Speaker 1: Welcome back, everyone to a new episode of You're Wrong
with Molly Hemingway, editor in chief of the Federalist and
David Harsani, a 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'd love to hear from you. Molly, I was just curious,
did you enjoy the Broadway debut of Supreme Court Justice
Kaitanji Brown Jackson? What'd you think of that?
Speaker 2: So?
Speaker 3: I only saw the very limited clips they gave, and
even those limited clips showed that as bad of a
Supreme Court justice as she may be, she is still
better at that than at Broadway.
Speaker 1: Not sure about that. The play was and juliet at
person as I said, and Juliette.
Speaker 3: Did you read Matt Taybee's write up of the music?
Speaker 2: All?
Speaker 1: Now?
Speaker 3: Okay, So everyone just kind of knows it's this popular
Tony nominated musical that uses current music, you know, in
that way that Mulan Rouge did to retell the story
of Romeo and juliet with female empowerment. So instead of
Juliette killing herself in the end, she just moves on
from a boy that she didn't really know that well,
and Tybee writes it up and he's screaming while he's
doing it. Is the best way I can describe it,
about how awful it is and unimaginative and just embarrassingly stupid,
and how these people really think they're giving it to
old William Shakespeare, but really they're just showing that they're
not very smart individuals. And it's a great I don't
remember what the name of his piece was on substack,
but it was a great read.
Speaker 1: Do you feel like we've turned a societal corner maybe
where these things that we that a lot of people
were at least kind of gate where had some patience
with hearing this kind of woke or whatever you'd call
this kind of nonsense. It's just we can openly mock
it now. I feel like we've turned some kind of corner.
Speaker 3: I was thinking about this because I was reading like
a totally innocuous tweet from Dan McLaughlin saying, you know,
Donald Trump had just won the Electoral College but done
so really poorly, basically like in a completely unimpressive way,
and he was the twenty second highest vote getter in
history or something, or of the electoral college vote, and
I was just thinking about, well, to be honest, I
was thinking a little bit about how that completely misses
the point of what happened. But also what you just
said is the thing that's in the air. People feel
like we have been that something happened where you can
now overtly state this stupidity of some of the woke
ideology that had pervaded discourse. And people like you and
I could always do that because we're paid for our opinions,
but there was this thing happening in the country where
people felt very stifled and they had to protect their
jobs or their children, and so they couldn't really just
say honest, totally obvious things about how the left had
hurt culture or hurt other institutions that they run. And
so Yes and Juliette. Though very popular with the New
York City crowds or tourists to come to New York
City to see a musical, it's just kind of missing
the mood of the moment.
Speaker 1: I think, if I may just this is slightly off
what we were going to talk about. But what you
just said, I've actually written about this, you know, it's
something that's coming out in the future. But I was
thinking about the reopening of the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris,
you know, and how this just I watched this documentary
on it. It's just this beautiful building. And then the reopening,
all these Western leaders came and they listened to you know,
this guy, this composer Greki. He was this anti communist
Polish composer, and and classics like handle whatever. It was
just all Western and all beautiful, and they rebuilt it
in only five years. Initially, you know, it took a
century to build the place, and they used modern techniques
to to just construct this medieval you know architecture. It's
just like af fusing of modern you know, efficient ways
of building things with beautiful architecture. And it was just
I hope that in the future people look back at
this moment as the moment where sort of the West
was back, you know what I mean, where people weren't
scared to defend Western civilization and culture. Doesn't mean everything
that Republicans, for instance, say, is right or anything like that.
It's just we don't have to be lorded over by
people who kind of shame you into, you know, accepting
things that you know are either untrue or crazy. And
you know, you know how everyone always evolves into the left.
You never evolved into being a conservative, you know, when
they're talking about like abortion or whatever position. So anyway,
I know this is a little a little far flung,
but to me, this all sort of comes together.
Speaker 3: I gave a speech a few years ago at the
Bradley Prizes talking about the need for a sort of
a counter revolution because people always think of conservatism as
preserving various things. Well, what happens when those things that
you want to preserve are no longer there, You actually
have to return to them. You have to you have
to fight for them. And it's not so stale of
a movement when you're having to fight. And we're seeing
some of that fight happening. I don't know if it'll
be enough. I'm very nervous about it, but I'm hopeful.
And to your point on the Notre Dame thing and people,
you know, just people taking hold of Western civilization and
being pleased with it. I was reading, I was trying
to get some information for just a basic passage that
I was writing about a particular moment of history, and
I was on like history dot com and it was embarrassing.
It was like, the nineteen fifties were a time of
great economic growth and everyone was having kids and people
were able to buy their own homes for the first time,
and inflation was low, and you know, rock and roll
was happening, and everyone was getting televisions. But it was
really bad because women had to couldn't work out of
the home, and other marginalized groups didn't have this good thing.
And I was like, I'm just kind of sick of
this whole attitude of how And I'm not saying by
any means that when you teach history, you don't teach
the full story, but there was this self loathing. There
is this self loathing in the way the American educational
establishment teaches American history that threatens the existence of the republic.
And they really have brought us to the edge. And so, yes,
I'm very happy about where we are at this particular moment,
but they're not done trying to destroy the country, and
so we have a little bit of an upper hand
right now, but we need to make sure that they're defeated.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm not prematurely celebrating anything. I don't know who's
going to win. I think all the major institutions are
still in the hands of people who hate Western civilization basically.
But I was just thinking about this as well. You know,
we're teaching our kids basically to hate all the things
that made us great, religion, natural rights, capitalism. But I
do have hope, and I was another thing if I
could just connect to this. I was thinking about how
the RmlA and how incredibly successful he's been down there,
and how unabashedly you know, South America is this continent
that is constantly sliding back into collectivism and it's just
been a problem forever, and he is just unabout actually
pro market, pro western civilization, pro other nations like the
United States and Isron else who are defenders of that
legacy anyway. So it does give me some hope that
it's not the only place. And you think about Europe,
you know, places like Hungary and elsewhere that you know
that left wingers hate. But the truth is I don't
like everything Hungary does, but I believe they do the
things they do because they want to reclaim, you know,
their history, and reclaim a lot of the ideas that
they believe.
Speaker 3: It is good.
Speaker 1: It's about fascism. It's about being Hungarian and being European
and not just giving up you know, open borders things
like that, also that assimilation. Anyway, I'm all over the place,
but all I think there are a lot of fights
that need to be fought, and it seems to me
at least that I'm not you know, again, I'm not
saying that Organs are right about everything, but now that
Trump wont it seems a lot of people are willing
to engage in those fights, and you know, I think
that boats well for the future, I hope better than
what was going on before.
