The 9/11 Generation a Generation Later

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
And today, 25 years to the day after that fateful day,
have we still remembered the lessons of 9-11? Welcome to
the Dan O'Donnell Show. If you would like to join us,
414-799-1130 on our Carpetland USA Flooring Center talk and text line,

(00:23):
email DOD at iHeartMedia.com. Yes, of course, the day begins.
is one that we will be reflecting on 9-11 25
years ago today, September 11th, 2001. We will talk with
someone who is trying to keep the lessons of 9-11
alive for a generation of people who were not alive

(00:45):
when the Twin Towers went down. A hundred million people
in this country, a full one-third of the entire U.S.
population was not yet born. And we will tell you,
about an incredible project right here in Wisconsin that is
aiming to educate that generation of Americans and really all

(01:05):
of us telling us about what 9-11 was and what
we all pledged, how we all pledged to never forget
25 years ago today in the moments, hours, days, weeks
that followed. Well, things steadily, slowly, surely, inevitably changed. I think.

(01:25):
Got back to normal. The same old political divisions cropped
up and we are more divided in many ways than
we ever were before. We have also got a lot
of other stuff to get to today. Of course, daily
Trump date, President Trump speaking at the annual remembrance at
the Pentagon. We are also going to get into some

(01:47):
local politics. We're going to get a wrap up of
the big midterm convention, first ever midterm convention, Wisconsin Congressman
Glenn Grothman was there. He's going to provide a quick
synopsis of it. We're going to talk about where we
go from here as we are in a sprint to
the midterm election here in Wisconsin and across the country.

(02:10):
So if you want to follow the Dan O'Donnell show
on social media at Dan O'Donnell show X, Facebook, Instagram,
Dan O'Donnell show podcast available on I heart radio or
wherever you listen to podcasts. In New York City today,
the traditional reading of the names of the 9-11 victims.

Speaker 2 (02:30):
James V.

Speaker 3 (02:32):
De Blasio Jr. J.

Speaker 2 (02:34):
Sorrell Malabuyak de Chavez.

Speaker 3 (02:41):
And my brother, Joseph Michael Giacconi. The pain is still there.
The void in my family will never be completely healed.
The what could have been and should have been still
make me angry. He should have been holding his two

(03:03):
beautiful grandchildren right now.

Speaker 2 (03:07):
But Joe and Sandra did a good job. And this ceremony,
this ceremony is essential.

Speaker 3 (03:14):
At the very least, I get to come here one
day a year and speak my brother's name, Joseph Michael Giacconi,
out loud.

Speaker 1 (03:24):
And you hear it. And he is here. And he
is present. And he is never forgotten.

Speaker 2 (03:32):
We love you and miss you.

Speaker 1 (03:34):
The morning filled with poignant tributes like that from family members. Yes,
Zoran Mamdani, the controversial mayor of New York City, Did attend.
He was actually videotaped laughing with AOC as some of
those names were read. Definitely not a good look for Mamdani. Now, everybody,

(03:56):
I think, who was alive during 9-11 remembers exactly where
they were, exactly how they heard the news. I've told
the story often. 9-11 was sort of the seminal moment
in my young life. I had just turned 20 years old.
I was actually broadcasting a radio show on Marquette university
radio on the radio station there. And we had gotten

(04:17):
word that a plane had hit one of the twin
towers in New York city. Now this was just after,
in fact, I think just a couple of months after
a New York Yankees pitcher by the name of Corey
Lytle crashed his single or twin engine plane, his small
personal aircraft in New York city. So the thinking was,
that this was another incident like that, that some small

(04:40):
plane had lost its way. And I'll never forget the
ashen look on my co-host's face when I asked, well,
what type of plane was it? He said a 737.
And we sort of looked at each other for a second.
And I can remember trying to get more information because
this was well before the Marquette radio station, which now

(05:02):
has incredible, uh, equipment and it's just very, very well done.
There's a podcast space as well, but back then there
wasn't even a TV monitor in the studio. So I
had to go out and this was a class building,
Johnston Hall. And I walked into a classroom and there
was a TV that was on a cart. Anybody of
my age will remember how we used to watch news

(05:26):
events or movies or some, there's that old tube TV
that was on a cart. And there were a number
of other students and maybe a teacher, professor or two
who were already in there. And I walked in just
at the moment that the second plane hit the twin tower.
And in that moment, immediately knew that the entire world

(05:47):
had changed. This was not an accident. America was under attack.
I rushed back in, finished the rest of that broadcast.
And spent probably the next two to three weeks doing
nothing but consuming news. And I had been really forced
from my little self-involved shell, as I suppose everyone at

(06:08):
age 19, 20 is. You're focused on school. You're focused
on girls. You're focused on parties and friends. And you're
aware of a great big world out there. And it's
probably a lot different now because of the prevalence of
social media, because everyone is always connected. But back then,
we really... weren't. And while everyone has a story on 9-11,

(06:30):
I think it's my generation that really, because it was
that seminal moment, has the story to tell that it
was so formative in our lives, but really how formative.
I actually sat down this morning kind of thinking about
where we all were as young adults and you know,
just starting our lives, really. Maybe we're in college, maybe

(06:53):
we're still in high school, maybe we're just out of college.
That sort of mini-generation in between the millennials and Generation X,
we're called the X-ennials, usually about 45 now, down until
about maybe 40, 39, somewhere in there. So I sat
down and I penned this essay about 25 years since 9-11.

(07:18):
Where we were, where we are, and hopefully, where we're going.
We were just kids. High school seniors, college freshmen, standing
at the edge of adulthood with no real idea how
the world worked. On a sunny Tuesday in September, we
learned horrifyingly quickly. From classrooms and dorm rooms, we watched

(07:41):
the second plane hit and didn't so much feel the
shock and pain as it wholly consumed us. The smoke,
the flames, the tiny specks falling from the towers that
we gradually realized were people. By the time the first
tower fell, our childhoods were over. In our first few
hours and days of a new form of adulthood, we

(08:04):
swore we would never forget the moment that shaped us.
The anguish, the hopelessness, sure, but also the sense of
duty and resolve that filled us with a sense of
solidarity and national pride that we promised would never fade.
And for a while, It didn't. In that defining moment,
patriotism wasn't a buzzword. It was a way of life.

(08:25):
It was our way of life. We flew the flag proudly.
We volunteered to help in recovery efforts in whatever way
we could. Many of us enlisted in the military to
fight what we decided was the most just and necessary
war of our lifetimes. Never forget, we told ourselves, and really,
how could we? We weren't the millennial generation anymore. We

(08:48):
were the 9-11 generation, shaped forever by an event that
felt simultaneously larger than life itself, but also intensely personal.
It was an attack on all Americans, but it felt
especially targeted at us, an effort to darken the future
of the nation we were just about to inherit. But

(09:10):
the passage of time is both inevitable and inescapable. And
now a generation has passed since the 9-11 generation made
those promises. We haven't broken them so much as they
have slowly faded. Somewhere in the last 25 years, emotion
became memory and immediacy became history. The concerns that 25

(09:34):
years ago seemed so trivial again consume us, so much
so that a nation so united in purpose seems more
divided than ever. And the 9-11 generation is at the
vanguard of a new generation of anti-Americanism. A new Islamist-tinged
socialism has descended upon this country and its leading adherents,

(09:57):
millennials all, espouse 9-11ism. only empathy for terrorists, but also
many of the same radical beliefs that motivated them. Abdul El-Sayed,
Michigan's radical left-wing United States Senate candidate, embodies this jarring shift.
As he said at a town hall event last year.

Speaker 4 (10:19):
I think the the approach that we've often taken to
terrorism has been to figure out how to leverage the
might of the U.S. military to go in and root
out certain terrorist organizations, etc. And where that's necessary, that's necessary.
But I also think we need to be curious about

(10:40):
why those things happen in the first place.

Speaker 5 (10:43):
What drives somebody to want to commit such a heinous act?
I have to be a student of people's pain. That's
what I did in medicine. That's what I try to
do in politics.

Speaker 1 (10:54):
He's not alone in his politics either. Minnesota Congresswoman Ilhan
Omar minimized the devastation of 9-11 to argue that its
real impact was Islamophobia. Here she is at a CARE
conference in 2019.

Speaker 6 (11:13):
CARE was founded after 9-11. Because they recognize that some
people did something and that all of us were starting
to lose access to our civil liberties.

Speaker 1 (11:26):
Now, that's obviously factually untrue. CARE was founded in 1994,
but her meaning is crystal clear. America wasn't the real
victim of 9-11, but rather the ultimate perpetrator because of
the way it mistreats marginalized people. And how could those
marginalized people not want to attack it? Michigan Congresswoman Rashida

(11:50):
Tlaib echoed this sentiment in 2019, arguing in an interview
with MAKERS that America's innate hatred was the real evil
of 9-11.

Speaker 7 (12:00):
I was probably my second year in law school when
9-11 happened. And I was really terrified of what was
going to happen to my husband, who was only a
green card holder at the time. I immediately called my
brothers and told them, be very careful who you hang
out with. telling my sisters, you know, just be real
careful out there and being really afraid of my fellow Americans.

Speaker 1 (12:24):
In a tragic irony, nowhere is this anti-Americanism more prevalent
or aggressive than at ground zero in New York City itself.
Mayor Zoran Mamdani, now arguably this country's most famous communist,
has spent years minimizing and trivializing 9-11 and framing it
as mere pretext for the real evil of American imperialism

(12:48):
and violence. This culminated in the run-up to the 25th
anniversary of 9-11 just a few days ago, when Mamdani
signed an executive order designating the day as an official
day of remembrance. He then handed the ceremonial pen to
his chief legal counsel, a literal terrorist defender whose own

(13:10):
brother-in-law was one of the 9-11 hijackers. Video from the
ceremony shows Mamdani's chief legal counsel, Ramzi Qasim, receiving the
pen and then smirking as though he was fully aware
of the obvious symbolism of his boss's gesture. Qasim has
represented Ahmed al-Darby, a Guantanamo detainee who was convicted in

(13:35):
the 2002 bombing of a French oil tanker. Qasem's sister
was married to Khalil al-Midahar, one of the hijackers who
crashed American Airlines Flight 77 into the Pentagon. In just
25 years, roughly half of the 9-11 generation is apparently

(13:55):
just fine with this. Half of the 9-11 generation voted
for this. Half of the 9-11 generation voted apparently thinks
like this. Half of the generation that swore it would
never forget the lessons it learned on the first day
of its adulthood somehow grew into a generation of children
seduced by the promise of free toys if we simply

(14:17):
pledge allegiance to a new flag. Yet half of that
generation has steadfastly refused. Half of that generation rejects communism, socialism, Islamism,
and anti-Americanism in all of its forms. And, most significantly,
half of that generation is raising what may be the

(14:39):
single most pro-American generation of young men in at least
a half a century. We haven't just taught them the
lessons of 9-11. We have lived them each and every
day of the 25 years since the day that still
shapes us and always will. Now our children's generation stands

(15:00):
ready to inherit this nation and ready to fight the
same ideology that we did. But that ideology, that hatred,
that fundamental belief that America is the world's greatest threat
is no longer a world away and striking only on
a sunny September morning. It's embedded in our culture. It's
in our politics, our schools, our media. It's seemingly everywhere.

