Speaker 1: This is the buck Sexton Show, where the mission or
Speaker 1: mission is to decode what really matters with actionable intelligence
Speaker 1: or mistake American, You're a great American. Again, the buck
Speaker 1: Sexton Show begins. No, welcome to the buck Sexton Show.
Speaker 1: This is Ben Weingarten in for Buck Sexton here on
Speaker 1: New Year's Eve, live in Midtown Manhattan. I don't know
Speaker 1: if this is this qualifies as the Freedom Hut, given
Speaker 1: that we are in the Blasios, New York, and it's
Speaker 1: also just madness outside these studios right now. Maybe it's
Speaker 1: a safe space for liberty lovers, conservatives and the like.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for spending your holiday season with
Speaker 1: me here on New Year's Eve. If this is a
Speaker 1: time to be thankful and appreciative, and I want to
Speaker 1: start first by sending out my condolences to the family
Speaker 1: of one of my colleagues at the Federalist, the late Brepayden,
Speaker 1: who was taken from us way too young. It's a
Speaker 1: tragic loss for our company, for family, for freedom itself,
Speaker 1: and her life should serve as an example for what
Speaker 1: people in the media should strive for. As I mentioned,
Speaker 1: Ben Winegarden filling in for Buck Sexton today, Senior Contributor
Speaker 1: at The Federalist Senior Fellow at the London Center for
Speaker 1: Policy Research. I'm also the proprietor of The Big Ideas
Speaker 1: with Ben Winegarden podcast, where we focus on long form
Speaker 1: conversations with deep thinkers and expert doers. You can subscribe
Speaker 1: everywhere podcasts are found, and you can follow me on
Speaker 1: Twitter at bh Winegarden. I also want to start we
Speaker 1: should appreciate what we have, the freedoms that we have,
Speaker 1: that we live in this amazing nation. I want to
Speaker 1: also thank right up at the top, Buck Sexton for
Speaker 1: giving me this opportunity to spend this time with you
Speaker 1: and fill his large shoes. Today, given that we are
Speaker 1: at the start of a new year and in the
Speaker 1: holiday season, we should talk about how lucky we are
Speaker 1: to be in this nation and how great we have it.
Speaker 1: And it's not just the material bounty that we have.
Speaker 1: It's about the freedom that provides us the opportunity to
Speaker 1: pursue our happiness however we define it. This is the
Speaker 1: exception in the history of mankind, the standard in world history.
Speaker 1: And this isn't just historically. Look at a map today,
Speaker 1: look at the governments and where the largest population centers
Speaker 1: in this world exist. Freedom is the exception. It is
Speaker 1: darkness almost over the entire globe, and that actually is
Speaker 1: what is normal in the history of mankind. The standard
Speaker 1: is that you live as a surf under a lord,
Speaker 1: or as a slave under a slave master, or in
Speaker 1: a gulag nation like what North Korea is today. Look
Speaker 1: at a world map, study world history. The reason history
Speaker 1: is so important, in part, is so that we appreciate
Speaker 1: the fruits of what we have in this nation. Billions
Speaker 1: of people throughout human history and including today, have only
Speaker 1: known totalitarianism and an oppressive state where if you have
Speaker 1: any rights, you really do have crumbs, like Nancy Pelosi
Speaker 1: likes to say, and they can be snatched from you
Speaker 1: at any time. Rule of law non existent, could be
Speaker 1: gone tomorrow. Property rights, what are property rights in many nations?
Speaker 1: Take the case of Venezuela for example. In two thousand
Speaker 1: and one, Venezuela was South America's richest country. Now it's
Speaker 1: a failed state. It is literally like Iraq when you
Speaker 1: look at what the metrics are in terms of economics
Speaker 1: and crime. The collapse all due to bad ideas. Bad
Speaker 1: ideas can take everything that you've built up over centuries
Speaker 1: and destroy them. Amazing. One of the benefits that we've
Speaker 1: had in America from our success, much of which we've
Speaker 1: taken for granted, and few people even think about all
Speaker 1: the necessary steps that it took to get to this
Speaker 1: place today. One of the benefits is that we have
Speaker 1: it so good that we can take time to explore
Speaker 1: all the flaws within our nation. We can focus on
Speaker 1: those flaws to such a degree that we end up
Speaker 1: tearing at the very fabric that made us into what
Speaker 1: we are. It's an amazing thing. People have never had
Speaker 1: things so good, and they want to throw this experiment
Speaker 1: into the trash band of history. I should tell you
Speaker 1: I have a child on the way right now. That'll
Speaker 1: be one of the New Year's gifts. I could be
Speaker 1: called out of this show at any minute, potentially as
Speaker 1: a result of where we are right now. And as
Speaker 1: a future first time parents, one of the things that
Speaker 1: you think about is what kind of world are you
Speaker 1: going to bring your child into? How do you inculcate
Speaker 1: them with the beliefs, the values and principles that you
Speaker 1: want to dominate in this world. You know, part of
Speaker 1: it is protecting them, but they also have to live
Speaker 1: in a reality and what is the reality today? Well,
Speaker 1: the reality today is that among our elite, the ideas
Speaker 1: that trickle down and percolate into society are completely antithetical
Speaker 1: to the ones on which this nation was based. And
Speaker 1: in a sense, what you have is progressive agitprop progressive propaganda.
Speaker 1: It's in government and in the bureaucracy, which is its
Speaker 1: own branch of government, even though it's not treated as such.
Speaker 1: It's in the media, and it's in our education system.
Speaker 1: You have highly credentialed people, but not necessarily wise people.
Speaker 1: Their intelligence, but they're they're intelligent people, but their intelligence
Speaker 1: leads them to believe they can perfect society, that they
Speaker 1: have a moral duty to try to perfect society through
Speaker 1: wielding the power of the state to nudge us deplorable
Speaker 1: as as cass sunst Obama regulatories are once put it
Speaker 1: to nudge us deplorables towards the right answer. But who
Speaker 1: were they to make that decision over us? Why is
Speaker 1: that the morally right thing to do? They would argue, Essentially,
Speaker 1: they're morally superior as virtue signalers, and as holders of
Speaker 1: these values and principles, they should be the ones to
Speaker 1: point us in the right direction. And what is the
Speaker 1: impact of these bad ideas well. I mentioned they destroyed
Speaker 1: Venezuela in a very short period of time, in under
Speaker 1: two decades. Bad ideas took the richest nation in South
Speaker 1: America and destroyed it. But those ideas have seeped in
Speaker 1: here as well. And people look at campus craziness and
Speaker 1: they kind of shrug it off as well, this is
Speaker 1: just young people, immature. It's crazy Ivory tower sort of stuff.
Speaker 1: And when they get onto the real world and see
Speaker 1: the percentage of tax dollars taken out of their smaller paychecks,
Speaker 1: then they start to see, oh my gosh, there actually
Speaker 1: are some pretty negative consequences for me and my family
Speaker 1: in my future. But it's about much more than just economics,
Speaker 1: because economics are an outgrowth of our belief system. Free
Speaker 1: market economics are an outgrowth of a system of values
Speaker 1: and principles, Judeo Christian Western values and principles, and that
Speaker 1: free market capitalist system springs from them. It's the result
Speaker 1: of them, but that's not the end. That's just one
Speaker 1: of the benefits. There was a recent poll put out
Speaker 1: by the Foundation for Liberty and American Greatness slash you
Speaker 1: gov and it was called the State of American Patriotism Report.
Speaker 1: They pulled eleven hundred people, a bit under fifty percent
Speaker 1: of them between fourteen and thirty seven years old folks,
Speaker 1: So we're talking millennials and premillennials and maybe a little
Speaker 1: bit of gen xers as well. Here were some of
Speaker 1: the findings from that survey. Half of those survey believe
Speaker 1: the United States is sexist and racist. American exceptionalism is
Speaker 1: on the decline. According to the report, forty six percent
Speaker 1: of younger Americans do not agree that quote unquote, America
Speaker 1: is the greatest country in the world. Thirty eight percent
Speaker 1: of younger Americans do not agree that quote America has
Speaker 1: a history that we should be proud of. One in
Speaker 1: eight fourteen percent of millennials agree America was never a
Speaker 1: great country and it never will be. So that is
Speaker 1: the future. Andrew Cuomo constituency. Forty six percent of younger
Speaker 1: Americans agree that America is more racist than other countries.
Speaker 1: I gotta tell you, these people have never been to
Speaker 1: any other country. Probably, It's absolutely mind numbing, both the
Speaker 1: ignorance and the arrogance, the ignorance to not know and
Speaker 1: the arrogance to put forth these sorts of views not
Speaker 1: knowing anything about them. Eighty four percent of Americans do
Speaker 1: not know the specific rights enumerated in the First Amendment,
Speaker 1: So how can they be counted on to defend that
Speaker 1: First Amendment when they don't even know what it is
Speaker 1: or why it existed in the first place. Nineteen percent
Speaker 1: of millennials believe that the American flag is a quote
Speaker 1: unquote sign of intolerance and hatred. My god, Forty four
Speaker 1: percent of younger Americans believe Barack Obama had a quote
Speaker 1: unquote bigger impact on America than Orge Washington. So that
Speaker 1: is what young Americans get out of our education system,
Speaker 1: out of our media. I mean, you gotta give the
Speaker 1: left credit. At least with Alexander Hamilton, people know a
Speaker 1: little bit about him. So you have this ignorant, arrogant
Speaker 1: young population in America, and that is our future. The
Speaker 1: bad ideas have consequences. If people hate the very values
Speaker 1: and principles on which a country is based, how can
Speaker 1: they be counted on to defend them, to promulgate them
Speaker 1: to their kids. And we're talking multiple generations of this
Speaker 1: kind of propaganda. So naturally, in Axios last night, there
Speaker 1: was an article titled the Coming Reckoning for Capitalism. A
Speaker 1: quote from that article, one of the most important trends
Speaker 1: likely to drive the twenty twenty presidential race a growing
Speaker 1: dissolusion with capitalism as practice and a coming struggle over
Speaker 1: how to recast this pillar of the Western order. And
Speaker 1: you know, it's funny. These people like to talk about
Speaker 1: how Trump is a threat to Western civilization, yet they're
Speaker 1: the ones that want to throw out the very principles
Speaker 1: on which Western civilization derives. The article goes on the
Speaker 1: bottom line, you could hardly challenge a more basic part
Speaker 1: of who we are as Americans and Westerners. Polling shows
Speaker 1: a rising number of young Americans prefer socialism to capitalism. Now,
Speaker 1: I would question whether or not they can define what
Speaker 1: socialism is and what capitalism is. So the fact that
Speaker 1: they have an opinion on it is I would say
Speaker 1: questionable to begin with. But that's staggering because if we
Speaker 1: won the Cold War, how can it be that half
Speaker 1: the country believes in socialism over capitalism among the youth.
Speaker 1: That is a direct failure on the part of those
Speaker 1: who run our institutions, who are supposed to be the
Speaker 1: ones safeguarding what this country is based on and the
Speaker 1: article continues, that's a twelve point decline and young adults
Speaker 1: as positive views of capitalism in just the past two years,
Speaker 1: and a market shift since twenty ten, when sixty eight
Speaker 1: percent of viewed it positively. We're talking about fourteen to
Speaker 1: thirty seven year old folks, millennials, eighteen to twenty nine
Speaker 1: year olds. But it starts way before they're even in college,
Speaker 1: this sort of prop gandizing and effectively brainwashing people, and
Speaker 1: there's something very sick about that. So there was a
Speaker 1: Wall Street Journal editorial that caught my eye recently is
Speaker 1: titled Reading from Left to Left at Barnes and Noble,
Speaker 1: and it goes on to talk about a display at
Speaker 1: Barnes and Noble that this journalist saw called quote unquote
Speaker 1: Inspiring Books to Empower young readers. What inspires and empowers
Speaker 1: young readers. While the collection included first Generation, thirty six,
Speaker 1: trailblazing Immigrants and Refugees who make America Great, which lionizes,
Speaker 1: among others, Univision anchorman Jorge Ramos, and the first fashion
Speaker 1: model to wear a he job. The article goes on,
Speaker 1: there were three memoirs by illegal aliens, two novels whose
Speaker 1: protagonists were refugees. So any side of my oars, Supreme
Speaker 1: Court justice, turning pages my life story and we rise,
Speaker 1: We resist, We raise our voices and anthology that includes
Speaker 1: a fictional story of a child who is arrested by
Speaker 1: Immigrations and Custom enforcement agents at school as he endorsed
Speaker 1: taunts from white classmates wearing Make America gride again. Hats
Speaker 1: who writes this stuff up? This is the onion, This
Speaker 1: is a Barnes and Noble but display. This is what
Speaker 1: These are the books that are pushed on our kids.
Speaker 1: The article goes on one Portlandia esque title, You Are Mighty,
Speaker 1: A Guide to Changing the World, is built as a
Speaker 1: how to manual on build up being an activist. It
Speaker 1: features Genesis Pelacio, a preteen girl wearing a Vegan power
Speaker 1: T shirt who became a vegetarian when she was three
Speaker 1: after learning that quote unquote, animals were killed for her food. Apparently,
Speaker 1: according to the article, Barnes and Noble stores and other
Speaker 1: cities have similar displays. The chain's corporate office didn't answer
Speaker 1: the emails of the author, and the article concludes conservative
Speaker 1: theme children's book books are out there, but you have
Speaker 1: to seek out these subversive titles like pornography before the Internet.