Speaker 3: So I still have something more to say about the
broad Way thing, but I just want to add another
point on what you just said, which is some of
the threats against well, some of the threats against classical
liberalism have come from the left, which has embraced a
sort of authoritarian restriction on speech and hatred of all
of the things that have made America great. But you've
also seen some of that on the right. And I
think the reaction on the right of rejecting markets or
other things that have led to our flourishing is a
result of how failed the elites were and how they
were handling all sorts of things, whether that's wars or
the border, or the economy, or accountability for mistakes, and
having some success with genuinely Western ideals is a great
way to push back the threats from both the left
and that new right.
Speaker 1: Well, I'm very thankful that you brought that up, So
let me just add to that just slightly a minute.
I one hundred percent agree. There are a lot of
people on the right, the new right mostly who reject
liberalism real you know, classical liberalism, not just liberalism. And
they'll say it, they reject classical liberalism. I think that
it's misguided and it's just reactionary because a lot of
people have appropriated those ideas and failed. I'll give you
a perfect example of the European Union. It appropriates and
claims the mantle of liberalism, but all it does is
use it in ways that failed the people. And I
hope that because of Malay and others, and hopefully the
Trump administration with Doge and other things like that, can,
like you say, the only way you're going to you
can bring people in because they're normal and they've rejected
the lefts kind of social science quackery and authoritarianism. But
you're only going to keep them if you show them
results and success and make their lives better. And frankly,
it's going to be tough because the Biden administration honestly
is set up an economy that's brittle right now. You know,
things could go you know, the spending and we can
get into that another time, and everything else. It could
be a big problem. So let's talk about the Broadway.
Speaker 3: Yeah well yeah, no, Or to bring it back to
the court. I was thinking about this in part you know,
if you look at the conservative judicial movement, which began
as a reaction to how the left had taken over
federal courts and the Supreme Court in particular, and just
done this outcome based jurisprudence, like, we're not happy with
the pace of change that the Americans are providing us,
so we're just going to declare things as being constitutional
even though they're nowhere in the Constitution, or even if
the means by which we declare them are in fact
anti constitutional. So finally, sort of slowly it goes from
a stream to a massive movement in the eighties, this
conservative judicial project of people who think that we should
have a more constitutionalist approach to interpreting the law and
doing it based on the original meaning of the Constitution,
not the ever changing whims of whoever happens to be
the justice at the time. And it works really well.
I mean, there are a lot of setbacks. Of course,
you might remember the Robert Boor hearing where the left
just utterly tried to destroy that person, or how they
would destroy nominees because they were worried that they would
be originalist interpreters of the Constitution like Ginsburg, who had
to step down during Reagan's term. But you build up
this slowly but surely, with a ton of disappointments and
a ton of mistakes by Republican presidents. You build up
this great federal judiciary and this movement, and you take
things like the pro life movement, which was told in
nineteen seventy three that there was this like hidden mystical
right to abortion, like secretly somehow in the constitution, and
not even the left thought that was real. But it
does a lot to destroy rule of law in the
country as people kind of know what the court is doing.
And so the pro life movement works really really hard,
over literally fifty years to transform the Court into an
originalist court. And I mention all this because people talk
about how the Dobs ruling, which overturned Roe v. Wade
and returned abortion jurisprudence to the States as the Constitution
would have it, and they say, oh, this is like
such a tumultuous change, and they're so upset about it.
And I think people don't quite realize that had the
conservative judicial movement and the pro lifelent, which are two
separate things, actually had they put all this work into
changing the court, and then when Dobbs came up, you
had another one of these Bs decisions of gobbledegook trying
to find some again hidden right to abortion that doesn't
exist in the Constitution. I think you would have lost
the entire conservative judicial movement. I think people would have
given up on that branch of government altogether, meaning they
would no longer respect the decisions of the court. It
would have been a disaster. And people don't think about
that enough. And how you know, doing this bold thing
of just being honest about how abortion was not actually
right that the founders put in the Constitution. You know,
it's like so obvious that it seems kind of stupid
to say it. But but of course with the left
braying about it NonStop, you know, it can seem where
to say it anyway, that's my way to get back
to the court. Kaitanji Brown Jackson is the most recent
appointee to the court and not considered one of the
more one of the brighter ones on the court. Right
Like you might not like Elena Kagan's jurisprudence, but she
does a really good job in oral argument and plays
her games or plays her positions so as to get
the best possible outcome for her side on a decision.
Katanji Brown Jackson, she's only been there for two terms.
She's still figuring her way out. She's mostly known for
being the most loquacious justice on the court. She in
oral arguments talks a time and the reason, why do
you mind if I go into this a little bit?
Speaker 1: No, we're here, I'm sorry, you can't speak, okay.
Speaker 3: So, when a case gets to the Supreme Court, you
have oral arguments, and they are really short arguments in
front of the court, and so the advocates on either
side have to present their case very quickly, and then
you have a very short period of time where the
justices may ask questions. I don't have to ask questions,
but they may ask questions. And there are nine justices,
and if you have, say thirty minutes for questions, you
know that's not very much time per justice. Katanji Brown
Jackson spends a lot of time on questions, and it's noticeable,
particularly because she's the newest member of the court. So
rather than being someone who's kind of saying, oh, let's
watch how Elena does this, Let's watch how sam Alito
does this, she just kind of gets in there and talks,
talks talks. Now, when Gorsich came on the court, he
was mocked and derided for his questions because they took
so much time, supposedly, and all of the corporate media
were just ripping on him for spending so much time
asking questions. So she comes on the court and she
spends literally like twice or more amount of time, and
everyone says, isn't she just wonderful to talk and share
her viewpoints during oral argument? So this is kind of
the this is who she is, right, and seeing her
on Broadway there and again doing such a poor job
with it, it was just a little like, what are
you doing exactly? And it was very tone deaf. For
another reason, when the Dobs decision that I just mentioned
was leaked, it put a target on the heads of
every single justice who voted to overturn Row. So that's Alito,
Thomas Gorsich, Kavanaugh, and Amy Cony Barrett. They had to
flee their houses, they had to put on bulletproof vests.
They you know, Kavanaugh had his wife and children nearly
killed by an assassin. They've had daily protests at their houses.
They can't go out to dinner. And when that opinion
was leaked, the dissenters didn't really do anything to help
out those other justices and the dissenters and not that
this included Patanji Brown Jackson because she wasn't on the
court yet, But the dissenters or the Democrat appointed justices,
they get to go everywhere they want. They get the
red carpet rolled out for them at elite law schools,
and they get Beyonce tickets, and they they can sort
of do whatever they want, including appear on a Broadway stage.
