Trent Christensen running for Utah Attorney General

[00:00:00] Speaker A: They'd have to slather the makeup on me. We're live. All right, everyone, welcome to political head trauma, where if head trauma had a podcast, it would sound like this. Today we have Trent Christensen coming on at 03:00 he's running for our attorney general. That'll be good to chat with him. [00:00:25] Speaker B: Tell us a little bit about yourself and you're from and a little bit about why you decided to run for attorney general in the state of Utah. [00:00:33] Speaker C: I appreciate that. Thank you for the question. So I'm from Utah, grew up in Utah, went to BYU. I did my mission in Chile, came back, went to BYU, went to BYU Law school, graduated magna cum laude, went back east, practiced law for a while. I did complex business litigation. I protected companies that were being sued by the federal government, worked at a law firm. I filed briefs in front of the supreme Court, appellate courts. I did that for a number of years. But then I came back to Utah and I've had that experience, the litigator experience that I think you need if you're going to be an attorney general. But I've also had a different kind of experience that I think is really valuable and necessary for an attorney general. I've been a CEO. I'm the only candidate in this race that's had that kind of experience, been a CEO. I've run a know, I've made payroll. I've had to make hard know regarding personnel, things like that. Done that for a number of years. I'm currently general counsel for a tech firm. It's based up in Farmington. It's called Omnitech. We do predictive AI with the military, with Hill Air force base, and with a number of defense contractors. And the reason I see those two things are both kind of important is, listen, the attorney general's office is 600 people and 300 of them are attorneys. And those aren't always the easiest people to deal with. [00:01:42] Speaker D: Right. [00:01:43] Speaker C: And if someone comes in and they're a litigator, which a lot of people have some litigation experience, but they don't have the leadership experience to match it, you're not going to run that office. That office is going to run you. And so I'm coming in saying, I have a vision. I have the experience, but that's in the past. I have the experience for the future and the vision for the future of what I want the office to be. So I was approached a couple of years ago about running for this office, and I'd been thinking about it for a while and the trigger for me was September of last year, when I finally said, okay, that's it, I'm getting in, there was a member of the legislature that floated the idea of making the attorney general's office an appointed position under the governor, taking the voice away from the people and giving it to the governor. And you're seeing that in a lot of instances where other things, instead of being popularly elected, are becoming appointments, and it's just consolidation of power under the executive branch. And it was right then that I knew I had to get in this race, because the attorney general is the single most important check against the other branches of government that citizens have. In a state, it's different than the federal government, but in a state, they need that attorney general. It's a check against the governor, it's a check against the legislature and the judiciary branch. It's also a check against the federal government and a check against the counties. Right. To make sure that everybody's doing their jobs correctly. But it takes somebody who's willing to stand up, take a punch, throw a punch, and do the right thing, no matter the outcome. And so I decided to get in the race because I believe the attorney general needs to be that check against power that the citizens need, even if it means being a check against the power of my own office for the benefit of the people. A city attorney general has to be the attorney for the people, not for the state. And that's a different mindset that I bring. I'm not the attorney that's going to implement the vision and the agenda of the state. I'm going to make sure that individual rights are protected first against the power of the state. [00:03:29] Speaker B: That sounds great. Now, a lot of people in this state don't understand exactly what an attorney general does because you will not only represent the people, you represent businesses, you represent law enforcement. You have to be the top law dog in the state. So you've got to work well with law enforcement. [00:03:48] Speaker E: Who's beeping? [00:03:49] Speaker B: Is that your phone or my phone? [00:03:50] Speaker A: That's his phone. [00:03:52] Speaker E: All right. [00:03:52] Speaker B: It's you, I think. [00:03:54] Speaker C: Turn that off. [00:03:56] Speaker B: But you also have to be the top law person. And we've got a prosecutor in Salt Lake county that loves, has not met a law enforcement officer. He won't try to convict of something. [00:04:10] Speaker D: Right. [00:04:11] Speaker B: And there's a lot of business aspects where you are working to help businesses. There's a lot of citizen aspects. And law enforcement has to be able to go to you with issues and have your support and back you at the same time. So does citizens, so does the state. So does legislature. So will you give people basically an elevator speech about what the duty is of the attorney general in Utah? [00:04:40] Speaker C: No, I really appreciate that, and I found that a lot. I'll tell you, when I told my kids I was running for attorney general, I was like, do you guys know what that is? And they said, you're the most important of the attorneys. And I was like, no, but okay, yeah, sure. So I needed to do my job in my house, make sure my kids understood what this job is. And a lot of people have those questions. And I think you put it perfectly, Holly. I think the attorney general, first and foremost, is the top be and has to fill that role of making sure that law enforcement has the resources, but also the backing of the state that they, and to me, top cop means two things. First off, it means that there has to be a relationship between the voice of the people and the AG's office. And by voice of the people, I mean those that are popularly elected. There's only one kind of law enforcement in the state that's popularly elected, and those are the county sheriffs. Every other state law enforcement, state police, highway patrol, whatever it is, whether it's a police force that's run by a regulatory agency, cities that hire their own police forces, the county sheriffs are the only ones that get elected. And as I've gone around and talked to all the different county sheriffs, what they feel is I'm not supported by the state, which to me means that the people aren't supported by the state because it's the county sheriffs that put those, excuse me, the people that put the county sheriffs in power. [00:05:54] Speaker D: Right. [00:05:55] Speaker C: They've come to me and said, we've got problems with x, y and z. And all we get from the state is the state will send us cases and say, hey, prosecute this, we're not going to do it. Prosecute that, we're not going to do it. [00:06:05] Speaker D: Right. [00:06:05] Speaker C: So the county sheriffs don't feel like there's an advocate for them in the attorney general's office. And if there was, you'd be able to coordinate resources. You'd be able to coordinate these cases and make sure that the sheriffs understand, if they're doing their job and I'm doing my job, that they're going to have the resources they need to make sure that the law is actually enforced. [00:06:23] Speaker D: Okay. [00:06:24] Speaker C: And that's the first thing when I say top cop, you have to make sure that there's a relationship between those county sheriffs and the attorney general. But you'll get jurisdictional disputes, right, where the county sheriffs say one thing and state law enforcement wants another. Or you got the county sheriffs sort of pitted against some of the regulatory agencies, like you said, businesses pitted against the regulatory agencies. And what I've said to the sheriffs is first, last and always I'm going to listen to you because, again, you're the voice of the people. That's why I got in the race, because there were legislators that wanted to take the voice of the people away as it related to the attorney general. [00:06:57] Speaker D: Right. [00:06:58] Speaker C: So you talk to the sheriffs, you make sure you understand their positions on things, and then you coordinate and say, this is what we're going to listen to. I'm going to listen to everybody. But when there's a jurisdictional dispute, when people are confused who's got the right away on this, it's going to start and end with the sheriffs. If you do that, you're going to be able to say, let me back up a step. There's several counties in which I've heard that they've had some issues within the county. Maybe there's some accusations of embezzlement, this and that, and they ask the state to help come intervene. The state's not interested. The state doesn't want to look at it, and so they try to kick it to another county. That county is not interested in helping. So there's no oversight of what's happening in the counties. And when there's no oversight, human behavior just is that if nobody's looking over your shoulder, people start to do whatever they do, they sort of treat it like their own kingdom, their own fiefdom. [00:07:47] Speaker D: Right. [00:07:48] Speaker C: And it would only take once of an attorney general stepping in and saying, stop, we're not going to do this. We're going to enforce the law. And anyone else doing things like this in the counties would realize, oh, okay, we got a new sheriff in town, right. Somebody that's going to oversee the counties, be their partner, but also set a good boundary. They say that good fences make good neighbors. [00:08:07] Speaker D: Right. [00:08:07] Speaker C: And if you're working with the legislature and you're saying, look, I want to partner with you and let's do everything we can for the will of the people, but don't cross this line because you cross this line and then we have to have a different relationship. Same thing with the governor. [00:08:18] Speaker D: Right. [00:08:19] Speaker C: Same thing with the county. S. This is what we're going to do to work together. You cross this line and we're going to have a different relationship. But as long as we're within our boundaries, we're going to have a fantastic relationship and we're going to enforce the law for the people. [00:08:30] Speaker A: So can you boil down for some of those specifics that you've heard where different constituencies have tried running projects up and it's been pushed off? Can you give us some examples on that? [00:08:45] Speaker C: Yeah, there's a case in Carbon county. There's a case, we were out in Uinta last night, out in vernal, where there's been discussions of, look, there's been investigations, full 50 page investigations that have been produced saying x, y, and z is happening. There's some embezzlement, there's improper use of funds, and it needs to be investigated. Well, in our system, the only person that can then investigate that is the attorney. [00:09:07] Speaker D: Right. [00:09:07] Speaker C: The sheriffs, they do the investigation, they give it to the attorney. If the attorney is not willing to look at it, that sort of ends it right there. I mean, prosecutors have discretion to take a case or not take a case. And in that way, they can act a lot like a judge, right. If they decide not to take a case, case is over. And so when that happens in a county system, there's no one else to take that. So they've kicked it up to the attorney general's office and said, okay, there's this, will you look at it? And the attorney general's office, at least in the cases that I've heard, has said either they've claimed that there's a conflict of interest and they can't get involved, or they've said, that's not something we're going to get involved in. The authority exists to get involved, to prosecute it, to look into it further, to investigate it further. But they've just said no. And so in some of those cases, counties can partner together and they can say, well, maybe we can kick it to this county attorney and see if they want to help investigate. And it's just been something where the other counties in the state haven't been willing to prosecute, haven't been willing to step in and say, okay, let's see what's going on here. And I'm not claiming anyone's at fault. I haven't looked at the details. [00:10:09] Speaker D: Right. [00:10:10] Speaker C: But what I am saying is there needs to be a partnership where state attorney general is open and willing and capable of looking into those cases. So the people in the counties know they have recourse when their system, they don't feel like their system is addressing their needs. And right now, if the county system doesn't address their needs, there's nowhere else to go. [00:10:29] Speaker A: Well, that's a good point. [00:10:31] Speaker B: Well, I know that our current attorney general has worked tirelessly and is prepared a long time to actually go to DC in the supreme Court and talk federal. How informed are you on the federal land issue, especially for rural Utah counties like ours? Counties like Washington county box elder, 88% is owned by the federal government, and yet other states have no idea what we're talking about. But I was told by Herbert years ago that we need to have the presidency, the House and Senate, before we dare take a bite of this apple, because you only get one bite. And yet our state, and I know Sean Reyes has been preparing for that trial. What are you doing? [00:11:24] Speaker A: Just opening up the. [00:11:26] Speaker B: And with that in mean, when we've had the president, the Senate, and the Congress, we haven't done anything. And if an UAG comes in, how prepared is that office? I know the office is amazing. I know a lot of the employees in there. They're fantastic attorneys. I'm wondering, how much do you know about the federal land issue, and what would you do in that scenario? [00:11:52] Speaker E: Would you go for it? [00:11:53] Speaker B: Do you have to wait for the governor to tell you to go for it? How does that work? [00:11:59] Speaker C: If there's no other message that gets across in this podcast, it's that the attorney general does not have to and should not ever wait for permission from the governor to do anything. Okay. If the attorney general isn't willing to walk in on day one and just go to war, then that person should not be attorney general. They do not need to coordinate with the governor. They shouldn't have to coordinate with the governor, but it would be great if they could. Right again, it's an approach where you say, I'd love to have the governor's help and provide and present a unified front, but it doesn't have to be that way. The attorney general can just, like I said, go to battle for the rights of the people. And so, to your point, there's at least. And I want to give Sean Reyes some credit here. To your point, Holly, he's done a lot of work. He's done a lot of work, and he set the stage for rural Utah to win these court battles. There's, at a minimum, 60 ongoing federal cases right now that the state has filed and that there. Did I do that? Do you see that there's a little thumbs up. I don't know if that was me. There's 60 ongoing cases right now in federal court filed by our attorney general's office that deal with public lands and rural Utah issues. There's grazing rights that are being litigated right now. I don't think the vast majority of people along the Wasatch front don't understand the actual economic impact of grazing rights and what that means and how that can affect the state as a whole. There's lawsuits that involve access to trails. [00:13:22] Speaker D: Right. [00:13:23] Speaker C: I recently learned the other day that our dirt, you know, the national parks, everything that happens southern Utah, throughout rural Utah, provides more revenue by far than skiing. But if we're not fighting these battles and we're not fighting to make sure that we still have access to trails, that the federal government isn't taking over this land and then them dictating what's happening on our land, we lose that revenue source. And if it's not happening along the wasatch front, a lot of times the people along the Wasatch front just simply don't understand it or don't care about it. [00:13:52] Speaker D: Right. [00:13:52] Speaker C: And so I'm not going to claim that I understand all the details, but I know that there is a vast number of cases right now that the current attorney general in his office, really good attorneys, have put forward to protect public lands. And the next attorney general has to be willing to step in and fight those fights as if they are life and death. I'll give you another example. In Uinta, out in the basin, there's jurisdictional disputes over the water rights. But because it's not along the wasatch front, because it's along what some people call the Wasatch back, people don't pay attention to it. [00:14:20] Speaker D: Right. [00:14:21] Speaker C: The attorney general. Others may not be sending the a team. They're sending the b and the c team to go litigate those cases. Well, you need to send the a team because if we lose that battle over the jurisdictional rights of that water, that's game over. And that affects everybody. It affects the waste front, the entire. So it's less a matter of understanding the minute details and more a matter of understanding the priority. [00:14:43] Speaker D: Right. [00:14:44] Speaker C: The priority has to be to understand what's going to benefit or hurt the people the most. And you got to put the best resources to fight those court battles for the grazing rights, for the dirt tourism, for the water rights that are happening all along the state. They may not be the most visible, that's not going to get you the most clicks or the most whatever it is in the media, but