Speaker 1: Welcome to today's podcast sponsored by Hillsdale College, All Things
Speaker 1: Hillsdale Hillsdale dot ed or. I encourage you to take
Speaker 1: advantage of the many free online courses there, and of
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Speaker 1: On this Wednesday, at the day after an election. There's
Speaker 1: a lot to talk about, and I will be talking
Speaker 1: about it with Brett Bair, I'll be talking about with
Speaker 1: Comfortably Smugg of the Ruthless Podcast. I'll be talking about
Speaker 1: it with Noah Rothman as well. The first of the
Speaker 1: bottom line, Peggy Flannagan is a lunatic from Minnesota, their
Speaker 1: lieutenant governor, deeply involved in the non oversight that allowed
Speaker 1: the fraud to app in Minnesota. She won the nomination
Speaker 1: over a moderate Democrat, is not really a moderate. Congress
Speaker 1: Woman Craig is a lefty, but she's not crazy lefty,
Speaker 1: and Peggy Flannigan is. And Peggy Flannigan is their nominee
Speaker 1: going to take on Michelle Tafoya. You've heard on this show.
Speaker 1: Michelle won a spirited race with an absolute majority fifty
Speaker 1: against some very strong candidates like my friend Tom Wheeler
Speaker 1: and others, and so Michelle de Foya will be formidable.
Speaker 1: Is a question about whether or not Minnesota wants to
Speaker 1: actually have a reasonable person in the United States Senate.
Speaker 1: They've gone from al frank And to Tina Smith and
Speaker 1: now they they're gonna send Peggy flan again. They keep
Speaker 1: going from left to left to left. I don't know.
Speaker 1: We will wait and see if they elect Peggy flan again.
Speaker 1: Maybe it's time to give Minnesota to Canada and swap
Speaker 1: it out for Alberta. I'll bring that up with Smug
Speaker 1: as well, coming up a little bit later. If you're
Speaker 1: watching on the Sale News channel, this is when Peggy
Speaker 1: Flanagan went full coseplay with the Muslim community in Minneapolis.
Speaker 1: And I understand devoted Muslims dressing in accordance with their
Speaker 1: religious observance. I don't understand non Muslims dressing up as Muslims.
Speaker 1: And it's sort of like you do wear green right
Speaker 1: on Saint Patrick's Day, but it's not this. If you're
Speaker 1: watching on the sam News channel, I don't know what
Speaker 1: you call that. It's not a Burka. It's a full
Speaker 1: covering associated with people from Somalia, some Malli Americans, and
Speaker 1: I just think that's a little too identity politics for me.
Speaker 1: But we'll see what they have to say. The biggest
Speaker 1: story though, not Minnesota, not even Wisconsin, where Francesca Hong
Speaker 1: blew what the pollsters said was a twenty plus point
Speaker 1: lead a week ago and lost to David Crowley by
Speaker 1: four thousand votes out of seven or ninety one thousand
Speaker 1: votes cast, less than a half percent. The story there
Speaker 1: is how did the polls get it that wrong? Including
Speaker 1: the Marquette poll. I'll talk about that a little bit
Speaker 1: later with John Roberts of Fox News. I was talking
Speaker 1: with him about it today. It is the gold standard.
Speaker 1: John knows that. I know that. Marquette's one of those
Speaker 1: that you just say, oh, that's I believe it. It's broken.
Speaker 1: Polling is absolutely broken. The question is going to be,
Speaker 1: why are we going to use it anymore? Why is
Speaker 1: anyone reporting on what pulling is right now? In Georgia,
Speaker 1: the most recent poll has John oss Off ahead of
Speaker 1: Mike Collins by nine points ar P Pole. In North Carolina,
Speaker 1: the most recent poll has Roy Cooper seven points out
Speaker 1: of Mike Watley, Well, given that they missed by ten
Speaker 1: or fifteen in Michigan and twenty in Wisconsin last night,
Speaker 1: why in the world do we believe these numbers? And
Speaker 1: Steve Kornaki, estimable and serious man on MS NOW last night,
Speaker 1: trying to explain the pulling cut number five.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I.
Speaker 3: He's here's the thing.
Speaker 1: A glitch, Yeah, Steve.
Speaker 3: Steve's thinking, here's let's let's let's look at it this way.
Speaker 3: We're kind of indefinitely waiting for them to get their
Speaker 3: act together here and get the sticks and bring them
Speaker 3: back and go on. And we've got folks here who
Speaker 3: are working real late, and I don't think we want to,
Speaker 3: you know, keep them here to this could go ninety minutes.
Speaker 2: And it's ninety minutes of me saying.
Speaker 3: Have you heard of any other athletes running for Congress?
Speaker 3: It's such a It's like we've I know, we've come
Speaker 3: so far here. It's been four hours since polls closed.
Speaker 3: It's been unbelievably interesting and an intense a night here,
Speaker 3: and and it really is coming down to this one giant,
Speaker 3: you know, update in Milwaukee.
Speaker 1: But man, they.
Speaker 3: We we we we waited ninety minutes for them, they
Speaker 3: did this whole procession and then they find out there's
Speaker 3: nothing on the sticks and and yeah.
Speaker 2: So it's just my way of saying that.
Speaker 3: I'm just trying to say the audience here so abruptly
Speaker 3: ending on them, just why we're doing this, because they've
Speaker 3: the audience has been with us for for six hours
Speaker 3: in some cases for this moment that didn't happen. And
Speaker 3: and so folks, we're gonna I think we are gonna
Speaker 3: wrap it here for the reasons we're saying here. Just
Speaker 3: but I just I want you to know, I hate hate,
Speaker 3: you know, doing this to you because it's we we
Speaker 3: we we You've been I know you're here for results,
Speaker 3: and we've come to the point where it's like one
Speaker 3: thing away. I hope you understand that we just, you know,
Speaker 3: we gotta let everyone here has got a you know,
Speaker 3: has been here for a long time, and and I'm just.
Speaker 2: Trying to.
Speaker 1: They never killed time before, has he? They just never
Speaker 1: done this. I've done this like a million times in
Speaker 1: my life. Okay, I need this is very awkward.
Speaker 3: So this is a okay, Okay, so folks, here's what's
Speaker 3: happening there there. I'm I'm doing a this is sort
Speaker 3: of a cut in thing.
Speaker 1: I have to.
Speaker 3: I'm they're gonna let me set this, so it's you.
Speaker 1: Sorry, yeah, the producer.
Speaker 4: But listen, do we want to do Wisconsin results in
Speaker 4: these updates?
Speaker 2: Or how do we want to parties out?
Speaker 1: They're like producing it live. They've got someone in Steve's here.
Speaker 1: I guess they fired every producers. Now, okay, so we're
Speaker 1: doing job over the thing.
Speaker 2: We're gonna fit.
Speaker 3: We're gonna tape here that they're going to insert into
Speaker 3: news now. So if you, if you'd like, you can
Speaker 3: watch us put this together.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we're gonna do that. No, we're not gonna watch.
Speaker 1: It's a flabbergasted Steve Karnaki. It's very good. Always welcome
Speaker 1: on the Hue Huge Show. But I've been at thirty
Speaker 1: Rock till dawn right twenty sixteen after the Trump upset,
Speaker 1: when it was like night of the Living Dead there,
Speaker 1: and I was the only guy in the building that
Speaker 1: voted for Trump. And uh, I was sitting by myself
Speaker 1: in a corner. Andy Lack, who was then the president
Speaker 1: of NBC News, you might want to go in this
Speaker 1: other room, and I did, But I know what all
Speaker 1: night elections are like we joyed, and I did that
Speaker 1: in Dallas in two thousand and four. They're much more
Speaker 1: fun then say twenty twelve, when you think Mitt Romney's
Speaker 1: going to win and he loses in an hour. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you remember this studio in twenty twelve. Yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: it's just it's there are times where you got to fill,
Speaker 1: and there are times where you don't have to fill
Speaker 1: at all because it's over and you can go home.
Speaker 1: And that was a time when you got to fill.
Speaker 1: And what you're doing is you say, Okay, let's pretend
Speaker 1: that somebody has not been awake and therefore they're just
Speaker 1: coming in. So I'm going to start over and I'm
Speaker 1: going to fill for the next ten minutes by repeating
Speaker 1: everything I've set up until this point. And I have
Speaker 1: a lot of experience in this department. When Arnold Schwarzenegger
Speaker 1: was running in the recallection, he asked me. I said,
Speaker 1: I would be happy to mc a rally for him
Speaker 1: at the Orange County Fairground. And the terminator was forty
Speaker 1: five minutes late after the program called on him to
Speaker 1: be forty five minutes late, and so I was up there.
Speaker 1: I was calling everybody out of the crowd. If I
Speaker 1: wreck he ignized anyone like the third city council member
Speaker 1: from Laguna Neguel, come on up and tell us what
Speaker 1: you It was one of those situations where you just
Speaker 1: got to fill And I feel awful for Steve Karnaki
Speaker 1: because he had to have a producer and his ear
Speaker 1: giving him something anything. Talk about Minnesota, talk about South Carolina,
Speaker 1: talk about New Hampshire's gonna vote on September third, And
Speaker 1: what are we gonna do about the pulling up there?
Speaker 1: If this is bad there? And what are we I
Speaker 1: can't believe that he was so absolutely dumbfounded by the
Speaker 1: lack of data, because Steve's a machine, He's the best
Speaker 1: in the business. I just feel bad for him. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: Hassan Piker on his podcast was feeling sad for Francesca. Huh.
Speaker 1: Cut number two.
Speaker 5: Will be able to lean into their victories, so it'll
Speaker 5: be less difficult, It'll be easier to deliver our message.
Speaker 5: It'll be more difficult though, because the establishment will not
Speaker 5: underestimate us. They will continue to undermine us, but they
Speaker 5: will not underestimate us, so.
Speaker 6: The knives will be out.
Speaker 1: What what do you with the appeal of this fella. Really,
Speaker 1: the establishment will not underestimists, they will undermine us. The
Speaker 1: knives will be on. What does that even mean. That's
Speaker 1: the dumbest thing. Because he says so many dumb things,
Speaker 1: I can't say that's the dumbest thing he said. It's
Speaker 1: like a therapy session with him. He's doing talk therapy
Speaker 1: with himself into a microphone, and for whatever reason, seventy
Speaker 1: five thousand people are watching him and they fanned for it.
Speaker 1: I don't get it. Stay tuned in America. I'm cuture.
Speaker 1: Welcome back, America. I'm cucuit.
Speaker 7: No c.
