Speaker 1: Welcome back everyone to a new episode of You Were
Wrong with Molly Hemingway, editor in chief of the Federalist,
and David Harsani, a senior writer at The Washington Examiner. Well,
a senior writer at the Washington Examiner. Just as a reminder,
if you like to email the show, please do so
at radio at the Federalist dot com. We love to
hear from you. Exciting week Molly, the inauguration you attended? Yeah,
how was it?
Speaker 2: I did? It was great?
Speaker 3: So, like the whole weekend in VC has been fun.
The parties started around Friday and there were lots of
parties all weekend, like a ridiculous number of parties. On
a Saturday night, there were probably like forty major parties.
Speaker 1: So find to ask how does that work? Does like
an organization put on the party? Is like a magazine's
put on part of How who puts on the parties?
Speaker 2: Exactly?
Speaker 3: All the above, like podcasts or nonprofits or state societies.
So state societies are this thing in DC that used
to be much more prominent. I think where people who
were from a given state would get together to party.
I remember when the Broncos won the Super Bowl in
ninety eight that we watched from the.
Speaker 2: Colorado State Society party.
Speaker 3: So you're just with a bunch of people who work
in any number of different industries, lots and politics obviously,
and you just share your common love of your home
state and as people who you know. For instance, Spotify
had a big presence in town because they really started
as a way to share music and make money off
of people listening to music. But they had this very
weird situation happen in twenty twenty four where they also
turned out to be very important for the election, and
it wasn't really what they ever thought they would be,
you know, because I think people think of media that
affects an election being more like daily news media and
not like three hour podcasts, and so I think they
were trying to kind of figure out a little bit
more about why they were so popular and how they
could help that side of the business that type of thing.
Speaker 2: Does that make sense?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think. Yeah. It's as interesting with Spotify that
they had a party because obviously most people listen to
streaming music, but I've noticed myself like, why am I
going to some other platform to listen to podcasts when
I can just use them where I listened to music,
so that's interesting. Was there a party that you liked best.
Speaker 3: I liked all the parties, and I can't remember, like
some of mine were off the record, so really can't
talk about.
Speaker 2: And there I was also doing a lot of TV
and for Fox.
Speaker 3: It was fun because we had three different special locations
in addition to our normal bureau at Fox, and they
were all rooftop or penthouse of different buildings, had these
great views of the capital and it's just kind of
fun to do that type of thing.
Speaker 1: Foxes is Fox right, Fox is situated perfectly there right.
Speaker 4: Oh.
Speaker 3: I remember this in I think it was twenty seventeen.
That was also really cold, and we had some rooftop
locations there, and I remember Britt Bear was like, we
all realized, we also have a warm, toasty studio with
a perfect view of the Capitol, right, Like, we don't
have to be on this rooftop freezing right now. But
it was cold, and particularly I did some coverage from
a rooftop right before the inauguration with Harris Faulkner and
that was extremely windy and extremely cold, but kind of fun.
Speaker 2: Sorry.
Speaker 3: I know this stuff isn't really important, but it's just
this is like a part of the excitement, you know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, people have to get a sense of things. It
was freezing.
Speaker 3: Oh, I kind of feel like if you're dressed appropriately,
you can handle anything. And I did have my you know,
ury Russian hat and all that.
Speaker 1: So, yeah, you are from Colorado, so you understand these things.
Speaker 2: But you know that it doesn't get that cold there
color I loved it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the snow, but it's sunny and it melts pretty
quick and it's really not that cold in a weird way. Yeah,
I love Colorado. Okay, so you had a good time.
Last question on this is is how does it compare
to other inaugurations? Was it a was it a bigger
spectacle people seemed. I was surprised on TV at least
at how many people went out into the cold to
celebrate this, meaning normal average Trump fans.
Speaker 3: So was I mentioning last week that I had to
stand in line for three hours to get tickets to
go to inaugurations that my kids could go. And so
when when it got canceled, we were very disappointed because
there are so few opportunities, you know, for the kids
to get to see stuff like this, and so we
decided that we would be down there anyway, and I
was down there working anyway, although I had time off
in between my hits in the morning and my hits
at one of the balls, and so we just hung
out with a large group of people at the Heritage Foundation.
And it was so fun to be able to watch
the speech with other people, super crowded, but just like
normal people who were excited about the speech. And it
was also great to see how different people reacted to
different lines in the speech. I thought it was a
very well written speech. I'd like to revisit it, because
you know, it was kind of such an exciting moment
that I want to revisit some of the really good lines.
But I thought it was interesting, and I said something
about this on X yesterday. But when he said that
the federal government would recognize that there are only two sexes,
all of the young people in the crowd where I
was just looked like bright eyed and shouted and raised
their hands like they were so excited by this. And
I thought, but I think we under valued how difficult
radical gender ideology has been on children, and how just
like cruel it is to confuse children or for them
to have to not have clear guidance on how to
help friends who are struggling with what's been foisted on
them by radical gender ideology. You know, all that stuff
like it was just a real it felt like a
moment of liberation for them.
Speaker 1: Yeah, those speech was fine. Obviously, you don't when you
watch it on TV, you don't really get the full
sense of the excitement of the people they are. I'm
you know, just in general, I don't inaugurations seem too
much like coronations to me to regal in a way,
you know, So they and the kind of hero worship
that goes along with it. And I'm not just talking
about Trump. I think the same thing happened with Obama.
I would say, not with Biden. I never felt like
anyone actually really wanted Biden or like Biden to be president.
But I don't love that stuff. But I thought his
speech was it was good, you know, I thought it
was fine.
