Shawn Hendrix on the recovery efforts in Western NC (06-13-2025--Hour3)

[00:00:04] What's going on? Thank you so much for listening to this podcast. It is heard live every day from noon to 3 on WBT Radio in Charlotte. And if you want exclusive content like invitations to events, the weekly live stream, my daily show prep with all the links, become a patron, go to thepetekalendershow.com. Make sure you hit the subscribe button, get every episode for free, write to your smartphone or tablet. And again, thank you so much for your support.

[00:00:29] I want to welcome to the program Shawn Hendrix. In case you are on the Twitter machine, formerly known as X, he goes by the Shawn Hendrix, that's Hendrix with an X. And he actually is one of the reasons, if not the reason why folks in Western North Carolina got Starlink set up in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene. And so, Shawn, welcome to the program, sir. How are you? Yeah, thanks for having me.

[00:00:54] Sure. And first off, I want to thank you for all that you have done to help Western North Carolina, all your efforts, because it didn't just stop with the Starlink tweet that Elon Musk saw, apparently, and then responded to. So walk me through, I guess, the days where, like, the storm rolls in. And because you're, and correct me if I'm wrong, are you sort of Eastern North Carolina? Yeah, I'm Eastern North Carolina. So you see the storm? I green rolled.

[00:01:23] Okay, all right. So you see the storm come in, you see the aftermath of it. And I guess what prompts you to, well, I guess I should ask first, did you then go immediately to Western North Carolina to help and then send the tweet? Yeah.

[00:02:01] I was like, oh, sure. You know, 100%. So I jumped in, loaded all my gear up and headed up. And as I got closer, I realized, oh, gosh, this is just getting worse. And then it became apocalyptic. Right. I was just an absolute nightmare to even get to the airport. And then once we got the Starlink, we started handing them out. And I realized that, my goodness, these fire departments are overwhelmed. I mean, they've lost houses, they've lost loved ones.

[00:02:32] They're not in a position to take over distributing all these Starlinks and getting them set up. And so I ended up partnering with the United Cajun Navy. They had a helicopter. And we started dropping these Starlinks off at all these fire stations, just going in, setting them up and going, guys, you have internet.

[00:02:48] And a lot of these first responders hadn't even been able to check in with their family members outside the area. They have no clue if their family died in the flood. And so it was so amazing to see these guys making phone calls and calling their family outside the area and saying, hey, we're okay. You know, we've lost a lot, but the kids, the grandkids are okay. And I was hooked. I'm like, oh, we've got to keep doing this. This is so important. Seeing people get orders for heart medicine flown in. It just, it was so important to get communications back up.

[00:03:16] Yeah. I remember in the first days, it was the primary, you know, first order response that was needed because you didn't even know. We couldn't get information about where people were that needed help because there was zero comms.

[00:03:32] Yeah. I want to, yeah. I want to give a shout out though, to Lenore Amateur Radio. They, the AM operators were actually the first line. We had AM communication the moment the storm hit. But after that, we obviously needed more. Right. So it's the AM radio was like the only thing during the storm and right after Starlink. But those guys, those guys were super critical. And they sure did a lot to help the recovery.

[00:03:56] Absolutely. Yeah. The AM operators were essential as well. So the, the, all right. So you, you start dropping these off at the fire departments, but, and I don't know Starlink, I don't know how it operates or anything, but I heard you say that they had internet. So does, but it, I thought Starlink does internet or does it not? Okay. No, it is internet. Yeah. So a Starlink is just a wifi connection. It's just a broadband connection to low earth orbit satellites.

[00:04:25] It's the thing where we're struggling with was, it's like, we're trying to set up accounts and put our credit card on them. And it was slowing us down. That's why I tweeted at Elon. I was like, man, this is killing us. Please make them free. Just if Starlink turns on a disaster zone, let's just make it work. Right. Like as minutes, you know, minutes or hours in a disaster situation.

[00:04:44] And he, that's when he retweeted me and said, Hey, they'll be free for the entire disaster zone. And then they turned on and shipped me like 50 more units. So it was, it was just so critical to the early recovery effort. So did you know, do you know Elon Musk or was this just like a shot in the dark? You were taken just, Hey, hail Mary, tweet at the guy, see if he responds.

