FM Talk 1065 Podcasts
Quin Hillyer - Biden vs Trump Debate - Mobile Mornings - 7-02-24
We'll see you in the next one. >> News, sports, weather from Dr. Bill Williams, traffic and both from Kane and one of the Gulf Coast's most familiar voices. It's Mobile Mornings with Dan Brennan and Dalton R.Wig. [MUSIC] >> Morning from Dan and Dalton at Pinchalk 106.5, it is just about seven minutes after eight o'clock on Mobile Mornings on your Tuesday, which happens to be the 2nd of July, inching our way closer to the National Holiday on July 4th. >> That's right and I heard from Leanna that traffic is already bad. She was coming into work, so hopefully if you're heading out anywhere, it clears up for you whenever you decide to leave for the beach or wherever you're headed for the fourth. But hopefully everyone has a safe, independent stay later this week. It is a Tuesday, that means it's time to talk with our Tuesday guest. That would be Quinn Hillier. You can read his work at quinhillier.com and also the Washington Examiner. And a banner term for the US Supreme Court ended with a very, very busy week, even had to tack on an extra day. And the final ruling we get from them is maybe the most waited on decision. And that came yesterday in Trump v USA in presidential immunity, Quinn. >> Yes, and I think conservatives are very badly mistaken if they celebrate this decision. And let me explain why both practically and according to the Constitution. Practically, if you reverse things, if Hillary Clinton had squeaked by to beat Trump in 2016, and then Trump had squeaked by to beat Hillary in 2020. And Hillary had done to Trump, or had done a lot of the things Trump did. And then was being tried and asked for immunity. Almost every conservative in the country, 99.9% would have been saying absolutely no way should this immunity, this level of immunity be granted. It wouldn't be close, conservatives would be yelling from the rooftops that even to suggest that level of immunity for a former president would be abominable. And yet because it's Trump, because it's a Republican, suddenly we want the immunity that we would not want if it were Clinton. Think about that, this is setting a precedent for basically forever. And certainly for until there's a court that will overturn it, and that can only happen if it's given the right circumstances to overturn it. So practically speaking, we should be worried if that which is done for supposedly us is not something we would want if the shoe were on the other foot. And practically speaking, where I'll stop there. >> Well, and let's, the Hillary Clinton thing. I would say, she continues to this day to say that the 2016 election was phishing. And don't forget the report that she cooked up that claimed massive amounts of Russia in collusion with Trump, but it led to years and years of impeachment trials and speculation that was completely unfounded. So I would say in a different way she did go about trying to end the Trump presidency. >> But I'm talking about giving immunity to her if she had actually won in 2020 and won in 2016 and then lost in 2020, but had done all sorts of things that were questionable and had been tried, et cetera, et cetera. And she claimed immunity for a whole lot of really questionable actions. There's no way any conservative, including a judicial conservative would say yes. That's just, the conservatives here are looking too much at who is immediately affected rather than the long term. But apart from that, it's really weird. The conservatives, conservative judges all the time say, you've got to look at the text and the history, the text of the Constitution, the text of the statutes, and the history surrounding it. What was the original public meaning? You read those decisions yesterday. And it's the conservatives who are taking like court cases that themselves vastly extrapolated from the text. And then they're pushing them further and extrapolating further and then further. So what they're doing is they're saying, well, logically you can extend this and then logically you can extend that and pretty soon you're getting into emanations from Penumbros, which is what hurt us in abortion cases 50 years ago. And you read the dissent and the dissent is from the liberals is citing text, is citing history, is citing near constitutional text, which is the federalist papers. And they're basing it in what the law and the Constitution actually says what it was actually understood to mean at the beginning and what the history shows. So why is it that suddenly conservatives are abandoning what we've said all along before, which is text, history, and context? And Quinn, this is certainly your lane. You've been studying this thing in America, the Constitution, American history for a long time, but just from what I've, you know, from what I read and then watching some other commentators, including, you know, Attorney General, former Attorney General Bill Barr, who is no fan of Donald Trump, that with this being viewed through such short-term and partisan lens that liberals and people that don't like Trump are acting like Robert's