Speaker 1: To its credit, Congress did one thing over the last
Speaker 1: year and Joe Biden did one thing over the last
Speaker 1: year that made it seem like we are governed by adults.
Speaker 1: They passed a federal law to ban TikTok from the
Speaker 1: American market. I'm kind of astonished that they did it.
Speaker 1: I don't know. I feel like liberals get sort of
Speaker 1: so convinced that something is left wing coded that they're
Speaker 1: just going to defend it regardless. And this is something
Speaker 1: that President Trump had called for in his first term,
Speaker 1: even signed an executive order for banning TikTok. And for
Speaker 1: those who don't know, TikTok is a social media application.
Speaker 1: It's one of the most popular social media apps. It
Speaker 1: basically consists of an endless supply of short form videos
Speaker 1: lasting maybe a minute that you just never endlessly scroll through,
Speaker 1: a dopamine addiction creation machine. Now, the reason why Congress,
Speaker 1: why Trump in his first term wanted to ban TikTok,
Speaker 1: why Congress and President Biden ultimately decided to pass a
Speaker 1: law to ban it, is because of its clear connections
Speaker 1: to the Chinese Communist Party. The point of TikTok seems
Speaker 1: to be more so than simply to be a business
Speaker 1: that makes money. The point of the app seems to
Speaker 1: be in large part to collect data, enormous amounts of
Speaker 1: data on its users in a way that it goes
Speaker 1: beyond even what Facebook other American based social media companies do,
Speaker 1: and for this information to go into the hands of
Speaker 1: the Chinese. Byte Dance is the Beijing based parent company
Speaker 1: that owns TikTok. It's based in Beijing subject to Chinese law,
Speaker 1: and like any major business in China, is tied in
Speaker 1: inextricably with the Chinese government and the Chinese Communist Party.
Speaker 1: There are other allegations out there that, based on the
Speaker 1: kinds of content that's available on American TikTok versus like
Speaker 1: the Chinese iteration of TikTok, that the Chinese are deliberately
Speaker 1: trying to dumb down Americans with it, that the content
Speaker 1: is so vapid and so you know, dopamine hit inducing,
Speaker 1: so add d d ddddd inducing, that this is actually
Speaker 1: a deliberate strategy on the part of the Chinese to
Speaker 1: make to weaken their chief geopolitical adversary. Now well, there
Speaker 1: have been some kind of dumb libertarian arguments against banning TikTok.
Speaker 1: The libertarians basically don't seem to care about the fact
Speaker 1: that this is a foreign company producing a foreign product
Speaker 1: to suck up people's data. I think the libertarians basically
Speaker 1: just say, well, the market shouldn't be regulated. It's a
Speaker 1: free market. Have a free market, don't touch the market,
Speaker 1: don't interfere with the invisible hand of the market. If
Speaker 1: if someone's going to make a better product, let them
Speaker 1: make a better product. But don't have the government regulated.
Speaker 1: Because libertarians have more dogmas that they follow. No Catholic
Speaker 1: has had to bind him or herself to more dogmas
Speaker 1: than libertarians do. And there are some libertarians say, oh,
Speaker 1: this is an assault against the First Amendment because it's
Speaker 1: a platform where people express themselves, which I think is belowney.
Speaker 1: Congress has the power to regulate international business, international commerce.
Speaker 1: It's clearly right there in the Constitution. This is an
Speaker 1: international based company. It is sucking up American interests. The
Speaker 1: nature of this kind of social media market is such
Speaker 1: that even if you ban this platform overnight one there's
Speaker 1: gonna be an American company ready to take this spot
Speaker 1: right away. Heck, if TikTok overnight goes away, everyone who
Speaker 1: utilizes TikTok for content creation purposes. Whatever is just going
Speaker 1: to go to YouTube or to Instagram owned by American companies,
Speaker 1: or some new social media platform will arise that will
Speaker 1: gain popularity, and people just start doing the same thing. Furthermore,
Speaker 1: the bill that Congress passed the President Biden signed it
Speaker 1: doesn't actually just call for flat out banning TikTok. It
Speaker 1: says TikTok will not be available in the American market
Speaker 1: unless they want to divest and let an American buyer
Speaker 1: buy it. So Byte Dance, the Beijing based company that
Speaker 1: owns TikTok, if they want to sell the product to
Speaker 1: an American company, they can do that. TikTok can stay
Speaker 1: on the market. Now, Byte Dance doesn't seem to want
Speaker 1: to do that. They're they're very resistant, and there's this
Speaker 1: weird sort of court case that's popped up where President
Speaker 1: Trump President elect Trump is trying to say no, no, no,
Speaker 1: I don't want TikTok to I want to have a
Speaker 1: political resolution to this before this law can come into effect.