[00:05:04] I mean, it was definitely a hail Mary. I mean, to be fair, I said two words to him at the Superbowl once. But other than that, we had no, no interactions. I don't even remember that moment, but, uh, but it wasn't like he's a good buddy of mine. Um, I think he just saw from my post, he fundamentally understood what I was going through and he immediately recognized it. Cause I got, once I posted it, somebody ran up to me like Elon retweeted you. I'm like, what? And, uh, I just, it was a hail Mary.

[00:05:29] But then all of a sudden my phone's ringing and it's like, hi, this is Starlink. I'm like, that's kind of crazy. I don't know. Like whatever you need, we're here to help. And I was just like that. I mean, I'll be a Starlink fan for life over that alone. Yeah, absolutely. All right. So, all right. So you get the call, they give you 50 more units. Um, so then, uh, what was the next phase then? I guess you started dropping those off at other locations.

[00:05:53] Yeah, really. Uh, I split them up. Nick Soder or Chris Hall took some for me. Uh, they had a few they brought in as well. Uh, and Ryan Hall, Ryan Hall, y'all, the weather guy on YouTube is who gave us the original units. So he started all this and Chandra flew them out to me. But then, uh, United Cajun Navy was massive and getting units out because they had a helicopter. Um, and then I took care of everything up and down I-40, like Black Mountain Children's Home, Excel College, uh, and, uh, other local fire departments.

[00:06:23] But we got those out pretty quick. I mean, we had ours deployed before FEMA ever turned their first unit on nine days later. And then, uh, then the weather started coming in. We were like, it's about to get really cold. And that's when Operation Shelter was born. Uh, we had to basically, we were going with like hot tents, just a tent with a wood-burning stove because it was all about survival at that point. And, uh, but then all of a sudden people started donating RVs to us. So we quickly pivoted to RVs because, I mean, America was just blowing away the generosity.

[00:06:51] People were giving us like $30,000 to $40,000 RVs and just like take it for as long as you need it. So this is, uh, what I wanted to get into next, Operation Shelter. And I saw the Give, Send, Go, um, platform has Operation Shelter still listed up there. Are you still taking donations via that platform? I mean, we're, we're building, we're just getting ready to break ground on building a brand new house. I mean, if somebody wanted to give more money, it would be spent. Like, there's no shortage of monetary need up there.

[00:07:20] Um, we have a charity called Here We Grow that adopted us. So, uh, the grow squad.org, you know, that's a 501c3. I'd much rather it go through there. Okay. I have a lot of people who want to use Give, Send, Go, and I get that. But, um, you know, we partnered together with Excel College, World Vision, Adventure Relief, Valley of Hope Church, Mercury One. It's called the Better Together Coalition. And we've partnered together. We have a four-acre campus up there with 150 volunteers.

[00:07:48] And we will rebuild or restore 350 houses by November. So, yeah, I mean, like, Western North Carolina is not going to get to a point anytime soon where they're like, hey, we don't need any extra money. Right. You know what I mean? So it's, it's, it's a long road. Right. And I've, uh, I've done an interview with, uh, a fellow from the Excel College. Uh, you can go to their website also, thexlcollege.com slash disaster-relief.

[00:08:13] Uh, and that's part of the Better Together Coalition. So how, how did you get hooked up with all of, uh, all of those organizations? Was that Andrew by chance? Uh, I'm trying to remember. It's been months. Um, yeah. So I think it was when it was first launched. Yeah, I think so.

[00:08:28] Yeah. So the way I got hooked up was, uh, United Cajun Navy said Excel College is a relief center and they have no internet. Um, please take them a Starlink right now. And I'm like, I'm on it. So I drove down there. I got them set up. I met Andrew and we just have been working together ever since.

[00:08:44] You know, a dollar to any of those organizations. Mercury one is a very easy one to find too. A dollar to any of those organizations is going to help rebuild Western North Carolina. Uh, but yeah, that's how I got connected. I set up a Starlink and then I got a truckload of prime from Logan Paul delivered there. Uh, we got beef, uh, Jacklings to deliver a tire semi-truck full of beef jerky.

