Welcome back, everyone to a new episode of Your Wrong with David Harsani and
Molly Hemingway. Just like to remind everyone up top that if you have any
hate mail, fan mail, any kind of mail that you want to send
us, please do at radio at the Federalist. So, Molly, I
think we should start with today's I mean, I think it's it's a reported
announce It's reported that DeSantis is going to Ronda Santis is going to announce for
the presidency today on Twitter. Has that been verified? Like for sure?
I don't know what it would mean to be verified, but yeah, that's
what That's what apparently is going to happen, and it's going to happen,
at least for me. One of the interesting angles of this is that it's
going to happen on Twitter Space, which is kind of like the audio space
where people have conversations. I will I will admit upfront as well that I
have never been on a Twitter space and I'm not exactly sure how it feels
or looks to do that. I'll probably tune in today to see what Rond
santass to say. So I have done a Twitter space before. I've listened
in on many of them. There are these people on Twitter who I know
jokingly call the Internet autists who understand every nook and cranny of the Russia collusion
hoax. And sometimes they have Twitter spaces and it's just fun to kind of
listen in and see what they're fighting about or what they what they think.
But those are audio only, and for some reason in my mind, I
thought this would be audio end video, but now I realize it might just
be audio. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, maybe maybe there
will be some unveiling of some new technology on Twitter. I don't I don't
know. Probably not. I just made that up, but you never know.
I find it interesting that a lot of people in media and media observers
and media reporters are very uset where they're pretending not to be upset, but
they seem upset that someone would actually circumvent the gate keepers that you know,
where you usually go for this sort of thing. Now, my view on
this is that it's just going to be covered by everyone anyway, so it's
almost irrelevant. I just don't think it's that important today where you announced,
it's not like the old days, right, Do you agree with that?
I actually don't know if it ever mattered where you announced. I mean,
I remember. The one announcement I remember from the twenty twenty cycle was Kamala
Harris's announcement. It was massive. She had the Barack Obama team rolling her
out, she had filled San Francisco with all her lefty supporters and it looked
really Obama like, and she went on to get like not a single vote
in the Democrat primary. She might have always been running to be a mediocre
vice president. I don't know, But that's the only actual announcement that I
really remember. Well, you probably from twenty twenty, From twenty twenty,
yeah, twenty sixteen, nobody would have said, I have an idea for
the perfect announcement. You're gonna come down a golden escalator and you're going to
tell people you're gonna win the presidency. Like it was brilliant, but it's
not what anyone would have planned. But usually I think you just need to
get in the race and then just start seeing how things go. But having
said that, I actually like the Twitter announcement for the reason you just said,
which is the Ronda stantists has a posture of utter disdain for the propagandists
in the corporate media and announcing on Twitter is a great way to show that
you are not going to be beholden to the corporate press. I think.
Okay. And another interesting aspect is that Elon Musk and he's going to interview
him. I think also David is it sa Sacks? Yes? Yes,
noted federalist author David Sacks. He has a very popular pie cast that he
does, and I think he'll be moderating a discussion between Elon and and Ronda
Santis. I don't know exactly how to'll go, but I will be tuning
in. I will as well, and I find but I do find the
Elon aspect kind of interesting and in that he is He's an incredibly well known
popular guy. Does he have the most followers on Twitter? Probably? So
we're talking about like over one hundred million. I forget what the numbers.
I have this suspicion, though I have no hard data to back it up,
that Elon's turn towards I wouldn't call it like traditional conservatism or even conservatism.
I just think it's kind of like normyism, like he's just wants to
normal people doing normal things, going to be a normal country has actually given
a lot of cover to people who who would not normally be open to someone
like Ronda Santis. Do you do you agree that that having Elon sort of
backing him, and I think this, I think he has backed him in
the past on Twitter in some way helps de Santis, you know, just
generally with independence or things like that. I can't remember if Elon supported him
for governor or if he was saying you would make a good president, but
he has said recently that officially he's neutral in the race. He does seem
to be not neutral when it comes to free speech and making Twitter a really
high value free speech platform or something approximating it, because there's still very many
problems with it. But I don't know. I don't know if I agree
with that yet. I don't know how. Elon's obviously very influential and he
has the power breakthrough conversations by saying things that like everybody kind of knows it
is true, but you're not allowed to say it. So it's interesting that
he's involved in this, But I view it more like you would view Chris
Wallace interviewing someone on the day of their announcement. It's not you know,
it does matter if the person is well respected or controversial, it's just kind
of the person who's being part of the journalistic side of the announcement. Well,
what I like about it is that he's actually not a journalist and he
might ask interesting questions. Like journalists have prefabricated ideas about what they're supposed to
ask. It's always the same, it's always boring. If you went on
to CNN, you know exactly how they be like why why don't you think
teachers should be able to say the word gay or whatever? So it could
be more interesting because he's not really a journalist, right, So that reminds
me that the other thing that is interesting about Twitter spaces is that when you
listen in on a Twitter space, you have this option to raise your hand
with like and then buy your avatar. There's a little like emoji hand raised
to say, like, this person wants to ask a question. And so
I saw all these people yesterday saying that Donald Trump should make his triumphant return
to Twitter on today during the spent sitting on the Twitter space and just sit
there with his like emoji hand raised constantly throughout the throughout the Twitter space of
Ronda Santis's announcement. It made me laugh. Yeah, that's funny, But
god, I think it means that other people can ask questions. I think
it means like you and I could go in there, raise our hands and
we might get a question answered. I mean, unlikely given how many people
will be watching, but possible. Yeah. Just you you pointing out that
Donald Trump could raise his hand there makes me not look forward to what's going
to come in the next few months. The crazy online battle that goes on
between those two camps is just so annoying. I want to quickly say,
though, I read a story or a SOI a story in the Atlantic which
basically said that Elon has turned Twitter into an alt right hub of just nazi's,
anti Semites and so forth, and that is why, you know,
someone like Ronda Santis feels more comfortable there than he does on even Fox or
or elsewhere. But it is amazing to me how all of a sudden,
having just open speech is framed as you supporting all the speech that's involved,
which is just completely one It's a one eighty from what liberalism was about,
maybe even ten years ago, and yet that is just a talking point.
