Speaker 1: Broadcasting live from the Abraham Lincoln Radio Studio the George
Speaker 1: Washington Broadcast Center, Jack Armstrong and Joe Getty.
Speaker 2: Armstrong and Jettide and now he Armstrong and Jetty. Not
Speaker 2: just New York.
Speaker 3: There are other races around the country where these socialists
Speaker 3: candidates are coming to. The four obviously remain to be
Speaker 3: seen if they can win the election in a falls.
Speaker 3: They most certainly are likely to in New York because
Speaker 3: the districts in which these three candidates prevailed were pretty
Speaker 3: hard left districts to begin with. Where the siren song
Speaker 3: of socialism may have some appeal. It happens, I guess
Speaker 3: at least once every generation, and these are young voters
Speaker 3: who turned out I guess to support these three candidates,
Speaker 3: some of whom are maybe having trouble finding jobs.
Speaker 1: The sirens Song of socialism.
Speaker 4: How popular is it for average Americans? I don't know.
Speaker 4: Maybe lanhe Chen does. He's the director of Domestic Policy
Speaker 4: Studies at Stanford University. Lannie, thanks for joining us today.
Speaker 4: Appreciate your time.
Speaker 5: Great to do with you.
Speaker 4: Jack. Yeah, you're younger than me, But I thought that
Speaker 4: that whole issue of whether or not we would ever
Speaker 4: want to be a socialist country was dead and buried
Speaker 4: and not an argument we needed to have, but apparently
Speaker 4: we do well.
Speaker 6: I think it kind of is a little bit consistent
Speaker 6: with some of the populist sentiment that we have right now.
Speaker 6: You know, I think that there are these ideas that
Speaker 6: socialist candidates promote that you know, if the siren song
Speaker 6: that was brit Hume, who you had on earlier, that
Speaker 6: really is the right way to describe it, because you've
Speaker 6: got all these policies that people just sort of say, well, gosh,
Speaker 6: that sounds pretty good.
Speaker 5: I mean, why don't we take from one group that
Speaker 5: has a lot, Why don't we know, give that to
Speaker 5: everybody else.
Speaker 6: Why don't we think about increasing the size of government
Speaker 6: so that government can do more. All of these ideas
Speaker 6: to those probably who have a slightly more popular streak,
Speaker 6: might at first glance seem attractive, And I think there's
Speaker 6: a consistency to the success of socialist candidates, particularly in
Speaker 6: urban areas like New York. And we didn't even talk
Speaker 6: about LA, but in LA you're going to have a
Speaker 6: socialist running against someone who's incompetent.
Speaker 5: But really, that is.
Speaker 6: One of the things I think that is appealing to
Speaker 6: people is just look, it seems like a really easy
Speaker 6: solution to what is a really difficult set of economic problems.
Speaker 6: So I kind of see the socialism, the rise of
Speaker 6: socialism in America as consistent with the broader kind of
Speaker 6: populus streak we see across our politics.
Speaker 4: How big a problem is it for the Democratic Party?
Speaker 4: Are they going to get steamrolled by the socialists or are
Speaker 4: they going to be able to keep them at bay?
Speaker 6: Well, I think that's a huge question, particularly as they
Speaker 6: look ahead to twenty twenty eight. I mean, putting aside
Speaker 6: whatever happens in the midterm elections this November, how these
Speaker 6: candid to do in places like New York and California.
Speaker 6: The big question, I think is what what does the
Speaker 6: heart and soul of the Democratic Party look like? And
Speaker 6: those kinds of questions, by the way, Jack, you know,
Speaker 6: these are the kinds of questions that only get resolved
Speaker 6: during presidential election years, and I think the Democrats are
Speaker 6: going to have to resolve what kind of party are
Speaker 6: they going to be? Are they going to be a
Speaker 6: party that tries to put together a governing coalition that is,
Speaker 6: you know, left center left, or are they going to
Speaker 6: become the Party of AOC Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders,
Speaker 6: And that question was put off for a couple of
Speaker 6: years by the Biden administration. It was put off by
Speaker 6: the crowning of Kamala Harris. And now they're going to
Speaker 6: have to resolve that question as they go to.
Speaker 5: Twenty twenty eight.
Speaker 6: And I don't know where they're going to come out,
Speaker 6: because I think if they come out on the side
Speaker 6: of the socialists, it will doom them to not being
Speaker 6: able to win a national election in my view for
Speaker 6: several cycles, right, And it's gonna be a big problem
Speaker 6: for him.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I've been li likening it to the Tea Party
Speaker 4: back in the day in two thousand and ten. Joe
Speaker 4: and I got pretty involved in the Tea Party and
Speaker 4: liked a lot of the stuff they stood for. But
Speaker 4: then you had some candidates that put Tea Party next
Speaker 4: to their name and they were whack jobs. Yeah, But
Speaker 4: because they had Tea Party next to the name, they won,
Speaker 4: and it kind of discredited the whole movement. And and
Speaker 4: then some of them, you know, discredited the entire Republican Party.
Speaker 4: And I'm looking at some of these people that won
Speaker 4: the other night, this one woman because we're learning more
Speaker 4: about them after they won this one woman she demanded
Speaker 4: the total eradication of Western civilization at one point.
