We're back with another edition of the Federalist Radio Hour. I'm Emili Jashinsky,
culture editor here at the Federalist. As always, you can email the show
at radio at the Federalist dot com, follow us on Twitter, x whatever
you call it at FDR LST. Of course, make sure to subscribe wherever
you download your podcasts into the premium version of our website as well. Today,
I thought we would mix it up a little bit. There's going to
be a first part to this podcast and a second part to this podcast.
In the first part, I'm going to do a little question and answer.
I put out a sort of question on social media saying, hey, if
you have anything you want to ask me, I'll be taking those questions here
on Federalist Radio Hour today and got some really interesting responses. So I'm actually
kind of excited to go through your questions and maybe just thank everyone a little
bit for listening, for engaging with the show. I know I say this
all the time, but it's so humbling, and you know, I think
it's an honor actually to just sift through your thoughts and to hear your perspective.
So we're going to start with that. Second part is going to be
a quick conversation I had with Christopher Bedford of the Common Sense Society before he
headed on an amtrak. He's going up to New York, so he had
about twenty minutes. And that's why I want to do, you know,
a little two parter here, because I don't like to put an episode out
that is under thirty minutes long on a show called Federalist Radio Hour. But
in general, there's just always so much to talk about. There's, for
my perspective, really no reason to ever be under the thirty minute mark.
So I want to start here again by taking some of your questions. We
haven't really done this before on the show, but you're always welcome to hit
us up at Radio the Federalists dot com. We actually read all of those
emails if you shoot me a tweet. I got a ton of feedback on
Instagram, which was awesome. I didn't used to use Instagram for work at
all. My bio on Instagram actually used to just be mostly tree pictures,
that's all it said, and the point of that was to deter people from
following me on Instagram. And then I realized Instagram was actually really great for
all kinds of professional purposes, but I didn't expect to get so many awesome
questions on Instagram. I think they just make it really easy to talk back
and forth. So why don't we start with one of those. This is
a question. Let me make sure I get the name right here. This
is a question from Jay Renderly, who asked, how can conservatives change the
narrative about abortion? Now we can and we have done individual podcasts on this
question. I mean, it's huge. It's something that conservatives have been thinking
about literally for decades, and there's so many different directions to go in.
I mean, of course, a lot of people have talked forever about sort
of centering stories about conservatives, centering their narrative on abortion around individual personal stories
that highlight experiences media does not often highlight, Media does not often want to
talk about, For example, with just Me eighteen, which just was in
the news again because of Texas in the last month, the media actually doesn't
tell the stories of people like Rick s Antrum's daughter. I believe this is
named Bella, who survived this condition and is having a really rewarding life and
bringing a lot of joy and happiness to her family. So I think that's
the common answer that you'll get, you know, sort of centering the emotional
experiences of so many people. And you know, we could talk about that
all day. You know, where conservatives have failed, where conservatives have succeeded.
We could go all the way back to Todd Aiken and the twenty twelve
War on Women narrative, which was totally produced by the media in sync in
alignment with the Democratic Party. If people have not, if people have not
revisited that history, it's actually really interesting because you know, where how many
years passed? The Great Recession? Not that long, And in twenty twelve,
the twenty twelve presidential election, there were a whole lot of people that
were still really struggling, and the media just gave the Democratic Party or the
Democratic Party gave the media, basically on a silver platter, a fully established
narrative to drive the presidential election cycle, media coverage, and media ran with
it. And you know, I think it probably did detract from conversations that
we could have been having about all kinds of different things, just so that
they could sort of go through this fabricated thing about how deeply I consider to
hate women and all of their plans to oppressed women. And et cetera,
et cetera. And there's also, by the way, that was coincided with
the time when the Obama administration was taking some very real steps that I think
did genuinely concern old school leftists when it came to infringing on religious liberty,
how Obamacare was affecting Catholic groups, Catholic charities, and how that sort of
set precedent in different directions. You know, those stories again weren't really told,
and when they were told, it was Sandra Fluck who some people might
remember. So this is a huge conversation. But perhaps the one contribution that
I can make in response to Jay Renderley's question here that I think might be
different from other peoples in the conservative movement. It's too pronged one, or
at least the argument is too pronged one. You really have to acknowledge that
this country, and I'm saying this from a pretty staunchly prole perspective, the
country is not on the same page as those of us who are staunchly pro
life. So that makes the political and moral conversation a little bit different.
So what you can do politically and what is moral then to do politically,
are complicated, so some people might call that incrementalism. That's a sort of
inner nice scene roiling debate in pro life circles about incrementalism, and you do
you risk blowing up the entire movement if you know, support getting rid of
exemptions and for example, with Rond DeSantis the heartbeat bill. So that's kind
of from my perspective at least, that's a different question than the one that
I want to answer here, which is, although it's important to acknowledge and
that sort of first point, the second point though, is I actually think
when talking about, for example, exemptions or talking about things like we were
just talking about with with conditions, like we just mentioned with with Rick Santorum's
daughter, I think that there's been a tendency to dance around those questions,
to to go with euphemisms like pro life, which I have no problem with.
But I am perfectly content to be called anti abortion. And the reason
is what I want to argue for here, that people do not believe,
or it's harder for people to believe conservatives are truly pro life. It does
a huge It gives a huge advantage to the media and the left for pro
life people to run away from some of those conversations, or to beat around
a bush the bush and some of those conversations, rather than just boldly embracing
the reality that you you indeed do want to restrict all of these these different
what we what the left would call freedoms or rights. Uh, because you
believe first and foremost that life begins at conception. And if you believe first
and foremost that life begins at conception, I actually think it's much more persuasive
for pro lifers to embrace that that this is always a life. That we
cannot start making decisions about dignity, That every living human being has dignity,
whether they're way at the end of their life in a sort of Terry Shivo
situation or their way at the beginning of their life in a very early stage
of human development. That this is a life. And I really really think
people who are on the pro life side should act like that at all instances,
at all stages of pregnancy, at all stages of life period. And
that means I think boldly embracing some really difficult conversations about exceptions, for example,
and this applies to things like IVF too, And that's why I'm increasingly
thinking this is more and more important to embrace the reality, the difficult reality,
that this is life in all of its stages. So, for example,
if you start embracing that when it comes to fetal development, when it
comes to the development of a baby very early in a pregnancy, that is
makes the argument, the moral argument more consistent. When you start talking about
IVF, when you start talking about some of these forms of birth control,
some of these forms are well quote unquote birth control, some of these forms
of you know, the morning afterpill, all of those things. I think
it's much easier to make that argument if the pro life side is willing and
ready to lean in one hundred percent to these conversations or to the reality that
you're dealing with a human life that has equal dignity, the incredible stories of
babies conceived through rape and their mothers who have survived rape and gone on to
love these children and to oppose abortion because they are so glad they did not
extinguish this life with equal dignity. I'm not saying these conversations aren't complicated.
I am, however, saying that I do think to answer the question,
one way conservatives can change the narrative about abortion is being more intellectually honest in
all of these conversations. There are some people who are fantastic at this.