Speaker 1: Rothsman is the senior writer at National Review, author of
Speaker 1: the book Blood and Progress. Noah, when I was a
Speaker 1: lawyer in the White House long ago, you may not
Speaker 1: have been born. When I'm a lawyer in the White House,
Speaker 1: we had a questionnaire Forrairie would be appointee to the
Speaker 1: Reagan nomination? Who's interviewing? The last question of which was,
Speaker 1: and may still be, is there anything in your background which,
Speaker 1: should it be made public, would embarrass the president? I
Speaker 1: think we now need an addendum. Have you ever criticized Thanksgiving?
Speaker 1: Do you think that's now going to be early on
Speaker 1: in the due diligence with candidates.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 8: Absolutely, there should be a woke one checklist. Have you
Speaker 8: ever criticized cultural appropriation? Do you think burritos are in
Speaker 8: American food?
Speaker 6: Yeah?
Speaker 8: Do you have a problem with holidays, Thanksgiving, Christmas, Fourth
Speaker 8: of July, Halloween, any of those apply? You should not
Speaker 8: run on the Democratic ticket, and a healthy Democratic Party
Speaker 8: would enforce that kind of thing, because it's objective is
Speaker 8: to get people elected to high office. That's the only
Speaker 8: point of the Democratic Party and the Republican Party to that.
Speaker 1: Peggy Flanagan, we got Elsie in Michigan calling football an
Speaker 1: area of toxic mask. We've got Grant Platner with a
Speaker 1: Nazi tattoo. I mean, we've got a parade of horribles
Speaker 1: this year. Do you think the Republicans are out of it?
Speaker 1: Given the candidate quality on the Democrat side, they're not.
Speaker 8: I mean, if twenty twenty two is a model Republicans,
Speaker 8: we should have benefited more from that environment, an anti Democratic,
Speaker 8: anti Biden environment, but candidate quality put a ceiling on
Speaker 8: their performance and Democrats could experience the very same phenomenon today.
Speaker 8: Back to Elsie, you had mentioned that you know they're
Speaker 8: finding these old tweets which aren't especially old twenty three,
Speaker 8: twenty four. You know, if you've undergone some kind of
Speaker 8: a conversion, you should have a conversion narrative that you
Speaker 8: can reach to and say why you don't believe the
Speaker 8: thing you believed two years ago. But he's exactly like
Speaker 8: Francesca Hong in that regard the.
Speaker 2: Senate.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's a new one cut number three abdu Alsai
Speaker 1: for Noah.
Speaker 9: Rockmand healthcare should be a choice made by a patient
Speaker 9: and their doctor.
Speaker 1: That patient is under the AHV.
Speaker 9: To eighteen the parents as well, right, and I believe
Speaker 9: that Medicare for All should cover all healthcare, yeah, which
Speaker 9: is defined by what a patient needs in accordance with
Speaker 9: their doctor. So that includes reproductive rights right, that includes
Speaker 9: gender affirming care.
Speaker 1: What do you think, Noah, that going to be in
Speaker 1: a couple of Mike Rogers ads.
Speaker 8: That's going to be in a couple of Mike Rogers ads.
Speaker 8: As well as Bernie Sanders, who had admitted in his
Speaker 8: twenty twenty bill for Medicare for All that it consists
Speaker 8: essentially of nationalizing the health insurance industry. Everybody loves the
Speaker 8: idea of getting healthcare for everybody that's great, but they
Speaker 8: don't want to lose their insurance. This is a primary
Speaker 8: problem with Obamacare.
Speaker 2: It was a big.
Speaker 8: Selling point for Republicans who opposed that sort of thing.
Speaker 8: And if you just were unconscious for Obamacare debates, maybe
Speaker 8: you missed it. But Democratic political professionals remember the ordeal
Speaker 8: they went through trying to sell that thing. It was
Speaker 8: not fun. And that's just on the policy side of things.
Speaker 8: You know, Lsieid's come out against as you said, you
Speaker 8: know football, it's got a big problem with the toxic
Speaker 8: masculinity in football. Not a huge fan of July fourth.
Speaker 8: It's very Francesco Hongi ish, and he checks all the
Speaker 8: boxes that a conventional far left liberal would have to
Speaker 8: check in twenty twenty. And it was not a great
Speaker 8: year for Democrats in twenty twenty, but the exception of
Speaker 8: Joe Biden, who conspicuously distanced himself from all the revolutionary
Speaker 8: progressivism that was overtaking the party at the time. So yeah,
Speaker 8: they want to run that playbook again, they're going to
Speaker 8: encounter what Abigail Spamberger said when she admonished all her
Speaker 8: colleagues in the post election call in that year and said,
Speaker 8: never say defund the police again. Never say the word
Speaker 8: socialism again. If you do, we're going to experience exactly
Speaker 8: what we experienced this year, a very disappointing year, despite
Speaker 8: the headwinds that Republicans were experiencing Democrats.
Speaker 1: Two segments come back to polling in segment two. But
Speaker 1: I got to ask you about a parents you're out
Speaker 1: on CNN the other night. It reminded me of the
Speaker 1: final scene of Godfather Won. You took care of all
Speaker 1: family business around the table. I just wonder when you
Speaker 1: went to break, did people slump over in their chairs?
Speaker 1: What happened?
Speaker 10: No?
Speaker 8: You know, I managed to get all ninety seconds of
Speaker 8: that out uninterrupted, which which was unique and gratifying for me.
Speaker 8: It's a funny thing about that show, and the cameras
Speaker 8: go off. You know, we're not talking about what we
Speaker 8: just talked about. We're not rehearsing the fight that we
Speaker 8: just had. Everybody's just kind of cordial. But yeah, it
Speaker 8: was a it was a fun segment. And if nobody
Speaker 8: knows what you're talking about. I was referring to LSA
Speaker 8: even just trying to elaborate on all the deficits that
Speaker 8: he has he brings with him. As a candidate, and
Speaker 8: I managed to get them all out ended up being
Speaker 8: a lot.
Speaker 1: Well, I thought, and tell me if I'm wrong, I
Speaker 1: know you're a theater kid, or you admit to being
Speaker 1: a theater kid on National Review and you've got a
Speaker 1: theater kid that was.
Speaker 2: Deliberate the theater scholarship to undergrad.
Speaker 1: Q okay, So you delivered that with pan, and I
Speaker 1: think they were a little bit stunned at the fact
Speaker 1: you didn't have to take a breath as you just
Speaker 1: moved around the table, taking the premise after premise out
Speaker 1: and chopping it up into firewood and leaving it splintered
Speaker 1: around and they were stunned. Has that ever happened before?
Speaker 1: It has?
Speaker 8: But I'll tell you why, only because on MSNBC and
Speaker 8: now CNN, I'm trained to get as much of a
Speaker 8: thought out with as few breaks as possible, because if
Speaker 8: you take a breath, that's the last thing you're going
Speaker 8: to say, will there will be interjections, So you really
Speaker 8: just have to hit beat, beat, beat as fast as
Speaker 8: you possibly can in order and be as coherent as possible.
Speaker 8: It requires some training, But I blame my liberal colleagues
Speaker 8: for forcing me to figure that one out because it
Speaker 8: was a matter of necessity.
Speaker 1: It was a masterpiece, and I just thought they were
Speaker 1: a little bit stunned by the fact you dove in
Speaker 1: to Abby's objection, seize it by the throat and said, yes,
Speaker 1: we're going to do exactly that and here's why, and
Speaker 1: did not let go of the throat of the premise
Speaker 1: until after your ninety seconds were done. And I would
Speaker 1: use that in a media training class. Actually, it's so
Speaker 1: rare that anyone gets even our wonderful friend Scott. Scott
Speaker 1: gets shut down a lot. Are they treating you nicely
Speaker 1: because you're relatively new?
Speaker 8: Well, they always treat me nicely, and they interrupt very frequently.
Speaker 8: It was a rare occurrence that I'd managed to get
Speaker 8: that thought out and uninterrupted. It's just kind of part
Speaker 8: and parcel for that set, which I don't blie. It's
Speaker 8: just the nature of that show and very many other
Speaker 8: political chat shows, especially those with a left wing host.
Speaker 8: You know, they challenged the premises of conservatives. They don't
Speaker 8: accept the premises of conservatives. I'm used to it, which
Speaker 8: is why you have to be as articulate as you
Speaker 8: possibly can be, which with as much alacrity as you
Speaker 8: can summon because you only have so much runway.
Speaker 1: And get up momentum. This is a little bit of
Speaker 1: a class for people out there who in speech and
Speaker 1: debate get up momentum, take a deep breath, and and
Speaker 1: keep running the ball forward until somebody tackles you. Fair summary, Yeah,
Speaker 1: fair enough.
Speaker 8: I actually managed to put a period on that thought,
Speaker 8: so I didn't need to be tackled to the ground, fortunately,
Speaker 8: But sometimes you do. Sometimes you there's other thoughts in
Speaker 8: there that you don't have the opportunity.
Speaker 1: To get out.
Speaker 8: But this time, Yeah, that was a that was a
Speaker 8: good solid clip.
Speaker 7: Enjoyed it?
Speaker 2: Thank you?
Speaker 1: Oh I did? I thought I watched it? Try did
Speaker 1: they did they put rap in your ear? There's some
Speaker 1: some mysterious voice say rap ever to you on CNN. No.
Speaker 8: I get that from Fox often and it's very dis oorienting,
Speaker 8: But on CNN, no, I do not.
Speaker 1: I'd learn they don't need to bother the guests if
Speaker 1: you if you take.
Speaker 2: A morning Joe used to do that to me.
Speaker 8: They would say listen, we're coming to you next, and
Speaker 8: that sort of thing, which is usually quite helpful. But wrap, Yeah,
Speaker 8: that doesn't happen on CNN, just because I don't control
Speaker 8: the microphone that they probably give that those directions to Abby.
Speaker 7: But not me.
Speaker 1: All right, it was I salute you. I'm going to
Speaker 1: try and keep Noah over to talk about the big
Speaker 1: question of the day. Why are we reading any polls?
Speaker 1: Why are we taking any poles? Seriously, two weeks in
Speaker 1: a row been off by double digits. Last night they
Speaker 1: were off by twenty points. The Marquet poll, well, the
Speaker 1: gold standard pole, like the des Moines registered poll that
Speaker 1: a Kamala winning. No one will be back if he's back,
Speaker 1: stay tuned, Welcome back America. I'm Hugh Hewitt No See Rothman,
Speaker 1: senior writer with the National Review.
Speaker 7: No.
Speaker 1: I assume you are familiar with the Monty python bit.
Speaker 1: This parrot is dead, are you? I am all right,
Speaker 1: So the polling is dead. Try and tell me that
Speaker 1: it's not.
Speaker 8: Well, here's the only thing you can say about polling, Hugh.
