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: Magnorma stake America, You're a great American. Again, the buck
Speaker 1: Sexton Show begins. Analyst, remember the d This is the
Speaker 1: Buck Sexton Show, and this is Ben Weinegarden in four
Speaker 1: Buck Sexton here on a snowy night in Manhattan. A
Speaker 1: four four nine zero zero Buck. That's eight four nine
Speaker 1: zero zero two eight two five. Again, this is Ben Weinegarden,
Speaker 1: pinch hitting for Buck. And even though it is spring training,
Speaker 1: I have to admit that that analogy sort of pains
Speaker 1: me as a Mets fan after what occurred yesterday, which
Speaker 1: we want to talk about a thirteen year, three hundred
Speaker 1: and thirty million dollar deal in our division. Well, Ben,
Speaker 1: you do know that I'm a huge Phillies fan. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: I didn't want to get into it before this, and
Speaker 1: now I expect the show to be sabotage. So this
Speaker 1: should be an interesting few hours here live from New York.
Speaker 1: As I mentioned, this is Ben Winegarden. If you haven't
Speaker 1: heard me before, I'm a senior contributor at The Federalist,
Speaker 1: a senior fellow at the London Center for Policy Research,
Speaker 1: and you can follow me on Twitter at bh wine Garden,
Speaker 1: where I do talk about baseball at night. During the
Speaker 1: day it's all business. Most of the baseball tweets have
Speaker 1: been as neurotic and upset as you might expect as
Speaker 1: a New York Mets fan blowing our window, blowing our window.
Speaker 1: All right, if you're not a baseball fan, I will
Speaker 1: spare you with my sorrow here as the guys behind
Speaker 1: the glass laugh at my dismay. I want to open
Speaker 1: tonight first by thanking Buck because he does a vital
Speaker 1: job here, and that is to articulate the values and
Speaker 1: principles that we all share and then are not well represented.
Speaker 1: And you know they're not well represented when you see
Speaker 1: what the loyal adversary, the Democratic Party does on a
Speaker 1: daily basis. And we're going to start tonight by talking
Speaker 1: about Democrats, and we're gonna close by talking about Republicans
Speaker 1: and conservatism and what the future holds. So this week,
Speaker 1: of course, the big story was Cohen Kabuki theater. Michael Cohen,
Speaker 1: the least credible person, a person who perjured himself in
Speaker 1: front of Congress. Now the red carpet is rolled out
Speaker 1: for him in Congress, of course, you know, just happening
Speaker 1: to coincide with the highest level nuclear negotiations with the
Speaker 1: North Koreans that you could possibly have. By the way,
Speaker 1: there were some other big stories as well. Robert Whiteheiser
Speaker 1: was on Capitol Hill and he dropped some important information
Speaker 1: about the Chinese trade deal that there would actually be
Speaker 1: an enforcement mechanism, and there was news but the fact
Speaker 1: that incremental tariffs would not be levied on the Chinese
Speaker 1: as part of ongoing negotiations. We have the collapse of
Speaker 1: a socialist regime happening in our own hemisphere. We have
Speaker 1: India Pakistan squabbles which are highly dangerous and potentially threatened
Speaker 1: many US national interests in that part of the world.
Speaker 1: But the media focus was on the least credible person
Speaker 1: you could possibly have. That was the media's focus. Oh
Speaker 1: and by the way, he was coached, it seems or
Speaker 1: at least had communications with dubious representative Adam Schiff. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: and speaking of Russia, by the way, this week it
Speaker 1: was revealed the Trump administration engaged in a cyber attack
Speaker 1: to completely take offline a Russian troll farm that was
Speaker 1: attempting another shoddy effort to post some garbage and influenced
Speaker 1: quote unquote the twenty eighteen midterm election worst collusion ever,
Speaker 1: worst collusion ever, folks. Where Michael Cohen is important is
Speaker 1: not because of anything Michael Cohen said, although what he
Speaker 1: did show is that there is no collusion, once again
Speaker 1: for the million of time, after two committees showed it,
Speaker 1: after all the weeks from the Muller Special Council showed it.
Speaker 1: Not that Cohen has any credibility, but at this point
Speaker 1: he has nothing to lose. He's going to jail. Essentially,
Speaker 1: no collusion, not one iota. This person who is so
Speaker 1: close to the president, this person who could read his
Speaker 1: mind based upon his testimony, Cohen isn't what's important. What
Speaker 1: Cohen represents is important, and that is that he is
Speaker 1: a precursor to what's coming for the next two years
Speaker 1: of every of endless coverage of every last iota of
Speaker 1: Donald Trump's life being investigated by his worst enemies. So
Speaker 1: Axios's lead article this morning, which is sort of a
Speaker 1: good proxy for where the left establishment sees the world going,
Speaker 1: they write, whether or not Mueller is sitting on a
Speaker 1: grand finale, Democrats are picking up the Baton with a
Speaker 1: vast probe that already involves a half dozen committees. That's
Speaker 1: great use of taxpayered dollars and will include public hearings
Speaker 1: starring reluctant witnesses. So who are these witnesses they want?
Speaker 1: The Democrats want to call Trump family members with subpoenas
Speaker 1: if necessary. The investigation will touch Trump's businesses, his foundation,
Speaker 1: because after all, his businesses and his foundation are so
Speaker 1: relevant into his presidency right now, and then they want
Speaker 1: to talk about his presidency. Oh and it could extend
Speaker 1: to twenty twenty. Top Democrats tell axios by coincidence. Besides Russia,
Speaker 1: topics include conflicts of interest, money laundering, and Jared Kushner's
Speaker 1: security clearance and other White House clearances. Rep. Jamie Raskin,
Speaker 1: a Democrat from Maryland who's on the House Oversight Committee,
Speaker 1: says that the committee is zeroing in on the Moscow project. Yes,
Speaker 1: the famous Moscow building project which never got off the ground,
Speaker 1: where there were never any high level conversations which had
Speaker 1: no impact whatsoever on anything relating to this presidency, the
Speaker 1: Russia connection and the influence of oh other foreign actors
Speaker 1: like Saudi Arabia. They've teased that for a while that
Speaker 1: they're going to look at basically every foreign connection because
Speaker 1: after all, we found so much collusion already, Am I
Speaker 1: wrong again? So many of these actions actually occurred before
Speaker 1: the presidency, so they're really irrelevant in context of anything
Speaker 1: resembling impeachment, which is what they ultimately want to get to.
Speaker 1: So and let's continue a little bit down that road.
Speaker 1: I'll quote here from a Wall Street Journal article titled
Speaker 1: House Committee's planned to interview Trump organizations, CFO and others.
Speaker 1: Congressional investigators don't want to cross wires with mister Muller's
Speaker 1: probe into Russian interference in the twenty sixteen presidential election,
Speaker 1: which is expected to end soon, among other matters. Mister
Speaker 1: Muller's investigative, mister Trump, are members of the campaign concluded
Speaker 1: with the Russians? And if the President has obstructed the
Speaker 1: progress of the inquiry by firing a subordinate By the way,
Speaker 1: they didn't put that in the article, but that's the reality.
Speaker 1: Firing a subordinate somehow, obstruction potentially declassifying documents somehow an
Speaker 1: impeachable offense. The article continues, mister Trump has repeatedly denied
Speaker 1: wrongdoing and call the investigation of which hunt. Some Democrats
Speaker 1: are concerned that not all of the findings from those
Speaker 1: investigations will become public. By the way, if there is
Speaker 1: no indictment, then it should not become public. You're supposed
Speaker 1: to protect the innocent. Justice Department policy prevents the indictment
Speaker 1: of a sitting president, most legal experts say, and Democrats
Speaker 1: fear that evidence against that it may not be released
Speaker 1: if it isn't in an indictment. I thought this was
Speaker 1: supposed to be the party of criminal justice, but apparently
Speaker 1: not so. Then there's a quote from Representative Raja Krishna Morti,
Speaker 1: from a Democrat from Illinois and a member of the
Speaker 1: House Oversight and House Intelligence Committee quote, we should just
Speaker 1: assume the worst and that we're never going to find
Speaker 1: out what any of these investigations reveal if they don't
Speaker 1: lead to an indictment. That's the worst. We're talking about
Speaker 1: a member of the House of Representative, someone who is
Speaker 1: supposed to at least feign interest in justice. And what
Speaker 1: is he saying. He's saying we have to assume the worst. Ie,
Speaker 1: We're not going to get information that we can use
Speaker 1: to attack a president if it isn't used to indict someone.
Speaker 1: That's the worst, you know, if they want everything that
Speaker 1: Mueller did exposed. Congressman noonez today during SEPAK said something interesting.
Speaker 1: He said, and I agree with him. If this is
Speaker 1: going to happen, if we're really going to go down
Speaker 1: this road, Let's see every communication of the Mueller Special Council.
Speaker 1: Let's see every last shred of evidence. Let's see it all.
Speaker 1: Let's see all the personnel. Let's see the background checks
Speaker 1: that were done into the personnel who comprised the special counsel.
Speaker 1: Let's have it all hashed out, and then let's declassify
Speaker 1: every last document associated with any investigation or President Trump.
Speaker 1: I don't think the investigators want us to look at
Speaker 1: the information that they use for their investigations. I want
Speaker 1: to go back and take a trip down memory land
Speaker 1: with a quip here. And I'm not going to tell
Speaker 1: you when this clip occurred or who said it, but
Speaker 1: let's roll clip one. The effective impeachment is to overturn
Speaker 1: the popular will of the voters. We must not overturn
Speaker 1: an election and remove a president from office except to
Speaker 1: defend our system of government or our constitutional liberties against
Speaker 1: the dire threat. And we must not do so without
Speaker 1: an overwhelming consensus of the American people. There must never
Speaker 1: be a narrowly voted impeachment, or an impeachment supported by
Speaker 1: one of our major political parties and opposed by the other.
Speaker 1: Such an impeachment will produce the divisiveness and bitterness in
Speaker 1: our politics for years to come, and we'll call into
Speaker 1: question the very legitimacy of our political institutions. You may
Speaker 1: have the votes, you may have the muscle, but you
Speaker 1: do not have the legitimacy of a national consensus or
Speaker 1: of a constitutional imperative. This partisan coupe data will go
Speaker 1: down in infamy in the history of this nation. I'll
Speaker 1: give you a second to write down on a piece
Speaker 1: of paper who you think it was that made those
Speaker 1: comments and when those comments were made. All right, are
Speaker 1: you listening? That was Gerald Nadwer in nineteen ninety eight.
Speaker 1: You might remember Gerald Nadwer, Democrat from New York. He's
Speaker 1: still in the House today. Back then and today he
Speaker 1: would be the person, as the chair of the House
Speaker 1: Judiciary Committee who would oversee impeachment proceedings. Back then, he
Speaker 1: was defending Bill Quinton against impeachment. Isn't it amazing how
Speaker 1: that exact argument could be applied today, but you will
Speaker 1: never see the left apply because it doesn't suit them,
Speaker 1: it doesn't support their political interests, because they aren't actually principled.
Speaker 1: But you know what impeachment itself is actually besides the point. Yes,
Speaker 1: Democrats would love to impeach and remove if they could,
Speaker 1: they're not going to be able to get to the removal.
Speaker 1: And frankly, they recognize some of them, at least the
Speaker 1: more sober ones, the old guard, if you will, and
Speaker 1: we'll talk about the old Guard versus the Young Turks
Speaker 1: a bit later. The old Guard recognizes that impeachment is
Speaker 1: a weapon that can lead to self destruction. They saw
Speaker 1: the Republicans do it, and with some of the folks,
Speaker 1: the more progressive folks in the Democratic House right now,
Speaker 1: they could be in big trouble if they actually go
Speaker 1: down that path. But impeachment, again is besides the point.
Speaker 1: It's not about that act. The goal of these investigations
Speaker 1: is to continue to create the appearance of smoke, but
Speaker 1: there's never any fire. There has never been a smoking gun.
Speaker 1: There is no fire. You've had people who loathe the
Speaker 1: president take unpressed in an action to look into communications
Speaker 1: private documents, take away boxes and boxes full of the
Speaker 1: most private communicators with lawyers of the president and others.
Speaker 1: There's no there there, But the momentum is such that
Speaker 1: they can't stop. They have to feed their base, and
Speaker 1: they are wedded to this narrative. And so again, it's
Speaker 1: about creating the appearance of smoke for as long as possible,
Speaker 1: and that's going to mean into twenty twenty and through
Speaker 1: the election. Clearly. Now the question is does that actually
Speaker 1: move the needle with you, the American people, And I
Speaker 1: would suggest that it won't. Those who believe this is
Speaker 1: essentially a hoax, we're gonna believe it's a hoax. Those
Speaker 1: who are on the other side and believe it's a
Speaker 1: Russian spy, they're gonna believe what they're gonna believe. The
Speaker 1: people in the middle, those old Reagan Democrats turned Trump Republicans,
Speaker 1: I don't think that this is gonna play well with them.
Speaker 1: I really don't. But that said, you can bet the
Speaker 1: House committees are going to leave no stone unturned because
Speaker 1: they need to create a constant hysteria. This isn't about oversight.
Speaker 1: This is a political conviction in search of the appearance
Speaker 1: at least of crimes. It's an investigation in search of
Speaker 1: a crime, and in a worst case scenario for the investigators,
Speaker 1: the process itself is the punishment. The process is the punishment.
Speaker 1: The whole purpose of this, this whole effort that started
Speaker 1: well before Donald Trump was elected president and we're talking
Speaker 1: June and maybe even earlier in twenty sixteen, the whole
Speaker 1: purpose was to sabotage and paralyze a presidency. And that's
Speaker 1: why we have four years of quote unquote investigation. This
Speaker 1: is Ben Winegarden in four buck Sexton. Lines are open.
Speaker 1: Eight four four nine zero zero buck. That's eight four
Speaker 1: four two eight two five. Will be right back. Welcome
Speaker 1: back to the buck Sexton Show. This is Ben Weinarten
Speaker 1: in four buck Sexton. Thanks for joining us on this
Speaker 1: Friday night. Eight four four nine zero zero buck. That's
Speaker 1: eight four four nine zero zero two eight two five.
