Speaker 1: Welcome back, everyone to a new episode of You're Wrong
with Molly Hemingway and David Harsani. How are you, Molly,
I'm doing great.
Speaker 2: How are you doing?
Speaker 1: I'm doing pretty well. We're on the road this week.
Speaker 2: I know, we're in Utah at a Federalist summit and
we are in Deer Valley, a place I have never
been before.
Speaker 1: Oh, it's gorgeous here. It is really beautiful, I would
like to point out.
Speaker 2: So it's like eight thousand feet and in my mind
it was zero feet. So I've been walking around but
also a little bit out of breath. But then it
made me feel a little bit better that we're above
eight thousand feet.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Altitude sickness is a real thing. Okay, So what
are we going to talk about today? Let's start with
the Elon Musk Donald Trump interview, which is it's kind
of a very unique I don't think anything like it
has ever been done, right, I don't know.
Speaker 2: I mean, it's so interesting to think about how the
media have a role in our elections, and in presidential
elections in particular, and how that role has so frequently
been a candidate will sit down with the editorial board
of a newspaper, or they will host debates at major
media outlets, or there will be interviews, sit down interviews
with one reporter or an anchor and the presidential candidate.
And we're in such an interesting media environment in that
so many people don't trust corporate media to do anything correctly. Also,
corporate media are completely in bed with the Kamala Harris campaign.
And then you have this other situation where you have
Elon Musk, who's like an oligarch but not like most
of the other oligarchs and has said he is voting
for Donald Trump, invites Donald Trump on to Twitter for
a wide ranging two hour interview, which seems kind of normal.
I mean, there have been podcast interviews of both Republican
and Democrat candidates in recent years, but for some reason,
everybody lost their mind that Elon was doing this.
Speaker 1: I just want to say, on a practical level, what
interests me about podcasts is that it is just a natural,
organic conversation that you can have with someone right like
we do. And that's what I like about podcasts. And
I think quite often things that maybe a reporter doesn't
think would be interesting to an audience comes up in
that kind of conversation that is much more compelling, right
than the normal goofy question that the media wants to
ask about climate change or whatever topic people don't really
care that much about.
Speaker 2: Right. So podcasting has become this huge thing, and it's weird,
you know, because we're on one right now to even
talk about. But in large part it is is that
wide ranging interview where you aren't constrained by time limits,
where you can go off on tangents. And so I
have yet to watch this two hour listen to this
two hour interview between Elon Musk and Donald Trump, But
all of the media coverage was like they're rambling, Well,
welcome to podcasting. Like you listen to a three hour
Joe Rogan interview and it's not all thirty second sound bites.
I mean sometimes it's really long stories that go in
all sorts of different directions. And yes, exactly, that's what
people like about the form. You get a more authentic,
get a more authentic experience with the person who's being interviewed.
Speaker 1: So what I didn't actually see all the reaction, what
was it? Was it just the rambling or did they
I know that they had problems that it was happening
at all, basically because in essence, they're circumventing the media
with this. But like, what were some of the most
ridiculous things you saw?
Speaker 2: I would like to look it up on Twitter? Okay,
So Elon Musk tweeted out a collection of headlines, and
it was just every single corporate media outlet being really
upset that Elon interviewed Trump, and they, you know, they
focused on anything negative that happened. For instance, I saw
Elon said that between the interview of Trump and other
I think audio conversations that were hosted on Twitter, it
was like a billion plus views on Twitter, which is amazing.
So it was it was highly watched or listened to
and so but that also meant that the site crashed
or it's possible. I think Elon Musk said there was
a denial of service attack on Twitter right when it started.
There were a lot of people in corporate media who
were upset about it happening.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I saw glitchy.
Speaker 2: Use the word glitchy, right, And so there was like
a forty five minute delay before the interview takes place.
A Washington Post so called reporter is asking Kareem John
Pierre at a press conference, if there's anything that can
be done by the Biden White House to shut this down,
shut down this interview. And he predicted that there would
be misinformation in the interview and that therefore the White
House should do something to protect America.
Speaker 1: They don't want their candidates interviewed, and they don't want
the opposing candidates interviewed, so no interviews.
Speaker 2: They want to completely control what everybody thinks about it.
But just as an account does that quote unquote reporter
look at himself in the mirror when he's begging the
White House to please violate people's First Amendment rights, not
just to speak, but to listen.
Speaker 1: I have to say that's a relatively new thing in
the press, where even in the old days where you
had biased leftist press, they were pro First Amendment. They
believe that people should have a say, and now most
of them are many of them are just champions of censorship.
It is insane to think that that's true.
Speaker 2: So at this conference, someone is here from Oregon and
she was reading this headline from a TV outlet in
Central Oregon that said something about Elon Musk is using
his platform to spread his right wing views, and it's
really funny because Elon Musk is not right wing at all.
I mean, there's the issue of, oh god forbid that
Elon Musk share his views. We'll let the Washington Post
and The Atlantic and New York Times, like they can
all post their views, but Elon Musk can't. But more
than that, he's not conservative, like he is voting for Trump.
