{"id":11495,"date":"2016-01-05T17:16:36","date_gmt":"2016-01-06T01:16:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bradblog.com\/?p=11495"},"modified":"2022-01-13T19:01:49","modified_gmt":"2022-01-14T03:01:49","slug":"bundy-deceived-us-oath-keepers-founder-says-bradcast-152016","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/?p=11495","title":{"rendered":"&#8216;Bundy Deceived Us,&#8217; Says Oath Keepers Founder: &#8216;BradCast&#8217; 1\/5\/2016"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/BradBlog.com\/Images\/BradCast_Obama_StewartRhodesOathKeepers_010516.jpg\" hspace=\"6\" vspace=\"3\" border=\"0\" align=\"right\">On today&#8217;s <a href=\"https:\/\/BradBlog.com\/BradCast\"><i>BradCast<\/i><\/a>, I&#8217;m back!  And with <i>huge<\/i> thanks to Nicole Sandler of the awesome <a href=\"http:\/\/RadioOrNot.com\">RadioOrNot.com<\/a> for filling in for me and Desi over the holidays to help us get some some much-needed time off!<\/p>\n<p>First up on today&#8217;s show: President Obama <a href=\"http:\/\/chicago.cbslocal.com\/2016\/01\/05\/transcript-president-obamas-remarks-on-gun-violence\/\">announces<\/a> his Executive Actions to combat the scourge of gun violence in this country.<\/p>\n<p>Then, I&#8217;m joined by <b>Stewart Rhodes<\/b>, Founder and President of <a href=\"http:\/\/OathKeepers.org\">Oath Keepers<\/a>, a group which describes itself as &#8220;a non-partisan association of current and formerly serving military, police, and first responders, who pledge to fulfill the oath all military and police take to &#8216;defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic.'&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>While the Oath Keepers were on the front lines of the armed 2014 standoff against the federal government at the Bundy Ranch in Nevada, Rhodes has declined to join the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cnn.com\/2016\/01\/04\/us\/oregon-wildlife-refuge-protest\/index.html\">ongoing armed take-over<\/a> of the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.fws.gov\/refuge\/malheur\/\">Malheur National Wildlife Refuge<\/a> near Burns, Oregon by other members of the so-called &#8220;Patriot Movement,&#8221; including two of rancher Cliven Bundy&#8217;s sons.<\/p>\n<p>Rhodes explains how he believes the showdown at the Bundy Ranch differs from the current situation at Malheur. He claims the former resulted in stopping the &#8220;assassination&#8221; of the Bundy clan by federal officials, whereas, in the latter case, &#8220;I haven&#8217;t seen any direct threat to anybody&#8217;s life.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>He describes one of the men holed up in the federal Oregon facility as &#8220;either insane or an agent provocateur who&#8230;<i>wants<\/i> to see violence,&#8221; and another as a &#8220;loose cannon idiot who has a martyr complex.&#8221; He suggests that Bundy&#8217;s son Ammon, who helped lead the takeover in Oregon, is &#8220;naive&#8221; and &#8220;has people right there with him who are unstable, who may initiate violence.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;They want to go down in a glorious firefight,&#8221; Rhodes warns about at least two of the individuals. &#8220;If they don&#8217;t get that, it&#8217;s entirely possible they might initiate it.&#8221; And while the other Bundy son, Ryan, has reportedly said he was &#8220;willing to kill and be killed if necessary,&#8221; in the stand-off, Rhodes rejects the idea that the men are &#8220;terrorists&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>I also pressed Rhodes about critiques of his own organization, which has been described as &#8220;conspiracy theorists&#8221;, &#8220;vigilantes&#8221;, &#8220;rightwing extremists&#8221; and even &#8220;racists&#8221; at various times. Many have accused them and others in the Patriot and Militia Movements of looking to pick fights with the federal Government. I ask him why his group and others like it didn&#8217;t come to the aid of the Occupy Movement when those peaceful protests were brutally crushed by local, state and federal officials back in 2011 and why they haven&#8217;t been louder in opposition to the ongoing epidemic of police violence across the country.