Speaker 1: Welcome back. Everyone's a new episode of You're Wrong with
Molly having Away, editor in chief of The Federalist and
David Harsani, senior writer at the Washington Examiner. Just as
a reminder, if you'd like to email us here at
the show, please do so at radio at the Federalist
dot com. We'd love to hear from you. I'd love
to hear from you, Molly. How's it going.
Speaker 2: It's going great? Another great week here in America?
Speaker 1: Is was it a great week? Let's start with something
I thought was pretty great Elon Musk and kind of
doge leadership, i'd call it, though I don't know how
the hierarchy exactly works. There did a two part, pretty
long interview with Fox News Brettbaar in the last week.
I was fascinated by this interview, and I just want
to preface it all by saying I wish they had
done this earlier. I think articulating the mission in this way,
getting into basically refuting some of the things that people
have said about them, but getting into where the real
waste and inefficiencies were was to me, and I followed
the news pretty closely, pretty fascinating and interesting. Did you
watch those interviews. I hate to put you on the spot.
Speaker 2: I did, and I also thought it was really interesting.
This is so much stuff that we can talk about
with Doge and the media response to it. But i'd
seen a reporter with The Hill. I think the White
House reporters say that if someone responds to a question
you ask by saying I'm so glad you asked that question,
then you're not doing journalism right. And I was thinking
about that, and it's there's a truth to that. You
don't you're not there to make the subject of your
interview feel comfortable. But there's also a lie in that,
which is so many times the media are only interested
in gotcha questions or provoking a response that will anger
people or please people, rather than illuminating what's going on.
The brettbar interview was fascinating with these Doge people because
I learned so much, and I learned so much in
so many different ways. It didn't feel like he was
there to attack them, no, which is not to say
that he didn't ask some challenging questions or raise areas
of concern that other people had brought up. But if
you wanted to know about Doge, who's doing it, who's
behind it, what their theories are, what they found. It
was just a really interesting interview. You're allowed to have
your own thoughts about their answers, but you cannot deny
that you've got a lot of really helpful and interesting
information to assess their project.
Speaker 1: We have to concede, though, that A lot of times
politicians or whoever say thank you for I'm happy you
asked that question, but they don't really actually mean it
at all. You know, it's just kind of a thing
they learned to say. I'm happy you brought that up, Molly.
That means I'm unhappy that you brought that up, Molly.
But yeah, I agree with you.
Speaker 2: By the way, I'm not a politician, but if I'm
doing a Q and A and someone asks me a
question I don't like, I always say like, oh, I
don't know what the answer to that is, Like I
never respond the way you're supposed to, which is what
you just said, Well, that's a good question. Well here's
a way of looking at it. When I say that's
a good question, I mean that's a good question usually
because it kind of stumps me.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, for sure, because we're normal human beings, not
pod' happy.
Speaker 2: Oh sorry, I don't mean to.
Speaker 1: That's right. Sometimes you're happy.
Speaker 2: Sometimes I'm happy if I gave a speech but I
didn't get to say something that I wanted to say,
and then someone asks me a question that allows me
to say the thing I always wanted to say. I mean,
I'm like, oh, thank you, I'm so glad you asked that,
because I couldn't figure out how to shoehorn that into
the speech, but I would like to yell about it now.
Speaker 1: I don't obviously give as many speeches as you do,
but I you know, I give speeches, and I've done
it for you know, over a decade, I guess. And
I've always preferred the Q and A part and in
fact or for Q and A without any speech, which
I think is always more informative because a lot of
times you're when you're speaking, you're not really you know,
people in the crowd have different ideas or they have
a different focus, so they want you to talk about
something else that's more important to them. And so for me,
that kind of interaction is always more informative for me
and more interesting and you know, intellectually than just or
most of the time than giving a caned speech, which
I think can be worrying at least when I give them.
I don't know about you if you feel that way too.
Speaker 2: I completely agree, in part because I usually get it
wrong when I just give a speech, meaning I'll be thinking,
I bet they want to hear about this thing, and
it turns out they didn't want to hear about that
thing at all. When you have a Q and A,
the good part about that is you are being really
responsive to the desires of the audience in a way
that makes everybody happy. The downside is that sometimes there
are people in the audience who are not completely mentally balanced,
or you know, they'll ask a question or they won't
let something go, and so you have to have some
kind of moderation. This is so far afield from Doge,
so we should probably give back.
Speaker 1: No, you definitely need someone to control the crowd because
there's always one person tries to take over the Q
and A or is a little bit yeah off. So
anyway back to back to a Doge.
Speaker 2: So speaking of people who are a little off, back
to Doge.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they are interesting people interviewed there. They're exactly the
kind of people I want doing an inventory on what's
going on in government, frankly, But I guess I'd divide
the conversation into a few different sections, and one would
be some of the instances of waste and inefficiency that
are mind blowing. Now I might get the specific numbers
slightly wrong, but one instance that Elon Musk spoke about
was that the National Park Service had spent I think
eight hundred a million on a survey system that had
no feedback loop, meaning it existed and people would lodge
their complaints or whatever, but there was no one actually
looking at it.
Speaker 2: You were right, I mean, Musk said, and I'm reading
this from Joy Pullman's excellent piece six unbelievably scammy federal practices.