Speaker 3: So I also went to the Commander in Chief ball,
which was the first first ball that he danced at.
Speaker 2: I don't know if you watched any of that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I saw some of that, Yeah.
Speaker 3: And I was so glad to be at that ball.
In particular, I think there were three. There were three balls,
the Commander in Chief Ball, which is for the military.
There was I think it's called the Liberty Ball, which
was the big one that had all the musical acts,
and then was it Starlight was the third, which was
kind of the big donor ball slash where a lot
of the cabinet type people went. And I liked my
ball because he the people were fantastic. That were all
these like decorated military people but you know, responsible but
having a good time. And it was just like a fun, lighthearted,
almost like less political crowd. But also John Voight was there,
which was very exciting for my crew and kid.
Speaker 2: Raw you know, people like that.
Speaker 3: It was just fun and it was great, like when
President Trump came out and danced and the crowd just
was eating it up.
Speaker 1: I saw Mike Tyson and Jake Paul were there. I
think was that the one.
Speaker 3: There they were at I think the Liberty Ball, And yeah,
that was the one which was more like those kinds
of people.
Speaker 1: It did seem lighthearted and almost like a relief valve
from the last four years. I don't like to put
too much. I don't think normal people's lives changed that
much because of an election all of a sudden, but
did seem to be this kind of outpouring of relief almost,
And we'll see how it goes. But so that's nice.
It's historic to go to any inauguration.
Speaker 2: So, oh, you asked how it compared.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I remember I thought it was really cold during
Barack Obama's second I guess it was. I thought it
was the first, but it was the second that was
very cold and windy. I would say this was kind
of like that one though, in the level and the
level of excitement in the air. Sorry, the first I
should say it was like the first Barack Obama inauguration,
where you know, obviously I'm not a Barack Obama fan,
but you could just sense that all these people who
were there felt very optimistic about what was going to
happen in the country, and you know, lots.
Speaker 1: Of big change election just like this one, you know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and then yeah, that's probably the closest similarity I found.
Speaker 1: Let's get into some other stuff on his way out.
We still have to talk about Joe Biden. I think
this week maybe this will be the last time. Uh
he I think signed the I think his pardons were
the most corrupt in presidential history, I would say, I'm
not a historian. I don't Maybe there were worst pardons
in the early you know, pre Civil War, I don't know.
But to me, what made his pardons really awful or that,
you know, And just to lay the groundwork, he pardoned
basically his entire family, all of Biden and his brother,
you know, he had pardon hunter he was. And then
he pardoned General Millie Adam Schiff, who else, Liz Cheney,
there was another one I forget who the problem He
is so special in that he was not just personally corrupt,
he also corrupted the republic, you know what I mean,
Like the most presidents are either just personally corrupt or
ideologically terrible for us, but Biden, I think, did both.
And considering what affeckless like ineffective person he was, he
leaves behind a disaster. So I just quickly wanted to say,
not about the personal corruption, because I think that that's horrible,
but by oh yeah, it was Fauci. So by pardoning Fauci,
by pardoning Milli, he is essentially set up a precedent
that allows for corruption within the government rampantly. If this,
it becomes tradition to just pardon all the people, all
these partisans in your government. They will just act with impunity.
They will know that they can be pardoned and nothing
they do will matter. I mean, we deserve to know
what Faouchi did. We deserve to look into what Milli did. Why.
I think I'm sorry I acted, you know, in as
you know, in a seditious way, by calling the Chinese
government communists and letting them know that he would give
them a heads up if the president of the United
States decided to do something militarily. Anyway. I just think
they were so corrupt and so awful. I don't know
if you agree with that, but.
Speaker 3: So I have so many mixed feelings about it. I
don't disagree with anything you said. But you know, first off,
I don't think being pardoned for your crimes against the
country by a corrupt president means that people can't find
out the truth about what you did. And in some ways,
truth is as important, maybe even more important, than the
actual punishment. So understanding what Fauchi did. You know his
pardon goes back to when he first started working on
gain of function stuff. But I think people just kind
of need to know about gain of function. I mean,
this is one of the things that Barack Obama was
actually good on banning, the banning gain and function research,
which he thought might lead to I don't know, a
global pandemic being unleashed on the world and killing untold
numbers of people. But just finding out the truth about
it and about how Fauchi worked around that Barack Obama
executive order and who was funded and why and what
they did with it, that's still important and what worries me.
To take it back to what you were just saying
about the coronation of the president. I was just thinking
how the Article one branch is Congress, that really should
be our most important branch, and they have so willfully
given up all their authority to the executive branch that now, well,
it is very important, more important than it should be
who is president. They have more ability to change policy
and the direction of the country than they should. And
it's not a good thing. But I wish Congress were
strong enough to and cared enough about the people to
dig into these things anyway, or maybe even the Department
of Justice could still look into these things, even knowing
that there will be no accountability for it.
Speaker 2: With Fauci and others.
Speaker 3: So there's that issue truth being very important on Fauci,
Millie and what Liz Cheney and her friends did as
part of their J six inquisition. The one good thing
I keep thinking about this, the Supreme Court has held
that acceptance of a pardon is an admission of guilt
for your crimes. We don't really know exactly all the
crimes that Liz Cheney is pardoned of, you know, such
an extensive pardon, or you know, all the crimes that
Anthony Fauci is guilty of. But he you know, by
accepting the pardon, you are accepting that you are that
you are guilty of these crimes.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's not a Fifth Amendment. It's not a case
of the Fifth Amendment. This is different. I forgot what
the Supreme Court decision that you know that laid out
that you're accepting guilt was, but I don't remember.
