Speaker 1: Hey, guys, ready or not, twenty twenty four is here,
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Speaker 4: All right, Welcome to Counterpoints, everybody. I'm Ryan Grim here
Speaker 4: with Emily Joshinsky.
Speaker 5: Had a big show today.
Speaker 4: Israeli President Isaac Herzog is coming to Capitol Hill today.
Speaker 4: A handful of Democrats are protesting. What else we ought?
Speaker 6: Well, we're going to start with, of course, the news
Speaker 6: if you're not sick of indictments yet, that Donald Trump
Speaker 6: is facing another indictment and then potentially another indictment after that.
Speaker 3: Ronda Santa sat down.
Speaker 6: With Jake Tapper yesterday, so we have all the highlights
Speaker 6: from that interview. Joe Manson, there's some pretty interesting video
Speaker 6: from Joe mansion in New Hampshire. Maybe a little bit
Speaker 6: about Gavin Newsom and that. We'll then get to Israel
Speaker 6: we'll get to some wild video footage of Charles Barkley,
Speaker 6: and then our guest today is Christopher Rufo. We'll be
Speaker 6: talking to him about his new book. We have lots
Speaker 6: of questions and are excited for that interview.
Speaker 5: And yeah, and a quick word on that.
Speaker 4: You and I both have read the book, and just
Speaker 4: to tease the interview a little bit, like what I
Speaker 4: would say is that the most dangerous thing about the
Speaker 4: book is how.
Speaker 5: Good it is.
Speaker 3: It's not dangerous from my perspective.
Speaker 4: To me, like the worldview that it articulates and advocates
Speaker 4: for is kind of nihilistic and anti social, but it
Speaker 4: does it in such an impressively structured way. It's like
Speaker 4: it's a piece of intellectual hef that has to be
Speaker 4: grappled with. And I think it's filled with contradictions that
Speaker 4: hopefully we can some which I think you'll agree with
Speaker 4: me on probably and some of which you won't.
Speaker 5: But I'm curious to see how this goes.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I agree, we're really looking forward to that. Let's
Speaker 6: start though, with the news of Donald Trump receiving a
Speaker 6: target letter from special counsel Jack Smith. This is in
Speaker 6: reference actually to those alleged efforts to overturn the twenty
Speaker 6: twenty election. So we'll put a one the element up
Speaker 6: on the screen here. This is from Fox News.
Speaker 3: They say a.
Speaker 6: Government source with direct knowledge of the situation tells Fox
Speaker 6: News that Smith's office sent Trump a target letter, and
Speaker 6: the former president confirmed the news in a social media
Speaker 6: post Tuesday. The development indicates that another indictment of Trump
Speaker 6: could be looming in the near future. You'll remember that
Speaker 6: actually from the last indictment. When the world learned about
Speaker 6: target letters, it's usually a pretty clear red flag that
Speaker 6: you are about to be indicted. Now, the Republican primary field,
Speaker 6: Soccer and Crystal sort of walked through the breaking news yesterday,
Speaker 6: but the primary field has had about twenty.
Speaker 3: Four hours to react.
Speaker 6: Now, I should start with one tiny little bit of
Speaker 6: updated news from ABC say. The target letter mentions three
Speaker 6: federal statue federal statutes conspiracy to commit offense or to
Speaker 6: defraud the United States, deprivation of rights under color of law,
Speaker 6: and tampering with a witness, victim or an informant, sources
Speaker 6: familiar with the matter told ABC News Now. Vivek Ramaswami
Speaker 6: has said that these are quote different from any of
Speaker 6: the other prior indictments against Trump, referring to the charges
Speaker 6: in this case. You also had Nicky Haley, You had
Speaker 6: Governor Chris former Governor Chris Christie come out and talk
Speaker 6: about this. Chris Christie said, basically, as a former prosecutor,
Speaker 6: I want to see any potential indictment before I talk
Speaker 6: about the case against Donald Trump. That said, let maybe
Speaker 6: clear his conduct on January sixth proves he doesn't care
Speaker 6: about our country and our constitution. Nikki Haley said, that's
Speaker 6: why I'm running. We need a new generational leader. Then
Speaker 6: you had Asa Hutchinson, who I don't even know what
Speaker 6: I'm mentioning because he's so completely irrelevant, just torch Trump.
Speaker 3: A lot of them never Trump. People really loved that.
Speaker 6: And Ron destantas his His first reaction was, I can't
Speaker 6: speak about that because I haven't seen it. I can
Speaker 6: tell you one of my jobs as president will be
Speaker 6: to end the weaponization of these agencies.
Speaker 3: I will get that job done.
Speaker 6: He also talked about this on Jake Tapper, which we're
Speaker 6: going to break down the entire interview later in the show,
Speaker 6: but he did say, this country is going down the
Speaker 6: road of criminalizing political differences, and I think that is wrong.
Speaker 6: He references Alvin Bragg and said, my job is to
Speaker 6: restore a single standard of justice, to end weaponization of
Speaker 6: these agencies.
Speaker 3: We can put a two up on the screen right now.
Speaker 6: This is reaction from Julie Kelly, someone who has done
Speaker 6: a lot of reporting on these types of issues, in particular.
Speaker 3: I'm so sorry. I meant a three.
Speaker 6: Julie Kelly doing a lot of reporting on this in particular,
Speaker 6: she says it won't just be Trump, and I should
Speaker 6: say from the right named in a January sixth indictment,
Speaker 6: DOJ Smith love conspiracy charges in every conspiracy account obstructions
Speaker 6: seditions THATCREA needs at.
Speaker 3: Least one co conspirator.
Speaker 6: Prepare for lawyers, White House, official campaign aids, and maybe
Speaker 6: GOP House members to be indicted to. In other WORDSDS
Speaker 6: indictment exhaustion is obviously imminent. And just before I toss
Speaker 6: to Ryan, let's run the sound bite. Sorry for going
Speaker 6: out of order at guys, but this is a two
Speaker 6: from CNN.
Speaker 2: But it's a pretty serious moment, and it causes from
Speaker 2: both illegal and in this case a political standpoint.
Speaker 7: I imagine a certain degree of circling the wagons. Look
Speaker 7: it shows that there is a degree of legal jeopardy
Speaker 7: coming in the direction of the former president, and that's
Speaker 7: always serious for anybody who receives a target letter. So
Speaker 7: I do think, you know, it's something that needs to
Speaker 7: be taken seriously. Perhaps an indictment is on its way.
Speaker 7: We saw in the last case that that preceded an indictment.
Speaker 7: I think we're likely to see the same thing here.
Speaker 7: He's probably not going to go in and testify.
Speaker 8: And then it's you know, then we're back to Okay,
Speaker 8: this case perhaps going to be be heard in the
Speaker 8: in the DC district, And who's the judge that gets
Speaker 8: asign and we're kind of off to all the questions
Speaker 8: that we had on the first round.
Speaker 6: So that's Jim Schultz, somebody who was actually a lawyer
Speaker 6: in the Trump White House.
Speaker 3: So, Ryan, what do you make of that reaction?
Speaker 6: Obviously it's not entirely different from what a Chris Christie
Speaker 6: or maybe an Asa Hutchinson would immediately make of the situation,
Speaker 6: but also from the broader field as they digestive the
Speaker 6: news publicly.
Speaker 4: I think Ramaswami is wrong on his analysis so far.
Speaker 4: If the ABC News reporting is correct that those are
Speaker 4: the three charges that he's going to face. I think
Speaker 4: that you can say that colloquially that that amounts to insurrection,
Speaker 4: and therefore you could argue the fourteenth Amendment, or which
Speaker 4: amendment is, it's the fourteenth Amendment that triggers that bans
Speaker 4: you from running for a president or in federal office
Speaker 4: if you've been involved in insurrection. The insurrection they meant
Speaker 4: specifically was the Civil War, although law doesn't.
Speaker 5: Limit it to that. But I don't see how those three.
Speaker 4: Charges would get past a Republican Supreme Court. In other words,
Speaker 4: they're not going to stop they're not going to stop
Speaker 4: him from running, they're not going to take him off
Speaker 4: the ballots, and if he won, I just do not
Speaker 4: see the Supreme Court coming in and saying you can't
Speaker 4: take office. So I don't think we're at that place yet.
Speaker 4: But like you said, it is. This is another indictment
Speaker 4: thrown on the pile, and I think it is ammunition
Speaker 4: for my earlier argument that, in particular, the New York
Speaker 4: case was a big mistake for Democrats because it looks
Speaker 4: so trivial the paperwork around a payoff for Stormy Daniels
Speaker 4: compared to trying to overthrow an election allegedly violently through
Speaker 4: an insurrection like that is that is broadly.
Speaker 5: The charge under which these three allegations fall. So you
Speaker 5: present a scenario where.
Speaker 4: It looks like they're coming after him on just everything
Speaker 4: that they can find. When something like you know what,
Speaker 4: lots of politicians pay hush money, lots of politicians don't
Speaker 4: try to overthrow the elections.
Speaker 5: That they lost.
Speaker 4: And so I do wish that they had focused their
Speaker 4: energy on that particular case. But we still have the
Speaker 4: document's case coming, as Trump calls it documents hoax. That's
Speaker 4: that's still waiting in the wings. The Georgia elections indictment
Speaker 4: may still be coming too, from the state attorney general
Speaker 4: there soon probably and the Michigan Attorney General. I wonder
Speaker 4: if this is do we have this here? I wonder
Speaker 4: if this was a coincidence or if this just or
Speaker 4: if this is related to these charges. So sixteen Michigan residents,
Speaker 4: several of them very high profile party apparatricks in Michigan,
Speaker 4: signed certificates saying that they were the duly elected electors
Speaker 4: from Michigan. They were going to They tried to give
Speaker 4: that to Ron Johnson. They mailed it to the Senate.
Speaker 4: They were trying to get it to Pence so that
Speaker 4: they would do basically what happened in eighteen seventy two
Speaker 4: where there were multiple electors seven nineteen sixty even did
Speaker 4: oh yeah, they well, well that was the DNC.
Speaker 6: It was a similar situation where you had people in
Speaker 6: the cases of sort of like actively litigating where the
Speaker 6: state's electors were going to go. So it kind of
Speaker 6: cast their lot for the one person. And then that's
Speaker 6: sort of again like the fake elector's thing is actually
Speaker 6: that it's not an entirely misleading term, but misleading in
Speaker 6: the respect that it's not like they were trying to
Speaker 6: commit fraud or anything. They were openly trying a leadgal
Speaker 6: strategy basically, right.
Speaker 4: So where they're getting hit is signing a paper that says,
Speaker 4: now I feel bad for one woman and if she
Speaker 4: can prove it, I think she should get off. She
Speaker 4: says she thought she was signing a sign in sheet.
Speaker 4: Oh no, Now, if that's nonsense, and that they can
Speaker 4: prove that she's just coming up with BS, then I
Speaker 4: see you throw the book at her.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 4: One of the women like, look, I was just a meeting.
Speaker 4: Everybody was signing it. I signed. I'm here.
Speaker 5: If there's a time next to her signature, then I think.
Speaker 4: She has to be found, not heal checked. And why
Speaker 4: I say seven thirty five here, it's when you became
Speaker 4: a duly elected elector. The others are top party officials,
Speaker 4: you know, who are saying, like, we are the electors,
Speaker 4: and yeah, their plan was we're going to send these
Speaker 4: to Mike Pence, and Mike Pence will then look, oh,
Speaker 4: Michigan sent us two batches of electors, which is exactly
Speaker 4: what happened in eighteen seventy two, except it was like
Speaker 4: South Carolina and Georgia and Florida, and we have two.
Speaker 4: I can't rule on anything. This has to go back
Speaker 4: somewhere else. And then Ted Cruz is saying, send it
Speaker 4: to a commission. In eighteen seventy two, they did form
Speaker 4: a commission that comes up with the compromise around Tilden Hayes,
Speaker 4: And so that was what they were trying to get to.
Speaker 4: And so then the question is did they have enough
Speaker 4: rational belief that what they were saying was founded in
Speaker 4: sincerity or was it just completely fake? Some of that
Speaker 4: we'll have to do with text messages. I'm sure that
Speaker 4: they've obtained emails that they've obtained. But that's what's always
Speaker 4: bothered me about these questions that if you fundamentally, genuinely,
Speaker 4: honestly believe that you're the elector even though.
Speaker 5: You're not, than what how do we go from there?
Speaker 5: How do we serort that out?
Speaker 4: Now, you guys on the right of the ones that
Speaker 4: believe in absolute truth, So I have less sympathy.
Speaker 3: Facts don't care about feelings.
Speaker 5: Yeah, exactly, you felt like you were an elector. The
Speaker 5: facts say otherwise my.
Speaker 3: Truth that I was a Trump elector.
Speaker 4: Yes, you're you're relying on all this postmodernism that RUFO
Speaker 4: loves to dismantle.
