‘You're Wrong' With Mollie Hemingway And David Harsanyi, Ep. 135: Big Plans For Gaza

Join Washington Examiner Senior Writer David Harsanyi and Federalist Editor-In-Chief Mollie Hemingway as they analyze President Donald Trump's proposal for Gaza, debate the White House's tariffs threats, and dive into the partisan fight over the future of USAID. Mollie also shares her thoughts on Jane Austen and the 1995 movie Sense And Sensibility, and David reviews A Real Pain and "This Is Us."

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:16):
Welcome back, everyone to a new episode of You Were
Wrong with Molly Hemingway, editor in chief of The Federalist
and David Harsani, senior writer at The Washington Examiner. Just
as a reminder, if you'd like to email the show,
please do so at radio at the Federalist dot com.
We'd love to hear from you, and it's definitely nice
to have you back. Molly. Your voice was out last week.
It's sort of back, right.

Speaker 2 (00:36):
I'm doing much better now. I hope I can make
it through this. And yeah, I'm sorry I was unable
to talk last week.

Speaker 1 (00:45):
Maybe I'll win some debates now that you can respond.
I love what I'm on Twitter and everyone's like, I
can't wait till Molly dunks on. You teaches you the
right way to think about.

Speaker 2 (00:56):
This, as if I've ever had any influence on that
at all. But anyway, let's of course you have. Let's
get into it.

Speaker 1 (01:05):
So when I was thinking about this week's episode, I
was thinking, there are so many things going on at
the same time that it's like almost difficult to decide
what even to start talking about. It's a barrage, right, Well.

Speaker 2 (01:19):
The strategy seems to be from the Trump administration to
just do things every day and almost keep the enemies
of the Trump administration off their footing.

Speaker 1 (01:33):
But yeah, go on, Well, I figured we could start
with last night's press conference was that Trump had with
Benjamin N'tagna, who the Prime Minister of Israel, in which
he said a lot of things that I think, surprise
for you all. I was. I was blown away by
this press conference. I was blown away. Now, obviously, the

(01:56):
most newsworthy thing he said was that the United States
was going to own Gaza. Someone online said from the
riviera to the sea. You know, he is going to
make it, you know, a beautiful place. He's going to
move out all the Gazins, the Palestinians, rebuild it, let
people come back, maybe long term. Now, I suspect I

(02:21):
just want to preface all that. First of all, it
wasn't the only thing he said. I just thought, well, actually,
let me just preface this by saying, I don't actually
think that's ever going to happen. You know, I don't
think that the United States is going to own Gaza.
I don't even really believe that Donald Trump wants to
own Gaza. I don't know what he's going what's going on.
But as usual, I think he's throwing a bomb in

(02:43):
and re calibrating the entire debate. The expectation of the
of the Brookings Institution people and the swamp and everything
is that one day there'll be a Palestinian state in
Gaza and that's just what's going to happen sooner or later.
And Trump's like, actually, there might just be a casino.

(03:05):
There are no Palestine student. I mean, it completely starts
the debate over anyway. I don't know what did you
think when you first heard that?

Speaker 2 (03:13):
So I have been really sick. So I'm hearing little
snippets and I saw little tidy things. So I'd like
to watch the whole debate, but I have so many
the whole press conferences, press conference, but I have so
many thoughts about this in general. Do you know we've
referenced before the time we met with Jared Kushner in
the first Trump administration when he laid out his plan

(03:37):
for the Abraham Accords, and we very politely listened and
asked questions, left the White House and said to each
other that that was a very nice meeting, but that
we were pretty sure that no other country would ever
sign an accord with Israel like the one he was plotting.

Speaker 1 (03:55):
Did we say, dude's crazy if something like that, I
feel like.

Speaker 2 (03:59):
We might have been more positive, but we just thought
it was completely unrealistic.

Speaker 1 (04:03):
Now for sure.

Speaker 2 (04:04):
One of the things I remember that he said was
that the Trump administration view was that the Palestinians would
get the first sort of right in this contract negotiation.
They would be the first people that the offer was
brought to to have a peaceful accord with Israel, to

(04:24):
start treating themselves less like permanent refugees and more like
normal human beings who want to flourish. But that if
they said no, they didn't have veto power over the
whole thing. If they said no, they were just going
to move on to the next country.

Speaker 1 (04:39):
Do you remember that, Yeah, for sure.

Speaker 2 (04:43):
And that's kind of what I feel like is the
different view of Trump versus what much much of the
world was thinking. Before Trump. They just gave Palestinians veto
authority over everything that was happening in the region, and
Trump was like, what if we treated them like grown
ass adults, but they don't have veto power. And since

(05:04):
then we saw the Palestinians launch a war or sorry,
I should really just say Hamas because it's not all Palestinians,
and I'm sorry for that. But Hamas launched a war.
They lost that war. They're losing that war horrifically, and
there are consequences to launching and losing a war that
might include that their little permanent refugee grift that they've

(05:27):
been running doesn't continue. I don't think people realize, like
the whole stick there is that when they lost their
war with Israel with what became, you know, the powers
of Israel in the forties, they became refugees, they say.
And you know, I'm very sympathetic to how awful that

(05:48):
war was and how bad it was for the Arab people,
but they lost, you know, and so they said there
were refugees, and thus began like a global situation of
being tree like they were refugees for the next eighty years.
So they claim to live in refugee camps, you know,
in both the West Bank and Gaza. And I think

(06:10):
Trump's saying like, okay, well, let's just not do this
refugee thing anymore, you know, or if you want to
be refugees, you can be refugees. Elsewhere in the UN
can support you elsewhere, but it's causing such a problem
to have you be in this space that that can't continue.
Does that make sense?

Speaker 1 (06:25):
Yeah, no, it's exactly right. Now. I would just stress
that the refugee think so most Gozins are claimed to
be refugees. They're only around fifty thousand people in Gaza
nineteen forty eight. Now there are millions. There's an entire
UN agency that props up this idea that you can
be a refugee for seventy years, just sitting around waiting

(06:47):
to go back to your home in Tel Aviv. Right, So,
if that's true, if these people are actually refugees, why
can't they be refugees in Egypt? Why can't they be
refugees in Jordan? Gaza is not their home. They're waiting
to go home home. Why must they live under hamas rule?
Why must they be martyred for Hamas's cause? Now in

(07:08):
nineteen forty eight, After nineteen forty eight, around seven hundred
and fifty thousand Jews were expelled from the Islamic world.
At the same time, Jews didn't create refugee camps, you know,
outside of Jerusalem and waiting for them to go back home.
They made they brought them in and assimilated them into
society and gave them lives. No one thinks of themselves
that way. It is it is a It is a
crime against humanity what these Arab countries, including Jordan and Egypt,

(07:31):
have done to the Palestinian people, who they used as
a cudgel against Israel. You know, the only people who
you know, there are fifty million Kurds. No one does
that with them. It's just this one area because of Jews. Anyway,
people say, you know, like this is a terrible idea,
We're going to invade another Middle Eastern country. I don't
want to do that. I don't want to put one
American in harm's way for Gaza or anything like that.

