Speaker 1: Well, 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 email the show,
please do so at radio at the Federalist dot com.
We love to hear from you. Hi, Mollie, how are
you doing. I'm okay, great, I'm okay. Let's start with
Daniel Penny today, the New Yorker who was on a
subway train where this individual, I think he was homeless,
named Jordan Neely, maybe Anthali Ille, I'm not exactly sure,
threatened subway riders in a way that people. I mean,
you've been to New York many times, you know, I
grew up there. There were many times I was stuck
on a subway car with someone who seemed pretty dangerous,
you know, was threatening others, and in many instances, not
that I've ever saw it, you know, there was violence.
So he did what a good Samaritan should do, and
in my view, a man, you know, who was able
to should do, and you know, he got involved and
he put the man in a headlock. But the man
died and Alvin Bragg charged him with I think there
were initially more charges. Maybe he pulled back some charges.
I don't know if you know about that, but manslaughter essentially,
and a jury in Manhattan found him not guilty, and
that made me very happy.
Speaker 2: I'm happy that the jury found him not guilty, but
i am not. That is not justice because he never
should have been charged and he never should have gone
through all of this that he went through because he
tried to help out his neighbors who he didn't even know.
And it's so bad for society when you're charging the
people who are actually doing good things. And Jordan Neely
clearly was you know, yes, yes he was threatening to
kill people, and yes he was saying that he didn't
care if he died that day, and he was incredibly threatening.
It also appears that he was dealing with all sorts
of other problems like not having a good family, being crazy,
being you know, mentally unwell, being homeless, you know, being
drug addled. All of these things combined to create a
horrible situation. That you had a good Samaritan come in
and try to help everybody out is a wonderful thing,
and it's a It's a great example. This guy should
have been given the keys to the city, he should
have been lauded, he should have been winning awards, and instead,
this evil Manhattan district attorney who's funded by groups that
you know are funded by all sorts of left wing billionaires,
he charged him with a crime. I mean, New York
City has many problems with crime that are going unprosecuted
because this same district attorney believes in restorative justice trends
that require you not to charge people with crimes when
they've clearly committed them, or to downgrade what you're charging
them with, to waste taxpayer dollars and money on this
is evil, to discourage other men from doing what is right.
Is a horrific attack on women and children by Alvin Bragg.
And so yes, I'm thrilled that the New York City
jury found him not guilty, but that doesn't mean that
I'm happy with this situation.
Speaker 1: Oh, I agree. The prosecution itself was meant to share
the ability. You know, most most people don't want their
lives ruined. They don't, especially in New York. You've been
in New York and people don't want to get involved
in situations you know, I mean all you know, it's
happened to all of us. But protecting women from from
someone who seems violent, it's something everyone should do. So
But now in the back of your head, you're going
to think, Alvin Bragg is going to bring me in
a court, charge me with manslaughter, ruins my life. So
I think that's part of this for sure. I don't
know if you remember, Alvin Bragg went after a bodego
worker who had stopped some kind of robbery. It didn't
go you know, to couln't charge him in the end
because it was so ridiculous. But I'm sure it'll happen again.
Alvin Bragg. If you remember the Columbia students who rioted
and took over a building and destroyed property and threatened
Jewish students, he let them go scott free. You know,
so obviously it's not just restorative justice. I think that
he is, you know, just a kooky left winger who's
going to you know, helping to destroy that city. And finally,
you know, I see a lot of people compare Daniel
Penny to Bernie gets So when I was young, there
was this guy, Bernie Getz. If you're younger. You may
not know he you know, how can I put this?
He was a vigilante. I don't think it's the same situation.
He went out looking you know, he had been the
the you know, he had been the victim of crime.
So he went out there. He had a gun and
he was looking to, you know, exact some vengeance. I
think now, listen, he was a folk hero in New
York and because crime was out of control. But you
have to expect I think Daniel Penny Penny was far
more you know, he just reacted to a situation the
right way. But you know, there's only so much people
can take as far as criminality goes. And when when
the authorities won't do anything, not just won't they do anything,
but they're going to be on the side of the criminals.
You know, it's going to be a problem in urban areas,
I think more and more. But I mean, I hope not.
I think vigilanteism is good, but people have to defend
themselves and protect themselves and protect their neighbors in the end,
you know.
Speaker 2: So one of the other bad things about the situation
is that racists tried to exploit the fact that the
victim was black, not the victim. The guy who died
was black, and I don't know what that proper way
to describe that situation was. And that the guy who
rescued everybody in the car and who put him in
a chokehold was white. And they said this shows that
white people are evil and that black people need to
be vigilantes against white people. And it was just all
sorts of racist, awful stuff that was going on, and
that didn't seem to resonate with much of America either.
You know, they were trying to foment riots at the
end when the acquittal happened, and you had various BLM
hucksters out there trying to do that, and it just
didn't work. And so I wonder, do you think this
is possibly the end of the BLM racism and Marxism
that we saw recavoc across the country for so many years.
Speaker 1: I don't know if it's the end, but people are
definitely sick of it. And it actually even predates the
BLM stuff in the nineties or late eighties. They would
have been a riot after this, you know, Al Sharpton
would have been there, and there would have been a
riot or some kind of you know, public you know,
disturbance or something, and I should say it is tragedy.
It's a tragedy what happened to Jordan Neely in the
sense of how you know, you know he felt hate
using this cliche, fell through the cracks. But you know,
we need to help people who need help. But yeah,
they want to make everything racist. So my answer to
that is, I don't think it's over. But obviously I
think some people, probably many Democrats, are just getting sick
of it. I saw just slightly related. I saw a
poll of New Yorkers on whether they want to to
poort illegal immigrants, and like fifty eight percent in the
suburbs and fifty four percent within Manhattan. In New York City,
not just Manhattan. I do want to do that, you know,
I think there's just there there, you know, no one.
It reminds me of when Rudy Giuliani became mayor. You know,
no one wants to live. You know, quality of life
is more important than anyology for a lot of people,
so they don't. I don't think you have the luxury
of being of engaging in BLM stuff when your life
is you know, your quality of life is declining. So
I think maybe the fever's broken a bit on that
as well. Anyway, it was Yeah.
