
Loading summary
A
This is an iHeart podcast.
B
Guaranteed Human.
A
Cross our hearts and hope to die by these 50 countries differing so much in race and religion, in language and culture. It is a big idea. A new world order. Well, I know they're lying. They tricked me once, but they're not going to trick me twice. The time is now. Welcome back to the Professor Penn Podcast. This is David Penn, your host. Glad to be with you as always for episode number 278. It's a special guest episode airing tonight, the 10th of February, 7pm Central Standard Time. Before I introduce our guest, I want to share with everyone that we are making some big changes are on the campfire here. Hello, Tanner.
C
What's up?
A
What's up, man? See all this pressure's on, Tanner, because very shortly, allegedly next Monday. But around Free People Radio, we don't keep the clock perfect. But we're targeting next Monday, which is going to be the 16th, 16th. The 16th. We're going to be going live five days a week from 7am to 9am drive time. Talk television on Rumble and Get Her. That's going to be Mr. Royce White and Mr. David Penn. And we're just going to hold court in here five days a week. It's going to be call ins. You'll be able to call in and talk to Royce. I'll be moderating. It gets out of control, I'll have the kill switch. Yeah, right.
C
Are we enabling you with the kill switch or do I have the kill.
A
Oh, we might have to have it backed up double.
C
Yeah, we might have to have two.
A
Because what works for me might not work for you. Anyhow, we're really excited about this and I do want to say we don't want to give up YouTube. We really appreciate you. Some of you I know have watched every episode I've ever done, 277 episodes, which is quite complimentary. We want to continue on YouTube. Trying to figure out how that's going to work. But please repost the links because YouTube does not help us. We talked about this on the last episode.
C
Yeah, well, I mean, we've been talking about it for year now, but.
A
But we just did it again. It's getting to a point. We just did it again with the show with Mike Lindell. 992. Stop.
C
Yep.
A
It doesn't go up and then taper off. It goes up and hits a ceiling.
C
Yep.
A
That tells us something, doesn't it?
C
It does.
A
They're watching Professor Penn. They don't like me. You know, I'm such a nice guy, too. Yeah, I understand why they don't like me. And on that note, I want to introduce my guest today, Ms. Wendy Phillips, who is. This is going to be my first opportunity. We know about each other, we've talked to each other, but we've never had a chance to really get to know each other. And for everybody that's watching and want to get into the game of politics, you know, there's a lot of digital news and reading and complaining and pissing and moaning, but ultimately politics is about people getting to know each other and learning to trust each other. Something that's lacking in our current politics here in Minnesota is trust. And I try to be very frank with people. If I don't like them, I tell them. And I have one criteria for not liking them. It's when they lie to me. I don't think Wendy Phillips is a liar. That's why she's in studio. Wendy, I'm going to let you tell the audience. You can introduce yourself. You know, you're not currently well, you have an interesting history. I want to talk about those of my audience that know, you know, you have an interesting history in the party that'd be the Republican Party of Minnesota. Please tell me how, how long have you been involved in Republican Party politics as a party participant here in Minnesota?
B
Well, first let me say thank you for inviting me to be on your show today. I really appreciate that. And I moved here during COVID moved across country from Los Angeles County, Southern California, really May of 2020, and was just unbelievably baffled by what it was that I witnessed in the 2020 elections and then the January 6th fake insurrection. I mean, that whole thing just got me wound really tight.
A
Are you born in California?
B
I was a native Californian. I've only lived in two states. I lived in California for 62 years and I've been here for almost six.
A
It's really none of my business, but if you don't want to answer, don't say anything. But what did you do for 62 years in California?
B
Well, I did a lot of things. I was an entrepreneur for many years. I had an ad specialty business. So anything that you can imagine putting a logo on. I was a broker in between clients and vendors and I created promotional items for my clients and I had that business for about 25 years. But before that I was a singer, songwriter, musician and a fitness professional.
A
Wow.
B
So I have.
A
Could you just stop just for a second? My audience knows this. That's crazy. Yeah. Wende and I are kindred spirits.
B
No Kidding.
A
Wendy, I played rock and roll here in this town. I'm a classically trained violin player. I play piano. I sing. The only reason I'm not doing it now is because politics has taken up all my bandwidth. And I, like you, got very involved in politics after the 2020 election. Same deal and fitness professional. I taught athletics for 20 years, like.
B
In the school systems or in health clubs or. Where did you teach?
A
Like, in the streets.
B
Oh, okay.
A
Like martial discipline stuff.
B
Like, oh, very cool.
A
Teaching, you know, young people how to be men, older people, that I could beat them up, you know, that kind of stuff. But I did it for a very long time from, like, I was maybe from 85 to 2000. That was my. My. My reason to be. Okay, so we have some similarities. What did you. What was your instrument or did you sing?
B
Well, let me. I want to back up here for just a second, talking about martial arts.
A
Yeah.
B
So my maiden name is Norris. And when I was. As in Carlos Norris, as in Chuck Norris. Carlos is Carlos.
A
Yeah. Let me tell you something. Your mind. My first black belt is in the same system he was in. And the guy that gave that to me and Carlos were both in Korea together. They were in the first class of MPs that were taught by Korean. They were KCIA, is what they were. They taught. Here's how this. Do you know this story about how Carlos got involved in the martial arts world?
B
No. And I need to ask you. I'm completely ignorant about this. So Carlos and Chuck are the same person?
A
The same person.
B
Okay.
A
Yes.
B
Very good.
A
So are you related to Chuck Norris?
B
I am not. But when I was in eighth grade, I was taking martial arts. My brother, who's 15 months younger than I, and he and I both were enrolled in this martial arts class. And for our very first test, Chuck Norris was the tester.
A
Oh, that's just great.
B
And I'm standing in front of Chuck Norris, and I'm just shaking like a leaf, you know, And. And he looks down and he goes, wendy Norris. And he looks at me and he goes, you better be good.
A
That's hilarious, actually, the way these guys got into it. He was in Korea as a serviceman, as was the guy that taught me. And these guys were MPs. And what would happen was the American generals would go meet with the Korean generals, because even though the war had ended, the Korean War was over, but there was still a lot of bodies floating down the rivers, and it was very violent there. So they all had bodyguards. And then the generals would go in to Meet. And then all these kids, these 18, 19 year old American kids would be standing around and they were all big. And then there was these little Korean guys, five, five, weighing 140 pounds, 130 pounds. And these Korean guys just had their way with these 19 year old Americans.
B
Took them to the woodshed, they did.
A
And really. So Chuck Norris's first teacher, and my teacher's teacher was a guy named Wang Ge was actually Chinese who had moved into Korea and was working for the government. And he had organized all these killers. And there was an awareness that in the American hierarchy of rank that there was something to learn from these Korean dudes. So they put a test group of young 19 year old, 18 year old Americans and let them learn how to do this thing. And Chuck Norris was one of the byproducts of that, as was my teacher. And they were friends and had a long, long association. And it was really interesting to hear people really respected Chuck Norris and Chuck Norris. And my teacher came back from Korea as did some service people that came back out of Japan. Because you go back historically and I don't know if you know this karate is kind of normal for you. You like kind of grew up with it, right? Yeah. But before the 50s, nobody knew anything about it really. It was brought back after World War II and after the Korean War. And there was people like Chuck Norris that actually were the kind of the pathfinders of exposing American audiences to Asian martial arts. And he was a great martial artist.
B
He's a really good man too, from everything I understand about him.
A
That's the rumor.
B
That is the rumor.
A
That is the rumor.
B
I bought it.
A
Well, there is, you know, the guy that taught me there's a lot of Chinese and Koreans hanging around. And one of the Asians told me one time, you know, all this, it's kind of BS because the stronger guy always wins. Really doesn't matter if you're trained or not. I mean, you can take a guy off the farm. Like I trained with a guy that used to knock out cows. He was a veterinarian, used to practice by hitting cows in the head and knocking them off. You know, that guy was tough, right?
B
Wow.
A
He was a farmer from Kenyon, Minnesota. Not that far from Homestead county anyhow. And this Asian guy said to me, he goes, you know, we're not really teaching you how to fight. Anybody can learn how to fight. We're teaching you Asian culture. And it's very different than Western culture. But there was a high degree of, there was a premium placed on honesty and humility and endurance and patience. And never retreat in battle, but never be in a place where there's going to be a battle. I mean, there was a whole philosophical underpinning of those martial artists going back into the beginning. Now, now, you know, black belt, what do they say that was on the Karate Kid black belt? J.C. penney, 999. You know, you can, you can buy your black belt, but when I got mine, there was not for sale. You really had to work for it. And that's how it was for Chuck Norris and probably for you, too.
B
Well, I'm thinking too, that to earn a black belt, as opposed to buying one, that you probably learned a whole lot more in the process of earning it than buying it. Right. What is the value of purchasing something like that, especially when it is so much about the mental discipline?
A
Well, that was the point of it. And they taught an energetic view of kind of magic, which was hard. I remember I said to my teacher, I said, this is kind of magic, you know, neither a soothsayer nor a magician be right out of the Old Testament. And he looked at me and he said, that's up to you, kid. But I hung in there. And what I realized after many years, you know, if you're Jewish, for example, and you don't know the New Testament, you only know half the story. If you know the New Testament, but you never read the Old Testament, you only know half the story. And you can know the Old New Testament. But if you don't know the natural way, which Tanner knows because he's a hunter, you're missing a big important part of the story. So I was fortunate to have this really intense martial training. And it was intense, really intense. And then I had a religious training. And that actually at the time I was doing it, which is going to be the segue into politics, I had no idea what I was doing in my life. Like, I'd spent 25 years perfecting this martial discipline. And one day I woke up and I said, man, I don't want to be like Chuck Norris and be doing this when I'm 70. I think I'm going to do something else now because they don't want to give it up. Right? It gets weird when you get older. And I go, why did I waste all that time doing it? It felt like a waste in a way. And then I'd spent all this time in religious training. What did that mean? And I had this experience. And then I woke up one day right about in 2021, when we both went into politics. And I realized for those of us that have that kind of a frame, that I'd been prepared my whole life and, you know, we're not that far apart in age and, you know, you got a lot in your tank because you're running for Secretary of State here in Minnesota, which means you have a lot of energy to go do that and a lot of self confidence to go do that. At a time when most people are saying, I've had enough, and you obviously have not, which means you've got some training and some energy source to have the strength, the ambition, and it is ambition to be a candidate.
B
There's a lot of ambition in it. But you know that it wasn't a planned ambition on my part at all. I mean, when we go back to. You had asked me before, I kind of took you off on a different trail. You had asked me what instrument I played when I was a musician. I am actually still a musician, even though I don't play that much right now, for same reasons that you're not playing right now. But I'm a guitar player.
