculous to think that. If you give a blank check that we're going to be able to get these things done, it's just like putting a fentanyl lace band-aid on an open wound. It'll make you feel good for a little bit, but then you're ultimately going to kill the patient, or is OD in that case. Kat, I've tried to explain to our audience over the years that this is no different than you and I, when we max out our credit cards, and we go to the bank, and the bank says, I'm sorry. You have to cut the amount you're spending every month. We can't lend you any more credit. The difference is the government doesn't ask to borrow money from us. It just takes more money. Exactly. And it's common sense. The more money that the government is spending, it's not monopoly money. This is our money. Yep. Every single dollar that the government spends, it's coming out of your pocket. And so if you're truly for an America First policy and you want to reduce taxes and you want to reduce spending, you have to cut the debt. And lifting the debt ceiling does not cut the debt. And when you get in the room, and I'll tell you, you know, this is some behind the scenes, you know, information that was never reported.

You know, we sat there and we pulled out a sheet of paper and we listed out $5 trillion worth of things that can be cut. And we looked around the room and J.D.E. JD Vance was sitting next to me and we all kind of looked at each other and we said, there's going to be a lot of pissed off people. And we all kind of just gave ourselves a glance and each other glanced. And we said, yeah, but this is what we have to do. You know, I have to lose weight. Does that mean that I want to, you know, stop eating pizza? No, but I'm going to have to, right? Like, you have to make the difficult decisions. And if everybody's mad, then that might be an okay thing. Because if everybody's happy, then the person or the entity or the organization, or in this case, the country that's losing is America. Everybody's going to have to give a little something. And I'm talking like these different organizations and associates. We can cut $5 trillion. We can do it and really drain the swamp and take on the regulatory regime. But it's going to be difficult. It's going to be tough. And people are going to have to really think critically about the long-term goal here of getting our country back on track. Kat, I love visiting with you. You just make my day a better day. And I appreciate knowing that you're in Congress fighting for us. And you have a great television hit and just find a way to sneak my name into it.

It's warm. It's freezing up here, but I know it's cold back home in Florida. It is. You'd be awesome, as always. Thank you so much. Thank you. Talk soon. I don't know if she got my name in that Fox hit, but that's all right. Newest Congresswoman Kat Cammack. All right, let's do some news and weather, et cetera, and come back with more. It's day one of the 12 days of Preston on the morning show with Preston Scott. Welcome back to the 12 days of Preston. This is day number one, the month of January. I'm Preston Scott in lieu of the morning show. We're taking a look at the year of 2025 in review. This is my January visit with the president of the James Madison Institute, Dr. Bob McClure. And I had been counting the number of days this country was held hostage by the O'Brien administration. Now I'm counting it down. We're down to 12 days before the new administration. What are you most? excited about with the new administration? And Dr. McClure, what are you most apprehensive about? Well, first, Preston, and I want to wish all your listeners a happy new year in, you know, wonderful 2025 as well. What is disheartening to me is what I'm seeing from the Biden administration on the way out the door, whether it's the pardons. the releases of the Guantanamo Bay hostage terrorists, what they've done with oil and gas. And the list goes on in terms of what I'm saying. It is very disheartening. It's un-American. I'll say it. It is horrific. People have compared it to, you know, the crazy ex-girlfriend who's... you know, going to burn everything down on the way out the door. But I think it's worse than that. And while I think the new administration can change a lot of that of what it's been done, it's going to take time. It just handstrings them and slows them down. Having said that, what I'm most excited about is that we have adults back in charge. We have a president, whether you love or hate his tweets or his personality, who knows where he's going. He ran on very clear, very specific, common sense policies. And I love that. He didn't run on platitudes. And we have adults back in charge, and they are not waiting and they're not messing around. And so I'm very excited about where we're going to go over the next two years. The president coming in, Donald Trump, obviously he has benefited by the fact he's been there before and I suspect he's learned some lessons. What is your sense, Dr. McClure? Because you are as well connected inside the state of Florida because that's your focus. JMI is all about Florida focus. What is your sense of what these first 100 days of the Trump administration and its impact by selecting certain members of Florida's Congressional Caucus or, you know, some of Florida's best to serve in his administration? What will the impact of those 100 days be on the Sunshine State?

You know what I think is fascinating is that, and I was having this conversation with someone yesterday, Florida has a 30-year history, and you and I've talked about this, starting, I would say, let's just say with Jeb, of movement conservatism. I mean, like deep thinkers on tax and regulations, on school choice, on all of these different issues, unafraid movement conservatism, which is very different than... Mitch McConnell's Republican Party. You know, Mitt Romney's Republican Party is very different. And I scream it from the rooftops. We have this brain trust that has been... made strong in an iron-sharpens iron kind of way here in the furnace of Florida, whether it's Susie Wiles or James Blair, who's a new policy director, who many of your listeners won't know under Trump, whether it's Pam Bondi, Marco Rubio, National Security with Walt. The list goes on. They're going to all move to D.C., and they're going to work to make... Washington more like Florida. Now, it's different. It's going to be harder. There are a lot of reasons we can talk about. But what I'm most excited about, Preston, is that... The bitch here in Florida is so strong. There are so many strong movement conservatives, starting with our governor, but Byron Donalds's, and the list goes on, who are not going to be in this new administration, who are still here to make Florida the shining city on the hill to continue our success so that. Because what I'm seeing, Preston, is people don't care anymore. I mean, you're seeing people on CNN coming out and acknowledging, you know, Trump is going to be a success if he hasn't been already. You've seen the New York Times, acknowledge some of some things. And people don't care anymore. They're not afraid. Now that he's won, now he's won the popular vote. And they're looking to Florida for guidance on policy, these other states, the other 49 states. The reality is that all of this brain trust that has been refined by fire is going to D.C. And it's not leading a vacuum here in Florida. There's tremendous conservative leadership still here in this state. And the other 49 states have been following Florida's lead for so long. That's going to continue. And now we have an opportunity to impact for the generationally, Washington, D.C. with these same kind of, quote, free state of Florida values. You've been through this legislative session thing for years.

The Republicans have controlled the legislature for quite a while now, and they kind of have it down to a science, the way that they move leadership in and out. Is there much of a break-in time for the new leaders in the House and the Senate? Not really for the leadership. The break-in time comes with the newly elected officials. So they have supermajorities in both the House and the Senate, but you have a fair amount, I don't know the exact number, of newly elected House members and newly elected Senate members. So there is a training and a learning for those men and women to understand how the process works, how it's going to work. You know, those freshman classes, particularly in the House or are electing their speaker because we have term limit, even though that speaker is years away from becoming speaker. So that can be a little dicey sometimes. One of the things that we do at JMI, and we're doing it actually next week, is we are doing a legislative process where we're bringing in some of these new legislators and teaching them. Not the ropes of the process. That's the role of leadership. But what is federalism? Why do states matter? How can we push back against the dictats of D.C. and things like that. So that's where the education comes with a lot of these newer members. Because we have term limits, eight years, Preston, there's a lot of turnover on a regular basis. Well, and that leads me to my next question. And only someone in your position can really answer it, Bob. How does Florida or how has Florida protected itself from what is infected Washington, D.C.? Obviously, they've got a year-round legislature, and I can't stand it. Florida does a part-time legislature. But how do they keep it so the bureaucrats don't end up running everything? As you said, you've got new members. You've got to break in, but you still have the people that aren't elected that do have a lot of sway. It takes time. I was having this conversation with someone yesterday in Naples, and they were saying, you know, it's four years enough for Trump. Well, Washington is different from Florida, and for two reasons. One, the bureaucracy is massive and more firmly entrenched, but secondly, there are no term limits. And I really believe that those term limits really matter with fresh blood and new energy and an attitude. I think term limits... You know, people come in. I had a legislator tell me he was the former Speaker of the House. He said, you know, Bob, my first four years in office, I looked at every bill. I read every jot and tittle. I was prepped for every committee meeting by the fifth year, 60, or seventh year. What does staff tell me to do? What should I be doing? And that's what happens. And you think about that writ large in D.C. So term limits in Florida bring in fresh blood, new energy, new ideas. But we have also pressed and been blessed with tremendous...