So it's just Okay, I just kind of amazing. Yeah, this reminds
me of something The Atlantic puts out this piece saying going after Twitter for being
a free speech platform, and it reminded me that the Atlantic's motto used to
be and probably still is, something about how they've been of no party or
click since eighteen fifty seven. I don't know if that was ever true,
but I've never thought of a motto that is less true for a publication than
of no party or click. I mean, the Atlantic is nothing but party
and click, and they are clearly very hostile to people being able to express
themselves in converse and like discover truth on their own without the Atlantic leading the
way. Glenn Greenwald was reminding people that the current editor of the Atlantic was
one of the primary cheerleaders of the falsehoods that led to the Iraq war invasion.
He falsely, you pushed the site. He pushed this idea that Saddam
Hussein had weapons of mass destruction that he was about to deploy at any minute,
And he was hailed and put on every TV show and given this like
really big platform, and it was his name, Jeffrey Goldberg, and he
was never punished for being so wrong or being such a bad journalist. He's
also the guy who invented, or allowed himself to be used by other people
who invented the completely and demonstrably false twenty twenty store that Donald Trump had called
dead American soldiers from World War One suckers and losers or something like that.
He built this, He claims there's no way to test it out at all.
He claims he had four anonymous sources who said that the story that Donald
Trump couldn't go to Ein Marne during his visit to France at some point in
his presidency. You know, the story was that he couldn't make it there
because of rain. But really it's because, contrary to everything you've ever seen
or witnessed from the man, he secretly harbors a hatred for dead World War
One American soldiers. The story was so ludicrous that more than twenty people,
including people who loathed Donald Trump with like the fire of a thousand sons,
said this story is complete an utter bullpuckey. People like John Bolton, who
said, I was there, and we know we can only take the President
of the United States to places when it's safe to do so, and because
of rain and all this stuff. It was an impossibility. I'll just note
that I was in Paris in the summer of twenty twenty and I actually got
to go to ein Marne, and even then people were talking about how they
couldn't take President Trump on the day that they were supposed to do it.
A further note, he visited a World War One American cemetery the next day.
So, and I mean, there's just like nothing about the story that
was legitimate. It has still not been retracted. The Atlantic is also the
publication that pushed the Russia collusion hoax. They published many stories. I think
they even had like Franklin four right, like a late era Russia collusion hoax,
defending the most preposterous part of the whole thing, which was like the
Alpha Bank. They I mean, they're just wrong, and they were wrong
about BLM, they were wrong about Kavanaugh, They're wrong about every story out
there. They are purveyors of propaganda and disinformation, and they're angry that people
might have free speech of no party or click since eighteen fifty seven. No,
yeah, I was a big fan of Atlantic years ago. I just
thought their writing was so high quality, and even when I disagreed. I
just thought it was a worthwhile read. But Jeffrey Goldberg has destroyed that magazine.
I mean, it was already on the way down, the trajectory was
not good. But he has completely destroyed the credibility of that magazine. Hired
a bunch of people who are, you know, just intellectually dishonest, people
constantly dishonest. And but I just quickly wanted to say one thing, and
I agree with everything you say about Jeffrey Goldward, but I think the Iraq
war stuff was far more complicated than the Russia collusion hoax stuff which end that
story. It was that you can roll your eyes at me all you like.
I you know, I think people truly believe things that were untrue.
We're in the case of like that story about Donald Trump in the cemetery.
It was completely and obviously transparently just concocted as a hit and had absolutely nothing
behind it. That's just my view of things. I actually, despite the
fact that I did roll my eyes that you're there, I agree with what
you said. It was a much more complicated story. And also it was
an era before which we understood just how completely our intelligence agencies play politics.
And so we had, you know, Compowe there at the United Nations saying
it was what was I can't remember what the phrase was. It was like
airtight. There was no doubt about it. They had the intel that Saddam
Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. Now later we find out that this like
totally locked down, totally airtight intelligence was not. It came from It came
from information that the Americans got from Germans who had been talking to an Iraqi
person who wanted his family to take power from Saddam Hussein's family. So he
concocted this kind of crazy story about how so Dom not only had weapons of
mass destruction but the reason why nobody had ever found them is because he was
moving it around the country in mobile units. And the source was someone who
had an incentive to not tell the truth. They had his name Curveball or
something like that, and never a good name for an intelligent source. The
US never spoke to him. Yeah, the US never spoke to him.
They were never able to assess the credibility of the claim, and they used
that to go to the United Nations to build the Coalition of the Willing.
But you're a right that we didn't know all that at the time. I
will point out that many of the people who were suspicious about the Russia collusion
hoax were people on the left, such as Glenn Greenwald, and people on
the right such as myself who had been skeptical going back to you know,
who had been really skeptical about Iraq war claims. And I think the fact
that we had that experience of going through knowing that intel agencies will lie to
you that helped us be more suspicious when that was called for. In twenty
sixteen and twenty seventeen. The Watchdolt on Wall Street podcast with Chris Markowski.
Every day Chris helps unpack the connection between politics and the economy and how it
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Check out the Watchdout on Wall Street podcast with Chris Markowski on Apple, Spotify
or wherever you get your podcast. It's a complicated topic. I'm going to
move forward and just say one quick thing about the last thing for me,
at least onto Santis is that I've noticed. Listen, I have to be
honest with you. It just wasn't in me to get involved in the primary
debates and writing about primaries yet I need it's just never ending. But anyway,
I've noticed that this narrative has taken hold, that the Santis is this
robot, this artistic person who has no personality, et cetera, et cetera.