But what makes him conservative supposedly is that he supports
the First Amendment to the US Constitution.
Speaker 1: The difference is he allows people he disagrees with to
actually be on his platform and speed yeah, and.
Speaker 2: He was like, I will interview Kamala as well, but
she is not going to be interviewed.
Speaker 1: I hate to say it. I'm sure you've seen the
polls where people on the left, but some people on
the right believe that misinformation and hate speech should not
be protected. I just saw a new one, especially among
young people. It's a very dangerous trend, and not just
among journalists. So that's very concerning.
Speaker 2: I was talking with a high level member of Congress
who cares about the First Amendment and has done work
in defense of the First Amendment, and this person was
saying that when they speak with other high level Republican
elected officials. Those people express concern about what are we
going to do about misinformation and disinformation?
Speaker 1: Should we talk about Europe right now and the EU?
So there's a lot there are a lot of stories
coming out of Great Britain, Scotland and England as well
where the cops are showing up. First of all, the
cops warn you on Twitter like think before you tweet,
you know, and show up at your door if you
said something allegedly hateful. I don't actually even know what
these people are saying. It doesn't matter and arrest you.
Now it's Orwellian. But I just want to say, having
written a book about Europe, this has been happening for
years in other countries. Countries in Germany for a while
they had a law that you were not allowed to
mock foreign leaders in Germany online. They would come to
your house, they would arrest you. I fear, And that's
what my book was about, that that kind of thinking
is coming here, and thinking manifests in legislation and a
change in how things are. So we have a constitution,
but it's not going to matter if the people don't
value it. What was your take when you saw all
this going on.
Speaker 2: Actually, I thought you were going to talk about the
EU guy who took a shot at Elon Musk over
the interview. I mean, he writes this whole letter about
how dangerous it is that Elon Musk is doing an
interview of a major political party's presidential candidate. I was
shocked to see it. It's so stupid in so many ways. One,
should Donald Trump win election, you're going to have to
work with him, and you've just tried to silence him
from being able to be on any platform. But also,
what in the world is Europe or the EU doing
telling us how to run our elections or what we
can talk about We well, but again, think about how
the whole Russia collusion hoax is because Facebook supposedly allowed
Russia to buy one hundred thousand dollars in ads and
everything had to be turned over to deal with this
horrible thing that Russians bought ads to disrupt our election,
even though they were totally janky ads that were partly
for Hillary Clinton and partly for Donald Trump. But the
head of the EU is threatening a social media company
for hosting a hosting an interview like that is so
much worse. Election interference than anything that they talked about
in the Russia collusion hoax.
Speaker 1: This is why I fear and I understand the inclination
of a lot of conservatives to say, we have to
get more involved here and tell people what to do.
But the kind of control the EU has over social
media over there is very dangerous. So if the wrong
people are in charge, they can really manipulate it even
more than they do now, you know what I mean.
Speaker 2: Yeah, sure, but there are things people can do. Maybe
the Foreign Affairs Committee in Congress should have fired off
a letter before the close of business yesterday threatening sanctions
or something.
Speaker 1: I mean, my view is that we need to get
government completely out of that business. We can't have social
media companies spying on us, because we have a right
not to be spied on. We can have rent seeking,
we can have them colluding to undermine people. And that's
what's happening now, and it's I think one of the most,
if not the most dangerous effort to censor Americans as
ever existed in this country. I mean, I was reading
about World War One recently, and it was really bad
during those years, but I think this is even more comprehensive.
Speaker 2: Oh, it was so quaint compared to what we're going
through now it's different.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean it was easier to control the mail,
for instance, and it is to control the Internet in
a way. Right, We still can speak to each other,
we still get we still have somewhat of a voice.
In those days, they literally threw people in jail who
were just without any due process, who just suspected of
being anti war essentially.
Speaker 2: So, yeah, but in fact, it is easier to surreptitiously
male things than it is to post something on a
social media platform where algorithms can detect it the moment
you hit seent.
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, it's bad. Yeah, So that now can we
talk about the EU arrest authorities arresting people. Do you
think that that's going to happen here? Is it possible?
Will it happen here? As they say.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm certainly worried about it. I remember a few
years ago, there would be these people who would poll
college students and they discovered that these college students didn't
really care about the First Amendment, and they would and so,
you know, the people would post the poll results and say,
this is a very bad sign about the future of
the country. There doesn't seem to be a strong culture
of free speech. And then you'd have all these people
who would pooh pooh the results, and they would say, oh,
you know, college historically is a time when people experiment
with leftism and then they mature once they get out
in the real world, and so don't overstate how bad
this is. And those people were completely and utterly wrong.
Speaker 1: We do not understating the problem.
Speaker 2: Yes, we do not have a culture that supports speech
even just it used to be so American. You know,
when I was a kid, we used to say it's
a free country. So you'd see someone doing something you
didn't like, or they would say something you didn't like,
and your parents would say, it's a free country. Right, Yeah,
nobody says that anymore. Now they're like, what can we
do to constrain this person's right to speak this way?
