The following is an edited transcript of a special RNC episode of Morning Wire. Daily Wire editor-in-chief John Bickley sits down with California mom Anne Fundner who brought the tens of thousands of attendees at the Republican National Convention to tears and to their feet on the night of July 16 when she told the tragic story of losing her 15-year-old son Weston to fentanyl. The blame for his death, she said, ultimately falls on President Biden and his administration. 

“I hold Joe Biden, Kamala Harris — the “Border Czar,” what a joke — and Gavin Newsom and every Democrat who supports open borders responsible for the death of my son,” said Fundner.

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JOHN: Joining us now is Anne Fundner, a mother from California who lost her 15-year-old son to fentanyl and who is putting the blame on President Biden and his administration and the governor of her state, Gavin Newsom. Anne, thank you so much for joining us. You courageously took the stage at the RNC, gave a very powerful, emotional statement about your son and your family and the tragedy you guys suffered. I know it’s difficult to discuss, but can you tell us about what happened to your son, Weston?

ANNE: Well, Weston was a really good kid. We did everything right. We put him in sports and I was room mom. We had such a great relationship. He was my perfect little bouncing baby boy. He taught me what love was, an unconditional love like I had never known existed other than my own parents. He was my firstborn son, it just teaches you that love is so strong. And for the first time I understood what that meant when I looked at him and held him in my arms. He was my everything. He really was. I was so active in his life, his father was active, both of us. We did the family dinners every night, we had outings together, and fun vacations. We had a nice life. Private school. I think of things like we got him braces. He just had braces. Just everything that you do to set somebody up for the perfect life — 3.5 GPA; football, hockey, friends, you know. And fentanyl still found him because kids fall into peer pressure. And, as many conversations as I had with him, he was a teenager who came into his own independence and decided he wanted to fit in with a new crowd at a new school. He had always gone to private school. He wanted to try public school, too. And I think he just wanted these friends who were just fun. I guess he fell into peer pressure and it got a hold of him and it killed my son.

ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS/AFP via Getty Images

JOHN: You made a striking statement last night. You said, “Look, this is murder.” Can you unpack that for us? Why do you feel that way?

ANNE: Because the people who deal these drugs know that fentanyl kills. When you try fentanyl one time, it is not a question of if you are going to die, it’s when. Once you try it, it is very hard to get off of it and never do it again. These drug dealers are like sexual predators. They groom children. They know that if they can get a child to try it once, within three hours they’re going to get withdrawal symptoms that range from bone aches to fevers to cold sweats to bowel issues to headaches — things that make chemotherapy recovery look like a picnic in the park. It’s a very, very difficult thing on the body. Within two or three hours of the first time of trying it — one time. It’s 50 times more addictive than crack and these drug dealers know that, and that’s when they come around and say, “I got what you need to kind of ease this pain.” So if the child survives the first pill, now the drug dealer has a client. And everyone asks, “Why would they want to, like, kill their client?” Because it’s so addictive, they’re gonna have business. If they can get someone to try it one time, they’re gonna have business. So most kids don’t live more than a couple weeks. When I say it’s a groomer mentality, they know they can’t tell their parents. They’ve gotten them to do something wrong. They’re afraid. They’re struggling with an addiction that they never wanted just because they tried something one time — and by the way, they don’t know they’re trying fentanyl. They think they’re trying something like a Percocet or Xanax which are very popular, unfortunately, with kids these days, as a party drug. And it’s pure fentanyl. There’s no Xanax. It’s a pressed pill with blue powder that you can buy off of Amazon or someone who’s probably on drugs themselves is packing these pills. It’s like a chocolate chip cookie. There’s all these little chocolate chips of fentanyl in it, and you don’t know which side of the cookie is going to have the most fentanyl. If you get that dose, seven out of ten pills are deadly.

JOHN: And for you, were there any warning signs?

ANNE: No. My son was a really good kid. All kids, when they start walking in a high school situation, you want to make sure they’re making the best choice. We had conversations, you know, hey, that was really not a good choice the other night. But for the most part, nothing that I thought was concerning enough. I’ll tell you what, I don’t know if I was just blind or I just never imagined in a million years this would happen.

