Episode 8: Minneapolis

In this episode of The 3 Guy Podcast, Reuel Sample, Ben Schachtman, and Nick Craig unpack the Minneapolis shooting of Alex Priddy during an ICE operation and how it became a national Rorschach test for the Trump administration. They dissect “stupid on both sides,” including calling a freshly killed man a “domestic terrorist,” activists showing up armed, and mayors posturing on TV while refusing to cooperate with federal immigration law. They argue for letting real investigations play out, question ICE’s quasi‑paramilitary tactics and quota-driven enforcement, and wrestle with how much leeway armed agents should have when lethal force is used in chaotic protests.​

The conversation pivots to how this national story bleeds into New Hanover County, highlighting a controversy over a school-board attorney who shared an offensive Roy Cooper meme, deleted it, and apologized—only to become the target of intense backlash. The hosts hammer the school board’s dysfunction, apparent double standards compared to district employees who posted ugly comments after the Charlie Kirk shooting, and the media’s role in framing who gets canceled and who is quietly protected. They close by stressing that public figures are never really “off the clock” on social media, debating whether there is any consistent standard or grace in modern cancel culture, and previewing coming political fights from government shutdown drama to local DA and sheriff races.

Transcript

0:06

Welcome to The 3 Guys podcast. I'm Reuel Sample from the Wilmington Standard, joined on my left by Nick Craig from the Nick Craig Show and Ben Chalkman from WHQR. It's good to see all of you gentlemen. I got to tell you, I'm from the North. It's been cold, winter weather this weekend, some snow, some snow, you going skiing this weekend? No, but I did break out an actual jacket instead of just a hoodie for the first time. Oh, really? It was my one concession to the weather, so it's fine. Where do you go skiing around here in Wilmington? You go to Beach Mountain or something out west. Or you go over the county dump. Yeah. That is the tallest point. In New Hanover County. It looks like it. It's got to be. Almost full. Eventually, it will be the highest. With permission, they can go to 270, which that would be a decent little bunny slope. 270? Yeah. I don't know what 270 is. 270 feet. Oh, okay. Yeah. See? We keep throwing stuff away at the rate we're doing. Well, maybe this weekend. Eight inches of snow on top of that, it would be real great. Yeah. There you go. It's going to be one of those kind of shows, ladies and gentlemen. We've got a lot to talk about. We do. And we're going to talk. Minneapolis has been in the news a lot lately, and you can't go anywhere without hearing about it. I mentioned this to you on the phone. One of the great features of YouTube TV is their multi-box feature, and they have a news one that's Fox, CNN, MSNBC, and BBC America. And so I have that on all day in my office. Not that I watch it, but it's just kind of off to the side. And that has been the story on every news outlet the entirety of the last five days. I can imagine that's the same thing down there in WHQR's central headquarters, is that you've got that feed coming in all the time. Yeah, yeah. And it's certainly drawn a lot of attention. I mean, I would probably say George Floyd was the last time that something like this, ironically, in Minneapolis. And it was, you know, I'm sure there's a lot to say about this. I will say that I think people have done two things. One, they've put everything that they feel about this administration, positive or negative, onto this one incident. And they've also used these two incidents, the killing of Alex Brady and Rene Good, as their sort of Rorschach of how they feel about the administration. So they're collapsing everything down on this, and then this becomes the be-all, end-all about how you feel about the Trump administration. So I mean that both in the sense that there are obviously people on the left who are like, this is why we hate the Trump administration. But also for some conservatives who are saying, like, this is my breaking point. You know, Senator Tom Tillis, for example, who is a friend of the show, Tom Tillis. Yeah, he's a very popular Republican in North Carolina. But I just mean there's been this intense pressure and collapsing onto this incident that has made people extremely emotional. I'm not judging that. But it is now officially one of the most high-voltage third rails I've come across in a long time. I'm going to get to your article on, did you just put that on Facebook or did you push it, put it on? That was just on Facebook. OK. I'm going to get to that in just a second. But Nick, there's a lot of stupid going around on both sides. Is that fair to say? Yeah, I think so. And I think, I mean, you tend to see this in any event that can be taken one way or the other and hyper-politicized in one way or the other. Yes, you will have and see stupid on both sides of any issue that you can even squint and see, oh, there's a left and a right on this issue. So then, yeah, there will be stupid. And we'll focus on the right. The stupid on the right is, I don't care who you are, you don't call somebody who is just deceased a domestic terrorist. I think they ramp that up just a little bit. Sure. And just that really quick judgment that we see all the time. You know, and that, I think, lends itself well into the comments that Ben put out on Facebook. And this is the unfortunate reality of individuals not waiting for the dust to settle. And it's tough. The administration, from my vantage point, feels like if they don't get in front of it, the mayor in Minneapolis and the governor, who, to their credit in terms of using media, have done a very good job at getting in front of cameras. And so their argument is, hell with this, we'll get our story out first. You see on the other side, you saw it kind of right after Rene Good, the local administration in Minneapolis, trying to get to the microphones first. And of course, that leads to stupid comments like, get the F out of our city and we're not going to enforce federal immigration law, which you don't have the say of if you're a municipal mayor. If Bill Saffo said, we're not going to enforce immigration law, and the federal government was here, that might sound good, but he does not have any ability to do that. It's federal law. That's right. So it's a race to the bottom. Stupid on the left, why would you bring a gun to a, you can't even do that here in North Carolina. No, it's illegal, which is crazy. It's illegal during a protest, and I think this is one of the spaces where there's been very little nuance. And one of the things I would hope that an investigation would bring out was, this, as far as I could tell, was not a staged rally where you get a permit to picket or protest. And like in North Carolina, that's where it's illegal. Parades and stuff like that. And we've seen, during the summer of racial justice, we saw conservatives and liberals and just whack jobs bring guns and law enforcement dealt with them. In what's going on right now with ICE, there are some official protests at a set time and place. There are also just neighborhoods where ICE is conducting an operation, and there are people in that neighborhood who are reacting negatively to that, and they're protesting on the spot, which is not what the law usually constrains as a protest. So we don't know why Alex Priddy had a gun, and if he had planned to go out that day... And we might never know. We can't ask him. It might come out through e-mails or text messages, again, that's the kind of information that an investigation would surface, and we'd have a better idea of why. It is totally possible that was his everyday carry. And I know that there are people all over the spectrum who have said, well, why did he have these extra magazines? There's a guy I see at the Food Lion all the time. He's got a Colt .45 revolver with two speed reloaders. And I always think, what kind of O.P. Corral... Ben, I mean, the price of groceries is a very aggressive sport, my friend. You never know. When Ben Shotman picks up the last zucchini, you might just have to... But I always have myself wondering, if the intimidation value of that thunderclapper doesn't do it, if you have to reload a second time, you've gotten it so far over your head. In the Food Lion. In the Food Lion. But that's his constitutional right. And I think it was the chief of the city police who said it's immaterial if he had an optical sight or an extended magazine, which is, by the way, just what these things come with most of the time. It's like three extra rounds, and why not? All of that, it's grist for the speculation mill, but it doesn't really affect the legality of the situation, and it could go in many different ways. I think where the question is, and this is where you start to inch closer to that third rail, is unless you somehow forgot you had the gun on you, which I mean, I've heard from people that that has happened. It seems unlikely. Once you get into proximity with police, that becomes a dangerous situation. And I know many legal gun owners who have been stopped at a DUI checkpoint or because they failed to yield or ran a... They did a jersey roller through a stop sign, and they've got a gun in the car, and the stop comes up, and maybe it's on the dashboard, or