Speaker 1: Welcome back, everyone to a new episode. If you're wrong
with Molly Hemingway, editor and 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. Molly. How are you? How
are you doing through this constitutional crisis we're in right now?
Speaker 2: The constitutional crisis is going pretty well for me.
Speaker 1: It's going pretty well for me too, you know. Just quickly,
before we get more into DOJE and all the you know,
the Democrats claims about abuse of power, I just want
to say that this is weirdly like a libertarian dream
going on in a way. I don't think that people
like myself are excited enough about this person going in
and basically gutting or shrinking or providing this transparency that
we have that like, if you told me we could
have done this during the Bush years or any other
year since then, I would have been super excited.
Speaker 2: It's actually a bit disorienting because I have been feeling
like one of those crazy people in the middle of
the street screaming about how awful government operations are for decades,
and to have other people come along and be like,
did you know we're spending this on that? Or our
entitlement program seem to be very out of control. It's
weird because I've just been feeling lonely for a long
time talking about it. Now it's become popular.
Speaker 1: Well, you know, we're a.
Speaker 2: Tool you can look through to see where your money
is being wasted.
Speaker 1: I'm slightly confused as to whether that tool existed before
or not, or we were just not looking.
Speaker 2: Actually, not only did it exist before. Little known story.
You can thank Sean Davis for that tool.
Speaker 1: Oh really, okay, thank you Sean.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So he was working for Senator Tom Coburn in Oklahoma,
one of the great libertarian senators who just was called
doctor No because he opposed pretty much everything the government
was doing that was unconstitutional. And they were trying to
get access to what was being spent where, and there
was one agency in particular that was very reluctant to
share details about what they were spending money on, and
believe it or not, it was USAID. So they wrote
a bill to require immediate posting on a government site
of where the money was being spent and they wanted
it to be bipartisan. They got Barack Obama on board
because it was like one of these things where it's like, oh,
I want to claim I'm against government ways fraud and abuse.
And they even wrote the bill so that there was
no funding for the posting of this information, like you
just had to find the resources already. And so I
think it's called what is it USASA spending dot. I'm
so sorry that I don't know.
Speaker 1: It's fun.
Speaker 2: Yeah, anyway, and it's been there for a long time
and it's you know, the data aren't perfect, it's not
which we saw some of that as people became more
aware of this tool. But yeah, Sean was like a
twenty five year old staffer who had a dream and
made it happen. And then like finally people are realizing
you can look through these things.
Speaker 1: This is a topic probably for another time, but there's
a paradox within the Trump movement where a lot of
people are like hardcore libertarians who want to destroy you know,
Elon's putting up like Tom Friedman, Milton Friedman videos and
Thomas Soule quotes, and then on the other side you
have a lot of people who have very different ideas
about how government should be, and sometimes I feel like
maybe maybe there's is going to be somewhat of a
class there as far as economic vision and size of
government vision.
Speaker 2: Well, absolutely, and I would highly recommend people do watch
that Milton Friedman video if it's the one you're talking about,
where Peter Robinson interviews him about which government agency should
be kept in, which should be gotten rid of, and
he kind of just goes through and explains why. But
one thing that I'm crazy enough to know that very
few people agree with my view of government, which is
very limited. But I think all Americans support the idea
of having a government that serves the people, that is,
that is limited away from waste and fraud and abuse,
you know. And there's a lot of agreement here even
as people strongly disagree about what the size and scope
of government should be.
Speaker 1: I mean, USAID, I think does some decent stuff around
the world occasionally, you know, but the amount of bad
things they do, the it's clear that's just a slush
run for a bunch of social science quackery we're spreading
around the world. If we were using usa ID as
a front for the CIA to Underminekami governments. I'm all
in on that, but we're not. We're using it to
put on you know, to do all this stuff that
we've all heard about going back a really long time.
Because I saw the New York Post I think it
was it might have been elsewhere, broke the story about
how we had USA Idea had given the college, you know,
funding to one of these al Qaeda terrorists who went
to school in Colorado, by the way, where the what.
Speaker 2: One of these an we're al Alaki himself.
Speaker 1: Yes, And it's funny because there's a tradition of this
in the sixties or fifties, the founder of the Muslim
Brotherhood went to school in Greeley, Colorado, you know, and.
Speaker 2: Where my parents went to school and met, and also
my niece went there too. It's now called University of
Northern Colorado. And what's better, what's best about this is, yeah,
he went to Greeley, Colorado Teacher's college or something, and
went to a shop and decided that he was so
appalled by seeing men and women dancing together that he
started one of the world's greatest terrorist movements, the Muslim
brother I.
Speaker 1: Always laughed at that when I lived there. I'm like, oh,
he went to Greeley, and he's like, oh my god,
this is terrible. I need to go back to Egypt.
Speaker 2: I remember my dad always telling me that story. You know,
but oh, that smells horribly and there's a smell of money.
Speaker 1: Anyway, that's not the sort of thing we want to
be doing right as a country, I think.
Speaker 2: And I've just been to pause here again and we're
al alaki. He went to Fort Collins, right, Oh yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, it was so yeah, It's.
Speaker 2: Just so random to me. And you know, usually when
you think of state schools in Colorado, you'd think of
University of Colorado, but there are two other state schools
that have fomented terrorists on a global scale. I think
that's just a really remarkable thing that Colorado could, like.
Speaker 1: Yeah, be fair. This was I believe you know, it
was about a decade before you was a terrorist, right,
so it wasn't like we sent a terrorist there. But
still something's not right there. And you know, even if
you think this or this agency does some good work
around the world, uh, you know, it's obvious that they
do a lot of bad things and shouldn't we know
and shouldn't we scale it back. And you know, if
they thought their charge was you know, supported by voters
and Congress and all, that, they would be bragging about it,
not trying to hide what they're doing, you know what
I mean. So I'm completely forward this kind of transparency.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's also interesting what Trump is doing is not
getting rid of I D.
Speaker 1: A I D.
Speaker 2: Sorry, even if that's what maybe should be happening. He's
simply saying it needs to be accountable in a cabinet agency.
So it's going under the State Department, that's it, and
they're reviewing it's they're reviewing its spending to make sure
that it's policies, that it's programs are aligned with the
government's policies. The idea that this is in any way
controversial is insane. Of course, you should make sure that
this slush fund for the CIA or whatever is aligned
with the government's policies. Also, in theory, all of it
is fine, using these soft money things to achieve your
foreign policy goals. The problem with USAID is that the
people who were running it and the people who were
running our country that their foreign policy goals were kind
of at odds with the national interest. So when it starts.
The whole idea is, oh, we'll help the good guys
in global conflicts so that we don't have to go
to war there. We'll just kind of like prop up
the good guys. And then all of a sudden, the
good guys became really bad guys. And so it's not
just the animal all alachy types, but also we used
that agency to push some of our worst ideas, whether
it was trans radicalism or other bad ideas, and so
it became this agency to spread hatred and bad madness
because that's what the regime wanted, but it wasn't aligned
with the Americans, with like actual American voters and people.
Speaker 1: I would like to shut it down and just fold
whatever they're doing under different, you know, agencies, but the
you do need that to do that in Congress, and
I'm happy that we're not just shuddering agencies illegally, as
you might think from the things that Chuck Schumer and
others are saying Elon Musk is doing. Now. It's so
hard to tackle this. This is a big, big topic.
But let's just start for a moment, if we could,
with Elon Musk and this claim that he is not elected.