[00:09:06] It just kind of became our hub, uh, up in the mountains. Yeah. And I would run out and grab truckloads of be it generators or heaters or whatever we needed. I would go down the mountains to Greenville or Raleigh or wherever load up at a Lowe's. And then we just brought truckload and truckload of stuff back. I mean, I remember Murphy one, we needed generators really bad. And he's like, well, send you a truckload. I'm thinking like, and a semi truck pulled up with a hundred thousand or the generators on it. So I was just, it was just, I was literally,

[00:09:36] humbled every day at how generous everyone was. Well, it's one of these things in every disaster that I have covered over 20 years in media. It's, it's always the same, which is so many people want to help. They just don't know how. And so giving them, you know, the, the, the focus or the target. And then they, they just, they want to pour everything into that thing. And so I always look at sort of what I, my role is like that certain entities and

[00:10:06] say, I trust these guys, I trust this organization. They're doing this kind of work. And one of the things I like about XL college is that they're, they're organizing volunteer trips, which like some people can't donate money, but they can donate some time. They can get together with some people and go up there and they can do some stuff to help. And if you can't do that, there's also go up and visit, be a tourist, pump some money into the local economy. That's a really big deal as well, because these businesses were just devastated.

[00:10:33] And a lot of people think that, you know, it's all still closed down. And a lot of it, I was talking to Corey Valancourt, he's from the Smoky Mountain News and earlier this week. And, you know, he was pointing out like there are some areas that were completely untouched. It's so bizarre that there are some areas that are so. The way the mountains were faced. Right. Yeah, exactly. Like just because you happen to be on this side of the mountain, you were fine. And then right around the bend, you're just wiped out.

[00:11:00] And so there are still a lot of businesses that are open that need support. And a lot of people think they can't go up there. Sean, I'm going to hold you over through the break to do our second segment, if you don't mind. I appreciate your time. And by the way, is there, I mentioned Excel College and you mentioned the Better Together Coalition. Are there any websites you want to direct people to if they want to help?

[00:11:23] I mean, the GrowSquad.org, Mercury One, Excel College, like those are all the main. Like I said, any of them, we don't care where it comes in from. We're not we're not keeping score here. We just whatever you can remember, go click on that. Give money. They're all 501c3s. It's all strictly used for Western North Carolina. Like I said, we just want to we just want to get people back to living life.

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[00:13:03] I'm chatting with Sean Hendricks, and he's located down in eastern North Carolina, Greenville, North Carolina, but did a lot of work and has been doing a lot of work to help the folks in western North Carolina. And Operation Shelter was what he set up. It's now kind of been brought under sort of a coalition called the Better Together Coalition. And I wanted to talk with you about sort of the status of the relief efforts that are ongoing.

[00:13:32] I know when we cover, you know, the legislative action where, you know, relief funding from the state, the federal government packages and all of that. But what are you seeing with the pace of donations now that we are, what, nine months out from the disaster? It's, I mean, it's one 1,000. It's a trickle. It's, you know, it just doesn't make the news cycle.

[00:14:01] I used to compose something, and it would get millions of news. Because, I mean, it was in every news. Everybody was interested. It was talk. You know, we're up against, like, World War III right now. You know, people didn't pay attention to other things, you know. And also, too, to be fair, when Trump came in, you know, the cleanup effort really got underway. Things started getting restored. We're now down to that kind of death by 1,000 paper cuts. You know, it's all the leftover stuff. And so it's not big, big stories.

[00:14:29] And I think, you know, people have a lot of hope in the new administration, and rightfully so. They did a lot. But, you know, in their mind, okay, government's here. It's done. But it just doesn't work that way. That's the big infrastructural fixes that we needed. But, you know, we've still got, you know, retired couples that were living on a fixed income that the bridge to their house was $30,000 and got washed away. There's just not a government fund for private bridges.