Speaker 1: Before the break, I was talking about process as punishment
Speaker 1: when it comes to all of the investigations, first in
Speaker 1: both the Senate and House Intelligence committees, the Molar Special
Speaker 1: Council investigations that preceded them. I want to kind of
Speaker 1: summarize what has transpired because I continue to believe that
Speaker 1: this is probably the biggest scandal in American history, and
Speaker 1: only a small fraction of so called journalists are the
Speaker 1: ones covering this. And that's a travesty. It's a travesty
Speaker 1: not because we care about media, but because we care
Speaker 1: about truth. And thank god we have the Internet. We
Speaker 1: would not have an informed citizenry without the ability of
Speaker 1: anyone potentially to be a journalist. So the intent, first
Speaker 1: of all, when it comes to every step back, when
Speaker 1: you know, when the President talks about while Jim Comey
Speaker 1: assured him he's not a target, the president was always
Speaker 1: the target from probably even before or investigations or dossiers
Speaker 1: or anything else started. We're talking in earlier in twenty sixteen,
Speaker 1: when he was popular and it actually looked like, wow,
Speaker 1: this guy is going to be competitive. So the first
Speaker 1: attempt was, let's destroy him during the press in the
Speaker 1: run up to in the elections in the primary season
Speaker 1: even but then as it advanced, let's start investigations as
Speaker 1: an insurance policy, you know, just in case the point
Speaker 1: zero zero one percent chance this guy actually triumphs over
Speaker 1: Hillary Clinton, then what's spy on his associates? And let's
Speaker 1: use informants to try and entrap them in Russian collusion
Speaker 1: premised on a selacious and unverified dossier paid for by
Speaker 1: Hillary in the DNC and collected from shady Russian sources.
Speaker 1: That's an interesting way to try to and affect frame
Speaker 1: someone that's very It doesn't get any more Clintonian, really,
Speaker 1: it really doesn't get any more Quintonian than that. So
Speaker 1: he gets elected before he's even elected. There are approaches,
Speaker 1: there's recordings of conversations, and does the intent of this
Speaker 1: to take out two people who were vital to the president?
Speaker 1: Number one, the Attorney General Jeff Sessions has to recuse
Speaker 1: himself because of Russia from the very start. So, in
Speaker 1: other words, the law enforcement bodies, FBI, Department of Justice,
Speaker 1: the person at the top who might be able to
Speaker 1: control them, taken off the board. The national security advisor,
Speaker 1: who actually agrees with overturning what the foreign policy and
Speaker 1: national security establishment have done for decades, taken off the board.
Speaker 1: So two vital cogs pulled out immediately, taken off the
Speaker 1: playing field. Later on, as they're continuing these investigations, they
Speaker 1: use a firing letter that's drafted by one of their own,
Speaker 1: dag Rosenstein, to try to create a case of obstruction.
Speaker 1: See Rosenstein wrote the letter on behalf of the President.
Speaker 1: The President fires Jim Comey. But isn't that interesting? It
Speaker 1: was sort of a trap in some way. It's kind
Speaker 1: of it'd be interesting to actually it will. Of course,
Speaker 1: Congress can interview Rosens because he's running out the clock.
Speaker 1: He's talking to favorable media offline, getting them to write
Speaker 1: favorable things about him in a war that he is
Speaker 1: having with McCabe. But Congress doesn't get to have any
Speaker 1: oversight over something that really matters Dad Rosenstein. All of
Speaker 1: this is happening while Congress is throwing the president's agenda,
Speaker 1: and that's on a bipartisan basis. Courts are holding up
Speaker 1: policies under assinine universal injunctions. And then you have a
Speaker 1: molar Special Council which is not only squeezing anyone close
Speaker 1: to Trump but toxifying anyone around him, trying to get
Speaker 1: them to cough up something anything that will stick. So
Speaker 1: that's part of it. But then the other purposes to
Speaker 1: cover up the needed investigation of the investigators. How do
Speaker 1: you have a team and not just their political inclinations
Speaker 1: of the fact that they were all pretty much pro
Speaker 1: Hillary people, but how do you have people who are
Speaker 1: the establishment of the establishment as the ones who are
Speaker 1: supposed to be independent. If you are a part of
Speaker 1: the deep state, quote unquote, you can't be dependent. If
Speaker 1: your career was made, if you spent decades in these bureaucracies,
Speaker 1: in these institutions, your independent special counsel in name only.
Speaker 1: Many of the folks involved with wrongdoing which was never
Speaker 1: investigated the investigators probably very closely. No Robert Mueller. They
Speaker 1: might have gotten promotions from him at certain points during
Speaker 1: their career. He was the FBI director. How can it
Speaker 1: possibly be independent? Oh yeah. And then in the middle
Speaker 1: of all this we find out about you know, perspective
Speaker 1: Kuda taz twenty fifth Amendment, literally deposing a president that
Speaker 1: is the stuff of police states. So who are the
Speaker 1: ones destroying the institutions? Who were the ones acting in
Speaker 1: true Russian if not Soviet fashion. You know, Vladimir Putin
Speaker 1: is probably smirking about this whole thing. I have to say,
Speaker 1: And what is going on in Congress right now is
Speaker 1: merely the extension of one big, never ending effort to
Speaker 1: create the appearance of illegitimacy of crime. Tis said, even
Speaker 1: if President Trump isn't taken out by Congress, the voters
Speaker 1: will do their bidding, or very worst, he'll be a
Speaker 1: president not even able to stand on one leg, but
Speaker 1: maybe standing on a pinky toe. You know, the gravest
Speaker 1: national emergency of all has been the rolling effort to
Speaker 1: fram the president as a national emergency that requires regime change,
Speaker 1: or maybe there never was truly a regime change in practice,
Speaker 1: the first peaceful non transfer of power in American history.
Speaker 1: This has been one garden in for Buck Sexton on
Speaker 1: The Buck Sexton Show eight four four nine zero zero
Speaker 1: Buck A four four zero two eight two five. Why
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Speaker 1: Better for America. This is the Buck Sexton Show, and
Speaker 1: this is Ben Weinegarden in for Buck Sexton. Phone lines
Speaker 1: are open eight four four nine zero zero. Buck. That's
Speaker 1: eight four four nine zero zero to eight two five,
Speaker 1: and let's go to the phones, and let's go to
Speaker 1: first to Charlie in Maryland earlier on the Box Sex
Speaker 1: and Show. This is Ben Weingarten. Hey, thanks for thaying McCall. Ben.
Speaker 1: I've been following this Mueller thing for some time now,
Speaker 1: and I am mad at the politicians for only one reason.
Speaker 1: They don't run this country. The bureaucrats run it, and
Speaker 1: they are openly about it. They are committing treason against
Speaker 1: this president and nobody is really saying much. I just
Speaker 1: find it absolutely amazing that we let just go. Charlie,
Speaker 1: thank you so much for the call and you know,
Speaker 1: I agree with you. This really comes down to the
Speaker 1: administrative state. At the end of the day, regimes change,
Speaker 1: our administrations change, control of the House, control of the
Speaker 1: Senate fluctuates, but the bureaucrats are forever. They are always there,
Speaker 1: and many of them are almost possible to fire. In fact,
Speaker 1: if you actually look at the government's internal ratings of
Speaker 1: government employees, everyone gets like an A plus plus. It's
Speaker 1: almost impossible to get downgraded. Probably the more corrupt or
Speaker 1: political acts that you make, you probably rank higher sad
Speaker 1: way in many agencies. And this has been reported and documented,
Speaker 1: though obviously not bandied about frequently by the political class.
Speaker 1: Not to say, of course that there aren't rank and
Speaker 1: file folks who do a great job. But if you're
Speaker 1: in a political bureaucracy and you are not political, it's
Speaker 1: very tough to rise in advance. That's why someone like
Speaker 1: a Mike Flint, incidentally, was so amazing that he rose
Speaker 1: to the position as the head of the DA under
Speaker 1: President Obama. Amazing that he ended up at that point,
Speaker 1: given how impolitic he was. But it really does come
Speaker 1: down to the bureaucracy, the administrative state, and incidentally, Congress,
Speaker 1: Congress has seeded power to these agencies. These agencies technically
Speaker 1: fall under the executive branch, but it's clear they are
Speaker 1: a fourth branch of government. I wrote a lengthy piece
Speaker 1: about this actually, and I just tweeted it out where
Speaker 1: I talk about the fact that we have created a
Speaker 1: fourth branch of government that is unelected, unaccountable, and it
Speaker 1: molds the powers of all three branches. So actually, if
Speaker 1: you look at how a federal agency works, literally, federal
Speaker 1: agencies play judge, jury, prosecutor executioner. So if you are
Speaker 1: involved in some sort of legal action when it comes
Speaker 1: to an agency, you have a business, Your business is
Speaker 1: regulated by an agency. You flatter regulation. You want to
Speaker 1: litigate against that agency, you have to go in front
Speaker 1: of an administrative judge. So it's a government judge. You
Speaker 1: couldn't have a more rigged playing field. There's a great quote.
Speaker 1: I urge you to look it up. Look up Gary Lawson.
Speaker 1: He's a law professor who's written about the administrative state
Speaker 1: and shows you that the administrative state is tyranny. If
Speaker 1: you have all three branches of government in one subset
Speaker 1: action of the executive branch, that's tyranny. The whole purpose
Speaker 1: of separation of powers was that you didn't have executive, legislative,
Speaker 1: and judicial functions all under one roof. That's why this
Speaker 1: is much bigger than any one particular president. It's much
Speaker 1: bigger than these last two years and maybe the six
Speaker 1: years succumb It's fundamentally about who rules. We the people rule,
Speaker 1: or de bureaucrats rule. Congress has ceded its power to
Speaker 1: these agencies. They've delegated their own powers away. Sham on
Speaker 1: Congress for doing it. And it also allows Congress to
Speaker 1: never take responsibility for anything. And we wonder why does
Speaker 1: every pivotal decision end up at the Supreme Court. Well,
Speaker 1: it's because Congress is completely derelict in its duty. It's
Speaker 1: out to lunch. There's no courage among Congress to actually
Speaker 1: do its job, which is to legislate. One other quote
Speaker 1: that I would urge you to look up and i'll
Speaker 1: paraphrase it here is from Harry Truman. Harry Truman talks
Speaker 1: about the fact and again here we're talking now seventy
Speaker 1: years ago, almost sixty seventy years ago, Harry Truman talked
Speaker 1: about the fact he thought he had power as president
Speaker 1: until he met the bureaucrats. He says something like, except
Speaker 1: for those damn bureaucrats, they run the show. That's a president.
Speaker 1: So imagine, now you know, we're almost seventy years on
Speaker 1: from Truman, how much more entrenched and powerful government is,
Speaker 1: which is already so big and already has literally stacks.
Speaker 1: If you look at the Federal Register, we're talking hundreds
Speaker 1: of thousands of pages. And then when you look at
Speaker 1: the rules and the regulations, which is really where laws
Speaker 1: are written, it's not written by a congresshman. A congressman says,
Speaker 1: here's sort of the broad policy, and it might be
Speaker 1: a thousand or three thousand page bill, but then every
Speaker 1: single part of that bill, all of the rules and
Speaker 1: regulations are then delegated out to these agencies. So the
Speaker 1: real laws come down to a bureaucrat. And by the way,
Speaker 1: if you're one of those bureaucrats and you want to
Speaker 1: go to the private sector, you might you might yourself
Speaker 1: take it upon yourself to draft the rules. That they're
Speaker 1: really complicated and only you, as a regulator, know how
Speaker 1: to interpret them. So what do you do. You go
Speaker 1: work then in the industry that you were regulating, and
Speaker 1: what do you do there? You consult on the most
Speaker 1: complex regulations ever that you yourself drafted because you're the
Speaker 1: only one who can help that company avoid getting in
Speaker 1: trouble with a particular agency. And you make x times
Speaker 1: as much as you made while you were working in
Speaker 1: the public sector. So it's a really perverse incentive system,
Speaker 1: and it's a perversion of limited government consent of the governed.
Speaker 1: They run the show, You don't run the show. All right,
Speaker 1: let's go to another call. Let's go to Bill in
Speaker 1: West Virginia. Bill, you are on the Buck Sexton Show.
Speaker 1: Thanks for taking McCall. Hey, I believe in fighting fire
Speaker 1: with fireing at and they've been hounding Trump with over
Speaker 1: the twenty sixteen East election and he's had no, no
Speaker 1: proven collusion and buy him with the Russians in it.
Speaker 1: I think the twenty eighteen election should be investigated because
Speaker 1: the Democrats seem to want to keep the border open,
Speaker 1: and Trump and Republicans should call for an investigation of
Speaker 1: the Democrats and in any possible collusion that they're using
Speaker 1: to aid the Mexican drug cartels by wanting to keep
Speaker 1: the borders open. Thanks for the call, Bell, And you
Speaker 1: know it's interesting they never want to talk about foreign
Speaker 1: influence when the foreign influence might actually help democrats. But
Speaker 1: let's look at the facts. I've talked about this on
Speaker 1: a prior episode where we went really deep into the
Speaker 1: weeds on the census citizenship question. What's that all about. Well,
Speaker 1: non citizens, including illegal aliens, get counted in the census.
Speaker 1: The census, the population numbers count everyone citizens and non citizens.
Speaker 1: So that includes the you know, the kind of range
Speaker 1: of ten to twenty million illegal aliens or maybe more
Speaker 1: in America as households are counted in the census. And
Speaker 1: what are those census numbers used for? Total population is
Speaker 1: used to determine the apportionment of seats in Congress and
Speaker 1: local seats as well. In other words, those places that
Speaker 1: have more illegal aliens, they get more political power than
Speaker 1: those places that don't have a lot of illegal aliens.