it's what's best for the people and I want to say this to your question. If the attorney general's focus is to get attention, then their focus probably won't be to fight those fights. And then the only reason the attorney general wants attention is if they're looking to run for a future office, they want to be governor or senator. It's not what I want to be. I don't want to be governor. I don't want to be senator. I want to serve for attorney general for two terms and then be done. And because that's my focus, I can focus exclusively on what the most important issues are, regardless of whether it's along the waste front or within the rural areas, because that's what's going to be the most benefit to the people, and that's what I'm going to do in the eight years that I'm attorney general. [00:15:40] Speaker B: Excellent. [00:15:41] Speaker A: Sounds good to me. [00:15:42] Speaker B: I'm curious about the water rights issue. I feel like Utah is asked to give more than other states, and I'm wondering when is Utah going to just put their foot down, have California build their own reservoirs and they're the ones who want to go all electric. When is Utah going to hang on to the resources that we're allotted and that belong to. [00:16:06] Speaker E: Be, I don't want. [00:16:07] Speaker B: To be a jerk and say, no. [00:16:08] Speaker E: You guys should not have water. [00:16:10] Speaker B: But it's a constant nudge. A little closer. A little more. A little more. A little more. [00:16:15] Speaker E: And at what point do we say. [00:16:17] Speaker B: Hey, we've got 3 million people now and we've got a million people over. [00:16:22] Speaker E: The course of 20 years. [00:16:23] Speaker D: Yeah. [00:16:24] Speaker B: What is another 20 years going to look like and how prepared are we? [00:16:27] Speaker C: Well, and this gets back to your earlier question that I want to circle back to your earlier question, and it relates to this was when's the right time? [00:16:35] Speaker D: Right. [00:16:35] Speaker C: Should we just go for it? Because people said you only get one bite at the apple. I don't necessarily believe that. I see their point when they're saying, look, you don't want to take your shot and miss. [00:16:44] Speaker D: Right. [00:16:45] Speaker C: So you want to be prepared and take your best shot. But to say you don't get two bites of the apple, you can file these lawsuits multiple times. Right. And you can fight these fights across different fronts. And this water issue is one of them. [00:16:59] Speaker D: Right. [00:16:59] Speaker C: There's a lot of different ways to split this. There's been different agreements among the states about how to use the water out of the color of rhythm and other things. [00:17:06] Speaker D: Right. [00:17:06] Speaker C: And so there needs to be negotiation. There needs to be diplomacy. But at the same time, there has to be an attorney general willing to put his foot down and say, no, this is how we're going to do it and whether we have to sue it in other state or sue the federal government. But it takes a proactive, long term strategy approach to it. And it kind of makes me come back to my point about it's not just about litigating, okay. Litigation is about strategy. And the person that's sitting in the attorney general's office, it's a little more like being a George Washington and directing the battle than actually in the trenches fighting the battle every day. You have to be able to do both. You have to see the long term strategy of what you're doing, and you have to be able to direct the ongoing day to day tactical affairs of the office. And so water, like you said, it's going to be an issue today, tomorrow, in 30 years from now, it's just going to keep being an issue. And so working with the public, working with the legislature, understanding the demographic shifts and how that's going to affect us, reexamining the agreements we've entered into with other states and then seeing what the federal government's doing, what other states are trying to do and mapping out our strategy and where we're going to have to enter into litigation and be prepared for litigation versus when we're going to be able to negotiate with other states. [00:18:14] Speaker D: Right. [00:18:14] Speaker C: But it's this ongoing effort. It's not, we're going to solve it tomorrow with a lawsuit. It's make sure that we understand what the demographic shifts are going to be. So in ten years from now, we're prepared to fight that battle again because there's not going to be more water, but there are going to be more people moving in. So you have to be proactive in understanding what the strategy needs to be tomorrow, next month, next year, and ten years from now. [00:18:39] Speaker B: That's a really good point. I'm always wondering when crimes happen in this state, and there is, let's say a crime has happened and a police department handles it one way and the family, the victim doesn't feel like it's being, let's not say a police department, because I know police departments put all the evidence together. They take prosecutors and prosecution is decided by them and not the department. And so they could have a great case put together, but a prosecutor won't prosecute. How does the attorney general come in and help the victim? [00:19:16] Speaker E: Maybe get some? Is that something an attorney general can. [00:19:20] Speaker B: Get involved in and help? [00:19:22] Speaker E: One? [00:19:23] Speaker C: Yeah, absolutely. One of the things that I want to establish that I have in my plan that I want to put forward as attorney general is instituting some prosecutorial reforms. And part of that is to set up an office within the attorney general's office that allows people, victims recourse when they don't feel like they've been heard. And I want to do this across agencies. [00:19:41] Speaker D: Right. [00:19:42] Speaker C: DCFS is a good example of one in which I know a lot of cases in which parents feel like they don't have recourse. But in this specific example that you gave, have an office, have a division that's set up to say, look, this was my case. This was the evidence. I don't feel like I was heard. The prosecutor didn't want to take my case and review those. There's a lot that can be done to make sure that prosecutors are doing their job correctly. And I have a lot of faith in the prosecutors in the attorney general's office and across the state. But there's a problem in my mind with the incentive structure that prosecutors are given. If I start as a prosecutor on day one and I know that I want to rise in the ranks in the office and I want a promotion, and I eventually want to be ahead of a division, my incentive is to get convictions. [00:20:28] Speaker D: That's it. [00:20:29] Speaker C: I rise and fall by the number of convictions that I get. And so if I look at a case and I don't think I can get a conviction, I either don't take it or I try to plea bargain it, right? I only take those cases, and it's just incentive. It's just human nature. A prosecutor will only take the cases that they think they can win because that's how they're judged for future raises, right. For future promotions. And so we need to change. I mean, prosecutors are humans. You need to change the incentive structure. Humans react to incentives, both positive and negative incentives. So changing the incentives by which a prosecutor gets a raise. There's been cases where, for example, a prosecutor, he's going after a conviction, but he finds exculpatory evidence. He finds evidence that would show that the defendant actually didn't do what the prosecutor is claiming he did. It's their legal duty and ethical duty to turn that evidence over to the other side. But there's been cases where that hasn't happened, and there's been cases where that hasn't happened because it doesn't benefit the prosecutor. They have a disincentive to do that. So if an attorney general can come in and change the incentive structure, and actually give them points for saying, hey, you did the right thing, you followed the law. Then you're going to see prosecutors who have the incentive to do the right thing over time. [00:21:40] Speaker D: Right. [00:21:40] Speaker C: But then there's a negative incentive right now. A judge makes a wrong decision, maybe it gets appealed, maybe it doesn't. It's really expensive to appeal in a decision of a judge. And maybe to your point, maybe a victim or a plaintiff doesn't have the resources to appeal that decision. What do they do? They have no recourse. [00:21:58] Speaker D: Right. [00:21:59] Speaker C: And so what I want to do is set up essentially what you would see in a business context where you've got so many prosecutors, every single one of them knows that they're going to be three of them picked at random in any given year, for example, and their caseload is going to be taken, and there's going to be a spot check. They're going to pull five cases out of that prosecutor's caseload and they're going to review it. An independent agency will review it and say, did you follow the law? Did you follow the process? Did you turn over exculpatory evidence and review the entire case and then give a grade? How did you do? And if a prosecutor knows a, I now get rewarded for doing the right thing, and there's a possibility that my caseload is going to get audited and they're going to see that I didn't do the right thing. You're going to have prosecutors much more willing to take the cases they need to take and follow the law and make sure that everyone's rights are being protected while they vigorously enforce the law. I think we need to do it with judges, too. Pull a random selection of cases from judges and say, okay, did that judge follow the law? Did they follow the process? Were constitutional rights protected? And have that office in charge of making sure that those rights were protected with some teeth to say, if they weren't protected, then there's going to be x, y, and z consequences, because, again, please go ahead. [00:23:09] Speaker B: Who funds that? Who's going to get you that money for your department to create something? [00:23:15] Speaker C: And that's why you have to build those relationships with the legislature. [00:23:18] Speaker D: Right. [00:23:18] Speaker C: Like when Sean started the division that's handling sex trafficking, child trafficking. [00:23:22] Speaker D: Right. [00:23:23] Speaker C: He was able to draw some of the money from the budget because what he did is he took people that already specialized in those areas, pulled them out of their existing divisions, and then created a new division. So he kind of moved them over, but he also went and got some new funding for the legislature, from the legislature specifically, to give them the resources they needed to do a deep dive into that area and to prosecute the violations of that law. And so if I'm going to the legislature saying, I want to partner with you, we want to protect rights of people, and we're going to create this new division, there's going to be some resources that they need to put towards that. But I think, please, this could be. [00:23:55] Speaker B: Called criminal justice reform. [00:23:56] Speaker C: Absolutely. [00:23:57] Speaker B: And the state needs. We need to make sure that every person, black or white or gray, whatever, is getting fair justice. There's not a two tier justice system and the victims are being advocated for. Just as much as one case to you may make sense, but it may not make sense in a rural community where they don't have the fund prosecuted or whatever it is. Maybe it's a sticky case all the way around. [00:24:24] Speaker C: I like this idea. [00:24:25] Speaker B: Do we have Internet access? [00:24:26] Speaker A: Yeah, we're back up. [00:24:27] Speaker C: Can we make this? [00:24:29] Speaker A: Yeah, Trent, go ahead and tell us about your website real quick while we switch over to our. [00:24:35] Speaker B: We're going to change studio. We get back in the studio. [00:24:38] Speaker C: Very good. [00:24:39] Speaker E: So my website, share with us how. [00:24:40] Speaker B: People can get to know you. [00:24:42] Speaker C: Yeah, my website is trentchristiansen.com. I'd love everybody to come visit. It has a place where you can put your name, your email address, your phone number in. You can get updates on the campaign, and you can volunteer. We can come bring yard signs to your house, bring flyers. It also has links to all my social media accounts, Facebook, Twitter, x, Instagram. Love for everybody to come get involved, ask me questions, engage on Facebook. I love having conversations with people. That's how I get to know really what's happening out in the rural areas. So I'd love for people to come and engage. Trentchristensen.com and then Trent Christensen ag across all the social media platforms. I'm going to pop your website up. Trent, hang on here. Here it comes. Trent Christensen. How about this? Can you see that? I cannot. Here it comes. Okay, here we go. [00:25:34] Speaker D: There it is. [00:25:34] Speaker C: Oh, there it was. Now you can see. [00:25:36] Speaker D: There it is. [00:25:37] Speaker C: Now you can see. Yeah, those are my kids. Yep. And then you can see along the know where you can engage with us some biographical info. We're going to have some policy positions up there, but more than anything, if you want to scroll back up for just a second. Dwayne, Holly, you asked at the beginning, why did I decide to do that? And that picture right there shows you four reasons why I decided to do that. My kids are 18, 1614, and twelve, and they're going to live in this state. We love this state. I hope someday I'll have grandkids. They're going to live in this state. But I need to make sure that this state works for them and for your kids. Holly, to your point that a crime that's committed in Salt Lake by someone who has the money to hire the attorneys isn't prosecuted any differently than someone who does it in another county who doesn't have the money to hire the defense attorneys to protect them? [00:26:29] Speaker D: Right. [00:26:29] Speaker C: There can't be a two tier justice system. It has to be one set of rules, the rule of law for everybody. And that's what I want to do as attorney general. But let me take that a step further. Right. We're talking about criminal justice reform. That has to happen across all levels of government. I'll give you an example. There was an office that was supposedly started by the governor, and it was supposed to be just this. It was supposed to be an office where if someone had an issue with what was happening at the executive branch, they could go to this office and file a complaint. And it was billed as, this is going to be transparent. This is going to be open government. This is going to give people recourse. And a year later, a reporter went and called the number of that office and got a disconnected dial, went and looked. There was nobody there. The website was down, and it just had never been set up. There was only two out of the five board positions that had been filled. It was just, again, it's kind of political kabuki theater. Nobody's actually doing the job of overseeing what government's doing for the benefit of the people, and the attorney general's office can and should be doing that. [00:27:31] Speaker A: So you're telling me that the governor made the promise of this office, kind of started the foundation of it, and then the office died on the vine? That wasn't announced. It wasn't told to anyone. It just went into ether. [00:27:50] Speaker C: I mean, I want to be fair. When it was brought up that only two of the five board positions had been filled, they quickly filled the other three and whatnot. I don't know if it's now up and running, but again, it was a year later that this reporter went and tried to dig into this a little bit, and there was just nothing there. And so, Holly, you mentioned a two tier justice system. Well, that's just in criminal justice. What about in state government? What recourse do the citizens have? And I say this all the time to know if you get crossways with dcfs or the division of securities. [00:28:22] Speaker D: Right. [00:28:22] Speaker C: I mentioned I was a CEO, I ran a venture accelerator for three years. And we would have people all the time that were just trying to raise money for their business, made a simple mistake, and all of a sudden now they've got a felony record because the division of securities came and just slammed down the law on them when they could have just helped them understand the law. [00:28:40] Speaker D: Right. [00:28:41] Speaker C: And now you've got people that know all they were trying to do is raise money for their company, but they made a simple mistake. And what recourse do they have? That's the question I keep asking. What is the recourse that people have in this state? And it's usually one of two things. You either hire a very expensive attorney and you defend yourself, or you roll over and take it. [00:29:00] Speaker E: You get a department like the ATF who overnight decides that certain things are banned or illegal and turn people into felons overnight. Right. There. Is that the attorney general we go to? Because I know our local sheriffs can stop the ATF from coming in the county, but if the attorney general says, this is not going to be tolerated, the ATF has no ability to write laws, and that belongs to the Senate. And if our AG stands firm on things, I think we've got a great ag in Texas right now who's kind of standing up to the federal government. And I'd like to see that happen, especially where guns are mean. Utah is a constitutional carry state. [00:29:41] Speaker C: Yes, it is. Yep. And here's my point to that. Yes to the sheriffs and yes to the attorney general. Like, if we could present an actual unified front where the sheriffs are stopping the ATF from coming in, but they know that the AG has their back. [00:29:55] Speaker D: Right. [00:29:56] Speaker C: They know that they're going to be supported from a state level, then it's a more powerful stance against