Speaker 1: Liberals are devoted to diversity, but they define it in
Speaker 1: a particular way, obsessing over race, sex, and sexual orientation
Speaker 1: while demanding conformity of thought. Une. Let me tell you
Speaker 1: as a future father or I recently received a book.
Speaker 1: My family received a book by someone who did not
Speaker 1: know where I stood on the ideological spectrum. I kid
Speaker 1: you not. It's called as for Activists. This is a
Speaker 1: picture book. I'll quote a bit from it, and then
Speaker 1: we'll go to a correct quick break letter. E Equal rights, black,
Speaker 1: brown or white, clean and healthy is a right every
Speaker 1: place we live in play Environmental justice is the way.
Speaker 1: Letter j J is for justice, YEA for justice, Juanita Jamala,
Speaker 1: justice for the janitors, Justicia for all. Letter. Oh, this
Speaker 1: is a great one. Open minds operate best, critical thinking
Speaker 1: over tests. Wisdom can't be memorized, educate, agitate organized. Now
Speaker 1: tell me where our response to a book like that is,
Speaker 1: because I don't think there's AS for America is exceptional.
Speaker 1: B is for borders and national sovereignty. See is for
Speaker 1: capitalism and creative destruction. That would be laughed out of
Speaker 1: the bookstore. But the other side is propagandizing with picture
Speaker 1: books for young, impressionable children who cannot cannot conceivably grapple
Speaker 1: with any of these sorts of ideas. It's on imaginable
Speaker 1: that there's anything like this on our side, and frankly,
Speaker 1: I don't begrudge us, because it's sick to try to
Speaker 1: propagandize among young people with this stuff. So what do
Speaker 1: you do when you're dropping your kid in the middle
Speaker 1: of a world where everything is insane and where everything
Speaker 1: is about breeding left wing activism and ignorance. We're creating
Speaker 1: activists and idiots, useful idiots for an agenda, and we'll
Speaker 1: talk a little bit about that agenda right after this
Speaker 1: quick break. This is Ben Winegarden in for Buck Sexon
Speaker 1: on the Buck Sexton Show. More next, This is the
Speaker 1: Buck Sexton Show and this is Ben Winegarden in for
Speaker 1: Buck Sexton. Happy New Year's Eve to you all, and
Speaker 1: thank you for joining me today. Follow me on Twitter
Speaker 1: at b h Winegarden. All right, before the break, we
Speaker 1: were talking a bit about poisonous ideas and the poisonous
Speaker 1: consequences they have for society, and it's very hard to
Speaker 1: kind of quantify or sum up what the impact of
Speaker 1: multiple generations of this sort of progressive thought policing has
Speaker 1: been but I think there was a fine example of
Speaker 1: it this weekend on Meet the Press, where Chuck ta
Speaker 1: did a full episode on environmentalism, and he stated near
Speaker 1: the start of the show, and I'll quote here, We're
Speaker 1: not going to debate climate change the existence of it.
Speaker 1: The Earth is getting hotter and human activity is a
Speaker 1: major cause. Period. We're not going to give time to
Speaker 1: climate deniers. The sciences is settled, even if political opinion
Speaker 1: is not. Unquote, that's a very scientific attitude there by
Speaker 1: Chuck Todd, because after all, we know exactly how much
Speaker 1: human beings have contributed to warming. We know for effect
Speaker 1: that this isn't just one of another million historical cycles
Speaker 1: that there have been in terms of temperature. We know
Speaker 1: the temperature is climate. They're exactly the same thing. He's
Speaker 1: so confident in his position that anyone who would who
Speaker 1: would deign to present some countervailing evidence, shut up. And
Speaker 1: by the way, we're going to call you climate deniers,
Speaker 1: which is a pretty offensive kind of term, because what
Speaker 1: they're When you hear deniers use what does that usually
Speaker 1: bring up, Well, it's holocaust deniers. Chuck Todd is smart
Speaker 1: enough to know that he probably shouldn't be using that
Speaker 1: phrase to describe anyone who would challenge of you that
Speaker 1: is not unanimously held. Look up, the ninety seven percent
Speaker 1: of climate scientists all agree statistic and it's a bogus statistic.
Speaker 1: Stand He had Jerry Brown on the California Governor and
Speaker 1: Jerry Brown said this about climate change. First, he was
Speaker 1: talking about the challenge from China and then climate change.
Speaker 1: So I want to put this in context here, he said,
Speaker 1: and I quote, instead of worrying about tariffs, I'd like
Speaker 1: to see the President and the Congress invest tens of
Speaker 1: billions in renewable energy, in more efficient batteries to get
Speaker 1: us off fossil fuel as quickly as we can. Well,
Speaker 1: they really love this in France, the green invest He
Speaker 1: goes on, I would point to the fact that it
Speaker 1: took lad President FDR many, many years to get America
Speaker 1: willing to go into World War two and fight the Nazis.
Speaker 1: And he continues here, well, we have an enemy, though different,
Speaker 1: but perhaps very much devastating in a similar way, and
Speaker 1: we've got to fight climate change and the President's got
Speaker 1: to lead that. So what I want to understand. Is
Speaker 1: is he saying that fighting something that may or may
Speaker 1: not be transpiring in the environment that human beings may
Speaker 1: or may not have a disproportioned impact on, is the
Speaker 1: equivalent of fighting the Nazis? Or is he go bearing
Speaker 1: the Chinese to the Nazis. I'm not quite sure where
Speaker 1: he's going with that analogy, but let's sum up what
Speaker 1: this really is. Climatism is a secular religion, or at
Speaker 1: least it is a sect in the progressive secular religion,
Speaker 1: and the state is their church. What is climate change
Speaker 1: really about for them? It's about sort of in some sense,
Speaker 1: justifying mass redistribution of wealth. It's about apologizing for our
Speaker 1: western sins of being industrialized and therefore redistributing the fruits
Speaker 1: of it to the first and through world nations. It's
Speaker 1: a form of elite virtue signaling. It's very easy to
Speaker 1: say I care about the environment and then go trotting
Speaker 1: around on a jet. You don't really have to deal
Speaker 1: with the consequences or take responsibility. And oh, by the way,
Speaker 1: there's also the self interested aspect of this, which is
Speaker 1: that those who promote this vision oftentimes with the very
Speaker 1: people who end up personally benefiting from government investments, the Greens,
Speaker 1: more Cylindras, well Clendras all over the country. If these
Speaker 1: people are the ones who are allowed to dominate ultimately, though,
Speaker 1: what progressive insm is about, as I mentioned, is a
Speaker 1: secular religion. It is about dominance, and the way that
Speaker 1: you instill that dominance is to propagate these messages starting
Speaker 1: with little children, starting with toddlers, and working all the
Speaker 1: way up through college. And how are you going to
Speaker 1: be able to compete against that when all you have
Speaker 1: is the real world? This has Ben Winegarden in for
Speaker 1: Buck Sexon on The Buck Sexton Show. This has Ben
Speaker 1: Winegarden in for Buck Sexton on the Buck Sexton Show.
Speaker 1: Follow me on Twitter at bh wine Garden and thank
Speaker 1: you so much for spending your New Year's Eve evening
Speaker 1: with me. We've been speaking about the dominance of progressivism
Speaker 1: in media and academia. We've all followed that sort of
Speaker 1: running theme. It's a huge challenge, and frankly, conservatives haven't
Speaker 1: even begun to grapple with just how devastating it's been.
Speaker 1: The progressive march through the institutions, as Grahams Sheet called it,
Speaker 1: over one hundred year period we haven't even been we
Speaker 1: haven't even begun to recognize the extent the nature of
Speaker 1: the problem, which is imperative to actually then starting to
Speaker 1: figure out a way to counter it. Maybe something that
Speaker 1: can help us to remember what our principles are is
Speaker 1: to look at an adversary who threatens them. It's sad,
Speaker 1: but it could be that perhaps it'll be an external
Speaker 1: threat to the US's dominant position in the world that
Speaker 1: allows us, in part to enjoy the freedom that we have.
Speaker 1: Maybe it's an external threat that we have to look
Speaker 1: to to summon within the American people who we are
Speaker 1: and what we really believe in. We're going to do
Speaker 1: a deep dive now on China. Most people when they
Speaker 1: think about China today, they think trade war, tariffs, President Trump,
Speaker 1: Mano Imano with Jijinping. I believe that drastically minimizes what
Speaker 1: is actually going on in the world. Maybe the most
Speaker 1: monumental revolutionary shift that has happened in Washington, DC under
Speaker 1: President Trump, certainly on the national security and foreign policy side,
Speaker 1: since the opening of the relationship with China under Richard Nixon.
Speaker 1: We're talking in the seventies here. The narrative has always
Speaker 1: been that China would peacefully rise, that we would open
Speaker 1: up trade with China. China would be rich. Rich countries
Speaker 1: ultimately want to be free countries rather than the other
Speaker 1: way around, that free countries end up rich, and that
Speaker 1: any bellicosity, any adversarial nature, any aggression from China would
Speaker 1: be checked by the fact that, look, they're entering this
Speaker 1: world trading architecture that the West built, and they are
Speaker 1: going to be good partners and we'll all get rich
Speaker 1: together if they got access to the world financial architecture
Speaker 1: that we built, and it's helped enable them to become
Speaker 1: the major producer of goods consumed in America and the
Speaker 1: second largest country economy in the world. It's also funded
Speaker 1: the world's largest intelligence dictatorship. Something to keep an eye on.
Speaker 1: They actually have scores where they grade citizens on their
Speaker 1: patriotism and a massive surveillance system around them. So you
Speaker 1: could be a bad citizen if they don't like your spending,
Speaker 1: habits or maybe where you travel or what you say
Speaker 1: on social media checked as it already is. What we
Speaker 1: did was we capitalize what was a communist regime and
Speaker 1: turned it from a third world country into from a
Speaker 1: wealth perspective, a competitive country in economics, and we allowed
Speaker 1: it to expand its fear of influenced worldwide. Now, how
Speaker 1: has China paid us for the privilege of becoming a
Speaker 1: leading world power. Well, they steal hundreds of billions of
Speaker 1: dollars worth of intellectual property, in particular from strategically significant sectors.
Speaker 1: That's real value taken from the West and of course
Speaker 1: from America, because we're a dominant technological power, So they
Speaker 1: steal our blueprints. They don't create them themselves. They're not
Speaker 1: a fair competitor. When the President talks about free, fair
Speaker 1: and reciprocal trade, part of that is they need to
Speaker 1: deal on an even playing field, and they don't. This
Speaker 1: is part of a comprehensive plan of economic aggression, which
Speaker 1: the White House documented in a June twenty eighteen report
Speaker 1: from its Office of Trade and Manufacturing Policy, which is
Speaker 1: run by Peter Navarro, who's cast as a China Hawk.
Speaker 1: It lay it out in that strategy that China's goals
Speaker 1: are to protect its home market from imports and competition,
Speaker 1: expand its share of global markets, secure and control core
Speaker 1: natural resources, globally dominate traditional manufacturing industries, acquire key technologies
Speaker 1: and intellectual property from other countries, including the United States,
Speaker 1: and capture the emerging high tech industries that will drive
Speaker 1: future economic growth and many advancements in the defense industry.
Speaker 1: One of those primary technologies being five G control over
Speaker 1: all global communications. China is a huge competitor in this space,
Speaker 1: and there's been an increasing effort among some countries to
Speaker 1: wean themselves off of potentially Chinese technology when it comes
Speaker 1: to global telecommunications. China's also engaged in a massive loan
Speaker 1: to own strategy, where they provide financing to countries to
Speaker 1: build things like ports, strategically significant things, and then when
Speaker 1: the country's default on them because they can't afford the terms,
Speaker 1: China comes in and gobbles them up. So they expand
Speaker 1: their influence through loaning and then owning you. They've opened
Speaker 1: up their first overseas military base last year in Djibouti,
Speaker 1: a strategically significant nation at the entrance to the Red
Speaker 1: Sea and route to the Suez Canal. A US base
Speaker 1: is located just miles away. It repeatedly is a base
Speaker 1: for staging operations against Jihades groups, and of course, China's
Speaker 1: allegedly directed high grade lasers at American aircraft in Djibouty,
Speaker 1: supposedly injuring two US airmen. Now China is seeking to
Speaker 1: have a state owned company manage the port of Jibouty.
Speaker 1: They threaten access to the freedom of seas by buzzing
Speaker 1: our ships and the ships of our allies. They militarize
Speaker 1: man made islands in the South China see even though
Speaker 1: they promised President Obama they wouldn't. Big surprise, they threatened
Speaker 1: companies in the West who list Taiwan and Tibet other
Speaker 1: territories as separate territories on their websites, because China considers
Speaker 1: it all China. So if you have a dropdown menu
Speaker 1: on your website and you are a global let's say,
Speaker 1: hotel chain, China will attack you. You can't list Taiwan
Speaker 1: Tibet as separate entities. That's all there, that's all China,
Speaker 1: that soft power. By the way, they will threaten companies
Speaker 1: abroad for merely what's listed in a dropdown menu. And
Speaker 1: by the way, companies have cowed to this, and why
Speaker 1: in part because they're afraid of losing that business in
Speaker 1: the world's second biggest market. In part because they're probably
Speaker 1: afraid of other potential ramifications that could threaten the life
Speaker 1: and limb of their employees literally. They also propagandize. They
Speaker 1: have publications around the world, propagate their own media. They
Speaker 1: infiltrate our education system and other education systems through the
Speaker 1: use of confusion institutes. I did a podcast on confucious institutes.