I'm just saying it because I think if there's one thing that could be done
more, done better in a post Dobbs environment, and just thought about more
too. I don't have all the answers. It's not perfect. I do
really really believe in that one. So I was glad to see this question
come in via Instagram. Chris kuns ask asked, what are your thoughts on
last night's debate? First of all, I should clarify that I don't believe
this was Senator Chris Coons, because that would really be surprising even to me.
We have some I should say. I know we have some high profile
listeners to Federalist Radio Hour, and we always have. I think it's the
amazing audience that have been Dominich built up over the course of years. But
this is not from Senator Chris Coons. My thoughts on last night's debate basically
where the Ron DeSantis was at his best and Nikki Haley was at her worst,
although none of it matters. They're fighting for a very very distant second
place, there's a small chance that someone comes out of Iowa with momentum that
changes things in New Hampshire, then one or the other drops out, and
someone's able to go into Super Tuesday with a consolidated kind of anti Trump.
And I don't mean that in the sense that like never Trump, but people
who would rather vote for someone other than Trump, and this primary sort of
consolidates that vote. But so far as we know it, that vote from
national polling is right now less than fifty Trump nationally is over fifty percent.
So even if someone comes out of Iowa and New Hampshire with momentum, which
I think there's already a small chance of, not a zero chance, but
a small chance, even if that happens, you are then counting on to
say that this debate really mattered. You're then counting on that person, whether
it's Destanta's or Haley, having an enormous ability to shift public opinion on the
right as they head into Super Tuesday and some of the primary battles. I
just think the chances of that are so low. I don't think either campaign
is particularly well run at this point. I don't think the Republican Party in
past that fifty percent threshold that Republican primary voters are willing to go past that
fifty percent threshold of support for someone other than Donald Trump. I just don't
think more than half of Republican primary voters, as people start racking up votes
going into the convention, which of course is a lovely Milwaukee this year,
I just don't think there's a path mathematically for that. So I don't think
the debate mattered. Well, if you're a regular listener to this program,
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the Dysantis candidacy, having watched what happened in Florida, and having always been
pretty reluctant about trump Ism and the Trump era, like you know, honestly
a lot of people in conservative media and a lot of people on the right
too. That's not a completely sort of Beltway blinder bubble position to have.
You know, there are a lot of people who voted happily for Trump but
would have preferred to vote for someone else. And we saw that play out
in twenty fifteen. Twenty sixteen. Most voters who went to the polls in
that Republican primary voted for somebody other than Donald Trump. He just had the
highest I guess proportion of the votes is the best way to say that.
So there's always been you know, enough people, but they've never gotten something
good from everybody else in the Republican Party, Like the Republican Party has done
a really bad job of responding to what Trump did a really good job of
tapping into. And I thought Rond De Santis is one of the few bright
lights who did do a good job of that both politically and morally. Doesn't
agree with all of his policies. I thought there was, you know,
a couple instances of overreach, but in the aggregate, I think he was
really good for the state of Florida, and I think he would be probably
a good president of the United States. I said probably, because I don't
know that to be true for sure, and you know, anybody who claims
that they do is lying. And he really don't have an idea. The
best we can do is sort of have these expectations and make decisions based on
them. But Ron De Santis, I think really showed why he was a
good option for so much many people last night at the debate, and it
was too little, too late. I think Nikki Haley I said this on
the News Nation broadcast, or actually this was Megan Kelly's broadcast of her Wonderful
podcast after the News Nation debate broadcast that she did in December. I actually
think Nikki Haley is really harming her future in the Republican Party with this run
because in a primary, she is being asked to stake out so many anti
DeSantis and anti Trump positions. You know, Chris Christy dropped out of the
race before the debate last night. He was kind of a non entity in
most states except for New Hampshire before it. But because Nikki Heley is running
against Ron DeSantis and Donald Trump, she is staking out a position positions to
the center of, not to the right of, but to the center of
both of these popular figures. And DeSantis is more popular with her. He
was even popular among the kind of never Trump crowd and still is with some
of them. So Nicki Haley spending all of these months and all of this
money blasting out her positions being different. For example, she had to defend
just last night positions on immigration, on transgenderism, on Ukraine in a way
that is not popular with a lot of Republicans, with probably most Republicans.
And if she had, you know, if she had a different landscape,
in the Republican primary. Let's say if Rond Deo Santis had not run and
it was like Donald Trump, Vivek, Chris Christie and Nicki Haley, she
might have been able to get away with some of this better, just avoided
talking about Trump and run to the right of Chris Christie and handled Viveke in
a different way. But that's just not what happened. And so I actually
think this entire candidacy, including last night where it was just her and Ron
de Santis, I think that made it really will probably make a lasting We'll
have a lasting effect on her likability and her viability as a political figure on
the right because when Nicki Haley is talking about things Republicans actually agree with,
when she has the instincts that push her to actually, whether or not she
believes it, actually say things that Republican voters agree with, she does a
good job of it. You know, she's she's a good messenger. I
shouldn't say she's a great messenger. I always go back and forth on whether
she's a great politician or a terrible politician. But she has moments that shows
she's she's able to communicate effectively. You know, there are a lot of
people, not a ton of people, but there is a section of the
population that really does like Nikki Haley, and so if she ran in a
way that was responsive to Republican voters, she might have been able to be
a more popular figure. We actually saw this during the Trump administration. She
was a more popular figure on the right during the Trump administration because she wasn't
constantly trying to prove that she was more centrist or more liberal than Republicans than
Donald Trump, and then then and then Trump is't in general. So I
really think that debate to the extent it mattered, which it didn't. I
mean, we're not talking about huge viewership here. We're not talking about game
changing performances. We haven't really seen any debate change the landscape here except for
Nikki Heely did get a little bump after the first couple. I think Vived
got a little bump after the first couple. But you know, I just
don't think it mattered. So that's basically my take on last night's debate.
What would this is from Connor Essex. What would it take for Republicans to
support RFK Junior in the twenty twenty four election? You know, I think
it would take him. Fully. I don't think you're ever going to get
a bunch of Republicans to support RFK Junior in the twenty twenty four election.
I think they would have to feel because of the Trump factor. Basically,
I think there's just a lot of Republican voters that only trust Donald Trump because
he is the bulldozer, and they only want a bull dozer because they feel
like the country is slipping away from them and it's happening so quickly. You
need someone who's going to make a big is going to do big damage to
the swamp really quickly, and so I don't know in this cycle you could
ever do that. But to get more Republicans to support RFK Junior, I
think it would be him really making an affirmative argument for when the expansion of
government is appropriate and when it's not. I want to hear him talk about
that, because he's gone after so the private sector in ways that you know,
as an empathetic I am to the new right argument and outright supportive of
it on a lot of cases in terms of the economy. And by the
way, that's another reason Ron DeSantis was at his best in last night's debate,
he talked about social security in a way that was really responsive to and
in a way that you know, Republicans should have learned from what voters were
telling them in twenty fifteen and twenty sixteen, and that's okay, you should
have taken lessons from that. He talked about social security and I think a
really helpful and genuinely conservative way, but in a way that wasn't just playing
on Nikki Haalism. I think he did the same thing on Ukraine. I
think he did the same thing where you talked about Disney, and I really
think he handled that well. In terms of our junior, I think he
has to talk about and sort of confront head on, you know, why
he does trust government to expand in certain cases, to take over private individuals
in certain cases, and because I actually really think that weighs heavily on the
minds of a whole lot of Republican voters, very heavily on a whole lot
of minds of Republican voters. Is that this is I've been working on a
piece about this, actually, so I'll just work out some of my thoughts
here in this conversation, which is actually always helpful. But you know,
it's in the same way that Javier Mila comes into Argentina with a sort of
very libertarian perspective on big government. What he did is very very different when
some of the European populists do. Which is this kind of melding of economic
progressivism and social conservatism interesting, But I don't think it's with the American conservative
movement it stands for. I think a lot of what's called economic progressivism by
as people now say the old right capital capital r is not actually economic progressivism.