Speaker 9: That's right.
Speaker 3: So you know, that's a really interesting point on.
Speaker 6: The Manhattan charges because as we're as we were making
Speaker 6: that point, I was thinking, there was a really searing
Speaker 6: imagery to Donald Trump being the first president, first former president.
Speaker 3: Indicted in every news station had the.
Speaker 6: Cameras following his plane up to Manhattan, and they were
Speaker 6: doing like twenty four hour Trump Watch basically around that indictment.
Speaker 6: This one is much more serious from the perspective of
Speaker 6: the left. This one is much more substantive and credible.
Speaker 6: And you've already I think lost the public's attention. And
Speaker 6: that's not to say the whole public has tuned out.
Speaker 6: That is to say, no now though, that this is
Speaker 6: a blob, Like the indictments are a blob for people
Speaker 6: who don't have the misfortune that we do of paying
Speaker 6: attention to every little new development in the breaking news cycle.
Speaker 6: This is all really going to blend together. And you
Speaker 6: know they're not equal. These indictments are not equal, and
Speaker 6: that is pretty clear when you make a side by
Speaker 6: side comparison of them. So the indictment fatigue and exhaustion,
Speaker 6: it's not just that it's the just sort of the
Speaker 6: blending together. It's not just that people are starting to
Speaker 6: tune out. It's that when you're adding legal layer on
Speaker 6: top of legal layer, it's really complicated. And I think
Speaker 6: it gets harder for Democrats, for the left, or for
Speaker 6: the anti Trump's center, maybe even the anti Trump right
Speaker 6: to penetrate the public consciousness every time after you sort
Speaker 6: of not you personally, but after the credibility was all
Speaker 6: these mental gymnastics to say that Alvin Brand had a
Speaker 6: grave and serious case, and you know that's not to
Speaker 6: say that literally book yes, yeah, and things that people
Speaker 6: already understood about Donald Trump. So when you've already exhausted
Speaker 6: these like huge, big breaking news cycles where you have
Speaker 6: the sirns out and all of that over bookkeeping, I
Speaker 6: think a lot of the public's attention has been lost.
Speaker 4: Yeah, but nobody listens to me. So what are you
Speaker 4: gonna do? So you don't think he's going to go
Speaker 4: to the grand jury? So he has now three days.
Speaker 4: He was given four days to appear tell his side
Speaker 4: of the story, which we don't have a legal analyst here.
Speaker 4: I'm certainly not one. That seems unusual to me. So
Speaker 4: it feels like usually it's behind closed it's just behind
Speaker 4: closed doors, and they get they get to hear from
Speaker 4: just the prosecutor, and you have no chance to make
Speaker 4: a defense of yourself. Maybe for whatever reason, in the
Speaker 4: federal process it's slightly different, or maybe because he's the president,
Speaker 4: he's different in any of that. They gave him four days,
Speaker 4: he's now down to three.
Speaker 6: Uh.
Speaker 4: What Jack Smith is, according to CNN setting signals by
Speaker 4: going a subway.
Speaker 3: We gotta play this, we have this, we gotta play this.
Speaker 3: All right.
Speaker 6: So Ryan just teased this, but this is an actual
Speaker 6: CNN segment between by the way, not just random cranks
Speaker 6: they had on air. This is John King and Dana Bash,
Speaker 6: two of their most prize and treasured talents. There's nothing
Speaker 6: more I can say to set it up. You actually
Speaker 6: just have to watch it.
Speaker 10: Jack Smith is tight lipped. He was spotted today by
Speaker 10: CNN going to Subway for lunch, picking up a sandwich,
Speaker 10: leaving and not saying a word. So no comment from
Speaker 10: the Special Counsel's Office on whether they plan to indict
Speaker 10: Donald Trump and when that is potentially going to happen
Speaker 10: for the second time for a federal case.
Speaker 11: Remember when the Classified Documents Target letter, when Trump announced
Speaker 11: that there's a lot of commentary goes Jack Smith making
Speaker 11: a mistake? Care is he leaving this all to Donald Trump?
Speaker 11: And then they released the indictment and we all said, wow, wow,
Speaker 11: we read it, We saw the documentation, We saw the
Speaker 11: level of detail. Jack Smith going to Subway today is
Speaker 11: a message to Donald Trump. Donald Trump tries to intimidate people,
Speaker 11: tries to bully people, he tries to scare you away.
Speaker 11: That was Jack Smith with no words and a simple
Speaker 11: five dollars sub in his hand, saying I'm here, I'm
Speaker 11: not going to Yeah. The imagery was was intentional and
Speaker 11: spoke by you.
Speaker 6: So what's crazy to me about that is Dana Bash
Speaker 6: might actually know there was intentionality behind that imagery. Like
Speaker 6: if Jack Smith is actually seriously going to subway and
Speaker 6: leaking the footage or telling CNN to have their cameras
Speaker 6: there and that's why she said it was, that's even
Speaker 6: more pathetic than CNN. And by the way, I'm just
Speaker 6: realizing it. That is a subway around the corner from CNN.
Speaker 6: That's like two blocks from CNN. If even so it
Speaker 6: I've just solve the case on air, just like Sherlott
Speaker 6: palms the subway video, it's like this, he took.
Speaker 4: A car to well the department does depart department just
Speaker 4: has a new building down there too that I don't know.
Speaker 4: I think maybe they have well, there's enormous amounts of office
Speaker 4: space down there.
Speaker 3: There's a lot of legal work, right.
Speaker 4: So, and he's a special whatever, so they probably have
Speaker 4: a little space down there. But yes, I think your
Speaker 4: point is interesting, like did Dana Bash and John King
Speaker 4: like get a text message from somebody saying, hey, this
Speaker 4: was intentional, because otherwise how do they come up on
Speaker 4: their own with the idea that a guy getting a
Speaker 4: sandwich is a signal to Donald Trump.
Speaker 5: It feels like you have to be told that exactly.
Speaker 4: And if they're told that, then it's true, Well he
Speaker 4: really is through CNN setting a signal.
Speaker 5: Weird.
Speaker 3: They had their cameras at the subway.
Speaker 6: That's another part of I don't know why, ridiculous so seriously,
Speaker 6: but it is really funny and kind of bizarre because
Speaker 6: it's like Kim Kardashian tipping off the paparazzis, paparazzi saying
Speaker 6: I'm going.
Speaker 3: To be here at this time.
Speaker 6: Someone told them to have cameras there, and either they
Speaker 6: were following Jack Smith because there was the target letter
Speaker 6: had been you know, announced by Donald Trump on troop Social,
Speaker 6: so they had just been following him anyway.
Speaker 3: But to your point, even.
Speaker 6: If that's not the case, even if you know they
Speaker 6: weren't tipped off to be by to be at the subway,
Speaker 6: it does sound like they were tipped off that this
Speaker 6: was intentional. And that's again I think that's even more
Speaker 6: pathetic than CNN just coming to that conclusion on their own.
Speaker 4: I think we need more analysis of this. It looked
Speaker 4: like one foot long sub.
Speaker 5: Is that right.
Speaker 3: I thought it looked at a SI.
Speaker 4: We'll have to go back and look at this footage closer.
Speaker 4: So it looks like one foot long sub which is like,
Speaker 4: wait a minute, okay. Jack's like, hey, I need lunch.
Speaker 4: I'm going to subway. Yeah, anybody need anything? Nobody needed
Speaker 4: anything nobody else, nobody needed like an oatmeal raisin cookie.
Speaker 5: I find that suspicious. They have excellent cookies.
Speaker 4: And if somebody's going the subway and they ask you
Speaker 4: if you want anything, yeah, which you're going to tell.
Speaker 5: Me you want a cookie?
Speaker 3: Most people would.
Speaker 5: So did he not tell his co workers that he
Speaker 5: was going to subway.
Speaker 6: Or he knew the cameras were going to be on
Speaker 6: him and he didn't want to send a bad message
Speaker 6: to the kids about.
Speaker 3: Eating cookies for lunch.
Speaker 5: That could be.
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 6: It's hard to say, but well, we'll pay attention to
Speaker 6: this story as it develops. Well, be sure to bring
Speaker 6: you any updates on Jacksmith's lunch preferences. Ron DeSantis sat
Speaker 6: down with Jake Tapper of CNN yesterday, which is actually
Speaker 6: interesting in and of itself. Ron DeSantis is obviously pretty
Speaker 6: known for avoiding or not avoiding, so much as stewing
Speaker 6: corporate press, legacy media and being really aggressive about that,
Speaker 6: making it an intentional strategy. His team actually, as he's
Speaker 6: been in the governor's office, has intentionally cut corporate press
Speaker 6: legacy media out and for good reason. By the way,
Speaker 6: he had an absolute hit job done on him by
Speaker 6: CBS sixty minutes once, and after that it really snowballed
Speaker 6: into a broader strategy that we are blocking access. If
Speaker 6: you don't change your ways, if you don't give us
Speaker 6: a fair shake, just like you would give any Democrat,
Speaker 6: then we are going to cut off access to So
Speaker 6: it's interesting.
Speaker 4: That he sat down sign of how well his campaign
Speaker 4: is going, that he's rethinking.
Speaker 5: It's that strategy.
Speaker 6: My colleague Eddy Scary wrote in The Federalist actually a
Speaker 6: couple of weeks ago, a piece that I wonder if
Speaker 6: this implanted that in the desantisis team team's brain basically
Speaker 6: like he is DeSantis's best when he's in adversarial conversations
Speaker 6: with reporters and to sort of rejuvenate.
Speaker 3: His campaign, he should be doing that all the time.
Speaker 3: And so here he is on CNA. Let's roll a
Speaker 3: few clips here, a few highlights.
Speaker 6: He obviously reacted to the Donald Trump news, and so
Speaker 6: he also reacted to news about our questions about his campaign,
Speaker 6: the state of his campaign, his poll numbers. So let's
Speaker 6: end Wokeness and then Ukraine. But let's start and we'll
Speaker 6: just we'll run through some of these highlights. Here's the
Speaker 6: first clip.
Speaker 12: Some of your supporters are disappointed that your campaign has
Speaker 12: yet to catch fire the way they would want in
Speaker 12: terms of polling. One Republican polster, one who is sympathetic
Speaker 12: to you, I was asking her about your campaign and
Speaker 12: she said she thought the issue was you bumped up
Speaker 12: at the beginning because voters, Republican voters saw you as
Speaker 12: a more electable conservative like Trump, like Trump without the baggage.
Speaker 12: But then they say, as you go further and further
Speaker 12: to the right on some of these divisive social issues
Speaker 12: that could alienate moderate suburban moms, et cetera, Republican voters
Speaker 12: see you as less and less electable. What do you
Speaker 12: say to that analysis.
Speaker 13: We I donal think that's true. I mean, the proof
Speaker 13: is in the pudding. I mean I took a state
Speaker 13: that had been a one point state, and we want
Speaker 13: it by twenty percentage points, one point five million votes.
Speaker 13: Our bread and butter were people like suburban moms.
Speaker 6: So that's him being questioned on the state of his campaign.
Speaker 3: Let's row the next club.
Speaker 12: The biggest issues were the number two issue, women in
Speaker 12: racial or ethnic minorities are discriminated against in the army.
Speaker 5: Wokeness is listed here.
Speaker 12: But it's only number nine, so that would suggest that
Speaker 12: wokeness is not as big.
Speaker 13: Well, but I think there's an issue about like not
Speaker 13: everyone really knows what wokeness is. I mean, I've defined it,
Speaker 13: but a lot of people who rail against wokeness can't
Speaker 13: even define it. And so I think it's a sense of,
Speaker 13: you know, this is not something that's that's holding true
Speaker 13: to the core martial values that make the military unique.
Speaker 13: And I can tell you the veterans, you don't have
Speaker 13: to look far and wide, go to a VFW hall,
Speaker 13: go to an American legion. There's huge amount of concern
Speaker 13: about the direction that the military is going.
Speaker 6: With one more before we start breaking these down. This
Speaker 6: is Desantas responding to the Jack Smith target letter to
Speaker 6: Donald Trump. Actually just probably hours after that news broke.
Speaker 12: If Jack Smith has evidence of criminality, should Donald Trump
Speaker 12: be held accountable.
Speaker 13: So here's the problem this country is going down the
Speaker 13: road of criminalizing political differences, and I think that's wrong.
Speaker 13: Alvin Bragg stretched the statute in Manhattan to be able
Speaker 13: to try to target Donald Trump. Most people, even people
Speaker 13: on the left, acknowledge if that wasn't Trump, that case
Speaker 13: would not have likely been brought against the normal civilian.
Speaker 6: So Ryan, Actually, we do have Chris Ruffo on later
Speaker 6: in the show, and I think we'll probably have some
Speaker 6: questions for him about how he's had conversations with Ron
Speaker 6: DeSantis about wokeness, defining wokeness and then once you define
Speaker 6: it sort of targeting with targeting it with policies. But
Speaker 6: what did you make of DeSantis's back and forth with
Speaker 6: Tapper on those questions.