Speaker 2: On that note, I have also found something interesting about
this post election environment where you have people because of
how big the Republican victory was, even in the face
of just the unbelievable propaganda press and all the institutions
sort of being aligned against Republicans. But because the victory
was big, you have people coming out and speaking a
little more freely about why they changed to vote for Republicans.
And one of the things I've been hearing a lot
from various influencers or podcasters is how they really think
Democrats are doing a bad job of running their own city,
or even just the ways in which they interact with politics.
They are not pleased with Democrat governance. And that could
be anything from the city like I said, to inflationary policies.
And you mentioned this guy falling through the cracks, although
I read that he had been given housing for a
certain period of time and he left within a few
days because he just couldn't handle it. I think a
lot of the problems that we have in the country
with homeless people or drug addle people, it's so much
more complex than the homeless industrial complex could even hope
to deal with and also they don't really hope to
deal with it. That complex looks to make money off
of taxpayers without solving anything. I mean, there's always the
issue that people who receive large gests from the government
don't want to solve it because then they don't get
the money from the government. But they're not even trying.
And the plans of a lot of these people on
the left in this massive nonprofit an environment that works
with government funding, it's really hurting the country and it's
not yielding good results. And I'm wondering if you're going
to see more and more voters rejecting that governance structure.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it's not just the Democrats run cities. It's
that crackpot progressives run cities. There's the craziest people. I mean,
Alvin Bragg is just you know, just a nut and
he is you know, he is in New York City
making decisions for how people live their lives. It's just
even when I was young, it would it would it
was unfathomable to me, unfathomable to me that there would
be these very successful people who live like in Manhattan
and they would vote for the most incompetent nut jobs
on earth to run their city. This makes no sense
to me, but I do think this ties into something else,
that that that happened, and that in a weird way,
and that's the the murder of the United CEO and
the arrest of I think his name was Luigi Mangion.
You saw a lot of progressives rationalize and justify It's
not exactly the same thing, but rationalize and justify criminality
murder because you know of their disdain for capitalism or
whatever nonsense they came up with. And we're not just
talking about sort of crazy progues. I'm talking about Elizabeth Warren,
who is a prominent senator who says that the killing
was vile. But this is a warning that if you
push people hard enough, they lose faith in the ability
of their government to take charge. Violence is never the answer.
That people can only be pushed too far, which is
simply a rationalization and justification for violence. Now, A, that's
never okay. Also, whatever, I don't want to get into
the health care insurance business. And B this kid was
a privileged who comes from a very affluent, wealthy family.
There is no one pushed him to do anything. This
is leftist mind virus, you know what I mean. And anyway,
to me, Alvin Bragg and these and people who justify
and I'll give you another example, people who justify and
rationalize the killing of Zionists or Jews or whatever because they,
you know, of colonialism. This is to me all kind
of interconnected. I don't know if this makes any sense
what I'm saying, but it's all interconnected.
Speaker 2: He said, you don't want to get into the insurance thing.
But this is one of the things that has bothered
me about the response to this assassination in the middle
of New York City. We were told in twenty ten
that Obamacare and the Democrats plan for healthcare would cure
everything wrong with our healthcare system, and they took over
a massive part of the US economy in order to
do this. They you know, barely pushed it through Congress,
manipulating every procedure they could. And now Elizabeth Warren is
saying this is this is what happens. I mean, had
she build Obamacare as something that also leads to targeted
assassinations because people can't put up with it, that would
have probably not helped out her.
Speaker 1: Cause, right, well, I mean for her, she wants, you know,
she wants more, so she'd just tell you it wasn't enough,
Obamacare didn't go far enough because they think that, you know,
like the manifesto this kid had said something like, you know,
they care about profit above people. You know, it's this
kind of trope leftist ideal. Without profit, you don't have
medical care. I'm not saying the insurance industry is perfect.
I think there are a lot of problems we can
all agree. But the idea that that this guy was
out there killing people and so forth, it's stoked by
Elizabeth Warren types and then there's always going to be
someone who acts This reminds me of calling you know,
the president, the presidential candidate Hitler every day. I said,
I'm not saying I'm trying to chill anyone's speech. Could
say whatever you want, but it is what it is,
right And and I went through this kid's I keep
calling him a kid, he's a man, he's a young man.
I went through his social media feed and stuff like that,
and really there was nothing in it that would have
led me to believe that he would act this way.
It was kind of boring. And sort of pseudo intellectual,
you know. He's really into like technocratic democrat writers and stuff.
Occasionally he liked what the New Right had to say.
There was nothing like that. So I don't know.
Speaker 2: The whole thing is weird, to the point that I'm
curious what it is that we don't know. I have
seen three different things put out there as quote unquote manifestos,
and I know, technically manifesto just means explanation of why
you did something. However, they're all so short that I
just in my mind manifesto is like Ted Kaczynski's unibomber thesis,
where it's very long and detailed and weird, you know,
and these are in some cases the suppose manifesto is
just a paragraph. And so I don't know which one,
if any of the ones I've read is real. Obviously
all three are not, and so it's hard to divine
greater meaning or even I wonder should you try to
take greater meaning when people are killing people for a
political cause. It is what they want, and to give
them that reward is very It just does not set
right with me. But also, yeah, like to your point,
he's something seems off about this as a very wealthy kid,
someone who's in a family that they can afford to
take care of things health related. It seems even if
insurance isn't covering something fairly young.
Speaker 1: I mean, a lot of a lot of revolutionary violence
comes from bourgeois, you know, like Ted Kezinsky is not poor.
You know, he quotes Ted Kaczinsky on his Goodreads page
that I saw and it made me think, you know,
they had a maybe had a somewhat of a similar
outlook on the world from what I saw.
Speaker 2: So I you know, I've gotten in trouble for saying
this before, but you know, I do like to It's horrible,
but I'm obsessed, you know, when something like this happens
and I look for explanations, most manifestos indicate that the
person involved is either stupid or crazy. In my view,
the Ted Kaczinski one is a notable exception. You know,
you read it and there's some really interesting stuff about
how technology is affecting humanity. Obviously, I completely opposed the
murderous spree that he went on as part of his
beliefs on technology. The other quote unquote manifesto, which was
poorly edited but interesting, was Anders Breiviick's explanation for why
he murdered all those children in Europe. Do you remember
that Norway?
