The Rising Republic: Fort Knox and Martial Law

[00:00:10] Hello everybody, welcome to The Rising Republic. It's your boys, L. Douglas Hogan. And Ryan Buford, glad to have you. Alright, it's been a crazy, crazy... We got so much going on in the backdrop. We got some Fort Knox audits that are coming up. President Trump promised whenever he took office he'll be running page by page, line through line through our budget, getting rid of waste, getting rid of all the unnecessary spending that's been going on in our country.

[00:00:34] And lo and behold, it's happening now and everybody seems to be freaking out. Ryan, what have you heard? Well, I mean, I can't remember if we talked about any of the stuff that had been uncovered through the Doge type stuff last time we were on air. But I mean, the Social Security stuff that's coming out, all the things from USAID, you know, and now into Fort Knox where we're waiting to see what is in Fort Knox, what physically exists.

[00:01:02] And I think it's a valid question. What are we dealing with? And every president kind of has just assumed that everything is good to go. And now we're starting to ask real critical thought questions of where are we as a nation down to the point of where's the physical cash? Where where is the physical backing that we used to have before we left the gold standard? And but I know, of course, it hasn't been released yet. Like, what is it there?

[00:01:31] And if whether or not that's going to be released to the public or not, hopefully, you know, we'll kind of get an idea. But the fact that we're chasing down mineral reserves and resources in Ukraine as a bargaining chip kind of makes me wonder a little bit. Yeah. And there's so much stuff that just pouring through and you got to sift almost through everything because there's so much coming out right now.

[00:01:52] I don't I don't know how many people is employed through Doge or working for Doge, but there's so much that's being covered right now by the media. And it's kind of you have to sift through it line by line almost as as Trump has said in the past. And it's it's it's difficult to find out what what is really true and what really isn't. Yeah. But one thing we know for sure is that everybody's buzzing about it is that there's an audit coming.

[00:02:20] There's an audit coming to Fort Knox because Fort Knox is supposed to have like 50 percent of America's gold reserves tied up in there. And we're talking 147.3 million ounces of gold like it's huge. And this is supposed to be like 50 percent of this of our stash. Yeah, that's a big number. Yeah. You know, I'm kind of curious. We should have a certain amount. And I think there's it's going to go one of two ways either. And this is kind of my conspiracy thinking.

[00:02:49] Either it's going to be less than what we're supposed to have or it's going to be significantly more than what we're supposed to have. If it's less than what we're supposed to have, that's going to have, you know, an impact with regard to panic, you know, banking institutions. You know, where are we doing with fiat currency, all this kind of stuff.

[00:03:06] If it's more than what we're supposed to have, there's going to be a big question around the world as to where we got it from and who we took it from or what, you know, what put us in a position to where we have that kind of resources or those kind of resources. So I'm kind of curious to see where it's going to go, like what we're actually going to get out of it. But it's kind of weird because if it's not right on the money where it should be and you don't have people painting, you know, clay bricks gold to make it look like we have what we are supposed to have.

[00:03:38] You know, it's going to stir a pot that most people haven't really been paying attention to. And that is the cash in their pocket or the digital number in their bank account from their paychecks, you know. I don't know what's going on, but I recently, very recently saw a YouTube video and I can't remember the amount of gold that was being moved.

[00:04:00] But in the newscast is said that X amount, millions of whatever of gold, probably ounces of bullion was being transferred from the Bank of England to the United States. I'm like, did you hear that too? Like what's going on here? Are they trying to replace it, you know, to make it look like we're really up to par where we're supposed to be? Yeah, I mean, that's the only thing I can think of is it's like, you know, oh, if we're going to be audited, then if we have reserves in one location, then we need to bring them back to Fort Knox.

[00:04:28] And if they're not in Fort Knox, why the hell aren't they? You know, what's going on? So that's kind of got me curious to like what is the validity of that? Is that an accurate report of what's going on with this money from the Bank of England? But I don't know. I mean, it's funny because we see this stuff, you know, there's these like broad strokes, sweeping movements and things like that that are happening with this administration one after another after another.

[00:04:58] And it's happening so fast that the media can't even keep up with it. So I think it's going to be tricky. I mean, it has been tricky to be able to determine the truth. But, you know, we're generally pretty good at sussing out the details. And I think this is going to be the type of thing where you're going to be pulling from other resources to find out why is this money moving? Where did it go? Are we bringing it back? Is it, you know, is it just for show?

[00:05:20] I'm looking at the independent right now and the independent saying, and this was as of February 15th, 2025 says, why are the U.S. banks flying gold from London to New York? So this is as current as Trump's administration. Now, we know that there are things going on. I'm not saying that Trump's innocent. I hope to God he's not involved in this, but it would be hard to imagine that somebody could get into Fort Knox without Trump finding out about it. You know what I'm saying? And replacing some of that gold that is supposed to be there that isn't just to make us look good.

[00:05:50] And this could be an ally kind of a thing that, hey, you take care of us right now. We'll take care of you. You know, that kind of a thing. Quid pro quo kind of a thing. But it goes on to say deep under London's thread needle street lies an intricate network of tunnels. Holding the world's second largest depository of gold. The Bank of England's nine heavily fortified volt holds hundreds of tons of precious metal valued at more than $252 billion.

[00:06:15] But now they're being slowly emptied over fears that President Trump is about to start a global trade war. Okay. But here's it goes on to say, but much of the gold hasn't shipped to New York City where the commodity is. For the moment, we're substantially more than it is in the United in the UK capital. The US bank, JP Morgan and you the UK's ASHSBC are two of the biggest things flying the precious metal across the Atlantic to cover losses on short positions. reports the Wall Street Journal.

[00:06:43] The disruption to the gold market and the subsequent movement of bullion from London to Manhattan appears to be consequence of Trump's looming tariff threats against imports from the European Union entering the US. So it sounds like it might not be just hitting, you know, going into Fort Knox per se, but just kind of entering the United States economy. So I'm not sure how that plays out and how. Well, you got banks moving money to cover losses. Exactly.

[00:07:07] It has nothing to do with Fort Knox, but those banks, I mean, for the United States government to hold a certain amount of gold, you know, I'm sure there are ways for banks to be able to use similar resources for storage because it's kind of like, and they're probably rent the space basically to keep their gold in that location. I mean, I wouldn't be a bit surprised at all if that's kind of what's been happening. Right.

