Hello, everyone, Welcome back to a new episode. If you were wrong
with Molly Hemingway and David Harsani. If you'd like to reach the show,
please do so at radio at the Federalist dot com. We'd love to hear
from you. Hey, Molly, another week, another bunch of a batch
of indictments against Donald Trump. This time yeah, in Georgia. This Georgia
one was one that we've been anticipating for many, many months, and it
finally came through. It was clearly quite delayed, but it finally came through.
So everyone can look through it, and it is like the others,
complete bad guano insanity. But what do you what do you think of it?
David? I have, like I always have these conflicting thoughts when I
read through these indictments. It's like, I'm like, why is Donald Trump
the way he is? Then I'm like, this is not something that should
be in the criminal realm, and this is something that should be in the
political realm. And if if I was a voter who read through this,
I would say Donald Trump doesn't belong to, you know, in the presidency.
But when I see that, when I see that, let me just
what you're like? What Actually, I'm kind of surprised that you're taking this
entire approach here, because are you saying that you don't think people who can
test elections should be or what was the particular problem with this contestation? I
think that then that's my second point there is that I think that your should
be allowed to contest elections, even in the way Donald Trump has, and
that that should not be a criminal offense. But when you make it a
criminal offense, that there's a reaction to that by a lot of people who
say, hey, listen, I'm going to rally around this guy because you're
just coming after him for political reasons. The big picture situation with Georgia,
if we can just take a big step back at let's look at the neighboring
state of Florida. Florida goes one point Republican in twenty sixteen, and four
years later it goes three plus points republican. Georgia, right across the border,
somewhat similar demographics, goes from five points Republican twenty sixteen to one point
Democrat in twenty twenty, and it's like, huh, what happened there?
What made the people of Florida love Donald Trump, And even though it's like
highly contested state where all the Democrats were really playing to win, and what
made the people of Georgia swing so radically to the Democrats side? And part
of the story, like a somewhat smaller part of the story, is the
immigration patterns into Georgia versus Florida, where you get a higher quality of people
coming to Florida the Georgia. But a lot of it is there was a
systematic takeover of the election process. You know, people like to make fun
of Stacy Abrams or whatever her name is, but she worked to take control
of the election system in a way that radically benefited Democrats. And even that,
even though that's like a very long complicated story itself, even that would
not have been sufficient without Mark Zuckerberg's two left wing groups that worked to take
over the government election offices in a way that systematically benefited Democrats. And there
were two groups. They were funded to the tune of four hundred and nineteen
million dollars. Georgia was far and away the state that they targeted in like
an extreme takeover attempt that would help both with the presidency and the Senate.
And they came into nationwide, these groups came mostly into the blue areas of
swing states. In Georgia, that's true also, but Georgia is unique in
that the Republican Secretary of State actually invited them in. You might remember that
in June of twenty twenty, they had a primary where the Democrats who run
the elections in fulland County had like a complete disaster. They had twelve hour
weight lines for the primary. The New York Times sounded like Sidney Powell in
writing about it, so did the Washington Post in Politico, and they were
alleging like trenanigans with the election system. And Ravensberger and his team did not
like the negative coverage from the New York Times, so they welcomed in the
Zuckerberg groups. And they were like, well, let them take over the
Fulton County elections and we'll take that money and we'll use it to help out
with Democrat get out the vote efforts. And they did. Now in so
doing, they did things like mailed mail and ballid applications to everybody in the
state. They had an agreement. Even this is like some of this is
Zuckerberg related, some of this isn't. They did an agreement they signed to
make it much easier to pass signature verification as part of this massive mail in
ballot effort, and they did take over the blue counties of this state to
help out with like maximizing Democrat vote, and there were other things that,
like the Secretary of State's office not the most office I've seen out there,
they also did things like allowed even though they were kind of notified that this
was a problem, that there was a lot of illegal voting, by which
I mean in the state of Georgia, if you're a law abiding citizen,
you do not vote in a different county than the one that you're registered in,
even if you live in the different county. And in the twenty twenty
election, there's pretty good evidence that a number significantly exceeding the margin of victory
did that. And the remedy in state law is that you should have had
a new election. They already had a new election already on the books because
they had the Senate runoff, so it would not have been that difficult.
And the Secretary of State's office was resisting any effort to get to the bottom
of that bucket of votes, along with all the other buckets of problematic votes.
They were not helping people figure out what was good or bad. But
there it's okay to challenge an election like this, like George's was something of
a mess, and that's why they cleaned up their election laws a little bit
in the year following. Okay, I don't like how my initial statement came
out, so I'm going to revise it. Just to some extent, I
don't like the way Rudy Giuliani acted or Donald Trump acted incompetently in my view
when challenging these things kind of scattershot way that I don't think a competent person
would have reacted to this kind of thing. But what you said was,
I'm sure it's all true your expertise on this that I do not, but
a lot of that needs to be taken care of before elections, not after
elections. There's it's very difficult to challenge a lot of the things that went
on. Stop. No. So, first of all, I in the
book, I'm very critical of Rudy Giuliani, mostly for what he did in
Pennsylvania. I actually don't think he was a huge player in Georgia. It
was enough of a player in Georgia. He was not good in how he
handled any of the post election litigation at all. I will grant you that,
okay, but that's not the story in Georgia. The story in Georgia
is that a really good lawsuit was filed, and you know, you have
to do these like when you know nothing, when you know very little,
and so they're getting information from all these different people. They put together a
lawsuit. And by the way, when you're getting information from different people,
some of the information they got turned out to be like really good, like
what I just told you about. That was the kind of claim that someone
brought forth. It was this data expert whose dad once ran for governor of
Georgia and he got really into like voter data and he's really solid and really
knows his stuff. And another stuff is like people say aliens came in and
they took over the ballot box. Now, when you're filing the laws,
and that was an extreme exaggeration. That doesn't work now because my point is
when you file a lawsuit and you say, okay, this person says that
four hundred dead people vote, and this person says that there's tens of thousands
of illegal votes, you can put it all in the lawsuit and then as
it proceeds, you're kind of like getting more information, which is what they
wanted from the Secretary of State's office to kind of resolve some of this.