Again, I go back starting with Jeb, but with Rick Scott, Ron DeSantis, Danny Webster. I mean, all these old names of people, John McKay, Paul Renner, but later, you know, movement conservatives who are unafraid. And what we have found is that... Good policy, and I've said this on your show before, is good politics. It takes time. But once you implement good policy and politicians realize nobody died, nobody got shot, and you can get reelected, it just becomes a flywheel with momentum. And now that's what we have here in Florida is this conservative movement in the most diverse state in the country. Now remember, any of our interviews. that we share on the 12 days. Some of them are cut down a little bit, edited for time. You can listen to all of them. Just go to the I Heart Radio app and check out the Conversations podcast. You'll find our special guests right there. Dr. Bob McClure of the James Madison Institute. We've got so much to cover. It was an interesting start of the year, and we're capturing it all here on day one of the 12 Days of Preston. On the morning show with Preston Scott. I'm

All right, welcome back, the 12 days of Preston. Let's get right to it and continue our look at the month of January in the year 2025. Joining us is Peter Murphy. Peter is a senior fellow at the committee for a constructed tomorrow. It's known as CFAC. We've had guests from CFAC over the years with us to Washington, D.C. based organization in support of free market, technological solutions to energy and environmental challenges. Peter, welcome to the show. How are you, sir? Good morning, Preston. I'm great. Thank you. And good to be on. Yesterday, we highlighted Joe Biden's efforts to leave a lasting mark, if you will, damaging our country. Let me first ask you, before we get into the nuts and bolts of that, Peter. Who do you think is really making these decisions? Because Joe Biden just puts his signature on it, and someone may very well be moving his hand for all I know. But who do you think is really authoring these policies? Is this Barack Obama? Are these Barack sycophants? Who's behind this? I think the Barack sycophants is an apt description. What the Democratic Party has become in the 2020s and progressively... pun intended, throughout the century, the first quarter of this century, is they become a much more hard left Marxist party. And Joe Biden made a deal with this devil to be the moderate faith, the fake age, to be elected. He and, of course, Mrs. Biden. to occupy the White House, to be president, to have all the perks, and to do whatever this party had become, to implement whatever it is that they have become. And that is a much more left-wing party. Now, Joe Biden's career, which, of course, spans from Nixon's reelection in 1972. That's Biden's first election. to the Senate, he was always in the middle of where the party was, whether it was a, you know, dominated by southern Democrats, who were the chairman still at the time of the Senate committees, where it became a kind of more law and order, more centrist party under Bill Clinton in the 90s, to now this far left. progressive radical group, that's what he is. And he has no, he has no compass whatsoever. He has no principles. And so he just went with it. And it got him in presidency because, again, he was this moderate face, this exterior charm that prevailed and made all kinds of promises that they never meant. So he's been there, he's been there, faked. as they implement all this stuff right till the time they leave. Tell me this. We've got about two minutes before we take a quick break. What does this executive order do in practicality? It shuts off, unless it's reversed, this executive order involving the offshore oil exploration. Yes. It puts a, it makes it untouchable.

You know, we have a, to grow our economy, we need affordable energy, period, end of story. It's what drove the worst inflation in the late 70s, the cost of energy. And it's, and we have to tame inflation by lowering the price of energy and making America more competitive in the global marketplace. So you have to expand our reach, our resources. And there's this vast. 625 million acres is... a third of the landmass of the United States. He put that all off limits with this ancient law, and that's got to be reversed. It can be, but it's not as simple as it sounds. Yeah, I want to get to that next. Peter Murphy with me. He's a senior fellow with C-Fact. We're talking about Joe Biden. I mean, why not end the way he came in? Day one, he killed the Keystone XL pipeline and put us on an IV with everybody who hates us. to find the energy, the sources of energy that we need, and then move this to this ridiculous, untenable EV nonsense. Back with Peter Murphy. Peter, we were talking about this executive order. Now, I would immediately come to the conclusion that, look, this is going to get reversed on January 20th the moment Donald Trump takes office. You mentioned it might not be that easy. Well, the law is not clear that the president can reverse it. The law is clear that you can put, impose conservation, or in the name of conservation, you can impose off limits to development. It's not clear that you can reverse that in the law. So that has to be tested in the courts. Donald Trump should not. assume anything other than he can reverse it. I mean, you know, he needs to act, and I'm sure he will, act to reverse it. Then there'll be a lawsuit. The Greens will bring a lawsuit. Of course. And the courts will be tested by this. Now, but this goes to show this, you know, in the modern era, I mean, I guess back in the day when this law was put in place, you don't anticipate presidents abusing it. Right. This is an abuse of this law. And especially when you're the lamest of lame ducks, you're actually leaving office in 10 days, and so you're going to act this way. I mean, it's a really disgraceful approach, and that's certainly not what Congress had intended, nor has it been acted on this way. For 70 years, it's been in existence. And so... So the courts may recognize that abuse of it. But this goes to a longstanding problem of the Congress of the United States is they don't make law specific enough. They leave too much discretion to the executive branch, which is now...

you know, scores of agencies and unelected bureaucrats who were interpreting things. Now, the courts rolled some of that back. The agency's ability to interpret laws or reinterpret them is the key. The courts did roll that power back somewhat in his last session, but nonetheless, Congress needs to be more specific in the laws that they pass. And if a law, if a new circumstances arise, then you go back to Congress and you change the law. I mean, that's how it should be. And this is a result of just decades of Congress being very vague and leaving too much discretion to the executive branch, which is now comprised not so much of the president's people as these lifelong bureaucrats who have their own agenda. I was going to ask you, Peter, in closing. As many things as you and I could point to and absolutely agree on that Joe Biden, his administration, and I call it the O Biden administration, have done to damage, hurt this country. Couldn't you argue the real lasting legacy is what you just defined, this ability to dig in and find ways to take legislation and twist it? Well, progressivism, as they practice it, and this really began under Woodrow Wilson, or even, to be fair, Teddy Roosevelt. Yeah. They are not governed by law. They are governed by their own agenda, which they view is higher than law. More important, there's a moral superiority to their agenda. And so laws are basically for the other side, not for them, because this is their religion. in effect. And the lasting legacy, you know, they're using this climate issue, which is so manufactured and fake and unscientific to do whatever they want. You have not a few Democrats in Congress who want a climate emergency, quote unquote, climate emergency, like a COVID emergency that gives untrammeled power to the executive branch. Now, they're not going to want it now, but when Biden was in office. Chuck Schumer, Jeff Merkin of Oregon, many others, were calling for climate emergency. This is a dangerous time because progressimism is not bound by laws and constitutional principles. They will do what they want until someone can stop them. That's their mentality, and it's a dangerous one going forward if they should get back into power. Peter, thank you. I appreciate your insight and expertise, and look forward to having you back on the show sometime. Thank you, sir. Thank you, Preston. Appreciate it. Peter Murphy with us from C-Fact. There you go. I thought it was as easy as putting your signature to it. Not so much. That's a very important clarification. But he's so right. They just weasel in there and say, oh, wait a minute, we can do this with that law. We can do that. And he's right. It's do as we say, not as we do. Absolutely positively. That's the progressive mantra. All right. The first hour is in the books, unbelievably. It's show number one. which means it's day number one of the 12 days of Preston. I mean, in our calendar, we know it's December the 18th. But humor me as we go back to the year that was here on the 12 Days of Preston on the morning show with Preston Scott.

