#213 Braxton McCoy - Why is the US Government Selling Millions of Acres of Public Land?

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Speaker 3 Just want to say congratulations to the American citizens.

Speaker 3 We had a huge win last night. I just got word this morning about it.
What am I talking about? I'm talking about

Speaker 3 a certain amount of U.S. politicians, people that we elected,

Speaker 3 were trying to sell in between two and three million acres of public land. That's land that's ours.
the American citizen. That's my land.
That's your land.

Speaker 3 That's land that Theodore Roosevelt set aside for people like us to enjoy and to do as we please on it.

Speaker 3 Now, what was happening is they wanted to sell between two and three million acres of public land for affordable housing.

Speaker 3 That would have affected a lot of people. And we got loud about it.
I'm way late to this party,

Speaker 3 but we got loud about it. And I got word last night that we're going to pack this into the big, beautiful bill.

Speaker 3 And it got pushed out. They dropped it.

Speaker 3 But I don't think this is over. From my understanding, this has been going on for the better part of a decade, 10 years.

Speaker 3 And so I'm sure it's going to pop up again, even though the majority of the american people that i know i've seen poll after poll that says we do not want our land sold

Speaker 3 and so i want to say thank you to a couple people that were way ahead of me on this and i just i just i have a tremendous amount of respect for people that get loud on certain issues because there's a lot of fear that comes with that so i just i want to say thank you to cameron haynes to the guys over at meat eater jocko will ink joe rogan

Speaker 3 Senator Tim Sheehey,

Speaker 3 and most of all, Braxton McCoy, who had the balls to come on my show and talk about this.

Speaker 3 You know, I'm thanking him because when you do this,

Speaker 3 when you go up against and speak for the people and talk about what you believe in that isn't in the government's agenda, you carry an ungodly amount of stress, a tremendous amount of of fear.

Speaker 3 I mean, what you're going up against is a corrupt establishment, and it's sad.

Speaker 3 But they pulled it out of the bill. But like I said, it's probably not over.

Speaker 3 Crazy, right? You know,

Speaker 3 I hate to say this,

Speaker 3 but the U.S. Capitol and the majority of DC has turned into

Speaker 3 the world's most elite, expensive brothel. And they're always open for business so long as it benefits them, the ones sitting in office.
And it's disgusting.

Speaker 3 And I hate what our country has turned into with this. It was never supposed to be like this.
It's supposed to be, you represent the people. that elected you.

Speaker 3 And time and time again, I don't feel like that's happening.

Speaker 3 It's disgusting. We need a third party.
I mean, when you speak out, this is why I want to thank these guys.

Speaker 3 Because when you speak out, you're going up against people who a couple of years ago, before they were elected, probably didn't have much. The majority of them didn't have much.

Speaker 3 And time and time again, we see elected officials, and after a couple of years, they're millionaires.

Speaker 3 And after a couple more years, they're worth hundreds and hundreds of millions of of dollars on a salary that supposedly only pays about $200,000 a year. Now, how does that happen?

Speaker 3 Well, that's why I say it's become the most elite, most expensive brothel in the world. Not only that, you're going up against a corrupt government that would potentially target you.

Speaker 3 put you in prison, have the IRS audit you, make up rumors about you, hire PR firms to dig into your background and find every little mistake that you've made just to push their agenda so that they can get paid off.

Speaker 3 And it's disgusting. It is disgusting.

Speaker 3 We need a third party.

Speaker 3 You know, I fell into the trap of, oh, it's Republicans versus Democrats. Man, I know we have a lot of differences, but this is one thing that everybody came together on and looked what happened.

Speaker 3 We at least postponed it. Like I said, I don't think it's over.
We really need to think about putting a third party together because this shit is not working. And I want to leave you with a quote.

Speaker 3 Might not be exact, but for evil to prevail, all that needs to happen is for good men to do nothing.

Speaker 3 And so

Speaker 3 try to get past the fear, the intimidation, the corruption, and just do what's right, man, because

Speaker 3 I've got kids.

Speaker 3 You've got kids.

Speaker 15 This is the future of our country.

Speaker 3 And if people don't speak up, the country's going to look a lot different sooner than later.

Speaker 3 We're still releasing the Braxton-McCoy interview in Braxton, man.

Speaker 3 Kudos to you, man, for having the courage to come on my show. and educate us on what's going on.
I know there's a tremendous amount of fear. I feel it too, man.

Speaker 3 But thank you and thank you to everybody else that I just mentioned.

Speaker 1 Cheers.

Speaker 1 Braxton McCoy, welcome to the show, man.

Speaker 2 Thanks for having me, Sean.

Speaker 1 You ready to blow the doors off this thing?

Speaker 2 I mean, I guess.

Speaker 2 I'm overstimulated and wired right now, man. Yeah.

Speaker 2 Good to go.

Speaker 1 Yeah, so I found you. I was actually,

Speaker 1 I was actually, I saw a tweet from Jocko, and I respect a lot of what Jocko has to say. And he had retweeted one of your things, and he just said, he said, pay attention to this guy.

Speaker 1 So then I went down the rabbit hole, went through your X feed, saw you had shouted me out, and I think Tucker and Rogan. about the sale of public land, which I knew nothing about.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 I retweeted it and said, I'll be in touch. And like an hour later, I started getting phone calls and text messages from all these powerful people

Speaker 1 on not to do it. And

Speaker 1 generally that means we're right over the target. So we didn't really text anybody back because I don't like it when people try to influence who I bring and do not bring on the show.
That really.

Speaker 1 fucking pisses me off. You know, it's, it's, I thought everybody was about free speech, but guess not.
But

Speaker 1 anyway, so just proved to me I was right over the target. We did have a small conversation with Lee's office, who seems like he's the one kind of leading this charge.

Speaker 1 And Jeremy, he was supposed to, they were supposed to send something, right?

Speaker 16 Yeah, we were looking for a readout of

Speaker 16 his time with the Senate parliamentarian yesterday. I haven't gotten it yet.

Speaker 1 Yeah, we haven't gotten it. Weird.

Speaker 1 Or maybe not.

Speaker 1 But it's weird though because i like a lot of the stuff that lee has to say but but um

Speaker 1 but this seems

Speaker 1 this seems uh like somebody's gonna make a lot of money off of national parks and public land so

Speaker 2 you seem to be the guy to talk to so thanks for coming well thanks for having me and and when i tweet that i i wasn't saying i'm the guy i was just saying like let's find the right fucking guy uh and then it kind of turned out people seem to think that i am so that wasn't me being like, put me on or whatever.

Speaker 1 No,

Speaker 1 I didn't mean that. I just mean you, you seem to be the one that has the balls to get loud on this.
And a lot of people in America now, they don't like to speak up.

Speaker 1 They don't like to say what's on their mind. They don't like to hold people

Speaker 1 accountable. And I just, I see you doing it and I respect the shit out of that man because I know that takes balls.
It's a lot of pressure. Yeah.
And I know you're going through a lot

Speaker 2 of

Speaker 1 stress for different reasons, which we'll get into later.

Speaker 1 But yeah, just thanks for coming and thanks for bringing this to our attention because, like I said, I knew nothing about it and

Speaker 1 I enjoy our national parks.

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Speaker 2 Yeah, and the so

Speaker 2 national parks, he's telling the truth when he says national parks are not on the table.

Speaker 1 Okay. Sort of.

Speaker 2 But if you look at a place like Yellowstone National Park, just as an example, because that's what he kept saying, no one's trying to sell Yellowstone.

Speaker 2 Well,

Speaker 2 the ethos of the park is to preserve this land for the sake of the animals and the American people, right? Well, the park is at like 8,000 feet in the mountains.

Speaker 2 It's below zero for a significant portion of the year. That park itself is actually just summer range for the most part for these animals.
So Greater Yellowstone ecosystem is about the size of Ohio.

Speaker 2 And that part he's absolutely trying to sell. So the animals are going to lose their winter range.
I guess Yellowstone, he's not going to pave over a geyser.

Speaker 2 but the animals themselves are going to be cooked if this were to go through.

Speaker 2 And for anyone that doubts,

Speaker 2 you know, he's tried to say that he's only going to sell off this small percentage of public lands. That's kind of the central claim he's making.

Speaker 2 But note that it always, his landscape.

Speaker 1 Exactly between just small amount is in between two and three million acres, right? I think it's actually like 225 million to 285 million, if I'm correct.

Speaker 2 Yeah, that's the way I was reading it too.

Speaker 2 It looks like he's trying to set a floor, but no real ceiling.

Speaker 2 so the floor is this must be sold off and then the ceiling is these other 240 million acres are to be evaluated at least that's what it looks like which is setting the table for a sell-off and I know we'll talk more about this later but we have processes in place for getting rid or the disposal of land already

Speaker 1 What are those? What do you mean the disposal of land?

Speaker 2 Well, that's kind of the legal term that they use. It's really like transfer to

Speaker 2 a municipality or an organization for development and growth, things like that. That's covered under FLIPMA, which is the Federal Land Policy and Management Act in 1976.

Speaker 2 That thing is there.

Speaker 2 It kind of wrapped up a bunch of other older laws into one new one that set a multiple use mandate in place. And part of that multiple use allows, or part of that act allows for the disposal of lands.

Speaker 2 Like if a city needs to grow for some reason, like that's, for example, that's how that ground in Las Vegas that they took Trump out of context on.

Speaker 2 I'm not sure if you saw that, that ground got developed, it would have went through Flipma.

Speaker 2 So we can do this already.

Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah. You know, with me, it's like, when does this end? Like, you know, Theodore Roosevelt preserved our land for the American people to hunt it, enjoy it, hike it, camp it,

Speaker 1 whatever outdoor activity you want to do. And he did that because of this exact reason, right? Yes.
Capitalists,

Speaker 1 people, you know, the elites will buy up all the land and then there will be no public land left.

Speaker 1 That's why. he did it.
And now we're trying to change that. And, you know, and the other reason I brought John Braxton is because, you know, more and more in the country,

Speaker 1 it seems like the American people, this just keeps happening more and more over time. I don't give a shit which administration it is.
It's, it's the, the American citizen is never heard.

Speaker 1 All we hear is these fucking politicians. And it's becoming more and more clear.
I mean, you see polls about all the shit that's going on right now and how against people are against what's happening.

Speaker 1 And none of these politicians care. Right.
Almost none of them, no matter what the issue is. They just keep going against the people, the people that elected them in.
And I'm just fed up, man.

