Speaker 1: Welcome back, everyone to a new episode of You're Wrong
with Molly Hemingway, editor in chief of the Federalist and
David Harsani, senior writer at the Washington Examiner. Just as
a reminder, if you'd like to email the show, please
do so at radio at the Federalist dot com. We'd
like to hear from you. Molly. Let's start this week
by talking about what is a huge story in DC.
I'm not sure how much normal people care about it,
but you know, it's definitely worthwhile to talk about Vanity
Fair ran A. I think it's a two part piece.
We've only seen part one of it. It involves interviews
with White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles. I assume
you have a reaction to people doing interviews with Vanity Fair,
who shouldn't be doing that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I do. And I think people know who Susie
Wiles is. She's frequently Trump will talk about how awesome
she is, and she she's lauded at these, you know,
rallies and things like that. So I think people understand
that Susie has been very close to the Trump team
for you know, at least five years. You could look
at it more, you know, she's she kind of came
from DeSantis world. Well, she's she's a really remarkable political
consultant and advisor. And a lot of what has gone
well in the second Trump term has been attributed to
Susie Wiles. She the first Trump term was just constantly leaking,
people leaving, you know, just lots of turnover and lots
of drama, and this one really hasn't been And a
lot of it is that people fear, in a good way,
Susie Wiles, and they know that she does not tolerate silliness.
And so yeah, it was absolutely shocking, in from my
perspective to learn that she had opened the kimono like
eleven times to a left wing reporter. And the story
yesterday was that he wrote the first of these of
a two part series just absolutely lambasting her and trying
to like, you know, gin up division between her and
the entire leadership team. And she's like, oh, I was
taken down of context, and I'm really stunned at how
this didn't go well, Oh you are, because I thought
she was brilliant, you know. I thought she was this
really smart person who wouldn't be as stupid as most
Republicans are where they desperately crave the love and the
Gazi profile, you know, promised by Vanity Fair. Like when
Vanity Fair asked Milania when they said they wanted to
do a big Gazi cover with her and do a story.
I think the way that The New York Post wrote
it was that she laughed in their faces. That's the
proper response. Vanity Fair and other crazed left wing media
are always going to help their friends and hurt their foes.
And you've got to be smart enough to not care,
got to be smart enough and like have some kind
of moral core to literally not care anything about them.
And so I think it was I don't have any
any sympathy at all for what happened to them, because
that's what's been happening to Republicans for forty years. And
if you don't pick up on that, that's on you, right.
Speaker 1: No, I mean yes, and no, I would just say,
we've debated this before. I think it's fine for conservatives whoever,
to go onto these shows debate these people in that context.
I think what annoys me, and you know this very well,
is that Republicans are still probably right now leaking to
the Washington Post in New York Times, and not to
others who will, I guess, help them, but not help them,
but just give them a fair reading. I guess of
what they're saying. This is different. Who are you're really
appealing to? Who reads vanity fair? Not the people you're
trying to reach. I will say, though I read the
piece and I expected it to be much worse. Excuse me, Yes,
there's definitely I think his name is Chris Whipple is
the reporter. There's definitely a left wing slant everything he's
writing here. But let me give you one of the
quotes that everyone's talking. I don't think she was taken
out of context. It doesn't seem to the context makes
complete sense. So for instance, calling Donald Trump saying Donald
Trump has an alcoholic personality right now, that was big news,
and I think I forget who came out and said
he doesn't even drink. But if you read deep into
the story, there's a quote I'm going to read from her.
She says, some clinical psychologist that knows one million times
more than I do will dispute what I'm about to say.
But high functioning alcoholics or alcoholics in general, their personalities
are exaggerated when they drink, and so I'm a little
bit of an expert on big personality. She's talking about
her dad, who was a Yeah, giant's legend and NFL
Voice of the NFL. So when she says that he
has an alcoholics personality, she's talking about how he operates
really big. You know, his personality is exaggerated when he's
in public. Things like that. I don't find that offensive
at all. I mean, in the context is there. You know,
she said some things about Pambondi that I'm sorry they're
just true. Maybe she's trying to send a message, you know,
I don't know. But what I mean is I just
don't think I think everyone's overreacting to this piece. I
don't think it was terrible as terrible as everyone's making
up meaning for the administration. I don't know why they
would do it, but anyway, that was my take on it.
When I read it, I expected something far worse than
we actually saw.
Speaker 2: Oh no, that's great that you're so like forgiving and
generous to the vanity for people. But yeah, I didn't
read it because I don't read propaganda like that unless
like I really have to. But I and also by
the way, most people don't read I'm glad you read it.
I'm sure it's not I am sure. Actually, when she
was said I was taken out of context or they
the framing was all wrong. I was like, right, that's
what they do. That's what they do, so you can't
complain about it after you sit down with them eleven times. Meanwhile,
like every real non leftist reporter has to beg borrow,
you know, do anything to get like an Anadyne quote
from the White House. But they're like, or you liberal media,
we have an insecurity complex. We would love we really
want you to like us, and we like all those
gazzy profiles you do of the Democrats and you say
you'll do one for us. Like the greatest example of
it is when that world's worst, history's worst press secretary
after bag Dad Bob was Crean John Pierre, right, like
just horrible at her job, and she got like the sexiest,
most beautiful photo and for cream John Pierre, a woman
who's in her twenties, they did something to make her
look like a really really wrinkly old lady. And it
was like, yeah, because that's what photographers do. They're part
of the left wing media complex, like you can't get
upset about it. That's what they do, so don't play
with them.
Speaker 1: But yeah, well, can I clarify something that because you
insulted me, I just want to say the Vanity I'm
not defending the Vanity Fair writer. I'm told you it's
in a left wing slant. I'm defending Susie Wiles, who
I don't think said anything terrible in this interview that
should that that should have this reaction where the entire
White House is, you know, circling the wagons. It's it's
she was actually saying something that was interesting and quite
smart about Donald Trump and and and in that quote.
That's all I'm saying. Sorry to interrupt, going.
Speaker 2: Well, hold on, what was the thing that like that? Okay,
So it also goes through layers of left wing media
when you play with left wing media. So first off,
there's the right up of the piece itself, and she
is very upset about it. So I wouldn't say that
it's crazy to think that the framing and whatnot is negative. Yeah,
she went after Elon Musk, jd Vance Russ, vote, Pam Bondy.
It wasn't actually to your point, it wasn't that anything
that she said about any of these people was necessarily horrible.
Her complaint is I say a thousand nice things and
they cherry pick out all the mean things. It's like, yeah,
that's what a left wing reporter will do. They're not
interested in the facts. And you might have thought you
were showing nuance and that you weren't just being sickophantic
toward these people, or that you weren't just being universally
praising them, you were being a real person. Reporters aren't
real people. All they do is exist to like crave
some hit to take down their political enemies. So don't
trust them. I don't care what the article says. I
don't care what she said. I don't care at all
about it. I only care that she agreed to do
it eleven times. Like it's embarrassing as a person of
the right. It is embarrassing to me how much people
on the right are lack confidence in their viewpoint. The
trust in corporate media right now is at an all
time low. I think among Republicans it's eight percent, but
it's like at twenty eight percent nationwide. The corporate media
is only believed they are only believed by people on
the left and Republicans in Washington, DC. That's their constituency,
and they are a major threat to the Republic in
how they operate, in the hoaxes they perpetrate, in the
information ops they push out, in their propaganda and bias,
and they are sustained by people taking them seriously. Milania
Trump laughing in their faces was smart.