it's one of those seat holsters. And it's intimidating and nerve-wracking, because if you do not conduct yourself the right way, that could go south very quickly. And I think that's irrespective of race. If you're near a law enforcement officer, and you have a gun, there's the potential for it to go bad. And I think that is both because there are law enforcement officers who can interpret that as a threat, and also because there are some poorly trained law enforcement officers who should know the right thing to do, who should know how to process that, de-escalate it, make sure that your constitutional rights doesn't turn into you getting killed. But it's worth being concerned. And so I think it felt really, really toxic to people to be calling him stupid or saying this was a mistake or foolish right after he died, which is another reason you wait for an investigation. But part of that would be, from the point of view of law enforcement policy, did he put himself in a questionable situation when he's in the street, when he's coming between an ICE agent and someone, again, knowing he has a gun? And I think there's a ton of nuance there. And differences between what the court would say if they're establishing the appropriate use of force, what a layperson would say about was that a common sense decision or not, and then what could ICE have done, not as required by law, but to de-escalate that situation? And even what was Minneapolis PD's obligation? And that's one of the interesting things with all of this is, regardless of whether you are a fan of what is going on with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, they are not in your municipality to conduct crowd work. In the case of what was going on Saturday morning, there was a target that they were after, a very specific guy that they were trying to arrest, who I guess was at this donut shop that, or around this donut shop where it happened. Ben, I will push back a little bit on the just people in the neighborhood are upset. I mean, there are signal and telegram channels and these air tables and stuff tracking these ICE agents in Minnesota. We saw something similar here in Charlotte back just a couple of months ago. The fact that local police, and they've been told expressly not to get kind of in the middle of this, and ICE is not only trying to capture a target that they've deemed reputable, but also having to essentially do crowd work and worry about, here's a guy, regardless of whether he has a gun or not, but here's a guy who is actively impeding the work of law enforcement. There's failures all over the board. And to the gun owner side, I have no problem saying I have a concealed carry permit. I've been to plenty of protests during COVID with the school board here, even in downtown Wilmington, everybody's allowed to make their own decision. Never in a million years would I have thought it was a good idea to bring a firearm to one of those protests, to the point that you make, Ben. Now that it's not my constitutional right to do so, I don't want to put myself into a situation where if something happens with law enforcement and I lean over and they can see I have a firearm, they draw me, I do something wrong, and they shoot and kill me. I agree, and I do not disagree that there are people who are planning their whole day around where they think ICE is going to be, based on a whole host of different- I think Renee Good was a good example of that. She was driving around all day in front of ICE people. I think, I'm saying we don't know that about Alex. And we don't know if he, I mean, there's a world in which he wakes up, checks his telegram or signal or whatever, and says, I'm going to load for bear, and I'm going to go out. And there's another possibility where this is his everyday carry, and he comes across this, and then he intervenes because he's going to the donut shop or whatever. I'm just saying we don't know. Oh, absolutely. And let me be clear, I'm not saying that he, for a fact, was part of this group. I think the larger discussion of these active protests, which I think we talked about this three weeks ago, you have the right to protest. The question is, where is that line between constitutional right to protest and then actively impeding the work of state, federal, local law enforcement? There are a lot of stories coming out. There's one story that he actually was bending down to help somebody who had been pushed over because he was a nurse, which gets us to that story that you got a lot of pushback on when you said, we got to get the whole story. Yeah. And I later updated this and apologized because I was coming at it from very specific point of view, my wheelhouse of reporting on law enforcement. And there's some people who even bristle at the use of the phrase law enforcement. There are people like, ICE is not law enforcement. I mean, they are. They are federal law enforcement. Which is just an odd thing to be like tipsy over. I think there is, again, there is a case to be made that they are not law enforcement the way your local cops are law enforcement. Which is fair. They have different jurisdictions, different things they can do, but they have many of the same protections, in fact, enhanced protections in a court of law above and beyond what your local cop has. Your local cop has qualified immunity. They have, in some cases, absolute immunity, which is for civil court. Yeah. It doesn't mean you can't bring them into a court of law and charge them with murder if they feel like they violate a policy. But in terms of the civil... You can't sue somebody. So there are important differences. And the way ICE has been conducting itself is different than the way your local law enforcement does it. And I think an important part there was that I do think in a perfect world where you can't change how ICE is acting, but you can change other factors. I would say the coordination between local PD and ICE would be way better because I think there were more ICE agents in Minneapolis than Minneapolis had PD. And so they can't be everywhere, right? They can't be in front of the donut shop to clear the street, which needed to be done because there are just people in the street, which is not safe and in some places illegal. But there was no PD there to do it. And I have to imagine that was because of a lack of coordination between ICE and PD. But back to your point, what I was trying to say, and I think I was a little bit more articulate about later, was that journalists are going to be in an incredibly difficult position because there is a media, and this goes for conservative commentators and journalists at writ large, the whole world, the whole range, right? To come up with a final statement, a sort of a conclusive sweeping statement on what happened and what it means in moral terms, legal terms, political terms, moments after a human being is killed. And not to quote Tucker Carlson, but it felt like that got left out quite a bit. But especially in these, and people hate this phrase, but it's just true, this kind of fog of war situation where, Nick, you were talking on your show about people who are doing the CNN parsing of the video. And it's like, yeah, that gives you some things, right? I certainly think I knew more about what happened to Alex Priddy after I watched that than before, but there were still questions like, whichever of the two agents that fired the first shot, if he fired the first shot, what did they see? What did they know at the moment? Did he know that the guy in the gray coat, we have like this Zapruder film language around us now, so it looked like someone reached in and disarmed Priddy. Did the other agents know that happened, right? Someone shouted gun, did they think that meant I have his gun or that he has a gun? Yeah. Did something fall out of his pocket and then they mistook it for a gun? I don't know anything about the motives of Alex Priddy. I don't know anything about the motives or the probably pretty intensely siloed- That's how many gets, yeah. If you've never been in a situation like that, it's very hard to explain. And I still think there are lots of questions that you can't answer by watching that film, like what was the state of mind of those ICE officers? I mean, they seemed a little out of control. Just in terms of, I've watched one police officer take someone with a gun on drugs into custody. I've been there when it happened. This was seven guys, this was chaos. And you were okay afterwards? I was fine. Okay. It just seemed, and I've had people, law enforcement sources I've known for a long time were like, how did it take seven guys to restrain him? Is this guy on some kind of drug? Was it just the chaos of the moment? Are they exhausted? I just feel like, so all of those questions, right? And a dozen more. And you were just simply telling people to wait. To wait and say, the pressure is going to be extraordinary to say right away what happened. And part of, and again, my point of view is about law enforcement is about, it's always through the lens of this bargain that we've made. Which is, in my personal opinion, one of the better deals we've made in the Western modern world. Which is to give that authority to law enforcement on a condition. To give over our right to kill each other, to protect ourselves, to a police force. And then we surrender our right to kill whenever we feel like it. And then we now have an organization