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, 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. We love to
hear from you as well. It's nice to see you.
I thought we'd start today just breaking news that there
has been a deal struck between the Israelis and Hamas
on release of hostages. Well, let me tell you what
the deal is. Reportedly, it will be a six week
ceasefire where in that time gradually the IDF withdraws from
Gaza Strip except from the southern border between Egypt, where
you know most of the weaponry comes in. Israel will
allow humanitarian trucks Center six hundred, which for sure you
know that will be stolen by Hamas. And here's the
part that you know. I think it tells us who
cares about human life and who doesn't. Hamas promises to
release thirty three or thirty one. I have seen both
hostages on humanitarian grounds, meaning that a lot of these
people are probably living. For every one of those hostages,
Israel will release thirty terrorists in exchange for them.
Speaker 2: And people who are in prison.
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay. And then there are five kidnapped female soldiers,
Israeli soldiers who are females, fifty terrorists for each of them. Now,
this is a separate discussion about women in military, and listen,
Israel doesn't really have that much of a choice. It's
a small country, so it's army uses women as from
the beginning. But when women are kidnapped, especially by you know, sadistic,
violent terrorists like this, they will do horrible things to women,
and for a decent society like the United States or
Israel to see that and live with that is very difficult.
So they will give up a lot to get them back.
And that's just one of the many reasons I don't
think women should be, especially in combat, but maybe in
the military at all if we don't need them to
be anyway, that's a separate discussion. But they will still be.
Israel will still leave hamas sixty five hostages. Most of
them are probably already dead. We don't even know if
these hostages that are coming back are alive, so that's
a terrible deal, you know, in many ways, But of
course I understand why they do it. If there were
American hostages, I would want them back to There are babies,
there are young women. Still, you want to get them
back no matter what. Anyway, So that's the deal. Obviously
Trump's about to become president, and that has a lot
to do with it, don't you think.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So it sounds not ideal, but also not nothing.
I mean, it actually enrages me. Not that it angers
me that the Israelis do this, but it enrages me
that the world is such that it is that in
order to get your hostages you have to release like
convicted criminals or terrorists that whole, like one for one
wouldn't make sense, one for thirty or one for fifty
really doesn't make sense. But you have to deal with
what you have to deal with if you want these
hostages back, you have to deal with the real world
and not the world you wish you had. So I
think that's great, and I also think just even the
fact that any movement is happening is good. A ceasefire
also seems to have always benefited, like as long as
it's done on their terms. Obviously seems to do well
with the ceasefires, and they kind of know when they
can do one and when they can't do one. Right, well,
it's not like the war is going to be over.
It's just that they're going to take a break to
do this hostage exchange.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the war. I don't think, at least from what
I've read, that the war is over. Israel does well
with ceasefires, you know why because Hamas or whoever as well,
they always break them, so Israel can re engage whenever
it really wants to, and it should I hope. So
ceasefires mean nothing to Hamas. It's just a means for
them to retrench. There was a ceasefire in place on
October sixth, twenty twenty three, so they do not mean anything.
Israel's just trying to get hostages back, and I think
you're right, you know me, moral people tries to do
whatever they can to do that. My question is does
this make it more likely that more hostages are going
to be taken? Because it obviously works, and Israel has
a long history of giving up tons of hostage hostages,
even for corpses that they don't want mutilated, and so on.
So yeah, so you know that's a problem. But anyway,
I wanted to talk a little bit about the Trump Obviously,
it sort of reminds me of these aren't there are
American hostages, but it reminds me a little bit of
Reagan and the Iranian hostages. I think didn't Trump say
he was you know, they was gonna unleash hell or
something like that if they weren't returned. I forget exactly
what he said.
Speaker 2: Uh, they needed to be back. They needed to be
back before he takes office or else there will be
hell to.
Speaker 1: Pay, which isn't going to happen. But well, just about that.
Speaker 2: Though this has been a difficult situation now for a
year and several months, it's not I don't actually think
the Biden administration has been as bad toward Israel as
a lot of people say. I think they. I think
they've done a lot to help, but they've also not
done a lot that they could have done, including just
kind of explaining to himas as Bola and Iran, what's
going to happen if they If they you know, you
can not be fully involved in a war, but also
convey more strength than the Biden administration did, and so
even just little things like that, like get these hostages home,
can move people to a negotiating table, and that we
should use that bully pulpit that we have to say
things like that.
Speaker 1: From the American perspective, yes, from the Israeli perspective, I
don't think there's any room for negotiation with Hamas anymore.
I think they have to be decimated and taken out
of the equation, even if it means the Palestinian authority
running Gaza if they can. Last time they were there,
they were being thrown off ruse, but it could happen.
I guess. I have a harsh review of the of
the Biden administration, which I think tried to leverage Israel
into making bad deals, try to stop them from going
into Rafa, Criticize their beeper the thing, you know, criticize
their attacks on his Ballah, held them back from retaliating
against Iran. That does not exude strength that you know,
shows weakness in a way which is harmful. I think Trump.
I think the idea Hamas probably had was that Trump
is going to unleash Benjamin Nettan in a way that
would mean the end of them, and that's why they
agreed to the ceasefire. They probably had no other way
to go. I am bothered a little bit. And I
forget his name, the Trump Middle East dude with cough.
Maybe I forget his name, But the way he talks
about Katar doing God's work and stuff, it's a little bothersome.
I realize you need someone to broker these deals, but
Qatar is an enemy of the United States in many ways.
It has a very weird relationship, but it really does
undermine US and Israeli interests in the Middle East quite often.
So now I'm a little worried about that, But anyway,
that's a separate issue. I'm happy that hostages, the ones
that are still alive, are coming back, and I think
that's a good thing. But we'll see, you know, we'll
see what this means in the long term. It's and
I do want to say one thing though, about Benjamin Netanya, who,
so October seventh was the most maybe other than the
um Keeper War, maybe even more than that, the worst
security failure in Israeli history. But since that time he
has decimated Hamas for the most part. He has basically
rendered Hezballah toothless and in Lebanon, which is a huge thing.
