Welcome back, everyone to a new episode of You're Wrong with Molly Hemingway and
David Harsani. If you'd like to reach the show, please send us an
email at radio at the Federalist dot com. Thank you Molly. Today,
I think we should just dive in, even though I really was trying to
avoid this. Just dive into the whole DeSantis Trump primary race seems to be
what a lot of people are interested in talking about. I think it's way
too early, but I cannot stop the tide of history. It is what
it is. Yeah, I'm not super interested in the primary myself, but
I had a few sort of random thoughts. I was surprised to get the
news this week that de Santis had shaken up his campaign management staff. His
campaign manager is now in a different role, and he put it his sort
of chief of staff in as his campaign manager. And I don't know if
that will solve his problems or not, but it actually made me think about
how weird it is that the Trump campaign has been surprisingly tight and focused.
Like everyone's talking about how the other campaigns are doing a very bad job of
taking him on, and that's true in part, in large part, it's
also true that, particularly considering the erratic nature of the head guy in the
campaign. The campaign is like really focused and on point and doing what they
should be the Trump campaign. So just interesting to see that happening. But
of course there's a lot that you don't know until people start voting. You
know, you can talk about this all sorts of different ways, but it
really will come down to help people vote to state the obvious No way,
Yeah, obviously. I mean that's why I feel like it's too early.
There hasn't really theresn't you know, we don't really know obviously state by state
primaries we're talking about. It just seems too early for I get that everyone
is saying de Santis is failing, and there's this I hate to say in
the word, there's this narrative that's sort of ossified, you know, that
he's not doing like that, he is has no personality, and then all
that stuff. I just I feel like it's it's his failure, is letting
that congeal as a talking point about him more than actually what he's done.
Does that make any sense? Yes, and no. I've talked with a
lot of people who are super fans of Ron Descants they're fans of Ron de
Santists. They also like Donald Trump. They are surprised by how much they
have grown to not adore Ron de Santists because of how he's handled the campaign,
and when they talk ab out him, it is about him, not
really about the campaign. It's about the way he answers questions or even like
his mannerisms, like there's something something has soured for people, for a lot
of people, and let me let me, let me, let me pose
this to you. The other day he said he was asked about who won
twenty twenty election or whatever, which is going to be a question he's going
to be asked basically in every interview, and he said, Donald Trump lost.
You know, I forget how he said it. The full context of
that quote was that he said, basically, he framed it like you're like
he was talking about your book right that that it had been unfair. But
once it's over, it's over. And Joe Biden sworn the Bible and he
is the president. I don't understand why that is offensive to anyone. And
I don't really know what you're supposed to how you're supposed to use questions.
So before I before I tell you what I think about his response, which
I already publicly said I thought he was responding well to these questions. It's
not a factional until you say it. On here. I do want to
talk first and foremost about the question. I am writing a piece right now
where I express my belief that that question is never asked in good faith.
The question that we heard all the time after the twenty sixteen or the twenty
twenty election, but I've started to hear again in recent days is do you
do you believe that Joe Biden won twenty twenty election? Yes or little?
Yes or little? It's so stupid. And the piece I wrote was about,
how then do you know the nineteen seventy two men's Olympic basketball game against
with that against the Russians and they whether they I forget it was a okay?
So yeah. It's the only time a team has refused to accept a
result of the outcome is the American men have refused to accept that they lost
the nineteen seventy two gold medal championship game in the Olympics, and they were
playing against the Soviet Union, and going into that game, the men had
a sixty three and O record, Like going back to nineteen thirty six,
the American men had won not just seven gold medals at that point, they
had won sixty three games in a row. They were monsters, Like America
invented the game, and so we were just very good at it. But
that year the Soviet Union was actually pretty strong, pretty experienced, and they
had come in also hot and heavy, and they in fact were leading the
game right up until the last few seconds of the game when someone was fouled.
He scores two shots, so the US takes the lead, at which
point I don't even remember all the details, but basically they replayed the last
three seconds three times until the Soviets were able to win. And it is
just so complicated what happened when the Soviets claim that they called for a time
out in between the two free throws, but that the referees didn't see it.
The referees, by the way, include the Bulgarian, which you know,
a lot of people found suspicious, and so then they put time back
on the clock, but then they shouldn't have done that, but then the
time wasn't put back properly, so they just kept on like kind of coming
up with reasons why the Soviets could get another shot at things, and then
another the Bulgarian referee actually interfered in a play in a way that was advantageous
to the Soviets, and they end up winning, and the US team appeals
to the basketball court, and I think it was a three two decision that
the court ruled that the Soviets had won. All three who voted that the
Soviets had won were from Soviet Bloc countries, and the US team just refused
to accept that they lost. And it has been fifty one years and they
still refuse to accept it. And last year they came up with this idea
that they would donate their silver medals to the Basketball Hall of Fame, and
the International Olympic Committee said, yeah, that's fine, but you have to
accept them first, like we're not just going to transfer them to someone else.
You have to accept them and then you can donate them. And the
team was like, well, we will literally die before we accept that this
was a free and fair game, so we're not going to do it.
And the Soviets, for their part, well, the Soviet Union doesn't exist
anymore, but the Russians do. And in twenty seventeen, they made a
movie and it's called something like three Seconds to Victory, highest grossing Russian film
of all time, and it's about how they totally won the game. So
when I hear people say did Joe Briden win to twenty twenty election, in
my mind, I just hear people say, did the Soviets win the nineteen
seventy two gold medal game? Like, yeah, they did. At the
end of the game, they had more points on the board, they received
their gold medals they want. But you'd be an idiot to go up to
any of these men and say, do you accept that you lost? Like?