decision granted full immunity for every single thing, when to me it looks like he kind of parsed into three separate categories, official acts, and then acts on the kind of periphery of what the official presidential job would be, and then non-official acts. And he passed it down to the lower court to have them kind of, you know, decide piece by piece what constitutes an official act or an unofficial act. And also looking at, from the other side, you have Biden, and whether you believe it or not, I fully believe that he is sicking his dogs and have on Trump since he came into office and that this Robert's decision protects presidents, present, past, and future to allow them to do what they need to do without worry about political retribution once the next president comes into office, whether that president's a Republican or Democrat. That's the way that Robert's decision read to me. Well, okay, let me take the first two points on the trifurcating things into three different groups. First of all, not even the Trump people said that unofficial acts should be immune. So that's actually not much of, I mean, that's not even at play, and yet the court, John Roberts, acted as if that's a big one, given that up. Secondly, he says, absolute immunity for every core responsibility. Now that's hugely sweeping language, and he included in core responsibilities any discussions with the Justice Department. Now, if you take that literally, if the president calls the Justice Department and says, I want you to arrest and set up a mock trial and execute pro-lifers, he could be impeached and remove from office if it were found out, he could not be tried criminally. Now that's pretty scary, okay? If the sweeping nature of the absolute immunity and the number of things that were identified as core responsibilities, that if you give it to a future president, Kamala Harris, every conservative in the country is going to say, "Oh my God, what have we gotten ourselves into because she is going to weaponize us like we've never seen," okay? And then the middle category turns out not to be much of a middle at all, because it says the president is presumptively immune for every official act within the outer limits of his power, not reasonable limits within the absolute outer limits. He is presumptively immune, and to show that he's not immune, the prosecution has to show that there is no damage done even conceivably to official duties. So that means that anything that he can claim is part of his powers, if it is at all affected by any consideration, then you can't be prosecuted criminally for. You know what that would have meant, that would have meant, Gerald Ford would not have needed to pardon Richard Nixon, because Nixon would have already been stop free. I could think of example after example, where this is just in practice in history and in reading the Constitution, it makes no sense. But would Nixon have still been the president? No. Nixon could have been impeached and removed, but Nixon, in fact I'm reading a book right now by Nixon's and Reagan's speech writers and my friend Kim Kitchy, and talking about this exact thing. When Nixon got out the first month, you know, there was a lot of public discussion, you know, that okay, Nixon was going to have to prepare to defend himself criminally, because it was just assumed based on every cogent reading of the Constitution that he was still criminally liable. Well according to this ruling, he would not be criminally liable. And so you've got to look A, what does the Constitution say, B, what does the text say, and C, what does this mean if you take Trump out of it, if you take Clinton out of it, if you don't know who you're talking about, what precedent are you setting in right now, the precedent would be setting an unbelievable amount of uncontrolled power for a president without any criminal retribution. Let's look at this quickly, politically, before we get to the break and we'll get to the debate after the break, Quinn, but real quickly, politically this sets up for the Democrats much as they use Roe v. Wade and the emotion of that to better outcomes than a lot of people predicted back in the midterms. This sets up for Democrats to go right along with their narrative that Trump is, say, the ultimate bogeyman, somebody you should be scared to elect in the office, that's their narrative and this plays into it, correct? Of course it plays into it and you know what this did? It's not completely, but it largely takes the fear of a totally decrepit, demented Biden off of the front pages and puts the fear back on Donald Trump, where it is. So this is not a good thing for Republicans who want to be Joe Biden, because exactly what you said this plays right in the Democrats' political hands. It's a bad decision on substance, it's a bad decision on practical precedent and it's a bad decision short term for the politics of it. I think it's a great decision for Republicans who don't want to see their presumptive nominee locked up by his political opponents leading into this election. I mean, that is the most immediate thing we're talking about