Speaker 3: It's verdict, but I don't I should reread it. I
think the guy refused to pardon on the grounds that
he wanted to retain his Fifth Amendment rights, and that's
what this was about.
Speaker 2: And so.
Speaker 3: And so by accepting it, they lose that right against
self incrimination because they are still.
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, I agree about this. By the way, finding
out the truth is far more important what Fauci. Fauci
wasn't the decider in the end to to basically blanket
us in authoritarianism more worse than anything since the Civil War.
But I would say that, you know, he's a big
part of that, and we need to know how it happened,
why people listen to him. He participated in censoring legitimate
opposition voices. These things all matter. My point is, I
think a sense a precedent where you know, not Donald Trump, whoever,
you know, has some sidekick in the government who's just
abusing his power, and he knows that the President's just
gonna end up partying giving him a blanket pardon for
ten years. I mean, these are blanket pardons I believe
for Milly and Fauci, going back to twenty fourteen, especially Millie,
who I think is a really devious character in our government.
Speaker 3: So I have been talking to a lot of military
people about this, and they really think that one was
very bad, because so important for generals not to be political,
and he just destroyed that whole thing.
Speaker 2: I want to read what one of them said.
Speaker 1: You know, of course he has been framed as a
and propped up as a hero of the left, you know,
for stopping Donald Trump from starting World War three, which
he never would have done in my opinion. In fact,
Trump has been, or at least during his first term,
was far more judicious with the use of military power,
I would say, than presidents that came before him.
Speaker 3: So one of my friends writes, this is disgraceful, just disgraceful.
Milly is guilty of sedition that must be punished. Joe
never underestimate Biden has politicized the chain of command at
the highest level that deeply undermines civil military relations and
the non partisan nature of military hierarchy. If Milly had
two brain cells, he'd know that and refuse a pardon
like this.
Speaker 2: It's just shameful.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it is.
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Speaker 1: So I forgot who was someone on Twitter? I'm sorry,
I'm forgetting who it was said it would be nice
and probably supported by most Americans, a constitutional amendment that
limited pardons from the you know, election before you know,
after election day to inauguration day of the next president.
I don't know how much that would stop this from happening,
but I do think if you think your party is
going to win, you don't do this. If he had
done this before the election, it would have been terrible
for Democrats, right.
Speaker 3: I actually don't think such an amendment is necessary. It's
a way like what you're what. The real problem is
is corruption in DC, the size of the government, the
quality of the people we're electing and making up a
new rule. It would just somehow be circumvented in some
way or I don't know it just I agree with
the problem is the people, not the constraints.
Speaker 1: I think yes, I mean, I think the founders vastly
overestimated the moral character of future presidents, right, and so
that's a problem. Yeah, I agree, we should have liked
better people.
Speaker 3: I want to say one more thing about the pardons
of Liz Cheney for her crimes against the country and
other people. I have such little regard for Republicans in
their ability, their their intelligence, and their ability and their
discipline to actually hold people accountable for their crimes that,
in a little way, I think this short This was
a shortcut to everybody recognizing that Liz Cheney and other
people were guilty of crimes against the country. Mark Nellie
is guilty of crimes against the country. Anthony Fauci is
guilty of crimes against the country. And having Joe if
i'dn pardon them for their crimes against the country was
like a really efficient way to get there. And given
that a lot of these trials would have to be
held in a totally corrupt city of Washington, DC that
views its job as convicting Republicans and not convicting democrats
of crimes, it's almost like the most efficient way to
get there. Does that make sense?
Speaker 1: Yeah, And actually, thanks for reminding me about this. These
pardons are also an admission. It can be one of
two things. One that they're guilty of something, and that
you believe they're guilty of something, or something that we
were told can never happen, the politicization of the Justice Department,
the weaponization of the entire bureaucracy of the government. Of course,
that can happen and did happen, And this admits that
that can happen. Now I'm not saying that Donald Trump
would do that as well. I don't know what he's
going to do, but I do know that they did it,
and they did it to a lot of innocent people
who have, as I've said before, have no way to
fight back. Oh, you're admitting one or the other, and
or or both. Maybe I don't know.
Speaker 3: Well, let me say Liz Cheney has said that it's
like a vicious, despicable, impeachable lie to say that you
don't believe that the Department of Justice is beyond approach.
So she already has told us that she's taking the
side of saying she's guilty of crimes against the country.
But I totally agree with you that this is one
or both of these things, and that's not good. It's
kind of reminding me of how when Jack Smith, in
his obsessive desire to put Donald Trump in prison, quickly
like rushes everything and it goes to the Supreme Court,
and the end result is that they greatly clarify or expand,
depending on how you look at it, executive power in
a way that very much. You know, we had this
kind of hidden area of like what exactly can the
president do with the Department of Justice, and it was
kind of a debatable issue, and the Supreme Court is like, well, no,
the president is obviously in charge of his agencies. And
it was this huge and massive increase. What Democrats did
through their widespread and coordinated and nationwide lawfare campaign has
so many more bad results than just the prosecution of
their political opponents. It is indeed the very destruction of
the rule of law. And I pray that we can
come back from that.
Speaker 1: But it's hard, Yeah, it is hard. Just as you
were speaking, I was thinking, how many things, how many
of the bad things that are happening go back to
the Obama administration. I'm thinking about Eric Holder and how
he said he was the wingman of Obama and use
the Justice Department in a despicably partisan manner. You know,
you remember, like if you criticize the law enforcement or
the FBI, you were called like a traitor by Mourning Joe.