The whole point is that the game was not conducted in a free and
fair fashion. And that's the whole point of the twenty twenty election. Now,
whether you think that the hundreds of changes to the laws and processes that
governor our elections in the months preceding the election was okay, whether you think
it's okay to do that in a non constitutional manner, as many of them
were done, whether you think it's good to flood the zone with tens of
millions of unsupervised ballots at the same time that you lower scrutiny for those ballots,
whether you think it's okay that the corporate media made up news stories such
as the false i'marm story in which Donald Trump's oppos of the secretly harbored hatred
for American soldiers, a thing that was not true but that was inserted into
the debates, or whether you think it's okay for the media to suppress real
stories about the Biden family business, or to collude with tech companies and the
government to suppress all news of information that would help Republicans and elevate news and
information that helps Democrats, Like it's okay to have a problem with how that
election was conducted. Tens of millions of people do. And to say,
did Joe Biden more electoral College votes is such a stupid question. It's not
asking good faith. Everybody knows that he won the electoral College and that he
was inaugurated. But we actually wanted to have like a legitimate, honest,
mature discussion about the way we conduct elections. It's the last question you would
ask. So I had to get that off my chest before we talk about
how Rhonda Santas answered. You know, I want to talk about de Santis
as well, but that reminds me of something I saw this week of Ron
Klain, who used to be Joe you know, it has basically been with
Joe Biden forever, was on TV talking on Jensaki Show, two former administration
officials talking about how the indictments against Donald Trump and all that. But it
reminded me that Ron Klain was actually a lawyer in two thousand who tried to
get he was one of the leading voices and trying to get military ballots thrown
out and not counted in Florida and having recounts in only certain districts that would
help Al Gore, and then of course spread the conspiracy theory about George Bush
losing that election. He also did not accept the two thousand and sixteen,
you know, six sixteen election. So I never see anyone ask anyone like
that, Do you accept that George you know that George Bush won the election.
Do you accept that Donald Trump won the election. It's a stupid question
that would never even be asked of people on the left who for years have
not I mean, I'm working on a book about this right now. They
do not accept election losses, So it's a it's a stupid gotcha question,
But do I know one of our colleagues, John Davidson, recently wrote a
piece about this, But I mean, do we really want to relitigate twenty
twenty constantly? I mean, or can we just move on from we just
can we just stay on the on the Rhonda Santist thing really quickly? Because
there were two different times when reporters were playing this, do you accept that
the nineteen seventy two gold Medal went to Russia or whatever? Trick? And
the first time he's asked by a New York Times reporter, I think in
Iowa, and he goes through It's like he read my book. But also
because I know he actually knows these issues really well, he goes through all
the problems with the election, and he's like, but but do I believe
that like Venezuelan servers secretly altered votes. No. Now, there is not
a word about that that I disagree with, and in fact, I wrote
a book on it. But what I hated was the way the New York
Times wrote it up. They said, Ron de Santis seems to be moving
away from the conspiracy theory that the election was stolen that Republican voters cling to
without evidence. It was like, no, literally, what he said is
what Republican voters believe. It also happens to be what's true. And just
because The New York Times doesn't do the work of understanding or talking to a
single conservative and good faith to understand what Republican voters think about the twenty twenty
election, something that was admitted to in Time magazine by left wing reporter Molly
Ball. By the way, it's not just conservatives. You know, there
were people bragging about what they'd done with the election. But because The New
York Times wants to paint everybody as believing this Venezuelan server story, they falsely
claimed De Santis was moving away from something he'd said previously. It's just not
true. He has always been good on this issue. He has put his
money where his mouth is. He over he has overseen and signed into law
improvements in the Florida electoral system. He banned the private takeover of government election
offices or signed legislation that the Florida Legislature had passed on that. And it's
just I just hate the framing and I hate how stupid it is. By
the way, when I defended him, I had a bunch of Ronda Santis
stands yell at me for praising him, and I just have to say again,
the only thing worse than Ron De santis fans getting mad at you when
you critique him is that they have a pensiant for getting mad at you when
you praise him as well. And it's just insane. The watchdoltown Wall Street
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There is a lot of very online anger about about this primary that I don't
know most normal people really care that much about it yet, And this is
why, you know, I just think it's too early for desantist to panic.
But I would say this, I like how we answered these questions,
and when I read the full context of how we answered them, they're actually
even better and they are not like you say. The whole framing is,
Oh, he's pushing away from this crazy idea that the election wasn't fair,
or you know that it's this conspiracy theory and he's moving towards, you know,
a more central position, or he's moving against Donald Trump. I don't
think that's the case. I mean, not on that answer, and not
at all, right. I mean he said that, I do the election
was fair, right, I do want to quibble within how he handled I
think it was okay NBC News. This is why I was trying to get
to okay. So in that question, this reporter is trying to get him
to trash the idea that we have a problem with elections in the country,
and he answers with his general answer that we just talked about, and she's
like, okay, but I noticed you didn't give a yes or no to
my gotcha question? Could you please right now give me a yes or no
to my stupid question? And he's like, yeah, I accept that.
