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Speaker 1: Welcome to the latest episode of Your Wrong normally with

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David Harsani and Molly Hemingway, but this week it's a

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special episode. So you are here with Molly Hemingway, editor

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in chief at The Federalist, and my amazing husband, Mark Hemingway,

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Books editor at The Federalist, and the person who gets

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to deal with me day in and day out in life.

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How are you doing, Mark.

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Speaker 2: I'm glad to be here in my own home with

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my own wife.

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Speaker 1: So David Harsani is taking the week off as Jews

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normally do during Christmas, you know, So that's good.

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Speaker 2: I think it's technically honaker right now. All though, to

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be honest, that's not one of the bigger holidays for

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the Jews.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, although for David it really is a big holiday.

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He's always been a big fan of Hanukkah. But we're

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here and we're just going to do a quick episode

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on some of the biggest news of the week.

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Speaker 2: Just a quick episode usually happened in the last week.

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Speaker 1: Anytime we say something like that, it then becomes a

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three hour episode too. But just wanted to go over

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a couple stories, and we'll start with the sixty Minutes

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Brew haha, which is a really big story in Washington,

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d C. Probably less of a story in most of

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the country, but it's an interesting one that relates to

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our current media landscape, and so I think it's worth

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going through. So CBS News has you know what it

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frequently has called its flagship product, sixty minutes, which has

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had a very troubled past, which I'm sure we'll get into.

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And the media outlet has had a bunch of bumps

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in recent years, and new owners placed Barry Weiss, the

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editor in chief of The Free Press, in as the

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head of the organization to kind of clean things up

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and help them become a more respectable news product. And

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she has been met with fierce resistance. She's a woman

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of the left herself, but she would describe herself as

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center left, and so she is very you know, blood

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People find her reasonable in dealing with the right, even

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as she herself holds views on the left side of things.

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And there's been a lot of internal resistance, and it

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all kind of came to a head this weekend when

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she said that a piece needed more work before it aired,

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and the staff responded by essentially leaking the piece globally

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and saying that she was a monster for wanting to

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have an improved, in her view, an improved editorial.

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Speaker 2: Look.

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Speaker 1: I think she basically thought it was too much of

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a joke of a piece and that it could be

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stronger against the Trump administration if they prot if they

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did some basic due diligence of for instance, featuring the

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commentary from Trump administration officials in the in the piece

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itself before it ran. What do you know about the Well.

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Speaker 2: If you read the memo that she wrote, basically what

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she said was the New York Times and others have

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basically already reported this story that you.

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Speaker 1: Know the and should we explain what the story was about?

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Speaker 2: The story was about with the president in l Salvador.

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Is that the right country where you know, the Trump

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administration has been sending officials and this this place is

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kind of notorious because you know, the president of El

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Salvador has gosh, I hope I have the right country there.

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Speaker 1: It's all Salvador, Okay, great.

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Speaker 2: The president has basically cleaned up his country by you know,

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building this huge prison and you know, stashing away anybody

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who's causing any problems there. Now a lot of there's

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a lot of controversy with this obviously, because you know,

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that seems very authoritarian. At the same time, this guy

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went from the El Salvador, went from a country that

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was you know, completely plagued by violence and corruption to

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a place that has I think maybe the lowest level

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of violence and you know, the you know, in the

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in the western hemisphere right now, you know, lower than

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American I think, key measures. So you know, it is

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a controversial story, and it's controversial the United States is

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sending people that you know, are violent or criminal immigrants there,

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or even people that are not criminal immigrants there is,

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as the story alleges. But Barry Weiss was like, look,

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New York Times and all these other people have reported

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this story, how can we advance it? You know, this

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is just you know, regurgitating a lot of what's already

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out there. And then she had some other concerns about

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the tone of the peace, you know, and there was

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you know, all sorts of other grumblings you know, that

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were leaked from the people that worked on the piece

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that it's hard to tell, you know, are accurate or not.

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But if you read the memo that was released what

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she wrote, it sounded utterly eminently reasonable.

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Speaker 1: I'm going to quibble with you there in the spirit

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of the Year Wrong podcast, but I want to first

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before I kind of disagree with how it came off,

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just go over the highlights of that memo, you know.

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She begins and says, I'm writing with specific guidance on

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what I'd like for us to do to advance the

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Seacott story. I know you'd all like to see this

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run as soon as possible. I feel the same way.

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But if we run the piece as is, we'd be

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doing our viewers at disservice. So first, she says, last

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month many outlets, most notably The New York Times, exposed

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the horrific conditions at Seacott. So she agrees with the

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leftist perspective that the conditions at Seacott are horrific. Our

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story presents more of these powerful testimonies, as she puts it,

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and putting those accounts into the public record is valuable

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in and of itself. But if we're going to run

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another story about a topic that has by now been

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much covered, we need to advance it. Among the ways

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to do so, does anyone in the admin or anyone

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prominent who defended the use of the Alien Enemies Act

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now regret it in light of what these Venezuelans endured

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at Seacott. That's a question I'd like to see asked

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and answered. I just want to point out what she's

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saying is what a reasonable person of the left might

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have said in journalism, like a couple decades ago. So,

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you know, the media have been overwhelmingly biased with leftist

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framing and leftist viewpoints for a very long time. But Mark,

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you and I grew up in a journalism where our

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leftist editors would say stuff like that, right, like, hey,

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you need to advance this story. We don't just want

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to regurgitate what the New York Times says. Now, regurgitating

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what the New York Times says is like the highest

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calling of many journalistists, right.

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Speaker 2: Right, Well, you know, questioning the entire framing and premise

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of the story I think is a little different than

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her acting in her capacity as an editor.

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Speaker 1: Oh I'm sorry, is she editor in chief or not?

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Because as editor in chief, questioning the framing of the

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story is actually your most important job, right sure, I'm just.

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Speaker 2: Trying to say that, Like when I said, you know,

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it was a reasonable editorial memo. I wasn't, you know,

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agreeing with the premise of the story. But you know

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what you're saying, is you know, essentially correct.

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Speaker 1: Yes, she says, at present, we do not present the

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admin's argument for Wyatt sent two hundred and fifty two

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venezuelans to seacut. What we have is, you know, Caroline

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Levitt's soundbye claiming that there are claiming they are evildoers

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in America, rapists, murders, et cetera. I just want to

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again say, it's so frustrating as an American who doesn't

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believe an invasion of our land by people who have

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no right to be here and who many of whom

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are committing crimes like rape and murder, to have this

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like dismissed as a mere claim by Caroline Levitt.

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Speaker 2: Well, speaking of the claim from by Caroline Levitt, I mean,

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one of the issues there is I think it later

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came out that CBS News had something like three administration

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sources on record discussing the story, and they didn't use

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one of them in the piece.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, none of them. Yeah, they asked three actual people

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involved or you know, dhs and other people, and they

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didn't use any of the commentary they got. But she says,

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isn't there much more to ask in light of the

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torture that we are revealing. So she's like, you know,

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Tom Homan and Stephen Miller are crazy and they'll talk

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to anyone, so why aren't you talking to them? Which

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is a good point except for the part you know,

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hold on, and she says, the data we present paints

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that's a I want to put sick in there. The

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data we present paints an incongruent picture of the two

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hundred and fifty two Venezuelans sent to Seacott. We say

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nearly half have no criminal histories. In other words, more

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than half do have criminal histories. We should spend a

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beat explaining this. We then say that only eight of

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the two hundred and fifty two have been sentence sentenced

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for violent offenses, But what about charged? My point is

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that we should include as much as we can possibly

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know and understand about these individuals. Excellent point. Also, I

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don't trust anyone at CBS to be honest about those

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figures in it.

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Speaker 2: Well. Also worth noting that CBS's source for this entire

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thing is there's this group at cal Berkeley that basically

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like train students to supposedly find and root out war crimes.

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So this is like a college project essentially. And yeah,

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it's gotten some acclaim for this or that before or whatever,

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But again you're talking about well, you know, sixty minutes,

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which does not have a reputation for being you know,

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fair or unbiased, you know, leaning on a cal Berkeley

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like working group of students, So this is not a

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recipe for getting a particularly objective report.

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Speaker 1: And then she says, you know, Secretary's and Secretary nomes

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trip to Seacott. We report that she took pictures in

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video there with MS thirteen gang members, not not trend

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de Arragua members, with no comment from her or her

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staff about what her goal on that trip was, or

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what she saw there, or if she had or has

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concerns about the treatment of detainees like the ones in

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our piece. I also think that the ensuing analysis from

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the Berkeley students is strange. The pictures are alarming, we

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should include them, but what does the analysis add. I

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don't know what she means by that point, and I

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again wouldn't trust a Berkeley student group well regarded as

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you say or not. We need to do a better

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job of explaining the legal ration now by which the

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ADMIN detained and deported these venezuelans. It's not as simple

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as Trump invoking the Alien Enemies Act and being able

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to deport them immediately, and that isn't the admin's argument.

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She goes on to what their actual argument is, that

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the detainees are doing judicial review, and we should explain

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this with a voice arguing that Trump is exceeding the

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authority under the relevant statute and another arguing that he's

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operating within the bounds of his authority. There's a genuine

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debate here. If we cut down Christy nome analysis, we'd

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have the time. My general view here is that we

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do our viewers the best service by presenting them with

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the full context they need to assess the story. In

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other words, I believe we need to do more reporting here.

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I'm eager and available to help. I track down cell

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numbers for Homan and Miller and sent us along. Please

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let me know how I can support you, and particularly

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that last point, like we should show what the legal

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arguments are against what the Trump admin is doing, and

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then we should do something that hasn't happened very much

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in corporate media in the last ten years, which is

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present the legal arguments in favor of what the Trump

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admin is doing. And the staff responded by saying, how

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dare you If you make us do this, you're killing

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the story, which is such an unbelievable admission from the staff. Right,

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if we were to be fair, if we were to

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do like if we were to take our left wing

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framing and all of our left wing desires but just

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put like a fig leaf of balance on it, it

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would destroy the story. It's what they're saying. And so

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they were like, we can't do that. We cannot even

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mention for a moment that there is a different perspective

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than the one we've been force feeding our idiot viewers

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for years. It will kill our story. And they lost

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their minds, And I'm like, wow, is that amazing?

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Speaker 2: Right? Yeah, Well, I did see a lot of people

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that were initially like, oh wow, this looks really bad.

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Then when they read the memo, were like, oh, well,

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you know, this seems you know, reasonable, which you know

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is a is a step in the right direction. But

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also this entire story and a lot of what's going

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on at CBS News seems to rest on this idea

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that like CBS is this prestige news outlet, you know, news,

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and sixty minutes is their crown jewel. And I do

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think that in the forgotten times of a decade ago,

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this was how it was perceived kind of broadly, you know,

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certainly not among half the country, but among you know,

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a lot of people, and they just have not adjusted

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to this like new reality where sixty minutes is a

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joke and you know, all of the major news networks

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you know, basically aren't trusted by most of the country

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at this point in time.

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Speaker 1: So you were actually involved in one of the big

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stories that that created the reason why we consider I.

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Speaker 2: Was tachnically involved in a couple but yes.

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Speaker 1: Okay, well for the first one though that I remember,

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and I don't remember if it was the two thousand

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election or the two thousand and four election. Dan rather

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utilized forged documents as part of a hit piece right

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before that election against President George W. Bush. Can you

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remind us of what that is?

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Speaker 2: Yeah, in order to basically dodge service in Vietnam, George W.

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Bush got signed up for the Texas Air National Guard.

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And there was always this question of favoritism because you know,

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whether or not his service in the Texas Air National

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Guard was legit in order to avoid Vietnam, and you know,

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I believe it was like late September, so it was

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like very nearly at a literal October surprise. Dan Rather,

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who was probably the biggest news figure on the planet

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at that time, ran a segment on sixty Minutes questioning

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I can't remember this specif the aspects of George W. Bush's,

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you know, international Guard service. But the point was to make,

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you know, basically accuse him of being a draft dodger

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to some degree and presenting these documents on air that

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people looked at and quickly determined, you know, these documents

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from nineteen seventy one or whatever it was were not

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produced on an actual typewriter, but they were done by

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a modern word processing program, and all of a sudden,

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Dan Rather had to account for his reporting how he

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got to documents the providence of it, and absolutely could not,

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and CBS ended up basically melting down over this. Dan

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Rather got fired and it was a huge deal and

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a huge watershed moment because it was the first real

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time that you know, what were then bloggers on the

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internet basically completely debunked a major news story, and I

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can't remember I got roped into this was part of

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a website called rathergate dot com that was reporting on this,

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you know, daily, and I can't remember I advanced the

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ball on that in a few different ways. But sixty

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Minutes is in the last twenty some years since Rathergate

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has had a whole spate of controversies. In another thing

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that I was heavily involved in reporting on, they did

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a big segment involving ben Ghazi where they had to

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retract the entire piece, and some years after the fact,

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I eventually reported that my former CIA official named Tyler Drumheller,

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who was who was a security consultant the CBS News

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was basically actively involved in the shaping of that report

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that later got completely debunked because it had to be

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basically retracted because it relied on in an inaccurate source.