This is our version of the best of the morning show. It's kind of our gift to you. The 12 Days of Preston, day number one. This is our number two of our December 18th show. And we're looking back at the year 2025, and this is the first show, the month of January. And we are thrilled to have with us. U.S. Senator from Alabama, Tommy Tuberville. Coach, how are you, sir? Good morning. You know, I'm doing pretty good. A lot better than a lot of people across the country right now. But we're cold in D.C. We're wet. We're... frozen and uh but we're just waiting for what 11 10 11 12 days from now to get this nightmare over with yeah we changed from counting how many days we've been held hostage to now counting down to the days of freedom i'm with you on that you all have met recently with the uh president-elect uh how'd that meeting go well i've talked to him quite often on the phone but he came in last night spent a couple hours with just senators alone there's We only have 52 right now. Jim Justice has not sworn in because he's waiting until his governorship is over with next week. But we'll be having 53. But he came in, had a great talk. He obviously did a lot of talking early and then asked questions and let us ask questions. And he's on a role. I tell you what, you know, I played a lot of golf with him. The last two years, I was the first senator that came out for him. Obviously, he came in last night face-to-face with about half. senators in the room that this time last year was not for Donald Trump. Number one, they didn't think he can win. And, of course, up here, they think everybody thinks they know everything. But we needed a leader like him. And so he just opened it up. He said, listen, I know we've had disagreements, but we got all work together for the American people for the next four years. We only got one more shot. He's exactly right. So it was good, informative. He gave us his opinion on a lot of things that he'd like to do. We talked about the reconciliation. That'll work itself out. But it's just good to have a leader, somebody that leaves in America. Coach, you know, one of the reasons why I'm so grateful for you to take time with us, and I said the same thing to Congresswoman Kat Cammack, is you don't just feed us lines. You tell us the truth of what's going on, what your heart's telling you is going on, and I appreciate that, and our listeners appreciate that. So I say that in preface to asking this. Do the rest of the Republicans in the U.S. Senate, do they get it, regardless of what they might deep down think of Donald Trump, do they get the importance of the moment that we find ourselves in? You know, I think most of them do, but we've still got 10 or 12 that think that they're more relevant than they are. You know, the 77 million people voted for a change in this country, a mandate. And I think they're still...

tugging against that rope saying, you know, you know what, we don't really want to lose our power. We want to, we want to stand up to, you know, to Donald Trump because, you know, he's really not the guy we wanted. But at the end of the day, I think the people back in their state, who they should represent. And I represent people Alabama. And they told me, you know, whatever he wants to do, let him do it. Because what this group up here has been doing, and I've told our Republican caucus, you know, those of you that are not for Donald Trump, you know, you've come a long way since I told you that I was for him, and now you're leaning his way. But what you've been doing up here, for the last, a lot of you that are holding back against President Trump, they're the old guards that've been up here 25, 30 years. What you've been doing ain't working, folks. It ain't working. The American people are suffering because your decisions. Now it's time to get on a different ship and a different way of running a country, which is by leadership and by doing things for the American people and getting big government out of our life. And if we don't do it, it is our fault now. Is John Thune going to cut significant ties with Mitch McConnell enough to properly represent the Republican caucus? You know, that was one of the first times that we had a group meeting with President Trump, obviously. Mitch McConnell was sitting back, you know, with the rest of us peons that are just normal senators. He's not in leadership or anything. John Thune's set by President Trump. It was good to see that. But, you know, as I've told everybody, I think John Thune will be fine. He wasn't my first choice. But at the end of the day, you know, he's a fresh breath of air. Obviously, Mitch McConnell and... President Trump, don't get along, never have. Mitch McConnell is old school. You know, he's from the old regime that thinks that they know the right way, but that hasn't worked. But as I've told President Trump several times since the election, you know, you're the leader of the Senate. You are the Speaker of the House. Whoever we have there are going to listen to you, and if they don't, we'll run them out. And he understands that because... He has a different way of doing things. You know, he's one of these guys that usually said, you know, the Gulf of America, you know, by Greenland, straightened out the Panama Canal, bring in Canada. And you know what? He's dead serious. Don't think he's not serious. A lot of people say, well, he's talking in things that can't get done. Don't count him out, folks. Do not count him out because he's looking out for the future. He's not standing still and say, listen, you know, let's just keep doing things. You know, we're the greatest country on the face of the earth. If you're not growing, you're going backwards. He's exactly right about that. And so we've got to grow. We've got to do things different for national security because let me tell you, China is buying up things all up into Mexico, all up into, we've got Chinese ships and submarines all around into the Pacific, close to California, and the Atlantic, close to Cuba, close to Florida.

You know, I love works of nonfiction. So, author Michael Connell, the book is Blood and the Badge, the Mafia, two killer cops, and a scandal that shocked the nation. Michael, welcome to the program. How are you? Good morning. Thank you. Thank you for having me. My pleasure. Now, before we talk about the setting, 1970s, 1980s, New York City. When did this story cross your path? How did this become an interesting potential book for you? Yeah, I had written a book that came out four years ago about the mafia in the 1930s and 40s, a book called A Brotherhood Betrayed about murder incorporated, which was the assassination arm of the mafia in those days. So I was... I was reading and talking to people and researching in the mafia field, and I became aware of this story set in a later period in the 80s when two highly decorated elite detectives were on the mafia payroll. These were accomplished detectives. who were passing information to the mob, information about who was under surveillance, whose phones were tapped, who was about to be arrested. Most importantly, who in the mafia was a rat, a squealer, a canary, who in the mafia was... secretly cooperating with the government. And what's more, these two cops would then be paid a bonus to facilitate the murder of these traitors in the mafia. It seems like a story you would find in a movie. In fact, it's all true. Wow. You know, as you were talking, I'm seeing a half dozen movies just kind of run through my head as you're even describing the storyline here. Let's talk about the two main characters, Louis Epilito and Stephen Caracapa. Let's talk about them pre-mob. You said they were highly decorated. Were they good cops at one point and then something happened? Tell us about them before they got mixed up in this. Yeah, I mean, it's a very, it's a very odd story. Louis Epolito was the prime mover in this story, was born into a mafia family. His father was a Gambino crime family Capo or captain. He led his own crew. He was known as Fat the Gangster, and he worked with Louis' uncle, who was known as Jimmy the Clam. I mean, these are names right out of the sopranos, right? And no surprise, Fat the Gangster was an abusive character, a violent character. So Louis Epilito grew up in a kind of abusive atmosphere in his household. And when his father died of a heart attack, weeks later, he joined the police department as an act of rebellion against his family. I mean, his friends and family couldn't believe that he would do that. To join the police was...

You know, it was an act of betrayal. He did join the police. He became a detective. He was a really good cop. He earned headlines in the New York newspapers. He was partnered with somebody who was his exact opposite in many ways, a detective named Stephen Caracapa. Louis Epilito was a big, loud, boorish. boasting guy, and Stephen Caracapel was the opposite. He was very quiet and circumspect, and he dressed in a very, very particular manicured way. But together, they entered into this collaboration with the mob. You know, Appolito, who had grown up in the Mafia family, he got reeled back in by his family. You know, it's hard, sometimes hard to escape your bloodlines. Great book to pick up and read Blood and the Badge by Michael Connell, my guest. Michael, you talked about Louis Appalito getting reeled in by the family, the bloodline, sort of holding sway here. Did his partner, did Stephen have an, had an option here? Or is this one of those things where, okay, if you don't say yes, you end up dead? No, I think Stephen had an option. Who knows what conversations occurred between these two men that facilitated these activities. Stephen had a criminal background of his own. He had been charged with a felony crime as a teenager. He had been caught, loading stolen construction goods. into a rented truck. The charge was dismissed. He went to Vietnam. He came back from Vietnam and joined the police department at the same time as Apolito. Did he do this for money? Was this about money? I mean, some of the detectives that I spoke to have suggested that it was simply about money. I don't think that tells the whole story. I think Caracapa did it because he liked having this secret life. He liked pulling one over on people. For Epilito, it's a more complicated question. I don't think in his own mind that he really knew if he was. a detective masquerading as a mafiosi, or if he was a mafiosi masquerading as a cop? When it's all said and done, what was it that they started doing and how did they start doing it? Who brought the idea together on what their role would be?

