March 17, 2023 • 36 mins
Mark Hemingway is a Senior Writer at Real Clear Investigations.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, everybody, welcome to the Buck Sexton Show. On this episode,
Mark Hemingway is with us of Real Clear Investigations. He's
also an editor at The Federalist and the husband of
the formidable Molly Hemingway, who is fantastic author and writer
in her own right. Mister Mark, how are you doing, sir?
(00:20):
How is America? You know America is hanging on, But yeah,
I'm doing all right. You know, one thing that I
know you get very focused in on is all the
school stuff. You've been on the board of a classical
school for nearly eighteen years. Want to I want you
to tell me about that, But then I also want
(00:41):
to ask about you may have seen, you know, Biden
is saying that it's cruel now to prevent gender transition
surgery for kids. That's it's cruel to stop kids from
getting surgery that is going to almost certainly ruin their lives.
But anyway, well we'll get to that first. Telling me
what is that? What is this classical school you've been
(01:01):
on the board of for almost twenty years. Yeah, my
church has had a school in some form or another
for you know, nearly one hundred years. Like a lot
of Lutheran churches. But you know, like I think a
religious education in this country kind of suffered an identity
crisis in the you know, in the sort of the
late twentieth century, and you know, our school have gotten
(01:22):
very small. We were deciding what to do with it,
and you know, you know, the school population have gotten
so low, like do we close the school or something.
So what we did, and this was you know, gosh,
eighteen twenty years ago. Now we basically doubled down on
the religious emphasis of the school and we made it
a classical school. Now twenty years ago. It's kind of
funny because you know, talking about classical education like like
(01:42):
these days. You know, I talked to well educated parents
and they know exactly what classical educationism and ask me
questions like are you teaching Saxon or Singapore math? And
they had like the very opinionated ideas about private schooling
because they've had to because of the collapse of public education.
But at the time we did this, we we didn't
really know what we were doing. Were in a gamble,
and obviously with you know, during the pandemic was sort
(02:04):
of the culmination. I mean, you know, we have a
very well regarded classical religious school in a Washington, DC suburb,
and during the pandemic when all the schools in the
Northern Virginia were closed, we had to take the application
off the website at our school, which is crazy. And
now like getting into private schools in DC in recent
years has been absolute blood sport, which is just you know,
(02:24):
amazing to me because you look at how many people
in the DC area are in somewhere or another, you know,
responsible for destroying public education, you know, via the Democratic
Party or teachers unions or whatever it is, and you
know they're living in an area where you know, nobody
with any money feels good about sending their kids a
public school. Um, so you know, education reformance has got
(02:46):
to be a much higher priority than it's been. You know,
I think that one one constant reality of the public
school system. And I know there are people always they
always played this game like we can't speak about this
with any nuance or or you know, it's always oh,
but you know, I went to a great public school,
or they're great public schools here me okay, but there
(03:08):
are also a lot of terrible public schools and they
never get better. And the fact that the DC Public
If you're right next to Washington, DC, you live right
outside of DC, I know where you guys are, and
I know that city pretty well, having lived there a
couple of times. They've spent don't they spend something like
in the twenty thousand dollars range per student. It's like
the highest in the country, and the public school system
(03:29):
there is is horrible. I remember there was a Washington
Post story. This is about a decade ago, and so
I'm sure the figures are certainly much higher now, but Washington,
DC was spending about thirty thousand dollars per kid. Wow,
and Washington the Washington DC school district is by several
objective metrics, the worst school district in the country. I mean,
it's like constantly competing with school districts and in certain
(03:51):
parts of New Jersey for like the absolute worst performance
in terms of dropout rates and stuff like that. You know,
it's also a situation where they've been a number of
high profile cases in the last twenty years, like teachers
union corruption, like actual embezzlement like millions of dollars and
things like that from the unions and schools in DC.
So I mean, it's just just bad at every level.
But what's also interesting though, in this area in particular,
(04:13):
is that just outside of DC, in Northern Virginia, you know,
in Loudon County, in Fairfax County, you had, by some measures,
some of the best public high schools in the nation.
Fairfax County in particular, you know, it was always upheld
as a model. And what happened. A bunch of woke
people got elected to the school board and like within
a span of a few years, it's become a national
(04:33):
news story what's happened with Loudon County schools with the
trans bathroom stuff. And then in Fairfax County they had
this famous magnet school for science and technology, that Thomas
Jefferson High School. It's when you know, it was an
Ivy League feeder school and it was a public high school,
and the Vade School Board has basically tried to destroy
merit based admission to it. You had to test into it, right.
(04:55):
But what happened was is because there were a ton
of Asian immigrants in me in the Northern Virginia, you know,
and again these are historically discriminated against immigrants. We're taking
up all the spots in the stem schools. So all
of a sudden they had to do away with the
merit based admission to the school, and that this has
been a big fight. Um as that school gets you know,
fallow starts to fall apart. Um. There's a recent scandal
(05:16):
where they didn't inform several students because of what looks like,
because they were you know, white or Asian, that they
had won national merit scholarships. You know, I mean like
they're just they're just waging war on people. And it's
it's it's absolutely sounding to me to watch this just
implode and and everyone's sort of standing around, powerless, you know,
to do anything about it. And I've been screaming for
(05:37):
the twenty plus years. Republicans need to make an education
reform a much bigger political priority. How do they do that? Well,
for one thing, they need to start talking about it. Um.
You know, obviously there's you know, a war on meritocracy
in this country. Um, you know, right now in advance
for an advance of what looks like there's a potential
(05:57):
of the Spreme Court to basically you know, take away
from of action in this country. Ivy League schools even
have announced they're no longer going to be using SAT scores,
you know, and I'm sorry, but SAT scores and standardized tests. Look,
we all have issues with them. You know, maybe we
didn't enjoy them. But the fact of the matter is
is SAT scores, for instance, we're a great equalizer. I mean,
(06:17):
it was a you know, if you were an Asian
immigrant who spends you know, I don't know, twenty hours
a week or whatever outside of school, working in your
family restaurant, you don't have time to burnish your resume
doing all these fancy extracurriculous that look good on an
Ivyleague school application. But if you go in and you know,
you pull a fourteen fifty on the SAT, then you
got a shot at getting in an IVY League school. Well,
they do away with the SAT all of a sudden,
(06:39):
What's all that's going to do is empower you know,
the kids who have the money and time and resources
go out and burnish their resume with you know, charity
work and you know, higher education consultants and all that
other nonsense that is involving schools these days. So that's
like one issue right there, you know, talk about like,
you know, why are we doing away with merit based
admission to you know, like STEM School, Stem High schools,
(06:59):
now and colleges. You know, just go out there and
talk about that. I wonder as well, you know, you're
so you're on the board of this school having for
a long time of your school attached to your Lutheran church.
Are there parents who show up at any of the meetings? Now?
I know it's it's a pre selected group in so
far as these are people that are choosing to go
to this school and it's you know, Christian affiliated, But
(07:21):
is anyone showing up and saying, hey, you know, I
really think we need to expand gender ideology for the
kids starting around the third grade? I mean, do you
come up against that? Uh? I always I find it
remarkable trying to figure out where does this begin, because
we know what happens in a lot of different schools
across the country where they start the very sexualized books
(07:41):
for young kids and the LGBTQ plus indoctrination stuff at
a very young age. Obviously in Florida that calls to
Hughes fight a huge fight. Do you know, do you
come across any parents who feel like there's not enough
of the left wing stuff going on for the kids.
Do you know what I mean. I mean that they're
not being LGBTQ, play's friendly enough or something. There's stuff
(08:02):
like that, but it's very much confined to the margins.
M One reason why religious schools are good for this
sort of thing, and if I were, you know, a parent,
I'd be out there looking for religious that cares about
these issues. I'd be looking at religious schools is because
most religious schools are actually controlled by the church. In
order to be on the board of the school or whatever,
you also be a member of the church. And then
you know that board ensures that nothing that the school
(08:25):
does is going to go against the doctrine of the church.