Does staff revealed in the Fox interview a nearly one
billion dollar survey for no reason. He pointed out that
survey could have been done for ten thousand dollars. Also that, yeah,
they were taking survey results and then doing absolutely nothing
with them.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And he claimed, and I think he's I don't
think he's lying that he would routinely come across, you know,
programs or whatever projects that were a billion dollars of
just pure waste. Now, Democrats have been saying, and I've
heard others say, you know, a billion dollars is nothing
in the big picture, and that might be true, but
a billion dollars is objectively a lot of money, and
the only way to save ondiscretionary spending is to go
billion by billion probably. But these other things just blew
my mind. The federal government has four million credit cards
but only two point five million workers, Like, something's wrong
about that. There are a thousand, four hundred people in
the IRS who hand out who are in charge of
handing out laptops and cell phones. But anyway, so these
are how can I say? These are tangible kind of
things that I believe that people can no exist, But
hearing it in specifics, I think we'll maybe change their mind.
On DOGE. I saw some polling that doge wasn't doing
very well, and sometimes I feel like maybe credits are
getting away with claiming that, you know, Musk wants to
destroy social security, media and all this stuff. That's just
simply not true. As he pointed out, he's actually, if
you know, he's actually making social Security for instance, more
efficient for users.
Speaker 2: Seeing the people behind doge was really interesting. They seemed
very patriotic people at the top of their fields in
high level professions, willing to take a few months or
a year to serve their country and to save the country.
That is very different from the image painted by corporate
media in their doge stories of you know, twenty two
year old kids who know nothing about anything going on.
The people that were featured in the Brett Barry interview
were of a variety of different ages, but they were
career professionals at the top of their given line of work.
And even the way the one guy talked about asking
his wife if he could sort of deploy to do
this work, which he really believed in. You never think
of accounting or auditing as super manly, you know. Activity Wait,
that didn't sound right. I do think of those as
like very manly things more than womanly things. But I
mean the idea that they're trying to save the country
from this horrific rot, this unaccountable fourth branch that's unconstitutional,
that threatens the republic itself. It felt very early America
Founder era inspiring.
Speaker 1: Well, let's talk about a few of those people, because
I actually wrote about this this week. I just pulled
it up so Brat Smith, I forget what he was
he the guy who was like, I don't know. He
was a billionaire, I believe, but he This would really
blew my mind. The National Institutes of Health RIGHTIH has
seven hundred separate IT systems and none of them can
speak to each other. They have twenty separate different sub agencies,
and each of those agencies has a chief operate Information
officer making I'm sure a very good salary. Another guy
that I thought was really interesting was and I'm going
to brutalize his name, I'm sorry, but it's Aram Maga Dasi,
I think. And he was a computer engineer, and he
was saying that it costs around one hundred billion dollars
a year to keep the computer systems going for the
federal government, and some of them have been and the
systems themselves have been around for fifty years. The retirement
papers of a federal worker that they fill out when
they're leaving government are done by hand, all by hand,
and they are stacked and held in a mine in Pennsylvania.
They are not digitized. So these guys, I think it
was Bradsmith, was saying that how they were going to
digitize them within a few months. And we've had this
system going fifty years. But anyway, the problem with I
just thought this was interesting, of it's not boring, But
the problem between the problem with not having these systems
speak to each other is that there are I forgot
how many fifteen million people over the age of one
hundred and twenty who have still you know, living social
Security numbers. So someone or even young people who have
Social Security numbers, Someone went to the Small Business Loan
Administration or whatever and took out a business loan for
a toddler who was nine or is a nine month
old a toddler using their Social Security number, and there
was no way for these agencies to speak to each other. Now,
I just it's just incredible that we have allowed this
to go on so long. And I don't understand why
DOGE can't exist past one hundred and thirty days or
whatever they said. I think every administration should have a
doze looking into efficiencies. And finally, I for me, you know,
mus says they're going to cut a trillion dollars in
discretionary spending. That's a lot of money. I'm slightly skeptical
that that's actually going to get done, and it's definitely
not going to save us as far as our spending goes,
because it says a lot to do with other programs.
But that's a that's a great accomplishment, and if he
does it in one hundred and thirty days, I was
thinking he might be the first government worker to ever
accomplish a task on time and get it done right right,
But the history of government.
Speaker 2: On that note, I do remember reading about the claim
he made on the survey costing nearly a billion dollars,
that both he and Doug Bergham had said that it
was like eight hundred and seventy million dollars for survey
work like that, and some media people, you know, rushed
to the federal government's defense and said they didn't they
couldn't find contracts supporting this idea. One of the problems
with everything in life is that I do want people
to check claims made by Elon Musk and other people.
And I think the last people on Earth I would
trust to report accurately on the budget of the federal
government is anybody in the media. I don't think they
understand it. I think they play games. I think that
they if someone tells them, oh, this thing, Elon Musk said,
isn't true. They'll find some kind of factor figure to
justify claiming that, But that probably misses a thousand other
facts that are more important. And I'm not saying that
Elon Musk doesn't say things that aren't true, or that
any human says things that aren't true. But it's just
frustrating how much our media think their job is to
defend federal employee unions and not to report the truth
about the problems in our federal government. Uh, can't you
say something about the federal employees again?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 2: And I'm very sympathetic to how difficult this must be
for them to have, for the first time in their
lives have their jobs be considered something other than lifetime
gear and tees. But I was looking at all these
violent protests at TESLA. Yeah, And I don't know how
to say they all look like federal employees. They were
seemingly educated, older people who didn't seem to have different
jobs than that. I don't I'm just like, are these
protests just antifa of working with federal employees and one
hundred percent of the people there are one or the other.