(07:54):
But why can't we ask them if they want to leave?
And why can't we pressure Jordan, which incidentally, during the
partition plan, like you say, they lost wars, They've lost
six seven wars. They constantly want to reset history back
to pre nineteen forty eight. No, it doesn't work like
that anywhere else in the world. Anyway, I'm going on
this is like another Ted talk, but it is perfectly legitimate.

(08:16):
To ask them and to incentivize them to leave there.
Why can't is there all offer the money to go
somewhere else and then rebuild that place and make it
a place that's, you know, that works for everyone and
is more peaceful. I think the core or the kind
of the seed of Trump's idea is a good one.
It's happened in a thousand places in the world, you know.

Speaker 2 (08:38):
So this is not totally related, but the whole thing
reminds me of one of my very favorite stories about
me as a reporter, which I'm sure I've said like before,
but when I was in the West Bank in Ramaala,
like you know, thirteen years ago or something, and interviewing
sayib Ericott and he has kind and the guy famous

(09:01):
for the negotiating the Oslo Accords for the Palestinians, and
my first question to him, I did not know that
the culture in Palestine Monkst Palestinians is to not ask
questions of leaders, so I just treated it like a
normal reporting assignment, completely ignorant to the culture. So my

(09:24):
first question was about that permanent refugee thing and why
they weren't just focused more on uplifting the economic prospects
of the people she did not like. And then my
second question was that I wondered if he was sending
mixed messages by claiming to be opposed to suicide bombings
while also going to his nephew's funeral who was a

(09:46):
suicide bomber, which you know, I thought there was like
a totally reasonable explanation for it, but I was just
trying to Anyway, I and the other reporters I was
with got kicked out of Ramala for these questions.

Speaker 1 (09:58):
I'm proud of you, Amali. I'm always proud when I
hear that story, a woman asking this man these questions.

Speaker 2 (10:03):
I had no idea how dangerous it was while I'm
doing it, but anyway, Yeah, the economic game is not
good for anyone. I mean, we talk a lot about
how the people there in the Gaza Strip support Hamas,
and that's true. They've also been horribly mistreated by their

(10:24):
own leaders, who keep them in a less economically viable
situation than they should be and who do it for
political gain. And so it would just be great to
end the entire game there, which has resulted in disaster
for both Israel and the Palestinians.

Speaker 1 (10:40):
So like the tariffs on Mexico and Canada, which we
will discuss in a minute. This could be Trump saying, listen,
this is something that can happen Jordan, Egypt, you know,
Saudi Arabia. Maybe you should start to think about helping
these people rebuild, Start to think about what the world

(11:01):
could look like if there is a you know, if
if Gaza looks like Dubai. Now, obviously they're not under
an ocean of oil, so I don't think that's going
to happen. But maybe he's pressuring them to take in
some refugees. You know, I always think about this. We
in the West, we have like a moral imperative to
take in refugees. You know, if you don't, you're you're
a hater, et cetera. But Arab countries and Islamic countries

(11:24):
have no imperative to take in their own people. Just
we have to import all these people. They never have to.
I mean, there is literally no ethnic difference between a
Gosen and someone in Jordan, but yet they take almost
no refugees.

Speaker 2 (11:37):
The thing that worries me about what I've heard about
what Trump was saying though, was yeah, definitely do not
want Americans involved in any kind of military any more
involved than we already are, particularly in any kind of
military operation there. I also don't love the idea that
Israel has bombed the Gaza Strip into oblivion and then

(12:03):
we're the ones who pay for the cleanup, like they
chose a particular approach to eradicating Hamas and I totally
think it's their business. I mean, not that you can't
weigh in on what you think about it, but it's
there a decision they made. But there is an aspect
of it that seems to be that they should also
be dealing with the expense of rebuilding, Like you can't

(12:27):
actually have these Palestinians living in the Gaza Strip right
now in many parts because of the destruction there. That's
another issue that people are just not talking about. It's
so utterly destroyed that it's unsafe for inhabitation and much
of it. So, but why should that be? That was
the decision made by the Israelis, which is, you know,

(12:48):
they were responding to a war that they did not
start in this case. But I don't like the idea
that it's our job to clean it up unless there
is some you know, massive payoff, like it would be
kind of funny to have an American outpost there with
great beautiful Mediterranean beaches.

Speaker 1 (13:10):
Well, you wouldn't have to have them anymore in these
Gulf States, and you wouldn't have to have them all over.
If America actually owned a piece of guys and had
a base there, I think it would be the best
spot for it. But you know whatever, I agree, I
don't want to put Americans in danger, and I don't
really think Americans should pay for a rebuild, and I
want to you know, I know that people might not
understand this, but it is highly unlikely. I don't have

(13:31):
any I haven't spoken to anyone yet, but it's highly
unlikely that the Israelis actually want to see American souliers
put in danger. They know that they would be blamed
for that, and that would hurt their relationship with the
United States. You know. I just it seems very unlikely
to me that they actually want the US there. I
think they would be happy to see some Palestinian refugees leave,

(13:53):
but I doubt very much that they would want to
see the Americans there. But see where it goes. I
suspect that this is just a negotiating tactic. I mean,
it was funny because as as Trump was speaking, you
could see Benjamin Natanna, who trying to hold back his laughter.

Speaker 2 (14:07):
Like what I was just going to say the little
clip I saw, he had this like very funny grin
about everything that was being said. But can you take
us through everything else that was said at the or
the other things you were said, Well.