And if the church that's running the school is you know,
a solid, you know church with traditionally Christian, biblically centered beliefs,
you're not going to encounter any of that stuff because
the moment the parents, the parents sort of raise these issues,
then you know they can be you know, pretty much
dismissed because you know, it's it's they don't have any
(08:47):
sort of direct input in it. It's a private school.
You can need to choose to send your kids there,
are choose not to. Then the other thing that's happened
simply is like I said, you know, it's become basically
would suppost pandemic become blood sport in a lot of
you know, fluent areas to get your kids into a
private school, um, and the demand to get into private
schools is really really high. So that for once, you know,
(09:07):
if you if you have a private school where there
isn't a lot of pressure to get kids into the school.
And in fact, as is the case in a lot
of private schools, you know they're turning people away because
they're waiting less in every grade. Then parents aren't in
in a position whatever to So I should say, parents
who have ideas contrary to with the school wants in
terms of values, you know, are not in position to
(09:28):
tell schools what to do, which is very different obviously
than public schools where you have all these you know,
massive political factors going in to things and really sort
of upsets things. Do you think that they because you're
you're a Virginia resident. You mentioned Loudon County as well.
That was clearly a big part of Governor Younkin's victory. Right,
(09:50):
there's the frustration with the schools because of COVID, but
also the you know, trans student attacking the other student
in the bathroom, and the policies are a lot of this.
Does that frustration continue and do you think that that'll
play a role in how Virginia goes just politically in
general in twenty twenty four. I think it, honestly, you know,
(10:13):
continues because it very much affects the Northern Virginia area
where there are a lot of affluent people and in
a huge population hub that determines a lot of the
voting in the state essentially, And so what happened in Virginia,
it's really interesting and instructive and why I think that
Republicans need to go out there and talk about this
a lot more because you know, it really worked for
(10:34):
young can basically have a situation where, yes, most of
the residents in Northern Virginia are you overwhelming Democrats, and
they vote overwhelming Democrat. But having said that, they're not
like urban progressives. They're you know, like they tend to
be much more moderate Democrats, unlike say the voters that
live in DC or big cities. And these are people
that you know, care about certain things a great deal,
(10:55):
you know, and with the pandemic basically two things happen.
One is that the see completely fell apart as a city,
like a lot of other urban centers. It just it
had been falling apart for a while, but it got
really really bad. Now, like the homeless problem, all these
other things are exploding in DC in ways that wasn't before.
And so young kid is running, you know, post pandemic,
and the people in northern Virginia are looking over the
(11:15):
bridge and they're seeing all this crime that they're worried about,
you know, coming over into their neighborhoods. And then the
other thing was Virginia had one of the worst pandemic
responses of any state in the nation. I mean, it
basically just completely shut down schools for eighteen months, you know,
deferred to the teachers' unions on everything. You know, these
are high achieving parents with jobs, and they were frustrated
(11:35):
beyond belief with you know, having to take care of
their kids and you're having all the problems that come
with doing school from home and seeing what their kids
woke curriculum was like for the first time, and all
these other things, and you know, I'm sorry, you know,
with a lot of Democrats around the country, especially the
affluent ones. If you do two things. You know, if
you threaten their property values a crime and you you know,
(11:57):
ruin their kids' ability to get into a top flight
ledge because you're messing with their education, Well then God
have mercy on your political soul. I mean, it's just
such a losing message for Democrats across the board. You know,
those two things, and that's how young can one basically,
I think messaging very effectively on both of those issues.
But education in particular was just huge because you had
all those human national scandals and Karen McCulloch just took
(12:19):
for granted that the national press in Washington, DC was
going to run interference for him, and it didn't work
out that way because you know, Junkin was relentless about
hammering the education issue and it resonated with enough Northern
Virginia voters to peel them off. It was very effective strategy,
as we saw. I want to ask you, speaking about
how cities are doing. You are a native Portlander, Is
(12:43):
that correct? Well, my mom my, Max, I'm a native
organ Well, my mother is. My mother grew up in Portland.
I lived in Portland for a time. I've got a
ton of relatives growing there. Yeah, I want to we
want to talk Portland and what has happened to that city,
specifically in justice. But first I want to ask everybody
who's listening, how's your energy level these days? Are you
(13:05):
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Can I just tell you I've been to Portland once.
It was two and ten, and I remember thinking to myself,
this city is amazing. It's beautiful, the food is great,
(14:34):
It's got a really interesting vibe to it. Obviously great coffee,
like so much going for it. It wasn't very expensive
then either. It was starting to get more expensive to city.
But I remember also talking to people who were there
and I was like, when I'm at a place for
the first time it's been They said, yeah, you know,
the downtown and we got a lot of a lot
of vagrants that it was. It was just beginning to happen, right,
(14:57):
and you could kind of see that the the Democrat
left was becoming more assertive in its craziness, you know.
And I think this really happened to Austin in the
last you know, five to seven years. You know, these
cities go through, all these people moved there, they realize
how great it is. But then also the Democrat reality
starts to creep in more and more. What happened to Portland, man,
(15:19):
I mean it is it is hemorrhaging people. It had
I think in twenty twenty one a thousand shootings, which
some crazy number, which for a city of that size,
just means that there are areas where there are shootings
going on all the time. What happened? What happened to
and why isn't Why aren't Oregonians up in arms? Yeah,
this is a good question. I mean the answer is
(15:41):
Oregonians are up in arms, which is to say, um,
business owners in Portland and almost everyone outside of the
city are, you know, incredibly frustrated by what's going on.
And I'll sort of get to why that why that
is in the moment in a moment, But basically, what happened.
Is one of my favorite Portland anecdotes is as that
starting in the late nineteen nineties, Portland became known as
(16:02):
a very trendy city. And as evidence of that, I
like the site that they didn't they didn't mark. They
did this elaborate market research. I remember reading about this
New York Times. They were trying to pinpoint what started
the Paps Blue Ribbon revival in the nineteen nineties, Like
while of a sudden, hipsters started drinking Paps Blue Ribbon,
and they found out that for whatever reason, it started
(16:22):
as an organic trend in Portland, Oregon. Like you know,
like Portland was like hipster or central, like that's where people,
you know, they had a great music scene, it had,
you know, this burgeoning restaurant scene that you mentioned that
was like really sort of flowering and started in late
nineteen nineties, and it became trendier and trendier until right
around the time when you were there in twenty ten.
That was the height of Portlandia fame. Remember the TV
(16:43):
show about that or whatever. The sort of like made
fun made sort of gentle fun of right about it.
They didn't want to eat the chicken in like the
chicken kebab or whatever until they knew the chicken's name
and what the chickens hopes and dreams were and all
I remember that from Portlandia. Yeah, right. Funny thing about
that sketch was that Portlandia was like it was the
(17:05):
reality of Portland at the was so much actually crazier
than the sort of sketch show. There was like an
actual There was a local culinary competition right around the time,
I want to say, a year or two before the
show aired with that sketch, and you just described about,
you know, meeting the heritage breed chickens where there was
a local culinary competition where two chefs got into a
(17:26):
fight and one of them had a fractured tibias result
with mug shots because one of them wasn't using locally
sourced pork at some culinary competition. I mean, that's how
crazy Portland was in terms of all that stuff. But
it was right around that time that, like, because it
became trending the nineties and people started moving there and
moving there. And the situation with Oregon is it's like
(17:47):
a lot of Western state it's kind of this way,
but Oregan is kind of an extreme example, where Oregon
has about four million people, and it's it's a large state,
you know, it's like the size of Germany and has
four million people. But of the four million people, just
over about half those the population lives in like two
or three counties that make Portland metro area. So what
happens is is that once there's this even greater influx
(18:09):
of population into Portland, then all of a sudden, whatever
is going on in that city, no matter how crazy
it is, it's going to like basically ruin the politics
the entire state. And in this case, basically it was
a whole bunch of Californians and you know, people from
around the country that lived in urban environments that had
gotten too expensive or you know whatever, they were just
(18:30):
sick of dealing with, you know, the traffic and smog
in La or whatever it was, all moved to Portland,
and they brought with them their progressive politics, thinking that
while I can just have my progressive politics somewhere where
it's cheaper and easier to live, and then almost immediately
started voting for all these you know, sort of radical
ideas and progressive policies that you know, basically completely ruined
(18:51):
the city and why is it the heartland of antifa?
