Best of the Program | Guests: Sheriff Mike Smith & Kelly Shackelford

42m
Utah County Sheriff Mike Smith discusses the demoralizing fall of some red counties as the crime rates spike due to soft Republicans. Pat Gray joins Glenn and Stu to discuss the recent Supreme Court decisions and the government's ineptitude on gas and oil. President and CEO of First Liberty Institute Kelly Shackelford joins to discuss the importance of school choice when it comes to taxpayer-funded schools.
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Transcript

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Welcome to the program.

Today we talk talk to a sheriff who's trying to figure out how to deal with a prosecutor that is

not exactly living up to his end of the bargain when it comes to stopping crime.

We also are in the middle of Supreme Court time, which means that during hour two of this show, and this goes on for a couple more weeks, there are days where the Supreme Court decides they're going to release some opinions, and we got a bunch of them today.

We're going to go through that.

It kind of happens live on the air during this this show, so don't miss it if you can listen to it live.

But that's what you're going to hear part of the discussion today, all the Supreme Court stuff that comes down.

And then also we talked to Kelly Shackelford, who helps us go through not only the cases that have been decided, but also the ones that are right around the corner.

What do they mean to us and the future of this country?

It's a huge topic right now.

And we also go into the economy as well, which continues to burn.

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Mind Your Business.

You're listening to

the best of the Blenbeck program.

This is the Glenbeck program.

I want to talk to you about an experience I had last night

here in just a couple of towns down from my ranch.

I

gave a speech

on Flag Day.

It was amazing.

Every year, this town has a Flag Day ceremony, and people come to it.

There were about a thousand people, maybe about 800 people there yesterday.

And they did this really moving ceremony.

And then I walk out and I talk to them.

The first thing I said was, you have to know how unique you are.

I'm not sure how many towns across America are having a flag day

free.

Hey, everybody, come to the high school.

For the, I mean, it felt like I was in the music man for a while.

It was amazing.

But in talking to people before the event,

I really got the sense that people are changing and are very concerned.

Because, well, let me just talk to the politicians.

Look,

more and more, it seems like there are two kinds of politicians, and there aren't.

There's a big fat middle, but they're not doing much.

And it seems like your choice is the Burn It Down

group or the what fire group

if the what fire group is afraid of the burn it down group you haven't seen anything yet because the left is wanting to burn it down

they just do it wrapped in you know in crazy words that make you go oh no no seriously they just said they loved america The Burn It Down people love America many times, love America too, but they think burn it down, and that's the worst idea ever.

But unless you stop saying what fire and you actually see what's going on,

the Burn It Down people are going to win.

Because it's happening now in our small towns.

It is happening in red state America.

Yesterday,

I told you about

a county that is as red as they come.

And yet there is a prosecuting attorney that is changing things not only in his county, but also changing really, I mean, I talked to the sheriff up here and he was concerned, you know, I don't know how many counties away about this other sheriff,

you know, like two hours away.

He said, this guy is influential and he is changing the way law enforcement is happening.

The sheriff for Utah County, one of the most conservative counties in the country.

Mike Smith is with us now.

Hello, Mike.

How are you?

Good morning.

How are you doing?

Well, I'm good.

I mean, I'm a little concerned because I think this, I'm using your county as an example of what's happening all across the country, where you don't need Soros coming in and buying everything up.

Some Republicans are doing it themselves.

Tell me why Utah County, of all places, is beginning to look a lot like San Francisco.

Yeah, and that concerns me as well.

That's a really scary statement and sad statement for Utah County because that's not us.

And recently, we've had a prosecutor take office who brings these ideals in that I agree with you.

They are Soros-based ideas.

They're failed programs that we've seen over and over again in large democratic cities that we, you know, they use them, crime rates go up, and for some reason, our prosecutor believes that if he brings them here to Utah County, he's going to have a different result.

And he just isn't.

What is the feeling of the community right now as they see this going on?

You know, I can tell you

with law enforcement, it's demoralizing.

You know, our officers are out.

