Speaker 1: Broadcasting live from the Abraham Lincoln Radio Studio the George
Speaker 1: Washington Broadcast Center, Jack Armstrong and Joe, Katty Armstrong and
Speaker 1: Jettie and no Hee Armstrong and Yetty. I want to
Speaker 1: bring the schools.
Speaker 2: I want to bring the schools back to the States.
Speaker 2: And and I've said it a hundred times, we're ranked
Speaker 2: at the bottom of the list, and yet we spend more.
Speaker 2: If you tell me about Indiana and some of these
Speaker 2: great states that run really well Iowa. You tell me
Speaker 2: about those states, and if they run their own education,
Speaker 2: they're going to do a lot better than somebody sitting
Speaker 2: in Washington, DC that couldn't care less about the pupils
Speaker 2: out in the Midwest.
Speaker 3: No, no, no, no, no, places like New York and LA.
Speaker 3: They should set the standards for the kind of education
Speaker 3: your kid gets in stupid Iowa and stupid Indiana, and
Speaker 3: then the federal government can force it on those people.
Speaker 4: Wow, that is some excellent sarcasm there.
Speaker 1: I just appreciate Trump's use of the term pupils, which
Speaker 1: you don't hear that much anyway. Yeah, well, he's an
Speaker 1: old man, he is that. So President Trump is sitting
Speaker 1: on is still considering apparently an executive order that some
Speaker 1: people thought might come out this week aimed at abolishing
Speaker 1: the Education Department. By the way, some of them just
Speaker 1: throwing it in there at Trump's age, he's damn near eighty. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the last three weeks. Who you me, anyone has worked
Speaker 1: three weeks that much that hard at any age, let
Speaker 1: alone eighty years old, I'd be in some sort of
Speaker 1: rest facility, some sort of resk. God, anyway, back to you,
Speaker 1: it's amazing anyway. A draft of the order directs Education
Speaker 1: Secretary Linda McMahon to quote, take all necessary steps to
Speaker 1: facilitate the closure of the Education Department based on the
Speaker 1: maximum extent appropriate and permitted by law. And then and
Speaker 1: that just refers to the fact that if Congress starts
Speaker 1: a department and tasks it with specific things, really the
Speaker 1: best you can do is pare it down to that
Speaker 1: which is obviously undeniably what Congress said specifically. But agencies
Speaker 1: tend to metastasize and take on a bigger and bigger
Speaker 1: list of programs, a lodger remit. As they'd say in
Speaker 1: the intellectual community, why can't you talk like regular people.
Speaker 1: I'm trying to, you know, to change the world in
Speaker 1: the way they were never designed to do. But anyway,
Speaker 1: some of the verbiage from the Draft report, the experiment
Speaker 1: of controlling American education through federal programs and dollars and
Speaker 1: the unaccountable bureaucrats those programs and dollars support has failed
Speaker 1: our children, our teachers, and our families. The draft viewed
Speaker 1: was labeled as predecisional.
Speaker 4: I like that. I just like that term.
Speaker 1: I live my life that way. Watch lots of issues.
Speaker 1: I like that color for the drapes. But this is
Speaker 1: a predecisional, you know, discussion.
Speaker 3: I'm in my predecisional period on a number of things.
Speaker 4: I was thinking to you the other day.
Speaker 1: I want you to react to this from from your heart,
Speaker 1: from your ticker, from your gut. Two hours spent looking
Speaker 1: at granite and other counter surfaces for a kitchen remodel.
Speaker 1: So did a new slip off your neck or how
Speaker 1: did you end up in that situation? I enjoyed it.
Speaker 1: This is how you tell us apart. I thought it
Speaker 1: was fun. I perfectly embrace that. Other people are okay
Speaker 1: with that.
Speaker 3: I yes, dude, I don't understand that on any level whatsoever.
Speaker 1: I can almost convert you I'll convert you on one left.
Speaker 1: The variety of colors and patterns that are produced by nature,
Speaker 1: by God's creation, are astonishing and beautiful. I've awakened the
Speaker 1: poet in your soul. Anyway, So I thought this was great.
Speaker 1: Kim Strassel, who's a genius, quoting a lot of really
Speaker 1: brilliant women on today's show, which which I think is great.
Speaker 1: She's talking about the executive Order. She was writing about
Speaker 1: it recently and is in favor of it, and I
Speaker 1: love her description, you know, never mind her reasoning, which
Speaker 1: is great. But never has a department been more deceptively titled.
Speaker 1: To listen to this week's whaling, the Federal Education Department
Speaker 1: is the beating heart of our nation's schools, and its
Speaker 1: demise a straight line to an illiterate nation. Oh my god,
Speaker 1: that's funny. Yeah, yeah, I gotta voice her articles because
Speaker 1: she doesn't have an aluw enough voice to say a.