I mean opposing monopolies is actually a pretty conservative argument of how and pretty
economically conservative market. So I don't know that, and this is I think
one of the biggest problems with the so called new Right. I don't think
it's a disqualifying problem, although I think it is for some thinkers. But
I do think it's really important to look at sort of Malayism and say there's
something here. And that's what I think RFK Junior needs to be responsive to.
Is you know, if you do oppose the expansion of government in areas
like the surveillance state, in areas like COVID lockdown policies, or in his
case vaccine mandates. If you do oppose that on the principle of trusting individuals
and sort of respecting the boundaries of individual freedom, then how do those expand
into other areas? What is the justification for expanding those into other areas?
That's what I would be really curious to see him talking about. This is
another question from not not Jalen. What is broken about the political pipeline that
allows for permanent, useless reps. I'm increasingly inclined to a growth a left
that money is a huge problem. To that point, I'm generally favorable to
conversations about term limits too. You know, if you're here in DC,
it's hard because with term limits you could make the you could end up making
the revolving door even more intense. You kind of intensify that phenomenon by you
know, just creating a stepping stone and there's there's sort of no there's no
longevity, So you lose institutional no knowledge. And at the same time that
institutional knowledge comes with a whole lot of swamp baggage, especially if you're looking
at the Senate or if you're looking at some of those guys who've been in
the House over and over and over again for so many terms. And know
all the lobbyists they've got their speed dial and their rolodexes and rocking and rolling
when legislation comes up. Then again, that also means they know how to
make legislation most effective. So I would say, actually, money, just
even thinking about it allowed I think money and politics is probably the biggest issue
because you know, let's say, without turminits, you know, we have
the system that we have now. If you are are able to really put
limits on lobbying, if you're able to change the way that elections work,
and that's a really hard thing to think about, because speech and money are
you know, the connection between those two things is real and important. That
said, it's that the uneven playing field, the pay for play, I
just increasingly see as enormously enormously problematic, even for people who are trying to
so called drain the swamp sincerely or otherwise, who want to convince voters they're
draining the swamp, and people who sincerely do want to drain the swamp.
Money is just a massive, massive obstacle to that. And I think about,
you know, let's take an example from the left. Why did Bernie
Sanders. Why did he change on immigration? Why did he change on some
of these cultural issues? Why is he so staunchly progressive but not in that
kind of old left sense, but you know, open to the full left
position, the full cultural left position, on transgenderism, on so called equity,
all of these different things. Why, Well, some people might say
it's just pure socialism, but the case, the socialist case for open borders
isn't as clear cut as it might sound. Now, even Bernie Sanders was
out there calling open borders a coke proposal not that long ago. And you
know, this is the same thing with turfs with on Title nine, issues
on sex and gender issues and transgenderism. The question of you know, whether
that is truly supportive of what the women's movement when Bernie Sanders was an activist
in the sixties and seventies and eighties, what the women's movement fought for.
There are so many you know, died in the wool socialist, hardcore progressives
who understand that the full transgender agenda, or the left full transgender agenda,
is not compatible with what was fought for when things like Title nine were put
into our laws. So why is that it's not just because of money.
But I think it's a realization in part that you can't that is a a
And Bernie Sanders is a huge, small dollar fundraiser, obviously kind of in
a similar way to Donald Trump. But if you want to raise money,
that is just a hard no for so many people in terms of money and
in terms of voting with a lot of those socialist aligned groups, that is
just a hard no. You cannot that they cannot be aligned with you whatsoever.
If you are if you sort of subvert the consensus, the less consensus
position on some of those cultural issues. And I really don't know that Bernie
Sanders believes what he says about immigration and about sex and gender and some of
these other issues. And I don't know, I don't know. Maybe he
has evolved in a way that I actually think Rond DeSantis has evolved sincerely ideologically,
And a lot of Republican politicians, whether they're sincere in other things,
I do think they've had some Ron Johnson's a good example, sincere evolution,
since twenty sixteen, since the Tea Party years and sort of understood their voters
better and understood the country better because we all had an opportunity to understand the
country better when we saw corruption actually bubble to the surface. You didn't have
to dig through as many layers, you know, after twenty sixteen, as
you probably did before. Rand Paul was one of those people who understood kind
of the problems with the surveillance state. Thomas Massey understood the problems with the
surveillance state before a lot of other people did, but it became so much
clearer after twenty sixteen. So anyway, the watch Dout on Wall Street podcast
with Chris Markowski. Every day Chris helps unpack the connection between politics and the
economy and how it affects your wallet. The virtue signaling has come to roosts
as the US reaches its highest level of illegal border crossings ever recorded. Our
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out the Watchdot on Wall Street podcast with Chris Markowski on Apple, Spotify,
or wherever you get your po podcast. How do this is another question from
Think Jackie how do libertarians and conservatives balance freedom versus security? On that point
I was just talking about. It's why I wanted to bring this question in
exactly. I think they did a really bad job for a really long time.
And you know, if you listen to this podcast, one thing I've
personally been thinking about a lot recently is that, you know, the conservative
movement made a lot of really bad trade offs that were arguably rational, arguably
rational in the forties, fifties, sixties, seventies, eighties, nineties,
and onto today, although less so when you got to there was a much
less rational calculus when you got to the Iraq War, and a lot of
good conservatives saw that coming. But up until let's say nine to eleven,
the conservative movement made a lot of trade offs in that question of security and
freedom. And I think it's because a the technology was advancing in ways people
didn't realize ideological adaptations had been made, so for example, creating something like
the CIA, creating and giving so much power to the CIA, allowing j
Edgar Hoover to treat not just leftist groups, but you know, there were
other groups that had been watched really hard. People's freedoms that have been abridged
really intensely by some of these giant surveillance apparatuses that evolved with the support largely
of Republicans and conservatives, because there was an extremely rational fear of infiltration by
a hostile foreign country that had access to nuclear weapons and that sort of We're
not even one hundred years into the history of nuclear weapons, so it would
be very naive of us to say that we know that, you know,
nuclear proliferation, we know how to solve it, right, Like we had
one experience with you know, in in Japan, and that was it.
That was enough to dissuade anyone from kind of wading back into those waters crossing
that line. Again. We actually don't know that, and we we actually
don't have a clue about that. We have a very very small and gentle
clue of you know, nearly a century of nuclear peace after the use of
the deployment of nuclear weapons. But one hundred years is a blink of an
eye in the scope of human history. So it makes sense if you put
yourself in the shoes of politicians up until nine to eleven, that you had
this very rational I mean, if you read Witness, you get incredible perspective.