Speaker 1: The law is supposed to come into effect. The problem
Speaker 1: is the deadline they set was January nineteenth, So if
Speaker 1: byte Dance doesn't either sell to an American buyer. If
Speaker 1: Byte Dance does not sell to an American buyer by
Speaker 1: January nineteenth, it's off the American market. President Trump is saying, well,
Speaker 1: I'm coming into office January twentieth, let me have a
Speaker 1: chance to politically resolve this, which I don't know that
Speaker 1: the Court's going to give any credence to it. I mean, sorry,
Speaker 1: The fact is, this was a law passed by Congress.
Speaker 1: It was signed into law by Joe Biden. I don't
Speaker 1: think a president elect has any ability to protest or
Speaker 1: stop a law from coming into effect if it's supposed
Speaker 1: to come into effect before he gets into office. Now
Speaker 1: Trump gets into office January twentieth. And this is the
Speaker 1: weird thing about Trump's position is that Trump has done
Speaker 1: like a total one point eighty on the topic of TikTok.
Speaker 1: In his first term, he was super anti TikTok. The
Speaker 1: whole Republican Party wound up joining him, and it was
Speaker 1: a lot of a lot of it was like national
Speaker 1: security concerns, national security concerns. Other conservatives, sort of more
Speaker 1: social conservatives started to raise the issue of hey, like,
Speaker 1: maybe we should also look at this just from the
Speaker 1: perspective of this is just bad. The content of it
Speaker 1: is also bad, and we shouldn't be you know, obviously
Speaker 1: we have to. You know, there are constraints that the
Speaker 1: First Amendment puts on the federal government taking action to
Speaker 1: limit stuff, or certainly modern day interpretations of the First Amendment,
Speaker 1: the modern day interpretations of the First Amendment put limitations
Speaker 1: on our ability to regulate this stuff. But this is
Speaker 1: not good stuff. It clearly coursens the minds of young people,
Speaker 1: dumbs down the mind of young people. And this is
Speaker 1: sort of the comparison that people have made. There have
Speaker 1: been some stories about this, allegations of this that the
Speaker 1: Chinese iteration of TikTok doesn't have the same kinds of content.
Speaker 1: The Chinese regulate their TikTok much more strictly and only
Speaker 1: allow that they allow a lot more like education videos
Speaker 1: and things like that, whereas the American version of TikTok
Speaker 1: is you know, a lot of softcore pushing the borders
Speaker 1: of almost pornography, mindless dumb stuff, mindless skit, mindless comedy stuff.
Speaker 1: Some stuff is fine and good, but a lot of
Speaker 1: it is pointless, stupid nonsense. We also have seen evers basically,
Speaker 1: since the iPhone and social media became a dominant force
Speaker 1: in our culture starting around two thousand and nine, the
Speaker 1: mental health of teenagers in America has taken a massive noseedive.
Speaker 1: Much higher rates of teenage suicide, much higher rates of
Speaker 1: teenage depression, much higher rates of teenage anxiety, much higher
Speaker 1: rates of teenage mental illness. And it all starts in
Speaker 1: two thousand and nine, right when the smartphone and social
Speaker 1: media became these enormous forces in our culture. Now, why
Speaker 1: has Trump flipped his position on it? It's tough to say.
