Speaker 1: Welcome back, everyone to a new episode of You Were
Wrong with Molly Hemingway, editor in chief of The Federalist
and David Harsani, senior writer at The Washington Examiner. Just
as a reminder, if you'd like to speak to us,
please email the show at radio at the Federalist dot com.
We'd love to hear from you. Molly, I hope you
had a nice new year.
Speaker 2: Did on that note on the mailing us last week?
I assumed nobody would be listening to the show because
it was Christmas week and it was our biggest mail
bag ever, So yeah, who knows.
Speaker 1: There were literally i'd say hundreds of recommendations for Christmas movies.
I would say that some of them have less to
do with Christmas, and Diehard had to do with Christmas.
But I actually it'll talk about this later in the show,
but it spurred me to watch some of the classics
that I had never seen, and that it surprises people
that I had never seen. So, but today, let's start
with the death of former President Jimmy Carter, who I
think was he.
Speaker 3: A hundred on the dot I wasn't really paying attention.
Speaker 2: Was Yeah, I have no idea a hundred sounds right, he.
Speaker 1: Was either he was definitely one hundred or over. So
I know that, and that's he's the longest living ex
president ever his death.
Speaker 2: Now Joe Biden is the oldest. No, Donald Trump is
the oldest former president. Yeah, Joe Biden will soon be
the oldest former president.
Speaker 3: Joe. I think Jimmy Carter looked better than.
Speaker 1: Joe Biden looks though, right before his death, when I
saw him and the wheel him out that day, I.
Speaker 2: Think that's a bit much. Do you remember the pictures
from when Actually one of the horrible things the last
couple of months was when there were there was that
they party for Jimmy Carter or something, and they filmed
it from Afar, and it looked like he was not
It really looked like he was going to die within hours.
And they then announced that he had voted that year,
and they were so happy that he had voted, And
I was thinking, are we sure? Are we sure this
guy is up for voting?
Speaker 1: Well, maybe someone else filled it out for him. This
is why we shouldn't have male ballots, right, I mean,
unless they wheeled him down to the to the machine,
which I don't think they could anyway, this is a
weird discussion.
Speaker 3: So I anyway, the media, of course, you.
Speaker 2: Agree with everybody that said Jimmy Carter was our best
president and best ex president. That's what I want to know.
Speaker 3: Did they say it was our best president? Also? You know,
it's weird about it.
Speaker 2: Did you see some of the hagiography from the me
It was pretty incredible, including that one cartoon showing him
crushing Ronald Reagan under the weight of his greatness.
Speaker 1: The funny thing is, I don't think his president presidency
was was a good one, but it is. He did
some good things. People forget. He did deregulate. Yeah, he
did regulated travel a bit. He was a deregulator. I
don't know if people know this about him. He was obviously
feckless in many ways. On foreign policy, he was terrible.
He gets credit for the you know, his big moment
is the Egyptian Israeli peace deal, which he had very
little to do with American money. Of course, bribed Egypt
into peace, but other than that, you know, the two
countries had actually been working on it before.
Speaker 3: He came in.
Speaker 1: In any event, I don't I don't I think his
presidency was mediocre. It's his post presidency that everyone talks
about being so great.
Speaker 3: Yeah, before we before.
Speaker 2: We moved to the post presidency. Do you remember. I'm
too young to remember this, but I do remember my
parents talking about this, the the economy under Carter.
Speaker 1: I do I grew I mean, I was, you know,
I sort of remember. I think I do. Sometimes, you know,
where you hear a lot of stories and it becomes
a memory that but I'm not sure if it is,
but you know, gas lines and things like that. You know,
I grew up in this city, you know, I was
a little kid in the seventies. I do remember, like
nineteen eighty and perhaps I romanticize it, but all of
a sudden, you know, I think Reagan brought a lot
of patriotism back to the United States after you know,
a decade I'd say of less than a decade, but whatever,
many years of kind of wallowing in, you know, in
recessions and in water get and all that. And then
when I was a kid, I was ten, my dad
drew me a map and we watched the eighty returns
come in, and every time Reagan went a state, I
would color it in.
Speaker 3: I forgot what color, you know, and.
Speaker 1: I hate, you know, I was pretty mad at Reagan
because he didn't pick Jack Kemp, you know, as his veep.
I'm sure I was just mirroring my dad's position on that.
But anyway, it was an exciting time the US one,
you know, the to Olympics, all of that. So I
remember that change from the Cardiors to the Reagan years
and the idea that things got worse after that, which
I often see, you know, journalists and others talk about
the Reagan years like we were you know, oppressed or anything.
It was just a really nice time in America, I think,
you know, I know, we had some recessions after as well.
Speaker 2: To note how based your father is, I love that
he was rightly opposed to the selection of hw over Kemp.
That's pretty interesting. And then also I thought I was
a total nerd about politics as a kid, but I
never drew in an electoral map. And and I'm writing
this book on the Supreme Court and there's a story
about one of the justices drawing in a map for
the Kennedy election.