They're working hard for their community.

They are there for their citizens.

They love their communities.

They want to serve them.

They want to help them.

They work tirelessly to

bring crime and to

investigate these things.

And then they fall on the lap of the prosecutor and nothing happens.

And it's demoralizing.

And we see victims that are re-victimized through these programs.

You know,

as you look at,

you know, Utah County and you look at the Republican Party, and we are very largely Republicans.

You know, you look at the Republican platform, and the platform itself says swift and certain punishments with just and appropriate penalties are essential deterrence to crime, and victim rights are always

superior to criminals' rights.

And we have a Utah County attorney who doesn't follow that platform yet.

He runs on it.

He is not a Republican.

We've seen over the past 20 years, from the 90s or the 30 years, I guess, from the 90s to the early pre-COVID 2020s, a real drop in violent crime.

But since at least the last couple of years, we've seen that totally reverse and it has gone up.

What is the cause about it?

And what can we do to stop it?

You know,

there's a ton of things out there that you can say is the cause about it.

But to stop it, I think everybody needs to be engaged.

You know, know, as we look at law enforcement, you see this movement across the nation.

And it really is a Soros movement, you know, that this all cops are bad.

And we're seeing it here in Utah County.

We're seeing a county attorney who keeps pointing a finger at law enforcement saying they're the problem, demoralize law enforcement.

You know, there's a reason why they're doing that.

So for me, I look at the situation.

You look at our community and you've got really a small number of law enforcement compared to the citizens that they're trying to serve.

And so for me, the answer is we're all on the same team here.

Let's work together as citizens.

Law enforcement, we are begging for you to be part of our team to help combat crime.

Sheriff, I really get the

impression that

the people are on your side and on the side of the cops.

But these activists, and you don't need

George Soros.

When you've got somebody like David Levitt,

you've got real problems because he's got a family name.

He's one of these guys, like in Texas, we have the bushes.

He's one of these guys with the name.

And so everybody's like, oh, I know that family or I know those names.

And they're not paying attention to what he's doing.

And he's got a good shell game going on.

His press conferences, he says, oh, no,

we got rid of the special victims unit, which is, you know, on sex crimes and abuse and everything else, the really nasty stuff.

We got rid of that because we found an easier way to do it.

You see that what I've heard, you have never had cartel members in your county, and you have them now, and people aren't afraid because they're watching what he's doing in the office.

Is all that true?

It is.

You know, we look at the SVU unit, and he did dismantle it.

So the part of it that I guess is a little untrue is as law enforcement, we still have an SVU unit.

You know, we're pressing forward.

We push out to our employees, our officers, you do your job.

Do your job.

Regardless of what David Levitt chooses to do, you do your job and he can answer to the people for his inaction.

So we push forward.

He's pulled his prosecutors out of it.

You know, it was, it's a model that's that's used across the nation.

It is a model that works.

And he

pulled these prosecutors out.

It used to be when you had a sex crime, they would, from the minute this crime was reported, and a prosecutor was involved all the way through the process.

So that when these came to court, we didn't have a prosecutor who is opening up a folder and looking at a case for the first time, you know, five minutes before it goes to court.

And that's what we have now.

We have untrained prosecutors that he's put in these positions that

have a stack of cases that they're looking at five minutes before court, and they're not involved in the case.

And so you get what you pay for in that scenario.

As far as cartels go.

Oh, go ahead.

Go ahead.

No, go ahead.

As far as cartels go, you know, we have had tough on crime with our major crimes task force.

We work hard.

And these cartels, you know, some people may get in their mind oh you know it's it's drug users it's you have to realize that cartels operate like fortune 500 companies and if they're looking at their liabilities their risks all these things okay i'm looking at an area where you know what the risks are low so business is better here and so we move business here we've always been able to to be really tough on them and we still are on the law enforcement side but they're just not getting uh

prosecuted properly and so the risks are low and and they they flow to where business is good and risks are low and that's what's happening

i i have heard and i don't know if this is true that on arrests some officers are being told that they kind of almost laugh and go like that's fine i'll be out soon i mean it's starting to sound like new york

Yeah, that's happening.

