Speaker 1: Welcome back to everyone to a new episode. If you're
wrong with Molly Hemingway, Editor and she for The Federalist
and David Harsani, senior writer at the Washington Examiner. Just
as a reminder, if you'd like to email the show,
please do so at radio at the Federalist dot com.
We'd love to hear from you. Maddi. Let's start this
week with a AOC appearance at the Munich Security Conference. Obviously,
she was there to burnish her foreign policy credentials. I
don't think she really has any yet, right, but I
think it's fair to stay. She embarrassed herself pretty badly there.
It was excruciating to watch the clips for me, even
though I dislike her. I'm just it's hard for me
to watch someone when they embarrass themselves in public for
some reason, even if I dislike them. But in a
normal society, in a normal world, in a healthy country,
this would put the end. This would be the end
of any kind of presidential aspiration for her. Don't you think.
Speaker 2: You are a better person than I am to feel
so badly for her because I just loved every minute
of it. I like her attitude where she acts like
she knows so much more than everybody else. She was
mocking Marco Rubio. What was for? I mean, it was
an amazing thing where she didn't seem to understand the
relationship between the country of Spain and the country of
Mexico her last name.
Speaker 1: She didn't seem to know that horses were actually brought
here by Spaniards or reintroduced here after ten thousand years,
or whatever it was.
Speaker 2: I'm not sure she understands why we call the Spanish
language the Spanish language. She seems to not have a
strong underst standing of the relationship between Spain and the
New World. Her last name, as Sean Davis pointed out
on Twitter, she is her last name is Cortes, and
she does not know anything about Cortes and him bringing
horses to America. She My favorite thing, though, was when
she said that the Americans had seized the dictator of
Venezuela solely because it was south of the equator. And
I am not the world's best at geography myself, but
there's not even a tiny bit of Venezuela below the equator.
Like that's bad to not know your own near neighbors.
Speaker 1: It's bad for someone who wants to be president. It's
bad for someone who went to an elite conference of
foreign policy minds who couldn't ask, you know, answer basic
questions I had. I had other problems that made me angrier.
One was that AOC repeated the blood libel that ISRAELA
committed genocide in Munich, where the Nazi parties started, which
is a mile a few miles away from Dakau. And
she had no problem doing that. What was also interesting
to me I read this story her adviser. His name
is Matt Dusk. He's one of these unhinged America hating
leftists on foreign policy used to be. I think Bernie
Sanders is the main advisor on foreign policy that had
been coaching her for four months to prepare for this
conference so that she would not and she was nervous
that they would nitpick her answers. Now you have to hear.
I think we don't do clips on this show, but
you have to, like listen, everyone gets tongue tied. I
am you know, I'm not the greatest speaker on earth.
But she could not coherently answer a question. It was
likes and ums out the answers. And she's not a
serious person. The only thing she knows less about it,
I think is economics, probably. But the idea that she's
going to be running for president scares me because I
don't know that people won't vote for her. I just
don't know that I think she you know, she fits
in for you know, progressive politics actually fit in very
well with where the Democratic Party is right now. I
think the world would be in serious danger if she
was president. I mean that I think would be. It
would be an existential threat to world order if she
became the president of the United States.
Speaker 2: So yes, and no. I think that generally speaking, Democrats
no longer elect people who have their own views. They
elect people who they think can be elected, and then
they run everything through the bureaucracy. So she's not strong
enough to battle the bureaucracy. Almost no Republican is either,
So not to downplay how much of a threat she
might be, but I just think, you know, we had
Biden for four years. It was pretty dangerous for the country,
but he was not running a single thing, right.
Speaker 1: Well, you're actually making a good case that the bureaucracy
should exist in some sense where it is I'm not
where it is a where it is a government. But
when when when the president does make foreign policy decisions.
But it's good that there are other people who can
tell him when they were her when they're wrong, or
or explain things to them in a different way.
Speaker 2: You don't think let me let me be clear. I
actually think the harm to the country is in the blob,
the foreign policy consensus. They have done bad work for
a few decades. She would not be able to resist that,
so in that sense she would be a problem. But
I also want to just say something about the media
coverage of her. Part of the problem with her in
a to answer basic questions on foreign policy is that
the media love her and so they never give her
tough questions at all. And it can be something of
a barrier to success when you are treated with kid gloves.
We've seen that with Kamala Harris, even Hillary Clinton. You know,
the moment they face any actual, real opposition, they struggle.
Oh wait, Tim Kaine, who was supposed to be this
like amazing person and was a disaster when anyone interacted
with him. And my favorite example of this, though, happens
after the Munich Security Conference. AOC realizes she is getting roasted.
You know, she messed up her answer about Taiwan, did
a horrible job, you know, didn't know basic geography, didn't
know basic history about her own region. And so she
called a friend at The New York Times and basically said, hey,
could you help me, like could you run a piece
where we redo everything and you kind of give my perspective.
And that reporter Kellen Browning, was like, yes, ma'am, I
got you. Let's her just like uncritically respond to everything.
And then he also adds his own like cushiness and help.
He says something about how she hesitated in her answers.
It wasn't hesitation that was the problem, It was just
the wrong answers. But if you are a lefty, the
New York Times is there to help you and help
your party, no matter how bad of a job you do. Well.
Speaker 1: I like I saw people defending her Taiwan answer, which
I don't think could be called an answer, is just
a bunch of it was a word salad, and it
is a complicated question. I admit, what do we do
with Taiwan? Right? If you're getting ready for this for
four months, don't you think you'd have some kind of
answer to that question? She could not come up with one.
