Purge of the Global Progressives - In The Tank #479

The Heartland Institute’s Linnea Lueken and Jim Lakely are joined by writer and commentator Jon Gabriel​ for episode 479 of the In The Tank Podcast.

With the certification of Trump’s election victory, the ousting of Justin Trudeau as Prime Minister of Canada, and other progressive defeats around the world in recent years, could this spell the beginning of the end for global progressives? Are big companies and big tech finally shifting away from a focus on DEI and ESG, and will it stick? The team talks about all of this and more.

Jon Gabriel (@exjon on X) is the author of Sink the Rising Sun, his first novel.

Episode Transcript

Linnea Lueken (00:15):
Hey, everybody. We are live. It feels like we're
off to a running start here atthe beginning of 2025. The
central theme in the news thelast week or so has been a sort
of dominoes game of progressiveprojects and people failing or
at least floundering from a slewof companies abandoning DEI
principles to Justin Trudeau,the prime minister of Canada,

(00:36):
finally being chased out of hisseat, as well as other
international failures on thepart of global progressive
movements. We're gonna betalking about this and more on
episode what episode is this?
I forget. I'm sorry. I'vealready failed. Okay. I am a new
host.
Anyway, this is the In the Tankpodcast. Thanks, guys.

(01:38):
It is episode 479. Thank you,and I am sorry. Okay. You might
notice that I am not, DonaldKendall, unfortunately, who has
gone on to great things in theHeartland Institute's Emerging
Issue Center, which he is thedirector of. You guys can count
on him swinging by the showfrequently so you don't have to
bear with just me forever.

(01:58):
He's not gone forever. If youwanna keep track of what, Donnie
is up to, and I strongly suggestthat you do, you can go to
heartland.org at the emergingissues center page under the
topics tab, which is the mainpage for his center. Alright.
Anyway, so I'm on the Alukin,your new host. This is my very
first time hosting, so please bepatient with me.

(02:20):
I am learning, and so I alreadymessed up once, and we're gonna
keep a tally. Okay. So today asusual, we've got Jim Lakeley,
vice president of the HeartlandInstitute. Jim, how is 2025
looking so far?

Jim Lakely (02:34):
2025 is looking, pretty great so far. You know, I
guess, you know, it's kind of wecall it pulling a gym when you
are muted, when you're supposedto be, not unmuted. You're
supposed to talk. So, hopefully,we can come up with a few
pulling up Linnea coming outhere soon. It's previous maybe
it's forgetting the number ofthe episode at the time.

(02:54):
I thought it was maybe pullingup Linnea. But, yeah, I'm I'm
doing great. It's a it's a newyear. I think, you know, people
talk about how it feels likethere's been a vibe shift, in
the country and in the world.And, before we get into the
show, actually, I wanna I justwanna say that, my heart, it
hurts, and my prayers are with,the people of Southern

(03:15):
California with those,devastating fires, the worst
that the LA Basin has seen, inprobably most people's
lifetimes.
I used to live for for, 5 years.I lived in Pasadena, California.
I lived right below where thosefires were coming. I would have
been in an evacuation zone. So II know it very well.
I have friends there still. Andso, you know, stay alive, keep,

(03:37):
you know, be hopeful. You'll beable to rebuild, and, we're
thinking about you all the time.

Linnea Lueken (03:43):
Yep. It's really, really bad stuff. We'll probably
touch on that a bit on theFriday show, which is climate
realism show. So that's mylittle plug for that one. We
also have a very special guestthis week.
This is John Gabriel, theundisputed king of stuff
according to x. He works withthe ricochet podcast network and
is also a writer for discoursemagazine and the Arizona

(04:05):
Republic and a bunch of otherplaces. He's also a fiction
writer with a new militaryfiction novel out. John, I'm
sure I missed a bunch of stuff.You've got a really extensive
history.
So is there anything else thatyou wanna add here?

Jon Gabriel (04:18):
Not really. I I make really good coffee. I make
pour over coffee, and I'll bedoing a demonstration later.
But, yeah, that about covers it.

Linnea Lueken (04:27):
Thank you very much. Alright. For for the
audience here, before we reallyget started, I wanted to remind
you guys that YouTube hates us.Therefore, if you want to
support the show, you can go toheartland.org/inthetankanddonatethere.
If you're a regular YouTubeviewer, you already know all of
this, but I'm gonna say itanyway, in case we have somebody
that's, like, tuning in for thefirst time, waking up from a

(04:50):
multi decade coma or something.
Clicking the thumbs up to likethe video and sharing also helps
break through some of YouTubesuppression. And even just
leaving a comment also helps.Alright. So it's we're gonna
we're gonna launch right intoour our first topic here because
I know that Jim doesn't careabout this topic at all, and
it'll be interesting to see hisreaction. Heartland Institute,

(05:13):
as many of you guys know, is onpretty much all social media.
We're pretty well informed abouthow difficult it is to post what
you want even when it's withinthe reasonable guidelines of the
website. We're also pretty wellknown for debating the consensus
narrative on a variety oftopics, especially climate
change and some COVID stuff thatmay or may not be the reason why

(05:34):
we're demonetized here. And onFacebook in particular, we're
pretty regularly suppressed forquestioning those common
progressive narratives. So whenwe see this, a shift in, you
know, Meta or Facebook'sapproach, it's really striking
to us. From National Review, wehave, Meta to replace fact

(05:55):
checks with community notesystem as Zuckerberg vows to
return to free speech.
National Review, writes,Zuckerberg said after Trump won
the 2016 election, Meta triedaddressing concerns made by the
legacy media about howmisinformation was a threat to
democracy. As part of thateffort, Facebook partnered with

(06:16):
a number of prominent legacymedia outlets, which were tasked
with educate educating? Yeah.That's right. The veracity of
high profile stories that werereceiving significant attention
on the platform.
But the fact checkers were toopolitically biased, he admitted,
which is why Meta is ending theprogram altogether. And, Jim, I
think you have a video for ustoo.

Jim Lakely (06:38):
Yeah. We do. Let me pop this up here. Okay. Sure.
Yeah. Here we go.

Speaker 5 (06:42):
Has happened over the last several years. There's been
widespread debate aboutpotential harms from online
content. Governments and legacymedia have pushed to censor more
and more. A lot of this isclearly political. Even if they
accidentally censor just 1% ofposts, that's millions of
people, and we've reached apoint where it's just too many

(07:02):
mistakes and too muchcensorship.
The recent elections also feellike a cultural tipping point
towards once again prioritizingspeech. So we're gonna get back
to our roots and focus onreducing mistakes, simplifying
our policies, and restoring freeexpression on our platforms.

Jim Lakely (07:19):
Okay. I got I gotta I gotta stop it right there.

Linnea Lueken (07:22):
Yeah. Okay. So, Jim, we don't have any history
at all with fact checkers hereat the Heartland Institute, of
course.

Jim Lakely (07:28):
Oh, no. Oh, no. Our our, no. It's not as if our
Facebook page, is completelyuseless and has been for about a
decade, because we are, youknow, shadow banned, and we
can't grow. We can't get any wecan't usually even do any
Facebook ads for anything.
But just getting back to that,there's just a couple of things
I wanna say off the top aboutthis. I'm interested to hear

(07:49):
what my friend John, has to sayabout it as well as he is a
master of social media and,knows knows that inside and out.
But, first of all, would any ofthis been been happening if the
election turned out the otherway? Do you think Mark
Zuckerberg and Facebook, andYouTube and Google or who you
know, whatever is going on outthere, I guess, everything other

(08:12):
than blue sky, would any of thembe now rededicated to allowing
Americans to exercise theirfirst amendment free speech
rights? Do you think that wouldthat would have happened if
Kamala Harris won?
Of course not. Of course, itwouldn't be happening right now.
This is happening because, asMark Zuckerberg realizes, there
has been a vibe shift, acultural shift in this country.