[00:14:55] The way the government would fix that is to take an easement to cross everybody's property and put one government-owned bridge in. Well, that's going to take who knows how many years to get everybody to agree to. And that's the current plan. And I understand where they're coming from. They can't maintain and be responsible for all these private bridges. But at the end of the day, it's still a lot of individual need. Yeah. Well, and the bridges thing, it's interesting you mention that.

[00:15:19] People who don't sort of drive the back roads in the mountains may not be aware of just how many bridges there are. Because it's not like, you know, the Flatlanders where we are, where you got curb and gutter, and it's all, you know, drainage and everything underneath the road. And it all washes into the treatment plants or out to the rivers and stuff. Up there, it's all just like, you know, gravel roads. A lot of them are paved.

[00:15:45] But the drop-offs to the side, they're just like these little gullies that are used to move the water as quickly as possible. And so people just build these bridges across. And it's like every driveway has a bridge almost. And those all got washed away. Everywhere you see a culvert in eastern North Carolina is basically a bridge in western North Carolina. Yeah. Yeah. And so it's a huge problem.

[00:16:09] And so we keep, you know, trying to get people to, you know, remember what's happening in western North Carolina. You mentioned in the last segment about your goal is to do 350 homes. And is that what you're – so is that the pace that you are working at? Or is that the goal that you're stretching for? What's that number? That's the pace right now. That's the pace. That's awesome. I forgot to shout out Operation Blessing. They're part of this as well. There's a lot of names, and I want to make sure I honor everyone who's doing so much.

[00:16:39] But, yeah, that's what we're on pace. But a lot of those are just like new drywall, new moldy, like flooring. Not that that's a small thing, but it's, you know, it's all over the place to what, you know, considers a restoration. But houses are unlivable until they are. And the volunteers can do a lot of that work. But then we get into houses or businesses that need electrical. Well, you can't just take a group of volunteers and do electrical on a house. It's just not the way it works. So now we've got to come up with $30,000 to rewire a business.

[00:17:08] And that's where a lot of the Operation Shelter Ash went to. Obviously, there's a lot of it went to just a relief effort. But then we have a house we're rebuilding for Christine. We announced that on NewsNation. Rebuilding a house is not cheap and not free. The material is not free. But, like, precision walls, they're making us, like, an insane deal for these prefabbed walls. And everybody's really trying to help. So, but it's, you know, you've still got to buy screws and wires. It's just there's still a monetary cost.

[00:17:35] And we get just enough, it feels like, and we're always just needing a little bit more. But we're making it work. And, again, if it wasn't for the big organizations, none of this would be happening. Because, like, Mercury One is just an absolute monster when it comes to getting things done for us. And same with World Vision. But, you know, as for the government money, we just don't see it because we're not one of the big NGO partners tied in with all the politicians. That money just doesn't make it to us. Yeah, Mercury One is awesome.

[00:18:05] I've been a donor to that organization for probably a decade now. They just do awesome work. Yeah, everywhere they go, I'm always impressed with the work that those guys do. So, if the radio thing doesn't work out, I might just go work for them or something. But, so. Oh, their studio in Dallas? Yeah. Phenomenal. If you ever get a chance to go visit, they've got an amazing, that's the Blaze Media side. But they've also got a great museum there. Definitely worth the trip. That's good to hear. All right, good to know. I'll put it on the bucket list. Yeah.

[00:18:34] So, I also saw you were at the, I saw your Twitter feed, and you were over at the North Carolina Republican Party convention this past weekend. Yeah. And so, I wanted to ask you why, but also I thought you made a really good point. You were calling out some counties that didn't have anybody there.

[00:18:51] And it goes to, I keep telling people, if good, competent people do not stand up and volunteer their time to help, you know, maintain this infrastructure of government or civic organizations, then you'll be governed by bad, incompetent people. I understand there's a lot of other things you could be doing, but people need to be involved in stuff. So, why did you, why were you there? Are you involved in Republican politics? Are you getting involved in it? Yeah, I'm a delegate. I was a delegate, but it's exactly what you said.