I was one of Ronald Reagan's favorite books. In fact, when when
you read that and you read you know what Stan Evans wrote, you read
all of these histories of the Cold War actually from the left. I mean,
I've been reading a lot of left Cold War history over the last year
and time, and again, when you read it, you find out that
people who were inappropriately surveilled, or you can oppose that surveillance while also realizing
inappropriately surveilled foreign leaders that were inappropriately targeted. All of these things. You
can oppose that. Now in retrospect, you could say that was wrong at
the time. It's wrong now. It was wrong at the time, It
shouldn't have been done. But you can also understand, Hey, they had
extremely real and serious connections to a hostle foreign power that in the blank of
an eye could have deployed nuclear weapons against us. Was it in their interest?
We can have that debate all the time, But I like this question
because I think libertarians and conservatives have done a really bad job of balancing freedom
and security, in part because they were blinded to the dangers of these technologies
by a rational and new fear that came up after World War two. Let's
see one fact about Ryan Grimham that has surprised you the most. A lot
of Ryan grim questions, which is great because Ryan has just become a really
good friend. One fact about Ryan grim that has surprised me the most.
I don't want to say that as a surprised but one thing about Ryan,
I don't think it came as a surprise. It was just something that I
learned about Ryan is that he's incredibly kind. And I think the most successful
people in Washington, and I mean successful in like a real substantive way,
and I should say half of the most successful people in Washington, you find
out that they're genuinely very kind, and the other half of successful people in
Washington are just, you know, cynical and in some cases outright sociopathic.
It's kind of one or the other. If you're really successful in media and
politics, you're either genuinely a very kind person or you're sociopathic. And Ryan
is really successful, and he falls in that category of just being really,
really kind and compassionate and caring. So that's a very nice thing to learn
about somebody. Let's see so many good questions here. If Trump's suspends his
twenty twenty four election campaign. Who does this base vote for? Who wins?
To answer that question, I would pretty much say is Ronda Santis.
Here's one. What advice would you give for somebody who wants to get into
journalism and podcasting? Always start with reporting. And that's not how well,
I guess, it's technically how I did it. I started reporting. I
did a little reporting for Campus Reform when I was in college. And you
know, when I joined the commentary desk at the Washington Examiner, the great
Timothy Carney was my editor, and he encouraged us to do reported commentary,
reported commentary, so not just opining. Especially, you know, I was
like twenty three, not just opining, but backing that up with sources,
backing that up with public information, documents, data, and again quote from
experts and people who are sources for you. So I think that you have
to have that foundation. I think people who skip that step end up hitting
a ceiling. So I just really recommend, you know, have something useful,
which is new information, new synthesis, syntheses of information, you know,
be someone who creates really helpful charts, Be someone who creates really helpful
archives of information. You know, that's That's one really great way is like
you can start on Twitter. You can start really easily sharing that kinds of
information, and if it's useful and you're you know, tweeting it in response
to things that reporters are talking about and interested in, you can get their
attention. Drew Holden is at the Washington Free Beacon. He does these amazing
He's been on the show. He does these amazing archives. He'll just like
dive back onto cable news records, Twitter records, especially Twitter records of journalists,
and does original reporting on their horrible coverage, on their ignorance, on
their unhinged rants about conservative and all that stuff. That is that's constitute's original
reporting, and it's also extremely helpful. So I would say, you know,
even if you're somebody who's you know, in your thirties or forties and
wanting to get into all of this, especially if you're a student, find
a way to start with reporting, you know, report about your campus.
You can join the National Journalism Center, where I'm the director, at jc
dot dot org, or you can email Radio at the Federals dot com if
you're interested, and they'll forward it over to me so that I can take
a look. But you know, start by learning the ropes of reporting,
and that's your that's the easiest pathway into reporting and podcasting. Travis asks,
and Travis asks that last question. Travis asks, how did you get into
broadcasting? My first job that I had for a little less than two years
out of college was as the spokesperson for Your America Foundation. So that job
involves some Fox News and radio appearances and all of that. So when I
jumped over to the Washington Examiner, it was sort of natural then to go
into and do more TV stuff as a journalist. And so from there just
snowballed down the hill. Should Lloyd Austin resign? I don't think we know
the full story of what's happened with Lloyd Austin. So far, it looks
right now like he intentionally deceived the President of the United States. But you
know, maybe we'll find out he intentionally deceived the President of the United States,
his boss. And by the way, he's in the nuclear chain of
command. There's two hot wars that were heavily involved in. So yeah,
I mean, if you deceive the President of the United States and in those
circumstances intentionally, probably you should resign. If you're so sick that you can't
do the job and you persisted at doing the job anyway, probably you should
resign. If your country is in the course of two wars where American lives
could be on the line, schair, probably you could resign. Again.
There may be more to this story that Austin and his team was keeping the
White House out of the loop because they had, you know, reasonable concerns.
And I'm not saying Lloyd Austin is always right or great at his job,
but he may have had reasonable concerns that the President of the United States
is so incity incapacitated it's actually dangerous to bring him in on decision making.
Again, still not appropriate you answer the commander in chief, But I am
curious to care more to that story. It's on asked how much fiber should
we eat today? I'm not answering that question because there are legal risks to
giving unsolicited well I guess it's solicited in this case, but to giving medical
advice, So I should really go nowhere near that question. This is another
good one from Andrew Punch Best bar in Wisconsin. The answer that question is
really any bar in Wisconsin if you've been to Wisconsin, you know, just
we we have great bars. I love a good bar on a lake if
there's a if you're in an area that has a lot of lakes, which
is pretty much the entire state. But those those bars on lakes are wonderful.
They usually have like nice lawns between the bar and the lake that you
can on a nice summer day hang out on. In some cases you can
cross country ski up to the bar. A lot of people snowmobile up to
the bar, which if you do that, you should probably just drink soda.
I was watching a or was at a bar once and was the bartender
was doing a round of shots for every goal the Chicago Black black Hawks scored,
and there were a lot of snowmobilers in this bar for what turned out
to be a very high scoring game. And there, you know, some
people made bad decisions, and I do hope eventually other people intervened and prevented
anything dangerous from happening. But best Barisconsin, any Barron Wisconsin, it's going
to be better than a barn most other states. See what is an issue?
You and Ryan Graham are on the same page about another Ryan question.
Maybe Ryan was sending these in No. This is from Alex Kramer. We're
actually on the same page about a lot of issues. Run the same page
about, you know, the structural problems in the media, the structural ideological
problems in the media, and that's a really big one. I think we're
on the same page about about lobbying when it comes to American lobbyists, domestic
lobbyists and foreign lobbyists. Those are really big ones. The problems in the
political process, you know, the machinations. We're on the page about like
of how populouss handle their business in Congress, whether it's the Squad or the
Freedom Caucus. That's a pretty big one. This is a question from Brett
Elliott, who asked any plans to cover the recent migrant housing at James Madison
High School. Of course, I will definitely have coverage of that up at
the Federalists. It looks like so far, it looks like an absolutely outrageous
situation. It's no other way that you can put it, So yeah,
I would definitely take a look at the Federalist dot com for that. Let's
go to some Twitter questions here. Tom Costa asked, there doesn't seem to
be any Beltway consensus by party with regard to bitcoin and crypto. Just wondering
if you and the big B Christopher Bedford, have any insight to offer on
what your contacts see or how you think crypto policy will adapt going forward.