(08:34):
And, you know, I don't want to Idon't wanna punish him for
making the right decision.Right?
But the idea that now now it'sokay, Mark Zuckerberg, for you
to stand up for free speechrights. I'm I'm very glad this
is happening. But you gave$400,000,000 to Democrats on the

(08:54):
left to defeat Donald Trump in2020. Your platform, believed
the government and the the deepstate and the CIA. That's
another thing.
You probably have CIA, assets inyour company right now. You
might wanna look around and dosomething about that so that the
censorship actually does stop.But you told the world that the,

(09:15):
the Hunter Biden laptop wasRussian disinformation. Now,
again, I don't wanna punish youfor doing the right thing, but
how about an apology? How abouta real apology And, actually, a
fuller accounting of exactly howyour company, and every other
social media company in theworld until Elon Musk caught x,
was collaborating with thegovernment to illegally destroy

(09:40):
the free speech rights ofAmericans during an election.
An apology for that, and then wecan listen to more of the more
of the, video, I suppose.

Linnea Lueken (09:50):
Well, that's I love it when we get a gym rant.
Yeah. I mean, a heartland is toolike you said, we clash all the
time with the fact checkers. II'm strongly skeptical that this
is legitimate, and I'mwondering, John, if you might
agree with me on this. And thereason why I question his change

(10:11):
of heart here is partiallyinformed on those lies that he
told previously about Facebookcensorship during government
hearings.
You know, and in and in partbecause the government hasn't
really shown any intent to shutdown their own censorship
programs and stuff.

Jon Gabriel (10:30):
This is definitely a trust but verify kind of
thing. I applaud him for makingthe statements he did. At least
he admitted, you know, how badthe censorship had gotten. So
that is a start. He went to thecensorship anonymous meeting and
said, hello.
I'm mister Zuckerberg. And, orI'm sorry. I'm Mark z, and I am

(10:53):
a sensor, and, that's the firststep recovery. So we'll wait and
see, but he's already shown whenthe winds were blowing a
different direction, he wasshutting down free speech. So
he's trying to keep in the goodgrace of the government,
whether, it's a pro censorshipregime as we've had for, gosh,
at least 8 years, if not longer.

(11:15):
And, now he's trying to fit inwith the new vibe shift, which
living in Silicon Valley, heknows that's going on. That's
where this vibe vibe shiftterminology even came from. It
was about a year ago, lastFebruary, when, some of the I
think it was, Santiago Peleggiwho noticed this vibe shift that

(11:36):
people were speaking out loud,thoughts that everybody was
thinking, but, previouslycensored themselves from saying.
Just even just asking questionsabout the government and what's
going on with printing money,what's going on with the climate
exactly, you know, where is allthis money going, they would
just not talk about it becauseit was not cool to talk about

(11:58):
those kind of things. You justkinda follow the agenda being
set by leaders and, you spokeaccordingly.
And especially since theelection, but it really started
before that, all the way toFebruary, More and more people
are doing this. You know? Morepeople I don't know. You'd be at
a dinner party or be out inpublic, and it's not, you know,
it's not a political place atall, and a waiter would make a

(12:21):
crack about Biden, or someonewould you know? I'd get my
haircut, which was tooaggressive a couple days ago.
I'm debuting it now in shame.I'm hiding with my hat. But
talking talking to the barberand him just, you know, never
mentioning politics before, andall of a sudden, he's just like,
man, This country is kindamessed up right now. So it's

(12:43):
only intensified since November.I think it's just a matter of
zeitgeist.
It's a cultural thing more thana political thing. So, yeah,
Zuckerberg's riding that waveright now. People just have to
keep on him, so he doesn'tchange his mind, and he actually
follows through with changingwho knows how many algorithms
that have been suppressingarticles. I I've seen articles

(13:05):
that, you know, I'll write an oped. It goes semi viral, and then
no one shares it anymore.
Just just like shutting a door.It's like, oh, okay. I guess
that annoyed somebody. So I'vebeen shut down, but that's why
I'm barely ever on Facebookanymore because it's boring. I I
don't wanna just see, I don'tknow, you know, boring

(13:26):
recitations of what I could seeif I flipped on CNN or open the
local paper.

Linnea Lueken (13:32):
Yeah. Yeah. I mean and and Jim knows this
because we have the backgroundfor YouTube and stuff. Maybe one
of the mistakes that thesetechnocrats made was letting us
have access to the analytics ofour posts and stuff, because it
makes it really easy to tellthat something artificial is
happening when you havesomething that's on a pretty
good upward trajectory and allof a sudden it flatlines and

(13:53):
falls off out of nowhere.

Jim Lakely (13:55):
And

Linnea Lueken (13:55):
it doesn't have, like, a gradual natural looking
curve to it. It's just cut.

Jim Lakely (14:00):
Yeah. Well, yeah, you're I mean, we're Linae is
talking about the, the climateat a glance video series that
she had done, and we have a newset of those coming on the way
very soon. But we did, what, Ithink 31 or 32 of those, and one
of them really took off. I mean,it had 250,000 views, I think,
within 24 hours, and then itjust went it just stopped. And

(14:20):
that it is impossible.
It is impossible, but that was anatural algorithmic thing. So a
a human being went in there anddecided a leftist human being
went in there and decided, thisis not the message I want anyone
to see anymore. I'm going tokill it. And, having the power
to do that behind the scenes,it's one of the frustrating
things about social media andwhat I think is good about Elon

(14:40):
a lot of many good things aboutElon Musk buying Twitter and
renaming it x is that,obviously, that has had an
effect on Mark Zuckerberg. MarkZuckerberg would not be doing
this, again, if the election hadgone the other way.
He also would not be doing thisif Elon Musk did not buy x
because just him doing that onesocial media, service, he is
starting to change the theripple effect is starting to

(15:03):
change, at least starting withFacebook, and I'm sure,
hopefully, YouTube and Googleand others. But, you know so he
wouldn't be doing this if theelection had gone the other way
or if or if Elon Musk had boughtx. And, you know, like I said, I
I hope this actually, YouTubereally I mean, this is not gonna
help us get our channel remonetized, but YouTube, Google
is a problem, that they thatthey that they basically shadow

(15:25):
ban anything that that is notgiving off the leftist, agenda
and message. And, you know,they'll let you have your free
speech. They will say thingslike, you know, free speech does
not mean, free promotion, whichis not what anybody, honestly,
is asking for.
We just don't wanna have, youknow, the boot on our neck, you
know, having our head pusheddown under the water constantly

(15:46):
because we don't we don't goalong with, with leftist
orthodoxy on climate,especially, and all sorts of
other things.

Linnea Lueken (15:54):
Yep. Definitely. Do we have more of that

Speaker 5 (15:56):
We're gonna get rid of fact checkers and replace
them with community notessimilar to x starting in the US.
After Trump first got elected in2016, the legacy media wrote
nonstop about how misinformationwas a threat to democracy. We
tried in good faith to addressthose concerns without becoming
the arbiters of truth, But thefact checkers have just been too

(16:18):
politically biased and havedestroyed more trust than
they've created, especially inthe US. 2nd, we're gonna
simplify our content policiesand get rid of a bunch of
restrictions on topics likeimmigration and gender that are
just out of touch withmainstream discourse.