Like how did that have because that's even a level
beyond you know, people say, oh, you know, they'll call
them hippies. I'm if these are not hippies. There's these
are people. There's a lot of white dudes with face
and neck tattoos, putting black balaclavas over their heads, acting
like they're fighting fascism by throwing rocks at cops and
(19:12):
immigration you know, enforcement officers and like bad stuff going on. Yeah,
that's actually a really interesting question. Um so, I don't
you know how familiar with the history of this sort
of stuff. You probably are more so than most people.
But you know, there's this issue of anarchism, which was
an actual sort of you know, prominent current in the
(19:33):
late nineteenth century. I remember, well the late nineteen I
think you could say the late twentieth century when they
did all that stuff in Seattle. Remember it went they
went crazy and they shouted all the Starbucks windows, right yeah, right, yeah, No, No,
that wasn't that was Seattle too. It was the Pacific Northwest.
But in the late nineteenth century, remember was the person
that assassinated was at McKinley was an anarchist. There was
all this anarchist violence in the early part of the
(19:56):
twentieth century. Well, for whatever reason, the anarchists were actually
you know, there was a there was a strong sort
of bunch of anarchists enclaves that were in the Pacific Northwest.
I mean it was always looming. I mean like there
are towns in Washington State that existed this day. They
were founded specifically as like anarchists, like communes or whatever.
And so there was always that sort of current and
(20:16):
then you built on top of that with this sort
of weird hippie fringe that was always attractive Pacific Northwest,
you know, like there was like some extreme ideology, you know,
in terms of the hippies. There was a guy named
John Zerzan that was a living in Eugene, Oregon when
I was going to school there in the mid nineties,
and he had a radio show, right and he was
(20:39):
this anti technology anarchist. He was a close associate of
Ted Kazinski, the Uni bomber or whatever, and he was
going around in Eugene, Oregon when I was there in
the mid nineties basically like preaching to you know, these
gutter punks that were like homeless kids skateboarding on the
streets and preaching anarchism to them. And when I was
in high school, when I was in college, there are
all these stories of like the you know, these anarchists
(21:00):
breaking into like city council meetings and all this other
stuff and causing a ruckus and like all the local
stuff in Eugene, Oregon University of Organism. And then like
three or four years after that, I turn on the
television during the WTO riots and I look up and
I'm like, oh, my gosh, it's all the same gutter
punks you know that I was seeing in Oregon, um,
you know, uh, just a couple of years earlier. And
(21:23):
so I mean, I really think that there was there
was this sort of weird, underground ideological thing that had
been happening for a long time in the state that
sort of created this, but but it didn't really become
a problem until it certainly grew around in twenty ten
with the with the Occupied Wall Street movements, right gave
(21:45):
some fuel to that. But what really happened would really changed,
was all of a sudden, with all these progressive anti politics,
basically there was no longer any political will to reign
any of these people in and all of a sudden,
like Portland became like an Antifa theme park. Basically, well,
these people could go out, you know, and do all
this stuff and they would never be, um, you know,
sort of attacked or you know, you know, he's going
(22:07):
back ten years ago and the cops are afraid to
do too much or else they'd be you know, accused
of attacking you know, homeless kids. Um. Never mind that
they were basically violent. They were organizing themselves into terror cells. Um.
And they were just going around like on random Wednesday nights,
breaking the windows and restaurants and this totally insane, and
they just allowed this to continue to this day. I mean,
(22:27):
you know you may have seen this. Actually, Ted Wheeler,
the mayor who I think it's tough. There's some really
bad mayors, but certainly one of the worst mayors in
America in terms of our results, and it's kind of
funny to see him. I remember during the pandemic where
he went down to talk to Antifa and they just started,
you know, f bombs and you know, you're the worst.
(22:48):
They they they despise him, just like they despise everybody
else because they're spiteful, angry little idiots who aren't accomplishing
anything other than just destroying property and making people's lives,
you know, more difficult and miserable. Um, you know, the
surrounding community. But I think it's interesting is that finally
now Portland has started to have a little bit of
(23:08):
a conversation about, hey, maybe we can't just have the
whole downtown be an open air homeless shelter, Like maybe
maybe that's actually a bad idea. And Ted Wheeler has
started to try to move in that direction. And there
are stare is still this this left wing vanguard there
that is like that the city has been destroyed, and
(23:29):
they're like, how dare you try to turn things around?
And they're still they're still pushing. Oh no, yeah, I
mean as bad as Ted Wheeler is, and he's horrendous.
He very nearly lost the Democratic primary in the last
election to a woman who was literally antifa. It's like
publicly declaring she was antifa, and he won like a
few percentage points over this one. Um. I mean, so,
(23:51):
I mean that's the political reality that you're you're dealing with.
But you're right, they don't make any distinctions between say
you know Ted Wheeler, the guy that you know constantly
is attacking the police unions on their behalf and the
overall you know, sort of fascist structure or whatever they're fighting.
He's just part of it. But but part of the
reason why that you know, they're able to do this
(24:11):
is because they have a demonstrated history of pushing Ted
Wheeler around. Portland has this you know events the city
of Roses, they have a Rose Parade every year or
whatever it was this gosh, it was like I want
to say, it was about four years ago they Ted
Wheeler canceled like the entire Rose Parade because Antifa threatened
violence against the parade anonymously, by the way, and the
(24:32):
reason why they were threatening violence was because the Multnoma
County Republicans wanted to march in the parade. Like, if
he's going to cancel an entire parade because you sent
him an anonymous threatening letter about this, why wouldn't you
keep pushing it. I mean, he's just you know, a
read in the wind, you know, as far as you know,
ending fascism in America, So you know, why not push
(24:52):
him in till he breaks. It's also fascinating because in
the case of Portland Antifa, you had people who were
trying to burn out of Federal Courthouse who you could
see were almost all white guys. There were some women,
but they were white, and they were doing this in
the name of BLM, and the whole thing just struck
me as, Oh, so they're just you just choose whatever
(25:14):
cause suits the moment so that you can throw your
molotov cocktails that act like you're some kind of hero
against fascism, right, And they'd already burned like a police
facility and a bunch of other stuff around town at
the time that happened, and they, you know, they won't
even do anything there. The Wheeler was joining the protests,
and the national media was basically one hundred percent behind it, like,
(25:35):
oh well, this is just a peaceful protest with a
few agitators. I mean it, it was totally insane. Seattle
is just just as bad, right, pretty much. I mean
that's Seattle had the chatz or the chop or whatever.
They were calling it a Capitol Hill zone. Are they
turning things around? I just wonder I haven't spent much
time to the Pacific Northwest. I told you, I've really
just been out there that one time I went to
Cannon Beach, which is beautiful though, and it strikes me
(25:57):
as it should be this great place. But you've got
two cities that should be the jewels of the Pacific
Northwest that are just turning into crappy places to spend
spend too much time, certainly in the downtowns. Oh yeah,
I know right now. Seattle is actually there was just
a big story recently about Seattle's facing a ton of
lawsuits from business owners in the Chazu as they should. Basically,
(26:20):
they just completely surrendered law and order and you know,
left these business people and people lived in an area
at the mercy of these you know, like literal war lords,
you know, running the city. So yeah, they're still dealing
with that Amazon. And Amazon is going to occupy an
entire skyscraper in downtown Seattle and they just moved the
whole project outside of the city because they weren't going
to begin to deal with that. And you know, these
(26:42):
things keep happening, and yet somehow, you know, there isn't
the political reform movement that you'd think would be happening,
um in the last mid term, right. Phil Knight, the
founder of Nike, dumped millions of dollars into the candidacy
of a tough on crime independent candidate and then later
switched to dumping millions of dollars into the Republican in
(27:04):
the Oregon governor's race, and in a three way race,
Republican came very close to winning UM but ultimately didn't.