And even worse than that, we're having, you know, especially when you talk drugs or other things, our officers are arresting people.

They're resisting arrest.

They're assaulting our officers.

And then the county attorney won't prosecute on those crimes.

So if you assault a police officer,

there's no consequences.

And when

we ask, and this is the response we get.

Well, it will confuse the jury.

And our jaws, we're just, our jaws are dropped and we're going, what are you talking about?

Somebody's selling crimes in our community.

An officer tries to arrest them.

They don't want to be arrested, so they fight the officer.

How is that confusing to tell a jury?

I don't know, but I have to tell you, this is, you know, I've made light of this, or I've brought this to light to the national audience because I think this is happening in our communities and people are not aware of it.

And you don't need George Soros when you have

these Republicans who

I don't know what his deal is.

I just know he is not the Republican that he makes everybody believe he is.

I mean, the whole family has always been squishy,

but there's something really wrong here.

He is

taking felonies and pleating them down to misdemeanors.

This is going to create a New York City or a San Francisco or Los Angeles kind of crime wave if it's allowed to continue.

Am I wrong?

No, you're not wrong.

And it's, it's, you know, when you when you talk about taking felonies and bringing them down to misdemeanors, you know, he'll put out this narrative that he's he's prosecuting the worst.

He doesn't do plea deals.

Well, he absolutely does.

He he is smoking mirrors.

He's doing plea deals before they ever hit the court.

He's he had one of his friend legislators run a bill, it was HB 300 a couple years ago, gave the prosecutor the ability to drop these felonies down.

He does it continually.

And so

he's dealing them away before they ever get to court.

He says he doesn't like plea dealing.

Is it true?

One more, I'm sorry to interrupt, but one more quick question here because I've only got about 60 seconds.

Is it true?

I saw a case where a grandfather was molesting his granddaughter, felony, and he decided to drop it down to a misdemeanor because he was concerned what that would do to the grandfather.

Is that true?

Did I read that case right?

No, you read it right.

Unfortunately, that is true, and it's sad.

Oh, my gosh.

You know, I'll tell you,

what do you say about a prosecutor who, in a press release, makes a statement that the criminal justice system is the greatest threat to American freedom that we've seen in a generation.

What do you say about that?

He said that?

He said that.

And I don't

know.

Yes, our criminal justice system isn't perfect, but

I'd put it up against any system in the world.

This is America.

And

I can't believe he would say something like that.

We're talking to Sheriff Mike Smith.

Thank Thank you very much, Sheriff.

I appreciate your honesty on this.

I will tell you: look, you have to decide who to vote for, but I'm telling every city in America, you better look at what's going on in your town because it's coming disguised as a Republican.

And these states are starting to fall one by one because you're not paying attention to what's going on in your own.

And, you know, we like to believe that, oh, well, we can trust them.

You have to get the word out.

People are

not necessarily who you think they are.

And this prosecutor is

extraordinary, in my opinion, extraordinarily dangerous.

His name is David Levitt.

And the whole Levitt thing is, I mean,

all of these institutional families, enough is enough.

Enough is enough.

This is the best of the Glenbeck program.

We have at least five Supreme Court rulings coming out.

Kelly Shackelford is going to be joining us from First Liberty coming up in just a minute.

He'll tell us what all of these mean and how much they will affect us in our lives.

Do you ever remember a time like this, Stu, where

you felt such an impact from the Supreme Court on more than one case?

Geez.

You know, the Obamacare one pops to mind as a big one that we followed so closely for such a long time.

This one, though, because it's robust.

So that was one case.

Yeah,

this is the sort of marquee of the entire Supreme Court, right?

It's the focus of every single time the Senate looks at a nominee.

They're always focused on whether they're going to be for or against Roe versus Wade.

That one obviously being there.

But there's several other cases, as you mentioned.

The one about guns is a big one in New York.