There was a high-level drug dealer in those days named Bert Kaplan. And he went to prison. And his best friend in prison, his jailhouse buddy was Louis Epilito's cousin. And in jail, this man, his name was Santora. said to Bert Kaplan, you know, when we get out, if you ever need to have a little, a little extracurricular work done by some cops, my cousin will do it for you. And Bert Kaplan didn't want to have anything to do with corrupt cops. But in fact, he got into a situation where he needed their help, and he hired them to abduct and kill somebody that he had worked with. And then later, Bert Kaplan began to work as an intermediary between these corrupt cops and the Lou Casey crime family. When you say corrupt cops, that almost, well, I mean, it implies that before they ever went to work for the mob, they were sketchy. Were they? Well, certainly Louis Epilito was. He was engaged in all of the petty corruptions that you might expect existed in the NYPD in the 70s and the 80s. He was, I mean, it's kind of a contradiction. He was a, he was an effective cop, but he was a dirty cop. The 70s and 80s, if we were to kind of put a pinnacle on the mob, in New York City. Is that the pinnacle of it, the 70s? It's a really interesting question. It was a period of transition for the mob. You know, organized crime really became organized in the 1930s and the 40s. Right. You know, prohibition flooded the mob with money. And for all of those decades, the mob operated by very, very strict rules. In the 70s and the 80s, that began to change. A lot of drug money came in. The old bosses said, let's not, you know, we're not going to get involved in the drug trade. We'll leave that. We'll leave that to somebody else. But in fact, they did because they just couldn't resist it. There was too much money involved. And so then you have this new generation of younger mobsters who come in and they're making a lot of money and they don't really want to. They don't really want to follow the old rules. And at the same time, Rudy Giuliani and other prosecutors are using the RICO laws to bust the mob. The big bosses for this first time are starting to go down. And so to answer your question, it was in a way the peak because it's when they were really making big money, but also it was the beginning of the end for the mob.

What's the fascination? I mean, obviously, you're writing a book and people are buying this book about the mob. What's the fascination from the godfather to the Sopranos to the departed to all of these documentaries? Why the fascination with this topic? It's such a good question, and I wish I had a super smart answer. I've thought about this a lot. Why do we root for Don Corleone? Why do we root for Tony Soprano? They're not really sympathetic characters. It's just something about... It's something about the American anti-hero is really the best answer I can give. And kind of maybe goes back. Even before there were mob movies, there were movies about, you know, about outlaws and cowboys. And we rooted for them. It's just. You know, it's something about the dark glamour of these characters. You know, and it will, you know, it will probably go on forever. I mean, Robert De Niro is in another mafia movie coming out in March, written by the great Nick Pilegi. And it just seems like this, you know, this just, it goes on forever. After you doing that interview, I just felt like going, hey, hey. It's the 12 days of Preston the month of January here on the morning show with Preston Scott. Welcome back to the 12 days of Preston, the month of January. We brought in Sal Nuzzo from Consumer's Defense to weigh in on legislative matters and. Who was Governor Ron DeSantis going to choose to be the next U.S. Senator from Florida? It is definitely the $64,000 question of the week. Now, Ron DeSantis did say, the governor said, he wanted to make the pick before the inauguration. So we're looking at sometime this week. And I think if you put all of the names in the mix, you've still got Ashley Moody, you've got Laura Trump, you've got James Uthmeier's chief of staff. An interesting name popped up over the past week, and that is Congressman Cory Mills from over in the Atlantic side. He is a decorated veteran. He is getting a lot of notoriety, and he publicly stated that regardless of who the governor picks, he plans to run for the seat in two years when it's up for reelection. So that could go into the mix. I think if we set all of the politics aside and just look at... kind of the dynamics of Florida and try to make an objective selection. I think if I were making the choice or advising, it would likely be the Attorney General Ashley Moody appoint her to the Senate seat, which would open up the AG position, and then the governor could put James into...

that role because James being James Uthmeier, his current chief of staff who had been the general counsel and is a very, very good attorney in his own right. So there are some dynamics at play politically that will go into this mix along with the impending appointment of a CFO because of Jimmy Petronus's resignation to run for the congressional district out that Matt Bill Gates vacated. But setting all of that aside, that seems to me to be the logical selection. Ashley Moody. then maybe your outside number two pick would be a Cory Mills? Yeah, I mean, I like Corey a lot. That sets up another special election. It sets up another special election, which would be the third in Congress because you've got Mike Waltz in addition to Matt Bill Gates. And so there's a lot of permutations of how those dominoes could then fall because in addition to that, If let's just say he were to do Cory Mills, you have that special election, who from the legislature might consider running for that? And then you'd have even more dominoes. Yeah. It's a dynamic time. It's fun to be a Floridian right now. You said it first. You said it first, Matt Bill Gates. I said the name. Yeah, you did. So he sends out a note and he says, yeah, I'm thinking about running for governor. I made the comment that I'm not sure that he can win a statewide race with the luggage that he does have. He does have some. Oh, he's got some luggage. I think he's a brilliant apologist for the conservative cause. I think he's exceptional on his feet. I think he has a great command of facts. But. He's a lightning rod. He is. And to that end, I've mentioned in the past a Democrat senator from down in South Florida, Jason Pizzo, is kind of the what should be the new face of the Florida Democrat Party, a center left moderate Democrat. He saw that post from Matt Bill Gates and he tweeted out or posted with it saying he looks forward to kicking his hind end. Yeah. And then on that, our friend John Stemberger, then reposts the Jason Pizzo post saying, don't worry, Senator, you won't have a chance. We're going to do it in the primary, which made me chuckle. To that end, I think a Matt Bill Gates run for the Republican nomination for governor in two years. And this is all. As it stands, two years is a lifetime in politics right now. Or it's actually five lifetimes in politics these days. It's going to be a dynamic in which you have someone who's a lightning rod like Matt Bill Gates, but who you are exactly right. He is an incredible apologist for conservative movement principles.

If Donald Trump's agenda takes off and the populist movement continues to gain momentum, I do believe it benefits Matt Bill Gates for a potential run because Florida is a very deep red populist state that it is shifted populist versus the fiscal, conservative, socially. socially moderate or socially conservative to slightly more socially moderate i think and i think that's going to benefit Bill Gates in a primary if trump's agenda takes off it'll be interesting to talk about and you and i discussed we'll deal with that in the soft season when we're done with the session But you think there's a possibility, and I've read the governor's discussing a potential special session before the session. Tell us about this. Yeah, so the session begins the first Tuesday in March. Right. Prior to that, they do have some legislative committee weeks, but the governor is announced that he would like a special session to come for the primary purpose that I'm reading and seeing on immigration legislation, largely to make sure that floor. Florida's ready to assist with any federal efforts on deportation. So my guess is there could be some state preemption language on locals, especially if you've got areas like Tallahassee or other center-left cities that may try to... fight back against some of that or may try to... Arbor illegals. Yeah. So my guess is it could be somewhere along those lines, but I really would not be surprised if another topic or two gets added into a special session ahead of it. I keep hearing grumblings about the possibility of tweaking the condo inspection law that passed a year ago because as we've talked in prior sessions when I've been in, that the implementation of that law is hitting hard on people who have longstanding residences in areas like South Florida or out on the panhandle where all of a sudden they're getting hit with assessments for multiple thousands of dollars that they just... cannot afford. You know, there's a ton of different things that they could take up. I'm hearing, you know, the possibility of either in a special or in the regular going back to the open carry debates that we've had. There's a ton of possibility, and I'm really starting to get my antenna up on it. Our legislative session preview, and we'll preview it one more time before we actually get to the session. And then we'll preview the session right then and there. How quickly does the kind of the marching orders of the session come out? I mean, and does it come from the governor along with the new president and the new speaker? Well, typically over the course of the governor's, I would say the meat of his term, which I would say is the second two years of his first term and the first two years of his second term.