Speaker 1: Well. Two things. One, it's a very dec thing to
want to be in Vanity Fair right, just by by
by people in power.
Speaker 2: It just is low intelligence people. And she's not low
IQ right.
Speaker 1: I have never met her. She doesn't seem low IQ.
She seems TRQ brilliant. I do like that. Every time
I'm critical of Trump or someone you know, people online
are like, you just want the left wingers to love
you and stuff like that, which is very stupid because
I don't care.
Speaker 2: But he craves the hatred of everybody.
Speaker 1: No, I'm just saying, I'm just being I'm just saying
what I feel, whatever I mean. So it's nice to
see that the people who really crave it are all
in the administration getting makeup pancaked on their faces to
be on the cover of Vanity Fair and I don't
know if maybe Donald Trump likes it. I mean, he
definitely is a person who is inclined to speak to
major media like that, and maybe he made everyone do it.
I don't know, but I'm sure he didn't make Susie.
I'll speak to this guy eleven times during the during
Liberation Day, during the inauguration, like all these big moments,
she was on the phone with him.
Speaker 2: I want to say one thing. I was screaming about
this yesterday, and as I was, people said, oh, you
know who really likes to talk to corporate media, Donald
Trump and Scott Descent. And I was like, you know what,
you are right, And I also find that annoying. But
I think that's a good standard. You have to be
as good at destroying the media as Donald Trump or
Scott Bissent or jd Vance to talk to the left
wing media. If you don't have that level of skill,
then you don't. Okay, that's it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't think two of those people are very
good at it all. Scott Descent is just a leftist,
so he's at home in those kinds of situations.
Speaker 2: In real eric people are like that, dude's amazing.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean then they're being fooled. But the Donald
Trump is good at it. But there is My point
only is that there's this he does. I think, because
he's an older guy who's been around is from New York,
that he still wants to be accepted to some accept
by them. I can't. I can't do it. I'm not
a psychologist, right, I don't know for sure, but that's
what it seems like to me. More than this, though,
I just want to stress I find it very annoying
that Republican senators and house members and powerful Republicans still
leak all the stuff they have when they feel like
it to the New York Times and Washington Post and
Politico and all these places that are constantly that exist
to destroy them. Basically.
Speaker 2: Oh not just that, but if we write, if we
write a piece that's critical of an agency or administration official,
people act like you've somehow betrayed them. It's like, well,
we do not exist to do your pr or operations.
Like we will fight left wing media, which might make
you think we're your friend because it's a similar enemy,
but we're also covering you as real journalists.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I guess now tracts me.
Speaker 2: Sometimes the phone calls that Sean or I will get from.
You know, when we're running pieces.
Speaker 1: I mean, if you're a journalist, you're not taking out
the happy, nice stuff and putting it out. You're putting
out the stuff that's going to create controversy. That's just
the journalist. Okay.
Speaker 2: So here's where I disagree. If someone is giving you
I sometimes am writing book length projects or long pieces
about people who've given me a lot of time and access.
The purpose of that is so that you write something
truthful about them, so that you truly understand the person.
You've spent a lot of time with them, so you
get a feel for them, and you understand the nuance
of their position, and you understand where they've been you know,
taken out of context, and then you provide that greater
context because journalism isn't should not be about gotcha. At gotchat,
she said one hundred things and one of them was
really mean about this person. He said one hundred things
about this person and one was mean. So I'll take
that one. That's not truthful, that's not objective, that's not
journalism's that's National Inquirer, you know, worse than National Inquirer. Actually,
so I saw Brian Stilter being like, well, I used
to work at Vanity Fair, which should tell you everything
about the quality of Vanity Fair. And he's like, and
I can tell you they're fact checking is better than
anybody out there. And you hear this sometimes, like the
New Yorker will say we have a vaunted fact checking department.
I'll just point out that, like last week they ran
a piece about Oliver Sachs making up all of his
stories in The New Yorker, and like, they did run it,
but they didn't say, and we the vaunted the fact
checkers of the New Yorker are the ones who let
all that through without a moment's hesitation, or the Russia
collusion hooks, or the Brett Kavanaugh rapesmear things that the
New Yorker has also done. The idea that Vanity Fair
has a vaunted fact checking department is a joke. And
I was thinking about this time that this is like
before I realized that you can never operate with them
at all. I'd been interviewed by The New York Times.
I don't remember what the story was about, because I
don't care about them, but they ran a quote by
me and it was clear. You know, maybe I talked
to them for a long period of time and they have,
you know, three quotes that they're running by me in
a factual claim and it's clear from what they're doing.
I was like, oh, you didn't understand what I was
saying at all, Like you did not understand you know,
that's not talking about that thing, it's talking about this
other thing. And they were like, yeah, we literally only
care if the words exit your mouth. That's not fact checking,
that's hack checking. Like that is if someone if a
source ever told me, and I pray you, if a
source ever told me that I'd misunderstood what they had said,
I would take that extremely seriously, unless they were like,
you know, they I had caught them saying something admitting
to a crime, and then they're like, no, I was sleepwalking.
You know, I wouldn't take that seriously. But if someone
says I I messed up my understanding, I would. I
would say, Okay, let me know what's going on here,
because my job isn't to get them. And I would
say that regardless of if it's my foe or friend
or whatever. You know, you want to get the story right,
don't you.
Speaker 1: Yeah, But you're you're conflating to things, getting the story
right and giving a framing of what's going on in
the way that your source demands you do it, which
I don't think is right. Obviously, you're going to hone
in as a reporter on the most controversial thing. A
person says, I agree with you totally. You should give
that context. It depends on the situation. I guess I
did want to go back with something that you said.
That's I think incredibly and I'm incredibly interested in. Is
this Oliver Sacks stuff For people don't know. He's a
famous neurologist, many books. If you've ever seen the movie
Awakenings with Robert de Nier, Robert Denier or Robin Williams,
that's his story, which has actually never happened. I don't
think there was any way to fact check Oliver Sachs
because he was reading the story, he was there alone. Typically, however,
there were many psychiatrists and neurologists who said, this sounds fake,
this doesn't sound you can't replicate this. Why can't you replicate?
And those people were left out. So it's often misleading.
Things are about context, not mere you know, fact checking
in kind of a traditional sense. I think you know
what I'm saying. So sometimes I think people just love
to hear. There's remember the movie rain Man where they
made autistic people into like Superman, you know what I mean,
where they can just calculate everything and do everything. And
this that came from all of our sacks in a way.
