March 15, 2024 • 32 mins
In this episode, Tudor interviews Batya Ungar-Sargon, the opinion editor of Newsweek and author of 'Bad News: How Woke Media is Undermining Democracy.' They discuss the political division in the country and the misconception that Americans are more divided than united. They delve into the Democrats' loss of the working class and the impact of EV mandates on auto workers. They also explore the devaluation of working class jobs and the importance of vocational training. The conversation touches on the influence of money in politics and the need for politicians to prioritize the economic agenda of the working class. The Tudor Dixon Podcast is part of the Clay Travis & Buck Sexton Podcast Network - new episodes debut every Monday, Wednesday, & Friday. For more visit TudorDixonPodcast.com
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to the Tutor Dixon Podcast. A lot of times,
you guys will hear me say that I don't actually
think that we are politically that divided as a country,
but there are certain issues that make it seem like
we are ridiculously divided.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
And I will say that. On occasion.
Speaker 1 (00:16):
Bill Maher has had guests on, and that kind of
goes in that direction where a guest who is a
progressive leftist or someone who's on the far right comes on,
and people I think across the country are kind of like,
how did that happen?
Speaker 2 (00:30):
How are they not that different than me?
Speaker 1 (00:33):
And I love that about him because I mean, he's
certainly not by any means a conservative or a Trump supporter, but.
Speaker 2 (00:40):
He'll say things.
Speaker 1 (00:41):
And what I think is funny is conservatives will sometimes
cherry pick what he says, because a lot of times
he'll say something that is pretty conservative, and then at
the end he'll say something like, of course Trump is
horrible and sucks, you know, and then they cut that
part off because there is a connection between Americans. And
so we saw this woman on and it was like
(01:01):
this moment where I said, Wow, this is what we've
been saying in Michigan, but haven't really been able to
say it, don't know how to say it, and so
I'm glad she agreed to join me today. Batya Unger Sargon.
She is the opinion editor of Newsweek and the author
of Bad News. How Woke Media is Undermining Democracy. Thank
you for joining me.
Speaker 3 (01:22):
Thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 2 (01:23):
What a pleasure to be here with you.
Speaker 1 (01:25):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (01:25):
I am so excited because I heard you.
Speaker 1 (01:27):
Honestly, I was listening to what you said about Michigan,
and I'm like, man, it's really different when someone who
is a Democrat or a progressive, someone who comes out
and says, hey, I'm on the left, says democrats are
maybe not seeing.
Speaker 2 (01:43):
What the working class is actually saying.
Speaker 1 (01:46):
And it started out with you talking about the situation
that we see with the uncommitted vote, and I just
thought it was fascinating that you were like, you know,
everybody says this is his problem, but I don't know
if that's why he actually loses Michigan.
Speaker 2 (02:00):
You can just get into that a little bit.
Speaker 3 (02:02):
Sure, Absolutely, I completely agree with you in your introduction.
I think that Americans are much more united than we
are divided, especially about the most important issues. If you
look at the polling on things that seem so divisive
when politicians or the media talk about them, most Americans
(02:22):
agree on them. There's a huge consensus about seventy percent
of Americans are on the same page when it comes
to the most important issues. And of course, because our
media and our politicians make money and get power off
of this polarization narrative, they're constantly pushing it. But it
is a canard on this great, great nation. And I
(02:43):
think you can really see that in what's happening now
in the primary. So if you look at this whole
conversation around the uncommitted vote, right, the media was really
hyping this up. Are two hundred thousand Muslim Americans living
in Michigan going to throw the election for Donald Trump
by withholding their vote from Joe Biden over his support
(03:05):
for Israel, which you know between us, he's waffling now,
of course, in part in order to appeal to dearborn right,
he's sort of.
Speaker 1 (03:13):
And I think because just watching the news and that's
what he thinks is like to your point, that's what
he thinks is happening in Michigan. And you made a
point about polarization being kind of an elitist concept that's
been pushed on us, and I think it's shocking to
me when.
Speaker 2 (03:30):
I see exactly what you just said.
Speaker 1 (03:32):
He is changing his narrative a little bit because he's
being forced by the elitist media that is able to
do that. But you have a different theory on Michigan sight.
I'm sorry, interrupted, I.
Speaker 2 (03:42):
Want you to get to that.
Speaker 3 (03:42):
No, no, not at all. You know, I think the
media is very sort of thirsty for this uncommitted vote
to happen, because first of all, they're very anti Israel,
and so they love to see people sort of protesting.
Is rather completely on the side of the pro Palestinian protesters, right.
But also to me, this is an alibi for the
(04:05):
Democrats because I think Joe Biden is going to lose Michigan.
But he's not going to lose Michigan to two hundred
thousand Muslim Americans one hundred thousand uncommitted voters. He's going
to lose Michigan because there are six hundred thousand auto
workers there and his ev mandates have been absolutely disastrous
for working class Americans across the country, but especially in Michigan.
(04:29):
We know that all of this money into the EV
market has been deeply punishing to autoworkers. It takes much
less time on the line to make an electric vehicle
than it does a regular gas car, and as a result,
these workers are going to have much less work to do.
And this despite the fact that Americans don't want evs, right,
(04:52):
everybody who wants an EV pretty much has one. So
they make these cars and then they sit on the lots.
People don't buy them, which course ends up costing workers' jobs.
And here is the thing. The Democrats simply cannot admit
the truth, which is that they lost the working class.
The very united working class working class Americans who are
(05:14):
Liberals and who are Conservatives. Again, very little separates them.
They certainly don't hate each other. That is a totally
elite phenomenon. The Democrats lost the working class over the
course of the last forty fifty years. Instead, today they
cater to the over credentilled college elites and then the
dependent poor people who can't work or who won't work right,
(05:34):
who live off the government. That's the Democratic coalition, whereas
Republicans now represent most working class people and the Democrats
simply cannot admit that because it is truly outrageous to
have abandoned labor like that. So instead they masquerade as
the Party of Labor and then come up with these
other narratives, Oh, he's going to lose Michigan over the
(05:57):
uncommitted vote. Oh, you know, they make up these other
narratives to hide the truth, which is that they lost
the working class because they betrayed the working class. And
that's where Donald Trump stepped in and said, I'm going
to speak to these people.
Speaker 1 (06:10):
But see, I don't think that they think of it
as betraying the working class, because I think they think
of it as making progress.
Speaker 2 (06:17):
To your point about.
Speaker 1 (06:19):
Evs, like this is very This is progress in their minds,
even though the consumer doesn't want it. And we've never
seen government before force a product on consumers. And it's
a product you use every day. I mean, there's nobody
that doesn't get in a vehicle every day. I'm very
few people, I imagine don't need a vehicle to get
somewhere every day. Where you know, in the United States,
(06:40):
there's not a lot of walking. It's in most cities,
in most areas. You're in suburban America, and you need
a vehicle. So you are taking a product that someone
uses every day and saying this is no longer acceptable.
You are forced into this, and it's not a small product.
It's not like going out and buying new underwear. This
is going to cost you a lot of money. It's
going to cost you tens of thousands of dollars. And
(07:03):
these evs are going to cost you tens of thousands
of dollars more than you normally would have to pay
for something for a vehicle.
Speaker 2 (07:10):
And so people are going, what are you doing? But
in Michigan, I think it's.
Speaker 1 (07:14):
Especially different because we are the state that put the
world on wheels. This is our legacy industry. We are
set up to make gas powered vehicles. We are set
up to power the country. We are not set up
to make electric vehicles. The other thing, the other dirty
little secret about making electric vehicles is that takes a
(07:35):
lot more energy to make electric vehicles, and Michigan is
not set up for that either. We have some of
the highest energy costs in the nation in the Midwest.