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And I come to find out later that this guy

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was basically on the payroll of Hillary Clinton at the

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same time he was working as a security consultant or

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whatever for CBS News sixty Minutes and so, you know,

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basically he spiked the story that was there was going

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to be very unfavorable to Hillary Clinton, and then you know,

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they've had all kinds of other things. You know, there

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was the debacle with Kamala Harris last fall, which you know,

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they paid out a settlement to Trump millions of dollars

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where they completely sliced and dice Kamala's interview to make

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her sound more coherent than you know she you know,

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famously is not, and did not release a transcript for

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the first time ever of their interview with a presidential candidate,

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which was, you know, a really shady and crazy thing

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for them to do. And then you know, just this spring,

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Leslie Stall, one of their you know, top correspondences in

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sixty Minutes Forever, had this report where she talked on

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air where she she asked whether or not Israel was

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responsible for the starvation of the hostages taken by Hamas

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on October seventh because they hadn't been getting enough food

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into Gaza. I mean, it is well known that Hamas

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was stealing all the food shipments and taking them from

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the people of Gaza, and it was just appalling that

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she would ask this, And so you know, that ended

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up being a sort of a big that ended up

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playing something of a significant role. It was a recall

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in the in the paramount purchase of CBS simply because

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you know, some of the investors in Vault were were

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Jewish and not happy with how things are being reported,

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and rightly so. So there's just been a cascade of things.

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And there's you know, probably about ten other things that

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I didn't mention. And there's this this idea that sixty

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minutes is still the prestige news magazine show that everybody's

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paying attention to. It's just laughable. It's not I did

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see Axios. I think I think it was Axios running

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a story esterday talking about how, you know, people take

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CBS News of sixty minutes so seriously because it's the

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highest rated news program by a wide margin, you know,

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and has been for many many years. Well, SEBA sixty

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Minutes airs at seven pm on Sundays. The only reason

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is the highest rated news program is because people forget

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to turn off the TV after the football game is over.

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It's it's just absurd. And like CBS News and sixty Minutes,

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you need to deal with the reality that their reputation

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is very tarnished and very diminished. And when somebody like

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Barry Weiss comes in and very gently suggests that, well,

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maybe we need to add some sort of counterbalance, or

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maybe we need to you know, advance the ball and

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not just have these you know, hit pieces constantly. They

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lose their mind.

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Speaker 1: So I want to just before we move on to

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the next part of this story, I want to add

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to it. You know, you're talking about some of these stories,

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but this pattern of CBS News and how they treat

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friends versus foes is very much worth thinking about. You know,

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you mentioned some of this, but like their interview of

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Kamala Harris in which they edited her answers to make

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her seem more coherent. You know, we're all familiar with

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how incoherent she is and how much difficulty she has

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with the English language, but they were editing her to

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make her answers seem tighter, better, more competent. Similarly, I

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was working on a story and had some trouble getting

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people on the record, But then it was admitted to

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by the new owner of CBS herself that they were

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very worried that stuff would come out about how sixty

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Minutes handled their Joe Biden interview. I remember it was

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an interview from October twenty twenty two. Wait, what year

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was the horrible attack on the October seven attack on Israel?

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Speaker 2: I think it was twenty twenty three.

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Speaker 1: Maybe okay, so then maybe it was sar it was

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twenty twenty three. So I'd heard from people inside CBS

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that it was a quote monster edit to make that

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interview able to air. So if you go back and

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you look at it, the guy, I don't know if

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it's I get all these people confused, I get all

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the white people confused as CBS News. Is it Scott Pelly,

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I don't remember. But he kind of begins and he goes,

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it had been a hard week on President Biden, and

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you could tell that he was exhausted or something. So

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that's the that's their opening statement, which you might notice

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already is not something that they would ever give that

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benefit to a Republican that they had on. You know,

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it had been a hard week on President Trump and

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he seemed to be short tempered with us or whatever,

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you know, But they say, oh, it's you know, been

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a hard week, and then they just sliced and diced

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in like tiny edits on everything, so that Joe Biden,

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who they must have known, was coming off like particularly

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on video, because the transcript isn't as bad but had

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come off very poorly, So they were just kind of

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slicing and dicing to make him seem better. And then

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you compare that with what happened in the lead up

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to the twenty twenty election when Donald Trump and Leslie

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Stall got in a fight over Hunter Biden's laptop, which

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showed the corruption of the Biden family business. Isn't funny

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by the way that these Biden family business or Clinton

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Global Initiative, they all go away when the people have

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no shot at being president anymore. Just find that so fascinating.

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Must be non corrupt businesses in play here. And she said,

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this is sixty minutes, mister president. We can't traffic in

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fake news like the Hunter Biden laptop. So she says

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fake news and defends herself by saying they can't do

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fake news. And it's just just like a horrible pattern.

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But even more specifically, I want to look at the

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woman who Barry Weiss employs cheerfully apparently, who should have

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been fired the moment Barry Weiss took over, And any

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I think good editor would have fired her immediately, which

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is this what's her name like Sherry Alfonso or Alfonsi.

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The woman who did this Seacot story has a horrible

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track record of journalism, of bad journalism. So the one

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that really bothered me was when she deceptively edited a

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response made by Ron DeSantis about vaccine distribution at Publics,

401
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where she asked him a question. He utterly eviscerates her

402
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and lets her know that her entire framing is wrong,

403
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and he does it so conclusively, like he off the

404
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cuff knows the entire chain of events of how Publics,

405
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which is a very popular grocery store down in Florida

406
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and everybody trusts it and all that kind of thing,

407
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how they got the part of the vaccine distribution program

408
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that they did, And he explains that other similarly situated

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retail outlets got other parts of the vaccine distribution program

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or other parts of the program. And he explains how

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why who he met with, like how it's working and

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what's going to happen going forward, And she takes like

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one tiny part of his answer and the part where

414
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he calls her fake news, and she and she puts

415
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in the middle of it something from someone claiming he's wrong,

416
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but not really addressing what he actually said, and it

417
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was horrible, and she didn't get fired after that because

418
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CBS and sixty minutes aren't legitimate news outlets. And then

419
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she did that horrible censorship story in defensive censorship in Germany.

420
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Speaker 2: Yeah, that one was really just shocking.

421
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Speaker 1: She just still keeps a job. So it's kind of

422
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hard to feel bad for CBS or sixty minutes or

423
00:24:46,359 --> 00:24:49,759
Barry Rice when this woman is still getting to work

424
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as a quote unquote journalist when she's clearly not one.

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Speaker 2: You know, well to put the best construction on this,

426
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I mean, you know, if you were serious about reforming

427
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a place like c News in sixty minutes, I mean

428
00:25:01,359 --> 00:25:03,880
it would be you know, seering a battleship and not

429
00:25:03,960 --> 00:25:08,799
a sports car. But it's still, you know, there's still

430
00:25:08,839 --> 00:25:11,119
a lot of low hanging fruit here, Like you're right, Like,

431
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why that Sharon Alfonsie or whatever woman still has a job.

432
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It's just it's astonishing. I mean, she's reared her head,

433
00:25:17,799 --> 00:25:20,640
you know, a bunch of different times. You know, I

434
00:25:20,640 --> 00:25:22,519
will say that like one of the worst actors. I

435
00:25:22,599 --> 00:25:23,759
forget the guy that was I think he was the

436
00:25:23,799 --> 00:25:26,640
executive producer of sixty Minutes or whatever for many years.

437
00:25:26,920 --> 00:25:30,559
He basically resigned earlier this year and some other things.

438
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So I don't know. I mean, I think they need

439
00:25:34,400 --> 00:25:37,160
I think that things might be moving in the right direction,

440
00:25:37,240 --> 00:25:39,359
but I don't know. I'm mean, I don't trust that

441
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they they will.

442
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Speaker 1: I just want to wrap back to one of my

443
00:25:42,079 --> 00:25:45,960
first points though, which is another thing I think was

444
00:25:46,039 --> 00:25:49,920
a problem with this was the last minute intervention. One

445
00:25:50,000 --> 00:25:54,519
in fact, early intervention is what is needed to help

446
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CBS in sixty minutes they had their framing of so

447
00:26:00,240 --> 00:26:04,039
or let me say this, as a normal American who

448
00:26:04,119 --> 00:26:12,400
loves her country, I want supposedly flagship news outlets and

449
00:26:12,680 --> 00:26:18,000
supposedly great places to cover the actual problems we're dealing with.

450
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I'm very used to the New York Times Washington Post

451
00:26:21,160 --> 00:26:24,440
sixty minutes approach of trying to stop any improvement in

452
00:26:24,480 --> 00:26:28,480
our country by working with the Berkeley School or cal

453
00:26:28,559 --> 00:26:33,839
Berkeley to sabotage any efforts at improving things. I am.

454
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I'm so used to that, I'm sick to death a bit.

455
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What I would like is someone or a group with

456
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the resources, the unbelievable resources of corporate media, where they

457
00:26:46,119 --> 00:26:52,359
have been given this huge gift of ownership of airwaves

458
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that enable them to have these massive news operations that

459
00:26:56,039 --> 00:26:58,440
you and I couldn't even dream of, like a tiny

460
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fraction of if they devote those to helping the country

461
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rather than hurting the country. And so if you take,

462
00:27:04,960 --> 00:27:09,279
for example, a really important story with multiple size, which

463
00:27:09,319 --> 00:27:14,680
is the story of immigration and mass uncontrolled migration to

464
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our country, where we now have the highest percentage of

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foreign born people in this country, then we've you know,

466
00:27:24,480 --> 00:27:27,759
had interval well yeah, and since we've been like looking

467
00:27:27,799 --> 00:27:31,440
at it, and that doesn't even count all the people

468
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that we don't know, we don't have counts for because

469
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they're here illegally. And look at what that does to

470
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normal Americans. What does that do to our school systems?

471
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What does that do to our hospitals? What does that

472
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do for firemen and policemen? You know, you think about

473
00:27:48,039 --> 00:27:51,920
a city like Los Angeles, which had horrible fires and

474
00:27:52,079 --> 00:27:56,000
has about the same number of firemen now as they

475
00:27:56,039 --> 00:27:58,920
did in the sixties, even though the city is like

476
00:27:59,640 --> 00:28:04,920
massively bigger and now having to deal with every language

477
00:28:04,960 --> 00:28:09,119
known to mankind in a tiny you know environment, and

478
00:28:09,640 --> 00:28:15,319
horrible leadership of some kind. You know, like I would

479
00:28:15,359 --> 00:28:19,519
love sixty Minutes to devote their resources to what it's like,

480
00:28:20,519 --> 00:28:23,880
you know, since they're caring about Venezuelan terrorists, maybe what

481
00:28:23,960 --> 00:28:28,359
is it like to live in Aurora, Colorado next to

482
00:28:28,440 --> 00:28:30,920
some of these terrorists? What does it do to your

483
00:28:31,160 --> 00:28:35,319
home life? How does it affect your children? Like, I'm

484
00:28:35,400 --> 00:28:37,920
glad that they care so much, like deep, so deeply,

485
00:28:37,960 --> 00:28:42,000
along with their other Democrat partisans, like who's that senator

486
00:28:42,039 --> 00:28:46,640
from There's a Rep in Maryland who all he does is.

487
00:28:46,640 --> 00:28:49,359
Speaker 2: Cares about tomar By flew down to.

488
00:28:50,960 --> 00:28:54,880
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I'm glad. I'm glad that Democrats care. Democrats

489
00:28:54,920 --> 00:28:58,440
like CBS News and sixty Minutes and these Democrat representatives

490
00:28:58,480 --> 00:29:03,640
like they care so deeply about Venezuelan terrorists. But I

491
00:29:03,680 --> 00:29:07,160
would like a news organization to care about Americans and

492
00:29:07,240 --> 00:29:09,359
what we have to go through and what it's been

493
00:29:09,440 --> 00:29:13,319
like to have people like themvoice this mass, uncontrolled migration

494
00:29:13,440 --> 00:29:16,759
scheme on our country and show us, you know, show

495
00:29:16,839 --> 00:29:20,200
us the growth, show us what can be done. The

496
00:29:20,480 --> 00:29:22,880
entire framing was wrong, so that when you come in

497
00:29:22,880 --> 00:29:25,319
at the last minute and go, oh, you totally mess

498
00:29:25,400 --> 00:29:28,279
this up, that's way too late to fix something.