Speaker 1: I think it wasn't an island.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean it was. It was a horrible crime.
I mean, just a horrific situation of how he killed
these children, how intentional he was and what he was doing,
and his explanation for it was to bring attention to
what he thought were some Again, in Elizabeth Warren's parlance,
you know, he'd just taken so much and he couldn't
take it anymore, and so you don't excuse it. But no, sorry,
that's I just hate when people talk that way. You
know what, I excuse murdering a father of two children.
Sometimes that's what happened. No, it's not what happens. We
all get angry at people all the time, and we
don't murder people because that's not an appropriate response to
being really frustrated and fed up with any number of things.
Speaker 1: And imagine, imagine, let me think JD. Van saying someone's killed,
you know, on the left, and him saying, you know,
that's terrible, some perfunctory you know statement, and saying, but
you know, kind of deserved it. You know the industry's terrible. Yeah,
I mean if the insurance if you can kill CEOs
who are part of the insurance health you know, the
healthcare insurance industry, then you know, then you have a
rationalition for big oil, you know, for big pharma, for
I mean, you know, it's it's it's like commune is
reverting to form in my in my view.
Speaker 2: Well, and you noted how you knowed how wealthy this
kid was and his victim was someone who had grown
up in Iowa with working class parents, who by virtue
of being really smart and hard working, made it to
this very top tier position versus the alleged assassin who
was born into privilege, went to a very fancy pants
high school, went to Ivy League college, and then killed
this father of two.
Speaker 1: There's another aspect of this I wanted to talk about
for a bit. We are constantly being and I wrote
about this in my recent book. I detailed how virtually
every week there's a new report from the Justice Department,
or there was for years, about how right wingers are
ready to commit violence, how white supremacists are ready to
you know, spring a coup on us, and all of
this stuff. And of course I'm not saying there's no
no right wing violence, but we have a left wing
violence problem in this country. We have it on college campuses,
we have it in assassination attempts. You know, going back
to the Alexandria baseball field, and no one is talking
about left wing violence, which has been predominant, the predominant
political violence in American history. I know everyone thinks of
Oklahoma City, but you know what, in the early nineteen hundreds,
communists and anarchists were constantly blowing up things, including on
Wall Street where they killed thirty people. I don't know
if people knows in nineteen twenty, in the seventies, I
looked this up recently. In one eighteen month span in
the nineteen seventies there were two thousand, six hundred bombings
by the weather on ground in other left his groups.
And yet we're always talking about right wing violence when
left wing violence has been the predominant I think, you know,
strain of political violence in the country. I'm not saying
that every you know Democrat is at fault, but it's
a problem. If this was a right wing or who
did this, we would be plunged into a national conversation
about it, and about conservative rhetoric. You remember the Paul
Pelosi thing. All of us had to take ownership of that.
You know, every conservative was at fault. And now you know,
they pretend it's completely apart from their ideology when it's not.
They're defending it, some of them.
Speaker 2: Well, even that guy who attacked Paul Pelosi, I think
though he hated Nincy Pelosi was a crazy man, but
a crazy man affiliated with various.
Speaker 1: Left wing Yeah.
Speaker 2: Oh, that's what I was going to say about your
pointing out this disparity in left wing versus right wing violence. Obviously,
any political faction is capable of violence, and we've sadly
seen how that happens. What we saw in the seventies
was the FBI was heavily tracking left wing groups, infiltrating them,
and engaged in various activity that was wrong. You know,
I think we all, well, all right thinking people or
rational people have come to see the many problems with
how our FBI has done things. But the response of
the FBI to being caught tracking all these left wing
groups was basically to stop tracking them completely to this
day and instead to track a bunch of right wing groups.
Right wing groups tend to be really respectful of authority.
They don't even get upset when the FBI infiltrates one
of their fringe groups and then arrests everybody involved, because
they view these they view it bad, you know, if
you're fringe. And so the FBI has spent the last
few decades very comfortably infiltrating with people on the right
and never getting any pushback from it at all. And
they still don't go after anyone on the left because
of what happened to them when they did that in
the sixties and early seventies.
Speaker 1: You know, the Biden DOJ will will say that parents
upset about you know, COVID restrictions and all these you know,
social science quackery or domestic potential domestic terrorists. But these
left you know, but the media and others will go
out and defend Antifa, you know, because it says they're
anti fascist right there in the name, so it must
be true. And you know, I mean, think about BLM.
It was if probably the most violent sparked the most
violent you know, widespread violence in American history, you know,
and at least a modern American history. And you know,
they were propped up by corporate money and by you know, politicians,
including some Republicans.
Speaker 2: So I just want to point out Chris Ray, who
has been overseeing the FBI for the last seven years,
an era that has been horrific in terms of us
realizing all the nefarious things the FBI has done on
Americans to try to run a soft coup against President
Trump in his first administration, lying to Faiza courts, leaking
like sieves to hurt political opponents, going after parents, going
after pro lifers, doing nothing in the face of left
wing violence right, And Chris Ray, every time he's asked
about it, he says, I could not be prouder of
the men and women of the FBI. They've done nothing wrong,
and I condemn you for saying anything right. And one
time when Congress was asking him some questions, he claimed
he had to go to an important meeting, and one
reporter in the world, Miranda Divine, found out that no,
actually he was taking an FBI jet to a vacation. Right.
And last week Senator Mike Rounds of South Dakota, which
is kind of a bloody red state, said that he
loves Chris Ray and he couldn't think of a thing
in the world that Chris Ray had done wrong. He said, literally,
I do not have a single solitary complaint about anything
he's done in his job. Senator Mike Rounds supposed Republican
from South Dakota. So when the FBI goes after leftist bombers,
every Democrat in Congress says, you come after another one
of our people, We're going to destroy you, and they
back off for decades. And on the right there are
these senators like Mike Rounds of South Dakota who says,
I love the FBI for going after my voters. I
couldn't love him more. I love how they attack my voters.