And the other justices can't go to a Broadway play.
They can't go for a walk with their children, they
can't go out to dinner without left wing mobs threatening
their safety. You know, Chuck Schumer went to the steps
of the Supreme Court and threatened violence by name at
the workplace of Kavanaugh and Gorsage by name. He threatened
violence and never apologized. So there's just like a tone
deaf aspect of this, like a probably don't go to
like a radical queer TRANSI play that's stupid or musical
because it suggests that you have particular their viewpoints on
issues that might be before the court. I mean, but
we can set that aside. Maybe not, but maybe don't
be so tone deaf about how you get to literally
appear on stage while your colleagues still have to fear
for their lives from your supporters.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, my first reaction to seeing her was, Okay,
it's fine, why can't adjustice. You know it's her dream
and you know she's worked hard, and who cares in that?
But then I saw what you wrote, and I hadn't
thought about how the other side is not normal, that
they don't they don't act the same way that someone
an assassin showed up at Kavanaugh's house with all the
tools to kill and kidnap and torture his family, right,
And then it hit me that I wrote recently a
whole column about how the left wing is far more
prone to violence that I think it was. Eighteen to
twenty nine year olds in one poll, forty three percent
of them said it was fine to kill the CEO
of the United Healthcare Insurance Company. So I think that
all ties in, And you're right, you know, I mean, yeah,
the play's embarrassing and it's not her fault, but of
course she's celebrated and the others are slandered constantly by
corporate media as shills for billions and who knows what
other conspiracies.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, here's another thought. How much would someone have
to pay for a walk on speaking part on a
Broadway production, Like if you were to give money to
get that, or if you were to thought of that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so if you're just a rich dude and you
give probably I don't know many thousands, I don't know
one hundred thousand.
Speaker 3: I'd say it's just funny that Pro Publica, that left
wing Democrat propaganda group that goes after anyone conservative, isn't
writing a piece about how she violated ethics by getting
this thing valued. It quite a bit of money.
Speaker 1: You know, let's just use that as a segue. That
site is one of you know, they invented the amber
Thurman died from because of the abortion lawn and Georgia's story, right,
they invented all kinds of stories about Clarence Thomas. I
call it Potemkin journalism, but it's really much more insidious,
I think. And they were ready to smear peak Hexseth
right with the story about how he had not actually
been accepted by West Point. And the only reason that
that story didn't dominate our media for a week is
that the guy kept his acceptance letter in his house
and provided it, which is I don't know if that's
a normal thing for people to do. Maybe it's because
it's West Point, you know, and that's a great honor,
But that was kind of amazing. If he didn't have
that letter, what would have happened? They would have run
that story and we would have been we would have
to have you know, I don't know what would have happened.
It might have sunk his nomination.
Speaker 3: I think that my mom has kept my nomination letters
to the service academies that I got from various you know,
members of Congress when I was trying to when I'm
stupidly thinking I should go to a service academy.
Speaker 1: I ever knew that about you.
Speaker 3: If it's Pete Heegs's mom that kept it, I guess,
is what I mean. It seems like a mom thing
to do.
Speaker 1: Oh. I saw her in an interview recently. She's a
big defender obviously of her son.
Speaker 3: Well, you say obviously, But the New York Times somehow
got access to that email she wrote him that was
very critical of how he was treating women and children,
and then ran it as if that was like the
full total of the story. And as she pointed out,
she was really angry at what kind of what he'd
done with his marriage. I was just thinking, I loved
that she did that. That's what my parents would do
if I were, if I were having marital trouble, and
I loved that she did that. And I just have
one quick thing to go back to the court that
I was just thinking of. Pro Publica. They also ran
the hit pieces on Martha Alito's flags that she had
and one of the things that, Yeah, one of things
that was interesting about that is that when that flag
dust up came out, Justice Alito said, those are my
wife's flags and barring like a divorce. I don't see
how I I mean, I don't remember exactly how he
said it, but like, I don't see how I can
tell her she can't fly the flags. I asked her
not to, but I can't tell her she's half owner
of the home and blah blah blah. And it was
a very sort of pro female approach he took. Well,
there was this Democrat activist named Lauren Windsor who does
surreptitious videos, kind of like a James O'Keeffe type thing.
Actually it's worse she I think she flat out misleads people,
but in worse ways. But she goes up to Martha
and Aalido at some event and talks to her, and Martha,
you know, completely substantiates this story. You know, She's like, oh,
like that man can tell me what to do with
my flags. Those are my flags. I'm a woman and
I get to do what I want. And it was
just funny how it was supposed to be expos exposing
something nefarious, and it completely substantiated the version of events that.
Speaker 1: Had been Also, incidentally, there is nothing wrong with that
flag or either or any kind of flag from the
Revolutionary War, not just nothing wrong.
Speaker 3: I love that flag I had.
Speaker 1: I love that flag. Yeah, I love that flag.
Speaker 3: Great.
Speaker 1: It's funny since since that happened, and you know, I
drive around the country in certain places and I've seen
more of them pop up than I had before. I
hadn't actually seen many of them around. Now they're appeal
to having flags across the nation.
Speaker 3: Okay, So about the Pete hag Seth ProPublica thing though,
one of the things I thought interesting was that the
editor of Pro Publica, or an editor at Pro Publica,
he got really defiant. Pete hag Seth posted the letter
and he's like, yeah, so they were trying to write
a hip piece on me, and I have the letter
and they're stupid, and the the editor says, well, we
called west Point twice and they told us twice that
he had never even applied, and then we didn't run
the story after he provided us with this document, and
that's how journalism works. And it's like, well, actually, first off, no,
I mean, I think Biden claimed that he got into
a service academy. Did Pro Publica ever look into that?
He only the president of the United states with a
history of lying about everything. So if you were really
doing journalism and you really were interested in people's claims
about going to service academies, maybe dig into Joe Biden
a thousand times more than Pete Hegseth, an actual decorated
veteran who clearly is the type who would have been
accepted into a service academy and went to Princeton or Harvard.
I mean, like he's it's not like a shock that
he would have gotten it.
Speaker 1: Also, yeah, the next.
Speaker 3: Day a letter comes out or the email that they
sent Hegseth comes out, and it's like, dear loser, we
have verifiable information that you're a lying liar who lies.
You falsely claimed you got accepted to the military academy
and we know that you did not. Why are you
lying about this important thing? Why do you think that
as a liar you should be able to head the
Department of Defense. I mean, it was not journalism. It
wasn't like can you shed any light on this? It
was horrific. And so when that came out, it was like, oh,
is this what journalism is? Writing your hit piece already
before you collect all the information and then giving someone
forty eight minutes to respond before you hit publish, and
they just happen to have on them the one thing
that debunks it, or else you would have destroyed their lives.