Now Democrats are trying to make it out like he's
the real president and all that. One of the biggest
complaints I've had in twenty plus years of writing about
politics is that we are not governed. We are managed
by the administrative state. That's this leviathan that that that
puts its claws into what you drive, what straws you use,
you know, and a ton more everything in life. They basically, uh,
in some essence, have some control over. That is not
what the founder is envisioned, and that is not how
we should be governed. And anything we can do to
roll that, and that's always going to continue to grow,
and you have to kind of shear it, you know,
occasionally and trying to pull and I don't think that's
ever actually happened. I don't think Reagan did anything like this.
So I'm very happy about what Elon's doing. My point was,
I'm sorry that none of those people were ever elected.
So Elon is mate is is is scaling back the
power of these agents. He's not expanding them. The idea
that he's in there because he's trying to steal your
information to sell you a tesla is is ridiculous. You know,
He's not the rich. World's richest man is not doing
this because he needs to be richer. I'm sure that
that's not going to happen because of this. So anyway,
my point is that these people have no credibility to
complain about not unelected officials governing our lives when they
have the EPA controlling all carbon dioxide, right, Like you
have no credibility to complain about this anyway.
Speaker 2: Right, they are related issues. This elected versus unelected thing
is insane, in particular because Donald Trump ran a campaign
where he said that if you elected him, he was
going to put Elon Musk in charge of the Department
of Government Efficiency, which was the cutesy term they used
to describe an audit of what the government was doing.
He was very open, very honest, very transparent about that,
and then people said, I like that, I'm going to
vote for that. Okay, So this idea that like, we
didn't know this was going to happen, that someone would
care about how we're spending money, they were very clear
about it. Secondly, Donald Trump has said repeatedly that Elon
Musk will make the recommendations and it's Trump's decision what
to do. So again, the guy who was elected has advisors.
That's something we've known since the beginning of our constitutional republic.
There's nothing at odds here. But also I loved what
in that press in the Oval office with Trump, Elon
and Little X, which is just one of those things
where you go, we live in weird times to have
Little X in the press briefing. Elon was talking about
how this is returning government to the people. The administrative
state is an attack on democratic governance, as you just referenced,
and so returning government to the people is a good thing.
During the campaign, the media and other Democrats kept on
saying that Trump was going to attack democracy, and wise
people noticed if you just replaced the word democracy with bureaucracy,
it actually made sense that they were freaking out. So
obviously Trump wasn't an attack on democracy, but definitely an
attack on the bureaucracy. The bureaucracy is the means by
which the Left has gained and maintained power against the
will of the people for one hundred years. And it
was kind of funny. It's kind of funny to hear
Elon Musk talk about this bureaucracy and how it goes
against the will of the people. When you know, if
you read the early Progressives, that was the whole point, right,
Wilson talks about the need to put in a professional
class that isn't going to be affected by the whims
of the electorate, that will just be there permanently to
make decisions apart from, you know, according to them, apart
from politics, it will be experts. So rather than having
people vote on whether to get involved in the Paris
Climate Accords and have a treaty signed by the Senate,
we'll just have the experts just put us in there,
you know, or whether than having the people way in
on whether they want to move to you know, certain regulation,
will just get a fig leaf a cover from Congress,
and then we'll run absolutely wild, and we'll have a
permanent bureaucracy that is judge, jury, and executioner of all
the laws that they create without really any means to
fight it. This entire regulatory structure. So it's the whole
point of the administrative state that was intentionally built by
Woodrow Wilson and his minions, that what we're dealing with
is what they wanted to deal with. They were open
in their hatred of the Constitution. They were open in
saying that the Constitution was a failed document, that three
co equal, or the three branches of government that provide
checks and balances not co equal, that that was like
an old idea that had to go, and that if
we were going to succeed, we had to have this
fourth branch of government that would really run everything. That
was the administrative state. Kind Of weird how during the
Biden administration, as he declines and as you know, Robert
Hurr says he's so incompetent he couldn't stand trial, and
no jury would say that he was like capable of
standing trial. So we have a president who's who everyone knows,
whether they admit it or not, is not there, and
yet the government is still being run, right. It's that
fourth branch of government that just kept things going. Congress
wasn't doing anything, the president wasn't doing anything. Judiciary is
usually still running pretty strong.
Speaker 1: But yeah, well, the reason Democrats are you hit on
something I think super important is the reason Democrats are
freaking out about this is that even when they lost elections,
so for a long time, there was this adherence to
process because I believe both it was mutually assured destruction.
You didn't break norms because you knew the other side
would use them. But then Democrats started, I think, with
Harry Reid and Barack Obama breaking them. They have spent
two decades corroding separation of power, delegitimizing the Supreme Court, etc.
You know, We've talked about it a million times. They
always knew, even if they lost to Donald Trump, that
all these agencies, that the giant bureaucracy still had their
mission in mind, and that they would continue on. You know,
I mean, you've written about it, You've writen books about it.
The during the Trump years, the entire you know, the
the bureaucracy basically nullified his presidency, you know what I mean,
And so they thought that would continue to go on.
And so the reason they hate this so much is
that even looking under the hood of what goes on
there makes them look terrible.
Speaker 2: I am surprised at how poorly they prepared for this situation, because,
like we just said, Trump said he was going to
put it doge together. He was tweeting about it, Elon
Musk was posting about it. I mean, this was a
very public Planecrats seemed to have been taken completely by surprise.
And when you go back eight years to the first
Trump administration, as soon as they started implementing their agenda,
you had the media had much more power at that
time than they do now, so they were fomenting like
all sorts of hysteria. They were running the Russia collusion hoax.
But the street protests that you saw nationwide going on
for quite some time, both immediately after the election and
then also once the executive order started being implemented on
immigration and other issues, you know, it was a coordinated, thoughtful,
maybe not thoughtful, it was a wild, coordinated, well funded process.
And now they're trying to get people to riot or
protest over federal funding, taxpayer funding of trans operas or whatever.
Do they have any idea how unpopular that stuff is. Like,
it's just or on behalf of federal employees. And as
you and I both know having lived in the DC area,
federal employees are the reason why the federal government is
the reason why the Washington, DC area, which is not
otherwise known as a naturally beautiful place, is one of
the most expensive places to live in America. The average
federal employee is so well compensated and also has basically
a sinecure for life. And I do mean sinecure because
a lot of federal employees are wonderful people who do
great work, and a lot of them don't really do
much work at all. Like when I covered the federal
government for Federal Times, and I would interview people about
how to handle or performing employees because I just like,
take a step back. One of my articles I did
I use I did using fed scope data, where I
looked through the fedscope data, which is just this like
data cube that shows hirings, firings, all sorts of things,
and in twelve cabinet level agencies for the previous five
years to when I wrote this story. I think in
twelve cab level agencies with millions of employees, something like
eight people had been fired in the previous five years.
There's maybe like a dozen, an incredibly small number. Like
I'd worked at a nonprofit with like fifty employees that
had more firings. Right, Yeah, it's impossible to fire a
federal employee, so they don't necessarily do a lot of work,
and there's nothing you can do about it because.
Speaker 1: The retirement perks are better than anyone's going to get
in private private sector, so.
Speaker 2: No threat of ever being fired, no threat of ever
being laid off, no punishment for poor performance. So what
people would do if there was a poor performer, they
would just promote them to a out of their agency,
or promote them to a different place, or sometimes they
would just pay them not to work. And it's just
crazy that the Democrats are like, what if we went
And I do get that federal employees are one of
the most reliable blocks of Democrats voters. I get that.
