Welcome back everyone through a new episode. If you're wrong with Molly Hemingway and
David Harsani. Just as a reminder, if you'd like to email the show,
please do so at radio at the Federalist dot com. How are you,
Molly, I'm great. How are you doing. I'm a little tired.
I'm I have lost sleep just thinking about Project twenty twenty five And how
scary of this? Wasn't that weird? Like all of a sudden one day,
all of my crazy lefty friends were like, there's a secret plan led
by crazy right wing organization known for destruction, the Heritage Foundation, and they're
going to destroy the country. And I'm like, where are these people getting
their news? Well, first of all, yeah, they talk about it
as if it's some kind of secret, you know, blueprint where there's just
this giant website, completely transparent, lists all the authors, all the people
involved, and there's a ton of people. They brag about it, they
talk about it, and the hissteria over it is just I think it falls
in line with the Russia collusion hoak stuff, or the Federalist Society stuff,
or yeah, you know, the Supreme Court ethics stuff. It's just this
ginned up, concocted hysteria over really nothing. So I actually sat down and
read the whole thing, and I'm not going to pretend I didn't skim a
lot of parts, because I did. It's a nine hundred pages. It's
mostly I would say ninety percent of it is just kind of stuff that conservatives
have basically been saying forever. We're going to get rid of the education depart
you know, Department of Education. We're going to do this, We're going
to do that. I don't even like some of it. I think conservatives
probably would disagree on a lot of parts of it. I'm not crazy about
some of the economic stuff. But the idea that it's authoritarian or anything or
theocratic is kind of a joke. So I'd read one critique from someone who's,
you know, in this sort of like new right, we don't like
the economics of the old right. Who is like, the problem with this
document is that it just doesn't really do much other than restate standard conservative principles
that they've held for dozens of years, And it was like, that's a
you would say that, in fact, it does have some changes from nineteen
eighty style republicanism or whatnot conservatism. I mean there's but yeah, I just
thought it was funny, like that seemed to me a more reasonable critique than
the ones I was getting from my frankly difficult to deal with insane left wing
friends. Now, yeah, I mean the real debate here should be an
intro or right debate over the economic stuff. I mean, I think they
I was going to like, I'm unhappy about a lot of it, but
I think that the Heritage Foundation went out of its way to try to bring
in different kind of voices. So like on trade, there's a section on
trade from Navarro, which obviously is much more restrictive, and then there's another
one I wish I could remember who wrote it, but it's you know the
other side of that. So I think that that's a good faith effort to
kind of bring together a lot of people on the right. Now there are
sections like praising unions and stuff like this that's very new right and I think
a huge mistake, but still not authoritarian. In fact, I would think
that the left would be much happier about that stuff than they were now.
Listen, there's a lot of notts to social conservatism. There's like a section
about how we should be keeping the Sabbath and stuff like that, but there's
no policy prescription and them making you not work on a weekend, So I
would like to propose it. The reason why they're freaking out is that the
Heritage Foundation here, working with all these other conservative groups, is dealing with
a problem that the right has had where it kind of got a little stagnant
in terms of how it was presenting its ideas or how they were relating to
the issues of the moment. And so it was really easy to deal with
a right that was locked in the amber of the nineteen eighties, where you
know, whenever they talked, it sounded exactly like what you would have heard
from a stump speech of a congressional candidate in nineteen eighty six or something,
and that was causing electoral problems, and it was also just causing like a
like a deadening of the movement. And Heritage, which is a big heavy
hitter, is saying, we've got to be aggressive about what these ideas mean
right now, and it's kind of exciting and interesting, and it gives people
things to talk about and to think about and to work on policy about.
And the left recognizes that as a threat, and that's why they're actually freaking
out about it, because someone's actually saying, what if we did something when
we had power? What if we applied these conservative principles. So, I
know you're kind of talking about the very specifics of the what's in the project,
but I think what's actually disturbing the New York Times and Salon and you
know, left wing publications and activists is the idea that maybe if a conservative
or conservative friendly politician got elected, they might actually do something with their power.
Yeah. No, I think that's part of it. It did make
me laugh that many of the things that are that. So I read a
slight piece. I'm sorry, but I read a slight piece this morning about
this, and it's a long piece, very talking about how scary it all
is, and they do not, literally do not mention a single thing in
it, you know. So I wonder if any of these people even know
or care. I think Project two twenty five just sounds scary too. But
the way you talked about the rhetoric, the political rhetoric, and the sort
of complacency of it and all that, I think that's exactly why you have
a new Right and exactly why young people are looking for new ways to express
themselves as conservatives. I think a lot of those ideas are Hoover esque,
frankly, but I think I get the reason. I think you nailed it.
Yeah, I did think that. So when the people started getting hysterical,
Donald Trump comes out and he's like, I have nothing to do with
Project twenty twenty five. And that's technically true. I mean it's not just
technically true. That's true. He has nothing to do with Project twenty twenty
five. It's a group of nonprofit like conservative organizations trying to come up with
a plan for governing the country that can be used by someone like Donald Trump.