I just wanted to read you something that I read today, and the
Frank Bruney has I pronounce a column at the New York Times. Here's the
tweet. From his style of hair to his dearth of flair, from his
emotional removed to his fugitive groove, there's something jarringly antimodern about the Santis.
He's more Tebird than Tesla. No matter the Musky announcement tonight. Now that
is like has really found his calling, hasn't he? Yeah? Well,
just I laughed when I read it because the president is Joe Biden. I
don't know how flair you know, what his groovy hair cuts all about,
or how modern he is, or if he's more Tesla than tebird. But
the very idea that a conservative and I mean this disposition early conservative person can
win the presidency is insane. I don't know it was Hillary like a groovy
modern check or was she just an old lady running for president? She didn't,
she didn't win. That's true. That was a bad That was a
bad example. Is Joe Biden a groovy modern person? I would say,
no, no, yeah, anyway, it just makes me laugh. I
mean, they're they're completely in on their call in on this narrative. So
I think that, like with with expectations that go with other candidates, when
he comes out and he's going to show himself to be more you know,
more friendly or or funnier or maybe as a dry So I don't even know
anything about Ron de Santis personally, it's going to backfire on them. So
I am like a pro and a con thing here to stay. So first
off, what I find funny it's everybody's like, oh, Ron de Santis
has failed to take flight. The dude hasn't even announced for president, and
he is polling very strong second in states, nationally, etc. Like who's
doing great, Nicky Hayley, Asa Hutchinson, Like those people are kind of
like you want to pat them on the head and say, that's cute that
you're running for president. But Ron de Santists without actually even running, isn't
a pretty good position, particularly given who he's up against. The Other thing,
though, is that I think it's interesting how many pundits think that they
control who the Republican electorate vote for, and how much they just sort of
like dismiss the ideas of the Republican voter. And the Republican voter is going
to get to say and who they want to be their nominee, and they've
already, I don't know, they've definitely expressed thus far that they want it
to be probably Trump, but if not Trump, de Santists. And I'm
not saying there's like not a scenario where someone else could get it. There
is, but the vast majority of Republican voters, according to poll want an
America First candidate who has these who has rejected the failed policies of that like
two thousand to twenty fifteen era Republican Party, whether it's you know, bailouts
for corporations or never ending wars, or amnesty and no boarders, or like
an economic policy that puts the needs of the worst corporations ahead of average Americans.
And I think there's like a lot of leeway in that space for you
know, what the views particularly are. But it's kind of a return to
a more Reagan or pre Reagan Republican party on some of this stuff. This
is the successful pre Reagan Republican Party. I know everything you just said is
basically baiting me into an argument, but I think it was. I mean,
you don't think like, oh, I think it was a complete utter
failure the pre Reagan Republican Party, the blood Gerald Ford not on foreign policy.
All right, I'm not going to take any of that bait. I'm
just going to say this to you. I think right now, name recognition
is what drives poll numbers, right, and I think Trump obviously has the
name recognition, and he was president and all of that. I think if
we looked at the same time in twenty sixteen, Trump was probably not on
top of polls, right, So it's just way too early to make Maybe
he was, I don't know, but it's just way too early to make
these pronouncements. I think that the media want Trump. I think they think
he's going to lose. I think they're scared of Ron de Santis because he
has been effective in Florida. And that's just their perspective. I'm not saying
it's right or wrong. I just think that's their perspective on things. Do
you disagree? I do. I always think there's this like cope in right
wing circles where people are like, actually the media love Trump. No they
don't, And they're like, the media gave Trump all sorts of free media,
you know, during twenty sixteen, and that's why he won. They
did give him all sorts of free media. That's not why he won.
He won because of his policies matching with the desires, his policies and approach
matching with the ideas of the Republican Party. But then also I don't know.
I mean, the media are clearly out of their minds with hatred towards
Ron de Santis, but in a way that seems thus far pretty conventional media
hatred. I think if he were to become a true threat to winning the
nomination, we would see them make him look like you know, Trump Hitler
Times twenty. I mean, that's always the case. I don't think they
like Trump. I think they think that Trump is easily beatable. I think
they thought that in twenty sixteen as well, and I think many of us
thought he was easily beatable in that year as well, wrongly. So yes,
I think if ron de Santis a month from now is ahead in the
polls you're going to see, I mean, I don't really know where they
can take it. You're pretending that it's conventional. You're just saying that it's
conventional. I mean, is it conventional to I guess that's a double ACP
has warning black people and gay people not to go to Florida because their lives
are in danger or whatever. But I mean that seems pretty conventionally, it
doesn't. I mean, I feel like that goes back to Reagan air.
I just want to clarify again. I really did only mean on foreign policy,
because I think you and I might agree there were major problems with the
economic policy or other things free Reagan. I mean to me some one angry
email, Yeah, I mean I don't. Maybe one day we'll do it.
Argue over history, have an argument over history. But I think Nixon
was, you know, a terrible president who was way far left wing on
most policies. I think, you know, they were just sort of aimless,
non ideological. I think Goldwater was amazing, of course, and I
think Reagan Reagan just fulfilled that promise. But anyway, at least rhetorically.
One quick thing also we should mention, and is that Tim Scott, who
also doesn't have much support and I think is kind of it's probably running for
vice president, right, isn't Nicky Haley? Isn't Tim Scott? Aren't these
people running for vice presidents like to me, I have no idea. I
said this before, this real no downside and running for president today, all
you do is get attention. All you do is raise some money. What
what's the downside do you want to do it? Well? I mean,
if you're a name and no one. Again, I've said I wouldn't win
an election of my own home. I don't just don't think my belief system
is popular among Americans. I think I'm out of touch with the American voter.
Uh yeah, I don't really even feel like mentioning the other people.