Speaker 4: First of all, a guy who had a viral and
Speaker 4: extremely damaging story about eating pudding with his fingers should
Speaker 4: never say the proof is in the pudding.
Speaker 3: You were very fixated on food today.
Speaker 5: Don't go yeah, don't go anywhere near pudding.
Speaker 4: And then he talks about bread and butter, like the
Speaker 4: knock on him has been some of these viral videos.
Speaker 3: Does he eat that with his fingers too? The butter?
Speaker 5: See, now you've got me thinking about that.
Speaker 4: Maybe like he's if he's hungry and he's stuck in
Speaker 4: a two hour meeting and all all that's in front
Speaker 4: of him is butter or he's on a private plane.
Speaker 5: I don't know what he's gonna do.
Speaker 4: Never go full Klobe, but I do think it is
Speaker 4: an important question because as effective as Rufo has been
Speaker 4: at making, you know, his kind of culture war critique
Speaker 4: to be the thing that we're all wrapped up in
Speaker 4: and obsessed with, the guy, the candidate who adopted it
Speaker 4: has flamed out, and the Republicans who have adopted it
Speaker 4: generally have have not seen dividends in the way that
Speaker 4: you would hope if you're a partisan Republican.
Speaker 5: You know, the Democrats increased.
Speaker 4: Their numbers in the Senate, they they lost their their their.
Speaker 5: Numbers in the House by much less than they thought
Speaker 5: they were going to be.
Speaker 4: So why And I thought Jake Tapper, channeling that that
Speaker 4: female GOP polster put it well well, that DeSantis was
Speaker 4: Trump without the baggage and electable Trump. He then went
Speaker 4: far right in his both his style and his policy,
Speaker 4: which is leading people to think, oh, well, maybe he's
Speaker 4: not electable, so let's go with the more fun guy.
Speaker 5: If it's a if.
Speaker 4: It's a long shot anyway, And the problem with electability
Speaker 4: arguments is that some of it is vibes, some of
Speaker 4: it is numbers and polls, and he's just not polling
Speaker 4: as well against Biden as Trump is, and people can
Speaker 4: see those numbers, right. So do you think that there
Speaker 4: was a different path for him that wouldn't have led
Speaker 4: him to this place where he's Trump without the baggage,
Speaker 4: but also without the electability.
Speaker 6: I don't know, because i think we're still seeing that emerge,
Speaker 6: and I'm curious as to whether Ron DeSantis can kind
Speaker 6: of as we get to debate. I mean, the first
Speaker 6: debate is less than a month away now, and after
Speaker 6: debates you really start to see for better or worse
Speaker 6: than some cases. You know, at certain points, for Marc Rivio,
Speaker 6: these were really good and at other points they were
Speaker 6: momentum killing.
Speaker 3: And you know, you get you lose money.
Speaker 6: People see you in a debate, and they see the
Speaker 6: media coverage of you in a debate, whether or not
Speaker 6: that's actually reflective of what the public thought, and they
Speaker 6: pull their funds or they put more funds into you,
Speaker 6: and then the media coverage can change. So I'm curious
Speaker 6: if he's like right now, if they're going back to
Speaker 6: the drawing board. He had a great answer to somebody
Speaker 6: in Iowa yesterday who I think described herself as a
Speaker 6: super Trump.
Speaker 3: Fan, and yeah, it was a good clip.
Speaker 6: And DeSantis comes in and basically says, listen, the way
Speaker 6: Donald Trump was treated was horrible. I am going to
Speaker 6: change it. I'm the one that can actually make the change.
Speaker 6: And that is to the polster that Tappers challenge channeling
Speaker 6: what was it wasn't just that he was Trump without
Speaker 6: the baggage, it was he he's Trump, but in this
Speaker 6: he has this like spirit of trump Ism, as people
Speaker 6: on the right would describe it.
Speaker 3: But he's also able to pass legislation.
Speaker 6: He's not mired in the palace intrigue of the Trump
Speaker 6: White House, and he's doing things.
Speaker 3: He's proactive with policy, he's.
Speaker 6: Coming up with new ideas, and I don't think that
Speaker 6: he has been able to define himself that way in
Speaker 6: the campaign.
Speaker 3: He was as governor, but in the campaign when you are.
Speaker 6: Again he's talking to Jake Tapper in this planned interview
Speaker 6: for the last few days, it's at least been publicly announced,
Speaker 6: and what happens, Jack Smith said.
Speaker 3: The target letter to Donald Truck.
Speaker 5: I'm it for that.
Speaker 6: So it just I mean, I think there's a really
Speaker 6: possible and people understand this obviously, but it looks really
Speaker 6: like Donald Trump dominating the media cycles is also going
Speaker 6: to have him dominating the polls, and so far we
Speaker 6: have seen no evidence to the contrary. In fact, we've
Speaker 6: seen Trump's numbers or the gap between Trump and DeSantis
Speaker 6: grow the more Donald Trump is being hit with indictments
Speaker 6: and legal challenges, the more he is dominating the media cycle,
Speaker 6: the more he's dominated the.
Speaker 3: Polls so far.
Speaker 4: And the phrase to your point that he keeps using
Speaker 4: is get it done right, And he used with that
Speaker 4: Trump supporting woman and he's like, basically, Trump's good, He's great,
Speaker 4: he makes you laugh, all those things. But I'm going
Speaker 4: to actually get the things done that he said he
Speaker 4: was going to get done. But I think that momentum
Speaker 4: and winning is the thing that you need to persuade
Speaker 4: people that you're actually going to get it done. Like
Speaker 4: winning begets more winning, and if you are losing, you
Speaker 4: get the stench of an l on you.
Speaker 5: And then when you say I'm going.
Speaker 4: To get it done, people are like, Okay, that's great,
Speaker 4: that you're going to get done, but you can't even
Speaker 4: win this election. Your poll numbers of cutting whatever, they
Speaker 4: have a third or whatever since you've come out, And
Speaker 4: you saw that on the Democratic primary a lot that
Speaker 4: people had a lot of questions about actually Barack Obama's
Speaker 4: electability in two thousand and eight. But winning Iowa and
Speaker 4: then polling evenly with Hillary Clinton was it. That was
Speaker 4: the answer, can't you can't win? Oh, well, I just won,
Speaker 4: Now I can win. And Bernie Sanders answered some of
Speaker 4: those electability questions as well by winning a bunch of races,
Speaker 4: and then when he lost some critical battleground races, it
Speaker 4: all came rushing back that, oh yeah, he can't win.
Speaker 4: And so you had a bunch And so the idea
Speaker 4: of whether you can get something done or whether you're
Speaker 4: electable is so ephemeral and so related to just how
Speaker 4: you're doing. It's an unfair kind of circular reasoning that
Speaker 4: people have. But that's the world that we live in.
Speaker 4: And right now he's kind of undermining his own case
Speaker 4: by flailing around the campaign trail.
Speaker 6: Now they got into actually foreign policy a bit, not
Speaker 6: something that Ron DeSantis would deal quite as much with
Speaker 6: as governors who would as president, although Florida is a
Speaker 6: big state with international waters on it, so he has
Speaker 6: a little bit of that. But Taber asked him obviously
Speaker 6: he's also a veteran, But Taber asked him here about Ukraine,
Speaker 6: and this is how Rond DeSantis responded.
Speaker 13: We are going to approach the world instead of Europe
Speaker 13: being the focus like it has been since World War Two.
Speaker 13: And it was understandable why it would be after World
Speaker 13: War Two, NATO stopping the Soviets. I get it, but
Speaker 13: now the Asia Pacific really needs to be to our
Speaker 13: generation what Europe was to the post World War two generation.
Speaker 13: So I would have the Europeans do more in Europe,
Speaker 13: that's more in their backyard, that's more of an interest
Speaker 13: for them.
Speaker 7: You know.
Speaker 13: I would be willing to be helpful to try to
Speaker 13: bring it to a conclusion there, but I am not
Speaker 13: going to diminish our stocks and not send to Taiwan.
Speaker 13: I'm not going to make us less capable to respond
Speaker 13: to exigencies. And you've got to care at least as
Speaker 13: much about your own border as you do about foreign borders.
Speaker 6: Great, some people on the right have been a little
Speaker 6: hesitant on DeSantis when it comes to Ukraine. When it
Speaker 6: comes to whether or not he's willing to sort of
Speaker 6: go full Trump or full like New Right, as it's
Speaker 6: called in conservative movement circles, he said, you know, I
Speaker 6: don't think anybody wants to see US troops in Ukraine.
Speaker 6: In his interview with Jake Tapper as well, in addition
Speaker 6: to sort of flushing out that point and making the
Speaker 6: juxtaposition with China, Ryan, I want to play one more
Speaker 6: clip because this one was sort of funny too, of CNN,
Speaker 6: a CNN panel reaction to the interview, Let's roll this
Speaker 6: final club.
Speaker 14: I think what we show today was that I was
Speaker 14: happy to see him sit down with I forget what
Speaker 14: they call you now, corporate media.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, I'll take that. Yeah, that's a nice verst,
Speaker 5: trust me.
Speaker 3: I know.
Speaker 14: But I was glad to see him sit down outside
Speaker 14: of his bubble because then it helps him look more electable.
Speaker 14: I mean, it's one thing to do a Joe Rogan
Speaker 14: interview or kind of the fringes. It's another thing to
Speaker 14: sit down with a consummate journalist. And I think today
Speaker 14: he was able to handle those questions and deal with them.
Speaker 14: And although I don't I don't believe in his policies
Speaker 14: per se. But he actually looked decently presidential today. I'm
Speaker 14: not sure it was a reset because everything is I'm
Speaker 14: anti woke, anti woke. Today he just inserted in the military.
Speaker 14: But at least today he started to give the ViBe's
Speaker 14: still a Scott Jennings things. He started to give the
Speaker 14: vibe that he could be president of the United States.
Speaker 6: Novel observation there from CNN. It's a vibe primary.
Speaker 4: There you go, what did you make of that? Kind
Speaker 4: of stealing my bit there? But I do like the
Speaker 4: idea that they think that appearing on CNN makes you
Speaker 4: seem like a presidential candidate. Appearing on breaking points and counterpoints,
Speaker 4: that's what makes a president.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I mean it does it make you look electable
Speaker 6: to talk to the twenty thousand remaining people watching.
Speaker 3: In the middle of the day.
Speaker 4: I mean I get their point, Like if he is
Speaker 4: if the problem that he's having is he's seen as
Speaker 4: too fringe because he's like half the things he says
Speaker 4: regular people don't understand.
Speaker 3: He launched with elon that.
Speaker 4: He's too online, he's too on Twitter in particular, then
Speaker 4: getting off of that and seeming like a more normal
Speaker 4: person eating pudding with a spoon rather than your fingers.
Speaker 4: Like these these are things that you can do as
Speaker 4: a politician to make yourself appear more palatable to a
Speaker 4: general electorate.
Speaker 6: I guess you've he's lost the rank group. But I
Speaker 6: can tell just because it's a pudding. That was when
Speaker 6: you were like, I've done, don't say gay that bill,
Speaker 6: stop woke that bill. You were still thinking about supporting DeSantis.
Speaker 6: But when he ate the pudding with his fingers, that's
Speaker 6: when you said.
Speaker 4: Absolutely no, check plays out. Can't do this to maintain
Speaker 4: some dignity.
Speaker 6: No. Your point about CNN is an interesting one also
Speaker 6: because they don't. But Cary Seller's there just referred to
Speaker 6: Jake Tapper as a consummate journalist. And it's not so
Speaker 6: much that Ron DeSantis is unwilling to have conversations with
Speaker 6: these so called consummate journalists. It's the problem with the
Speaker 6: Jake Tappers of the world is that they sort of
Speaker 6: fundamentally misunderstand DeSantis, but more importantly, Desanta's supporters. And that's
Speaker 6: one of the things DeSantis said in his back and
Speaker 6: forth with the woman we referenced earlier, the Trump supporting woman.
Speaker 6: I think this was in Iowa. He said it's not
Speaker 6: he did the Trump thing. He said, it's not about me,
Speaker 6: it's about you. And that is really, really really powerful.
Speaker 6: That could be one of the things that helps some
Speaker 6: sort of claw back at Trump again. I think this
Speaker 6: gap is really huge, and the more Trump is in
Speaker 6: the news perhaps insurmountable. I don't think it matters very
Speaker 6: much as if CNNC's run dasantis as presidential, but he
Speaker 6: can generate news cycles when he goes back and forth
Speaker 6: with somebody like Tapper, and they're positive news cycles for
Speaker 6: him in a Republican primary. So I think it was
Speaker 6: a decent showing for DeSantis on CNN yesterday.
