Speaker 1: And broadcasting live from the Abraham Lincoln Radio Studio, the
Speaker 1: George Washington Broadcast Center, Jack Armstrong and Joe Getty.
Speaker 2: Armstrong and Getty and he Armstrong and gettys not live
Speaker 2: from studio c Armstrong and Getty. We're off for taking
Speaker 2: a break.
Speaker 3: And as long as we're.
Speaker 2: Off, perhaps you'd like to catch up on podcasts, subscribe
Speaker 2: to Armstrong and Getty on demand or one more thing
Speaker 2: we think.
Speaker 4: You'll enjoy it, sir, choices we get in l those
Speaker 4: were your choices.
Speaker 2: Somebody got shot? O?
Speaker 4: How good? Hold on the dirty dead?
Speaker 3: What do I want with my da do?
Speaker 4: Shaddy?
Speaker 2: What the hell is this?
Speaker 4: Everybody that is?
Speaker 2: That is rapper too low? Who is a pairing as
Speaker 2: a kiss? A guest on a podcast? Who the gun
Speaker 2: went off in his pocket? Apparently somehow?
Speaker 5: Okay? First of all, guests on a podcast. To have
Speaker 5: a podcast, all you need to do is own a
Speaker 5: phone or a computer. So is this a podcast with
Speaker 5: any I mean anyway? So he's sitting around talking to
Speaker 5: a guy and his gun goes off. What's the most
Speaker 5: interesting to me is these people live such a lifestyle.
Speaker 5: The reaction is, Hey, who's gun went off?
Speaker 3: Somebody's gone.
Speaker 2: Who pretty, somebody's gun went off. Whereas most of the
Speaker 2: company I keep, if there were a gun shot in
Speaker 2: the room, we would all be quite flabbergasted. Who shot? Who?
Speaker 2: Oh my gosh, is that a gun in your pocket?
Speaker 2: Or you're just happy to be on my podcast. Say
Speaker 2: that again, Michael. Just the beginning of it.
Speaker 4: And choices we got in life. Those were your choices.
Speaker 2: All right. Getting back to our topic, motivating ourselves for
Speaker 2: the new year, rapper too low. If you need to
Speaker 2: stick to your diet through January, that's beautiful. So there
Speaker 2: are a couple of things I wanted to do yesterday
Speaker 2: as kind of a kicking off the year thing. But
Speaker 2: we have so much let's to get to it. We
Speaker 2: can't get to all of it. But I love this.
Speaker 3: I'm gonna hit you with part of it and then
Speaker 3: we'll move on.
Speaker 2: We got a bunch of stuff. But this is written
Speaker 2: by a guy named Jeff Goldstein, who is a writer
Speaker 2: I really like, and he has this redeclaration of independence,
Speaker 2: and you'll know what he's driving at immediately.
Speaker 3: Be it so understood. This is my vow for the
Speaker 3: new year, too. I refuse to.
Speaker 2: Unpack white violence. I reject the idea that my existence
Speaker 2: perpetuates white power structures. I will not, and in fact cannot,
Speaker 2: examine my ipplicit biases. I'm an indo. I refuse to
Speaker 2: grant determined interpretive communities authority over my being. My meaning
Speaker 2: is mine, is what makes me me. I'm not taking
Speaker 2: any journey to discover the impact of my privilege on
Speaker 2: black and brown people's I will not become anti racist
Speaker 2: or anti fascist to satisfy your demands. I reject cultural Marxism.
Speaker 2: I am an individual. I'm not defined by my color,
Speaker 2: my lrige, and my sex. I'm jeff good to meet you.
Speaker 2: I will not respect your pronouns or celebrate your queerness.
Speaker 2: I am hostile to your sexualization of children. I reject
Speaker 2: your triggers and your desire to control my speech. I
Speaker 2: know who and what you are. You are my presumptive master,
Speaker 2: or else the useful idiot who empowers him. But I
Speaker 2: will grant you and your ideology no power over me.
Speaker 2: There's more you want to hear a little more sure.
Speaker 2: I reject equity because it is collectivism disguised as virtue.
Speaker 2: I reject inclusivity because it is inorganic superficial and contrived.
Speaker 2: I reject mandated diversity. I will not surrender to the
Speaker 2: crayon box mafia, nor do the gender changelings who pretend
Speaker 2: I am construct answerable to their whims. Cultural appropriation is
Speaker 2: merely culture. It expands to include, and it makes up
Speaker 2: the very fabric of a pluralistic society. There's no such
Speaker 2: thing as digital blackface. My whiteness is not violent, my
Speaker 2: sex is not oppressive. My religion doesn't concern you, and
Speaker 2: my children are not your stam mold. Your beliefs will
Speaker 2: not be imposed on me. The state will not parent
Speaker 2: my sons.
Speaker 3: Theory. Yes, digital blackface, I'd forgotten that term.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, and again if you've lost a thread, This
Speaker 2: is a re declaration of independence. Queer theory is critical.