Joe Biden won, which you should never respond to a gotcha question with anything
than a metaphorical punch in the face. So that bothered me. And then
he goes on to say, and you know who's really the bad guy in
this whole story, it's Donald Trump because he passed or he signed like legislation
that was all about COVID relief that enabled tens of millions of mail in ballots
to flood the country. Now, it is absolutely true that tens of millions
of ballots fluttered into the country in part through that funding. Also because Mark
Zuckerberg spent four hundred nineteen million dollars to enable left wing groups to take over
this operation and enable it to weaponize it, which people didn't quite realize at
the time until it was way too late. But also this idea that he's
so confused about where to aim his fire is infuriating. Just as a person
who understands Republican voters, I don't know how to say it anymore clearly,
like that's going to appeal to the people working on your staff, who are
a bunch of never Trumpers. It's not going to appeal to like Iowa voters
to be like, oh yeah, the primary victim of this like unbelievable secret
operation to control the outcome of the twenty twenty election. We're going to blame
him for it. And I just wish he would be as focused as he
was from like twenty eighteen to twenty twenty two, both in how he attacked
idiot reporters but also like understood who his enemies were. How is he going
to win a primary if he never points out that Donald Trump did a terrible
job during you know, on numerous issues. I just don't understand what he's
supposed to do. He's going to say, oh, Donald Trump was great,
everything was great about Donald Trump, Then why vote for him at all?
Well, you know, it is a kind of a fundamental issue about
why he's running. That is a very difficult question to answer. I'm using
a question to answer what I'm saying. Is it actually there were a lot
of people who thought that Ronda Santis should not run right now, and he
wanted to, and his people really wanted him to, and so they need
to have a good answer for it. And I actually just think the proof
is in the eating of the pudding here on how it's going over with Republican
voters. It's not going over well. He's so highly funded. We're at
Jeb Bush levels of funding here that with like all of the best campaign people,
and it's just resulting in people not like glumbing onto him. Here,
here's what I'm going to say. I do not understand Republican voters. I
do not understand what wins elections. I'm not going to pretend I do.
But I do know this that today Donald Trump, or maybe it was yesterday,
you know, accused some DA of having an affair with the gang member.
Today Ronda Santis suspended a Soros DA who wasn't doing her job, you
know, from continuing to undermine the Florida law and the constitution. And to
me, that goes centrally to why you know, that's the central case to
why de Santists is preferable to Donald Trump. Because I've just made a better
argument than he's making for himself. That's why maybe I should be a campaign
manager or something. I think. I don't think we will ever win a
campaign if I run it, but I will say this, he then needs
to make that case, and every time he does, everyone's like he you
know, then there's just this mass. I mean, Donald Trump has spent,
and it makes complete sense. He's running a general campaign right now because
he's so far ahead, but he spent a ton of money just destroying the
Santists. That's why tons of Trump people don't like de Santists. A lot
of those attacks are completely unfair, and I don't understand what the guy's supposed
to do. Now you're saying you should you know, why is he running.
He's running because he's a competent governor, and he's running against a person
who had a lot of changed a lot of the dynamics of our politics.
But he's not someone i'd call competent really in most ways. That's that's his
case. I think there's so much there that I would like to talk about.
First off, I don't actually know what you're talking about with what Trump
said about the sort of fake prosecutor in Atlanta, But the woman is a
crazy partisan. She was actually holding fundraisers for people who were running against the
people she was targeting in Georgia. Also, the entire case is completely wrong.
So we have had many things on this at the Federalist about alternate electors
and how people were attempting to do legal challenges that Georgia one actually probably had
as much as much merit, if not more merit. Yeah, I would
say it had more merit, and that they actually had found a class of
voters that were voting illegally, and nobody disputes that, even the Secretary of
State's office admits this, and that the remedy, according to Georgia laws,
should have been to hold a new election, and they wouldn't do it.
And had that happened and you needed an alternate slate of electors, that's what
the Georgia Republican people were doing. And she's trying to put people in prison
for doing something in a constitutional fashion. She should be condemned. Brian Kemp
should be doing something akin to what Ronda Santis is doing with his Sourros prosecutors.
But I do find it very annoying when people are like, well,
yes, Donald Trump has withstood more than any man in history in terms of
attacks from the deep state, and he's like still standing, but he didn't
do everything, so I'm gonna trash him. And it's just it's not it's
not the arguments, that's not How can I say this? The distinction people
need to make if they're running for president. They need to make a distinction
about what they'll do and what Donald Trump do. And your your notion that
Donald Trump didn't do everything, I think underplays how he did incredibly little or
how he should have. We didn't fulfill most of the promises that he put
forward. I think that's a fair political argument, setting aside all the other
stuff that goes David, this is so annoying. Every Republican, like top
guy in my adult life, has claimed that they're going to handle the border
situation. I mean John McCain, Paul Ryan, Mitch McConnell, George W.
Bush, like everybody claimed Donald Trump became president because they didn't. That
was his central He actually got control over the border. Am I saying it
was perfect? No? Was there still work to be done? Yes?
But did he get Mexico to actually take care of the problem on their side
to help us on our side. Yes. There's a reason why Joe Biden's
first actions in office were to tear down all of the things that Donald Trump
had done to secure the border, even against a hostile Republican Congress. You
might remember that Republicans refused to help Trump get five billion dollars for the wall.
They have had no trouble finding like a hundred billion plus for Ukraine,
but they couldn't get five billion for the US southern border. So like he's
dealing with, you know, a resistant Can I ask you a question,
who do you think would be more compident in dealing with that situation right now?
Donald Trump or Ron De Santis? Only a yes or no answer.