Jim Lakely (16:33):
Alright. I got I gotta stop it right there. There
is so much to unpack. I know wecould do the whole hour on this,
and I could just keep stoppingthis. But, you know, there's the
admission that the election,well, first of all, let me back
that up just a bit.
He says in this video we may notget to to that part of the
audio, but he says that it'lltake a couple of months, but we
are going to restore your freespeech rights on Facebook. It'll

(16:54):
take a couple of months. Hecould have done this at any
time. He could have done this in2020. He could have done this in
2017.
He could have done it in 2018.He could have done this at any
time. You know? Again, I don'twanna punish him and yell at him
for doing the right thing, butyou were the ones you you all
together, Silicon Valley decidedthat they could not believe it.

(17:16):
They couldn't stand it.
We didn't use our power to stopthe bad orange man from getting
to the White House. We willnever let that happen again. We
are going to use our power todestroy that bad orange man and
punish all anybody who had the,the, you know, the gall to vote
for him will also be punished.And then the then then then the

(17:37):
society will turn out the way wethink it should be instead of
the way the people want it to beby voting. And so, again, all of
this could have been done at anytime.
It was immediately known, MarkZuckerberg, that the Hunter
Biden laptop was not Russiandisinformation. Immediately
known. That was bullshit, andeverybody knew it. You could
have turned the switch rightthere and said, I'm tired of

(17:59):
being lied to. I'm tired ofbeing manipulated by by
government, actors out there.
I'm tired of getting emails andphone calls saying, hey. That's
a pretty nice, $1,000,000,000,multibillion dollar social media
company you gotta go in there.Be ashamed if something happened
to it by the government comingin and regulating you out of
existence. He could have saidall of these things earlier, and

(18:19):
he didn't. He could have stoodup for the constitution earlier,
but he didn't.
And, again, that was the 8thtime I've said this. I don't
wanna punish him for doing theright thing, but it does anger
me a little bit that he saysthings like, yeah. You know,
restricting what people couldsay about, you know, the
transgender movement or, whatwith the election or some other
things, you know, it was out ofthe mainstream. Us Facebook

(18:44):
censoring the, by far, majorityview on controversial topics.
Yeah.
Gosh. I guess that was a mistakebecause they the the there was
put us out of the mainstream.One last thing I'm gonna say
about this, and we shouldprobably want another topic or I
will keep going, is, like,here's where the here's the
issue where the proof will be inthe pudding, climate change. You

(19:05):
know, the the, the the trans thetransgender issue kinda came out
of from out of nowhere. It'spretty obscure.
You could call it a new, youknow, ritual in the leftist
religion, transgenderism.Climate is like the old
testament of leftist, socialreligion. If they allow people

(19:27):
to actually say what they thinkand what the science tells them
about the climate, then then Iwill stop punishing them for
doing the right thing becausethat is the last hurdle they
need. The first hurdle, really,they need to jump.

Linnea Lueken (19:41):
Yeah. I mean, you've got LinkedIn kicking Greg
Wrightstone off for justpublishing research papers on on
LinkedIn that are, you know,saying that, like, there aren't
more hurricanes than there were.And it's just the fact the data
just shows that, yeah, it's it'spretty bad. And I really
briefly, before we move on tothe next topic, I do want to

(20:01):
bring up because it's related,this report from The New York
Post. There was some news goingaround saying that the
government is going to get ridof their global engagement
center, which is theircensorship center, basically.
But it turns out that they'reactually just rebranding it
under a new name with the sameemployees. This is from the
article. The State Departmentreportedly notified Congress

(20:24):
last month that it plans toshuffle staffers and money from
the controversial and nowshuttered Global Engagement
Center to a new office aimed atcountering foreign information
manipulation and interference,which is again harkening
straight to the, you know, theRussian bot, Russian
disinformation stuff. I have nodoubt whatsoever that there are

(20:47):
people planting fake news onlinefor, you know, geopolitical
reasons. But, John, you know, assomeone who's been working with
media for a long time and haskept his eye on the government
like a hawk, do you imagine thatthe feds are going to now stop
trying to manipulate informationthat they just don't like?

Jon Gabriel (21:05):
Oh, of course not. And, boy, Marco Rubio, when he
shows up at state, he needs toyou're talking about the old
testament. He needs to move upto the gospels and get a whip
and, clear out the temple of themoney changers kind of a thing
because that Foggy Bottom isrotten with political
operatives, and, they can't beallowed to get away with this

(21:29):
chicanery just, shufflingaround, the cards, shuffling the
deck chairs. It's a bad system.It doesn't work even if they
were fear of heart in trying todo the right thing.
The way you combat is everybodyknows the way you combat speech
you don't like is with morespeech, and that's the only
thing that's going to work,especially when the government

(21:50):
is involved. You know, asannoying as it is for social
media companies to censor and soforth, it's not they're not
included in the constitution,but I say it's bad for the
culture, it's bad for business.But when the government is in
charge of doing it, it's justcrazy. I'm sure that censoring
global misinformation isn'tgoing to get rid of something

(22:12):
like the ghost of Kyiv storycoming out of Ukraine because
the administration likes that.That that was a very handy myth
for the people to tell

Jim Lakely (22:20):
you it

Jon Gabriel (22:20):
was disproven. You know? And nothing against
Ukraine, but that's what we'regoing to see. We're going to see
favored countries, favoredconflicts. And who knows, you
know, if there's anotherpresident, you know, several
terms into the future, you know,they they could just gin up
anything.
Another reason to invade theMiddle East, some Middle Eastern

(22:41):
country. So they're not going tocensor stuff that they approve
of, only things that they arethat don't help them get
reelected, that don't help themreceive funds. And it it's just
a terrible idea to leave thesepeople on the taxpayer payroll.

Jim Lakely (22:56):
Yeah. Do do you know what's more dangerous than
disinformation? Governmentcensorship. That's a lot more
dangerous than misinmisinformation. And, also, just
one last thing.
I I love the idea of thecommunity notes as opposed to
using lying on the hard left asa PolitiFact to be the authority
or any mainstream mediaorganization to be the authority

(23:17):
on the truth, or the governmentthe government, the biggest
disseminator of mis anddisinformation, that we've ever
seen over the last 5 years onyou just named the topic, and
they were they were peddling themost disinformation. But the
community notes idea idea isgreat. If you're experienced,
you know, trolling on on x, youcan see that community notes are

(23:39):
actually quite helpful. It'sgoing to be very important in
the details on how Facebookinstitutes their own community
notes program. If it's going tobe allowed to be dominated by
the likes of lefties that werewho work for PolitiFact, it's
not gonna have the effect thathe hopes, and he's going to
actually just continue the thede facto censorship regime that
he says he wants to correct.

(23:59):
If it's going to be truly andand truly, crowdsourced by among
users who know what they'retalking about and can cite use
citations. Again, I wanna Ican't wait till this is
implemented. I'm gonna try to dosome community notes on false
climate alarmist BS and we'llsee if I can, get that community
note up there. We'll see.

Linnea Lueken (24:20):
Yep. It definitely remains to be seen.
Speaking of things thatprogressives love being slowly
taken away from them, A wholebunch of companies are now
seeming to call it quits on DEI,diversity, equity and inclusion
initiatives. Andy, you can pullup the little graphic that I
made for this. From the AP, wehave that McDonald's is the

(24:46):
latest in a ton of companies,especially the bigger names that
you would recognize, apparentlywalking back DEI commitments and
maybe even in some cases, entiredepartments.
The AP reports that McDonald'ssaid Monday it would retire
specific goals for achievingdiversity at senior leadership
levels and end a program thatencourages its suppliers to

(25:07):
develop diversity training. Thecompany's diversity team will be
renamed the Global InclusionTeam. The Chicago Burger Giant
says it remains committed toinclusion and believes the
diverse workforce is acompetitive advantage. So not
every I want to emphasize beforeI open this up for comments that
every company is doing this alittle bit differently. Not

(25:28):
every company's allegedwithdrawal is the same type or
to the same degree, but we areseeing a general drawback or at
least they're trying to renamethings so that they can stop
getting yelled at for DEI allthe time.
So, you know, the AP claims thatDEI policies are actually a
counterweight to discriminatorypractices of the businesses.