Now. Had the Secretary of State's office been compliant, they would have,
for instance, figured out very quickly that the claim on the tens of thousands
of illegal votes was valid, and they would have figured out very quickly that
the number of dead votes was not significant enough. Number of dead people voting
was not significant enough to matter, okay. And the office was resistant,
basically operating as if they were like a contrary party, you know, and
it all goes through. The lawsuit was good. The court system there was
a nightmare. I write about this in the book. They couldn't get a
judge. The judges that they would get and then then wouldn't work out,
were very compromised. They couldn't get a date. They finally get a date
for the hearing, and it's like either the day before or the day after
January sixth. The entire point is to challenge the election while it matters,
not after, and so the delays in the judges like delaying it passed the
time when the Electoral College votes are taking place, delaying it until the time
when the actual votes are being tabulated. This is all a major problem.
It's not in this case, Rudy Giuliani's problem. It's certainly not Donald Trump's
problem. And to blame them for problems that are well outside their control is
and then to criminalize that is ridiculous. Let's set aside, just for a
moment, whether you like the way Rudy Giuliani or Donald Trump acted, or
whether it was fair or not. Right, Let's just set that aside and
talk about the Rico indictment basically, which is a rico. I don't know
if people know this. It was passed I think federally at least in the
nineteen seventies to deal with mafia types because they have brackets here influenced and corrupt
organizations act right, right, So essentially prosecutors had a very tough time dealing
with, uh, you know, big organizations that had a lot of moving
parts and that weren't so obviously in a conspiracy together to commit a specific crime.
I think that Rico should be unconstitutional. I've said this long before Donald
Trump was even you know, a political character there. It is seems to
be very unconstitutional to have this wide net that that basically allows you to go
after a bunch of people who have some of who have done who have not
willingly committed a crime or willingly wanted to commit a crime, or even known
that there were other crimes going on. I mean, everyone has due process
rights. It's basically just used so that you can pressure a bunch of people
on the periphery of something that's going on to go after some main person and
that here, that's Donald Trump. It is completely ridiculous because this is supposed
to be about election interference or overturning democracy, but yet that's not really the
crime. There's no this is about fraud, and it's about all kinds of
other criminal acts that have nothing to do with an election, you know,
overturning an election. As I read this thing, you know, a lot
of the supposed conspiracy is just saying stuff. Now I realize that they're not
being charged on those comments. Donald Rump is not being charged on a Twitter,
a tweet or whatever. But the conspiracy wouldn't exist without those tweets,
and they were public, So how can they be this criminal conspiracy if we
knew what he was saying, and he was sending lawyers to fight these things.
It doesn't make sense or we even get into that stuff, though,
I want to stick on the Rico thing. Margot Cleveland wrote a great look
at sort of like the six different buckets of charges in this Georgia thing,
and she says, the first one is RICO, and there are two problems
with going after them for RICO violations. And I will just say I'd heard
from a smart attorney that the Georgia Rico statute is even worse than most states
RICO statutes. So there's that. But RICO is supposed to be going after
an enterprise, and as agatting Andy McCarthy pointed out, the whole point of
the enterprises that it exists in perpetuity or you know, like it exists over
long course of time. And Margaret was saying, this group of people was
gathered with an objective. The objective was to challenge the election. Should that
objective be achieved, well achieved, or fail, the enterprise quote unquote goes
away. The only thing they were there for was for that act. And
then the second thing she says is that they are tried as if they're being
charged with unlawfully attempting to change the election in Trump's favor. But the actual
things mentioned in the indictment are more about trying to get the legislator to investigate
the election. And so it doesn't even work even on that first order,
right, there's there's no real criminal act. Like even when Rudy Giuliani is
saying, like the voting machines don't work, to the legislators to investigate,
why can't he I don't understand why that is part of any kind of criminal
conspiracy. That's part of he's asking someone to look into something. He's not
saying do something illegal here. I actually think I'm going to rewrite or pull
out of the book some stuff that I had about how the Washington Post,
the New York Times, and Politico back when they thought that they would have
to challenge the Georgia election right as Democrats, they sounded again like Sidney Powell
and Lynn would when they were talking about voting machines. And nobody has charged
the New York Times or Washington Post or Politico with any crime, even though
they are these people who are out there being like these machines can be compromised
by a foreign country and as someone reminded me just yesterday, USA Today ran
an article the day before the election claiming that they thought that there would be
problems with machines. Now I'm on record is not believing. I believe human
error is so much worse than machine error, like I would so wish Philadelphia
would turn over their voting to machines, like actual machines, rather than the
party machine of people. It is funny how people think that it's easier to
cheat through some sort of computer program which where you can see it's happening,
than through human either error or malfecence. Right now, if I can defend
both the Amy Klobuchar, Kamala Harris, Barack Obama senator types who've always been
obsessed with machines, and the USA Today, Washington Post, New York Times
people who were obsessed with machines when they thought that they Republicans might win elections,
and even you know, the Republicans who fought on election basis. It
is true that there are in fact a lot of problems with machines, including
an inability to to like detect it in real time or like academics have done
studies where there are failure rates in how things are registered, and even if
you get even if you get the ticket out, like they did a thing
a test where they like actually changed a vote on one of the races and
only seven percent of people checking their ticket noticed it, you know. So
there are all sorts of problems. So I don't want to belittle it completely.
I just think they're bigger problems with people. So yeah, I mean,
so here's the thing. The yesterday I think we're two days ago.
Actually Hillary Clinton was on you know, first of all, the television coverage
of this, the gloating over this, which is a serious problem for our
republic. Even if I don't care how much you hate Donald Trump, he's
the leading presidential candidate of the Republican Party right now, and he you know,
they want to put him in jail over a lot of what I think
our speech crimes. So, but the gloating and the laughing and the smiling.
And there's Hillary Clinton, who, first of all, I just want
to mention, has never accepted the results of the two thousand election, has
never was on the record saying that she doubted the veracity of voting, you
know, of the voting machine outcomes in Ohio, in two thousand and four
and who did not never accepted the not only did not accept twenty sixteen,
but work to use OPO research, launder through the press, helped by our
institutions of government, to basically undo the presidency that she you know that she
lost of Donald Trump. She's on TV laughing about this, and this to
me strikes It's not even hypocrisy, but it's just shows that there are two
systems of justice, and that makes it difficult al Gore. When I was
reading these indictments, I thought, Wow, al Gored did all the same
stuff. His lawyers did all of this most exactly this stuff. The only
they're like, you know, there's this mythology that he was a statesman at
stepped aside. No he didn't. He took it to the Supreme Court.