And you know, he had this story about this. I
think you were maybe brothers who could like land on
any prime number anywhere, like in the millions, you know,
over and over, and other psychiatrists are like that, just
that's impossible, right, and no one you know that's saying
too too good to check. Well, that's exactly what happened
with him. So I agree. Context is incredibly important, but
sometimes it's difficult to check. So you should be skeptical
about the things you hear if they sound fantastical or perfect.
Speaker 2: Just one final thing. One of the things the New
York Times cherry picked from the Vanity Fair story was
they said, to show how bad the tension is between
this in this very tense white house. It's so bad
that JD. Vance offered one hundred dollars to the photographer
for everybody that he could he could look better if
the photographer could make JD look better than these other people,
he would give him a hundred dollars per person. And
he said, if you can make me look better than
Marco Rubio.
Speaker 1: It's a thousand.
Speaker 2: I was like, Oh, so has this reporter who's so
good at understanding the human condition that he's at vanity Fear,
one of the faunted places never met a man like
Is that not just total typical masculine busting of chops.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a thousand percent a joke. I mean, yeah,
I'm not you know whatever. I mean, that's obviously I
didn't even I had to be kind of told that
that was supposed to be actual. I thought they were
just joke joking out that that was attention creating moment.
I just assumed when I read it that it was
a joke. I will say one thing you said, how
they quote you out of context and we're talking about
this story. The only time I've ever been quoted, or
most of the time I've ever been quoted in a
major you know, newspaper or whatever, is when I go
after conservators or Republicans. So it always makes me look
like that's the only thing I do. And I'm not
spending ninety nine, you know, ninety percent of my time
being anti collectivist, antisocialist, anti whatever democrat.
Speaker 2: So okay, all right, letting me scream about that.
Speaker 1: No eleven interviews. That's pretty wild.
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Speaker 1: Be informed.
Speaker 3: Check out the Watchdout on Wall Street podcast with Chris
Markowski on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 1: Next topic, unfortunately, is the massacre in Bondi Beach in Sydney. Horrific.
Fifteen people were murdered in cold blood.
Speaker 2: And shot.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and many more shot, many more shot and hurt. There.
The two people who did it, one was a It
was a father and son. A father was a Pakistani immigrant.
The son I believe was born in Australia, but was
being reports say, was being investigated for ties to the
to isis Islamic state. My first question was, Australia has
all these gun laws, they essentially have confiscated guns. But
yet this person, these people who are connected to might
be connected to terrorism, had six weapons and it seems
to me, you know, long rifles and other firearms. How
did they get them? I mean, it's just insane.
Speaker 2: But well, not just that they had weapons, but that
the Jews on the beach did not have weapons.
Speaker 1: They were defenseless. All they have to wait for the police,
which we can get into this a little bit. It's
clear from the evidence that I've seen that the police
don't know how to react to this sort of thing
or cowardly in Australia, I don't know elsewhere. But I mean,
in just an overview of it is that, you know,
I don't think Jews are safe anywhere right now in
the world other than maybe Israel. I don't, or I'd
rather put it this way, I don't think Jews probably
and I am one feel safe going to a public
event to celebrate their holiday anywhere in the world right now.
And I don't know, just last week in Amsterdam, there
was a holidayhonka party and people were marching by saying
kill the Jews and all kinds of stuff. In New
York there was a temple that was like surrounded by
these people yelling take out another settler and stuff like that. This,
you know, it's accelerated very quickly. It's frankly, you know,
kind of the norm, but it is very upsetting norm.
Speaker 2: Historically speaking, ISIS and other Islamist terror groups frequently target
Jewish communities, people, events, that's true. They also frequently target
Christian community and events. You know, we just had a
Christmas market in Germany where they're not going to host
it because of security threads. We have regularly had attacks
on Christmas markets, on you know, churches, all sorts of
awful things. They also just attack Western things in general,
like the FBI disrupted a terror plot for New Year's
Eve in la I think we had an Islamist attack
in America on New Year's Eve last year in New Orleans.
I believe that was the date of that. We have
Islamist attacks on just people, you know, like in San
Bernardino and the French theater. The there are a lot
of Islamist attacks, and so I think it's interesting that
you went first to the guns. Of course you did,
because you're like the gun expert, and I totally get it,
and I totally agree with literally everything you said there.
But the real problem is one we don't want to
talk about, which is that we have a problem with
Islamist mass Islamist immigration to Western countries.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I think that's a problem. I've written. I mean,
you know in my book, in my book Eurotrash, I mean,
there's an entire chapter I wrote about the problems with this.
Like it's very difficult, I think, somewhat nuanced to make
an argument for immigration and say that not everyone is
equal when it comes to immigration, and that you want
people who immigrate who will not just assimilate, but embrace
the values of the places they go. And that's a
difficult thing to do. And if you can't do it right,
then you have to cut off immigration. I mean, I
have evolved on this issue because I do think that,
for instance, Muslims and Americans actually assimilated very well. But
there's increasingly it's problematic that you have people coming over
here who are targeting either Christians or Jews, I'm dismissed
that Christians are attacked by Islamists. I mean, you know,
in Africa right now there is I call it a genocide,
but there are massacres of Christians all the time. I'm
just pointing out that this was clearly aimed at choose
anti Fada globalized.
Speaker 2: So it was done on an anniversary of another anti
Jewish event in Australia I believe, or a flying of
a Dish Isis flag.
Speaker 1: So no, you know, the October seventh was launched on
Simhastori's Jewish holiday. This is Hanukkah, like they this is
a norm for these people, Intifada globalizing to father the
people phrase people rationalize here and use in Western countries,
including the United States. Intifada is Palestinian for jihad, and
it's a sub category of jihad. And Jews can be
an easy target sometimes because they're in a country and
they you know, there's only one hundred thousand Jews in Australia,
you know what I mean. And by the way, there
has been anti Semitic attack or anti Jewish attacks in
Australia for a year now that are out of control.
Speaker 2: There have been an open anti Semitic protest like at
the Sydney Opera House with people calling for the death
of Jews, and.
Speaker 1: There was arson at the Melbourne Synagogue, the biggest synagogue
I think in Australia and so and so on. I
think Australian Jews should leave and go to Israel. I
don't think they're welcome there anymore because the government there,
instead of protecting them, instead of siding with them. A
Western government decided that they wanted to reward Hamas with
the state. The Prime minister of that country recognized Palestine
and invented an invention of Hamas and the PLO. So
they should leave. They should leave Europe too. In my view,
they're not wanted there. I don't know how many times
they have to be told that and shown that anyway.
So it obviously we have an immigration problem in Western
countries where we're bringing in I mean people who candler
with Jews, candler with Christian Christians are next because political
Islam makes no room for that either. And you can
see it, and people tell me it's Islamophobic for me
to point out that there are places in Europe. I'm
talking about Sweden, I'm talking about Britain. I'm talking about France.
There are no go zones where Islamists run communities with
a parallel governments or governments that are above the government
of the country, and police are scared to go in there.
You can't have a country like that. You can't have
that kind of thing going on. It's only going to
get worse. We can't have that here. We cannot have
that here.
