Speaker 1: Welcome back everyone to your new episode. If you were
wrong with Molly Hemingway, editor in chief The Federalist and
David Harsani, Senior writer at The Washington Examiner. Just as
a reminder, if you'd like to email the show, please
do so at radio at the Federalist dot com. Molly,
looks like you're on the road again.
Speaker 2: I am. I'm in beautiful tell your ide Colorado, and
I'm really supposed to be on a little mini vacation.
But we took a break last week and it seemed
like two weeks was too much of a break for us.
I know, our listeners just really rely on this podcast.
Speaker 1: Molly, America needs us. Two weeks it's too long for
us to be away. Are we need to tell people
what to think? Let's so, because we haven't been on
for two weeks there there have been a lot of stories. Actually,
it's been pretty pretty busy out there, and a lot
of the news is not great. You know. I think
we should start with talking about a piece that appeared
in the Washington Post over the vacation on not I
don't remember what day exactly, that accused Pete Hegseth of
essentially committing a war crime, right, all anonymous sources correct, Well, and.
Speaker 2: Can you can you say what the piece said exactly?
Because I don't read the Washington Post anymore because they
just push hoaxes so much that I don't even want
to pollute my mind with their with their info.
Speaker 1: Ops.
Speaker 2: But you read it, so tell us what it said.
Speaker 1: Well, people know, I'm sure that the Trump administration has
been targeting narco traffickers in the Caribbean, and I believe
the Pacific Right blowing them up. So in this story,
Pete Hechseth sources claim that he there was an initial
strike which which did not destroy the vote in kill
everyone on it, so he ordered a second strike to
finish the job. I think there's a quote in there
something about him saying at one point that we need
to kill everyone, right, So it seems to me, well,
then he denied it that that took place. But there
was a second story. Am I jumping the gun here
by saying talking about the New York Times piece? Which
was very confusing to me to first like believe that
the New York Times would actually have a story that
debunked the Washington Post story. They had people telling them
that it had not happened that way. You know, it's difficult.
I am open to believing that our military does things
like that, but I, for right when I went the story,
knew that I couldn't trust what the Washington Post was writing,
because I did all the hallmarks of the typical hit
piece that I saw with Brett Kavanaugh, or I saw
during the Russia collusion hoax. It, you know, just anonymous
sources giving you little snippets of I hate to say
the word, but they want to create a narrative that,
by the way, fits in very neatly with what's been
going on with senators and others telling people in the
armed forces not to follow illegal orders, yet not naming
what the illegal orders are. And all of a sudden, Wow,
here's an illegal order, you know, right here in the
Washington Post that people should have said, No, this is unconstitutional,
This breaks the Geneva Conventions or whatever whatever it is.
That's how I saw it. I don't know what did
you think?
Speaker 2: So I care about our military being used properly and
following US law. I also feel like I have less
sympathy for drug traffickers who are part of a military
target operation than most people in the media do, so
I just have to admit that bias going into this.
I think that drug trafficking is a horrific threat to
the country and to our people. I think that foreign
entities have long known like this is just a rule
of war. People have known for a long time that
if you can get an opposing people hooked on drugs,
it's very good for you and bad for them. And
so I think there are national security objectives even as
you know, we have been fighting this drug war for
decades with operations like the ones that Trump and Higgs
sit they're ordering, and you know, you can debate about
how effective it has been and stuff like that. So
the Washington Post, I don't trust them because their track
record of information operations is just so extensive that I
think it's a giving them a gift to take any
story of Theirs seriously. So, just in the last few years,
the information operations that they've been involved in or have
led would be the Russia collusion hoax, which they kind
of launched with a completely mendacious and ridiculous story about
Mike Flynn violating the Logan Act by talking to his
Russian counterpart prior to the election. Was one of the
big pieces that got the Russia collusion hoax going, and
it was a complete information op from leaders of Barack
Obama's intelligence services. Let's see, there was the Brett Kavanaugh
rape hoax that they launched with a tendentiously written story
alleging that federal Judge Brett Kavanaugh, with a stellar record,
had secretly been living the life of a rapist. And
they did it through stuff that just never should have
been written based on the level of information they had,
and clearly what an operation it was. It just happened
to drop Clarence Thomas style on the eve of his
confirmation hearings. Let's see, they were the ones that ran
the information op from the Bendmann brothers about how Donald
Trump had broken some law by asking the Ukraine president
to the now acknowledged Biden family corruption in Ukraine. That
turned out to be just riddled with errors and just
completely wrong on what that call was. So I just
kind of want I get annoyed when people are like, well,
I bet that they lied about all those things, but
they're not lying now. I mean, you have to be
a complete idiot or loser, or there's got to be
something wrong with your brain to take the Washington Post
seriously when they do story like this, like, is it
possible that Pete hegset Willy Nilly committed a war crime?
I guess that's possible. It doesn't match the man I know,
but it's possible. I'm certainly never going to take the
Washington Post's word for it.
Speaker 1: Okay.
Speaker 2: So the other thing is that and I will read
it here when I'm off my little mini vaka. But
I'm told that the story said that the story was unclear,
like it tried to give the impression that Pete Hegseth
saw that there were survivors on a completely destroyed boat
and said, murder them. I'm committing a war crime. And
then what actually happened, according to other anonymous sources, is
that he was like, yeah, no, we need to take
out this boat and you know, destroy destroy the boat.