[00:07:34] But when that's, I mean, it's telling because if banks are moving gold and that was what, two weeks ago that this report's coming out that people are realizing, oh shoot, people are moving gold around. And now we're within seven days of that happening. All of a sudden we get called to investigate Fort Knox.

[00:07:52] That's kind of, you know, that's kind of telling, you know, because if we're looking at potential trade wars or issues with, you know, solvency and, you know, nations collapsing as a result of, you know, gold that doesn't exist that's supposed to. Where are we? I mean, it's basic accounting. Where are we at this point? Well, because of all this buzz, I mean, the gold futures in New York have risen 11% just this year. Wow. And that's closing Thursday at $2,935 per troy ounce.

[00:08:23] Well, it's interesting with the rest of the market too because the majority of it hasn't looked very good over the last couple months. Right. And so, and the whole point behind that is when you, when, when, when, when they're saying this is how much gold we have, you know, if they're saying that there's, hey, there's 140, 140, 147.3 million ounces of gold in the United States. But then all of a sudden people start believing, hey, there's not really that much gold there.

[00:08:46] They start suspecting that, that the gold prices, the value of gold will up because if there's less gold, let's say it becomes more rare than we thought it was, that would make its value much higher. Correct. Right. That's how, that's how that system works. Yeah. And, and if there is less gold, what happened to it? Like where are the reserves? Why haven't they been kept up? That kind of stuff. Right. And, and I can totally see the smoke and mirrors from the last two presidencies.

[00:09:11] Well, I guess the last presidency and I'm really the one before too, even when Trump was president because there was so much bad media and all the other stuff happening that even if something like this was happening right underneath Trump's nose, it would, it wouldn't surprise me. You know? Well, he didn't know half the stuff that was going on under his noses last time because all the holdovers that he had. He's coming in much stronger than he did last time. Yeah.

[00:09:35] And it's almost, it's been kind of interesting to watch because it's, it's almost like a hunter, you know, who gets skunked the first time they go to a spot and then they realize, oh, there's a pattern here. And I think what's happening is that pattern has been recognized and it is being used to his advantage and really, and frankly, to the American people for their advantage as well. It might not feel great. You know, I think we definitely need to peel that bandaid off.

[00:10:02] And there's, I'm hearing, you know, I've, I'm in a pretty liberal area myself. So I hear a lot of people that are complaining about it and all these things and, you know, everybody's worried and concerned, but I'm just kind of sitting back like, yeah, let's do this. Keep going, keep going. And I'm kind of like silently encouraging this and thinking to myself, this is going to be amazing. And it's just getting better.

[00:10:26] I got in my, my conservative friends are, are split on this because the people that I talked to, half of them were like, they don't, they don't want to know, like they don't want this on to happen. Okay. Because one, exactly. They're afraid to, you know, it's going to cause us this problem in the, in the economy. It's, you know, it's going to freaking make, make Trump look bad. It's going to, you know, make people hate Elon Musk. This isn't coming out of their mouth. It's just, you know, I'm ablimining that. Yeah. In general, I'm generalizing it.

[00:10:55] And then on the other side of the coin, which is my position and which I've asked them in return is, but do you really want to be lied to? You know, even, even if it makes you feel good, you won't do your government to keep lying to you. Just make you feel good when they're, when their right hand is doing this, but their left hand is doing this. I don't want that. I want the transparency and I don't want to be lied to. Yeah. I think that's, it's kind of like getting out of a bad relationship or trying to determine whether you want to keep that relationship alive.

[00:11:23] Like you, at some point, if you've, if you've crossed that line or your partner has crossed that line, you have to be able to come. What is the term? Come, come to grips or come to task. What do you call it? You know, come to terms with, with the reality of transparency, how important and how important it is and whether or not you're going to be able to trust after some sort of infraction. Right.

[00:11:48] And the trust is going to be hard to earn back, but once, you know, it, then it takes more time and it may never happen with, with, because he's only got, he's only just started Trump. Oh yeah. I mean, he's got four years, 60 days in. Yeah. So he's got a little, a little less than four years in and, and then he's, he's going to be done. And then who's the next president going to be, you know, and then, but that, that pain, that, that mistrust that was laid out here.

[00:12:16] And in the previous presidency, he's going to roll over. It doesn't matter who the president is. Yeah. They're going to be the face of the person that's not trusted because they're the face of the government at that point. Yeah. You know, so if you got a bad Congress, it's not passing bills or can't come to an agreement on a bill to send to the president for him to sign off on the president's held accountable for that. So when presidents run, they run on all these promises. Trump, for example, when he says before his last presidency that he's going to build a wall, a big, beautiful wall. It's going to be huge, you know, that kind of thing.

[00:12:44] And he made this promise and it started and he got a lot done, but it got slowed. And it was even late coming because he just can't build a wall like that without passing congressional. He could write a bill to get it going, but the money has to come from congressional approvals. They have to move the money around. The budget has to be approved first and sent through. And so if it's slowed or stopped and it's hindered in any way that would stop his promises from working out. And it's like that with any president.

[00:13:11] So any president gets elected in there, they're running all these promises, but they can't always keep their promises. And America people, I feel, in large part are not able to understand the differences in what he can and can't do because they're just ignorant of how the Constitution works. Oh, yeah, 100 percent. And like what someone is capable of. And I think there's a lot of the folks that are, you know, the folks who are really concerned about some of Trump's actions making him look bad or making them lose faith in him as a person because he did or didn't do something.

[00:13:40] I think that's kind of short sighted because a lot of the things that are happening right now are going to have a long term impact that are going to undo the long term damage that occurred the previous administration. Yeah. And I mean, I remember looking as we were going week by week with the Biden presidency right off the bat. And I was like, God, it's going to take a year for every week.

[00:14:09] This guy has been in office to undo what has been done, the damage and what we're dealing with. And I'm seeing that unraveling in lightning speed at this point. And that's the only way to do it. You have to you really have to unravel all this stuff and do it rapidly and even go a little bit farther just so people can realize, hey, look, at the core of this nation, there is a set of rules.

[00:14:35] And this is what we this is what we stand on. And I don't think people realize the importance of that and how how much of a monster the government has become in that it's like grown into everything. The Department of Education. I mean, that move last week or week before was significant, you know, where they're talking about removal of the Department of Education completely.