And there are a lot of them, and there are
a lot of contractors, and all of their jobs are threatened,
and so there's a lot of pressure on the Democrat
Party to defend federal employees and contractors right now, for
normal taxpayers who just voted people into office, the idea
that we're going to bat for people to not do
work is insane.
Speaker 1: The normies that they lost in this past presidential election
do not care about government workers. I looked at numerous
polls of the most pressing issues for people. This is
not even doesn't even register at all. It's crazy that
they're out there chanting like lunatics for USAID. It's just nuts.
Speaker 2: Well or and federal employees. Like I was thinking about this,
how federal employees were a big reason why COVID hysteria
happened and the government shut the government forced the closure
of all these businesses, and when that happened, a lot
of people lost their jobs. Okay, so the Feds, by
the way, the FEDS funded Gain of function research, lied
about it. Then as part of the cover up, came
up with all sorts of insane things that led to
closures of businesses and schools and people had their lives
kind of destroyed over this. And the FEDS just said,
we'll stay at home and not work for money.
Speaker 1: Will you do that?
Speaker 2: Okay, so while you're while we're destroying your lives, we're
just going to take a little break here and not
really work that hard or like maybe you work hard,
but most of your team doesn't work hard or whatever.
And now they're saying, we cannot tolerate this idea that
we might be laid off. I'm sorry, I've been laid
off a ton people and my family have been laid
off a ton. Fired. This is not something that's usually
about your performance. It might be that your company was
run poorly, or any number of other things. It's a
normal fact of life that a job is not a
life time sinecure for poor performance. But in the federal
government it is. You know, did you see that kind
of infuriating.
Speaker 1: Did you see I maybe it was a Politico story
where they made it sound like these people were in
a war zone. You know that it was the most
horrible thing that could ever happen to You know, I've
been one day. I walked into a job at a
very big company and they're like, yeah, your job's done,
and I had to pack my bags on a security
guard escorted me. I had nothing to do with my
performance or anything. This is life. We all, No one
has that kind of guarantee other than federal workers. I
just want to mention you said something important. There are
three million federal workers right or somewhere around there. But
there are another There are millions more contractors. There are
millions you know, there are lawyers, There are lobbyists there,
you know, like the entire in DC when I lived
there during the recession, you know, the Great Recession, cranes
were still up all over the place. Like DC never suffers,
you know, because the government money keeps pouring in and
you know, that's that has to end.
Speaker 2: So we've got employees which are millions, we've got contractors.
And what we learned through doge I think, or what
became clear to a lot of people, you also have
a massive non governmental organization architecture that is fully funded
with taxpayer dollars. And so these people, these three sets
of people are basically the Democrat Party at work, the
Democrat Party voters. And so when you kind of when
all these crazy things are happening, you're like, how is
this happening? Doesn't feel like America. You basically have like
a sector of the economy that is not government funded,
and then the government funded people who are all the
most reliable Democrat voters. And so when USAID revealed that
a lot of people were getting paid basically to be
Democrat Party functionaries by Republican taxpayers or just non you know,
just taxpayers period, it was kind of appalling to people.
Speaker 1: You know what argument drives me up a wall when
I hear it. Don't say a Democrat will say that's
only three hundred and fifty million dollar program, it's nothing.
You know, it's only three hundred fift You're not going
to cut the deficit that way, you're not. I don't care.
Three hundred and fifty million dollars is a ton of money.
And when they say stuff like that, they sound ridiculous
to a normal person who struggles, you know, to pay
their bills. It is, it is so tone deaf and
incredibly tone deaf. It's hard for me to believe that
no one's telling them stop making that argument, you know.
I see democrats do it all the time.
Speaker 2: In a really weird way. The lower the dollar amount,
the more people associated with real money.
Speaker 1: No, you're right. I was thinking it's so abstract. Three
entred and fifty million to me, it might as well
be three hundred and fifty billion. There is no difference
in my mind between those two numbers, do you know
what I mean? In resate?
Speaker 2: But when people say, for one hundred and twenty five
thousand dollars, you got a trans opera in Peru or whatever,
and you're like, oh, my goodness, if I had one
hundred and twenty five thousand dollars, it would be life changing,
you know, life changing.
Speaker 3: Have you been keeping track of the Trump scorecard? The
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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 1: So that's one part of it. We wanted to talk
about the judicial, the judge part of it. Obviously, Dems
NGOs are doing some shopping for parties and judges that
allowed them to put injunctions against certain things that are
and there. I just want to preface it by saying,
I think almost all that I've seen other than the
birthright one are ridiculous because there's no they are exceeding
what their power is, you know, the judicial branches power is.
And my hope is that a higher court who takes
the Constitution seriously will immediately smack it down very you know,
in a way that maybe it won't allow it to
happen again, I don't know.
Speaker 2: Well, you were talking about how you didn't like that
jd Vance said that Trump was going to ignore court orders,
and I just want to say, he didn't say that.
Speaker 1: He didn't say that.
Speaker 2: Said was absolutely correct that like a rogue district court
judge does not have more authority than the democratically elected president.
Speaker 1: He did not. You're right, he did not say it.
It felt like almost like he was intimating that it
should be ignored. I'm not saying he did. I'm saying
a lot of people who are fans of the president
are saying online and I'm not talking about just random people,
but people who are writers. We need to start ignoring
these judges. I think that's a mistake at this point,
because you're setting precedents. Don't by the way, I'm sure,
actually not even setting precedents. Democrats have ignored the courts
for years. But it's important, I think, at least to
try to keep this process going. Okay, save the process.
Speaker 2: Okay, I agree, But it's also true that it would
be wrong to let a rogue, crazy judge destroy the
country because the process demands it. Okay, so there's so
many issues in play here. First off, would be the
nationwide injunction issue, and you've had justices on the Supreme
Court express concern with the rise in nationwide injunctions that
we really saw begin to just get out of control
during the first Trump administration. So Trump would make some
kind of policy decision or executive order, and a judge
in Alaska or whatever would say, nationwide, I'm shutting it down,
and then it would work its way through the courts
and get to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court gets
to decide what cases it hears right, so frequently they
decide based on things like whether there's a split decision one.
So the federal judiciary has the Supreme Court according to
the Constitution, and whatever inferior courts that Congress sets up.
So we have circuit courts where you have you know,
like a dozen or so circuits across the United States,
divided by region they cover different states, and then you
have district courts that are even further down from there,
and the circuit courts are the appeals courts for the
district courts. The Supreme Court gets to decide what cases
it takes. So if one circuit says, we think this
is constitutional, and another one says it's not or whatever
we think it's legal, this one's not. The Supreme Court
might take that case to resolve that dispute, and the
circuit and district courts really just have overview of their
geographic area, according you know how Congress is set up.
So when they're saying, not only are we going to
not only are we going to say what the law
is here in this area, but we're going to say
what it is nationwide, that is a problem. You've had
justices expressed that it's a problem that this is an
inappropriate thing that these federal judges are doing, some of
which are just like lowly district court judges, and some
justices like Clarence Thomas in particular, have said, we need
to deal with this and we need to kind of
give some direction on it. And I think that's going
to be the big legacy of this recent activity from
all of these federal judges who are Democrats trying to
shut down Donald Trump, is they're going to be shut
down on whether they can do nationwide injunctions. And I
say that because you have to imagine a majority of
the Court is really not liking this. Now, it is
true that you've got conservative judges doing this sometimes too.