Speaker 1: There are some people who are trying to argue that
Speaker 1: Trump has people close in his inner circle who are
Speaker 1: bite edance investors that they don't want to see their
Speaker 1: investment die, so they're trying to push President Trump to
Speaker 1: be pro TikTok. The other theory is that Trump massively
Speaker 1: benefited from TikTok in the twenty twenty four election, which
Speaker 1: probably he did. Trump realized he's making these kind of
Speaker 1: generational gains with young male voters, and he sees that
Speaker 1: people in their twenties and under don't want TikTok to
Speaker 1: be banned, which, by the way, I got to applaud
Speaker 1: Congress for having a real like adults in the room moment,
Speaker 1: saying of even Democrats in Congress. I mean, obviously this
Speaker 1: wouldn't have happened without Democrats in the Senate voting for
Speaker 1: it and President Biden getting on board, coming to the realization, Hey,
Speaker 1: this is just a bad This is just bad. This
Speaker 1: is bad for American national security, this is a geopolitical
Speaker 1: foe just vacuuming up tons and tons of information about Americans.
Speaker 1: Just not good and acted like adults in past this law.
Speaker 1: But I think President there is real political shrewdness behind
Speaker 1: what behind this position Trump is trying to take of
Speaker 1: trying to do anything in his power to save TikTok.
Speaker 1: Now it's political shrewdness. Again, I still think they're moral, ethical,
Speaker 1: childhood development reasons that I want to see TikTok thrown
Speaker 1: in the trash, although I do acknowledge even if TikTok
Speaker 1: goes away, if you TikTok completely is annihilated tomorrow, it's
Speaker 1: not gonna fundamentally change things. Instagram just has properties that
Speaker 1: are every bit as addictive. YouTube has properties that are
Speaker 1: every bit as addictive. Some other social media company that
Speaker 1: is American based could come up. That's every bit as addictive.
Speaker 1: If bite Dance sells to an American company, TikTok will
Speaker 1: continue to be and will continue to be just as
Speaker 1: bad as it is. And by the way, the fact
Speaker 1: that byte Dance isn't selling, I mean, one of the
Speaker 1: basic principles of appropriate corporate activity is, well, you look
Speaker 1: the interests of your shareholders. That has to be if
Speaker 1: you're a CEO of a company, you ultimately have to
Speaker 1: make your decisions in the light of what is in
Speaker 1: the best interest of the shareholders. That is sort of
Speaker 1: your mandate. And a lot of American laws kind of
Speaker 1: premised around that, a lot of theory of business is
Speaker 1: premised around what is in the best interests of the shareholders.
Speaker 1: The fact that this company is byte Dance, again based
Speaker 1: in Beijing, the fact that byte Dance is not willing
Speaker 1: to divest to allow for an American owner of the
Speaker 1: American app store iteration of TikTok suggests that something other
Speaker 1: than making money is afoot. Something other than shareholder interest
Speaker 1: is what this Beijing based Communist Party tied company is
Speaker 1: concerned with. If the point is not to have a
Speaker 1: platform with advertising that makes money, which is the point
Speaker 1: of all other social media entities. But something else that
Speaker 1: that almost proves the point of what Congress and President
Speaker 1: Biden and you know what, first term President Trump were
Speaker 1: saying that the point of TikTok isn't actually to operate
Speaker 1: like a normal business. The point is to gather up
Speaker 1: people's data. The point is some kind of nefarious geopolitical
Speaker 1: motive that the Chinese Communist Party has. That that's the
Speaker 1: actual point. If if they were just interested in the
Speaker 1: interests of their shareholders, they would try to keep the
Speaker 1: company afloat. They would try to find for their for
Speaker 1: their most valuable market, they would try to find a
Speaker 1: buyer so that the shareholders wouldn't suffer a tremendous loss
Speaker 1: by just losing the American market. But that's not what's
Speaker 1: That is not what's happening. So I mean, I guess
Speaker 1: I could understand now. The thing is, though, I you know,
Speaker 1: I'll deal with this in the next segment when we return.
Speaker 1: I want to talk about the political shrewdness of Trump
Speaker 1: trying to preserve TikTok, trying to be the guy that
Speaker 1: young voters look to as a kind of savior, and
Speaker 1: why Republicans would be smart to think about stuff like this.