Speaker 2: So yeah, I just want to point out how the
New York Times falsely characterized this. They said she stalled
for roughly twenty seconds before offering a response that reflected
the United States' longtime policy of strategic ambiguity. I want
whatever drugs Kellen Browning is on, because that's an amazing
restatement of reality into something that nobody else experienced.
Speaker 1: It's almost like the Kamala Harris sixty minutes interview being
you know, being put together to make sense, like her
drawn out answers. But it is funny that Browning says
that Acassio Cortez was worried about having her message microscopically
dissected and that the messaging was would being lost in
all the commotion around this. What was her messaging? There
is no messaging, there's no She had nothing to say
of substance at all.
Speaker 2: I think her message, which did come through loud and clear,
is that the United States is evil, It does evil things.
Other countries are great. We have no right to be
doing anything we're doing. I got that. Did you not
get that?
Speaker 1: I guess that's inherent in her philosophy. Yeah, I guess
My question, I guess, is how much does it matter
in broader politics today? I feel like we're in an
idiocracy in many ways. Oh, actually, I want to go
back to one thing. There are many times when Donald
Trump will go on these rants where he's not making
a lot of sense in my view, and it will
happen with foreign policy sometimes. Do you think he could
call the New York Times and they would fix it
up for him? I mean, the idea would they love
to point out to quote him verbatim, you know, all
the UM's and all the spinning. But they did not
do that to AOC whose answers are you know, are
just crazy?
Speaker 2: So just real quick. When CBS interviewed Joe Biden the
week that Israel was attacked by Hamas, it was also
the week that I think the Special Council said that
he wasn't fit to stand trial. I could be wrong
on that, but he blumbered through the interview. When CBS
ended up like settling with Trump over a different problem
that they'd done, one of the reasons they gave was
that they were worried they would have to explain what
they did in the Joe Biden interview, I interviewed people
who said it was a quote monster edit to get
it done, and they began by saying Joe Biden had
had a rough week and he had shown signs of tiredness.
You go back to the first administration and Trump is
like yelling at Catherine Harriage, who's a great reporter, I think,
but he was like yelling at her on behalf of
CBS and everything. There was no such introduction like Donald
Trump had had a rough week and was fed up
with all of our lives about him. You know, there
was no cushioning of it to your.
Speaker 1: Point, No, yeah, never. Never. A lot of these politicians
on the left but on the right too, they don't
really have complex or you know, they haven't thought about
foreign policy, you know, deeply, let's say. But they can
get through messaging because they're politicians. They know how to
speak well. They just bs their way through it. Like
she can't even do that. I think that's like a
minimal skill you need as a politician. On the other
hand is Marco Rubio. He gave a speech as well
on foreign policy this week. Gosh, now I forget was
it at the same conference or okay, same conference? And
I read that speech and I didn't hear him give it. People.
Some people were very impressed. People, you know I lean
on for a foreign policy quite often, were impressed. But
I know what the messaging was. The messaging of that
speech was that that Western civilization is better than the
others and that it needs to protect itself.
Speaker 2: It was a it was a beautiful speech. But I
would like to also point out how the New York
Times responded to it. And yes, he's talking about we
always hear about the special relationship that we have with Europe,
and that's undoubtedly true. We have a special relationship with
Europe because we come from Europe originally, and our countries
founding is so tied to Europe and our wars and
you know, both being at war against them and then
being at war with them with various countries there. And
he talks about that, and the New York Times said, oh,
that's actually not true because now Europe has been overrun
by Muslims, so everything he said was false. It was like,
I think you might have been the point of the speech,
New York Home.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean I wrote a book about this.
I think we're compactive. We have a special relationship because
we come from them, but our morality is very comports
well with each other, so you know, we have the
same outlook on the world, or we used to. And
I thought it was a fine speech when I read it,
you know, I liked it. Yeah, I don't know. I mean,
I think Marco Ruby is really good at this job.
I don't know if he's going to run for president
one day, whatever. I think this has been the best
job for him, better than being a senator, frankly, and
when he's asked questions, he has learned to give super coherent,
compelling answers, in my view, to bet the big questions
that people ask him.
Speaker 2: So I really like him, and I loved this speech,
and I have really loved him in this role as
Secretary of State. Sometimes it's hard for me to reconcile
who he is right now with who he was when
he was doing like Gang of Eight and immigration stuff.
It's just weird to me that this is the same guy.
I don't know if the real person is now or
if it was then, or if it's just a reflection
of how we all grow and change over time, do
you know what I mean?
Speaker 1: I said all those nice things about Rubio, but I
don't have great respect for him as a politician because
to me, he seems like a trend follower in many ways.
He started as a tea party or he became then
the Gang of Eights, then he was then he turned
to the populist economics when everyone did. Like, I'm not
saying that any of those positions are wrong, I just
have suspicions.
Speaker 2: So I do think though that there's a difference between
I don't know how to say it, like you have views,
you also have ambition, And I'm not saying this is
what happened or anything, because I think, actually, who's the
Mitch McConnell. I think opposed Marco Rubio in his primary
to become the Senator from Florida. But let's say he
wins the primary and McConnell says, okay, just so you know,
like we'll give you money, but here's what you have
to do, and so he does it understanding that sometimes
you have to work with people who you don't totally
agree with in order to help people in general. If
it's something like that, I think that's more understandable than
if it really is as you're saying, just like a
following whatever the moment is, but he did run as
a Tea Party challenger, and that does indicate something. I mean,
it's populous, but it's good in my view.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's only populism I've ever liked. But I'm not
saying it's premeditated. I don't know that Marko Uruvio sits
down saying, Wow, this is going to be my next
step because this will help me politically. I actually don't.