Speaker 4: Straight line to an illiterate nation.
Speaker 1: You know, you gotta be scary, and as we practically
Speaker 1: are now with de part of Education in charge. Well
Speaker 1: wait a minute, yeah, the Education Department is more of
Speaker 1: the straight line to an illiterate nation than its absence
Speaker 1: would be the re our. Federal Education bureaucracy takes no
Speaker 1: part in the daily, hard fought grind of teaching. Little
Speaker 1: salute to the great teachers, That sentence goes out to
Speaker 1: y'all because you're heroes.
Speaker 3: I am stunned by the work a lot of my
Speaker 3: kids teachers have done and do just I mean stunned.
Speaker 1: It's a lot of teachers' unions are evil. Really hear themselves.
Speaker 1: I love you, yeah, yeah. Anyway, So the Federal Education bureaucracy,
Speaker 1: it takes no part in the daily, hard fought grind
Speaker 1: of teaching. It does not step in classrooms, interview teachers,
Speaker 1: or debate curriculum. It doesn't meet with parents, coach sports,
Speaker 1: or set bus schedules. The department's only job is to
Speaker 1: act as the keeper of the education treats. Every year,
Speaker 1: these federal masters get some eighty billion dollars to dispense
Speaker 1: on good behavior.
Speaker 4: They hive off a dollop for their own salaries.
Speaker 1: Well. The rest they dispense as if rewarding a pet.
Speaker 1: Good state puppies, those that roll, fetch and fill out
Speaker 1: paperwork and triplicate get grants from IDA funds.
Speaker 4: Bad puppies lose their school lunch money.
Speaker 1: Thus today's inane system in which kids from Taos to
Speaker 1: Tallahassee are held hostage to a counterproductive mays of federal
Speaker 1: rules that dictate dollars yet waste resources and stemy local innovation.
Speaker 1: School stage Bingo nights when staff coach parents to minimize
Speaker 1: their salaries on forms so that the school qualifies for
Speaker 1: Title I Low Income funding. Wow. Parents and administrators fight
Speaker 1: to get kids labeled special needs to score an individual
Speaker 1: education plan and extract federal resources. And by the way, folks,
Speaker 1: before you fire off an angry email that in no
Speaker 1: way implies that any kid with special needs is trying
Speaker 1: to do that, not at all. It's like, you know,
Speaker 1: riddle in for ADHD. There are some cases that are
Speaker 1: absolutely necessary. They're a hell of a lot that aren't.
Speaker 1: Having said that, in recent years, the threat of losing
Speaker 1: federal funds also sent district scurrying to comply with Joe
Speaker 1: Biden's trends gender directives. And then she gives a bunch
Speaker 1: of specific examples of the specific grants and how they
Speaker 1: they play the tune in the schools have to dance
Speaker 1: to it. Whatever you know, whatever the cause, celeb is
Speaker 1: restorative justice and transgender you know, boys playing girls' sports
Speaker 1: and the rest of it.
Speaker 3: You know, the thing Trump said there at the beginning
Speaker 3: should be like the only part of the discussion, and
Speaker 3: then go from there. We spend more than anybody else,
Speaker 3: we get lower results. Even if you don't want to
Speaker 3: compare to other countries, don't compare it to ourselves. We
Speaker 3: spend more than we ever have and we get less
Speaker 3: out of it. What changed from you know, the year
Speaker 3: nineteen ninety or the new year nineteen seventy, that we
Speaker 3: have to spend so much money per pupil and then
Speaker 3: get a worse result. I mean that seems like such
Speaker 3: an obvious How would you get around it?
Speaker 1: Sign that things are off the rails? Yeah, I think
Speaker 1: it's Washington thrives on this. But we need to return
Speaker 1: to a plane spoken sentiment like this has been a failure.
Speaker 1: What do you want to try now? As opposed to
Speaker 1: the notion that, well, the Department of Education exists and
Speaker 1: it does the things it does and we probably shouldn't
Speaker 1: mess with it.
Speaker 4: No, it's failed.
Speaker 3: What are you try now? Or somebody just hit you
Speaker 3: with teachers or heroes and right, you're supposed to just
Speaker 3: recoil an emotional horror from.
Speaker 1: You know anything else. And indeed Ms Strassel, much like
Speaker 1: mister Armstrong and mister Trump, points out the formula afore
Speaker 1: described sent one trillion dollars to schools since nineteen seventy nine,
Speaker 1: producing a perfect inverse correlation of plummeting education scores. And
Speaker 1: then she makes a point that I love, go ahead,
Speaker 1: I don't.