Speaker 6: Yeah, yeah, I mean, look, the more that we dig
Speaker 6: in to the records of various people who have been successful,
Speaker 6: who are part of this democratic socialist movement, the more
Speaker 6: we're going to discover things that are not just out
Speaker 6: of step with where most Americans are, but that are
Speaker 6: truly odious policy positions, I mean truly offensive policy positions,
Speaker 6: ones that people look at and remind them of why
Speaker 6: Democratic socialists are out of step with frankly, most voters
Speaker 6: in this country. So it will be very interesting as
Speaker 6: we go on.
Speaker 5: Again.
Speaker 6: I thought, you know, Britt made the right point there,
Speaker 6: which is that these people can win elections in the
Speaker 6: middle of New York City or the middle of la
Speaker 6: But the problem you're going to have is that the
Speaker 6: image of these people, what they stand for, who they are,
Speaker 6: is going to pollute the broader image of the Democratic Party,
Speaker 6: which by the way, isn't great right now. If you
Speaker 6: ask Americans what they think of the Democratic Party, they
Speaker 6: don't have an incredibly favorable impression of it. And I
Speaker 6: think this is one of the challenges they're going to
Speaker 6: have is if you've got more centrist Democrats, people like
Speaker 6: John Fetterman, the Senator from Pennsylvania, who represents a more
Speaker 6: moderate form.
Speaker 1: Of the Democratic Party.
Speaker 6: How is that going to work if you've got a
Speaker 6: bunch of socialists running around who define who you are?
Speaker 5: That's the challenge.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 4: He actually tweeted out yesterday about some of those candidates.
Speaker 4: He said, why am I the only Democrat in the
Speaker 4: US Senate that refuses to excuse this or defend any
Speaker 4: of those self identified communists? There you go, there you go.
Speaker 6: And and by the way, Fetterman was, you know, he's
Speaker 6: been one of the few Democrats to break ranks and
Speaker 6: vote with President Trump and Republicans on some key issues,
Speaker 6: some key policy issues. And you've got a few others
Speaker 6: too who have tried to take on a more moderate tone.
Speaker 6: But they're getting drowned out right now, Jack, totally drowned
Speaker 6: out by these socialists. And and and the funny thing
Speaker 6: is not the first time it's happened in the Democratic
Speaker 6: Party in the last couple of years.
Speaker 4: Right Well, I was wondering how much of it is
Speaker 4: the economic stuff, the socialism part, or how much of
Speaker 4: it is the anti Semitism. We don't, you know, free
Speaker 4: free Palestine part.
Speaker 6: It's all part of the same toxic stew. In my view,
Speaker 6: it's it all gets caught up together. And this is
Speaker 6: the really dangerous part of it for the Democratic Party
Speaker 6: is that, you know, for many, many years, the Democratic
Speaker 6: Party was pretty solid on issues relating to Israel and
Speaker 6: our partnership with Israel, the important role that Israel plays
Speaker 6: in the region.
Speaker 5: And in the last couple of years.
Speaker 6: This this you know, sort of pro Palestinian pro Hamas
Speaker 6: movement that has gained power and traction within the Democratic
Speaker 6: Party has become a much bigger definitional piece. To the
Speaker 6: point now Jack, where you've got certain Democrats who are
Speaker 6: using it as a litmus test. Did you get money
Speaker 6: from Apak? Did you get money supporting Israeli and pro
Speaker 6: Israel causes? And if you did, you are not pure
Speaker 6: enough to be in the Democratic Party.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And that I think is a big problem for them.
Speaker 4: I haven't heard anybody who's been accused of that because
Speaker 4: they did take money from Apak who said, you're damn right,
Speaker 4: I did, and I'm proud I haven't heard exactly say
Speaker 4: that they are back away.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I did but yeah, yeah, they all back away,
Speaker 6: they all figure out a way to cover their rear ends,
Speaker 6: and it's shameful. I think it's just shameful. So all
Speaker 6: of this together has created this what I would consider
Speaker 6: a toxic stew of modern leftist politics that has become
Speaker 6: a bigger, bigger part of the Democratic Party. And that's
Speaker 6: why they have a definitional problem in my view as
Speaker 6: they go into twenty twenty eight. So it doesn't matter
Speaker 6: what you know, more mainstream candidates might say, because the
Speaker 6: dialogue will be dominated by AOC and Nithia Rahman and
Speaker 6: all the rest.
Speaker 4: Yep, the way Bill Maher was able to talk about
Speaker 4: the TA baggers and discredit the entire Republican Party back
Speaker 4: in the.
Speaker 5: Day, Yeah, yeah, it's a very similar thing.
Speaker 4: Speaking of twenty twenty eight, one guy who'd like to
Speaker 4: be president in twenty twenty eight is Gavin Newsom, governor
Speaker 4: of California. And there's a new another story in the
Speaker 4: La Times about this investigation that the Trump Justice Department
Speaker 4: is doing into the first couple and the First Partner,
Speaker 4: California's first partner targeted by Trump. Newsom says, here's what
Speaker 4: we know about her career in finances the LA Times
Speaker 4: digging in to the finances of Gavin Newsom's wife. Is
Speaker 4: this a real story? Does this have legs?
Speaker 1: I think it does.
Speaker 6: I certainly do think it's there's a story here. It's
Speaker 6: only an investigation that needs to be done. And by
Speaker 6: the way, it's very easy, I think for the governor
Speaker 6: to dismiss it as purely politically motivated. That keeps in
Speaker 6: line with the predominating sort of center of Democratic Party
Speaker 6: messaging now, which is basically anything that Trump does we
Speaker 6: don't like. And you know, rather than sort of addressing
Speaker 6: the accusations and you know, helping people understand what is
Speaker 6: and isn't truthful, they just sort of say the whole
Speaker 6: thing is a smeror.