That doesn't mean that he's behind it or anything like that. But then
he went on to say, like, some of what they're saying sounds scary.
Well, some of what quote unquote they're saying isn't what they're saying,
it's what corporate media is claiming that they're saying. To your point about this
piece you just read, And it would be really great if Donald Trump wasn't
so stupid as to believe what bad people in corporate media say about his voters
and his base of support. So that would be my encouragement. Well,
I guess we could jump to another topic from here. It's a good segue.
I think part of that is just Donald Trump triangulating and moderating for the
general I would say that the RNC platform is indicative of that. So I
don't get me wrong. The Project two twenty five blueprint does have very social
conservative positions. I think that appeal would appeal far more to social you know,
hardcore social conservatives, and it went to some independent in Michigan or something,
and the president is aiming, you know, for that voter right now.
So the abortion, you know, it's for outlong abortion all that stuff,
which Donald Trump is not for, you know, he's I think he's
actually this is just a tough discussion for someone like me because I'm pretty hardcore
pro life, right, But how do you win elections? What do you
say to win elections? So let me just say this. So the RNC
came out with its platform, which I think is very simplistic and kind of
silly, but I guess maybe people care or not. I don't know.
It doesn't have anything on guns anymore, and it doesn't have anything on abortion,
So let's just talk about that. Do you think that people who support
Donald Trump actually care will not vote for him now because those those two issues
are strip from the RNC platform, or is it irrelevant Largely, I don't
think it'll matter too much in this election. I think it will be bad
for the Republican Party going forward. So I speak as someone who's never been
like a party activist. I've never worked for you Republican members of Congress or
anything like that. You know, I tend to vote, tend to vote
Republican, but I'm just not I'm not involved on those inner workings of the
party. And so I have these really complicated, contradictory thoughts, like I
don't actually care about platforms at all. I really don't. I've never cared
about it. I've never really read much about it. Didn't love that the
Republicans didn't bother having one in twenty twenty thanks to COVID. But like,
I just don't really care. And yet a lot of people I trust,
and a lot of people who've put a lot of work into the cause of
defending and protecting unborn children and their mothers and other issues that are kind of
form the basis of the coalition that is the Republican Party. They care a
great deal about the platform, and they've told me that it's a means by
which you can accomplish things at the local, state, and federal level by
having these like clear words in the platform. You know, Phyllis Schlafley is
a great example of someone who used platform battles to accomplish really important things for
conservative women. And this platform is kind of a platform of I mean,
it just doesn't I totally get why it would be a good platform to have
to win the presidential election. And that's not nothing. You know, if
you just feel like you're getting dragged down by platforms that you don't even agree
with or whatever's that's a political issue. But I don't think a lot of
Republican leaders, including Donald Trump, really have an understanding of who forms their
grassroots army. And that grassroots army is not the people who like can't be
bothered to vote unless Donald Trump's on the ballot. It's pro lifers basically,
and people who care deeply about the Constitution and the Second Amendment. And so
if you want people out there actually ballot harvesting and going door to door and
talking to their neighbors and caring enough about something to actually put effort into it.
You're basically talking about pro lifers, and so is there any confusion between
whether you vote for Donald Trump, the most pro life president in history,
who secured victory after victory for pro livers and has shown that he's been willing
to work on a transactional basis with them, versus a guy who is making
the cornerstone of his campaign his love of killing babies. No, it's not
like a tough It's not a tough question this time. But a lot of
what makes the Republican Party work is like, you know, all the other
races, all the other candidates, all the other times when they're like,
you got to vote for this tax break thing, and we'll throw you a
bone and pretend we care about your stupid babies, you know, like that
kind of stuff. When they're decreasing even that which they've already been pretty bad
on, I do think it might have a bad effect on the party going
forward. I don't know if any of that made sense. No, it
does. It's a fine, you know, it's a balance there. It
is weird to me that Donald Trump's kind of so they'll tell you his opponents
will tell you that he is this orange star banging Can I say that sort
of reprobate, you know, terrible human being. But also he wants to
create this theocracy where women are not like it. Just I'm not saying it
can happen that way, but it doesn't. The argument doesn't really make sense
in my view. My problem with Donald Trump. One of the problems I've
always had with him is I didn't think he was conservative enough. And I
do think he's a northeastern kind of New York Republican who doesn't fully understand social
conservatives. Right Still, he was the most effective pro life president ever.
So you have to make a choice here and you want to bring people in
to the party. Is he doing the right thing? I think Republicans sometimes
don't understand that incrementalism is a good way to go about these things, where
the left does it all the time. Okay, but I would say pro
lifers are the kings and queens of understanding incrementalism. We worked for decades,
five decades incrementally to secure the overturning of Roe v. Wade. We will
continue to work for decades for every other battle that you know. I mean,
it's just a lifelong battle if you care about it's humans. So I
don't think it's like, I don't think there's just a limit to how much
they're willing to take one of the I thinks, yes, no, no,
one of the other things that helps the Republican Party. I've noticed because
I've this is the only issue I truly care about, Like I mean,
I care about a lot of issues, but this is the one that is
the reason why I even waste my time in politics, is because I care
about women and children, families and not killing babies. And in the pro
life movement, most of the people that I've encountered are not particularly conservative,
they just also care about babies. So probably the thing saving the Republican Party
right now is that it has become a little more populist in working class and
stuff like that, issues on which you know, I would meet people all
the time who were pretty crazy lefty, but they had just been driven out
of the Democrat Party over abortion. But these things are delicate and you might
not notice the change right away, but you can notice it over time.