(25:51):
John, do you find that to betrue in what we've seen from DEI
so far?

Jon Gabriel (25:57):
Yeah. It was basically forced on companies
because they thought it was thepolite thing to do. Look. We're
tired of getting yelled at, forbeing horrible people, you know,
whatever it might be, whateverthe social issue might be. But
what you're seeing now, thisvibe shift, now none of this is
to say that, oh, okay.
The right one on these issues.Everybody you know, no one

(26:20):
believes it anymore. They didn'tbelieve in DEI either. It's just
it was considered cool in 2018to create all these initiatives.
It's seen as uncool now.
Now when, they get together atthe country club, the CEOs get
Snickers because of their crazyd I DEI quotas or something like
that, and they would rather notget that. So now people are no

(26:44):
longer you know, I remember afew years ago where LinkedIn,
every time I checked in becauseit's such a riveting site to
read in detail. But, anytime Icheck-in to LinkedIn, it was
just like, enter your pronouns.I'm like, why would I do that?
And then I started seeing all myfriends who work in, especially,
the private sector, he, he, she,she, you know, she, her, you

(27:06):
know, things like that juststarted popping up and a few
with jokes.
I didn't see their postsanymore, you know, putting jokes
where the pronouns were. So itit's just, it it's, meaning it's
a fashionable thing is why theydid it, and it's a fashionable
thing on why they're getting ridof it. So I don't think people
believed in their heart ofhearts that, all the crazy

(27:28):
manifestations of wokeness thatwe've seen, they didn't take
this stuff to heart. Theydidn't, you know, bury it in
their soul. And, oh, I I'm atrue believer.
I'm committed to this. I'm goingout in the streets to protest.
They just followed the herd, andthat's where the herd was going,
and now the herd is abandoningall that stuff. And you're
seeing you know, I know somepeople in the Hollywood area,

(27:48):
and as Jim started the podcast,gosh. Please stay safe out
there, everyone in, SouthernCalifornia.
But I know some people outthere, and they're talking about
projects. It's like, wow. Icouldn't have, sold the script a
couple years ago, and now peopleare buying it. I, you know,
recently put out a novel, and itwas kind of the same thing. It's

(28:10):
just like, why bother goingthrough publishers and things
like that with sensitivityeditors, and, oh, why isn't your
hero from a paraplegic fromGuatemala with, emotional
issues?
You know? Oh, okay. I'll I'llchange World War 2 history to do
that. Instead of going throughthat, it's just like, how about

(28:31):
a book where the hero is a goodguy trying to do the right
thing. He's not perfect.
He loves his country. He's notdealing with emotional trauma.
He's not an a gritty antihero. Ithink we've been fed this stuff
for decades now, and it's justboring. Nobody wants it anymore.
So and you're seeing that, yeah,in entertainment. You're seeing

(28:53):
it in media. You're seeing it incorporations, and you've already
seen it for years in smallerstores, shops, mom and pop
businesses who are just like,look. We don't have the
resources to do all this crap.You know?
Why bother? And you've also seenthe rise of a lot of online or
virtual HR departments, that alot of small businesses use

(29:15):
because, like, look, you guysdeal with all this nonsense. Let
me know which, which squares Ineed to check on my screen, and
so we don't have to worry aboutall this craziness. We're, you
know, aligned with state laws,whether we're based in Oregon or
based in Utah. They can alignwith the state laws without
having to deal with the all thedrama that this kind of victim

(29:36):
mentality always brings.

Linnea Lueken (29:38):
I mean and there's another angle to this
too that I don't think peopletalk a lot about, and that is
that there are you know, Iworked for a, you know, major
international kind of company inthe past, and we had all these
DEI trainings and stuff, andthey were odious. And when I say
odious, I mean, it wasn't justthat it was a waste of time and
it was boring. It was, like,actively insulting and

(29:59):
belittling and stuff. It wasreally, really bad. I wish I had
screen recorded it or orsomething to show just how bad
it was.

Jon Gabriel (30:07):
But There's actually a trick for that that I
used working in the privatesector, if I may interrupt Yeah.
Is I always listen to what theteacher is saying about the
requirements of diversity orwhatever the latest woke agenda
is. I say, what you're sayinghere is completely insufficient.
It does not address the rootcauses, and then I amplify the
wokeness to ridiculous lengthsuntil they have to tell me to

(30:30):
shut up and, just shut up andpay attention. So it's just
like, you know, you are you'releaving all these other groups
out, and I start getting moreand more obscure.
And then they get annoyed withme, but they usually just think,
uh-oh. I'm gonna have to teachwhat this guy says a year from
now. This guy's going way toofar.

Jim Lakely (30:46):
You make them regret putting John Gabriel through a
struggle session, don't you?Exactly.

Linnea Lueken (30:51):
That's right. Yeah. It's it's almost, what I
think at this point, we wouldalmost call the Matt Walsh
approach to, dealing with GEI.Exactly. But yeah.
No. But it was it was so bad.Unfortunately, in my case, I
couldn't bully them back becausethey were smart enough to make
it a computer module withunskippable videos and stuff
that you had to sit through andwatch. It was just terrible.

(31:11):
But, what I was getting at isthere's entire companies, like
massive companies that donothing but produce this stuff.
And so there's like a financialincentive to sell DEI programs
to major corporations, and it'sa huge scam. It's like the
craziest that when you reallystart digging into, all the

(31:34):
little, like, rabbit holes andstuff that you can find with
that, it's it's nuts, actually.You know, they contract out or a
major company will contract out,you know, a a, like, a training
company and buy all of theirtraining modules and have you
check them off. And that'ssupposed to, I don't know, cover
it for the company. So it andit's not and it's not just DEI

(32:01):
either.
Some other stuff that's gettingkilled is also, and I'm hoping
that this sticks, but I reallykind of don't trust it either.
We've got JPMorgan and Black,even BlackRock, who is kind of a
big pusher of this, but they'reexiting the net zero banking
alliances and net zero assetmanagers initiatives.

(32:23):
Specifically, we've gotBlackRock. So what I what I
wanted to say about about theBlackRock issue in particular or
no. Oh, you know what?
Let's do JPMorgan. You're right.I'm sorry, guys. I'm a little
clumsy here. There they areclaiming to be withdrawing from

(32:45):
their net zero like environment,social and governance programs
that they are part of The NetZero Banking Alliance and the
Net Zero, Manage Asset ManagersInitiative are basically just
like collections of companiesand organizations that pledge
that they're going to make surethat all of their portfolios are

(33:06):
are directed towards the causeof reducing carbon dioxide
emissions and pursuing differentenvironmental projects and
social projects and all of thatgreat stuff that we love so
much, including DEI.
The fact that they'rewithdrawing from this stuff

(33:26):
makes me kind of suspicious, notjust because, again, like we
said with Meta and, and with theDEI stuff, it seems like there
might be just kind of a areframing, especially
considering we have the SECpushing to, kind of increase the
ESG responsibilities thatcompanies are supposed to adhere

(33:48):
to, at the same time that thisis going on. So, Jim, do you
think that this stuff like, isis BlackRock really going to be
giving up the climate issue? IsJPMorgan Chase and all the other
banks that have withdrawn fromthese alliances? Are they really
giving up on those issues or arethey just rebranding it?

