June 19, 2024 • 52 mins
There's no such thing as Election Day anymore. Join Federalist Editor-in-Chief Mollie Hemingway and Senior Editor David Harsanyi as they diagnose the biggest shenanigans marring the 2024 election, compare President Joe Biden and Donald Trump's polling numbers, and explain what Americans should expect for the nation come November 5.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:15):
Welcome back, everyone to a newepisode of You're Wrong with Molly Hemingway and
David Harsani. Just a reminder,if you would like to email the show,
please do so at radio at theFederalist dot com. We'd love to
hear from you. Mally, Howare you doing, I'm doing great.
How are you doing? I'm doingwell? Usually and typically this podcast,
(00:35):
will you know, you and Ijust have discussion reacting to whatever's going on
in the news, and I thinkthat's a fine thing to do. I
think people enjoy it. But we'regoing to take this podcast and I think
a just have a broader conversation onwhat our expectation should be for the twenty
twenty four election. How is itgoing to play out, What should listeners
(01:00):
be looking for, you know,and what issues might pop up that they
haven't even thought about, or maybeissues are going to pop up again that
we've already had to deal with inthe past. So I'd like to start
by talking about election integrity, right, So, just a broad question.
Have things gotten better? Have statesmost states like tightened up this thing?
(01:26):
Or are we going to have thesame exact thing happen again. It's a
complicated question. It's one that doesn'thave like a yes or no answer,
because each state, according to theConstitution, handles its own elections its own
way, and so a lot ofthe places that were concerned about what happened
(01:46):
in twenty twenty were red states.So in red states you have had some
improvements in different ways, whether youknow, tightening up of election security and
integrity, and then in some placesit's gotten worse. And I think each
one of those things we can talkabout a little bit in detail, but
can I just kind of take astep back and paint like a really big
(02:08):
picture that I think is important forpeople to understand. So for a long
period of time, elections in thiscountry were really built around the idea of
an election day, that you wouldgo through a campaign together as a country,
and then you would all go voteon the same day, and then
(02:28):
later that night or soon thereafter,you would find out who had won each
state and who had won the election. And when you were doing elections that
way, it was like a veryshared cultural experience. You were talking about
issues together. You were also reallyrequiring a certain amount of enthusiasm to be
(02:50):
in play to affect the outcome ofthe vote, and so if you had
people who were generally one side orthe other, but one side wasn't super
jazzed about things, but the otherside was super jazzed about something, you
know, you could kind of affectelections that way. It would determine the
winner. And we really do nothave that anymore. When we were under
(03:10):
the old system, there used tobe concern about certain municipalities, you know,
a Philadelphia, a Detroit, aChicago, where they had machines and
I don't mean by that actual youknow, clickity clack machines, I mean
like operations to drive up the votesin a particular area, to affect statewide
(03:32):
elections or local elections as well.And so you might see union operatives or
mobsters or other people who were involvedin like literally driving around and getting people
into the voting booth, maybe payingthem, maybe incentivizing them, you know,
through threats or incentives, making surethat they actually showed up to vote.
(03:57):
And the way that we do electionsnow has turned that machine system into
a nationwide prospect or more accurately,has allowed machines to operate when and where
needed, and not to just doit with the physical limitations of a single
location on election day, but todo it without geographical limitations, without time
(04:20):
restrictions, for weeks and in somecases months ahead of election day. I
have more to say, but Idon't want to just drown on here.
No, I mean, so letme ask you before you go on.
Actually, so let me ask youthis. So we used to have an
election day, Now we have anelection season. I would say, is
it worth trying to fight to bringback that election day? Or should Republicans
(04:45):
for the most part, simply giveup on that notion and fight and change
the way that they're looking at this? Like Donald Trump always is kind of
hoopooing mail ballots, let's say,and that kind of undermines himself because you're
going to need people to be mailingin those ballots themselves, because sometimes on
election day it's raining, or peopleget lazy or whatever it is. It's
(05:05):
much, you know, so youlose votes that way. Just making that
up, but that's just what Ibelieve is true, you know, is
probably happened. So should Republicans changethe way they look at elections or should
Republicans be fighting to bring back howit was? So my personal views are
kind of at odds with the politicalviews. So if I can just say,
first up, I think it's verybad for a country to have an
election season without a lot of Ithink it's just bad. It's just unhealthy.
(05:30):
You can be spending, you canbe having millions of votes coming in
weeks ahead of a debate. It'sjust it's not a good way to make
decisions. You want an informed populace. You don't want it to just be
like whoever has the most money toharvest ballots wins. And I keep thinking
of something that former Attorney General Barrtold me when I was writing the book
(05:51):
Rigged, about how telling people theycan decide on who they're going to vote
for at any point in the electionseason, as opposed to at the end
of the election season is like tellinga jury that they can come to a
verdict at any point in a trial. It's just not a good It's just
there's no good order to it.So, while all sorts of things that
(06:15):
affect the integrity of an election actuallypull really well with Americans, things like
should you show that you really arewho you are before you vote? That
polls very well. Despite Joe Bidensaying that means you support Jim Crow,
the vast majority of everybody believes inID to vote or other types of you
(06:36):
know, should you if someone ismail in balloting, should you check their
signature? You know, things likethat. They're all very popular. However,
mail in balloting itself is also verypopular, so my views are at
odds with most Americans. Americans reallylike to have unsupervised mail out ballots with
(06:57):
like with all the chaos that itbrings, And I would just say,
if you're going to do it,you should do it more along the lines
of Florida than in New York.You know, there are certain states that
do it better with more integrity thanothers. And so one of the problems
with twenty twenty was the mad rushto mail in balloting where people weren't able
to, like really do it ina thoughtful, slow way. But you
(07:20):
are absolutely correct that if you don'tplay the game according to the rules as
they are currently written, you'll justnever win elections. So Republicans, I
could not understand better the dislike ofmail in balloting. I personally don't support
it, and I don't do itmyself. But you have to bank ballots
(07:40):
well ahead of election day if youwant to be competitive So just to quick
aside, we see polls right andthey've barely like, no matter what happens
with Donald Trump in court, whateverthey're not, they don't move that much.
So elections have basically come down toI think you are you know you've
said this or you've argued about this, that they basically come down to who.
(08:01):
It's not convincing people to vote foryou, it's how many people who
already support you can you get outto vote? Right? So largely so
are Republicans prepared for that in twentytwenty four? Do you think that they've
come to terms without reality or not? Okay, so it's a state by
state question there, But I justalso want to, you know, just
(08:24):
take a little step back. Whenyou and I were younger, do you
remember how concerned people were about lowinformation voters. It used to be a
bipartisan concern that people were voting forthis candidate or another, this policy or
another without really knowing who they werevoting for what they were voting for.
That has gone completely away because nowyou just have massive ballot trafficking operations that
(08:48):
are financed by left wing billionaires mostlybut now also by your taxpayer dollars that
are focused on getting Democrat constituents seeballots into the ballot box. And this
means people who may or may notknow that there is an election, They
may or may not know who isrunning, they may not know anything about
(09:09):
the issues in play. The newthing is just to make sure that if
that person has ever been registered atthat address, or if someone can be
said to have registered at that addressand can be said to have a pulse
or whatever, you get a ballotassociated with that person into the ballot box.
And it's the nature of the demographicdifferences in between Democrats and Republicans that
(09:35):
it's a much easier thing for Democratsto do than Republicans. So Democrats can
go to you know, inside acity, an apartment building that houses you
know, like a certain number ofpeople and just kind of like go floor
to floor, whereas with Republicans theyare, you know, having to figure
out how to harvest ballots, youknow, in the over the hills and
(09:58):
through the dales, and so it'slike a less there's some challenges built into
it. They're best conquered on astate by state basis. Some states are
actually doing a good job with it. You have some efforts in Pennsylvania and
a lot of you know, Ithink money, energy, and effort to
work on a ballot harvesting operation therefor Republicans. You've seen some in Arizona,
(10:22):
a lot of money and energy beingdeployed there, but it really needs
to happen in a comprehensive way.I'm a little bit nervous that like the
RNC isn't aware of it. Theydid recently start a Swamp your Vote initiative
a couple of weeks ago that issupposed to address some of this, but
(10:43):
I'm just I'm a little nervous justto go back to something you said,
if you really want to have peopleyell at you tell them that people that
voters have a c that citizens havea civic duty not to vote if they
don't know what's going on. Likevoting has become this right ri of democracy
(11:05):
where we have convinced everyone that thevoting is the most important thing they can
do to be a good citizen,when it's not true. The most important
thing they can do to be agood citizen is be aware and educate themselves
on what's going on and then voteright. And by the way, there
are many, many highly educated peoplewho vote like they don't know what they're
talking about either. So I'm notsaying like you have to have an IVY
(11:26):
Lead degree to be voting. It'snot a class thing. But I think
that you have to have some recognitionand understanding of what's going on before you're
going out there. But we've createdthis society, we're voting itself without any
of the responsibilities to go along withit is like the driving force of a
healthy democracy, which is not true. So in any event, so I
(11:48):
feel you on that ground. Andwhen we just mail people ballots, like
people who maybe don't even really wantto vote or have no interest in it,
they'll just pick it up and doit because it's right in front of
them. I don't think that's speaksto a healthy democratic or republic, you
know what I mean. And placeslike I believe, does Colorado have an
all mail in ballot election? Theymight believe so an organ I mean that
(12:11):
does that is insane. I mean, I just think that that is a
way to really undermine what your civicyou know, the civic duty of you
know that you have in society,and you know, I don't know if
people realize like ten percent of thecountry moves each year, and some places
have automatic voter registration or major effortsto get people registered with populous, with
(12:33):
the populace that at least that manyare moving in there out each year.
And so you take a place likeNevada, where you have a very trangent
population moving in moving out automatically registered, you will see with their automatic mail
in voting. You know, you'llsee doors with just dozens of ballots in
(12:54):
front of them because they are inapartment buildings where people are known for moving
in and out of quite regularly.How do they auto register you? Is
it with your driver's license usually orsomething. Different states have different rules.
Yeah, so maybe when you interactwith the government, you get registered at
that moment. So that's a bigthing that we talked, you know,
previously on the show about zucker Bucks, which was something that my book Rigged
(13:18):
dealt with a lot. And thiswas the effort by Mark Zuckerberg where he
gave hundreds of millions of dollars totwo left wing organizations staffed by Democrat operatives,
who then funneled money into the primarilyinto the blue areas of swing states.