Speaker 8: It's all we've got. And that's not saying a lot,
Speaker 8: but it's not nothing. Otherwise, prognostication is reduced to just
Speaker 8: expressions of opinion, a subjective exercise, which you know can
Speaker 8: be valuable if you're talking to somebody with a lot
Speaker 8: of wisdom, has been around a long time, who has
Speaker 8: been servying the political environment for decades. That can be valuable,
Speaker 8: but otherwise it's our only instrument for measuring public opinion.
Speaker 8: When it comes to primary races, polling has always been
Speaker 8: very bad. This year, it's exceptionally bad, but it's exceptionally
Speaker 8: bad in a way that we're familiar with. What are
Speaker 8: these polls failing to capture so far? On the Democratic
Speaker 8: primary side, It's African American voters, it's working class voters.
Speaker 8: We've been dealing with this problem for a decade. Only
Speaker 8: the problem was beneficial to Donald Trump because Donald Trump
Speaker 8: was getting a lot of these votes that just weren't
Speaker 8: being captured by pollsters. It's funny when you get older,
Speaker 8: as when I was young coming up, it was impossible
Speaker 8: to get young people to respond to a poll. Young
Speaker 8: people were so difficult to pull, and that was a
Speaker 8: hidden source of democratic strength.
Speaker 2: They banked on it.
Speaker 8: Now it's impossible to not get them to respond to
Speaker 8: surveys because those surveys aren't necessarily conducted by landline. They're
Speaker 8: very rarely conducted by landline. So we've altered these methods
Speaker 8: to correct for one problem and created another along the way,
Speaker 8: and that's just how these sort of things work.
Speaker 2: My question whether or not we're capturing the question yet is.
Speaker 1: Why are we using bad information that can influence the election,
Speaker 1: which I think it did in Michigan, may not have
Speaker 1: done obviously, did not do in Wisconsin, but could do
Speaker 1: in North Carolina, in New Hampshire, in South Carolina. There
Speaker 1: are a lot of places where you just wonder if
Speaker 1: it's bad information in you're going to get bad election results.
Speaker 1: It does have an impact. It's not neutral.
Speaker 8: It did no it does have an impact, or it
Speaker 8: could have an impact in theory, if you flood the
Speaker 8: zone with bad polling, all of which are in moving
Speaker 8: in one direction, and convey to people who are paying
Speaker 8: close attention to this race that it's basically over and
Speaker 8: one candidate has all but won. That will depress turnout
Speaker 8: for the candidate who's down, because why participate it's already over.
Speaker 8: That's very serious and I'd be curious to see if
Speaker 8: there's reporting that can be done around this on whether
Speaker 8: this was banal, accidental or by design, whether as as
Speaker 8: if to say, there's an effort to flood the zone
Speaker 8: with dubious polling that creates an impression of inevitability for
Speaker 8: certain candidates designed to put to discourage the other side's vote.
Speaker 8: There's nothing illegal about that. There's something a lot that's
Speaker 8: untoward and immoral about it, but it's the sort of
Speaker 8: thing that I would need reporters to identify suss out,
Speaker 8: and I think there's plenty of room to explore that,
Speaker 8: especially in the Michigan and the Wisconsin governor's race. But
Speaker 8: what's what do we do about it?
Speaker 2: Is that your question?
Speaker 11: Man? I don't know.
Speaker 8: I think we just have to menalize.
Speaker 1: If we had the same amount of concern over bad
Speaker 1: polling as we did about misinformation from Russia or other
Speaker 1: foreign actors in presidential election, doesn't the level of misinformation
Speaker 1: contained in pulling easily surpassed that done by foreign actors
Speaker 1: in our presidential elections, both prom con Democrats and Republicans.
Speaker 8: Maybe, I mean, the only difference is, you know, remember
Speaker 8: those hearings after twenty sixteen when Democrats on the House
Speaker 8: floor were identifying the ways in which Americans were manipulated
Speaker 8: by Russia, and they included big placards with memes that
Speaker 8: were on Facebook like Jesus and the Devil arm wrestling
Speaker 8: over the fate of Hillary Clinton's campaign brought buff Bernie Sanders,
Speaker 8: which was a big meme a decade ago. This is
Speaker 8: the sort of thing that was said by Democratic politicians
Speaker 8: to have materially influenced the outcome of a presidential election.
Speaker 8: I needed more citations there than we got. But this, Yes,
Speaker 8: this could be very much more serious, only in so
Speaker 8: far as they're coming from domestic sources, Americans who are
Speaker 8: presumably invested in the health and preservation of the republic.
Speaker 8: And that's the sort of thing that you'll defer to
Speaker 8: more than you would dubious meme that's coming at you
Speaker 8: from a cliqu farm in Macedonia. So yeah, it could
Speaker 8: be much more serious in that regard, only because we
Speaker 8: put more faith and trust in it because it's coming
Speaker 8: from domestic sources.
Speaker 1: Exit question. Do you think the polling in Michigan put
Speaker 1: LSA over the top?
Speaker 2: Possibly?
Speaker 8: It was so close it's quite possible that Haley Stephens
Speaker 8: voters were discouraged, at least on the margins. You know,
Speaker 8: you could go back throughout the year and ask yourself
Speaker 8: a lot of questions, like, was Janet Mills really that
Speaker 8: far behind Grand Platner to the degree that she had
Speaker 8: to drop out. I mean, polling suggested she was down
Speaker 8: by twenty points. Was she We'll never know, but there's
Speaker 8: probably a lot of lower rate house races, mayoral races
Speaker 8: that suffer from that very same confidence deficit. And I
Speaker 8: don't know what to do about it except to Warren
Speaker 8: voters that you know, caveat m tour. This may or
Speaker 8: may not reflect the landscape, and you just have to vote.
Speaker 1: That's another perhaps one rule. Do not report polls that
Speaker 1: are paid for by one campaign or the other, or
Speaker 1: by dark money. No l. C. Rothman on X in
Speaker 1: the National Reviews. Thank you, Noah. I'll be right back in, Martha.
Speaker 1: Stay to the edition breaking news that I get to
Speaker 1: talk about with Brett Behar, host of Special Report every
Speaker 1: night on the Fox News Channel at six pm. Buttt
Speaker 1: will be there tonight. I'm sure he'll be covering the
Speaker 1: fact that Carolyn Lovett, press secretary for President Trump, will
Speaker 1: be leaving that job at the end of the month.
Speaker 1: Brett used to cover that beat. I don't know which
Speaker 1: press secretaries you had, but I'm thinking of Sarah Canby,
Speaker 1: Sander Tony Snow, Ari Fleischer, Dana Prino. Republican presidents have
Speaker 1: had a good run here, and Carolyn's been a very
Speaker 1: fabulous press secretary. What do you think they follow her.
Speaker 6: With Hugen afternoon? I think, you know, it's a little
Speaker 6: bit of a loss for President Trump because I thought
Speaker 6: she was a pretty good advocate on his behalf, really
Speaker 6: good articulating you know, where his head was, which is
Speaker 6: tough to do in a fast moving president who tells
Speaker 6: everything he thinks on truth, social and but she, you know,
Speaker 6: did very well and at the podium there fending off
Speaker 6: a lot of questions in that press room. Who they
Speaker 6: go to, you know, some of the people that have
Speaker 6: stepped up before, I'm sure will fill in, but maybe
Speaker 6: they'll they'll go to another permanent person. I had Tony
Speaker 6: Snow in the Bush administration, that had Dana for a
Speaker 6: little bit, and then the early days I think Ari Fleisher,
Speaker 6: So you know, they You're right, there have been some
Speaker 6: some good ones. There have been some some questionable ones.
Speaker 6: Oh yes, I didn't cause some problems.
Speaker 1: I wasn't going to mention the ones who always rubbed
Speaker 1: me the wrong way. But it seems to me intelligence
Speaker 1: matters in this job a lot, and not just eloquence.
Speaker 1: But you really got to know what you're talking about.
Speaker 6: Yeah, and Carolyn did a really great job of knowing
Speaker 6: the brief and being comfortable with it to spar with reporters.
Speaker 6: But she also gave, you know, pretty much a lot
Speaker 6: of access. And one of the things that this president
Speaker 6: has done more than previous and definitely more than the last,
Speaker 6: is reporters ask him questions. So you know, some days
Speaker 6: Carolyn didn't have anything because he was on his fifth
Speaker 6: press conference in the Oval Office. And you know he's
Speaker 6: been on your show many times. He likes to answer
Speaker 6: the questions.
Speaker 1: He does. Now. That brings me to my second question.
Speaker 1: But I know you didn't cover the Justice Department. You
Speaker 1: did the Pentagon. But the Attorney General gave a presser
Speaker 1: today and there have been some legendary DOJ correspondents, including
Speaker 1: our own kry Urban, but Rida Braver and Ruth Marcus
Speaker 1: and Nina Totenberg legendary. Today there's a big story a
Speaker 1: thousand fake marriages, all to Chinese spouses who are doing
Speaker 1: a fake marriage with an American citizen. Nobody asked the
Speaker 1: Attorney General if any of them are Chinese Communist officials.
Speaker 1: Brett I get so frustrated sometimes when the obvious questions
Speaker 1: don't get out. Does it not occur to them?
Speaker 6: I don't know. I mean that would have been tough
Speaker 6: question for me if I'm in that room, you know,
Speaker 6: with the tie to CCP and all that is happening
Speaker 6: on a number of different fronts. So yeah, I agree
Speaker 6: with you.
Speaker 1: It's a big stri I would also ask something very
Speaker 1: very mundane, which is did they have pre naps? Because
Speaker 1: what do you think we're just guessing here? Do you
Speaker 1: think someone who enters into a fake marriage gets a
Speaker 1: prenup or not?
Speaker 6: It's a great question. I don't think they do, but
Speaker 6: it seemed like this was kind of a fly by
Speaker 6: night operation, but pretty organized for that many people.
Speaker 1: One hundred thousand dollars also seems low to me. I've
Speaker 1: got a serious question after this. Doesn't that seem low
Speaker 1: to you to be able to if you're coming from
Speaker 1: China to get a fake marriage? I think you're paying
Speaker 1: seven figures.
Speaker 6: Not saying yeah yeah. I mean, you know, there's a
Speaker 6: lot of people in tough times, so one hundred thousand
Speaker 6: probably is attractive to a lot of people.
Speaker 1: Okay, before I go to this area today, I was
Speaker 1: on with John Roberts when I was at sant Ane Brett.
Speaker 1: They had a rule they would tackle you if you
Speaker 1: made a reference to popular culture that was more than
Speaker 1: a week old. So I couldn't use a Seinfeld reference
Speaker 1: or anything like that. They would say, don't do that,
Speaker 1: You'll lose the audience. Fact's not an evidence. John dropped
Speaker 1: a Princess Bride reference today. What is your thinking about?