what the ATF is doing, because it's not just the sheriffs or maybe just the AG and not the sheriffs. [00:30:09] Speaker D: Right. [00:30:09] Speaker C: You have to provide a unified front for the federal government to say, oh, these guys are actually serious about this. [00:30:14] Speaker D: Right. [00:30:15] Speaker C: And that's what I think we can do as the AG. The AG's office is doing a lot of good with the sheriffs right now. I want to say that, but there has to be a better connection between what's happening at the local level and the state level so that there's always a unified front when people's constitutional rights are concerned. [00:30:30] Speaker A: Well, have you heard Ohio's got that attorney general that's talking about. He, they went constitutional carry, I think the end of last year, beginning of last year, and he had a study done. He's been catching flak. Every leftist, purple haired weirdo, all those vegans and whatever they are, they're all crying because it came out. And the study shows crime actually dropped in. All except for, I want to say Cincinnati, which tells me Cincinnati is a toilet bowl. [00:31:11] Speaker C: That's a different story. [00:31:12] Speaker D: Right. [00:31:12] Speaker A: Or maybe it's. [00:31:17] Speaker E: Like Salt Lake City. [00:31:18] Speaker A: Six of Ohio's eight largest cities saw less gun crime after the state's constitutional carry law took effect, according to the study published today in the center of Justice research partnership between the Ohio AG and Dave Yost, which is one of my personal heroes right now, and Bowling Green State University, I mean, it's even a state university did the study. But not to get sidetracked onto that because I actually want to talk about that later on the show. But I want to say that's a good thing that attorney general can do is to, if a new law comes out to bolster, is this law for real? Did it make the change, show the evidence? And he showed it. [00:31:59] Speaker C: And that's a big part of what I've been trying to say the next attorney general has to be willing to do. There's a bully pulpit that the governor has because he's the governor. [00:32:07] Speaker D: Right. [00:32:08] Speaker C: But there's a bully pulpit that the attorney general has because he or she is the attorney general. And I think it can be used a greater effect. I keep saying, and it's similar, but I'll use the example of election integrity. [00:32:20] Speaker D: Right. [00:32:20] Speaker C: If we can do a full statewide transparent audit and investigation of the electoral system, then we're going to be able to see does it work? And if it doesn't, where doesn't it work? And let's fix those things. So to your point, you pass a law we're now constitutional carry. The attorney general has all the authority to run this investigation, to run this study, partner with Bowling Green. [00:32:40] Speaker D: Right. [00:32:40] Speaker C: And then use the power of the office to stand up and say, hey, remember that law we passed? It works because you'd be guaranteed that the left is going to try and tell you it didn't work. They're going to run their own studies or they're going to try and bring up cases, anecdotes saying you passed that law and look at how terrible life is now. And so that's an example, in my opinion, of an attorney general who's proactive, saying, seeing down the road seeing around the corner and saying the leftists are going to come and attack this law. They're going to say that we did terrible things in this state because we enacted constitutional carry. Let's protect the law and actually study its effects so that we can come out and say, look at what happened, right. And in those jurisdictions where they didn't fully implement it, we can see what happened, right, in those larger metropolitan areas. But again, it's a good example of an attorney general saying, I'm going to be proactive. I'm going to look down the road and see what the left is going to do and I'm going to preempt it and we're going to have this study and we're going to show the rest of the country that this is what works, right? So that whatever people want to come out and say you made a mistake to do constitutional carry, you can see like, well, that's your opinion, but here are the facts, right? That's good governance. [00:33:45] Speaker A: Even then you may find out that constitutional carry didn't work. We all know it does. But we're in dream purple Hood, Greenland, where soy lates are breakfast. [00:33:57] Speaker C: But anyways, now you hate soy lates, too. [00:34:01] Speaker A: Soy is not milk. An oat milk? What is that? Where is the nipple on an oat? Yeah, there should be a law. [00:34:11] Speaker E: I want the know if someone's a vegan. Don't worry, they'll tell. You know, I still got this beef because I've seen Sim Gill in action so many times and he's in a blue city, of course, Salt Lake City, where he's not prosecuting the people from the summer of love in Salt Lake that were putting our law enforcement in danger, they were putting our businesses in danger. People that were downtown were in danger. He wasn't quick to prosecute them. And then you get an actual vandalism at his office and he's light on crime. Then you get in the last AG's race, the guy running against Sean Reyes, I don't remember his name, out of Utah county, talked about how he wants to do away with the death penalty and yeah, I don't love the death penalty. I believe life is important and yeah, let him rot. Jail. Here's the problem. I know in law enforcement that death penalty is one hell of a ticket to get somebody to either confess or not. When that's on the table, that's a totally different animal. Now, when a person is facing, of course, there's millions of appeals and we rarely impose a death penalty, but when you eliminate it. You take that from investigators and prosecutors as a way to actually get to the root of a crime. He also wanted to do a lot more trials. And my biggest thing was, where are you getting the money? Where are we getting the money in Twilla county to do more trials, plea bargains. I understand that there's a need for that. But counties like ours, when we have, say, somebody with a mental health issue or a drug issue, it's not a violent crime. Our county doesn't have any way to. We don't have anywhere to put them to where we're not putting them in jails or prisons. We don't have an option to put them in rehab or put them back in drug court. Something that was working for a lot of people is that something the attorney general's office could impose or at least be an advocate for, for rural counties like ours, that we could use the money and we could use resources where it comes to rehabilitating the people that actually have a shot? Because I don't think sex offenders can be rehabilitated. I think that science has shown that that's something that once you're molesting a child or a rapist, a serial rapist, those types of people don't rehabilitate per se. We need other methods. We need ways to actually get people accountable, of course, and get them going in the right path, not making better, better criminals by putting them in prisons when they were just drug addicts, when they went in and had no violent crimes, but they come out still addicted to drugs somehow, and yet they now commit more violence and more violence because now they've learned how or what to do. Is that an attorney general issue? Is that something you could see happening, or is that something that requires our legislature? [00:37:35] Speaker C: No, that's an everybody issue. I mean, that affects everybody. And I think every member at state government, county level, city level, ought to be concerned and active in this. And so let me address it a couple of different ways. When you're talking about mental health versus violent criminals, right. That's sort of a different area. But the attorney general, again, has a powerful bully pulpit from which he can go to the legislature and say, look, we have to work on this together. The cities and the counties need the resources to handle this. It's not a violent crime issue. It's a mental health issue. [00:38:06] Speaker D: Right. [00:38:07] Speaker C: And you're not doing anybody any favors by putting the mentally ill in jail. [00:38:10] Speaker D: Right. [00:38:12] Speaker C: You have to be able to trust the local prosecutors, but you have to give them the resources, the cities and the counties to deal with those issues as they come up. [00:38:20] Speaker D: Right. [00:38:20] Speaker C: There has to be that partnership between what's happening locally and what's happening at the state level and that partnership. The counties and cities need to understand that they have advocates at the legislature and the attorney general's office to help them get those resources. But on another level, this is point number two. The state attorney general can help in those areas if there are crimes that are not being prosecuted. [00:38:42] Speaker D: Right. [00:38:43] Speaker C: If there are issues that are going unresolved or just completely ignored by a DA. [00:38:47] Speaker D: Right. [00:38:48] Speaker C: A state attorney general can jump in, can have a say, can actually prosecute and take some of those cases over, but also do it in a way to say, look, we're not going to allow this in Salt Lake City. We're not going to allow this in Tuella. We're not going to allow this across the state and not just do it and not say anything about it, make it a public issue. [00:39:07] Speaker D: Right. [00:39:07] Speaker C: Where you're saying the attorney general is having to step in here and we're happy to do it. But guess what? This is your job that we're doing right now, and we're going to do it for you, but we shouldn't have to keep doing it for you. You need to enforce the law, but we're not going to let these violent crimes go unanswered. But let me take a step back into sort of a more strategic approach. [00:39:24] Speaker D: Right. [00:39:25] Speaker C: We know this is happening. We know it's going to continue to happen. And so there needs to be a longer term approach, somebody in the AG's office that's looking at a proactive, longer term approach to what's happening here. And there have been efforts all across the country, Los Angeles, San Francisco, or two of the big Portland, some of the biggest examples where there's been a lot of effort to, quote unquote, reform our criminal justice system, but in a way that law abiding citizens would not appreciate. [00:39:52] Speaker D: Right? [00:39:52] Speaker E: Absolutely. [00:39:53] Speaker C: There's a fellow named John Arnold. You can look him up. A-R-N-O-L-D. [00:39:57] Speaker D: Right. [00:39:58] Speaker C: He's trying to be the next George Soros. [00:40:00] Speaker D: Right. [00:40:00] Speaker C: He's putting billions of dollars. There's been some articles that have come out about it, about how he's trying to, again, reform criminal justice, but not in a way that's helpful to the people. And he has a foundation, it's called the Arnold foundation. And there were lobbyists up at the legislature that were lobbying on behalf of his foundation to the state legislature to try and implement some of the things he was doing. And one of those lobbyists is in this race, in this attorney general's race that lobbied on behalf of the Arnold foundation. And what I'm saying is you need to look at what's happening in the larger context of things which George Soros and John Arnold are trying to pull off in LA and San Francisco. And you need to be prepared to combat it because it's coming. [00:40:38] Speaker D: Right. [00:40:39] Speaker C: They want to implement the same things here in a sim gill type of approach and overrun the criminal justice system and not prosecute crime and let these things go free and allow illegals to come in and allow homeless camps to get set up and do it all in the name of tolerance and helping people. [00:40:57] Speaker D: Right. [00:40:57] Speaker C: And if there's an attorney general that can see it coming and stop it before it starts, you're going to avoid a lot of these problems. You got to take on the problems that are here now, but you have to know it's coming and be proactive in stopping those reforms when they're on their way and getting these liberal prosecutors, liberal Das put in that don't want to prosecute crime. And I've said this before, I've said it to the counties. I think I've said it just earlier in this interview, if you stop it once and you really stop it, then people are going to know, oh, okay, this isn't going to fly here, right. If there's something happening in the counties that nobody's taking a look at and you go in and you stop it in one, all the other counties are going to see, okay, we're not going to get away with that anymore. [00:41:34] Speaker D: Right. [00:41:34] Speaker C: Or if a prosecutor, a liberal DA, isn't going to prosecute crime and that state attorney general steps in and says, yes, we are, and we're going to hold people accountable, then you're going to focus some attention on that problem and you're going to be able to get the public behind you, which means you're going to be able to get the legislature behind you, which means you're going to be able to dedicate the resources you need to give the local, the city and county police officers, along with the county sheriffs, the resources they need. And they're going to know, okay, the attorney general's got my back. If I go into a dangerous situation and I arrest these criminals, right, and I put myself in danger, I'm going to have an ag that's actually going to prosecute this crime and not waste all the effort that I put in doing my job to try and stop crime. [00:42:14] Speaker A: Not to mention when they just release them back onto the street, it emboldens them. [00:42:19] Speaker E: Absolutely. [00:42:20] Speaker A: They actually increase their violent behavior because they've been like, oh, I've got a big question about that. And I don't know if you even have the answer to this, but the Soros foundation has done irreparable damage to the coast of this country. And it sounds like this to many other countries, too. Purple haired Arnold, I don't know what we call him, giant one eyed monster, whatever. He's set to take over for that. What are some things that an ag could do to not just protect his state, but let's face it, we've got to look at protecting bigger than just the state because the state of Georgia is getting bleed over from New York. And now they've got a young nursing student that the guy crushed her head. You've got an infant in illegals. Where is it? And these are products of other states that are bleeding over into them. How do we deal with that on a bigger mean? Is it time for torches and pitchforks? I guess that's what I'm asking. [00:43:35] Speaker C: No, it's not time for torches and pitchforks yet. As long as you have an attorney general that'll stand up and fight these fights for you. And let me give you an example. Look at what Governor Abbot is doing in Texas, right? He's securing the border. He's putting up the barbed wire. The federal government says, you have to take it down. They say, no, we're going to keep putting it up. [00:43:52] Speaker D: Right? [00:43:53] Speaker C: They're fighting that fight and they're stepping outside. [00:43:55] Speaker E: Ruled against him, though, that he's not allowed to have his officer, are not allowed to ask if someone is legal or illegal. A judge just ruled against the governor. And that legislation, the legislators put out a law that if someone is stopped by police and found to be illegal, they will be sent to ice and removed from the country. And a judge, a Reagan appointed judge, just stopped that. [00:44:19] Speaker A: Well, and I have other concerns about that. I applaud him on shipping the illegals to the sanctuary cities and stressing their financial wallets. But the illegals still get deeper in. And those sanctuary cities are going to hit a census in three years and they're going to get another congressional vote out of it. [00:44:41] Speaker D: Right? [00:44:42] Speaker A: So in the end, we're going to lose. [00:44:43] Speaker C: Well, not if 2024 turns out to be a better election than 2020, right? I mean, if we get a Trump presidency again, and I've fully endorsed the president back on January 16, and he carries through which I think he will with his promise of mass deportations. That has to happen and it has to happen. Now, to your point, Jared, that these censuses are going to take, they're going to happen. [00:45:06] Speaker D: Right. [00:45:06] Speaker C: And we can't allow them to happen when you've got states that are allowing non immigrants not only to vote but to be on voting boards. [00:45:14] Speaker D: Right. [00:45:14] Speaker E: Or in law enforcement. [00:45:16] Speaker C: Exactly. [00:45:17] Speaker E: Morons. [00:45:18] Speaker C: So it takes a proactive approach to say, look, this has never been done before, what I want to propose kind of thing. [00:45:24] Speaker D: Right. [00:45:25] Speaker C: Like it's never happened that you had the Texas governor setting up barbed wire down on the border, but he did it. [00:45:31] Speaker D: Right. [00:45:31] Speaker C: And if you say, look, we're going to implement some things in this state, it's never been done before, but we're going to try it because guess what? Utah is a major corridor up I 15 and down 15 of drug trafficking, sex trafficking, child trafficking. So that issue affects us. We have standing to go in and take care of this issue. So we can go in, I can partner with the county sheriffs. We can say we have all the power and constitutional authority we need to protect our people and we can start to implement some measures to get these illegal immigrants out of our state and then we will get sued and then we will defend ourselves against those lawsuits. And we might win some and we might lose some, but we got to fight the fight. And nobody's fighting the fight. It's just like, well, hands thrown in the air. There's nothing we can do. It's a federal issue. No, it's not. It's a