A
Oh, really?
B
Yeah.
A
What kind of music were you playing back in the day?
B
Well, in. Early on, like in my late 20s, I was doing country rock stuff in a band called Trick Rider.
A
Okay.
B
And then I created my own band that was called Wendy Lee in Trouble. And we did a lot of classic rock, alternative rock, some of the more country rock kind of stuff. And just.
A
And you were doing this in la?
B
I was doing it. Most of that I was doing in the San Joaquin Valley in the Central California area.
A
Okay. Yeah.
B
So to be able to afford to buy a home in California, I had to move. I grew up in Santa Clarita, which is about 35 miles northeast, a little bit of Los Angeles. And if you've ever heard of Magic Mountain.
A
Sure.
B
That is where I grew up in that city.
A
I know the San Joaquin Valley also quite well.
B
Yeah.
A
Isn't that close to Fresno, if I'm not mistaken?
B
Yeah. I actually lived in Visalia for 11. And it was when I was in Visalia that I started the rock band. And so we played nightclubs and casinos around the Central California area. And one of the most memorable experiences I ever had. This still just fills my heart. We were playing in a little city called Clovis, which.
A
I know it.
B
You know. Clovis.
A
Oh, yeah.
B
Okay. And it was a street fair, so we were one of the main bands. And we were on the street and they had cordoned off, you know, like four city blocks or whatever it was that they did. And we were set up on in the middle of the street, like in an intersection, off to one street, you know, out of the center of the intersection. And there's hundreds of people standing around these four corners. And all of their children are just running wild in the middle of the street, you know, just going crazy. And so I took off my Yamaha Pacifica, my electric guitar, and I sat it down because we were getting ready to do Rocky Mountain Way. And I sang that song, but I didn't play on it. And so I set my guitar down, I turn around and right in front of my mic stand is this little child. Must have been like two or three year old child. And they're just looking up at me. And I looked down at this little child and he reached up, he reached his arms up to me. So I knelt down, I stepped aside from my microphone, I knelt down and I gave this little child a hug. And one after another, every single child that was in that intersection had to run over and give me a hug.
A
That's cool.
B
It was the longest intro to the song that we'd ever done before. And by the time I started singing, my heart was so full. And here I am, what, probably 25 or 30 years later. And that is still one of my most, you know, prominent memories of playing. And you know that playing in nightclubs and casinos is not the most wholesome environment to be in. But to play a street fair like that and to have these little children just love on you like that was an amazing thing. And it was in front of God and everybody, you know, it was just one of the most pure experiences I've ever had.
A
That's wonderful because at that time when I was doing a very similar thing up here around this area, I get up in the morning and you'll like this tanner, a little pinch between the cheek and gum. At the moment I sat up in bed, light a Marlboro while I rolled the joint. I mean, I was living the full. I was living the full rock and roll experience there for a while. I hope you weren't.
C
Why would I like that?
A
I'm just saying that was me when I was your age. Oh, okay, okay. Goofy. I was goofy. See, then I went straight at a certain point and I changed that. But, you know, I mean, I fully was. But we're Talking about the 70s now and the 80s and people that didn't live through that period of time like you. You don't realize that the best decade in the history of the world was the 1970s. That was the best ever.
C
The 70s.
A
The 70s were. Do you agree with me that it was pretty darn good?
B
Well, 70s was pretty good. Yeah. I graduated from high school in 76. So did I. Oh, my goodness. We've just got so much in common now.
A
Unbelievable.
B
So you gotta tell. Now, When's your birthday?
A
July 27th.
B
And you're going to be 68.
A
I'm going to be. I graduated early, so you'll be 67.
B
67. See, you're a year younger than I am.
A
Okay, well, I'm sorry I screwed you up with the graduating early thing.
B
That's.
A
But I did. I did graduate a year early. I did not like high school. I was a rebel. I'm still a rebel, although I'm trying to be, you know, more mellow. It's hard when you're dealing with people in the Republican Party.
B
Well, and I think that back then we were more like a rebel without a clue. And now we're a rebel with a cause. You know?
A
You know, I look at it, big difference.
C
That was a beautiful way of saying.
A
We were a rep. Say it again.
B
What was it I said that we used to be a rebel without a clue and now we're a rebel with a cause.
A
Okay, I get it. Well, we were rebelling, that's for sure. I was against.
B
Well, we were taught to rebel. Right? I mean, I was a little child when the Vietnam War was going on. And you grow up watching all of that stuff and how veterans were treated when they came home. And, I mean, I was raised by a Marine and my brother was a Navy guy, and so I found all that very confusing.
C
Do you need tires? Go to tireget.com t I r e g e t dot com. The link is down in the description. I don't know about you, but I don't like waiting in a tire shop or talking to a salesman. Tireguit makes it so easy. I can order the tires right from my couch. Seriously, it's one website. A few clicks and the tires are delivered right to your installer. You drop off your car and boom, your tires are on. Plus, you get to support Free People Radio. So not only do you get tires, but you also get to support your favorite show. We'll even throw in an extra little deal. Just enter promo code FPR in the checkout for an extra 3% off.
A
It was. You know why I say the 70s was a great time? Is because we still had the corruption was on the way down low. We didn't know about it. We Thought Mexico was corrupt. We didn't know what was going on in our own backyard. It was still a second turning. We'd had the Civil Rights act of 1964. There was a moment of. I don't want to call it racial harmony. But we weren't divided like we are now. Because there had been a natural healing that had taken place because of the Civil Rights movement. So people were okay with that. I'm sure in California, the same thing like Minnesota, women had, you know, achieved a much more integrated place in the society, which I was cool with. And that was cool. And it was just a pretty chill time, particularly right after the war ended. The war ended in 73. And we both came into our own in the late 70s. And it was a very free. I mean, we were afraid of the Russians. We were afraid of nuclear war. I mean, that was being stoked. But, I mean, generally speaking, there was jobs, everybody could work. There wasn't a lot of imports in those days. There was a lot of US Domestic manufacturing.
B
I remember one of the things that I did that broke my late dad's heart when I was 19 years old. So my dad was a construction electrician in a union called ibew. My mom was a businesswoman. Dad was a Democrat, mom was a Republican.
A
Oh, great.
B
That was an interesting household to grow up in. And back then, it was like the big joke was that mom and dad, for year after year after year, canceled out each other's votes. And that was, as. You know, that was as intense as it ever got between the two of them. But just growing up in. In that time, in that household, I think I grew up with an attitude that you don't have to agree with people. To be able to find them interesting, to be able to find them lovable, you know, to want to invest in them. And that was a really great springboard for me, you know. And then dad, he was such a kind of easygoing guy. And he would come home in the afternoons after he would finish working, and he'd sit out in the backyard under our huge fruitless mulberry tree in his lawn chair. And he'd drink a beer and he'd eat a cube of cheese. That was like his thing, you know. And everybody knew, well, we gotta leave dad alone while he's in the backyard. Cause he's gotta unwind a little bit, you know. But my dad was really influential in my life, I remember. And this, I think, is part of what really lent itself to me. Even having the courage to do what I'm doing right now, and that it's not just this, but this is one of the first things, because this is what happened before I came into relationship with the Lord. I was in 9th grade, and for my 9th, 10th and 11th grade years, I tried out to be a cheerleader every year. And every year I was skilled enough to make it past the group of teachers and administrators that were judging cheerleaders, cheerleader tryouts. And then I would try out in front of the school. And I was never the popular kid, you know, the super popular kid. So for three years straight, I tried out to be a cheerleader and I never made it. And I came home after the third year of doing that, and I just broke down and cried, you know, and my dad, big old construction worker guy that he was, he'd wrap his arm around me like this, you know, and he'd kiss me on top of my head and he'd go, squeak. He called me squeak. He goes, squeaky. I gotta tell you something, I know how important being a cheerleader was to you. He said, and you're not gonna understand this now, but someday you're gonna see that you trying out for three years straight and not making it, but not letting that stop you from what you wanted to do. He goes, you might not ever be a cheerleader. He goes, but those experiences, they built more character in you than you will ever know. And I can still hear my dad saying those things to me when I was 17 years old, you know, and it's things like that that my dad would say to me that just landed so firmly in my heart. And those things have never been diminished or disappeared in any way, shape or form. And whenever I am in a spot where I just want to throw up my hands and go, you know what, this is really hard. And I'm really getting tired of being beat up or people telling lies about me or, you know, whatever experience I've had, let's say over the last five years, that I can just hear my dad telling me, these things are building character in you, and nobody's going to be able to take that away from you.
A
Well, that is what you need to be in politics. You know, this young man, when he started working here at Free People Radio, hanging around with me, I think he was pretty. We were told in the story in the last podcast, he looked a little bit suspicious because in his age cohort, you know, it's a very left leaning cohort. That's a nice way of saying it, right? And you know, when I'm doing my solo podcast, he's looking at the scripts and he's, you know, there's a lot of them. And, you know, he's making this case to the audience over time, and he's like, wow, wait a sec. Whoa. A lot of times we walk out of the studio and he'd go, I didn't know that. And then what he's done is like, you went into politics. I went to politics. He's a delegate. He went to caucus.
B
Isn't that great for you? Thank you, Tanner.
A
Yeah. And that's what we really. For those of you that are out there watching and being entertained, because Wendy has got some pretty entertaining stories. Yeah, I like it.
C
I really like. I'm like, this is a very heartfelt podcast so far. I'm loving everything she's saying right now.
A
Right. Well, I knew we were going to get along. That's why I thought it'd be great if she came, because I saw Wendy talking about endurance. What your. What your father was teaching you is, you know. You know, there's another thing, too. You know, you get. These people are successes, right? They're success. Success. Whatever that means to whoever's determined.
B
Yeah, that's really a subjective term.
A
Very subjective. Generally speaking, it's how much cash is in the bank. Okay. Which doesn't register for me at all. But, you know, you can't have a success unless somebody failed. I mean, those things define each other. And speaking of martial arts, you know, the idea is get up. I mean, you get knocked down if you're fighting, so it's where you get up. It's only over when you don't get up. So I have seen you on video and I've heard the stories. And now that I know you're a transplant into Minnesota, boy, I got so many questions. How were you able to enter the Republican Party in 2021, basically, is what you did. Right. And move so quickly through the ranks of the party to attract the attention of the constabulary, which then put its full weight upon you. Can you tell that story? Because I want to know the details of the story.