499
00:29:28,720 --> 00:29:31,720
Speaker 2: Well, sure, what you said, is of course all true,

500
00:29:31,759 --> 00:29:34,440
but like, even just on a more basic level, if

501
00:29:34,440 --> 00:29:37,759
you're going to have a super hard hitting report on

502
00:29:38,039 --> 00:29:41,799
the Trump administration enabling the torture of people, you know,

503
00:29:42,319 --> 00:29:44,279
at the very least you should have a track record

504
00:29:44,319 --> 00:29:46,960
of having been that hard on the previous guy and

505
00:29:47,000 --> 00:29:50,279
the guy before that. You know. You know, as a journalist,

506
00:29:50,319 --> 00:29:52,319
your job is to hold people in power to account.

507
00:29:52,400 --> 00:29:54,160
And I don't have a problem with you going hammer

508
00:29:54,200 --> 00:29:56,720
and tongs against the people in power as long as

509
00:29:56,759 --> 00:30:02,079
you don't discriminate. And incrimination is so blatant and obvious

510
00:30:02,400 --> 00:30:05,440
that I don't know how anyone takes it seriously. I'man

511
00:30:05,480 --> 00:30:07,599
like everyone knows the game at this point in time,

512
00:30:08,039 --> 00:30:10,680
and the reason why the Trump administration can literally just

513
00:30:10,839 --> 00:30:13,559
write off the media in their second term here is

514
00:30:13,599 --> 00:30:16,480
because everyone knows that's the case, and they don't hold

515
00:30:16,519 --> 00:30:19,279
any power of credibility because they haven't been holding people

516
00:30:19,319 --> 00:30:20,519
to account equally.

517
00:30:22,799 --> 00:30:25,279
Speaker 3: Fed Chair Jay Pal seems like he's straight out of

518
00:30:25,359 --> 00:30:28,279
reservoir dogs stuck in the middle. The watch Dot on

519
00:30:28,319 --> 00:30:31,400
Wall Street podcast with Chris Markowski every day. Chris helps

520
00:30:31,480 --> 00:30:34,079
unpack the connection between politics and the economy and how

521
00:30:34,119 --> 00:30:36,720
it affects your wallet with inflation on one side and

522
00:30:36,799 --> 00:30:40,240
unemployment on the other. Jay Pal's acting clueless with a

523
00:30:40,319 --> 00:30:43,160
dual mandate coming in from both sides. There's not much

524
00:30:43,200 --> 00:30:45,359
else he can do. Whether it's happening in DC or

525
00:30:45,400 --> 00:30:47,960
down on Wall Street, it's affecting you financially. Be informed.

526
00:30:48,000 --> 00:30:49,839
Check out the Watch Dot on Wall Street podcast with

527
00:30:49,960 --> 00:30:53,240
Chris Markowski on Apple, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.

528
00:30:56,319 --> 00:30:59,079
Speaker 1: Well, what would be the next thing we should talk about? Sorry, David?

529
00:30:59,160 --> 00:31:02,240
Do you see the important work that David does by

530
00:31:02,319 --> 00:31:05,519
managing this whole process and what a disaster it is

531
00:31:05,559 --> 00:31:09,240
when he's gone. Okay, So the other thing that I

532
00:31:09,319 --> 00:31:11,599
kind of want to talk about real quick was a

533
00:31:11,680 --> 00:31:15,319
story that blew up last week out of Federalist reporting,

534
00:31:16,319 --> 00:31:19,640
and the Federalist has been so on top of this

535
00:31:19,759 --> 00:31:24,480
story for the last five years. But Fulton County, Georgia

536
00:31:24,799 --> 00:31:29,119
admitted in a videotaped hearing that they did not dispute

537
00:31:29,200 --> 00:31:33,799
that they had failed to do something that was required

538
00:31:34,200 --> 00:31:37,480
under Georgia law and statute in the twenty twenty election,

539
00:31:38,160 --> 00:31:43,960
which related to how they processed ballots from advanced voting

540
00:31:45,200 --> 00:31:47,599
and advanced voting. You know, they're different kinds of voting.

541
00:31:47,640 --> 00:31:51,240
There's unsupervised mail out balloting, which is where you just

542
00:31:51,279 --> 00:31:54,000
like send ballots out into the ether and they come back,

543
00:31:54,160 --> 00:31:58,559
and you're supposed to do some kind of diligence to

544
00:31:58,599 --> 00:32:01,000
make sure that the ballots that were sent back match

545
00:32:01,039 --> 00:32:04,680
with voter rolls. Actually, let's go, let's let's say first off,

546
00:32:04,960 --> 00:32:08,480
historically speaking, we've developed a system for secure voting, which

547
00:32:08,640 --> 00:32:13,200
involves people coming into a place that is judged by

548
00:32:13,240 --> 00:32:16,839
election workers and showing that they are who they say

549
00:32:16,839 --> 00:32:19,319
they are, or at testing under oath that they are

550
00:32:19,400 --> 00:32:22,039
who they say they are, getting a ballot and the

551
00:32:22,079 --> 00:32:25,160
ballot itself is like in a controlled environment. Then you

552
00:32:25,200 --> 00:32:27,920
put the ballot in a box that's controlled And as

553
00:32:27,960 --> 00:32:32,519
we change to different styles of voting, we see people,

554
00:32:33,240 --> 00:32:37,279
you know, supposedly trying to replicate security provisions associated with

555
00:32:37,440 --> 00:32:40,799
in person election day voting, where everybody comes in within

556
00:32:40,839 --> 00:32:43,079
a certain like you know, ten hour period or whatever.

557
00:32:44,519 --> 00:32:47,039
So there's mail out balloting, which is where you just

558
00:32:47,079 --> 00:32:49,319
like send stuff out and it comes back in. And

559
00:32:49,359 --> 00:32:52,279
we already kind of know Fulton County messed up that

560
00:32:52,359 --> 00:32:55,440
part of the process. So when you're getting ballots from

561
00:32:56,079 --> 00:32:59,400
out there and you don't know you know who they're

562
00:32:59,440 --> 00:33:02,319
coming from. You have sometimes something as simple as a

563
00:33:02,359 --> 00:33:05,599
signature match that you're supposed to do. In Fulton County

564
00:33:06,480 --> 00:33:08,839
basically failed to do that, and that's why some of

565
00:33:08,839 --> 00:33:14,240
their election commissioners did not vote to certify. That was

566
00:33:14,279 --> 00:33:16,960
one of the reasons why a couple of the election

567
00:33:17,000 --> 00:33:20,359
commissioners did not vote to certify the Fulton County election

568
00:33:20,480 --> 00:33:23,440
in twenty twenty. But this dealt with advance voting, which

569
00:33:23,440 --> 00:33:27,799
is where you come into voting locations ahead of an election,

570
00:33:28,039 --> 00:33:32,720
but otherwise it's the same as election day voting. And

571
00:33:34,599 --> 00:33:38,640
Georgia state law requires you to certify the ballots coming

572
00:33:38,720 --> 00:33:45,759
out of those screening machines, and then Georgia rules and

573
00:33:45,799 --> 00:33:49,599
regulations specify that what that means, which can include like

574
00:33:49,640 --> 00:33:52,440
accounting for how many ballots were in there, how many

575
00:33:52,480 --> 00:33:54,279
of them were able to be read, how many of

576
00:33:54,319 --> 00:33:58,920
them were spoiled, and then signing your name and the

577
00:33:59,039 --> 00:34:04,920
names of two witnesses, and for nearly every single precinct

578
00:34:05,279 --> 00:34:08,360
in Fulton County, they failed to do that. And the

579
00:34:08,400 --> 00:34:11,960
reason why you have these procedures in place is so

580
00:34:12,000 --> 00:34:15,280
that you can trust the results of the election. You know,

581
00:34:15,280 --> 00:34:18,079
there's a lot of ballots flying around and you need

582
00:34:18,199 --> 00:34:21,519
to have strict control over them at all times, and

583
00:34:21,639 --> 00:34:25,159
people attesting to that control so that you can, if

584
00:34:25,199 --> 00:34:27,960
there's a problem, go back and identify where the problem is,

585
00:34:28,719 --> 00:34:32,480
and that you can replicate results and all these kinds

586
00:34:32,480 --> 00:34:36,039
of things. And so a guy just like, just like

587
00:34:37,079 --> 00:34:40,960
a guy who cared about election integrity had figured out

588
00:34:41,000 --> 00:34:44,119
that this had not been followed, this procedure had not

589
00:34:44,199 --> 00:34:47,039
been followed, and that it affected three hundred and fifteen

590
00:34:47,599 --> 00:34:52,760
thousand ballots. And yet you know, all the certifications had

591
00:34:52,800 --> 00:34:55,039
gone through even though this step of the process had

592
00:34:55,079 --> 00:34:59,440
not been done properly. And Fulton County attorneys are on

593
00:34:59,639 --> 00:35:02,280
TV saying, yeah, we don't dispute this, that's true. What

594
00:35:02,400 --> 00:35:06,000
he's saying happened or didn't happen, It didn't happen. And

595
00:35:06,400 --> 00:35:08,840
you then see the state election board kind of reacting

596
00:35:08,880 --> 00:35:13,239
to this and being very upset about this failure and

597
00:35:13,519 --> 00:35:18,920
referring this failure to the Georgia Attorney General, who my

598
00:35:19,079 --> 00:35:22,360
sources say is worthless and won't do anything about it.

599
00:35:22,440 --> 00:35:25,320
But also the Department of Justice, which has begun once

600
00:35:25,360 --> 00:35:28,679
again investigating Fulton County, and I say once again, because

601
00:35:28,960 --> 00:35:31,599
they have such a bad track record of election administration.

602
00:35:32,119 --> 00:35:34,360
No offense to the lovely people of Fulton County, but

603
00:35:34,480 --> 00:35:36,599
y'all got problems down there. And so the Department of

604
00:35:36,760 --> 00:35:39,480
Justice has, over the years, you know, nothing to do

605
00:35:39,559 --> 00:35:42,280
with the twenty twenty election, has had to intervene to

606
00:35:42,559 --> 00:35:44,840
make sure that their voting systems are or to try

607
00:35:44,880 --> 00:35:48,760
to help them with their voting systems being better run.

608
00:35:50,320 --> 00:35:55,239
So Brionna Lyman, our wonderful one of our elections team,

609
00:35:55,519 --> 00:35:58,239
just writes up this that this happened. It's on video

610
00:35:58,679 --> 00:36:02,039
in a state election board media and we've written a

611
00:36:02,119 --> 00:36:06,360
lot about problems in Georgia and problems in Fulton County,

612
00:36:06,360 --> 00:36:07,960
and it kind of cracks me up when some of

613
00:36:08,000 --> 00:36:10,000
those stories take off, and when some of them don't.

614
00:36:10,079 --> 00:36:12,880
This one definitely took off, and a ton of people

615
00:36:12,960 --> 00:36:18,360
were noticing her reporting on this and knew yourself, what

616
00:36:18,480 --> 00:36:18,719
did you?

617
00:36:20,519 --> 00:36:22,559
Speaker 2: Oh, well, no, I mean I just tweeted this out

618
00:36:22,599 --> 00:36:25,960
and like, I don't say this lightly, Okay. I've done

619
00:36:25,960 --> 00:36:30,920
a ton of reporting on election administration issues, and you know,

620
00:36:32,159 --> 00:36:34,719
you know all you know, the things involving ballots, things

621
00:36:34,760 --> 00:36:37,320
involving you know, actual ballot fraud, on and on and on.

622
00:36:38,079 --> 00:36:40,760
I've never got out there and said the twenty twenty

623
00:36:40,800 --> 00:36:43,079
election was stolen or anything like that. I mean, the

624
00:36:43,159 --> 00:36:45,480
problem is is that, you know, often these issues are

625
00:36:45,559 --> 00:36:48,639
very murky and complicated or whatever, but there were so

626
00:36:48,920 --> 00:36:52,679
many problems in Georgia in twenty twenty. I genuinely don't

627
00:36:52,719 --> 00:36:55,159
think we can say with confidence who won that state.