Speaker 7: It?
Speaker 1: Was a very good one, and I was amused. I
Speaker 1: think everyone said, what's your rule about things like that?
Speaker 10: Oh?
Speaker 6: I think the iconic ones like Princess Bride inconceivable. I
Speaker 6: think that's that's worthwhile. I think a lot of the
Speaker 6: audience gets all that you know, and so I think
Speaker 6: it's funny and shows personality. But John, I saw the
Speaker 6: whole live shot.
Speaker 7: It was great.
Speaker 1: Oh I just threw that in there, and I haven't.
Speaker 1: I must say I was taken aback because it's one
Speaker 1: of my favorite films. All right to the serious stuff.
Speaker 6: My name is Indigo Montoya. They're prepared to die.
Speaker 1: I think it may be the most easily you can
Speaker 1: do Seinfeld. You know, close talkers and straight arm walkers.
Speaker 1: But people might not get it. People get the Prince's Bride, okay.
Speaker 1: Brt Frond Maraser of The Wall Street Journal. Iran is
Speaker 1: defying US pressure by becoming a survival economy. I don't
Speaker 1: think we can crack the regime with economic sanction, because
Speaker 1: they'll loot ninety two million people to keep a quarter
Speaker 1: million in power. What do you think I.
Speaker 6: Agree with you. I think they are feeling pressure. I
Speaker 6: do agree that they have three hundred thousand or three
Speaker 6: hundred percent inflation, and I do agree that there are
Speaker 6: indications that people aren't getting paid and there's angst and chaos. However,
Speaker 6: for forty seven years, they've managed to get around sanctions.
Speaker 6: They've managed to figure out how to make their country work,
Speaker 6: even in the face of a boot on the neck
Speaker 6: of them economically. And I have a feeling that they
Speaker 6: are running out the clock towards the midterms and will
Speaker 6: hang on. And so when this back and forth and
Speaker 6: the president can say something about we're in control of
Speaker 6: the Strait, and then Iranians can fire on a boat
Speaker 6: and a ship and they can say we're in control
Speaker 6: of the Straight. So oil prices in the meantime, you know, hover,
Speaker 6: and as we saw in these elections, you know, I
Speaker 6: think cost of living is still what drives people's mentality
Speaker 6: when they're going to the ballot box and scared of
Speaker 6: democratic socialist agenda is something, but it's not as much
Speaker 6: as cost of living.
Speaker 1: So I agree with that. I want to know what
Speaker 1: you think about in October. Surprise if the president we're
Speaker 1: to launch a return to combat major combat operation and
Speaker 1: do so in the middle of October for three straight weeks,
Speaker 1: Benjamin att Yao would be very happy if it's before
Speaker 1: the Israeli vote. What would it do to our elections?
Speaker 1: Do you think? If anything?
Speaker 6: You know, we've we've seen so little reaction other than
Speaker 6: negative to a long term conflict and the fact that
Speaker 6: it's this long. I mean, every pole that we look
Speaker 6: at look at is kind of upside down. Republicans, you know,
Speaker 6: it's less, But I don't think it will affect that
Speaker 6: that much unless there is some major combat operation that
Speaker 6: ends in a definitive success that ends everything. And I
Speaker 6: actually agree with you. I'm talking to a lot of
Speaker 6: experts and I have Jack Keen on tonight. They believe
Speaker 6: that it's not going to end until there is that.
Speaker 1: And I'm thinking, if you have to do that, and
Speaker 1: you've got a limited number of ordinance strikes, you do it.
Speaker 1: All when they don't want you to do it, which
Speaker 1: is before the Israeli elections before ours. Okay, bred I
Speaker 1: want to close by asking you about polling. And Fox
Speaker 1: News has the best posters in the world. They're very
Speaker 1: serious professionals. They work hard at it, and in fact,
Speaker 1: every network tries to be it right. They don't ever
Speaker 1: want to be wrong. But we've had two big misses,
Speaker 1: and I don't mean close misses, enormous misses in Michigan
Speaker 1: and then went last night in Wisconsin. Is it broken
Speaker 1: to the point that you are reticent about using polling?
Speaker 6: We're using it less and I think we will ahead
Speaker 6: of the midterms. We'll give a you know, a glancing blow.
Speaker 6: I think it's going to be more important to talk
Speaker 6: to people on the ground. You know, the Kahali group
Speaker 6: was pretty close on a couple of the polls. They've
Speaker 6: had a decent track record. Excuse me, but you're right.
Speaker 6: When you're off twenty points, that's like you're in a
Speaker 6: different state. And I think, you know, he accidentally wrote
Speaker 6: Michigan instead of Wisconsin upside down or something. And I
Speaker 6: think you just have to be everything with a grain
Speaker 6: of salt. I think you know, we could be in
Speaker 6: the midst of Republicans are hoping the big red waves
Speaker 6: that never materialized. Well, I mean there could be a
Speaker 6: big blue wave that doesn't materialize, depending on how people
Speaker 6: are feeling about their economy.
Speaker 1: Okay, last question on the relative scale of things you
Speaker 1: don't want to say, with criticizing Thanksgiving being a ten,
Speaker 1: where is it for a mission candidate to say that
Speaker 1: toxic masculinity is manifested in football?
Speaker 6: I think it's high. I mean it's right up there
Speaker 6: with Thanksgiving.
Speaker 1: I think you're right.
Speaker 6: I mean between college football and big blue and you know,
Speaker 6: Detroit Lions, you're backing yourself into a corner.
Speaker 1: I agree, and we will see in eighty three days.
Speaker 1: Brett Bear Special Report. Good to talk to you, Brett,
Speaker 1: Thank you for joining me. Don't go anywhere, America. I'll
Speaker 1: be right back. I've got John pod Orts coming up,
Speaker 1: and we're gonna do an intervention with John because on
Speaker 1: the commentary podcast, they're very, very, very upset with where
Speaker 1: the war is going. And I keep going back to
Speaker 1: are we better off than we were on January twentyeth,
Speaker 1: twenty twenty five, And my answer to me to be
Speaker 1: Iran is by a magnitude or off the charts. Stay
Speaker 1: with me. I'm Hugh Hewittt. You're listening to the u
Speaker 1: Uit Show on the Salem News Channel, the Salem Radio Network,
Speaker 1: and our wonderful affiliates across the country. Welcome back, America.
Speaker 1: I'm Hugh Hewittt with the editor in chief of Commentary
Speaker 1: Magazine and the host of the daily Commentary podcast, John
Speaker 1: pod hoorts. John, I'm worried. I'm worried about two things.
Speaker 1: First thing I'm worried about is the Commentary Roast on
Speaker 1: November eighth in New York City, where the honoree is
Speaker 1: Ron Derman. I'm worried because I went to chat SHEBT
Speaker 1: and on my first past they didn't know what it
Speaker 1: was and they couldn't find information. So I asked them
Speaker 1: to try hard.
Speaker 2: They shouldn't. I don't want them to.
Speaker 10: You don't want This is a very private exclusive This
Speaker 10: is a very private exclusive event. It's off the record.
Speaker 10: It's our main fundraiser of the year, and we keep
Speaker 10: it on the QT so that everybody can be frank
Speaker 10: and amusing and say what they want to say without
Speaker 10: fear of it all being exposed to the harsh light
Speaker 10: of day.
Speaker 1: It's going to be fabulous this year because Ron Dermot
Speaker 1: you will not remember this. John. I've only met him once.
Speaker 1: I was in your company at the Arcade Hotel at
Speaker 1: the Cleveland convention in twenty sixteen.
Speaker 10: Oh, I remember it very well, in that bizarre Yes,
Speaker 10: the ArKade, A beautiful nineteenth century arcade.
Speaker 1: Yeah, which fabulous hotel, which.
Speaker 2: Is in a movie.
Speaker 10: I saw a movie that where and Superman people floating
Speaker 10: to the ceiling Superman, that's right, that's right, David porn
Speaker 10: Sweat and Rachel Brosihan floating to the ceiling of the
Speaker 10: Arcade Hotel.
Speaker 7: Yeah.
Speaker 10: Well, I know that you and Ron Durmer, and you
Speaker 10: told me and what I remember, yes, yes, what I
Speaker 10: tell you that was going to say, I remember at
Speaker 10: that Just to give people a sense of what that
Speaker 10: convention was like. That was, of course the convention where
Speaker 10: Trump was nominated, and there was a private session a
Speaker 10: lunch that I was at with Paul Ryan.
Speaker 2: Then the you know, Speaker of the House. Was he
Speaker 2: Speaker of the House then or was.
Speaker 1: He the minority leader speak?
Speaker 2: I can't remember.
Speaker 10: Yeah, he was Speaker of the House and he was
Speaker 10: explaining how if Trump lost by three points they would
Speaker 10: hold the House. If Trump lost by seven points, they
Speaker 10: could probably hold the House, but if he lost by ten,
Speaker 10: they would lose the House by twenty seats. And in
Speaker 10: no one of these scenarios did he say what might
Speaker 10: happen if Trump won rather than lost.
Speaker 2: So that was the mood at.
Speaker 10: The convention among the regular Republicans, including you know not
Speaker 10: I would not, I'm not a professional Republican, but you
Speaker 10: know in these circles, which is like, Okay, how bad
Speaker 10: is it going to be in November?
Speaker 2: How bad is Trump going to lose that?
Speaker 10: And everybody seemed to have that attitude in the circles
Speaker 10: in which I was traveling, So that just goes.
Speaker 1: I long ago that was, and I had that mood.
Speaker 1: And all I remember, though, is when the ambassador walked away,
Speaker 1: you said to me, that's one of the most important
Speaker 1: men in Israel. Because I was not familiar with Ron
Speaker 1: Dermer at that point, I think maybe doctor Orn was
Speaker 1: still the ambassador, but but you told me that's the guy,
Speaker 1: and I think he remains the guy. Do you think
Speaker 1: he remains the guy that the Prime Minister turns proper?
Speaker 10: Well, Ron Durmer is no longer in the government. He
Speaker 10: is no longer an explicit, you know, right hand man
Speaker 10: to Benjamin and Yahoo and his but I assume that
Speaker 10: he is still a confidant. He left the government because
Speaker 10: it was such a you know it, three or three
Speaker 10: extraordinarily ruling years of work, and he has kids, he
Speaker 10: has teenage kids, and he had promised his wife that
Speaker 10: he was only going to sort of do it for
Speaker 10: a year, and of course then October seventh happened and
Speaker 10: he had to stay. But it was just sort of
Speaker 10: like hell on his family. So he he chose to
Speaker 10: go back into private life. But I assume that he
Speaker 10: and BB are on the phone constantly.
