Badlands Media

Why We Vote Ep. 177: Steven Richer Smackdown and the Election Truth Alliance Breakdown

CannCon and Ashe in America take apart a Deseret News profile that positions Steven Richer, the former Maricopa County recorder behind the infamous "Drawer 3" ballot scandal, as the trusted Republican voice on why California's elections are secure. They walk through his claims about audits, fraud detection, and mail-in deadlines, pointing out that the very system he defends prioritizes ballot access over ballot accuracy. A philosophy clip on the structural impossibility of proving election fraud sparks a deeper conversation about why the design of the system, not any single data point, is the real evidence of intent. The bulk of the episode is dedicated to a detailed reaction to an interview with Nathan Taylor, cofounder of the Election Truth Alliance, where CannCon and Ashe scrutinize his heat map methodology comparing US elections to Russian vote-rigging patterns, question his claimed cybersecurity credentials, and point out that the interviewer never asked a single hard question. They close by noting that despite years of public invitations, groups like ETA still refuse to appear on the show, a pattern they argue reveals selective, partisan motives rather than genuine election truth seeking.

Geopolitics with Ghost Ep. 114: Trump Slams Israel at G7, Lapid Erupts Over Deal - 6/16/26

Episode 114 opens with a War Room clash: Rabbi Wallachie acknowledges that US and Israeli interests are diverging, but Ghost steps in to correct his claim that Hezbollah is simply the Iranian army, walking through its actual origins as a resistance movement. From there, Ghost breaks down a heated Bannon segment where Wallachie denies any Greater Israel expansion plan, a claim Ghost dismantles using Ben Gavir's own statements about expelling Lebanese civilians. At the G7 in France, Trump publicly criticizes Israel's conduct in Lebanon, suggests Syria's Jelani take over the Hezbollah fight, and reveals he was angry about the Beirut strike hours before the Iran deal was finalized. Ghost digs into the Strait of Hormuz numbers discrepancy between CENTCOM's leaked count and Bloomberg's tracker data, and explains why Trump is withholding the full 14 point memorandum until Friday. Putin and Trump's hour long birthday call gets coverage alongside Lukashenko's bombshell claim that the Vatican and Naftali Bennett deceived Putin into pulling back from Kyiv in 2022. The episode closes with Israel's political fallout: Lapid calling Netanyahu's handling an absolute failure, Smotrich and Katz refusing to be bound by the deal, and American Jewish leaders demanding the text be made public.

The Daily Herold: 6/16/26 - UFC Plot Foiled, Ghost on Israel's Endgame & Newsom Probed

Jon Herold comes in Tuesday on a hectic kid-shuttling day with a story that immediately raises questions. The FBI says it disrupted a terror plot involving explosive drones and a staged sniper attack targeting last weekend's UFC Freedom 250 event, with five suspects in custody and 23 more identified, but Jon notes none of them were arrested in Washington DC and wonders how surveillance happened just days after FISA 702 expired. Ghost joins for an extended breakdown of the Middle East endgame: Trump's strategy of simultaneously escalating and deescalating to box Israel into a corner, the bombshell that Naftali Bennett sabotaged the 2022 Russia-Ukraine peace deal while serving as mediator, and the prediction that Arab nations will drift toward Iran while Israel becomes politically isolated. JD Vance pushed back hard on claims Iran gets American money in the new deal, insisting not a single taxpayer dollar moves. Gavin Newsom announced he and his family are under DOJ investigation and called it political, though Jon suspects the real story runs through his wife's finances. The Supreme Court also rejected Carter Page's surveillance lawsuit on statute of limitations grounds, and Jon has thoughts about who that rule actually protects.

Badlands Media Special Coverage: 6/16/26 - Trump on Iran Deal Text & Uranium Plan

President Trump holds a joint press conference with an Iranian leader who thanks him directly for ending the six week war, then walks through the terms of the new memorandum: Iran will never have a nuclear weapon, the Strait of Hormuz opens permanently and toll free, and the US pays nothing. Trump promises to release the full document and read it word for word at an upcoming press conference, contrasting it sharply with what he calls the disastrous Obama JCPOA. He addresses the buried enriched uranium stockpile, confirming space based surveillance and a plan to eventually destroy it with no rush involved. Trump also responds to Senator Lindsey Graham's skepticism by floating sending the deal to Congress, mentions a White House UFC event from the previous night, and previews a Versailles dinner invitation from the French president before closing with an update on falling oil prices and record stock market highs.

Badlands Daily: 6/16/26 - Newsom Under Investigation, Eisen Probe, Texas ICE Voter Files

CannCon and Ghost open Tuesday with somber news first: a B-52 crash at Edwards Air Force Base claims all eight servicemen aboard, the latest in a string of unexplained military aircraft losses. From there the show pivots into a packed lineup. Trump's latest Save America Act post adds two new conditions, and CannCon and Ghost debate whether the bill's failure to pass is actually a deliberate gatekeeping move to avoid a "fortified elections, case closed" narrative that would leave the black box voting machines untouched. ICE quietly starts pulling local voter files in Texas, the FBI raids Ohio's leading voter registration nonprofit with 125 agents, and Trump appoints James McDonald, one of the two attorneys who investigated FTX's collapse, as the new US Attorney for the Southern District of New York, days after Sam Bankman-Fried's pardon request and appeal loss. Norm Eisen's States United nonprofit comes under House Oversight scrutiny for deputizing private lawyers to prosecute Trump-aligned alternate electors in Arizona and Minnesota. Gavin Newsom announces he is under DOJ investigation and casts himself as Trump's next political target, while CannCon breaks down how his wife's nonprofit funnels donor and state money into her own for-profit film company through a school licensing scheme.