Okay, we'll skip over that. I had something to say there's probably well,
well, I'm just gonna say, I mean, well, the one
thing that did does always bother me, of course, is when you see
someone like Joy Bahar say that Tim Scott and she mentioned Clarence Thomas don't understand
the experience of the black you know, the black American they have not.
Meanwhile, those two, I believe, have like really inspirational stories to tell
about how you don't have to be a victim of a system, even if
you believe that stuff, which I don't. But the very idea of meritocracy
undermines, you know, the whole leftist worldview, right, So that's why
they have to sort of smear African Americans who don't aren't you know, who
don't believe the stereotypical things they you know, believe they must. So I
don't just want to mention that, I want to talk a little bit about
the Let's turn our attention to another topic, the death ceiling fight, which
is ongoing. Here's all I have to say on that. I wrote a
column about this. The I'm so sick of saying this, but the Preciss
coverage of this is just intolerably insufferably misleading. Some reporters don't even bother to
mention that the House has passed a bill hiking hiking the death ceiling. The
other the Day, Political at a story if get the reporter's name, saying
that Biden is a consensus maker, He's been trying to negotiate this whole time,
but Republicans are obstinate and they simply won't agree to anything. So where
does this all go? Meanwhile, I dug up quotes from in January showing
that Joe Biden has said repeatedly that the White has has said repeatedly they will
not negotiate on the death ceiling, and that Kevin McCarthy has been saying since
February, let's sit down and negotiate. But yet they have this prefabricated story
and they just continually publish it. They've been doing this since since since Bayner
and Obama were involved in these debates. Yeah. There, So the corporate
media messaging, particularly the Politico John Lemayer piece that you uttered evisrated, matches
completely with left wing Democrat messaging. I saw that AOC tweeted last night.
Why would anyone like Kevin McCarthy has the votes right now, he hasn't done
the work. He doesn't have the votes for his current proposal in the Senate,
he doesn't have the votes in the House. He doesn't even have the
votes in his own party, and the GOP are starting to feel that.
But I want to say that this tweet actually kind of excited me. And
let me first off point out the obvious AOC is writing this as if Kevin
McCarthy hadn't already passed a House increase on the debt limit, which he did
weeks ago, and she's just acting like it didn't happen. But the fact
that she's acting like this didn't happen, the fact that from mea Jaia Paul
called for riots in the streets if she doesn't get a like just clean debt
limit raise, the fact that the Senate, including supposed like yes people like
John Fetterman, but also saying mentally competent Democrat senators are saying like there's going
to be a fourteenth Amendment solution. The fourteenth Amendment exists so that the president
can unilaterally raise the debt ceiling limit, which is John, that was John
Fetterman. Yeah, these are insane reactions, and I think it's what you're
seeing is that the left, the Democrats, the media, they realize that
they're about to lose their first debt ceiling fight in forever maybe, and they
don't know how to cope with it, and they're just like lashing out everywhere.
So I love seeing the reaction of the left that I also want to
say, can I interject one quick thing. We're talking about taking spending levels
back to all the way back to twenty twenty two levels, so they're like,
there's this guy, oh, I think it's last name Stein is a
report at the Economics Report at the Washington Post, who is saying, like,
Democrats can't abide by this kind of massive cut into nutrition for the poor,
and you know, all this stuff when we're talking about going back to
twenty twenty two spending levels. And then Republicans the bill, I believe,
has a ten year window where you can raise spending or hike spending by one
percent per year, which is completely reasonable. And by the way, whenever
you pull this question, the vast majority of people, like seventy percent are
in the side of Republicans as when it comes to cutting spending connected to I'd
actually just pause to read these Jeff Stein Washington Post chief Stein. Yeah,
this guy is the one who last week tweeted out that John Fetterman had made
a mentally coherent comment in a hearing, when in fact he had not spoken
sentences, And Jeff Stein cleaned up the quote to make it make sense and
tweeted out that that's what Fetterman had said. Betterman is unable to speak,
he's able, he's unable to do his duties. He's unable to deliberate.
He's unable to do anything, and everyone knows it. And if this were
a Republican it would be the number one story leading everything, like day after
day that the Republicans are monsters for letting someone who's mentally unable to fulfill his
duties preside in the Senate. And Jeff Stein is that level of Pravda like
propagandist. He said again last night, I really do not know how this
ends. It is very hard for me to see how the White House accepts
the kinds of cuts to programs like education, rental aid, nutrition for poor
families that the GOP seems to have made their red line. Do not envy
the White House comms team that could be tasked with figuring out how to spin
a deal that is directionally similar to the Goop cuts they spent months incinerating.
At the end of the day, it sure looks like President Biden is going
to have to pick out pick between the unilateral options they view as all incredibly
risky and cuts as big as six percent twelve percent to a huge chunk of
domestic programs that are too numerous to share to list here. He's like the
last hysterical And as you said, it's about bringing spending back to a few
months ago. Well, discretionary spending has been raised by twenty three percent in
the last two years because of a COVID emergency. Now this happens all the
time. Whatever spending they're going to do is going to be the new sacred
baseline that can never be breached again. And this is why it's so disastrous
when you let them or give them an emergency bill or let them spend more
money. It's completely irresponsible. But it amazes me how many ECON reporters,
people are supposed to understand economics, could literally just move over, switch their
bio to Bernie Sanders campaign manager and would sound and they could just tweet out
the same exact stuff. It is just amazing. Okay. So I also
want to say that this whole imbroglio does show how much Democrats mismanage things.