628
00:36:55,760 --> 00:36:58,280
I'm you know, Biden only won it by ten thousand votes,

629
00:36:58,840 --> 00:37:01,440
and you know, just the thing that we know, you know,

630
00:37:01,840 --> 00:37:03,800
first off, you know, it doesn't really count for the general,

631
00:37:03,880 --> 00:37:06,519
but we know that they basically had a complete meltdown

632
00:37:06,559 --> 00:37:09,920
in the primary of that year with voting machines. Was

633
00:37:09,960 --> 00:37:11,920
it and it was a whole thing. New York Times

634
00:37:11,960 --> 00:37:15,079
did a big story on how like Georgia canad minister elections,

635
00:37:15,320 --> 00:37:16,880
and of course and Biden wins the state. A few

636
00:37:16,880 --> 00:37:19,039
months later, all of a sudden, it's the safest election ever,

637
00:37:19,199 --> 00:37:21,639
you know, Never mind a few months ago, New York

638
00:37:21,679 --> 00:37:25,320
Times is saying they're, you know, disaster, you know, the

639
00:37:25,440 --> 00:37:29,559
situation with you know, the Mark Zuckerberg grants, the zuck

640
00:37:29,639 --> 00:37:32,840
Bucks situation or whatever, where of the three hundred and

641
00:37:32,920 --> 00:37:35,440
some million dollars or four million dollars overget exactly what things.

642
00:37:35,559 --> 00:37:39,599
Total was literally one tenth or more of those grants

643
00:37:39,639 --> 00:37:42,800
and it was like forty one million dollars went to

644
00:37:42,920 --> 00:37:46,119
swing counties in Georgia to try and influence the outcome

645
00:37:46,199 --> 00:37:49,599
there where they were, you know, giving grants to local

646
00:37:49,719 --> 00:37:53,719
election offices to basically juice democratic turnout. And you know,

647
00:37:54,480 --> 00:37:58,719
and amazingly this wasn't quite illegal. You had this situation

648
00:37:58,800 --> 00:38:01,480
where where Georgia loss is that you know, if you've

649
00:38:02,719 --> 00:38:05,159
if you've if you're registered in one precinct and you

650
00:38:05,239 --> 00:38:07,320
move to a new area and you don't update your

651
00:38:07,960 --> 00:38:12,079
your voter registration and you vote in a new precinct,

652
00:38:13,320 --> 00:38:16,480
then your vote is invalid. And there was you know,

653
00:38:16,920 --> 00:38:21,159
huge problems with that in the state. You know, And

654
00:38:21,599 --> 00:38:24,639
again you can ask all these questions like is it

655
00:38:25,159 --> 00:38:28,639
is it helpful to like throw out you know, a ballot,

656
00:38:28,719 --> 00:38:32,400
a ballot from a legal Georgia resident based on you know,

657
00:38:32,519 --> 00:38:34,920
technicalities and voter law or things like that. I mean,

658
00:38:34,960 --> 00:38:37,719
these are these are legitimate questions, but the reality is

659
00:38:37,800 --> 00:38:40,320
is that no one in Georgia, and specifically Fulton County,

660
00:38:40,400 --> 00:38:42,360
seems to have any sort of handle on, like what

661
00:38:42,559 --> 00:38:45,360
is going on in that state, who's administering elections, who's

662
00:38:45,440 --> 00:38:48,079
enforcing regulations, and it's a complete disaster.

663
00:38:48,880 --> 00:38:51,559
Speaker 1: So every step of the way when we have reported

664
00:38:51,719 --> 00:38:55,239
on problems, and you mentioned the residency issue, it's a

665
00:38:55,360 --> 00:38:58,360
very complicated issue, but it was. It was a major

666
00:38:58,440 --> 00:39:04,440
part of the lawsuit filed in Georgia to challenge that election, Okay,

667
00:39:04,760 --> 00:39:08,239
and it turned out to be one hundred percent true.

668
00:39:08,679 --> 00:39:12,119
So Georgia law requires you to vote to live and

669
00:39:12,239 --> 00:39:16,199
vote in the precinct that you're registered in. And there

670
00:39:16,239 --> 00:39:21,400
were a lot of people who had who had reported

671
00:39:21,760 --> 00:39:23,920
that they had moved out of that out of a

672
00:39:24,000 --> 00:39:26,639
given county. So I didn't say I said precinct. I

673
00:39:26,639 --> 00:39:28,559
should have said county. So you're supposed to vote in

674
00:39:28,639 --> 00:39:31,519
the county that you're registered to voting, and that you

675
00:39:31,719 --> 00:39:38,280
live in that county. But people had publicly filed that

676
00:39:38,400 --> 00:39:42,119
they had changed their address to a different location but

677
00:39:42,239 --> 00:39:45,760
then gone and or you know, someone had had voted

678
00:39:45,920 --> 00:39:49,199
in their name in the old county, or they had

679
00:39:49,280 --> 00:39:52,039
voted in their name and you can say, well, you know,

680
00:39:52,119 --> 00:39:54,960
it doesn't affect the presidential election because they're still Georgia

681
00:39:55,039 --> 00:39:57,920
voters blah blah, and of course affects the presidential election.

682
00:39:58,119 --> 00:40:01,119
First off, anyone who's fallen owing the law, and the

683
00:40:01,199 --> 00:40:03,760
law is clear, or was in twenty twenty, the law

684
00:40:03,880 --> 00:40:06,079
is clear, you're not supposed to do that. So anyone

685
00:40:06,159 --> 00:40:10,599
who's following the law and therefore doesn't vote somewhere that

686
00:40:10,639 --> 00:40:15,360
they're not living in is disenfranchised relative to people who

687
00:40:15,400 --> 00:40:17,960
aren't following the law. You know, you don't know the effects.

688
00:40:18,199 --> 00:40:21,639
You have to enforce the law across the board. And

689
00:40:21,760 --> 00:40:24,519
then also like how cavalier people are a lot of

690
00:40:24,760 --> 00:40:27,679
county commissioners and mayors and school board like all these

691
00:40:27,760 --> 00:40:31,320
races are affected people who care about election integrity, not

692
00:40:31,599 --> 00:40:35,320
because they care about Trump, although they might, you know,

693
00:40:35,440 --> 00:40:37,880
in this case care about it because of Trump. They

694
00:40:37,920 --> 00:40:40,519
care about it because if you don't have secure elections,

695
00:40:40,599 --> 00:40:44,719
you don't have free people. If you cannot trust elections,

696
00:40:45,239 --> 00:40:49,199
it's over. And so when Raffinsberger, who is the Secretary

697
00:40:49,199 --> 00:40:50,960
of State, who I think is running for governor in

698
00:40:51,000 --> 00:40:53,679
Georgia now he kind of was like, yeah, it's yeah,

699
00:40:53,719 --> 00:40:55,599
that happened, but like we're not going to do anything

700
00:40:55,599 --> 00:40:58,239
about it. And always and always and always again that's

701
00:40:58,320 --> 00:41:01,800
sort of his approach. And so in this reporting he

702
00:41:03,119 --> 00:41:07,960
totally responded poorly, I thought, which is he claimed that

703
00:41:08,039 --> 00:41:11,599
the rules that he is elected to enforce and uphold

704
00:41:11,639 --> 00:41:15,280
and all that were just clerical errors, and that anybody

705
00:41:15,679 --> 00:41:20,480
noting the problem was trying to challenge the right to

706
00:41:20,599 --> 00:41:24,519
vote of people. And it's like, buddy, buddy, buddy, we

707
00:41:24,719 --> 00:41:28,480
have election rules precisely so that people can trust elections.

708
00:41:28,599 --> 00:41:32,119
That's true, whether Democrats win or Republicans win. You really

709
00:41:32,239 --> 00:41:35,199
want the loser to feel confident that they lost, not

710
00:41:35,440 --> 00:41:37,320
you know, the winners should feel confident they won. But

711
00:41:37,440 --> 00:41:41,880
like you really need to have peace and civil society

712
00:41:42,000 --> 00:41:44,719
that the loser trusts it. And so when you're just saying, yeah,

713
00:41:44,760 --> 00:41:48,360
we have rules, Fulton County followed, like, you know, some

714
00:41:48,519 --> 00:41:51,440
percentage of them well below one hundred percent. And that

715
00:41:51,639 --> 00:41:53,360
was a mess of a place. And it was also

716
00:41:53,440 --> 00:41:56,599
the place where we were videotaped with unsupervised ballot screening,

717
00:41:56,880 --> 00:41:58,639
And it was also the place where we told everybody

718
00:41:58,679 --> 00:42:01,639
we were done counting, but then they kept counting. And

719
00:42:01,719 --> 00:42:03,599
it's also the place where they were supposed to only

720
00:42:04,039 --> 00:42:07,360
screen ballots under supervision, and they didn't have supervision the

721
00:42:07,400 --> 00:42:09,320
whole time. It's also the place where they didn't do

722
00:42:09,400 --> 00:42:12,400
signature match. You know, it's the most populous county in Georgia,

723
00:42:12,519 --> 00:42:15,360
so it's not some county with four hundred people. It

724
00:42:15,920 --> 00:42:20,119
the election very much rode on how Fulton County administered

725
00:42:20,159 --> 00:42:22,760
their election. The Secretary of State's office was supposed to

726
00:42:22,800 --> 00:42:26,159
be monitoring it much better didn't. And now when anybody

727
00:42:26,360 --> 00:42:28,840
like shows that beyond a shadow of a doubt, they're

728
00:42:28,920 --> 00:42:31,559
like dismissing it, and that does not inspire confidence.

729
00:42:31,960 --> 00:42:34,639
Speaker 2: So the other thing about this, though, is that it

730
00:42:35,239 --> 00:42:38,440
also kind of highlights how election administration has become a

731
00:42:38,639 --> 00:42:41,280
sort of part is an issue where you know, we

732
00:42:41,400 --> 00:42:46,079
had examples of this in rig Remember you did some

733
00:42:46,239 --> 00:42:48,559
very good reporting on that where there were you know, counties.

734
00:42:48,679 --> 00:42:49,920
Part of the problem with what was going on in

735
00:42:49,960 --> 00:42:53,039
Pennsylvania was there were rules where you know, the Democratic

736
00:42:53,079 --> 00:42:57,000
counties were just flaunting and the Republican counties were you know,

737
00:42:57,239 --> 00:43:02,800
adhering to them, to their detriment in terms of election

738
00:43:02,880 --> 00:43:04,480
administration or rule of law or whatever.

739
00:43:04,599 --> 00:43:04,719
Speaker 3: You know.

740
00:43:04,840 --> 00:43:07,639
Speaker 2: Raferensburger is weird because he seems to be like the

741
00:43:07,800 --> 00:43:12,719
one Republican official in the country that is like, hey, yeah,

742
00:43:12,800 --> 00:43:17,119
who cares about election laws? I mean, it's just absolutely insane. Now,

743
00:43:17,199 --> 00:43:19,559
of course he's running for governor now, and he got

744
00:43:19,599 --> 00:43:22,119
all these plaudits for quote unquote standing up to Trump,

745
00:43:22,480 --> 00:43:24,639
and by standing up to Trump, it was literally, you know,

746
00:43:25,000 --> 00:43:28,159
defending the fact that democratic counties in Georgia were doing

747
00:43:28,239 --> 00:43:32,800
a terrible job. And so you know, this, this really

748
00:43:32,920 --> 00:43:35,039
needs to be an issue, and I you know, I

749
00:43:35,360 --> 00:43:37,440
don't know. I mean, maybe the DOJ can do this,

750
00:43:37,760 --> 00:43:42,400
but we're rapidly approaching this problem where you have basically

751
00:43:42,920 --> 00:43:46,039
urban democratic areas in this country that are just you know,

752
00:43:46,679 --> 00:43:50,199
letting everything go, you know, in terms of election administration,

753
00:43:50,599 --> 00:43:52,639
and there's no breaks and no one's going to stop them.

754
00:43:52,960 --> 00:43:56,039
And maybe there will be some reportes reporting five years

755
00:43:56,199 --> 00:44:00,960
after the fact that shows they re really screwed up,

756
00:44:01,000 --> 00:44:02,679
and well, by the way, you can't trust the results

757
00:44:02,719 --> 00:44:05,000
of that election, but it doesn't matter because that's all

758
00:44:05,039 --> 00:44:05,800
ancient history.

759
00:44:06,079 --> 00:44:07,679
Speaker 1: That was one of the things that was interesting too.

