Speaker 1: Welcome back, everyone to a new episode of You Were
Wrong with Molly Hemingway, editor and chief of the Federalist,
and David Harsani, a senior writer at The Washington Examiner.
Just as a reminder, if you'd like to email a show,
please do so at radio at the Federalist dot com.
We love to hear from you. So, Molly, we have
a new governor here in Virginia, Abigail Spanberger, who ran
a campaign promising moderation. She I believe a few years
ago during a Democratic Party meeting, said that the party
should never use the word socialist again. Her first day
in office, what do we have or our first week
in office? What do we have? We have a slew
of hard left policies, tax raises, abortion abortion bills, gun control,
lack of accountability for elections. Like every kind of foundational
progressive idea to weaken the country has already been embraced
by Democrats in Virginia.
Speaker 2: Well, all that and more.
Speaker 3: She fired anyone who was good in the state universities
and is replacing it with hard left activists. All the
hard left activists are being put throughout her administration so
that they can do the most damage most quickly, and
because of the information warfare environment we're in the corporate media,
which love what she's doing. They're not saying like, oh,
this person lied when they said.
Speaker 2: They were a moderate.
Speaker 3: Didn't we lied when we said she was a moderate.
They're just kind of acting like these are totally normal things.
Speaker 2: That are being done, and it's a very worrisome situation.
For it is true that Virginia is.
Speaker 3: A pretty Democrat state, but this is coming off of
a rare occurrence of where we had a Republican governor,
lieutenant governor, and attorney general. And it's not just Abigail Spaanberger.
By the way, you might remember that the attorney general
had wished for the death of his political opponents and
for their children to witness it.
Speaker 1: Jay Jones was that his name?
Speaker 3: It is his name, and that's my attorney General of
the Commonwealth. So this is disconcerting, it's scary.
Speaker 2: Actually it's done right. Yeah, it's done right.
Speaker 1: Scary. She Spamberger is a weak politician in a lot
of ways. I don't find her very impressive at all.
She won easily because Republicans did not run good candidates,
did not run good campaigns here in Virginia. I do
wonder though, if they would. Here's the thing, Younkin was
actually a popular governor of Virginia, despite this being a
blue state. I think he was popular because he could
reach out and because he was gave a moderate face
to conservative ideas that I think are actually quite popular,
and he could express them in a way that maybe
like Joshapiro in Pennsylvania can do on the other end
of it, you know, And these are popular governors. Smnberg
is not going to be popular governor if she raises
taxes on all deliveries as she's going to do, if
she raises taxes on businesses as she's going to do
on new businesses, if she has the abortion bill the
Democrats are talking about. What was the governor's name who
said that we should be able to kill babies after
they're born, Ralph Northam. Yeah, this is like essentially going
to make that reality. It's just incredibly radical. A lot
of people have guns here in Virginia. Second Amendment is
not an unpopular thing here, and there's a gun bill
that's going to attack that as well. So I do
wonder how if this will help Republicans. I mean, I
don't it doesn't really matter because they're going to ruin
the state by that point. But I don't know.
Speaker 3: I mean, this is pretty standard, MO, and you can
do a lot when you have corporate media at your
beck and call, and she does. I mean, none of
them are saying we lied to you when we said
she was a moderator. She lied to you when she
said she was a moderate. They're just acting like these
radical positions aren't a big deal, and then when they
take effect years later, or when the when the effects
are felt years later, they're not going to tie it
to their lives or political party differences. It's a very
powerful thing that democrats and the left have with control
of nearly all the media, and I think this is
no exception.
Speaker 1: Can I tie this into I'm sorry, going sorry, I
just go ahead, No, no, please go on.
Speaker 2: I was talking to a friend.
Speaker 3: We were driving in Virginia on Saturday, and she's a
very moderate, bushy type Republican and she was saying that
she feels like when Democrats are in power, they act
like they will never lose power, and when Republicans are
in power, they act like they're not in power. And
I thought that, I mean, that's how I felt for
a very long time, but that I was hearing it
from her really spoke I think to the general frustration
that a lot of Republican voters feel that even if
they do the hard work of winning elections, it doesn't
seem to result in the type of change that Democrat
voters get when they put the hard work into winning elections.
Speaker 1: Well, I know that that's a popular sentiment, but I
think there are reasons for that beyond that Republicans are
just more cowardly or something. It's that if you are
still and there are fewer of them, a small government conservative,
you don't view government, you don't want government to be
an act. You don't want it to be as activists
as a left wing person does. So you're always fighting
a defensive battle if you're that kind of person, and
it becomes very difficult. But just something you said about
the media and how there will be no real repercussions
for lying to people I was thinking about. I don't
know if you saw the story where a bunch of
these climate extremists from twenty years ago have admitted, essentially
like Bill Gates and others, that their doomsday predictions haven't
come true. And that they need to take a more
moderate tone on this stuff, like they put this country.
We have so many terrible laws and regulations on the
books undermining our prosperity and all of that, and all
of the media to participated in this climate deniers, all
the kind of rhetorical tricks they use to demean and
undermine people who didn't believe climate doomsday predictions. And there's
no there's no reckoning, there's nothing. No one has to
pay a price. The same people are on the television,
the same people are lecturing us in a different way. Now,
there is never any reckoning there. We've talked about this
with the Russia Russia collusion hoax and all of that.
So it's a it's a tough fight on that flank
as well.
Speaker 3: Speaking of you know Spanburg Or one of her first
acts was to rejoin I think it's called Reggie. It's
that greenhouse gas initiative. It's total scam, nonprofit that you
pay the nonprofit for carbon credits and the effect on
consumers in Virginia is to dramatically increase their energy costs.