I don't know him or anything, but I don't think
that's it. I just think he has the inclination. Maybe
he's not very ideological underneath at all, and it just
kind of goes where the action is kind of I
don't know. I do know that on foreign policy has
been pretty consistent, and maybe he cares about that more
than he cares about other stuff, and maybe that's why
he's good at this job.
Speaker 2: That was another thing I really liked about the speech,
and I would encourage people to read it, showing that
Trump's foreign policy is in line with traditional Republican foreign policy.
You know, Reagan, Eisenhower, all that in between. So many
of us came of age in that blip of I mean,
there are always streams of thought that are happening in
any party or any movement. But I think we have
overstated how quote unquote Republican neo con interventionism is when
really it's more in line with Wilsonian progressivism because it
was such a major part of like the late nineties
through well really for the Republicans it began after nine
to eleven and last for another fifteen years.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we disagree on this, not that I maybe we
don't disagree actually, but I don't think Trump's foreign I
think Trump's foreign policies as far away from like Lindberg
isolationism and stuff that it is from neo conservatism. I don't.
I don't.
Speaker 2: I don't know from Eisenhower, who is very much like
be strong and be restrained. Reagan Alsoower blow stuff up,
but you're not like looking for long term interventions.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I'm not saying I'm not saying that. I'm not
saying it's neo conservatism. I'm saying that a neo conservative
would probably be happy with Trump's foreign policy.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I think so too, And I think that's important
for people thinking going forward. People who act like it
is this idea that you never use your military just
because you don't get involved in stupid wars. They're wrong,
and there's not really an appetite for that in the
American people. The American people might not vote a lot
on foreign policy, but they tend to be pretty consistent
in understanding we are this great power. We do need
to exert what is to our advantage globally, but we
just want to be smart about it and understand that
there's a high financial cost. There's a high cost in
human life. There's a high cost in terms of what
you're not doing at home when you're doing things abroad.
That doesn't mean that the American people don't support smart
military intervention. We do.
Speaker 1: Barack Obama was on a podcast called No Lie with
this guy named Brian Tyler Cohen. The funny thing is,
I see this guy lying all the time online, so
I find that the name of the podcast pretty funny.
But in Barack Obama said a couple things, and one
of them was kind of a He claimed us that
conservatives well me quote. He claimed that conservatives do quote
the mean, angry exclusive us them divisive politics. That's their
home court. Our home court is coming together, isn't that now?
I'm just a mere mortal. I'm not Barack Obama. But
I disagree that that's what the left does. In fact,
I'm not sure I can find people out there who
show more antipathy or its people aren't like them than
the urban progressive or the act of it left wing activists.
I mean, we've run across them. You see it when
you look at polls when after the next shows us
that the left is less inclined to want to have
friends or family members who are who disagree with them.
I guess that's what he means by exclusive and not welcoming, right.
So that's the first part of it. We can get
into this. The second part is he's the last person
who should be talking about this. He changed American politics
for the worst forever. He was the most divisive president
in history, I believe, or in modern history for many reasons.
It's not to say no one else has said bad things,
or people came out with presents who came after and
weren't divisive as well. It's that he changed how he
made everything about politics and his allies. It was terrible
for America, and we can get into that. But were
what was your reaction when you heard the great Obama
talking about divisiveness?
Speaker 2: I find it interesting that the left needs to feel
that it's true that they are uniters and that their
opponents are dividers. I mean, a casual trip through Facebook
with your lefty friends will just you know, it's kind
of I don't know if people on the left understand
how much people who aren't on the left talk about
how intolerant and divisive and spiteful they are in their
social media while the rest of us are kind of
just operating with our family and friends as normal humans
who understand that there are differences and it's okay. It's
like a attish or something. They need to believe that
if they say that they're not divisive and that their
opponents are that it will mean that that's true. It
shows a shocking lack of there's nothing realistic about that
assessment of the Obama presidency to not realize and even
maybe embrace how divisive it was. He and Michelle very
strongly opposed the country and they thought it was bad,
and they worked to convince a lot of people that
it was bad and it worked, which is divisive. I
mean racially, I think it put the country back. It
makes me sad that I got to grow up in
an era where you'd seen like steady progress in terms
of racial harmony, and then just these horrific setbacks leading
up to the twenty twenty race riots and the transfer
of one hundred billion dollars in corporate wealth for reparation.
It's very unhealthy for the country. What the what Obama did? Yeah,
might feel guilty about it, and he thinks if he
says this, then people will also. He knows if he
says it, the media will say yes. Isn't that true?
He's not divisive. I saw that on Twitter. People said
it is true. He was very non divisive. He was
very unifying. It's like, yeah, where.
Speaker 1: I pined for the days when Obama was president and
everything we lived harmoniously together. Yeah, I guess I could.
I want to get to the core of the problem
I have with Obama is that it goes back. If
you remember, he started his presidency by saying that people
who disagree with him cling are bitter and cling to
guns and religion and hate. Yeah, and people who who
hate him. The core problem with him and what differentiated him,
I think from other presidents, was that he did not
if you disagreed. He wanted unity, but unity meant that
you had to drop boy your beliefs and accept his.
He made no If you disagreed with him, you were
a racist. There was something nefarious about you. You were
clinging to the old gods. You didn't understand how great
the future could be. He left no room for good
faith debate. He left no room for people to disagree.