Or you have Tim Walls Walts Walls saying there's no
right to speak misinformation.
Speaker 1: I love that you don't. You care so little about him,
you don't know how to dispense his listening. Yeah, he
literally said that misinformation or disinformation whatever was not protected
on the First Amendment.
Speaker 2: I hear this all the time, particularly around elections. I
think he said.
Speaker 1: That's when we need more free speech than.
Speaker 2: Ever, right, and also determined by whom what's misinformation? For instance,
Sorry this is to deviate from the topic, but here's
an example of misinformation. Tim Walls said that he had
retired at a higher rank than he retired and he
did it for ten, fifteen years, twenty years. He overstated
the rank he had obtained, and it's like so much
worse than that sounds, because he had been frocked into
a higher rank and he was supposed to take his
the unit he commanded into was it Afghanistan or a rock?
I think it might have been a rock. And once
he so, they realized that they were probably going to
be shipped out in the fall of one year, and
in the spring he retired. And he claimed, you know
that he did it before they knew they were going. Well,
everyone else in the unit knew where they were going,
except for him apparently. But that's a great example of
misinformation and disinformation. If Tim Walls is looking for something
to prosecute there or to ban.
Speaker 1: Should prosecute himself. Yeah, I mean, of course, it's always
been the question who decides what misinformation is? Government should
have no role in that. The whole point of the
First Amendment is to restrict the government from intruding on
your speech. But boy, he's such a liar. He's he
is weird, right, Yeah.
Speaker 2: I saw Peach Keenan on Twitter saying that she has
Tim Walls derangement syndrome, and I totally have that. Like,
there's something about him that enrages me. And his he
seems sort of bully like and he's a liar and
a fraud, and he really makes me man.
Speaker 1: I don't like to talk about class a lot or
class differentiation, but I hate more than that as people
pretend to be something they're not, you know. And he
is like this fraud who pretends he's from Middle America,
but he's you know, who lied about his service. And
by the way, he didn't just lie about his rank,
he lied in overt and in other ways about being
in combat.
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Speaker 2: Yes, I think he knew what he was doing, so
he strongly misled people like he intentionally misled people. He'd
say one sentence about his actual twenty four years in
the National Guard, and then you can say another sentence
about being in war, and he would say I didn't
technically say I was war, except for one time he did.
He said we should restrict people's Second Amendment freedoms because
nobody should be able to carry the weapons that I
carried in war.
Speaker 1: Well, did you see there was that Bloomberg story where
it said that he had served in Iraq and then
the reporter switched it to say Italy after it came.
Speaker 2: Out, and then very similar situation.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he had written a story about walls in the
Atlantic long time ago when he first ran for Congress,
where there are a lot of those kind of sentences
where you could read it both ways. But he said
he went overseas to serve. You know, what do you
think when someone says that, You don't think, oh, they
went to Italy, You think they went to Afghanistan or Iraq.
Speaker 2: Okay. So there are all these examples too of people
introducing him and claiming that he retired at a higher
rank than he had or that he had served in
Iraq or Afghanistan, and Tim Walls just kind of silently nods,
and I was I'm a tiny bit sympathetic to that
in the sense that all the time people will introduce
me with a false title or false you know.
Speaker 1: Like someone says David Harsani best selling author, and then
I'm like, hmm, should I say, actually, no, I'm not
a best selling author. It's like a weird thing to.
Speaker 2: Do, right, you are a best selling author? First?
Speaker 1: No, I don't think so, but go yeah.
Speaker 2: But someone will say, you know, I'm editor in chief,
but they'll call me senior editor, or they'll say I'm
at Heritage when I've never been at Heritage at all.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, our Federalist society, and it's always a question of
like when do I correct them? But there are so
many instances of this, and then also in his own
campaign material, in his own speeches, by his own.
Speaker 1: If someone said you served in Iraq and combat, I
know I would say, actually I didn't. That's stolen valor
right there.
Speaker 2: So if we can just kind of roll it back
to the rollout of Tim Walls I do. It reminds
me so much of when the Democrats picked John Kerry
to be their nominee and they were like, we have
a brilliant plan to fight you know, the Republicans who
are running this war on terror whatever, will nominate John
Carry and nobody can criticize him because he's a he's
a veteran.
Speaker 1: Remember when he came out and he said reporting for
duty during the DNC.
Speaker 2: It was like they'd never spoken to a single member
of the military about what people who actually served think
of John Carrey. Like every member of my family hated
him who had served, you know, like they hadn't remembered
the Jane Fonda situation of Vietnam.
Speaker 1: Deny throws Purple Heart away or pretended to.
Speaker 2: Well, there's also the issue of that. He was like
in country for twenty days and got four medals without
really seeing much commat It was kind of a weird
stort to see more about that from the swiftboat people.
But so I think something very similar happens with the
Tim Walls roll out there, like we have found the
perfect guy. He served in the National Guard for twenty
four years. He's from you know, he lived in man Cato.
He appeals to rural voters. It's like they didn't vet anything.