B
Absolutely. Well, and I'm going to give you a little bit of backstory first. So I played in nightclubs and casinos for many years in bands. When my daughter was 12, she gave her heart to the Lord. And she's a singer, songwriter, musician in her own right. She's way more talented than I ever was, could even dream of being. And so she is immediately playing and singing in the praise team, the junior high praise team in the church that she accepted Christ through and she's bringing home all this really great rock music, you know, that has a faith based theme. And through my 12 year old daughter and music, God led me to him. And so it was when I was in my 40s that I came to the Lord. I started playing in praise teams immediately.
A
What is a praise team for?
B
A praise team is a team of musicians that lead worship in a church on Sunday morning or Saturday night or Wednesday night. Whenever it is that they meet, they usually have some music to prepare people's hearts. And so I was part of praise teams and I was living in Central California when I accepted the Lord. I moved back to Southern California in 2001. My dad passed away unexpectedly and mom was in a state after being married for 57 years. She just was devastated at the loss. And there were a lot of different things going on in my life. And so I moved back to Southern California and I moved in with my mom and she and I were gonna work our way through, you know, the loss of dad. And it's so cute too. I told you guys that he calls me Squeak, right? Well, he nicknamed all of us kids when we were babies. My older sister was Tiger, my younger brother was Moose. And when we got to be teenagers, those names fell away. But my dad called me Squeak until the day he died when I was like 43 years old.
A
Everybody's got a nickname, and so that.
B
Was just something that was, was so precious to me. But I started playing in praise teams and then I actually became a worship leader in a church where I was the band leader, I was the one that was building the services for every Sunday. And I was hired into a church that was a dying church. It had an organist and a choir director, and the choir sang hymns. Well, I didn't grow up in church, so I didn't even know hymns. And the people there was like 20 people that attended this church and they were a much older population, like 75 to 90 years old. And I went in there and I didn't understand. I'd never even heard the term worship wars before. Well, I walked straight into a worship war because, well, I've never heard that.
A
Term myself, so help me out with that one.
B
You have this older population that loves the old traditional music. You've got young families that are moved by contemporary, more rock genre worship songs. And the divide between those two things is so huge that all the space in between is war. And I would have these little old ladies come up to me after church on Sunday. You know, it'd be like Hands on the hips and this close to my face. And you know that so and so just left the church because of you. And I went through that for a really long time. And I prayed really hard about that. I was like, okay, Lord, how do we get over this hurdle? Because my immediate thing is I just need to go to another church where, you know, my style is appreciated. And evidently God had a different plan for that. And the point of all of this is leading to where I am at this point in time. And so I ended up staying in this church for eight and a half years as a worship leader. And the church grew, like, exponentially during that time to where in that part of Southern California. Regular church size is like a couple hundred people that would go on a Sunday morning. And that church went from 20 people to about 200 people. And it was really interesting because what I did was I looked at the big picture and I went, okay, there are new people coming in, and this is a good thing. But there are a bunch of older people that are feeling left out, and that's not what I want to do. So how do I remedy this? And what I ended up doing is taking what was really beautiful and was really reverent of the traditional and what was really beautiful and what was really reverent of the contemporary. And I started medleying these songs together. And the effect that it had on this congregation was just supernatural. It was a supernatural thing. You're reading my mind. It was divine. And I believe that that was one of the first times that I can identify in my adult life. So being an 18 year old dad says this stuff builds character, right? And in my 40s, I'm the worship leader of this church and experiencing this difficulty. But rather than cutting and running, I stay and I figure out how to make it work. And I understand at this moment in time that that was one of the training grounds that God took me through to bring me to this moment. I actually had an opportunity when I was a worship leader at that church to go on mission in Romania. There was a pastor that was in Southern California that for 14 years he'd been taking teams to Romania. And what they would do is they would have like a child care thing that was fun and games, and the parents were present there. So there was never anything, you know, unscrupulous going on. It was just like a whole family affair. And after the playtime with the kids, we would have these evangelical rock concerts and people are just giving their hearts to the Lord. And I'm traveling the country doing Homestays. And if you knew me, I am a person who enjoys her creature comforts. You know, if I go to a hotel, my husband laughs at me because if we're there even for one night, I unpack all my toiletries, all my clothes. I like move in because that's what makes me feel comfortable. Well, I'm doing these homestays and sleeping on people's floors in Romania where I don't even speak the language. And God had me so far outside of my comfort zone that I didn't understand it at the time, but that God was going to give me a message. And so I'm about two thirds of the way through this two week concert. I've been having tons of vocal issues for three concerts in a row. At the end, I'm walking up to the microphone and I have no speaking voice. And I'm saying, lord God, if you want me to sing for you tonight, then you have to give me a voice. And I would sing full voice for the entire concert. And when the concert was over, my voice would be gone again.
A
That's a good story.
B
And so, and I mean, that's not even the biggest faith walk of this, but this is what, this is what we've got time for today.
A
That's.
B
So the pastor comes to me toward the end and he says, you know what, Wendy? He goes, I've got a confession to make. And I said, what's that? He said, well, for the 14 years that I've been doing this, I have never brought a woman as a worship leader before. And I said, oh, okay. And he said, but more importantly than that, out of the 14 worship leaders that I've brought, you're the only person that has mentored these young men to become worship leaders. And at that time I was 50 years old and my musicians were 20 to 27 year old Romanian men that I had never met before. And we're out touring the country together. And as I'm falling asleep that night and thanking God for having a use for a woman who came to the Lord so late in her life, I got a download from God and I haven't heard his voice audibly, but he says to me, basically, you're not going to be a worship leader forever. He says, because of your age, you're not always going to be relevant. And so what I want you to do is I want you to start praying about what your next assignment for me is going to be. And I was devastated because I thought I was going to die a worship leader. They were going to have to pry my guitar out of my cold, dead hands.
A
And.
B
And so I started praying. And within about eight months, God showed me what it was that he was going to have me doing, and it was going to be around healing. And there is so much healing that is needed in our nation, in our state, in our politics, you know, even in our families at this point in time, because the divide has become so great between conservatives and liberals. And so God started taking me. He gave me three more years as a worship leader, and by the time my tenure was done, I was really ready to be done. And he just took me in a different direction from there. And so, I mean, so many of the things, as I look back over my life right now, I can just look at these moments in time that I have experienced great preparation for the moment that I'm in right now.
A
But you didn't know it when you were going through it.
B
I did not know it when I was going through.
A
I have the exact same why, oh, why?
B
We are just kindred spirits, and we've never even sat down and talked before.
A
Why am I going through this? What does this mean? And then it all makes sense downstream. And I think it's interesting to hear you talk about healing from a political frame. It's not words that are normally applied in that space. But I'll just share with you what I've been working on with this audience and with my own focusing of what I'm supposed to do. I'm talking a lot about personal empowerment. And I just said on the last solo podcast that the answer to the dilemma we're in is found in Matthew and Mark. And so on Thursday's podcast, I'm going to go through a bunch of biblical passages which I think are relevant to this kind of political environment within which we find ourselves. And you talk about polarization, not to get down this rabbit hole, but I wasn't happy that there was two different super bowl halftime shows. I know a lot of people were really happy about it, but the super bowl was the one remaining event where we could go down to the bar and nobody asked what your politics were. Everybody just hung out and enjoyed the game. And now football game.
B
That is the great unifier, huh?
A
Well, it's the great bread and circuses, and it's a great distraction, and there's all kinds of things I don't like about it, but now it's being used to further divide. And I saw the first super bowl, so, you know, I've watched this happen over a very long period. Of time. And I, I, you know, healing is rather than division and ultimately, well, there's two ways to do it. There's ethnic cleansing or there's healing. So I'm much more on the healing side of things.
B
Absolutely.
A
And I think that when a candidate comes forward and starts talking about healing the community, that language is not being used anywhere right now. So you're kicking off a great. Because ultimately that's what it's going to be. Tanner backed me up on this. I've talked about, people talk about, okay, we need to put this one in jail and execute that one. I said no truth commissions, just like South Africa, come on in and tell the truth. Because so many people, so many millions of people are implicated in where we're at, in my opinion. That's my opinion. And so what are you going to do? Jail everybody? Because, you know, if you're not self governing, you're in on it to some degree. Like I'm really into being self governing, like extremely into being self governing. So I'm really not on the payroll. I mean, I'm not taking Social Security, I'm not taking Medicaid. I don't intend to if I can get away with it. You know, I don't want any, I don't want the government to be a crutch for my life, which requires me to stay well and economically viable and it requires me to walk by faith and not by sight. There's a lot of requirements that come with that. So it's a healing path of being self governing. It's kind of the ultimate healing path because when you self govern, you realize that you're depending on something, it's just not the government. You're depending on your faith and your relationship with, with the Lord, which we get leftists that watch this frequently and put nasty comments in the comments section when we talk this way. But I mean, you know, I say to these people, you know, you got to try it. A lot of people, like for you, you were indicating that you didn't develop a relationship with God until later in your life, which means beforehand. Would you call yourself a atheist and agnostic? I mean, no.
B
I was a believer who really wanted to run her own life. And so I just resisted. I knew when I was 12 years old that God was real and that Jesus was who he said he was. And I actually said the sinner's prayer when I was 12 years old. All the kids in our junior high school, we had three junior high schools in the Santa Clarita Valley where I grew Up. And one of the kids dads was a preacher at a Fire and Brimstone Baptist church. And all of us went to church for about a month. So four Sundays, I answer an altar call, I put my faith in Jesus. And this pastor says, well, now you gotta go home and get your family saved or they're gonna go to hell. And I was like, wow, that's intense. So I go home and I'm like, mom, dad, you know, everybody's gotta get saved. And they basically patted me on the head, telling me, that's nice, and, you know, shooed me outside to go play. And it felt like being rejected by my family. And so for the next 28 years or so, I turned my back on the Lord because I felt like I had to make a choice, which was totally a lie from the enemy. But that was my path, you know. And So I was 12 years old, believed God was real. When my daughter was 12, she put her faith in Christ and God called me back to him through my daughter.
A
Wow, that's quite a story, you know, And I think Wendy will back me up on this. Tanner, all this stuff. Now, I was watching Senator John Kennedy of Louisiana on an X clip.
B
He's hilarious.
A
He's hilarious. Yeah, he's very funny. And he said, I think we need to get some more conspiracies. Why? Because all the conspiracies we have turned out to be true.
B
Right.
A
So, you know, if you grew up aware, which, you know, you're in California, so there's a certain level of just awareness, just being in California. I mean, it's not like we didn't know these things. We just didn't know how real. Like, you turn on the television on Saturday afternoon and there'd be a show from one to two on the one. You know, you'd have three network television stations, but there'd be one local station. And on the local station, they were looking for content. So there'd be some show, and from 1 to 2 or 1 to 3, it'd be about the Illuminati. And you'd sit there and you'd watch it and you'd go, wow, that's spooky. Or then the next week it'd be on aliens and the pyramids. And so it's not like the information wasn't there. It just. We looked at it as entertainment. And at least I did.