I would suggest he did a whole lot of the calling the plays on the priorities that, especially under Speaker Paul Renner, that they took up. And to his credit, he got just about everything he wanted policy-wise and in his agenda and mostly in the budget. I think what we're going to see... in Speaker Danny Perez and Senate President Ben All-Briton is not necessarily pushback, but a little bit more of a level of independence on the legislature that will kind of bring its own color and flavor to the governor for some items that may not be in the governor's priority top five or top ten priority list. The final two years of Governor Ron DeSantis match the two-year term of a Senate president and a new speaker. And then everyone's going to be new together. We're going to have a new governor. We're going to have a new speaker and a new president. So how much of that might modify what the House Speaker and the Senate president do? Because at least they know. They've got a bona fide conservative in the governor's office. Yes, definitely. And I think there's going to be some of that at play because it's not even a re-election year. It is a term out election in 2026. You also have the dynamic of, and I know it is Speaker Perez's first session as Speaker. You have Speaker-designate Sam Garrison beginning to take. a hold of some of the things in his committee chairmanships and as an incoming speaker, even though it's not for two years. He's beginning to ascending get more under his belt as well. So you've got these things at play that take hold in ways that do not really reflect in other states that I've worked in over my years. From Consumers Defense, Executive Director Sal Nuzzo with me here on The Morning Show with Preston. Looking back at January 2025, it is the 12 Days of Preston. Don't go anywhere. Great. guests and segments still to come. All right. As we wrap up this second hour of the 12 days of Preston, let me give you the lay of the land here. If you're just tuning in, And you're going, what, what is this? This is weird. Well, first of all, if you've never listened to the morning show with Preston Scott, this is a very different presentation because it's not really the morning show with Preston Scott, though it kind of is. This is something that we're doing while we're away on vacation. We're taking a break.

I do it every year at Christmas time. I spend time with my family. I spend especially some time with my wife. We celebrate our anniversary in the midst of all of it. And we just unplug from doing shows and push everything away for a while. But several years ago, I realized that you got a little testy, you regular ruminators. when we were away for a while. You could handle a day or two of Gordon Deal, but not two weeks of it. So I really thought long and hard and decided, well, why don't we do the best of the year and combine that with sort of a gift while we're away, a placeholder, if you will? And so what was born was the 12 days of Preston. So we are doing shows while we're away on a break. And we will be back on Monday, January 5th with live shows for the new year. God willing. But these shows are a look back at the year. So it's sort of a best of and a chronological look at the year. So there are things that are dated in here, but it's as the year unfolded, a reminder of how the year unfolded. And going back to January, I had jury duty, but I was excused. And so I had originally scheduled Grant Allen to come in and fill in for me to be the designated host, but I was able to be there. And boy, did the news cycle cooperate for me. I am here dutifully doing my job, which isn't one. But I'm grateful to share this time with you, Jose. Can you see over there in Studio 1A? And I have been holding on to this. I've been gathering a little bit of sound so that I can properly lay this out.

And I think it's worth spending a little time on because it is instructive. A week ago tomorrow, Donald Trump, JD Vance, their families gathered with other dignitaries for the National Prayer Service at the National Cathedral. offering the message, the homily, the sermon, Bishop, Marianne Edgar Buddy. Listen in part to just a remark or two of Ms. Buddy. Mr. Buddy. Millions have put their trust in you. And as you told the nation yesterday, you have felt the providential hand of a loving God. In the name of our God, I ask you to have mercy upon the people in our country. And we're scared now. There are gay, lesbian, and transgender children in... Democratic, Republican, and independent families, some who fear for their lives. And the people, the people who pick our crops and clean our office buildings, who labor in poultry farms and meatpacking plants, who wash the dishes after we eat in restaurants and work the night shifts in hospitals, they may not be citizens or have the proper documentation. But the vast majority of immigrants are not criminals. They pay taxes and are good neighbors. They are faithful members of our churches and mosques, synagogues, Wadara, and temples. If you're not careful, you can listen to that and go, what's wrong with that?

We'll set aside the discussion of a female bishop giving the message. We'll set that aside. It says in 1 Timothy 4, now the Spirit expressly says that in the later time, some will depart from the faith. By the devoting of themselves to deceitful spirits and teaching of demons through the insincerity of liars, whose consciences are seared. The majority of immigrants are absolutely just as she described, except here's the problem. We're not talking about immigrants. We're talking about people who have broken the law and are here illegally. This is one deception. The deception of wordsmithing, the deception of conflation. See, those are the very things that signal to you her political beliefs. And she used what was supposed to be a national prayer service to deliver a political message there. That is... Not supported by facts. LGBQ people aren't fearing for their lives from Donald Trump. They're fearing because of lies told by the mainstream media. They're fearing because gender mutilation might be banned and barred in this country, which it should be. They're fearing because they have been caught.

Their efforts to propagandize children and sexualize them have been called out. But there's another little twist in this story. I just want you to remember what she just said about immigration, though, it was wrong, and about these political issues, these social political issues. Now, I want to pick up right there. Because when pastors alleged ministers of the gospel, she is not one. When they decide to get into political issues and social issues from the pulpit, they forget that they are supposed to be teaching God's word. That's what they're supposed to be doing. and allow that to speak to the social political issues of the day. You see, government is never meant to impact the church. And that's what this woman is guilty of allowing. The hypocrisy she displays is, whew, man. She's omitted a lot of the Bible from her biblical reading. She's just like breezed right past major sections of scripture, including the book of Jude. But I think the big takeaway for you and me is this. You need to study God's word for yourself. You need to take ownership of what it has to say so you're not deceived by bad teaching. And I'll be honest with you. We're living in an era. where bad teaching abounds. It is all over the place. How are you going to test and approve the teaching of God's Word in whatever church you attend for the protection of you and your family if you don't read God's Word enough to know it? Something to think about. All right. When we come back, more great guests. Another very interesting segment. Here on the morning show with Preston Scott, it's January on the 12 Days of Preston. Welcome back to the 12 days of Preston, day number one, the month of January. Let's get right to it. and a visit with Zach Cass, 14 years as a strategist with Open AI and the guest at the Power Forward Speaker Series. I've got to know, before we start talking about the event a little bit and what kind of led you down this path you're in in your career and in your life, how do you come up with, I mean, that is a bold thing to put on the business card, futurist. I'm glad you asked. Listen, I run an advisory firm. So at this point, you know, the title on my business card is CEO of the KIA advisory, and we work with Global Fortune 1000 in government. The term that gets people excited to come listen to a talk is usually futurist. And because of my work at the University of Virginia,

in sort of future studies, I could bend an academic title in the same way. I cannot tell you that I am, by any definition, precisely deserving of the title, but it does give some credit to the work that I do now. Tell me about that path for you, Zach. Where did it start? Was there like a thing that pushed you towards this direction? I went to Berkeley and I studied history and computer science. Graduated during the midst of the global financial crisis and took the only job I could get at the time in San Francisco, which was for a company called Crowdflower, eventually became known as Figure 8, and it sold to happen. Some people know it, it was a machine learning company, and that's how I cut my teeth professionally and I never left. machine learning and then machine learning gave way to, you know, AI. It basically was statistical machine learning which gave way to neural nets and modern AI. And I cannot tell you that I had much prescience or that this was a really prescriptive path, but it certainly played out nicely and then my sort of fascination with the science. And now the cultural and organizational implications have, you know, presented a pretty exciting career. Do you remember the first time or where you were when you heard the words artificial intelligence? What was the context? That's a good question. I can't tell you the first time. It would have been when I was a child, right? I mean, we've been using the term artificial intelligence for quite some time. You know, the closest thing that I can think of would probably be in a film, and if I had to guess what film it was as a kid. You know, Skynet could be up there. Terminator, certainly. Sure. Will Smith's film, but by the same name. In a professional setting, the first time I heard it was probably, certainly when I was applying the jobs and Crabtflower talked to me about what data labeling was, was human data labeling was used for. When did the academic background and the learning and your career, what you were doing, when did it get to a place where you started the sense, okay, the potential of AI in business in people's everyday life? You know, when we were doing, a crowdflower provides training or provided training data for companies building these large statistical machine learning models. And what's all you really need to know about these models is that the digital machine learning was so expensive because it required so much data and so much compute, and it wasn't very good. So the efficacy was so low that only the really big, really well-funded companies were doing it. And you knew at the time that if companies could have access to this, it would become far more prolific. Because companies like Facebook were selling ads better, Google was, you know...

