Speaker 1: Broadcasting live from the Abraham Lincoln Radio Studio the George
Speaker 1: Washington Broadcast Center, Jack Armstrong, Joe, Katty.
Speaker 2: Armstrong and Getty and he.
Speaker 1: Armstrong and Yeddy. Coming up later in the show, A
Speaker 1: couple of intriguing not two terrifying stories about a I
Speaker 1: plus some gender bending madness. But it's always a pleasure
Speaker 1: to talk to lonhe chen Lan. He's the David and
Speaker 1: Diane Stephi Fellow in American Public Policy Studies at the
Speaker 1: Hoover Institution and the Director of Domestic Policy Studies at
Speaker 1: Stanford University. Lon he Welcome, How are you, Joe, A
Speaker 1: very good morning to you. Also, among your credentials, you
Speaker 1: are a big Dodgers fan and executive producer Mike Hanson
Speaker 1: is convinced the Dodgers are about to be sold and
Speaker 1: fall apart financially.
Speaker 2: He would be completely wrong in that assumption.
Speaker 1: Ah, everybody roots against the big dog. You have to
Speaker 1: put up with it.
Speaker 3: So you know, in the words of the great was
Speaker 3: it whoever it was that called the last game of
Speaker 3: the World Series, you know, to beat the champ you
Speaker 3: got to knock them out, and nobody's knocking out the
Speaker 3: Dodgers this year.
Speaker 1: They win three in a row. The revolution is coming
Speaker 1: from Major League Baseball, though. The proletariat are going to
Speaker 1: rise up in the streets. All right, So let's talk
Speaker 1: a little politics, and you know, us getting too far
Speaker 1: in depth into a primary election where four hundred and
Speaker 1: thirty two people showed up to vote and trying to
Speaker 1: xtrapolate that to some giant movement I think is just silly.
Speaker 1: But in the recent primaries there have been some kind
Speaker 1: of intriguing result. What do you think is the most
Speaker 1: significant one?
Speaker 3: Well, I still think it has to do with the
Speaker 3: nationalization of our politics, Joe. And the reason that we
Speaker 3: care about the Wisconsin governor's race or the Minnesota Senate race,
Speaker 3: or races that otherwise probably wouldn't have a whole lot
Speaker 3: of impact for people who don't live in those states,
Speaker 3: is because of what it means for our national politics.
Speaker 3: And I think, particularly on the left, if you look
Speaker 3: at the energy behind a lot of the progressive democratic
Speaker 3: socialist candidates, and I get it, not all of them
Speaker 3: self identifies democratic socialists, but in my book, if you're
Speaker 3: in favor of the government takeover of healthcare, you're pretty
Speaker 3: much a socialist. And I think that that's what we've
Speaker 3: seen from people like Abdul al Sayid in Michigan, or
Speaker 3: Francesca Haung in Wisconsin or others around those various Midwestern states.
Speaker 3: And again, the reason we care is because of what
Speaker 3: it says about where the energy is in the progressive
Speaker 3: movement and what these races tell us about national Democratic
Speaker 3: party politics. So that to me is to be the
Speaker 3: most trend. And actually do think a couple of people
Speaker 3: about it that Democratocrat is statically dodged it last night.
Speaker 1: Okay, Lonie, we're having a connection issue, Michael, is there
Speaker 1: anything we can do? Reset anything? What would you suggest?
Speaker 2: I will try and get it reconnected.
Speaker 1: Okay, Yeah, we're gonna disconnect with Lonhi and reconnect. Some
Speaker 1: of these new modern software, internet driven ways to connect
Speaker 1: or absolutely wonderful when they work, but tend to be
Speaker 1: a bit more glitchy than the old hardwired even the
Speaker 1: fiber optic cable stuff of yesteryear, which in a little
Speaker 1: scene behind a look behind the scenes here is now
Speaker 1: prohibitively expensive to do. Yes, oh, he's checking with Lonhie
Speaker 1: here he comes in three two one, yes, No, what
Speaker 1: do we think? Okay, Lonie Chen rejoins us Loni. Sorry
Speaker 1: for the interruption, the technology being what it is, but
Speaker 1: you are saying the energy where everybody's curious where the
Speaker 1: energy is and plas of politics.
Speaker 3: Yeah, sorry about that, I guess Bernie Sanders tap my
Speaker 3: phone again. But the basic point is that the basic
Speaker 3: point is that what you have is this nationalization of
Speaker 3: politics and the energy on the democratic side right now
Speaker 3: it does appear to be with the far progressive left,
Speaker 3: and I think that's the lesson. Even though you know,
Speaker 3: Democrats I think dodged a bullet with Francesca Hong apparently
Speaker 3: losing last night. I do think that they that's where
Speaker 3: the energy is, and if you look around, you know,
Speaker 3: that's where the success has been. And I think it'll
Speaker 3: be very interesting to see how much of that remains
Speaker 3: as we get past the twenty six midterm cycle and
Speaker 3: start talking about twenty twenty eight.
