Speaker 1: Sorry, there's a crisis at the Lucretia household. The kitten
Speaker 1: has gotten herself too high to get down and I
Speaker 1: can't reach her.
Speaker 2: Ask not what your country can do for you, Ask
Speaker 2: what you can do for your country.
Speaker 3: Mister Gerba Shaw, tear down this wall.
Speaker 4: It's the Ricochet Podcast. I'm James Lilyx and I'll be
Speaker 4: talking with Stephen Hayward and Lucretia. Our guest today John Hindrick,
Speaker 4: who at the center of the American Experiment, to talk
Speaker 4: about Well, of course, Governor wats So let's as a
Speaker 4: podcast and.
Speaker 3: I'll tell you what I have been doing.
Speaker 2: I've been voting for common sense legislation that protext as
Speaker 2: second Amendment. But we can do background checks, we can
Speaker 2: do CDC research, we can make sure we don't have
Speaker 2: reciprocal carry amongst state and we can make sure that
Speaker 2: those weapons of war that I.
Speaker 3: Carried in war is the only place where those weapons.
Speaker 4: Were Welcome everybody. It's the Ricochet Podcast, number seven hundred
Speaker 4: and three. I'm James Lylyx in Minneapolis, and I'm joined
Speaker 4: by Stephen Hayward and Lucretia. And it's like the ship
Speaker 4: of Perseus, you know, keeps. We keep shedding different pieces,
Speaker 4: Rob and Peter and adding others, but yet the ship
Speaker 4: itself is still the same. When I'm gone, of course,
Speaker 4: it will still be the Ricochet Flagship Podcast, and you
Speaker 4: guys can carry on and eventually forget that I ever existed.
Speaker 4: But that's the ways of way, I hope. For Now.
Speaker 4: We're here today to discuss well, we're going to be
Speaker 4: getting to the vice presidential pick with John Hindereker from
Speaker 4: power Line in just a little while, but I want
Speaker 4: you guys to to give me your impression on the
Speaker 4: overwhelming sense of joy that we are now, the giddy,
Speaker 4: the giddy, infectious enthusiasm, as somebody once said, the fact
Speaker 4: that we seem as a nation to have awoken from
Speaker 4: a slumber, of of of of a torporous slumber, and
Speaker 4: now we're suffused with this magical sparkle that runs like
Speaker 4: electricity through the entire country. I've been led to believe
Speaker 4: that the future was pretty grim, given that the ism
Speaker 4: and the climate change and the rest of the existential
Speaker 4: crises at face, But apparently we have turned a corner
Speaker 4: in America's back.
Speaker 3: Baby.
Speaker 4: So what do you think, James?
Speaker 1: Can I offend all of your listeners with what I
Speaker 1: call it. It's the Kamelama ding dong media gasm.
Speaker 4: It does drip off the tongue, doesn't it. Now the media, yes,
Speaker 4: the media is enthusiastic and emboldened by this. I mean,
Speaker 4: we're getting really hard stories on Tim Walls, like his
Speaker 4: favorite hot dish recipe. But anyway, Stephen, you were going
Speaker 4: to say.
Speaker 5: Well, how quickly this is galloping along? Ten days ago
Speaker 5: we were told that this selection was about vibes. Harris
Speaker 5: Harris had all the vibes, and this week suddenly became joy.
Speaker 5: And once again I thought of a historical parallel. I
Speaker 5: drive Lucretia nuts with these. She thinks, I'm I'm wacko.
Speaker 5: But the last time we had a candidate who is
Speaker 5: about the politics of joy was also a vice president
Speaker 5: succeeding a president who dropped out mid campaign from Minnesota.
Speaker 5: Right the minute you said it, Yeah, right, the great
Speaker 5: Hubert Humphrey was all about the politics of joy, and
Speaker 5: boy did he have an unjoyful campaign and an unjoyful result.
Speaker 5: I think we're going to repeat that, not exactly the same,
Speaker 5: but I think we're going to see the same pattern.
Speaker 4: Agrecia, why is it. Why does it drive you nuts
Speaker 4: when he brings up Hubert Hmphrey, I mean Humphy.
Speaker 1: No, No, it doesn't drive me. I call him analogy man.
Speaker 1: He doesn't drive me nuts that he brings up Hubert Humphrey.
Speaker 1: What drives me a little bit nuts is that Steve
Speaker 1: can manage to find and not always apt historical analogy
Speaker 1: to just about anything, as if history just repeats itself
Speaker 1: over and over and over in exactly the same way.
Speaker 3: No, no, no, no, it's it's not.
Speaker 5: I'll use the apocryphal Mark Twain line. History doesn't repeat itself,
Speaker 5: but it rhymes. I think that's what we're saying, and
Speaker 5: that would.
Speaker 4: I thought that was George Lucas well. I mean, yes,
Speaker 4: we do look back and and it's it's inevitable, and
Speaker 4: it's natural to find parallels like this, the Minnesota, the Joy,
Speaker 4: the rest of it. But let us focus, perhaps just
Speaker 4: on the joy itself. I'm not opposed to joy in
Speaker 4: an election. I kind of like it as a matter
Speaker 4: of fact. I While I like the idea of somebody
Speaker 4: laying out a clear path to get ourselves out of
Speaker 4: the numerous morasses in which we find ourselves, there is
Speaker 4: something quitch essentially American about having that bright spirit, that
Speaker 4: that inner Norman Rockwell glow to your face that attracts people.
Speaker 4: You can't, I mean, you can't glower and frown and
Speaker 4: be dismissive and sarcastic and bitter in the rest of
Speaker 4: it and expect people to come to the polls to
Speaker 4: vote for anything. But you know, grim sullen duty, and
Speaker 4: sometimes grim sullen duty will get you the election. But
Speaker 4: what's what's the matter with joy is what I'm is
Speaker 4: what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: What's there to be joyful about? She's an idiot, he's
Speaker 1: a draft No, she can't say. You can't call him
Speaker 1: a draft doctor. That's silly, a stolen valor, a petty
Speaker 1: tyrant who, in the same breath that he says mind
Speaker 1: your own business, reminds us that he was. You know,
Speaker 1: he locked people in their homes and then encouraged their
Speaker 1: neighbors to snitch on them if they actually walked outside
Speaker 1: to walk their dog during COVID. He was the absolute worst.
Speaker 1: There is nothing to be joyful about either of those
Speaker 1: far leftist, basic communist idiots. Sorry, I like nothing about
Speaker 1: either one of them, Absolutely nothing. You know, I can
Speaker 1: find a few things about RFK that I like. I
Speaker 1: like nothing about those two.
Speaker 4: What about RFK do you like? I like the fact
Speaker 4: that he's become a meme into which people drop every
Speaker 4: single historical event of consequence. Just him sitting there with
Speaker 4: his arms crossed, calmly discussing how he was in Sarajevo
Speaker 4: in nineteen fourteen in wonder by a coffee. I mean,
Speaker 4: it's just absolutely delightful. But anyway, to Lucreaseia's point, I mean,
Speaker 4: what's there to be joyful about? I mean, if you
Speaker 4: want to look at the positions of the candidates and
Speaker 4: where you think that they would send us on the left, no,
Speaker 4: it's not something that fills your heart with a great
Speaker 4: deal of joy. But again, we are talking about a
Speaker 4: vibe election. We are talking about something where people are apparently,
Speaker 4: at least I mean on the left side, are absolutely
Speaker 4: enthusiastically energized by the fact that they don't have to
Speaker 4: pretend that they believe that this doddering man with mashed
Speaker 4: potatoes in his brain is somebody for whom they should
Speaker 4: feel enthusiasm. I mean, they've got real power and energy
Speaker 4: behind them, and I think it's it's to people who
Speaker 4: aren't particularly engaged on the issues, or don't engage the
Speaker 4: extent that you do, or do engage and don't agree
Speaker 4: with you. This is a powerful motivating thing. Is this
Speaker 4: is a real I mean it may be a blast
Speaker 4: of nitrous gas, it may wear off, but it's energized them.
Speaker 4: So what are the consequences of that? Do we find out?
Speaker 4: You know, does the does the right find a way
Speaker 4: to manifest joy in its own way? Because otherwise we're
Speaker 4: the lemon suckers?