The case about the

government's right to regulate

power plants is a massive one when it comes to global warming and how much

you're going to be paying for electricity.

We have the prayer on the field one was another big one on religious liberty.

Go ahead.

Right.

Do you think I'm overstating or overreading the impact?

We should ask Kelly this next hour.

Of the EPA one.

This seems like almost an end run where the Commerce Clause that was decided during the FDR administration was an end run around the constitutional powers that gave the federal government access to everything in our life.

This kind of seems like an end run around that decision in a way, doesn't it?

Possibly, yeah.

That could be the way this plays out.

And I think the court

is more of a focus on our lives than I think the founders really intended.

I don't think that they wanted it.

Oh, yeah.

But I mean, it has become the backstop against all sorts of abuses by our government.

I mean,

the courts as a whole have been the only thing stopping this administration from doing all sorts of crazy things, from requiring vaccines to,

you know, gosh,

we could probably name five or six cases just over the past six months that have been pushed, they've been stopped from doing things, you know, when it comes to immigration is another one, where they would just, they would say in the argument, we can't do it ourselves.

We need congressional support.

And then Congress would say, yeah, we're not going to do that.

And they'd say, okay, we'll do it ourselves.

And luckily, the courts have been been there to stop it over and over again.

They're not perfect, but right now they seem to be the only people in our constitutional framework who care about the Constitution.

Well, they will get around the Constitution eventually.

I think they're going to declare a national emergency, a climate emergency, or a banking emergency, or an energy shortage emergency.

One way or another, emergencies are coming.

And that's how you really make an end end run around Congress and the Supreme Court.

Let me give you this story from CNBC.

Raising children is expensive in the United States, and families are feeling the pressure.

More than 12.5 million children in the U.S.

live in poverty.

Even middle-class families are increasingly struggling to pay for everyday expenses.

Yeah, why is that?

The U.S.

Department of Agriculture has

published a report using 2015 data that estimated expenses of child rearing from birth through the age 17 in a middle-income family of two adults and two children.

It is 233,610.

With inflation, that means it's 286,000 in 2022.

But adjusting for inflation, they say, may not be enough.

Child care costs have actually outpaced inflation.

In 2020, child care expenses rose 5.03% year after year compared to the annual inflation rate of just 1.2 at the time.

The fact that is sending an infant to daycare in many places across the country could be significantly more expensive than in-state public tuition to send them to college.

The United States has been very reluctant, very conservative when it comes to these kinds of family policies.

One of the issues issues with child care is the U.S.

isn't or is a patchwork system.

We have programs that fully subsidize eligible children.

We have tax credits that subsidize a portion of child care costs for higher-income families.

We also have block grants for states to help them expand access.

The problem with all these systems is that with this multitude of approaches, we're just not getting close to anything universal or affordable.

Okay, so here's CNBC saying, really,

we need pre-K money.

We need more money and we can't solve this problem state by state.

It has to be solved at the federal government.

Again, another crisis the government can take care of.

Well,

I don't know about you, but I get a little tired of working for everybody else

um i pay my fair share i pay more than my fair share and uh i usually you know i've never had a problem paying my taxes because i love the country and i'm willing to help others i just think that helping others is not doing gender studies i think helping others is not enforcing uh

the uh idea that our public schools have to have open bathrooms with all of our kids and hide information from us parents.

No, sorry.

At what point do you start saying, I'm not really being represented here?

Well, you can't because we have representation.

You vote for your representative.

That's one of the problems with us

is

we'll hire somebody, but they'll do the exact opposite usually.

Now, there is a great article in the Federalist about the student loan bailout.

Because we saved and behaved responsibly, President Joe Biden will punish us.

Nor

is his plan fair to those who don't go to college.

We put five children through college, one still attending.

We saved up.

We never took out any loans.

We didn't want our kids burdened with debt.

Our kids went to William and Mary, Mary Washington, Dartmouth, John Hopkins, and the University of Pennsylvania.

So far, the total cost of these colleges has been well more than $600,000.

