Rich Lowry, Editor in Chief of National Review Interview

Rich Lowry talks with Mendte in the Morning about one of Donald Trump’s biggest accomplishments and the Somali scandal in Minnesota.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Now let's talk to Rich Lowry, editor in chief of
the National Review. He's with us every Tuesday at this time.
Before we talk about the gas powered cars, Rich, which
is what I want to get into, because I loved
your cobblem about that. Talk about this blue slip process.

Speaker 2 (00:16):
Well, traditional prerogative home state centators to object to nominees
that will serve in their states. So just another way
that the US Senate is very easy to bollocks up
and obstruct things of its very nature. This is the
way the Senate is meant to work, can be highly

(00:38):
frustrating every incumbent president who's nominating. People hate this, Senators
love it. It seems unlikely it's going to go away.
But I understand why Trump's eveying against it.

Speaker 1 (00:50):
Yeah. I looked it up because I thought to myself, well,
this must be legislative. It must be somewhere in the code.
They must have been passed along time time ago, and
they can't get rid of it. It's just a courtesy.
They could get rid of this tomorrow if they wanted.
But you're saying both sides like it too much.

Speaker 2 (01:08):
Yeah, you're a senator, a Republican senator. Right now, it
frustrates you greatly. But if a Democrat wins in twenty
twenty eight, you're really going to like it. So I
think secret vote everyone would support it in the Senate,
and it's custom It's very customary and traditional body. Again,

(01:29):
this is its constitutional role, whether these particular practices are
outlined in the Constitution or not, to make it hard
to do things and to operate on the basis of consensus.
So it's always extremely frustrating to the majority and the
incumbent president.

Speaker 1 (01:46):
It just seems it seems ridiculous, to tell you the truth,
it really does. I understand why the senators in those
states might like it in an individual state if you
have a nominee that you don't like, but if the
majority wants that, the majority gets it. I don't. I
don't get this at all, especially because you can get
rid of it so easily. You don't even have to
You can just say it's gone, and it's gone tomorrow.

(02:07):
I don't get it. I agree with Donald Trump on this.
Let's talk about gasoline prices and gas powered cars, because
I don't think people realize how much more gas costs costs,
not only because of taxes. That's why it varies from
state to state. But because of some decisions made by presidents,

(02:29):
specifically the Biden administration in this case, in his assault
on gas powered cars, and that's going to end. And
you applaud Donald Trump for this, right.

Speaker 2 (02:39):
Yeah, this is this is tremendous. So Biden wanted to
basically phase out gas powered cars. They'd always deny it,
but they are going to make it extremely harsh for
people to produce and buy gas powered cars. They just
wanted a couple of years from now the US fleet
to be two thirds electric. At the moment it's two
percent electric. So you can't do this without forcing massive

(03:00):
changes down people's throats. Now, some people like electric cars.
They found a niche there. You know, if you're white
male with who's assalent and already has a car and
live in a progressive area era, you're very interested in
an electric car. But that's a small segment of the market.
It'll grow over time, I believe, as they get even better,

(03:20):
and they've made leaps and bounds to this point. But
people like hybrids are especially gas powered cars. So consumer
preference and economic sense should drive this process. And that's
what Trump is returning to and we should salute them
for it.

Speaker 1 (03:33):
Now the steps that he's taken, and he's taken several
steps when it comes to the way cars are manufactured,
the way gas is processed, all of that. Will that
bring the price of cars down? And will it bring
the gas prices down?

Speaker 2 (03:47):
It'll bring the price of cars, gas powered cars down
over time. It's some marginally amount, marginal amount. It'll also
one of the perversities that he's so called cafe regulations
which are talking out, which is mileage requirements on an
automaker's fleet, is that the way they worked, they tilted

(04:08):
in favor of really big, heavy cars, so people like SUVs.
But this also accelerated that trend, so small cost effective
cars were perversely harder to make. So maybe that you
have cost effective small small trucks, things that you know,
cost twenty thousand dollars serving that part of the market,
but still I think people like big cars. I'm not

(04:30):
sure how much of a difference is going to make
on cost at the end of the day, but this
was four and I think was losing four or five
billion dollars a year on electric cars because they're expensive
to make and no one wanted to buy them.

Speaker 1 (04:42):
Let's talk about this scandal in Minnesota a little bit,
because I'm fascinated by the way the media is talking
about it as they're trying to seemingly downplay it for
some reason. And I think I agree with the President
when he said this may be the biggest state scandal
ever billions of dollars. It's one billion. Now they're saying

(05:03):
it could go as high as two billion dollars. What's
fascinating to me is Tim Walls and how he heard
about it. There were all these whistleblowers and he just
wanted to be vice president. It sounds is he I
know he's culpable, but is he liable to any charges?

Speaker 2 (05:22):
I don't know. I don't know whether being bad governors
a crime. It is, he's guilty, yeah, but look they
look the other way in part for woke a quote unquote,
anti racist reasons. The first element this fraud had to
do with a food program, and all of a sudden,
this charity called Feeding the Future has all these new

(05:44):
feeding sites all around the state, and so people are like,
wait a minute, this doesn't make sense. We've never seen
anything like this before. Let's investigate and kick the tires
and the organization came back to, don't do that, because
you know what you'd be if you did that racist.
And there's a report by the Auditor of the Legislature
saying this threat really affected how they handled the suspicions.

(06:06):
So this ran longer and probably got bigger than it
would have been if they hadn't been politically correct about it.
So it's just going Tevin Buran's coming into this country
out of the goodness of our heart. Right, we have
nothing to do with Samaliah. There's no reason for us
to let in Samali's. We did it out of the
best intentions and have dozens and dozens of them ripping
us off, in the taxpayers of Minnesota off. And we're

(06:28):
still being told even if you focus on it now,
you're racist.

Speaker 1 (06:32):
Yeah, it's still happening. I just watched an interview with
Ilhan Omar. She brought that up as well, that it's
racist that they're even looking into this. I'm dying to
see Rich how she may be involved in this. Rich Lowry,
editor in chief of the National Review, with us every
Tuesday at this time at nine oh five. Thanks a lot, Rich,
good talking to you.

Speaker 2 (06:52):
Thanks for having me