(15:25):
But the 9-11 generation is still here, still ready to
fight it and fight for this country by teaching our
children's and eventually our grandchildren's generations why today, just as
much as 25 years ago, this fight is not one
we can afford to lose. If you would like to

(15:47):
read that, it is at the Heartland Post, heartlandpost.com. We've
got links to it at Dan O'Donnell Show on X
and facebook.com slash danodonnellshow as well. We'll be right back.
here on the Dan O'Donnell show it was 25 years
ago today that the world changed forever but as we

(16:12):
said here on the Dan O'Donnell show for many people
a full third of all Americans alive today it's a
historical event it's not something that immediately brings to mind
the trauma and the feelings of helplessness and sadness and
resolve that we all felt as Americans. A quarter century

(16:33):
has passed. How do we keep that memory alive forever?
How do we make it come alive for those who
weren't alive on September 11th, 2001? The best way to
do that is through education. In Kewoskum, the Wisconsin 9-11
Memorial has just launched an effort to dramatically expand that

(16:57):
educational mission and make 9-11 a living bit of history
for those maybe who didn't actually experience it. Joining me
now on the phone is the president of the Wisconsin
9-11 Memorial, Mark Bazzotta. He is also the superintendent of
the Kewoskum School District. And Mark, thank you so much,
first of all, not just for joining me, but also

(17:21):
making this your mission.

Speaker 8 (17:23):
Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 9 (17:24):
Well, thanks for having me on. It's a pleasure, but
you're absolutely right when we take a look at the
mission of the Wisconsin 9-11 Memorial. It really is around education,
making sure that we go back to that statement that
we always say, never forget, right? Because, you know, 25
years ago, we made a promise. And I was a

(17:45):
teacher just starting out teaching at the time. And we
made a promise not to forget. And keeping that promise
today means teaching a generation that wasn't there.

Speaker 1 (17:54):
So right now, I mean, the Memorial and Education Center
in Kewoska, it opened five years ago to coincide with
the 20th anniversary. Well, it's an outdoor experience. I, I
will be totally honest. I have not been there yet,
but with what you're planning to do, I'm, I'm absolutely
making it a mission to get there. At some point,

(18:17):
there is a 2,200 pound steel I beam that was
recovered from the North tower. You've got learning stations on
the events of the day, a survivor tree, There is
a veterans area. But now you're trying to make a
permanent year-round memorial. Tell us about what it is that

(18:39):
you're trying to do right now.

Speaker 9 (18:42):
Yeah, great point. You know, obviously the memorial that we've
got right now kind of started back in 2014 when
we applied to get that piece of steel. And then
it took us a good seven years between that and
the fundraising to be able to create the memorial that
we've got right now, which is a fantastic space for
people to come, reflect on, be inspired by, learn about 9-11.

(19:05):
But being an outdoor space, it's got some limitations to it.
And so what we want to do is we really
want to create a Midwest destination for 9-11 education. Our
vision is to serve students and families from Wisconsin and
neighboring states, It's not intended to replace the national memorials,
but it's the idea of bringing that history and lessons

(19:28):
of September 11th within reach of our families and schools
who might not have that ability to travel the thousands
of miles or have the money to be able to
go to New York to be able to experience that.
So we feel like Wisconsin and other people in the
Midwest deserve the right to be able to have a
similar experience, but be able to do it here.

Speaker 1 (19:49):
And that's a fantastic point. We think, hey, you know what,
there is the National Museum, the National Memorial. Of course,
there was all of that ceremony going on, as there
has been every single tonight. We'll have the tribute in light.
for the 9-11 victims, the nearly 4,000 people who lost

(20:09):
their lives. And I've been there. It is truly remarkable.
I mean, it just takes your breath away because all
of that memory, all of that emotion just kind of
comes flooding back. But there are so many people who
don't have the opportunity to go all the way to
New York City, to go all the way to Washington, D.C.,
or there's the Flight 93 Memorial in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, That's

(20:32):
why it's so important to having Kewoskum, Wisconsin, just sort
of a centrally located spot in the upper Midwest for people,
not just in our state, but our entire region to
get that sort of experience.

Speaker 9 (20:45):
Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, we're talking about now expanding
that out to an indoor museum and education center. As
you can imagine, in Wisconsin, having an outdoor space is
great for a good portion of the year, but there's
a good portion of the year that is really not
great for bringing in community groups, for bringing in school

(21:05):
field trips. So we're looking at a 4,500 square foot
indoor education center. It's going to have interactive exhibits, educational stations.
going to have spaces for school groups, community programming. It's
going to have some multifunctional gathering spaces. As a superintendent,
I'm always thinking about sort of the logistics of bringing

(21:26):
a large group of students here. You know, where are bathrooms?
Where can we eat lunch? So we'll have those different
pieces there. And If you take a look at the renderings,
the building itself is really going to be a testament
to 9-11. There's all sorts of symbolism that's going to
be built into the actual architecture.

Speaker 1 (21:42):
And you can actually see that at wisconsin911memorial. com, wisconsin911memorial. com. And
I would strongly encourage you to visit that site, not
just to check out the renderings, but This is a
massive undertaking, and this is the launch of a capital
campaign to try to raise the money, $ 4 million, to

(22:07):
get this project off the ground, to get it built,
and to get, I think, future generations to understand just
what 9-11 meant. This is such a worthwhile project. I
cannot say enough how behind this I am. how important
I think it is, wisconsin911memorial. com. Mark Pizzotta, the president of

(22:30):
the Wisconsin 9-11 Memorial, joining me here on the Dan
O'Donnell Show. And, sir, you said that you sort of
made this your mission. 9-11 happened when you were a
young teacher. Why did you, why have you dedicated your
life to this project and to this mission?

Speaker 9 (22:45):
Yeah, I think there's a couple of things. Number one, obviously,
it's about respect, looking back at what happened during 9-11
and remembering that. But honestly, for me, the inspirational part
is what are the lessons that we've learned from what
happened and how are we carrying that with us? For me,
it's really about it's a bigger mission about inspiring service

(23:07):
and that being an important part of who we are
as Americans. I mean, I think back about how we
rallied together as a country, and that's inspirational for me.
And for the people who come to visit, we certainly
hope that they walk away being inspired and asking the
question about how can I serve, whether that's military, firefighters
or EMTs, volunteering for a nonprofit, joining a civic organization,

(23:32):
could be coaching a youth team or helping out a neighbor.
There's all these ways that we can help serve one another. And,
you know, we always just we want to make sure
that our young people are learning something here, that we
want them to leave inspired to do something as well.

Speaker 1 (23:48):
That's right, because it's often easy to forget when you
when you talk about that day, when you talk about
the impact of it, the global war on terror, all that,
that there is this human element to it. And that
was one of the biggest things, my biggest takeaway. I mean,
everybody remembers that. you know, the feeling of helplessness. I
also remember I was a second year college student, a

(24:09):
college sophomore. And I actually, I had my car on
campus and I went home because I had a younger
brother who was at the time, I think eight years
old and wanted to, you know, sort of be with him,
explain to him what was going on, which had to
be very difficult to understand as a third grader. And
the entire neighborhood where my mom was living at the time,

(24:31):
they were all out at dusk with their flags out
and there was a kind of an impromptu prayer service.
And just for weeks and months afterwards, how there was
this extreme pride in being American. But even deeper than that,
there was sort of this extreme pride in being a
human being and being a neighbor and being part of

(24:53):
a community. And we really came together in a way
that I dare say we might not have in the
25 years since. But that's one of the big things
that I think this memorial is really going to highlight.
And it really is going to highlight a Kewoskum High
School graduate who, on her very first business trip, this

(25:17):
story just, it tugs at my heart every time. Andrea Haberman,
who was killed in the North Tower on 9-11, it really,
I think, helps to humanize for people in Kewoskum and
people in Wisconsin. We're thousands of miles away from New
York and Washington, D.C., But to hear her story, to
to tell the story of her life and her untimely death,

(25:40):
it really humanizes that tragedy. I think helps to bring
about that sentiment like we're all human beings. We're all Americans. Yes,
but we're all neighbors. We're all people. We all have
our own story. So I think that's fantastic that you
guys are really highlighting her as a Kewoskum native.

Speaker 9 (25:58):
Yeah, and I'll throw in there, too, we just unveiled
a new victims memorial that, through a lot of research,
we've been able to find 17 different people who had
ties to Wisconsin who are victims of 9-11.

Speaker 1 (26:11):
Oh, wow.

Speaker 9 (26:12):
And it does emphasize the fact that this wasn't just
a New York event. As a matter of fact, just
a couple of weeks ago, I was talking to a
woman who afterwards ended up flying out to New York
to do grief counseling with families. So, I mean, like
you said, I remember it, too. You know, whether you

(26:32):
were fundraising for a particular organization that was helping out
there or if you were jumping on a plane because
you were a firefighter and you wanted to help with
search and rescue around the country, including Wisconsin, people were
impacted by this.

Speaker 1 (26:45):
Mark Bezada is the president of the Wisconsin 9-11 Memorial
in Kewoskum. They have launched a $ 4 million capital campaign,
which I strongly, strongly encourage you. Folks, I don't do
this a lot. I reserve, you know, really asking if
you are able to, if you're able to support a

(27:07):
worthy cause only for those causes that I really, truly
believe in. And this is one of them. keeping the
memory of 9-11 and the lessons of 9-11 and everything
about that day and everything about the quarter century now
that has come afterward alive forever. If this is something
that you think you might want to support, I strongly

(27:28):
encourage you to head to Wisconsin911memorial. com. Check it out. They're
trying to raise money for a permanent 4,500 square foot
indoor facility that is going to be perfect to teach
future generations. Again, one third of this country who was
not alive and many more people who were too young

(27:50):
to understand, like my younger brother was just sort of
at that cusp at age eight to really understand what
was happening and what the impact of this was. We're
all living with the legacy of it. We need to
learn about it. Wisconsin911memorial. com. Mark Pizzotta, the president of the
Wisconsin 9-11 Memorial. Thank you, sir. Best of luck with

(28:14):
this project and keep us posted, please.

Speaker 8 (28:17):
Thank you.

Speaker 1 (28:19):
You are listening to the Dan O'Donnell Show. Be right
back after this. Why is it so important for the
next generation, for subsequent generations, for all generations, really, to
learn about 9-11, to Ensure that it's not just something
that exists in a history book. Why is that so important? Well,

(28:40):
because there are a whole lot of people who know
absolutely nothing about it, who don't understand how it fundamentally
changed America. Welcome back to the Dan O'Donnell Show. In
case you're wondering why it is so important that we
have a 9-11 memorial in Kewoskum, Wisconsin, my thanks to
to the president of that organization. Once again, I strongly

(29:04):
encourage support this mission because you have an entire generation
of people. And frankly, folks, I don't blame college students.
It's super easy to see a video like the one
I'm going to play for you, the audio of which
is going to be kind of jarring. I said, well,
how dare they not? They weren't alive when 9-11 happened.