And yeah, just for these completely ridiculous, outloaded ideas that
don't work. Oh, she did also talk about how she
ended ICE cooperation. She's in rebellion in a very Virginia sense,
we're good at this over the years. She's in rebellion
against the United States government over enforcement of immigration and borders.
And this is a big issue because Virginia has brought in,
i mean, just unbelievable numbers of illegal immigrants, including a
you know, according to the news every single night, a
ton of criminal illegal aliens. It's a major issue when
you're involved in an accident, which you know I've experienced
in my family and among my friends, where you're involved
in an accident with an illegal alien and you're on
the hook for everything, you know, it's it's a major issue.
And to say we're not going to cooperate with our
laws that were democratically passed and we're not going to
cooperate with the enforcement of those laws, it's just an
open rebellion, open insurrection, as they say, against the United States,
and again not a moderate position.
Speaker 1: I feel like we have never or we're not getting
to the essence of that debate. So it's always how
you know, the left is always pointing out some excessive
force allegedly used by ACE or whatever. But the essence
of the debate is that states don't want to enforce
a federal law having to do with the border and
with immigration, which is under the federal government's purview. You'll
remember during the Obama administration, Obama went to the Supreme
Court against Arizona to argue that border enforcement is a
federal concern. But yet now states simply ignore it. And
I would love to ask Spamberg or someone like that,
what does she want us to do about illegal immigration?
But we can never talk about that because ices have been,
you know, become villains in the eyes of all progressives.
But we can never I've never really heard someone get
to the essence of that debate. What exactly do Democrats
want to do about illegal immigration? How are we supposed
to enforce those laws? Or do they think that we
shouldn't enforce those laws? In my view, they don't think
that we should enforce those laws at all. Well.
Speaker 3: Mark Hemingway, who I am related to by marriage, wrote
a piece on just that at the Federalists talking about
how that is the crux of the issue. Democrats do
not want to enforce any immigration law because they support
completely open borders and they get mad when you say,
wait a minute, sounds like you support completely open borders.
But if you ask them, okay, so what should be done,
they literally think nothing should be done.
Speaker 2: And I think we talked about.
Speaker 1: This a little bit.
Speaker 3: But when the shooting of that woman who was interfering
with law enforcement in Rene, Good, Yeah, when that happened
to people say I've never seen anything like it. People
have completely different viewpoints of what they're seeing with this
cop shooting into the car.
Speaker 2: It's like, sort of true. It's kind of a.
Speaker 3: Stupid point, but it's sort of true. Because if you
think that immigration law is illicit or whatever, you know,
like corrupted and you can't you shouldn't have any of it,
you see that cop enforcing immigration law as the worst
thing in the world. And if you do believe in borders,
and if you do believe countries have the right to
police them, and if you do believe people shouldn't be
here illegally, and if you do believe that police do
have a monopoly on force in situations, you see something
totally different.
Speaker 2: Because your view of the world is totally different.
Speaker 3: And yeah, Abigail Spanberg, who presents as a moderate and
never was, she was always a left wing radical, and
she did. She was smarter about how she ran it
than some other people are, and that she hid that.
But the former CIA operative is a radical who does
not believe, does not really care if I'm assaulted by
an illegal alien. She just doesn't care. She doesn't care
if my kid gets in a car accident with a
criminal illegal alien and.
Speaker 2: Has to go to the hospital. She doesn't care, and
neither do any other Democrats.
Speaker 3: And like, I feel kind of crazy about it because
to me, it's so obvious you should care about the
citizens of your state and how they are being hurt
by a failure to enforce the laws.
Speaker 2: But she's just adding fuel to the non enforcement fire.
Speaker 1: The kind of dishonest trick media plays and the left
plays with this issue is that they have an undue
focus on alleged excessive force by ICE, so that becomes
the main story rather than the suffering of, like you say,
a normal citizen here, so that the whole debate is
about is Ice using excessive force rather than and what
do we do and how do we most effectively fix
this problem? The most effective way to fix this problem
is for states to cooperate with federal agents and ICE
to get illegal immigrants out of the country because they
shouldn't be here in a humane way. Right, I'm all
for that, but still to enforce the law. There are
states that do that and there are no problems there.
And there are states like Minnesota and I guess now
Virginia that are going to try to stand in the
way of ICE, and I bet you that that will
lead to tragic, some kind of tragic circumstance somewhere. Right.
Speaker 3: Well, that was another point that Mark made in his Peace,
which is ICE does enforcement operations in all fifty states.
You're not hearing about horrific problems in Tennessee because the
government of Tennessee cooperates with the federal government in the
enforcement of our immigration laws.
Speaker 2: And they don't.
Speaker 3: I don't encourage insurrection against the federal government. It's happening
all the time in Florida. Florida is actually kind of
getting a name for itself in how well it is
supporting the federal law enforcement officers if anyone tries to
obstruct them. The Florida system is on top of it
and taking people out of the way who are trying
to obstruct federal law enforcement. So yes, the problems are
caused by confusing messages from Democrat politicians or out and
out encouragement toward insurrection, and we see this, I think
also with the terrifying thing we saw in I think
it was Saint Paul the Twin Cities in Minnesota this weekend,
where a group of left wing terrorists openly bragged about
how they violated the First Amendment rights of Christians in
the city by invading the worship space and taking over
their worship. To this point, not a single elected Democrat
of note in Minnesota has condemned this violation of religious rights.