[00:14:59] And somebody in my circle was like, oh, my God, can you believe Trump is just allowing rich people to get richer now? And I was like, what are you talking about? Well, because he's offering ten thousand dollar vouchers or credits, tax breaks or whatever for people who send their kids to private schools. Like homeschools and stuff. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:15:18] And I was like, wait a second, because if they can afford to do that, then that means that they're spending tens of thousands of dollars per student per year on public education. Yeah. It's coming. It's failing. Yeah, exactly. And it's coming. It's coming from the same budget. Correct. So what they're accusing Trump of wasting this money on per child or per household is going there anyway. Like this is X amount of dollars are allotted to the education system.

[00:15:46] So if they can break it up and send this much money per child to get that child educated, it's not like he's taking money, extra money out to make this happen, to make this work. He's taking what's already been allotted there and splitting it up or dividing it up amongst the kids. Yeah. Well, you think about it. I mean, that is one example.

[00:16:05] So if you look at your annual tax bill, there are usually components on there that have to do with like a school bond or levy or something like that, a couple hundred bucks a year or whatever it might be.

[00:16:19] So if we start getting out of the public school system, you will see not only benefits of your child's education getting better by your choice of going to a private school, but you will start to see taxes drop as a result of these institutions not being built anymore because they essentially are going to be outdated. There's going to be different forms of education. So, I mean, there's a financial aspect to it and the people that are living in these regions understand that.

[00:16:49] But I think for the most part, it's just, oh God, there's – it's just one more way for the rich to get richer because that's all that people see this guy as is some billionaire. They're same as Musk. You know, what's he doing? Some NPC in there auditing our gold and our programs and, oh, what'd you find? A bunch of dead people on Social Security that are getting paid that are 300 years old. Yeah, because that's what we're dealing with.

[00:17:17] I mean, the edge – it's like every time he turns over a rock, there's a billion bugs that come out squealing. That's a good way to look at it. Cockroaches. Yeah, cockroaches. We're like, okay, what's under this rock? And Elon is not getting a paycheck for this leader either. He's not getting paid – like Trump isn't. Trump doesn't collect paychecks from, you know, doing his job as president. Elon isn't either. These guys are patriots and they're doing this for America. And Elon, I don't believe he was even born here.

[00:17:46] He's an American citizen, but he wasn't even born here. But he loves America, right? So him and Trump are doing this thing where they're trying to be transparent. And part of it, I get why the time to do this, rip the Band-Aid off kind of a thing, isn't really in your first term as president. It's your second term. That's the time you want to rip the Band-Aid off. The first term is a buildup pretty much. You want to privately kind of be going through things and find out what's going on, you know,

[00:18:13] and get a real good grip of what's happening in your country, you know, what your departments are doing, what your cabinets. You want to know all these things in the first four years of the president. And hopefully if you win re-election, you rip the Band-Aid off, right? Because you're not going to get re-elected. There's not a third term for a United States president. Okay? So I think there might be some loopholes. I've been hearing people talk and chatter, but I'm not sure what those loopholes are to be for a third term. But for the most part, most presidents only get two terms, right?

[00:18:42] So if Trump's going to make people mad and he's going to try to save America, what he feels is in his mindset or his route to saving America is to do that now because there won't be another term for him. Like this is it. This is the end of the road. Well, you know, it's interesting that you say that too because I don't know if you saw the video that Elon Musk put out of Tulsi Gabbard. I'm guessing it was Tulsi Gabbard on her Twitter account or whatever, Instagram.

[00:19:08] But she's basically questioning like the left and their viewpoint of Ukraine and things like this in elections specifically. And she gives a real brief rundown of Zelensky and what he did, you know, how his elections wound up getting botched and basically shut down as a result of martial law. So he was – because they knew he was going to lose the election six months ago or eight months ago, something like that.

[00:19:36] So they basically said, no, we're in an active war. So we're just not going to have an election and we're going to allow this president to remain in power. And I think that's kind of that old thing that's in your previous thing. That's like if you just – if you have – if it takes an emergency to give you emergency powers, you're always going to have an emergency because people who have that power are not going to let it go.

[00:20:05] So if there's a loophole, I can see that happening because it's like, wait a second. All we have to do is get into a war. But I don't see that happening. If anything, I see the opposite because I'm seeing a lot of like, hey, we need to resolve this peacefully. We need to get out of these situations. Same thing as in the first term.

[00:20:24] So I have a feeling that that is something that we're going to probably be looking into or it could be a reality because if our nation is thinking, hey, look, it's okay to extend a presidency because of something like this from a different nation. Why not suspend our constitution to do the same thing? Yeah. And I remember that was a big fear when Obama was president on his way out. This kind of thing was going to happen to prevent Trump from taking office. And, you know, we were all worried about it again when Biden was president.

[00:20:54] I know the left worries about it when Trump is president. It's a legit American fear, this, you know, this martial law thing where we're going to suspend the constitution because there's special powers that the president gets and they're called wartime powers. I've talked about this with Sarah F. Hathaway on her show, The Change of Earth Series. These are the kinds of things that can stop an election from happening.

[00:21:14] If we're in a war, we don't have to hold an election because you can't swap presidents in the middle of a war and expect things to go smoothly for our people overseas. You got a commander in chief who's got his people commanding the front line. So when a president goes in, most presidents do this. They hire and they fire because you don't want your people that's working for you to have opposing views. You want people of the same mindset and the same views that you share.

[00:21:41] And so it's the same, you know, when you go into presidency, you take those people, those top military people that you had from the previous administration. You want to replace them with people that you want to rule your military because you don't want somebody to say, hey, I need you to do this. Tell me, tell me, tell me, can we make this happen? And then you got a holdover from the Biden administration, you know, that's running, let's say, the army, for example. And he's like, no, I don't think we're going to do it that way. I command, you know, he's the president's the commander in chief.

[00:22:06] And that's why you want to get rid of the old people and not let them try to sideswipe you, so to speak, or undermine you. This has to be a smooth transition. And when we got something on the line, like we're talking about American treasure, the blood of our soldiers overseas, and we got people that are running things that aren't in alignment with you, that could be a serious problem, especially in the middle when there's suddenly, you know, it's time to swap presidents now, you know, commanders in chief, and then you're going to swap in.