So they did the entire get outthe vote operation, again mostly in
(13:41):
the blue areas of swing states,and it had a profound effect on the
elections. You get super super turnoutin a blue area of a swing state
and you can control the presidency.You know. And after that happened,
it became quite controversial, but JoeBiden understood that's how he was elected.
Shortly after he got into office,he issued an executive order for Biden Bucks
(14:07):
and this is where every single federalagency in the under his control had to
come up with a plan for howthey could help target government benefit groups for
registration and get out the vote efforts, and they kept they have kept those
plans secret. To a large degree. A broad coalition of reporters has been
(14:30):
doing really good work trying to figureout exactly how this is working. You
got like an unlimited federal budget wherepeople say, you know, for instance,
it used to be that you werenot supposed to take beneficiaries of federal
programs in college and use those forpoliticking or any kind of election related activity.
(14:50):
And under Biden's watch, that's beenflipped on its head, and in
fact, you're supposed to use itto register people on college campuses, which
of course are like one thousand percentDemocrat, or you know, you take
offices that hand out welfare benefits andsay would you like to keep these going
by registering to vote right now forthe party that you know we want you
(15:13):
to vote for. And so it'slike all sorts of ethical problems related to
this. And I also I'm notsure Republicans have I mean, it's just
one of these like frustrations. Wefirst reported this at the Federalists years ago,
and Congress there is a committee inCongress that has looked into it.
But just like the general lase fairattitude that a lot of these Republicans in
(15:37):
Congress have toward this corruption of ourelection system with taxpayer dollars is a little
disappointing. These jobs reports are justa movie trailer for a bad movie.
Watched Out on Wall Street Podcast withChris Markowski. Every day Chris helps unpack
the connection between politics and the economyand how it affects your wallet. The
(15:58):
month of May, Bailey created anyfull time jobs, mostly from their government,
and tons of part time jobs.The headline number may look good,
but the rest of it is adud. Whether it's happening in DC or
down on Wall Street. It's affectingyou financially. Be informed. Check out
the Watchdot on Wall Street podcast withChris Markowski on Apple, Spotify or wherever
you get your podcasts. Well,can I ask you a question about Biden
(16:21):
bucks? So I'm assuming these arefederal dollars. I don't know where they've
been procured from. Sound like Bidenshould be able to do this, you
know, latterly. But yeah,elections are run by the state, So
does how does it work? Didthey go to a school that gets federal
money or like how is it dispersed? So it's interesting you're you're doing.
(16:44):
You know, it's federal funds thatjust go to get out the vote efforts,
which can include voter registration and otherget out to vote efforts. So
the elections themselves are run by thestates. But you know, you can
set up your student aid office toregister people to vote and then that can
get Then also then you can say, well, we're not doing it in
(17:06):
partisan way. We're just also drivingpeople where like we're picking up their ballots
and we're taking them in. Whenyou do it in when you do it
with one population and not with another, it's election interference. You know,
if it's not like the same benefitis given to everybody, then I really
target it. Yeah, so it'snot given to private get out the vote
(17:27):
groups. It's given to government entitiesthat are trying that are supposedly asked,
you know, trying to get outthe vote. And as you say,
if it's not dispersed evenly to allkinds of populations, then you can just
target the voters that you want.And it sounds like Tamony Hall or something
like that. And even like youknow, state Department is making sure to
(17:47):
register people who don't live in thecountry who are American citizens, which is
like, okay, fine, alsooverwhelmingly Democrat. It just happens to be
that all of the people that Bidenis, all the constituents sees that the
Biden bucks are going to are justoverwhelmingly Democrat constituencies. And this does you
know, we're in very tight electionsin this country. The twenty twenty election
(18:08):
came down to forty three thousand votesacross three states. Like a little bit
here and a little bit there mattersa lot, and we are talking massive
federal interference. Oh but I wasgoing to mention some state based officials have
taken action against these Biden Bucks programs, saying that it's an inappropriate infiltration of
the federal government into state administration ofelections, including like when you're registering people
(18:33):
to vote as a federal entity,that's in violation of our state law.
So it depends on what your statelaws are in different places, but people
have taken action. It sounds tome like this. You know, red
states will be like this is unfair. We have to stop these programs,
all these programs, but blue statesaren't going to say that. So in
essence, you're almost you know,you limit it within your own state,
(18:55):
but the other state is probably expandingthis kind of thing. Am I wrong?
Like you know what I mean?I mean, you're not going to
stop in New York from finding newvoters, but you are going to stop
it maybe in eras yet stay likeArizona, but maybe like Florida. Well
could you take like a state likeIdaho. Let's say where it is a
red state, but it's turning bluewith the importation of a lot of Californians,
(19:17):
Oregonians and Washingtonians and it has veryliberal campuses. So if a red
state decides there that they don't wantthat Democrat takeover of their elections that way,
that would not be an unwise thingfor them to do. Now,
I do want to say this isone of the interesting things. And the
New York Times has kind of raisedthe alarm about how they are realizing that
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some of the get out the voteefforts that Democrats are doing are registering their
political opponents to vote. It's notjust about registration. That's one thing I
wish like Republicans tend to believe likein this self discipline and self government kind
of thing, and it's like,it's your responsibility to register to vote and
go out and vote. And Democratsare like, would you like help care
(20:00):
carrying your ballot from your kitchen tableto the threshold of your door. Would
you like help filling this out?Would you like someone to come and explain
the issues to you? Would youlike someone, you know, to get
this into the ballot box? Likethey're helping you every step of the way
and thereby influencing your vote. Youknow, Hi, you have not been
ruled sentient by a court of law. Would you like me to fill out
(20:22):
your ballot in this nursing home alongwith everybody else's you know what I mean,
Like they're really sort of crafty,and it's very difficult to determine problems
conclusively, and so Republicans should betaking advantage of these registrations and doing the
harvesting as well. So I justhate it because I think it should be
harder to vote, and people getmad at that, but I think that
(20:45):
if it really is the sacred thingthen they're doing, you should have to
put a minimal amount of effort intowanting to do it. I think,
you know, and you're right,and Republicans, if they want to compete,
they're going to have to kind ofdo the same thing. So you
were a book called Rigged, which, when you know it took a deep,
super deep dive into a lot ofthese problems. And one of the
(21:06):
other aspects you speak about in thatbook that I don't want to spend too
What we don't want to spend toomuch time on right now because we quite
often is the media. So inyour estimation, the election is rigged because
we don't really have a media anymore. That's part of the problem, correct,
So, just objectively speaking, oneof the metrics by which international observers
(21:27):
judge the fairness, freeness, andlegitimacy of an election is if it takes
place in a non propaganda news environment. And with the demise of corporate media,
you know, ethics in recent years, we really do have a problem
(21:47):
in this country about whether we're outsideof a propaganda environment. So one of
the things that you'd seen in pollsfor the last few months is that all
sorts of demographic groups are overwhelmingly notoverwhelmer. They're moving in dramatic and interesting
fashion toward Trump and away from Clinton. There's this one group that is not
(22:07):
and it's seniors. And by theway, that's a very good group to
have. Joe Biden is very blessedto have seniors. They're committed to voting,
they don't need a lot of workto get out and vote, and
they're reliable, and they are kindof sticking with him. And you look
at it and you think, God, shouldn't seniors care more about the direction
of the country than like a millennial. I mean, not that you don't
(22:27):
care as a millennial. That soundedhorrible, but you know what I mean,
Like you would kind of assume,if you were being prejudicial here,
that they wouldn't like what he's doingto the country, and yet they're kind
of sticking with him. And Ido believe that A big reason why is
some of the only people watching corporatemedia news shows are seniors, and so
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you'll look at something, you know, Joe Biden does something, whether it's
imprisoning his political opponents or trying toimprison his political opponents, or you know,
coming up with the executive orders onthe border, and you watch the
media coverage of it and it's juststraight one percent propaganda. And combined with
(23:10):
that, you have a regime thathas shut down or attempted to shut down
alternate voices in the media and peoplewho say something contrary to what CBS News
says, and that does render anelection less secure. Absolutely well. I
will say it's clear that a lotof people aren't watching, or a fewer
(23:32):
and few people watching, you know, establishment media, But I will say
that they still I think, sortof set the agenda the conversation. The
narratives they come up with seep intothe national conversation. So I do think
that sometimes they're more important than wemaybe would give them credit for in some
ways. But anyway, let's moveon. So you mentioned censorship, which
(23:55):
the media was part of. Itwas worse because I think the media can
concocted all kinds of conspiracies that didn'texist. But so let's talk now about
like tech social media platforms, andthat's where most people get or a lot
of people get their news, anda lot of people have their conversations.
There was a ton of sort ofconcerted censorship, like the Hunter Biden laptop
(24:22):
story, for instance, which wasn'treally about Hunter Biden. It was about
Joe Biden, but you know,you had you had the former CIA and
other you know, government officials sayingit was Russian propaganda, the media sort
of going along with that, andthen tech companies banning mentions of the story.
So do you think that that theDOJ and others kind of worked with
these tech companies to ban speech andpolitical speech, are going to be able
(24:47):
to get away with that again thistime? Or are is there just enough
skepticism of what they're doing that theywant Oh my goodness, um alarmed that
you even ask the question that wasI'm trying to be the interviewer. Here're
okay again, if we can takeit back to twenty sixteen, what happened
that election? Cycle was that DonaldTrump was able to circumvent corporate media and
(25:11):
take his message directly to the Americanpeople, and they liked it, and
they voted and elected him president.And it was a huge wake up call
to Silicon Valley and they were veryupset. And there is contemporaneous reporting.
Alan Bacari wrote a really interesting bookabout some of this stuff too, where
the day after that election, youhave people openly saying we will never again
(25:33):
let what happened you know here,happen again. And what they meant by
that was that with corporate media completelybecoming propaganda for the Democrat Party, they
also would do that, and sothey instituted some draconian algorithmic game playing to
suppress news and information they didn't like, to elevate news and information that they
(25:55):
wanted to, you know, getout there. And they did it across
like every issue that people vote onand every candidate they vote on, and
is so it is so dystopic whatwe've been living through since twenty sixteen,
and it gets worse and worse,and then the more it's entrenched, the
more difficult it is to go backfrom any of that. And so yes,
(26:18):
in twenty twenty, we saw howcensorship can affect an election with the
horrific situation of with the government helpsocial media companies shutting down discussion of the
Biden family corruption, journalism about theBiden family corruption from the oldest continuously publishing
(26:41):
newspaper in America, I mean amazingFirst Amendment violations. It wasn't just about
that, which was inarguably the mostimportant campaign story of that cycle, but
also everything you know, COVID andtrans issues and race issues and everything.