that enforces laws and we hold them accountable. And those laws are put in place by elected folks, not by... And so all I'm saying is that we do grant them a lot of leeway. And sometimes that ends up in situations where law enforcement officers take people's lives and it's allowed and we don't feel good about it. But the flip side of that is that we hold them to extraordinary account. And usually through a series of levels. So for example, if a Wilmington police department officer kills someone in a shooting. Regardless of whether or not it was a good shoot or a bad shoot. The state steps in. The State Bureau of Investigation investigates. That's, by the way, every police department across the entire state of North Carolina. It takes it out of the... It takes away any kind of local bias that a local investigation would do. After the SBI is done, professional standards or internal affairs, they investigate. Because sometimes a shooting is legally allowed. But could have been prevented through better policy, better training. So there's a second level of investigation. And so the last part of what I posted was one, there's going to be five award situations where we're going to have to wait. Two, we are talking about law enforcement agents who can use lethal force. And that makes us feel uncomfortable. And the other side of that bargain is accountability. And the third part was, I have serious doubts about this administration's willingness to conduct a fair and open investigation. Given that they had immediately rusted judgment on several cases. And it's my job to be skeptical of the government. And anytime the government's like, oh, we're going to be investigating ourselves. When the DOJ, which would represent these officers in court, is also investigating. Like that's at least grounds for skepticism. Because they were elbowing out the state and local officials. Should the state and local officials be involved in this, you think? In terms of the investigation? Yeah. No, I don't think so at all. Okay. I think it's a federal law enforcement operation, whether you like it or want to call it federal law enforcement or not. It's a federal law enforcement operation. And to the point of government skepticism, the point you made about trusting the federal government and some of the concerns there. I think those, from the right, those same concerns exist with the local, with local people within the state of Minnesota. That's fair. Again, as I just stated, the rhetoric, you can argue that on both sides. I think it exists there as well. I mean, the commentary that has been made about that. No, I don't trust the Tim Walz administration to fairly investigate that, the same way that those on the left might not trust the Trump administration. And I actually ended my post, and I shouldn't have said this, because this was just being flip, and it was not the time to be flip. But I said, I feel like an international observer would be the only way to get a clear picture. And kind of for that reason, right? Because on the right, you can clearly say, well, there's a vested political interest in this going a certain way. A hundred percent. And there's a vested political interest in the Trump administration that's going another way. And my God, who are we as people to trust? And so all of that to say, yeah, there was a lot of violent pushback. One person said, you know, what more evidence do you need? I think they basically said, and I'm paraphrasing here, like, did you need to be side by side with another Jew as they were shot and pushed into a ditch that they had dug? So that's, is it because this is such a, and again, we're talking about somebody who died. I'm not admonishing that. It's the only time I'm going to say this. We're having a frank conversation. Is it because this is such a good issue for the political left in terms of everything that they feared about the Trump administration, the Gestapo, the authoritarian, all of this bullshit that's been spewed now for 10 years. Is this such a good issue to move this point forward that it's like, hey, we'd love to investigate, but this exemplifies everything that we've been saying. So to hell with the investigation. It looks really bad. So let's just run with it. Even answering that question will get me thrown out of certain windows, but I think it's a fair question. And I think this is one of the times where you start to see the strata of the left and the right. But on the left, there are certainly people for whom this is just the breaking point. Sure. That they've been waiting for. Yeah. And it feels, it feels crass. It feels opportunistic. But they have seen some conservatives pause or even be critical. And there are some people who remember Ruby Ridge. They remember Waco. And that doesn't mean it's great that the Weaver family were, you know, white, you know, separatists. But I don't know anyone who knows the story of Ruby Ridge who goes, I feel totally good about how the federal government acted there, right? Same thing with Waco. Ditto for Waco, right? And so for all different reasons, people who have said, yes, this is, this is the wedge. We're going to get our crowbars here and just go to town. Sure. I agree with you on that. I also think there are people who do not understand how law enforcement works. And what they saw was those last five shots, which are hard to watch. Yeah. Because at this point, what you know as a viewer, what you're pretty sure of as a viewer, is that Alex Pretty's weapon is off scene now. It's out of the equation. The Asians are backing up. He's on the ground. He's already been shot twice, possibly at this point. And then there are five more shots. That is incredibly hard to watch. And it looks like an execution. It looks like what you would expect a military engagement to look like, where you just shoot to the person dead, because a mistake of not killing an enemy combatant could cause you and your entire platoon, their lives. There's going to be a couple of things that's going to hold up all this. Number one, ICE still has not rolled out body cams for all of their agents. That's fair. And we've heard DHS said they do have body cams. These particular agents have body cams? They said there was body cams. Okay. I think it's a situation where, unlike state and local law enforcement, where some of that has been mandated by state law, there are certain numbers of them, but not... The weird thing is, so Congress, as part of the appropriations for Homeland Security writ large, it was millions of dollars for body cams, but it doesn't require them to wear them. They just have to buy them. So your government didn't wear it, guys. So they're sitting in evidence lockers back at HQ. I was like, but the other thing is, is that because it was a mob scene, they were unable to preserve the crime scene, which has been a problem. Yeah, because it was immediately taken over by a protest. It was immediately taken over. So Ben Shapiro, I know you have a love-hate relationship with Ben Shapiro. Yesterday was talking about the number of violent criminals who are illegals arrested over the past six months. That the number has actually gone down in relationship. And what he posited is, it is all a result of ICE not being able to go into prisons or jails to arrest these folks. Because in reality, all of this could go away tomorrow if Minneapolis and Minnesota would just cooperate with ICE. When somebody gets arrested who's being an illegal, they go to jail, pick them up, and they go home. Yeah, if the state would honor an ICE detainer, which is, by the way, North Carolina law. If a similar situation unfolds in North Carolina, ICE levies a detainer and the state law requires sheriffs. There's a couple that still kind of fly above the radar. They are required to honor that. I heard Shapiro's point, and I appreciate him trying to find some kind of middle path here. I think the problem is the way ICE has been set up, and the fact that it's been given quotas. I mean, there's a long-running joke about what happens when you give state troopers a quotas for speeding tickets. Set on I-40. Yeah, you get a ticket for going 65.5 miles per hour. And it's like, this can't be the best use of law enforcement or taxpayer money. So I honestly don't think you could get to the quotas that Stephen Miller has laid out by just going. Do I think, in terms of public sentiment, if you said, hey, all we're doing, right, is finding people who've already been arrested, they are not in the country legally, we are going to put them through due process and deport them, which is what we've done under Democratic and Republican administrators. I think, to the point, you were talking about poll numbers last time. I think most people are okay with that. I even think, if you wanted to get bigger numbers and you sent around an army of bureaucrats with clipboards, and they just went to job sites, and they went to farms, and they went to jails as well, and just said, well, we're just going to run all these down, would they get everyone? No. Would they get a lot of people? Yes. Would that do significant economic harm to the hospitality and agricultural issue economies? Yeah, it would. But I think, one, there are ways in which, if you got rid of the quotas, which was part of the pretty rough rhetoric that came out of the election campaign, and focused on the quote-unquote worst of the worst, then you could do that without scenes like