Speaker 1: I don't know. I think there's a lot of just
ridiculous anger at him that manifests in acts of violence.
But some of it is definitely it seems to me
a concerted effort.
Speaker 2: It is so obviously a coordinated operation. And I do
think that people who engage in this kind of violence
and coordinated violence that's clearly well funded and marketed not through,
they should be held accountable for it.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, for sure. I mean this is in many ways.
I'm not saying every single instance is Sometimes they are
just people who lose it, you know, I'm not saying
they don't deserve to be punished. It lose a temper.
But a lot of this is I would say a
form of terrorism. I mean, this is a political this
is a political act, and you're trying to threaten and
intimidate people who you disagree with. Can I quickly say
something about that too. You know, we went through years
and years of FBI warnings about the right wing terrorists
and MAGA terrorists and you know, nationalists who are terrorists
and all this stuff. And yet from the beginning of
the nineteenth century, when you had anarchists and communists blowing
up Wall Street and all that, until to this day,
the left wing has been the predominant, you know, group
that uses terrorism and violence for political means. I mean
throughout the sixties all the way into the eighties, you
had all kinds of terroristic acts. In the seventies, they
were happening weekly, and you know, and and the left
never takes any responsibility or ownership for that in the
way that like I was supposed to take ownership for
the Charlottesville march or something, you know. I mean, they
support BLM explicitly, and BLM engages in terrorism, and they don't.
You know, no one ever, you know, in the media
ever says, oh, the left wing is you know, is terroristic?
Speaker 2: Well, why yes, No. It's a point of major frustration
for a lot of Americans. We saw this most notably
in the twenty twenty situation when you had violent riots
throughout the country that caused more than two billion dollars
in insurance claims, arson, looting, you know, destruction of property,
more than a dozen murders, maybe more than two dozen
murders or deaths associated with the rioting, and the response
from the media in corporate America was to give one
hundred billion dollars to BLM, not to criticize, but to
actually give them such a transfer of wealth and permanent wealth,
permanent programs to be racist in hiring or racist in
promoting people. It was unbelievable. And then you had the
riot at the Capitol, which was also bad, lasted by comparison,
about a millisecond compared to the summer of violence. You
had people, some violent, some not all of them charged
with felonies, sometimes put in prison for years. The disparity
is what was so frustrating to people. I will never
forget that. The attacks on the other branches of government,
including the White House and the judiciary. There was a
month's long siege at the Marco Hatfield Federal Courthouse in Portland,
and our DOJ said there wasn't much they could do
because the people were targeting the building during the night time.
And then compare it with what happened with the rioters,
where anybody who was in or near Washington, d C.
Had their credit card information like voluntarily turned over, and
they lost jobs, and they lost their families, and they
lost their court cases, and they had couldn't get a
decent attorney to save their life. And this disparity is
very frustrating. So I saw Pam BONDI said something about
how someone who committed an act of terrorism against a
Tesla dealership would be they'd be seeking twenty years for
that person, and everyone was like, twenty years for a
little bit of tiny, little bit of terrorism, And yeah,
it does seem actually kind of a lot, except that
nobody said anything when we just went through all of
the ridiculous. In fact, people did say stuff about the
January sixth protesters, and what they said was fafo and
you know, I don't want to do the time, don't
do the crime, like they were so callous about that,
And that was you know, much less coordinated or planned
than what we're seeing here with the nationwide Tesla situation.
Speaker 1: I would say, just in the same way that not
every act you know against the Tesla is the same.
Not every you know, person who participated or whatever in
January sixth stuff deserved the same. So I agree. I mean,
twenty years seems pretty pretty steep for an act of
you know, vandalism on a car. But if you're you know,
you know, you're destroying a lot of property, as I've
seen has happened, you know, burning down an entire you know,
dealership or something. I mean, that's a serious, serious crime.
So I don't know, We'll see.
Speaker 2: It's also just a testament, Like there are so many
problems I have with Elon Musk, mostly related to how
he believes that you can create children and intentionally deny them.
You know, I'm a happily married rental unit. But that
he's willing to do all this is really remarkable for
the country. You know, he's facing the left. Loved him
when he was a Lefty, loved him, and he's doing
what he's doing even though they are trying to destroy him.
Speaker 3: Now, is Bernie really grassroots or another presidential push? The
Watch Dout on Wall Street podcast with Chris Markowski. Every
day Chris helps unpack the connection between politics and the
economy and how it affects your wallet. Bernie and AOC
have gone on a full propaganda gamut blitz for their
fundraising rallies, but some of these attendees were.
Speaker 1: Actually paid to be there. Who's really getting paid?
Speaker 3: Whether it's happening in DC or down on Wall Street,
it's affecting you financially.
Speaker 1: Be informed.
Speaker 3: Check out the Watchdot on Wall Street podcast with Chris Markowski, Apple, Spotify,
or wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 2: Do low energy today, Molly, I don't Maybe you need
more coffee.