Speaker 3: Right well, I think at least two ways of thinking
Speaker 3: about this.
Speaker 5: One is they're trying to get the jump on Trump
Speaker 5: by stealing some of Trump's thunder Trump's rallies are these
Speaker 5: great joyous affairs. I mean, he's kind of been the
Speaker 5: candidate to joy because he's funny in his sort of
Speaker 5: sarcastic and attacking way, is sort of don Rickles stick
Speaker 5: that he does.
Speaker 3: And you know, maybe they've got a little off balance.
Speaker 5: I mean, I think you've made a couple of minor
Speaker 5: mistakes here in the aftermath of Hamila's ascendants, So they're
Speaker 5: trying to steal that. But it's also a tactic second
Speaker 5: to avoid any serious media scrutiny which the media is
Speaker 5: happy to go along with. And it's because it's going
Speaker 5: to be a short campaign. They're gambling they can make
Speaker 5: it to election day on vibes. To go back to
Speaker 5: the original theme of the campaign. I'm skeptical it's going
Speaker 5: to work only because there's some underlying facts that I
Speaker 5: think will reassert themselves. One is a Republican registration has
Speaker 5: been surging, especially in the battleground states. Republicans have actually
Speaker 5: drawn even or ahead of Democrats and registrations in a
Speaker 5: lot of places in the country. I think nationally, Republicans
Speaker 5: are now nearly even with Democrats for the first time
Speaker 5: in decades. Now you have this third of the country
Speaker 5: who are independents and they always decide things. Second, the
Speaker 5: issue map will come back into play. All the top
Speaker 5: issues favored Trump. People are concerned about the border, the economy,
Speaker 5: national security, abortion, which is supposed to favor Democrats. I
Speaker 5: guess it does. It's number six or seven on the
Speaker 5: list of important issues for voters. And if the campaign
Speaker 5: and if the Trump campaign can get us back around
Speaker 5: to reminding people what they're unhappy about, I think Harris
Speaker 5: will have a harder time dodging and weaving and changing
Speaker 5: her positions, and that's going to reassert itself. So I'm
Speaker 5: still betting on Trump for a narrow but solid win.
Speaker 1: Rate. Suggestion on X that Trump should hold a press
Speaker 1: conference since Kamalama ding Dong won't, and have a TV
Speaker 1: next to him and ask questions and have the answers
Speaker 1: be play being kam Lama ding Dong's answers that thinks
Speaker 1: that she said in the past come across on the TV.
Speaker 1: And I think that would be brilliant because I agree
Speaker 1: with Steve if If and this I unfortunately I don't
Speaker 1: agree with his optimism on this. If the Trump campaign
Speaker 1: can get the conversation back to issues, of course, trump wins.
Speaker 1: Of course Trump wins, you know, and away from personalities
Speaker 1: and so on. I get mad at Republicans who want
Speaker 1: to complain that they're, you know, that Trump is not
Speaker 1: focusing on issues. But it's a little bit difficult right
Speaker 1: now for him to push forward on this when he
Speaker 1: gets absolutely zero help from the press. So he's gonna
Speaker 1: have to do some some kinds of tricky things I
Speaker 1: think to force the press, maybe not hold a press
Speaker 1: conference like I just described, but to force the media
Speaker 1: into demanding from Kamala Harris that she addressed you know,
Speaker 1: other than on day one she's going to lower prices,
Speaker 1: thank god. I don't know quite why she's waiting until
Speaker 1: the first day of her new administration and not maybe
Speaker 1: get started on that now. But you know, anyway, so
Speaker 1: that that's what worries me. I don't know that I've
Speaker 1: ever seen it so bad where the media just was
Speaker 1: so all in. You know, it's get Maybe it's just
Speaker 1: been getting worse and worse and worse. But you really
Speaker 1: have to go to social media to find anything that
Speaker 1: is in any way critical of Kamala Harrison. Not even
Speaker 1: Fox is very critical if you ask me. So that
Speaker 1: was my thoughts on the matter. Maybe I think Trump
Speaker 1: can do.
Speaker 4: It, get the same sense. I mean, one of the
Speaker 4: things that you can do. And again, the minute we
Speaker 4: spend all of our time saying here's what they should
Speaker 4: do if they really want to win, they do this
Speaker 4: when you start. When you do that, the game's up.
Speaker 4: I mean you're not actually seeing it come from the
Speaker 4: minds of the people who are running the campaign. But
Speaker 4: what I would like to see, because I don't want
Speaker 4: a ViBe's election, what I would like to see is
Speaker 4: a series of honest questions and an honest examination of
Speaker 4: the answers. I mean, there's a couple of things that
Speaker 4: Walls have said that I think are indicative of his positions,
Speaker 4: and it's maybe not enough to run on Joya's big
Speaker 4: dad mid Western energy when you have two statements that
Speaker 4: really indicate the divide in the country. One of them
Speaker 4: has to do with a comment about the border wall
Speaker 4: that you know, if they put it up twenty feet,
Speaker 4: he'd invest money in a company that made thirty foot ladders.
Speaker 4: It words to that effect, which to me is revelatory
Speaker 4: of a whole host of positions, and I think that
Speaker 4: we deserve an honest conversation about those. And if the
Speaker 4: press really wanted to hold his feet to the fire
Speaker 4: or at least facilitate that on his conversation, they would ask,
Speaker 4: and they would press, and we would get very detailed
Speaker 4: specifics about what exactly their position on the border is,
Speaker 4: because I'd like to know. I'd really like to know.
Speaker 4: The second has to do with the comment again it
Speaker 4: was floating around on social media last week, had to
Speaker 4: do with the statement about hate speech not in disinformation,
Speaker 4: not having First Amendment protection. Well, that's wrong. That's very,
Speaker 4: very wrong. And as if we've seen in Western democracy recently,
Speaker 4: particularly in England, horrifyingly in England, the idea that there
Speaker 4: is this special I mean, they don't have the First Amendment,
Speaker 4: so you know, they have fun with your or well
Speaker 4: fulfillment factory there, buddy. But the idea that they're putting
Speaker 4: people away for spreading, for sharing a link that they
Speaker 4: believe to be inflammatory and is terrifying. So yes, does
Speaker 4: the left, the majority of the progressive body in the
Speaker 4: country today, believe that there should be options for hate
Speaker 4: speaking disinformation apparently so? Apparently so because it's injurious and
Speaker 4: threatening to our democracy. Well, there isn't. There isn't There
Speaker 4: isn't any carve out. And the biggest threat to our
Speaker 4: democracy is somebody setting up themselves as the adjudicator of
Speaker 4: what is is not allowed to be said. And that
Speaker 4: goes for social media, that goes for the newspapers, that
Speaker 4: goes for standing on this street corner, that goes for everything.
Speaker 4: I don't want to hear a word out of these
Speaker 4: guys about freedom of speech and our democracy. If they're saying,
Speaker 4: well that's disinformation, ergo, we're going to use the force
Speaker 4: of the state to make sure that it isn't spoken. No, sorry, no, James, I've.
Speaker 1: Never been so proud to own a tesla in my life.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Well, you're one of those, you know, bleeding hearts that
Speaker 4: wants to save the planet. So I understand that correctly.
Speaker 4: Every day, just until Elon Musk pulls off his rubber face,
Speaker 4: reveals the lizard head beneath and then bricks everyone on
Speaker 4: the countryside, that'll happen. Well, you know what, we can
Speaker 4: sit here and h right now, I'm outnumbered. I'm just
Speaker 4: one Minnesota against you guys, at least you know, physically Minnesotans.
Speaker 4: Perhaps you guys are Minnesotas in your heart. But I
Speaker 4: want to bring on my old friend John, John Hindereker,
Speaker 4: president of the Center American Experiment of Minneapolis, space think
Speaker 4: tank that is not at the present time. On Fire
Speaker 4: proposes creative solutions that emphasize free enterprise, limited government, personal responsibility,
Speaker 4: and government accountability. In other words, fascism straight up. He
Speaker 4: was found with the power Line blog in two thousand
Speaker 4: and two, and we welcome back John.
Speaker 6: How you doing doing great, James, Good to see you.
Speaker 4: Yeah, good to talk to you too. All right, we
Speaker 4: got the gov here. You know, I wrote a piece
Speaker 4: about this for Discourse where they're just saying, Hey, you're
Speaker 4: a Minnesota what do you think? How do you do
Speaker 4: people think?