I think it's cool. And you better not take Chris
Ray out out of a job. I mean, there's something
seriously wrong with Republican elected officials in the Cajones region
and also in the Brain region that they do stuff
like this. And I have to say it also makes
me judge South Dakota's negatively, like what's wrong with them?
Are they stupid? Like I'm actually getting a bad view
of the entire state of South Dakota based on who
they send to Congress.
Speaker 1: We're going to hear from some South Dakota ins in
the email, I would love to yes, you want to know, saying.
Speaker 2: Yourself, defend yourself. How do you have so little the
sense of your own worth that you put people like
this in power and they don't even fear you at all.
Speaker 1: Well, the notion that Chris Ray needs to finish his
term is ridiculous. Donald Trumps is under no constitutional you know,
duty to let him finish anything. And this idea I
saw some Democrat senators saying, you know, no, he doesn't
have a term. He can have a term until ten
years or whatever, but he does not have to be
and Trump can fire him to you know, as soon
as he's the day becomes president.
Speaker 2: He has a term limit. He cannot serve more than
ten years. On this point, why can he not serve
more than ten years? Because we're supposedly all aware of
how bad it is when the FBI has too much
power and how j Edgar Hoover used his lifetime appointment
which essentially became a lifetime appointment, to wreak havoc against
all of his political foes and to accrue power for himself.
And yet we're all like, oh, oh, can the FBI
be bad? I hadn't heard that I have no complaints.
I'm Mike Grounds of South Dakota.
Speaker 1: No, No, I just I have a big problem with
a agency that raids the house of pro lifers and
throws them in prison, elderly pro lifers. Okay, Like that alone,
for me is a good enough reason to get new leadership. Right.
You know, the whole thing they did with these students,
you know, with the chilling of speech, the chilling of
a protest against school boards that was concocted by the
DOJ and carried out with the FBI, that too, would
be enough for me to fire the guy who was
in charge. Was there of an investigation into any of
that within the FBI? Did Did he ever answer for that? No?
And this has nothing to do with all the stuff
that they did, you know that was wrong before, with
the rush of Gate and everything else.
Speaker 3: The IRS wants to do your tax returns. The Watchdot
on Wall Street podcast with Chris Markowski every day. Chris
helps unpack the connection between politics and the economy and
how it affects your wallet. The IRS now has a
one hundred and fourteen million dollar budget to expand their
direct file program. Filing with the IRS is like playing
poker with mirrored sunglasses.
Speaker 1: Don't show your cards.
Speaker 3: Whether it's happening in DC or down on Wall Street,
it's affecting you financially.
Speaker 1: Be informed.
Speaker 3: Check out the Watchdot on Wall Street podcast with Chris
Markowski on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 2: There was a report out this week about how they
spied on all sorts of people involved with the oversight
of the Department of Justice, and it took years for
the report to come out. Turns out they were like
checking the communications of the lawyers representing the committees that
were overseeing the Department of Justice for their Russia collusion
hoax and then not about it for years.
Speaker 1: I laughed because the NBC News, I think the headline
or the lead said Trump's doj spied on Congress. You
had to get so deep into that. What's that guy's name,
delayne In or something. You had to get.
Speaker 2: Kenlainian confusion ken because he was always taking information from
Fusion GPS and funneling it through his media outlets. But
he also, I think, was the guy who got fired
from the Los Angeles Times or some media outlet something
bad happened, because he was viewed as just an uncritical
regurgitator from the CIA, which I think he still is.
Speaker 1: Basically, Yeah, you have to get way deep into that
story to know that it had anything to do with Russia,
you know, Russia, Russia, Russia. So found that humorous. Yeah,
I mean, you're spying on Congress, You're spying the FBI,
is you know, I mean the CIA, I guess spied
on the Senate when Brennan was there. So I guess
it's just the norm norm in these agencies. Anyway, Hopefully
there'll be some reform we'll see. So on the.
Speaker 2: Note of Mike Rounds, I was also and how I
judge all of South Dakota because of how awful the
people are. You could say the same for Oklahoma, which
had James Langford was the only Republican senator stupid enough
to fall for Mitch McConnell's plan to sabotage Republicans with
this border bill that let in so many people each day, And.
Speaker 1: Was he the only one who supported that border bill.
Speaker 2: I'm just saying that Mitch McConnell had this plan. He's like,
what if we take a dummy in our ranks who's
not up for reelection for like six years and we
have them pushed this idea of a border bill, will
claim that it's a great bill, but really it's going
to be an amnesty bill. And only James Langford was
stupid enough to be like, I'll take that assignment. And
so he did, and he puts out this border bill
that all the actual people who care about immigrations say
is horrible, but of course was used by Joe Biden
Democrats Kamala Harris to make the claim that it was
Republicans who didn't care about the border. Anyway, James Langford
is from Oklahoma, so weak, so so bad. The other
Senator from Oklahoma is this guy, Mark Wayne Mullins. He's
the sort of funny one who sometimes threatens to beat
people up because I think he's like a former wrestler
or something, so in hearings when someone questions his integrity,
he like stands up in his big you know, tough guy. Anyway,
this week, he was asked whether Senator Jonie Ernst of
Iowa should be primaried if she votes no on Pete
Hegseth as Defense Secretary. We've reported at The Federalist about
how she's been involved in trying to sabotage that nomination,
how she was actually thinking for a while that she
might be able to be replacing Pete haig Seth as
the nominee, and how she was calling down Tomar a
Lago and causing all sorts of problems. And you know,
she's been very notable in not speaking out loud about
her support for haig Seth, although I think on Monday
of this week she did finally say she supported him.
But Mark Waynemullin says that if she votes against Trump's
cabinet nominees, that she shouldn't be primaried. It's like, why not.
Why shouldn't someone be primaried for not supporting what her
voters want. I have no doubt that the people of
Iowa would like her to support this nominee. And if
she doesn't want to support him, that's her business. But
she's going to get primaried over it. And the idea
that Mark Wayne Mullen be like, oh no, don't don't
demand that the person that you've sent to the Senate
in any way support your viewpoints. It just made me think, like, fine,
we'll primary him too. Everyone getting primary in oklahom because
Oklahoma is one of those states that is so read
that they could be putting in really solid people. I
get annoyed with people when they complain about Susan Collins
from Maine. Yeah, she's a super lib squish, totally agree,
and yet also is accurately representing the viewpoint of her state.
