Speaker 1: Welcome back, everyone to a new episode of You're Wrong
with Molly Hemingway, editor in chief of The Federalist and
David Harsani, senior writer at The Washington Examiner. Just as
a reminder, if you'd like to email the show, please
do so at radio at the Federalist dot com. Molly,
how's it going.
Speaker 2: I'm going to have to turn on my microphone for
a minute though. Yeah, everything's great.
Speaker 1: Okay, let's talk about the media, Molly. There's a new
book app by Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson. Forget what
it's called, but basically it's about how the media was
bamboozled by the Biden administration on the president's mental acuity
and his ability to perform his job. I find the
whole it's just kabookie theater or everyone knew. I don't
buy any of this, any of what's going on with
this kind of internal struggle session that's going on about
how the media acted during those years. I think they
knew in twenty twenty when Biden was in his basement
campaigning from there, I certainly saw it and everyone knew
was only going to get worse. Anyway, What are your
impressions of what's going on here.
Speaker 2: Okay, so I just have to point out you said
you didn't know what the title of the book is,
and I wouldn't have known either except I read a
line in a New York Times review of the book.
So the book is called Original Sin, and the New
York Times, those noted brilliant, knowledgeable people at the New
York Times said that unlike the Biblical story about original sin,
which they said was Adam and Eve were just innocently
curious and fell into sin, that the story of the
Biden problem is one where they were actually intending to
hide his condition. So someone get the New York Times
a copy of a Bible, and it's very hard to get,
I'm sure, but someone needs or just like Sunday School
for Dummies kind of lessons over at the New York
Times are needed.
Speaker 1: Well, no, they're notorious for understanding theological ideas. Over there
at the New York Times are the.
Speaker 2: Story of original Sin and Adam and even eating the apple.
It's not like, oh, totally unknown stories. So even for them,
this was pretty bad. But yes, you're exactly right. The
claim being made by Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson is
not that they lied throughout the Biden administration by downplaying, ignoring,
or mocking people who noticed Joe Biden's mental decline. It's
that they were misled by a tiny handful of anonymous
people inside the White House. They can't name who these
people are, and they can't be specific about what they did.
But just so you know, it's not that the media
about Biden's decline. It's that it's that about a half
dozen people misled them. This is as stupid as their
original problem, which was covering up Biden's mental decline or
mocking people who who noticed it. Everyone loves to say
that Jake Tapper's co author Alex Thompson actually did a
great job covering Biden's mental decline. That is only true
by comparison to the other propagandists in that he would
occasionally mention it, but it would always be with these
like really calm headlines like Biden is changing the way
he walks to Marine Force one, what is it called
Marine one? And then the story would say he's having
people walk around him, And then it would say some
people think this is because he's declining a bit, but
other people say no, it's for protection. I mean, it
was like so blase and boring, designed not to create
the kind of hysteria that you see about every single
Trump story. And Jake Tapper, for his part, was deriding
people as mocking a man with a stutter whenever they
noticed his decline. So he was much worse. And now
he's making a lot of money off of a book
claiming that six people in the White House misled him.
Speaker 1: Well, as far as Thompson goes, we're grading on a curve,
and you know, he scores well in that way. He
was a late adopter, though, because he went back this
last week. And I tried to figure out when I
started writing about this. Listen, I'm not a doctor, but
I kind of noticed that things weren't exactly right. And
in twenty twenty one I wrote my first column about
how he was doddering, you know what I mean. And
it did not stop from there. And by the way,
I was part of many people who did that.
Speaker 2: Wait, so I was doing a radio interview where they
were praising the Federalists for all of our good coverage
early on the Russia collusion hoax and the Kavanaugh rapesmear
and these types of stories, and they were including the
Biden mental acuity issue. And I said, we did amazing
work on Russia collusion in Cavanaugh, COVID and all that,
But I don't don't want to take credit for early
amazing work on the Biden stuff, because we didn't do
anything any earlier than one hundred million people in the
country noticed things like we weren't. We weren't like exposing
secret knowledge. We were just watching the news with our
eyes and saying what we saw. It wasn't that impressive.
Speaker 1: Well, and you mentioned something in passing before that, I
think we need to talk about a little bit. If
this is the original sin that sounds really bad, right,
original sin that the subhead by the subtitle is President
Biden's decline, it's cover up and his disastrous choice to
run again. Now I'm going to get back to that
last part in a minute. If you were tricked by
the Biden administration and as his flax and hacks and
whatever it is, why can't you name all the people
who did it? I mean, if the president could not
president has the nuclear codes. It's the most important person
in the world, arguably probably, and yet you can't tell
us who tricked you. I didn't read this book. I
doubt he names anyone right who should lose their job,
who shouldn't be part of the Democratic Party moving forward.
They know exactly what they did. I said this many times.
But if they didn't know, they shouldn't be reporters. If
they did know, they shouldn't be reporters. Those are the
two choices here. There's no other choice.
Speaker 2: So I saw Megan mccardal, who's at the Washington Post,
dunking on a Twitter user named political math who was
talking about I think his point was about how Jake
Tapper kept getting used by people, and she said, we
should not go after people when they admit that they
were wrong about something, or they admit they were misled.
You know, this is really a bad way to approach it.
And everyone in her replies was like, he wasn't misled,
he was lying. Jake Tapper is lying, and they're you know,
I encourage people to put the best construction on all
sorts of bad behavior, but or that doesn't mean you
deny the reality that Jake Tapper is lying. He is
lying when he says that he was misled by the
White House, and that's why he couldn't do his job.
He simply he views his job as regurgitating whatever Democrat
Party operatives or intel figures tell him to do. So.