Supreme Court said, you can't steal an election. You can't just count votes,
recount votes in places that you want to and ignore everyone else. And
we can't keep having rehabbing elections just you know, voting just because you don't
like what happened. So anyway, al Gore should have been to help make
it's a conspiracy in the sense that it was worse than this conspiracy in many
ways going on Pennsylvania. The Pennsylvania case that Giuliani messed up was actually very
much like a Florida twenty twenty case on are you allowed to just count votes
in places where you you were expecting to get more votes and not do that
same level of diligence in areas where you wouldn't. And can I mention something
about, yeah, they recounted the votes using all the later recounted votes.
I think it was USA Today, Miami, Harold and they all Bush gained
votes in all using the very liberal standards, with the chads, with everything
else that the that the Democrats wanted in that election. And yet how many
people do you think believe that Bush actually won two thousand. I still see
people say that the Supreme Court gave them the election, which is just nonsense.
But anyway, so that double standard, I think, really but it
does. And it also speaks to another thing, though, which is,
yes, the Supreme Court had to get involved in two thousand and pretty much
everyone on the Court at that time and everyone on the Court at this time,
you know, thinks that was not great. Judges do not like to
get involved, and it's really bad. When you do have an election like
the one in Georgia because you need the judges to get involved but they refuse
to do so, or even like in Wisconsin, where the judges get involved,
but they're like, but don't think this. Yes you're right, but
we're going to We're not going to challenge the results of the election that was
affected by you being right and everybody else being wrong. And so it's a
it's a huge mess. So again big picture, the more we move from
clear coherent voting where everybody votes on the same day and they count the votes
on the same day into this election season with billions of dollars of outside Democrat
money influencing things, the worst it is for the entire system. Like nobody
trusts sayings. You don't even know how many votes are out, much less
how they're going to be counted. You don't have good transparency of what's being
counted. It's just a nightmare. And so if you care about the republic
holding together, you should work to clean up the system. And that's true
whether you're Democrat or Republican, or whether the people who are complaining right now
or a Republican or whether they were Democrat, like it's important that people trust
elections. There's a real tension there because in one way, you have to
try to get policies in place that tighten up these elections, that make them
fairer in all of that. But on the other hand, there are places
whether that's not going to happen, and you have to compete in the way
the Democrats do to try to win the back those states or win those states,
meaning, you know, you have to play the games they do or
you're never going to win another election. Right. So it's just a weird,
weird thing, isn't it. Yeah, you know, it's weird.
I just realized that last night I had a dream that involved ballot harvesting.
Exactly. That's so lame. I remember I used to dream, you know,
cool things about like flying in space, and now it's ballot harvesting.
It's really I feel bad for myself. Can I read something to you that
I wrote about in before the twenty twenty election, there was a Democrats got
together and Republicans to sort of play out a war game, if you will,
for the twenty twenty election. And then funny the Republicans who the people
who played the Republicans were like Bill Crystal and stuff like that. So ticket
for what it is. But in this fictional war game, John Podesta plays
Biden right, and so they they In one of the scenarios, Biden loses
the election. So this is what John Podesta does in this war game.
He edges voter suppression and then he persuades the Democratic governors of Trump won states
such as Wisconsin and Michigan to send pro Biden electors to the Electoral College.
In the meantime, he commits as California, Oregon in Washington to threaten to
secede from the Union. Of Trump takes office, the Democratic How's unilaterally names
Biden president and then quote at this point in the scenario the New York Times,
Ben Smith explains, the nations stopped looking to the media for cues and
waited to see what the military would do. Can you imagine, I mean,
this was this was John Podesta's best, uh you know, wait way
to deal with with losing an election, which is almost but even worse than
anything Donald Trump did in the conspiracy I know it's not real, but worse.
No, and all of this was being messaged I mean again, in
twenty twenty, there was an effort to get electors to change their votes.
There was an effort to overturn the election. This was participated in by prominent
Democrats. Sorry in twenty sixteen, and nothing happened. By the way,
tons of Democrats voted to not accept the votes from various states, and some
of those people are in leadership in the Democrat Party right now. You had
a third of the Democrats in the House refusing to show up for the inauguration
because they believed that Trump had stolen the election bycluding with Russia. And nothing
happened to these people. So we you know, I saw some people being
like, oharded, they were okay, But someone say it's bad to criminalize
challenging elections because now Democrats can be in trouble for it. It's like,
wake up people, wake up people. There has been nothing but challenging elections
from Democrats since two thousand and all that happens is rewarding. And then you
have like legitimate problems like twenty twenty election, which we all know was the
weirdest election of our lifetime, and they're trying to criminalize even acknowledging that,
discussing that, debating that, like it's frightening. I don't really think most
Democrats really understand what's happening here. I feel like or they're so hateful,
the political left is so hateful of Trump and Republicans in general, that they're
just they just never think it's gonna, you know, boomerang on them,
and they're probably right, but it does I mean, if the Washington Post
in twenty sixteen, which they did after the election, ran op eds from
people trying to convince electors to do exactly what Donald Trump was doing, isn't
that not a criminal act. I'm not saying it's a conspiracy, but it
is a criminal act. But yet they get away with it. I don't
know what even to charge. I don't even know what they could have charged
Hilly Clinton with honestly in twenty twenty. I mean there in twenty sixteen for
the Russia illusion stuff. I think there's plenty of illegal leaking. There's plenty
of laundering by the press knowing, you know, But I don't know even
know if charged that Jack Schaeffer was that his name? Did I just make
that up? Jack Smith? Who's yeah, Jack Shaffer's Jack Smith said that
Donald Trump was defrauding the United states by challenging the election. I think that's
preposterous. But in terms of like, if you can do that, then
certainly if you knowingly invent a conspiracy theory to try to control an election and
then keep using that conspiracy theory to undermine your country's standing in the world and
your country's operations, like I think probably we could come up with some stuff
for Hillary Clinton and everybody who participated. No, I'm sure, I'm sure
they could, but I think that that would be problematic, just as this
is. Yeah, but I just want to say the the Georgia case and
the dc J six case, in a way, even talking about the specifics,
like the specifics of them are cartoonish, cartoonish or like scary. You
know, you've already mentioned that some of these counts are supported by pointing out
that Donald Trump asked people to watch the media or to watch congressional hearings,
and they put that as like in furtherance of a conspiracy. Margot Cleveland's thing
notes that a lot of the charges are related to constitutionally protected efforts to petition
your government for a redress of grievances. These are all really scary, awful
things, but the point of these lawsuits is not to be tried in a
fair court of law. It's to just kind of get a quick conviction and
then they can maybe try to appeal up the road. And so by talking
about the specifics it's sort of legitimate, yes them in a way. The
whole thing is a joke. The whole thing is an attempt to destroy the
country, and there's nothing worth treating as serious here. I mean, yeah,
yeah, But the Jack Smith stuff, in the Fulton County stuff is
that there's conspiracy to commit something that he is not actually a criminal act.