Speaker 1: Well, if I may, since we brought up so my
dad was very you know political vary into history, so
I have like, remember when when you'd be in school
and you'd have to cover the Korean War, let's say,
and what was it called a diary like the cardboard
paper and you'd put a map and whatever.
Speaker 3: You'd paste them diorama. Yeah, I think that's what we
called them.
Speaker 1: But anyway, I would come in with such detailed ones
on the wars you would novel. It was so obvious
my dad did it. It would be massive and like
the maps I did. I mean I helped him, you know,
he'd help me, but he gets so into it, so
it was just funny. He was really into making maps
and stuff. So anyway, I was really into the election.
Speaker 2: Yeah, not to go too for a field, but in
seventh grade, I was in a class that was independent
study and they put the fear of God into you
at the beginning. They're like, you're going to pick a
topic and then at the end of the year, you're
going to make a presentation that's going to be like
a college level presentation. You are going to be asked questions.
You need to know every single thing about your topic.
Like I can't remember all of the details about it,
but I just remember having the fear of God put
into me. It was my first time moving from Ellen
Entry School to Junior high school. I chose the Mayan
Indian to study, and I spent that entire school year
reading everything books got books, I got, you know, I
went through the extensive National geographic collection we had. Did
a really good presentation and I knew so much about
the Mayan Indians, and everyone else did their presentation and
it was more like what you would have done if
you put like a month into it, as opposed to
the entire school year, and I'm I distinctly remember the
teachers being like, oh no, like we we scared this
one too much, you know, and they think they like
gave me an award at the end of the year
that was clearly a we are so sorry for what
we put you through.
Speaker 1: Above and beyond or you know what's funny is, you
know they like it was clear whose parents were really
involved and who like worme to do.
Speaker 3: You know whatever.
Speaker 1: But I bet you that even though my dad helped
me make those dioramas or whatever, it instilled a love
of history. I mean that a lot of other kids'
dads didn't do that, wouldn't so you know it's people
like your dad did that whatever, but were you, you know,
the scared you to do. But I bet that that
is how you deal with your book now or anything
you're doing, you know what I mean.
Speaker 3: I just I don't know it works.
Speaker 2: Although I don't like when parents do too much. I
feel like my kids they don't get help from us really. Also,
they don't take help from us. Sometimes we'll make fun
of them, reminding them that their parents are both professional writers,
but they think they know more than we do.
Speaker 3: Of course, they're teenagers.
Speaker 2: But my friend Megan up in New York. I was
meeting with her last year and asked her how things
were going, and she has these two young boys, and
she said, oh, things are going great. I just got
an A on the science project for school. Like I
asked one of my kids if they'd read the Odyssey,
and they look at me like, you know, yeah, I've
read it with three different translations already, and I was like, oh,
I should probably get on that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a long poem.
Speaker 2: Okay, back to what.
Speaker 1: It's listen, it's near's day. It was a long night
last night for me, longer than usually. It's funny because
I show up to this place at like eight and
I'm like, well, This is usually when I'm like gearing
up for bed, you know what I mean, It's like
the Knight's just starting for me. Jimmy Carter, so as
expected as you say, you know, they they set him
up as this, you know, the greatest ex president of
all time. And listen, he did some humanitarian work, There's
no doubt about that. And here's the thing. Most legacies
are complicated. You know, it's never oh, this person's a
you know, a saint and this person's a villain. But
the truth of the matter is there was no dict
during his lifetime. Basically that Carter did not either you
know a bet their regime in some way or you know,
or empower them to do terrible things. I'm talking from
hamas which he embraced years ago, to South American dictators,
to Central American dictators, to North Korean dictators. He undermined
virtually every president you know after he left, including Democrats
like Clinton and Obama. So he changed presidents had never
done that.
Speaker 3: I believe.
Speaker 1: Maybe Teddy Roosevelt got a bit involved sort of in
some stuff after his presidency, but most of them would not.
They'd maybe endorse the Canada, you know, the candidate of
their party, So I don't really under I mean, I
understand he's a Democrat, but anyone who remembers the seventies
and anyone who remembers what Carter did through all those
years would know that he was a terrible, terrible ex president.
Don't you do you agree?
Speaker 2: I think it's I think he was made the world
a worse place. And I understand what you say about
him being good domestically with some humanitarian work. That's that's true.
I think it reminds me, though, of another thing, which
is if you listen to all the people and sorry,
I don't want to. In fact, I'm not going to say.
There are complicated views of how he treated people, and
I'll leave it at that. But as far as the
policy perspective goes, yeah, I mean, his track record is
not great. He frequently would give his approval to elections
that were fraudulently done. Overseas, he helped North Korea get nukes.
He was doing the opposite of helping in the Middle East.
And more than anything, it's like what you just said,
there's an appropriate role for ex president and he was
not embodying that role. He should have known more than
almost anyone else in the country how much that hurt things.
And I don't know if he was feeling like he
hadn't been appreciated for his presidency and he was just
didn't feel like he owed it to the country to
take a back seat when other people were president. But yeah,
George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton, they both had to
deal with someone who was meddling in very unhelpful ways.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Carter also was in a sense sort of a
accidental president. It was after warder Gape. I think, you know,
they look for the most milk toast, seemingly moderate person.