this. And I feel like, if you still wanted to get higher numbers, there's still a way you could do it without the quasi-paramilitary approach that ICE has taken, which feels deliberately combative against liberal cities. And even if that's not how ICE feels, and that's not how individual Asians feel, that's how the White House has communicated it from time to time. They have been very combative some time. Yeah, but again, when you're the mayor of Minneapolis, and you want to act like you're the big tough guy by saying the F-word on national television, I mean, real strong there, and you're going to say, we don't want ICE in our city, this administration is going to tell you to go take a flag and plant it straight up your ass. They don't care. I do think it's funny that they, and you know, I come from an era where, you know, that kind of language from elected officials used to be... Verboten. Verboten, so we're not going to use it. It's a little funny that... You haven't watched Republican Heroes. Well, I'm saying from an era... It's a little funny when MAGA folks are like, he used the F-word. I was like, all right, okay. You know, let's not pretend that's still... But to your point, yeah, it's allowed a series of escalating attentions, and I think the... I don't really understand the policy goal, the way it's being pursued. I do feel like coming out of the Biden administration, there was broad support for immigration enforcement reform. Not just saying we need to change our laws, but also like, hey, something's gone haywire here. And again, I think if you could find a way to do it where you weren't deliberately antagonizing people before or after the fact, and have some Democratic city leaders brought that on, sure. But I think that's what people are recoiling from, was that there were people who just didn't like the numbers. There were people who felt like, whether it was true or not, they felt like the taxpayer money was going to these folks, or that in some way resources were being drained out, or they were immigrants themselves, and they didn't like the people that jumped the line. I hear that from liberal and conservative immigrants. Fareed Zakaria on Jon Stewart's podcast was like, I'm an immigrant, I'm a legal immigrant, and I don't like that people have done this. So again, I think there was a mandate to do something. I just think that the way that they've gone about it has been so toxic to at least half the country. And I think increasingly, we've seen the reaction over the last week, has been largely political, not moral or legal. I haven't seen Republicans back away because they thought ICE broke the law here, or because they thought it was immoral. But they're like, for the love of God, there are enough people who look at this and just can't stand it, that it's going to hurt us. I mean, the editorial from the Free Press was not, this was Kent State. It was, you're going to screw yourself in the midterms. Do you just sit down every morning and just go through like 100 different free, because you quote these, So can I make one point on that? And I don't disagree with the point you're making Ben. And I think the opposition to, not the opposition to that, but the opposing event to that is what conservatives and Republicans saw under the Biden administration with the rampant influx of individuals into the country. We saw, it didn't get the national media attention, but we saw the 22 and 23 year old college girls going out for a run in the morning to be brutally murdered and assaulted by somebody that Biden led into the country. And so it's very interesting to see how essentially, this all comes back to immigration, how these events are incredibly polarizing for one side when it's one administration and the other. It's very interesting to see that be the case. And I was in the thick of this, I just started radio here in Wilmington right as the Biden administration was kicking off. There was little to any coverage outside of Bill Malusian and Fox News for months on the immigration issue. And I'd sit there every morning and say, hey, this is what's going on. And if you flip through the news networks or the nightly news programs, it wasn't a real story. And so that's one of the interesting, one of the kind of long running interesting threads in all of this. Go ahead. I would just say, I would grant you that there was some ideological capture in the way it was covered. There was a fear that because, even by some conservative think tank estimates, immigrants, including illegal immigrants, are generally more cautious and keep their nose clean at statistically better rates than US citizens. There were still some incredibly bad actors who could have been caught with tougher enforcement measures. And I think people were afraid of trying to nuance that, especially in TV news, where nuance is just a silly term. And I think that there was, you know, so there was the issue of people who were here illegally, who did reprehensible, horrible, violent things, and they should, you know, be punished and then extradited and punished again. But then there was the broader issue of that, from my personal opinion, the fall down on the job failure on immigration of the Biden administration, even though past administrations had handed him kind of a janky, broken system, I feel like he drove into a ditch. Or his auto pen. Or his auto pen. Or he just, no one was behind the wheel. And that was, I mean, he named the vice president, the borders are, which obviously is more, you know, it's just a title. But like, you know, there was some admission, like, hey, somebody's got to take charge of this. And I think, I'm not even gonna say many conservatives because the data would back up the point that many Americans, regardless of political ideology, found that process incredibly frustrating. So here's my question. If Minnesota and Minneapolis do what North Carolina has done and said, okay, ICE, you can go in to jails and pick up the people who are arrested, who have been found to be here in this country illegally. Because let's face it, if you're here in this country illegally and you don't keep your head down, you should go home. I'm sorry, hang on a second. So if that happens, then ICE itself can start standing down a little because ICE is not really meant to be a storming force. They're meant to go into jails and one or two pick up people and go home. They're not meant to be in the communities. That to me sounds like that would solve the problem overnight. It would, I think it would help. Um, I think I agree with you a hundred percent. I mean, I'm, I am biased. You should. I am. Of course. I'm biased on this issue because I worked in kitchens for so long and worked with so many people who were here illegally. The hardest working people. Yes. I mean, they just work circles around, you know, you get some like college grad. You're like, this guy's going to take 15 seconds. It's like the old FedEx commercial. Oh, you have a BA. Let me show you how to use FedEx. Yeah. These guys would be like dishwashing with one hand and prepping with the other hand. They were amazing. And I had a coworker of mine call me to come and get him from his place in Silver Lake because like, um, he had a busted taillight. And he checked every day. He backed up against his garage and put his brakes on and looked. And he said, can you come get me? I was like, yeah. Not that I was, uh, you know, trying to subvert immigration law. But that's how, that's the level of caution. Yeah. Never drunk, never drove drunk, never went downtown to go carousing, was just work, home, work, home. And I think, yeah, if that's your concern, if you want people who are in this country illegally to be deported, with the message of, hey, we want you here, but we want you here legally. Come back, do it the right way. I think you could get a lot done to the jails. And that's what was being done. I think there was a huge surge at the border due to geopolitical issues in Latin America. And it was a point like our sort of, you know, wink and a handshake system broke. At that point, because we've historically relied on, you know, especially since Mexico has developed a bit of a middle class and there's less direct, there's still some, but there's less direct immigration from Mexico. It's mostly from... It's transient through Mexico. It's politically, it's political instability in Latin and South America coming on these crazy long treks. Yes. All the way up through Mexico into the United States. And that has its own, you know, filter function. And so we were kind of getting what we needed for economic terms and then a little bit more, which made people frustrated. But it wasn't enough to really wreck the system. And that surge really broke the system. And our, you know, it was just jerry-rigged together and it didn't hold. And I don't know if we can... At this point, I hope that the American public doesn't go back to that system because it always just leaves it vulnerable for that. And we've never addressed the core underlying problems, which is that if it's easier to get across the border, you know, and live with your head down than it is to go through the system taking years, decades plus, then which one would you do? Yeah. Yeah. But I mean, I don't want to get into a full-blown immigration discussion. I mean, it's easier for me to walk in a food line and steal than it is for me to take my hard-earned dollars and pay it