And so the military career guy who was running the
operation did a double strike because the boat was disabled
but not destroyed. So it's a legitimate military objective. I
don't think that career military officer, based on the information
that we have now, should be strung up on war crimes.
And also people who were going thinking they were going
after Pete Hegseth. But now they realize they're going after
this guy. I think they should be ashamed of themselves
for like not waiting for more information.
Speaker 1: Well let me yeah, let me go back a little
to the original story how it was constructed. The Pete
Heseth has said, we're going to kill narco terrorist quote right,
We're going to kill them. So when you situate that
in the story to make it look like this was
an incident where you have shipwrecked these people, I think
there were two people alive, and then you're like kill them,
you know, by putting in that kind of quote like
as an umbrella over what's happening, when in fact, the
person in charge believed that they were going to get help,
like I said, and took it back. So the original
story the New York Times, if we're to believe them.
Speaker 2: Also based on anonymous sources.
Speaker 1: But yeh right, so we don't know what happened. And
you know, I have two different thoughts on this. I
think we have in the United States, has a legitimate, legitimate,
has legitimate cause to stop people from from importing narcotics
into this country illegally destabilizes the country it's criminal. We
have every reason to protect our borders using lethal force
if necessary. I also don't trust the government, you know,
I mean Obama was going around droning people, including an
American citizen who had no due process. Was he probably
a terrorist? That guy? Yeah? Are these people probably narco traffickers?
I'm sure they are. But there has to be sometimes,
I think, and I don't know how, some kind of
oversight to make sure that the government's not just doing
things to you know, to appease voters or whatever it is.
And that part of it is a little bit concerning
to me. I don't know how you feel about it now, Yeah.
Speaker 2: So kind of just real quick on that point too.
I do think there is an issue here with the
Obama going after an American by drone strike. I think
when you're intentionally trying to murder an American via drone
strike overseas, that's different than even like, you know, how
he killed Anna We're a Alaki, but also Annamar al
Alachi's kid, who was also an American citizen. The kid
thing is kind of it wasn't what they were going for, right,
but he died as part of the strike. But the
first one they were going for, and I think that's
why a lot of people have concerns about it. It's
possible that when you're going after the Taliban or Venezuelan
drug smugglers, you might as part of that be getting
someone who's an American or something. And you know, they
are legitimate concerns there, But as long as you're not
intentionally trying to take them out and violate their due process,
that way it's less of a concern. But it kind
of annoys me how little Congress cares about legitimate things,
and then how they get really easily whipped up into
a frenzy by the Washington freaking Post. So like when
we were withdrawing from Afghanistan, which was a complete and
utter debacle. You might remember that we said that we
killed ten people on their way to committing another terror attack,
and it turned out that we killed seven kids and
three adults who had absolutely nothing to do with enemy
combatants in Afghanistan. And I don't even think Congress did
an investigation into it, like they didn't do over six
And then the Biden administration said, yeah, we're not going
to hold anyone accountable for this, you know, killing of
these seven kids and it just the the lack of
consistency with people. You know, it's good for us to
one to do things right and to achieve military objectives
and to follow rule of law and all that, but
I cannot stand the way the media and other crazy
Democrats aren't consistent about it and are doing it so
purely and obviously for partisan gain, Like that's very dangerous
for a country.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I agree. I wrote about this today having being
lectured to by these Democratic senators who had nothing to
say when we clearly target rushed this operation where we
killed a whole family in Afghanistan just to appease voters
who were angry about the withdrawal. Frankly right, I mean
that's the reason they did it, and then call it
a righteous strike, which is what MILLI did. I think
it was MILLI after they sort of knew that it
was went wrong, and then not a single person in
the entire government was held responsible for it. But more
than that, Obama, I no, no, I'm sure you remember,
like no one cares about war powers, like you know,
who's what's his name? Tim Kaine wants to pass a
resolution demanding that Donald Trump come to Congress and get
a authorization for military force? Are you kidding me? Well,
first of all, where were you when Barack Obama relied
on the United Nations as a reason as where he
derived his power to involve himself in Libya? Right where
we were involved in a war for seven months with
no congressional sign off at all. Now, and that's a
while back, I guess. But the idea that all of
a sudden Donald Trump has to live by these what
I think is actually a constitutional He should go to
Congress and get an OOP. But he won't because no
one does. I mean, every president ignores that, especially Democrats.
They ignored all the time. So that drives me crazy.
The other side of this that I don't like, and
maybe you'll disagree here with me, is I see that
the administration keeps calling them narco terrorists we have, you know,
and then everyone's picked that up. They are not These
people are not. Terrorism has this very specific meaning. We
go out with terrorists use violence or the or or
intimidating people with violence for ideological goals, not for criminality,
not to make money on drugs. The reason they're using
terrorism is to give themselves a legal reason to blow
people out of their boats. Right, because that's the legal
reasoning they've offered. I don't think they're terrorists, and I
think we should be careful about that, But I also
think we have a legitimate reason to stop them. I
don't know, I'm all over the place, but both sides
annoy me with that. Donald Trump, if I were him,
I would go to Congress. Let the Democrats vote down
use of military force to stop narco traffickers. I bet
you they I bet you they'd sign off on it.
But he won't do that because no administration gives up
power none.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's actually like going back to George Washington. Executives
have really held tight to their powers there. But the
Constitution should have word here too, and I agree with
you they should go to Congress for it. I just
want to say not every drug dealer and trafficker is
an ARCO terrorist, but there are narco terrorists in drug trafficking, possibly,
like if they're doing it for political reasons.