Asad is now in because of that war, Asad is
now in Russia and Syria has fallen. We'll see that's
a good thing. I mean, he was a real genocidal dictator.
And then we have you know, Iran, which is basically
pretty impotent. So I mean he's accomplished a lot in
you know, since October seventh. It's not as he's been
you know, as if he's been terrible. So anyway, it's
my perspective on that.
Speaker 2: I just want to say about that. But I think
people always want to put people in good brackets or
bad brackets, and they get really loyal to someone or
they really hate one, and just people are complicated. And
I actually genuinely generally like Netanyahu, and I think he's
done good work over the years. He's also done a
bunch of stupid things and also you know, clearly did
not keep the country prepared for the terrific massacre. So
he's a complicated figure, but he can still be like
overall pretty impressive. Like I think the Operation Beeper and
the eradication of Hamas and the pinpoint strikes on Iranian
key assets, like I think all of that has just
been brilliant and that books will be written about it
for a long time to come.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he's a he's a complicated guy and a complex figure,
and he's done. I don't know if people know. In
the nineties he basically spearheaded the effort to turn Israel,
the Israeli economy around from being basically a socialist economy
to a free market economy that has just bloss But yeah,
he is, especially on a personal level, he's a weird guy.
He consolidates power for himself and his cronies. Like, he's
definitely complicated. He's made a lot of mistakes, like you say,
but that there's this this kind of like unna, this
hatred of him from the left. It's just it's irrational.
You know, the guy is not even that much of
a He's he's overly cautious, to be honest with you,
and he's not like a warmonger or anything like that.
Israel is a consenstate of war for sure. But if
he if he didn't have to be involved in them,
I'm sure he'd be very happy. I want to talk
about some of the uh Trump people.
Speaker 2: Speaking of complicated people, we've got all these nomination hearings
going on. I don't know how much you've followed. We
have really just we really just got things going with
Pete Hegseeth this week and Pam Bondi and a few others.
But how do you think they're going.
Speaker 1: I think they're going well so far. For Trump. I
think Pete heg Seth did a good job. He came
off as a competent, funny, patriotic nomine I thought. I mean,
I think his answers were well crafted. I think he
didn't seem nervous. I don't know how much any of
it really mattered. I guess maybe Joni Ernst was going
to vote against him, maybe or something like that. I
doubt it, though, So I don't know how important it was.
But I think that if anyone was paying attention who
didn't know much about him, I think they would have
been somewhat impressed. How about you, what do you think there's.
Speaker 2: So much there?
Speaker 1: So?
Speaker 2: I know Pete having worked with him at Fox, and
I really like him. It was definitely an outside way
of doing you know, it's not your traditional person that
you put in as Secretary of Defense. And there are
a couple things about that. One it's almost always someone
who's got extremely strong ties to the military industry complex
who can reassure the people who make money off of
war that the money will continue to be made. And
that's just kind of been the model we have used
for a while. There's even an argument for it, and
Pete is very different. He seems more focused on the
health of the military as opposed to the health of
the military industrial complex. Having said that, it's a complicated organization,
it's impossible for anyone to run. He will be no exception,
and it's an organization that seems to think that it's
in charge of the country sometimes and that what it
wants to do is more important than what the constitutionally
elected commander in chief wants to do. So it's a
big challenge. I thought he did really well. Not only
did he embarrass the Democrats who just sounded shrill and
not in control of themselves. I think he also made
a lot of people who are worried about whether he
can handle an organization of that size. I think he
impressed a lot of people. I get the feeling people
thought he was a pretty face on Fox News and
they didn't realize how well educated he is. How deep
of a thinker he is, how strategic he is in
his thinking, and so some of that came through in
the hearing, I think, which helped him. It's a little
bit annoying that you had Republicans come out yesterday and say, okay,
now we'll vote for him. Oh, now you will vote
for the Republican president's nominees. Well great. When you wait
so long to come on board with something like that,
it makes it really easy for Democrats to sort of
continue their posture of we're never voting for a Republican
nominee unless we're John Fetterman, and then we might do
one or two. I think maybe more pressure should be
applied to Democrats to start working on fixing the country's
problems and encouraging them to be part of that solution.
I know partisanship is a good thing and gridlock can
be a good thing, but we have some serious problems
with our military, you know, from recruitment to budgets to strategy,
and we need, we need the whole country to kind
of root for our Department of Defense and not turn
it into a partisan money pen.
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Speaker 1: There were a lot of unhinged Democrats, especially in that hearing.
You know, needs to go through all of them, but
just give you one example. I believe Tim Keane just
a small man in my opinion, you know, talking about
him drinking on the job and trying to basically knowing
he's going to go through, but trying to embarrass him
and undermine his credibility and all that. I think a
legitimate question whether he can handle such a big organization.
I'm not saying that should stop it, but that's but
of course that's not what most Democrats focused on. They
try to smear him I think there was a last
minute Jane Meyer's story, that mayors story that came out
right in the New Yorker about how I don't know
someone was sexual assault. It was huge.
Speaker 2: Kavanagh, Actually, I do want to talk about this for
a minute because I was thinking about how for decades
we have had a media complex that is so powerful
that if it wants to take someone down, it pretty
much can you remember the exceptions Clarence Thomas, Brett Kavanaugh,
but you don't remember the you know, hundreds of people
that they've taken out with one or one hit piece whatever.
They clearly had the goods to run that kind of
operation against Pete Hagsith, and they went for it. And
what I find interesting about it is you take a
man like Clarence Thomas, you take a man like Brett Cavenaught.
