Speaker 1: Welcome back, everyone to a new episode of Your Wrong
with Molly Henmingway, editor in chief of The Federalist, and
David Harsani, senior writer at The Washington Examiner. If you'd
like to email us, please do so at radio at
the Federalist dot com. We love to hear from you. Molly.
You're in Colorado this week at home state. Is it
for pleasure or work?
Speaker 2: It's for the funeral of my uncle. I mentioned a
couple of weeks ago to that side, so it's just
a quick visit out here for that.
Speaker 1: Sorry to hear condolences. Let's jump in and start talking
about the National Guard being deployed to the war zone.
The dystopian hellhole of Washington, DC. What do you make
of it? Like, obviously I think that you know, I
don't live in DC anymore, but I do visit on occasion,
and to me, it does seem like the place has
gone downhill, starting with Union Station, which was once a
pretty vibrant sort of place. I think bookstores and all
kinds of shops and a lot of people around to
a place now that's kind of like a little scary sometimes,
especially if you're there certain parts a day. But then
even when you go outside, just it's just not the
same place. I don't think. I don't talk about crime
stats in a minute, but anyway, do you think it
needs the National Guard to be fixed? What do you
make of the whole thing?
Speaker 2: So I have lived. I lived in DC proper for
fifteen years, and then we moved just outside of DC,
and I still work in d C most days. And
one of the things I thought was really interesting is
that when I first moved to Washington, d C. I
lived at tenth and D Northeast in Washington and there
was a drug dealer who lived on my block, and
he also was a pimp. And let me just back
up because to me this is somehow relevant. But like
the day we moved in, my roommate and I were
asked by the police if they could rent out the
basement of our they could sublet the basement of our
place so that they could monitor the drug dealer. And
I did not know much about how crime works, but
we knew enough to say no to that. And the
drug dealer was a colorful person on the block, but
like always took care of people who did not snitch.
I'm not saying I wouldn't have snitched if I'd seen
something actually wrong, but he was pretty discreet anyway. That summer,
the National Guard were at the corner of our house
every single weekend, and it became kind of funny for
us and my roommate and I have pictures of ourselves
wearing like really short skirts, sitting on the military vehicles
with the cute National guardsmen and we would just like
go talk to them because they were young men. And
so the idea that everyone's like freaking out about this
right now, I'm like, we've done this before, and by
the way, we've done it before, and it's had positive results.
Like the early aughts to mid aughts of the two thousands,
like those were very fun years, I think, to be
out in some ways, like it just seemed like we
got a handle on the crime. And when I was
first married and living in DC, our house was robbed
and we came home and you know, so like things
were stolen, including my camera that had my pictures of
my honeymoon on it that I had yet to get developed,
and my computer and my laptop some other things like that,
and the cops first of all had no interest in
coming over. Finally, someone came over, and then their recommendation
to us was that we take our time and go
to pawnshops and see if anyone had sold the computers
and camera there. So that wasn't great. And then I mean,
I just want to say I genuinely loved a lot
of what I experienced living in Washington, DC. I always
lived on Capitol Hill. It was a nice, nice ish neighborhood,
had good friends, loved the walkability, very easy with our
young children. And then my husband once intervened. Some youths
were trying to harass someone coming out of the Metro
and my husband tried to intervene to help, and three
kids were attacking him and I think one of them
broke his tooth or something. And again, like the police
had zero interest in any of this. They just never
cared about anything unless it was like a full on murder.
My friend Caroline had her car stolen seven times, my
husband had his car stolen two times. Anyway, that was
like in the good days of DC. And when I
see all these reporters being like DC is the most idyllic,
eden like paradise that ever existed, and I'm like, I
am so happy for you that you get to experience
that because I wasn't making the money to live in
Georgetown or wherever you know all the wealthy white people live,
and so I never got that experience. I got like
the car car getting stolen experience.
Speaker 1: Yeah, when I lived in DC, I lived up in
like Cleveland Park, I guess, or Cathedral Heights, I don't
know what it's called. But it was pretty nice up there,
and I didn't really have to worry much about crime.
But I will say that I wanted to say something
about this that maybe is not what people like to hear.
But growing up in New York, I used to go
into the city all the time, and it was during
the late eighties and nineties when things were at their worst,
like the murder I had the high and murder rate,
which like three thousand murders or something happened like nineteen
one or something like that, And it was a lot
of the risk factor and the grittiness added to the appeal.
When you're a young person, right, there's a kind of
anarchy of the city that you like. But if you
were living there and you have kids and stuff like that,
quality of life matter is far more than that aspect
of things, and New York got a lot better. I
think they're also probably going somewhat downhill.
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 2: People have been complaining about New York all the time,
and every time I'm up there for Fox. You know,
here from people don't take the subway and I do.
And I'm not saying I haven't had some bad stuff
happen up there too, Like a couple of years ago,
I remember coming out of the subway and there was
just a man covered in blood threatening people, and I
was like, this is not good.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: I'm not saying I haven't seen stuff like that, or
that their homeless situation isn't very bad, or that they
don't also have bad crime. But I'm far more scared
to just be walking around casually in DC than New York,
which I do. You know, I feel fine doing.
Speaker 1: Wait, when you live in a city, you sort of
get used to that and you know what to do
or where to be blocks not to walk DC that
the violence used to be really compartmentalized, I guess to
certain areas. I don't know if that's still the case,
but anyway, it's clear to me, Like so it's everyone
points out, Hey, the crime where it's down. Violent crime
is down in DC, murders down in DC. But I
think there are other aspects of this. It's like, it's
not just the murder, right, it's being harassed by you know,
mentally ill people for instance, or that there's a homelessness problem,
there's quality of life ish or the litter I see
now that wasn't there before. It's just like indicative of
something that's going on. It doesn't mean, you know, there's murder.
It's not the only I think statistic that matters. And
in another way, when I tell people, and I have
made this argument, like when they complain about city life
that it used to be far worse in the seventies
or far worse in the nineties, it doesn't really matter
to someone today, Right, That doesn't mean that there should
be any of that going on in your city, and
it's completely legitimate to complain about it and want it fixed.