Speaker 1: So you talk, you talk to your sister Ruthie, who
Speaker 1: lives in Israel. Do you think the Prime Minister has
Speaker 1: a good chance of remaining not as a caretaker, not
Speaker 1: in a hung parliament, but as actually winning. Do you
Speaker 1: see that happening?
Speaker 10: My sister Ruthy whom you mentioned, who is a columnist
Speaker 10: with the Jewish New Syndicate and has herself a twice
Speaker 10: weekly podcast called Israel Undiplomatic, just told me twenty minutes
Speaker 10: ago that the person she considers the most accurate pollster
Speaker 10: in Israel, who got the twenty fifteen election right, which
Speaker 10: is something that he was the only person to get right.
Speaker 2: A BB landslide in twenty to fifteen.
Speaker 10: Says he is convinced that BB NETNW who will win
Speaker 10: the right wing coalition led by net Now, who will
Speaker 10: win enough seats to form a majority government. But he
Speaker 10: is the only poster in Israel who is saying that.
Speaker 2: So well, that's my report to you on how things are.
Speaker 10: The election is on October twenty seventh, so that's two
Speaker 10: months from now, and God only knows. This is an
Speaker 10: incredibly complicated political system they have.
Speaker 2: There's a lot of gamesmanship.
Speaker 10: There's a lot of horse behind the scenes, horse parties
Speaker 10: being created and closed up to join other groups or
Speaker 10: to act as spoilers.
Speaker 2: Or to become king makers.
Speaker 10: And there is an X factor figure in the general
Speaker 10: Gotti Eisenod, who is now leading a party but has
Speaker 10: never been in politics before, who he himself personally is
Speaker 10: polling well, but that doesn't mean no one votes directly
Speaker 10: for the prime minister, so so his party will have
Speaker 10: to will have to outperform and his ANTIBB coalition. So
Speaker 10: basically there's a BB coalition and there will be an
Speaker 10: anti there are ANTIBB forces, and he's now the leader
Speaker 10: effectively of the ANTIBB forces. And that's the question is
Speaker 10: who will prevail. And my guess, my guest, if you
Speaker 10: really have to bet, my guess is that nobody will
Speaker 10: be able to form a government and that we will
Speaker 10: be what you mentioned in a caretaker moment, which is
Speaker 10: exactly what happened between twenty nineteen and twenty twenty two.
Speaker 1: When okay, this is a trivia question before we go
Speaker 1: to break, because it's never discussed. I listened to Dan
Speaker 1: Senior and Amie Sagal Anddavid Yale. None of them ever
Speaker 1: bring this up. So it's not fair asking you the
Speaker 1: attorney general. I teach constitional law. I know our system
Speaker 1: pretty well. The Israeli system is Yes, the Attorney General
Speaker 1: in Israel for four years has been nothing but a
Speaker 1: thorn in the side of bb Netne And I think
Speaker 1: she's not Is she gonna be? Is she? Is she
Speaker 1: a g forever? How long does she stay?
Speaker 2: You know what?
Speaker 10: I honestly don't know the answer to that question because
Speaker 10: her her political position is sort of like the FED chairman,
Speaker 10: somewhat shielded from the from the politicians, but it is
Speaker 10: true that her she is like Javert trying to bag
Speaker 10: Bibi in in In. Therefore, there were four prosecutes usis
Speaker 10: there are now two. I believe and I'm not saying
Speaker 10: this as a BB partisan or anything. I believe these
Speaker 10: cases are entirely without merit and that it is an
Speaker 10: outrage that they have been going on now for six years.
Speaker 2: Six years.
Speaker 10: He has essentially been in a courtroom on and off
Speaker 10: for six years and there is a trial going on.
Speaker 10: During the Iran conflict, he was in a courtroom during
Speaker 10: It's imagine it's a Trump for president and at the
Speaker 10: same time had to be in Alvin Bragg's courtroom through
Speaker 10: the entirety of his presidency.
Speaker 2: I mean, it's it's it's deranged.
Speaker 10: It's part of the it's part of the problems with this,
Speaker 10: you know, very vibrant nation, but one with an immature
Speaker 10: political system that it hasn't figured out proper checks and balances.
Speaker 2: And here we are.
Speaker 1: Well stand by. I'm gonna talk with John about what
Speaker 1: it's like CLI on the Upper West Side now during
Speaker 1: the break, and then when we come back, I'm going
Speaker 1: to get to Iran and the fact that we need
Speaker 1: an intervention on the Commentary podcast because it is absolutely
Speaker 1: depressing me every day that I listened to it. But first,
Speaker 1: we're going to talk about the reality of living on
Speaker 1: the Upper West Side in a period of time I
Speaker 1: never thought i'd seen America States. I'm back with John
Speaker 1: podhorra S, editor in chief of Commentary Magazine. If you're
Speaker 1: not listening to the Commentary podcast every morning, you're missing
Speaker 1: the best podcast intellectual substance out there. John. I only
Speaker 1: lived in New York for six months. I lived at
Speaker 1: one hundred and tenth in Broadway. It was crazy then,
Speaker 1: but I'm a gentile and I'm not particularly worried about
Speaker 1: antisemitic nuts running around. Now. You live there in what
Speaker 1: is the most anti Semitic moment, maybe since the KKK
Speaker 1: got going. Are you personally alarmed? Do you worry about
Speaker 1: your children and your friends and the crazies around you?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 10: About two blocks for me two weeks ago, coming out
Speaker 10: of synagogu at about one o'clock in the afternoon and
Speaker 10: an Orthodox synagogue. A man walking down the street, noticeable
Speaker 10: as a Jewish person because he was wearing a keepaw
Speaker 10: a skull cap, was stabbed near the heart with a
Speaker 10: screwdriver by somebody who yelled a lahuac bar and that
Speaker 10: is you know, it wouldn't have been me because I
Speaker 10: don't walk around I don't wear keepa My sixteen year
Speaker 10: old son does. So you tell me whether I should
Speaker 10: be worried or not. Well, she won't take it off, won't.
Speaker 10: I won't tell him. I won't tell him to take
Speaker 10: it off because he is a proud member of the
Speaker 10: tribe and this is important to him, and he is
Speaker 10: he is, and so he wears his he wears his
Speaker 10: Judaism on his sleeve. And I'm not going to say
Speaker 10: he shouldn't. I think that would be shameful. It would
Speaker 10: be I think. But I am I concerned. Yeah, I'm
Speaker 10: concerned as I've never been concerned before.
Speaker 1: In my life. So has the New York City Police
Speaker 1: Department responded in noticeably Jewish neighborhoods, especially in Brooklyn and Manhattan,
Speaker 1: with an increased presence on the street, which would seem
Speaker 1: to me to be the obvious thing to do.
Speaker 10: I have seen that, particularly in this area. But of course,
Speaker 10: the question is not really whether the police can retard
Speaker 10: or block.
Speaker 2: A random act of madness.
Speaker 10: And it appears this guy who yelled a la Jakorn
Speaker 10: and stabbed this gentleman and stabbed somebody three blocks away earlier,
Speaker 10: about half an hour earlier. Is a mentally ill person
Speaker 10: and not an Arab, by the way, And so that
Speaker 10: kind of attack is very hard to prevent. Right, It's
Speaker 10: like the other crimes in New York that are now
Speaker 10: so prevalent or that are so frightening to people, are
Speaker 10: these times when people are pushed onto a subway platform. Now,
Speaker 10: when I was a kid, you know, crime was economic.
Speaker 10: That is to say, what you got was lugged. You've
Speaker 10: got somebody came up to you and stole your wallet,
Speaker 10: or you know, when we had more, we carried around
Speaker 10: more cash than we do now and whatever. So so
Speaker 10: that was more. There was more menace in that sense
Speaker 10: because you just didn't know, and there was there was
Speaker 10: a lot.
Speaker 1: There wasn't we got to go back on. It wasn't
Speaker 1: directed when I lived in the city in nineteen.
Speaker 10: Right, No, it was not that was that was directed
Speaker 10: at anyone.
Speaker 2: And so.
Speaker 1: Okay, sure, welcome back in America. I'm with John Todd
Speaker 1: Hortz here on The Huge US Show, editor in chief
Speaker 1: of Commentary Magazine, host of the Daily Commentary podcast, which
Speaker 1: you ought to listen to. John, I want you to
Speaker 1: finish the thought that people here on the podcast. The
Speaker 1: menace that I felt living in New York in nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty was generalized. Everyone was on their toes for everything.
Speaker 1: Now it's directed to Jews. I just don't know what
Speaker 1: the American city police should do about that. Do you
Speaker 1: have a thought on that, right?
Speaker 11: My?
Speaker 2: Well? Okay, So here's the story. The story is that.
Speaker 10: Jewish institutions need to be and are protected. They're protected
Speaker 10: in two ways, one of which is they have cough
Speaker 10: cars in front of them and stuff like that. The
Speaker 10: other is private security. And one of the unknown hidden
Speaker 10: stories of the last couple of years is that Jewish people,
Speaker 10: who number about five million in the United States, and
Speaker 10: have you know synagogues and community centers and the institutions
Speaker 10: and all of that, are spending privately seven hundred and
Speaker 10: fifty million dollars a year on security.
Speaker 2: Wow. Just think about that for a second.
Speaker 10: So, while there are local authorities everywhere in the country
Speaker 10: that are aware of the threats to synagogues and Jews
Speaker 10: and all of that, nonetheless it is insufficient and the
Speaker 10: work needs to be done to harden these about a lot
Speaker 10: of this money is capital spending on securing the institutions,
Speaker 10: creating barriers to entry for you know, bad actors, that
Speaker 10: kind of thing, and so buildings places are much safer.
Speaker 10: Even though we know the guy drove into try to
Speaker 10: literally smash his car into this synagogue in Bloomfield Hills.
Speaker 2: The attack that.
Speaker 10: Abdullah Sad refused to condemn or said was the result
Speaker 10: of hurt people hurting people. Yeah, so that kind of
Speaker 10: thing that could happen, because there are some things you
Speaker 10: really can't block, but buildings and institutions are secure. What's
Speaker 10: happening here is a mood that is being created in
Speaker 10: the city that normalizes anti Semitism by calling it anti
Speaker 10: Zionism and basically tells people it's not only that you
Speaker 10: could be criminally attacked, but if you're in a restaurant
Speaker 10: and somebody looks at you and says are you a Jew?
Speaker 10: And you say yes, and he then curses you out
Speaker 10: or throws a chair at you, or a Jewish owned business,
Speaker 10: suddenly people are graffeeding up the business and the mayor
Speaker 10: of New York City is on their side.