I didn't talk to any actual military people about what
people who served in the military think of men who
are commanding large numbers of troops and abandoned them before deployment.
They didn't think about Looking at how Tim Walls has
done when he's run for statewide office, which shows that
he does very well in cities and very very poorly
among rural voters. As in so many states, it sort
of doesn't matter because I think.
Speaker 1: Rural people are stupid and they're just like, whoa white
dude from middle of America, you know what I mean?
And they're not dumb or no dumber than other voters.
By the way, did you see all the swift boating
headlines like oh, Tim Walls is being swift voted, like
the swift boat guys were lying or something. No, they
were right, and they I think told a story that
was very compelling about a person who was a fraud.
So swift voting to me means something very different than
I think they think it means to me.
Speaker 2: Yeah, right, they were trying to disparage the thing. I
do want to talk about how the role happened and
the Trump campaign versus the Harris Walt's campaign. So as
soon as Kamala Harris is announced as the replacement without
a single vote being taken of Joe Biden, the media
do this thing where they just immediately start running her campaign. Right,
They're really excited to say that she is this wonderful person.
And it seemed like the Trump campaign was caught flat footed.
They released a memo showing that they had predicted that
she would be the nominee, that they'd written in May
like an internal document. And that's super interesting, except that
it almost seemed like they were more interested in claiming
they were ready for it than demonstrating that they were
ready for it.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean, it's import to define a candidate early.
Like the whole weird thing. That's the whole point of that.
To define him as weird, it's very hard to shake it.
So I don't feel like they did that.
Speaker 2: Wait, did I tell you my theory about the JD
Vance weird thing?
Speaker 1: Maybe?
Speaker 2: So I saw some I put this out on Twitter
and some left wing people picked up on it and
they and it just makes me laugh because it was
just kind of a random thought. JD Vance is so
not weird that it's it's bizarre that they came up
with this talking point. Right, he's like too normal. Being
weird is almost helpful to him, right, it gives him
more snag or somehow more interesting. So I had this
idea that the Kamala Harris campaign had contracted with a
focus group to come up with some kind of negative
term to come to disparage jd Vans with. But they
all got like drunk or they forgot to do their work,
and so the morning that their assignment is due, the
Harris campaign says, so you know, what'd you come up with?
And they panic and they say, oh, we we focus
grouped this thing that Jdvance is weird, and everyone it
just it just works so well, So everybody should say
it all at once, and that that's how it happened,
because it's so bizarre that they would think that was
an effective Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, I'm not a huge fan, right,
and I don't of JD.
Speaker 2: Vans. You hadn't told me.
Speaker 1: And I don't know that I find him weird at all.
I find him incredibly square. Is that the right word.
Speaker 2: That's what I'm saying, Like it helps him to have
some staggers.
Speaker 1: Maybe it's weird to be a normal guy who gets
married and has kids and accomplishes things and hasn't been
in politics their whole lives, you know.
Speaker 2: Right, But when you're the campaign of people who believe in,
you know, mutilating children or making them permanently infertile or sterile, like,
that's weird to me.
Speaker 1: Has anyone asked Walls about that Danny sin a bill
that allowed for the mutilation of young children.
Speaker 2: And worse, if a parent doesn't agree with it, the
children can be taken away from the parent. That strikes
me as weird as you'd say. Okay, So anyway, I
thought the Trump campaign kind of flubbed the Kamala rollout.
They were really quiet, They didn't define her right away.
They let the media run their syhop, and you know,
it's just kind of been not a great thing to watch.
When Walls was announced, I got the feeling that all
these people on social media, like normal people, were like,
we're not going to leave this to the campaign to define.
We're going to do it ourselves. And they did an
amazing job. I would like to say, you know, I
think we were a good effective part of this of
going through his actual track record, his actual history, and
just punching back fiercely right away on stolen valor and
other issues.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think. So. It's amazing these rollouts that you mentioned,
the Kamala rollouts. She literally has not sat down with
anyone and answered a question about anything so far right.
Not just that, but it made me think she was annoyed, coorinated,
I don't know what you want to call it, but
she has not had a vote selected exactly. She was pushed.
She was pushed into that position. So the president Joe
Biden is still president, was pushed out of that role.
He hasn't answered a legitimate or genuine question about why
that happened. She hasn't answered any questions about her positions.
So I have never seen anything like this. It's never
happened before. She has switched positions on major issue after
major issue, with a press release or a comment, and
the media just says this is her position now and now.
If I say that she has the other position on
the Green New Deal, they will fact check you. So
I have never seen anything like this in my life.
Speaker 2: I have seen something like it, and I think we
can reference it. But before we talk about that, I
do not accept that she has changed her position on anything,
and there is no evidence to support the claim that
she has changed her position on anything. On the one hand,
you have her track record in California, her stated policy
positions while in office in California, her actual actions taken
while in office in California. You have her stated policy
positions and voting record when she was a US Senator.