And then they ended up with yet another like crazy
progressive UM governor and Oregan's governor prior to that, Tina Cotech.
I think right now, Tina Gotech's the current governor, Camera
Brown Brown. Yeah. Um, she she had the lowest approval
(27:27):
ratings of any governor in the country. And first and
you still can't get rid of these you know, progressives.
They just elected basically an acolyte of Brown essentially to
run the state. Um. It's it's like so far gone.
I don't know what it's going to take to fix it.
Part of the problem is is that you know, people, Um,
you know, all of the people that are sick of
what's going on in Portland are just moving to Boise.
(27:49):
And this is you know, I think a big warning
for everyone else. Um. You know, Boise is the only
big population anchor in Idaho, and you know, twenty year.
Twenty five years ago, Boise was one of the the most
provincial cities in America. Now there's got a tech sector
in a microburry in every corner. I wouldn't be surprised,
you know, if the BIDO isn't careful that that state
goes the way of Oregon in another twenty years. So
(28:09):
people really need to be thinking hard about this. I
think the good news is after people saw what happened
to Portland and Austin in particular, people are a lot
more wary about, you know, people moving into your state.
You know, they don't just necessarily see it as an
unalloyed economic good. They have to understand that there's a
culture that's very much they're worth preserving. And let me
(28:29):
tell you, you know, as a third generation Oregonian, I
am really really sad. I love that state. I mean
it was gorgeous. I mean it was a real privilege
to grow up there in terms of like just an
unreal natural beauty of the place and not just that,
like a wonderful local culture. You know, for years growing
up it was run by a bunch of liberal rockefellow Republicans,
but they are mostly libertarian, leaving me alone types who
(28:52):
did a really good job of managing competing interests. And
more than that, they were just competent people. You know,
they balanced budgets, they did the right thing. They were
good on an vironmentalist issues in a very positive way
that unfortunately, I think the Republican Party is a little
too captive to special interests on um, you know, nationally. Um.
It was just it was a it was a good
state to be from, and I was really really proud
(29:12):
of it. And like now you mentioned, oh I'm from Oregon,
and people literally roll their eyes in your face because
Portland is that bad. I mean, I've got whatever. People,
I guarantee you whatever you heard about Portland, it's worse.
I mean it's it's downtown is a really really scary place.
And it's not just downtown. All of the violence and
all the antife and all the crazy homeless people you know,
yelling obscenities in the street corner that's spread that basically
(29:34):
the entire city. And anyone that tells you different is
lying to you. Yes, you can live there. Yes it's
not always violent. You know, you can get around this.
But like people that live there and say, well it's
not so bad and they have Stockholm syndrome. They don't
know what like an actual functioning city looks like any
I mean I was I was in Baghdad for a
while during the war, and there were people who were
(29:55):
going out and you know, getting like milk and eggs.
But it was bad, right, I mean, it's you know,
people are still living in these places. They're just bad
things are happening, so you know that's they're they're quiet there.
You can find quiet in any place at any time
if you look for it. But if there's too much
of the other stuff going on, that's the real problem.
I want to ask you about elections, by the way,
in election security, because I know you've done a lot
(30:16):
of research into well the most important thing, which is
how do we fix things for twenty twenty four instead
of people just walking around screaming at me and others
we won. I look at them and I'm like, not
not really. I don't know what else to say. Like,
you know, we can sit around and talk. You can
tell me that they cheated, and but we got to
fix the cheating, not just stand here and shout that
(30:37):
we won, right. I mean, it's like if the other
team goes home with the trophy. You can say the
ref fix the game as much as you want, but
you got to figure out how you're gonna win the
next game. Let's talk about that in a second. Though.
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Mark The election in twenty twenty four is going to
be hard for Republicans to win in terms of processes,
vote counting, and tactics unless we do what how do
we fix this? Though? That's that's really tough. But I
(32:03):
mean there are two sort of basic things here I
think need to be addressed. One is that I was
somewhat heartened to see that Trump came out and sort of,
you know, moderated his position on vote by mail. To
be clear, I think vote by mail is terrible. It's
obviously more rife for fraud than almost any other form
of voting, and I'm not a fan of it. I
(32:23):
wish we could all come together society vote you know,
from sun up to sundown on a single day and
know the results right away. I think that is the
way that democracy should be run. But the fact of
the matter is is that's not the way it's been
run for a long time. And even a lot of
Republicans are really you know, accustomed to vote by mail,
So publics need to come up with a strategy to
sort of address that. So we don't have you know,
(32:45):
two months of Democratic organizers running around, you know, maximizing
vote totals, where Republicans are sitting back on their hands,
as we saw on the last mid term, basically hoping
that Republicans turn out big on election day to overwhelm
that effort. Again, I'm not a fan of vote by mail.
I think it's righted by fraud. But as a friend
of mine put it, you can't have arms control unless
(33:07):
both sides have news, right, and so intel Republicans prove
that they can sort of you know, equalize the playing
field in terms of organizing for vote by mail or whatever,
they're not going to be in a good position or
whatever to sort of push back against a lot of
these other sort of you know, dodgy ways that they're
trying to sort of expand the vote and open it
(33:28):
up to the hoping up the process to abuse. So
that's one thing I think that needs to happen. And
the other thing is that one of the things that
came out when I worked with my wife on her
last book on election security issues called Raked have a
copy of And one of the things that really sort
(33:49):
of shocked the heck out of me was, and I
think most people don't even realize this, which was that
there were some shenanigans in a gubernatorial election in New
Jersey and like the early nineteen eighties, and a federal
judge put the entire Republican Party under a consent decree,
which basically meant they couldn't do any sort of election
day monitoring or other in all the traditional activities the
(34:12):
party would do on election day. And that federal judge
literally he retired from the bench, and he kept senior status.
I don't know if you know what that is. That's
like a way for retired judges to sort of like
stay active in the profession while actually being retired. And
he kept senior status just for for for like decades,
(34:32):
just to just to keep this injunction in place basically,
and that injunction wasn't lifted until that judge died and
an Obama appointed judge looked at what he had done
is basically hamstring the Republican Party for forty years and
keep them from doing any election day you know, monitoring
another activity. And in twenty twenty was the first election
(34:56):
where the Republican Party since it was nineteen eighty or
eighty two Puck and Party had you know, the ability
to go out there and send organizers out in the
field or whatever and do poll watching and all that
stuff that the party would normally do the first time
in nearly forty years. And so the party itself didn't
have a lot of muscle memory in terms of like
how to go about doing those things, having the trained
lawyers out there that do that sort of thing. So
(35:18):
I think what needs to happen now that like your
plug and Party can go back and do this. Um,
you know, we need people at the ground level. You know,
we need party precinct people you know going in and
volunteering to do the election day stuff. We need the
and we need the party apparatus to go in and
you know, make sure that there are people in place
to like watch these things and prevent any sort of
(35:38):
shenanigans that are going on, because I guarantee there are
shenanions going on, making accusations about widespread fraud or anything
like that. But people are very much abusing the process
and in all sorts of ways and getting away with it.
And we need to be much more sort of vigilant.
And that you know, comes down to the listeners. You know,
the volunteer. He is himinature on Twitter. Highly recommend you
(35:59):
follow him Mark Hemingway everybody and also look for his
work on Real Clear Investigations and over at the Federalist
dot com market. Has been an honor, a privilege, and
a privilege, my friend. Thank you for being here with this.
