Speaker 1: Welcome back.
Speaker 2: Everyone's your new episode of You're Wrong with Molly Hemingway,
Editor and treat of The Federalist and David Harsani, senior
writer at The Washington Examiner. If you'd like to email
the show, please do so at radio at the Federalist
dot com.
Speaker 1: We love to hear from you. Tell you what I
don't love, Molly.
Speaker 2: I do not love the ice and snow that surrounds
me right now.
Speaker 3: Yeah, this has been I am a lifelong person who's
been in snow, and I'm very used to snowstorms. I
even love snowstorms. What we're dealing with now is unlike
anything I've ever experienced, which is a tremendous amount of
ice and that is much more difficult to move than snow.
Speaker 1: I live south of where you are. It should be
this way.
Speaker 2: I moved here to get away from cold winters, and
I can't well.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you did not go south enough to manage that.
But we so where we are in northern Virginia. The
snow came on Saturday night into Sunday morning, and we
were able to get out just fine. Not just fine,
but we were able to get out and go to church.
And normally we have about two hundred and fifty two
hundred and fifty five people on a given Sunday, and
we had forty one people show up and it was
it was great. Pastor. Our head pastor was wearing jeans,
which happens like three times in his life, and under
his under his robes, and the organist was unable to
make it. So a different family came where the woman
is very musically talented and her husband said, Pastor, do
you want her to play the organ? And she did.
She just literally went right up there and just played
the organ site reading and did a fantastic job. And
she's not really an organist. And then oh, we had
a baptism, which was also very exciting. And I think
that the girl who got baptized should her memoir should
be called baptized in a blizzard if she has a
life that matches that. And it was just a beautiful day.
We get home, we shovel and our whole goal was
just to stay ahead of everything, and we did throughout Sunday,
and on Monday morning we realized we'd made a horrible,
horrible mistake. Our neighbors who had not shoveled were able
to clear their sidewalks because they still had snow on
the bottom, whereas we had no snow, just ice. So
we couldn't even like walk down our stairs because they
were rounded ice. And Mark had to be out there
doing like changing hitting it with a hammer shovel. It
took him a really long time yesterday to clear enough
of a petty Did.
Speaker 2: He watch the hokal is that her name? The New
York Governor's video on how to properly shovel? Did you
see this?
Speaker 3: What did she say?
Speaker 2: Well, she just showed people how to shovel like a
complete nanny, and I was impressed. I also wanted to
make my wife go out and shovel, but you.
Speaker 3: Know, I like shoveling. But it was it was you have.
Speaker 2: To be careful apparently if you're over well I because
I'm older, I have to be careful because I could
get a heart attack. That's what she said.
Speaker 3: The Capitol Weather gangon was like, some doctors say that
everyone over fifty, no one over fifty should shovel. And
I was like, hey, now calm down here, it's okay.
My dad, who's currently in the ICU, but is the
strongest person I know. He would be out shoveling with
like a T shirt and a vest, like a puffy
vest and shorts. He'd be out there like shoveling, and
you know, when you are getting that level of workout,
it's actually kind of okay. But we are also dealing
with temperatures here. We knew this storm was coming, We
even knew that it would be an ice storm. And
I have to say that the Democrat run cities that
I'm encountering, both Alexandria and Washington, d C. Are not
operating at their best potential. And my left wing neighbors
are like, oh, what, you know, you can't expect them
to know how to do snow removal, but we when
you don't do snow removal, you can't operate your other
functions like schools. And you know, we have a far
drive to a high school and I don't think my
kid who does the driving as I don't think they've
ever driven on the snow, and I'm not comfortable with
them going now, you know, like an under stressful condition.
Speaker 1: It's not just snow.
Speaker 2: There's a lot of ice that's a lot more dangerous.
Speaker 3: I would love to teach to drive, but we're in
such a narrow neighborhood, you know, the neighborhood has It
takes real skill that you can't get until you know,
you have to learn how to do it to navigate
between like on a single lane with cars on either
side of you, and ice that you could possibly be
rolling into. So then DC, like right in front of
the Fox building, there is a fairly major thoroughfare of
E Street that just has not been properly plowed at all.
And it's weird. It was weird earlier this week, but
even but now you know, here we are in the
middle of the week and it's still not plowed, and
it's very difficult to get in and out, and it's
just not a ton of competence.
Speaker 2: Don't they preemptively throw down like they used to do salt,
but now they do some kind of liquid and that
should melt the ice, but it hasn't been melting it
for us.
Speaker 3: I think the problem might be what I talked about,
that the snow pack followed by the ice, So if
they did pre treatment, it's actually worse in this case.
But there's a lot of money going to my taxes.
And Alexandria has the best radical environmental and trans and
DEI programs in the world. I would like for my
taxes to go towards snow removal and proper trash removal
and police work.
Speaker 2: You know, well in the old days, a good snowstorm
and a lack of you know, removal would bring down
mayors like this was like the main thing you had
to do, like in the northeaster instance. But you know
what's scary down here in the South is that people
panic with even a little snow. So you know, DC
is everyone panics. I mean, I went to the supermarket
like an idiot a day before the snowstorm was here,
is like nothing for us to buy. So I'm a
little more worried about other drivers than I am about
my driving or the ice.
Speaker 3: So on that note, I had a very busy week
last week, and so I was also delayed on some
of my prep. But we have a bakery in our
neighborhood that has been targeted by left wing authoritarians because
they posted a It's like one of these bakeries where
you can just put up neighborhood signs about things yard
sale or quilting club or whatever. And someone put up
a sign for a new TPUSA chapter and so all
of the left wing authoritarians who dominate my neighborhood announced
a boycott of the store. So anyone who's saying has
been like going to this bakery to make sure that
the left wing authoritarians don't destroy it. But I got
there so late that they they were cleaned out of everything.
I managed to get some cinnamon bread, which I didn't need,
but I was like, we might need it, you know,
we might be trapped in our house for days.