You have her stated policy positions when she was running
for president. And these things include that she did not
want restrictions on illegal immigration to criminalize it. Yeah, and
she wanted to make sure that anyone who came to
the country illegally had complete and full welfare and health benefits.
She supported the first version of the Green New Deal,
which was the one that was so bad that I
think AOC might not have supported it. She but we
have this just on everything, whether it's guns, energy, her
desire to ban fracking, banning meat, you know, all these things.
You have her words on video, her policy papers, her votes,
and then what you have to balance this out the
claim is that she changed her position. You will go
to a media outlet like Axios and they'll say we
talked to a nameless person who claims to work on
her campaign, and that person says she changed her mind.
Speaker 1: No, the journal like, no, Yeah, the journalistic standard should
be you can change your mind, obviously, but you have
to explain to us why that happened. What was your
thought process, Why did you first? Why were we for
it at first? So why did you want to ban me?
Explain that and tell me what changed your mind on
all of these issues. Even I'm a nobody, if I
change my position, I write a column to explain what
happened or how my thinking has changed. I'm sure you
do similar things, So why wouldn't the person who's going
to run the country. And by the way, she didn't
take these positions as a city council person. She took
them running for the presidency of the United States a.
Speaker 2: Few years ago. And then also she is currently the
incumbent in the White House right now. There are two
people in the White House, the president and the Vice president.
She is one of them. They have an administration, they
have their track record. So for instance, when she in
the last few days she said she was going to
build a wall or something, you know, She's like, I'm
going to build a wall when I become president. Okay,
why have you let fifteen million illegals in under your watch?
Speaker 1: No one asks her anything like that.
Speaker 2: Did you get a kick out of her no tax
on tips policy proposal?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Why do we have a press? I was just thinking,
why do we have one? If they can't get an
answer out of a campaign, a presidential campaign, on any
major issue, what is the point of a press at all? Honestly,
you have no answer.
Speaker 2: I mean, I think that's the problem. Their job. They
see their job as securing Republican defeat and securing Democrat victory,
and so that redefines their entire role. If that means
lambasting people for asking Donald Trump questions, they'll do it.
If it means defending the press, not asking Kamala Harri's questions,
they'll do it. They have no organizing principle other than
electing Democrats.
Speaker 1: I mean, a month ago or maybe a little more,
if you called Joe Biden a husk of a human
being who was dead eyed and didn't know what was
going on, you were a conspiracy theorist. They turned on
that in a day, completely took up a new narrative,
pushed out the President of the United States from his
position or his re election campaign, and then didn't bother
to ask him why he can be president but not run,
Not one time. I don't know. Maybe someone's asked him
over the weekend, but I doubt it.
Speaker 2: Do you do that thing? Like I keep on waking
up with these types of questions, like who's president? Where
is Joe Biden? What's going on? What happened with the
assassination attempt on Trump?
Speaker 1: I mean I was just a here in Utah on
a panel on journalism and it I thought about the
old timey journalists on you when I started, and they
were liberal, but if they could take someone down, they
would do it like they wanted to take powerful people
down that they wanted to ask tough questions, they wanted
to catch people in lives and that is not the
case anymore.
Speaker 2: No, they still have that just for Republicans. So I
thought this weekend was a good example of that. Well,
what I wanted to say really quickly before we talk
about this weekend's Sunday shows. I think Kamala Harris is
copying the Katie Hobbes campaign. This was an idea first
articulated by Chris Bray, who's a writer out of California,
and he noted how Katie Hobbes, who ran for governor
of Arizona against Katie Sorry, Carrie Lake, is that right?
Like getting everything confused and just but that was for
governor right two years ago. Yeah, so carry Lake was
this like formidable force since she was out there. And
Katie Hobbes, who was the Secretary of State when she
was running for office, which is another thing entirely, she
just did no debates, did nothing but protected press interviews,
did not articulate policy positions, and then was carried to
victory by the press. I think that's what Kamala Harris
is trying to do. I think it will actually be
far more difficult for Kamala Harris to do it after
about two weeks from now or three weeks from now
than it was for Katie Hobbs. But I do think
that's what they're going to try to do.
Speaker 1: It is incredible about Trump. Say what you will about him,
but he will answer. He's always out there answering questions.
Sometimes I think maybe he's out there a bit too much,
or answering questions he doesn't exactly know the answers to.
But in general, he is willing to talk to almost anyone, right,
And it is just a he doesn't get credit for
that from the press. In the old days, you get
credit for that. You get credit for agreeing to be
interviewed by hostile reporters. Non.
Speaker 2: Okay, So did you see jd Vance this weekend?
Speaker 1: I saw highlights I did not watch.
Speaker 2: Okay, So he goes on three different Sunday morning shows.
It was a brilliant strategy just to do that, because
it kind of highlights how Tim Walls and Kamala Harris
are afraid to do any interviews of any kind with
anyone other than the friendliest of friendly press, and even
there they're having trouble. But he is this thing that's
a little rare for Washington d C. Which is he
actually knows his stuff, and he seemed prepared for all
of these interviews. And my favorite thing to see were
the different interviewers getting increasingly frustrated with JD. Vance for
not bowing down to their gotcha questions. So these Sunday
shows in particular are really good at getting weak Republicans
on the air, and then they hammer them with that
have nothing to do with anything of interest to actual voters,
and it's just this belligerent thing that beats them down.