at self-checkout. I mean, as a conservative, I find that comment incredibly frustrating because it's like, oh, the immigration system is broken. Sure. There are facets of the immigration system that are broken. Sure. Democrats had control of Congress and the White House from 20 to 2022. If it was so freaking broken, then they should have fixed it. And like, and vice versa. If Republicans were screaming from the rooftops, the immigration system is broken. Well, you jokers are in charge right now. Do something about it. I just, I don't think that's a, I don't, I find that, not to you personally, but I find that to just be a very low rate, ridiculous excuse. Like, oh, it's been broken for decades. Well, then what the hell are we even talking about? Somebody, both parties have had long stints of control over forever that it's been broken. It's interesting that the party that used to be the most anti-immigrant used to be the Democrats and the labor unions. Way back in the day, yeah. Way back in the day. And it's interesting that as part of his stump speeches that J.D. Vance talked about how immigration, especially illegal immigration, hurts the working class, which is exactly what the Democrats said 50, 60 years ago. It's, it's, it's that kind of, yeah. But, um, and you know, we said before the show that we weren't going to talk Minneapolis a lot. We did a good job. But we, but I didn't want to, I did want to talk about how Minneapolis has actually affected us here in New Hanover County at the school board. Everything rolls. I'll tell you what, man. There could be an asteroid that crashes into the moon and somehow that becomes a New Hanover County school board. A giant crazy board with red yarn. It all goes to the middle and it's the school board. It's the New Hanover County Board of Education. It nearly is. And it's the lowest form of, well, it's. It is the, it is the smallest form of local government in terms of like what they physically have control of. Exactly. But they're, you're right. They're in the middle of everything. Yeah. Somehow. I mean. I've heard people suggest if they had a budget, they had a balance every year. Then maybe they have less time. Yeah. I heard other things. I heard they were in Venezuela the other day. So, um, tell me about this, Ben. Cause you probably, both of you have been following this, but, uh, we had an attorney, uh, from the retained, uh, law firm. Yeah. Post some things on his personal Facebook page. Yeah. So this was a post from, I believe it was, uh, former governor. Now U S Senate candidate, uh, Roy Cooper, long time, uh, Democrat, uh, winning his guy in the game. No, you know, he does. I'm sorry. Um, 40, literally 40 years away. That's right. Like I, you know, whatever I think of his policies, I'm like, thanks. How, how? But so, uh, this, this attorney, um, Brian Krumke posted in response to that, um, uh, a meme that was going on at the time that was, uh, marked safe. I think it was marked safe from being shot in the face because I'm not effing R worded. Um, I don't know if you want it. If I say it, then this YouTube can't be watched by it. That's right. So we'll, we'll bleep as much as we can. Um, I'm not saying it to be sanctimonious. I'm saying it because, uh, Google will ban this. Yes. From like half the places you could watch it. Um, but you can guess, um, and then, um, a number of people, I think some folks from the NAC educational justice people saw it. Um, cause they have the time to follow. Yeah. All they do is kind of a cold, miserable Sunday, nothing else to do. Um, and they were like, Hey, you know, why did you post this? This is really offensive. And he took it down, um, deleted it and apologized at that point. Word had gotten to at least most of the school board members. And by the time we got to Monday morning, you know, we asked, we just asked them for comment. Um, and they were way ahead of us. They had, you know, fully polished statements. They were, you know, gonna, gonna take care of us. And then on Tuesday, uh, and we can get into this a little bit, um, in this weird kind of way, they kind of announced that he, um, he's not with us anymore. He won't, he won't be doing any work. We've cut ties with him. We don't want to be doing any work for the district anymore, but no vote was taken. And they didn't, you know, they didn't move away from that law firm. And then we had sort of an avalanche of reactions to that where people either felt like this was a victory or they felt like the board hadn't gone far enough by dropping the law firm or that this was a ridiculous overreaction to, you know, it admittedly somewhat offensive meme that was probably posted in jest and then deleted and apologized for. So there was a whole range and I know I'm not capturing all of the different reactions, but there was, it was safe to say there was not like one group reaction to it. So this is sort of like what conservatives were reacting to when people were talking smack about Charlie Kirk. Yeah, yeah. But I think there's, I think there's some, some differences with it. The big one from, from my vantage point is this is a contractor that works with the school district. You have employees that are employed through the new Hanover County school system, whether they're educators or administrators that posted comments in the aftermath of Charlie Kirk and including two current board members, Tim Merrick and Judy Justice, who Judy claimed that president Trump wasn't actually shot. It was a hoax and completely made up. Tim Merrick said that Charlie Kirk died by his own word. I mean, these are comments, these people posted on Facebook. And so I just, I, to listen. And as I watched the agenda review meeting that took place on Tuesday to listen to Tim and Judy outrage over this is just the worst example of the most hypocritical nonsense that you could possibly imagine. These two, these two individuals post some of the most nonsensical stuff on social media. And for them to be so pissed off about what a contractor is doing, when both of them have had no problem doing it, me as a, yes, as a conservative, I could care less what this guy posted on Facebook. That is where I have been forced into that corner by the, well, how dare teachers are allowed to express their rights. Okay, fine. Then a third party contractor should sure as hell be able to do that. If we're not going to hold our educators, these education professionals, as we're always told to this standard, then why the hell would we hold a third party contract? Oh, is he right? Are we doing double standards here? Yeah. I think from just like a lay person point of view, I get what you get what you're saying. And certainly, yeah, I agree. Judy's posted some dumb and sometimes hurtful stuff. And she, and she has to live with that, right? It's been reported on. Yeah, in some cases. Yeah. I think, you know, we had to make a decision from an editorial desk. I had to make a decision from an editorial desk. I'll own that, about is this a story or not? And I was like, well, I think it kind of depends on what the school district says about it. But to your point, I don't want to dodge this. There is a difference between an elected official saying something because they're held accountable by the public. Absolutely. If Judy's comments and Tim's comments, which I'm sure will come back to haunt them with some, at least middle of the road voters in the very near future politically, then that's how it goes. But unless they commit a felony, they're not getting removed from the board. Absolutely. An employee has to live by the standards that are set by the school district. And it is in their contract that they have to live up to whatever those policies are on campus. And so this is kind of a weird loophole because it's definitely not on campus. But does on campus even make sense when so much of the things we do that gets in trouble are online anyway? Yes. But it is at the very least up to the superintendent, the manager in chief or the board to decide whether or not they're going to hold their employee, which includes contractors, accountable. And I thought, well, let's ask them for comment. And if they say, this doesn't rise to the level of whatever, and they put out a statement, then that's the story. They're like, if Pete Wildebour said, look, you might find this tasteless, but it doesn't rise to a viral offense. It was on his personal page. He took it down. He deleted it. He apologized. That satisfies me. That would have been it. But all of the board members, at least initially, seemed to feel very strongly that this had crossed some kind of rubicon of inappropriateness. That was their decision. So they went for it. So that was our metric for doing it. And I do think if you don't have any of that nuance, and you're not really interested, and you shouldn't be required to be, and all the difference between what can an elected official say, what does an employee say, I 100% see this seems like hypocrisy, where one person gets to say something that you find tasteless, and then another person says something that I find tasteless, and they don't get the same treatment. For people who posted stuff like that, I 100% get where they're coming from. And to a certain extent, I agree, because they're just seeing all these stories about people who are either defenestrated and have their reputations ruined or not. And it doesn't seem to be the same standard. So I do get that. Unanimous