I'm just kidding. I would say Trump probably really and here's but I'm not
sure. So I will tell you One of the things that hurt me early
with Ron De Santis is he came out against the Biden McConnell approach to the
Ukraine War, and immediately you had corporate media on both left and right tell
him he better back down, and he kind of did. He kind of
backed down immediately, and it freaked me out because I thought that. I
remember thinking like, you can come in there and say, wow, we
are handling our wars very poorly, and then the moment you get in,
very powerful forces within the government kind of get you in line. And you
saw that even with how they would sort of brag about how they'd manipulated Trump
into extending situations in Syria or extending the situation in Iraq or extending the situation
in Afghanistan. The people, the generals or the other people would kind of
brag that they'd tricked him into into continuing things on, and it took him
a while to figure out, like I gotta basically like just say we're getting
out of Afghanistan and just be you strong about it. And I do have
to say Biden, to his credit, followed through with that. But I
worry that if you can't stand up to like the Wall Street Journal at a
royal page, that you're not going to stand up to the people who are
more powerful. I mean, I guess I'd just see it very differently.
I just want I think about Donald Trump standing next to Fauci and letting Fauci
run the US government. It bothers me and it doesn't look like he actually
when it really mattered in you know, stood up to these people in government
in DC who run our lives. And that was a big moment. I'm
not saying Ron de Santis, by the way it takes it was perfect in
that situation either, by the way, but I think that he showed a
lot more spine and maybe it was easier for him as a governor. I
don't know than Donald Trump ever did it during There's no question that it's easier
to do it when you're not running for reelection, when you just have a
state. But it was still very hard, and Ron de Santis showed amazing
courage and wisdom, and I mean he was not just good, he was
like really good on some of these things. I do recognize these closed schools,
beaches and stuff at first, and I feel like that's understandable, and
I wish people would also understand that for other politicians there, that it would
have been great if everybody would have had courage and work together. It was
a really difficult thing to fight against. The lies, the deception, the
media propaganda was very very different. None of that's going to change, and
none of that's going to change on any issue moving forward. But I didn't
really want to make this about I mean, we could talk about whatever you
like, but I didn't want to make it about, like, you know,
the Canada against Canada, and I wanted to talk about what I think
Desantist's problem is is that he's running against basically an incumbent, and there's nothing
that I don't believe that his answers are really hurting him. I think he's
being hurt in that there's an inevitability question with most people. They just see
Trump's way ahead. Trump gets all the attention. All these indictments make them
even more dogmatic about who they're going to going to defend, and that there
was really very little desantists can do to overcome it, other than to stay
in the race and then try to, you know, do something in a
debate or you know, surprise someone in New Hampshire, Iowa, somewhere right.
I'll tell you something that's not going to happen, but I would just
like to throw it out there. Well, there are two things we'd talked
last week. I think about the potential for Trump to pick to Santis as
his VP. A very bright listener was pointing out that which I assume we
all know, but like, you can't have you can't have the electoral votes
from a state county if both the president and vice president are from that state,
which is why Dick Cheney had to pretend to move back to Wyoming because
both he and Bush claimed to live in Texas. But here's another thing that
won't happen. Rhonda Santis has a very very bright political future potential. I
don't think it's going to be for president. The presidential nomination in twenty twenty
four. He could see that this was not a good idea. Get out,
maybe even throw behind the big dog and live to fight another day.
He's got a very long future ahead of him, and I would just if
does not ask my opinion, and I do not give it. But there
are a lot of people making a lot of money off of him right now
that do not care if he has a bright political future. They just want
to get as much money, pick it off this campaign course as corpse as
they can, And he should really be thinking strongly about his potentially extremely bright
political future. And he either has to somehow win this nomination and win the
presidency, like it's another unfair thing he has to deal with, Like he
has to hear Donald Trump basically tell lies about him, but he kind of
can't respond as if it were a normal campaign because of the weird incumbent issues
and the unfairness of the twenty twenty election. It's also unfair. I don't
know that he would not have to not just win the nomination, but win
the presidency for him to get out of this mess. There's no way to
know if he has a bright, that brighter future. I mean, I've
I don't want to, you know, rack my brains right now. But
many of people that we thought had incredibly bright futures and politics didn't you fade
away, New people emerge, situations change. I don't know that he does.
Maybe this is his only shot. Maybe it isn't. And I don't
understand why his fortunes get any better if he doesn't stick it out a little
longer, just to see what's going to happen with Donald Trump. I don't
know that Donald Trump. I don't know what. We don't know what's going
to happen with Donald Trump. And I think that DeSantis would be a far
better I'm not saying he's going to be better than Trump campaigner or anything like
that. I realized Trump connects with people. I don't get it. I
realize it's a thing, but I think he was going to it would be
a very powerful, uh general. I think against Biden, he would just
imagining them debating, I just think DeSantis would destroy him. I mean,
I don't even I can't even imagine. Their abilities are not on the same
level. Okay, I'll just say two things on that. One, nobody
should freak out or be doing anything until at least a first debate where we
get to did you just call him a corpse? You said he was a
corpse in the No, I was saying that his advisors are trying to pick
over a campaign corpse to get money into their pockets. So you don't think
he is a corpse yet in this race. No, But I'm just pointing
out that the interests of his well paid advisors might be at odds with his
own interests. And he is probably getting only talk from these people who stand
and make a lot of money the more they can keep this campaign going.
And he needs to understand that his political future might be at odds with those
Republican consultants, the class of people that I do not have the highest regard
for. So but they should definitely wait until a debate at least to see
how it goes. I will just caution people sometimes you can overstate how well
someone's going to do and it doesn't go well. And I watched his debate
with Charlie Christ and I know everybody said Ron de Santis did a great job.
I thought he did perfectly adequate, and obviously he won in a landslide
against Charlie Christ did not think he was the strongest debater I've ever seen.