And you know, one thing the Democrat Party's pretty good at is making sure
that it's hardcore basis taken care of and Republicans have never been good at that,
and getting worse is not a recipe for success. Government intervention has ruined
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or wherever you get your podcasts. And things have changed once Dobbs came
down and row was no longer reality. It wasn't just so easy to say
on pro life anymore. You actually have to support legislation that's real, and
then you have to balance that with your electorate. Now, I would say
I thought Donald Trump made has made it actually pretty good, has made some
pretty good arguments. You know, when he had the debate, and obviously
he was debating someone who wasn't mentally prepared for that sort of thing. But
you know, attacking them for being at radical, which they are extremists nihilists
on this issue is a very good way to go about it, and then
saying, listen, people should locally should decide for themselves. I know that
a lot of people I work with and other pro life people think it's a
national issue. I think you need to fight this state by state, and
so I just think he made a good argument. This way. You're not
turning off people completely. You're not making it feel like you're just going to
shove this legislation down there. It's even though that's what the left wants to
do. Obviously. If I can just make one clarification, I've seen some
people who want to be weak on abortion say, well, Dobbs just gives
it all to the state, so it's a state's issue, so we don't
need to talk about it anymore at a national level, And that's just wrong
on multiple levels. For one thing, Dobbs overturned Row, which unconstitutionally limited
the right of the people to talk about abortion and make decisions about what the
abortion law should be. It didn't say at the state level, I mean,
at the state level is one of the places you can do that.
We also have a Congress, you can do it there. You could do
it at the local level. You can do it in like all sorts of
ways. It's not about it didn't say like you have to do it at
the state level, And so I see people clinging to that and saying they
also say, well, every pro lifer said they just wanted it to be
at the state level. No they didn't. They said that it prohibited states
from being able to set their own policy, which is one of the problems
with ROE. But the goal of a pro lifer is to have a world
where babies aren't killed and women aren't used. And you know, like it's
not at the state level, Like it doesn't really matter which place you're protected.
I mean, you can have arguments about the best place to protect them,
and I do think the states is where the battle has to be.
But I've just seen people overstate what the actual decision says. Well, I
don't have a definitive position on how it should be handled, but I know
right now as a political matter, I just think fighting it from state to
state is far more important. I mean, you see more babies being born
in states already that have enacted restrictive yeah, protections. I hate when I
say it's restrictive when it's the opposite. But so that part and then also
guns, you know, which is kind of more surprising to me, because
I don't even think that. I don't here here's what I think. I
can't recall a single election, certainly not a national election where someone lost or
lost voters because they were pro Second Amendment. I just don't think that's happens.
I don't think anyone's lost election over that. I think it's just this
issue that's completely overstated by the left. So that was that took me,
took me by surprise a little. But again, I don't think that's another
issue that Donald Trump is not great on it. I mean exactly if I
can just say really quickly. One of the things I think is funny is
people say all the time, if you're not like on that crazy MSNBC,
CNN, New York Times, never Trump Republican train, that you don't criticize
Trump. And what I've noticed with some recent discussions is they're mad when you
don't criticize Trump. From the left, they don't even notice it when you
criticize Trump from the right, like bringing up guns. I'm remembering, you
know, Sean Davis wrote a piece about the unconstitutional nature of Donald Trump's executive
order ban on bump stocks. I know Sean Davis doesn't even care about I
thinks bumpstocks are stupid, but you know, he made a constitutional argument that
that was wrong, a constitutional argument that was upheld, you know, by
the Supreme Court. And I'm just raising that. I'm reminding people of that
because Donald Trump has not had the best record on guns, and so it's
something to be wary of should he be reelected. Obviously he'll be a million
times better than a Joe Biden would be in a second term, but it's
still something to be on guard about. And then the other thing is if
you say, I'm really concerned that Donald Trump is, you know, not
handling the pro life base of the party right, it's like you didn't say
anything because you didn't criticize from the left. Like they just don't notice anybody
who's on the right, Like our arguments don't matter, our concerns don't matter.
If you're criticizing Trump, it doesn't matter. You know what I'm saying
yeah. I mean, the funniest thing to me is always how I read
maga extremism, no matter what's going on when there it is literally true,
I keep saying literally. But Trump is the moderate candidate in this election right
now. There, he is far more modern. If Joe Biden had been
the moderate that we were promised, I think this looks this world looks completely
different right now. But he's not. And I think it polls. I
think reflac that you know, if someone wants to you know, control the
border and even get rid of the people here illegally, that's extremely popular,
no matter how many times the other side saying Project twenty twenty five wants to
you know, have camps to put Latinos in. No, it doesn't Latinos
in polls want people expelled who came here illegally. My parents are immigrants.