decision by the board there, right? No, that's the problem. The board did not, I mean, you can, this is publicly consumable information. I'm very disappointed with our local media for essentially all running the same headline that the new Hanover County has cut ties with its law firm. That is verifiably false. No, it's still the same law firm. Yes. And as Ben mentioned in our pre-show, they have a contract. Now, and it's again, it's just, it's shoddy journalism at the best. There is a contract that I think is a year or two years, however long the term is. That contract is coming up early this year and the board did in fact vote, I think it was six to one or five to, to put out an RFQ or RFP. They voted, yeah, they voted four to three to talk about it. Yes, to add it to the agenda. Which is sometimes meant as a, let's just shop around for other options. It's just a good way, the same way that if you were buying a piece of property, you are trying to buy a house, you might look at more than one property. And it's worth noting when they went into this contract, the law firm kind of acknowledged that this is not what they do most of the time. They do do a ton of government work. Norbert Blanchard in particular is a, as far as I can tell, is a good attorney. We've had some good conversations on record and off about, but he's represented dozens of different stuff. He's tried cases all the way up into the circuit court. So he knows what he's doing in general, but they acknowledge we don't do a ton of like education stuff. So there is again, good reason to see, hey, is there anyone else out there doing this stuff? There aren't a ton of law firms doing this. And there's some really bad blood between the district and some of the firms that do this in the past that they're probably not going to go back to. Exactly. And so all I wanted to say was that, yeah, 100% agree. We were trying to be really clear that they're breaking ties with this attorney. Sure. Still with this law firm. They'll review it next year. They could stay with that firm. They could not. You know, Republican David Perry accused Democrat Tim Merrick of saying, this is punitive. You want to punish this law firm because of the one-time actions of one attorney. And Merrick said, well, you know, it's also about their lack of experience and we should go back and you can make of that what you want. But it was clear that they had not dropped the law firm, that they weren't even dead set on putting out the RFQ, but they would at least talk about it. And that there was no clear mechanism by which they had removed Kromke from serving for them. It seems to be like a conversation they had behind the scenes, but he's part of the deal they get with the law firm. So they can't just say, you know, without a vote, they can't say we're dropping this law firm. And Mr. Kromke actually has a special education background. He does, which was part of the reason for, I think, the outrage left of center. So, Nick, it seems that there's two stories here. The first story is whether it should have been the law firm or whether it should have been the new Hanover County Board of Education that held Mr. Kromke. Sure. And I might even argue before you get to your second point. I want to hear it. I don't even know, Ben, that the school board could vote to remove him. I don't know that their contract even, like, if I hire Ben to do something and I don't, and then I'm like, oh, I don't like Ben. I don't like you, Ben. Go find somebody else to do this for me. Well, no, dude, this line says we're providing the services. Whoever we have available is who you're going to get, whether you like it or not. They didn't contract with Mr. Kromke. They contracted with the law firm. And so I think what they would have to do is be willing to break a contract, which they've done in the past, and say, we will only enter into a new contract. We're breaking this contract. Or, you know, we plan to not renew it. It would be a less drastic move and condition it in a new contract. To say this one individual cannot represent us or something like that. But, you know, God forbid, Norwood has a medical issue or something and can't attend a meeting. If this is the only other guy available, your option is no legal representation at a meeting or this guy. That's, you know, you wouldn't, as a school student, you would not want to put yourself in that spot. It could definitely, it could definitely complicate things. And you need, you... Oh my God, do you need... Especially at the school board, Jesus. If you're questioning why they have to have an attorney, all you have to do is just go to one school board meeting. Or watch a 17-hour meeting online. I mean, they argued at their... They spent 30 minutes arguing how long the meeting should be. I mean, I know... There was a truly surreal moment. I was sitting in my car, just with my head on the steering wheel, just like, this can't be real. I mean, this is a... I know people on the school board that I'm very close with, and I don't say this with any ill will. There is a strong possibility. And this is not just with the current group. I mean, you go back to previous, even with Democrat control, it is by far one of the most... It has to be one of the most dysfunctional government organizations in North Carolina. I mean, these, they will... There was, in years past, and I remember this, and I'm sorry for picking on Judy and Justice, but Judy and Stephanie Kraybill would argue about the agenda. They'd spend an hour and a half at the beginning of the meeting arguing over the minutes of the previous meeting, what the agenda should look like. This is a school board meeting, hasn't even started yet. We're three hours into the meeting and they're arguing over, where should the Pledge of Allegiance be on the meeting? Insane. Could the inherent... I mean, we're always talking about the school board. Could the inherent dysfunctions in school boards be due to the fact that that's where a lot of politicians start? I mean, these folks are not polished elected officials. It's a farm team in some places. And I know for a fact, AAA baby, over the last 10 years, I know the Republican Party and the Democratic Party has told prospective unpolished candidates, why don't you try for the school board? Because it's a little lower... It was a little lower. I think now people think about it a little bit differently. You know, they think about it as being the title fight. The cultural wars of the 2018, 2019, where school boards became... We've talked about it on the show, is that school boards became the center of focus of the cultural war. And so we started focusing on, who are we putting on school boards? Not necessarily are they smart in policy, which they all are. They're smarter than I am on this. But where do they align on cultural wars? I do take your point. I will just say, both parties' benches have been pretty thin over the last couple of years. We've seen a lot of new... Just that we've seen a lot of newcomers, right? Who haven't done sort of the traditional like, I've been on this committee. I've been on this commission. You know my name. I've been out there. I've had this other public facing position. There's been some good candidates who have done that. And I think they've done better. I think that's borne out some political truisms. But yeah, both parties, many elections, I've seen a lot of people who are like, who is this person? That's right, because they're political newbies. Now, the second story here is, and I think I know where you are, is that the story is the story. Is it getting covered fairly? Is it getting covered properly? And you would argue it's not. Yeah, I mean, there were plenty... I got sent these screenshots, plenty of educators within the school system that made what I think anybody would find to be objectionable comments. And I'm not talking about the elected official. I'm talking about employees within the school district that made objectionable comments in the aftermath of Charlie Kirk's assassination, including wishing that his wife would be next. I mean, these are employees within the school district. That was brutal. Yeah, and there was no expose, local commentary about that. And as a conservative who says both of these things are objectionable, I put myself into a situation where I say, I don't really care if these other individuals aren't gonna be held to account, then you're not allowed to hold this attorney to account. It's complete and total hypocrisy. And if we wanna hold our contracts to the level, which I'm fine with, then our employees sure as hell need to be held to the same thing. You can't pick and choose. Did local media break your rule about what you were talking about in Minneapolis and jump before they knew everything? I think if we had reported on Sunday, that would have been breaking the rule. I think by the time we reported it, which was Monday, I believe, at that point we had heard from most of the board members, Republican and Democrat, and from the superintendent, who it was clear to me in my editorial opinion that they were all upset. Now how upset? What they thought the full penalties should be. There is some daylight between some of the board members, but they were all very upset. And I heard from plenty of conservatives that this is not okay. And some of them, because they just felt like the attorney should be held to a higher standard because he