The censorship from corporate media was ridiculous. You also had it where, you
(27:03):
know, you saw things like onTwitter, which at that time was not
owned by Elon Musk. If youpushed a conspiracy theory that Donald Trump was
personally like stealing mailboxes to keep peoplefrom mail in voting, that was fine.
If you said something like we allknow that mail in balloting is less
secure than in person voting, whichis true for obvious and logical reasons,
(27:25):
you would be censored. Not justcensored from that story, but like your
whole publication would be censored, youryour whole you know, it wasn't just
that tweet that was censored. Everytweet from you would be downplayed, blacklisted.
It's horrible. The State Department,which the Federalist is suing right now
for its role in the censorship industrialcomplex, you know, has helped fund
(27:51):
and market many censorship tools to beused against the American people in violation of
our first men rights, and thoseare like entrenched now in the ecosphere.
And I have thought a lot aboutelection administration, and I genuinely believe all
(28:12):
these problems, like the Biden Bucksand the zuck Bucks and the mail Atbalot,
like all of that is super importantand huge and is a tiny fraction
of the problem caused by social mediacensorship in this country, which I think
affects millions upon millions of votes.I think when you say, like,
how is it possible that the sensiblepeople here are not winning the day on
(28:34):
this issue or that, I thinkit's I think it's big tech more than
anything. Really, Okay, letme push back on that. I'm not
saying that you're wrong that it isa big deal. It's a big deal
to me because kind of mass censorshipof courses is problematic and if you let
it be normalized, it becomes worseand worse. But I just feel like
the Internet is a place where inthe end this stuff gets through in some
(28:59):
way anyway. It's very hard tocontrol. When you had three networks,
it was easy to control the message. It's far more difficult now with all
are site or others. Now.I'm not saying it doesn't matter, but
I just don't feel that most peopleare on Twitter getting their views. I
think people who are politically involved areon Twitter getting their views and they don't
change their mind very much. AmI wrong about that? I feel like
(29:19):
you're just backing me up here though, That's what I'm kind of saying.
Like, but you're saying it's moreimportant that administration of an election. I
don't know, is it. Imean, you know, our male ballots
being just handed out to everyone.Isn't that more dangerous than stopping people from
talking about those stories? But whatI meant not about Well, first of
all, I think violations of firstmoment rights are actually I think that's worse
(29:44):
than election interference, as bad aselection interferences, And it's all related to
self government, right, Like,if we don't have the if we don't
have the ability to seek truth andargue for truth and convince other people of
truth, it's the same thing aslike election interference, where you don't have
the right to pick your own peopleto I totally agree. I just want
to just clarify, I mean,how much it has affected the election.
(30:07):
I don't think okay, as faras how much it has affected the election,
I do believe censorship is a muchbigger player than all of the other
issues combined. It is so subtleand so entrenched, and it's so every
you know, people don't realize howmuch you know. Clicking on this story
for us is that you take,for example, you want to learn something
(30:27):
about like what happened to George Floyd, and you search into Google and Google
has blacklisted every single website that willtell you something accurate about it, and
instead it says, here's what theNew York Times says about it. Whatever
happened? What was the Russia collusion? What's going on there? You want
to you know, who did areally great job with hard, factual reporting
(30:48):
on every aspect of that, theFederalist Google it and see what comes up.
It will be the places that peddledthe Russia collusion hoax that are given
to you on a platter. Youremember that old saying about how Osama bin
Lauden was hard to find, andthat they finally found him on the second
page of Google results, like thejoke being that's that's an impossible place to
(31:12):
find anything. We'll try the twentiethpage of Google results, you know,
where the first page is this leftwing site and that left wing site,
and you know, everything is likepushing it, and then that becomes what
Wikipedia says, and that's what feedsinto the AI system, so that you
know, it's just overwhelming and actuallycan cause me to despair a little bit,
(31:32):
so we should probably move on.But the way people affects the way
people think about every issue. Youknow, he takes something like trans issues.
Polling shows that even the vast majorityof Democrats are like, no,
I don't believe men should be allowedto play on girls teams. And yet
you watch the media and you doyour Google search, and everything will be
like fed to you like you're thecrazy person for thinking that men shouldn't be
(31:55):
on girls' sports teams, you know, and then that effects who you vote
for and what you think is normaland et cetera, et cetera. That's
fair enough. But here's the thing. So when I put something into Google.
Yeah, I'll get some left wingsite explaining it to me as the
top you know entry, or I'llget Wikipedia, some demented person had gone
in there and given their own explanationfor whatever it is. So I totally
(32:16):
agree with that, And I alsoagree obviously that you have a press that
I don't even like calling it thatanymore. You have this media that lies
to you. But what is thesolution to that? You can't I mean,
in the end, we can't forcea bunch of private entities. And
I'm not even talking about Google,which people will argue, let's say,
is some kind of utility, butI'm talking about CBS or CNN or whatever.
(32:38):
I mean, how are you goingto force people to be fairer?
What is the way to do?There is no real way to accomplish that,
is there. I mean, whatdo we do? How do we
fix this? So some of what'shappening with big tech and government to censor
competing news outlets to these left wingmedia outlets is something that action should be
(33:00):
taken against. That that's an unfairintervention into a free market that artificially sustains
these left wing propaganda outlets. Butno, I think like in a free
country, you're allowed to spread lies, or you should be. But what
we've got right now that's very badis if you are spreading lies about russiaclusion
(33:22):
or COVID response, or Brett Kavanaughor Justice Salito or like any number of
people, you are allowed and evenyou benefit from doing that, and if
you speak truth about it you getharmed. That is not sustainable. Yeah,
I'm a weird. I'm a marketguy, so I'm always like the
(33:42):
market will correct itself and stuff likethat. But I have been dismayed that
like the Washington Post can lose tensof millions of dollars, or a place
like the Atlanta can be dropped upby some rich person frankly to disseminates disinformation
and there's no real correction, Likethere's no one. I know that people
the Post got fired recently. Butit's not like someone comes in and goes,
hey, you know, maybe weshould be fair. They just kind
(34:05):
of like doubled down, okay,and what they've been doing, you're the
one being foolish here. I thinka lot of people think these these media
outlets exist to make a profit.Obviously they do not. And the left
has understood this really really well,Jeff Bezos. Yeah, he lost a
lot of money on the Washington Post. Or he has lost a lot of
(34:28):
money on the Washington Post. Healso gained a lot of money through the
COVID pandemic that more than made upfor it. And in order to make
money he had to spread worldwide hysteriathat made Amazon the go to place for
shopping. Yes, a lot ofbusiness has failed. His didn't. His
did better than ever before. Andyeah, if it took the Washington Post
spreading conspiracy theories and lies like,that's a small price to pay. I
(34:52):
know, but lots of people arelosing their job, right, I mean,
go on, well done. Takethe Atlantic. I up to hear
Donald Trump making fun of the Atlanticfor the money it loses. So I
think it's owned or was owned byLoreen Powell Jobs, Steve Jobs's widow,
and so every time every year it'slike, oh, they lost another ten
(35:12):
million dollars, he'll make a jokeabout it. Right, I'm sorry her
spending ten million dollars a year tocontrol elections is a bargain. The Atlantic
pushed the Russia collusion lie. Theydid it for years. They pushed various
lies about wars. They invented theein marn hoax, which low information voters
(35:35):
believed, which was this like unbelievablydisputed, not just disputed, but like
proven to be false claim that DonaldTrump secretly hated dead American troops. This
story was so made up that JohnBolton, who hates Donald Trump, was
like, this is a made upstory, as did like two dozen other
people. It was used in debates, it was used in campaign ads.
(35:59):
They're actually using again this cycle forten million dollars. It's a bargain.
The idiocy is that the right doesn'tsee that they're in an information war.
They think complaining about the media issufficient without realizing like, okay, those
people are willing to lose ten hundredmillion dollars a year on their media organizations.
(36:19):
All you would have to do isgive like a fraction of that to
hire real reporters who report real newsand inform the public. And they don't
really realize that that's something to do. That's sounded too negative. No,
a good opportunity for people to engagein, like saving the country by supporting
real media and pause for real contactthe federalists. I've been on that forever.
(36:40):
Listen. I love think tanks,but most people don't care about your
white papers. They have very littleeffect. All that money you should be
or a big bigger chunk of thatmoney should be be going towards journalistic efforts
and information efforts. I agree withwhat you're saying, obviously, but CNN
(37:00):
does have shareholders, like they're partof a bigger company. Like I don't
know how long they can continue tojust keep losing money in that way.
And maybe they can do it becausethey're part of a bigger conglomerate or they're
part of a conglomerate and that kindof those losses don't matter that much.
But I mean, journalists are losingjobs all over the country constantly. At
some point, I think it's goingto matter. I do. Like there
(37:22):
are a few big papers, they'refine, they're you know, Post Times,
whatever, but most of journalism hasbeen gutted out, and that's terrible.
That's actually terrible for democracy. Right, So I don't know, maybe
we'll see I mean, I don'tknow, So I don't know. If
you answered my question, do youthink that they can repeat that kind of
(37:45):
censorship again or is it going tobe a little more difficult because Elon Musk
owns X And you know, mypoint was that Nolan can they they are,
They're doing it right now. Thisis why we are suing the State
Department for its ongoing support of censorshiptools. They're doing it. It hurts
horribly, it hurts our elections,it hurts our ability to be governed by
(38:08):
ourselves, and they're doing it ona massive scale. Now, the big
thing, the big like sort ofwhite pill of the whole thing, is
Elon buying Twitter. I do notmean by this that Twitter is perfect,
that it's even good, but itisn't the censorship tool that every other social
(38:30):
media, major social media outlet isat this point at least, and so
you are able to discuss things freelyand have conversations without the level of censorship
that we see on other platforms.I mean, I have to say,
since Musk bought it, it,in some sense it's more like a sewer
(38:50):
frankly, like there's just terrible peopleon there saying terrible things. But I
prefer having that there with the moreopen and again it's not perfect, I
agree with you, but just amore open conversation and an open news flow
and the ability of people to becontrarian or to challenge. You know,
I really recommend By the Way foryou, so Stewart, because I don't
(39:13):
have that experience at all. ButI'm also an active blocker. I have
more than one point two million followers, which is to me a stunning number.