No one is madder about you know, who stood in the line and waited
to come here. No one is angrier about people cutting the line than them.
So they completely misjudging these kind of like issues that should be simple.
But he's not all there, So let's talk about him. Actually, everyone's
talking about Joe by and all the time, and I just quickly. Want
to preface all this by saying that Trump's discipline now is incredibly surprising to me.
The way he's He's kind of let the left stew in this and try
to figure it out, and that of sets them. Have you seen them
like Trump hasn't made an appearance in fourteen days. They need him so badly.
I saw someone pointing out that the Democrats have been trying to put Trump
under gag orders, They've been censoring him, they've been trying to get him
kicked off social media. And then the moment that he's like, I'm just
going to let the Democrats implode over here, They're like, why is he
not saying anything? He needs to say things? We are we're our rage,
you know, levels are way too low, so we need to get
them lifted up. It is very funny and it's smart politics, you know.
And his whole campaign seems more discipline this time around to me. Quick
note on I actually was saying something about this on Barney earlier this week.
It's the biggest undercovered story I think is how tight this campaign is. So
twenty sixteen was a legendarily untight presidential campaign. I actually think that was part
of its beauty. You had top advisors openly screaming at each other about the
best way to do things. Trump was going out and rallying and saying all
sorts of crazy and incendiary things, and it would make the media. You
know, I'll be in uproar. Twenty twenty actually wasn't. Twenty twenty was
a pretty tight ship as well. It just ended up being kind of to
its detriment. Like one of the things that Donald Trump does well with is
to run ideas by different people, see what their reaction is is, and
then make a decision about, you know, the proper way to go.
And everyone was kind of on the same page, I feel like in twenty
twenty, and it killed some of the energy and he wasn't able to go
out and campaign in front of crowds, so he couldn't even test out ideas
there. This seems to be the best of both worlds. This twenty twenty
four campaign's led by Susie Wiles and Chris los Avitas. They rarely rarely are
even out there publicly, so that's different than some previous campaign assistants that Trump
has had, and they have been executing this I think next to flawlessly.
People forget that when Donald Trump decided he was going to run again, there
was not the world's biggest sentiment in favor of it. You know, a
lot of people were tired of him. A lot of people were just hoping
there was a way to move on into a different candidate. He pretty effectively
sidelined everybody and unified the Republican Party around him. He obviously was always going
to be the front runner, given the success he had in his first presidency
and the feelings that people had that twenty twenty was unfairly taken from him.
And then ever since then too, they've just been executing I think, pretty
flawlessly, including this period of time of keeping Donald Trump off by large social
media speeches. And he did give a speech in drell Doral, Florida that
was pretty funny and good, but it's interesting. Yeah. Twenty sixteen was
also weird because he almost ran as much against the Republican establishment and the old
Guard as he did Democrats, So it was this weird energy and twenty twenty
was a little different, I guess. And now he is the establishment essentially,
RNC falls in line with him, and there's no yeah, yes,
and no. I would say that if the Republican establishment truly wanted to take
Trump out, what they should have done after he lost in twenty twenty was
praise him to high heavens, and instead they also started openly conspiring for how
to make sure that he couldn't be the nominee again in twenty twenty four,
thereby giving him that thing you just talked Hi about in twenty sixteen, where
he had to take on the establishment. There's no question that Mitch McConnell and
the big money wanted anyone but Trump. They said, so they put their
efforts behind mainly I think Nikki Hayley. That was the big mistake. They
should have all rallied around one candidate. They made the same mistake in twenty
sixteen, and it should have, in my view, been to Santus,
who I think would bring something different to this race. I don't know if
you'd do better or worse, but they were His sort of energy and competence
compared to what Biden is doing would be quite quite a quite a picture,
right, or quite a distinction between those two campaigns. I don't know,
though you never know these how electric reacts this stuff. Well, we got
to do. I mean, I actually would say I agree. Ronda Santis
is an amazing governor. He's highly effective, He's on paper, in particular,
exactly what you would want. And the voters had an opportunity to choose
him and they just did not cotton to him. And if that's in the
Republican primary, it's unlikely that someone with his skill set and track record would
appeal more outside of the Republican Why is it unlikely? I don't think it's
unlikely. I think it's likely primary voters are were Trump. A lot of
Trump loyalists there that no matter you know, that loved him. I don't
know, you know, I don't know that regular Republican voters wouldn't have liked
him as much. I think people like you and I are really motivated by
ideas, and a lot of other people are not necessarily. I don't mean
that to sound I hope that didn't sound wrong. But there are aspects of
campaigning that really aren't about what you believe so much as how you present it.