Speaker 1: Right, the Francesca Hong thing, and this is the sort
Speaker 1: of every man analysis, So you get here as opposed
Speaker 1: to in Lanhi's world, if she hadn't been a half wit,
Speaker 1: she'd a one. I mean, she lost by a fingernails.
Speaker 1: She was an embarrassing candidate in a lot of ways
Speaker 1: she was the left version of some of those MAGA
Speaker 1: candidates that were so terrible a couple of cycles ago.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, she It was interesting that she and Mike
Speaker 3: Lindell of my Pillow fame were in the you know,
Speaker 3: sort of running on the same day basically and had
Speaker 3: elections on the same day, and they're both caricatures. I
Speaker 3: think of whether it's the Maga right or in Francesca
Speaker 3: Hogg's case, the far progressive left. But you're absolutely right
Speaker 3: about Hong. If she had, you know, basically gone underground
Speaker 3: for the last two weeks of her campaign, she.
Speaker 2: Might have won. Actually she would have.
Speaker 3: She would have been better off going underground than giving
Speaker 3: the interviews she gave, because what the interviews exposed was
Speaker 3: that the far left caricature in her case wasn't actually
Speaker 3: a caricature, It was actually the truth. Right. I mean,
Speaker 3: you have somebody who's talked about, you know, getting rid
Speaker 3: of Thanksgiving and you know again government takeover of health care,
Speaker 3: you know, being totally comfortable with all of the you know,
Speaker 3: sort of politics of twenty twenty, as I like to
Speaker 3: think of at the woke politics of twenty twenty, being
Speaker 3: totally comfortable with all of that, and the interviews just
Speaker 3: showed that she gave some disastrous interviews. And you're absolutely right.
Speaker 3: If she was even a tick better of a candidate,
Speaker 3: you know, she probably wins that wins that election.
Speaker 1: So let's look next door at Minnesota. I was surprised
Speaker 1: that the lieutenant governor, Penny Peggy Flanagan beat a pretty
Speaker 1: solid centrist Democratic candidate, Angie Craig, because Minnesota become a
Speaker 1: laughingstock essentially for their horrific levels of fraud per capita.
Speaker 1: California will make them look like amateurs when all the
Speaker 1: accounting is done. And she was sitting at Tim Waltz's
Speaker 1: side as all this was going on. You know, my
Speaker 1: analysis is if you're a progressive and you blame everything
Speaker 1: on either white people or capitalism or whatever, you never
Speaker 1: look in the mirror. But I was surprised that the
Speaker 1: lieutenant governor of such a scandal play. I mean, Tim
Speaker 1: Walls was going to run himself, but he couldn't because
Speaker 1: he's so scandal played. I couldn't believe she won.
Speaker 3: Well, again, we have to think about where the energy
Speaker 3: is in the Democratic Party, and I think particularly in Minnesota,
Speaker 3: that was the center of a lot of I mean,
Speaker 3: not just the fraud stuff, but you know, all of
Speaker 3: the police involved shootings and all the things that we've
Speaker 3: seen over the last couple of years. Minnesota was the
Speaker 3: epicenter for that, and I think in some ways what
Speaker 3: it did was to galvanize the left to move even
Speaker 3: farther left, rather than trying to come back to the
Speaker 3: middle and trying to say, look, how can we address
Speaker 3: some of the challenges that have been created by the
Speaker 3: failed Walls administration.
Speaker 2: Instead of that, they went further left.
Speaker 3: And actually, I'm not surprised that Flanagan was able to
Speaker 3: win there because I do think again, it's where the
Speaker 3: energy is, and the movement in Minnesota was particularly acute
Speaker 3: because they sort of see themselves, you know, with all
Speaker 3: due respect to California, they sort of see themselves as
Speaker 3: the center of the anti Trump existence. And I think
Speaker 3: that's why that electric moved even further left.
Speaker 1: So I want to talk about the Republicans in a second.
Speaker 1: But how seriously do you take the prospect of Abdul
Speaker 1: al Said winning in Michigan winning a United States Senate seat.
Speaker 2: You know, I wouldn't underestimate the guy.
Speaker 3: I mean, if you look at his ability to articulate
Speaker 3: a message in a very you know, I don't happen
Speaker 3: to agree with the message, but I think that he
Speaker 3: can articulate a message in a pretty compelling way to
Speaker 3: people who you know, otherwise don't follow politics as closely.