Speaker 1: I think that they may use drug trafficking as a
way to raise money. But it seems to me that
the ven First of all, we should also talk about
vent as well. On the threats that Donald Trump has
made on the country, itself. Hey, I hate those commis, right,
but if we're going to start bombing them or an
he threatens, I mean that is war, right, controlling their airspace,
that is an act of war. And he should go
to Congress again, I don't think he will, and we
should say, going back to Thomas Jefferson, presidents have circumvented
going to Congress. Right, the Korean War lasted three years.
There was never a declaration of war. And you can
go on and on. I have a list somewhere. It's huge. Right,
Reagan didn't ask for permission when he invaded Grenada, or
when he sent troops to Lebanon. Bill Clinton bomb Bosnia
and Serbia without any kind of congressional you know, buy in.
So it's been a problem for a long time. All
I'm saying is like that Democrats are trying to make
it out like Donald Trump's ignoring the Constitution. He is,
but that precedent has been set for a very long time.
I don't. I don't think it started with Donald Trump.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, I completely agree, And I just think it's
a matter of congressional honor that they should demand to
uphold their own Article one authorities and powers. I did
want to say something a couple other things on this story.
The first is just a brief word to the wise.
I'd seen that Brit Hume, the wonderful Brit Hume at
Fox News, had retweeted The Washington Post's original story but
did it today and said, this story remains exclusive to
the Post. Beware of stories that remain exclusive. And so
what he's saying is nobody else has been able to
in any way corroborate this claim from the Washington Post
that was based on two anonymous sources. And I responded
to him that that was very good and wise words,
but partly because I was thinking about this because the
New York Times story is based on five anonymous sources,
clearly five very high level anonymous sources, but still anonymous sources.
It just reminds me that you'll hear all the time.
It's like my big pet Peeve. The Washington Post will
have a story sourced to two anonymous sources saying, you know,
Pete Haggseth committed war crimes, and then like Natasha Bertrand
and Ken Dalanian and other known hoaxers will say that
they have confirmed the Washington Post story. It is literally
ontologically impossible to confirm an anonymously sourced story with anonymous
sources almost always, what that is called is repetition, meaning
you had two bad actors at the Pentagon maybe, and
they run to their buddies at the Washington Post and
they say, please write this story because we're trying to
hurt Pete hagg Seth, and the Washington Post says, whatever
you want, we'll do it. And then those same two
people run to Kendlanian and Natasha Birtrand and they go,
we run this story. We got this other information that'll
make it seem like you're, you know, having something new.
That's what an information operation is. And so don't think
that just because multiple people report something that it's true.
The way to confirm a story is with real facts
and real figures and real people really on the record,
and I know and you know that we you know,
we traffic and anonymous sources ourselves. It's kind of like
the way you get things done in Washington, d C.
But that there's a cost associated with anonymous sources. And
one of the costs is it's not really confirmable until
it is tell someone you know, admit something on the record.
Or you have the evidence on the record.
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Speaker 1: The anonymous sourcing has gone nuts over the last decade.
I'd say, I mean, there was always anonymous sourcing in
DC stories, but never like this, and the bar you
had to reach to report something like this would be
very high. I cannot remember, and maybe you'll correct me.
Maybe I'm wrong. The New York Times has never debunked
a Washington Post story that I can remember. But this
isn't just a debunking by kind of a parallel path
of reporting. They explicitly debunked the story for I give
you the quote this is the New York Times, writing
about the Washington Post story. The two officials also said
that mister Heseth made nor oral directive at the that
went beyond the written order. The written order, this is me.
The written order was destroy that ship, not destroy that ship,
and if there's a survivor, hit him with another missile.
Make sure everyone's dead, as the Washington Post said, and
then it goes on. The Post article did not provide
context on when mister Heseeth gave what its sources described
as a spoken, spoken order to kill everyone. The biggest problem,
one of the big problems with media, I think, was
that they all saw themselves, you know, defending democracy as
one organ right, working together to stop Trump. Whatever it is.
To see that the UH, to see that the that
the that the Times is actually correcting a story that
that puts the Trump administration in a good light is
a very very small little ray of light. I think,
how about you?
Speaker 2: Were you as? You weren't? Apparently? I mean when I
saw it, I was suspicious. I was like, what the
Washington's going on here? No, the New York Times, You're
totally right the Wash. When the Washington Post created the
Russia collusion hoax. The New York Times was like, we'll
do it even more than you are, and they raised
each other to Pulitzers, by the way, as rewards for
active participation in this information up. When the Kavanaugh rape
hoax happened, the New York Times was like, we'll make
up even more stories about this well respected federal judge.
We're gonna go after him for throwing ice at a
bar and ordering beer on a high school trip back
when it was legal to drink beer in high school
at age eighteen. You know, like they were ridiculous. They
were competing in the ridiculous department. And so when they
don't do it here, I'm like, what's going on?
Speaker 1: I mean, there might be something they're not doing journalism right, Like,
I don't know. I mean maybe they are, Maybe they are,
but I don't know. Listen, we don't know for sure.
But it seems from the denials by Trump administration, I mean,
obviously denials, you could be lying, but it's clear that
this Admiral Frank Bradley was someone who destroyed, who ordered
the destruction of the ship. To me, I believe that,
And it seems like this is just how they conduct
themselves on these sorts of strikes. They make sure that
the target is down, but we'll see. I mean, I
think it's worth I wish I could trust these outlets
because I think it's worth knowing what we're up to.