Jim Lakely (34:09):
I think they might just be rebranding it. On the
net zero, I think they're gonnahave to give it up because that
is a complete dead end. Theyknow it is not is not
sustainable. In both the netzero thing and, you know, woke
corporate wokeism and DEI andall of that in the corporate
world. Let's understand whatthat was.
That was that was the left usingcorporate America to be the

(34:33):
enforcement arm of its agendaand its and what it wants the
world to be. They, the left hasbeen horribly, unsuccessful in
persuading people that theiroutlook and views on how, like,
how we should organize ourlives, how much energy we should
use, how big a house we shouldhave, the kinds of things we

(34:56):
should say, the flags we shouldfly in front of you know, on our
homes, and all those sorts ofthings. The left has very
particular, ideas about the bestway to go about all sorts of
different pursuits in life that,you know, ostensibly, you're
free to choose for yourself. Butthey were very bad at persuading
people that that was the way togo. And when you add in the

(35:17):
climate cult, where they thinkthat the way we're living our
lives now is literallydestroying the planet, and we
will be unlivable for humanbeings within a 100 years if we
don't go basically, putourselves back to the stone age
tomorrow.
They had a hard time persuadingpeople to make the choices in
their own lives, to live in thatmanner. But what they found out

(35:40):
that they can do, again, usingthe government once they came
into more power in thebureaucracies and especially
with the election of, first,Barack Obama and then, the you
had the interregnum of Trumpthere for a bit. And then then
Biden, they got right back to itand did it in a big hurry. They
decided the the the best way tomake the permanent change that
we really wanna make, is to usecorporate America as the

(36:02):
enforcement arm of our aims. Andso this is where you get, you
know and they got arrogant aboutit, frankly.
I used to have we played theclip on this show before, and I
think we've played it on theClimate Realism Show as well.
Larry Fink at a, I think, WEF,World Economic Forum, panel
bragging, just stating out outout overtly that the they were

(36:24):
using their immense power in theglobal economy to, quote, force
behaviors. We need to forcebehaviors. And he doesn't mean,
force behaviors, in a rightwarddirection. He means forcing
behaviors by, making peopleleaving them no choice because
I'm going to bankrupt thatcorporation.
I'm gonna not gonna give youloans. We're not gonna invest in

(36:45):
this sector, and we're gonnaforce behaviors. And and that
way, we can finally get to thatleftist utopia. He doesn't say
that kind of stuff anymore.Another big catchphrase for the
left was the whole of societyapproach to social change.
This was all part of it. It itthey there was the thing that
frustrated the left, I think,for decades is that they
couldn't get corporate Americaor the global corporate,

(37:08):
behemoth to go along withenforcing their ideology. But
they have been very successfulin that over the last few years,
and DEI is a bit you know, it'sa part of it. It's a bit part of
it. But this net zero thing, youknow, the idea that they're not
going to invest you're not gonnabe allowed to invest in in oil
or natural gas companies or coalcompanies because we need to

(37:28):
phase those, you know, thoseforms of energy out of the our
global economy for good.
The reason you don't hear LarryFink talking about forcing
behaviors anymore is because hedid another, panel not too long
ago, I think, within the lastyear, where he looked at the AI
revolution and said, holy crap.We're gonna need a lot of energy

(37:49):
for those server farms for thefor, artificial intelligence.
And we have two choices. We canlet China be the developer, and
on the forefront of developingAI by using coal fired power
plants, Or we can, forget aboutthis wind and solar garbage
because it's not strong enoughand reliable enough to power our
own AI systems. So we're gonnahave to go nuclear is what he

(38:11):
prefers, but maybe natural gasas well.
So that's why and where I thinknet zero is the real
abandonment. I really think theyare going to abandon the net
zero because there's AI on theone hand, and then there's the
climate cult on the other. And,there's China competing for
both. And, actually, China'sgoing for the AI, and and we're
gonna gonna we're gonna stoprunning for the climate cult
anymore. So yeah.

(38:32):
I I think all of this is part ofthat is part of that forcing
behaviors. That's all gone. Ithink we've we've entered,
hopefully, a new era in whereforced corporations' forcing
behaviors is no longer whatthey're interested in. They're
interested in actually makingprofit and being in the lead in,
corporate and and technologicalinnovation.

Linnea Lueken (38:53):
Well, I don't wanna drag this, topic out for
too long because we're a littlebit behind schedule here on
these. But, yeah, I would man,Jim, actually, I am again the
the more cynical one compared toyou on this issue. I think that
they are sneaking around. And,while they might abandon net

(39:13):
zero for themselves, they're notgonna abandon it for the rest of
us. I think it's far more likelythat they're going to invest in,
like, micro reactors, likenuclear micro reactors and stuff
and their own personal powerplants Yeah.
While actively lobbying for, netzero green grid stuff in

(39:33):
general. I I really think thatthat's the direction that this
is going. It's gonna be like aweird, like, energy feudalism.

Jim Lakely (39:41):
I'm supposed to be the senator one

Linnea Lueken (39:43):
right now. You're the whole But I just I had to
bring I had to bring the thehope down for a second.

Jim Lakely (39:48):
Oh, alright. Well, we'll we'll probably talk about
this more on the Climate RealEstate Show tomorrow as well,
actually.

Linnea Lueken (39:54):
John, before we move on to our, our wonderful
next topic, did you haveanything that you wanted to add?

Jon Gabriel (40:01):
Yeah. Net zero really is, running on fumes.
Those of us in HeartlandInstitute definitely has been on
the forefront of this. Just themath doesn't work. You don't
make your energy policy based onpurse your personal morality.
You make it on science, you makeit on physics, and there just

(40:22):
isn't enough power that can begenerated by renewables we have
now, unless you include, in abig way, nuclear, and I was a
reactor operator on a submarine.I'm very familiar with the
technology, and it is incrediblysafe. We know now far more than
we did when those submarinereactors were created, and they

(40:43):
are have been made tremendouslysafer still. We need to deploy
these things, and, if anybodycan get my hands so if I can get
my hands on a personal modularreactor, that would be great.
You can find me at my off thegrid cabin, where I'll just be
listening to cool music and,drinking coffee and reading old

(41:04):
books.
So I will never be on a podcastagain, which is a tragedy for
the Internet at large. However,that's really just the way to
go, and, people have to get overtheir bizarre phobia about
nuclear energy. It usually comesfrom a place of deep, deep
ignorance and fear mongering bythe media.

Linnea Lueken (41:26):
Yep. True that. Okay. So in my notes, I have
this next segment labeled as,the Biden administration is
sundowning. So we're we are, weare about to talk about the fact
that, I hope everybody in the inthe chat here, did see the video
of, Kamala certifying theelection.

(41:47):
But if you didn't, we're gonnakinda play it in the background
here. Her facial expressionsreally cracked me up. It's a
little bit sad to watch. It'skinda I don't know. It's kinda
like I don't know.
Just kicking her while she'sdown, but, it is kinda funny
that she had to certify theelection that she lost. So we
have from the daily signal. Doyou have that one for me? Daily

(42:14):
signal. Biden administrationadmits defeat by withdrawing 7
woke rule changes.
The daily signal rights, thewithdrawals are being hailed as
wins by conservatives who havesubmitted comments against the
rules, which would havecompelled allowing male
participation in girls sports,prohibited religious exemptions
for birth control coverage,taken federal funding away from

(42:34):
pregnancy resource centers andmore. Just a bunch of, like, the
most bizarre, unpopular policiesyou could think of. He did have
to back down on those, butunfortunately, he still has been
ramming through all sorts ofstuff anyway. From Click
Orlando, we have, that Biden hassigned into law 50 bills ahead
of Christmas alone. And theseare most of them are kind of

(42:58):
little nothings, but every extrabill that gets passed that we
didn't need is, just moreclutter and more garbage that we
will have to deal witheventually.
Worst of all of them is himattempting to do some, like,
kind of last minute offshorebans, our offshore drilling
bans. These I'll be able to talkto talk to this issue in a

(43:23):
little bit more detail ontomorrow's show. But I wanted to
pitch it out there anywaybecause it's kind of like the
death throes, you know, like thelast, like, dying spasms of the
Biden administration. And Iwanna just throw it out to the
whole gang here to, comment onwhatever you you feel like with
regard to that. I don't thinkit's overly unusual for an

(43:44):
outgoing administration to tryto cram through as much of their
own agenda as possible, but it'sit's mostly nonsense.
He gave out a bunch of awardsand stuff to people that are
like George Soros. Just theworst people that you could
think of.