state, city, local community issue. And people are dying and they're dying of fentanyl overdoses and children are getting trafficked and there's being drug trafficking and it has to be fought here. And maybe we lose some of those battles in the trenches in the lawsuits and the federal government, you get liberal judges or even Reagan appointees that say, nope, sorry, you can't do that. But we're going to fight the fight and there's going to be something along the way that we win and we're going to build on those wins and we're going to keep fighting those fights. So the people of Utah know, regardless of what happens, there's an ag that's going to fight this for them and not just say, well, I don't know, it's a federal issue. That's not okay. [00:46:45] Speaker E: Well, and I think a lot of you in the race, I know pretty much everyone in the race and we've had a couple, well, we've had one on, but I've known Derek Brown a long time and I really highly respect him. He was an excellent GOP chair and was able to get really good communication between people who were at each other's throats. And I get that you need to have a strong presence where people can trust you, businesses can trust you. And I am a law enforcement kid. I grew up in law enforcement. My father, my brother. I have strong ties to law enforcement. So that's my family that shows up in the city when it's burning down. It's my family that takes hits to the face or runs the risk of when. When Sim Gill is trying to prosecute a whole department for misdeeds and then during an election year and he has all the charges filed and two days after he's elected he drops all the charges because he had no is. To me, that helps turn people against law enforcement. And we need a bond. Utah is a pretty great state to be a police officer or a deputy in. I think. I think we've got great police officers and everything else, but I'm seeing the tide turning and I want to make sure that anyone who wins this seat will have law enforcement's back as much as they have business and citizens. So I'd like to see a good working relationship with all because you can't be friends with everyone all the time, of course. But I have a big problem with asset forfeiture. I have a big problem when somebody can search another person's car and if they've got thousands of dollars in that car, the departments can take it. I have a big problem with that. I think Utah should put an end to that. I know we're a high drug traffic area. An I 80, I 15 up, parleys all that way is all high traffic for drugs. But I want an ag. He's going to go, wait a minute. Your civil rights are being violated and they took $18,000 from you. Since when is it illegal to carry a large amount of cash with you? You have no crime. You've been charged with no crime, yet a department takes it. And that's going on all around the country. And to me, that's blatant violation of my civil rights. And it's your job to bring a case against me. And if I happen to have $25,000 on me in cash because I'm headed to Wyoming to buy a classic car, why do I have to defend myself to you and you get to take it? This is a problem. Utah has been guilty of it I hate that. And I know it's beneficial to law enforcement because they get to keep that money or they share it with the federal government. But then there's no crime. We've got so many problems. Criminal justice reform. We should start looking in jails and looking at these ridiculous sentences against a black person versus a white person for the exact same crime. And that's where I want reform to start. Let's see who's in there for marijuana crimes. Let's see who's in there for who's in there, who's mentally ill. Look at the mental illness problem across the nation right now. And nobody is saying, that's the problem we need to tackle. Because I know our AG's office, and with work with legislators, made the mental health three digit number so that people can call if they're having a mental health crisis. Instead of 911, they call this. Our AG's office did that with our local legislature and with Chris Stewart, our congressman, our district. That's the type of stuff I want to see coming out of the AG's office. I want people to get help, not get thrown in prison, not get thrown into a homeless camp and said, hey, good luck. I want something where even drug addicts who are not violent have something. And I want the AG's office leading that right. And not to get famous, necessarily, but to set precedent on human life and how valuable it is, regardless. If a 15 year old, a nine year old, a 40 year old, people struggle and they're struggling in our state, we need to be leaders in this. [00:51:18] Speaker D: Yeah. [00:51:19] Speaker C: Holly, you've touched on a lot of really great issues right there, and I want to hit on a couple of the things you said, but I want to preface it with a story that I think can kind of encapsulate what you're talking about. You talk about recourse. Like, what is the people's recourse when they feel like their assets have been taken by police or the state comes for them? Right. Why is the attorney general leading on that? The first case I ever took to trial, ever. I was a young attorney, first year attorney, and I had a friend come to me. He was an ecclesiastical leader, and he said, hey, I have a couple I need you to talk to. And they don't have any money, but they need your help. And they told me the story. The state had showed up at their house at gunpoint and extracted their two daughters, nine and eleven, from the house, from the parents, and took them and put them in foster care. And the state was trying to terminate the parental rights of those parents based off of an accusation by a disgruntled former employee. So I looked at the case, I said, okay, I'm going to take this case, and I was going to represent the parents. I was going to protect their parental rights, and I was going to get those kids back. And I showed up to the very first hearing. And again, I'm just a first year lawyer, right? A little wet behind the ears. I'm very probably overconfident, but I show up at the first hearing and the state literally tosses this motion to me across the table. It's a 24 page motion for sanctions against me, against the attorney. And what they were trying to do is it was a brushback pitch, right? They were trying to scare me and get me off this case and say, you don't belong here, kid. So I argued the motion, I won the motion, and we won the hearing. But it took eight months to get those girls out of that system, get them back with their parents, protect those parental rights. And this may not surprise you, as soon as that family was reunited, they took off. They left that state. [00:52:59] Speaker E: Never. [00:53:00] Speaker A: Oh, yeah. [00:53:01] Speaker D: Right. [00:53:01] Speaker A: Isn't there a federal legislation that. It's perverse, but states make money when they remove children from parents. So you get a lot of abuses in that which honestly, and foster care systems. I don't mean to bring up guillotines every time I do a show. [00:53:26] Speaker E: Sure does 355, folks. He brought it up at 355. [00:53:31] Speaker C: Does this have to do, seriously, once you. I know that's kind of an issue for you. [00:53:37] Speaker A: Once you approach parasitic, abusive government, what's the other answer? [00:53:45] Speaker C: And that's my point, is there's no recourse. Your recourse is one of two things. You go and hire an attorney, and maybe you can afford them and maybe you can't, or you roll over and you take it from the state. And here's my larger point. If you haven't fought the state, right. We have other attorneys in this race that have done really excellent legal work, litigation, right. There's other people in this race that have never practiced litigation, but some that have. But that's fighting for the state. [00:54:13] Speaker D: Right. [00:54:13] Speaker C: You take the state's agenda and you're going to implement the state's agenda. There's nothing wrong with that. I have a lot of respect for people that work for the state their whole careers. But if you've never fought the state, you don't understand the vast resources and power and presumption that the judges give the state. You are uphill from day one, and. [00:54:32] Speaker E: You go bankrupt trying to defend yourself by design. [00:54:36] Speaker C: Never been in that position. You don't understand what it's like to fight the state. And that's the mindset that I want to bring to the attorney general's office. The attorney general needs to be an advocate for the people, even against the power of his or her own office to give them recourse. [00:54:49] Speaker D: Right. [00:54:50] Speaker C: And that's what I'm talking about. Setting up divisions where people can come and say, $25,000 was taken from my car and not have it go through a bureaucracy of five months before anybody even looks at it, it gets handled. [00:55:00] Speaker D: Right. [00:55:00] Speaker C: There's attorneys that get assigned to cases, and because they have a partnership with local law enforcement, they can say, hey, we understood this happened. Can we get detail? Like, can we just handle it? It shouldn't be five months. It should be 5 hours. [00:55:11] Speaker D: Right. [00:55:12] Speaker C: But that requires an ongoing, proactive approach to build relationships with these police departments at the city and the county level. It requires trust with the people to say, no, I'm going to make good on that promise, and I'm going to fight for your rights ahead of the agenda of whatever regulatory agency we're talking about. And to your point, Jared, I spoke with, he's a former member of the legislature, and he's an attorney, and he's been working with dcfs. He wrote laws relating to dcfs, but also fighting against dcfs his entire career. He told me there are 700 cases a year in which parental rights are terminated. Now, you can imagine that some percentage of those are probably warranted, right? There is such a thing as really bad parents, right? [00:55:54] Speaker A: Abusers, drug addicts, all that. Yeah. [00:55:59] Speaker D: Right. [00:55:59] Speaker C: Where's that money going? The system? [00:56:04] Speaker D: Right? [00:56:04] Speaker C: Where is the money going? Who's benefiting from that? What parts of it work and what parts of it don't? What recourse do parents have? And unless an attorney general is willing to stand up and say, look, I'm 47 years old. In my entire life, I've never heard or seen of an audit of dcfs, ever. [00:56:23] Speaker E: Foster care systems make. I mean, foster parents get paid quite a bit of money per kid, and a lot of them will take on twelve kids. [00:56:30] Speaker A: Well, that good care for it. [00:56:32] Speaker C: I don't want to. The foster parents that do a good job. [00:56:35] Speaker D: Right. [00:56:35] Speaker A: I don't want to disabuse the foster system because it's a needed gap and. [00:56:41] Speaker C: Let'S just make sure it works. [00:56:43] Speaker E: That's all I'm saying. [00:56:46] Speaker C: I've never been part of a private organization that didn't voluntarily audit its books and then share those results with the people that needed to see it, the shareholders, the investors, whatever. [00:56:54] Speaker E: Investors. Right. And we are all investors in this. [00:56:56] Speaker C: State, but the government doesn't do it and they won't do it until there's someone who doesn't need to ask permission of legislative leadership or of the governor or of regulatory agency to run one of these audits, someone that can just stand up, wake up one morning and being, no, we're going to war and we're going to make sure we understand whether these regulatory agencies work or not. And the parts that work, awesome. The parts that don't, we're going to fix them. And if someone needs to go to jail, so be it. But somebody's got to stand up and make that fight. [00:57:21] Speaker E: I wish that our federal government leadership was doing the same thing and auditing these big ABC departments. And I've said it on the show a million times, but we need an audit of the FBI. Did you guys hear the news going to Ukraine? We need an audit of the CIA right now. [00:57:38] Speaker C: The doc, right? [00:57:40] Speaker E: Yes. [00:57:41] Speaker C: We need to see what's going. Tell me. [00:57:44] Speaker A: The United States Marine Corps is the first ABC organization to pass an audit last week, the first in something like 25 years. I want everyone to soak it in. Hoorah. Marines. Good job. All right, go on. [00:58:00] Speaker C: I love it. [00:58:01] Speaker E: I would love to see that at a federal level, but I especially would like to see a bulldog on the state level for those citizens that feel like, hey, I can't afford to fight this state. I can't afford to go bankrupt to get my life savings back that I drove across state lines with, or I can't afford this. It would be nice if there was some sort of department. You've got incredible attorneys in that office, and Sean's got amazing attorneys and investigators in that office. And I think that they work tirelessly on so much. So this would be a money issue. [00:58:42] Speaker C: Let me say this to that point. I started this interview by telling you about that idea that was floated last September about making the attorney general. [00:58:50] Speaker E: Who made that idea, by the way, because I've heard that's only a rumor because he talked about the attorney general and the state school board, which had my head about spinning around. [00:59:00] Speaker C: So there was an article, there were articles in the desert News and KSL. I can't remember if the trib had one, but it was Senator Mike McKell who floated the idea. And they actually had quotes from the governor in the article supporting the idea. Initially and he sort of couched it in. I'd like to learn more, but I support the idea. So there's articles September, October of last year. But here's the point I want to make about that. It wasn't just an attempt to move the AG under the governor. [00:59:27] Speaker D: Right. [00:59:28] Speaker C: There was a concerted effort, in my opinion, to demonize the actual office itself. [00:59:34] Speaker D: Right. [00:59:34] Speaker C: Say like, look, there is corruption top to bottom in that office. You just got to go in and clean house. And it almost made my head explode. I know a lot of these in that office. Those are good attorneys. Those are people that could be making any salary they wanted at any law from across the country, and they chose to take that job and fight for justice. [00:59:51] Speaker D: Right. [00:59:52] Speaker C: Part of what I'm going to say is like, yes, the attorney general needs to stand up for individual rights, but also for his office. Those are good attorneys and they're doing their best. [01:00:00] Speaker D: Right. [01:00:00] Speaker C: And we can give them tools and incentives to help them do a little better. We can all do a little better. [01:00:05] Speaker D: Right. [01:00:05] Speaker C: But what I won't stand for is them saying, well, we're going to have to clean house over there. We're going to have to fire all 300 attorneys and get new attorneys. Those are good people. [01:00:14] Speaker E: What you're saying is, right. You've got to be prepared to fight the state. Who you've got legislators and you've got the pulpit of the governor's office. And if they're literally telling all of Utah that your office is corrupt and your AG is corrupt and the AG, how do you defend yourself when there's not a hearing where you get to face your accusers? It's only this rumor mill that can be misinformation. There could be a little here, a little there, but there's no way to actually draw it all out. And I want an AG that's going to stand up and go, this is crap. Bravo, Sierra here. I have not done these things and my office has not done these things and we're ready to go to war to defend this office. And I mean, I would love to see that. [01:01:04] Speaker C: Yeah. [01:01:05] Speaker E: And I'll say it again, is getting used against them and they don't have a way to fight back. [01:01:10] Speaker C: Right. They don't have a way to fight back because the attorneys in that office, the staff in that office, it's a 600 person office. [01:01:18] Speaker D: Right. [01:01:18] Speaker C: 300 of which are attorneys. [01:01:20] Speaker D: Right. [01:01:20] Speaker C: It's not their job to be the public spokesman. It's their job to go protect civil rights, individual rights, fight for what's right. It's the attorney general's job to go fight for them and for the people of Utah and stand up. I'll say it. Know, sort of the governor. There's no other state constitutional level authority that has more of a bully pulpit than the attorney general. And the attorney general should be partnering with the legislature in ways that benefit the people and giving credit to the legislature and standing up for his attorneys and local law enforcement and county law enforcement and state law enforcement when they're doing the right thing and saying, this is what we need to do in Utah. And I want to get to an earlier point that you made, Holly, about, it'd be great if the federal government did that. It's always been the case when something works in a state. Other states pick it up. Eventually the federal government pick it up. Look at what we could do with election integrity. The first thing I want to do on day one is start to conduct a full, statewide transparent audit of Utah's electoral system. [01:02:15] Speaker D: Right. [01:02:15] Speaker C: I want to make sure it works. We've heard that it's safe and secure. Let's prove it. [01:02:19] Speaker D: Right. [01:02:20] Speaker C: I hope that when we get all the way done that we have proof that the election was safe and secure. That'd be great. But to hold the audit and to actually provide proof to people that it worked and maybe show some things that didn't work, that's where you can go to a legislature and say, hey, I get it, you guys like doing it this way. But here's a mountain of evidence that shows that this isn't the best