But I also block literally tens ofthousands of people. Those are hand
curated, boutique blocks. I blockfor people being mean to you. I
block for people being mean to SeanDavis or to me. Like, I
(39:37):
just block, not mean. Idon't mind mean. I just think when
it's like cartoonishly mean or anti semiticor you know, just like, yeah,
I love blocking. It's not eventhose Twitter I'm talking abou accounts with
millions of followers that are really gross, you know, and in some sense
though, and I don't want toviewer off into something that we're not talking
about this podcast, but you know, maybe I'm happy that I can just
(40:00):
see what people really think sometimes.I know it's a weird, you know,
it's a weird way to view theworld, but I'd rather know that
these people are out there and hateus or whatever it is than not know.
In a way, now, Ithink it's exaggerated because they're kind of
like clout chasers who just get allthese like people to follow them that are
(40:20):
not Can I say, like,if you're anonymous on Twitter, yeah you
might have you might you know,follow this anti semit doesn't mean that you
are that in your daily life oranything like that. So I think those
numbers are exaggerated. But I'm happyto know that people feel comfortable saying some
of the things they are. Idon't know how we got onto that,
but anyway, so I'd rather havethat than have censorship, because what happens
(40:40):
is then all of a sudden,it's like, oh, we have to
get rid of these anti Semites.We're also going to get rid of the
people say bad things about George Sorows. You know, they always do this.
They kind of try to like makea completely legitimate criticism or flame about
someone be you know, just asbad as the real nuts. You know,
they conflate the two anyway, Soyou think they will, you think
(41:05):
they are. So that does notbode well for twenty twenty four, I
guess right, Well, if youlook at twenty twenty, which was another
one of these elections where Democrats werewilling to do whatever it took to keep
Donald Trump from being re elected.They lied, they issued fake news,
they engaged in massive censorship, Theyrigged, And I choose that word advisedly
(41:30):
because it's about like preordaining changes toensure a particular outcome the system to have
massive mail in balloting that could thenbe exploited, you know, through Zuckerbucks
and other things. They still onlywon by forty three thousand VOTs across three
states. Since then, you haveseen Joe Biden's numbers plummet, you know,
(41:52):
and you have people being able tomake a side by side comparison of
what they thought about life under Trumpversus what they thought about life on and
it's there's no question that the regimeis super sad about the threat of Trump,
that they hated his presidency, thatthey thought it was chaotic, and
that it hurt them personally like thepowers. It's also true that the American
(42:13):
people have a very different idea aboutit. And I'm not saying by that
that you don't have like low favorabilityfor Trump. You do, you much
lower favorability for Biden. You know, he's he's lower than Trump. So
that is not what you saw intwenty twenty, and so when it's coming
down to close elections, I thinkI would say that while Republicans absolutely need
(42:36):
to be laser focused on get outthe vote, ballot harvesting operations in the
places that matter, and they needto fight the censorship, and they need
to fight the media corruption, andthey need to like kind of do everything,
you know, really well, thatI would not say that they can't
win this election. I mean,if it were a normal, free,
(42:58):
fair election, based on the waywe used to do elections, it would
be a blowout. So I thinkthey could win even with the new environment.
I wasn't even yeah, I mean, I wasn't even I didn't even
mean it like that. I justmeant, will it be a mess?
You know? Are we going tosee the same sort of mess? I'll
just say, I think we've spokenabout this recently, but I just don't
(43:20):
see how either side we'll be readyto accept the results of this election.
So do you feel like we're forsure going to have like a crazy postal?
Is the post election going to becrazy lawsuits? Like? How do
you envision that? I know thingschange quickly, but yeah, I think
that one, you know, onevery bad thing that Democrats did for the
(43:45):
health of the country, but verysmart and savvy thing that they have done
is criminalize Republican legal work. They'veworked to disbar every effective Republican attorney and
with basically no pushback from Republicans,no conservative judicial society has pushed back against
this effort to criminalize Republican election lawand to disbar Republican election attorneys. It's
(44:10):
really something to observe, and soyou have to not just put together a
ballot harvesting operation, a complete getout the vote operation, which is not
just about registering people to vote,but actually getting the ballots into the boxes.
You also need to do fights againstthe law fair done by markle Las
(44:31):
who's sort of the guy who cookedup the Russia collusion hoaks and also orchestrated
the twenty twenty mail in balloting issues, and he's working very hard again this
year, and so savver and smarterDemocrat attorneys. You have to fight that,
and then you also have to fightafter the fact for anything that went
wrong. I am quite anxious tosee what the twenty twenty four conspiracy theory
(44:57):
will be about Donald Trump, andI've been trying trying to listen to the
left and get some kind of clueas to what's coming because the Russia collusion
stuff, you could now looking back, you can see that it had been
sort of bubbling. Anyway, Ido not look forward to the post the
lessons at all. Yes, Ido want to say that already what Democrats
(45:17):
have done with their law fair againstDonald Trump does render any outcome or any
Biden victory as kind of illegitimate onits face. And what I'm saying by
that is because of this inappropriate meddling, this attempt to remove Donald Trump from
the ballot, which was an actualeffort, coordinated conspiracy across multiple states to
(45:43):
try to actually kill the election.Then you also have all the different cases
and all the different jurisdictions attempts toimprison and bankrupt their political opponent. This
is the thing where if this wereanother country, we would say already the
legitimacy of this election is in doubt, so in a weird way for the
(46:04):
preservation of the country, like youalmost have to like they've already passed the
point where it's going to be verydifficult to accept a Biden victory should he
eke that out. Does that makesense. Yeah, I mean it's not
even a secret. Is a conspiracyautomatically secret? Now, I mean it's
an open conspiracy because Alvin Bragg saidhe was going to go after the president.
Others have you know, who areafter him, have openly stated that
(46:28):
they want to punish him and puthim in jail and like that. So,
I mean, I don't know.I would say, also, it
depends on how. I mean,if it is a very close election,
it's obviously going to be more contested, you know, if someone But I
don't see how it's not going tobe a very close election. It's very
difficult for me to see any waythat that could happen. But who knows.
(46:50):
I don't know. You know,Joe Biden is one of the most
if not the most unpopular president incumbentin history. So the numbers are well
below what Trump's were at this timefour years ago. Yeah, I mean,
the switch in the polls is prettystunning. It's like double digit from
where he was twenty twenty to nowgo on. I mentioned this before.
(47:14):
I just don't know, like settingaside everything that you don't like about Trump
or don't like about Biden, justas far as policy goes literally, I
can't think of any part of what'sgoing on in the country or foreign policy
that anyone could legitimately say it's bettertoday than it was, you know,
be covid Trump administration. I justthere is no yes. And yet I'd
(47:37):
say, if you talk to peoplewho are in the establishment, they would
say that everything's so much better thanit was during the Trump era. So
like New York City, DC,they objectively think that things are great.
They're very happy with the Biden policies. They are They're thrilled, in fact,
(47:57):
and I tell people this when I'mtraveling throughout the country, Like DC
loves Joe Biden. They think he'sdoing a fantastic job. They're so happy
with, for instance, the warin Ukraine. They are thrilled. So
I'm just saying, no, Listen, from their perspective, things are going
exactly as they prefer them to go. Like I don't think we're in the
(48:19):
middle of the Great Depression, butit's clear that, for instance, inflation
has affected so many people. Andthe more the media tries to tell everyone
that they're crazy, that it's amirage something, the more I think it
angers them. But anyway, sowe have a lot to look forward to,
a lot of exciting, exciting thingsto look forward to in twenty twenty
(48:40):
four. It sounds like it's goingto be a giant mess. Can we
talk about something less depressing? Culture? Yep? What have you been reading
or watching or listening to? Well, I'm about to go to a place
I've never been before, which isItaly. So I have been reading books
(49:06):
on Italy, like art books aboutdifferent things to see in different museums.
So I was super exciting, superexciting. I've never been. No,
I've never been, and I havealways wanted to go. I mean,
obviously I'm just like obsessed with theRoman Empire of course as a middle aged
(49:27):
white man, but just in general, vatic and all that, I just
would love to I want to goto a place less fascistic than my country.
So that's why we chose. They'rejust kidding. But so I've been
looking through art books, like readingguides, reading an interesting book called The
(49:52):
Tigris of Furley, about Renaissance Italy'smost courageous and notorious countess by Liz Love
by the way, and also watchinga Stanley Tucci documentary documentary Serious about It
is a show where he's yeah,yeah, yeah, so I picked the
(50:12):
regions. Yeah, so what aboutyou. Gosh, what I'm gonna say
is gonna sound far less exciting.But I've been watching I'm going to uh
now, not going anywhere. I'vebeen watching a show. I would call
this a guilty pleasure. It's ashow called Suits. Have you ever watched
the show? Is this the onewith the princess? Oh? Yeah,
(50:37):
yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, she's she's I would say, you
know what, she's fine, she'sfine in this show. Yeah, I
guess this is an old, anold TV series. It is like,
it's about two lawyers. But Iso I have this idea. I have
this theory basically that you know themovie Goodwill Hunting for instance, or this
Suits, there's always a he didn'tlike it Hunting, Oh my gosh,
(51:00):
I think it's the most overrated awfulmovie. Okay, So those are superhero
movies. There's a character who's justso far more intelligent than everyone else that
he's a superhero. So that's whatthis show basically is. It's almost like
it reminds me of like House,but with a lawyer, but it's soap
opera y and stuff. But Istarted watching it and I kind of liked
(51:22):
it. I do want to saythat everyone should immediately purchase this album.
It is so so good. Wehad a review of it at The Federalist
several weeks back. But it's calledJackpot by Monty Borden and the Dangerous Few,
and it is just like one ofmy very favorite albums. It's the
(51:45):
only thing I've been listening to NonStop. And you'll love it. So can
you repeat it? Jack Jackpot,Jackpot? And our headline was Jackpot is
the most compelling album of the year. It just it takes all the different
types of like Americana and just makesit. It's in particularly like listen to
(52:08):
it over and over. It's justreally really great. So stream it,
buy it whatever, do it nowdone, It's on my list. It
will be done. Okay, Well, Molly, thanks for giving us an
overview of what to expect next election. I hope you have a nice time
(52:29):
in Italy and we'll be back nextweek though, So until they'd be Lovers
of Freedom and She's got afraid?Is she go wow wax and hats yet?