These are men who do not have shady pasts. They
are deeply honorable men who everyone who actually knows those
people will swear up and down that they are like
some of the most honorable men they've ever met. Pete
very open about this. He's been married three times, he's
gone through some difficulties. He's never denied this, but it
meant that there was more material you could work with, right,
and yet still the media Democrat campaign to take him
out appears to have failed. I don't know exactly what
that means, other than we can get some indication that
truly the left wing media have so destroyed their credibility
that them running an information operation against Pete Higsith just
doesn't work anymore, or that it's just not going to
work as well as they used to work. Like it
used to be Washington Post comes after you, You're done,
end of story, with a few exceptions. Now it's more
like Washington Post came after you, okay, and it might
be done, probably not could be. And so I think
it's partly that there. I think it's also just a
lot of Americans have realized that they use these info ops,
not because they're real, but just they deploy them selectively
against people they don't like, when they could deploy them
after everybody, against everybody. And so Jane Mayer being there
I thought was hilarious because of course she has lied
about Clarence Thomas, she has lied about Brett Kavanaugh. Sometimes
they go back and read her Brett Kavanaugh stuff and
it still makes no sense, Like I don't even know
what she was alleging in one of her pieces because
it made so little sense. And I literally co wrote
a book on Brett Kavanaugh. They you know, it's innuendos
and smears. In this case, she claimed falsely that Susan
Collins and Joni Earnst refused to meet with some credible
accuser of Pete hag Seth. And I'm sorry because I didn't.
You know, I should read this before weigh in too
much on it. But A, the person's not credible. B
those women did not refuse to meet with the individual.
In fact, Susan Collins tweeted out that she had said
she would be willing to meet with anyone and thought
that these things should go through committee rather than her.
But like willing to meet and so, you know, just
typical Jane Mayer, like clear, carefully worded things, deployed at
the last minute, and it just didn't seem to work.
Speaker 3: Well.
Speaker 1: I noticed. I think it was Peter Baker says his
name at the New York Times retweeting one of these stories.
And this is the little game they played. The New
York Times probably passed on the story because they saw
that there was nothing there. What they do is someone
with no credibility runs the story, and then they report
on the story being run, like this is the game
they pulled with Kavanaugh. There are two reasons why, in
my opinion, these don't have traction. One is, no one
trusts the media anymore. I think Kavanaugh maybe broke broke that,
you know, broke that was the last straw there, or
you know, on this sort of attack because it was
so risible, you know. And the other thing is no
one trusts the senators involved in it. I mean, right,
I mean we have no trust in Elizabeth.
Speaker 2: Did you see Senator Mark Wayne Mullen from Oklahoma go
after one of his colleagues.
Speaker 1: That's the drinking And.
Speaker 2: I loved it, like I liked and I actually liked
that he didn't name names. I mean usually I would say,
if you're going to make an allegation, name names. But
the fact is that in that August body of the
US United States Senate, there are a lot of drunkards.
There are a lot of carousers. There are a lot
of people who you know, just are not honorable. I
interview Supreme Court justices about this, and they say, far
and away the worst part of confirmation is to have
your morality questioned by someone who like killed a woman,
you know, yeah, like Ted Kennedy up there being like,
excuse me, but how dare you? And it's like you
literally killed a woman and you're sitting here in the
Senate and you're going to act like you have some
you know, moral high ground or related to drinking or crowsing.
Speaker 1: I mean, listen, it's bad to be an alcoholic if
you are, and that's something someone should deal with. But
you know what if someone drinks and they're doing their job,
I honestly, I don't even care that much. I mean,
I want someone to do the job. I want them
to adhere to the Constitution, and I want them to
do the right thing. And their personal lives are messed up.
That's not great, but it's not the you know, it's
not the only thing I care about, And especially for
these senators to you know, to talk about that or
to make that an issue, especially, I was just appalled
by Tim Kain there. You know, he was just I
just think he was so that reminds me.
Speaker 2: Do you remember his like twenty eight year old kid,
twenty five year old? I don't remember how old he
was like seven or eight years ago, got arrested as
part of an Antifa riot in Minneapolis or somewhere in Minnesota. Yeah,
I'm just wondering what happened to him. The kid's name
this adult male, but lynn Wood Michael or Matthew Kane.
I just kind of wonder where he is now, Like
did he commit to the bit, is he still Antifa
or did he change his mind and become an investment banker.
I just wonder. Also, if I were Tim Kane and
my kid were Antifa, I would not be talking to
a nominee about his family or anything.
Speaker 1: Or his How about his tattoo? I was I loved
you know, he has a Jerusalem tattoo on his chest,
which is the kind of squared It's hard.
Speaker 2: To explain that square cross square cross with forecross for
cross as an each quadrant.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly that. I didn't know this, but at the
NAT I lived right across from the National Cathedral for
a year. But inside the floor has a giant Jerusalem Cross,
and Jimmy Carter just uh his funeral, you know, and
the procession went through there and everything, and no one
was offended by the Jerusalem like the Jerusalem crust there.
I'm not saying there's not a racist on earth that
puts a Jerusalem Cross on, you know, tattoo up, but it's.
Speaker 2: Really not that kind of simbol. I mean, it's been
around for a really long time. Usually is something when
I we have one at my church on it built
into the architecture of the building. But usually like if
I see someone wearing one, I wonder if they made
a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, because I think that's where it
kind of started, is that you'd go to Jerusalem, you'd
get a Jerusalem Cross, and that way people knew that
you had visited the Holy Land. So I don't you know, yeah,
the idea that it's some I just hate where they
invent symbols, like during the Kavanaugh thing and prior to that,
they had this hysterical period of claiming that if you
gave a like a thumbs up or an AOK sign,
that that was a secret Nazi salute. And there was
a woman, like a Mexican Jewish woman who was working
on the Kavanaugh confirmation and the Washington Post wrote up
a whole story about how she might be a white
supremacist because she had given a thumbs up to someone
when they motioned like, do you want water, and she
was like yeah, and so they were like she might
be a Nazi. I mean, it's I don't understand how
these people can work and print stuff like that and
not feel badly about themselves. Who's that woman who ran
for president from New York senator? Not Hillary Clinton, Kirsten,
Kristen Gilibrand or Kirsten So my favorite thing is that
when she ran for president, in her opening ad, she
said that she was a young mother, and the woman
was in her fifties.