[00:19:22] I saw such an utter failure of government. I was like, okay, why is this? Well, there's incompetent people. Why is that? Because, well, the people that are competent are busy. But we, it's, like you said, it's on us to go get involved. And, you know, we got counties without representation, and it's, we need people who know how to get things done. And it aren't there because of the politics to make everybody's life better, not to be, oh, I'm chair of this person. I don't care. Let's just get it done.

[00:19:51] And you're right. Like, if you want to get involved, it starts at the low level. Getting involved, you know, worrying about federal politics has very little to do with your county school board. Yeah. All this stuff you can get involved in and make real change. And guess what feeds into the federal system? Local to state, state to federal. So, you get trash in, you get trash out. Right? So, we've got to put better people in the system so they can rise up and start running things at a federal level, too. It's a bottom-up solution.

[00:20:21] You can't just inject yourself. I can't just go run. As much as people want me to, I can't just go run for governor. Right? It doesn't work that way. Yeah. No, you're exactly right. It's sort of the farm team, you know. But it is the place where you can actually have the most direct impact. You have more control at that local level than at a national level. That's right. Congressman Dan Bishop, I've known him since he was a county commissioner here in Charlotte. And I would talk with him about it. And he's like, dude, you get up there and it's 435 people in Congress.

[00:20:49] Like, you can't get stuff done up there. When you were a county commissioner, you could get stuff done. And so, it's just if good people, competent people step forward at the local level. And if you're really good and you're really competent, then yeah, you could advance up and go into larger offices and then have more of an impact. But you've got to know how to do that. And you learn that at the local level. So, Sean, I appreciate you spending some time.

[00:21:16] Again, I'm grateful for all the work that you're doing to help the people of Western North Carolina. Sincerely, good for you, good on you. And I hope to have you on the show at any point in the future. If you need anything, you'll let me know. All right. Sounds good. Thank you. That's Sean Hendricks. I appreciate your time. All right. If you're listening to this show, you know I try to keep up with all sorts of current events. And I know you do, too. And you've probably heard me say, get your news from multiple sources. Why?

[00:21:42] Well, because it's how you detect media bias, which is why I've been so impressed with Ground News. It's an app and it's a website and it combines news from around the world in one place. So, you can compare coverage and verify information. You can check it out at check.ground.news.com. I put the link in the podcast description, too.

[00:22:03] I started using Ground News a few months ago and more recently chose to work with them as an affiliate because it lets me see clearly how stories get covered and by whom. The blind spot feature shows you which stories get ignored by the left and the right. See for yourself. Check.ground.news.com. Subscribe through that link and you'll get 15% off any subscription. I use the Vantage plan to get unlimited access to every feature.

[00:22:30] Your subscription then not only helps my podcast, but it also supports Ground News as they make the media landscape more transparent. I just want to give a shout out also. My former colleagues up in Asheville at WWNC, Mark Starling, Tank Spencer. They were, Mark was the morning guy, or is the morning guy still, and the news director up there. And Tank was my producer when I was afternoons and now he's the producer for Mark's show.

[00:23:01] And they were just honored with a Service Excellence Award. They flew them up to D.C. for their coverage in the wake of Hurricane Helene. They lived at that studio. For four days, they couldn't even get out. And they were about to run out of fuel in the generator. Because the road that leads to the studio, it's probably like a, I don't know, an eighth of a mile maybe.

[00:23:30] And it's through the woods. And so, like, dozens of trees had fallen across this road. And they were like, we can't get fuel into the site in order to fill up the generator. And Mark and Tank could not get out. So they were living on, we had a, in the break room, there was a cupboard that had various assortments of shelf-stable product.

[00:24:00] That, I believe, it amounted to basically, like, chili dogs or something. Like, Vienna sausages with some chili, whatever. And that's what they lived on for four days up there. Maybe some packets of ketchup and stuff. Like, and so they said, they were talking about it on their, on their, right? Because they went, they blew out all commercials. They went live 24-7.

[00:24:26] And they, they put the call out, like, we can't get fuel in for the generator. We're going to, we're going to run out of fuel and then we're going to be off air. And they had guys come in with chainsaws and clear that road so they could get the fuel in, so they could keep the station on the air. Like, sort of like 007 style, disarming the bomb, you know, filling up the generator when there was, like, no time left.

