Truth in the Barrel Unfiltered Episode: April 6, 2025 Welcome to Truth in the Barrel unfiltered! Each week hosts Amy McGrath and Denver Riggleman select stories from the news to shine a spotlight on and discuss with wisdom, wit, (and a bit of whiskey). On this week’s episode Amy and Denver talk about the Right’s animosity toward due process, especially when it comes to deportations, the continued fallout from SignalGate, the insanity of Laura Loomer which can only be outdone by the insanity of taking advice from Laura Loomer, Texas Congressman Keith Self’s attempt to make Joseph Goebbels great again, and the pain that will come from President Trump’s wildly unpopular new tariffs. But here at Truth in the Barrel we know it can’t be all doom and gloom, so the episode ends with Amy and Denver saying cheers to some of the small victories of the week. 01:44 Due Process 08:58 Andry Hernandez 14:36 Signalgate 23:15 Laura Loomer 29:30 Paging Mr. Goebbels 36:10 Why Tariffs Are Gonna Hurt 40:33 Cheers To Small Victories *This episode was recorded on April 4, 2025, and aired on April 6, 2025. About Truth in the Barrel: Amy and Denver are both military veterans, political junkies, and whiskey lovers who sit on opposite sides of the aisle but have one thing in common: they love the United States of America. Truth in the Barrel was born of Amy & Denver’s commitment to country, the Constitution, and a well-curated collection of the world’s finest bourbon. Join them weekly for deep dives into timely topics, interviews with recognizable guests, and a dose of call-in fun. Visit Our Website: www.TruthintheBarrel.com Subscribe to Truth in the Barrel: https://www.youtube.com/@TruthIntheBarrel
Chapter 1: What are the key topics discussed in this episode of Truth in the Barrel?
Welcome to Truth in the Barrel, the unfiltered edition, where each week we run down the topics that you need to understand a little bit more because there is a lot of disinformation out there. I'm Amy McGrath. I'm with my co-host, Denver Riggleman, and we're happy to be with you today.
Good day, good night, every day is a new adventure. And today, as we get started, Amy, I'd like to say, I know that this show is called Truth in the Barrel. Last week was the single barrel silverback. Today is the Christine Riggleman Reserve, which just got gold. Single barrel at the New Orleans Bourbon Festival. So I'm going to take a little bit of sip of that.
I know we're going to need that later, right? We will. I cannot wait to talk to you about the things that have happened over the last week or so.
yeah it's a lot i mean i feel like every single week it's just a deluge of stuff we have to talk about um and really push back on i want to make sure that anyone following this uh follows us on all the social media channels that you follow so blue sky uh x uh what else is out there truth through social
True Social, YouTube. Gosh, we're everywhere. We're like a conglomerate of awesomeness that is spreading over the entire globe. That's why I love this.
You've got to follow us and tell all your friends and family about this show because we're going to be talking about all of the things that happen and we're going to be distilling them down to the actual truth. That's what this is about. All right, so let's get started.
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Chapter 2: Why is due process important in deportation cases?
So last week, and here's the thing, this happens quite a bit where you're driving down the road and you see somebody's bumper sticker and it says, I love the Constitution or I follow the Constitution. And quite often you meet these people and they have actually never read the Constitution. And so we have a member of Congress last week at a town hall in Indianapolis, Indiana,
She was asked – this is a Republican member of Congress, okay? She was asked about the deportation of migrants from this country to prisons in El Salvador. And she basically said, hey, those people don't get due process. And here's the direct quote. If you violated the law, you are not entitled to due process. And – I can't tell you how many people actually believe that.
That is like the most un-American thing you can possibly say. We have this constitution and in there it says, hey, the Fifth Amendment says no matter who you are, if you're in this country, you get due process. And so I wanted to start out just talking about this.
You've got to be referring. Is it Victoria Sparks?
Yes.
Is that who it was? Yeah.
Indianapolis.
Oh, Indianapolis. So Indiana – I think it's Indiana's fifth. I'm trying to remember the district. I bet I'm close. My guess is – and I'm going to do this as a Republican, right, as a former Republican, Amy – I bet people cheered. I didn't see that, right? But I bet people cheered. I did see some of the, I saw that it was her that had did that, you know, the statement. I read about it.
But I think it's pretty amazing that you would pick up on that because, you know, the Republicans always said they were the party of, you know, the Constitution. You know, the guy here in the 6th District, Ben Klein, one of my former colleagues in the 116th, he carries a pocket Constitution and waves it during committee meetings.
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Chapter 3: Who is Andry Hernandez and what is the controversy around his deportation?
Like most Americans believe, as I do, if you're here illegally, certainly if you're a criminal, you need to be deported. The problem is with the government coming in and nabbing these people and just sending them without due process, we have the potential for what? For mistakes, right? Huge mistakes. And that is what we're seeing already happening, right?
Well, yeah, I mean, there's going to be it almost feels like they don't care that they throw the baby out with the bathwater. There could be innocent individuals or legal immigrants or people who are misidentified that are rounded up. Right. And that's something that we've always sort of said, oh, gosh, that's that's like some of these awful dictators and authoritarians.
But isn't it sort of easy where you can wrap nativism, xenophobia and racism into a neat wrapper thing? of illegal immigration and throw them out without due process. And there should be a rationalization or validation for me as a God-fearing American living in Indiana that we should be throwing these people out. You know what? And if we wrap up a few questions
you know, that are innocent or just have families, you know, or maybe are misidentified. You know what? That's just the way it is. And I think that's the thing that absolutely blows my mind. If you claim to be a conservative, if you claim to be somebody who's a constitutionally minded individual, that would be, yes, we hate criminals. okay, especially violent criminals. You're right, Amy.