here, and I don't think any president during their term should have to be looking over their shoulders for who's going to be elected next who might want to try to put them in jail, whether it's drone strikes you're talking about with Obama or anything else. Well, then don't do things that leave yourself open to being put in jail, but guess what? This still won't keep Trump out of jail because it has nothing to do with state courts and the problem is the ridiculous prosecution, mostly ridiculous, from Alvin Bragg, could go on regardless because this only affects federal cases and that was not a federal case. So Trump could still be in jail after all of this. Now, Quinn Hilliard, Quinn Hilliard.com, the Washington Examiner. More with Quinn will turn our attention to last Thursday night and get your take on that Quinn, okay? Okay. It's 8-20, Dan and Dalton. Dan and Dalton, they're going to talk 1-0-6-5 on mobile mornings on the 2nd of July, Tuesday morning, Quinn Hilliard, Quinn Hilliard.com, and the Washington Examiner, he's been a political columnist and observer for a long time, but I won't even hesitate to say you've never seen anything like what we saw on Thursday night on that debate stage, Quinn. That was appalling. It was frightening. It was inexcusable and for the media to pretend that they are so surprised, actually they might be because they live in such a little bubble and they willingly lie to themselves in each other and willingly ignore absolute proof facts, right, in front of them in order to push their narratives. But the truth is, and it has been obvious for anybody with half a brain for a long, long time that Biden is slipping into a form of senility. That doesn't mean that he has Alzheimer's or something like that, but it means that he has moments that are worse than just foggy that make him basically incapacitated sort of in and out of incapacitation. And if there is a crisis while he's in one of those interludes, we're in a boatload of trouble. We are inexcusable for the Democrats, not just to put up with him until January 20th, but to actually expect the country, ask the country to put this man in office for four more years. It is appalling. It is inexcusable. It is un-American. And you know, while we don't have a diagnosis to point to, I think pretty much everyone has someone with dementia or a similar ailment in their family. So a lot of people know exactly what's happening, at least the decline in his mental capabilities. And you're right. I mean, it's surprising, but not really, that so many people have just been behind the curtain, I guess, and had no clue that this is the road we've been headed towards for such a long time, then the calls immediately after the debate, especially before everyone got their marching orders were, oh man, gotta get him out, gotta get a different Democrat in there, someone who can actually string thoughts together during a 90 minute debate. Things have kind of toned down on that front after some of the politicians like Obama and Pelosi said, no, he's going to stick the course. But I was thinking this week with Independence Day coming up, if they were to make a move, got the July 4th news dump, it's also a patriotic week, I don't know if we'll see something if Biden decides to step out if it would be this week or not. But you kind of explored the potential of the Democrats replacing him in an article this week. Yeah, I did an imaginary phone call between both Obama's, both Clinton's, Hakeem, Jeffrey's, Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, and Schumer, and Ron Klein, who was the chief of staff for Biden for a long time, calling Joe and Jill, and it's been laying down a lot of them and saying either you get out and make it look like you're doing it on your own, or we're going to publicly issue a statement saying that you should get out, and you'd be dead meeting, you know, there's no way you would recover politically from that anyway. And then they gotta come on Harris, and they say, look, if you run, you're going to get crushed, there's no way you can win, and you'll be a husband in your career. You'll be over, why don't you, instead, take a lifetime appointment, which would mean you would not even have to worry about all the messiness of politics. Take a lifetime appointment to the Ninth Circuit, Federal Court of Appeals. You can't be removed unless you, you know, go do bribery or something, and you might be set up to the Supreme Court in the future, and guess what? If you don't take this, we're going to endorse somebody else anyway. That could actually do it, especially if they then replace them with the right ticket, which I also outlined in the piece. You can see it at, uh, at, uh, at QuinnHoyer.com, or Google it at QuinnHoyer in Washington, examiner. That's what they should do. So far, they have it, although I am told this. I have a very good source who tells me that his very good source. So this is second hand or third hand said that Obama and some others already made a call to Joe urging him to get out, and Joe said no, and that's when Obama and Clinton then said, well, if, if