Now, I mean, let me quickly just interject one thing. When I
say that, I mean in my eyes, like in my eyes, because
he's well versed in policy, because he's going to, you know, sort
of run rings around Biden when it comes to that sort of thing. To
me, he's impressive. Again, I admit freely, I don't know what
people like to see in candidates, or I don't get it, so I
like that. Yes, another thing I got in trouble for was saying that
he gave very good, substantive answers to interviews. Did you get in trouble
for saying that these fans of his are insane? Anyway? I think when
he answers, he knows not just the conservative principle in play, he knows
the specifics about the policy. I love it. The one thing I would
add for him is a way to connect it to the average voter, Like
most people are not as into policy or even principle as much as he is,
but they are into things like gas prices or are they going to take
away my guess of and you know, like a way to take that policy
in principle and then connect it to the to the voter who feels like this
guy gets what I'm going through. I would do that if I were him.
I mean, and writers have pointed this out, but he does very
well when he's uh, I think up against someone who who's trying to throw
got your question, Adam Orga like Dasha Burns, I think is her name?
You know through that you know, I don't know that she lied.
Sometimes I think these reporters, some of them at least, are in a
bubble and don't even know. But when she was talking about how Democrats don't
want abortion until birth, his pushback in contact when when you see the whole
thing is very strong in a way that I don't see many Republicans in general
be able to sort of lay it out. So I don't know, stuff
like that impresses me on a political level at least, right, Yeah,
speaking of these reporters, I was talking to a reporter the other day and
I was kind of struck by how stupid they were, And then I was
realizing that this is actually a widespread problem. Does that mean we should cut
that out that I just said that. No, I would not, because
there are tons of people are successful because they just they're credentialed question askers and
stenographers, right like, they're not thinkers, they're not skeptical anymore, at
least of certain people. And then when there are smart ones, they used
their brightness to be dishonest, right, so for evil, for wrong purposes.
So you know, there there can be like a Philip Bumps, So
no matter what happens, he's like that proves the opposite, you know,
like he's always just reactively not not very bright. But there are other people
I who you can tell are are smart and and and you know, are
dishonest in that in that way of the Washington Post who does not know how
babies are made. It's my favorite thing. He tried to fact check Marco
Rubio for saying that life begins at conception, and he was like, actually
happens sometime after that. It's I just I just brought him up because the
other day some one of the Biden you know, one of you know,
the Biden phone call story whatever, and he's like, that actually proves that
he wasn't involved, Like, no matter what you say he's like a five
year old, he'll just tell you that proves exactly the opposite of what's happening.
But anyway, so I don't know. I it bothers me that that
that people are counting out the santists so early. But then I think about
it, and I'm like, he has a lot to overcome, so,
you know, more than most people do. It's it's a tough situation and
I don't know. I don't know that he can. So if he does
really well, if he does really well in this debate at the end of
this month or August twenty third, Fox News to watch it, that could
that could change things for him. Okay, well unfortunately, if he does
poorly, that could also. Yeah, there's so many things going on in
the world that are more important than the presidential primary in some to some extent,
I mean, just a quick note. We weren't going to talk about
this. As I mentioned, Ohio had a a referendum the other day,
and you know that they wanted to raise the level the threshold to change the
constitution. I think it was to sixty percent of or something like that.
But that failed, which is not good news for for pro lifers. I
will say though, that simple majority referendums are completely on America and they're tyrannical.
They're not meant to happen. Our governing is not This is not the
way we govern in this country. I hated them in Colorado when I lived
there. I can't believe they exist in other states. But it is what
it is, and it does not bode well for I think in twenty twenty
four there's going to be some kind of pro abortion referendum in Ohio. Right,
Yeah, No, there's a well funded effort. It's an incredibly well
funded effort. I don't know what the actual numbers were in Ohio. I
was kind of curious about it. A funding disparity easily, Yeah, the
funding disparity was insane in terms of how much the left was pushing for this.
It's not something that actually makes it easier to kill babies, like directly
in Ohio, but it could lead to a passage of something that makes it
easier to kill on warn children. So pro lifers were concerned about it.
But it's there's so much money flowing into this and so much effort and energy
and testing being done, and it continues to be a situation where there are
really good pro life conservative groups that are fighting back. They are not funded
at the same level as the left is, and the Republican Party in general
and special interests associated with the Republican Party are not They're just like completely checked
out, and that's not a great situation. Republicans are terrible on this issue
because most of them don't even want to talk about it. I think that
the rob being overturned was the worst thing that ever happened to them politically.
Basically, now they actually have to make arguments. And that's all true.