Speaker 3: You know, what do you think?
Speaker 4: And it's like, you know, we have all these stories
Speaker 4: about the people who Oh, he was a teacher. He
Speaker 4: was a great teacher. I love him as a teacher,
Speaker 4: and you know that's entirely possible. I'm sure that his
Speaker 4: students did love him. I loved my teachers too. And
Speaker 4: then I'd go back to the talent and I'd open
Speaker 4: up the newspaper and one of them was writing a
Speaker 4: fist shaking letter about Ronnie Reagan being mean to the Santainistas. Okay,
Speaker 4: all right, I'll just think back of the happy days
Speaker 4: when you're feeling me at chemistry. The fact that he's
Speaker 4: a genial guy and that he's friendly and people like
Speaker 4: him is utterly irrelevant. What matters are the policies, And
Speaker 4: you guys have been going over the policies, not the personality,
Speaker 4: and laying out exactly what didn't work for Minnesota and
Speaker 4: what won't work for the country. So let's just set
Speaker 4: aside all the football coach, the supposed stuff about, you know,
Speaker 4: the service in the National Guard. Let's just what counts
Speaker 4: is the ideology behind the policies and how those play out.
Speaker 4: What's he done for Minnesota?
Speaker 7: Well, first of all, James, I would take issue with
Speaker 7: the characterization of Tim Walls as genial. I think he
Speaker 7: is vicious and mean spirited, and I think he's displayed
Speaker 7: that throughout his political career. And I think one thing
Speaker 7: he's got going for him as a vice presidential nominee
Speaker 7: is that he's well qualified to play the attack dog
Speaker 7: role that vice presidents typically at a sign.
Speaker 6: So I just want to make it clear.
Speaker 4: I understand that, I understand all.
Speaker 7: But yeah, but James, You're right, the real issue is
Speaker 7: is what has he done and how has it worked?
Speaker 7: And the answer is that the Walls administration has been
Speaker 7: a classic illustration of the failure of left wing policies.
Speaker 7: Tim Walls came into office as governor of Minnesota, and
Speaker 7: for the last two years especially, he's had a very
Speaker 7: compliant state legislature and he's implemented a whole series of
Speaker 7: far left policies and they've had disastrous consequences for Minnesota.
Speaker 7: Do you want to start with crime, James.
Speaker 4: Well, yes, And let's also talk about how much the
Speaker 4: governor has and because gotta be fair, I'm going to
Speaker 4: talk about a lot of things, but how much the
Speaker 4: governor has influence over that particular aspect. So, yeah, let's
Speaker 4: talk about crime. I live in Minneapolis. I've got my
Speaker 4: thoughts on that, but go ahead.
Speaker 7: Well, let's let's start with the basic data. I think
Speaker 7: that's what's important. Minnesota, through its history has always been
Speaker 7: a low crime state. That was always true until Tim
Speaker 7: Walls got into office at the beginning of twenty nineteen
Speaker 7: and now beginning in twenty twenty and continuing to the present,
Speaker 7: for the first time in its history, Minnesota is officially
Speaker 7: a high crime state. The per capita rate of serious
Speaker 7: crimes that's part one crimes is defined by the FBI,
Speaker 7: is now higher in Minnesota than it is for the
Speaker 7: country as a whole. We are a high crime state
Speaker 7: that has never happened before, and there's a couple of
Speaker 7: reasons for it, James. One of them, of course, is
Speaker 7: the twenty twenty George Floyd riots and Tim Walls dithered
Speaker 7: for four days. Everybody was pleading with him, including the
Speaker 7: mayor of Minneapolis, to call out the national Guard, and
Speaker 7: he wouldn't do it, and he said, but he said
Speaker 7: that he wasn't doing it because he was sympathetic to
Speaker 7: the objectives the of the rioters. Finally, after four days
Speaker 7: he called out the National Guard and they called the riots.
Speaker 7: But the damage was done. I mean, is you know, James.
Speaker 7: Big swaths of the city of Minneapolis were burned down,
Speaker 7: and the rioters stormed the Minneapolis Police Department's third precinct station.
Speaker 7: They burned into the ground. I mean, it was a nightmare.
Speaker 7: And the crime rate in Minnesota has never recovered. The
Speaker 7: crime spree continues to this day. And the other thing
Speaker 7: that and David Zimmer of our office did a post
Speaker 7: either yesterday afternoon or just this morning, which is also
Speaker 7: really revealing, and it shows how the crime rate, the
Speaker 7: violent crime rate started rising right after Tim Walls and
Speaker 7: Keith Ellison came into office at the beginning of twenty nineteen.
Speaker 7: And it plots the crime rate, violent crime rate against
Speaker 7: the incarceration rate in Minnesota, which is absurdly low, and
Speaker 7: as the incarceration rate falls over the course of the
Speaker 7: Walls administration, the violent crime rate rises. And David goes
Speaker 7: on to explain the specific things that have been done
Speaker 7: in Minnesota by the Walls administration and by the Minnesota legislature,
Speaker 7: which Walls dominates, that have radically reduced the incarceration rate.
Speaker 7: So the data are all there. Minnesota has become a
Speaker 7: high crime state for the first time ever, and Tim
Speaker 7: Walls can't dodge the responsibility.
Speaker 4: A couple of points. One to go back to what
Speaker 4: you were saying before about him having being kind of
Speaker 4: nasty in the clutch, Yeah, I mean that when I
Speaker 4: say genial, I mean that the images of him always
Speaker 4: look like, you know, when you're looking through your dad's
Speaker 4: old photographs of the hunting trips. He looks like, you know,
Speaker 4: the the chubby guy in the end with a big
Speaker 4: grin and the plaid jack and the rest of it.
Speaker 4: I'm just talking about the most superficial issue of it. Secondly,
Speaker 4: when it comes to Walt and the riots and the
Speaker 4: rest of it. I mean, you remember, he gave a
Speaker 4: press conference just like the May at the end of May,
Speaker 4: where he went off on the protesters. He may have
Speaker 4: had a you know, initial sympathy like his wife at
Speaker 4: the start, who said that she'd like to keep the
Speaker 4: window open so she could smell the you know, the
Speaker 4: the the burning of justice, which says a lot, but
Speaker 4: I mean, he did really hammer them in a press
Speaker 4: conference toward the end of May. I was reading some
Speaker 4: remarks about that, and you know, it's kind of just
Speaker 4: what I want the guy to say. Well, I agree
Speaker 4: with the points that you make. I think I can't.
Speaker 4: It's going to be hard to blame him specifically for
Speaker 4: what happened in Minneapolis. Minneapolis I believe is driving most
Speaker 4: of the crime right here, and that has to do
Speaker 4: with less police. It has to do with less policing.
Speaker 4: It has to do with the end of all of
Speaker 4: the little nuisance laws by which they used to nip
Speaker 4: crime at thet etcetera, etcetera. There's a lot of stuff
Speaker 4: packaged into that. And while I don't think you can
Speaker 4: hanging around him, which you can hang around him is
Speaker 4: his party and the attitudes of his party, which are
Speaker 4: don't police, don't pull the guys over, don't send him
Speaker 4: the prison. You know that.
Speaker 7: I think, Well, James, if you're saying that he's not
Speaker 7: the only radical leftist in Minnesota or absolutely the Tiffin
Speaker 7: County Attorney Mary Moriarty, you know, we could do a
Speaker 7: separate podcast about her but I think you're being way,
Speaker 7: way too generous. I mean after the rioters was after
Speaker 7: the fact, Well, the riots were going on, that's what
Speaker 7: we needed him to do something to stop them, and
Speaker 7: he didn't and and that's the key fact. And then
Speaker 7: again beyond that, uh, the incarceration rate has has declined
Speaker 7: significantly and you can just see it in the chart.
Speaker 7: And the violent crime rate has risen, and that too.
Speaker 7: Again he's not the only one, but it's a combination
Speaker 7: of administrative actions and legislative actions that have that have
Speaker 7: driven that.