We have the highest energy cost for businesses. And we've
just said that we're going to be even more radical
and go to all renewable energy. When renewable energy just
like evs, Hey, maybe we do need to make a
(07:58):
change here, but it has to be a change that
can actually supplement what the other option was, and at
this point we don't have that.
Speaker 2 (08:06):
So it's one thing to say, Okay.
Speaker 1 (08:08):
We're going to try to put some of this other
type of energy in while we continue to innovate, because
as Americans we are great innovators. We don't have the
answer just yet, but we're not saying that we're being
forced into this is the answer. We're gonna put windmills
in the lake. You're gonna look at your out from
the beach on Lake Michigan and see windmills, and that's
going to power these factories.
Speaker 2 (08:29):
Well guess what. And now we're no longer a right
to work state, so guess what. This was the perfect.
Speaker 1 (08:35):
Opportunity for the auto manufacturers to say, you know what, Michigan,
it's been a good run.
Speaker 2 (08:40):
We're heading over to Tennessee. We're going to Kentucky.
Speaker 1 (08:43):
And the auto workers feel that the people that are
a part of the Autoworkers Union, they're in Michigan, they're
not in Tennessee.
Speaker 3 (08:50):
It's class warfare. Against the working class. The entire Green
New Deal is class warfare against the working class. You
know who makes those windmills China, right, I mean, that's
the secret right there. Michigan represents the American dream, right,
It represents what used to be the norm, which is
(09:13):
the biggest sector of the American economy used to be
in manufacturing, which meant that working class Americans were producing
things for working class consumers. And so the price point
was set somewhere that both you could have the American
dream as a worker and you could afford the car
(09:33):
as a consumer. That was the American dream up until
the seventies. Now most working class industries are no longer
like that. They shipped all the good paying working class
jobs overseas to China and Mexico to build up their
middle class, and then they opened the border and imported
an entirely new slave cast to drive down the wages
(09:55):
in the service industry and to telegraph to working class people,
you are nothing if you do this job. This is
not a job for an American guy.
Speaker 1 (10:04):
It was just exactly what I've tried to say to
people so many times, is you are belittling our workers,
the people who put their heart and soul into these
jobs and telling them, I mean, I come from a
steel foundry. We had a family steel foundry, And the
amount of times I was told those jobs are dirty.
No one wants your jobs, Like, do you understand what
(10:24):
these jobs do? I mean, first of all, you don't
get the food on your table if you don't have
us making the farm equipment, So you know what, take
a hike. And then I mean, these people, what they
do is something to be proud of, and you're saying, oh.
Speaker 2 (10:39):
You know, it's not worth it. These aren't jobs for Americans.
Speaker 1 (10:42):
And then what are you saying about the people that
are coming across the borders.
Speaker 2 (10:45):
You don't don't actually care about those people. You think
they're less then.
Speaker 3 (10:49):
And that's why they import them to do jobs that
the elites would be humiliated to do, like be a janitor.
They consider that job beneath contempt. A lot of people
get a lot of self respect out of having that job.
That is not an embarrassing job to have. It is
so gross the hatred and contempt for hard working Americans.
(11:10):
You brought up steel. The elites they don't understand trade,
They don't understand what it means to the working class.
But you know who understood that, Trump because he showed
up and said, you know what, We're gonna have tariffs
on steel and aluminum. We're gonna have twenty five percent
tariffs on that. You're not gonna bring in steel from
China and undercut my workers. Why would we do that?
(11:32):
He up ended the complete status quo that was that
held on both sides. And when people talk to me
about Trump's character and how you know they don't like it,
I say to them, do you know what kind of
a person can show up when there's two parties and
they both agree that we should be selling out the
working class, that we should have free trade and open borders,
(11:56):
and you show up and say he showed up and said,
I'm not gonna take on just the other side. I'm
going to take on my own side. I mean, whoever
heard of putting on tariffs in America over the last
forty years? And what is the result. The average wages
for person working in steel is eighty eight thousand dollars
a year. That is a middle class wage, and that
(12:16):
is completely the result of Trump's trade policy. And this
is something the left just cannot understand because they have
this innate disrespect for people who work with their hands,
who do dirty jobs. These people get self respect out
of those jobs. They think it is beneath them, and
so they devalued these jobs and devalued this work.
Speaker 2 (12:37):
Let's take a quick commercial break. We'll continue next.
Speaker 1 (12:39):
On a Tutor Dixon podcast, you talked about the importance
of steel and the tariffs and everything, and I think
that steel is something in the metal that we use
for our military equipment all of this. It's just something
that people really don't understand. Steel is not something you
dig out of the ground and it just keeps coming.
You have to Actually, there's chemistry to it. You have
(13:02):
to create it. You have to put the right chemicals
in it. There's a recipe to every type of steal
that we use, and right now we don't have the
people that know how to build the recipe. We don't
even have many metal or just left in this country,
and in our universities we have about four or five
metallurgy degrees left across the country.
Speaker 2 (13:21):
We are in a very.
Speaker 1 (13:23):
Big national security disaster when it comes to this, and
yet we're still letting it happen over in China. Oh,
bring in all of our stuff in China. I had
one of my competitors when I was in the foundry
industry email me just last week and he said, you're
going to be shocked by this, but we make parts
for the military, and they told us that they are
(13:44):
now it is now a twenty five percent by America clause.
It used to be a ninety percent by America clause
for any type of product that was going to our military.
Twenty five percent. They just had their orders reduced because
they're going to bring in seven twenty five percent of
castings that go on our military vehicles from China, from
(14:05):
our enemy. What.
Speaker 3 (14:08):
It's absolutely disastrous. The Democrats are so soft on China,
both foreign policy wise and domestically in terms of jobs.
In terms of that output, you know, there's another outrage,
which is that we spend two hundred billion dollars a
year funding higher education and just one billion dollars a
(14:28):
year funding vocational training. There is such a huge shortage
of skilled trades folks in America today, and that is
again by design. The Democrats had this idea, starting with
Clinton and then Obama, that everyone was going to go
to college because of course, you know what happens when
you go to college, you become a good little liberal, right,
(14:50):
like you're getting doctrinated into like their way of thinking.
And so they started funneling billions of dollars into that
and then again cutting off one of the surest pathways
to the American dream for people who work with their
hands for a living. It's an absolute outrage. And you know,
the GOP, if they want to become the party of
(15:11):
the working class beyond Trump, this is a great place
to start vocational training, give people the training they need
to be able to achieve the American dream while working
with their hands for a living and doing the jobs
we actually need to survive.
Speaker 1 (15:26):
I mean, it is something that my dad used to
say to me all the time, because my dad was
an engineer by trade, but he was always on the
shop floor, and obviously he had worked in foundries his
entire life, and he used to say, I would have
definitely been that kid that they would have put on
Riddlin and said I was an add and that I
couldn't handle life because I can't sit at a desk.
(15:47):
That's never going to be me. He's like, but look
at the successful businesses I've been able to create, because
my gift was not sitting behind a desk and doing
paperwrock all day. My gift was being out on the
shop floor, on the line, helping to make a product.
Speaker 2 (16:01):
And I think that's the thing that people don't see.
Speaker 1 (16:03):
They think there's only value in what you can learn
in life from a book, which I'm not taking any
value away from that, But there are people who thrive
outside of that environment of being at a desk, who
thrive in a creative space, in a different type of space,
and oftentimes those are the people who build the businesses.