In fact, the mayor of Saint Paul sided with the
people who went after the Christians, and their whole reason
for doing this, which they bragged about, which Don Lemon
had for knowledge of and participated in, was that one
of the pastors at that church during the week is
a law enforcement officer, and they, I guess have a
weird religious view that Christians can't be engaged in law enforcement,
which you know, is something certainly that people have talked
about and I would say is not a view held
by literally any Christian of any note. And so they
said that because they personally don't think that a Christian
should be in law enforcement, that they had the right
to terrorize a congregation in Saint Paul. I mean, that's
where we are, and nobody did anything. The police weren't there,
even though they were like broadcasting what they were doing.
The state government has done nothing about it. And still,
I mean, as of the time of this taping, no
one's been arrested for what they did.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it was called the city's church and Saint Paul.
Later I saw Don Lemon was somewhere. What's that crazy
at Jennifer Welch is that her name? She's like some
kind of off unhinged podcast or whatever.
Speaker 2: Isn't she. I think she's actually the Grape Welch heiress.
Speaker 1: No, I don't know. Honestly, I can't take more than surgery.
I can't take ten seconds of that. Boy is sorry.
I know, call me misogynistic if you like. But he
said he basically called the people in their white supremacists,
which is just saying because first of all, a lot
of the people in that church weren't white, but moreover,
they were worshiping, and even if they were white, it
doesn't make them supremacists anyway. But yeah, there's this, I
have like a broader problem with protest culture in general.
I think it's kind of an American but leftist protesters
always seem to believe that their First Amendment rights trump
the rights of other people's First Amendment protections. So they
can just shout you down, they can prohibit you from speaking,
if you're a comedian, if you're at a school wherever,
that they can just shut you down. And they did
that here where people were worshiping, which is gross. And
I just want to say, Donald Trump, this isn't a
throw clearing thing. This is to make a point. But
he does a lot of things a lot of people
probably don't like. He speaks in a way a lot
of people don't like. But when you see the other
side dorming a church, shutting down church services too, in
defense of illegality, are you really surprised that people are
going to vote for the Republican over whatever? You know,
people who defend this kind of this kind of protests
and not just and it's not even a protest, just
an act of criminality, and not just here, but you
have this happening in different ways across the country.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Heather McDonald had a piece about how refreshing it was
to have a president just speak like a normal person
when it comes to some of the horrific crime that
has been taking place, and how we'd gotten used to
politicians having this weird, distant way of talking about it.
Speaker 1: And she was.
Speaker 3: Quoting what Trump said when that Ukrainian immigrant was brutally
slaughtered on public transportation in North Carolina, and how he
just was like, Yeah, this is a monster. We can't
have that, we can't let this type of stuff happen.
And I think there is something very refreshing about someone
just being like, yeah, these people are these people are
acting crazy, and we can't have it. So a lot
of Americans do feel that way. Can I say one
more thing really quickly? You said this wasn't ritual malediction
or whatever, but I was an X this week and
that Frank Fleming guy had tweeted something about how so many,
so much criticism of Trump fails to acknowledge the context
in which he is speaking, so they'll say that he's
bad without noting just how horrible some of our other
leaders are.
Speaker 2: And I just agreed with him.
Speaker 3: I'm like, yeah, I frequently agree with criticism of Trump,
but when you when you are like so focused on
it while not acknowledging how horrible are all these other
so called leaders?
Speaker 1: Are?
Speaker 2: You just seem unhinged, right?
Speaker 1: Ye?
Speaker 2: I just want to say.
Speaker 3: People got so mad at me for saying that I
frequently agree with criticism of Trump, and they were like,
we knew you couldn't be trusted and you're the worst.
Speaker 2: And I was just like, wait, I thought we all
agreed that.
Speaker 3: You know, Like the thing that kind of comes to
mind is after Rob Reiner was brutally murdered by his
son and he's like that, dude's the worst.
Speaker 2: Do not agree with this, you know?
Speaker 3: And I say that as someone who was personally personally
targeted by Rob Reiner for destruction as part of his
Russia collusion hoax, because we were the publication that was
doing the most to debunk that. But I just because
of my own code, I do not believe in that.
But I didn't think it was like that controversial. And
I was like, Okay, everyone just calmed down. I think
I like, I genuinely like Trump and his policies.
Speaker 2: You know, that doesn't mean that I agree with everyone.
Speaker 3: And it reminds me of that Ed Cock said, I
say his name, the mayor of New York gotch sorry
and got how he was like, if you agree with
me on seven out of ten things, vote for me.
If you agree with me on ten out of ten things,
seek psychiatric help. Like nobody should agree with any you know,
politician of all people on everything.
Speaker 1: Anyway, I've always found it very difficult when it comes
to Trump, and maybe Obama had a similar kind of
hold on people. Where you are either pro Trump or
anti Trump never really makes complete sense to me. I mean,
I get it, I get what's happening, but I just
don't understand why I have to have any kind of
loyalty to anyone other than my family or whatever friend.
Tomorrow he could turn around and do a bunch of
stuff I even hate more than I hate what he's doing,
you know, I mean, like I don't know what he's
going to do, and especially someone as mercurial as Donald Trump,
you can't say I am pro or anti Trump. But
there's a lot of this thing where oh, I trust
what he's doing here, even if he sounds crazy or
he's off off the hook or whatever.
Speaker 2: I don't know. I mean, I'm pro Trump.
Speaker 3: I have no problem saying that I am happier with
him as president than I've ever been of any president
in my lifetime. So that doesn't mean again that I
agree with everything he's done. And I do understand a
little bit of the defensiveness of him, which is because
of again this cartoonishly hostile environment in which he operates,
where you have people just act like it's okay and
normal to do things like the Russia collusion hoax or
multiple impeachments or all the judicial insurrection stuff. Like you
people act like that's normal, and so when someone who
they trust is also piling on, they're like, really, can
you not like think of the larger context. So I
get it, but it just kind of but to be
fit in getting it, it's like too extreme if you
can't say I do not agree with this approach he's
taking here.