Speaker 1 (14:22):
Thank you for thank you for bringing that up. I
don't remember the exact wording, but Trump had had also
said that he was looking into it. The administration was
going to look into how they felt about Israel annexing Judea,
like I can even use the word West Bank, which
just is amazing. But you know, there's such a dramatic

(14:45):
change from the last administration on this, But that to
me is almost more important. I Mean everyone says, you know,
uses the media, media and un you know, endorsed phrases
like occupied territory and refuge ges and settlements and all that.
But the truth of the matter is it's just the
territory is being was fought over in a war. It

(15:08):
was never a country. You know, it's disputed, there's no
no one's occupied whatever. I've always thought that Israel should
create a defend you know, defensible border there by annixing
certain land maybe giving back some other land elsewhere to Palestinians.
And no American administration has ever endorsed that idea, and
Trump might and I think that that is maybe even

(15:30):
bigger news than this Gaza thing, which probably won't happen.
He also, essentially without saying it, you know, explicitly, just
the idea that there has to be a Palestinian state
is not really on the table with him, and it
doesn't need to be a Palestinian state. I hope there
never is really unless they change their ways, and I

(15:50):
think that that's important as well. Anyway you want to
talk about, Yeah, sorry, I have something.

Speaker 2 (15:59):
Else, that weird thing that people talk about forty or
three D chess or whatever. Yeah, what is the praise?
Obviously not three?

Speaker 1 (16:07):
I don't know. I just I just said sixty. I
don't know what they usually say.

Speaker 2 (16:10):
But it does seem that, in fact, his approach is
so simple, but people keep being shocked by it constantly,
Like he wrote the book about it, the Art of
the Deal.

Speaker 1 (16:26):
I read Art of the Deal recently, and it's just to.

Speaker 2 (16:30):
Make an outlandish first offer and then it breaks people
out of their normal way of thinking, and then you
can negotiate for what you really want.

Speaker 1 (16:38):
He sounds it like controlled hyperbole or something in the book.
I forget the exact wording.

Speaker 2 (16:42):
Yeah, I mean definitely, like even Fetterman, who I do
not like and I hate it when Republicans are like
so pleased by him.

Speaker 1 (16:52):
But he was.

Speaker 2 (16:53):
Saying something about how it was a provocative suggestion what
to do with with the Gaza strip, but that new
ways of thinking were needed about this, and I was like, yeah,
you don't need to like freak out about it necessarily.
I mean, I would freak out if like this is
Liz Cheney's next war enacted by Donald Trump, that would

(17:14):
be horrific. I doubt it will be, but I you know,
I'm always nervous when any US official starts talking about
a permanent presence in Israel or something like that.

Speaker 1 (17:27):
Yeah, I mean, but people should, like I said, I'm
against that kind of thing, but I will say that,
you know, the idea that this is like Iraq or
something Hamas has been really destroyed, and you know it
wouldn't be that sort of thing. I just I think
it's a mistake. I think about American Zain bre Root
in the early eighties. You're dealing with Hazbalah, You're dealing
with Iran, You're dealing with you know, Hamas Islami shi

(17:50):
Had Muslim Brotherhood. These are dangerous groups. You don't really
want to be meshed within them.

Speaker 2 (17:55):
Yeah. But I but even like on the expansion of
the country, I mean, I'm not opposed to strategic expansion.
I think that Alaska was a great purchase. I'm glad
with the Louisiana purchase. Like I like all these things.
I would love to get Greenland, and I think that's
strategically a very important thing if we could somehow work

(18:16):
something out with them and make that a US territory.
I do wish we had control over the Panama Canal.
A permanent presence in the Middle East for the purpose
of war is not something that makes me nearly so excited.
I'm not saying I'm hostile to talking about it, but
it's just, you know, it's I.

Speaker 1 (18:36):
Mean, we have a basis in Saudi Arabia and Qatar
and elsewhere. Why can't you just have one base in
Gaza That would But I.

Speaker 2 (18:42):
Don't love those either, That's what I understand. I would
like to be focused on China other things.

Speaker 1 (18:49):
So, but like you said, you know, exerting or strength
leads to peace sometimes, and Americans being there do maybe
make the world a more peaceful place. Again, I'm not
one of these. I'm not a neoconn or anything, but
I'm not. You know, there's a balance to these things,
you know. So I don't know. We'll see where it goes.
You know, you never know what this guy is the

(19:11):
thing is going to go. I you know, we'll see.

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Speaker 1 (19:52):
I thought next week could talk because to me, it's
almost similar in a way the tariff situation with Canada
and Mexico, and to maybe a lesser degree China, which
I tend to think is its own problem. And I'm
gonna say we probably disagree on this. I don't think
it was this great move. I don't think we gain

(20:13):
that much from doing it. As you know, I oppose
any kind of tariffs. Really. Here's what happens with Trump,
though he'll say tariff's are great in and of themselves.
I want to be like McKinley. I want to get
rid of the income tax. I want to just run
the country on tariffs. So David Harsani goes out there

(20:35):
and he's like, well, here are the problems with that, A,
B and C. And then Trump's you know, rescinds his
tariffs because he just wants to gain whatever, you know,
more Mexicans on the border with soldiers on the border,
and everyone's like, you're such a fool, You're such a
fool that you fell for that Trump is thinking way about.
But the problem is that a ton of Trump boosters

(20:55):
and Trump fans go out there and then defend tariffs
in and of themselves too, you know, you know, like
how am I supposed to debate within this kind of
with these rules that are constantly changing.

Speaker 2 (21:08):
I have two somewhat contradictory thoughts here. One is that
I actually am You know, the country was funded by
tariffs back when it had a much smaller government, and
the introduction of the income tax coincided with a horrific
and unconstitutional expansion of government through this unaccountable administrative state.

(21:32):
So I'm not. I am one of those people who
also thinks that tariffs are not the worst way to
fund the government, and I believe less bad than the
current taxation regime. But I also learned a lot during
the first Trump administration when at that meeting up in

(21:52):
Canada with world leaders, they were freaking out about Trump's
tariff proposal, and he was like, I mean, we could
just all go to zero tariffs if you want it,
I'll do that today. And they were like no, no, no,
no no. And it made me realize, like, oh, this
is like every single other thing. This is a negotiation tactic.

(22:14):
But also it's one that works. I mean, we do
have power as such a large economy, and it is
true that Canada and Mexico have benefited mightily from being
our neighbors. In some cases, they don't just take advantage
of that, they are materially undermining our security and health.

(22:36):
And I think the fact that Mexico is basically a
government run by the cartel right now is a great
example of that. But also Canada has taken advantage of
the security that we provide them to just not care
as much as they should about their own immigration policy,
their border policies. You know, they need to clean up

(22:58):
their situation. And I I personally wish that we cared
a million times more about Canada and Mexico and other
near neighbors than we do about Ukraine, the Middle East,
et cetera.

Speaker 1 (23:11):
We have.

Speaker 2 (23:13):
After being overinvolved in these other things far away, we've
been under involved in the security that's near. And so
I am glad that Canada and Mexico took it seriously.
I'm glad that they're beginning to talk about what to
do and do it in a much more serious way.