That's why he had no qualms about going after nuns,
little sisters are the poor. It was an example he
was making to other religious people. To it was kind
of like a progressive cultural supremacy, right, if you didn't
do what he wanted. And that's how all his allies
treated people. They treated them like they were traders. He
came up with a new idea of America, and if
you didn't accept that new idea of America, you were
a bad person. When people were killed by Islamis and
you wanted to say something about it, you were Islamophobic.
That stupid neologism that he came up with, and they
didn't come up with it, but he made it popular,
right it is. He was one of the worst. I
wrote a book called Obama's Four Horsemen. When I wrote it,
it predicted all the things that would go. I predicted
what I thought was going to happen after his presidency,
and I thought the title was way way over the
top at the time. I fought my editors not to
have it. Boy, I think it's a great title because
almost every the extremism on abortion, the hate of America.
I mean, this guy went, he went to Egypt and
he said the future must not belong to those who
slander the prophet of Islam. But slandering Christians was fine
with him, and he did it all the time. He
was also, incidentally, as far as presidents go, the first one.
And I went back and looked, it wasn't my imagination
who popularized the idea of dual loyalty because of because
Jewish Democrats wouldn't support his Iranian plan. He was constantly
doing that, and when before he became president it was
Americans for the most part, both parties supported the Jewish state,
not everything it did, but in concept and all that
that is no longer the case after him. I mean,
I have so many complaints about on him, it's crazy.
But what drives me or makes me angriest, is that
this revisionism about him being a uniter, that he has
a scandal free presidency. It was the opposite. The way
they passed Obamacare blew up Washington in a way we
will never recover from the Democrats unilaterally passed a national
reform without any of.
Speaker 2: The opposition of the American people. I mean a strong They.
Speaker 1: Pulled out every trick, they did everything to undermine goodwill
right and they did it. And everything that people warned
about that would happen with that bill has happened and worse,
and all the Swiss guard media called you a liar.
They said you were trying to murder people if you
didn't support him. They changed American po I'm not saying
it was all great before we were all nice to
each other. We weren't. But I think it was a
dramatic change. And I think he laid the foundations for
the Trump presidency and for what we have now. I
really do. So.
Speaker 2: I don't know that's a rant, but it just reminds me.
Megan mccardal, who was at the Washington Post and might
still be, wrote a great piece with that about that
point that the passage of Obamacare ruined politics in DC.
It does make me angry that we just spent much
of the last year trying to rescue Obamacare. And I
don't understand why we all have to rescue something that
was passed over the opposition of the American people and
in complete opposition to the Republican Party and then the
Republican parties. Well, we got to save it, which is
why people hate the Republican Party.
Speaker 1: Well, the problem with these kind of left wing welfare
programs that's all Obamacare really was, is that once you
hook people on it, and once you have it implemented,
it's very hard to take it away. We're still dealing
with with programs passed in the sixties, massive entitlement programs
that are bad for Americans that don't work, that costs
more than they knows, trillions more than they were initially
predicted to cost, and it's very difficult to extricate yourself
from them. I'm not making excuses for these Republicans, but
there's a painful political price to pay. Probably like you
remember when George Bush tried to reform Social Security. Literally
it was such a tep it like you would be
able to keep young people would have been able to
keep more of their money. They could have chosen to
stay on the program and you would have thought he
was hitler right at the time. I mean, it probably
ruined his president, helped ruin his presidency with Iraq, right,
and it was crazy. I don't know. I'm rant in
and raving today about things.
Speaker 2: This is so unimportant, but I can't help but think
about it every time Barack Obama's name comes up. First off,
is that he whatever you want to say about him,
he is so loving toward his wife and daughters. He
always praised them, speak well of them. I don't think
I've ever publicly heard him give even a tiny indication
that he's in thing other than completely elated that they
are his family. And then his wife, it's the opposite.
She's just constantly tearing him down about how he kind
of ruined her life. And it's weird, right, like why
she's one of the most privileged people. I think we
talked about that last week. The other thing is I
can't quite get out of my mind. This is a
little bit in contradiction to what I just said, But
that biography of him, which revealed his multiple times of
writing down his fantasy about having sex with men, and
that's very I am. I can say with a pretty
high degree of confidence that I have not encountered that
among the best, best, best majority of men in my life,
kind of close to the opposite. And it's so weird.
Speaker 1: Right when you're a straight man, you don't talk about
wanting to be in gay relationships. That's something. I think.
The book is called Rising Are the Making of Barack Obama.
It's a it's a door stopper. It's like thy two
hundred pages or something. I've not read the whole thing,
but I've read into it and it has a lot
of incredible information and.
Speaker 2: It's kind of difficult to move past that in particular, right, Like,
it's just and it's weird that nobody talks about it
when it's it's right there.
Speaker 1: Okay, I think, Molly, there's so much to talk about
with him that we don't need to go back into
his youth. I don't know, I mean, you know, but yeah, yeah,
his wife, I don't you know. His wife is just
so bitter about her life. I just it's hard for
me to understand by the way I think people like
Barack Obama on a personal level. I mean, it got
grating with his supercilious like lecturing constantly. Oh my lord,
I did not. I do not want to go back
to that. But he was. He seemed like a good
family man, which is weird. So I ask you this question.
I've asked lots of people. I'll say this about myself. Actually,
I would rather vote for a sociopath if he's going
to do the right thing when he gets elected. Then
a good person who does all the wrong things. Oh yeah, yeah.
And when I say this or right this, people go
berserk on me. But I don't really care that much.
I mean, I think when you're a bad person in
your personal life, you're probably going to be a bad
person anyway in politics. But I might not be the case.
The reverse isn't the case.