Speaker 2: Race theory is critical. Consciousness is the Marxist rejection of
Speaker 2: the individual as individual. I have some stats on how
Speaker 2: many states queer theory is being taught in schools to
Speaker 2: little children as truth and is as shocking. Well, one
Speaker 2: more time. Queer theory is critical. Race theory is critical.
Speaker 2: Consciousness is the Marxist rejection of the individual as individual.
Speaker 2: Cultural Marxism is determined to raise norms so chaos tear
Speaker 2: families asunder and reduce being to collective conformity. I reject
Speaker 2: its premises as fully as I reject its adherents. I
Speaker 2: will not comply. I will not mouth your slogans. I
Speaker 2: will not denounce on command. I am not your tool,
Speaker 2: and you are not my minder. And he has a
Speaker 2: little more about my speech is my own. I reject
Speaker 2: each of your excuses to silence me. I don't ask
Speaker 2: for your protections. I can filter information without your interference,
Speaker 2: Mark Zuckerberg, and I despise your presumption to protect me
Speaker 2: from myself. I am your sworn enemy, and you are mine.
Speaker 2: I will not perform for you. I will not read
Speaker 2: from your script or dance in your follies. Oh my brother,
Speaker 2: we'll post this at armstrong egedi dot com. It is brilliant,
Speaker 2: and he goes on.
Speaker 5: But that's the main party, and it fits in with
Speaker 5: that Wall Street Journal article I was reading from last hour.
Speaker 5: The progressive moment in global politics is over. That moment
Speaker 5: existed mostly online and with the you know, high level
Speaker 5: university set. It was a much smaller group than we
Speaker 5: all thought or feared, thank god, but it was it
Speaker 5: was misleading because it was so prevalent in you know, TV,
Speaker 5: newspapers and Twitter in places like that, but it was
Speaker 5: not near as big as we all thought. And the
Speaker 5: best thing that could happen to people that are on
Speaker 5: the right side of that, and you could be a
Speaker 5: lifelong Democrat and be to the right of all that
Speaker 5: stuff by a law shirt like Bill Maherr and lots
Speaker 5: of people. The best thing that could happen for us
Speaker 5: is if they continue to believe that they have the
Speaker 5: numbers they think they have as opposed to the tiny
Speaker 5: fraction that actually agrees with them.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: I'm reminded of something great you brought to us, I
Speaker 2: think it was last year about how it only takes
Speaker 2: fifteen percent of a population that's dedicated to a revolution
Speaker 2: to make it successful. Because you want to give us
Speaker 2: the nickel version of.
Speaker 5: That, Yeah, you have to have the fifteen percent really
Speaker 5: really active group that wants to overthrow the current regime.
Speaker 2: But you get a big enough chunk of people who
Speaker 2: mostly agree with you. They're not going to really do much,
Speaker 2: but they're not going to get in the way, and
Speaker 2: then you have the crowd that's scared of you, and
Speaker 2: you can easily.
Speaker 3: Get over fifty percent, right right, and that's how you in.
Speaker 2: And imagine if you were in that hardcore fifteen percent
Speaker 2: that wanted to, I don't know, for the sake of
Speaker 2: the argument overthrow Western society in the name of neo Marxism.
Speaker 2: Imagine if your first step was to capture media and education.
Speaker 2: I mean, that would be an enormous coupe because you could,
Speaker 2: and I'm stating the obvious here, you could project the
Speaker 2: idea that you have way way more mass than you
Speaker 2: do for your radical ideas, like radical gender theory, which
Speaker 2: I will give you a clue. It's like over a
Speaker 2: third of American states are teaching radical theory. There's no
Speaker 2: such thing as a man or a woman. You get
Speaker 2: to choose to little kids in schools. So man, these
Speaker 2: these scumbags, And I'm sorry for the for the you know,
Speaker 2: I'm a wardsmith. I can do better than that. I
Speaker 2: apologize these monsters. At least it's more adult. The fact
Speaker 2: that these monsters have gotten as far as they have
Speaker 2: is really really troubling. But you know, on we go
Speaker 2: with the fight. Trudeau resigning in Canada is a lot
Speaker 2: of what sparked. For instance, the Wall Street Journal article
Speaker 2: one on the list of Western leaders or parties that
Speaker 2: have really suffered defeats trying to ride the whole pronouns
Speaker 2: latinex you should be ashamed of yourself for being a
Speaker 2: white male.
Speaker 3: Bang right, Yeah, yeah, he was huge into that.
Speaker 2: And the what's really troubling about this, and we've had
Speaker 2: a bunch of conversations, is you got to your well,
Speaker 2: just you keep calling it fifteen percent for the sake
Speaker 2: of the argument.
Speaker 3: You get your hardcore fifteen percent activists.