That's my main problem here, you know what I mean, Like they say,
oh, he the criminal act is defrauding the US government, which isn't
a thing really in this case because it's a political debate, but that there's
an enterprise to defraud the US government to challenge the election and lawfully change what
were the initial results. That's completely legal act that others have tried to do
in the past and not been charged for. So yeah, I don't know,
it's it's pretty crazy. And at the same time, incidentally, you
have the president of the United States. You know, there's more and more
evidence that he literally used the US government to enrich his enterprise and his family,
and it is literally uncovered. And as others have pointed out, every
time something happens within that realm, there's a new indictment once and everyone just
talks about Donald Trump. Can I I just saw that this mor I just
saw this this morning, and I want to mention it. So Glenn Kessler's
the fact checker at the Washington Post, and his new piece today is how
Republicans overhyped the findings of their Hunter Biden probe. So I'm like, wow,
I'm sure that piece is garbage, But let me look and see.
When was the last time he fact checked Joe Biden, who is the President
of the United States and lies basically every other sentence, every other coherent sentence.
Last time he fact checked Joe Biden was April twenty eighth, and before
that February fifteenth. Three times this whole year. He is like the He's
the dean of fact checkers, right, He's the leading light of the fact
checking profession. And just the other day, Joe Biden said he saw bridge
collapse in Pittsburgh. He was saying in Milwaukee, among dozens of other lies,
and not a single check of that he actually is the dean of these
people, which says everything about I mean, a lot of these people are
much much younger than he is. They are not the brightest bulbs in the
chandelier. They are. It's like the lowest level of propaganda work that you
can do. Like the really good propagandists they work high up at the Washington
Post or New York Times. This is like when you're not really smart enough
to keep a job, otherwise, by the way, very good at doing
what you're told. Yeah, the Federalist does have a full list of Joe
Bunn's lies. I think we're up to two hundred and fifty or whatever.
And by the way, I think that that's a way under count because you
can't really fact check this guy because he lies in ways that are very difficult
to do that well. And unlike the way they did the Trump things.
So like if Trump said four hundred times that the Russia collusion thing was a
hoax, he would be fact checked as lying four hundred times, even though
he was telling the truth four hundred times. And we should probably have done
that because if we did that, if we did it, where every time
he repeated the same full story, you know, we like, for instance,
his son dying in Iraq in Iraq, right, I mean he just
changed that for the you know, for the first time because there were people
finally got so sick of it. But it was funny because where I think
it was funny because I don't know, I don't know why I say funny.
I think that's just like how I grew up. But there's nothing funny
about this, right. But he gave he gave another speech where he's out
there talking about Bidenomics, which I just want to stress is not an actual
thing. There was no such thing as Bidenomics. Like Reaganomics was about you
can like it or not, but it was an actual, you know,
set of economic prescriptions that were very clear to people. You know, lower
taxes, tighten up the money, you know whatever. But Bionomics is nothing.
It's just a bunch of you know, climate stuff for this so whatever
they want, it's basically build back better. And if they're trying to give
credit to to bidonomics for turning the economy around, but really all they did
and all Bidenomics, and it's not gaining any traction because it's people realize that
there it's not a thing well did was let people go back to work.
They've just basically gotten back the jobs that they lost. If if if you
talk about the ten million jobs that were lost and regained simply by letting people
go back to work, then you're talking about a really anemic growth here,
really anemic economy. You have, you know, a low employment rate.
It was essentially the same employment rate that Donald Trump had before COVID. I
mean, it is not anything by any standard. Donald Trump deserved credit for
a great economy as well. This is just the this is not even as
dynamic. Donald Trump didn't have a lot of room to grow. The economy
was relatively strong when he got around, and you know, so it's more
impressive than what Joe Biden's doing. I think people realize that, you know,
perhaps you know, they just realize that that's the case. I don't
know, what do you think? I just find interesting. I do think
campaign should focus on the economy because a lot of people voted for that reason.
So I'm not like totally surprised that Biden would would run this type of
thing. He can count on corporate media to help him completely. So the
campaign approach seems to be what if we told people that the economy was going
great, and we got our media to just gaslight people into believing that the
economy is going great, and it's not the craziest thing. I mean,
the media ran the twenty twenty campaign. They came up with some pretty outlandish
things to convince people on, like that Joe Biden would be moderate, that
he would that all the problems of the world would go away if you elected
him. The fatal flaw here, I think, seems to be that the
casual conversation in the war in the country is about how bad the economy is,
and in two particular ways. One grocery shopping. Like I was at
a grocery store recently and I heard a person working at the grocery store talking
to someone who was purchasing peaches who was a guest at the prices and they
were and the guy was just like, the prices just keep going up and
up and up. He's like, half of what we do is change the
prices, you know, for the produce stockers. And they weren't I mean,
I don't want to, I don't want to stereotype, but they appeared
that they might both be Democrat voters. And this is what they were talking
about, and everybody talks about it, like discussing when you found you know,
I just was at my parents' house and they had like too many eggs,
and I'm like, why'd you get the eggs? And dad was like,
oh, because the prices were really good on the eggs, you know,
like you notice when the prices are going down whatever. So it's hard
to say the economy is like roaring when people are casually like buying to buying,
buying eggs to store up for the for the long haul. Yeah,
and that's directly the fault of bonomics, which spent a ton of money right
after the hot economy was you know, an economy is opened up, so
it's going to be hot. Created the environment where the fed hats of rain.
Interest rates as well, those are the two legacies of bionomics. High
inflation and rising interest rates, both of which it doesn't economic growth. Yeah.