Speaker 2: I would strongly prefer a good person who is also
good and wise about the direction of the country. It's
probably hard to be a sociopath and care about the
direction of the country.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I love Lazy politicians are my favorite because
they don't want to do anything, and that's a good
way to be. How could could Obama be where his
whole career, like early career was hitched to reverend right,
where he takes pictures with Fara Khan, you know all
that stuff. I mean, is he really a good person.
I don't know.
Speaker 3: The CNBC needs to start honest with themselves. The watch
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Speaker 1: Be informed.
Speaker 3: Check out the Watch Dot on Wall Street podcast with
Chris Markowski on Apple, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 1: All right, sorry about that. Let's talk about Oh, another person.
Speaker 2: Transition to talk about?
Speaker 1: Right, Let's talk about Jesse Jackson. I was I noted
on Twitter, how quaint, how quaint the term HEIMI toown
was now, you know, compared to what's going on. But
Jesse Jackson was the original, one of the original Racehouse stars.
So he shook down He died today. He was eighty four.
Leave shook down companies all the time. He ran for
president in eighty four. Was it I forget exactly what I.
Speaker 2: Think A couple of times I could be wrong. And
he gave great speeches. He's one of the great speech givers.
Speaker 1: Fantastic speaker. A lot of rhyming going on, gets you
really worked up. He was. He was in one of
the great actually think Mark retweeted this. He was in
one of the great State life skits, The question is Moot,
where he's a game show host and no matter what
anyone says the answer to the trivia, says the question
is moot, and then goes into some political tirade. It's
very funny. You know. He was a fixture in American
politics for a very long time, not so much in
recent years. And I passed away, And you know, I
don't want to rip a guy the day he died, really,
but I was not a fan of overall of Jesse
Jackson's politics, or the way he handled himself, or the
kind of racial strife he caused in this country needlessly
quite often. And I don't know, you have anything, say,
oh I do, Okay, you go for it.
Speaker 2: So this morning, okay, So I'm still in Colorado with
my mom. We talked last week about how my dad died,
and I've been going through all the paperwork and stuff
and my parents have this like massive California king sized bed,
like it's so big. So I've just been staying in
that bed with my mom. And this morning when I
woke up, she said, your friend died. I'm like, who,
Jesse Jackson. And I was like, oh, you know, because
I knew he'd been in hospice for several months, and
I knew that there was like a deathwatch even a
few months ago, where they thought it was quite imminent.
But back in nineteen ninety two, he led He was
a big proponent of what has become a very common
usually Democrat scheme to help drive out votes for the
Democrat Party, which is early voting. And he had even
part of a coalition that got early voting into Colorado
in nineteen ninety two, and he was leading a march
to go early vote. And I do I loved watching
political conventions when I was quite young, and I distinctly
remember I'm pretty sure it was eighty four, given the
age I think I was a speech he gave, and
also eighty eight. I'm almost positive he ran at least
twice in those years. And I'd always just kind of
followed him and found him interesting, and I decided to
join the March to Early Vote holding a sign for
my candidate, who was not the same candidate as everybody
else in the March to Early Vote. So I joined
the march. There were a few other people who also
had signs for this was George H. W. Bush and
Dan Quail, and they all got kind of kicked out
of the march early. But I was a little smaller
and scrappier, and so I just kind of went into
the middle and I kept marching. It was from the
you know, the CU Denver campus to the City and
County Building, I think so that is. And this one
guy named Albertus Simmons was like a big guy and
a close associate of Jesse Jackson's, tried to get me
out of the march. He literally would stand in front
of me and tell me to leave the march, tell
me I was not welcome in the march, and I
just kept declining to leave the march, but he kept
coming after me, and finally he takes my sign and
rips it up into a bunch of different pieces. Side note.
Side note. I kept the sign and I have it.
I'll show it stud I kept all the pieces, so
I just kind of knew that my voice had been
taken at that point, and I just stood on the
sidewalk crying, Oh no. And I'm also like it was
not like the world's most street savvy eighteen year old,
so I was far from campus. I didn't know, like
like it'd all been kind of chaotic. All my friends
had gotten kicked out early. And I'm just standing there
crying and holding my sign and I hear someone say,
can you tell us how you feel? And I look
up and it's like TV cameras and reporters with notebooks,
and I said, I thought this was the Rainbow Coalition.
I guess it's for everyone but me.
Speaker 1: It's fantastic. Oh did they run with it now?
Speaker 2: Oh? Yes, like major news coverage. Rush Limbaugh, who also
died on this day, by the way, Oh wow, Limbaugh
called my house had me on his show. It was
the first time that like I was ever mentioned on
the show. Oh makes me cry because I love Rush
so so much. And then the Reverend Jesse Jackson called
my parents because he wanted to apologize. And I don't
know what his claim to that title is, but my dad,
who is a pastor and you know, went to seminary
and is a reverend. He does not like it when
people call themselves reverend when they're not actually leading a congregation.
And so he calls my dad and he's like Reverend Ziegler,
you know, trying to get hold of Molly, and my
dad just kept calling him mister Jackson, which cracked me up. Anyway,
I did end up having with him, and he did apologize.
Blow like, that's like a lame ending to the story.
But we ate at this soul food place in Five
Points that was really good. I can't remember the name
of it, and he apologized for real.
Speaker 1: This story, it blows my mind that I have not
I've known you this long, and I've never heard this story.
The rush Limbaugh. It kept getting better, It kept getting better. Yeah,
so he called you. Did he rhyme in real life? Like?
Did he speak the way he speaks in real life?
Was he nice? Like to tell us more? You had
a dinner with him?