Speaker 4: So let's go to education, because I think you've govern
Speaker 4: or submit budgets. Budgets are statewide, and so I think
Speaker 4: maybe we can look there and say that we can
Speaker 4: have a more clear direct between line between his tenure,
Speaker 4: his occupation of the office, and the results. Where is
Speaker 4: Minnesota always prized as a literate state that's full of
Speaker 4: smart people looking to get ahead. How are we doing
Speaker 4: on that score?
Speaker 6: Yeah?
Speaker 7: Well so Catren Wigfall, who's our education policy fellow here
Speaker 7: in America Experiment, put together a brilliant chart that tells
Speaker 7: you everything you need to know. And what it shows
Speaker 7: is that in recent years, and particularly during the walls administration,
Speaker 7: spending on K through twelve education has skyrocketed. The chart
Speaker 7: shows per student inflation adjusted spending, and it is just skyrocketed.
Speaker 6: At the same.
Speaker 7: Time, student performance has been declining catastrophically. And the chart, again,
Speaker 7: it just tells everything you need to know. And the facts, James,
Speaker 7: as you know, are shocking. Currently, more than half of
Speaker 7: all of the K through twelve students in Minnesota's public
Speaker 7: schools can neither read nor do math at grade level.
Speaker 6: I mean, just think about that more.
Speaker 4: Because we're not spending enough. We're obviously not spending enough money.
Speaker 6: It's unbelievable. Let me give you another one, James, let
Speaker 6: me give you another one.
Speaker 7: The longer they're in Minnesota's public schools, the worse off
Speaker 7: they are. Sixty four percent. Sixty four percent of eleventh
Speaker 7: graders in all the Minnesota public schools K through twelve
Speaker 7: cannot do I'm sorry, this is eleventh graders sixty four
Speaker 7: percent across the state of Minnesota cannot do math at
Speaker 7: grade level. Sixty four percent. Well, I mean, this is
Speaker 7: catastrophically bad.
Speaker 5: How do you expect them to make more Democrats without
Speaker 5: schools that perform like that? Hi, Johnny, we usually you
Speaker 5: and I usually only see each other in pixels. And
Speaker 5: I've got three or four questions, but they all culminate
Speaker 5: in this one. When are you ever going to run
Speaker 5: for governor of Minnesota? Clearly we need someone like you
Speaker 5: to do this.
Speaker 7: I actually have been asked that question more seriously, Steve.
Speaker 7: But it's been a while, and I think I don't
Speaker 7: want to run and have people talking about whether.
Speaker 6: I've seen a hell yet.
Speaker 4: You know, I.
Speaker 6: Think I've passed the point where that would have been
Speaker 6: a good idea.
Speaker 5: Yeah, well all right, well look, I know, but people
Speaker 5: should keep asking you that. Look, Lucretian, and I won't
Speaker 5: say we don't have any sympathy for you in Minnesota,
Speaker 5: but we have been governed well me, I'm still but
Speaker 5: Lucretia grew up in California. We're governed by Gavin Newsom,
Speaker 5: and it seems to me the only difference between Newsom
Speaker 5: and Waltz is that Waltz doesn't use as much brial
Speaker 5: cream in his hair, and Newsom gets more pressed because
Speaker 5: California and so forth. On the other hand, I do
Speaker 5: notice that Newsom's approval ratings in California are deeply underwater.
Speaker 5: The problem is there isn't. And by the way, the
Speaker 5: serious point behind my question of you running for governor
Speaker 5: is that the Republican Party is just so feeble in
Speaker 5: californ that they can't seem to get a decent statewide
Speaker 5: candidate with even a shot at disrupting the progressive juggernaut.
Speaker 3: Here.
Speaker 5: Minnesota's closer, right, I mean, the Republicans are like with
Speaker 5: a couple of seats in the legislature, Is that right?
Speaker 3: And yeah, yeah, I often.
Speaker 7: Point out to people everybody thinks Minnesota's this deep blue state.
Speaker 7: It's true that Republicans haven't won a statewide election since
Speaker 7: two thousand and six, but if you look at the legislature,
Speaker 7: it's very narrowly balanced. I mean, the Democrats, all the
Speaker 7: terrible things they've done in the last two years, they
Speaker 7: passed by one vote in the state Senate thirty four
Speaker 7: to thirty three. They swung one seat in twenty twenty
Speaker 7: two in a district where there was a Republican incumbent
Speaker 7: he was challenging the primary by a more more conservative Republican.
Speaker 7: The conservative Republican won the primary became the nominee. The
Speaker 7: incumbent Republican then endorsed the Democrat who won by three
Speaker 7: hundred and twenty one votes, and all the terrible things
Speaker 7: the Democrats have done since past thirty four to thirty
Speaker 7: three in the Minnesota Senate. So yeah, we are more
Speaker 7: finally balanced than people realize. But the other side of
Speaker 7: the coin, steve to be honest, is that Minnesota's Republican
Speaker 7: party has been weak for about the last fifteen to
Speaker 7: twenty years, and there's a structural imbalance. The Democrats in
Speaker 7: the twenty two cycle outspent Republicans three to one, and
Speaker 7: that's typical in some ways. They'll outspend the Republicans four
Speaker 7: to one, five to one, six to one.
Speaker 3: Right, Okay, well, sorry, that's a problem.
Speaker 5: One more question and then I'll turn over Lucretia, who
Speaker 5: I think I know what she wants to ask about.
Speaker 3: I think conservative media have been pretty good.
Speaker 5: At least laying out the whole list of issues about
Speaker 5: Waltz and his opinions and his views. There's one story, though,
Speaker 5: that I know you and Scott Johnson have covered closely
Speaker 5: that I haven't heard people jump on yet, and it's
Speaker 5: the scandal over the what's it called the Feeding Minnesota
Speaker 5: program where you've had feeding our future, Right, would you
Speaker 5: tell listeners what that's about and his wall it's implicated
Speaker 5: in least being negligent about that.
Speaker 6: Yeah, oh god, we could talk for a lot.
Speaker 7: Future is the biggest that's shorthand okay for a huge
Speaker 7: scandal here in Minnesota, the single biggest fraud that's been
Speaker 7: identified as coming out of all the COVID programs. And
Speaker 7: very briefly, this was a program that was supposed to
Speaker 7: feed poor children. Now, if you did the math, we
Speaker 7: don't have that many poor children in Minnesota. I mean,
Speaker 7: these people were claiming to feed millions and millions.
Speaker 6: Of meals the poor children.
Speaker 7: Feeding Our Future was one of two or three umbrella nonprofits.
Speaker 7: And the woman Amy Bach, who ran Feeding Our Future,
Speaker 7: she's now a criminal defendant. She went out and rustled
Speaker 7: up a bunch of Somalis to put together other nonprofits
Speaker 7: and they work frequently through restaurants, and they started invoicing
Speaker 7: for the alleged feeding of millions of to poor children,
Speaker 7: and the State of Minnesota shoveled out the door. The
Speaker 7: Department of Education shoveled out the door hundreds of millions
Speaker 7: of dollars and finally got investigated. The US Attorney thinks
Speaker 7: that five hundred million dollars were stolen from the taxpayers.
Speaker 7: There are seventy criminal indictments. One case so far has
Speaker 7: gone to trial. Eighteen defendants have pled guilty. Five have
Speaker 7: been found guilty. In that trial, the defendants delivered a
Speaker 7: bag with one hundred thousand dollars in cash in it
Speaker 7: to the home of one of the jurors like the
Speaker 7: day before they were going to start deliberating, with a
Speaker 7: note saying that there was more where that came from
Speaker 7: if she voted to acquit the defendants. It's an unbelievable scandal,
Speaker 7: but it's one of many, well over a billion dollars
Speaker 7: in identified specific scandals with names, not just the way
Speaker 7: the indulgent every day scandals. Names have gone out the
Speaker 7: door during the Walls administration. I mean, it is the
Speaker 7: most scandal plagued administration in America.
Speaker 3: Yeah good.
Speaker 5: Can't some of that attach to Waltz or is he
Speaker 5: able to put distance between him and that?
Speaker 6: You tell me it hasn't attached to Walls in.