And I used to think this about in New York
as well. When Rudy Giuliani before nine to eleven, you know,
his poll numbers were always you know, really low. But
I think secretly even the liberals who lived in the
city were happy that it was being cleaned up and
the broken windows policy was in place. So I don't
know if like the National Guard is the way to
fix this that maybe just temporarily, but I would love
for it not to be the answer.
Speaker 2: I think part of the problem is that Mariel Bowser,
our mayor, is a proponent of protecting criminals more than
their victims. And we saw this mostly happen during the
BLM riots, which is funny. Do you remember that Trump
was blamed for tear gassing BLM rioters at the White House. Yeah,
by the way, he was blamed for this in part
by Muriel Bowser, who opened up the Democratic National Convention
in twenty twenty by saying it when in fact she
was the one who had tear gas BLM writers. But
she was also the person who painted the like defund
the police BLM stuff out in front of the White House.
She was all in on all of the worst ideas
of the BLM movement, and she continues to care more
about again the criminals and protecting them and making sure
they're okay then worrying about the crimes that are being committed.
And this is a particular issue in DC because I think,
unlike a lot of cities, or compared to a lot
of cities, we have far more youth crime, which is
difficult to deal with, right, youth crime because people aren't
you know, there's like less that you can do to
go Like there was a couple of years ago, I
think at fourteen year old girl and a fifteen year
old girl who murdered a man while carjacking. I know
they're like, just don't worry about carjacking. Well, carjacking can
be horrible. They murdered an immigrant man who was an
uber driver and it was horrible. But they're youth, so
what can you really do? And according to these people,
the police union has been screaming from the rooftops that
they're not getting the support they need. They're actually in
favor of this national Guard move. You also have had things,
by the way, because you mentioned crime stats and how
people feel, and I do think that's actually important. A
lot of things are not recorded as crimes. Like I
say this as someone who has tried to report crimes,
Like when I first moved to d C and had
my car broken into, I reported it, but they didn't
record it, you know what I mean? Like what is
a crime stat and just I think it was this
year or late last year one of the police commanders
in d C was fired for juking the stats, and
the police union's defense was they all do it. So
I would encourage everyone to not just autistically hold to
police stats as a determination of what's going on in
a city.
Speaker 1: Well, yeah, because if you're not arresting people that doesn't
show up in stats, it doesn't mean there is no criminality, right,
And it seems to me, at least since COVID, there's
kind of been something of a societal breakdown where you
have a lot of especially in DC. I hear I
don't live there, but that there are gangs of youths
sort of running around knowing that they're not going to
be arrested, harassing people, are engaging in petty crimes and
stuff like that, which in the long run might lead
to more serious crimes by those young people, right if
they're left unchecked to act that way.
Speaker 2: So I just want to take a step back to
and talk about the response to restoring order in the country.
And for me, this does go back to twenty twenty
when the BLM riots start and I was horrified by
how people responded to it, as if as if it
were fine or justified or The er example of this
is when Tom Cotton says that we should restore order
in our nation's great cities. The New York Times practically
imploded over it. They could not believe that they published
someone saying something that a majority of Americans agreed with
that the National Guard should be brought into restore order.
Now you can disagree with that, that's fine. I don't
you know. I'm not saying that it's the right position
or not. It's a majority of America and help position,
and for good reason, our cities were in flames DC.
I saw this reporter saying, the only crime I've ever
witnessed in Washington, DC have been done January sixth, when
Grandma's violently entered the Capitol. And I'm like, so, you
weren't here in twenty twenty when the whole city was
on fire, you know, when sixty cops were attacked by
BLM writers and had to go to the hospital, or when, yeah,
when they set Saint John's Church across from the White
House on fire, in addition to all sorts of other buildings,
and it was just chaos and like graffiti everywhere, and
windows smashed and looting like you weren't here for that,
and that was happening in every city. And when people
wanted to restore order, they were bullied against it by
these you know. And again we have to remember corporations
spent one hundred billion dollars to support BLM. It was
very difficult to do anything right because corporations, our media,
and the BLM movement itself were all working in tandem
with the Democrat Party actually too and some Republicans like
Mitt Romney to make it so that you couldn't do
anything to restore order. And our cities really deteriorated from
that and the COVID shutdowns. And if you want to
be a great country, you have to you have to
have good cities, I think, and our cities have been
historically great, and some of them still are. And I
want people to care and I want them to not
be held hostage by these left wing people who have
horrible ideas about governance.
Speaker 1: And just a quick note on how cities will manipulate
their crime statistics is that quite often in DC and
in New York now and elsewhere, we have like the
source prosecutors, they will all the often downgrade felonies to
misdemeanors to make them seem non violent. And if you
do that, the crime stats are going to look a
lot better. I just want to also go back to
another thing you said about BLM and how the New
York Times basically had a break down when con wrote
that column. Let's not forget that. What's her name, Hannah Nicole,
Hannah Jones. I think she said that destroying property was
not violence. I'm saying stealing was not violence. Things that
could be replaced or not violence. And I don't like
talking about myself, but growing up, my dad at a
store and was robbed, right and they took everything. It
was a jewelry shop by gunpoint, right, So he lost
a lot of property that had long, long term effects
for him. He had worked years to build that up.
Do I'm saying, like the people who pretend that destruction
of property is nothing because there's insurance or whatever, these
basically socialists say this quite often don't understand and how
how that can affect a family, communities, things like that.
So that was really offensive to me because rioting is
violence and it doesn't matter if there's insurance or not.
But you're right, I said that the COVID is when
the societal breakdown started. But BLM, I mean there were
large parts of cities that were burnt down in Saint
Louis and elsewhere where small business owners were truly affected
and hurt. And it seems like since then things haven't
gotten no one. The cities haven't recovered from those riots,
which were the most expensive per capita riots to happen
in the United States ever, more than the sixties riots,
more than any other riot.