Speaker 2: Shortly after George W. Bush launched his campaign to get
everybody to say that Islam is a religion of peace,
there would be all these global polls of Muslims, and
after the polls were done, there would be headlines from
various media outlets saying, the vast majority of Muslims do
not support extremists or violent terrorist incidents. The vast majority
of Muslims oppose violent extremism and terrorism. And that was accurate.
You know, it would be like seventy five or eighty
percent of Muslims globally would say you shouldn't kill Jews
and Christians, you know, willy nilly. And how many Muslims
are there in the world two billion, two billion, so,
so how many would that be, Like they're saying there
are only five hundred million Muslims who want to kill
Christians and Jews, which is a huge number, you know
what I mean, Like, I agree the vast majority. Take
three out of four Muslims. They don't want to kill
me right now. There are always in populations like crazy
people or people who commit violence, and we're usually used
to that being like a tiny fraction of a tiny
fraction of a percent, you know, and five hundred million
people globally, when you are importing millions of people to
these other countries, like you're gonna get people who support violentarism.
And so to your point, not all cultures are the same.
There are cultures that generally oppose or have strict like
rules on the guidance of use of violence developed over
a long period of time, and there are some with
looser rules. And it's totally legitimate to think about that
when you are crafting an immigration policy, and certain it's
even worse when you don't assimilate. And we stopped assimilating
decades ago, so it's not like people are coming here
and then we're like, and you're gonna become Christian. You're
gonna be in a Christian community and you're gonna learn
how not to kill people just because you're mad at them,
and you know, like, we're not doing that. We're just saying, Oh,
the Christians will now be like the middle man between
the government, the taxpayers, and your pocket linings, and they're
just going to set you up with everything and they're
never going to talk to you about religion or values
or norms and it's going to be great.
Speaker 1: Well, I see people out there saying things like, you know, switch,
imagine if Palestinians were Jewish and Israelis were Muslim, would
people still be talking about them the same way and
this and no, because if Palestinians are Jewish, they would
be peaceful and successful. That's why they all cultures are
not the same. Islam is not a religion of peace,
and that doesn't mean there aren't many many peaceful Muslims.
There are, but Islam is I'm sorry, it's formed by
a warlord who is a who conquered half the world.
And that's just how it is. Western culture is better.
If it weren't, there'd be mess migration from the West
to the east, from Western countries to Islamic countries, but
there isn't. It's just how it is because Western culture
is superior, was it? Obama said, everyone thinks their culture
is better. You know, it's kind of relativistic view of
the world. The British would say their culture is better,
and the you know the yeah, but ours is better.
It is better because I can measure how it's better,
and I can view it has flourished and helped people flourish,
and other people will flourish adopt our ideals. Abu Dabi
is not rich because of Islam. I'm sorry. It's rich
because there's oil, and it's rich because we invented the
car and the plane and so on. So that doesn't
mean that Muslims can't participate in that and come in
here and be good citizens. There are plenty of good
Muslim people and citizens. But the idea that it's the
same and that frankly, you're going to import bad ideas here.
We can't let that happen. And if that means shutting
down immigration, I guess I have to before that because
if the government itself can't say, well, you want to
do have a higher standard of vetting. I don't mean
vetting like oh are you terrorists? No, sir no, I
mean I mean I am in Gaza and in the
West Bank, like ninety percent of people support Hamas and
its goals. How can you let people like that into
a country, a diverse country that is all kinds of
people living together here. You can't. They are not compatible
with this system. And that's just how it is. It's
not because of their race, it's not because of their
skin color, and it's it's because of their ideas. And
Islam is a political idea, not just a religious one.
And that's a fact. Like that group you mentioned that
was planning a terrorist event in.
Speaker 2: La Turtle Island Liberation Front.
Speaker 1: Yeah, even the left wing media is like, yeah, this
was real and it was serious. I saw NBC report that,
So they're they're like pro you know, Palestinians. Part of
it's been embedded into the radicals menu of grievances, right,
and it's dangerous. There's no I know people hate Israel
now and all that, but there's literally zero Israeli terrorist
events in this country. You have nothing to worry. There
are no Jews blowing things up. Doesn't mean Jews are perfect,
doesn't mean that you know, things don't happen, but that
no Christian terrorism or very very little Jewish and Christian terrorism,
and it's usually a fringe that is not supported by
step did yeah or yeah by anyone.
Speaker 2: I just want to say I woke up on Sunday
early to this news, which is the second time on
the Bondi Beach massacre. Second time I've woken up, you know,
on a weekend to see a horrific you know, see
things on Twitter that are horrible killings of Jews and
it's just awful. And so I feel, you know, to
feel very badly for all my Jewish friends, because there
is that, Like you said, you kind of began by saying,
I don't think Jews are safe anywhere, and I pray
that's not true, but it's not an unreasonable thing to
worry about. And I'm just sorry that.
Speaker 1: I would say I feel like Jews don't feel safe anywhere.
I would say that we shouldn't. How can I say this.
I'd never go outside and I'm like, oh, I'm Jewish
and you know people are stalking me or whatever. I
think Americans aren't like that at all for the most part.
So a lot of what we see online is not
real life. You know. I'm not saying no one ever
makes a remark about Jews or anything. But I've lived
my life, as you know, pretty proudly Jewish, and it's
very rare that I've ever seen anything like that. So
we shouldn't live in fear. But I mean, if you
were in Manhattan today and you wanted to have a
big Honikah lighting somewhere, I mean, if you're Jewish, do
you feel safe? I don't know. I don't know. I
wouldn't feel that safe.
Speaker 2: So I want to move on to the brown thing.
But I just want to flag two things very quickly.
One was that early on we got video of a
man overpowering one of the terrorists and pointing his gun
at him. I think the terrorists later got away and
killed more people, but it was an impressive act of
bravery from that man. And then yesterday we got the
news and saw the videos and pictures of or of
this couple that saw someone put up an ISIS flag
on their car, and so they saw what was going on,
and it's an elderly couple, like in their sixties, and
they tackled one of the shooters and did their best,
and he murdered them both. And I just want to
say it is inspiring that Australians have that much courage,
even as they have you know, taken away their own
arms like they did that to themselves. But it was
impressive to see some courage. It was also awful to
see the two lady cops just sit there and like
not do anything, you know, what was going on.
Speaker 1: And the man who took the gun away from one
of the shooters was in ISLAMI you know, he was
a Muslim, and I saw.
Speaker 2: Some people saying he was marinit Christian, but maybe.
Speaker 1: I could be wrong, but whatever he is, it's just
incredible bravery. I mean, this is a horrible thing to say,
but maybe he should have shot that guy because he
just went back and got another gun and kept killing.
Speaker 2: Okay, so what were you saying about the about the
Brown shooting. I'm very frustrated with this one because there's
a weird lack of interest in this story and lack
of information. And you know, we know that a guy
came into a classroom shot up the classroom. Two people
were killed, including this woman who's the vice chair of
the Young Republicans at Brown, which is a very difficult
position to be in. And then a I think like
an engineering kid maybe from Virginia and then six others
were shot. They had a person of interest that they
detained and it turned out he had nothing. They released him.