Speaker 4: And you know the problem with.
Speaker 5: This sort of thing is that there's a drip drip
Speaker 5: drift to it all.
Speaker 6: And then when the campaign actually gets started and he's
Speaker 6: actually running, the people who are going to use this
Speaker 6: stuff are not the Republicans, Okay, it's going to be
Speaker 6: his Democratic opponents, the people like AOC. They're the ones
Speaker 6: who are going to deploy it against him. So from
Speaker 6: a political perspective, he's got to figure out how to
Speaker 6: lance the spoil and the answer is not simply to say, well,
Speaker 6: it's a politically motivated investigation. I think there does need
Speaker 6: to be some substantive rebuttal and it's got to come
Speaker 6: sometime soon.
Speaker 4: Well, you know a lot of people in California politics,
Speaker 4: and you're a high road guy and not a bomb checker.
Speaker 4: But are the whispers out there that you know him
Speaker 4: and his wife made a lot of money in ways
Speaker 4: that ain't cool?
Speaker 6: I mean, look that there are a lot of whispers.
Speaker 6: I don't necessarily know what is and isn't real. I
Speaker 6: think there needs to be that.
Speaker 5: That's why there's an investigation, and that's why the LA
Speaker 5: Times and other media organizations are probably going to dig
Speaker 5: into this a little bit because there are some murmurs
Speaker 5: and some rumors that they're going to try and chase down.
Speaker 4: Are all of them going to be true?
Speaker 6: Probably not, But if enough of them are true that
Speaker 6: it casts a shadow over his candidacy and over who
Speaker 6: he is and what he's done during his time in office.
Speaker 6: In a competitive primary in twenty twenty eight, that could.
Speaker 5: Be enough to ensure he doesn't get the nomination.
Speaker 6: So he's got a political problem and potentially a legal problem.
Speaker 6: I don't want to speak to the legal piece of
Speaker 6: it because who knows, but politically, certainly it is a
Speaker 6: problem for him, so they've got to deal with it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Mark Halpern thinks that it'll keep him from run,
Speaker 4: and they'll decide that they just don't want to put
Speaker 4: their fans through this.
Speaker 6: Yeah, Well, he wouldn't be the first one to beg
Speaker 6: off a run because there was just too much.
Speaker 4: You know, where there's where there's smoke, there's fire.
Speaker 1: So we'll see.
Speaker 4: It doesn't help that you had the Biden family and
Speaker 4: everything they did around their money stuff, and then you
Speaker 4: got Trump and his family doing right that It just
Speaker 4: kind of makes everybody think, well, this is what everybody does.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I mean, and that's sort of the unfortunate reality
Speaker 6: of our politics now is that people, I think have
Speaker 6: sort of discounted a lot of people in public service
Speaker 6: and they've said, look, these guys are all crooks. And
Speaker 6: what it does is it really takes our politics in
Speaker 6: our discussion down a level.
Speaker 4: And this has been happening for a long time.
Speaker 6: Jack, It's not a recent phenomenon, but I think it's
Speaker 6: become particularly acute now with what we've seen over the
Speaker 6: last couple of years, and it makes me sad personally
Speaker 6: because we should hold in public to a higher innvation
Speaker 6: buyer stand doesn't seem you know, things happen.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I absolutely agree with that.
Speaker 1: Lon heat Chin.
Speaker 4: Appreciate you joining us today, Director of Domestic Policy Studies
Speaker 4: at Stanford University. Always really good to get your insight.
Speaker 4: And I too would like a return of the character issue,
Speaker 4: but I don't think it's in our future anytime soon.
Speaker 4: You look at Graham Platner up in Maine and uh,
Speaker 4: you know, it's just more of a he's on our
Speaker 4: side and we could win a seat, so we'll overlook whatever.
Speaker 4: And that just at least for the near future of
Speaker 4: our politics. The character issue is over. I think, man.
Speaker 4: I grew up with the character issue being a big
Speaker 4: deal in politics. Man, if you were a crook or
Speaker 4: cheating on your wife or any of that sort.
Speaker 1: Of stuff, you had to drop out.
Speaker 4: Obviously those days are over. We got a lot more
Speaker 4: on the way. Stay here.
Speaker 7: Mean, awhile Brooklyn Escorts Service is charging World Cup soccer
Speaker 7: players up to ten an hour, Why so steep a
Speaker 7: price because it takes them two hours to score?
Speaker 6: What happens when you can't use your hands.
Speaker 4: I heard something yesterday, was listening to some music radio.
Speaker 4: Apparently chicks are digging the soccer players and there's a
Speaker 4: pretty big man. Those soccer players are cute sort of
Speaker 4: thing going on among women in the country, and soccer
Speaker 4: legs has become a thing. Soccer legs. Having soccer legs
Speaker 4: is very popular. So I guess those would be big
Speaker 4: beefy legs. I guess. But then you got withered, little
Speaker 4: Tyranno source rex arms because you don't get to use
Speaker 4: your arms. So if you want that, A bunch of
Speaker 4: Supreme Court rulings came down. Having a chance to look
Speaker 4: at all of them, it's just been in the last
Speaker 4: few minutes and I've been talking to guests, but this
Speaker 4: is a pretty big gun one. So four years ago,
Speaker 4: the Supreme Court ruled that law abiding persons had a
Speaker 4: right to obtain a permit to carry a concealed gun
Speaker 4: when they left home. That's assuming you live in a
Speaker 4: county where your sheriff will allow you get a concealed permit.