[00:22:35] You saw how bad the Biden withdrawal was from Afghanistan. It was complete botchery. And it would be like that on a wide scale if all of a sudden we had a president swapped in the middle of a war, because now we got cabinet, we got, you know, cabinet members, we got joint chiefs of staff who were appointed by the president that now are not in alignment with your views and they're not going to be doing what you're doing. And it's going to be widespread debauchery. But Volodymyr Zelensky, he's an absolute tyrant. Don't get me wrong. He's an absolute tyrant. And I'm not in alignment with him.

[00:23:05] Everything that he does, you know, it's all propaganda machine for him. Having the cameras. You remember whenever Russia first started to invade, I believe this last time, and he was in the trenches and he was fighting. He was making these videos and these TikToks and these YouTubes and all that. I mean, he was a sensation before he ever became president of Ukraine. Remember, he used to dance in feminine clothing and he used to do all this.

[00:23:33] I think he either dressed like gay or he is gay, but that's how he dressed these sparkly type things that he did. He was a sensationalized president. So he took this position as president. He ran with that YouTube or that social media sensation. And that's the kind of generation he's reaching out to. And now he's conscripting his people because he's got manpower issues. Did you see that video, the interview with him and Trump? Oh, I mean, I saw enough of it to realize what was happening in that room.

[00:24:03] It was crazy. And there was other things that came out today. I think it was shared on our PBN group in the background. I saw some stuff on Twitter as well, how there was a previous deal with Europe or the United Kingdom where basically there's already some sort of something with Vladimir Putin's mineral reserves.

[00:24:29] And they've been promised to the United Kingdom or something like that. I don't know. I don't have all the details. But essentially, like he showed up knowing that there was no way he was going to make a deal like that. And he was just doing it as a photo op to get more money out of us. And, I mean, that went about as well as you could expect from a guy who's like, no, you know, get your own. We will help you. We can help you. But not like this.

[00:24:57] If you want to, you know, we're not just going to sit there and send money over. You can get it from the other nations who haven't been chipping in doing their part. And he comes over dressed. I know the left is going crazy about the way he came over. You know, they're like, I guess Trump. And he was questioned by somebody in his cabinet. Somebody from Trump's cabinet, rather, questioned Zelensky. Why don't you ever wear a suit? And he made this, well, I'm at war. Well, so what? Every president that's in a wartime, he still wears a suit.

[00:25:25] They don't change their clothes because they're at war. Right? And there's this element of I don't care. You know, it's like you were saying. He came to the table not even willing to compromise. Yeah. Right? And just to show some disrespect, just get time in front of the cameras, you know. But he got shut down by both Vance and old Saturday Night Live likes to throw out their garbage, too. And their stupid little videos are already making fun of Vance. You know how they are. I don't know how these low, slow, and this is completely off topic and deep out in the weeds.

[00:25:51] But these left-wing pundits and these shows how they continue to, they're not making it. They're struggling. And I don't know how they continue to do it. But back on track. Let's do this. I want to take a quick break here and get back. Because this actually can get kind of deep and get kind of sinister where this could go. I want to talk a little bit about that. Let's take a quick break here. We'll come right back. I want to talk a little bit about the last time we had a full audit. Perfect. Are you prepared to be the family doctor in a disaster or emergency?

[00:26:46] This is the Intrepid Commander. Get the Prepper's Medical Handbook today at Amazon.com. Again, that's the Prepper's Medical Handbook by William W. Forgey. Welcome back to the Ridinger Republic. Okay, so 1943 when Franklin D. Roosevelt was president, it was the last time there was a last full audit over at Fort Knox. And when I say full audit, I don't even know how full it was.

[00:27:12] I think he took a couple people in with him, and they just did like it was a partial. And it wasn't even – maybe it was full, but I don't know. It's hard for us to know because the government is so secretive about it. And they don't allow cameras to go in. And that's why when Elon came up with this idea about doing a live walkthrough, I was like – I love the transparency idea, but remember, I've been in security for over 25 years. Yeah, for sure.

[00:27:41] I don't think I want the world to know the layout of Fort Knox, right? Yeah. You know what I'm saying? So maybe when they get there, they can cut on the cameras and show the gold. You know, that's the kind of thing I would prefer. I don't want a live walkthrough per se. I'm not down with that. Yeah. I mean, there's a certain – yeah, there's certain things that you need to keep safe and secure. There was – But an audit, I mean, 80-plus years since the last time. Well, there was a partial audit also in 1974.

[00:28:12] Partial audit. That was whenever they – there was a couple delegates that was picked out. Congressional delegates were picked out. Basically, what that means is they grabbed some people that they thought would keep quiet, you know, and they picked out their old people. So that's what delegates are. They delegate certain persons to do this. And it's some journalists. So you also – you just don't get – it's not a raffle, right? Where journalists – It's a selection process.

[00:28:42] So they pick out their people, and they go in, they did this. And I'm not saying – it doesn't even count as an audit in my mind because it was a partial audit. They literally walked in and said, here it is, you have Fort Knox, and here's some gold. That's not good enough for me. So there's been – and there's been – since then, there's been no – they had no visitor policy at Fort Knox since 1974. So that's quite a bit of darkness.

[00:29:30] Yes. There's gold everywhere. Sure. Right? I mean, where's all this gold coming from? That kind of makes just – I don't know how much gold the United States has, but I do know that during the Great Depression, there was a lot of stuff collected. And the government was taking a lot, and they weren't giving out a lot. But again, we became pretty – the United States war machine pretty much woke up, and that war brought us out of the Great Depression because jobs are created in war times.

[00:29:59] It's just the way the capitalism functions. People begin to wake up, and jobs are created, and they begin to – the government will fund people and businesses to create this, this, and this, and jobs are created, and people get wealthy. And the middle class continues – will grow. But if the gold is not there, and there's way less than they told us, we could be looking at an economic collapse. And there's already been talks of digital currency.

[00:30:27] God, they would love for a digital currency to take effect because in a digital currency, and you got the reserve system working up. And can you imagine a centralized – a reserve centralized digital currency system where the government essentially is controlling. That's why I think Biden – well, I don't think I know. Biden made some legislation, and he put – who was the IRS, which – okay, they don't make legislation. But they – this is a great part.