We hope you come back. It's great to be on here.
Hey, everybody, welcome to the Buck Sexton Show. On this episode,
Mark Hemingway is with us of Real Clear Investigations. He's
also an editor at The Federalist and the husband of
the formidable Molly Hemingway, who is fantastic author and writer
in her own right. Mister Mark, how are you doing, sir?
(00:20):
How is America? You know America is hanging on, But yeah,
I'm doing all right. You know, one thing that I
know you get very focused in on is all the
school stuff. You've been on the board of a classical
school for nearly eighteen years. Want to I want you
to tell me about that, But then I also want
(00:41):
to ask about you may have seen, you know, Biden
is saying that it's cruel now to prevent gender transition
surgery for kids. That's it's cruel to stop kids from
getting surgery that is going to almost certainly ruin their lives.
But anyway, well we'll get to that first. Telling me
what is that? What is this classical school you've been
(01:01):
on the board of for almost twenty years. Yeah, my
church has had a school in some form or another
for you know, nearly one hundred years. Like a lot
of Lutheran churches. But you know, like I think a
religious education in this country kind of suffered an identity
crisis in the you know, in the sort of the
late twentieth century, and you know, our school have gotten
(01:22):
very small. We were deciding what to do with it,
and you know, you know, the school population have gotten
so low, like do we close the school or something.
So what we did, and this was you know, gosh,
eighteen twenty years ago. Now we basically doubled down on
the religious emphasis of the school and we made it
a classical school. Now twenty years ago. It's kind of
funny because you know, talking about classical education like like
(01:42):
these days. You know, I talked to well educated parents
and they know exactly what classical educationism and ask me
questions like are you teaching Saxon or Singapore math? And
they had like the very opinionated ideas about private schooling
because they've had to because of the collapse of public education.
But at the time we did this, we we didn't
really know what we were doing. Were in a gamble,
and obviously with you know, during the pandemic was sort
(02:04):
of the culmination. I mean, you know, we have a
very well regarded classical religious school in a Washington, DC suburb,
and during the pandemic when all the schools in the
Northern Virginia were closed, we had to take the application
off the website at our school, which is crazy. And
now like getting into private schools in DC in recent
years has been absolute blood sport, which is just you know,
(02:24):
amazing to me because you look at how many people
in the DC area are in somewhere or another, you know,
responsible for destroying public education, you know, via the Democratic
Party or teachers unions or whatever it is, and you
know they're living in an area where you know, nobody
with any money feels good about sending their kids a
public school. Um, so you know, education reformance has got
(02:46):
to be a much higher priority than it's been. You know,
I think that one one constant reality of the public
school system. And I know there are people always they
always played this game like we can't speak about this
with any nuance or or you know, it's always oh,
but you know, I went to a great public school,
or they're great public schools here me okay, but there
(03:08):
are also a lot of terrible public schools and they
never get better. And the fact that the DC Public
If you're right next to Washington, DC, you live right
outside of DC, I know where you guys are, and
I know that city pretty well, having lived there a
couple of times. They've spent don't they spend something like
in the twenty thousand dollars range per student. It's like
the highest in the country, and the public school system
(03:29):
there is is horrible. I remember there was a Washington
Post story. This is about a decade ago, and so
I'm sure the figures are certainly much higher now, but Washington,
DC was spending about thirty thousand dollars per kid. Wow,
and Washington the Washington DC school district is by several
objective metrics, the worst school district in the country. I mean,
it's like constantly competing with school districts and in certain
(03:51):
parts of New Jersey for like the absolute worst performance
in terms of dropout rates and stuff like that. You know,
it's also a situation where they've been a number of
high profile cases in the last twenty years, like teachers
union corruption, like actual embezzlement like millions of dollars and
things like that from the unions and schools in DC.
So I mean, it's just just bad at every level.
But what's also interesting though, in this area in particular,
(04:13):
is that just outside of DC, in Northern Virginia, you know,
in Loudon County, in Fairfax County, you had, by some measures,
some of the best public high schools in the nation.
Fairfax County in particular, you know, it was always upheld
as a model. And what happened. A bunch of woke
people got elected to the school board and like within
a span of a few years, it's become a national
(04:33):
news story what's happened with Loudon County schools with the
trans bathroom stuff. And then in Fairfax County they had
this famous magnet school for science and technology, that Thomas
Jefferson High School. It's when you know, it was an
Ivy League feeder school and it was a public high school,
and the Vade School Board has basically tried to destroy
merit based admission to it. You had to test into it, right.
(04:55):
But what happened was is because there were a ton
of Asian immigrants in me in the Northern Virginia, you know,
and again these are historically discriminated against immigrants. We're taking
up all the spots in the stem schools. So all
of a sudden they had to do away with the
merit based admission to the school, and that this has
been a big fight. Um as that school gets you know,
fallow starts to fall apart. Um. There's a recent scandal
(05:16):
where they didn't inform several students because of what looks like,
because they were you know, white or Asian, that they
had won national merit scholarships. You know, I mean like
they're just they're just waging war on people. And it's
it's it's absolutely sounding to me to watch this just
implode and and everyone's sort of standing around, powerless, you know,
to do anything about it. And I've been screaming for
(05:37):
the twenty plus years. Republicans need to make an education
reform a much bigger political priority. How do they do that? Well,
for one thing, they need to start talking about it. Um.
You know, obviously there's you know, a war on meritocracy
in this country. Um, you know, right now in advance
for an advance of what looks like there's a potential
(05:57):
of the Spreme Court to basically you know, take away
from of action in this country. Ivy League schools even
have announced they're no longer going to be using SAT scores,
you know, and I'm sorry, but SAT scores and standardized tests. Look,
we all have issues with them. You know, maybe we
didn't enjoy them. But the fact of the matter is
is SAT scores, for instance, we're a great equalizer. I mean,
(06:17):
it was a you know, if you were an Asian
immigrant who spends you know, I don't know, twenty hours
a week or whatever outside of school, working in your
family restaurant, you don't have time to burnish your resume
doing all these fancy extracurriculous that look good on an
Ivyleague school application. But if you go in and you know,
you pull a fourteen fifty on the SAT, then you
got a shot at getting in an IVY League school. Well,
they do away with the SAT all of a sudden,
(06:39):
What's all that's going to do is empower you know,
the kids who have the money and time and resources
go out and burnish their resume with you know, charity
work and you know, higher education consultants and all that
other nonsense that is involving schools these days. So that's
like one issue right there, you know, talk about like,
you know, why are we doing away with merit based
admission to you know, like STEM School, Stem High schools,
(06:59):
now and colleges. You know, just go out there and
talk about that. I wonder as well, you know, you're
so you're on the board of this school having for
a long time of your school attached to your Lutheran church.
Are there parents who show up at any of the meetings? Now?
I know it's it's a pre selected group in so
far as these are people that are choosing to go
to this school and it's you know, Christian affiliated, But
(07:21):
is anyone showing up and saying, hey, you know, I
really think we need to expand gender ideology for the
kids starting around the third grade? I mean, do you
come up against that? Uh? I always I find it
remarkable trying to figure out where does this begin, because
we know what happens in a lot of different schools
across the country where they start the very sexualized books
(07:41):
for young kids and the LGBTQ plus indoctrination stuff at
a very young age. Obviously in Florida that calls to
Hughes fight a huge fight. Do you know, do you
come across any parents who feel like there's not enough
of the left wing stuff going on for the kids.
Do you know what I mean. I mean that they're
not being LGBTQ, play's friendly enough or something. There's stuff
(08:02):
like that, but it's very much confined to the margins.
M One reason why religious schools are good for this
sort of thing, and if I were, you know, a parent,
I'd be out there looking for religious that cares about
these issues. I'd be looking at religious schools is because
most religious schools are actually controlled by the church. In
order to be on the board of the school or whatever,
you also be a member of the church. And then
you know that board ensures that nothing that the school
(08:25):
does is going to go against the doctrine of the church.