Speaker 2: He is on their side.
Speaker 10: He is a supporter of the lawlessness and antiinomenism. He
Speaker 10: does not like Israel, he does not like the Jewish state.
Speaker 10: He does not like Jewish people who do not agree
Speaker 10: with him that the Jewish states should not exist.
Speaker 2: And he is.
Speaker 10: Loathsomely eager to traffic in and join in with the
Speaker 10: jackals who want to harm the Jews.
Speaker 2: So one final note, he said.
Speaker 10: Asked about why he would not support Israel, he said,
Speaker 10: you know, I can't support one state that would privilege
Speaker 10: one religion over another. Two days ago, he welcomed and
Speaker 10: appeared at a celebration of Pakistan's independence seven ninth anniversary
Speaker 10: of Pakistan's independence. The second sentence in Pakistan's constitution says
Speaker 10: Pakistan is an Islamic state. So he's a liar. He's
Speaker 10: a filthy, rotten, stinking liar. He doesn't like the Jewish state,
Speaker 10: he doesn't like Jews, and he's he is giving people
Speaker 10: in the city a permission structure.
Speaker 2: That is inevitably going to lead to violence.
Speaker 1: So here's the difficult question. I have a college friend
Speaker 1: Jewish who works for him in a senior job. Can
Speaker 1: you imagine doing that?
Speaker 10: No, I can't, although you know if he's there thinking that,
Speaker 10: you know, he might be there to help temper the
Speaker 10: worst impulses, which is why Jessica Tish, my former intern,
Speaker 10: who is now the police commissioner of New York City,
Speaker 10: uh and a and a, you know, a good person
Speaker 10: from a serious Jewish family and a very good police commissioner,
Speaker 10: is still there. I think to, you know, do what
Speaker 10: she can to protect the city from its own mayor
Speaker 10: is the.
Speaker 2: Best way I can put it.
Speaker 10: And when that becomes intolerable for her or becomes intolerable
Speaker 10: for him, that employment will end.
Speaker 1: Commentary podcast one day at least ask the panel is
Speaker 1: the world better today than it was on January twenty
Speaker 1: first of twenty twenty five, because you guys are very
Speaker 1: stressed out over the Iran War. But I keep going
Speaker 1: back to the fact we're a lot better off than
Speaker 1: we were, that you agree with that we have like
Speaker 1: thirty seconds.
Speaker 10: Very simply, we would right now have a We would
Speaker 10: have the dumbest and least consequential politician ever to serve
Speaker 10: in the White House had Trump not one on November fourth,
Speaker 10: twenty twenty four, and things would be terrible.
Speaker 1: That's that's what I always remind myself, even when it's
Speaker 1: a bad day. In the Iran battle. John pod Ortz
Speaker 1: follow him at Jay pod orts on X. Listen to
Speaker 1: the commentary podcast Monday through Friday. It posts about ten
Speaker 1: thirty or eleven o'clock and it's invaluable. Thank you, John.
Speaker 1: Speak to in America, Welcome back America. You hewittt now
Speaker 1: joined by former United States Senator Jim Talent, who represented
Speaker 1: the Great State of Missouri. We usually talk national security
Speaker 1: because Jim is on the Reagan Institute Board of National
Speaker 1: Security Center for Peace through Strength. Jim, I'm just talking
Speaker 1: to John pod Ortz about the very basic question is
Speaker 1: the world in the United States better off today than
Speaker 1: they were on January twenty at twenty twenty five, because
Speaker 1: it seemed to me that's the way to consider the
Speaker 1: Iran conflict.
Speaker 12: Well, I assume you're just you're talking about the Middle
Speaker 12: East specifically, and the answers, Yeah, the answer is unequivocally yes.
Speaker 12: Iranian national power, both military and economic, has been broken.
Speaker 12: I mean, humpty dumpty has fallen off the waluew and
Speaker 12: nobody's putting it back together again. So thereability The regime
Speaker 12: made linger probably will for a while, but their capabilities
Speaker 12: are those of a sub national force, so they can
Speaker 12: threaten coastal shipping the whu Thi's can do that. They
Speaker 12: can execute their own people, Hamasta does that, they can
Speaker 12: try and assassinate foreign leaders. Every terrorist group in the country,
Speaker 12: in the world tries to do that. So they're a
Speaker 12: problem now that we have to manage, specifically with regard
Speaker 12: to the Strait, and the President is managing it by
Speaker 12: hitting them back five times as hard when they decide
Speaker 12: to hit us, and by throttling them with the blockade.
Speaker 1: So the Wall Street Journal has a headline Iran is
Speaker 1: defying US pressure by becoming a survival economy. Tehran's leaders
Speaker 1: focus on subsistence in bid to outlast sanctions and enable blockade.
Speaker 1: I am of the opinion that they can loot ninety
Speaker 1: two million people for the money they need for themselves
Speaker 1: and their army forever, and that we won't crack them
Speaker 1: this way, But it's they can't get strong enough to
Speaker 1: threaten any of our allies in a significant way. At
Speaker 1: the same time, agree, disagree, I.
Speaker 12: Think I disagree you now again. I think I should
Speaker 12: preface by saying, and I've been saying this for months,
Speaker 12: I think the fall of the regime is inevitable, but
Speaker 12: very well not be imminent. So you said they loot
Speaker 12: their people. What wealth have their people got? The currency
Speaker 12: is worthless?
Speaker 4: You?
Speaker 12: I mean the state is surviving now. Its entities are
Speaker 12: cross borrowing. They're borrowing money from each other.
Speaker 7: To make the books look like they like they balance.
Speaker 12: The only way they can do that is for the
Speaker 12: central bank to create money, to add zeros to the
Speaker 12: count to the accounts, to print money, and so the
Speaker 12: currency is worthless.
Speaker 1: I think what they'll do is go into individual homes
Speaker 1: and take anything of value, whether it's gold or silver,
Speaker 1: or watches or cars. That's what I mean by loot
Speaker 1: their people because their people don't have guys.
Speaker 12: Yeah, it's probably a barter economy. They can steal from
Speaker 12: their own people. But this is not North Korea. This
Speaker 12: is and this is a nation state in the middle
Speaker 12: of the Middle East that had designs on dominating the
Speaker 12: whole region and have gone a long way towards doing it.
Speaker 12: So can they crawl along? Can they limp along? Execute
Speaker 12: enough people to stay in power? Maybe, but their strategy
Speaker 12: for the region is shattered. That's why I said it's
Speaker 12: a problem now that we have to manage. Beginning with
Speaker 12: the straight well Chris Wright announced yesterday. I'm sure you
Speaker 12: saw it.
Speaker 1: I saw it. Nine.
Speaker 12: Yeah, are moving and the pipelines are pumping five or
Speaker 12: six million more than they did before the war began.
Speaker 12: That basically makes up for the oil that they thought
Speaker 12: they were stopping the world from getting. Now, oil price
Speaker 12: is going to remain elevated because of the risk going forward.
Speaker 12: But I look what I like to see us hit
Speaker 12: them again the way you've argued for and John has
Speaker 12: and others.
Speaker 7: I would be fine with it.
Speaker 12: But I can't stand here and say that a policy
Speaker 12: where we are throttling them economically while hitting them back
Speaker 12: very hard if they ever dare to hit us, I
Speaker 12: can't say that's an unreasonable choice under the circumstances.
Speaker 1: If Donald Trump had the Cooper Plan, Admiral bad Cooper
Speaker 1: has the plan for UH four weeks of intensive bombing
Speaker 1: to destroy the remaining infrastructure of value. If he executes
Speaker 1: that in October, what is the political impact of that.
Speaker 12: Well, I suppose if there was some very visible result,
Speaker 12: like the regime bending the knee, it would probably be good.
Speaker 12: But I think this is a domestic election. I don't
Speaker 12: I don't think the war is not helping. I guess
Speaker 12: although it's you know, it's it's it's causing. I think
Speaker 12: a lot of not causing, but it's it's it's causing
Speaker 12: to be visible a lot of the anti semitism on
Speaker 12: the left, which does help us. It's an economic election
Speaker 12: and it's going to turn I think on the quality
Speaker 12: of the candidates, how hard we hit them for all
Speaker 12: this socialism, which I'm convinced we're going to do that.
Speaker 12: I'm not worried about us doing that. But the thing
Speaker 12: we need to do that we're not doing you is
Speaker 12: talk about the coming manufacturing economic boom. You already see
Speaker 12: the signs of it. Kevin Hassett's talking about it all
Speaker 12: the time. For the productivity is up, manufacturing investment is up,
Speaker 12: real family income is up, consumer spending is up.
Speaker 1: I feel like I'm in nineteen.
Speaker 12: Eighty two and nineteen eighty three is coming, and we
Speaker 12: have we're not telling people that.
Speaker 1: You well, I remember that, Oh that was the turn,
Speaker 1: but it came too late to save. I guess we
Speaker 1: didn't lose the Senate in eighty two. We lost the House.
Speaker 12: No, we lose the Senate. I don't think we're going
Speaker 12: to lose the Senate. Now, now a lot depends on
Speaker 12: what the individual candidates do. We're going in that red
Speaker 12: zone the last sixty days. We've got some really good ones.
Speaker 12: We've got some others that are okay. You know, we're
Speaker 12: going to see what happens. But you I think, look,
Speaker 12: we made the tax cuts permanent. The president. Trump's a
Speaker 12: huge deregulatory president, as as Reagan was. We have an
Speaker 12: energy policy where production is surging, and for once we
Speaker 12: actually have balanced trade with other countries around the world.
Speaker 12: There is no way that is not going to produce
Speaker 12: enormous economic growth. And I think if we make that
Speaker 12: case to people, it's going to be very credible and
Speaker 12: it's going to lift some moods out there.
Speaker 7: But we're not making it.
Speaker 1: Ill.
Speaker 12: If I can suggest, why don't you get Hassett on
Speaker 12: the ship. I've been tough to him for fifteen minutes.
Speaker 12: Get Kevin on the show.
Speaker 1: Good idea, Yeah, he's very much What do you last?
Speaker 1: Quick exit? Jim? The polls are busted. Should we even
Speaker 1: be using them in reporting? Oh?
Speaker 12: Well, ideally no, But I mean they're going to use
Speaker 12: some of you now in part it's because and and
Speaker 12: when you've run as many campaigns as I have. You
Speaker 12: know this, there's only two objective indications of how well
Speaker 12: a candidate is doing. One of them is the money
Speaker 12: you've raised, which is not as relevant anymore because so
Speaker 12: much money comes from the outside.
Speaker 7: The other is Poland, so they're going to report on it.
Speaker 1: But I don't.