Speaker 3: You know?
Speaker 2: I mean it was a real bad thing he did
probably almost certainly violated my civil rights by how they
handled that march right. And if I were a litigious person,
or if people were smarter about how to handle it,
they would have gotten sued very badly, so I'm not downplaying.
He really did seem since in his apology, but he
also had to apologize before it got comuch work.
Speaker 1: And yeah, well here is. Jackson got a BS in
sociology in nineteen sixty four. Then he attended the Chicago
Theological Seminary on a scholarship. He left a seminary in
sixty six, three classes short of earning his master's degree,
to focus full time on the civil rights movement. He
was ordained a minister in sixty eight, but it doesn't
look like he earned it. It looks like he was given
to him by the Chicago don't know.
Speaker 2: I mean, I think for my dad it was more
the issue.
Speaker 1: That you didn't have a church master.
Speaker 2: You should have flocks, right they should be, and then
it's okay to do other stuff. Like my dad ended
up getting very involved in politics himself, but not as
a pastor. As a pastor, he cared about his flock.
So yeah. I Also, my husband was reminding me that
Ryan Liza wrote a really monumental takedown of Jackson as
it related to blood Diamonds. Somewhere in Africa. The Clintons
had put Jackson in charge of negotiating treaties in Africa,
and he something somehow had something to do with blood diamonds.
I have to reread that story with the caveat that
I have never found Ryan Liza to be the most
accurate in his description of events.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm going to look that up. We can talk
about him in the future. I mean, you know, he
just passed away. It's kind of I detested him when
I was younger, but other characters have emerged that make
him less to test, Like Al Sharton came and he
was worse in my view, you know. And then obviously
the Black Lives Matter stuff and other leaders of those
kind of movements were far more extreme and divisive and
than he was. So I guess now looking back at
his history, he seems bad, but not as bad somehow.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I think that maybe the better thing
to say would be that once he admitted that he'd
had all those affairs and different children from different women,
all right, he kind of stepped out of that arena
where he had been treated as a reverend who was
this moral voice of a nation. He just I think
that was like twenty five years ago. He just kind
of faded away. So it's easier to let things go
when you forget the race hustling, and you forget the
anti Semitism, and you forget the partisan politicking under the
guise of Christianity or whatn't But.
Speaker 1: Do you remember during the Monica Lewinsky scandal, there would
be pictures of Clinton walking with Jesse Jackson, who was
his spiritual advisor at the time, where he too was
having affairs with the younger women, you know, making children elsewhere,
And he was often a spiritual advisor and often the
place that Democratic presidential candidates would go to get permission
basically to run, and that was later handed off to
Al Sharpton, where every single Democrat goes to Al Sharpton
and gets his blessing to run. Not good, All right,
We've spoken about a lot of interesting personalities. The personalities. Today,
let's talk about Robert Duval who passed away. Actually, first,
let's talk about the Olympics for a second. Okay, I'm
sorry about that. We have two topics i'd like to
touch on. Both involve communist countries. One is Canada and
the others China. Canada has been embroiled in the cheating
scandal in curling, which I watch. I love. I watch
all the curling I can and there's a lot Americans
are doing. Okay, the Canadian cheat. Did you see this?
Speaker 2: Yes? I believe it like they did it so brazenly.
They're not even denying it.
Speaker 1: Well, initially he did. He cursed at the Swedish guy.
One of the Canadian curlers cursed at the Swedish guy
and said, and then the Swedish person told him to
look at the videotape, which then they showed. But what
I didn't know about curling, Let's be honest, I didn't
know anything about curling piano about a week ago, even
though I watched it last time. But a lot of
it's sportsmanship, a lot of it. There's no ref there,
there's they come in, they'll measure, they'll do certain things,
but it's basically up to the players to exhibit good
sportsmanship and follow the rules. And one of the rules
is when you're throwing the stone it's called molly, that
big forty six pounds forty six for forty two pound rock,
you cannot you let it go where there's a line.
I think it's a green line. But these Canadians would
like push it again against the rules. And not just
the men's team did this, but the women's team as well.
I think they should be kicked out of the Olympics.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think I thought that before I saw the
cheated so I definitely feel that way. I loved how
the Canadians said that they were upset with the Swedes
for catching them cheating is.
Speaker 1: What it said. Ysh, just just embarrassing.
Speaker 2: You should be able to win on your own merits.
On curling. When I went to Oregon for Thanksgiving, my
husband's families from the mountains Bend and we drove into
Bend and it was like eleven PM and there was
major curling going on in the open air ice rink.
But I think it's as close And I was like,
this is cool. Spread to Bend Orgon.
Speaker 1: It looks like a fun game. Yeah, I think.
Speaker 2: It's a cool thing. I think it's also the only
sport that they should let women play with men or
men play with women.
Speaker 1: I should say so no tennis, no? Uh?
Speaker 2: Did they have couples like a mixed a mixed doubles
that'll work too.
Speaker 1: But I'm not trying to undermine you here.
Speaker 2: I'm just despite my general dislike of Canada. I've seen
a bunch of people saying recently that their estimation of
Canada has decreased in things like the cheating in curling
has not helped them. But I started hating Canada when
I was a teenager because I read this book by
this guy who was an AI scholar, oh man, what
was his name, Benjamin something. He kind of like did
analysis of poles and stuff.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah.
Speaker 2: He showed this one poll where they asked Americans what
they thought of Canadians, and the top ten responses were
like awesome, nice, neighborly, cool, funny, we love them, you know,
like that kind of thing. And then they asked Canadians
what they thought of Americans and it was all jerks, mean, awful, losers, whatever.