Speaker 2: And yet it's millions of dollars in damage, and again
corporations rewarded that with billions of dollars of support. I
love this. By the way, I just want to do
a side note. All these corporations are now like meeting
with conservatives or meeting with other people saying like, Okay,
we think maybe we got a little out over our
skis on some previous stuff when we joined forces to
finance the people who seek your destruction, and so we
just wanted to say sorry. And so Claremont Institute has
a great database that shows what each corporation gave to
BLM and associated movements. By the way, the number one
thing BLM was trying to raise money for interestingly enough, transactivism.
Trans people are always thinking, oh, black people being killed
by police is the big issue of our time. Even
night they were doing prolema stuff and transactivism and corporations
were like, could we give you one hundred million dollars please?
Would that appease you? Anyway? I go and I look
in their database and I see how much they have
given to left wing causes that seek the country's destruction,
and I'm like, okay, so that was the amount that
you now regret, So what are you going to give
to the other side? And they're like, oh, we weren't
talking about money. We thought that if we met with
you and said sorry, that that would be sufficient. So offensive.
Speaker 1: It was like the Major League Baseball having its All
Star Game in Atlanta, like nothing happened this year?
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Speaker 1: It should be noted as well, that the entire BLM
movement was tethered to a string of fictitious racist events,
none of which actually happened in the way that they
had been depicted by either the media or activists.
Speaker 2: Right, So the whole BLM movement started in Ferguson, Missouri,
when there was the guy who we were told had
said hands up, don't shoot, and that he was this
innocent victim of police violence. And then the real story
turned out that he'd been on a campaign of violence.
He never said hands up, don't shoot, and he reached
for the gun of the police officer, at which point
he got shot. So that type of fictitious story, Is
that what you're saying?
Speaker 1: Yeah, and many others similar similar Okay, well we'll see
what happens. I think the National Guard is a bit
of theater, to be honest with you. I just don't
think that that's a real way to fix the city
in the long term. And I wonder if there needs
to be more done, you know, with DC in the
sense of taking away more of its power. It has
never been able to govern itself. I mean, it had
a crack addicted, prostitute chasing mayor, which is fine, I guess,
but then you realized it by far he came out
of jail, is weird.
Speaker 2: When I first moved to d C, he was mayor again,
I think, or he was elected soon thereafter, so he'd
already been to prison. He was set up. He had
a famous that famous quote, and yeah, I thought that
he was an example of everything that was bad with
democratic governance. And then I realized he was the best
mayor we ever had. Probably there was another good one
in the early aughts, and he she I can't even
remember what was. I just remember they were like good
and they were quickly run out of town because their
whole thing was that they were going to clean up
our schools. And DC spends more money per student than
any other school district in the country with the worst
or among the worst results, and the mayor was trying
to clean that up. And so the teachers' union's all
organized to oust him. Remember it was Michelle, Michelle Ree I.
Speaker 1: Think was the She was the person. Yeah, so I
just hit me. I saw a reporter. I don't I
remember the reporter on the specific numbers, But essentially the
argument was that DC had been losing money because of
Congress had taken away some of its funding, right, and
that that was the reason that they couldn't police correctly
in all of that. Meanwhile, so I look into this,
and the number per cap at a spending of through
taxation and other programs and everything of a DC resident
is higher than almost any city on Earth, like it
is through the roof. So that excuse is just completely preposterous.
Let's talk about Let's switch topics, if you're ready, and
talk about Donald trump meeting of Vladimir Putin in Alaska. Now,
I'm going to challenge you slightly here and say that
we did a lot of talking about Biden's policy towards
Ukraine and how we were enmeshed in this war and
how we were part of this war. But doesn't seem
to me in many ways, Donald Trump has been pretty
hard on Putin, and he has not extricated us from
this in any way really. I mean occasionally you'll hear
them say something thing. I think Vance the other day
said we can't fund it forever or something along those lines.
So how do you feel about how Trump has sort
of handled the Ukrainian situation from your perspective?
Speaker 2: So when during the campaign he said that that war
would end within twenty four hours of him taking office,
and we are more than six months in, right, and
it is it's still going on. So it's you know, yes,
I understand a lot of other things have been done
in the first two hundred days of this administration, and well, yeah,
it'll be it'll be six months here soon, not yet.
I guess that a lot has been done that a
lot of global unrest has probably been viewed as more
time sensitive. But he was pretty clear in his campaign
that he would work to achieve a like a negotiated
settlement very quickly. Now, you had that whole situation where
Zelenski blew it up quite publicly in the White House
when he was fighting with the White House. But I
think they still gave more stuff afterwards. You've seen a
little bit of pullback, well or even you know, more
than a little from some people who are in the administration,
but it's still going. So having said all that, and
with the disappointment that it's still all going at great
cost and expense of lives and taxpayer dollars and all
that and destruction of Ukraine, I am glad that they
are talking like they're going to be talking on Friday.
That's good. It's always good to talk. I'm not one
of those people who's like, it's bad to talk to
your enemies. It's good to talk find out more liked
when Reagan did it. You know, you don't know how
these things are going to go always, and it might
not be that you get resolution immediately or soon thereafter,
but it will put hopefully people on the paths resolution.
And also, I think another problem is that during the
first administration they're worse. Some meetings that involved Putin and
Trump and CNN and the Washington Post the New York
Times made those meetings be about the fake and delusional
Russia collusion hoax. So you could not really have meaningful,
peaceful discussions between Trump and Putin without that hysteria. And
now that only the most bitter clingers hold to that,
I think they can actually just meet as world leaders
without all of that distraction.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that's all fine. It just if you
meet with someone. Obviously, when world leaders meet, expectations are high,
and he called it a feeling out meeting. It just
seems like to me that Putin has said things that
tells me that he's not ready for any kind of
real negotiation. He says he wants, you know, he'll stop
the war tomorrow if he gets east pieces of eastern Ukraine,
and maybe that's going to be the end of this.
But I think that only becomes the end of it
if we stop funding Ukraine and it collapses in this war,
which did not happen so far. So I don't know.
I mean, I don't know what to make of but
I think it's cool that they're meeting in Alaska. I
don't know why, you know, I like these like high
level meetings meeting in Iceland, with Reagan meeting in Alaska here,
so it'll be interesting.
Speaker 2: I was just thinking how cool it is that we
have Alaska. I mean, it is so close to Russia.