Speaker 2: The other day, I was reading about the a bill
in virgin about how they're going to start banning magazine
sizes to like eight or seven or something like that,
which is ridiculous. And I was thinking about your neighbors
and how much I hate them for moving into Virginia
and ruining the state.
Speaker 3: Me too, And Mark has been saying that the changes
proposed by Abigail Spanberger and her colleagues are probably going
to make it so that we have to move endbout
that there's a reason for you know, one of the
problems with media is that it's located. The vast majority
of media are in New York City and Washington, DC.
And if you think about the type of women in
particular who work in media. These are women who are
I mean, there's a stereotype here of a childless or
maybe like one or two children kind of woman, not
a woman who represents the hope's dreams and aspirations of
the vast majority of women in this country. And then
all the really good women are thinking, I don't want
to live in New York City or DC. And I
understand that what I've been doing here is important in
representing the vast majority of women in this country who
have no voice in the media. But it's getting so
hostile that I don't know how much longer I can continue.
Speaker 2: Well, the landscape has changed a bit, right, technologically, you
can live anywhere more than it used to be before.
Speaker 3: No, yes, you can definitely live away and still have
and still work in media, but you can't do it
at the level that you need to do it to
have a powerful voice. If you are not right there
when news breaks, or if you're not right if you're
not available for the in person shows, or if you
can't just set up an inner be with the senator
and make it there in twenty minutes, you know that
does affect your.
Speaker 2: Career for sure. Yeah, yeah, I mean, for over ten
years I've worked remotely, and it does hamper your ability
to like be part of kind of the community unfortunately
in DC, which is a good thing, but I should say,
but also not great if you want to be on
TV and stuff like that. Not that I do, but
you're good at it. I don't like a face for
podcasting already. All right, Ice another ICE shooting, you know,
another tragedy. I would say, like, whatever you think of
what happened, I mean, this is how I view it.
At least, I think these things are tragic. The guy's
name is Alex Preddie. I've not done a forensic look
at all the videos. I don't know the legalities or
justifications are good or not. It seemed to me like
the administration has kind of stepped back on that a little.
Speaker 1: They're going to investigate it. To said they should do it.
Speaker 2: I mean, if it was a good shoot, it's a
good shoot. I just want to preface all by saying
that there's a misconception. It seems to me, at least
on social media, that if this was a bad shoo,
that that means that the entire purpose of ICE and
what they're trying to do is somehow wrong, and I
don't see that as a connection at all. There are
bad police shoots in other you know, instances, in other situations,
and that doesn't mean that you get to break the
law tomorrow just because the police acted poorly or whatever.
I mean. And I'm not saying they did. I don't know,
but yeah, I'm waiting for you. I don't know where
to go.
Speaker 1: There are a lot of facets to this, right, right, right.
Speaker 3: I totally agree with you. It's you can never delight in,
you know, watching the killing of a human being. And
with the first instance with Renee Good, she was she,
like Alex Petty, was part of an activist network that
is designed to interfere with law enforcement. That's what they do.
They're not They're not protesters who are peacefully protesting the
democratically passed immigration laws that Ice and Border Patrol are enforcing.
That's that's totally that would be a legitimate thing to do,
and that would be a First Amendment protected activity. But
they are part of well funded, well orchestrated networks of
agitators trying to thwart the enforcement of democratically passed laws,
which is not a First Amendment protected activity. In general,
in the case of Renee Good, who how did the
New York Times put it, she wasn't aiming for the
policeman when she hit him with her car, as I
believe how they tried to make that into a big thing.
Speaker 1: Actually first at.
Speaker 2: First they said that she did. There was no evidence
that she had even hit him, and then had.
Speaker 3: Hit and then not aiming for him when she hit him.
And there just has been horrifically evil propaganda press coverage
of this as opposed to actual reporting of what's going on.
But it's still sad. It's still sad to see a
woman get and killed on video. I mean, it's it's
a life lost, and her life was not you know,
she was not doing good things with her life to
begin with in terms of her efforts to interfere with
law enforcement. But very sad. And then this Alex pretty
thing near as I can tell, Like, I love how
on Twitter, the moment something happens, everyone becomes an expert
in that thing that just happened. And for me, the
videos were a little hard to decipher, but I think
what it like, what it looked like to me is
a known belligerent. He had previously broken a rib as
part of an altercation and part of his activities as
an anti law enforcement activist and agitator, A known belligerent
was being disarmed. He had a particular type of sig
that is known for accidental firing. Right that while he
was being disarmed, that accidental firing happened that two police
poeman shot him thinking he was firing the weapon that
they knew he had on him, because they didn't know
that he had already been like that he had just
a moment prior been disarmed, or they thought he had
a multiple multiple weapons on him, and it looks like
he was holding a magazine, not a gun, but he'd yeah,
he'd brought a gun to his efforts to interfere with
law enforcement. And we were talking to the kids last
night and explaining not getting shot by police is actually
a pretty easy thing to achieve, right. The media make
it out like the police are out there just shooting people,
and we just went over basics too. If a policeman
tells you to get out of the car, you get
out of the car like you actually are supposed to
follow what they say. They might be there might be
all sorts of problems. They might be very confused about
a situation. There might be they might be a bad cop,
you know, but like you still in a society that
is is governed by rule of law. Yes, they do
have you know, the government does have some kind of
monopoly on force. And to not get shot you you
don't shoot at them or fail to follow orders or
you know what I mean. Like, I'm not saying in
any way that either of these people should have been shot,
but their actions were irresponsible too.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there are two sides to it.
Speaker 2: One is that cops have, or all law enforcement have
a license to use deadly force, and because they have that,
they have a special responsibility because they're trained to make
sure they use it responsibly. Right. So I think any
anything shooting of a civilian, no matter what he's doing,
needs an investigation.
Speaker 1: We can't can't, you know.
Speaker 2: I don't think Steven Miller should have gone out there
and said that he was going would be assassin. We
don't know that kind of thing, And that rhetoric's not right.
