Climateers Crash Congressional Baseball Game

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
The College World Series. Always agreat time. It's my first time going
to be here for the entire thing. Really excited. I can't even tell
you how excited I am. I'mso excited that I got a little bit
into the baseball itch. There was, you know, my favorite baseball team,
the Chicago White Sox. I watchedsome major league games. I've gotten
into college baseball because of where Ilive, right, But I couldn't help

(00:21):
but be curious as to what wasgoing on in the Congressional baseball game.
Yeah, I'm sure you've heard thatthey play a baseball game between the Democrats
and the Republicans, and have forthe most part every year for the better
part of the last oh I don'tknow, it's well over a century.
I think nineteen oh nine was thefirst time that that happened. But the

(00:43):
overarching thing for me is that wehave this, we have this, this
event which is meant to me tobe a unifying event. I look at
the final score, it's thirty oneto eleven. The Republicans won for the
fourth year in a row. Theydidn't have a game in twenty twenty or

(01:03):
in the late fifties early sixties.They started really keeping track of this stuff
after that, though, and itreally is just supposed to be a fun
thing. Yeah, I'm sure itgets competitive, and yeah, I'm sure
there are people out there they're goingto do the best that they can to
make it a political statement. Butfor the most part, this is the
kind of thing that makes me feeland reminds me that the people in Congress

(01:23):
are really just people. Yes,it's easy to hate them because of their
platform. It's easy to cheer forone side or the other based on the
politics that we tend to identify withmore. We are very familiar with the
people that are representing our state,but maybe not as much the people that
are representing other states. Obviously,there are a lot of people out there
that we don't identify with at all. And Rachids Hilly we talk about AOC

(01:49):
talk about for the left, theyhave their own people that they dislike,
like Matt Gates and Marjorie Taylor Green. At the end of the day,
though, they are people. Ialways am going back to that moment where
Mike Johnson officially was given the gavelby Minority Leader of the House Hakim Jeffries,
who is a very liberal Democrat.He had nothing to say except good

(02:10):
things, complementary things about Mike Johnsonhanded him the gavel and hugged him before
Mike Johnson gave his acceptance speech asthe new Speaker of the House. This
is just last fall. It's easyfor us, if you're a hardcore conservative,
to say, I'm not a fanof liberals, I'm not a fan
of Democrats in general, and I'mnot certainly not a fan of somebody like
Jaquem Jeffries. But in that moment, no matter how different their politics were,

(02:35):
they were just two men, twoAmericans who knew at the end of
the day, they are on thesame team, the team for the United
States of America, and little eventslike the Congressional Baseball Game, while fun
and they do garner their own attention, are really just a tradition to help
allow us to remember that we arejust humans. We are sharing this planet,
we are sharing this country, andthere's room for all of us,

(02:58):
even if we argue a lot,if we have a lot of different things
that we dislike. However, someprotesters couldn't help but make it about themselves,
even though this was supposed to bean event for fun. Heck,
we've had people shooting at Republicans.Steve Scalise was hit with a bullet at
one of the practices a handful ofyears ago. This was a thing that
happened. Some people just can't separatethe fact that these politicians are human beings.

(03:22):
It is okay for us to disagreeabout things. Well, there were
eight people arrested last night. Theyare part of a climate change group that
tried to run on the field beforethe game had started, right as the
game was getting ready to start.They call themselves Climate Defiance. They say
it was their fault that this happened, and they took credit on social media.

(03:44):
Unfortunately for them, Capitol police jumpedright on top of them as they
got onto the field. This iswhat is considered a youth led movement.
These are younger people. Of course, it's younger people. It's the same
age of people that are doing thesame Free Palestine protests all over college campuses
around the country. But they postedon their x account and I wanted to
read this. They said update.Eight of us have been arrested for shutting

(04:04):
down the congressional baseball game. Theyare behind bars now. Make no mistake,
it's the members of Congress who shouldbe locked up. We have taken
the field at the congressional baseball gamein play has frozen Congress since billions of
public dollars to subsidize deadly fossil fuels, but the police are tackling us instead.
This Chevron sponsored game cannot continue.This is unconscionable. These people,

(04:29):
that's an end quote. By theway, these people are insane. Okay,
Yeah, I know that most ofthem are young, and I know
that they want to feel like they'redoing something that matters. All they're doing
is making people hate what they're standingfor. Again, I have to say
this to anybody who's protesting. Doyou think spray painting statues is going to
make people think about you guys beingon the right side of history. Do
you think you're going to win anysupporters by running onto a baseball field and

(04:51):
acting like your cause is more importantthan anything else that's going on in the
world. You might really feel likeit's incredibly important, but they're certain ways
to go about doing things. Iunderstand that people say, hey, sometimes
you need to tip the scale.Sometimes you need to flip some tables.
You need to upset the balance orthe status quo to get what you want
or to get people to take noticeof who you are. But these kind

(05:13):
of demonstrations, especially at a baseballgame, which was designed to try to
avoid too much political discourse. Thiswas supposed to be a fun event,
and they made it about them.They wanted to say, hey, we
need in fossil fields and all thatstuff. And instead of just having signs
or incented just like trying to chantor whatever, they decided they were going
to create a real scene by jumpingonto the field and they were promptly caught,

(05:36):
tackled, arrested by Capitol police.As if that wasn't going to happen.
We saw what happen with the Redsfan the other night. He would
just ran on the field like adummy and did a backflip and then got
tased. None of these people gottased at least, right It just nobody
looks at what you did there andthink that you did the right thing.
And they're getting absolutely roasted on socialmedia because people are saying, you guys

(05:58):
are stupid, and I'm never goingto agree with what you say, because
now I know what you're made of, I know what the whole point of
what you do is, and it'sjust to disrupt things for disruption's sake.
If you really truly believed in whatyou believe, you're going to be able
to tell me that with your words. You won't have to pretend like you're
some sort of crazy hippie activist that'supsetting the balance of the world and trying

(06:20):
to change people's mind that way.Of course, there was your token pre
Palestine protesters who started chanting and holdingup a Palestinian flag and sign in the
outfield, which basically just drew moreand more people to chant the chant Usa
USA over and over again. Becauseremember, ninety eight percent of the people

(06:41):
that were there were there to enjoythe day. It isn't always about you.
It isn't always about whatever you're tryingto protest, and doing protesting things
in different ways I can understand,But expecting to be as outlandish and as
obnoxious as possible and thinking that's goingto win support, That's not how this
world works, and I guess thesepeople are gonna have to find that out

(07:01):
the hard way. And it's hardto imagine people feeling like that's, yeah,
let's do that. Let's instead ofhaving fun incentive enjoying ourselves in Sena
forgetting about politics for five minutes.We're gonna just dedicate our entire lives to
one cause. And if we getthrown in jail, we ruin our future.
We ruin our potential job opportunities inthe future. We are who cares

(07:25):
because I'm twenty two years old andI just want to be a troublemaker.
All right, it's your life.You do what you want, but prepared
to live with the consequences. Playstupid games. You're gonna win stupid prizes.