It's just a couple miles away from from Russia. There's
that there are those two islands that are right across
from each other. We hold one and they hold the
bigger one. So I do also like that it's a
meeting in Alaska, a great state. I do think that
this is another thing where what we were told about
this war being false hurts negotiations. The idea that Russia
and Ukraine would have a conflict if they didn't get
along well is not something that we were all surprised
by when Russia invaded Ukraine. This was something that during
the George W. George H. W. Bush administration, you had
really great minds talking about how Ukraine absolutely had to
be neutral between the West and Russia or else it
would get invaded by Russia. And that's because the eastern
part in particular of Ukraine, which is historically, you know,
Russian speaking and all that is also the means by
which the shipping routes work for Russia from US much
of the world. And so when Russia invades and everyone's
aghast and they start saying stuff like Zelensky's going to
win this war, which by the way, I've literally never
heard a single person explain how that would happen, and
I've asked them all. Then they're like, if we just
give them enough money for enough years, they're going to
win the war, which was just not even really true,
because Russia has all these other means by which it
can survive and in some cases even thrive. And so
I think the more honest people are about the high
probability that a settlement will involve Russia keeping the areas
that it has conquered and held for years, I think,
or coming up with some explanation that works beyond that
that's not literally every man, woman and child in America
goes to nuclear war against Russia, Like that's what doesn't
seem like a reason. But if someone has a reasonable
solution other than that, they should probably have mentioned it
before it did.
Speaker 1: Well, I mean the way you frame that is like
they're both at fault for this equally. Just because as
Russian speakers in Ukraine doesn't mean that Russians get to invade.
There's a large Hungarian population in Romania doesn't mean Hunger
gets Sentanks in and take it. And the way they win.
It's like saying Vietnam can't win the Vietnam War because
the United States has nuclear weapons. Well, it can be
a stalemate for long enough that Russia gets sick and
tired of losing treasure and people and all that. Now,
obviously Ukraine can't do that on its own, either could Vietnam.
And it's you know, you need China, you need Russia,
et cetera. But I'm just saying, I mean they could
be a stalemate for another ten years. I mean that
could happen Putin.
Speaker 2: Yeah, actually that I should I should say that is
probably the best argument of the people who want to
have a long war there would be if we do
it long enough, and we finance it for long enough,
it could weaken Putin and he could get replaced with
someone else who we think would be better.
Speaker 1: I don't know, you make me laugh. You're so funny.
People who want a long war there who started this
war Putin did. I don't want a long war there,
but I also don't want to let him just do
what he wants to do in Europe. I don't want
a long war. I wish it would stop tomorrow and
Putin would withdraw US troops. I don't know how well,
since this is going to be fixed, Ukraine's just going
to have to give up a large chunk of his
country because there's a Russian minority which was sent there
to colonize that area by the Russians. They already have crimea,
so they has shipping.
Speaker 2: Okay, that's like okay. First off, I never said that
because people speak Russian and Ukraine that Putin gets to
invade Ukraine. I never said that. What I said was
that George H. W. Bush's policy advisors warned that Ukraine
had to stay neutral or they would risk invasion from Russia.
That's not saying that Russia should invade. That's not saying
it's a good idea for Russia to invade. I really
do not think these people wanted Russia to invade. In fact,
I think that's why they were saying, we have to
be careful with how we manage this. And I actually
don't totally blame Ukraine, although it is a very corrupt
country and everyone knew that and admitted that until a
couple of years ago. I blame the United States for
how they made Ukraine be like a vassal for the
purpose of poking at Russia. I don't think that was
a good idea. I think the decades of that have
shown to be a failure. I really do not like
all of the stuff that our deep states deep state
agencies were doing there, all the money that we have
funneled through there, all the way that our elites have
had family members make money there, Hunter Biden being a
great example. I think it's all very very corrupt, and
it has led to this horrific tragedy, which is a
lot of people being killed, a great architecture being destroyed,
institutions being destroyed. We've now had years of no freedom
of religion, no freedom of speech, no elections. Like it's
a very bad situation, and it grieves me, Like the
whole thing is I wish people cared more about all
the destruction, all the loss of men, what that does
to family formation, Like war is not cheerful, and we
shouldn't just act like it's no big deal. So even
that what I'm admitting, it's a good argument. If we
do this long enough, then we can weaken Russian and
we can weaken Putin, and we can get someone in
we like more than Putin. But even that comes at
a very very very high cost, not not even mentioning
the taxpayer funding, Like it's a really big cost.
Speaker 1: War always has a high cost, right, sometimes it needs
to be fought. I mean everyone does this. I mean,
a lot of people do this. They blame Ukraine. We
meddled Western agents. These medaled there, but the Russians were
meddling too, and the Russians had corrupt governments installed in
Ukraine as well, and that I think had the West
worried in a lot of ways. It wasn't like it's
one side's fault there. Did Ukraine give up its nuclear
weapons after the fall Soviet Union to gain its independence?
It did that, And I think Russia has been more
prone to break these agreements, including the invasion of Crimea,
which had nothing. I think there was a Russian government
installed at the time where pro Russia government in Ukraine
at the time. I don't remember all the specifics, but anyway, whatever,
needless to say, I hope that it ends in a way.
I hope that the war ends, I mean, but I
don't think that. But I also like the Ukrainian surrender.
Speaker 2: I would say I would like it to end on
as favorable terms for Ukraine as possible. Yes, And I
worry that the most favorablele were when Russia came in
and did not take Kiev like that was awesome, because
they tried much to a lot of people surprise. That
was great. But does there need to be another high
point like that before there can be a negotiated settlement,
some show of strength. I don't know.
Speaker 1: I think the Ukrainians outperformed expectations greatly so far, but
I wish.
Speaker 2: We later learned was all because we were doing everything.
Speaker 1: Because yeah, we help them. I mean. I also I
am not against the idea that I think Vance brought
up recently that Europeans need to take on a bigger
chunk of the of the of the funding and the military,
you know, funding for this war that they I would say,
the EU almost unanimously sports except for a few countries
like Hunger. So let's move on now to the Bureau
of Labor Statistics. So this isn't as sexy a topic.