Speaker 1: But to be fair, Donald Trump himself is sort of
cartoonish in the way that he conducts himself sometimes. So
it's a weird world we're living in. But I saw
someone it so and it NR said I forgot who
it was, said like he liked a lot of what
Trump was doing or something, and that we needed to
put we needed to elect people. We need to get
back to electing people or also sort of morally better right,
whatever it was, not one of these people will take
even a moment to consider that these norms were destroyed
by Barack Obama and later by Joe Biden, even though
they used very polite rhetoric.
Speaker 2: I'm trying to avoid saying any bad words.
Speaker 3: They're the whiniest little girls when dealing with conflict, and
they backstab and they think they're so cute because they do.
They don't do it like men fight. Men fight by
punching each other, but they fight like girls. They're like,
I'm gonna gossip about this person and really hurt their reputation.
And Trump is definitely more just like I'm going to
say out loud that I don't like that person, and
it's so unlike the way things are done in DC
because he's not really a creature of DC that they
don't know how to handle it. But to hear the
commentariat class be like, I'm so preferred when we were
acting like little girls about our political enemies. It just
is impotent and embarrassing to me.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but you know, I mean, shouldn't shouldn't the people
who run this country like, for instance, I noticed this
trend I'm sure you've noticed as well, or maybe we
even spoke about it, where everyone and politicians curse now
all the time, and they do it as a shortcut
to exert some kind of earnestness, but it's all fake, right,
and it comes off like they're being I think I
do think Donald Trump does not think much before he speaks,
and if he has a problem with someone, he says it,
and maybe you know, he overstates it, and sometimes I
think it's kind of disgusting. But I think a decorum,
a certain level of decorum, is something we should have
from our leaders. I'm not I agree with you. It
doesn't need to be this. You know this what is
like Tip O'Neil and Reagan meeting for breakfast type of
thing all the time. And you hate each other, then
you can you don't need to hide that. But we
should treat each other with a certain level of respect.
I say that as you know, everyone always tells me
it's a Christian country. I agree. I mean, we need
to have a certain amount of respect for each other.
Everyone is always running around I think picking the worst
moment their enemy has and defining him. That way, and
it makes us kind of hate each other, and this
coarseness and how we speak of each other. I like
a good debate, I like a good insult, like I'm
not against any of that, but I think there's this
ugliness that isn't really about debate anymore. It's like so
personalized that it's weird to me. I don't even see
anyone debating policy anymore left right. It's right right on
the right. People debate right wing policy on the left,
but I never see that crossover. I don't know. I
don't even know where I'm going with this.
Speaker 3: I would give one other thing about this, which is
it's just this is a topic that I'm personally conflicted on.
You look at something like the radical trans movement, which
involves people denying reality, farming bodies, removing healthy body parts,
forcing everybody into like a fantasy realm where you get
to change your sex, even though sex cannot be changed.
Speaker 2: It's innate and unchangeable.
Speaker 3: And what happened is a lot of people in this country,
probably based on Christian heritage and not belief, but that background,
were very polite about the whole thing, polite to the
point of destruction, and polite to the point that children
were being mutilated, permanently sterilized, and having their lives destroyed.
Speaker 2: And there is this.
Speaker 3: Issue of how far do you take being polite. I
do agree we should treat each other with respect and love,
and then I also think that people are taking advantage
of that to destroy the republic to the point that
we are going to be vulnerable to war, civil war,
massive amounts of conflict, and that we should be loving
but much more forthright about how unacceptable some of these
positions are. Like communism is unacceptable, and much of the
Democrat Party is just embracing it fully and thinking that
if they call it democratic socialism, that will people will
be nicer to them, and then they are because a
lot of this stuff is very damaging to the lives
of Americans. What people are doing to our cities is horrific.
The taxes, the crime, the like, complete lawlessness happening in
many cities, and we should be more forthright about opposing it.
I think and being and that does mean being like
being intense and sometimes mean.
Speaker 1: Probably no, I think that's fine. I don't exactly know
where the line is I mean at line is I
mean at hominem attacks I don't like. And you see
them all the time now as a kind of way
to dismiss someone, you know, mocking them for whatever. And
even that's okay sometimes if the person's really evil. I
think you need to be able to call someone evil.
You need to be able to call what is wrong wrong,
what is true truth? Like ten years ago I wrote
a column for The Federalist where I said something like,
we have to start calling people who lie liars, not
call because all these euphemisms and NPR had me on
and it said, like conservative columnist says, you know, we
need to start people calling people liars, like it was
some kind of revolutionary act to just say what things are. Now,
maybe I'm wrong, you know, you can disagree, but there
is a kind of ugly underlying ugliness to a lot
of this, and it I don't know. I don't know
that I think harms the case that maybe people are
trying to make Sometimes.
Speaker 4: Well, Washington's housing fixes backfire. The Watchdot on Wall Street
podcast with Chris Markowski. Every day, Chris helps unpack the
connection between politics and the economy and how it affects
your wallet. Trump plans on purchasing billions and mortgage backed securities,
as well as allowing people to use retirement to make
down payments. Does adding more cash bring down the price
or at fuel to the fire. Whether it's happening in
DC or down on Wall Street, it's affecting you financially.
Speaker 1: Be informed.