And we don't know who it is. And this guy
is just on the run. What's going on?
Speaker 1: Yeah, they don't know who it is. They they released
a video of someone walking, but it seems to me
like they have no clue. And then the MIT professor
Sean and I, you know, who knows what that's about?
Speaker 2: In his home?
Speaker 1: In his home. Yeah. I don't want to rush and
say these are politically motivated. We don't know, but they're weird, right.
It seems unlikely that they're just this is just some
random criminality.
Speaker 2: So I hate that we you know, it does matter
what what's going on here?
Speaker 1: Is this?
Speaker 2: Is this someone with a mental break? Was this a
love interest like shooting? Was this a Islamist terrorism? Was
this left wing violence? Right wing violence?
Speaker 1: Like?
Speaker 2: What is it? Why were people targeted? Were they not targeted?
Why was that location chosen? I want to know all
about it, and I feel like it's been weird the
lack of information, including that I'm not even sure what
he said when he entered the door. You know that
one of the few pieces of information we had was
that he shouted something, but nobody could remember what it was.
And then I'm like, do we still not know what
he said? Which is weird.
Speaker 1: You know, people are at this saying he yelled a
la a bar and this and that. I don't know
if that is true at all, And I wish people
wouldn't spread those kinds of rumors, not because it's implausible
that someone would do that, but I just don't even
want to know the truth.
Speaker 2: Wait, tell I deal with it, right. But I was
talking with a friend about there was this interesting thing
where you've had a spate of murders where people get
away from them in a way that we hadn't seen
for a while. So if you think from like Columbine
to the Bondi Beach thing, you know, we're kind of
accustomed to people doing mass shootings as a form of suicide.
It's a form of like, you know, please notice my
suicide here kind of thing. But like from Luigimi and
June need to other people, you're just having people get
away or trying to get away. The guy who killed
Charlie Kirk got away for a few days, which suggests
a more political motivation. I mean, Islamist is different because
even though it's got a political connotation, they also have
their religious view that they are going to have a
nice time in heaven. They if they get martyred, by
going to the end until they're until they're shot and killed.
But these other things seem like they might be political.
I don't know.
Speaker 1: The scary thing is that it is actually quite easy
to kill someone in this country or in any country actually,
and that it happens so infrequently. I know, you know,
whatever shows that we're a very moral people. I know
it's out of style that say nice things about us,
but the increase in this sort of thing reminds me
of the books I read about the late sixties and
seventies when leftists were violent. A lot of this is
leftist violence. Most of it is leftist violence. Doesn't mean
that right wingers never do anything violent, or there are
no terrorism terrorists. I mean, yeah, I'm thinking about Oklahoma
City and so forth. There are horrible events, but most
of it is left wing in general. So, deary, I
guess I we shouldn't be speculating like that. The other
news story I want to talk about, I assume that
you would have something to say about is that we
now know. I believe Fox News reported this first. You
might correct me if I'm wrong. Okay, that the FBI
in twenty twenty two when they rated Marvel Lago, the
FBI did not believe they had probable cause to do it,
and basically the Biden DJ pressured them into doing it
or ordered them into doing it, which obviously speaks to
the political nature of the entire operation. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Now, I'm going to say that the emails show that
they were hell bent on rating mar A Lago for
a long time and that they were really pushing for it,
and they, you know, once again, had internal resistance. Some
of my im did we this is a little bit
of a tangent, but did we talk about how the
Federalists won the Grand Now Journalism Prize a couple of
weeks ago.
Speaker 1: I don't know, but congratulations.
Speaker 2: Thank you. It was a huge, you know award, and
our team that worked on the Russia collusion stuff this
past year won the award. And some of my stories
about that, my exclusive stories were that were showing how
at CIA and at O D and I there were
many people who were fighting the Obama spy team's efforts
to do the Russia collusion hoax, and they were siloed,
they were kept away from information, they were threatened with
job promotions, like all sorts of bad things, and it's
always nice when you see that there's internal resistance. So
once again, the Biden FBI was just like, we're going
to raid mar A Lago, and you had people being like,
I think this is a horrible idea, and we don't
have probable cause, and you know, all this stuff, and
they're like, we got to do it anyway. It turned
out to be probably the single biggest, a horrible thing
for the country to go through, to see the Biden
DOJ raiding mar A Lago. It was that thing that
even though the media were all out there saying like,
we think this is wonderful and there's totally good reason
for it, and they have probable cause and it's great,
you know, they were out there saying that, but most normal,
all normal Americans and even some who aren't normal, were like,
this is horrific. This is the worst thing I've ever seen.
This feels like a Banana Republic kind of thing. So
we have these emails now showing that they were really
pushing for it. It was part of a larger problem. So,
for example, I think, you know, President Obama has had
some disputes with the National Archives for what now like
nearly twenty years I guess how many years ago was
that he left twenty since twenty sixteen, Yeah, dealing with
his archival materials and their disputes. They go on for
a really long period of time. It's okay to have
disputes go on for a long period of time about
which are which papers go here, where they're whatever. And
in the case of the Trump situation, they were clearly
just like this is going to be the way we
go after Trump. So there was no forgiveness, there was
no leeway. One of the emails showed that they'd had
like an agreement on a date of May twenty fifth
or something for some exchange. But Trump's lawyer says, like
in a in correspondence, like we thought that was like
sort of like when we begin doing some of this stuff,
and the FBI DJ is instead just being like unforgiving
about everything. So that different treatment of Trump versus Clinton
and Obama and even you know, George W. Bush is
part of the story here. It was a huge mistake
on their part.
Speaker 1: Well so pertantly yeah, oh yeah, I mean it was
Banana Republic stuff. The in the in the correspondence, the
official is saying, this is old information. We need someone
new to tell us there's something there because maybe they
worked it out. We don't even know. Secondly says, this
is something the classification debate is something that first needs
to be worked out before we start rating next president's home. No,
you know, because these things happen with every president basically,
and that the classification needs to be sorted out and
without any new facts. We shouldn't be doing this also
because not only do the facts not support probable cause,
but if we do it this way the league, it
will be a tenuous case afterwards because this will all
be one day pointed out right. So if you want
to build you build a case. It takes a long time.
But of course everything was accelerated because they were only
building a case to try to stop Donald Trump from
being president. And that's why it happened, and that has
been out of Republic stuff. That's I hate the word
coup because it means something very specific, so I wish
it was a better word for it. But this is
like soft coup stuff, right, and there's no real way
around it. You can look at it this way. There
is no way this would happen to anyone else with
with responsible DOJ prosecutors who were actually trying to build
a real case against someone, which is completely within their purview.