However, there is in addition to all the money you just mentioned, there
are billions and in kind contributions by the media who completely like this. Dasha
Burns interview with DeSantis lie about what Democrats believe and what Democrats want, which
is abortion till birth with no restrictions, funded by taxpayers, and that's also
difficult to overcome. I want it to turn to something else that is kind
of connected to the media again, and that's this amazing piece of people haven't
read that they should. At Tablet Magazine by David Samuels, which was a
interview with this author, David Garret wrote a book called Rising Star, which
came out in twenty seventeen, which is a biography of Barack Obama, but
the first half is not really an interview. It's sort of him I don't
know, you know, basically the book engaging with the book taking us back
to the rise of Obama, juxtaposing reality to what was going on, and
before we get into like some of the specifics, I would say that it
just shows you that the entire Obama mythology and legacy was created, which many
politicians do, but completely non unfact checked, right, Like, no one
went back, No one cared about his real life story, about the lack
of experience, about the lack of accomplishment, about any of that. They
liked the idea of Obama and they were his biggest cheerleaders, I would say,
the biggest cheerlead, bigger cheerleaders for him than certainly than even Joe Biden
or anything like that. But anyway, let's talk about this story, which
I think people should read. Yeah, that's who'd say, Actually put aside
some time to read it. It's very long. I think it took me
like an hour to read it. That sound about right. Maybe I don't
know that not that long, but it's long. Okay, I don't remember,
but I'm just saying yea. At some point I was like, wait,
I'm not even halfway through this. You know, it is full of
absolutely fascinating information. And I don't really know that much about Garrol or Samuel's
so I don't, but it's kind of my impression that they would be like
Democrat aligned people but also very honest in a way that you're not seeing among
a lot of Democrats right now, you know, both in terms of like
the fact that Garrol wrote was Mlk's biographer and wrote a page thanfully honest look
at the man and all his flaws, and still I think, yeah,
yeah, and still like wrote a very favorable book about MLK, Like it
shows he has a cappacity for a very nuanced and honest thinking, and his
disdain for Obama really trips through. I'm actually wondering, did you read the
book when it came out? You know, it's funny. I looked to
see if I did. I try to read a lot on my phone and
this, you know, listen to books, and I do have it,
and I was into it, but I didn't read the whole thing, and
I think someone else had mentioned this. I think what happened was it was
twenty seventeen when it came out. I think I've had had enough about of
Obama at that point, Like I didn't really even care that much. I
figured he was the past. Though. In twenty twelve I wrote a boo
called Obama's Four Horsemen, which I got a lot of blowback for being a
bit hyper you know, using too much hyperbole, and that maybe in that
in that book. But the truth is, I think so many of our
problems go back to his presidency. I think he was a destructive force.
But there's a book this story is really not about that. It's about that
he's basically a fraud. And you know, I don't know right away,
I was reminded that right that at some point, I don't know what year
it was, all of a sudden, someone unearthed the picture of Barack Obama
hanging out with the Minister Farakhon right, and no one in the media could
track down that photo. Ever. You remember the whole uh, you know,
they would what was that guy's name, Reverend Wright? Right, that
whole thing, and this story just how can I say it reaffirmed in me
that yes, Barack Obama was very open to faracon like ideas, and that
yes he wasn't I would say, an aggressive anti Semite or anything, but
he had sort of this left wing, progressive disdain for Jews that you often
see, or basically the Jewish history or Jews suffering, you know, because
it undermined, you know, you know, the plight of black suffering in
some way or whatever it was. And that he was not that he's a
fraud, a complete fraud. His whole life story is basically fraudulent. And
that book he wrote, I forgot to do what it is called again Father
Jeams of My Father is just a piece of fiction, right, is that
what? That's the argument that garrow Places puts forth, and I think it's
a pretty compelling argument. I did want to just say him about the book
that came out in twenty seventeen. I did not read it. I didn't
even really remember it coming out, except I was talking with this other friend
who's a Republican consultant, and he was screaming that he was very upset that
people were only now discovering it because when he read it when it came out,
he couldn't believe how explosive it was, and nobody wanted to talk about
it at all. And I mean, when we're staying explosive, it's explosive.
Like David Garrow tracks down the main girlfriend of Obama, who had never
been talked to by a single reporter, and he gets like a very substantiated
story about how the actual nature of their breakup was different than the way he
portrayed it. He portrayed it that she just wasn't like down enough with that
she was a white woman, wasn't down enough with the black national experience or
something. And she explains that it was really because he was not willing to
condemn anti Semites within his black identitarian movements that he was associating with. It
wasn't even that she was saying that he was anti Semitic. She just she's
her grandparents had helped Jews in where was it, Where were they I don't
know, but there they were, like actually honored at yad Vishem for what
they did to help Jews during the Holocaust, And it's very near and dear
to her heart. And he just wasn't willing to condemn anti Semites. And
so it was a problem that led to many fights and eventually break up according
to her, But it's kind of a story that rings true, as you
might say, because she's not she's never talked to the media. She doesn't
seem scorned. By contrast, he asked her to marry him twice and she
said no. You know, it just interesting. And then also, of
course there's the there's the somewhat explosive issue there about letters he wrote to his
girlfriends involving same sex fantasies that he had, Like I'm not even saying that's
like meaningful or anything, but it's the kind of thing that I just can't
help but think that if Donald Trump had letters like that out there, that
we'd be talking about it about fourteen times a day, you know. And
yeah, and set that aside, forget Donald Trump, which is like gets
everyone you know nutso, and just say Mitt Romney. Imagine if Mitt Romney
had written letters like that the most staid republic impossible, and you know,
it would have been a huge deal. But yeah, it is interesting because
another part of this is like his you know, fantastic, this fantastical story
he gives about, you know, growing up with all these like revolution at
people talking in dorm rooms about this revolutionary idea and that one. I meanwhile,
he was just friends with rich white dudes. I mean that those were
his best friends. That's how he grew up. He was just such a
complete fraud. And basically, I think others have made this argument, and
I am much more open to it lately, is that basically this is his
third administer. You know, this is his third term right now that we're
going through. The whole administration is packed with his people. The ideas that
they push are just an evolution from what he could get away with. Everyone
used to say, pretend he was a moderate, but he got away with
whatever he could. That's what left this do They go forward as far as
they can and then they build on that. So anyway, I don't know,
well, I don't know. This was another thing that I thought was
really interesting in the tablet piece that I very much hope that people read.
It's truly something you need to read and just engage with the ideas in there.