(23:34):
Mexico has more to do than Canada, but they both
have a lot to do to secure the border, take
more responsibility for their own defense and not just be
taking advantage of us and free riding off of a
lot of our strength and economy.

Speaker 1 (23:53):
Well, I agree that income taxes are the wrong way
to tax citizens. I prefer some kind of vattax or something,
you know, some kind of consumption tax I think would
be better, but it's never going to happen because there's
so many vested interests in the income tax and things
like that. Anyway, the best way I agree, also to

(24:14):
help us with Mexico is to try to help maybe
lift Mexico into first world status instead of third world status.
But I don't really know how we can do that,
you know, I mean, I think we've tried, and yes,
we can pummel any nation into submission that we want. Right.
But this but as soon as Trump announced tariffs, a
bunch of people went out there and started talking about

(24:35):
trade deficits and all the usual stuff, as if we
don't benefit from trade ourselves, which we do. Even Trump,
I think, and I forgot his language, admitted that there
could be pain involved when we put tariffs in place,
probably inflation. So you know, it's if you want to
use the threat of tariffs. For instance, what did he

(24:57):
do before? Oh yeah, Columbia, he just Columbian president basically
surrendered within like ten minutes of hearing Trump threaten him
with tariffs, right, he should take his own citizens. I'm
completely on board with that kind of stuff. And China's
a different story because they are you know, they're an
enemy of the United States in any way, so I
understand that.

Speaker 2 (25:17):
I actually, you know, people were the Canadians were upset
because the tariff on China was like ten percent and
one on Canada was thirty percent or something. I don't
remember what the numbers were, but way higher twenty five.
I think the one on China is still enacted, and
it's about these It also relates to these products that

(25:37):
have been able to be shipped from China with basically
no scrutiny. I think that's the one that's going to
be a really big issue, and I haven't seen nearly
enough coverage on that. There is this cheap economy that's
run through China that you know, is causing problems with

(25:58):
our own economy just because of how much kind of
steals intellectual property, which a lot of people think of
as really big things, like you know, scientific knowledge, but
it also can just be fashion or you know, artistry
of some kind, and they copy it and they reproduce
it for cheap, and they're you know, just kind of
like skimming off of the economy without much scrutiny because

(26:22):
it's so difficult to scrutinize like individual packages from China.
It'll just be interesting to see what happens there.

Speaker 1 (26:28):
Yeah, I mean, I am concerned about the turn against
free trade, not in maybe in action, but in rhetoric
and in the way people think, you know, that people
are ripping us off when no, there we're buying stuff
from them that we like and need at affordable prices.
Our manufacturing base is not gutted, it's a top. It's

(26:49):
bigger than it's ever been. Fewer people work in manufacturing now,
and I.

Speaker 2 (26:53):
Think we should have learned something from COVID though, Like
we don't have the manufacturing base that we should have
for our own security. It doesn't work as a complete
free trade issue when there are borders involved. We don't
have the capability of building certain things start to finish
in our own country in a way that could cause

(27:14):
major problems in a global conflict. So, yeah, we've got
a good manufacturing base, but we have also offshored a
lot of that without thinking through not just the consequences
on our people, but the consequences on our security. So
I don't disagree with what you're saying, and I totally
agree that the importance of letting markets work on fetter.

(27:37):
It is really key. Oh my gosh, this reminds me
of something hilarious. I saw someone said this to me. There's,
you know, the Bulwark publication that's so crazy. There's this
guy who works there who used to work at the
Weekly Standard named Jonathan Last who I saw on TV
and he is looking rough, so I hope he's physically

(27:57):
and you know, physically okay, he did not look good,
but I saw this a little still shot of him.
But he sent out a special edition of The Bulwark
on Sunday night and he said, you'll see why I'm
doing this. It's because we're about to see, you know,
a catastrophic drop in the markets. And so his's because
of the tariff threat. And his whole thing was like

(28:19):
what to do, what each level of drop in the
market would mean, and so he had four categories. The
first was like a zero to five percent drop, and
then it was a five to seven, seven to nine,
and it was like more than nine percent and what
it means and it was this, you know, basically like
a prediction that the country was about to go off
the cliff because of Donald Trump's tariff threats. Of course,

(28:44):
like the market does drop, but like at the level
of four tenths of a percent or something like that.
And so he was over on bluing on whatever that's
called Blue On the bluing on Place Blue Sky.

Speaker 1 (28:57):
Yeah, and he was like blun On's an excellent book
that was out in November, and he.

Speaker 2 (29:03):
Was really upset that the markets had not dropped much.
And he said, I guess this means the markets don't
work anymore either, and that the markets are yet another
institution that's capitulating to a Donald Trump regime. And it was,
you know, he seemed very mentally unwell as well as
physically at lost.

Speaker 3 (29:22):
It.

Speaker 1 (29:22):
Don't get me wrong, I think I think the market
would take a big hit if we had twenty five
percent tariffs on Mexico and Canada. But when the market
fell and market falls, and then a lot of people
see deals that they can get in on because they're
not insane and they don't care about Trump. They care
about making money, you know what I mean. So I
think people get hysterical. And last thing on this I
want to say that drives me bananas. The inconsistency of

(29:47):
partisans drives me bananas. Bernie Sanders is out there saying, yeah,
tariffs are terrible. He's been a pro tariff guy for
like thirty years. Democrats were pro tariff, you know people,
you know, they claimed it would save American jobs and
so on. They've been that way forever. But Donald Trump
all of a sudden wants them, and now they're like
free marketers. I mean, Bernie Sanders wants unfettered international markets going.

(30:10):
I mean, it's insane how everyone hinges all their thoughts, opinions,
everything about the world on whatever Donald Trump says. It
just drives me by naval.

Speaker 2 (30:19):
Okay, I also think Republicans do that too. Something like
the Wall Street Journal, which is, you know, openly advocating
for business interests, has always opposed tariffs no matter who's
the president. But Republicans had no problem when Reagan enacted tariffs,
when you know, they had maybe a little bit of

(30:39):
a problem when Bush did. But they act like it's
the end of the world or you know, not. Republicans generally, Republicans,
I think are pretty supportive of Trump's economic policy, particularly
after seeing how well it went for everybody in his
first term. But that sort of you know, conservative establishment
treated did Trump's tariff threats differently than they did Reagan's

(31:03):
or bushes.

Speaker 1 (31:04):
And I've said, because there's a reason for that.

Speaker 2 (31:07):
Reagan had very emotional outbursts over Trump.