we can't talk him out of it, we better bolster him so he wins, and that's when they put out their statements, but, you know, be that as it may, either way, they're not, they don't have the guts so far to do it publicly, and the threat of doing it publicly is the only thing that's going to get him out. You know, it's amazing time to live in. It reminds me kind of like, uh, Biden and Kamala are squatters in the house, even though, you know, they hold the office, but I don't think either wants to leave, uh, with just a minute over, and I know there's all kinds of candidates that could potentially replace Biden, but let's say Kamala doesn't make her way out, and she is the candidate. Is Trump performed better against Kamala or Biden? Is it about the same? It's likely better against Kamala, uh, because she is so not just unpopular but unlikable, and the more people see her, the less they like her, uh, at least people like some people like Biden, uh, anybody that likes Kamala, you got to remember she, she was supposed to be one of the two front runners in 2020, and instead she was the first semi-major person to drop out because her polls had tanked so badly before she even made it into December of 2019 actually. Yeah, Buttigieg was, Buttigieg was, uh, was running pretty hot at that time, and then South Carolina happened, and suddenly here's Joe Biden. All right, Quinn, uh, Washington Examiner, Quinn Hillier dot com places they can read your stuff, right? Yes, indeed. Thanks a lot, guys. Thank you. Have a wonderful independent state Quinn, and we'll come back and turn up your voice to 51-34-30-106, you can hop on the phone line or the text lines there. 834, FM Talk 106-5, and Mobile Morning's coming to the text line here in a minute, 51-34-30-106 plus fans of EBSledge, Eugene Sledge, author of With the Old Breed, Paley Lou and Okinawa. We'll get into a very cool story regarding him and Paley Lou here in just a minute, but this segment brought you by our good friends over at Tobias and Comer Law, the local personal injury law firm. It's helped get fair compensation for a ton of people in our area, and they've been doing it for decades from their office down on Dauphin Street. I've talked about this so often, but of course, you see billboards all around advertising, and so many of those attorneys aren't really from this area. They have offices as you call, and you might not ever even talk with them. At Tobias and Comer Law, they are here. They are local. They shop or we shop. Go to church. We go to church, and they represent people around here because they live around here, and they give you that kind of effort as well, and so often I've heard so many stories of people who've gone into their offices or talked with them, and then they even stay friendly with them after the case runs its course. That's just the kind of good people they are at Tobias and Comer Law, and a great conversation yesterday with Lacey Smith from Tobias and Comer as we were talking about. Bike safety as we head into summer, so many children out there on the roads, and we also have, of course, these e-bikes, which have become so massively popular. I know you're seeing more and more out there, just some great tips on staying safe and keeping the kids safe, whether you're the ones on the bike or you're in a car, and there's bikes around. You can check that out along with a ton of other great information at TobiasComerLaw.com, plus you can check out all of our Law 251 podcasts from over the years at that same site, or fmtalk1065.com, so that website TobiasComerLaw.com, you'll also find the phone number there for a free consultation at any time of the day, 251-432-5001, that's TobiasComerLaw.com. On the text line, a text we're commenting about, "Quinn's source in Washington, D.C. My neighbor's best friend, sisters, uncle's dad's dog knows somebody very important in D.C., and they told me, "Phew, an interpreter, Joe Biden got a phone call from Obama." Okay, they go on with that, but anyway, that's so questioning Quinn's resources in D.C. Yeah, I'm no law student. I thought one time about going to law school, and that was the one time I thought about it. That's as far as it went. I've been pretty good at arguing with people over the years, but a lot of this is above me. I'll be honest with you. A lot of the decisions, there's certain things you have to outsource when it comes to your life makes things easier to depend on experts. You have experts coming to your house today. It's hot outside to say the least, and they're going to make sure that it's not so hot in your house. You outsource that, and you get the results that you want. No shame in that. We talked about this earlier this week, or late last week, we're here every day, we report the news, we pontificate, we opine, but you and I both do a good bit of reading, podcasting, researching to have an idea of what's what, because sometimes it's hard to know what's up and what's down. You read two opinions on something, and they're miles apart, and they seem like both sensible people. Anyway, and there's also perils of outsourcing your thoughts, outsourcing