Speaker 1: And naturally, the places that are magnets for illegal aliens, well,
Speaker 1: of course they're naturally blue places, sanctuary jurisdictions. And then
Speaker 1: hundreds of billions of dollars of federal funds are dulled
Speaker 1: out based upon population numbers from the census, population numbers
Speaker 1: inflated by illegal aliens. So you want to talk about
Speaker 1: foreign influence in Meadowing. It's right there. Democrats encourage it,
Speaker 1: they incentivize it, they protect illegal aliens. They probably give
Speaker 1: illegal aliens in some ways more rights than you have
Speaker 1: as a US citizen. That's foreign influence in Meadowing. And
Speaker 1: that's not even to mention, by the way, a little
Speaker 1: tidbit that Democrats are loath to talk about. And we'll
Speaker 1: get to this a little bit later tonight. Chinese foreign influence.
Speaker 1: According to Vice President Pence in a landmark speech that
Speaker 1: he gave at the Hudson Institute last year, the Chinese
Speaker 1: were running ads, for example, in Midwestern states that were
Speaker 1: impacted by the tariffs the Trump administration put on them
Speaker 1: to essentially try and lobby against those tariffs and also
Speaker 1: use them against the Republican Party for their own political interest.
Speaker 1: That's foreign influence. And it's not just then. If you
Speaker 1: look in the papers today, Huawei, massive Chinese tech company
Speaker 1: which the US government has been clamping down on, telling
Speaker 1: our allies in Europe and elsewhere, don't use Huawei technology
Speaker 1: for five G because it's going to create a backdoor
Speaker 1: and allow the Chinese to spy on you. Guess what
Speaker 1: they are running marketing literature lobbying American citizens in our
Speaker 1: newspapers today telling you how great a company Huawei is,
Speaker 1: and they don't pose a threat and they come in peace.
Speaker 1: So you want to talk about foreign influence, that's foreign influence.
Speaker 1: And this is not even to get into if we
Speaker 1: applied the same logic applied to Donald Trump, to Barack Obama,
Speaker 1: and Victor Davis Hanson has written a great piece on this,
Speaker 1: I urge you to read, well, would we start looking
Speaker 1: at Iranian influence? How could a president ever make those
Speaker 1: sorts of decisions towards the Iranians? The appeasement of all appeasement,
Speaker 1: Neville Chamberlain. Peace in our time? What if we started
Speaker 1: looking into that? If we're going to make decisions, investigatory
Speaker 1: decisions on the basis of hunt, these policies are kind
Speaker 1: of sketchy, and maybe they're helping our adversaries or not,
Speaker 1: as the case may be. In this case. Actually, when
Speaker 1: it comes to Trump, the foreign policy establishment has scuttled
Speaker 1: an attempt to reach out to Russia, to split off
Speaker 1: Russia from China. And oh, by the way, our own
Speaker 1: intelligence services have now said Russia and China are closer
Speaker 1: than they've been in decades to our great detriment. But
Speaker 1: what if we applied that foreign collusion meadowing standard to
Speaker 1: anyone else. I don't think it's a road we want
Speaker 1: to go down, but the genie is out of the bottle.
Speaker 1: Let's take a quick break. This is Ben wine Garden
Speaker 1: in four buck sexton eight four four nine ers or
Speaker 1: a buck eight four four zero zero two eight two five.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to the buck Sexton Show. This is Ben
Speaker 1: Weingarten in four buck Sexton eight four four nine zero
Speaker 1: zero buck. That's eight four four nine zero zero two
Speaker 1: eight two five. We were just talking a bit before
Speaker 1: the break about foreign influence meadowing, the broader scope of
Speaker 1: all this, and the broader context for all of this,
Speaker 1: which comes down to legitimacy of our government, whether there's
Speaker 1: consent of the governed, whether the investigators themselves need to
Speaker 1: be the ones who are investigated. And this is in
Speaker 1: some sense and elaborate cover up of a plan that
Speaker 1: they never expected would be revealed because they never thought
Speaker 1: Trump would win. But let's look ahead to twenty twenty
Speaker 1: and I noticed an article. It didn't get a lot
Speaker 1: of press, but I think it's gonna be the first
Speaker 1: data point that we may be able to point to
Speaker 1: in terms of trying to delegitimize at the very beginning
Speaker 1: a potential Trump win in twenty twenty. So Politico had
Speaker 1: an article came out on the twentieth titled sustaind an
Speaker 1: ongoing disinformation assault targets dem presidential candidates. A coordinated barrage
Speaker 1: of social media attacks suggests the involvement of foreign state actors.
Speaker 1: And I want to read a little bit from this
Speaker 1: because it's critical to note that they are getting this
Speaker 1: information out now, that foreign powers are using social media
Speaker 1: to try and destroy democratic candidates. So it starts A wide,
Speaker 1: raging disinformation campaign aimed at Democratic twenty twenty candidates is
Speaker 1: already underway on social media, with signs that foreign state
Speaker 1: actors are driving at least some of the activity. The
Speaker 1: main targets Senators Kamala Harris, Elizabeth Warren, and Bernie Sanders,
Speaker 1: and former Representative Beto Cultural Appropriation O'Rourke, four of the
Speaker 1: most prominent announced or prospective candidates for presidents. A political
Speaker 1: review of recent data extracted from Twitter and from other platforms,
Speaker 1: as well as interviews with data scientists and digital campaign strategists,
Speaker 1: suggests that the goal of The coordinated barrage appears to
Speaker 1: be undermining the nascent candidacies through the dissemination of memes, hashtags, misinformation,
Speaker 1: and distortions of their positions, But the divisive nature of
Speaker 1: many of the posts also hints at a broader effort
Speaker 1: to sew discord and chaos within the Democratic presidential primary.
Speaker 1: Where have we heard this narrative before, dissemination of memes, hashtags, misinformation,
Speaker 1: and distortions of their positions. Well, if that's going to
Speaker 1: swing the election, why didn't we lose the Cold War
Speaker 1: like sixty years ago? I mean, if it was just
Speaker 1: literally let's put out some memes, hashtags, misinformation and distortions.
Speaker 1: I mean, wouldn't the Soviet Union of one? They could
Speaker 1: have flooded Aerican news with all sorts of memes and hashtags.
Speaker 1: This isn't to discount the fact that foreign adversaries use
Speaker 1: misinformation and disinformation for their ends. They absolutely do. If
Speaker 1: you want to see that, look no further than the
Speaker 1: Kashogi caper. Look at how they created this narrative about
Speaker 1: Jamal Kashogi that actually has completely influenced US foreign policy,
Speaker 1: pushing us away from the Saudi is trying to attempt
Speaker 1: to undermine a block against Iran, the number one threat
Speaker 1: in that region of the world. Foreign influence is real.
Speaker 1: Misinformation and disinformations are a fact of life, and they
Speaker 1: are massively powerful because when you change people's minds, you
Speaker 1: ultimately change their activities. And in politics it's obviously paramount.
Speaker 1: But let's put in context what Russia did last election.
Speaker 1: If you look at the they spend a few hundred
Speaker 1: thousand dollars on some crappy social media ads that, yeah,
Speaker 1: there may have been several million impressions, But do you
Speaker 1: think that anyone changed their mind based upon any of
Speaker 1: the garbage that was put out by the Russians? You
Speaker 1: think that that caused discord and influence the election and
Speaker 1: swung votes. There was never any proof that anything that
Speaker 1: the Russians did swung votes. In fact, if you look back,
Speaker 1: if you even look back at the DNC emails that
Speaker 1: were leaked, the poll numbers didn't really shift after that leak.
Speaker 1: So when we talk about influence, swinging elections, leaking emails,
Speaker 1: that could be devastating, obviously, But memes, hashtags, misinformation and distortions.
Speaker 1: If you have people that are making videos where they're
Speaker 1: making it seem like candidates are saying things and they're
Speaker 1: fake videos, and the technology is there to do that
Speaker 1: sort of thing. Yes, that could certainly swing things. It
Speaker 1: could certainly cause discord. And if you're an evil actor
Speaker 1: that wants to do America harm, you can come up
Speaker 1: with some pretty substantive ways to cause a lot of
Speaker 1: casks in our system, especially with the media that we have,
Speaker 1: which is willing to run with this stuff and rarely
Speaker 1: does their homework, but memes, hashtags, misinformation, and distortions. And
Speaker 1: it's only the Democratic Party that's been subject to this.
Speaker 1: So it continues. The cyberpropaganda, which frequently picks at the
Speaker 1: ross most sensitive issues in public discourse, is being pushed
Speaker 1: across a variety of platforms and with a more insidious
Speaker 1: approach than the twenty sixteen presidential election, when online attacks
Speaker 1: designed to polarize and mislead voters first surfaced on massive scale.
Speaker 1: Recent posts of widespread dissemination include racially inflammatory memes and
Speaker 1: messaging involving Harris Arooric and Warren and Warren's case, and
Speaker 1: it goes on and on, and they say not all
Speaker 1: of the activities organized. Much of it appears to be
Speaker 1: organic or reflection of the politically polarizing nature of some
Speaker 1: of the candidates. And on, guess what, the candidates are
Speaker 1: going to destroy themselves by themselves. It doesn't take social
Speaker 1: media memes and hashtags. You know, only Democrats think that
Speaker 1: hashtags can defeat evil adversaries. I mean, come on, come on,
Speaker 1: a kid in their basement could do this again. But
Speaker 1: when real influence operations actually impact us, the media hoaxes,
Speaker 1: the Kashogie caper, the Jesse Smollette story, Russia Gate, confucious institutes,
Speaker 1: as we'll talk about a little bit later. What is
Speaker 1: this really about again? Number one, delegitimizing a potential Donald
Speaker 1: Trump victory in advance and propagating the narrative the meme
Speaker 1: of foreign influence boogeyman. But two, ultimately, this is about
Speaker 1: hyperregulating political speech, which means killing conservative speech on social media.
Speaker 1: The left wants to have a monopoly on political thought,
Speaker 1: and that's traditional media, social media, academia, the whole bureaucracy.
Speaker 1: That's the reality. This is ultimately going to be about
Speaker 1: regulating political speech, and regulating political speech is not going
Speaker 1: to be to the benefit of protecting all First Amendment speech.
Speaker 1: Political speech of which is the most important and conservative speech,
Speaker 1: of course, which is quite valuable. This has been onegar
Speaker 1: in for Buck sex in eight four four two eight
Speaker 1: two five will be right back, And I read it
Speaker 1: and I was like, you know what, I don't care anymore.
Speaker 1: I don't care anymore because again, I'm at least trying
Speaker 1: and they're not. So the power isn't the person who's trying,
Speaker 1: regardless of the success. If you're trying, you've got all
Speaker 1: the power. You're driving the agenda, you're doing all this
Speaker 1: stuff like I just introduced Green New Deal two weeks ago,
Speaker 1: and it's creating all of this conversation. Why because no
Speaker 1: one else has even tried. Because no one else has
Speaker 1: even tried. So people are like, oh it's unrealistic. Oh
Speaker 1: it's vague, Oh it doesn't address this little minute thing.
Speaker 1: And I'm like, you try, you do it right, because
Speaker 1: you're not because you're not. So until you do it,
Speaker 1: I'm the boss. How about without in respect to miss Ocasio, qute,
Speaker 1: she's not the boss on this program. This has Ben
Speaker 1: Weingerten in four Buck Sexon on the Buck Sexon program,
Speaker 1: and that was Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio Cortez saying that she
Speaker 1: is the boss, although I think Nancy Pelosi would beg
Speaker 1: to differ. But it brings up an important point, and
Speaker 1: that is that when Democrats aren't warring to try to
Speaker 1: bring down Donald Trump, there's a war going on, a
Speaker 1: Democrat civil war. You know, we've heard for years Republican
Speaker 1: civil war. There is a Democrat civil civil war for
Speaker 1: the soul of their party. It's the old Guard versus
Speaker 1: the young Turks, because now we live in a world
Speaker 1: where the likes of Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer and
Speaker 1: Diane Feinstein they aren't sufficiently radical. And that video of
Speaker 1: Finstein with the kids, I don't even know where to
Speaker 1: start with that, except to say that it is scary
Speaker 1: that progressives start that young. And we've talked about this before.
Speaker 1: Their whole idea is to indoctrinate from day one so
Speaker 1: that everyone is woke. I think you're going to see
Speaker 1: though the Dems. The Dems cannot get out of their
Speaker 1: own way, whether it's the Green New Deal, fake fake rollout,
Speaker 1: actually the Rio rollouts where we're talking about slaughtering cows
Speaker 1: and no more air travel and transcontinental railroads and the like,
Speaker 1: a cross oceans, railroads, high speed fout in California, or
Speaker 1: we're talking about Congresswoman Omar's anti semitism, where basically every
Speaker 1: single week she racks up another point on the anti semiboard,
Speaker 1: or Rashida tayeb insinuating Mark Meadows as a racist. It
Speaker 1: was pretty blatent by the way she was calling him
Speaker 1: a racist. Mark Meadows is a better man than I
Speaker 1: because he apparently went up to her and hugged her
Speaker 1: after the fact and forgave her. But while the left
Speaker 1: is going to overreach, and I think you're gonna see
Speaker 1: in these hearings that they're gonna be clown themselves. They're
Speaker 1: not going to be able to help themselves. Because for
Speaker 1: the younger ones, the more impressionable ones, the more naive ones,
Speaker 1: the ones you don't know about how Washington works, they
Speaker 1: are so energized and animated. Their trumped arrangement syndrome is
Speaker 1: so deep it's gonna shine through and people aren't gonna
Speaker 1: like what they're gonna see. And then for the others,
Speaker 1: you kind of have to tag along because if all
Speaker 1: the energy is with the progressives, you need to take
Speaker 1: up the most progressive causes possible because that's votes, that's fundraising,
Speaker 1: that's media airtime. I mean, look Acasio Cortez and media darling.
Speaker 1: They like her not just because she says insane things,
Speaker 1: but because the media actually agrees with a lot of
Speaker 1: those things. Democrats right now, if you look at the
Speaker 1: presidential candidates, and we're going to go through a little
Speaker 1: bit of the horse race and just a bit, it's
Speaker 1: a party of infanticide. It's a party of socialism, including
Speaker 1: socialized medicine. It's a party of the mass slaughter of
Speaker 1: cows and the grounding of all plans. As I mentioned,
Speaker 1: it's a party of abolish ice. It's a party of
Speaker 1: border walls are immoral. It's a party of anti Israel,
Speaker 1: pro Iran deal. Orange man Bad is one of the
Speaker 1: only things that unites all of them. I would suggest
Speaker 1: that they've failed to learn something from Barack Obama, who
Speaker 1: I think agrees with all of these progressives, and he's
Speaker 1: sort of their leader, even though he's been very quiet
Speaker 1: because he's making millions of dollars at Netflix and elsewhere,
Speaker 1: but I guarantee you he's playing a role in this election.
