All right, talk to us about the midterms, what's coming up, and the fact that, you know, you can have all these, you know, traditional, you know, polling and modeling and so on, and at the end of the day, it could be all wrong.

Yeah, look, I- if I had to [laughs] use one word to describe polling nowadays, just modern polling generally, it would be garbage.

There's a lot of reasons.

I mean, I think one of the biggest things is that from an operational standpoint, the polls measure flat.

And what I mean by that is the broader a poll is, the more those polls flatten out.

And so you can have a poll that is completely wrong because you got a couple districts, two, three, five districts in a state that have good activists in them.

They've maybe got a good local party.

What are your predictions as we come into the midterm? Do we retain the House? Do we lose it? W- what happens in the Senate? What are your thoughts?

Can you say that again for the people in the back?

He said if...

Y- yeah.

Plato said if you fail to engage in politics, then you are destined to be governed by your inferiors.

And so if you're out there and you just go like, "I don't have time.

I don't know..." Well, okay, so then you're just gonna have evil people, idiots, incompetents.

That's who's going to govern you, and you're giving them permission to do that.

[upbeat music]

And, uh, Mark Meckler, thank you so much for joining me, and, um, I'd love to get, you know, your thoughts on, uh, why compassion and care for animals is so personal to your Christian faith as well.

Yeah.

Well, thanks for having me, Jenna, and it was great to connect with you over this.

It's funny 'cause we know each other politically, right? And, and the political world is so messy and mean and aggressive and vicious that you gotta have something else in your life.

And of course, for you and I, that anchor point is our faith, and God created all the animals.

And in my life, animals have always been a place of respite.

And, you know, Patty and I, we're big Great Dane fans, and we've been married 33 years.

Mm-hmm.

Have you ever heard them, any of them, say anything positive about or patriotic about America at all in the last few years?

No.

They don't even do it when they're in power.

I mean, they have a more positive attitude towards the politicians when they're in power.

But about America, they're embarrassed about America.

They hate America.

They wanna fundamentally transform America.

Oh, brother

Where does that movement stand today? How close are we to that? And is it possible to get there with such a divided nation? I

want to start with just a brief primer on what that is, because I think a lot of people don't know.

Even people who are politically aware don't understand Article 5 gives us in the states the power to call a convention, to propose amendments to the Constitution, to restrain federal tyranny.

Everybody knows that Congress can propose amendments.

We've done it 27 times and amended the Constitution.

Everybody knows Congress has the power to do that.

Very few people realize that when two-thirds of the states want to gather in convention, they could do the same thing.

What do you say?

Where does that movement stand today? How close are we to that? And is it possible to get there with such a divided nation? I

want to start with just a brief primer on what that is, because I think a lot of people don't know, even people who are politically aware don't understand.

Article 5 gives us in the states the power to call a convention, to propose amendments to amendments to the Constitution, to restrain federal tyranny.

Everybody knows that Congress can propose amendments.

We've done it 27 times and amended the Constitution.

Everybody knows Congress has the power to do that.

Very few people realize that when two-thirds of the states want to gather in convention, they could do the same thing.

What do you say?

What would you say about that?

Yeah.

I think it's an existential threat to the Western world, for sure.

And all we have to do is look at history, and you can go all the way back to the very beginning and look at Muhammad, um, the great prophet of Islam, as they call him, and he was a warlord.

That's what he did for a living.

He went out and he committed conquest.

He enslaved people.

What should-- before we talk about religious freedom, what should we be doing differently, or what should we be aware of? Because it sounds like, from what you're saying, we're being manipulated into envy and hatred for reasons that don't have to do with making America better, but actually tearing it down.

Will you walk us through some of that, Mark?

All right.

Well, let's start with 1787 and the Framers, 'cause we'll clear their reputation.

And the reason that people think, and, and I think this is important, Tim, you say good-hearted people believe this.

I, I think that's important.

Most people believe 1787 was a, quote-unquote, "runaway convention," or they were sent only to amend the articles, until recently, until Rob Natelson looked at the original commissions.

These are documents taken by each of these guys, you can actually go see them in the National Archives, taken by each of the people who went to convention.

Uh, Mark, that's what you've done, is now 20 states with an exact same call for the exact same subject matters.

Yeah.

And it was an attraction, and it was fascinating to look at and fascinating to watch it rattle its tail, but if you ever open the jar, you're gonna get bit, and that's what he was describing.

Like, how do you manage the toxicity in the midst of the positive stuff coming out of it? My response was, "You don't.

You, you gotta cut yourself off from that." He did sometime later, but he cut himself off when she actually started to sort of lean into the more pro-Nazi stuff.

He obviously couldn't tolerate that, and that's when he broke ways with her.

But this conversation, he was very clear.

Candace was not a friend of his.

How do you feel about Brian's chances in that defamation case?

I

Like, this is something I've been fighting for for over a decade.

Term limits are something that are, again, almost universally desired by the American people.

And I would say not just for Congress, but we also need them on the deep state, these bureaucrats and staffers that stick around for 20 or 30 years and really control the levers of power.

Convention of States, our organization, has been pushing not just for term limits but for a balanced budget amendment, for other amendments that would do away with some of the power from the federal government and give it back to the states.

It takes 34 states to call that convention.

So far, 20 have done so, and people can figure out more about that at conventionofstates.com.

Aren't the voters the term limit? By putting in term limits, don't you take power out of the hands of the voters to some degree?