But last week I believe the president fired the commissioner Erica.
I don't even know.
Speaker 2: Who end BLS commissioner.
Speaker 1: Was, who was voted on almost unanimously the Republicans as
well in Congress, but because he said it was the revision,
you know, the revisions were rigged and fake and all
of that. And yesterday he named is the Heritage Foundation. Yeah,
was with the Heritage Foundation. Now I I think we're
going to disagree, but I just thought that was a
Banana Republic move.
Speaker 2: It is.
Speaker 1: I don't think that the BLS is partisan at all.
I think that most of the number I mean, I
know that the numbers are plugged in to existing systems
that have been around for a while. There are constantly
big revisions. The biggest revision happened under Obama nine hundred
thousand jobs or whatever it was. And I know that
people get mad that there are big revisions or that
there are revisions, but that's part of the process. Is
almost every kind of pulling down, you have revisions afterwards,
especially economic data. Here. The problem is that a lot
of the small businesses do not answer the polling until
after the deadline, and those revisions have to be made later.
There's a two month window to do it. By the
time you do those revisions, it's pretty on spot with
other polling done by ADP and others. Not always perfectly,
but it gives you a good reflection of what's going
on in the economy. The idea that a thousand people
involved in this our own cocoots with fake numbers and
fake this, or that the commissioner can change those numbers
is just not true. Now, is the system in need
of reform? Probably we do need reform there. Not that
I don't think it's going to fix things exactly. You're
still going to have revisions. But the idea that it's fake,
the idea that's part is and I just think is
not true.
Speaker 2: I agree with you that the firing of Erica can
talk for her or whatever her name was, was not good. Sorry,
it was not the way you want to see that done.
My thing is I don't understand whether it him fire
her on day one and put in someone more in
line with their thinking, or do it midway through one
of the monthly reports so as opposed to in response
to what was viewed as a weak jobs report, which
makes it seem, as you said, like total banana Republic. Ye.
But I do not think that that woman deserved to
keep her job. I think that the BLS data collection
has been a joke for a long time, and that
when you're dealing with something like that, you need to,
as the head of an agency, do what it takes
to fix it. And it's not that they denied that
their data collection was getting worse over time. They admitted that.
But you also need to do something about it with
marcuts relying so much on this information. For me, it's
less about whether it was partisan, although I do worry
about that, and that there have been a lot critics
who worry about artisan game playing and giving a week
report to people at a time when they are looking
for a rate cut from the FED or something can
be very helpful for the political prospects of a given politician,
and not doing that can work the opposite right by
the way, that was my side note too. If Trump
keeps pressuring the FED to be more responsive to what
he thinks is a weak economy, I don't even know
why he's upset when these numbers come out weak, because
it should help with the pressure on the FED. But
that's a side note. But they have had a lot
of problems at BLS, including leaks of information that can
lead to market changing results, the very bad data collection
that also negatively impacts the way the market operates because
of just how cartoonishly bad it is. It's not like
they're off by ten thousand, you're twenty thousand. Sometimes they're
off by like close to a million in a year,
and so when that's happening, you need to do something
to fix it. So I don't know a ton about
EJ and Tony at the Heritage Foundation other than he's
been probably the most prominent critic of them not making
the changes they need to to improve the agency, and
so that might be a good pick for that reason.
Speaker 1: Well, just give you some numbers. I actually think that
in this position you should be seeking out people who
who are have aren't partisan at all, you know, I mean,
that's just what I think. But the revision statements since
COVID have dropped from sixty percent to forty three percent.
So the forty three percent of businesses report on time,
usually all many small businesses. The larger ones know what
they're doing, you know, have a better sense of the
long term aspects. So because of this number was probably
due to terror of people not knowing what was going
on with towers and also deportations, which it is what
it is. I mean, you can explain to people that
that was going to happen. See what happens in the future.
But obviously they need reform with tracking. They have problems
with tracking and the movement of workers, with deaths, new businesses,
growing sectors, so on. I'm not sure how you're going
to do that. But here's what I want to say.
This commissioner and the last commissioner have both requested funding
to do the reforms they have actually and I never
say that it's taken a hit on funding. You can't
just on the fly reform how you collect information that easily.
I don't know that this new guy is going to
be able to do that either. So now you've given
it the you've created the perception that he's going to
give Trump the numbers he wants to see. I just
think that's problematic for us in trusting one of the
few things I think government should actually be doing, giving
us economic data that only they can collect, you know,
or they can collect effectively. Let's say, But anyway, we'll
see what happens. If people don't trust BLS, then some
private company's going to end up doing a better job
ADP whatever it is, and people will trust that. All right,
let's move on. Let's go back to Russia Gate again,
or what we're calling it, Abomba Gate. I don't even know,
but we now know, or we as you'll explain, we
did know that there was a whistleblower during the whole
sort of the height of the hysteria, right, who was
telling the FBI that Adam Schiff was approving the leaking
of classified information, probably in a very framed in a
way that made it seem much worse than it was
the whole time, which is a crime.
Speaker 2: So yes, last night cash Ptel declassified some information and
released it showing that a career intelligence officer who was
working for the Democrats on the House Permanent Select Committee
on Intelligence had from more than a decade warned the
FBI beginning in two thousand and seven, by the way,
that Adam Schiff was approving the leaking of classified information.
And this whistleblower actually gave details into how he was
doing this, you know, quite explicit details. And he it's
funny because he described himself as a friend to shift
he was working for the Democrats, but he was very
concerned about this unethical, illegal, and in his words, treasonous
leaking of information. And yeah, it's just interesting. I mean,
it's not so frustrating. As someone who's covered this for
a long time, there is nothing surprising about learning that
the details of how Schiff authorized leaks of classified information
to help him politically and to harm his political opponents.
That's not surprising. I joke about it all the time.
You know. There was this great story that CNN ran
that we like to talk about out where they said
that there was explosive evidence held by the House Permanent
Select Committee on Intelligence that Donald Trump Junior had gotten
advanced notice of WikiLeaks and that showed that he was
colluding with the Russians to steal the twenty sixteen election.