advises the board on ethics. Something like that was an argument I heard. Or just because they found the language inappropriate, or they had exceptional needs children and they took offense to that. There was no one key reason. But I think given the amount of feedback we got, and knowing that the elected officials were clearly upset about it, I felt like that was enough to do the story. And by the time we had published, they had sent out a formal statement, which is often like the lowest threshold first for a news story. But you should do more than just republish the statement. But it is enough. It wouldn't be satisfying for me as an editor. I would say, is there anything else? But it is to me like, okay, yes, that is a thing that happened. A high ranking public official said a thing that is news. Are either one of you going to have any of the school board members on your shows to talk about this at all? I mean, I'm personally not. Again, I don't find it to be an interesting or compelling story. I mean, I think it is what it is. I mean, I don't know how much more they would say about it. I think they are a little bit more free to discuss a contractor than they are a direct employee in terms of the state's personnel laws. But I don't know if any of them would want to get into the business beyond what they've already done of saying what they felt about him personally or morally or anything like that. I think Nick made some valid points about the standards we have. One of the problems of media is that we're often only as good as our sources. And I do have conservatives who send me stuff, but not as many as liberals. And if a conservative sent me one of those photos of a teacher and I sent it to the district and said, have you seen this? There's lots of people commenting on it. It seems offensive. I probably would have done that. But they didn't. And to the point that you just made, you wouldn't have gotten a statement from the school. It would have been much harder to get that statement from the school district because of what Ben just noted, which is the personnel law. And the fact that, especially the school board members, they put themselves at serious jeopardy because all of those things are discussed in closed session. That's true. If they reach out to somebody and say, we're dealing with this. Not only can they not talk about it, they can't even name. That's right. And for good reason, because if somebody gets terminated. Now, if they were fired, we would know because we would get the termination. But anything short of that. If, let's say, Ben isn't working at the school district, writes something terrible on Facebook. He is suspended by the superintendent. Ben would have the ability to appeal that to the board of education as his final stop. And so if they comment to somebody before that or open themselves, then you're in a position where you have to recuse yourself. It's just a mess. We had a crazy story, just a tiny glimpse into how this works, where we had clear documentation that had been laid to us about a teacher, it was actually a female teacher, who had inappropriately touched a female student. We knew the teacher's name. We knew the student's name. We talked to the family. We knew pretty much when, where it happened. And they did the Catholic Church thing where they just moved her to another school, which school districts around the country have been doing for a long time. Because they couldn't quite fire. For whatever internal legal reason, which I have to take at face value because they're never gonna tell me about it, this didn't quite get there. And but the superintendent at the time did change policy. And so that was our hook because that was a public record that we could get our hands on. And we could tie it directly to what we knew had happened. We ended up not naming the teacher because we just didn't quite have the legal grounds to do it. It was incredibly difficult. Personnel may have been very, very difficult. And we have heard from folks on the right about some of these teachers. But because of personnel law, we sometimes run right into a brick wall. And I get that different people care about different things. But that personnel law is just a, it is a tough obstacle for reporters across the political spectrum on issues across the political spectrum. I think three quarters of these things, nine tenths of these things would go away if when somebody goes to Facebook or social media or other wherever you go and posts something that they remember that they are always an employee of an organization. Is that they're always, I am always the editor of the Wilmington Standard. I always am. You're always a member of WHQR. You're always part of it. I don't believe me. I know all about it. I went through it in 2024. I know all about it. I know the first amendment protects us from retribution by the federal government, but it doesn't protect us from our employer. It's the largest, I would argue, is the most misconstrued thing in the entire constitution. It really is. I mean, if you go on on a rant, WHQR has every right to fire you. I will tell you, and I know you posted some spicy stuff after the Trump assassination attempt. I posted some spicy stuff over the years. I posted probably the, it's just funny. This tells you a little bit about the political scene. I mean, I posted something critical at the Australia festival. Now that's, I'm surprised you're not going to get thrown into the Cape Fear river and body. It was close. It was close. And I, you know, that was, I've been in HQR for maybe a year and I had probably gotten way too cocky at Port City Daily where I had not very little oversight as far as what I was doing on social media. You know, they helped me to hide editorial standards, but social media, I had too much elbow room, I think. And so I posted this and, you know, the hammer came down and I had said, you know, this is, I'm not saying this on behalf of HQR or as an HQR news director, but I am saying based on, you know, years of covering this as a journalist and that muddied the water too much. And I learned my lesson. I said, from now on, let's just not pretend that there's any work-life separation. You know, there just isn't. And if I say it at the bar, you know, it's still public. I just treat everything I say to everyone as a plausible public statement because if I don't, I have to start like, you know, I need a second phone and I have to, you know, and like... Now you're like a true elected official. At that point, you're actually... Yeah. You know, it's like, oh, I got to text Ben with my off the record phone. So yeah, I mean, I think it would be great if social media could pop up a little screen that's like, as the editor of the Wyoming Standard, are you sure you want to post this? I don't think you would have that much trouble, but... The sports betting apps have this figured out really well. You open up, if you're on too long and I've done this where I'll just like... I'll be in the middle, like making a parlay, but I like put my phone down to do something productive and not piss away my money. And after a certain period of time, you'll get a pop-up that says like, hey, just so you know, you've been logged in for 25 minutes and you've bet X number of dollars. Like it is warning you, you may have a gamble. I'm not kidding. Yeah, I mean, literally, that's what it does. So Facebook needs support. You put a little thing on, you might have a social media. You might have a social media. But one other thing to know, and I know we have to wrap, but it is interesting that even prior to any of this taking place, and this is something that was reported, but seemingly is underreported. Before any outrage had happened, he had deleted the post and publicly apologized, which I'm not saying it justifies it or it admonishes any of it. But I do think that needs to be factored into a decision and a discussion. I mean, there's one thing to say something that you thought at the moment was a funny meme and then go like, okay, this is actually real. This was done in bad taste. I'm going to delete it versus, no, this is what I believe and I'm going to stand by it. I think there's a little bit of nuance and difference. I don't think it says, oh, his job should be spared because of that. But I think it shines a light into maybe a little bit more, what is this like? Is this truly the devil that we're talking about? Or is this a guy that saw a funny meme, probably hates Roy Cooper and is like, hey, A-hole, I think this meme is funny. Like F you. So are they going to send him to sensitivity training? You mean his law firm might? Actually, I've heard anecdotally that they've racked up some surplus business lately because people are voting, conservatives are voting with their dollars in support of him. I've seen those. I've seen those things on Facebook. I'm hiring that lawyer. I will also say, I do think the window of cancer, the timeout period has contracted a lot since we started canceling people online in 2016. It used to be like, you would cancel someone and it'd be like a whole presidential administration before you saw that person again. And now it's like, Ye had his meltdown last year. He's got a full pitch. He's like, a year feels like, I went full anti-Semite. Full anti-Semite. All right, I'll take a year. So I mean, that would be like a lifetime ban. We ban artists forever for like one uncouth word. And so now it's like, all