Speaker 1: By the way, I urge you to check it out.
Speaker 1: They use these so called cultural exchange institutes within our schools,
Speaker 1: and what they actually do is they propagandize with the
Speaker 1: Chinese Communist party line, and they also spy on Chinese
Speaker 1: citizens or x Chinese citizens who are abroad and potentially
Speaker 1: even engage in espionage beyond just trying to push former
Speaker 1: Chinese citizens in wine and potentially threaten them. So beyond
Speaker 1: the propaganda, and this isn't just a foreign policy issue.
Speaker 1: They also the Communist Party in China. And this is,
Speaker 1: according to Vice President Pence, who give a major speech
Speaker 1: on this, a rewarding or coercing American businesses, movie studios, universities,
Speaker 1: think tank scholars, journalists, and local and state federal officials.
Speaker 1: They have to toe the party line. According to Vice
Speaker 1: President Pence, our intelligence community says China's targeting US state
Speaker 1: and local governments and officials to exploit any divisions between
Speaker 1: federal and local levels on policy. It's using wedge issues
Speaker 1: like trade tariffs to advance Beijings political influence. We hear
Speaker 1: a lot about Russian influence and elections well, according to
Speaker 1: Vice President Pence, and this is a landmark speech that
Speaker 1: I urge everyone to read. Overlooked by the media, one
Speaker 1: of the most important foreign affairs addresses, really one of
Speaker 1: the most important addresses period during the Donald Trump presidency.
Speaker 1: Vice President Pence at the Hudson Institute in the Fall
Speaker 1: West President's Pence said, China is also directly appealing to
Speaker 1: the American voters. Last week and again, this was during
Speaker 1: the election season. The midterm elections, the Chinese government paid
Speaker 1: to have a multi page supplement inserted into the Des
Speaker 1: Moines Register, the paper of record in the home state
Speaker 1: of our ambassador to China, Ambassador Brand's dad and a
Speaker 1: pivotal state in twenty eighteen and twenty twenty. The supplement,
Speaker 1: designed to look like the news articles, cast our trade
Speaker 1: policies as reckless and harmful to Iowans. Foreign influence in
Speaker 1: our elections, folks, right there in the newspapers. As Vice
Speaker 1: President Pence goes on to say, Beijing now requires American
Speaker 1: joint ventures that operate in China to establish what they
Speaker 1: call party organizations within their company, giving the Communist Party
Speaker 1: of voice and perhaps a veto in hiring and investment decisions.
Speaker 1: They also provide funding, of course, to think tanks and schools,
Speaker 1: and with that funding does come strings attached, of course,
Speaker 1: So China's engaged in a comprehensive whole of government effort
Speaker 1: to become the world's hegemon, and it has a direct
Speaker 1: impact on America, not only as an economic competitor, but
Speaker 1: as a national security threat. And I want to read
Speaker 1: just a couple quick excerpts and then we'll talk about
Speaker 1: what the response has been on the nature of what
Speaker 1: China is doing in the world. New York Times, so
Speaker 1: their credit ran an article in June how China got
Speaker 1: Triuanka to cough up a port. Article starts every time
Speaker 1: Sri Lanka's President Mahinda Rajapaksa turned to his Chinese allies
Speaker 1: for loans and assistance with an ambitious port project, the
Speaker 1: answer was yes, yes, though feasibility studies said the port
Speaker 1: wouldn't work. Yes, though other frequent lenders like India had
Speaker 1: refused yes, though Sri Lanka's debt was ballooning rapidly under
Speaker 1: mister Rajapaksa. Over years of construction and renegotiation with China
Speaker 1: Harbor Engineering Company, one of Beijing's largest state owned enterprises,
Speaker 1: the Hambantota Port Development Project distinguished itself mostly by failing
Speaker 1: as predicted. With tens of thousands of ships passing by
Speaker 1: along one of the world's busiest shipping lands. The port
Speaker 1: ru only thirty four ships in twenty twelve, and then
Speaker 1: the port became China's. Mister Rajapaksa was voted out of
Speaker 1: office in twenty fifteen, but Sri Lanka's new government struggled
Speaker 1: to make payments on the debt he had taken on
Speaker 1: under heavy pressure, and after months of negotiations with the Chinese,
Speaker 1: the government handed over the port and fifteen thousand acres
Speaker 1: of land around it for ninety nine years in December.
Speaker 1: The transfer gave China control of territory just a few
Speaker 1: hundred miles off the shores of Arrival, India and a
Speaker 1: strategic foothold along a critical commercial and military waterway. Okay,
Speaker 1: but it's not just in Sri Lanka. So another article
Speaker 1: Wall Street Journal. Later in the year, Trophy Infrastructure, troublesome debt,
Speaker 1: China makes inroads in Europe. The article begins, Europe is
Speaker 1: distracted by internal discord over immigration and its tense relationship
Speaker 1: with Russia and the US, and the US seeking to
Speaker 1: fill the void, China is taking advantage of a historic
Speaker 1: opportunity to wedge itself into the heart of the West,
Speaker 1: deal by deal. Applying experience honed in Asia and Africa,
Speaker 1: China is constructing parallel financial and commercial networks in Central
Speaker 1: and Eastern Europe to challenge the global order. It has
Speaker 1: taken footholds in more than a dozen nations on the
Speaker 1: periphery of the European Union, some such as hungry or smaller,
Speaker 1: more marginalized members. Others, including Serbia, are on the runway
Speaker 1: for admission. Article goes on Beijing's offers of trophy, infrastructure
Speaker 1: and financial lifelines to troubled economies, give those countries proposals
Speaker 1: they aren't hearing from Washington and Moscow, which both generally
Speaker 1: view the region through prisms of national security, and it concludes,
Speaker 1: in part, for European politicians, the Chinese alternative promises quick
Speaker 1: results and less fuss over contracts and transparency than typically
Speaker 1: found in the West. The catch is that China's package
Speaker 1: deals are government orchestrated and require borrowing from its banks
Speaker 1: to pay its contractors. Another article, Hugely Vital article talks
Speaker 1: about these this port lending in the like as a
Speaker 1: trojan horse. It is estimated that stay backed Chinese investors
Speaker 1: state owned at least ten percent of all equity imports
Speaker 1: in Europe, with deals inked in Greece, Spain, Italy, France,
Speaker 1: the Netherlands, in Belgium. This in addition to a growing
Speaker 1: investment portfolio of at least forty ports in North and
Speaker 1: South America, Africa, the Middle East, Eastern Europe, and on
Speaker 1: and on and on. China's interest in European ports is
Speaker 1: defined and driven by the Belt and Road initiative. Folks,
Speaker 1: this is the biggest geopolitical challenger to America. And when
Speaker 1: we come back from a quick break, I want to
Speaker 1: talk a little bit about the tremendous shift back, a
Speaker 1: revolutionary shift to first recognize the nature of the China
Speaker 1: problem and start to push back on them. This is
Speaker 1: Ben wangeran in for Buck Sex and on the buck
Speaker 1: Sex and show We'll be right back Welcome back to
Speaker 1: the Buck Sex and Show. This is Ben Weingarten in
Speaker 1: for Buck here on New Year's Eve. Thanks for tuning in.
Speaker 1: Before the break, we tee it up a little bit
Speaker 1: part of the China story, which is what has China done?
Speaker 1: The next part is what has America acknowledged, publicly recognized,
Speaker 1: and what is America doing to start to push back
Speaker 1: on it? And of course it starts by recognizing the problem.
Speaker 1: And there was a vital part of our national security
Speaker 1: strategy that came out last year or this year early
Speaker 1: this year that recognized something that few in the political
Speaker 1: establishment would have ever imagined uttering for years a quote
Speaker 1: from it. For decades, US policy was rooted in the
Speaker 1: belief that support for China's rise and for its integration
Speaker 1: into the postwar international order would liberalize China. Contrary to
Speaker 1: our hopes, China expanded its power at the expense of
Speaker 1: the sovereignty of others. China gathers and exploits data on
Speaker 1: an unrivaled scale and spreads futures of its authoritarian system,
Speaker 1: including corruption and the use of surveillance. It is building
Speaker 1: the most capable and well funded military in the world
Speaker 1: after our own. Its nuclear arsenal is growing and diversifying
Speaker 1: part of China as military modernization and economic expansion is
Speaker 1: due to its access to the US innovation economy, including
Speaker 1: America's world class universities. So we acknowledge the problem in
Speaker 1: our national security strategy and then in our national defense strategy.
Speaker 1: This was written the central challenged to US prosperity and
Speaker 1: security is the re emergence of long term strategic competition
Speaker 1: by what the National Security Strategy classifies as revisionist powers.
Speaker 1: It is increasingly clear that China and Russia want to
Speaker 1: shape a world consistent with their authoritarian model. It goes
Speaker 1: on from there China's leveraging military modernization, influence operations, and
Speaker 1: predator predatory economics to coerce neighboring countries to reorder the
Speaker 1: Indo Pacific region to their advantage, and it concludes the
Speaker 1: most far reaching objective of this defense strategy, this being
Speaker 1: America's defense strategy, is to set the military relationship between
Speaker 1: our two countries on a path to transparency and non aggression.
Speaker 1: Part of that starts with recognizing the nature of the
Speaker 1: problem and call them out. So the Trump administration put
Speaker 1: out what's called a three oh one report through the
Speaker 1: US Trade Office, and what that did was catalog all
Speaker 1: of the unfair cheating that China engages in when it
Speaker 1: comes to again to the world economic architecture that we
Speaker 1: the US created, and we're kind enough to give them
Speaker 1: access to. The FBI and the Department of Justice have
Speaker 1: called out espionage in testimony from China in Congress, including
Speaker 1: talking about the malign influence of the Confucius Institutes that
Speaker 1: I talked about before. As I mentioned, Vice President laid
Speaker 1: out a landmark speech that I urge all of you
Speaker 1: to read at the Hudson Institute earlier this year in
Speaker 1: the fall. Then lay it out all of the malign
Speaker 1: activities of China and what the administration is starting to do.
Speaker 1: That's a pretty big deal when the Vice President gives
Speaker 1: a landmark speech like that. We've also named and shamed.
Speaker 1: The DOJ has announced a slew of indictments of Chinese espionage,
Speaker 1: including in areas that are strategically significant in technology, and
Speaker 1: actually Jeff Sessions delivered and address when he was the
Speaker 1: Attorney General saying that China would be an explicit focus
Speaker 1: of the Department of Justice prosecuting Chinese espionage and cheaters
Speaker 1: Beyond that we've seen a military build up under President Trump.
Speaker 1: We've seen investment in the Navy and in our nuclear arsenal,
Speaker 1: retooling it. We have potentially we're potentially going to pull
Speaker 1: out of the I n F Treaty now that is
Speaker 1: geared towards Russia on its face, but there's actually a
Speaker 1: Chinese impact to that as well, which is that China
Speaker 1: is not a party to it, and that's a threat
Speaker 1: to them if we're no longer a party to it.
Speaker 1: We've taken off the handcuffs by engaging in offensive cyber warfare.
Speaker 1: There's reportedly an executive order which says that the US
Speaker 1: will indeed engage again in offensive cyber warfare as all
Speaker 1: of our adversaries have done to us. There's, of course
Speaker 1: the trade issues, I believe, and Warry Cudlo, for example,
Speaker 1: of the National Economic Council has said that tariffs for
Speaker 1: this presidency are effectively a means to an end, which
Speaker 1: is ultimately free trade. And in this case, it's first
Speaker 1: getting China to stop cheating and then it's to actually
Speaker 1: enter a system of free, fair and reciprocal trade. We've
Speaker 1: been building bilateral relationships in the Indo Pacific specifically to
Speaker 1: counter China's influence, tightening up regulation of business deals with
Speaker 1: foreign entities, including, of course, China promoting arm sales to Taiwan.
Speaker 1: China hates that concept. The Build Act to help compete
Speaker 1: against China's strategic efforts to build around the world. We've
Speaker 1: laid out all of these things, and this is just
Speaker 1: the start of a massive shift in US government priority
Speaker 1: to counteract China's malign influence. With our next guest, we'll
Speaker 1: talk a little bit about China's aims and America's response
Speaker 1: to them. We'll be right back on the Buck Sexon program.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to the Buck Sexton Show. This is Ben
Speaker 1: Weingarten in for Buck Sexton here at the top of
Speaker 1: hour two, and during the last hour we spoke a
Speaker 1: bit about China's global strategy and this Trump administration's push back,
Speaker 1: which I think is potentially a revolutionary change in American
Speaker 1: foreign policy. Today we're joined by an expert on the subject,
Speaker 1: Dean Chang, who's a Senior Fellow at the Senior Research
Speaker 1: Fellow at the Heritage Foundation, where he specializes in Chinese
Speaker 1: political and security affairs. Dean, thank you so much for
Speaker 1: joining us in Happy New Year. Thank you for having me,
Speaker 1: and Happy New Year to you as well. Appreciate it, Dean.