Speaker 5: Sure, good enough.
Speaker 6: Moving on to our next conversation. Here we're talking about
Speaker 6: Joe Manchin, one another one of Ryan's favorite politicians.
Speaker 5: I love Joe Manchin.
Speaker 3: All right, Right, what happened with Joe manchon this week?
Speaker 4: So he was in New Hampshire, you know, which is
Speaker 4: may or may not have a primary, but it's still
Speaker 4: kind of symbolic in our minds of the launching of
Speaker 4: the presidential campaign season. So anytime you go to New Hampshire,
Speaker 4: you're setting a signal. Hey talk about me as a
Speaker 4: presidential candidate, especially if you're going with a dark Bundy
Speaker 4: organization that has raised seventy million dollars and says that
Speaker 4: it's going to have ballot access in all fifty states,
Speaker 4: not the Green Party talking about no Labels, which is
Speaker 4: basically private dec We hadge Fun and other mobile putting
Speaker 4: together money behind this organization to say that you can
Speaker 4: we just get people like Joe Manchin and John Huntsman,
Speaker 4: Lisa Mkowskiff, she'll join us to just common sense solutions
Speaker 4: that involve a lot of cutting taxes and cutting regulations.
Speaker 3: Get some adults in that room.
Speaker 4: Yeah, basically like you know, nineties era republicanism.
Speaker 3: Or democratism Clinton, they just.
Speaker 5: Want to go back to the nineties, just nineties nostalgia.
Speaker 3: They want low taxes, right.
Speaker 5: And so we put up a one here.
Speaker 4: So Joe Manchin up at at this unw at this
Speaker 4: no Labels event where they are very kind of not
Speaker 4: subtly recruiting him to be their independent candidate, and he
Speaker 4: continues to tease at. Dick Durbin, uh the other day
Speaker 4: called Joe Mansion history's greatest political teas accurate. No lives
Speaker 4: detected in that description and so he sat down with
Speaker 4: with these moguls to talk about how common sense solutions
Speaker 4: are needed and maybe he'll be the one to provide it.
Speaker 4: I think people have to understand that the context for
Speaker 4: this is that you don't want to make any one
Speaker 4: hundred percent predictions.
Speaker 5: But he's close to a.
Speaker 4: Dead man walking in West Virginia. In his re election
Speaker 4: race in twenty twenty four, Jim Justice has announced he's
Speaker 4: going to run against him, a former Democrat, former friend
Speaker 4: who's now a Republican and not a friend. And the
Speaker 4: partisan structures that he's running up against in West Virginia
Speaker 4: are to me so insurmountable that even somebody who is
Speaker 4: an adept politician like he is in West Virginia and
Speaker 4: well liked.
Speaker 5: You go around West Virginia.
Speaker 4: Everybody likes Joe Manchin, and the left has to acknowledge
Speaker 4: that he's good at the kind of the retail politics
Speaker 4: of it, and in a small state where you get
Speaker 4: to meet most of these people over a long career,
Speaker 4: he was governor's Secretary of state, state senator. His family
Speaker 4: has been involved in Virginia politics for three generations. But
Speaker 4: it's just such a Republican state at this point that
Speaker 4: you've got too many voters who are just willing to say,
Speaker 4: I like Joe Manchin, but I'm a Republican, and I
Speaker 4: also liked Jim Justice too, and so.
Speaker 3: Well, hence Jim Justice becoming a.
Speaker 4: Republican, right, Yeah, exactly, And Manchin, in fact, Mansion helped
Speaker 4: trigger this. I think nineteen ninety four, Mansion was behind
Speaker 4: the Republican the Democrats for the Republican Governor Movement, which
Speaker 4: really kind of busted the dam in West Virginia and
Speaker 4: helped create the Republican party that is now going to
Speaker 4: eat him alive.
Speaker 6: If Manchin ran as a Republican and say Jim Justice
Speaker 6: hadn't gotten into the primary, so it was Mansion and
Speaker 6: Alex Mooney. If he had switched parties, he would win easily,
Speaker 6: just with.
Speaker 4: The r Ish. Maybe the problem is, and I say
Speaker 4: this as somebody who's glad that he came back to
Speaker 4: the IRA and helped pass the biggest climate spending package
Speaker 4: in world his but I think that his support for
Speaker 4: the American Rescue Plan, he was a pretty reliable, if
Speaker 4: annoying Democratic vote throughout twenty twenty one and twenty twenty two,
Speaker 4: and I think that that really did actually cost him
Speaker 4: back home. I'm not going to write a profile and
Speaker 4: courage book about Mansion, but you know, compared to what
Speaker 4: West Virginia would be expected to produce, which is like
Speaker 4: a Shelley Moore Capito who's going to vote for zero
Speaker 4: democratic priorities, Mansion was a godsend for Democrats in twenty
Speaker 4: twenty one and twenty two. And I think he's going
Speaker 4: to and I think he'll pay the price for that now.
Speaker 4: Like I said, he was extraordinarily annoying all the way
Speaker 4: through and cut what could have been a seriously ambitious
Speaker 4: agenda down to a much smaller one, but still big
Speaker 4: enough that it's causing him a lot of problems.
Speaker 5: And so that leaves him with.
Speaker 4: Maybe this escape hatch of a vanity presidential run and
Speaker 4: then a deal where, because he's a deal maker at heart,
Speaker 4: a deal where at some point he drops out for
Speaker 4: some type of concessions for who knows what.
Speaker 6: Yeah, there's something, really, there's something really powerful about being
Speaker 6: able to say I was at the table when we
Speaker 6: were debating the American Rescue Actor that or whatever it
Speaker 6: is and saying, listen, they pushed me to do X,
Speaker 6: Y and Z, and I just could see him.
Speaker 3: I don't think he actually ever will become a Republican.
Speaker 6: So I feel like he has this sort of emotional
Speaker 6: attachment to the Democratic Party, and he did vote, I
Speaker 6: mean he voted in that direction, not in initially more
Speaker 6: capital way, because I think he is, you know, sort
Speaker 6: of an old school Democrat. Maybe not in the way
Speaker 6: that modern democrats like or would define that now, but
Speaker 6: he really I don't know. I feel like if he
Speaker 6: did decide to become a Republican O La Jim Justice,
Speaker 6: he would be a kind of an unstoppable force in
Speaker 6: West Virginia. But that's pure speculation. Your point is very
Speaker 6: well taken. Let's actually just roll his clips so people
Speaker 6: can see him seated next to a well quaffed John
Speaker 6: Huntsman border up in New Hampshire.
Speaker 3: Take a look at this video.
Speaker 15: I think people are getting ahead of the putting the
Speaker 15: card ahead of the horse. We're here to make sure
Speaker 15: that the American people have an option, and the option is,
Speaker 15: can you move the political parties off their respective size.
Speaker 15: They've gone too far right and too far left. If
Speaker 15: that movement can move, but they can't be done. That
Speaker 15: can't be done. Nless they're threatened only can threatenings have
Speaker 15: people out there that says, listen, they can't win. Either
Speaker 15: side can't win without the independent, without that independent, that
Speaker 15: center left, center right, an independent Republican, an independent Democrat.
Speaker 15: If they have another option, then they're in trouble. Those
Speaker 15: parties are in trouble. So they're going to have to say, Okay,
Speaker 15: we're going to look at this again. I don't think
Speaker 15: unless we stay over here that they're going to vote
Speaker 15: for us. Maybe we can move. Let's see what happens.
Speaker 16: It's too early, but even things.
Speaker 15: We need to do something.
Speaker 6: I'm I I see one.
Speaker 16: That's because if you.
Speaker 6: Do get in the race and you spoil the election,
Speaker 6: would you would that factor into true.
Speaker 16: I've never been any.
Speaker 15: Race I've ever spoiled. I've any races to win, and
Speaker 15: if I get a race, I want to win.
Speaker 6: So oh, he was ready for that one. He also
Speaker 6: told Kaitlyn Collins that he says, I haven't made any decision,
Speaker 6: nor will I make a decision until the end of
Speaker 6: the year.
Speaker 3: And this goes along with C three.
Speaker 6: If you were wondering, you know, when are they going
Speaker 6: to talk about Gavin Newsom, the most formidable man in
Speaker 6: the Democratic primary. Potentially, here you have Democratic strategist Doug
Speaker 6: Shown saying in an Orange County register at ed that
Speaker 6: Gavin Newsom wants to run for president. This wasn't sort
Speaker 6: of a spilling of any tea. It was more just
Speaker 6: reading the tea leaves, looking at what's out there and saying,
Speaker 6: this is a guy. And I'm sure Duck Shown knows
Speaker 6: a little bit of inside stuff too, And I think
Speaker 6: it's probably pretty clear writing is on the wall for
Speaker 6: a lot of people that Gavin Newsom wants to run.
Speaker 6: So I think the question when you look at both
Speaker 6: those stories side by side, two very powerful Democrats in
Speaker 6: their own states, seems to me almost that they're running
Speaker 6: out the clock, and that there's an idea of whether
Speaker 6: Joe Biden, something happens to Joe Biden, that they are
Speaker 6: positioned in case something goes wrong medically for Joe Biden,
Speaker 6: in case there's a surprise decision one day that he
Speaker 6: doesn't run because of his age, because of his health,
Speaker 6: And now they're in a position where they can jump in.
Speaker 6: And I think Mansion maybe using the third party excuse
Speaker 6: to do that, or should we be taking the Mansion
Speaker 6: third party spoiler threat very seriously, I.
Speaker 4: Don't think so, because I think, like I said saying earlier,
Speaker 4: he's such a deal maker that you could buy him
Speaker 4: out of that for whatever kind of concession he wants
Speaker 4: if it looks like he's going to get seven or
Speaker 4: eight percent or something like that and throw the election
Speaker 4: to Trump.
Speaker 5: But I think you're right.
Speaker 4: About the analysis of the status quo because right right now,
Speaker 4: the kind of no labels argument in the Mansion argument
Speaker 4: pretends that Joe Biden doesn't exist, like it pretends that
Speaker 4: Bernie Sanderson won the presidential campaign.
Speaker 5: It's like the parties are in control by the far
Speaker 5: left and the far right.
Speaker 4: It's like, I'm pretty sure that Joe Biden is president
Speaker 4: right now. And Joe Biden is not the far left.
Speaker 4: He's just the definition of a boring centrist. Like that's
Speaker 4: who Joe Biden is. He I'm glad that he has
Speaker 4: kind of been dragged a little bit to the left,
Speaker 4: but he's still Joe Biden, and he's still he's still
Speaker 4: always codes as a centrist, yes either way to voters,
Speaker 4: to voters, and so the idea that somebody's going to
Speaker 4: look at Joe Biden and Joe Mansion and see much
Speaker 4: daylight between the two of them is a fantasy. They
Speaker 4: also do this this thing that he did in that
Speaker 4: clip where they say, you know, sixty percent of the
Speaker 4: country is independence, Like, okay, yeah, that's true. Half those
Speaker 4: are registered as independents, but are always partisan voters with
Speaker 4: either Democrats or Republicans. Like another forty percent of those
Speaker 4: are to the left of the Democrats or to the
Speaker 4: right of the Republicans, so they're not like centrists sitting
Speaker 4: around for Huntsmen and Mansion to team up. You're left
Speaker 4: with like maybe ten percent of those independences who are
Speaker 4: remotely gettable, and those people don't want to vote for
Speaker 4: a spoiler in general, or they probably just rather sit
Speaker 4: it out than vote for a spoiler, right, And so
Speaker 4: you'd have to have like some health scare and then
Speaker 4: maybe Kamala is like the Democratic nominee or something, and
Speaker 4: then maybe there's some type of an opening or something.
Speaker 4: But yeah, it's I don't even think with Gavin Newsom
Speaker 4: that you have a space for somebody on the kind
Speaker 4: of center right or center center, like a Mansion.
Speaker 6: No, yeah, I agree with that completely, and I think
Speaker 6: you know, Newsom has sold himself in California. Interestingly, I
Speaker 6: don't think he flies outside of California. I do think
Speaker 6: he's charismatic, but I think outside of California he just
Speaker 6: gets absolutely torched, even in a Democratic primary. But he
Speaker 6: certainly would be able to have a lot of money
Speaker 6: and he would be able to get a lot of media.
Speaker 6: So it's not an insane idea that Gavin Newsom could
Speaker 6: position himself in a primary. I think the entire no
Speaker 6: label shtick, I'm sure we agree on this is just
Speaker 6: so cynical. It's weaponizing this American fatigue with the political
Speaker 6: system in a way that just advantages the political system.
Speaker 6: It's all about exploiting Americans exhaustion with corruption for the
Speaker 6: sake of strengthening the ability to stay corrupt, to fortify
Speaker 6: the corrupt system. And you can see that by the
Speaker 6: people who flock to no labels. In fact, like that's
Speaker 6: the most obvious thing in the world. It's just low
Speaker 6: taxes and open borders. Like it's on the center left
Speaker 6: and the center right. You bring both of them to
Speaker 6: both of them together, and it's the worst of both worlds.