Speaker 1: That's next on the John Girardi Show. President Trump is
Speaker 1: trying to do what he can to prevent the social
Speaker 1: media app TikTok from being unavailable in the American market.
Speaker 1: He's trying to save TikTok. I'm not sure that he's
Speaker 1: going to be able to do it. He's trying to
Speaker 1: the American law to either ban TikTok from the American
Speaker 1: market unless they divest and find an American buyer for
Speaker 1: the app is set to go into effect before he
Speaker 1: takes office. I don't know what interest he can bring
Speaker 1: to the court to say, well, I should have a
Speaker 1: say in stopping this before the deadline. Well, no, you're
Speaker 1: the president elect. If you become president after this law
Speaker 1: comes into effect. Sorry, you know you're out of the
Speaker 1: picture that you don't really have a role here. But
Speaker 1: I will say I think Trump is really shrewd for
Speaker 1: wanting to preserve it. Now, let me explain why this
Speaker 1: reminds me of a lot of the debate about student loans.
Speaker 1: I said this a lot during the whole federal student
Speaker 1: loan Should President Biden forgive Federal student loan debate? I
Speaker 1: don't think it's crazy to forgive student loans student loan debt,
Speaker 1: although it raises the question why are student loans special?
Speaker 1: Why not forgive people's credit card debts or you know,
Speaker 1: mortgages that people got that were lousy, or any other
Speaker 1: kind of debt that people take on in ways that
Speaker 1: they got taken advantage of or something. Actually, people with
Speaker 1: student loan debt are financially much better off than a
Speaker 1: lot of people in a lot of other categories because
Speaker 1: they all have college or many of them anyway, have
Speaker 1: college degrees. And some of the worst cases of student
Speaker 1: loan debt are people that we're going to wind up
Speaker 1: paying for anyway. It's usually people who got some pointless
Speaker 1: master's degree, so they're gazillions of dollars in the hole,
Speaker 1: and they don't have any job skills that would allow
Speaker 1: them to pay that debt back. So we're going to
Speaker 1: eat the worst of those examples. Anyway, My thought had been,
Speaker 1: like a Republican administration should actually try to forgive student loans,
Speaker 1: but fix the root problem. I wouldn't want student loan
Speaker 1: debt just to be forgiven without fixing the root problem.
Speaker 1: I think that's more important is fixing the problem at
Speaker 1: the source. Stop allowing the federal government to give out
Speaker 1: so many federal student loans. The fact that you had
Speaker 1: so much easily accessible federal funny money available to anyone
Speaker 1: who wanted to get a higher degree anywhere, and they
Speaker 1: were giving out these loans without any of the assessment
Speaker 1: of risk of oh, we're going to give you one
Speaker 1: hundred thousand dollars for a master's degree in underwater basket weaving,
Speaker 1: ballet gender studies. You know, if it were a normal
Speaker 1: bank looking at a normal investment in a normal business,
Speaker 1: they would say, no, that's a terrible business plan. But
Speaker 1: because it's the federal government, they're like, sure, go for it,
Speaker 1: with no thought that this person is never going to
Speaker 1: be able to pay that back. That's what I would fix.
Speaker 1: I don't mind paying back, I don't mind for giving
Speaker 1: student loans if you solve the root problem. And I
Speaker 1: sort of thought it would make sense a Republican would
Speaker 1: be wise to make a deal like that saw the
Speaker 1: root problem while also ingratiating yourself with a new generation
Speaker 1: of voters. I wonder if this is what Trump is
Speaker 1: trying to do. Trump sees, hey, I got a whole
Speaker 1: bunch like what has always been the Republican parties problem.
Speaker 1: Young voters vote for Democrats, older voters vote for Republicans,
Speaker 1: and you're always struggling with that dynamic of, Okay, how
Speaker 1: do we get more young people to vote Republican. Republicans
Speaker 1: have been struggling with this pretty much for I don't know,
Speaker 1: for the last seventy years. It's like the old Winston
Speaker 1: Churchill quote, if you're not a communist in your twenties,
Speaker 1: you have no heart. If you're still a Communist in
Speaker 1: your fifties, you have no brain. Trump reversed that trend.