Speaker 4: Check out the Watchdot on Wall Street podcast with Chris
Markowski on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 1: Let's talk a little bit about Greenland. Okay, Now we've
mentioned this in passing I think a few times, and
I am actually a fan of trying to obtain Greenland
for the United States for geopolitical reasons. And went the
Chinese there, and I went the Russians there and all
of that. Donald Trump has made this something of I
call it an obsession. I mean, he tweets about it
a lot. He'll tweet about it in the middle of
the night. He'll have memes where there's you know, you know,
the Greenlands of this American just puts an American flag over
the whole thing. What I mean, every poll shows me,
and you can believe polls are not that, like seventy
five percent of Americans have zero interest in any kind
of military expedition there. Yes, and I agree, And I
think today in Davos, Donald Trump says that he would
not take it by force. This is just like the
way he wheels and deals. I think he's trying to
exert pressure and leverage and all of that. I think
he's thinking about Greenland too much, like let's make an offer.
Let's make it if you want. I saw a lot
of people complaining that, you know, we're suffer here in
American suffer, and now we're going to give ten ten
thousand dollars to every person in Greenland, you know. Yeah, yeah,
I think it would be good for the United States,
though I should and if people don't know, Denmark, Greenland
is Dane territory, but we have carte blanche basically to
do what we want there. We have military there. We
signed a deal I believe in the fifties to that
that the Danes allow us to do essentially whatever we
want there. So I feel like he's just the obsession
with this place. It just does not comport with its
important I don't know what do you mean. I'm just
mentioning this because it literally like dominates the news. It's
like he talks about this ninety percent of the time.
Speaker 3: So okay, first off, I'll just say that obtaining Greenland
has been on the wish list of presidents going back
like one hundred years. It's geopolitical significance is massive relative
to like what it is, which is a country with
not many people that's very icy and poorly named as Greenland.
And Trump seems to be that president who does what
everybody says they're going to do but doesn't do, or
that takes action that everybody else like just talks about.
And so I'm not surprised he was talking about this
during the first administration, and when he presented it, everybody
acted like it was the craziest idea. But it really
is something that Americans have thought about for a long time.
Speaker 2: I do not believe.
Speaker 3: I need to study more, but like just you know, cursory,
I'm glad he's saying he doesn't want to use force,
because if you subscribe to just war theory, I don't
see the case for, at least at this point, of
a war of expansion that would involve the loss of
life and all that. But I do see a reason
why we could have a good alliance here.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 3: Buick from the Sugar Cubes, I do. So my brother
and I were talking about her because he, for some
reason didn't realize that she had been in the Sugar Cubes.
And I remembered the time the first time I saw her,
which was on Saturday Night Live in nineteen eighty eight,
and I was babysitting and I was very young, and
I immediately went out and bought the tape, the cassette
tape for Life's Too Good.
Speaker 2: And I've always just kind of liked her.
Speaker 3: I think she's got a really great vibe and voice
and all that, and so I was just looking into
her because of this conversation, and I saw that she
was encouraging Greenlanders to throw off all of the colonialism
and become independent. And I was like, Wow, does she
have a death wish for Greenland? Like if they didn't
have support of Denmark or the US, they'd be done right,
Like it would be so easy to take them over
if they were just independent. Like the whole reason why
this is a challenge is because of the Danes.
Speaker 1: Well, I just want to say, I don't think there
would be a single person would lose their lives if
we wanted to take Greenland. We would take it very easily.
It's thirty thousand people there. Here's the thing, you know,
Donald Trump's out there, He's threatening the Danes and others
with all kinds of massive tariffs if they don't go
along with this, and that you're just pushing these people
towards China. That it is not worth it's backfiring in
a way. I just think the over like this is
the sort of thing that you should be doing quietly,
not embarrassing another country. The Danes can't be like, oh,
we got bullied into this and we have to do it.
You're going to create a kind of and I'm not
this pro NATO guy. I actually think that that Europe
needs to take care of itself far better. The Danes
actually aren't bad. I mean they they have withstood the
immigration or migration stuff there there there there, terrorists aren't
very high. They're they're they're a good country in a
lot of ways. I just don't get what this how
this benefits the United States to to, you know, push
on this to such a degree. But yeah, I agree
with everything you said.
Speaker 3: Other than that, now, I do think that people don't
give credit to Donald Trump's just his negotiation strategy has
worked really well for him over the course of his life,
and it usually does begin with some great outsize threat
followed by completely reasonable negotiations. He wrote about it these uh,
you magnificent Mastard. I read it in your book, like
he put it in the book, what his whole negotiation
style is. And everyone acts like it's the craziest thing
world every time they see it, and it's getting kind
of blame. I saw, oh my gosh, I saw someone
say that because of what he'd said about Greenland needing
to like, you know, bow down to us and come
our way, that it was twenty fifth Amendment time.
Speaker 2: I think anyone who.
Speaker 3: Says that we should be looking at the twenty fifth
Amendment for Donald Trump should themselves be institutionalized like they
are losing grasp on reality to such an extent that
their loved ones should care for them and put them
in a safe place. Particularly when you see people who
are ostensibly on the right, or who previously claimed to
be on the right, who said word zero about Joe
Biden and the twenty fifth Amendment and then they're out
there re upping it. It's embarrassing. I feel badly for them.
I feel bad for them. I feel like they should
get help and that their loved ones should get them
out of public life.
Speaker 1: Well, everybody who talks about the twenty fifth Amendment is
engaged in kind of wishcasting for any at any point.
It's just never probably going to happen, unless there's a
president who has you know, who literally runs naked through DC,
you know what I mean. Like, there's just it's never
going to happen. People talking about it literally.
Speaker 2: Be Joe Biden, and nobody brought.
Speaker 1: It exactly exactly.
Speaker 2: I do think, Well, his friends had died, I mean
he I.