And you look at why certain people had success. You know, a
Bill Clinton, but not a Hillary Clinton, a Barack Obama, a Joe
Biden, a Donald Trump, These are people who genuinely enjoy, well maybe
not Obama, but genuinely enjoy interacting with people, schmoozing with them, putting
in those long, hard hours of shaking every hand and taking pictures and remembering
names and stuff like that. And so when I think of Ron DeSantis's situation,
I think that might have been a bigger issue than the actual I mean,
it was a timing issue first and foremost one billion percent, and that
he didn't understand that this was going to be a probably insurmountable task to take
on Trump this year, and that also it would affect what people thought about
him by even trying to do it. That's a huge issue. But I
think that when it comes to ideas and implementation and all of the stuff,
he is, he's just amazing. He's wonderful. I mean, you're right
on the shaking every hand in the auditorium until it closes not so great.
I mean, there are a lot of people, a lot of candidates,
perspective presidential candidates that people thought would be great, like Rudy Giuliani or Fred
Thompson or whatever, who just didn't click right. And you just don't know,
You never know, You never know, but we were sed to be
talking about Joe Biden. I know. So he's going to have a big
press conference tomorrow, the big boy press conference. We'll see how that goes.
I did notice something I thought was pretty funny. The expectations for him
are so low that when he does something just even barely normal, I see
people like Jen Ruben or others like, oh, he did that without a
script? He answered that question. No, it's it's kind of like I
say, It's like the way my wife speaks to me when I fix some
simple thing in the house, like a you know, a door hinge or
something like. It's like clapping for a two year old who, for you
know, takes his first step. So I don't think it's gonna work.
I think the pressure is going to be mount because every time he flubs or
something happens, it's just going to be so highlighted. But he's not stepping
down so far. Do you what do you have? You changed your mind?
I don't remember what you said last week. I I just want to
first off say that I had a friend who years ago say I had a
friend who said, watching the press handle Joe Biden is like watching a family
try to help a three year old win Candyland. And we're right, what
you're describing right now about the low expectations for him fits into that. Okay,
So I do think Biden survived the Michal coup attempt, and that that's
not nothing. It was kind of a foreordained conclusion that once his main enablers,
the liberal Democrat media and other Democrat leaders, once they turned on him,
that he was done, that there was no way he could withstand it.
You were seeing stories come out of the New York Times that were like,
oh, by the way, he has Parkinson's are you know? Kind
of that level of extremism based on anonymous sources and all the tricks that they
usually employ only against Republican opponents. And it was crazy. It was hysterical.
And he did come out hard and say I'm not going anywhere. And
it was pretty clear that like tiam Obama is leaking against him, trying to
drive him out. All of their public people are speaking that way, their
private people are leaking. And I thought it was also interesting. I just
want to do the what's gone well for Biden thus farm and then we'll talk
about what's not going well. But you had a lot of rumors. Oh
four senators say that they think he should step down, but they wouldn't have
their name with them. And all of the people who did come out and
say that they thought he should step down that were elected Democrats were people I'd
never heard of before. And so when it came to people on the record,
it was top level Democrats saying that they're standing with him. And that
is almost certainly because this is not an organic situation. There's no groundswell of
support for removing him among the people who just nominated him. It's the elites
who want to get rid of him, and they're trying to convince the voters
to agree with them to drive him out. Yeah, I agree, politicians
are risk averse anyway. There's no one out there to support that has this
ground slow of support. So for instance, when Hillary Barack Obama ran against
Hillary, there was this second option that was much more exciting for people,
that generated more support. So that was easy. But now where do you
go. I will say that the only higher level person I so came out
was Michael Bennett, who is the Senator in Colorado, and he only came
out because I believe someone leaked that he had said. They didn't think Biden
could wait, and he couldn't lie about it, so he had to come
out and say it. Well, and you had Nancy Pelosi this morning,
so shall walk it back. You know, I thought it was a pretty
Nancy Pelosi style shift. She's like, he's going to have to make a
decision about whether he wants to stay, and they're like, he already decided,
and she's like, he's going to have to put a lot of thought
into that. In other words, you need to keep thinking until you come
to the right decision. And that's what I was going to say. Initially
he survives the coup. Obviously, if he has another big stumble, I
think it would be really hard to survive that next stage of outrage. But
I worry that what has happened here by surviving the initial coup is that it's
giving his opponents time to actually put together a plan, you know, researching
what needs to be done, getting the media to smooth over all of the
illegalities or process problems that would be in play. Oh, technically you can't
do this, But we talked to four experts who said it's no big deal
when democracy is on the line, you know, and coming up with some
kind of perfect plan. The only issue here, The only issue is that
top Democrats in the media and otherwise understand that Joe Biden is not going to
beat Donald Trump, that even like their ballot harvesting operation, would be harder
to sell, even harder to sell this time around than in twenty twenty,
and that people would probably not trust the legitimacy of a similar election even more
than they didn't trust the legitimacy of the last election. And so they understand
that they are in in danger of losing power, and that's the only reason
why they're trying to get him out as the nominee. If this were a
real issue where they were really good people who really did just care about,
you know, his health, they would only be talking about him stepping down
from the presidency, not replacing him on the ticket. Well, let's talk
about that mythology that's being created. So in Axios, the I think it's
Jim Vanda Hay and Mike Allen wrote that hell hath no fury like a press
corps deceived and that's why all of a sudden, the entire press is putting
on this full or press against the president. I view it differently. I
think they got caught because they had no control over what was happening in the
debate, and now they're just doing the work of a different group of Democrats.