Speaker 6: And I think the one thing that populace have in
Speaker 6: common with centrists is like Why can't we just compromise,
Speaker 6: Why can't we just sit down at the table and
Speaker 6: do something for people. The problem is that centrists aren't
Speaker 6: actually serious. What they want is to sit down at
Speaker 6: the table and do something that benefits them. Their version
Speaker 6: of compromise is let's help the industry or you know,
Speaker 6: let's help the political class. And they do it under
Speaker 6: the veil, which is really powerful of compromise. But typically
Speaker 6: when people start talking about compromise with Washington, d C.
Speaker 3: You should get really nervous.
Speaker 5: Right, Yeah, everybody loves the idea of compromise.
Speaker 3: It's good.
Speaker 5: Yeah, we're learning kindergarten. They should be doing stuff exactly.
Speaker 5: They're exploiting that.
Speaker 4: So Daniel bogus Law for The Intercept, went up to
Speaker 4: cover this event in New Hampshire. We could put this
Speaker 4: last element this So a No Labels board board member
Speaker 4: told bogus Law that if Martin Luther King were around today,
Speaker 4: he'd be supporting a mansion centrist run and note he
Speaker 4: would be basically a member of No Labels.
Speaker 5: He wrote.
Speaker 4: The board member said doctor King was a Centrist. If
Speaker 4: he were alive today, he would be a member of
Speaker 4: the Note Labels party. Bogus Law then pointed out to him, Hey,
Speaker 4: don't you remember that whole thing where he said the
Speaker 4: biggest obstacle to progress is white moderates and he was
Speaker 4: the board members kind of shunted it away before he
Speaker 4: could answer that question.
Speaker 6: But so wasn't this board member in particular was like
Speaker 6: an associate of Martin Luther King's? Was he not like
Speaker 6: someone who was in the circle of Martin Luther King?
Speaker 5: Right?
Speaker 4: And we also had that AI image going around of
Speaker 4: Donald Trump and Martin Luther King on Twitter.
Speaker 5: J you to see that yesterday. No, you can't see it.
Speaker 4: You can go find that on social media if you want.
Speaker 4: It's MLK and Trump at a diner, you know, at
Speaker 4: a diner. Yeah, sitting in a sitting in a like
Speaker 4: a like an Ohio diner kind of thing, just enjoying
Speaker 4: each other's company.
Speaker 5: And ironically no labels.
Speaker 4: Gave Donald Trump an award in twenty sixteen as a
Speaker 4: problem solver, a guy who so now they're running against
Speaker 4: him as too far right. In twenty sixteen, they were
Speaker 4: like elevated him as somebody they would support.
Speaker 5: So I guess Martin Luther King too, board member.
Speaker 4: That's why is at the diner with Trump, also a
Speaker 4: No Labels member.
Speaker 3: They were just getting some stuff done.
Speaker 4: So I wonder what Martin Luther King thinks about No
Speaker 4: Labels going after their former guy.
Speaker 3: That would be interesting. Ryan.
Speaker 6: I'm really curious to get to this next block because
Speaker 6: it's a issue you've been covering very closely. The interscept
Speaker 6: has been covering very closely. Let's talk about everything unfolding
Speaker 6: as you have her song from Israel coming to Washington,
Speaker 6: d C. This week, and the squad reacting and then
Speaker 6: establishment Democrats reacting to the squad reaction.
Speaker 3: Break it down for us well.
Speaker 4: I mentioned that Daniel Bogos always at that New Hampshire
Speaker 4: event and then No Labels event on Monday. We also
Speaker 4: had them out at net Roots on Saturday for this
Speaker 4: moment where so we'll play this clip. This is You've
Speaker 4: got Representative Jan Schakowski of Illinois and Permila Jaya Paul
Speaker 4: of Washington, the chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, are
Speaker 4: on stage at the net Roots Nation in Chicago, which
Speaker 4: is a gathering kind of progressive operatives. They start getting
Speaker 4: protested over Israel and specifically over Schaikowski not being on
Speaker 4: a bill that would bar the use of US money
Speaker 4: to detain Palestinian children, and it evolved slash devolved into this.
Speaker 3: Maybe I should just walk on y Can I say something?
Speaker 17: Can I say something? As somebody that's been in the
Speaker 17: streets and has participated in a lot of demonstrations, I
Speaker 17: think I want you to know that we have been
Speaker 17: fighting to make it clear that Israel is a racist state,
Speaker 17: that the Palestinian people deserve self determination and autonomy.
Speaker 3: That the dream, that the dream.
Speaker 17: Of a two state solution is flipping away from us,
Speaker 17: That it is not that it does not even feel possible,
Speaker 17: It does not even feel possible. And I want you
Speaker 17: to know that while you may while you may have
Speaker 17: arguments with whether or not some of us on stage
Speaker 17: or fighting hard enough, I do want you to know
Speaker 17: that there is an organized opposition on the other side,
Speaker 17: and it isn't the people that are on the state.
Speaker 6: What is her staff doing wedding or go to Nutroots,
Speaker 6: because this is exactly from like the perspective of your communications.
Speaker 3: People. You don't want to have happened.
Speaker 6: Is her get up on the stage, start getting booed
Speaker 6: at Netroots, which is way more lit than seapack in
Speaker 6: terms of like booze and audience engagement and then start
Speaker 6: riffing and get yourself into this situation. Now you have
Speaker 6: a take on how other people reacted to this, and
Speaker 6: not just a take but.
Speaker 3: Reporting on it too.
Speaker 4: But yeah, you've you've seen a lot of politicians get
Speaker 4: tripped up by net roots. I think famously you had
Speaker 4: Martin O'Malley, I think, when he was running for president,
Speaker 4: said you know, got protested and said all lives matter,
Speaker 4: and it's like, oh, problem, not the right place to
Speaker 4: say that.
Speaker 5: Don't say that there.
Speaker 4: Bernie Sanders got protested at a net roots everyone does,
Speaker 4: and he just did his very grumpy thing.
Speaker 5: If you don't want me up here, I'll just get
Speaker 5: out of here. Do you leave me alone? Invited me here?
Speaker 5: Now you're yelling at me, come on.
Speaker 4: And so you've got to be prepared for, you know,
Speaker 4: these these moments. And so Giapaul told The New York
Speaker 4: Times that as soon as she stepped off stage, that
Speaker 4: phrase racist state, which is blunt, was rallying around her head,
Speaker 4: and she's like, oh, that's not going to go well.
Speaker 4: She's in a difficult spot because it is a state
Speaker 4: that has ministers in it who are proudly racist. One
Speaker 4: of them was convicted previously of inciting racism and supporting
Speaker 4: terrorism against Palestinians.
Speaker 5: Like literally, yeah, literally, a minister in the government.
Speaker 4: They say racist things all the time. They have a
Speaker 4: explicitly ethno nationalist orientation that gives rights to citizens based
Speaker 4: on their ethnicity and their religion. You have half the
Speaker 4: population living under the control of the country that doesn't
Speaker 4: have rights, and you have another half that does have rights,
Speaker 4: And so what is that She described it in that
Speaker 4: moment as a racist state. If we can put this
Speaker 4: up and you can pause it and read the whole thing,
Speaker 4: I'll read the entire thing. But here's her clarification of
Speaker 4: what she meant, where she's What she's basically saying here
Speaker 4: is that she doesn't believe that Zion is an equals racism,
Speaker 4: and that she doesn't believe that the state is fundamentally
Speaker 4: intrinsically from the day it was born racist, but that
Speaker 4: its practices currently are so that of course is not
Speaker 4: satisfactory to the people who are calling for her head
Speaker 4: and calling for her to, I guess apologize more and more.
Speaker 4: And so they pushed a resolution onto the which we
Speaker 4: can talk about later. They push a resolution onto the
Speaker 4: House floor yesterday which has come, which came a day
Speaker 4: before Isaac Herzog, the President of Israel, which is different
Speaker 4: than the Prime Minister, is coming to address the Congress.
Speaker 4: You have most of the squad members saying that they're
Speaker 4: going to boycott this speech by by Herzog. Here we
Speaker 4: have I think Alexa Andrew Kazu Cortez being asked if
Speaker 4: she plans on attending you address.
Speaker 3: I will not be atending.
Speaker 18: But there's currently a crisis of democracy and apartheid, and
Speaker 18: I think that this is something that has been a consensus.
Speaker 15: Now.
Speaker 4: The resolution is one of the wildest things I've seen
Speaker 4: put into the oppera in my time covering Congress. If
Speaker 4: we can, we can put up the text of it
Speaker 4: that's a little small. We'll have a bigger one for
Speaker 4: you later, but basically you don't need to read it.
Speaker 4: I'll tell you all three things that it says it can. Interestingly,
Speaker 4: it condemns anti Semitism and xenophobia. It's wondering if any
Speaker 4: Republicans would be like, wait a minute, we're against xenophobia.
Speaker 5: Now are we condemning Trump? Here? What's going on here?
Speaker 4: It says, then the third one says, we will always
Speaker 4: support Israel always. Israel's like, hm, we could even invade
Speaker 4: Ukraine and you'll still support us, Like it's unconditional. We
Speaker 4: will always in the future support Israel. And then it
Speaker 4: says Israel is not a racist or apartheid state. Now
Speaker 4: you know why they put racist in there, because that's
Speaker 4: the word that Jayapaul used. They slip in apartheid there
Speaker 4: because they know that everybody's now going to vote for
Speaker 4: this thing, and it led to a whole bunch of jokes.
Speaker 4: Saying I'm not a racist or apartheid state. T shirt
Speaker 4: is raising a lot of questions that I thought were
Speaker 4: answered by my T shirt and me anytime that you
Speaker 4: are pushing the House to just straight up declare that
Speaker 4: you are not something that you are not a racist state,
Speaker 4: you're not an apartheid state. You might have some problems
Speaker 4: that are not going to be sorted out by the
Speaker 4: House just declaring it. I was I was talking to
Speaker 4: a reporter up on the hill like this, it's all
Speaker 4: this afternoon, They're going to vote on Israel not being
Speaker 4: an apartheid state.
Speaker 5: And of course, but it is like Nobo, the House
Speaker 5: is saying it's not so.
Speaker 3: Well, okay.
Speaker 6: So also then the Biden administration comes in because again
Speaker 6: this is all happening as you mentioned, in the context
Speaker 6: of the speech that.
Speaker 5: AOC Parazog meeting with Biden, right and Aos.
Speaker 3: It wasn't just AOC, it was other squad.
Speaker 4: Members Owlman to leave Omar and Omar and to leave Defense.
Speaker 4: Let's be clear, Israel does not allow Omar or to
Speaker 4: leave into the country. Yes, they're members of Congress elected
Speaker 4: by seven hundred thousand Americans each and they're not allowed
Speaker 4: to go into the country. So Israel has no right
Speaker 4: to complain if they don't feel like showing up for
Speaker 4: that speech.
Speaker 6: So we obviously disagree on this issue, and we've had
Speaker 6: this conversation many times. I think where Jaya Paul actually
Speaker 6: walks back the racist statement, as you pointed out, that's
Speaker 6: where her kind of reservations and where she pulls back
Speaker 6: is really interesting because to the point about Omar, for instance,
Speaker 6: when you use the word racist, when you invoke apartheid,
Speaker 6: as you mentioned, it's sort of the rights that are given, taken, etc.
Speaker 3: In Israel are not.
Speaker 6: Based on race, they're based on religion, and that it
Speaker 6: has implications obviously for ethnicity and race in Israel and
Speaker 6: in Palestine obviously, but whether it's baked into the state
Speaker 6: itself racial policies, I think objectively no, And that's where
Speaker 6: I have a really hard time invoking apartheid. They're Palestinian
Speaker 6: Arabs that serve in the Israeli Parliament.
Speaker 3: There are plenty of.
Speaker 6: People in Israel with different backgrounds, racial backgrounds, and I
Speaker 6: think specifically invoking race, and then Giapaul realizing specifically invoking
Speaker 6: race and walking it back. I feel like I'm in
Speaker 6: a weird position of agreeing with Giapaul at net Reads
Speaker 6: Nation as she's getting booed, but I actually think it's
Speaker 6: not so much I agree with her is that I
Speaker 6: think actually where she walks back is where the meat
Speaker 6: of that debate is. And it's so rare we start
Speaker 6: to talk about actually the center of the debate or
Speaker 6: the real thing at question, and actually that's what's happened
Speaker 6: in this conversation.
Speaker 4: Yeah, there's probably some elements of it that get lost
Speaker 4: in translation between American culture and Israeli culture, in the
Speaker 4: sense that you know, race and racism is such an
Speaker 4: has such a specific, constructed meaning in the United States.