This is an interesting question that again we've dedicated full episodes to and Chris should
not answer this question because when you ask him to delve into something that could
be construed as financial advice, you're getting into the same bad territory as if
you asked me to get into a territory that could be construed as medical advice.
Actually, neither of us should is in any position to be giving financial
or medical advice. But I will say bitcoin as this kind of idealistic attempt
at decentralization that also involves heavy consolidation. If you look at obviously FTX and
some of the ways that the industry has come to be structured and captured by
elite interests and captured by corrupt elite interests, you see, I think why
there's no consensus from conservatives and then even really from the left. Some people
on the left, although not as many, are very interested in crypto as
a I mean, in some ways there's as a way to subvert capture of
the financial system, as a way to undercut Wall Street, although that's less
and less you know how this would actually pan out. But on the right,
you definitely see more interest in it from a sort of libertarian perspective,
from the perspective of even just plan old conservatives, and you have seen some
plan old conservative politicians flirt with fully embracing bitcoin. I still think that's really
dangerous because there is no way this is just my perspective, there is no
way that bitcoin can ever exist with true decentralization. Therefore, I don't see
a manifestation of the bitcoin dream, of the crypto dream that's that avoids the
same types of elite capture. There's a way though that it could be less
captured by elites and corrupt elites. There's a way that it could be more
resistant to corruption, and there's a way that it can still subvert government control.
But there's no way more than the regular financial system. But there's no
way that it really fully can be divorced from the system. That's just from
my perspective. There's no way that Washington and Brussels and Beijing will ever allow
this to proliferate on a global scale in a way that does not allow for
government regulation. It just there's too much power already for that to happen.
So, you know, I think that explains that there's just nobody knows quite
what to make of and to make of it, and that means elites they
don't know. Huh. Should we embrace this and use it as a fig
leaf to manipulate people further and to make more money and to get more power,
or is this genuinely really dangerous and should we sort of kill it in
the crib. So that's my perspective on why you haven't seen a lot of
it. This is from Raoul. Why doesn't the GOP and it's Voss realize
the main step to border security includes an influx of judges to adjudicate cases.
I think nobody really understands border. I think the left has the border.
I think the left has a much significantly worse understanding of what's happening at the
border than the right does. But I think it's true that even the right
doesn't understand. It's kind of like with the irs, like if you want
to avoid, there's an argument that if you want to avoid and if you
want to pull all of the taxes, if you want to make sure that
everyone is paying they're so called fair share, right, So if everyone is
paying the same rate or the appropriate rate, not the same rate, but
the rate that we've decided, you know, through our congressional procedures, that
is appropriate for people in each income bracrate to pay, then you need to
hire more people for the I R s now. I don't like that argument,
because there's some evidence to suggest the more people you hire the IRS,
the harder it is for the middle class to avoid things like unfair audits that
end up costing you a bunch of money and create a completely unnecessary sense of
stress. In the case of the border, you definitely need to hire more
border agents. But if you hire i'm sorry, more judges or you need
to free up more judges would be the way to put it. But if
you do that, you're streamlining. If your policy is still to give people,
to give people asylum in a way that expands our legal understanding of asylum
beyond what a it is and what it be should be, I think we
should have some in our asylum policy, but not super broad, because if
you still have that broad asylum of asylum, that broad interpretation of asylum,
and if you're hiring a bunch of judges to adjudicate these these asylum cases with
a broad understanding of asylum, you are still incentivizing people to take these horrific
trips through the Darien Gap to bolster the basically total takeover of Central America and
Mexico by criminal gangs, which puts everyone in more danger and creates instability,
and it allows them to smuggle extremely addictive things like fentanyl into the country more
easily. That's what happens if you just get more judges in and don't do
anything to tighten up that definition of asylum. So that's my answer to that
question. Why are the elites so stupid? That's from Chuddy mcchud. Why
are the elites so stupid? I think we're all so stupid. I think
the elites come across as more stupid because they act like they're smarter. And
this is this happened at the debate last night when you had and Chris and
I talk about this in the second segment, if you're still with us,
we talk about how Ali Vittally and some other NBC News reporters didn't know that
when Ron DeSantis was saying pale pastels, he was referencing Reagan, and so
instead they very confidently suggested Ron DeSantis was being sexist to Nikki Haley at the
debate by using this line that's in his stump speech. So they the people
that think we all need disinformation police to guard us, they came out and
spread this like weird disinformation that Ron DeSantis was being sexist because they didn't know
a line that if you have any familiarity with the American Right, you've heard
at Sea Pack, you've heard at conservative gatherings, Lincoln Dinner, whatever it
is. If you have been around Republicans as a reporter at the top of
your field because you work for NBC News, you should know that that is
a Reagan quote. But of course they seem to have no idea that it's
Ring quote. So it's normal for a lot of us to, you know,
maybe not be super familiar with history from the eighties, because you know,
we just we forget politics very quickly. We don't read as many books.
And you would surely pick this up from books if you read about the
American Right and you were interested in politics. But for a political reporter who
is covering a Republican primary to just come out confidently and suggest that Rond Destantius
was being sexist. That's different if you also don't know the basic history.
It is your job to cover American politics. You should know the basic history.
So I think they were all dumb, But you come across as extra
dumb if you're an elite, because you act like you are smarter than everybody,
and it should have more power over everybody because you're smarter than everybody.
One more question here from Halalflow, who does an amazing job clipping some of
the best segments from Breaking Points from Counterpoints, and we just appreciate hall Aalflow
on our team at Breaking Points appreciates halal flow and all of hallalflow support.
Halfalo asked from the left basically, how would you describe the coverage of the
Federalist about Gaza Palestine, Israel? And how does the paper get different views
across on this and what does the right think about conditions or stopping military funding
and aid towards Israel. I had to answer one Israel question because I do
think that especially somebody who does a show with Ryan and I got a lot
of questions about Ryan again that this might this question might get at some of
those questions I didn't get to answer. I do a show with Ryan,
part of the Breaking Points team, so that's Crystal Ball, Ryan Graham,
Sager and Me and Krystal and Sager host most days. Ryan and I host
on Wednesdays. I've gotten here a lot of arguments that even conservatives who are
intellectually curious and intellectually honest and read everything from both sides. I just feel
really lucky to have the job that I do at Breaking Points because you know,
even as someone who seeks out all of the constantly seeks out sort of
obsessively seeks out disagreements and dissenting information, you still just end up encountering so
many different manifestations of these arguments when you have to have them publicly and when
you have to plan a show. So I you know, through through the
course of you know, the last few years doing a show like this,
yeah, you do, you know, get extra acquainted with the argument of
the left, and that definitely on every issue, whether it's drugs, whether
it's immigration, whether it's gun control, that definitely gives you more perspective and
sometimes it makes you more conservative, sometimes it makes you more conservative in different
ways, and sometimes it makes you rethink a conservative position. So when it
comes to Israel, it's just from that vantage point. Been very interesting to
watch the last few years play out, from the Trump administration through October seventh
and through now January eleventh. Yeah, I mean it's been extremely interesting.