B
I don't remember those shows.
A
Oh, I. Well, that goes to show you what a weirdo I was. But, no.
B
Yeah, I wasn't allowed to sit and Watch TV a lot. My parents were always going go outside and play.
A
Well, we were outside a lot, too, in those days. We were outside. But this. I'm just saying, the information about the Fed, about the Rothschilds, about billionaire cabals, about the Dollar empire, all this stuff, I mean, it was there. I knew about it from the 70s, but I didn't pay really the kind of attention to it until the 90s. And in the 90s, I started to really dial in. And we had a thing here which is very appropriate for this Epstein thing. Before we get to your campaign and your history in the party, which I got to get to.
B
Sure.
A
But, you know, we have this Epstein thing. We're going to talk about it Thursday. And people don't know this, and you probably don't know this because you weren't here in the 90s. But in the early 90s, there was a very notorious takedown of a child sex exploitation ring that was associated with the Children's Theater Company here in Minnesota. And that's still here, the Children's Theater Company, whitewashed now, still putting on shows. And it was a theater company for kids. And they take them really young. And, you know, they were, you know, through 18 years old. And it turned out that the part that got into the press was that it was abusive young boys by perverse older men. It was framed up in that kind of a way that it was older men molesting younger boys. Actually, all the kids in the school, not, maybe not all, but a very large percentage of the kids in that school were actually involved in a satanic culture. And it was a satanic cult. And I know that from knowing people that were in it. And it was actually taken down in large part by the government covertly, which I also watched that happen. And I watched that and, you know, the snuff films and the child porn and I mean, all this came into my consciousness from people that I knew and interviewed. And, you know, what happened. I blew out my circle circuits, is what it did. I mean, I went through this and I saw it and I experienced it, and it was psychologically horrible for me and dangerous. And then when it was over, I tried to forget about it. And how I tried to forget about it was even though someone told me that they were trained by the CIA to do this work. And I thought to myself, wow, sir, can you explain this to me? Because I don't get this. Why do you think we're here? It was that kind of a deal. So they were trying to clean up this mess, and it Was an awful mess. But as trained as I was, and I was trained, when I got to the other side of it, my decision was, I'm going to get married and have kids. And I want to forget about this. This must be an isolated group of wackos. Even though the people that I met and interviewed told me it was an international satanic organization that involved politics, billionaires, I mean, they explained the whole theology to me, how it was working and not working. My point is, I knew about. And because it was so psychologically troubling to hear stories of children being eaten and all the things that. I mean, I personally heard this, you know, I wasn't reading it on acts. I mean, he's a real human being sitting this far away from me, telling me the story about it. I wanted to forget it. I thought it was an isolated. Even though I had evidence and I.
B
Thought to the contrary.
A
And you people must be crazy. I mean, my response to it was, you people must be crazy to talk this way. It can't be real. Even though I knew it was real, they used to say denial is more than a river in Egypt. Because I was into denial. I didn't want to deal with it. And even that experience prepared me for what's going on today because I know that this is very real. And most likely the psychological mechanism will function again that people will not be able to stay present for the. Of this event. And though for all the Christians that believe in Christ and believe in, you know, there's another part of the equation. I mean, if you believe in Christ, then you're going to believe in the devil.
B
Absolutely.
A
But that's not really today's contemporary Christianity.
B
Well, and you know what the, the devil wants? He wants most of all that people don't believe he's real because then he can move about more freely.
A
And the goal is to destroy Christ on the planet. That is the satanic endgame.
B
Absolutely.
A
And so when we get into politics, you go, what does that have to do with politics? Well, it's as much or as little as you want to put into politics. That way I can see politics completely dispassionately as a sociological and anthropological activity that has no supernatural. I mean, I have that gear because I'm trained academically to have that gear. But I also have this other gear that you have where when you have God in your life, you start to look at things very from another frame. And neither one of those frames is right or wrong. I mean, if you don't have the religious frame, you're Going to look at those people and say they're crazy. But if you do have that frame and you're looking at a person that doesn't have that frame, I just tell people all the time, hey, you only got half the story. Maybe you should do a little practice, a little research before you start calling me crazy. But as it applies to politics in Minnesota or even going through the party, I will say that there was a lot of Republican politicians caught up in that thing in the early 90s. Some of their careers went up in smoke. I'm going to be kind of. And not mention any names because they're probably dead. It's a long time ago. There's no reason to dig that up. But to think that evil is not afoot in our political culture here in Minnesota is quite naive. And I watched.
B
I don't know how anybody could arrive at that conclusion.
A
Oh, I would say most people are still in that place. If they had arrived at the conclusion there was a supernatural battle going on and they'd woken up to that reality, we wouldn't be having the problems that we're having. So we still have the majority of people. And what I'm trying to say is I'm not blaming them because I did the same thing. I intentionally took what I knew, put it aside, quit the work I was doing so I didn't have to do it again, and went into what I would call a normal. I became a normie the best I could. I had kids. And I'm going to forget about this stuff because I don't want to deal with it. And so I'm just trying to break bread with the people that are hearing me speak, that are saying, I don't think so. Eh, can't really be real. And I'm just going to tell you, I've seen it with my own eyes. It is real. Both sides of that equation. And it really plays into our political life here in Minnesota and why I know that. And what I'm setting up is I watched a video of what happened to you in the party, and that was such a striking thing for me. We didn't know each other at the time. We didn't, but I did. Somebody sent me the video, and I watched the entire thing. It was filmed. And there was a certain amount of real grief in that video. I mean, real raw emotion.
B
Well, it was in the moment of everything that was, you know, being taken away for, you know, just trying to keep things nice here.
A
Here comes winter. In winter, good tires aren't a luxury. They're a necessity for safety. Tireget.com Getting your winter tires is quick, easy, and priced right. With Tireget.com you order online in stall right by your house and stay safe on the road this winter season. Well, then, go ahead. There's a lot of Minnesota delegates and Minnesota participants listening at that time. What was your role in the party?
B
I believe that what you're talking about is a recording that was done at the CD1 meeting. And I believe that that meeting was on May 13th of 2024. That meeting was held for the purpose of removing me from office. I was at that moment the CD1 rep to the state executive committee. I was also the bpou chair of Homestead county at the same time, but my role in CD1 was to serve on the state executive committee and book.
A
Hold book. See now, Tanner Wendy came here from California just before she had a meteoric rise through the party. For some reason, they hadn't made her for who she really was, and they let her zip to the top. I had a very similar experience here in CD3. So you got into the party, you were elected chair. You must have. Were you a vice chair first, or did you just go right for chair?
B
No, actually, I went from 2021, early 2021, sitting on my couch, yelling at Fox News because none of the Republicans were doing anything about all of the, you know, all the stuff that was hitting the fan in November and in January. And after a few weeks of that, I just stopped and I went, Lord God, I can't keep doing this if I keep yelling at the TV or if I just sit on my couch quietly and watch all this. I'm part of the problem. I want to be part of the solution, but I have no idea what to do. And then I prayed a really dangerous prayer. Lord God, whatever you tell me to do, I will do it. And within a couple of weeks, I met Eric Mortensen, who was a sitting house rep. And he introduced me to the guys at Action for Liberty. And I get that that group of people is controversial probably for a lot of your listeners. Some of them probably love a 4L, and some of them probably hate a 4L. And that's all fine. But that was what got me. My start, is they invited me up to their headquarters and they said, would you just do a brief presentation for us, like maybe eight, you know, PowerPoint slides or something, and talk to us about something you're passionate about? And I really didn't know a whole lot about Minnesota politics, but I had met Eric Mortensen at this freedom rally, and he was talking about the Never Again Bell. So I decided to do a presentation on the Never Again Bell. And my slide presentation, I think, was like 40 slides, because I just tend to go all in when I wasn't really an eight.
A
Could you? Great.
B
And I think that the guys were blown away that, you know, I had the skill set for public presentation. I mean, when you've been in a band for decades and you've taught 50, 60 people in a fitness class at a time, you figure out how to command an audience, you know. And so I did my presentation. They were like, wow, that was great. You know, what are you going to do? And I said, I have no idea. And Eric Mortensen said to me, well, I know what I'd tell you to do if I was in charge of your life. I said, well, let's pretend for the moment that you are. And he said, you need to run for the House. So I actually, in 2021, I started holding freedom rallies, just inviting people. And the crowd went from 30 people up to 150, 180, couple hundred people over, I think the five events that I did.
A
And I was doing the very same thing up here in CD3, but go ahead.
B
And so at that point, what I did was I made an announcement at Caucus 2022 that I was going to run for House Seat 25A, and I was looking for the endorsement. And because the current administration of the Olmstead bpou was firmly against Action for Liberty, they did everything they could to block me from even getting an endorsing convention. But, you know, with God's help, I prevailed and I was the endorsed candidate.
A
Are the same people still there at Homestead?
B
There are some of the same people there, but I mean, when I was doing those rallies, and then it's such a blue district, I actually outperformed all the other Republicans that were in the county, with the exception of a senator, you know, a Republican senator that won in District 24. But I was, after the, the election and all that, I was sitting there going, I have no idea what I'm going to do. But I had built this huge network of, like, at any moment in time, I could call 40 to 80 people and have them go and do something with me.
A
You built a peer to peer relationship.
B
I did.
A
And that's politics.
B
That's who I am.
A
Though most people were in. They were in your network.
B
They were.
A
They supported you.
B
They were great. They were amazing. And so moving beyond that, I'm just a few weeks after the Election. And I'm going, okay, God, I know that you wanted me to run for that. I don't understand why I didn't win. Because at that moment in time I'm like, well, if God asked me to do it, I'm probably going to win. Right? And it was just a couple weeks later that a group of people who had a different idea of how to run government than the group of people that were in charge in Olmsted county, they reached out to me and we started having meetings. And what we ended up doing was creating a slate of people that were grassroots. And we did a lot of phone calling because I had been trained how to do this, did tons of phone calls, had some events and went into the 23. I guess it would be convention. BPOU convention. And we took everything. We took every office in the executive committee. We took every delegate position.
A
Wow.