Speaker 5: It's like the absolute worst thing you can say to anybody.
Speaker 4: You've got Tommy Tuberville being like, well, they're white nationalists,
Speaker 4: but don't.
Speaker 5: You dare call them racist.
Speaker 3: They're Americans, like and you you unless.
Speaker 4: You're in the United States, And in that conversation you
Speaker 4: hear somebody like Tuberville say something like that, and they
Speaker 4: sound like a completely insane person. You mean, white nationalis
Speaker 4: isn't racism? And huh, where where are you coming up
Speaker 4: with this? But understanding that mindset, that that Cordin's off,
Speaker 4: that that one term from everything else, it helps to
Speaker 4: explain why it's like whoa whoa, whoa whoa whoa uh,
Speaker 4: Because if you're a Palestinian living under this occupation, going
Speaker 4: through four checkpoints on your way to school, being taunted,
Speaker 4: you know, having having dogs nipping at you, the kind
Speaker 4: of academic debate between whether that you're a victim of
Speaker 4: racism or you're a victim of some kind of ethno nationalist,
Speaker 4: bigoted stew that is just producing this toxicity.
Speaker 5: It's upstream of it's upstream.
Speaker 4: It's like whatever it is, it just feels just awful to.
Speaker 5: Live to live under.
Speaker 4: And then you throw in the apartheid question and I
Speaker 4: asked a bunch of members of Congress yesterday on the
Speaker 4: hill whether they thought it was an apartheid state, and
Speaker 4: some of them would say, well, look, Amnesty International says
Speaker 4: it is, and they would just try to defer to
Speaker 4: Amnesty International and other human rights groups including Betts Salam
Speaker 4: and Israeli organization that.
Speaker 5: Says yes, this is an apartheid state.
Speaker 4: Others would say no, because an apartheid state requires permanent
Speaker 4: control over people within its borders. Now, control over some
Speaker 4: of these areas is going on seventy five years. But
Speaker 4: as long as they can kind of pretend that there's
Speaker 4: going to be some two state solution in the future,
Speaker 4: then this is a temporary occupation rather than an apartheid government.
Speaker 4: But if you have lived and died your entire life
Speaker 4: under this quote unquote temporary system, it's very hard for
Speaker 4: you to see the difference.
Speaker 3: So let's also we have clip from the White House.
Speaker 3: This is D five. This is current Jean Pierre reacting.
Speaker 18: Here the administration's new plan to counter anti Semitism. As
Speaker 18: you all know, this past May, we announce a very comprehensive,
Speaker 18: once of a kind anti Semitism plan, which we think
Speaker 18: is incredibly important at this moment.
Speaker 3: I think they just solve the problem.
Speaker 5: Yes, they got an anti plan.
Speaker 3: Okay, it's good to know.
Speaker 5: She was pressed.
Speaker 4: She was pressed a lot in that in that briefing
Speaker 4: about these questions, and she didn't really want to because
Speaker 4: it's Democrats are in a difficult position. When when Jiapaul
Speaker 4: clarified her comments there walk them back, then she gets
Speaker 4: hit from the left saying why don't you stand by that? Yeah,
Speaker 4: like you have people saying why say it doesn't help
Speaker 4: us for you to say it in the first place
Speaker 4: if you're not going to stand by it. And so
Speaker 4: in the same vein the White House doesn't want to
Speaker 4: associate itself with that specific comment, But they also don't
Speaker 4: want to condemn her too hard because then then they
Speaker 4: get hit for, you know, being weak on it, right,
Speaker 4: and so uh, And the idea that the House of
Speaker 4: Representatives is taking time out of its day for this
Speaker 4: three part resolution.
Speaker 3: Is just so perfect in the White House as well.
Speaker 5: And the White House is getting peppered about it.
Speaker 6: Yeah, So we also have this tear sheet from the Intercept.
Speaker 6: You've had an article here about Pervez, one really really
Speaker 6: interesting article about a little bit of a case study here.
Speaker 5: This is fascinating. Yeah.
Speaker 4: So if you've been following our coverage, you know that
Speaker 4: in the twenty twenty two cycle a PAC and its
Speaker 4: allied super pack or allied organization Democratic Majority for Israel,
Speaker 4: they spent collectively close to fifty million dollars in democratic
Speaker 4: primaries telling voters that these candidates were bad and not
Speaker 4: mentioning Israel Palestine, just focus grouping whatever they could about
Speaker 4: Donna Edwards. They spent seven million dollars against Donna Edwards
Speaker 4: in Prince George's County of Maryland, basically saying that she
Speaker 4: was bad at constituent service, like never once talking about
Speaker 4: the actual issue at hand, which is their difference is
Speaker 4: on the question of Israel Palestine. And so as a result,
Speaker 4: you had a lot of consultants advising their candidates keep
Speaker 4: your head down on this issue and also other progressive issues,
Speaker 4: because supporting the Green New Deal and Medicare for all
Speaker 4: was becoming a proxy for APAC DMFI for also being
Speaker 4: supportive of Palestinian rights.
Speaker 5: So not only would they back away.
Speaker 4: From supporting Palestinian rights, they would also back away from
Speaker 4: issues that they thought might get them in the crosshairs
Speaker 4: of APAC and DMFI, because that amount of money in
Speaker 4: a primary is almost insurmountable when you're fit, like Donna
Speaker 4: Edwards was up by thirty points or so before they
Speaker 4: came in with six years, six or seven million dollars
Speaker 4: and knocked her out of that race. Summerlee. They came
Speaker 4: in the last three weeks and dropped millions. She got
Speaker 4: a million from outside from Justice Democrats and Working Families Party,
Speaker 4: and she respon she was able to respond, and she didn't.
Speaker 5: She wasn't on record in any way that.
Speaker 4: Could be kind of used against her in these attack ads,
Speaker 4: and so she survived, but only by like four thousand points.
Speaker 4: They had another two weeks, maybe they end up beating
Speaker 4: even Summerly, who voted against this resolution. By the way,
Speaker 4: So now you have an interesting development where this candidate
Speaker 4: in Houston running against a pretty standard kind of center
Speaker 4: right New dem APAC endorsed Lizzie Fletcher in Houston elected
Speaker 4: in twenty eighteen. It almost seems to be baiting APEC
Speaker 4: and DMFI to get into the race because the district
Speaker 4: was redrawn by Republicans in Texas.
Speaker 5: It's now about seventy five.
Speaker 4: Percent non white, with a significant Muslim population, a lot
Speaker 4: of pack that Houston has a big Pakistani population in particular,
Speaker 4: but also other Muslim American populations. And so he's just
Speaker 4: straight up saying, you know, Jaya Paul was getting attacked unfairly,
Speaker 4: and that you know he supports restricting aid to Israel,
Speaker 4: and that he basically ticks off every box that would
Speaker 4: get the attention of APAC and DMFI. In my sense
Speaker 4: is that he feels like this is a chance to
Speaker 4: test the question of if you actually run toward this issue,
Speaker 4: rather than not mentioning it like most of the Cans
Speaker 4: would just try to not mention it. Yeah, you know
Speaker 4: what make this an issue. My opponent is being funded
Speaker 4: by outside money organized by APAC. That's bad for democray,
Speaker 4: that's bad for this district. I'm the anti APAC candidate,
Speaker 4: and in a low turnout primary, if you can get
Speaker 4: people who that matters to to turn out, maybe he
Speaker 4: can win. He's raised three hundred thousand dollars, so he's
Speaker 4: a credible candidate. So it'll be a real test case
Speaker 4: of whether or not you can actually run this way. Now,
Speaker 4: it's only the question is what kind of population do.
Speaker 5: You need for that to work?
Speaker 4: This is seventy five percent, like I said, not in white,
Speaker 4: so that narrows the places where you can kind of
Speaker 4: run this strategy. But Houston and its suburbs is definitely
Speaker 4: potentially one of.
Speaker 6: Them, absolutely absolutely, and it's testing a political strategy that
Speaker 6: has a lot bigger implications. It's funny because we talk
Speaker 6: about this a lot on the right, especially when it
Speaker 6: comes to abortion, another one of those issues where every
Speaker 6: sort of establishment politician, like the equivalent of a Jaya Paul,
Speaker 6: feels like they're always between a rock and a hard place.
Speaker 3: You say one thing, you upset the base, you say
Speaker 3: another thing.
Speaker 6: It's just it's a nightmare for them, especially when you
Speaker 6: throw in their donors and their fundraisers, et cetera. But
Speaker 6: there's this example of Ronald Reagan at an early Sea Pack.
Speaker 6: I want to say, this is a seapack phrase from
Speaker 6: maybe even the first Sea Pack. He talks about bold colors,
Speaker 6: not pale pastels.
Speaker 3: And especially on.
Speaker 6: The left, a lot of people remember Ronald Reagan as
Speaker 6: being the sort of arch conservative, but he was a revolutionary.
Speaker 6: He completely remade the Republican Party. He was the tip
Speaker 6: of the spear of the remaking of the Conservative of
Speaker 6: creating the conservative move and ushering it into the Republican
Speaker 6: Party at least. And he really firmly believed that your
Speaker 6: best political strategy is actually, in a lot of cases,
Speaker 6: the moral political strategy of just saying here's what I believe,
Speaker 6: here's why I think it's a problem in confronting things
Speaker 6: head on. The parallel to me really stood out when
Speaker 6: you were talking about I think this hit my inbox
Speaker 6: last night from your son with your sub stack.
Speaker 3: That just stood out to.
Speaker 6: Me because I actually think it's something a lot of
Speaker 6: especially centrist politicians, forget because they constantly have donors tripping
Speaker 6: in their ear. A lot of times, voters just want
Speaker 6: to believe and trust that you're being honest with them
Speaker 6: and that they kind of know what you're going to do,
Speaker 6: and then they can make up their own judgment. And
Speaker 6: that's not even like Hackney that really like people want
Speaker 6: to know that they can generally understand where you're coming from.
Speaker 3: And if you can pull that off.
Speaker 6: It's not easy if you're a politician, because you want
Speaker 6: to lie about who's funding you and what you actually
Speaker 6: believe because you want to win.
Speaker 3: But sometimes even your most cynical.
Speaker 6: Attempt is not even your politically advantageous attempt.
Speaker 4: All the the strategy is in some ways cynical, But
Speaker 4: to go to Reagan, it's an interesting case case and
Speaker 4: that you want as a politician, you want to elevate
Speaker 4: your least popular enemies so that you look kind of
Speaker 4: good in comparison to them. And Reagan did that all
Speaker 4: through forn you with the counterculture and the hip hooies,
Speaker 4: and you know, in the seventies the Republicans were calling
Speaker 4: it acid, amnesty and abortion and just trying to really
Speaker 4: tie the Democrats to this counterculture that people were, you
Speaker 4: know that the silent majority I would have been part
Speaker 4: of that counterculture. So I'm not you know, I'm not
Speaker 4: endorsing this this opinion, but beat up you would opinion. Yeah,
Speaker 4: you're hard hat on.
Speaker 5: Hitting me with a monkey wrench, no doubt.
Speaker 4: So he's trying he's kind of baiting attacks from the
Speaker 4: hippies so that he can be like, look, the hippies
Speaker 4: don't like me, I must be good, totally and so perfect.
Speaker 4: Aguan is saying, look, Apak wants to destroy me, therefore
Speaker 4: I must be good.
Speaker 6: And the resolution we have this from D six did
Speaker 6: obviously you'll be shocked to learn pass.
Speaker 3: What's that four hundred and twelve to nine one abstention.
Speaker 4: Yeah you Betty McCollum from Minnesota abstained and you had nine,
Speaker 4: which is basically the squad minus. I think sometimes beca balance.
Speaker 4: Max Frost, Greg Get talked about is kind of squad
Speaker 4: ad Jason they voted, they voted yes, but otherwise it's
Speaker 4: here the people that you understand is like squad and
Speaker 4: squad ad Jason voting voting no.
Speaker 6: Well, speaking of the squad, let's talk about Charles Barkley.
Speaker 3: How's that for a transition.
Speaker 6: Charles Barkley clearly the member, a member of the sports punditry.
Speaker 5: Squad, forgot about it.
Speaker 3: I don't know that's quite a stretch.
Speaker 6: Well, Charles Barkley was out in Lake Tahoe over the
Speaker 6: weekend and actually talked about bud light twice both Friday
Speaker 6: and Saturday nights. Charles Barkley was out in public weighing
Speaker 6: in the bud light controversy, which is really hilarious meaning
Speaker 6: and of itself, just that Charles Barkley is so fixated
Speaker 6: on what's.
Speaker 3: Happening in a bud light.
Speaker 6: Let's start by rolling the clip here.
Speaker 5: And I have a problem with that, okay, right.