Speaker 1: Do think though, like his letter and text or whatever
it was to the Norwegians, I mean, he's just I
don't know why he does stuff like that. Like it's
so to say that Donald Trump is egocentric is a
massive understatement. I don't we need a better word than that.
The Norwegians didn't give him the Nobel Peace Rice, so
now he's angry about that. Like, this is a kind
of stuff that I think probably turns off a lot
of people because it's not about America. Yeah, we'll see
what happens.
Speaker 2: I just again, this is.
Speaker 1: To me, I mean, we can't we cannot pretend that
this is normal, right, nothing about Donald Trump? And also
I just want to one I'll let you talk. But
one thing you mentioned the book. I get the book.
I get what he does. Running a country is not
the same as running a business. The Danes are not
looking for profit here. The Danes Greenland is a welfare
state for the for Denmark, and it's been that for
a long time. It's a prestige thing. So you probably
need to approach it a little different than you would
a hostile takeover of another company or whatever he wrote
about in his book. It's different.
Speaker 3: Sorry, okay, I just back to the You didn't give
me the peace prize, so why should I care about peace?
To me, that reads as obvious humor. And also I
don't know, I mean, does that not strike you as
funny or no?
Speaker 1: A lot of the crazier things he says strike me
as very funny. I just don't know if I want
my president doing it. I don't know if that was
a joke. I feel like probably not, But I don't know.
I don't know. I don't know. Sometimes I don't know.
I do know. Listen, it's not a twenty fifth Amendment thing.
Though it's just a bad, bad text or letter. Okay,
let's talk a bit about if you like about Jos Shapiro.
I don't know if you saw this story. He has
a book coming out. It's called Where We Keep the
Light God? Is there anything worse than political memoirs. I mean,
I would say ninety percent of them are just it's sufferable,
just so difficult to read. He in that book, which
I have not read, I've just read excerpts, he tells
the story of his vetting process the Democratic Party's vice
presidential nomination in twenty twenty four, where he had a
meeting with a woman named Dana Remis I guess is
her name, and she was with the Obama administration, who
was quote unnecessarily contentious with him and then asked him
if he was a double agent for Israel or whether
he communicated with an undercover agent of Israel. A lot
of Jewish people, including myself, immediately took notice because the
dual loyalty smear is not new. In fact, it's quite
it's an old trope. It's been around forever. But hearing
this happened to him makes all the sense in the world,
because there was no reason that he shouldn't have been
the VP. He had taken the VP, not unless he
didn't want it, which it seems to me he did.
He was his approval race. Again, these are just polls,
but it matters his approval rating at the time of
this interview. I looked it up. In Pennsylvania, it was
between fifty seven and fifty nine in all polls. He
won fifty six percent of the state In twenty twenty two,
Pennsylvania was won by Donald Trump. Walls, on the other hand,
who eventually got the NOD, was pretty unpopular in his
own state of Minnesota, which has not gone to a
Republican since nineteen seventy two when Richard Nixon won it.
Meaning like Pennsylvania is a very important state. It is
in many ways the pivotal state in the last election,
and they did not go with him. I believe they
didn't go with him because he was Jewish. I'm not
saying that Kamala Harris is an anti Semite. I'm not
even saying that people asked him these questions are anti Semites.
I think they're actually trying to chill When people do this,
they're trying to chill your pro Israel views, which they
asked him if he would apologize for speaking out against
these Prohamas protesters. But he was a better candidate in
every way. Walls was a one of the worst vice
presidential candidates probably in history, certainly in modern history. There
was no reason not to pick him that I could see.
So I think it's fair for him to be offended
by these questions. I just want to say, I don't
think he's any kind of hero because at the time,
and I again I was at the Federalist and I
wrote about this, he cowardly walked back his pro Israel positions.
He was a coward. He apologized for a columny he
wrote when he was twenty years old in college where
he said that the Palestinians could never have a state
because they were a warlike people and didn't weren't up
to it, which history has proven him correct his twenty
year old self. And so he clearly wanted to be
the vice presidential candidate today when it's financially expedient for him,
when it's politically expedient for him, because this stuff has
subsided somewhat now he speaks out.
Speaker 3: So I am just thinking about this in the context
of he has a book coming out that he's trying
to sell, and so when you do that, you take
things that are juicy and you go with them. And
it sounds like what he went through was what when
it's in the federal judiciary, you call an SDR sex
drugs and rock and roll.
Speaker 2: Is that what it's called sex trugs.
Speaker 3: It's like an interview where that we've written that I've
written about a few times as it relates to Supreme
Court nominees. Before someone nominates you, they want to find
out what is going to come out during the campaign,
and so you get asked all sorts of sensitive questions.
Have you ever paid for an abortion? Have you ever
cheated on your wife? Have you taken any illegal drugs?
And the reason why is because you might remember that
under Reagan there was a nominee who had to have
his name pulled because he had smoked marijuana with his
graduate students or like law students, And it's a common
occurrence like do you have any tax problems? Do you
have anything like that? And so I could see them
asking questions like have you ever had any dealings with
any foreign agents?
Speaker 2: What were they?
Speaker 3: You know, being more specific about it, and it not
necessarily I know that I know that Kamala Harris has
some issues in the Democrat Party, has some issues with
anti Semitism. But I could also see a case for
this just being a due diligence that they were performing.
Speaker 1: Do you believe First of all, I want to say,
it is completely legitimate to ask someone do you have
any financial entanglements with this other country? Have you ever
lobbied for this other country? Do you see any conflicts
of interest? That's not what they asked him. They literally
asked him if he had been a trader. Right? Do
you think that you know that Walls went to China
in nineteen eighty nine when Tiaman Square happened the protesters
were killed. He went there thirty times. He was a
fellow at a Chai Coom university, visiting fellow. He had
a lot of ties to China. And now, by the way,
where was where was all their vetting on all the
fraud and everything else he's probably been involved in. Do
you think they asked him if he was a Chinese spy?