And they had two anonymous sources who said this, and
both of them confirmed that everything that CNN was saying
was true. And then Kendelanian NBC said he also was
confirming CNN's report independently, which is my favorite. You can't
confirm an anonymous report independently because how do you know
that it's not just the same two anonymous sources, So
you're more like repeating it rather than confirming it. And
then it turned out that both of those sources had
somehow misread the date on the email, and instead of
it being advanced notice of WikiLeaks for Don Junior, it
was after the fact, Hey did you see this WikiLeaks
thing from a rando in California who just happened to
get Donald Trump Junior's public email address? Always joked that
the two sources were Adam Schiff and Adam Schiff's mother.
You know, that's how like obvious it is that he's leaked.
I have written stories about all the leaks coming from
him or his people, but getting the details on how
is very interesting. And so that's where it happened. Now.
What I also found interesting about this is that I
wrote about this. I didn't have all of this declassified information,
but I wrote about this in December of last year
in my piece called three Russia hoax Bombshells Hidden in
the Inspector General report on DOJ's surveillance of Congress, And
so this was it's just so annoying. The Inspector General
is like the HR Department of the government. You know,
if you go to them and you say something bad
is happening at your company, they're not actually going to
help you. They're just going to try to do what
it takes to help the company you work for. That's
how I kind of view that Inspector General. It's not
like they won't be somewhat honest about what's going on,
but they always downplay it and they make it seem
not as bad. But last year twenty twenty four, the
Inspector General released a report about leaks that had happened
in twenty seventeen. Nothing gets past these guys. They just
move at the speed of light, right, And they knew
that there had been leaks of classified information to the
Washington Post and the New York Times. And the one
of the Washington Post stories was from April twenty seventeen.
It was by Ellen Nakashima, Devlin Barrett, and Adam Entus,
and it said that the DOJ had gotten a warrant
to spy on Carter Page. And even at that time
when I wrote that up, I wrote it up as
evidence of how the DOJ was completely out of control
and was trafficking in this delusional Steele dossier. But if
you go back to twenty seventeen, that was still at
the height of people pretending to believe or claiming to
believe believing that the Steele dossier was accurate and that
it was really telling details about Trump colluding with Russia,
and they got a Pulitzer Prize for that. But hidden
in that report investigating that leak, I saw that a
Democrat staffer on the Congressional Committee had voluntarily told the
FBI that he suspected two members of Congress, as well
as a few staffers, of being involved in the leaking
of this classified information. And it didn't say who this
whistleblower was his committee, who were the members of Congress,
But I had already deduced from other stories that were
written by The New York Times that the two were
Adam Schiff and Eric Swalwell. And I don't know, I'm
just kind of pleased with myself for figuring all of
this out before it became big news last night or
this week.
Speaker 1: A great journalistic habit is to read full read reports
when they come out, fully with a dendum and all that,
and you find a lot of things in it. That's
something I was taught a long time ago, which I
have stopped doing because I'm too old, too long did
not read, but well, it still works.
Speaker 2: I did that with all of these Tulsea Gabbard and
John Ratcliffe things, and there's so much in there. I
just want to give an example of this too, though.
According to the IG, the whistleblower told the FBI that
he suspected that Schiff had previously leaked classified information or
maybe that's fall well, and that schiff wanted to influence
public opinion via the release of classified information. Oh sorry,
suspected that Number one had previously lead classified information and
that Member two wanted to influence public opinion via the
release of information. But it hides all these details that
came out through cash ptel's declassification of the document, where
it's in like explicit detail. This member talked to this
staff member and suggested this way to get the information out.
And it's what I hate about IG reports. And then
when it does come out, people go, oh, it's old news.
We already had this release in an report, but it
was buried so dryly in the body of the report
that only four people read it, and only one of
those even understood what it meant. Do you know what
I mean?
Speaker 1: Yeah, of course I know what you mean a lot
of euphemisms in them, and you know, I mean, you
would think that if some journalists who did have access
to or you know, had originally reported these stories saw
that they would be really interested in who that person was.
And yet I don't think anyone was. You probably wanted
the only people to write about it, if not the
only person back then.
Speaker 2: I assume I was just going to say that the
same IG report, I had a piece on the three bombshells,
and the second bombshell was that one staffer was suspected
of talking to three reporters who published classified info. And
what enraged me about that part was that they kind
of had him dead to rights and yet they never prosecuted,
Like there's only so much you can do, even with
like a very like here you have a Democrat staffer
who's friends with Shiff giving the FBI the goods, and
the FBI is like, well, we're not going to do
anything about it. But if some like Rando invents a
fake story about Donald Trump and hookers and stuff, they're like, oh,
We've got to actually investigate the entire Republican Party over this.
And it's that problem that our FBI is so full
of people, or like so under the control of people
who are so unethical. It makes it very depressing, Like
how are you going to do anything to fight that? Anyway,
I'll stop talking about it now.
Speaker 1: Isn't Schiff also under investigation by the DOJ from mortgage
fraud or something?
Speaker 2: Yeah? He and Tish James, I think, which is so
interesting because they said that when Donald Trump put up
his collateral for his loan that he repaid in full
to the happiness of his bank, that that was mortgage
fraud that required full on prosecution. And then to find
out that Tis James has been claiming multiple addresses as
her primary residence and Adam Schiff has done it. I mean,
I don't I don't think that Donald Trump should have
been charged, not with a crime that he didn't commit.
I think that's horrible. But if the people who are
charging him with a crime he didn't commit are actually
committing the crime, they definitely need to be prosecuted.
Speaker 1: Right well, I mean, the alleged crime that Donald Trump had,
you know, overestimating the worth of your property or whatever
it was, is something that almost every American tries to
do all the time. It's not I mean, you can
go after anyone you want and say that that's true
and find a jury in a state like New York
and go after your political enemies, but mortgage, the mortgage
fraud that they're involved in is actually a much more
explicit breaking of the law. I think, right that you're
trying to essentially avoid taxation, they're.
Speaker 2: Claiming multiple places as their primary residence, or they're claiming
primary residents in a state, like an Adam Shift's case.