Speaker 6: Charles Beckley also said just he actually talked about how
Speaker 6: he's not afraid of cancel culture, and I think what
Speaker 6: set a lot of people off is that he said,
Speaker 6: all you rednecks or a holes who don't want to
Speaker 6: drink bud Light, if y'all, hey, y'all can't cancel me,
Speaker 6: I ain't worried about getting canceled because let me tell
Speaker 6: you something. If y'all fire me and give me all
Speaker 6: that money, I'm gonna be playing golf every day. As
Speaker 6: I last said, If you're gay, as I said last night,
Speaker 6: if you're gay, God blessed.
Speaker 3: If your trance, God blessed you. If your problem with.
Speaker 6: Them, if you obviously the Dylan mulvaney controversy, which has
Speaker 6: then turned into a boycott of bud Light that has
Speaker 6: at least in the short term, absolutely affected their bottom
Speaker 6: line and their business. It has ignited a conversation over
Speaker 6: ESG because there's this conversation, why would bud Light send
Speaker 6: the Influencer can their influencer kit to Dylan mlvaney, even
Speaker 6: though it was only like one or two beers. Whatever
Speaker 6: was sent to Dylan mlvaney obviously a major trans influencer.
Speaker 6: Why would they do that, Why would they want to
Speaker 6: upset their customers.
Speaker 3: Then you have the bud Light executives.
Speaker 6: Saying that their brand is too freddy and they're trying
Speaker 6: to get away from that.
Speaker 3: Why would they do that. A lot of people were.
Speaker 6: Saying, well, it's for the ESG score. It's because they
Speaker 6: don't mind having a dip in business in the short run,
Speaker 6: so long as they can seduce investors to put their
Speaker 6: money in bud Light based on getting a better score
Speaker 6: on the ESG like list, which is those scores actually
Speaker 6: do really matter.
Speaker 4: So the conspiracy theory would be that they would deliberately
Speaker 4: tank their stock by half so that they can get
Speaker 4: more investment in the company. It's like like that, that
Speaker 4: doesn't make any sense.
Speaker 3: Probably that they didn't anticipate.
Speaker 5: That would be that much of a hit. I'm sure
Speaker 5: they did not yet.
Speaker 6: And that you have people who are operating without the
Speaker 6: knowledge of you know, the people really really high up.
Speaker 6: You have marketing executives who are so thoroughly steeped in,
Speaker 6: you know, their sort of ideology that they see all
Speaker 6: of this as being a benefit for business and not
Speaker 6: to mention sort of a moral imperative. And so that's
Speaker 6: why bud Light as soon as this happened got rid
Speaker 6: of the woman. I believe she was first suspended and
Speaker 6: then canceled. Yeah, canceled, Yeah, canceled the woman.
Speaker 3: Out who who went viral?
Speaker 5: It was out canceling everybody.
Speaker 6: But Barkley's point about you know, I think it's actually
Speaker 6: really interesting that he started by saying if you're gay,
Speaker 6: bless you, and then if you're trans, bless you.
Speaker 3: Because this is.
Speaker 6: A country that even among the like bud Light drinking demographic,
Speaker 6: there is high support for gay marriage and for like
Speaker 6: homosexuality in general. That happened over a really quick period
Speaker 6: of time. Support really built. It's specifically the Dylan mulvaney thing.
Speaker 6: Like bud Light has been doing pride stuff for years,
Speaker 6: it was specifically Mulvany in twenty twenty three that set
Speaker 6: this off.
Speaker 4: What surprised me about the whole thing is like, why
Speaker 4: don't why is the right now upset about corporations appealing
Speaker 4: to different subcs communities Like corporations have always done, Like
Speaker 4: you got people who were into hiking, you know, there's
Speaker 4: a hiking themed product that they make for them. You
Speaker 4: get like the ide, and it would be like, well,
Speaker 4: I don't like to hike, and so I'm so mad
Speaker 4: that they marketed their their beard of hikers that I'm
Speaker 4: gonna boycott the thing. It seemed kind of snowflaky to me,
Speaker 4: rather than like what I would expect from a previous
Speaker 4: incarnation of the right, which is more of a live
Speaker 4: and let live, Like you don't like Dylan mulvaney, fine,
Speaker 4: but to then never drink bud Light again is a
Speaker 4: strange reaction to me.
Speaker 3: Especially as a conservative.
Speaker 6: I've always found boycotts to be kind of snowflaky because
Speaker 6: as a conservative that you know, I didn't grow up
Speaker 6: in the fifties and sixties, so as somebody who grew
Speaker 6: up in the nineties and oughts, you don't have a
Speaker 6: lot of options if you start boycotting things, and it's
Speaker 6: always incredibly selective. And also I really like bud Light lime,
Speaker 6: so that was problematic from the get go. But on
Speaker 6: that note, although I am I'll take Miller, Let'm from
Speaker 6: Milwaukee over but Light any day, the Saint Louis swill.
Speaker 6: But on that note, unless you put line in it,
Speaker 6: That's what's so interesting about the Barkley clip to me
Speaker 6: is that it does channel they'll live and let live
Speaker 6: populist American sentiment in general. That's not just the American
Speaker 6: kind of like if you had to say, what is
Speaker 6: the American attitude on politics, it's not just when it
Speaker 6: comes to social policies. Also, like when it comes to
Speaker 6: the size of government. It's really powerful when you talk
Speaker 6: to people about like gas stoves, when you talk to
Speaker 6: people about the New York pizza ovens. I'm not saying
Speaker 6: that this applies to you know, Americans approval of every
Speaker 6: policy down the line, but it is just that resonates
Speaker 6: with a huge swath of the American public. But that's
Speaker 6: where it comes into tension with the trans stuff, is
Speaker 6: that it's like live and let live.
Speaker 3: But I say, away from my kids is how people
Speaker 3: on the right see it.
Speaker 5: And but Dylan's an adult.
Speaker 6: But Dylan is an adult influencer. That is first of all,
Speaker 6: that's big TikTok influencer was brought into the White House.
Speaker 3: And I think people see dil Malvani as.
Speaker 6: Someone who is kind of contextualized by the cultural not
Speaker 6: bud Light obviously because it's not for children, but by
Speaker 6: the cultural establishment.
Speaker 3: And like trans.
Speaker 6: Influencers in general as role models for children, and.
Speaker 5: They pitched themselves.
Speaker 6: Rachel Levigne has made that pitch too, that like this
Speaker 6: is an example for children to look.
Speaker 3: Up to and follow.
Speaker 4: But if that's how people feel, parents should just keep
Speaker 4: the kids off, TikTok, right.
Speaker 6: I mean I agree with that obviously, and people are
Speaker 6: doing it with Disney too, and so like Disney has
Speaker 6: gotten a taste of this. But I just think that's
Speaker 6: interesting of the context or the tension is that there
Speaker 6: is a really strong live and let live strain in America,
Speaker 6: which is where I think you saw support for gay
Speaker 6: marriage skyrocket in the span of like ten years, and
Speaker 6: you know, Obama goes from campaigning against it's a championing
Speaker 6: it in the matter of like four years, like two
Speaker 6: thousand to twenty twelve. But then this particular issue was
Speaker 6: like transgenderism, as you have the left push for policies that.
Speaker 3: People feel encroach on their freedoms.
Speaker 6: It's different than what people saw with gay marriage, which
Speaker 6: was opening up freedom from their perspective, the perspective of
Speaker 6: your sort of.
Speaker 3: Like average American. And that's where I think things are
Speaker 3: fundamentally different for people.
Speaker 4: I do feel like there's a retrenching going on though,
Speaker 4: even in the LGB side. Curious if you're seeing that too.
Speaker 4: We don't have it handy. But Mark pocan congressman from Wisconsin,
Speaker 4: openly gay member of the Appropriations Committee, delivered a really
Speaker 4: stearing five minutes speech that people can find it on
Speaker 4: my Twitter feed because Republicans in the committee blocked ear
Speaker 4: marks that were associated with any LGBT groups. And his
Speaker 4: point was, nobody here would remotely consider blocking an ear
Speaker 4: mark because it was so stated with a civil rights
Speaker 4: group like that, would that nobody would even today think
Speaker 4: to even suggest doing that and to block and he
Speaker 4: and he talks about the way that the attack on
Speaker 4: the trans movements has now has now as he said,
Speaker 4: kind of affecting more broadly. Oh yeah, the broader move
Speaker 4: So I don't I don't think the gains are as
Speaker 4: locked in as as people would like.
Speaker 3: No, not at all.
Speaker 6: Andrew Selibyn talks about this a lot and has written
Speaker 6: about this a lot. That you know, if you are
Speaker 6: LGB and you have enjoyed a lot of wins over
Speaker 6: the last couple of decades, and then you see the
Speaker 6: t sort of being inextricably intertwined with the LGB cause,
Speaker 6: and the t is asking for things that even a
Speaker 6: lot of people in the LGB camp are uncomfortable with
Speaker 6: and don't think our smart policy, let alone politically advantageous.
Speaker 6: This is not going away anytime soon, and I think
Speaker 6: specifically because of that, because it's going to start to
Speaker 6: cause friction with a cause that a lot of the
Speaker 6: country supports, and that's going to be again, like, I
Speaker 6: just don't think this is going anywhere anytime soon, despite
Speaker 6: what maybe Charles Barkley wants.
Speaker 4: I guess well, Charles Barkley, I think understands that there
Speaker 4: is a huge portion of the population who supports those
Speaker 4: rights and will support him for standing up for it,
Speaker 4: particularly his show's going to be on CNN, right.
Speaker 6: I think he does have a show with Gale king
Speaker 6: Right debuting on CNN, right, So I think, yeah, he
Speaker 6: sees that, you know, he's speaking to you know, millions
Speaker 6: of people who are going to see that and agree
Speaker 6: with him and.
Speaker 4: Be like, thank you for standing up for us, King Charles.
Speaker 6: I think the American public is very much on board
Speaker 6: with the King Charles point when it comes to live
Speaker 6: and let live, Like if your trans blessed you. I
Speaker 6: think that's a really easy pitch to make. I think,
Speaker 6: especially for adults. I think when there are policies involved
Speaker 6: that start that people feel are on offense, you know,
Speaker 6: where they're aggressive, the policy is the aggressor as opposed
Speaker 6: to you know, opening things up or whatever it is,
Speaker 6: and children are involved. I think that's really where the
Speaker 6: King Charles line will not be as politically palatable.
Speaker 5: King Charles was my hero growing up.
Speaker 3: Really, I didn't know that.
Speaker 5: Read his memoir like three times.
Speaker 3: It should be on your shelf.
Speaker 4: I lost it because, I mean it's so tattered. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 4: I got his I saw him at a Phillies game once.
Speaker 4: I didn't know that any of this, got his autograph.
Speaker 3: Was he nice?
Speaker 5: He was very nice? It was great.
Speaker 3: I'm sure he was. I can see that.
Speaker 6: Ryan, you're gonna be talking about us, so I'm gonna
Speaker 6: be talking about the Jason el Dean video controversy.
Speaker 3: I know you're huge Jason Aldean. Kidding on, have you
Speaker 3: heard of Jason el Ding?
Speaker 5: Okay for to learn about this person?
Speaker 6: Right before that, you're talking to us about marjor Taylor Green.
Speaker 3: What do you got for us today?
Speaker 4: Incredible development in the presidential campaign, an endorsement by Marjorie
Speaker 4: Taylor Green of the Biden agenda the greatest political ad
Speaker 4: definitely of this cycle, maybe of the last ten cycles.
Speaker 5: Let's roll this one.
Speaker 1: Joe Biden had the largest public investment in social, infrastructure
Speaker 1: and environmental programs that is actually finishing what FDR started,
Speaker 1: that LBJ expanded on, and Joe Biden is attempting to
Speaker 1: complete programs to address education, medical care, urban problems, rural poverty, transportation, Medicare, Medicaid,
Speaker 1: labor unions, and he still is working on it.
Speaker 5: Okay.
Speaker 4: When I first saw her speech at which was at
Speaker 4: the point, yeah, the turning point in USA thing, I wondered,
Speaker 4: I was like, are they going to turn this into
Speaker 4: a thirty second campaign had because I would if I
Speaker 4: were them, And sure enough they did. And this is
Speaker 4: not a deep fake, This is not AI produced. This
Speaker 4: was the speech that Marjorie Taylor Green gave. If there
Speaker 4: was any deception at all, it would be in where
Speaker 4: they ended it, because of course she doesn't end it
Speaker 4: right there. She kind of is upset about what she
Speaker 4: says is the fallout of some of some of that
Speaker 4: FDR LBJ Biden agenda. So just for this sake of
Speaker 4: honesty and transparency. Like here is kind of the rest
Speaker 4: of what MTG said.
Speaker 1: That is actually finishing what FDR started that LBJ expanded on,
Speaker 1: and Joe Biden is attempting to complete socialism. Meanwhile, we
Speaker 1: are now thirty two trillion dollars in debt, with record
Speaker 1: high homelessness, forty year record inflation. We're losing the US
Speaker 1: dollar as the number one world currency. We're losing our freedoms.