Speaker 1: It's like the Young Guns book about Kevin m Remember
that Young Guns book with all the Republicans who are
like in their mid forties at the time.
Speaker 2: I think, hey, I'm not sure they were in their
mid forties at the time. I actually think they were
pretty young really, and be relative to an average age
of eighty five in the Congress, they were totally young.
But she was saying how she was a young mother.
And then yesterday when she was screaming at Pete Hegseth,
she looked like a witch out of like a you know,
a German fairy tale. She looked like she had aged
a lot.
Speaker 1: Anyway, I mean saying, you know, if I say someone's attractive,
I'm you know. I don't know if that's okay, But
I definitely don't want to go around calling women looking
at saying they want sentence in the Senate. I let
you do that the guilty find I'm not.
Speaker 2: You know, I'm an I'm an average looking lady. I
know it. Who's not average looking is Pam BONDI.
Speaker 1: Nice, She's older than I thought. She looks great for age,
and I have a problem with her. My problem with
her is that she lobbied for Qatar, which I think
is problematic. But anyway, I thought she also did an
excellent job from what I saw. I didn't watch the
whole thing, obviously, what'd you think of her?
Speaker 2: I just was distracted by what you said about lobbying
for Katar or cutter. I don't know how to say it.
I don't like when people lobby for foreign governments, period.
And I think I was standing in line for a
very long period of time today for inauguration related things,
and I was in line with this like super nice
guy named John who was a lobbyist. But I couldn't
help myself, like the moment he said he was a lobbyist,
and I was like, I hate lobbyists. Certainly, you know,
something like this whole town is ruined by lobbying. But
it's one thing, the lobby for an industry for, you know,
to protect that industry from nefarious legislation or to you know,
improve the situation for you in the communities that you benefit.
I just don't like the foreign lobbying, and a lot
of people do it. My husband and I made a
decision early on to just not take any money from
foreign entities for anything. So that would be like if
a foreign person wanted help writing an op ed or
a book or to advocate for their position, and we
just decided we wouldn't do it. And it's you know,
you can see that decision in the size of our house.
And yet I still don't like that. Everybody does that.
Speaker 1: You know, well, listen, I like a lot to me
a lobbyist. It can be good or bad. I mean,
they are good causes, they're good industries, they are bad ones.
I don't view it, but I agree with you. I
would never work for anyone for a foreign government, despite
what people might think. Moreover, you're right, a lot of
people in DC, especially back in the two thousands, would
take money from a lot of weird countries to do
a lot of things. I would never do that, not
because I'm you know, a saint or anything, but I
think it undermines your ability to be taken seriously if
people find out, you know, and it's just not something
you want to do. But more than that, I just
basically hate almost every other country. So there's no country
that can other maybe than Israel. I wouldn't do that either.
That could entice me to help them. So anyway, I
still get accused, of course, of being get taking money
from the NRA, big tobacco, big food bag.
Speaker 2: I was going to be like people, it's so bad,
I do all this for free.
Speaker 1: Nobody's me.
Speaker 2: I'm just saying what I believe.
Speaker 1: I wrote a pro pharma column recently which got me
a lot of anger well back for not but I
didn't even take a penny from anyone. No fight. I'm
a loser.
Speaker 2: Anyway. Back to the Pam Bondi thing, I wasn't. I
don't know her that well. A lot of people who
I like have spoken very highly of her, and and
I even remember I was reading I think it was
Randy Barnett's recent memoir, which is super interesting, and he
had that he was fighting Obamacare by talking about how
you you know, it's like the first time you were
penalized for not participating in commerce, right, and he said
she was the only attorney general of a state who
understood the argument. So I think it's you know, so
I've always you know, I pick up little things people
say here and there. They like her. What I'm mostly
concerned about is the Department of Justice is completely corrupted.
Will she be able to tackle that agency and do
what needs to be done? I pray so. And I
do think that some of the people that are coming
in there underneath her have personal experience with how corrupt
it is, and that might help them have the energy
and mindset of understanding how things work and what needs
to be I hope. So she was ag.
Speaker 1: In a serious state. It's a big organization itself, so
she has experience. I think she's very qualified for the job.
And you know, whether you you know, you like her
positions or not. I thought she also did an excellent
job and seemed seemed very at ease answering questions and stuff,
which matters in DC. Where you're not intimidated by these people.
So I think that's good news. What did make me
laugh was it was I think it was Dick Durbin
and others constantly saying, Hey, you just have to promise
that you will not weaponize the Justice Department against your
political enemies.
Speaker 2: Please tell me. She talked about the weaponization of the
department again.
Speaker 1: She gave some specifics. What's the guy's name who kind
of falsified FISA warrants and stuff. She mentioned, what's his name,
I can't remember something, but anyway, Kevin Klein, Clement Kleinsmith.
Speaker 2: He's like one of a thousand people who like.
Speaker 1: But go on, she said, you know, we're going to
look at it with an open mind, and if people
you know broke the law, we're going to prosecute. If not,
like they gave her names, are you going to go
after you know, lis Cheney or you know? And stuff
like that. So I don't know why any one of
these people should be above the law, including list Cheney.
If she did something wrong. I'm not saying, you know,
she did something illegable. If she did, she shouldn't be
above the law. I'm not. I'm not I don't understand why.
Speaker 2: I want to know. Here's what could we go.
Speaker 1: We deserve any deference.
Speaker 2: Sorry, right, they're not above the law. I love when
they're like Donald Trump is not above the law. Right,
he shouldn't be under the law either, you know, he
shouldn't be treated differently. Likewise, Democrats aren't above the law.
This idea, like, you can't go after Democrats who may
be engaged in a conspiracy against rights. Yes you can.
You can certainly investigate it, Like there's more than enough
evidence that we had one of the worst you know,
periods against rule of law in our country's history, with
a coordinated conspiracy to go after every single Republican attorney
in different states. They were sharing information, you know, to
go after these people to make questioning an election a crime,
like not just a crime, but like a really bad
crime that you could go to prison for for the
rest of your life, like going after pro lifers and
Roman Catholics and parents like they should be held accountable.