Speaker 3: I mean, that is the end game of the discussion.
Speaker 3: We're spending more and getting less need. Something's wrong. We
Speaker 3: got to change, like massively change. But this is this
Speaker 3: is how you get people to rally.
Speaker 1: Jack.
Speaker 4: We've established it needs to change.
Speaker 1: Now we're going to get them excited about it by
Speaker 1: pissing them off. She writes, Yet what And she went
Speaker 1: through gosh six or eight different ways the money flows
Speaker 1: to schools for dancing to the tune being a good puppy.
Speaker 1: Yet note what these federal funds have in common. The money,
Speaker 1: ostensibly for the children, all goes to the adults to
Speaker 1: hire more counselors and special ed teachers for those IEPs
Speaker 1: sometimes great necessary, but more administrators to run various programs,
Speaker 1: including perverse ones, legions of staff to input data, and
Speaker 1: guess what. Most of those adults belong to a union
Speaker 1: local of the National Education Association or the American Federation
Speaker 1: of Teachers, because the keeper of treats was, is and
Speaker 1: always will be Jimmy Carter's thank you for Teachers Union endorsements.
Speaker 1: Randy Weingarten controls the clicker, and then she's a little
Speaker 1: annoyed that Trump has been a little passive on education
Speaker 1: so far, but everything else has been so feverish it's
Speaker 1: hard to it's easy to forget that. No, no, no,
Speaker 1: this is month number two. We'll get to it. It'll
Speaker 1: be good. I hope you're Randy Winingarten.
Speaker 3: Say hello to Hitler and Ojy when you get to Hell,
Speaker 3: because that's where you're headed.
Speaker 4: Amen to that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, she does say he didn't mention school choice in
Speaker 1: his address as addressed to Congress this week, which would
Speaker 1: have been good. But conservatives are already on the offence
Speaker 1: and winning school choices exploding across the States. Those laboratories
Speaker 1: and democracy innovating on scholarships, vouchers, savings, accounts, charters. New
Speaker 1: generation and conservative leaders are embracing next steps accountability and standards, merit,
Speaker 1: pay for teachers, reviving vocational education and parents are loving
Speaker 1: it in large measure. One one note, before we eliminate
Speaker 1: the Department of Education, and although, honestly to answer myself
Speaker 1: before I even make any argument, have the Department of
Speaker 1: Justice to it, or Streets and Sanitation or park rangers
Speaker 1: or something.
Speaker 4: But we don't need a whold department for this.
Speaker 1: But the still breathing Department of Education launched a public
Speaker 1: portal last week for parents, students, teachers, and communities to
Speaker 1: submit reports of sex and race based discrimination in public
Speaker 1: K through twelve schools. The portal is called the nd
Speaker 1: DEI Portal and allows the submission of an email address,
Speaker 1: the name of students, school or school district, and a
Speaker 1: text box for detailing. Hey, even though this DEI racial
Speaker 1: discrimination stuff is illegal, now my school is still doing
Speaker 1: it and here's how they're doing it.
Speaker 3: Wow, that's good because our friend Tim Sandifer, who works
Speaker 3: for the Goldwater Institute. He tweeted out today win for Goldwater.
Speaker 3: A Pennsylvania school district tried to hide its DEI from
Speaker 3: a mom It claimed the materials were copyrighted so they
Speaker 3: weren't subject to state's open records law, and Goldwater.
Speaker 1: Change that in one Yeah, yeah, I could write a
Speaker 1: book right now about ways colleges, especially and lower tiers
Speaker 1: of education are getting around all the anti DEI stuff.
Speaker 1: I'll give them points for creativity, but they are just
Speaker 1: changing names of programs and offices, changing titles, and pretending
Speaker 1: to change their admissions while doing precisely the same stuff.
Speaker 1: And one more note and then I'll shut up. I
Speaker 1: read a really interesting piece. I can't remember who wrote it,
Speaker 1: might have been the Free Press. Was talking about how
Speaker 1: one of the big problems is the accreditation organizations that
Speaker 1: the government has tasked with. And this is the sort
Speaker 1: of thing that ought to respond to the private market,
Speaker 1: but it doesn't because universities are so woke. But they're
Speaker 1: tasked with saying the University of Pennsylvania, for instance, has
Speaker 1: good professors and they're teaching good stuff, and.
Speaker 4: We accredit them as a university.
Speaker 1: Those organizations are crazy ass woke, the creditors themselves, and
Speaker 1: so they're going to the universities and saying, if I
Speaker 1: don't see you march in the DEI tune, we're not
Speaker 1: going to credit credit you as a university.
Speaker 4: Yeah, not shocking at all.
Speaker 3: Troubling, So coming up trying to put a lipstick on
Speaker 3: a pig re Ukraine and Russia.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna try to do that.