You know, you were not allowed to do it. And
all of a sudden, I we're saying that they can
just on a single day, turn the whole thing around
and go after your path.
Speaker 3: My favorite thing is when they say the process is
its own form of punishment. And so even though we
think that Liz Cheney would not be found guilty of
her crimes against America or whatever, the whole process of
going through that is such a horrific punishment. And it's like,
oh it is. It is good to know.
Speaker 1: I got so mad reading Fauci. I wish I could
have the exact quote, but he said something like that
having this hanging over our head, you know, is just
this huge punishment for us. I'll tell you, It's not
a worse punishment than people couldn't see their loved ones buried,
you know, or go to church, or the kids who
missed school and had their lives basically sometimes not destroyed.
But you know, heard in a serious way, he's just
such a despicable character in America. And he said, like
I don't know if he'd go to jail. I don't
know what if he'd you know, if what he did
was criminal, But I do want to know what he did.
I mean, I think it's corrupt. I think it was
one of the terrible moments in recent American history.
Speaker 3: AnyWho, Uh, yeah, Okay, So we talked about bid pardons.
What about President Trump's pardons.
Speaker 1: I don't listen. I don't like blanket pardons just for
everyone who participated in something, because in a sense, tells
me that you're saying what happened was fine. I'm talking
about January sixth. I do think many of those people,
from what I read I am not an expert on it,
were the victims of political prosecutions. You know what I
mean that that the country was trying to make an
example of them in a way. And part of that
is political as well, in the sense that you're trying
to make October sixth the worst day in American history,
when I think it was just a political riot and
many of the people there did nothing wrong. But you know,
people participated in any kind of violence. I you know,
I just I think by just the blanket pardon, you're
you're saying that everyone acted the same there, and I
you know, they didn't, and that everyone was a victim
of political prosecution, and doesn't seem to me that every
single person was. So I don't know, that's how I
feel about it. I don't you know, democrats deserve it
in a sense, but I don't know.
Speaker 3: I was talking with Mark about this this morning and
we were just kind of discussing all those things you're
talking about right now, and I think what happened at
first on January sixth, when people saw what happened, they
thought that people who broke windows or were violent that
they should have, you know, that they should be held
accountable for it, that they should be prosecuted. And so
you saw just sort of wide on the left, you
had people being like, this one instance of violence is
worse than the four billion instances of violence that we
saw earlier in the previous year, you know, and that
was sort of just a very political thing. But on
the right you had people say, well, you know, you
shouldn't riot and you shouldn't participate in anything violent or
break a window or whatever, so yeah, you should be
held accountable. And that was that was kind of the
posture for a lot of people for a long time,
and then what they saw was fifteen hundred people prosecuted
in a way that was completely at odds with what
they saw during the summer of violence. So in twenty twenty,
for instance, Portland rioters besieged the it was the Marco
Hatfield Federal Court building, So definitely jurisdiction of DOJ, right,
you know, or it's something that they could have looked into.
And there were people injured, and there were there was arson.
You know, you had the whole summer of violence of
dozens of people being killed and cities being burned and
just all the horrific stuff. And I believe the DOJ
said it was just really hard to prosecute because a
lot of these things took place at night.
Speaker 2: Do you remember that ye hard to process.
Speaker 3: And then when it comes to six, they're like, we
got this grandma because we geo fenced her phone and
we found that she was within like four feet of
the opening of a building.
Speaker 2: And that's a violation of such and such.
Speaker 3: Or you take what was done by hundreds or maybe
even thousands of people to disrupt an official constitutional.
Speaker 2: Proceeding, which is the.
Speaker 3: Confirmation of a Supreme Court Justice during the Kavanaugh stuff, right,
people getting arrested, Senators actually conspiring with left wing groups
to bring protesters in to disrupt the proceedings and to
get arrested to slow them down, to slow down a
constitutional proceeding. You had people up to the moment of
disrupting the proceedings at the final vote from the Senate
gallery being given at most a fifty dollars ticket, okay.
And then you see what happens to the j six ers.
Some of them are welcomed inside and then spend four
years in prison, right, And so all of a sudden,
this perspective of people goes from being you know, of
course you should hold peop accountable, to being.
Speaker 2: Like, holy bleep, what is.
Speaker 3: Going on here? The Department of Justice is insane. You
also have them using the you know, obscure provision of
the Starbine z Oxley thing to go after people. The
Supreme Court says, obviously that's not something you can do,
which affected hundreds of these people.
Speaker 2: And you have them.
Speaker 3: Using strong arm tactics, raids in the middle of the night,
really embarrassing home raids, you know, seizures of things like
holding people in pre trial detention for four years, like
all sorts of horrific things where you're like, this seems
like what the worst of other countries do. And so
when people say like, oh, well, you know, people who
hurt cops versus people who wandered in you know stuff,
people started viewing it less as about what the j
six protesters and or rioters did and completely about the
DOJ being corrupt. And so that's where like the blanket
refers to the DOJ's behavior. It doesn't mean that people
say I think it's okay to hurt a cop. I
think it's okay to break a window. People still don't
think those things are okay, and they do think that
the time these people served should have been served.
Speaker 2: For that, you know what I mean.
Speaker 3: But the pardon is about like, your witch hunt will end.
Your attempt to like conspire against people's free speech rights
ends today. And so I think that's why you're seeing
people be so positive about the end of this period
of time.
Speaker 1: Let me just con see that the hypocrisy is real.
It's systemic. I think on the left at this point
happens not just on the federal level, but on the
state level, like in New York City where you know,
Columbia students get off with a warning, you know, and
others wouldn't. But I think it's fair. I think you're
that's how you view it, and it's idealistic, and I
think many people view it that way, but not all people.