It's not just liberals. It's mostly liberals, but occasionally it's
a conservative being like, no, you can't trans kids, and
I'm going to say that nationwide or whatever it is.
But a lot of people don't like Chief Justice John
Roberts for being something of his squish right. But he's
not a squish on things he cares about. You know,
he's not a squish on affirmative action, for instance. He's
been pretty bold on stuff like that. And if you
go back and listen to what he said during his
nomination hearings or his confirmation hearings to be on the
Circuit Court, the DC Circuit Court of Appeals, and then
the Supreme Court, he speaks pretty clearly about how judges
should not be. They should be very restrained in what
they do. And so the best case construction on his
incoherent Obama Care decision, for instance, would be, this might
be a bad law, but Congress passed it. We should
figure out a way to make it work. And you
have to imagine he has that same idea about the
executive branch too, and that he will also want to
He also has to understand, sorry, this is a very
long way of getting back to what you were saying.
Jd Vance might have been saying or didn't say. He's
got to understand that if the district courts continue to
run wild and do Democrat party bidding here, it threatens
the entire judiciary and it's basically our only branch of
government that works right now. Yeah, So we started this
whole thing by talking about what the constitutional crisis, and
I think there's a way to look at this where
we are in a constitutional crisis, and a way to
look at it where we're not in a constitutional crisis.
So what you just said about the way Trump admin
should respond to some of these injunctions and how that's
what they're doing kind of shows that we're not in
a constitutional crisis. It's not really the end of the world.
The President Trump is enacting policy, you have some rogue
judges who are trying to stop that, and you have
means of getting around it, and then you'll ultimately have
the Supreme Court probably smacking down the whole practice of
nationwide injunctions or providing guidance on when it can be implemented.
And they're the Supreme Court. So that's how it is
The argument that it is a constitutional crisis, though, does
get to these judges are going way beyond their authority
and trying to prevent the constitutional republic from existing. Basically,
that is a problem. I mean, it's not a minor thing.
And the way that they're doing it is really brazen
and lawless, and so we shouldn't understate the problems caused
by some of these judges, and they should base I mean,
they should be worried that they're destroying the country because
that's kind of what they're trying to do. So we
shouldn't underplay it, even while we still have means of
working through the normal system to stop them.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I just have one other short rant on this
problem with the idea that we're suddenly in a constitutional crisis.
When Joe Biden tried to tweet an amendment into the
Constitution and a bunch of left wing organizations said that's
exciting and fun and real, that was a bigger constitutional
crisis to me. Obama ignoring the courts on Obama Care,
Obama ignoring the courts on immigration, Obama unilaterally making millions
of people's citizens magically, like these are real constitutional crises,
is a crisis and no one called it then that
they celebrated this stuff. So the very idea that challenging
that Jade Evans tweeting something accurate I agree about courts
is a constitutional crisis is insane, which leads me to this,
The media is back at it again. They have not
changed at all. They don't have the same power, but
they have not changed at all.
Speaker 2: Right, I agree. I was thinking back on the constitutional
crisis thing. To me, when people freaked out about criticizing
like a particularly stupid federal judge as being a constitutional crisis,
it reminds me of like, we understand Congress has power, right,
it's in the Constitution Article one. They're you know, i'd say,
arguably the most important branch of our government. That does
not mean that every subcommittee that does something stupid in
Congress has the same authority as the full Congress, right,
you know what I'm saying. Yeah, And so to say,
like if you were to criticize again a rogue subcommittee
that's saying something stupid or subpoenaing somebody is Oh, if
you critique that, then you're attacking Article one of the Constitution.
It's actually not true.
Speaker 1: And these people who are destroying the lives of toime
of justices. They don't like numerous justices. They're they're they
are fine, They're not they're not corroding, they're not undermining
the constitution. I mean, it's such a joke.
Speaker 2: Right, So Humor this week put up a whistleblower tip
line for people to report dose people being mean to
them or something, and you could, you could file a report.
And so I whistled, blew. I blew the whistle on
Chuck Schumer, who has threatened violence against Justice Kavanaugh Gorsich
if he if they didn't rule the way he wanted
them to on an abortion decision.
Speaker 1: And they're well done.
Speaker 2: Yes, I mentioned also that people had taken them up
on that.
Speaker 1: So, I mean, you know this was this is media, yeah, media. Yeah.
So we spoke about this briefly because it broke when
we were recording last week. But and I think I
got the numbers wrong or whatever it is. But Politico
has this product called Political Politico Pro, which is basically
aimed at government workers. Right. The the subscription is some
insane amount. What was it?
Speaker 2: Well done? I have to stop you already. It's not
aimed at government workers. It's aimed at like the government
industrial complex, so probably most of the people who purchase
that subscription would be lobbyists to stand to gain lobbyists
for corporations that stand to gain from the government industrial complex.
But they also sell to government agencies and congressional offices,
and then they also provide like secret knowledge, secret journalism
that only you get if you pay. They're not totally
public about how much it costs, I think in part
because they're charging different people different amounts for the same product.
But it sounds like the Political pro subscription is ten
thousand dollars a year to fifteen thousand dollars a year,
not per person. You can get up to three people
on that, so you can have three screens or three
screens I think is the way to do it, or
three users I can't remember for the ten to fifteen
thousand dollars, so it's not necessarily per person, but it's
no more than three people.
Speaker 1: But it's which a normal person, here's ten thousand dollars
per subscription, and they are probably like, that's insane, I
really wanting, But go on, I wondered if there wasn't
a value in that too, you know, for these people
for real, and some of my Twitter followers sent me
little snippets from it and all that. And let's just say,
I don't think it's worth that much money or anywhere
near that much money. But the thing is this, taxpayers
buy these or paid for these subscriptions. I forgot what
the number is. Was it eight million or was it more?
Speaker 2: I forgot what the last year I think was eight million,
and it really ramped up under the Biden administration, I think,
but I think it's thirty two million total or thirty
five million total in subscriptions. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So numerous writers, even on the writer are like, this
is not you know, you're you know, this is just
a product that government buys. It's not a subsidy in
this and that. Listen, it's a subsidy. Now, if you
want to say we can't ban or government workers need
this and taxpayers should pay for it, okay, politicals should
let us know how much of its budget comes from
government and taxpayers, and we should have easy access to
understanding what because I believe that it does. There's no
way you're getting eight mil from government agencies and then
reporting on them fairly or you know, or not skewing
your coverage. That's just my opinion and I should know
about that well.
Speaker 2: And again it's not just the So let's say the
topic is the administrative state, and one hundred percent of
your subscriptions come from people who benefit from the administrative state.
It doesn't matter that only eight million dollars a year
is come only quote unquote eight million dollars a year
is coming from taxpayer funds. It's really all coming from
taxpayer funds because they're all feeding at the trough of
the government industrial complex. So whether they're NGOs or lobbyists,
or federal employees or state employees or congressional offices, the
congression offices is one thing. Although I do want to
say I talk to people who purchased it for congressional
offices and they said, the primary value of a fifteen
thousand dollars politico pro subscription is that if you're working
on a piece of legislation affiliated with a certain topic
and you don't know which person in the office down
the hall works on that topic, Politico pro will tell
you who the person is. Alternatively, you could get up
and walk down three doors and be like, hey, who
does ag in this office? But for fifteen thousand dollars
a year. You can just get that information without having
to pick up the phone or walk down the hall.