This is what when guided missiles start appearing frequently, I
think we're in hostilities. Like to me, that's a war
of a sort. And I want to know what's going
on me too, And we cannot really know because we
cannot really trust any of these people.
Speaker 2: Yeah, not the government, not the media, not anyone. Okay.
So the other related thing is that this mini information
op that the Washington Post was doing was part of
a larger information op that we have all been witnessing
and that you know, alluded to with this organized campaign
to say that military people should not obey orders from
the president if Democrats in the future say that those
orders were illegal. And a lot of people in the
media who don't have a ton of military experience were like,
what's the big deal, Like, there's no big deal. They
just said, like, if in the future Democrats think that
you should be prosecuted for following that order, But they
didn't say that there was an illegal order, and I
think they don't understand how precarious military order is and
how important it is that people not be getting mixed
messages from political leaders about whether they should follow orders
or not from their higher ups. And you know, that's
one of the ideas behind the New York Times debunking
the Washington Post story. Maybe they think they have a
bet way to pursue this larger information op of trying
to accuse Trump and his people of war crimes. I
don't know, but I think everyone should be wary of
the obvious organized information op that's going on, meaning there
are nonprofits, so called nonprofit groups, you know, Democrat funded
groups that are posting billboards outside of military installations, sowing
doubt in the minds of military members. You had the
video produced by one of these NGO groups to from
from what Donald Trump calls the seditious Six, these six
elected Democrats, including Captain Mark Kelly as he likes to
call himself, the Senator from Arizona, you know, saying lots
of weird stuff about following orders. And so once you
start seeing information ops working, you know, like we talked
about the Russia collusion hoax, the Kavanaugh thing, the first Ukraine, impeachment, etc.
You can kind of when you start seeing them, you
get a feel for them, and so I'll be curious
how this proceeds or whether they're going to decide that
this one failed and move on to another one. What
do you think it is?
Speaker 1: It is incredibly suspicious that they were engaged in this
unlawful order thing right before this story came out. Maybe
they knew the story was going to come out and
that's why they were doing Here's my problem with with
the seditious six. First of all, it's not I don't
think anything they've done is sedition, you know. I think
this is covered by speech. But they are simply unable
to give us an example of what an illegal order
would be. They couldn't give us a single example until
this happened. And Kelly said the other day this looked
like it was unlawful and illegal, don't I don't think
it's unlawful or illegal, you know, to target these boats,
But why would they continually say that with any kind
of specific instance of where someone was ordered to do something,
which I think this will segue into our National Guard
story as well. It is not illegal to deploy the
National Guard it is not illegal to take out these boats,
and it is dangerous and reckless to tell, you know,
a politically a young person who's in the army to
not or any armed forces to disobey orders because they
have some kind of political problem with it. The aren't
The commander in chief is elected by the American people.
He is there, he gives orders. People follow them unless
they're unconstitutional or or they think they're moral. And if
they do don't follow them, they have to pay a consequence,
you know, if they're not illegal. So I don't know,
let's talk about the National Guard. Unfortunately during was it
Thanksgiving Day? I forget, but two national it was the.
Speaker 2: Day before Thanksgiving last.
Speaker 1: Wednesday, Wednesday, right, they were shot in Washington, d C. Honestly,
I don't wasn't really following the news that day. Do
you know what area that this happened.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that wasn't the Varigate West Metro staff, which is
just a couple of blocks. I mean, first of all,
it's like totally downtown d C. And it is just
a couple of blocks from the White House.
Speaker 1: Yeah, place I've been many times, you know, the place
that's well known to most Two people who are in DC.
This isn't some corner of corner of the city anyway.
Speaker 2: It's horrible.
Speaker 1: One of the a young woman died, Sarah Beckstrom. She
was only twenty years of age. Yeah, not that it
would have been okay at any age. From West Virginia
National Guard. The other guardsman, Andrew Wolfe, was shot. He's
twenty four. He's still I believe, in critical condition. It
was a terror attack, right. It was an Afghan named
uh I can't pronounce it. Lockanwall is the last name
who was brought over here during the after the Afghan withdrawal.
We still don't know the full story there, though I
found it so I got so angry at reading this,
these stories. I think ABC News carried one where they
talked about the financial stress he was under and this
and that, and you know, like that is a reason
to fly across the country. I think he's where was
he from California? I'm not sure where it was, Washington State,
Washington State? I think Washington see or drove drive and
shoot to National guardsmen? So PTSD this that, I mean,
give me a break. This is a terror attack. It's
a Islamic terror attack. It seems everything points to that
it's horrible. And another part of this was I'm sure
you saw this people democrats and leftists trying to blame
Trump for deploying the National Guard and putting them in
this position. He has every right under the Constitution to
deploy the National Guard to Washington, DC. There was no
reason for them to be shot. It's not Donald Trump's fault.
It's not the National Guard's fault. It is the fault
of an Islamic terrorist. So I think it can be.
