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Speaker 1: It's time from all the Attitude, all the opinion, all
Speaker 1: the information, all the debates of the US, Now the
Speaker 1: Leyton Smith Podcast powered by News Talks it B.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Podcasts two hundred and fifty nine for October nine,
Speaker 2: twenty twenty four. There's a handful of contributors who have
Speaker 2: guested on my broadcast radio and podcast over the years.
Speaker 2: A small group of individuals who are frequently inquired about,
Speaker 2: as in when is ex y or Z going to
Speaker 2: be on again? Patrick Basham is one example, more particularly
Speaker 2: at the moment because of the presidential election, and in
Speaker 2: two five nine he doesn't disappoint, and via the Daily Express,
Speaker 2: Patrick has some new and fresh polling numbers. Again. He
Speaker 2: details the methodology used by Democracy Institute in gathering them,
Speaker 2: and it's proved to be very reliable. However, that aside,
Speaker 2: I woke up this morning feeling different, a different frame
Speaker 2: of mind, if you like. Can't explain it, but can
Speaker 2: say that it's denying me the desire to be too serious.
Speaker 2: So after the mail room, I'll reveal what Jeremy Clarkson
Speaker 2: and I have in common. That is probably not what
Speaker 2: you think. But first, on the subject of multiculturalism, which
Speaker 2: seems to be plaguing the world at the moment, there's
Speaker 2: a few references I'd like to make mention of. In
Speaker 2: twenty eleven, a Muslim from Canada named Salem men Surr
Speaker 2: wrote a book called Delectable Lie, a Liberal repudiation of Multiculturalism.
Speaker 2: It was a book that, well, let me put it
Speaker 2: this way. My point is that although multiculturalism once seemed
Speaker 2: a very good idea, at least to politicians and others
Speaker 2: smitten with the ambition for unity, it is increasingly shown
Speaker 2: to be a lie, a delectable lie, perhaps yet a
Speaker 2: lie nevertheless that is destructive of the West's life, liberal
Speaker 2: democratic heritage, its tradition and values based on individual rights
Speaker 2: and freedoms. This could have been foretold, as indeed, those
Speaker 2: philosophers and historians of ideas who viewed freedom as immeasurably
Speaker 2: more important than equality in the development of the West
Speaker 2: did foretell. They admonished people against the temptation to abridge
Speaker 2: freedom in pursuit of equality. Now that's a very telling
Speaker 2: little paragraph, And there is much more to it, of course,
Speaker 2: especially in Canada, which seems to have led the way
Speaker 2: over the years of trying to abridge this problem. Now
Speaker 2: in Australia. Over the weekend, of course, there were lots
Speaker 2: of demonstrations, and some of them pretty vicious. Nick Cator,
Speaker 2: writing in The Australian under the heading of failure of
Speaker 2: leadership has led to ugly tribalism on streets and university campuses,
Speaker 2: wrote some extremely good commentary, referring to a speech, one
Speaker 2: speech in particular, but some more in general. He said
Speaker 2: that hideous distortion of the truth was voiced by Sheikh
Speaker 2: Ibrahim de Doon in Western Sydney a day after the attacks,
Speaker 2: when he said, I'm smiling and unhappy, I'm elated. It's
Speaker 2: a day of courage, it's a day of resistance, it's
Speaker 2: a day of pride, it's a day of victory. He
Speaker 2: told the crowd. That was the day after, of course,
Speaker 2: October seventh of last year. Nick says the importation of
Speaker 2: this tribal animus into Australian civic society is the most
Speaker 2: disturbing consequence of last year's attacks. It found fertile ground
Speaker 2: among progressive intellectuals mired in Western self loathing and affixated
Speaker 2: on race, gender and identity. The plight of civilians caught
Speaker 2: in the middle of the war in Gaza is merely
Speaker 2: the post hoc justification for a visceral sense of historical
Speaker 2: grievance against the Jewish state and the Jewish people. And
Speaker 2: then there is this. The wealthy owner of the Nomad
Speaker 2: restaurants in Sydney and Melbourne has been revealed as the
Speaker 2: protester arrested for allegedly holding up a Swashtika sign superimposed
Speaker 2: over an Israeli flag at Sunday's pro Palestine rally in Sydney.
Speaker 2: Alan Yazbek being charged with knowingly displaying a Nazi symbol
Speaker 2: in public after he allegedly held the sign which bore
Speaker 2: the words stopped Nazi Israel. He and his wife, who
Speaker 2: was an interior architect, have run the popular Surrey Hills
Speaker 2: restaurant No Mad since twenty thirteen. The Australian newspaper understands
Speaker 2: they say several patrons rushed to cancel bookings on Tuesday
Speaker 2: night after news of the charges spread among the Jewish community.
Speaker 2: And who can blame them this couple. I don't know
Speaker 2: whether they were migrants from far away or whether they
Speaker 2: were born in Australia. It doesn't reveal that. But they
Speaker 2: started their business just over a decade ago with a
Speaker 2: thirty seat cellar door that became a two hundred seat
Speaker 2: restaurant with food inspired by their travels through Spain and
Speaker 2: the Middle East. Had a focus on cooking over fire.
Speaker 2: I'm sure there must be a book or two on
Speaker 2: the restaurants, and then, as the media generally does in
Speaker 2: circumstances like this, they list the restaurants that they owned
Speaker 2: or now own, and then went into a bit of
Speaker 2: private life. The couple paid four million for their home
Speaker 2: in the affluent eastern Sydney suburb of Willara in twenty sixteen,
Speaker 2: but more recently this year apparently they bought an eleven
Speaker 2: million dollar house in Albert Park in Melbourne. On Sunday,
Speaker 2: mister Yazbek joined the crowd of ten thousand pro Palestine
Speaker 2: protesters who had been given permission to march through the
Speaker 2: streets of Sydney CBD, but police allege the fifty six
Speaker 2: year old failed to heat warnings not to display offensive material. Now,
Speaker 2: the first mistake that was made was to give them
Speaker 2: permission to demonstrate against the country that their kinvote, that
Speaker 2: their kinfolk attacked and murdered and slaughtered twelve hundred people,
Speaker 2: not to forget those who were hijacked back to Gaza.
Speaker 2: But that's not right, that's not really what I mentioned
Speaker 2: this for. It's multiculturalism that we have a problem with,
Speaker 2: and it's a growing problem and it needs to be addressed.
Speaker 2: The Australian government the most incompetent government arguably ever. I
Speaker 2: heard somebody say that it was worse than the Golf
Speaker 2: Whitnam government. Well it is. They are hopeless, useless and stupid.
Speaker 2: But Australia is in trouble because there is a shortage
Speaker 2: of real talent. The Liberal leader, of course, is improving
Speaker 2: out of sight. But nevertheless there's a way to go
Speaker 2: and one hopes and even praise that peace will settle
Speaker 2: itself on these problems facing Australia now in a moment.
Speaker 2: Patrick Masham Laton Smith. Leverrix is an antihistamine made in
Speaker 2: Switzerland to the highest quality. Leverix relieves hay fever and
Speaker 2: skin allergies or itchy skin. It's a dual action antihistamine
Speaker 2: and has a unique nasal decongestent action. It's fast acting
Speaker 2: for fast relief, and it works in under an hour
Speaker 2: and lasts for over twenty four hours. Leverrix is a
Speaker 2: tiny tablet that unblocks the nose, deals with itchy eyes,
Speaker 2: and stops sneezing. Leverrix is an antihistamine made in Switzerland
Speaker 2: to the highest quantity. So next time you're in need
Speaker 2: of an effective antihistamine, call into the pharmacy and ask
Speaker 2: for Leverrix lv Rix, Levrix and always read the label.
Speaker 2: Takes directed and if symptoms persist, see your health professional.
Speaker 2: Farmer Broker Auckland. Patrick Basham is the director of the
Speaker 2: Democracy Institute. He's the founder of the Democracy Institute. Patrick,
Speaker 2: It's excellent to have you back on the podcast. And
Speaker 2: I know that that greeting is matched by thousands of
Speaker 2: others because I get it all the time.
Speaker 3: Well, thank you late. It is always a pleasure to
Speaker 3: speak with you, a pleasure and an honor to speak
Speaker 3: with your final audience. Always grateful for the opportunity to
Speaker 3: talk about all things American and occasionally things further afield
Speaker 3: as well.
Speaker 2: I had over the last couple of weeks I had
Speaker 2: when's Patrick Basham coming on on multiple occasions, and I
Speaker 2: said last week because I was thinking I thought it
Speaker 2: was last week and then it wasn't. But here we are,
Speaker 2: and it might be appropriate to say that at this
Speaker 2: point of time that election day is here a Wednesday,
Speaker 2: and Wednesday is podcast day. So we're going to we're
Speaker 2: going to meet up in this fact and cover off
Speaker 2: some stuff right on the bill. So I have a
Speaker 2: question for you, and I'll be interested in your response
Speaker 2: today as we speak, what would be the biggest political
Speaker 2: headline in the US.
Speaker 3: It's a variety of headlines on the same theme about
Speaker 3: how close the race is between Harris and Trump, whether
Speaker 3: you know, whether Trump is going to self destruct as
Speaker 3: he apparently has done in the past, allegedly has done
Speaker 3: the past, and it's hope for it does again. Is
Speaker 3: Harris putting the coalition back together again? You know? So
Speaker 3: it's reflective of the fact that it's a reflection of
Speaker 3: the fact that even the traditionally unreliable mainstream media polling
Speaker 3: indicates that this is it is a very competitive race
Speaker 3: and that no one can be certain based on that
Speaker 3: those sort of polls as to you know, who will
Speaker 3: be the victor, even though we all know who should be.
Speaker 3: So that's the sort of horse race thing that is
Speaker 3: dominating right now. If I might take a moment to
Speaker 3: mention what I think should be the story, one because
Speaker 3: I believe it should be, and also because I think
Speaker 3: it's it's a below the radar story in terms or
Speaker 3: variable that is actually going to impact the outcome to
Speaker 3: some extent. And the story, of course should be the
Speaker 3: appalling pathetic in all senses of the word federal government
Speaker 3: Biden Harris regime response to the hurricane in the Southeast
Speaker 3: States of the United States. That that story was completely
Speaker 3: buried the first few days by the mainstream media, but
Speaker 3: the situation cuation was so bad and thanks to social media,
Speaker 3: that the mainstream media by late last week had to
Speaker 3: start covering it with at least a modicum of accuracy.
Speaker 3: And of course that's the story gets out. Things just
Speaker 3: get worse and worse, and Harris and her campaign are
Speaker 3: so inept that and so to have such a ten
Speaker 3: ear politically cannot read the room that they've sort of
Speaker 3: made every optic related mistake and sort of verbal mistake
Speaker 3: you can make in terms of responding to this, and
Speaker 3: so the story has more than the story that there's
Speaker 3: a real story that has truly has legs, should have legs.
