Speaker 1: And the ignorance tick on the campuses, talk about it.
Speaker 1: They're just getting away with all this rather.
Speaker 2: Than know in fact. Fifty five KRC, it's ato six
Speaker 2: Here at fifty five kr CV Talk station, it being Thursday.
Speaker 2: We'll hear from my heart media aviation expert Jay Rattler
Speaker 2: at the bottom of the hour. As is always the case,
Speaker 2: a welcome edition to the fifty five KC Morning Show.
Speaker 2: I'm please to announce David Harsanyi my next guest. You
Speaker 2: may have read what David has written in the past.
Speaker 2: He's a senior writer the Washington Examiner or a nationally
Speaker 2: syndicated columnist, author of four books, contributed to New York Post.
Speaker 2: His works appeared in My Favorite Place, The Wall Street Journal,
Speaker 2: among others including The Washington Post, Reason, USA Today, National Review,
Speaker 2: numerous other publications, and he's been a feature on Fox News, CNN, MSNBC,
Speaker 2: Soon to Be Demised, NPR, ABC, World News Tonight, and
Speaker 2: other outlets. Welcome to the fifty five KC Morning Show,
Speaker 2: David Harsin, you to talk about your book, The Rise
Speaker 2: of Bluing on how the Democrats became a party of
Speaker 2: conspiracy theorists. Good to have you on the show today.
Speaker 1: David, thank you for having me. I appreciate it.
Speaker 2: Among all the things you talk about. And you know
Speaker 2: what I've observed over the years and my political philosophy
Speaker 2: fifty nine years so old, so you know where I
Speaker 2: am and what I've seen throughout my life. I remember
Speaker 2: the Soviet Union and all that's happened in between now
Speaker 2: and that. But the Democrats seem to me to be
Speaker 2: always accusing the Republicans of engaging in conduct that they
Speaker 2: are absolutely engaging in right before our very eyes. It's
Speaker 2: something a deflection. They literally will do things that they
Speaker 2: then accuse the Republicans of doing. And I have always
Speaker 2: just sort of out loud wondered, how is it that
Speaker 2: they think they can get away with it, or maybe,
Speaker 2: as this most recent election has shown, maybe they aren't
Speaker 2: getting away with it and more smarter than they take
Speaker 2: us to be.
Speaker 1: Dad, Well, that goes back, and that's where I start
Speaker 1: my book. When Killer Clinton showed up on the Today
Speaker 1: Show and said that there had been a vast right
Speaker 1: wing conspiracy to undermine her husband, which was not true. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of projection and deflection about that kind
Speaker 1: of stuff. Take the whole case of the Democratic Party
Speaker 1: or not the whole case. The half the cases that
Speaker 1: was that Trump is hitler, but the other half was
Speaker 1: that democracy was in dire h you know, danger because
Speaker 1: Republicans might take over. And then the next sentence they'll say,
Speaker 1: but yeah, so we need to pack the court, you know,
Speaker 1: we need to sen of misinformation, we need to get
Speaker 1: rid of the electoral college. I think maybe, you know,
Speaker 1: their version of democracy is just something that you know,
Speaker 1: it's just Democratic party policies, not actually the constitutional order.
Speaker 1: So yeah, they do that with a ton of stuff,
Speaker 1: and they get away with it because a lot of
Speaker 1: our institutions are run by people who agree with them, media,
Speaker 1: higher education, and you know, many government agencies and so on.
Speaker 3: So they that's how they get away with it.
Speaker 2: Well, getting away with it, and what their desire is
Speaker 2: I guess I want to try to drive to that
Speaker 2: latter point. They say that, you know, we here on
Speaker 2: the more conservative side of the ledger I consider myself
Speaker 2: a little libertarian, so but that we are undermined, we
Speaker 2: are going to ruin, We're going to undermine the constitution,
Speaker 2: et cetera. What are they really ultimately looking for? It
Speaker 2: seems to me that they want more power. They want
Speaker 2: to confiscate more of our wealth, they want to dictate
Speaker 2: the terms of conditions, more of our lives, all in
Speaker 2: the name of it, mostly predicated these days on the
Speaker 2: underlying religion that they have been teaching to our young
Speaker 2: people now for about two decades. Is global warming crap,
Speaker 2: Like my exhalation while feeding the plants is wonderful, but
Speaker 2: it's also killing the globe. Literally everything hinges on. Oh
Speaker 2: my god, we're all going to die airgo. We need
Speaker 2: to confiscate and regulate. That's the antithesis of the freedoms
Speaker 2: and liberties that are founding fathers placed in the Constitution.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, yeah, I mean in the book I wrote,
Speaker 1: it's not just about conspiracy theories. It's about currents of paranoia,
Speaker 1: paranoid style politics, and global warming. Climate change has been
Speaker 1: a big part of that. I'm a little younger than you,
Speaker 1: not much, And you know I remember that, you know,
Speaker 1: twenty thirty, even almost thirty years ago, there were you know,
Speaker 1: we were told the world was going to start ending.