When I was campaigning, I met this guy and he's like, listen,
(16:26):
he was a billionaire. I was a terrible student, hated school,
and I decided I wanted to create my own shop,
and I put it in my dad's garage. And then
we build a pole barn, and then we expanded, and
then we kept expanding, we kept expanding. He said, today,
with the regulations in this state, they would have never
let me even start my business. And he said, think
(16:48):
of the hundreds of thousands of people that have been
fed and created their own home and had their own
lifestyle because they worked at one of my companies that
I built over all this time go to college. Said
it was just my creativity and the idea that I had,
And I think that's what we've stolen from this nation,
is entrepreneurship.
Speaker 3 (17:11):
Definitely. I do have to disagree with one thing you said.
I do denigrate the learning happens in the universities. I
think a lot of it is nonsense. I have a PhD,
so I know what I'm talking about when I say
a lot of it is just nonsense, like just total
just it's just ridiculousness. And a lot of people go
into STEM. It's true, not everybody gets a Humanity's degree
(17:32):
like I did, but every person who goes to university
has to take Composition one oh one, which is taught
by an income poop like I used to be, like
with the English PhD. And to get an English PhD,
you have to take a critical theory class. You have
to study critical race theory. So everyone is going through
that funnel. I think I'm much about these ideas. I
(17:53):
was in college way before.
Speaker 1 (17:54):
That kind of stuff, And honestly, I was just thinking
about this because my daughters came home. My fifth grader
came home from school, and she was like so and
so his parents are Democrats?
Speaker 2 (18:05):
Do they not like us? And should we not like them?
Speaker 1 (18:08):
And it just hit me so hard because I'm like, man,
when I was a kid, I didn't know what so
and so's parents did for a living. I barely understood
what my own parents did for a living, let alone
that they were Democrats or Republicans. And I'm like, how
did we get even in education in lower schools?
Speaker 2 (18:26):
How did we get to the point.
Speaker 1 (18:27):
Where we started this idea that one there's a side,
what side are you on?
Speaker 2 (18:31):
You have to pick a side?
Speaker 3 (18:34):
Yeah, it's really awful, and it's so alien to working
class life. Working class Americans, if they're liberals or conservatives,
they work side by side with people they disagree with.
I mean, Michigan is probably like a perfect, perfect example
of this. You'll go into an auto shop, right and
you know, everybody's unionized, and half the people vote for Trump,
probably more like seventy five eighty percent vote for Trump,
(18:54):
you know, and the other twenty five percent maybe vote
for Bernie. And then you know, it's it's very The
idea of hating somebody over who they vote for is
so alien to average Americans. They simply do not have
that luxury, and nor would it ever occur to them
to do that. It's so alien to who we are
as a nation. And I was so thrilled to find
(19:15):
out that this polarization doesn't exist in eighty percent of
the country. It's just us in the elites and the
media and in politics who keep pushing these narratives trying
to make people hate each other so that we can
sort of consolidate power.
Speaker 1 (19:30):
Well, and it's also I think there's this terrible thing
that's happening where it's like personal relevance and too many
people become like political pundans that have to keep it
going somehow, and so it has to be the next
radical statement.
Speaker 2 (19:48):
And you see these people who.
Speaker 1 (19:51):
I think that you know, I would look at them
and go, gosh, that's the spokesperson for the left. And
you would look and say, that's the spokesperson for the right.
And yet I'm listening to the person on the right
and going I do not feel that way. That is
not okay. And I know what they're doing. I who
is someone who sees them every day and probably has
personally met them. I know they're playing a game, and
(20:11):
it is to get more downloads it's to get more clicks.
Speaker 2 (20:14):
It's like an obsession, you know. But I think it's
the same on the other side.
Speaker 1 (20:18):
I mean, I think that this was kind of how
things started with AOC, and I do think that she's
kind of toned things back a little bit.
Speaker 2 (20:24):
But going to the met with a big.
Speaker 1 (20:27):
Fancy, expensive dress on that says text the rich is like,
no ironic, you know.
Speaker 2 (20:33):
I'm like, hmm, it isn't that ironic.
Speaker 1 (20:35):
So you know, I think that we're all kind of
sitting back and going these extremes are not us.
Speaker 2 (20:42):
But how do you actually talk about this?
Speaker 1 (20:45):
Because I find it hard, well, especially as someone who
ran for office, because I'm automatically like this crazy extremist.
So it's really it's hard for me to talk to
the other side because like, I'm that job. But I
do think that there is a response ability or I
feel like there should be some responsibility at least in
the media for someone to go instead of always saying
(21:07):
that side in this side, we're going to try to
see ourselves as Americans. But I think the twenty four
hour news cycle has destroyed that because it's not news,
it's just drama.
Speaker 3 (21:17):
I do think there's a really interesting thing happening on
exactly this point with Trump, Like he came out the
other day and said, you know, like you mentioned, I'm
not a conservative, and I think that is first of all,
obviously true. But his policy agenda to me seems, you know,
pretty indistinguishable from a new deal Democrat, a Democrat in
(21:37):
the nineties, you know, fifteen weeks on abortion, controlling the
border to protect wages. He's actively courting black voters, which
is just delicious to see, and his voters, by the way,
his supporters love him for it. You know, he's he's
very positive and pro gay while being you know, against
the transgender agenda. That is just where eighty percent of
(21:59):
Americans no more free trade. Let's have trade that works
for America first. This is where the working class is at.
But because he triggers the left, I think intentionally right
to stay in the headlines.
Speaker 2 (22:14):
Yeah, he literally can't forget anyone.
Speaker 1 (22:16):
Yes, exactly exactly right, But.
Speaker 3 (22:19):
So they it's literally invisible to them. When you start
laying out everything he's done, You're like, where do you
disagree with this? Like this is stuff Democrats used to
say when they were like normal. They'll say, oh, January sixth, which, again,
like the one hundred thousand Muslim uncommitted voters, is just
a distraction, right because they don't want to talk about
the policy agenda because it implicates them in having abandoned
(22:44):
the people who vote for him.
Speaker 2 (22:46):
Let's take a quick commercial break. We'll continue next on
a Tutor Dixon podcast.
Speaker 1 (22:54):
You know, you talked about the autoworkers voting for Trump,
and then you said or Bernie Sanders, which I thought
was in seeing because I have some of our younger
relatives in our lives who are huge Bernie Sanders supporters.
Speaker 2 (23:06):
And they actually felt really betrayed.
Speaker 1 (23:10):
By the Democrat Party when Donald or when Joe Biden
became the nominee, because they're like this was manipulated. Everyone
else was kicked out, Like we didn't get to choose,
This was not what we were going to choose. And
I think that there's still there's kind of this group
of young people that feel like Joe Biden's not really
our guy, we aren't getting to choose, And I think
(23:30):
there's a lot of people out there there are waiting
and saying they're going to put our guy in. Who
is our guy? We don't know they're going to pick someone.
Maybe it's a whitmer or maybe it's a Newsome, but
somebody else is coming in to rescue us from this
guy who is not our person. I don't think that
that at this point is going to happen. But I
think it's interesting because the elites have chosen for them
(23:52):
and they're not even seeing this party of elites, but
but they've actually been trained to say, also, I'm on
and elite. I mean, I've had people that are just
out of college in their twenties and thirties who are like, look,
I have an advanced degree.
Speaker 2 (24:07):
I'm a part of the elitist class.
Speaker 1 (24:09):
And I'm like, it's weird that you're willing to come
out and openly say that. It seems like it would
be a bad connotation, you know.