I want to talk about the gun rhetoric in a
minute from the administration. Initially, but he had this guy
had a concealed carry license. But any responsible gun owner
any concealed carry instructor will tell you. And he had
a broken rib, CNN reported last week with being you know,
getting into a scuffle or whatever with ICE agents. So
potentially tragic situation can happen if you bring a gun
to a volatile situation, especially with people who had other
people who have guns, and especially with police officers. And
he probably knew that, and he acted recklessly at the
very least, and we shouldn't pretend otherwise. He was obviously
part of kind of an organized, like you say, an
organized effort to an inorganic effort to stop ICE agents
from doing it, from enforcing the law.
Speaker 1: That doesn't mean he should be shot, like you said.
Speaker 2: And I really I found a lot of the initial
comments distasteful, not because I didn't think the shoot was good,
but because administration officials started saying that you're not allowed
to bring a gun to a protest. What they should say,
you're not allowed to bring a gun and then obstruct
the police, not that you can't ever bring you know,
I saw a Bessett saying, uh, semi automatic, like all
these scare mongering language for people who don't understand guns,
loaded extra magazines. You can every not every virtually every
concealed carrier has a loaded weapon. That's the point of
the weapon. In fact, they probably have one in the chamber,
which is maybe why this went you know, the sig
went off, because that's the point. But if you're going
there too to and you know you're going to have
interactions with police in this one, you bring a gun,
you're asking for deadly trouble, right, And we have to
admit that as well.
Speaker 3: The level of coordination and funding and central control over
the insurgency in Minnesota is like off the charts relative
to the cluelessness of the j six rioters who had
you know, who just were like in a They were
not they were not planning on a riot. They found
themselves in a riot through bad decisions.
Speaker 2: Well, what one of these things is a riot? And
one of these things is organized undermining of the law
of the law purposefully, so civil disobedience. There's a role
for that in society, honestly, but there are also consequences
to that, especially if you're going to start bringing guns, right.
Speaker 3: Yes, And the idea behind these agitators is that if
they can bring enough chaos to ice operations, it will
mean that they can thwart the will of the people,
the people who elected the president. And they know that
Donald Trump ran on a campaign to deport illegal aliens
following an open borders policy of Biden and the rest
of the Democrat Party. They know that a majority, like
the vast, vast, vast majority of Americans definitely want criminal
illegal aliens, meaning those illegal aliens who rape, murder, rob
They want those people deported, like almost every American does.
But even a majority of America, but even for just
normal people who broke the law to come or stay
in this country, a majority of Americans want them deported
as well. And so what do you do when you
have laws that you disagree with and a majority of
the people disagree with you. You can't go to change
those laws democratically because you're not going to win. So
you use insurgency tactics, apparently, And so that's what they're
doing with the idea that if enough chaos happens, first
of all, that will embolden your elected leaders to fight
for an open borders regime, but it will also get
weak Republicans to side with you as well. And that
is what was beginning to happen due to the chaos
operations that were well financed and well coordinated in Minnesota.
I think jd Vance made this point that ICE is
operating in all fifty states and the fast majority of
interactions are happening without any incident whatsoever, because like most
of these deportations are happening in Texas, in Florida, in
Tennessee with people who are not running an insurgency against
the federal government. So in places like Florida, you are
a criminal, illegal alien, the elected or the police in
Florida notify the federal government, Hey, we got one of
the people that you were trying to deport. You can
come get him at this jail. And you know what
I mean, Like they work with them. And so what
we're seeing in Minnesota is what happens when you are
trying to insurrect against the federal government. With the help
of Jacob Frye who openly tweeted that he was trying
to run an insurrection against the federal government and Tim
Walls and what I'm very the governor who asked people
to help out the agitators against law enforcement, rather than saying,
don't forget that you are supposed to to not agitate
against law enforcement and what I'm very confused by. Okay,
so you mentioned that the Trump administration had done some
had used some rhetoric that was unwise and overstated following
the killing of Petty Well.
Speaker 2: Also was factually wrong about it. Yet about sent.
Speaker 3: Amendment, I very much agree with that, because when you're
in a war like this, it's also an information war,
and nearly the entire corporate media are just as, if
not more radical than the people who are out there
on the streets, and so they're not going to be
honest about what's going on. They're not going to be
truthful about what's going on. They're going to be part
of that activist network. So you have to be like
perfect in your counter countering of that information operation, not
saying reckless things that are unsupported by facts. And that's
one problem, and then another problem is why you know,
Like yesterday I was I was on Standby on TV
for a show that was where Will Cain was interviewing
President Trump, and President Trump was talking about what a
nice conversation he had with Tim Walls and how it
was weird that he sounds so crazy when he's on Twitter,
but he's actually a nice guy to have a conversation
with and it was making me laugh on the one hand,
because that's a very good way to describe Donald Trump,
who has said horrible things about Tim Walls, but then
is apparently having a nice conversation with him. But I'm thinking,
why are we playing nice with a governor who's openly
challenging the federal government and the enforcement of its laws.
Why are we being nice to someone who's you know,
And he also said he had a nice conversation with
Jacob Fry. Frey Fry how we see it, Why are
we being nice to people who are overseeing the theft
of my money through so Mollian fraud operations. Like I
don't want him to be nice to those people. I
want him to come down and say, you don't actually
have the right to thwart democratically elect democratically passed laws
that are constitutional. You do not have that right. You
can't do that, Like we already debated this during the
Civil rights era and over and over and over again.
The federal government is deemed to have the right to
enforce immigration law. Right.
Speaker 2: I mean, if you're being nice to reach your goal,
I have no problem with it. And it seems to
me like it was Walls who gave in here where
ice where local officials are now almost after immediately after
that conversation, it seemed to me helping federal authorities do
what they needed to do. So that is the outcome
of a nice conversation. That's fine with me. I don't
really it doesn't really matter to me. As you know,
a lot of the Twitter stuff is performed. I think
it's dangerously performative in the sense that there are credulous
activists and all of that who believe what you're saying
and then go out and put themselves an incredibly dangerous situation.