(29:29):
So it's only natural that they don't really get what
was so important about this. They don't get the details,
but it is very, very telling. what it is you're
going to hear. And this is just a man on
the street, or in this case, a woman on the
street interview. I'm sorry. I don't know where this came from.
It's making the rounds on TikTok and on X all

(29:50):
over social media today. I wish I could give proper credit.
I have no idea who this is that's asking the
questions or who put this compilation together. But the question
was very simple. who attacked us on nine eleven what
what were the causes of not a little what was
nine eleven about and this woman just went around on
a college campus or multiple college campuses and the answers

(30:12):
well or sort of start who.

Speaker 10 (30:15):
Attacked us on nine eleven protect us on that's the
group called i saw my sister.

Speaker 11 (30:22):
At terrorists i don't know the exact name i forgot um.

Speaker 1 (30:26):
i don't want to say the wrong iraq afghanistan.

Speaker 4 (30:30):
It was, I believe, a group of terrorists that hijacked
a few planes, flew them into the Twin Towers.

Speaker 1 (30:37):
Osama bin Laden. It was the terrorist group.

Speaker 8 (30:40):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (30:40):
Do you know, like, what terrorist group?

Speaker 1 (30:42):
Not specifically.

Speaker 2 (30:43):
Hold on, I just gotta think.

Speaker 8 (30:45):
One second. Oh, yeah.

Speaker 1 (30:50):
I did know, I did. We were taught this. Do
you know who attacked us on 9-11?

Speaker 2 (30:53):
Uh, very loosely, not really.

Speaker 9 (30:58):
I'm blanking on Osama bin Laden and the terrorist group.

Speaker 1 (31:02):
Yeah, it's a terrorist group.

Speaker 2 (31:03):
I just can't remember.

Speaker 1 (31:04):
Do you know why they attacked us?

Speaker 12 (31:05):
What was their reasoning for attacking us?

Speaker 6 (31:09):
I don't know necessarily the reason.

Speaker 2 (31:13):
I mean, they're just considered a terrorist group. I guess
that's all we really have on that. I personally have
no idea.

Speaker 6 (31:20):
Was it a retaliation of someone who was president.

Speaker 12 (31:25):
At the time, like Bush?

Speaker 1 (31:26):
Revenge.

Speaker 10 (31:28):
For, I don't know, their war they had back then.

Speaker 1 (31:32):
Again, while I don't totally blame them because to them,
9-11 was a historical event. Now, would your average person
my age, I'm 45 years old, so I was a
college student when 9-11 happened, would your average millennial, if
I was a 20-year-old college student and you quizzed me about, say,

(31:52):
Pearl Harbor, about the Kennedy assassinations, Now, I'm a student
of history. I was obsessed even before I sort of
came of age with 9-11 and really started, you know,
dedicating my life to current events and news and politics
and that sort of thing. I would have been more
likely to have understood and to have known that. But
your average person, it's a historical event. But did you

(32:15):
hear the last answer? Well, it must have been revenge
for something America did. It must have been Revenge for
who is the president Bush. That is exactly the narrative
that the left started pushing almost instantly that this was
a natural response to the great evil of American imperialism.

(32:38):
And this was what I was sort of focused on
in my essay, the nine 11 generation, by the way,
it's up heartland post.com at Dan O'Donnell. So I've got
it right at the top of my X feed. Facebook.com
slash Dan O'Donnell show as well. It might seem harsh. Well, Dan,
you're actually equating socialism and communism with the mentality of

(32:58):
the terrorists. Yeah, I sort of am because it stems
from the exact same anti-Americanism, anti-Westernism, this belief that America
is the great Satan. It comes from that same hatred.
And for 25 years now, there's really been an effort
to sort of justify it. There's been an effort to

(33:19):
excuse it away, saying, well, it's only natural. You heard
Abdul El-Sayed, the Senate candidate from Michigan. We played that
soundbite of him during our opening monologue that he said, look,
I have to understand people's pain. I did it as
a doctor. I'm doing it as a politician. Well, that
is liberalism. That is socialism in a nutshell. That is,

(33:42):
the pain always stems from some American action, some capitalistic action.
that because the 9-11 hijackers were members of a marginalized group,
it is only natural that that marginalized group sort of
rise up and strike back against the great Satan, against
the great evil. I will say this. Not all teachers

(34:05):
are failing in their duty to educate their students. We
have got a great essay from one of our Heartland
Post writers about her kid's kindergarten teacher and what she
did for 9-11. You won't want to miss this. It's
coming up next here on the Dan O'Donnell Show. Welcome back.
It is the Dan O'Donnell Show on this, the 25th

(34:27):
anniversary of the 9-11 terror attacks as we once again
make that memory of that horrible day come alive and
pledge to ourselves yet again that we will never forget. However,
it's inevitable. I think that there is a level of
Just the passage of time sort of wipes everything away.

(34:50):
It has a funny way of fading everything into memory,
into history. And even with 9-11, just as I'm sure
our grandparents' generation said they would never forget Pearl Harbor
as our parents and grandparents' generation said they would never
forget the Kennedy assassination. The 9-11 generation, and I wrote

(35:11):
about that in an essay that is up right now, heartlandpost.com.
We have have it's only natural that that we've sort
of forgotten. Well, there are people among us who are
trying to keep the memory alive, even for those who
whose parents might not have been alive. And that that

(35:32):
is something that's going on. The people who were not alive,
who were born after 9-11, are having children. And those
children are now going to school. Well, Megan Novak, who
is a great writer. at the heartland post and this
essay about her son's kindergarten teacher who did something actually

(35:52):
kinda special for 9-11 before you jump down or 30
well a kindergarten teacher shouldn't be talking about this it
is actually an incredible way that this teacher broached the
topic as Megan writes our country seems to be more
divided than ever as the years pass in September 11
2001 more and more Americans are forgetting what the tragedy

(36:13):
meant and how united we were afterwards. There are even
schools and teachers who are choosing not to teach the
history of 9-11, or perhaps even worse, whitewashing the true
impact of the terrorist attack and why it happened in
the first place. But not every teacher. My son's kindergarten teacher,
in only her second year of teaching, has taken a

(36:33):
different approach. She asked all of the students to wear red, white,
and blue to school today. She taught them that even
in times of tragedy, it's our job to show that
we always love America and no other country or bad
guys could possibly take that away from us. A lot
can be learned from this teacher. Most likely, she was
not alive herself when 9-11 happened, but she is going

(36:56):
above and beyond to instill in her students why we
should be proud of our country, especially in the face
of tragedy. As we commemorate the 25th anniversary of that
dark day in our nation's history and remember the stories
of the lives lost and the many heroes who sacrificed everything,
it's important to also take a moment to appreciate the
teachers who are keeping these stories alive and instilling a

(37:18):
love of country in the next generation. That is Megan
Novak writing at the Heartland Post about her son's kindergarten teacher.
I would like to give that teacher an award, frankly.
I was talking about earlier in the week, my son's
principal actually said for every middle and high school student, uh,
in the district, or at least in the middle and

(37:41):
high school today, they were watching the man in the
red bandana, which if you're looking for something, it was
made for ESPN, uh, about Wells Crowther, who president Trump
just gave the posthumous medal of freedom to, uh, earlier
this week in a ceremony, I believe on Tuesday, uh,
It just exemplifies what this country is about. And for

(38:03):
educators like that who say, look, we can avoid the
politics of this. We can avoid what sometimes 9-11 discussions
devolve into conspiracy theorizing and discussions over the causes of
terrorism and whatever other nonsense that the left now gets
us into. We can say, look, there were heroes on

(38:26):
that day. who willingly ran into the towers as they
were collapsing and knowing full well that they might never,
ever come out. Wells Crowther was one of them. He
got 18 people down. He was running back up. I mean,
just the heroism of that day was utterly incredible. And

(38:49):
we can talk about that and say, yes, there is
unspeakable evil in this country. There was on 9-11-2001. there
is in 9-11, 2026, 25 years later, there is unspeakable
evil in this country, in the world, all over. But
there is a fundamental goodness about humanity that even on

(39:09):
America's darkest day, even on the darkest days in world history,
will always shine through. That ultimately, I think, is what
the takeaway maybe should be. That the light of human
goodness always, just like the lights that emanate from the
twin towers where they once stood tonight. will always be

(39:31):
the guiding light for this world. You're listening to The
Dan O'Donnell Show. Hour number two on this, the 25th
anniversary of that fateful day, September 11th, 2001. Welcome back
to The Dan O'Donnell Show. If you'd like to join us,
414-799-1130 on our Carpetland USA Flooring Center talk and text line.

(39:54):
You can always email me, dod at iheartmedia.com. At Dan
O'Donnell Show on X, Facebook, Instagram as well. Check out
The Dan O'Donnell Show podcast on iHeartRadio or wherever you
listen to podcasts. As we get into the daily Trump date,
of course, the president started his day for the 9-11

(40:15):
observance ceremony at the Pentagon. First Lady Melania Trump also
there delivered remarks honoring the victims, first responders, and military
personnel and said something that really gets to the heart
of what it is that 9-11 was about, what it
is that we swore on that day and every day

(40:37):
after that we would never forget, and the lesson that
we really should be taking away, that this fundamentally is
a good country we are a good people that makes
us a great country that makes us of great people
that america is great because its people fundamentally are good
here's the president no one.

Speaker 13 (40:57):
Can ever prepare for a day like nine eleven but
we can always choose to be the kind of nation
the world saw in those days We can build families.

Speaker 1 (41:11):
Like the Stackpoles.

Speaker 13 (41:12):
We can raise our children to know that their country
is good, that their fathers are brave, and that our
flag is a symbol of justice and freedom. And we
can be a nation whose heroes are not fanatics for
an abstract cause.

Speaker 1 (41:33):
They don't even know, really, what they're doing. but the
kind who race.

Speaker 13 (41:38):
Into buildings and give their lives on a Tuesday morning.
For strangers, they've never met people they didn't know, gave
their lives. And we can fill the lives of our
children with light and love that will sustain them against
any trial and transcend, any darkness, whenever that darkness may come.

(42:07):
As scripture tells us, the light shines in the darkness
and the darkness has not overcome it. September 11th reminded
us of the terrible power of hate. The 25 years
since have shown us the even greater power of the

(42:29):
American spirit to endure and prevail and to win. And
today our country is stronger. than it has ever been.

Speaker 8 (42:40):
Before.

Speaker 13 (42:41):
It has never been as strong as it is right now.

Speaker 1 (42:45):
Because of that spirit.

Speaker 13 (42:47):
When future generations come here in 25, 100, or 250
years from now, they will stand in a nation that
is free and unyielding.

Speaker 14 (43:00):
In the face of evil, and they will still honor
the heroes 9-11, 2001, who no age will erase from
the memory of time. It will never, ever be forgotten.

Speaker 13 (43:19):
Will never be forgotten. And we can never forget.