Speaker 3: And also Ai comes to the McDonald's drive through, among
Speaker 3: other things.
Speaker 1: On the way, Trump talked about all the good happening,
Speaker 1: the damn sis seeds.
Speaker 5: That was Liz Warren. There's so much steam coming from
Speaker 5: her ears. I thought you was sending smoke signals me
Speaker 5: very mad at Orange Man. Meanwhile, Nancy nod through her
Speaker 5: mouth like it was a tough chunk of rice pudding.
Speaker 5: George Washington's teeth bit better, and he whittled them out
Speaker 5: of mahogany.
Speaker 4: I'd meant to comment on that.
Speaker 1: After the Tuesday night speech, Nancy Pelosi was making never ending,
Speaker 1: very old person mouth motions. I saw that.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, we're all going to be that age someday.
Speaker 1: Well right, yeah, I'm not going to mock her for it,
Speaker 1: but the idea that she was the leader of a
Speaker 1: party until like last week is just absurd. I just
Speaker 1: ran into my son in the hallway. He said, what
Speaker 1: are you doing at home? I'm at home, And the
Speaker 1: reason I'm home, as I told him, is because I'm
Speaker 1: on the tail end of the flu and my stomach
Speaker 1: is not good. This whole flu thing. I'm flying today,
Speaker 1: and I'm going to get an aisle seat. If you
Speaker 1: know what I'm saying. I need to to be able
Speaker 1: do move quickly, move quickly. There are remedies, of course,
Speaker 1: you know you're hip to them. Yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 4: I hate to take some sort of stop me all up.
Speaker 4: What do you hate more?
Speaker 1: That's a good question.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Oh my god.
Speaker 1: Speaking of medical matters, I just got a call during
Speaker 1: the commercial break from my dermatologist.
Speaker 4: They got a slice on me again. And I'm gonna
Speaker 4: walk in there.
Speaker 1: I've threatened before to bring my own knife and say, yeah,
Speaker 1: come at me, let's go.
Speaker 4: You like it, I'm gonna get some, but I've changed
Speaker 4: my strategy.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna walk in there and say, hey, let's save
Speaker 1: all of us a little time in trouble. Just skin me,
Speaker 1: just take all of it, all right, or at least
Speaker 1: my back.
Speaker 4: We'll call it.
Speaker 1: Good covering, some sort of cellophane or something. Oh man,
Speaker 1: those summer days on the Indiana dunes, all covered with oil.
Speaker 1: That's like the only thing going in the right direction.
Speaker 3: You know how, I always say, name one thing that's
Speaker 3: getting better, because everything seems like it's getting worse. One
Speaker 3: thing that's getting better is as we stay out of
Speaker 3: the sun and our kids, like my kids, I think
Speaker 3: one of us had one sunburn and the other one's none,
Speaker 3: and their lives and.
Speaker 1: I used to get burnt practically every day. Yeah yeah,
Speaker 1: with the the cost being paid now with slicings. Anyway, Ah,
Speaker 1: what was I going to say, there's a sunburned sunscreen
Speaker 1: doing better? They skin you skinning Joe? Yeah, let's uh anyway, ah, jab,
Speaker 1: we're not coming off at all like old Al Green
Speaker 1: shaking his cave. You can get the fluid any age?
Speaker 1: All right? Oh no, I'm yeah, just yeah, man, here's
Speaker 1: something exciting. McDonald's is going to use AI computer vision
Speaker 1: and facial recognition in store mounted cameras at the drive
Speaker 1: through to determine whether the orders are accurate before they're
Speaker 1: handed to customers. Oh so, the same technology that is
Speaker 1: facial recognition. They're going to look at your bag, I
Speaker 1: guess and say it looks like two cheeseburgers and mcflurry
Speaker 1: go ahead, give it to him.
Speaker 4: It's necessary.
Speaker 1: You know what drives all this, by the way, raising
Speaker 1: the minimum waged.
Speaker 3: Where they can't afford him employees, so they got little
Speaker 3: willing to spend whatever they got to spend to get
Speaker 3: rid to eliminate employees ding true fact. Yea, what is
Speaker 3: the Trump plan in Russia?
Speaker 1: Ukraine?
Speaker 3: We might actually know now we might not armstrong and getty.
Speaker 6: President's Zelensky sent a letter to the President. I think
Speaker 6: the President thought that it was a really good, positive
Speaker 6: first step. We're now in discussions to uh coordinate a
Speaker 6: meeting with the Ukrainians and Rhyod or even potentially Jetta,
Speaker 6: and I think the idea is to get down a
Speaker 6: framework for a peace agreement and an initial ceasefire ceasefire
Speaker 6: as well.