So you bear some responsibility. But I hate saying this,
it sounds so squishy, But lowering the temperature when people
are actually dying, I think that's okay, right. Every president
until very recently, none of them ever said it was
okay to be here illegally.
Speaker 1: Never.
Speaker 2: I mean, there was never the position of the Democratic
Party until recently. Even if they were lying about what
they believed right like, it was never their position.
Speaker 1: I did want to say one quick thing.
Speaker 2: I wrote a column last week about how I think
protest culture is annoying and Unamerican because a lot of
young people and people we see who unfortunately died here
confuse activism with good, good citizenry and patriotism. But it
now is stepping further and further where they have convinced
themselves that that Ice is fascist, that Republicans are fascist,
and you keep telling saying that to people, they're going
to act like I wouldn't want to act if people
were actually fascist, But that is not the case. So
there are legal avenues to stop ICE. There are democratic
institutions that can change laws to stop you. Are they
act like they're in Iran or they are in Tieman
Square or something, You're not there. There are avenues for
you in a democracy or our democratic system to do something.
So this, I don't know what to call it. I
think we've convinced a lot of people that they're absolutely
helpless and that there's a Nazi regime rising, and you
see it all over Twitter from people behind there in
their rooms. You know, not people are actually going to
be out there convincing other people to put themselves in danger.
I just think it's just so reckless.
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Speaker 3: Yeah, I was. I'm very frustrated by people not understanding
the difference between protests and illegal obstruction of law enforcement.
And I was thinking about this. On Friday, we had
the annual March for Life in Washington, d C. This
has been going on every year since Roby Wade was passed.
And we had a divine service at my church ahead
of the march. And the people that I was talking
to there who many of them had this was their
very first march. When I got down to the march,
I also talked to a bunch of people who it
was their very first march. I thought it was interesting that,
you know, on Twitter, you get a certain idea about
what people are thinking or how they've moved on from
the abortion issue. It's too difficult to fight. And then
you go down to this largest continue like of all
the human rights issues in the world, this is I
think the longest continuous march. You know, people have marched,
have like lived, died, and their children and grandchildren are
marching for this cause of ending the scourge of abortion.
And they were very motivated, they were very positive. It
was like a wonderful march. It was interesting. There were
a ton of police there, including like a ton of
people from Fairfox County Police. It's just weird because I was,
you know, having also been in DC on the January
sixth time, which was a rally at the White House
and then the you know, protest slash riot at the
Capitol a couple miles away. There were no police there
out on the streets that day. And here for the
pro lifers, who are, like argue, the most peaceful group
of people known to mankind, there were just police every
few feet, a different set of police. But my point
being here peaceful, large, massive protest and very little media coverage.
Whereas you have these organized obstruction efforts they're called protests,
and they get very favorable coverage from the media.
Speaker 2: Well, can I talk just a little bit about the
rhetoric they used. I just want to say the scare
Republicans should never be out there scare mongering about loaded weapons,
semi automatics, extra magazines and things like that, because the
left I have already seen, like Newsome and others gravitate
towards this, grab it and say, look, they don't really
the Trump administration doesn't really support the Second Amendment, which
I think they have. So that's why you're right about
careful language. We wouldn't talk about the First Amendment this way,
I hope not. We shouldn't talk about the Second Amendment
this way either.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So there was something happened Ilhan Omar, who's a
woman who came from Somalia. Her father apparently was not
the greatest guy in Somalia and has risen to being
a prominent member of Congress, but also someone who you know,
is credibly accused of being involved in the immigration fraud
when she married her brother in order to help him
gain residency in the United States, and also is credibly
accused of being closely related to the massive amounts of
theft through Somali fraud people involved in her offices and
campaigns are all over the fraud, either allegations or convictions anyway,
she held and she's a very strong supporter of completely
open borders and opposition to all law enforcement related to
enforcing our democratically passed laws on immigration, as well as others.
She's also for other defund police initiatives and is you know,
generally pretty anti American in her governing philosophy. But she
was at a town hall yesterday and again don't know
exactly what was going on, but someone who seemed a
little off kilter, literally like struggling to be upright, sprayed
her with a substance and she I don't know if
she knew who he was or what, but she just
like she kept going, which was good. Any attacks on
any elected officials are bad, whether they come from crazy
people or politically motivated people. It's not something you want
to see in our country. But I noticed that AOC
came out. She's like, I hope you guys realize that
this is what happens when you put a target on
someone's back. So, in other words, if you point out
that ilhan Omar is involved with fraud or that people
in her office are involved with fraud, or she's closely
related to that, or that she was personally involved in
immigration fraud through the marrying of her brother. Then you're
the reason why someone sprayed water on her who might
be crazy at a constituent meeting. No, that's not how
that works out. But I do wonder if AOC thinks
that all of the Democrat Party saying get in their faces,
don't let them live freely obstruct law enforcement is any
way related to the efforts to obstruct law enforcement, you
know what I mean? Like how choice of her to
see something that may or may not even be remotely
true in the case of ilhan Omar, but not in
any way take responsibility for these gross anti law enforcement
actions that are taking place.
Speaker 2: What AOC did there trying to chill criticism.
Speaker 3: Don't talk about her marrying her brother.
Speaker 2: Right, we get to say what we want and we
get to point out things that we believe. You know,
the President of the United States, Joe Biden, went and
went out there and called half the country quasi fascists
or whatever terminology used.
Speaker 3: Right before a bunch of people got shot up.
Speaker 1: Yes, right, I saw in CNN yesterday.
Speaker 2: They have that like roundtable show, and someone was pointing
out that it's happening on both sides is violence and
we have to cool it.
Speaker 1: Fine, that's a fine message.