Speaker 1: I don't think I can have more coffee. I'm shaking
right now. You know what I did, Oh my gosh.
I took my coffee where you know my we grind
the coffee, and I put half decaf in there, in half,
just to like save me from like shaking. I don't
know what to do. Too much coffee. Can you kill yourself?
Can you overdose on coffee? Do you think?
Speaker 2: Yeah, definitely, you want to be careful also, really so,
I'm in a family where I'm the only coffee drinker
and my husband drinks tea, and you know, he's a
little bit snobby about that. He doesn't really drink that
much of it to begin with, and then he acts
like he's a better person than me because he's not
addicted to haffee.
Speaker 1: A bunch of hate tea drinkers. They're all they're fancy
flavors and you can only do it with a certain
temperature on the water.
Speaker 2: And oh my god, I will say, I have daughters
who like tea, and I find that so charming. It's
so cute. You know, they like the whole process and
they really do get into the ceremony of it all,
and that's very charming cute. But I need coffee to exist,
and I get headaches if I don't have it. And
I also just love the taste. So I will say
I have decreased how much caffeine I have.
Speaker 1: At the risk of boring our listeners even more, may
I ask, how do you take your coffee? So?
Speaker 2: I bought an espresso machine from one of my neighbors
ten years ago. It was one of those like little
tinin espresso machines, had never been used. Was in the box.
Got it for eighty bucks. That is a beast. It's
just working so well. So I just make an Americano,
which just an espresso drink with water, and then I
do add a little bit of.
Speaker 1: Sweetener and sweetener like one of these non sugar replacement yeah.
Speaker 2: Like Stevi or Splendor or something like that. Yeah, or sugar.
I mean, I don't really care. I just I like
a little bit of sweeter, not much. I can also
drink it black.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Now I take milk and a little milk, splash
of milk and some sweetter myself in case any listeners watering,
All right, whatever, I probably should have added more coffee.
Let's let's move on to something I think is interesting.
I don't know. I always sense like when I wrote
a whole book on Europe. Listen, I'm interested in it.
But I always feel like Americans don't really give a crap, right,
I mean, they don't really know or care very much.
But I think it is interesting this next story because
it speaks to the kind of authoritarianism I think, at
least that exists in the Western in Western Europe, that
people forget about when they're bashing Hungry or Russia or whatever.
And trust me, I bash those places too. But the
other day, a French court sentenced marine is a marine Lapan,
I forget it. First thing, I think she is now
on the types of jail times. She may, I forget,
but she's gonna be barred from seeking any public office
for I think five years, and she I believe, is
leading the polls right now in France. The I would say,
the populist right in Europe is popular. You know, it's
making headways in Germany, Austria, obviously Hungary, but also in
places like France. So I did not know what was
going on with this case. Actually, blindsided me. But so
I went and I read up on it and listen,
it feels like probably La Penn and some of the
people in her party misappropriated money. It wasn't a ton
of money, but it looks like they misappropriated here. It
would probably be like an offense. Who governs that sort
of thing? I forget, but it would be like FC. Yeah,
I think it would be like an FEC offense. Probably
be a fine involved, certainly there would be no jail
time involved. And let's just face it, France is an
incredibly corrupt place as far as government goes. It always
has been. Much of Europe is that way, with some exceptions.
So but it feels very much like lawfair. It feels
like what was the kind of lawfair that was launched
against Donald Trump here? Did you agree with that?
Speaker 2: Yeah? I believe all politicians are probably corrupt, or so
such a high percentage of them that you can just
round it off to all of them. So I'm not
even interested in the underlying allegation about Marine Lapen. It
sounds like people in her party may have used funds
in a way that the equivalent of the FEC didn't want.
I could not care less. It is so obvious that
the people who claim to care about democracy really care
about power and the rules based order, and any threat
to their way of doing things is punishable by criminal processcution,
or prosecution of some kind. It is obvious that she
has gotten too powerful, that our party has gotten too powerful,
and that people don't want to relinquish their power and
they don't want to face their voters, and so the
only way they can handle it is by doing what
democrats in the United States did, which is lawfair, and
it's disgusting. Also, it's disgusting that there are so few
political parties in Europe who care about the massive problems
caused by unchecked immigration and the destruction to the societies
that that can cause. The reason why her party is
rising in influence is because they're willing to talk about
these things. But it does concern me because Jason Willich
had this really interesting tweet about how the only thing
that constrained Democrat law fair in the run up to
the twenty twenty four election it was not the judiciary,
it was the Supreme Court. Every other court was more
than happy to play along with this, like this seems
like legitimate. That's not quite fair. I think Aileen Cannon,
the district judge in Florida, the moment she got that
classified documents case, she was like, well, I'm not going
to roll over here. I'm going to make I'm not
going to accept things just because the government says them.
I'm not going to be deferential to them. And just
that level of oversight at the district court level basically
killed the case until I'm sorry, not.
Speaker 1: Just kidding, but also the judge in the Hunter case
where they tried to give him immunity, right, Marlene Norika,
she kind of stepped up also.