Speaker 3: Okay, so Zelensky is playing ball a little more than
Speaker 3: he did a week ago. Today, Uh with what Trump wants.
Speaker 3: Whether it's just rhetorically or in reality, I don't know
Speaker 3: which Trump needs. But uh, and here's Trump yesterday talking
Speaker 3: about the whole thing.
Speaker 2: What's going to happen is Ukraine wants to make a
Speaker 2: deal because I don't think they have a choice. I
Speaker 2: also think that Russia wants to make a deal because
Speaker 2: in a certain different way, a different way that only
Speaker 2: I know, only.
Speaker 1: I know, they have no choice either.
Speaker 3: So what was that the entire foreign policy establishment wants
Speaker 3: to know in a certain way that only I know,
Speaker 3: only I know Russia needs to make a deal.
Speaker 1: Also, what is that oh boy? Whether that's oh boy
Speaker 1: threat that hasn't been said out loud, or we are
Speaker 1: more aware of their near collapse of either the economy
Speaker 1: or the military or something. When Trump last time around
Speaker 1: appeared to be kissing up to Putin, he secretly implanted
Speaker 1: a painless chip under Putin's skin that is, in fact,
Speaker 1: to tiny nuclear device he can blow his head off
Speaker 1: with the flip of a switch. I don't.
Speaker 4: I am so intrigued by that.
Speaker 3: I've got a button and it's right next to my
Speaker 3: diet coke button here at the desk, So I gotta
Speaker 3: make sure.
Speaker 1: I don't get him mixed up. But if I press
Speaker 1: this button, it'll blow your head clean off your shoulders.
Speaker 1: So let's get down to business. Yeah, wow, that's is
Speaker 1: that Trumpian bull duty or hard to say? But so
Speaker 1: I want to preface with this just for my own
Speaker 1: conscience that I am not trying to spend this like I.
Speaker 3: Think Trump has handled this beautifully and I'm all in
Speaker 3: favor of everything that's happening. He said some to me
Speaker 3: just horrific things about the war in Ukraine and equivocating
Speaker 3: between Russian and that, like they're equal, and I don't
Speaker 3: get that at all. But that being said, he might
Speaker 3: through all of that haze of the way Trump does things,
Speaker 3: there might be a strategy. According to even David Ignatius
Speaker 3: in the Washington Post today. And I came to this
Speaker 3: through Mark Halprin's newsletter where he said, the foreign policy
Speaker 3: world of.
Speaker 1: Washington, d c.
Speaker 3: And they are a thing, the foreign policy what is
Speaker 3: the right term, something.
Speaker 1: Contingent.
Speaker 3: They're more or less permanent, I mean, like the State
Speaker 3: Department and a whole bunch of other thinkers and everything
Speaker 3: like that. They stay there as presidents come and go,
Speaker 3: and they are starting to wake up to according to
Speaker 3: Mark Halprin, to a possible strategy that Trump's got here,
Speaker 3: and that David Ignacius writes a little bit about in
Speaker 3: the Washington Post today. First of all, David Ignacius writing,
Speaker 3: and he does not like Donald Trump, but he writes,
Speaker 3: give Trump this much. He's right that the time has
Speaker 3: come to end the horrific Ukraine War. And he's right
Speaker 3: too that the United States needs to re establish a
Speaker 3: relationship with the Kremlin to play an effective mediating role. Okay,
Speaker 3: so you got to do whatever you gotta do to
Speaker 3: get Putin to talk to you. And one you have
Speaker 3: to talk to him too. You have to come up
Speaker 3: with a way to get him.
Speaker 1: To talk to you, right, yeah, and send the message, Hey,
Speaker 1: we're not coming in to lop your head off in
Speaker 1: spite of my earlier idea or coming into broker this.
Speaker 4: So we're gonna be cool. Can you be cool?
Speaker 3: Here's the paradox at the core of the negotiations, writes
Speaker 3: David Ignatius. Though Ukrainian President Vladimir de Zelenski has bristled
Speaker 3: at Trump's pressure, he badly needs a ceasefire. His forces
Speaker 3: are tired and depleted and could begin to buckle in
Speaker 3: the next six months. As for Russian President Vladimir Putin,
Speaker 3: he has welcomed Trump's embrace, but he doesn't want to
Speaker 3: cease fire unless it gives him the victory. He hasn't
Speaker 3: won on the battlefield, because while Russia has been somewhat successful,
Speaker 3: they're not anywhere near what Putin was open for.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: I read a great think piece that said Putin has
Speaker 1: lost this war by any of his definitions. It's been
Speaker 1: a miserable failure in spite of the territory game.