And if the church that's running the school is you know,
a solid, you know church with traditionally Christian, biblically centered beliefs,
you're not going to encounter any of that stuff because
the moment the parents, the parents sort of raise these issues,
then you know they can be you know, pretty much
dismissed because you know, it's it's they don't have any
(08:47):
sort of direct input in it. It's a private school.
You can need to choose to send your kids there,
are choose not to. Then the other thing that's happened
simply is like I said, you know, it's become basically
would suppost pandemic become blood sport in a lot of
you know, fluent areas to get your kids into a
private school, um, and the demand to get into private
schools is really really high. So that for once, you know,
(09:07):
if you if you have a private school where there
isn't a lot of pressure to get kids into the school.
And in fact, as is the case in a lot
of private schools, you know they're turning people away because
they're waiting less in every grade. Then parents aren't in
in a position whatever to So I should say, parents
who have ideas contrary to with the school wants in
terms of values, you know, are not in position to
(09:28):
tell schools what to do, which is very different obviously
than public schools where you have all these you know,
massive political factors going in to things and really sort
of upsets things. Do you think that they because you're
you're a Virginia resident. You mentioned Loudon County as well.
That was clearly a big part of Governor Younkin's victory. Right,
(09:50):
there's the frustration with the schools because of COVID, but
also the you know, trans student attacking the other student
in the bathroom, and the policies are a lot of this.
Does that frustration continue and do you think that that'll
play a role in how Virginia goes just politically in
general in twenty twenty four. I think it, honestly, you know,
(10:13):
continues because it very much affects the Northern Virginia area
where there are a lot of affluent people and in
a huge population hub that determines a lot of the
voting in the state essentially, And so what happened in Virginia,
it's really interesting and instructive and why I think that
Republicans need to go out there and talk about this
a lot more because you know, it really worked for
(10:34):
young can basically have a situation where, yes, most of
the residents in Northern Virginia are you overwhelming Democrats, and
they vote overwhelming Democrat. But having said that, they're not
like urban progressives. They're you know, like they tend to
be much more moderate Democrats, unlike say the voters that
live in DC or big cities. And these are people
that you know, care about certain things a great deal,
(10:55):
you know, and with the pandemic basically two things happen.
One is that the see completely fell apart as a city,
like a lot of other urban centers. It just it
had been falling apart for a while, but it got
really really bad. Now, like the homeless problem, all these
other things are exploding in DC in ways that wasn't before.
And so young kid is running, you know, post pandemic,
and the people in northern Virginia are looking over the
(11:15):
bridge and they're seeing all this crime that they're worried about,
you know, coming over into their neighborhoods. And then the
other thing was Virginia had one of the worst pandemic
responses of any state in the nation. I mean, it
basically just completely shut down schools for eighteen months, you know,
deferred to the teachers' unions on everything. You know, these
are high achieving parents with jobs, and they were frustrated
(11:35):
beyond belief with you know, having to take care of
their kids and you're having all the problems that come
with doing school from home and seeing what their kids
woke curriculum was like for the first time, and all
these other things, and you know, I'm sorry, you know,
with a lot of Democrats around the country, especially the
affluent ones. If you do two things. You know, if
you threaten their property values a crime and you you know,
(11:57):
ruin their kids' ability to get into a top flight
ledge because you're messing with their education, Well then God
have mercy on your political soul. I mean, it's just
such a losing message for Democrats across the board. You know,
those two things, and that's how young can one basically,
I think messaging very effectively on both of those issues.
But education in particular was just huge because you had
all those human national scandals and Karen McCulloch just took
(12:19):
for granted that the national press in Washington, DC was
going to run interference for him, and it didn't work
out that way because you know, Junkin was relentless about
hammering the education issue and it resonated with enough Northern
Virginia voters to peel them off. It was very effective strategy,
as we saw. I want to ask you, speaking about
how cities are doing. You are a native Portlander, Is
(12:43):
that correct? Well, my mom my, Max, I'm a native
organ Well, my mother is. My mother grew up in Portland.
I lived in Portland for a time. I've got a
ton of relatives growing there. Yeah, I want to we
want to talk Portland and what has happened to that city,
specifically in justice. But first I want to ask everybody
who's listening, how's your energy level these days? Are you
(13:05):
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Can I just tell you I've been to Portland once.
It was two and ten, and I remember thinking to myself,
this city is amazing. It's beautiful, the food is great,
(14:34):
It's got a really interesting vibe to it. Obviously great coffee,
like so much going for it. It wasn't very expensive
then either. It was starting to get more expensive to city.
But I remember also talking to people who were there
and I was like, when I'm at a place for
the first time it's been They said, yeah, you know,
the downtown and we got a lot of a lot
of vagrants that it was. It was just beginning to happen, right,
(14:57):
and you could kind of see that the the Democrat
left was becoming more assertive in its craziness, you know.
And I think this really happened to Austin in the
last you know, five to seven years. You know, these
cities go through, all these people moved there, they realize
how great it is. But then also the Democrat reality
starts to creep in more and more. What happened to Portland, man,
(15:19):
I mean it is it is hemorrhaging people. It had
I think in twenty twenty one a thousand shootings, which
some crazy number, which for a city of that size,
just means that there are areas where there are shootings
going on all the time. What happened? What happened to
and why isn't Why aren't Oregonians up in arms? Yeah,
this is a good question. I mean the answer is
(15:41):
Oregonians are up in arms, which is to say, um,
business owners in Portland and almost everyone outside of the
city are, you know, incredibly frustrated by what's going on.
And I'll sort of get to why that why that
is in the moment in a moment, But basically, what happened.
Is one of my favorite Portland anecdotes is as that
starting in the late nineteen nineties, Portland became known as
(16:02):
a very trendy city. And as evidence of that, I
like the site that they didn't they didn't mark. They
did this elaborate market research. I remember reading about this
New York Times. They were trying to pinpoint what started
the Paps Blue Ribbon revival in the nineteen nineties, Like
while of a sudden, hipsters started drinking Paps Blue Ribbon,
and they found out that for whatever reason, it started
(16:22):
as an organic trend in Portland, Oregon. Like you know,
like Portland was like hipster or central, like that's where people,
you know, they had a great music scene, it had,
you know, this burgeoning restaurant scene that you mentioned that
was like really sort of flowering and started in late
nineteen nineties, and it became trendier and trendier until right
around the time when you were there in twenty ten.
That was the height of Portlandia fame. Remember the TV
(16:43):
show about that or whatever. The sort of like made
fun made sort of gentle fun of right about it.
They didn't want to eat the chicken in like the
chicken kebab or whatever until they knew the chicken's name
and what the chickens hopes and dreams were and all
I remember that from Portlandia. Yeah, right. Funny thing about
that sketch was that Portlandia was like it was the
(17:05):
reality of Portland at the was so much actually crazier
than the sort of sketch show. There was like an
actual There was a local culinary competition right around the time,
I want to say, a year or two before the
show aired with that sketch, and you just described about,
you know, meeting the heritage breed chickens where there was
a local culinary competition where two chefs got into a
(17:26):
fight and one of them had a fractured tibias result
with mug shots because one of them wasn't using locally
sourced pork at some culinary competition. I mean, that's how
crazy Portland was in terms of all that stuff. But
it was right around that time that, like, because it
became trending the nineties and people started moving there and
moving there. And the situation with Oregon is it's like
(17:47):
a lot of Western state it's kind of this way,
but Oregan is kind of an extreme example, where Oregon
has about four million people, and it's it's a large state,
you know, it's like the size of Germany and has
four million people. But of the four million people, just
over about half those the population lives in like two
or three counties that make Portland metro area. So what
happens is is that once there's this even greater influx
(18:09):
of population into Portland, then all of a sudden, whatever
is going on in that city, no matter how crazy
it is, it's going to like basically ruin the politics
the entire state. And in this case, basically it was
a whole bunch of Californians and you know, people from
around the country that lived in urban environments that had
gotten too expensive or you know whatever, they were just
(18:30):
sick of dealing with, you know, the traffic and smog
in La or whatever it was, all moved to Portland,
and they brought with them their progressive politics, thinking that
while I can just have my progressive politics somewhere where
it's cheaper and easier to live, and then almost immediately
started voting for all these you know, sort of radical
ideas and progressive policies that you know, basically completely ruined
(18:51):
the city and why is it the heartland of antifa?