Speaker 1: When we look at China's malign activities and also China's
Speaker 1: stated national goals, the question is how does it implicate
Speaker 1: us national interests? And the question I would ask is
Speaker 1: to you, what would the world look like if China
Speaker 1: achieved its stated national goals by say twenty forty nine. Well, so,
Speaker 1: what we have with China, I think it's important to emphasize,
Speaker 1: is not a rising power. This is not imperial Germany
Speaker 1: circa nineteen thirteen. In some ways, it's more dangerous because
Speaker 1: it's a returning power. For thousands of years, China dominated
Speaker 1: all of Asia. It was the Middle Kingdom. It was
Speaker 1: also the Central Kingdom. All of its neighbors they never
Speaker 1: balanced against China. Instead, they were tributary states. They offered
Speaker 1: tribute to China. And I think that's the model of
Speaker 1: international relations that China is now bringing to a global stage.
Speaker 1: China wants to be China is a returning major power
Speaker 1: and as the number two economy in the world, soon
Speaker 1: potentially to be the number one, that's how it wants
Speaker 1: to be treated. The implications for the United States are
Speaker 1: quite severe. If the so called Made in China twenty
Speaker 1: twenty five project succeeds, for example, then China wants to
Speaker 1: be the world's leader in the manufacturing of things ranging
Speaker 1: from locomotive engines to aircraft, agricultural products to microchips. And
Speaker 1: the question people should be asking is what do you
Speaker 1: think the world would look like then in twenty twenty
Speaker 1: six if China. I think the answer to that is
Speaker 1: China would have a protected domestic market that other countries
Speaker 1: would not be able to compete in, but which would
Speaker 1: generate the money for China to then subsidize a global
Speaker 1: push on the economic side, to dominate global locomotive trade,
Speaker 1: global aircraft trade, global space operations, global microchip manufacturing, and
Speaker 1: as we've seen with Sri Lanka, as we've seen elsewhere
Speaker 1: in Asia, when China dominates other countries. Bow what do
Speaker 1: you make of my assessment that the currently ongoing trade
Speaker 1: negotiations are merely one part of a much more comprehensive
Speaker 1: effort to push back on China using some or even all,
Speaker 1: elements of US national power, as we've seen embedded in
Speaker 1: documents like the drum Administration's National Security Strategy, the National
Speaker 1: Defense strategy and numerous addresses, including those by Vice President
Speaker 1: Pence in recent months. Well, I hope you are correct.
Speaker 1: The problem I have with that assessment is I think
Speaker 1: it's overly optimistic. We seem to have a government that
Speaker 1: has distinct trouble coordinating among its various elements. We certainly
Speaker 1: have a government where various parts of the Deep States
Speaker 1: seem to feel that they are entitled to try and
Speaker 1: act against presidential directives and operations. So I'm hoping that
Speaker 1: there is more of a strategy there being in the implementation.
Speaker 1: But I do think you've identified two key documents that
Speaker 1: did in fact come out and mark a huge sea change,
Speaker 1: The National Security Strategy and the National Defense Strategy. Basically
Speaker 1: say we view China and Russia as our foremost threats.
Speaker 1: Not terrorism, not ISIS, not al Qaeda. Those are still bad,
Speaker 1: but the people that we have to truly worry about
Speaker 1: our nation, state level actors who can mobilize a huge
Speaker 1: amount of resources. And in the case of China, they
Speaker 1: are mobilizing not just military resources, but economic, political, human, technological,
Speaker 1: and financial. What is the significance Often we hear about
Speaker 1: China's man made islands militarization of those islands, efforts in
Speaker 1: the South China Sea and essentially trying to exert their
Speaker 1: sovereignty over waters that the international community would generally argue
Speaker 1: and certainly the US would argue, are not theirs. What
Speaker 1: is the impact of those moves on everyday American life? Ultimately,
Speaker 1: ultimately speaking, we are talking about China trying to expand
Speaker 1: its sovereignty over international common spaces. So for the South
Speaker 1: China See issue, we're talking about the corroded argy of
Speaker 1: global trade. Five point three trillion dollars of goods moves
Speaker 1: through those waters every year. If your listeners are listening
Speaker 1: on a on a laptop, if they are going to
Speaker 1: later watch the Rose Bowl tomorrow on a flat screen,
Speaker 1: if they're going to get a beer or soft drink
Speaker 1: out of a refrigerator, those goods quite likely have passed
Speaker 1: through the South China see And if not the goods themselves,
Speaker 1: certainly subparts and components. If China controls those waters as
Speaker 1: national waters, then it has the ability to really basically
Speaker 1: strangle international trade or at least make it much more
Speaker 1: expensive for all of those goods. There was recently a
Speaker 1: bipartisan report published which essentially said and I will paraphrase
Speaker 1: it here that the US might not win in a
Speaker 1: war head to head with China, presumably a conventional war.
Speaker 1: What do you make of that report and how would
Speaker 1: you compare overall China's conventional and non conventional capabilities versus
Speaker 1: those of America. Well, the Chinese have two advantages. One
Speaker 1: is very basic which people forget, which is the US
Speaker 1: is a global military power and we need to be
Speaker 1: because we have global interests. What that means is every
Speaker 1: dollar we spend on defense gets spread around the world.
Speaker 1: China is still a regional military power, and every reming Bee,
Speaker 1: every un it spends it mostly gets this focus at home.
Speaker 1: So if we have twelve aircraft carriers in the Pacific,
Speaker 1: if we're lucky, we have seven, and not all of
Speaker 1: those are going to be available. China is working on
Speaker 1: its third aircraft carrier and they're keeping all of those
Speaker 1: at home. So far, from twelve to three, we're looking
Speaker 1: at seven to three and probably less. So that's the basic.
Speaker 1: The bigger issue is China knows where it wants to go.
Speaker 1: China sees US as a threat. For eight years, we
Speaker 1: had an administration that actively work to prevent US from
Speaker 1: even saying that China is a threat. Had a senior
Speaker 1: commander of Pacific Command who said the greatest threat in
Speaker 1: his area of responsibility, meaning the entire Pacific, was climate change,
Speaker 1: not North Korea, not China. Climate change. When you have
Speaker 1: senior military commanders thinking that way, talking that way, you
Speaker 1: can have a lot harder time trying to get the
Speaker 1: resources and the war planning done versus an adversary who says,
Speaker 1: you know who my biggest enemy is? The United States. Yeah,
Speaker 1: one can only imagine what the perception of those comments
Speaker 1: about climate change was in Beijing. And meanwhile, it's not
Speaker 1: as if there have not been a series of potentially
Speaker 1: cataquismic acts that China has engaged in towards the US
Speaker 1: that oftentimes I think are overlooked. Two of them in
Speaker 1: recent years being the OPM hack number one and number
Speaker 1: two the literal liquidation killing of our intelligence network on
Speaker 1: Chinese soil. Put in context, how devastating those two acts
Speaker 1: have been China, somebody once pointed. A major British historian
Speaker 1: pointed out, we should be rewriting the entire history of
Speaker 1: the Second World War now that all of the secrets
Speaker 1: have been declassified, about how we were reading all the
Speaker 1: German codes and all the Japanese codes. That is how
Speaker 1: fundamental our ability to read their information was the fact
Speaker 1: that the Chinese basically have all of our personnel data
Speaker 1: and we're able to crack our communications to kill off
Speaker 1: our network of agents. Gives you an idea of how
Speaker 1: much of our mail, email, documents, data flow they are reading.
Speaker 1: This is you know, if there is a conflict and
Speaker 1: the other side knows your orders, knows where your forces
Speaker 1: are going, knows your rules of engagement, you are seriously
Speaker 1: up a creek. What is China's end goal and establishing
Speaker 1: control of ports throughout the world, including most notably in
Speaker 1: Europe and the Middle East. This has been described by
Speaker 1: some as sort of a trojan horse effort to what end. Well,
Speaker 1: I don't think it is so that there will be
Speaker 1: Chinese troops walking the unter den Linden or occupation forces
Speaker 1: in Rome. This is not how the Chinese, I think,
Speaker 1: are thinking. I think what it is is to have
Speaker 1: enough of control and the influence over key parts of
Speaker 1: the global trade and later the global financial system that
Speaker 1: when another country, be at the United States or Germany
Speaker 1: or who member says hey, you have to stop hacking
Speaker 1: into our data. Hey, you have to start respecting intellectual
Speaker 1: property rights. The Chinese said, you know, be a real
Speaker 1: shame if none of your cranes worked, if none of
Speaker 1: your pipelines worked. I mean, that's the sort of thing
Speaker 1: that we are seeing now in Sri Lanka. Apparently now
Speaker 1: in Kenya is where the Chinese have financed ports things
Speaker 1: and then they basically say, hey, you sun this contract payoff,
Speaker 1: and when the country can't, it's like, okay, well that's
Speaker 1: simple enough, We're foreclosing, We're taking over the port. You know,
Speaker 1: when you're talking about a country like Greece, work Hungary,
Speaker 1: that is potentially the situation less likely in a place
Speaker 1: like Germany or France because they are wealthier, but poor
Speaker 1: European countries may someday face the same pipe. What is
Speaker 1: the appropriate response to what I've frequently referred to as
Speaker 1: sort of a loan to own strategy, That is, China
Speaker 1: provides financing that seems to present no strings attached to it,
Speaker 1: but then ultimately the financing the dead burden becomes crippling,
Speaker 1: and then the foreign nation has to then turn over
Speaker 1: those assets to the Chinese. What is the appropriate response
Speaker 1: from the West in general and American in particular. Well,
Speaker 1: I think one important thing not to do is to
Speaker 1: not get into a competition with the Chinese on who
Speaker 1: can loan more people more money, because, as my good
Speaker 1: friend Derek scissors Over at the American Enterprise Institute has
Speaker 1: pointed out, you will never outsubsidize the Chinese. Their loans
Speaker 1: and things are not based on financial balance sheets. It's
Speaker 1: not based on a good business plan. It is strategic.
Speaker 1: It is hey, I want influence in this country. I
Speaker 1: don't care if that port never makes money. If I
Speaker 1: gain influence, that's my payoff. So on the one hand,
Speaker 1: so long as we are operating on a more financially
Speaker 1: sound basis, that's part of what we should be doing.
Speaker 1: We should be saying, hey, this port is a good idea.
Speaker 1: We should look at it because it will make everybody money,
Speaker 1: including the owning country. In the meantime, though, one of
Speaker 1: the things we could probably do is, for example, create
Speaker 1: a voluntary core of legal experts so that poor countries
Speaker 1: could have advice to say, look, you do you may
Speaker 1: not realize this, but these loan terms are terrible. You
Speaker 1: may not realize this, but they are going to ultimately
Speaker 1: charge you an arm and a leg and ahead in
Speaker 1: terms of interest rates. Don't sign this contract. We might
Speaker 1: even offer to help provide negotiators, and because they would
Speaker 1: be paid therefore, you know, they are presumably going to
Speaker 1: be working for the government of the other country to say, look,
Speaker 1: you know you may need some actual negotiating advice, legal
Speaker 1: advice on before you sign with the Chinese. These are
Speaker 1: things that I think human talent wise, we could be
Speaker 1: helping to develop in these countries so that they have
Speaker 1: a better chance of standing up to the Chinese. You
Speaker 1: speak about the sort of illogic from an economic perspective
Speaker 1: of much of China's efforts abroad to essentially buy influence,
Speaker 1: not actually have prosperous projects domestically. I wonder if you
Speaker 1: could speak a bit to the idea that, look, central
Speaker 1: planning fails everywhere that it's tried. To what degree has
Speaker 1: central planning hamper the Chinese? And ultimately could it prove
Speaker 1: to be to some degree their downfall, their fatal flaw.
Speaker 1: You know, I think that if I were a more
Speaker 1: suspicious person, I'd say that Alexandra Ocasio Cortez basically seems
Speaker 1: to be a better disciple of Mao than the Chinese.
Speaker 1: The Chinese themselves have said, look, central planning doesn't work.
Speaker 1: So the Chinese economy today is this weird hybrid. They
Speaker 1: call it a socialist market economy where certain directives are
Speaker 1: laid out and state owned enterprises don't operate according to
Speaker 1: making a profit, but resource allocation still does in fact
Speaker 1: use the market to sort of get signals through Hey
Speaker 1: this is working, this isn't working. So on the one hand,
Speaker 1: your average Chinese person, you know, the restaurants they eat at,
Speaker 1: many of the shops they shop at, those are real
Speaker 1: private commercial enterprises. But steel, shipbuilding, aerospace, those are state champions.
Speaker 1: They are given centralized direction, and we're watching a slowdown
Speaker 1: in innovation in those areas precisely because they are operating
Speaker 1: under an ever heavier dead hand of you know, a
Speaker 1: sort of higher level oversight and direction, rather than the
Speaker 1: hidden hand of more traditional capitalism. Dianne, we'll have to
Speaker 1: leave it right there. Happy New Year's and thank you
Speaker 1: so much for coming on. Thank you again for having me.