760
00:44:07,800 --> 00:44:11,519
The state election board is where you will hear cases

761
00:44:11,639 --> 00:44:13,480
like this or where you know, they'll they'll work their

762
00:44:13,519 --> 00:44:17,440
way up and the previous or I don't know if

763
00:44:17,440 --> 00:44:20,000
it's the current chairman, sorry for not knowing my details

764
00:44:20,079 --> 00:44:23,280
on this. Had just basically been keeping any cases like

765
00:44:23,400 --> 00:44:26,719
this from being heard. The rest of the board kind

766
00:44:26,719 --> 00:44:29,079
of got sick of it, and now they're seeing a

767
00:44:29,159 --> 00:44:34,519
flood of cases. So sometimes you hear claims like I

768
00:44:34,639 --> 00:44:36,400
just want to say, Rafisberger said that this was like

769
00:44:36,480 --> 00:44:39,679
the safest and most secure, that Georgia had the safest

770
00:44:39,719 --> 00:44:43,519
and most secure election in twenty twenty in the country.

771
00:44:44,079 --> 00:44:48,400
That's just that's just not true in any way. And

772
00:44:48,599 --> 00:44:51,400
he is personally involved in it because he was the one.

773
00:44:51,519 --> 00:44:53,360
So you referenced how the New York Times was very

774
00:44:53,400 --> 00:44:57,639
upset about Fulton County in the primary election in twenty twenty,

775
00:44:57,719 --> 00:45:00,440
and that's true, but it was all a kind of

776
00:45:00,519 --> 00:45:06,719
part of a part of a ruse. So first off,

777
00:45:07,039 --> 00:45:10,199
you hear people on the right now being very suspicious

778
00:45:10,199 --> 00:45:15,039
about election machines, But for the longest time, from George W.

779
00:45:15,239 --> 00:45:23,159
Bush's second victory until November one, twenty twenty, it was

780
00:45:23,280 --> 00:45:26,159
Democrats who had no trust in voting machines. You know,

781
00:45:26,239 --> 00:45:30,519
Barack Obama on down were holding hearings in the Senate

782
00:45:30,599 --> 00:45:36,400
about how Carl Rove had stolen the Bush's second election

783
00:45:36,559 --> 00:45:40,079
by controlling voting machines in Ohio, and you know, it

784
00:45:40,239 --> 00:45:45,199
was very strongly held, and so also Georgia had bought

785
00:45:45,440 --> 00:45:49,280
new voting machines, and the New York Times, Politico and

786
00:45:49,519 --> 00:45:52,159
other Democrats were just freaking out about it and saying

787
00:45:52,199 --> 00:45:54,679
this meant that they could be easily hacked and everything.

788
00:45:54,719 --> 00:45:56,480
And it also even like I think there was a

789
00:45:56,559 --> 00:46:00,440
PBS thing that aired on November first, twenty twenty that

790
00:46:00,559 --> 00:46:03,320
was like, the Republicans are going to use voting machines

791
00:46:03,360 --> 00:46:09,199
to steal Georgia. And then when Biden sort of shocks

792
00:46:09,239 --> 00:46:12,880
everybody by winning Georgia, it's the Republicans who start being

793
00:46:12,920 --> 00:46:16,199
suspicious about voting machines. As you know, and as we

794
00:46:16,360 --> 00:46:20,639
wrote in the book, were not big voting machine conspiracy theorists.

795
00:46:21,079 --> 00:46:23,079
And we made the case in the book for what

796
00:46:23,320 --> 00:46:26,960
really happened in the twenty twenty election, which was flooding

797
00:46:27,000 --> 00:46:30,559
the zone with tens of millions of unsupervised ballots, mail

798
00:46:30,559 --> 00:46:36,599
out ballots, changing laws and regulations overnight to accommodate those,

799
00:46:37,280 --> 00:46:42,719
and using actual government offices to get out the vote

800
00:46:42,800 --> 00:46:47,760
in Democrat areas of swing states, and we make the case.

801
00:46:47,920 --> 00:46:51,000
I'm very proud of that book and what we accomplished

802
00:46:51,360 --> 00:46:56,079
with that. But Georgia was where Zuck spent most of

803
00:46:56,199 --> 00:46:59,320
his money or you know, I think that was the largest,

804
00:46:59,360 --> 00:47:01,000
biggest at large state.

805
00:47:00,800 --> 00:47:03,000
Speaker 2: That received the most grants, was I believe Georgia.

806
00:47:03,119 --> 00:47:06,920
Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, And they did it in part through this. Okay,

807
00:47:07,000 --> 00:47:10,280
So they have the primary Fulton County, which is a

808
00:47:10,440 --> 00:47:13,480
mess of a county, has these long lines and they're

809
00:47:13,519 --> 00:47:15,960
not running their elections properly in the New York Times

810
00:47:16,039 --> 00:47:19,000
and political freak out about it, and so it helps

811
00:47:19,159 --> 00:47:23,920
bring in that Zuckbuck money where Zuck Bucks where they say, well,

812
00:47:23,960 --> 00:47:26,840
what if we a bunch of Democrat activists took over

813
00:47:26,960 --> 00:47:29,519
Fulton County kind of like helped you out on the inside.

814
00:47:29,559 --> 00:47:32,639
We run ads encouraging everybody to do mail out ballots,

815
00:47:33,000 --> 00:47:34,840
and then we can control that part of the process

816
00:47:34,880 --> 00:47:38,119
to make sure the Democrats vote blah blah blah. And

817
00:47:38,280 --> 00:47:40,840
it moved the state more than any other state in

818
00:47:41,000 --> 00:47:44,960
the country. And so Raffensberger was the every other state

819
00:47:45,039 --> 00:47:48,679
that they did this in they were using Democrat politicians,

820
00:47:48,719 --> 00:47:53,119
secretaries of state governors, or Democrat controlled legislature. Georgia was

821
00:47:53,159 --> 00:47:55,559
the only one where it was the Republicans who were like,

822
00:47:55,760 --> 00:47:58,760
we don't like bad press from the New York Times,

823
00:47:59,159 --> 00:48:02,239
so we'll do whatever you say, Mark Elias. And they did.

824
00:48:02,440 --> 00:48:06,559
And so it was a disaster. And so Raffensberger, I think,

825
00:48:06,639 --> 00:48:09,159
is embarrassed about that or just doesn't want to deal

826
00:48:09,280 --> 00:48:14,920
with his role as a stooge like unwitting studient.

827
00:48:15,199 --> 00:48:18,679
Speaker 2: He just he just can't admit he's terrible at his job,

828
00:48:19,000 --> 00:48:21,199
and you know, he's responsible for this debacle.

829
00:48:21,480 --> 00:48:23,559
Speaker 1: I should be clear. I was just thinking. I was like, well,

830
00:48:23,599 --> 00:48:25,400
if he's running for governor, and if he's going to

831
00:48:25,400 --> 00:48:27,159
be the nominee, and if he's going to win, I

832
00:48:27,239 --> 00:48:30,000
sure hope he's a better governor than a secretary of state.

833
00:48:30,519 --> 00:48:32,599
Speaker 2: There's no evidence of that. I mean, part of the

834
00:48:32,639 --> 00:48:35,079
problem with Raffensburger isn't just him, it's that, like, you know,

835
00:48:35,159 --> 00:48:38,800
his staff was also a zoo. Remember his staff was

836
00:48:38,840 --> 00:48:41,360
the one that leaked all those quotes to the New

837
00:48:41,440 --> 00:48:43,679
York Times that Trump had supposedly so his.

838
00:48:43,719 --> 00:48:46,320
Speaker 1: Staff illegally recorded the phone call. And I just want

839
00:48:46,360 --> 00:48:47,559
to do a little fine point on that too. We

840
00:48:47,639 --> 00:48:50,000
heard a lot about Donald Trump saying find me eleven

841
00:48:50,079 --> 00:48:53,360
thousand votes. This is a great example, like the story

842
00:48:53,400 --> 00:48:55,800
that the Federalists published this week is a great example

843
00:48:55,960 --> 00:48:58,960
of what the Trump lawsuit actually did. It would say,

844
00:48:59,320 --> 00:49:01,840
we think they're be as many as this many votes

845
00:49:03,320 --> 00:49:07,079
that had residency issues. We think there could be this

846
00:49:07,239 --> 00:49:10,960
many votes that didn't have or we think there were

847
00:49:11,119 --> 00:49:13,079
this many that had this, that or the other. And

848
00:49:13,119 --> 00:49:16,000
they tied it to statute that didn't have proper certification,

849
00:49:16,599 --> 00:49:20,920
that were improperly registered. All this stuff that is really

850
00:49:21,039 --> 00:49:24,320
real and important. And I can't remember what the total

851
00:49:24,400 --> 00:49:25,920
number of votes was, but let's say it was like

852
00:49:25,960 --> 00:49:29,840
one hundred and fifty thousand that they had listed. And

853
00:49:30,000 --> 00:49:32,119
Trump was saying, you don't need to agree with us

854
00:49:32,199 --> 00:49:35,880
on every category in every vote, but could you agree

855
00:49:35,960 --> 00:49:40,480
with us on enough to be more than the margin

856
00:49:40,559 --> 00:49:44,280
of victory which was like eleven thousand, right, And it

857
00:49:44,360 --> 00:49:46,960
was portrayed instead as him saying can you find eleven

858
00:49:47,039 --> 00:49:49,920
thousand fraudulent votes? That was not true at all. He

859
00:49:50,119 --> 00:49:53,440
was on a phone call trying to get so. When

860
00:49:53,719 --> 00:49:55,880
the Trump team had filed their lawsuit, they also had

861
00:49:55,920 --> 00:49:57,800
a problem that they couldn't get a judge to hear it.

862
00:49:57,920 --> 00:50:01,760
It was just a bunch of bs. Nobody was hearing it,

863
00:50:01,880 --> 00:50:05,239
and they these things need to be timely heard. It

864
00:50:05,320 --> 00:50:10,480
doesn't matter after January sixth, when the election is you know,

865
00:50:10,519 --> 00:50:12,920
when the electoral call it when the Electoral College votes

866
00:50:12,960 --> 00:50:16,400
are ratified. So they're trying to get everything done as

867
00:50:16,480 --> 00:50:18,880
quickly as possible. And it also relates to why they're

868
00:50:18,920 --> 00:50:22,199
having alternate electors in the case that their lawsuit is

869
00:50:22,320 --> 00:50:26,960
heard and agreed to and they can can hold a

870
00:50:27,039 --> 00:50:29,280
new election, which could have been done easily as part

871
00:50:29,280 --> 00:50:31,840
of the runoff election. So there are a lot of

872
00:50:31,840 --> 00:50:33,960
people who are feeling very vindicated by some of this

873
00:50:34,239 --> 00:50:37,840
recent reporting because they were treated as if they were

874
00:50:37,920 --> 00:50:40,599
being crazy for saying there were problems in Fulton County

875
00:50:40,679 --> 00:50:44,360
and they weren't crazy, right, No, Well, and the other things.

876
00:50:44,400 --> 00:50:46,239
Speaker 2: I just want to point out that the whole you know,

877
00:50:46,480 --> 00:50:49,119
find the fraud episode or whatever that you were talking

878
00:50:49,159 --> 00:50:52,519
about there, and that didn't just that didn't just you know,

879
00:50:53,760 --> 00:50:55,719
get Trump's some negative press. I mean that was used

880
00:50:55,760 --> 00:50:57,400
in Trump's impeachment trial and it.

881
00:50:57,400 --> 00:50:59,920
Speaker 1: Got him indicted, and it got the entire Republican Party

882
00:51:00,039 --> 00:51:02,880
of Georgia inded it, which shut them up for five years.