So I think it was like in February that Chuck Schumer said, mark my
words, the Republicans are not going to come up with a plan. We're
going to get a clean debt limit and it's a clean debt limit increase,
and you had Biden saying, I refuse to even acknowledge the reality that the
House is controlled by Republicans. I am going to deny the election results and
refuse to negotiate with this chamber because like that's my red line. And now
we are a few days before we're about to have default situation and Biden is
negotiating with McCarthy. Schumer is nowhere to be found. Democrats are losing their
minds calling for fourteenth Amendment solutions and AOC being hysterical, you know, Premier
Jaya Paul calling for riots in the streets like the BLM riots of twenty twenty
that were led by Democrats that cause like so much destruction to the country.
And I think it really shows that the Democrats have failed to realize the new
political realities of the Republican Party. And I think maybe we're all as shocked
as anybody that Kevin McCarthy has done a good job of channeling all that.
But even with the likely concessions that will still have to be made by the
Republicans, they've just kind of won this. I mean, they're not going
to get everything that they put in their bill, but if they are able
to keep next year's spending level at this year's spending, that's something that you
know, as you point out those like a ridiculously like low bar given how
much spending has increased in the past couple of years, but that's something that
hasn't happened in recent memory. That's true. He has done a good job,
or I think maybe we should stress that Democrats have done a terrible job
in gambling put you know, gambling on the idea that Republicans would never be
able to pass any kind of plan or bill. I mean, you mentioned
Chuck Schumer. He would be out daily tweeting at McCarthy saying, where's your
plan, where's your plan? And now he has no plan. Republicans have
a plan. Where's his plan? No one, no one asks, So
yeah, I think that's all true, though I'm not as confident as others
that Republicans have won, though I think maybe politically they have one. I
could see Biden, who does not care about the Constitution, abuses it constantly
unilaterally. I could see him moving to that fourteenth Amendment option rather than dealing
with a political fallout from the left. I don't know what happens then.
I assume the Supreme Court overturns it. I don't know. That would cause
immense damage to the markets and everything else, So we'll see. I will
say though that my piece the other day was basically what I wanted to point
out was that every story you read about this in corporate media frames the debate
as hostage takers and consensus builders, meaning the organic position, the position you
have to land on, is obviously the one where you pass a clean bill.
Where I don't know why anyone thinks that the debt ceiling was invented to
control spending. Literally, this is the best time to discuss that issue.
Like the idea that McCarthy's going to be like, Okay, Biden, we'll
discuss spending cuts at another time, I trust you, is absolutely insane.
Biden is the guy who did the student loan thing. Through executive action,
he passed a massive is it the biggest bill in his the most expensive bill
in history using reconciliation, not a single Republican vote. There is no way
he is a builder of a consensus builder. I mean, it's just completely
insane, and McCarthy has no reason to trust him. We'll see how it
turns out. I think it's a really bad spot for Biden because he's either
going to be he hammered by his left or he's going to have to deal
with doing something terrible like the fourteenth Amendment option. So he doesn't really have
a good way out of this. One less kind of same one thing about
the media I've been thinking about. I'm working on a project. I've been
thinking about this. You know, if you go back all the way to
even the sixteen hundreds, when journalism sort of first started, there has never
been unbiased media. It was always like there were royalist media, there were
republican media, there was this kind of media, there was Tory media.
The whole idea of an unbiased press is a completely new, you know,
twentieth century idea so or mid twentieth century idea, so I don't think we're
ever going back like I saw some of our colleagues saying that we need to
like destroy the media and rebuild it. I don't think that's ever going to
happen. But what the right wing money, a lot of people with the
money don't understand, is that you have to build a right wing media.
I've said this before. You will never be able to fix corporate media.
Never. It's not even like it's corporate media anymore because a lot of these
institutions, like the Washington Post where Jeff Stein works, they are just vanity,
have vanity ownership, right, It's not like they're making a lot of
money. They're just left wingers. Just prop them up and right right wing
needs the same thing. Or you're never going to win these battles in the
media. Maybe it doesn't matter, but anyway, no. I will also
add to that, like you have the you have almost nobody who's not a
leftist supporting our current media environment and what they do, but they still have
Their funding from big corporations and big billionaires is astronomical, and the funding that
the people who fight their false narratives get is extremely small. And you get
what you invest in And if you have every corporation, every like bad corporation
in America propping up Joe Scarborough and you know, the Washington Post and the
New York Times, you're gonna get lots of Russia collusion hoaxes and Brett Kavanaugh
rape smears and any you know whatever. Like they're like twenty five things every
day that they're doing their lives that dominate the entire media landscape. And even
the ostensibly like right of center publications and media outlets like react to it as
if it's worth reacting to. You have to bite against it really hard.
And it takes reporters because it's not about pushing back with like philosophical arguments or
opinion pieces. You have to do the hard reporting. And hard reporting costs
money, not just for the reporters but for the editors and for all the
support. And then you have to fight the big tech censorship industrial complex,
which our government is part of. And so yeah, if you don't want
the corporate media to destroy the country, you have to invest in. So
if anyone wants to invest, please, we have a media foundation at the
Federalist and are happy to take any and all donations to them. Yeah,
and then when Musk has this platform that lets anyone speak, they have,
they get there, you know, they get hysterical. All right. So
well, I just had an idea. If people want to give money to
the Federalist, they should email Jeremy j E. R E M Y at
the Federalist dot com and he will help you set up a donation. Yeah,
I'm done. Please do. I didn't even go into that rant to
raise money, but I think it's a good segue for sure. Um.
I mean, listen, I think opinions important, obviously, I do that
a lot. I think it's important to have ideas and to push back.
But without the underlying journalism and reporting, there is no ammunition there. That's
you know, that's supremely important. Um. Can we move on. Let's
move on. Let's move on to the Dodgers. The Los Angeles Dodgers,
garbage organization and target. So what do these two things have in common?
Well, I don't know if people saw, but the Dodgers had invited a
group called the Sisters, Sisters of the Perpetual Indulgence, which is just particulous,
you know, says a lot about them. But anyway, they're kind
of like an anti Catholic organization right, who mock faith or not even mock
it. I would say, they do very despicable things that that are unneeded.