So I decided I would be the one American who
didn't like Canadians. And then my brother married a Canadian
and they have, you know, aw children and stuff, and
she's wonderful, of course, but I try to keep it
up anyway, my dislike of Canada. I will say a
Canadian I believe took the gold in the competition with
the other Communists that you're talking about. Elaine Gou who's
worse than an average communist. She's got a really weird
backstory and is an American because we all know that
if your mom conspires to have you born in America
and has no intention of you of actually being a
citizen of America, that you are just as American as
you and me. So she's an American, and she competes
for China, communist China, and is really into it, loves
to celebrate communist China, and her family all work for
the CCP, and I think her mom, you know, was
an agent of the CCP prior to pretending to become American.
Speaker 1: This woman, by the way, is loaded. She's worth twenty
three million dollars. And now we learn that the Chinese
gave around fourteen million to American athletes to play for them.
Probably she was given around six million dollars. Reportedly. There's
another figure skater, I think Juye is her name, and
she was also given a bunch of money. It's like
the Chinese, they steal your technology, they steal your athletes.
Goo says is a Jugu, and Goo says that she
is trying to inspire women in China, a young girls
in China to ski and so on, And I say
she should be skiing for Taiwan then, but mostly I
think she should be skiing for the United States because
she goes to Stanford. She is a beneficiary of capitalist
system now of the Chinese system, and it is very
I don't know, I don't know what can be done.
Speaker 2: She's just start fishy about it too, like her mom
raised her as a single mother with an unknown or
like possibly sperm downer father in one of the wealthiest
areas of the United States. Her grandfather was high up
with the CCP. It's just kind of weird to me.
Like she loves China, that's fine, she should just live
there and not benefit from all of what we do here.
Speaker 1: I mean this goo is on the cover of Time magazine.
We talked about this last week. Yeah, and the.
Speaker 2: New York Post of all publications, said that when she
failed to win the gold again that it was a heartbreaker.
And I'm like a heartbreaker for people who love treason
and communist China. Like who's heartbroken over a bad person
not getting gold but getting silver? Like he's still too high.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't know. Should deport her, should make a
special Trump should sign a special executive order and deport her.
So as I get older, people who have been part
of my life, I don't know them, but there in
my cultural life are dying. Robert du Val has been
in my life since I'm a kid, you know, in
so many great movies. He described himself. I love this
quote I wish I had in front of me. But
he described himself as character actor, which I think is perfect.
He was like a character actor who was a star.
He wasn't, you know, He wasn't Robert Radford. He didn't
have like the obvious good looks or anything like that.
But he had a real presence on screen, and he
had a real ability to play all kinds of interesting characters,
from bad guys to heroes to anything right. I mean,
he was just one of the greats. That's like my
cue to you. Do you agree?
Speaker 2: I love Robert Duval. Love him partly, I think because
he looks like a member of my dad's family. I mean,
he if you told me that he was an uncle,
I'd say totally believe it. And I love his acting.
I love his humility in his acting, and I love
that he just was steadily working for sixty years doing
great work in so many things. Did you see I
know we talked about it, but I can't remember if
you saw it the Judge.
Speaker 1: Yeah, with Robert Downey Junior. Maybe was that it?
Speaker 2: Yes, highly, highly recommend it. But yeah, there's so many
things I really really liked. Also, I love the Apostle.
Have you ever seen that?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Not in a long time. I mean when I
think of him and I sat down, I'm like, what
was he great? And obviously The Godfather comes to mind,
even though I would say that that's not like his
most impressive role Apocalypse Now, he just was Charlie, don't
surf that whole scene. He's just so amazing. I think
he steals a movie, really, and I love that movie.
Speaker 2: And do you remember him in the Natural?
Speaker 1: Yes? He was in the Natural. I hadn't even thought
about that. Yeah.
Speaker 2: And then I also love Tender Mercies. Yeah, it's a
great soundtrack if you if you ever get a chance
to hear that.
Speaker 1: But did you ever see The Great Santini? No?
Speaker 2: I'm sure we will see it soon because there's something
about that that my husband has always felt like that
movie so perfectly captured his grandfather. I think it was
that he was suspicious about whether it was maybe actually
about his grandfather.
Speaker 1: The paper. Have you ever seen this movie? No?
Speaker 2: I didn't? You just watch this again?
Speaker 1: Maybe I love this movie. It's got Michael Keaton is
an editor of like a New York post style paper,
and the New York Times is trying to hire him
for their metro page. And it's got Marisa TomEE And
Robert Duval is the editor in chief of the paper.
Glenn Close, isn't it? Randy Quaid is the columnist. People
always trying to kill him because he's upset them so badly.
It's great, if you know, if you've worked in journalism,
it's just like it's fun. First of all, it's nothing
like really working at a paper, but it is a
lot of fun. And he's great in it. He's great
in it. Okay, Molly, do you have anything else culture related?
Speaker 2: Not really. I have been knee deep in papers and
taking care of everything for my dad. Although wait, I
might have mentioned this last week. I probably did. My
dad's odd love of LBJ.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yes, just surprised you.
Speaker 2: Totally surprised me. But I also by going through his papers,
which has been so fun, I've divided them into you know,
he has a lot of sermons, Bible studies, things he's written, prayers,
just beautiful things that will be a treasure for my family.