But all the boa
Welcome back, everyone to a newepisode of You're Wrong with Molly Hemingway and
David Harsani. Just a reminder,if you would like to email the show,
please do so at radio at theFederalist dot com. We'd love to
hear from you. Mally, Howare you doing, I'm doing great.
How are you doing? I'm doingwell? Usually and typically this podcast,
(00:35):
will you know, you and Ijust have discussion reacting to whatever's going on
in the news, and I thinkthat's a fine thing to do. I
think people enjoy it. But we'regoing to take this podcast and I think
a just have a broader conversation onwhat our expectation should be for the twenty
twenty four election. How is itgoing to play out, What should listeners
(01:00):
be looking for, you know,and what issues might pop up that they
haven't even thought about, or maybeissues are going to pop up again that
we've already had to deal with inthe past. So I'd like to start
by talking about election integrity, right, So, just a broad question.
Have things gotten better? Have statesmost states like tightened up this thing?
(01:26):
Or are we going to have thesame exact thing happen again. It's a
complicated question. It's one that doesn'thave like a yes or no answer,
because each state, according to theConstitution, handles its own elections its own
way, and so a lot ofthe places that were concerned about what happened
(01:46):
in twenty twenty were red states.So in red states you have had some
improvements in different ways, whether youknow, tightening up of election security and
integrity, and then in some placesit's gotten worse. And I think each
one of those things we can talkabout a little bit in detail, but
can I just kind of take astep back and paint like a really big
(02:08):
picture that I think is important forpeople to understand. So for a long
period of time, elections in thiscountry were really built around the idea of
an election day, that you wouldgo through a campaign together as a country,
and then you would all go voteon the same day, and then
(02:28):
later that night or soon thereafter,you would find out who had won each
state and who had won the election. And when you were doing elections that
way, it was like a veryshared cultural experience. You were talking about
issues together. You were also reallyrequiring a certain amount of enthusiasm to be
(02:50):
in play to affect the outcome ofthe vote, and so if you had
people who were generally one side orthe other, but one side wasn't super
jazzed about things, but the otherside was super jazzed about something, you
know, you could kind of affectelections that way. It would determine the
winner. And we really do nothave that anymore. When we were under
(03:10):
the old system, there used tobe concern about certain municipalities, you know,
a Philadelphia, a Detroit, aChicago, where they had machines and
I don't mean by that actual youknow, clickity clack machines, I mean
like operations to drive up the votesin a particular area, to affect statewide
(03:32):
elections or local elections as well.And so you might see union operatives or
mobsters or other people who were involvedin like literally driving around and getting people
into the voting booth, maybe payingthem, maybe incentivizing them, you know,
through threats or incentives, making surethat they actually showed up to vote.
(03:57):
And the way that we do electionsnow has turned that machine system into
a nationwide prospect or more accurately,has allowed machines to operate when and where
needed, and not to just doit with the physical limitations of a single
location on election day, but todo it without geographical limitations, without time
(04:20):
restrictions, for weeks and in somecases months ahead of election day. I
have more to say, but Idon't want to just drown on here.
No, I mean, so letme ask you before you go on.
Actually, so let me ask youthis. So we used to have an
election day, Now we have anelection season. I would say, is
it worth trying to fight to bringback that election day? Or should Republicans
(04:45):
for the most part, simply giveup on that notion and fight and change
the way that they're looking at this? Like Donald Trump always is kind of
hoopooing mail ballots, let's say,and that kind of undermines himself because you're
going to need people to be mailingin those ballots themselves, because sometimes on
election day it's raining, or peopleget lazy or whatever it is. It's
(05:05):
much, you know, so youlose votes that way. Just making that
up, but that's just what Ibelieve is true, you know, is
probably happened. So should Republicans changethe way they look at elections or should
Republicans be fighting to bring back howit was? So my personal views are
kind of at odds with the politicalviews. So if I can just say,
first up, I think it's verybad for a country to have an
election season without a lot of Ithink it's just bad. It's just unhealthy.
(05:30):
You can be spending, you canbe having millions of votes coming in
weeks ahead of a debate. It'sjust it's not a good way to make
decisions. You want an informed populace. You don't want it to just be
like whoever has the most money toharvest ballots wins. And I keep thinking
of something that former Attorney General Barrtold me when I was writing the book
(05:51):
Rigged, about how telling people theycan decide on who they're going to vote
for at any point in the electionseason, as opposed to at the end
of the election season is like tellinga jury that they can come to a
verdict at any point in a trial. It's just not a good It's just
there's no good order to it.So, while all sorts of things that
(06:15):
affect the integrity of an election actuallypull really well with Americans, things like
should you show that you really arewho you are before you vote? That
polls very well. Despite Joe Bidensaying that means you support Jim Crow,
the vast majority of everybody believes inID to vote or other types of you
(06:36):
know, should you if someone ismail in balloting, should you check their
signature? You know, things likethat. They're all very popular. However,
mail in balloting itself is also verypopular, so my views are at
odds with most Americans. Americans reallylike to have unsupervised mail out ballots with
(06:57):
like with all the chaos that itbrings, And I would just say,
if you're going to do it,you should do it more along the lines
of Florida than in New York.You know, there are certain states that
do it better with more integrity thanothers. And so one of the problems
with twenty twenty was the mad rushto mail in balloting where people weren't able
to, like really do it ina thoughtful, slow way. But you
(07:20):
are absolutely correct that if you don'tplay the game according to the rules as
they are currently written, you'll justnever win elections. So Republicans, I
could not understand better the dislike ofmail in balloting. I personally don't support
it, and I don't do itmyself. But you have to bank ballots
(07:40):
well ahead of election day if youwant to be competitive So just to quick
aside, we see polls right andthey've barely like, no matter what happens
with Donald Trump in court, whateverthey're not, they don't move that much.
So elections have basically come down toI think you are you know you've
said this or you've argued about this, that they basically come down to who.
(08:01):
It's not convincing people to vote foryou, it's how many people who
already support you can you get outto vote? Right? So largely so
are Republicans prepared for that in twentytwenty four? Do you think that they've
come to terms without reality or not? Okay, so it's a state by
state question there, But I justalso want to, you know, just
(08:24):
take a little step back. Whenyou and I were younger, do you
remember how concerned people were about lowinformation voters. It used to be a
bipartisan concern that people were voting forthis candidate or another, this policy or
another without really knowing who they werevoting for what they were voting for.
That has gone completely away because nowyou just have massive ballot trafficking operations that
(08:48):
are financed by left wing billionaires mostlybut now also by your taxpayer dollars that
are focused on getting Democrat constituents seeballots into the ballot box. And this
means people who may or may notknow that there is an election, They
may or may not know who isrunning, they may not know anything about
(09:09):
the issues in play. The newthing is just to make sure that if
that person has ever been registered atthat address, or if someone can be
said to have registered at that addressand can be said to have a pulse
or whatever, you get a ballotassociated with that person into the ballot box.
And it's the nature of the demographicdifferences in between Democrats and Republicans that
(09:35):
it's a much easier thing for Democratsto do than Republicans. So Democrats can
go to you know, inside acity, an apartment building that houses you
know, like a certain number ofpeople and just kind of like go floor
to floor, whereas with Republicans theyare, you know, having to figure
out how to harvest ballots, youknow, in the over the hills and
(09:58):
through the dales, and so it'slike a less there's some challenges built into
it. They're best conquered on astate by state basis. Some states are
actually doing a good job with it. You have some efforts in Pennsylvania and
a lot of you know, Ithink money, energy, and effort to
work on a ballot harvesting operation therefor Republicans. You've seen some in Arizona,
(10:22):
a lot of money and energy beingdeployed there, but it really needs
to happen in a comprehensive way.I'm a little bit nervous that like the
RNC isn't aware of it. Theydid recently start a Swamp your Vote initiative
a couple of weeks ago that issupposed to address some of this, but
(10:43):
I'm just I'm a little nervous justto go back to something you said,
if you really want to have peopleyell at you tell them that people that
voters have a c that citizens havea civic duty not to vote if they
don't know what's going on. Likevoting has become this right ri of democracy
(11:05):
where we have convinced everyone that thevoting is the most important thing they can
do to be a good citizen,when it's not true. The most important
thing they can do to be agood citizen is be aware and educate themselves
on what's going on and then voteright. And by the way, there
are many, many highly educated peoplewho vote like they don't know what they're
talking about either. So I'm notsaying like you have to have an IVY
(11:26):
Lead degree to be voting. It'snot a class thing. But I think
that you have to have some recognitionand understanding of what's going on before you're
going out there. But we've createdthis society, we're voting itself without any
of the responsibilities to go along withit is like the driving force of a
healthy democracy, which is not true. So in any event, so I
(11:48):
feel you on that ground. Andwhen we just mail people ballots, like
people who maybe don't even really wantto vote or have no interest in it,
they'll just pick it up and doit because it's right in front of
them. I don't think that's speaksto a healthy democratic or republic, you
know what I mean. And placeslike I believe, does Colorado have an
all mail in ballot election? Theymight believe so an organ I mean that
(12:11):
does that is insane. I mean, I just think that that is a
way to really undermine what your civicyou know, the civic duty of you
know that you have in society,and you know, I don't know if
people realize like ten percent of thecountry moves each year, and some places
have automatic voter registration or major effortsto get people registered with populous, with
(12:33):
the populace that at least that manyare moving in there out each year.
And so you take a place likeNevada, where you have a very trangent
population moving in moving out automatically registered, you will see with their automatic mail
in voting. You know, you'llsee doors with just dozens of ballots in
(12:54):
front of them because they are inapartment buildings where people are known for moving
in and out of quite regularly.How do they auto register you? Is
it with your driver's license usually orsomething. Different states have different rules.
Yeah, so maybe when you interactwith the government, you get registered at
that moment. So that's a bigthing that we talked, you know,
previously on the show about zucker Bucks, which was something that my book Rigged
(13:18):
dealt with a lot. And thiswas the effort by Mark Zuckerberg where he
gave hundreds of millions of dollars totwo left wing organizations staffed by Democrat operatives,
who then funneled money into the primarilyinto the blue areas of swing states.