I think some people treat January sixth, you know, writers
real the ones that deserve punishment as heroes. But my
real problem is just feel and see this corrosion of
rule of law, you know, where it's tit for tag constantly.
I worry about it, you know, I just worry about it.
So I'm not saying that I'm up in arms about
the blanket JA sixth thing. I get why it happened.
I understand your perspective and what you said, but I
do worry about stuff like that. I don't think the
part and power was meant for that kind of you know,
blanket immunity.
Speaker 2: So I was telling Mark this too.
Speaker 3: That to me, it's like if you had a nationwide
speed limit of fifty miles per hour, but you had
people going like ninety miles an hour routinely and causing
car wrecks and killing people in car wrecks and just
creating horrific driving conditions, and throughout the country people said
that's so. The prosecutors were like, nothing to see here,
let's not worry about it. And then all the people
who were following the law for years go like.
Speaker 2: Fifty, What did I say the speed limit was?
Speaker 3: You go fifty one in a fifty, And the complete
power of every law enforcement agency comes and says, you
guys should die in jail for what you've done. And
it's not that the people didn't violate the speed limit,
they did, but the context in which that was happening.
Speaker 1: Like what is the law?
Speaker 3: Is the law what the speed limit was, or is
the law how it's enforced? And so after a year
of letting people try to set fire to the White House,
force the President into an underground bunker Injure, scores of
part police and other police throwing bricks at the White House,
trying to take over a federal courthouse, burning police precincts
to the ground, burning buildings with people in them, and
killing people that way, and that was all treated as
just not really that.
Speaker 2: Big of a deal.
Speaker 3: And then when you have the troubled twenty twenty election
and censorship that prevents people from being able to talk
about it, and then you know, a three hour out
of hand protest at the Capitol, and that's the thing
that everybody decides is the worst moment in history.
Speaker 2: It's like, what is the law? Then it seemed like the.
Speaker 3: Law wasn't about you can't hurt cops, because we just
had a summer built around the idea that cops needed
to be killed.
Speaker 2: All cops are bastards and whatever, all those like kill
the cops.
Speaker 3: Things were like you had major corporations agreeing with this
and saying that they would reorder their entire way of
doing business to bow down to the people who said
that cops should be killed. And then you have a
protest that is very poorly handled, by the way, by
the cops themselves, not through necessarily their fault, but like
they did not use their deterrence methods that they normally used.
They were understaffed, willfully understaffed by Nancy Pelosi, by the way,
that was a choice she made, a refusal to allow
protection of the building. And then they start like throwing
you know what do it come like the smoke bombs
into the crowd and pelletts into the crowd, and it's
very agitating and so it's like everything breaks out, breaks
down civil society and law in order to break down.
And then that's the thing that the people who've quietly
put up with all of these like horrific things for
a year, then you throw the book at them.
Speaker 2: It's it's crazy making you know what I mean?
Speaker 1: No, I agree. You know, prosecutors have some discretion. You're
talking about the ninety and fifty to fifty mile per
hour thing, So prosecutors have discretion. But if prosecutors discretion
is wholly driven by partisan you know, I you know, goals,
I would say, to make one type of people look
bad and the other. Okay, yeah, that's a big problem.
And I agree it's a big problem my own. I
just this is a bigger conversation. I just think executive
power has gotten out of and I feel like we
don't even have a Congress anymore, Like we're run by presidents.
That's bad for the stability of the country. It's also
not how the founder's vision the country being run, you know.
And sometimes people laugh, not laugh, and maybe mock me
for being idealistic about a process and so on, But
this is why we have process. Like you're just talking
about the justice system we've processed because we're not supposed
to be politicized these things. But I totally, I'm very
it was not a coup. It was a political riot.
People are like, I saw what's his name, Swawell say
that this was the word. No event ever have more
cops been killed. First of all, no cops were killed
on January sixth in twenty fifteen. I think it was
a BLM fan killed five cops in Dallas. That was worse,
you know, we don't do most people even remember that happened. No,
you know, and then you have, of course all those
riots and also, by the way, nine to eleven hurt
more cops than any event in US history. So anyway,
so I understand where you come from. I'm sympathetic. I
just think that when you're the president, you know, you
should make sure that you're not saying it's okay. And
he never said it's okay. Even on that day he
said be peaceful. Get I get that. But anyway that
you asked me, so that was my possess.
Speaker 3: I'm actually curious what you think about the Silk Road guy.
Speaker 1: I I don't know. I honestly, I had not been
following that story. It feels like maybe he shouldn't. What
do you think, Let me first get your opinion.
Speaker 3: I don't know enough to actually comment. So it's Ross
Olbricht is his name. It's been a big cause of
libertarians that he was also over prosecuted by a vindictive
judge who did not handle the trial correctly. So this
guy set up a true free market called the Silk
Road where there was no regulation, no government oversight, and
because of that a lot of bad things were traded
on there.
Speaker 1: I don't know enough about it either. I feel like
I would love to see if real free market like
that exists, but I don't really know what laws. You know,
I don't know enough about it.
Speaker 2: So this is another one of those things.
Speaker 3: Because drugs and sex were traded on this site, and
you know, drugs kill people and are harmful.
Speaker 2: People.
Speaker 3: I think thought there should have been some punishment for him. Maybe,
I mean not libertarians. They thought there should be no
punishment for this, obviously, but the sentence he got was
two life sentences plus and he was a young.
Speaker 1: Guy who like sentences, Oh my lord.