Speaker 1: The Democrats, the progressives have regressive progressives. I like to
Speaker 1: call him regressives, We'll see if that catches on. They
Speaker 1: failed to learn from Barack Obama that, to paraphrase Van Jones,
Speaker 1: you have to drop the radical pose to achieve the
Speaker 1: radical ends. What does that mean. It means you need
Speaker 1: to wrap your radicalism in a non threatening, non offensive,
Speaker 1: non left wing, tinfoil hat wearing sort of robe garb.
Speaker 1: And this is why if you look back to the
Speaker 1: original regressive progressives, the Angela davis Is of the world,
Speaker 1: or the Bill Airs of the or the radicals of
Speaker 1: the sixties, they stopped throwing bombs and they started fighting
Speaker 1: wars for the minds of young people. They put on suits,
Speaker 1: some of them, at least most of them, shaved and showered,
Speaker 1: and they went into the institutions. They became teachers, they
Speaker 1: became bureaucrats. They needed to drop the radical pose to
Speaker 1: achieve the radical ends. And Barack Obama did the exact
Speaker 1: same thing. He covered the radical leftism in a seemingly
Speaker 1: non threatening, common sense, every American, every man kind of way.
Speaker 1: It did shine through at times, but not enough to
Speaker 1: imperil his eight years. Although Democrats did lose at every
Speaker 1: level because people actually hated the policies they liked the person.
Speaker 1: So while on the one hand, Democrats are being shifted
Speaker 1: to the left, far to the left, and the Overton
Speaker 1: window perhaps itself is shifting as they stake out the
Speaker 1: most radical positions, and those positions over time become more
Speaker 1: mainstream because political shifts happened faster over a wider birth
Speaker 1: than they ever have. If you look at what was
Speaker 1: considered radical five or ten years ago, that becomes routine
Speaker 1: now in a lot of respects, unthinkable things become the norm.
Speaker 1: In fact, hundreds of years of human history and teaching
Speaker 1: and practice have become overturned in recent years. But there's
Speaker 1: a whipsaw effect that's occurring because while on the one
Speaker 1: hand there's the impeach and remove at any costs caucus,
Speaker 1: they're also so called moderates in hotly contested seats going
Speaker 1: into twenty twenty, folks in purple district districts that you know,
Speaker 1: we're probably suburban, middle upper middle class. You might even
Speaker 1: have Republican majorities, but they don't like Trump, and Republicans,
Speaker 1: to their credit for once, are actually playing political hardball.
Speaker 1: So you have Republicans in the House that are making
Speaker 1: amendments to legislation and forcing Democrats to actually take hard votes.
Speaker 1: So here's the latest one. There was gun legislation that
Speaker 1: came out in the House. And what did Republicans do. Well.
Speaker 1: It was a bill to expand federal background checks for
Speaker 1: gun purchases. This is out, It's described in the Washington Post.
Speaker 1: So I'm going with the left interpretation of what happened here,
Speaker 1: and they write, twenty six moderate Democrats join Republicans in
Speaker 1: amending the legislation, adding a provision requiring that ICE be
Speaker 1: notified if an illegal immigrant seeks to purchase a gun.
Speaker 1: Talk about a poison pill. Democrats can't vote for that. Well, actually,
Speaker 1: twenty six so called moderates did. This not only incensed
Speaker 1: the Occasio Cortezes of the world, it actually incensed Nancy
Speaker 1: Pelosi too, because her job is to keep order within
Speaker 1: her party and make sure they all stick together. So again,
Speaker 1: I give Republicans credit. They actually played hardball once. Amazing.
Speaker 1: They should do it more often. They should do one
Speaker 1: of the things that we care about. So what is
Speaker 1: the reaction of Speaker Pelosi and the Occasi zero Cortezes
Speaker 1: of the world. When we come back from this break,
Speaker 1: I'm going to go through the sort of gulag politics
Speaker 1: that you're about to see from the left. This is
Speaker 1: Ben Winegarden in for Buck Sexon on the Buck Sexon Show.
Speaker 1: I'll explain what I mean by gulag politics in just
Speaker 1: a minute. Eight four four nine zero zero Buck. That's
Speaker 1: eight four four nine zero zero two eight two five.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to the Buck Sexton Show. This is Ben
Speaker 1: Weinegarden in four Buck Sexton. Phone lines are open eight
Speaker 1: four four nine zero zero Buck. That's eight four four
Speaker 1: nine zero zero two eight two five. During the break,
Speaker 1: I was scanning my Twitter feed and came across this
Speaker 1: great tidbit that sort of exemplifies exactly what we were
Speaker 1: talking about earlier when it comes to bureaucrats. This is
Speaker 1: exhibit a of bureaucrats cashing in. And I believe this
Speaker 1: is from Politico Annals of Speculation. I'll quote from this
Speaker 1: one on't note. How much could Robert mull Or make
Speaker 1: if he decides to head to a law firm as
Speaker 1: he wraps up his investigation as special counsel washington Ians
Speaker 1: Marissa Kashino asked around quote as high a number as
Speaker 1: the market has available, says Jeffrey Lowe. The Washington managing
Speaker 1: partner of legal recruiting firm Major Lindsay in Africa, quote
Speaker 1: firms that can pay five million dollars while for five
Speaker 1: million dollars. If they can pay between five million dollars
Speaker 1: and ten million dollars, that can be the number two unquote.
Speaker 1: To be clear, this is Politico writing. We're talking about
Speaker 1: annual compensation, so five to ten million bucks a year.
Speaker 1: Another quote five million. I think that's the starting point,
Speaker 1: says the McCormick Group's Stephen Nelson. At least several millions,
Speaker 1: says Garrison and Sissons Dan Binstock, though he adds it
Speaker 1: could be significantly higher at certain firms exhibit A of
Speaker 1: bureaucrats cashing in. But let's actually look at the more
Speaker 1: substantive point, which is if Politico is writing right now,
Speaker 1: and I believe it's Poetico about how much Mueller stands
Speaker 1: to make in the private sector before the report is
Speaker 1: even delivered, this really must be a nothing burger of
Speaker 1: a report. I mean, you're talking about compensation for Robert
Speaker 1: Mueller before this report that we've been waiting for with
Speaker 1: these breathless bombshow report after bombshow report, day in, day out,
Speaker 1: every news cycle. Now the story that they want to
Speaker 1: focus on is how much Robert Moore is going to
Speaker 1: make when the Special Council concludes. Let's go back to
Speaker 1: what I was talking about before, which is the Democratic
Speaker 1: civil war and the sort of AOC versus Speaker Pelosi,
Speaker 1: old guard versus young Turk split. Well, in this case,
Speaker 1: AOC and Pelosi are standing together against their so called
Speaker 1: moderates in their party, who of course are a minority
Speaker 1: within their party. So the Washington Post headline is House
Speaker 1: Democrats explode in recriminations as liberal as lash out at moderates.
Speaker 1: I'm kind of surprised that the article didn't read Republicans
Speaker 1: pounce on House Democrats explode in recriminations as liberals lash out. Well,
Speaker 1: they'll probably do it now. So that article says, and
Speaker 1: remember this is dealing with legislation that twenty six moderate
Speaker 1: Democrats in the House went along with Republicans on where
Speaker 1: in expanding federal background checks for gun purchases, Republicans added
Speaker 1: a provision requiring that ice be notified if an illegal
Speaker 1: immigrant seeks to purchase a gun. Democrats hate that. Now,
Speaker 1: it's absurd that they hate that, But Democrats hate that
Speaker 1: so the article reads in part and I quote in
Speaker 1: a closed door session, a frustrated speaker Nancy Pelosi lashed
Speaker 1: out at about two dozen moderates and pressured them to
Speaker 1: get on board. Quote, we are either a team or
Speaker 1: we're not, and we have to make that decision unquote,
Speaker 1: Pelosi said, according to people present but not authorized to
Speaker 1: discuss the remarks publicly. But Ocasio Cortez, the unquestioned media
Speaker 1: superstar of the freshman class. That's aw. Let's see when
Speaker 1: a Republican is described as an unquestioned media superstar in
Speaker 1: a supposed we straight news article on the Washington Post,
Speaker 1: the unquestioned media superstar of the freshman class up the
Speaker 1: anti admonishing the moderates and indicating she would help liberal
Speaker 1: activists unseat them in the twenty twenty election. So Kazio Cortes,
Speaker 1: this twenty nine year old with no power in Congress whatsoever,
Speaker 1: but a massive social media following and a press that
Speaker 1: loves her. Clearly self evidently she's talking about primarying moderates.
Speaker 1: Corbyn Trent, a spokesman for a Kazio Cortez, said she
Speaker 1: told her colleagues that Democrats who side with Republicans quote
Speaker 1: unquote are putting themselves on a list. You're on a
Speaker 1: list if you cross Alexandra Kazio Cortes. So now we're
Speaker 1: talking about blacklisting within the Democratic Party. Isn't that fascinating?
Speaker 1: Who are the ones acting like authoritarians? So Corbyn Trent,
Speaker 1: this spokesman goes on. She said that when activists ask
Speaker 1: her why she had to vote for a gun safety
Speaker 1: bill that also further empowers an agency that forcibly injects
Speaker 1: kids with psychotropic drugs. You seriously can't make this stuff up.
Speaker 1: They're going to want a list of names, and she's
Speaker 1: going to give it to them, Trent said, referring to
Speaker 1: US Immigration and custom Enforcement. You're on a list, you're
Speaker 1: a moderate, you vote your conscience, you vote probably in
Speaker 1: line with what you're moderate. Supposedly constituency says, you're on
Speaker 1: a list, and you'll get primaried. Now, I encourage Acazio
Speaker 1: Quartz to try to primary these people, because if they
Speaker 1: get primaried and they're quote unquote moderate districts, that means
Speaker 1: Republicans are going to sweep those districts. Queen I'll be
Speaker 1: back in a majority in the House. But seriously, that
Speaker 1: takes some nerve. First of all, again, who is Alexandro
Speaker 1: Acazio Quartz to be the one coming up with these
Speaker 1: litmus tests? But then, even more importantly, Democrats are drawing lists.
Speaker 1: You know, I'm just I'm reminded of the Seine Fight
Speaker 1: episode where a land Venice. You know, she's on the list.
Speaker 1: She can't get the Chinese food. She's been blacklisted by
Speaker 1: the Communist Party. So when I talk about Gulag politics,
Speaker 1: that's where I'm going. You're on a list, You're out.
Speaker 1: It's a Kazio Quarte as his way or the highway.
Speaker 1: Is that where the Democrats want to be. They want
Speaker 1: to systematically pick off anyone who dares dissent from what
Speaker 1: progressivism demands. Again, please do that, Representative Acazio Quartz, Please,
Speaker 1: I beg of you, name and shame every single moderate
Speaker 1: who votes along with the Republican on something rational. Illegal
Speaker 1: aliens going to buy a gun? H Maybe that should
Speaker 1: concern us a little bit. In fact, it's an issue
Speaker 1: in her home state. MS thirteen runs rampant here. Acazio
Speaker 1: Cortes knows full well who they are. What if you're
Speaker 1: a law abiding citizen in one of these places, What
Speaker 1: does a Kazio Quartes say to you when a kid
Speaker 1: is out playing in the street and illegal alien buys
Speaker 1: a gun, kid gets shot, accidentally buy a gang member,
Speaker 1: What does she say to those parents? You know, being
Speaker 1: a leftist means never having to grapple with the consequences
Speaker 1: of your policies, Republicans. When the policies work out, Democrats
Speaker 1: will say, well they didn't work out well enough, or
Speaker 1: they'll try to find the anti silver lining, the fool's
Speaker 1: goal of lining in it. Democrats, it's all about feelings,
Speaker 1: what feels good, what seems compassionate. It's never about getting
Speaker 1: thrown off your healthcare plan. It's never about never being
Speaker 1: able to see the doctor that you liked for your
Speaker 1: entire life. It's never about being freed from joblock quote unquote, ie,
Speaker 1: let's celebrate people getting fired because now you can go
Speaker 1: find better benefits somewhere else. AOC never has to grapple
Speaker 1: with the reality of anything that she says, because the
Speaker 1: media will never Where are the fact checkers going line
Speaker 1: by line, word by word through every last thing that
Speaker 1: Alexandrea Kazio Cortez says. And I hate to harp on
Speaker 1: her because on the one hand, she's a side show.
Speaker 1: It's sort of embarrassing. On the other hand, though she
Speaker 1: is a representative of where her party is going at
Speaker 1: the very least ideologically. I'm sure there are going to
Speaker 1: be more seasoned people that are going to follow in
Speaker 1: her footsteps, although of course Democrats might not like someone
Speaker 1: who's more season They think that she's authentic quote unquote,
Speaker 1: she's a bartender quote unquote. In fact, I would say
Speaker 1: that AOC is just the new age version of Bernie Sanders.
Speaker 1: And look where Bernie Sanders is. Bernie Sanders would would
Speaker 1: have been dismissed as a total kuk socialist, goes on
Speaker 1: his honeymoon to the Soviet Union, and if you haven't
Speaker 1: seen those videos, you have to see the videos of
Speaker 1: him celebrating, looking like the useful idiot that he is,
Speaker 1: taking shots of vodka in the Soviet Union in the
Speaker 1: Cold War, celebrating with these folks. But that guy would
Speaker 1: have been competitive in a general election last time around,
Speaker 1: and he's one of the favorites in the Democratic primary
Speaker 1: this time around. In fact, if it hadn't really been
Speaker 1: rigged on the Democratic side with the super teligates last
Speaker 1: time around, he probably beats Hillary Clinton. Acazio Cortez is
Speaker 1: just an inexperienced version of Bernie Sanders. So we can
Speaker 1: dismiss her, we can mock her, we can ride her.