Speaker 2 (24:17):
But it's hysterical. Yeah, I think.
Speaker 3 (24:20):
And to your point, the exact opposite happened in the
GOP right, Trump was outspent two to one. Right, the
donor class really doesn't want him. They don't like his tariffs,
they like the open border, whether they'll admit it or
not because it's good for Wall Street, you know. They
really don't like his economic agenda, and so they poured
(24:41):
money into Nikki Haley's campaign and these other campaigns, and
the most amazing, miraculous thing happened, which is the billions
of dollars spent to try to defeat him between the
GOP primary and of course the Democrats like law fair
campaign and everything they're throwing at him, and the voice
of the electorate was unsuppressible. He's still won by leaps
(25:05):
and baths. I mean, what a miracle, What an amazing country, right,
Like it turns out that the will of the people
is stronger than the will of the donor class, at
least on the right.
Speaker 1 (25:15):
It's so funny though, because like behind the scenes, you
see it all happening. I mean, I think everybody saw
it happening, but maybe you see it on a different
level when you're in our position, because you know, all
these people are like DeSantis is the guy.
Speaker 2 (25:27):
And I remember talking.
Speaker 1 (25:28):
To people and going, I don't think that you understand
what it is to go against Trump. I mean, even
as a Trump endorsed candidate, Trump people didn't come out
and vote for me. There's a special Yeah, there's something
special about him. And when Chris Christy came out and
said there's no such thing as a Trump voter.
Speaker 2 (25:46):
I'm like, God, what are you talking about?
Speaker 1 (25:49):
I mean you, I feel like you're just saying things
like someday I'll have a unicorn. You know, these are
not true things. So I don't understand why. And then
but the thing was that made me upset about this
is I'm like, you know, you all love Ron DeSantis
and he has done great things in the state of Florida.
But I think a lot of people knew that he
(26:11):
was the sacrificial lamb. It was more of a let's see,
let's throw him out there and see if he can
sink or swim, you know, and if he sinks, then hey,
it was our investment and we lost. But it's a person,
and it's become this thing of like the people in
the political world don't matter anymore because it's the chess
players at the top. And Trump gets around the chess
(26:34):
players and they hate it.
Speaker 3 (26:36):
Yeah, they really really hate him for it. I think
with DeSantis, I was talking to a sort of policy
person that I trust who's sort of very much on
the kind of protectionist view of things, and he was
saying he had had a meeting with DeSantis and he
tried to talk to him about economic policy and he
was just completely not interested. And you know, the thing
(26:56):
about working class Americans is in their bone they're anti woke.
They think it's divisive, They it doesn't represent their views.
They think it's intolerant. And the American people are a
deeply tolerant people. But at the same time, they're economic
policies like their jobs, good wages, the American dream. That's
(27:19):
what they're looking to politicians for. They don't need to
be told by politicians, you know that these are your
values exactly. They know what their values are. They need
an economic agenda and Trump gets that and DeSantis just
really didn't get it.
Speaker 2 (27:36):
That's such a good point and it's something I've been trying.
Speaker 1 (27:38):
To talk to people about because you know, I had
a crew come in and it was like, you know,
we're going to run on anti woke, which was so
dumb because here's Whitmer, who has all of the horse
things against her in this state. I mean, the state
is crumbling, and yet it's like this is working in Florida.
The But you're so right, and I got to see
(27:59):
it firsthand. At the end of the day, conservatives are
really not sitting at home wringing their hands over whether
or not their child will be transd at school the
next day. They're wondering if they can afford their groceries.
You know, they know what their values are within their family.
They know how to have discussions with their kids. That's
I mean for all of the we don't want big government,
(28:21):
let it happen in the family. That's what they're saying.
And Trump's not in their personal life. Trump is not
in their bedroom. To your point, he was the most
pro gay president. Not only was he pro gay in
the country, but he decriminalized homosexuality across the world in
many places where he was saying this is not acceptable.
(28:41):
You know, he and Rick Cornell did great things for
homosexuality across the globe. Nobody talks about that, and you
know why nobody talks about it because it's really not
something that people want to advertise on the right.
Speaker 2 (28:53):
But it was something that he did that was saving.
Speaker 1 (28:57):
Lives, and those are the I think that's the way
you get into office and you say, hey, we're going
to protect people, We're gonna make sure that our values
are protected without campaigning on that. What he campaigned on
is when you go home at night, you're not going
to worry about whether you can get gas in the morning.
When you wake up in the morning, you're going to
know there's a job there. If you're a manufacturer, you're
(29:18):
going to know that you have employees and energy. And
guess what, nobody is going to have to worry about
whether or not their kid's going to get into fentanyl
because I'm going to close the border. And that is
something that is so critical. And you know there's this
narrative and there's been this narrative for years now, well
the border. Hispanics don't like the border because those the
open border, those people come and take their jobs.
Speaker 2 (29:41):
They take every working class person's job.
Speaker 1 (29:44):
This is not acceptable for the entire United States to
have unvetted people pouring across the border.
Speaker 2 (29:52):
And that's not to say we don't like immigration. That's
to say, why would you not protect your own.
Speaker 3 (29:58):
The high water mark for working class wages was in
nineteen seventy one. The share of the population that was
born somewhere else that was an immigrant was four percent.
We've now seen stagnating working class wages since then fifty years,
and we are at a new high water mark where
the share of the population that is foreign born is
(30:18):
around fifteen or sixteen percent, and the majority of them
are in working class industries jobs that don't require college degree.
So let me ask you, how can people, literally with
a stray face, say they're not taking people's jobs. We
have exponentially increased the supply of labor. Of course, that's
going to drive down wages. In fact, that's probably why
(30:41):
Joe Biden opened the border, because he thought it would
tame inflation by lowering working class wages, which is the
worst possible way you could do it. You're literally upward
transfer of wealth from the working class to the elites
who consume illegal labor, who hire these people, and they
(31:01):
have to pay them less now than they would have
to pay an American. It is again class warfare against
the working class.
Speaker 1 (31:07):
I mean, it's kind of the ultimate gaslight too, because
he's out there and he's like, you know, we've got
to have this is the loving thing to do. We
have these people coming in and just so you know,
I'm not the problem. Corporations are the bad guy, but
he's actually I mean, it's like talking trash about your
enemy and then going home and sleeping in the same bed.
(31:28):
You know, it's like, these are the people funding you.
I mean, we know, but I don't think that most
people do know. I think that, I mean, I think
that narrative is starting to break on both sides. And
I'm not just picking on Joe Biden, because I've seen
it on the Republican side too. And I do think
that there is way too much corporate control over politicians,
(31:49):
and that is because we decided, Okay, politicians can only
bring in this much money, but you can have all
this dark money, and the dark money wins elections and
it is such an ugly, ugly process. And I could
probably talk about that for a long time, but I
have kept you already longer than I promised. But it's
been fascinating. I've just so enjoyed our conversation.
Speaker 2 (32:10):
Thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 3 (32:12):
What an absolute pleasure. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
Speaker 1 (32:15):
Yes, it's been so much fun. And I know you
have another book coming out. I didn't know if you
wanted to promo that. If you can tell us a
little bit about that before you go.
Speaker 3 (32:21):
Yeah, it's called Second Class, How the elites betrayed America's
working men and women, And it's about everything we just
talked about. So if that sounds like you're jam you
can pre order it on Amazon today.
Speaker 1 (32:31):
I think it's going to be amazing because this has
been so much fun. Batiya Ungers are Gone. Thank you
so much for coming on today.
Speaker 2 (32:38):
Thank you God bless and.