Speaker 2: And another woman, so one of the instances he mentioned
was that Charlie Kirk was assassinated while speaking out, and
this woman says, well, that was just right wing on
right wing violence. The president thing was just right wing on, Like,
they won't even accept that left wingers, who in my estimation,
my historical estimation, are far more inclined towards violence than
the right wing in this country. They can't even admit
that the assassination of the president, with the assassination of
Charlie Kirk by some left wing nut reflects poorly on them.
But then we're not allowed to talk about ilhan Omar,
who incidentally is a Hamas boosting conspiracy theorist and terrible
all around person. I don't want anyone to ever touch
her in the United States. We're not a third world
country here, but I am allowed to point those things out.
Do you want to switch topics or okay, let's talk
about third world repression of speech and let's talk about Iran.
So obviously there's a again I would call it a
revolution in a way. It seems like we know that
it was just more than just some protests in the street.
There are very big numbers being thrown around of estimates
of how many people have been killed by the regime there.
I don't know if they're true or not, but I
do know it's a repressive regime that shuts down Twitter
and ways for people to communicate outside of the country
and to see news, has religious police that be women,
you know, and does all these terrible things, and once
nuclear weapons. So today Trump confirmed that the USS Abraham
Lincoln and a strike group have been deployed to the area.
He is what, he tweeted out, a massive armadus headed
to Iran. It is moving quickly with great power, enthusiasm,
and purpose. It is a larger fleet headed by the
great aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln. Then was sent to Venezuela.
Like with Venezuela, it is ready, willing and able to
rapidly fulfill its mission with speed and violence if necessary.
Speaker 1: What do you make of all that?
Speaker 2: I mean, he did a few well maybe a month
ago now or a few weeks ago, say that keep protesting,
We're on our way. To help you, right. Do you
think this is connected to that or something else.
Speaker 3: Yes, So a few weeks ago, everyone seemed to be
ready for strikes to happen within twenty four or forty
eight hours to assist the protesters, the domestic protesters who
were standing up against their government. And then it didn't happen,
and there were a lot of questions about why it
didn't happen. And what you just read is the reason
why people like to say, oh, the regime is falling,
it's about done. And it is true that it is
not at its highest point of strength right now, but
there's a lot of destruction they can do in the meantime.
And one of the things they can do is try
to annihilate Israel. And you might remember when there were
all of those strikes that the Iron Dome repelled. Most
of those strikes were repelled. It was a great success
for the Iron Dome, which is a US Israeli project.
It went really well, except that Israel depleted most of
its missiles there, so that if Iran were to do
it again, they weren't quite ready to repel at the
same level. So if we had struck without getting our
people in place, it would not have been you know,
it could have been a very very bad situation if
they decided to respond by trying to destroy Israel. So
this seems like a smart move. You know, at the
time that everyone was like, I think he's going after
Iran right now, everything was still over doing the Venezuela Armada,
like it takes time to move these, to move things
into place, and so now that they're in place, that's
interesting that he's being public about it. Is interesting. He
tends to be pretty open about what his plans are.
I would take it very seriously if I were Oran,
and the domestic protests are because people are starving and cold,
they're you know, the situation is bad, and so you
just have to kind of monitor but also be ready
for all all eventualities.
Speaker 1: A lot of people.
Speaker 2: Who are anti Israel or you know, want to cut
off the Iron Dome funding and all that. But what
I don't think they understand, maybe they don't care, is
that the Iron Dome. Yes, it's cures Israel in many ways,
but it also saves a lot of Iranian lives and
a lot of lives Palestinian lives, because if Israel is
going to be attacked without an iron dome. It needs
to react in using tremendous force.
Speaker 1: I assume this is Trump. Actually, let me read you more.
Speaker 2: So Trump goes on and he says, hopefully Iran will
quickly quote open quote, come to the table cost quote
and negotiate a fair and equitable deal, all caps coming,
no nuclear weapons, one that is good for all parties.
Time is running out is truly of the essence. As
I told Iran once before, make a deal, etc. I
would love a great deal with Iran. But you know,
I was listening to a podcast called The Rest is History,
which I quite like, and they have a series on
the Iranian Revolution, and if you're interested in that, I
think listeners should give that a listen to, because it
really lets you get into the mind of the clerics
there in the mulahs. This is that you're not dealing
with a rational country or a Western country. Here, you're
dealing with apocalyptic Shia twelvers who constantly see the end
of day is coming. And they will not, like you said,
just relinquish power because we're threatening them or because they're protests.
They really don't value life in the same way that
we do, or others do or Israelis do. So it's
something to think about. My question to you is if
Joe Biden was doing this or if someone else was
doing this. Is this seems like something that a lot
of people would have called neocon policy years ago, because
we are, in essence, either trying to we're threatening the
same thing with Venezuela. It seems Trump is instead of
boots on the ground regime change, he's going to try
to control the regimes from outside. I don't know if
that's a good long there's good long term prospects for
that kind of policy because they'll be a new president
who won't do that, but it seems like he wants
change from the outside and he will threaten them with
military strikes to do it. What do you think of
that policy? Is it neocon?
Speaker 3: I think that it would have been better for you
to say what would you think if George W. Bush
were doing rather than Joe Biden? Because Joe Biden and
his leader Barack Obama, of course, are partly responsible for
this horrible situation because of how they have tried to
lift up Ran in that region and make them the
country that controls everything and helps them with their path
to nuclear power and all that. But yes, like if
George W. Bush were moving an armada to the region,
I do think you'd see people strongly concerned about what
he was about to do. But not because it's the
move of the armada to the region that makes Neocon policy.
But it's really completely about mindset. I've you know, when
people were worried about the strike on Iran, on Iran's
nuclear capabilities, I think a lot of that was PTSD
from that's I hate using a legitimate illness to describe
just the anguish you feel about how your leaders are
being But for a long time, Republicans had been taken
over by this like Wilsonian progressive foreign policy of you know,
we're going to turn every country into a democracy, and
we're going to do it by invading and setting up
shop and occupying a country for decades. That's the Neocon thing.