So they did the entire get outthe vote operation, again mostly in
(13:41):
the blue areas of swing states,and it had a profound effect on the
elections. You get super super turnoutin a blue area of a swing state
and you can control the presidency.You know. And after that happened,
it became quite controversial, but JoeBiden understood that's how he was elected.
Shortly after he got into office,he issued an executive order for Biden Bucks
(14:07):
and this is where every single federalagency in the under his control had to
come up with a plan for howthey could help target government benefit groups for
registration and get out the vote efforts, and they kept they have kept those
plans secret. To a large degree. A broad coalition of reporters has been
(14:30):
doing really good work trying to figureout exactly how this is working. You
got like an unlimited federal budget wherepeople say, you know, for instance,
it used to be that you werenot supposed to take beneficiaries of federal
programs in college and use those forpoliticking or any kind of election related activity.
(14:50):
And under Biden's watch, that's beenflipped on its head, and in
fact, you're supposed to use itto register people on college campuses, which
of course are like one thousand percentDemocrat, or you know, you take
offices that hand out welfare benefits andsay would you like to keep these going
by registering to vote right now forthe party that you know we want you
(15:13):
to vote for. And so it'slike all sorts of ethical problems related to
this. And I also I'm notsure Republicans have I mean, it's just
one of these like frustrations. Wefirst reported this at the Federalists years ago,
and Congress there is a committee inCongress that has looked into it.
But just like the general lase fairattitude that a lot of these Republicans in
(15:37):
Congress have toward this corruption of ourelection system with taxpayer dollars is a little
disappointing. These jobs reports are justa movie trailer for a bad movie.
Watched Out on Wall Street Podcast withChris Markowski. Every day Chris helps unpack
the connection between politics and the economyand how it affects your wallet. The
(15:58):
month of May, Bailey created anyfull time jobs, mostly from their government,
and tons of part time jobs.The headline number may look good,
but the rest of it is adud. Whether it's happening in DC or
down on Wall Street. It's affectingyou financially. Be informed. Check out
the Watchdot on Wall Street podcast withChris Markowski on Apple, Spotify or wherever
you get your podcasts. Well,can I ask you a question about Biden
(16:21):
bucks? So I'm assuming these arefederal dollars. I don't know where they've
been procured from. Sound like Bidenshould be able to do this, you
know, latterly. But yeah,elections are run by the state, So
does how does it work? Didthey go to a school that gets federal
money or like how is it dispersed? So it's interesting you're you're doing.
(16:44):
You know, it's federal funds thatjust go to get out the vote efforts,
which can include voter registration and otherget out to vote efforts. So
the elections themselves are run by thestates. But you know, you can
set up your student aid office toregister people to vote and then that can
get Then also then you can say, well, we're not doing it in
(17:06):
partisan way. We're just also drivingpeople where like we're picking up their ballots
and we're taking them in. Whenyou do it in when you do it
with one population and not with another, it's election interference. You know,
if it's not like the same benefitis given to everybody, then I really
target it. Yeah, so it'snot given to private get out the vote
(17:27):
groups. It's given to government entitiesthat are trying that are supposedly asked,
you know, trying to get outthe vote. And as you say,
if it's not dispersed evenly to allkinds of populations, then you can just
target the voters that you want.And it sounds like Tamony Hall or something
like that. And even like youknow, state Department is making sure to
(17:47):
register people who don't live in thecountry who are American citizens, which is
like, okay, fine, alsooverwhelmingly Democrat. It just happens to be
that all of the people that Bidenis, all the constituents sees that the
Biden bucks are going to are justoverwhelmingly Democrat constituencies. And this does you
know, we're in very tight electionsin this country. The twenty twenty election
(18:08):
came down to forty three thousand votesacross three states. Like a little bit
here and a little bit there mattersa lot, and we are talking massive
federal interference. Oh but I wasgoing to mention some state based officials have
taken action against these Biden Bucks programs, saying that it's an inappropriate infiltration of
the federal government into state administration ofelections, including like when you're registering people
(18:33):
to vote as a federal entity,that's in violation of our state law.
So it depends on what your statelaws are in different places, but people
have taken action. It sounds tome like this. You know, red
states will be like this is unfair. We have to stop these programs,
all these programs, but blue statesaren't going to say that. So in
essence, you're almost you know,you limit it within your own state,
(18:55):
but the other state is probably expandingthis kind of thing. Am I wrong?
Like you know what I mean?I mean, you're not going to
stop in New York from finding newvoters, but you are going to stop
it maybe in eras yet stay likeArizona, but maybe like Florida. Well
could you take like a state likeIdaho. Let's say where it is a
red state, but it's turning bluewith the importation of a lot of Californians,
(19:17):
Oregonians and Washingtonians and it has veryliberal campuses. So if a red
state decides there that they don't wantthat Democrat takeover of their elections that way,
that would not be an unwise thingfor them to do. Now,
I do want to say this isone of the interesting things. And the
New York Times has kind of raisedthe alarm about how they are realizing that
(19:37):
some of the get out the voteefforts that Democrats are doing are registering their
political opponents to vote. It's notjust about registration. That's one thing I
wish like Republicans tend to believe likein this self discipline and self government kind
of thing, and it's like,it's your responsibility to register to vote and
go out and vote. And Democratsare like, would you like help care
(20:00):
carrying your ballot from your kitchen tableto the threshold of your door. Would
you like help filling this out?Would you like someone to come and explain
the issues to you? Would youlike someone, you know, to get
this into the ballot box? Likethey're helping you every step of the way
and thereby influencing your vote. Youknow, Hi, you have not been
ruled sentient by a court of law. Would you like me to fill out
(20:22):
your ballot in this nursing home alongwith everybody else's you know what I mean,
Like they're really sort of crafty,and it's very difficult to determine problems
conclusively, and so Republicans should betaking advantage of these registrations and doing the
harvesting as well. So I justhate it because I think it should be
harder to vote, and people getmad at that, but I think that
(20:45):
if it really is the sacred thingthen they're doing, you should have to
put a minimal amount of effort intowanting to do it. I think,
you know, and you're right,and Republicans, if they want to compete,
they're going to have to kind ofdo the same thing. So you
were a book called Rigged, which, when you know it took a deep,
super deep dive into a lot ofthese problems. And one of the
(21:06):
other aspects you speak about in thatbook that I don't want to spend too
What we don't want to spend toomuch time on right now because we quite
often is the media. So inyour estimation, the election is rigged because
we don't really have a media anymore. That's part of the problem, correct,
So, just objectively speaking, oneof the metrics by which international observers
(21:27):
judge the fairness, freeness, andlegitimacy of an election is if it takes
place in a non propaganda news environment. And with the demise of corporate media,
you know, ethics in recent years, we really do have a problem
(21:47):
in this country about whether we're outsideof a propaganda environment. So one of
the things that you'd seen in pollsfor the last few months is that all
sorts of demographic groups are overwhelmingly notoverwhelmer. They're moving in dramatic and interesting
fashion toward Trump and away from Clinton. There's this one group that is not
(22:07):
and it's seniors. And by theway, that's a very good group to
have. Joe Biden is very blessedto have seniors. They're committed to voting,
they don't need a lot of workto get out and vote, and
they're reliable, and they are kindof sticking with him. And you look
at it and you think, God, shouldn't seniors care more about the direction
of the country than like a millennial. I mean, not that you don't
(22:27):
care as a millennial. That soundedhorrible, but you know what I mean,
Like you would kind of assume,if you were being prejudicial here,
that they wouldn't like what he's doingto the country, and yet they're kind
of sticking with him. And Ido believe that A big reason why is
some of the only people watching corporatemedia news shows are seniors, and so
(22:49):
you'll look at something, you know, Joe Biden does something, whether it's
imprisoning his political opponents or trying toimprison his political opponents, or you know,
coming up with the executive orders onthe border, and you watch the
media coverage of it and it's juststraight one percent propaganda. And combined with
(23:10):
that, you have a regime thathas shut down or attempted to shut down
alternate voices in the media and peoplewho say something contrary to what CBS News
says, and that does render anelection less secure. Absolutely well. I
will say it's clear that a lotof people aren't watching, or a fewer
(23:32):
and few people watching, you know, establishment media, But I will say
that they still I think, sortof set the agenda the conversation. The
narratives they come up with seep intothe national conversation. So I do think
that sometimes they're more important than wemaybe would give them credit for in some
ways. But anyway, let's moveon. So you mentioned censorship, which
(23:55):
the media was part of. Itwas worse because I think the media can
concocted all kinds of conspiracies that didn'texist. But so let's talk now about
like tech social media platforms, andthat's where most people get or a lot
of people get their news, anda lot of people have their conversations.
There was a ton of sort ofconcerted censorship, like the Hunter Biden laptop
(24:22):
story, for instance, which wasn'treally about Hunter Biden. It was about
Joe Biden, but you know,you had you had the former CIA and
other you know, government officials sayingit was Russian propaganda, the media sort
of going along with that, andthen tech companies banning mentions of the story.
So do you think that that theDOJ and others kind of worked with
these tech companies to ban speech andpolitical speech, are going to be able
(24:47):
to get away with that again thistime? Or are is there just enough
skepticism of what they're doing that theywant Oh my goodness, um alarmed that
you even ask the question that wasI'm trying to be the interviewer. Here're
okay again, if we can takeit back to twenty sixteen, what happened
that election? Cycle was that DonaldTrump was able to circumvent corporate media and
(25:11):
take his message directly to the Americanpeople, and they liked it, and
they voted and elected him president.And it was a huge wake up call
to Silicon Valley and they were veryupset. And there is contemporaneous reporting.
Alan Bacari wrote a really interesting bookabout some of this stuff too, where
the day after that election, youhave people openly saying we will never again
(25:33):
let what happened you know here,happen again. And what they meant by
that was that with corporate media completelybecoming propaganda for the Democrat Party, they
also would do that, and sothey instituted some draconian algorithmic game playing to
suppress news and information they didn't like, to elevate news and information that they
(25:55):
wanted to, you know, getout there. And they did it across
like every issue that people vote onand every candidate they vote on, and
is so it is so dystopic whatwe've been living through since twenty sixteen,
and it gets worse and worse,and then the more it's entrenched, the
more difficult it is to go backfrom any of that. And so yes,
(26:18):
in twenty twenty, we saw howcensorship can affect an election with the
horrific situation of with the government helpsocial media companies shutting down discussion of the
Biden family corruption, journalism about theBiden family corruption from the oldest continuously publishing
(26:41):
newspaper in America, I mean amazingFirst Amendment violations. It wasn't just about
that, which was inarguably the mostimportant campaign story of that cycle, but
also everything you know, COVID andtrans issues and race issues and everything.