Glenn Greenwald, who a lot of people on the right agreed with in the
last couple of years and have gone to the lengths of calling him anti Semitic,
have gone to the lengths of calling him all kinds of names. In
the last couple of months, he wrote a thoughtful piece that a lot of
people on the right will still disagree with and that I know I would still
disagree with. But he wrote a really thoughtful piece about Sager's interview with Tucker
Carlson and the split between Tucker Carlson and Ben Shapiro that's emerged and again bubbled
to the service of the conservative discourse in the last couple of months. We
talked about this a little on counter points. I actually really like both Tucker
Carlson and Ben Shapiro. I think on this exact issue they both have interesting
points about about the typical or the traditional conservative opinion on this issue. You
know, it's to go back to Hallatho's question, how do you describe the
coverage of the Federalists about Gaza and palestin Israel? And how does the paper
get different views across on this One of the reasons I went to work for
the Federalist is that we get different views across on every issue. I tell
the story a lot about Roy Moore and when every Beltway reporter was begging the
people of Alabama to explain to them why fifty percent of people, roughly we're
still planning to vote for Roy Moore after all of the sexual misconduct allegations,
and the answer was super obvious. On the right, it was abortion.
Doug Jones was pro abortion, and that was a huge problem. People said,
I don't care if it's Roy Moore, you know's it would be a
moral for me not to vote or to vote for drug Jones. And there
was a fairly rational argument behind it, even if you disagreed with it.
The Federalist ran a piece from an Alabama voter saying here's why I'm voting for
Roy Moore and sort of laying out that argue, and even though the media
had been asking for someone to answer this question forever, they've tried to cancel
the Federalist for giving them an answer, for elevating the voice of, you
know, an average person with whom they disagreed, which again was sort of
exactly what everyone said they needed to do better after Donald Trump was elected.
So I really like the Federalists on that, and I think that's allowed us
to approach the Israel issue. I sort of pro I would describe our coverage
as pro Israel, but Pentagon skeptical, and you know, there are I
think we've published things. I disagree with a lot of the takes on free
speech when it comes to Israel, even with some of my own colleagues who
are brilliant, and I'm younger than them and certainly less experience than them.
So I say this with great humility that I do disagree on some of the
questions about speech and what you know, sort of broad definitions of anti Semitism,
or as I see them, overly broad definitions of anti Semitism. But
I think because the Federalist has years of that sort of muscle memory, and
frankly doesn't get enough credit. You know, some people will associate us with
just the new right, or David Harsani will write a column that's super anti
New Right, and we just get put into one category or the other,
because that's how Twitter sort of gamifies our brains. But in fact, we
really do have this, and our readers know this, and listeners to this
podcast know this. We have years of that sort of reflex of asking tough
questions and publishing pieces from this wide spectrum of thought on the right. And
I mean wide spectrum. You can basically go to the Federalist and find on
a lot of the major issues, you're not going to find, in many
cases a left perspective because that's not what we do. We don't exist to
make the same arguments as the corporate media, which often makes left arguments,
maybe not populist left arguments, but sort of centrist democrat arguments. That's not
what we exist to do. So we just had that muscle memory, and
that's one of the things that I think benefits our coverage. We are pulling
on and existing stable of interesting writers. So you know, maybe I have
some disagreement with some of the stuff that we've published, and you know,
I certainly have disagreement, even with some of the people on the right,
like Tucker that are super Israel skeptic. I find myself, you know,
in a strange middle zone between the Tuckers and the benz Again, both of
them I think are very good people. That's you know, I think that's
a healthy thing. And yeah, that's I would say. I would describe
our coverage as pro Israel, but pentagon skeptic, which is an interesting place
to be. And Laflo also asked, does the right thing about conditions or
stopping military funding and aid towards Israel. That's a good question. Glenn's peace
kind of addresses the history of this from Reagan to George H. W.
Bush and specifically when it comes to net and Yahoo. I think when you're
talking about conditions and all of that, a lot of it happens at the
presidential level and sort of presidential cabinet level and would be happening behind the scenes.
And I actually think probably behind the scenes if this was a Republican administration,
there would be all kinds of different conversations happening, all kinds of sort
of tug of war, even if publicly that posture wasn't there. So I
don't know. I would commend Glenn's peace to people who've been thinking about this,
because while it definitely comes from a staunch leftist and super critical perspective on
the right, he does walk through some of the history and the evolution of
how we've talked about this issue in a way that I think, you know,
even considering this from a perspective of a conservative was fairly helpful. All
right, now, I am going to pivot here and bring part two of
the episode into the conversation. It's about twenty minutes with Chris Bedford, who's
acually been writing about Nicole Hannah Jones of the author of the sixteen nineteen Project,
the lead journalist on the sixteen nineteenth Project, the Pulitzer winning sixteen nineteen
Project that has been installed in dozens of school systems around the country, a
very very powerful project, and we've been talking about that for a couple of
years in the country and here in the podcast. But Chris did some sort
of fresh writing on it that brings in some interesting points from Nicole Hanna Jones'
history that is worthwhile, I think to reconsider as she herself is weighing back
in on the issue so without further ado, here's part two of today's Federalist
Radio Hour. Thank you so much for all of your questions. I appreciate
them immensely. Appreciate you all listening so so very much. Please like and
subscribe the podcast. Leave a review. It does so much help if you
leave a review. I always forget to mention that just humbled constantly that people
listen. But if you leave a review, it's really really helpful for us.
And remember you can always reach us at radio at the Federalist dot com.
So now I mean it, without further ado, here's Christopher Bedford,
executive editor over the Common Sense Society. Chris, Welcome back to the new
year. Happy New Year, Happy new Year to you as well. New
year knew me. You might not have noticed it because we're remote right now,
but I am now a wellness influencer. When did that happen? January
second? January second, I'm health health wellness. I did my first dry
January, taking a break from day and tomorrow. But you know, it
is the longest period of time and twenty years have gone without having a drink.
We don't need to get into this because you just don't know. I
think it's normal to have a loss of wine with dinner, at least a
a loss of wine with dinner. Actually, you know that's what That's one
thing that thinks for me, having a drink is much more about like a
custom and kind of have it. And like I made I made cachery peppy
to the night, which is Italian for cheese and pepper. It's pretty simple
but delicious dish. And uh to drink that with like a cranber or soda,
a glass of water, I'll get it like it was good food.
But I was sitting there going, man, I don't know how people do
this, Like what you get like a diet coke with your catchery peppy.
It needs I mean it didn't need. I got survived, but it is.