That's what journalism is like. It is what journalism is
these days. But it's disgusting.
Speaker 1: Was that a verbatim quote from the letter the Loser,
Loser Loser? Yeah? It was not how a journalist conducts themselves.
I'm not saying they wouldn't send a letter, but it
has such a sort of political thrust to it, you know.
But more than that, why should we trust this outlet
that constantly concoct stories about people to destroy them. I
have no reason to trust them on anything, Like you say, just.
Speaker 3: One pitch on that left wing billionaire Democrat funders provide
limitless funding to Pro Publica to send armies of reporters
against any and all political opponents. Through Pro Publica. People
who like journalism, real journalism, should know that it takes
money to investigate things and to have reporters research things.
And they should, particularly this time of year, feel more
than welcome to give funds to the Federalist or other publications,
but really the Federalist to fund reporting on important things,
and you can do that at the Federalist dot com
slash donate.
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Speaker 2: Check out Watched Out on Wall Street podcast with Chris
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Speaker 1: Let's talk about Hegseth for a minute. So it seems
to me like he met with Senators Jony Ernst. Others
seem okay, it looks to me like he is going
to be successful. I saw Donald Trump came out. I
found this sort of interesting. You know, said he's a
good guy. We're going to stick with him, which he
didn't do for Matt Gates. I think perhaps he realizes
that this is already a done deal. Probably do you agree?
Do you think what do you think is happening?
Speaker 3: I don't think it's a done deal. I think that
I think that a lot of people are much more
positive toward Pete Hegseth than they were when his nomination
was announced, and it was a little surprising. Definitely, the
military industrial complex kind of came out immediately opposed to it,
but then they I think they just kind of moderated
on it. They feel more comfortable with some of the
other picks, which maybe should give the rest of US spots,
meaning the other picks underneath elsewhere in the Defense Department.
And then also I heard from senators that he really
is just impressive in his meetings. I think they thought
of him as a Fox News host who doesn't really
know anything. And I've said this before that before I
started working in television news, I also had some bigotry
against the talking heads, thinking they weren't very bright, and
frequently the people who are hosting shows are some of
the brightest people out there. I mean, what they're able
to do in terms of running something like that is
pretty is pretty difficult, so they shouldn't be viewed as
stupid also Pete Hegseth is a very well educated man,
and he's a very well read man, and he's thought
through all these issues, and so when he's having his
meetings with senators, they are truly becoming more impressed with him.
So I do think he's probably going to get through.
But there are also all these rumors that they're going
to like continue to try to kavanaugh him and stuff
like that, So who knows.
Speaker 1: I think, you know, even if the guy doesn't have
a lot of experience running some big organization, that would
probably give me pause, you know, but you know, that's
a more big picture position anyway. And it's more you know,
if I thought he had underlings who were really smart
and more experienced, I would I would you know, that
would get That would make me feel better about his nomination.
Speaker 3: So I do want to say George Stephanopoulos had a
panel this weekend. I can't believe he's still doing his
show after being exposed as such a horrific liar, but
he had a panel on this weekend and it was
like two left wing reporters and then Donna Brazil and
then Ryan's previous And the interesting thing was that the
two left wing reporters and Ryan's previous were all in
complete agreement that the efforts to defend Pete Hegseth had
been really smart, and so what they said this was
was that Donald Trump stood behind his nominee, as you said,
And then voters just started saying to Jonie Ernst and
to others who were trying to get rid of of
heg Seth that if they did that they would be
primary and their lives would be made very, very difficult,
and they took those threats seriously. One of my colleagues
at Fox told me that the senators were very upset
with me for highlighting these issues which we wrote about
and we broke the news that Jonny Ernest was trying
to replace heg Seth as the nominee and that she
was going against him. But the senators were very upset
that we were like allowing the people to have a
say here in what they thought about who should be
confirmed as Secretary of Defense. And it made me laugh,
but just shows you can just stand by the person,
remind elected officials that they are accountable to the people
for the decisions that they make, and just don't let
the left and the media and other democrats dictate what
you do, and then you can be very successful if
you have their positions and popular nominees. You can. You
don't have to accept that the left is trying to
bork or Clarence Thomas or Kavanaugh your nominees. You just
don't have to.
Speaker 1: Since you brought up George Stephanopolis, let's talk about the
defamation suit against him in ABC News by Donald Trump
that was settled for fifteen million dollars this week. It
caused kind of an uproar among the usual corporate media
types who rather than say, well, let's actually take a
step back and say it was the cause of the suit.
Was that Stepanopolis. I believe he was in an interview
with Nancy Mace, maybe kind of a contentious interview where
he kept saying that Donald Trump had raped e Gene Carol,
the woman who won the civil suit against him in
New York, which was not true. It's false. But instead
we're about being precise and not you know, defaming people.
They were very worried about how this sort of intimated
or showed that they were surrendering already to the you know,
the fascist incoming White House and stuff like that.
Speaker 3: So I actually want to take a step back even more,
which is to remind ourselves what the Egen Carrol civil
suit was and how it started. So this woman, who
I think is in her eighties, maybe she claimed that
when she was in her fifties, that one of the
world's maybe the world's most recognizable man hid himself in
a Bergdorf Goodman and found a way to rape her,
a fifty something year old woman in the Bergdorf Goodman.
And it's a story that strains credulity, Okay, But she
had been kind of telling this story, and you know,
she did live in New York at the time. You know,
sometimes you get these stories from people and like they're
literally impossible, like the person lived in a different country
at the time or something. But she was concocting this
with George Conway, who's the very well funded resistance guy
who runs the Lincoln Project in various other or he's
involved with the Lincoln Project and a bunch of other
never Trump financial schemes. And it was financed secretly, and
they lied about this by Reid Hoffman, who's been involved
in a ton of election interference stuff. He might remember
he manipulated social media in an Alabama race. I think
it was years ago and is a billionaire Democrat funder
and so it was a total Democrat operation and they
had the case in New York City with a jury
that was more than willing to say that in this
civil suit they believed this somewhat difficult to believe story,
but even they were unwilling to say it was rape.
So I think the first question was like, do you
think this is rape? And they were like nope. They're like,
do you think you could call this sexual harassment or
assault or something? They're like sure. And so that was
a problem though, because they really wanted, as part of
the Democrat messaging to say this was a felon and
a convicted rapist and here, and they would have had
trouble with that anyway of this being a civil trial,
but it just wasn't enough for them for what they
wanted to do with the election. And so after the fact,
the judge is like, well, if you're define rape differently
than this courtroom does, you can kind of say it's
rape now.