Speaker 1 (31:10):
What. No, Reagan didn't to do blanket tariffs over you know,
over to Mexico. He had some tarifts in Japan, which incidentally,
I think after a year he rescinded. And also Reagan
was a perfect person. I mean, he made mistakes, but
more than that, there was plenty of conservative opposition then
to those tariffs, including still in the Wall Street Journal

(31:31):
and elsewhere. I mean, Trump uses tariffs or the threat
of tariffs in a far broader way than than others.
And don't get me wrong, I get it. Protectionism is
or you know whatever. Protectionist policies are very popular with people.
I get that, and it was popular in Reagan's time
and it's popular now.

Speaker 2 (31:49):
I do you have a question about this, How would
you prefer that a Trump get what he wants in
terms of what Mexico or Canada or other countries should
be doing if not through threats of tariffs, that's a.

Speaker 1 (32:06):
Very good question. I think that I'd have to think
about it a little more. But I am sure that
there are other levers to pull that you can threaten
Canada with certain kinds of aid. I don't know. I'd
have to think about what. But but if Trump said this, Canada,

(32:27):
We're going to put a twenty five percent tariff on
you if you don't stop the you know, drugs coming
over the border or whatever, that makes sense to me.
But that's not what he said. He said, we don't
want concessions. We want to get rid of the income tax,
and this is the way towards doing that. So you know,
am I sucker for believing what he's saying. Probably, But
I think it's worth for me, at least, I'm just

(32:47):
talking about myself to make arguments, philosophical arguments against long term,
forever tariffs of twenty five percent against Canada.

Speaker 2 (32:58):
I mean, I disagree with that all David, but I
do think it's funny that he can be like, We're
going to build a beautiful Las Vegas and the Gaza
Strip and you do not have these like huge philosophical
disagreements with for that.

Speaker 1 (33:12):
Oh, I'm sorry, I don't sorry. Let me just go
back a second. I think his Gozillan is awesome. I
didn't know that. I I hadn't stressed that to you. Obviously,
I don't again want to put Americans in danger, but
I think that overall, it's a very good idea to
let Gosins move to Jordan and Egypt and elsewhere and
build a beautiful riviera to the sea there. Let's talk

(33:36):
about DOGE and specifically us A I D. Which is
this agency within the government that basically its charge was
you know, it was supposed to help you know, foreign
nations and you know, and you in need and people

(33:56):
in need and minorities in need and oppress people in need.
I think it was signed into existence to an executive
order by John F. Kennedy. Though we talking about this later.
You know there there is legislation, you know, funding it
and all of that. Yeah, it's hard for me to
even express how crazy some of the stuff that's been

(34:18):
uncovered as far as spending goes. Is like sending money
to Columbia so they can put on like trans plays
for kids or something, right, that sort of thing. And
I guess I would just start this conversation by saying,
if the people who ran those agencies really cared about
the mission, they would not have used it as a

(34:39):
slush fund for their partisan you know, propping up their
partisan friends and spreading their social science quackery around the world.

Speaker 2 (34:47):
Well, thanks for the overview. I think it was designed
as a way to advance American interests abroad, sort of
a slush fund for the CIA and State Department to
do soft power pushing of our interests abroup.

Speaker 1 (35:06):
I like that part of it though, right.

Speaker 2 (35:08):
Yeah, Well I was just gonna say the problem with it,
there are problems with that, but you know, leaving that aside,
the main problem with it is that the people in
charge of our regime became deeply hostile to American interests
and values, Like I think their interests began harming the
country and pushing left wing ideology. And so when you

(35:30):
see these insane amounts of money being spent on funding
DEI musicals in Ireland, or transgender operas in Colombia, or
a transgender comic book in Peru, or a you know,
a massive jobs program for gay and trans people in Serbia,
which were all those are all real things right, or

(35:53):
just even like all the crazy stuff that USAID was
used to fund poorly designed projects in Africanistan. It was
just like lighting money on fire, you know, solar farms
in Afghanistan, where everyone just immediately stole the materials to
power their own houses. You know. But you know, in

(36:14):
and of itself, having a way to achieve foreign policy
goals with soft power is not the worst idea in
the world, Which is why I think that what's happening
with USAID, which is not it's shuddering so much as
bringing it under control of the Secretary of State so
that it can have proper oversight, is not just reasonable,

(36:34):
it's it's so beyond reasonable that the fact that people
are freaking out about it is a huge tell about
how corrupt this agency is.

Speaker 1 (36:43):
I haven't seen Chuck Schumer this passion about anything since
he was gening up a mob to go kill Supreme
Court justices, you know what I mean. And it is
says something about them that they are so angry, angry
about this, this thing, this this slush fund, right more
than they have been again about anything. They claim that

(37:04):
it's unconstitutional. I don't exactly know if what Elon Musk
says is always we're cutting funding or just transparency sometimes,
you know what I mean, if there is if there
is a congressional if there's legislation that funds something, you
need to have a new legislation. But I don't I
don't think he's doing that. I think he's like you say,
he's bringing in under Mark or Rubio who's in charge

(37:26):
now and just showing the American people what's happening.

Speaker 2 (37:30):
Right Well, there are a couple of issues there. Yeah, absolutely,
if Congress has authorized the funding that you can't just
be like, well, we're not going to fund something in
this case. Usually what Congress has done is kind of
had really nebulous funding provisions. You know, we're just going
to give all the taxpayer money to this agency or
that agency, and how the agencies handle it, they have
some you know, discretion on So what I want to

(37:55):
say really quickly about these funding projects, though, I think
what we're learning and people have been slowly getting this vision,
maybe through learning about the Biden family business or other
family entities that are involved in government funding or government operations.
What frequently happens is you have this massive national government

(38:18):
i mean sorry, non governmental sector of the economy that
takes money from the government to achieve the government's goals.
This is not always bad either. I just want to
point out so or a lot of people are actually
more supportive of this than I am. To take example
of a domestic issue, during the Bush administration, there was

(38:41):
a big push to allow religious groups that were doing
good work that the government wanted done to have them
just be funded directly. So if you're running a soup kitchen,
or you're running a foster care agency, you're helping immigrants
and refugees, well, you're going to do a better job
than we will, we'll just give the grant money to you. Obviously,
there are major problems with this for religious organizations in

(39:03):
that you might start becoming reliant on the government, or
the government will start telling you how to do your charity.
Great example of this was when the City of Philadelphia
told Catholic charities that they couldn't be Catholic and continue
to run the foster care programs. They had to violate
their beliefs if they wanted to continue to do foster

(39:24):
care because now it was just like completely embroiled with
the government funding. So when you're looking in the international space.
A lot of the money that went out there supposedly
to Vietnam or Columbia or Serbia, it was really going
to this international space of elites who make money as
the heads or staff of nonprofit agencies, non governmental organizations.