Speaker 1: We'll be right back on the buck Sexton Show. This
Speaker 1: is ben Winegarden in four buck Sexton on the buck
Speaker 1: Sexton Show. Appreciate you taking the time to spend it
Speaker 1: with me here on New Year's Eve. You can follow
Speaker 1: me on Twitter at b h Winegarden. All Right, we've
Speaker 1: been talking a bit about national security and foreign policy
Speaker 1: as well as foreign influence. We've heard about the hysteria
Speaker 1: of foreign influence in the US, primarily from the Russians,
Speaker 1: but also does exist from the Chinese and from all
Speaker 1: sorts of other malign actors throughout the world. One of
Speaker 1: those actors is Iran and now their proxies. Very interestingly,
Speaker 1: Iran has built up a set of Sunni partners, and
Speaker 1: there are plenty of folks in American media and outside
Speaker 1: of American media as well, who, for example, were proponents
Speaker 1: of Iran Deal and the Obama administration's policy writ large
Speaker 1: with respect to Iran and the Middle East. What was
Speaker 1: that policy? That policy was about enabling the building of
Speaker 1: a quote unquote Shiite crescent, a land bridge that would
Speaker 1: allow Iran to become the dominant hegemonic player in the region.
Speaker 1: These folks, as you would imagine, have not been pleased
Speaker 1: by the Trump administration, because the Trump administration's main actions
Speaker 1: in the region have been to counteract almost everything that
Speaker 1: the Obama administration did. For example, pulling out of Iran,
Speaker 1: you reimposing crippling sanctions, building up an alliance of relatively secular,
Speaker 1: authoritarian Sunni Arab nations as a bulwark against Iran and
Speaker 1: the Shii crescent that they're trying to build, not just
Speaker 1: those nations, but amazingly an Israel US Sunni Arab partnership,
Speaker 1: something that most people thought they would never see in
Speaker 1: their lifetime. But that actually is the perverse positive, the
Speaker 1: perverse benefit of an Obama administration that tried to make
Speaker 1: Iran the strong horse in the region. Now I mentioned
Speaker 1: foreign influence and Iranian foreign influence. How do we see
Speaker 1: that in America? Well, we actually see it in a
Speaker 1: media that not only cheerleads, but even it appears is
Speaker 1: a willing participant, is complicit in, whether wittingly or unwittingly,
Speaker 1: actual influence operations, information operations that happen to have the
Speaker 1: perverse detrimental result for America, which is putting forth the
Speaker 1: Iranian position, pushing back on this alliance that has been
Speaker 1: built as a bulwark against it, and ultimately damaging a
Speaker 1: relationship with Israel, damaging a relationship with others who are
Speaker 1: vital to defending against the world's leading state sponsor of
Speaker 1: jihad in Iran. Where is this influence operation most acute?
Speaker 1: We see it in the story of Jamal Kashogi. And
Speaker 1: up next we're going to talk about that influence operation.
Speaker 1: This has Ben Weingarden in for Buck Sexton on the
Speaker 1: buck Sexton Show. We'll talk about that influence operation back
Speaker 1: in just a minute. Welcome back to the buck Sexton Show.
Speaker 1: This is Ben Weinarden in for bucks Sexton. All right,
Speaker 1: before our break, we spoke a bit about foreign influence operations,
Speaker 1: one of them being that of Jamal Kashogi. And to
Speaker 1: give you a little bit more context here, Jamal Kashogi
Speaker 1: was cast by the media as this liberty loving muckraking
Speaker 1: journalists from Saudi Arabia who was fighting the good fight
Speaker 1: against the authoritarian Mohammed bin Salmon MBS and as a
Speaker 1: result of his efforts was brutally butchered by that regime
Speaker 1: in Turkey in the Saudi embassy. There, some of us,
Speaker 1: including my next guest and his organization as well as myself,
Speaker 1: questioned that official narrative, and suddenly, two months after this
Speaker 1: influence operation has had its intended effect, we now find
Speaker 1: that those who were cast as having smeared Koshogi, were
Speaker 1: actually telling the exact truth that the Washington Post has
Speaker 1: just printed where he used to write. Joining me now
Speaker 1: on the line is David Reboy, Senior vice president at
Speaker 1: the Security Studies Group. His organization has done tremendous work
Speaker 1: on the Koshogi story. David, thanks so much for joining us.
Speaker 1: It's my pleasure. Happy year. Likewise, happened a new year
Speaker 1: to you as well. So you contend that the entire
Speaker 1: Koshogi story, and you were following this in real time,
Speaker 1: is in effect and information operation don effectively on behalf
Speaker 1: of the Qatari government which is aligned with the Iranians,
Speaker 1: and thus this whole information operation has benefited the Iranians
Speaker 1: connect the dots for us. Sure well, I want to
Speaker 1: give you a lot of credit too, because because you
Speaker 1: and I were there at the very beginning, as soon
Speaker 1: as this was, as soon as this was breaking, and
Speaker 1: I think we both saw not a lot of people did.
Speaker 1: We both saw the stitches on the fastball coming at
Speaker 1: us and um and we recognized this for what really,
Speaker 1: for what it's for what it was. So I want
Speaker 1: to command you on your great work on this as well. Oh,
Speaker 1: thank you but sure. But to be brief, UM, we
Speaker 1: had in in in the Middle East, especially around these
Speaker 1: parts where you don't have a real robust tradition of
Speaker 1: a free, inquisitive non artists and pressed. Um, you don't
Speaker 1: even have the aspiration for that. What do you do have?
Speaker 1: You have basically agents of influence or what people people
Speaker 1: who would be called in another context UM, you know,
Speaker 1: for lack of a better word, intelligence agents and their job.
Speaker 1: You know, some guys are spies, some guys UM do research,
Speaker 1: and some guys are journalists. That's just the cover that
Speaker 1: they wear. And they go sort of from place to place,
Speaker 1: from from gig to gigs, UM advancing the interests of
Speaker 1: their patrons. And Kashogi was a guy who did this
Speaker 1: and applied his his his wares, his whares where we're
Speaker 1: um we're influenced through the medium of journalism UM or
Speaker 1: writing columns and and he did it on behalf of
Speaker 1: Osama bin Laden and the Mushaden in Afghanistan, he did
Speaker 1: it on behalf of the prior ruling click in UM
Speaker 1: in Saudi Arabia specifically Turkey, Fifaal and and most recently
Speaker 1: he was doing it on behalf of the Qatari government,
Speaker 1: and it's it's kind of interesting how all of those
Speaker 1: particular patrons that Kashobi had were sort of of a
Speaker 1: similar Islamist stripe. Well. At some point over the last
Speaker 1: couple of years, this particular point of view, this Islamist
Speaker 1: persuasion of Kashobi's, meets up against MBS and the new
Speaker 1: kind of reform movement that's going on in Saudi Arabia,
Speaker 1: and all of a sudden, his Shogi is the odd
Speaker 1: man out. His particular sympathies for the Muslim Brotherhood put
Speaker 1: him far outside of what um of of what Mohammed
Speaker 1: bin Salman and the rest of the young reformers in
Speaker 1: the Kingdom um want to go for where they want
Speaker 1: to go with with their society. They're very anti Brotherhood,
Speaker 1: and they're also very anti Iran. Maki Shogi was also
Speaker 1: anti Iran, but he was very much pro Brotherhood, so
Speaker 1: um so he was. He was a bit of a
Speaker 1: free agent for a while until he found the Kataris
Speaker 1: and the Qataris are our major um rivals and regional
Speaker 1: adversaries to the Saudies, and they bank roll and give
Speaker 1: diplomatic and other institutional support to the Brotherhood and they
Speaker 1: have for for the last you know, thirty forty years.
Speaker 1: And so this so Katar was really a perfect home
Speaker 1: for Jamaka Shogi Um. And and sort of that brings
Speaker 1: us to his his his death and you know, his
Speaker 1: his death at the hands is believed to be a
Speaker 1: savvy agent probably almost you know, certainly UM savvy agents
Speaker 1: inside inside Turkey. But the more the more we learn
Speaker 1: about this, the more it seemed like it wasn't so
Speaker 1: much a killing in cold blood as it was an
Speaker 1: attempted rendition. They wanted to bring him home. Um, they
Speaker 1: wanted to to uh to bring him home from from
Speaker 1: Turkey back to Saudi Arabia, and he didn't want to go.
Speaker 1: It seemed like there was a fight, a struggle ensued
Speaker 1: and Um and he died. Now that's a terrible thing. Sure,
Speaker 1: it's a terrible thing when when anyone died. But as
Speaker 1: I pointed out recently at Security Edit in a new
Speaker 1: article of Security Studies group Security Studies dot orger, Um,
Speaker 1: it's it's a it's a far different story. You know,
Speaker 1: a spy dying UM on the way to be UM
Speaker 1: to be sort of forcibly taken back to his home
Speaker 1: country is a far fly from the media narrative, which
Speaker 1: is that he was this wonderful freedom loving um journalist
Speaker 1: who was just murdered because Saudi Arabia couldn't stand the
Speaker 1: idea of someone advocating for freedom um, which of course
Speaker 1: is the narratives that both Kataris want to advance and
Speaker 1: and all sorts of the narratives that a lot of
Speaker 1: people on the left and the Washington both want to advance.
Speaker 1: So we're in a kind of strange situation where could
Speaker 1: show he was a Qatari asset prior to his death
Speaker 1: and his death um, you know, after his death he
Speaker 1: sort of transmodified again into a Tatari asset um for
Speaker 1: use against the saudiast um. You know, once once he
Speaker 1: had once he had sort of you know, uh departed
Speaker 1: his natural life. So it's a it's an interesting situation,
Speaker 1: I think, you know. Um, it's by far one of
Speaker 1: the big stories of the year for a number of reasons. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and time has made Kashogi one of their people of
Speaker 1: the year, holding him up, you know. And this is
Speaker 1: the part of this which is just purely cynical. Politics
Speaker 1: of journalists are under attack around the world, and here
Speaker 1: was someone who was writing in the US for the
Speaker 1: Washington Post, and thus Trump is responsible or Trump is
Speaker 1: somehow complicit because he's working with Mohammed bin Salmon to
Speaker 1: defend US national interest in that region, and Salmon is
Speaker 1: portrayed as the butcher in all of this. But I
Speaker 1: want to go back to just the basic details of
Speaker 1: Kashogi's background, and you raise a few of them. He
Speaker 1: was effectively a quote unquote state journalist for the prior
Speaker 1: ruling clique in Saudi Arabia. He worked closely with Turkey
Speaker 1: bin Faisal, who was the Saudi intelligence chief until just
Speaker 1: before nine to eleven, and then an ambassador after so
Speaker 1: Kashogi presumably traveled around with him as an advisor. And
Speaker 1: Kashogi was an Islamic supremacist as well. How did he
Speaker 1: ever end up allowed into the United States in the
Speaker 1: first place? But this is an excellent question that nobody
Speaker 1: seems to know the answer too. I know a number
Speaker 1: of people at I mean, at first as as we remember,
Speaker 1: the story was that he was a Green card holder.
Speaker 1: And you know, I reached out to people that I
Speaker 1: know at DHS and and and others in government, and
Speaker 1: I said, hey, can you find out for me some
Speaker 1: of the details about his Green card application and so forth,
Speaker 1: and the responsible of hey, we don't know anything, and
Speaker 1: you know, and it quickly became clear that he was
Speaker 1: not a Green card holder, but he was in this
Speaker 1: country legally somehow. And to this date it's been several
Speaker 1: months and we still don't really know the answer to
Speaker 1: who was the one that gave him a throng l
Speaker 1: who was the one that that allowed him to allow
Speaker 1: him to come in? And and look, I mean, it's
Speaker 1: it's possible he came in in a diplomatic way because
Speaker 1: he did for a time, he did work at the
Speaker 1: Saudi embassy in Washington, so it's possible that he um
Speaker 1: he still had some type of diplomatic credentials, and you know,
Speaker 1: he was a known guy around town. So it's it's
Speaker 1: it's reasonable to expect if there was someone in the
Speaker 1: bureaucracy or the intelligence community that's kind of raised their
Speaker 1: hand to on his behalf and got him in here.
Speaker 1: I mean, regardless, somebody who hung out with the mujadin
Speaker 1: and beIN Lauden in Afghanistan should probably be looked at
Speaker 1: twice if admitted at all. This is Ben Weingarten in
Speaker 1: for Buck Sexon on the Buck Sexon Show. We'll pick
Speaker 1: up this conversation on Jamaica Shogi just after the break.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to the Buck Sexton Show. This is Ben
Speaker 1: Weinarten in for Buck Sexton. We've been speaking with David Reeboy,
Speaker 1: senior vice president at the Secure He Studies Group, about
Speaker 1: the story of Jamal Kashogi. One of the defining stories
Speaker 1: of twenty eighteen in the view of the media. But
Speaker 1: actually it's defining because it shows the media being complicit
Speaker 1: in an information operation from hostile powers. Now, David, we
Speaker 1: were just talking about how Jamal Kashogi was able to
Speaker 1: enter the United States in the first place. Regardless, he
Speaker 1: has been held up as a cause, celeb and used
Speaker 1: on a bipartisan basis in a sense as a martyr,
Speaker 1: as a political symbol for the political establishment to impose
Speaker 1: its views on the Trump administration. Essentially, what has been
Speaker 1: the impact of the death of Kashogi? How has it
Speaker 1: been leveraged? Sure, he's primarily the people who are who
Speaker 1: are sort of waiting with bloody Kogi shirts, so to speak,
Speaker 1: fall into one or more of these categories. I think
Speaker 1: the first is people who are pro if Lamist, pro
Speaker 1: Muslim brotherhood, It doesn't mean that they are UM. They're
Speaker 1: either Muslim nor brothers UM. But they think that the
Speaker 1: best debt for the Middle East is to have UM,
Speaker 1: you know, is to have what they believe is you know,
Speaker 1: authentic Islamic democracy, which they think is Sharia law, and
Speaker 1: they think it's a you know, sort of positive development
Speaker 1: for the region. UM. I think that's crazy. Even I
Speaker 1: think that's crazy. But you know this, this particular point
Speaker 1: of view is quite popular in inside the Belble and
Speaker 1: especially at a CIA and UH and some other intelligence pagencies.