Well, last week, Biden forced taxpayers to assume nearly $6 billion in federal student loans

for 560,000 borrowers.

News stories announced the decision on forcing taxpayers to pay off the loan for others, and it appears delayed until closer to the election.

While some debt is likely to be paid off by taxpayers, Democrats will probably keep keep their other borrowers locked in politically by continuing to freeze repayments and warning that Republicans will end this.

Should my wife and I have just borrowed all of this money and sent our kids to public universities?

If so, we could add $600,000 to spend on all sorts of other things, nicer cars, houses, fun trips, or we could have given that money to our children and grandchildren when we die.

To save to pay for a family's college bills, we always purchased used cars and, you know, and we were a year old when

we drove them for years.

My Ford Tauro lasted 16 years, more than 225,000 miles.

My Pontiac Transport for my wife lasted almost as long before Russ meant that it could no longer pass the state's yearly safety check.

So because we saved up and behaved responsibly, President Biden is going to punish us,

those who didn't save or work 90, 80 hour weeks, who spent their money on other nice things instead.

Now we are paying off and picking up their tab for their kids' education.

How exactly is that fair?

Nor is it fair to those who don't go to college.

This is a great article that you really need to read at the Federalist.

But I think this is the way a lot of people are going to start to feel.

As we have shortages ourselves and shortages of money,

how are people going to deal with the process that we are sending welfare checks and we're

sending food stamps down to the border

when we have hungry people here?

By the way, the direct impact

of the Fed is going to be felt again today.

They are raising the rates of interest.

So anything connected to the interest rates, that's credit cards, adjustable rate mortgages, or

fixed rate mortgages that you haven't secured yet, all of this will change

today and could change directly.

They're trying to cool the economy, which means they're trying to get you to stop buying stuff.

And it's pulling us into a recession if business investing and consumer spending is slowed too much.

But they're going to get it right this time.

So, what it's going to do is it's going to make borrowing more expensive for companies, higher costs of capital.

The valuation in the stock market is going to get compressed.

We've already seen a lot of that happening right now, but this will be increased drag on your your 401k or anything that you have that's a retirement fund.

And the problem is that we're going up three-quarters of a percent.

Stu, how much was it for each point

just on the federal budgets borrowing?

Yeah, as rates tick up.

Do you remember?

Yeah, it's one, each percentage point costs us another $400 billion per year, which is the equivalent of adding a new Defense Department every year.

Oh my gosh.

By adding a point?

One point.

And it's something like $4 trillion over a decade.

And it gets to a point where just the interest

on our national debt becomes the focus of our entire budget eventually.

I mean, we're not that far away from this becoming really a society that just repays debt rather than actually does things.

The best of the Glenbeck program.

Kelly Shackelford, a very good friend of the program and now a powerhouse to be reckoned with

with the organization he's the CEO of, First Liberty Institute.

He is chief counsel of First Liberty Institute as well.

Kelly, welcome to the program.

Happy to be on, Glenn.

Thank you.

So you've been watching these roll out from the Supreme Court.

We had a surprisingly high number today.

We had six different cases.

Can you tell me which are the important ones and which actually will affect us?

Well, I think for your audience, I doubt very many of them would be of any interest.

I think

this is a weird time, Glenn.

We've got,

you know, a record number, if you look over the past few weeks, that have been not issued.

I mean, there's only 65 cases this term, and we were at like 29 or something just a week or so ago, which is, I don't think that's happened since maybe 1950.

So, but we're getting closer.

We're now down to, I think, 17 or 18, but all the big ones are left.

The Dobbs case, the Second Amendment case, the border case, the Remaining Mexico, the two big religious liberty cases, which are both our cases at First Liberty.

We're waiting for all these big cases, and it looks like they're just going to maybe unleash them all in a very short amount of time close to each other but uh

we'll wait until next week and see what happens next week

so what are the two big religious um

uh decisions that are coming i i know coach kennedy that's one of them what's the other one the other one is a case out of maine uh where they they had a school choice program where parents could pick any uh

school that they wanted for their kids as long as it wasn't religious.

