Speaker 1: It is the seventeenth of July. It is the third
Speaker 1: day of the Republican National Convention, the night where vice
Speaker 1: presidential nominee Ohio Senator JD. Vance will take to the
Speaker 1: podium to celebrate the life and times of the man who,
Speaker 1: just a few short years ago, he said, was America's Hitler.
Speaker 1: This is the warning. Last night's disgrace at the Republican
Speaker 1: National Convention gave the whole world and all of America's
Speaker 1: children an abject lesson in the qualities of debasement. There
Speaker 1: are few better shining examples of what it means to
Speaker 1: debase yourself than what Nicki Haley and Ron DeSantis did
Speaker 1: last night. Let's, in the words of that great former
Speaker 1: sportscaster Warner Wolf, go to the videotape and let's watch
Speaker 1: Nicki Haley tell you what she thought about Donald Trump.
Speaker 2: President Trump asked me to speak to this convention in
Speaker 2: the name of unity. It was a gracious invitation and
Speaker 2: I was happy to accept. I'll start by making one
Speaker 2: thing perfectly clear. Donald Trump has my strong endorsement.
Speaker 3: Period.
Speaker 1: Now let's listen to Ron DeSantis.
Speaker 3: Donald Trump has been demonized, He's been sued, he's been prosecuted,
Speaker 3: and he nearly lost his life. We cannot let him down,
Speaker 3: and we cannot let America down.
Speaker 1: It's very important to remember that Donald Trump attacked Nikki
Speaker 1: Haley's husband, attacked his military service, subjected her family to
Speaker 1: abject cruelty. But yet this broken woman is up there
Speaker 1: on the stage celebrating the leader. I suppose this is
Speaker 1: what Donald Trump means when he talks about unity through debasement.
Speaker 1: The abandonment of any principle, any conviction, is clearly how
Speaker 1: you get ahead, how you climb the greasy pole of
Speaker 1: the parties in American politics. It is astonishing we have
Speaker 1: eradicated a demand for character in our society, in our country.
Speaker 1: What preposterous equal these are. Now, I'll say this about
Speaker 1: Donald Trump, who I am no fan of to say
Speaker 1: the least, but at least Donald Trump would never debase
Speaker 1: himself for another person. He would never lie down and
Speaker 1: lick Ron De Santis's feet like Ron De Santis does Trump's.
Speaker 1: He just wouldn't. He doesn't have it in him. And
Speaker 1: I guess in some way that's admirable because witnessing Nikky
Speaker 1: Haley and Ron De Santis was stomach turning. What we
Speaker 1: are witnessing in this moment in time is a collision
Speaker 1: of cowardice and cynicism, diffusion of the two into some
Speaker 1: type of nuclear like energy that is irradiating our democracy
Speaker 1: and killing it. If the political leaders of the country
Speaker 1: literally believe in nothing, will say anything, do anything for
Speaker 1: a bit of attention in the spotlight, we're doomed. Jd.
Speaker 1: Vance is a first rate fraud and he is a
Speaker 1: first rate political extremist. His views are repugnant and dangerous. JD.
Speaker 1: Vance does not believe in democracy. He has called for
Speaker 1: an American Caesar. He has said that in order to
Speaker 1: defend freedom, we have to lessen our commitment to democracy.
Speaker 1: It's the exact same argument that Adolf Hitler made. Democracy
Speaker 1: was a threat to freedom because some people you see
Speaker 1: are unequal because they are lesser than, and those lesser
Speaker 1: than people who get to vote equally, are stealing something
Speaker 1: from the true Americans. It's an evil ideology and it
Speaker 1: should be treated as such. JD. Vance rose on the
Speaker 1: patronage of a weirdo billionaire named Peter Teele. And when
Speaker 1: I say weirdo, I mean weirdo. This is a guy
Speaker 1: who talks about sea steading that new nations should be
Speaker 1: created out of shipping containers strung together on floating islands.
Speaker 1: It's nonsense. Peter Keiel accepted citizenship in New Zealand, yet
Speaker 1: he still is involved enough to spend tens of millions
Speaker 1: on JD Vance's political campaign. Now. The Republican National Convention
Speaker 1: has been an exquisite clinic thus far, in its preliminary
Speaker 1: nights of weirdness and debasement. When you sit back, if
Speaker 1: you can lower the partisan temperature, take out your partisanship,
Speaker 1: just remove it, pretend even if you disagree with Nikki
Speaker 1: Haley that she's right on every single issue. Can you
Speaker 1: imagine getting up and giving a speech where everybody, and
Speaker 1: I mean everybody knows how full of shit you are.