Speaker 3: Let's say, you know, I think that Mike Rogers, who
Speaker 3: is the Republican Senate nominee in Michigan, is probably very
Speaker 3: excited to run against Abdul l Sae because of his positions. Particularly,
Speaker 3: I think he's particularly vulnerable on his positions with respect
Speaker 3: to taking away healthcare by replacing it with this government
Speaker 3: run system. I do think that is a particular vulnerability
Speaker 3: for l Saeed. Not to mention his association with people
Speaker 3: like Ilhan Omar and AOC who might be appealing again
Speaker 3: to the progressive left, I don't think they're appealing to
Speaker 3: the vast majority of Michiganders. So I think Mike Rogers
Speaker 3: has is definitely in a much better position because he's
Speaker 3: running against Alsaid. But I would not underestimate the Democrat
Speaker 3: in that race just because you know, he's good on TV,
Speaker 3: and he's compelling and knows how to articulate a message.
Speaker 1: Mom, Donnie ask in a lot of ways. I want
Speaker 1: to talk maybe next segment, after we bid you goodbyel
Speaker 1: On he about the whole Medicare for All and how
Speaker 1: that's really fraud, how it will eliminate private insurance and
Speaker 1: fraud it to be covered. It's utterly fraudulent. We'll explain
Speaker 1: why in a second, but let's take a look to
Speaker 1: the right. Does the Republican Party have any idea what
Speaker 1: it is?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 3: I mean, for all the challenges that the Democratic Party has,
Speaker 3: I think that one of the challenges on the Republican
Speaker 3: side is that, you know, we have, for the last
Speaker 3: I don't know, as a movement, probably at least for
Speaker 3: the last decade, certainly been a party that's been very
Speaker 3: closely associated with a single person, and that's Donald Trump.
Speaker 3: And I think the question becomes what does the party
Speaker 3: and the movement look like as we start to think
Speaker 3: ahead to twenty twenty eight and you know, when they'll
Speaker 3: be a new set of candidates. And I think that's
Speaker 3: a question that we've got to grapple with now. I've
Speaker 3: always maintained that the movement, the Republican conservative movement, what
Speaker 3: do you want to call it, is that it's strongest
Speaker 3: when we're thinking about a series of ideas about how
Speaker 3: to improve people's lives. And what I worry about a
Speaker 3: little bit is that we've fallen too much into the
Speaker 3: politics of personality versus the politics of ideas. And I
Speaker 3: would hope that whoever the next nominee is, whoever wants
Speaker 3: to compete for that nomination and don't I don't have
Speaker 3: a particular view on, you know, where that's headed, but
Speaker 3: I'll just say that whoever does it, I really hope
Speaker 3: that they focus on, you know, what are the ideas
Speaker 3: that are going to make this movement durable for the
Speaker 3: years to come. I mean, that's where I think that
Speaker 3: the party needs to go.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm a big Marco guy, which we'll be talking
Speaker 1: about next half hour, I think. But you know, it's funny.
Speaker 1: I was just going to say, I heard recently that
Speaker 1: the difference between a hack and a writer is a
Speaker 1: hack writes what he thinks his audience wants to read,
Speaker 1: and a writer writes what he actually feels and thinks.
Speaker 1: And I was just going to ask you, and you
Speaker 1: parsonally answered this. But and I have talk show host privilege.
Speaker 1: I can spout high minded ideas and principles and quote
Speaker 1: Thomas Jefferson. But I never have to win an election. Okay,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm not tasked with winning election, and if
Speaker 1: we don't, I lose my job. So it's easy to
Speaker 1: be high minded. But having said that, is the roadback
Speaker 1: for the Republican Party to coherence and relevance in persuading
Speaker 1: people to come over. Is it less about being a
Speaker 1: hack and more about a set of ideas. I think
Speaker 1: hackery always ends badly. Pandering always ends badly, although it
Speaker 1: will always be a part of politics.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, I think the best combination is ideally
Speaker 3: you have great ideas and a great way of talking
Speaker 3: about them. And you know, I mean, for all of
Speaker 3: the the sort of discussion about Newt Gingrich in the nineties,
Speaker 3: I mean this is like well before the time of
Speaker 3: maybe some of your listeners. But if you go back
Speaker 3: to the Contract with America, and you know, Newt had
Speaker 3: a way of really talking about those ideas, and all
Speaker 3: of those ideas were you know, sort of solid conservative ideas,
Speaker 3: if you will, but he was you know, he managed
Speaker 3: to package them up and talk about them in a
Speaker 3: way that I think a lot of people found compelling.
Speaker 3: And when you combine good ideas with a good message.
Speaker 3: That that's sort of the holy grail of politics and policy,
Speaker 3: and so that's really where we've got to go. It's
Speaker 3: not just about having good ideas, because I think good
Speaker 3: ideas are great, But to your point, good ideas alone
Speaker 3: are not enough to win an election.
Speaker 2: They just they're just not in this day and age.
Speaker 2: You have to be able to communicate.