He's he claims primary residence I think in multiple ones,
but one of them was in Maryland, a state that
he does not represent in Congress. He's a senator from California. Yeah,
so he was claiming to be a California resident for
the purpose of being a senator from there while claiming
his primary residence elsewhere.
Speaker 1: Has anyone gone through every single person in Congress to
see where they claim their primary residence? That might be
a good story right there.
Speaker 2: I don't know, and I think it does kind of
depend too on what your state laws are for this too.
Speaker 1: Right right? So, okay, are you ready to talk about culture?
Speaker 2: Sure?
Speaker 1: I don't have much, but I want to say something
here about an emailer?
Speaker 2: Was that not the most amazing? Which one are you
going to talk about?
Speaker 1: The International house Hunters?
Speaker 2: Well, I couldn't believe that. I was so excited. We
got good email this week.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's from it from It's from someone named Ryan.
I don't I'm not going to give away his last name,
but he so. I am an avid watcher of International
House Hunters. I actually this morning watched an episode I
am a big fan, and he and his he and
his family had I'm not sure if they moved to
Italy or they have bought a house in Italy or something,
but he gave me this I think ten bullet points
about how the whole show is fake, how it's all manipulated,
how they say they know the house they're going to buy,
that they do all the legwork. I forgot what it
all was, but I still watch it, but now I
watch it as more of fiction than a reality show.
But I appreciated that email very much, so thank you.
Speaker 2: You're underselling how amazing this email was. Can I can
we read it? Or no?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Did you say not to share it?
Speaker 1: No? He didn't. Let's go through some of it. So
one of the houses we pretended to look at belong
to the real estateation, so essentially they look at houses
that aren't for sale quite often to give the illusion
of choice. He says that if you watch the show,
you'll understand this stuff. But the rental prices they gave
were completely made up in each episode. There's always, like
not always, but often one lower end price, one right
on the button, and one a little more. You know.
That's how they often do it. They often give or
always give, actually a map of the city, except a
cartoonish version of the map, and then they pin where
the home is in the neighborhoodies. That's just random, completely random, right.
Speaker 2: The actual house was outside of town, but they printed
it in a random place on the town mount.
Speaker 1: And the producers coax the couple to argue about stuff
and disagree with each other for added drama.
Speaker 2: In one scene filmed with a GoPro on the dash,
it looks like we're pulling up to a house in
the real estate agent's Fiat five hundred. In reality, we
were driving in circles in a parking lot nowhere near
the house in a rented Fiat five hundred, pretending to
look out the window at the house.
Speaker 1: I like this. On one day, the cameraman got drunk
at lunch. I forgot to put the memory card in
the camera. A few weeks after the shoot, the production
company emailed us to say they had come back for
pickup shots and sent six hours of raw footage to
watch so we could put everything back where it appeared
in the video for continuity.
Speaker 2: And then they're paid like next to nothing for this,
for all of this drama.
Speaker 1: I still like it, you know. My assumption is I
still like watching it. My assumption here is that sometimes
they fake it when they have to to make it.
You drop into a city, there's not always things available
that you're asking for this or that, so they fake
it in different ways. I'm sure they do this on
house Hunters Regular house Hunters as well, which I find
so boring because they just go to some suburb like
it all looks the same, you know, and yeah, whereas
here they're in like you know, they're in Malmo, Sweden,
or you know, the Cambodia. It's just interesting to see
those places. Anyway, that was a great email, so I
appreciate Ryan. Other than that, I don't have much, I
have to be honest. I'm rewatching the show Peaky Blinders,
which I only saw over years and segments and kind
of I just wanted to watch it from beginning ten. Now.
It's violent, it's you know, sexual content and all that,
but it is the so stylized in a way that
I love. The music's fantastic, a lot of nick A
p J. Harvey, like you know. And then Black Sabbath
comes on because this happens in Birmingham and so anachronistic music.
Is that the way to put it? And you know,
it's a mob story and it's pretty good. I like it.
I'm you know, I just I think there's sixty Oh
there's a movie coming out. So they ended in the
next year, there's a movie coming out. What's his name?
Speaker 2: I love him so weird and right, yeah, yeah, I
was an interview with him.
Speaker 1: Yeah he is. He's an exotic look but you know,
he's the most normal guy. He got married like twenty
something years ago, he has two kids. He's almost never
in the news, doesn't like to give interviews. There used
to be a meme like disappointed Cillian Murphy or something,
and they asked him what he thought about the meme
and he goes like, what the hell is a meme?
Like he has no social media, he doesn't know anything it.
So I just think that guy's a fantastic actor. But
also Tom Hardy's in it, you know, for some of
the seasons, and he is just great. Anyway, good show.
I'm sure a lot of people have seen it, But
if you haven't and you're like that sort of thing,
I would recommend it.
Speaker 2: Okay, Well I have seen nothing, Okay, I have been
extremely busy, and I went to sort of I want to.
It wasn't like a bachelorette party, but a weekend gathering
for friends of a really good friend of mine who's
getting married here in a few weeks. And we went
out to the eastern shore of Maryland and it was
lovely and just a very nice time. I was thinking
while being there, just how great it is to sometimes
have women only outings and lots has been, lots has
lots have Oh my gosh. Much has been written about
how we've had a decline of male only spaces or
female only spaces, but there's just something so great. And
also I have been blessed with very good friends who
they themselves have very good friends, and so none of
the stereotypical downsides of being in a single sex space.
But it was just really fun to get together and
get this woman ready to be married. It was great.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's nice. It's always nice to see old friends.
I did go out to the beach the other day
of Virginia Beach. Have you ever been out there? Yes,
it's pretty nice. I like it.
Speaker 2: I was once the the maid of honor for a
wedding where it was just four of us out there
on the beach and it was beautiful.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's quite nice. All right, that's it. That's all
I could come up with.
Speaker 2: Okay, sorry, I'm really going to work on more I did.
I've been trying to do this audiobook things. I do.
Have lots of time when I'm traveling, like on a plane,
where it might be better to listen than to read.
Like I'm moving, so I can't like hold a book there.