B
We took every state central delegate position. We did not leave room for anybody that was part of the older guard. And for two years as the chair, I didn't start out as the chair. There was a situation there that I don't feel we need to go into. But the chair that had voted in and I was voted in as deputy chair, that person was removed from office three months after being elected. And so I stepped up as the interim. And in the fourth month, I was elected as the chairman. And for the remainder of that two years, I had people showing up to the meetings every single month that were there for the sole purpose of disrupting business. And it was not easy, it was not fun, but it was a great training ground. You know, how do you continue to move forward even though you're coming up against all of this resistance? So that is like 20, May of 23, June of 23, I become the chair. But in April of 23, I'm contacted by some people and they said, you know, we need somebody that is a real fighter that will stand up for the grassroots in the state executive committee. Would you consider running in the. In CD1 to become the Rep to state execration? And so I agreed to do that. And it was interesting because the person that they elected as chair was, even though he was super young, he was total establishment guy. And, you know, here I am at 60, whatever years old, however old I was then. And I stood up in front of this room of people that were clearly more of an establishment group. And I shared with them the story about being the worship leader in this church where I was hated. And rather than running away from it, I decided that I need to figure out a way to bring these two worlds together so that this church would flourish. And I told him, this is my vision for the party. I want to look at what the party has been doing that is still relevant, and that is something that is moving forward. And I want to take new and bold perspectives and blend those things together. And this room that voted in an establishment chair, voted in a grassroots rep for the executive, for the state executive Committee. And so they actually loved me for the first year because I was up there at the table with David Hand. And every month I was saying, the people that are sending me up here, they're asking for financials. They want to see a printout. This, this financial report, treasurer's report that we're getting every month. It's. It's bogus, you know, and I want to bring details back. They never gave me the financials, but I would report in great detail every month back to the CD what it was that I had done while I was in that room. And even people that ended up voting for my removal would tell me, we've never had a rep that has gone and fought for us the way that you do. And bring back the detailed reports that you bring back. For the first time, we really feel like we know what's going on up there in that state executive boardroom. And so we get into Caucus 2024, which I didn't understand, the full history of Otter Tail and the whole Republican Party and having staffers as chairs to CDs and all that stuff. I really didn't understand all of that at the time. But I was really clear when I was sitting in that boardroom and David Hand was talking about how the caucus of CD7 was an illegitimate caucus that needed to be nullified for X, Y and Z reasons, and you weren't part of it. And I kept asking questions and I was. I think there were 15 voting members of that board, and I think that there were five of us that voted against disenfranchising Otter Tail County. But they went ahead and did it. And the suggestion, the suggestion from the state Executive Committee was that Otter Tail just not have a BPOU convention this year. And I'm looking at the state constitution. And I had asked somebody in Ottertail for the Otter Tail constitution. And both of those constitutions say the same exact thing. The BPOU shall have an annual convention. I went, that's pretty clear cut. Shall have means. There's no gray area. You do it or you're in violation of the constitution. Well, probably about a week before their convention was the Olmsted County BPOU convention. That was on April 6th. And I was the chair of the convention. And there was a delegate that stood up and said, I have a resolution to present. And the resolution was to support the seating of all of the Otter Tail delegates. I had nothing to do with that resolution. All I did was ask for a second. There was a second. There was discussion, and then we took the vote. We probably had close to 200 people in our convention. Olmsted county is a big county, and the body of delegates, I think all but three people voted to support Ottertail County. In my world, as a leader, that's a mandate. Otter Tail calls me and says, would you come up? I said, well, as a matter of fact, this just happened in my own convention, so, yes, I will come up and share your convention for you. And within.
A
I remember now, you chaired that. And that was the beginning of the.
B
That was the beginning of the end.
A
Yes, I remember now. I'm tuned in.
B
Yeah. And so I was told that I was a traitor and that I was disloyal. And, I mean, for 13 months that I sat at that state executive committee table, I was told every single month that I was disloyal and that I needed to resign my position. And I just kept coming back month after month, and, you know, because I figured, well, they're entitled to their opinions. Doesn't mean I have to listen to them, you know. And so within one month, I was in my own removal process. And there were. I think there were 52 people that were voting members in that meeting, but there were close to a hundred people that drove in from all over the state to support me. And all of those people were barred from the room.
A
That's. That was the film.
B
Yeah.
A
You were actually outside.
B
I was. Well, I got kicked out of the meeting because they gave me 10 minutes to make my defense. And I was pretty rattled over what was going on. And I told him, I said, you know, I really don't think that this is going to serve the purpose that you're hoping it's going to serve. You know, I think that if you remove me, that you're going to blow up the party. And the current CD1 chair chose to ignore that. A particular congressman chose to ignore that. And sadly, at this point, so while I was the chair of Olmsted county, we would have somewhere between 65 and 95 people that would attend those meetings. And at this point in time, Olmstead is challenged to make a quorum of 17 and so they really blew up the party. Most of the people that were going to those meetings were grassroots people, and the grassroots was blown away that they had been. And it wasn't about me at that point. It was about all these people that had supported me and my. Yeah, my ideology had supported Ottertail and what the constitution says about what should take place. And so, I mean, that whole thing devolved very, very quickly.
A
Which brings me to my point where I tried to set this up. Alex, that's evil. I mean, you know, Alex is from my district. I'm sure he was on that executive committee because he was a national committeeman at the time. I don't have to ask which way he voted, because I know which way he voted. You know, this kind of stuff when you learn, see, because like you, I went in the party, I thought, oh, this is a party of the people. I didn't know I was joining a cult. I didn't know it was a cult. You know, well, now we do. So then you go, well, in a cult or in a club. Club and a cult, there's a, you know, it's a sliding scale. You can start at club here, enter here, slide down, and slide right down into a cult. And, you know, the farther up you go and the more power is involved, the more cultish it gets. So what we're finding out now, and I don't have any 8 by 10 glossies I did in the 90s. I don't have any now. It's 30 years ago. Maybe things are better. Maybe they're not. I don't know. But I do know that power in this world is aggregated at a level we can't even see. And the people who are elected, like said congressman, we see him as being powerful, that he's been elected to a seat of power. No, he's not. He's not in a seat of power. He's renting a seat. And if he does what he's told, he can keep his job in show business. And so when you see that, which you did, because I'm going to say back to what I heard. I heard that you read the constitution of the Otter Tail epou and of the state party constitution, and you knew what the rules needed to be based on the rules. You had a vote, and only three people were on the other side of the football. There was an overwhelming landslide, which had nothing to do with you. You just happened to be the leader who was dealing with the delegate who brought forth a motion. You didn't orchestrate that.
B
I did Not. I didn't have anything to do with that.
A
Right. You weren't looking for the fight. The fight just ended up on your lap. And because you saw yourself not as manipulating the delegates, but serving them. See, it's the. It all depends on how you look at the polarity. If you look at the polarity, when you get to the top, you're the boss and everybody else is serving you. That's a very not winning strategy in a self governing republic. Actually, when you're the boss in a self governing republic, you serve everybody below you.
B
Absolutely.
A
You work for them.
B
Absolutely.
A
And you always have the rule book right next to you so that when you're serving people, you're serving them based on the rules that we've all agreed to do.
B
You know what the. When I was served with documents for my removal, you know what the first and biggest charge against me was?
A
Please.
B
Was acting unconstitutionally.
A
Great. So. And they're going to continue to. Because they watch this. I mean, these people and they suck. And if you're listening to me, you know who you are and I know who you are. So when you pop your head up, it's going to get punched. We're done playing around with you people. There's no more Mr. Nice Guy. You see, I'm also from Minnesota, so I'm affected with the Minnesota nice thing. Unlike my cohort here at Free People Radio, Mr. Royce White, who enjoys just screaming at people that are liars. He enjoys it.
B
Yeah.
A
I personally don't enjoy it. But let me tell you what happened to me, Tanner. I told you, I'm really depressed. I've been depressed. And I'll tell you why I'm depressed. The depravity is on full display because we're moving into the election season. So when you know it and you're connected to it like I am, I'm not saying I'm always right. I'm not. But I got a pretty good sense for what's going on. And I look at what's going on and I go, this is friggin depressing what the party is doing. Really depressing. And then I realized what the solution is. Expressed rage. Because you know, depression is rage turned inward. So I'm not going to do that to myself. I'm going to go after the people that I know are liars. And I mean, I know they're lying. And now you need to know I know you're lying and you know that I know you're lying. Everybody's going to know your liars. We've been working on that at Free People Radio. So of course they. Of course, in the classic Saul Alinsky model, which is supposedly only on the left, but these people are also on the left. We don't know that about the Republican Party of Minnesota. It's very progressive. I'll tell you a funny story because you're a woman of God. I was at a meeting and Jim Schultz, I love you, but I gotta tell you, it was your meeting, Minnesota Business Alliance. I was invited because they think I. I don't know why I was invited. Maybe Jim just likes me because I like Jim. And I was leaving and a guy walks up to me, he says, wait, wait, Somebody wants to talk to you before you leave. I said, okay, great. And I wait. And a guy walks up to me and he goes, I just spent the day with Tom Hammer. I go, that's cool. I got a message for you. I go, you do? And here it was, his message. Are you ready?
B
I'm ready.
A
Message one. It was a two part message. First message, you're all listening out here, all you Christians that aren't voting, for example, or you're not in the party. Let me tell you, you're doing exactly what they want. Because the first message was, there's too many Christians in the Republican Party in Minnesota. But wow. And my comment was, man, you take the Christians out of the party, there's not much left.
B
The Sam said, they're like 1.7 million of them.
A
And he goes, and another thing, when it comes to this abortion issue, I want you to know we support that because we don't think poor women should have children. So that is a wing of our party that really is holding the levers of power in the party. And we are getting closer to Eric Mortensen's. And for those people that don't like afore l let me just tell you in Tanner, you know, I feel this way. Everybody wants to agree with everybody. I don't want to agree with anybody. I'm just looking for aligned interests. It's politics. You don't have to like me. I'm not trying to be likable. I'm trying to lay out a case for what I think we need to do to stay alive.
B
And amen to that.
A
If you really want to stay alive, a little bit like the Terminator, if you want to live, follow me. Now we're waiting for the people of Minnesota to wake up to this. And they will or they won't wake up in time. But I'm not looking for agreement I'm looking for aligned interest, as you were saying, which was very eloquent, which is a great segue into your run for Secretary of State. Yet two groups, yet a traditionalist group. And you had grassroots. And your statement was much like when you were doing the prayer services, the music. You were looking a way to blend these two groups so that you had a congregation.
B
Yes.
A
Okay. That's a very beautiful idea. And, you know, not to get off on this thing that we're kindred spirits, but that's exactly what I've been talking about. We don't need to like each other. We don't even need to agree with each other. We need to find the areas where we have aligned interests. So I'll tell you a story, and then we're going to talk about Secretary of State. And if we run over an hour and a half, so be it.
B
Okie dokie.