Speaker 2: No, but I don't know.
Speaker 1: I doubt it very highly.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 1: The reason supposedly that they asked Shapiro whether he was
an Israeli agent. Guy's been in government forever. Is this?
But he had when he was a kid, he went
to a kibbutz and learned there, and there was IDF there,
and he had done something with the IDF. Like supposedly
this was the impetus for it. I don't know looking
at what was going on in the summer of twenty
twenty four within the Democratic Party, the pro Haamas faction,
that they were scared to insult the other questions they
supposedly asked him. I think it's if someone asked me, well,
this is why I'm mad at him. If someone asked
me if I was a trader, I would not go
campaign for them after I would speak up for myself.
He said nothing until now when he can make some money.
But I don't know.
Speaker 3: Well, Republicans should think they're stars that he was not
chosen because he would have been much more difficult to
be Maybe Trump would have won no matter what, probably so,
but he would have been more difficult.
Speaker 2: I wondered if you saw that. I think it was
last week.
Speaker 3: Within a few hours, all sorts of leaders on the
progressive left started tweeting against anti Semitism. Yeah, and I
had to imagine that they just like brought everybody into
a room and said, here's the polling. You're going to
say something right now. You got to do it, like
we have got to change this image of the Democrat
Party as embracing antisemites. Did you see that or no,
like AOC one of the.
Speaker 1: People, Yeah, I mean, because the wording was almost exactly
the same on all those tweets. It's obviously that some
group told them to do it. They probably see what's
going on with some of the people, you know, and
I hate to call them far right, because I don't
even think that that's the true. But these podcasters that
are popular now and they want to make you know,
the juxtaposition would be it's difficult for them to try
to hang those people on the Republican Party or tether
them together if they themselves are acting a certain way.
But for me, the Democrat Democratic Party is still far
because they've elected officials who act in this way. Not
just a podcast or for young people gonna it's gonna
be crazy, let's talk. Do you want to talk about
culture now or do we have anything else you do? Oh,
it's the excitement there. What what'd you watch? So?
Speaker 3: First off, I just wanted to say, because I was
thinking about it at the start of the new year,
that we have so many generous donors at the Federalist
and a lot of listeners even of this podcast, who
came through end of year giving gifts, becoming monthly givers,
and it means so much to us, and we are
able to We're able to accomplish a lot through that generosity.
And I just want to thank those who have joined
with us and encourage anyone who has not yet joined
with us.
Speaker 2: To do so. It is greatly appreciated. That has nothing
to do with culture.
Speaker 3: So I will also tell you I forgot last week
to tell you about a movie I had watched the
previous week. Okay again, and I should say, which is
Umbrellas of Schrberg.
Speaker 2: Schuurburg. Is that how you're saying it?
Speaker 1: I don't know. I don't know this movie nineteen sixty four,
I think one.
Speaker 3: Of the most famous movies out there. It's a musical,
but it's French. The cinematography is unbelievable. Like I would
just like to have it on in the background all
the time. You just look at any shot, and the
shot is composed perfectly, and Catherine Deneuve is in it.
Speaker 2: You've not seen it.
Speaker 1: I have not seen it.
Speaker 2: Okay, Well, I.
Speaker 3: Mean it's a musical, so I'm not like going to
encourage you to necessarily want wow.
Speaker 2: Just feel about that.
Speaker 1: Just pulling it up on the internets here it is
obviously has been. It was nominated for five Academy Awards.
It's considered like one of the great films of all time.
I don't even think I have ever heard of this movie,
which is weird because I'm really into film and movies,
so I will probably go watch it even though.
Speaker 3: It's Yeah, Catherine de Nube is great in it, but
my favorite was the woman playing her mother, Anne Vernon,
who just turned one hundred and two. This and it's
a love story of a sort that is so you know,
just like touching, like I keep thinking about it about
the complexity of love.
Speaker 2: And again it's all sung.
Speaker 3: And then it also who did the the score? You
will know the the song. I think it's I Will
Wait for You because it's been recorded by many many artists.
Speaker 2: But okay, yeah, so that was good.
Speaker 3: I would I would just recommend it, Okay, and then
I have seen a bunch of other stuff in the
last week as well. I saw I rewatched Room with
a View.
Speaker 1: Mm hmm. I saw that years and years ago, so.
Speaker 2: I liked it a lot.
Speaker 3: I thought it was well done, although I definitely have
that problem like the older I get, the more movies
fail to work with me because I start siding with
the wrong people, you know, like how young love is
frequently so stupid.
Speaker 2: You're just like, these people are stupid.
Speaker 3: Like Romeo and Juliet. When you're a teenager reading it,
it's very different when you're an adult and you're like,
oh gosh, get it together, guys.
Speaker 2: And I felt a little bit that way with Room
with a View. Who's the guy that was in my left.
Speaker 1: Foot, Daniel d Lewis.
Speaker 3: He's in this movie as a very young, like evil guy,
but I was like, maybe she should have gone with
him instead of so the other.
Speaker 1: Guy, of course, of course should have.
Speaker 3: And there's a scene that is the only scene I
remember from when I watched it when I was a
teenager for understandable reasons, where three men are enjoying a
swim naked and things are just flopping everywhere, and Mark
was like this is ridiculous. It's just ridiculous to see
this many naked parts on men just flopping around and
it's not sexualized or anything. It's just they're playing in
a spring. But it was kind of like, Okay, here
we go, and.