He ran, you know in Jimmy ford'say, Gerald Ford's there.
He kind of got lucky and that's why he got
a shlacking in nineteen eighty. I just want to say,
here are some of the people he helped prop up Castro.
He did it often. But Hugo Chavez, you know, that's
the election. I think you were probably one of the
elections you're talking about. I mean, he gave that election
legitimacy when there it was clearly a stolen election, and
he's supposed to be pro democracy. He embraced, not just
horrified in the PLO. He embraced Hamas. He told the
Israelis to deal with Hamas. So these are all horrifying
regimes and people, and a good person, like they were saying,
he's a good man. A good man would not embrace
these people. He did not just say this is a
legitimate election.
Speaker 3: He was.
Speaker 1: He was a fanboy for a lot of these dictators.
That is, that is not what a good person does. Again,
I don't know, you know, you came boring to someone's soul.
Maybe he thought he was doing the right thing, but
in the end he didn't. And that's how we judge
politicians and president. So I think that's important. I don't
know anything else on him. Okay, he is ah. I
think you know, Trump is show going to go to
his you know, his state funeral, and I think that's fine.
He was a president. I think traditional, you know, to
do that is a tradition we've held and there's nothing
wrong with it.
Speaker 3: Do you agree with that.
Speaker 2: I think it's what I was thinking. It was a
good thing, not because it's that important that all ex
presidents go go to the funeral of another ex president,
but that we had gone through a period of time
where the left was so insane that they were unable
to treat the twenty sixteen election as legitimate or the
Republican Party in general as legitimate. And so having Donald
Trump go to the funeral, I think it's good for
the left. I mean, I think it's good to make
them realize that the way that they were behaving is
just not helpful to themselves or to anyone else. And
so I'm glad for that kind of normalcy.
Speaker 3: I agree.
Speaker 2: I will say I was surprised to see that, you know,
he'll be lying in state? Is that how you see it?
I know it's like one or the other, But I
don't remember laying lying laying in state. I don't know
what I was trying it out. I was trying out both.
We'll now get fourteen letters about the proper way to say.
Speaker 3: This lying in state.
Speaker 2: Okay. So I went to see Reagan when when he
was in the Capitol after he died, and I stood
in line for a very long period of time for that,
and I was just wondering, are are people going to
do that for Carter?
Speaker 1: And if so, why, maybe the newsrooms of like NBC News,
what was that? Maybe the NBC News newsroom, you know,
will line up, but I'm not sure about normal people
busting in from all over the country.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they're treating it like it's going to be a
big event, and I was kind of surprised by that.
Speaker 1: Honestly, I think Trump being there probably makes it a
bigger event.
Speaker 3: People you know, will probably want to see Donald Trump.
Speaker 2: I yeah, it won't be going to the capital for them,
or will he Maybe he will.
Speaker 3: I know know two things I wanted to mention. One
was The Times I think last year ran a whole.
Speaker 1: Story giving sort of a platform to this guy who
said that the nineteen eighty election had been stolen by
Ronald Reagan because he had made a secret deal with
the Iranians so that.
Speaker 3: They would hold the hostages until he was elected.
Speaker 1: I believe the osages were released on the day of
his inauguration, which was very smart I think by the
Iranians to do.
Speaker 3: The other thing is, you know'd even.
Speaker 2: Mention all of that about how he opposed the Shaw
and all that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Yeah, I mean he handled that situation really poorly. Yeah,
he was a bad president. I'm not saying I'm just
saying I don't, you know, I don't think he was
a worst president.
Speaker 3: Than Joe Biden, for instance.
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't think he's one of the worst presidents,
but he was not a good president for sure.
Speaker 2: I want to say one good thing about him as
a post president. After the two thousand election, which was
another election that Democrats refused to accept the legitimacy up,
so we've got nineteen eighty As you just mentioned, a
lot of people I used to claim that it didn't
happen in nineteen eighty eight, that they didn't accept the
legitimate but a bunch of Bush operatives said in fact,
they were causing problems even there. But two thousand was
prior to twenty sixteen, was the worst example of them
refusing to accept the legitimacy of an election. But because
of how close that election was and how it all
came down to Florida and how ballots were being handled,
there was a commission put together where Jimmy Carter and
James Baker analyzed am I getting the date right? Was
it two thousand? After two thousand? I think so? They
an analysis of election systems and it's actually not the
worst report ever. And one of the things that they
point out is that the easiest way to commit election
fraud is through mail out ballots, mail in ballots, and
that's obviously true just by definition they're unsupervised and so
many opportunities for manipulation. And he was honest about that, and.
Speaker 3: It's nice.
Speaker 1: Here's the thing, though, he accepted the election of Hugoshavez
as legitimate, but not the election of Donald Trump, not
the election of George Bush, not the election of He
actually was out there with many other Democrats, as you
mentioned in Oh No, you said eighty eight, but two
thousand and four, same deal. Carter would not He said
that Trump was not a legitimate president, but Hugo Shaves was,
but Hamas was, but you know, all these other elections,
So he was that's a bad guy, right, I mean,
that's clearly a partisan position he's taking.