His claim is I did defense for the Democrat Party
during Biden's presidency, and now because Democrats told me he
was doing fine. Democrats and the White House kept saying
he was doing fine, and I regurgitated that. And now
Democrats are saying that, oh, actually they were hiding it
from so many people, and so I'm regurgitating that claim
because it helps the Democrat Party. There are major issues
in play if Jake Tapper's story were true, like there
would be pushes for criminal charges right hiding from the
American people. The decline of someone unable to perform the
duties of the presidency is a major issue. And he's
not treating it like a major issue. He's merely treating
it like I would like to somehow recover my reputation
by covering the story five years after it matters.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that's right. I think she's a I
think Megan mccardil is a good faith debater basically. And yeah,
she also said something and I wish I could remember
the term for how people are late to believe something
because they don't see it in an aggressive manner, or
you know, because they don't hate Biden. Like let's say,
I shouldn't say hate. Hate'es a strong word. I dislike
Biden intensely that because I see it that way, I'm
more easily I see the things that he does wrong.
But people who aren't that way don't. I mean, then
you shouldn't be a reporter. Skepticism is the key to
being a reporter. I've said it a million times. And
if you can't see what's going on, you're not right
for the job. Jake Tapper, who he has a long
record and plays this little triangulation game that makes him
look moderate to some people. This is how can I say,
this is a contrived position he takes when it's safe.
He's always a moderate when it's safe to be a moderate,
and we shouldn't fall for it with him. I'll give
you an example. So in this book, there's a New
Yorker excerpt. It's very long. I was interested in reading it.
But so remember the Clooney fundraiser in Hollywood where Barack
Obama had to lead lead Biden off the stage by
the hands because he didn't know where he was. So
now we learn from in this book that Joe Biden
didn't even know who George Clooney was when he saw
him there.
Speaker 2: This is my favorite story about Joe Biden, and I
think very I love it.
Speaker 1: Well anyway, So I just, you know, so he didn't
know George Clooney was probably offended George Clooney very much.
Who wrote a he's asking to step down later after
the debate, But three days after that, CNN, where Jake
Tapper works, had a has a media newsletter written by
whatever Oliver Darcy or whatever that guy's name is, and
he said that it was a fabrication to say that
he was a lot of stage. I wrote a column
I think the last year, you know, detail or months ago,
detailing that virtually, and not even virtually, every major establishment
media outlet, ABC, NBC they all said that the videos
of Joe Biden were fake news or cheap fakes, that
everything was a fabrication, that was paranoid. There's an NBC
news headline that says Republicans are spreading the conspiracy theory
that Joe Biden might not run again. I mean, that
is insane. So if they were all fooled. Where's the reckoning?
Where is Why aren't reporters telling me how they were fooled,
who fooled them? So on and so on again. I
just think it's just not true.
Speaker 2: I just want to highlight that first thing you said, too,
which is when a reporter, when the best case scenario
is that a reporter is fooled on every single story
he covers, whether it's Russia collusion, COVID hysteria, Kavanaugh rapesmear,
trans issues, lawfare, and Joe Biden's mental decline and a
thousand other stories, you should not claim to be a journalist.
You're you know, I don't get fooled on those on
those stories.
Speaker 1: I mean, even if you're fooled and you're then wrong,
which I have been in my life, you write something up,
you say I was fooled. I was wrong. This is
why I was misled. This is why, yes, ye, to
concede that you make mistakes is a smart thing to do.
I think it gives you credibility as a journalist.
Speaker 2: David, Yeah, don't think. Still, there's a difference between getting
a story wrong and pushing information operations like I.
Speaker 1: Don't think they got it wrong. I think this was
an information. I think they tried to hide the president's
to climb.
Speaker 2: Which is what I'm saying is I totally agree when
you get something wrong, you should admit it. Like I
got how conservative Trump would be wrong, so I admit it.
I got how wrong it would be, Like I wasn't
even writing at the time, but just because I believed
that opening up trade with China would be a totally
great thing, I always admit that I fell for that,
not fell for it, but like I thought opening trade
with China would be good for both China and the
United States, and it turned out to have some serious downsides.
I have no problem admitting things like that, but when
it comes to reporting, that requires you to check sourcing,
to be diligent, and so I don't think you should
just get things wrong or you know, if you admit
that you've got something wrong more than once, that's when
you think about changing careers. The Russia collusion hoak story
required reliance on anonymous store on anonymous sources that were compromised.
I have previously told our audience about how the same
moment that I realized the Russia collusion hoax was a hoax,
I was on set with Jake Tapper because of things
I witnessed while on set with him, So I know
he knows it was a total BS story. So it's
not just about oh, I got something wrong and I
misunderstood or I was misled. This is a pattern of
corrupt behavior from Jake Tapper that means he should not
be making money off of journalism.
Speaker 1: I'm sure he makes a lot though, and this book
is probably a best seller. And they are just the
entire journalistic establishment, from the people who give awards, to
the people who run those unions and so forth. In
all these institutions, none of them have had any reckoning
for the not for the Russia collusion thing, not for this.
There's enough money there. There are enough viewers there siloed now,
but there are enough of them and they can make
us angry and we talk about it, so that probably
gets the attention as well. Frankly, and I don't know
how else to deal.
Speaker 2: With Well, there's nothing we can do to keep that
book from being a number one best seller. There are
a lot of dumb people in the United States, unfortunately,
and even if you take CNN's very small audience and
sell it to all of them, that makes it a
best seller. Okay, so what we can do it's just
the same as the Russia collusion conspiracy theory. We couldn't
keep that story from being believed by the vast majority
of Democrats. They still believe it. They bitterly cling to
it because Jake Tapper was willing to be the person
who spread that conspiracy theory. Knowingly. What we can do
is keep the rest of the country from falling for
his lives. And so I do think it's important to
talk about it, call him out. It's not going to
keep him from sitting on huge piles of cash to
advance Democrat for his work advancing Democrat narratives. But at
least if the rest of the people no longer think
like you said, oh, he can sometimes come off like
a moderate or whatever. You had to be pretty stupid
to think Jake Tapper is a moderate at this point,
and so the percentage of people on the right who
think that is increasingly vanishingly small.