[00:30:55] I'm glad it was the IRS and not let – or Congress. But he had the IRS come up with some ways to put some focus groups on digital currency because in his mind, he's like, this can't be controlled. Bitcoin, for example, you know, it's not – it's monitored, yes, by the United States, but it's not regulated by the United States. Exactly.

[00:31:20] So what happens when people start investing their money in this stuff that's not regulated by the United States, and it makes the gold – or not the gold – well, yeah, essentially the gold becomes less because people are using less gold. And they're putting all their value in this digital – in digital trades. And then the United States says, hey, you know, we're going now this way with a digital ID, which is coming, by the way. It's in the United Nations sustainable development goals.

[00:31:47] And we just need a – we just need the right president to sign the United States onto it, and it's going to happen. It's going to go down. We're going to have a digital ID where everybody gets one, and you can't buy, sell, or trade without one of these digital IDs. And if you buy, say, you know, everything goes digital, which we're pretty much – I deal so little with cash anymore. Yeah, me too.

[00:32:08] And it's – I mean, I'm running into more and more situations where, you know, even the kiosks at the store – I mean, last week I went grocery shopping, and they were like, oh, you know, only one of the eight machines there would accept cash as payment. And they're all designed to. They've all been built that way. But they only have one of them that actually accepts cash, the rest of its own card. But do you go – Back in early 2020, I think, remember there was a huge change shortage?

[00:32:36] People were like – there was like no nickels or whatever it was – Yeah, there was a huge coin shortage, or people were not accepting coins anymore or something like that. But it's – I mean, there's definitely a reduction for sure in not only our frequent use of cash, but even accepting cash to be able to do stuff with it. Well, when you go to the grocery – do you go to the grocery store or do you buy online? I always go to the grocery store. And, okay, do you pull out cash? Say again?

[00:33:06] Do you pull out cash to pay? No, no. I'm not saying it's right or wrong. Neither do I. Maybe less to track, though. But here's the thing. When you pull out paper, a dollar bill, we'll call that cash. Okay. That – it's just paper. What that's saying is this is a trade note equivalent to what the government says it's worth at Fort Knox. Right? Yeah.

[00:33:31] So all the – and our government has been printing trillions of dollars in cash paper, and that's supposed to be backed by gold. My personal opinion, we've never had the amount of gold in Fort Knox that – so basically the notes that we have is not backed. No. That's my personal opinion. And I don't think it ever has been. And what we have – the nickels are supposed to be worth five cents of – because it's supposed to be backed by precious metal.

[00:34:01] That's constitutional, precious metals. So a nickel is supposed to be worth five cents worth of precious metal. A dime is supposed to be worth 10 cents worth of precious metal. A quarter, same thing, 25 cents. A dollar, it's a note. Now we start getting crazy because we're not dealing anymore in precious metals. We're dealing with something that's basically promised by the U.S. government saying we have this. This is backed. Right? Right. But let's say I don't take any cash at all. Let's say I don't pull out any paper currency. Let's say I don't pull out any nickels, quarters, diamonds, pennies. Okay? I'm just pulling out my debit card.

[00:34:29] We've been dealing in digital currency for so long that we don't even realize that it's happening. I can't tell you how often I buy from Amazon. It's a digital transaction, and we've been doing it forever. Yeah. And, I mean, that digital transaction is going from your pocket to probably some manufacturer in China. I mean, to be honest, I mean, that's where the majority of the Amazon products come from. So it's – and all we're doing is trading digital currency. We're not actually trading gold.

[00:34:55] So, I mean, and if that promise drops, if it's not backed on gold, then it's a promise and that's it. So if we don't have the gold, then we're breaking promises left and right. Yep. And people don't realize that. I mean, I can see where there would be a worldwide issue if the U.S. dollar is no longer seen as the standard because that's kind of – that's how it's measured as of now.

[00:35:24] I think that was something that happened – oh, how long ago was that? Since the 70s or – And even recently, Russia and China was working on – what was that piece that they came up with? Because they were trying to – and that was a big old threat. Well, this is going to undermine the stability of the currency system because the United States is the standard. Whatever – we're supposed to have the most gold per se, right? So whatever they say that we have, like this – the United States is the standard for – if the United States economic system collapses, it's going to be a global catastrophe.

[00:35:54] What happens in this country? How bad can it be? You're more so of a survivalist than I am. What happens whenever – when the banks collapse and they're like – and they shut down because, let's face it, if we find out there's not as much gold as they're saying, and then this truth gets – they rip the bandit off, so to speak, as you always eloquently say it. And we find out that we've been lied to all this time.

[00:36:22] And it's not going to take long for the economic system to collapse. Economic system collapses. It's going to get bad at that point because we don't have a system in place when it collapses. It's going to be awful. Dark days. Definitely. And I mean, at that point, you're looking at – I mean, to me, the way I see it is kind of like what we walked out of during the hurricane in Prepper Camp, where within 100-mile radius, you've pretty much had no access to food, technology, power, fuel, like that.

[00:36:52] And it'll – but it's going to last more than just a couple of days before they can get power up or a couple of weeks, a couple of months, whatever it might be. I mean, this is – you're talking long-term at that point. And from a survival standpoint, I mean, this is where having skills and materials are some sort of something that you can barter with. I mean, people think that I'm a little bit weird maybe for stocking up on firewood.

[00:37:18] This last summer, I put 20 cords up and I go through about four cords a year. So for me – and I've never done this before – but even the farmers who plow the fields around me come up to me and they're like, hey, what's going on with your wood? Can I buy some from here or where did you get it from? And for me, it's a little bit of a hazard because it's a visual presence. I mean, you can tell when you've got 20 cords on the ground, that's a lot of space that's being used up.

[00:37:44] But it's also something that I see as something that I can use to get things from people and your ability to do that. Because if other people burn wood and I've got a cord that I can spare to get you through winter because guess what?

[00:37:59] Nobody's accepting this form of currency or you can't get fuel for your chainsaws or you can't even get up logging roads because the government shut everything down for access on private land or federal lands or whatever it might be. It can get real hairy real quick. And something as simple as just having staples on hand makes a huge difference.