I want them to go back. Get out of here. You don't belong here. You're a criminal. However, it can be that justice is where we should be going, right? Without automatically saying, let's just throw everybody out based on the color of their skin. That's really what we're... I don't want it to come to that. That scares the hell out of me. And I do believe that...
Deportations and justice don't have to be mutually exclusive. I mean, that's just a belief that I have.
Yeah, and I hear from folks on the right exactly what you just said. Like, oh, well, of course there's going to be mistakes, but it's for the greater good. Well, no. We have this Constitution for a reason. You can't just do that because mistakes are made, right? There was one just in the past couple weeks, a man whose name is Andre Jose Hernandez Romero.
And he was a gay makeup artist who had a tattoo and his tattoo basically said mom and dad on it. And the feds ice nabbed him, said that his tattoo is evidence that he is a gang member and sent him to the El Salvador prison. So there's lots of problems with that. Number one, Evidence of being a gang member is your tattoo. Okay, but there's no – again, there's no due process there.
There's no ability for him to say, hey, that's a tattoo that says mom and dad. There's no – and that's just wrong, right?
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Chapter 4: What is SignalGate and how does it affect national security?
You can't. Well, two points that I think people have to understand who aren't in government and who haven't been in government and dealing and had to preserve classified information. The first point is that we make it cumbersome for a reason. to deal in classified circles. We make it hard. Why? Why do we make it hard?
We make it hard so that if there's a spillage or a leak, we can figure out where it came from. And you brought up a really important point of the arrogance. I know this show is based on fact, but my theory on this is that if you look at the people on this chat chain, Most of them have not been in the executive branch in government. They've been in Congress. I'm sorry, but that's different.
It is.
And they have this arrogance of, oh, we are smarter than everybody who has had a career in this stuff. And so while they're telling us we have to go through these cumbersome measures of going through classified channels to talk about these things, we're smarter than them. We're just going to set up a signal chat chain.
And they probably had some civil servant who said, hey, Mr. Secretary, that's probably not a good idea. And he probably said, well, I'm smarter than you. I'm going to do it my way.
Shut up, Lucy.
Yeah, that's... That's number one. I mean, we make it cumbersome for a reason so that our enemies cannot hear us and so that if there's a leak, we can figure out where it's coming from. And number two, just in January, you had a Department of Homeland Security official, longtime civil servant, who made a mistake.
And she went to her colleagues and said, I accidentally put in an unclassified government email, I accidentally added a journalist onto this email where I was talking about an ICE raid that was going to happen. And guess what happened to her? She was removed from her position and her security clearance was revoked.
Did anything happen to any of these guys that I would argue actually released more – worse information over Signal?
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Chapter 5: Are there concerns about the use of unsecure communication methods in government?
Well, Tim Hawk would never sign a loyalty pledge, number one. He wouldn't do that as a military member or public servant. Number two, my guess is he has some of the same attributes as General Milley, where he's very honest and blunt about what's happening.
And also, I would say, what if NSA—and, you know, the thing about conjecture and theoreticals and hypotheticals is you don't want it to go out there, but if NSA was aware of Signalgate without it being released by Jeff Goldberg, was that actually identified? Ooh. That causes issues.
The other thing, too, what if he refused to do a specific mission criteria that didn't match his signals intelligence directors? There's that, too, right? So you have this effect, like, why? Or was it simply this? Was it simply that there was somebody who was in Trump's ear saying, you need to go with this guy because he's just simply not that guy?
because he's not a Trump guy, Biden put him in there. So he's got, and listen, you're talking about conspiracy theorists. You're talking about fantasists. You're talking about people who probably believe that Lord of the Rings is a documentary, right? These are the people that are making decisions in the United States government complex, Amy. And I think all of those things could be possible
But it's usually Occam's razor. I think the probable and the reason they pushed him out of there, he's a Biden appointee and he refused to profess loyalty to Trump. I think it's probably that simple. And I know Tim and he's probably like, I'm just not doing that. And probably the writing has been on the wall for a week. We just didn't know about it.
And they pulled the trigger last night and got him on a plane and sent him back to D.C.
Yeah, and people need to know this is unprecedented. I mean, to come into office, fire the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, fire all these, you know, the chief of naval operations, now fire the head of NSA for really no reason. We've got to watch this. It's a purge.
Something else happened last week that I think maybe was glossed over in the media, but I think it's really kind of scary and important as well. A Republican representative from Texas on the House floor quoted one of Hitler's best friends, Joseph Goebbels. Joseph Goebbels was the propaganda – the lead Nazi propagandist back in the 1930s and 1940s.
And the Republican member of Congress was having a back-and-forth – with Biden's chief disinformation officer. There was a hearing, and he was arguing with her. And he said, and I quote, and this is the quote from Joseph Goebbels, he said, "'It is the absolute right of the state to supervise the formation of public opinion.'" And I think that may be what we're discussing here.
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Chapter 6: How does arrogance and ignorance affect government operations?
This wasn't the first time that he quoted Hitler's best friend, by the way.
I wonder what memorabilia he has hanging on his wall.
I mean, here, look, I can, I have a few quotes that I've memorized over the years. I have a couple from Eleanor Roosevelt, Maya Angelou, some people, even Alan Shepard. Um, I, I, I have not memorized any quotes from anyone that knows Hitler. I can just say that. I don't, I don't know. Thank you. Thank you.
Thank you. Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you. Thank you.
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
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