Speaker 1 I am so fed up with this shit. But anyways, let me read you a quick intro.
We'll get into

Speaker 1 the nuts and bolts of this whole thing here pretty soon. Braxton McCoy.

Speaker 1 A son of southern Utah, raised roping cattle, hunting elk, and fishing with your grandfather with public lands is the backbone of your life.

Speaker 1 A combat veteran veteran who survived a suicide bomber in Iraq, rebuilt your life at Walter Reed, and now you fight to keep America's public lands from being sold off. Author of The Glass Factory,

Speaker 1 riding on the mountain during hunting season.

Speaker 1 You wrote it on the mountain during hunting season. A guide and advocate leading hunts since 2015 and championing public lands since 2016, declaring not one acre should be lost to privatization.

Speaker 1 A rancher and a horse trainer in Idaho, a patriot who sees these lands is bought with blood from Lewis and Clark to Teddy Roosevelt, and you're calling out anyone, even senators, who dares to auction them off.

Speaker 1 And like I said,

Speaker 1 the reason I found you was that tweet from Jocko that said, we need to pay attention to this. So I dug in.
And now here we are.

Speaker 1 And we've done some research on what Lee's doing and some of the other people that are involved that nobody knows about yet, I'm sure. And so we'll get into all that.

Speaker 1 But right off the bat,

Speaker 1 I want to talk about your ties to the land and

Speaker 1 a little bit of your patriotism, what you've done for the country and all that kind of stuff. So

Speaker 1 why does this mean so much to you?

Speaker 2 Man, I grew up.

Speaker 2 We were a poor family. We didn't have a lot.
It was common for a lot of people down there. I was on, I grew up on a small horse place.

Speaker 2 My old man trained horses and did electrical work to kind of keep make ends meet there.

Speaker 2 My grandpa was a plumber. His dad had been a dairyman and failed at that and ended up having to move to the city.
But he was a big-time outdoorsman, him and all of his brothers.

Speaker 2 Every one of his brothers enlisted as well.

Speaker 2 And so,

Speaker 2 since birth,

Speaker 2 the thing that we got to enjoy the most as a family was public ground. You know, we'd go out fishing and

Speaker 2 just, you know, just to look at is nice too. At one time, I think I was about 12.
We were up on the mountain and there was some moose down in this pond and my grandma wanted to get footage of it.

Speaker 2 So I got on the back of the four-wheeler and she drove down there and I'm holding on trying to watch and these it was a cow calf and they started chasing us so I've got like this took this video of a cow calf chasing us when i'm like 12 bouncing on the back of this you know so just even little little memories like that man my grandpa he was real good at time flies he's best fisherman i ever seen all of his brothers really but he he was a real good fisherman we'd uh

Speaker 2 we'd go down to the creeks and he'd get me set up and say okay i'm gonna go you know we'll see who catches the first fish and i'd be out there casting away and then he'd go sit down and wait for a bug to land on him and catch and make sure it was the right bug that looked like they were eating.

Speaker 2 And then he'd get his fly box out, tie on, and he'd start whacking fish. I think trying to maybe teach me a lesson that took 40 years to learn.

Speaker 2 But yeah, so it's like, it's been my whole life.

Speaker 2 You know, I got family in the cattle industry and a lot of friends. You know, so a lot of time day working as a kid, day working,

Speaker 2 go out and help move cows around or rope or doctor or whatever you need to do. Mostly for us, it was just helping neighbors and then trying to get horses worked because that was an income source.

Speaker 1 Do ranchers use public land?

Speaker 2 Oh, yeah, a ton of them do. And that's, I was going to say, I always, I get all uncomfortable with the word rancher.
My buddy and I have a beef operator or a meat-selling business.

Speaker 2 I don't consider myself a rancher.

Speaker 2 Cowboy, I guess,

Speaker 2 horseman.

Speaker 2 I think in order to be a rancher, it's got to be your full-time gig, what makes all your money. And it's really not that for me, but I do love it.
And I love cattle.

Speaker 2 And as far as ranchers using the land, yeah, man.

Speaker 2 In fact, a lot of small family ranches, which are already struggling,

Speaker 2 they'll be broken by this. They're running, some of them, not all, but some of them are running like 90, 10 deeded to undeeded acreage.

Speaker 2 So like 10% of their operation is on deeded acres and 90% is on public ground.

Speaker 1 Man, you know, I want to move into some of your patriotism too. I mean, you would die for this.
You almost did die for this country. Yeah.
And I mean,

Speaker 1 you know, the funny thing is, is you're getting attacked. I see you've been called a communist.

Speaker 1 You've been called all kinds of things. And, you know, you are a typical American who served your country, got blown up by an IED.
You have nothing to win.

Speaker 1 You have nothing personally to win for taking a stand against this. Now, on the other side, I don't know for a fact, but I mean, there's a lot to lose, a lot of money to lose by selling this off.

Speaker 1 I mean, what developers are going to develop this land and all this stuff.

Speaker 1 And we'll get into all that in a little bit, but it's just, I want to bring that out. Like, you personally have nothing to gain.
No financial incentive. You're not getting any land.

Speaker 1 You're not, you're not, you don't, I don't, you don't strike me as a person that wants to get famous or, you know, be

Speaker 1 having Twitter wars. I mean, none of that.
And you're just getting attacked for just protecting American people's interest and public land.

Speaker 1 And so I want to just, I want you to go through a little bit of your service. if you don't mind to show people you know you did fight for this country

Speaker 1 did the people coming after you fight for the country?

Speaker 2 Isn't that interesting? Yeah.

Speaker 1 It's always the way, right? Yes. It's always the way.

Speaker 2 Man,

Speaker 2 as a kid,

Speaker 2 I hated school, man. I wanted to be outside.

Speaker 2 I liked reading books. Other than that, I pretty much hated the rest of it.
I liked science stuff, but I didn't really care for school that much. I liked riding bulls and...

Speaker 2 chasing girls and riding dirt bikes and kind of the typical American thing. And then 9-11 happened.
And even though we all hated New York City, those are still our people.

Speaker 2 You know, it's more of a brotherly piss on you kind of thing. But if somebody else takes a swing, you want to take a swing back.
So I enlisted and ended up over in Ramadi in 05, 06, time for.

Speaker 2 Oh, shit. Yeah.
That's a hot time.

Speaker 2 It was.

Speaker 2 Yeah, it was busy, man, for sure.

Speaker 2 And typical kind of war.

Speaker 2 tons of guys have way more combat experience than me you know a few gunfights here and there some sniper fire

Speaker 2 we we crashed a ch-46 one time the pilots called it a hard landing but it felt like a damn crash to me you know like

Speaker 2 we were like two minutes off this objective and the 46 those things are like vietnam war or korean warrior or something

Speaker 2 And it got like electrical fire or some kind of thing. And we ended up back and we made it all the way back to Fabromati and hit the PLZ, that big concrete one there.

Speaker 2 And then, of course, got right back on a bird and flew back and did the stupid mission.

Speaker 2 So that was kind of a lot of log pack security type bullshit too. You know,

Speaker 2 a handful of actual PSD stuff. But for the most part, they just tasked us out into.

Speaker 2 We were very generalized, you know.

Speaker 2 EOD needs a lift somewhere. Someone's in a tick, you know, just kind of that sort of stuff.

Speaker 2 And then on the 5th of January, we were providing security for this Marine element that

Speaker 2 was recruiting Iraqis in order to send them over to a different country to be trained up to be police officers.

Speaker 2 And my understanding as just an absolute idiot on the ground was that they were having a problem because they

Speaker 2 They were trying to use Shia to police Sunni neighborhoods in Ramadi, and that was just not working out. So they said, okay, well, let's recruit some Sunnis and see if that might be a better gig.

Speaker 2 So that was kind of the idea. And on the third day,

Speaker 2 so the fifth would have been the fourth day. But on the third day, it was supposed to be the end.
The recruitment drive was supposed to be done and over with.

Speaker 2 But there were so many people that had showed up that we were out until like midnight. And then we finally had to just send people home.

Speaker 2 And the catch is there were, there were not even any slots left. We were doing this for show at this point, and everybody knew it, but they were trying, you know, hearts and minds, all that shit.

Speaker 2 So they said, okay, we got to go out one more day. Well, they had only promised us three peaceful days, and it's Ramadi in the beginning of 06.

Speaker 2 You could just about guarantee MT that you're going to have an issue. And the day before,

Speaker 2 the day... Either the day before or the day before that, we had watched guys sit at a bus stop and never get on anything, just watch us all day.
Violence. Yeah, and we passed that up.

Speaker 2 So we knew what was going on.

Speaker 2 And then, so on the fifth, that morning, we go to S2 and get the brief. And the brief is like, hey, you need to be on the look for V-beds

Speaker 2 because they're going to attack you with a V-bed. And he said, all right.

Speaker 2 And I even made the joke we get in the trucks. And I was like, well, let's go get fucking blown up, dude.
Because

Speaker 2 everybody knew.

Speaker 2 We get there to this place called the Glass Factory. And it's just like what you would imagine.
It's a factory. You've probably been there.

Speaker 2 I haven't. Okay.

Speaker 2 So it's just kind of a, looks like all the other factories over there, which are not all that different than ours, except for some architectural differences. But it has this wall.

Speaker 2 around the sort of compound and that wall has a big gate to let trucks in and then a man gate to let people in and we were using the man gate to let the dudes through the Iraqi dudes through, and then wand them and then send them in to be go through the recruitment process, jumping jacks, and all that fun stuff.

Speaker 2 I still got videos of that. Uh,

Speaker 2 and well, we get there that morning to the man gate, dude, and there is

Speaker 2 like a thousand Iraqis lined up at the door already. And these people, these are not a punctual people.

Speaker 2 So we, we called up and we're like, hey, this is a bad, really bad idea.

Speaker 2 And they said, basically, Roger, continue mission, you know, like, all right. So I went and talked.
I was Bravo team leader at this time. And I went and talked to my first line leader.

Speaker 2 His name is Johnny. And I was like, John, I don't want to put guys out there.
This is stupid.

Speaker 2 And so he and I decided we would go out with our interpreter.

Speaker 2 We called him Carlos because we thought he looked like he was from Juarez rather than Iraq.

Speaker 2 So we go out with Carlos and just start asking questions.

Speaker 2 And pretty soon this guy, and you know, just the typical stuff like, why are you here on time? You know, why'd you get here early?

Speaker 2 The guys,

Speaker 2 they'd say, well, I just want a good opportunity at the job.

Speaker 2 Or a sheikh, cleric, told me to be here. And that is usually a tip off.