Speaker 3: But what they've done and what Biden's done, or more
Speaker 3: to the point, what they haven't done, has just fueled
Speaker 3: that fire. And so it is something which is reinforcing
Speaker 3: the enthusiasm amongst those who are already committed to voting
Speaker 3: against Harris to ensure that they do because they see this,
Speaker 3: I think, with a great deal of accuracy, very correctly
Speaker 3: as it epitomizes the incompetence and of the Biden Harris
Speaker 3: administration and also the degree to which they enthusiastically politicize
Speaker 3: every decision that they make. Uh, and they have as
Speaker 3: they have a pear to have done so.
Speaker 2: In this case, you said something a moutent ago about
Speaker 2: reading the room, and I misheard you momentarily. But I
Speaker 2: want to, I want to, I want to utilize it.
Speaker 2: She's doing a good job or a bad job of
Speaker 2: reading the womb to say room or womb, I said
Speaker 2: womb ah, yes, because that's it seems to be leading
Speaker 2: hitting her whole approach absolutely.
Speaker 3: The only really, the only policy position that she is
Speaker 3: sort of proactively staked out and stood firm on is
Speaker 3: her commitment to basically no limits or constraints on a
Speaker 3: woman's reproductive rights, as you know, as defined by the Democrats. Interestingly,
Speaker 3: when posters ask whether they're Republican Harris voters, Trump voters,
Speaker 3: or independence when they ask what do you know about
Speaker 3: Harris's policy positions, overwhelmingly, across the board, no one knows.
Speaker 3: No one, no average voter, regardless of how they're voting,
Speaker 3: knows much about what they what she is going to
Speaker 3: do or says she's going to do, because she hasn't
Speaker 3: said very much. But the one issue where you get
Speaker 3: something like twenty five thirty thirty five percent across the board,
Speaker 3: everybody's confident in saying, I know where she stands on abortion.
Speaker 3: It's the one thing that they have stressed and so her.
Speaker 3: What they're doing with that, I mean, we don't know
Speaker 3: yet whether it's going to work, but it's you know,
Speaker 3: it's incredibly disingenuous. Is they are doing the traditional democratic
Speaker 3: thing of saying, you know, where for a woman's right
Speaker 3: to choose, we protect a woman's reproductive freedom, et cetera.
Speaker 3: The other guys are anti abortion, but they've extended that
Speaker 3: and they're just blatantly lying about what the Supreme Court
Speaker 3: decision over over through Roe v. Wade means and meant
Speaker 3: they're completely lying about Trump's position on whether on a
Speaker 3: national abortion ban, which she's against, et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker 3: And so they they're using this and it's often very
Speaker 3: effective in terms of fundraising and ensuring that the liberal
Speaker 3: female base of the party turns out to vote, you know,
Speaker 3: where they paint whoever the Republican is. In this came
Speaker 3: Trump case case Trump as someone you know from the
Speaker 3: you know from from nineteen twenty four, not twenty twenty four,
Speaker 3: in terms of their attitudes to female to women's reproductive rights,
Speaker 3: and themselves as a defender of that. And of course,
Speaker 3: the one quite effective way in which both Trump and JD.
Speaker 3: Vance and others have pushed back is they have pointed
Speaker 3: out one that you know, they actually do but think
Speaker 3: that there are exceptions to abortion bands. They're not in
Speaker 3: favor of a national one. But they've pointed out that
Speaker 3: Harris and her running mate do not agree with any
Speaker 3: restrictions literally up to the moment, in fact, past the
Speaker 3: moment of birth. And so it's become this you know,
Speaker 3: sort of ping pong match, which is important, very important
Speaker 3: to some people on both sides, but in both cases
Speaker 3: it's a minority, and you know, there are other issues
Speaker 3: that are far more important right now to most people.
Speaker 3: But what I think the thing it really tells us latent.
Speaker 3: It epitomizes how the Harris campaign has focused from the
Speaker 3: get go on issues which are really really important to
Speaker 3: their core constituency. Now, obviously you have to keep your
Speaker 3: core your base vot is happy, but she's in a position,
Speaker 3: as Biden was, of needing to enlarge the tent a little,
Speaker 3: and they're not obviously attempting to do that, which you
Speaker 3: can either view as an aptitude or you can view
Speaker 3: it as an acknowledgment on their part that they just
Speaker 3: simply have to minimize their losses.
Speaker 2: If I could jump ahead just a little, the Democracy
Speaker 2: Institute and the Daily Express you have run and you've
Speaker 2: been doing this for some years. You've run polling on
Speaker 2: half of both of your organizations. Is the day the
Speaker 2: Express a printed a printed paper in America or oh
Speaker 2: it's online online? Yeah, the way of the future. The
Speaker 2: most important issues. I'm interested to see that. I was
Speaker 2: that abortion is fifth on the list, but only eleven percent,
Speaker 2: So you've got inflation at the top, immigration, economy, crime, abortion, healthcare,
Speaker 2: and I'm very pleased to say climate change is last
Speaker 2: on six percent.
Speaker 3: Yes, so.
Speaker 2: That that that to me is very satisfactory. But the
Speaker 2: but the abortion aspect of it is less than than
Speaker 2: I would have anticipated.
Speaker 3: Yes, indeed, and it's it's it is a demonstrates what
Speaker 3: I illustrates what I was just touching on there, that
Speaker 3: it is a very important issue to a small minority.
Speaker 3: It's the issue to a small minority on both sides
Speaker 3: of the issue. But this is an election that is
Speaker 3: being and will be dominated issue wise by the candidates
Speaker 3: actual and perceived positions on a whole range of economic issues,
Speaker 3: the immigration issue, the slash border issue, and crime, And
Speaker 3: of course those sure will are where later and I'm
Speaker 3: sure most of your listeners are that those the economic issue,
Speaker 3: the immigration issue, the crime issue. In twenty twenty four
Speaker 3: across pretty much all of the West, those three are
Speaker 3: interwoven in terms of how they impact the quality of
Speaker 3: life of the average voter, and they're interwoven in terms
Speaker 3: of the politics of them, and they favor as they
Speaker 3: have done in most elections across the West in the
Speaker 3: last couple of years. They favor the challenger. The it's
Speaker 3: not that they disfavor the incumbent, because when people are
Speaker 3: concerned about inflation and immigration and the economy and crime,
Speaker 3: it's because they think there's there's there's too much of
Speaker 3: all of those things, right, And so it's it's a
Speaker 3: it's a really important foundation for the Trump campaign to
Speaker 3: build on. Is I think largely it's done fairly success successfully,
Speaker 3: and it's an albatross around the neck of the Harris campaign,
Speaker 3: as it was around the neck of the Biden campaign,
Speaker 3: and as it has been around the next of so
Speaker 3: many incumbents and governments around the West, whether you know,
Speaker 3: whether they were normally conservative or nominally liberal or of
Speaker 3: the left. You know, it's just when when people aren't
Speaker 3: happy about material things and their physical security, they tend
Speaker 3: to want change in the government. But on the abortion
Speaker 3: issue specifically, it's important to note, well, it is very
Speaker 3: important to note, as you did, that it is only
Speaker 3: issue number five, uh in terms of voters' priorities. That
Speaker 3: does not mean that the eleven percent we found our
Speaker 3: most recent poll are all pro choice, you know. It's
Speaker 3: it's that there are a good number of people on
Speaker 3: the pro life side who think it's the most important issue.
Speaker 3: And I'm always arguing with friends on both sides, were
Speaker 3: particularly on the right, who they may be pro life,
Speaker 3: not necessarily but may be procate, but they think that
Speaker 3: it's a loser for the for the Republicans and for Trump,
Speaker 3: and I argue it is necessarily so because the reason
Speaker 3: for it is so crudely, well simply therefore crudely as
Speaker 3: necessary here is that those who are pro choice, who
Speaker 3: depending on how on the poll you ask, but most
Speaker 3: polls you find them more of them, they vote all
Speaker 3: the time on all for all kinds of reasons, including abortion,
Speaker 3: and they vote for the Democrats these days. The folks
Speaker 3: who are really really concerned about abortion from the pro
Speaker 3: life perspective, they don't vote all the time. They're what
Speaker 3: we call in the polling business, low perpen city or
Speaker 3: medium propensity voters. They show up every two or three
Speaker 3: or four elections, or every once in a twenty years,
Speaker 3: it depends, but they tend to be moved by that issue.
Speaker 3: They're easily moved by that issue more than anything else.
Speaker 3: So all to say, when people come into new voters
Speaker 3: come in to vote on that issue, they tend to
Speaker 3: be on the pro life side, which rather balances things out.
Speaker 3: But the bottom line is that the issues that conventional
Speaker 3: wisdom says and traditionally historically a favor of the Democrats,
Speaker 3: the environment, healthcare, put my view aside, and let's say
Speaker 3: abortion is another one of those. They're out there, they
Speaker 3: mean something to voters, to really much all voters, but
Speaker 3: they're not what overwhelmingly voters are choosing to cast their
Speaker 3: ballot on the basis of. And that is bad news
Speaker 3: for the Democrats. Just as when issues like healthcare were
Speaker 3: far more of a priority for voters in past elections,
Speaker 3: those inherently benefitted the Democrats, whether they were in power
Speaker 3: or whether they were in opposition.
Speaker 2: Why didn't we go back to well where we were
Speaker 2: and just take a look at how you conduct your
Speaker 2: polling because it impressed a lot of people last time,
Speaker 2: and there'll be people who didn't hear it. So let's
Speaker 2: let's try it again.
Speaker 3: Okay, tell me to shut up when I get especially
Speaker 3: drew down to too many details or get especially a
Speaker 3: doll here. So what we do is for our national polling,
Speaker 3: we usually have completed surveys, we talked, we actually contact
Speaker 3: hundreds of thousands of voters, but we completed surveys from
Speaker 3: usually between twelve and fifteen hundred, and you have to
Speaker 3: you know, it's such a small percentage of people that
Speaker 3: you contact who are willing to take a poll. I mean,
Speaker 3: that's just that, you know, the problem in the polling industry.
Speaker 3: That's number one. You know, you get one two three
Speaker 3: percent of folks are actually willing to talk to you,
Speaker 3: whereas you know, decades ago it might be fifty percent
Speaker 3: or forty or thirty percent. So that's that's the first problem.