Speaker 12: I don't trust him. There's some polsters if you follow
Speaker 12: them consistently. Henry Olsen's very good. I mean, there's some
Speaker 12: good ones out there, but there's also some real bad ones.
Speaker 1: And Henry Patrick Rushini there are a half dozen the
Speaker 1: boy have they been bad this week? In last Jim
Speaker 1: Talent can be followed on exit Jim Talent, Thank you, Senator.
Speaker 1: I'll be right back in America. State Tue and Grace America.
Speaker 1: I'm go Hewett. Welcome now a three of today's program.
Speaker 1: Admiral Mark se Montgomery, retired United States Navy Senior Fellow
Speaker 1: at the Foundation for the Defensive Democracy, joins me, as
Speaker 1: he does at least once a month.
Speaker 7: No.
Speaker 1: I was in a minor league baseball game last night
Speaker 1: where it got still out of hand. They had the
Speaker 1: third baseman pitched the ninth inning rather than use another reliever,
Speaker 1: and all he did was throw big fat meatballs that
Speaker 1: they were hitting all over the place, but they got
Speaker 1: some outs too, So I thought I would begin with
Speaker 1: a big fat meatball. What do you think is going
Speaker 1: on with iron right now? Are we winning?
Speaker 11: So that's the meatball? Okay, So look, I think it's weird.
Speaker 11: You hear the President say I controlled the straight oh
Speaker 11: hor Moves, and you hear the Bahadi, the head of
Speaker 11: the agency, say we control the straight of Hormuves.
Speaker 7: They're both correct.
Speaker 11: The United States, using its navy, can blockade the straight
Speaker 11: of hor Moves, And if you're foolish enough, like a
Speaker 11: Panamanian freighter yesterday, to try to run it, you'll catch
Speaker 11: a couple of hell fires and you have to lay
Speaker 11: to and be boarded. And it so that by dint
Speaker 11: of a navy we can stop all flow through the Straight.
Speaker 7: Of hor Moves.
Speaker 11: The Iranians can can buy geography right now block the
Speaker 11: straight of Hormuves by firing in and scaring merchant ships.
Speaker 7: So those are both true.
Speaker 11: But what's also true is the only one of us
Speaker 11: that can open the straight oh hor Moves is the
Speaker 11: United States. If the President were decided to do that,
Speaker 11: I think right now he does not have the political
Speaker 11: will to do that because I think it would involve
Speaker 11: risk to our ships but also to merchant ships, and
Speaker 11: it would require a significant bombing campaign to be restarted
Speaker 11: against the the littoral areas of in the vicinity of
Speaker 11: the straight Ohr moves.
Speaker 7: So right now you're going to all stop.
Speaker 11: And now the question comes which one of us feels
Speaker 11: the pain of a secure of a of a throttled.
Speaker 7: Straight of hooves. And I recognize a small amount.
Speaker 11: Of Western supported oil is coming through somewhere, probably between
Speaker 11: two and five million barrels a day, and stuff is
Speaker 11: going out through pipelines at the tune of seven or
Speaker 11: maybe even eight million barrels a day. But overall we're
Speaker 11: underperforming where we were before the war in terms of
Speaker 11: getting fuel out and certainly getting LNG out. So I say,
Speaker 11: at this point, you know, the United States, we're going
Speaker 11: to play a game of chicken on economic pressure, or
Speaker 11: we can restart a campaign. You know, I've argued for
Speaker 11: restarting an air campaign in order to impose costs on
Speaker 11: the Iranians and force open the Straight of hor moves.
Speaker 11: But I'm in the minority in terms of you know,
Speaker 11: if I were in the executive branch right now.
Speaker 1: Well you persuaded me a long time ago. Well, right
Speaker 1: now is at eighty two dollars and sixty three. It's
Speaker 1: a barrel. That's for Brent. And I assume that if
Speaker 1: we go back to full combat operation, that'll go back
Speaker 1: up closer to one hundred. And that's a political cause.
Speaker 1: The president doesn't want to incur between now and the election,
Speaker 1: but that after the election. Do you agree with my
Speaker 1: assessment that after the election all bets are off about this?
Speaker 11: I hope so, because you know, I believe this is
Speaker 11: how you look. There's a lot on the line here.
Speaker 11: One is should this regime exists as it continued? It is,
Speaker 11: it is currently constitu constituted, and I don't think it is.
Speaker 11: It's a I don't think it should. It's a forty
Speaker 11: seven year authoritary in regime that's practiced terrorism for that
Speaker 11: whole time, killed one thousand plus Americans, killed thousand Europeans
Speaker 11: in Europe or in Afghanistan, killed thirty thousand plus of
Speaker 11: its own people on a weekend. And you know we're
Speaker 11: treating you know, Europe treats US like cope belligerents, and
Speaker 11: we're not finishing the job here.
Speaker 7: So I think we should finish the job.
Speaker 11: Plus there's a principle of international trade here that will
Speaker 11: spread rapidly now, least of which to the Babe Mandeb
Speaker 11: in the Red and you know, in between the Red
Speaker 11: Sea and in the Arabian Sea. And we cannot allow
Speaker 11: this to continue. So if we have to wait to
Speaker 11: have the election or do it, we should do so.
Speaker 7: But we should go.
Speaker 11: We should get right to business because we are harming
Speaker 11: the readiness of the US Navy, US Air Force, and
Speaker 11: the US Army Air Defenders by not initiating as combat operations.
Speaker 11: Now I understand the politics of it, but you'll get
Speaker 11: your resolution and you know, the second week of November
Speaker 11: and then move on.
Speaker 1: So you've commanded a carrier strike for uce. How long
Speaker 1: can the Lincoln stay on that post? Do you know that?
Speaker 1: Are we preparing to relieve it with a different carrier?
Speaker 7: Well, I presume we are. We have a normal rotation.
Speaker 11: Now, what's going on right now is we're keeping two
Speaker 11: point zero in the UH as much as possible in
Speaker 11: the in the Mid East, in the Sentcom area of responsibility.
Speaker 11: So you know, if we're going to maintain two point
Speaker 11: Ohero carriers. That is extra pressure. But one way we
Speaker 11: can do it is the carrier that the carry strike
Speaker 11: group by commander that operates out of Yukuska in Japan
Speaker 11: can be utilized for this mission. You know, that takes
Speaker 11: away from into pacm the Indo pa the pay com
Speaker 11: commander won't like to hear that, Admiral Paparo, but the
Speaker 11: reality is, you know, that's probably a more likely scenario
Speaker 11: than pulling through another carrier too fast in the cycle
Speaker 11: to get a second one out of either San Diego
Speaker 11: or Norfolk. So one will normally rotate out from San
Speaker 11: Diego Norfolk, the one from Yukuska that gets the two
Speaker 11: that are there home after eight eight months, ten months,
Speaker 11: whatever it is. And then and then the other thing, though, Hugh,
Speaker 11: is the destroyers. That not just the destroyers that go
Speaker 11: with the carrier, but the extra destroyers we need. We're
Speaker 11: maintaining eighteen to seventeen eighteen destroyers in the San Kame
Speaker 11: area of responsibility. That's a lot of destroyers where we're
Speaker 11: and we have six you know, extra fighter squadrons from
Speaker 11: the Air Force there. We've got to rotate those as well,
Speaker 11: but we've got it. They do extended deployments. They then
Speaker 11: rotate and you hope this is the final set of rotations.
Speaker 1: So, Admiral, when do you start worrying about your sailor.
Speaker 1: I'm sure you're worry about your sailors all the time,
Speaker 1: but when do you start worrying about their effectiveness as
Speaker 1: a fighting force in terms of deploy It seems to
Speaker 1: me even in World War Two, we didn't leave people
Speaker 1: out there for a year at a time.
Speaker 11: So it's interesting you usuld say that, and I'll just
Speaker 11: do the world who analogy real quick. People don't get this.
Speaker 11: Nimtz had two commanders, Halsey and Spruance. Famously, Halsey over aggressive,
Speaker 11: you know, tricked a few times by the Japanese. Spruance,
Speaker 11: the real star of the show, who was deliberate, thoughtful,
Speaker 11: and imposed as will.
Speaker 7: On the enemy in a gradual way. But he rotated them.
Speaker 11: The guys underneath, guys like my grandfather was a carry
Speaker 11: striker commander. Then they didn't rotate. They just stayed on station.
Speaker 11: Oh you know, these guys rotated every three months. Oh no,
Speaker 11: you know you were in for if you were a
Speaker 11: marine or a sailor or a soldier, it was you
Speaker 11: got the full the full meal, you know, and so
Speaker 11: they got it.
Speaker 7: So they were.
Speaker 11: But look, the real answer your question is, you know,
Speaker 11: I've done an eight month deployment. I thought, you know,
Speaker 11: around month seven or it usually expects six. You think
Speaker 11: about six. Your family planning is about six. You know, kids,
Speaker 11: births come, you know, a month or two after you
Speaker 11: get no, it's around month seven. You feel the stress
Speaker 11: around month eight. I've heard I've had friends do ten
Speaker 11: month deployments and they would tell you that at a
Speaker 11: ten month deployment there's a you know, there's a pervasive
Speaker 11: sense of you know, I wouldn't call it depression, but
Speaker 11: you know, there's there's stress, there's deep stress felt.
Speaker 1: And I wonder, I get two more questions they got
Speaker 1: to get in. Are there statistics on re enlistment of
Speaker 1: people who deploy that long?
Speaker 11: Yes, I don't know that we advertise them, but they're statistics.
Speaker 1: Okay, Last thing, we have a military course, but we've
Speaker 1: got paramilitary, We've got the CIA, and we've got special
Speaker 1: forces within the military that are military, but they do
Speaker 1: secret stuff. Do you think they're at work right now?
Speaker 1: Do you think the agency's just been sitting on the
Speaker 1: sidelines for the last six months.
Speaker 11: First of all, I have to say the most effective
Speaker 11: member of President Trump's cabinet is actually John Radcliffe, ahead
Speaker 11: of the CIA.
Speaker 7: I mean, I.
Speaker 11: Believe he's basically making sure Ukraine goes okay. He's worked
Speaker 11: hard here. They're working hard against China. They did a
Speaker 11: lot in the Latin America over both Venezuela and Cuba.
Speaker 11: The CIA's hard at work, and very specifically, and what
Speaker 11: you're asking is, the CIA is hard at work both
Speaker 11: assessing Iran and seeing how with operations they can negatively
Speaker 11: impact Iran. I don't I have to say, you know,
Speaker 11: Radcliffe has been the absolute star of the cabinet throughout
Speaker 11: the first eighteen months. I know people love Marco Rubio,
Speaker 11: but Radcliffe is a lot less press and a lot
Speaker 11: more bang.