Speaker 3: That's when it began, and that ten years ago they.
Speaker 1: Said it was going to Yeah, so there's this apocalypse
Speaker 1: always coming. And because there's the apocalypse coming, we have
Speaker 1: to do a B and C. Now that you know,
Speaker 1: the Green New Deal, whatever, it's always something new, And
Speaker 1: all those policies are socialistic, I mean all of them are.
Speaker 1: Carbon dioxide is everywhere and then everything. If you want
Speaker 1: to control that, you can basically control the entire economy,
Speaker 1: and that's what they want to do. So you know,
Speaker 1: that kind of paranoia drives there.
Speaker 3: They try to.
Speaker 1: Scaremonger you into doing the things that they want. And
Speaker 1: it's the same with other stuff. I'll give you the one.
Speaker 1: What I think is one of the most pernicious strains
Speaker 1: of paranoia the suppression of the vote, telling a whole
Speaker 1: oh yeah, you know, telling Black Americans, you know, voting buck,
Speaker 1: that they are strippted agency, that they cannot vote, that
Speaker 1: people want to stop them, you know, from from being wealthy,
Speaker 1: or that people want or that cops are hunting them
Speaker 1: in the streets. Now, obviously they're a racist out there,
Speaker 1: not saying every shooting is not doesn't have very component
Speaker 1: to it, but many of them don't.
Speaker 3: And yet the whole BLM.
Speaker 1: Thing happened, and it was based on basically conspiracy theories.
Speaker 1: I mean, there was no in Michael Brown and others.
Speaker 1: There was no racial component to it at all, you know,
Speaker 1: and anyway, so that's one of them as well.
Speaker 2: And this, this conspiracy theory, this this anger and the
Speaker 2: fear mongering, has been enabled by a media that is
Speaker 2: almost exclusively up until recently exclusively dominated by left leaning
Speaker 2: commentators and left leaning talking heads. How they ended up
Speaker 2: taking over all of media is beyond my comprehension, David.
Speaker 2: But you know what, again, this election I think confirmed
Speaker 2: and has shown most of these left wing organizations that
Speaker 2: people are smarter than that. They've moved away from the
Speaker 2: msnbcs and the CNNs and even the NBC's ABC's of
Speaker 2: the world. They've gone out into the world and they
Speaker 2: start consuming contact like content like the podcast Joe Rogan.
Speaker 2: He'll have long, engaging conversations with people of all political stripes,
Speaker 2: doing a more deep dive. People really consume that and
Speaker 2: are interested in it because it's informative. It offers greater
Speaker 2: insight in what people really think and believe, and it
Speaker 2: provides an opportunity for a back and forth. It reveals
Speaker 2: again what you've laid out in your book, a lot
Speaker 2: of nonsense and garbage. We can find that now with
Speaker 2: the internet in these days.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean I agree with all that, but we
Speaker 1: also have to admit that Well, let me just take
Speaker 1: a step back and say, when I was young, you know,
Speaker 1: I was growing up in New York and there were
Speaker 1: many newspapers, and we knew they were all biased in
Speaker 1: some way. You read it, you know, you knew it
Speaker 1: was biased, but you could read between the lines and
Speaker 1: you could figure out what was going on. They didn't
Speaker 1: make things up for the most part. You know, you
Speaker 1: could have the CIA director come on the to a
Speaker 1: former CIA director would come on the TV and say something.
Speaker 1: You'd probably believe it because he wouldn't lie to you
Speaker 1: about it.
Speaker 3: But that is no longer the case.
Speaker 1: Things have become so politicized in media that they made
Speaker 1: up the Russia collusion hoax. I mean, either they made
Speaker 1: it up or they were too stupid not to know
Speaker 1: it was it was true, and either way they shouldn't
Speaker 1: be journalists. And then there was no reckoning. They went
Speaker 1: on and they hid Joe Biden's you know, acuity decline
Speaker 1: in his physical decline. Then they turned you know on
Speaker 1: a dime when it was you know, they'd gas light us.
Speaker 1: And then they turned on the dimes, So they're not
Speaker 1: even journalist, they're activists. But here's the thing, if we
Speaker 1: need there are a lot of boring Like Joe Rogan's
Speaker 1: conversations are great, but there's a lot of boring journalistic
Speaker 1: work that needs to be done, and that takes a
Speaker 1: lot of money, and the big media has that money
Speaker 1: and they're not doing their job. So if tomorrow Donald
Speaker 1: Trump actually did something terrible and they told us that
Speaker 1: about it, no.