Speaker 1: So you've got that. On the other hand, there are
Speaker 1: a lot of people who are pro Iran and who
Speaker 1: still resent Saudi Arabia's role together with Israel and trying
Speaker 1: to convince the event Obama administration not to not to
Speaker 1: implement the JCPLA on the random. These guys, I think UH,
Speaker 1: specifically MBS and UH and in particular UM young generation
Speaker 1: understood very clearly and still do UM that Rahan is
Speaker 1: a greater threat to their own stability and there was
Speaker 1: their regime stability and also the stability of the of
Speaker 1: the Middle East un than Israeli is. So they allied
Speaker 1: together to UM to combat the Iran deal. They failed
Speaker 1: in that regard, but the people who push the Iran
Speaker 1: deal very hard still harbor a grudge and they would
Speaker 1: like to um uh, they would like to get back
Speaker 1: at the Saudis anyway they can. So then there's a
Speaker 1: third group of folks who are hardcore fanatical Trump Trump haters.
Speaker 1: And these people, you know, take a look at the
Speaker 1: scene and they see, um, they see Jared Kushner's very
Speaker 1: tight relationship with MBS. They see um, they see Donald
Speaker 1: Trump's first and visit both to Jerusalem and also to
Speaker 1: ri Odd and they say, hey, you know, the Saudians
Speaker 1: are close to Trump. Therefore the Saudis are bad. Therefore
Speaker 1: we need to attack them. Um, you know, sort of
Speaker 1: in uh, in every in every venue. And I think
Speaker 1: those three you know, those those three things sort of
Speaker 1: explain most of the people who are who are who
Speaker 1: are going into hysterics about this, which is, you know,
Speaker 1: to be blunt and it sounds you know, people who
Speaker 1: are not familiar with geo politics, people who are not
Speaker 1: familiar with the Middle East, um, may think this is
Speaker 1: rather callous, but the truth of the matter is it's
Speaker 1: one guy who gets killed in the Middle East, and
Speaker 1: that stuff. You know, that's like Tuesday. You know, that's
Speaker 1: that's not um, that's not you know, something something exceptional,
Speaker 1: and it's certainly not something that is caused to completely
Speaker 1: reorient our on Middle East policy, which is which is
Speaker 1: what a lot of these folks would like to do.
Speaker 1: As I said, they would like to realign towards the Brotherhood,
Speaker 1: and they would like to realign towards the Iran and
Speaker 1: Saudi Arabia stands in between those two things and opposed
Speaker 1: to those two things. So obviously folks who care about
Speaker 1: that are going to be taking their shots. And that's
Speaker 1: pretty much what we've seen over the last over the
Speaker 1: last couple of months. I'm going to throw in one
Speaker 1: more interested actor in lovefair Kashogi, and we've just got
Speaker 1: a minute and a half to talk about this actor Turkey.
Speaker 1: This happened in a Saudi embassy in Turkey. Turkey has
Speaker 1: been increasingly aligned with the Muslim Brotherhood Qatar, even the Iranians,
Speaker 1: even though they're not natural allies by any stretch. Based
Speaker 1: on what you've observed and what has happened in the world,
Speaker 1: including in Syria with sort of a reproachemand between the
Speaker 1: US and Turkey in some regards as partners. Do you
Speaker 1: believe that there is a substantial Turkish leveraging of kashogi
Speaker 1: as well to their benefit and what is that benefit? Well,
Speaker 1: of course, UM, I think of course that's true. Security
Speaker 1: Study Group we UH, my colleagues Nick Short and Brad
Speaker 1: Patty wrote a kind of brilliant paper about this UM tracking,
Speaker 1: the tracking the way the Turks used the slow of
Speaker 1: information leaking out so very deliberately and very strategically in
Speaker 1: order to extract maximum benefit and in order to UH
Speaker 1: in order to generate the most the most painful for
Speaker 1: the Saudis as as they did so. And you know,
Speaker 1: we know that the the Saudis and the UH the
Speaker 1: churchs are are and have been m rivals UM, just
Speaker 1: as the Tutoris and the and the Saudis hat in
Speaker 1: and you know, of course they want to take advantage.
Speaker 1: Now you mentioned the reproach law between the US and Turkey.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure if that's really the case or it's
Speaker 1: just sort of a temporal tactical good good feeling UM
Speaker 1: towards the Turks here. So so that's that's yet to
Speaker 1: play out. I think, if I think if the President
Speaker 1: does indeed move closer to Turkey in a tangible way. Then, um,
Speaker 1: then I think that's that's you know, that's a terrible
Speaker 1: thing strategically, and it would be it would be a
Speaker 1: horrible blunder that that. I would be surprised if if
Speaker 1: John Bolton winning along with that. David, we're gonna have
Speaker 1: to leave it right there. Thank you so much for
Speaker 1: joining us today. We'll be right back on the Buck
Speaker 1: Sexon Show in just a minute. Welcome back to the
Speaker 1: Buck Sexton Show. This is Ben Winegarden in for Buck Sexton.
Speaker 1: Follow me on Twitter at b h Winegarden. Also encourage
Speaker 1: you to read my pieces at Ben Weinegarden dot com
Speaker 1: and subscribe to my podcast wherever you get your podcast.
Speaker 1: It's the Big Ideas with Ben Weingarten Podcast. All of
Speaker 1: this in my Twitter profile. All right, So we were
Speaker 1: just talking with David Reeboy at length about Jamal Kashogi,
Speaker 1: national security and foreign affairs writ large. And now I
Speaker 1: want to transition back to what is going down on
Speaker 1: the ground domestically and what we're going to see over
Speaker 1: the next two years. You know, I think it's total
Speaker 1: folly to try to make ten predictions for twenty nineteen
Speaker 1: ten predictions for twenty twenty. Part of what being a
Speaker 1: conservative means is you have to understand human nature. One
Speaker 1: of the realities about human nature is that we cannot
Speaker 1: comprehend the millions of variables that go into any of
Speaker 1: these political circumstances. If that was the case, why we're
Speaker 1: so few of the quote unquote experts able to see
Speaker 1: what was coming in the twenty sixteen election. Being a
Speaker 1: conservative requires humility, It requires understanding our own limitations. That
Speaker 1: does not mean, of course, that we shouldn't look at
Speaker 1: what is going on on the ground. And the horse
Speaker 1: race frankly for twenty twenty has already started just today.
Speaker 1: Elizabeth Warren, Senator from Massachusetts, Pocahontas. You can actually look
Speaker 1: at the Vegas odds, it's going to be about one
Speaker 1: and twenty four to one that she will be the
Speaker 1: next president of the United States. She formed an exploratory
Speaker 1: committee for presidency. She is joined by any number of
Speaker 1: folks mainly to her left. Amazingly, by the way, amazing
Speaker 1: that she is not on the firm left wing of
Speaker 1: her party. Potentially look at someone like Alexandroocazio Cortez. She
Speaker 1: would probably consider Elizabeth Warren, the equivalent of what we
Speaker 1: would call Rhinos, who is she joined by? Well in
Speaker 1: the old Guard, you do have folks like Bernie Sanders.
Speaker 1: You also have Joe Biden. Joe Biden will be an
Speaker 1: interesting figure because I think a lot of people believe
Speaker 1: that he is someone who could peel off some of
Speaker 1: those what I would call Reagan Democrats, the new Reagan Democrats,
Speaker 1: call them Trump Democrats in the Midwest, in the Heartland
Speaker 1: and elsewhere who went and voted for a Republican against
Speaker 1: many odds, and Trump has sort of tried to reorient
Speaker 1: the party towards being a workers party, so to speak,
Speaker 1: the party of labor, the party of the middle class
Speaker 1: and the lower middle class. This is a dramatic shift
Speaker 1: in our politics. Reagan did it before, and this is
Speaker 1: the Trump equivalent of it. So Joe Biden is seen
Speaker 1: as a figure who potentially could threaten that stranglehold on
Speaker 1: the middle those voters who swung over and voted Republican
Speaker 1: and said they've had enough with the establishment Democrats and
Speaker 1: those like Hillary Clinton. Amazingly, in some ways, you can
Speaker 1: see parallels almost between Bernie Sanders supporters and Donald Trump
Speaker 1: supporters and By the way, Bernie is another candidate who
Speaker 1: will definitely be competing I believe in this next election,
Speaker 1: although he is not announced yet and he is old
Speaker 1: to be fair. But let's not be agist here. His
Speaker 1: galvanizing support during that last election were younger Democrats, the
Speaker 1: young Turks. But he has some more competition this time.
Speaker 1: He has folks like Corey Booker, who's already spent time
Speaker 1: out in Iowa, substantial time on the ground. He's building
Speaker 1: his national network. He's doing all the things one would
Speaker 1: do if they were really serious about it. Now I
Speaker 1: have my doubts about Spartacus. He's shown himself on the
Speaker 1: national stage to be buffoonish at times. Frankly, he has
Speaker 1: a likable personality and that's powerful, and Democrats love the
Speaker 1: idea of rising star candidates. Traditionally, Republicans have been the
Speaker 1: party of it's the next person in line. You've paid
Speaker 1: your dues, you've worked your way up, you've ingratiated yourself
Speaker 1: with the establishment. It doesn't really matter that the Conservative
Speaker 1: base is where the real energy is in the party.
Speaker 1: It is about paying your dues, working your way up
Speaker 1: the ladder, and then you were ultimately rewarded for it
Speaker 1: with your nomination. Clearly it didn't go that way last election. However,
Speaker 1: Democrats believe in these rising stars. They believe in the
Speaker 1: people who catch fire overnight. And that's why, in spite
Speaker 1: of the fact that there is a massive list of
Speaker 1: Democrats potentially running next time, someone who is not even
Speaker 1: on the radar could potentially be in play. Just look
Speaker 1: at Donald Trump's ascendants. Who else is on the left? Well,
Speaker 1: we have the billionaire class, and this is really interesting
Speaker 1: because at least one of the two billionaires is going
Speaker 1: to have a real tough time dealing with the base
Speaker 1: in his party that fundamentally loads capitalism and loads corporate
Speaker 1: people besides those in certain more creative industries. So you
Speaker 1: have Tom Steyer on the one hand. Tom Steyer is
Speaker 1: someone who probably has I would guess, minimal national name identification.
Speaker 1: What he does have is a massive bank account and
Speaker 1: loyalty within his party because he's been supporting the left
Speaker 1: wing of his party for years with millions of dollars
Speaker 1: to his name. This is a guy who is an
Speaker 1: envirol radical, someone who is an arch leftist, who believes
Speaker 1: essentially in taking the fruits of capitalism. The hundreds of millions,
Speaker 1: if not billions of dollars that he has earned and
Speaker 1: using it to in effect take down that very system.
Speaker 1: There's something sickening about that. It goes back to my
Speaker 1: opening monologue. Today. You have these people who have been
Speaker 1: gifted this unbelievable system that has enabled them to flourish,
Speaker 1: to pursue their self interests, to pursue their happiness, to
Speaker 1: pursue their dreams. And what do they do with it?
Speaker 1: They say, I hate this system, and I want to
Speaker 1: put millions of dollars of my own money and to
Speaker 1: turn it on its head, to repudiate everything that the
Speaker 1: country was built on. So Tom Stier's won. Then you
Speaker 1: have Michael Bloomberg, New York Democrat, New York by way
Speaker 1: of Buston Democrat, built a tremendous company, a dominant company
Speaker 1: in the news and information space. In the financial space.
Speaker 1: I used to work in finance years ago, everyone had
Speaker 1: a Bloomberg box. It remains the monopoly in finance. So
Speaker 1: he learns how to build a better widget than anyone
Speaker 1: else and developed contracts and ties that would ultimately allow
Speaker 1: him to be a dominant player in the marketplace. And
Speaker 1: for that he should be commended. He's been a fantastically
Speaker 1: successful business person, but his politics are god awful. I
Speaker 1: believe that he will be portrayed the way Democrats would
Speaker 1: have loved to portray Donald Trump but couldn't, which is
Speaker 1: as an out of touch billionaire, but not only that,
Speaker 1: someone who is at odds with his party fundamentally, because
Speaker 1: he would be cast as a moderate quote unquote. You know,
Speaker 1: he was sort of a Republican in New York and
Speaker 1: then an independent because he couldn't really win as a Republican, etc. Basically,
Speaker 1: what he is in many respects is a classic Democrat
Speaker 1: in a lot of ways. You know, he's most known,
Speaker 1: probably nationally, for backing these campaigns to clamp down on guns.