The censorship from corporate media was ridiculous. You also had it where, you
(27:03):
know, you saw things like onTwitter, which at that time was not
owned by Elon Musk. If youpushed a conspiracy theory that Donald Trump was
personally like stealing mailboxes to keep peoplefrom mail in voting, that was fine.
If you said something like we allknow that mail in balloting is less
secure than in person voting, whichis true for obvious and logical reasons,
(27:25):
you would be censored. Not justcensored from that story, but like your
whole publication would be censored, youryour whole you know, it wasn't just
that tweet that was censored. Everytweet from you would be downplayed, blacklisted.
It's horrible. The State Department,which the Federalist is suing right now
for its role in the censorship industrialcomplex, you know, has helped fund
(27:51):
and market many censorship tools to beused against the American people in violation of
our first men rights, and thoseare like entrenched now in the ecosphere.
And I have thought a lot aboutelection administration, and I genuinely believe all
(28:12):
these problems, like the Biden Bucksand the zuck Bucks and the mail Atbalot,
like all of that is super importantand huge and is a tiny fraction
of the problem caused by social mediacensorship in this country, which I think
affects millions upon millions of votes.I think when you say, like,
how is it possible that the sensiblepeople here are not winning the day on
(28:34):
this issue or that, I thinkit's I think it's big tech more than
anything. Really, Okay, letme push back on that. I'm not
saying that you're wrong that it isa big deal. It's a big deal
to me because kind of mass censorshipof courses is problematic and if you let
it be normalized, it becomes worseand worse. But I just feel like
the Internet is a place where inthe end this stuff gets through in some
(28:59):
way anyway. It's very hard tocontrol. When you had three networks,
it was easy to control the message. It's far more difficult now with all
are site or others. Now.I'm not saying it doesn't matter, but
I just don't feel that most peopleare on Twitter getting their views. I
think people who are politically involved areon Twitter getting their views and they don't
change their mind very much. AmI wrong about that? I feel like
(29:19):
you're just backing me up here though, That's what I'm kind of saying.
Like, but you're saying it's moreimportant that administration of an election. I
don't know, is it. Imean, you know, our male ballots
being just handed out to everyone.Isn't that more dangerous than stopping people from
talking about those stories? But whatI meant not about Well, first of
all, I think violations of firstmoment rights are actually I think that's worse
(29:44):
than election interference, as bad aselection interferences, And it's all related to
self government, right, Like,if we don't have the if we don't
have the ability to seek truth andargue for truth and convince other people of
truth, it's the same thing aslike election interference, where you don't have
the right to pick your own peopleto I totally agree. I just want
to just clarify, I mean,how much it has affected the election.
(30:07):
I don't think okay, as faras how much it has affected the election,
I do believe censorship is a muchbigger player than all of the other
issues combined. It is so subtleand so entrenched, and it's so every
you know, people don't realize howmuch you know. Clicking on this story
for us is that you take,for example, you want to learn something
(30:27):
about like what happened to George Floyd, and you search into Google and Google
has blacklisted every single website that willtell you something accurate about it, and
instead it says, here's what theNew York Times says about it. Whatever
happened? What was the Russia collusion? What's going on there? You want
to you know, who did areally great job with hard, factual reporting
(30:48):
on every aspect of that, theFederalist Google it and see what comes up.
It will be the places that peddledthe Russia collusion hoax that are given
to you on a platter. Youremember that old saying about how Osama bin
Lauden was hard to find, andthat they finally found him on the second
page of Google results, like thejoke being that's that's an impossible place to
(31:12):
find anything. We'll try the twentiethpage of Google results, you know,
where the first page is this leftwing site and that left wing site,
and you know, everything is likepushing it, and then that becomes what
Wikipedia says, and that's what feedsinto the AI system, so that you
know, it's just overwhelming and actuallycan cause me to despair a little bit,
(31:32):
so we should probably move on.But the way people affects the way
people think about every issue. Youknow, he takes something like trans issues.
Polling shows that even the vast majorityof Democrats are like, no,
I don't believe men should be allowedto play on girls teams. And yet
you watch the media and you doyour Google search, and everything will be
like fed to you like you're thecrazy person for thinking that men shouldn't be
(31:55):
on girls' sports teams, you know, and then that effects who you vote
for and what you think is normaland et cetera, et cetera. That's
fair enough. But here's the thing. So when I put something into Google.
Yeah, I'll get some left wingsite explaining it to me as the
top you know entry, or I'llget Wikipedia, some demented person had gone
in there and given their own explanationfor whatever it is. So I totally
(32:16):
agree with that, And I alsoagree obviously that you have a press that
I don't even like calling it thatanymore. You have this media that lies
to you. But what is thesolution to that? You can't I mean,
in the end, we can't forcea bunch of private entities. And
I'm not even talking about Google,which people will argue, let's say,
is some kind of utility, butI'm talking about CBS or CNN or whatever.
(32:38):
I mean, how are you goingto force people to be fairer?
What is the way to do?There is no real way to accomplish that,
is there. I mean, whatdo we do? How do we
fix this? So some of what'shappening with big tech and government to censor
competing news outlets to these left wingmedia outlets is something that action should be
(33:00):
taken against. That that's an unfairintervention into a free market that artificially sustains
these left wing propaganda outlets. Butno, I think like in a free
country, you're allowed to spread lies, or you should be. But what
we've got right now that's very badis if you are spreading lies about russiaclusion
(33:22):
or COVID response, or Brett Kavanaughor Justice Salito or like any number of
people, you are allowed and evenyou benefit from doing that, and if
you speak truth about it you getharmed. That is not sustainable. Yeah,
I'm a weird. I'm a marketguy, so I'm always like the
(33:42):
market will correct itself and stuff likethat. But I have been dismayed that
like the Washington Post can lose tensof millions of dollars, or a place
like the Atlanta can be dropped upby some rich person frankly to disseminates disinformation
and there's no real correction, Likethere's no one. I know that people
the Post got fired recently. Butit's not like someone comes in and goes,
hey, you know, maybe weshould be fair. They just kind
(34:05):
of like doubled down, okay,and what they've been doing, you're the
one being foolish here. I thinka lot of people think these these media
outlets exist to make a profit.Obviously they do not. And the left
has understood this really really well,Jeff Bezos. Yeah, he lost a
lot of money on the Washington Post. Or he has lost a lot of
(34:28):
money on the Washington Post. Healso gained a lot of money through the
COVID pandemic that more than made upfor it. And in order to make
money he had to spread worldwide hysteriathat made Amazon the go to place for
shopping. Yes, a lot ofbusiness has failed. His didn't. His
did better than ever before. Andyeah, if it took the Washington Post
spreading conspiracy theories and lies like,that's a small price to pay. I
(34:52):
know, but lots of people arelosing their job, right, I mean,
go on, well done. Takethe Atlantic. I up to hear
Donald Trump making fun of the Atlanticfor the money it loses. So I
think it's owned or was owned byLoreen Powell Jobs, Steve Jobs's widow,
and so every time every year it'slike, oh, they lost another ten
(35:12):
million dollars, he'll make a jokeabout it. Right, I'm sorry her
spending ten million dollars a year tocontrol elections is a bargain. The Atlantic
pushed the Russia collusion lie. Theydid it for years. They pushed various
lies about wars. They invented theein marn hoax, which low information voters
(35:35):
believed, which was this like unbelievablydisputed, not just disputed, but like
proven to be false claim that DonaldTrump secretly hated dead American troops. This
story was so made up that JohnBolton, who hates Donald Trump, was
like, this is a made upstory, as did like two dozen other
people. It was used in debates, it was used in campaign ads.
(35:59):
They're actually using again this cycle forten million dollars. It's a bargain.
The idiocy is that the right doesn'tsee that they're in an information war.
They think complaining about the media issufficient without realizing like, okay, those
people are willing to lose ten hundredmillion dollars a year on their media organizations.
(36:19):
All you would have to do isgive like a fraction of that to
hire real reporters who report real newsand inform the public. And they don't
really realize that that's something to do. That's sounded too negative. No,
a good opportunity for people to engagein, like saving the country by supporting
real media and pause for real contactthe federalists. I've been on that forever.
(36:40):
Listen. I love think tanks,but most people don't care about your
white papers. They have very littleeffect. All that money you should be
or a big bigger chunk of thatmoney should be be going towards journalistic efforts
and information efforts. I agree withwhat you're saying, obviously, but CNN
(37:00):
does have shareholders, like they're partof a bigger company. Like I don't
know how long they can continue tojust keep losing money in that way.
And maybe they can do it becausethey're part of a bigger conglomerate or they're
part of a conglomerate and that kindof those losses don't matter that much.
But I mean, journalists are losingjobs all over the country constantly. At
some point, I think it's goingto matter. I do. Like there
(37:22):
are a few big papers, they'refine, they're you know, Post Times,
whatever, but most of journalism hasbeen gutted out, and that's terrible.
That's actually terrible for democracy. Right, So I don't know, maybe
we'll see I mean, I don'tknow, So I don't know. If
you answered my question, do youthink that they can repeat that kind of
(37:45):
censorship again or is it going tobe a little more difficult because Elon Musk
owns X And you know, mypoint was that Nolan can they they are,
They're doing it right now. Thisis why we are suing the State
Department for its ongoing support of censorshiptools. They're doing it. It hurts
horribly, it hurts our elections,it hurts our ability to be governed by
(38:08):
ourselves, and they're doing it ona massive scale. Now, the big
thing, the big like sort ofwhite pill of the whole thing, is
Elon buying Twitter. I do notmean by this that Twitter is perfect,
that it's even good, but itisn't the censorship tool that every other social
(38:30):
media, major social media outlet isat this point at least, and so
you are able to discuss things freelyand have conversations without the level of censorship
that we see on other platforms.I mean, I have to say,
since Musk bought it, it,in some sense it's more like a sewer
(38:50):
frankly, like there's just terrible peopleon there saying terrible things. But I
prefer having that there with the moreopen and again it's not perfect, I
agree with you, but just amore open conversation and an open news flow
and the ability of people to becontrarian or to challenge. You know,
I really recommend By the Way foryou, so Stewart, because I don't
(39:13):
have that experience at all. ButI'm also an active blocker. I have
more than one point two million followers, which is to me a stunning number.