Speaker 3: So we contact people. I mean, there are various ways
Speaker 3: of doing it these days because of technology. The way
Speaker 3: we do it, what we think is the least worst
Speaker 3: way of doing it, that is potentially the most accurate,
Speaker 3: is we phone. We phone voters just as you know
Speaker 3: in the old days, as it were, but we don't
Speaker 3: use live callers. A couple of reasons for that. The
Speaker 3: principal one is expense. So we have a we have
Speaker 3: recorded questions and someone answers their phone. They sort of
Speaker 3: picks up in this these days almost all cell phones,
Speaker 3: mobile phones. They answer their phone and a human voice,
Speaker 3: but a recorded voice. After introducing the concept and them
Speaker 3: and the person on the other end of the of
Speaker 3: the call agreeing to take part in the poll, they
Speaker 3: answer the question. The questions are given to them, read
Speaker 3: to them, you know, a human, real voice, but recorded,
Speaker 3: and then they answer by pressing numbers on their keypads,
Speaker 3: sort of multiple choice. And that way we're able to
Speaker 3: all huge numbers of people and it's relatively over two
Speaker 3: or three days and actually come up with a good number.
Speaker 3: So one thing that we do in just about all
Speaker 3: our polling that only a couple of other posters do.
Speaker 3: We think it makes a big difference. And this might
Speaker 3: be you know, relevant to your to your audience, is
Speaker 3: we only take the responses of those we determine what
Speaker 3: we call likely voters. And the reason we do that
Speaker 3: is that, you know, it's not rocket science. They're the
Speaker 3: people who are actually going to show up and vote. Right.
Speaker 3: We're not interesting. We're interested intellectually in whateverybody who lives
Speaker 3: in America thinks, but in terms of the election outcome,
Speaker 3: we're interested in what the people who are going to
Speaker 3: vote think. Uh. And you say, well, okay, well don't
Speaker 3: most people vote, well, yes, but enough don't. It makes
Speaker 3: a difference. So, for example, there are there are polls
Speaker 3: out there the survey adults, and that means they survey
Speaker 3: every single well every person person they survey may be
Speaker 3: a voter, they may not be a voter, they may
Speaker 3: not even be a citizen. And so it's kind of
Speaker 3: like asking a thousand consumers what they're going to buy,
Speaker 3: which might be relevant because they're all spending money in
Speaker 3: the in the grocery store, but they're not all going
Speaker 3: to vote. The other way of doing it, which is
Speaker 3: the most common, is you just you talk to registered
Speaker 3: voters because in America you have to register before you
Speaker 3: can get a ballot, and your register as a Republican,
Speaker 3: a Democrat, as an independent. And that's better than looking
Speaker 3: at everyone. But it's of those registered voters, about twenty
Speaker 3: five thirty thirty five percent any given election aren't actually
Speaker 3: going to show up. Sooks. Posters use registered voters or
Speaker 3: they use adults because it's way cheaper because you don't
Speaker 3: have to call or email or text or online communicate
Speaker 3: with anything like as many because you are not rejecting
Speaker 3: you know, we're rejecting so many potential respondents. It takes
Speaker 3: longer and costs a lot more money. And then of
Speaker 3: course the other the art I mean This is a
Speaker 3: combination of art and science. And another part of the
Speaker 3: art involved is, Okay, you've got all these you know,
Speaker 3: we've got our fifteen hundred likely voters who have completed
Speaker 3: this phone survey, but how do we figure out whether
Speaker 3: they are representative of the country right? And so you
Speaker 3: have to then weight those responses based on what we
Speaker 3: believe are the most accurate up to date demographic factors,
Speaker 3: socioeconomic factors, you know, age, gender, race, ethnicity, where they live,
Speaker 3: and of course where they what their political affiliation is.
Speaker 3: And one of the ways in which many polls, and
Speaker 3: this has gone on for a long time, but it's
Speaker 3: particularly prominent in the recent elections, and I would say
Speaker 3: still in this one. What happens so often is that
Speaker 3: these polls are not weighting it accurately, either intentionally or
Speaker 3: out of ignorance. And so you'll see polls that are
Speaker 3: attractive in terms of the headline for the Democrat, and
Speaker 3: then you look underneath the hood and you'll see that
Speaker 3: they have weighted it in such a way that the
Speaker 3: Democrats are disproportionately represented. And that means, of course, you know,
Speaker 3: if you if your sample has ten percent to me
Speaker 3: Democrats you're probably going to have a headline number that
Speaker 3: you know skews to the Democrats. Now you say, well,
Speaker 3: it could go both ways. Of course, it can go
Speaker 3: both ways. But if you look at the media polling
Speaker 3: over the last decade, it always skews in one direction. Right.
Speaker 3: To ensure I don't bore anybody any further, I'll stop.
Speaker 3: But those that's sort of the the outline, the skeleton
Speaker 3: of sort of how we approach it and why we
Speaker 3: do some of the things we do with our polling.
Speaker 2: Well, there is no question what you said a moment ago,
Speaker 2: that it leans in one direction is accurate. Now, if
Speaker 2: I may, I'm going to refer to another pole. Here's
Speaker 2: the headline this morning from zero Hedge, and it's their story.
Speaker 2: I presume you look at zero Hedge occasionally, Yes, so
Speaker 2: you know you know Tyler Durden or who he is
Speaker 2: or who he represents anyway, he's they're responsible for this
Speaker 2: story rather than somebody else feeding it to them that
Speaker 2: Trump trouncing Carmela in key battleground states after sudden poly
Speaker 2: market surge. And I want to refer to the New
Speaker 2: York Times. Even the New York Times notes that Harris's
Speaker 2: edge in Pennsylvania in mainstream polling could be faked news,
Speaker 2: as the pole average could even be so stable in
Speaker 2: part because many posters are using heavy handed statistical techniques
Speaker 2: that reduce the variance of their results from from pole
Speaker 2: to pole, but that increase the risk of systematic errors.
Speaker 2: Systematic polling errors in which which one side does better
Speaker 2: than expected across the board have been common in recent cycles.
Speaker 2: And that's essentially what you're referring to.
Speaker 3: Yes, absolutely, that's why some of the you know, there
Speaker 3: are forecasters and modelers, you know, professional, amateur, you name it,
Speaker 3: who are doing this thing, whether in the US or
Speaker 3: doing it from outside the US, and some of them
Speaker 3: on the sort of right of the spectrum are pointing
Speaker 3: out that the last two elections, there were these major
Speaker 3: polling errors, whether you look at an individual polls, you
Speaker 3: look at these averages that are so heralded of several points,
Speaker 3: and you know, by the bottom line is Hillary Clinton
Speaker 3: and Joe Biden's numbers, whatever their eventual numbers were, they
Speaker 3: were much less than were forecasts. And Trump's numbers, whatever
Speaker 3: you think they really were, were officially much higher than
Speaker 3: the polls the quote unquote heralded polls and averages had suggested,
Speaker 3: and so many of these forecasters and modelers on the
Speaker 3: right are now taking the current polls and saying the
Speaker 3: only sensible thing is to is to adjust them on
Speaker 3: the basis of what we now know is an historical
Speaker 3: polling error and say, look, actually Trump, wherever he is
Speaker 3: ahead or behind, he's usually really give him a few
Speaker 3: more points, because we know from recent history that that's
Speaker 3: how it pans out. Because Trump, it's not simply that
Speaker 3: these polls have been inaccurate, again by accident or by design.
Speaker 3: But Trump, whether it's a primary, whether it's a general election,
Speaker 3: Trump consistently outvotes his polls. He just does better for
Speaker 3: four kinds of reasons that we've discussed in the past,
Speaker 3: you know. So, yeah, it's a very valid concern.
Speaker 2: All right, So let's look at the latest poll that
Speaker 2: came out a couple of days ago. Democracy Institute are
Speaker 2: the Express US Prison Dential Poll four October twenty twenty four.
Speaker 2: The national popular vote is out of sync with the
Speaker 2: mainstream I think, Am I right?
Speaker 3: It's out of sync with Yeah, it's out of sync
Speaker 3: with most of the polls that you hear about a lot. Yes,
Speaker 3: so you've got correct.
Speaker 2: Well, your numbers, so why don't you why don't you
Speaker 2: share them?
Speaker 3: Yeah, we have Trump at fifty, Harris at forty seven,
Speaker 3: the other little you know, minor candidates with two and
Speaker 3: only one percent undecided. Now, so that's that's the lead
Speaker 3: that we've the kind of lead we've been showing for
Speaker 3: a while now. I mean Trump had a much bigger
Speaker 3: lead the end of Biden's candidacy and when Harris first
Speaker 3: took over for a bunch of reasons, I mean, it
Speaker 3: was unrealistic that that would last. But since Harris has
Speaker 3: been the facto and then the actual candidate, we've had
Speaker 3: this sort of two three point lead. That's that's that's
Speaker 3: Fay state fairly consistent and not that one should view
Speaker 3: judge one's own polling based on what other posters are doing,
Speaker 3: but it's just a point of reference for your audience, latent.
Speaker 3: As you correctly said, this is out of line with
Speaker 3: most mainstream polls, who generally show Harris with a small lead,
Speaker 3: maybe a tie. The occasional one has Trump maybe up
Speaker 3: a point. But there are two or three that have
Speaker 3: consistently been the more accurate national polls that show that
Speaker 3: that are showing now or have shown consistently consistently like
Speaker 3: we have over recent weeks and months, Trump with a
Speaker 3: one two three point lead. So we are we're in
Speaker 3: minority company, but I think but I think we're in
Speaker 3: a very good company, if I might put it that way.
Speaker 2: I believe so because I well, like a lot of
Speaker 2: people who heard that podcast and your description prior to
Speaker 2: this one, they liked the way you approached it. It's
Speaker 2: a much more it's a much more honest way, and
Speaker 2: I think I think that that shows up. So looking
Speaker 2: at the swing states, you've got Michigan just for a start,
Speaker 2: with forty seven to forty six in favor of Trump.
Speaker 2: So that's in the well and truly in the margin
Speaker 2: of era. But as you've alluded to already, people are
Speaker 2: now starting to talk about and I'm talking about polsters
Speaker 2: and commentators are starting to talk about the fact that
Speaker 2: you've got to allow Trump a bit more space than that,
Speaker 2: because he's very likely to poll better than the forty seven.
Speaker 3: Yes, that is absolutely true. You said, that's what's what
Speaker 3: history tells us. I mean, we're slightly argue. You musty
Speaker 3: argue against myself here in the sense that for all
Speaker 3: our you know, no polling is perfect. Ours isn't perfect.
Speaker 3: For all our flaws and imperfections. The one thing that
Speaker 3: we have consistently done over the years since Trump's been
Speaker 3: on the scene is we've tended to nail his vote,
Speaker 3: whether it's in primaries or in general elections, pretty comparatively
Speaker 3: on the nose because for a couple of reasons, you know,
Speaker 3: Boyer listeners with but in terms of how we approach
Speaker 3: identifying what became known as the shy Trump voter right,
Speaker 3: because we think we still do that well, we may
Speaker 3: be proven wrong. Because we think we still do that well.