Speaker 1: But the reality is she has built up a following
Speaker 1: in the public, and not only that, she has shifted
Speaker 1: the Overton window. I said it before. These policies they
Speaker 1: may seem nuts, and they are nuts, and they are disastrous,
Speaker 1: and you can look at world experience, example after example,
Speaker 1: but the lesson has to be constantly retaught. That's what
Speaker 1: Reagan taught us, freedom never being more than one generation away.
Speaker 1: What democrats are talking about right now are the worst
Speaker 1: possible ideas, the most regressive ideas you could ever have.
Speaker 1: They've been tried over and over again. Look at East
Speaker 1: and West Germany, look at North Korea and South Korea.
Speaker 1: Examples are plentiful. They need to be taken seriously, and
Speaker 1: they need to be fought day in and day out.
Speaker 1: We're gonna talk a little about that democratic field and
Speaker 1: what is to come. This has Ben Wagaran in for
Speaker 1: Buck Sex and on the Buck Sexton Show. A four
Speaker 1: four zero two eight two five. That's a four four
Speaker 1: nine zero zero two A two five we'll be right
Speaker 1: back talking the horse race, democratic radicalism, Overton Window and
Speaker 1: much more. Welcome back to the buck Sexton Show. This
Speaker 1: is ben Wine Garden in four buck Sexton. In just
Speaker 1: a short while, we're going to pivot to what's going
Speaker 1: on in international affairs and we'll talk a little bit
Speaker 1: about China and North Korea. And you know, in some
Speaker 1: ways it's funny to talk about the left and then
Speaker 1: you're talking about China and North Korea and these other
Speaker 1: places where that's where the socialist dream is. And you know,
Speaker 1: maybe the best depiction of it is you look at
Speaker 1: a world map of different places at night, and then
Speaker 1: during the day, North Korea is just dark. There's no activity,
Speaker 1: there's no commerce. It's a very telling thing when there
Speaker 1: is no light, and literally you have a gulag nation.
Speaker 1: And I go back to again East Germany and West Germany.
Speaker 1: If you ever look, that is maybe the greatest controlled
Speaker 1: experiment of all time in terms of here you have
Speaker 1: the same people they started out, the same infrastructure, the
Speaker 1: same level of talent, the same traditions, values, principles, literally
Speaker 1: the same families. Look at where East Germany and West
Speaker 1: Germany were at the end of the Cold War, and
Speaker 1: even today if you look at many measures, East Germany
Speaker 1: is still behind West Germany in a lot of economic
Speaker 1: measures and other measures as well. That is the human
Speaker 1: toll of terrible ideas, terrible ideas that there may be
Speaker 1: claims of good intentions behind, but imposing your view of
Speaker 1: what's moral and just, which requires mass wealth redistribution and
Speaker 1: dramatically altering the way that you conduct your lives. That's tyranny,
Speaker 1: even if it ended up with good outcomes, quote unquote,
Speaker 1: it's tyranny. And none of the socialistens in anyway will
Speaker 1: ever explain how it is that the stuff will be
Speaker 1: created that they then redistribute. Under a system where there's
Speaker 1: only reading distribution, who's going to create in that system?
Speaker 1: You're just going to be sharing a shrinking, shriveling, dying
Speaker 1: pie with everyone because there's no incentive to create, to
Speaker 1: be dynamic, to pursue your dreams. If you look at
Speaker 1: what the Soviet Union was like, and you wonder in
Speaker 1: part today, why is the Soviet Union? If you look
Speaker 1: at the alcoholism rates, they're just off the charts. I
Speaker 1: would pause it that one of the reasons probably is
Speaker 1: human capital was destroyed by socialism and you're still seeing
Speaker 1: the effects of it today, Which brings me to the
Speaker 1: Democrats twenty twenty. Field. I see a major challenge for
Speaker 1: the Democrats in twenty twenty. And it isn't just that
Speaker 1: I think Trump is going to have a great agenda
Speaker 1: to run on, or perhaps that the economy is going
Speaker 1: to be continue to be rip roaring, and financial markets
Speaker 1: and all the other things that all the pundits always
Speaker 1: say or what people vote on. To be the Democrat
Speaker 1: that wins your nomination, you have to be sufficiently woke.
Speaker 1: You have to demonstrate social justice, warriordom to the death.
Speaker 1: You also have to check the identity politics boxes. And
Speaker 1: then you still have to attempt to win a state
Speaker 1: like a Florida, arn Ohio, or a Pennsylvania or a Michigan. Now,
Speaker 1: while they won't make the same mistake as Hillary Clinton
Speaker 1: of not campaigning in a place like a Michigan, it
Speaker 1: is very tough to try to sweep out in a
Speaker 1: primary where everyone is so far left and everyone is
Speaker 1: trying to outdo each other on the left, and then
Speaker 1: seem reasonable enough to win in those places where that
Speaker 1: are completely intolerable of that insane leftism. So I just
Speaker 1: want to take off the names. These were kind of
Speaker 1: my initial thoughts on a handful of names today. Okay,
Speaker 1: Joe Biden, what has Joe Biden been running on? Well,
Speaker 1: he took back a nice comment that he had for
Speaker 1: Vice President Mike Pence on social media because he got
Speaker 1: attacked by social justice warrior and failed candidate in New York,
Speaker 1: Cynthia Nixon. Took back his nice words for Mike Pence
Speaker 1: because god forbid, you're actually ennuy towards someone of the
Speaker 1: other party. Oh yeah, and Uncle Joe went overseas in
Speaker 1: front of a European audience in the last couple of
Speaker 1: weeks and badmouth America. One of the first rules of
Speaker 1: one of the seminal rules of politics that a quote
Speaker 1: unquote elder statesman like a Joe Biden would acknowledge always
Speaker 1: is you don't go overseas and attack America. You just
Speaker 1: don't do that, period full stop. Okay, we have Spartacus.
Speaker 1: Spartacus kicked off his campaign by violating rules in Congress
Speaker 1: while grand standing during the shameful Kavanaugh hearings, and go
Speaker 1: look up his friend t Bone. That's a laugher. Elizabeth warned,
Speaker 1: what Folcahontas is the defining aspect of her career. Kamala Harris,
Speaker 1: her own paramour, admitted how she made her way to
Speaker 1: the top in San Francisco politics. Hint it wasn't based
Speaker 1: on merit. She called for abolishing private insurance compared eyes
Speaker 1: to the KKK, lied about her drug usage and attempting
Speaker 1: to quense the fact that she's now pro drug after
Speaker 1: being anti drug as a prosecutor. Lied about the music
Speaker 1: she was listening to while smoking pots. So was she
Speaker 1: lying about the pot usage? Was she lying about the
Speaker 1: music she was listening to? Was she lying about her
Speaker 1: position altogether? Beto is the Robert Francis O'Rourke, I should say,
Speaker 1: is the cultural appropriation candidate and sort of the EMO candidate.
Speaker 1: He's also a white male and tries, he might to
Speaker 1: call himself Beto. White male is a dangerous thing to
Speaker 1: be in the Democratic Party, doesn't check off the identity
Speaker 1: politics box, try as he might, and of course frames
Speaker 1: himself as Beto when he's running against somewhat of actual
Speaker 1: Cuban descent. But let's leave that aside. Amy Quobachar I
Speaker 1: thought that Amy Quobachar could potentially be competitive because she
Speaker 1: kind of comes off as you know, reasonable. She had
Speaker 1: all these moderate Republicans fawning over her in articles, but
Speaker 1: you cross Amy Quobachar and she'll throw a stapore at
Speaker 1: your head. I mean literally, it's like a character and
Speaker 1: office space, like a violent Milton or you know, her
Speaker 1: ridge is more than Hillary Clinton's rage at Bill Clinton
Speaker 1: based upon the descriptions that we've seen. And then today
Speaker 1: we had the announcement that Washington Governor Jay Insley would
Speaker 1: be running, and he is running as the climate change candidate,
Speaker 1: fighting the climate. So his platform when we talk about
Speaker 1: fighting climate change is let's massively reorganize our daily lives
Speaker 1: over a hypothetical issue where the scientists have been persistently wrong.
Speaker 1: And oh, by the way, their funding is generally tied
Speaker 1: to proving the consensus is what they claim the consensus
Speaker 1: is about global warming that justifies all manner of wealth redistribution.
Speaker 1: And oh, by the way, the worst offenders in the
Speaker 1: world won't go along with whatever their scheme is anyway,
Speaker 1: So we're going to sacrifice our position as the pre
Speaker 1: eminent capitalist world power. But China and all the rest
Speaker 1: of the countries are going to keep trucking along. I
Speaker 1: would say the field is set tremendously for Donald Trump
Speaker 1: in a lot of ways. But long term, the Woke
Speaker 1: crew is going to triumph over the Democratic Party again.
Speaker 1: I think the Overton window is shifting. The most radical
Speaker 1: positions have now been put out there by multiple candidates.
Speaker 1: They're all signed off on the Green New Deal. I'm
Speaker 1: going to talk about that in a second. They are
Speaker 1: directionally where the party is going. They may have staked
Speaker 1: out the positions too orally. Those positions may be losers
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty, they might even be losers in twenty
Speaker 1: twenty four. But where's the country going? Well, their view,
Speaker 1: the progressive view, is the view that dominates in popular culture,
Speaker 1: in our schools, everywhere in the bureaucracy itself in a
Speaker 1: lot of ways, and worth noting. Incidentally, Democrats are out
Speaker 1: there working to kill the electoral college right now. Colorado
Speaker 1: was the most recent state to enter an interstate compact
Speaker 1: that needs a majority. It needs I think two hundred
Speaker 1: and seventy electoral votes for this legislation to pass, where
Speaker 1: essentially you would have a national popular vote that determines
Speaker 1: where all the electoral votes in a given state go
Speaker 1: so a state might vote Republican, but if the country
Speaker 1: majority votes Democrat, all those states electors go Democrat. And
Speaker 1: it appears, at least right now that it's constitutional. You
Speaker 1: have twelve states and the District of Columbia. I forget
Speaker 1: if they're included in the twelve over they're incremento to
Speaker 1: the twelve states one hundred and seventy two electoral votes
Speaker 1: by the latest count covered here. See, they want to
Speaker 1: actually have direct democracy, which is tyranny. All of these
Speaker 1: politicians love to talk about democracy the greatest thing ever.
Speaker 1: The Founders hated democracy. The Founders talk about democracy as
Speaker 1: tyranny of the majority, where fifty percent plus one vote
Speaker 1: can vote away the rights of everyone else. Just because
Speaker 1: you have free voting doesn't mean you'll end it up
Speaker 1: in tyranny. And let me just say why the Greens,
Speaker 1: why are they going with green Jay Insley the most
Speaker 1: recent one, and the Green New Deal and the rest
Speaker 1: of it. I would suggest that it's because science is
Speaker 1: the only way that they can justify socialism. The Green
Speaker 1: movement is socialism masquerading as science. They have to create
Speaker 1: a crisis they can justify by something that is unimpeachable,
Speaker 1: that you cannot argue against or your anti science. So
Speaker 1: if the science demands the totalitarian response, only a Neanderthal
Speaker 1: could oppose it. Worst case, if the green agenda fails,
Speaker 1: they get their friends rich through chronyism. We have cylindras
Speaker 1: add infinitum, in perpetuity forever. That's what the green thing
Speaker 1: is really about. It's about they can't win based upon
Speaker 1: the actual evidence, so they need to go science. Aha.
Speaker 1: This is Ben Winegarden in for Buck Sexton on the
Speaker 1: Buck Sexton Show. A four four nine zero zero two
Speaker 1: eight two five A four four nine zero zero two
Speaker 1: eight two five. Welcome back to the Buck Sexton Show.
Speaker 1: This is Ben Weinegarden in four Buck Sexton eight four
Speaker 1: four nine zero zero Buck. That's eight four four nine
Speaker 1: zero zero two eight two five. All right. In a
Speaker 1: past episode of this program, I went into great detail
Speaker 1: into what I think is the most vital, underestimated, underappreciate it,
Speaker 1: and potentially most significant of all policies that the Trump
Speaker 1: administration has undertaken, and of course not gotten nearly the
Speaker 1: credit it deserves for it, in part because it is
Speaker 1: in some way as a rebuke of everything the experts
Speaker 1: quote unquote have told us for almost fifty years, and
Speaker 1: that is the fact that China is a competitor more
Speaker 1: than that it's an adversary. And while the administration may
Speaker 1: catch its terms somewhat diplomatically at times, it's very clear
Speaker 1: that there has been a market change. Now, why should
Speaker 1: we care about China as a major geopolitical competitor beyond
Speaker 1: the fact that it's a world's second biggest economy, it
Speaker 1: has nuclear weapons, it's a massive population and landmass, massive
Speaker 1: natural resources, and all the other knock on effects of
Speaker 1: having this behemoth that's adversarial with the communist run government
Speaker 1: facing US in a vitally important strategic region of the world.
Speaker 1: I always go back to the question why should we care?
Speaker 1: How does this actually our daily life? And the first
Speaker 1: thing right off the bat is, besides trade that we
Speaker 1: have with China, there's also the fact that literally trillions
Speaker 1: of dollars worth of goods traffic through areas seas that
Speaker 1: are in China's sort of near abroad. And if that
Speaker 1: were to change, if that relationship were to somehow fundamentally change,
Speaker 1: or those seas were not to be able to be
Speaker 1: patrolled freely by the US, you can imagine the economic
Speaker 1: calamity that would occur if China actually took aggressive measures there.
Speaker 1: And by the way, the Chinese military has threatened US
Speaker 1: ships in this region. So this is a real threat
Speaker 1: and it really does impact actually the day to day
Speaker 1: and we're not just talking stock prices, but we're talking
Speaker 1: about costs of goods when you go down to your
Speaker 1: local Walmart or any other store in America for that matter,
Speaker 1: overshadowed in what I've termed sort of the kabuki theater
Speaker 1: of the Cohen hearing and all the rest that we're
Speaker 1: about to see over the next couple of years. Over
Speaker 1: the last two weeks, there were three major development, three
Speaker 1: major stories relating to China that have nothing to do
Speaker 1: with the trade deal that may or may not ultimately
Speaker 1: end up being negotiated. What are those three stories. Well,
Speaker 1: one of them starts in all places in Cincinnati, Ohio.