It's not like the it's not like what was that French magazine called that
was where the people were shut Charlie, Charlie, hebdo. It's not like
there there's biting social commentary about the church. It's just mocking and demeaning faith
and people of faith. And they were disinvited, I believe, at first
by the Dodgers, but then after being educated by people, the Dodgers reinvited
them and sent this Struggle Session letter that is hilarious to read about apologizing to
these these demented people and then reinviting them to to Dodger Stadium to participate in
Pride Night or whatever. I just don't understand what these teams and corporations are
thinking. Why do they even have to get involved in this sort of thing
in the first place. Why can't they just be a political Yeah? I
mean, I think the left has done a really good job of, in
fascist fashion, getting corporations to align with their party to push their political narrative,
and they've worked really hard to bully them into doing it. And so
sort of like Pride Night was the camel's nose underneath the tent, and now
it's like full on demonic blasphemy, anti Catholic, anti Christian, bigoted hate
groups who are going to be featured on Pride Night at at Dodger Stadium.
And yeah, they never should have been invited in the first place. Then
when they were and it caused an outcry among the Roman Catholic and Christian fan
base, they were disinvited. And then that's when the heavy hitters came in,
the people who actually run the country, the regime. They said,
you will apologize, bow down to the sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, and you
will do this struggle session, or we will destroy you. And so the
Dodgers, understanding that their fan base doesn't mean anything but that the Woke You
Left BSG movement can actually make life difficult for them, they bowed down so
quickly. They're on their knees. They are humiliating themselves, begging for forgiveness
from a group that mocks. You know, it's not just like the Roman
Catholic Church, which as a Lutheran, you know, I'm not a big,
huge fan of but still try to respect. They actually mock and disparage
and blaspheme our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, and there is I mean,
it's just so awful. I think I've noticed the media not really being
honest about who the sisters of Perpetual Indulgence are so that they can kind of
like ride this out. But you know, I was talking to my family
member who is a lifelong Dodgers fan, and he told me he's done.
So I don't know how many people are like that, but at least the
people I know, they just don't feel like they can in good conscience support
an organization that hates Jesus, which apparently the Dodgers are aligning themselves with.
Did you you know those signs they have in front of houses progressives that says
like in this house, I love is love and kindness is everything. Well
is it kindness to have drag queens celebrating the mocking the stations of the Cross
in a bar crawl where they give back condoms for sex. I mean,
these are the kinds of things that this group does. They have a naked
man on top of a cross like doing some kind of sicko dance like,
you know, I don't understand they have. I mean to make it clear.
They have a Jesus on a cross, then they have a naked man
performing at on the Jesus on the cross. It's really bad. I mean,
it's really really bad stuff. So this is the kind of person that
the Dodgers apologized too. Yeah, and then said these words which always make
me laugh. I can't help it. We will continue to work with the
LGBTQ plus partners to better educate ourselves. Have you ever heard of a gay
activist saying, you know, I could be educated on let me be educated
on what Catholics really believe, or let me be educated on what social conservatives
are find offensive. No, the only people who can educate are BLM activist
and gay activists. I don't need to be educated by people who have these
stupid ideas of a gender. Wow, forgive me, David, but I
love telling leftists that they need to educate themselves. It's just like makes me
laugh so much, Like you need to educate yourself about basic biology, you
need to educate yourself about you know what the world's biggest religion teaches about.
Educate is just a euphemism for a basement basically at this point, which turns
me to Target. And by the way, I am not some like crazy
social conservative type. I just want normalcy. I just want to go watch
a baseball game and a hockey game and not be hit over the head with
flags that have eight hundred colors on them telling me that, you know,
I need to celebrate someone's sexuality. It's just ridiculous. It's un American because
I judge people by their actions, not by the people they sleep with.
Well maybe not always Target Target woman walks in I think this started on a
TikTok I'm not sure, but a woman walks in and sees that the Target
sells clothes you know that let people express their gender choices and or whatever.
But one of them and I, you know, hate to get into this
hero on this family friendly podcast, but helps children, you know, do
talking, which is like, you know, makes a a boy feel like
a girl. And what made me crazy was this morning I opened up an
Associated Press story on this where they're like, falls, this is just conservative
misinformation because Target doesn't sell this kind of thing only to children and children's sizes
only adults like children never buy a small adult or anything like that, and
then you read like a thousand words of gibberish and journalistic sounding rhetoric, and
then you get to the end and it says Target only sells kids swim swim
shirt shirts swim shirts. I think it's skirts with a tag reading thoughtfully fit
on multiple body types and gender expressions, which is literally the same exact thing.
So this is a usual And then there's no other way to put it.
It's gaslighting. They want to gaslight you into believing that this isn't actually
happening, that there isn't some guy who says he's a Satanist designer or whatever
making clothes for Target, that they're not perpetuating this kind of demented idea that
children can change their sex. Yeah. No, I the associated press is
dangerous propaganda, and it's good when people can realize that. But I thought
that was a great example of it. They said that when Targets sold swimsuits
to hide male Genitalian present as a female, that that's not tucking, that's
gender affirming. And so therefore when people on the right call it tucking their
false that is not fact checking, that's just straight up propaganda. On behalf
of the regime. I just saw this tweet from Justin Hart who said that
his wife was pointing out that when the left burns cities to the ground,
the media claimed that's mostly peaceful protests, and that when moms decide to shop
less at Target, that's violent threats. And that's basically meeting. Yeah,
yes, show up a school board meeting and ask questions. Violent threats.