Speaker 7: The local press in Minnesota. I mean, look at the
Speaker 7: deparent of Education. The commissioner was appointed by Walls. The
Speaker 7: buck stops if it doesn't stop with Walls. It stops
Speaker 7: with the Commissioner of Education. Yeah, not a single person
Speaker 7: in the Department of Education has been fired or suspended
Speaker 7: or furloughed, or had a pay cut or had a
Speaker 7: reprimand put in their file or anything else as the
Speaker 7: result of a five hundred million dollar scandal. That's the
Speaker 7: administration that Tim Walls runs.
Speaker 4: Johnny, this is of a piece with the usual Republicans.
Speaker 4: You obviously are telling me because you don't like the
Speaker 4: Feeding Our Future program, that you don't want to feed children,
Speaker 4: that you just the very idea of feeding children angers you.
Speaker 4: And this is one of the attacks that we've seen
Speaker 4: when people point out that they're trying to make it
Speaker 4: sound as if the GOP is upset that the state
Speaker 4: feeds children in schools, that that's the thing that that
Speaker 4: animated James.
Speaker 7: I'm upset when people steal money by pretending to feed
Speaker 7: non existing children. Well, that can't need to be a
Speaker 7: slightly different point.
Speaker 4: That's you know, your your your nuance. There is just
Speaker 4: not He's going to fall on deaf years because we
Speaker 4: know that the Republicans want children to be starving all
Speaker 4: day and they don't want them to learn. But the
Speaker 4: attack is that they say that the Republicans are opposed
Speaker 4: to feeding children in school before we go to du Cretia,
Speaker 4: could you just tell us exactly why that isn't an
Speaker 4: accurate description of the objections to Walt's policy.
Speaker 7: Well, I mean none of that has even come up.
Speaker 7: I mean, the criminal prosecutions and the criticism the Department
Speaker 7: of Education has taken have had nothing to do with
Speaker 7: feeding children. They've had to do with stealing money.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 4: But it's the idea that I mean, we're going to
Speaker 4: feed children in school regardless of income.
Speaker 6: That's the whole Well, that's that's another So that's a
Speaker 6: whole nother.
Speaker 4: That's completely different women.
Speaker 7: Completely different issue. Now we're talking about children who are
Speaker 7: actually attending school. That was not the case of feeding
Speaker 7: our future.
Speaker 4: I know.
Speaker 6: There's a whole nother.
Speaker 7: Issue, which is that the Minnesota legislature has has passed
Speaker 7: now a law that provides both breakfast and lunch to
Speaker 7: all students in the Minnesota public schools, not just poor kids.
Speaker 6: You don't have to qualify for free lunch.
Speaker 7: You don't get free breakfast and free lunch if you
Speaker 7: are a student attending Minnesota schools. And and that has
Speaker 7: not been all that controversial, frankly, but I mean some
Speaker 7: of us have criticized it on the ground that it's
Speaker 7: really the parents' job to feed their children. Okay, if
Speaker 7: there are poor kids as parents can't afford to pay
Speaker 7: the thirty five cents or whatever school lunch costs.
Speaker 4: Now happy, I'm happy to help them out.
Speaker 1: The programs federal programs that do that.
Speaker 7: Yeah, but since when is it the states duty to
Speaker 7: feed children in the first instance. It's up to the
Speaker 7: parents to feed their children.
Speaker 1: So I want to ask a question of you, John
Speaker 1: that I think you can attach directly to Tim Waltz.
Speaker 1: So for a variety of different reasons, I have probably
Speaker 1: spent a dozen hours over the last couple of weeks
Speaker 1: with command sergeant majors that are friends of mine that
Speaker 1: I work with, and I will tell you that while
Speaker 1: the people who wouldn't vote for let me say that right,
Speaker 1: the people who would vote for the Kamalama Ding Dong
Speaker 1: Tim Waltz ticket aren't going to care about Tim Walt's,
Speaker 1: shall we say, exaggerating his record. There are a lot
Speaker 1: of veterans out there who might not have voted one
Speaker 1: way or the other, who will come out on this
Speaker 1: because the issue to me is very, very very serious.
Speaker 1: It is because I spend most of my time professionally
Speaker 1: in my volunteer time with soldiers. The idea a of
Speaker 1: a command sergeant major. I know he had the right
Speaker 1: to retire. We're not clear how he got out of
Speaker 1: his enlistment, his six year enlistment, but that he would
Speaker 1: leave his battalion before they were about to deploy to Iraq.
Speaker 1: I know there's all these little things about dates and
Speaker 1: so on. So are you know at least a year
Speaker 1: and a half before a unit's likely to deploy, especially
Speaker 1: in those circumstances, So he put in his retirement paperwork
Speaker 1: after he found out they were deploying. There's no doubt
Speaker 1: about that. Number two. And to leave his battalion like that,
Speaker 1: I have never met a senior enlisted officer who would
Speaker 1: even consider doing that. They're always doing the opposite. So
Speaker 1: he is cowardly or he's so driven by power and
Speaker 1: so forth that he wouldn't see it any other way.
Speaker 1: But then to claim that he was in war, that
Speaker 1: you knew I held this gun in war, all of
Speaker 1: the things that he claimed to claim. Having been a
Speaker 1: retired command sergeant major he knew that most people were
Speaker 1: unlikely to challenge that because most people don't understand how
Speaker 1: the whole process works and the difference between an eight
Speaker 1: and a E nine and why it matters. But over
Speaker 1: the years, he's claimed so many lies, basically twisting the truth.
Speaker 1: I think that's a lie that veterans I know and
Speaker 1: talk to who couldn't give a damn about politics are
Speaker 1: scandalized by this, and I think that attaches to him.
Speaker 1: And I think what you're seeing is a lot of
Speaker 1: Republicans continue to press this point. You see some evidence
Speaker 1: that the Democrats are a little panicked about this and
Speaker 1: are trying to push back. I think this sticks with Waltz,
Speaker 1: and whether it sticks with him enough to force them
Speaker 1: to get rid of him, it's not c to me
Speaker 1: yet depends. But what do you think Knowing that you're
Speaker 1: there in Minneapolis, you've probably met some of the people
Speaker 1: that were in his battalion that were upset about the
Speaker 1: fact that he'd abandoned them.
Speaker 7: In their opinion, Well, there are multiple things going on
Speaker 7: with respect to Tim Wall's exaggeration at best of his
Speaker 7: military service, and I agree with you, Lucretia, that the
Speaker 7: most significant one is his abandoning his battalion. Okay, he
Speaker 7: was in the Minnesota National Guard for twenty four years.
Speaker 7: He took money, you know, he served. That's all great,
Speaker 7: that's fine, it was all in peace time. Well, now
Speaker 7: the Iraq War comes along, and in two thousand and five,
Speaker 7: or maybe even in two thousand and four, his battalion
Speaker 7: gets the word they are going to be deployed to Iraq.
Speaker 6: And there's a lot of talk about this.
Speaker 7: This is in the works, as you say, for quite
Speaker 7: a while, and several of his former National Guardsmen fellows
Speaker 7: have that he repeatedly told them, I'm going to Iraq,
Speaker 7: I'm going to be with you, I'm going to be there,
Speaker 7: and then at the last minute he pulled out and
Speaker 7: he quit, and he left the National Guard, and many
Speaker 7: of those National guardsmen are bitterly angry at him for it.
Speaker 7: There was a piece in the Daily Mail where the
Speaker 7: mother of a twenty year old minister or National guardsman
Speaker 7: who was in that battalion, who went to a rock
Speaker 7: when Tim Walls didn't. She's bitterly angry at Tim Walls
Speaker 7: to this day. I don't know how big an issue
Speaker 7: this is with the general public, but I think it's
Speaker 7: going to be an issue with a lot of veterans.
Speaker 6: And I think the side.
Speaker 7: Issues as I would view them, the fact that he
Speaker 7: always said, oh, I retired as a command sergeant major.
Speaker 6: Well, actually that's not quite right.
Speaker 7: You know, he held that title kind of provisionally, but
Speaker 7: he never completed the requirements for it, and so when
Speaker 7: he summarily quit the National Guard, he was demoted and
Speaker 7: he didn't retire command sergeant major. Now I think most
Speaker 7: people maybe won't understand that distinction. I think some military
Speaker 7: people will. And then of course he goes around, he's
Speaker 7: on video, you know, talking about himself like he was
Speaker 7: a war hero. You know, he's talking about gun control,
Speaker 7: all these weapons of war. I carried these weapons of
Speaker 7: war in war. No, he didn't. You know, he was
Speaker 7: never in a war. He never went near a war zone.