Speaker 3: And that's why if you look at the left, for
Speaker 3: all of the bad ideas that the far far progressive
Speaker 3: left is talking about, medicare for all, free grocery stores,
Speaker 3: you know, getting rid of basically elements of private enterprise.
Speaker 3: The reason why you know those are ideas, and the
Speaker 3: reason why people have really given the far progressive left
Speaker 3: another look is because.
Speaker 2: They've been able to communicate those ideas.
Speaker 3: And so whatever it is that Republicans and Conservatives decide
Speaker 3: to do next, the one thing I hope they'll do
Speaker 3: is I hope they'll marry strong ideas with in some
Speaker 3: ways what President Trump has been able to do, which
Speaker 3: is to communicate effectively, and now he's communicated his own agenda.
Speaker 3: But I guess I would say the lesson learned from
Speaker 3: that is you can communicate about these ideas in a
Speaker 3: way that is very compelling and powerful to people. So
Speaker 3: you've got to figure out how to combine all these
Speaker 3: different forces. And whether it's Marco Rubio or JD. Vance
Speaker 3: or whoever it might be next, that's they're going to
Speaker 3: be their challenge. That's going to be the fundamental challenge
Speaker 3: of the next couple of years.
Speaker 1: Lanie Chen of the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, lot he
Speaker 1: is always enlightening. Thanks a million for the time. Good
Speaker 1: to talk to you, sure, Joe, good to talk to you.
Speaker 1: More to come stay with us, Armstrong.
Speaker 2: See Armstrong and Getty Shark.
Speaker 1: You know, we don't get into a lot of policy
Speaker 1: wonkiness around here because it's a little dullish and would
Speaker 1: put us out of business. But I did want to
Speaker 1: touch on this really quickly because I found it enlightening.
Speaker 1: For what it's worth, my wife and I are just
Speaker 1: short of medicare age. We'll be there soon, god willing.
Speaker 1: I'm only dimly aware of how it works, and a
Speaker 1: lot of the folks falling for a socialist cheek, whether
Speaker 1: they're abdul l s I Aid and As followers or whomever,
Speaker 1: are running around talking about medicare for all, among other
Speaker 1: things like free childcare and an eight percent wealth tax
Speaker 1: on billionaires and stuff like that, and some of the
Speaker 1: goals that they speak of, good housing, good healthcare, affordable food,
Speaker 1: basic dignity of life. Okay, nobody disagrees with any of
Speaker 1: that stuff, but it's worth mentioning that this guy who
Speaker 1: earned a doctorate in public health from Oxford, for God's sake,
Speaker 1: and his wife is a practicing psychiatrist, which means she
Speaker 1: has a medical degree and refuses to take Medicare, which
Speaker 1: is hilarious. He knows all this stuff, he's He says
Speaker 1: he actually authored a book, Medicare for All, a Citizen's Guide,
Speaker 1: and it said it would eliminate private insurance. But the
Speaker 1: catchphrase Medicare for All is misleading. What he poses isn't
Speaker 1: universal Medicare, but a single payer system with no premiums, deductibles,
Speaker 1: are cost sharing, and no alternatives, and Medicare has all
Speaker 1: of those things. All seniors who don't also qualify for
Speaker 1: Medicaid have to pay a monthly Medicare Part B premium
Speaker 1: starting at a couple one hundred dollars, and tied upward
Speaker 1: income seniors who enroll in traditional Medicare fee for service
Speaker 1: also have a about a seventeen hundred dollars deductible for
Speaker 1: in patient hospital care, steep cost sharing requirements, and no
Speaker 1: limit on out of pocket spending. They also have to
Speaker 1: purchase a separate prescription drug plans whose munthly premiums range
Speaker 1: from nothing to about two hundred and forty bucks depending
Speaker 1: on income. That's per month. Another forty percent of seniors
Speaker 1: in traditional medicare by supplemental insurance policies to cover benefits
Speaker 1: like dental and vision care that are not provided by
Speaker 1: the government, and for protection against catastrophic costs because again
Speaker 1: there's no out of pocket limit. There's all sorts of
Speaker 1: private insurance involved in Medicare to make it worth an
Speaker 1: s It's a it's a good thing for seniors, no doubt,
Speaker 1: But the idea that hey, we're going to have Medicare
Speaker 1: for all, which means you don't have to have private
Speaker 1: insurance just to lie, we would end up with British
Speaker 1: style universal health care where you have to wait six
Speaker 1: months to get your cancer treatment started. And that's as
Speaker 1: nightmarish as it sounds. Not that our current healthcare system
Speaker 1: isn't screwed up, is it's so screwed up. We're gonna
Speaker 1: talk to Craig, the healthcare guru about that, I think tomorrow.
Speaker 1: But Medicare for All is a it's a canard, it's
Speaker 1: a sham. It's a scam, like virtually everything they do.