Speaker 1: Can you imagine going and turning on the television when
Speaker 1: you get back to your hotel room watching the speech,
Speaker 1: and the pleasure, the sadism of the look on Trump's
Speaker 1: face as you debase yourself, humiliate yourself, the lack of dignity,
Speaker 1: the abject weakness. Ron DeSantis is a delusional man and
Speaker 1: truly one of the worst political candidates of all time
Speaker 1: who ran for national office, who ran one of the
Speaker 1: pathetic and worst political campaigns of all time. But in
Speaker 1: this age of delusion, Ron DeSantis believes he's a future
Speaker 1: president and he will never be because Maga loves strength,
Speaker 1: and those two have been defenestrated beyond any ability of
Speaker 1: mind to conceivably explain the weakness oozes from them out
Speaker 1: of every or debasement, weakness, submission, a surrender of intellectual agency.
Speaker 1: These are the requirements to be a good Maga. No thanks,
Speaker 1: I reject that unity, and so should you, because when
Speaker 1: the media talks about we need unity in America and
Speaker 1: they don't explain that unity on Trump's terms means debasement
Speaker 1: and submission to every idea that Trump has at the
Speaker 1: expense to the ideas and ideals our fathers and mothers
Speaker 1: died defending and nurturing for two hundred and forty eight years. No,
Speaker 1: we must not, and we will not. The President Joe
Speaker 1: Biden has some deep thinking to do because his campaign
Speaker 1: increasingly looks like a suicide mission headed straight at an iceberg,
Speaker 1: and the strategy seems to be that weak and cowardly
Speaker 1: people who won't tell truth to power feel invigorated to
Speaker 1: scream at the rest of us that we did not
Speaker 1: see what we saw and that the polling numbers that
Speaker 1: are real are not as a kareem down a pathway
Speaker 1: of national catastrophe. Tonight, j D Vance takes the stage
Speaker 1: and the main event will be close at hand. There's
Speaker 1: been no person as manifestly unfit for national office standing
Speaker 1: behind a podium speaking to a national convention since Sarah Palin.
Speaker 1: He's like Sarah Palin, except smarter, as deeply cynical, a
Speaker 1: lot more stable, and deeply deeply and I mean deeply ambitious.
Speaker 1: He's the Republican nominee for vice president. That's a terrifying thing.
Speaker 1: And let me say something else. The decision to remove
Speaker 1: Joe Scarborough and Mika Brazenski from the air by Rashida Jones,
Speaker 1: the MSNBC president, and Caesar Conda, the NBC President, was
Speaker 1: a despicable act. And more importantly, it was an act
Speaker 1: of cowardice, not journalism, cowardice. And you should understand this
Speaker 1: is exactly how freedom erodes when Donald Trump becomes president
Speaker 1: in November. It's a phone call and it's only a
Speaker 1: few people. What Jones and Conda were terrified of was
Speaker 1: offending Donald Trump. They were afraid of offending a presidential
Speaker 1: candidate in the wake of an assassination. They were afraid
Speaker 1: that somebody might say the wrong thing. But you know what,
Speaker 1: this is the United States, and there are no rights
Speaker 1: to not be offended, and certainly the most powerful people
Speaker 1: in the world don't get to regulate what offense is. No,
Speaker 1: these people, after hiring Rona Romney McDaniel, did not not
Speaker 1: learn any lessons. In fact, they've just revealed themselves more.
Speaker 1: And they may be wonderful business people, but they have
Speaker 1: no business running a news operation in a moment where
Speaker 1: freedom of the press is about to be tested like
Speaker 1: it has never been in the modern era of the country.
Speaker 1: The Washington Post says democracy dies in darkness. It doesn't
Speaker 1: democracy dies when The Washington Post has a publisher who
Speaker 1: deleted thirty million emails. Cynicism is strangling faith in the
Speaker 1: most glorious traditions of our freedom. It's killing idealism in
Speaker 1: this country. It's killing principle, it's killing conviction, and we
Speaker 1: must stop it. There will be a new cause that
Speaker 1: arises from Trump's ascendency, and that cause will be one
Speaker 1: that must be nonviolent and represents the best traditions of
Speaker 1: American justice and liberty and freedom. The Warning will speak
Speaker 1: to that cause. Always join us, be part of this community.
Speaker 1: Understand what's happening around you, keep your eyes open. This
Speaker 1: is an hour where all of us must be wide awake.
Speaker 1: I'm Steve Schmidt. This is the Warning and I invite
Speaker 1: you to join. Subscribe on our substack, on our YouTube channel,
Speaker 1: follow us. Welcome to the community.