So I was mocking people for that, but I loved
when people are like, no, no, no, no, no, it's
or even political. They said, not a single dollar of
government money comes into Politico. It's a transaction. It's like, well,
first of all, transaction is a way to get money.
So they were like, not a single bloody red scent
comes from and the taxpayer to us, except for the
thirty five million that we've gotten through subscriptions and calling
it a subscription, Like you have an obscenely priced product
and people pay for that and you don't think there's
any reason to be concerned about it, Like it's the
Hunter Biden artwork thing. Well, no, no, no, this stuff
is absolutely worth five million dollars a pop and there's
nothing untoward about it. Okay, maybe probably not.
Speaker 1: Also it is it is completely fair to ask for
transparency on these things. Oh yea, that's what I would say.
So the government buying something distorts the price. The only
if a government worker wants a ten thousand dollars subscription,
he would never pay for it himself. He gets the
government to pay for it because the government has endless
money for them and distorts think the price completely. So
I don't know what you do. There are other publications
I mean I remember like CQ Congressional Quarterly right or
things like that are aimed at government workers and offices
and lobbyists and things like that, but you knew exactly
where their money was coming from. How much of you know,
does political exist without this kind of subsidy from subscriptions
from government? I don't know.
Speaker 2: And also just the bottom line is you take something
like they were the ones who published the story, so
they used to employ someone. They chose to employ someone
who they knew was spreading disinformation about Russia.
Speaker 1: Clusion.
Speaker 2: Her name is Natasha bertrand she was well known as
an agent to spread falsehood about the Russia collusion hoax.
And they said, we want her, We want to give
her money to do her bad stuff on our platform.
And she did, you know, she famously before. I think
she's now at CNN because they were like, we like
what she does. She spreads lies and we love people
who spread lies for political.
Speaker 1: She's though, hasn't she work for like the Atlantic? And
she's been all over right.
Speaker 2: I mean really she works for the CIA, right, or
some other federal agency, Like, really, these people work for them.
But she was the one who wrote for Politico and
gave and Politico gave their credibility to this. She wrote
the article fifty spooks say the Hunter Biden laptop is
Russian disinformation. Okay, so that's Politico. They have been engaged
in any number of conspiracy theories, the Brett Kavanaugh one,
the COVID hoaxes, the Russia collusion stuff, like all of
it was spread by Politico. They spread disinformation on behalf
of the bureaucracy because all of those things were really
about protecting the bureaucracy.
Speaker 1: And so.
Speaker 2: The idea that you would have an obscenely priced subscription
model and then you're involved in election medaling, which Natasha
bertrand that was election medaling. That was a billion times
worse than the worst thing that anyone said Russia did
in the twenty sixteen election, a billion times worse. And
so they're doing election medaling and they're getting taxpayer funding
to do it because they call it a subscription. No,
I'm sorry, I don't know how do you deal with this?
Speaker 1: So there's CQ or there's another publication and they rely
on government workers because that's their product. Right transparency, do
we say government has to let us know when they're
buying these subscriptions? Do or should government not have any
subscriptions that are paid for by taxpayers.
Speaker 2: So people were saying when I was complaining about it,
they're like, oh, you'd think federal employees shouldn't get the news.
They don't have a right to news. And I'm like,
you know what if you say to people taxpayers, hey,
we know that your hard earned dollars are going to
fund this federal government, and we really think that our
federal employees need news subscriptions to do their job, well,
I think a lot of people are like, okay, okay, sure,
and then they go and by the way, it's fifteen
thousand dollars a year per person, and they go, wait, nope,
that sounds wrong, you know. So I think transparency is
the key. Decreasing the size and scope of government is key.
And mostly though, like all these people being like the
free press had a thing out and they were like
there was a conspiracy theory going around that Politico was
receiving millions of dollars from the government and it's not
true they were getting millions of dollars from the government
for good reasons. It's like, you guys are really bad
at debunking conspiracy theories. And it's not wrong for people
to be upset about Politico, which is a bad place
that spreads bad information on behalf of Democrats. It's not
it's not weird for people to be like, I don't
think we should be giving them millions of dollars of
my money to destroy the country.
Speaker 1: I mean, don't you feel like some salesperson from Politico
goes to an agency, an agency person who's in charge
of subscriptions, say some comms person, and says, would you
guys buy five subscriptions for me? There's a implicit deal there, right,
that you're making because the cost of it is enormous,
and you're you're making a deal with these but it's
not a real sale because the government person's not weighing whether,
you know, it's worth the money. They're just trying to
buy favor with the you know, with with the with
the magazine, you know, with the publication. So I think
it's a problem. I don't know how to deal with it,
But yeah.
Speaker 2: I don't know. I don't now. I don't want to
defend them. I think that it's more just a symptom
of how corrupt our federal agencies are. Like I live
in the Washington, DC area, right, and we bought our
first home several years ago. It's a very modest home.
My mother in law routinely makes fun of us for
the quality of our kitchen given the price we paid. Okay,
and it's fair. My house is smaller than the house
my mom grew up in Denver, but very similar and
very similar era when it was built, and the price
we paid was obscene and ridiculous. And it's because, like
the whole system is messed up here. Everything costs more
than it should because ultimately it's taxpayer funding that goes
to subsidize the whole thing. So I think it's it's
kind of just more simple. It's like, well, of course
we're not going to write negative things about the industry
that enables us all to live in big houses. I
don't know how to quite explain it. I don't think.
I think it's more like, well, of course we're going
to protect the the bureaucracy. We wouldn't exist without it.
Speaker 1: I think we spoke about this last week. I mean,
it's a company town, and the company's the federal government,
and everyone's everyone, frankly down to the plumber, you know,
relies on the federal government because it's all you know,
money rains down on the on the lobbyist, and then
it rains down on everyone higher. So it is impossible
to live in that area without bleeding yourself. Bleeding yourself.
Just get a house if you're a normal person. I don't.
I sometimes would wonder how any normal person could live
in the DC area. I moved away from there. It's
immensely expensive. So yeah, I get it.
Speaker 2: Two federal employees in this area, they're, first of all,
they're set for retirement, just like by virtue of their
first day at work. And it's a really nice income level,
you know, like a nice six figure income level for
the vast majority of federal employees when you include like that,
probably i'd say for all of them, when you include
the benefits and all that. So it is hard to
compete against it if you're not part of the grift. Okay,
we should move.
Speaker 1: Yeah, let's talk about something else. So I wanted to
hit one on something really quick. Donald Trump the other
day had a press conference. I think it was a
wide ranging press I'm not sure which one was, whatever
it was, but he was asked about the hostages that
have been released by Halmas who are been tortured, starved,
you know, nearly to death, and horrible things have happened
to them. And he gave a statement on how these
people look like they had come out of concentration camps.
It was a very clear eyed and moral and how
a normal person would react to seeing that sort of thing,
something that we did not see for four years of
the Biden administration, with their moral equivalencies and so on.
And then he gave an ultimatum that the hostages should
be released, all of them by noon on Saturday, or
all hell was in a break loose, which what we
should have been saying from the beginning. There are Americans still,
I think six American citizens.