Speaker 3: And so people I respect and read like Jeffrey Tucker,
definitely we're advocating for his pardon or commutation of his sentence,
and his mother had made a really big, like long
standing campaign.
Speaker 2: And he did seem to be maturing in prison.
Speaker 3: You know, who knows how much of that is an act,
But I don't know what I think about it.
Speaker 1: Actually, remember Molly, when people were wondering if the media
had come to their senses after the election, where they
were legacy media well, where no one listened to them
about how Trump was hitler, and all the scare mongering
and all the hit pieces kind of failed. It seems
to me like they didn't learn a lesson. I think
they're back to the same exact stuff they were doing
twenty sixteen onward.
Speaker 3: I don't remember people thinking that they had learned anything.
I do remember people thinking that the power of the
corporate media was greatly diminished, and that people just are
so sick of the way that they do stories that
they just.
Speaker 2: Don't trust them at all.
Speaker 3: And I think that has continued to be the case,
although they still have way, way, way too much power.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's always going to be a large number of
people who just like to hear certain things and don't
care about the truth. I think that's human nature. To
seek out places tell you, you know, that frame the
world in the way that gets you all worked up.
So one of the stories was a NBC dropped a
story about Pete Hexth that says that I believe it
was his sister in law under deposition, I'm not exactly sure,
said that he had been so abusive to his wife
that she had had to hide in a closet because
of the you know, the threat. I'm not did they
say that he actually hit her or was just a
threat of physical abuse against her.
Speaker 3: So it was a little confusing as it was written,
but it appears so Pete Hexseth has been very open
about this, that he's been married three times, and so
his second ex wife with whom he shares many children,
I think.
Speaker 2: A couple children, I don't know.
Speaker 3: Supposedly her brother's ex wife claimed that, yeah, that Pete
Hegseth was physically abusive or something like that, and they
asked the mother of his kids if that was true,
and she said, you know, like categorically not true. I'm
see seeing my lawyer, Like I don't talk about my marriage,
but it's not true, and I'm seeing my lawyer. And
so the story they ran was that he was, you know,
incredibly accused of being abusive to his ex wife.
Speaker 1: It should be noted that these stories in the contemporary
contemporary world spread mostly on social media. So I saw,
for instance, Peter Baker, who is a reporter at the
New York Times, tweet out the sister in law's claim.
But I did not mention that the person this is
about herself said that wasn't true, which is obviously done
on purpose. No real journalists would do that.
Speaker 3: This very much reminded me of something a story that
I was involved in. So I wrote with Carrie Severino,
the book Justice on Trial about the Kavanaugh confirmation and
the future of the Supreme Court.
Speaker 2: And we got our book out very very quickly.
Speaker 3: It was kind of the definitive history of that confirmation
and how it happened.
Speaker 2: We interviewed more than one hundred people.
Speaker 3: We interviewed people, you know, close to Cabanon and his
accuser and all sorts of you know, we just had
like everything. But there was this other book, I think
it was the next book to come out by two
New York Times reporters and I forget their names, but
they wrote a book and when they went on their
media blitz just before the book came out. They claimed
that there was an additional accusation could not be more credible. Now,
Carrie and I had found magically access to this book
before it came out, and we read it, and so
we knew what the accusation was, and it was ridiculous.
It was from Max Steyer, who likes to present himself
as a nonpartisan defender of the federal employee or something.
His wife is Florence pan who is this one of
these like crazy left wing activist judges on the DC circuit,
And he claimed that he knew about a woman who had,
you know, one of these like mysterious Kavanaugh things. Like
if you ever read the accusations against Kavanaugh, they never
quite make sense. I have read the Jane Meyer Ronan
Pharaoh story alleging something that Kavanaugh did like twenty five times,
and I have no idea what it is they're saying
he did. It's so poorly written or they're trying to
make something work with information that doesn't fit, you know anyway,
So something happened, and it's kind of unclear what in
the telling of from these New York Times reporters, like
they have the woman who this supposedly happened to, and
she says she has no idea what he's talking about.
That was the credible allegation, And so this reminds me
of that, Like anyone can make an allegation, the proper
the proper thing to do with an allegation, by the way,
is to investigate it before you do anything.
Speaker 2: Else with it. Anyone can make an.
Speaker 3: Allegation against any other person that is in no way
newsworthy or legally actionable. So if you were to come
to a district attorney or any other prosecutor and say,
this guy robbed this bank, before you go public with
the allegation that there's a credible allegation that someone robbed
a bank, you do your due diligence.
Speaker 2: You go to the bank. Was it robbed? Is there
any evidence tying this person to it? You know, like
does he have an alibi?
Speaker 3: Like all these things that you would do before youublicly
smear someone. And in journalism, the allegation is absolutely all
that's needed, even when it's refuted by the person involved.
Speaker 1: Well, it depends who it's aimed at, right, Yeah, the
whole point of journalism, the whole reason we have journalism
is to weigh and explore the veracity of an accusation
to send, not to send it to us. We you know,
this woman could just have gone on Twitter and spread it.
We don't need journalists anyway. Obviously they want to sink
his nomination, but it's not going to happen. So the
other story which PBS spread, Now I most people know this.
I just want to stress that PBS is in part
funded by the public, and that we fund them. Who's
the woman you mentioned her last week? Who's now going
to be covering? Oh no, maybe I confuse NBC, who
covers the White House for them? It's like insane woman anyway?
Speaker 2: Are you talking about alsor yeah?
Speaker 1: Is that is that NBC?