It's well paired with a glass of red wine. And that's why I've
never actually done dry January before this month. It's because it's just I see,
like damp dan January. That makes sense, like maybe like cut some
weight, do some exercise, like don't drink like you did around Christmas in
New Year's Damn January is the most irish thing I've ever heard. Everything's damp
in Ireland. But uh, but you know, it's do you know how
many how many pounds? I've lost zero ounces, zero ounces, not a
single one. But you know, New Year knew me, and uh,
this is going to be a journey and I'm going to I'll keep you updated
throughout. Yeah, a health journey is a marathon. It's not a sprint
exactly. And you know I'm taking it seriously, not today, not today.
You've been also, well, oh, it's because you're taking an amtrack.
You won't get on an amtrack without having a beer. Yeah, I
remember by that time I bumped into you on an amtrack at like ten thirty
in the morning or eleven thirty in the morning, and I got you a
beer. You're being such a whimp about it. You're like, I can't
have a beer. I have to go on Red Eye in ten hours or
something like that. It was Kennedy. Yeah, which is it's actually fine,
just totally fine. Anyway, all right, all of that aside.
The world is on fire, Chris. So I'm glad that we have put
your health issues first and foremant I don't have health issues. I'm a willness
influencer. Well, that means you're gonna have to start posting things on Instagram,
but that aside shots from the gym. You have been following this story
about Nicole Hannah Jones, who I always I mix up if it's Hannah Nicole
Jones or Nicole Hannah Jones. It's like because Hannah Nicole Jones is a name
that flows well, but it's not her name she has And I remember,
you know, during the during twenty twenty and actually twenty nineteen, even when
people started kind of piecing together the puzzle that is the mosaic life of uh
Nicole Hannah Jones or did I just get it wrong, Hannah Nicole Jones.
It's Nicole Hannah Jones. Just you can just call her Nikki Nicole Hannah Jones.
Man, is she just your like typical dorm room freshman who stumbled into
this like hugely powerful position at the New York Times. One appealser, just
an emmy, now an emmy. That's the hook for talking about this.
And I will say she also over the last weekend re upped a Federalist piece
from years ago that our colleague Jordan Boyd wrote, uh, and Nicole Hannah
Jones referred to this as opposition research, It was actually just a piece on
like kind of piecing together some of these puzzles from what she had written in
college, what she had written. She has written some crazy, crazy stuff.
Yeah, Jordan wrote about some of what she calls the white white people
bloodsucking, bloodsuckers and all these different things like that. Seriously, I think
I saw that piece. It was a she was responding to an article when
she was a sophomore in college or an op ed that was pretty hard on
the American Indians, you know, like we have this uh you love these
references. We have this idea in America like the noble savage, like the
fern belly Indians like very peaceful until like the white man came and taught them
scalping. She's completely insane. But uh, some written in an op ed
I haven't read. And her response that Jordan I think wrote about was just
unhinged, calling the white people savages and devils and it was like fair bloodsuckers.
Yeah, it's like fair con It's pretty unhinged. It's almost like she's
really obsessed with race, I think. But one thing that was interesting.
A friend shot me this and I ended up writing it up. And we'll
see if it gets published, but there's she was still the year that she
wrote the twenty sixteen nineteen projects. By the way, the entire central thesis
of that has been pulled by The New York Times. The opening thing was
that the true founding of America was slavery, and the American Revolution was fought
for slavery. Both of those lines have been pulled by The New York Times
after a few years ago backlash from serious historians that are far from conservative.
In fact, some of them are open socialists. I mean, this was
just absolutely panned. Yeah, even the historians were like those historians who would
generally give her some of the benefit of the doubt were like, well,
I mean, the American Revolution was extremely disruptive to the slafe trade. It
didn't increase slavery. But the same year, just a few months before she
became a celebrity for doing this project, she was still tweeting about this theory
this book called they Came Before Columbus, and the general theory of this book
is that the Great Ancient civilizations and Renaissance air civilizations of Central and South America
were heavily influenced by trade and even worship of African kings, which is a
very stupid theory. The idea was that for thousands of years and up to
the beginning of the Aztec Empire, African civilizations these like great, sprawling,
triumphant African civilizations, of which not like a relic or a stone or a
coin or a building is left over. Like we just have to imagine them
in our heads, you know, just close your eyes. We're sailing these
giant fleets over to South America and Central America where they were teaching the Omecs.
This was a theory at the time this book was written in the seventies.
The Omes turned out to be like ten thousand BCS, so they probably
weren't doing that teaching the Omes and then later on teaching the Aztecs, so
that eleven thousand years later, teaching the Aztecs about architecture, about casting bronze,
that the Aztec god, one of the Aztec gods, might actually be
based on these interactions with these Africans. They taught them how to build the
pyramids. No, forget about the fact that there's like, aside from that
there a pyramid. There's not really a lot of comparisons between the Egyptian pyramids
which were flat surface tombs, and the Aztec peiers pyramids which were temples,
and the older ones. This whole theory was like and it was panned at
the time. The New York Times panned this book. They called it ridiculous
pseudo archaeology, called it this afrocentrism that like, actually guys Africa founded the
world, and some of the things that they also based on, where the
os there's this famous art from the Omas which is shockingly old civilization we've since
learned, where they have flat noses and big lips and like that was cited
as evidence that these were carved by Africans. And so this woman who's supposed
to be is a Pulitzer Award winning, Emmy Award winning historian who the polits
are center even much more dangerously than like adults reading this stupid stuff. The
Poetry Center has turned this in her sixty nineteen project into curriculum and sent it
to thousands and thousands and thousands of classrooms to teach children that America is founded
as a slave state. It's the purpose of America by a sophist who is
criticized by his actual historians, and who thinks that African Kings founded the Aztecs.
I mean, it's just it shows you that this is a theory that
she had in college. Is the theory she shared in an article in The
Oregonian in twenty ten. But usually people kind of dispense with their dumb theories
with the time they set out about their life's work. The fact that she
was a black situation here with you, but sure with me, I got
you'd be shocked at how many dumb theories I have dispensed with and stops talking
about. No. Yeah, you've actually known me for a decade, so
you know that there are some things I'm just like quietly left, like I'm
not still sharing those dumb ideas. I'm not going back and like I'm sorry,
I'm not looking for I'm sorry I was so stupid. But she was
still sharing them. I mean, she still believes them as recently as twenty
nineteen. And Okay, I was going to say twenty nineteen, that's what
you found here, So it's not it's sort of the dorm room stuff she
brought with her into her career at the New York Times and the New York
Times, you know, never really sniffed this out until they had to do
a correction. In fact, they may have liked it about her that she
sort of was espousing radical or what they probably see is like radical adjacent ideas
that empowerment erupt. Yeah, that's the thing is it's not really empowering to
I mean, it can be, I guess, to make up myths about
your people. Most civilizations do. But this one is just so silly and
it's funny. There's a lot of like liberal scholars who are very offended by
it because the idea that that South and Central American empires couldn't actually achieve anything
on their own they found offensive. Well, yes, it's being used to
justify racism, and I think that's the important point here, and that it
is outright open Like the entire concept of equity of DEI, as our listeners
know very well, is predicated on racial discrimination, race hate, and yeah,
and that's the center. This is sophistry in the service of racial discrimination.