Speaker 2: For the last four years, the media and other Democrats
and people who weaponize the Department of Justice have all
said that it is a jailable offense to say that
an election is not legitimate. And Jimmy Carter said that
twenty sixteen was a stolen election, stolen by Donald Trump
colluding with Russia. So I guess he escaped the clutches
of the Biden do oj for that one.
Speaker 1: The other thing I wanted to quickly mention was that
Jimmy Carter is not alone in this kind of revisionist
history where we lift up mediocre leftists and villainize or
you know, undermine good presidents like Ronald Reagan, I think
was a great president in many ways, not just policy wise.
It's not just about policy. Jimmy Carter had the Malay's speech.
He made America feel bad about itself. Ronald Meagan made
America feel better about itself. And the same thing with
Donald Trump. Frankly, you know, he I think makes people
feel more patriotic, and he is an unabashed patriot. He
would never give a Malay's speech. Ronald Reagan would never
give a Malay's speech. So, but it's not just him.
I always talk about my one of my favorite presidents,
Wren Harding, who was later maligned by leftists as a
bad president when he was one of our greatest presidents.
Calvin Coolidge, you know, we celebrate until recently because he
was a big racist. Wilson, you know, was up there
like tenth best president on these historian lists, and you
know JFK's up there, and I you know JFK didn't
really do much. He doesn't deserve to be a top
ten president in my view.
Speaker 2: I don't think JFK was a top ten, but I
do think he was pretty good and also even well
that's a that's a totally different conversation.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't I don't think he was a bad president.
I just don't think he was a great present. But
my point is that these left wing presidents are always
lifted up because they're activist presidents, because they do things
that left wingers like. Where a president who was modest
and functioned within the constitution, like Warren Hardy, I guess
I just want to make this about Warren Harding. You know,
is is was starting with the FDR era. Who an
FDR is Essentially he was a closest we've ever come
to a fascist in this country. And yet he is
always like, you know, number one or two or not
number one, but number two after Washington, you know, on
these lists, when he did a lot of harm to
this country.
Speaker 3: So anyway, so it's not anything.
Speaker 1: New that we're going to make a doubt, you know,
make a democrat into a hero, even though he was
a bad president and a terrible post you know, had
a terrible post presidency, so I just want to mention
that as well.
Speaker 2: So David, now that we're in the new year, oh,
I actually want to say, there is something that I
was not anticipating about the year twenty twenty five, which is,
I feel like I'm living in the future. Twenty twenty
five just sounds materially different than other years, Like I feel, oh,
we're advanced, this is twenty twenty five.
Speaker 1: Nate Bargatsi has a new special and he talks about
how he's from the you know, he's from the nineteen hundreds,
and now it's just sounds so long ago. You know,
it's like when he was a kid. Someone's staying there
from the eighteen hundreds.
Speaker 2: You know. My mom, My mom always talks about reading
nineteen eighty four when she was in high school, like
in nineteen sixty four and thinking, oh wow, what a future.
Nineteen eighty four like so far in the future. I
can almost not imagine it. And now she's like, and
now that's like forty years past. Twenty twenty four turned
out to be a rather momentous year. I'm just wondering
if you had any favorite stories from the year now
that where you can look back on it as a
whole package.
Speaker 1: I haven't done any research, so there are probably some
stories I'm missing or better stories, but I have to
think just off the cuff. My favorite story was the
Pager assassination, because it's.
Speaker 2: Like when you're talking about when Israel blew the Wieners
off of all the as well.
Speaker 3: As quite literally.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so you know, since then sixty Minutes actually had
a pretty good segment on it, and just the it
reminds me of the seventies. The very idea that they
knew that pages were being bought from Taiwan, and they
started a company and they sold it to them and
then waited and waited and blew them up at the
same time. It takes a lot of ingenuity and you know,
planning for something like that, and you know, I just
thought it was a cool you know, it helped save
the lives of many civilians. It helped, you know, in
so many ways, and it was just a great fun
story that you would maybe beat in like a novel,
you know.
Speaker 2: So it was targeted at the bad guys. It is
very hard when people are so inside of a civilian
population to get the bad guys and not the not
bad guys, but that was a really well targeted operation. Well,
I just want to say one more thing about it.
I feel like when I was younger, you'd hear all
these great stories about Masade, like going deep into enemy
territory and doing these just crazy operations. But then it
kind of felt like that wasn't happening so much. It
was true you were targets or whatever. This was definitely
a return to those It reminds me of one of
my favorite tweets the day that it happened, which was
something like, can you say, wow, those Jews are really
wily and crafty but mean it in a completely positive way?
Speaker 3: Yeah you can.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I did all that stuff, and then you know,
a lot of it was really incredible. The anteby rescue.
I don't if people know that, so you could look
them up. There's a great book called Rise and Kill First,
which is all about these things. But they were sometimes
the Israelis like to sort of push their legend and
mythology as well on this to scare, you know, their enemies.