Even journalists regurgitated without skepticism or demands for any kind of substantiation. Targets claims
that its customers were like too mad about this and that they were confronting workers,
and I mean it was actually kind of fight. They were trying to
like suggest that they were violent, but they were really like, they're shopping
less, they're asking questions, they're confronting workers, all things that Americans have
a right to do in a free society. And you know, again,
the left will support using these corporations in fascist like fashion to push their political
ideology. I just want to, like, I think people think fascists means
like authority figure I don't like, but it really kind of refers to corporations
working with the political party that's dominant to control a country. And that's what
we have right now with TARGET working with the Democrat Party to push like ratical,
extreme and dangerous gender ideology on children. I don't you know, I
don't have a problem. I'm one of these people who, like I have
these lines that people when they crossed them, I just can't in good conscience
keep supporting someone. So I have no problem not going to TARGET. I
actually think that people who don't want the destruction of their country should be willing
to give up things that they really like. Like I had to give up
baseball a few years ago, and I was the world's biggest baseball fan.
I mean I lived breathed baseball. I was a huge Saint Louis Cardinals fan.
I had been upset that they shut down for COVID. I had been
really upset that they engaged in the racism of the BLM movement. And I
had even written them a letter saying, like, you can't do this anymore.
This politics is not like, I can't in good conscience continue to support
you. And then the next year MLB said that if you make elections in
Georgia more secure and have more integrity, and you work through the democratic process
to make that happen. We will economically target you as our savior, Joe
Biden told us to do. And at that point I was like, well,
I can't support Major League Baseball anymore, like they're actively working to destroy
the country. And so for me, I mean, I stopped, and
I just stopped, and it's not been a problem for me. I mean,
I miss it, but I don't miss it enough to go back to
being a fan. I will continue boycotting Target as I have my whole life.
I will not be going there anymore. I'm not really a boycott or
you know, but I have to say when it comes to my kids and
targeting kids, that is I think a red line for me. I don't.
I don't. I just can't even contemplate why someone would do it.
And let's let me just quickly say that I believe again, I'm not have
the quotes exactly right, but the CEO initially of Target said we're doing this
with a good of society or some nonsense. It's just ideological twaddle, right.
I mean, the idea that you need to have specialized clothing for this,
of course, is just it's it's it's like a virtue signal. It
doesn't really exist, you know, in any way that that matters in the
real world. And sometimes I do wonder about this as well. I mean,
there are a lot of gay Americans who just go to work. They're
normal, they don't, they don't politicize their private lives in this way.
Aren't when you know, aren't they distraught or put off by the idea that
the most the craziest, most offensive people represent or put forward as representatives of
their movement, that people who want to commerce others to accept ideas are put
at the forefront of their you know, to claim to represent them. When
when someone says, oh, yeah, Jewish people say this or that and
you and claimed to be represented as Jewish people, I am deeply offended because
they are not. So I do wonder about that as well, or when
that is or if that's ever going to turn, And maybe it's not,
I don't know. Anyway, Let's get out of politics. Let's talk a
little bit about culture. I actually have watched a couple of things this week,
how about you. I was traveling to my cousin's wedding, which was
beautiful in Denver, and so I also went to my niece's graduation outside of
Omaha. That was also wonderful, just a beautiful wedding. I was crying
the whole time. It was great to see my family. And then the
graduation was also great. And I have to say my niece went to a
government high school, and I'm not a fan, but her graduation ceremony included
an excellent speech from this kid who talked about how they'd all been on like
a hero's journey, and it was really well argued and inspirational. And then
the superintendent gave a speech on how failure is an option and how everything great
that happened in this country happened after like multiple failures, and how they need
to stop like being victims of cancel culture or anxiety and just like get out
there and get ready to fail and then succeed. And I was like,
this is fantastic. It was great. A core idea of American life is
the failure is part of it. Like every great American builder or thinker had
failed numerous times. Sometimes when they didn't fail, they would actually create a
mythology about failing, like it is part of the American DNA that you can
fail and pop back and achieve something. So that sounds like an amazing speech.
I love that you call them government schools, because at some point people
decided that public was less jarring than state run school I want to actually plug
a podcast that probably a million people listened to already, and I think someone
on our staff when we were together a few weeks ago recommend it to me,
but I don't remember who, so I hope that person is listening The
Rest is History podcast with Tom Holland and Dominic Sandbrook I think is his name
to historians. I had to go on a long drive this weekend and I
could not stop listening. I didn't want the car right to end. It
is I think my other than you're wrong with David Arsani, Molly having Way
my favorite podcast maybe or the Federal Stradio Hour, so third it is third.
Tom Holland's an amazing history and his books are fantastic, very They're almost
like reading novels. They're just popular history is usually on ancient history. They're
amazing. I've only read one book by Dominic Sandbrook, I think is his
name. I might be getting it wrong, but their ability to see the
world through the eyes of the people who are living that history is just really
really compelling. It's very well done, and they also have a very diverse
or like they'll do one on like Reagan Contra, and then they'll do one
on like Herodotus. Then they'll do it like it's not anything you know,
it's not just ancient history. It's it's all over the well. They'll do
like famous pigeons in history or like you know whatever. It's just really inventive
and fun. Anyway, I just wanted to plug that, Okay. Well,
I also made a little more progress in my Bible reading, and I
at first did not love Deuteronomy. I was telling Sean Davis this and he
was like, oh, do you have edits to suggest to God about Deuteronomy.
I was like, well, I was just like really enjoying Genesis,
Exodus, Leviticus, numbers, and then Deuteronomy, say, isn't great?