Speaker 2: There so much to go over there. I do like
the idea that if you're an American, that other countries
should worry about doing anything against you, And it does
seem like it's just one of the one of the
main perks of being the United States of America right
now and having our relative power and with all that
we do for other countries, other countries should be kind
of worried about how they treat Americans. And there's something
to be said for our government not tolerating or treatment
of Americans abroad, and we just definitely lost that for
a while. Mark Vogel, the guy who was brought back
and who President Trump stood out in the snow to
greet and let him stay in the Lincoln bedroom last night.
He had been held in and we say hostages, but
a lot of these are prisoners. Yeah, he'd been held
prisoner in Russia since like before Britney Griner, who we
traded arms dealers for, and yeah, it's just nice to
have someone who cares about it.
Speaker 1: He was he had a small amount of medical cannabis
or something like that. At least that's what I read.
Speaker 2: I On that note, people don't be stupid. This is
like the flip side of American strength, is that everyone
thinks they can do anything they want in any other country,
include bring drugs in there. We had movies in the
nineteen eighties to teach us not to bring drugs into
other countries. And what would happened to you?
Speaker 1: What was that the Turkish prison when I heard what
it was called. Yeah, definitely, you know, I mean a
lot of the hostages in Iran, that's a different story
because they have family there, they're going back and then
they're you know, they're they're arrested. But the Russian thing
with bringing drugs into that country, it's a really stupid
thing to do.
Speaker 2: So on the hostage deal, that hostage deal with Israel
and Hamas, that was implemented prior to Trump taking office,
and some people were upset because they were like, it's
too generous to Hamas, And I thought it showed good faith,
you know, let's get these guys out of here. And
one of the things that was so horrible about the
most recent batch of hostages let out is that you realized,
you know, like what you just said, Trump was acknowledging
they looked like they'd been taken very poor care of, very.
Speaker 1: Bad I think Trump mentioned this, Yeah, I'm sorry, And
if you look.
Speaker 2: At like the first hostages to be released to that level,
I think people got worried that they're doing it in
order of how healthy they are and that it was
going to get even worse, or that maybe some of
the you know, so claimed hostages are actually dead, and
so just having moral clarity on this is not an
okay way to you know, these it's wrong that you
have these hostages. It's wrong. The way you're treating them
is important. I do worry about what is being done
in it, who's expense to resolve the situation. And also
my husband's in Israel right now, so and we'll be
there after noon on Saturday. So I just hope whatever
happens going to be fine anyway harm him from coming
home softly.
Speaker 1: Trump mentioned it, and he's one hundred percent right that
they do, and you just mentioned it. They release hostages,
you know, by health, and it's well known that they
try to feed hostages when they know they're going to
have to give them back to bring them back to
some kind of health. And you saw how the man
the other day looked like and the women as well,
so obviously they were worse off before and then they
delayed giving how much delayed the return of hostages, probably
because they're trying to feed them because the world sees
what's happening. Many of them are probably dead. And you know,
I think it's right for Israel to enter this deal
that was probably agreed upon because of Trump, even if
he didn't make the deal. They knew Trump was coming
and that Israel would be let off the leash probably
if they didn't make a deal, and that I think
you save as many as you can and you have
to go back in, and I think that's what's going
to happen. We'll see.
Speaker 2: Oh, that was the one final thing I was going
to say. I saw these people saying, oh, Trump and
Israel they're no longer upholding their end of the deal.
It was Hamas who stopped releasing hostages according to the
plan of the deal.
Speaker 1: Also, it's not a deal. This is blackmail, That's what
it is. I mean, I get it there Israel signed
on to a ceasefire agreement, but in the end it
is just you took civilians and now you're blackmailing people
care about civilians anyway, Speaking.
Speaker 2: Of moral authority, I do want to have a couple,
just a couple of things here really quickly. The Pope,
Pope Francis yesterday went to town on Trump and Vance for
having a border policy. And did you see what he
said about this at all?
Speaker 1: Yeah? I saw this. Try not to get into the
theological debates, but yeah, I saw what the Pope said
about I forget what the phrasing is. Where you're that
Catholic idea where you help your family, you know, it's
kind of an outward spiraling of help. Yeah, and he
said that Vance was wrong about that, or in midless
misled people about it in some way.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'd highly recommend. John Davidson has a piece for
us at The Federalist on how what Pope Francis said
is at odds with much of the teaching of the
church and the current catechism of the Roman Catholic Church.
But it was just kind of sad to see. I
don't I wish these people would think through It is
important for religious leaders to speak the truth and speak
morally about issues that confront people. And that includes the
importance of how we treat the stranger, as usually say
the stranger, the foreigner, the immigrant, legal or otherwise. Like
all of these things. Christianity teaches a lot about what
you're supposed to do and how you're supposed to behave
in this context. And when you say something that is
incorrect about what your church teaches in that context, or
you overly politicize or response, it means that people will
tune out everything you have to say. Like when Bishop
Booty Buddy, this woman who is is the bishop of
the Episcopal Church or something in the Washington, DC area.
Traditionally the National Cathedral hosts a prayer service to pray
for newly elected people or the newly elected president, and
she took that time to share her political views, and
her political views were very particular, you know, to her
Democrat party beliefs. But I don't necessarily have a problem
with someone trying to speak, you know, I don't have
a problem with someone expressing what Christianity has to say
about the issues of the day. They should just also
do it in a way that they should be kind
of prudential about it, and they should also be correct.
It's important to be correct about what you're saying, and
if you get overly political, it can be I don't
know if I'm quite saying. I just worry about the
effect on the church. And I'm not Roman Catholic, but
it's worse for the Church than it is for you know,
a bunch of Americans saying, oh, the Pope says, we
can't care about our own people, which is kind of
the effect of what he was saying it's just going
to make them tune him out completely.
Speaker 1: You don't have to tell me about this being Jewish.
They're the distortion.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 1: One of the big no nos in Judaism is misleading
people about Judaism and what it's about. And literally there
are dozens of major Jewish organizations that have taken you know,
that are fronts essentially for communist ideas that pretend to
be Jewish. It's terrible. It's terrible, and seeing other religions
have to deal with it, I'm sorry for them. I mean,
I think it's terrible, but I don't want to get
into theological stuff. I don't know if the Pope's right
or not. All I know is that if you want
to take care and treat people humanely and continue to
alight a million people into this country that we every
year legally that we treat humanly, you have to uphold
what made this country great and gave us the ability
to do that. If you just allow lawlessness to happen,
you're going to turn every American against legal immigration as well.
I already see that happening.
Speaker 2: Even as a Lutheranic care what the Pope has to say,
because it has such an effect on everyone else. But
it also is just wrong to tell people that everyone
in the world has a right to be in the
United States of America, like the idea that we're the
only country that can bring in refugees and that every
are immigrants or illegal immigrants or whatever, and that everyone
has a right to be here. It's just not it's
not true.
Speaker 1: And this actually goes back to Gaza. For instance, the
Europe led in a million Syrian refugees after a civil
war there, and you know, it was a moral imperative
for them to do it. Everyone said, it's great, look
what it's done now in Europe. But yet Islamic countries,
why don't they take gaz and refugees. Why don't others
take refugees as well? Why does it have to be
the United States and Europe constantly taking refugees from and
not people who share cultural values and the culture of
people who are trying to escape tyranny or poverty or
whatever it is.