Speaker 2: Yeah, when they were like, we have an amazing deal
that we worked out, she was like, this doesn't make
any sense at all. Yeah, good on her. Following Margo
Cleveland's reporting, I just went to always remind people of
Margo was the one who reported on that plea arrangement
and how atypical it was and outside the norms of
of such federal prosecutions, and that definitely caught the right
people's attention. I hate law fair, I want people. I'm
so okay with people having differences of opinion on everything, immigration,
you know, markets, whatever, the way to manage those debates
is by fighting them out politically, not by putting your
opponents in jail or tying them up with lawsuits, or
making them spend time in a courtroom, or bankrupting them.
You know, it's not that that is not the hallmark
of a free and open society. And the fact that
these people who claim to care about a free and
open society are the ones imprisoning or or banning from
the ballot their political opponents, it just disgusts me.
Speaker 1: Well, I obviously agree with you that, you know, the
law fair that happened to Donald Trump was bad for
the Republic, and hope it never happens again. But it
should be noted that this kind of stuff has gone
on in Europe for a long time. In fact, it
happens all over the place. In Israel, for instance, the
judicial branch, which is completely untethered from any kind of oversight,
meaning there is no even constitution they could look to
or anything, has been engaged in lawfair against Natanya, who
I'm not saying is perfect or anything like that for
probably two decades, you know, just trying to get that
guy and put him in jail. In was it Romania?
It was Romania, The EU pressured the government to disqualify
a candidate I forget his name, Georgescu. I think it
is who is, you know, a far right figure. I
don't really know how far right he is, because in
the parlance of the New York Times and so forth,
everyone on the right is far right in Europe, so
you never really know. It's the norm in Europe. And
I don't see it getting any better because the people
in power, I mean, unless it's some sort of violent
revolt in France over this, I don't know.
Speaker 2: You moved on from the Roman But he won a
runoff election, much to everyone's surprise, in December, and they
then declared that that runoff election was invalid because they
claimed that there had been Russian disinformation that tried in
true tactic. And then they removed him from the May
presidential ballot altogether on similar grounds, like he had violated
some election norm.
Speaker 1: Well, the claim was that eight hundred accounts on TikTok
eight hundred. Now, just to put that in perspective, I
assume there are billions of TikTok accounts, right, eight hundred
of them they said had been planted by Russia, which
might well have been there's nothing that you can do
about it.
Speaker 2: Love that, but also was probably not true. I want
to point you to Matt Taibi's reporting on this, where
we had sometimes foreign groups, sometimes groups supported by our
own government, making claims that there were various accounts that
were controlled by Russia, and he looked into these accounts
and it turned out just to be a complete nutter lie.
Sometimes they were people who just disagreed with Neocon foreign policy.
Sometimes they were like farmers in Iowa who also disagreed
with Neokan foreign policy. You can't just make a claim
that things are controlled by Russia and have it be
accepted as fact, particularly after we've gone through years of
having those claims be shown to be completely false. To
just accept them uncritically at this point means you're part
of the path.
Speaker 1: But okay, true. But even if they are, so, what,
there's nothing you can do about that. I mean, Russia
can buy some TikTok accounts, what are you going to
do about it? TikTok's owned by China, you know, chicoms.
I recently saw there was some kind of scam here
by Russians to enlist, kind of like right populist Twitter influencers,
which there was like four levels removed from the Russians themselves,
as I think that people should fooled. So he is
it with money, but you know, there was no way
for them to know. So what they're involved now and
those people are pro Trump, So now we have to
invalidate candidates. I mean, it's just it's preposterous and we
would never do that even if it were true. And
obviously Russia tries to get involved in elections, especially in
places like Romania, Moldovia, you know, in Eastern Europe. But
this is ridiculous. Yeah, you're right, they removed him. I
think his party can still run and I think they're
in the lead, but you know, who knows if they're
even going to be allowed to take power. I don't
even know, right, I.
Speaker 2: Mean, like if you had said, oh, we're going to
get rid of Donald Trump off the ballot, but we'll
let Republicans, you know, we'll let the Republicans pic Nicki
Haley or whatever, that doesn't mean that you haven't just
completely destroyed the integrity of the election.
Speaker 1: You have, Sue, I lived in just so now. I
lived in Romania for six months when I was a kid,
buk Yeah, it felt weird. Quick from America nineteen seventy six.
Speaker 2: Wait where were you born?
Speaker 1: Queens New York? An American?
Speaker 2: I just realized. I was like, wait, was he born
in Hungary? No, your parents came here.
Speaker 1: But Romana. Oh my god, this is gonna be so boring.
So Romania my parents came. Yeah, they defected from Hungary,
but Romania was not was though communists was not was
not as strict I guess as how you'd put it.
You could go there and other people from other communist
countries can visit. So we went there to visit family
and we stayed for a long time.
Speaker 2: Oh that's so interesting. I love it, and so people
and you had to see family members.
Speaker 1: Yes, so it was the first time I had ever seen,
you know, my extended family, and it was the first
time my parents had seen their family. Not all of
them could get out of Hungary. But yeah, so it
was I.
Speaker 2: Think about that all the time, like people who are
willing to leave. I was having dinner with someone who
was from London and when she married her husband, they
moved here and she just doesn't see her family that much,
and that was hard and that's totally free country that's
a six hour plane with it's.
Speaker 1: Even it was even harder in a weird way because
when you leave, you have to escape, you can't really
tell a lot of people. Maybe you tell close family,
you don't want to give it away. So when my
parents got out, they left a lot of family behind.