distributing the information on the internet better. Amazon was doing demand forecasting and search better, but I don't think it became really obvious to me until 2019 when I first saw GBT2, that was OpenAI's third product. And that probably was the moment for me where it became clear that neural nets were going to win, that in fact statistical machine learning was not the right architecture. and that all the people, you know, who had been making a case for neural nets were right, and that natural-range processing was going to be the future and that we were on this incredible new trajectory. And then obviously GPT3. For a lot of reasons, really excited me. And that was the moment that I started telling people, hey, your lives are going to be very different in five years. You do this type of thing. You talk with businesses. You mentioned that you consult with companies. How frequently now are you needing to kind of adjust and change what you're sharing because of how fast this technology is moving? Part of the reason that we, that the advisory business I run is so successful now and part of the reason that I get to travel around the world. You know, I, as I mentioned, I'm currently on my honeymoon in Corchabelle. And the reason we're here is because I spoke at Davos. And the reason I spoke at Davos is because while there are many people who want to talk about AI, there are many people, there are many of those who have stared at it for this long and actually have sort of used this technology to this degree. And so a lot of what is required now is just context switching and updating. Information presents every day, knowing how it fits into the broader scheme, what's real, what's not. You know, that's now a full-time job. And, yeah, it's a blast. It just requires quite a bit of attention and computational power. What is your best guess on what you see as the potential pitfalls? What are businesses going to need to navigate to avoid inside this new world? In the interest of your listeners, I think I would, I think I'll answer this question slightly differently. Businesses are going to have a couple problems. We can talk about those. I think the pitfalls are actually probably more societal. Okay. I'll answer it. I'll be fair. I'll answer it and then I'll answer the other question. Companies are going to struggle to realize that it's not about AI per se. Making it about AI does a disservice to the actual change that's coming. Fusion, quantum computing, these technologies are around the corner and simply staring at AI and saying, we're going to update to this technology right now. You know, it's not actually future-proofing your company in any real way. Okay. So I think companies are going to get stuck because they're not going to update to the paradigm shifts.

They're going to hire people who are very, very insistent that they practice to study a job to become a very specific kind of employee and that if their job changes, it won't be good for them. And I think we're just going to be mired in this massive colossal change management issue, which some companies will navigate very well and others won't. And it's not actually the technology that's going to make a break a company. It's the people within it and their willingness to update to the fact that the world is just changing so much now. For the pitfalls, and I think this is far more interesting. are probably going to come down to, one, dehumanization, this idea that, you know, some, this is my theory, that some percentage of the population will at some point have a greater interest in a virtual reality than a physical one. I'll talk to the audience a lot about that. And then the other, and I think this is one that we just, we have to talk about early and often is identity displacement. So many people have fixated on the economic implications of job automation when, in fact, Almost certainly the deflationary result of that is going to be economically good for everyone. It won't, however, serve most of us emotionally, and it will leave many people, if not all of us, feeling some sense of loss in our professional identities. And what we do, because of that, we'll sort of determine how well we come out of this next chapter and, you know, how well we design our lives for the future. Back with more of the 12 Days of Preston on the morning show with Preston Scott.

Back with the 12 days of Preston, day number one, the month of January. It's kind of a year in review, and so we're back at the beginning of the year 2025. And as you know, I love... authors who write about stories of history. And I've got another great book to share with you right here. Buddy Levy. Buddy's the author of more than 10 books. He has appeared on the History Channel's program's greatest mysteries and the unexplained. And his latest book is Realm of Ice and Sky. It's a true story, subtitled Triumph Tragedy and History's Greatest Arctic Rescue. Buddy, welcome to the program. How are you, sir? Preston. I'm doing well. Thanks for having me. My pleasure. I appreciate you joining us here. I've got to ask on the front end here. Now, more than one of your books deals with cold temperatures. I'm curious, do you just, when you start researching, do you find stories that have never been told as you're researching one story and decide, okay, this needs to be told in a later book? That's exactly what happens. You know, I bumped into Realm of Ice and Sky, the story of the first attempts to fly dirigible to the North Pole while I was researching my previous book. And so, you know, I'm on an Arctic swing here. This is my third one in a row. And, yeah, I can't seem to get enough of icebergs, freezing rain, sweet, and, you know, floating ice flows. All right, set the stage for this particular story. Give us kind of the time frame, what was going on, because when you say derogables and the Arctic, that almost seems oxymoronic. That's a great observation. Yeah, so it's... It's the turn. It's the early 1900s, and, you know, the Wright brothers have just started testing out the planes at Kitty Hawk. And the airship, or dirigible, or what we think of now as a blimp, is a very new technology. And men have been... batting their head against the ice for 100 or 200 years trying to get to the North Pole. And this American Maine Walter Wilman has the great idea to try to fly a prototype blimp, essentially, to the North Pole. And the story is really a three-part story about the men who attempted to fly to the North Pole when it looked like making it there by the traditional dog sled method was... fraught, let's say, fraught with terror and death and tragedy. Is this a typical story? When you talk about, you know, Walter Wellman and his pioneering of...

You know, obviously not just the polar thing, but the transatlantic airship aviation thing. Is this one of those classic stories of, well, we're going to do it because it's there and no one's done it before? I think that's part of it, Preston, but, you know, there's also, we're on the cusp at this period of a great technological advancement and scientific discovery. And so North Pole is this big blank space on the global maps. Certainly, there's an element of fame and immortality involved. You know, to be the first one to make it to the North Pole, guarantees financial. Just, I mean, your untold riches, really, lecture tours and book deals and newspaper articles. And so you've got this kind of frenzy to try to be the first. And there's also a great deal of national pride involved. So in the book, you know, we've got the American named Walter Wellman, this famous Norwegian explorer ruled Almensen, and then this Italian airship designer later named. umberto noblemelais so there's a whole lot going on um and so i would couple it with uh you know discovery exploration and then also a search for the unknown Joining me on the program is Buddy Levy. The book is Realm of Ice and Sky. You know me. I don't do novels around here. True Stories is what we focus on on the program. Buddy, it seems to me that one of the things that your book accomplishes, whether intentionally or not, is you recategorize Walter Wellman. He seems like a guy that prior to your book and your writing is kind of noted in history as sort of an also-ran, a guy who didn't quite get much done. That's true. actually had never heard of him, to be honest. And the guy is really fascinating. I mean, he's in this Ohio-born, self-taught kid who ended up starting his own newspaper at age 14. And by the time we meet him really in the book, you know, he's middle-aged and is one of the most famous journalists in America. He hobnobbed with captains of industry like J.P. Morgan and Andrew Carnegie. And he ended up having it. Pustle because he's really interested in science and exploration as an Arctic explorer. And you're right, you know, if you put him on the Mount Rushmore, you would not put him on the Mount Rushmore of Arctic explorers. And he's kind of a footnote. But.