Matthew Mehan had a great episode about this, and I
think he'll be doing something with the Federalist Radio Hour
two talking about how justice is not vengeance. You know,
you shouldn't go and say well, because you did this,
we're going to make life horrible for you. And it's
not neither is it waving it away like it didn't matter, like, Okay,
we're going to let bygones be bygunes. Justice is truly
about holding people accountable and restoring rule of law. And
so if she answered, we're going to look into things
and if there's something there, then we will pursue it.
That's the proper posture now, either to be like it's
okay that you tried to destroy the country. Who hasn't
done that a few times, you know, or to say, yeah,
we're coming after Liz Cheney.
Speaker 1: I you know, forget Liz Cheney for a minute. There
should be, if not prosecutions, a report. I want to know, Listen,
when you have power, you should actually be held to
a higher in a sense, to a higher level of justice,
so you know than others, because you've destroyed lives and
you've destroyed the reputation of the Justice Department. So I
want to know who went after parents who went af
their pro lifers why and did they follow you know,
proper regulations and process and all that as well. It's
not just about criminality it's about the rot there and
the corruption in that organization. Yes, you know they went
after Donald Trump, they after attorneys who helped Donald Trump,
but they've also gone after people who have no voice,
who have no you know, who are just citizens who
were purposely, you know, with ay, you know, threatened to
chill speech. You know, pro lifers had their homes raided.
When you're doing something like that against someone who's powerless
to fight back, that's even worse in a way. It's
just despicable. So I think we need to find out
what happened, Mollie. Did you see the horrible news that
Jennifer Rubin is leaving the Washington Post to start a
new publication with Norm Eisen. Is that his name? He
was like in the Obama administration. It's called Believe It
or Not, The Contrarian.
Speaker 2: I love everything about it. First of all, big congrats
to the Washington Post. Also, my anger over them publishing
her was never really with her, like she's clearly not
mentally well, if people don't know who we're talking about,
she's this very prolific blogger who went from one hundred
percent recitation of Republican talking points, no matter how stupid
to one hundred percent recitation of Democrat talking points. No
matter how stupid she is, there's not a single issue
she has not changed her mind on up to and
including whether she supports Israel or not, you know, which
would have which it was like one of the last
ones to go, but it went down there at the end.
So she's not someone that anyone with intelligence listens to.
And the Washington Post employed her as their token conservative
for like a decade, so rather than feature any conservatives
on their op ed page, they ran a thing called
like the Conservative Mind with Jen Rubin. None of the
words were true, you know, like it was just insane.
So I assume she got fired or like a or
told that her contract wasn't being renewed. And so she
says she left the Washington Post and she wants to
start this thing, yes, with a bunch of very well
funded never Trump baloose like Norm Eisen, but also people
you know, we've written about it, the federalists like Stephen Richer,
who I wrote what a bad job he was doing
as the guy running elections in Maricopa County, Arizona, and
he got ousted, and other people like that, like Andrew Weissman,
who was the guy you couldn't critique as he ran
the Oh my gosh Mueller Report.
Speaker 1: Yeah wrote Oh is he part of this? Wow?
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's all just like in like that Asha ran Kappa.
I don't know how to say her name. O.
Speaker 1: People were like.
Speaker 2: Really out there in the Russia collusion space and the
Bill Crystal types. So they're calling the publication where they
will repeat the same things you hear at every other
major publication, the Contrarian which is pretty funny. And I
do have to give them credit for that joke, I
assuming they were meaning it as a joke. And they
also announced they're going to have a cooking like a
cooking column and a humorist. And guess who the humorist is, the.
Speaker 1: Guy from the New Yorker who has never been funny.
What's his name Borwitz or.
Speaker 2: Something, Andy Borrowitz, the humorist on the planet. So anyway,
I just like, I feel like between the Bulwark and
the Dispatch, like you don't really need another never Trump
baloo publication, Like what what are you going to get
that you don't get there?
Speaker 1: Obviously contrarianism would me. And you're at a certain kind
of publication, and you're saying things that people are not,
you know, that they don't expect. That's the whole point
of a contrarian. There's going to be nothing contrarian on
this site. But I don't even know if this could
be considered a never Trump's site as just the site
of democrats. I mean, Norm Eisen is from the Obama administration.
Andrew Weissman is a was he ever a Republican and
he's always been kind of a Democrat. I mean, I
know you can be never Trump, but it's not the
same as people who were once conservative. Other than Jen
Rubin Jennifer Ruben.
Speaker 2: I actually think never Trump is the way to describe it.
I would like to fight you on that, because they
the entire media space of Republicans, with almost no exceptions,
is just never trumpers. But NBC, MSNBC and CNN and
the Washington Post and the New York Times in the Atlantic, like,
if they're putting on a quote unquote Republican or if
they're publishing a quote unquote Republican, it's a never Trumper.
And Jen Rubin I'm sure identifies as a Republican. Probably
Andrew Weissman certainly Stephen Richer was a Republican office holder.
The thing that you unites them all is an absolute
obsession and hatred for the Orange guy. That's true at
the Bulwark, that's true at the Dispatch, that's true at
the Contrarian. That's like the only thing that unifies them.
I don't think they have thoughts other than that.
Speaker 1: I have a couple of things to say on Jennifer Rubin,
who has probably a really big readership because there's a
segment of people she just tells them what they want
to hear in a very excitable way. I would say
was I was embarrassed of her writing during when Min
Romney was running for president, when I, you know, and
I thought, you know, I want amt Romney to win,
you know, I thought he'd probably would be a decent president. Her,
like you say, recitation of those talking points constantly, no
matter what was said, was embarrassing. So when she switched,
she was the same embarrassing hack, just for different people.