So in that extremely racist op ed that that Jordan wrote about where she
called white people blood sucking devils and savages, oh research, there's this one
line that most of the places hadn't really focused on. I think people who
were writing about it. Didn't really know what she was talking about. She's
like, and by the way, our ancestors were sailing the coastal lands of
South America long before Christopher Columbus and his savage rapists came. And it's like,
and this is like a throwaway line of people like, Okay, they
weren't ever paying attention to the more offensive stuff. But it turns out it
ties back to this theory that in that twenty Nineteentheen tweet she called formative for
her, like it was a second book she listed on like but people should
read for Black History Month, and she wrote about it in a school newspaper
and she was in college and she wrote about it for The Oregon and over
a decade later, these are formative things for her is pseudo archeology, pseudoscience,
dream lands, and then it backs up her racism. Right, So
I want to connect this actually to something that happened. This is going to
seem like a real serious pivot here at the CNN debate last night between did
you watch that? I did watch it. I watched it. You are
a masochist, I know, but I will say there was this moment that
it was worth watching for and you will especially appreciate this. So Ron DeSantis
in his stump speech talks about getting rid of the sort of pale pastels of
and he's talking about like the establishment Republican Party, So this is something he
talks about a lot. And he used the line repeatedly when he was reciting
scripted sort of lines that you toss out in a debate in your introduction and
then whenever it fits, you know, to Rebut in the middle of the
debate, Nikki Haley and Ali Vitally NBC News sent a tweet saying a color
scheme quote, pale pastel or otherwise, is not the way you attack a
presidential candidate. None of the men who've been on these debate stages have had
their clothes used to criticize their policies. Because she wasn't familiar with the Reagan
quote, it gets worse, so she thought that was so clever. I
went and checked the live blog that all the NBC News reporters were responsible for
updating throughout the night. Ali Vittally published that on the live blog, so
she like actually ran with it at a certain beyond the tweet. It wasn't
just sometimes you have live blogs that just published the tweets of your commentation.
Oh no, it's she. So at a certain point, the pale pastel's
commentary could start to ring a little sexist. Notice what she does there could
start to ring a little sexist. None of the male candidates are being taken
a task for their bright red ties, somehow being akin to their policy stances.
And then was Nicky Haley wearing a pale pasto? She actually was,
But it doesn't matter. Run Desanta's uses this line all the time, because
all Republicans use this line all the time. Alec Hernandez from NBC News jumps
in and says DeSantis's pale pastel's reference is a line pulled from his stump speech.
He often says that Republicans need to lead with core convictions and governed with
bold colors. About pale pastels. That said, saying it out of context
here standing next to Haley does come off differently. So he says this is
a DeSantis like He seems to have zero idea that neither of them Ali vittally
alec Hernandez seems to have zero idea that this is not just from DeSantis's stump
speech, and it's not about Nicki Haley's clothes. It's an extremely common Reagan
quote and Chris, believe it or not, it gets worse, It gets
worse. Scott Bertram from Hillsdale pointed out that it ended up in the copy
of NBC News's story on the debate by Alex sites Wold. They say Desantus
accused Haley being inspired, being inspired by Hailey Clinton, which is true,
and painting metaphorically with pale pastels and eyebrow raising word choice to attack the first
female governor of South Carolina, especially since she was wearing a pastel top.
DeSantis use the phrase multiple times. It boggles the mind. It boggles the
mind. And these are the people like Nicole Hannah Jones at the very top
of their profession. I get that Ali Vittali is only I think someone tweeted
me. She's apparently like thirty three years old. I get that if you
are covering a Republican primary and you are so arrogant as to accuse Ron DeSantis
of being sexist for using a Reagan line over and over and over again,
and you don't even know it's a Reagan line, and you're also one of
the people that thinks you need to protect all of the rest of America from
quote disinformation. You're an idiot, and your editors should not let you tweet
or live blog. But your editors probably need to be replaced because they published
the alex Sites world piece. So three reporters didn't happen. There's many levels
there, There's many levels. The CNN's not one of those companies that just
generally just published right to do it. They actually have multiple level of Jews,
right NBC, multiple levels levels of editors that should have existed to be
able to catch that sort of thing. You know. One of the things
I banned when I was at the collar from copy is the term unprecedented because
it was used basically in every report about Donald Trump, and it's like,
actually, basically everything is precedented. Vanity of vanities, as the Old Testament
says, they don't just like the I think one of the reasons why the
American voter more and more has seemed to exist within what's happened that month and
not really thinking much more like the new cycle moves so quickly. People like
Joe Biden is also he's screwed up awfully, He's done this. But the
election six months later. No one remembers was going on six months before.
It's because I think a lot of our news reporters, with their Twitter brains,
don't they exist in the immediate present. They don't have any concept of
history. They're jackals and fake experts. They can read a Wikipedia thing,
but they actually don't know what they're talking about on almost any subject. And
yeah, I'm guilty of this. A lot of a lot of journal we
have to write it, we have to cover broad swaths. Of course,
you're going to lose some expertise. But the amount of these people who really
do believe that they are subject matters experts, political experts who don't know about
famous presidents and famous quotes and history of this come before, it's really embarrassing,
and that they're very confident in that. Like the being dumb is fine,
but being arrogant and dumb at the same time is extremely annoying. And
you see that and at CNN probably the same thing is true for NBC.
I'm not sure. Like my wife used to work there, still gets phone
calls from like well meaning friends CNN who because she's the only person that they
know who has conservative thoughts. Yep, and they she's like the conservative whisper.
They it's like to them, it's like Jane Goodall looking at the apes.
They do not remotely understand it. They're like, well, why would
why would Republicans be upset about this? And she has to explain it to
them, and they're just it's like they're not reaching out to yell at her,
they're not reaching out to argue with her, or they're not reaching out
to criticize her. They genuinely don't know. It's like when I ask someone
to translate something in French for me, it's just I have no clue.
I do not understand it. And I think that's the case that they're so
isolated. There's so much into the bubble. They Before twenty sixteen, people
people, even when Republicans and Democrats in DC still used to kind of interact
a lot more often, these people still weren't interacting outside of their bubble even
before then. So now they're their entire lives in it. And it's not
surprising how ignorant they are of it. And it's it's kind of funny when
they showed it when it's on display, though, Yeah, I mean it's
the same if you can make the right accusations of racism and sexism, and
you have the same attitude towards the American people that they should be shielded from
disinformation. It doesn't matter how mediocre you are, what your knowledge of history
is, what your level of humility is, none of that matters. You
are vaulted straight to the top of your profession. And it's truly a sad
state of affairs. Christopher Bedford, I know you got to run. I
do. Actually, thanks for catching that. Hey, Mark and Molly are
here now, so basically everyone except for you and John Daniel Davidson in Alaska.
Yeah, he's well, don't docs the man. It's a small state.
Everyone knows each other. Yeah, right well, Christopher Bedford, Executive
editor, over the comment since Society, thanks so much for stopping by.
Federalist Right, glad to be here. You've been listening to another edition of
The Federalist or radio hour. Emily Tashinski, Culture editor here at the Federalist.
As always, you can't know the show at radio at the Federalists dot
com. Follow us on exit d r L S T that we'll be back
soon with more. Until then, be lovers of freedom and anxious for the
friend, was in advise that you ball today, staying