And those people, frankly, are probably going to be punished
in some way, like they're not going to be able
to get out and go on a vacation Italy or whatever.
You know, So there's sometimes there's hard feelings about that,
and you know, so it's a little bit difficult.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the checks have made amazing films on that subject
of what it's like for the people who remain behind.
And my I have a really, really good friend. She's
American now and she grew up in Czechoslovakia and some
of her aunts escaped. And one of the weird things
I remember about it is that one of the I
think one of the aunts escaped when she was a
young when my friend was a young girl, and she
had said something at school that she shouldn't have said,
and so the family just stopped telling her things because
you know, she couldn't be trusted to completely keep a secret.
And I mean, thinking about all the communism destroys families
and privacy, and just like the intimacy, it's just so sad.
Speaker 1: They definitely use children to turn them against families, you know,
I mean, I have a lot of stories about that.
But yeah, so I mean I just to say I
have tremendous respect for my parents for doing that. It's
a scary thing to do. But also I'm just happy
they did it so I didn't to be born in
those hell holes and I could be born here queens.
Ain't that nice? But you know, we moved up. But also,
you know, it's this is just about immigrants who come
here legally. I'm not talking about illegal immigrants that a
lot of times people will call them slave labor and
this and that. But the truth of the matter is
that people do it because there's a generational you know,
there's a generational fight to improve your life. You know,
it's going to be tough for you when you first
get here. My dad was a chemist in Hungary and
he came here and he worked in a warehouse, you
know what I mean. So the idea that you should
just get stuff right away and have everything right away
is not how the world works, and it's an expectation
I think underminds good immigration policy too. So what on
earth were we even talking about?
Speaker 2: Sorry, there was one other thing I wanted to say
about this election interference, which is I don't necessarily even
have a problem with it. I think it's just normal
governmental action, the type we've seen for thousands.
Speaker 1: The way, What do you mean you don't have a
problem with it?
Speaker 2: Well, but with meddling in other people's elections. And I
just wanted to say, we also care about who gets
elected in other countries, and we also try to advantage
those candidates that I want, and I don't have like
a huge problem with that. I you know, it's good
to have good candidate, good to have good politicians that
you can have good relationships with other countries, or to
have a weak person so they can be controlled. But
did you read the New York Times story on the
proxy war against Russia being waged by our government?
Speaker 1: I did, Molly, because you mentioned it, and I read
everything you suggest I read, so I thought it was
really well done journalism. I want to say, I just
feel like maybe it's a few years late to read
a story like this. Would you agree with that.
Speaker 2: So every time there's a New York Times story of
that length and it was literally like twenty five thousand words,
I'm assuming that there's something in there that's hidden, that
is explosive, there's like a reason for it being published.
I learned this during the Russia collusion hoax, that they
would do these stories where they were actually the purpose
was to drop a little bit of information deep into
the story so that later they could claim that this
was old news, you know. And so I learned to
read it like you learned to read Pravda. But I
also thought it was, oh, this is really interesting. Clearly
talked with a lot of the people involved in the
proxy war with Russia using Ukraine. And then I realized
I subscribed to the Wall Street Journal, and so much
of the story was about the bungling of various different
campaigns and how that happened due to internal conflicts in Ukraine.
But I kept thinking about how the Wall Street Journal
every day, every single day, they'd be like, Ukrainians are
on the verge of defeating Russia, and it was absurd.
It went on for years. They would then they would
like every few months be like okay, so it turns
out Russia gained a lot of territory, but the Ukrainians
are feeling better than ever. Really read like propaganda, and
the New York Times also was doing stories like that,
and I realized this was the New York Times explaining
to its readers that this was a proxy war, which
most of us understood for a very long time, for years,
but you probably didn't know if you were just reading
the New York Times. And I think they were also
trying to say, since this is our war, since we're
the ones who gave the weapons, we're the ones who
gave the intelligence, we're the ones directing the strikes, we're
the ones doing this war. If we were to end
this war, this would look like an American loss. I
was kind of like the subtext I picked up from there.
And the thing is, I don't think Americans view it
that way. I don't think they view ending a war
that is three years in and still has no strategy.
Speaker 3: Is a loss.
Speaker 2: I do think they might think that people who were
cheerleading that war are losers, but that doesn't mean it's
an American loss. Does that make sense?
Speaker 1: Makes sense? What you're saying. My perspective is that I'm happy,
and I think the Ukrainians did far better than most
people expected in that war because of us. Obviously, after
reading that piece, it's clear and that I'm happy that
Russia has been bled in a way, and I'm sorry
lives were lost, but they started this war, not the
Ukrainians in that sense. But also, how deeply are we
going to be ameshed in this thing? And does that
help you know our interests? And what interest do we
have there? And how long does this go on? And
what is the endgame? All those are really legitimate questions
that for many years, or for a few years, you
weren't even allowed to ask without being called a putin.
I'm definitely not. I would say, I'm kind of I
hate to be in the middle, you know, take the
middle position, but that's where I am on this, and
I think maybe many Americans are that way. They just
want it to be over, They want to know what
the point is, they want it, you know, and all
of that, and I just I don't This answer is
a lot about why and what was going on during
the Biden administration and why they you know, I don't
know why it was so important to them, I guess,
but it also speaks to a lack of transparency that
most Americans did know we were that involved in this war.