She's always been terrible in that way. But her reason
for alleged reason for leaving is that basically the Bezos,
the owner know what's his first name, Jeff, Jeff Bezo, Sorry,
I'm so bad with names. I can't help it. Who
you know, who is who his money to burn? You know,
props up the Washington Post, which is losing a ton
of money, is that he did not run an endorsement
of Joe Biden. I mean that that is the reason
she claims that that newspaper has lost its soul and
so on. Meanwhile, can you think of a single writer
at that paper who would even give a fair framing
of a Donald Trump position? I mean every they have.
They have so many columnists at that paper who hate Trump.
The editorial board hates Trump.
Speaker 2: All the reportings I could name one, Oh.
Speaker 1: That and what's his name? Will Willock?
Speaker 2: Will I was, oh, Jason Willock is actually would I
was going to say, Mark Teisson and I don't agree
with everything Mark, I don't. I mean he and I
are like not in our disagreements on foreign policy, but
I think he operates in pretty good faith.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, you know, I'm still you know, I'm
still a fan of George Oyle. But that's only basically
one of two or three people i'd read there who
I think are worthwhile.
Speaker 2: But but this is what I was kind of getting at.
We actually have a situation where more people voted for
Donald Trump than voted for the Democrat you know who
all the media loved and endured in. What publication do
you have a single representative of this of this majority
of Americans or like, you know, uh, the.
Speaker 1: I mean legacy media. What legacy media outlet like New
York Times, Oshanton Post, you don't.
Speaker 2: Like there was?
Speaker 1: CNN has one Scott Jennings, right, who does a good job?
Speaker 3: One?
Speaker 1: Yeah, one, I know, And it's incredible to see them
team up against him on that panel, including the alleged
non unbiased yeah, Abby Phillips or whatever her name is.
It's it's kind of a joke, but he does a
good job. But that's the only one I can think of, certainly,
no one at MSNBC. I love how the.
Speaker 2: Los Angeles Times was like, we're changing, We're going to
bring on Scott Jennings, so the only conservative at CNN
to be our only conservative at the Los Angeles Times.
That's not how it works. If you're changing and you
want to be a legitimate media outlet, you start hiring
non leftist activists in the newsroom, for all of your
news people, for all of your editors, for all of
your assignment editors for your line editors, you know, and
then you bring in tons of people who aren't leftists
to report. Yes, but for your editorial page then yeah,
it should be definitely much more than a single solitary
person who voted for the guy who's about to be president.
You need to have this radical change. And like everyone's like,
oh no, Los Angeles Times is changing. They brought in
a columnist, buddy. The Los Angeles Times problems are not
with the editorial page, which no one reads. It's with
everything else that they're doing at the Times. That's where
they need to make change.
Speaker 1: Completely agree, it's a complete culture change that needs to happen.
You have to have someone in a newsroom, and I
worked in a newsroom, and you've worked in newsroom where
newsrooms where you need them to challenge the framing or
the thrust or the facts of a story, which you
don't get when you have everyone in group think on
the left. I'll give you a quick example. I sixty minutes.
Ran sixty Minutes when I was a kid, was like
the most respected investigative journalists institution there was. They ran
a story on Israel the other day that could have
been Al Jazeera. They had the State Department officials who resigned,
you know, because of our support of Israel, and they
just let them lie and lie, because I think there
was no one in the newsroom who would say, wait
a minute, that's not true. One hundred and eighty thousand
people weren't kilt in Gaza, you know what I mean,
or whatever. So, yeah, you need a complete culture change.
Putting a columnist, you know, honestly, I was kind of
a token columnist at the Denver Post, and you could
see all I was doing almost was becoming a fact
checker or kind of like by myself against a whole
paper trying to balance things. That doesn't work that way.
You need reporters who can chase stories that conservatives care about,
you know what I mean. Also, not just going after
Republican politicians all the time.
Speaker 2: Yeah. This relates also to some other news that came
out this week that Yamish Alsandor, who I think is
at PBS, is returning to the White House to be
a reporter. Well, she's not a reporter. She's a left
wing activist and she kind of got a name for
herself when she would fight with Donald Trump about things
like whether the COVID virus came from China and whether
it was racist to say that it came from China.
Like every question of hers was filtered through a prism
of like BLM type Marxist.
Speaker 1: You know, they're not sending their best. You know that's saying.
I mean, they're not, you know, but well go on.
Speaker 2: But like she wins awards from her peers because they
love activism, like the kind she provided many awards. So
she takes a break from doing any kind of pushing
of a president during the Biden administration, and guess what
she's happy to announce she's on her way back. And
it just reminds me, like people are like, we need
to fix this, uh White House newsroom. The problem is
not really the newsroom. During Republican administrations, it's actually fine.
Then you have reporters who hate the president and a
president who has to answer a bunch of tough questions.
That's okay. The problem is we don't have reporters during
Democrat administrations. We had a guy loses very like sense
of life during his administration, and everybody in America knew
other than the press that were there, and they didn't
turn on him until they thought it would hurt their
party's chance of winning an election, and then they asked
some tough questions and then once they sidelined him, they
were like, so it's okay to have him back as
the commander in chief for the next nine months because like,
he's not a threat to our electoral chances anymore. I mean,
that's the threat. It's not having idiots like umiche alsendor
in the newsroom or in the White House press briefing
room with a Republican That's fine. I mean it's stupid,
but it's fine. The problem is who's there. You goet
like four people who actually do their jobs during a
Democrat administration, none of them get called on. If they
even complain for a moment about not being called on,
they get like a six month punishment, you know, and
there's nothing you can do about it. So we need
to make changes, but not like to do it now
is fine, But really the problem is Democrat.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I agree with that a lot. I mean, I'm
fine with you yelling at the press secretary about this
or that as long as you do it all the time.
But you notice it's almost like they're reactivated, like all
of a sudden, the old faces or reappearing.
Speaker 2: That huge journalism again.