LISTEN: Hear the full interview with Anne Fundner on Morning Wire

JOHN: I’ve got two young girls. The most terrifying thing to me is this sense that you cannot see this coming. And how sudden this is, and it really struck me when you spoke – that sense, it strikes terror in every parent. Now, you’ve blamed two administrations, the Biden administration and the Newsom administration for this tragedy. Can you tell us why?

ANNE: Because President Trump had the factories in China closed that produced the precursor chemicals. He had the borders secured as well as he could without some of the Democrat border cities putting a stop to their border walls. But for the most part, he did as much as he could to get that border wall secured. He had ICE. He had everything on lockdown at the border. He was doing everything he could to stop it. Now, there were Democrats that were doing their Democrat thing and not following along with what they’re supposed to be doing, so fentanyl still got over the border, but he was stopping it. I mean, he really was coming down on this hard and President Xi knew he meant business and he knew that he couldn’t get away with things with Trump. So when President Biden came in, the border’s just opened. You saw caravans flooding over. We don’t even know who these people are coming into our country. The cartels have just run wild. He allowed those China factories to be reopened under the Biden administration. I mean, this is their exasperated tragedy. They did this. There is no way to look around this. They opened the borders. They do nothing, nothing to stop this crisis at all. They did more to stop you from taking ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine during COVID than they are doing to stop people from coming in with fentanyl. And Gavin Newsom, he should be ashamed. He has children, young ones. And California is the wild, wild west. They will find a car of fentanyl, someone drug-running fentanyl, and they arrest them, the judge lets them out and says, “Come back in two weeks.” And how many people do you think come back? These people should be tried for attempted murder. They should. If they kill someone, they should go to jail for life. And look at what Sarah Huckabee Sanders did. She said, “And if you kill a child, you’re looking at the death penalty.” When you get strict penalties on this, you will see the fentanyl statistics drop dramatically because drug dealers do not want to go to jail and be sentenced to life. My son’s case was clear cut, on video. They knew who it was, he was the second person this person had murdered — and nothing, not even a slap on the wrist. Nothing happened. And if they’re not going to prosecute people, then why…? It doesn’t make sense. It’s almost like they want this to happen. Our youth have so many challenges, lots of indoctrination going on. It’s just one more thing they’re doing to hurt us and bring down our youth.

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JOHN: It’s not only hard to hear the tragedy, it is very hard to hear that there’s no accountability, that there are actually no repercussions for these horrific crimes, as you’ve described. What can be done to reverse this?

ANNE: Close the borders, number one. Shut the borders. Let’s increase our ICE officers because they’re no resources there. Biden has just done a number on ICE. He took away the fentanyl machines that were at the ports of entry, which is a secondary kind of precaution. Because drug dealers don’t go through the front door, right? He did put some of those back in this weak fentanyl bill. That’s all he did in the fentanyl bill. But he did give money to Ukraine in that bill — and that’s really what that bill was about. It was such a weak bill, it was embarrassing. The cartels need to be labeled foreign terrorist organizations. This is a war on American soil and more people are dying than from all of our recent wars combined. On American soil. On 9/11 we attacked a country because they killed 3,000 people on American soil. Where is the attack on the cartels? They are killing our children. And why aren’t we holding China accountable? Shut those factories again. Fentanyl needs to be considered a weapon of mass destruction. And every community needs harsh, strict laws. You want to deal fentanyl? You’re going to jail. Period. Zero tolerance whatsoever. You’re going to jail. And if you kill someone, you’re going to jail for life or looking at the death penalty. And if you kill a child, you will look at the death penalty. These people know what they’re doing. They know what they’re doing. And they’re still pushing it on our children. They don’t care about your kids. They don’t care if they die. These pills come to your door for $7.50. Through Snapchat, through Instagram. They are ordering them online. Underneath your doorstep, leave $7.50 and they’ll come straight to you. They know they have an income. They have so many clients. And they’re all expendable. And there’s more behind them.

JOHN: As you have made clear, this is a true crisis. Something has to change. Thank you so much for sharing your personal tragedy so that some action can be taken. Thank you for joining us.

ANNE: Thank you for having me.