Speaker 2 And so I'm in the middle of talking to this dude and another guy comes up and he's like frantic and he's yelling and I know like 13 words in Arabic or whatever and none of them are like very kind.

Speaker 2 So I'm trying, I can't tell what he's saying and I'm asking Carlos, man, tell me, help me out here. I have no idea.
And he says he sees a bomb

Speaker 2 and I said, okay, what kind of bomb? And he says, a bomb with wires. So my brain immediately went to tripwire.
No, he said grenade. I'm sorry.
Grenade. That's what it was.
Grenade.

Speaker 2 That's how Carlos translated it to me anyway.

Speaker 2 And so I'm thinking tripwire. So I radio up.
We had internal comms and then external. So I radioed our team and was like, hey, don't come out here.
There's a tripwire somewhere.

Speaker 2 You know, there's like a thousand Iraqis wandering around. You can barely keep these people.

Speaker 2 So

Speaker 2 I say, don't come out here. We're going to try to figure this out.
And then within what feels like moments, a semi-truck crashes through our concertina wire on the eastern perimeter.

Speaker 2 And then, of course, everybody lights it up. You know, we've told the v-bed everyone's thinking that's a big ass v-bed you know

Speaker 2 uh so we take this guy gets taken out and now there's iraqis running all over the place you know they think they're stuck between literally a rock wall and a gunfight so they're going

Speaker 2 ape shit

Speaker 2 and we've got this truck and driver to deal with

Speaker 2 and uh so now we actually need help And not too long after that,

Speaker 2 Lieutenant Colonel McLaughlin shows up and a couple of dog handlers. So Lieutenant Colonel Mac comes out with his PSD team to start trying to help us get people organized.

Speaker 2 There's a fucking Lieutenant Colonel out there with a bunch of fives and sixes and fours. You know, he's a very, very brave man.

Speaker 2 And these dog handlers were Marines, and we had done a few like joint stuff with those guys.

Speaker 2 And they said, hey, do you want us to go get our dog? And Sergeant Cannon's dog was sleeping on the hood of my truck. I was like, yeah, go get that sucker up, dude.
So he comes out and

Speaker 2 now we're getting these people back in lines. And we needed them in like three different lines.
One,

Speaker 2 do you have a government ID? Do you have no government ID? Do you have a government ID, but you worked for the bath party?

Speaker 2 Because we can't employ, you know, McBremer made it so we couldn't employ bath people. So we needed to kind of filter them through quickly once they went in.

Speaker 2 And right as we start to get everything pretty stabilized, I hear, and I'm on the radio actually with my medic, and I hear Bruno start growling.

Speaker 2 And I remember I just looked up under my K-pot,

Speaker 2 and he's got this dude's arm in his mouth, this Iraqi dude. And then the next thing is just two bright white flashes, like boom, boom.

Speaker 2 And I wake up face down. I feel like I'm not even, I don't even know if I was fully conscience, conscious really.

Speaker 2 Face down, and I know I am really fucked up.

Speaker 2 and I can see

Speaker 2 organs and stuff right here like kind of under me but my arm the only thing I could really move very well was my right elbow

Speaker 2 and I got myself propped up on my right elbow and was looking

Speaker 2 and I thought holy shit I got blown in half you know

Speaker 2 so I My left humerus had been broken, but my left hand worked. So I was like rubbing this organ through my fingers, trying to see if I could feel it.
And I don't know. Dude, I felt anatomy.

Speaker 2 I don't know if you can even feel organs like that, right? But I'm sitting here.

Speaker 2 And then I hear Johnny screaming my name, just like everybody else, anybody with a McCoy or Mac, whatever, it's just Mac, right? And so I'm hearing Mac, Mac.

Speaker 2 And then next thing I know, I can feel like a little weight off of my back

Speaker 2 and then a little more weight.

Speaker 2 And then these organs kind of pulled out and I could see the top of my hips.

Speaker 2 Shit. So I was like, fuck, at least, you know, at least I got hips, right?

Speaker 2 But I couldn't really see much more.

Speaker 2 And then they rolled me over. And when they rolled me over, that's when I knew my legs were totally screwed.

Speaker 2 They didn't,

Speaker 2 like, they were rolling like this, you know, wobbling.

Speaker 2 And what had happened is I,

Speaker 2 essentially, everything that didn't have armor on it got hit by ball bearings.

Speaker 2 And my right femur was busted in two places, my left in three, my left tibia, my left hip was broken in two spots, my right hip in one, my radius and ulnar were broken,

Speaker 2 all the bones in my right hand, my right median nerve was transected right here at my wrist. My left humerus was broken, I had brain injury, busted ribs, broken back.

Speaker 2 And I was laying there bleeding. And, you know, the first thought you have is after seeing stuff, you think, there's just absolutely no fucking way I'm going to live.

Speaker 2 You know, so then you start doing that stupid shit, like, you know, tell my mother I love her and that kind of stuff.

Speaker 2 And then my medic gets there and he starts cutting my pants off to try to assess. Right.

Speaker 2 And pretty soon he goes, dude, you're not wearing any underwear, you know?

Speaker 2 And I was like, fuck you, dude, it's cold, okay?

Speaker 2 So we're trying to have as much fun as we can about it.

Speaker 2 But I think pretty much everybody thought I was going to die, including me.

Speaker 2 And every time, so your femurs,

Speaker 2 your glutes are so strong that when your femurs break that bad, they contract. They pull together.
So So my femurs were like as long as they were wide,

Speaker 2 which in the end might have saved my life really from bleeding out.

Speaker 2 But I could see every time I would, my heart would beat, water would, or blood and kind of pus and stuff would come out of all these different holes.

Speaker 2 It was like if you had a water bottle and squeeze it rhythm.

Speaker 2 And so they were trying to get that stuff patched up and they pretty

Speaker 2 You know, I think they realized pretty quickly that they just had to get me on a medevac or I wasn't going going to make it.

Speaker 2 And the medevac they had available was a five-ton.

Speaker 2 So they threw me on a litter and then put me on this five-ton.

Speaker 2 And some Sergeant Major, in his infinite wisdom, had put speed bumps on the road all the way from Ogden Gate to Charlie Med. So, you know, those five tons, it's like riding on a brick already.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 so I'm just bouncing back there, rattling. I feel my bones inside.
You know,

Speaker 2 in my book, I think I described it as like a bag of wrenches. You know.
Damn.

Speaker 2 And they get me to Charlie Med, and that's where they established,

Speaker 2 you know, started getting blood transfusions going in my arms.

Speaker 2 And then they put me on a bird

Speaker 2 to try to medevac me to Balad, you know, which is where you want to go.

Speaker 2 You want to get to an Air Force base instead of an Army one, right but uh we got in the air and then i was bleeding out too much so we had to stop in tq to quadam

Speaker 2 you stopped there to get more blood and then again we had to stop in uh fallujah they had a holy shit man yeah and it had a trauma med center there

Speaker 2 and so they started that's where they put the pick line in my neck i think so at one point i had like eight quarts of blood going in but i i was developing compartment syndrome in my legs.

Speaker 2 So they were swelling internally and they were doing everything they could to try to save my legs, you know. So to

Speaker 2 Falluzzia,

Speaker 2 they got me in traction splints and I hadn't had any pain meds yet because my blood pressure was so low they couldn't hit me with morphine, you know.

Speaker 2 So they grabbed my legs and they gave me like a rag to bite on. And man, the pain was intense enough that I was in and out anyway i think

Speaker 2 but i bit down on that and they got my leg on those traction splints and stretched them out and then they took a a knife and cut

Speaker 2 obviously a surgical knife not like a buck knife or something but they split me from knee to hip on both sides all the way up and then put wound vax in to try to peel that swelling and infection and that kind of shit out

Speaker 2 and then i went from there to ballad

Speaker 2 and then from Ballad to Landstool and then from Landstool to Walter Reed.

Speaker 2 Holy shit, man. Yeah, it was

Speaker 2 pretty intense. How long were you at Walter Reed?

Speaker 2 The, let's see, like three or four months.

Speaker 2 The Army put together a program at that time called CBHCO, which was like community-based healthcare organization or something like that, one of these Army acronyms.

Speaker 2 And there was, what was really happening is is there were so many dudes that were wounded at the time that they were running out of beds, you know.

Speaker 2 So they were trying to get guys, once they were eligible for outpatient care, they were trying to get them back to their hometowns for civilian hospitals just to offload.

Speaker 2 You know, they said it was because they thought dudes would heal better and maybe they really did think that, but I think it was probably because they were running out of space.

Speaker 2 So I was there for like three months and then I did outpatient in Utah for

Speaker 2 another year and a half or so, I think, something like that. Another few surgeries and rehab like four times a week, you know, physical rehab.

Speaker 2 And then

Speaker 2 they retired me in August of,

Speaker 2 I think it was August of 07. It was 07, but I think August of 07.

Speaker 1 Damn.

Speaker 1 Shit.

Speaker 1 You go through all that to be called a communist

Speaker 1 from politicians.

Speaker 2 Nice.

Speaker 2 Yeah, man, another sort of classy.

Speaker 2 I try to not say this too much because it's such a heated thing, but another thing is, man,

Speaker 2 I volunteer as a sheriff's deputy now. I got in a gunfight last year for my community friend.

Speaker 1 I heard that.

Speaker 2 And you're going to call me a fucking communist, dude?

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Speaker 1 Well, let's get into...

Speaker 1 Let's get into let's get into the history of this. I read something about Lewis and Clark, so give us us a history of preservation of

Speaker 1 land.

Speaker 2 When somebody asked me how did we end up with public land, my answer is conquest.

Speaker 2 War, treaties, purchase. That's how we did it.

Speaker 2 If you go all the way back to the Articles of Confederation, You can see this idea emerge

Speaker 2 that the people of the United States who just fought this war to free themselves of a king own this land. Now there were,

Speaker 2 so at the time,

Speaker 2 Georgia,

Speaker 2 let's see, Georgia, North Carolina, Virginia, Connecticut, Massachusetts, those states had made claims on land that went all the way to the Mississippi River.

Speaker 2 So that means that South Carolina, Maryland, places like that are now landlocked.

Speaker 2 So they're debating these issues, trying to put together a government, you know, while we're winning this war over here.

Speaker 2 And those seven states who are landlocked were saying, hey, wait a minute, this is our blood and treasure on the line too.

Speaker 2 You don't get to just claim all of this extra territory and lock us out of the potential for growth and development and all of that.