Speaker 1 (32:40):
Thank you all for joining us on the Tutor Dixon Podcast.
For this episode and others, go to Tutor dixonpodcast dot com.
You can subscribe right there, or head over to the
iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts
and join us next time on the Tutor Dixon Podcast.
Speaker 2 (32:56):
Have a blessed day.
Welcome to the Tutor Dixon Podcast. A lot of times,
you guys will hear me say that I don't actually
think that we are politically that divided as a country,
but there are certain issues that make it seem like
we are ridiculously divided.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
And I will say that. On occasion.
Speaker 1 (00:16):
Bill Maher has had guests on, and that kind of
goes in that direction where a guest who is a
progressive leftist or someone who's on the far right comes on,
and people I think across the country are kind of like,
how did that happen?
Speaker 2 (00:30):
How are they not that different than me?
Speaker 1 (00:33):
And I love that about him because I mean, he's
certainly not by any means a conservative or a Trump supporter, but.
Speaker 2 (00:40):
He'll say things.
Speaker 1 (00:41):
And what I think is funny is conservatives will sometimes
cherry pick what he says, because a lot of times
he'll say something that is pretty conservative, and then at
the end he'll say something like, of course Trump is
horrible and sucks, you know, and then they cut that
part off because there is a connection between Americans. And
so we saw this woman on and it was like
(01:01):
this moment where I said, Wow, this is what we've
been saying in Michigan, but haven't really been able to
say it, don't know how to say it, and so
I'm glad she agreed to join me today. Batya Unger Sargon.
She is the opinion editor of Newsweek and the author
of Bad News. How Woke Media is Undermining Democracy. Thank
you for joining me.
Speaker 3 (01:22):
Thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 2 (01:23):
What a pleasure to be here with you.
Speaker 1 (01:25):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (01:25):
I am so excited because I heard you.
Speaker 1 (01:27):
Honestly, I was listening to what you said about Michigan,
and I'm like, man, it's really different when someone who
is a Democrat or a progressive, someone who comes out
and says, hey, I'm on the left, says democrats are
maybe not seeing.
Speaker 2 (01:43):
What the working class is actually saying.
Speaker 1 (01:46):
And it started out with you talking about the situation
that we see with the uncommitted vote, and I just
thought it was fascinating that you were like, you know,
everybody says this is his problem, but I don't know
if that's why he actually loses Michigan.
Speaker 2 (02:00):
You can just get into that a little bit.
Speaker 3 (02:02):
Sure, Absolutely, I completely agree with you in your introduction.
I think that Americans are much more united than we
are divided, especially about the most important issues. If you
look at the polling on things that seem so divisive
when politicians or the media talk about them, most Americans
(02:22):
agree on them. There's a huge consensus about seventy percent
of Americans are on the same page when it comes
to the most important issues. And of course, because our
media and our politicians make money and get power off
of this polarization narrative, they're constantly pushing it. But it
is a canard on this great, great nation. And I
(02:43):
think you can really see that in what's happening now
in the primary. So if you look at this whole
conversation around the uncommitted vote, right, the media was really
hyping this up. Are two hundred thousand Muslim Americans living
in Michigan going to throw the election for Donald Trump
by withholding their vote from Joe Biden over his support
(03:05):
for Israel, which you know between us, he's waffling now,
of course, in part in order to appeal to dearborn right,
he's sort of.
Speaker 1 (03:13):
And I think because just watching the news and that's
what he thinks is like to your point, that's what
he thinks is happening in Michigan. And you made a
point about polarization being kind of an elitist concept that's
been pushed on us, and I think it's shocking to
me when.
Speaker 2 (03:30):
I see exactly what you just said.
Speaker 1 (03:32):
He is changing his narrative a little bit because he's
being forced by the elitist media that is able to
do that. But you have a different theory on Michigan sight.
I'm sorry, interrupted, I.
Speaker 2 (03:42):
Want you to get to that.
Speaker 3 (03:42):
No, no, not at all. You know, I think the
media is very sort of thirsty for this uncommitted vote
to happen, because first of all, they're very anti Israel,
and so they love to see people sort of protesting.
Is rather completely on the side of the pro Palestinian protesters, right.
But also to me, this is an alibi for the
(04:05):
Democrats because I think Joe Biden is going to lose Michigan.
But he's not going to lose Michigan to two hundred
thousand Muslim Americans one hundred thousand uncommitted voters. He's going
to lose Michigan because there are six hundred thousand auto
workers there and his ev mandates have been absolutely disastrous
for working class Americans across the country, but especially in Michigan.
(04:29):
We know that all of this money into the EV
market has been deeply punishing to autoworkers. It takes much
less time on the line to make an electric vehicle
than it does a regular gas car, and as a result,
these workers are going to have much less work to do.
And this despite the fact that Americans don't want evs, right,
(04:52):
everybody who wants an EV pretty much has one. So
they make these cars and then they sit on the lots.
People don't buy them, which course ends up costing workers' jobs.
And here is the thing. The Democrats simply cannot admit
the truth, which is that they lost the working class.
The very united working class working class Americans who are
(05:14):
Liberals and who are Conservatives. Again, very little separates them.
They certainly don't hate each other. That is a totally
elite phenomenon. The Democrats lost the working class over the
course of the last forty fifty years. Instead, today they
cater to the over credentilled college elites and then the
dependent poor people who can't work or who won't work right,
(05:34):
who live off the government. That's the Democratic coalition, whereas
Republicans now represent most working class people and the Democrats
simply cannot admit that because it is truly outrageous to
have abandoned labor like that. So instead they masquerade as
the Party of Labor and then come up with these
other narratives, Oh, he's going to lose Michigan over the
(05:57):
uncommitted vote. Oh, you know, they make up these other
narratives to hide the truth, which is that they lost
the working class because they betrayed the working class. And
that's where Donald Trump stepped in and said, I'm going
to speak to these people.
Speaker 1 (06:10):
But see, I don't think that they think of it
as betraying the working class, because I think they think
of it as making progress.
Speaker 2 (06:17):
To your point about.
Speaker 1 (06:19):
Evs, like this is very This is progress in their minds,
even though the consumer doesn't want it. And we've never
seen government before force a product on consumers. And it's
a product you use every day. I mean, there's nobody
that doesn't get in a vehicle every day. I'm very
few people, I imagine don't need a vehicle to get
somewhere every day. Where you know, in the United States,
(06:40):
there's not a lot of walking. It's in most cities,
in most areas. You're in suburban America, and you need
a vehicle. So you are taking a product that someone
uses every day and saying this is no longer acceptable.
You are forced into this, and it's not a small product.
It's not like going out and buying new underwear. This
is going to cost you a lot of money. It's
going to cost you tens of thousands of dollars. And
(07:03):
these evs are going to cost you tens of thousands
of dollars more than you normally would have to pay
for something for a vehicle.
Speaker 2 (07:10):
And so people are going, what are you doing? But
in Michigan, I think it's.
Speaker 1 (07:14):
Especially different because we are the state that put the
world on wheels. This is our legacy industry. We are
set up to make gas powered vehicles. We are set
up to power the country. We are not set up
to make electric vehicles. The other thing, the other dirty
little secret about making electric vehicles is that takes a
(07:35):
lot more energy to make electric vehicles, and Michigan is
not set up for that either. We have some of
the highest energy costs in the nation in the Midwest.
We have the highest energy cost for businesses. And we've
just said that we're going to be even more radical
and go to all renewable energy. When renewable energy just
like evs, Hey, maybe we do need to make a
(07:58):
change here, but it has to be a change that
can actually supplement what the other option was, and at
this point we don't have that.