Speaker 1: I think, yeah, no, I think he wants to appear
as a moderate to the left actually, so that they're
watching and they say, oh wow, this guy's giving giving
it to me straight from both sides. So for three
years after the fact, he'll come up and tell me
that Joe Biden's not okay, Well thanks for that, you know,
and it didn't matter. It's like ridiculous. But anyway, there's
another aspect to the story. I think that is a
little undercovered. So the last part of the sub keep
saying sub headline, subtitle of the book is and his
disastrous choice to run again. I've noticed something here now
that they because Joe Biden no longer matters to them.
And the day after the debate, I've said this also,
all of them turned on him, not because if they
had any kind of journalistic integrity or ethics. They turned
on him because they saw that they might not be
able to beat Donald Trump and it someone else. That
was also part of their political agenda. But anyway, now
they're scapegoating Biden for everything that bad that happened to
the left. I think it's completely self delusional. The Democratic
Party is polling is a historic lows right now, and
it's not because of Biden's memory problems. You know, no
one forced every Democrat to vote for the Inflation Reduction Act.
No one forced them to walk around and call Republicans
fascist and not make a coherent argument about anything. No
one forced them to, you know, to make this kind
of gender quackery that you know, central to their social policy.
No one asked them to, you know, open the borders
and so on. I mean, these things all matter, but
more than that, who is going to So let's say
Joe Biden says I'm not going to run right in
twenty twenty two, who's going to be the candidate. It's
going to be Kamala Harris. That she's in the White House,
she's ensconced there. She's not stepping aside for anyone. She
was going to be the candidate. And the idea that
she needed more time is insane. After initially being you know,
seeing a jolt in the polls, she became less and
less popular the more people heard her. She didn't need
less she needed she didn't need more time, She needed
a less time the more the public herd or the
more they disliked her. She did not lose because of
Joe Biden. I think Joe Biden would have done done
just as well frankly as she did. But anyway, so
they escapegoating him. I see all these former Obama people,
everyone just scapegoating him for everything that's wrong with the
Democratic Party. I think that's a delusional. Part of the
problem is also that they lie to the American people
about Biden, and that makes them less trustworthy. For instance,
in this New Yorker piece, Chuck Schumer says that he
would talk to Biden and Biden would forget who he
was talking to her, why he was calling. Right, But
I looked it up two days before the debate, Right,
Chuck Schumer said he's fine, sharper than he's been in years.
All this right wing propaganda that his mental acuity has
declined is wrong. So he is a liar, right, and
that's part of it, But it's not the only thing anyway.
I just wanted to mention that part. I know.
Speaker 2: I think a big part of this media reputation rescue
operation is also about cope for the Democrats. Now, Democrats
will always do fine. I mean, even as badly as
Kamala lost, they still have tens of millions of loyal
voters who are very motivated to come out in the midterms,
and un and less Republicans start giving people a reason
to vote for them, they will likely win control of
the House back and make it in roads, like they're
not a dead party. But I think this mental acuity
storyline is cope for them not to recognize what you
just said. Their policies are very unpopular with normal Americans.
You have to be part of their constituent interest groups
government employees, union, members of the teacher union member type
people in order to be voting for them at this
late date.
Speaker 1: Yeah, once the once the sort of identity politics runs out,
which it did slightly with Hispanic voters and with Black voters.
This lesson with Jewish voters, this last time their whole
they can't win a national election then, Like Donald Trump's
not very popular, but he is much more popular than Democrats,
and that is all that matters in politics, right, go on.
Speaker 2: This is a little side note, but on identity politics.
I was trying to figure out how many gay people
voted for Donald Trump or how many gay people voted
for the Republican candidate over time, and it's very hard
to parse any data that's out there because the polling
now groups lesbians and gays with buy transgender, queer, like
all of it together, and as you have an entire
generation of people that are identifying as gender queer and
all voting Democrat. It's kind of hard to see if
there are changes over time. It kind of looks like
there aren't changes. But I suspect there are because more
people are identifying in the b t QIA plus category
in the younger generations. But I'm not sure.
Speaker 1: Sorry that I mean no, no, I mean I think
I've tried to look at that kind of data myself.
I don't really trust it at all, because self identification
is a weird thing, and who's identifying by your sexual
habits is a very weird way to go about life
in my view, right, I mean, I don't really get it.
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Speaker 1: All right, so let's move on now to Donald Trump's
trip to the Middle East this week. He is bypassing
his rubodies going to he was in Saudi Arabia. I'm
not sure if he's in Qatar yet, but he gave
a speech in Riod. Well, actually, let me take a
step back and say that before he left, the United
States had helped I don't have his name in front
of me get, you know, to procure the release of
the last American hostage. Obviously he's dual citizenship. I think
who's held for like five hundred and thirty days through Katar?
And you're laughing because how do you printounce it?
Speaker 2: Well? No, I like that you say Qatar, it's I
believe cutter. I was on Outnumbered yesterday on Fox and
there was a word. I can't remember which word it was,
but Emily Compangna was telling us how to pronounce it correctly,
and I was like, I'm just going to stick with
my American pronunciation because I get so annoyed at how
we have words that we just say consistently for decades,
and then one day everyone says, no, the actual way
you say it, like if you're a local is such
and such. It's like, I'm not a local. I'm an
American and I've been saying Kiev for my entire lifetime.
I don't need to say Kiev now. But it kind
of they work on you and then and then you
start changing. But yeah, I said Katar for years, but
then was corrected many times on again at Fox where
they're like, it's cutter.