Speaker 3: Our government is.
Speaker 1: One big, fat, bloated machine, and it's killing the American dream.
Speaker 4: So a bunch of technocratic stuff about the budget and
Speaker 4: it's killing the American dream, and it's socialism. Bernie Sanders
Speaker 4: gave kind of the same speech during the twenty twenty
Speaker 4: campaign where he said, you guys say that I'm a socialist,
Speaker 4: I call myself a democratic socialist. Let me tell you
Speaker 4: what I mean by democratic socialism, and he couched in
Speaker 4: the spirit of FDR and the legacy of FDRs.
Speaker 5: I'm an FDR democrat.
Speaker 4: Biden, when he was really feeling his oats in early
Speaker 4: twenty twenty one, said the same thing that he wanted
Speaker 4: to be, you know, wanted to be another FDR, and
Speaker 4: that's when he really pushed forward with this like really
Speaker 4: aggressive kind of agenda that was then whittled away by Joe.
Speaker 5: Manchin Kirsten Cinema.
Speaker 4: But if you want to wrap that all in socialism, Okay, fine,
Speaker 4: it's government spending.
Speaker 5: Fine call it socialism.
Speaker 4: I did, like, what is Marjorie Taylor Green doing here?
Speaker 4: Like just reading off what could what literally was turned
Speaker 4: into a campaign ad for Joe Biden.
Speaker 3: I think it's.
Speaker 6: Still a blind spot for the right, how favored well,
Speaker 6: speaking of the developing populist Republican mind. Actually speaking of Georgia,
Speaker 6: another Georgian we're going to talk about Jason al Dean,
Speaker 6: who Ryan said he is excited.
Speaker 3: To learn about who this person is.
Speaker 6: Country fans know Jason eld and he's a very very
Speaker 6: popular and has been over this guy. Yeah, he's like
Speaker 6: one of the kings of pop country and has been
Speaker 6: a mainstay for a very long time. He had a
Speaker 6: video called Try That in a Small Town, very politically charged.
Speaker 6: It's for his new single, which I think was actually
Speaker 6: released in May. The video itself was released pretty recently
Speaker 6: within I think within the last week, but it was
Speaker 6: pulled as of today. It was pulled by CMT, and
Speaker 6: CMT hasn't quite waded into again, this is just as
Speaker 6: of we're taping. They haven't answered media comment request about
Speaker 6: why they did that, but the video has gotten a
Speaker 6: lot of criticism from the left. We can put the
Speaker 6: first element up on the screen.
Speaker 9: This is just.
Speaker 3: CMT yanked the video. Again.
Speaker 6: They haven't said exactly why they did that, but Billboard
Speaker 6: was the first to report it. Then all of this conversation,
Speaker 6: I think started bubbling more and more to the surface.
Speaker 6: The right started to really pay at time to the
Speaker 6: blowback that al Dean had been getting. I think the
Speaker 6: reight had just been kind of enjoying the video and
Speaker 6: not paying attention to the people who were criticizing it.
Speaker 6: Just so you can get a little taste of what
Speaker 6: that video is like.
Speaker 3: Here's a very short clip o.
Speaker 9: God on the owner of a liquor store.
Speaker 6: Think it's a food so carjacking, pull a gun on
Speaker 6: an owner of a liquor store. These are things that,
Speaker 6: as red meat as they sound, are ripped from headlines here.
Speaker 3: In Washington, d C.
Speaker 6: Not too long ago, a man who was a translator
Speaker 6: in Afghanistan was gunned down during his shift driving.
Speaker 3: I think he was a lyft driver at night.
Speaker 6: He his wife told him, you know, didn't want him
Speaker 6: to go out, but he said he had to make money.
Speaker 6: And he's clearly was a hard working man was gunned
Speaker 6: down during his shift for absolutely no.
Speaker 3: Reason, totally senseless violence.
Speaker 6: And so again I get that that sounds red meat,
Speaker 6: like a lot of it, but it's also pretty ripped
Speaker 6: from the headlines. And I guarantee you resonates with a
Speaker 6: whole lot of people, even if it's not people in
Speaker 6: my immediate era area here in Washington, d C. And actually,
Speaker 6: a couple of weeks back, Crystal and I got into
Speaker 6: a conversation about country music and especially pop country music.
Speaker 6: I said something that I got some tweets about. It
Speaker 6: was kind of interesting that I really am annoyed by
Speaker 6: how country music sometimes devolves into redneck mad libs. Like
Speaker 6: if you grew up in a smaller city and a
Speaker 6: file over state, you know, a lot of the stuff
Speaker 6: is just coastal liberals who are getting rich off of
Speaker 6: dumb stereotypes because it.
Speaker 3: Doesn't feel remotely authentic.
Speaker 6: And it's like when Hollywood does their like real America depictions,
Speaker 6: they're just sort of like crudely attempting to paint a
Speaker 6: picture of what they think, quote real America looks like,
Speaker 6: and it's generally laughable. And you get that into in
Speaker 6: country music a lot, even though it's supposed to be
Speaker 6: like the one place where it speaks to real people,
Speaker 6: and I think to some extent it still does that,
Speaker 6: but sometimes you do just get redneck mad libs. And
Speaker 6: what's really unfortunate about that happening in country music is
Speaker 6: that you're undercutting one of America's coolest artistic exports. And
Speaker 6: people don't think of country music that way, but it
Speaker 6: really is. It developed with musical traditions from West Africa,
Speaker 6: from Ireland, from Italy, blended all of these things together
Speaker 6: and even more than that in a very very very
Speaker 6: American way. And by the way, the story of country
Speaker 6: music not all positive. Some very American but very bad
Speaker 6: parts of that story and some very American and very.
Speaker 3: Good parts of that story.
Speaker 6: But you know, at the end of the day, pop
Speaker 6: music is always going to be pop music, whether it's
Speaker 6: country music, whether it's rap, any of that. Some of
Speaker 6: it is good, but when you get into that redneck
Speaker 6: mad lib territory where you have these people in like
Speaker 6: air conditioned boardrooms, or are just throwing words like tractor
Speaker 6: and beer and truck together.
Speaker 3: It's just sucking the soul out of one of this.
Speaker 6: Actually, I would say like one of the most valuable
Speaker 6: American artistic traditions. So the Aldine video is getting absolutely
Speaker 6: torched by the left on social media.
Speaker 3: I'm trying to find some of the quotes here.
Speaker 6: This is a police reform activist who said, just look
Speaker 6: at the lyrics and you see that beyond this being
Speaker 6: so insentitive to the small folk town, small town folks
Speaker 6: dying from gun violence, it's a reference to mass shootings
Speaker 6: in places like Uvaldi. It is also just a racist
Speaker 6: dog whistle invoking quote urban crimes that we better not
Speaker 6: do and quote his sundown quote town.
Speaker 3: This is for the quote what about Chicago crowd.
Speaker 6: And then you have a podcast host Jim Stewartson who said,
Speaker 6: this is one of the most dangerous, irresponsible videos from
Speaker 6: a mainstream artist I have ever seen. Jason Alden is
Speaker 6: openly radicalizing his fans into white nationalists, vigilante violence, and yeah,
Speaker 6: there's the Interestingly, this is a quote from Mississippi Free
Speaker 6: Press news editor Ashton Pittman, who said, Jason Aldean shot
Speaker 6: this at the site where a white lynch mob strung
Speaker 6: Henry Chote up at the Moray County Courthouse in Columbia, Tennessee,
Speaker 6: after dragging his body through the streets with a car
Speaker 6: in nineteen twenty seven. That's why al Dean chose to
Speaker 6: sing about murdering people who don't respect the police. Okay,
Speaker 6: so al Dean responded to all of this. He goes
Speaker 6: on Instagram and says, quote, I've been accused of releasing
Speaker 6: a pro lynching song, a song that has been out
Speaker 6: since May and was subject to the comparison that I
Speaker 6: direct quote was not too pleased with the nationwide BLM protests.
Speaker 6: These references are not only meritless, but dangerous, he said.
Speaker 6: No one, including me, wants to continue to see sense
Speaker 6: those headlines or families ripped apart.
Speaker 3: Try that in a small town.
Speaker 6: For me, refers to the feeling of a community that
Speaker 6: I had growing up, where we took care of our neighbors,
Speaker 6: regardless of differences or background or belief. That to me
Speaker 6: is fascinating, because he said, you'll notice something in the
Speaker 6: past tense again. Just to get this up to speed,
Speaker 6: or just to get this in there again, he said,
Speaker 6: it refers to the feeling of a community that I
Speaker 6: had growing up, that I had growing up, where we
Speaker 6: took care of our neighbors regardless of regardless of differences
Speaker 6: of background or belief. Again, that is past tense, and
Speaker 6: it's probably true that you'll have a harder time car
Speaker 6: jacking someone in small town Virginia than you would here
Speaker 6: in Washington.
Speaker 3: D C.
Speaker 6: But small towns are suffering as much and if not
Speaker 6: more in some cases than the bluest cities in other ways.
Speaker 6: So like the seven thousand persons saying that I grew
Speaker 6: up in Wisconsin, some of these places are thriving because
Speaker 6: social capital remains really high. Others, though, where NAFTA and
Speaker 6: WTO absolutely decimated.
Speaker 3: Their workforces are not at all what they used to be.
Speaker 6: People are falling through the safety net drug and crime.
Speaker 6: Drugs and crime are everywhere. Social scientists have looked at
Speaker 6: the correlation between the social capital in some of these
Speaker 6: really rural areas and drugs and duds of despair.
Speaker 3: This is not a secret at all.
Speaker 6: These patterns are crystal clear, and that's why people like
Speaker 6: al Dean and others from a lot of places that
Speaker 6: have been hit this way, like Donald Trump them express
Speaker 6: that political sort of angst by liking Bernie Sanders, but
Speaker 6: Donald Trump. Why does someone like Jason Aldean, who's a
Speaker 6: Trump supporter, flock to him? Because nobody else is comfortable
Speaker 6: saying things that al Din is saying in that song, which,
Speaker 6: by the way, are closer to the truth than a
Speaker 6: lot of what his critics are saying right now, and
Speaker 6: he was immediately called racist.
Speaker 9: Again.
Speaker 6: This is one of those things that just pushes people
Speaker 6: to Donald Trump. There's a really good song by Mark Aurelli,
Speaker 6: and I think it actually might be getting covered on
Speaker 6: the new Grace Potter record, Lovely Vermont Native.
Speaker 3: I love this song.
Speaker 6: It's called Rose Colored Rearview because in it, the singer
Speaker 6: remembers better times than a small town, but then wonders
Speaker 6: whether that's just kind of the sheen of nostalgia. And
Speaker 6: I think that's a thought process a lot of people
Speaker 6: are going through right now. So the lyrics are there
Speaker 6: was a time this town felt like family. I could
Speaker 6: ride my bike down any street and somebody always knew
Speaker 6: my name. There was a time before the meal pulled
Speaker 6: out and the pills moved in, when we didn't need
Speaker 6: no medicine just to take away the pain.
Speaker 3: Was there a time or was it only in my mind.
Speaker 6: When everything seemed simpler and we all sat down for
Speaker 6: dinner every night? Or am I just looking through this
Speaker 6: rose colored rear view. The answer is yes, in a
Speaker 6: whole lot of places, there was a time. And that's
Speaker 6: where that Al Densweng is fascinating. It's not just the
Speaker 6: cities versus Mayberry anymore. The cities are burning and while
Speaker 6: Mayberry might not physically be on fire, it's burning up too.
Speaker 6: And Ryan, that to me is really obviously sad, but
Speaker 6: also there is this I think ten Well, the show
Speaker 6: is kind of over, but also not quite over, because
Speaker 6: we have an interview with Christopher Ruffo offered the new
Speaker 6: book America's Cultural Revolution coming up, and I've both read
Speaker 6: the book and we're.
Speaker 3: Really excited about it.
Speaker 6: It is going to be posted after the full show.
Speaker 6: We've got, you know, twenty to thirty minutes with Rufo
Speaker 6: coming up. And so what we want to do is
Speaker 6: get the show out to subscribers so that we are all.
Speaker 5: Up to date on the breaking deal with our subscribers.
Speaker 4: We're not going to break that deal, that's right, that's show.
Speaker 6: Yeah, So we want to get the full show out
Speaker 6: and then we're going to get that RUFO interview up
Speaker 6: a little bit later, so basically, stay tuned for that.
Speaker 3: But thank you for watching the show. We appreciate it.
Speaker 3: We'll of course be.
Speaker 6: Back next Wednesday with more counterpoints, and back really soon.
Speaker 3: With the RUFO interview.
Speaker 5: There you go, see you soon.
Speaker 9: Stay tuned.
Speaker 16: Shot sho sh sh sh shottish bish