Jim Lakely (44:00):
So What?

Linnea Lueken (44:03):
That's alright. What you got, guys? John,

Jim Lakely (44:10):
make sure you're here. Spoke with Jim by talking
while

Linnea Lueken (44:12):
muted. Terry.

Jon Gabriel (44:14):
Hi. I'm Jim Gabriel. Yeah. I I just for
years now, I've been saying it'snot a Biden administration as
much as it's a Biden regency.You have kind of the doddering
old king being held up and,processed by various counselors
who are jockeying for positionto get their pet projects funded

(44:35):
to gain more land back in themedieval times, but, that's what
you see going on here.
All these goofy staffersthroughout the White House are
just, hey, if you sign thispiece of paper, we'll give you
another scoop of ice cream. He'slike, alright. I'll I'll do that
too. And that's what thesethings feel like because they're
just so random. They're all overthe place, just flinging money,

(44:57):
hither and yon, and, yeah, justgiving awards out like crazy.
Just like, oh, I get to playpresident for a couple weeks
before I'm booted out and haveto return to my home in
Delaware. The whole thing hasjust been pathetic. The past 4
years have been a prime exampleof elder abuse. Everybody could

(45:17):
see it when he ran in 2020, and,how the media pretended that he
was fine, and, boy, we can'tkeep up with this guy. He's a
tiger.
No. He's a very, very old manwho's been on well a very long
time, and, he should be kickingback in a rocking chair at his
lake house, dropping a line inthe water, and hanging out with

(45:39):
his grandkids. And now greatgrandkid, who he announced
instead of dealing well with thehorrific fires going on in
SoCal. So, it's just yeah. Itit's very much a death row.
I love that concept of hisentire administration's
sundowning because that's whatit feels like. Please go away.

(45:59):
We're we're done now.

Linnea Lueken (46:01):
Yeah. And a lot of it feels too like he's kinda
trying to twist the knife in,you know, for Trump when he's on
the way in. And I think Jim hadsomething to comment on that
particular theory of why all ofthis is happening now the way it
is. Because now Trump comes in,he has to deal with all this
stuff that Biden is doing.

Jim Lakely (46:19):
Yeah. I mean, did I rant on something on on on a
message board that we had thatdid I miss it? Did I did I rant
it and forget? But no.

Linnea Lueken (46:25):
You may have. I have it closed so it won't ping
at me during the show.

Jim Lakely (46:28):
I did. I tend to go a little nuts sometimes, when
these things trigger me, and I Itake them out on the staff at
the Heartland Institute. Look. Imean, they're they're when you
see the stuff that the Bidenadministration is doing first of
all, if we had a real media thatwas interested and it has never
been interested at all and lookat having a critical eye,
pointing a critical eye at theBiden administration, they would

(46:51):
actually maybe we would see anoutrage story or 2, from the
legacy media saying, you know,maybe it's a little
inappropriate to, mister Bidento be implementing these some of
these radical policies that theAmerican people wholly rejected
just, a few weeks ago, that thisis not what America wants.
America voted the other way.

(47:12):
And so it would be, it's rude,to say the very least, to think
that you just because you can doit, you should do it. You should
implement your, your policiesand ram them down America's
throats, you know, good and hardwhether they like it or not. The
one policy that I think thatmight be, well, just backing up.

(47:32):
There there's something calledthe Congressional Review Act,
which, Bill Clinton signed in1996. And it's basically
designed to handle a situationlike this, when an outgoing
administration, the lamest oflame ducks, decides to sign all
of these executive orders or tohave their administration, their
their agencies, theirbureaucrats quickly write all of

(47:52):
these rules.
And a bureaucratic rule has theforce of law. You could go to
jail if you violate a ruleimplemented by an unelected
bureaucrat. So the CongressionalReview Act is supposed to allow
expedited review of those newregulations that were put in in
a lame duck session for apresidency and then just quickly
overturn them. And then on topof that and this was supposed to

(48:15):
be a deterrent to have thesekind of shenanigans going on,
part of that law says that anysimilar rule that you try to
write just like this in thefuture is null and void
immediately. In other words, youknow, don't try to abuse your
power like this on the way outwhen when, when a new
administration is coming in,because the one of the
punishments is gonna be youcan't even do anything

(48:36):
approaching that rule everagain.
So but the one rule that thatBiden is that, and, Lynae, you
you could probably speak to thiseven better than me, was was
putting because you used to workon an offshore oil rig. Was
putting even more of the, oceanfloor off limits, from, oil
exploration right before DonaldTrump gets in, who says he wants

(48:57):
to drill, baby drill everywherehe can. And the little wrinkle
in this is that the the statutethat Biden is using to take
that, seafloor off of oilexploration possibilities,
basically makes that almostalmost permanent or, at the very
least, even harder than thannormal to reverse with the
stroke of a pen. In other words,you can make it the law with the

(49:19):
stroke of a pen, but a newpresident coming in a month
later cannot just undo it with astroke of a pen. It becomes a
lot more complicated.

Jon Gabriel (49:26):
Well, so the president add too Yeah. Oh, I'm
sorry. Shoot. If I can add too,with offshore drilling, the
upcoming issue, everybody'stalking about the latest thing
being AI, deep sea mining. Chinais moving very hard into that
into that area doing tons ofresearch, and that's actually a

(49:46):
lot of their submarine programis, kinda based on that
exploration, and we have to beprepared for that.
Russia's involved, and severalother countries were getting
involved for all these untappedresource resources in the ocean,
which are vastly more plentifulthan mines on land. Of course,
environmentalists don't wantmines on land because, I guess,

(50:07):
they're icky even though we needthem for all their green energy
initiatives, and then they saythey're against it looking for
the ocean because somethingmight happen that's bad somehow.
But we need to be doing researchinto that. Who knows? It might
not be profitable at all, but weat least need to be ahead of
where we are in research intoseeing, you know there's so many

(50:29):
rare earth minerals involved.
And right now, China controlsall of them. They control all
sorts of resources for thisgreen energy revolution, for the
batteries, for solar panels, andso forth. And, we have to get in
the game on these things, and,Biden is still suck stuck in
last century.

Linnea Lueken (50:47):
Right. And I'll definitely be able to go over
that a bit more tomorrow. Butthe, the areas that it it's,
again, it's kind of a littlepetulant move because, actually,
the areas that, Biden has takenoff the table are mostly areas
that there isn't all that muchproduction going on anyway. It's
still bad. Like, it's still veryyou know, it's terrible.

(51:08):
But he's like, you know, theWest Coast of the United States,
the East Coast of the UnitedStates. The only offshore
drilling that's going on in theEast Coast is in, like, Canada.
So we're not doing any of that.

Jim Lakely (51:21):
The East of America, you mean?

Linnea Lueken (51:23):
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. The East Coast of, the
Gulf of Mexico, which is rightalongside Florida, where a lot
of offshore drilling is bannedanyway.
I mean, it's he is he's being alittle bit sneaky about it, or
at least his staffers that wrotethis rule are being a little bit
sneaky about it.

Jim Lakely (51:40):
We can call Canada West Greenland.