Speaker 2 So the agreement they come to is that we will design state borders and put the rest that we'll cede these other states, colonies at the time we'll cede that land to the federal government in the public trust for the betterment of this nation moving forward so that concession was made at the birth of this nation so that's the first war then you go from there to stuff like the louisiana purchase

Speaker 2 uh you know i don't know if you heard but napoleon was fighting a whole bunch of people over there needed some money and he finally said you know what how about i just sell you this whole thing for $15 million?

Speaker 2 So we buy that.

Speaker 2 And then you've got other pieces like Treaty of Guadalupe, Hidalgo, the War of 1812, which eventually ended up with land being ceded to us, the whole 49th parallel stuff from the British government, and both Spanish and Mexico.

Speaker 2 So basically war and conquest from that point is how we won this land back. I think that's a really important point to start.
So it's not me that's doing the blood and soil thing.

Speaker 2 It's the people who founded this country.

Speaker 2 So if you're going to call me a communist, I guess you're going to have to go back to the founding generation and call them a communist because that's what they thought.

Speaker 2 Lewis and Clark,

Speaker 2 no one really knew what we had bought in this Louisiana purchase. We just knew that it was a good deal and we had just doubled the size of our country, which seems like a pretty good thing.

Speaker 2 And they did it for $15 million. It's not like it was a huge expense.
Now, we were pretty broke at the time, but either either way,

Speaker 2 so

Speaker 2 Jefferson establishes this Corps of Discovery to put him out on a grand expedition, and he trusts his friend, Meriwether Lewis, with this.

Speaker 2 Meriwether Lewis then recruits his friend from the Army, William Clark, and they put together a team and go out, and what they're looking for is a Northwest Passage.

Speaker 2 They wanted to find a water source that would run from the Pacific to the Atlantic. So basically, kind of in a way, trying to solve the problem that we later solved with railroads, right?

Speaker 2 So these guys go out.

Speaker 2 In my opinion, it's one of the bravest things anyone's ever done. I mean, you have, some people thought there might be freaking dinosaurs out there.

Speaker 2 They had no idea what was still extant in the wilderness. And so they go out and get on this boat, about 50 people or so.
I can't remember the exact number of people.

Speaker 2 And they start pulling this boat up this Missouri River, having no clue what's going to be, you know, at the end of it. The first winter, they winter in Mandon, North Dakota.
And they're learning.

Speaker 2 They're, you know, meeting natives and learning some things from them, making trades with them, scaring the shit out of them with our technology, you know, stuff like that, trying to make peace.

Speaker 2 where they can, see who they can make peace with and who they're going to have to fight as we institute this whole manifest destiny idea

Speaker 2 and then the next year they go from there to essentially the the rocky mountains

Speaker 2 in fact so on the way through there what it in what is now modern day montana they find themselves up against their very first grizzly bear And I just kind of love this story because Merriwether Lewis, if you read his journals, he's like bragging in there at different points about how he's killed 300 bears.

Speaker 2 I'm like, I ain't afraid of no damn bear, you know, all this.

Speaker 2 And then he's out with a few other guys and they run into this bear that he describes as a white bear. You know, sometimes Grizz can look kind of silvery-backed.

Speaker 2 And there's two.

Speaker 2 And they're watching him and they sneak up to about 100 yards and him and this private both shoot these two bears.

Speaker 2 And anyone who's black bear hunted before knows like what you would expect for the most part is that bear to run away. Well, grizzly is a whole different animal.

Speaker 2 And the Indians have been trying to tell them this. You know, they called it like the great white bear and stuff, like be careful with the great white bear.
And

Speaker 2 well, they shoot these things and they immediately charge at them. So they, you know, these are, they're shooting flint locks.
So it's not like they can just empty a mag into them.

Speaker 2 So they turn and run.

Speaker 2 And it gets to the point where Lewis has to jump into the Missouri River to try to get away from this bear. It chased him him for like 80 yards before it had,

Speaker 2 you know, and it gets the, that one that chased him gets all the way to the river and then finally starts to tire and doesn't come in the water after him anymore.

Speaker 2 The other one had ran toward them and then died. It was hit more in the heart.
But then they go back and do, like, examine these bears and he realizes how big they are.

Speaker 2 And then he writes about how different this place is and how wild and difficult it's going to be to tame. You know, if the the bears are this much harder out here, then what else are we going to find?

Speaker 2 And then the one that he, that chased him, he'd hit it through both lungs. Wow.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 Wow. Yeah, man.

Speaker 2 They're grizz are no bullshit for sure.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 So I, and even in my own life, I enjoy, I like just looking at Grizz, but I take them pretty seriously. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 2 So that's

Speaker 2 kind of where this stuff starts.

Speaker 2 And then, you know, of course, eventually they make it back, plenty of adventures along the way, and report back to Jefferson, like, hey, this is what we found.

Speaker 2 There is no Northwest Passage, but there's all this other stuff.

Speaker 2 And in the meantime, that land that had been ceded to the federal government, they were using some of it to pay off soldiers.

Speaker 2 If you were a private, I think you could get 100 acres, you know, or if you were an enlisted man, you could get like 100 acres.

Speaker 2 And then if you were, I think, a colonel or above, you could do as many as 500 acres. And they were kind of starting to expand in that way.
Another thing Jefferson realized, I think,

Speaker 2 was

Speaker 2 one of the most intelligent or wise parts of the idea of manifest destiny is he understood that we did not have a military that could conquer the amount of terrain that we had.

Speaker 2 He knew it was not going to be possible. So the next best resource is your American people.

Speaker 2 You know, the average person is pretty brave and durable too.

Speaker 2 So we're trying to move them out west and establish new states, provinces, towns, villages, all this kind of thing, farms.

Speaker 2 And so that happens for

Speaker 2 another little while. And then just to kind of give a really broad overview of how the lands ended up in the situation that they're in.

Speaker 2 Then we do things like homestead acts and timber acts and mineral acts and these kinds of things and we put them in place and say go out and conquer more. We've got more ground to take care of.
And

Speaker 2 what happens really quickly with the homestead act type stuff is the further west you get, the more arid and austere the ground gets.

Speaker 2 So now we've got to go from 160 acre homestead acts to, you know, 300 or 380 or whatever it was, and then all the way up to like sections sections of land because it takes more land to be able to make a living on

Speaker 2 uh then we end up again i'm just giving you a very broad

Speaker 2 then we end up uh

Speaker 2 with a timber baron problem

Speaker 2 and it wasn't just there you know the robber baron concept it wasn't just timber barons

Speaker 2 it was you know people that were overgrazing and things like that too but to speak straight to the timber baron thing the they were going out and just clear-cutting entire forests you know they were trying to make money, man.

Speaker 2 And there was this idea in America, you see it with stuff like the Buffalo, too, where this was a totally endless resource that you could never actually

Speaker 2 extinguish. So I don't even think they were that terrible of people.
I really think that they thought there was going to be another timber section and another.

Speaker 2 And, you know, by the time they got to the end, perhaps this other stuff would have been grown back. I think it's kind of their mindset.

Speaker 2 But

Speaker 2 that was not what was happening. And then Enner guy called Panosh,

Speaker 2 and I could be saying his name wrong, but he was friends with Teddy and they're part of the Boone and Crockett Club that Teddy put together. And

Speaker 2 his dad was a timber baron.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 instead of passing that business down to his son to go do the same thing, he kind of had this ethos of, you're going to fix the stuff that I've screwed up. because I overdid this.

Speaker 2 So he sends him off to forestry school in like Florida, or not Florida, I'm sorry, France, Germany, and he goes and learns about forestry management.

Speaker 2 And then he comes back and ends up working with Teddy on the preservation of these forests. And this is after, of course, the Forest Act was put in place, I think in 1891.

Speaker 2 So we'd had a couple of presidents who'd made some national forests before Teddy, but Teddy's the one that Teddy and Panosh come in, and they're the ones that really get after it.

Speaker 2 I think they established like 100 national forests to be preserved. And another thing I love about those two is they

Speaker 2 both were like men's men. They loved the box.
They would go down in the basement and fight each other all the time. And then they'd go back up and just like work on policy.
It's like a barracks.

Speaker 2 You know what I mean?

Speaker 2 So like this guy's not a pussy, you know? And I guess I would say he's not a communist either.

Speaker 2 And this is kind of where the ethos of preservation and protection starts,

Speaker 2 in my opinion. And that's, again, a broad overview.

Speaker 1 That's good. That's good.

Speaker 1 How much U.S. land in acres

Speaker 1 is public? Do you know?

Speaker 2 Yeah, it depends on how...

Speaker 2 So a thing they like to do is use the term federal land. Now, that is...

Speaker 2 A thing certain politicians really like to do is use terms that have a colloquial meaning and a more legalistic meaning.

Speaker 2 So they'll use terms like federal land because that is how it's written in a lot of these acts.

Speaker 2 But when he's

Speaker 2 specifically him and some others, when they use it, what they're trying to do is get the American mind to conflate military bases, Indian reservations, things like that with public accessible ground so that you kind of think of it all as one thing.

Speaker 2 And it's really not.

Speaker 2 You see this in that red map that everybody likes to post. Have you seen that one? It's white and then it's just all this red.

Speaker 2 Well, they've got national parks and Indian reservations and military bases wrapped up in that red map. I think that's the, you know, the main takeaway there.

Speaker 2 Sorry, I got myself distracted. What was the actual question?

Speaker 1 How much public land is there in acres in the U.S.?

Speaker 2 BLM's got about 250,

Speaker 2 I think, I think 245 million acres. Forest is like

Speaker 2 130 or 150. National Parks is like 90.

Speaker 2 U.S. Sports or U.S.F.
The fish and wildlife stuff is right around 120, I think.

Speaker 1 All millions.

Speaker 2 Millions, yes. Yeah.
And those are the ones, and then you've got monuments, but monuments are wrapped up in forest or, you know, they're wrapped up in other agencies for the most part.

Speaker 2 So that's kind of the basic layout of the total acreage. I think it ends up around 600 million wow yeah

Speaker 2 but don't let them conflate military bases and indian reservations is that is that what they're converting military bases and indian reservations no they can't touch they know they can't touch indian reservations that's what i've thought

Speaker 1 exactly i didn't think they could touch any of it to be honest with you well we do have processes for that

Speaker 2 this is conspiracy stuff in my brain this is not anything this is just an opinion and a thing to think about here though.

Speaker 2 If

Speaker 2 a full

Speaker 2 rollback, to use a term, were to be made on public lands, I think reservations would sue the government.