And Deuteronomy was kind of repeating all this stuff. And then the end just
you start realizing, like the repetition of the law is has a purpose to
make sure people understand like how seriously to take it. And then it ends
with like Moses not being able to get into Canaan, and it was very
I cried and I'm like, I can't and I'm not like really a crier
when when reading stuff like that, And I couldn't believe what an amazing man
Moses was like to go with him through all five books, you know,
in terms of either his writing or his story, and I'd really been struck
by how great these people were. In Genesis Abraham, you know, and
I found that very harsh. It doesn't he's not able to go in because
he killed the Egyptian men. No, I think it's because he hadn't trusted
God. When he had said, like, hit the rock and water will
come out, and he like hits it twice. It's sort of like hadn't
he'd lost his faith. So all these jamok who were building idols in the
middle of the desert because he didn't show up in like a half an hour,
they get to go into Canaan and start a new new life, a
new world. But Moses doesn't. I feel like there was also something about
some of them having to die off before they could go in even just the
forty years. And I want to skip ahead before I go back to Deuteronomy,
because I also read Joshua and seeing how I don't know if I'd quite
realized how much conquering had to happen. When Israel makes it to the Promised
Land. I kind of just thought God had delivered them to this place where
they could just inhabit it and all would be good, and seeing that they
had to actually conquer it. And I also like how it goes into like
the actual war plans and the tricks. You know, there's like the city
of i Ai, which was interestingly named, and how they don't sit enough
men at first and they kind of get slaughtered, and then they go back
and they pretend they're just doing the same thing, but they actually have a
much bigger army and they lure them out of the city and then they conquer
It is a lot of Again, Sean Davis was joking that I've read from
Genesis to Genocide, because you know, Joshua is just a lot of a
lot of kids going on. Well it's but not for ethnicity so much.
I mean, it's because they do not follow God. But there was this
thing in Deuteronomy, you know how in the early books of the Bible,
there's a lot of like God will punish people like a father will sin,
and the punishment will go to the third and fourth generation. But there was
also this thing in Deuteronomy that says fathers shall not be put to death because
of their children, nor shall children be put to death because of their fathers.
Each one shall be put to death for his own sin, meaning if
you commit a capital crime, you cannot like other people aren't going to have
to pay for that. And I thought that would be like a good lesson
of justice for our current moment. Even sorry for going off on this,
but so much of this is about laying out what justice is and what it
isn't and the modern left has completely turned conceptions of justice on their head.
And you realize that even in these like harsh Old Testament era, there are
all sorts of ideas about having people be scapegoats who aren't responsible for their sin,
or how like justice should be only to a point and anything beyond that
is like an unacceptable vengeance. And so you're saying, yahweh would oppose reparations
for instance, Yes, I agreed, and I also sorry. In Deuteronomy
twenty eight, there's this it's like that I laid before you a blessing and
a curse, and it's so nice, like the blessing part is like,
you follow my law, You're going to be happy, You're going to be
healthy, you're going to have a beautiful wife, you're going to have children,
crops will grow great, your flocks will prosper. And it's like a
nice vision of what happens if you follow God's law. And it's like if
you don't follow my law, and then it's like straight out of a Liam
Neeson revenge movie. It's like you will you will be betrothed to someone,
but another man will ravish her, and your children will be born but taken
away into slavery, and your crops will die, and your animals will all
have like wasting away illness, and it just goes on and on and on,
and I was like, I'm actually scared right now. It is and
it is interesting the sort of juxtaposition of a national chronicle and also I'm not
saying a mythology, but you know, the theological aspects of it and how
they're intertwined in those books. I haven't read them in a long time,
but yeah, I'm just gonna read one more verse. Ye strong, be
strong and courageous, do not fear or be in dread of them. For
it is the Lord, your God who goes with you. He will not
leave you or forsake you. So like I think a lot of people read
these books and they focus on, you know, how harrowing the situation is,
but it's also very comforting, how much God reminds his people that he's
there with them. And I don't know, I've been loving it. Well,
you just keep checking in where I think it's very interesting and you're taking
us a small part on this journey with you. Now, my next thing
I have is so dumb compared to what you were just talking about that I
feel I don't even know if I should go forward, but I will.
I had I watched a movie. It's from two thousand and four and it's
a movie from Hong Kong at the time, China. Now, I guess
that it's called Kung Fu Hustle. Have you ever heard about this movie?
Now? It is the weird one of the weirdest movies I've ever seen.
I did not want to watch it. Someone convinced me too, and I
think it's one of my favorite movies that I've seen in years. It is
so funny and inventive and it's not really what It sounds like when I was
a kid and we only had like three, three or four channels, they
used to do on Saturdays to play like Kung Fu movies for us all day.
I don't know if you're you're probably younger than me, but anyway,
they would play these all day on like the local channel, and I love
them, and this is sort of like a satire of them, and it's
just very funny. I can't even explain what it's about, but people who
know what I'm talking about grew up in the same time period, might enjoy
it. Then I watched a remake of White Man Can't Jump on Hulu,
which I did not like, but I have to say the reviews were terrible.
I thought they were better. And then I watched the original, which
has a real heart to it with Wesley Snipes and Woody Harrelson. A very
funny movie. And that is all. Oh. I did watch an NBA
game, which I have never really been into basketball, and the Denver watch
Lebron lose is how I know it. When I was back at my cousin's
wedding, every all my cousins and siblings and everything, they were all watching,
right, I don't know what game that was, like Game two or
Game three, and I just seemed like, I feel a little bit bad
that sports has so turned me off that my children don't get to experience what
it's like to cheer for a team. So I let my oldest watch the
end of the Nuggets defeating sweeping the Lakers so that they could head to the
NBA Championship. Yeah, Denver must be going crazy. I miss Colorado a
little jealous when I hear that you go back. Someone should invite me to
speak or something there. If you're listening. It was beautiful, but it
was crazy. The air quality was so bad that my eyes were burning.
I couldn't breathe. I had a headache, which I don't think was from
an altitude, but it could have been, I guess. And it's because
there are these massive Canadian fires that are like the airstream was carrying the smoke.
I mean, you felt like you weren't just at a campfire, but
like in the middle of it. It was crazy. Yeah, I bet
well. Anyway, thank you, thank you for joining me, Molly,
and thank you for joining me everyone else. And we'll be back next week
and until then, be lovers of freedom. And anxious for the fray, and