Speaker 3: We think our Trump numbers this year are are pretty accurate,
Speaker 3: although we acknowledge, as I've been acknowledging to you and
Speaker 3: others are acknowledging that the likelihood is that Trump's numbers
Speaker 3: in any poll are not his ceiling, but they're his flaw. Right,
Speaker 3: So I think we're close to the mark. But I
Speaker 3: do agree, wouldn cur with anyone who said, if you're wrong,
Speaker 3: you're probably underestimating him a bit. He may be a
Speaker 3: point or two above that, And I would say, yeah,
Speaker 3: that's that's entirely possible. That's where if there's an error
Speaker 3: the eras I think in that direction.
Speaker 2: Right, So you've got Minnesota forty four to Trump and
Speaker 2: forty forty eight two Harris. Uh huh? Is that that
Speaker 2: four point margin? Is that considered margin of era?
Speaker 3: It is in this one. But what's important about Minnesota is, well,
Speaker 3: it's less about Minnesota itself what happens there on election
Speaker 3: night and the days after, than what it tells is
Speaker 3: So you know, the context is Minnesota was fairly close
Speaker 3: to the last two elections, but it's been a safe
Speaker 3: Democratic state, you know, forever. Right, It's the only state
Speaker 3: that Walter Mondale won in eighty four when Reagan ran
Speaker 3: the table, right, forty nine to one. But okay, but
Speaker 3: so it's a blue Democratic state. Something things have to
Speaker 3: go crazy for the Republicans to win it. So Kamala Harris,
Speaker 3: she chooses the Minnesota governor as her running mate, and
Speaker 3: that I means for a bunch of reasons. Number one
Speaker 3: being the fact he wasn't Jewish. But besides besides that,
Speaker 3: it was the fact that her weakness or you know,
Speaker 3: she can't. She has to run the table in the
Speaker 3: Midwestern states, the ross belt states, one presumes, and Trump
Speaker 3: merely has his million really needs probably to pierce that
Speaker 3: blue wall to be victorious overall. So she chose a
Speaker 3: governor who was quote unquote popular, you know, being re
Speaker 3: elected in a Midwestern state and with a sort of
Speaker 3: folksy everyman persona someone who was older than her and
Speaker 3: whiter than her and all that sort of stuff. The
Speaker 3: problem is, what this polling and other polling demonstrates is
Speaker 3: that she chose someone who because minnies Sota is dominated
Speaker 3: by its very liberal urban areas, politically, it's popular there.
Speaker 3: He was very woke and very anti police and all
Speaker 3: this stuff, but and with you know, particularly interesting ties
Speaker 3: to communist China. But it's not actually popular with blue
Speaker 3: collar Minnesotan's. And the reason that's important is not what's
Speaker 3: less what happens in Minnesota than the fact that it's
Speaker 3: blue collar white Midwesterners who are going to determine how
Speaker 3: those rustbelt Midwestern states go. So they they sort of
Speaker 3: did their identity politics thing, you know, middle aged, older
Speaker 3: white guy who gets elected in the Midwest. So we'll
Speaker 3: we'll put him on the ticket, and he'll make sure
Speaker 3: we keep Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan. And it's not worked
Speaker 3: out seemingly that great, you know, in his performance in
Speaker 3: the vibe presidential debates sort have exemplified that. And so
Speaker 3: if Minnesota goes is retained by the Democrats and Harris
Speaker 3: in November, well no surprise there. But there's the potential.
Speaker 3: It appears that it could be a lot closer, in
Speaker 3: sort of almost uncomfortably close. What that tells you is
Speaker 3: that the neighboring state of Wisconsin, which is a true
Speaker 3: swing state, and one or two others are likely to
Speaker 3: be trending even more away from the Democrats. Uh. And
Speaker 3: so this four point lead for Harrison Minnesota is something
Speaker 3: which doesn't say, you know, panic, panic, panic, but it says, oh,
Speaker 3: this is looking up hill, this is this is an
Speaker 3: uncomfortable number for us. We have to hope this is
Speaker 3: as an outlier. But other polls are showing, you know,
Speaker 3: comparable results that are in this margin of era, you
Speaker 3: know area. So it's that's why it's worth doing and
Speaker 3: worth as it turns out, I think, you know, reflecting upon.
Speaker 2: So skipping to Pennsylvania, which is which is I'm sick
Speaker 2: of hearing. It is a must win for Kamela to
Speaker 2: get where she wants. She's not doing so well fifty
Speaker 2: Trump forty six to her. Now, how does that compare
Speaker 2: with them last time?
Speaker 3: Well, last time it was I mean, you know, officially
Speaker 3: it was very close. I think it was about a
Speaker 3: point point and change that Biden officially won by And
Speaker 3: I think Pennsylvania, really, I think we're going to look back.
Speaker 3: I could be wrong, obviously, but I think I'm going
Speaker 3: to look back and say that Pennsylvania exemplified the mistake
Speaker 3: the Democrats and made by tossing Biden out and putting
Speaker 3: her in. I mean I say that obviously as someone
Speaker 3: who thought that Biden was going to lose to Trump,
Speaker 3: and I'm sure he would have done. But what was
Speaker 3: overlooked by the Democrats the powers that been was that, yeah,
Speaker 3: they have this guy who's this pop unpopular failed president,
Speaker 3: and they won this this quote unquote fresh face, and
Speaker 3: maybe we can build a new narrative around this younger,
Speaker 3: darker woman, right and all of that. What they overlooked
Speaker 3: is that her natural appeal is strongest in areas as
Speaker 3: dissimilar from the Midwest as you can find in America,
Speaker 3: that is, on the East and West coast, right where Biden.
Speaker 3: This is the thing with Biden, and this is the
Speaker 3: part of why he you know, even if in my
Speaker 3: view the election had been fairly contested in Pennsylvania, it
Speaker 3: still would have been a close thing, even though I
Speaker 3: think Trump would have won, is because Biden, rightly or wrongly,
Speaker 3: he retained throughout his career an image not only as
Speaker 3: the as the sort of gaff prone, humorous every man
Speaker 3: guy who you know, sort of was comfortable with with
Speaker 3: with everybody and wasn't that bright, but he just had
Speaker 3: everybody's best interest in heart. That he was someone who
Speaker 3: was by by his default position was always to be
Speaker 3: supportive of the labor unions. He was blue collar Joe.
Speaker 3: He was. He was born in Scranton, Pennsylvania, in the
Speaker 3: northern part of the state, and the state is littered
Speaker 3: with buildings and highways, et cetera named after him already,
Speaker 3: uh and he retained a reservoir of goodwill amongst older
Speaker 3: blue collar Democrats, many of whom no elsewhere in the
Speaker 3: country no longer vote or vote for vote for the
Speaker 3: Trump or vote for the Republicans. But these folks ex union,
Speaker 3: many of them retired white blue collar jobs occupations when
Speaker 3: they were working, they they remember this this, you know,
Speaker 3: uncle Joe, who looked out for them and their and
Speaker 3: their and their interests, and they turned out for him.
Speaker 3: It's quite skewed. Actually, they turned out for him disproportionately
Speaker 3: in areas of Pennsylvania where you know, their numbers, you know,
Speaker 3: tend to dominate. Now, that's great for the Democrats. He
Speaker 3: was greade in twenty twenty. The problem is that they
Speaker 3: that demographic pro that demographic and Democratic profile voter has
Speaker 3: absolutely no interest in a Kamala Harris type candidate. And
Speaker 3: I mean, you know, she doesn't get them. They don't
Speaker 3: get her. And it's just a complete mismatch, right, it
Speaker 3: just is, you know, putting all preferences and opinions aside.
Speaker 3: So her appeal in Pennsylvania was always going to be limited.
Speaker 3: Now what was going What could have made the difference
Speaker 3: was that the popular governor of Pennsylvania, who also wanted
Speaker 3: to be the next candidate and would like to be
Speaker 3: the next president. Still, if she'd chosen him, he played
Speaker 3: a great hit, great influence on how the election was
Speaker 3: a show we say contested in twenty twenty. And he
Speaker 3: might have been able, by hook and by crook, to
Speaker 3: have guaranteed Pennsylvania to her, but she couldn't choose him
Speaker 3: because the base of her party wouldn't accept a pro
Speaker 3: Israeli Jewish vice presidential candidate. So her one card, the
Speaker 3: one ace she could have played in that key state,
Speaker 3: she chose not to play. And that means that she
Speaker 3: has her comparatively low ceiling. And when you see, you know,
Speaker 3: what was it Saturday night in a town of thirteen
Speaker 3: and a half thousand people in Pennsylvania, Trump gets one
Speaker 3: hundred and five thousand to show up, it just demonstrates
Speaker 3: that the last estimate, the final estimate, I believe, was
Speaker 3: one hundred and five thousand. That's obviously from all around
Speaker 3: the Yeah, it's it's extremely big. So it just demonstrates
Speaker 3: that he has the wind of his sale, you know,
Speaker 3: in his sales. She's fighting uphill, doesn't mean she can't
Speaker 3: pull it off. It's probably going to be within the
Speaker 3: margin of error in terms of the file outcome because
Speaker 3: these you know, these states are so closely contested. But
Speaker 3: it's just a calculation of Democrats made and they may
Speaker 3: have made it thinking they could get that govern they
Speaker 3: would have that governor because he was the obvious pick.
Speaker 3: As you said, you're tired of hearing how Pennsylvania is
Speaker 3: everything to the Harris campaign. But they made the other decisions,
Speaker 3: they mean, decisions that took them in a different direction,
Speaker 3: and so they're in a real battle.
Speaker 2: Now, when is your next set of statistics, your next party.
Speaker 3: Well, working backwards, our final poll, sort of comprehensive poll
Speaker 3: will be the weekend before the election, is on Tuesday,
Speaker 3: November fifth, so it'll be out for his first sorry,
Speaker 3: second and third probably I would expect, you know, Daily
Speaker 3: Express willing and allowing, but we'll almost certainly we will
Speaker 3: be doing between now and then, we'll be doing more polling.
Speaker 3: So we'll do probably the national popular vote a couple
Speaker 3: of times, we'll do we do some you know, this
Speaker 3: recent poll that you're kindly discussing now, Laton, this is
Speaker 3: Midwest wing states and some blue states in the north.
Speaker 3: Will be looking at the sun so called sun Belt,
Speaker 3: the swing states and the Sun Belt over the next
Speaker 3: couple of weeks. So it's a roundabout way of saying,
Speaker 3: you know, to keep keep watching, keep listening, because in
Speaker 3: the next week or two there will be more numbers.
Speaker 2: Do you think that there is a wearisome approach developing
Speaker 2: to the selection.
Speaker 3: A yes, my, my, unintentionally political sounding answer is yes
Speaker 3: and no. Right, Yes, there are so many you know,
Speaker 3: so many people are so locked in and have been
Speaker 3: for so long on this election as they were the
Speaker 3: previous two elections that you know, most people would happily say,
Speaker 3: you know, in July, can we just get over this thing? Right?