Both reasons, hiding what Biden was about and helping now unseat Biden are
both in an effort to stop Donald Trump. That is their goal. It
is not good journalism, It is not any kind of you know, you
know, you know, democracy saving effort. It's just terrible. And in
a column I quote Ace Rothstein from a casino. Have you ever seen that
movie when he yells at the black I think it was the black Gio,
and it was a yokel on the floor who was being ripped off. If
either you were being scammed, then you're too stupid to have this job,
or you were in on it, and that's even worse. And that's how
I think about the media. There will be no explanation for why we didn't
know about this. The idea that people embedded in the White House didn't know
what was going on is just an obvious It's just a transparent lie. Yeah,
can we just talk about They're like, no, no, no,
we weren't covering up this thing that one hundred percent of the rest of the
world saw. We were just too stupid to notice it. That's their defense.
We weren't liars who were colluding with other Democrat power brokers and the conspiracy
of silence. We were just too stupid to notice what any fourteen year old
on TikTok could notice. Now I get it that I am a I have
an ideological stake in this, and I don't like Joe Biden. But I
went back to see when was I writing about this, and by the way,
I was writing about this, like in twenty sixteen or whenever, already
about but Joe Biden. But I wrote last year Joe Biden is not okay.
It's an entire column of things in the public record, videos that we
can see things that he said, like after an incoherent anti gun speech,
he says God bless the Queen man like the and then we just walked away,
and the press just walked away as if this was something normal that would
happen every day. And Joe Biden kept doing this, so the idea they
didn't know, and they knew a lot more because they have There's no way
that people from the administration aren't saying things off the record. It's a lie.
Did you see a George Stephanopolis. Some guy on the street asked him
if Biden's going to survive, and he's like no, And I think that,
you know, they just want Joe Biden in now or out. But
if he's in, they know Kamal is going to take over before four years,
is up right? I mean, there's no doubt about that. They
just want the power. Yeah. I actually think that was the initial plan
too, was to just get him elected and get him to transition to Kamala.
And then it turned out he had a huge ego and a wife who's
like Lady Macbeth, and the transition plan didn't work also because Kamala Harris is
very bad at her job, and so they are in a mess. And
now they just want to not deal with the mess they made. They want
to have like a magical solution that subverts democracy in their own primary. And
people are I mean, they could have this blitz primary thing they're talking about
though. They're talking about some blitz primary where they go through and alects,
you know, get someone else on the bolt. I'm not as like,
you know, I don't care about this coup stuff because Kamala's job being on
the ticket is to take over for Biden. I mean, that's his pick.
Supposedly she's the best person for the job. So they deserve what they
get. Can we talk about her for a minute? So yep. I
see a lot of people saying she's running ahead of Biden, you know,
and she hasn't even started a campaign so people can see her. Well,
I think you're fooling yourself if you think Kamala's going to get out there more
and be more liked. I think what's going to happen is you're going to
have a very well funded Trump campaign ripping her apart daily. That hasn't happened
either, And I think a lot of people who would get to know her
are more likely not to like what they see than like what they see.
And another thing I just quickly want to mention is we keep what's going to
happen here in the revisionist history is going to be that Joe Biden lost because
of that debate and people realize he was too old. He's incredibly unpopular right
now because his presidency has been a disaster, and that should not be forgotten
either. Kamala. Kamala was tasked with the border, right, which is
a disaster, and what else has she done? So I don't know why
anyone believes she's going to be the answer here. I don't really know who
would be the answer. Probably be some moderate governor from Pennsylvania or something.
Probably their best bet. But that's to do that would take a lot of
heavy lifting. I'm not even sure how they do it. Yeah, I
don't know, but I don't think that. I don't think the story is
over. I think if I were Joe Biden, I would truly hire a
food tester. I think. No, I'm very very serious. I'm worried
about what lengths they're willing to go to to get him out. Well,
Shane Gillis had that joke where he might be the first president that you can
assassinate just by like fake punching him or scaring him so that they don't really
need to poison his food. I just need to like, ooh job.
I mean you know what I'm saying, though, Like they know survive another
stumble? Will they do something? Will they mess with his medication? Will
they I don't I don't know. You guys sound crazy, right, now
I have to say a lot of times I think that you've sounded crazy in
the past. It's just that just those things have just come true. But
I will say that I just yes, I don't think that's going to happen.
I think they'd rather just write it out with him. First of all,
we have to always remember that all there, the democracy is ending.
If we lose this election. Stuff is just fake. They don't actually believe
that, so I think I don't think see exactly. So I remember,
I don't know if we should publish our war game that we did at the
Federalist Staff retreat. But weird how things keep happening from there. Right,
It's funny that I was Joe Biden and I did not make it through to
the end of the morn. You know, boy that ended in World War
three? Right, we just went off the hook. But I don't know
what's going to happen. I think we often underestimate, or maybe voters or
people often underestimate that these people, these candidates, politicians have massive egos.