Tell the folks what you're doing and why it's so important.

Yeah, well, look, Washington DC is out of control.

We see they can't test the Save America Act.

87% of people support voter ID.

Simple things like you can't vote if you're not a citizen.

People want a balanced budget.

People want term limits.

Your thoughts?

I

mean, she's just, she oozes charisma.

She's articulate.

She's intelligent.

She's pretty.

I mean, she's got, she's the full package as a broadcaster.

And so I knew she was going to be really famous.

Zero to

Can that actually be met? Is this a possible reality? And how does it play out in reality?

Yeah, and I want to extend your analogy a little bit.

I think it's fantastic.

In the United States of America, we are essentially the stockholders.

We own the country.

We are ultimately sovereign.

The stockholders of a company are the sovereign in the company.

What are things you say would be more fringy that you're not going to focus on with this? And what are the main tip of the spear issues that this could actually move the needle on?

Is there any currency to that idea? i think it's a perfect idea

there's one thing i want to push back on is it did used to be true that the pay in the private sector was better than the public sector but nowadays in the public yeah in the public sector nowadays with all the pensions and benefits and job protections and the pay raises they get in the public sector they generally get paid more than equivalent private sector jobs so they're getting more money they're getting lifetime tenure they're getting these pensions And then, and this is really the only important piece I think you missed, their incentive is to grow the government.

Because when they grow the government, their power grows, their influence grows, their financial benefits grow.

So it's just a broken system all the way around.

And we're not going to punish you for that.

Well, in the private sector, you'd probably get a bonus and a promotion for doing that.

And this points to something really important.

Our incentives are broken inside of our government.

So for listeners who may not be familiar, can you kind of outline as we get started with this conversation, what is the Convention of States project and what is it exactly that you're working to accomplish?

Sure.

Well, Article 5 contains the ways in which we are allowed to amend the United States Constitution.

It contains two ways.

The first is the one we've used 27 times, and that's when both houses of Congress agree by a two-thirds vote they want to propose an amendment.

They agree on that amendment.

They take the vote and they send it out to the states for ratification by three quarters of the states.

How do you keep this thing on the tracks?

Yeah.

And in that book, which President Trump actually read, he doesn't just complain, and it wasn't just pabulum for the masses.

He wasn't just trying to sell books.

He says, "This is what's been done to our warrior class, and this is how you fix it." So Trump had read that book.

He's like, "Well, if we want the then DOD, now DOW, fixed, well then, I got a guy that knows how to fix it, so let's bring him in and have him fix it." And the thing is, I've known Pete literally now probably 13 years personally.

Yes.

He gives...

He is, he is willing to give blood for them.

[laughs] Yes.

And so if you're watching D.C. and you think, well, they're, they don't do anything right, they're not gonna do anything right, they never do anything right, well, then the question has to be, so what do we do about that? And there is something to do about it.

The Framers of the Constitution put a little magicRemedy inside of Article 5 of the Constitution.

Article 5 is where we get the power to amend, and they knew, they actually said to us that at some point, the federal government will become a tyranny, and we need to be able to do something to rout around the federal government to fix the federal government, and that is to call what's called a convention of the states.

It takes 34 states to call a convention of the states.

There are 34 states, two-thirds have to agree in advance what they want to talk about.

In our case, what we want them to talk about is term limits.

Yes

there would be some pretty big risks because when i look at government these days let's just say i have some pretty deep concerns

well you should for sure but you're going to love this as a guy who loves history i know you love history here's a little buried piece of history that's probably going to make you feel better which is what you said about that original convention is not actually true.

And there's a lot of reasons we believe it's true.

I'll explain what those reasons are.

But if you go back and you pull the commissions for the convention, the commissions are literally a piece of paper that each of the delegates brought with them to convention.

And seven states empowered their commissioners before Congress even said anything.

The commissions themselves, you can find those on our websites, actually have this language in them.

So it's kind of a long question that I just asked you there, but do you see us being able to fight through that and come together, or is this going to cause division within the church? Yeah.

And then the House today, the numbers were off the chart.

Yeah.

So what happened here in the Kansas constitution, it's a really weird thing back in, uh, 1979.

So one year, uh, sorry, 74, one year after Roe versus Wade, there's something inserted in the Kansas constitution that we've come to call the Roe protection amendment.

The Kansas Constitution was amended in a lot of ways back then, a big amendment, but there's no debate, there's no discussion, there's no public record of why they put this one thing in.

And this one thing is, it said that the state can't call a convention of states by a mere majority of the legislature.

It takes two-thirds of both houses.

I mean, President Trump's made a couple of things here and there, but it seems like another year of the same old, same old in Congress is only going to create more energy in the movement.

No, for them, not me.

Do you like it? [laughing] That's for you, Mark, and they love you.

They understand that you set the intellectual foundation for this movement.

I mean, they're out there, and I agree with you, they're doing the hard work.

They're the ones getting it done.

But when you wrote the book, Liberty Amendments, I mean, there's this story we tell all the time: You didn't know I was doing this-

What do you have lined up next?

[laughing] Man, next, Mark, we're, we're on the move.

They weren't involved in any of it, were they?

No, they weren't involved in any of it.

They're, you know, they're...

This is where I think you're entirely unique, Mark.

I mean, you've been deep in the political process.

Obviously, you worked in the White House.

You've written books about this.

We've already seen some of that, haven't we?