Speaker 1: He got a big percentage of gen Z mail to
Speaker 1: vote for him. He's giving the Republicans like a head
Speaker 1: start on the next twenty years of elections because instead
Speaker 1: of all those voters being liberals being Democrats, they're already Republicans.
Speaker 1: Gen Z can start coming into the Republican fold faster
Speaker 1: than most prior generations. And what does gen Z like?
Speaker 1: They like TikTok. They use TikTok all the time. Trump
Speaker 1: won the twenty twenty four election in no small part
Speaker 1: because of clips of interviews he did, podcasts, he did
Speaker 1: stuff he said getting shared widely on TikTok so I
Speaker 1: kind of think he's smart, politically shrewd. You know, I
Speaker 1: still think the national security side of it is terrible.
Speaker 1: I think, you know, I don't agree with him doing this,
Speaker 1: but I think politically he's wildly like a fox to realize, Hey,
Speaker 1: I want to position myself. I want to position the
Speaker 1: Republican Party to still be the party that this generation
Speaker 1: keeps pulling the lever for. We're not going to do
Speaker 1: that if we eliminate this social media platform they really like. So.
Speaker 1: I again, I don't agree with him. I think it's
Speaker 1: bad to keep TikTok afloat. I think TikTok in and
Speaker 1: of itself is just a bad thing. But he is
Speaker 1: politically shrewd, and I guess I applaud him for having
Speaker 1: a kind of political foresight that most Republicans totally lack.
Speaker 1: When we return, the Liberals are getting more and more
Speaker 1: of a normal white guy problem. Next, on the John
Speaker 1: Girardi Show, I didn't watch too much of the Pete
Speaker 1: Hegseth confirmation hearings from yesterday. Pete Hegseth is President Trump
Speaker 1: President elect Trump's nominee to be the next Secretary of Defense.
Speaker 1: And the Senate under Republican control is trying to move
Speaker 1: expeditiously to get Trump's appointees confirmed. So even before President
Speaker 1: Trump takes office, they're starting to have confirmation hearings on
Speaker 1: Trump's nominees. So here's Pete Hegseth testifying and these confirmation hearings. Basically,
Speaker 1: for most of these different cabinet officials, the way it
Speaker 1: works is they have their confirmation hearings where they have
Speaker 1: witnesses giving testimony for and agains, they take questions and
Speaker 1: stuff that the nominee him or herself takes questions. This
Speaker 1: is all happening in the context a Senate committee, So
Speaker 1: it doesn't happen in the context of here's the nominee
Speaker 1: for Secretary of Defense and they're just on the floor
Speaker 1: of the Senate and all one hundred senators you get
Speaker 1: to ask them questions. No, it happens. Basically. The process is,
Speaker 1: you're nominated for Secretary of Defense, the Senate Armed Services
Speaker 1: Committee does your first round. They do your vetting basically,
Speaker 1: so they ask him questions. He presents his information to
Speaker 1: the Armed Services Committee, he takes questions from senators on
Speaker 1: the Armed Services Committee. The Armed Services Committee votes up
Speaker 1: or down to confirm him, and then his nomination goes
Speaker 1: to the full Senate, where all one hundred Senators have
Speaker 1: the opportunity to vote up or down. Now, let me
Speaker 1: give you the roster of Senators in the Armed Services Committee. Now,
Speaker 1: the way it works with committees in both the House
Speaker 1: and the Senate is the majority party gets to determine
Speaker 1: who is a member of the committee, and the majority
Speaker 1: party basically gets to allocate their x number of seats
Speaker 1: within the committee x number of members of this committee,
Speaker 1: and the majority party in the Senate gets a majority
Speaker 1: of members also in this Armed Services Committee. So there
Speaker 1: are let's.
Speaker 2: See two, four, two, four, six, eight, ten, twelve, fourteen, sixteen, eighteen, twenty,
Speaker 2: twenty two, twenty four, twenty six, twenty seven.