Speaker 1: Men are always getting naked and jumping into springs together.
Speaker 3: I was park but it's not really sexualized. And he's
like Molly anytime. He's like, maybe in UK and we know,
like all we need to know about their boarding school system.
He's like, let me tell you, in America, men don't
get naked and wrestle each other, Like just not.
Speaker 1: What we do. We're quite puritanical in that sense for sure.
Speaker 3: And then we watched a Netflix movie that I can
actually recommend, I think the first time I can truly
give a recommendation for a Netflix movie. And I can't
remember what it's called, but I think it's called The Cut,
and it's with Ben Affleck and Matt Damon.
Speaker 1: It is not called the it is not called The Cut.
It is called The Rip. And uh, it's okay, you
like that movie. I did not like it, oh really really.
There are a number of reasons. The whole one is
it felt like, uh, like an expensive episode of like
Law and Order or something like. And but more than that,
the implausibility. First of all, I just found it in
the whole story is just ridiculously implausible. I don't want
to give it. I'm going to give away some of it,
but that the cops show up and that no, there's
no backup and they have to kind of like it's
Ford Apatche the Bronx there and they have to fight
off all these other forces. It's just kind of it
just never bought it. But more than that, I just
felt like, I actually don't dislike Matt Damon and Ben Affleck,
and I just didn't feel like it just didn't feel
like there was much acting there in a way, there
was no real I don't know, it just it bored
me kind of. I don't know, why'd you like it?
I know it's gotten good reviews, so I'm probably on
the outside here, but.
Speaker 3: Well, I just enjoyed. Yeah, I thought it was I
don't know, I just thought it was pretty good. Like
it's a mystery what's going on or what do you
call it? Kind of a mystery?
Speaker 1: There is a thriller.
Speaker 3: Things aren't as they seem and you don't know who
to trust.
Speaker 2: You don't know who.
Speaker 3: The good guys or the bad guys are, and I
I'm going to talk about another thing I saw where
that was not really the case, although there was finally
an ultimate twist, I guess, And I just like it
when you're kind of like, I'm not sure exactly what's
going on and I'd like to figure it out.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it was, it wasn't it was. It was okay,
I guess. I just maybe my expectations were higher because
people were saying how good it was. I don't know.
Speaker 3: Likewise, maybe my expectations were extremely low. I was like,
Netflix movie, I did do such a horrible job, it's.
Speaker 2: Not worth it. And then I was like, oh, I'm
kind of into this. So there's that.
Speaker 3: And it was also fun to see Matt Damon and
Ben Affleck together. I have a friend who worked with
them on a project. And like many, this is like
twenty five years ago, and at the time, Matt Damon
was seen as the brilliant one and Ben Affleck is
kind of a cute, good looking but stupid one. And
she had said that's not entirely accurate, like Ben Affleck
is brilliant for.
Speaker 1: What did you ever see the family Guy thing where
it depands to met Matt Damon. He's type in a
way writing goodwill hunting and Ben Affleck's just smoking a joint,
laying on the couch and it goes, why don't you
throw that my name on that thing? That's how people
viewed it. But when I saw you know, longer interviews
with them, it's clear that Ben Affleck is kind of
maybe even a more creative force. Like I think Ben
Affleck is a very good director. I've liked the movies
he's directed quite a bit. I find him as an actor,
though I think Matt Damon's probably a better actor. I
just think Matt Damon has more range as an actor.
But I don't know, I don't think about it too deeply.
What else?
Speaker 3: And then my final thing is that we watched the
limited series seven Dials.
Speaker 1: Oh the Agatha Christie.
Speaker 2: Thing so Netflix.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so it's one of Agatha Christie's lesser works and
they do a really good job with it. Like I
thought it looked great, really enjoyed the lead actress in it.
It was scary in part, you know, it was violent
parts in all the good Agatha Christie ways, and but
I didn't like how it was like so obvious what
was going on for the longest time. There was a
little bit of a twist at the end, but not
enough to satisfy the who done it? The lack of
a who done it? Because you know who did it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I've been debating whether to watch that or not.
But you think it's like on the whole Worth scene,
I do, okay, O love but I.
Speaker 3: Guess it was Helen and Bottom Carter weekend or whatever
because I do.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, she was in a room with a view, right, Yeah.
Speaker 3: I like how unique she is in her approach and
how that's worked for her for so long.
Speaker 1: She's great, she's never boring to watch. I mean, she
was in like Fight Club I remember, right, and she was,
but she was also in The Queen like she Yeah,
she's great.
Speaker 2: She got range.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there are those people who like everyone loves Meryl Streep,
but to me, she's always Meryl Streep in whatever she does.
Speaker 2: And I kind of like that. Helen A. Bottom Carter
just's talented.
Speaker 1: Yep. I the only thing other than the Rip that
I watch I've been I've been binging this show that's
old called The Closer that I saw on Netflix with
Kira Sedgwick, Kevin Bacon's wife, and I like it. I
think I would. Each episode has not every episode, but
many of the episodes are quite well done as far
as a murder, you know, procedural murder mystery thing goes.
It's nothing revolutionary here, but she's good and the show's
pretty good, and I've been binge watching it. I hate
when I get pulled into something like that. I'm like,
how many seasons are there? Oh? Seven? I come in
it for seven seasons. Anyway. If you'd like to reach
the show, please do so at radio at the Federalist
dot com. We love to hear from you, and we
will be back next week. Until them be lovers of
freedom and anxious for the fray.
Speaker 4: Fit ex forever.
Speaker 2: I will wait for you.
Speaker 1: For a thous and summers.
Speaker 4: I wi