Speaker 3: In fact, to you, the diplomatic agenda was summed up
Speaker 3: well by Keith Kellogg yesterday. He's the retired Army lieutenant
Speaker 3: general who's serving as Trump's Ukraine envoy. What you're seeing
Speaker 3: now are urgent efforts to bring both sides to the
Speaker 3: table to get a peace settlement. Bringing both sides to
Speaker 3: the table means applying pressure points and incentives, sticks and carrots,
Speaker 3: he said.
Speaker 1: Yesterday Putin and I don't know if he's just waking
Speaker 1: up to this or what.
Speaker 3: Puttn has been feasting on these carrots for months. But
Speaker 3: the Kremlin suddenly began sounding truculent this week and offered
Speaker 3: by Britain and France to provide troops for a deterrent
Speaker 3: force after a ceasefire brought a nasty response Thursday from
Speaker 3: last we will categorically not tolerate such actions. European troops
Speaker 3: in Ukraine would amount to official and undisguised participation of
Speaker 3: NATO countries in a war against the Russian Federation.
Speaker 1: So that's what we were talking about the other day.
Speaker 3: Is Trump just trying to like slip this by the
Speaker 3: world and putin by being so belligerent and so over
Speaker 3: the top hard on Ukraine, like behind the scenes, in
Speaker 3: front of the scenes, cutting intelligence, cutting services, callings, let's
Speaker 3: get a dictator, all this different sort of stuff, and
Speaker 3: then the reality was gonna be Russia wakes up and
Speaker 3: lait a second, there are thirty thousand NATO troops here
Speaker 3: and a brand new United States business full of business
Speaker 3: people and trucks and everything like that.
Speaker 4: Ah the hell did that happen?
Speaker 6: Is?
Speaker 3: Is that what Trump's secret strategy is? I mean, that's
Speaker 3: what David Ignations is saying. And I don't know. And
Speaker 3: it's a face saving thing too, of as you should
Speaker 3: know if you don't know, face is so much a
Speaker 3: diplomacy is letting people walk away with their pride and
Speaker 3: or at least you know, if you're a dictator, well
Speaker 3: it's a dictator. Whether you're a dictator or you're elected,
Speaker 3: you have to have your people feeling like you didn't
Speaker 3: get played, and you need to be able to present
Speaker 3: it that way.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they call it legitimacy and political science. Sometimes it
Speaker 1: comes through the ballot box. Sometimes it comes through the
Speaker 1: point of a bayonet. Sometimes with a dictator, it's a
Speaker 1: combination of yeah, I don't want to speak out because
Speaker 1: they don't want to go to jail.
Speaker 4: Plus life's pretty good.
Speaker 1: But there are many many cases in history where if
Speaker 1: life is pretty crappy, and Russia has some pretty serious
Speaker 1: economic problems and social problems right now, I mean really
Speaker 1: really serious. I wonder if the you know, Trump has
Speaker 1: a hard time sitting unclassified information. There are a couple
Speaker 1: of times through his tenure where, for instance, the Israelis
Speaker 1: got crazy, pissed off or whatever, but he's obviously sitting
Speaker 1: on something big.
Speaker 3: If you don't see get information, you put it in
Speaker 3: the back to mar a Lago, you pull the shower
Speaker 3: curtains so nobody can see it.
Speaker 1: Everything's fun.
Speaker 4: Well right, yeah, I'm fine with it.
Speaker 1: But yeah, so anyway, I wonder whether the classified stuff
Speaker 1: he can barely keep to himself has to do with
Speaker 1: ugh OLLI garks who are really really pissed off at Putin,
Speaker 1: because remember they accumulated a large share of their wealth
Speaker 1: by dealing with the West, doing business with Europe, for instance,
Speaker 1: and Putin and his little warfs screwed all of that up.
Speaker 4: I just I don't know what it could be, but
Speaker 4: it's intriguing.
Speaker 3: Well again, and I'm not trying to work too hard
Speaker 3: to give Trump credit for this master plan. But for instance,
Speaker 3: this week, Left Leaning TV was playing some of Russian
Speaker 3: TV to say, see how this is playing back in
Speaker 3: Russia where he got They're showing clips of Trump yelling
Speaker 3: at Zelensky, at Jadvans yelling at Zelensky. They're playing that
Speaker 3: on Russian TV. Well maybe that's so Putin can say, see,
Speaker 3: we won, and when the settlement is done, I won.
Speaker 3: I got twenty percent of the land. Zelensky's the punk.
Speaker 3: Even according to the President of the United States. While
Speaker 3: at the end of the day there are now thirty
Speaker 3: thousand NATO troops there, we've established a business which is
Speaker 3: practically the same as having troops there, and we're not
Speaker 3: gonna let American material and business people be attacked by Russia.