Speaker 2: I thought she was PBS, but I have no.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, PBS. So in any event, this happened
in twenty sixteen, I remember with Laura Ingram. But if
you raise your hand out towards people in a manner
that's straight, and you take a shot of that moment,
it looks like a a Nazi salute. So Elon Musk
gets up and he does this thing, which he is
very awkward. I have to say as a person, But
let's talk about that. He hits his heart right and
he's like, I forgot what exactly says, and he shoots
his arm out in a Hitler type salute. If you
just look at that one particular second. Now, this is
spread online by the usual Aaron Rupar and people like that,
but also picked up by PBS and then other journalists
like this just wasn't only PBS. Other journalists were like,
it seems like he did this, and then peliticians Chris
Murphy others say as a fact that Elon Musk offered
a Hitler salute, a Nazi salute. It is very reminiscent
of twenty sixteen to me.
Speaker 3: I mean, I don't even know what to say about it,
because it is so stupid that it's hard to interact
with people who are claiming to believe it. I assume
no one, literally, no one on earth is so stupid
as to think that Elon Musk was saying Hyle Hitler
at a rally. I assume that anyone who's saying that
he did that is pretending.
Speaker 1: Is that so funny that you it's so funny that
you said that I tweeted out no one on these words.
No one on Earth believes that Elon Musk actually, you know,
did a Heile Hitler suit or whatever? And people are like, no,
they do. They convince themselves they believe. I don't. I
still stand by that. I don't think any person actually believes.
First of all, why on earth would he do it? Secondly,
Elon Musk wants a smaller limited government, believes an unfettered
free speech. He's he has illustrated that, not just said
it with his own property. He almost all his To me,
he's quite libertarian, I would say, small l libertarian in
his beliefs. For the most part, what on earth, what
part of his ideology is? Is is compatible with national socialism.
I don't even understand what that's supposed to mean. It's
it kind of ties into my book. I mean, honestly,
this is blewing on stuff. There's a draw paranoid drive
in politics where you have to assign all kinds of insidious,
nefarious beliefs to people because you can't actually debate what
they're saying, or you don't want to. Chris Murphy is
he's asking, I think, who do I've got? Who was
up there? He was like, what do you think of
Elon Musk's Nazis. He was, you know, he was in Senate.
I mean, I don't I don't even know what to
make of this stuff. One more thing actually on this sorry,
people for a year and more than a year now
have been marching around on college campuses with real life
kind of Nazi opinions about Jews. Okay, yes, Hamas flags
his Bulah flags in Congress. We have a bunch of
people who spread blood libels about Jews all the time.
Chris Murphy has never uttered a word criticizing them. In fact,
he's a big fan of the Islamic regime in Iran.
So it is just contemptible. I don't even know what
to say about it anymore. It's like living in a
It's like, am I taking crazy pills? That's what I
feel like.
Speaker 3: Hans Feeney has something like this on a tweet where
he was like, I'm learning that Nazism is an awkward
hand gesture and not calling for the death of all Jews. Like,
that's not college campus is being overrun by people who
want all Jews dead.
Speaker 2: That's not. That does not in any way evoke Nazism.
Awkward hand gesture does.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I still don't think anyone believes it. And I
am a fan of Elon Musk's politics, and trust me,
I'm pretty sensitive to Nazis and Nazism because it does
exist on the far right here. But yeah, you mentioned.
Speaker 3: Chris Murphy and his love of Iran, and I like
it when we always remember that I broke this story about.
Speaker 1: Meeting with it was amazing. I mean, let's be honest.
I don't want the government to go after someone like that.
But Donald Trump was president. He had a certain policy
that's actually within his purview, foreign policy with Iran that
he was going after. And Chris Murphy, he was a senator,
secretly meets with Iranians to undermine him, probably lies about it,
and then because of your work, had to admit it.
And that's worse than any Russia That's worse than the
actual fantasies of Russia collusion, you know what I mean.
Speaker 3: Murphy was one of the people who said that Mike
Flynn meeting with the Russian his Russian counterpart ahead of
the election meant that he was guilty of the Logan Act.
Speaker 1: Logan Act. That is the most maybe Carrie also John Kerry,
but that is if you were going to use the
logan act. That would be the perfect place to launch it.
All right, do you want to talk about culture? Sure, Okay,
I have a surprise for you. I sat and I
watched The Triangle of Yoh you mounted a social media campaign.
It soon forced me to do it.
Speaker 3: WHOA, tell me all about it.
Speaker 1: It's interesting that you say that you know it lingers
in your mind and it pops up because that I
can see why. You know, it's a movie that you
think about part of it. Listen, I'll just preface this
by saying I liked it. I thought it was an
interesting movie to watch. It's very kind of European movie.
It doesn't have, you know, it doesn't tie up the
story really, you know, leaves you with a cliffhanger. It
is kind of disconnected in a way. We're you know, weirdly.
It's not like a neat American movie. But I did
enjoy it because it does. It toys with a lot
of toys with patriarchy, matriarchy. It toys with woke I think,
wokeism in a way, and then also socialism and capitalism
and how it would work when things break down. I
did sort of guess in the third par can we
just spoil the movie, you think?
Speaker 3: I think it's been out, it's like three years old,
so if people haven't the end, and also people probably
shouldn't go watch it.
Speaker 1: So the shipwreck part I sort of guessed immediately. I'm like,
why aren't they taking a little walk around the island,
you know, to see if someone else is here. It
seemed so weird, but that's part of it. They're helpless,
They're they're entitled, most of them, right, and they don't
really know how to take care of themselves anymore, which
I think is kind of ridiculous. But I just it
was interesting to watch. It kept me, you know, I
kept thinking about the philosophical points they were making, you know.