[00:24:54] And so kudos to them, congratulations to them, but also their families that, people don't realize this, when we come in, when anybody in radio comes in to work those types of disasters, it is very difficult on the families because we leave our family at home to come here. And if we are here, we may not be able to get home.

[00:25:19] And so I want to shout out to Brandy and to, why am I drawing a blank on Tank's wife? I know her name. Why am I, I'm just, I just drew a blank on her name. Andy, good Lord. Oh my goodness. I worked with them. And I knew her for eight years. Anyway, Brandy and Andy. Oh, I just realized that now. Brandy and Andy. That's funny. And the kids for letting their dads do that.

[00:25:50] A story at Inside Climate News by Lisa Sorg. Last month, the North Carolina Division of Emergency Management fired a subcontractor that had been founded by top officials at Rebuild NC, the now discredited state agency that botched response efforts after Hurricanes Matthew and Florence in 2016 and 2018. The company is called Path Built. It had been hired to work on disaster recovery in Western North Carolina.

[00:26:21] Yeah. So the people that ran Rebuild NC and utterly failed to rebuild NC after two hurricanes, they then left the agency, started their own company, and then got a contract under emergency management. When Lisa Sorg reported all of this at Inside Climate News, that contract got scrapped. As it should.

[00:26:49] You guys do not get to be around any other disasters in North Carolina. I'm sorry, but not sorry. All right, so spring is here, a time of renewal and celebrations. You got graduations, weddings, anniversaries, and the special days for mom and dad. Your family's making memories that are going to last a lifetime. But let me ask you, are all of those treasured moments from days gone by, are they hidden away on old VCR tapes, 8mm films, photos, slides? Are they preserved?

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[00:27:48] Creative Video, preserving family memories since 1997. Located in Mint Hill, just off 485. Mail orders are accepted too. Get all the details at createavideo.com. All righty, now it's time for a little segment we like to call pre-gaming with Brett Winterbull because he comes up at 3 o'clock. And so I help get him in the right frame of mind for his final Friday program. And then he hangs me over for the hangover. So Brett, good to see you. Happy, happy.

[00:28:17] Hang on, hang on. Let's get the mic turned on. There we go. Oh, there we go. See? That one is, that mic is never used. I know, right? That mic is like never used. I'm glad you came in with Metallica. That was for you, Nick. Producer Nick, pick that tune for you. The best, the best song of all time. All of it. There are people who got married to that song. Really? I don't know. I was going to say people you know? Not that I know. Have you been to a wedding? I was at a wedding one time. I did. I attended a wedding with my wife. We were married. Oh, nice. That makes sense.

[00:28:46] No, I went to a wedding one time where during the reception, the DJ played Living on a Prayer by Bon Jovi. Okay. Okay, which, fair. All right. But the groomsman then proceeded to do a lip syncing air guitar, Milli Vanilli kind of performance.

[00:29:12] Like, complete with the, like, on the knees sliding across the floor deal. Not, like, choreographed like it was meant to be, but, like, they drank too much. Oh, I believe that. Sure. Mm-hmm. And then were, like, screaming, living on a prayer and all those. They were from up in, you know, Jersey area. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. It was a little, it was a little disturbing. Really? Well, they had mullets. So, well, I mean, really, you know. They were in style once upon a time. Yeah, this was recent, though. This was, like, within the last five years. What? Well, seven years or so. Well, you know. Yeah.

[00:29:42] So, but never, I've never had Metallica played at a wedding. Did you have Metallica played at your wedding? No. Was that, did you ask your wife, can we play Metallica? And she, she would have said. She vetoed that? She would have said yes. She'd have been like, yeah, of course, let's play Metallica. No, this was one of those, like, kind of Sinatra kind of music kind of things. That is classy. Classic. That is classy.