way to do it. This is the right way to do it. And if you do that. [01:02:45] Speaker E: On that note, we didn't have standing over the 2020 thing. Remember, judge kicked it out. Even though the presidential election affects all the states, we didn't have standing. [01:02:56] Speaker C: General has the full constitutional authority to run an investigation of our state electoral system. [01:03:01] Speaker E: Absolutely. But a lot of people will follow you on this because just like that idea of turning over the AG's office and being under appointment and the school board, there's a lot of people floating an idea that, no, we need to have a secretary of state who's going to run the elections because why would you want, and this is nothing against lieutenant governor's office. Nothing. But the lieutenant governor's office runs elections and perception. They also run their own. A lot of people would like an outside source that's running the elections and that may not necessarily benefit or be burdened by the results. I don't know what that looks like other than an attorney general who maybe does audit our elections, right. [01:03:48] Speaker C: And it's not just the election itself, but it's everything that happens in between and the next election. [01:03:54] Speaker D: Right. [01:03:55] Speaker C: How are we cleaning voter rolls. [01:03:57] Speaker D: Right. [01:03:57] Speaker C: How are we preparing for the next election? All of those things. [01:04:00] Speaker D: Right. [01:04:00] Speaker C: It's a longer process. It's not a six month process. That's a longer process. But my larger point is if we do it and we do it right, which is what we do in Utah, other states will say, well, Utah audited their election. Why can't we audit ours? Right. Let's see how they did know. Let's implement some of those same things. Maybe they do some things in their audit that's better than ours. I don't know. And it spreads. [01:04:21] Speaker D: Right. [01:04:21] Speaker C: Eventually you gain the momentum to say every state is doing it, or at least all the red states are doing it. Let's have one in the federal government. That's how ideas in this laboratory of a democracy that we have actually take hold and get spread across the country. But there has to be somebody who stands up and does it first. [01:04:38] Speaker D: Right. [01:04:38] Speaker E: Well, I'm going to ask you the question anyone else is going to ask you. And how do you pay for it? [01:04:43] Speaker C: Well, here's the thing. If the attorney general came out and said, we're going to audit the election, you can go to the legislature and get an appropriation for it. That might be hard. [01:04:52] Speaker D: Right. [01:04:52] Speaker C: There's going to be some political differences, I think, within the party, and I think there's going to be some people in power who don't want that to happen. But an attorney general can use outside resources to pay for something like that. And if a state attorney general said, we're going to run an audit at the election, would anybody like to help fund it? 48 hours? You could fund something like that so fast. But be transparent, fully transparent with the sources of the money, the vendors. We're going to use the different third party sources that we're going to use to audit this election and audit every part of it. [01:05:22] Speaker D: Right. [01:05:22] Speaker C: The ballots, the mail in ballots, the machines, doing interviews with county clerks, doing interviews with their employees, taking a full top to bottom approach and being transparent with all of it so that the people can finally see, yeah, this part works. That part not so much. [01:05:36] Speaker E: That's a good point. I know that can get sticky when you start bringing in funds from outside sources, but full transparency is the key to have it not be sticky. You can see where the money spends, spent. Hell, you could do most of it with volunteers and people. [01:05:52] Speaker C: I know that would bang down my door. That would knock down my door to get involved in this. [01:05:57] Speaker A: I got a question. If we're going to do that, what can I start selling so I can get that good government markup? [01:06:07] Speaker C: What are you talking about? [01:06:09] Speaker A: Because I'll sell stuff to this audit. No, I'm just kidding. Like a $5,000 hammer guillotine. [01:06:19] Speaker D: Right? [01:06:20] Speaker A: It's just crazy. [01:06:22] Speaker E: It does. [01:06:22] Speaker A: Or else, here's the hard part we're at is we do an audit here. Like my county, I trust my county, I trust my county clerk a thousand percent. I think she would be one of those that ISIS would have her in a dark room with a lamp on her and they're working her toes over with a hammer and she wouldn't let anything out. She's just that hardy. [01:06:50] Speaker C: I love it. [01:06:51] Speaker E: But she's also highly transparent and into election security, 1000%. [01:06:57] Speaker A: And then you go into the rest of the state and then you go beyond the state and that's where you start losing me. And then you've got Colorado, Maine. [01:07:09] Speaker E: We just got to protect our own at this point and try to get other states to do the same to follow suit. But blue states are not going to follow suit. [01:07:16] Speaker C: No, they're not. And that judge in Illinois that just took Trump off the ballot, she's a traffic, she has literally no jurisdiction to do that. She's not a federal. Like she doesn't rise above that level. She could make a decision like that, but she doesn't. And of course, the news runs with it. Oh, he's off the ballot. And again, it's Illinois. [01:07:37] Speaker D: Right. [01:07:38] Speaker C: So you might kind of expect it from them. [01:07:40] Speaker D: Right. [01:07:40] Speaker C: But there are attorney generals that are Republican across in different states that have to deal with a Democrat governor or a Democrat controlled legislature. And they need to be proactive in their approach. We don't suffer from that. Well, we can get into that, but they have to be proactive to, you know, the law is this, and we're not taking Trump off the ballot. I don't care what any of you. [01:08:04] Speaker E: Litigation, what state can afford to litigate against this, because this is going to go straight to the Supreme Court because of the timing alone. And then think about the rioting that will happen in certain in Illinois. We're talking rural Illinois, because not all Illinois is like Chicago. I mean, Chicago, Trump country compared to what Jesse Samoy said. [01:08:26] Speaker A: Think of the rioting that's going to happen during the cold weather vortex out front of design. [01:08:33] Speaker D: Right? [01:08:33] Speaker C: It's all by design, the rioting, the unrest. [01:08:36] Speaker D: Right? [01:08:37] Speaker C: Getting us to fight with each other. It's all by design. And they want that to happen across the country. And they want us to get mad about the fact that this Illinois judge took Trump off the ballot. It's completely insane, right? And yes, it's going to go all the way to Supreme Court, in my opinion, the Supreme Court. And I think they might actually get one of the liberal justices decide with him on this. Given her past history on election issues, I think the supreme Court's going to knock it down. But you've already got places like Colorado that have printed the ballots, right? Like it's already too late there, right? And they want to just frustrate us. They want to make us steal the election. Right. [01:09:15] Speaker E: And they're not even shy about how they're doing it. We're going to steal the election. And yet even justices like you said ask the question. He's never been charged with a crime. He's never been charged with insurrection. How are you using this to take him off a ballot when he's never been charged? Is there a trial none of us heard about? I mean, even liberal judges worth their weight and salt, they better vote the right way because what we've seen when people have lost their minds, we've seen the left throw their hissy fit. There's a silent majority of people out there who have kept their cool and are going to get so livid. Because now you're telling me, now you're taking my choice away. He's never committed a crime that he's been charged with, and you're trying everything to get him charged. [01:10:03] Speaker D: Right. [01:10:04] Speaker C: Criminally. [01:10:06] Speaker E: Civil. [01:10:06] Speaker C: Civil. [01:10:07] Speaker E: Now they're calling him a rapist because a judge said a civil matter for a victim that can't remember what year it happened. She doesn't know exactly what happened. She's creepy as all hell. She's got a terrible track record. [01:10:19] Speaker A: It's better than that. They give the restitution charge prior to the conviction. [01:10:24] Speaker C: That's right. [01:10:25] Speaker E: And now it's $400 million trying to bankrupt him out of running. And the american people see this, and anyone who says this is not absolute election interference is a liar. They're lying to themselves. [01:10:40] Speaker C: If they can do this to a former president who happens to have that much money, what can they do to you if you don't have a state attorney general that's going to stand up and fight for you? [01:10:50] Speaker E: They're doing it to people every single day. [01:10:52] Speaker C: That's right. And unless we have a state attorney general that's going to stand up and say, not in this state, no, and smack it down wherever it rears its ugly head. That's what you're going to find. Because they're trying to take over in all the states. It's not that they're just going after Trump and trying to keep him off the ballot. This is a message. What they did to General Flyn, what they did to Rudy Giuliani, right. It's a message. It's the same message that those prosecutors tried to send to me when they tried to sanction me for getting involved in that case to protect those children. Don't mess with us. You don't belong here. This is our game. Get out. [01:11:27] Speaker A: To bolster that, but not to throw a wrench in it. Remember the charge? What was it? Was it Massachusetts gave? [01:11:36] Speaker C: Oh, yeah. [01:11:38] Speaker A: Where it looks like the person writing the number had a stroke and went into reset. And just putting commas and zeros, it was like the GDP of Italy, right? And he got fined. That was his fine. You get fined gajillion dollars. [01:11:57] Speaker E: That's actually illegal. And you're like, you can't be fined more than what a crime can. Just. [01:12:03] Speaker B: Here's the thing. [01:12:04] Speaker E: I feel like Sean Reyes has been a pillar of support for Donald Trump. And I know that Trump has backed him in the child trafficking thing. And most people in this country would have no idea how severe child trafficking is in this country until Sean Reyes brought it to everyone's attention, brought it to mean, we got to see a ball rolling. I think you're going to be filling some really big mean. I get that the states all have to get on board, but at this point, I just want red states. I mean, let's start with red states who go, okay, here's the deal. This is happening. This is happening. This is happening because once the citizens of blue state see that, wait a second, I'm just as important as the guy next to me, the girl next to me. I deserve a fair trial as much as an ex president deserves a fair trial. And this is abuse. And this happened to so and so that I know these people have experienced this. The DOJ or our justice system has affected every family somehow in this country. And after seeing the January 6 situation and talk about evidence not getting turned over to the defense and plea bargains made without the defense attorneys even knowing what they don't have or what they do have, this is mock of justice, is mocking it, and they're selling this huge lie. And now I think more Americans are saying, wait a second, they just pulled all this over. These people have been under the jail in DC. They may never see the light of day. And yet what crime did they commit? Not one person that's been charged with insurrection. Not one, let alone. I mean, if they were, it was the worst insurrection in the history of history. An unarmed insurrection. This is such a serious job you want to get. This is so much trust needed by the american people or just the Utah people for your job. But we're battling a federal government here that at every turn is totally making justice look like a joke. [01:14:19] Speaker D: Right. [01:14:20] Speaker C: And there's so many ways that a state attorney general can be proactive in these cases. [01:14:26] Speaker D: Right. [01:14:27] Speaker C: But also make sure that the people know I've got you. [01:14:31] Speaker D: Right? [01:14:31] Speaker C: You have a resource, you have someone who will go to war if they need to with the entire weight of the state attorney general's office to protect. There's. Let me give you an example. There's a current senator from Missouri. His name is Eric Schmidt. He was the attorney general of Missouri. And when Biden passed his unlawful student loan forgiveness plan, Eric Schmidt said, no, you don't. And he sued on behalf of Missouri. He took it all the way to the supreme Court and he argued it himself. And he. Okay, but that didn't just affect Missouri, that affected all of us right now. The Biden administration went around, went around the ruling, did something that I still think is unconstitutional and they still started doing it. He fought that fight and he won. And you have attorney generals all across the country that are doing that. You've got the attorney general in Tennessee, in Florida, in Texas. [01:15:16] Speaker D: Right. [01:15:17] Speaker C: Fighting these fights, filing lawsuits against big Tech, big pharma against the federal government. [01:15:23] Speaker D: Right. [01:15:23] Speaker C: And those attorney generals have an outsized impact. They can affect national policy by fighting these policies in the federal courts. [01:15:31] Speaker D: Right. [01:15:32] Speaker C: It doesn't just have to be Utah. You got to protect your house first. You can have an outsized impact on federal policy if you're willing to take on those fights. [01:15:41] Speaker E: Well, and you're right. That's the thing. Sean Reyes took on the fight with trafficking and it changed policy nationwide. So you're absolutely right. [01:15:49] Speaker D: Right. [01:15:49] Speaker C: And he pushed back on ESG. That changed the fight as well. [01:15:51] Speaker D: Right. [01:15:52] Speaker C: Give him full credit for that. [01:15:54] Speaker E: Well, and Marlo Oaks, no one knew Marlowe Oaks and treasurer before we know it. ESG is in everybody's vernacular now. They all know what they're talking about and they're seeing Dei and how it works and how, I mean, our country is in a very bad way. And I feel like as a Republican, I want to see our platform come out in every single elected leadership example, everything. I'm tired of being the party that compromises all the time, plays defense all the time. I want to be the party that is leading by example and fighting for the people, all the people, not just our side, but the civil rights of every person. And so it's getting to a point where I think a lot of people in our county are ready for that upset. We're ready for someone who's going to stand up and say, no more. We're done with going the norm. And our AG's office has been pretty forthcoming as far as fighting. And so I'm hopeful that whoever gets in that seat will have that vigor and especially that ability. [01:17:08] Speaker C: And it's important to look through the candidates and see which one you think can really bring to your point that vigor and that isn't conflicted. You know, for example, the state suing Facebook. [01:17:17] Speaker D: Right. [01:17:18] Speaker C: For the damage. And this is an interesting point that I want to highlight. We know that Facebook executives knew that their algorithm was addictive in hurting kids. We know that they knew that and that they went ahead anyway. And the reason we know that is because other state attorneys general fought those fights, got those disclosures, and now it's out open in the public. And because of the fight that was fought on that battlefield, now we can take that and go sue Facebook and say, okay, we want damages. [01:17:46] Speaker D: Right. [01:17:46] Speaker C: But you can't have someone as the attorney general who's conflicted out. [01:17:49] Speaker D: Right. [01:17:50] Speaker C: I don't have any problem with people deciding they want to be a lobbyist. If that's your career of choice, that's fine, but I don't think a lobbyist who has lobbied for Facebook should be the next attorney general. I think that creates a conflict. Again, people can choose whatever career path they want, but you have to understand, are there conflicts that are going to compromise the ability of the next attorney general to fight the fight on any battlefield that they need to fight it. I've never been a lobbyist. My background, like I said, I'm a litigator. I'm a leader. I've been a CEO, but I've fought multimillion dollar lawsuits. I've filed briefs in front of the supreme Court. But at the same time, I have the ability to say, okay, I'm going to take that Facebook case and I'm going to win it. [01:18:25] Speaker D: Right. [01:18:25] Speaker C: We're going to take all of these cases, the 60 cases that are currently pending that involve rural Utah, grazing rights, access to trails, all those things and we're going to win them. [01:18:35] Speaker D: Right. [01:18:35] Speaker C: And you have to have somebody that's going to be willing to come in, but also do the strategy of it, the long term planning of it, the proactivity of it, and say we're going to do it in a way that we win, not just today, but in a year, in five years and ten years. [01:18:47] Speaker B: And that's what I think the federal. [01:18:49] Speaker E: Supreme Court case has been paid for. I mean, the money's been put aside to sue over our federal lands and nobody is doing