She's definitely the only Republican who could be elected to
the Senate right now from that state. She's very principled
in so far as adhering to her own views on
how to approach different issues, and she's very straightforward about it.
I don't have complaints about her. But when you're from
Oklahoma and your people are really concerned about the direction
of the country, and your voting patterns are more like
or your approach is more like Susan Collins from Blue Maine, yeah,
it's a problem.
Speaker 1: Right. Well, yeah, I generally agree with you on the specifics,
but I don't agree with you on the idea that
senators of any senators have any loyalty to the president's picks.
I mean, if they're making a good concern, well, you
said that they're not representing their vote. You're saying they're
not representing their voters. Their voters voted for them. They
voted for the president separately. It's not one vote for
all things. So what I'm saying is that if a
senator had a good argument, a conservative argument against a nominee,
like I would say against RFK, for instance, that would
be fine by me. They don't owe Trump any loyalty
in that way. But you're right in the in the
in specifics that I think their votes, you know, undermining hexeth.
I don't know why they're doing it. I assume it's
because of the stuff he's been accused of. I don't know.
That's a different story.
Speaker 2: There's no reason for that if you're loyal, I don't.
I don't think the fact that Jonie Earnst enthusiastically voted
for Lloyd Austin means that she's loyal to Joe Biden.
So why do we call it loyalty if you're thinking
that you should vote for Pete set as a marked
improvement over Lloyd Austin. Like, I hate the way we
talk about these things loyalty. Did O'donald Trump wants loyal people,
Oh he does. That's so weird, Unlike every other person
who's ever been president.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's just I don't.
Speaker 2: Tony Ernst voted for Lloyd Austin. She loves Lloyd Austin.
She voted for Merrick Garland. She loves Merrick Garland.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I think her.
Speaker 2: Voters are reasonable when they say, Okay, you foisted Lloyd
Austin on us, We're gonna definitely expect that you vote
for Pete Hegseth.
Speaker 1: You know, I have no I don't disagree with you
on that. I actually think voting we archied about it
this at the time. At some point you're gonna have
to You're gonna have to give the president a cabinet,
and you're gonna have to vote for someone you try
to get the least terrible person involved. I have no
problem with that, but all My only point is that
I don't think that someone should be primary just because
they don't believe, you know, agree with the president on
everything he's do, you know, doing, or challenge him on something.
I just don't. But I agree with you on the
specific with Joy on this specifics. Here with Joony Ernst,
I think she's wrong here. I think heg Seth is
completely qualified and until something else, something has proven definitively
about him, I don't see any reason why they should
vote against him. So anyway, I don't know. I just
there's this idea.
Speaker 2: I'm still hung up on this. Okay, we have a
Senate that I can't even remember how many people voted
for Merrick Garland, easily the worst Attorney General of the
country has ever seen.
Speaker 1: Right, So you didn't know that when you voted for him,
You didn't know how bad he would be. You got
to vote for somebody or not, right, And I'm sure
not every Republican voted voted for Merrick Garland. I remember
what the numbers were.
Speaker 2: He had a really high vote total, which I think
was probably orchestrated by Mitch McConnell as a way to
make up for not letting him even get a hearing
in twenty sixteen when Barack Obama nominated him to be
the Supreme Court Justice. But objectively speaking, this is a
guy who has done a lot of to the country
and they all voted for him, and you can say, well,
they didn't know at the time. Well, You've got about
a thousand examples of people getting voted in who did
damage to the country and you can say, oh, well,
they didn't know at the time. They didn't know at
the time. They didn't know at the time the idea
that now would be the moment when they suddenly developed
some really principled objections to a nominee and they're really
concerned about someone's credentials or whatnot. That's just laughable. They
have they're awful, The Senate is awful. They have allowed
really bad things to happen to the country for decades,
and so when they say, oh, I'm very concerned about
Pete Hegseth possibly changing the military and the operation of
the Pentagon, it's mockable and laughable because they don't. The
only thing they care about is they really like the
way they've been running the country for a long period
of time. They don't want changes to the way they've
been running the country and the people who are in charge,
and it's all kind of transparent. I'm not saying by
that that people might not have, you know, legitimate objections
to this person or that person, But when you look
at it from a distance, it's a joke. They're all
a joke. They loved Lloyd Austin, they loved Pete Booted Judge,
they loved Alejandro Mayorcis. I think Jony Ernst might have
not voted for that one, which only kind of proves
the point that she voted for the others. And yes,
the people of Iowa are saying, if you're going to
vote for those people, you darn well better be voting
for Donald Trump's picks.
Speaker 1: Yes. So here's the thing. There's an argument I hate,
and I see it's prevalent across kind of the Trump right.
And listen, it's not unique. They did the same thing
with Biden and Obama and so on. But this idea
that the Senate, that the politics is you know, that
partisanship is a single celled organism that must be fed.
So I in two thousand and one, in two thousand
and eight, in twenty ten, in twenty twenty four. I
want the Senate to be to do each job and
to be independent and whenever it's just capitulating and threatened
by the President to do things which Democrats do as well.
That bothers me in specifics. I think you're right here,
you know, but there are a lot of people who
are like, this is the will of the people. There's
no such thing. There's really no such thing as a
mandate either. You have elected officials in the Senate who
have a job in Congress, in the presidency, and they
all are supposed to do their job. That's all I'm saying. Now.
If you have a specific problem with one senator, I
get that, But the bottom line is this idea that
they just have to go along with the president does
because that's what people voted for. No senators make legislation,
presidents execute them. That's and you know, and deal with
foreign policy and that I know it sounds I sound naive,
and you know it's so j June to say stuff
like this, but that's what I believe in. And I
just feel that the Senate needs to take back its
independence in some way, which probably is that we're going
to happen. But that's my hope, and that's what I'm
arguing about here.
Speaker 2: Okay, well, I agree in part. I feel very strongly
that we have these separate branches of government and that
they need to have some self respect and understand what
their role is. And further, I as the article one branch.