Speaker 2: Well, the genius of neo Marxism developed in the intellectual
Speaker 2: salons of Europe in the forties and fifties, nineteen forties
Speaker 2: and nineteen fifties. They wrote books, they signed their name,
Speaker 2: they told us precisely what they wanted to do. The
Speaker 2: genius of it is they have crafted, and it's an
Speaker 2: evil genius, these moral sounding arguments that convince a certain
Speaker 2: sort of person that they are doing the right thing
Speaker 2: morally by becoming.
Speaker 3: An adherent to Neo Marxism.
Speaker 2: And it's particularly effective among women who want to seek
Speaker 2: agreement and groups and acceptance of that sort of thing.
Speaker 2: And it's particularly successful among your university crowd who want
Speaker 2: to be on the cutting edge of thought, that's how
Speaker 2: they gratify their egos by being the innovator, the new person,
Speaker 2: the revolutionary. It's incredibly I mean, they take practically sexual
Speaker 2: glee for being innovators in the universities, because how are
Speaker 2: you going to justify your big if you in any
Speaker 2: level of education say you know that stuff we've been doing,
Speaker 2: it's perfect. I wouldn't change it at all. True, you've
Speaker 2: wasted your PhD. So anyway, man, you have heard a
Speaker 2: lot of gun shots. If your reaction to a gun
Speaker 2: shot in a room is this.
Speaker 4: And choices we got in laye, those were your choices?
Speaker 2: Whobody been calmer than that shot?
Speaker 3: Who did somebody get shot?
Speaker 2: Huh? What? It would be the most amazing thing that
Speaker 2: ever happened in my life if a gun went.
Speaker 3: Off in a room. We're sitting there interviewing, I don't know.
Speaker 2: Rich Lowry from the National Review of Rich says who
Speaker 2: shot who?
Speaker 3: Who? Somebody get shot?
Speaker 4: And choices we got in lay Those were your choices?
Speaker 2: Who? It actually pretty interesting conversation before you know, the
Speaker 2: gun went on. So the other thing I wanted to
Speaker 2: squeeze in a couple more kind of wrapping up the
Speaker 2: year looking forward, to the year things, because I'll rant
Speaker 2: and rave about the previous story for the rest of
Speaker 2: my life. But Jan Crawford was on CBS's face the
Speaker 2: Nation Sunday.
Speaker 3: I saw that, and she brought the thunder.
Speaker 2: That the most uncovered and underreported topic last year was
Speaker 2: clearly she said, quote that to me, Joe Biden's obvious
Speaker 2: cognitive decline. They became undeniable in the televised debate, unquestioned
Speaker 2: that that's the most underreported story of the year.
Speaker 5: Yeah, absolutely true. But we'll be lost to history. It's
Speaker 5: amazing that there isn't more introspection over that. Well, here's
Speaker 5: the really interesting part. She says, still incredibly, we read
Speaker 5: in the Washington Post that his advisers are saying that
Speaker 5: he regrets that he dropped out of the race, that
Speaker 5: he thinks he could have beaten Trump, and I think
Speaker 5: that is either delusional or the gaslighting the American people.
Speaker 5: But CBS's chief Election.
Speaker 2: And campaign correspondent Robert Costa jumped up and said, well,
Speaker 2: President Biden has repeatedly said he was sick during the
Speaker 2: debate in Atlanta, and he's always been fine, and he
Speaker 2: leaves fine.
Speaker 3: That is his position.
Speaker 2: The position of many of his top stadents as well
Speaker 2: as even though there is that reporting that Jan was
Speaker 2: talking to reduce the obvious accepted by everyone reality of
Speaker 2: Joe Biden's cogdon decline as there is that reporting, but
Speaker 2: he has now Jan he has said repeatedly had a cold.
Speaker 3: Costa's lost to me, he's lost his mind. I don't
Speaker 3: know who that's for.
Speaker 5: Eighty five percent of America before that debate thought he
Speaker 5: shouldn't serve again.
Speaker 2: So I don't know who you're serving with that, But
Speaker 2: enjoy your bubble Bob, the Armstrong and.
Speaker 6: Getty Show, Yeah, or Jack Orgoe podcasts and our Hot Lakes,
Speaker 6: Jack Armstrong and Joe Getty, the Armstrong and Getty Show.
Speaker 2: I wonder if.
Speaker 3: There's gonna be a run on those giant Schnauzer.
Speaker 2: Of course there are, of course, they're the dignified giant
Speaker 2: Schnauzer they call it. Is there like an undignified giant
Speaker 2: Schnauzer breed as well, like the clowney, you know, kind
Speaker 2: of loser giant Schnauzer that where's a wife beater around
Speaker 2: the house and woops where it once? I don't know.
Speaker 2: So this is one of my favorite moments in legislative history.
Speaker 2: A House Republican representative Earl Buddy Carter of Georgia, natch,
Speaker 2: I'm gonna move to Georgia just to vote for Earl
Speaker 2: Buddy Carter. He introduced a bill this week that would
Speaker 2: enable President Trump's efforts to purchase Greenland and rename it
Speaker 2: Red White and Blueland.