Speaker 4: That's its own issue. But the Supreme Court also agreed
Speaker 4: that there were sensitive places where guns may be prohibited,
Speaker 4: such as schools, courts, and other buildings. Right, you can
Speaker 4: carry a concealed weapon, but not schools, courts, and some
Speaker 4: other government buildings.
Speaker 8: Well.
Speaker 4: In response to that, lawmakers in California and Hawaii came
Speaker 4: up with their own list of sensitive places and they
Speaker 4: expanded it from courts and government buildings and schools to parks, beaches, playgrounds,
Speaker 4: places of worship, bars, restaurants, grocery stores, all kinds of
Speaker 4: different places where you were not allowed to carry a
Speaker 4: concealed weapon. And if you can't carry a concealed weapon
Speaker 4: in any of those situations, there's barely any point in
Speaker 4: having a concealed weapon. So gun owners sued. The Ninth
Speaker 4: Circuit Court refused to block most of those restrictions, and
Speaker 4: it ended up in the Supreme Court, and a ruling
Speaker 4: has come down now that California had gone too far
Speaker 4: by recort by doing that, and it's now back to
Speaker 4: it's from an opt into an opt out, or do
Speaker 4: I have it backwards anyway? It used to be you
Speaker 4: couldn't carry your gun into a grocery store. Now you
Speaker 4: can unless the owner of the grocery store decides he
Speaker 4: doesn't want you to. So there's still a property rights
Speaker 4: element to it, which I completely get. I own a
Speaker 4: grocery store, I should be able to say I don't
Speaker 4: want anybody with a gun in here. The problem with
Speaker 4: that though, so I'm pro property rights. The problem with that, though,
Speaker 4: of course, is all you're doing. Hey, grocery store owners,
Speaker 4: let you know or you know whoever, is gonna put
Speaker 4: up a sign saying no gun's allowed, no concealed weapons
Speaker 4: allowed here. All you're gonna do is keep the law
Speaker 4: abiding trained went through the process people from carrying a
Speaker 4: gun in there. A bad guy who wants to come
Speaker 4: in with a gun and shoot the place up or
Speaker 4: is dangerous is still gonna carry his gun. Why doesn't
Speaker 4: everybody get that the laws only have an effect on
Speaker 4: law abiding citizens. They don't stop the bad guy. You
Speaker 4: can put up a sign that says no gun's allowed here,
Speaker 4: and you're not gonna get the maniac show up to
Speaker 4: the grocery store and say, oh dang, I was gonna
Speaker 4: shoot the place up, but you got a sign that
Speaker 4: says no guns, so I guess I won't. However, he
Speaker 4: goes in there with a gun and decides to shoot
Speaker 4: the place up, and you won't have a law abiding citizen,
Speaker 4: a good guy with a gun. To use the phrase,
Speaker 4: who maybe could stop him because he has stopped the
Speaker 4: law abiding citizen. But that's where we are in that ruling.
Speaker 4: It's definitely seen as a win for the gun rights crowd,
Speaker 4: of which I am a member, not an official member,
Speaker 4: but I own guns and soon to be a glock
Speaker 4: which is about to be outlawed in California. That's its
Speaker 4: own story. Maybe I'm more on that later. Gonna talk
Speaker 4: to our old boss, Jason Rantz coming up from Seattle.
Speaker 1: Stay tuned, Armstrong and Getty.
Speaker 4: How you doing, Thanks for joining us. Lots of cool
Speaker 4: stuff to talk about. I definitely want to get to
Speaker 4: that story about people are giving their kids the GLP ones,
Speaker 4: which might be a good idea, but man, there ain't
Speaker 4: a lot of data out there about how it affects
Speaker 4: kids when they're still growing and all that sort of stuff.
Speaker 4: Want to welcome to the Armstrong and Getty Show. Jason Rantz.
Speaker 4: If you watch Fox you see him all the time
Speaker 4: on there. And Jason, congratulations on your TV presence so much.
Speaker 4: Been a radio host forever in Seattle on Seattle Read
Speaker 4: seven seventy am. Jason was even our boss for a
Speaker 4: cup of coffee and is a really good guy. Hey, Jason,
Speaker 4: how you.
Speaker 1: Doing doing well? Thanks for having me, Yeah.
Speaker 4: And congratulations on all your TV success. I see it
Speaker 4: like every day.
Speaker 5: Now, you know.
Speaker 1: They keep me busy. It's Fox News Nation CNN.
Speaker 4: So are you a Seattle native you've been there your
Speaker 4: whole life?
Speaker 8: No, so, I've been here seventeen years or so. I'm
Speaker 8: actually so. I was born in New York, but I
Speaker 8: grew up in Los Angeles. I ended up coming out
Speaker 8: here about sixteen seventeen years ago.
Speaker 4: And I first visited Seattle on vacation I don't know,
Speaker 4: thirty years ago or something like that. And I remember
Speaker 4: the first time I ever wont I thought, Wow, it's
Speaker 4: like a clean San Francisco. This is awesome.
Speaker 1: And then something changed over the years.
Speaker 4: I don't know.