Like how did that have because that's even a level
beyond you know, people say, oh, you know, they'll call
them hippies. I'm if these are not hippies. There's these
are people. There's a lot of white dudes with face
and neck tattoos, putting black balaclavas over their heads, acting
like they're fighting fascism by throwing rocks at cops and
(19:12):
immigration you know, enforcement officers and like bad stuff going on. Yeah,
that's actually a really interesting question. Um so, I don't
you know how familiar with the history of this sort
of stuff. You probably are more so than most people.
But you know, there's this issue of anarchism, which was
an actual sort of you know, prominent current in the
(19:33):
late nineteenth century. I remember, well the late nineteen I
think you could say the late twentieth century when they
did all that stuff in Seattle. Remember it went they
went crazy and they shouted all the Starbucks windows, right yeah, right, yeah, No, No,
that wasn't that was Seattle too. It was the Pacific Northwest.
But in the late nineteenth century, remember was the person
that assassinated was at McKinley was an anarchist. There was
all this anarchist violence in the early part of the
(19:56):
twentieth century. Well, for whatever reason, the anarchists were actually
you know, there was a there was a strong sort
of bunch of anarchists enclaves that were in the Pacific Northwest.
I mean it was always looming. I mean like there
are towns in Washington State that existed this day. They
were founded specifically as like anarchists, like communes or whatever.
And so there was always that sort of current and
(20:16):
then you built on top of that with this sort
of weird hippie fringe that was always attractive Pacific Northwest,
you know, like there was like some extreme ideology, you know,
in terms of the hippies. There was a guy named
John Zerzan that was a living in Eugene, Oregon when
I was going to school there in the mid nineties,
and he had a radio show, right and he was
(20:39):
this anti technology anarchist. He was a close associate of
Ted Kazinski, the Uni bomber or whatever, and he was
going around in Eugene, Oregon when I was there in
the mid nineties basically like preaching to you know, these
gutter punks that were like homeless kids skateboarding on the
streets and preaching anarchism to them. And when I was
in high school, when I was in college, there are
all these stories of like the you know, these anarchists
(21:00):
breaking into like city council meetings and all this other
stuff and causing a ruckus and like all the local
stuff in Eugene, Oregon University of Organism. And then like
three or four years after that, I turn on the
television during the WTO riots and I look up and
I'm like, oh, my gosh, it's all the same gutter
punks you know that I was seeing in Oregon, um,
you know, uh, just a couple of years earlier. And
(21:23):
so I mean, I really think that there was there
was this sort of weird, underground ideological thing that had
been happening for a long time in the state that
sort of created this, but but it didn't really become
a problem until it certainly grew around in twenty ten
with the with the Occupied Wall Street movements, right gave
(21:45):
some fuel to that. But what really happened would really changed,
was all of a sudden, with all these progressive anti politics,
basically there was no longer any political will to reign
any of these people in and all of a sudden,
like Portland became like an Antifa theme park. Basically, well,
these people could go out, you know, and do all
this stuff and they would never be, um, you know,
sort of attacked or you know, you know, he's going
(22:07):
back ten years ago and the cops are afraid to
do too much or else they'd be you know, accused
of attacking you know, homeless kids. Um. Never mind that
they were basically violent. They were organizing themselves into terror cells. Um.
And they were just going around like on random Wednesday nights,
breaking the windows and restaurants and this totally insane, and
they just allowed this to continue to this day. I mean,
(22:27):
you know you may have seen this. Actually, Ted Wheeler,
the mayor who I think it's tough. There's some really
bad mayors, but certainly one of the worst mayors in
America in terms of our results, and it's kind of
funny to see him. I remember during the pandemic where
he went down to talk to Antifa and they just started,
you know, f bombs and you know, you're the worst.
(22:48):
They they they despise him, just like they despise everybody
else because they're spiteful, angry little idiots who aren't accomplishing
anything other than just destroying property and making people's lives,
you know, more difficult and miserable. Um, you know, the
surrounding community. But I think it's interesting is that finally
now Portland has started to have a little bit of
(23:08):
a conversation about, hey, maybe we can't just have the
whole downtown be an open air homeless shelter, Like maybe
maybe that's actually a bad idea. And Ted Wheeler has
started to try to move in that direction. And there
are stare is still this this left wing vanguard there
that is like that the city has been destroyed, and
(23:29):
they're like, how dare you try to turn things around?
And they're still they're still pushing. Oh no, yeah, I
mean as bad as Ted Wheeler is, and he's horrendous.
He very nearly lost the Democratic primary in the last
election to a woman who was literally antifa. It's like
publicly declaring she was antifa, and he won like a
few percentage points over this one. Um. I mean, so,
(23:51):
I mean that's the political reality that you're you're dealing with.
But you're right, they don't make any distinctions between say
you know Ted Wheeler, the guy that you know constantly
is attacking the police unions on their behalf and the
overall you know, sort of fascist structure or whatever they're fighting.
He's just part of it. But but part of the
reason why that you know, they're able to do this
(24:11):
is because they have a demonstrated history of pushing Ted
Wheeler around. Portland has this you know events the city
of Roses, they have a Rose Parade every year or
whatever it was this gosh, it was like I want
to say, it was about four years ago they Ted
Wheeler canceled like the entire Rose Parade because Antifa threatened
violence against the parade anonymously, by the way, and the
(24:32):
reason why they were threatening violence was because the Multnoma
County Republicans wanted to march in the parade. Like, if
he's going to cancel an entire parade because you sent
him an anonymous threatening letter about this, why wouldn't you
keep pushing it. I mean, he's just you know, a
read in the wind, you know, as far as you know,
ending fascism in America, So you know, why not push
(24:52):
him in till he breaks. It's also fascinating because in
the case of Portland Antifa, you had people who were
trying to burn out of Federal Courthouse who you could
see were almost all white guys. There were some women,
but they were white, and they were doing this in
the name of BLM, and the whole thing just struck
me as, Oh, so they're just you just choose whatever
(25:14):
cause suits the moment so that you can throw your
molotov cocktails that act like you're some kind of hero
against fascism, right, And they'd already burned like a police
facility and a bunch of other stuff around town at
the time that happened, and they, you know, they won't
even do anything there. The Wheeler was joining the protests,
and the national media was basically one hundred percent behind it, like,
(25:35):
oh well, this is just a peaceful protest with a
few agitators. I mean it, it was totally insane. Seattle
is just just as bad, right, pretty much. I mean
that's Seattle had the chatz or the chop or whatever.
They were calling it a Capitol Hill zone. Are they
turning things around? I just wonder I haven't spent much
time to the Pacific Northwest. I told you, I've really
just been out there that one time I went to
Cannon Beach, which is beautiful though, and it strikes me
(25:57):
as it should be this great place. But you've got
two cities that should be the jewels of the Pacific
Northwest that are just turning into crappy places to spend
spend too much time, certainly in the downtowns. Oh yeah,
I know right now. Seattle is actually there was just
a big story recently about Seattle's facing a ton of
lawsuits from business owners in the Chazu as they should. Basically,
(26:20):
they just completely surrendered law and order and you know,
left these business people and people lived in an area
at the mercy of these you know, like literal war lords,
you know, running the city. So yeah, they're still dealing
with that Amazon. And Amazon is going to occupy an
entire skyscraper in downtown Seattle and they just moved the
whole project outside of the city because they weren't going
to begin to deal with that. And you know, these
(26:42):
things keep happening, and yet somehow, you know, there isn't
the political reform movement that you'd think would be happening,
um in the last mid term, right. Phil Knight, the
founder of Nike, dumped millions of dollars into the candidacy
of a tough on crime independent candidate and then later
switched to dumping millions of dollars into the Republican in
(27:04):
the Oregon governor's race, and in a three way race,
Republican came very close to winning UM but ultimately didn't.