Speaker 3: But the no part comes from I think initially on
Speaker 3: the Democratic side, they you know, they've suddenly realized after
Speaker 3: the debate that Biden was poor a candidate, as his
Speaker 3: opponents had said, and so they were devastated. But then
Speaker 3: they got this second chance. Right the second they've grabbed
Speaker 3: this second chance, they now have hope. So let's, you know,
Speaker 3: how much time can we squeeze, you know, how much
Speaker 3: Jews can we squeeze out of what's rest in the
Speaker 3: campaign to get Kamala Harris over the top. So some
Speaker 3: Democrats are actually you know, not wanting this to end
Speaker 3: because they think the more time she's on she's out there,
Speaker 3: the better it will go. Some of us argue the opposite.
Speaker 3: And then on the on the Republican side, you have
Speaker 3: a good and I would say growing number of Trump
Speaker 3: voters who with every assassination attempt, every federal government response
Speaker 3: or lack of to a hurricane. Everything that happens in
Speaker 3: terms of the politics of the country, they are more
Speaker 3: and more enthused and keen to ensure do what they
Speaker 3: can to make this election mean something from their point
Speaker 3: of view. And so there's what I'm trying to say
Speaker 3: is that there's renewed energy on both sides for very
Speaker 3: different reasons. And of course the fact that just as
Speaker 3: Trump being the candidate for the third election in a
Speaker 3: row means that for the third election in the row
Speaker 3: for the Democrats, the main the only thing they have
Speaker 3: to say to most of their loyal voters is Trump's
Speaker 3: are publican candidate, and that's it. You know, they're off,
Speaker 3: They're frothing at the mouth, and they're after the polling
Speaker 3: stations or in their case, you know, railing in the
Speaker 3: posting the ballot. On the Republican side, there was tremendous
Speaker 3: antipathy obviously to Biden, but most Trump voters dislike personally
Speaker 3: Harris far more than they dislike Biden personally and are
Speaker 3: more terror even more terrified of her views than they
Speaker 3: are of Biden's policies. So on both sides, there's more
Speaker 3: juice at this late stage most of which could not
Speaker 3: have been anticipated even a few months ago.
Speaker 2: It's intriguing because there is a fair bit of weariness
Speaker 2: down in this part of the world. And I keep
Speaker 2: suggesting to those who challenge occasionally the amount of time
Speaker 2: that I spend on American politics, particularly at the time
Speaker 2: like this, that there are another things you've got to
Speaker 2: take into account. First of all, that the United States
Speaker 2: is the the and most powerful country in the world.
Speaker 2: What happens in America on all fronts, really, if it's dramatic,
Speaker 2: what happens in America has an effect or is likely
Speaker 2: to have an effect on the rest of the world.
Speaker 2: And if you've got a useless president, whoever it might be,
Speaker 2: and they've had some, then we're all in dire straits
Speaker 2: or likely to be. And there's another aspect too, and
Speaker 2: that is that you can watch how people follow politics
Speaker 2: in America and react to it, and learn what their
Speaker 2: attitude is to their own country and what's important or
Speaker 2: not important, or how much they care or how much
Speaker 2: they know or don't know in many cases. And I
Speaker 2: find all of that intriguing, apart from the fact that
Speaker 2: it's also scary at times.
Speaker 3: Oh absolutely. I mean one of the things that's always
Speaker 3: interested me intriguing me about American politics going way back,
Speaker 3: is how compared to most other democratic nations, the American
Speaker 3: political system largely washed this dirty laundry in public. Right now,
Speaker 3: I would argue that in recent times a lot more
Speaker 3: is happening in a sort of inside private laundereat than
Speaker 3: in the past. But nevertheless, one of the reasons that
Speaker 3: many people outside the country find it easy to automatically
Speaker 3: criticize American politics is because they know so much about it.
Speaker 3: In part because, as you say, for all those reasons
Speaker 3: you enunciated, laden it's important for the rest of it
Speaker 3: influences the rest of the world, but also because Americans
Speaker 3: sort of can't keep their mouth shut and they sort
Speaker 3: of show the world what's going on. Right the characteristic
Speaker 3: American personality of telling everybody what they think about everything
Speaker 3: also applies to their politics and wanting to export their system,
Speaker 3: their style of politics around the world. Also, you know,
Speaker 3: robs some people the wrong way, but it influences how
Speaker 3: things happen elsewhere. Has done America's intervening for good or
Speaker 3: for ill, and for good or for bad intentions around
Speaker 3: the world. I mean, just just one thing on, why
Speaker 3: you know the importance of it, and not of your
Speaker 3: listeners say, well, Patrickson now about to bash Harris and
Speaker 3: Biden over foreign policy. I'm not actually going to mention
Speaker 3: that these following two things for that reason, but to
Speaker 3: make another point, which is much of the criticism of
Speaker 3: the hurricane response has been because so much money has
Speaker 3: been and continues to be showered upon foreign governments and
Speaker 3: foreign countries by Biden and Harris, who they deem to
Speaker 3: be clearly in greater need than anybody at home in America. Now,
Speaker 3: whether you know whether one thinks that money should or
Speaker 3: shouldn't be spent in Lebanon, in Ukraine and wherever, the
Speaker 3: bottom line is that America is in a position through
Speaker 3: oh been part these days, through some very artful accounting,
Speaker 3: but that America is in a position to at least
Speaker 3: in the short term, to spend these huge sums and
Speaker 3: to therefore influence what happens in country X or y. Right,
Speaker 3: they can choose that Biden and Harris are in a
Speaker 3: position where they can make these kinds of choices about
Speaker 3: whether the money goes externally or internally. Now, most people
Speaker 3: think they're making the wrong choices, and I think they're
Speaker 3: making the wrong choices, but the fact is they're making them,
Speaker 3: and those choices will make a difference. Do make a
Speaker 3: difference elsewhere. It doesn't necessarily it's necessary for good, but
Speaker 3: they make a difference. Whereas your average democracy in the world,
Speaker 3: the government may have all kinds of views, and they
Speaker 3: may be good ones about what's happening elsewhere, but they
Speaker 3: can't do much about it because they have a small military,
Speaker 3: or they don't have the foreign aid, whatever the heck
Speaker 3: it is. They don't have the trade influence in the
Speaker 3: trade power that kind of thing, and the economic might
Speaker 3: the hest to put muscle behind their words, but America does.
Speaker 3: And so you know, if you don't think American elections
Speaker 3: are that important, you have to somehow gel that with
Speaker 3: the fact that America might be intervening in your country,
Speaker 3: or a country neighbor to yours, or one that you
Speaker 3: think is really important around the world as a result
Speaker 3: of its election outcome, or as a way of trying
Speaker 3: to influence that election outcome domestically here in America, let
Speaker 3: alone influence it and influence what's happening elsewhere. I mean
Speaker 3: the fact that Harris yesterday on CBS's sixty minutes in
Speaker 3: one of for very rare sit down interviews, refuse to
Speaker 3: say that, yes, Naiu in Israel there was an ally
Speaker 3: of the United States. I mean, you can say why,
Speaker 3: I don't think he is. But for her, as vice
Speaker 3: president of a quote unquote pro Israeli administration, to not
Speaker 3: be able to say yes to that tells you, you know,
Speaker 3: is important not just for American voters information, but it's
Speaker 3: important for what's going on in the Middle East right now. Right. Yes,
Speaker 3: that's just a fact. We may like that fact or
Speaker 3: dislike that fact, but it's a fact.
Speaker 2: Well, it's one other thing that I wanted to add
Speaker 2: to my list, and it's probably the most important actually
Speaker 2: for most people. Anyway, Where did all the ideas come
Speaker 2: from to form the government of the United States. They
Speaker 2: came from Europe, from England and Europe, if you want
Speaker 2: to separate the two. But all the French philosophers, et cetera,
Speaker 2: et ce all contributed one way or the other, for
Speaker 2: better or worse. After the Second World War, things changed,
Speaker 2: and the further away we got from the Second World War,
Speaker 2: the more they changed. And now most of the ideas
Speaker 2: that disturb us in particular come from the United States,
Speaker 2: all the woke stuff, all the craziness that we have
Speaker 2: that we have been reading about, hearing about, experiencing, and
Speaker 2: it has spread to this part of the world. In fact,
Speaker 2: it has spread the many parts of the world. But
Speaker 2: in the in the free world, as we like to
Speaker 2: think we are, it's affected as most. And I picked
Speaker 2: this up back in the back in the early eighties
Speaker 2: more than before that, partly due to age and interest
Speaker 2: in development, but I picked it up. And political correctness
Speaker 2: as it was initially has developed into all sorts of
Speaker 2: very ugly and unhelpful attitudes to life, reflected most recently
Speaker 2: in my opinion today or yesterday by Hillary Clinton, who,
Speaker 2: talking about social media, says, we have to control social media.
Speaker 2: If we don't control social media, then we we've lost.
Speaker 2: We can only control it. We can only get get
Speaker 2: where we want by controlling social media and associated comments.
Speaker 2: That's where that's where it originates.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, And of course I mean just on the Hillary
Speaker 3: Clinton interview there, because it begs what she said, bige
Speaker 3: many questions. I mean, among them, who's the wei she's
Speaker 3: referring to. I'm guessing her wei is more her and Bill,
Speaker 3: not you and me. Late I'm just taking a wild
Speaker 3: guess that perhaps right, just just just perhaps, you know,
Speaker 3: it's make a great point. I mean, there's a a
Speaker 3: now long departed I think Nobel Laureate winning economist Joseph
Speaker 3: Schumpeter German Chap if I've got that right, who said
Speaker 3: many important things for which he got many accolades and
Speaker 3: much controversy. But one of his sort of central thoughts
Speaker 3: was that the problem, and this is this is something
Speaker 3: that I think became apparent is really where I'm getting
Speaker 3: to in the eighties and nineties in the West, across
Speaker 3: the West, was that capitalism was the best way to
Speaker 3: organize things economically, right, most most productivity, most wealth, greatest consumption,
Speaker 3: quality of life, all that material stuff. But he foresaw
Speaker 3: the fact that capitalism's success would be problematic for capitalism
Speaker 3: or capitalist societies because once you've sort of once you've
Speaker 3: got all this wealth and everyone's most people are fairly
Speaker 3: comfortable by historical standards, So what do you do next?