Speaker 7: And so you know, stolen valor is a charge that
Speaker 7: we'll see it. It may stick to him.
Speaker 4: No. I mean, just as you know the phrase big
Speaker 4: debt energy means the patriarchy is back, doesn't it mean
Speaker 4: that all of this talk about his service means that,
Speaker 4: you know, it's good that we got these guys with
Speaker 4: guns in uniform going to our coons to do things.
Speaker 4: And of course that's going to stick and not be
Speaker 4: flipped the minute that it turns on, you know, the
Speaker 4: other candidate. So yeah, I'm not sure how much this
Speaker 4: is going to stick with people. Some of the particulars
Speaker 4: may be.
Speaker 1: That on James. Yeah, I mean, Pennsylvania has eight hundred
Speaker 1: thousand veterans. Again, what John says is true. Well, does
Speaker 1: it matter to the general population that the guy said
Speaker 1: he was a command sergeant major but he really was
Speaker 1: demoted back to master sergeant. It doesn't matter to the
Speaker 1: general population. They don't know the difference between eight and
Speaker 1: e nine and why that's important. But you know what,
Speaker 1: every single one of those veterans understands it completely.
Speaker 4: And I agree with you.
Speaker 1: It's going to make a difference, and in close elections
Speaker 1: it's going to make a difference.
Speaker 4: Perhaps you're perhaps you're absolutely right. It goes it goes
Speaker 4: back to you convincing the vast middle that your person,
Speaker 4: your guys are the ones who are happy and joyful
Speaker 4: and will do great things and the other side is
Speaker 4: full of youple And I mean what John was saying
Speaker 4: there before, making the distinction between the state giving breakfast
Speaker 4: and lunch to needy kids who otherwise could not afford it,
Speaker 4: and then just giving it to everybody seems like to
Speaker 4: a lot of people a ridiculous distinction to make. What
Speaker 4: are you upset about?
Speaker 3: Why not?
Speaker 4: What's the problem? You want to stigmatize the kids who
Speaker 4: are getting it for free?
Speaker 3: But it actually is.
Speaker 4: I mean, it's indicative of a lot the idea that
Speaker 4: the isn't the parents' responsibility to put the lunch the
Speaker 4: lunch of bulls in the bag. Is the state in
Speaker 4: all of its manifestations it's supposed to take care of you.
Speaker 4: That's what we get hung up on. But does that
Speaker 4: affect the general election?
Speaker 3: I don't think so.
Speaker 5: So anyway, go on, Can I make just two quick
Speaker 5: observations about this?
Speaker 3: One is there?
Speaker 5: I think we're at the phase that happens in a
Speaker 5: lot of campaigns where the record of the running mate
Speaker 5: the a possible personal scandals come to the fore for
Speaker 5: a few weeks. The same controversy almost happened with Dan
Speaker 5: Quayle in nineteen eighty eight and his Indiana National Guard service.
Speaker 5: So who knows whether this is going to stick the
Speaker 5: way the swift boat problems stuck with John Carey. But
Speaker 5: there's a second thing here, the exaggerations of Waltz. There's
Speaker 5: a pattern here that I've commented on before with Lucretian,
Speaker 5: I've written about there's a kind of neediness about liberals,
Speaker 5: so and they lie about stuff about their own record.
Speaker 5: You know, Joe Biden, as we know, was arrested with
Speaker 5: Nelson Mandela and March and the civil rights movement and
Speaker 5: climb Mount everest al Gore invented the Internet. Hillary Clinton
Speaker 5: was under fire in Bosnia, right, Brian Williams at NBC News,
Speaker 5: it's not just officeholders, but you know, he was under
Speaker 5: fire in Iraq. And what drives these people to do this?
Speaker 5: I think it's part of their Actually think it's deep
Speaker 5: roots in leftist ideology. And that takes a while to explain,
Speaker 5: but at some point, as social psychologist has to say,
Speaker 5: there's a pattern recognition problem here with liberals who feel
Speaker 5: compelled to puff up their personal heroism and bravery and
Speaker 5: reputation when the facts can't back it up.
Speaker 3: And that's always a bad sign sometimes things.
Speaker 1: Truth is more important than just the facts, Steve, don't you.
Speaker 5: Know it's well my truth number, it's my truth. We
Speaker 5: live in the age of proprietary truth, as I've been
Speaker 5: calling it.
Speaker 1: That's the simple explanation for what you said would take
Speaker 1: too long to explain.
Speaker 5: Okay, Yeah, So I don't know, John, that's need a
Speaker 5: truth teller like you run for governor, a real truth teller.
Speaker 3: So I'll just my stick there.
Speaker 7: I think point Steve, I can't really explain it, but
Speaker 7: there's no question there's a long history. There's no doubt
Speaker 7: that Tim Walls is very much in that tradition.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 6: He can't just you know, be honest and tell the truth.
Speaker 6: They have to pump themselves up.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Is this a modern effect? I mean when I think
Speaker 4: back to we were talking before he got on here
Speaker 4: about the previous happy warrior, Hubert Humphrey. Remember, I don't
Speaker 4: remember Humphrey actually exaggerating and inflating what he did. I
Speaker 4: remember any of those guys really doing so. I mean, JFK,
Speaker 4: you know, pt book, the rest of it. There's always
Speaker 4: a little of that in politics. But as far as
Speaker 4: being sort of a pathological thing by people who really.
Speaker 6: I got hey, James, I got to stick up.
Speaker 7: I got to stick up for Kennedy, you know, I
Speaker 7: think passing out the tie pins, you know, the one
Speaker 7: O nine that it's okay politics. You know, he had
Speaker 7: that on his record, But later on he was asked,
Speaker 7: you know how he became over.
Speaker 6: Yeah, well, and his answer was, well, I had no choice.
Speaker 6: They sank my boat, right.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 7: I think at some level, Kennedy, you know, Kennedy did
Speaker 7: have a little.
Speaker 6: Of our self awareness.
Speaker 4: Yes, well, speaking of presidents who did not finish out
Speaker 4: their term, it's the fiftieth anniversary of Watergate, the resignation
Speaker 4: and the rest of it. I always remember that this
Speaker 4: time of the year. I think it's the birthday of Prince,
Speaker 4: the anniversary of Hiroshima and Nixon's resignation. Ah, so celebrate
Speaker 4: those in which way you choose? What do we know
Speaker 4: fifty years on that we didn't know at the time.
Speaker 4: What have we learned in retrospect? Should he have stuck
Speaker 4: it out?
Speaker 3: Yes?
Speaker 4: Does any of this matter to a modern American politics
Speaker 4: or the residences to this day that still echo in
Speaker 4: the very and whenever we talk about these things, Well.
Speaker 5: Let me start with three quick points that Lucretia can
Speaker 5: backfill in a number of ways.
Speaker 4: That was a question of our guests.
Speaker 3: Actually, okay, well, let's John, He's sticking around.
Speaker 4: I want to give you.
Speaker 6: I have more to say about Tim Walls.
Speaker 7: By the way, you should hear what you did in
Speaker 7: Minnesota's economy, for example. But that's okay, we can Did
Speaker 7: you know that for the first time in our history,
Speaker 7: we are now a below average state economically by the
Speaker 7: most basic measure gd per capita GDP. We have always
Speaker 7: been above the national average and per capita GDP. In
Speaker 7: twenty twenty three, because of Tim Walls is crazy and
Speaker 7: the DFL is crazy left wing policies, we are now
Speaker 7: below average.
Speaker 4: I mean, we have more more people leaving than coming in.
Speaker 7: And of course, yeah, way more people leaving and moving in.
Speaker 7: That's the acid test. And people want to live in
Speaker 7: your state, and people don't want to live in Tim
Speaker 7: Walls's Minnesota.
Speaker 6: Now let's go back to.
Speaker 4: You.
Speaker 3: Sound like a candidate staying on message just there.
Speaker 7: Yes, I try to stand a message, but so yeah, look,
Speaker 7: I mean, I'll tell you what and you guys may
Speaker 7: know more about this than I do. I was in
Speaker 7: law school during Watergate. I had friends who were a
Speaker 7: couple of years ahead of me in law school who
Speaker 7: went to work in the prosecutor's office. The Independent Prosecutor's office.