Speaker 1: It was terrible. He said that it was substantially true
that it was rape, like as if there is no
legal definition for that act of you know, of a
complete first degree felony or whatever right, and that in
the broader sense, everyone understands it as rape. So he
essentially discarded with the jury or the jury said no
when he just started.
Speaker 3: Himself told, but he himself was giving the guidance on
these definitions. And then I forgot one other thing, which
is that New York State kind of rejiggered their laws
to enable this lawsuit to take place. We didn't even
know what year this was supposedly taking place, and it's
a civil thing, you know, the standards here are very low.
And it was in this context that George Stephanopolis, who
of course came to fame as Bill Clinton's press secretary
at the height of all the Bill Clinton problems that
and has been working as a Democrat activist for ABC
News since then, that he berated Nancy Mace for supporting
Donald Trump, since in George Stephanopolis's mind, Trump was a rapist,
and he kept saying that, and Nancy Mayce kind of
famously was responding about how she was not appreciating the
bullying and that she was a victim of sex violence
or something, and he just said it over and over
and over again. There was no journalistic reas and for it.
It was also a lie, and it was horrific journalism,
the kind that we have become accustomed to at all
of the corporate media, and George Defnopolis is no exception.
So yeah, they had to settle for George Stefanopolis repeatedly
lying about this and give fifteen million dollars to the
Donald Trump fake news media wing at his library.
Speaker 1: And I add something about George Steppanopholis, let's go back
even further. Yeah, he worked for Clinton. He just worked
for Clinton. He was a fixer. Basically, he helped cover
up what I think were far more credible accusations of
rape against his boss and destroy helped helped to destroy
women who came forward with stories that we later learned were,
of course one hundred percent true about Bill Clinton. And
you know, the audacity of someone, first of all, the
ridiculous if there's a second tier editor hired at somewhere
that happened to be a conservative or something, there's a
revolt at the newspaper or there's a revolt at the outlet.
But this guy and others can just have be perched
top be stars at these networks. Who are just political activists.
George Stephanopolis gave I forgot what the number is, but
some huge amounts of the Clinton Foundation last selection, and
Yet was covering, you know, in twenty sixteen, and Yet
was covering the election anyway, just to give you some
background on him if you're younger and you don't remember. Yeah,
So I am very I get nervous when people start
suing other people, you know, over things they say. But
you know, when you're accusing someone of rape, this isn't
an opinion. This isn't like saying, oh, I think Donald
Trump's going to be a fascist one day. You're saying
here that you rape someone, which has never never been
adjudicated and no one has ever proven it in a
court of law. And I think he's every right to sue.
I can't believe he settled for such a small number.
I think maybe just wanted it to go away, don't
you think?
Speaker 3: Oh, I actually think that the settlement of any amount
is significant. And you know it's significant because the corporate
media reaction to it has been hysteria. People are livid
at ABC News for settling in this and they say
that's a horrific precedent. And that it makes people think
that they that they just do fake news. The polls
that have consistently shown it for decades don't show that
you're doing fake news. But this admission that you lied,
or the settlement that all but admits that you led,
that's fake news.
Speaker 1: And I do wonder if he said it like this.
I believe from the things that I've seen that Donald
Trump probably raped this woman. I don't think you could
sue him. Then it's saying it as a matter of fact, right,
I mean, that's the difference saying it as a fact. Yeah.
Speaker 3: But I'm just moving on to the next part, where
we have all these people in the media saying if
we're not allowed to defame our political opponents, we can't
do our jobs. And there is a truth to this, right.
Journalism these days is not about telling the truth or
presenting arguments and letting people decide, or describing factually what
has happened without putting major political spin on it. It
is propaganda. And they're saying this settlement threatens our propaganda
model of journalism, and if we can't lie about Donald Trump,
we're going to have trouble. And I like the honesty.
I like the admission, but I think that they should
get ready if we can just again go back New
York Times v. Sullivan, which is a very old decision now,
has done so much to protect the media even when
they lie. The standards, the burden and proof that you
have to show that someone was acting maliciously or intentionally
when they defamed their political opponents is so high that
it's almost impossible to meet. And a few years ago
you started seeing some rumblings among federal judges, including Supreme
Court Justice Clans Thomas, that this was a problem and
that it needed to be revisited, that New York Times v.
Sullivan gave way too much power to the corporate media
to lie about political opponents without enough protections for their victims.
And Lawrence Silberman, who was a wonderful judge on the
DC Circuit, wrote an assent that dealt with this in
one of the cases where he was saying, you know, again,
I think it's time to revisit some of this New
York Times v. Sullivan jurisprudence which enables our media to
just run wild against people, whether it's Nick Sandman or
pro lifers, or Donald Trump or a thousand other victims
that they have each day. I would not be shocked
to see some folding back here. And I'll just point
out too that when you look at an originalist interpretation
of our views on this, at the time the Constitution
was written, there were it was not so difficult to
hold media accountable for law about even prominent public figures.
Speaker 1: I mean, if I could push back there, I think
that in the founding era the newspapers are far worse
than they actually are today. There were so many vile
rumors about politicians spread around that people were actually dueling
and killing each other over it. Also, I'm saying something
what originalist interpretations says, you First Amendment protects lying. You
can lie if you want. There is no uh you know,
I think people deserve those kinds of protections. I don't
know enough. Yeah, yeah, I'm making I'm trying to make
my full case first.
Speaker 3: But going, okay, I'll let you make your focus.
Speaker 1: No, it's okay. I was just going to say, I'm
obviously I don't know all this. You've obviously know more
about the solving case. I mean, you've been looking at
it clearly, But I don't I worry about chilling speech
with Uh, you know, having just letigious people out there,
because what's going to happen is political people are going
to build these shops and and so suing people constantly
if they say things you know you don't like, and
that could be problematic too.