Speaker 1: I'm not going to say cutter because I was going
through life fine saying Katar. My whole life now was
sun on TV they started saying cutter. I don't really
change it up. Yeah, I don't understand why some places
and names have to be pronounced in the accent of
the of the country right, but others don't. Like, for instance,
I'll give you an example Hungary. Right, it's a country
that we call Hungary. It's not called Hungary and Hungarian,
it's called Mudjar or sag like no one around here
as its demand, no one demands you say it the
Hungarian way. Why do I have to pronounce like Spanish
words with the little like rolling ours and accents and
just not into it. I don't know what I was
talking about those Uh Okay, so guitar helped now helped
get the release of his hostage. Now, I I'm not
a fan of that country. I think it's a terror
sporting state. I realize that we need it again. I
don't care who we deal with as long as it
helps the American people. But they are kind of I
think about the emrror there in the country there as
one might talk about the mafia. They're kind of in
like in the protection racket, you know what I mean.
They fund hamas so that can take hostages and then
they swoop in and to help you get the release
of those hostages. They play both sides on virtually everything.
So what do you think of his trip?
Speaker 2: Well, I don't know a ton about the trip, but
I did listen to the speech and I thought that
it was a super interesting, well done speech talking about
his approach to foreign policy. It was a great encapsulation
of what he did during the first term and also
what he's trying to do in this second term. So
he is at this economic summit, and first off, you
know this is speaking of you know, bad countries or
whatever countries with problems. Saudi Arabia known for harboring or
known for cultivating terrorists. Obviously, we had so many of
the nine to eleven hijacker terrorists being from Saudi Arabia,
and they have very different ideas about human rights than
we do and natural rights and all that. But it's
a beautiful country. It's a very wealthy country tree and
he Trump was very well received in this country. He
clearly just gets along with the Saudi family. And partly
that's related to business reasons. It's also related to the
Trump approach where Obama and Biden very much tried to
make Iran be the big powerful force in the Middle East,
and Trump pivoted away from that into making Saudi Arabia
kind of the big daddy of that region. And it's
for peace and prosperity reasons. He thinks that's much more
lightly to align all the countries against Iran, which seeks
if you listen to what the Iranians say, they seek
the destruction of Israel. They went death to America. And
Trump was painting a picture, a different picture, which was
we could actually all get along, we could have peace
and prosperity. And if you don't we can certainly be
tough with you as well. But he had some really
good lines where he was talking about how the so
called nation builders had wrecked more nations than they had built,
and that the interventionists kept intervening in complex societies that
they did not understand.
Speaker 1: So it was a.
Speaker 2: Repudiation of this model that both parties were into, of
intervening in the Middle East, purporting to build nations there,
spending unbelievable amounts of American money and lives and failing,
And it was saying we're moving away from that, We're
not doing that anymore. And so I think it was
a very important speech and very well received, and a
clear renunciation of the absolutely insane foreign policy approach that
we began taking at the end of the Clinton era
and up until the Trump era.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I didn't like the speech at all. I mean,
I'm happy to find something to disagree with you on.
I felt like I was written by some Claremont, you know, isolationists.
It had nothing to do with.
Speaker 2: What you know. You don't know. There are no there are, no,
there are isolationists. He's in Saudi Arabia.
Speaker 1: I didn't say you are. I didn't say I don't
think he is, actually, But the idea, why is he
talking about neocons? There's no neocons and what No one
wants to invade any place. No one wants to build
any nation up, No one wants to do any of them.
He's still talking about the Aughts. Who wants to what
country do we want to invade and nation build?
Speaker 2: Which one did he did he talk about neo.
Speaker 1: Kons, Yeah, you mentioned neocons. He mentioned interventionists and so on.
He's an interventionist too in a way. I mean he's
telling you're on what to do. But also I just
don't see what it had to do with what was
what's going on at all. And I will say this though,
I'm very happy that he's building stronger ties to Saudi Arabia.
I think those people are gangsters over there, but at
least there are friends in many ways. And obviously he
is building a coalition that will oppose Iran, which to
me is incredibly important. I do worry actually about this
administration and some of the people that are in there,
that they are going to give Iran an Obama type deal,
and I hope that's not the case. The President of
the United States doesn't say that. I like what he
says about Iran.
Speaker 2: All hold on, there's one mention of the word neocon,
and I'd like to read it to you in contexts
and have you react to it. He talks about how
they're all this great economic development in places like Dubai
and Abu Dhabi. Deva Muscat says, the transformations have been
unbelievably remarkable before our eyes. A new generation of leaders
is transcending the ancient conflicts of tired divisions of the
past and forging a future where the Middle East is
defined by commerce not chaos, where it exports technology not terrorism,
and where people of different nations, religions, and creeds are
building cities together, not bombing each other out of existence.
We don't want that, and it's crucial for the wider
world to note this great transformation has not come from
Western intervention noise or flying people in beautiful planes giving
you lectures on how to live and how to govern
your own affairs. No, the gleaming marvels of Riyad and
Abu Dhabi were not created by the so called nation builders, neocons,
or liberal nonprofits like those who spent trillions and trillions
of dollars failing to develop, of all bagdads, so many
other cities.
Speaker 1: So you don't like that, it's a complete straw man.
First of all, Saudi Arabia, none of the Gulf States
have ever exported any technology anywhere in their whole entire existence.
They have invented zero things, zero things. They have they're
on oil. Ninety five percent of their workforce is foreign.
Those people build things, they use American technology, European know how,
Western know how. No, that's A and B. Most of
these countries still have like Qatar has a ten year
sentence for proselytizing Christianity. I do. I am not a
moral relativist. I think these places are horrible. I don't
think there's anything wrong with saying that lashing a woman
in public, as they do in Saudi Arabia is problematic.