Speaker 2: I want to touch on another religious related thing, which
is there's this school in Wheaton, Illinois. I think it's Wheaton,
maybe it's not. It's like outside of Chicago. It's called
Wheaton College. Right near Naperville, I know. And it used
to have a really good reputation. It used to even
be called like the Evangelical Harvard or whatever it had.
It was tough to get into and it had rigorous academics,
and it's really declined in recent years. But they have,
like so many evangelical Christians, just they're desperate to be
loved by the world. And they used to be kind
of conservative. It's where Billy Graham went. I think it's
where he met his wife. They have a C. S.
Lewis Library and a lot of a lot of evangelic,
smart evangelicals have come through there. But one of their
grads is the Sky Russ Vote, who was confirmed to
be head of OMB the Office Management and Budget, and
he went through a very tough Senate confirmation and was confirmed.
So they put out on their social media congratulations to
him and also encouragement to pray for him in his
position of leadership in the Trump administration. And Wheaton has
all of these crazy left wing graduates who said, how
dare you ask us to pray for russ Vote? That
is wrong. You know, at Wheaton we learned to hate
people like Russ Vote, and so we will not pray
for him. And just for your knowledge, in Christianity, you
are to pray for everyone in leadership. It's not about
whether you agree with them politically or not. But these
left wing graduates were having none of it. And so
then Wheaton College took down the request for prayer for
russ vote and said that they didn't wish to be political. Now,
first off, they brought in that like David French, left
wing evangelical group before the election last year. One of
I know someone who's a stud student at Wheaton, And
apparently professors were giving people the day off after the
election this year so that they could properly grieve that
Kamala Harris hadn't been elected. They're political, right, they just
and also taking down a call to prayer for someone
who's in alum who's in government is an inherently political act, right,
So they now have a bunch of people pushing back,
and you know, I've been I tweeted about it publicly.
So I've been hearing from a lot of people affiliated
with the school about how livid they are at the
left wing, just the left wing takeover of the school
and how hostile it is. We published a piece at
The Federalist about some recent graduates who had trouble starting
a pro life group there or having a pro life
group there. So Wheaton College. One of the things that
I've noticed about evangelicals is they're always like ten years
behind the the cultural zeitgeist. And I think they're in
the like they're in twenty fourteen. The way that they're
thinking right now that you need to be like really
worried about what the left wing says and who cares
what that does to your non left wing students and alumni.
Speaker 1: Well I don't. Again I'm not a Christian, but I
don't think you have to go back to twenty fourteen.
Maybe go back to fourteen. And I'm pretty sure Christians
are supposed to pray even for centers, right, I mean,
even if you thought he was a terrible person, you'd
pray for him. But anyway, I mean, you see this
kind of corrosion going on, Like think about like all
these Catholic universities, Georgetown, PC, whatever, I mean, they're filled
with all kinds of you know, anti anti Catholic or
it's anti Christian kind of voices and anti Semites and
all kinds of terrible people. So maybe that's where we're
all headed. Maybe we need new universities.
Speaker 2: Maybe this is why Hillsdale College is doing such a
great job. Oh, they totally trolled Wheaton too, because a
lot of people would apply to both schools and Hillsdale,
which is very difficult to get into these days. They
after Wheaton was imploding, they put out on their social
media that they were not going to rescind their congratulations
to Russ vote for his confirmation.
Speaker 1: Do is it hard to get into because just so
many there's people clamoring to get in, or the or
why is it hard to get in?
Speaker 2: I mean it's a small school first off, but their
acceptance rate with their published acceptance rate is like twenty percent.
Speaker 1: Okay, it feels like we need more Hillsdale's right, I
don't know, because they should open another branch somewhere.
Speaker 2: Did you think, well, just as easy as just starting
a branch. I think that there's a certain culture that
develops over a long period of time, and the administration
is almost as important in supporting that culture as the faculty.
But I will say that every time Hillsdale has faculty opening,
you would not believe how deluged we are with people
from elite schools who just want to go and teach.
And I think there's a misnomer where people think Hillsdale's
like exclusively conservative or anything. It's definitely a place where
critical thinking is encouraged, but there's a pretty wide variety
of professors. But they have to support they have to
support academic, a real academic approach and not what we've
seen with this takeover of left wing university.
Speaker 1: Shout out to Hillsdale. All right, Mallya, let's do culture.
Can you explain the super Bowl halftime show to me
like I was born in nineteen seventy.
Speaker 2: Oh, the super Bowl halftime show. Okay, so I didn't
watch the full super Bowl because I'm busy, but I
did check in a little bit, and then I did
want to see Kendrick Lamar's halftime show. I am not
the world's biggest Kendrick Lamar fan, but neither am I
a hater of his, and I love halftime shows, mostly
love Prince's halftime show from two thousand and seven, which
is which I made the kids watch afterwards. So I
don't know exactly what you mean here, but Kendrick Lamar
is a beloved rap guy is one a ton of
Grammys and is known. I kind of think of him
as almost like the heir to Tupac, you also do
not like, but much smarter than average lyricist, has interesting
wordplay and discusses high level concepts, like particularly considering he's
like from Compton, you know, where some of his peers
do not show.
Speaker 1: His er audition, was he dissing another rapper named Drake. Yes.
Speaker 2: I just want to say before we get to this, though, Yes,
I will say I don't like I said, I'm not
like the world's biggest Kendrick Lamurfian. Although I certainly like
some of his stuff, I also don't hate him. I
do think it was a weird choice for a halftime show,
simply because of what I just said. He's not singing songs.
There's nothing you can totally widely dance to. He's more
like a thoughtful a thoughtful poet, you know, a poet
of the modern nage. I'm kind of joking here, but
my point being, it's just a weird choice.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I thought it was because in the old days
you'd want someone who had widespread appeal to musical it is.
Speaker 2: It is one of the problems about the lack of
shared cultural moments and things. There aren't really the U
two's and the Aerosmiths and the Princes and you know,
that just doesn't really They've kind of run through a
lot of those and so instead you go, oh, this
year we're doing country or this year we're doing rap.
But yes, I don't actually totally understand the debate between
Kendrick Lamar and Drake. I did think it was you know,
Drake's a Canadian also artist who is in a feud
with Kendrick Lamar, and I think that Kendrick Lamar thinks
that Drake is overrated. I think he's also friends with
several of the women that Drake dated over the years,
and so sometimes his disses deal with that. He's also
accused him I don't know any evidence to support this
of being a pedophile. So that was one of the
interesting things. Like the only moment that you could hear
the crowd getting into it in the halftime show was
when he said his line about Drake being interested in
minors in a minor.
Speaker 1: Which which seems a weird thing to have happening at
a Super Bowl halftime show with you know, one hundred thousand,
a hundred million people watching, or whatever the number is.
Speaker 2: I don't know. I like the idea America is back.
He gave this very pro patriotic performance. He you know,
the dancers were all doing things in red, white and
blue and in the shape of the American flag, and
you had Uncle Sam narrating it, and you had him
attacking a Canadian. Drake is Canadian. You had him attacking
a Canadian for fifteen minutes straight. So it felt very
like USA is back.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I just didn't want people around me to think
that I didn't know what was happening, which I didn't,
but I did like the spectacle of it, you know, so.
Speaker 2: But it was still I mean I watched it again, actually,
and I liked it better the second time. But it
was just so boring in a weird way, like because
you couldn't really get into it, yeah, and because it's
very hard to understand his lyrics on that in that format.
It was just boring.
Speaker 1: Yeah, or two boys.
Speaker 2: But the dancing was good. I think we can all agree, right.