Speaker 1: They're twenty seven members in the Senate Armed Services Committee,
Speaker 1: with Republicans having the majority. Let's go through the list
Speaker 1: of Democrats on the Senate Armed Services Committee. Jack Reid,
Speaker 1: a Democrat from Rhode Island, is the ranking member. Then
Speaker 1: Gene Shaheen from New Hampshire, Kirsten Gillibrand Gillibrand from New York,
Speaker 1: Richard Blumenthal, Mazie Hrono. Total Moron, the Democrat from Hawaii,
Speaker 1: Tim Kaine from Virginia, Angus King from Maine, Elizabeth Warren,
Speaker 1: Gary Peters from Michigan, Tammy Duckworth from Illinois, Jackie Rosen
Speaker 1: from Nevada, Mark Kelly, and Elisa Slotkin from Michigan. Now,
Speaker 1: much of the time, as a result, in Hegseeth's confirmation
Speaker 1: hearing was dominated by Democrat female senators berating him. Kirsten
Speaker 1: Gillibrand was yelling at him, Mazie Herona was asking a
Speaker 1: bunch of stupid questions like she always does. Elizabeth Warren
Speaker 1: is trying to posture because probably she's thinking she wants
Speaker 1: to run for president or Pocahontas herself. And this huge
Speaker 1: percentage of the Democrats on this committee are women. Of
Speaker 1: the let's see, of the twelve Democrats on the committee,
Speaker 1: there are one, two, three, four, five, six seven women,
Speaker 1: So seven of the twelve are women. It's not a
Speaker 1: huge majority, but it's a lot. It's more so than
Speaker 1: on the Republican side, and they have tended to be
Speaker 1: the most vocal voices on the committee. Now, the hilarious
Speaker 1: thing is that Richard Blumenthal is on this committee. Richard
Speaker 1: Blumenthal who lied about being a Vietnam veteran for most
Speaker 1: of his adult life. Would kind of completely outrageous that
Speaker 1: he's still on this committee. But I digress. Now, the
Speaker 1: fact that you had all these female senators yelling and
Speaker 1: shrieking at Pete Hegseth and shrieking is not too far
Speaker 1: off yelling quite a bit at Pete hegg Seth. I
Speaker 1: think it's highlighting a problem that this guy I follow
Speaker 1: on Twitter named Will Chamberlain, who's a senior counsel at
Speaker 1: the Article three Project, which is some conservative judicial entity.
Speaker 1: He writes, One underdiscussed issue for the Democrats is that
Speaker 1: they lost a number of their quote, normal white guys
Speaker 1: in the Senate. They're normal white guys. Here are some
Speaker 1: of the normal white guys who are now not in
Speaker 1: the Senate on the Democrats side. Bob Casey, he lost
Speaker 1: his reelection bid, Sharad Brown lost his reelection bid, John
Speaker 1: Tester from Montana, Bob Casey from Pennslvania, Shrod Brown from Ohio,
Speaker 1: John Tester from Montana. They all lost their seats, so
Speaker 1: they're out. Joe Manchin retired, Tom Carper retired, Ben Carden retired.
Speaker 1: Manchin was replaced by a Republican. Carper and Carden were
Speaker 1: replaced by women. As a result, Chamberlain writes, you wind
Speaker 1: up with hearings like the Hegseth hearing. Women like Maizie
Speaker 1: Herono and Elizabeth Warren and Kirsten Gillibrand who have zero
Speaker 1: relevant military or intelligence experience are on the Armed Services
Speaker 1: Committee berating a combat veteran. It's a bad look, and
Speaker 1: the Democrats don't really have any way to fix it.