all of the work because just think of COVID. We until 2020, and I know some of you out there, especially who have been on the anti-vax train for a lot longer, said, "Oh, we should have never trusted a lot of these health officials, but look what happened there." I think as a nation put too much stock in decision makers who know medicine, that was a major, major problem. You need to get varied opinions as well from experts, but I will never know more about law than John Roberts or Clarence Thomas or really any of the nine Supreme Court justices. From what I've read and looked through with this, the ruling makes perfect sense. We don't, and just take the Democrats, and they're going to shift this whole thing to being about the Supreme Court, like you were saying, just like Roe v. Wade and weaponize it all. They weaponize Roe v. Wade, got out the emotional vote and did very well in the midterms. Nobody saw that coming. Same thing. This is right before the election. Politically, I don't think it's a winner for Republicans. Politically. Right. That's enough against Biden or whoever the nominee may be that it doesn't matter as much as that midterm bid where Trump was not literally on the ballot. Right. True. Right. But Tim Scott said it. Senator Tim Scott, and you played that audio earlier, we said this is now about the Supreme Court and Democrats. Their messaging will be, "Look at what this Trump appointed court has done to our nation. Can you believe it? That they're running us into the ground." And though some of these decisions take away some of the presidential decisions, but just taking power out of the federal bureaucracy and at least taming it with the Chevron ruling and the EPA ruling and the SEC ruling, just some great stuff coming from this conservative court. And it will be used against them in the upcoming elections. But I like getting opinions for people who are as objective as possible. And while I think Attorney General Bill Barr certainly had an axe to grind towards the end of the Trump term, I really don't think he's any fan of Donald Trump. And of course, there's been a war of words between them. It's tamed down here lately, but especially after 2020, things got really heated between them. The Democrats, the liberals that never Trumpers after this ruling yesterday are looking at it in such a short-term lens, all they want to see is Trump put in jail, completely ignoring the fact that this ruling would make it impossible for Trump to put Biden in jail for things he did during his presidency, if they were official acts. I mean, this is about the future. Yeah. You're right. You're right about that. I mean, Biden probably should be thankful in some ways because he himself could get trapped up in all this with what he's done in his presidency, right? He could be prosecuted as well. And so, and there are checks on the presidential power even after this ruling. You still have Congress and I know it's asking a lot of them to do their job, but they still have, you know, the keys to the kingdom as it were. They can impeach presidents if what they've done is incredibly wrong. You still have the voters who were the ultimate check on power or should be who decides who is in office or is in an office. So all of this fretting yesterday from the left, including from Sotomayor and her dissent, where they keep bringing up the seal team six thing and that Trump could have his political opponents shot dead in the middle of fifth Ave, if he could have the seal team go out and do that and be completely covered by this immunity, that is not what Roberts ruled at all. It's so far from what he ruled. Here is Bill Barr, former attorney general who, like I said, no fan of Donald Trump. Here was his response to the fretting from the left after this decision yesterday. The dissent by Justice Sotomayor, I think unfairly portrays the majority opinion. The question is what's the function being performed? What's the authority being used? Not what instrument is being used. So for example, the president can direct that a case be dropped and that's part of his constitutional authority, but you know, he cannot accept a bribe to do that because that's receiving a bribe. He doesn't have authority to receive a bribe. Another example would be he has the right to go and tell the Department of Justice to investigate something, but an example used by Justice Sotomayor was, oh, then he can fabricate evidence, give the evidence to the department and tell them to use that to indict them. He doesn't have authority to fabricate evidence. It's not carrying out an executive function. And the worst example, I think, the one that makes no sense whatsoever is the idea that he can use seal team sex to kill a political opponent. The president has the authority to defend the country against foreign enemies, armed conflict and so forth. He has the authority to direct the justice system against criminals at home. He doesn't have authority to go and assassinate people. So whether he uses the seal team or a private hitman, it doesn't matter. It doesn't make it a carrying out of his authority. So