Speaker 1: I doubt that you saw this story. A local news
Speaker 1: source there, WCPO nine Cincinnati, a local television station I believe,
Speaker 1: wrote an article the titled Chinese spies covet Cincinnati's corporate
Speaker 1: secrets was October arrest an isolated incident. And here's how
Speaker 1: that article starts. It says, to anyone who has startled
Speaker 1: when an alleged Chinese spy who targeted ge aviation was
Speaker 1: arrested in October twenty eighteen, here's an even more alarming fact.
Speaker 1: It wasn't an isolated incident. Cincinnati companies are regular targets
Speaker 1: of Chinese spies, hackers, counterfeiters, and business partners. This news
Speaker 1: source has learned from court documents, government records, and interviews
Speaker 1: with business and federal law enforcement officials. And then they
Speaker 1: go on to quote a US attorney for the Southern
Speaker 1: District of Ohio, quote, economic espionage is a very significant threat,
Speaker 1: said Benjamin Glassman. It could cost people their jobs, It
Speaker 1: could destroy companies. With the destruction of companies comes the
Speaker 1: destruction of communities and really a radically different place for
Speaker 1: the United States in the world. And the article goes
Speaker 1: on to talk about all the sorts of economic espionage
Speaker 1: that has involved companies just in Cincinnati, Ohio alone, and
Speaker 1: you can bet that their investigations into this sort of
Speaker 1: espionage everywhere, because, as the article laighs out, there have
Speaker 1: been indictments, numerous indictments that the Trump administration under this
Speaker 1: FBI and Department of Justice have ramped up to bring
Speaker 1: Chinese nationals to justice, and in the particular case when
Speaker 1: it comes to ge aviation and involved what's termed the
Speaker 1: first Chinese intelligence officer to be extradited to the US
Speaker 1: for prosecution. And by the way, he's not the only one.
Speaker 1: News broke just before we came on tonight that Canada
Speaker 1: is set to begin proceeding as the will allow Huawei
Speaker 1: CFO Manguanzo to be extradited to the US per an
Speaker 1: announcement from the Canadian Department of Justice on Friday. So
Speaker 1: this is ramping up. We are starting to ring Chinese
Speaker 1: actors who violate sanctions, potentially allegedly or engage in economic espionage.
Speaker 1: We're actually taking the fight to them. We are applying justice.
Speaker 1: We are not acting fearful in our response and proving
Speaker 1: that we're a paper tiger, as the Chinese may have
Speaker 1: assumed for say the last eight years, and really probably
Speaker 1: the last twenty eight or thirty eight or forty eight years.
Speaker 1: It's one story Cincinnati. Another story. A report out from
Speaker 1: the US Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship that's
Speaker 1: chaired by Senator Marco Rubio, who has come out as
Speaker 1: one of these staunchest China Hawks joining the Trump administration
Speaker 1: and encouraging the Trump administration's actions against the Chinese. His
Speaker 1: committee put out a report called MAIDE in China twenty
Speaker 1: twenty five and the Future of American Industry. A MAIDE
Speaker 1: in China twenty twenty five is all about Chinese dominance
Speaker 1: in manufacturing and industry. And of course the way they
Speaker 1: do that is, in part is by cheating when it
Speaker 1: comes to trade, is by economic espionage, is by enforcing terms.
Speaker 1: When it comes to our dealings with them, they're completely
Speaker 1: one sided and go in their direction. And what this
Speaker 1: report lays out, and I'll quote in part from it,
Speaker 1: is the MAIDE in China twenty twenty five Industrial Plan
Speaker 1: targets ten high value industrial sectors for global dominance, demonstrates
Speaker 1: that the Chinese government is doing more than merely breaking
Speaker 1: the rules. It is seeking to set new terms for
Speaker 1: international economic competition. Evaluating the MAIDE in China twenty twenty
Speaker 1: five Plans should contribute to the American policy framework in
Speaker 1: two ways. First, assessing the plan's particular goals and progress
Speaker 1: toward them can identify areas for defensive action. Second, comparing
Speaker 1: areas of China success to America's relative decline can help
Speaker 1: identify areas for creative reform. China has a direction that
Speaker 1: they're going when it comes to manufacturing and industry. We're
Speaker 1: playing defense right now. We're just starting to identify the
Speaker 1: scale of these Chinese efforts and their intent, which is
Speaker 1: ultimately to undermine us. Last point I'll point out, Senate
Speaker 1: Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations just released a report that I
Speaker 1: urge you to look at. It's called China's Impact on
Speaker 1: the US Education System and represents perhaps the most extensive
Speaker 1: investigation to date of confucious institutes. What are confucious institutes?
Speaker 1: Will their Communist Party backed educational so called cross cultural
Speaker 1: exchange programs, backed with Chinese money, oftentimes with Chinese Communist
Speaker 1: Party approved professors who go to US universities and they teach,
Speaker 1: and of course, naturally, when you look at what they teach,
Speaker 1: it's a completely one sided pro Chinese Communist curriculum. And
Speaker 1: actually FBI Director Ray has indicated that there may be
Speaker 1: espionage associated with these so called educational programs, including spying
Speaker 1: on Chinese nationals who are here. So it's not just
Speaker 1: necessarily collecting information that might be useful from US universities,
Speaker 1: but it's even inspiring on what they consider their own
Speaker 1: people and threatening them. And this report goes into great
Speaker 1: detail about the size, scope and sale of these activities.
Speaker 1: And we're talking hundreds of these across the US. We're
Speaker 1: also talking hundreds of millions of dollars that China has
Speaker 1: put into this. This is real foreign influence. This is
Speaker 1: foreign meadowing in US society when you have a foreign path,
Speaker 1: our adversarial putting millions of hours into our academic institutions
Speaker 1: to advocate for literally the party line, the Chinese Communist
Speaker 1: party line. When we come back, we'll talk with Stephen
Speaker 1: Yates about China, North Korea, and a whole bunch of
Speaker 1: other goings on in the region. This has been weangarten
Speaker 1: in four Buck Sex and eight four four nine zero
Speaker 1: zero Buck. That's eight four zero zero two eight two five.
Speaker 1: They wanted the sanctions lifted in their entirety, and we
Speaker 1: couldn't do that. They were willing to denuke a large
Speaker 1: portion of the errors that we wanted, but we couldn't
Speaker 1: give up all of the sanctions for that. So we
Speaker 1: continue to work and we'll see, but we had to
Speaker 1: walk away from that. I think we'll end up being
Speaker 1: very good friends with Chairman Kim and with North Korea.
Speaker 1: And I think they have tremendous potential. I've been telling
Speaker 1: everybody they have tremendous potential, unbelievable potential. But we're going
Speaker 1: to see. But it was about sanctions. I mean, they
Speaker 1: wanted sanctions lifted, but they weren't willing to do an
Speaker 1: area that we want. That was President Trump talking about
Speaker 1: his negotiations with North Korean leader Kim Jong un, and
Speaker 1: clearly to the disappointment of many in the media who
Speaker 1: wanted to say that Trump made a horrendous deal, as
Speaker 1: sad as it is to say, but you could see
Speaker 1: that in their reactions. Trump, in my view, rightly walked
Speaker 1: away from the table from a horrible deal when it
Speaker 1: comes to the US national interest. Today, we're going to
Speaker 1: speak with Steve Yates about both North Korea trade negotiations
Speaker 1: and more broadly, the Trump administration's China policy. And Steve
Speaker 1: joins US now. He's an expert on Asian politics, geopolitics,
Speaker 1: and perhaps most notably, the former deputy National Security advisor
Speaker 1: to Vice President Dick Cheney from two thousand and one
Speaker 1: to two thousand and five. You can follow him on
Speaker 1: Twitter at Yates d CIA. Steve, thanks so much for
Speaker 1: joining us. A pleasure to be with you. Well, let's
Speaker 1: start in North Korea. And the vital question when it
Speaker 1: comes to all of these negotiations is what does Kim
Speaker 1: Jong un actually want to achieve? So I asked that
Speaker 1: question to you, what does he want? It's a fair question,
Speaker 1: but I think before you even get to that, I
Speaker 1: think there's a couple of things that are long term
Speaker 1: issues where people are experts, pundits and sometimes foreign leader's mistake,
Speaker 1: where our president thinks he wants to go and how
Speaker 1: he's going to get there. And I think we've seen
Speaker 1: in this instance another example of people making long term
Speaker 1: assumptions based on short term tactics by our president, and
Speaker 1: just as they have been in for several years now,
Speaker 1: they're likely to be wrong. And so the on again,
Speaker 1: off again summits and walking away from the table. It's
Speaker 1: part of what this president does in his negotiations, and
Speaker 1: sooner or later people will figure it out. North Korea,
Speaker 1: the best we can tell, this is one of the
Speaker 1: most isolated parts of the planet. It wants some sense
Speaker 1: of connection with the outside world, but too much in
Speaker 1: its own country, still has total control, and it wants
Speaker 1: easing of sanctions which affect its ruling class more than
Speaker 1: its people. And it wants the US to remove its
Speaker 1: forces from the Korean Peninsula, somewhat lessening the security threat
Speaker 1: it perceives. So those have been basic elements that they've
Speaker 1: been talking about for three two term US presidents of Clinton,
Speaker 1: Bush and Obama in different ways, and all of those
Speaker 1: conventional approaches to diplomacy, and those administrations failed to change
Speaker 1: the direction North Korea was going. Hence we have it
Speaker 1: Donald Trump and a different approach to these talks. Kim
Speaker 1: Jong UN's predecessor, his father, Kim Jong il, left a
Speaker 1: last will and testament, at least parts of which have
Speaker 1: been disseminated publicly. And in that last will and testament,
Speaker 1: he laid out a strategy to essentially use nuclear weapons
Speaker 1: as in some sense a bargaining chip, with the ultimate
Speaker 1: goal of reunification of the Korean Peninsula, presumably under communist role,
Speaker 1: So a Korean peninsula where North Korea is the dominant
Speaker 1: power there. Obviously, in South Korea we have an administration
Speaker 1: which is somewhat more favorably disposed towards the North Koreans
Speaker 1: than those in the past. Do you think that Kim
Speaker 1: Jong un ultimately wants reunification as his number one goal?
Speaker 1: I think that is their dream, and I think in
Speaker 1: the North Korean propaganda world, they believe their dream, but
Speaker 1: it only takes a few seconds of awareness of what
Speaker 1: reality is in North Korea. Even some skeptical journalists have
Speaker 1: been able to go from time to time, and some
Speaker 1: health ministries like the Graham Ministries have been able to
Speaker 1: go to hospitals get a glimpse, and it's so different.
Speaker 1: It's the most pulverized polity on the planet. There's no
Speaker 1: way there's going to be any meaningful unification like East
Speaker 1: and West Germany at the end of the Cold War
Speaker 1: anytime soon. And so they do have that dream. They
Speaker 1: do see themselves as on the winning side of this,
Speaker 1: and South Koreans, for the most part, they for many
Speaker 1: decades had the same dream, but with them on top
Speaker 1: of it, and in recent decades they've kind of come
Speaker 1: to the conclusion of this would be extremely costly, extremely risky,
Speaker 1: and just because we're technically all Koreans were totally different
Speaker 1: than these people now. And so I think there's been
Speaker 1: this desire to give piece a chance on the South,
Speaker 1: but not necessarily wanting unification and having to deal with
Speaker 1: the cultural and economic deadweight that North Korea would be
Speaker 1: for them. Absent the credible threat of a real imminent
Speaker 1: attack to Kim Jong Gun's regime or a sanctions regime
Speaker 1: that is so airtight that it is literally completely starved
Speaker 1: for capital, how are we not to assume that Kim
Speaker 1: Jong gun will continue to try to play us off
Speaker 1: with negotiations and bite his time because he knows the
Speaker 1: reality that at most Donald Trump has six years left,
Speaker 1: whereas Kim Jong gun is leader for life absent some
Speaker 1: sort of coup. Well, I think there's a heavy, heavy
Speaker 1: reality in what you described, and you know, sort of.
Speaker 1: When I first went into government, I was told that
Speaker 1: the easiest answer for a government lawyer to give when
Speaker 1: asked the question is no, and the easiest assumption when
Speaker 1: wondering about changes in fundamental policy or direction of the
Speaker 1: countries is also know that these regimes linger longer than
Speaker 1: anyone would like, and sometimes are even forecast. In the
Speaker 1: nineteen nineties, I was on the receiving end of some
Speaker 1: public but also some internal government reports that forecast the
Speaker 1: imminent collapse of North Korea. Tons of evidence, very high confidence,
Speaker 1: and obviously we're two decades later and they're still there.
Speaker 1: So I think the odds are he stays in this,
Speaker 1: and so I think somewhat rationally, the president's strategy is
Speaker 1: to do what is necessary to mitigate the threats that
Speaker 1: get beyond the peninsula. So his approach to this, whether
Speaker 1: by coincidence, dumb luck, designed, whatever it is, have resulted
Speaker 1: in many viewers. In other words, none of the provocations
Speaker 1: that occurred during the Obama administration when they were not
Speaker 1: engaging in talks, and he's still avoided the major concessions
Speaker 1: with a lot of money and other kinds of changes
Speaker 1: that were put forward under the Clinton and Bush administrations.
Speaker 1: So for now I think he's been threading that needle.