Speaker 2 A fear there is,

Speaker 2 I don't know if you know this, but we broke a lot of treaties with these people.

Speaker 2 And if you look at the ruling in Oklahoma, I think it was last year, the year before, the Supreme Court essentially ruled that 40% of Oklahoma now belongs to the tribes.

Speaker 2 And now they're trying to work out exactly what to do with that. You know, if you've got a farm there,

Speaker 2 do you pay your taxes to the tribes now? Or how does that work? So that's being fought. And I think that

Speaker 2 you could see stuff like that happen in the West easily. Now, the conspiracy side would be, well, if you're a developer, that sounds great.
A lot of these reses need money.

Speaker 2 So you're just going to buy it from the res now. Who cares? Right.

Speaker 2 And again, that's conspiracy.

Speaker 1 Makes sense.

Speaker 2 So

Speaker 1 how long has this push been?

Speaker 2 Mike Lee's 2010

Speaker 2 campaign was already talking about this kind of stuff.

Speaker 2 But it's been going for before that. It's not just him.

Speaker 2 There's lots of other people. So none of this is new.
I think they've already already lost three lawsuits trying to push for essentially the same thing in different ways.

Speaker 1 2010, was it the same?

Speaker 1 What I understand is they want to build affordable housing on public land because of the housing crisis. But if I remember right, in 2010, land housing was

Speaker 1 like a fire sale.

Speaker 2 Especially around Utah. It took a little longer for the 2008, 2009 thing to hit southern Utah, the more rural areas.
So yeah, it's never really been about affordable housing, in my opinion.

Speaker 2 Also, this is another one of those terms that seems to be being used

Speaker 2 in kind of a legalistic way and also a colloquial way. Like

Speaker 2 my understanding as a layperson is that affordable housing, Section 8 kind of stuff comes with other stipulations. Like there has to be amenities for this stuff, mental health centers.

Speaker 2 roads, bridges, infrastructure, food. They have to have easy, ready access to food.
Kind of in a sense, the 15-minute walkable city thing applies to that in a sense.

Speaker 2 And then affordable, that sounds like, hey, my kid can't afford a house right now. Build a house that he can afford.

Speaker 2 And that's the part they're trying to sell people on. And

Speaker 2 I don't see how that's actually going to come out of any of this.

Speaker 1 Where is the

Speaker 1 like, how many different states are involved in this? How many different?

Speaker 2 In the push?

Speaker 1 In the push.

Speaker 1 It's between two and three million acres.

Speaker 2 Well, it would affect, for the most part, it would affect the 11 western states that have the most public land in them. As far as who's pushing it hardest, it's usually Utah.
Has been since forever.

Speaker 1 What do the people think?

Speaker 2 The people hate it. I mean,

Speaker 2 depending on where you source your numbers, this is either a 75-25 issue or an 80-20 issue. I mean,

Speaker 2 the people hate it. They've never wanted it.

Speaker 1 Where is the land located that they want to build all this stuff?

Speaker 2 I haven't seen an actual map. I've seen it

Speaker 1 right outside of the city or is it far away?

Speaker 2 Well, that's the claim that's being made, but we... We already have a process in place for land that's near cities or needs to be developed.
So I don't

Speaker 2 like to see the map. You know, one

Speaker 2 person could speculate.

Speaker 2 There's this whole corner crossing fight happening in the West right now. And are you familiar with the concept of corner crossing? No.

Speaker 2 As we were developing the West, one of the ways we paid for the railroads was to give them land.

Speaker 2 What that ended up with is land that looks like an actual checkerboard.

Speaker 2 So there'll be a chunk of land here that is privately owned and then a chunk of public and so on and so forth and it builds this checkerboard looking pattern.

Speaker 2 Some states were trying to block sportsmen and others from crossing over the corner between those two chunks of land.

Speaker 2 And the landowner was saying, essentially, you're violating my airspace by doing that. In In some states, I think you own about 200 feet of the air above your house, which is probably a good thing.

Speaker 2 It should be illegal to fly a drone over my house, right?

Speaker 2 But

Speaker 2 that's not really what you're doing. You're crossing, you know, I guess half of your body or something is crossing it.

Speaker 2 So that fight is going on, and it looks like sportsmen are going to have a big win on this thing.

Speaker 2 And I imagine that the landowners who own those sections that have been trying to keep people out are not very happy about this potential win for the common man.

Speaker 2 So that's one person who, or one group type of people that I would say stands to benefit from this a lot,

Speaker 2 then they can just swoop up those sections that are

Speaker 2 locked in between their land.

Speaker 1 Are those the sections that are going up for sale? Supposedly going up for sale?

Speaker 2 Man, the language seems to have changed so many times that I don't, it's really, it's getting hard to argue with because because it keeps, the goalposts keep getting moved.

Speaker 2 But I would say, yeah, for sure.

Speaker 2 Another weird thing about that is we've done land swaps with those kind of people before. In fact, I know of one in a different state.

Speaker 2 I can't and don't want to out the person in the group involved in it, but it would probably benefit both sportsmen and

Speaker 2 this wealthy landowner if this were to happen because

Speaker 2 their place is giant. It would be cut in half.
And now there would just be two contiguous tracts of land because they would swap with each other across the board.

Speaker 2 It would have to be approved during a public comment period, like public input has to be involved. And if the public says, yeah, let's make that swap, that's better for us both, then good.

Speaker 2 So things like this can already happen.

Speaker 2 Interesting.

Speaker 1 Interesting. What are some of the

Speaker 1 what what are the what is this public land being used for right now

Speaker 2 Hunting, fishing, recreating.

Speaker 2 I think the word scenic is actually used too. So just for looking at, which is a value, in my opinion, unto itself.
Hiking, camping, looking at the freaking stars.

Speaker 2 You know, it's one of the least light-polluted areas in the world.

Speaker 2 It's a place where the everyday American can go live like a king used to, essentially. Like we're all little petty kings out there.
We can kind of do whatever we want.

Speaker 2 And some people will say, well, it costs you money to get on. That's okay at national parks or developed campgrounds, but on undeveloped ground, it doesn't cost you anything.

Speaker 2 You can just go out and use it whenever you want, even if you live in Hoboken, New Jersey, you know.

Speaker 2 So that's what it's being used for. And

Speaker 2 there is, that is some of the stuff that it's being used for. There's a multiple mandate, multiple use mandate in place right now under Flipma, which is the Federal Land and Policy Management Act.

Speaker 2 What that multiple-use mandate guarantees is the preservation of the land

Speaker 2 for the use, for its own value, and also for the use of the American people. So for recreating, grazing, extraction.

Speaker 2 In the past,

Speaker 2 I would argue from a conservative right-wing perspective that

Speaker 2 a lot of the managers within these agencies have stood in the way of parts of that multiple use.

Speaker 2 You can just imagine someone saying,

Speaker 2 well, I want to bid on this piece of timber. Here's our reason why we think this will fit within Flipma and I want to go through that process.

Speaker 2 And then it gets stalled by bureaucrats within an agency.

Speaker 2 So I can understand the frustration because I think Flipma gets abused in a lot of ways under like NEPA and and others. What is Flipma? Federal Land and Policy Management Act.

Speaker 2 It has been abused for sure, but it's also been used well. I mean guys are still out grazing.

Speaker 2 You know, some of them maybe not as long as they want to, and there's probably strong arguments in some of these cases for being able to graze a little more than they're grazing now, but it's they're at least out there grazing.

Speaker 2 Guys are still out there hunting. They're still out there fishing.
You know, they're still out there with their family. Timber extraction, mining,

Speaker 2 oil extraction, all of that is still happening on public lands. Perhaps not the scale that everybody wants, but it is happening.

Speaker 2 Another thing that we have in place that a lot of people don't know about that I actually think is terrible in a lot of ways is you can hard mineral claims.

Speaker 2 My understanding is that that old law that goes clear back to like 1871 is still in place. And I think it was the Hard Minerals Act.
I can't remember the exact name.

Speaker 2 But within that act, it establishes that anyone, including a foreigner, can come here. And if they find hard minerals and get a claim approved, they can mine it.

Speaker 2 And under that system, the federal government gets nothing from it. Whereas in other extractionary processes, they get a percentage.
So I think on

Speaker 2 minerals like lithium, I think the federal government gets a sub-10% as far as revenue sharing goes. I think the states on those same things get something like 4%.

Speaker 2 Don't quote me on all these numbers, but it's something like that. The revenue sharing process.
And a lot of these mines are foreign people.

Speaker 2 You know, I think that's a real problem that should be addressed, but nobody seems to want to address that.

Speaker 1 You mentioned something about putting refugee camps on the land, too.

Speaker 2 Well,

Speaker 2 there's a whole shitload of money going into into refugee resettlement in the West. If you go to Randoland on Twitter, you can look at these grants yourself.

Speaker 2 I mean, it's like 10 million, 4 million, 12 million, all for different refugee resettlement. So when I hear affordable housing, I'm sorry.

Speaker 2 I guess I'm a conspiracy theorist, but my alarm bells start triggering.

Speaker 1 I mean, there's something to it, right? I mean, you're getting attacked for speaking out. I mean,

Speaker 1 how are you getting attacked?

Speaker 2 Why are they coming after you? In some ways, I don't know. I was told that they hired a firm to dig into me, dig dirt up on me or whatever.

Speaker 1 Who's they?

Speaker 2 I was told specifically it was,

Speaker 2 I don't want to get sued over here, but I was told specifically, so allegedly here, that it was Michael East Camp that did that.

Speaker 2 You know, whether that's true or not, I don't know. How am I going to confirm that? If you're any good at digging into somebody, you probably don't call them and tell them you're doing it.
You know,

Speaker 2 so that's one way. And then, I don't know, it sounds like you got some calls.
Oh, yeah,

Speaker 2 we got some calls. That's for sure.

Speaker 1 Like I said, that's how I was like, oh man, this is

Speaker 1 we must be over the target here because a lot of people are telling me, don't do this interview. Don't do it.
But

Speaker 1 like I said, now, then when that happens, I feel like I have to do it. But I feel like it's my duty to do it.

Speaker 1 But

Speaker 1 what are some of the, I mean, so it's affordable housing, potential refugee camps, Section 8 housing. What else? Anything else?

Speaker 2 Well, they're trying to say the Section 8 thing might not be in play, but the director of HUD

Speaker 2 said as much just a few months ago. You know, he straight up said, we want to build 7 million homes.
That's what he said.

Speaker 1 7 million?