Speaker 1 (43:24):
President Trump from here is going to head out to Dublin.
He is going to be going to his golf course,
the Trump Golf Resort in Ireland. for the Irish Open.
So he's going to be spending the weekend there. Vice
President J.D. Vance today represented the Trump administration at the
Ground Zero ceremony in New York. He was joined by

(43:47):
former presidents Obama, George W. Bush, and Bill Clinton, all
of the former living presidents, save for Biden, a number
of other Trump administration officials in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, for the
ceremony there honoring President the heroes of Flight 93, the
victims there. Today, the big news outside of the 9-11

(44:10):
anniversary impacting the Trump White House was, of course, the
inflation report. CPI report today, year-over-year inflation staying flat, but
inflation did run hot up to 0.4% month-over-month for the
month of August. Markets are now starting to price in
a rate increase. by the federal reserve when it next meets,

(44:35):
this is exactly the opposite of what it was that
president Trump wanted to do with the federal reserve, because
obviously there is a whole lot wrapped up in getting
those interest rates down. However, as the president said, just
a couple of days ago, it is very likely, of course,
by the way, what was driving those monthly energy increases

(44:57):
was the very, very volatile, uh, food and energy, of
course it was energy, it was the price of gas,
was of course CPI is much, much more stable. And
President Trump was warning that, look, gas prices are not
going to go down most likely until after the midterms. Now,
this would very likely be pretty doggone devastating for anybody

(45:22):
who has to run in these conditions because even though, yes,
the price of gas was much, much higher in during
the peak of the summer of 2022 under Joe Biden,
there was no crisis. They tried to blame the Putin
invasion of Ukraine as being the cause of gas prices spiking.

(45:43):
That wasn't. It was domestic energy policy. It was choking
off domestic supply and making us far more dependent upon
OPEC and other nations that are hostile to American interests. Well,
What the Trump administration has done is really take us
away from foreign dependence. He has turned America into the
single biggest net exporter of oil, and the massive deal

(46:08):
that was struck with Venezuela is going to have long-term
dramatic consequences. not just for lowering the price of energy
here in the United States and across the Western Hemisphere,
but it is also going to put significant pressure on
the enemies of America looking at you, China, as the
United States is just asserting once again its dominance in

(46:32):
this hemisphere. And remember, all of this, all of this
fight for resources, the Iran war, All of it. Yes,
we could not allow Iran to have a nuclear weapon.
President Trump said that over and over and over again.
It was all about Iran not having a nuclear weapon,
Iran not having a nuclear weapon. Well, that coming, the

(46:52):
attack on Iran coming in such short order after the
strike that took out Nicolas Maduro and brought him to justice,
by the way. He is awaiting federal trial in the
United States. The U.S. government did not recognize him as
the rightful leader of Venezuela, but rather as essentially an
international drug kingpin. So the strike that took him out

(47:15):
was also about essentially boxing China in and not allowing
it to essentially fuel its economy and, more importantly, fuel
the economy of tomorrow. I know I have talked about
this at great length. And it bears repeating. All this
is about every single strategic geopolitical move that is being

(47:37):
made right now is aimed at three things. One, controlling
artificial intelligence and being the dominant player in AI. Two,
being the dominant player in robotic technology as well as supercomputing.
I'll add that on to artificial intelligence. And also technology.

(47:58):
controlling the race for space. Right now, the United States
has a substantial lead in all of them. Well, what
do you think is the common denominator behind all of those?
We need a tremendous amount of electricity. We need a
tremendous amount of rocket fuel. We need a tremendous amount
of energy. What this president has done, and he had

(48:21):
the foresight back in his first term, even though he
was ridiculed for creating Space Force, They made an entire
show on Netflix starring Steve Carell from The Office. Poking
fun at this president was dumb enough to start Space Force. Oh,
what a joke it was. What a laughable thing it was. Well,
just a couple of weeks ago, he dedicated or at

(48:42):
least announced the new Space Force Academy that's going to
be like West Point. It's going to be like the
Naval Academy, the Air Force Academy. This is going to
be sort of the future of educating and training people
in that next frontier. And what I think we're seeing now,
the debate, we talked a lot about this yesterday, about

(49:02):
flock cameras, the debate about data centers, the debate about
artificial intelligence. Generally, I saw the guy was at Roxon,
John Roxon, I believe his name is, who just very
publicly quit Anthropic and said artificial generative intelligence not just
the large language models, which essentially just predict what the

(49:24):
next word is going to be in a string of
words without really doing any independent, what we would call
thought at the machine level, that generative intelligence is a
power that that is going to kill us all. I
have heard the doomsday scenarios. I have a very difficult
time believing that this is, and especially when I see

(49:47):
a whole lot of this anti-data center push coming from
Neville Roy Singham, who is a billionaire, and he is
also about as big a China shill as it gets.
We need to control data in this country. I'm not
saying that Port Washington is needs to accept a data center.

(50:08):
I am not saying that every place the libs want
to put a data center, and you'll notice it is
never in lib communities. Seriously, name me a data center
that is gone in a liberal community at any point
during this massive push to put data centers in every
red area of this state and every other state. They

(50:30):
don't want them. And it has nothing to do with,
you know, that they're going to give everyone cancer. Like,
what was that? The fear of 5G is going to
suck Lake Michigan dry. Was that the insane environmental fear
they gave us over the Foxconn plant? No, there are
very real concerns about changing the fundamental nature of a
rural or small town community and just turning it into

(50:53):
something it's not. I get those concerns, but this idea
that we can't have data centers anywhere is Just like
this idea that is now getting in the public bloodstream
that we can't have flock cameras anywhere. And look, we
talked about this at length yesterday. I understand the constitutional concerns.
I share them. I think there are significant Fourth Amendment concerns.

(51:16):
And I think there are serious, serious potential for abuse
of these things. Just as we had the debate in
the post 9-11 world over the mass surveillance of cell
phone data. Just as we had trap and trace controversies,
just as we had all sorts of things that sort

(51:38):
of morphed into a new understanding of Fourth Amendment law,
a new understanding of civil liberties and constitutional law. I
think we need to have the courts very quickly get
some ground rules. But the solution is clearly not what
I fear far too many, again, very liberal communities are

(51:59):
doing today. And just getting rid of flock cameras altogether. Well,
who do you think benefits the most from that? The
criminals who would otherwise be caught. Look, it's not a coincidence, folks.
The first year that we saw flock cameras be widely used, 2025,
we sort of hit a critical mass for flock cameras

(52:22):
and advanced automated license readers. We saw the single biggest
drop in the nation's murder rate and violent crime rate
since the FBI began tracking statistics. The biggest reason for this,
of course, was Trump's crackdown on illegal immigration, the deportations,
the closing of the southern border, focusing on getting just dangerous,

(52:43):
awful human beings out of this country quickly. That's the
big thing. The secondary thing is people are no longer
able to get away with crimes that they might have
been able to get away with. Now, that does not
excuse the very real concerns, just as we have very
real concerns about generative A.I. and we have very real
concerns about pretty much everything. When you have these technological

(53:07):
leaps and bounds. But do not kid yourselves. There are
a whole lot of people in this world who do
not have America's best interests at heart, who want us
to just be Luddites and smash all of our technology,
just as the actual Luddites did during the Industrial Revolution
more than 150 years ago. It's the exact same thing,

(53:31):
because the idea here is we don't want America to
get too far ahead before we get too far ahead
of ourselves we've got to take a step back it
was a big big event the first ever midterm convention
in dallas last night congressman glenn growth min was there
he will check in with us next here on the

(53:52):
dan o'donnell show welcome back to the dan o'donnell show
the midterm convention first ever midterm convention wrapping up in
Dallas last night. Wisconsin Congressman Glenn Grothman was there. He
is back in Wisconsin today. He joins us now on
the Dan O'Donnell Show. Sir, how was it? What was
your biggest takeaway from the big midterm convention?

Speaker 8 (54:16):
Well, it was certainly very exciting. And the best thing
was the speeches, not just by Trump, but by Vance.
There was a great speech there by Bobby Kennedy. Until
you listen to them all run together, it's easy to
forget all the good things that they've done. And that's
going to be very frustrating. We should not have who
wins the midterm elections determined by whether gas is $ 3. 80

(54:40):
a gallon or $ 2. 80 a gallon. And again and again,
Trump and Bobby Kennedy and Vance standing up to the
special interests that you haven't seen people stand up to forever.
And we can go over some of those things. And
not only that, going after some politically incorrect things, but

(55:01):
things that have to be done. You know, you talk
about the border. I'll tell you, I get around. There
are employers, wealthy employers, who are for really opening up
the border. And that by itself is the biggest thing.
If we lose this race after all Trump and the

(55:24):
legislature has done on the border... It sends a message
to politicians that the public doesn't care about how many
people are coming across the border. That's the first thing
I got. The next thing is this DEI, which we
have done so much in all of our appropriation bills
to get out of this stuff where we have a

(55:45):
big bureaucracy judging people by, you know, are you Native American?
Are you Pacific Islander? Are you Middle Eastern? North African
or what have you, in which we have all these
groups being treated better than the native born. Um, but,
but we got rid of a lot of this stuff. Um,

(56:06):
and again, are we going to be rewarded by that?
Or are we going to send the message to every
politician in Washington and every politician is going to come
to Washington that the public doesn't care or even wants DEI. Um,
We have an incredibly low murder rate, apparently the lowest
murder rate in over 120 years. That kind of surprises me.

(56:28):
But I think the attitude the Republicans have set is
a pro-police attitude, right? Pro-law enforcement attitude. And that's why
it's not a coincidence. It's not a coincidence, you know?

Speaker 1 (56:41):
Well, I've got to ask, sir. You sound, if I'm
reading this correctly... You sound rather pessimistic about the midterms.
And I get it. I get it. Politics is cyclical.
The party that controls the White House, especially if it
has control of both houses of Congress, as Republicans do,
typically pays a price in the next midterms. The opposition

(57:02):
party is very motivated to get their people out to vote.
They often do very well. But it does sound to
me like you think there might be a blue wave.

Speaker 8 (57:14):
I don't say a blue wave. I mean, I'm concerned
like everybody's concerned for the historical reasons. I think we
should do very well and we're going to be spending
a lot more money in the next two months to
show that, right? I mean, there are so many areas
in which things have gone well. I'll tell you, the
other day I was at a union event and some

(57:35):
of the people who were there at the entrance, you know,
like we're going to come after you. And historically, You
couldn't be more pro-union than Donald Trump. I'll tell you,
I was in Madison for a long period of time.
Again and again, I know the Carpenters Union. Their number
one goal was we've got to get rid of all

(57:55):
these illegals. They're stealing good union jobs. So here, Trump again,
the dream presidency, as well as a Congress that is
a dream presidency or a dream Congress for.

Speaker 1 (58:10):
Trump, Working people?

Speaker 8 (58:14):
For working people.

Speaker 6 (58:17):
Yeah.

Speaker 10 (58:17):
Right.

Speaker 8 (58:17):
I mean, this is what we need. You know, they
always were complaining about people coming here. And I'll tell you,
I have sat in the offices of executives saying, Glenn,
I'm tired of giving away so many raises. I want
more illegals. Because what happens with the law of supply
and demand, right? So here you have, I mean, everybody

(58:38):
should be for not just Trump, but the Republicans underneath
them who have created a situation in which there is no,
or created a situation in which wages are going up.
And they're going up because, you know, we're not letting

(58:59):
a bunch of people who are going to accept lower
wages coming across the border. You want to go back
to the, yeah, go ahead.