And if it reminds you of Vietnam and stuff like that.
And I'm not saying that's where we're headed, because I
don't think the American people are there, but that's what
it reminded me of.
Speaker 2: It definitely, I was thinking about, like this was very reckless.
It's all about how well. It also tries to say
Biden did this and Biden did that. The one thing
we all know is that Biden may not know that
Ukraine is a country. Well, he does, obviously he cares
a lot about Ukraine. His family made so much money there,
but he by this point was not really in a
position to know what day of the week it was.
So when they're like Biden wanted to do this and
Biden decided to advance here, Biden did not. That was
not Biden. I wish that the article would have explained
who at the White House was running this war. But
I also thought it's not just Biden. You had a
ton of members of Congress on both sides of the
Aisle who were clearly very involved. I mean, they were
headed over to Ukraine like it was a commuter shuttle
all the time. They were just constantly dropping in and
coming back, and who knows what they were doing. There
was Republicans and Democrats, and you're right that there was
a lack of transparency. And the reason why that's so
much worse than normal with what our government does to
meddle is that Russia is a nuclear power with six
thousand nuclear warheads, and when you're butting up against nuclear war,
you kind of want a little more transparency and buy
in from the American people.
Speaker 1: It's weird thing to say, but I'm gonna say it anyway.
I just I know they have nuclear weapons. I don't
think they're getting into a nuclear war over Ukrainian provinces,
nor are we. It is dangerous, though, and we need
to be smart about it. And you're right, President Biden
is not someone even though I don't think he was
running the country, it is not someone we can really
rely on to make good foreign policy decisions. So that
that was problematic. I feel like now though, Putin, because
of how it went down with Zelenski and Trump and
all of that, Putin feels like he has the upper
hand and it seems like he's going to kind of
now be more reluctant to sign any agreement. That's why
I feel like, with the latest news I've read about him,
I wish there was a way to pressure them just
as strongly as we are pressuring Ukraine to make a
deal and get this thing over with, even if they
lose some land.
Speaker 2: Unfortunately, welld on on the nuclear front, I do agree. Actually,
that was one of the other things that was sobering
about reading this twenty five thousand word piece in the
New York Times was how the big reason why things
didn't get hotter is because Russia seemed disinclined to get
too much hotter. Like you just pointed out, they're the
ones who invaded Ukraine, they're the ones who started this war.
Absolutely true, they're you know, finding out what happens when
you do that. But they also didn't respond, you know,
when US, when the US led strikes in Russia, they
did not respond too hot of a manner. And I
mentioned that they have the six thousand nuclear warheads because
it deals with the actual strategy of the war. So
right now they're not going to deploy nuclear warheads over Ukraine,
mostly because they can probably get what they want without
without coming anywhere close to that. But if this war continued,
if the interventionists had their way, and this was now
a twenty year war and we were going much more
into Russia and we were trying to decapitate Putin and
stuff like that, then you start considering whether to ramp
up your response. And that's why. Actually I saw someone said,
strategy is for things where you want to win. If
you don't want to win, you don't need strategy, And
I think that explains a lot about our foreign policy
right now. We don't want to win. We just want
to spend money and time in places, and so the strategy,
such as it is, is to spend as much money
and time as we can in a given conflict like
this war started four months after we left Afghanistan. If
we end this war in Ukraine, we're just going to
start somewhere else four months later. You know it just
there's this beast that needs to be fed and you're
not allowed to question it, and it just keeps going.
Speaker 1: I don't know about that, but I do want to
know what the endgame is, and if America this involved,
we should be having a much more transparent debate in
Congress and elsewhere about what's going on. I don't know.
This Ukrainian thing I've been reading about, it just doesn't
seem like it's coming to an end yet. And what
do you think that Trump, the Trump administration will continue
just keep funding their weaponry until there's some kind of
agreementment or are they going to leave them leave it
to Europe to do? I don't you know. They say
a lot of things, but I'm not sure there's been
any real policy. I mean, maybe there's been a slight
pullback in that in funding, but there's we're still providing
them weaponry.
Speaker 2: Und I don't think there's any I don't think there
really has been any pullback in funding. I don't know,
and I think we'll know more in the coming weeks.
I actually expect to have a meeting here soon with
some people that will keem me into some more of
the strategy and I will bring it back to the
faithful listeners of your wrong.
Speaker 1: We look forward to hearing about it. Would you talk
about culture?
Speaker 2: Let's do it?
Speaker 1: I have to oh wait, did you watch anything?
Speaker 2: I watched a few more episodes of White Lotus, which
I continue to enjoy, although it's like, I can't watch
all of it because it's so not naughty, not he's
not even anywhere near the right word for it. Absolutely horrific.
But the storyline I'm continuing to enjoy in many ways,
and so I'm looking forward to the end of that.
And then I rewatched for like the four hundredth time
with my kid rear window.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, you mentioned that last week?
Speaker 2: Wait I did.
Speaker 1: It? Just says when I was talking about adolescens the show,
about the continual the one shot that's.
Speaker 2: Not real window, that's rope.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you might have. Okay, Sorry, I mixed them up. Okay,
that's it.
Speaker 2: That's it.
Speaker 1: That's so unfair. Sorry.
Speaker 2: I'm also like, while rowing, I watched some of that,
say anything, I don't have anything exciting to say. Please
please help us out with the culture section by having
something interesting.