Speaker 1: But yeah, you need to hire this is the kind
of person. Need to hire someone who hates everyone. I mean,
it's someone who is just doesn't like, is skeptical about
people in power, doesn't believe what they say, will go
to any length to bring them down as within within
the framework of telling the truth, which sometimes doesn't happen,
and they should be. That's the kind of person you
want to be a journalist. But that's not what we
have anymore anyway. There I mean, they were losing so
much money. MSNBC is president or whatever or you know,
whatever position was just step down. Their ratings are have
tank did you see. I'm going to get the numbers
all wrong, but the Washington Post was had like I
think fifty five million hits a month is now down
to like eight or something. You know, there's just been
this huge collapse and those numbers are not right, but
you know it's in the vein of that, so I
don't know, doesn't look like they're trying to fix Molly.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I mean I think that's what you get
when you turn your publication into you know, Washing Post
was always horrifically biased. It has been forever, But in
twenty sixteen, when they decided to actually embrace being a
propaganda outlet, they just lost it all. And it certainly
worked for a while, like people were like, we want propaganda,
we want to be fed these lies, and they won
awards for their Russia collusion, coup efforts and other stuff
like that, and then people were like, wait, maybe it's
wrong to try to run a coup based on wrong information.
And then now they've got no credibility and they don't
have the ability to run a similar coup operation, and
so they're kind of screwed. The The main sorry, yeah,
I'm sorry now.
Speaker 1: I was just saying, the main difference between twenty seventeen
and twenty twenty five, I think is that there's no
the hysteric stone work. People don't believe it anymore. There's
no you know, there's no Russia collusion. Even if they
came up with one, No one I would believe it.
Speaker 2: If there was something real that actually happened, nobody's believing it.
Speaker 1: That's a problem. I mean that I was going to
say that that's also a problem with how we're dealing
with these nominees. Now, I think these nominees are okay,
But if there was one who wasn't okay, I probably
wouldn't believe anything the Washington Post is telling me.
Speaker 2: So, David, I get from what we've talked about thus
far that you are not as obsessed as I am
about the Los Angeles fires. Is that accurate?
Speaker 1: Everyone has become a fire expert on Twitter. I am not.
I don't really. I watch it in horror. I feel
very bad for people who's lost their homes, even very
rich people, even actors. Everyone. No one deserves that. But
I don't know who to if the government is to blame,
like I'm not as sure as everyone else, is that
it's climate change, which I don't think it is, or
that it's government you know, mishandling things. I don't know
is the answer? How about you.
Speaker 2: I don't mean that I want to ascribe blame to it.
Speaker 1: Oh, okay, that's what we do here, Molly.
Speaker 2: I just mean that I am stop digging for information
and looking at pictures and checking in on friends. And
you know, certainly had some friends who lost houses and
some friends didn't. And it's just the scope of the
damage and destruction is very difficult for me to wrap
my head around.
Speaker 1: Me too, and I am not one of those images
some of those images of entire neighborhood's just gone. It's
just so hard to fathom, you know, in this country.
Speaker 2: Thinking it's not even about rebuilding your house, which would
be an overwhelming difficulty, it's about your entire community is gone.
Your grocery store, in the schools, and the churches and
the you know, everything's gone. Probably your neighbors aren't all
coming back. How do you even navigate the construction process.
It's just it's it's overwhelming to think about.
Speaker 1: It's brutal. I do I I do not want to
describe blame, but I do wonder. It does feel like
there wasn't enough preparation for something that people have spoken
about for a long time, the possibility of it, or
something like this happening, which has happened before quite often
in smaller, you know, in smaller ways. So that does
make me angry, though again, I hate to jump in
front of these things where I really have no expertise
on it, but it just does seem like.
Speaker 2: So you know, fire fire happens, and the Santa Ana
winds happen, and fire can happen naturally or it can
be set. But there are definitely things you can do.
And I would say, you know, one first and foremost,
brush clearing is very important to slow the spread of fires.
And that's a problem I think, not just in California,
but in most of the Western States. They're not doing
the kind of well either. There are different philosophies here
let it burn or don't let it burn, but you
know there and it can kind of depend on the area,
and so sometimes you have to do controlled burns. And
there should be water to fight fires, and there should
be systems in place for pressure water pressure, and there
should also be things like you know, California made it
so that you weren't allowed to raise insurance rates for
high risk areas, and so a lot of insurance just left.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I mean that I have an opinion on Yeah,
stay farm left. It's just and so it's ice fixing.
I mean, it's just so stupid every time.
Speaker 2: And then like a Los Angeles fire department that's the
same size as it was in the sixties and seventies
when the city was a quarter of the size and
allocating significant parts of its budget to DEI and making
sure you're hiring enough trans and people and people women,
and you know, things like that.
Speaker 1: Ellie is very expensive. I assume property taxes are very high.
I assume all taxes in California, especially for the wealthy,
as high. And you would think that they would have
the best fire department that money could buy. I mean,
it seems like it would be one of your top
concerns that in a police force. And yet you're telling
me I didn't even hear this, that the size of
the fire departments, you know, that's small. I mean, don't
you feel just to just overall? Yeah? No, gone.
Speaker 2: Did you see that video of the fire lady. My
husband calls them top fire lesbians, but I don't know
if this was a top fire lesbian or just a
lady firefighter. I think she was a top fire lesbian.
She was saying that. She said. There's a clip of
her going around saying the wives say. The wives say
they're worried about me being able to carry their husbands
out of a fire. And I say, if your husband
needs carrying out, he's messed up, right.
Speaker 1: Really, I didn't see that.
Speaker 2: Now, Well, it was kind of interpreted that she was
just talking about the public that she was saying that
if a woman in the public said, you're not strong
enough to carry out my husband, that she would say, well,
if your husband needs carrying out of a fire, he
messed up. When she was really saying it internally about
the wives of firefighters, the wives of male firefighters, that
she was telling them if they had like messed up
or if they needed carrying out. And I'm been one
person was telling me that you need to trust the
people on your crew so much that when you even
like think they're thinking that way, it can really affect
what you're willing to do. And knowing that they've got
your back, you know, I'm going to go try to
rescue this baby even though a beam might fall on me,
because I know these people have my back and they'll
drag me out. But if you're saying, like, oh, if
you tried to rescue a baby, you done messed up.