Speaker 1 (59:05):
Oh, I was just going to say, I think on
that score, Trump is sort, of a victim of his
own success, right? We saw this in the first Trump term.
He was so incredibly good on illegal immigration. And the
second Trump administration has been even better. What did he say?
We don't need new laws. We just needed a new president.
He proved that in two weeks, three weeks, the border

(59:26):
was totally sealed. We haven't released anything. A single person
into the interior of the country in something like 15,
16 months now, we're going to have net negative migration
for the first time in 50, 60 years. The crime
rate going down is a direct consequence of all that.
But it's almost as though that takes the issue off

(59:48):
the table. It's an issue that really motivates people to vote.
He's so good at it that people aren't saying, well,
this is a problem. We need Republicans to stay in
there and solve.

Speaker 8 (59:58):
Yeah, and let me tell you something else. I talked
to a lobbyist for the landlords, not in Wisconsin. He's
talking more about the Southern United States where you have
more people who are illegal. And he told me his
people were a little bit suffering because they were having
to lower the rents. And why were they lowering the
rents in the Southern United States? Because we stopped this,

(01:00:19):
or as we kick out people who are illegally, right?
All of a sudden these apartments open up and rather
than being a buyer's market, for immigrants flooding in here
because we have a shortage. Instead, we have a necessity
of landlords having to cut their rents because they don't

(01:00:41):
have enough people to fill them up. That's an interesting thing,
isn't it?

Speaker 1 (01:00:45):
Yeah, it certainly is. And the other thing is... Oh,
go ahead, please. I'm sorry.

Speaker 8 (01:00:50):
And historically low unemployment numbers.

Speaker 9 (01:00:52):
Yeah.

Speaker 8 (01:00:53):
Why so unemployment? Because... You know, we have we don't
have this excess number of illegals walking around. I'll tell
you something. This morning when I left Dallas, I was
in a cab and I talked to a guy, Mexican
in descent. He was born here, but Mexican descent. He
was talking how tough it was in Biden. And I
hadn't realized that. But in Dallas, he felt he couldn't

(01:01:15):
let his kids outside to play in the lawn. He
couldn't let him play in the lawn because there were
so many illegals here. Now it's back to the days
in which his kids can play around. He wouldn't even
think of it. But that's it. That was his observation
on one of the reasons why he was so grateful
we have the Republicans in charge.

Speaker 1 (01:01:33):
Congressman Glenn Grothman joining me here on the Dan O'Donnell Show,
freshly back from Dallas at that midterm convention. Sir, to you,
what was the big highlight of that midterm convention? What
was the thing that really stood out to you?

Speaker 8 (01:01:48):
Oh, just the huge number. of records that are being hit.
Donald Trump saying that we had drug prices drop a
year ago for the first time forever was a small amount.
And then last year with this Trump Rx, some drugs
dropping over 50%. And that comes from a president and

(01:02:12):
a party that's not afraid to stand up to the
drug companies who give so much in campaign contributions. So
there you are. Another example, the military hitting their goal.
Remember just a couple of years.

Speaker 10 (01:02:25):
Ago, Biden.

Speaker 9 (01:02:26):
Oh, what was us?

Speaker 8 (01:02:27):
We don't you know, we don't have enough people applying
to get in the military. Now we're at one hundred
three percent of the target. Now, that doesn't affect the
average guy's daily life. But isn't it better to know
that we can pick from the cream of the crop
for our military because so many people want to join
because we have a commander in chief? who is a patriot,

(01:02:51):
as opposed to where we were two years ago, where
we didn't have enough people signing up for the military.
I mean, there's another thing you don't think about on
a day-to-day basis, but man, we cannot punish this party
for all the good things they're doing.

Speaker 4 (01:03:04):
Right.

Speaker 1 (01:03:05):
And we cannot punish the Democrats for how radical they
have gotten. And it's almost remarkable to me how short
the attention span is of the average American voter. that
have we really forgotten why prices are so high it
has nothing to do with iran okay gas prices i'll

(01:03:25):
give you the average price of gas is up about
a dollar over the same point last year for the
first time in american history in the summer of 2022
under joe biden because of just feckless economic policy that
led to hyperinflation, the likes of which we hadn't seen
in 40 years before that. The average price of gas
was $ 5 a gallon in all 50 states. He had

(01:03:48):
to raid the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, not because there was
any sort of emergency like a 9-11, but because Democrats
were going to get smoked in the midterms. I guess
I've got to ask you, though, sir, do you think
that you see a party that was very, very close
to nominating someone like Francesco Hong here in Wisconsin. You

(01:04:08):
see a party nominate.

Speaker 8 (01:04:10):
And have a guy who did nominate... Yeah, who's just.

Speaker 1 (01:04:13):
Thoroughly incompetent and radical on every major issue, giving tablets
to prisoners, for God's sakes. Yeah, but you see where
I'm going with this. The party that is just so
out of touch with everyday Americans and is so far
to the left do you think the voters will sort
of punish them for that? Because in 2022, Republicans thought, oh, well,

(01:04:35):
we can't possibly lose histories on our side, and then
went and nominated candidates who were not very high quality,
and they got punished for that. I almost wonder if
the pendulum is going to swing the other way, and
we see the same thing happen to Democrats this cycle.
Do you agree with that?

Speaker 8 (01:04:52):
Well, I certainly think it should, and as you get
out that story, I certainly think it will. I mean,
you know, If you want a party that is all
in on DI, a party that criticizes the tax cuts,
I mean, that's what you're getting from the Trump administration,
not to mention their transgender extremism. Do you want your
kids and grandkids to grow up in a world where

(01:05:15):
the government is run by the most extreme, the transgender?
You know, I mean, no, we don't want that. And
it would be a real disaster. By the way, I
also should mention Bobby Kennedy. gave a great speech, if
you want to Google it, talking about, you know, the
artificial dyes they're getting out of our food, the synthetic chemicals,

(01:05:36):
which he is attributing already better health in this country.
You know, if you buy a Big Mac in Europe,
I'm told, compared to a Big Mac here, they taste
entirely different. Why do they taste entirely different? Because our
food has too much artificial goop in it. Bobby Kennedy's
taking care of that. Now, a lot of people don't
think about, you know, the quality of my food. But

(01:05:56):
we really, and it takes guts. You know, a lot
of people, some of the Republicans don't have guts to
stand up to the junk food industry. How many politicians
stand up to Pepsi Cola? Not many. But we got
Donald Trump, and he's leading the congressional Republicans to stand
up to those people.

Speaker 1 (01:06:14):
And in fact, I think, you know what, you sort
of convinced me, sir, because my father was watching the
midterm convention. I stopped by and saw him. My kids
were all, you know, doing things. various, I think they
read violin lessons. So I had the night for, I
stopped by and visited my dad. He is, first of all,
he texts and is raving about Bobby Kennedy's speech. I

(01:06:35):
missed it because I was driving to his house. Uh,
he said, you have got to see this. You have
got to work this into your show. I watched it
was a tremendous speech. You have now convinced me. I'll
tell you what we're going to, I think next segment, sir,
we're going to play a bit of an extended portion
of Bobby Kennedy's speech. Just, eviscerating the democratic party because

(01:06:57):
you are you are the second person now third person
actually had another friend who said did you see bobby's
speech texted me this morning uh so we are going
to get into that uh congressman i always do appreciate
uh you taking the time i i i agree with
you if there were justice in this world the democrats
would never win another race because of how radical and

(01:07:20):
how awful they have proven themselves to be last time
they had power They destroyed this economy. What do you
think will happen this time? Congressman Glenn Grothman, my guest, sir,
thank you so much. Have a wonderful weekend.

Speaker 8 (01:07:34):
Thank you. And Google that Bobby Kennedy speech, baby.

Speaker 9 (01:07:37):
Thanks.

Speaker 1 (01:07:37):
All right, sir. You are listening to The Dan O'Donnell Show.
We'll get to Bobby coming up next. As promised to
both Congressman Glenn Grothman and my own dad, here on
the Dan O'Donnell Show, one of the best speeches I
have heard all year and I have heard in a
long time came from Health and Human Services Secretary Bobby

(01:08:01):
Kennedy Jr. last night at the Republican Midterm Convention. Now, Kennedy,
of course, is from the most famous Democrat family in
in american history the kennedys are synonymous with the democratic
party but in his speech and we're going to play
a couple of longer excerpts from it because he just

(01:08:22):
does such an incredible job of illustrating how far democrats
have fallen from the lofty ideals that they represented when
his father was attorney general when his uncle was president
even as recently as the clinton era Democrats stood for
things that Republicans would stand with them on. Now, there

(01:08:45):
is absolutely nothing that ties the Democratic Party of today
to its history. In fact, they would argue that the
Democrats of yesteryear were racist bigots. Here is bobby kennedy
junior talking about what the democratic party used to stand for.

Speaker 10 (01:09:06):
Well i'm seventy two years old and for seventy years
of my life i would have been any amount of
money and i would not be addressing a republican convention

(01:09:29):
The irony of my presence here is inescapable. I attended
my first Democratic convention in 1960 when I was six
years old, and I attended most of the conventions, the
Democratic conventions after that, and I spoke as a keynote
speaker in many of them. I grew up in a

(01:09:51):
Democratic party of Franklin Roosevelt, of my uncle John Kennedy,
of my father Robert Kennedy. And ours was a party.
Ours was a party of strong principles, of clear policies,

(01:10:13):
and an inspiring idealistic vision for America. My uncle ran
on a platform of tax cuts, strong defense, and fighting communism.

Speaker 1 (01:10:26):
Does that sound familiar?

Speaker 10 (01:10:32):
The Democrats of that era stood with labor and working
people and the American middle class. Nearly every cop and
firefighter was a Democrat. Our party was a champion of
the Bill of Rights and particularly for unbridled free speech.
It was wary of centralized government power and corporate privilege

(01:10:57):
and secret intelligence agencies. My uncle and father understood the
connection between free markets and functional democracy. They stood firmly
against crony capitalism on the right and socialism on the left.
They were all for competition, for meritocracy, and for excellence,

(01:11:22):
which they thought should be a universal aspiration for Americans.
My father and uncles had served in World War II,
and they understood the difference between forever wars that they
opposed and wars to protect our national security, which they
believed we should never hesitate to defend.

Speaker 1 (01:11:45):
My family.

Speaker 10 (01:11:45):
My family played critical roles in building NIH and the
CDC into centers of gold standard science that transformed America

(01:12:06):
into this relentless dynamo of international research. They promoted physical fitness,
and they protected women's sports. My uncle, Ted Kennedy, wrote
Title IX. which, because he wanted to make sure that women,

(01:12:32):
real women, were able to have a safe and guaranteed
spot in college sports. And they stood with Israel as
the bulwark of democracy. and as a beacon for press

(01:12:57):
and religious freedoms, a haven from oppression to gays and
women and ethnic and religious minorities amidst a regional sea
of intolerance, of misogyny, of child marriage, of human slavery,
and of ethnic and religious genocide. They saw Israel as

(01:13:21):
America's most critical frontline ally in fighting the toxic ideology
of Islamism, which by its own accounts is waging an
existential war against our country and against Western liberal democracy.