And one of the things that is kind of emphasized is that Barack Obama
broke all precedent by moving out of the White House and just a few blocks
down the road. So instead of going back to Hawaii or back to Chicago,
and you know, to be fair, because he made so much money
off of his time as regime head. He has homes all over the world
or country, and you know, takes yacht vacations with celebrities, and he's
you know, he's gone a lot to Martha's vineyard, Hawaii, etc.
But he has a home in Calorama. He never left town. He's got
all of his people in this current administration. So not only was he kind
of helping run the resistance, which is norm breaking, as we might say,
and destructive to the republic, he also then now is very key in
the third term of the Obama presidency. He'd kind of said before that he
would like to have a third term along these lines where you install a puppet
and you do everything, but you don't have to go out in front of
the cameras. And a person with severe mental decline is currently sitting in that
who happened to be his vice president is sitting in that top chair, and
nobody in the media, because they're corrupt propagandists, is even looking into it,
much less reporting it accurately. On I mean, he wrote this book.
He talks about this woman and not a single reporter ever found her or
spoke to her, though she was not in hiding at all and willing to
speak to anyone. That isn't make amazing. Compare that to the things that
we have that we've tracked down, or reporters have trackeddown related to Donald Trump.
Every remember the story, has a book of Hitler quotes next to his
bedside. This, I mean, just a million orders were sent to Prague
to figure out how Trump's lawyer secretly had a meeting with Russians, none of
which happened, was all completely invented, and they put reporters over there for
like months at a time to dig into this. I hope that this leads
to a reevaluation by some honest people who are out there who aren't don't a
partisan riddled brains about his president see and the person that he was, which
is you know, hopefully diminishes his standing, I think, and I very
much appreciate one thing Donald Trump did a few things he did, but mostly
I appreciate that he completely obliterated the Obama policy legacy, because most of the
Obama policy legacy was done through executive orders, like he was some kind of
king with the media cheering on and Donald Trump destroyed it, which I think
is one of the we should talk about this as well. I think one
of the main reasons that people hated Trump so much right off the bat was
that he was basically the anti Obama. He hated Obama, he undermined Obama's
policies, and he also personally went after Obama with the whole citizenship thing year
after year. And I think that because of their love of Obama, that
was one of you that drove them to hate Trump even more than they would
have normally. Yeah, the election of Donald Trump is absolutely the chief legacy
of Brackama. I love that, all right. I just we felt like
people should read that. It's it's kind of an amazing story. Tablet does
good work in general, but that was just it really was mind blowing to
read. And I'm actually going to go back, I think, and try
to read if I have time. Rising Star, Yeah, are you ready
to talk about culture? Was there anything else you wanted to Absolutely so,
if I may start. I saw we spoke about this last week. I
saw Mission Impossible six or whatever it was, And during the week I had
a completely complete reevaluation of my initial positive review of that movie, I thought
about it a bit and I realized that a ninth grader could have wrote that
movie right. It is incredibly written. I could not have wrote that movie,
could have written the script to that movie, and that it was just
nonsense and garbage, like it's all just about the experience of all the stunts
and all that stuff. So I was like, I'm going to go back
and watch more movies from the seventies when people have to write scripts that make
sense and die blog that could actually maybe happen, that was more naturalistic,
that was more interesting, And that's what I've been doing. So this is
my thing is I'm going to go back and watch movies from the seventies,
my favorite era of moviemaking. So here's what I rewatched. Friends of Eddie
Coyle. Have you ever heard of that movie, Robert Mitchell. I feel
like I've heard of it, but I don't think i've seen it. Yeah,
it's it was interesting because rewatching it, I realized that movies like The
Town by Ben affleck ohe a lot to it. It's kind of a Boston
gangster film, but it's very little real violence in it. Love it.
I've seen it before. I watched Day of the Jackal. Have you ever
heard of that one? I think I've seen that when which hold on?
Or maybe I've read it? Oh yeah, I was a Frederick ForSight book,
I believe. Yeah, yeah, So I watched that. I watched
which just an excellent movie. Listen. It doesn't have the sophistication or the
stunts or things you know of you know in filmmaking that we see today,
but still excellent. I watched The Gambler with James Kahn, so movie,
don't watch the remake with Mark Walbert. Unfortunately that's not very good. Then
I watched a movie that was from the sixties called Bullet with Steve McQueen,
which was which is good. And then I find the final one I want
to mention is I watched rewatched. I've seen it so many times. So
I rewatched the original Dirty Harry movie and it hit me that we're going through
a lot of the things that people went through in the seventies, rising crime.
People are nervous and that bread this sort of vigilante movie like Death Wish
and Dirty Harry basically is as well, where people I think enjoyed watching someone
take control in a way that they couldn't, you know, or fight back
against the tide of violence in a way they couldn't. And I wonder if
that's coming for us as well at some point. I don't know if Hollywood
is it would be as open to making a dirty Harry or death wish.
I doubt it, but I or you know, I know they remade it
or whatever. But I wonder if that's coming for us. Because the seventies,
the grittiness of those movies, even Taxi Driver things like that, I
think we're really reflective of how people there's frustration people felt about society, and
I wonder why that hasn't happened for us. I just I know you just
said that about The Gambler and the remake, but my friend's husband made that
movie, sorry, and I enjoyed it. Okay, I didn't want to
install your friend. Let's put it this way. I think the original is
probably better. I think it's a class, you know, a classic movie
of the seventies, and maybe I you know. So I just want to
say I actually wrote down each and every one of those recommendations, because while
you are not my cup of tea for most things, what you like,
is not my cup of tea. You seem to you seem to work with
me on the seventies movies, so I will try those out. Yeah.