And jd. Vance was super calm, and I liked that.
A lot of people they get really flustered when they're
asked hot questions. He was super calm, and he just
kept rebuking and refuting all of the false claims from
these people, and they would say, we're going to move
on now, and it was my favorite. It was like
this admission of defeat. We're going to move on to
the next topic. In other words, I've tried my best
and you defeated me.
Speaker 1: I noticed that when Democrats are interviewed and they lie,
which would do quite often, no one's ever fact checking
them during the interview, saying no, actually this happened to that.
But I noticed with Republicans, it's constantly the case. It's
a completely different experience to watch. Right. What I liked
about what I saw with JD Vance's I think an
important thing to do is not accept premises of questions
because they're misleading in premise. There you're begging the question
quite often, you know, in the proper definition of begging
the question. And he did not allow them. From what
I saw to do.
Speaker 2: Then, Okay, So on the panel that you just referenced,
you and Mark Hemingway, we're talking about how Republicans should
totally go on corporate media and answer questions from hostile press.
Speaker 1: I don't think I said it like that, but go on.
Speaker 2: I think that's what I heard. I do agree that
there are certain people who can and should do that,
but I also think that that's what I said.
Speaker 1: I said, some people are good at it and some
people aren't. The people are good at it should do
it because I think actually the Trump, I think he
thrives when he's being attacked, you know, in an interview.
Speaker 2: Agreed I would like to see a member of the
Republican Party agreed to appear on Meet the Press and
instead of answering questions, just ask questions like what have
you done to make up for your Russia collusion hoax?
Why do you know you said this on this such
and such date about COVID that's clearly wrong. When did
you correct it? Why do you ask this type of
question and not this type of question. No, we're not
moving on until we get an answer.
Speaker 1: Right. Our colleague Sean Davis does that one people when
reporters approach him. Right. I've seen that other people do
that as well. I think it's smart because you're not dealing,
as I said on this panel, I don't think you're
dealing with media anymore. That's a misnomer. Now you're dealing
with the pr Department of the Democratic Party, so you
have to treat them as people. So I think that's fine.
I think also the reason I don't know is Walsts
giving interviews or I don't so people who are scared
to answer, people who don't actually have a belief system
are scared to do interviews. I'm not saying anyone wants
to interview with me, but I'd be fine with being
interviewed by almost anyone because I am confident in what
I believe and I can just answer a question and
I think that JD. Vance, even though I disagree with
him on some stuff, is confident in what he believes
and feels prepared to answer a question. And that's something
that should be valued. But I'm not sure it is
by voters that much anymore.
Speaker 2: Oh, I think it totally emboldens voters to see someone
take on me. Nobody hates the one thing everybody agrees on,
even some people on the left, they hate corporate media.
So seeing someone do a really good job of taking
him on, I think it's a really good moment.
Speaker 1: It's just I feel like people watch Sunday shows are
completely into it. I don't like JD. Vance's economic views
at all. I think they're left wing in many ways.
I don't like his industrial policy and trade policy positions,
you know, I think they're more ideological than Donald Trump's are. Actually,
I think Donald Trump's not very ideological. I think he
views policy through you know, his eyes, as common sense
or whatever. But I think JD. Vance has a much
more serious and in my estimation that's not a good thing.
But he has a much more serious view of economics.
Supports a minimum wage, things that I think are just
progressive economics, and I don't want the Republican Party to
go in that direction. I want them to go in
a different direction. So that's why I'm not.
Speaker 2: David doesn't like that. Jd Vance wants to fight the
hollowing out of the middle class through our economic and
trade policy. He has opposition to the middle class. Is
that fair? Did I do it?
Speaker 1: I think that's completely unfair, completely unfair characterization of my views.
I think open and liberal trade policy helps the middle
class and helps the working class. I think being able
to go and into a store and buy something for
less money allows other industries to thrive, saves you money,
helps the working class. I think keeping dying businesses alive
is a bad idea. I think we've seen that over
and over again. I think it's a populist message message
that works because even the you know, everyone's pro America
in that way, at least they think they are. Anyway,
that's my problem with him. I still think he's a
far lesser evil than the other side. But you know,
if I had my way, I would have hoped that
he would have picked someone else. NICKI Kahn. Not just joking.
I actually think Youngkin's a good guy to pick because
I think that he is doing a good job. But
I also think there's a comp he's competent, and I
wish that we had more competent people in government, not
just people that tell us what we want to hear
all the time. And I think he's you know, out
of the people who were spoken about, I think he'd
be a good one.
Speaker 2: I just have to say, and I don't think this
is unfair that you have no problem with the complete
outsourcing of the manufacturing base of the country to other countries.