Speaker 3: Awesome.
Speaker 2: The bill would also require the federal government to refer
Speaker 2: to it as such on official maps and documents. Never
Speaker 2: mind what the Denmarkians and Greenlanders say. Let's see as
Speaker 2: part of the bill, America is back and will soon
Speaker 2: be bigger than ever with the addition of Red, White
Speaker 2: and Blueland. President Trump has correctly identified the purchase of
Speaker 2: what is now Greenland is a national security priority, and
Speaker 2: we'll proudly welcome its people to join the freest nation
Speaker 2: ever exist.
Speaker 3: When our negotiator in chief inks this monumental deal.
Speaker 2: Also considered as names for the new state, Cold af Sylvania,
Speaker 2: Polar Barrington, simply Ice, Ice Baby, and my favorite North
Speaker 2: North North Dakota. Oh. Now, we're gonna have nice cooperation
Speaker 2: with Greenland. The Arctic and those passageways are going to
Speaker 2: be incredibly important in the next fifty years and it's
Speaker 2: a good thing.
Speaker 5: Do you remember? I should do it again in case
Speaker 5: anybody didn't hear it. The biggest rumor in Washington, d C.
Speaker 5: According to Mark Alpern, and he talks to all the players.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, the biggest rumor in the world, persistent and omnipresent,
Speaker 2: is the talk of a grand bargain between the United
Speaker 2: States and China that involves reduced tariffs, US access to Greenland,
Speaker 2: China's peaceful taking of Taiwan, all and several provisions and
Speaker 2: players to be named later.
Speaker 5: It seems implausible to many years and eyes, but the
Speaker 5: talk of this deal is everywhere, says Mark.
Speaker 3: Alper This sounds like it could be.
Speaker 2: A moral horror to me, but I'm trying to understand it.
Speaker 2: We won't fight you on Taiwan. We concede, sorry, Vladimer.
Speaker 2: You get the rights to the Northern Passage through the
Speaker 2: Arctic and the rest of it as a zone of
Speaker 2: influence and security. And let's get it on and we
Speaker 2: call it a deal. Yeah, yeah, and a couple of
Speaker 2: players to be named later.
Speaker 7: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I got a question.
Speaker 5: So yesterday was Lincoln's birthday, Yes, sir, and Lincoln is
Speaker 5: on the penny. The penny was the most my whole
Speaker 5: life on the present piece of currency that existed. It
Speaker 5: is since lost its usefulness. Yes, we all agree with that.
Speaker 5: But if Lincoln isn't the greatest president of all time,
Speaker 5: he's number two. So I mean, you know, everybody agrees
Speaker 5: on that pretty much. Right, he's either him or Washington.
Speaker 5: They're in the top two. And do we move him
Speaker 5: to another? Doesn't it seem I mean, we're eliminating the
Speaker 5: most dominant currency that existed for my whole life with
Speaker 5: him on it.
Speaker 2: So that's a lot of less Lincoln bouncing around. And
Speaker 2: they're talking about putting you know, Harriet Tubman on the
Speaker 2: twenty or whatever. I've been talking about that for a
Speaker 2: long time. Lincoln still got there. He's got the five
Speaker 2: dollar bill. Yeah, that's a fine. You know, he's the currency,
Speaker 2: the finn the five.
Speaker 3: It ain't like the penny.
Speaker 5: Though everybody had a penny in their pocket my whole life,
Speaker 5: Lincoln was in their pocket, your whole life.
Speaker 3: No more. You got to move on. I just feel
Speaker 3: like he's getting downgraded.
Speaker 2: Not only I don't know what to tell you, you know how,
Speaker 2: I'm always predicting a planet of the beavers, because human
Speaker 2: beings are going to die off because we're not reproducing
Speaker 2: a fascinating story. The Czech Republic was trying to build
Speaker 2: a damn project for years and years and years, and
Speaker 2: while they were arguing about it, beavers actually damned off
Speaker 2: the river and accomplished what the government couldn't.
Speaker 3: That's a pretty funny story. They're ready to take over.
Speaker 2: Arm Strong Heyetty.
Speaker 1: Broadcasting live from the Abraham Lincoln Radio Studio, the George
Speaker 1: Washington Broadcast Center, Jack Armstrong and Joe Keetty Armstrong and.
Speaker 2: Jet Kid, he Armstrong and Getty Strong.
Speaker 3: Not live from Studio C Armstrong and Getty.