I liked I liked how the woman and they gave
her like the worst job ever. The toilet cleaner, you know,
takes over as the matriarch of this lord.
Speaker 2: I don't remember her name.
Speaker 3: She was amazing and I think people recognize that about
her big one.
Speaker 1: Everyone was great in the movie. I liked the Russian
business guy. I liked I like the male model. I
think he did a good job in trying. He was
trying to appeal, So I liked this what pulled me.
In the first part. He's trying to appeal to this
woman who's his girlfriend, who's a model, right, and he's
trying to appeal to her by being a feminist basically,
like with the paying of the bill and stuff, and
she wants no part of that. And I'm like, this
is interesting, you know what I mean. I don't know
if you. I forgot if you you said you liked
it or lingered, but you weren't sure.
Speaker 3: I thought that it's I think you I mean, can
we call it just Marxism? Was cliched and overwrought and
to like hitting you over the head. But I recognized
also that it had that.
Speaker 2: It was like well done? Is that?
Speaker 1: Yeah? It was really well done. It that hit you
nailed what I was. It was a little bit too Yeah,
it was a little bit too on the nose with
the socialism stuff. But I think it kind of backfired
on them. It showed that the woman who worked and
had merit actually ran things. Right. Do you think at
the end, since we're spoiling that she kills a woman
and she doesn't what do you think you think she does?
Speaker 2: And that's what I kind of liked about it.
Speaker 3: Too, because, like I thought, I thought, all the yeah,
the anti capitalism stuff was stupid.
Speaker 2: But then at the.
Speaker 3: End, when the woman who's running this like authoritarian situation
sees her power threatened, the working class lady who overtakes
everything and develops power, and then her power is threatened,
she gets more violent than any of the rest had been.
Speaker 1: Don't you think the men would? First of all, the
way that male like I kind of liked him, and
I thought he was more on the way he immediately
surrenders to be like this kept man was kind of funny.
But I just feel like because of physical strength and
when you have anarchy, they would have just taken the
stuff from her, where they would have just learned how
to fish themselves. Yeah, don't you think. I mean, how
hard is it to go out there and grab an
octopus or whatever she was doing. I don't know. But
the juxtaposition with how they were living on that yacht
initially and the kind of slave labor that was around them,
you know what I mean, and how they did whatever,
even embarrassed themselves with that swimming thing, you know what
I mean. It was just anyway, I enjoyed it.
Speaker 3: Well, that's great, Thank you, David, I found it disturbing.
I wish I wish I'd known, because I kind of
would have revisited what I thought about it because I'm
like remembering the plot.
Speaker 2: There's like the first part where they're on the land
and you're sort.
Speaker 3: Of seeing this power based on beauty and wealth, right, yeah.
Speaker 1: But it's the couple.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And then there's the period.
Speaker 3: Then the second act is on the yacht where you
just sort of see this exploitation of the working class.
Speaker 2: Yeah, undeserved.
Speaker 1: She's actually an influencer. I'm not sure if she was
a model, but sort of like a model.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: And then the yacht is steered by is what he
harrelse in the captain yea, And yeah, so it's horrible.
It's a horribly managed capitalist utopia, you know, dystopia, and
so it crashes and then some people survive on this
island and that's when the Filipina lady, who was amazing,
takes over the power keeps men.
Speaker 2: She's not, you know, in any.
Speaker 3: Way like it's a it's a you know, she's an older,
not traditionally attractive, powerful lady.
Speaker 1: But the male model is her kept man right away
because you can yeah, the first scene where they have
the male model trying out and all the men are
don't have their shirts on. His shows like how vacuous
these people, like how empty it all is, and I
like that. That scene also drew me in. I don't know,
it was fun.
Speaker 2: That was that that The title of the movie comes from.
Speaker 1: Right on your face yea.
Speaker 2: The triangle in between the in between your eyebrop.
Speaker 1: I thought it was I thought it was worthwhile. I
don't know that if it's for everyone, but I like
movies a toy with ideas, And even though it was
a little bit on the nose, Yeah, do you do
you have anything that you watched?
Speaker 3: No? I went to a inaugural activities. That was my
culture for the weekend and I really liked it. And
it was so fun to see everybody dressed up and
having a good time in DC.
Speaker 2: It was very cold, but delightful.
Speaker 1: Did Mark wear a tucks?
Speaker 2: Of course?
Speaker 1: I did watch something else. Okay, it was called and
I Act. But this is a recommend Okay, even though
it's again not for everyone. It's called The Unbearable Weight
of Massive Talent and it is a meta script with
Nicholas Cage playing himself I thought I would hate it,
but he so he plays himself and he is Nicholas
Cage and he's doing all these movies, these terrible movies.
He's ignoring his daughter and the ex wife is also
a character, and he's invited to a birthday party with
Spanish gun he goes and anyway, he starts working for
the CIA. It's ridiculous, but it is very funny. Yeah,
especially the first part of it. It's oh, and they
do a deaging thing. So he has like an alter
ego that's him when he's young, and he acts like
Nicholas Cage was young, always yelling like at weird times,
you know what I mean, and cursing a lot and stuff.
And uh, they bring up a lot of his old
movies and they'll show them on ten. It's just a
I thought it was pretty well done. I recommend it,
all right. That's uh, that's it for me. Nothing for you.
Speaker 3: Please do send in those emails to radio at the
Federalist dot com.
Speaker 1: We'll be back next week. So then the lovers of
Freedom and punch just people, friend
Speaker 4: There's no need to do