That's the other thing people talk about is how difficult it is to buy
a house. How that affects even whether you can sell a house. You
know, it's it, and already it was difficult to buy a house,
So it's just it seems like a weird approach for them to go down,
but who knows. I mean, a lot of presents take credit for creating
jobs, you know, and it's always frankly BS. But at least in
this case, it's so obviously BS that I just don't even think it is
a good way to go into the next election. And I think he's going
to pivot to just the whole look at these neo fascists because it worked for
them, they think in the mid terms, and I think they think it
will work again. Can I take a quick detour and talk about something that's
weird that I wrote about. I wrote about have you followed this Argentinian election
only? Thank you, David so in my quest not to have to write
about Donald Trump in elections, every single column I read about this Argentinian guy
named Javier Malay. I don't know how exactly how to pronounce it, but
he is an insane He looks like he's from Austin powers like he has like
big mutton chop sideburns and like a big fluffy hair, and like super charismatic
guy. Every here I'm going to read you some of the headlines, just
pieces of the headline. I've had to describe him Trump admire right wing,
populist, far right, outside fart right, populist, rightist, far right,
libertarian, radical and far rights, and literally every story about it.
But the guy is Argentine. Argentina is going through exactly what I think would
happen here if we just let democrats run rough shot, if there was like
a direct democracy here in democrats around the country, they would continue to spend
inflation in argent you know, in his country's nuts. You know what,
the the interest rates are there, one hundred and eighteen percent, one one
eight percent, the stuff like that. So he just blames you know,
basically the Paul krugmanesque economics that made this possible. He is a huge proponent
of personal liberty, you know, just the self avowed classical liberal, but
also hugely anti abortion. Like they did a gotcha question on him, like
they asked him, if a ten year old had been raped and was pregnant,
would you deny them an abortion? And he's like, a life is
a life. That one terrible thing, you know, we don't want to
compound it with another terrible thing. Stuff like that against state run sex education
program. I mean, basically, this Molly, this is my dream candidate,
Like I want to move there and vote for him. I love this
guy that much. And it's like the first politician I've said that about probably
since you know me, he's probably not going to be successful. I mean
it's very you know, it's very difficult to overcome the institutions there and stuff
like that. Favorite part with that he had these English massiffs that he named
like Marie Rothbart, Milton Friedman or something like that. Yes, yes he
had. He's a weird guy like he is. He's like a television personality
there, and he is one of these guys who he kind of reminds me
a little bit in the way of the debates, like the Christopher Hitchens type,
though not ideologically similar. But he hates elites. He calls them rats
all the time. Like so he is a libertarian populist where I would I
wouldn't call, you know, call him libertarian is a short cut because I
don't think he actually is like a you know, capital at a libertarian.
But anyway, I wrote about him because I think he shows that you can
be a person who believes in kind of the economic ideas I subscribe to,
you know, free market stuff. And also be you know, believe that
that leads to a more virtue and moral society. And I think that that's
true. So I hope he wins because I don't think there's another guy like
this in the world. I don't think there's another candidate seeing any kind of
success in the world who's like this guy at all. It's certainly not here.
I don't think we're headed in that direction at all. But we'll see.
But you know, I'm I'm worried that we're headed to that kind of
economy if if frankly, if Joe Biden wins again, or the Democrats take
Congress, I mean, if Democrats take the Senate, I think it's going
to be a big problem. So anyway, I wanted to do just touch
on something else that's a big story. Hawaii. I've never been to Hawhire
or anything like that, but what I'm seeing there reminds me of like Pompey
or something, you know, like it reminds me of, you know,
just a kind of just horrifying, horrifying ecological disaster. And have you ever
been out there? Oh? I have. My husband was born in Hawaii,
right and and I have been to Lanai, Lanai how do you say
it? I don't know. The destruction is horrible. I cannot believe it.
I mean, it's also kind of interesting how how it's not the entire
island of Maui, but just this one area. I'm scared about how many
people may have died. And it's just, you know, like some people
are saying that they're more than a thousand people who are missing, and you
worry that a lot of those are people who are not going to be recovered.
But it just is horrible. Yeah, the thoughts are there, you
know. I just you just hate to see things like that. Lahinah,
right, Lahinah. I honestly don't know. I've never been there. I
don't know much about it. It's beautiful, it's great. Yeah, Like
my husband's family lived there for a long time and he has native cousins.
It is like one of his aunt's married a Native Hawaiian, so we've been
over for weddings and things like that. Actually, my husband wrote a great
piece on how he was born in the same hospital as Barack Obama. So
I'm shocked this has not gotten like dramatically more coverage. This is the worst
wildfire disaster. I think the country has had in some time, and it's
in a place where you think people would want to go cover it more.
And it's just you can even imagine how it would be exploited by people.
You know. They always likes to take a natural disaster and say this was
caused by global warming or whatever, and it hasn't really happened. I sense
that maybe people are worried that people will Katrina Joe Biden with the failures of
his administration here, not that you know, I personally believe that local and
state officials are the ones that should handle disaster response. But I know from
experience that the media believe that the president is personally responsible for every death that
happens during a natural disaster or something like this. So maybe they just it's
like a Biden protection mode, or that they know the entire government of Hawaii's
Democrats, so they're doing just general Democrat protection mode. I don't know,
but it's weird. Do you think it might have to do with just Hawaii
is a weird geographically, this outlying state, and I don't know that,
you know, I don't know, maybe we don't treat it like we would
California or something like that. I don't know, of course, it's I
mean, it's like, how what was it when the smoke from the Canadian
fires? Also not enough coverage of that. By the way, when it
finally hit New York City. In DC, people were like, did you
know there's smoke in the United States. It was like, we've known there's
smoke in the United States four months and you didn't care because it wasn't in
your precious corridor. So if there aren't unless it's there, yeah, yeah,
if there were a fire in New Jersey, it would be leading the
news, if there had been a destruction like this leading the news. It
is partly because it's so far away, but that's point like, it's also
a vacation destination, So why aren't Why aren't all all of the talking heads
on a plane out there too? I saw Will will Cain. You know
it's with Fox News now I know a long time he was out there,
and he said he was saying that there's literally he doesn't see another media,
major media outlet out there, which is kind of insane. The other big
story this week, and it is that everyone's pretending to like this song.