Speaker 1 (01:13:44):
It's an ideology that.

Speaker 10 (01:13:45):
Has subjugated, impoverished, and tyrannized and tortured the people of
Palestine and the people of Iran, and they openly promise
to do the same to us. Democrats oppose government coercion,
defended individual rights, believe that government should give Americans information,

(01:14:10):
good information, and then let them trust them to make
up their own minds. Democrats and labor leaders fought fiercely
in my generation to stop illegal immigration at the border.
During COVID, I watched the Democratic Party turn against every

(01:14:30):
one of its essential values, its principles, and all of
the policies that define my party. Democrats turned away from
gold standard research and blindly defended industry-sponsored, agenda-driven science written
by corrupt and captive regulatory agencies.

Speaker 1 (01:14:53):
So, I would disagree with some of those that Democrats
weren't actually corrupt. the party of the constitution and the
party standing up for all of that but all right
that that is from a lifelong democrat and it's it's
difficult to argue on the broad points that democrats were
the party of free speech democrats were the party that

(01:15:13):
believed at least uh... a couple of generations ago in
a strong national defense in the working people in protecting
working people justin incredible first couple of minutes of Kennedy's speech.
Then he gets into how in just a matter of
weeks during COVID-19 in 2020, Democrats systematically dismantled the Constitution itself.

(01:15:41):
This is stunning. Take a listen.

Speaker 10 (01:15:44):
And the Democrats, which were once the champions of the
American Constitution, systematically obliterated the Bill of Rights. And particularly
beginning with the First Amendment, under the guise of combating misinformation,
Democrats censored hundreds of scientists and physicians who questioned the

(01:16:06):
government's dubious COVID pronouncements and orthodoxies. 37 years, 37 hours
after President Biden took the oath of office, he ordered
Facebook and Instagram to remove my accounts. in order to
prevent public debate. I'm not complaining about what happened to me,

(01:16:30):
but it was a bad thing.

Speaker 1 (01:16:32):
For our country.

Speaker 10 (01:16:33):
Democrats obliterated the second leg of the First Amendment, the
guaranteed right of assembly by social distancing regulations that were
completely unscience-based. Democrats violated the third leg of the First
Amendment the freedom to worship. They closed every church in

(01:16:56):
our country for a year. Who could imagine that would
have ever happened? And they kept open the liquor stores
and the big box stores as essential businesses. Democrats torpedoed
the Seventh Amendment right to jury trial by giving liability
shields to the giant pharmaceutical companies. No matter how negligent

(01:17:18):
they were, no matter how reckless, no matter how toxic
the ingredients, no matter how grievous your injury, you could
not sue them. Democrats violated the Fifth Amendment by shutting
down three million businesses with no due process and no
just compensation. Democrats shut down the Fourth Amendment, protection from

(01:17:43):
unlawful searches and seizures by forcing Americans to disclose their
medical information before they could exercise their constitutional rights. In
a single year, my party obliterated 250 years of constitutional guarantees.

Speaker 1 (01:18:04):
And that, he said, was what finally convinced him that
this is no longer his father's Democratic Party. It's no
longer his uncle's Democratic Party. It's no longer his Democratic
Party or your Democratic Party. This is something new. This
is something different. And frankly, this is something incredibly anti-American

(01:18:26):
and dangerous. It is anti-constitutional. It is anti-Western. It is anti-white.
It is anti-capitalist. It is openly anti-American. And it must
be defeated. Check out the entire speech. It runs about 20,
25 minutes. You will not regret it. You are listening
to The Dan O'Donnell Show. It is conservative thought, not

(01:18:48):
just talk. 25 years ago today, and in a way,
for those who lived through it, it feels like, how
is it even possible that a quarter century has passed?
I am Dan O'Donnell. Welcome back. Final hour on a Friday.
a special sort of retrospective. I know we've covered some

(01:19:10):
other things. And by the way, again, I do strongly
encourage you, take about a half hour. I think it
runs 20, 25 minutes. Watch, if you didn't watch it
last night, all of Bobby Kennedy Jr. 's speech just
excoriating his lifelong party. I mean, this is the ultimate Democrat.
from the ultimate democrat family in fact many members of

(01:19:32):
his family absolutely do not talk to him because of
how he turned his back on the party or how
as he puts it the party turned his back on
him at many democrats have said you want musk is
another example of a lifelong democrat Somebody who said, look,
I didn't leave the party. The party left me. The
party went so far to the left. It went just

(01:19:54):
utterly insane really since COVID-19. What do they say? Oh,
woke one was crazy. Oh, as if we're not still
in the peak woke era. As if now woke one
hasn't been replaced by woke two, which is even more
insidious and even more hard edged because it's just open
socialist communism. This is just straight up. racism and Marxism

(01:20:20):
rolled up into one, frankly, bigoted package that wraps itself
in the mantle of compassion and caring about people. But
we have sort of had as the undercurrent of today's show,
9-11 and where we are 25 years later, it is
deeply disturbing that you have so many people essentially espouse

(01:20:44):
the same ideology of Osama bin Laden in the hijack.
And I don't mean that in a figurative sense. I
don't mean that in a metaphorical sense. About a year
or two ago, I can't remember the exact year, it
just popped into my head because I had completely forgotten it.
People were rediscovering one of Osama bin Laden's videos, and

(01:21:05):
it was a transcribed version, and they were reading it
and filming themselves on TikTok. agreeing with osama bin laden
agreeing with him about american imperialism and at the great
satan that is america and how all of the world's
problems can be laid at the feet of america and
especially the american form of x imperialist exploitative capitalism i

(01:21:28):
mean there is not a dime's worth of difference between
the writings of the man who literally masterminded not one,
but two attacks on the world trade center. People forget
that he also masterminded the 1993 world trade center bombing
and actually said when he was asked, why, you know,
didn't the towers come down and said, we didn't have

(01:21:49):
enough money. We didn't have enough planning. Well, eight years
later they did. And people 20 years, 21, 22 years
after the twin towers did come down are discovering this
great philosopher who Osama bin Laden. It's because I think
they really haven't been educated or they have been deliberately

(01:22:09):
misinformed and deliberately indoctrinated instead of educated into this anti-American philosophy.
All right, if you would like to join the Dan
O'Donnell Show, 414-799-1130. That is our Carpetland USA Flooring Center
talk and text line. Email dod at iheartmedia.com at danodonnellshowx, Facebook, Instagram,

(01:22:32):
Dan O'Donnell Show podcast on iHeartRadio or wherever you listen
to podcasts. Please do check it out. We had a
fantastic interview with Glenn Grothman coming off of the midterm convention.
We also talked with the president of the Wisconsin 9-11
Memorial and Education Center. It is so important to support

(01:22:54):
this mission, to support education about 9-11, to support education
in general about actual American history, because Frankly, we are
not teaching it. Well, Tom Tiffany, gubernatorial candidate, Republican, today
said he is going to require Wisconsin schools to teach

(01:23:15):
students about the September 11th attacks. He said, 25 years ago,
America was forever changed when terrorists attacked our country. We
must never forget the 2,977 innocent lives taken by the
first responders who ran towards the danger, the passengers of
Flight 93 who fought back, and the Americans who answered

(01:23:36):
the call to serve our country in the years that followed.
As I said, this was the stat that really got me.
About one third of Americans were not born when 9-11 happened. Now,
right now, Wisconsin does require schools to hold, quote, a
special observance of September 11th, but state law does not

(01:23:57):
actually require schools to teach students about the terror attacks.
That puts Wisconsin behind a number of other states that
have already made 9-11 education a part of their requirements
for schools. The Associated Press actually reviewed this, and it
published a report ahead of the 25th anniversary today. It
found that numerous states... do have requirements related to teaching

(01:24:20):
about 9-11. Educators, this from our website, the Heartland Post,
educators are increasingly grappling with how to teach an event
that none of today's K-12 students and even many of
today's teachers were alive to witness. Well, Tiffany says Wisconsin
should join those other states to ensure that Wisconsin students
receive in-depth education on one of the most defining events

(01:24:43):
in modern American history. He said, as the number of
Americans with a personal memory of 9-11 grows smaller, our
responsibility to teach its history grows greater. Future generations must
understand what happened on September 11th so that America never forgets.
Never forget was, of course, the promise that we made

(01:25:03):
ourselves and a lot of us have. I mean, nobody
who lived through 9-11, I think, will forget it. But
we remember it now not as this immediate promise. trauma
that we all experienced together, but we remember it as
sort of a historical event. And that's natural. That's what
I've been saying throughout this show today, that it's normal,

(01:25:23):
it's natural, it's expected that as the years pass, trauma
and the horror of, say, losing a loved one, It
never goes away. It never goes away. But you just
feel that pain in a different way. And I think
the nation collectively feels the pain and the trauma of

(01:25:44):
9-11 in a different way. But the thing that's really
upsetting and the thing that is really disappointing is that
so many people forget, not necessarily the morning of 9-11,
but right about now, right about like 5 p.m. Central Time,
6 p.m., George W. Bush gets to ground zero and
he's on the bullhorn. And he said, you know, I

(01:26:07):
hear you, the rest of the country hears you, and
the people who took these buildings down are going to
hear all of us soon. I mean, this was just
an incredible moment that showed the resolve of the people
that weren't going to be defeated, that weren't going to
be cowed into subservience, that weren't going to apologize for

(01:26:31):
who we are. The idea was, and I can still remember,
As a Marquette University student, I did not go to
any class, and I think most classes were canceled. There
was a big prayer vigil, I believe 9-11, 9-12, somewhere
in there as a Tuesday, and classes resumed the next day.
I will never, ever forget this. I can't remember the class.

(01:26:53):
I know it was a philosophy class of some sort.
If you ask me what it was, I don't know.
It was 25 years ago. This was September 12th, so
this would be tomorrow, 25 years ago. and i get
into the class and the professor whose name i don't
know i remember he was a jesuit priest and there
there were a ton of jesuit priests back then who

(01:27:14):
were were teaching were in the administration father uh... wild
was uh... did great president of the university jesuit priest uh...
but the jesuits sort of have a fierce liberal streak
i was not fully prepared for this professor to say
something to the effect of, all right, I trust you

(01:27:36):
have all now seen the tragedy that unfolded in New
York and Washington, D.C. And I want to discuss today
what America has done that would push people to respond
like this. And I looked around saying, you have got
to be kidding me. Of course, kids raised their hand

(01:27:58):
and they were saying, oh, well, it was, you know,
and again, mimicking the same sort of talking points that
we see today well they have escaped college classrooms and
they are now mainstream that it's american imperialism that it's
american meddling in the middle east that it's uh... us
imposing our will on people ultimately what it comes down

(01:28:19):
to and this is the ultimate law in leftist thinking
this is the ultimate failure that they have is ascribing
virtue to people who are in what they describe oftentimes
erroneously as an oppressed class as an oppressed demographic or

(01:28:39):
socioeconomic group. If you collectively, if you are a member
of that collective group, then there is a collective virtue
that sort of washes over you by virtue of you
belonging to that group. And no matter what vice you
engage in, no matter what evil you engage in, it
can be explained by the people in that other group,

(01:29:01):
the group that has been oppressing you. This was how
we saw this much more recently on October 7th, 2023,
when we had the worst terror attack in the history
of Israel. When you had some of the absolute most
vile human beings on earth attack innocent kids, kids, teenagers

(01:29:24):
who were at a music festival, you had elderly people
who just happened to be in their homes in the
wrong place when these people parachuted in and just committed
atrocities against them, murdered them, slaughtered them wholesale, kidnapped them,
took them back to the Palestinian territories. By that afternoon

(01:29:45):
in New York City, And by the next day, in Madison, Wisconsin,
on the campus of UW-Madison, you had leftists, basically, and
you had Islamists, sympathizers to these monsters, rallying not because
they were mourning or they were fearful of what Israel's

(01:30:05):
response was going to— There was a woman on the
bullhorn in Madison. This was Sunday, October 8th, 2023, almost
three years ago. I remember it like it was yesterday.
I remember it almost as clearly as I remember 9-11-2001
because it was so shocking. It so utterly shocked my conscience.