Speaker 1: I don't know the liberal policies. I guess, yeah, government,
Speaker 1: that's what's changed.
Speaker 8: I mean, there are parts of Seattle and certainly the
Speaker 8: Pacific Northwest, are absolutely gorgeous. And we experienced the promise
Speaker 8: of Seattle for the US men's National World Cup match
Speaker 8: last Friday, where the city cleaned up like they engaged
Speaker 8: in sweeps. There were no homeless people just loitering everywhere
Speaker 8: smoking fentanyl. It just happened to be a gorgeous summer
Speaker 8: day and it was glorious. It was the reason why
Speaker 8: so many people lived here. And yet I found myself
Speaker 8: getting a little bit upset because we realize we can
Speaker 8: do this every day if we actually wanted to, but
Speaker 8: they don't.
Speaker 4: Right, Yeah, a similar experience they had and in San
Speaker 4: Francisco when President She visited it, but he's like, why
Speaker 4: can't we have the.
Speaker 8: Streets like this all the time? A hundred percent? And
Speaker 8: I actually I was in San Francisco leading into that.
Speaker 8: I just had an event that I was doing there
Speaker 8: and I was wondering around. I was like, man, it's
Speaker 8: so nice. All of a sudden, I was like, oh,
Speaker 8: that's why.
Speaker 4: Right exactly what was it?
Speaker 5: Like?
Speaker 4: What was the whole World Cup experience like? For Seattle?
Speaker 1: It was really cool.
Speaker 8: Look, this is a soccer city that we have one
Speaker 8: of the biggest soccer teams in the MLS, Seattle Sounders.
Speaker 8: People were really excited, and of course we had a
Speaker 8: whole bunch of people who were showing up to watch
Speaker 8: the US men's national team play. So these are folks
Speaker 8: who are primarily from the United States who are traveling here,
Speaker 8: and it felt vibrant downtown for the first time in
Speaker 8: frankly a long time. I just went on a long
Speaker 8: walk with my dog downtown just to see however was
Speaker 8: going to shake up. And you felt the electricity in
Speaker 8: the air. And as someone who actually lives in Seattle,
Speaker 8: doesn't live on the outskirts, I felt safe for the
Speaker 8: first time in a long time. I felt real pride
Speaker 8: in what ended up happening on that day. And you know,
Speaker 8: good news is we're going to keep that going probably
Speaker 8: for the next few weeks at least until the round
Speaker 8: of sixteen for the final men's game here at Lumenfield.
Speaker 8: And I'm just worried about what's going to happen afterwards.
Speaker 4: Right, cool, Well, one of the reasons we wanted to
Speaker 4: have you is, Yeah, we've been having a lot of
Speaker 4: fun playing clips of your new mayor, Jay Lennon Chavez
Speaker 4: or whatever her name is, and some of the wacky
Speaker 4: stuff she's tell us about the mayor of Seattle.
Speaker 8: Now, yeah, So Katie Wilson, she came to this position
Speaker 8: as an activist, not having held an actual job, certainly
Speaker 8: nothing in politics. She worked a lot behind the scenes
Speaker 8: in helping craft some of the legislation and taxes that
Speaker 8: ended up forcing a bunch of businesses to either go
Speaker 8: out of business or go across to nearby Bellevue. And
Speaker 8: she's kind of been floundering. And in a way, there's
Speaker 8: a positive spin I can put on that that she's
Speaker 8: so inexperienced that some of her crazier ideas have not
Speaker 8: even remotely started to take shape. But she's caught in
Speaker 8: that hard place that all activists find themselves when they
Speaker 8: take the position of mayor here, where you've got the
Speaker 8: activist class who are demanding you not do certain things
Speaker 8: like end homelessness and do your sweeps and stop people
Speaker 8: from smoking fentanel. But she's also I think realizing that, yeah,
Speaker 8: she's got a city that she needs to run, and
Speaker 8: every position that she takes around homelessness or crime could
Speaker 8: result in someone dying. And I think that when you're
Speaker 8: put in a position where you're no longer just an activist,
Speaker 8: you're actually making decisions, it gets a lot tougher for her.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's surprising to me that Seattle hasn't had enough
Speaker 4: of the street people and the crime, and you know,
Speaker 4: the chazz shop and all the stuff that has happened
Speaker 4: over the years. Because San Francisco they finally had enough
Speaker 4: and they got a new mayor and like you said,
Speaker 4: to start with policy matters, and San Francisco cleaned up
Speaker 4: pretty good, at least the commercial areas. I was there
Speaker 4: just last weekend. I saw one street person. One And
Speaker 4: in an entire day of being around Union Square and
Speaker 4: all the shop stuff like that it used to be,
Speaker 4: I would have seen a thousand. I mean, so that's
Speaker 4: a pretty major change. But Seattle's still willing to try it.
Speaker 8: Yeah, and it's a major change still coming from a
Speaker 8: Democrat mayor, right.
Speaker 1: I mean, there's a lot of people, and you know.
Speaker 8: To a degree, it existed in San Francisco well before Seattle.
Speaker 8: But there are a lot of people locally who the
Speaker 8: idea that you might present and you know, a proposal
Speaker 8: to clean up homelessness, and it's deemed conservative, and of
Speaker 8: course it just dies without getting any sort of hearing
Speaker 8: or debate. These are Democratic politicians putting in place policies
Speaker 8: that have been written by other Democrats, and it's not political.