Speaker 7: And it was Archibald Cox who took that over. No, no,
Speaker 7: what was the sequence?
Speaker 3: Cox was the.
Speaker 7: First one, and who mix and fired and then and
Speaker 7: then yeah, oh that's right. Then and Jeorski took it over.
Speaker 7: And I had friends who went to work in that office.
Speaker 7: And the whole ethos was get Nixon. We are trying
Speaker 7: to get Nixon. I mean, I saw it firsthand, and
Speaker 7: I guess what I've always felt is that in the end,
Speaker 7: Nixon didn't have any choice.
Speaker 6: And part of the reason he didn't.
Speaker 7: Have any choice is that his party didn't stand behind him.
Speaker 7: He got sold out really in the us SE And
Speaker 7: at the time, people thought, oh this is a good thing,
Speaker 7: you know, James Baking, all these people, they're not being partisan, right,
Speaker 7: And with hindsight the way the political game has been
Speaker 7: played ever since, I'd like to see kind of an
Speaker 7: alternative universe where the Republican Party gets behind Nixon, stays
Speaker 7: behind Nixon, where he doesn't get you know, he doesn't
Speaker 7: get forced out and sticks to his guns, and see
Speaker 7: what would have happened.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 5: So, I mean, I think we've learned some new facts
Speaker 5: over the fifty years because a lot of confidential documents
Speaker 5: from the Justice Department have been pride loose through Foyer
Speaker 5: and other means, And what we learned is there was
Speaker 5: massive prosecutorial misconduct and completely unethical ex party communications with
Speaker 5: Judge John Sirica, who's subsiding over the whole thing. It
Speaker 5: also turns out that people who've were slowly gone through
Speaker 5: some of the things in the tapes, especially the famous
Speaker 5: smoking gun tape, the March meeting with John Dean saying
Speaker 5: we can find the money to pay hush money to
Speaker 5: the burglars, turns out that the timelines don't work out right,
Speaker 5: and those conversations were actually misunderstood, including by Nixon's own team.
Speaker 5: But then, finally, I think when you look at what's
Speaker 5: happened to Trump, starting with the the phony Russia hoax
Speaker 5: and the law fair against him, all of a sudden
Speaker 5: our perspective has changed. One of the things to understand
Speaker 5: about Nixon is remembered he humiliated the left by winning
Speaker 5: forty nine states in nineteen seventy two, and second he
Speaker 5: proposed seriously to take control of the federal bureaucracy. And
Speaker 5: I think the real subtext here, and of course Watergate
Speaker 5: was an excuse and Nixon himself admitted it. He says,
Speaker 5: I gave them a sword, and if I'd have been them,
Speaker 5: I'd have done the same thing with it.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 5: That was the famous David Frost interview. But look, the
Speaker 5: I think the real subtext here and the sort of
Speaker 5: lingering and significant storyline for us today is that bureaucracy decided,
Speaker 5: the permanent government, the deep state, whatever you want to
Speaker 5: call it, They decided Nixon has to go because he
Speaker 5: is an existential threat to our existence and our program. Right,
Speaker 5: Nixon understood, and he was starting to say something that
Speaker 5: Republicans still have trouble saying directly, and then I'll shut
Speaker 5: up our permanent bureaucracy, the administrative state, whatever you want
Speaker 5: to call it. It is the partisan instrument of the
Speaker 5: Democratic Party. And that's why any threat to it.
Speaker 3: So you know your.
Speaker 5: Bushes are not going to threaten it very seriously. And look,
Speaker 5: they tried to take Reagan down using the same law
Speaker 5: fair playbook with a ran contra. But Trump once the
Speaker 5: ind comes along and as a direct threat to them
Speaker 5: with specific proposals. That explains why the left is ginning
Speaker 5: up about Project twenty twenty five, even though it's an
Speaker 5: exercise that heritage has done for forty years. And so
Speaker 5: you know, if Trump wins as I as I say
Speaker 5: I expect he will, you're going to see them try
Speaker 5: and run the exact same playbook one more time.
Speaker 1: I but I would disagree with one thing you say
Speaker 1: to disagree with small point, because you actually contradicted yourself
Speaker 1: in that whole one. Because what you said was the
Speaker 1: administrative state, how did you put it? Is the is
Speaker 1: the Democratic Party, it's the part as an instrument of
Speaker 1: the uniparty, Steve, and you said that because the very
Speaker 1: next thing you said was the Bushes aren't going to uh,
Speaker 1: you know, do anything about that. The the the the
Speaker 1: the Republican party establishment is almost as guilty and complicit
Speaker 1: in refusing to allow kind of back to what John
Speaker 1: even said, refusing to allow any Republican president or presidential
Speaker 1: candidate to criticize too deeply the swamp. Call it that,
Speaker 1: and that sounds a little bit childish to put it
Speaker 1: that way, but I mean it sincerely. And that is
Speaker 1: that that because the Republicans wouldn't stand behind Nixon. And
Speaker 1: I don't think it's just because they were, you know,
Speaker 1: watching the polls and so forth, Because they weren't responsible
Speaker 1: for some of the negative press that that Nixon was getting.
Speaker 1: In all that, Republicans have shown themselves over and over,
Speaker 1: with few exceptions, that they're not willing to stand behind
Speaker 1: a candidate who wants to clean house of the federal government.
Speaker 1: And so that's where I would disagree, and I think
Speaker 1: if you put it in that context, it explains why
Speaker 1: Nixon was not supported in nineteen seventy four, and it
Speaker 1: explains why Trump wasn't supported in twenty sixteen, twenty seventeen,
Speaker 1: all through his presidency, and why Trump is not supported
Speaker 1: by many members of the Republican establishment today because they
Speaker 1: don't want Trump to do what Trump wants to do.
Speaker 1: They didn't want Nixon to do what Nixon wanted to do,
Speaker 1: because there's just too much at stake for the way
Speaker 1: things operate on a daily basis in Washington, d C.
Speaker 1: For Republicans even to want that whole nice little situation
Speaker 1: that've got to end, whether it's defense contractors, on and
Speaker 1: on and on. I could go on this forever, and
Speaker 1: I won't. I'll quit now.
Speaker 6: Well that's a big subject.
Speaker 7: But I'm going to go back to a point you made, Steve,
Speaker 7: because I just don't remember this. I'm sure you're probably right.
Speaker 7: You say Nixon was making noises about really taking on
Speaker 7: the federal bureaucracy.
Speaker 6: I mean Nixon found the EPA.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, no, right, yeah, maybe.
Speaker 7: I'm just forgetting I was younger then, but I mean,
Speaker 7: I don't remember Nixon making war on the federal bureaucracy.
Speaker 3: Well, well it's a long Oh no. No, he understood what.
Speaker 5: Had gone wrong, I think, and wanted to reverse course
Speaker 5: dramatically in a second term.
Speaker 3: But he just want to abolish the EPA.
Speaker 5: He wanted to actually centralize control of the bureaucracy in
Speaker 5: the White House and have a super cabinet. There's a
Speaker 5: great book about this from Gus the late seventies called
Speaker 5: The Plot That Failed, And the opening scene is it's
Speaker 5: my liberal professor named Richard Nathan. It's a great makes
Speaker 5: for great reading. But he said, was he overheard his
Speaker 5: conversation on a plane in early seventy three. We were
Speaker 5: one liberal operative says to another on the shuttle New York.
Speaker 5: You realize Nixon's only weeks away from taking over the
Speaker 5: federal government. That becomes the whole storyline of the book.
Speaker 5: And yeah, no, Nixon's a complicated person. We didn't perceive
Speaker 5: this very well. The administrative state and spending arguably grew
Speaker 5: more under him than under the.
Speaker 3: Great Society, and that is a big problem. That's one
Speaker 3: of the great Wait.
Speaker 5: So well, that was why you know my mentor stand
Speaker 5: Evans used to say, you know, I didn't support Nixon
Speaker 5: until after Watergate, you know, after.
Speaker 3: Wage and price controls, and water was a breath of
Speaker 3: fresh air.
Speaker 7: Yes, well, this is one of the great historical moments
Speaker 7: with Nixon or Ford. I think it was in Nixon
Speaker 7: and then carried on by Ford and Dick Cheney, and
Speaker 7: you know the Donald Rumson charge of waging price control.