They should do it if they wanted, they should do
it to everyone equally. There's gonna be a lot more
of this. I suspect of it in the next three years,
because there's the probably a lot there. But anyway, so Molly,
I thought, because we had a few things on tap
here on culture, we'd go culture now and probably a
little longer than usually. Yeah, I wanted to mention that
Rob Reiner passed away, didn't pass away. He was murdered
by his or his son is the alleged murderer. Obviously
he was unwell, and his wife as well. It's just
such a gruesome story. And I know he said a
lot of crazy stuff, Rob Reiner, but I had went
through his movies that he made, and a lot of
them are just mad, i'd say, in the last few years.
But as someone who grew up in the eighties and nineties,
I just want to read you this string of movies
and just think about how tonally different they are and
how they've been kind of embedded in the in like
the fabric of American culture. But this is Spinal Tap,
just a really funny movie. I love it. Then he
did the Short Thing, which is meh. But then he
did Stand by Me, The Princess Bride, when Harry met Sally,
Misery and a few good men. All of those movies
are so different, and all of them have become kind
of staples of I guess I'm going to show old
I'm now, but you know, the TBS New classic movie
that almost every one of our generation has seen, you know,
many many times. He was a talented guy, and I'm
it's it's just horrible how how he went. That's all.
Speaker 2: Well, yes, he I have such you know, different thoughts
on him. First of all, amazingly talented. Princess Bride is
one of my favorites. I know some people think it's
way overrated, but just an unbelievable string of hits and
you know, remarkable in that way. And I there's that
thing about don't if you don't have something nice to
say about the dead, don't say anything something. Is that right?
Or Is that okay something like that, Yeah, you know,
But personally, I'm very conflicted because Rob Reiner targeted the
Federalist for destruction, and it's hard to say nice things
about someone who was so bad on certain things. He
founded something called like the Committee to Invent Instigate Russia.
It was a major part of the Russia collusion hoax,
which we just won a big prize for our role
in destroying that hoax, but it was very, very difficult
to fight it. And Committee to Investigate Russia was something
he founded, he funded that he worked on with all
sorts of bad people like James Clapper, Max Boot, Evelyn Farcas,
Michael Hayden, Jeb Johnson, Michael More, Norm Ornstein, Leon Panetta,
Charlie Sikes, Clint Watts, David from people who were really
pushing the lie that Donald Trump had stolen the twenty
sixteen election by colluding with Russia, and anyone who had
enough courage to fight against that was roundly lambasted and lampooned.
And he kept that going, you know, for years, the
years that we were doing most of the work on that,
almost single handedly. And I genuinely appreciate his films. I
genuinely do. His political activism was very damaging to our
republic and it should not be commended in any way.
And I love hearing people say like what a nice
man he was and all that, and that's great. He
was not nice to my children. It was not nice
to me. It was really really bad to the people
at the Federalist and our families who suffered horribly from
the censorship and the targeting of our publication. So I'm sorry,
but I just have to mention that because I'm conflicted
on it. Sure I get that no matter what, no
matter how bad you are on you know, trying to
destroy me in my business and everything, you do, not
deserve to be murdered by your son. Yeah, to be
like to be very clear on that. And I think
what happened to him and his wife is just horrific
and like one of the worst, saddest, awful things.
Speaker 1: Conservatives are in a precarious position with these kind of
artistic types because sometimes they do things that you love,
and then you hear them speak about politics or the
world and this is more personal for you, but just
in general, you know, you hear them say things and
you're like, they're complete idiots on this like they don't
know anything. Most of them know nothing about those kind
of issues, but they feel because they're famous, that they
have some kind of moral right to lecture us about it.
And that is unfortunate. So yeah, it's difficult to separate that.
I'd have to do it with a lot of people
I like, unfortunately, but none have attacked me personally, have
come after me, except boy George once came after me
personally on Twitter. Other than that, yeah, it's terrible. Another
person who passed away, Norma Pothartz, passed away. He was
I think in his nineties ninety five or something.
Speaker 2: Like that, before a month's ninety fifth birthday.
Speaker 1: I would say a genius, I guess, or whatever that means.
It's just rare that you have someone who has such
knowledge about literary things, political things, historical things, and he
was just a special mind. I never met him, so
I don't I don't know him. I didn't know him personally,
but it's just a very impressive person. I think, you know,
he's editor of Commentary. He turned Commentary into what we'd
call a neoconservative magazine. But I don't think he was
a neoconservative. But in the real, true sense of the word.
Speaker 2: Yeah, sometimes people use the term neocon. Sometimes I'm one
of those people to refer to interventionist foreign policy. But
it's actually this you know, wonderfully broad intellectual movement that
had it's outset very little to do with foreign policy,
and you know, it's just a really interesting era where
people who had been on the left moved to the
right by strength of you know, facts and reason. So
he being a great example of that.
Speaker 1: The famous thing is they were mugged by leftist mug
by reality.
Speaker 2: Yeah, did you see that thing where I think it
was David Sedaris who got bit by a dog.
Speaker 1: I saw something about that, but I didn't look into it.
You know, too many dogs in Manhattan.
Speaker 2: I think is very upset that nobody cares because he
doesn't rank as high on the intersectionality as the homeless
person and their dog. Not enough to of course renounce
his left wing views, but it's still kind of interesting.
So did you. Yeah. In Midge Dector, his wife also amazing,
I mean, from a really amazing family. Midge and he
both staggering talents. His daughter, who's a very good American
Israeli journalist, Riuthy bloom and had really interesting things to
say well into his old age, you know, including that
one of the things that I found very comforting was
that he had some of the same pain in twenty sixteen.
He did not start out liking Donald Trump at all.
He was a Marco Rubio supporter, I think, and then
when Trump won the nomination, he began to be alarmed
by the never trumpsm of Bill Crystal, that would be
his friend, Irving Crystal's son, you know, and other people
like that who just kind of lost their minds. And
he spoke publicly about it, which I thought was interesting,
And as someone who went through that because of my
husband's work at the Weekly Standard, it was a very
painful thing, and knowing that he was going through it
just by not losing his mind to never trumpism was
comforting for me.
Speaker 1: Well. Yeah, I don't know if you ever read his
books about I think once called breaking Ranks and the
others once called ex friend and so they're just about
how the left left him. And he was friends with
like Alan Ginsburg and like you know, all these huge
you know, these big names in the sixties that were
no longer his friends when he became a.
Speaker 2: Conservative you say that ex friends line. So that's one
of his quotes. I began to be bothered by the
hatred that was building up against Trump from my soon
to be new set of ex friends. It really disgusted me.
I just thought it had no objective correlative. They called
him dishonorable, or opportunists or cowards. And this was done
by people like Brett Stevens, Bill Crystal and various others,
and I took offense at that, So that inclined me
to what I then became anti anti Trump. By the
time he finally won the nomination, I was sliding into
a pro Trump position, which has grown stronger and more
passionate as the time has gone on.
Speaker 1: Well, his last two books were World World War Four,
The Long Struggle against Islamo Fascism and Why are Jews Liberal?
Speaker 2: Which is which is really interesting. Actually, yeah, that's good.
Speaker 1: Just an incredible talent. And I'm sorry that he passed away,
but you know, he lived a very long life. If
I get to.