A
You know, it's my. You know, if anybody's hanging in here listening to this, they need to know I'm getting to meet Wendy Phillips. It's a thrill for me. I hope it's a thrill for you, too, because Wendy is a special person. So, you know, when I was doing the same thing, I was, I didn't call him freedom rallies, but I was holding meetings. I came into the party in 2021, and I immediately got very active and started holding these. I called them master classes. Again, for those of you out there, I'm not a Mason. That's a. A musical reference, actually, so. Because, you know, and I also want to say why you're great for this. If anybody wants to know why Wendy's great for this. If you're a music, a musician, by definition, you're creative.
B
Not only that, but, you know, as I'm training young musicians, which I had many, many years of opportunity to do that, one of the things that I would teach them is that before you show up for rehearsal, you need to be prepared. You need to do all of your homework. You need to know that music inside and out. Because once you step into the band, your focus can no longer be on yourself. You have to have that as part of your muscle memory. And you have to take the greatest part of your focus and listen to the other instruments that are in the band and figure out how you fit into that instrumentation. And I believe that there is a whole lot of that going on in politics as well. I have to be a great listener. I'm not looking to create an echo chamber for myself. That is a bunch of yes. People that are Telling me everything that I want to hear. I like having people that will come up against me because I believe that iron sharpens iron. And if we want to arrive at the very best solutions for the people in the state of Minnesota, we're going to have to be willing to, to have some friction, you know, with the ideas that we're proposing and let that friction heat up to the point that these different ideas, they converge and they create something that is brand new.
A
Well, let's just start here for those that Wendy has run every state. If you're watching me in Tennessee or you're watching me in Oregon or you're watching me in Texas, I think Secretary of states are everywhere. Tireget.com where convenience meets the road. Why make buying tires complicated? With tireget.com it's simple. Tireget.com one site, a few clicks and the tires of your choice are shipped to an installer right by your house?
B
I believe so, yes.
A
What watch this. Now, audience, watch this. What is the primary or what are the main things that the current Secretary of State, Steve Simon, or that that role itself? What are you tasked with overseeing as the Secretary of State?
B
Well, the three bigs are the elections, business licensing, and the state flag and the state seal. And then there's a bunch of different departments that the Secretary of state oversees as well. But as I'm looking at the big picture, I believe that election integrity is the linchpin for everything right now. If we don't get our elections right, we don't have much hope of getting anything else right. And so I'm super focused on election integrity. In my opinion, we need to go to a place where elections are locally controlled, where they are completely secure and they're transparent. And what that translates to in my world is that we need to go back to paper. We need to have paper ballots. We need to have a hand count and same day voting and one day voting. There are six things that are my bigs in the election integrity piece and those are the first three. Paper ballot, hand count, one day voting. We need to end mail in balloting, period. And I'm not talking about absentee ballot. I'm talking about millions upon millions of ballots being mailed out unsolicited by most of these people. And then the collection of those ballots, that needs to stop. But we also need to clean up the voter rolls. That is huge.
A
Which Steve Simon is obstructing here.
B
He is obstructing that very heavily. Yes. And I would be like swinging that door open. Federal government, come on.
A
In help me out.
B
Exactly. Let's take a look at this. Let's crack the door on this.
A
Is Minnesota still participating in the ERIC system?
B
Do you know in the what system?
A
ERIC system. Okay. Don't know.
B
I don't know what that is.
A
Okay. Something for you to do a little homework on. I put you on the spot, no problem. But Iron Shop sharpens iron. You can go listen to my last podcast. We covered it. We ran out of town. It was a two hour and 17 minute podcast. We got a little tanner and I got a little wordy up front because I was so happy the young man went to caucus. But I covered a guy who had been on Ms. Now msnbc and they portrayed him as a nonpartisan director of a ngo. And that NGO was all about restoring faith in our elections. Well, his previous history is he had run the creation of eric, which is a multi state strategy for registering voters and cleaning up voter rolls. Which if you talk to like a Mike Lindell or Rick Weibel, they'll say that's the center of the fraud because it, you know, stuffs people in there that don't deserve to be in there anyhow. It was funded by the, by the Pew Charitable Trust. And he had, you know, they had a whole election program working by Pew which kicks out about $300 million a year in grants. And you know, it's just so corrupt the way the mainstream media portrays this as being nonpartisan. And even just to tell you where I'm coming from on this, when I went into the party in 21, I started, we called them masterclasses as I was saying. And my mentor at the time, I did have a party mentor, a guy named Dave Kylo who was the chair of my bpou. He said, well, you just can't go do this. You gotta go do it through the party. I said, I don't want to do this through the party. He said, no, you have to, otherwise it's a lack of sacred honor because you're a party officer. So I went down to the CD3 executive committee and I put on a presentation and I gained the support of the board and Randy Sutter, who was the chair at the time, who you probably served with on that, probably had plenty of Randy. Randy and I get along great politically. No, personally, I always gave him respect. But he said to me, yeah, we'll do this under two circumstances. Number one, CD3 is not putting a dime into it. Great, I'll pay for it out of my own pocket. Number two, this is 21 now. Never discuss election integrity in any of these meetings. So that's where the party was at in 21, at least in CD3. And so we, over the course of the last five years, or five years, really, we've been moving towards a greater awareness that this is a problem in the, you know, in the Republican Party, but in the hierarchy, probably there's a lot of people that don't want to deal with this issue. I would even to this day. So, you know, you saying that I'm going to run and this is my signature issue. I mean, everybody's jumping on the bandwagon now, okay? Because Trump has cracked the seal on this deal. There's federal. The DOJ is suing the state of Minnesota. Ellison is defending. They're trying to keep these voter rolls secret, et cetera and so on. Huge fight over it. So it would be kind of declassee for a Republican candidate or a Republican officer to say, free and fair elections. You guys are wingnuts. But I was there when they were calling people wing nuts for thinking that the elections were suspicious. And so I want to know where anybody that's running for Secretary of State, I don't really care what you're saying in 2026. What did you say in 2023? What did you say in 24? Because, see, when Trump runs cover, everybody's got balls, right? Okay. What balls did you have back there when you were standing out there alone? Okay. Because I know what you were doing. You stood up and they threw you out of the party. True, right?
B
Absolutely.
A
Okay. I have a very similar experience. You know, so I was elected out. I mean, I, you know, that's a whole other story. The fistfight in the boardroom, the whole deal. I mean, I got a whole. We don't have time.
B
I don't have a fist fight story.
A
We had a fist fight. We had a fist fight.
B
I want to hear that story.
A
But my point is that, yes, people can change. People could. Like you said, you hadn't accepted Jesus Christ as your Lord and savior until later in your Life. I was 29 myself, which means there was a lot of water under the bridge between 13 and 29. And I had a real serious conversion, and it was real, and I will stand on it. And anybody want to put me to the test, I'll go for it. But where were these people back then? Because I know where they were. They were hiding. They didn't have the courage to stand up and loudly protest because it's Minnesota, after all. We're such nice people. We trust Everybody we have free and fair. Of course. We trust our government. Of course. And these people that I started contending with back then are still running the party. Not all of them. David Hand is replaced by Alex Plackish. That was not a movement forward. That was just a movement, like a bowel movement. Okay? So, I mean, we still have the same people. Bobby Benson is still down there in CD6. Noreen's still up there in CD7. The very people that made sure that you got smoked for something that you didn't even orchestrate blamed you, as if you have some kind of God power over your delegates and you're going to control every motion. And that's not who you are. You don't see your job as being a controller. You see your job as being an educator, a servant.
B
A servant, Right.
A
So they're still out here. So as you roll into the Secretary of State campaign, which Tanner will put all of your contact information in the notes for the podcast so that you know. And if you're out there and you like Wendy, send her some money. See, I'm a little different than most people. I'm a businessman. You like Wendy, I like Wendy. She's running a insurgent campaign with probably very little to no support from the establishment. Probably.
B
Fair statement.
A
Fair. Right. Have your group of people. Super name recognition in one part of the state. You're going to have to go all over to get this. But when people who vote understand, because, see, the general Republicans out there, the voters, the constituents, even if they don't admit it, they know the elections need to be looked into. That has become common knowledge. Not that everybody sits around and talks about it, but I think, what was it, 70 or 80% of Americans want voter ID now.
B
Oh, my gosh. I just saw a poll that was the Pew Research center poll.
A
And that's no friend of the people, 83%.
B
And when they broke it down, it was 95% of Republicans want voter ID. And that was the one thing we haven't talked about yet. 71% of Democrats. So we already talked about five elements that I want to fix in our Minnesota elections. The final piece is voter id. And I'm not just talking about a photo id, because our state's been giving driver's licenses to illegals for quite a while now.
A
And automatic photo registration.
B
Exactly.
A
26 states have automatic voters registration.
B
Isn't that just terrible?
A
And you know what, though? The Electoral College votes in those 26 states is enough to win. Just that they've already got the thing. If it's true. Now, I'm all about trials and tribulations and dispositive evidence and using the adversarial system to prove this stuff one way or the other. But if you look at it from the outside like a poet, As a poet, I'm going to say it's rigged and we already lost. So if we're going to pull it back, it's going to take the citizens. And when you talk about an issue that unites left and right, that's the issue.
B
Absolutely. And I mean, it needs to go a step beyond photo id. There needs to be the evidence of citizenship and eligibility in that mix. You can't just show me a photo ID that shows me where you live, and I go, great, come on in and vote. We need to know that that person is a citizen and as a Constitution, has a legal right to vote, because otherwise they're disenfranchising your vote or mine.
A
I want to say, as a constituent, you have to just tolerate me. I'm a policy wonk and I never sleep and I read constantly. One of my greatest fears, I mean, not one of my great, probably my single greatest. I don't want to say fear because I don't walk with concern. It's not really a fear. Not that I don't have anxiety and fear. And when I do, what runs through my mind is, oh, you faithless.
B
Right?
A
Come on. And I'm getting better at it.
B
I believe. I believe. Lord help me with my unbelief.
A
Right, yeah. You know, but I mean, I'm getting better at it now because I figure if something really awful happens, it's what God wants for me, and I'm okay with that. But I think President Trump is talking about federalizing elections, and that's causing a lot of concerns. Got the SAVE Act. But what I'm concerned, my concern is that this need to determine who's a citizen ends up being a national digital id.
B
Yeah, that's not going to work. And I don't sit here and profess to have all the answers, just like you brought something up a few minutes ago that I don't have knowledge of. I'm going to be transparent and I'm going to tell you I am a learner and I learn every day of my life, and I don't have all the answers at this moment in time. But if we can set our sights on what it is that we believe that we need, which is being able to identify who is eligible to vote and who is not, and then we're Going to have to really get creative. Talk about that creative piece of. Get super creative. How do you go about doing that without diminishing people's civil rights? Without taking away their liberties?