Speaker 2: It can be part of a bigger story. Though. One
of the things that was interesting is that in twenty
twenty one, so during the first Trump administration, Trump arranged
to end the war in Afghanistan, and Biden, you know,
was kind of boxed in but didn't fight it, and
he did go ahead and end that war. The manner
in which he ended it was a mess, perhaps possibly
partly a result of the US military not wanting to
end the war there and not making appropriate plans for
how to do it. I don't know. But one of
the things that became a cause for the Senate was
that we needed to get every single Afghan who had
helped in the effort in this twenty some year long
war in Afghanistan, that we needed to get everyone who
had helped and their families, their extended families, and they
all needed to come over, and they needed to come
over immediately. And I remember Senator Ben sass was very
upset that JD. Bance had said he didn't think this
was a good idea, and he said, I would be
honored to have these people as my neighbors. These are
just the best people in the world. And so a
couple months into it, the House Republicans on the Homeland
Security Oversight Committee were investigating how the was going on
these Afghans who were being brought over, and what they
found was there was we're told that this was among
the group of the most highly vetted people in the
history of the universe. And that's just a flat out lie.
Like if people should learn what it means to have
been vetted as part of this program to bring people over.
And let's just like pauseier to note that this man
that killed these two National guardsmen was someone who helped
the CIA in the Afghanistan war, and in fact, I
think he was an assassin for the CIA, or that's
what the reporting is right now. So you know, interesting
background history in light of where things ended up, and
maybe worth analyzing a little bit more about the type
of person that you use for kill operations overseas being
brought into suburban Washington State. You know whether that is
the best idea and whether the best oversight was done here.
But in general, the vetting for people would be like
to ask them, are you a terrorist?
Speaker 3: No?
Speaker 2: Do you have any plans to be a terrorist? No,
You're good to go. Like that was the vetting people
in Afghanistan. It's such a m non advanced country. Let's
say that they don't know their birthdays, they don't have
records of their names birthdays. They would do a search
for names, and if people didn't show up in a
database of like hardened criminals, they were like, you're good
to go. And that's when they were doing vetting. One
of the things this House Republican report found was that
people on US bass or sorry, people in the US
thought that the vetting was being done by where they
were held overseas on US bases, and people on the
US basis thought the vetting would be done once the
people came to America. So I do think there are
more people involved in this shooting of the National guardsman
than just the guy who did it, and our refugee
resettlement and asylum programs are insane and the type of
thing you would do if you were trying to destroy
a country, and like the calmness with which people engage
in this is just it's criminal.
Speaker 1: Well I'm going to say something probably bit unpopular right now,
but well, let's take a step back. The withdrawal process
of Afghanistan was timed for political expediency, not for the
best strategy from withdrawing, meaning they kind of threw to
people and then there was a big bottleneck and a
crazed bunch of people trying to escape that country. I
actually think that leaving people to be slaughtered who are
helping you in that way is a moral.
Speaker 2: So that but hold on, that's a lot you're assuming there.
Why would they be slaughtered?
Speaker 1: Why would they Why would people who help the Americans
be slaughtered in in Afghanistan by the Taliban? I think
that's a pretty I think that those who were known
to have helped the CIA or the American Armed Forces
were in danger.
Speaker 2: Are they sure they would have been known to have helped?
Speaker 1: You know, there were people who were known because we
know there were lists of people that were handed to
the Taliban. By the way, I.
Speaker 2: Actually was just I was being devil's advocate. I agree
with you, what part of they shouldn't be left there
to be killed by the Taliban means they should come
to suburban Washington State.
Speaker 1: Now you're jumping ahead of what I was going to
talk about. So that's a problem, and there should have
been a plant to help them in some way, not
necessarily for sure to be real, to be you know,
to be put in in suburban anywhere, United States, but
there should have been a plant to try to help
them to go somewhere else, go to Pakistan, go, I
don't know where, but they're needs to be. And I'm
not saying every single person who was running for those
planes needed to be or who have came to the
American base needed to be resettled. But I think it's
fair to say that we did create some of that
problem there and that we shouldn't abandon people who are
legitimately helped us, the people the CIA, And I don't
know if this is going to bear out in reporting.
We'll see who this guy was, but if you used
him in assassinations, he's obviously a bad guy, and those
are usually the people you're going to recruit to assassinate
other people within Afghanistan.
Speaker 2: Right, you're not necessarily a bad guy.
Speaker 1: Okay, not necessary, but but you are not.
Speaker 2: But you're not a normal person.
Speaker 1: You're not a normal person. Now we come to the
second part, the vetting. What kind of vetting can you
really do?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 1: I mean you could. It is easily the case that
this guy could have been radicalized here we don't even know,
but maybe he was radicalized before. You don't know, you're right,
you're going to do I'm going to ask you, are
you're a terrorist? No, I'm not. It's like asking someone
if they were a communist in nineteen fifties, right, like
you know was coming up. I mean that my parents
came over, they asked them, are you're a communist? If
you ever been a communist? You can lie about that stuff,
and certainly Islamic nations where there's a lot of radicalism,
that's a big problem for us. So I would I want.
Speaker 2: To point out that people got real IDs based on
this betting, something I don't have yet because I don't
have my paperwork together to get it done. But some
Rando Afghan who doesn't know what day of the month
of the year of he was born, has a real id.
Speaker 1: And I do I am I have a real idea
because I might that gave me one. But let me
say this, the I am a fan of immigration. I
get a lot of heat for it. The mood within
sort of activist conservative circles has changed. The thing is,
I just don't think that we have to have immigrants
from everywhere. I think we get to chew where they
come from. Now when good Americans, it is perfectly legitimate
for us to say we can't really vet people from
certain places very well, so we're not going to let
them into the country. There is nothing in the constitution
that says we have to allow people from everywhere all
the time to come in. And since the Obama years,
I think we let in people from Islamic countries more
than anywhere else, and that is becoming a problem.