(39:49):
And so when you're like, gosh, I don't think we
should be funding transgender operas in Colombia, what you're really
doing is funding like the rad Cliff grad who runs
that operation. And so it's sort of it's someone jokingly
referred to it as universal basic income for the left,

(40:11):
there is truth to this. They just completely control this
space in which the federal government is paying massive amounts
of money for the salaries and operations of these non
governmental operations, and just being able to see it, you're realizing, oh,
the reason why this is a threat is this is
how the Left accomplishes all its goals through this symbiotic

(40:32):
relationship with the government and the NGOs and all the
left is staffed there. They're using it, you know, we
see it. They're using it to push radical transit theology,
other you know things are sort of antithetical to basic
functioning society. And so just shedding a light on this
and possibly stopping the funding of this is a huge

(40:53):
threat to the left's ability to wage its political war
against its enemies.

Speaker 1 (41:01):
I mean. And also pro terror groups are being funded
all kinds of terrible you know, nefarious organizations and un
American you know, organizations spread anti American ideas. But all
you know, I love the So another part of this
is well, and I saw you know, leftist saying this,

(41:21):
this isn't a lot of money, like why are they
you know, it's only three hundred and fifty million dollars
that program that you're talking about. Well, you know what,
there isn't a lot of discretionary spending to cut. There
are only certain places to go. And even if you
cut five million dollars somewhere, I'm for it. If it's
undermining American values, if it's being you know, if it's

(41:43):
under if there's no transparency in what you're doing, I
don't care if it's one million dollars, right, I mean,
it's worth doing. And I hate that argument. There's another
aspect to this that that that I think is really bad,
and it's the funding of media news organisations. We are
giving money to the BBC. Okay, a rich country that

(42:06):
you know, that that has. You know, the BBC, which
has a political outlook that often is against against American values,
are at a newspaper within Israel, which, which I would
explain to people, is kind of like the New York Times.
They hate Israel. You know, it's a it's a paper
in Israel that hates Israel, just far left. Why are

(42:27):
we funding the Israel's a rich country in that sense,
I mean, I understand we fund them for military needs,
but now we're we're funding a propaganda outlet within the country.
I mean, it's nuts. And then finally there's Politico. So
this morning I saw someone tweet that political had taken
eight million dollars. Then how they do it is the

(42:47):
government buys their subscription services. Okay, I'm not sure if
it's unclear to me how much of that is us
AI D. But I do know that they took around
eight million dollars from the federal government in the past
few years through subscriptions. That's a lot of money. And
never so of course they are going to protect the

(43:09):
people who basically bankroll their operation or help bankroll their operation,
and they never disclose this at all. So I wonder
how what other what other how much does a New
York Times, how many government how much does do taxpayers
subsidize government workers getting a New York Time time subscription
or Washington Post subscription.

Speaker 2 (43:31):
So I was thinking about this about how you know,
just if you remember when government agencies used to meet
in person, which is something they're going to be doing again,
they would subscribe to local papers to stay informed on issues, right,
So they would subscribe to the New York Times or
the Washington Post or other things, and they would in
fact probably purchase quite a few subscriptions so people could

(43:54):
just share them around the office. And as things evolved,
you know, this changes to digital subscribcriptions. And I'm sure
in the minds of these people. What I found shocking,
by the way, was the price of these subscriptions. When
I think of subscription, I'm still remembering when like the
local paper was thirty five dollars a year or fifty
dollars a year, right, or you know, which would add

(44:16):
up if you're buying a few hundred of those the
political pro subscription, Am I right that it's like fifteen
thousand dollars a year for a single subscription. Because I
saw this one grant, it was like five hundred thousand dollars,
I think for thirty seven subscriptions, which I guess would

(44:37):
be more like thirteen thousand dollars.

Speaker 1 (44:40):
I don't know for sure, but I think someone told me,
and you know, I don't know this is true that
two specialized subscriptions by the USAD costs like forty five
thousand dollars to Politico, and I just want to point.

Speaker 2 (44:52):
Out that's enough to hire in some cases a full reporter.
Two subscriptions gives you a full reporter, yes, who can
make it their job to protect everything. That enables politicode
to hire one reporter with two subscriptions, like, it's a
whole corrupt model that we're not getting paid twenty thousand

(45:16):
dollars for a subscription to the knowledge that we have.
We're sort of getting the opposite. We're getting censored by
USAID funded agencies or funded groups by the US government
because we are a threat to the regime. But if
you're not a threat to the regime, and Politico is
not a threat to the regime, they are. They are

(45:36):
huge asset of the regime. You see, taxpayer dollars go
to help keep the regime in power. And if they're buying, Like,
oh my gosh, if one agency is buying thirty seven
of these crazy subscriptions to have twenty reporters who help
support the regime, do you know what I could do

(45:58):
with twenty reporters to report actual news? Like it's just
enraging to think about this. So people are like, Oh,
don't worry about it. That's just paying for a subscription,
a twenty thousand dollars a year subscription that enables you
to hire half of a reporter. And that's just the
federal agencies. There are state agencies, there are NGOs, all

(46:20):
these people paying for a ridiculously priced subscription that enables
them all to keep their power. It's a great example
of the corruption of the media and the government.

Speaker 1 (46:33):
Yeah, I mean there's kind of a moral hazard inherent
and all of that because you can charge whatever you
want and government will pay. So if it's fifty thousand dollars,
no normal person's paying that. Maybe a corporation is paying
it if there's value, But I assume that, like a
lot of these subscriptions can be shared, So why do
you need to buy a whole bunch for the government.
I don't really know what to do about that, except

(46:54):
I think a good way to go about it is transparency. Say,
government pays US eight million dollars, so now I'm going
to take you know, I think that it's going to
affect your coverage. I'm sorry, And that's how I'm right.

Speaker 2 (47:05):
Right, Like we're running this hit piece on the Supreme Court,
we should let you know that we're worried that the
Supreme Court is a threat to our business model, you
know what I mean. Like, it's just we're running this
hit piece on Trump because he's a threat to our
business model. Everyone has interests and they should be disclosed.
But knowing that Politico is such a highly government funded

(47:26):
operation is one of them. And it's not like they're
saying we're giving you money to report the news. They're saying,
we're giving you money for a subscription to the secret
knowledge you have, Oh, the secret knowledge you have. By
the way, corporations also paying this sort of bounty so
that they can continue to have good coverage as they

(47:47):
compete for government contracts as well, is super interesting.