Asserting your interests abroad is not necessarily a problem, assuming,
you know, assuming you do it smartly. And the thing
that I that I have grown to really love about
Trump foreign policy is, you know, he just he just
goes in and strikes and then is out or you know,
even in Venezuela, where we are ostensibly running the government
with very like we're not even really totally there, And
it is these long drawn out, decades long occupations and
trying to change people into having like girls' schools. I
still don't understand the neocon obsession with like we're going
to make sure girls are educated in Afghanistan. It was
a total failure. And also things just go better when
you assert your own interest and do it efficiently or
do it like in whatever is the best way for
you possible. Iran is a threat to the United States,
working with Venezuela, working with Russia, and there are reasons
why you would want to further constrain them, you know,
as part of your global agenda. But I'm not you know,
I love that. Also, this is happening in response to
a domestic outpouring in Iran, not you know, like us
coming in. And you know, like in Venezuela, that was
an illegitimately quote unquote elected because he wasn't elected dictator
who the people had tried to oust through democratic means,
and he just rigged the election results to make it
seem like he had won in cartoonish fashion that was
just not true. And likewise, in Iran you have you
have like mass protests. Even with our limited information window,
we see that there is a real desire for help
here that's different than us. Just you know, it's not
just our it's not just that obviously, it's mostly that
this is in our interest and not have them have
nuclear weapons.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I just want to say, I couldn't
care less if the Venezuela and dictator was elected or not.
Hitler was elected, doesn't matter to us if you're an
enemy of the United States. Yeah, But I'm just saying
when people say, oh, he wasn't properly elected, that I
would even if you if people loved him in Venezuela.
He's in the Western hemisphere. He's undermining American interests, and
we have a right to protect our interests.
Speaker 3: Yes, but when you're talking about regime change, to do
it over and against to do it over and against
the will of the people is a completely different animal
than to help out the people. Do you know what
I'm saying.
Speaker 1: I know what you're saying.
Speaker 3: Like, the problem with Germany wasn't just Hitler. It's that
the people elected him, right, It wasn't just him. It
was a national problem.
Speaker 2: My my only My point only is that I agree
that that Venezuelan elections are fake or you know that
the leadership of the country isn't truly elected, but I
don't That to me is not the most important thing.
Speaker 1: But it's not sai I am.
Speaker 2: I am skeptical that this kind of policy is going
to work with Iran. Frankly because without any informant enforcement
mechanisms that are real and long term, I just don't
see how the Iranians. Uh, I don't see how we
can trust the Iranians, and moreover, they'll just wait Trump out.
But more than that, I mean, this is not what
Trump really promised them, right, this is not really a
regime change. I mean, you're essentially going to lift them
up and give them credibility if you do this, But
that's you know, Honestly, I just don't think it's very
hard to overturn this regime. So I don't really know
what other answers there are. I will defend I think
George Bush's nation building was a failure. I am not
a neo conservative, but it's always going to be easier.
But Trump gets to live in a post nine to
eleven post Trump would propost Bush world, where he knows
that those were failures. I think at the time, we
look back at what happened in Japan, what happened in Germany,
and these people thought that we can do the same thing.
If we're going to wage war across halfway across the world,
we can try to help people. I think they overestimated
the desire of other people to be free, certainly the
desire or the ability of Islamic people sometimes to embrace democracy.
And that was a huge failure. But that doesn't mean that,
you know, regime change is always better or always a failure.
Speaker 3: I do want to just point out the George W.
Bush philosophy is widely considered to have best been articulated
by Charles Crouthammer in his I think two thousand and
three speech at Ai that I heckled in real time,
which I love because I later became, you know, friends
with Charles. I heckled it because I disagreed with it
at the time, and so you say, like, oh, he
has the benefit of living in this post era. There
were people who were saying this was not a good
idea at the time. And if you reread that Charles
crowdhammer speech. He says, Okay, maybe the realists will eventually
be proven right and this will be a disaster, but
shouldn't we give it a try. It's a real funny
like line to have in there, that he's like going
after the realists even then and he's like, maybe maybe
they'll be preve been right. It's like, yeah, well we were,
and thank you, and we could have seen a lot
of money and lives.
Speaker 2: Well, i'll exclude you from this comment that I'm going
to make, but a lot of the people who were
most vehemently against that are still many. Some of them
aren't live, many of them are are vehemently against any
any thing that we do. It reminds me of the
guy who's constantly saying that the market's going to crash,
and when it finally crashes, everyone treats them like a prophet.
It's easy to say, let's be realists and completely, you know,
let's be able to be Henry Kissinger and just look
at our interests only, which is important.
Speaker 1: But I think American people are very generous.
Speaker 2: Honestly, even though you know that's not how we're depicted,
and that there needs to be some level of idealism
to sell it to the American people that we're going
to help some we're going to help these protesters. We're
going to make life better for the people in Venezuela
and not just take their oil and et cetera.
Speaker 1: All right, you want to talk about.
Speaker 2: Culture, let's do it. What did I have? Oh? I
watched two things? Do you want to go first? Yeah?
Speaker 3: I want you to cover.
Speaker 2: I watched a show which I did not think I
would like it, all on Apple called Hijack Hum. It
stars Idris Alba, and it is what it what you
think it is. It's just there's a plane that's hijacked,
and it's not reinventing the wheel here. But for some reason,
it was just really tense the whole way in a
good in a good kind of way. It's just a
thriller and interesting and I binge watch it like I
can stop watching it. There's a second season, so obviously
this character is having bad luck with his transportation. But uh,
I would watch that. I think I think it is
a good one. If that's your that's your deal. The
other thing I watched was one Battle after the next.
Speaker 3: Is that what's called the Academy Award nominated h one.