[00:38:22] So, I mean, I can't emphasize enough to make sure you keep your pantries topped off, your freezers topped off, your resources for heat and water topped off and ready. I mean, it's the same survival prepping type stuff that we do with all the time on all the other shows on PBN. But when you're talking long term, at that point, you're making promises on paper that are backed by your own blood.

[00:38:47] And I remember back in the day, my dad was like – he told me one time to my face, he's like, you know what? You don't ever write a check that your body can't cash. And I always took that to heart because that means that if I can't answer to this promise that I'm giving to someone else, that it's coming out of my skin, whether it's through hard work or physically because I'm basically going to get chased and beat down or lose a limb or get a broken knee or whatever as a result of it.

[00:39:16] So there are some – there's a lot of possibility of darkness in that regard. That said, we learned a lot during the Depression that we have lost, but there was a way for people to survive and through promise. And I've seen some of the bookkeepers' books from old general stores and stuff like that where people were paying for food or just general store type items with livestock.

[00:39:45] I've seen receipts for rings or jewelry for people who wanted to buy a wedding ring. And the promise that they made because they didn't have cash was a cow and the baby calf next spring to the bank. So it's not so dark that we can't find an alternative, but the thing is there's going to have to be an agreeable alternative to cash.

[00:40:10] And it's going to have to happen quickly and people are going to have to realize that there is intrinsic value in cores of firewood that's stacked up or fuel that you might have set aside or livestock that you might be raising, that kind of stuff. Because those things do hold value. Chickens right now are going to be phenomenal. So it's just that kind of stuff, that mentality. What happens when everything collapses in the long term?

[00:40:33] You have to be able to sustain long term and you have to have something that continually can provide in some sort of barter fashion, not just what you can throw in your closet or under your bed. Which is, and it's a repeated topic that we hear all the time, like when we go to prepper camp in Salute of North Carolina, right? Every year in September, we go there and we hear somebody talk about prepping. And one of the things that comes up about prepping is these trading and bartering things. Like you want things that are practical and multipurpose.

[00:40:58] Chickens, like we talked about the last time, the last episode, chickens are great because you can eat the meat. The eggs, there's so many purposes, so many things you can do with just the eggs alone. And they reproduce and they create more food and more food. Same thing with goats and cattle. You know, the hides are useful. They're good for meat. They produce milk and you can do all kinds of things with the milk, right? Multipurpose items. Bullets, same thing. You can shoot a bullet, right? You can take the bullet apart.

[00:41:27] You can use the contents of the bullet, the gunpowder part portion of it to make other flammable things to start fires. These are things, alcohol. You can drink alcohol. You know, you can sterilize wounds with alcohol. You can start fires with alcohol. Multipurpose things that are very useful in times of Great Depression, in times of survival.

[00:41:49] Because we're talking about, we're not talking about, what we're talking about, if there's a true economic collapse, it's going to be much worse than what happened during the Great Depression. And people need to understand that we cannot rely on the government that's been lying to us to come through for us and to sustain us. If there's no system in place, which there will be. I've read the back of the book because you know I'm a very religious person. I've read the back of the book and I know that it's going to come through. It's going to happen. The digital currency system is going to happen.

[00:42:19] And, you know, there's 4,400 words in the United States Constitution. And what do we know about martial law? All we know about martial law is that it says the Congress shall have the power to provide for the calling forth of the militia to execute the laws of the Union, suppress insurrection, and to repel invasion. That's the whole context. That's everything we know about martial law. Right? So when this comes to us, because there's so little definition and so little historical record on martial law,

[00:42:47] that gives the government a huge swath of a huge brush, you know, a blanket, if you will, to do and interpret the Constitution to mean whatever it means. And here's something else more frightening, right? And you sat in my, I think you did, you sat in one of my martial law classes before. Whenever martial law happens, you can't expect the courts to come in and help you. Because once martial law goes out there, we're talking about military tribunals.

[00:43:10] So once military tribunals are in effect, the constitutional system that we know as courts will not be in effect. Because when that happens during true martial law, there is no court system set up in effect because the tribunal system, the military system, is in effect. So there's not going to be a Supreme Court there to back you up. There's not going to be, well, you know, I'm going to have to plead Duncan versus whatever, you know, in this case.

[00:43:39] It's not going to happen that way. So basically, whoever's there on the scene will be the judge, jury, and executioner for the military tribunal. And anybody that's ever, if you've never been in the military before and you don't understand how difficult it is in military life, you'll find out because the punishment is very, very steep whenever you do something wrong. And God forbid you're accused of being a rebel or an insurrectionist in such times. Yep, absolutely. You know, that's just it.

[00:44:07] I mean, we're getting to that point where it's like people need to start considering what happens after the bomb drops, you know. Not the physical bomb, but whatever the impact might be. You know, what's the next stage and how do you get out in front of it? Yeah, I just, it can be dark and dismal, but there also is, there's always light at the end because, and, you know, from the biblical standpoint,

[00:44:34] if you want to quote passages within the Bible, there's all sorts of examples on the importance of putting up for the future, for the unknown, for the hazards, watching out for things, looking at signs, paying attention. And we can all do that. Yeah, the Bible says consider the ant. So you're like, what's that? What's that even being? Well, just all you got to do is consider the ant. Look at the ants and how they, you know, they take care, they work. They're always working. They're always putting up for themselves. And so you see the big old lines of ants. What are they doing?

[00:45:03] Well, they're going out, they're collecting, and they're going back to their storing. And they eat and they survive. And it's not like one winter kills them off. Guess what? They're going to be back next year because they worked all summer long. They worked hard. They put it back. They saved up. And then they're good. And that's where we need to be, not only as an individual, but as a nation as a whole. And if we've been sitting there relying on winter stores of gold for the last 80 years that nobody actually can confirm,

[00:45:29] we're going to be going hungry financially in a hurry. Well, there's the big executive order that Biden, or not Biden, Obama wrote back whenever, in 2012. This is Executive Order 13603 was written to maintain technological superiority. Oh, yes. Yeah, in its national defense equipment during, the scary part is in the verbiage of the executive order, it says in peacetime and in times of national emergency.

[00:45:57] And so the word national emergency is written four times in that 10-page executive order, and it never wants to find actually what a national emergency is. That basically means, similar to what martial law is, there's just a few words on it. And there's no definition of what martial law is. Just call forth a militia to suppress insurrection to repel invasions. So what is an emergency? Well, an emergency could be anything that the United States government deems it to be. And that's why this is so important, this discussion about an economic collapse is so important.