Speaker 2 (08:06):
So it's one thing to say, Okay.
Speaker 1 (08:08):
We're going to try to put some of this other
type of energy in while we continue to innovate, because
as Americans we are great innovators. We don't have the
answer just yet, but we're not saying that we're being
forced into this is the answer. We're gonna put windmills
in the lake. You're gonna look at your out from
the beach on Lake Michigan and see windmills, and that's
going to power these factories.
Speaker 2 (08:29):
Well guess what. And now we're no longer a right
to work state, so guess what. This was the perfect.
Speaker 1 (08:35):
Opportunity for the auto manufacturers to say, you know what, Michigan,
it's been a good run.
Speaker 2 (08:40):
We're heading over to Tennessee. We're going to Kentucky.
Speaker 1 (08:43):
And the auto workers feel that the people that are
a part of the Autoworkers Union, they're in Michigan, they're
not in Tennessee.
Speaker 3 (08:50):
It's class warfare. Against the working class. The entire Green
New Deal is class warfare against the working class. You
know who makes those windmills China, right, I mean, that's
the secret right there. Michigan represents the American dream, right,
It represents what used to be the norm, which is
(09:13):
the biggest sector of the American economy used to be
in manufacturing, which meant that working class Americans were producing
things for working class consumers. And so the price point
was set somewhere that both you could have the American
dream as a worker and you could afford the car
(09:33):
as a consumer. That was the American dream up until
the seventies. Now most working class industries are no longer
like that. They shipped all the good paying working class
jobs overseas to China and Mexico to build up their
middle class, and then they opened the border and imported
an entirely new slave cast to drive down the wages
(09:55):
in the service industry and to telegraph to working class people,
you are nothing if you do this job. This is
not a job for an American guy.
Speaker 1 (10:04):
It was just exactly what I've tried to say to
people so many times, is you are belittling our workers,
the people who put their heart and soul into these
jobs and telling them, I mean, I come from a
steel foundry. We had a family steel foundry, And the
amount of times I was told those jobs are dirty.
No one wants your jobs, Like, do you understand what
(10:24):
these jobs do? I mean, first of all, you don't
get the food on your table if you don't have
us making the farm equipment, So you know what, take
a hike. And then I mean, these people, what they
do is something to be proud of, and you're saying, oh.
Speaker 2 (10:39):
You know, it's not worth it. These aren't jobs for Americans.
Speaker 1 (10:42):
And then what are you saying about the people that
are coming across the borders.
Speaker 2 (10:45):
You don't don't actually care about those people. You think
they're less then.
Speaker 3 (10:49):
And that's why they import them to do jobs that
the elites would be humiliated to do, like be a janitor.
They consider that job beneath contempt. A lot of people
get a lot of self respect out of having that job.
That is not an embarrassing job to have. It is
so gross the hatred and contempt for hard working Americans.
(11:10):
You brought up steel. The elites they don't understand trade,
They don't understand what it means to the working class.
But you know who understood that, Trump because he showed
up and said, you know what, We're gonna have tariffs
on steel and aluminum. We're gonna have twenty five percent
tariffs on that. You're not gonna bring in steel from
China and undercut my workers. Why would we do that?
(11:32):
He up ended the complete status quo that was that
held on both sides. And when people talk to me
about Trump's character and how you know they don't like it,
I say to them, do you know what kind of
a person can show up when there's two parties and
they both agree that we should be selling out the
working class, that we should have free trade and open borders,
(11:56):
and you show up and say he showed up and said,
I'm not gonna take on just the other side. I'm
going to take on my own side. I mean, whoever
heard of putting on tariffs in America over the last
forty years? And what is the result. The average wages
for person working in steel is eighty eight thousand dollars
a year. That is a middle class wage, and that
(12:16):
is completely the result of Trump's trade policy. And this
is something the left just cannot understand because they have
this innate disrespect for people who work with their hands,
who do dirty jobs. These people get self respect out
of those jobs. They think it is beneath them, and
so they devalued these jobs and devalued this work.
Speaker 2 (12:37):
Let's take a quick commercial break. We'll continue next.
Speaker 1 (12:39):
On a Tutor Dixon podcast, you talked about the importance
of steel and the tariffs and everything, and I think
that steel is something in the metal that we use
for our military equipment all of this. It's just something
that people really don't understand. Steel is not something you
dig out of the ground and it just keeps coming.
You have to Actually, there's chemistry to it. You have
(13:02):
to create it. You have to put the right chemicals
in it. There's a recipe to every type of steal
that we use, and right now we don't have the
people that know how to build the recipe. We don't
even have many metal or just left in this country,
and in our universities we have about four or five
metallurgy degrees left across the country.
Speaker 2 (13:21):
We are in a very.
Speaker 1 (13:23):
Big national security disaster when it comes to this, and
yet we're still letting it happen over in China. Oh,
bring in all of our stuff in China. I had
one of my competitors when I was in the foundry
industry email me just last week and he said, you're
going to be shocked by this, but we make parts
for the military, and they told us that they are
(13:44):
now it is now a twenty five percent by America clause.
It used to be a ninety percent by America clause
for any type of product that was going to our military.
Twenty five percent. They just had their orders reduced because
they're going to bring in seven twenty five percent of
castings that go on our military vehicles from China, from
(14:05):
our enemy. What.
Speaker 3 (14:08):
It's absolutely disastrous. The Democrats are so soft on China,
both foreign policy wise and domestically in terms of jobs.
In terms of that output, you know, there's another outrage,
which is that we spend two hundred billion dollars a
year funding higher education and just one billion dollars a
(14:28):
year funding vocational training. There is such a huge shortage
of skilled trades folks in America today, and that is
again by design. The Democrats had this idea, starting with
Clinton and then Obama, that everyone was going to go
to college because of course, you know what happens when
you go to college, you become a good little liberal, right,
(14:50):
like you're getting doctrinated into like their way of thinking.
And so they started funneling billions of dollars into that
and then again cutting off one of the surest pathways
to the American dream for people who work with their
hands for a living. It's an absolute outrage. And you know,
the GOP, if they want to become the party of
(15:11):
the working class beyond Trump, this is a great place
to start vocational training, give people the training they need
to be able to achieve the American dream while working
with their hands for a living and doing the jobs
we actually need to survive.
Speaker 1 (15:26):
I mean, it is something that my dad used to
say to me all the time, because my dad was
an engineer by trade, but he was always on the
shop floor, and obviously he had worked in foundries his
entire life, and he used to say, I would have
definitely been that kid that they would have put on
Riddlin and said I was an add and that I
couldn't handle life because I can't sit at a desk.
(15:47):
That's never going to be me. He's like, but look
at the successful businesses I've been able to create, because
my gift was not sitting behind a desk and doing
paperwrock all day. My gift was being out on the
shop floor, on the line, helping to make a product.
Speaker 2 (16:01):
And I think that's the thing that people don't see.
Speaker 1 (16:03):
They think there's only value in what you can learn
in life from a book, which I'm not taking any
value away from that, But there are people who thrive
outside of that environment of being at a desk, who
thrive in a creative space, in a different type of space,
and oftentimes those are the people who build the businesses.