883
00:51:02,920 --> 00:51:06,119
It was horrible political interference and it was also related

884
00:51:06,199 --> 00:51:10,440
to you know, they were also working with the DOJ

885
00:51:10,679 --> 00:51:13,119
on that too, Fawnie Willis, who's now been discredited. And

886
00:51:13,280 --> 00:51:16,400
also because of federalist reporting. Sorry, I love all of

887
00:51:16,480 --> 00:51:19,280
our federalists reporting on this, and I'm thinking of a

888
00:51:19,840 --> 00:51:21,519
I think I was the first person to report the

889
00:51:21,840 --> 00:51:25,039
actual meaning behind that phone call, what actually happened in

890
00:51:25,119 --> 00:51:27,480
that phone call, as opposed to how the Washington Post

891
00:51:27,559 --> 00:51:31,840
and s News reported it. And then also I was

892
00:51:31,920 --> 00:51:35,000
reading a book in which they admitted something I had

893
00:51:35,199 --> 00:51:40,280
always suspected based on reporting, which is that this kind

894
00:51:40,320 --> 00:51:42,960
of weird lady who worked in the Secretary of State's

895
00:51:43,039 --> 00:51:46,880
office had illegally recorded the fal and she had not

896
00:51:47,119 --> 00:51:50,800
testified in front of the sham J six committee because

897
00:51:50,800 --> 00:51:52,880
she knew she'd broken the law and they were worried

898
00:51:53,000 --> 00:51:55,519
that if she had to talk about it, the whole

899
00:51:55,519 --> 00:51:57,000
reason she would have been called would be to talk

900
00:51:57,039 --> 00:51:59,159
about the phone call, because she also leaked it to

901
00:51:59,239 --> 00:52:02,039
the Washington Post. She also leaked false information to the

902
00:52:02,159 --> 00:52:08,559
Washington Post, where she falsely claimed that Trump had made

903
00:52:08,559 --> 00:52:11,559
a call and said something that he never said. The

904
00:52:11,679 --> 00:52:13,840
Washington Post had to admit that error, and that was

905
00:52:13,880 --> 00:52:14,719
in the impeachment.

906
00:52:15,039 --> 00:52:18,760
Speaker 2: The correction the Washington Post ran on that was just astonishing,

907
00:52:19,079 --> 00:52:20,800
and it was two months after the fact. But in

908
00:52:21,000 --> 00:52:25,079
some the Washington Post anonymously printed fabricated quotes they knew

909
00:52:25,119 --> 00:52:27,280
were from a secondhand source in the office of a

910
00:52:27,320 --> 00:52:30,840
political enemy. They could not confirm those quotes with additional sourcing,

911
00:52:31,199 --> 00:52:33,679
still attributed them to the sitting president of the United States.

912
00:52:34,360 --> 00:52:37,000
Use those quotes as a basis to speculate the President

913
00:52:37,039 --> 00:52:40,519
committee to crime, and the Democratic Party would later repeatedly

914
00:52:40,639 --> 00:52:43,960
cite this bogus article would attempt to impeach Trump for

915
00:52:44,079 --> 00:52:47,679
high crimes and misdemeanors. But it gets worse. Several other

916
00:52:47,800 --> 00:52:51,719
major media outlets, including NBC, ABC, USA, DID, APBS, and

917
00:52:51,800 --> 00:52:56,480
CNN all confirmed the fabricated quotes from the Post anonymous

918
00:52:56,480 --> 00:53:00,599
source by citing their own anonymous sources. Is what passes

919
00:53:00,679 --> 00:53:04,119
for reporting on election integrity in this country.

920
00:53:05,039 --> 00:53:07,199
Speaker 1: And then I'll just mention another person who works for

921
00:53:07,400 --> 00:53:12,039
Secretary of State Raffensburger as a consultant or something, Gabe Sterling,

922
00:53:12,119 --> 00:53:15,480
who was all over CNN saying that Republicans were insane

923
00:53:15,599 --> 00:53:17,679
to think there was any problem with how they had

924
00:53:17,760 --> 00:53:21,800
run the election and I saw yesterday David Schaefer, who

925
00:53:21,920 --> 00:53:24,480
had been the chairman of the Georgia Republican Party and

926
00:53:24,639 --> 00:53:29,599
went through really bad persecution from Fannie Willis. Fanny Willis,

927
00:53:31,320 --> 00:53:36,920
he noted that among the people who voted illegally in

928
00:53:37,000 --> 00:53:44,199
the Georgia election were there was a woman who lived

929
00:53:44,199 --> 00:53:49,079
in Maryland but voted at Gabe Sterling's address. So one

930
00:53:49,119 --> 00:53:53,239
of the top people in Rafensburger, someone's voting at his address.

931
00:53:53,280 --> 00:53:57,800
They're like, there are no problems in this election. Okay,

932
00:53:58,360 --> 00:54:00,599
moving on. I actually think we should move on to culture,

933
00:54:00,639 --> 00:54:02,559
because there was another topic we wanted to talk about,

934
00:54:02,599 --> 00:54:06,800
but it fits nicely with the movie we watched last night.

935
00:54:07,400 --> 00:54:11,519
So I don't know, I'd had a really rough day

936
00:54:11,760 --> 00:54:14,960
yesterday of just NonStop go go go, and then being

937
00:54:15,039 --> 00:54:18,960
on special report, coming home and had more work to do,

938
00:54:19,159 --> 00:54:20,960
and so kind of late I said I'd like to

939
00:54:21,000 --> 00:54:23,599
watch something, and somehow we ended up on what was it?

940
00:54:24,400 --> 00:54:27,239
Speaker 2: I always Amazon Prime or whatever, and you know, we're

941
00:54:27,360 --> 00:54:30,159
just basically whatever was available, what was free or whatever,

942
00:54:31,559 --> 00:54:34,800
and so we ended up clicking on and watching this

943
00:54:35,000 --> 00:54:39,679
movie late night, starting oh yeah, and then The Calling,

944
00:54:42,039 --> 00:54:48,280
which is about a perky young Indian woman with no

945
00:54:48,559 --> 00:54:54,760
comedy experience who uses some like weird like intra office

946
00:54:54,840 --> 00:54:58,320
competition to get an interview to be a comedy writer

947
00:54:59,199 --> 00:55:02,639
on one of the a huge late night network TV

948
00:55:02,760 --> 00:55:07,760
show and gets the job again despite zero comedy writing experience,

949
00:55:08,039 --> 00:55:16,360
zero writing samples, and manages to transform the television show

950
00:55:17,440 --> 00:55:21,480
by explaining to everyone how it's really important that white

951
00:55:21,559 --> 00:55:25,599
men not be allowed to control everything is basically what

952
00:55:25,840 --> 00:55:29,159
the premise of this quote unquote comedy is about. And

953
00:55:29,239 --> 00:55:32,760
it's kind of, you know, amusing because the big story,

954
00:55:32,920 --> 00:55:35,440
one of the big stories last week was this amazing

955
00:55:35,559 --> 00:55:38,800
article publishing Compact Magazine by a guy who was a

956
00:55:40,000 --> 00:55:44,280
Hollywood writer. You talked about how his entire career was

957
00:55:44,360 --> 00:55:49,840
basically like shut down, you know, from start, I think

958
00:55:49,880 --> 00:55:54,159
starting in like twenty fourteen, basically everyone in Hollywood decided that,

959
00:55:54,320 --> 00:55:56,239
you know, millennial white men were never going to get

960
00:55:56,280 --> 00:55:59,360
any jobs. And he had all kinds of receipts and

961
00:55:59,400 --> 00:56:01,199
it wasn't just Hollywood, in all kinds of fields, it

962
00:56:01,280 --> 00:56:04,199
was seen that millennial white men were basically shut out

963
00:56:04,239 --> 00:56:07,840
of a lot of entry level positions or advancement in

964
00:56:07,880 --> 00:56:11,159
their career fields because there was so much cultural pressure

965
00:56:11,239 --> 00:56:14,960
in certain industries to make sure that they promoted women

966
00:56:15,119 --> 00:56:20,679
and or minorities above them to a degree that was

967
00:56:20,760 --> 00:56:24,519
really shocking. Like white men went from being overrepresented to

968
00:56:25,039 --> 00:56:27,079
in the span of a few years in several industries

969
00:56:27,159 --> 00:56:30,599
to being like way underrepresented relative to their share of

970
00:56:30,679 --> 00:56:33,559
the population in lots of key industries. And like this

971
00:56:33,880 --> 00:56:36,000
entire movie, which came out in twenty nineteen, to the

972
00:56:36,079 --> 00:56:39,639
height of woke, I guess, was you know, basically like

973
00:56:39,679 --> 00:56:41,760
an ode to this. I mean, it was really kind

974
00:56:41,800 --> 00:56:44,239
of amazing in that regard, and there was just all

975
00:56:44,360 --> 00:56:46,840
kinds of other like liberal politics infused in the whole thing.

976
00:56:47,559 --> 00:56:47,800
Speaker 1: It was.

977
00:56:48,199 --> 00:56:51,119
Speaker 2: But and you know, I don't know it was what

978
00:56:51,239 --> 00:56:55,000
it was. I mean, it wasn't horrifically bad. I mean

979
00:56:55,039 --> 00:56:58,000
it was generally well paced though like a lot of movies,

980
00:56:58,039 --> 00:56:59,599
it was you know, twenty minutes of a half an

981
00:56:59,639 --> 00:57:03,360
hour two long, and you know, it had you know,

982
00:57:03,519 --> 00:57:06,239
funny in moments, and had Emma Thompson. It was obviously

983
00:57:06,639 --> 00:57:09,679
John Lithgallum, and it was obviously well acted. But it's

984
00:57:09,800 --> 00:57:11,920
just was like from a it was a film that

985
00:57:12,079 --> 00:57:14,679
was like six years old that felt like it was

986
00:57:14,760 --> 00:57:17,400
from another era. Entirely. I mean, it was just like

987
00:57:18,079 --> 00:57:21,519
really astonishing how out of touch it was relative to

988
00:57:21,519 --> 00:57:22,440
the way things are today.

989
00:57:23,079 --> 00:57:27,480
Speaker 1: Well, the compact piece was so interesting and in that

990
00:57:27,639 --> 00:57:34,119
and that it broke through to like squishy people about

991
00:57:34,159 --> 00:57:37,159
the problem of anti white racism. And it was a

992
00:57:37,199 --> 00:57:42,159
little frustrating, being that we have published a lot about

993
00:57:42,199 --> 00:57:44,760
this at the Federalist for many many years.

994
00:57:45,679 --> 00:57:47,000
Speaker 2: Carrel wrote a great book on this.

995
00:57:47,239 --> 00:57:50,519
Speaker 1: Yeah, Jeremy carl wrote The Unprotected Class, How Anti White

996
00:57:50,599 --> 00:57:54,199
Racism is Tearing America Apart. It is a great book

997
00:57:54,280 --> 00:57:59,639
and well worth a read. And it's good that more

998
00:57:59,679 --> 00:58:06,679
people are accepting that racism is bad against whites, and

999
00:58:06,840 --> 00:58:11,320
that there was rampant racism against white males in particular.

1000
00:58:12,840 --> 00:58:14,800
But there was a line in the movie toward the end.

1001
00:58:15,239 --> 00:58:21,039
First of all, I actually like Mindy Colling fine, I

1002
00:58:21,519 --> 00:58:26,079
do not fine. That was not well written, and it

1003
00:58:26,280 --> 00:58:30,000
was also directed by someone who who I didn't recognize

1004
00:58:30,159 --> 00:58:33,400
and not well directed. And I was like, hmm, maybe

1005
00:58:33,440 --> 00:58:35,880
we should let maybe we should let the men handle

1006
00:58:35,960 --> 00:58:40,480
the right. But there was a part at the end

1007
00:58:40,519 --> 00:58:43,920
where she in this poorly written movie that kept on

1008
00:58:44,039 --> 00:58:46,880
having ending after ending after ending, but no need for it.

1009
00:58:46,960 --> 00:58:49,519
It wasn't like a FuMB cute we're going to keep going.

1010
00:58:49,599 --> 00:58:52,000
It was like, let us out of this misery of

1011
00:58:52,119 --> 00:58:56,079
this movie. But she agrees to go back and work

1012
00:58:56,159 --> 00:59:00,719
for the absolutely mean lady if she won't white men

1013
00:59:01,400 --> 00:59:04,320
in the future. Yeah, And it was so casually said,

1014
00:59:04,440 --> 00:59:07,760
like it's okay to say, now, don't hire any black men.

1015
00:59:07,880 --> 00:59:12,480
We don't like them, you know. That's it was like

1016
00:59:12,880 --> 00:59:17,159
she didn't know she was saying something really awful and racist.

1017
00:59:17,920 --> 00:59:21,719
And it was just incoherent too, in the sense that

1018
00:59:21,960 --> 00:59:27,159
the show comes back to greatness under only white men apparently,

1019
00:59:27,679 --> 00:59:29,159
and yet then we're supposed to be mad at the

1020
00:59:29,199 --> 00:59:31,159
white men, and then the final.

1021
00:59:30,920 --> 00:59:33,000
Speaker 2: Scene is them like panning across the office, and of

1022
00:59:33,079 --> 00:59:35,320
course it's gone from being mostly white writers to like

1023
00:59:35,480 --> 00:59:38,119
a Benaton ad. Never mind, it is saying what happened

1024
00:59:38,159 --> 00:59:40,599
to all the white writers that were likable characters previously

1025
00:59:40,679 --> 00:59:41,119
in the movie.