Linnea Lueken (51:42):
Yeah. Exactly. But the, so so Trump's victory
here has really obviously putthem all into a tizzy. And the
the victory of the right overhere is not the only one that's
occurred in recent years. Forour our main topic here, we have
the most recent other leadershipthat has just been announced is

(52:06):
going to be changing, hopefullyfor more conservatives.
But there's always chance itcould go back to liberals. Is
that Trudeau, who from thisarticle and see CNN, I'm going
to read it off, leader of theLiberal Party for 11 years and
prime minister for 9, was facinga mounting set of crises from
Donald Trump's tariff threats tothe resignation of key allies

(52:28):
and disastrous opinion polls.His resignation could be seen as
choosing to jump before he'spushed ahead of a general
election to be held later thisyear that he is widely expected
to lose. And Canada is just thelatest in this trend, though,
other than Trump's election, aswe have this Politico article as

(52:48):
well. And this writer explainsin this very cope filled
article, the long standingeffort to keep extremist force
forces out of government inEurope is officially over.
I'm going to read a bit off ofthis one because the article is
just oh, it's so it's so good.Alright. For decades, political

(53:09):
parties of all kinds joinedforces to keep the hard right
from the levers of power. Today,this strategy, known in France
as cordon senate sanitaire, I'mnot good at French, I'm sorry,
is falling apart as populist andnationalist parties grow in
strength across the continent. 6EU countries, Italy, Finland,
Slovakia, Hungary, Croatia, andthe Czech Republic have hard

(53:31):
right parties in government.
In Sweden, the survival ofexecutive relies on a confidence
and supply agreement with thenationalist Sweden Democrats,
the 2nd largest force inparliament. In the Netherlands,
the anti Islamic firebrandgeared to elders, I'm very sorry
if I mispronounce that, is onthe verge of power, having
sealed a historic deal to formthe most right wing government

(53:52):
in recent Dutch history.Meanwhile, hard right parties
are dominating the polls acrossmuch of Europe. In France, far
right leader Marine Le Pen'snational rally is cruising at
over 30%, far ahead of presidentEmmanuel Macron's renaissance
party. Across the Rhine,alternative for Germany, a party
of police surveillance for its aplea a party under police

(54:16):
surveillance for its extremistviews is pulling second head to
head with the Social Democrats.
Okay. So obviously a lot ofthese guys are European right
wingers, which nowadays is notso extreme, unless, of course,
your central access liessomewhere around like Trotsky.

(54:36):
Europe is also not the onlyplace that we're seeing this
kind of stuff. We've also seenJavier Mili in Argentina. He's
been quite a bit of a firebranch.
Everybody likes him up here atleast. I don't actually know how
Argentina is taking it, buthopefully well. So, John, so
we've got left leaning groupslike Politico here that are

(54:57):
just, like, losing it. Are they,like, totally missing the point,
though? Because it seems to methat the rising popularity of
these guys has something to dowith, I don't know, the policies
of, you know, progressivism forthe last several decades.
It it's like a it's a reaction.It's not, you know, like a like

(55:17):
a, you know, the return of theempire or something. But

Jon Gabriel (55:21):
Yeah. In anytime, an older government is thrown
out, it's because they werefired. It's not necessarily
because the new government orthe new party, the new
president, whatever it might be.It's not because they're the
greatest thing since slicedbread usually. It's because
people are ticked off.
They're they're tired of beinglied to. They're tired of seeing
their standard of life,decrease. Their economies

(55:43):
collapse. Germany, was standing,you know, the standing giant,
looming over Europe 10, 15 yearsago. Now now they can't turn on
a light bulb because they're outof energy.
So people have seen thedisastrous run that, these left
leaning governments have had,and they're tired of it. Trudeau
is a perfect example of this.Their economy is in shambles,

(56:06):
and now if you look at theincome per capita for Canada,
it's equivalent to the state ofAlabama, which is the 4th
poorest state in the union.People notice these things, and
as a kid, I used to go back andforth over the border. My
parents or my grandparents livedin Sault Ste.
Marie, Michigan, right on theedge of Canada, and there's a

(56:27):
Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario aswell, and it was just a quick
day trip we'd take up there. Andeverything looked about the
same. Didn't matter which sideof the border you're on. Now
Canada doesn't feel like kind ofa miniature, more polite
America.
It feels darker, definitely,with anti free speech stuff,
which has really offended a lotof people, scandal after

(56:47):
scandal, which the compliantCanadian media wouldn't cover.
And, now clips going viral ofPierre Polive, who's the likely
conservative party leader whowill take over whenever they do
hold an election. People haveseen the results of their
governments, and they're donewith it. And, for the media, you
see this a lot in the UK, mediajust mutter right wing and

(57:10):
expect people to run-in terror.I'm sorry.
Protecting national borders iscommon sense. It is not right.
It is not left, and that's whyyou see so many lifelong
liberals, lifelong democrats,choosing to vote for parties
they never considered in thepast because they're like, this
is just nuts. Can somebody stopthis? At least we we stop the

(57:33):
lurch to the left.
If not going full on right, atleast we have to stop this
craziness because people justsee the results of their
policies. They don't work. It'sthat simple.

Linnea Lueken (57:43):
Yeah. I mean, I have a pretty hard time
believing that the the SwedenDemocrats are this, like,
firebrand right way, hard rightextremist group.

Jon Gabriel (57:53):
Pushing the new Swedish empire.

Linnea Lueken (57:55):
Yeah. I I mean, I I very strongly doubt that, just
as I doubt that our friendMillie down in Argentina is
going to start people or startgiving helicopter rides. It's
it's it's kind of like you see,it's the same stuff that they
did to Trump. Right? Where theycame and the whole entire, you

(58:18):
know, body of mainstream mediasaid that he was some kind of a
far right extremist for yearsyears.
Oh, thank you very much, Andy.That's terrific. Yeah. See,
they're pretty they're prettyhappy with them. It looks like I
can't really read it too well.
Approve. Yeah. There we go.That's nice. We like him too.
We love the idea of slashing 90%of our of our federal

(58:42):
bureaucracy. It's it's it's justlike what they did with Trump.
And what ended up happening withTrump is a lot of people looked
at him after all of the mediahysterics, and they said, look.
This guy is pretty casual,actually. I mean, he's not
exactly even as far as Americanconservatives go, he's not that
right wing.

(59:03):
He's not that conservative. Sowhen you see the same stuff
being said about, like, NigelFarage or anybody else that's
kind of rising in Europeanpolitics, you can't help but
roll your eyes and not take themtoo seriously. Jim?

Jim Lakely (59:18):
Yeah. I mean, I think you look at the, you know,
I helped do the research forthis part of the thing today and
I had, I don't know, 500 links Isaid to you,

Linnea Lueken (59:25):
and you you were very nice editing now. Yeah.

Jim Lakely (59:29):
But but just looking at

Linnea Lueken (59:30):
the headlines for this.

Jim Lakely (59:31):
Yeah. Just looking at the headlines for these, this
is The Sun in the UK. DutchTrump meet Europe's most
dangerous man, Gert Wilders. InItaly, BBC, Georgi Maloney,
Italy's far right wins electionand vows to govern for all.
Austria, far right, gets chanceto form government in Austria.