[00:30:11] I did see, I was not invited to this wedding, but I did see a wedding where from the church to the reception hall, they were escorted by various local mascots. Like from the high school or something? From businesses, from sports teams. Really? Yeah. There was, like, there was, like, half a dozen of these mascots that walked them down the streets. I think this was up in, like, Philadelphia or Pittsburgh or something.

[00:30:41] That's fantastic. They walked them down the street. And then when they walked in, you know, like, when the bride and groom walk into the reception, they, the mascot, like, walked them in, like, was standing between the bride and groom holding both of their hands, and they all walked in together. Wow. Wow. That is bizarre. Yes. That is not cool. I would, I would not be a fan. It was like a business, too. Like, you don't even know the mascot. You know? It's like... Tom's plumbing. Right.

[00:31:08] With the dirty plunger in his hand. Now... I'm kind of curious how the call went. Like, hey, I'm getting married. Oh. Can I rent your mascot for our wedding reception? Of course. They're probably getting paid. Yeah. They're getting paid for this. What's the hottest wedding you've ever been to? Not, like, sexy hot, but, like, temperature hot. Oh, gosh. Cape Cod back in, like, 1997.

[00:31:38] Cape Cod, 97, summer. Summer... Suits? Yeah. I mean, it was really brutal. How about you? July. Yeah. South Carolina. Outside. Suits. No! Bride took two laps around the entire outdoor seated area in a horse-drawn carriage that went about one mile an hour. Wow. So we're just cooking.

[00:32:07] Reception hall, quote-unquote, was the little plantation house, because it was, like, on this old plantation or whatever. Oh, that's good. Can I say plantation? You got HVAC. That's great for them. For them. For them. In the house, it was such a small hall that only the wedding party and family were in there. They set up a large tent outside, which just trapped all the heat. So it was hotter in the tent. We left. Are you kidding me? We never... We left.

[00:32:37] We saw the ceremony. We... You gotta wring out your shirt on the way home. Literally. That's terrible. It was brutal. I was not planning to ask you any of this, but Metallica prompted it. So I did want to ask you this. Have you heard of Denise Casper, Obama judge, who has now decided that Trump's executive order requiring all voters in federal elections to be citizens, she says that's illegal. No, it's not. And she implemented an injunction. Really?

[00:33:05] Blocking the implementation of that executive order. Wow. Wow. You know, can I just tell you, we have to go back to the 70s, right? With the injunction junction. What's your function? Oh yeah. The after school... That's what we gotta do. Yeah, yeah. I mean, that's what we need. I'm a bill. How I became a law thing. Was it a schoolhouse rocks? That's a schoolhouse rock. Yeah, yeah. That's right. So this is, on Twitter, we've got judges removing Trump from command of the army.

[00:33:32] A judge is going to remove him from the command of the army. Well, yeah, until the 9th Circuit, of all circuits, stepped in and said, whoa, whoa, whoa. My word. Right. Even that's too much. Even that's too far. They were like, no, he's allowed to do this. But we'll have a hearing, right? So they're going to have a hearing on that. But you had the lower court judge. Do you know who that lower court judge was that said that he couldn't send the National Guard there ruled for Gavin Newsom? Judge Bosberg? No. He flew out to San Francisco to issue the injunction.

[00:34:01] No, it's a guy by the last name of, I think his first name is Charles, last name Breyer. Ring a bell? Oh, the Breyer. Of the Breyer. Of the Breyer family. Judicial clan. Wow. Yeah, Stephen Breyer's son. Wow. The dude is 83, and we're to believe that he wrote some 40-page ruling in an hour. But no. But the upside. No. The ice cream's delicious. Mint chocolate chip? Absolutely. Chocolate chocolate chip. A hundred percent.

[00:34:30] Chocolate chocolate chip. You could have used that in South Carolina. It would never have survived because they had no refrigeration outside. It was brutal. Just put a lot of salt around it. All right, that'll do it for this episode. Thank you so much for listening. I could not do the show without your support and the support of the businesses that advertise on the podcast. So if you'd like, please support them too and tell them you heard it here. You can also become a patron at my Patreon page or go to thepcalendorshow.com.

[00:35:00] Again, thank you so much for listening. And don't break anything while I'm gone.