Speaker 1: It's a brilliant inside I thought, because it's true. I
Speaker 1: think Democrats are going are they are Certainly they've got
Speaker 1: a white male problem. They are so committed to the
Speaker 1: left just embraced so much all the millennials who were
Speaker 1: young in the Obama era, and they learned this lesson
Speaker 1: from their college professors, learned all this lesson of learned
Speaker 1: all these lessons from their college professors about using woke
Speaker 1: coded language and embraced the whole panoply of intersectionality ideologies
Speaker 1: that white males have to give space for black female
Speaker 1: voices and blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. And
Speaker 1: the Democrat Party really seriously has embraced this. By I mean,
Speaker 1: you can see it reflected in their numbers. They just
Speaker 1: don't have as many white guys in the Senate and
Speaker 1: in the House as the Republicans do. Now, that's not
Speaker 1: a bad thing in and of itself, and I'm not
Speaker 1: trying to be like prescriptive that you should have more
Speaker 1: white guys. I'm not saying that. What I am saying
Speaker 1: is this, white guys are still a pretty sizable voting
Speaker 1: block in this country. White voters are still the majority,
Speaker 1: and there is more than a little bit of fairness,
Speaker 1: especially among white guys who are literally at the bottom
Speaker 1: of the left wing intersectionality. They're not literally at the
Speaker 1: bottom there figuratively and actually reading more about totem poles,
Speaker 1: I think actually your most important thing is at the
Speaker 1: bottom of the totem pole. Anyway, regardless, white males are
Speaker 1: at the bottom of the intersectionality hierarchy. The absolute bottom
Speaker 1: of the hierarchy with role, intersectionality, politics, cultural ideas is
Speaker 1: the most important people that we have to give the
Speaker 1: most time and energy and attention to listening to are
Speaker 1: you know, disabled, LGBT, African American, queer, transgendent whatever. The
Speaker 1: very bottom of that hierarchy is straight white guys, and
Speaker 1: straight white gen Z guys have learned that lesson. They
Speaker 1: have learned their that lesson their whole life, and all
Speaker 1: of a sudden they they have the temerity the gall
Speaker 1: to say, hey, maybe maybe I shouldn't keep voting for
Speaker 1: this party that says I suck. Maybe I shouldn't keep
Speaker 1: voting for this party that says I am literally the
Speaker 1: worst category of person, because that is effectively what they've
Speaker 1: been told. And then they have the gold and the Liberals.
Speaker 3: Are shocked, astonish, the oh my gosh, gen Z males
Speaker 3: are voting for Republicans. They like Donald Trump for sever
Speaker 3: That's terrible. How could they have done this? How could
Speaker 3: they have betrayed us when we told them their whole lives,
Speaker 3: that that girl power was far more important than that
Speaker 3: they were totally meeaningless.
Speaker 1: Straight white guys are voting Republican in droves, which is frankly,
Speaker 1: I think the left has this idea that that's always how,
Speaker 1: that's how it's always been. It has not always been
Speaker 1: that way. Straight white guys voted for Democrats in large
Speaker 1: numbers as recently as Barack Obama. Okay, look at two
Speaker 1: thousand and eight, I mean two thousand and eight, when
Speaker 1: Barack Obama won his first time was a crushing victory.
Speaker 1: And even beyond that, I mean, it was quite common
Speaker 1: for straight white guys to vote for Democrats in the South.
Speaker 1: In the middle of this of the twentieth century, straight
Speaker 1: white guys were Democrats a lot. That this kind of
Speaker 1: gender and racial politics that we see today has not
Speaker 1: always been the case, and as a result, like Democrats
Speaker 1: are losing this voting blog as a result of their cultural, political,
Speaker 1: almost esthetic preferences, They've just decided we don't care about
Speaker 1: white guys, and millennial white guys have been more willing
Speaker 1: to accept that, having grown up in a sort of
Speaker 1: pre intersectionality culture than gen Z guys are. I think
Speaker 1: gen Z guys have been told, basically their whole lives
Speaker 1: that they stink in some subtle way or another, and
Speaker 1: then they become eighteen nineteen twenty and they're trying to rebel,
Speaker 1: and they're like, hey, let's rebel by voting for Donald Trump.
Speaker 1: What's more rebellious than voting for Donald Trump, the one
Speaker 1: guy you're not supposed to vote for. As a young person,
Speaker 1: perception the shapes political realities, especially political realities, and to
Speaker 1: see Pete Hegseth. As Will Chamberlain was making this point,
Speaker 1: to see Pete Hegseeth sitting there. This guy was an
Speaker 1: actual combat veteran, This guy who actually did a lot
Speaker 1: of stuff to help veterans out in his post military
Speaker 1: service life. This guy who actually deployed get screamed at
Speaker 1: by Elizabeth Warren because she thinks his tattoo is some
Speaker 1: kind of white supremacist thing when it's not. Get screamed
Speaker 1: at by Kirsten Jilbrand who's never been a member of
Speaker 1: the military, and yet here she is as a barking orders
Speaker 1: at this guy who's been nominated to serve as the
Speaker 1: Defense secretary, who actually did serve. It's just a terrible
Speaker 1: look and it's highlighted. And this is the problem Chamberlain's identifying.