Speaker 2: And We're off. We're just men nut machines. We need
Speaker 2: a little break. But while we're off, enjoy a carefully
Speaker 2: cultivated A and G replay. While you're at it, why
Speaker 2: not hit Armstrong Egeddy dot com. Dropis not if there's
Speaker 2: something you ought to be talking about when we get
Speaker 2: back to work, and while you're there, pick up some
Speaker 2: ang swag Armstrong Egeddy dot com. So ourfka junior hearing
Speaker 2: I do not have a strong position on a lot
Speaker 2: of these issues, as they are so freaking complicated. And
Speaker 2: then you add in politics and money and then try
Speaker 2: to figure out what's true and what's not. It's really
Speaker 2: really difficult, but I do know this, Practically everybody in
Speaker 2: the country seems like they got a kid who's got
Speaker 2: something wrong with him that didn't exist decades ago. How
Speaker 2: many times have we said on this show, how is
Speaker 2: this not biggest story in America?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 2: And RFK Junior spends a lot of time talking about it.
Speaker 2: Whether he's right about all of that stuff. I haven't
Speaker 2: got the slightest idea. I would say this, it matters
Speaker 2: more to me than anything else in my life. I
Speaker 2: spent the entire day yesterday, like I've spent many of
Speaker 2: my entire days over the last thirteen years, dealing with
Speaker 2: this situation with one child. Psychiatrists start this medicine, stop
Speaker 2: that medicine.
Speaker 3: Do I call the police right now? What?
Speaker 2: How do I handle this whole situation? And it's all
Speaker 2: because of something that my kid doesn't deserve, that happened
Speaker 2: to him, because of the environment, or something that happens
Speaker 2: with vaccines around Who freaking knows. I have no idea,
Speaker 2: but I know a lot of you are in the
Speaker 2: same boat, and I would love to be able to
Speaker 2: figure this out.
Speaker 5: Love to be able to figure this out. It's the
Speaker 5: most challenging thing that's ever happened in my life. It'll
Speaker 5: be the most challenging thing in my son's life the
Speaker 5: rest of his life.
Speaker 2: And I love it if we could have serious conversations
Speaker 2: about these things.
Speaker 3: But can we? Is it possible to get it beyond
Speaker 3: what is Trump for? Is he for it that I'm
Speaker 3: for it? Is he for it that I'm against it?
Speaker 3: Can we get past that or not?
Speaker 2: If we can't get past that, then I guess we're
Speaker 2: all just doomed to try to figure this all out
Speaker 2: on our own.
Speaker 8: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Getting back more specifically at RFK Junior, I think you
Speaker 2: could teach a college class, maybe two of them, back
Speaker 2: to back an entire year on his nomination and the
Speaker 2: controversies around it, because there are I mean, there's the
Speaker 2: scientific part of it, certainly, the question of you know,
Speaker 2: how to approach scientific studies and meta studies and that
Speaker 2: sort of thing. Correlation and causation could be a few cases,
Speaker 2: a few classes, and then you could get into a
Speaker 2: situation where somebody and I'm glad that sen It's in
Speaker 2: charge of getting to the bottom of this and not me,
Speaker 2: but somebody says a whole lot of things that are true,
Speaker 2: and a whole lot of the people that are attacking
Speaker 2: him are greed heads and liars, and he's a greed
Speaker 2: head and a crack pot and says things that aren't
Speaker 2: true for attention and money. All of those things can
Speaker 2: simultaneously be true. And that's why this is so interesting
Speaker 2: to me and troubling and confusing. And you know, I
Speaker 2: have no idea, no desire rather to offend anybody who
Speaker 2: thinks that Bobby Kennedy would be a real force for
Speaker 2: good given some of his stances, because I get that,
Speaker 2: I actually get it. I'm just troubled by the guy
Speaker 2: in a lot of the things he believes.
Speaker 5: I am back to the general back away from RFK Junior,
Speaker 5: to the general question of so he says, on a
Speaker 5: regular basis, we have the sickest kids in the world.
Speaker 5: Is that documentable? Is that true? I know we've got
Speaker 5: more anxiety and depression and suicide than we've ever had.
Speaker 3: Do we have more than other ways? I don't look
Speaker 3: into this stuff.
Speaker 2: Maybe I should, because I'm so busy dealing with my
Speaker 2: own individual situation.
Speaker 3: I don't really have.
Speaker 2: Time to look into the meta problem and compare it
Speaker 2: to you know, Norway, because I'm trying to figure out
Speaker 2: you yesterday, yesterday, I'm on the phone with multiple doctors
Speaker 2: trying to figure out various this and that as things
Speaker 2: aren't working well at all, and so I don't know,
Speaker 2: do we have the sickest kids in the world. Is
Speaker 2: that a statement that's true?
Speaker 3: I don't know. I don't know that would be helpful.
Speaker 2: I mean, it's enough to know that our kids are
Speaker 2: sick in ways that they weren't thirty years ago. On
Speaker 2: the other hand, you know, for a unique then you
Speaker 2: can start nailing down what is unique about the United
Speaker 2: States that would tend to cause what we're seeing. I
Speaker 2: doubt that's true. I'm reeling through my memory banks. I
Speaker 2: know a lot of the negative trends in terms of
Speaker 2: mental health that we're seeing are practically universal, if not
Speaker 2: universal in the developed world, they.