I care deeply about Congress protecting its authority and much
of the problems in the many of the problems in
the country are a result of Congress completely handing over
to the executive branch all of their authority. They basically
just pass these laws that say, we're not going to
be specific about what we want. We'll let the president
and the regulatory agencies decide what the law actually is,
how they're going to enforce it, and we're not going
to say a word about it. And so when you
look at the growth of government and the problems with
that growth, the bureaucratic bureaucratic power, Congress's fault, not the
executive branch. And I even take this to the point
that I'm offended on behalf of the Senate that they
don't respect themselves enough to do their own background checks
on these nominees. They defer to the FBI and say,
we'll just say, we'll just go with whatever you say FBI. Mean,
why wouldn't even if the FBI weren't a horrific agency
that should not be trusted in any way.
Speaker 1: This is just.
Speaker 2: Unbecoming of the Senate to defer all of its authority. Now,
having said all that, I think again, the problem is
nobody believes that the Senate is this August institution that
you claim it is. You might remember, nor that here's
I'm not trying to be critical of what you're saying.
What I'm pointing out is when Joe by and became
president in a very narrow election fraught with problems, every
single Democrat voted for every single nominee, and for good measure,
so did a bunch of the Republicans. But when Donald
Trump wins the nomination in a change election against all
sorts of problems that he's up against, including law fair, widespread,
well coordinated, well funded efforts to remove him from the ballot,
imprison him, bankrupt him. They tried to shoot him twice.
They have the propaganda press just lying constantly about who
he is, what he believes, you have, all of these
things he's coming up against, and he still wins the
popular vote, which is just insane. He also secures Republican
victory in the Senate, which is crazy because you got
Mitch McConnell out there saying, just so you know, I'm
going to spend post election time fighting Republicans more than Democrats,
and still voters give them majority control of the Senate.
And so the voters are saying, I didn't do all
this so that you would, you know, vote for Lloyd
Austin and not Pete Hegseeth. You know what I mean, Like,
there's a bigger picture here that affects why people are
so frustrated with this sort of impotent, cowardly thinking. They're
so cute Republican senator who loves Merrick Garland and loves
Lloyd Austin but doesn't love the Trump nominees, that's all.
Speaker 1: I don't think it's cowardly to stand up against your party,
even if you disagree with that person. But more than that, Listen,
Garland was terrible. I think he should have been impeached. Hero.
Speaker 2: You know, he's just a wait, when hasn't one stood
up against their party?
Speaker 1: Sorry, I'm just saying if some Republican doesn't want to
go along with Trump and most senators they're not.
Speaker 2: Oh you're you're saying like that's their party, and the
party isn't the uni party establishment that runs deep.
Speaker 1: No, I don't think there's a uniparty, you know, I
don't think there's a uniparty. Yeah, I mean I bet
you if I looked at Jony Ernst, I bet she
votes with Republicans, I mean, you know, and against democratic initiatives. Right,
But does she ninety percent of the time, So I
think the.
Speaker 2: Question would be does she fight Mitch McConnell like that
takes courage within the Senate.
Speaker 1: This is what I'm talking about. Mitch McConnell is elected,
probably in huge landslides in Kentucky, I don't remember exactly,
and you know then senators voted to make him leader.
Now you say he probably uses his power and ways
to compel them to do that, or course them to
do that.
Speaker 2: I would say courage is voting against Mitch McConnell. That's
what I would say. Courage is voting because think about
what Mitch McConnell does. If you vote against him, he says, Okay,
that's fine, you can vote against me, just so you know,
I'm going to have my army of supporters try to
destroy you every minute from here on out. Is which
is again fine, use of his power, that's what he
wants to do, But it takes courage to fight that,
and a lot of Republicans don't have that courage.
Speaker 1: Is Mitch McConnell against Hexseth?
Speaker 2: What do you think?
Speaker 1: Has he come out again? I'm asking you a serious question.
Speaker 2: Has he come out and said everybody obviously should vote
for this person.
Speaker 1: I don't know.
Speaker 2: No, No, in fact, I think he's quite notably not
said a word. I mean, it's so clownish, it's so
it's like, it's so clamish that someone as smart as
you doesn't see what's going on to even if he
ends up, even if the plan for Mitch McConnell and
his cronies is to just have four people vote against
every nominee, but different people vote against different nominees, and
he's always voting for him. Like, we're not stupid, we
know what's going on. We know that Mitch McConnell and
his party are opposed because they say they're opposed, and
they've got a track record of opposing, and they're very
petty and they're very butt hurt. Sorry for them, that's
the academic term for it. And so like we don't
need to pretend we don't know these things. We know
these things.
Speaker 1: I'm trying to clarify my argument here. If you have
problems with what Mitch McConnell does, that's fine, But Mitch
McConnell or anyone of his crony is in the Senate
aren't in no responsibility to help Trump if they don't
like what Trump is doing. That's all I'm saying. And
you know, this idea that they're all in it together
all the time I think is wrong. But I just
quickly want to say something about Garland. Mary Garland was
the best case scenario for Republicans, wasn't he before? You know,
all he did. He seemed like a pretty squishy you know.
I mean, he had done nothing to let us know
that he would abuse the Constitution in the way he did,
and maybe we should have seen it. I'm not saying that,
but I'm saying that Republicans vote for someone like that.
It's the best case scenario they're voting for. It could
have been a lot worse, right.
Speaker 2: Again, Democrats. Okay, So a Republican nominates mother Teresa, and
everyone's like, this is the worst pick ever. What an
immoral person. She slept around as a child. You know,
they do that when they nominate Mery Garland. Everyone's like, well,
he's a jolly good fellow. I can't think of anything
to say against this person. He's just a fine chap. Indeed,
I mean, how many decades do we have to go
through the game where there's one standard for Democrats, which
is like, unless they're literally murdering someone at the moment,
they're the best person ever. And then for Republicans they're
always I mean, oh, we're very concerned about this, and
we're very concerned about that. Those two standards that are
applied by the regime, the media, the people in the Senate.