Speaker 1: The Democrats are going to continue to have more and
Speaker 1: more and more of this perception problem that the Left
Speaker 1: is going to be more and more identified in the
Speaker 1: eyes and minds of gen Z men, young men, male voters,
Speaker 1: white male voters, as this is the party that hates you.
Speaker 1: This is the party that is here to yell at
Speaker 1: Hector bright, straight white dudes. So vote for us, please,
Speaker 1: as we yell and scream at you. Vote for us,
Speaker 1: please as we say that you have horrible white male privilege.
Speaker 1: Vote for us, please as we you know, condemn and
Speaker 1: criticize you. That's not going to work. That's not a
Speaker 1: winning message, and so much of modern day left ideology
Speaker 1: is built around this stuff. Frankly, it's kind of why
Speaker 1: Joe Biden's a better candidate than Kamala Harris. Joe Biden's
Speaker 1: at least he's a straight white guy, And I think
Speaker 1: the perception before Biden was fully senile was that, hey,
Speaker 1: this is an affable fellow. I guess I'll vote for him.
Speaker 1: Sure less crazy than Donald Trump. I mean that that
Speaker 1: was kind of the thought I think that a lot
Speaker 1: of voters had, including a decent chunk of suburban white people,
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty. But when the option is then presented
Speaker 1: as instead of relatively not in the throes of dementia,
Speaker 1: twenty twenty, Joe Biden versus Donald Trump, that's a different
Speaker 1: proposition to twenty twenty four Kamala Harris versus Donald Trump,
Speaker 1: or in totally senile Joe Biden versus Donald Trump. When
Speaker 1: we return, one of the most important things that Pete
Speaker 1: Hegseth discussed during his confirmation hearing getting answers and accountability
Speaker 1: for the Afghanistan withdrawal. That is next on the John
Speaker 1: Girardi Show. There's this journalist I follow on Twitter named
Speaker 1: Jerry Dunleavy. He was a DOJ journalist for the DC
Speaker 1: Examiner and he worked as a senior investigator for the
Speaker 1: House the House Foreign Affairs Committee for a number of
Speaker 1: years and loudly quit the House Foreign Affairs Committee. He
Speaker 1: was like a Republican staffer. This was after Republicans took
Speaker 1: control of the House after the twenty twenty two elections.
Speaker 1: He loudly quit that committee because the Republican chair of
Speaker 1: that committee basically was not willing to really dig deep
Speaker 1: for answers about the Afghanistan debacle, the withdrawal, the disastrous
Speaker 1: withdrawal from Afghanistan, and as a result he quit. Basically,
Speaker 1: it seems that even Republicans on Capitol Hill didn't want
Speaker 1: to totally roast various people in leadership positions within the military,
Speaker 1: people like Mark Milly, other generals, and they just didn't
Speaker 1: really want to get to the bottom of it. Well,
Speaker 1: Dunleavy's been following this really critically and closely over the
Speaker 1: last few years here, and he has this to say
Speaker 1: about Pete hegseeth heg Seth made clear today that holding
Speaker 1: the Department of Defense and generals accountable for their twenty
Speaker 1: twenty one failures is a top priority for him as
Speaker 1: Secretary of Defense. It's exactly what the troops vets in
Speaker 1: public deserve. Here here the fact that somehow we didn't
Speaker 1: have heads rolling left, right and center among top military
Speaker 1: brass for the disaster of the withdrawal. For however, many
Speaker 1: Americans got left in Afghanistan. Media totally uninterested in covering it.
Speaker 1: It was antional disgrace. So I if HEGs Us is
Speaker 1: really going to do that, God bless him. I hope
Speaker 1: he gets it done. That'll do it. Johns already show
Speaker 1: see next time on Power Talk