Speaker 7: I know, I mean conservatism in the nineteen seventies was.
Speaker 6: Not when it later became.
Speaker 5: William Simon was the first energi zar, which is, you know,
Speaker 5: on principle he couldn't shouldn't, okay.
Speaker 4: Right, But to his credit, Nixon had a plan for
Speaker 4: building something like one hundred nuclear reactors. Correct, They had
Speaker 4: this big strategy where that we're going to become completely
Speaker 4: energy independance. We would have had so much, so much
Speaker 4: electricity at this point that it would be too cheap, demeter,
Speaker 4: it would be pennyche I mean that, you know, like,
Speaker 4: as you said, he was a complicated man and no
Speaker 4: one understands him but his woman.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, well, John, we got a few minutes left. Anything
Speaker 4: you want to leave us with any parting thoughts, any warnings,
Speaker 4: anything for the great national audience to remember that only
Speaker 4: US Minnesotans know.
Speaker 7: Well, not really, I mean I would just add this thought.
Speaker 7: I'm appalled at Tim Wall's being the vice presidential choice
Speaker 7: because because Kambala may very well win and I don't
Speaker 7: want Tim Walls anywhere near the levers of power. On
Speaker 7: the other hand, one interesting phenomenon is how now that
Speaker 7: he's the vice presidential nominee, light is being shown on
Speaker 7: him and his administration, his policies, his con in a
Speaker 7: way that's never happened here in Minnesota. Despite our best efforts, James,
Speaker 7: the Star Tribune and the other media here in Minnesota
Speaker 7: have done nothing but run interference for Tim Walls. I've
Speaker 7: got a good friend who was active in the twenty
Speaker 7: eighteen Republican campaign when Walls first got elected governor and
Speaker 7: kept trying to talk to local reporters about Tim Walls's
Speaker 7: military service and how he abandoned his battalion and lied
Speaker 7: about his rank. All this stuff was known then, and
Speaker 7: the reporters uniformly told him that's an old story, it's
Speaker 7: been covered, we won't write about it. And you know,
Speaker 7: it's really interesting how this is. It's a kind of
Speaker 7: a case study in how in how it's not just
Speaker 7: the national media, you know, that's in the tank for
Speaker 7: the Democrats. In some respects, local media tends to be worse.
Speaker 7: And it's kind of fun for me to see people
Speaker 7: finally paying attention to Tim Walls's record.
Speaker 4: We'll see, and we'll also see how people outstate regard
Speaker 4: this whole weird charge. I think one of the most
Speaker 4: rustive illus trading things about the administration happened a couple
Speaker 4: of years ago. I think a couple of years ago
Speaker 4: during the trans day of Visibility at the state Capitol. Now,
Speaker 4: I'm of the opinion that if somebody wants to declare
Speaker 4: themselves to be another gender and where the clothing of
Speaker 4: that other sex, fine, I don't care. There's a club
Speaker 4: for you, I'm sure, I don't care. Don't ask me
Speaker 4: to agree to conform to the general ideology to anything,
Speaker 4: don't ask me to be anything but indifferent. However, I
Speaker 4: do draw the line at having an event in the
Speaker 4: state Capitol where this guy on heels is dancing on
Speaker 4: the state's seal, which is embedded in the floor of
Speaker 4: the rotunda. It's actually this sort of thing you cannot do.
Speaker 4: There are ropes around it out of respect, you're not
Speaker 4: supposed to walk across it. But we have this event
Speaker 4: where everybody's whooping and whooping and hollering and cheering at
Speaker 4: this guy staggering around doing a horrible dance in high
Speaker 4: heels on the state seal itself. And to oppose that,
Speaker 4: to find that deplorable, is weird. Apparently that act that
Speaker 4: show is not itself weird, but to have an objection
Speaker 4: to it, to have an opinion about it even is
Speaker 4: being seen as weird. And that is how the culture
Speaker 4: of the Metro at least has shifted in the many
Speaker 4: years that I've been here.
Speaker 1: Now before they removed that seal since.
Speaker 7: James No, this is my point of lucretia. That seal
Speaker 7: no longer exists. You know why, because Tim Walls's committee
Speaker 7: didn't like it. There was an Indian on it on horseback,
Speaker 7: a pioneer pine trees waterfall, the state mottol and the
Speaker 7: date eighteen fifty eight, that was the date when Minnesota
Speaker 7: became a state. Tim Walls's committee said we shouldn't celebrate
Speaker 7: that date. That was a tragedy that Minnesota joined the Union.
Speaker 7: That was a terrible, terrible thing. We have to take
Speaker 7: that date off the state seal. And so the Indian's gone,
Speaker 7: the Pioneer is gone, the date is gone, it's all gone,
Speaker 7: and now it's just a loon. So the state seal
Speaker 7: that guy danced on, symbolically that was a preview of
Speaker 7: things to come.
Speaker 6: Because that state seal has now been retired.
Speaker 1: Well in the state seal is no longer on your flag.
Speaker 1: Instead you have the wanna be Somali flag.
Speaker 3: Not as badly.
Speaker 4: Yeah, the real question is whether or not you will
Speaker 4: be sand blasted or dynamited off one of the buildings
Speaker 4: in the State Fair because one of the old nineteen
Speaker 4: thirties nineteen forties barns I remember has the States has
Speaker 4: the old seal on it. So I'm curious whether we're
Speaker 4: going to go full or well and statue here and
Speaker 4: and jackhammer that thing off because its sentiments are no
Speaker 4: longer to be shared. History is such a bothersome impediment
Speaker 4: to getting us all into the year zero. Gosh darn it. Anyway, John,
Speaker 4: thanks so much. Everybody should go daily as you go
Speaker 4: to Ricochet too, power line blog dot com and have
Speaker 4: a good read. John, enjoy your lunch. Thank you for
Speaker 4: joining us today.
Speaker 5: And James, can I just get in a very quick
Speaker 5: closing note of course, listeners should know that I have
Speaker 5: filed an injunction in federal court under the old common
Speaker 5: law doctrine of adverse possession to take permanent ownership of
Speaker 5: Peter Spot since he's gone a Wallace, and Lucretia is
Speaker 5: recruiting a team of the best medical doctors to give
Speaker 5: the long overdue rhinoplasty to Rob Long.
Speaker 7: So, Fustine, I gotta warn your adverse possession takes twenty
Speaker 7: one years, so you might have to wait a while, you.
Speaker 4: Know, you know what the next year is going to
Speaker 4: feel like at least twenty So yeah, Johnny Derecord, thank
Speaker 4: you for joining us today in the podcast. To see
Speaker 4: you John, And we've come to an hour, so we're
Speaker 4: going to get out of here because what more needs
Speaker 4: to be said, really, except that you want to go
Speaker 4: to Ricochet, where a couple of things will happen. One
Speaker 4: you will be amazed she hadn't gone there before. B
Speaker 4: you will be curious beyond measure to find out what
Speaker 4: goes on in the member feed. Well, you have to
Speaker 4: join up for a mere pittance. You can find out
Speaker 4: and join the community there. That's just insane, center right,
Speaker 4: civil conversation you've been looking for all your years in
Speaker 4: the web. Mostly civil, sometimes yes, sometimes you know, not
Speaker 4: so civil. We're only human, what can we say. You
Speaker 4: can also find whether the Ricoshet people are meeting up,
Speaker 4: because it's not just a website. It's a place where
Speaker 4: people arrange meetings, where we meet in human form contact
Speaker 4: and have ribs and drink beer and generally talk about
Speaker 4: everything except politics. Lucritia, thanks for joining us today, Steven again,
Speaker 4: you know, good luck in the adverse possessional lawsuit. I
Speaker 4: take twenty one years, but I hope I'm going to
Speaker 4: be here for that long, and if not, I'm sure
Speaker 4: somebody else will be slaughtered in this place with absolute
Speaker 4: frictionless ease. We were brought to you by the people
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Speaker 4: I'm James, Alex here Minneapoli, Stephen Lachritian. It's been a
Speaker 4: pleasure and we'll see everybody in the comments at Ricochet
Speaker 4: four point zero.
Speaker 3: Next time, James,