all these horror stories really are are are are false. Maybe so. Yeah. And so do we want our president, whoever it is, whether it's Donald Trump, Pete Buttigieg, Gavin Newsom, insert candidate here, when they are the president, do we want them looking over their shoulder every second of every day wondering if so and so wins the next election, are they going to bring charges against me? Are they going to try to put me away for doing my job, which is to lead really the United States? But we know president is leader of the free world. There is so much responsibility in that position that would anything ever get done if they had to worry about criminal prosecution, and this had been decided civilly in that Nixon case. And I think it was 82. The Supreme Court had that one that you can't civilly punish a president after they get out of office. And this kind of just stayed in that same track just with criminal prosecution. And yeah, you're going to hear a lot more bedwetting. And that's what I think the Pennsylvania Center federal, he said the liberals were bedwetting because of the Biden debate, and they just need to stick the course. You're going to hear a lot more liberal and never Trump or bedwetting leading up to the election. And they're saying, you know, the keys to a dictatorship. We've already seen the lines that have been trotted out there. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait to see the ads. Wait to see the dramatic ads as we get into this in the into this campaign season. It's going to blow your book shouldn't, but both sides. I mean, do you think the Republican Republicans got anything to work with from some of the material quote unquote that Joe Biden provided on Thursday night? My God. What did we want? What did we witness? We were shocked. Yeah. Sad and a little mad because that's our president. Really? How long you been hiding that? And then of course with Trump, we know the narrative, this is going to come at us a hundred miles an hour with the criminal and with the intent to take take down his political opponents with with no mention of him being tracked down like a Fox and that more rabbit Fox. Yeah. The this these ads and take away the ads and just talk about the rhetoric. We didn't hear on TV this morning on CBS on NBC on ABC because we're doing our job. Can you imagine what was said this morning on those mainstream? We have the news right down the middle for you. So you know, I'm that's what many Americans are consuming. And that that's why so many Americans have got the the Trump disorder. And I've never watched the view outside of a couple clips that have gone viral online. I might have to what anyone out there tell me what time the view comes on. I might have to record it or make an appointment viewing today because that is probably going to be some spectacular entertainment 11 o'clock and by 11.08 you'll be throwing out. You think so. And text you're here, Ray said, I saw on Fox 10 where AOC will be filing for impeachment for the Supreme Court. This is nuts just impeaching everyone when it's not fair. Yeah, I saw that. And yeah, that that will be the main push. It's now now it's not so much Biden v. Trump, although it is it's Biden v. Trump v. Trump's Supreme Court. Yeah. And they saw success with that in the midterms like Dan said earlier, I think you could probably expect that same route of attack here. You know, what's also entertaining and is the infighting that's going on between potential Democrat candidates, if they don't slide in here during this presidency for the 2028 election and the infighting that's going on there, did you see that the Gretchen Whitmer leaked text where she reached out to someone with the Biden campaign and basically said, there's no way in hell we're winning Michigan after this. And the latest poll shows Trump up four points in Michigan. If Biden doesn't get Michigan, he's not getting the electoral college. And that text she sent was leaked. And the thought is that you've got other players and other allegiances within that Biden camp for who they'd like to see in office in 2028 or if someone replaces Biden early. So that will be fascinating to watch over the coming years as well, kind of the infighting in the Democrat party, whether it's Pritzker or Whitmer or Newsom, they're all going to be at each other's necks going forward. And why did the argument have to involve seal team? Why? It's because I believe you could say you could say justices who brought it up in the argument. It was. So I hear it. But you could say special forces without naming without naming one team of the special forces. I mean, that's that's these are heroes. Yes. And you dragged them into this argument. You know what they've done for your life, justice, you know what they've done for all our lives? Yeah. Of all the people, of all the people to indict in a way of soil in a way, because you're making this argument that something could happen to a Trump political opponent. And seal team six is going to do the job. That's disgraceful. Yeah. And it's obvious. They were wanting it because those are the most badass