[00:46:25] Because once you've gone a few days, and that's all it's going to take is a few days, where your money isn't worth anything to you, where you take a quarter or a dollar or $100, whatever, to the store, if the store's even open. You've seen what happened in Ferguson. You've seen what's happened in all these big cities during the riots. Yeah. That small fry, compared to what would happen, the cities will burn first after just a couple days. If their dollar's not amounted to a hill of beans.

[00:46:55] Yeah. People will kill. They will do, good people will do very bad things for money. Inside of 24 hours, you're going to see people getting killed. For their family, for food. Yes. Because after a day or two, as Americans, you know, people, three days without food. I mean, without water is all a person can do. I don't know how many, I know human body could probably, it'll be very difficult to stay in 30, 40 days without food. You're dead after that. You know, and so people, even good people will do very awful things to protect themselves,

[00:47:25] protect their family. And so that's in those kinds of times, you can't rely on the government. You can't rely on your neighbor. You can't rely on anybody. In fact, I would say don't trust anybody in those kinds of situations. You're going to see some, first the cities are going to burn. You know, it'll be the first thing that's going to happen. I talk about this in Surviving Martial Law. My book too in the Patriot series, the cities are going to be the first things to go down because they'd never prepare. They're usually, you know, socialistic in nature and they rely on their government to take care of them.

[00:47:54] And once that system is gone and the conservative system of self-reliance is what matters, they're going to start burning and killing and doing whatever they have to do to survive. And then they're going to start, once they're running out of resources in the cities, they're going to start spreading out to the rural areas, to those people like us who know how to self-sustain. Yeah. And they're going to be coming for your chickens. They're going to be coming for the cattle. I've already heard from, you know, my wife's friends. Oh, I know what's going to happen if things go south. We're coming to your house.

[00:48:24] Exactly. No, you're not. You can't take care of them. No. They are not part of my survival plan, unfortunately, which is, it's sad and I'm going to have to turn people away and I'm probably going to upset my wife about that. But the reality is they're not part of the equation. So they're on their own. They've known me long enough to be able to pick up what I've been throwing down and they still haven't done it. There's nothing I can do about it. I mean, you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink, right? Exactly.

[00:48:53] They're not going to be drinking from this pond, tell you that. So, and I hate to do that, but there's going to be a point like not only are people going to change, but they're going to change in ways that you don't realize within your own circle sometimes. And if you think that you're going to be, you know, your buddy, buddy with some prepper, you're going to go help, you know, harvest at the end of harvest season and just get a free ride, that ain't happening.

[00:49:20] I mean, you might get a little bit, but it ain't, you know, it's just not going to happen. So if that is your plan, good luck. That's why I'm so thankful. You know, my wife is, she's, she's big in horticulture. You know, she can, she can grow. She's got a green thumb. She can grow anything. You can live off of vegetables. Exactly. There's proteins and certain vegetables, you know, I mean, you can live pretty good and you know, bringing in a squirrel or deer as a man here and there, you know, to supplement your, your vegetarian diet with some proteins. Let's do it.

[00:49:48] You know, I need to get into chickens. I've been talking about chickens for some time. The family bother me about chickens. We'll get chickens. It's just, I haven't been able to, to sort that those details out yet and have the time to deal with it. But it's something on my, on my list of to do's, but something I want to talk about real quick is some, some precursors that might come to something like a martial law. Like sometimes the government will, all the time, the government will know what's coming down the pike way before we are. We will, we can see it coming, you know, but we can, we, we see things like almost in,

[00:50:16] in, in, we can foreshadow things because we, we understand how just kind of looking at with our sensors or we can call it the sixth sense or spider sense, whatever you want to call it. I've been really good at determining. And I wrote the tyrant series based off of things I saw was happening with our government. And a lot of those things came to pass with the whole COVID-19 thing when, and the manipulation of viruses and the killing off the population, all that is, is it's all set. It's all, it's going to happen. The population is going to happen because we can't sustain the way we are right now.

[00:50:46] But the government knows before we do. As a matter of fact, when these things could, when you start seeing precursors, they know this is going to happen. And so they start setting things like curfews, travel restrictions. They start rationing food. They start setting up checkpoints. They start censoring more that, you know, you start seeing excessive military presence. You start seeing rapid inflation because they're trying to pull money back, you know, and try to put for, for themselves or, or to enter ration out later.

[00:51:11] So you see rapid inflation, unusual government purchases, like what we saw a few years ago with, with the Biden administration, I'm sorry, the Obama administration, when he's buying up all the ammunition. I think that was under Obama increased regulation, those kinds of things. When you see those things happening in bulk like that, just know that something sinister is about to go down. It's about to happen. And the only way to survive things like that is to, to, to first of all, be aware that it's coming and to know how to survive when it does happen. It's just like seeing a storm in the distance.

[00:51:41] Oh yeah, exactly. Here it comes, you know, buckle up the hatches. Yep, exactly. And the thing is you get through that enough times, you get complacent sometimes and you think, oh, I'm okay. It'll be all right. You know, I forgot to close the door this one time or, you know, didn't close the chicken coop or didn't, didn't do this one thing that I, I do to maintain and keeps the place secure and safe. And I think as a nation, you have to be very careful that we don't get complacent. Right.

[00:52:08] And people do get complacent, you know, and they, they, they really don't know what the, what the left hand is doing. They're just kind of watching the right hand because it's full of pleasantries. Well, we're, we're being taken care of, you know, but in behind the curtain or behind the back, so to speak, the left hand is doing something quite different, but they're unaware of it because they can't see it out of sight, out of mind. Right. It's like all of these executive orders that happen. I'm going to go through some executive orders that, and you heard these in my surviving martial law class, but there's a few executive orders that were written in the past.