Speaker 8: That's the funny thing about all of this. None of
Speaker 8: the proposals around cleaning up our cities are truly political.
Speaker 8: They become politicized right because they're politicians who are involved.
Speaker 8: But it's not a Democrat or Republican thing to say, yes,
Speaker 8: we'd like to have clean and safe streets where people
Speaker 8: aren't smoking fentanel or taken meth on street corners and
Speaker 8: harassing people and dying outside like these are not red
Speaker 8: versus blue ideas. This is just common sense. And when
Speaker 8: you start pushing away the activism and politics around it,
Speaker 8: you start to see results and you don't have I
Speaker 8: love when people say you got to be innovative, we
Speaker 8: need to.
Speaker 1: Get an innovative look at it. No you don't.
Speaker 8: You don't need to be an innovative on any of
Speaker 8: these things. We know exactly what works. It's a caaren
Speaker 8: and stick approach. It has always worked. We're seeing it
Speaker 8: happen in San Francisco. We saw how it worked in
Speaker 8: Austin and San Diego and other places that are quote
Speaker 8: unquote left wing cities when they pull the politics out of.
Speaker 1: It and just do the basics.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Joe Getty, the other half of the Armstrong and
Speaker 4: Getty shows on vacation, he just called him a little
Speaker 4: bit ago. He's just Northia and Vancouver right now, and
Speaker 4: he is talking about seeing people shooting up on the
Speaker 4: street and it's amazing how many these just some of
Speaker 4: the most beautiful cities in the world, decided.
Speaker 1: To allow this to happen.
Speaker 8: Yeah, this is the ideology at play. So what he
Speaker 8: saw what so many of us see as a direct
Speaker 8: result of two different policies. Number one is harm reduction,
Speaker 8: which I know you've talked about before. I think you
Speaker 8: and I have talked about this before. Harm reduction, for
Speaker 8: those of you who don't know, is basically a policy
Speaker 8: that says we are going to quote unquote reduce the
Speaker 8: harm of illicit substance abuse. And that has meant giving
Speaker 8: out clean needles, because the idea is that instead of
Speaker 8: sharing needles where you can spread bloodborne diseases, it's clean.
Speaker 8: You're cutting that down while you're trying to get the
Speaker 8: person help that they need, the detox that they need,
Speaker 8: the treatment that they need. This is true of fentanal pipes.
Speaker 8: They get passed around all these other things. The problem is, ideologically,
Speaker 8: there is this belief that if you even offer someone
Speaker 8: services for detox quote unquote before they're ready you're stigmatizing
Speaker 8: the addiction and then they're not going to get the
Speaker 8: help that they need. It's total nonsense, and frankly, I
Speaker 8: don't even care if it creates stigma. I want to
Speaker 8: stigmatize people who are illicit drug of users because.
Speaker 4: They've sricitize them to my kids every single day, ye
Speaker 4: one hundred.
Speaker 8: But they no longer offer the treatment and they no
Speaker 8: longer have any sort of push and so what this
Speaker 8: policy has just become is just handing out needles and
Speaker 8: handing out pipes. The other thing is housing first policy,
Speaker 8: which is why homelessness doesn't actually get better. Housing first
Speaker 8: to the left is that you put them inside of
Speaker 8: a home or a shelter, low barrier, meaning if they're
Speaker 8: drug users, they can continue to use drugs. You want
Speaker 8: to get them indoors first and then offer them the treatment.
Speaker 8: But the exact same issue, they're not being offered the treatment,
Speaker 8: they're not being compelled into treatment as a condition of
Speaker 8: getting the free subsidized housing, and what it ends up
Speaker 8: becoming is permanent subsidized housing, so they're still the underlying
Speaker 8: reasons for their homelessness has not been treated. So just
Speaker 8: allowed them to continue using inside a permanently subsidized housing
Speaker 8: unit that eventually they will die of an overdose. Inside
Speaker 8: it's incredibly expensive. No one gets the help that they need.
Speaker 8: They're never going to become self sufficient. It doesn't really
Speaker 8: make any sense.
Speaker 4: Well, I talk about this a lot on the show.
Speaker 4: I'm a sober alcoholic twenty years and I hang around
Speaker 4: that crowd a lot, and most people don't want to
Speaker 4: stop drinking or doing drugs. That's the problem. Most people
Speaker 4: people want to stuff. So the idea that we need
Speaker 4: to get them help, most people don't want help exactly.
Speaker 8: They're so into their into the depths of their addiction
Speaker 8: they do not know what's best for them, which is
Speaker 8: why I would argue there's a moral responsibility for society
Speaker 8: to step in and help, especially when we're dealing with
Speaker 8: homeless people who don't have connection to family, don't have
Speaker 8: friends who are able to step in, and we see
Speaker 8: this happen all the time. If you are so deep
Speaker 8: in your addiction that you continue to say no to
Speaker 8: offers of help because of that addiction, and who's supposed
Speaker 8: to step.
Speaker 1: In and help these people?
Speaker 8: Then that this idea all when they're ready, we want
Speaker 8: them to know that we're they're never going to be ready.
Speaker 1: They are never going to be ready.
Speaker 8: If you're already homeless, living outside and you're a drug
Speaker 8: addict and nothing has changed, you've already hit rock bottom.
Speaker 8: So the next rock bottom that they're going to hit
Speaker 8: is death, and I would rather us get involved before
Speaker 8: that death happens.