But I also block literally tens ofthousands of people. Those are hand
curated, boutique blocks. I blockfor people being mean to you. I
block for people being mean to SeanDavis or to me. Like, I
(39:37):
just block, not mean. Idon't mind mean. I just think when
it's like cartoonishly mean or anti semiticor you know, just like, yeah,
I love blocking. It's not eventhose Twitter I'm talking abou accounts with
millions of followers that are really gross, you know, and in some sense
though, and I don't want toviewer off into something that we're not talking
about this podcast, but you know, maybe I'm happy that I can just
(40:00):
see what people really think sometimes.I know it's a weird, you know,
it's a weird way to view theworld, but I'd rather know that
these people are out there and hateus or whatever it is than not know.
In a way, now, Ithink it's exaggerated because they're kind of
like clout chasers who just get allthese like people to follow them that are
(40:20):
not Can I say, like,if you're anonymous on Twitter, yeah you
might have you might you know,follow this anti semit doesn't mean that you
are that in your daily life oranything like that. So I think those
numbers are exaggerated. But I'm happyto know that people feel comfortable saying some
of the things they are. Idon't know how we got onto that,
but anyway, so I'd rather havethat than have censorship, because what happens
(40:40):
is then all of a sudden,it's like, oh, we have to
get rid of these anti Semites.We're also going to get rid of the
people say bad things about George Sorows. You know, they always do this.
They kind of try to like makea completely legitimate criticism or flame about
someone be you know, just asbad as the real nuts. You know,
they conflate the two anyway, Soyou think they will, you think
(41:05):
they are. So that does notbode well for twenty twenty four, I
guess right, Well, if youlook at twenty twenty, which was another
one of these elections where Democrats werewilling to do whatever it took to keep
Donald Trump from being re elected.They lied, they issued fake news,
they engaged in massive censorship, Theyrigged, And I choose that word advisedly
(41:30):
because it's about like preordaining changes toensure a particular outcome the system to have
massive mail in balloting that could thenbe exploited, you know, through Zuckerbucks
and other things. They still onlywon by forty three thousand VOTs across three
states. Since then, you haveseen Joe Biden's numbers plummet, you know,
(41:52):
and you have people being able tomake a side by side comparison of
what they thought about life under Trumpversus what they thought about life on and
it's there's no question that the regimeis super sad about the threat of Trump,
that they hated his presidency, thatthey thought it was chaotic, and
that it hurt them personally like thepowers. It's also true that the American
(42:13):
people have a very different idea aboutit. And I'm not saying by that
that you don't have like low favorabilityfor Trump. You do, you much
lower favorability for Biden. You know, he's he's lower than Trump. So
that is not what you saw intwenty twenty, and so when it's coming
down to close elections, I thinkI would say that while Republicans absolutely need
(42:36):
to be laser focused on get outthe vote, ballot harvesting operations in the
places that matter, and they needto fight the censorship, and they need
to fight the media corruption, andthey need to like kind of do everything,
you know, really well, thatI would not say that they can't
win this election. I mean,if it were a normal, free,
(42:58):
fair election, based on the waywe used to do elections, it would
be a blowout. So I thinkthey could win even with the new environment.
I wasn't even yeah, I mean, I wasn't even I didn't even
mean it like that. I justmeant, will it be a mess?
You know? Are we going tosee the same sort of mess? I'll
just say, I think we've spokenabout this recently, but I just don't
(43:20):
see how either side we'll be readyto accept the results of this election.
So do you feel like we're forsure going to have like a crazy postal?
Is the post election going to becrazy lawsuits? Like? How do
you envision that? I know thingschange quickly, but yeah, I think
that one, you know, onevery bad thing that Democrats did for the
(43:45):
health of the country, but verysmart and savvy thing that they have done
is criminalize Republican legal work. They'veworked to disbar every effective Republican attorney and
with basically no pushback from Republicans,no conservative judicial society has pushed back against
this effort to criminalize Republican election lawand to disbar Republican election attorneys. It's
(44:10):
really something to observe, and soyou have to not just put together a
ballot harvesting operation, a complete getout the vote operation, which is not
just about registering people to vote,but actually getting the ballots into the boxes.
You also need to do fights againstthe law fair done by markle Las
(44:31):
who's sort of the guy who cookedup the Russia collusion hoaks and also orchestrated
the twenty twenty mail in balloting issues, and he's working very hard again this
year, and so savver and smarterDemocrat attorneys. You have to fight that,
and then you also have to fightafter the fact for anything that went
wrong. I am quite anxious tosee what the twenty twenty four conspiracy theory
(44:57):
will be about Donald Trump, andI've been trying trying to listen to the
left and get some kind of clueas to what's coming because the Russia collusion
stuff, you could now looking back, you can see that it had been
sort of bubbling. Anyway, Ido not look forward to the post the
lessons at all. Yes, Ido want to say that already what Democrats
(45:17):
have done with their law fair againstDonald Trump does render any outcome or any
Biden victory as kind of illegitimate onits face. And what I'm saying by
that is because of this inappropriate meddling, this attempt to remove Donald Trump from
the ballot, which was an actualeffort, coordinated conspiracy across multiple states to
(45:43):
try to actually kill the election.Then you also have all the different cases
and all the different jurisdictions attempts toimprison and bankrupt their political opponent. This
is the thing where if this wereanother country, we would say already the
legitimacy of this election is in doubt, so in a weird way for the
(46:04):
preservation of the country, like youalmost have to like they've already passed the
point where it's going to be verydifficult to accept a Biden victory should he
eke that out. Does that makesense. Yeah, I mean it's not
even a secret. Is a conspiracyautomatically secret? Now, I mean it's
an open conspiracy because Alvin Bragg saidhe was going to go after the president.
Others have you know, who areafter him, have openly stated that
(46:28):
they want to punish him and puthim in jail and like that. So,
I mean, I don't know.I would say, also, it
depends on how. I mean,if it is a very close election,
it's obviously going to be more contested, you know, if someone But I
don't see how it's not going tobe a very close election. It's very
difficult for me to see any waythat that could happen. But who knows.
(46:50):
I don't know. You know,Joe Biden is one of the most
if not the most unpopular president incumbentin history. So the numbers are well
below what Trump's were at this timefour years ago. Yeah, I mean,
the switch in the polls is prettystunning. It's like double digit from
where he was twenty twenty to nowgo on. I mentioned this before.
(47:14):
I just don't know, like settingaside everything that you don't like about Trump
or don't like about Biden, justas far as policy goes literally, I
can't think of any part of what'sgoing on in the country or foreign policy
that anyone could legitimately say it's bettertoday than it was, you know,
be covid Trump administration. I justthere is no yes. And yet I'd
(47:37):
say, if you talk to peoplewho are in the establishment, they would
say that everything's so much better thanit was during the Trump era. So
like New York City, DC,they objectively think that things are great.
They're very happy with the Biden policies. They are They're thrilled, in fact,
(47:57):
and I tell people this when I'mtraveling throughout the country, Like DC
loves Joe Biden. They think he'sdoing a fantastic job. They're so happy
with, for instance, the warin Ukraine. They are thrilled. So
I'm just saying, no, Listen, from their perspective, things are going
exactly as they prefer them to go. Like I don't think we're in the
(48:19):
middle of the Great Depression, butit's clear that, for instance, inflation
has affected so many people. Andthe more the media tries to tell everyone
that they're crazy, that it's amirage something, the more I think it
angers them. But anyway, sowe have a lot to look forward to,
a lot of exciting, exciting thingsto look forward to in twenty twenty
(48:40):
four. It sounds like it's goingto be a giant mess. Can we
talk about something less depressing? Culture? Yep? What have you been reading
or watching or listening to? Well, I'm about to go to a place
I've never been before, which isItaly. So I have been reading books
(49:06):
on Italy, like art books aboutdifferent things to see in different museums.
So I was super exciting, superexciting. I've never been. No,
I've never been, and I havealways wanted to go. I mean,
obviously I'm just like obsessed with theRoman Empire of course as a middle aged
(49:27):
white man, but just in general, vatic and all that, I just
would love to I want to goto a place less fascistic than my country.
So that's why we chose. They'rejust kidding. But so I've been
looking through art books, like readingguides, reading an interesting book called The
(49:52):
Tigris of Furley, about Renaissance Italy'smost courageous and notorious countess by Liz Love
by the way, and also watchinga Stanley Tucci documentary documentary Serious about It
is a show where he's yeah,yeah, yeah, so I picked the
(50:12):
regions. Yeah, so what aboutyou. Gosh, what I'm gonna say
is gonna sound far less exciting.But I've been watching I'm going to uh
now, not going anywhere. I'vebeen watching a show. I would call
this a guilty pleasure. It's ashow called Suits. Have you ever watched
the show? Is this the onewith the princess? Oh? Yeah,
(50:37):
yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, she's she's I would say, you
know what, she's fine, she'sfine in this show. Yeah, I
guess this is an old, anold TV series. It is like,
it's about two lawyers. But Iso I have this idea. I have
this theory basically that you know themovie Goodwill Hunting for instance, or this
Suits, there's always a he didn'tlike it Hunting, Oh my gosh,
(51:00):
I think it's the most overrated awfulmovie. Okay, So those are superhero
movies. There's a character who's justso far more intelligent than everyone else that
he's a superhero. So that's whatthis show basically is. It's almost like
it reminds me of like House,but with a lawyer, but it's soap
opera y and stuff. But Istarted watching it and I kind of liked
(51:22):
it. I do want to saythat everyone should immediately purchase this album.
It is so so good. Wehad a review of it at The Federalist
several weeks back. But it's calledJackpot by Monty Borden and the Dangerous Few,
and it is just like one ofmy very favorite albums. It's the
(51:45):
only thing I've been listening to NonStop. And you'll love it. So can
you repeat it? Jack Jackpot,Jackpot? And our headline was Jackpot is
the most compelling album of the year. It just it takes all the different
types of like Americana and just makesit. It's in particularly like listen to
(52:08):
it over and over. It's justreally really great. So stream it,
buy it whatever, do it nowdone, It's on my list. It
will be done. Okay, Well, Molly, thanks for giving us an
overview of what to expect next election. I hope you have a nice time
(52:29):
in Italy and we'll be back nextweek though, So until they'd be Lovers
of Freedom and She's got afraid?Is she go wow wax and hats yet?
But all the boa
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