Speaker 1: I don't think it's been a mistake to try to
Speaker 1: hold out the Vietnam economic development model as something for
Speaker 1: a North Korean to possibly understand and maybe aspire to,
Speaker 1: because they're not going to become sole They could march
Speaker 1: in the direction of a reformed communist economy, and that's
Speaker 1: what Vietnam has been. If you accept the premise that
Speaker 1: North Korea is in some sense a proxy of China
Speaker 1: and probably does not make any major decision without serious
Speaker 1: consultation with Shia's regime. Given that background, do we believe
Speaker 1: that stepping away from the table impacts talks with China
Speaker 1: and She? I believe it does. But I also believe
Speaker 1: that was the president's intent. It was conspicuous that he
Speaker 1: made direct mention of the trade talks and the fact
Speaker 1: that what he was doing and annoy by getting together
Speaker 1: and meeting and putting cards space up on the table,
Speaker 1: saying publicly how much positive rapport there are is between
Speaker 1: the two leaders, and yet they had demands that we
Speaker 1: couldn't accept and so it's a bad deal. I'm going
Speaker 1: to walk away. And he made a direct reference to
Speaker 1: the coming conversation with Shijingping that is supposed to be
Speaker 1: at Mara Lago soon and that he would be prepared
Speaker 1: to take this same approach. She's got fabulous rapport, was
Speaker 1: she temping? Supposedly something that I find hard to understand,
Speaker 1: given that I don't believe that communist leaders have a
Speaker 1: soul with which to have rapport, But the President is
Speaker 1: playing that part, and I think it was a strong
Speaker 1: positive signal. Now we have to see what he does.
Speaker 1: But best I can tell, the administration is looking for
Speaker 1: a framework for long term negotiations on trade, not believing
Speaker 1: that they're going to get a quick hit on China
Speaker 1: trade that's going to solve the problem. And in that regard,
Speaker 1: it's the same as North Korea goes without saying how
Speaker 1: vital trade is between the US, the number one economic
Speaker 1: power in the world, and China at number two. Do
Speaker 1: you see the trade negotiations as I do, as one part,
Speaker 1: one facet, albeit a very big one, of a much
Speaker 1: more comprehensive pushback in some sense, overturning almost fifty years
Speaker 1: of US policy visa each China pushing back on both
Speaker 1: when it comes to law enforcement, and that is indictments
Speaker 1: over espionage and other malign acts of the Chinese in
Speaker 1: the US, a military build up, rhetorical and then also
Speaker 1: substantive policy issues where we are comprehensively pushing back. Is
Speaker 1: trade just one facet of a comprehensive plan in your view?
Speaker 1: So I deeply hold that view that the trade negotiations
Speaker 1: are very important. They're fundamentally much much more important to
Speaker 1: China than the art of the United States, And I
Speaker 1: think we might have the first administration in my lifetime
Speaker 1: that fully understands that, or at least partially understands that.
Speaker 1: But China's economic dependence on the United States is a
Speaker 1: sizable proportion of its total GDP. For the United States,
Speaker 1: our interaction with China is like half a percent of GDP,
Speaker 1: and you know, we don't want to lose that. Willy nilly,
Speaker 1: that kind of a change matters. It will be felt,
Speaker 1: but it's far from fundamental. And so we have a
Speaker 1: negotiating position of strength, and it's good that we have
Speaker 1: some sense of that and engage in the conversation. But
Speaker 1: whether it's beginning with Vice President Pence's speech at the
Speaker 1: Hudson Institute last October, but I've had interactions with Australian
Speaker 1: senior leaders and Japanese senior leaders, and even some European
Speaker 1: senior leaders, and now even our friends in the Great
Speaker 1: White North in Canada. There's a fundamentally different conversation about
Speaker 1: China today because we don't just look at the threats
Speaker 1: that are happening inside their country or international relations, but they,
Speaker 1: under the Communist Party's rule, are interfering with the fundamental
Speaker 1: institutions of our nations. Our education, systems, our media, and
Speaker 1: our political systems, and I think for the first time
Speaker 1: in most of my career, they're not getting a complete pass.
Speaker 1: Nothing big has really been done to change it. Yet
Speaker 1: they've been called out on the Huawei technology issues and
Speaker 1: five G and sanctions busting when it comes to Iran.
Speaker 1: So we're at the beginning of this law conversation, and
Speaker 1: I'm very very heartened that the conversation is taking place
Speaker 1: beyond just the usual lobbying halls about trade or no trade.
Speaker 1: It's a bigger strategic issue, and it's kind of bothered
Speaker 1: me that people have talked about the Cold War being
Speaker 1: over in the early nineteen nineties when a very large
Speaker 1: communist party plays a furious role in global strategy. Today,
Speaker 1: there's a substantial challenge for the administration, which is that
Speaker 1: long term, China, I think clearly does represent the biggest
Speaker 1: geopolitical threat to America, But in the short term, financial
Speaker 1: markets and many in the business community hit the sort
Speaker 1: of punitive policy that the Trump administration has taken to
Speaker 1: develop the leverage to actually have hopefully beneficial negotiations. If
Speaker 1: you were counseling the president, how would you suggest that
Speaker 1: he deals with the competing tensions of needing to keep
Speaker 1: the pressure on China, which has had real impact internally
Speaker 1: in China, but also dealing with the fact that financial
Speaker 1: markets don't necessarily like it, and he's going to be
Speaker 1: the ballot in two years, you know. I think that
Speaker 1: the administration's team at the at the highest levels are
Speaker 1: very sensitive to this and very aware of it. Now.
Speaker 1: I wouldn't mislead to say that I have been brought
Speaker 1: into multiple inside conversations and this is what I hear
Speaker 1: firsthand in those multiple conversations. But but my dealings with them,
Speaker 1: uh indicate that they that they basically have somewhat of
Speaker 1: a divide and conquer communications strategy, which is hard in
Speaker 1: this day and age that everything goes out into different
Speaker 1: medium and blurs together. But they've been They've been messaging
Speaker 1: to Wall Street their intent, which they mean to try
Speaker 1: to make some real progress and rebalancing the US China
Speaker 1: economic relationship. And I think that they have worked into
Speaker 1: their communications somewhat an element that I believe strongly in
Speaker 1: that I have a great respect for the history of
Speaker 1: China and for the people of China. Don't think that
Speaker 1: the policies we stand for, our anti China. That's what
Speaker 1: the Communist Party wants to parlay out there to keep
Speaker 1: us from being able to do anything to protect our
Speaker 1: own interests. It's the Communist Party that's the problem. That's
Speaker 1: the one percent of China that dominates the ninety nine
Speaker 1: percent of the rest of the Chinese. And that one
Speaker 1: percent is the one that has denied their culture and
Speaker 1: their heritage and broken their fundamental institutions of family and
Speaker 1: faith and other things that were valuable parts of the
Speaker 1: historical Chinese experience. And so well, that's a big nugget
Speaker 1: to get out there in the public. There are elements,
Speaker 1: I think of the administrations. They understand this. So they
Speaker 1: speak to the Wall Street which they're familiar with, and
Speaker 1: they have people on the team that talk every day
Speaker 1: with leading influencers up there to try to make sure
Speaker 1: that they understand we are going to try for outcomes.
Speaker 1: This isn't just an all out war for the sake
Speaker 1: of war. When it comes to talk of trade, it's
Speaker 1: a rebalancing with a purpose, and we should benefit from it,
Speaker 1: and so should the Chinese people. It's done right. And secondarily,
Speaker 1: they so far have remained committed to keeping elements of
Speaker 1: pressure in place. There's some of you know, they've delayed
Speaker 1: the escalation of earths from from ten and fifteen percent
Speaker 1: up to twenty five. But that's for a time and
Speaker 1: I think if as the President has to walk away
Speaker 1: from the next round of talks about meaningful progress, those
Speaker 1: things will come into play and he'll keep the leverage
Speaker 1: going into the election cycle. He can't afford to go
Speaker 1: soft on this, in my estimation, and hold the electoral
Speaker 1: college coalition he had in the rust belt states. That
Speaker 1: was a big change in twenty sixteen and it made
Speaker 1: a strategic difference politically. Steve, we're gonna have to leave
Speaker 1: it right there. Thank you so much for coming on.
Speaker 1: We've been speaking with Steve Yates. You can follow on
Speaker 1: Twitter at Yates DCIA. Thanks so much for coming on,
Speaker 1: my pleasure. Thank you. This is Ben Weingarten in for
Speaker 1: Buck Sexton on the Buck Sexton Show. Eight four four
Speaker 1: nine zero zero. Buck, that's eight four four nine zero
Speaker 1: zero to eight to five. Lines are open, all right.
Speaker 1: We just spoke with Steve Yates, former deputy National Security
Speaker 1: advisor to Vice President Dick Cheney and someone who I
Speaker 1: would say has a tremendous grasp on the situation in Asia,
Speaker 1: this battle that's going on right now between the Chinese
Speaker 1: and their proxies, namely North Korea and then all of
Speaker 1: the other nations, and the US has been working to
Speaker 1: align itself with these other nations and start to comprehensively
Speaker 1: counter China. And you know, for years, for decades and decades,
Speaker 1: we were told about China's peaceful rise. This relationship was
Speaker 1: open with Richard Nixon back in the seventies, and the
Speaker 1: idea was that China would get rich alongside the US.
Speaker 1: This would be in both of our interest. Economic liberalization
Speaker 1: quote unquote would lead to political liberalization. Well, everything that
Speaker 1: we've seen since Tianamen Square in nineteen eighty nine proves
Speaker 1: that that was pure folly. And guess what, the Chinese
Speaker 1: Communist Party doesn't necessarily want to be a peaceful trade partner. Essentially,
Speaker 1: what we have helped to do is build China's economy.
Speaker 1: And it's not just through anything resembling free trade or
Speaker 1: fair trade. It's through stolen intellectual property and the parts
Speaker 1: of the Chinese. It's your economic espionage, it's unfair trade dealings,
Speaker 1: it's your cyber attacks, it's through them killing out our
Speaker 1: intelligence officers, literally, it's through the biggest attack in US history,
Speaker 1: cyber attack in US history, the Office of Personnel and Management,
Speaker 1: where essentially China stole the files of more than twenty
Speaker 1: million supposedly government employees, the most sensitive information, the documents
Speaker 1: they fill out to try to get a government job
Speaker 1: when there's a national security implication, there's an investigation, a
Speaker 1: substantial background check, and we're talking hundred plus pages background check.
Speaker 1: China hack that information and it gave them a tremendous advantage.
Speaker 1: Trump has challenged this notion of China's peaceful rise. It's
Speaker 1: said in his National Security Strategy in twenty seventeen economic
Speaker 1: liberalization has not led to political liberalization. We're actually a
Speaker 1: strategic competitor of China, and it's maybe even more ramped
Speaker 1: up than that. And we've seen a comprehensive effort by
Speaker 1: the Trump administration to start to push back on this.
Speaker 1: And with my next guest, we'll talk about some more
Speaker 1: things that the Trump administration has pointed out about the
Speaker 1: failure of our elites and how detrimental it's been to
Speaker 1: our national interest. This is Ben Weingarten in for Buck
Speaker 1: Sexon on The Buck Sexton Show eight four four nine
Speaker 1: zero zero Buck. That's eight four four nine zero zero
Speaker 1: two eight two five Back in just a moment, Welcome
Speaker 1: back to the Buck Sexton Show. This is Ben Weinegarten
Speaker 1: in four buck Sexton lines are open eight four four
Speaker 1: nine zero zero Buck. That's eight four four nine zero
Speaker 1: zero two eight two five. Or We've talked a lot
Speaker 1: this evening, in particular an hour one about the deficiencies
Speaker 1: on the Democratic side, both ideologically and tactically, but at
Speaker 1: the same time the world is in some ways also
Speaker 1: going their way now. In January, Tucker Carlson set the
Speaker 1: Republican intellectual world ablaze by articulating in a sense why
Speaker 1: Trump won, namely that he called out a failed intellectual elite,
Speaker 1: a failed ruling class, starting with Mitt Romney, and this
Speaker 1: was in response in part to Mitt Romney's anti Trump
Speaker 1: editorial in the Washington Post, and what Tucker rays were
Speaker 1: many failings of the elite, starting with the fact that
Speaker 1: they're not really ruling for the common good anymore so
Speaker 1: much as the good of third world nations or feel
Speaker 1: good policies that make them feel as if they're virtuous
Speaker 1: and compassionate people, regardless of the outcomes for their supposed
Speaker 1: beneficiaries while they continue to enrich themselves and a crew
Speaker 1: more power. Doctor Matt Peterson has written extensively about this.
Speaker 1: He's the vice president of Education at the Claremont Institute
Speaker 1: and editor of the American Mind, and he wrote the
Speaker 1: piece at that new website, The American Mind, where he
Speaker 1: argues Tucker Carlson is right now. Full disclosure before we
Speaker 1: jump in. I'm a publious fellow at the Cremin Institute,
Speaker 1: and I continue to do work with them because I
Speaker 1: think they're a great institution that's doing God's work and
Speaker 1: trying to restore America's founding principles. Doctor Peterson, thanks so
Speaker 1: much for joining us. Thank you so much for that introduction.
Speaker 1: Then thanks well, it's my pleasure and thank you for
Speaker 1: writing this piece. Let's start at the highest level, which
Speaker 1: is how, in your view, have our elites found us?
Speaker 1: Oh gosh, so there's so many ways. I mean, I
Speaker 1: would start, though, with a misunderstanding of American principles and purpose.
Speaker 1: The first failing you'd have to talk about is that
Speaker 1: the education of our elites fails to understand and distinguish
Speaker 1: what is distinctive about America and what American the American
Speaker 1: principles of government aren't therefore what we ought to be
Speaker 1: aiming at. What's the purpose? And so what you have
Speaker 1: what you see in elite society is an unwillingness or
Speaker 1: an aura culture that is very reluctant to embrace something
Speaker 1: distinctly American. And it's much more apt to say what's
Speaker 1: wrong with America? Right, And it's the suspicious of patriotism.
Speaker 1: I would start there. And then the problem is that
Speaker 1: outside of that, if you don't have a way to
Speaker 1: be a patriotic elite, or you're not taught what the
Speaker 1: principles and purposes of your government are, you then descend
Speaker 1: to self interest. Right. The only other thing you have
Speaker 1: in the academy is self interest or some form of
Speaker 1: then social justice woke doctrine. Right. So this is an
Speaker 1: enormous problem. It's been going on for a long time.