I'm sorry, I think that's fine to say. That's another thing.
And see what does any of this have to do
with the Gulf States. No one has ever bombed Saudi
Arabia or Abu Dhabi or Qatar or any of that.
They have not been in a war. That's my problem
with this speech. It doesn't seem to be based in
any kind of reality. I don't know. I don't even
know what else to say. I'm happy what he's doing
with Iran, and I get that the President of the
United States is going to go there and he's going
to praise those countries. It's fine. George Bush used to
walk around holding the Sheikh's hand, right, I mean, that's
all fine. But this is just revisionist history. No one
ever nation built, I mean ever, but in recent times,
no one was nation building in Saudi Arabia, any of
the Gulf states. The only thing we did was defend
Kuwait from Iraq. That's what we did.
Speaker 2: Okay, So I don't remember what year it was, but
I was there two thousand and four. AI had its
irving Crystal dinner and Charles Krauthammer gave the speech, and
it's a landmark speech. It became the unifying speech of
the of the people who wanted to do war in
the Middle East. And I forget what the name it
is called democratic realism, but he lays out a case
for so. First of all, he says, the realists say
we shouldn't intervene in the Middle East, and maybe they
will be proven to be right. But how do we
know if we do not try? And so he proposes
a different school called democratic globalism, and he says it
has in this decade rallied the school of thought, has
rallied the American people to struggle over values. It seeks
to vindicate the American idea by making the spread of democracy,
the success of liberty, the ends and means of American
foreign policy. He says, I support that, I applaud that,
but I believe it must be tempered in its universalistic
aspirations and rhetoric from a democratic globalism to a democratic realism.
So he says, he lugs this idea of spreading democracy
across the whole world, except that you have to be
realistic and it can't be spread across the whole world.
He says, it must be targeted, focused and limited. We
are friends to all, but we come ashore only where
it really counts. This is his limiting principle. It always
cracks me up. He says, where it counts today is
that Islamic crescent stretching from North Africa to Afghanistan. So
you say, like, who's doing this well?
Speaker 1: That you're talking about a speech from over twenty years.
Speaker 2: Ago that perfectly encapsulates the views of a particular group
of people who are still operating.
Speaker 1: I'm asking you who right now and what country do
we want? Who wants to invade? What country? And what
nation building do we want to participate in it? Right now? Today?
Speaker 2: I think there are there's a sector of people that
would like to remove the leader of Iran and replace
him with someone more to their fitting. So maybe you
maybe the answer is.
Speaker 1: That's not being it because I want the Uranium people
not to be dictated over by a theocratic dictator. Doesn't
make me a neocon. If I wanted to go there
and build democracy, I don't think it's going to work there, frankly,
But I just I don't think there's anything wrong with us.
They undermine our interests all over the world. Wouldn't it
be good to have a friend there? I mean, we've
been doing that for a long time, and I realize
now it's we have.
Speaker 2: Replaced the head of a country and had it work out.
Speaker 1: Well, you don't know what the counter history of any
of that is, That's what I'm saying. It's easy to no,
I don't.
Speaker 2: If compare a moll margt Afi to what we're dealing
with now or combara Asaddam Hussein to what we're dealing
with now, Like you can.
Speaker 1: See rock worse now than before for us?
Speaker 2: Well, first off, think about how much money and time
was spent to create the situation now? Is it better
and is it better for Let's just take for example,
is it better for Jews, of which there used to
be a population in a rock? Is it better for
Christians where hundreds of thousands of them were killed? Like?
Is it better for us? I don't think. I don't
think anyone thinks a Rock was a good adventure.
Speaker 1: I think A Rock was a mistake. I think Iraq
was a mistake. I'm not defending that war. I mean
I supported it early and then I turned against it
because you know it wasn't working. Obviously a lot of
people did that, and it's easy to do that, but
it was a mistake. My point only is that I
don't know how things turn out. If Sodom whose Saints
Days or not. Maybe he's in a maybe he's in
a war with Iran, and in something more terrible happens,
I don't know. All I'm saying is that we don't
know how these things turn out, and that's why. That's
why I'm not a neocon. I don't know that if
we go in somewhere and try to build democracy it's
going to work. It's never really worked, so I don't
even know why we're on this. My point is that
there's no I want to go back to my point.
There's no one in Washington right now. You're talking about
twenty year old speeches and a fail something that failed,
and I think most people there's no public support for
anything like that. There is no politician out there championing
neo conservatism right now. None.
Speaker 2: Well, I actually you've convinced me pretty well that neocon
is a bad phrase to use, just because it's not specific.
It's it can be viewed as a pejorative for a
certain type of people. I mean, a lot of people
understand what we mean when we say neocon, but I
just prefer to say interventionist because I think that's a
more accurate descriptor. In the same way that I think
if you want to insult people who don't want to
be in in wars, I think a good insult is
restrainer because they approach use of the military not from
the perspective of whether it's a good idea here or not,
but just always they're like, we're always going to want
to restrain, We're always going to want to limit the
use of the military. But isolationist isn't like a big
group of people there either. They're usually pretty happy to
have economic engagement with other people. They're not actual isolationists.
But anyway, if we want to look at where people
want to do some nation building and intervention, I think
Ukraine is a great example, and that has also not
that has also been an incredibly costly enterprise with as
per usual, no clear marks for success, no exit strategy.
It's a great example of how the foreign policy blob
thinks a war is good. Like it's such an obvious
thing that I know all of our listeners figured out
twenty years ago. But once you realize that the people
in DC aren't looking to win wars, they're looking to
spend money in the complex that supports wars, it makes
sense why we never win them. Like the goal is
to have it last for as many years as possible
and to see the appropriations that come along with that.