it. So I really appreciate that. I mean, you got a person on here who wants one of your signs already. Hey, mom, stop it. I'm neutral. [01:19:09] Speaker A: Yeah, send a couple of signs out this way. [01:19:12] Speaker E: Delegate. Well, and right now you have decided to go convention only you're not gathering signatures. Now, why this is so great to me is because here's a grassroots candidate who sees something that needs fixing and he thinks he can do the best job, just like we talked about in the beginning of the show before our Internet outage, that when a candidate like that, he may not have a million dollars in the coffers to go run a campaign or $500,000 to go gather signatures. So what you're doing is you're going through convention and you're going to trust the delegates to choose you and get you on the ballot. That means that a regular Joe Schmo like you and I has that fair advantage to go talk to 4000 people instead of 3 million. And so anybody that is liking what you hear, this candidate, we've got his website that I put in the show notes and we'll do it again. But go to Trent Christensen. Is it four, number four ag? [01:20:16] Speaker C: No, it's just trent.com. [01:20:18] Speaker A: Yeah, trentchristiansen.com. The four ag is on your socials like on your social media, Twitter. Offer to donate, Rumble and Grindr. [01:20:28] Speaker E: I'm sure he has a donate button. I'm sure he needs volunteers. If you're running for state delegate, you will have the opportunity to choose the AG through convention. And so again, go to your caucus and talk about this candidate. If it's someone you like with your delegates, if you don't want to be a delegate yourself and just find out if you've got a delegate that is willing to get to know this candidate, who maybe already knows, whatever. But right now is the chance and he's laying everything on the line with you, the voters, and saying, hey, pick me, choose me, get me through to convention and I'll be on the ballot. And we'll go from there. So I respect that a lot. I respect that a lot. In our state, SB 54, we can't get it recalled for some reason. And we're a private party, the republican party, we're private. But legislators put up SB 54 under the guides. That caucus doesn't really hear your voice and signature path is the way to go. And we took it all the way to the Supreme Court. And yet we still have this dual path when, if these legislators really believed that we're a private party and that our delegates are actually valuable, they would vote to get rid of aspiration 54 right at the Capitol. And they haven't. They like the dual path. They'll pay for signatures and get on the ballot no matter what. So I find it extremely great and trusting, and it's going to be hard. I mean, you've got 4000 people to campaign to. [01:22:16] Speaker C: That's right. [01:22:16] Speaker E: But at least it's not 3 million right out of the gate. [01:22:19] Speaker C: But here's the beauty of it that I love. This is the part that I love, talking to people, understanding the issues, understanding what's happening to you in your local areas. [01:22:29] Speaker D: Right. [01:22:29] Speaker C: I mentioned earlier about law enforcement, that the county sheriffs are the only members of law enforcement anywhere in the state that are popularly elected. [01:22:36] Speaker D: Right. [01:22:36] Speaker C: I mentioned that there was an effort to try and take the voice of the AG away from the people and make that an appointment. [01:22:41] Speaker D: Right. [01:22:42] Speaker C: Everything about what I'm trying to do as attorney general is to give the voice to the people, and that's what I want to do at convention. I want to know if the voice of the people picks me, I will fight. But if they don't pick me, I will back whoever they want. [01:22:55] Speaker D: Right. [01:22:55] Speaker C: Because it's the voice of the people that matters. It's not what I want. It's not what you want. It's the people. [01:23:00] Speaker D: Right. [01:23:00] Speaker C: And that's why convention, to me, is so important. I've been a state delegate five times. I've been a county delegate twice. I actually had the honor of serving as an elector in 2020. I was one of only six people in this state who was a member of the electoral college. That vote, that cast a legally binding vote that gets recorded in the Library of Congress for Donald Trump, that was an. Okay. [01:23:19] Speaker E: Hold on, delegate. [01:23:21] Speaker A: Hold on. Tell me about this electoral college. I want some further education. How did you become a part of it? What was the process? Can you lay it out for me? Did you see the rest of the subruder film go on. Laid out? I'm waiting. [01:23:39] Speaker C: I'll give you a larger. So the electoral college is how the president gets elected. [01:23:43] Speaker A: Yes. How do you become a part of it? [01:23:45] Speaker D: Right. [01:23:45] Speaker C: There's electors, and every state has electors, and it matches the number of their federal delegation. So Utah has six. [01:23:51] Speaker D: Right. [01:23:51] Speaker C: Four congressmen and two senators. And it's the same process, actually, as becoming a state delegate at state convention. I put my name in as an elector. I was able to give a speech to know, I want to be an elector. Here's why it matters. I'm going to vote for Trump. I believe in what his policies are, and I want him to get reelected. And the voice of the people chose me. [01:24:12] Speaker D: Right now. [01:24:12] Speaker C: The Republicans pick their electors, the Democrats pick their electors, and whoever wins the state, Trump won the state. So the Republican won the state. So we went with republican electors. Had the Democrat won the state, those electors would have gone up to the capitol and signed their name and voted for their candidate. [01:24:29] Speaker D: Right. [01:24:29] Speaker A: So every party brimstone across the valley. I get it. I've often wondered, because I've heard stories, but I've often wondered how the electoral college, how they got know. You've heard stories theoretically, but how the individuals became a member of the electoral college. I've heard it. And I know, I remember I watched like a interview with one on CBS or NBC or one of those, and they talked about the kid. He did it. His father did it before him. The kid was in college. He was like a junior in college, and he was already doing it. [01:25:13] Speaker C: That's awesome. [01:25:14] Speaker A: No, that's interesting. I would like to do a show just on. [01:25:19] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. In some states, do it differently. It's based on state law. [01:25:23] Speaker D: Right. [01:25:23] Speaker C: That's the beauty of our system. Every state can do it. However, they know in some states, the electors are appointed within the party. [01:25:29] Speaker D: Right. [01:25:30] Speaker C: But not in Utah. [01:25:31] Speaker D: Again. [01:25:31] Speaker C: And, Holly, to your point, it's the voice of the people at convention that matters. [01:25:35] Speaker D: Right? [01:25:36] Speaker C: That's how the electors get chosen. That's how candidates get put on the primary ballot. [01:25:41] Speaker D: Right. [01:25:41] Speaker C: Other states have these jungle primaries where you put 17 people on the ballot and the electorate at large is supposed to know who of these 17 people am I supposed to vote for? Right. [01:25:53] Speaker B: Right. [01:25:55] Speaker E: They let you actually sit in front of someone, look them in the eye, ask them hard questions and get a feel, and then make a judgment. I think that there are people who have made, well, the count. My vote campaign that actually got us SB 54 was. There was an agenda attached there, I believe, and it turned campaigns into, you had to have money to be anything, right? [01:26:26] Speaker C: No. As I understand the history of it, it came to be after Mike Lee beat Bob Bennett at convention. The history of it, Bob Bennett was a very senator. [01:26:37] Speaker D: Right. [01:26:37] Speaker C: And Mike went through the convention process, got his delegates elected, and completely surprised Bennett in election. [01:26:44] Speaker E: And people like me knocked on doors for Mike Lee because we believed in. [01:26:48] Speaker C: Him and it was a political earthquake. [01:26:50] Speaker D: Right. [01:26:50] Speaker C: That somebody know that was the first office Mike ever ran for. And God bless him, he went straight to the Senate. [01:26:56] Speaker D: Right. [01:26:56] Speaker C: And that's awesome. But he did it through the voice of the people. But then you have these interests that are like, well, wait a second, Bob Bennett was our guy, right. And they didn't want that. And so they created a second way for people to go through, not necessarily going by the voice of the people so that you wouldn't have those kind of upsets in the future. And that's how I understand the history of it. Somebody may disagree or tell me I've got my facts wrong. But to your point, it's to give the voice to the people. [01:27:22] Speaker D: Right. [01:27:23] Speaker C: And people will say, well, if you go through convention, only the hard right wingers will vote for you. No, the people that took the time to go to caucus and ask their neighbors, like, I'm looking out the window at all these houses, my neighbors, they would be the ones voting for me. [01:27:35] Speaker D: Right. [01:27:36] Speaker C: And I'm going to run for state delegate and I'm going to say to them, guys, you know me. We've lived next to each other. Our kids play together. You know me. I want to represent you. How can you do better than that? And I'm going to return and report. I'm going to come back and say, yeah, this is who I voted for and this is what happened. That's the voice of the people. [01:27:52] Speaker E: Here's the thing, that return and report is so key. And I've been a state delegate for years and I ran as a national delegate and I was so lucky because I was one of two in my county and the other one was Chris Stewart. So it was like amazing. And then 2020, we don't get to go to, and that sucks. But the return and report, so what does the state do? Is they make caucus now because everybody in count, my vote said caucus is hard to attend. People working can't get there. So what does the state do? Okay, pre register. Oh, you can't be there. Then register absentee. We're going to put all of this data online. It's going to be easy. Now, I don't want to discount the people who actually go out and get signatures themselves. Because I would hate to say that person, like, some of our county people have to get 300 signatures, and they go to every single person. I don't want to discount the person that says, okay, I trust you to be my guy. I'm going to sign my name. You can't sign any other petitions after that. But you're my guy, and I don't have to go to my caucus. But what they're missing is there's, what, 50 to 100,000 signatures needed for, like, a senatorial race. And it's so high. Maybe it's less. I'm not sure how many it is, but I know that it's half a million dollars, and it has to be. [01:29:16] Speaker C: A certain percentage from every county. [01:29:18] Speaker D: Right. [01:29:18] Speaker C: There's a lot that goes into it. [01:29:20] Speaker E: And they're paying an outside company to come in and go door to door. And half the time, these people can't really answer that many questions about this candidate. They can just read off a flyer of what this candidate stands for. They're not meeting the candidate. They're meeting somebody who's convincing them, just like, to count my vote. Campaign. Count my vote. That sounds amazing. Yeah, I'll sign that. Of course I want my vote counted, when in fact, they're saying, you count my vote, but not count my voice. You're not hearing my voice. I'm just signing a piece of paper and saying, yeah, okay. Get out of my porch. Get off my porch. [01:30:00] Speaker C: Right, yeah, exactly. [01:30:01] Speaker A: Leave me alone. Dinner is hot. [01:30:05] Speaker E: I think it's really great that you're putting trust in the delegates. There's nothing worse than to be a county chair and watch a signature candidate get on the ballot automatically. And it didn't matter that I even had a convention, because nobody went just convention only. That's how it used to be. So I'm watching all these delegates who spent all this time and energy, and I spent all this time and energy to create events for them, only for their voice to just be irrelevant, neglected. The person, bought their way on. [01:30:39] Speaker C: What. [01:30:40] Speaker E: Our elected process should even be. [01:30:42] Speaker C: And let me tell you how that affects this race. So there's four republican candidates running, and I have a lot of respect for all of them. Three of us have decided to go convention. Only one is gathering signatures regardless of. Let me tell you how it's playing out in the actual running of the race. [01:30:56] Speaker D: Right. [01:30:58] Speaker C: The one that's gathering signatures knows that that person is going to be on the primary ballot, so it shifts their focus into the future. [01:31:04] Speaker D: Right? [01:31:04] Speaker C: They're sort of already running a primary race. They're not necessarily as engaging with the delegates because they don't need the delegates. Right. The other three, I'm doing it because I love this, I love this kind of communication, this back and forth, this ideas of exchanging ideas. And I'm going to delegates and saying, this is why I'm your choice and maybe you don't vote for me. [01:31:24] Speaker D: Okay. [01:31:25] Speaker C: I had a very nice fellow at the Tuilla dinner that came up to me and he said, what's your position on Trump? And I said, I endorse him 100%. And he handed me my flyer back and said, I can't vote for you. And I said, that's great. And we actually had a great conversation for a couple of minutes and then he went on to someone else that he'll, he'll vote for and that's fine. [01:31:42] Speaker D: Right. [01:31:42] Speaker C: But we have that conversation. That's what needs to happen is people talking to each other. [01:31:47] Speaker D: Right. [01:31:48] Speaker C: And that's what you get when you go through the delegate process and those delegates in an ideal system. And I think the party is doing a lot of good things to make sure this happens. It's the return and report. Those 4000 delegates will vote and then hopefully go back to their precincts and say, this is who I voted for. This is who won. This is why I voted for Trent over this person or that person. [01:32:07] Speaker D: Right. [01:32:08] Speaker C: And here's what I think about it. And maybe you care what I think, maybe you don't. But as a delegate, I studied these candidates. I looked them in the, you know, I got a sense for this person. I asked them these questions and these were their, I always, I always report. [01:32:25] Speaker E: Before convention of who I plan to vote for. And I do this because most people, they seem to trust me when they've elected me. But I give them all the information and then I tell them how I plan to vote and I'm waiting for them to respond. Well, I don't like that. Don't vote that way. And then I'll ask another question. Does everybody else feel this way? Because you will have that one or that too. But when it's silent and you've given your report before convention, you can go to convention and feel really good about voting on behalf of your neighbors. And that's what we encourage all the time when we're teaching people how to be delegates. Be committed. Get ready for your phone to ring off the hook. [01:33:02] Speaker B: Answer it. [01:33:03] Speaker E: Go to these events. We plan. Talk to these candidates. We try to get you in front of people at least three times before convention. Our convention is on April 19, so put that in your calendar. We always welcome the state candidates. We invite all state delegates, our central committee, and the public, along with our county delegates, of course. But we get speaking time to every candidate running. Our goal is to have an educated populace, which is why Jared and I wanted to do this show, because a better educated voter, regardless of their party, if they know exactly who they're backing and why, they know why they're backing them. [01:33:43] Speaker C: I love that. I don't have to agree with them, but they studied the issue, right? And they can tell me why they're voting for them. It's not just, well, I saw a billboard. [01:33:52] Speaker E: That's what human nature is about. And that's why, by design, they want us at each other's throats, because it makes us weak. We're stronger. When we can argue, well, we can disagree. We can hold on to our values and our principles, and we can go and vote the way we feel is important. And we can always defend our vote if we have to, but we shouldn't have to. We each know our neighbor has their own issues. [01:34:17] Speaker C: And I love the way you phrased it. I'm representing my neighbors. [01:34:21] Speaker D: Right? [01:34:21] Speaker E: Yeah. [01:34:22] Speaker C: People that know you, right? [01:34:23] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:34:24] Speaker C: They've seen you out mowing your lawn, right? They know your kids. They know that one of my kids is the neighborhood troublemaker. Right. They know you, and you come back and you say, this is what I did, and this is why I did it. That is representative democracy. [01:34:40] Speaker D: Right. [01:34:40] Speaker C: I'll tell you a quick story about caucus if I can. So, my son was 16 at the time, my oldest, and I wanted him to see, this is how it works. That's how I became a state delegate. My dad took me to one of these caucus meetings. Awesome. And I said, I want you to come. I'm going to run for state delegate. And I got to explain to him what that means and everything. And I said, you're going to come, and I want you to. And I kept saying, I want you to see how democracy works. So he came with me, and I raised my hand. I ran for state delegate, and