Speaker 3: Ought to be worth here and by degrees and various topics.
Speaker 2: A number of people on the autism spectrum and anxiety
Speaker 2: and medication and all that sort of stuff.
Speaker 3: Is that true? Other I would develop.
Speaker 2: I hope, you know, I hope somebody has and that
Speaker 2: comes up in the hearing today. If we have the
Speaker 2: sickest kids in the world, that's a big story. And
Speaker 2: another problem is a lot of the big studies that
Speaker 2: People's site have been utterly discredited. Sure, some of these topics, Sure,
Speaker 2: Charlottean's on all sides. Whenever you have a severe need,
Speaker 2: you will have fraud.
Speaker 5: It's it's tough. I mean to be perfectly fair on
Speaker 5: all sides. It's really tough because you've got ideology, you've
Speaker 5: got money, and then you got Trump derangement syndrome, and
Speaker 5: you put all of those together and it's really hard
Speaker 5: to figure something out. The money thing. I was asking
Speaker 5: this all the way through COVID.
Speaker 2: Remember when they would try to decide whether or not
Speaker 2: to UH to to approve another booster, make another mandatory booster,
Speaker 2: And I would say, and it's still true, how many
Speaker 2: billions of dollars depend on that?
Speaker 3: Yes or no?
Speaker 2: And are you gonna tell me everybody involved, and yes
Speaker 2: we should mandate another booster, or no is doing it
Speaker 2: for health reasons and not for the billions and billions
Speaker 2: and billions of dollars that are on the line.
Speaker 3: It's impossible to think that that's true.
Speaker 2: And even if it doesn't motivate them to do the
Speaker 2: opposite of what they would have done otherwise, it can definitely,
Speaker 2: you know, I'm forty percent sure this is a good idea. Wait, wait,
Speaker 2: you're gonna donate enough money that I can get elected
Speaker 2: for as many terms as I want for the rest
Speaker 2: of my life. Yeah, I'm fifty one percent sure.
Speaker 5: Are a lot mostly non elected officials involved in all
Speaker 5: that stuff, all these different committees and agencies and stuff
Speaker 5: like that. I don't know anything about their motivations. But again,
Speaker 5: when you got that much money slashing around, I mean,
Speaker 5: the various pharmaceutical companies wouldn't be doing their jobs if
Speaker 5: they weren't trying to influence these people with you know,
Speaker 5: we'll give you a gazillion dollar grant to study this
Speaker 5: if you vote yes. The other weird thing around the vaccine,
Speaker 5: You're going to see a whole bunch of Democrats today
Speaker 5: beaten up RFK Junior for his stance on vaccines. All
Speaker 5: of that flipped during COVID. My whole life, our whole
Speaker 5: lives have been talking about all these moms in Marin County,
Speaker 5: in the Bay Area who wouldn't get their kids vaccinated.
Speaker 2: Super hippie lefty liberals. Remember the old the saying used
Speaker 2: to be people that don't vaccinate their kids are all
Speaker 2: within a certain radius of a Whole Foods.
Speaker 3: That was always because it was true.
Speaker 2: I live in a town like that full of lefty
Speaker 2: moms who didn't want to vaccinate their kids. Now it's
Speaker 2: a maga, crazy right wing nut job thing. How did
Speaker 2: that happen?
Speaker 3: How did y'all switch teams so fast?
Speaker 2: I think if you can answer that question, you understand
Speaker 2: human beings, and please at that point share it with
Speaker 2: the rest of us.
Speaker 5: And then one more thing before it starts to show. Officially,
Speaker 5: we had the breaking Kennedy news at the end of
Speaker 5: the show yesterday we read part of the Caroline Kennedy
Speaker 5: letter about her own brother. It didn't mean that to
Speaker 5: be any endorsement of Caroline Kennedy. If you've listened to
Speaker 5: the show for a long time, I don't hold the
Speaker 5: Kennedy's in high regard In any way.
Speaker 2: They ought to be banned. I think that we ought
Speaker 2: to offer them the following bargain. You can be jailed
Speaker 2: or exiled permanently, or you can change your name. I
Speaker 2: never want to hear the damn name Kennedy again, No,
Speaker 2: except for that nice gal from MTV is now on
Speaker 2: Fox News. But worth keeping in mind the blast from Carroll,
Speaker 2: Sweet Carol, from Caroline Kennedy about her brother. She was
Speaker 2: up until like a couple of months ago saying Joe
Speaker 2: Biden is fit for office for another term.
Speaker 3: So keep that in mind in terms of her judgment
Speaker 3: or how honest she is.
Speaker 8: I the armstrong and getting show.