[00:52:37] So most of them by John F. Kennedy when he was president and then Clinton wrote a big one and then Obama, the, the one with, uh, I just shared with you, uh, with Obama, um, executive order one, three, six, zero three came out, which kind of, um, took all these, all these executive orders I'm about to read to you are swallowed up whole by this one executive order that Obama wrote. And so, um, for the listeners, um, executive order, this was written by John F. Kennedy in 1962 executive order one zero nine nine seven that in times of emergency, again, emergency

[00:53:07] she's never clarified in any executive order, um, that the government could take power, seize control of electric, electric, all electric power, petroleum, gas, solid fuels, and minerals. Uh, executive order one zero nine nine eight. The government could take control of food resources, farms, fertilizers, and facilities. Executive order one zero nine nine five. The government could take control of telecommunications management. Executive order one zero nine nine nine. The government takes control of teleport of, uh, trans transportation, the production and distribution of materials.

[00:53:37] Um, executive order one one zero zero zero manpower management. You, anybody don't know what manpower management is? It's basically workforces that the government can, can create workforces. So use your imagination to decide what a workforce is because the executive order doesn't clarify that exactly. Um, executive order one one zero zero three. The government takes control of all air travel, airports, operating facilities, executive order 11,004, uh, housing and communication or I'm sorry, community facilities.

[00:54:07] Now, Richard Nixon wrote one in 1969, federal departments and agencies control all U S citizens, churches, and businesses. That's a big one. Like these, to my knowledge, these executive orders haven't been overridden. The great thing about executive orders is, um, a president, any president can come in and undo an executive order because executive orders are not legislation. Right. Right. They're not designed to be, they're unconstitutional. Really executive orders are basically for the, for the, for the president to say, here's how my cabinet's going to operate.

[00:54:36] So FEMA, the IRS, um, the justice department, these are not branches of the United States government. These are departments. These are agencies. And they answer to the president of the United States. So he writes an executive order and tells these departments, these agencies, this is how, this is how my administration is going to run and they fulfill it. But when Obama wrote this executive order, uh, one three six zero three called the national defense resources act. Um, it, it's, it basically, it sees all water, all human and animal food, all transportation,

[00:55:04] all energy, all construction materials, all health resources, all farming equipment, all fertilizers, all fuels on and on and on. Everything I just read to you is encapsulated within this one executive order, but no president since not Biden, not, not Trump to my knowledge has undone this. So if any president can, with an executive order, override another executive order, it's not as complicated as a, as congressional legislation where you have to get everybody to agree, you know, the house has to write a bill, uh, approve it in the house.

[00:55:34] And then it goes to Senate for, for approval. Um, you know, they all have to agree and approve it. Then he goes up to the executive office and he signs off on and makes it a bill. That's how legislation truly works with executive order. It doesn't work that way. He says, this is how I'm going to do things. And he's, and he, and he has all these departments and agencies that answer to him and only to the president regulate the people this way. And it's a way to bypass legislation. And when you think about what could happen during true martial law, um, because there's

[00:56:03] no legislation been created or executive orders written to override this, you could, you have a very scary situation where one person can become not only the commander in chief, but, um, judge, jury and executioner. Yeah. And I mean, I will give Trump praise for having done as much as he has done, even in his previous term and not in the first two months here.

[00:56:28] But you also, there's a part of me that is also kind of like, dude, uh, if this, if this becomes too much of a drug where he can't handle it and other stuff starts happening, we could very well see the Vladimir Putin, not the Vladimir Putin, the, the Vladimir, whatever his name is, uh, activities happening.

[00:56:52] And all of a sudden, you know, we're dealing with a monster that we cannot, uh, like we can't escape from because, and, and I think really what it's going to boil down to is if we ever hear those keywords, uh, what is it national, a national, uh, what is it in the, in that executive order? Emergency. National emergency. Yeah. So if, if you ever hear their keywords, you know, or somebody, somebody from the presidential

[00:57:21] press office or Trump doing, going on TV to say, we're currently in a national emergency or we have declared a state of national emergency. I think that's basically the red flag warning to all of us. Just be ready because it's common. And people who don't know what that means, they're going to wake up to it, uh, far too late. You know, when, when someone shows up to their doorstep and takes their, you know, able-bodied

[00:57:48] sons and daughters to go work or, and physically removes them from the home because they're property in the government now. Um, and they have no say in it. I think that's going to be a wake up call to a lot of people when farmers are no longer able to use their own equipment because of whatever reason, you know, or, uh, you know, it gets confiscated and sold off for the price of the metal. Yes. I don't want people thinking that it can't happen.

[00:58:18] So many people have these blinders on thinking that that's, that's just right wing conspiracy theory. Folks, this has been happening on a fall, a smaller scale in Illinois and California and Washington state. The government there controls so much of your life. I mean, it's regulated down to what you can and can't drink. You know, you know, we see crazy, uh, was it new? I want to say Newsom a few years ago that wrote some crazy bill that you can only, he

[00:58:44] got rid of the certain size of sodas or something like that because I guess the calorie, he, maybe he should relay some of the information that Governor Pritzker over in Illinois, because he's so large that he, you know, I don't want some guy that weighs 400 pounds telling me what my lifestyle should be like. Like, you know, you don't even exercise, you clearly don't care about your diet and you're going to tell me what's good for my body. Go away. Yeah. Yeah. And you know, that whole concept of, you know, who's the governor who's in charge of this

[00:59:12] town or this state or this County or whatever. I mean, it goes all the way up to the top. And I think people, when people realize that it can turn on a dime because of the declaration of an emergency or state of things, I think crisis would be the buzzword. Yeah. So it's, it's, I think I would like to think that people woke up enough from COVID to where they won't let this happen again, but I have a feeling it's going to happen again and people

[00:59:40] are going to buy into it just like before, but it's going to be under the guise of something else, something either patriotic or I don't, I don't know what, but it seems like we're heading down that path and it's not a good one. Yeah. And one side will be jubilant and the other side will be highly upset. I mean, this is, it's going to happen that way, but we are at an hour, Ryan, it flew by fast. Such a great conversation. Absolutely. It's always a good conversation.

[01:00:09] Thanks everybody for tuning into the show. Glad to have you. Feel free to send us emails, conversations. You can always reach out to me on Twitter if you want. And what's your Twitter handle, Ryan? What is it? It's at dad prepper. You can email us both that email either one of us or both of us. Feel free to email us, please. At PatriotRising1773 at gmail.com. Again, that's PatriotRising and L at PatriotRising1773 at gmail.com. Thanks again for listening, everybody. I'm L Douglas Hogan. And I'm Ryan Buford.

[01:00:39] You'll have a great day. Bye. Bye.