Speaker 1: It's been building for a long time. But what you
Speaker 1: see now are people like Tucker talking about it explicitly
Speaker 1: on the right in ways that really no one has
Speaker 1: for some time. There's a political element, of course, but
Speaker 1: if you believe that politics is downstream from the culture,
Speaker 1: part of what comes out of our elites are sort
Speaker 1: of norms governing practices for how to live your life,
Speaker 1: and that comes well before we talk about policies. Charles Murray,
Speaker 1: whose work I'm sure you're very well familiar with, talks
Speaker 1: about in one of his books the idea that the
Speaker 1: elites don't preach what they practice. In other words, they
Speaker 1: sort of promote and anything goes progressive utopic sort of
Speaker 1: worldview where they reject the traditional values and principles on
Speaker 1: which our entire civilization is based. But then in their
Speaker 1: own wives they live very conventionally and they really do
Speaker 1: a disservice when they exhibit certain behavior in their rhetoric
Speaker 1: and other behavior in their private life. Do you think
Speaker 1: that factors into the sort of Tucker thesis and your
Speaker 1: view as well. Oh? Absolutely, I think Tucker is one
Speaker 1: hundred percent writer about this, And obviously Charles Murray has
Speaker 1: spearheaded that the proof of this in very real and
Speaker 1: damning social science. So what you see is that when
Speaker 1: you are a member of the elite, you're reluctant to
Speaker 1: adopt any policy that actively promotes the health of the family.
Speaker 1: At the same time that you know, because of your station,
Speaker 1: you know that getting married is a good idea of
Speaker 1: staying married is a good idea. Marriage is much healthier
Speaker 1: among elites than it is among the rest of society.
Speaker 1: And so this is where Tucker really made his mark.
Speaker 1: This is why Tucker's monologue resignated throughout the country. What
Speaker 1: he said was this is quote, culture and economics are
Speaker 1: inseparably intertwined. Certain economic systems allow families to thrive, and
Speaker 1: thriving families make market economies possible. That's what he said.
Speaker 1: And so what he did is do something different. He said, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: you can't just treat policy is is it's separate from
Speaker 1: the promotion or the denigration of the family. Economics is
Speaker 1: it used to be called used called political economy. Economics
Speaker 1: is necessarily tied to morality and to promote certain kinds
Speaker 1: of behavior and rewarding it and punishing other kinds of
Speaker 1: behavior or discouraging it. And I don't really think that
Speaker 1: this should be controversial, but unfortunately a lot of rhetoric
Speaker 1: on the right that we're just used to, that we've
Speaker 1: adopted over the last few decades, makes it controversial to
Speaker 1: say these things. I think it's kind of a truism
Speaker 1: that an economy derives from a culture and Embedded in that,
Speaker 1: to your point, is the idea that morality matters, and
Speaker 1: it clearly functions in a free market, and a capitalist
Speaker 1: system doesn't just arise out of nowhere otherwise, you know,
Speaker 1: the people who had claimed that China, for example, would
Speaker 1: become economic would become politically liberal and socially liberal because
Speaker 1: it's economically liberal, they would have been proven right if
Speaker 1: it was that economics decided. But actually it's the other
Speaker 1: way around, and it starts with people and their own
Speaker 1: voluntary actions. Now, the criticism of Tucker's piece, and you
Speaker 1: deal with this in your piece as well, is that
Speaker 1: if the free market leads to certain disasters in society,
Speaker 1: creative destruction implies both not only creation but also destruction,
Speaker 1: and there's real societal costs to that. Then is Tucker arguing,
Speaker 1: and are folks like you who support his argument then
Speaker 1: arguing that we should sort of rebel against the free
Speaker 1: market in some ways because there are societal losses in
Speaker 1: free market systems as well. I think it's a matter
Speaker 1: of priority. I think I think the best way to
Speaker 1: understand it is that even make sure it does desire
Speaker 1: a free market in a sense that we do have
Speaker 1: a drive within us right to be creative, to take
Speaker 1: initiative to buy and sell things amongst ourselves, the fourth
Speaker 1: and so on. But in order to do that, we
Speaker 1: need a governmental structure around it some way, but that
Speaker 1: the establishes kind of rules of the game and points
Speaker 1: us in certain directions as opposed to others. So let
Speaker 1: me give an example, because I understand absolutely why many
Speaker 1: people might be listening saying I'm not sure what this
Speaker 1: guy's talking about, or I don't know if I quite
Speaker 1: agree with Tucker. This sounds like, you know, some kind
Speaker 1: of socialism kind of you know, great society typed out,
Speaker 1: And this is not what we're talking about. It's not
Speaker 1: what Tucker's got talking about. Carlson said that our leaders
Speaker 1: should speak out against the ugliest parts of our financial
Speaker 1: system because not all commerce is good. Uh, some commerce
Speaker 1: is in fact harmful. And so what are the questions
Speaker 1: he asked, was why is it why is it defensible
Speaker 1: to loan people money, poor people money that they can't
Speaker 1: possibly repay, So take payday loan outlets and poor neighborhoods, right,
Speaker 1: four hundred percent annual interests. This is this is this
Speaker 1: is a practice where you might raise a question mark
Speaker 1: might I say, why is this commerce good? And in fact,
Speaker 1: in American history, Abraham Lincoln, when he first ran for office, said,
Speaker 1: you know, loaning money to poor people at exorbitant rates
Speaker 1: of interest. In that idea, Noah Webster during the ratification debate, said, look,
Speaker 1: you can't separate the morals of the people from the
Speaker 1: influence of money on men's sense of justice and moral obligation.
Speaker 1: The law, you know, influences our habit, and we should
Speaker 1: restrict credit to people who won't be able to pay
Speaker 1: money back in order really to encourage them to save
Speaker 1: and to be responsible. Now, I think that's a matter
Speaker 1: of common sense. But when you when you have a
Speaker 1: kind of a brittle conservative rhetoric, it really is libertarian
Speaker 1: in a way, right, that says, well, there's no connection.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's that's why people were upset with what
Speaker 1: Tucker was saying. But I think no Webster was right.
Speaker 1: Right laws to credit the poor people, they help encourage
Speaker 1: good behavior. So that that leads to a fundamental question,
Speaker 1: which is is it government's job in some way to
Speaker 1: promote virtue. People instantly sort of recoil when you talk
Speaker 1: about should government be promoting certain moral as values and
Speaker 1: principles and not others. Do you believe that it is
Speaker 1: the fundamental job of government to do so well? I
Speaker 1: think that the first instinctual reaction of many older conservatives
Speaker 1: would be to say, what are you talking about? The
Speaker 1: Taliban had a department of virtue and vice, and the
Speaker 1: last thing we do is last thing we want is
Speaker 1: to increase the power of the administrative state. And there
Speaker 1: are certainly a lot of truth to that. In a way,
Speaker 1: I agree with that one hundred percent. At the same time,
Speaker 1: we can't neglect what law is. And here the American
Speaker 1: founders can help us out because they did not promote
Speaker 1: a kind of great society where government interfered in every
Speaker 1: part of people's lives. On the other hand, they did
Speaker 1: not lie to themselves and think that law and policy
Speaker 1: on matters of numbers, right on matters of economic policy,
Speaker 1: we're just kind of morally neutral. They knew that law
Speaker 1: either encourages or discourages certain kinds of habit and certain
Speaker 1: kind of kinds of behavior, and they didn't pretend otherwise.
Speaker 1: So the way I put it is, of course government
Speaker 1: and law can't reach inside people and make them virtuous.
Speaker 1: That certainly is not something that law him do directly.
Speaker 1: In fact, other institutions to be doing that much more
Speaker 1: directly than government. On hand, I mean to reward certain
Speaker 1: kinds of behavior and encourage it right, certain kinds of
Speaker 1: habits and ways of life, And it is to discourage
Speaker 1: other kinds of habits and ways of life, and to
Speaker 1: pretend otherwise, I think is very dangerous. Where does Trump
Speaker 1: factor in in this thesis? I mentioned in my open
Speaker 1: that in some sense what Tucker was explaining as why
Speaker 1: Trump won while the elites failed, he called them out
Speaker 1: on it. What is the takeaway in terms of what
Speaker 1: the future of conservatism looks like? Is there something within
Speaker 1: Trump that recognizes the problem and you can say, here
Speaker 1: are the sorts of policies that we might want to
Speaker 1: push for based upon what he saw in the electorate.
Speaker 1: So I guess one question, what does the future of
Speaker 1: conservatism look like? Too? Well, the Republican rank and file
Speaker 1: simply reject this out of hand and take the sort
Speaker 1: of view that, well, look, this was a blip in
Speaker 1: US history. This president actually rejected everything that we show
Speaker 1: it in our twenty twelve autopsy of why Mitt Romney
Speaker 1: lost and the status quo will ultimately prevail again, well,
Speaker 1: I certainly have the view that even though there are
Speaker 1: many people in Washington and elsewhere in power, you President Trump.
Speaker 1: I mean, they think that once President Trump leaves the scene,
Speaker 1: and of course they hope to force him out off
Speaker 1: the scene, force him off the stage, they hope that
Speaker 1: things will go back to the way they were. And
Speaker 1: I think this is a dangerous delusion as well. I
Speaker 1: don't think things are going to go back to the
Speaker 1: way they were. I think that what we're having is,
Speaker 1: or what we should be having, is a very serious
Speaker 1: debate about what is a matter of principle and what's
Speaker 1: a matter of policy. So principles should be the things
Speaker 1: that don't change, right, that that dictate what kind of
Speaker 1: policy we should propose given the circumstances. But policy changes
Speaker 1: over time because we find ourselves in different circumstances. So,
Speaker 1: you know, to give an example of I think what
Speaker 1: Trump understands and what Trump can actually teach us, the
Speaker 1: federalis papers. Let's go all the way back to the
Speaker 1: you know, the ratification of the US Constitution. Our founders
Speaker 1: are very clear about this. Justice is the end of government.
Speaker 1: And Charles Kessler, the editor of the Claremont Review Books
Speaker 1: warned of this twenty years ago. He said, conservatives avoid
Speaker 1: arguing about questions of justice whenever possible, And by then
Speaker 1: I think he meant, you know, they like to argue
Speaker 1: about numbers in GDP and utilitarian kind of arguments of efficiency,
Speaker 1: and they don't want to argue about justice. In the meantime,
Speaker 1: the last talked about justice all the time, right, Social
Speaker 1: justice is their mantra. And so if we avoid arguing
Speaker 1: about questions, of arguing about political questions and talking about justice,
Speaker 1: we really are are essuing politics. Kessler said, a central
Speaker 1: issue is justice, and that's the problem. So the example
Speaker 1: I would give is a matter of rhetoric when it
Speaker 1: comes to economic policy. Whatever the policy should be, we
Speaker 1: can debate about. We can debate about right with evidence
Speaker 1: if we if we know Paris as an example, will
Speaker 1: this lead to the ends that we will think about
Speaker 1: the arguments that are going to win that resonate with people.
Speaker 1: Trump's argument economically, over and over again is I care
Speaker 1: about our people. My purpose is to make their lives better.
Speaker 1: And he's very clear about that. He's very very simple
Speaker 1: and stark language. Whereas conservatives are still in a way
Speaker 1: fighting the Cold War in their Mind. You know they're
Speaker 1: fighting is the Soviet Union, and they'll say things like, well,
Speaker 1: you know this is good because it's it's free, it
Speaker 1: leads to freedom and it's part of the free market. Well,
Speaker 1: freedom is good, right, but freedom needs to be justified
Speaker 1: because ultimately justice is the end of government. The name
Speaker 1: of the piece is Tucker Carlson is right. You can
Speaker 1: find it at the American Mind and we've been speaking
Speaker 1: with its author, my friend, doctor Matt Peterson, vice president
Speaker 1: at the Clermont Institute and also the editor of the
Speaker 1: new website, The American Mind. Doctor Peterson, thanks so much
Speaker 1: for joining us. Thank you so much for having me,
Speaker 1: and we'll be right back. This is Ben Winegarden in
Speaker 1: for Buck Sex and on the Buck sexon Show eight
Speaker 1: four four nine zero zero buck. That's eight four four
Speaker 1: nine zero zero two eight two five. All right, So
Speaker 1: we're about to round out our three here on the
Speaker 1: Buck Sex and Show. And this has been Ben Winegarden
Speaker 1: in four Buck Sex and follow me on Twitter at
Speaker 1: bh Winegarden. Check on my website at ben Winegarden dot com.
Speaker 1: In our last interview, we spoke about one thing that
Speaker 1: was very fundamental and it extends beyond any single presidency.
Speaker 1: It's bigger than Donald Trump. It's bigger than Democrats and Republicans. Really,
Speaker 1: we talked about the fact that our elites have failed us,
Speaker 1: our ruling class has failed us, and that extends beyond
Speaker 1: any one party. This outrage, this resistance, it extends beyond
Speaker 1: any one party, because really, what Donald Trump represents is
Speaker 1: a threat to the power of that failed, largely progressive,
Speaker 1: bipartisan elite and a representation of what the American people
Speaker 1: want and the American people being fed up with a
Speaker 1: so called group of representatives that don't actually represent them.
Speaker 1: So Trump, in my view, is a living, breathing symbol
Speaker 1: that they've failed. He's constructed a massive Trump Tower in
Speaker 1: their collective heads. Again, this goes beyond any one presidency,
Speaker 1: and it goes to the core of what our nation
Speaker 1: is built on, and that is the idea of consent
Speaker 1: of the governed. That is how our republic works. The resistance,
Speaker 1: the outrage, the intransigence of our political class is in
Speaker 1: direct proportion to how strong his punchback has been against them.
Speaker 1: They hate him, they hate what he represents, because he
Speaker 1: represents their failure, and he represents you, you, deplorable Americans,
Speaker 1: anyone who doesn't agree, anyone who dissents from the prevailing
Speaker 1: progressive orthodoxy. Finally, I just want to thank Buck sex
Speaker 1: and for having me on tonight. It's been a real
Speaker 1: honor and privilege. Hope you have a great weekend. Again,
Speaker 1: this is Ben Weegarten. Follow me on Twitter at Bhwinegarden
Speaker 1: and online at Benwegarden dot com. Thank you so much
Speaker 1: and have a great weekend.