Speaker 2: Battle after another. I am a huge fan of Paul
Thomas Anderson. You know there will be blood Boogie Knights,
his early movie name right now. I mean, I think
I've liked all of them, and I don't. I was
weirded out by this movie. I don't exactly know if
I liked it or not. A lot of it is
political or there's a political backdrop. There are people helping
illegal aliens, They're blowing up things. There's a cartoonish kind
of star chamber of what do you call it, white
supremacists who want to bring America BacT and then all
that's kind of dumb, even though it is kind of cartoony.
But having watched it, I would say I think that
is overdone. I don't really feel like this is because
the hippie terrorists in this movie look like idiots too,
you know what I mean? Like, I just lookink anyone
comes off really well or anything that way well acted.
Niche del Toro's in it, he's great, everyone's good in it,
all of that. But I just you know, it's really
good in it. Who I don't usually like a Sean
pan He's the villain. I actually think he does a
really good job. So it's it's Paul Thomas Anderson. So
it's a well made movie. It's just didn't grab me,
Like I wouldn't watch it again. I didn't get the
White exists it's based it's not based. I guess it's
based on Vineland. Is that the name of the book
of Thomas Pinshon?
Speaker 1: Who?
Speaker 2: Oh, I'm not a fan of you know, I Greg
Grabby's Rainbow.
Speaker 1: I still don't get it. You know, I'm so.
Speaker 3: Glad you said that, because Mark is always making me
read Various Pension and I sort of like it, and
then I'm like, I don't really know what's going on here.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's like fun to read, but it's just abstract,
Like maybe that's what this movie is like, you know,
there's no real need for this story. You're not really
saying anything, but it's kind of fun to dip in
and out of it and see it. But anyway, that
was me this week. Those are the two things I did.
Speaker 3: Okay, I have a lot because we've been snowed in.
And also so I already mentioned that I did the
March for Life last week. A friend came in for that,
so I got to spend some time with her, and
I have also been doing a ton of organizing. I
have a fairly small house. I have an office that
is also my closet, and I you know, I have
a large shoe collection and that I also want to
turn into like a little home studio so that we
can maybe do this on video. You're already set, David,
but it's going to take some time and effort and
like reconfiguring, and it's requiring me to get rid of
so much stuff. So I've been just spending hours each
day just throwing stuff out or organizing or filing whatever.
You don't keep a lot of notes, but I do.
I still take notes by hand, and you know, I
have notebooks that it'll say off the record, and so
I need to shred those things, but not but I
can throw away other pages. I don't need to shred everything.
And it takes a long time to shred everything. So
it's just been quite the ordeal and also really fun
to go through weird things I wrote when I was younger.
I keep cards from friends and my sister writes great cards.
You know, it's just like a lot to go through.
So if anyone has any tips. I also apparently have
a stationary problem where I like to collect stationary but
then not send it. So I'm working on that. I
need to do a better job with that. But I've
also watched a lot of movies. Last night I watched
half of the New West Side Story because I was
done organizing and the rest of the family was watching it.
Have you seen the new by which I mean five
years ago West Side Story?
Speaker 1: I have not not.
Speaker 2: I've not even seen the original, really, so are you
hold off? I think I've seen like the numbers, like
the snapping number, and I know the songs like I'm
Happy to be in America or whatever that song, but
I've never like sat down and watched webside story. Now.
Speaker 3: So this whoever was the cinematographer, was just great, beautifully
composed shots. It didn't grab me, but I don't know
if that's because I came in halfway through as opposed
to I was having trouble connecting with the characters. And
it's compounded by the lead, Maria being played by that
Rachel Zegler girl. Oh was she the handedly destroyed snow
White through idiocy? And okay, and I just don't One
of the kids was so angry at me for saying this,
But I don't think she's pretty, and I think that
the lead in a musical should be really beautiful. I'm
not a particularly beautiful person, and I understand that means
I would never do the lead in a musical. And
do you know, I just think you should pick really handsome,
beautiful people.
Speaker 2: I like looking at interesting people, interesting faces.
Speaker 3: She does have a very interesting face, but she kind
of looks like a little scrunchy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't.
Speaker 3: I don't have much, and I wasn't if I was
like incorporating my own dislike of her selfishness to arcissism.
Speaker 2: I mean, there are people that I just you know,
are in movies and I just can't I don't like them.
Something about them. I don't know them, but something about
their mannerisms or they're even their face give you a
person right where I off to Tom Hanks, I just
can't do it. With that voice and the way he
talks and everything. I don't like it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I get that. So then I there's another movie
I only watched part of, but that's because I had
to turn it off because it was so immoral and
it was PG. Thirteen and it was called definitely maybe,
And it's about a dad, the guy who's married to
Blake Lively, one of the Ryan's, but I always get
them confused.
Speaker 2: Ryan Reynolds Reynolds, Yes.
Speaker 3: Yes, And so he's playing the part of a dad
who's explaining to his very young child who her mother is.
But she knows her mother, so it's more like he's
telling a story. And then she's gonna guess which of
the women he slept with is her mom. And I'm like,
this is so inappropriate, it's so over the top inappropriate
that I just had to turn it off. So we've
done two movies that I didn't watch fully, and then
there's a new ten years later, a new s a
new year season of The Night Manager. Oh yeah, did
you watch that?
Speaker 2: I Thomas Verdon had the house guy in it right
top of Hugh Laurie does this one. I didn't think
this one did. And maybe he died in the first center.
Speaker 3: He dies in the first one.
Speaker 2: So he's Sean la Correy book The Night Pan, which
I think, yeah, and I.
Speaker 1: Know I did not watch this see.
Speaker 3: One of them, but it looks like it's good, and
I don't remember. Mark says, we watched the other one together,
but I don't remember that.
Speaker 2: It's like I was watching what was I watching Bertous
and I saw that the next season's command twenty twenty
eight or something like that. I'm like, I can't, you
can't have three years. The last one of these came
in twenty sixteen. I can't even remember a thing, you know.
I have to be in shows now. I just let
them kind of run out and then watch them when
they're over.
Speaker 3: And then anyway, So did you like that that or
Night Manager?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 3: I only saw the first episode, but it was good.