A
You don't want to take away their liberties?
B
No, never.
A
But there's also a kind of an implicit racism in this that is just awful. Like, we're going to be dis. And I see this with these, you know, they're black academics that are on the legacy media and they talk about the disenfranchisement of. And I'm thinking about Reverend Tim Christopher. If he sees this. He's a podcaster here in town. And, you know, I don't know what he would say, but I'm gonna say everybody who's an American citizen is capable of fulfilling whatever this requirement is if they want to vote. If you don't wanna vote, fine, don't vote. You know, it's kind of like the death penalty in reverse. And people are gonna get mad at me for saying it. I said it someplace. I don't. Did I say it on here? I said it someplace. I'm not pro death penalty. I'm not. And I'll tell you why. I don't want to see any innocent people get killed. Okay? That's good enough for me. One innocent man or woman killed with state power, that scares. That is a concern. And vice versa. You know, if we got one person voting, that's not supposed to vote, that's not cool.
B
It's not. Okay?
A
So we're going to have to. And if we really wanted to heal these two camps that have such great agreement about this issue, why are we fencing this as a partisan issue? Well, the people aren't. It's the pundits and the people that are on the payroll.
B
Right.
A
Which is a damn good indicator that something skuldugarous is at foot. But there's another part that you said which I think is super cool. The business licenses. There's 40,000 NGOs in Minnesota. Every one of them renewed their business license every year. Anybody looking at these NGOs, certainly Keith Ellison, who has dominion over them, was not paying attention to them.
B
You know what I found out in my research is that the NGO licenses are kind of split between the Secretary of State and the Attorney General. And so there is the ability of SOS to have some oversight in that.
A
Well, we certainly need it. Isn't it under this now? Again, because I'm an evidence based guy, I'm not into. You know, I'm all into the supernatural. When it's me, like me. And if I got another person that believes in it, like me, maybe we can have some agreement. But for the purposes of government, we got to have proof. We have to have dispositive evidence in courts of law, investigations. Not that it's necessarily going to change what I think or don't think.
B
No. But due process is an important thing.
A
It's the thing. It's the thing.
B
Otherwise, what are we doing? Right?
A
And because if you have discernment or you have feelings or you have all kinds of other skills. Yeah. You can see what's going on. And I'm going to tell you, you don't know about Eric. You're going to go look it up. You're going to say, oh, that was cool, and I wasn't meaning to out you. But you know what? The honesty is more important than, you know, it. You see, we have a lot of people in politics that lie every time their lips move. And those people, I'm opposed to. I'm not opposed to people. And I say all the time, I don't know. I really don't know. Tell me. And I'm not afraid to have limits to my knowledge, and I'm not afraid to make mistakes. And I'm not saying I never lie, but I will say this. When I lie, somebody told me something and I didn't take the time to research it. And I've. I feel terrible when I do that. I mean, I've become much better doing this job.
B
But don't you go back and own it, too?
A
Yeah, some. Most of the time, yeah. I try to. I have.
B
Me, too, because I make mistakes on a pretty regular basis.
A
Well, it's politics. I mean, if you go, like, if you.
B
How can you be in this and understand everything about it and all the moving parts and do everything right all the time? Nobody is capable of that. There's one person that has walked this planet that's capable of that, you know, and we call him Lord. And so when I do things wrong, I try to be a standup person, own them, and ask for forgiveness. And you know what? Sometimes those things are going to be so big that they will take you out, and other times you may get, you know, bumped and bruised a little bit, and then continue on your merry way on the same path that you've been on. But for me personally, I find that my spirit gets degraded for the more of those things that are happening that I just kind of go, well, that wasn't a very big deal, you know, and so I'M just going to push that off to the side for now. But those things add up really quickly, too. And so I'm not about airing all of your dirty laundry in public. I don't think that that's a solution either. But I think to have accountability people in our lives that we can go to and we can explain a situation and we can ask them for their wise counsel, that would be more objective than me looking at my own situation and trying to figure it out and then trusting those people enough and the counsel that they give you and following that path to making things right again. I believe in my heart of hearts, and this is true of the way that I look at other people, is that if you came to me and you told me an egregious lie, intentionally or unintentionally, or you told me a small lie, intentionally or unintentionally, and then you realized after the fact, and you came back to me and you said, wendy, I need to tell you this. I would have so much respect for you for having done that, because that takes a lot of courage to own the things that we've done in this life that have been less than our best. Whoever wants to show that side of themselves. But the humility and the level of honesty, those things are going to lend themselves to filling our tank, our integrity tank, you know?
A
Well, that's what's on empty.
B
And. Well, maybe for some people, I'm feeling pretty good about myself.
A
I'm talking about in the political realm.
B
Oh, absolutely.
A
Or even in the professional realm. I mean, if you take a look at the professional states, doctors, lawyers, architects, priests. I mean, that tank's a little bit empty after the last whatever. And now in the political realm, I mean, 20 billion, 50 billion, you know, I mean, who knows? I mean, let's try this and figure out what's going on. Tanner, did you see that thing on X where that Somali woman was going through the airport just in the last month, and she had 700,000 bucks in cash in her suitcase?
C
Yeah, I didn't know. When did that happen? I saw a game.
A
It was supposed to be recent. It was supposed to be very recent. Okay, so the cash is still leaving. Where's the cash coming from?
B
You know, so now we're talking about it openly, but we're still letting them fly it out of the country.
A
Well, what's really changed so far? So far? Really? What has changed? I mean, structurally. Structurally, in the state of Minnesota, nothing. In fact, we've seen a huge organized effort to stop whatever change that the administration was trying to create. So what's interesting, and we've said this on the podcast many times, the off ramp offered to the state of Minnesota to remove ice from the state was just turn over the voter rolls, and people went crazy. Like it was some kind of extortionist plot. Yeah, it's politics. That's why. What do you think it's like there's rules here. There's no rules right now. We're living in a moment where the rules are really obscure. Obscure. Suspended. And so you're gonna. You're running for secretary of state. You're running a statewide race. I presume you're going all over the state. Is that.
B
I am.
A
How's that going for you?
B
A lot of miles on the car. But you know what? I'm. I'm a people person. I actually enjoy people. I love meeting them. I love talking with them. I. I like it because I feel like I can go out there and be myself. Not everybody appreciates me in my authenticity, and that's fine. I'm not everybody's cup of tea, But I like going out there and being real and going home after the event and doing kind of an inventory of what took place in that space, not time. And when I can look at that event and I can go, wendy, you were honest. You know, people challenged you on certain things. Rather than telling them what you know that they wanted to hear from you, you told them the truth. You know, and that's. That's all I can do. That's the best thing that I can do. And if it's God's will for me to actually serve in this office for the next four years, I'll do it with my whole heart. I'm already building the team of amazing election integrity people of professor emeritus in constitution and law that I've got on board. There are different people that I'm having conversations with that are kind of the election integrity lawyers around the state. And it's just the adventure of going out there and doing it and being a really straight shooter and trusting God with the outcome. That's the thing that keeps coming to me over and over again. If I'm going to be able to do this and actually stay in this for the long haul, I have to be who I am. People have to know what they can expect from me and where I stand on certain issues. And if people come to me and they present me with a valid argument that would actually influence me, then I'm open for that as well. Because once again, I don't have all the answers to all the questions. What I do have is a good head on my shoulders. I have common sense. I believe that my eyes are open to the reality of what's going on in government right now, even though it's been heartbreaking and at moments in time has made me sick to my stomach as I find certain things out. But I'm in this and I'm being real and I will serve with my whole heart.
A
One of the things we talk about a lot on the podcast, there's a certain bias towards professional degrees and experience. And what I've learned, much to my dismay, is that just means you're acculturated into a business model of deceit, abuse and fraud, in my opinion. So what we talk a lot about on the podcast is this is only going to change when every day, regular American citizens, to use a biblical reference, pick up their cross and go into politics, which is not fun all the time. Sometimes it's fun. This is fun.
B
But I mean, I'm having a good time.
A
Yeah, I mean, it's fun to meet people. I mean, it's great if you're. But you have to do things. It's a lot of work. And we've outsourced that work to a political class of people that are skuldugerous criminals, in my opinion. And I just want to get the 8 by 10 glossies and start putting these people away. And that's where I'm coming from. I don't want anybody, I don't want to impugn anybody unless they're criminals. And I want to prove they're criminals if they, you know, I'm not. But I mean, this thing that happened to you in the party, I mean, it's not really criminal. Maybe it is criminal, I don't know, but it is definitely unethical and it's immoral and it undermined. And what you said was so true. All those regular, everyday citizens, when they saw what happened to you, disappeared. They don't come to the meetings anymore. They gave up. And the hierarchy knows that. They know if they shit on people enough, people of goodwill and good conscience will give up because they're not really trained to put up with battle and, and, you know, have the endurance to keep going till the end. As it says in Matthew 10:34, don't give up. Keep going. You know, you go till the end, you'll get saved. There's no off. There's no off ramp. Oh, man, this is tough. I think I'm gonna quit. And that's not what you did. I mean, you took really a. I saw that film. You were not happy.
B
I was not happy.
A
You were stunned, actually, and hurt.
B
I was stunned for a while.
A
You were hurt after that and you've managed to get back in to the game. You're doing something very valuable, I personally think. And when I'm in this interview role, I try not to editorialize too much, but I think your presentation of self in everyday life is pretty right for this job because these people go in there and they disappear. They're never seen again. You know, Secretary of State. Name the guy before Steve Simon. You know, we don't. This is. We see this as not being an important thing really. And actually it's the center of the thing. So if someone is going to confront this, they have to have the right personality to do it. The right look, the right. The right tone. Like for me, I'm not the right guy for this. I get pissed. You're a little bit more even keeled than I am. But I'm just gonna.
B
Just. Cause you haven't seen my Irish come up yet.
A
Oh, is that what it is? But I mean, I'm very happy you came in. And you're welcome to come back during the course of the campaign. Come in. When we do the morning show, it'll have a huge audience. And we never talked about tire. Get Tanner beat on me next time, would you? We pay the bills around here with a little tire strategy we have called tireget.com where people can get any tire that they need for their consumer vehicles at the right price. And we mount and balance them right by your house. So anybody that needs tires. Oh, and Tanner now is pulling up here. We can all go to the free people store, which is Free People radio, Upward slash store. Because we want to get this out there just right. We're not far right. We're just right.
C
Just right.
A
We're just right. So, Wendy, it's great to meet you. We have never. I mean, I hope this is the start of a friendship and association for us. I don't dislike the person who's working against or trying to get the endorsement. Also himself. I mean, I don't dislike him because I don't know him.