1026
00:59:43,400 --> 00:59:45,719
Speaker 1: I don't think they were fired. I think they were

1027
00:59:45,800 --> 00:59:47,320
in that not all.

1028
00:59:47,280 --> 00:59:49,119
Speaker 2: Of them, No, not all of them were in that

1029
00:59:49,199 --> 00:59:49,639
shop pile.

1030
00:59:49,920 --> 00:59:55,039
Speaker 1: But just the other thing that was so funny about

1031
00:59:55,079 --> 00:59:59,239
it is the show is boring and bad, and she's

1032
00:59:59,239 --> 01:00:03,599
always having on people like plagiarist Doris Kern's goodwin to

1033
01:00:03,679 --> 01:00:07,280
talk about how great Doris Kern's goodwin is and Senator

1034
01:00:07,480 --> 01:00:11,880
Dianne Feinstein, who even six years ago was already dead

1035
01:00:12,760 --> 01:00:18,599
and she's like the solution to a boring show with

1036
01:00:18,719 --> 01:00:23,000
Senator Dianne Feinstein and Doris Kern's goodwin is that she

1037
01:00:23,119 --> 01:00:28,679
needs to talk about abortion more. And she's a childless witch.

1038
01:00:29,760 --> 01:00:32,280
And the idea is if she'll talk about her love

1039
01:00:32,360 --> 01:00:36,239
of killing unborn innocent children, that'll jazz thing you.

1040
01:00:36,519 --> 01:00:39,000
Speaker 2: Well. I think she's edgy and authentic, and she's sharing

1041
01:00:39,079 --> 01:00:39,840
stuff about.

1042
01:00:39,599 --> 01:00:43,760
Speaker 1: Herself and the hilarious joke she tells you just let

1043
01:00:43,880 --> 01:00:49,639
me share this with you. Republicans are trying to defund

1044
01:00:49,800 --> 01:00:54,800
Planned parenthood, the largest obortuary in the country and also

1045
01:00:54,880 --> 01:00:59,639
responsible for transing children and all these things, and she says,

1046
01:00:59,800 --> 01:01:03,519
is it's interesting that the people who want to ban

1047
01:01:03,639 --> 01:01:12,599
abortion don't have sex. I mean, like, that's not funny

1048
01:01:12,840 --> 01:01:20,599
at all, it's idiotic. And also it's everything that Stephen

1049
01:01:21,039 --> 01:01:24,440
Colbert and right Allan I get their name.

1050
01:01:24,599 --> 01:01:27,800
Speaker 2: No, Stephen Jimmy Fallon is the one that stayed relative.

1051
01:01:27,599 --> 01:01:31,079
Speaker 1: The one who's that guy who likes Jimmy Kimmel, Yeah,

1052
01:01:31,119 --> 01:01:34,320
who like tried to accuse the killer, the assassin of

1053
01:01:34,440 --> 01:01:38,440
Charlie Kirk being maga and then cried about how people

1054
01:01:38,480 --> 01:01:42,199
were mean to him when he falsely accused the person

1055
01:01:42,280 --> 01:01:44,599
he hates and being killed by other people he hates.

1056
01:01:44,960 --> 01:01:48,119
Speaker 2: Yeah, what she gives her is advice to revive her

1057
01:01:48,159 --> 01:01:51,000
show in twenty nineteen is the reason why, you know,

1058
01:01:51,119 --> 01:01:54,320
Jimmy Kimmel got yanked off the air and Stephen Colbert's

1059
01:01:54,960 --> 01:01:57,800
you know, had the plug pulled on him. Like they

1060
01:01:57,920 --> 01:02:00,559
literally cannot appeal to broad audiences because all they care

1061
01:02:00,599 --> 01:02:04,239
about is politics or whatever, and they think that, yeah,

1062
01:02:04,679 --> 01:02:07,679
being on their authentic, you know, highly political selves is

1063
01:02:08,000 --> 01:02:11,280
the way to go about it, rather than actually entertain

1064
01:02:11,320 --> 01:02:15,000
people and meet them where they are. But yeah, no,

1065
01:02:15,159 --> 01:02:17,760
it was I don't know, Like I said, it was

1066
01:02:17,960 --> 01:02:20,559
weirdly competent in certain ways. The acting was very good

1067
01:02:20,599 --> 01:02:22,079
across the board, and there was a lot.

1068
01:02:21,960 --> 01:02:25,199
Speaker 1: Of rooms Thompson could could redeem anything.

1069
01:02:25,039 --> 01:02:28,119
Speaker 2: Yeah, pretty much, and it did have some funny moments,

1070
01:02:28,159 --> 01:02:31,119
but by and large, it was just a complete nightmare.

1071
01:02:31,159 --> 01:02:33,360
It was like I could not believe how out of

1072
01:02:33,440 --> 01:02:35,400
touch it seemed, even just six years later. I mean,

1073
01:02:35,440 --> 01:02:37,800
it's just like shockingly said, and I don't think I'm

1074
01:02:37,800 --> 01:02:40,360
saying that just because politically I disagree with it. May

1075
01:02:40,400 --> 01:02:42,519
think any person watching this that lived there last year

1076
01:02:42,519 --> 01:02:45,280
would be like, wow, this is a time capsule from

1077
01:02:45,320 --> 01:02:46,079
twenty nineteen.

1078
01:02:46,519 --> 01:02:49,800
Speaker 1: There's like one good guy in it, just John Let's go, right,

1079
01:02:49,880 --> 01:02:53,400
like one decent character, and then they make him indecent

1080
01:02:53,480 --> 01:02:54,039
at the end.

1081
01:02:54,880 --> 01:02:59,159
Speaker 2: Yeah, well what yeah, yeah, no, he's like.

1082
01:02:59,280 --> 01:03:02,920
Speaker 1: A really nice, supportive husband of this very mean woman

1083
01:03:03,000 --> 01:03:04,599
who has nobody in her life.

1084
01:03:04,719 --> 01:03:06,639
Speaker 2: And then they like, I don't care if you see

1085
01:03:06,679 --> 01:03:10,480
this or not, but they basically excuse infidelity by Emma

1086
01:03:10,519 --> 01:03:12,880
Thompson by him revealing that, you know.

1087
01:03:13,239 --> 01:03:16,000
Speaker 1: He fandoned his wife and children to be with her.

1088
01:03:16,639 --> 01:03:19,880
Speaker 2: Yeah. So yeah, like like we're supposed to feel better

1089
01:03:19,920 --> 01:03:21,559
about the whole thing as a result of that. Well,

1090
01:03:21,800 --> 01:03:25,880
I guess they're both terrible broken people, you know. And again,

1091
01:03:26,079 --> 01:03:28,360
as you mentioned, he was like the only really like, well,

1092
01:03:28,400 --> 01:03:30,519
it's not the the head writer guy was kind of

1093
01:03:30,559 --> 01:03:33,920
likable and with one intention, but basically he was kind

1094
01:03:33,920 --> 01:03:36,039
of the moral core of the movie, and they just

1095
01:03:36,280 --> 01:03:39,880
completely undercut that because otherwise it would have looked, you know,

1096
01:03:40,159 --> 01:03:45,079
very disempowering for their feminist protagonist, for her to have

1097
01:03:45,239 --> 01:03:48,400
been you know, unfaithful, so they had to go and

1098
01:03:48,480 --> 01:03:52,079
do that. But anyway, yeah, I saw that, and God willing,

1099
01:03:52,119 --> 01:03:53,400
I'll never think about it again.

1100
01:03:55,239 --> 01:03:59,679
Speaker 1: So we since we only usually talk about what culture

1101
01:04:00,119 --> 01:04:03,440
seen over the last week, so I already talked about

1102
01:04:03,800 --> 01:04:07,079
my hatred of Hamnett last week. You liked it much

1103
01:04:07,159 --> 01:04:07,880
better than I.

1104
01:04:08,920 --> 01:04:14,239
Speaker 2: Wouldn't say that. I mean, I think that it's wildly overrated.

1105
01:04:15,559 --> 01:04:19,360
Jesse Buckley, the female lead in that film, is just

1106
01:04:19,559 --> 01:04:22,639
NonStop history onics for the second half of the film

1107
01:04:23,679 --> 01:04:27,679
and completely drags the whole thing down. I think it

1108
01:04:28,119 --> 01:04:31,079
was a the story was well intentioned, and there were

1109
01:04:31,159 --> 01:04:34,000
parts of the ending that I liked. But like, the

1110
01:04:34,119 --> 01:04:36,159
more I think about that woman in her performance, and

1111
01:04:36,239 --> 01:04:37,880
she'll probably be nominated for Oscars.

1112
01:04:38,199 --> 01:04:38,840
Speaker 1: He's gonna win it.

1113
01:04:39,360 --> 01:04:45,280
Speaker 2: I'm just beside myself at how how much of a

1114
01:04:45,559 --> 01:04:49,639
showcase to overacting it was. You know, basically the plot

1115
01:04:49,679 --> 01:04:51,960
of the movie is, you know, I mean, should I

1116
01:04:52,079 --> 01:04:55,679
just ruin things for people? Something bad happens and the

1117
01:04:55,719 --> 01:04:57,920
woman spends the rest of the movie just you know,

1118
01:04:58,840 --> 01:05:02,280
beside herself and just wailing and gnashing of teeth and

1119
01:05:02,360 --> 01:05:05,639
rending of gardens to garments to a degree that's just

1120
01:05:05,760 --> 01:05:06,760
intolerable to watch.

1121
01:05:08,400 --> 01:05:12,880
Speaker 1: Okay, and then we also okay, we had company this weekend,

1122
01:05:12,920 --> 01:05:13,840
which was wonderful.

1123
01:05:14,280 --> 01:05:17,440
Speaker 2: They had an eight year old son, dear friends.

1124
01:05:17,360 --> 01:05:22,039
Speaker 1: And yeah, yeah, so that was really fun to watch

1125
01:05:22,119 --> 01:05:25,840
some stuff with him. So we watched something I'd never

1126
01:05:25,960 --> 01:05:29,159
seen before, which is the animated Grinch. I do want

1127
01:05:29,159 --> 01:05:31,960
to say, I get a lot of people making fun

1128
01:05:32,000 --> 01:05:34,679
of me for my reviews of things that were done

1129
01:05:34,800 --> 01:05:38,679
decades ago, So just deal with it. Okay, watched the

1130
01:05:38,800 --> 01:05:41,079
animated Grinch, which I had never seen.

1131
01:05:41,400 --> 01:05:43,880
Speaker 2: How have you never seen the animated Grinch?

1132
01:05:44,239 --> 01:05:45,559
Speaker 1: I've thought about this. I want to talk to my

1133
01:05:45,639 --> 01:05:47,480
mom about it, but I'm pretty sure so I didn't

1134
01:05:47,480 --> 01:05:48,760
know even when it came out.

1135
01:05:49,199 --> 01:05:50,880
Speaker 2: I thought maybe I had sixty six.

1136
01:05:51,119 --> 01:05:52,760
Speaker 1: Yeah, I thought maybe I hadn't seen it because it

1137
01:05:52,880 --> 01:05:55,960
came out like in the late eighties, at a time

1138
01:05:56,000 --> 01:05:57,480
when I wear every.

1139
01:05:57,440 --> 01:06:00,880
Speaker 2: Year on television with much fanfare, when you were growing up.

1140
01:06:01,159 --> 01:06:04,239
Speaker 1: I'm going to assume that we didn't watch it because

1141
01:06:04,239 --> 01:06:09,400
it's stupid and awful and horribly animated, and my mom

1142
01:06:09,559 --> 01:06:13,880
probably hated it. My mom who's wonderful? What elementary school teacher.

1143
01:06:14,000 --> 01:06:16,440
I'm sure she didn't like the art or the storyline.

1144
01:06:16,840 --> 01:06:19,000
I didn't like it at all. And I've read the

1145
01:06:19,039 --> 01:06:21,440
book I knew. I haven't seen the movie. What the

1146
01:06:21,559 --> 01:06:22,159
long form?

1147
01:06:22,519 --> 01:06:25,559
Speaker 2: Jim? What? Either? This is the first I'm hearing this,

1148
01:06:25,719 --> 01:06:26,840
and then I just watched it with you?

1149
01:06:26,880 --> 01:06:27,119
Speaker 3: What do you?