And so it was just pure discrimination against all the religious schools.

And I think we're going to win.

I mean, the argument went well, but this will be a really big case because it'll make clear nationwide that when you have school choice, which we really should have,

that you can't exclude the religious schools.

You guys are compete against them like everybody else, and people are going to pick the best education for their children.

And so I think that'll be a really big case.

It's sort of almost the final nail in the coffin on these attempts to discriminate in school choice.

And the only step left really will be to get school choice where parents choose.

You know, it shouldn't be just rich people get to choose their schools.

Everybody should be able to choose what's right for their kid if it's their tax money.

And quite honestly, why should I have to pay two tuitions?

I mean, I'm willing to do it to help the kids whose parents don't have any money, but this should all be choice.

And I think those public schools would go out of business quickly.

I was in front of an audience

last night.

I gave a speech, and I was asking the audience some pretty basic questions about America, American history.

And I don't know, I think I said three times from the stage last night, wow, our school system has greatly failed us on these things.

Nobody would raise their hand on a couple of questions that I thought were fairly easy.

Yeah.

It's really, I mean, look, not only are they failing in that way, right?

But they're also failing in what they're trying to indoctrinate, you know, third graders and second graders, stuff that parents are just appalled by, and we are all appalled by.

So

as you said, a number of these schools go out of business.

I think a number of those schools would actually have to

start acting like they're in that community and they're actually having to be better and they're actually having to be good and they're actually having to represent the morals and values of their community and not some sort of woke, crazy stuff that they're putting in elementary schools.

So I think it would be great in lots of ways.

And it's fascinating to me, Glenn, it's one of those issues that you know, Republicans are heavily in favor of school choice, but so are Democrats.

I mean, you know, African American, Hispanic, I mean, these are large percentages, and yet they can't get it through because the teachers union has such a lock that they're not voting for something that is very important to most of their people.

And so I think that's part of why you see sort of this really a fracturing of a lot of things that we had kind of counted on.

I mean, there was a district yesterday in Texas that's 84% Hispanic that just had an election for Congress.

They elected a Republican.

You would never see that in the past.

But, you know, they're voting their values.

And so some of these things are changing.

But that case, I think, will be really big.

It's called Carson versus Macon.

And, of course, the Coach Kennedy case is a huge case.

I just think we've dealt with for 50 years a lot of these bad old decisions that have created this sort of hostility to religion in our schools.

And it shouldn't be that way.

The founders never meant it to be that way.

They believed in free speech.

They believed in the free exercise of religion.

And that should be what the law is.

And I think we're going to move back that way after Coach Kennedy comes down, but we'll have to wait and see what the opinion says.

You know, I got to tell you, if I had a coach who is a Muslim and he wanted to take his prayer rug out at the end of a football game and say a prayer, I wouldn't have a problem with that.

I'm obviously not a Muslim.

And, you know,

why does anybody have a problem with these things?

The Sports Illustrated has just come out with just an amazingly bad article.

When faith and football teamed up against American democracy, the U.S.

Supreme Court will decide the case of a football coach at a public high school who was told he wasn't allowed to pray on the field in front of players.

The expected result is a win for the coach and the further erosion of the separation between church and state.

I don't know where they find that.

Kelly, do you?

I don't.

It was amazing, Glenn.

I've been doing doing this kind of work for thirty-three years, and this is the first time I can ever remember an article by the media being so ridiculous that it led to its own news story.

There were stories yesterday at Fox News, at Bright Bar, at all kinds of media because of the Twitter explosion that occurred when Sports Illustrated posted this story.

It was so ridiculous and so biased.

Everybody's like, okay, a coach praying by himself for 20 seconds is the end of democracy.

You know, number one, we're not a democracy.

You know, we're a republic, a constitutional republic.

And number two, separation of church and state.

You know, number one, those words aren't in the constitution, but number two, please tell me where the institution of the church is in this.