And yeah, and they don't want to kill a bunch
of people, which also leads to less success in wars
for whatever. You know, however that works. But most of
the people in the foreign policy blob in DC, they
want entanglements that last a long time and that produce
a lot of money for the industries that they want
to go work in after they leave the government.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that's largely conspiratorial. I don't think that
George Bush or yeah, I do. I don't think. I
don't think George Bush wanted Americans to die in Iraq.
I don't think that the Americans who ran the government
wanted Americans to die in Vietnam.
Speaker 2: Think that they don't want they want to limit casualties.
I literally just said that.
Speaker 1: Also, but they want entanglements. I mean anyway, I don't
want to are you about that part of it. I
just want to say that this speech was aimed at
people who don't exist. They don't exist in DC right now.
I just don't think there are neo cons in DC,
and I don't think that his rendering of the Middle
East is accurate. On the other hand, I am happy
that he's in Saudi Arabia. I'm happy that he's pressuring Iran.
I'm happy that for the most part it seems for
now he's letting Israel do what it needs to do.
Though post Trump populism, I think it's going to be
very bad for Israel. I just don't I think the
government is filled with people who don't see the upside
of having them as our top ally there. And I
don't know. Those are my impressions of the trip.
Speaker 2: Okay. So the other thing I thought was interesting is
that the you know, speaking of terrorists, the head of
the new president of Syria, oh yeah, is visiting. And
I think that's a good sign because if you want
to triangulate away from Iran being a controlling agent in
the region, if we could get Syria to see some
economic opportunity by moving away from Iran, that would be
or some you know, some help by moving away from Horan.
That also isolates Russia and its role there. So I
like seeing all that, and I also like just having
this approach of seeing how trade and economic development with
another country leads to peace and prosperity, and having that
be the approach rather than heavy military spending, being like
the forward operating way that we approach things. And Saudi
Arabia still has not signed on to the Abraham Accords,
and that's one of the things that Trump is trying
to accomplish there too, which is good.
Speaker 1: Well, I assume that Saudis, who don't very much care
about Palestinians at all, or waiting for that situation to,
you know, figure itself out, and then they probably would,
but I don't know who knows. It's the thing about
one thing about ISRAELI I think people don't really realize
in the Middle East right now because I read news
reports all the time and talking about Arab Israel wars.
In this Israel's at peace with literally every Gulf nation.
The Israelis are tourists in Abu Dhabi all the time,
you know what I mean. They are at peace with Egypt,
they are at peace with Jordan, and they are a
peace with everyone except the Palestinians there. And once that
situation is somehow resolved, you know, never be fully resolved.
I think you have peace there. What do you make
of him not visiting Israel? Do you think that there's
something behind that that's important or or not.
Speaker 2: I don't worry about Trump's posture toward Israel, but I
do think there may be something behind it. And so
when you're trying to reach out to Syria and get
them to move away from Iran, and you're trying to
focus on the use of trade and economics as a
way to bring peace to the region. You don't want
to complicate that message too much. And so Netnyahu just
had a visit here quite recently. There's not like a
need for indust really visit right now, and so I
think it was just viewed as not the purpose of
the trip and could have confused the message of the trip.
But I also say that in part because I don't
really worry about his perspective. I think he understands Aron
as a threat. I also think he understands that, yes,
Israel is a great ally, and it's an important ally
in that region, but their national interest is not always
the same as our national interests, and just having that
be very clear for people and understanding the separation of
those two things is not bad.
Speaker 1: Finally, on the Middle East, there's this issue of Qatar
gifting a Boeing seven four seven to the president to
retro I guess into a air Force one because the
Air Force one has as old. I think it's from
the eighties. The Boeing was supposed to make a new one.
It is way behind schedule. It's its own I think
owing podcasts talk about Boeing's problems.
Speaker 2: Oh, I don't know, I don't like. I actually don't
have a major problem with countries giving gifts to each other,
but what those gifts are is important. And I recognize
that this plane is American made, that it was made
in fact by Boeing, and that it's owned by Katar,
but it doesn't make it. You know that it was
built in America. So I'm not like totally freaked out
about it. But anytime another country gives you something like
and yeah, of course it would be retrofitted and everything,
but you still worry about what kind of surveillance would
be in the plane that would be a national security
threat or it was just like the nature of a
gift of that size. I am the most concerned about
what you said about Boeing being so far behind schedule
and so far over budget with the next Air Force one.
I mean, it was supposed to be delivered already. They
aren't expecting to have it done for another ten years
at this point, and what was already a three point
nine billion dollar project for a single plane is already
over budget. That's that's a national security crisis. And to
have to rely on something from another country because our
own military industrial complex is failing at even the stuff
that it's supposed to be doing is it's bad news. Indeed.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Boeing is a rent failed or rent sinking company. At
this point, They've got to have to get you know,
the unions that they have are constantly shutting them down there.
Most I think they're headquarters aren't Chicago maybe, but they're
obviously in Washington, which is a very tough state to
do business and for people manufacturers, So they should get
out of there and move to the South or something.
I mean, it's ridiculous that you can't build a plane
for the president. You figure the president puts an order in,
you get that done first, right. But for me, it's terrible.
It's a terrible thing to take this plane from that country.
For I think it the perception of corruption that could
exist Trump family doing business there. I'm not saying it's corrupt,
but I'm just saying that it's not the type of
country you do this with. You know, Pam Bondi's judging
the legality of it. She was a she was a
lobbyist for Katar, you know, Steve Witcoff or whatever he's were,
you know, make tons of money with Qatar. It's just
not a country that we should allow to for other reason,
moral reasons as well, allow them to give give the
president a gift in this way. It's just it's not necessary.
Speaker 2: I don't like the way people say give the president
a gift, Like it's, yes, the president is the person
who flies around Air Force one, but it's a gift
to the country.