Speaker 1: Well, the last two weeks I talked about adolescents, and
people will continue to send me stories. Apparently the British government,
you know, is using it to push some kind of
left you know, identitarian left wing and you know Islama foe.
I don't know what they're doing and I don't even care.
I told I was telling this to someone before I
liked it on its own in a vacuum. I thought
it was a great show. I can't get involved in
the politics of it. Stop writing me letters about that.
I just don't care. Okay, I watched The Residents. Have
you heard about the show it's on, not folks. It's
about I would say, very similar In fact, I believe
it mocks it mocks the similarity. It's it's almost satirically
so called Knives Out that you know, or those kind
of the Agatha Christie setup where Hercule Puro would solve
a mystery. It star as a woman named Azu Aduba.
She's excellent, and I liked it better than Knives Out.
I thought it was fine. I thought it was good.
It's about a murder that happens in the White House
during a state dinner North Australia, and everyone is a suspect,
you know, staff and so on.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 1: Second thing is I would say one of the strongest
recommends I've ever made on this show. Okay, I feel
weird that I've been recommending things so strongly lately, but
this is a series I would maybe I have to
think about it a little because it's very important. Put
in my top ten of all time. It's called Patriot.
It's on Amazon. It's not a new show. Have you
ever seen or watched this or heard about it?
Speaker 2: Watched it all? How far are you in?
Speaker 1: Oh? You have? Oh? I'm in the second season, I
guess in the middle. Are almost done? Did you love
the show?
Speaker 2: Well? I did. I thought it was amazing and I
was kind of surprised there were only two seasons. It's
very weird, I mean, not really weird, but it's not
for everybody. I don't think the character development is amazing.
The storyline, so we should.
Speaker 1: Talk about it.
Speaker 2: So we've got a guy whose dad, he and his
dad are both in the Special Services.
Speaker 1: CIA, and he has a brother who's a congressman.
Speaker 2: It was very funny Texas congressman.
Speaker 1: And he he joins an industrial engineering firm in Milwaukee
because that's the way for him to get to Luxembourg
where they are making deals with Iranians and so on.
Because he is involved in trying to stop the Iranians
from doing something. I have to be honest with you,
that's kind of the foundation of the plot. But it's
almost not even that important to the movie because it's
actually very character driven, right, Yes. The star's name is
Michael Dorman. He is a new from New Zealand. People
kiwi's I don't know. You would never know that. Yeah,
you would never know because his accent isn't there. But
what so would you say? Like the show has the
sensibilities of an indie movie in a way, you know,
it's quirky.
Speaker 2: One of the things about the guy is that he's
a folk singer.
Speaker 1: So he's a folksinger on the side, and he's constantly
singing about his missions and stuff. It is so funny.
It's so so funny. So he'll like do something terrible
and then he goes to an open mic night and
he's singing about like the stuff that he did, but
no one is really listening or taking it seriously. He's
talking about murders and you know, plots against the arians.
Speaker 2: He does not have good operational security. I can't remember
how things ended, but I remember thinking that I was
frustrated that it only lasted two seasons, and then I
also thought it kind of ran out of gas and
that they didn't know what to do with it.
Speaker 1: Well, it was not popular, so not a lot of
people have watched it, but I've learned since mentioning this
on Twitter that the people who don't do like it
love it. Yes, there's a podcast that goes through every
episode and it's been going on for years, and some
guys showed me that you can actually buy the book
Integral Principles of the Structural Dynamics of Flow, you know
the book He's Got to get his hands on. There's
a fake version of that. Yeah, and you can. You
can listen to the songs now if you want to
check it out. Just in a little snippet, I would
recommend watching the song called French Gun. He sings about
how he has to get a gun, how he has
to get his hands on a gun in France to
get strapped in France. Anyway, I just you know, it's
not a perfect show, and sometimes it gets a little
slow here and there, but I say overall, I just
have you know, I have a good time watching it.
I want to see the next episode. I care about
the characters. I want to see what happens to them,
including the people he works with, including his dad, including
his his friend. He makes. It's just fantastic. Yeah, I
wasn't very popus. There's only two seasons. One of them,
I think sort of short, and the.
Speaker 2: Second season is shorter. I am a little concerned that
you and I agree. I don't think that's happened before.
Speaker 1: It has happened. Okay, I'm happy. I'm happy like this show.
Can I say this without sounding like a smug or
pompous or something or whatever I sound like here? But
don't you feel like it has The show's just has
a gen x show, very gen xy sensibilities. Oh interesting,
Like even the second season starts with the Beastie Boys
flute from whatever that song is, And you're like, I'm in,
don't stop.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So how did you come across it?
Speaker 1: If I'm ask you know, I believe I started watching
it years ago and then forgot about it or something,
and then I was I was looking for working on
a project. I don't want to talk about that exactly,
but I was looking for sort of spy shows and
things about spies, and it came up on a list
and and I thought I'd give it a shot. Oh wow,
we agree, And that's a strong recommend And I'm sure
I'll hear from people that how terrible it is. All right,
that's all I have, It's all you have. All right.
We'll be back caffeinated next week. But until them be
lovers of freedom and anxious for the fray. The Jankie
Plan begins today. Today I started to make my way
to a friends guy
Speaker 3: Do