When I was campaigning, I met this guy and he's like, listen,
(16:26):
he was a billionaire. I was a terrible student, hated school,
and I decided I wanted to create my own shop,
and I put it in my dad's garage. And then
we build a pole barn, and then we expanded, and
then we kept expanding, we kept expanding. He said, today,
with the regulations in this state, they would have never
let me even start my business. And he said, think
(16:48):
of the hundreds of thousands of people that have been
fed and created their own home and had their own
lifestyle because they worked at one of my companies that
I built over all this time go to college. Said
it was just my creativity and the idea that I had,
And I think that's what we've stolen from this nation,
is entrepreneurship.
Speaker 3 (17:11):
Definitely. I do have to disagree with one thing you said.
I do denigrate the learning happens in the universities. I
think a lot of it is nonsense. I have a PhD,
so I know what I'm talking about when I say
a lot of it is just nonsense, like just total
just it's just ridiculousness. And a lot of people go
into STEM. It's true, not everybody gets a Humanity's degree
(17:32):
like I did, but every person who goes to university
has to take Composition one oh one, which is taught
by an income poop like I used to be, like
with the English PhD. And to get an English PhD,
you have to take a critical theory class. You have
to study critical race theory. So everyone is going through
that funnel. I think I'm much about these ideas. I
(17:53):
was in college way before.
Speaker 1 (17:54):
That kind of stuff, And honestly, I was just thinking
about this because my daughters came home. My fifth grader
came home from school, and she was like so and
so his parents are Democrats?
Speaker 2 (18:05):
Do they not like us? And should we not like them?
Speaker 1 (18:08):
And it just hit me so hard because I'm like, man,
when I was a kid, I didn't know what so
and so's parents did for a living. I barely understood
what my own parents did for a living, let alone
that they were Democrats or Republicans. And I'm like, how
did we get even in education in lower schools?
Speaker 2 (18:26):
How did we get to the point.
Speaker 1 (18:27):
Where we started this idea that one there's a side,
what side are you on?
Speaker 2 (18:31):
You have to pick a side?
Speaker 3 (18:34):
Yeah, it's really awful, and it's so alien to working
class life. Working class Americans, if they're liberals or conservatives,
they work side by side with people they disagree with.
I mean, Michigan is probably like a perfect, perfect example
of this. You'll go into an auto shop, right and
you know, everybody's unionized, and half the people vote for Trump,
probably more like seventy five eighty percent vote for Trump,
(18:54):
you know, and the other twenty five percent maybe vote
for Bernie. And then you know, it's it's very The
idea of hating somebody over who they vote for is
so alien to average Americans. They simply do not have
that luxury, and nor would it ever occur to them
to do that. It's so alien to who we are
as a nation. And I was so thrilled to find
(19:15):
out that this polarization doesn't exist in eighty percent of
the country. It's just us in the elites and the
media and in politics who keep pushing these narratives trying
to make people hate each other so that we can
sort of consolidate power.
Speaker 1 (19:30):
Well, and it's also I think there's this terrible thing
that's happening where it's like personal relevance and too many
people become like political pundans that have to keep it
going somehow, and so it has to be the next
radical statement.
Speaker 2 (19:48):
And you see these people who.
Speaker 1 (19:51):
I think that you know, I would look at them
and go, gosh, that's the spokesperson for the left. And
you would look and say, that's the spokesperson for the right.
And yet I'm listening to the person on the right
and going I do not feel that way. That is
not okay. And I know what they're doing. I who
is someone who sees them every day and probably has
personally met them. I know they're playing a game, and
(20:11):
it is to get more downloads it's to get more clicks.
Speaker 2 (20:14):
It's like an obsession, you know. But I think it's
the same on the other side.
Speaker 1 (20:18):
I mean, I think that this was kind of how
things started with AOC, and I do think that she's
kind of toned things back a little bit.
Speaker 2 (20:24):
But going to the met with a big.
Speaker 1 (20:27):
Fancy, expensive dress on that says text the rich is like,
no ironic, you know.
Speaker 2 (20:33):
I'm like, hmm, it isn't that ironic.
Speaker 1 (20:35):
So you know, I think that we're all kind of
sitting back and going these extremes are not us.
Speaker 2 (20:42):
But how do you actually talk about this?
Speaker 1 (20:45):
Because I find it hard, well, especially as someone who
ran for office, because I'm automatically like this crazy extremist.
So it's really it's hard for me to talk to
the other side because like, I'm that job. But I
do think that there is a response ability or I
feel like there should be some responsibility at least in
the media for someone to go instead of always saying
(21:07):
that side in this side, we're going to try to
see ourselves as Americans. But I think the twenty four
hour news cycle has destroyed that because it's not news,
it's just drama.
Speaker 3 (21:17):
I do think there's a really interesting thing happening on
exactly this point with Trump, Like he came out the
other day and said, you know, like you mentioned, I'm
not a conservative, and I think that is first of all,
obviously true. But his policy agenda to me seems, you know,
pretty indistinguishable from a new deal Democrat, a Democrat in
(21:37):
the nineties, you know, fifteen weeks on abortion, controlling the
border to protect wages. He's actively courting black voters, which
is just delicious to see, and his voters, by the way,
his supporters love him for it. You know, he's he's
very positive and pro gay while being you know, against
the transgender agenda. That is just where eighty percent of
(21:59):
Americans no more free trade. Let's have trade that works
for America first. This is where the working class is at.
But because he triggers the left, I think intentionally right
to stay in the headlines.
Speaker 2 (22:14):
Yeah, he literally can't forget anyone.
Speaker 1 (22:16):
Yes, exactly exactly right, But.
Speaker 3 (22:19):
So they it's literally invisible to them. When you start
laying out everything he's done, You're like, where do you
disagree with this? Like this is stuff Democrats used to
say when they were like normal. They'll say, oh, January sixth, which, again,
like the one hundred thousand Muslim uncommitted voters, is just
a distraction, right because they don't want to talk about
the policy agenda because it implicates them in having abandoned
(22:44):
the people who vote for him.
Speaker 2 (22:46):
Let's take a quick commercial break. We'll continue next on
a Tutor Dixon podcast.
Speaker 1 (22:54):
You know, you talked about the autoworkers voting for Trump,
and then you said or Bernie Sanders, which I thought
was in seeing because I have some of our younger
relatives in our lives who are huge Bernie Sanders supporters.
Speaker 2 (23:06):
And they actually felt really betrayed.
Speaker 1 (23:10):
By the Democrat Party when Donald or when Joe Biden
became the nominee, because they're like this was manipulated. Everyone
else was kicked out, Like we didn't get to choose,
This was not what we were going to choose. And
I think that there's still there's kind of this group
of young people that feel like Joe Biden's not really
our guy, we aren't getting to choose, And I think
(23:30):
there's a lot of people out there there are waiting
and saying they're going to put our guy in. Who
is our guy? We don't know they're going to pick someone.
Maybe it's a whitmer or maybe it's a Newsome, but
somebody else is coming in to rescue us from this
guy who is not our person. I don't think that
that at this point is going to happen. But I
think it's interesting because the elites have chosen for them
(23:52):
and they're not even seeing this party of elites, but
but they've actually been trained to say, also, I'm on
and elite. I mean, I've had people that are just
out of college in their twenties and thirties who are like, look,
I have an advanced degree.
Speaker 2 (24:07):
I'm a part of the elitist class.
Speaker 1 (24:09):
And I'm like, it's weird that you're willing to come
out and openly say that. It seems like it would
be a bad connotation, you know.
Speaker 2 (24:17):
But it's hysterical. Yeah, I think.