There are also a lot of mementos from his crazy
childhood in the sixties in Denver when it was much
less populated. He was on the board of the Douglas
County Parks and Recreation and was for at least a decade,
and his love of nature and Colorado animals, wildlife, fishing,
parks and preserving them. And then he was also actually
active in the Republican Party toward the end of his life,
so he clearly made a change, and he was a
district captain in the Republican Party, and he like his
notes on getting out the vote. I'm kind of surprised
I didn't talk to him about it more. I'm not
saying I didn't talk to him about it at all,
but he was more focused on GOOTV earlier than a
lot of people on the right were. I think.
Speaker 1: You sent me so you sent me a picture of
one corner of his office, just pile books to the
ceiling papers everywhere. When I see something like that, my
heart just warms. I love it, like that's how I
love to be surrounded by books in that way. I
often wonder what is going to happen when I die
to all the crap I've collected, all the books that
I will probably never read again. I wrote a comment
about this once. It was basically me making the argument
an excuse for why I have like nine thousand books.
And part of it is that it tells your intellectual history,
like you're what you were thinking about, what things interested you.
High minded stuff, but pretentious stuff sometimes, you know. And
just I think that now as you go through your
dad's stuff, that's what you're seeing.
Speaker 2: It is such a gift. And then also it's funny
what I value is different than what my brother and
sister value you. And like early on when we first
started this, I said to my brother something about how
we could donate all of these books on American history,
and he looked at me like I was insane. He's like,
that's literally mostly what I want. He has complete collections
of Luther's works and other really amazing theological books. That's
what I want, or to make sure they go to
the right person. And then he has so much stuff
on the West, on the history of Denver, on the
history of Colorado, history of other places he's interested in,
and lots of Westerns, you know, complete Zane Gray and
Louis Lamore. And it's funny because my sister, who's like
you've met her, she's such a force of nature, like
I'm getting those. I'm like, okay, I like them too,
but she's like, no, I read them to Dad, and
Dad read them to me, So I'm getting those. And
I love that she has that connection with that fiction,
that Western. So we all will make sure that the
books go to the right place, even if that is
to be donated to someone else who will appreciate them
like he appreciated his. But yeah, I've been like taking
pictures like books he has that were written by people
I know. It's just fun to take a picture and
be like, my dad was reading your book or your
I sent you a picture of an article that you
had of yours, which I thought was funny.
Speaker 1: I appreciate it. Yeah, it's nice to know someone's reading
it is funny. Just last word on this is that
when I was you know, when you're young, you think
you're not like your parents at all. And I remember
one day going to my dad's library as a lot
of books as well. I'm being like, all these books
are so interesting. I love all of these books, Like, oh,
just my dad right now. You know, we had a
lot of the same books we had bought. So but
it's interesting that your dad's book collection in his papers
appealed to the three of you in different ways, and
you all, you know, came you know, you all grew
up with them and all that. So it's wonderful and
it's so cool too.
Speaker 2: This one last thing that's gratuitous here, but he I'm
the youngest of my parents' children, and my mom had
very difficult pregnancies and deliveries with my siblings, and we
were living in Wyoming at the time that I was
to be born, and I can't remember exactly what the
situation was, if the hospital there did not have adequate facilities,
if there even was a hospital, if the doctor was
going to be on vacation, something like that. So she
moved with my brother and sister down to Denver for
a few weeks to prepare to give birth to me.
So I happened to have continued my dad's lineage in Colorado,
unlike my siblings because of this health reasoning, And he
wrote letters to my mom, and it's just so cool
to see him talking about the family and about the baby,
because of course they didn't know whether I would be
a boy or a girl. And you just get to
transport yourself to where your parents were at a different
part of their lives, and it's it's just such a
gift that my parents do love each other, did love
each other, and that they had a beautiful marriage, and
that they wrote stuff down too.
Speaker 1: I guess we're going to lose something. I have some
letters as well, from you know, relatives and et cetera.
But I think that having email will kind of take
that away from future generations. And it also doesn't let you,
I think a letter. I don't know if you did
this in elementary school, but we used to have to
write like pen find we have pen pals, and they
would make us write letters and stuff. You really think
through what you're going to say when you're writing a letter.
In ways, you probably don't an email, right, Like, it's
just an art that you don't have when you're in
instantaneous connections with people. Now, people like emails are antiquated
and my kids just text each other, right all right,
thank you for listening.
Speaker 2: We'll be Uh, you didn't have but you didn't have
any other culture to talk about.
Speaker 1: I did sort of want that seemed like such a
nice topic. But I will mention I watched a movie
that I think is the worst, the best worst movie
maybe ever made, called The Thirteenth Warrior. Have you ever
seen this movie? Oh?
Speaker 2: I love bad movies.
Speaker 1: Though it's bad but great in a way. It stars
Antonio Benderis, who's an Arab chronicler and diplomat who goes
hooks up with these Vikings and then you're like, this
is pretty awesome already. And then they're fighting like zombies
up in Viking territory in a war, and then you're like,
this is amazing. I wish the movie was about an
hour longer, because this is one of the few movies
I don't think has enough exposition or it doesn't have
enough background because you don't know what's going on. It's
based on a Michael Crichton book called Eaters of the Dead.
It was a huge it's directed by the guy who
directed Diehard. It it was a big failure. But I
think it has called status now. Yeah, yeah, John mctierney McTiernan,
I think, but it uh it it it has it's
a cult classic. I think. I think a lot of
people enjoy watching it because when I tweeted about it,
there were many men of a certain age who are
very interested in this. That's it for me this week,
though I didn't have much time. If you'd like to
email the show tell me what you think of the
thirteenth Warrior, please do so at radio at the Federalist
dot com. You'll be back next week. Until then, you
lovers of freedom dress, Yes, beautiful love the dress which
is now