And then they ended up with yet another like crazy
progressive UM governor and Oregan's governor prior to that, Tina Cotech.
I think right now, Tina Gotech's the current governor, Camera
Brown Brown. Yeah. Um, she she had the lowest approval
(27:27):
ratings of any governor in the country. And first and
you still can't get rid of these you know, progressives.
They just elected basically an acolyte of Brown essentially to
run the state. Um. It's it's like so far gone.
I don't know what it's going to take to fix it.
Part of the problem is is that you know, people, Um,
you know, all of the people that are sick of
what's going on in Portland are just moving to Boise.
(27:49):
And this is you know, I think a big warning
for everyone else. Um. You know, Boise is the only
big population anchor in Idaho, and you know, twenty year.
Twenty five years ago, Boise was one of the the most
provincial cities in America. Now there's got a tech sector
in a microburry in every corner. I wouldn't be surprised,
you know, if the BIDO isn't careful that that state
goes the way of Oregon in another twenty years. So
(28:09):
people really need to be thinking hard about this. I
think the good news is after people saw what happened
to Portland and Austin in particular, people are a lot
more wary about, you know, people moving into your state.
You know, they don't just necessarily see it as an
unalloyed economic good. They have to understand that there's a
culture that's very much they're worth preserving. And let me
(28:29):
tell you, you know, as a third generation Oregonian, I
am really really sad. I love that state. I mean
it was gorgeous. I mean it was a real privilege
to grow up there in terms of like just an
unreal natural beauty of the place and not just that,
like a wonderful local culture. You know, for years growing
up it was run by a bunch of liberal rockefellow Republicans,
but they are mostly libertarian, leaving me alone types who
(28:52):
did a really good job of managing competing interests. And
more than that, they were just competent people. You know,
they balanced budgets, they did the right thing. They were
good on an vironmentalist issues in a very positive way
that unfortunately, I think the Republican Party is a little
too captive to special interests on um, you know, nationally. Um.
It was just it was a it was a good
state to be from, and I was really really proud
(29:12):
of it. And like now you mentioned, oh I'm from Oregon,
and people literally roll their eyes in your face because
Portland is that bad. I mean, I've got whatever. People,
I guarantee you whatever you heard about Portland, it's worse.
I mean it's it's downtown is a really really scary place.
And it's not just downtown. All of the violence and
all the antife and all the crazy homeless people you know,
yelling obscenities in the street corner that's spread that basically
(29:34):
the entire city. And anyone that tells you different is
lying to you. Yes, you can live there. Yes it's
not always violent. You know, you can get around this.
But like people that live there and say, well it's
not so bad and they have Stockholm syndrome. They don't
know what like an actual functioning city looks like any
I mean I was I was in Baghdad for a
while during the war, and there were people who were
(29:55):
going out and you know, getting like milk and eggs.
But it was bad, right, I mean, it's you know,
people are still living in these places. They're just bad
things are happening, so you know that's they're they're quiet there.
You can find quiet in any place at any time
if you look for it. But if there's too much
of the other stuff going on, that's the real problem.
I want to ask you about elections, by the way,
in election security, because I know you've done a lot
(30:16):
of research into well the most important thing, which is
how do we fix things for twenty twenty four instead
of people just walking around screaming at me and others
we won. I look at them and I'm like, not
not really. I don't know what else to say. Like,
you know, we can sit around and talk. You can
tell me that they cheated, and but we got to
fix the cheating, not just stand here and shout that
(30:37):
we won, right. I mean, it's like if the other
team goes home with the trophy. You can say the
ref fix the game as much as you want, but
you got to figure out how you're gonna win the
next game. Let's talk about that in a second. Though.
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Mark The election in twenty twenty four is going to
be hard for Republicans to win in terms of processes,
vote counting, and tactics unless we do what how do
we fix this? Though? That's that's really tough. But I
(32:03):
mean there are two sort of basic things here I
think need to be addressed. One is that I was
somewhat heartened to see that Trump came out and sort of,
you know, moderated his position on vote by mail. To
be clear, I think vote by mail is terrible. It's
obviously more rife for fraud than almost any other form
of voting, and I'm not a fan of it. I
(32:23):
wish we could all come together society vote you know,
from sun up to sundown on a single day and
know the results right away. I think that is the
way that democracy should be run. But the fact of
the matter is is that's not the way it's been
run for a long time. And even a lot of
Republicans are really you know, accustomed to vote by mail,
So publics need to come up with a strategy to
sort of address that. So we don't have you know,
(32:45):
two months of Democratic organizers running around, you know, maximizing
vote totals, where Republicans are sitting back on their hands,
as we saw on the last mid term, basically hoping
that Republicans turn out big on election day to overwhelm
that effort. Again, I'm not a fan of vote by mail.
I think it's righted by fraud. But as a friend
of mine put it, you can't have arms control unless
(33:07):
both sides have news, right, and so intel Republicans prove
that they can sort of you know, equalize the playing
field in terms of organizing for vote by mail or whatever,
they're not going to be in a good position or
whatever to sort of push back against a lot of
these other sort of you know, dodgy ways that they're
trying to sort of expand the vote and open it
(33:28):
up to the hoping up the process to abuse. So
that's one thing I think that needs to happen. And
the other thing is that one of the things that
came out when I worked with my wife on her
last book on election security issues called Raked have a
copy of And one of the things that really sort
(33:49):
of shocked the heck out of me was, and I
think most people don't even realize this, which was that
there were some shenanigans in a gubernatorial election in New
Jersey and like the early nineteen eighties, and a federal
judge put the entire Republican Party under a consent decree,
which basically meant they couldn't do any sort of election
day monitoring or other in all the traditional activities the
(34:12):
party would do on election day. And that federal judge
literally he retired from the bench, and he kept senior status.
I don't know if you know what that is. That's
like a way for retired judges to sort of like
stay active in the profession while actually being retired. And
he kept senior status just for for for like decades,
(34:32):
just to just to keep this injunction in place basically,
and that injunction wasn't lifted until that judge died and
an Obama appointed judge looked at what he had done
is basically hamstring the Republican Party for forty years and
keep them from doing any election day you know, monitoring
another activity. And in twenty twenty was the first election
(34:56):
where the Republican Party since it was nineteen eighty or
eighty two Puck and Party had you know, the ability
to go out there and send organizers out in the
field or whatever and do poll watching and all that
stuff that the party would normally do the first time
in nearly forty years. And so the party itself didn't
have a lot of muscle memory in terms of like
how to go about doing those things, having the trained
lawyers out there that do that sort of thing. So
(35:18):
I think what needs to happen now that like your
plug and Party can go back and do this. Um,
you know, we need people at the ground level. You know,
we need party precinct people you know going in and
volunteering to do the election day stuff. We need the
and we need the party apparatus to go in and
you know, make sure that there are people in place
to like watch these things and prevent any sort of
(35:38):
shenanigans that are going on, because I guarantee there are
shenanions going on, making accusations about widespread fraud or anything
like that. But people are very much abusing the process
and in all sorts of ways and getting away with it.
And we need to be much more sort of vigilant.
And that you know, comes down to the listeners. You know,
the volunteer. He is himinature on Twitter. Highly recommend you
(35:59):
follow him Mark Hemingway everybody and also look for his
work on Real Clear Investigations and over at the Federalist
dot com market. Has been an honor, a privilege, and
a privilege, my friend. Thank you for being here with this.
We hope you come back. It's great to be on here.
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