Speaker 3: I'll begin with agreement. That's actually my concern if if
the New York Times b. Sullivan is revisited and it's
easier to go after media, for it's easier for politicians
to go after media, that's going to hurt publications like
mine a heck of a lot more than the New
York Times for multiple reasons. Not only does the New
York Times have far more resources than the Federalist does
to battle these things, but also our opponents are unevenly matched,
Meaning you have all these left wing billionaires who would
be happy to take the Federalist off the map, and
a lot of people on the right just wouldn't put
their resources that much against It would take more and
it would be more difficult to take the New York
Times out. Now, what I'm talking about is different than
what the quality of the media were, Like, I'm saying
that the law was understood and differently at the time
of the Founding that you could go after media even
if you were a prominent person, because that's the thing
now is that the media basically can say whatever they
want about a public person, and public person has been
redefined really horribly. So if you just like become someone
in the news that day because of something that happened
to you, they're like, oh, you're a public person even
if you're not a politician or the CEO of a
major company or something. And you used to be able
to used to be able to have recourse in a
way that New York Times b Sullivan took away. I
learned about this from Arthur Millock's writing, where he's done
some deep dives into First Amendment and Founding Times and
how things have changed over time. And so everyone should
be on guard because it's clearly not tenable what we
have right now where you can do republic threatening hoaxes
like the Russia collusion hoax that could have destroyed the
entire country and there's nothing you can do about it
because it's all based on anonymous leaks, and you know,
you can say, oh, someone told me this thing, and
then there's nothing you can do, even as the country
might implode that's not tenable. But you don't want to
risk the First Amendment protections either.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean in the same way that I support,
you know, on let's say, on Twitter. I want there
to be unfettered free speech, even for Nazis and everything
like that. I just do wonder but the other side
of allowing this sort of thing, and I especially worry
about it when it comes to opinion journalism and what
I do. You know, I am out there saying things
about people who I believe are bad people, and it
would be Now it's not selfish, but I mean just
in general. If I think someone's guilty of a crime
and I start talking about that and I start theorizing
about that about you know, I could be sued. Maybe,
you know, I worry about that. Not for me, but
for all of us. That's all.
Speaker 3: Might not be the worst thing to worry about it,
you know what I mean, Like I wish the Post
had worried about trying to destroy the life of Brett
Kavanaugh and his daughters before they did it. They didn't
seem to worry at all. They seemed to almost to
go for more.
Speaker 1: You know the problem with this is I don't think
any of them will I don't think you'd win. I mean,
maybe you'd win a suit because you'd find the right jury.
But the thing is you have to you have to
divine why, you have to dive into their soul and
prove that they did this on purpose when they're just
passing along someone else's in nuendo. It's going to be
very difficult to do that. Right if someone shows us
a woman says I was raped, and you're like, this
woman says she was raped? How are you going to
sue the reporter? And it's going to be very difficult.
You're gonna have to sue the woman who says it. Right.
Speaker 3: Well, I think this is a good way to start
talking about the other lawsuit this week, which is the
one against the Des Moines Register for its handling of
the ann Seltzer poll. And I don't know if you
read the lawsuit that Trump filed on that. I kind
of skimmed it. It was interesting. It's it's a consumer fraud
sort of action.
Speaker 1: I read this story about it. I did not read
the suit itself. You know, I just think it's ridiculous,
And you can tell me why it's not. I don't know.
Speaker 3: I don't have a strong opinion about it. I just
kind of want to talk about the thing, which is
so Anne Seltzer, who is this polster in Iowa and
is always called by her left wing colleagues the best
polster in America, even though she's clearly not and has
had a string of mess ups in her polls. I
just want to highlight one that made me aware of
this in detail. I was out in Iowa with Fox
for the twenty twenty caucuses, and she pulled her poll
at the last minute because it showed Bernie Sanders winning,
although she claimed it was because in one of the
you know, fifteen hundred phone calls, they'd forgotten to name
Pete Buda judge or something, or they'd named him in
a different order than he was supposed to be named,
or something really sketch, but was widely interpreted as the
Democrat Party would sure like to not have Bernie Sanders
being listed as the winner. You know. Anyway, she comes
out with a poll the weekend before election Day saying,
and I think the polling average at that time had
Trump winning Iowa by like seven, with some of the
more credible polsters saying he would win by ten or something.
And she comes out and says, actually, Kamala Harris is
winning Iowa by three. And to say it sent shockwaves
through the pundit class and the journalism class is a
huge understatement. The Des Moines Register itself ran a front
page paper saying that Kamala Harris was about to win Iowa.
And what an explosive thing. This was all the media
shifted in the last few days, and the last couple
of weeks had already been pretty frenzied, where the media
were saying, oh, you know, Liz Cheney's going to help
Democrats win, and this Madison Square Garden joke that someone
told is going to cause Donald Trump to lose, you know,
that kind of level of thoughtful media analysis. And so
when Anne Saltzer, the dean or not the lady Dean
of Polster, she says Kamala Harris is gonna win Iowa,
you know, not not even Pennsylvania, but Iowa by three,
then it's potentially lights out for Trump and we are
about to see a blowout of epic proportions. And it
I know again from my experience talking with everybody that
I would say every single right of center journalist or
analyst or anyone who discussed this, with the exception of
one person, and I would like to name her, Laura Ingram.
I mean we're talking people, not at the Federalist. Every
single person was freaked out by this pole, and everyone
on the left was cheering it on, and it was
a huge, huge deal. What was the final result in Iowa?
Speaker 1: I don't know. Trump wonted handily Trump one, I.
Speaker 3: Think by ten, so she was off by thirteen points.
And if you look at the way that she revealed,
the way that she polled, her sample size I think
was like a DEM plus four polling like group, which
doesn't make any sense because I think Trump won Iowa
by like seven or eight in twenty twenty.
Speaker 1: I think Iowa has many more Republicans these days anyway,
So it's.
Speaker 3: Not even a pole. Well it's not just my point being.
It's not just that it's a bad poll. It's a
bad poll that had some evidence of bad design.
Speaker 1: So what there are tons of polling out there that's clearly,
you know, driven by part is I can't remember, or
the left wing company that's always putting out ridiculous poles.
I mean, Rasmussen is a right wing polling outfit that
usually finds right wingers winning. Am I wrong about that?
Not the one Scott Rasmussen want to but the newer one.
Speaker 3: I think Rasmussen is one of the more accurate pollsters.
If I don't know what you're saying other than that, all.
Speaker 1: Right, well, my point is that to say, now, first
of all, you can look at the internals of a pole,
you can debunk it, you can say it's not We
have free speech to say that. You shouldn't. First of all,
listen to polling. This isn't as like you're telling someone
a food is healthy and then they eat it and
it's not healthy for them and it's killing them. This
is a pole. You shouldn't. Poles don't determine how you vote,
nor should they. People should just vote any way they want.
So I don't understand how we can start suing people
for having bad polls. Like you said, she's a left
wing polster. She embarrassed herself in twenty twenty. You're saying,
and you're right that many that this did send shock waves,
But many people at the time. I wasn't prepared to
disprove you here, but I think many people at the
time were like this doesn't sound real to me. Right,
you probably said it, and I'm sure people on Fox
said it. This pole sounds fishy. I don't believe this pole, right.