Richmond North of Richmond, North of Richmond right, very populous song, and
of course it was immediately politicized by everyone. I'm sure you don't. There's
no way you enjoy this song, your listeners. I would like you to
know that when David said he wanted to talk about this right before we got
on the call, I asked him to listen to what I was listening to
at that moment, and it was Richmond North of Richmond, because I like
to wake up and listen to this song because it's I don't know, it's
just as evidenced by the let's just see on this YouTube link alone. Oh,
I'm gonna ste seventeen million views. And you think we're faking it that
we like this song, David Harshani, I don't think everyone is faking it.
I'm not saying you're faking it, but I do think there is a
like a bit of virtue signaling on the right where they want to you know,
they pretend like they're all just work, you know, like something rural
person or working class person can do no wrong, and that you know,
they're just this kind of a victimhood mentality that comes with this. I don't
like the song itself. It's just not my cup of tea in general,
but I also think the lyrics don't are kind of ridiculous. I don't want
to like bash the guy. I mean, you know, he's you know,
I wish him the best, but find this kind of like rallying around
of this kind of virtue signaling off putting when the right does it just as
much as the laugh does it. But you know, I don't know.
I don't really want to go get into this argument. I do because I
would like to make fun of you right now. So let me read you
a letter I got from someone, which I think done. Okay, go
on, So before we do that, I had like a thousand pe will
send me National reviews attack on this song, and they were like, he
should have talked about the wonders of capitalism. That would have made a fine,
fine song, wouldn't it. I feel like you could have written this.
Maybe you did ghost write that piece. No, I didn't write that
piece. One of things is great about this, I mean, this is
clearly this guy does not even have a recording contract or didn't at the time.
It was he had been taping songs on his iPhone, which I know
because I went down this Oliver Anthony rabbit Hole. And I like a lot
of those songs, but they don't sound great. This is the first one
that actually sounds great beause it was on professional recording equipment for this radio thing
or whatever, and it has such I'm not saying it's like the most perfectly
composed song in the history of the universe. Of course, this guy is
just getting started. He just decided to move forward on his dream of singing
and writing and singing songs. But it does resonate like it it has.
It has some great lines, it has great feel. It's a viral sensation
globally because it There is this problem that rich mend North of Richmond want total
control of our lives, and that the way that they're running things is horrible.
And this could have been written like twenty years ago too, or a
long time ago, I should say, like ten years ago, about how
the Richmond North of Richmond had taken over, you know, like too big
to fail, and how they handled like that crisis, or how they fight
our wars without NYE toward winning, or how they claim to care about national
sovereignty. But they have a border that's completely overrun. And I'm sorry that
you're upset David that people actually care about these things and how it affects our
lives. But a lot of us do feel very frustrated that these powerful people
who don't care and think that we don't know what's going on are doing a
lot to destroy the country. And you know, just having someone speak to
it is great and odd think even though it was political in a sense,
to me, it's also not political. It's just sort of been that.
I don't know how to explain it. Just it's a it's a good protest
song with a lot of heart, and I can see why so many people
liked it. But yeah, go ahead and read your story about go ahead
and read your lot. Well now you know, I mean I am not
a proponent of empowering people to lord over the lives of others, as you
know, I mean, like that twenty year track record of not wanting that
to be, you know, to happen. But I think that there's a
propensity of people when you get into this class warfare stuff that is a very
Unamerican really in some ways, to pretend like all their troubles are there only
because some guy or some shadowy powerful person is not looking out for miners or
we have nothing to eat because of them. I mean, that's just it's
just not true. We're a wealthy country. There are lots of opportunities for
people to do well. And I just think that when we become vic,
when we make ourselves into victims, that we don't have to be a problem.
Like, let me just go back to remember when Kevin Williamson wrote that
piece about how people should move out of bad places, and everyone who has
literally moved from places to get better opportunities. Almost everyone I know has done
that. You know, it was just horrified by that idea. But that's
an American idea. We have industries that die and people have to move.
It happens all the time, and we pretend like that people can't take charge
of their own lives and make it better, but that they have to sit
around and wait for something. You know, it's funny about this kind of
song. It's actually he's asking for people to fix problems that he can fix
himself. And that's what bothers me. Go on, I had to finish
my thought. Okay, So it is actually horrific when you have people destroy
communities through policy making, there's a loss that happens when you move away from
your family, and I know that, and I don't just treating it like
frivolously, like just oh, you don't like what's happening in your area because
we moved manufacturing too across the world. Will just move to a place where
you will be disconnected from your family and they won't be able to help with
the raising of children and the inculcation of values, Like why don't you just
do that? There are losses associated with It's not that even that the like
thing is wrong. Obviously we all are descended from people who moved at some
point. But to be so cavalier about it and not to acknowledge the pain
and loss and the downsides that come with these things is a problem. And
I cannot believe you would defend a piece like that. That is so I
don't feel about what people to go through. I don't have it in front
of me, but I'm pretty sure he talks about that. I mean,
I agree with everything you just said. It is not ideal to have to
move away from your family, and I think we have a problem with that
in this country, where there aren't stronger communities that are built around Frankly,
churches and family, and I get that, but you know we're pretending that
jobs are moved away to hurt someone here or to break you know, to
benefit one person. No, it benefits working class people benefit from cheaper products,
and a lot of that is automation and technology and not thinking or policy.
You think if you mock people who are down and out, and have
I mocked anyone for not moving? You think that's like speaking truth to power.
I don't want to mock people for not God forbid, you actually tell
the people who are actually in power that the way they're doing things is wrong.
Like we have. Everyone just speaks truth quote unquote to the little guy,
and they don't do anything to change problems at the top. And then
you have someone who doesn't. You call it virtue signaling. I don't even
understand what you're talking about. How How do I don't? I mean,
I won't I want to change things at the top. I think they have
too much control, too much control over people's lives. And so when someone
sings that, you call it signaling. No, it's not. The virtue
signaling is first of all, a lot of the stuff he says doesn't make
sense to me. But that's not the virtue signaling. The virtue signaling is
that this idea that's conspiratorial. I think in some way that just a few
people are controlling all these things in everyone's lives, which is just not true.
I think that we become we let There are a lot of Richmond north
of Richmond, so I don't think it's just a few people. It's a
lot of all. Rich people are just in some devious way, vampires who
live off the blood of the little guy. I mean, you don't believe
that that's true in this country. It's not zero sum proposition. Rich people
can get rich, and there's tons of people, tons of people in this
country over the last thirty forty years who have moved from the working class to
the middle class and middle classes growing. Everyone keeps saying it's shrinking. That's
just not true, and that doesn't mean that the plight of these people is
that they're making it up. I know that there are a lot of people
suffering in this country. We have to figure out how to help them.