dudes on the planet. They were trying to make it the most extreme horror situation possible. And it's garbage. Right. I didn't think enough about that. You should never invoke them into this. That's just, you know, say 49 FM talk one oh six five Dan and Dalton. Morning from Dan and Dalton FM talk one oh six five. On tomorrow's show going to make sure everybody knows exactly what's going on out there for the 4th of July. We'll try to summarize everything and make sure that your municipalities included in our report. So you know what to enjoy when and where? Yes. We'll give you that full layout tomorrow coming up. The Jeff Poor show he'll lead it off with Congressman Jerry Carl. I can't wait to hear his response after that to Supreme Court ruling yesterday. Also, state representative Shane Stringer in our number one right around nine 30. And at the end of the show, Al GOP Chairman John Wall joins Jeff Poor talked about this in the six o'clock hour. It's just, it's funny how things work out sometimes, you know, where maybe you've never heard a word before or a word that sounds kind of foreign to you. And then you can't stop hearing that word over the next week or two. Hubris. You fuck the word. Well, it was my word that's like past week or so. And then you just hear everyone say it. Everybody say it all the time. I have not been on the hubris boat. I had no idea. So yeah, yesterday, yesterday evening, I turned on the Pacific, one of my favorite shows of all time. I love Band of Brothers. I love the Pacific. I haven't finished it, but I love Masters of Air, the new one that's on Apple TV. And so I'm watching the first episode of the Pacific again, starring our own E.B. Sledge, Eugene Sledge, who wrote the book with the old breed, Pelelu and Okinawa. And so I watched that, that I go back to do a little bit more prep last night. And I see this on CNN, a US Marine Corps aircraft has landed on a rebuilt runway on a World War II era Japanese airfield on the Pacific Island of Pelelu as the site of one of the Marines' bloodiest battles of the war. And now looking to the future, a possible US basing option and a strategy to counter China. And if you haven't seen the Pacific or read Sledge's book, the Battle of Pelelu is a major, major part of it. They said back to the present, the KC-130 Hercules transport aircraft touched down on the 6,000 foot runway on June 22nd. Marine Corps called it a significant and triumphant return to this iconic World War II site. Marine engineers had been working on rebuilding the runway for months, clearing brush, removing trees. And this is the fun part, ensuring no unexploded ordnance remained from the World War II battle on the island. And if you don't remember how bloody that battle was, more than 1,500 US troops, nearly 11,000 Japanese were killed on Pelelu in 1944 between August and November. And the US Naval History and Heritage Command noted that some of the Japanese troops hid in the island's jungle and weren't found until two years after the war ended. And Eby Sledge, he's talked about this a lot over the years, went back and watched a clip of this documentary, I can't remember exactly which documentary it was, where he was talking about first arriving at Pelelu and then the aftermath and what it did to his regiment. I looked at the island and all you could see, it just looked like a thin line. It was just a sheet of flame backed by this huge black wall of smoke. And I thought, my god, none of us will let me get out of that place. I come and landed with K-35 landed at Pelelu with 235 men and we had 64% casualties. The division was top notch, one of the finest in World War II, I say the finest and it was shot to pieces. And so in addition to this being runway we can use in any future TIFFs with China, of course, this is the coolest part. The Marines named the rebuilt landing strip the Sledge runway in honor of Eugene Sledge. That is just the coolest thing you'll see today. You just kind of came across that, right? You were watching? Yeah, it just turned on the Pacific. I don't know why yesterday I was just in that kind of mood or I wanted to watch it and threw it on, started doing some prep and all of a sudden the battle of Pelelu, that runway and they're naming it Sledge runway. Amazing. And again, you go back to that era of men and women, but those young guys that did all that they did, the most crucial corners of the world had really the most crucial time for our way of life surviving in Europe, across Europe and also in the Pacific and true heroes, as I was talking about. You would never invoke them into any kind of conversation that had to do with politics or whatever, because what they did was courageous and sacred, that's the work that the seals do today. Amen. It's extra years said, "Ordered with the old breed after E.B. Sledge was on your station last time, best book I've ever read." Yeah. Yeah. Sean's talked with his son, John Sledge, quite a bit. It is a great book. I recommend you. You get that book and read it and also watch the Pacific if you have the heart for it. Jerry Carl on the Jeff Porte Show on the way next.