It's something we can debate, it's not something.
Speaker 3: So yeah, I feel like we're doing two different things here.
One is whether you should sue over this, and the
other is still just I kind of want to just
talk about the thing. And so you mentioned food. I
can't remember what your example was exactly about food.
Speaker 1: I'm just saying, you know, someone's consumer misleading consumers about
the calorie count in your food or if it has,
you know, an ingredient or something of that nature. Less.
Speaker 3: Okay. So let's imagine that you are a food company
and the Des Moines Register puts out a pole that
says that they did a totally honest survey and everyone
said that your food tasted like dog food, but it
turned out that they had gone out of their way
to pull people who work for your competitor.
Speaker 1: Would you be.
Speaker 3: Able to do a consumer fraud action suit against the
Des Moines Register in that.
Speaker 1: Case, I'm not sure, But I'm not.
Speaker 3: Sure either, my point being.
Speaker 1: That this is going to lose money there. My livelihood
is at stake. Right, politics is a different animal. As
we know, you don't have the same rights to suit
people say things about you, right, like you mentioned before,
and if every time, first of all, you'd have to
prove intent, right, you would have to prove that she
was out there doing this on purpose. Trying to isn't
part of the suit. Also, like misleading people during an
election or election interference or something, I think that's part
of the suit.
Speaker 3: Well, I think that would be the harm that's caused
would be as a result that would be tying to the.
Speaker 1: Election he won Iowa. So my first thing, is a lawyer,
would be to say, of an effect on anything Trump
probably when Iowa within a bigger margin now than he
did the last two times. Right, did he win Iowa
last time? I don't remember.
Speaker 3: So okay, So that's that would make sense if this
were an Iowa only election. Two meaning that's an interesting
thing to say, but it's not the end of everything.
So this relates to something I saw Tim Carney say,
and I loved Tim, and he was upset about this lawsuit,
and I cannot find okay. So Tim Carney tweeted, in
addition to this being a brazen attack, on free speech.
It's also idiotic. A very wrong poll three days before
a general election doesn't sway anything. If anything, it helps Republicans,
as liberal media bias often does these days these days.
And I responded, of course, fake polls affect elections, that's
a big reason why they're done. And also fake news
dramatically affects elections in a negative way for conservatives. It's
on every set, Like you could say, oh, well, Republicans won,
so therefore the media failed. Well what if the Republicans
would have won by twenty five points without the fake
media for the last forty years, which is actually the
more likely scenario. Then to say that it doesn't that
the propaganda doesn't affect the way people think about things.
And I will just say I also am not saying
that because you have propaganda pressed that you should sue
them for election interference necessarily. But of course fake polls
affect elections in multiple ways, and they are deployed at
different times in a campaign to affect the election in
multiple ways. It's one of the things I love about
real clear politics is that they aggregate all the polls,
so you get the media and university polls in there,
which are just historically strongly biased in favor of Democrats.
But you also balance them out with the independent and
conservative posters, which tend to be far more accurate, and
it takes away some of the effect of these left
wing posters in the media and at the university. But
in the final days of a campaign, in actually pulling
matters a great deal. There are some people who only
pay attention at the very last minute of a race.
I'm not saying these people should be voting, and I
know you agree with me on that, but there are
a lot of these people who are like, now, who's
running for president again? And so when you see a
poll at the last minute saying that Kamala Harris is
winning Iowa by three points, and that means that she's
going to be doing great nationwide, and you want to
be on the winning team and you're a low information voter, yeah,
I think it can affect those last minute people. Also,
so much of who wins on election day comes out
to turnout. And if you are a really bad candidate
like Kamala Harris who hasn't exactly jazzed up her troops
and you need every last black voter in Philadelphia or whatever,
to come out and vote from wherever they are, house
or grave. You know, you need enthusiasm, and a false
poll could provide that enthusiasm and also demoralize your opposition.
I always think of the Washington Post ABC News poll
of Wisconsin. In the final days of the twenty twenty election.
The Washington Post claimed that Donald Trump was going to
lose Wisconsin by seventeen points. Seventeen points. That wasn't just
news for Wisconsin. It means that if he's going to
lose a state he won in twenty sixteen by seventeen points,
it's going to be an absolute blowout for Biden. And
if you want to be with the winning team, that's Biden.
And of course the election didn't just turn out to
be determined by forty three thousand votes across three states.
Donald Trump did lose Wisconsin. And how much did he
lose Wisconsin by?
Speaker 1: Heboly under a point.
Speaker 3: Like seven tenths of a percent. They were off by
sixteen points. That's an and Seltzer style miss. And there
are also the ways that polls affect things so much
earlier than that. So I am still scarred by twenty
twenty when you know I would be going on Special
Report every night, and every night from about like June on,
there would be polls showing that Joe Biden was going
to win his election by a blowout that nobody had
ever dreamed possible double digits. And so every night that
was sort of the framing in which we discussed things.
And I had a theory of that election which was correct,
which was that the election would actually be very close.
I didn't think necessarily that Trump would win, but I
thought it was going to be close, and as I
said moments ago, it came down to forty three thousand
votes across three states. In beginning in June, you're having
to dig yourself out of a punditry hole when the
question is like, why are we even here? Trump's losing
by twelve and then you have to say, well, you know,
I think it's spent all this time kind of getting
back up to the ground floor where you can then
talk about the debate, the actual issues moving the election.
And it is so demoralizing and it so affects the
way people talk about things in the media. And I
have personal knowledge of how this affected one cabinet official
in particular, who told me in September that he believed
the polls, and he believed the September before the election,
and that he just thought there was zero chance that
Donald Trump had even like the faintest hope of winning.
And I think it showed in how he handled the
rest of his time. And you know, so, yeah, poles
affect things, and so my big beef here is that
we just act like, oh, well, who cares when posters
lie and posters manipulate games? Like I do care about it.
I think it's really evil and wrong. And for a
country that spent billions of dollars, you know, freaking out
about supposed Russia collusion, not billions, but lots of time
and energy and tons of money freaking out about Russia
collusion on the theory that they had bought one hundred
thousand dollars in ads on Facebook, some of which supported
Hillary Clinton and some of which supported Donald Trump, and
we had to like nearly destroy the country over it.
The idea that we wouldn't take more seriously fake polling
is absurd to me.