I won. And then they said, okay, who wants to volunteer to run for county delegate? And nobody raised their hand. And he leans in and he goes, come on, dad. Show me how democracy works. [01:35:16] Speaker E: A representative republic. I get so angry at the word democracy. And that's exactly what you're doing. You are representing your neighbors in this room who don't have the time nor energy nor maybe they don't I tell my husband? This job fills my soul. It's passion for me. I love it. I feel like I'm doing something for my fellow man and the pay is terrible, but it fills my cup. [01:35:44] Speaker B: Right? [01:35:44] Speaker E: And so with that being something that the people who do this job, I think they feel that same way when they ask to be a delegate. When they run, they're doing it with that in mind that I absolutely want to represent my neighbors and I want them to trust me when I do. So I'm going to give them all the information I can and I'll go do the dirty work. Sit through political meetings all day long. [01:36:12] Speaker D: Right. [01:36:12] Speaker E: Some of us love them. [01:36:14] Speaker C: It's what's infuriating when you hear this argument of, well, if you only allow people to go through convention, you're only going to get the hard right wingers. And it's like, listen, if people are there representing their neighbors, then you're going to get what you get. [01:36:26] Speaker D: Right? [01:36:27] Speaker C: And if you don't like that they're more to the right or the left, then run for state delegate and change it yourself. But don't try to demonize and put a label on someone and make them less than because you put this label on them and say, well, we have to have a different way or it's just going to be the hard right wingers. No, these are people that have gone to represent their neighbors, which means to me, they represent the state. [01:36:46] Speaker E: And I think you're right. The people who attend their caucus, they tend to be really well informed on political issues. And so they might be called a hard right winger, but the truth is they're just not eating the BS sandwich every single day. They're looking and researching. And so I hope that anyone electing delegates will actually question them, find out what they think, find out what their core issues are, because you can sniff out a hard right winger just as easy as you can sniff out a left wing Republican, which a lot of people don't want either. They want someone in the middle who's going to get along. But there's a lot of people who are fed up with the norm. They're tired of the norm in government. It's insanity to keep repeating what doesn't work. And we're watching our right. [01:37:42] Speaker C: I feel disenfranchised. How do I change it? Go be a state delegate. Go be a county delegate. [01:37:47] Speaker D: Right. [01:37:47] Speaker C: That's how you change. [01:37:48] Speaker E: Go get your voice in front of these people. And the thing is, we've watched freedom after freedom after freedom. Go all in the name of security, Homeland Security this and TSA this, and it's gotten to a point where our school boards, now we're a domestic terrorist because we're standing up to school boards, which we have a meeting next week to go to. [01:38:10] Speaker A: Yeah, well, I don't want to knock the TSA because for like 15 years, I was single, and I would take a flight every couple of months to get a little action. [01:38:18] Speaker E: You know what? Our kids grew up in a world where they can't even imagine meeting someone at a gate. I grew up meeting people at the gate when they flew in. [01:38:25] Speaker A: Oh, I would meet someone, Kate. [01:38:29] Speaker E: It's not. [01:38:31] Speaker A: I'd get the blue pen and make that squiggle on my own. [01:38:34] Speaker C: Why don't we put the TSA on the border and let them frisk down who's coming from the border. [01:38:38] Speaker D: Right. [01:38:40] Speaker C: They're not going to bring down any airplanes. [01:38:42] Speaker D: Right. [01:38:44] Speaker C: What we go through, but the illegal immigrants are. Please come in. Absolutely. Here's a credit card. [01:38:49] Speaker E: Go spend your money. Their audit, 90% every year. [01:38:53] Speaker A: We could put the border guards on our airports, and we'd show up. I'd get a new cell phone, get a credit card. [01:39:01] Speaker D: Right. [01:39:02] Speaker C: Thank you for flying delta. Here's your. [01:39:06] Speaker E: Have you guys seen the latest thing that came out where they said that if you go to a flight and you're not 2 hours early to check in, airlines now are giving your flight away to these transports. So your seat is being given away to someone who's not documented so they can get moved to wherever they're going. And one guy called in, and he's like, you got to be kidding me. I was an hour early for my flight. I'm sitting there. I go up to get my seat checked in or whatever, and they told me, oh, sorry, we gave your flight away to who? And then there's this whole group of people that come in. [01:39:46] Speaker A: Do they pay him for it? [01:39:47] Speaker E: They just bump them, they get a different flight. But that guy's getting. You paid for that flight for that time, and that guy just got your free ticket, plus a cell phone, plus the check. I mean, american people, even Democrats, aren't sitting back going, yeah, this is fine. Yes, I think this is fine. [01:40:04] Speaker A: I wonder if he can come over and stay in my house and pet my dog, too. [01:40:07] Speaker E: Hey, guys, if you're paying attention and you have a question for Trent, call us at 385-899-2134 the number is on the screen. We're going to have to cut him loose pretty soon. [01:40:19] Speaker A: And we've got to cut our call screener loose in about 30 minutes. [01:40:25] Speaker E: We'll cut Trent at five. So we've got about 15 minutes. So if you have a question that he can answer for you, you've been a great interview. [01:40:33] Speaker A: I mean, it's been fun. [01:40:34] Speaker E: I appreciate that. We were in chaos when you jumped on the call just because our Internet. [01:40:40] Speaker A: You rolled with it. [01:40:40] Speaker E: But my goodness, I love it. I'm exhausted and I've just been sitting here. But if we have anybody that wants to call in, otherwise, we're just going to keep asking him more questions. Tell us about your family a little bit more. Your wife is your wife. Diana. [01:40:58] Speaker C: So I'm divorced. My four kids, 18, 1614 and twelve, my oldest leave on his mission to Argentina. I'm half argentine. My mother was a legal, she legally immigrated to the United States in 1963. [01:41:12] Speaker E: Wow. [01:41:13] Speaker C: And my dad grew up on a farm in Idaho. [01:41:15] Speaker D: Right. [01:41:15] Speaker C: So it's one of those best of both. [01:41:17] Speaker A: How do you feel about Malay? [01:41:19] Speaker C: I'm sorry? [01:41:20] Speaker A: How do you feel about Malay? [01:41:22] Speaker E: The president. [01:41:23] Speaker C: Oh, my God. On repeat and just like, listen to it as I sleep. I just love that stuff. Right? [01:41:30] Speaker E: I think Trump called him. He's actual maga make our great again. [01:41:35] Speaker A: He's the real deal. That guy is awesome. What's the guy in? Oh, heck, I've got him pulled up somewhere. The other guy down there that was just at CPAC. [01:41:48] Speaker E: Yeah, I know. [01:41:48] Speaker A: Gosh, man, those two guys. South America might be on the rise. [01:41:52] Speaker C: Well, you look at what's happening in mean, inflation through the roof. I mean, they're in trouble, right? And it's the people that finally said enough. [01:42:01] Speaker D: Right? [01:42:02] Speaker C: Look, my political background, my grandfather left Argentina because he refused to endorse Eva Peron and he lost his job. [01:42:09] Speaker A: Wasn't a good fascist. [01:42:13] Speaker C: Surprising. He wasn't a Nazi and he wasn't a fascist, so he left. [01:42:16] Speaker D: Right? [01:42:16] Speaker C: They came to America and they were crossing through the Panama canal the day that Kennedy was shot. And it was broadcast across the ship. And it's the most amazing story because my mom was telling me the entire ship was filled with people immigrating to the United States, legally immigrating. And these are people that, again, they're not Americans. But the word hit that Kennedy had been shot and she said it was devastating. Across the people are crying because this is the last hope they have. And the president of the last hope they have just got shot. [01:42:47] Speaker E: We were the shiny hope on the hill that they were all coming for. [01:42:51] Speaker C: And it's this. I'm going here for freedom. What's happening, right? And it was terrifying. And thank goodness the country survived. [01:42:59] Speaker D: Right? [01:42:59] Speaker C: But that was the sentiment at the time, is we've got to get to America. That's where we can be free. And that's sort of my political heritage. [01:43:07] Speaker D: Right? [01:43:07] Speaker C: I come from a father that left everything to come to the United States to live free. [01:43:11] Speaker A: Let's face it, your grandfather or father, they came here to pursue. [01:43:17] Speaker D: Yeah. [01:43:18] Speaker A: And hopefully these immigrants are doing it now because I would like to see freedom loving people who love the bill of rights and things like that. I'd love to see them flock here and bolster that. But I'm afraid a lot of them are coming here and saying, send me to New York, send me to Chicago, send me to Atlanta, send me to all these big cities where these cities have declared that they are willing to bankrupt themselves to push their underclass out into the streets for my well being so that they can post themselves up on the world stage and say, see, look how wonderful I am. And my soy late is great. [01:43:57] Speaker E: And one came for free stuff, right? And totally different mentality. [01:44:02] Speaker C: Look at the message that Trump first gave when he first was running, right? He got a lot of pushback on what he said about these people aren't good people. There's an article that came out today that compares the violent crime rate of Venezuela to the United States as immigration, as the borders just open and it just went like this. Here's Venezuela in the United States and. [01:44:20] Speaker E: It just went, they opened their prisons and sent them away. [01:44:27] Speaker C: Of military age single men that are from China and the Middle east. These aren't people that want to come and pledge allegiance to the flag. These are people that are coming to harm us. [01:44:36] Speaker D: Right? [01:44:39] Speaker A: That girl in Georgia was killed by a venezuelan who had been picked up in New York. And when INS tried to execute a deportation, a judge in New York blocked them from that. He got caught again, something, I don't want to say small, but something nonviolent. They had to cut him loose again. And then he got busted again for domestic violence. So we've got three tracks in New York. So then he runs to Georgia, moves in with his brother. And him and his brother get busted in Georgia twice, obviously shoplifting. And I want to say another car related thing. They were driving for Uber eats or whatever. And then lo and behold, he probably has a couple of beers in him, sees the running park out back, sees a pretty young thing running on it. And the left is trying to kind of blame her that he hit on her. And she screamed and made a big deal out of it. So he attacked her because the left has to stand up for the. [01:45:44] Speaker C: Of course it's her fault, right? [01:45:46] Speaker E: What was she wearing? [01:45:49] Speaker A: He crushed her head. I want everyone to hear this. He crushed her head unrecognizable when he was done with it. And the left is standing up for him. He should be by now. It's been what, four days? He should be on the end of a rope right now. My opinion, we need to start making a point of it. People who go out and mass abuse and make victims out of people, we need to start making a point of it. I hate to say it, but we need to start levying it. That the punishment is so brutal, make it quick, made it brutal and get it done. You know what? Instead of ten year jail terms, let's give them one year, but let's make it breaking big rocks into little rocks. [01:46:39] Speaker E: Well, isn't that something that if you're not a citizen, then the constitution, United States doesn't. [01:46:45] Speaker C: And that's the legal theory. Why do they get the same rights as a citizen? They don't. Right? [01:46:50] Speaker E: They're literally hunting citizens. We're victims of people. And yet, if we were to hurt them, we are under the constitution. And so we are going to have to go through all this drama. The guy that shot the girl in San Francisco all those years ago, he's been deported, what, seven times and found not guilty because there's this left wing ideology that you have to be good to everyone and Trump's bad. And this guy's. He's a victim of his own country. [01:47:22] Speaker A: He did it on accident. That illegal gun was rolled up in a towel and when he grabbed the towel, it accidentally went off. Yeah, he found, wasn't it a lost. A lost law enforcement pistol or a stolen gun, if I remember. [01:47:39] Speaker E: And the thing is, he didn't find it. He stole it. [01:47:42] Speaker A: Oh, yeah, he stole it, or he purchased it. But no, that's where we're staying. And hey, a race to the bottom. Still a race we might win. It's like that old phrase that if a vegan and vegetarian jump off a cliff, who hits the ground first? Doesn't matter. We all win. [01:48:08] Speaker E: No, who wins the race to the bottom? [01:48:11] Speaker A: We do. [01:48:12] Speaker E: We do. Well, okay, so this is the thing that's bothering me the most, is I always ask myself if, if a group of people were trying to ruin America, what would they do different than what they're doing? Right. [01:48:33] Speaker A: Mean, they would probably just lost you. [01:48:35] Speaker E: I don't hear who? [01:48:38] Speaker A: Oh, we lost your sound over there. Yeah. [01:48:44] Speaker E: Can you hear us? [01:48:46] Speaker A: He can hear us. [01:48:48] Speaker E: We can't hear you. [01:48:49] Speaker A: Anyways, we'll have you reset and jump back in. But I would say if I was trying to destroy a country, I would one take over the colleges and make them all dye your child's hair purple. [01:49:02] Speaker E: And green different because they've already done all that. [01:49:04] Speaker C: Yeah, go ahead and log out and log back in. Your audio might come back. [01:49:10] Speaker A: Yeah. Those are all the things that I would do exactly this. I would even go so far as to say I would find a controllable, blithering old man and put him in power, put him in charge. [01:49:25] Speaker E: And you would mess with the military to make them no longer a solid group, but they have to be individuals. And then you would make it just a mess. You would defund it. [01:49:39] Speaker A: All right, Trent, let's try your sound now. [01:49:42] Speaker C: Let me do this. How about that? [01:49:44] Speaker A: Yep, we can hear you except for the Marine Corps. [01:49:49] Speaker C: I mean, look at how many members of the military were fired because they wouldn't take the vaccine. [01:49:53] Speaker D: Right? [01:49:54] Speaker E: Did you watch trials with the guy from Homeland security? And he was straight called out. Who was it by? Matt from Florida. He's like, oh, so you're asking forgiveness from us because you made a mistake and it's personal and it's your health care and blah, blah, blah and you want permission from us. And yet 8000 people got disarnonly discharged because they wouldn't take a vaccine because of religious reasons. Why are you giving them their jobs back? [01:50:25] Speaker D: Right? [01:50:25] Speaker E: Give them the same mercy that you've been shown in your ridiculousness. And he said, no, I will not do that. Well, of course you won't because you're pompous ass. What's good for thee but not for me. [01:50:40] Speaker C: Majorcas gets impeached. [01:50:41] Speaker D: Right. [01:50:42] Speaker C: It's a purposeful, tactical, systematic approach to undermining the fabric of our society. [01:50:50] Speaker D: Right. [01:50:50] Speaker C: You overwhelm the system so the system eventually collapses. [01:50:55] Speaker D: Right? [01:50:55] Speaker E: Right. [01:50:55] Speaker C: You overwhelm it with illegal immigration, you overwhelm it with supposed diseases, you overwhelm the financial system, right. And so eventually it all crumbles and untreated mental illness together. [01:51:08] Speaker E: You have untreated mental illness. No, nothing for the mentally ill. And then you terrify them with climate change at a very young, young age. Then you tell them, oh, by the way, if you just paid more money and lived with less, we can fix the weather, right? This is insanity. And then we will turn on neighbors. Neighbors will turn on neighbors over political issues. And yet that's the whole goal, because that's when they win, because you'll need the government to get you out of it. A government that is too tyrannical at that point. And the Constitution doesn't have the same weight, and you can't fight back because you can't own an automatic rifle. Our military can, but you can't because we decided that the constitution is wrong. Well, I'm sorry. You should be able to own a nuke. If the military can own one, so should you, according to that document. Not that I want you all owning nukes, but what I'm saying is they're put so many restrictions on the United States that our freest country, if you put us in a list of countries of the most free, I think America is very, very far down that list. [01:52:17] Speaker C: Well, in Utah is pretty far down the list of actual political corruption. [01:52:21] Speaker D: Right. [01:52:22] Speaker C: And to get your point on the second amendment, people say, well, you don't need a semi automatic rifle to go hunting. No, I don't want it to go hunting. I want it