Speaker 5: I wanted Joe to make an argument for why I
Speaker 5: should be worried about the billionaires and being at the
Speaker 5: inauguration and being too close to Trump and whatever. This
Speaker 5: oligarchy that Biden warned us about the other night. Bernie
Speaker 5: talked about this lest yesterday with the Treasury Secretary some one.
Speaker 3: Of your confirmation hearings. Here's Bernie Sanders. We don't talk
Speaker 3: about this enough.
Speaker 7: And that is when you got three people on top
Speaker 7: well more wealth than the bottom half of American society,
Speaker 7: one hundred and seventy million people. You know what, that's oligauchy.
Speaker 7: When you have massive concentration of ownership in our economy,
Speaker 7: fewer and fewer corporations owning and controlling the economy, that's oligauchy.
Speaker 7: When you have more and more billionaires, whether it's Musk
Speaker 7: owning Twitter or Murdoch owning a Fox, or other billionaires
Speaker 7: owning newspapers.
Speaker 3: That's oligarchy.
Speaker 5: She didn't want to say bezos in the Washington Post
Speaker 5: because they're on your side, right Ryan, Yeah, who's another
Speaker 5: conservative Murdoch?
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's it? So well in what way? Well, what's
Speaker 2: the argument for there shouldn't be billionaires? They've got too
Speaker 2: much money? This is an oligarchy. I will tell you
Speaker 2: this a couple of things.
Speaker 7: Uh.
Speaker 2: Number one, if you are if you hope to be
Speaker 2: a serious person, a person who of you it is said,
Speaker 2: I don't always agree with him or her, but their
Speaker 2: point of view is always worth taking in. You need
Speaker 2: to be able to steal man the other side's argument,
Speaker 2: the opposite of a straw man, where you construct the
Speaker 2: ridiculous parody of their argument that knock it down and
Speaker 2: feel all manly you see.
Speaker 3: It all the time. It works. You've got to he dismissed.
Speaker 2: Like, I'll tell you what, after a rough day, nothing
Speaker 2: I like better than beating the hell out of a
Speaker 2: straw man. But you know, you've got to construct a
Speaker 2: very strong argument, as they would make it I've got
Speaker 2: to admit I'm finding this argument, this assignment very, very difficult,
Speaker 2: because I find the argument's weak. What I would say
Speaker 2: is similar to Bernie. You have that much concentrated wealth
Speaker 2: and power in a few people with a direct connection
Speaker 2: line to the Presidency and the entire executive branch, they
Speaker 2: will become a star chamber of the ultra wealthy, directing
Speaker 2: US policy to their whims.
Speaker 3: Oh my god, I did a good job. Evidently you
Speaker 3: know my argument. How would you stop?
Speaker 5: How would you first of all, how would you stop
Speaker 5: the possibility of that? How would you limit the possibility
Speaker 5: of that anyway within the bill of right?
Speaker 2: Oh? No, no, it can't be done. There are a
Speaker 2: couple of like really good counter arguments against that, even
Speaker 2: if you admit.
Speaker 3: That it's true. One, what are you gonna do about it?
Speaker 2: If your net worth is more than fifty million dollars?
Speaker 2: You don't get to a petition the government for a
Speaker 2: redress of grievances.
Speaker 5: Right, or you're not allowed to talk to your senator
Speaker 5: or the president.
Speaker 2: And speaking of visiting Washington, DC, if you ever strode
Speaker 2: along Ky Street and seen all the beautiful, shiny buildings
Speaker 2: that are full of lobbyists. That sort of thing is
Speaker 2: already happening in spades every single day.
Speaker 5: Obviously because of our bent, it's just so much easier
Speaker 5: to take the other side of this.
Speaker 2: Statistically. First of all, just start here. There are more
Speaker 2: billionaires that donate to Democrats than there are donate to Republicans.
Speaker 2: That's just an unknown fact. So and Bernie's against that.
Speaker 2: In his defense, he is utterly misguided. But Bernie Sanders
Speaker 2: is sincere true.
Speaker 5: Bernie is as a socialist, he doesn't think billionaires should exist.
Speaker 5: That is a nut job attitude. But Biden is fine
Speaker 5: with the Democrat billionaires. He isn't like conservative billionaires. Oh yeah,
Speaker 5: complete four one billionaires switch teams because a lot of
Speaker 5: times billionaires are just going with whichever direction see Zuckerberg,
Speaker 5: maybe whichever direction. Okay, they're in power, let's make them happy,
Speaker 5: which you know is not a bad business model.
Speaker 3: But first of all, it's a lot like we mock.
Speaker 5: If it's going to be one hundred degrees, everybody gets
Speaker 5: all excited as opposed to ninety eight.
Speaker 2: It's just a round number. I don't know why somebody
Speaker 2: who is whose net worth is nine hundred million dollars
Speaker 2: is eh, do what you want to do. But once
Speaker 2: you hit a billion, you're all of a sudden suspect
Speaker 2: I got to kill you. You've got a billion dollars.