Speaker 3: One would believe them. No one would believe them.
Speaker 1: And we need a media that is and does look
Speaker 1: at the powerful, and we don't have that. So that's
Speaker 1: bad for America. It's good that we stopped listening to
Speaker 1: them because they've been lying to us, but it's bad
Speaker 1: that they don't do the right thing.
Speaker 2: Well what I mean, yeah, absolutely, And here's a question
Speaker 2: I've been asking out a loud of my listeners because
Speaker 2: I got a kind of sense that they might start
Speaker 2: waking up to this echo chamber that they have been
Speaker 2: stuck in and realize that we are smarter than what
Speaker 2: they had been feeding us and change their ways. I mean,
Speaker 2: CNN may be moving a little bit more centrist, offering
Speaker 2: more political points of view. I know that there are
Speaker 2: some newspapers out there who are all in sad, sad,
Speaker 2: desperate shape to even stay afloat, didn't offer a political
Speaker 2: support for Kamala Harris took a lot of hits from
Speaker 2: the left wingers, but sort of maybe engaging in a
Speaker 2: shift to more responsible journalism. Do you think it's too
Speaker 2: late for them to do that or can we might
Speaker 2: find it? Maybe this might be an opportunity for a
Speaker 2: renaissance where we can actually start counting on media to
Speaker 2: provide us with maybe an unbiased assessment of the facts
Speaker 2: and not offer any commentary at the same time.
Speaker 3: I hate that. I can't be very positive that's okay, Yeah,
Speaker 3: I think it's not so.
Speaker 1: The owner of the Washington Post, doesn't you know, endoors
Speaker 1: and everyone goes bananas there, which just shows you how
Speaker 1: oft the ranch they are exactly. The Pull paper is
Speaker 1: already hardcore left. Every single concle conservative writer on their
Speaker 1: opinion pages is actually just hates Trumps. You don't have
Speaker 1: to like Donald Trump. I'm critical of Donald Trump. But
Speaker 1: the thing is you're not representing the readership of your
Speaker 1: paper or America. There are half the people in this
Speaker 1: country who more than half voted for Donald Trump, you
Speaker 1: know what I mean, and no one knows or understands
Speaker 1: what that is about. Is this guy Scott Jennings on
Speaker 1: CNN who does very good job. He's a conservative, but
Speaker 1: what makes me laugh is that he brings up topics
Speaker 1: and these other people don't even like It's like they
Speaker 1: never even heard the arguments. They don't understand what the
Speaker 1: other side's all about. So, but the problem isn't that
Speaker 1: you can just have an owner who changes things. The
Speaker 1: entire culture going down into journalism school all the way up.
Speaker 1: I mean, you have assistant editorial people revolting against the
Speaker 1: New York Times OpEd page editor and who gets fired
Speaker 1: The oppt page guy gets fired for running something they
Speaker 1: didn't like. Young people today are coming out of journalism school,
Speaker 1: not all.
Speaker 3: Young people, but especially them.
Speaker 1: They cannot abide by a differing opinion because they don't
Speaker 1: see it as a an opposing opinion. They see it
Speaker 1: as an immoral evil, you know, thing that needs not
Speaker 1: to be heard. They don't they don't debate. I mean,
Speaker 1: I got to say, I've been around a while, and
Speaker 1: I don't think I had a real policy debate with
Speaker 1: a liberal or a left winger in a long time,
Speaker 1: and certainly not in this election. It was all just
Speaker 1: you are a Russian spook. Yeah, you know, bought by
Speaker 1: big this and big that. Your NRA owns.
Speaker 3: You, you know whatever.
Speaker 2: So yeah, well, I mean I've always observed, David, and
Speaker 2: I know you feel the same way about this. Once,
Speaker 2: anytime an actual debate, when it gets reduced to someone
Speaker 2: screaming at you and calling you names, you can chalk
Speaker 2: one up in the win column, because name calling is
Speaker 2: not debate. And them screaming at you know, Donald Trump Nazi,
Speaker 2: Donald Trump Nazi not only is absolutely ridiculous from a
Speaker 2: factual standpoint, they're not supporting their cause by offering thoughtful
Speaker 2: logic and reason in support for what they're advocating.
Speaker 1: So cause because yeah, I so, for instance, I don't
Speaker 1: like libertarian whatever. I'm a free market guy. I don't
Speaker 1: like terifs, I don't like certain things Donald Trump says.