It's just untenable and people are sick of it. So, yes,
could Merrick Garland have been well, Merrick Garland couldn't have
been worse as a leader. He really is the worst thing,
I agree, But did they know that? Maybe not? But
like I don't care.
Speaker 1: All right, So you just want Republicans to vote against
every cabinet nomination of a Democratic president and to vote
for every cabinet nominee of a Republican president as long
as it's Donald Trump, because if there was some Mitt
Romney there, I'm sure there would be plenty of senators
wh would be upset if he wasn't putting conservatives into No.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you'll note that I never uttered what you've just
caricatured my argument. Okay, what I do want what I do,
And I in fact affirmed that I want a strong Senate,
which we don't have. But this approach of senators of
being completely deferential to the Washington DC Party and not
deferential to any other party, it's just it's nobody's fooled
by it anymore. We all see what's going on. Oh wait, sorry,
there's one other thing I wanted to say really quick.
I am sick to death of people claiming that their
opposition is something that it's not. Now, you say, the
Senate is its own they're their own people, and they
should agreed. They should say publicly why they opposed Pete Hegseth,
And it's not because he's divorced or drank when he
was an infantryman. Okay, I think we can agree with
that because the Senate does not care about adultery, divorce,
or drinking. And I can say that with some confidence
having seen these people in their you know out So
when they claim, oh, or is just very concerned about
adultery or divorce or drinking, whether they do it about
Kavanaugh or hag Seth, it's a lie. What their actual
opposition to these people is is always that they're going
to change the status quo, or that they embrace policies
that the person doesn't actually support. So the concern about
Pete hag Seth is that he might change the way
the Pentagon is being run. That's the concern, and they
should just be honest about it. They should say, I
love women in combat, and I love the draft for women,
and I love DEI initiatives. And that's why I, Joni Ernst,
voted for Lloyd Austin because I love the way he's
doing things. And it's why I'm sabotaging Pete hag Seth
because he has said he opposes some of these things.
And I'm worried how am I going to get my
funding from my military industrial complex people if I let
someone like this come in and shake things up. Just
be honest about it, that's all I ask.
Speaker 1: Well, be honesty, and they should come out and say
why they're against these people. If they are, I can't
bore into their souls. But again, I just want to
quickly say, the public seems to have this idea that
the Senate is beholden to the president. You know what
that leads to. That leads to giving away your war
you know, your war power authority. That means letting them spy,
That means giving them you know executive powers they shouldn't have,
emergency powers they shouldn't have, and that concerns me. Listen,
Donald Trump asked Congress the Senate in his first term
to get rid of the filibuster. At one point, people
forget that now, Mitch McConnell says, no, I want that
to continue. I'm not saying they should oppose him just
reflexibly because he's Donald Trump. But if he does things
they don't like, they should stand up for their institution.
That's my argument. It's I actually agree with you on
Hexseth specifically. I don't thin there's any reason to oppose him.
Presidents should get their cabinets in general, unless there's some
real reason you know that that shouldn't be so. And
that's it, and that's all you know. That's all I
have to say. Say sounds idealistic and stupid. I feel
like I'm on preaching, but that's how government's supposed to work.
And these agencies that are out of control, unconstitutional, that
don't govern us but rule us. They exist because the
Senate and Congress have given up their control and allowed
the executive branch to keep growing and doing whatever it wants.
And that's a problem, right. I mean, that's one of
the major problems in American life I think as far
as government goes. Anyway, Thank you, thank you for coming
to my Ted talk. Do you want to do culture?
Speaker 2: Sure? I watched that yap Rock.
Speaker 1: Oh did you like it? Oh? My gosh, I got
some blowback on that, So I.
Speaker 2: Did like it. I thought it was pretty good, except
that one of the people interviewed in it used a
derogatory term for people, the sword oh which questlove did this?
And it just I'm shocked when people, to me, it's
like hearing a racist insult on This is like on
an HBO documentary and he called people cis. So I
thought that was awful and someone should talk to him
about not using derogatory terms to describe humans. Sorry, that's
a little sidebar. I liked the documentary. I thought it
was pretty good. I liked the way it dealt with
how yacht rock didn't have a name until the Internet
produced that comedy series, and even showing what how that
comedy series gave people a way to think with new
I think, in a new way about what they liked
about that era of music. I loved getting into how
hip hop samples from that soul. Why you know, it
has these great basslines, and so I liked it all.
And then I did also find it funny how Donald
Fagan cussed out the documentary filmmaker for wanting to talk
to about.
Speaker 1: It, and I read an interview about that. Actually that
did happen, but Donald Fagan's representative called back immediately and
let them use all the music and everything. So you
know what I mean. I will just quickly want to say,
in the last episode, I confused Donald Fagan and Dan Folgelberg.
Speaker 2: Clearly, and I don't understand that because.
Speaker 1: I don't know anything about Steely Dan or Dan Folgelberg.
I'm not a fan of that kind of music. However,
not just not only did I confuse them, and you
were so perplexed when I was talking about this, but
I actually in the end, when I thought I had
gotten it all straight, I still confused. It. It is
again Donald Fagan, who is in Steely Dan Dan Folgelberg.
I don't know what he did or does.
Speaker 2: Just wanted to wait, Can I tell you a story
really quickly that you know, I think we've said this,
I've said this a thousand times that one of my
favorite albums is Donald Fagan's The Nightfly. And I still
remember being a very young girl in by Celia, California,
sitting in the car while my parents were shopping at
a garden store or something, and one of the songs
from The Nightfly came on and I loved it so
much that I waited to find out what the name
of the song was. And I mean, I was young,
and so if I could only take ten albums, you know,
that's definitely one of my albums. I just loved the
whole concept behind it and the quality. And I always
wanted Mark to like Donald Fagan too, and he hated
Steely Dan and Donald Fagan.
Speaker 1: Is this going to end with him liking these albums?
Because it's going to upset me?
Speaker 2: And then I thought if he just listened to Donald
Fagan's The Nightfly, that he would have to fall in
love with it. So I never have been able to
make him do anything, so I don't know why I
thought this would work, but I begged and pleaded with
him to just sit there and listen to the whole album,
and he was angry the whole time, and he finished
and he said, yep, still hate it. And later all
of his fancy pants music. Friends were talking about how
brilliant Steely Dan, this album in Asian and all this, Oh,
and just listen to this production, and how great Donald
Fagan is. And then he's then only then with people
that he actually respects, not his wife. He gives a
new listen and he decided that, in fact, he does
kind of like Steely Dan ended up Fagan.