B
I don't know him either. He seems like a nice man. I have no problem.
A
He used to be a Democrat.
B
I understand that.
A
Very, very establishment. The establishment seems to like him. They pull him out like a rabbit out of a hat. Geez, who we gonna get for this call, Tad? You know. No, we don't want that. And Tad, you're welcome to come on here. And Tad and I get along when I see him. We're very cordial with each other. You know, the only time I get mad at people is when they lie. Tad's never lied to me, so I don't have a bone to pick with him, but he's welcome to come in. And I want to know, Tad, back there in the day when Randy Sutter and David Hand were telling me, never discuss election integrity, they muzzled me so that I could be a party participant and put on events. Where were you? Where were you all? Now everybody's a hero because Donald Trump's come in and he's taken all the slings and arrows for these folks. I watched Alex Plecish call somebody on my committee. We were on the same bpou for 2 years. I know Alex oh so well. I watched him insult someone. I mean, really verbally insult them, because they had concerns about election integrity and he was insulting to shut him up. I mean, really insulting. So, I mean, I know where the hierarchy stood back in the day before it was fashionable. Well, what's fashionable now is not enough to get the job done. Now we got a whole new set of problems go forward in what do people have the courage to say? That's why I brought up the digital id. I don't want there to be. I don't want this election integrity thing to be the Trojan horse through which we all have a digital id. So I'm just going to throw.
B
That would not be a solution.
A
I'm just throwing that in there as a constitution. I'm a constituent.
B
Well, maybe you need to be part of the team that is figuring out how we get eligible voters.
A
You bring the whole team and put.
B
Them all at the table here that we don't have to go into.
A
I would love digital thing. I would love to delve into that. We got four seats here and bring them on because where is that conversation? I'm not hearing it seems to be a rather. Seems to be a rather important issue.
B
Well, I'll tell you what. I think that everything hinges on elections. And if we cannot get that component right, it's going to be really tough to straighten out. Anything else?
A
There's a couple people running for governor that say the exact same thing. Yeah, two of them. Bill Parrish and Mike Lindell. The rest of the folks, not so much. You know, not trying to put my thumb on the scale. I'm just calling them like I see them. I mean, I've been listening to Phil talk about these issues for a very long time. I've been watching Mike Lindell give up a lot.
B
That's right.
A
I mean, it's one thing to talk. And I don't know what Phil gave up. Phil might have given up a lot, too. I know what I'm giving up. So, you know, the rest of these people, I don't know that they really put it on the line for this issue. And I agree with you. Very important issue.
B
I'm putting it on the line.
A
Yes, you are.
B
And I'm teeing it up to fix it all.
A
Great. We could have a Dream Team election.
B
I would love that.
A
You know what? And they tell me, the establishment, that this candidate's not electable or that candidate's not electable. Let's all get behind Michelle Tafoya. And, you know, we had this thing. And I'm going to end on this, and I'm going to delve on this Thursday, you know, Bad Bunny. Bad Bunny. I. I haven't watched the super bowl in many years because I realized bread and circuses are not for me. Now, if you like football and you like athletics, that's great, but I'm a protester. I don't own any 401k money either, because I know what makes that stock market go, you know, around my campfire at home, I got some people that are not happy with me, but I'm a man of. At least on my own way of thinking, some principles. So I'm not big on. But I did watch it because I wanted to see what the hullabaloo was about. Bad Bunny. And I watched it and I read all the stuff on X. And I want everybody to know the same people that paid Bad Bunny to do that. If you didn't like it, I'm not going to say if I did or I didn't like it. I'm just going to say if you didn't like it, you know, 15 minutes of Spanish and lyrics that, you know, peel the paint right off the wall and, you know, it was insulting for a lot of people. You know who paid him to do that? The same people that paid Michelle Tafoya for 30 years. The money is exactly the same. The people are all the same. So I asked myself, I asked myself, if you're able to stay on that payroll for 30 years, how did you do that? I couldn't have done it. I would have said, hey, you know what? You. I'm not going to do that. That's me. So how are we going to go from where we are today and fix our elections and restore our republic with people that are on the payroll of the very folks that ran Bad Bunny up everybody's ass last night or this weekend. I asked myself questions like that. And I'm waiting for the citizens of Minnesota to, you know, put the dots together instead of impugning me for the obvious critique which cannot really be denied. I mean, we all have a master. Bob Dylan said, it could be the devil, it could be the Lord. We all got to serve somebody. Who are we serving when we work for Comcast and NBC? Who are those people? They're the people that put Bad Buddy up there. That's what they are. And who paid their. They're just the pass through. It's the billionaires that own these teams that had a little council and said, let's let the whole world know who our constituents are. And yet we're going to continue to watch football. Right? Because we love football. We got to get serious about beating this evil.
B
Absolutely. It is a battle of good versus evil. It's not Republican against Democrat. It's not grassroots against establishment. It is absolutely good versus evil.
A
And that's a great way to end because I like to say this for the Michelle Tafoyas and the Tom Emmers and the Bobby Bensons. I'm not a judge and I don't want to be a judge. When people drop their baggage and give over, I love them.
B
Everything is forgiven, right? That you talk about clean slate, that's when it happens. I've experienced it. You know, I came to christ in my 40s. I have a very clear delineation between life without Christ and life with Christ. And it is absolutely transformative. And anybody can experience it. They just need to put their faith in Jesus and ask him for his help. And it's going to be a brand new ball game.
A
And you know, this is why I say that the New Testament is such a great guidebook for the times we're in because it says if you have faith, you can throw a mountain into the sea. People go, how's that supposed to work? Well, you know, the mountain is all the money that these NFL billionaire owners possess and the Pew Charitable Trust and the Rockefeller Charitable Trust and the Ford foundation and the MacArthur foundation and all these NGOs and all this media all arrayed against us to break our brains so that we do what? Give up our faith.
B
Do you know what else the mountain is, though? It's all the sin in my life that ruled me before I put my faith in Christ. And he changed everything. That's the mountain for me.
A
The mountain has a lot of different interpretations.
B
It does.
A
That's what's great about the Bible. It's always also written.
B
It's living and breathing right, right here for us.
A
So what we're trying to do, and we say on the podcast, Republicanism, not the party, the philosophy, is looking for that same baggage drop where we give over. It could be for Christ, but Republicans are so badass. It doesn't have to be for Christ, but give over to our country, for the institutions of our country, for our institutions, of our faith in our country, which is based on George Washington couldn't tell a lie. Honest Abe Lincoln. We got to start at the very basic, let's not lie to each other. We don't have to agree. We don't have to like each other. We're looking for aligned interest. And you, Ms. Wendy Phillips, have got a great issue. You've really given me something to think about, because both the left and right agree on something you wouldn't think they agree about, which is they want voter id.
B
Yes, they do.
A
They want their votes to count. They don't want the appearance of a choice. They don't want fake freedom. They really want free will.
B
They want authenticity.
A
Oh, you got a great issue. If you can get that out there like that, well, you get a lot of Democrat votes.
B
I'm counting on it.
A
Wow, what a great way to end. It was very, very fun. Look, we went through two hours.
B
It went like a minute so fast.
A
It was great, wasn't it?
B
It was wonderful.
A
You're welcome to come back, Tanner. Let's try to have Wende back when she's up in town. And Tanner, thank you so much for staying late tonight to do this. We really appreciate it.
B
Thank you, Tanner. It was really great to meet you.
C
Yeah, it's good to meet you.
B
And thanks for becoming a delegate. Going to caucus. That's amazing.
C
A little scary, but we'll make our way. I got a good support net here.
B
Excellent, Excellent.
A
Thanks, everybody.
C
Have a good night, everybody.
D
Disclaimer the information provided in this podcast is for general informational purposes only. All opinions expressed by the podcast hosts and their guests are solely their own opinions and do not reflect the opinions of any entity they represent or associated with. This podcast is not intended to provide professional advice or political guidance and should not be relied upon for such. The content of this podcast is based on the host's knowledge and understanding at the time of recording and is subject to change any fact presented or factual statement. Made by the podcast. The host or guests are generated by available mainstream media sources, social media outlets and artificial intelligence, including grok, the Artificial Intelligence module of X. Although we strive to provide accurate and up to date commentary and opinions, we make no representations or warranties, express or implied, about the completeness, accuracy, reliability, suitability or availability with respect to the Podcast or the information, product, services or related graphics contained in the podcast for any purpose. By accessing and using this podcast, you acknowledge and agree that the hosts, guests and any affiliated entities are not responsible for any actions you take. Based on the information provided in this podcast, you agree that the use of this podcast is at your own risk. The hosts, guests and any affiliated entities are not liable for any direct, indirect, incidental, consequential or punitive damages arising out of your access to or use of this podcast. This includes any damages related to the loss of use, data or profits, whether or not advised of the possibility of such damages. In no event shall the hosts, guests and any affiliated entities be liable to you or any third party for any claims, losses or damages arising out of your use of this podcast or reliance on any information provided herein. By listening to this podcast, you agree to release and hold harmless to hosts, guests and any affiliated entities from any and all liability, claims, actions, demands and expenses arising out of a relating to your use of this podcast. Thank you for your understanding and cooperation.
A
This is an I Heart Podcast Guaranteed human.
Podcast: Real America’s Voice
Host: Professor Penn (David Penn)
Guest: Wendy Phillips (Secretary of State Candidate, MN)
Episode: 278
Date: February 11, 2026
This episode of the Professor Penn Podcast (Real America’s Voice) explores the intersection of politics, personal journey, and election integrity. Host David Penn welcomes Wendy Phillips, a candidate for Minnesota Secretary of State, for a deep and personal discussion. Phillips shares her background in music, faith, and leadership, alongside a detailed account of her meteoric rise—and dramatic ouster—from Minnesota Republican Party leadership, and her vision for restoring trust in Minnesota’s electoral process.
The conversation is heartfelt, frank, and peppered with humor, occasional righteous anger, and spiritual reflection. Both speakers use personal anecdotes to illustrate political points, emphasizing humility, persistence, and the moral dimension of public life.
This episode offers listeners a rich portrait of grassroots Republican activism and the inner workings—and dysfunctions—of party politics in Minnesota. Wendy Phillips emerges as a candidate whose approach is forged by faith, creativity, and direct experience with both leadership and betrayal. Her run for Secretary of State is framed as less an individual campaign and more a call for everyday citizens to reclaim self-governance, with election integrity as the essential battleground.
Final note:
"It is a battle of good versus evil... It’s not Republican against Democrat... It is absolutely good versus evil." — Wendy (115:50)
For More: