Speaker 1: Broadcasting live from the Abraham Lincoln Radio Studio, the George
Speaker 1: Washington Broadcast Center.
Speaker 2: Jack Armstrong and Jo Getty.
Speaker 3: I'm strong and getting and no key, I'm strong and yetty.
Speaker 4: As a helicopter force ingress towards the objective at low level.
Speaker 2: We arrived at Maduro's.
Speaker 4: Compound at one one am Eastern Standard time or two
Speaker 4: to oh one am Caracas local time, and the apprehension
Speaker 4: force descended into Maduro's compound and moved with speed, precision,
Speaker 4: and discipline towards their objective and isolated the area to
Speaker 4: ensure the safety and security of the ground force while
Speaker 4: apprehending the indicted persons.
Speaker 2: So how old is Maduro?
Speaker 1: I gotta think he get woken up from a sound sleep,
Speaker 1: and there's a bunch of you know, US super secret
Speaker 1: Special Forces Special Forces dudes with guns and flashlights and
Speaker 1: stuff in your face.
Speaker 2: Takes a while to get your bearings.
Speaker 5: You got to have at least one thought that, wow,
Speaker 5: this is a weird dream. He's sixty three. Yeah, it
Speaker 5: take me a little while to se I had some
Speaker 5: pice of food last night. What's going on here?
Speaker 2: Right right?
Speaker 5: Well? General Caine there describing the critical kind of uh,
Speaker 5: you know, the climactic moments of the raid and coming
Speaker 5: across Maduro. We skipped past where he helps us understand
Speaker 5: the incredible complexity and sophistication of the operation and for
Speaker 5: that analysis, what a pleasure it is for the first
Speaker 5: time of the year to talk to military analyst Mike
Speaker 5: Lyons about this awesome, awesome demonstration of American capability. Mike,
Speaker 5: how are you, sir? Do you have a good holiday season?
Speaker 6: Guys? Happy New Year? And yes, it's had a great
Speaker 6: highlight season and what a way to start the year
Speaker 6: for sure.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I was really digging your Twitter feed in the middle
Speaker 1: of the night the other night, following your your analysis
Speaker 1: of that.
Speaker 2: It was what happened.
Speaker 6: So thanks, Yeah, you know, just watching this, you know,
Speaker 6: here's to me, it's the biggest issue. For months, I'd
Speaker 6: been talking to former special operators and other people in
Speaker 6: the military trying to figure out what are we doing
Speaker 6: in the Caribbean right Obviously we're projecting power blowing up
Speaker 6: drug boats and the like there, and we all thought
Speaker 6: that this mission was going to be impossible. I mean,
Speaker 6: for us to go in kinetically take out Maduro, it
Speaker 6: would mean an invasion for US. I kept saying, well,
Speaker 6: nothing's going to happen because the Army's not in the
Speaker 6: game yet. And you know, the only I can think
Speaker 6: of it was like you're sitting on a desert island,
Speaker 6: you got a can without a can opener, and you're
Speaker 6: not going to eat, and then all of a sudden,
Speaker 6: the next day the cans open and now you're gonna
Speaker 6: be able to eat. I mean, the level of from
Speaker 6: an operational perspective was so complex and just just incredible,
Speaker 6: and from a competency perspective, And I still have the
Speaker 6: scars from the nineteen eighties with you know, Desert One
Speaker 6: and what happened there and the ashes that took place there.
Speaker 6: So I can't reiterate just how incredibly amazing this mission
Speaker 6: was and the complexity of it. One hundred and fifty aircraft,
Speaker 6: no casualties in and out two and a half hours.
Speaker 6: You couldn't write a script that said it would go
Speaker 6: as as you said.
Speaker 2: One hundred and fifty aircraft.
Speaker 5: Yeah, help us understand what kind of aircraft and what
Speaker 5: were they doing for we layman, Just give us the
Speaker 5: broad outlines of the complexity of the operation.
Speaker 6: So all the levers of forces that we have in
Speaker 6: power where we're applied here aircraft that took out their
Speaker 6: air defense systems, drones, monitoring surveillance, helicopters, shuttling in the
Speaker 6: seventy fifth Rangers. You know, this was if you had
Speaker 6: to give a visual, it's kind of like Blackhawk down
Speaker 6: back in the nineties, that failure of a mission, unfortunately.
Speaker 6: But you know the fact that we had the Rangers
Speaker 6: in there protecting the strike force, which is the Delta
Speaker 6: guys that go in and extract people like this, this
Speaker 6: is their mission, and we know that they ended up
Speaker 6: practicing this for months before they had a set up
Speaker 6: and they had done this. I'm still surprised that Maduro
Speaker 6: didn't have thirty thousand troops surrounding him. I mean, given
Speaker 6: the fact that you know, he knew the United States
Speaker 6: was going after him. So it still is just incredible
Speaker 6: about those those soldiers getting in. But every single one
Speaker 6: of those aircraft had a mission either bringing troops in,
Speaker 6: gathering surveillance, taking out targets. Just a real high combination.
Speaker 6: And you notice General Kane kept talking about the Joint Force.
Speaker 6: The Joint Force that is the difference between US and
Speaker 6: every other military out there. This is why the Russians
Speaker 6: are wallowing a novacane in Ukraine.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 6: They can't jointly bring all their forces together to make
Speaker 6: to attack something and move forward with They don't combine
Speaker 6: air power with ground power and ISR. They just go
Speaker 6: one at a time. But in this case, the United
Speaker 6: States is able to take with interagency, take all of
Speaker 6: these levers of power and bring them together and create
Speaker 6: this incredible fist that can take anybody out that we choose.
Speaker 1: To give me an idea of how oh risky this
Speaker 1: would have been, Like if you do it ten times,
Speaker 1: are you successful eight times? Or do would you have
Speaker 1: any guests on?
Speaker 2: Then?
Speaker 6: Well that's why we all sat around and said this
Speaker 6: just wasn't gonna happen. It wasn't even a kind of
Speaker 6: a course of action. And I was talking to guys
Speaker 6: that if the highest levels of jay Sock and you
Speaker 6: know that that had been in that spot, they just
Speaker 6: thought it was going to be just too difficult. The
Speaker 6: element of surprise, just maintaining that that alone was a
Speaker 6: factor that just was incredible. And then the weather played,
Speaker 6: I mean, the D Day type invasion is what we
Speaker 6: all thought. We thought that, yeah, if they thought they
Speaker 6: would move twenty to twenty five thousand troops or so,
Speaker 6: and because we thought they'd had to get an egress
Speaker 6: point in, but they were able to take out any
Speaker 6: of the air defense systems. So the other thing this does,
Speaker 6: too is that it shows that once again the total
Speaker 6: crap of Russian military equipment, because that's what's been surrounding
Speaker 6: Venezuela when it comes to their air defense system. So
Speaker 6: the essay three hundred you might as well put in
Speaker 6: the museum right now because anybody who has it is
Speaker 6: never going to use it again because the United States
Speaker 6: just blew right by it. So we take out the
Speaker 6: air defense platforms, we take out their systems, and then
Speaker 6: we've shut the power off in the country. I mean again,
Speaker 6: there's no other country in the world that can do this.
Speaker 6: But to say that you wouldn't expect a casualty, or
Speaker 6: you wouldn't expect something to go wrong, very unlikely. In
Speaker 6: this case. Eight out of ten times something else would
Speaker 6: go wrong. You have the expectation commanders expect losses. You
Speaker 6: have then expectation you lose something.
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, miraculous success.
Speaker 5: I was struck by General Kin saying we rehearse this
Speaker 5: over and over and over again. Not so that we
Speaker 5: could get it right, but so that it couldn't go wrong. Now,
Speaker 5: obviously fate and God intervened, but that that's that's a
Speaker 5: philosophy that we civilians don't I hadn't heard articulated in
Speaker 5: that way before.
Speaker 6: Yeah, that's the result of Desert one and the fact
Speaker 6: that you have to plan. When when I was on
Speaker 6: ACTI duty, we said, with the planning gets slimed, right,
Speaker 6: what's going to happen to us along the way, And
Speaker 6: you have to plan for every one of those contingencies,
Speaker 6: rehearse them so their second nature, so you know exactly
Speaker 6: what to do. It's that your playbook, checklist mentality that
Speaker 6: the military has military trains for that. Within our military
Speaker 6: because of this thing called commander's intents. Right, I'm watching
Speaker 6: people try to say, oh, the soldiers are these sailors,
Speaker 6: they don't know where're going. You know, we're invading Venezuela.
Speaker 6: None of that. Everybody got the mission. Everybody knew what
Speaker 6: the mission was. Get in, get out, extra extra streate
Speaker 6: the guy, get him in and out. Everybody knows commander's intent.
Speaker 6: And that's what's another thing that makes our military work
Speaker 6: better than everybody else's.
Speaker 1: Well, as you're talking to some of your friends who've
Speaker 1: been there, done that, with regime change and nation building
Speaker 1: and everything, is there some concern that we're going to
Speaker 1: have boots on the ground trying to keep Venezuela a
Speaker 1: stable place for a certain amount of time.
Speaker 6: I don't think so. This is not a rock We
Speaker 6: don't have one hundred thousand troops there. This was not
Speaker 6: an invasion, and it's also not regime change. Their constitution
Speaker 6: has put their vice president, Elsea Rodriguez now in charge,
Speaker 6: and we've given her the message you're either going to
Speaker 6: play ball or not. And if you're not going to
Speaker 6: play ball, you might find yourself in a pair of
Speaker 6: white tennis shoes and a Nike jumpsuits sitting in the
Speaker 6: back of a Special Forces helicopter here if you don't
Speaker 6: play ball. And the thing about it is, this is
Speaker 6: what we want to do. Were taking control, taking control
Speaker 6: of three hundred billion barrels of reserve crude oil in
Speaker 6: our hemisphere, not allowing the Chinese, by the way, the
Speaker 6: Uranians that had already built a drone facility manufacturing drones
Speaker 6: in Venezuela. The Chinese are taking their oil. The Russians
Speaker 6: and the military. This is long overdue to take care
Speaker 6: of this situation right now. I mean, this is, this
Speaker 6: has been so this will be so pivotabal for our
Speaker 6: country and from from a generational perspective, and how we've
Speaker 6: reset the world and reset the economy and the any
Speaker 6: energy market in particular, it's fantastic.
Speaker 5: I'm we're talking to military analyst Mike Lyons. Mike I
Speaker 5: mentioned earlier in the show that you almost have to
Speaker 5: compartmentalize each part of this because you always want to
Speaker 5: leap to the next part, and you kind of did,
Speaker 5: which is a great discussion, and I'm a little mystified
Speaker 5: by this. The upper was amazing, and there's a demonstration
Speaker 5: of American power. I think it will echo around the
Speaker 5: globe and it should. But going forward, can we exercise
Speaker 5: Lever's power effectively enough to get what we need out
Speaker 5: of the Venezuelan regime given the fact that they are
Speaker 5: still what they were and this this Galo's in charge
Speaker 5: now is a hardcore Maduroite socialist.
Speaker 6: Well we're gonna find out. And she controls the military
Speaker 6: right now, and he's basically said we'd come back in
Speaker 6: if we had to, So We're going to let this
Speaker 6: thing stew for a little bit. Again, it's not been
Speaker 6: regime changed right now, it's just different person running the country.
Speaker 6: Right now. I've got confidence that we'll put enough pressure
Speaker 6: on them. We will then start to take over the
Speaker 6: petroleum assets and where they actually pump oil from, and
Speaker 6: we'll do all we'll do all those kinds of things,
Speaker 6: which is what we're trying to do here. We're trying
Speaker 6: to get to I think, so for example, this this
Speaker 6: administration that Trump's was not keen about restoring Machado. That
Speaker 6: was the ind of Jual won the Nobel Peace Prize
Speaker 6: from uh this last year and.
Speaker 2: Was he already won the left election right right.
Speaker 6: But this but real politic on the ground. She doesn't
Speaker 6: control anything, you know, it's right now, this is hardcore
Speaker 6: human nature. Who controls the military? This is for you know,
Speaker 6: grown ups. This is not for you know, theoretical people
Speaker 6: that are running the government. She's got no legitimacy. Unfortunately,
Speaker 6: I hate to say it like that, but she doesn't
Speaker 6: to run the government. So we're gonna give this person,
Speaker 6: Rodriguez a chance because she does control the military and
Speaker 6: the oil. We're gonna cut a deal with her. I'm sure,
Speaker 6: and we'll move this. We'll move this down the road.
Speaker 6: And if we do it, this is again trumped with leverage.
Speaker 6: He is the leverage meister, getting leverage of oil right now.
Speaker 6: The fact that we have this control now over there
Speaker 6: oil puts Canada on notice, China onnoticed. China might not
Speaker 6: be able to invent in made Taiwan now they only
Speaker 6: have twenty five billion barrels in reserve. They might not
Speaker 6: have the energy to do it now. So there's so
Speaker 6: much leverage that was gained by this operation that without
Speaker 6: even a casualty being gone, I just can't talk about
Speaker 6: it so much.
Speaker 5: So if this gal doesn't come around, we snatch her
Speaker 5: up and then the person after her, and before long,
Speaker 5: it's like being the head of isis you know the
Speaker 5: first thing you do when you get the job is
Speaker 5: you're right your will?
Speaker 2: Yeah right.
Speaker 6: You know what's funny was they got asked the question
Speaker 6: like Marco Ruby got asked the question over the weekend
Speaker 6: about why did you just take him? Why didn't you
Speaker 6: take all his other henchmen. It's like, do you not
Speaker 6: get do you not hear yourself? I mean, that was
Speaker 6: the mission of getting that one person, which is the person.
Speaker 6: So again it's all done legally too, which is really
Speaker 6: why we go in there in the first place, under
Speaker 6: this guise of you know, getting him from legally from
Speaker 6: a drug perspective. No, you can't argue against it.
Speaker 1: Again.
Speaker 2: You know, the.
Speaker 6: Democrats wanted him out five years ago. They just didn't
Speaker 6: have the nerve to do what we did.
Speaker 5: Military analyst Mike Lines, Yeah, Marco gave a fine spank
Speaker 5: into Margaret Brennan.
Speaker 2: We enjoyed that.
Speaker 1: I wanted to ask you this before we let you go.
Speaker 1: I purposely went to New Orleans over vacation just to
Speaker 1: go to the World War II Museum.
Speaker 2: I assume you've been there before.
Speaker 6: I have amazing It's just, you know, the story you know,
Speaker 6: starts in the that real car and you walk through.
Speaker 1: That's the most amazing museum I've ever been to anywhere
Speaker 1: in the world.
Speaker 2: Absolutely incredible, and.
Speaker 6: A lot of presents there, and just the sacrifice is
Speaker 6: made and we just should never forget and we're getting
Speaker 6: further from that generation. But it's just incredible. I would
Speaker 6: buy everybody to go there. My classmate actually is one
Speaker 6: of the directors there, works down there and they hold
Speaker 6: nice events there, but just the historical what they've captured
Speaker 6: there is just amazing.
Speaker 2: Well we'll tell them I'm impressed.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, I want to hear more about that from you,
Speaker 5: Jack as well, Mike Liones.
Speaker 2: Mike, thanks so much for the time.
Speaker 6: Great to talk to you, great guys, Thanks for having
Speaker 6: me all.
Speaker 2: Right, our pleasure.
Speaker 1: Yeah, oh man, is this an exciting time of the
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Speaker 2: It's good to be right.
Speaker 1: Can you imagine the political disaster it would have been
Speaker 1: if this operation hadn't worked well.
Speaker 2: I'd rather holy cow.
Speaker 1: The fallout from that would have been something else, and
Speaker 1: then the geopolitical fallout. Obviously, as you're saying, it's a
Speaker 1: pretty big deal that we accomplished what we did, and
Speaker 1: if we hadn't accomplished it, the guy would still be there.
Speaker 2: Anyway, we got a lot to talk about. I hope
Speaker 2: you can join us.
Speaker 1: By the way, the text line four one kftcy.
Speaker 6: My resolution for this year, if my plan is to
Speaker 6: have seventy five dollars automatically deducted from my checking account
Speaker 6: every month.
Speaker 1: Without ever going to the gym at all, not even
Speaker 1: the first time.
Speaker 2: You could do that, Yeah, absolutely could do that.
Speaker 1: I will be going to the gym today, having just
Speaker 1: gotten back from vacation yesterday, and I'm sure it will
Speaker 1: be jam packed off people in brand new workout clothes.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, I'll be wearing my old workout clothes.
Speaker 1: But I too will be burning some calories, which is
Speaker 1: badly needed. Again, if I was a state fair hog,
Speaker 1: the vacation went great. Really looking at a ribbon this year,
Speaker 1: but I'm not. You see, as of yesterday you were
Speaker 1: up six from before Thanksgiving.
Speaker 5: That's pretty impressive. Yeah, well that's one word for it. Yes, yes,
Speaker 5: it'll kill me anyway.
Speaker 2: Nice.
Speaker 5: Thank God for the new stretchy fabrics that the American
Speaker 5: science has developed.
Speaker 1: Right that's that's a good way to make lemonade out
Speaker 1: of lemons, right there.
Speaker 5: But we live in a time with stretchy pants, right
Speaker 5: what night? And it's American ingenuity. Oh, speaking of which,
Speaker 5: I came across this. You know this, jack, All social
Speaker 5: issue polling needs to be taken with a grain of salt. Okay,
Speaker 5: And that's true of this too. But the arch Bridge Institute,
Speaker 5: which I'm judging from the writing style of their chief
Speaker 5: operating officer, is a patriotic outfit at conservative outfit. But
Speaker 5: they did a bunch of polling on the American Dream
Speaker 5: and it came whatever that means. And that's one of
Speaker 5: the great, you know, dishonest journalistic topics of our time
Speaker 5: is they just kind of assume the America can dream
Speaker 5: means whatever they want it to for the premise of
Speaker 5: their story, and then they declare that it's dead or
Speaker 5: people think it's dead or whatever. But then when you
Speaker 5: get down to wait a minute, how do you define
Speaker 5: the American Dream? You think that's a stupid definition. I
Speaker 5: don't think that's what I mean by it anyway. They asked, Well,
Speaker 5: first they said about seventy percent of Americans in their
Speaker 5: poll believe they have achieved or are on their way
Speaker 5: to achieving the American Dream. But more significantly, I think
Speaker 5: they asked them, what do you think that phrase means?
Speaker 5: What do you value about life when you talk about
Speaker 5: the American Dream? And freedom of choice? In how to live?
Speaker 5: Was the number one answer, eighty three percent. I want
Speaker 5: to live the life I choose.
Speaker 2: That's pretty good definition. That's a great definition I've always
Speaker 2: gone with.
Speaker 1: If you work hard and follow the rules, you can
Speaker 1: get ahead. Now a lot of people deny that. I
Speaker 1: still believe it's true. Oh you're a fool if you
Speaker 1: deny that.
Speaker 5: I mean you are definitely part of the times you're
Speaker 5: living in. Sometimes are easier than others, sometimes are harder
Speaker 5: than others. Sometimes your skill set, which is valuable yesterday,
Speaker 5: isn't as valuable today. But what is the alternative, you know,
Speaker 5: the warm embrace of collectivism?
Speaker 2: Good lord? Yeah, anyway, having a.
Speaker 5: Good family life was also very, very high on the
Speaker 5: list at eighty percent. Only fifteen percent said becoming wealthy,
Speaker 5: whatever that means, is essential to achieving the American dream.
Speaker 2: Happy to hear that.
Speaker 5: And contrary to the narratives of declining opportunity, just twenty
Speaker 5: three percent of Americans believe they have less opportunity than
Speaker 5: their parents did. And again, this is all, you know,
Speaker 5: debatable and interesting, but they also point, and one of
Speaker 5: the main points of this article is that they saw
Speaker 5: over and over again that Americans, real Americans, not journalists,
Speaker 5: not talking heads on cable TV, really are fond of
Speaker 5: their country. To Americans, view the US as a key
Speaker 5: driver of global progress leadership. They believe this is a
Speaker 5: country of optimism and possibility.
Speaker 2: All those things are true. Don't let anybody talk you
Speaker 2: out of it. Look at the new Joe bringing the sunshine.
Speaker 2: How long will this last? Critics want to know Armstrong
Speaker 2: and Getty.
Speaker 1: Okay, so that's free Maduro, Free him now Portland protesters.
Speaker 1: But it spears to be like three people involved in this.
Speaker 1: So I don't know how widespread that was.
Speaker 5: The hilariously idiotic reaction of the left to the Maduro
Speaker 5: raid coming up next hour stay with Us, not to
Speaker 5: be missed.
Speaker 2: But that reminded me.
Speaker 1: I came across I read a ton of projections, predictions,
Speaker 1: that sort of stuff from various people, and it was hilarious.
Speaker 1: I was listening to the National Review podcast, which I
Speaker 1: really like. Super smart people, you know, as dialed into
Speaker 1: the news as you can get, way more than me
Speaker 1: and everything like that. Unfortunate for them it was released
Speaker 1: the day we went in and took Maduro. One of
Speaker 1: the questions was where will Maduro be a year from now?
Speaker 1: And four of the final I know four of the
Speaker 1: five of them said it'll still be in power. So
Speaker 1: That just shows you.
Speaker 2: How surprising this whole thing was.
Speaker 1: People who follow this stuff closely for a living thought
Speaker 1: he'd still be empower in a year.
Speaker 2: That night he got snatched up.
Speaker 1: But anyway, one of the predictions from a historian, Neil Ferguson,
Speaker 1: who I really really like his twenty twenty six forecast,
Speaker 1: more war, more anti Semitism, less unity.
Speaker 2: Wow, Oh that sounds great. Maybe keep that to yourself. Yeah, wow,
Speaker 2: Dhoe invited him to the party. That's no fun.
Speaker 1: One thing I am looking forward to in twenty six, though,
Speaker 1: is the new CBS. Have you been following their rollout
Speaker 1: of their promos and everything like that, where they're vowing
Speaker 1: all these different things they're going doing. Man, it sounds fantastic.
Speaker 1: I hope they can. I think they will live up
Speaker 1: to it. With Barry Weiss, they're in charge. That the
Speaker 1: big question is, and the nuts and bolts of it
Speaker 1: is they're gonna try to not lean one way or
Speaker 1: the other, and they're gonna try to represent, you know,
Speaker 1: a point of view in America that gets left out.
Speaker 1: I was thinking about that as I was watching the
Speaker 1: news coverage, so I saw the pulling that two thirds
Speaker 1: of Americans think this was a good thing. Well that
Speaker 1: wasn't reflected in the news coverage the Venezuela thing.
Speaker 2: Two thirds thought it was a good thing.
Speaker 1: Well, there ought to be more news stations that reflect
Speaker 1: what the bulk of people think. Not that you have
Speaker 1: to go along with the mob because the mobs oft
Speaker 1: and wrong, but it just acknowledged the fact that the
Speaker 1: mob thinks this, and if you don't think it's right,
Speaker 1: then maybe lay out some reasons why you think it's wrong.
Speaker 1: But just to assume everybody agrees with you that it's
Speaker 1: awful so annoying. Yeah, and CBS is gonna try really
Speaker 1: hard not to do that. I saw Jan Crawford, their
Speaker 1: legal correspondent. Actually, I'll bet some of these people at CBS,
Speaker 1: it seems to me that are feeling free now. They're
Speaker 1: feeling like, oh wow, I can I can be the
Speaker 1: journalist I want to be in. Jan Crawford, their legal
Speaker 1: analyst forever on CBS, seemed that way to me when
Speaker 1: she was on Face the Nation last Sunday and they
Speaker 1: were doing their year round up, and she said, one
Speaker 1: thing I would like to see is a restoration of
Speaker 1: respect for the Supreme Court. She said, there's this belief
Speaker 1: out there that the Supreme Court is a Trump court
Speaker 1: and out of Whacker and she said it's just not
Speaker 1: true statistically, and I thought, that's fantastic, And I bet
Speaker 1: she's been wanting to say this for years. But she
Speaker 1: would have just gotten killed by their viewership, well and
Speaker 1: her management and her coworker. And because there was no coverage.
Speaker 1: You know, you saw it speaking of Barry Weiss. When
Speaker 1: she dared to say stuff even kind of like that
Speaker 1: at the New York Times, the wolves came out for
Speaker 1: and hounded her. Well, the wolves hound people.
Speaker 2: That's weird. It's like an interspecies thing.
Speaker 5: Anyway, they hounded her out of the newsroom. And now
Speaker 5: that's not gonna happen. You know, Jan Crawford, I always
Speaker 5: thought of her. It's like, you know, the wink in
Speaker 5: the nod that like back in the day, a couple
Speaker 5: of gay guys might exchange her a couple of potheads
Speaker 5: or whatever, you no reference to pot and their eyes
Speaker 5: meeting all. I always got the idea Jan Crawford was
Speaker 5: like a closeted at least reasonable person, if not conservative,
Speaker 5: because occasionally she'd show signs she'd give you that wink
Speaker 5: you with.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna be interested to see if it can work,
Speaker 1: if CBS can do that and get any ratings, and
Speaker 1: you know how much pushback will it be. I've already
Speaker 1: seen a lot online about how awful CBS is and
Speaker 1: people won't watch it anymore or not, so they might
Speaker 1: ah shit at I don't know, maybe they're gonna get
Speaker 1: some of the Fox audience.
Speaker 2: Who knows.
Speaker 1: I did see a year in roundup of ratings for television,
Speaker 1: and the big networks in primetime are now averaging about
Speaker 1: four million four million people, NBCCBSABC in primetime average is
Speaker 1: about four million, and in the prime demo it's way
Speaker 1: less than that because it's mostly super old people who.
Speaker 2: Haven't figured out other channels yet.
Speaker 5: Well, unless there are a bunch of guys chuck in
Speaker 5: a football back and forth. I can't imagine watching network
Speaker 5: TV in primetime. I can't remember the last time I did.
Speaker 2: Maybe it was, like you.
Speaker 5: Know, I tuned into the Rock and Roll Hall of
Speaker 5: Fame induction there for about ten minutes like that board
Speaker 5: Henry and I got into Tracker for a while, which
Speaker 5: I think is the number one show on television, at
Speaker 5: least it was for a while last year.
Speaker 1: As a drama, and it was kind of like an
Speaker 1: old timey experience to watch a show that's on Thursday
Speaker 1: nights at eight on CBS and.
Speaker 2: There's commercials and stuff like that. Who's still doing this?
Speaker 2: Did you watch it in real time? No? DVR? Absolutely not?
Speaker 2: Who could do that?
Speaker 1: Well?
Speaker 5: I just I wondered as a father and son of
Speaker 5: having that appointment might be kind of warm and cool.
Speaker 1: And now we watched it whenever we wanted, and we
Speaker 1: Binge watched it the way good American should do it.
Speaker 2: You go back and get all the episodes. I sit corrected.
Speaker 1: Something I didn't know was going to happen. In a
Speaker 1: couple of weeks. We are going to the Moon again.
Speaker 1: Just in a couple of weeks, NASA is sending astronauts
Speaker 1: around the Moon, not on the Moon, but around the
Speaker 1: Moon for the first time in over fifty years. Watch
Speaker 1: window is just a couple of weeks away. So I
Speaker 1: gotta imagine, with modern equipment, we're going to get some
Speaker 1: stunning pictures of the Moon here in a.
Speaker 2: Couple of weeks. Excellent, excellent, and won't that change our lives?
Speaker 5: Then they land and wipe their butts with the Chinese
Speaker 5: flag and show that to Comi's what form.
Speaker 1: Maybe that's it. Maybe we're saying we're not going to
Speaker 1: land on the moon, right, but we're gonna do the
Speaker 1: old well wall. We're here land. And then do you said,
Speaker 1: take the Chinese flag and wipe themselves or or do
Speaker 1: the whole floss.
Speaker 2: Between the legs thing and ye suits with the flag
Speaker 2: it's a good option.
Speaker 5: Or you leave it in place, and just in place
Speaker 5: of the little star at the middle or whatever's on there,
Speaker 5: you put a picture.
Speaker 2: Of Winnie the Pooh. I mean, how much would that
Speaker 2: piss off?
Speaker 1: Sheesh in pag Another year in pod that reminds me
Speaker 1: another year in podcast has listening to from the Dispatch.
Speaker 1: They were talking about undercovered stories and one of the
Speaker 1: correspondents said, it's going on right now and this was
Speaker 1: at the end of the year, and I didn't follow
Speaker 1: it at all. The back and forth between the new
Speaker 1: leader of Japan and President Sia China really hot rhetoric
Speaker 1: back and forth over Taiwan that the world's completely ignoring
Speaker 1: because it's Christmas season, Trump and various other things going on,
Speaker 1: but just like could change the world forever. Sort of
Speaker 1: conversations between Japan and China, and having just been to
Speaker 1: the World War Two Museum, which laid out pretty clearly
Speaker 1: the amazingly violent history between those two countries, not to
Speaker 1: mention that if China jumps ugly with or if Japan
Speaker 1: jumps ugly with Japan, in theory, we're supposed to come
Speaker 1: to their aid or be on their side in.
Speaker 5: Theory by treaty, sacred decades old treaty.
Speaker 1: Yeah, still wonder if we would. But yeah, so that's
Speaker 1: a hot spot to keep your eye on.
Speaker 2: That's very, very exciting. Now.
Speaker 5: I know you're well acquainted with Japan's horrific history in
Speaker 5: World War Two. Do you have any sort of cognitive
Speaker 5: dissonance in picturing them as an ally against China's at
Speaker 5: at all?
Speaker 1: I don't think so. Times change, right, times change, that's
Speaker 1: a long time ago. Let bygones be bygones. Huh, those
Speaker 1: are some bygones. And I was at the World War
Speaker 1: Two Museum in a New Orleans, which I will say
Speaker 1: every time it comes up, that is absolutely worth the
Speaker 1: trip just to do that. It is the best museum
Speaker 1: I've ever been to. I don't know how many people
Speaker 1: are aware of this, but there wasn't a World War
Speaker 1: two museum in the country until not that long ago.
Speaker 1: And when Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg made Saving Private
Speaker 1: Ryan and got on a World War two kick, they
Speaker 1: were to find out there was no World War Two museum,
Speaker 1: and they got behind making sure we have one. And
Speaker 1: because they are very well connected, rich powerful people with rich,
Speaker 1: powerful friends, and that movie made such a mark on people,
Speaker 1: they raised gazillions of dollars to build this museum. And
Speaker 1: also because they're entertainers. I think it isn't like a
Speaker 1: lot of museums that seem like it was designed by
Speaker 1: your fifth grade social studies teacher with the ultimate goal
Speaker 1: of putting you to sleep or taking something interesting and
Speaker 1: turning it dull. Is made by you know, Hollywood people
Speaker 1: who understand storytelling and audio.
Speaker 2: Visual and all that sort of stuff.
Speaker 1: Oh wow, So just from an entertainment standpoint, it's so
Speaker 1: damn good.
Speaker 2: Now we'll go to New Orleans to do that.
Speaker 5: While I'm there, May I drink to blackout, vomit in
Speaker 5: the streets, and exhort strange women to show me their breasts.
Speaker 5: While I'm there, there saw a lot of really drunk people. Oh,
Speaker 5: I got to tell this story before we take a break.
Speaker 5: This is my favorite drunk guy story. And I have
Speaker 5: been around a lot of drunk people in my life.
Speaker 5: I mean, I have spent my time with drug people.
Speaker 5: I've got the street cred for that, no doubt. But
Speaker 5: I had never seen this before.
Speaker 1: So my oldest son and I are in this bar
Speaker 1: restaurant watching a band.
Speaker 2: Music was so great everywhere, very freaking cool.
Speaker 1: I mean, it reminded me like when you go to
Speaker 1: Nashville and if you were a kind of wanna be
Speaker 1: musician like I am, it makes you want to cut
Speaker 1: off your hands and burn your instruments.
Speaker 2: Yes, says your instruments. Yes.
Speaker 1: At least everybody you come across is like stunningly good.
Speaker 2: Everybody.
Speaker 1: Trombone players were like what I mean, just.
Speaker 2: All over the place.
Speaker 5: Well, and what if what if you were that good
Speaker 5: and got to New Orleans or Nashville and realized, oh
Speaker 5: my god, there's seven hundred names me within three square blocks.
Speaker 1: Right, Hey, there's another guy in the corner plays just
Speaker 1: as good as you with all the hat out in
Speaker 1: front of it. Anyway, So I go into the restroom
Speaker 1: and we're standing at the urnals.
Speaker 2: Ladies, I don't know if you know how urinals work.
Speaker 1: We got a bathroom system in there where it's just
Speaker 1: it's up against the wall and you get to stand
Speaker 1: there and the wall is right there in front of you,
Speaker 1: which has never really been a problem for me. But
Speaker 1: there is this drunk guy in the stall next to me,
Speaker 1: and he kept he was going to unzip his pants
Speaker 1: to do his thing, and he kept bending forward and
Speaker 1: hitting his.
Speaker 2: Head on the wall.
Speaker 1: Oh no, he'd he hit his head and the I
Speaker 1: was like, damn it, ah, and then he and then
Speaker 1: he goes back to doing his pants and he bends
Speaker 1: over hit his head again. Dam I mean, he was cussing,
Speaker 1: and I wish I shouldn't do this on the podcast
Speaker 1: so I could use the word because it was so
Speaker 1: flipping funny. And he did it no less than six times.
Speaker 1: Were you his head on the matter? It was cement, yes,
Speaker 1: And he was so mad and he had the anger
Speaker 1: of like somebody was doing it to him. He just
Speaker 1: didn't understand where these blows to the head were coming from.
Speaker 2: Right, solve it, sove it.
Speaker 1: I wanted to tell him, dude, you gotta quit bending over.
Speaker 1: There's a wall here, and he ghosts it. Look, it's fine.
Speaker 1: I want it's fine, it's fine.
Speaker 5: I feel like this is going to continue until you
Speaker 5: become aware of the fact, until you've got a brain bleed, going,
Speaker 5: oh my god, he was hammered. It wasn't that late.
Speaker 1: I wonder how his day turned out. I should have
Speaker 1: followed him around. I'm not sure, but there are a
Speaker 1: lot of people like that in New Orleans. That whole
Speaker 1: bourbon street scene. That was not my thing, even when
Speaker 1: I was in my twenties. Just that that thing, just
Speaker 1: you know whatever, cheap, crappy drinks and loudness.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, I agree. Is that for people who don't
Speaker 5: drink much? I don't just want to take it completely
Speaker 5: wildly over the top and then go back to their
Speaker 5: fairly sober lives or what.
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 1: I was there for We were walking down there on
Speaker 1: New Year's Eve and I was looking around thinking, how
Speaker 1: is this entertaining for anyone?
Speaker 2: We were walking back to our hotel.
Speaker 5: Yeah, as a drunk. I've always said, I know I
Speaker 5: was a drunk and that was not my scene. I
Speaker 5: want to tell him.
Speaker 1: You know, if you go like three blocks over that way,
Speaker 1: there are bars with amazing music in it, and uh
Speaker 1: and you know, really cool things happening, but or or
Speaker 1: you can stand here with a bunch of twenty somethings
Speaker 1: and get out of your mind on really crappy, cheap
Speaker 1: plastic cup drinks so you throw up and fall over.
Speaker 2: Man.
Speaker 1: The police presence though, the security, I don't get that.
Speaker 2: I haven't come across.
Speaker 1: I want to have that conversation at some point, because
Speaker 1: I just think it's such a waste of tax payer money.
Speaker 1: There were squad cars with lights on evere hundred feet
Speaker 1: throughout the city, National Guard all over the place, cops
Speaker 1: and horses.
Speaker 2: And what does everybody say to me? What did everybody
Speaker 2: say to me? Every single person?
Speaker 1: Well, because of the terrorist attack last year, and what
Speaker 1: and so you think there's going to be this wouldn't
Speaker 1: again this year. That has never happened, Not one time
Speaker 1: has that ever happened.
Speaker 5: Yeah, that's never happened. It's not the way it works.
Speaker 1: I've you after nine to eleven, I've never seen security
Speaker 1: like they had in New Orleans on New Year's Eve
Speaker 1: because of the terrorist attack last.
Speaker 2: Year, which makes no sense whatsoever.