The way I interpret him is that he's an incredible pioneer because he's the first to attempt to fly to the North Pole in an airship. And he also makes the, is the first to attempt flying across the Atlantic in an airship. Later, I don't want to give too much away, but he's really, really fascinating and was also, you know, the first to create wireless technology in the Arctic. and using Marconi's new wireless telegraphy. And so the guy was just kind of a polymath, really. It's interesting because, you know, you talk about the aviation component of this story. And if we try to push above that and go to take the 60,000-foot view of this, like you say, not give a ton of way, but still kind of paint the picture of this book, you've mentioned some names that a lot of people know. They know the name Robert Perry. They know the name Roald Amundsen. At least they've heard those names. And they connect that with Arctic exploration. What's the nexus of all of these players? How do these people end up kind of in the same world? Yeah, that's great question. You know, there's this confluence happening where the airplane, as I mentioned, and the airship are both being developed simultaneously, and we forget that, that it was not exactly a done deal that the airplane was going to have supremacy of disguise. In fact, when this book sort of opens in 1906-07-08, the airship... has a lot of advantages. And so men are trying to see which technology is going to be the most practical, not only for military capabilities, but for commercial travel. That's sort of the primary driver. And so I like that you point that out because after the Wellman section of the book, which is part one, We encounter Roald Amundsen, who's mostly known because, you know, he was the first to the South Pole first through the Northwest Passage, and then I argue and others concur with me that he was... verifiably the first of the North Pole. But you also have characters in this book like Richard Bird, who ends up in this, and they all convene ultimately in this place called Spalbard, which is roughly halfway between northern Norway and the North Pole, which is kind of ground zero for leaping off to attempts at the North Pole. And you've got this incredible scene where you've got... Richard Byrd and his Josephine Ford, and then this massive airship called the Norga, 350-foot-long airship. And, you know, there's sort of this race for the North Pole, and it's a global...

media event. There's many journalists are up there in the far frozen north, and it's just an amazing scene. Buddy, we've talked a little bit about the airship component of this. I'm still fascinated by the fact that how did they think that an airship, which relies on air for, you know, its ability to stay aloft along with, you know, the motor component. over such cold temperatures? Who thought that was a good idea? That's a great question. Well, so the... These airships were in their fledgling stages. And you're right. I mean, when Wellman initially begins, you know, he straps a 75 horsepower motor on a hydrogen inflated, flammable hydrogen inflated 185 foot craft. And, you know, you kind of wonder what could go wrong. But by the time we reach the second and third part of the book. The airship has developed significantly with Zeppelin in Germany and the Italians in the military. Mussolini's Italian military had created these 350-foot-long, really advanced airships, which could then go 75 miles an hour at a top speed, but they cruised at about 50. There was still a lot of danger involved because you've got, you know, gasoline-powered engines connected to a hydrogen-filled craft. But they were, you know, and some had blown up. I mean, this is 20 years before the Hindenburg. Right. By the time Amundsen and Umberto Nobale, the Italian designer, get involved. But there had been an accident, so it was always a looming fear. Realm of Ice and Sky. Story written by Buddy Levy, an amazing true story. Fantastic adventure. All right, we got more to come. Final half hour is ahead of us. The 12 days of Preston, this is day number one. As we're away on vacation, we're not leaving you alone. We're here with you in spirit. And with a little technology rolled in as well. So we're recapping the year that was and being the first day of the 12 days of Preston. It's the month of January. More to come here on the morning show with Preston Scott.

Welcome back to the 12 days of Preston, day number one, the month of January, looking back at the year that was. We tackle a lot of big issues and we bring in some big guns like Hans von Spakovsky, a constitutional scholar and expert from the Heritage Foundation. I reached out to Hans to help us better understand this issue called Birthright Citizenship and the 14th Amendment. Hans, welcome back to the show, my friend. How are you? Preston, I'm doing just great, heading into Washington, which is still roiling as if it's been hit by the Trump tornado. You're laughing, but people in your world have to be loving what's happening. Oh, let me tell you. It's the middle of the week, a week and a half after he came in, and every single day with the moves that Trump is making, it's as if I'm having Christmas morning every single day and I'm going down to the tree and every present I could ever have wished for. is under the tree. I mean, it's just great. Absolutely love it. All right. Let's dial in here for a second on the 14th Amendment. Explain to our listeners, let's go back and bring up the 14th Amendment in its context. What was its purpose? Well, the purpose was to make sure that newly freed slaves would become citizens of the United States. But everyone today who is saying that This also means the 14th Amendment that the children of aliens who are in the United States, whether they're here legally or even illegally, are also citizens are just wrong. They are ignoring not only the language of the 14th Amendment, but it's history. And it is very easy to understand. All those who say, if you're born in the U.S. are a citizen. They're only looking at the first half of the 14th Amendment. What the 14th Amendment says, very simple, is your citizen, if you're born in the United States and subject to its jurisdiction. And what the sponsors of the 14th Amendment and Congress said, this is very clear. It's in the transcripts of all their debates was that subject to the jurisdiction of the United States meant... You owe your political allegiance to the U.S. You're subject to the U.S. as political allegiance. You don't owe it to any foreign nation. And the easiest way for folks to understand it is this. If a German tourist comes to the U.S., and she has a baby while she's here. That baby is a German citizen. Why? Well, because her mother is a German citizen. Her political allegiance is owed to who? The German government, because she's a German citizen. She's not a citizen of the U.S. And by the way, there's only three cases ever before the Supreme Court of this, all in the late 1800s.

In one of them in 1872, the Slaughterhouse cases, the Supreme Court said the 14th Amendment, the way that term should be interpreted, means that the children of foreign citizens in the U.S. are not citizens in the U.S. A few years later, an American Indian sued the government saying, hey. I'm a citizen of the U.S. I was born in the U.S. and the U.S. Supreme Court said, no, you're not. You are subject to the jurisdiction of your tribal government, not the U.S. government, and therefore you're not a U.S. citizen. Native Americans only became citizens in the 1920s when Congress passed the Indian Citizenship Act. If being born in the U.S. made you a U.S. citizen, there would have been no need for Congress to pass that law. How did we get to where we are right now over the last couple of decades where the interpretation of the 14th Amendment has expanded so much? And it might have taken place prior to the last couple of decades. But is it conflation? I mean, that's something the left loves to do. They love to take the issue of immigration and merge it with illegal immigration. And they're two distinctly different issues. Is that what happened here or something else? That's part of what happened. There's a third Supreme Court case. I think it was wrongly decided, but it's the one that the supporters' birthright citizen always point to. In the late 1890s, there was another case before the Supreme Court. In this case, it was the son. of two Chinese immigrants who had come to the U.S., they were here legally. They were permanent resident aliens. But you'll recall that we had passed these things called the Chinese Exclusion Act, which said that no Chinese individual could ever become a U.S. citizen. So the Supreme Court said that because these were permanent resident aliens, their son, what would be considered a U.S. citizen. I think that's a misinterpretation of the law, but even if you take that case into consideration, all that means is that the kids of permanent resident aliens, which is a very small number, might be considered U.S. citizen, not the kids of illegal aliens or diplomats. What happened as far as we've been able to trace, and we've done at the Heritage Foundation, we've done extensive research to this, it seemed to change during, surprise, the Roosevelt administration. When they were doing a lot of things, the Roosevelt administration apparently decided, well, you know, if you're born in the U.S., we'll give a U.S. passport, and it kind of devolved from there. So all those people who are saying, The Trump is wrong about this. They're shooting from the hip, including, by the way, the judge in Seattle, who said, oh, it's blatantly unconstitutional what Trump is doing. No, he's blatantly ignorant of the history of this. And, you know, nobody should pay any attention to what that judge said. Think about this, Preston.