Please tell me where the institution of the state is.

It's Coach Kennedy.

It's not the state.

I mean, this is really ridiculous and very,

you know, again, sports illustrators, as you said, should stick to sports and not try to get into woke politics in their sports.

This is the reason why they're losing so many people.

So

let me take it further.

As we look at Sports Illustrated and we see all of the errors there, that's one thing.

But I listened to the arguments.

I listened online through your website.

And it was amazing.

To be able to listen to a Supreme Court hearing was incredible.

I've never done it before in its entirety live.

And

opposing side was claiming.

It was nothing like

the facts of the story.

It was all over the...

all over the board.

I couldn't believe that they could get away with saying the things that they did without it being perjury.

Yeah, I think, I mean,

a lot of people don't know, but on the other side, and let me mention, Glenn, if people want to listen to it, it's still up at

our media website, which is firstlibertylive.com.

They can go listen to the argument.

It's unbelievable.

But

I think it's because what happened is that school district, instead of representing themselves, got as their attorneys, the Americans United for Separation of Church and State, State, which is an interest group with a pretty

extreme agenda.

They're all secular humanists.

They want to push religion out of society.

And these were their attorneys.

Well, they're not very experienced at the Supreme Court.

So I think they did something really foolish, which is you start trying to twist the facts.

I mean, there's a record.

So we could point to the record.

And if you remember, our counsel, Paul Clement, who's probably the number one guy at the Supreme Court,

at the end of his rebuttal, he just nailed fact after fact after fact and the record that they were trying to pervert.

Well, they can read the record.

So that doesn't work.

And so what was happening, by the way, for your audience, if they wonder what we're talking about, is Coach only wanted to pray by himself.

He went by himself.

He just a 20-second prayer after the game to thank God for the privilege of coaching the young men that he coached.

And he got that from that movie, Facing the Giants, that he saw.

And he made that pledge.

And for seven, eight years, that's what he did until they told him to stop.

And at one point, midway through his year, some kids went and prayed with him too.

But as soon as the school said, hey, don't do that with the kids, he said, oh, that's fine.

That's not what I'm trying to do.

And he went back by himself.

And they ended up firing him because he wouldn't.

And he never, hang on just a second.

He never ever invited them.

They asked him.

And he said, it's a free country.

Do it.

you know, do what you want.

So it wasn't like he was indoctrinating or pulling people in.

I think that's really important.

That's exactly right.

Yeah, he never did.

And they admitted that.

I mean, that was one of the things they admitted.

They admitted he never coerced anyone.

And yet

their new theory at the Supreme Court was to say, oh, no, this is all about Coach Kennedy wanting to pray with the kids.

And then my favorite was they put a picture in the brief.

And they argued this all the time, and the media messed this up all the time.

It was a picture of Coach on a knee after the game, surrounded by all these players.

And they were saying, look, see, see all the players?

Well, what they didn't mention was that was after Coach was told, hey, you go to a knee again, you're going to be fired, even by yourself.

And he was like, look, I don't want to get the kids in trouble.

So I'm going to wait until they're singing the fight song facing the audience because I don't want them with me.

So he went by himself.

But what was happening is the whole country was watching this.

And he was down on his knee and he felt people coming around him.

He was like, oh, no, the kids are coming around me.

When he opened his eyes, it was the other team, all the players, all the coaches.

And so, as I told the media, this wasn't about him playing with his players.

This was about in America, when the government comes and tries to shut down somebody's First Amendment rights, Americans rise up and say, you're going to have to run over me too.

And that's what was happening.

It had nothing to do with his players.

It was the other team.

If there's ever an American story that

let me take a quick one-minute break and come back to you.

We're talking to Kelly Shackelford from First Liberty

about what's happening in the Supreme Court.

I just want to take your temperature on

what's happening with the security for the Supreme Court, the vote that happened in Congress yesterday, and why,

I guess it's John Roberts' decision, why they're waiting on this decision that is causing most of the angst.

We'll talk to you here in one minute.

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