Speaker 2: So this is a good quick segue into the Somalia story.
Did you follow that at all? And I know it's
been like a story it's been going on for years
about how Somalis in Minnesota have been engaged in fraud
in federal government programs. You know, the story that kind
of blew up last week was how they'd set up
autism centers and how they were getting billions of dollars
for like this crazy amount of autism in the Somali
community in Minnesota, and that the money was being funneled
back to terror organizations like Al Shabab.
Speaker 1: I'm uncomfortable with often with saying oh, here are a
bunch of people in a certain community, so all the
people are bad and that sort of thing. Right with
this story which was reported on we should say more
deeply by Christopher Rufo, I think, yeah, I mean, there's.
Speaker 2: Been good the stuff on the terror funding. He broke
that this last week. The story has actually been undercovered,
but covered extensively for the last couple of years by
a variety of different groups.
Speaker 1: But now I will say something about Rufo, who I
have no you know, I don't always agree with like
I honestly, I think he's probably more paleo conservative than me.
I don't always like what he says, but he is
a perfect example of good of a person who is
doing good journalism, and that should be rewarded over these
influencers who add nothing. You know, like who you know
who I'm talking about. I do so. It was a
good story, well reported story. I am not I think
it's important to say this. I don't like to judge
people as a group, but when you're importing a kind
of culture that is obviously from another place, this Somalia,
which is corrupt place, if you're not embracing American culture.
We are actually not a very corrupt country compared to
Europe or anywhere else. We have low corruption here. This
is a problem of assimilation that is a legitimate thing
to talk about. I don't think it's a islamophobic it
is islamophobic. Actually, it's phobic of the kind of things
that go on in the Islamic world. It's not anti
Muslim to say that. It's just a fact and it points,
I think, to a bad immigration policy. And I don't
mean just letting the people in. I mean assimilating them
in our schools, changing their culture and all of that
which we can.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and the two I think the two groups, the
two most prominent groups that are responsible for this failure
of assimilation are what used to be called Lutheran immigration
and refugee services. I think maybe they stopped being Lutheran
or changed their name somehow, and then Catholic charities of
some kind, I can't remember which particular group, and they
managed to become this middleman between US policy on letting
anyone in the world who wants to come come and
take taxpayer money and the immigrants. And they have also,
you know, they've done it's not business because it's nonprofits,
but they've done big business in this regard, and they
were able to accommodate so many more immigrants than so.
Just to back up really quickly, Lutheran immigration refugee services,
which I think used to be targeted really to Lutherans
who were coming from other places and helping them out
as they came to America, had moved from small batch
immigration help like when people were fleeing communist countries, helping
them get set up in communities, into this like mass
immigration operation. Same with Catholic charities. When you were doing
it at a smaller level, assimilation was much more feasible
and it was much more community based, like a church
would take in a few new families and help them
get set up and help them assimilate to the culture
around them. When you're bringing in like one hundred thousand
people from another country and not even like trying that
they're They're not only not bringing them into the Lutheran
Church or the Roman Catholic church. They're setting up they're
Muslim the houses of worship and communities, which can prevent
or make it more difficult to have some assimilation into
the Minnesota community.
Speaker 1: And what about when you have leaders of that community
saying that America is terrible, that it is wrong to assimilate, right,
I mean you have you send these kids to a
public school that doesn't even teach them, you know, American
civics or why things are the way they are here,
or why they're better. You're not supposed to say we're better,
our civilization is better. That doesn't mean everything in your
civilization is bad. It means that you will be successful here. Like,
for instance, I would demand that you have a completely
This is nothing to do with radicalization or terrorism, because
terrorists can learn English, but you should be completely fluent
in English if you want to come here and be
a citizen or a refugee. Now, I will also say
you mentioned the Lutherans and Catholics. My parents were refugees
that came here through Highest which was a Jewish organization
that helped Jewish refugees, particularly from the Soviet Union places
like that. Now they're just bringing in all kinds of people.
They're not even about Jewish refugees because they are under
Jewish refugees anymore. And that's a problem because I think
there were many when my parents came here. At least
I just do this because I know that process. But
there was an expectation in the community you came into
that you'd want to become American. My dad watched TV
to learn English, you know what I mean, Like he didn't.
No one told him you didn't have to learn English.
Everyone the expectation would be that you do in language
is an important part of that. So I don't know.
Obviously this is a bigger topic with a lot of problems,
but yeah, I think.
Speaker 2: We might be needing to talk about it more. But
I'm sensitive to time here, Okay, So I want to
find out about culture stuff with you.
Speaker 1: Okay, I have something to talk about. Well, actually, how
about you. You're in Colorado, you have anything to say?
Speaker 2: I'm in beautiful tell your ide and.
Speaker 1: Is that where like Oprah has a house and Tom
Cruise has had this beautiful over there right, it's like.
Speaker 2: The place for people who live here, think Aspen is
for losers, like it's so nice and staying here with friends.
Speaker 1: Aspens down market for that, I get it.
Speaker 2: But I was walking around. We're here during the off season.
The mountain is not open yet, but I was walking
around downtown and I saw they're going to have a
people's march on December twelfth. I'm like, oh my gosh,
like I cannot even imagine a more elite place to
do a people's march. And we had driven through here
in June and this was the place that I told
you that it was gay because like of all the
gay flags everywhere with like symbols, I didn't even understand.