Speaker 1: So I mean, that's the that's the way.
Speaker 3: Even uh Starmer British Prime Minister said that the other day.
Speaker 1: He said it out loud.
Speaker 3: He said, if the United States has a major business
Speaker 3: interest in the Ukraine, that's our.
Speaker 4: Backstop right right.
Speaker 1: You know, Originally I thought you and David Ignatius were
Speaker 1: hinting that Trump was trying to swell, as you said,
Speaker 1: slip one past Putin, and I think that's that's fantasy.
Speaker 4: He's just too calculating.
Speaker 1: But the whole preserving his claim to legitimacy and victory thing.
Speaker 1: Now that that that's got my attention. That is signific again,
Speaker 1: even in a dictatorship. More on that and several other
Speaker 1: fascinating topics in a moment.
Speaker 3: Yes, well, yeah, the one most confusing part to me
Speaker 3: about Trump's strategy after this.
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Speaker 3: The only thing I don't understand about this is if
Speaker 3: this is a strategy, is why wouldn't you let Zelensky
Speaker 3: in on it behind the scenes. Hey, I'm gonna have
Speaker 3: to yell at you and make it look like we're
Speaker 3: really sticking it to you.
Speaker 1: But at the end of the day, what's you know
Speaker 1: and explain to Zelensky.
Speaker 3: And maybe Zelensky wouldn't agree with this because polling shows
Speaker 3: Ukrainians still want to fight and he can't blame them
Speaker 3: at all. But if the President said to him, look,
Speaker 3: you're not getting that land back, and Zelensky's even said
Speaker 3: we might not get all the land back. But if
Speaker 3: Trump said to him, look, you're not getting to let
Speaker 3: the land back. But at the end of the day,
Speaker 3: here's what's going to happen. We're going to have a
Speaker 3: vested business interest, which is same as a military interest,
Speaker 3: and they are going to be thirty thousand NATO troops there.
Speaker 1: So that is your protection, all right. Why wouldn't you
Speaker 1: say that behind the scenes of the Zolensky instead of
Speaker 1: having him It certainly would seem like completely confused by
Speaker 1: the whole thing. I don't know what standards there are
Speaker 1: for Ukrainian TV, but Zelensky is not only a performer,
Speaker 1: an actor, a comedian, but like the most popular one
Speaker 1: could be, he's in on it. He's playing his role
Speaker 1: as the the butt hurt. I thought we were allies
Speaker 1: guy to a t jack. He sucked you in. Now
Speaker 1: that's nine dimensional chess with a time machine. That's just
Speaker 1: one final perspective about Putin and and Kremlinology has always
Speaker 1: been in exact science at best. But this bloke, Rod
Speaker 1: Martin is that that's not his name, is it.
Speaker 4: I'd like to give credit words too, But.
Speaker 1: He's talking about how Putin's control of Russia pales in
Speaker 1: comparison to the Soviet Union's control, because you know, under
Speaker 1: Stalin especially, the Communist Party was the organ by which
Speaker 1: the control took place, and they were in every village,
Speaker 1: practically every cottage. In every village there were a pair
Speaker 1: of Communist Party eyes keeping an eye on things. And
Speaker 1: they got paid back through you know, patronage and money
Speaker 1: and power and the rest of it. But it's really
Speaker 1: now just the oligarchs, and the control of the Russian
Speaker 1: countryside is much less direct. And so this guy thinks, well,
Speaker 1: he asked questions, is Putin in control? And to what
Speaker 1: extent are the oligarchs of one mind? And what happens
Speaker 1: when the war ends? The oligarchs don't want the regime
Speaker 1: to fall, but whether they want Putin at the top
Speaker 1: is another matter. So he just thinks it's much less
Speaker 1: stable in Russia than we might think in the West.
Speaker 1: Who knows, you gotta think that the gazillionaires there in
Speaker 1: Russia have been saying to each other, if not to
Speaker 1: Putin's face, what are we getting out of this? Well,
Speaker 1: they were as rich as any human beings have ever
Speaker 1: been prior to the invasion of Ukraine. What do I
Speaker 1: need this for so you can feel like Peter the Great?
Speaker 1: What's it for me? Do you want to take a break?
Speaker 1: George Friedman wrote the piece, Thank you very much, Mike,
Speaker 1: we got to take a break. I was just gonna
Speaker 1: say putin coming out of COVID with that megal maniacle
Speaker 1: I want to be the next Czar and grow the
Speaker 1: giant Russian empire across the world. If his concern really
Speaker 1: was NATO getting too close and playing foots you with.
Speaker 4: Ukraine, why wouldn't he just say that?