And I downloaded a book my husband's been talking about,
which is All the King's Men, which he loved, so
I was gonna listen to it on my flight out
to Colorado, but instead I just listened to a bunch
of Issues, etc. Podcasts. I was catching up on a
bunch of those, which is my favorite podcast. So that's all. Sorry.
Speaker 1: Robert Penwarren wrote that novel, right, and I've never read
anything else he's writen. I just want to talk about
All the kings Men for a minute. It is one
of the greatest books about politics and human nature ever written.
My husband says it is about it. It essentially dives
into like populism in a way, and how politics corrupts,
corrupts even the best person it's just such a beautiful
and fantastic book. I have to just mention that my
person I worked with years ago on the Denver editorial board,
I think he teaches a journalism at See You Now.
His name is Chuck Plunkett. It was his favorite book
and he made me read it essentially, and I've I
just have read it numerous times since then. I would mention,
I'd like to mention actually a book I have. It's
a new that I started reading the other day. It's
a new uh. It's a new biography on Buckley by
Sam Tannan House. It is a huge book. I think
he's been working on it for a decade or whatever.
I'm slightly I have slight unease knowing tann and Houses.
He's he's a liberal, right, so I'm slightly worried about that.
But so far it's been it seems very well done,
and you know, it's a big book.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 1: Okay. I think I think that I.
Speaker 2: Read a bunch of reviews of that book that were
very critical and said he kind of missed the forest
for the trees really, and so I don't know if
I will read it or not. I might. I think
I might be speaking on this topic later this fall,
so I might I might have to read it, but
I just think it's also kind of like a sad
poetic thing that he chose Sam Tennenhouse as his biographer
and probably could have chosen a better person to do it,
and maybe someone who understood the good of what he
was doing for the conservative movement that might have actually
been better than someone hostile. Yeah, So I forgot to
mention that when I was at this girl's weekend, we
were in this town called Easton, Maryland, which is just beautiful.
Speaker 1: I've been there, Yeah, it's nice.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it's really getting even better. I think they
had some investment from people maybe who were from there,
but it's returned in COVID and so they're really nice
restaurants and really nice champagne bar and you know, just
stuff like that. But I went into a record store there.
There are a few record stores there, and the proprietor
of the record store, like the moment I walked in,
he was like, you're Molly Hemingway. This is so exciting
blah blah blah, and so I was like not expecting
that in a record store, and it was a good one.
I don't remember the name of it. I'm sorry.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I must live there. I tried. I was looking
to maybe live there a few years ago. I moved there. Yeah,
that's what I was.
Speaker 2: Kind of thinking. Yeah, but that traffic over the bridge
is awful. Anyway. I got a Beach Boys Christmas album
and a duplicate of a Prints album I had that
I need to get a better cover.
Speaker 1: For just very quickly. It's so boring. But I moved
my office in my house and I got this, like
the shelving for all my records, and I'm going through
them and cataloging them on discog, and I realized that
I have doubles of like twenty records. I mean, I
never even you know, I really have to keep track
of this because I'm wasting a lot of money.
Speaker 2: This is my This is the entire reason why I
started putting everything into discogs was so that I would
not have duplicates. I kept buying albums that I thought
i'd only listen to a friends' houses, and really I
had them myself, which is also an indication that I
have too many albums. But I really like that. I
also like seeing the value of what I have, which
discog shows you what it has sold for recently, and
you can you know that doesn't. I like an album
because I like it, but it is also good to
know the value of the collection. Or sometimes I get
albums from other people and I will look at it
and I'll be like, oh wow, this prog rock album
is worth like one hundred and fifty dollars. Most albums,
even if they're quote unquote valuable, would be like twenty dollars.
So yeah, you have a few. They're just like super
Sonic on their value.
Speaker 1: And when I started putting them in, I would just
throw them in. I'd say that's my album, and I
do the original and it'll tell me it's worth like
five hundred dollars. When I have some kind of like
yeah yeah. So lately I've been better with that because
it's telling me my album collection is worth like one
hundred thousand, which is not true, not even close, but
getting yeah, no, no, that's it's because like you know,
I'll have a claim to have an original of something
that's been a reprinted. But anyway, so guess what, Molly,
I got a I got a catalog here that someone
sent me. So when you review books and things like that.
You'll get the cat log for the winter books that
are coming at and right, here is a new book
by Molly Emingway. Oh yes, yes, I see the cover here.
It's called Alito, the Justice who reshaped the Supreme Court
and restored the Constitution. So that's exciting, which is really interesting.
Speaker 2: Yeah, can you take a picture and send it to me?
Speaker 1: You don't know what you can, Well, you must have
gone through the cover. That process is always harrowing for
me with the books I've written. Because you're saying no,
they'll send me something. I'm like, no, no, no, no,
it's a good cover.
Speaker 2: Awesome.
Speaker 1: I suspect you could probably go on Amazon now or
wherever and pre order it if you wanted to.
Speaker 2: I don't know if you can. I will definitely make
an announcement and I will definitely be pushing everybody to
buy as many copies as I can. But also I
saw that Justice Alito will have a book out next
year as well, like Minds coming out in the spring
in or April, I think, and his is coming out later.
But next year is also his twentieth anniversary on the Court,
and so there are various legal societies are doing things
to commemorate that too. So even though this book took
me longer than I would have liked to get done,
it's coming out at exactly the right time for the
Year of Aledo.
Speaker 1: The year of Aledo, if I remember correctly, when he
was first the expectations of Aledo were not that he
would be this kind of leading conservative on the core
when he was first named, right, I mean, I think
maybe even there were some reservations of at him. I
don't remember exactly.
Speaker 2: No, I don't think. I actually think people always think.
I don't think people realized he would be the giant
that he became. But people had the expectation that he
would be good because he'd been on a lower fort
for so long. It had been just solid, like there
was never a there was never like a what was
he thinking here kind of decision. He was just super
solid but super quiet. So people did not think that
he would become the author of all of these like
major opinions and all that.
Speaker 1: Not great. Well, I look forward to reading it. Yeah,
I'm sure we'll talk about it in the future, maybe
even next week when we'll be back. Until then, your
lovers are for the