to protect me from the government. That's why I want it. That's why. Yeah. The first amendment exists to protect me from the government. The second amendment exists to protect me from the government. And down the line, they all exist to protect me from the government. [01:52:43] Speaker D: Right. [01:52:44] Speaker C: And as soon as you get away from that, then you're giving the government power just the same way that Congress has abdicated its role and given all of the power to these regulatory agencies. Congress doesn't even look at what they do. They run an administrative state that you can't fight against because it's just a complete labyrinth of bureaucracy and Congress is nowhere to be found. [01:53:03] Speaker D: Right. [01:53:03] Speaker C: So we've ceded our power to the administrative state. We've ceded our power in all these different ways. [01:53:08] Speaker D: Right. [01:53:08] Speaker C: The states are ceding power to the federal government. They need an ag that's going to stand up for them. And that's why I want to be in this race. But I think that's the point of view that people need to have. It's not us against our neighbors, it's us against those that want control over our lives. [01:53:24] Speaker D: Right. [01:53:24] Speaker C: And that's your neighbor. Even if they disagree with you, it's the people that are making laws that curtail your freedom because they want the control over your life. [01:53:33] Speaker E: Well, and that's absolute. I mean, that's a great way to end that because you want a job where you're going to protect my constitutional rights, just like our sheriff has to protect our constitutional rights. And that's the job that everyone's supposed to take. But something happens. Something happens when people get elected. I don't know if you go through this veil of, it's a brooder like villain veil or something, but all of a sudden, I mean, Congress does nothing about it because they're constantly trying to run for their office and keep their. [01:54:03] Speaker C: Seat, or they get in and they have no personal wealth and they get out and they're millionaires. How does that happen? [01:54:09] Speaker A: Good for mean. [01:54:11] Speaker E: It's good for me to do it, but not you. You can't do insider trading. That is frowned. [01:54:18] Speaker A: What's that cookie lady's name? The lady. [01:54:20] Speaker E: Martha Stewart. [01:54:21] Speaker C: Yeah. [01:54:21] Speaker A: Martha Stewart. Yeah. How's she doing today? [01:54:25] Speaker D: Right. [01:54:26] Speaker A: She gets to hang out with Snoop Dogg now, though, so I guess she's okay. You know what the crazy thing is? I'll bet Martha Stewart would vote for Nancy Pelosi. [01:54:36] Speaker D: Yeah. [01:54:37] Speaker A: I bet in a heartbeat she would say, I went to jail for what you do. [01:54:45] Speaker E: I don't know that she would. I've seen interviews with her where she's like, it's absolutely. It's two sided. It's a two tier justice system. [01:54:52] Speaker A: Yeah. Her and Snoop Dogg are all in it. [01:54:57] Speaker E: It. Here's the thing. We cannot have two tiers of justice in this country. With our justice system gone, we are lost. And if we can't get it together, I think we have a great AG's office right now. That's just me. I think having a new Ag in there, I hope will continue the good that has been started there with the mental health awareness, with the child sex trafficking awareness. And if you need more money to create a victims advocate type department, hell, if it's just one person who looks over this victim's situation, because I have friends who feel like they were lost. They couldn't go to their sheriff, they couldn't go to the prosecutor. And the AG's office is like, look, it's not our jurisdiction. We don't know how to help you. It would be nice for me to be able to say, you know what? There's an office at the AG's that you go in there and tell them what your case is. They'll contact the prosecutor, they'll contact the investigators, and they'll get back to you and either tell you what they can do to help you or tell you why they can't. But people are sitting out there just victimized, and they don't know what to do. I know firsthand what it feels like. [01:56:18] Speaker A: Yeah. I know, a lady that has a stalker, that the police were on her side, everything else. But when it got before the judge, the judge kicks them loose. The stalkers back out on the street. The same night, police officers, a possible threat. That same day, the stalker went to her house, acted kooky at the house, the police buster at the neighbor's house, doing the old Homer Simpson hiding in a bush. Then she gets violent with the police, they haul her in, the judge kicks her loose. How is this rational? Is it that the jails were too full, they couldn't hold her? Or did the judge have a brunch? Only six scheduled. Yeah, we're missing something here. [01:57:09] Speaker C: Well, and it gets back to a point that I was making. If you don't have oversight, if there's no consequences for your actions, if no one's looking at that judge's caseload over the course of their career as a judge, judges can get away with a lot, and it's their own fiefdom. Like, this is how it's going to be. I'm sorry. Family court, criminal court. Hey, this is what I think, right? I know the law says this, but I'm going to do this. You want to appeal it, fine. Be my guest. [01:57:37] Speaker D: Right? [01:57:37] Speaker A: That's true. And there's no punishment for an appeal. That is successful. Family courts have been a runaway nightmare for 30 years now. Family courts have been a nightmare, and I'm not doing it as. [01:57:56] Speaker C: But again, you have to be willing to institute some judicial reforms along with prosecutorial reforms and the political reforms in the office. [01:58:04] Speaker D: Right. [01:58:04] Speaker C: It's just a lot across the board that you have to be willing to stand up and say, this is what needs to happen, and you're going to get flag from all sides. [01:58:11] Speaker D: Right. [01:58:12] Speaker C: You'll be told that, well, you're not standing up for women's rights. You're not standing up for dad's rights. It's just what works and what doesn't in our system and having recourse for people to go and say, at least to your point, Holly, at least somebody told me what was going on. I now know what my options are and what I can do. And even if I don't have the money to go hire a lawyer, I know what my options are. Right. Right now we're just leaving people high and dry. And, like, I get it. You're in danger. Your stalker is back on the street. Good luck. [01:58:42] Speaker E: Yeah. And at least you could say, here's in the constitution. Why? For a different case. This is why the prosecutor did this. This is why we're not helping. Here's what we can do. I get it. I think, though, when you keep saying all these judicial reform and prosecutor reform and criminal justice reform, this is a whole lot. And I would love to see someone take it on. I would love to see someone get legislators fire on this because I want legislators to feel from people that we're done with this two tier justice system. What happened in Salt Lake City in 2020, it never could have happened out here because when they had the BLM march out here, every armed citizen in this county was lining in front of the businesses with their guns, watching this parade and saying, hey, have a good parade. Hey, really great. Welcome to our town. But they knew right away no one is going to get out of line. When you have a populace who believes in the constitution and a sheriff that protects it and a council that protects it, and this is where we get down to an ag that is going to say, we got your back. All of you. [01:59:57] Speaker C: All of you. [01:59:58] Speaker E: You protesters, stay in line. Don't violate these people's rights. We'll have your back. You gun owners, stay in line. Don't violate their rights. We have your back. And, sheriff, I have your back if you need anything. [02:00:10] Speaker C: And that's the beauty of a community like Tuilla, where the people know each other. [02:00:15] Speaker D: Right. [02:00:15] Speaker C: And you've built that trust over time. [02:00:17] Speaker D: Right. [02:00:18] Speaker C: And that's the trust that needs to be restored between city, local, county and state agencies to say, we've got each other's back. Stay in your lane, everybody. I got your back. The state Ag has you. I got you. [02:00:32] Speaker D: Right. [02:00:32] Speaker C: And that's the message that they need to understand. The county sheriffs need to understand, I got you. [02:00:36] Speaker D: Right. [02:00:36] Speaker C: You've got an advocate in this office. We're going to follow the laws. [02:00:40] Speaker D: Right. [02:00:40] Speaker C: But that's the beauty of, in Tuilla, people just know each other. It's easy to build and maintain that trust. But you need to have an ag whose top priority is justice. And justice only happens through trust. It's the only way you get there. [02:00:52] Speaker E: It's so true. And again, it's going to be funding. Counties like ours need funding for those people with mental illness, those people with drug addiction. We need to figure out. I know that's not the aG's job, but we need to have mental illness needs to get addressed in this country, and fast. The last few shootings have been done in schools and stuff, mentally ill young people, and we've got to address it and we've got to maybe go back to having institutions, mental institutions. [02:01:23] Speaker A: You also want to hear another hard part. This is something that not many people are talking about, and this is going to sound idiosyncratic, but we've got to quit sending people with a slight depression to get mass therapy to dwell on their issue, because it's proving that constantly dwelling on that depression makes it worse. And the studies have come out. They're out now, this is what we've been doing. Oh, you've got a slight depression because your chair has a squeaky will at work go to therapy. We've got to quit doing that. Especially with these little boys and girls that go to school and the purple haired teacher that graduated last month that couldn't find their ass with both hands if it was in their back pockets is teaching them that, oh, you come out as whatever in the first grade, let's have a parade. Is messing them up. Don't follow that up with therapy because the constant dwelling on these minor things, if they've got a for real thing, that's for real. [02:02:32] Speaker C: Right. [02:02:33] Speaker A: If they have a real mental issue, bipolar, schizophrenia, one of those. But the depression, it's being proven that if you keep sending them to therapy to dwell on that, it exacerbates it. [02:02:44] Speaker E: Well, because there's money made in it. [02:02:46] Speaker A: Because, yeah, they don't want to see the person with a real issue. [02:02:50] Speaker E: Some depression medications actually cause more pharma. [02:02:56] Speaker C: Big Pharma doesn't. [02:02:58] Speaker D: What? [02:02:58] Speaker E: Pharma? [02:02:58] Speaker A: What? We do not. [02:03:01] Speaker E: Okay. [02:03:01] Speaker A: We have spurge, the good name of Big Pharma on this podcast. [02:03:06] Speaker C: You like your mouth. [02:03:07] Speaker E: Hey, Trent, give us a closing statement. We've really had a lot of fun. [02:03:13] Speaker A: Yeah, this has been a good show. [02:03:14] Speaker E: I did not expect this day to end as well as it did. We were having a great problem, and I thought, this has been a lot of fun. You're very upbeaten. You've got a lot of energy. I'm exhausted. [02:03:25] Speaker C: I'm excited about this. Well, let me finish with a quick story, if I could. So I mentioned early on in the interview, I'm general counsel for a tech firm. We do predictive AI with the military. And the chairman of my board of directors is retired four star general. His name's General Lance W. Lord. He was the first commander of the US space Command under Trump. He went up through the air Force, earned his fourth star, and then Trump put him in charge of space command. [02:03:48] Speaker E: Awesome. [02:03:49] Speaker A: So he's the guy off of the office in that show. That guy. [02:03:53] Speaker C: That's exactly right. When you're in his presence, it's a little bit more daunting, I'd say. Yeah, he very much as a four star general. And I went to them because I said he's a mentor of mine, but at the same time, I wanted his blessing. [02:04:06] Speaker D: Right. [02:04:06] Speaker C: I was going to potentially be leaving this job to go do this job. And I just wanted to talk to him about started. I kind of launched in like, this is why it's important and these are my issues. And he just said, stop, Trent. He said, you prepare for war, but you don't know when it comes. And when it comes, you fight and you fight to win. And when you're done, you come back. And whether that's, I tried to explain to him the deadlines. He's like, I don't care. April, June, November, 4 years, eight years. You fight until you win and then you come back and you're going to have a seat here at this table when you come back. And what it told me is they got me. And that's what I want to be for the people of Utah. I got you like, I got people that got my, and, you know, people have said to me all the time, are you ready for the fight that'll come when you want to audit the electoral system? Are you ready for the fight that'll come when you fight the feds? [02:04:54] Speaker D: Yeah. [02:04:55] Speaker C: Because people got my. [02:04:57] Speaker A: So he's one of those pre millie general. I like it. Instead of him saying, I've been studying Karl Marx and trying to understand why hatred today. [02:05:06] Speaker D: Right. [02:05:06] Speaker E: Was he wearing a dress when he said this? [02:05:09] Speaker C: No, he was not. [02:05:10] Speaker E: I love him. [02:05:11] Speaker C: You would love him. [02:05:13] Speaker A: That's our admiral that wears a dress. [02:05:15] Speaker C: Our surgeon admiral. There you have it. General Lance Lord, letting me know we got your back. [02:05:21] Speaker E: I love it. And that's a great way to, you know what? That's a great way for every single person to wake up in the morning and say that to themselves, that if they've got a support group, you know what? Every day is a fight. And when it comes, it comes. Some days are going to be easier than others, but tomorrow is always a new day. When you have someone that supports you and has your back, it's so easy to have other people's. [02:05:44] Speaker D: That's right. [02:05:45] Speaker C: And that's what we need to be. I mean, we talk about everything that's happening in our country. Just have your neighbors back. Don't be. Have your kids back. Have your spouses back. [02:05:53] Speaker D: Right. [02:05:54] Speaker E: Even the one that gets in trouble with the law. [02:05:58] Speaker C: That's right. Well, thank you. [02:06:02] Speaker A: Thank you. And sometimes having your kids back is putting a boot to that back. [02:06:08] Speaker C: That's how my dad saw it. I agree. That's funny. [02:06:15] Speaker A: It's true, Trent. This was great, everyone. Trentchristiansen.org. That's a christiansen.com or, sorry, that's A-S-E-N-T-R-E-N-T-C-H-R-I-S-T-E-N-O-P. Nailed it. [02:06:35] Speaker C: You're so close. [02:06:36] Speaker E: Dwayne says to say, what a great interview. [02:06:40] Speaker A: Thank you. Appreciate it. But I'm going to flash it. I've got it pulled up here. Where's that? There it is. I'm going to flash it on the screen one last time before we. [02:06:51] Speaker E: Are your kids excited about this run? I bet they're just bored, rolling their eyes like, oh. [02:06:58] Speaker C: They love that I'm doing something that I love. This is important to you, dad. I get that. And I love that for you. [02:07:05] Speaker D: Right. [02:07:07] Speaker C: Exactly. I don't want to go to your political meetings, but just good luck with that stuff, dad. [02:07:11] Speaker E: I've got one of those kids that's like, I'm not going to your meetings. And another one's like, he came to. [02:07:17] Speaker C: Tuilla with me, my oldest. He came. He loves it. He loves being a part of it. He loves seeing people that care enough about their community to come out to things like this. [02:07:25] Speaker E: Yeah, my son is the same. My daughter, not so much. My son, he loves it. [02:07:30] Speaker A: As they start getting older and start wanting to know what's going on in the world around them, and let's face it, they're going to be left running that world. And I just thank the good Lord every day that I am going to be left with the purple haired knitwits taking care of. [02:07:54] Speaker E: He's an atheist, so that's a funny sentence coming from him, but, yeah, I just feel blessed. [02:08:02] Speaker A: What's that girl from Sweden? The girl that quit going to school. Her eyes are a little too far apart. Makes you wonder. Greta Thunberg and David Hogg. Those guys are going to take care of me when I'm old. [02:08:23] Speaker D: Right? [02:08:25] Speaker C: You leave them with a good legacy, we show them how to do the work and they'll make us proud. [02:08:30] Speaker A: I don't know. [02:08:31] Speaker E: He says, though, bad times create strong men and weak times or good times create weak men. [02:08:38] Speaker A: And we've gone through the good times, but there are two places being born right now. I'm just going to have to hop a fence and go to either El Salvador or Argentina and see what freedom and prosperity looks like. [02:08:52] Speaker C: Yeah, we could just re elect Trump. I think that would fix a lot of so. [02:08:57] Speaker A: I hope so. [02:08:59] Speaker E: Thank you so much. [02:09:01] Speaker A: I think the shakeup we need is bigger than one man. All right, we gotta go. Remember, Ken Burns may do a documentary about this time one day. [02:09:14] Speaker C: I appreciate it, guys. Thank you so much. [02:09:16] Speaker A: Thank you, Trent. Have a good one. [02:09:17] Speaker C: Appreciate it. [02:09:18] Speaker B: Thank you. Bye.