1150
01:06:27,800 --> 01:06:31,199
Speaker 2: The Grins was directed by Chuck Jones, made the greatest

1151
01:06:31,280 --> 01:06:34,280
animator in history, Chuck Jones.

1152
01:06:34,760 --> 01:06:38,639
Speaker 1: The art was ugly, and I do think I have

1153
01:06:38,719 --> 01:06:39,760
a bias again.

1154
01:06:39,679 --> 01:06:40,840
Speaker 2: Are you god?

1155
01:06:41,400 --> 01:06:41,440
Speaker 1: No?

1156
01:06:43,159 --> 01:06:47,159
Speaker 2: This is unacceptable for crying out loud.

1157
01:06:47,239 --> 01:06:49,519
Speaker 1: No, it's messy and ugly, and I think art should

1158
01:06:49,519 --> 01:06:50,079
be beautiful.

1159
01:06:50,199 --> 01:06:52,800
Speaker 2: Are you? Oh my gosh, Oh my gosh.

1160
01:06:53,760 --> 01:06:53,960
Speaker 1: Oh.

1161
01:06:54,800 --> 01:06:58,320
Speaker 2: It was Chuck Jones, a man who was responsible for

1162
01:06:58,519 --> 01:07:02,039
like all of the greatest like Loony Tunes cartoons. I mean,

1163
01:07:02,079 --> 01:07:03,440
it's a masterfully I think.

1164
01:07:03,360 --> 01:07:05,280
Speaker 1: He was dropping acid when he did this.

1165
01:07:05,400 --> 01:07:07,920
Speaker 2: Wow, Oh my gosh, you have sixty years of this

1166
01:07:08,039 --> 01:07:12,440
being an absolute American classic that literally everyone apparently but you, loves.

1167
01:07:16,599 --> 01:07:18,599
I don't even know where to begin with this.

1168
01:07:18,880 --> 01:07:23,400
Speaker 1: Here's the thing that really turned me off. Was okay, so.

1169
01:07:30,360 --> 01:07:33,239
Speaker 2: Oh for crying out loud? If you're going to go

1170
01:07:33,320 --> 01:07:37,639
down this path, you'd better own it, happy to own it.

1171
01:07:37,800 --> 01:07:40,239
Speaker 1: I hated it. But the thing that really bothered me

1172
01:07:40,360 --> 01:07:43,000
more than anything, more than the ugly art, more than

1173
01:07:43,079 --> 01:07:45,920
the I did like the one song You're a mean one,

1174
01:07:46,320 --> 01:07:51,719
mister Grinch ugly art. The other song the dozel fosal

1175
01:07:51,960 --> 01:07:54,960
gossled pooh like. I didn't get that, and I did

1176
01:07:55,039 --> 01:07:55,480
not like that.

1177
01:07:55,639 --> 01:07:57,079
Speaker 2: Have you read Doctor seuss Is?

1178
01:07:57,199 --> 01:08:03,199
Speaker 1: This is this whole stick Okay, when the Grinch steals

1179
01:08:03,280 --> 01:08:10,960
everything and then gives everything back, and they say, that's

1180
01:08:12,000 --> 01:08:16,079
the true meaning of Christmas, and I'm like, what is

1181
01:08:16,159 --> 01:08:18,760
the true meaning of Christmas? Let's compare this with the

1182
01:08:19,199 --> 01:08:22,479
with the show we watched immediately after The Grinch, which

1183
01:08:22,560 --> 01:08:27,000
is Charlie Brown Christmas, in which they also want to

1184
01:08:27,119 --> 01:08:30,359
know what is the true meaning of Christmas? And what

1185
01:08:30,720 --> 01:08:36,520
is the answer given by Linus? Okay, he reads Luke

1186
01:08:36,760 --> 01:08:40,880
too and talks about the incarnation of God coming in

1187
01:08:41,039 --> 01:08:45,359
human flesh and saving the world. That's the true meaning

1188
01:08:45,439 --> 01:08:47,920
of Christmas. And it was clear and it was easy

1189
01:08:47,960 --> 01:08:50,319
to understand, and it was beautifully done, and the music

1190
01:08:50,479 --> 01:08:53,560
was amazing. And speaking of Acid, I think I think

1191
01:08:54,079 --> 01:08:56,520
probably been Squirldy was also on drugs doing that thing.

1192
01:08:56,720 --> 01:09:01,119
But like, it's great music, great story, animation.

1193
01:09:01,399 --> 01:09:04,319
Speaker 2: Look, I'm not going to dispute that Charlie vin Christmas

1194
01:09:04,520 --> 01:09:10,119
is a better film. It's a better special thematically, Okay,

1195
01:09:10,800 --> 01:09:13,039
But my question is, since I was in the same

1196
01:09:13,119 --> 01:09:15,600
room with you, did you watch The Grinch? Because everything

1197
01:09:15,680 --> 01:09:20,159
you just said got it wrong. Okay. What happens, as

1198
01:09:20,199 --> 01:09:22,920
you might recall, is the Grinch steals all of their

1199
01:09:23,039 --> 01:09:25,359
gifts and he hikes all the way back up the

1200
01:09:25,439 --> 01:09:27,039
mountain and then he looks down and thinking that this

1201
01:09:27,199 --> 01:09:29,960
is going to make them miserable like he is, and

1202
01:09:30,079 --> 01:09:32,680
guess what, they still come out of their houses and

1203
01:09:32,720 --> 01:09:36,600
they band together and they sing Christmas carols because it

1204
01:09:36,760 --> 01:09:40,439
doesn't matter that they have the gifts. That's the spirit

1205
01:09:40,479 --> 01:09:41,079
of Christmas.

1206
01:09:42,239 --> 01:09:45,079
Speaker 1: And then at that point he's like Chris, it's all

1207
01:09:45,079 --> 01:09:45,560
about them.

1208
01:09:45,560 --> 01:09:48,680
Speaker 2: I'm just that Yes, of course, no, it'd be much

1209
01:09:48,760 --> 01:09:52,359
better if there was a gospel reading. Of course, but

1210
01:09:55,239 --> 01:09:58,760
your summary of it is in fact inaccurate, So that

1211
01:09:58,920 --> 01:10:01,960
needs like maybe factor into whether you disliked it or not,

1212
01:10:02,079 --> 01:10:06,600
because apparently you'd missed that scene. No, the point is

1213
01:10:06,760 --> 01:10:08,880
is that you know, yes, on some little Christmas is

1214
01:10:08,920 --> 01:10:11,800
about you know, coming together and appreciating each other and

1215
01:10:11,880 --> 01:10:15,000
whatever else. Again not a gospel message, but still a

1216
01:10:15,079 --> 01:10:20,439
good one, Okay, But yes, no, it is hard to

1217
01:10:20,560 --> 01:10:23,279
top in terms of Christmas specials. A Charlie Brown Christmas.

1218
01:10:24,560 --> 01:10:28,000
I remember early. I remember reading somewhere that you know,

1219
01:10:28,079 --> 01:10:32,560
not only did Schultz write that himself, he basically, you know,

1220
01:10:32,680 --> 01:10:34,760
he was a you know, a big deal in popular

1221
01:10:34,840 --> 01:10:37,840
culture at the time, and he was the one that

1222
01:10:38,520 --> 01:10:42,119
demanded that Vince Garaldi do the soundtrack, which is just,

1223
01:10:42,239 --> 01:10:45,439
you know, absolutely iconic. And it's just fascinating to me

1224
01:10:45,680 --> 01:10:49,880
that Schultz's vision was like so complete. As an artist,

1225
01:10:49,960 --> 01:10:52,119
you know, you don't really think much about you know,

1226
01:10:52,319 --> 01:10:54,359
just you know, a three panel comic strip or whatever.

1227
01:10:54,399 --> 01:10:56,880
It doesn't seem like it's that much on the surface,

1228
01:10:57,000 --> 01:10:59,239
but you know, by then, and he'd probably written thousands

1229
01:10:59,279 --> 01:11:01,079
of Peanuts things and you had it very much in

1230
01:11:01,159 --> 01:11:04,000
his head like what he would want to present. It

1231
01:11:04,159 --> 01:11:09,760
is interesting that it's it's so it is so religious

1232
01:11:09,920 --> 01:11:15,119
in part because Schultz had an interesting religious journey. I

1233
01:11:15,159 --> 01:11:17,560
think he was raised Lutheran and then he became kind

1234
01:11:17,600 --> 01:11:20,000
of evangelical, and then by the eighties, he was calling

1235
01:11:20,079 --> 01:11:24,199
himself a secular humanist. But you know, but it is

1236
01:11:24,239 --> 01:11:27,640
true that spirituality was very important to him. And I

1237
01:11:28,000 --> 01:11:31,119
find it like, really, it's really remarkable by the standards

1238
01:11:31,159 --> 01:11:34,079
of today that you could just have an animated character

1239
01:11:34,199 --> 01:11:35,760
like step in front of the stage and you know,

1240
01:11:35,840 --> 01:11:39,960
read from the Bible in a Christmas special. And yes,

1241
01:11:40,079 --> 01:11:42,159
it doesn't make me feel like it was a better

1242
01:11:42,199 --> 01:11:44,159
America when that sort of thing was happening.

1243
01:11:45,119 --> 01:11:50,840
Speaker 1: All men, Well, great, Barring any other music, TVs books

1244
01:11:50,880 --> 01:11:54,600
you want to discuss, we are going to have We're

1245
01:11:54,640 --> 01:11:57,279
going to be celebrating twelve Days of Christmas. You mentioned

1246
01:11:57,920 --> 01:12:00,680
those guys being Lutheran. We're Lutheran, and we celebrate twelve

1247
01:12:00,760 --> 01:12:05,920
days of Christmas beginning on Christmas. And so many people

1248
01:12:06,119 --> 01:12:08,640
think of the Christmas. They think of Christmas as a

1249
01:12:08,760 --> 01:12:11,520
day and that it's December twenty fifth, And if they

1250
01:12:11,600 --> 01:12:14,079
think of a season, they think it's the Advent season

1251
01:12:14,119 --> 01:12:20,119
where you prepare for Christmas. But historically we celebrate Advent

1252
01:12:22,000 --> 01:12:24,520
for the four Sundays prior to Christmas and the weeks

1253
01:12:24,760 --> 01:12:27,119
they're in and then we do twelve days of Christmas

1254
01:12:27,199 --> 01:12:29,399
and then we do Epiphany and so we are about

1255
01:12:29,439 --> 01:12:36,000
to enter into our party season of celebration about Christ

1256
01:12:36,079 --> 01:12:38,760
coming to Earth to save us. So we will be

1257
01:12:38,840 --> 01:12:42,159
watching more Christmas movies and other things as part of

1258
01:12:42,199 --> 01:12:45,600
those celebrations, and so maybe we can even talk about

1259
01:12:45,600 --> 01:12:47,600
it next week if you wanted to join. I don't

1260
01:12:47,640 --> 01:12:50,439
know if I think day it'll be back, but if not,

1261
01:12:50,720 --> 01:12:53,039
we'll do more of these discussions.

1262
01:12:53,119 --> 01:12:56,039
Speaker 2: Yes, we need the Jewish guys perspective on the secular

1263
01:12:56,119 --> 01:12:57,760
Jewish guys perspective on Christmas.

1264
01:12:58,520 --> 01:13:02,640
Speaker 1: So thanks for listening, and thanks also to all of

1265
01:13:02,720 --> 01:13:08,159
our supporters. Make sure you download the podcast. Like the podcast,

1266
01:13:08,399 --> 01:13:13,119
also subscribe to Federalist Premium, and we also greatly appreciate

1267
01:13:13,279 --> 01:13:18,119
all support from our donors. If you have any questions, comments, insults,

1268
01:13:18,600 --> 01:13:20,520
and I'm sure Mark, you're going to get a lot

1269
01:13:20,560 --> 01:13:22,880
of people yelling at me about my lack of love

1270
01:13:23,239 --> 01:13:27,199
of the Scrooge, but send those the Scrooge the Grinch.

1271
01:13:28,399 --> 01:13:32,880
Speaker 2: Sorry I think you weren't paying attention. I'm just going

1272
01:13:32,960 --> 01:13:33,640
to put that out there.

1273
01:13:35,880 --> 01:13:39,640
Speaker 1: Send all comments to radio at the Federalist dot com.

1274
01:13:40,279 --> 01:13:42,840
Be lovers of freedom and anxious.

1275
01:13:44,680 --> 01:14:01,319
Speaker 2: Greasy Black. You're a monster, mister Grinch. Your outside m

1276
01:14:01,840 --> 01:14:02,399
T holl