You think that so long as you can buy cheap
products cheaply, it's worth it. And you also think that
all of the trade agreements that we've signed with people,
if they have the word free trade in it, that
that's kind of sufficient for calling them free trade, even
though there's nothing free necessarily free trade about that. Okay,
that last part was mean, But other than that.
Speaker 1: There's no no I think our most manufacturing has lost
automation and technology. That's the facts. And to continue, you know,
you keep saying hollowing out. I think we're hollowing out anything.
I think we still lead technologically on almost every way.
That's why people have to steal from us all the time.
In my book, You're a trash. For instance, I compare
the top making this number up. It's something like top fifty.
In the top fifty tech companies, there are like three
European and like ten Chinese, and the rest are all American.
I mean, we still innovate. People come here because they
know we can innovate, and that's because we allow competition
to grow. We don't coddle dying industries. We try to
have you know, we try to generationally let people have
better jobs. I'm sorry, I don't want to get too
deeply into this. Also, but what bothers me about politicians
who are populous in the way JD. Vances and Mark
or Rubio and others on economics is that their kids
aren't going to go work on some factory line your
kids are. They think that you're not better than that,
That's how I view it. And their kids are going
to go to Ivy League schools. Their kids are not
going to be on a line putting together cheap junk
for Americans to buy. So I think they're hypocrites. But
I also think it's bad policy.
Speaker 2: I think that's so ridiculous. Particularly, I mean, I think
it's actually unfair to both Marco Rubio and JD. Vans.
But in JD. Vance's situation, which you can read about
in his best selling book Hillbilly Eleogy, he's talking about
people he grew up with that he's related to himself. Like, yeah,
he was able, through strength and determined and God given
smarts to make it out of his economic situation. But
he is clearly deeply empathetic toward people in his class.
Speaker 1: I completely think that he is. His arguments are in
good faith. I'm not saying he's a bad guy. I'm
just saying, first of all, I don't know how many
people actually read that book. It's not about starting out
in a poor place. It's about people making really bad
decisions with their lives. His I think his I forgot
what his mom did. They were making a good living,
she was making bad choices and you know, the destruction
of the family. Like I said many times, the things
that he says are wrong in America, I agree with,
like the problems. It's his prescriptions to them that I
disagree with. So that's we've had some arguments about.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we've thought about this previously.
Speaker 1: So who if Kamala does have to do an interview.
Who will she pick? I assume just like George Stephanopolis
or someone like that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think it would be a Democrat operative like
George Stephanopolis or Jake Tapper or Dana Bash or any
of the thousands of other Democrat operatives who are in
positions like that. I could also see it being someone
like Oprah Winfrey does a special primetime special, or Barack
Obama hosts an interview or hosts an evening to introduce Kamala.
I mean, we'll see what they do during their convention.
I'm sure they will try to further. I'm sure they
will keep her off interviews until she gets through the convention.
Speaker 1: Now, the view is a very safe place for her,
I think, yeah, she would be surrounded by sick offants. Yeah,
for sure. Where does the left press believe we're going
to end up? Like, what is their goal? I think
their goal is to neutralize any kind of real conservative
Republican party. I think they'd be happy to go back
to like the FDR years, you know, where you had
this minority Republican party that they couldn't do anything. And
I don't know, you know, they're like I think of progressives,
especially who populate these new rooms. By the way, that's
why they pro Hamas. I mean, an old style democrat
would not have been pro Hamas. You know, I think
I read there were like thirteen people at the Washington
Post who had worked for al Jazero or Qatar, you know,
in some way, or the Brookings Institution or whatever. So
I just think they don't think as an end goal.
They just want to run the country, and the media
is just a huge part of that. So I don't
I mean, I can't read their minds.
Speaker 2: But I don't know the answer totally. But did you
read Rusty Reno's book Return of the Strong Gods, really
interesting book which looks at how World War One followed
by World War Two were so horrific for the intelligentsia
of the West that they really put some effort in
time into thinking through how can we prevent a rise
of Germany, a rise of fascism in Italy? You know
these days and you start to see academia kind of
turn toward this effort of fighting fascism in all its forms.
And so even some of the destruction of the family
comes from what you could arguably say was a good
motivation of like some people thought the patriarchy or father
led families were fascists and so they had to be destroyed.
And so you see how over decades people have worked
to oppose fascism. Supposedly, they start things like George Soros
starts the Open Society Institute, which is all about making
sure that the conditions that led to the rise of
Germany in World War One and World War Two are
not able to be met again. So sometimes I think
they are motivated by an actual good thought without thinking
through the repercussions of it. But I also feel like
when you look at how the left has completely embraced
this Palestinian struggle, and to be fair, they always have.
Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, to some extent, there's always been a
strong bias there.
Speaker 2: The day that the BLM riots started, that organization had
already been in existence since twenty fourteen. You go to
their website the day those riots started, and right there
at the very top they were like, we are pro Palestinian.
And this as the progressives have really sort of come
together more and more, I would not be totally surprised
to see them kind of come under some Islamist radicalism.