But helping them by I mean, I don't understand. Like he mentioned,
it was like Jeffrey Epstein in this song, it's just kind of like,
you know, what does that have to do with him drinking? Yeah?
What, Oh David, I'm sorry, I have to do with miners.
I don't understand the connection in those two things. Yeah, I just I
think I've said this before, but I used to get you know, when
you're when you're writing things, you get a lot of emails from people who
have like story ideas, And I have my like conspiracy theory bucket where people
are like, you know, back when I was at a newspaper, we'd
actually get like typewritten things from the federal prison and I would say, like,
the Feds are controlling me by putting a chip in my brain. You
know, you just sort of put that in the file of this is conspiracy
mail. So I used to get all of these emails from people that would
say that there was a powerful man connected to powerful figures who was engaged in
like a pedophile ring, and I'm like, these people are crazy, who
could possibly believe this is true? And then it turned out that in fact,
a very powerful man with connect two very powerful figures like Bill Clinton,
former President of the United States and Prince Andrew Is that right was engaged in
a global pedophile ring and you're mad at someone for like, are you literally
calling it like a conspiracy theory that that existed, because it's not. It
really is true. No, I'm not mad for so, I'm not mad
at this guy at all or anything like that. You've just got mad at
him for mentioning it. I'm not mad at him. I'm saying that the
song itself is kind of a hodgepodge of conspiratorial thinking. I don't. I'm
not saying that nothing happened on that island. Of course stuff happened on but
what does that have to do with miners and the government not taking care of
miners. It's just a weird hodgepodge of complaints, That's all I'm saying.
I didn't. I'm not the one who made this song viral. I'm not
the one who's telling you know, who's out there saying I must listen to
this or you know that it you know it's a great protests on if you're
going to say it's a great protest song I've ever write talking about Travis's letter
to you. You know what them with these arguments when we have over problem
is that they need to be more structured, Like where I'm all over the
place. My mind is all over the place. This is why I'm a
writer. I just actually I was like, we're going to move on,
because I think everyone can tell that you're wrong, So I'm not going to
like, Okay, Well, this letter writer says that, mister Osani,
which is very nice for him to call me that way. I'm not sure
if he means that. You say you have no idea what Republican voters think.
Well, admitting you have a problem is only step one. You have
a professional responsibility to seek out why Republican voters think, feel and act the
way they do if you're going to continue to commentate on their choices. Well,
I never admitted I had a problem. I never admitted I had it.
I don't think it's a problem for me not to bore into the souls
of millions of people too. I don't have any such professional responsibility, But
go on, say what you I just want to say, apart from the
I know that when people write and have personal comments that that's what we dwell
on. But I actually thought, like everything above that was really smart from
this guy, setting aside, you're whatever you're talking about here, where he
was just explaining why the santists approach of attacking Trump has not worked out well
for him, and he had a bunch of different reasons why, but one
of the things he was noting was that supporting Trump came with costs that never
were associated with supporting Bush or Romney or McCain. They Trump supporters lost their
friendships, Brothers and sisters stopped talking to each other. There are parents whose
children disowned them, and grandparents who will never see their grandchildren again because they
stood by Donald Trump. Every Republican has these stories. Every Republican knows Republicans
who have these stories. Attacking Trump as Desantists did was effectively telling the people
who made real sacrifices that they were stupid for doing so because Trump is just
a poser. It's a great political analysis of why the Desantist campaign has failed
as much as it has. And I thought that was just smart for him
to bring up that point that I hadn't really thought about the personal costs associated
with what it was like to be a Republican from twenty fifteen to the present.
I only care about personal attacks. I don't Once I saw that I
didn't care what he said, no, so then when he says, you
say that you have no idea what Repulican voters think and admitting you have a
problem is only like, that's actually I didn't even support Donald Trump and I
had that happened to me. I mean, I mean, I don't I
don't think that that's how can I say, I don't think that that's a
reason not to support the sance. I don't really understand how those two are
connected. In the sense that you've supported Donald Trump, do you have to
support him the rest of your life no matter what he does because there was
a high cost to supporting him initially. I just I don't think that.
As this reader also pointed out, instead of going with the approach of you're
an idiot if you support this guy, he should have done more at the
Vivacu Ramaswami approach of not attacking Trump voters. You know, like, it's
actually, just when did De Santa say you're an idiot for supporting this guy?
I don't like he said anything like that. I'm just saying I think
he's saying Donald I listen, I'm going to be honest with you. I
don't think that anything would have been different if he took a different approach or
didn't take a different approach. I think that he's going to have a tough
time because Donald Trump is the center of the world's attention and that he's the
incumbent, and it's going to be impossible to very difficult to knock him off.
I don't know. Everyone pretends that DeSantis isn't doing well because of this
approach or that approach. I don't just I don't know that there's any approach
that's going to make him more successful. So I have always felt like there
was a fatal flaw in just entering the race for DeSantis, meaning like,
if you do it, you have to do it in a way that you
can both take out the top dog, but also do it in a way
that does not hurt any of those voters who are with the top dog,
Like that's a very challenging job, and they chose to just have a completely
different approach. We'll see how that goes. But I was talking with Vivek
Ramaswamy about his approach, which is what this what this Travis writer was saying
should be done, And he was saying, yeah, if DeSantis had done
his own approach, like what Vivek is doing then Vivek would be going nowhere
vague. But but because DeSantis is trying this other like sort of Ted Cruz
Marco Rubio kind of campaign and it's not going very well, Vec has has
been able to kind of do well. I mean, he's beating Ron De
Santis in certain polls like that is insane. Yeah, I don't believe that
at all. I don't believe those polls at all because it's has Vivek Ramaswamy
at at thirteen percent or whatever. I don't even think thirteen percent of Republicans
know who he is, So I don't actually buy that at all. I
like to talk to I like to talk to people all the time about who
they support or whatnot. And I will say every time I talk to either
a Trump voter or a Ron De Santis voter, well, until a couple
weeks ago, they would all say that Vevec was there, was like a
surprisingly good candidate. So I'm not I'm not super surprised that he's doing so
well. All right, well we'll get that next time. Let's get to
let's get out of politics. So it's been a very contentious I'm sorry,
we should not do these really early in the morning. I know, I
feel like I've didn't go here, and but it's okay. So I'm back
on my seventies movie watching binge. So I watched a movie called Night Moves
with Gene Hackman. I loved it. It's a man movie. Who did
Bonnie and Clyde in the sixties. I watched Dillinger Have you ever heard of
This? With Warren Oates, who I love. That's a John Millius movie.