Speaker 3: I mean that just seems like so if you got five.
Speaker 2: Guys in the front row that each have three hundred
Speaker 2: million dollars, don't need to think about them.
Speaker 3: It's the two billionaires over there. Just it's just silly.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, you know, I think this is this is
Speaker 2: my final on this, and it's a very handy thing
Speaker 2: to keep in your intellectual back pocket to bust out
Speaker 2: in case of emergency. And that is Jefferson's famous declaration,
Speaker 2: not of independence, but that he would rather attend to
Speaker 2: the problems of too much liberty than too little. And
Speaker 2: there are so many things like the billionaire argument, because
Speaker 2: it's you know, it's reasonable to say, look, you got
Speaker 2: people with incredible wealth and power. They can direct the
Speaker 2: government in ways not foreseen by the Constitution. It's absolutely true.
Speaker 2: But the cure would be worse than the disease. It's
Speaker 2: it's a you know, to unfortunately bring up christin home. Agin.
Speaker 2: My dog Baxter, God bless him, still hanging on. He's
Speaker 2: a fabulous dog. He's very bright. He's very willful. He
Speaker 2: is like a disobedient child. He will get away with
Speaker 2: what he can. And you know, when I'm in the room,
Speaker 2: he's good. But at the minute I walk out of
Speaker 2: the room, he's like eight. The bus is gone. Anyway,
Speaker 2: I could certainly eliminate a lot of those problems by
Speaker 2: shooting my dog like I'm Christino. It would absolutely, one
Speaker 2: hundred percent cure those problems. Billionaire follow you, No, no, no,
Speaker 2: what am I Luigi the psychopathic lunatic? No I am not. No.
Speaker 2: What I'm saying is gosh, it would be nice to
Speaker 2: not have those problems. But if the cure violates your
Speaker 2: fundamental beliefs, then you've got to find another way. You've
Speaker 2: either got to live with it or be more clever
Speaker 2: about curing it. And one of the great sick tendencies
Speaker 2: of the left, especially but not exclusively the left, especially
Speaker 2: if you want to look at history, but one of
Speaker 2: their sick tendencies is to say, this is a problem,
Speaker 2: and this is a solution to that problem. Therefore we
Speaker 2: must do it. And the idea that we don't get
Speaker 2: to do that we need to just put up with
Speaker 2: it or help a little bit. We don't to give
Speaker 2: ourselves the power to cure that quote unquote problem would
Speaker 2: make us monsters.
Speaker 5: I'm not sure a lot of the media even has
Speaker 5: an argument. They just think that because I've seen a
Speaker 5: fair amount of news coverage where it's just Elon Musk,
Speaker 5: Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg. Will all three be attending the
Speaker 5: inauguration on Monday. There are the three richest men in
Speaker 5: the world.
Speaker 2: And they plan to sit together, and they kind of
Speaker 2: look at you like, huh, isn't that scary?
Speaker 3: But with no follow up is why it would be
Speaker 3: in any way?
Speaker 2: I don't right, it's just appealing to like not spelled
Speaker 2: out prejudices. It's like if you're in a group of
Speaker 2: racists and somebody brings up a black man, for instance,
Speaker 2: and somebody says something disparaging about them. Nobody says, all right, now,
Speaker 2: let's have a discussion of the positive and negative aspects
Speaker 2: of that person's character and whether that.
Speaker 3: Was deserved or not.
Speaker 2: No, they'll just snicker because they're racists, and that's the
Speaker 2: way it is. It's just a tribal signaling thing. I
Speaker 2: think they're way wrong on this. I think most people
Speaker 2: admire billionaires, wish they could be a billionaire.
Speaker 3: Think it's cool. Imagine what it'd be like to be
Speaker 3: a billionaire.
Speaker 5: I know there is a crowd college students or whatever
Speaker 5: college professors who are just the term billionaire.
Speaker 2: The idea of a billionaire makes them sick. But I
Speaker 2: think that's like a tiny percentage of the country, don't you.
Speaker 3: I would agree. I do think most people are bothered
Speaker 3: by it.
Speaker 2: The politics of envy is incredibly powerful too. But yeah,
Speaker 2: I think, and this is crazy. Maybe you want to
Speaker 2: jot this down. If a billionaire does something good, why
Speaker 2: don't you say that's good? And if they do something bad,
Speaker 2: say that's bad. And I don't like it. We'll go
Speaker 2: from there, all right. They are elon trying to rein
Speaker 2: in the shocking, sprawling, idiotic growth of the federal bureaucracies.
Speaker 2: That's great.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't care what his net worth is.
Speaker 5: I think it should be pointed out more than the one,
Speaker 5: two and three richest people in the world are all
Speaker 5: Americans who made their goal of it from scratch in
Speaker 5: the United States of America. Because you can wow.
Speaker 2: Great point.
Speaker 6: Jack Armstrong and Joe Getty The Armstrong and Getty Show