It's not just so simple as to say get out. They have their family
around them, they have a lot of people telling them what they want to
hear. So so I think Republicans should start pressing that point. By the
way, if they're going to get rid of Joe, they're going to have
to make a lot of promises to the family, because that's the family's meal
ticket, that's the entire family business. Is Joe being in power. And
if he is dethroned, like who's buying who's buying up Hunter's artwork, who's
going to provide the pardons for the for the Biden family, who's going to
allow the grift to continue or what you know, or to turn it into
a more law abiding grift like the Clinton Global Foundation was, you know,
like they need to make some promises, and I think Republicans should say,
everyone, preserve your paperwork. We're coming, you know, we know what
you're going to do here, and we're going to be looking into it.
I also see some Democrats argue that there is a team behind him. It's
not just him, you know, it's uh you know, you know,
the mayor Pete, you know, is making decisions. We are. Republicans
shouldn't lose. I know there's a lot of focus on buying, but they
shouldn't lose fat. They shouldn't lose folks is on how unpopular and tragic many
of the initiatives of that administration are, you know, because if someone new
comes on, you can have to refocus on that as well. So I
don't know. I feel like maybe he's going to stay. And I'm still
fifty to fifty on how I feel about it. I still you never know,
like we said, how the electorate reacts, so they'll maybe like Biden
was our guy, you know, we voted for him, whatever, they
may not like him being pushed out in this way. I don't know.
Yeah, I do think if the even Biden voters, if Obama were to
say, everybody, here's what we need you to do, they would be
like, sir, yes, sir. He's obviously behind this stuff, as
you say, because a lot of the folks who seem to be leaking seem
to be his like people in the administration so forth. Anyway, it's going
to be fun. What a wild election this is going to be. This
is the wildest one I think we've probably ever been around, other than Trump
maybe twenty sixteen. I don't know. That's it. Anything but politics right
now. Culture, Have you watched anything, read anything, listen to anything
that you want to share with the audience. I was. I don't know
if we talked about how I was sick for a while. So I've been
trying to catch up on everything and I haven't seen a ton. But we
did have a family movie night of watching Rocky Nice. Do you like that
movie? I love the original. I think it's great. You know,
Actually, what am I kidding? I love all of them until four till
write four. I don't know about the others. So you watched just the
first one, yes, And I am pretty sure the kids did not love
it, but I don't think I did the first time I saw it either.
And there were a few things that were interesting, including just how grimy
Philadelphia was in the seventies and we look at Philadelphia now, we're like,
things have really gone downhill, But things weren't so hot in the whenever that
was filmed nineteen seventy three. Any movie in the seventies that you watch when
there's street scenes, there's just litter everywhere. It's kind of grimy and gross,
and you know, I like watching that, but I wouldn't want to
live in it again. I was a young kid when that was going on.
But yeah, I like Rocky. It's funny because I was going to
actually mention Rocky before I saw someone tweet, you know, like Rocky Biden's
like Rocky keeps getting up after and I'm like, do you know that Rocky
didn't win in that when we lost? I guess they don't know. One
of the kids was so upset about that. I loved. I loved that
part of it, and I had recently watched it your Recommendation, that sliced
alone documentary, and so it was also fun to think about this man and
how he wrote this and how he wrote it quickly, and then how he
insisted on being the star and how that ended up working really well for everybody.
But I liked it's it's it's not the movie. I think people remember
it as it's not like this blockbuster story. It's actually quite a like very
intimate story about like love and overcoming obstacles. What I love is that he's
old in that movie and like this is his last chance, and then like
thirty years later, is still fighting in movies. But if you just view
that movie on its own, I think it's quite quite an. I also
like to go down that rabbit hole of Tilia. What was her name,
Tilia Talia shire Tala, And how she's Jason Schwartzman's mom. Yeah, and
she's Francis fort Coppola's sister. Yeah, she was in The Godfather. You
know, she's not the greatest actress, but she's sorry. Didn't she win
an Academy Award for that? She hardly speaks. So I also want to
say that I did finish watching the worst TV show out there, which is
The Bear? Are you watching that? You know? I love that for
a season, but ever since that episode with the family fighting that like just
meant to this is anguish watching that I have not returned. It fills me
with rage when people say that is like the best TV episode in history.
It's not. And then this season takes all of the problems of the second
season and then removes any of the redeeming qualities of the second season. It
is horrible, and Mark makes fun of me for how angry I am about
how bad it is. So in the kitchen, it's screaming between the two
main characters. Are you screaming between the main character and other people? He
has given people no reason to like him in any way. And then his
SIU chef Also, they replace personality with head nods. They just nod their
head a lot, and it's annoying and it's the only thing that they can
do. And they insert characters who are cartoonishly irrelevant, these fact brothers.