Speaker 1: I mentioned casually to lonhi Chen that I'm a Marco
Speaker 1: Rubio guy until talked out of it. He did an
Speaker 1: interview the other day. It was really something. We're gonna
Speaker 1: play you a couple of bits of that and then
Speaker 1: squeeze in whatever else we can. As always, if you
Speaker 1: can't stick around, grab it via podcast Armstrong and Getty
Speaker 1: on demand arms Strong.
Speaker 3: And Getty.
Speaker 2: The arms Strong and Getty Show adopted RFK s giant
Speaker 2: diet of red meat crazy.
Speaker 4: This is a diet that consists of eating sauer kraut
Speaker 4: and meat. Now you understand, like this is not a
Speaker 4: sustainable thing, Like you can't just walk into it. He
Speaker 4: can you imagine he has to travel with coolers of
Speaker 4: south I'm not going to travel the world with a
Speaker 4: cooler full of sour crowd.
Speaker 1: It's ridiculous. I can't do it. It's not sustainable. That
Speaker 1: is Marco Rubio commenting on RFK Junior's whack adoodle diet,
Speaker 1: and the interviewer followed up with the next clip, Michael,
Speaker 1: are you Maha? I'm in favor of Maha, like I
Speaker 1: think people should be.
Speaker 2: Is not but I think ultimately he is completely not
Speaker 2: want to pop tarts?
Speaker 1: No, I don't need pop tarts every day. Okay, you
Speaker 1: eat sweets.
Speaker 4: Pop tart is one of the great American innovations in history.
Speaker 4: Do you think about it?
Speaker 3: Comes He's beautiful for all the things you should not
Speaker 3: be eating, every single thing.
Speaker 1: That is his wife, Jeanette sitting in on the interview
Speaker 1: with Marco Rubio calling him out. That is hilarious. Jack
Speaker 1: is fond of repeating the absolutely undeniable wisdom that, with
Speaker 1: few exceptions, in an election, the person who is more
Speaker 1: comfortable in their skin wins. They beat the person who
Speaker 1: seems to be trying to be something, because that's so
Speaker 1: hard to pull off. Hillary was the ultimate example of that.
Speaker 1: I mean, look, no matter what you think of her, crazy, smart, tough,
Speaker 1: mean as a snake, yes yes, yes, Secretary of State,
Speaker 1: I mean credentials, but she always acted like she was
Speaker 1: She always seemed like she was putting us on or
Speaker 1: trying to be something she wasn't. So anyway, a little
Speaker 1: more with Marco Rubio, and hey, I'll admit it's true.
Speaker 1: I would like him to be president. I wanted him
Speaker 1: to be president for a while. Maybe you'd disagree, but
Speaker 1: he is a very likable chap. Let's see what I
Speaker 1: don't want to do too many of these. Let's do
Speaker 1: thirty two.
Speaker 3: You said to lar Trump if you had a day off,
Speaker 3: that you would watch football all day.
Speaker 4: I answered the questionmpletely wrong.
Speaker 1: Why. Well, first of all, the right answer is I
Speaker 1: would spend it with my wife going on, oh yeah, okay.
Speaker 1: But the true answer is, and.
Speaker 4: Here's why I messed up that answer. Okay, because here's
Speaker 4: the thing. The day would actually start much earlier. The
Speaker 4: greatest show on television today in America is College Game Day.
Speaker 4: Great show starts around ten or eleven, and that leads
Speaker 4: you to noon, and then the noon game, and then
Speaker 4: there's a three thirty game, and then there's a So
Speaker 4: I messed and in the idea like this is a
Speaker 4: crazy weekend. It would never happen. So I'm just putting
Speaker 4: this out there. But you could start at ten am
Speaker 4: on Saturday, you know, run the whole college football day,
Speaker 4: sleep for a few hours, then you wake up, and
Speaker 4: then you're in the NFL game day. Then you got
Speaker 4: the one o'clock game, the four o'clock game, the NBC
Speaker 4: game that night. That is an incredible weekend in my opinion.
Speaker 4: In my view, obviously, I don't believe that ever I
Speaker 4: will ever achieve this, certainly not in the next two
Speaker 4: and a half years or what have you. But and
Speaker 4: your audience probably doesn't care anything about what I just said.
Speaker 4: But I'm just telling you that that would be a
Speaker 4: crazy day.
Speaker 2: But that's never going to happen, right, Well, you never know,
Speaker 2: You never know.
Speaker 1: I should say. He's on the Katie Miller podcast though,
Speaker 1: and I'm enjoying it. It's a good interview, solid interview,
Speaker 1: and Katie does a nice job. One more I like
Speaker 1: the looks of this thirty three Michael. So I have
Speaker 1: a dog.