Speaker 1: Right, Not really though, because I'm sorry, people have compared
it to like the French gave us the Statue of Liberty. Yeah,
that's to the people. Congress said it was okay, but
this actually is only Trump's going to end up using it.
It has to go. The ownership of it has to be,
according to BONDI has to be transferred to the Presidential
libr Trump's Presidential Library after his own term. It's just
it's just it's it's not it's not necessary, you know, but.
Speaker 2: Even that, like it's a nonprofit group that runs the
Presidential Library gets it, Like, I don't like I already
don't like it, but I just think there's a precision
to how we could talk about it. It's not like
a personal gift to Donald Trump.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but it seems like it is in the sense
that they're trying to buy favor with the president in
some way, right. I mean, that's what the perception for
of my perception of this is. And they're doing it
to buy favor. I don't care if it was Biden
it and I imagine Biden took a plane from another country.
Speaker 2: You're pretty upset, right, people, But mostly because, like I said,
I don't like I just work. You know, they can
be crafty in what they put in the plane that
isn't discovered or something, and I worry about our ability
to discover it too.
Speaker 1: Okay, you want to talk about culture, let's do it.
What you do? Did you watch anything I did?
Speaker 2: With Mark? We watched something new on Netflix, which is
like an eight part thing called The Four Seasons with
Tina Fey and a bunch of other people, and I
started off loving it, and then by the end I
was pretty disappointed in it. But it's a remake from
a movie made I want to say, in the eighties
or something I don't know by Alan Alda about a
group of friends and them just like going through Stages
of life where one of the friends divorces his wife
who the other cups are friends with, and that had
Carol Burnett and and I love Carol Burnette. She reminds
me so much of my mother, and I love my mom.
And I also watched that because I was traveling, and
I was like, I'm gonna check that out. And I
also didn't love that.
Speaker 1: I think.
Speaker 2: My problem is both things are trying to find meaning
in pretty shallow friendships, and that is not a great
place to find a deep level of meaning. I mean,
true friendship, deep friendship is a great place to find meaning.
But I didn't really ever think these were genuine or
true deep friendships in either the movie or the TV series.
Have you seen one or both of these?
Speaker 1: When I was a young when I was a young tye,
when as a tyke, I had our family had gotten
HBO right and HBO in those days, they would be
there was nothing on it, and at eight they would
play a movie and at ten they would place something
a movie or boxing or special whatever. So when I
was eleven, I had that and this came on. It
was like one of the first adult movies I'd ever watched.
The Four Seasons with Alan Alda, so I was quite
taken with it. I'm like, because you know, you're a kid,
and these are like there's emotions, there's a divorce, there's
a younger woman comes in, Like I'm like, well, what's
going on here? So I remember that movie fondly because
it was one of the first kind of like adult movies.
I saw Carol bren I was like, oh, that's Carol Burnette,
like I'd never seen her in like a serious role.
Or you know, there's Alan Alda, and I thought it
was My memories of it are good, but I probably
haven't seen this movie literally in like forty years. So
when I saw the new one came out, I thought
it was a movie. But it's a TV show, huh
and has Steve Carrell in it, right, So I'll probably
watch it, but my hopes I didn't have high hopes
for it, and what you're saying seems like it's just.
Speaker 2: Meh, I don't know. And I really like Tina Fey
and the guy who plays her husband, who's same I'm
forgetting he was. He's a good comedian I'm talking about
come on.
Speaker 1: No. I tried to remember Will Forte Oh, yeah, he's funny.
He was he was on a show I like called
The Last Man on Earth.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so he's good, you know. And they've updated they've
updated it in different ways. So one of the couples
is a gay couple, and that is also undercooked. Like
they sort of like lightheartedly talk about how when you're
in a gay couple, it's totally open and you have
sex with other men, and it's like, well, that seems
like yet another example of how this friend dynamic wouldn't
totally relate to each other.
Speaker 1: Although we want to feel like, don't you feel like
in a lot of movies they just caricature gay people
in a really kind of like one dimensional way.
Speaker 2: The problem with that is like the caricature part, it's
the lack of critical thinking related to it too. So
absolutely it's true that in a sexual relationship there are
different norms associated with them, and when it's a male
female sexual relationship, the fidelity is key because when you
have sex with other people, babies are made, and that
creates a really difficult situation for the family when you're
having kids by different women, or you don't know who
the father of your child is. When you are in
a gay male relationship. A. Yes, men tend to have
a higher sex drive than women, not always, but frequently,
and so you have a high level of sex drive,
none of the risks associated with having a child with
someone else, of course, all sorts of other risks related
to sexually transmitted diseases. And then with lesbianism you have
like a much lower sex drive and you know, higher
emotional integl Like there's men and women are different and
and it plays out in the sexual dynamics. I think
the big problem is we don't talk honestly about those dynamics,
particularly as it relates to family formation or how it
changes the norm for all marriage when you redefine marriage
to include either same sex couples or other groupings.
Speaker 1: Glad I brought that up. I will watch it and
I will report back to you.
Speaker 2: Yeah, do you watch well? I do have other stuff.
Should I finish or do you want to go?
Speaker 1: We can go back and forth, I guess, because I
only have one. Actually, I watched the show I didn't
think I would enjoy, but I quite did for the
most part called Landman with your favorite actor Billy Bob
Thornton in it. That other show, Yeah, I saw.
Speaker 2: Like one scene from it that's been going around but okay.
Speaker 1: So it's good about the windmills or whatever. The funny
thing about that scene is that I think it's meant
to upset both sides because he goes on about how
windmills are not are not good for the environment. But
then at the end he says we're going to run
out of oil, which is not true. I mean maybe
in the sort of cosmic sense, we will run out
of oil. But I liked it. It happens, it's in
Middle and Texas, it's about the oil, it's about the
oil business. I don't know much about the oil business
in that way, so I don't know how much of
it is realistic or not. But he plays a sort
of like fixer who deals with all the issues that
go on independent oil company, not one of the big ones.