I'm a lesbian, you know that's not healthy for the
firefighter situation.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean that's a completely other topic. You know, again,
I don't know how much that is in play here,
but obviously no one should care about what your sexuality
is or who you are. Just get the best people
who can fight fires like anything else. I was just
going to say before that there's I get this overwhelming
sense sometimes and I assume others do as well, that
no one's doing their job anymore, that the institutions are
supposed to take you know, just think about the North
Carolina and the you know, and the hurricane and all
that went on there. It's you feel like there's just
a failure of our systems and the people in charge
to take care to do the basics. They want to
do all the extra stuff that they can't do the basics,
and you know, it's just it's a it's a feeling
of helplessness because these are the things we need them
to do and they can't do it. I don't know
if I'm if that's an exaggeration or I'm over well.
Speaker 2: I was just thinking that this is I think you
frequently speak as if the only like consideration is the
bottom line, or you know, well, if if you need to,
if you could do something cheaper, ship it overseas and
bring it back in with without thinking about what happens
to communities when you do that, Like that was wrong.
I'm going after you on something so different I'm.
Speaker 1: Letting you do this, but we will return to this,
because that is not my position at all. I'm just
saying we should cut corners to help.
Speaker 2: Culture matters and communities matter, and when you're in a
tight community, you don't want to let people down because
you know that will bring dishonor on your family. And
we've kind of lost a lot of that with some
of these efficiencies. Everyone's always like super new efficiencies, and
sometimes efficiency brings with it bad downstream effects.
Speaker 1: I'm too tired to get into a very big argument
about this, so I'm going to let that lie. But
I don't think that that is my position on things.
And I think and the the economic stuff we're talking about,
I don't think leads to the anything any of these
societal failures. But we can talk about that.
Speaker 2: It's cheap shot culture anything, not a lot. I just
want to say, I'm sorry. That was really unfair of me,
and I did not need to say.
Speaker 1: I'm going to go after you soon another episode on
that stuff. We'll talk about it. I don't I have
some stuff but I don't know if I've mentioned it before,
but I'm just going to mention it again. Anyway, there
was something.
Speaker 2: Going to be something you mentioned last week.
Speaker 1: Maybe one of them. I'm not sure, but I did
you were you the one who brought up the Martha
Stewart documentary. So I watched most of it. It was
it was was interesting and she's an interesting character and
all that, and it's complex again, right, some things I
liked about or some things I didn't, But James called
me right kind of like railroadering into prison? What a
bad guy? Yeah, it really was. I just don't think
she deserved to be in prison. And I'm not one
of these people who just wants to defend her because
she's a celebrity. I I feel like the government can
abuse that kind of power on in you know, insider
trading stuff, whenever it really wants against certain kind of people,
you know, if it decides to go after them. I've
always thought that. I watched Furiosa, you know, a Mad
Max movie, which I liked. I had seen it earlier
and I didn't love it. But this one of my
kids told me, you know, they liked it a lot,
So I rewatched it, and I actually liked it better
the second time. Again for the tenth time, this is
what I think. Maybe I mentioned last week was Ozark?
Did I mention the show Ozark? Last week? Okay, so
Jason Baman is like this dark, breaking, bad sort of show,
and I watched try to watch it again because this
is all this is down my alley. I want like
shows like this. There's not a single redeeming character. Everyone
is corrupting it and that's too much for me. I
need someone or something to anchor the morality of the
world there not everyone is evil, Like, there's not a
single even tertiary character, you know what I mean? That
isn't just bad and I can't I can't do it.
I can't watch a show like that. I'm getting older
and I'm soft, but you know anyway, So that's all
I had.
Speaker 2: How about you, I've got nothing sorry about that. I
am getting ready for inaugural stuff. I take it you're
not coming up for anything inauguration related.
Speaker 1: No, that's not my jam.
Speaker 3: I was just.
Speaker 2: Thinking that, you know, my kids have had to put
up with a lot of mom and dad being gone
or late nights because of my work, and I was like,
you know what I'm gonna I'm gonna make sure they
get to the inauguration. So I put a lot of
effort into getting tickets for the inauguration, and I yeah,
got them, and so we're going to do that. And
we have friends coming in from out of town who
are also going, so that'll be fun. And I'm going
to an inaugural ball.
Speaker 1: Wow, have you ever been to an inauguration before?
Speaker 2: Sure, I've covered a bunch of them and even had
like really good seats when I've done them before. This
will be like standing, you know, somewhere in the back.
But I'm just kind of excited about this one, and
I'm excited that my kids will be there, and it
just seems like a really great, you know, fun day
to spend standing around. I did also just have to
stand in line for more than three hours to get
my tickets. You couldn't send someone else to do it,
you had to do it yourself. And I feel like
I really bonded with the people in line around me.
Got a good crew of people. That's it.
Speaker 1: I saw Carrie Underwood's performing. I'm just repeating something I saw.
I don't know any of her songs or anything, but
she's famous.
Speaker 2: She is. She's very well known, so which.
Speaker 1: Is nice because typically you don't get big names really right,
for conservative inaugurations and stuff.
Speaker 2: Yeah, maybe not, but I don't know, and I like
that she's doing it, and I like all of the
sort of excitement around it. Even having to wait in
line three hours was an indication that this is there's
a lot of interest in this. But I'll be going
to a lot of activities this weekend and doing a
bunch of TV and inauguration and balls and all that.
Speaker 1: So anyway, it's exciting, happy for you, happy for America.
It's gonna be a very nice day. Yeah, all right,
that's it. So you didn't watch a single thing.
Speaker 2: I'm in a bad place on work.
Speaker 1: It's not a bad place. You're working on a book.
You got a lot going on.
Speaker 2: Okay, Well, keep those emails coming at radio at the
Federalist dot com, we love to read them.
Speaker 1: Maybe I'll watch something next week and we look forward
to it until then. The lovers of freedom and anxious
for the frame.
Speaker 3: We got a contoon though, with the Yamaha people dressed.
Speaker 2: Like there in Panama every weekend around these days.