Speaker 3: And next comes people's the average no, the average person
Speaker 3: at first, but the average intellectual and thinker and bureaucrat
Speaker 3: and policy maker about what they can do now because
Speaker 3: they don't have to worry about feeding everybody and most
Speaker 3: people having a job and clean water. It's like, what
Speaker 3: do we do? And of course you give enough intellectuals
Speaker 3: enough time to ruminate and fester, and they start coming
Speaker 3: up with all kinds of wacky notions about the planet,
Speaker 3: you know, dying off. We've got to do all kinds
Speaker 3: of things about that, and all this social you know,
Speaker 3: you know, wokeness. Of course, there is the bastard child
Speaker 3: of political correctness from the eighties, and you know, we
Speaker 3: get all of that stuff that started in the eighties,
Speaker 3: as you say, started in America, and America being the
Speaker 3: most successful capitalist economy, much of this stuff, and being
Speaker 3: just numerically large, you've just got more numerically more folks,
Speaker 3: more affluent folks, and more universities, and more intellectuals and
Speaker 3: more public policy types, more think tanks who are coming
Speaker 3: up with more and more crazy ideas and telling convincing
Speaker 3: each other that they're good and then you know, starting
Speaker 3: to work their magic in terms of the system. And
Speaker 3: of course America, because it was so politically powerful, because
Speaker 3: it was so economically powerful, it became culturally powerful around
Speaker 3: the world. And then that culture, you know, political correctness
Speaker 3: didn't didn't seep into the sinew of other Western nations
Speaker 3: because people voted on it. It's because it was exported
Speaker 3: through American culture right in many and American academics and
Speaker 3: all of that American think tanks. So you end up,
Speaker 3: in the case of America, with a country that culturally, socially,
Speaker 3: and in many ways politically, I would argue now is
Speaker 3: almost unrecognizable from the country it was even twenty years ago,
Speaker 3: certainly a generation or two ago, and in almost all
Speaker 3: cases not for the better right, and that that America
Speaker 3: is still I think America is probably even more criticized
Speaker 3: than she was in the past, but she's still influential.
Speaker 3: And therefore, depending on which country you chew, western country
Speaker 3: you name, that country has been influenced in what I
Speaker 3: would view and I'm guessing you would view as unfortunate ways,
Speaker 3: but to varying, varying degrees. You know, in another way
Speaker 3: that this is we've demonstrated how we've lost that genius,
Speaker 3: the method of the in the madness of those sixteen
Speaker 3: seventeen eighteenth century you know, true intellectuals from across Europe
Speaker 3: is that when the Cold War ended and there was
Speaker 3: much talk everywhere, but particularly in the US, about the
Speaker 3: Cold War dividend, the peace dividend, the defense dividend, because
Speaker 3: we have this massive spending all this money on this
Speaker 3: defense budget, paying for most of you know, Europe's defense.
Speaker 3: But now we've won the Cold War, we don't have
Speaker 3: to spend all that money on defense now. Whereas in
Speaker 3: the past, the react the response would have been, that's
Speaker 3: great news, So we can now reduce bring the size
Speaker 3: of government back down to a more reasonable level, we
Speaker 3: can cut taxes, we can give people back sort of
Speaker 3: more economic freedom, et cetera, et cetera. Oh no, The
Speaker 3: response was across the board pretty much with the exception
Speaker 3: of you know which your Reaganites was, We're not going
Speaker 3: to spend all this money on defense, So which social
Speaker 3: programs can we spend it on now? Like what can
Speaker 3: the government do in a for the first time or
Speaker 3: in bigger and better, in my view, bader ways than
Speaker 3: it was already doing. And that's what's happened, right, So
Speaker 3: it's that choice happened in the nineties. If it had
Speaker 3: happened in the fifties, the choices would have nineteen fifties,
Speaker 3: the choices I think made would have been quite different.
Speaker 3: And if they were made now, when only imagine in
Speaker 3: which direction they would be headed.
Speaker 2: Just on another matter, and on a very obvious one overall,
Speaker 2: how is the current situation in the Middle East affecting
Speaker 2: your average American?
Speaker 3: Your average American?
Speaker 2: Is this such a thing?
Speaker 3: Not a lot? Like it's not central to most people's
Speaker 3: views of voting calculus, however, and i'm you know as
Speaker 3: we are. You know, we're around the anniversary of the
Speaker 3: Harmas attack on Israel from October seventh, twenty twenty three.
Speaker 3: That that that what happened then, and more to the point,
Speaker 3: what's happened since in the Middle East and America's role
Speaker 3: regarding that, you know, that is it's a secondary campaign issue,
Speaker 3: but it's it's still a prominent one, and it's one
Speaker 3: that has on the Trump side. Meant that Trump is,
Speaker 3: according to the polls, getting a lot more Jewish support
Speaker 3: than he has in the past. And that this or
Speaker 3: is what's traditional for Republican because your listeners may or
Speaker 3: may not know Jewish Americas in Cheish American voters overwhelmingly
Speaker 3: vote Democratic right and you know, for a whole host
Speaker 3: of reasons. You know, time topic for another conversation, perhaps
Speaker 3: at the same time, on the Democratic side, they have
Speaker 3: sort of owned the the the the small but growing
Speaker 3: Muslim vote, an Arab vote, and those folks are really upset,
Speaker 3: really upset with Biden and Harris over what they view
Speaker 3: is their slavish support for Israel uh. And so they
Speaker 3: are they are either deciding not to vote or are,
Speaker 3: according to the polls again showing much more interest in
Speaker 3: Trump than in the past as a sort of protest
Speaker 3: to Harris and Biden. And crucially, I mean, your question
Speaker 3: really kind of actually takes us back to these specific
Speaker 3: states because the Arab and the Arab vote is I mean,
Speaker 3: it's it's in all kinds of places, but it's in
Speaker 3: terms of politics where it matters is in Michigan swing state.
Speaker 3: It matters in and around Detroit and Arab voters there
Speaker 3: by staying home or by let's say thirty forty percent
Speaker 3: voting for Trump where normally only ten percent would could
Speaker 3: swing that state. Where and we go back to Minnesota, Minneapolis,
Speaker 3: Saint Paul, the big liberal centers, that is where your
Speaker 3: Muslim voters are concentrated, especially Somalian voters, and they are
Speaker 3: having the same buyer's remorse about Biden and Harris, and
Speaker 3: although it's less likely the tit Minnesota for the reasons
Speaker 3: we've already discussed in our conversation today, it's still one
Speaker 3: of the factors that appears to be making it a
Speaker 3: closet an uncomfortably close race of the Democrats. So there
Speaker 3: are obvious ethnic groups religious groups in America for whom
Speaker 3: what's happening in the Middle East is the number one
Speaker 3: issue an America's role in response to it, Whereas most
Speaker 3: voters they're broadly vaguely aware of what's going on, but
Speaker 3: they're concerned about it is more under the umbrella of
Speaker 3: the world seems to be spinning a bit out of control.
Speaker 3: And do I think these guys have a handle on
Speaker 3: it and can get things back on track, stabilize things,
Speaker 3: or do I blame them for it? So it's in
Speaker 3: a bucket with Ukraine, Iran. You know, it's all this
Speaker 3: stuff that if you're on the Trump side, you think,
Speaker 3: you know, they just screwed things up, and if you're
Speaker 3: on the Harris Biden side, you think they've made the
Speaker 3: best of a bad hand.
Speaker 2: Well, we started with the question of what was the
Speaker 2: biggest political issue or headline in the country at the moment.
Speaker 2: So let's conclude with hopefully something a little different. What
Speaker 2: would be the top good news story in America today?
Speaker 3: Sure, well, the top good news story getting some attention,
Speaker 3: particularly on a lot of attentions on social and alternative media,
Speaker 3: less so in mainstream media. But we always remain hopeful
Speaker 3: and optimistic, don't we. Late is actually the response to
Speaker 3: the hurricane, not the federal government response, not the government,
Speaker 3: the response of the democratic governor of North Carolina, the
Speaker 3: response of ordinary individual, regular average Americans. Both the financial
Speaker 3: assistance the people, number of people who are dropping everything
Speaker 3: and traveling there, and the hope they can do something
Speaker 3: to help the people there who are affected. They may
Speaker 3: have been as affected as anyone else, or they may have,
Speaker 3: from their point of view, been lucky in their house
Speaker 3: is flooded, but it's not destroyed. You know this, The
Speaker 3: people who still have water, or people some people have
Speaker 3: electricity back. They who are just dropping everything, you know,
Speaker 3: and just putting their shoulders to the will literally and
Speaker 3: figuratively to help out their neighbors, their you know, their
Speaker 3: their fellow citizens, they're fellow Americans. It is a phenomenal
Speaker 3: thing that's happening. It is incredibly it's conreadily moving and touching,
Speaker 3: and it's reassuring that this the sort of grassroots spirit
Speaker 3: of compassion and neighborliness and concern and a sense that
Speaker 3: what's happening to others, whether you know them or not,
Speaker 3: might in the moment, be as important, even more important,
Speaker 3: than what's happening to you in your own life. I
Speaker 3: think it's really it's you know, really quite something, really
Speaker 3: kind of moving, and I think it will become more
Speaker 3: and more prominent in terms of the coverage, and I think,
Speaker 3: you know, I suspect that, you know, they'll it's one
Speaker 3: of those things. There'll be at some point there'll be
Speaker 3: Netflix movies about this, because it is worse than Katrina.
Speaker 3: We just don't most people don't realize that because the
Speaker 3: media has decided to not announce it that way, not
Speaker 3: to allow that narrative to completely blossom. But so, yeah,
Speaker 3: that's actually it's there is There is good news beneath
Speaker 3: all of the all of the bad news.
Speaker 2: That was a that was a great answer, and I'm
Speaker 2: very pleased. And I asked the question because it's a
Speaker 2: very very good note to call it quits for this
Speaker 2: day and turn you loose, so that you can recover
Speaker 2: in time for election day.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, we just have to keep winding oneself up. And
Speaker 3: it's a little great when you're doing the polling and
Speaker 3: you're talking about elections every day and studying it all.
Speaker 3: It's very groundhog Day, right, It's every day seemed a
Speaker 3: little bit like that the part of the next one.
Speaker 3: But this year, so much has happened that only happened
Speaker 3: once a decade or once the century. It's all happening
Speaker 3: in the same few months that it sort of gives
Speaker 3: one a bolt of energy each time the latest craziness occurs,
Speaker 3: if I may sound put it so cold bloodedly.
Speaker 2: Indeed, Patrick Vasham, Director of Democracy Institute in Washington, d C.
Speaker 2: It's been fabulous having this discussion, and I appreciate at
Speaker 2: your time, your effort, your energy.
Speaker 3: Thank you, Laton, My pleasure always.
Speaker 2: Now into the mail room for Podcast two fifty nine,
Speaker 2: missus producer. You're looking terrifix. I'm not even go to ask.