Speaker 4: We have two dogs, and then we have one that's
Speaker 4: really smart. You know, these are Golden doodles, but this
Speaker 4: one's more poodle than doodles, so than golden.
Speaker 2: Very smart.
Speaker 1: Knows how to open the door.
Speaker 4: So one day, I think Pete and his family were
Speaker 4: just sitting around watching television and they keep their front
Speaker 4: door open because they have cats, which I never took
Speaker 4: Pete for a cat guy.
Speaker 2: But oh my.
Speaker 1: God, and.
Speaker 4: So and anyway, and my dog just walked into their
Speaker 4: living room and looked around, realized I'm in the wrong house,
Speaker 4: and turned around and walked out.
Speaker 1: But yes, so our dog does open the door many doors. Pete,
Speaker 1: heg Zeth cat guy. I would not have guessed that. Huh, okay,
Speaker 1: let's you're right handsome. That was nice. It was endearing.
Speaker 1: Does he want the job? I know political professional political
Speaker 1: pundits would say, well, he pledged if JD. Vans runs,
Speaker 1: he will support him, as Barack Obama had the guts
Speaker 1: to say. And this is one of the few things
Speaker 1: I credit him with. After having said he wouldn't do something,
Speaker 1: he said, yeah, it changed my mind.
Speaker 2: There you go.
Speaker 1: That was hard, Which is why I laugh at so
Speaker 1: many professional political pundits. They are so locked into their
Speaker 1: habits and they're just repeating what the rest of the
Speaker 1: herd says. It's just absolutely silly. A couple of other
Speaker 1: political notes for you. Abdul al said, the newly minted
Speaker 1: Democratic nominee for the Senate in Michigan has promoted over
Speaker 1: and over again a book entitled Let This Radicalize You.
Speaker 1: He's plugged it at least ten times on his podcast,
Speaker 1: and they stopped counting after ten. So he thinks of
Speaker 1: this book like I think of James Lindsay's cinical theories,
Speaker 1: for instance, were Tim Sanderfer's proclaiming liberty just so good.
Speaker 1: I want everybody to know about it. Not getting paid,
Speaker 1: I'm not making any money. It's not because anybody's my friend.
Speaker 1: It's I think it's super great that you read these books.
Speaker 1: So al said feels that way about a book called
Speaker 1: Let This Radicalize You. His podcast is called America Dissected.
Speaker 3: By the Way.
Speaker 1: That's an interesting title. So the full title of the
Speaker 1: book is Let This Radicalize You. Organizing in the Revolution
Speaker 1: of Reciprocal Care, authored by Kelly Hayes and Marguerite Casey
Speaker 1: Foundation scholar Merriam Caba. It's an unabashedly anti American book,
Speaker 1: published in May of twenty three, promises leaders quote readers
Speaker 1: rather a practical and imaginative resource for activists and organizers
Speaker 1: building power in an era of destabilization and catastrophe. Chapter six,
Speaker 1: Violence in Social Movements. The authors dismiss peaceful protests as
Speaker 1: submissive to the state and argue that violent protesters should
Speaker 1: not necessarily be considered bad and I quote fetishizing distinctions
Speaker 1: between violence and nonviolence can lead to the indulgence of
Speaker 1: rhetoric about good and bad protesters, where peaceful protesters are
Speaker 1: celebrated and violent protesters, for example, those who engage in
Speaker 1: properties destruction that disrupts profit are viewed as disposable and disreputable.
