A Rough Ride Towards Election Day

Tom discusses how an attack on Iran, a looming impeachment trial, and a still-wide Democratic Presidential candidate pool means we are in for a rough ride as we move towards Election Day this November.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
I heard radio presents Tom broke off now here this
let's face it, we're in for a rough pride. We
have an impeachment proceeding coming up in the United States Senate.
It appears that Nancy Pelosi is now ready to file
her claims. But at the same time, the President of
the United States, on his orders, has taken out one
of the truly bad men in the Middle East, Sounami

(00:23):
of Iran. He has been responsible for any number of killings,
and I mean any number in the hundreds, probably also
that includes Americans. Sonami was on what appeared to be
a kind of low key trip into Iraq for what purpose,
I'm not sure, but we do believe that there's a
connection between Iraq and Iran in terms of coordination. And

(00:46):
then he was taken out on the highway, and the
President made that decision without conferring or sharing or making
judgment with the leading members of the United States Congress,
Senate and House Republicans and Democrats. It is, after all,
a country that has three parts. It has the executive branch,

(01:07):
the judicial branch, and the congressional branch. We've had lots
of these kinds of experiences in the past and the
leading members of those committees have been called in without
regard to their political affiliation, because that's the way the
system is supposed to work. When the President came to
brief members of his own party on what he did

(01:29):
and why he did it, Senator Mike Lee, a reliable
Republican from Utah, walked out in a rage. He said
it was one of the worst briefings he'd ever had,
and of course Ran Paul of Kentucky was also outraged
by what he'd heard. That's not unusual for him. But
that's an indication about the chaos that's going on in Washington.
And I know what a lot of people are thinking.

(01:51):
They're thinking the President did this because it's like the
movie Wagged the Dog. He was trying to distract attention
from the possibility that he will be on trial, if
not this week, in the very near future in the
United States Senate. He can't understand on a day to
day basis why people are not standing in the aisles
and cheering for him, just as they do with those

(02:12):
kind of manufactured forms that he has around the country.
When I say manufactured, they're well organized. It's not to
say that the people who are there don't believe very
strongly in him. But at the same time, he doesn't
wander off into other areas except when he can expect
the kind of cheering reception that he has been getting.

(02:32):
This is not unheard of in our country. We've gone
through this before. Lyndon Johnson got in trouble because of
how he conducted the Vietnam War, and he was stunned
because he thought he'd done so much for the civil
rights movement and for the economy. It didn't work out.
Richard Nixon, after the greatest electoral victory and the history
of this country, found himself, in fact, held down by

(02:56):
his obvious role in Water Keep. He hung on for
more than an or, but then the tapes, the recordings
that he had participated in got him and most of
his senior advisers, members of his cabinet. We're going to jail.
And he was going into oblivion where he tried desperately to,
if you will, to revive his reputation, and to some

(03:18):
degree he did by acknowledging that he was wrong when
what he did. So we've been through these passages before.
The difference between then and now is the enormous swiftness
of the kind of commentary that comes across the board.
People if you will get up in the morning, tune
in MSNBC or Fox, or they go online and they

(03:42):
hear all manner of judgments and claims and accusations, and
that becomes the basis for how they make a decision
on that day. We all have to take a deep broath,
stand back and say what's true, what's not, what's in
the best interests of this country, and what it is not.
We've survived out of these kinds of things before. America

(04:02):
has a great history of coming out of the worst
and becoming a better country for that experience. I hope
that that will be the case in the middle of
this election year. I really don't have a lot of
confidence because of the change in communications and the kind
of vindictiveness that both sides are showing without anyone saying
we're better than this. We can go to the future

(04:25):
and be a country that we can all be proud of,
Republican and Democrat, independent alike. We also have a great,
great divide between the age groups. Younger people who are
for Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. They have attracted a
lot of support from very young people. At the same time,
in the middle people are saying, wait a minute, we

(04:47):
can't blow up the system. What we have to do
is reform it, revive it, change it. Even the youthful
mayor of Notre Dame, or if you will, from Indiana
has been saying, no, that's going too far. He's not
playing to his generation. And the big question is on
the Democratic side, what will happen with the former senator,

(05:09):
the former Vice President of the United States, Joe Is.
He's known to his friends. Will he be able to
withstand what appears to be a withering attack coming from
Mike Bloomberg. These are all the questions that are in play,
and unless we get some kind of common ground at
some point, there's a chance that this country will be

(05:31):
not just divided, but will be deeply harmed by it.
So let's all get involved. That's the sermon that I
preach very often on these appearances, and I'm preaching it
once again. I hope that we'll get to the next months,
especially with the first of the primaries and caucuses, the
impeachment hearings, and the if you will, the kind of hard,

(05:52):
hard cases that are out there, one against the other
and remember this. By the end of the month, the
larger questions in the minds of a lot of people
will be who's the better football team is that L
s U Or Clemson? Who should win the Super Bowl
this year? And finally, what will spring training bring in

(06:14):
terms of the national pastime. There's a lot to cheer,
there's a lot to be concerned about. But in this country,
every day is worth living. I'm Tom Brokaw for I
Heart Radio.