Speaker 4: What do you think we ought to do with the
Speaker 4: people who've ruined their brains, who honestly are never going
Speaker 4: to be productive members of society ever. Again, they probably
Speaker 4: couldn't hold the job. They're not dead yet, but I
Speaker 4: mean you see them on the street corners all the time.
Speaker 4: They could never get their act together.
Speaker 1: What do we do?
Speaker 4: Do we just bite the bullet, realize we made a
Speaker 4: mistake and pay for them the rest of their lives.
Speaker 8: I have no problem putting folks in permanent subsidies. If
Speaker 8: they're in that camp. That is a small group, but
Speaker 8: they absolutely exist. Now, you don't completely give up on them, right,
Speaker 8: It's not just giving them, you know, free housing and
Speaker 8: that's it. You still have to put them into treatment
Speaker 8: as best as we can and hope that you're going
Speaker 8: to get some sort of results. That represents a small
Speaker 8: percentage of the people who are homeless, so the costs
Speaker 8: associated with that I think societally is worth it. It's
Speaker 8: everyone else who does not need to be sort of
Speaker 8: this foregone conclusion that they're never going to get better,
Speaker 8: that you can't get them the treatment that they need.
Speaker 8: It might take a lot of time and effort, right,
Speaker 8: I don't think that this happens overnight.
Speaker 1: I don't think it happens within a few months for
Speaker 1: most people.
Speaker 8: But I think it's worth spending the money to get
Speaker 8: at the root cause. If the end goal is to
Speaker 8: truly get them clean and sober, or get their mental
Speaker 8: health issues treated, whatever it is. Sometimes it's as simple
Speaker 8: as getting them education and connecting them with jobs. For
Speaker 8: some people, it's making sure they have access to a
Speaker 8: shower so that when they show up for a job
Speaker 8: interview that they're actually qualified for, they're not going to
Speaker 8: immediately be dismissed. Some of it is relatively cheap in
Speaker 8: the context of government spending. Some of it is really expensive,
Speaker 8: but it's better than allowing these people to just die
Speaker 8: on our streets or give up on them and say
Speaker 8: we're never going to get them the help that they need.
Speaker 1: I just reject that completely.
Speaker 4: Before we let you go. I've been asking everybody this today.
Speaker 4: You think the socialists are going to take over the
Speaker 4: Democratic Party or have they already?
Speaker 8: I mean, the base of the Democratic Party is being
Speaker 8: taken over by socialists and communists, There's no doubt about that.
Speaker 8: And you know, you had a bunch of we'll just
Speaker 8: call them the quote unquote mainstream Democrats who decided to
Speaker 8: embrace these folks because they're so desperate for power. Broken
Speaker 8: by Donald Trump, they need to get power at by
Speaker 8: any means necessary, including giving the nomination and the support
Speaker 8: of the party to a dude with a Nazi tattoo.
Speaker 8: And I think they're so desperate at this point they
Speaker 8: don't realize and haven't realized what they've done. I think
Speaker 8: they're going to find out rather quickly. Hawkeem Jeffries and
Speaker 8: Chuck Schumer certainly will. You've got people who are taking
Speaker 8: over the New York Democrats, and you think they're going
Speaker 8: to just go ahead and give the thumbs up to
Speaker 8: Hakim Jeffries as speaker with asking or demanding some sort
Speaker 8: of concessions. There was a lot of problems with the
Speaker 8: Republican Party when the Tea Party took over as far
Speaker 8: as the infighting, this is going to be way worse
Speaker 8: for Democrats, and you're dealing with people who fundamentally do
Speaker 8: not like this country. And the only way to look
Speaker 8: at this glass half full as an American who doesn't
Speaker 8: want to see our country destroyed is to say, at
Speaker 8: least these people hate Israel more than they hate the
Speaker 8: United States, and they might get distracted by a member
Speaker 8: of Congress who has the Star of David around his
Speaker 8: neck as they're walking by, so they might not destroy
Speaker 8: the country fast in that regard. So we have some
Speaker 8: time here, but at least we're not losing Republican seats
Speaker 8: to all of this. We're seeing, you know, Congressman Goldman lose,
Speaker 8: We're seeing Esplot lose. Those are progressive Democrats who are losing,
Speaker 8: and we're probably going to pick up some seats because
Speaker 8: these socialists do not win in swing districts.
Speaker 4: Jason Rant's a good dude. You see him on Fox.
Speaker 4: If you're in Seattle, you already know he's great on
Speaker 4: the radio. Appreciate your time to day.
Speaker 1: Jason, Thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 4: Yeah, he's really really good and he was our boss
Speaker 4: for a while. Just a fantastic guy. I can vouch
Speaker 4: for him personally. I want to tell you about incognity
Speaker 4: real quick. You get lots of calls, we all do,
Speaker 4: or I did you know. You get a call and
Speaker 4: you don't recognize the number and you think it's probably
Speaker 4: a spam call or somebody trying to rip you off,
Speaker 4: and it is a spam call, and it is somebody
Speaker 4: trying to rip you off, and you get a lot
Speaker 4: less of them. If you sign up with Incogny and cognate,
Speaker 4: can get your name off of these data brokers. That's
Speaker 4: what they do. You know, criminals can buy your phone
Speaker 4: number and your family details from data brokers right now.