Speaker 1: I mean, you couldn't walk ten feet without a guy
Speaker 1: with like a full on military rifle. Wow, And what
Speaker 1: do we pay for that. Anyhow, that's a different topic.
Speaker 1: We got a lot more news to get to the
Speaker 1: to our mind, ridiculous reaction of the left to taking Maduro,
Speaker 1: I don't know what their argument is.
Speaker 2: Among other things. On the way, stay here, Armstrong, Hey, Billy.
Speaker 7: Joel surprising fans who came to see a Billy Joel
Speaker 7: tribute band South Florida.
Speaker 2: The piano man himself joined the.
Speaker 7: Group for his first performance since he revealed his brain
Speaker 7: disorder diagnosis last year. Joel sank two of his hits,
Speaker 7: we didn't Start the Fire and Big Shot.
Speaker 1: Good for Billy. Interesting choice was that we didn't start
Speaker 1: the fire? Was that just to show that his brains
Speaker 1: still work? Because the lyrics would be hard to remember?
Speaker 1: On that say, he forgot a couple of them, and
Speaker 1: this singer of the tribute band helped him out.
Speaker 5: But yeah, what he must have been, you know, in
Speaker 5: the town and saw Billy Joel tribute.
Speaker 2: I gotta check that out. That'd be hilarious.
Speaker 1: How crazy would you go if you want to a
Speaker 1: tribute band in the actual act?
Speaker 2: Walked out?
Speaker 5: Oh yeah, yeah, nuts, So hey, I at least want
Speaker 5: to start this. I'll bet you did not hear about
Speaker 5: this over the last couple of weeks.
Speaker 2: I would not have.
Speaker 5: Unless I was alerted to it by our good friend
Speaker 5: Tim Sanderfer of the Goldwater Institute. There was an enormously
Speaker 5: important like Super Bowl of liberty win at the Eighth
Speaker 5: Circuit Court of Appeals. They ruled in favor of a
Speaker 5: group of school employees who argued that their free speech
Speaker 5: rights were violated when they were forced to endure a
Speaker 5: DEI training session that declared the usual stuff calling the
Speaker 5: police on black people and treating kids of color as adults,
Speaker 5: or forms of white supremacy, blah blah blah. Goldwater Institute
Speaker 5: filed a Friends of the Court brief, Friend of the
Speaker 5: Court brief.
Speaker 2: It's a typical story.
Speaker 5: And a lot of you sounds familiar to school officials
Speaker 5: in Springfield, Missouri, ordered employees to attend meetings where they
Speaker 5: are taught you know your DEI crap that America's legal, economic, social,
Speaker 5: and cultural institutions were saturated with quote covert white supremacy
Speaker 5: manifested in everything from claiming reverse racism to color blindness.
Speaker 5: White people are inherently privileged. They're morally obligated not only
Speaker 5: to acknowledge your privilege, but to renounce that privilege and
Speaker 5: to shut up and not talk if black people are
Speaker 5: in the room or whatever. Told their views were confused
Speaker 5: and wrong, not allowed to object. They were told their
Speaker 5: disagreement was having a conversation about football and bringing up baseball,
Speaker 5: whatever that means. But they're forced to shut up, stay silent.
Speaker 5: And then they were all given a test and if
Speaker 5: you did not have the correct answers, it would damage
Speaker 5: your employment. Now, the trial judge in the original case
Speaker 5: threw it out, said it was trivial.
Speaker 2: Can you thing imagine that?
Speaker 3: Wow?
Speaker 5: I abhorror political violence. But the things I would like
Speaker 5: to do to that trial judge, well, I'd like to
Speaker 5: give him a stern talking to. But anyway, the Eighth
Speaker 5: Supreme I'm sorry, the Eighth Circuit Court said no, that's
Speaker 5: wildly unconstitutional. Not only is it compelled speech, but it's
Speaker 5: the government telling people what to think and that they
Speaker 5: have to think it or the government will punish them
Speaker 5: as school employees. And so they absolutely hammered, hammered that law.
Speaker 5: This could echo throughout the land.
Speaker 3: Folks, this is a gigantic This is a Gettysburg size
Speaker 3: victory for liberty, and it passed mostly unnoticed because I
Speaker 3: think a lot of your media outlets are a little
Speaker 3: uncomfortable reporting it.
Speaker 1: Plus, it happened during that period where we just don't
Speaker 1: pay attention to hardly anything true enough, which is kind
Speaker 1: of weird to decide there's a couple weeks during the
Speaker 1: air no matter how big the story is, we're.
Speaker 5: Just going to ignore it. Well, I enjoyed the hell
Speaker 5: out of it, so I get why it happens. But yeah,
Speaker 5: I think it'd breakthrough somehow.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 5: Yeah, but again, this was absolutely covered up.
Speaker 2: This is huge.
Speaker 1: The reverse of that is so for a couple of
Speaker 1: weeks we'll ignore giant stories. Then you go back to
Speaker 1: the world where you cover stupid crap that means nothing
Speaker 1: as if it's a giant story, right, you know.
Speaker 2: It's funny.
Speaker 5: I wish they were popping into my mind right now
Speaker 5: because I thought of a couple of them over the break.
Speaker 2: Hey, anybody bring up X to you during vacation.
Speaker 5: No they didn't, And everybody was yelling at each other
Speaker 5: for a week about it, like a month ago, right, Yeah,
Speaker 5: Armstrong and Getty