I know that sounds kind of crazy, but they seem
to be quite married together.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but the hard left and the Islamist or even
the Palestinian movement have always been together. Even an Antebee
or these fam there were two German Communists as part
of that terrorist action. So I don't know if they
see them as the Third World struggle as they are struggling.
You know how we make fun of like gays for
Palestine or transfer Palestine or Gaza. But the truth is
that they do have a natural alliance in a way
of undermining Western civilization basically, you know, just to be
blunt about it. And so it's not like they understand
they couldn't live in Gaza, but their enemies the same
and they want to destroy the same system, and so
they're temporarily aligned. And I think that's probably how a
lot of these progress I sometimes wonder if they actually
think this deeply about it, though I'm not sure, you know,
I'm not sure if they're like real Marxists. I don't
think they're reading Karl Marx and then transposing it onto
racial stuff. But I think almost naturally they come to
that idea and then you know, right in that way.
Speaker 2: Okay, So other than making a trip out to Utah
for this Federalist conference. Do you have anything to tell
us about what you've been doing, watching, reading, listening.
Speaker 1: To I have two items. One is I watched with
one of my kids the original Twister movie. I think
it holds up really well. I just quickly want to say,
you know, in these new movies, they have a lot
of cgi and it probably looks more realistic in some way,
but I enjoyed seeing it being not that, you know,
being weird, like there's a cow flying through the air
and stuff, and it's just a lot of fun. I'll
get both so you can then we can talk about
you or do you want to go back and forth? Okay?
And I watched a movie called The Instigators with Casey
Affleck and Matt Damon on Apple. I actually like Casey
Affleck more than Ben Affleck is an actor.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, I think everybody does right, Okay.
Speaker 1: Okay, okay, thought I was standing out, thought it was
an outlier. Yeah. So I loved him in that movie
where with the Brad Pitt. I liked him in a
lot of stuff. So he's fine, and Matt Damon's fine
in the directions find everything. But you just watching and
you're like, why are we Like, why are we on
this trip here? You know, it was just very bland,
and you know, I can't even remember what the story
is anymore. It was just not very good, at least
from my view.
Speaker 2: So I never saw the first Twister. My family has seen, Okay,
that's why we watch, and they all really enjoyed it,
and we've had at the Federalists, we've published quite a
few reviews that were very favorable toward it. I have
not watched or seen anything. I did in ahead of
our conference. Came out to Salt Lake a few days
early because my husband family had a family reunion. And
as I may have mentioned once or twice on the podcast,
my husband and ira Lutheran, but he comes from a
Mormon family, and so I experienced my very first Mormon
family reunion and it was something else, I'll tell you.
Like the family that he's part of, they have one
of the largest family organizations in America, which is their
nonprofit that runs their reunions. They have officers. The family
began as a polygamist family, so you have the line
from one wife and you have the line from the
second wife, and then you identify yourself by which kid
of you know, wife one or wife two, And then
there were competitions to see which kid of which wife
had the most people there. There were presentations on you know,
advances they'd made. Mormons are super super into genealogy as
part of their religious practice, and so we had presentations
from experts and different and it was really really interesting
to be there and very large.
Speaker 1: So sounds like fun. Do you ever get in trouble
for talking about these things like in your personal life? Like,
I don't know, is someone going to be mad that
you spoke about it a little bit of a smile
going in your voice there, so you discussed it. I'm
just wondering, No, all right, because I do. I get
in troublesome times, like when we talked about that friend
episode where I was looking for friends, remember that whole thing.
So those people I think listened and then never contacted
me again.
Speaker 2: So I just you know, Oh, last week we talked
about how I was on Cottonwood Pass and Buna Vista and.
Speaker 1: How your husband saved you from a drive in movie.
Speaker 2: Yes, and I I hadn't told my husband this yet,
but one of his cousins was listening from Ireland and
really loved it because she grew up over Cottonwood Pass
and so that was fun. I forget sometimes that people
are listening, but no, I you know, it's just an
interesting part of my husband's family heritage, and so it's
good for the kids to learn about it too. We
also learned that they are that are children or children
of the American Revolution. My husband is a son of
the American Revolution. That was you know. We found out
like really interesting stuff related to some of his family members,
including that one of his ancestors forged the steel that
is still at West Point where they during the Revolutionary
War tried to do a blockade.
Speaker 1: On the Hudson River. Yeah, he was telling me about that.
Very cool. He had another story too, right, Yeah, I
mean I don't have that kind of history.
Speaker 2: Oh, when he swam across the river to actually connect
the parts of the of the the iron the iron gates.
Speaker 1: Well, weird speaking in front of people when we're doing this, right.
Speaker 2: Gives it a little I know, it's super weird being
in front of people, but.
Speaker 1: Because usually it's just we forget we're talking, right, and
we just I do I mean, I'm not that we're talking.
I forget that we're recording. Okay, well, let's move on.
We'll be back next sweet to embarrass ourselves further and
few lovers of freedom and anxious for the fray, and.
Speaker 2: Don't forget to email us at radio at the Federalist
dot com.
Speaker 1: Yes, we'd love to hear if you me. Thank you,