Speaker 1: And when they refer to peaceful protests, they're talking about
Speaker 1: cooperative protests that obediently stay within the lines drawn by
Speaker 1: the state. They're against that quote. This licenses people to
Speaker 1: care about the cause being protested without caring about what
Speaker 1: happens to the bad protesters. For example, even as significant
Speaker 1: numbers of people's the uprisings following the racist murder of
Speaker 1: George Floyd, it wasn't many fewer people vocally defended the
Speaker 1: rights of protesters who were arrested for acts of property
Speaker 1: destruction and funneled into the racist carceral system, Meaning people
Speaker 1: did not defend protesters who burned cities to the ground
Speaker 1: and ended up jailed. They rationalize all this by saying
Speaker 1: there's no greater purveyor of violence in the world than
Speaker 1: the US government, from war to policing, to incarceration to
Speaker 1: border violence to the slashing of the national safety social
Speaker 1: safety net, the US government kills untold millions. The violence
Speaker 1: of rebellion is infinitesimal by comparison, meaning it's justified. The
Speaker 1: maintenance of global capitalism necessitates mass death. Good lord, there
Speaker 1: are times I'm disturbed by these people. Not their philosophy,
Speaker 1: although that's plenty disturbing, but the fact that they could
Speaker 1: believe it. Speaking of great books, read Stephen Pinker's Enlightenment Now,
Speaker 1: which is absolutely fantastic, particularly the first section, which outlines
Speaker 1: how many billions of people billions, the free market has
Speaker 1: lifted out of poverty, misery, and disease and death into
Speaker 1: some pretty good standards of living since the Enlightenment, especially,
Speaker 1: and how liberty, political and economic have saved billions and
Speaker 1: billions of lives, and how centrally planned systems inevitably end
Speaker 1: in mass death and jailing, in political dissonance and torture,
Speaker 1: and the rest of it. And so to hear somebody
Speaker 1: say with a straight face the maintenance of global capitalism
Speaker 1: necessitates mass death, you know you're dealing with a crazy person. Anyway,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna read on. I'm going to tell you a
Speaker 1: little bit more of what their advocation in Hassan or
Speaker 1: Abdul l Sayid's favorite book, The Islamiunist. But first, a
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Speaker 1: So wherewith I, Oh, that's what these what else? IED's
Speaker 1: favorite book advocates, So the maintenance global capitalism necessitates mass death,
Speaker 1: and of course if you're causing mass death, I am
Speaker 1: willing to kill you for it, and they are willing
Speaker 1: to kill us for it too. And disobedience to Sharia
Speaker 1: law the other side of his act. But anyway, I'm
Speaker 1: going to quote the book down directly. If you choose
Speaker 1: to disrupt these capitalist systems passively, destructively or by way
Speaker 1: of extending mutual aid, the concept of violence may be
Speaker 1: stretched and manipulated by the powerful to encompass your work.
Speaker 1: That is why we must not allow the frameworks of
Speaker 1: the powerful to define the balance of our morality in
Speaker 1: our politics and our action. In other words, commit violence,
Speaker 1: it's justified. And they talk about defunding the police and
Speaker 1: all sorts of related quote unquote woke stuff. But yeah, interesting, yeah.
Speaker 1: L Said has also raised eyebrows for his consistent refusal
Speaker 1: to denounce the nine to eleven terrorist attacks or his
Speaker 1: top serget Hassan Piker, who said America deserved nine to eleven.
Speaker 1: Now they are kind of disavowing it just because they
Speaker 1: know they have to. But on the eve of the
Speaker 1: primary vote else I joined Piker, an influencer pool rally
Speaker 1: in Pool Party in Detroit. Shortly after his election win,
Speaker 1: Piker dismissed Haley voters his opponent as islamophobic pieces of s. Okay,
Speaker 1: that's how they try to get you to sit down
Speaker 1: and shut up. Sorry, guys, not gonna do it. Not
Speaker 1: around here. More to come.
Speaker 2: The Armstrong and Getty show.
Speaker 1: Mention this at the very beginning of the show. I
Speaker 1: was wrong about Jackie the Eagle. I was right that
Speaker 1: eagles don't have names. But Katie, I believe you have
Speaker 1: the transcript of what I said yesterday and for which
Speaker 1: I need to apologize. Yes, how long is it? Uh?
Speaker 2: Maybe like a minute?
Speaker 1: All right? Gohet, Jackie has passed.
Speaker 5: I believe in balance and that sort of thing. But look,
Speaker 5: there is no crueler bitch on earth than Mother Nature,
Speaker 5: pardon my frank terminology. While there aren't that many bald eagles.
Speaker 5: I'm just back from Alaska, where I can report that
Speaker 5: they're like crows.
Speaker 1: There are a lot of them, a hell of a
Speaker 1: lot of them.
Speaker 5: So if eagles did what eagles do and Jackie's dead,
Speaker 5: that's just the way that it goes. The eagle is dead.
Speaker 5: I'm sure I'll get angry about how insensitive I am. No,
Speaker 5: I just like nature and I understand human beings. You
Speaker 5: don't get to tell nature how.
Speaker 1: To be nature. That wasn't terrible. So we did get
Speaker 1: a couple of emails from people who were hurt at
Speaker 1: my lack of sensitivity to the dead eagle. And I
Speaker 1: will tell you this. I reflected upon my words and
Speaker 1: realize two things. Number One, I have been an enthusiastic
Speaker 1: consumer of a raptor cam that focuses on some nests
Speaker 1: by my house. And I have rooted for the eagles
Speaker 1: for their eggs to hatch, and for them to have babies,
Speaker 1: and the babies to be healthy and successful and that
Speaker 1: sort of thing. And so I thought, well, wait a minute,
Speaker 1: then why was I a little bit cynical about the reaction.
Speaker 1: And there are two reasons. This is not an excuse,
Speaker 1: it's an explanation. Two reasons. Number one, some of the
Speaker 1: crazy people who plagued the veterinarians and like went in
Speaker 1: and were trying to insist that they save Jackie, and
Speaker 1: the people are like, we're trying to do would you
Speaker 1: get out of here? There were crazy people on them.