But yeah, then in the eighties there were so many nineties,
there were so many botched operations, and Mosad was definitely
not what it was, but this or whoever, I'm not
sure which agency did this, but I think that because
their enemies are on the attack again, they've come up
with more interesting ways to get at them.
Speaker 4: Skyrocketing energy prices have caused people to do what Watched
Out on Wall Street podcast with Chris Markowski. Every day,
Chris helps unpack the connection between politics and the economy
and how it affects your While thirty four percent of
people have cut back or skip spending on necessary expenses
to pay their electric bill, this government involvement and increased
regulation continues to drive their p even higher. Whether it's
happening in DC or down on Wall Street, it's affecting
you financially.
Speaker 3: Be informed.
Speaker 4: Check out the Watchdot on Wall Street podcast with christ
Markowski on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 3: Anyway, So how about you.
Speaker 2: I thought twenty twenty four was interesting and again to
just take it back, something weird happened in twenty twenty
where it just everything felt weird for a very long
period of time, like time and space we're moving in
weird ways. For me, my memory is off on like
if something happened in the year twenty twenty twenty twenty one,
twenty twenty two. I don't remember which year it is.
It's just been kind of a weird, foggy period of
time for me. Twenty twenty four, I realized after Donald
Trump was announced the winner of that election. Sean Davis
was reminding me about this, actually because we were on
the phone together when it was announced, and I started crying.
I'm not a huge crier for things like that, but
I realized that there'd been a lot of there was
a lot writing on that election. And I don't even
mean like, to me, it's bigger than Donald Trump, but
it seemed like a directional change election. And when you
look back on the campaign, it's just amazing that this happened. Again.
If I can go back to twenty sixteen, I remember
when Donald Trump won. I would be in the makeup
chair at Fox and they show the What's on Fox
and Fox Business like while you're there, and it would
say President elect Donald Trump, and it just felt like
you were living in a movie, a movie that had
cast Donald Trump as the you know, we'd go, oh,
that would never happen, that's so crazy. Twenty twenty four
was insane. You're coming out of these years of lawfair,
where every powerful legal entity in the country decided to
use lawfair to try to eliminate the Republican Party, you know,
going after everyone from Donald trum Trump all the way
down to the stupidest protesters. You know, just decided to
destroy their lives, bankrupt them, imprison them, remove them from
the ballot, make them have to spend all their money
defending themselves. You're the raid at mar A Lago. You
had the mug shots had it was. It was dystopic
what was going on. By the way, I just want
to point out, on the right, you had basically no
response to it. You had no counter action, no legal
like entity being set up to say, Okay, we're gonna
We're gonna defend the rights of these people. You might
remember when when we put all the people in Gitmo,
every big law firm in the country came together to
defend the rights of the people who were in Gimo.
And here on the right, you couldn't even get people
to defend like top constitutional lawyers or top political operatives
like it was such a one sided destruction of the country.
It was. It was horrific to go through. So somehow
Trump comes out of that decisively winning the Republican nomination.
Everybody's saying like, oh, this is such a shame because
any other Republican would win and not Donald Trump. And
then he takes out the first Democrat opponent by June,
which is insane. That never happens with the debate performance,
or maybe it's better to say Joe Biden took himself
out of contention, but you know that happens. And then
you have the insane assassination attempt where you know, you
just still have it like replayed in your mind. The
way that Donald Trump oddly moved his head forward right
as the bullet.
Speaker 1: Was That's probably the story of the year, right that
assassination tip and his reaction to it. It is a
unique American moment. We've never seen anything like that.
Speaker 2: And that it was televised. Oh I do remember I
was on some panel show like a month later or
two months later, six weeks later, and I said something
about how I still woke up angry about that, you know,
that was very upset about it, and the other panelists
were all like, what they didn't even understand it, you know,
like people in the media are so left wing. They
don't even understand what you're talking about. If you say
I'm upset that they tried to kill Donald Trump, what
that doesn't even make sense? And then the other assassination
attempt and all of the media boot licking and like
saying that Kamala Harris was the most popular person who
ever existed, and how she had every single celebrity behind her,
and how the vibe shift was such that she was
going to win decisively, the polls being the one thing
that kept everybody in check. And then having Donald Trump win,
and you think about where he came from, you know,
being elected sort of sort of crazily in twenty sixteen,
then having the entire administrative state go to war against him,
including by saying he was a Russian spy, and just
to keep surviving. It's just it's crazy to live through this.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I just thought of something because of what you said.
Speaker 1: Now, obviously, moving forward in twenty twenty five, there's going
to be you have to govern, There's going to be
intra party fights among conservatives over issues and stuff like that. That's
going to happen. But you're right about this, like last
few years and not. Sometimes I can't put a date
on things either like the time as a flat circle
and all that. But part of it is that this
is the eraror where we lost trust in our institutions
for good reasons. There we realize they're corrupt, they're unserious,
a lot of our politicians are unserious, and that led
to what happened recently and now because of Donald Trump.
And again, you know, you don't have to like everything
he says, but there's this kind of renewed spine.
Speaker 3: I feel like.