Speaker 1: So you know, I grew up like a punk rocket,
an indie kid. So to me, Steely Dan was the
polar opposite of everything I respected in music. You know,
it was too perfect to produce, too mellow and all
of that. I did. I try to give it a
listen this week. I went in and you know, it's
it's not as terrible as I thought. I'm being a
more open minded as I grow older, and obviously, as
you know, I'm very into music and all that. So
it wasn't as bad as I thought, but I still
didn't really like it. It was just too perfect for
me in a lot of ways.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I can see that, Yeah, but therefore kind of
snag you Yep, Yeah it doesn't.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I like a little grit in my music, i'd say,
or something. I don't know.
Speaker 2: That's the other thing I liked about this yacht rock
documentary was how it got into how the entire Toto
band was basically the wrecking crew of the LA music
scene and just I mean, super impressive guys, and I
just loved them. Also, didn't you kind of get the
feeling that they had the best lives and that they
had modest success but more like continuous work as songwriters
and session musicians, and that they probably just had really normal,
good lives.
Speaker 1: No, yeah, one hundred percent. I was thinking about that.
I don't just a quick I don't know if they
mentioned this, but Toto did the soundtrack for the original
Dune movie, which came out from Lynch. I would say
that what really surprised me if we were still talking
about this doc. But what really I liked about it
was how down to earth most of them seemed. I'm
talking about Christopher Cross just seemed like a really normal dude,
you know, And Michael McDonald seemed he was just making
fun of him and making you know, and it's just
not taking himself as seriously as a lot of you know,
musicians do, as well as those Toto guys, which who
are very normal. I couldn't believe how one of them
looked now. He looks like a professor or something. He didn't,
you know, have the afro anymore. I actually like Toto
better I think than Steely Dan, though I'm not you know,
a huture fan of any of that.
Speaker 2: But if I can just also add on to that,
another thing I liked about the documentary was how it
talked about how MTV had dramatically changed the music environment
and by making it a more visual thing. I in
my mind, I thought it's always been visual people like
Elvis or the peoples, like there was such a visual
component to it that when I'd heard people talking about
Video Killed the Radio Star, I just didn't really buy
into it. But you completely see how weird it is
to have yacht rock style musicians in an MTV environment
and how they just had no shot at all. Basically
it made me think less of Michael Jackson in a
weird way. The blatant commerciality of those albums, which totally
worked on me. I mean that was again, I'm like
in fourth.
Speaker 1: Grade and Toto played on Thriller basically, right or do
I have that wrong? I think a bunch of them.
Speaker 2: Did, absolutely, But the way. They were just thinking, we're
going to get on every single radio station this way.
It's one of the complaints people have about Beyonce right now.
Country music is one of the only genres that is growing,
and so she just knew that and put out a
country album, not because she's country and not because she
could really pull it off, but because she was just
trying to get that market share. And there is a
lack of authenticy. You know. Obviously we all tried to
be marketable when we're in the creative environments, but you
can take it too far, not be true to yourself,
as they say.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so that was a good doc. I love those
rock docs that HBO makes. I watched I rewatch The
Beg's doc after that because I like suggested it. Yeah,
and it's just is that it.
Speaker 3: Yep.
Speaker 1: I watched a show called Silo. Have you heard of this?
It's a it's a science fiction show on Apple with
Rebecca Ferguson and Tim Robbins is in it. And it's
just the first episode really drew me in and then
it's kind of lost some momentum. But anyway, I would
if you're into science fiction. Oh and I watched the
show you were watching with Ted Danson man on the inside.
Speaker 2: What'd you think? So?
Speaker 1: I didn't like how it started, but then I thought
it got really sentimental and kind of excellent by the end.
Did you watch all the thing? Yeah, yeah, just about
aging and memory and and how of time we discard
older people in a way we shouldn't, you know. And
I thought his relationship with the baseball fan guy, the
guy was just really sweet and very well done. So
to me, you know, it starts off as supposedly this mystery,
but it ends something much more interesting, don't you think,
I mean, the mystery you don't even care by episode four?
And I like Ted Danson. I can't help. But you know,
he's been around my whole life, and he's kind of
seventy six. He looks great, don't you think?
Speaker 2: Does he looks great? I have seen every episode of Cheers.
I just have.
Speaker 1: Let Yeah.
Speaker 2: I liked him as a sitcom person for a very
long time.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so that was a good one. And then, you know,
I just watched this subdocumentary on Netflix which was called
Get Gotti, and it was just about the mobster John
Gotti and how they got him. And watch it, you know, again,
I grew up with this stuff around. I didn't really
pay that much attention, but I was taken aback by
how stupid he it really was, you know, he was
just quickly he was on trial because they had bugged
one of his social clubs and he went home every
day to a different social club and just talked about
all the murders he committed and everything. And they had
that bug too. So it seemed to me that the
mob weren't as bright as we, you know, as we
you know, sort of idealize and romanticize that life. But
they were pretty dumb in general. But it was interesting.
It was interesting to, you know, to honestly, I was
really interested in RICO and how RICO works, because in
my mind, like teachers' unions should be tried for racketeering
because they do the same exact thing the mob does,
and other sort of agencies of government and NGOs they
all act like the mob does in a way. So anyway,
I just found that interesting.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we should put you in it, DOJ.
Speaker 1: That would be crazy, do you see. I don't think
I could. I don't think I could do it. I
don't think I have the makeup for it. I can
never like fire someone even if they were a bad person.
We need people who can fire others, right, I don't
want that kind of interaction with people. All right, Well
that's it. Holly's quickly approaching. I hope you're ready.
Speaker 2: I'm not. I'm working on a book. I'm doing nothing
to prepare and just gonna beg my family for forgiveness later.
Speaker 1: All right, Well, we're not going to take a break.
We'll be back next week. Until then, be lovers of
freedom and anxious for the fray.