Speaker 4: Oh, thanks, Layton. I'll always take a compliment. Brian Leyland,
Speaker 4: who's your sometime interviewee and specialist in energy matters, has
Speaker 4: written to you this week. So what he's got to say, Obviously,
Speaker 4: we should listen to closely. Brian says, if you've read
Speaker 4: mood of the boardroom in the Herald this morning, you
Speaker 4: would have seen that many senior people in the electricity
Speaker 4: industry seem to believe that building more and more intermittent
Speaker 4: and unreliable solar and wind power will provide us with
Speaker 4: an economic and reliable supply. It won't. The problem is
Speaker 4: that to provide enough energy for the four thousand milliwatts
Speaker 4: of postulated new demand, we will need to install about
Speaker 4: twelve thousand megawatts of wind and solar power. Sometimes this
Speaker 4: will produce maybe ten thousand megawatts and other times maybe
Speaker 4: a few hundred. This does not provide a reliable supply,
Speaker 4: and the cost of twelve thousand megawatts to supply eight
Speaker 4: four thousand megawatt load is extortionate. Another factor is that
Speaker 4: wind and solar are abundant, the surplus energy available will
Speaker 4: crash the price, and when they are not available, the
Speaker 4: prices will skyrocket. The economics of installing more and more
Speaker 4: wind and solar power is more than is installed. There
Speaker 4: is also a major problem with systems stability, but it
Speaker 4: is probably beyond the understanding of the average person. International
Speaker 4: statistics show that the more wind and solar power connected
Speaker 4: to the system, the higher the power price. That's from Brian.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well anything, Ryan says worth consideration. Don't have to
Speaker 2: agree with everything, but he is an independent I won't
Speaker 2: use the word expert, knowledgeable man with vast experience and
Speaker 2: probably more brains than the rest of them put together.
Speaker 2: Now from Brett, one can only hope humanity will eventually
Speaker 2: wake up to the corruption it has brought on itself,
Speaker 2: including here in New Zealand and turn the tide. The
Speaker 2: battle between light and dark has to play out, however messy.
Speaker 2: May the light stir and grow within humanity till it
Speaker 2: simply cannot be constrained. The dark elements will fight tooth
Speaker 2: and nail for increasing control, for it knows it cannot
Speaker 2: survive in the light should critical mass be reached. What
Speaker 2: is feared most is the common people having the empowerment
Speaker 2: of freedom of thought, of will and self determination. A
Speaker 2: self empowered, well informed people are the hardest to control
Speaker 2: and contain. Little bit of philosophy from HTT thank.
Speaker 4: You, Ladon Colin says the mood of the boardroom article
Speaker 4: in The Herald, where the CEOs and directors express their
Speaker 4: opinion on the upcoming USA election gives some insight on
Speaker 4: how they think. Only the CEO from One New Zealand,
Speaker 4: who put his name to an alternative of the group think,
Speaker 4: appeared to give more consideration to his answer. Most seem
Speaker 4: to miss the point that the middle class worldwide wants
Speaker 4: stability in the States and the world, and not the
Speaker 4: carnage we have now. If we carry on like this,
Speaker 4: it can be assumed trade worldwide will become increasingly difficult
Speaker 4: for a lot of countries. So I then looked at
Speaker 4: how they voted, first of all, going back to where
Speaker 4: they backed Hillary Clinton, who is part of the Obama administration.
Speaker 4: Then they backed Biden, who was also part of the
Speaker 4: same administration. Harris became his vice president, and this has
Speaker 4: also become a weak administration. It is difficult seeing Harris
Speaker 4: making much improvement as the same powerful people that support
Speaker 4: her and her running maker right back to that very administration.
Speaker 4: So therefore, the States has had a weak administration before
Speaker 4: and after Trump's, which gave a form of stability for
Speaker 4: US in the world until COVID. A lot of our
Speaker 4: boardroom people ignore that and give Harris their backing. I
Speaker 4: suppose it is to be expected as many of them
Speaker 4: pushed for the ar Durn administration and its disaster. So
Speaker 4: in summary, I concluded that some of the private and
Speaker 4: public executives seem to be quite a lot out of touch.
Speaker 4: Is this why so many of late are being or
Speaker 4: need to be replaced, Not so much because their qualifications
Speaker 4: don't fit, but because of their ingrained, woke herd mentality.
Speaker 4: And then Colin goes on to say, I see Toyota
Speaker 4: is sorting out more of the junk that their administrators
Speaker 4: and hung up on. So that will be a positive
Speaker 4: if more companies follow suitor.
Speaker 2: Well, I think he's a now US is actually very good.
Speaker 2: And the people that he referred to I have no
Speaker 2: idea who because but the in principle the group of
Speaker 2: people that he refers to will be slow. Well, they're
Speaker 2: slow learners. And as the likes of Toyota, I guess
Speaker 2: and others make the changes, and there's any number of
Speaker 2: them now and growing, those who live in ignorance in
Speaker 2: this country will pay the price. Now, Craig, I've got
Speaker 2: your email on COVID. I have not had a well,
Speaker 2: I only just got it. I haven't actually read it,
Speaker 2: but I've grasped that it's a sensitive email. I will
Speaker 2: give it to you consideration. Thank you now from Murray again,
Speaker 2: thanks for your excellent work. I still listen every week,
Speaker 2: and so you should. Doctor Merrick was a name that
Speaker 2: harked back to when I first became a fully fledged
Speaker 2: conspiracy theorist in twenty twenty. Along with Robert Malone, doctor McCulloch,
Speaker 2: doctor Kouri and others. These guys were the heroes, truth
Speaker 2: being too important for them to follow the money and
Speaker 2: Guy Hatchett and New Zealand also should take a bow.
Speaker 2: My horror at how everything went upside down in my
Speaker 2: home country was a lesson that I didn't really want.
Speaker 2: But as they say, you can't unsee these things. New
Speaker 2: Zealand's terrible authoritarian labor government, what they did for the
Speaker 2: country and certainly for me, or did to the country.
Speaker 2: You might say. I still follow the news from my
Speaker 2: new home in Australia, and it's not with pleasure that
Speaker 2: I see the media continue to follow the path that
Speaker 2: they have been on. I do hope that the natsen
Speaker 2: act and NZF the Coalition find good common ground and
Speaker 2: stick to their guns. The labor of mob in Australia
Speaker 2: is similar to the adern mob and almost as inept.
Speaker 2: They also have the taxpayer fund at ABC to do
Speaker 2: their media bidding. It looks like the worst excesses of
Speaker 2: neo Marxism are only getting worse, with the ABC concocting
Speaker 2: a scurlous hit job on Australian Defense Force soldiers. Thank
Speaker 2: goodness for Sky News Australia via YouTube. Who I would
Speaker 2: recommend to your listeners. I like your idea of recommended
Speaker 2: reading and I appreciate that. And there to be more today.
Speaker 2: Excellent guests, insightful interviewing Laton, thank you, Thank you, Marry.
Speaker 4: Talking of people moving to the four corners of the world,
Speaker 4: Greg is writing from Canada. His subject matter as woke Canada. Actually,
Speaker 4: he says, I recently moved from christ Church to Toronto
Speaker 4: with my family, and I can confirm Canada as drowning
Speaker 4: and wokeness. For example, my youngest son came home from
Speaker 4: school today and informed us they had someone come and
Speaker 4: talk to them about the Canadian pronoun law. Apparently it's
Speaker 4: an offense not to refer to someone by their chosen pronouns.
Speaker 4: The one saving grace is that my son and his
Speaker 4: mates thought it was ridiculous. Let's hope the next generation
Speaker 4: can sort this nonsense out and get back to using
Speaker 4: language as intended. It's interesting talking to everyday people. While
Speaker 4: they tend to keep their opinions to themselves, people can
Speaker 4: see the nonsense for what it is. By the way,
Speaker 4: says Greg, we won't be staying long term. New Zealand
Speaker 4: isn't as bad as we thought. That's nice to hear.
Speaker 2: Well, not as bad as where you went. Maybe maybe
Speaker 2: you made the wrong choice, just saying come home. It's
Speaker 2: a great place now. From Eileen on the American elections opinion,
Speaker 2: we're only one generation away from tyranny and totalitarianism. Who
Speaker 2: said that, Ronald Reagan? How inspiring are Tampon Tim Walls?
Speaker 2: And I can say that because as a woman that
Speaker 2: wrote it. And America's beauty pageant contests and Kamala Harris
Speaker 2: Kamala's girlish laughing and word Salard unburdening the burden is
Speaker 2: alleged to be a Marxist saying she's a good looking girl.
Speaker 2: Though really till he was telling Porky's about attending the
Speaker 2: nineteen eighty ninety Animan Square protest question mark, God bless
Speaker 2: America and God help America. On November five.
Speaker 4: Ladon Olivia says, I think the world is waking up
Speaker 4: to the fact that the Left has become the greatest
Speaker 4: threat to the free world. Imaginable. They ruined everything. Few
Speaker 4: people really understood that this was the way of things
Speaker 4: until the COVID hoax transpired. The right went along with
Speaker 4: all this. Two of course, they were not skeptical of
Speaker 4: big Farmer, but or more so about media and government.
Speaker 4: Yet on all things COVID related, chose to suddenly trust
Speaker 4: both media's and government's total capitulation to one very lucrative
Speaker 4: industry where the contracts were militantly hidden from all public
Speaker 4: scrutiny and still are.
Speaker 2: That's from Olivia, Good Olivia as always, although it's been
Speaker 2: a while, there's no question that they're being uncovered the
Speaker 2: woe plot all over the world. Wonder where they're going
Speaker 2: to ban the internet, missus producer. And finally, I bought
Speaker 2: a signed copy of Bibi my Story Benjamin Netanya Who's autobiography,
Speaker 2: in the hopes that it will increase in value one day.
Speaker 2: Given Ashley Rinsberg's positive assessment of the Israeli Prime Minister.
Speaker 2: I'm hopeful, I'm not surprised that Benjamin Netanya, who's polling
Speaker 2: as PM, has jumped ever since he decided to retaliate
Speaker 2: hard against the damned hamas Hezbila and Iranian terrorists, with
Speaker 2: or without the limp wristed Biden Harris America. Recently, I've
Speaker 2: come to realize one thing. This world has only two
Speaker 2: types of country leaders, the nice ones and the not
Speaker 2: so nice ones. The nice ones always prioritize looking good
Speaker 2: over the interests of their people. They always try to
Speaker 2: be friend terrorists at great cost to their own. These
Speaker 2: nice leaders always end up running their country down to
Speaker 2: the ground by feeding their desire to please all the
Speaker 2: wrong people. Examples of nice leaders include just Senda Adoern,
Speaker 2: Justin Trudeau, Joe Biden, and Kamander Harris. Then there are
Speaker 2: the not so nice leaders. These leaders prioritize the protection
Speaker 2: of their country's interests over their own because they know
Speaker 2: that if their country does well under their watch, they'll
Speaker 2: be rewarded by the people. These not always nice leaders
Speaker 2: don't be friend terrorists, they bomb them. Examples of not
Speaker 2: so nice leaders include Benjamin Netting, Yahoo, Javille Miller, South America,
Speaker 2: Donald Trump and JD. Vance and In less than thirty days,
Speaker 2: America decides between a nice Harris and a not so
Speaker 2: nice Trump. May God save America if they don't wish
Speaker 2: to save themselves. Thank you, Jim Missus, producer, Thank you,
Speaker 2: thank you. That was the mail room that was so
Speaker 2: to Jeremy Clarkson and what we have in common. And
Speaker 2: it's not the Farm. I bet you thought it was.