Speaker 1: That people are far more capable and interested in defending
sort of Western values.
Speaker 3: Is that weird?
Speaker 1: Like I just I feel like there's they're not nervous
anymore that they're going to be branded this a racist
of phobic or you know, that they're fighting against, for instance,
the mutilation of children, or like people aren't scared anymore,
you know, or a lot of people aren't. We're still
a very I mean, we're still a divided country. We
have to be honest with ourselves. Kamala Harris was just
a terrible candidate in many ways and stuff like that.
But I just feel like there's a renewed sense of
West of pride in the country of you know, of
all that, I don't deny any of that. And it's
just weird to me that the catalyst for this crazy
both sides of that, has been Donald Trump. Right without
his election, we probably would never have known the depths
of the corruption of the people not only who were
against him, but who have been against us for a
long time. A justice department that throws you know, pro
lifers in jail and all of that and lies to us.
Speaker 3: The fauci, the COVID stuff, it's been.
Speaker 1: I think it's a really history I don't I usually
I usually feel like people estimate the historic quality or
the importance of where they are, But I actually think
this era has been incredibly important and probably we'll see
how it goes, but you know, we'll change the course
of the country in many ways, or maybe not change it.
But this was a crossroads and we decided that maybe
we shouldn't go off and be Europe, you know, I
wrote a book about this a few years or that
we should be America. I hope that's the case. We'll
see how it turns out, but anyway, so yeah, I
think it's a real historic year.
Speaker 2: I just feel debate on everything is getting more interesting.
You even saw recently there was a lot of social
media discussion about H one visas. The depth of discussion
we're having about immigration down to the how we run
visa programs level is so much better right now that
it has ever been in normal media normals.
Speaker 3: So can I say it's so weird.
Speaker 1: Though these debates are on the right, they're non debates
left right.
Speaker 3: There are debates within the right about the future. The
left doesn't debate it us.
Speaker 2: By that at all, I mean, I think the left
is still totally hold in too this oppressive fog of
you're not allowed to have your own thinking, and if
you say anything then slightly the wrong way, we will
destroy you. And so that's not conducive to debate, whereas
on the right. I have been actually feeling this on
the right for quite some time. And it's a weird
thing because partly what happens in these debates is that
people say things that I hate and I totally disagree with.
But I'm also excited that the debates are happening, you know,
whether it's about economic policy or foreign policy or whatever.
But yeah, it was a high stakes thing because of
some of these issues that are less about politics or
it's about how politics had become part of every single
aspect of our lives, and I do feel with this
election that you are pushing back against part of that
in a helpful way, I hope.
Speaker 1: So a person who just says, yeah, America is actually
pretty good is the person you have to side with
if you're you know. And this is why I keep
calling it the normy election. I just think a lot
of people who aren't very political decided that we can't
go down this road anymore.
Speaker 2: Remember early on in the first Trump presidency, there was
I think it was Colin Kaepernick someone like that, had
been protesting the America from his perch in the NFL,
and Donald Trump said something probably over the top in
response to it. And I remember being on a panel
on Special Report or something like that where everyone was
lamenting how awful Donald Trump was to in any way
suggest as an American president to speak against any American
using his free speech rights is just the worst thing
in the world. And it was like, is it or
you know, like or is this embrace of hatred of
one's own country a very dangerous thing that everyone in
the media is supporting, and that everyone in the media
is enabling, and that all the people on the left
are enable it, Like, isn't that sort of worse than
maybe saying something over the top that you shouldn't do this.
Speaker 1: I don't know that core lie lie that this country
is not just you know, that it was founded to
keep slavery going. That people that there's systemic racism right
now when everyone goes out of their way or most
people do to try to include everyone in their companies
and their you know, in their lives, is one of
the worst paranoias going in this country anyway, think about
a BLM COVID. These last few years have been just insane.
So many huge events have happened. So I hope, again
mentioning Warren Harding from before, I hope we have a return.
I hope Trump is going to be a return to normalcy.
It's weird to even say that Trump would represent a
return to normalcy, but who knows it might be let's see.
Speaker 2: Okay, So let's move on to culture. Have you been
watching anything over this break that you would like to
share with us?
Speaker 3: Yes, I'm looking for my list. Oh, here it is.
Speaker 1: So we had so many emails and so many people,
you know, giving us Christmas movie. I'm going to save it,
and we'll do it next year. I'll give us something
I'm talking about. But there have been just great, you know,
all these old timey movies.
Speaker 3: And then it hit me.
Speaker 1: I was like, you know, people over my house during Christmas,
and it hit me that I haven't seen most of
these movies, like the famous ones. So, for instance, It's
a Wonderful Life. I'd never watched it, and I decided
to watch it. Can I tell you a little interesting
tidbit about that movie? I see your confused face. That
movie was a failure when it came out. This is
just maybe everyone knows this. I don't know, but it
was a failure. It was so lowly regarded that they
did not like renew whatever the copyright on it in
nineteen seventy four, and because they hadn't done that, all
the TV stations could take it for free and put
it on. So that's when they started putting it on,
and that's when it became a classic and people started
watching it. So I thought that was interesting. It's a
lovely movie. I'd never watched it, and you know, it's
a lovely movie.