I think it's his first movie. I loved it. I thought it
was great. I watched a Thomas Crown Affair, which actually might be a
sixties movie, but that was I thought highly overrated, really fun to look
at, but I just think the story is real thin and not that great.
And then I wanted to quickly talk about a movie I watched. So
Martin Scorsese in the sixties did a little documentary called Italian American where he interviews
his parents in their little Italy apartment. It talks about the Italian experience in
New York and immigration and all that. It is just so fantastic. I
just loved it. I loved watching it. I really highly recommend it.
An Italian American one word, It's with his mom and dad and they talk
about just really like very how can I say as salt of the earth,
you know, people, I don't know if I'm interested in it because of
where I grew up or not. But I mean, if if, if,
if, if that's something that appeals to I'd watch it. You get
when you watch it, you're like, oh, this is where Scorsese gets
his dialogue from, you know, like this kind of the way they speak,
the way they speak about the world, and the way they it's just
kind of an incredible sort of peek into into that world. So I would
highly recommend that it's on HBO, I believe, And then I rewatched.
The last one is Battle of Algiers, which I think is actually from the
sixties. It's a French movie about self evidently the battle for Algiers during the
Revolution. There that's that's my list. How about you anything. I haven't
really watched anything because I've been traveling. I went up to Connecticut for a
Hillsdale event that was so much fun. We did. Hillsdale just puts on
great events, if I might say, we did their cruise this summer.
We had. We loved not just the event, but we met a lot
of nice people. And then similarly, we went up to Connecticut for this
speech and it was a great crowd. There were some friends there, I
met other people that were nice. And then I went to Colorado and saw
my parents. We celebrated my dad's fiftieth anniversary of his ordination into Holy ministry.
It was great, had a picnic at the church, got to see
in lots of family. And the other night I went to see Phoenix and
Beck at Red Rocks. Okay, never, first of all, Red Rocks.
I've heard of Red Rocks. Haven't you been to any shows at Rocks.
I'm not not a like rock show. I think I've been here though.
Okay, David, you should go and go see a show there.
It is out of this world. It's a natural amphitheater built into these I
don't know what you know exactly the type of rocks you call these things are.
It is amazing sound, it's a gorgeous setting. It is just an
experience like none other. And we were driving out Tristan, our staff writer,
lives out there, and I'd gone to see him, and then we
were driving back by Red Rocks and I was like, I'll just see what
shows are out there, and it said that on Monday and Tuesday and Wednesday
night that Phoenix and Beck were playing. Oh well, that would be great.
Is it Phoenix and beca band? Or is this Beck? And then
something called Phoenix two headliners? How do you not know who Phoenix are?
You should be into Phoenix. They're great. You would really I think you
would really really like them. And both of those shows were both of them
were just like so great. And Japanese Breakfast opened up and we my children
and I like Japanese Breakfast, so we just had a great, great experience
and it was really fun. The Red Rocks has been famous since you two
put out didn't YouTube put on at alpen of Red Rocks or something in the
eighties, I think, oh yeah. And one of the great things was
that Phoenix I think that that might have been their first time playing there.
So they were just clearly like just taking it all in, like this is
so cool. And Beck had said it's the highlight of their North American tour
to be there because it's just like such a great venue, as everybody says.
Okay, And then I also got some records at the concert. I
got some records, some back and some Phoenix. But I also went to
this record store in castle Rock that is a record store I've been going to
for decades. I didn't even know there was a record store in castle Rock.
I would have gone there for sure. I think it's where I got
my cassette tape of Sugarcubes Life's Too Good. I had like five cassette tapes
before I was like, I'm going back to Vinyl. And I got a
Jesus and Mary Chain dark Lands album, which is the second album. Yeah,
and then two Joy Division. So I'm happy postpund little dark, dark
post punk music. I love, you know. If I had to like
end my top, let's say a hundred, because I listened to a lot
of music, but I would say that Psychocandy by Jesus and Mary Chain is
in there. I think it's one of the great albums of all time.
Dark Lands is a little like more popish but still still good. Oh we
have our outra music. Awesome. Sometimes I'm like, oh my god,
we didn't mention any any bands. I don't know what to do. Yeah,
all right, that sounds like fun. I'm into Colorado in a while.
I wish if anyone's out there wants to invite me to any events in
Colorado, please do. I would love to go out there. I do
not hear good things, though. I hear like it's kind of going to
Denverse kind of a mess these days. And I was talking to family who
live in Denver and they're all basically feeling like it's now gotten so bad that
they need to leave and they're thinking about how to how to get out.
It's crazy. When I moved there, it was like the place to move.
Everyone was talking about Denver and how beautiful and how clean and how you
know, great it was. And now you know, so in Douglas County,
which is right south of Denver, is amazing and beautiful. And it
used to be this like hardcore Republican county. I think it is becoming more
Democrat, and I'm not totally surprised. It was reminding me of when I
was in high school. I had one of these artsy artsy friends who was
a little bit of a rebel, and he desecrated the signs that said Douglas
County, where where quality of life comes first, and he changed it so
it said where quantity of life comes first. And that was like a statement
about how many people were moving in, and that guy would be like in
apoplectic with rage at this point, like it's just so much building, no
water, just no problem though, everyone just build the build apart. Even
when I was you can see the sort of southern suburbs of Denver sort of
meeting up with like like it'll just be Castle Rock. Well, you know,
it'll just be all suburbs to Denver at some point, which is a
shame. Okay, Well, it was nice speaking to you this early morning.
I hope what we said. What I said made some sense, but
we'll be back, but we cannot. Yeah, next week, we do
it at a normal, proper civilized hour and we fight with us. No,
I think we should fight, but we have to have a more rules
to fighting. Yeah, we need rules to what we're going to talk about,
because you spring questions on me that I'm not prepared for in arguments.
I'm unprepared for it early in the morning. It's funny because it's really not
that early, just for us, right early, yeah, exactly. Okay,
Well until that, we'll see you next week and until then, be
lovers of freedom and anxious for the fray. It was