Speaker 3 (24:20):
And to your point, the exact opposite happened in the
GOP right, Trump was outspent two to one. Right, the
donor class really doesn't want him. They don't like his tariffs,
they like the open border, whether they'll admit it or
not because it's good for Wall Street, you know. They
really don't like his economic agenda, and so they poured
(24:41):
money into Nikki Haley's campaign and these other campaigns, and
the most amazing, miraculous thing happened, which is the billions
of dollars spent to try to defeat him between the
GOP primary and of course the Democrats like law fair
campaign and everything they're throwing at him, and the voice
of the electorate was unsuppressible. He's still won by leaps
(25:05):
and baths. I mean, what a miracle, What an amazing country, right,
Like it turns out that the will of the people
is stronger than the will of the donor class, at
least on the right.
Speaker 1 (25:15):
It's so funny though, because like behind the scenes, you
see it all happening. I mean, I think everybody saw
it happening, but maybe you see it on a different
level when you're in our position, because you know, all
these people are like DeSantis is the guy.
Speaker 2 (25:27):
And I remember talking.
Speaker 1 (25:28):
To people and going, I don't think that you understand
what it is to go against Trump. I mean, even
as a Trump endorsed candidate, Trump people didn't come out
and vote for me. There's a special Yeah, there's something
special about him. And when Chris Christy came out and
said there's no such thing as a Trump voter.
Speaker 2 (25:46):
I'm like, God, what are you talking about?
Speaker 1 (25:49):
I mean you, I feel like you're just saying things
like someday I'll have a unicorn. You know, these are
not true things. So I don't understand why. And then
but the thing was that made me upset about this
is I'm like, you know, you all love Ron DeSantis
and he has done great things in the state of Florida.
But I think a lot of people knew that he
(26:11):
was the sacrificial lamb. It was more of a let's see,
let's throw him out there and see if he can
sink or swim, you know, and if he sinks, then hey,
it was our investment and we lost. But it's a person,
and it's become this thing of like the people in
the political world don't matter anymore because it's the chess
players at the top. And Trump gets around the chess
(26:34):
players and they hate it.
Speaker 3 (26:36):
Yeah, they really really hate him for it. I think
with DeSantis, I was talking to a sort of policy
person that I trust who's sort of very much on
the kind of protectionist view of things, and he was
saying he had had a meeting with DeSantis and he
tried to talk to him about economic policy and he
was just completely not interested. And you know, the thing
(26:56):
about working class Americans is in their bone they're anti woke.
They think it's divisive, They it doesn't represent their views.
They think it's intolerant. And the American people are a
deeply tolerant people. But at the same time, they're economic
policies like their jobs, good wages, the American dream. That's
(27:19):
what they're looking to politicians for. They don't need to
be told by politicians, you know that these are your
values exactly. They know what their values are. They need
an economic agenda and Trump gets that and DeSantis just
really didn't get it.
Speaker 2 (27:36):
That's such a good point and it's something I've been trying.
Speaker 1 (27:38):
To talk to people about because you know, I had
a crew come in and it was like, you know,
we're going to run on anti woke, which was so
dumb because here's Whitmer, who has all of the horse
things against her in this state. I mean, the state
is crumbling, and yet it's like this is working in Florida.
The But you're so right, and I got to see
(27:59):
it firsthand. At the end of the day, conservatives are
really not sitting at home wringing their hands over whether
or not their child will be transd at school the
next day. They're wondering if they can afford their groceries.
You know, they know what their values are within their family.
They know how to have discussions with their kids. That's
I mean for all of the we don't want big government,
(28:21):
let it happen in the family. That's what they're saying.
And Trump's not in their personal life. Trump is not
in their bedroom. To your point, he was the most
pro gay president. Not only was he pro gay in
the country, but he decriminalized homosexuality across the world in
many places where he was saying this is not acceptable.
(28:41):
You know, he and Rick Cornell did great things for
homosexuality across the globe. Nobody talks about that, and you
know why nobody talks about it because it's really not
something that people want to advertise on the right.
Speaker 2 (28:53):
But it was something that he did that was saving.
Speaker 1 (28:57):
Lives, and those are the I think that's the way
you get into office and you say, hey, we're going
to protect people, We're gonna make sure that our values
are protected without campaigning on that. What he campaigned on
is when you go home at night, you're not going
to worry about whether you can get gas in the morning.
When you wake up in the morning, you're going to
know there's a job there. If you're a manufacturer, you're
(29:18):
going to know that you have employees and energy. And
guess what, nobody is going to have to worry about
whether or not their kid's going to get into fentanyl
because I'm going to close the border. And that is
something that is so critical. And you know there's this
narrative and there's been this narrative for years now, well
the border. Hispanics don't like the border because those the
open border, those people come and take their jobs.
Speaker 2 (29:41):
They take every working class person's job.
Speaker 1 (29:44):
This is not acceptable for the entire United States to
have unvetted people pouring across the border.
Speaker 2 (29:52):
And that's not to say we don't like immigration. That's
to say, why would you not protect your own.
Speaker 3 (29:58):
The high water mark for working class wages was in
nineteen seventy one. The share of the population that was
born somewhere else that was an immigrant was four percent.
We've now seen stagnating working class wages since then fifty years,
and we are at a new high water mark where
the share of the population that is foreign born is
(30:18):
around fifteen or sixteen percent, and the majority of them
are in working class industries jobs that don't require college degree.
So let me ask you, how can people, literally with
a stray face, say they're not taking people's jobs. We
have exponentially increased the supply of labor. Of course, that's
going to drive down wages. In fact, that's probably why
(30:41):
Joe Biden opened the border, because he thought it would
tame inflation by lowering working class wages, which is the
worst possible way you could do it. You're literally upward
transfer of wealth from the working class to the elites
who consume illegal labor, who hire these people, and they
(31:01):
have to pay them less now than they would have
to pay an American. It is again class warfare against
the working class.
Speaker 1 (31:07):
I mean, it's kind of the ultimate gaslight too, because
he's out there and he's like, you know, we've got
to have this is the loving thing to do. We
have these people coming in and just so you know,
I'm not the problem. Corporations are the bad guy, but
he's actually I mean, it's like talking trash about your
enemy and then going home and sleeping in the same bed.
(31:28):
You know, it's like, these are the people funding you.
I mean, we know, but I don't think that most
people do know. I think that, I mean, I think
that narrative is starting to break on both sides. And
I'm not just picking on Joe Biden, because I've seen
it on the Republican side too. And I do think
that there is way too much corporate control over politicians,
(31:49):
and that is because we decided, Okay, politicians can only
bring in this much money, but you can have all
this dark money, and the dark money wins elections and
it is such an ugly, ugly process. And I could
probably talk about that for a long time, but I
have kept you already longer than I promised. But it's
been fascinating. I've just so enjoyed our conversation.
Speaker 2 (32:10):
Thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 3 (32:12):
What an absolute pleasure. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
Speaker 1 (32:15):
Yes, it's been so much fun. And I know you
have another book coming out. I didn't know if you
wanted to promo that. If you can tell us a
little bit about that before you go.
Speaker 3 (32:21):
Yeah, it's called Second Class, How the elites betrayed America's
working men and women, And it's about everything we just
talked about. So if that sounds like you're jam you
can pre order it on Amazon today.
Speaker 1 (32:31):
I think it's going to be amazing because this has
been so much fun. Batiya Ungers are Gone. Thank you
so much for coming on today.
Speaker 2 (32:38):
Thank you God bless and.
Speaker 1 (32:40):
Thank you all for joining us on the Tutor Dixon Podcast.
For this episode and others, go to Tutor dixonpodcast dot com.
You can subscribe right there, or head over to the
iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts
and join us next time on the Tutor Dixon Podcast.
Speaker 2 (32:56):
Have a blessed day.
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