The booms, the bus the people in the culture and
stuff like that. And I don't know, I find it interesting.
I mean, it's kind of it's it's got a kind
of soap opera element to it that I don't I
never want. What's the show with Kevin Costner everyone loves?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I never got into it. It seems like a
soap opera, and I don't do soap operas.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so this is the same writer. I think his
name's Taylor Sheridan. Yeah, and it has it has a
bit of that for sure. It has Billy Bob Thornton,
Demi Moore is in it, John Hamm, isn't it.
Speaker 2: I just thinking about how funny it is that many
actors in the world you're surprised when you learn, oh,
that person's British, because they're in so many American show
sort of Billy Bob Thornton is the opposite of that.
He is who he is with his with his accent,
and parts have to be written about around that fact,
like it'll be like, and now we get the story
about why he's from the South, even though he's, you know,
a New York lawyer or whatever. He is landman.
Speaker 1: He doesn't need that.
Speaker 2: Because it's about the it's about the South anyway.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's yeah, West Texas, so he's you know, it
gives you a glimpse into like sort of the wealthier
people and also about the workers who make a lot
of money in a very dangerous job for a short
amount of time. I guess, and I guess it's a
soft recommend I have only watched like two episodes, so.
Speaker 2: Okay, well keep us, yeah yeah, keep us updated.
Speaker 1: Make sure I know runs on the edge of their
seats on this. Okay, what else? So?
Speaker 2: I also have been listening to the new Arcade Fire
album album they do, and I actually like ordered a
copy on vinyl before I even listened to it, which
I probably shouldn't have done. And I like to listen
to albums several times before I weigh in, and I've
only really listened to it twice. And there are parts
I like about it and there are parts I don't
like about it. It's produced by Daniel Landlaw, who I
really like, and you can hear his influence, but the
lyrics seem very much all tied up in Did you
know how the lead singer was having sexual relationships with fans?
Speaker 1: No, I don't know anything about it. Well, I mean,
I know a little bit about what they are.
Speaker 2: He got me too a few years ago, and people
were really angry about it, and and it seemed very immature,
and then it also seemed to be a matter of
infidelity since he's married to that super hot chick in
the band. I am not forgetting her name, but you know,
she seemed to be dealing with it fine, and the
bandmates seemed to be dealing with it fine. But the
fans are really upset, like he came.
Speaker 1: Up I'm sorry, upset that he it was involved in
this thing, or upset that he was smeared by something.
Speaker 2: That he was involved and Okay, it's just weird being
our age because we grew up with so much bad
behavior from musicians that I'm just totally neared to it,
Like I don't even notice. It's like, oh, he was
inappropriately having inappropriate sexual relationships with fans. Wow, put that
above the fold of the newspaper, like it's just exactly
what you expect of major rock stars. Sadly. And then
also though, I think in his case, he was viewed
as this feminist hero. They have very liberal politics, and
so for him to be reading young fans so poorly
and his wife poorly, it's just like something the fans
can't get over. And so the reviews that I've been
reading of the album are all like, he thinks he
can get over this. He can't. You know, there will
never be any forgiveness for this man, which seems unfair
on the other hand, the lyrics all seem to be
about how much this experience was bad for him, and
that's really annoying to read about art to listen to.
I've never really been a lyrics person, but I just
if it's actually at the point where I'm thinking about it,
it's not good. But having said all that, I kind
of enjoy the music, so I'll keep listening to it.
Speaker 1: All right. Cool. Daniel lenn Wi's been around forever. He's
produced so many people going back to like the eighties.
I think probably that's nice.
Speaker 2: One other thing is that I'm going Mark and I
will be headed to Poland. Wow, you're in a little
bit and I am trying to read up on that
country to it's a work trip, but I'm trying to
read up on that country and its history, particularly World
War two era history, so I can get the most
out of the trip. Have you been there before?
Speaker 1: No, Okay, I have not. They have a very interesting
history going back to when they were basically a little
empire there in Europe, but they weren't so nice to
my people in general.
Speaker 2: Well, that's that's the purpose of the trip. We'll be visiting,
you know, Auschwitz and assorted other sites like that, so
I'd never been able to stomach visiting sites like that.
I've I've been to the Holocaust Museum in Israel, but
that's like the extent of what I have been able
to handle because I get very emotional about it. So
I'm trying to prepare so I can handle it.
Speaker 1: Well, I'm not. I don't do those things either. I
saw Schindler's List once. I would never watch it again.
I don't watch documentaries so that I was young, I
was bombarded with that stuff, and I think, just to
turn this really serious quickly, I think that the American
Jews are too tied to the victimhood of it, you
know what I mean. And that's why I think Zionism
and Israel is a better, more positive, forward looking way
for juice to go than to be constantly talking about
the Holocaust. I don't think there should be a Holocaust
museum in Washington. I don't like it at all, But
that's just a me thing. I guess. I love that
you're going to Poland. I was tugging to my wife recently.
We're watching in the Amazing Race a little bit. Have
you ever seen the show? So I watch it because
they travel to these countries. I'm all about like off
brand European countries, Like I don't really want to go
to France or Italy. I want to go to like Bulgaria, Slovakia,
you know what I mean. I want like those second
third tier countries. Maybe Moldovia once the Socrainean thing is over.
It's a little close anyway, that's a weird thing to
talk about. So it's great and I hope you have
a great time you no matter where you're going. We'll
be back next week. If you'd like to reach the show,
you can do so at radio at the Federalist dot com.
Please do email us, and until next week, the Lovers
of Freedom and Anxious for the Frame stim