right, they set the timer, like wear a little like wristband and like it's taken down. It's the Simpsons meme where Homer's father walks into the bar, puts his hat on the hat rack, and then immediately picks it up, puts it back on and turns back out the door. I mean, it's the exact same thing. Well, when you have people like Anthony Weiner publicly running for New York City Mayor last year. Anthony Weiner, yeah. Carlos Danger. Yeah, so. Well, or the, I mean, the guy at CNN that was caught pleasuring himself on camera as a CNN journalist. Oh, Jeffrey Toobin. Yeah, Jeffrey, yeah. And then, and then like, by the way, that clip, I just came across my ex feed. They did an immediate interview with him. It is the most uncomfortable thing I've ever watched. And then they hire him back. Like he was like, oh, I thought we were between meetings. I was like, bro, you were at work. Yeah, you're still at work. Hey, man, work from home. Yeah, you got to get your break. It's the best argument for the no more work from home. Yeah, well, and people like Don Lemon or Lamont. Don Lemon is how it's called. Who is back in the middle of everything again. I'm torn about this, right? Because, and we could do a whole other podcast about this. Maybe we should. Yeah, I think we should. But I'll say I agree with you. Pat Bradford tried to make this point. Republican Pat Bradford tried to make this point at the school board meeting. Was that like, there should be some grace? Yeah, I think so. That is, you know, even if the sentence is ultimately the same, maybe the long view is different. Yeah. And like there is in a court of law, the court of public opinion, it feels different when someone apologizes, when someone recognizes that they've screwed up as opposed to someone who like triples down. Yeah, like, oh, you thought that meme was offensive? Let me show you this one. Or like just weirdly like tries to move on without addressing it. Like, I do think that that should be factored in somehow. I don't know how because it's so case specific. But I also feel like, do we, I mean, do we really want to live in a world where, I'm not saying there should be any consequences. There should definitely be consequences. But like, we got to, we got to treat, we got to teach people that you screw up, you know, that freedom of speech is not freedom of consequences. And then you get a chance to come back into the fold because otherwise, why would you not just go down like the most nihilistic path after you were canceled? Yeah, you don't screw all, you know what? I mean, we've seen people take that tack. Yeah, if the death, if it's the death penalty for everything, then it's like it stops, the system stops working. There needs to be some kind of gradients and some kind of willingness for people to be like, you screwed up. And like, if in a couple of years he reapplies, we're like, yeah, that was bad. Yeah. But you know, who amongst us hasn't posted something on Facebook where even your own team got you in the back? And that's one part of it. And then I think the other part is some level of fair application. Yes, I understand every situation, every case has some level of difference and nuance and things of that nature. But for any of that to play out, people have to feel confident that, hey, if somebody does this and something similar to this, that there's going to be a similar level of consequence, maybe in more severe in some cases, maybe less severe in other cases. But if without that, without that piece existing, speaking as somebody on the right, I'm like, you know what, man, if I had to watch all this crap posted and very few people be held to account, freaking have at it. If you want to post the most offensive thing on Facebook, I don't really care. Yeah, that's, that's, that's the, that's the really negative side of me that I'm, that I feel right now. Cause I just don't feel that there's been equal application with that stuff. And it pisses me off beyond belief. Or the other option is, is that if you actually have to post something like that, just post it on Parler because nobody goes to Parler anymore. Or Gap or Blue Sky. What was the other one? That briefly all, all, like everyone on the left, Mastodon. Mastodon. That's what Blue Sky is. But there's like 50 different servers and it was like, I want Mastodons. And it was like, I'm also on Mastodon. It was very strange. Well, as you can see, you probably can't see is that I had notes for an entirely different show, but such is life. We'll get to those later. But what do you got going on the Nick Craig show? I'm still kind of tracking everything. Government shutdown, potentially Friday, the ice thing is going to play into that. We had two Republican senators, Murkowski and Tillis. Tillis really just trying to pile up as much grace before we get some major contracting job with Deloitte or somebody like that. After he leaves. We used to say about my grandfather, who was a very ordinary man, started becoming a much nicer guy. And we all joked that he was an old man trying to get into heaven. He's an old man trying to get into consulting. And he will, the second his foot steps out of the Senate, he will have a multi-million dollar a year job. So that's going to, that government shutdown is expect a partial shutdown Saturday night into Sunday morning, which will coincide with potentially some white stuff falling from the sky. Yeah, we're talking snow. We're not talking the other stuff that happens. I think a CIA plane broke up over the town. What do you got going on? We're gearing up for primary candidates forums next week. Is that really next week? We've got, I can't believe it. Yeah, we're working on the logistics today, but it's Republicans and Democrats for the school board on Monday. And then Democrats for the county commission on Wednesday because there's no Republican primary. Some people are like, why aren't you hosting the Republicans? I was like, calm down. If you're a Republican, you're not voting in the county. They got their, they got their bench for commissioners under control. And then the next week we're doing something with ECT and Port City Daily again in Leland for Brunswick County, DA and sheriff. I think that'll be really interesting. Sheriff race is interesting. Very interesting. Very popular, probably a young sheriff over there too. The Chisholm or Daniels? Oh, I don't know. I met one of them. He's a Republican. Yeah. I have heard a lot of discord from Republicans because Brunswick County sits mostly white harem over there about the sheriff's office. Did you just say white harem? No, no, no, no, no. I said, I've heard a lot of discord from Republicans in Brunswick County because that's who's over there. Oh, okay. Yeah. It's, it's a Ruby Red County. No, no, no. That'd be a wild, wild thing to drop at the end of the episode. Who've just had a lot of frustrations with the way that office was run under John Ingram V from budgetary concerns to morale issues to workplace stuff. And as far as I can tell, you know, Chisholm, they hoped that he would sort of address some of those things. And I think this will be a little bit of a referendum on that. The DA's race, totally wild. Cause you've got John David, King of three counties, sort of appointed his successor as DA's often do. And then someone taking a run at that establishment. It is so hard. It is so hard to flip the establishment tide in a DA's race because you face the prospect of having to hire 20, 25, you know, absolute rockstar attorneys who all leave because they were either politically or personally loyal to the old day. Like that's a wild race. Oh yeah. So that's what you got going on. That's what we got going on. So Nick Craig, nickcraig.com. Yes sir. You are also on YouTube, Rumble, X, Facebook. Not on Parler, on WBT Radio in Charlotte, all over the place. That's right. How is that radio going? Doing good. Outstanding. Late night I can say whatever. I saw you at least once just like kill a cuss word in the cradle. You were like, and that's not good. It slips up every once in a while, but yeah, it's interesting. Like in private conversation, I can use profanity and like, and I know when it's appropriate, when it's not. And it's just something about when you're sitting in front of a microphone, you're just, your body, like you don't slip. Your body just knows. I don't know what it is, but your mind and your body knows. Don't say it. It's very, very odd. And yes, there have been plenty of times where you've heard a long pause, even back on my radio days here in Wilmington, where it was like, the next word that's coming out of my mouth is F-U-C-K. But I can't say that. So I'm going to pause for six seconds. And you're going to wonder if I died or if your radio is broken. And you and your staff are working hard over at WHQR. What's on the radio dial? Where on the radio dial? 91.3 FM or WHQR.org. Outstanding. Streaming, live streaming and all that. Outstanding. So, and if you haven't subscribed to Nick, make sure you go to nickcraig.com. Check out his subscriptions over there and make sure that you subscribe, especially to Ben's Sunday update, required reading. So, and make sure that you also check out the Wilmington Standard as we strive to give you all the best in conservative commentary here in Wilmington. So, Nick. Thanks, guys. Appreciate a great talk. Ben, good to see you. Yeah, good game. See you next week. I'm Will Sample. Thanks for listening.