<\/p>\n<p>We also discussed the claims made in a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/politics\/news\/the-oath-keeper-who-wants-to-arm-black-lives-matter-20160103\"><i>Rolling Stone<\/i> feature article<\/a> this week, charging that former Oath Keeper Sam Andrews was drummed out of the group for attempting to organize with African-Americans in Ferguson, MO. Rhodes calls Andrews a &#8220;liar&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>As to the Bundys, Rhodes claims the family took advantage of his group back in 2014. &#8220;We didn&#8217;t go there to get cattle back. We went there to keep the Bundy family from being murdered. They then took advantage of that situation and went and got their cattle back,&#8221; he tells me. &#8220;They didn&#8217;t say &#8216;come help us with armed supporters to go get our cattle back&#8217;. That&#8217;s not what they did. They said &#8216;we&#8217;re about to be murdered, come protect us&#8217;.  And so Ammon Bundy has displayed the propensity to deceive people. And he&#8217;s doing that right now [in Oregon.]&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>There was a lot more in our spirited conversation &#8212; we both agree, for example, about the outrage of &#8220;minimum sentencing&#8221; laws of the type at the center of the current dispute up in Oregon right now, as well as at the heart of the so-called &#8220;Drug War&#8221; &#8212; but you&#8217;ll have to give the full show a listen for complete details&#8230;<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><i><a href=\"https:\/\/BradBlog.com\/audio\/BradCast_BradFriedman_ObamaGunsAction_StewartRhodesORStandoff_010516.mp3\">Download MP3<\/a> or listen to complete show online below&#8230;<\/i><br \/>\n[audio:http:\/\/bradblog.com\/audio\/BradCast_BradFriedman_ObamaGunsAction_StewartRhodesORStandoff_010516.mp3]<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><center><b>* * *<\/b><\/center><i>While we post <a href=\"https:\/\/BradBlog.com\/BradCast\"><\/i>The BradCast<i><\/a> here every day, and you can hear it across all of our great affiliate stations and websites, to automagically get new episodes as soon as they&#8217;re available sent right to your computer or personal device, subscribe for free at <a href=\"https:\/\/itunes.apple.com\/us\/podcast\/the-bradcast-w-brad-friedman\/id803467610\">iTunes<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/stitcher.com\/s\/player.php?fid=25838&#038;src=psl\">Stitcher<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/tunein.com\/radio\/The-BradCast-with-Brad-Friedman-p477565\/\">TuneIn<\/a> or <a href=\"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/podcastgen\/bradcast\/feed.xml\">our native RSS feed<\/a>!<\/i><\/p>\n<p><!--BB-DONATEPITCH-START--><\/p>\n<div style=\"background:#f5f0e0; border:2px solid #6b5a2e; border-radius:6px; padding:10px 14px; text-align:center; font-family:Georgia,serif;\"><span style=\"display:block; margin:0 0 8px 0; color:#3a2e0e; font-size:0.95em; line-height:1.5;\"><strong>The BRAD BLOG<\/strong>, <em>The BradCast<\/em> and <em>Green News Report<\/em> are all 100% independent and 100% listener and reader supported!<\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/Donate\" style=\"display:inline-block; background:#6b5a2e; color:#ffffff; padding:6px 18px; border-radius:4px; font-weight:bold; text-decoration:none; font-family:Georgia,serif; font-size:0.9em;\">Please CLICK HERE to help support our work today!<\/a><\/div>\n<p><!--BB-DONATEPITCH-END--><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>On today&#8217;s BradCast, I&#8217;m back! And with huge thanks to Nicole Sandler of the awesome RadioOrNot.com for filling in for me and Desi over the holidays to help us get some some much-needed time off! First up on today&#8217;s show: President Obama announces his Executive Actions to combat the scourge of gun violence in this [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"ep_exclude_from_search":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[505,192,239,89,675,477,356,551,1709,51,126,127,313],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-11495","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tea-party","category-accountability","category-barack-obama","category-media-appearance","category-bradcast","category-kpfk","category-nevada","category-nra","category-oath-keepers","category-oregon","category-rights-and-freedoms","category-the-constitution","category-us-supreme-court","bb-type-bradcast"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11495","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11495"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11495\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11495"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11495"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11495"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcoauthors&post=11495"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}