Baseless Conspiracies Ep. 189: The GATE Program, CIA Child Training and a Butler Rally Theory

Jon Herold and Zak Paine open Episode 189 with a quick detour into a viral Sasquatch video (probably AI, possibly a guy in a suit) before tackling the newly released four-page ODNI report on global bioweapons labs and what it might mean for Anthony Fauci's accountability.
A short segment pulled from Candace Owens covers a theory connecting the 2022 death of a man named Mark Liedy, who allegedly stole the explosive PETN from his job, his confidant Corey Comperatore (the firefighter killed at the Trump assassination attempt in Butler), and the Hezbollah pager bombing operation.
Then the main event: the gifted and talented education program, known as GATE, and its possible ties to CIA mind development research. Jon walks through demographic and physical traits reported among former participants, binaural beats and Hemi-Sync training tracing back to the Monroe Institute's Gateway Program, code-breaking and Russian language worksheets given to grade schoolers, and the story of a friend who was approached by men claiming to be FBI agents decades after his own time in the program. The episode also covers Chase Brandon, who became a CIA officer at 18, spent decades undercover, and later became Hollywood's official CIA liaison.

Culture of Change Ep. 151: Culture of Space - Part 2

Part two of Ashe's conversation with Lt. Gen. (Ret.) Steven L. Kwast picks up where Space Revolution Ep. 22 left off, and this time they go further out. Literally. From China's 30-year plan to dominate the space economy to SpaceX's Earth-to-Earth rocket that can get you from LA to Singapore in under 20 minutes, this episode is equal parts geopolitical reality check and genuine wonder. Kwast explains why China is building battleships while America builds better buoys, what a livable space habitat actually looks like, and why Elon Musk's "future of human consciousness" comment still bothers Ashe. The answer, as always, is not a technology problem. It is a moral one.

The Book of Trump - Chapter 53: The 1983 Beirut Bombing

Ghost sits down with Clay Parikh, a Marine artillery veteran who was actually there, for the most personal episode of The Book of Trump yet. Clay walked through the same BLT headquarters building that was destroyed, donated blood to Palestinian civilians after IDF cluster bombing, and was days away from being the unit relieving the marines who died when Operation Urgent Fury redirected his ship to Grenada. Ghost and Clay trace the full arc: the PLO evacuation, the IDF's 18-year occupation and the birth of Hezbollah, the crippling rules of engagement that left sentries unable to chamber a round, and the mechanics of the truck bomb itself. The gut punch comes at the end when Ghost presents the LA Times piece confirming Mossad had foreknowledge and chose not to warn the US. Raw, emotional, and deeply relevant to everything unfolding in the Middle East today.

Breaking Free of Psyops Ep. 10: The Trouble with Peter Thiel

Palantir was not born in a garage. It was commissioned by the CIA director who oversaw 9/11, brokered by the neoconservative architect of the Iraq War, and handed to Peter Thiel and Alex Karp as a private commercial replacement for the Total Information Awareness Office after Congress shut it down in 2003. In this episode, Matt Ehret walks through what Palantir actually is, who built it, who it serves, and why a company that named itself after the all-seeing eye of Sauron now manages the intelligence, policing, banking, and military systems of most of the Western world. He also examines Thiel's Straussian philosophy, his belief that freedom and democracy are incompatible, his obsession with the antichrist he claims to fear but appears to be building, and the fact that his Palantir UK CEO got the job after the interviewer stood up and recited an Oswald Mosley speech from memory. From the inside, it looks like a tech company. From the outside, it looks like something else entirely.

Alphas Make Sandwiches Ep. 72: Salem Witch Trials, Saved by the Bell & America Maxing

GART is less than two weeks out and Ashe has a dedicated laundry basket for Deadwood outfits because Brian wants her to think about the weight of her suitcase. The ladies kick things off recapping UFC at the White House, the dripping with corporate sponsorships narrative swap the left tried after the taxpayer dollars argument fell apart, fighters walking out of the Oval Office down the Hall Of Presidents and giving glory to God, and Ashe's bicentennial memories of 1976 making the case that this is what the run up to 250 should feel like. Adriana takes the floor for a forty minute college lecture on the Salem witch trials, including the wildly underappreciated detail that it started with an illness, the catch 22 of confess and walk or deny and hang, ergot fungus on rye as a likely LSD precursor poisoning, and how the whole thing reads exactly like a 1692 mass formation psychosis. Christy closes out with saved by the bell, which has both a fun safety coffin origin (Victorian anxiety did not believe in doing anything halfway) and a boring boxing origin, plus the small detail that no safety coffin ever saved anyone. Photo challenge submissions, GART golf cart plans, and a battle of the sexes event teaser for next week.