(01:30:27):
This woman was screaming into the bullhorn, glory to the martyrs.
Glory to the martyrs. No, it certainly wasn't the Jewish
people who were killed simply because they were Jewish. No,
the martyrs were the people who were the terrorists. They
were the ones doing the attacking. They were the ones
committing the atrocities. It radicalized me beyond measure, especially when

(01:30:53):
what happened over the next couple of years spilled out
into mainstream society. The anti-Semitism that comes from the exact
same place of the anti-Americanism that sort of spurs people
on to read Osama bin Laden and think, yeah, I
kind of like the cut of this guy's jib. I
like what he's got to say because it plays into

(01:31:16):
this oppressor and oppressed mindset that even though these were
just innocent kids who were enjoying a music festival in
Israel because they were Israeli, they were collectively guilty. They
were collectively at fault because of Israel and the West
and America's posture towards those poor Palestinian people. The Palestinian

(01:31:43):
people have been supporting terrorists and electing terrorists, getting literal
terrorists to lead them, to govern them for decades. Yasser
Arafat was a terrorist. The PLO was a terrorist organization.
Hamas is a terrorist organization. Hamas democratically elected 20 years

(01:32:09):
ago when the Israelis... abandoned the Gaza Strip. Okay, you
go for it. Well, what happened? Within two decades, you
talk about not learning the lessons of 9-11. You cannot
let that soar, fester. You cannot let people who are

(01:32:31):
hell-bent on your destruction simply because you come from a
quote-unquote oppressor state. You cannot allow them to plot. You
cannot allow them to have access to any sort of
resources which would allow them to rain death and destruction
upon you because they lust after nothing but that. Now,

(01:32:54):
I'm not saying that the socialists here in America, the
communists who have now taken over the Democratic Party, have
that same sort of bloodlust. But I'll tell you what,
an uncomfortable number of them certainly were cheering a year
ago after Charlie Kirk was assassinated. An uncomfortable number of

(01:33:16):
them are now saying, yeah, uh, America did deserve 9-11.
The most popular streamer on the socialist left, Hassan Piker,
bleep it, dude, America deserved 9-11. He says he was
trying to be intentionally provocative, that this was sort of
a bad joke. Okay, fine, whatever. When has that ever

(01:33:39):
entered the thought process of someone who actually loves this country?
We went through Ilhan Omar, Zoran Mamdani, Rashida Tlaib, uh...
the guy in in michigan uh... are better on on
on outside these are people who do to varying degrees

(01:34:01):
subscribe to the islamist mindset I'm not saying Islamic. This
has nothing to do with religion. It has everything to
do with Islamist superiority based on the same class division
that the modern socialist left is foisting upon us. This
idea that because Islam has been so thoroughly demonized, especially

(01:34:27):
after 9-11. This is Rashida Tlaib, 2019, saying immediately after
hearing about 9-11, I was worried because America is just
so Islamophobic and awful that my husband and my sisters
and everybody was going to be targeted because, again, America
is terrible.

Speaker 7 (01:34:47):
I was probably my second year in law school when
9-11 happened. And I was really terrified of what was
going to happen to my husband, who was only a
green card holder at the time. I immediately called my
brothers and told them, be very careful who you hang
out with. I'm telling my sisters, you know, just be
real careful out there and being really afraid of my

(01:35:09):
fellow Americans.

Speaker 1 (01:35:10):
Like how, how does that 3,000 people were just killed?
3,000 be 2,977 innocent lives. What were they? The oppressor class,
the people who just happened to go to work at
Cantor Fitzgerald, the people who just got on a plane and,

(01:35:31):
they were oppressors they they were there i just you
know what i'm gonna step aside for a break i
wasn't intending on talking about this at greater length but
i think you need to because it all sort of
comes back to the same basic thing we'll be right
back in just a second you're listening to the dan
o'donnell show Dan O'Donnell show classical conservatism, contemporary style. Welcome

(01:35:58):
back to it. I am actually going to use something
that I wanted to get to a little bit later on, maybe,
but it so perfectly ties into what we were just
talking about in that opening monologue about the collectivist mindset
of the left that causes this sort of breakdown in
thinking where you see the world. not in terms of it's,

(01:36:20):
it's actually sort of ironic because they believe in this
form of moral relativism, but they also see the world
in a strict black and white dichotomy where there are
oppressors and there are the oppressed. And if you are
a member, if you are a member of an oppressive group,

(01:36:40):
I E heterosexual, white, Christian males, this is at the
top of the oppressive food chain for the American left,
then it is nigh on impossible for you as an
individual to escape that collective stigma and be a virtuous person. Simultaneously,

(01:37:02):
if you are in a group that is oppressed, and
we were talking about this in terms of Arab Muslims
in the Middle East, the Palestinians in particular, that there
is very little that you can do.

Speaker 2 (01:37:17):
Oh, don't worry.

Speaker 1 (01:37:18):
They will pay lip service to say, well, yes, we
don't condone terrorism. And yes, we we abhor horrible acts.
But we have to understand what is it that the
people in that oppressive group who were just attacked, who
were just attacked, what did they do? to so anger,

(01:37:42):
so enraged, so victimize the people in the oppressed group
that they were forced to act. We saw this. We
saw this very, very recently. In the assassination of, well,
we saw this in the assassination of Charlie Kirk a
year and a day ago. What did the killer, Tyler Robinson,
say in the message to his transgender furry boyfriend? He said,

(01:38:06):
there is just some hate you can't negotiate out or
you can't argue with or you can't talk to or
something like that. I am justified in what I am
about to do, murder Charlie Kirk. Because Charlie Kirk is
such an unspeakable evil that we need to take that out.
We saw that also December 2024 in the cold-blooded assassination.

(01:38:30):
of Brian Thompson, the UnitedHealthcare CEO. Luigi Mangione, the socialist
trust fund piece of garbage who killed him, was lionized.
even by people like AOC and Elizabeth Warren, not overtly
like the weird fangirls who showed up outside of Mangione's
trial and were just true. I mean, those are just unhinged,

(01:38:52):
crazy people. But you actually had AOC and Elizabeth Warren,
two of the leading collectivists in America, say, no, we don't,
of course, endorse violence. We can't possibly endorse violence. But
You can see how people were driven to these extremes
because of the social violence perpetuated by insurance companies like UnitedHealthcare.

(01:39:18):
If that doesn't create what Ben Shapiro, I think, very
aptly describes as the permission structure to engage in acts
of terroristic violence, I don't know what does, quite frankly.
And there was something that happened today. that at least
i think it was today was on the cbs this
morning program with gail king oprah's bff and oh yes

(01:39:40):
we have got something from the oprah show as well
coming up that further illustrates this How liberals have this
real issue with ascribing virtue to people who exist inside
the demographic box and the demographic group that they have
assigned collective virtue to when they do something that doesn't

(01:40:04):
conform to the expectation. That's when their brains sort of
go haywire. So today, Gayle King is talking to one
of the Lindsey Clancy jurors, and the juror talks about
the racial makeup of the jury pool. she drops a

(01:40:25):
bit of a bombshell that holdout juror could not be
convinced that lindsey clancy was not guilty by reason of
insanity he was just he was dead set on convincing
her uh... one of the jurors said he just couldn't
get off the fact that lindsey brutally murdered her three
kids this is like public enemy number one in the

(01:40:45):
feminist left-wing uh... uh... lindsey clancy sphere right now she
dropped the bombshell that that holdout juror is a black man.
I want you to listen to Gail King's brain break
on live television.

Speaker 2 (01:41:05):
I'm curious about the jurors themselves because we know it
was nine women, three men. What was the age range?
What was the racial makeup? I haven't heard any of that.

Speaker 12 (01:41:14):
What was it? 70-ish to 22. And one person of
color and then everybody else was white.

Speaker 2 (01:41:28):
A lot of the jurors had children.

Speaker 10 (01:41:30):
Uh-huh.

Speaker 2 (01:41:31):
One person of color was a person of color, a
woman or a man?

Speaker 7 (01:41:35):
A man.

Speaker 2 (01:41:35):
A man. Is a holdout juror a person, a black man?

Speaker 7 (01:41:41):
Yes.

Speaker 2 (01:41:42):
A black man is a holdout juror?

Speaker 12 (01:41:43):
Yes.

Speaker 2 (01:41:46):
Well, I have to sit with that for just a second.

Speaker 1 (01:41:49):
She just can't square that.

Speaker 4 (01:41:50):
What?

Speaker 1 (01:41:51):
I need to sit with this for a little. A
black man did not vote the way that I wanted
him to. Wow. It is rare that you get that
sort of an admission on national television. It is rare
that you get someone like, okay, so wow. I, oh

(01:42:12):
my goodness. Because what now, why is that? Why is that?
The expectation is that because this man, she knows nothing.
We don't know his name. We don't know his age.
She just learned 15 seconds before that he was a
black man. Yet she can't square the fact that that
black man would not vote to acquit because she just
has presuppositions about his individual character by virtue of him

(01:42:37):
being in a demographic group. by virtue of being in
that group that is just sort of presumed to be
virtuous that is just sort of presumed to do exactly
what I want them to do at all times it
is remarkable how revealing that moment is isn't it it's

(01:42:58):
remarkable because it just lays bare the preconceived biases, not
just of Gayle King, but also everybody else who is
so shocked. And this, if it wasn't the 25th anniversary
of 9-11, would be the big thing on social media today,
that that holdout juror that was just presumed. I mean,

(01:43:18):
it was just presumed. This had to be some 55-year-old
Red hat wearing, Trump supporting white man who hates women,
who doesn't understand women, who is a closet misogynist. And
it's not. It's a black man. It totally upends this narrative. Now,

(01:43:41):
I said the Oprah show had an equally crazy moment.
I guess we might as well get to this. Oprah Winfrey,
Gayle's BFF on her show. I guess she's doing a
show now. I don't know if this is a web show.
I don't know if this is on TV, if this
is syndicate. I have no idea. Shockingly, I am not

(01:44:01):
an Oprah Winfrey super fan. I'm not in her target demo,
but Oprah gets a group of women together and they're
talking about the Lindsay Clancy case. And this woman who
presumably is a member of Oprah's audience and it's just
kind of talking, she gets up and she says, look,
We need to have the same energy and the same
passion that we had for Lindsay Clancy for a black

(01:44:26):
woman who might strangle her kids in cold blood.