Speaker 1 (47:51):
But if you're a reporter, you you know you're reporting
on USAID and you know you're that maybe your salaries
are being paid by them. Are you really going to
go after them? I don't know you are. And I'm
not one of these people who says everyone should disclose
their funding. I'm sorry. I just judge people on what
they write and do accept if it's coming from a
government source, then I want I.

Speaker 2 (48:09):
Do think government funding is different.

Speaker 1 (48:12):
Not because of political but because the government needs to
tell us. Do you know what I'm saying, Like I
want to know my tax dollars are going to fund
the BBC. I should know about that. So just to listen.
Even if you think that the USAID does some good things,
and I actually do, the lack of transparency is a scandal.
It is just a massive scandal. And you know what's

(48:33):
funny about this, It's not funny. Who knows what other
like big giant agencies are doing, like it must be crazy.

Speaker 2 (48:41):
On that note, I just want to say the brilliance
of Musk sort of immediately going for the funding and
the hr for transparency purposes is just a great idea.

Speaker 1 (48:55):
I mean, people get so many at the end of
the day, like he has access to this or that.
First of all, they pretend they want you to think,
they want voters think Elon Musk is this rogue figure
within the government. I'm sorry to explain this to people.
The president actually doesn't do everything himself. He hires people
to do things. A lot of most bureaucrats aren't elected.
All of a sudden, they care about unelected bureaucrats. That
kind of makes me laugh. Now, if you want to

(49:15):
say that those should be an agency and the Congress
should make it one because it has such a big task,
all right, maybe you have a case. So that's not
their case. They've spent decades empowering bureaucrats, unelected bureaucrats, empowering
executive abuses. So you know, I don't really take them
very seriously. I don't know where I was going with this,
but I want.

Speaker 2 (49:36):
To have one more comment on the sort of corruption
of USAID and other agencies that fund the left's political
operation domestically, you know, because it's USA, idea is international,
but every single one of our departments is funding NGOs
where the left works. I also think that what you
what is true is, particularly in the DC area, just

(49:59):
a lot of people work get USAID, and a lot
of these people are married to reporters, and you're just
kind of getting a real vision of how the swamp operates.

Speaker 1 (50:11):
Yeah, I mean, I don't know that. People. I lived
in DC proper for a short time, but when I
was younger, and everyone I met was connected somehow, often
married to journalists or people. You know, there's a revolving
door lobbyist journalists, you know, working for this agency, that agency,
a lot of reporters. That's happened in Colorado as well.

(50:33):
You knew that if you left the newsroom you would
probably be like some comm specialists or some government agency,
or for some politicians. So of course you're not going
to go after these people. They're idiots like me. You
don't think about these things, and they say a lot
of ugly things about politicians.

Speaker 2 (50:49):
But there are liberation in this. We're in a world
that is so motivated by financial success, and I genuinely
am grateful, and I'm you know, I have all the
same things other people have of wanting money, and you
know all that, but I am so grateful in this

(51:10):
really weird way that Mark and I are not on
that gravy train because it creates it, it perpetuates its
own corruption. And if you can be we are beautifully
blessed and we certainly make more than enough money, particularly now,
but there were decades or at least a solid decade,
you know, early in our marriage, where that was not

(51:31):
the case, and it was very much paycheck to paycheck.
But the freedom that you have to go after anybody
because you're not financially tied, or that you you know,
you're keeping your financial ties low, Like I have different employers,
so I have. I'm very grateful for all them, but
they're restrictions on that. But the fewer that you can have,
the less involvement in a corrupt regime, the more freedom

(51:54):
you have. And that is such a beautiful thing. And
I wish people valued non tangible things like that as
much as they value financial success, particularly since we're all
going to die and you can't take it with you.
It's just my little encouragement to people.

Speaker 1 (52:09):
Yeah, I don't I think people don't understand that, Yes,
some journalists make good money or writers make good money,
but there is a risk when you start out in
this career that you may not you know that you
will fail. It is not it's a very competitive field, right,
and I could never understand that people who kind of
have made it become shills for corporations or politicians. You

(52:30):
have the freedom to go after powerful people, you know,
and they care that you're going after them, and you
can hurt them if they're doing something wrong, or you
can expose them. And then instead you got it just
a bunch of people being shills for politicians. I just
will never understand that this is the greatest job that
there is and people don't appreciate it.

Speaker 2 (52:47):
When my husband, I think I've said this part when
my husband worked at the Weekly Standard and everyone was
freaking out about Trump. One of his colleagues, who's crazy now,
But he was saying to Mark like, don't you get it.
Trump's going to destroy like the whole thing. And the
whole thing was this this means of making a lot

(53:09):
of money in Washington, d c. And it was, you know,
credit to him. He was actually right. He turned out
to be able to make money. I think he's probably
even you know, potentially USAID funded right now through different
through a different operation. But it is a threat and
it's just shocking, and I hope, I hope some good

(53:33):
comes from this transparency.

Speaker 1 (53:35):
Telecommuting has been a blessing in many ways that people
and writers don't have to live within d C. I
kind of I like DC as a town. I actually
think it's a slightly underrated city, has a lot to do,
But there is a culture there, especially if you're a writer,
that is stifling in my view, and very corporate, and
everyone is always you know what I mean. So I'm
you know, I think it's that that having all these

(53:56):
writers like you guys at the Federalists have all over
the country is really a blessing. This is why I
think government work should also be spread out, you know,
move an agency, to move the Energy Department to Denver
or whatever. I don't understand why everyone has to be
situated in DC.

Speaker 2 (54:11):
Particularly now, although I do worry about how that would
destroy other towns.

Speaker 1 (54:15):
But I'm thinking, do I want to export that cow
or import that kind of terrible organization.

Speaker 2 (54:21):
Can you remember that story that Bob Novac told in
his book Prince of Darkness about how he was a
young reporter in Saint Louis and he was at the
bar after a hard day's work and he's just talking
to another guy who's at the bar, and they're having
a great conversation and then at the end they're getting

(54:41):
each other's like names and info and it turns out
that the guy that he had such a great conversation
with at the bar was also the guy that he'd
just kind of written a piece about who had done
some bad things or you know, he was writing a
piece negative about him. And he said that the lesson
he took from it was that if you're a reporter,
you can't have friends. And the first time I read it,

(55:04):
I just was appalled by this. I was like, that
is not a good lesson. But the more that I've
had to cover corruption in DC and problems at the
FBI and throughout the intelligence community or in the media
or otherwise, I will absolutely admit that it's awesome that
my friends are at church and not at the FBI.