But it's beauty. It's absolutely beautiful here. And I walked
by an elk yesterday and it was anyway, that's nice. Wait, sorry,
and I did. I came here from Bend, Oregon, which
is the land of my husband's family, and that is
another very fancy place, although when he grew up there
it was more like a normal rural ish place.
Speaker 1: It's like places I go in West Virginia where I'm
not even going to mention them, but people people find
them and then turn them into places where normal people
can live anymore.
Speaker 2: Exactly.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so it's best not to mention like Ben should
never have like talked about how great it was there,
because now it's a rich people place. I uh. I
watched a show called Travelman.
Speaker 2: Hmm.
Speaker 1: It stars Richard ayadi is how you pronounce it? And
you know him? So you know who he is, right? Okay,
he's from the IT crowd. I forgot was the name
of the person he played, Moss.
Speaker 2: I love that show so much.
Speaker 1: I do too. Do you know that the creator of
that show? Now you know about him? Okay, yeah, so he's.
Speaker 2: Been persecuted by his country.
Speaker 1: Yeah, anyway, So he does a show travel Man, where
he goes to a city with a celebrity. I have
to be honest with you. Most of them are British
celebrities I don't know, or comedians that I don't know
that well. But he'll go to Budapest for forty eight hours,
Paris for forty eight hours. He actually went to New
York with someone for forty eight hours. And it's a
really good show. But that made me want to know
more about Richard Ayoadi because I find him very funny.
And in a weird way, like a British Woody Allen
almost in the sense that he's very nebbish and very you.
Speaker 2: Know, yes, funny glad.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So he's written like three books and they're absolutely
hilarious books. One is Ayoadi on Ayowadi, which makes fun
of those books like Scorsese on scorsesean stuff, but he
actually is like interviewing himself and it's very funny. Anyway,
I'm a huge fan of this guy now. I watch
him on YouTube and I just I just think he's
a he's a good guy. He's in the Phoenician Scheme
that Wes Anderson movie. I have not seen that, and
apparently he's writing a movie was with Wes Anderson, so
I'm excited about that. This shows a lot of fun
if you like travel shows, because he goes to weird
places and he does not praise every city like he
went to Hamburg and he just like makes fun of
yeah it is yeah, it's like why are we here?
So it's a lot of fun if you're into British humor.
So that's what I did, I think, and I watched
there was this documentary about Eddie Murphy on Netflix that
I watched almost the whole part of it. I have
to tell you something. When I was growing up, I
had to tell you something ali here on this podcast.
When I was growing up, I watched a lot of
in the late seventies when I was young, you know,
elementary school, and then in the eighties, I watched a
ton of stand up. We had HBO. I watched Richard Pryor,
Like I remember watching Belzer if he goes first name, now,
just a ton of people Richard Belzer. I remember watching
seeing Jerry Seinfeld before he had a show. I thought
he was great. A lot of this doesn't hold up
for me. Richard Pryor does not hold up for me.
Eddie Murphy does not hold up for me. It's just
kind of shock comedy where he was saying a lot
of things that you weren't supposed to do in those days.
But now it's kind of like meh, especially with Richard
Pryor and Eddie Murphy. Oh, I did drugs. I was
on fire, you know this f that. Like, I'm not
against cursing in comedy, but it just doesn't seem smart.
There are no jokes, there's no it's very few, like
funny observations that in them, at least from my perspective.
I don't know how you'd feel if you watched it.
Speaker 2: But so first off, I don't think comedy holds up period.
And what I mean by that is it's like a
daily newspaper. You can reread an old newspaper and be like, oh, yeah,
I remember when the Twin Towers came down or whatever,
but it's not working the day you read it later,
unless you're truly doing historical analysis.
Speaker 1: It's true with like when I watch Lenny Bruce, I
don't even get it. I don't think it's funny, don't
I honestly don't. I get that it was revolutionary and
transgressive and it was something that people had never seen.
But when I watch one of these like Catskill Comedians,
they're still funny, like it's about the human condition, not
about the news.
Speaker 2: So I always like, I have old comedy albums and
sometimes I'll listen to them again, and I remember that
when I was a kid, I really loved comedy albums.
My mom has excellent taste in comedy. But now the
only ones that I really still get something out of
are don't make fun of Me, Cheech and shrong. I
still think the weed humor holds up.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but like you know, I could listen like George
Carlin a lot. I used to have those albums from
you know, they were seventies albums if I listened to them
as a teenager, and they would make me laugh and
I wonder why was I really laughing? A lot of
it's not that funny, but yet there will be the
occasional uh you know skit that I think is smart,
but I don't know, a lot of it just doesn't
hold up. And yeah, like Robin Williams doesn't hold up
for me.
Speaker 2: Oh right, yeah, no on the comedy front, I just
want to say that on the flight out to Oregon,
which takes an entire day to travel from Washington, d C.
To Bend, Oregon. But anyway, I was listening to podcasts.
Let me just first off say there are some popular
podcasts that aren't really that great, but I I mean,
I enjoy them. But you you you just realize, like
a lot of podcasts it's just two guys talking or
four guys talking or whatever. I would put the Conan
O'Brien one in there, but I enjoy it based on
whoever the whoever the comedian he's interviewing.
Speaker 1: Is you do realize that we're just two people talking
on this spotcast.