Speaker 1: Second Amendment is his issue. I believe that what he
Speaker 1: thinks are moderate common sense stances, and which he may
Speaker 1: articulate in a moderate common sense sort of way. I
Speaker 1: believe it's not going to fly nationally, and I think
Speaker 1: his jabbing jousting with Donald Trump, that Donald Trump is
Speaker 1: going to wipe the floor with him ultimately if it
Speaker 1: ever came to it. You saw what he did to
Speaker 1: his Republican opponents and then Hillary Clinton, and I think
Speaker 1: before it even gets to that point, Mike Bloomberg is
Speaker 1: going to have challenges within his own party, and he
Speaker 1: may run as someone who acts as if he can
Speaker 1: unify the two parties. But if that's the case, he
Speaker 1: doesn't really have a good perspective on where the Republican
Speaker 1: and conservative basis today. Certainly, even among the most ardent
Speaker 1: never Trumpers, it's hard to imagine them being probe Bloombergites.
Speaker 1: They probably rather not vote. I would guess maybe I'm wrong,
Speaker 1: maybe I'm being overly optimistic here. Then you have others
Speaker 1: like a Julian Castro, or a Kamala Harris, or an
Speaker 1: Amy Quoba car or my personal favorite of all, Robert
Speaker 1: Francis O'Rourke aka Beato. I think Beato is going to
Speaker 1: have some problems too, because, and this is really one
Speaker 1: of the sickening things about where the left is and
Speaker 1: where Democrats are today. You see this in Twitter, and
Speaker 1: Twitter is not an accurate representation by any stretch I
Speaker 1: think of where the country is. The people who use
Speaker 1: Twitter actively are self selecting. A lot of them are
Speaker 1: political junkies. Many of them say things in Twitter that
Speaker 1: they would never say to someone's face in person. But
Speaker 1: there's been an active campaign on the left about saying
Speaker 1: that a white male cannot be the left's nominee, which
Speaker 1: goes against everything the country is based on. You want
Speaker 1: to talk about the idea of judging people on the
Speaker 1: basis of the content of their character, not the color
Speaker 1: of their skin or something they have no control over
Speaker 1: in their sex. It's absurd, it's asinine. There's one party
Speaker 1: that is really obsessed with all of these intangible qualities
Speaker 1: that reflect nothing about who you are as a person
Speaker 1: and what you're made of, or about your individuality. They're
Speaker 1: all about collectivizing groups of people, and then they're about saying, well,
Speaker 1: you up and hit certain boxes, so you may be problematic,
Speaker 1: quote unquote, that's the word they like to use. Problematic.
Speaker 1: Robert Francis O'Rourke I believe is problematic because he goes
Speaker 1: by the moniker beato. He's a cultural appropriator. He tries
Speaker 1: to portray himself as something he is not on an
Speaker 1: identity politics basis, as if he is a Latino Democrat
Speaker 1: from Texas. And by the way, of course, that's tremendously
Speaker 1: valuable from the perspective of the left, because if they
Speaker 1: flip Texas they believe they will have flipped the country permanently.
Speaker 1: The other ground, of course, is immigration. Fled the country
Speaker 1: with illegal aliens, give them mass amnesty, and it's their
Speaker 1: belief that then they will have a permanent democratic majority,
Speaker 1: which is incredibly cynical on the one hand, it's sort
Speaker 1: of and it's an evil plan on the other And
Speaker 1: they're never really honest about it. They're never really honest
Speaker 1: about it. We're gonna take a quick break, but before
Speaker 1: we do, I want to talk to you about Black
Speaker 1: Rifle Coffee Company. You know, in the midst of all
Speaker 1: this whining and frankly hysteria coming from the left, many
Speaker 1: of the folks I was just talking about whether it
Speaker 1: comes to the climate crisis, identity politics, toxic masculinity, folkahuntas,
Speaker 1: you have to wonder why in the world would anyone
Speaker 1: act this way. My guess is they're not getting their
Speaker 1: daily dose of Black Rifle coffee. I am a once
Speaker 1: a day coffee drinker. I'll probably end up twice a
Speaker 1: day or maybe three times a day in the next year.
Speaker 1: I might have mentioned earlier, I'm about to be a father, actually,
Speaker 1: so I'm going to need that extra energy. And what
Speaker 1: I like about Black Rifle or a few things. For
Speaker 1: one the flavor and for two the variety, but also
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Speaker 1: sexon on the Buck, Sex and Show. We'll be right back.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to the Buck Sex and Show. This is
Speaker 1: ben Winegarden in for Buck Sexton follow me on Twitter
Speaker 1: at b H Winegarden. Before the break, we were talking
Speaker 1: about the horse race which has already started in Earnest
Speaker 1: for twenty twenty, and we were focusing on President Trump's
Speaker 1: foils on the left, the assumed competition. Then there's, of course,
Speaker 1: the Trump agenda itself. There's the opposition, and then there's
Speaker 1: the positive, which is what will President Trump be running
Speaker 1: on in a couple of years, What will the public
Speaker 1: perceive as the most vital issues, what will motivate them?
Speaker 1: Will you be able to summarize the question? Will you
Speaker 1: be able to respond easily to the question are you
Speaker 1: better off than you were four years ago? One of
Speaker 1: the things that I think was missed in the campaign
Speaker 1: between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton is that you knew
Speaker 1: exactly what the Trump agenda was. You could not define
Speaker 1: Hillary Clinton's agenda. A candidate needs to be able to
Speaker 1: define themselves. They cannot allow the opposition to define them,
Speaker 1: and they also can't be defined by just being in
Speaker 1: opposition themselves. We've seen Trump derangement syndrome as the unifying etho,
Speaker 1: the unifying philosophy for democrats. Can you describe what the
Speaker 1: democratic agenda is today? You kind of know what direction
Speaker 1: they want to go in any of a number of issues, economics,
Speaker 1: maybe national security, and foreign policy, although it's probably somewhat ambiguous.
Speaker 1: Maybe in trade, maybe not environmentalism. Yeah, you can, you
Speaker 1: can define that, regulations, healthcare, size of government. Democrats cannot
Speaker 1: easily define these things. They are defined by their hatred
Speaker 1: of the president. And you see that the older hands
Speaker 1: in the House, for example, like Gerald Nadler, the incoming
Speaker 1: House Judiciary Chair, who would be the person overseeing a
Speaker 1: potential impeachment of Donald Trump in the House, you see
Speaker 1: that they are kind of trying to slowly lead along
Speaker 1: the more radical, energized, animated elements, hostile elements towards the
Speaker 1: President within their caucus. But on the other hand, they
Speaker 1: cannot upset where their bases and the bass is in
Speaker 1: Trump hatred mode they have been since before day one.
Speaker 1: Will that Trump derangement syndrome lead the left the Democrats
Speaker 1: to overstep presumably Nancy Pelosi and others in leadership, The
Speaker 1: old hands will say no, because they'll view it as
Speaker 1: potentially devastating in twenty twenty for them to have not
Speaker 1: learned the lessons from Republicans back in ninety eight ninety
Speaker 1: nine when it came to Bill Clinton. I've pointed out
Speaker 1: and I urge you to read this in an editorial
Speaker 1: at The Federalist, I wrote about Gerald Nadler what Gerald
Speaker 1: Nadler said back then, because guess what, he's a swamp creature.
Speaker 1: He has been in the House since before nineteen ninety eight,
Speaker 1: so he was there when impeachment proceedings conversations were going
Speaker 1: on in the House. What he said during that time period,
Speaker 1: and I'm going to paraphrase here, was the following. Perjuring
Speaker 1: yourself over something personal, over something sexual in nature, is
Speaker 1: not an impeachable offense. What are impeachable offenses? Impeachable offenses
Speaker 1: are high crimes and misdemeanors that actively gum up or
Speaker 1: thwart or betray the Constitution and actually threaten the separation
Speaker 1: of powers and checks and balances. In other words, for
Speaker 1: the most part, we're talking about besides the most egregious
Speaker 1: potential acts, what we're talking about here is violating your
Speaker 1: office in the sense of destroying the constitutional imperatives. He
Speaker 1: specifically said, perjuring yourself over personal matters essentially non factor.
Speaker 1: At the same time, he goes on television after the latest,
Speaker 1: you know, the last Michael Cohen revelations about oh, a
Speaker 1: potential campaign finance violation, and then did the president But
Speaker 1: he wasn't president at the time, So can he really
Speaker 1: be impeached if he wasn't even a president when the
Speaker 1: acts occurred that the president was involved in a conspiracy
Speaker 1: to commit a campaign finance violation. Regarding alleged hush payments,
Speaker 1: gerald Nadler created two very different standards for Bill Clinton
Speaker 1: and for Donald Trump over something which is not even
Speaker 1: we don't even know, we don't even know what a
Speaker 1: campaign finance violation is when you have a payment that
Speaker 1: would have been made before you were president, first of all.
Speaker 1: Second of all, over something which really was separate and
Speaker 1: apart from politics. You could certainly make that argument. Democrats
Speaker 1: would argue on the other side, but is it is
Speaker 1: it an in kind contribution for there to be an
Speaker 1: alleged hush payment? Well, Gerald Nadler today says yes, he
Speaker 1: was speaking a different tune twenty years ago, and frankly,
Speaker 1: he made very solid, mery notorious arguments about the gravity
Speaker 1: of raising something like impeachment, why it's politically perilous, and
Speaker 1: why is it politically perilous because to accuse the president
Speaker 1: of committing high crimes and misdemeanors and then potentially pass
Speaker 1: those papers up to the Senate to get to the
Speaker 1: point of removal is essentially the most radical act that
Speaker 1: the legislative branch could take versus the executive branch. But
Speaker 1: the energy in his party is so strong they'll be
Speaker 1: marching out in the streets if Donald Trump is not impeached, probably,
Speaker 1: and if we get to twenty twenty and Donald Trump
Speaker 1: is elected again, and I think if he follows through
Speaker 1: on its agenda, he will be elected again. He's got
Speaker 1: a real problem. Gerald Nadler and the rest of the
Speaker 1: Democrats in the House, they really do. And you have
Speaker 1: to ask yourself the question, will they push things too far?
Speaker 1: It's not just about what is President Trump's record, It's
Speaker 1: not just about who his opposition is going to be.
Speaker 1: But there's a serious question about what the Democrats are
Speaker 1: going to do in the House. Is it just going
Speaker 1: to be subpoena after subpoena and essentially try to run
Speaker 1: out the clock on this presidency, create this smoke and
Speaker 1: lead people to believe that there's fire there. It's yet
Speaker 1: to be determined. After a quick break, we're going to
Speaker 1: talk with my guest, Tammy Bruce, about the horse race,
Speaker 1: about the Trump presidency itself. This is Ben Weegarton in
Speaker 1: for Buck Sexton on the buck Sexton Show. We'll be
Speaker 1: right back. Welcome back to the buck Sexton Show. This
Speaker 1: is Ben Weingarten in for Buck Sexton. Right on the
Speaker 1: line right now is my guest, Tammy Bruce, someone who
Speaker 1: I've come to admire as a shrewd commentator, delightful personality,
Speaker 1: Fox News contributor, President of Independent Women's Voice, a national
Speaker 1: advocacy organization. Tammy joins us. Now let's jump right into
Speaker 1: it now that we turn the calendar forward to twenty nineteen.
Speaker 1: Clearly the horse race has started already, and there's just
Speaker 1: an amazing confluence of events going on in the world
Speaker 1: right now. On the one hand, you have a US
Speaker 1: economy that in terms of growth, wage growth GDP growth,
Speaker 1: employment rates being at lows not seen since the sixties.
Speaker 1: Things look great. On the other hand, financial markets had
Speaker 1: a tumultuous twenty eighteen and people are certainly concerned about that.
Speaker 1: On the national security side, you have a Chinese quote
Speaker 1: unquote trade war and increasing hostility generally, there you have
Speaker 1: North Korea supposed denuclearization, jumping out of Irando, there's immigration issues,
Speaker 1: cultural issues, and then of course there is the large
Speaker 1: resistance versus the Trump administration. Of all these factors, what
Speaker 1: do you see being the most critical over the next
Speaker 1: two years. Well, the critical thing is the recognition that
Speaker 1: Trump is a man alone, if you will, a single
Speaker 1: firefighter with some people who back him up, trying to
Speaker 1: put out the largest house fire that's ever existed, and
Speaker 1: it's going to take some time. I think the most
Speaker 1: critical thing is going to be President Trump remaining vigilant
Speaker 1: and focused on what his mission is. It was clear
Speaker 1: from the beginning. I mean, Trump is not a man
Speaker 1: who came from the outside and had no idea what
Speaker 1: was going on with government, So it was obvious, especially
Speaker 1: with who he's known through his life, what he was
Speaker 1: going to face. I think he's a bit of an idealist.
Speaker 1: I think to be a creative person in certain ways
Speaker 1: you have to be. But he also has had enough
Speaker 1: experience to know what he was going to be facing.
Speaker 1: In all of this, I think the American people have
Speaker 1: been a bit more surprised at the depth of the
Speaker 1: revulsion of an outsider coming into the system, and that
Speaker 1: in some ways has been frightening because it indicates that
Speaker 1: the corruption of what's now been termed the deep state,
Speaker 1: which is the system, is perhaps deeper than we thought.