Speaker 2 That was the term. And if you look at numbers, man,

Speaker 2 let's say 7 million and call it three people to a home. So 21 million people.
Well, there's 500,000 rough or 600,000 people in

Speaker 2 Wyoming. Montana's got about a million.
Idaho's got like 1.8. Utah has got like 3.5.

Speaker 2 So you're going to put 21 million people in there. I think there's something like around 200,000 voters in Wyoming.
How many do you think it would take to flip

Speaker 2 that state? 50,000?

Speaker 2 The number sure as hell is not a million. I know that.

Speaker 2 You put a million people even in a state like Utah. Utah, they voted this last, don't quote me on these hard numbers, but they voted something like 55, 45.

Speaker 2 And that's what Trump, who is a once-in-a-lifetime figure politician, he's extremely popular.

Speaker 2 So how red versus blue are they now with all this growth? And these states have already doubled in population since the year 2000. I think Colorado, Utah, Idaho, Montana, Arizona have all doubled.

Speaker 2 Nevada as well have all doubled since like the year 2000.

Speaker 2 And if you went to

Speaker 2 an old local, ask them. if they think things have gotten better.
I mean.

Speaker 1 Oh, yeah, I hear it all the time, especially after COVID. Every time I go out west, that's

Speaker 1 what

Speaker 1 they're bitching about. The California people

Speaker 1 every single time. Yeah.
But Montana, Arizona, Nevada, Tennessee,

Speaker 1 literally Texas, everywhere I go, that's what they bitch about.

Speaker 2 You know,

Speaker 1 is we're being invaded by California. But, um,

Speaker 1 but

Speaker 1 man, I want to talk about

Speaker 1 actually, let's take a quick break and then we'll pick up.

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Speaker 1 All right, Braxton, we're back from the break.

Speaker 1 I forgot to give you something. At the beginning, everybody gets a gift.

Speaker 1 I was pissing myself off by going through all this. Thank you.
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Speaker 1 Just candy.

Speaker 1 Not going to feel weird after you.

Speaker 2 Thank you. Sugar high.

Speaker 1 But

Speaker 1 yeah, so, you know,

Speaker 2 I saw this.

Speaker 1 Everything seems to be like very vague on this.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 like

Speaker 1 I just watched this thing on Charlie Kirks where Lee was on he called in and they were talking about map 444 which actually 444 is a big number to me.

Speaker 1 I think that that's I think that that's how God speaks to me. Okay.

Speaker 2 Is the number 444

Speaker 1 and I just saw this clip this morning, but it was it was saying that the fear mongers are using map 444,

Speaker 1 but the reality is it's map 443

Speaker 1 and you know and

Speaker 1 but it doesn't seem like there's any clear

Speaker 1 clarification on what exact land now he did say it was adjacent to

Speaker 1 basically

Speaker 1 adjacent to to to towns or places that are occupied with people and and and that it's it made it seem that it was right outside of town but i mean my fear is

Speaker 1 when does this end like the minute we we do that, then it goes on and then it goes on and then we do start getting into the national parks.

Speaker 1 I want to know what the what the financial incentives are here because the people seem to be clearly speaking up saying, no, this isn't what we want to do.

Speaker 1 And, you know, another thing that came to my mind just on the break is I just interviewed

Speaker 1 Really good guy. His name's Augustus Dorico.
He's doing cloud seating, which is another super controversial topic, right?

Speaker 1 But he had said in his interview that I believe he said within 10 years, all the aquifers out west

Speaker 2 will be run dry.

Speaker 1 There's not enough water out there. So where are they going to get the water to bring in 7 million homes when all the aquifers there are going to be depleted within 10 years?

Speaker 1 I mean,

Speaker 1 how are they going to do the water?

Speaker 2 I have asked this question multiple times and I don't get an answer. So I guess let me know if you get one.
There isn't water.

Speaker 2 I mean, clear back to when John Wesley Powell first surveyed it, they knew there was no water. He was writing back saying, look, man, this is

Speaker 2 much of the territory out west is just not suitable for

Speaker 2 agriculture and things like that. It just isn't.
It's too dry.

Speaker 2 Utah is the second driest state in the Union. I think their average annual precept is around, precipitation rate is around 12 inches.
The only one drier drier than that is Nevada.

Speaker 2 If you look at the Colorado River system, I think Lake Mead's down 150 feet right now.

Speaker 2 They're getting to a point, from what I've heard, they're getting to a point where they're now starting to worry about issues with drawing power from the hydroelectric dams. If they keep,

Speaker 2 I think in 2026, the Colorado River Compact is supposed to have an update. So percentages will change.

Speaker 2 Percentages are drawn from each will change.

Speaker 2 I was at my in-laws

Speaker 2 a couple weeks ago, and I was watching local news. There was a 20-minute piece about how there's just no,

Speaker 2 they need to build homes around Washington County, St. George, that kind of stuff.
And there's just no place to do it.

Speaker 2 We don't have room, you know, etc. Clearly trying to sell this bill to people.

Speaker 2 It was a realtor and a politician for the most part talking.

Speaker 2 And then maybe a sob story from some person that probably moved there from California whose kid can't buy a house, which I'm receptive to, man. Home prices are ridiculous in the West.

Speaker 2 So I get that argument. But the realtor was saying things like,

Speaker 2 if I could get 1,500 new homes in this area, I could have them sold before they were done being built, you know, stuff like that. Obviously, real estate developers would enjoy that.

Speaker 2 Realtors would enjoy that. But then the water question comes up.
And even in this piece, there's just some weird vagaries. They say, oh, we're going to build six new reservoirs down here.

Speaker 2 Like, okay, well, you can build a dam, but you have to have water to fill the reservoir.

Speaker 1 I mean, Utah, Utah specifically knows this because when I interviewed Augustus, Utah is one of the states that is,

Speaker 1 they're worried that the salt lake is going to dry up. Yeah, right.
And so they have him cloud seeding, trying to bring water into that valley. And

Speaker 1 I can't remember the other states that are working with him on this, but all of the western states are worried about the water supply.

Speaker 1 The other thing is, you know, if we're talking about affordable housing, then why aren't we fixing cities like Baltimore, Washington, D.C.,

Speaker 1 St. Louis, Chicago?

Speaker 1 I mean, we have affordable housing all over the place, and it's a disaster.

Speaker 2 It's a disaster.

Speaker 1 So why are we just

Speaker 1 putting new sections of it all over the map when we could just fix what we already have? I mean, you see these dilapidated buildings all over the place. Redevelop that.

Speaker 1 You know, and so there has to be some kind of a financial incentive, I would think, for this hard of a push, plus all the pushback I got about

Speaker 1 bringing you on the show. I mean, that was...

Speaker 1 like a siren going off in my head. And so I wanted to ask you about this gentleman.
We kind of looked into him a little bit, but Clint Brown, the president of American Path Initiative, 501c4.

Speaker 1 I'd never even heard of a 501c4 before, but

Speaker 1 apparently it is a organization that

Speaker 1 you don't have to that you don't have to report all of the money. So it's it's a great way to send dark money to whoever you want.

Speaker 2 And from from what I

Speaker 1 Jeremy, can you give us a quick lowdown on

Speaker 1 Clint Brown?

Speaker 16 Yep, as you said, he's the president of American Path Initiative. He's also responsible for helping get Cash Patel through his

Speaker 16 FBI director nomination in the Senate.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 16 he worked in the Senate with Mike Lee for over a year.

Speaker 1 He worked in the Senate with Mike Lee.

Speaker 2 He's working in the staff.

Speaker 1 Is Mike Lee attached to this president of American Path Initiative, 501c4?

Speaker 2 Because he's a

Speaker 2 To a 501c4.

Speaker 1 He's got real ties with this guy though, right? And it'd be a great way.

Speaker 2 He has worked with him in the past.

Speaker 2 Okay. Okay.

Speaker 1 Interesting.

Speaker 2 Do you know about this guy? I've had Twitter interactions with him. That's about all I know.

Speaker 2 Besides what you guys just said.

Speaker 2 I guess maybe...

Speaker 1 Did he make a Burner X account to come after you?

Speaker 2 I could never prove that, but it was funny. This rando account was only responding to my tweets.

Speaker 2 And it was like calling me gay and shit, you know, doing like 20-year-old broke back mountain jokes, that kind of thing. Like, you think I haven't heard that shit? You know, like, what the fuck, dude?

Speaker 2 The thing about that,

Speaker 2 dude, when they do that, it drives me crazy too, because here's some film written by some Skittles person like however many years ago that's trying to denigrate our culture.

Speaker 2 And then we've absorbed it into our own lexicon. You know, that annoys me.
But other than that,

Speaker 2 that's not new. Well, this account,

Speaker 2 eventually, after I went and looked at it and looked at all the replies, eventually I just said, is this you, Clint?

Speaker 2 And it replied, no.

Speaker 2 Which is a funny way.

Speaker 2 I think

Speaker 2 if I was running a burner, I'd probably, and again, I don't know, right? I'm just speculating. I have no idea.

Speaker 2 I could never prove this, not even necessarily attempting to, but I would probably say something like, who the fuck is Braxton or whatever? I'd probably be smarter about it than to just write no.

Speaker 2 And then it deleted itself right after that.

Speaker 1 Oh, the whole account disappeared.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I took screenshots because I thought it was really weird.

Speaker 1 Interesting. We'll put those screenshots up.
You got them?

Speaker 2 Yeah, they're on my phone. Perfect.

Speaker 1 Have they identified the... Actually, let's put in his LinkedIn as well.

Speaker 1 We'll put a screenshot of this guy's LinkedIn on there just so people know I'm not just making shit up out of thin air.

Speaker 1 But have they identified the developers or is BlackRock involved? BlackRock buying up neighborhoods at a time?

Speaker 1 And, you know, who are the developers that are going to develop this land if it does get sold?

Speaker 1 Who would it be sold to?

Speaker 1 Would it be sold to the developer?

Speaker 2 These are all questions I'd like answers to. I don't know.

Speaker 2 I know that

Speaker 2 when

Speaker 2 Senator Lee has accused me of lying

Speaker 2 to his constituents, I have posted underneath a list of his donors and said, and he said I was being paid. No one's paying me.
I mean, no one, I've never been paid for public land advocacy ever.

Speaker 2 I mean, people have, organizations have bought flights, you know, but no one's ever paid me for it. I've always done it volunteer.

Speaker 2 In fact, I bought my own flights down here just because I thought it was so important, right? So like, I'm not, I don't mean anything by that other than to say no one's paying me.