Speaker 2: It's not. For years the well, the family and others
Speaker 2: have been nagging me to watch Clarkson's Farm. I tried
Speaker 2: it once and I couldn't last. And the only reason
Speaker 2: I can put on it because everyone tells me how
Speaker 2: good it is and how much I'd love it. The
Speaker 2: only reason I can hold responsible for me not wanting
Speaker 2: to watch it is that it makes me sad having
Speaker 2: had one, having done all the things, driven the track,
Speaker 2: that grown the grapes, played with the Chucks, and I
Speaker 2: don't want to see somebody else doing it, had all
Speaker 2: the experience, and it would make me sad and maybe
Speaker 2: even shed a tear. So it's not that. No, it's
Speaker 2: Jeremy Clarkson reviewing the merceds AMGGT sixty three. Now I
Speaker 2: think it was the last. At the end of twenty eighteen,
Speaker 2: just before Christmas and we finished of the program I
Speaker 2: the radio program. I was asked what I wanted for Christmas.
Speaker 2: Could have been the first year of the podcast, it
Speaker 2: doesn't really matter it. Actually this is how it went.
Speaker 2: I said, I wanted a V eight and it had
Speaker 2: to be at least five liters, it had to be read,
Speaker 2: it had to be an suv, and it had to
Speaker 2: do not to one hundred and under five second. Well,
Speaker 2: in the end, I got everything bar the V eight,
Speaker 2: got the V six twin turbo Amgsuv and I love it.
Speaker 2: So this is Jeremy Clarkson in the Mescedes AMGGT sixty
Speaker 2: threes is in opening. When I put my foot down
Speaker 2: in my supercharged F type Jaguar, I never think on
Speaker 2: something's broken. To the accompaniment of a muted but rather
Speaker 2: delicious rear end cackle, it sets off at a pace
Speaker 2: you'd call exhilarating.
Speaker 3: It's nice.
Speaker 2: Some cars can't do this and they're boring, and some
Speaker 2: can do more than this and they're silly. The first
Speaker 2: car I drove with what I call silly performance was
Speaker 2: the Ferrari five nine to nine gto. It was fine
Speaker 2: on Ferrari's sunny test track in Italy, but in Scotland
Speaker 2: where it's raining and there was sheep. I simply couldn't
Speaker 2: put my food down hard in any of the first
Speaker 2: four gears. It was just too terrifying. Then there was
Speaker 2: the McLaren p one. He goes into a bit of
Speaker 2: detail and from there he said, I'm often told by
Speaker 2: planet enthusiasts that purely electrical cars can offer this level
Speaker 2: of performance, but that's nonsense. EV's are like teenage boys,
Speaker 2: lots of Well. I won't go into detail because this
Speaker 2: is a family show, but I drove an EV for
Speaker 2: the first time, the only time, when I had the
Speaker 2: car serviced about three months ago, and I have to
Speaker 2: say it was fascinating, but I still don't want one anyway.
Speaker 2: There's another problem with cars this fast. People adenoid people.
Speaker 2: Ever since the invention of the internal combustion engine. They've
Speaker 2: been in their villagers, hands on hips and dressed as
Speaker 2: speed cameras asking loudly why cars can can ever go
Speaker 2: faster than eighty k's an hour. And that's because that's
Speaker 2: the speed limit. Do you hear? Now? Today these people
Speaker 2: have developed a new technique. They get into their faceless
Speaker 2: boxes and drive around unbelievably slowly. I came back from
Speaker 2: somewhere last night. I don't know where it was, sirencestor.
Speaker 2: Hang on, I'm going to go and check with missus producer.
Speaker 2: She'd lived there somewhere. Okay, got it? Sirensster cr e
Speaker 2: n ceest sirens sster Now if they had it with
Speaker 2: an S at the front, it would have been easy,
Speaker 2: Siren says. Anyway, we sorted them. So I I'm back
Speaker 2: from the Siren Sister last night behind some kind of
Speaker 2: Mercedes people carrier, and it never once on a beautiful
Speaker 2: country road, exceeded fifty five k's and the break lights
Speaker 2: flashed on and off so regularly that I began to
Speaker 2: think that I was at a seventies rock gig. And
Speaker 2: then this morning I latched onto the bank of an
Speaker 2: MG going down the A forty at thirty ks an hour.
Speaker 2: Dawdling has become a national pastime, and there was a
Speaker 2: time when even the littlest old lady cruised down the
Speaker 2: road a road like this at ninety Not only more
Speaker 2: and this makes the idiotically fast cars even more soley
Speaker 2: as it's no longer the case that you aren't allowed
Speaker 2: to drive them quickly. You actually can't, and you can't
Speaker 2: overtake because there's always a cyclist coming the other way.
Speaker 2: All of which brings me to the new Mercedes AMG
Speaker 2: GT sixty three new questioned mark. It doesn't look it.
Speaker 2: It looks pretty much identical to the old GT sixty three,
Speaker 2: but it isn't. A very panel is different and now
Speaker 2: there are two seats in the back and four wheel drive.
Speaker 2: Plus it's bigger, much bigger. Parking will be an issue,
Speaker 2: I can assure you. And there's more. The gearbox is
Speaker 2: no longer at the other end of the prop shaft.
Speaker 2: It's attached to the engine, and the anti roll bars
Speaker 2: are being replaced by electronics, so they won't work after
Speaker 2: a while if you want everything to not work. There's
Speaker 2: even a hybrid version with fewer carbon dioxides the Mercedes
Speaker 2: AMGGT sixty three dash. The car I drove was the
Speaker 2: Premium Plus, which costs one hundred and sixty five thousand
Speaker 2: pounds in the UK, and I must say it feels
Speaker 2: like it should be more. It also feels like the
Speaker 2: engine is more powerful than it is because it's silly fast,
Speaker 2: scary fast. It's also loud, loud, like AMG Merks used
Speaker 2: to be when I was one of their most passionate customers.
Speaker 2: This car the growl of a bear called thunderstorm. It's
Speaker 2: a wondrous noise. And yet when you dig into the stats,
Speaker 2: you discover that the engine is not as the badge
Speaker 2: would imply, a six point three liter of the eight.
Speaker 2: It's a twin turbo four liter, just like mine, and
Speaker 2: it only produces four hundred and thirty kilowatts. It feels
Speaker 2: like a lot more. Maybe it's because the car is
Speaker 2: so huge. It's as though someone has fitted after burners
Speaker 2: to Yorkshire Mercedi says the car hits one hundred k's
Speaker 2: in three point two seconds, but again, I'd bet it's
Speaker 2: faster than that. The company also says it has limited
Speaker 2: the top speed to three hundred and fifteen k's, which
Speaker 2: brings me back to where I was. It's not the
Speaker 2: electronics that keeps this car anchored in the real world.
Speaker 2: It's the adenoidal clown in front and his horrible kiir.
Speaker 2: You don't know precisely what adenoidal means. You can look
Speaker 2: it up. It's not very kind. And then he goes
Speaker 2: on with the cat of experiences about driving between the
Speaker 2: farm and the pub, he says, but in the AMG
Speaker 2: it was a constant frustration, because even the tractors were
Speaker 2: being held up. Still, it gave me plenty of time
Speaker 2: to think about other things, such as the meaning of life,
Speaker 2: whether I could make it to the pub before mine ended,
Speaker 2: and how lovely the dashboard was. I also noticed the
Speaker 2: seats were superb, that the rear wheel steering wasn't too vicious,
Speaker 2: and that the ride in comfort mode at least was
Speaker 2: rather good, maybe because the front and back wheels are
Speaker 2: so far apart. And then he concludes, ordinarily, using drapes
Speaker 2: and tape to make a car bearable would cause me
Speaker 2: the question to question the wisdom of buying it. And
Speaker 2: I'd be similarly hesitant about buying all that power that
Speaker 2: I could never use, especially as it comes in a
Speaker 2: package that's only really parkable in Nevada. And yet this
Speaker 2: is the first fast Mercedes I've driven in a very
Speaker 2: long time that I've truly enjoyed. It's mad and completely
Speaker 2: out of tune with the times, but I loved the
Speaker 2: loudness and the unnecessariness of it all. Richard Hammond tells
Speaker 2: me that he seriously thought about buying a GT, but
Speaker 2: settled in the end for some kind of portion nine
Speaker 2: to eleven. You made a mistake, mate. The Merks and
Speaker 2: Absolute Belter details four liter of V eight twin turbo
Speaker 2: petrol performance not to one hundred and three point two
Speaker 2: seconds top speed, three hundred and fifteen k's price. The
Speaker 2: GT sixty three series starts from three hundred and sixty
Speaker 2: six thousand, five hundred Australian dollars and it still only
Speaker 2: gets four stars, not five. So that's what Jeremy and
Speaker 2: I have in common, a love for a particular Mercedes.
Speaker 2: And I read no, I didn't. I watched a review
Speaker 2: of the latest of my model, which is now three
Speaker 2: years old, a couple of days ago, and I thought,
Speaker 2: do I need that? The answer was no, I don't
Speaker 2: need it. And besides that, it's got one of those
Speaker 2: feral engines, which actually would save a lot of money.
Speaker 2: I will probably just stick to the one I've got forever.
Speaker 2: And the thought of the GT sixty three, and would
Speaker 2: I could I afford it? If I started saving.
Speaker 1: For it now?
Speaker 2: It would be an antique car before I could buy it,
Speaker 2: and that would mean that I wouldn't be here to
Speaker 2: do it. So with all that in mind, that will
Speaker 2: take us out for podcast Take us out for Podcasts
Speaker 2: two hundred and fifty nine. If you would like to
Speaker 2: comment on anything that's in the podcast, please do so.
Speaker 2: We enjoy it, complimentary or critical, and you can write
Speaker 2: too Leyton at NEWSTALKSB dot co dot Nz, Latin at
Speaker 2: NEWSTALKSB dot co dot Nz, or Carolyn with a y
Speaker 2: at NEWSTALKSB dot co dot Nz send the send the
Speaker 2: complaints to her. This is the official complaints handler. So
Speaker 2: we shall return shortly with podcast number two hundred and sixty.
Speaker 2: In the meantime, thank you for listening to us always,
Speaker 2: and we shall talk soon.
Speaker 3: Thank you for more from News Talks at B.
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