The food storyline is all about learning how to edit your dishes so that only
the best part remains. And then the TV storyline is about filling up a
dish with things that nobody wants to eat. It's so bad, it is
so awful, and I'm mostly angry because they took real characters in that first
season, real people, not fancy people. Oh, in the third season,
the uncle or whoever he is, who helps support the Oliver, who's
a good character. To make a point, he claims that he goes to
a lecture series at the University of Chicago. No, what made this great
was that these were real people, not people who talk film criticism, not
people who go to university lectures at University of Chicago and talk about astrophysicism or
whatever like it. They took every good person who was real and gritty and
troubled and not that well educated, and they turned them into film school fantasies
that nobody can relate to and it's it's awful, truly awful. Wow.
Sorry, now I in the second season, it was already headed downhill.
I think the first season was just one of my favorite, the favorite,
my favorite shows in the last like I don't know how many years, you
know, I love his passion about food all that. I loved it,
but all right, well anything else. They have a lot of RIM and
it's been making me revisit RM in that series, and I think I hate
RIM less than I used to, but I'm still not an RM person.
And then the final thing I want to say is thanks to everybody for your
wonderful commentary on how you also don't like Titanic. That made me feel much
better about ranting about that. I was worried and apparently I could start a
society of people who hate that movie. Yeah, one time, I only
like the first three M albums. I think Fables of the Reconstruction is a
great album. So once I tweeted out like Fable Rim sucked after Fables of
the Reconstruction something like that, and Mike Mills the basis goes that's nice,
he'd like answered under Yeah, then I found like that this feels bad because
they were around like twenty five years after that. I was in part of
my journeys through Ori Emo's reading. I think it might have been Mark mill
saying that they he was very pleased with all of their albums. Not every
album was great, but not every Dylan album was great. Yeah, thanks
comparing yourself to Dylan. I did recently also revisit band and I listened to
Document Maybe it was the next album, which I thought was pretty good.
I watched We'll Go But Come Back if you have anything else, but I
watched you. I think you may have mentioned the show Queen's Gambit. No
oh, I thought it was fantastic. Okay, highest recommendation. I mean
initially I didn't watch it because I thought it would be too dark and so
like I have a list here. When you were talking about the The Bear,
I don't watch any movie that makes me feel tense, I just stop
watching. I don't watch any movie that has real sadness in it. I
don't watch any movie where children are hurt or die, and I only watch
movies with cartoonish deaths. So Queen's Gambit had only one or two not safe
for work moments, but otherwise I thought it was great and I highly recommend
it. I watched Beverly Hills Cop like ten or whatever it is, like
the new one with Ednie Murphy. There's a new one. They bring beck
all the old cast, and as a person who grew up in the eighties
as a teenager, obviously it was a huge movie. It was just as
bad as the originals, I would say equally uninteresting. I watched you ever
watch the show Forged in Fire on Netflix where they make knives. It's a
knife making competition. Watch that. And I watched one other thing. I
can't read my handwriting. Oh, I was trying again to watch the sequel
to what is this show with the incest porn with the dragons? Yeah,
Game of Throne, so that I get. So this thing has like a
ninety percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes, and I fall asleep every episode. It's
just awful and boring. And I do not recommend it. All right.
That's all I have is that it for you as well to do anything else.
I mean I've done a lot. I had to go up to New
York, come back headed to Chicago for the Issues et Cetera conference, which
is my favorite podcasts. No, no, what is it so much better
than ours. I don't know what it is listening to for a long time.
And they have an annual conference, so I'm going out to that and
then I'm headed to Milwaukee for the convention. So yeah, So let me
ask you, what is this podcast? You're talking about issues, issues,
et cetera. It is done by Lutheran's you know, I'm Lutheran, but
it's it's very ecumenical, like they have all sorts of religions and different denominations
on to talk about issues of the day. So it's kind of a political
podcast, but with through the prism of a Christian worldview, all right,
and it's really well done, and the host, Todd Wilken, is so
good at asking questions and all that. Much like you, So, did
you go to a Guided by Voices concert? Or why are you wearing a
Guided by Voices T shirt? David? I? So, what I do
is every year I go to a T shirt online store and I pick like
twenty t shirts I like, and I buy them and then I use them
up over the year and then I just buy like twenty more. So I
do that all the time. What do you mean, use them up over
the year? Like I'm wearing a T shirt. I mean it looks like
eagle. Yeah, it's an eagle with USA on it. And I've been
wearing it for like fifteen years. I have T shirts that last a long
time. These are not the highest of quality. So I do a lot
of like outdoor stuff with it or riding my bike with it, and I
just really eat the money. Like maybe I'll meet a friend who also likes
guided by voices. I don't. I never do. No one ever talks
to me. I have all kinds. I have the Melvins, I don't
know. Greg Guttfeld loves the Melvins. It's a pretty good band. And
other bands like that, Ave Mint, Silver Juice, whatever. And then
yeah, no one ever talks to me about them. And then and then
that's it. I do not go and I'm into a concert, like I
told you in like I don't know, twenty years. I know you go
to many of them, Mark, But no, all right, that's a
nice conversation. No one's care about that. But I will have more conversations
that you might not care about, but you may until them. Be lovers
of freedom and anxious for the friends. Gonna have a lot of Sun,
I'm gonna hit a home right, the littlessly