Speaker 1: But secondly, and this is the key point, I realized
Speaker 1: what queered me to the whole thing, what poisoned my attitude,
Speaker 1: is how much I hate David Muir, the anchor of
Speaker 1: ABC News, the bent nosed jackass who will report that. Well,
Speaker 1: first of all, he reports that there's severe weather every
Speaker 1: single day, but he uses the same self serious, low
Speaker 1: voice tone whether he's reporting two baby ducks flew away
Speaker 1: from the nest or an earthquake killed one hundred thousand
Speaker 1: people in Detroit. I mean, it's just and he's such
Speaker 1: a lefty and he's so happy with himself. I hate him.
Speaker 1: And he's really been hammering the Jackie the Eagle story
Speaker 1: in like a syrupy, dopey way, and it it prejudiced me,
Speaker 1: and it made me cynical about not David Muir, bent
Speaker 1: knows jackass, but about the people who are into the eagles.
Speaker 1: And I apologize for that. I love nature. I love
Speaker 1: watching raptors and shore birds and that sort of thing.
Speaker 1: I spend more time than his normal doing it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I hate David Muir, you know, I say that's it.
Speaker 5: I had just kind of a bad taste in my
Speaker 5: mouth for David Muir for a while, and now I
Speaker 5: think I'm on your level. And it started with the
Speaker 5: La fires when he had the fire jacket on and
Speaker 5: they turned and he had a fashion clip clap clasp
Speaker 5: all right back of the jacket to make him look
Speaker 5: more fish. He's standing in front of Holmes burning to
Speaker 5: the ground. Yeah, he's so full of himself.
Speaker 1: Oh, that reminds me, among the other many things that
Speaker 1: we're probably not gonna be able to squeeze in. Maybe
Speaker 1: we'll try tomorrow. But the trial or the legal proceedings
Speaker 1: against that confused, dopey leftist piece of crap who actually
Speaker 1: set some of the disastrous fires in southern California, it's
Speaker 1: it's underway, and it is utterly clear he did it
Speaker 1: in the name of socialism and leftist politics. There have
Speaker 1: been reams written about how those fires are the product
Speaker 1: of climate change, yeah right, and fossil fuels and the
Speaker 1: evil evil conservatives and how climate change threatens us all. Oh,
Speaker 1: they're about to air a big climate change episode of
Speaker 1: sesame straight. Oh good, that's argosatic. Yeah, that's what they get.
Speaker 1: You terrify the little kids, terrify the little kids who
Speaker 1: can't understand any of this monsters. Anyway, So you got
Speaker 1: reams written about climate change, and you will you will
Speaker 1: be unsuccessful if you go to La Times or any
Speaker 1: of the major publications to try to find information about
Speaker 1: leftist inspired arson and the disaster, the utter devastation caused
Speaker 1: by that leftist violence, because setting a massive wildfire is
Speaker 1: an active violence. I mean, my god, it is perhaps
Speaker 1: the greatest mass destruction an individual ken unleash, and it
Speaker 1: was leftist violence. But you will not get a word
Speaker 1: on that. So anyway, enough said, I'm preaching to the
Speaker 1: choir here. You all know what I'm talking about. Jack
Speaker 1: is going to check in from the vacation road to
Speaker 1: kick off next hour. I believe he is still in Canada.
Speaker 1: America's hats going to be our fifty first state. But
Speaker 1: looking forward to that also, well, I haven't decided one
Speaker 1: hundred percent if I'm going to do this, but I
Speaker 1: want to talk about that fake academic Jason ar Day
Speaker 1: at Cambridge who's now been exposed as a plagiarist and
Speaker 1: a liar and a fabulous and just half a dozen
Speaker 1: kinds of crackpot. And it was easily easily seen for
Speaker 1: a long time. But because academia is so desperate, so
Speaker 1: feverishly needing to show how enlightened they are and how
Speaker 1: woke they are, they let this guy scam continue for years.
Speaker 1: And it's a real head scratcher. Like I said before,
Speaker 1: it makes you think these people are so nuts there
Speaker 1: might not be any reaching them. And I'll bring the receipts,
Speaker 1: as they say these days, in the particulars for you.
Speaker 1: Next hour, we'll talk to Jack and I think we'll
Speaker 1: we'll have for you our conversation with James Lindsay from earlier,
Speaker 1: which I will explain. If you're listening via podcast and
Speaker 1: you're like I already heard that, I'll explain why we're
Speaker 1: probably gonna do that again. But hope you can stay tuned.
Speaker 1: And if you can't, as always, maybe you don't get
Speaker 1: our four on your beloved local radio station, just grab
Speaker 1: it via podcast later whenever it's convenient via Armstrong can
Speaker 1: get you on demand if you subscribe to auto downloads.
Speaker 1: It's super easy. Thanks for being here, armstrong and Getty