Speaker 1: We've seen behavior of the FBI and the dj which
Speaker 1: has been shocking, and I think that part of this
Speaker 1: is because it indicates that there's a lot more that
Speaker 1: the establishment needs to hide than we realized. So the
Speaker 1: other reason why there seems to be so many things
Speaker 1: happening at once is that we finally have someone in
Speaker 1: the White House who is not invested in the system
Speaker 1: moving along as it has been. He's not invested in
Speaker 1: the status quo. So you might look at it as
Speaker 1: being that we had been effectively in a coma in
Speaker 1: a way managed by machines, kept alive through a process,
Speaker 1: and we've had people give nice speeches and like no
Speaker 1: drama Obama, the system moved along in a predictable way.
Speaker 1: But underneath, as we saw at the end of the
Speaker 1: Bush administration, there were things happening that weren't discussed, that
Speaker 1: even they might not have been aware of, and so
Speaker 1: we had a massive financial collapse. Because the system was
Speaker 1: supposed to be moving smoothly. What's happening with Trump is
Speaker 1: that you've got you've you've we've awoken from that coma,
Speaker 1: and so any activity is going to be unusual and
Speaker 1: yet not necessarily unexpected. It's called life. And so the
Speaker 1: stock market is responding to activity. Trump is a man
Speaker 1: of action, and so things are occurring we're not used
Speaker 1: to because the previous presidents have not acted in a
Speaker 1: way that has engendered a kind of action that of
Speaker 1: course you get reactions too. And I think it's a
Speaker 1: good thing, it's a healthy thing. It's necessary as we
Speaker 1: are beginning to get our to get back on our feet,
Speaker 1: we should expect this. And so I think the key
Speaker 1: element is for the president. And I think he knows
Speaker 1: this because he's been running a massive business of course
Speaker 1: most of his life, his adult life, so he knows
Speaker 1: about the back and forth. People in Washington Art don't
Speaker 1: like it, and the American people we have two generations
Speaker 1: now who are unfamiliar with it, and I think the
Speaker 1: communication is going to be key and him sticking with
Speaker 1: his priorities. I think the critical point that you make,
Speaker 1: and you make a number of critical points there is
Speaker 1: the idea that the president is in some sense a
Speaker 1: party of one. And when people talk about the resistance
Speaker 1: and like you said, the revulsion of our political class,
Speaker 1: it's actually not a partisan issue. It is a bipartisan issue,
Speaker 1: a bipartisan revolt against someone who would threaten the livelihood,
Speaker 1: the prerogatives, the credentials of those who have been, in
Speaker 1: a sense, the ruling class over time. What do you
Speaker 1: make of the sort of irony and all of this
Speaker 1: that it took someone like a Trump to be to
Speaker 1: expose the fact that those in power would be willing
Speaker 1: to act in the most lawless, violating norms, going against
Speaker 1: the institutions sort of fashion of anyone. I think that
Speaker 1: when you look back on the photographs of President Trump,
Speaker 1: like with his marriage and the guests being Bill and
Speaker 1: Hillary Clinton, everybody knew Donald Trump right he was part
Speaker 1: of the system. There was I think a general understanding
Speaker 1: amongst the rich and powerful, and we do have that
Speaker 1: group of people. I want us all to become rich
Speaker 1: and powerful. Of course, that they that I think either
Speaker 1: a direct understanding or a silent one, that everyone would
Speaker 1: go along and get along, that everyone would be benefiting
Speaker 1: based on a status quo with the American people, though
Speaker 1: becoming the collateral damage, and I think what they did
Speaker 1: not expect. And there's a term politically for people, even
Speaker 1: including like a Fdr Franklin Roosevelt, of men and women
Speaker 1: who are traitors to their class, people who come out
Speaker 1: of a system and turn on that system that perhaps
Speaker 1: has rewarded them in the past because something has struck them.
Speaker 1: And Trump fits within that framework. He's a traitor to
Speaker 1: his class. Now his class is, of course the rich,
Speaker 1: the powerful, and those are the people that also then
Speaker 1: are supposed to understand and you know, accept the nature
Speaker 1: of what has been going on. His crime is that
Speaker 1: I think he fell in love with the country at first.
Speaker 1: It was perhaps a genuine the effect of what we
Speaker 1: were all experiencing of the government having gone kind of
Speaker 1: haywire the direction that it was going in with Barack Obama.
Speaker 1: I think that he felt inherently and had been speaking
Speaker 1: publicly and on Twitter and in other ways for years,
Speaker 1: you know, rejecting and questioning and being extremely critical of
Speaker 1: what was happening in government. And I think that there's
Speaker 1: a point where whether it's an Alexandria Occassio quartet or
Speaker 1: Donald Trump who says, well, wait a minute, maybe something
Speaker 1: else can be done and maybe it's maybe it's me,
Speaker 1: and it's that decision that spark that then made him
Speaker 1: realize there was something larger than him. As he moved
Speaker 1: into his seventies. Maybe one part of it was boredom
Speaker 1: and he wanted something new to do. But in order
Speaker 1: to be willing to commit to really going against your
Speaker 1: team in a way, which was the establishment, I think
Speaker 1: it had to be more than that. And then the campaign,
Speaker 1: I think he really fell in love with the country
Speaker 1: and he did get to know it. I think he
Speaker 1: became a changed man in that process and in the end,
Speaker 1: And this is what for me, as a person of faith, well,
Speaker 1: I don't like organized religion very much. I find it
Speaker 1: not surprising that this nation has brought forth the perfect
Speaker 1: person in our particular history up till now, the perfect
Speaker 1: man and to address what this country is needed. Whether
Speaker 1: it's Washington or a Lincoln or a Reagan and now
Speaker 1: Trump now all very very different men, but astanding trajectories
Speaker 1: and at the right place, at the right time, making
Speaker 1: the right decision and at the correct junction when it
Speaker 1: comes to what the American people need. Now. Now all
Speaker 1: of them, you know, also faced unique problems and have
Speaker 1: had to be very aggressive in certain ways. But the
Speaker 1: moment for Trump and the irony of what is going
Speaker 1: on as you put as you put it is necessary
Speaker 1: and perfect because it strangely only Donald Trump could do it.
Speaker 1: It would be a man or a woman with enough
Speaker 1: money to where it wouldn't matter what, they wouldn't need
Speaker 1: their next job, not interested in the approval of a
Speaker 1: certain crowd, except the American people, genuinely wanting to make
Speaker 1: a difference separate from what their lives were or could
Speaker 1: have been, separate from politics. The difference between Trump, of course,
Speaker 1: and and the other men I mentioned, with the exception
Speaker 1: perhaps the President General Washington, is the lack of uh,
Speaker 1: you know, obviously Reagan and Lincoln politicians, you know, consummate politicians,
Speaker 1: but clearly the kind of person America creates in a romantic, deliberate,
Speaker 1: kind of creative, almost reckless way of moving into the future.
Speaker 1: But this country, but this country system requires that kind
Speaker 1: of of kind of boundless optimism and willingness to face
Speaker 1: the monsters to fix the future. That's what we bring
Speaker 1: to the American story, but to the story of really
Speaker 1: the human in condition. And I find this all to
Speaker 1: be very predictable and necessary if the nation was to survive.
Speaker 1: And it happened, and it's it's a very exciting time.
Speaker 1: What do you see happening with this democratic field? Is
Speaker 1: this is this a circular firing squad where everyone tries
Speaker 1: to go to the left of everyone else, or is
Speaker 1: there something that maybe we're not anticipating that we should
Speaker 1: be looking at. Well, I would point to a lot
Speaker 1: of people. The Democrats like to point at Connor Lamb,
Speaker 1: who uh you know, positioned himself as you know, a
Speaker 1: centrist and all of that, and they said, well, that
Speaker 1: that's the kind of Democrat who can win. The problem
Speaker 1: with that race for the Democrats was he faced no
Speaker 1: primary competition, so there was no leftist, no progressive to
Speaker 1: challenge him and to push him and to have that
Speaker 1: fight in public. And when that happens, that's where everything
Speaker 1: go off the rails. This is this is where the
Speaker 1: Democrats have their problem. Now the Republicans have already faced
Speaker 1: that that problem, if you will. The benefit though for
Speaker 1: the Republicans is that the fight was between Donald Trump,
Speaker 1: who's a businessman, wildly successful, uh knew what he was doing,
Speaker 1: has had a background of knowing what you know, within
Speaker 1: at least a conservative ideal about finances and personal freedom,
Speaker 1: et cetera. Uh, regardless of what you think of him personally,
Speaker 1: he had he had a business background that indicated to
Speaker 1: the American people he could handle running the country. The
Speaker 1: problem for the Democrats is, uh, it's Alexandrio Occassio Cortez
Speaker 1: versus Clare McCaskill. Right, it's people who have ideas that
Speaker 1: are that make no sense, that have been proven unworkable
Speaker 1: in historically. Uh, that will destroy elements of the country
Speaker 1: like well, Medicare for all single payer nobody knows, you know,
Speaker 1: when Cassio Cortez has asked, how would you pay for
Speaker 1: single payers? So, well, you just pay it like you
Speaker 1: pay your rent. I mean, this is the problem for
Speaker 1: the Democrats. Uh. And I think that this is what
Speaker 1: they're really going to find. And I'm you know, they're
Speaker 1: already trying to set up and limit the number of debates, uh,
Speaker 1: and how how public these kinds of arguments will go.
Speaker 1: But that's what's going to be problematic of how far
Speaker 1: to the left certain candidates get pulled in that fight
Speaker 1: and really, in fact, who might win or who become
Speaker 1: you know, who is that shorter lineup of the Democratic
Speaker 1: nominees and whether or not the American people will look
Speaker 1: and say this does not look good. I've I've equated
Speaker 1: this as being like sending the Hindenburg to pick up
Speaker 1: the passengers of the Titanic. Uh. This is That's what
Speaker 1: the Democrats offer, Like which vehicle are you going to
Speaker 1: want to get on with them? And this is where
Speaker 1: the president of course, and I believe that they'll be
Speaker 1: able to do this is articulate to the American people
Speaker 1: because the legacy media won't do what has been working, Um,
Speaker 1: what still needs to go, what still needs to work.
Speaker 1: I think it's unfair that he's been attacked for not
Speaker 1: accomplishing everything he promised in two years. I mean, he
Speaker 1: is a man alone effectively creating historical change. But for
Speaker 1: the Democrats, um, you know, and I'm still a Democrat,
Speaker 1: registered Democrat in California. Uh, regular grassroots Democrats want you know,
Speaker 1: they want normal governing. They also care about their families,
Speaker 1: they care about you know, they want to make sure
Speaker 1: they've got somebody who knows what they're doing, and they
Speaker 1: want something new. They don't want Hillary. We know that
Speaker 1: because they don't want what has been and so if
Speaker 1: if they think they're they're they're going to be offered,
Speaker 1: you know, Joe Biden and then see Pelosi's out there.
Speaker 1: All of these young people and others who want something different,
Speaker 1: like the Republicans wanted something different, They're in a lot
Speaker 1: of trouble because nobody's presenting themselves as the unifier that
Speaker 1: can bring all of those individuals together. And it certainly
Speaker 1: is not. I don't envy them. It's going to be
Speaker 1: fascinating to watch. And in the meantime, the president is
Speaker 1: still also going to have to deal with never trumpers
Speaker 1: and individuals who are more committed to the establishments than
Speaker 1: they are to the progress of the country. Temmy, we're
Speaker 1: gonna have to leave it right there. Thank you so
Speaker 1: much for joining us in Happy New Year, Welcome back
Speaker 1: to the Buck Sexon Show. This is Ben Weingarten in
Speaker 1: for Buck Sex and appreciate you taking the time to
Speaker 1: spend your New Year's Eve with me. All right, before
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Speaker 1: All right, I want to conclude today. You know I
Speaker 1: started in our opening monologue with an emphasis on being
Speaker 1: grateful for what we have and want to first start
Speaker 1: by thanking you, dear listener, for spending this day with
Speaker 1: me and talking about and thinking about some vital issues
Speaker 1: for this country. I also want to thank Buck Sexton
Speaker 1: for giving me the opportunity to fill in here on
Speaker 1: this New Year's Eve. It's been a pleasure, you know.
Speaker 1: As we go out today, I would leave with a
Speaker 1: couple parting thoughts. One is that this is the greatest
Speaker 1: nation ever invented in American not just American history, obviously
Speaker 1: been in world history. It is exceptional. And it's not
Speaker 1: exceptional because we have all of this bounty and material wealth,
Speaker 1: but because we have the freedom to pursue our happiness.
Speaker 1: This is uncommon. This is an uncommon nation, This is
Speaker 1: an uncommon lot that we have, This is an uncommon
Speaker 1: time period for all the stresses in a day to
Speaker 1: day basis. It's the most comfortable time to ever be
Speaker 1: alive in the history of mankind. And there's no nation
Speaker 1: in world history that has ever had this freedom. But
Speaker 1: this freedom can go away overnight, very quickly, and we
Speaker 1: see that in places from Venezuela to what Cuba once was.
Speaker 1: We see it throughout the world. There are external foes,
Speaker 1: but in reality, the most important thing is for us
Speaker 1: to be strong, for us to understand our values and
Speaker 1: our principles, and to defend those values and principles from
Speaker 1: enemies both external and internal. This has been Weingarten, having
Speaker 1: filled in for buck Sexton today. This is the Buck
Speaker 1: Sexton Show, Happy New Year, Thank you so much,