(59:52):
That's from the Wall StreetJournal. And so but if you
actually looked at the policiesof these so called far right,
politicians in in Europe, theywould probably, land to the left
of me and you and most and mostAmericans. They would they would
fall to the left, I would think,of what we would call mainstream
conservatism over the last 20years. All you need to do to get
yourself labeled far right, in aEuropean country by the European

(01:00:15):
press and the American press isto is to deviate from the
leftist agenda by 3% at most.And then, suddenly, you are far
right.
It's like that famous, thatinfamous or famous cartoon where
there's a guy, ideologically,he's kinda stayed the same, and
all of people that used to be,you know, he he thought were
Liberals are running so far tothe left that he is now right

(01:00:37):
wing. And that's the way itworks in Europe. That's the way
it works here in the UnitedStates as well. I mean, notice
that the headline for, in CNN,it just says simply, Canadian
prime minister Justin Trudeauhas announced his resignation.
What happens now?
It's not far leftist Canadianprime minister Justin Trudeau,
which is what he was. It wasn'tleftist, you know, dictator,

(01:01:02):
Justin Trudeau, the man who hadpeople's, assets seized if they
marched upon Ottawa to, protestagainst, you know, mass mandates
and lockdowns. That's atyrannical move. There's the
cartoon. Thank you very much,Andy, if you'd be able to see it
on the screen.
You know, so the left is neverlabeled as hard left even when
they are. And and and JustinTrudeau is was definitely a

(01:01:25):
leftist, w e f, worshipingleader who fought nothing of
trampling on the right of thethe rights of their citizens to
express themselves and to and tobasically just get on with their
lives as normal. And he has beenrejected. And that that's the,
you know, the title of thispodcast today is purge of the
global progressives. And whenthe progressive government

(01:01:48):
governance has been, kicked outeverywhere, basically, in the
western world, at least, placesthat really matter.
I was you know, just a humblebrag here. I was driving Nigel
Farage around, here in theUnited States for a day, and I
talk was talking to him, when wewere going to, film something at
a cigar cigar lounge. JamesTaylor, our president, was gonna

(01:02:10):
talk with him. In fact, you canstill go to heartland.org, and
you'll see this one of thefeature things, a wonderful
interview between the 2 gents.But I I remarked to him as we
were on our way that, beforeTrump was elected in 2016,
Brexit happened.
And it was something that noneof the elites and the and the so
called smart set in Europe, theUK, or the United States had

(01:02:30):
seen coming. And it was not thatclose of an election, to be
honest. And I asked NigelFarage. I said, that seems like
a harbinger of change here inthe United States too, because
Trump won election, what, 6months, 8 months after after
Brexit. And then just before the2024 elections here in the
United States, there was aparliamentary election in the

(01:02:52):
UK.
And Nigel Farage's Reform Party,although I think it only grabbed
3 seats, ultimately, when it allshook out, did way better than
people had ever expected becausethe Reform Party was, for all
and political purposes, wasinvented 20 minutes ago. And I
said, your success there, do youthink that's another harbinger
of change here in the UnitedStates? And it turned out to be

(01:03:14):
true. And so what I think andand what I think you're seeing
globally was the rise of JavierMele, a hardcore economic
libertarian, who campaigned witha chainsaw that didn't have a
chain on it. But he ripped thatthing up and promised to cut the
government, you know, with achainsaw, not a scalpel.
And that that imagery was onpurpose. He's like, this our

(01:03:37):
government is too out of controlto use a scalpel. We need to use
a chainsaw. And he won, and I Ithink that was a harbinger. But
you see all these places inEurope, they've rejected leftist
governance.
I think it's going to last for awhile because I really think the
people, when finally given thechance to express themselves,
are purging their governmentsand societies of progressives

(01:03:59):
and the progressive left'sagenda. This is a this is why at
the very top of this, podcast,Linae, you asked, how's 2025
doing? You know, after thinkingabout what we're gonna talk
about on our first podcast of2025, yeah, it's gonna be a good
year when you think about all ofthe ways that the not just the
American people, but people allover the world who are allowed

(01:04:21):
to have a voice in theirgovernment are, embracing
freedom, rejecting tyranny, andtelling the progressive left
that we've had enough. We'regoing in a different direction.
Even Finland even Finland, dogGabriel.
Even Finland as as as the 3rdmost prominent Finnish American,
John Gabriel, you must be veryhappy. There are most prominent

(01:04:44):
Finnish Americans, but you might

Jon Gabriel (01:04:46):
be happy to homeland is, coming around,
solely but surely, getting more,they they don't really care what
the rest of Scandinavia doesbecause they don't trust anyone
living next door to a ratheraggressive neighbor to the other
side. And, yeah, there's athere's conservative reforms
going on there as well, which isgreat to see. So, I understand

(01:05:08):
why my ancestors fled. Well, my,forebear fled originally because
the mob was trying to collect adebt, and so we jumped on a ship
in, Vasa, I think it was, andsailed off to the UP of
Michigan. But, that aside, I Ithink other ancestors must have
fled there for more legitimatereasons.

(01:05:31):
But it it's good to see because,again, it's just common sense.
This stuff doesn't work. And,once again, like, after the
election that we had, the leftis all like, we must have a
messaging problem. Let's changeour terminology. It's like,
guys, you have been pushing thatfor 20 years.
It's not the messaging, it's theresults. And, and that's why you
can have someone. It wasn't theeloquent speeches that Millet

(01:05:54):
gave that, won him the vote. No.It was the results of all the
governments before him, fromPerronese to the military coup
that was around in the eightiesand early nineties, I think.
People saw all those previousefforts failed, so we're like,
hey. Let's give this guy a try.Maybe we should just, I don't
know, cut back expenses ingovernmental control and, let

(01:06:15):
freedom ring.

Linnea Lueken (01:06:19):
Thank you very much. Well, unfortunately, guys,
thank you, John Gabriel, forsticking with us as we went a
little bit overtime today.Unfortunately, that's all the
time we have. Thank youeverybody for tuning in. We're
live every single week onThursdays at noon on Rumble or
Twitter, Facebook, YouTube.
Maybe not Facebook this time,wherever they let us be. For

(01:06:40):
audio listeners, please rate uswell on whatever service you're
using. Please leave a review. Ithelps us a lot. And thank you so
much again to John.
I'm sure you have some stuff toplug here. Where can our
audience find you and what's thetitle of your book so we can go
buy it?

Jon Gabriel (01:06:55):
Well, yeah, I was just reading this book. I'll
read a few chapters now, but,whoever this author is, just
incredible. No. It's the bestdebut novel I've ever written, I
must say. Sing of Horizon Sun,using my brilliant, award
winning career as a submarineguy to talk about World War 2
submarines.

(01:07:15):
It's a lot of fun to write andit seems to be selling well. So
if you're interested in thatkind of middle aged man focused
stuff, that's your book.

Linnea Lueken (01:07:26):
Thank you so much. And Jim, what have you
got?

Jim Lakely (01:07:29):
You can reach you can find me at jlakleyonx. Also
visit at heartlandinstonx.Definitely gotta follow xjohn on
x. If he gives you a followback, it will make your week. So
we will see you on social media.
And, oh, no. Always visitheartland.org and get that book,
sink the rising sun. I just gotit myself, and I'm looking

(01:07:49):
forward to reading it, John.Alright.

Linnea Lueken (01:07:51):
Thank you. And you forgot to mention that it it
beat Tom Clancy, this for atleast Yes.

Jon Gabriel (01:07:57):
It crushed. I'm I Amazon thinks I'm better than a
deceased author, which is quitean honor. But, yeah, number 1
over Clancy's number 2. So thatthat felt kinda good. Sorry,
Tom.

Linnea Lueken (01:08:09):
It's wonderful. Okay. You can find me, you guys,
at Linnea Lucan on Twitter.Please come check us out
tomorrow at the Climate RealismShow. We stream live at the same
time, noon central on Fridays toclose out the week on a little
bit of climate and energy news.
Always check out heartland.org.And, well, thank you guys all
for coming, and thanks forbearing with me on my very first

(01:08:32):
hosting opportunity here. So, Iwill see you guys next week.
Have a good one.

Jim Lakely (01:08:56):
You are fake news.