Speaker 1: I'm sure. I Mean, I think the all of the
Super Bowl was kind of boring this year. I didn't
think the ads were very good that I watched. I
didn't I'm not. I didn't have a real rooting interest
this year, so didn't really care that much. But it
was a blowout obviously.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the game wasn't that great. The ads were interesting,
so I do want to talk about that. That's one
of our few shared cultural experiences are ads at the
super Bowl, and it's because it's the only thing that
people watch in real time, so all of the advertising
energy goes into the super Bowl. And I was okay,
there were things I loved about the ads, and then
there were then there was a lot of sadness about
the missed opportunities. So on the upside, it had seemed
for a while that our advertising had become nothing other
than preaching about left wing politics in word indeed, I mean,
it was just oppressive, and then this year it seemed
like that mostly went away, except for the ad claiming
that girls can beat every boy at football, which my
kids and I were laughing about how stupid that was,
and I liked that they'd gotten away from a lot
of the bad politics of it. What made me sad
is every single ad seemed to be so poorly done,
just artistically speaking, poorly done. There's a lot of computerized clips.
Speaker 1: Also, do you agree that they weren't very funny? I
mean I didn't really. I don't think there was a
single ad. Like every year there's some clever ad that
actually I'm like, that's fun, but they're just now. They
just stick celebrities and like Beckham and Matt Damon and
they say some stupid stuff. And I didn't think it
was funny.
Speaker 2: It was fine. There are too many there's too much
use of the same celebrities too, like Matthew mcclas does
not need to be in everything, and Tom Brady does
not need to be in every single Super Bowl ad,
and it seemed like he was so I liked the
Totino's pizza rolls ad.
Speaker 1: Did you see that one with the alien? He says
like they're a dollar one hundred of them or whatever.
That one, I don't know.
Speaker 2: It was Chasmo was the alien and there are a
bunch of people saying goodbye to the alien. It's going
back to his home planet, and then the door closes
on him. And it's an absurd ad. It's truly absurd,
but it has these This comedian duo Tim Robinson and
Sam Richardson.
Speaker 1: From Yeah, Yeah, yeah, you know.
Speaker 2: Tim Robinson did the I Think You Can Leave, and
then they both do Detroiter's.
Speaker 1: He is in a movie with Paul Rudd coming out Tim.
Speaker 2: Robinson, Yeah, and it's definitely an acquired taste. Some of
the people at the Federalist adore him, so it made me.
But anyway, I thought that was kind of a funny
ad but not too.
Speaker 1: Much, and it was okay. And do I need to
see Ben Affleck doing with the fake you know, Boston
accent doing Dug and Donuts commercials anymore? Them over that?
Speaker 2: I just don't get those anyway. And what did you
think about the breasts one?
Speaker 1: I don't know. Did I miss a breast one? Yeah?
Speaker 2: So there was this ad that just showed like all
sorts of jiggling lovelies and then at the end, Wanda
Psyke says, but like, let's care about breasts where it
really matters. And so it was a pharmaceutical ad for
something breast related. But I thought it was kind of
well done. The fourteen year old boy in me thought
it was a very good ad.
Speaker 1: I mean, you're on the record as a fan, so right,
I mean, I'm not let's say I'm not out of
line here, right, all right?
Speaker 2: I did think it was funny too that they put
white people back in ads.
Speaker 1: Can I say this without getting in trouble that me
and my wife watched TV and we always point out
on the rare, rare ads where the couple in the
ad is not of different races. Honestly, couldn't even care less.
But it's just almost like the companies are like, we
can't have just a couple like black people or a
couple of Asian people. Everyone has to be interracial, and
it is so it gets annoying because most Americans do
not care about that at all, in my opinion at least,
and I don't think you're saying, you know, it just
it becomes this like expectation, this cultural expectation that you
have these weird ads. Anyway, did I go off in
a weird direction.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, that's what I was talking about. What I
also hated it would be like an ad and look
at how all the different people that our product is for,
and then it would just get increasingly ridiculous, and it
was like, here are three trans people, you know, using
our product, and it's like, we don't really need to.
We don't really need to do this.
Speaker 1: No, we don't. We don't. All right, oring super Bowl,
subpar commercials, weird halftime.
Speaker 2: Show, David. Did you see any good movies or anything
to save us here?
Speaker 1: Yes? Oh, I can't say they're good, but I did
watch some stuff. So I watched American Primeval. I don't
know if you've heard about this show it's on.
Speaker 2: Is this about the LDS. Oh?
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah. It's such a carat they the cartoonish a
historical nature of it. Listen, I'm not saying they were
innocent in the West, and they about eighteen hundreds. They
certainly were not. But the way they're so bloodthirsty is
just ridiculous. But it's a very gritty Western show, and
I like stuff like that. It reminded me maybe of
The Reverend a little bit in a way, that movie
with the Leo DiCaprio. I thought it was okay, the
story was okay, it was okay. I wasn't bored watching it,
which happens a lot these days. The second thing I've
been watching is called The Stranger.
Speaker 2: Just before you move on to the next one, I
just want to say my husband was raised LDS in
the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints, and
a lot of his family is in that church. We're
Lutheran now, but the history of that church is just
absolutely amazing and why elder than a lot of people
realize and my I'm going to mess it up, so.
Speaker 1: I can't talk about it.
Speaker 2: We talked about a little bit after the after the
family reunion that we went to this summer, but my
husband is descended from a bodyguard protector of Brigham Young's,
and that, you know, it just was. There were a
lot of gunfights and ambushes and people dressed up as
Native Americans and you know, just lots of lots of
crazy stuff going on.
Speaker 1: I think it's fascinating. I love that story. It's such
an American story, from the beginnings of that religion onwards,
like the whole Utah Zion thing, the war they fought
and all of that. But this show is just it's
not true that Brigham Young was you know, hitler, you know, so,
and they make him out to be this just this,
it's just made up. And yeah, whatever, I don't I
don't care that much. I'm not Mormon, but I just,
you know, it's just not true. I don't think it is.
I'm not an expert. But another the show I watched,
it's called A Stranger. It's a is that guy's name.
He's an author. Harlan Coben is the writer. He writes
like thrillers, and they made a show out of one.
It's called A Stranger, and I actually really enjoy it.
It's a British show like maybe six also, just a
six episode sort of deal. It's on Netflix. I think
it's from twenty twenty. I'm not going to give anything away.
But a stranger shows up and tells this man that
the things he believes about his wife and family aren't true,
and then it just kind of spirals out of control.
So it's one of those kind of shows. I think
it's pretty good. Okay, so I recommend that one if
that's your type of thing. But that's all. That's all
I have this week.
Speaker 2: Really cannot wait till I can get back into waiting
for reading for fun and watching things for fun. And
I apologize that I've been down on this, but I've
got a husband, traveling, kids at home, trying to finish
this book. There are snowstorms like it's just it's all
crazy so.
Speaker 1: Sick of the snowstorms.
Speaker 2: Just remind people also to email us.
Speaker 1: Again and again. If you'd like to email the show,
please do so at radio at the Federalist dot com.
We'd love to hear from you. We have tons of
interesting mail. And again, I think we need to do
a mail bag one day, Molly, and but until then
we hope everyone will remain lovers of freedom and anxious
for the fray.
Speaker 3: I hope.
Speaker 1: I'm mad to late zip my Demi straight. No, I'm
made you late. How much