Speaker 1: But you just keep calling him Hitler. You force someone
Speaker 1: like me to get out there and defend it because
Speaker 1: he's not Hitler. And you know what, Hitler was a
Speaker 1: really bad guy, and real bad things happen, and historically,
Speaker 1: in context, it's a terrible thing to the mean history
Speaker 1: in that way. So you push people actually to defend
Speaker 1: Donald Trump, who might not like all the stuff he's doing. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: and you know when you do that, no one will
Speaker 1: trust anything you say about the guy, as I mentioned before.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I mean I think they undermine their case.
Speaker 2: Well, and the other one. They keep running around screaming
Speaker 2: Donald Trump fascist. I keep reminding everyone, why would you
Speaker 2: please go and look up a dictionary and read what
Speaker 2: the word fascist means. You know, it is the state
Speaker 2: control of the means of production. And that is exactly
Speaker 2: what the left is all about. They are literally about
Speaker 2: controlling every aspect of business. They are the definition of fascist.
Speaker 2: But because Donald Trump is a charismatic leader, oh see,
Speaker 2: like Barack Obama was there ergo he is hitler, he
Speaker 2: is a fascist. It's just insane, and they undermine their
Speaker 2: own credibility. And they also well it's basically are admitting
Speaker 2: to their own ignorance about factual definitions. But moving over,
Speaker 2: you mentioned something about the money that is required to
Speaker 2: run a news outlet, whether it's biased or not, it
Speaker 2: does take money. I've been saying this for years and years,
Speaker 2: aren't they not? Are they not undermining their own business
Speaker 2: model when they continue to attack free markets and business.
Speaker 2: Generally speaking, they are advocating for putting themselves out of business,
Speaker 2: because what advertisers are going to support that kind of thing.
Speaker 1: Well, they're you know, you're assigning rationality to people who
Speaker 1: are not very irrationally. I mean, you know a lot
Speaker 1: of times politics and partisanship, and this goes across all you.
Speaker 3: Know, parties and everything.
Speaker 1: You know, you get irrational, you're part of people don't
Speaker 1: like money. Use this word but a mob in a sense,
Speaker 1: not a violent mob. But you're just its group think.
Speaker 3: And they they just think. Listen.
Speaker 1: And the incentive is the incentives of the first Donald
Speaker 1: Trump presidency. All the incentives for journalists was were to
Speaker 1: be over the top. You've got ratings if you kept
Speaker 1: saying that, you know, Trump was hitler. Think about this,
Speaker 1: what report if you're a reporter is doing good tempered work.
Speaker 1: You're doing you know, you're digging in, you're you're you know,
Speaker 1: you're just doing your job. You're not going to get
Speaker 1: a million followers. The person who has a million followers
Speaker 1: is the one who's saying Donald Trump's going to you know,
Speaker 1: make American to handmaid's tailor or whatever. That's the person
Speaker 1: who gets all the attention. So all the incentives for
Speaker 1: these people are to be over the top and to
Speaker 1: talk that way. So until all of that changes, I'm
Speaker 1: not sure you know that they can change. And yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean maybe they'll be hurt, maybe not. I mean,
Speaker 1: the New York Times actually this pretty well, but the
Speaker 1: Washington Post I think lost like seventy million dollars or
Speaker 1: something last year.
Speaker 3: Yes, so they have they have.
Speaker 1: These sugar daddies who back them, and that's fine. I mean, listen,
Speaker 1: had happened, but it's not a good business model, as
Speaker 1: you point out.
Speaker 3: So I don't know. I don't know if they're going
Speaker 3: to come to their senses. Nym.
Speaker 2: Well, David Harsani, author of the book we're talking about today.
Speaker 2: You can get a copy of it on my blog
Speaker 2: page for you five KC dot com, The Rise of
Speaker 2: bluing on. You can read into that the reason for
Speaker 2: the title How the Democrats became a Party of conspiracy
Speaker 2: theorist David. It has been a real pleasure having you on.
Speaker 2: I'm gonna encourage my listeners to get a copy of
Speaker 2: the book, read it and thoroughly enjoy it, and then
Speaker 2: let their friends read it. When they're done with it.
Speaker 2: As I always encourage Dave, keep up the great work.
Speaker 2: I know we're going to continue to read what you
Speaker 2: write and all these media outlets that you write for.
Speaker 2: It's been an enjoyable experience having you on the morning show,
Speaker 2: and I know it's going to be a really enjoyable
Speaker 2: experience reading your book or reading your book, The Rise
Speaker 2: of bluing On. Have a wonderful day, my friend.
Speaker 3: You two. Thanks for having me so much. Thank you.
Speaker 2: It's eight twenty coming up on Jay Ry left bottom
Speaker 2: of the hour for Ihartmedia. Some really fun stuff to
Speaker 2: talk about with Jay, which is typically the case. Don't
Speaker 2: go away, He'll be coming up soon. Fifty five KRC
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