Speaker 2: I actually had not watched it until last year myself.
It's one of those movies that you feel like you
know because you've seen parts of it, of it all
the time. But I liked it a lot better than
I thought I would.
Speaker 1: Yeah, same here, same here. Though it did make me, uh,
it was more. There were things in it that were
more risque than I would have imagined. An old timey moode.
He would have like one of the characters, how she dresses,
and how the guys are constantly just staring at her
as she walks by, and stuff like that, and then
how when he goes to the alternative reality, how many
like strip joints.
Speaker 3: There and sound and stuff. It was weird.
Speaker 1: I watched that. I watched Singing in the Rain. I
know that's not a Christmas movie, but i'd never seen it.
Did you ever see Singing in the Rain?
Speaker 2: I love it, you know.
Speaker 1: Overall, I liked it White Christmas, Yes.
Speaker 2: A vehicle Like if you understand that we're not looking
for plots, we're just looking for properties to dance, it
makes a.
Speaker 1: Lot of my gosh, what's the guy's name is a
Danny O'Connor, who's in that with him? With Geene Kelly,
these guys. That guy was an amazing dancer and what
I loved about it as Molly. As you know, I'm
not really a guy for dancing and singing movies and musicals,
but his aggressiveness and that like the way he tapped
danced and stuff. I was really impressed a dance. Donald O'Connor, sorry,
and Gene Kelly. You know what never changes though in
movies is that Debbie Reynolds is twenty two in that
movie and Gene Kelly is forty two in that movie.
So there's a twenty year difference. Enjoyed it? I saw
so those were oh yeah, white Christmas. Now, I tell
you something. I am a big fan of Danny K.
Like I now want to watch all Danny k movies.
Like I think he's really funny.
Speaker 2: When you said Danny O'Connor, in my mind, I pictured
Danny Kay.
Speaker 1: Okay, I have to tell everyone I thought that Danny
Kay was singing in the ring when I went.
Speaker 3: To the sea.
Speaker 2: It's okay, the one who like French people loved or
is that someone else.
Speaker 3: Jerry Lewis.
Speaker 1: I think French people, but I'm not sure they might
have loved Danny K. They should love Danny Kay. He
was great white Christmas. Okay, so that I liked as well,
and that was basically it. And then I watched a
cartoon called Clause. Have you ever watched it?
Speaker 2: No, but I think that was one of the recommendations
from one of our many emailers.
Speaker 1: It's excellent, like the style of animation, the whole movie.
It was really I didn't expect it to be good,
and it was good.
Speaker 2: I don't really have anything other than I watched Juror
number two.
Speaker 3: Actually, oh yeah.
Speaker 2: I first off say that my water rower, which I
love and I got so long ago when I tore
up my ankle, it made it very difficult to do
what I like to do normally, which would be like
running or other things that required me to have a
lot of weight on my foot. And we got the
water rower. I mean it's like twelve years ago and
I just love it. Do you ever use a rower?
Speaker 1: I have not.
Speaker 2: I have not shout out to the person who, by
the way, was like, you should enter rowing competitions. I'm
not that kind of rower. I just like to row
at home because it's a very convenient way to get
my heart rate up. You know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I've heard it's like the best exercise for you.
Speaker 2: I love my rowing machine. They did tell us when
we bought it that probably after ten years or so,
we'd have to reseal the tank. And true to their word,
that water rower has not needed an ounce of anything.
But last week while I was rowing, the water started
coming out. And it's going to take a while. Like
I'll probably have to order a new part. Our first
fix didn't work. Nobody cares about this. Sorry for this
boring story. I just I do want to say if
you're thinking about getting a water rower, it needed nothing
for ten years and twelve years actually, and now I
have to repair it. So I'm now using my husband's
like I don't even know what you call it, like
a wind sprint bike, you know, it's like, I don't
know what it's called, but it's a bike.
Speaker 3: It's a stationary bike.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but you it's like, you know, there's nothing to
plug in or anything like that. It's just like and
you sort of move your arms back and forth and
you do it, you do sprints on it. I like
it a lot. I'm now going to make sure this
is part of my tour in the future. This this
is how I watched things. So I started watching Juror
number two. I saw it, and I watched it like
over the course of three days, and I liked it
a lot. What did you think?
Speaker 3: I loved it. I loved it.
Speaker 1: It has this basically this moral quandary, right sort of,
and I don't want to give it away, And so
the whole time, at least I was, and I imagine
others who watch it are thinking what would I do?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, which makes it a really interesting watch. But
the actors were great in it, you know.
Speaker 2: The Yeah, I like that What would you do wasn't
just about the main dilemma, but really about every single
person in there. What would you do if you're this person?
What would you do if you're that person?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 1: It Also, having been on a jury for it was
like a long case, and I was a foreman of
that jury.
Speaker 2: I remember because you were glasses.
Speaker 3: Yes I'm not joking.
Speaker 1: Doris thought that I looked smart, Thank you, Doris.