Speaker 11 (01:44:30):
And the other thing that I would just be remiss
to not say is I hope this never happens again.
We know statistically it really will.

Speaker 7 (01:44:41):
It will.

Speaker 11 (01:44:42):
I want us to have the same passion for people
who don't look like Lindsay. who don't have her same access.

Speaker 8 (01:44:50):
Yeah.

Speaker 13 (01:44:52):
Yeah.

Speaker 7 (01:44:56):
Yeah.

Speaker 11 (01:44:57):
Who don't have her same access and education, her melanin,
her privilege. There are women of color sitting around this
country in prisons for this same thing that we've never
heard of. And I just want to remind us to
have the pink shirts and the energy for them as well.

Speaker 1 (01:45:16):
Yes, won't someone think of those poor black child murderers?
This is about as close to widespread psychosis that I
think you can possibly get to. What sort of failure

(01:45:38):
of cognitive reasoning says, yeah, we need to have similar
sympathy for people of color who commit heinous crimes. But
this is the modern American left. It is all broken
down by race, broken down by class, broken down by
socioeconomic status. and ascribing virtue to the quote-unquote underclass, to

(01:46:03):
the oppressed class, and vice, even evil, to the oppressor class,
whether real or imagined. You're listening to The Dan O'Donnell Show,
a tour de force of truth. Welcome back. It is
The Dan O'Donnell Show. So how is it that people

(01:46:25):
like Gayle King can be so shocked that the loan
holdout juror in the Lindsay Clancy case is black. Take
a listen to this. We played this in the last segment.
It's worth repeating. Gayle King, co-host of CBS's Morning Show,
this morning talking to one of the Lindsay Clancy jurors, who,

(01:46:47):
of course, is a feminist icon for trying to get
the triple murderer who strangled her children off, well, to
get her not guilty by reason of insanity. This woman
drops a bombshell on Gayle King that the holdout juror
is black. Gayle King can't possibly fathom that.

Speaker 2 (01:47:04):
I'm curious about the jurors themselves because we know it
was nine women, three men. What was the age range?
What was the racial makeup? I haven't heard any of that.

Speaker 12 (01:47:13):
What was it? 70-ish to 22. And one person of
color and then everybody else was white.

Speaker 2 (01:47:27):
A lot of the jurors had children. One person of
color was a person of color, a woman or a man?

Speaker 7 (01:47:34):
A man.

Speaker 2 (01:47:34):
A man. Is a holdout juror a black man?

Speaker 10 (01:47:40):
Yes.

Speaker 2 (01:47:41):
A black man is a holdout juror?

Speaker 7 (01:47:42):
Yes.

Speaker 2 (01:47:45):
Well, I have to sit with that for just a second.

Speaker 1 (01:47:48):
Now, why is that so difficult to understand? Unless, of course...
You have preconceived ideas about what a black man should
do simply by virtue of him being a black man.
And how is it that you ascribe virtue and you
ascribe vice? You ascribe good characteristics and evil characteristics based

(01:48:13):
on something as immutable as skin color because the left does.
Friedrich Nietzsche. actually pegged these people a hundred and, what,
thirty-some years ago. He wrote in his first essay on
the genealogy of morals, he talked about it in terms

(01:48:35):
of the concept of ressentiment, It is a French word
that literally just means resentment. But to Nietzsche, it was
a lot deeper than that because it was a bitterness
and a resentment of those who you perceive as more
successful than you as being inherently evil. He broke this

(01:48:55):
down into the master and slave morality. So master morality
essentially says, yes, These are powerful. These are self-assured. These
are life-affirming people. They start with, according to Nietzsche, a
yes to themselves. We are good. We are strong. We

(01:49:17):
are proud. We are generous. They look down on the weak,
not as bad or morally inferior, but Almost like, okay, well,
you don't have these characteristics, so they sort of look
at them almost with pity. The slave morality, on the
other hand, is quite the opposite. It begins with a

(01:49:38):
no directed outward at that which is different, stronger, or
more successful. The weak, the slave, in Nietzschean thought, can't
strike back in deed, so they compensate with imaginary revenge
by redefining the masters as evil and their own impotence, humility, meekness,

(01:49:59):
and pity as morally good. You see how this works.
Nietzsche used an image, he used a metaphor of the
lamb and the eagle, or any sort of bird of prey,
the lamb and the hawk. The lamb hates the eagle
or the hawk because hawks eat them. Therefore, eagles must

(01:50:22):
be evil and lambs who do not eat other animals
must be good. The eagles, though, don't feel morally guilty.
They simply act according to their nature. The lamb's judgment
is a creative act of ressentiment, not a discovery of
objective morality. That limitation, the limitation, though, of that, that

(01:50:48):
example has a limitation in that human beings do not
eat other human beings. I mean, there's one famous one
from Milwaukee, but you see where I'm going with this.
They do not exploit. So the limits of this and
Marx sort of embodied the slave morality when he wrote

(01:51:09):
Das Kapital. He wrote the Communist Manifesto. He essentially created
a manifestation of ressentiment that defined a generation, multiple generations
of people. We're still dealing with the effects of that today.
Human beings do not. The nature of humanity is not

(01:51:32):
to exploit others, especially not in a capitalist system. Marx
believes that it is.

Speaker 6 (01:51:38):
No.

Speaker 1 (01:51:40):
Capitalism. allows for the unprecedented wealth accumulation of all who
participate in it. It is not inherently immoral. This is
not eagles eating lambs or anything like that. But you see,
when you have an entire value system built upon this

(01:52:01):
outward anger towards people who you perceive as being more successful,
more powerful, somehow better than you, and folks, This is
why I talk about the two types of envy. There
is benign envy, which is that's to say like, oh, well, hey,
my neighbor has got a car. My neighbor has got
a really, really nice Mercedes. And I'm jealous of him

(01:52:24):
because I want a Mercedes like that. Benign envy says,
all right, you know what? I'm going to save up.
I'm going to do what I can to get that
exact same car. It turns envy inward. It says, what
can I do? to get what it is i want
in that sense it's very very healthy malignant envy on
the other hand, says my neighbor doesn't deserve that car.

Speaker 7 (01:52:48):
Why?

Speaker 1 (01:52:48):
Well, for reasons that I made up to, A, help
myself feel better about the fact that I don't have
a really nice Mercedes, and B, to excuse myself for
not working hard, not doing the things that might earn
me a new Mercedes. But it's very, very easy for
us to sort of turn that outward. It is a fascinating,

(01:53:13):
fascinating concept and i think i i can totally see
this at a playing out in all of the people
have sort of forgotten the lessons of 9-11 and try
to excuse away the anger that must have led to
terrorism and the anger that must have led to the
unspeakable evil well it must have been the oppressor class

(01:53:37):
doing something to the people who would otherwise be virtuous
but they felt they had no other choice as Abdul
El-Sayed said that the Michigan Senate candidate, he said, I
know we need to use the American military. We always
have to look at the military response. Well, I want
to look at the root cause. I want to look
at the pain that drove someone to this. Maybe there

(01:54:00):
is no pain. Maybe there is no blame that you
can actually ascribe to America, to innocent people who are
just going to work on a sunny Tuesday morning. Maybe
the people who you presume to be virtuous or presume
to have certain characteristics by virtue of belonging to a
demographic group are, on an individual level, pretty darn evil.

(01:54:24):
You're listening to The Dan O'Donnell Show. Just a couple
of minutes left here on The Dan O'Donnell Show before
we wrap it up for another beautiful Wisconsin weekend. It's already...
A beautiful Friday evening, the Brewers open up a three-game
series against the Cincinnati Reds at American Family Field this weekend.

(01:54:47):
And they can actually clinch the NL Central Division. They
are 10 games ahead of the Cubs, sitting at 91-56
on the season. The Cubs are at 81-66. Their magic
number is 5-6. And the Brewers already own the head-to-head tiebreaker. Now,
what a magic number means is that any combination of

(01:55:11):
Brewers wins or Cubs losses that totals five clinches the
division for the Brewers. Cubs are hosting the Pittsburgh Pirates
at Wrigley Field this weekend. So any combination of five
Brewers wins and Cubs losses will clinch it. Most realistic
path is probably the Brewers sweep the Reds And the

(01:55:33):
Cubs lose two out of three to the Pirates. If
the Pirates sweep the Cubs, the Brewers win two out
of three against the Reds. Those are the two most
realistic scenarios. It is, I'd say, probably 50-50 shot that
it happens. It's going to happen, ladies and gentlemen, barring
some sort of just miracle comeback. The Cubs got a

(01:55:56):
little too close for comfort before that last series where
the Brewers Just what an amazing series. It has been
so much fun watching this team for the past couple
of years. Really, for the past three years since Cubs
manager Craig Council abandoned us to go south. And Pat
Murphy just emerged as a truly incredible manager at the

(01:56:19):
Major League level. So that's what's going on in Major
League Baseball. Of course, the Green Bay Packers open up
the 2026 NFL season tonight. in Minnesota. And, folks, before
we get to it, very, very quick Packers preview on
this here. What did I say last night? I said
the Los Angeles Rams look like the best team in
the NFC. Now watch, they're going to go out and

(01:56:41):
lose to San Francisco in Australia by 21 points, just
to prove me wrong. Yeah, they lost by 20 points.
I was watching that game and said, all right, if
I am able to brag about this, it is not
very often that I predict a game like that And yes,
I did predict that they were going to win. There's
a whole lot of controversy. The 49ers got to Australia

(01:57:04):
a week ago to begin preparing. They actually played that
game at about 11 a.m. local time on Friday. It
was 7.30 p.m. or 11.30 a.m. or whatever it was.
7.30 p.m. on Thursday, our time. But the Rams only
got to Australia just a day. not even 24 hours

(01:57:27):
before kickoff and they flew out right afterwards. So there's
a lot of questions about that.

Speaker 7 (01:57:32):
All right.

Speaker 1 (01:57:33):
Very, very quick Green Bay Packers season preview. I think
it very likely with his criminal case out of the way,
Josh Jacobs is going to be suspended for six games.
He's probably going to negotiate that down for three Packers
running game. Maybe suspect. They don't know what they have
with Marshawn Lloyd. Who's been unable to stay on the field.
passing game I think is going to be a lot

(01:57:53):
better if Christian Watson stays healthy he Jaden Reed and
Matthew Golden with a healthy Tucker craft are going to
provide a whole lot of options for a very very
good quarterback in Jordan love offensive line looks to be
better defensively it all is going to hinge on the
return of Micah Parsons. Likely he's not coming back before

(01:58:14):
the bye, if not later than that. This is a
good defense that is elite and can be special with
Micah Parsons basically bringing a one-man blitz. Every time the
quarterback drops back, he is one of the best to
ever play edge rush. And the quicker he can get
back healthily and safely, the better. Go Pack, go beat

(01:58:38):
the Vikings. We are back Monday afternoon, 3.06. We'll do
it all again. Have a great weekend, Wisconsin. You've been
listening to the Dan O'Donnell Show.

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