Speaker 2: I'm just saying I put up I put us up
against some of these. But he had on Chris Fleming,
and I think I've told you about him before. I
love him. He's absurd, absurdist comedy, very physical, and it
was interesting to get some of his backstory about how
he became who he was. And I don't know. I
dragged Mark to one of his shows in DC and
he did it. Was that thing where Mark is just
doing it because he loves me and he occasionally lets
me pick pick what we do. And he came out
of it loving it. He was like, Okay, I acknowledge this.
And then the other thing is he pointed out that
Conan says it's that Chris Fumming is his favorite comedian
and that legitimized him in my husband's eyes. I guess
you might check him out. You'll probably hate him. You
would totally hate him.
Speaker 1: Physical, physical comedy, very physical. Like you know, let me
tell you who holds up amazing? Who really is just
so so funny? Is Stephen Wright? The one liner jokes
I'm saying they're so smart. He's a genius. Great, yeah, yeah,
he's a genius. Like I'm not saying any Murphy is
not funny, because a lot of the Sound Night Live skits,
for instance, I think are still funny, like when he
dresses up as a white person and goes out into
the world and everyone's giving him everything for free. Like
that's really still funny, even the gumbies, Like I get that.
I think it's funny, but his his stand ups just
not you know, it's just crass for no really good reason.
And I think I laughed when I was a kid
because I'm like, oh wow, I can't believe he said that.
But it doesn't you do it for me now anyway?
Sorry interrupt, No, I was just going to say.
Speaker 2: I also went to see a movie in a movie
theater with my kids and my husband, and that was
in Bend, Oregon. And the really crazy thing is we
showed up to the movie theater and it was I
mean there were long lines to get in, long lines
for concessions. It had like twenty screens. I mean it
was crazy crowded. I know it was around the holidays,
but still I was like, this reminds me of going
to movies when I was a kid, you know, Yeah,
and we saw the Okay, so we saw Now you
see Me, Now you don't.
Speaker 1: I think it's called Oh yeah, I saw the original
two or whatever I think, and I was just kind.
Speaker 2: Of accompanying the family and they were like, mom, you've
seen the previous two, and I'm like, I have never
seen this in my life. I mean, and I genuinely hadn't.
So it seemed like a third movie. It was totally serviceable.
Woody Harrelson, isn't it. He's he was very much Woody Harrelson.
Speaker 1: Like, but I like that, Yeah, you like Woody Harrelson,
who always plays himself basically yeah. And then the first
one was pretty good but I don't remember.
Speaker 2: And it had like a really stupid woke subplot, anti
capitalist thing blah. And then in a bookstore in Bend,
I got this little book of four Russian short stories.
Speaker 1: Saw you tweet it about that, and I really so.
Speaker 2: The first one was first Turgenev. I don't have to say,
I don't know how to say names, and we're going
to get complaints. Get Although I had a lot of
people say that i'd been doing alright on my pronunciation.
And we got some fan notes about not using they
when we should say he, although someone was curious if
we do it in our own speech, and I probably
do say they in my own speech. I just don't
want it in my writing. Yeah, but now I'm reading
this Dostoevsky The.
Speaker 1: Gambler, Oh, yeah, I've read that. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I just don't understand how the Russians are so.
Speaker 1: Good at suffer.
Speaker 2: Oh.
Speaker 1: They have great composers, they have great writers, yes, even
some great filmmakers, but they are in general unable to
govern themselves in any kind of constructive way.
Speaker 2: They're so comfortable with death as a people, even the
way they fight wars and everything. It's just like, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: I don't know. I don't know how comfortable they are.
I think it's just an inevitability which has no you know,
which you have no way to escape, right, I mean,
in these authoritarian or totalitarian regimes, I think they're comfortable,
but they do write about it in an incredible I mean,
I love Dostoevsky, and sometimes I feel like that's obvious,
like people like I don't know that it's easy to
like him because it's just so cutting and funny and stuff.
I mean, I have to say sometimes it's a bit
much like The Brothers Karamazov. To read the whole thing,
it gets to be a you do. Yeah, I mean
I always. I think I told you this before. I
wish they had named the brothers like Joe, Bob and
Doug or something, so I wouldn't have to constantly figure
out what's happening. But his other novels are great.
Speaker 2: Did you ever read The Brothers? K No, it's like
an adaptation of Yeah, it's it's it's actually really good
David James Duncan.
Speaker 1: Okay, I would, I would read that.
Speaker 2: I mean, it's kind of what you just said you wished, right, Yeah,
I can't remember the names of the brothers, but their
names like that, like David, But I.
Speaker 1: Do like sometimes picking it up and just reading in
just opening it somewhere and reading it. It's just so amazing.
So anyway, yeah, all right, that's cool. I saw you
tweet about that. I'm not a big short story guy.
I don't know.
Speaker 2: I like it for like when you're traveling and you
just don't have like extensive periods, but you got train planes,
trains and automobiles. You know time anyway. That's it.
Speaker 1: That's it. If you'd like to reach the show, please
do so at radio at the Federalist dot com. We
we we missed you for a week, but we got
a lot of good mail on your collective pronoun stuff
and everything else. I'm seriously like it was interesting mail this.
Speaker 2: Week, agreed.
Speaker 1: Even the guy there's a guy who hates and you're
writes all the time. Even he sent a letter that
was kind of like, not as angry as the usual one.
Some really appreciative because it's Thanksgiving time and we should
be thankful. I appreciate it. I appreciate the mail. But
we'll be back next week, and until then be lovers
of freedom and anxious for a fraid