Speaker 3: And so.
Speaker 1: But I thought the jury was very a very realistic
look at a jury where people are like, I just
got to get out of here. Let's say he's guilty,
or you know, all kinds of folks. So I thought
that was interesting as well.
Speaker 3: I just I don't know.
Speaker 1: I think Clint Eastwood is that it's weird to say this,
but just an underrated director. I think his movies are
always very well done, and I don't know why. I
read somewhere that they didn't really release this in the theaters.
Speaker 3: I don't why. It's an excellent movie.
Speaker 2: So I have mixed feelings about Clint Eastwood. I hated
Million Dollar Baby, but mostly because of the message that
you should kill people.
Speaker 1: I never even saw that one. I wouldn't I don't
watch movies like that.
Speaker 2: Spoiler alert. It's it's a it's a plea to do
assisted suicide. Yeah, Unforgiven was good. I love Richard Jewel.
Speaker 3: That was great.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I show that to my students. But I
don't know. I didn't see The Mule. I didn't see
Grand Charino, although I would like to.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it was good.
Speaker 2: I did like American Sniper. Yeah, Like I feel like
there's this theme in some of his movies that that
really is about, like what if we were just to
tell stories about basic American ideas.
Speaker 3: I just want to quickly say his West were great.
Speaker 1: I mean, he did the Outlaw Josie Wales, which is
just this fantastic movie Pale Writer, which was great.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they're unforgiven.
Speaker 1: I just I don't love all every movie he's made.
I just I think they're interesting or you know, and
certainly this one I think was one of his better,
better recent movies, at.
Speaker 3: Least in the last twenty years. I'd say, I put
out on an X.
Speaker 2: That everybody should go watch Durn number two immediately, and
a lot of people were responding that they loved it.
But then there were a lot of people who responded
that they didn't love it, that they thought it was
poorly written and poorly directed and poorly lit and poorly everything.
And I mean I thought it was stunning. I loved it,
and I even liked the simple way in which it
was told and the way that people spoke seemed pretty
real to me. Now, there's a ton of stuff there
that's wrong in terms of, you know, like how something
would happen in a trial or you know, it's a movie.
But I loved it and I cannot stop thinking about it.
Speaker 1: And it wasn't a perfect movie. There were some like
the cop in the you know, I don't want to
give away stuff. Whatever they were, there were aspects that
could have been fleshed out more. Maybe it should have
been a little bit longer, but you.
Speaker 2: Know, no, I liked it. I loved it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, No, Compared to most of the movies I see,
this is up there. Like if I made a top
ten list of movies from last year, this is probably
would be up there. So yeah, I recommend it as well.
I thought it was pretty good. Did you watch anything else?
Speaker 2: I don't think so. I mean I did. I feel
like someone who recommended no Good Deed, and I started
watching that, but then I kind of lost interest, which
is Phoebe from Friends is in it.
Speaker 3: And it's about, oh yeah.
Speaker 2: Well we're trying to sell a house, but there was
a murder in the house kind of thing.
Speaker 1: I have started many shows recently and lost interest and
I just can't keep watch, and I do wonder is
it me?
Speaker 3: I thought?
Speaker 1: Am I losing patience? Do I just want, you know,
a payoff? Or are these shows not that great anymore?
Like I'm watching the show Silo on Apple, which is
science started out so strong, I'm just so bored.
Speaker 3: I don't know if I could finish it.
Speaker 1: I didn't want to mention one show that is I
highly recommend I think I may have just mentioned I
watched the first episode I started watching it. It's called Shrinking.
I think the guy's name is Jason Siegel Harrison Ford,
isn't it.
Speaker 3: It's it's a really you know.
Speaker 1: It deals with you know, grief, I would say, but
in a funny way, and I recommend it. I haven't
watched all of them. I think I watched four episodes.
It's really good.
Speaker 2: Oh, I will say that. Right at the moment that
my water rower broke, I had just started watching Madness,
which one of our listeners had suggested that we would like,
and it did seem good. But then I then I
moved on to Jure number two, So I will all right, Madness,
try to get back to Madness. It's about this, like
CNN contributor. I mean, I just started it when the
water road broke, so I can't. I can't say, but
it looked like something. Maybe I'll save that for a
future updates.
Speaker 3: It looked like something.
Speaker 1: Maybe I will give it a shot right at my alley.
That's great. Another year in the books, huh, there's a
crazy year. I'm not the type, but I just want
to say I love all that. You know that we
get so many emails from these people that sometimes when
we're talking, I forget that we're, you know, recording this
year the public, and they remind me. But they're so
kind and they are and they really helped me think
better sometimes I don't know, you know what I mean.
Even their criticisms sharpened the way I think about things,
So I don't know. I think I appreciate it. I
know you do as well.
Speaker 2: Love that you are full of love on this and
I feel this way. Come. I love the feedback, I
love the ideas, I love the jokes, I love the
insults even it's just great.
Speaker 1: I think the hangover is why I'm being nice. Don't
expect us every week, Ulco, but anyway, we'll be back
next week. Until then, be lovers of freedom and anxious
for the fray