Yeah, someone gave me permission to call him Mark Hemingway. Someone on Twitter
said I'm allowed to call him Mark Hemingway. My husband, Mark also loves
the seventies movies. So yeah, and I'm going to continue watching and that
will report back to you. I mean, honestly, I think i'm a
little I like all of them, and I feel like that's weird, like
probably shouldn't. But yeah, okay, So the two that I want to
talk about are actually Mark Hemingway is here right now. What did we watch
this weekend? Okay, I know one of them, which was it was
called Daddy's Home And this is not highbrow. It was was that Will Farrell
and Mark Walberg or something like, Yes, I enjoyed it. It's really
stupid, but I really enjoyed. Good news for you. There's a Daddy's
Home too, I believe, And is that one good? I don't know.
I didn't. Okay. The second one I wanted to talk about was
this movie that I don't think I mentioned weeks ago, but I saw it
weeks ago on the plane from Athens home and it's called Living Living. It's
a British film. Bill Ny Is that his name? Bill? I always
forget people's names. It is really good. It's about this like British bureaucrat.
H It's about a British bureaucrat and kind of what he does in preparations.
Like a movie. It sounds like something I would recommend to you.
Yeah. It's based on a Japanese film by Kurasawa and then the screenplay was
by Isha Guru and the Kurasawa film was actually based on the death of Ivan
Iliach. It's good. I really liked it and it was really well done.
And yeah, Bill bill Ni is that his name? Bill Ny?
I think, yeah, he's funny. He's yeah, oh wow, Yeah
it's on my list. Okay, great, guess what? Maybe your stuff
is my cup of tea usually either, but I will I will give this
a chance. It sounds sounds intriguing, all right, anything else. I
made a record cabinet for all of my records. Wow, and you have
a many fashioned a record cabinet. Yeah, I'm gonna tell you a picture
of it because I'm very proud of it, and they're all up against one
wall. So my friend calls it the wall of sound. And now it's
very easy to find everything. I've got classical and then jazz, and then
everything's a to Z and I have compilations and soundtracks and comedy and Christmas.
So those are like the categories. So you do it alphabetically, so by
artist, so you'll have a rock unless it's unless it's one of the other
things I mentioned. Yeah, it's interesting. Mine is just thrown in as
I buy them. I really should categorize them. I think you need to
categorize them by subgenre. But I'm not going to get into that right now.
Yeah. I proposed that to Mark and he didn't think that was a
good idea. How many records do you think you have? Well, I
can look it up right now. I mean, I think people would be
interested in this. Yeah, I'm going to guess thousand, two hundred Is
that too much? Is that too much? So this is overstating it because
I got rid of many. I have twenty eight hundred and fifty seven in
my discogs, but I think I got rid of about a thousand, but
I didn't take them out. Okay, all right, Well, well,
this got really bortant at the end. I'm sorry. Yeah. I always
tell my I'll leave you with this. But I always tell my kids that
if I happen to die, they should not just get rid of my records,
that they were important to me, and that they might not like them,
but they may be worth money and they should sell them so someone else
can enjoy them. Actually, on that note, a big part of our
collection came from a neighbor just right around you know, the Bend. We
went to their yard sale. They had all these records out on tables and
Mark reaches in and randomly pulls one out and it's Brian Eno and he's like,
well, we're gonna be looking through these. And the lady was like,
you can have all thousand for a hundred dollars, and Mark said sold,
and we got this amazing collection. And I was just telling him that
I want to go back and think the lady and like explained to her how
valuable the collection was, and he said that she had told him at the
time that it was her uncle who had died. It has all this nineteen
seventies prog rock, which it has way more than I need. And so
that's part of what I've been getting rid of. But like things I didn't
even know about that I really have enjoyed listening to, and it makes me
a little sad, like I've imagined this person and how nobody appreciated what he'd
put together. And it's a really fine collection with some really valuable things,
like some rare fines. And similarly, I think it's okay to tell this,
but rich Lowry's dad collected records and had an amazing collection of classical music
and also a lot of easy listening and big band, and he didn't even
know what to do with it. So he let Mark and me take it,
and we took it all and I cataloged it all and went through it,
and his dad used to mark on the record sleeve the date that he
would play a different piece, like he would play that record, and it's
like the date the dates he would play the record, and you know,
you can kind of see it in different seasons of his life that he was
listening to it. And I don't know why he did that, but I
met him, but I didn't know him hardly at all, the dad,
But it's like you get a feel for this person and what they enjoyed listening
to it different seasons of their life. And finally, I'll just note that
we also have Anton and Scalia's record collection because none of his nine kids cared
for it. And that's also just like a joy to look through and be
like, this dude really liked Gilbert and Sullivan operas, you know, or
like other operas. Reminds me of the story where Sulio asked Judge Thomas to
co Justice Thomas to come with him to classical music. He said, you
love classical music, don't you, And Thomas said, of course I do,
but I hate people who love classical music. It's like that story.
I'm jealous when I hear those stories. It's ridiculous how easily you come into
these massive, amazing collections of music where I have to pay overpay on like
eBay to get a single record. I want so but every time we try
to give you albums, you're like, I'm not interested. That is not
true. You've given me albums. I've given you albums. In fact,
I have two albums that I because I'm an idiot, I double I bought
and then bought again for probably a lot of money. But they are kind
of like weird records, And I'm like, I should give this to Molly
and Mark, but I don't know that you'd enjoy them, but I would
think I'm going to give them to you anyway, and maybe you will.
Okay, great for everyone else. Please be lovers of freedom and anxious for
the Fray. Talk to you next week.