Trump issues the order, the next day a lawsuit is filed, and within a day the judge issues an injunction against it. How much research do you think he was able to do in a day on this? Why absolutely not? He stated that he believed that the state's suing have a great likelihood of success, but in reality, has there ever been a testing of this? Before the U.S. Supreme Court? No. Well, I mean, the only time it's been tested is in those three cases in the late 1800s, and those cases are all on the other side. It's the only way this judge could issue an injunction against this is by ignoring those Supreme Court cases. I was going to say, they likely found the right judge in the right district to hear the case. But didn't Trump, in essence, do this just to provoke that type of response so it ends up in front of the Supreme Court eventually? Yes, that's exactly what's going on. The Supreme Court needs to 125 years or more after the last decision on this. They need to put the final word in on this. The same way, remember, the Second Amendment. the right of all of us personally to bear arms. That really had never been before the Supreme Court until, what, 10 years ago, when the Supreme Court finally got a case on this and finally said, yes, it is a personal right. And that's the same thing here. We need to get a final disposition from the U.S. Supreme Court on it. Hans von Spakovsky back in January on the morning show with Preston Scott. To paraphrase the Great Rush Limbaugh, probably smarter than both you and I combined with half his brain tied behind his back. It still makes me laugh when I think of Rush saying that stuff. It's the 12 days of Preston. This is day number one, which means the month of January. If you miss any of this, we will be posting this on the podcast down the road, so don't you dare worry. The entire sequence of shows will be available to you to listen to. But, yeah, we're offering this in lieu of us being on the show live because we're taking a little commercial break. from doing the program. We're just away for a while. But we didn't want to leave you with just Gordon Deal for three hours for 12 days. So we've got the 12 days of Preston. And so tomorrow will be the month of February here on Friday, December the 19th. But we've got still one more segment to go, so don't you dare leave us. It is the 12 Days of Preston here on the morning show with Preston Scott.

Welcome back. Final segment of the 12 Days of Preston show number one. This is the month of January 2025. It's a year in review plus our gift to all of you who faithfully listen to the program. Now, I'd love to end the show with something kind of humorous or this is good news, but just a little bit different because it's from the pages of what's going on. This was from the final show of the month. Matt Staver, founder and incredible litigator for Liberty Council. Join me on the program. Give everybody a snapshot of the Center for Medical Progress and what Sandra Friedrich Merz and Dave Dallenden were doing and how it landed them in trouble in California. Yes, David Delighton and Sandra Friedrich Merz, both of those, back in 2014, 2015. They got together. They had never met each other before, but David reached out to Sandra. and they began to investigate the organ trafficking scheme with Planned Parenthood abortion doctors and executives and then organ procurement companies as they would purchase them from the abortion clinics and then sell them to the research labs. That was actually funded by the NIH under Dr. Anthony Fauci's direction and oversight. So this particular situation resulted in a lot of investigation. They looked at all the recording laws, and they realized that if you did a recording under cover where the other side didn't know you were filming them, there's an exception to the recording law if it's done in a place where there's no expectation of privacy, like a very heavily trafficked public place. So all of these recordings were over dinner or at conferences, lots of people coming to the table, lots of people around. And that's what they did. And they sat down with these abortion clinic doctors from Planned Parenthood and other executives in the Oregon procurement companies, and the videos were shocking. What we found is that they were having late-term abortions, and that even some of the abortion doctors... Dr. Nukotola was changing the procedure of the abortion to grab the baby, bringing the baby out feet first in a breach position, and then leaving the rest of the body of the head inside, but everything outside, and then taking the organs from the baby while the baby was still in the mother's womb via the head. So they would think, oh, well, it's not an abortion because the baby hasn't taken its first breath yet. They did that. to get more intact organs, more intact the organs, the higher the prices. Some of these baby body parts sold for $17,000 a piece. And they did this over and over again. They sold them to these, they provided, they did these abortions. The women oftentimes, most of the time they didn't know. They didn't know their babies were being aborted for selling their baby body parts while they're still out in front of the abortion clinic throwing up.

They're whisking these body parts off in various express trucks to be sold. So what happened is, as a result of those videos, there was a huge backlash, a huge outcry with what was going on with Planned Parenthood and these abortion clinics. Kamala Harris was the Attorney General. She began to do the criminal investigation, and she raided David's house, took all of the rest of the videos so none of them could be shown anymore. And then Xavier Becerra took over her position. Then he got 16 felony charges against both Sandra and David, and that's been going on now for eight years. So just recently, just this week, Monday, after eight years of litigation, we whittled the 16 felonies down to about eight, but any one of those could have sent Sandra and David to prison for 10 years. This would have been a jury in San Francisco, a two-month trial involving Planned Parenthood and abortion, and any one of those. could have been a 10-year prison sentence. So we have been defending, appealing, litigating over and over for eight years, very intense, highly expensive proposition. But, you know, life has no value other than it's, you can't put a value on it. And so to have these people thrown in jail would be an injustice. On Monday, we had a dramatic breakthrough. When we were in court, the case is now over, and that means Sandra Friedrich Merz will not. She's entered a plea of no contest to one count. That will be wiped away. And then she has no jail time, no fines, no restoration. Sandra and David are now finally, finally free after all these years with Damocles sword hanging over their neck of his extended prison sentences. Matt, now what happens to those videos? What happens to the work that they did? Well, the interesting thing is when we went to a preliminary criminal hearing where they decide whether they will continue the case. We were able to show a few of the videos, but then when we went to the other case involving Planned Parenthood and Civil, the judge didn't allow us to show any. So these videos have basically been under court order because of Kamala Harris, not to be released for the past 10 years since they were produced in 2015. But last year, Marjorie Taylor Greene subpoenaed these videos and showed them in Congress in a congressional hearing. And as a result of that, these videos are now public. So we haven't been able to share most of these videos, but now we can. And now you can see exactly what we're talking about. The judge did not want, in these cases, the juries to see these videos. And you'll see why, because they are absolutely disturbing. I remember when they came out. They were horrific. Yeah, they're horrific. I mean, there's one video, and there's one testimony in the case. from an expert. She wasn't an abortionist, but she was a research facility, a professor and scientist at a university in California. And she was doing research on mice, but one day they got a package delivery. It wasn't hers. It was one of her colleagues. She opened it up, and it was a baby beating heart.

Sandra and David spoke to her as part of their investigation, and then we brought her on the stand. The state threatened her that they would prosecute her if she even testified. She testified anyway, thanks to her bravery. And what she said was this heart beating while it got to the lab had to still be beating when it was taken out of the baby. She was shocked that this would have been extracted from a baby that was still alive when the heart was taken out. And they did that so that they could get higher prices for their organ procurement. Now, some of the organ procurement companies, prosecutor in Orange County, came after them for violating state and federal laws. Some of them went bankrupt because of the fines. Others are still in existence. But Planned Parenthood and these doctors that are part of this, that were wearing the Planned Parenthood Abortionist hat and the Oregon Procurement hat and going back and forth between the two. Not a single one of them have been charged. This is the injustice that we see, the weaponization of government. You know, Donald Trump's talked about this. Sandra Mayor, David the Leighton, is an example of California weaponizing the government to protect abortion, plan parenthood, their big campaign funder, and try to stop pro-life speech. You know, in this case, it's not going to work. It didn't work. And they're not going to silence or intimidate those who want to bring out the truth. Tell me, we've got about a minute left, Matt, and thank you for the time. But just tell me what you expect moving forward with this specific issue now that we have a totally new administration, a new Congress. Is Planned Parenthood going to get the scrutiny that it should have gotten all along? Yeah, I think Planned Parenthood will get the scrutiny. We had congressional hearings before because of these videos, but it was during the Obama administration. There were recommendations to go and investigate and prosecute Planned Parenthood from the House and the Senate. Now we've got a new sheriff in town, obviously, and I think not only will Planned Parenthood be defunded and all their abortion providers, but also more scrutiny and, frankly, I hope justice happens so that Planned Parenthood's butchery will be brought to light and ended. And I think now we have a great opportunity. Our team in Washington, D.C. is certainly working very hard across the nation and certainly with the new administration on these and other issues. Matt, God, God, and the team of attorneys representing people across the country. Thank you for what you're doing. Well, thank you, Scott. Good to be with you. Thank you. Matt Staver, and it's Liberty Councillc.org. I'll just go ahead and say it. We support it financially. And I'd love for you to consider doing the same. And I really do hope that you consider supporting Liberty Council, again, lc.org. Be awesome. The work they do benefits so many of us in ways large and small. I don't know that I mentioned it, but Matt gets before the U.S. Supreme Court and just doesn't lose. Because he's got not just truth, but God on his side. All right, that's it. Back tomorrow with another edition of the 12 Days of Preston.