Speaker 2: Mitch died, Midge died only a couple of years ago, right, Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah. It's kind of weird and sad in a way.
But whenever something like this happened, someone's passes away who
I like, but I'm not like obsessed with. I get
obsessed about them for a while, and I go back
and read their stuff and really get to know about them.
And that goes honestly for Charlie Kirk as well, I
didn't know much about and then when I like him
much more now than I did when he was around,
And maybe that there's a lesson there that I should
be more open minded towards people, or I want to
look into what they're saying.
Speaker 2: Thinking of lessons, I think about how I'm so glad
I grew up Lutheran for a million reasons. But one
of the things is I wasn't always in a dominant
religious setting. Actually, like my early childhood, I really was.
We were in a small country church where everybody I
knew basically was part of the church. But then when
I moved into a larger environment and I had to
deal with how a lot of people didn't share my views,
whether they were you know, fellow Christians who had slight
differences or different religions with much greater differences, and learning
how to explain my views and understand that not everybody
would be with me. That I think is a really
important skill to teach people. And I'm thinking about this
because like he went through the ex friends thing in
young age, so he was able to handle it better
in older age. I think my husband and I have
like strong church ties, which helped us whether the very
difficult time when everybody was being like really mean if
you didn't join you know, their never Trump movement and stuff,
And so I think we should think also as parents
how to help our kids have opportunities to learn how
to not be in Jordy positions or how to stand
strong even if it cost them a friend or you know,
things like that.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean, when anyone does ask me about writing
or being a columnist or something, I say, you know,
if you're just going to say you know, occasionally if
you have a different opinion, you have to be brave
and and talk about it and learn to deal with it,
because if you're just saying what everyone expects of you
all the time, you can be pretty boring, I think.
Speaker 2: But yeah, so, okay, so have you watched anything, seen anything,
read anything.
Speaker 1: I have not really watched something, but I wanted to
maybe quickly go through you. The Federalists released its notable
books and I participated, so maybe I could go through
those books do it. I don't think I have anything
that I actually watch, so you guys are kind enough
to still let me give my favorites on there. And
I noticed that mine is way overdone and the longest
one with the most things. I need to like prepare
this back. But here are my notable books, and I
don't you know there and they're not all from last year.
But there's a book called Jews Versus Rome to Centuries
of Rebellions against the world's mightiest Empire, and it's by
Barry Strauss, has written many good books about ancient history.
I would say this is very interesting because not just
because of the rebellion of Jews and it tells you about,
you know, how the diasporas stored and all that, but
that it also coincides with the rise of Christianity and
the height of Rome, and it's super interesting. And if
you're into Rome, as most men apparently are according to Poling,
there's a book called Children of Mars, the Origins of
the of Rome's Empire, which is very interesting, counterintuitive, I
think in many ways. Another book I loved is well,
I should get so excited about it, but Hitler's people.
It's called The Face of the Third Right by Richard Evans.
It has biographies of all the people who kind of
the generals, you know, but also the people who kind
of created the esthetic and cultural life, like Albert Speer
and Julius Strike Streicher and all those people. I'm going
to skip a few these. It's Mark Twain. I think
I mentioned that on the show. I don't know that
book's like fifty pounds to lift, but it's amazing. Yeah,
The Maniac. I think I mentioned. There was a Woody
Allen one and a bunch of books about music. It's
my guilty pleasure, and I won't read all of them,
but one of them that you might be interested in
others is called Burning Down the House, talking heads in
the New York scene that transformed rock. Yeah, And one
of the best rock bios I've read recently was called
Autonomy Portrait of a Buscock by Steve Diggol who's in
the buscos he's only remaining living member. And that is
it for me. Also, it's Hanukkah right now, and I
just want to remind everyone that it's not a holiday
about lights or miracles. That part was added two centuries
after the fact. It's a story of a rebellion against
interlopers and traders to the national identity of Judaism. That
is my lost cause, trying to convince people to celebrate
it for what it is.
Speaker 2: I love that you do that, so huh, how how
about you? Okay? I watched The Princess Switch, which is
an old movie with Vanessa Hutchins. Watched it with a
girlfriend and one of the kids, and that was, you know,
it was better than adequate. We had sat down and
we had seen a tweet where someone said the Nutflix
holiday movies are surprisingly good with good character development this year.
So we started one and it was horrifically bad. It
was about a woman pretending to be Santa so she
would have the money to send her kid to snowboarding school.
It was so like the lighting, the acting, the script,
everything was awful.
Speaker 1: It reminds me I did watch a Christmas movie that's similar, Noel,
Did you hear about this one? Is Anna Kendrick and
Bill Hayder.
Speaker 3: Oh?
Speaker 2: I like those people. Yeah, you've already said it's a
far better film than what we began watch.
Speaker 1: Anna Kendrick is already two words better than that film.
Speaker 2: Okay, but it wasn't very good or what.
Speaker 1: I don't know. I don't want to give it away.
Speaker 2: So I saw Hamnett last night, which is getting absolutely
rave reviews, and I did not love it, I will admit.
I mean, first of all, it's gonna win like every Oscar,
so just be prepared for that. I assume I don't
know any of the names of the people involved, so
forgive me. The guy who plays William Shakespeare remarkably well done.
The guy the woman who plays his wife, who in
the movie is called Agnes I guess that's her real
name instead of Anne Hathaway. I did not like it.
I thought, first of all, you know how you can
listen to podcasts at one and a half time speed
more quickly this is yours. I wanted this movie to
be at two time speed. I was just like, yeah,
got it, got it, totally got it. I'm here, I'm
with you, Okay, let's can we move on? So sorry.
The movie is about how Hamlet was written coming out
of the grief of William Shakespeare and his wife losing
their son Hamnett at a young age, and how they
process that grief and it's an interesting look at how
art helps us process grief.
Speaker 1: Sounds awful, sorry, child death artistry helping us? Okay, can
I say I'm such I'm such a troglodyte that when
I put this up it said Anne Hathaway, I'm like, oh,
Anne Hathaway is in it? The actress?
Speaker 2: Sorry, wait did I just say Anne Hathaway?
Speaker 1: What is it you did? But correctly, h it is.
It's Jesse Buckley and Paul Mescal.
Speaker 2: Okay, Paul Mescal is very good, and the kid who
plays Hamnet is stunning, like great actually both as a
little kid. And then and then sorry so ed, then
the Hamlet guy who plays okay, so way too long. Also,
they lean so heavily into paganism that it's just kind
of lost me emotionally, So William Shakespeare. Mary's a witch
from the forest, and she's a witch. She's like a
full blooded witch who hates Christianity. So I'm like, okay, well,
hard for me to care. Like she's trying to keep
her children alive using spells and potions, and I'm like,
I just okay, great. And then the thing that enraged
me more than anything is that the end she's in
grief and the marriage is hurting because of the grief.