Speaker 4: Then they you know, if they can get a hold
Speaker 4: of your voice or your kid's voice, or your mom's
Speaker 4: voice or anything like that, they can hoodwink you into
Speaker 4: giving them money. There's all kinds of horrible things that
Speaker 4: can happen with AI. You can't stop them from cloning
Speaker 4: your kid's voice. You can make sure that they never
Speaker 4: get your number in the first place. And that's done
Speaker 4: with Incogni's help, a website you can use to put
Speaker 4: data brokers unnoticed. They use the law on their side.
Speaker 4: They contact hundreds of data brokers and force them to
Speaker 4: delete your personal info. It costs about seven dollars a month.
Speaker 4: It's worth every single penny use in Cogni. We're big believers.
Speaker 4: We got a lot more on the way. I hope
Speaker 4: you can stay here. We're gonna talk about those gop
Speaker 4: ones for kids. Stay tuned.
Speaker 9: He finally, a personal trainer in England recently set a
Speaker 9: world record by eating one hundred and sixty two oreos
Speaker 9: in five minutes. It was the record for worst personal trainer.
Speaker 4: No kidding, thanks for that. I've been looking into this
Speaker 4: story all day long. By the way, I'm working with
Speaker 4: pink eye, so you should give me some cut me
Speaker 4: some sly. Conjunctivitis is that the word for it? When
Speaker 4: did the doctors say I had eye pain? My eye
Speaker 4: is not pink? About when you got pink eye? Your
Speaker 4: eye turn pink. Had eye pain, which of course is troubling.
Speaker 4: Your eye is not supposed to hurt. I got this conjunctivitis,
Speaker 4: which apparently is very very contagious. Well, you gotta worry
Speaker 4: is catching it in the other eye, So you gotta
Speaker 4: worry about rubbing your eye with it, and then rubbing
Speaker 4: your other eye, and then you give it to that eye. Now,
Speaker 4: let alone to your family and friends. That's why I'm
Speaker 4: working from home today. I didn't come into work so
Speaker 4: I wouldn't give Michael pink eye. Then he takes it
Speaker 4: home and gives it to his cats, and then all
Speaker 4: ol breaks. Look, I appreciate you doing that. You wouldn't
Speaker 4: want to give the pink eye to your cats. Speaking
Speaker 4: of health, the Wall Street Journal about how people are
Speaker 4: starting to use the golp ones or doctors are prescribing
Speaker 4: them for kids, including really young kids. I got a
Speaker 4: nine year old here opens The article opens with al
Speaker 4: because the kids laying on the floor and getting his
Speaker 4: regular stomach injection of the weight loss drug. My kids
Speaker 4: are a little older than that now, but they wouldn't
Speaker 4: have at any point really enjoyed getting a shot in
Speaker 4: the stomach, and I wouldn't have enjoyed given it to them.
Speaker 4: But for or parents and kids where traditional weight loss
Speaker 4: methods haven't worked that we all know there's an epidemic
Speaker 4: of obesity at all ages, including for kids. Even though
Speaker 4: elementary schoolers are being put on drugs such as Wagovi,
Speaker 4: prescribing it is somewhat controversial because they don't it's not.
Speaker 4: The drugs aren't yet approved for obesity in patients as young.
Speaker 4: I don't know what approved means, but a doctor can
Speaker 4: write a prescription for it, so it's approved enough, I guess.
Speaker 4: Without further studies, it isn't certain that young children can
Speaker 4: safely use the medications for weight loss without compromising a
Speaker 4: critical period of growth for their bones and brain. Gotta
Speaker 4: tell you, I'd be pretty hesitant as a parent to
Speaker 4: start my kids on this, given the fact that they're
Speaker 4: so new for adults, and we have no idea what
Speaker 4: it does to a kid who's you know, As my
Speaker 4: doctor once said, the human body is a pretty amazing
Speaker 4: machine that has been a evolving for a long time,
Speaker 4: and it'll most of the time, when it's working correctly,
Speaker 4: give you a little more of this little less that
Speaker 4: keep every inner testosterone and your various in all your
Speaker 4: different vital numbers and all that sort of stuff stay
Speaker 4: in the normal range for most of us all the time. Well,
Speaker 4: if you start injecting things like gop ones into the body,
Speaker 4: how the body then compensates for that to try to
Speaker 4: get back to normal in various ways your brain or
Speaker 4: your body. We don't have the slightest idea. But then
Speaker 4: I'm looking at a picture these two kids that they've
Speaker 4: got here. One's eight, one nine. They're very heavy kids
Speaker 4: and be a rough way to be for a variety
Speaker 4: of reasons, and certainly not healthy. Well, we'll all find
Speaker 4: out together, won't we, whether these drugs are good for
Speaker 4: us or not, and whether or not insurance is going
Speaker 4: to cover it and the price comes down, and all
Speaker 4: those different issues around that. We got another hour to go,
Speaker 4: probably take a look at some of those Supreme Court
Speaker 4: cases that have come down that we haven't even touched
Speaker 4: on yet. Supreme Court in June every year releases a
Speaker 4: whole bunch of cases before they take a recess before
Speaker 4: coming back in October. And a bunch of rulings came
Speaker 4: down today, a lot of them super technical stuff that
Speaker 4: aren't that interesting, but a couple of them are, and
Speaker 4: we'll run through those. United States plays Turkey tonight in soccer,
Speaker 4: meaningless game but still exciting. Got a lot more on
Speaker 4: the way. If you miss a segment, get the podcast
Speaker 4: Armstrong and Getty on demand.
Speaker 6: Armstrong and Getty