Speaker 1: Well, I'm not speaking for my colleague Tim here, I
will say that I don't think his point was that, oh,
it doesn't matter if people lie. I think he's making
a debatable point, but a point maybe I kind of
agree with him that I don't think in twenty twenty
four poles really mattered as much as they had in
the past. For instance, I think that most first of all,
it's on the citizen and on the voter to make
these decisions for themselves. Just because you mentioned some people
who don't even know who's running, and they show that's
on them. It's not really our job to try to
create pristine elections for them, where all polls are good
and people don't lie. You're never going to do that.
That's so I guess we're talking about two different things.
One is the suit itself, which I don't know if
you're four or not. I think it's wrong. And the
polling and the lying. I think there's lying. And I
think in each election, this election specifically, and I've written
about this, I think people did not listen to the mainstream,
mainstream corporate media at all. I don't think they had
any sway over how people acted anymore. I don't think
they believe the Hitler stuff. I don't think that the
polls really affected them, and who knows, maybe some people
saw the Iowa poll and they said, whoa, he's down here.
I got to go out and bo for Trump. I
mean that happens too, right, you know, I don't we
don't count the counter history. We don't know. I mean,
you make good points, but I'm just saying it could
have gone the other way too.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And I will just only add that on the
counter history that we don't know. It could have been
a bigger blowout for Trump had this stuff not happen.
I like, how when we're getting emails from people who
are like, you neglected to mention this, that or the
other when you talked about it, And I'm thinking, oh,
we're neglecting to mention a ton of stuff because we
don't have time to dig into everything. But one thing
I would like to mention is that there was some
evidence that this poll was leaked to Democrat officials prior
to its release, which plays into the suit as well
and might show some level of clusion. And then the
only other thing I wanted to mention is there's this
great scene in Narcos where the drug cartel party fakes
polling as a means of stealing the election. And the
whole idea is if they basically fake exit polls, and
in the hope that the fake exit polls will so
demoralize the supporters of the opposing party that they won't
bother to show up, and it ends up being exposed
and then they have to come up with a different
way to st feel the election.
Speaker 1: But I mean, I mean, are we going to start
suing people who call elections too quickly or are wrong
calls or I mean, there's a you could sue people
for everything the media does affects an election. Right, there's,
like you said.
Speaker 3: Knowing people over here and there's doing nothing over here,
and I just want to kind of have more conversation
about whether we should do nothing rather than whether we
should sue.
Speaker 1: Here's what you do. You say, look at this poster.
She's terrible and it's obvious that she shouldn't be in
this business. She doesn't even I think she's retired, right,
And you're like, we will never trust these people again.
That's the best way to go about it until they
start getting it right. Until they start getting it right.
Speaker 3: So we were also going to talk about another story,
but I think we need to save it for next
week on an explosive IG report. But we move Should
we move on to.
Speaker 1: Culture. Yeah, it's gonna a little battering. You're probably gonna
mock me. My things I watched this week, but one
of them was a cartoon for adults, not an adult cartoon,
but a cartoon for adults called The Watchman, which was
a famous graphic novel made a movie. It wasn't great,
But this cartoon, actually, I think is very It's a
very kind of gen X touchstone. I would say The
Watchmen and this cartoon I don't even know if it's
called a cartoon but animated. It's animated, and it was
excellence called The Watchman Part one, so I recommend that
second one is even more embarrassing. It's called The Skeleton Crew.
Did I mention this last week? I don't think so.
It's a Star Wars show on Disney Plus with Jude Law,
the very handsome Jude Law. It's for kids. It's kind
of like Goonies meets Star Wars. So if you have kids,
this is the Star Wars show for them to watch.
And then, because I didn't want to seem like a
complete low brow cartoon watcher, me and my wife watched
there's a Da Vinci documentary on PBS. I think it
might be ken Burns, so I'm not sure, very well done,
even though I'm not a big ken Burns fan. In general,
that's what I have this week.
Speaker 3: Oh my gosh, I have nothing. I'm so sorry. I'm
so busy. I've been listening to a lot of music.
I like listening to these Saclay concerts, which are frequently
house music or DJ things. I've been getting into Ben Boehmer.
You were listen to him.
Speaker 1: No, I don't know what any of this is.
Speaker 3: Okay, well i've been. And then also there are these
Arte concerts. I think they're usually done in London, but
I'm not sure. So I just listen to those while
I write. I need music that is enjoyable and gets
me in the right writing mood without being too disruptive.
Speaker 1: So does this have like a steady, like like a beat,
like like house music or whatever that was called when
they used to.
Speaker 3: Like lighthouse music, you know what I mean. It's like
it's it's it's got an energy to it, but it's
a very chill energy and builds up and there's some
really good stuff. But I didn't really prepare to remember
what the names were. And I while I was rowing,
I've been doing different things, but nothing's quite grabbed me.
So I'm I was hoping you would have a really
good suggestion, like You're a yacht rock documentary, because that
was so great. But I did sort of start watching this.
It's called like no good Deed.
Speaker 1: Oh I said that with Ray Romano and some other
people Lisakutro, I think.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and it's like kind of okay. But in my dotage,
I'm getting much less tolerant of watching drugs or illicit
sex or things like this, Like I'm just kind of
I don't want to see any of that or think
about it.
Speaker 1: Or oh I'm old too, but it just seems unnecessary.
I'm aways like, why why do I have to watch
these people having sex? You know what I mean? The
strangers gross and yeah street now I just you know,
I just don't. It just never has anything to do
with the story. It doesn't enhance the storytelling usually. I mean,
maybe there are some places that you need it, but
usually you don't. Yeah.
Speaker 3: I also learned a term recently called idiot plot, where
the term refers to this wouldn't be happening if the
people weren't idiots, and Mark gets so angry at me
when we're watching something and I'm like, this is stupid,
this is stupid. Why didn't they just do this or that?
You know? But I don't like true idiot plots, like
I can understand like oh I didn't expect that to happen,
or oh you know this problems right outside, But when
it's just stupid people, I think that's like watching people
do drugs. It's just not enjoyable to me.
Speaker 1: So you mean, when they're just acting in implausibly stupid
ways and it shouldn't happen and you just don't buy it,
that's the idiot plot. Yeah, it's like that commercial where
the where these teenage kids are doing everything wrong in
like a fake horror movie, like running out into the
cornfield instead of getting in the car and leaving that
sort of thing. Yeah, all right, m you're gonna have
to watch something over the holiday, so we have something
to talk about in culture.
Speaker 3: I'm writing, I have no time, but yes, we'll do my.
Speaker 1: I'll watch more animated Yeah, I'll watch more animated stuff
so we can talk about it. All right. Well, it
was nice speaking to you, Molly, and nice speaking to
everyone else. We'll talk to you next week. Until then,
be lovers of freedom and anxious for the fray