Speaker 2: Yes.
Speaker 3: And then this one came at the recommendation of one
of the kids, but also from viewers. And I think
maybe you watched it two years ago, which is a
little mini series called North and South. Have you seen it?
Speaker 1: I think so like in the in the nineties.
Speaker 3: Maybe, No, it's North and South of England.
Speaker 2: Oh oh, from the eighties. That's from like even before that, right, yeah.
Speaker 3: And it's kind of like a Pride and Prejudice with
a slightly different scenario.
Speaker 1: Isn't it anyone famous?
Speaker 3: I don't think so. I did not recognize any of
the people, I don't think, But yeah, it's a it's
a minister's daughter who gets who the family moves to
an industrial town, and she's very.
Speaker 2: Probably two thousand and four.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but it was I hated her. I mean I
hated her. She really thought she was hot stuff and
she wasn't meaning like she was like getting involved in
labor disputes that she had no idea what she was
talking about, but she had never been told she was stupid,
so she just kept doing it anyway. The man in
the story is very much mister Darcy likes and I
do like that type, so I enjoyed it.
Speaker 2: And he's the actor who played Thorin Oakenshield in The Hobbit.
Speaker 3: Oh, I don't think I've seen the Hobbit. I've read
the Hobbit, but I haven't seen it.
Speaker 1: It's okay, i'learn that book.
Speaker 3: The book is so exciting. The spiders still every time.
And then I've been playing a lot of Banana Grams
with one of the kids, so that's my cultural I
have a lot of cultural stuff, from March for Life
to Banana Grams.
Speaker 2: It was a very it was a very active and
diverse week you had culturally, which is good.
Speaker 1: Again is that it we have anything else, I.
Speaker 3: Want you to talk to Mark about the movie that
you saw, the Paul Thomas Anderson one, because he's seen
it and I think he'll be on next week, so
you should talk to her about that then, because he
had really interesting thoughts about it along with yours.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we'll see.
Speaker 3: Actually, David, of the things I was throwing out, I
had taken like twenty five pages of notes during a
subsequent viewing of Magnolia in the theater, and I was like,
these are really interesting notes. Clearly I thought I would
write something and send it into Siniste or something like that.
Speaker 2: But I.
Speaker 3: Was deeply moved by that movie too.
Speaker 2: There I could not watch it a second time because
it was so sad and affecting. Right. I don't even
know the actress's name who plays the abused woman. She
is fantastic in that, right, and then she smiles at
the very end, and you're like, this is just a bittersweet,
amazing movie.
Speaker 1: I usually don't like kind of anthology.
Speaker 2: Movies, even though they're well interconnected, but I did like
that movie very much. Yeah, okay, well, it's funny papers,
like you know how writers. I'm not saying this will
ever happen to me. But like Harvard will take the
papers of this writer or that writer, I literally have
no papers. Like I just throw out everything. I'm the
opposite of p O, a hoarder, you know, except for books,
which I have a few thousand oven records and stuff
like that. But as far as like papers go, cards,
very I don't know. So I don't like having around.
Speaker 3: I know you're trying to get out of here. But
just one last thing on this. I was talking to
Mark about being a daily journalist like we are, and
how not long lasting that work is, and I was
telling him that I'm okay with this and the way
that I view it. So I have all these books
of theology which are really interesting and I love reading
and studying and thinking about. But when you think about
the life of an average Christian, like ninety nine point
nine percent of their spiritual life is probably related in
terms of what they're getting from schol is coming from
their own pastor who's preaching to them each Sunday about
the meaning of the Word. And I recognize that all
my stuff is literally getting thrown in the trash, and
in fact, the only things I'm like keeping might be
related to particular things of books I've written or stories
I'm still working on. And I'm okay with that because
I think that in a similar way, the person who
writes the long term history of a current era that
will be important, but making sense of the world day
to day is of vital importance as well, And you
just have to get comfortable with the fact that you
have no quote unquote legacy, that you're just trying to
help people like in a day to day fashion, but
that that's it, that's really important.
Speaker 2: I think that's fascinating, and I agree. I like to
read good writing because it inspires me to try to
write better. So I'll go back and read columnists from
you know, the twenties or thirties or whatever, and it's
interesting to read to some extent, even Menken or someone
like that. But you're like, this is pretty disposable, right,
Like this is about something that I that doesn't concern
us anymore. So it's interesting, and I certainly don't think
anything i've ren is you know, going to you know,
no one will be reading it a century from now,
maybe maybe my relatives or something. So I agree that's
why I don't feel And also I hate looking at
anything I've written after it's published, Like, I almost never
read it, So why do I need things like if
a whole part was edited out and I didn't use it,
Like why am I saving the notes on that? I
don't really need it. It wasn't good enough to be published,
So I don't know. That's how I think about it.
And listen, I very much appreciate anyone it does read me.
I'm not saying I like you say. It's I don't
think writing about what's going on in our life. It's
like I'm always telling people life is actually much better
than it was in eighteen hundreds whatever. I'm always telling me.
But we all live in our own world, right, and
we have to make sense of what we're living in.
So I get that. I think it is in a sense.
I don't know how important it is, but certainly interesting,
I think. But not Yeah, pretty disposable. Well that's pretty
Actually that's a downer, Molly in any way. Well, you know,
everyone likes to think they'll leave somewhat of a legacy.
Speaker 3: Now my legacy is my children and maybe real lives.
Speaker 2: All right. If you'd like to email the show, please
do so at radio at the Federalist dot com. We
love to hear from you, and we will be back
next week with Mark Hemingway.
Speaker 3: Right, Molly, I'm recording my audio book.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we talked about that last week. We're very excited
to hear I have your book. I got a copy,
so I'll be reading it. I hear enough of you,
so I'm not going to listen to it.
Speaker 1: Anyway.
Speaker 2: We'll be back next week. The Lovers of Freedom and
Anxious for the Frame
Speaker 4: Ex