Speaker 1: Well, there was a memo from a combatant commander's sub
Speaker 1: level saying we need ideas on what to do about Iran,
Speaker 1: and I believe the story was true. I think the
Speaker 1: memo was leaked. I was we got two minutes. Did
Speaker 1: that surprise you?
Speaker 7: Just to be so blunt? You know, we need to
Speaker 7: crowdsource some new ideas.
Speaker 11: Yeah, I think it might have been from the sencom
Speaker 11: leadership itself.
Speaker 7: Look, I look, they need the crowdsource new ideas.
Speaker 11: You usually don't lay it out there quite so frankly,
Speaker 11: but maybe this is this is the twenty you know,
Speaker 11: the military of the twenty twenties is you got to
Speaker 11: you know, let everybody, you know, everybody participates. But the look,
Speaker 11: they knew they need new ideas we need to think about. Look,
Speaker 11: my new idea is an old idea. We should go
Speaker 11: to real convoy operations where ships transit with the merchant ships.
Speaker 11: That's one of the ideas I think. I think they've
Speaker 11: they've held back from it. I think the real issue
Speaker 11: they need to do is reset their risk tolerances and
Speaker 11: then do war gaming against that and say, look, if
Speaker 11: we relax our risk tolerances, take more risk, what could
Speaker 11: we achieve here? I think that's probably what's needed now. Well,
Speaker 11: hopefully they've been doing that over the last four months,
Speaker 11: in addition to finding new targets to hit in Iran.
Speaker 1: Admiral Mark Montgomery retired and I say, maybe always great
Speaker 1: to talk to you, senior fellow at the Foundation for
Speaker 1: the Defense of Democracies on the road, I have no
Speaker 1: idea where you are you could be in Ukraine or
Speaker 1: Taiwan or somewhere else. But thank you for spending time
Speaker 1: with me today, Admiral. I'll be right back in America.
Speaker 1: Don't go anywhere. Lots of election stuff happened, But we
Speaker 1: also had the president in Geneva, Ohio at the Patriot Games,
Speaker 1: and we've got Smug coming up to do some assessment
Speaker 1: of what was a magnificent bust on polling and whether
Speaker 1: or not we can believe anything that we read about
Speaker 1: any poll because I'm now I'm questioning, you know, for
Speaker 1: me once, shame on you. For me twice, shame on me.
Speaker 1: Do we believe any of this stuff? Or was it
Speaker 1: just that you don't make fun of Thanksgiving? Was it
Speaker 1: that simple? Stay tuned. If you've listened to this program
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Speaker 9: It is finally time for a straightforward assess of the
Speaker 9: state of our nation.
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Speaker 1: Welcome back to America, and who Hewart has promised Smug
Speaker 1: is an ass comfortably smug of the Ruthless Podcast. He is,
Speaker 1: of course, one of the great prognosticators of American politics.
Speaker 1: The Ruthless Podcast maybe the best political podcast in America.
Speaker 1: A lot of people are saying that, to quote Donald
Speaker 1: Donald Trump, a lot of people are saying that Smug.
Speaker 1: I have a question for the for the next time
Speaker 1: the Ruthless guys get together. You may have already laid
Speaker 1: down Thursday show, but maybe on Friday. When are we
Speaker 1: going to stop using these polls? They're off by twenty
Speaker 1: points in Wisconsin. Ye, they were off by double digits
Speaker 1: in Michigan the week before. And I've got you know,
Speaker 1: Cooper by seven over Watley. I don't believe that I
Speaker 1: got us off over Collins by nine. I don't believe
Speaker 1: that When are we going to stop using them?
Speaker 4: So I mean, thank you, first off for that very
Speaker 4: kind introduction, Hugh. I think this is going to be
Speaker 4: an entire election season where we get polls that are
Speaker 4: very far off. This is an ongoing pattern. It wasn't
Speaker 4: just last night. It's as you've seen primary so far.
Speaker 4: The poll has been way, way, way outside the margins
Speaker 4: of error. And I think that this shift that we
Speaker 4: saw in twenty twenty four the working class voters moving
Speaker 4: even more so towards President Trump. You saw black men
Speaker 4: moving towards President Trump. You saw Latinos going towards President Trump.
Speaker 4: This is a shifting electorate, like by the day, it's
Speaker 4: a shifting electorate. This is not who pollsters. They have
Speaker 4: to completely redo their sampling. They have to completely redo
Speaker 4: who they consider likely voters turning out, and they're going
Speaker 4: to have to do it fast because this Mitrim election
Speaker 4: is going.
Speaker 2: To be huge.
Speaker 1: It's eighty three days away now. Smull I was on
Speaker 1: with John Roberts, our friend, earlier this afternoon, and he
Speaker 1: asked me about this, and I my amateur. I don't
Speaker 1: know anything about pulling. I can barely spell polling. But
Speaker 1: I'm going to look for the professionals on the Ruthless
Speaker 1: podcast to tell me about polling, because that's what you
Speaker 1: guys do. But my guess is lefties love to talk
Speaker 1: at length to whoever calls them up because nobody calls
Speaker 1: them up. So I don't answer the phone if I
Speaker 1: don't know who it is. And I don't know if
Speaker 1: you're that way, but I think people who are inclined
Speaker 1: to talk to pollsters are going to skew way left.
Speaker 1: They're lonely, they got nobody to talk to. What do
Speaker 1: you think about it?
Speaker 4: So that has also been one of the greatest challenges
Speaker 4: currently in polling is first you heard maybe about eight
Speaker 4: eight years ago, this shift of doing a lot fewer
Speaker 4: landline calls for polling and trying to do more mobile.
Speaker 4: The challenge there is no one wants to answer the
Speaker 4: cell phone, and if they don't recognize the number, I
Speaker 4: get probably twenty spam calls a day.
Speaker 2: At this point.
Speaker 4: It's obnoxious, it's out of control. If I don't recognize
Speaker 4: the number, I'm not going to answer. That presents a
Speaker 4: challenge for polsters. What if I am a highly likely
Speaker 4: voter in a primary, as I'm going to be, and
Speaker 4: they can't get a hold of me. They're increasingly trying
Speaker 4: to use online sampling, which also presents a number of
Speaker 4: challenges of are you going to get accurate information? Are
Speaker 4: you actually talking to the person who they claim to
Speaker 4: be online? It's pollsters are facing significant challenges.
Speaker 1: Okay, so now a couple of specific rises you are
Speaker 1: in North Carolinian. According to the most recent poll today ago,
Speaker 1: former Governor Cooper is seven points ahead of Michael Wattley.
Speaker 1: I don't believe that Tom Tillis was behind until the
Speaker 1: last weekend. What do you think about that number?
Speaker 4: So that's the thing is North Carolina at this point,
Speaker 4: it's a recurring theme. Cycle after cycle, broker, voters break
Speaker 4: right right at the end. You see it happen again
Speaker 4: and again. I do want to say, though, I want
Speaker 4: to caution all North Carolinians, this is going to be
Speaker 4: an incredibly, incredibly challenging race. The dynamics here where you
Speaker 4: have a former governor of North Carolina, one who is
Speaker 4: responsible for laying so many criminals out of prison during COVID,
Speaker 4: one who has a record that they're trying to run
Speaker 4: away from, but has that name ID because they've already
Speaker 4: won a statewide office. This is going to be a challenge.
Speaker 4: He's already established a voting base because he has one
Speaker 4: statewide in North Carolina, and he is trying to coast
Speaker 4: off of just name ID.
Speaker 1: That's it.
Speaker 4: He does not want to run on his record. He
Speaker 4: doesn't speak about his record, He doesn't talk about any
Speaker 4: of his many accomplishments like letting criminals out of prison
Speaker 4: who went on to commit crimes yet again, to murder people,
Speaker 4: to do horrible things, and he is trying to appear
Speaker 4: as a moderate. That's also going to be a recurring theme.
Speaker 4: We can't take that for granted. We can't take that
Speaker 4: North Carolina breaks right right at the end. We need
Speaker 4: to make sure we do everything possible to get Waltley elected.
Speaker 1: All right, let's go up North. Mister Holmes is not
Speaker 1: with us today, but you'll talk to him this week.
Speaker 1: His state is nominated at Peggy Flan again, who has
Speaker 1: appeared in full burka. Right, she does the coseplay with
Speaker 1: practicing Muslim women who are very, very devout. Do you
Speaker 1: think that she's gonna actually pull it off a Minnesota
Speaker 1: against Michelle Tafoya, NFL sideline reporter.
Speaker 4: So this, this is the thing, is you have a
Speaker 4: great dynamic where Michelle Tafoya is a tremendous candidate. Great candidates,
Speaker 4: has a great reputation. Folks know her and trust her
Speaker 4: from seeing her on TV from the time that they
Speaker 4: spent So she's a reliable person that folks have known
Speaker 4: for a long time. That's helpful, especially when you're building
Speaker 4: name id running against a crazy you know, lefty is
Speaker 4: also very helpful because that Peggy funny is not in
Speaker 4: step with what voters in Minnesota want. However, Minnesota is
Speaker 4: another one of these states has been rapidly changing demographically,
Speaker 4: which has been rapidly shifting further and further to the left.
Speaker 4: You saw, excuse me, you saw how many people were
Speaker 4: out there in the streets essentially fighting law enforcement. And
Speaker 4: you saw those cities burn the summer of twenty twenty
Speaker 4: during the George flood riots. Minnesota, you know, has kind
Speaker 4: of lost touch with reality in terms of who they're electing.
Speaker 4: Should another race, It's gonna be a tough one.
Speaker 1: Should we just give it to Canada? Give up?
Speaker 4: Would I would entertain specific trades for Canada.
Speaker 1: Swe I'll close with l said in Michigan because he's
Speaker 1: the most dangerous man in election twenty twe You know,
Speaker 1: one guy can threw up the Senate. One guy can
Speaker 1: stop every nomination in the military, one guy can stop
Speaker 1: any bill, any nomination. He hates football. He thinks football
Speaker 1: has got toxic masculinity. Can that possibly work? And that
Speaker 1: like hating Thanksgiving? In Wisconsin, heying Michigan football.
Speaker 4: It's one hundred percent of the same thing, and it's
Speaker 4: anti im Americanism. That's what's the heart of this movement
Speaker 4: is its resentment. It's anti America, it's anti Western civilization.
Speaker 4: It's trying to do a smash and grab of an
Speaker 4: America that took two hundred and fifty years to build,
Speaker 4: but that very quickly can be torn apart if we
Speaker 4: let these cycle paths into power.
Speaker 1: Very well put a smash and grab on our two
Speaker 1: hundred fifty years of heritage. Good to see. If smug
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