And she shows up at the Globe Theater. Well, she
doesn't know anything that's going on, but apparently her husband
writes plays, I guess, and so she figures this out
and she goes to the Globe Theater and she has
never seen a play before, and so she is very
confused at why her son is on stage, even though
Hamnett dies as a young child and Hamlet is a
young man. She's like, what sorcery is this? How does
my son on stage? And she's like, why is he
saying words? No? And she's like disrupting the whole play,
And I'm like, what is going on? Like she's married
to William Shakespeare and she doesn't know how plays work,
even though her kids did a play for her earlier
in the film. And I think I'm the only person
in America who feels this way because it's got literally
like one hundred percent rating on runned.
Speaker 1: I never heard of it. Did you go to a
movie theater to see this?
Speaker 2: I did?
Speaker 1: Okay, all right, Oh so that's a no from you.
I should not watch it, That's what I'm getting. Don't worry.
I would never watch that movie in a million years.
Speaker 2: I'm sure we will get angry email about how I'm
unable to understand the beauty of this film. It's just also,
like all of William Shakespeare's gift it comes from her.
She the woman, the great woman.
Speaker 1: Is she because she's amused or because she actually does
the work or oh no, no, no.
Speaker 2: Not that she does the work, but like she's the
one who brings this out of him and he never
would have known or done. You know. It's like, well,
maybe maybe I understand how that works, but like I'm
just kind of done with the feminism. You said something
about feminism.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I was just saying that that Noel movie was
a little bit like that. It you know what, I
don't care. Here's a spoiler, like she's the real Santa Claus.
She has the gift, not because it's hereditary and Bill
Hater is supposed to be it. And it had some
funny moments when I'm just so tired. Maybe she is.
You know, I don't know who Santa Claus is, but like,
do I have to be hit over the head with
this every movie? You know? That's all I'm saying.
Speaker 2: There was that viral story in compact by the guy
who was talking about how white millennial men got totally
screwed and in all job fields that everyone's been talking about.
Did you read that or no.
Speaker 1: I read about it. I haven't had the chance to
read it yet. Yeah, I thought of the DII programs.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I thought it was well done. The one
thing that's a little bit annoying is how how it's
like being written now as if everybody didn't know about it,
and that they just didn't have the courage to say
more about it at the time.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And DII is is is evil because it judges
people by immutable characteristics like their skin color and how
they're born. I just I just think there's nothing good
that could ever come out of it, you know.
Speaker 2: And I'll just say on that note, there was an
excellent book that came out last year by Jeremy Carl
called The Unprotected Class, How anti white racism is tearing
America apart. Very well researched, very well done, looking at
the institutional racism that we have and had like in
recent years against white men in particular, you know, just
a real concerted effort to harm white men, and how
everyone just kind of went along with it. You had
corporations just bragging about it and acting like they were
good people for being sexist and racist, and it's just awful.
But you do have to have courage to speak against it.
And that was the big flaw with the Compact pieces.
He's sort of unwilling to speak against the people who
really perpetrate this. He gets mad at like older generations
of white men because they didn't suffer as much your generation.
But really, older generations of white men aren't the ones
who put this racist system into place. It was all
these left wingers, and.
Speaker 1: Some of them were white men. Yeah, I mean because
white because when people throw me in with white men,
it makes me. It just gets me so angry because
I don't even like most white men, or agree with
most white men, or have the same background as most
white men.
Speaker 2: From a friend who listens to this podcast, may I
also make one stylistic observation that is fairly ubiquitous in
the press and media. Why do people refer to my
demographic as quote white guy's quote always the casual white guy,
not the black man or Japanese man that we accord
to every one else. My theory is that guy makes
it sound lighter, like one is not insisting about the
prerogative prerogatives of the white man with all the baggage.
But I find it subtly demeaning to be referred to
repeatedly as a guy.
Speaker 1: What do you think about I noticed that that's fair.
I don't like it at all. I'm not saying that
there isn't racism against or the DEI doesn't exclude and
target white men. I think it does. But being white
is not a cultural distinction. I'm sorry, it's not okay.
I think that's it. If you would like to reach
the show, you can. Sorry, yeah, no, go on.
Speaker 2: Can we just do one more thing?
Speaker 1: I think we do this every week where I go
get it, get all revved up to do the email fart. No, no,
I want to tell me.
Speaker 2: I just want to say that, apart from my princess
switch and hamnet thing that I hadn't seen gotten to
spend time this weekend watching TV or movies because of
all the Christmas parties here in town. Do you go
to Christmas parties.
Speaker 1: Where just I went to a local in America, not
in DC, to a local one? Yeah one?
Speaker 2: And Mark and I do not like to go out
at all. We're very comfortable being at home. And we've
had this where we're going to like two or three
parties a night, and.
Speaker 1: Like everyone has them, everyone has them.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like last week we went to one organization's party,
and then we went to a different organizations party, and
then we went to a bar after that organization's party.
By the way, Oliver Stone was there. WHOA, I bet
you would have loved that.
Speaker 1: I'd like to speak to him of that some stuff.
Now let me ask you. Can you tell us what
you can't tell us what that organization was?
Speaker 2: I don't know if I should.
Speaker 1: Okay, Like I just I'm curious where. I'll ask you after.
But I'm curious, like where he would show up, you know.
Speaker 2: Oh well, I think that's more of a function of
him being at the same hotel as.
Speaker 1: The Oh okay, got it? Got it?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Because yeah, in this case, it was ADF, the Alliance
Defending Freedom. And I do not think Oliver Stone happened
to be I think it just he happened to be there.
But one journalist I know told Oliver Stone that his
that he was his girlfriend's favorite conspiracy theorist.
Speaker 1: Something to be proud, notice to be proud of.
Speaker 2: And then like the next night, as that story might indicate,
I didn't make the best decisions that night, including failing
to eat any anything at all. So the next night
we got to go to jd Vance's Christmas party, which
was so much fun. I mean, I'm sure they do
these like every night for different groups of people. It
was a great group of people. Much of the cabinet
was there, you know, just like good friends and great food.
They have like designed there's like a thing happening right
now that's Ralph Lauren Christmas style. And it was very
much in Ralph Lauren Christmas style and good food. And
went to a colleague at Foxes Christmas party and that
was really really fun. And I'm glad we got out
of the house for those because, yeah, we had a
good time.
Speaker 1: It's good to get out. I hate going out, as
you know, to anything. On the occasions that I do
usually prompted by other people in this house and I
go out, I'm usually happy I did and that I
got to speak to people. And I did go to
one Christmas event. I'm not important enough to be invited
to like jd Vance's Christmas party, And even if I
was important enough. JD. Van's probably wouldn't invite me or
whoever invites people. But I'm happy that you went and
you got to meet and see everyone. It's important for
the show. Did you mention the show to everyone? The podcast?
Speaker 2: So at the advance At the vance party, there were
several senators, and one of them had already told me
that he listens to our show, but really reiterated it again.
I didn't have much to say.
Speaker 1: About it, but you know, I hope I've insulted him.
Speaker 2: Oh I don't think so.
Speaker 1: Oh okay, but I have to work on it. So
now we'll give the email address, which is radio at
the Federalist dot com. Please do email and we will
be back next week. Until then,