Speaker 1: Why is he putting out long fantasy screens about being
Speaker 1: the new czar people who believe it was the West's fault? Coincidence? Right? Yeah,
Speaker 1: good point. Okay, more on the way, stay here, Friday, y'all.
Speaker 1: In my oldest kid's birthday, which means I've been a
Speaker 1: parent for fifteen years as of today. Am no wonder
Speaker 1: I know soul?
Speaker 4: Your oldness?
Speaker 1: Is that the explanation the exhaustion of being a parent?
Speaker 4: Oh? Oh yeah, that too. Yeah, and the flu doesn't help.
Speaker 1: Now, we could bring you some exciting results from America's
Speaker 1: track and Field Championships, where dudes have beat down girls
Speaker 1: in girls' sportsmen not in the mood for that. There
Speaker 1: are some notable ones, including a race where the two
Speaker 1: top female contenders said, we're not participating in this farce.
Speaker 1: I'm just shocked.
Speaker 3: I'm shocked that doesn't happen more often. I understand why
Speaker 3: you've been training your whole life, but I'm amazed there
Speaker 3: aren't more parents that just lose their minds.
Speaker 1: I would lose my mind. They'd have to get the cops. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you heard when that boy triple jumper whooped up on
Speaker 1: the girls and beat them by eight feet eight feet
Speaker 1: in a California match. All the folks in the stands
Speaker 1: are like, oh my god, can you believe this? They
Speaker 1: were disgusted and talk to each other, but they made
Speaker 1: no formal protest, whether out of conformity, not wanting to
Speaker 1: embarrass their children, or not wanting to target the confused
Speaker 1: child involved.
Speaker 4: I get that it's not necessarily cowardice.
Speaker 3: I don't think I could stop myself. I really don't
Speaker 3: think I could. I think I would run in front
Speaker 3: of the stands and say, who's with me? This is ridiculous?
Speaker 3: Does anybody disagree?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Yeah, but we're talking about what I said. We're
Speaker 1: not going to be talking about which we do all
Speaker 1: the time because it's a great topic. But you know,
Speaker 1: one of the themes has been picking and choosing what
Speaker 1: the modern world presents to you, because taking the whole package,
Speaker 1: I don't think is a very good idea.
Speaker 4: And the theme might be better stated as.
Speaker 1: The people trying to sell you the modern world do
Speaker 1: not have your best interests at heart. There's another example
Speaker 1: of it, and this is not old man shaking fisted clouds,
Speaker 1: because it's not just the amount of changes. The pace
Speaker 1: of change that I think is so dizzying to people
Speaker 1: right now and they don't have time to slowly take
Speaker 1: it in and decide whether, all right, do we want
Speaker 1: a television set in our house? How much can the
Speaker 1: kids watch? What shows can the kids watch? It's just
Speaker 1: it all comes on like a tsunami. Anyway, This headline
Speaker 1: caught my eye because I've kind of been on this
Speaker 1: kick lately. No granola eye. But ultra processed foods make
Speaker 1: up over half of American diets, even at home. Oh
Speaker 1: according to a recent study, it's fifty four percent of
Speaker 1: the diet at home and almost sixty one percent away
Speaker 1: from home, challenging the assumption that home cooking is automatically
Speaker 1: healthier because a lot of home cooking as you take
Speaker 1: some convenience food out of the freezer and heat it
Speaker 1: up and eat it, but it's ultra processed, lots of chemicals,
Speaker 1: you know, lots of weird industrial inputs, as opposed to
Speaker 1: minimally processed foods like fruits, vegetables and unaltered meats. That's
Speaker 1: declined significantly, drop from just thirty percent of at home
Speaker 1: calories and twenty four percent of away from home calories
Speaker 1: by twenty eighteen. That's weird and weirdly worded anyway, And
Speaker 1: these trends were consistent across almost all demographic groups, suggesting
Speaker 1: widespread structural factors rather than individual choices or driving the
Speaker 1: shift toward more processed diets. I'm not sure i'd phrase
Speaker 1: that the same way either. I would just say, much
Speaker 1: like you know, the wonders of the Internet and social
Speaker 1: media and all sorts of things, appeared to be all
Speaker 1: good and it took us while to recognize the bad.
Speaker 1: Having incredibly delicious, ridiculously convenient food at our fingertips all
Speaker 1: the time seemed to be a dream come true. He
Speaker 1: left out cheap, Yeah, no kidding, but with everybody obese
Speaker 1: and young people developing cancer at rates that they never
Speaker 1: have before, and all sorts of stuff. I think it's
Speaker 1: yet another example of yeah, the people who are profiting
Speaker 1: from this stuff or I absolutely love it. Is this
Speaker 1: something you would choose if you sat down and thought
Speaker 1: about it. I'm working with RFK JR.
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