Speaker 2 So when he has said that,

Speaker 2 I have posted underneath, here's a list of your top donors. No one's paying me to lie.
Who's paying you to lie? And no one ever responds. And on that list, you've got stuff like

Speaker 2 Club for Growth, Microsoft,

Speaker 2 Blackstone.

Speaker 2 I can't remember what the others are, but I've got those on my phone as well.

Speaker 2 So Blackstone, from what I understand,

Speaker 2 is

Speaker 2 private equity type stuff that invests in this kind of thing. I think Utah is fourth in the nation for private equity investment in single-family homes.

Speaker 2 So I don't think it'd be too difficult to start drawing lines if a person wanted to or knew how. I mean, I'm an idiot.
I don't know how to do this stuff.

Speaker 2 I barely, the only reason I do any good on Twitter is it's just an app that is really easy to use. I'm not good at tech, man.

Speaker 1 How did you get involved in this? How did it pop up on your radar?

Speaker 2 Well, I've been arguing with this guy about this issue.

Speaker 2 This guy is in center-to-lee, center-to-lee, yeah, since 20 at least 20 something.

Speaker 1 I mean, you've been in his office. Yeah.
You've okay. Yeah.
Let's go through this whole timeline of how you got started.

Speaker 2 There was a

Speaker 2 Senator Lee and I believe Ted Cruz and some other politicians had put together this thing they were calling the Public Lands Initiative, which was a push to cede, in their terms, back, these lands back to the states, which is a total misnomer because

Speaker 2 if you go to the Utah Enablement Act, there's language in there that straight up says, here's your 7 million acres, you never get any more.

Speaker 2 And I think I sent you guys the screenshots of that so you can put it up. It says, you're not entitled to any more, basically ever, you know, but in lawyer speak.

Speaker 2 So it was never their land to begin with. But that's a good way to push this kind of thing onto the public.

Speaker 2 Somebody who's got a grazing allotment in southern Utah, for example, if he's got an issue with a riparian area so he's trying to fix some kind of water on his place and it's BLM it is much harder to get that done through the BLM than it is on state ground because there are allotments on state ground as well what does the BLM stand for again bureau of land management okay

Speaker 2 and Utah has a thing called uh sitla that covers most of their state lands it's like uh

Speaker 2 student initiative teachers some shit it's basically it covers uh

Speaker 2 that these lands are managed to make money for the Department of Education.

Speaker 2 Well, if you wanted to fix some stuff on a riparian area on state land, it's way easier, just as an example.

Speaker 2 And they'll even let you use your equipment and time and stuff like this as an in-kind contribution, so it's cheaper.

Speaker 2 I can totally understand why a guy who's a rancher down there would prefer state management to BLM management on an allotment.

Speaker 2 But from a political perspective, or from the perspective of the people that are pushing this, they know that if that land were to be ceded to, not back to, but ceded to the state, there's a provision in the Constitution that says that the state constitution, which is true of, this is true of basically every Western state I know of.

Speaker 2 There's a provision in there that says any land held in our trust has to be managed to essentially highest maximum value. So it has to make money.

Speaker 2 Well,

Speaker 2 I mean, I don't think I need to explain to people, a grazing allotment is not going to make as much as a data center or something.

Speaker 2 So you've just set it up for being sold off by transferring it into state control. Unless the constitutions were to be amended.

Speaker 1 So are you saying they might be putting data centers?

Speaker 1 Out there too?

Speaker 2 It's just speculation, but yeah, I don't see why you wouldn't. If

Speaker 2 AI is the future, as everybody's saying. You know, we've got to build our demonic overlords.

Speaker 2 Just from a financial perspective, it's got to be cooler to run them in the Mountain West where you've got six months of winter and a lot of wind.

Speaker 2 And I'm sure these, you know, I know

Speaker 2 computers get hot fast. I'd imagine giant ass computers get hot even faster and are expensive to cool.

Speaker 2 So just one reason to move them out there another reason is they'd be very remote and a lot easier to harden

Speaker 2 you know if you think of it from a tactical perspective if you put a data center in the middle of like six sections of land you can get this thing out of mortar range or whatever if that's something you were worried about

Speaker 2 So you put that in the middle and then you hire security and you've got a suite set up for your data center. Bring in some H1Bs and put them on there.

Speaker 2 But this is speculation.

Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah, totally.

Speaker 1 Let's not do speculation.

Speaker 1 Let's just do facts. Okay.
So let's move into

Speaker 1 even the voting stuff that you mentioned. I understand it,

Speaker 1 but I don't think that is

Speaker 1 me personally, I don't think that is a legitimate argument about, you know, well, the state might flip. Well, if the state flips, the fucking state flips.

Speaker 1 Like, people live there now and they have a right to vote. But

Speaker 1 my concern is: this is our land. It's my land, your land.
This is

Speaker 1 Americans' land that they're able to enjoy like Theodore Roosevelt wanted us to. And now

Speaker 1 it's potentially going up for sale.

Speaker 2 So let's start with

Speaker 1 how you got involved.

Speaker 2 So when this public land initiative was going,

Speaker 2 I... Before I learned more about this, I had been amenable to the idea of transferring to the states.

Speaker 2 It's a really easy sell if you don't get in the weeds because the guy, of course, local control sounds better, right?

Speaker 2 So I thought, yeah, this would be much better for everybody. Give us our land back, that kind of thing.
But when you look into the details of it, that's not like, you're not likely to keep it.

Speaker 2 And when Teddy and others put this thing together, the idea was that it belonged not just to us, but to those yet in the womb of time, to our grandchildren, right?

Speaker 2 Well,

Speaker 2 I joined an organization that was supposed to be like a nonpartisan organization and got involved with them doing advocacy stuff.

Speaker 2 In fact, my wife still bitches at me to this day because I had forgotten about this, but I guess the day before we got married, I went to a trade show to do advocacy for this stuff.

Speaker 2 And so she had to go to a trade show for a few hours and she's still pissed about it, you know, eight or 10 years later, you know.

Speaker 2 So I joined this organization

Speaker 2 and I get invoted into state leadership. I actually didn't want to be in state leadership.

Speaker 2 I just wanted to try to provide the perspective of someone that didn't live in Salt Lake, you know, like a liberal perspective. I wanted to have our voices involved.

Speaker 2 So I was going to these meetings and, you know, pushing my...

Speaker 1 What do you mean you got elected into state leadership?

Speaker 2 The organization has an election process. So they elected me and put me in a southern Utah chapter board leader or whatever title they had.

Speaker 2 And again, I didn't even, this is not something I desired in any way.

Speaker 2 So that meant I needed to go to this rendezvous in Missoula. So I went up there

Speaker 2 and attended some of their workshops, hung out at the beer garden, went to the lectures, all that kind of stuff.

Speaker 2 But at one point there was this ethics panel, and it was some very smart people up there on this ethics panel. And they were deliberating on the ethics, the difference between

Speaker 2 morality and legislation and other nerd stuff.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 when it came question and answer time, I got a mic and was just like, I actually don't think you guys understand the difference between morals and laws at all.

Speaker 2 And I presented a scenario that was basically if a deer is stuck in a fence,

Speaker 2 if you shoot it without permission, you're breaking the law. But if you leave this thing whose leg is completely ripped up and is going to die anyway to suffer, then you've cut against your morality.

Speaker 2 So there's just a real easy delineation between the two things. And I was saying you guys are trying to argue that ethics are foisted on us by laws.
And I think the exact opposite is true.

Speaker 2 Laws should reflect our ethics and morals. So after presenting that, some people came to me and said, we want you to go to DC and lobby.

Speaker 2 Well, advocate. I don't even know what the right term is.
Okay. I don't want to get anybody in trouble.
Whatever the hell the right term is, either lobby or advocacy.

Speaker 2 So I went and presented my case to our representatives in D.C., those that I could get

Speaker 2 FaceTime with, which at that time was basically all of them or

Speaker 2 their

Speaker 2 high-up staff people, which is who you really want to talk to anyway, for the most part.

Speaker 2 And at one point, I'm in

Speaker 2 Lee's office, and I don't want to get

Speaker 2 any family in trouble, but

Speaker 2 they, one of his staffers ends up, because we're arguing about this transfer idea.

Speaker 2 And I was saying, for all the reasons I just mentioned, I don't think it's a good idea.

Speaker 2 And they pointed to, basically they were calling me an absolutist like they're doing now, which I'll just happily wear at this point.

Speaker 1 What's an absolutist?

Speaker 2 That I just want, I don't want them to take any of it now. I don't trust them with that anchor.
You know, so they're calling me an absolutist. It's another way of calling me an extremist and others.

Speaker 2 It's not just me. There's plenty of people that are out there saying this stuff.
I mean, Cameron Haynes is saying this stuff. He's got a huge platform.

Speaker 1 It seems like anybody that's big in hunting, outdoors, fishing,

Speaker 1 they're all beating to the same drum here. So there's something to it.

Speaker 2 Totally.

Speaker 2 If you've proven yourself untrustworthy, why would I trust you with even an inch, right? That's kind of my viewpoint on it.

Speaker 2 So they get up and they got an actual plot map of Utah and they pointed at at a parcel and they said well what about a parcel like this why can't we just have this transferred and I said I know the family that runs cattle on that personally you know they're a friend of mine so you'd be taking food and money out of their pocket if you did this

Speaker 2 and I don't

Speaker 2 At least with the staff, that didn't go over particularly well. I'm not saying it embarrassed them, but

Speaker 2 it probably did.

Speaker 2 So that was my first interaction with the guy, who, by the way, I thought was a pretty decent guy. Otherwise, we disagree strongly on this one thing, but I never thought he's a bad guy.

Speaker 2 I mean, I've done interviews like six months ago saying, I think he's a good guy. We just disagree.
And

Speaker 2 I think you're making a huge mistake.

Speaker 2 But if you're hiring people to look into me, I don't know about the good guy thing anymore. You know, my opinion's starting to.

Speaker 2 And I think he probably still is a good guy.

Speaker 2 There's just something going on on here so that's kind of where it started and then i eventually i ended up leaving that organization because i had begged them not to let this thing become

Speaker 2 a liberals who hunt organization or else it would be absolutely doomed

Speaker 2 and that's what they did dude you want to politicize it yeah i could you can't You cannot politicize this issue, especially as a liberal, because it's the conservatives in Utah that are that want it you know to a degree as far as the politicians go

Speaker 2 in fact at while I was on that trip one of the guys from that organization way up in the leadership there he was we were at a dinner and he was essentially I he might have even straight up used the term but he was calling me a baby killer Because he used to be with one of these other liberal orgs that goes over to war-torn areas.

Speaker 2 And so he's doing like the meme, you know, baby killer meme. So that was kind of, at that point, I was like, all right,

Speaker 2 you know, if you guys are this ridiculous, I'm not interested in staying. So then I've just been kind of on my own trying to educate people whenever the subject comes up.

Speaker 1 Are there any politicians that are against the transfer?

Speaker 2 Yeah, Ryan Zinke.

Speaker 2 Ryan Zinke has been great.

Speaker 1 He's a seal. He was.
He's a seal out of ⁇ he's a congressman out of Montana, right?

Speaker 2 He is, yep. And he used to be Secretary of Interior under Trump.

Speaker 2 Did a lot of great things. In fact, I was at the OAR breakfast.
I can't even remember what that acronym is. It's like outdoor something and research.

Speaker 2 Basically, they go over how much money is brought in by hunting, fishing, recreation, that kind of stuff. It's around $860 billion a year.

Speaker 2 So this is a big money. And then

Speaker 2 Secretary, at the time, Secretary Zinke spoke.

Speaker 2 You know, so I shook his hand, but I don't know him, never really met him. I don't want to, you know, hello, thank you.

Speaker 2 That's it, right?

Speaker 2 But since then, when he got into office, he has since reintroduced this Public Hands and Public Lands Act that would protect this kind of stuff.

Speaker 2 add another layer of protection to what is already there. I mean, he's been fantastic and totally stalwart on this.

Speaker 1 You know, the other thing that I

Speaker 1 know that it sounds like Lee is trying to do is reduce national debt, which I think we all want that. But, you know, there are lots of other ways, I think, to reduce that debt.

Speaker 1 A lot of other ways, but nobody's acting on them.

Speaker 1 And then the other thing,

Speaker 1 there's the affordable housing. But I mean, there's other ways to do that.
I mean,

Speaker 1 I don't know, cut some taxes, put a little money back in everybody's pocket to the American citizen, and then, you know, maybe they can go buy a house. But

Speaker 1 it's just one thing. But, you know, I mean, do you think that

Speaker 1 is there anything good that could come from this?

Speaker 2 For the everyday guy? Yeah.

Speaker 2 No, I don't think so. No, I don't think the everyday guy wins anything.
If he was going to, there wouldn't be this many people pissed off at me for saying I don't think so.

Speaker 2 I think when these arguments come up,

Speaker 2 the response should be

Speaker 2 the everyday man, hunter, fisher, wrangler, recreator, you know, that kind of thing, he only loses. He loses access, he loses his heritage, his birthright, all of that.
The winners are

Speaker 2 megacorps donors, politicians, that kind of thing. Kind of the typical American story.

Speaker 2 The talk of

Speaker 2 you've got to allow for growth in these places, all of that. That sort of thing has been argued since the beginning.

Speaker 1 Well, we just established there's been plenty of growth. The state,

Speaker 1 you rattled off several states at the beginning that the population has doubled since the 2000s.

Speaker 1 Definitely plenty of growth.

Speaker 2 Yeah, and

Speaker 2 we went to the fucking moon while all of this existed, so I don't think it's necessarily holding us back in some serious way.

Speaker 1 Did we go to the moon?

Speaker 2 Well, right, I don't know. You know, there's that.

Speaker 2 Well, we at least made a really cool film.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I think the everyday, the everyday guy only,

Speaker 2 only loses

Speaker 2 Grazers,

Speaker 2 hunters, all of them. It's just a loss.
And then

Speaker 2 I would really like to drive home again the point that this is the only place on earth that's like this. You can't just go do whatever the hell you want in Germany.

Speaker 2 I'd like to use them as an example because they have roughly the same percentage of... quote-unquote public land as we do, roughly 28%.

Speaker 2 But in Germany, you can't just go hunt wherever you want or go hike around whenever you want. And sometimes people will push back and say, well, you can't either because you need a license.

Speaker 2 Like, well, you have to manage the species too. These are two separate arguments.
But in theory, yes, I can. You know, I can go in Idaho.
I can go buy a tag over the counter every year.

Speaker 2 You can't do that in other places. So this is a loss for us and a win for someone else.
Take your bet.

Speaker 1 And then all the animals that will go extinct because you're saying that this is where they go go during the winter.

Speaker 2 Mule deer populations are on decline across the entirety of the West. Have been for years.
Nobody knows exactly why. Most likely it's a combinatory thing.

Speaker 2 It's more than just one thing. Certainly loss of winter range is one of those things.

Speaker 2 Mule deer only live in the western United States and Canada.

Speaker 2 That's it. And from my...

Speaker 2 I don't like to pretend to be overly pious because

Speaker 2 I am a Christian, but I suck at it, you know, and I'm not trying to do a false humility thing. I just, I'm really not very, I'm trying to be better, but I suck at it.

Speaker 2 And I don't want to pretend to be overly pious.

Speaker 2 But the book that we all adhere to, in theory,

Speaker 2 one of the initial

Speaker 2 commandments is to be a steward of creation. So killing off a species, especially one as iconic as a mule deer, I view as a sin, an actual sin.

Speaker 2 And that's probably what would happen. The only state I know of that's herd has reached stasis.
Now it's down from 1 million to about 400,000 animals last I read, is Wyoming.

Speaker 2 And one of the things they did, I think Eastman's worked with the head biologist of Mule Deer there.

Speaker 2 One of the things they did was identify some tracts of land that were used as a migratory route, a couple of ridges, and those ridges had fences on them because they were privately owned.

Speaker 2 And they came up with some money, bought those ridges. This is my understanding.
They bought those ridges out and then removed the fences. And now their herd has reached stasis.

Speaker 2 You know, some of these animals travel 100 miles.

Speaker 1 You know, people are worried about land preservation all over the country, too. I mean, just for example, here in Tennessee, I told you since COVID, this has been

Speaker 1 it's overdeveloping. There's piles of people jumping in here.
And now, just

Speaker 1 in this state, there is the Tennessee State Land Trust where you can

Speaker 1 put your property into a trust to preserve it so that it can never be overdeveloped. And

Speaker 1 I mean, like I said, people all over the country are starting to worry more and more about overdevelopment and what's going to happen to our forests and our rivers and our creeks and

Speaker 2 our conservation, you know?

Speaker 1 And so.

Speaker 1 Man.

Speaker 1 You've been on this for 10 years.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I mean, long, yes, as far as talking to people about it, anyone who would listen. But I, dude, I remember being in Iraq.

Speaker 2 I wrote about it in my book however long ago I wrote that freaking book, but we were, I can't remember if we were on an OP or we were in, you know, Hooch, whichever it was. I think we were on an OP.

Speaker 2 We were talking about what do you miss back in the world, you know, that kind of thing. And everyone's talking about their family.
And of course, I love my family and everything, but I said the dirt.

Speaker 2 And they were

Speaker 2 even my friends kind of shocked.

Speaker 2 I mean it, you know.

Speaker 2 There's this concept on Twitter that it's not magic dirt is what they say. And I understand what they mean when they say that.

Speaker 2 They mean you can't just bring anyone on earth here and then magically they're an American just because they touch the dirt, right? But it is magic dirt.

Speaker 2 It's magic because of us, our history, our heritage, the people that made this place. It is magic dirt.
So not in that other sense, but in this sense, it is.

Speaker 2 And I love it, man.

Speaker 2 So yeah, I've been on it since, you know, when I got wounded, dude, I was 20. I turned 20 in Iraq.

Speaker 2 So I was thinking about this stuff back then. Damn.

Speaker 1 The one thing you missed the most was the dirt.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 Braxton,

Speaker 1 I think that might be the perfect place to end this. But I do want to ask, if Senator Lee was sitting right here in my chair across from you right now, what would you say to him?

Speaker 2 I'd say, what's wrong with the process that we have in place?

Speaker 2 And it seems like you're trying to ride the popularity of Trump to ram through a pet issue. And I'd like an explanation for why that is.

Speaker 1 Well, we reached out to his office. We'll probably offer him a slot here to

Speaker 1 give him the opportunity to tell his side, even though it's already all over the place. I think this is the first time he's spoke on a fairly decent-sized platform, correct?

Speaker 2 I did Jockos a couple years ago. You did.
Yeah. Cool.
Cool.

Speaker 1 But, well, Braxton,

Speaker 1 like I said, I really appreciate you coming down here. I think it's very honorable, you know, the fight that you're putting up.
And

Speaker 1 it seems like the majority of America is behind you and not behind the politicians. I wish there was more politicians other than Ryan Zinke fighting this, but

Speaker 1 it doesn't look like there is, according to you.

Speaker 2 Well, at least on the right-wing side.

Speaker 1 One more thing. We just got some news that came in.
Can you read that off, Jeremy?

Speaker 16 Trump administration to end protections for 58 million acres of national forests.

Speaker 16 Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said the Clinton-era ruling barring road construction and logging was outdated and absurd.

Speaker 1 Well, there goes 58 million acres. Is that what that means?

Speaker 2 Well,

Speaker 2 it depends. You have to be careful not to lean into hysteria.
The left is good at that.

Speaker 2 Extraction is covered under Flipma and can and should be done responsibly.

Speaker 2 The old way they used to say it is

Speaker 2 graze it, log it, or watch it burn.

Speaker 2 It can and should be done. It just needs to be done responsibly.

Speaker 2 And so this is another one of these places where I'd like to see the map because I don't know who put out the very first map that everybody was reacting to,

Speaker 2 but if you know the areas, some of the areas that were designated for logging were stuff like juniper trees. And as a lover of mule deer, I hope they cut more of those.

Speaker 2 But you're not logging junipers. So whoever, I want to know exactly which sections and how it's going to be done, but yeah, you should log.
I mean, you have to, really.

Speaker 2 Some people,

Speaker 2 we have wilderness areas. Now, wilderness.

Speaker 1 So that may not be a bad thing.

Speaker 2 No, maybe not.

Speaker 1 That may not, but it says giving up protections, correct?

Speaker 2 Yeah, but it all, so it could be bad. You just have to be able to identify the plots in order to make the

Speaker 2 decision. Some areas do need to be logged, 100%.

Speaker 1 Gotcha. Gotcha.
Well, I wish you the best of luck, and maybe we'll do a follow-on if anything more develops.

Speaker 2 Good. Thanks, man.

Speaker 1 All right. Cheers.
Appreciate you.

Speaker 2 Cheers.