(55:28):
I mean not that there aren't people I go to
church with who work at the FBI, but it it
is important to tell the truth, and it can be
difficult when your husband works for usaid.

Speaker 1 (55:40):
Yeah exactly, you know stuff like that, Yeah exactly. I
remember I probably have told the story, but I remember
working at the Denver Post as a metro columnist, you know,
and everyone would, all the politicians invalue add to launch it.
I want to be they all are trying to manipulate you.
So I decided I wasn't gonna be friends with anyone,
which comes very easily easily to you, as you know,
But I think that that's the kind of attitude you

(56:01):
have to have. These people are manipulating you. They're trying
to either intimidate you or become your friend or whatever.
And I'm sure many of them are fine people, but
you know, there are plenty of millions of people out there.
I don't need to be friends with a politician and anyway,
so it goes. Can leave that on leaving on a skeptical,
cynical note, let's talk about culture. If you're ready. I

(56:21):
have a couple of things, do you. I know you've
been super busy.

Speaker 2 (56:26):
So last week when Mark guested as a host, we
got all this email from people saying how much they
appreciated that he talked about, you know, culture in a
substantive way, whereas you and I, who is like, what's
that movie with that.

Speaker 1 (56:41):
One through the thing with the guy?

Speaker 2 (56:43):
Yeah, and I will be disappointing everyone again, but I
am coming out of a really bad illness that just
knocked me out for two weeks. I slept a lot,
My brain was mush. But I'm working on a book
and so I just any minute I had. I was
trying to put a word down on the page. And

(57:03):
it was very bad. It was a really I mean,
I'm I'm out of it now and I'm so grateful
to God that that I've been relieved of this. So
I didn't really watch anything, and I'm sorry, but I
did watch one thing, which was Sense and Sensibility with
Emma Thompson. Yeah, Hugh Grant, is that right? No?

Speaker 1 (57:27):
Yeah, Hugh Grant, isn't it? Yeah? And uh from the nineties,
I believe, right.

Speaker 2 (57:33):
Yeah, and it was so good.

Speaker 1 (57:38):
Have you seen it? You know? Maybe maybe my uh
my kids were fans of those so what's her name,
Jane Austen's books and movies?

Speaker 2 (57:50):
So yeah, Kate Winsley was also in it. But I
would like to just give a word for Alan Rickman,
who died. I can't remember when Alan Rickman, I guess, yeah,
of that guy. I mean, he has such range and
he plays the Colonel Brandon character in this ninety spoiler alert,

(58:11):
I'm gonna tell you all about this nineteen ninety five movie.
And you know, one of the points of the novel,
of course, is about passion versus like thoughtfulness when picking
a partner, and the love story between him and Kate
Winslet is just beautiful and beautifully portrayed. I thought it

(58:32):
was very accurate to the novel and in fact almost
like made it better than the novel in some ways,
in the same way that the Pride and Prejudice mini series,
you know, the sixth Hour, how long it is, does
a really good job of distilling that novel and bringing
live to it. So I would highly recommend that. I

(58:52):
really thought it was well done and I'm glad I
watched it finally great.

Speaker 1 (58:58):
I know, I think there was a more modern adaptation.
I forget, maybe like a masterpiece theater thing with some
bigger names at one point, but yeah, that one gets
good reviews.

Speaker 2 (59:07):
And also I just want to say on Jane Austen,
I did not like her when I was young. I
in fact hated her when I was young. When they
would give you the books to read in high school,
I just hated it. And when I started reading them
to my children out loud, I realized that I had
simply been too immture to appreciate it in high school.

(59:28):
And as you know, just like learning more about love
and having a wonderful husband, but like all the ways
that you realize that your spouse is wonderful that you
can't even imagine when you first marry, and all the
you know, just just some of the issues that come
into play. She is so great at at female psychology,

(59:53):
and the older I got, the more I appreciated that,
and I get that men don't necessarily appreciate her in
the way that a lot of Like I remember when
Mark would always be having this watching like movies with
all male casts about survival at sea, and you're just
like this, I don't get you know, but you still
you want to learn to appreciate the male psychology or

(01:00:15):
you should so, uh.

Speaker 1 (01:00:18):
I get to watch Diehard with Alan Rickman after Sense
and Sensibility, and then you know, you did both.

Speaker 2 (01:00:22):
I tell you that I that I finally watched that
No Christmas. I think we did talk about it because yeah, okay,
I loved that movie as well, and I had you know,
it's one of those movies where you think you know
about it because everyone's talking about it. I knew the
entire plot, and yet I hadn't seen it. I don't
think or it had been so long that I had Forgome,

(01:00:45):
and that is a great movie. I've been so annoyed
by the by that awful Twitter conversation of is it
a Christmas movie and all that stupid stuff that I
had reflexively opposed it. But it's a very well done movie.

Speaker 1 (01:01:01):
Oh yeah. And Alan Rickman is just amazing. It was
his first movie. Just so good in it. Yeah, every
time I rewatch it, I'm like, I can't believe how
good this is, you know, I can't believe it's holding
my attention. It's just you know, Bruce Willas, Everyone's just
so amazing it. So I have two things I watched.
I watched a movie called A Real Pain on Hulu,

(01:01:25):
directed by Jesse Eisenberg, starring him and Kuran Oscars.

Speaker 2 (01:01:31):
Or something maybe, yeah, I think so.

Speaker 1 (01:01:33):
It's about these cousins who go to visit a concentration
camp in Poland too because their grandmother had died and
she had come from there, and they like track down
her house. It's kind of one of these uh, bittersweet
indie movies, you know, and it doesn't have like, yeah,
exactly doesn't wrap up, and it has a kind of

(01:01:54):
woody Allen feel. To it as well. To some extent,
I didn't love it, but I liked it, you know,
so I would recommend it. I listened to an interview
somewhere else with Jesse Eisenberg, and he's exactly the same.
He's exactly the same person in real life as he
is in this movie. He's I don't know, he has

(01:02:17):
a Woody Allen esque personality. Sits and then I watch
something which I have to explain to It's called This
is Us. Have you heard about this show?

Speaker 2 (01:02:28):
The TV show?

Speaker 1 (01:02:29):
Yeah, it was massively popular a few years ago, had
Mandy Moore in it. I don't know the name of
the other actors. See I was. I thought hard about
how to describe this, so this is here. It goes
the analogy. So I think about like a math addict.
Right when you first do math, it's probably a lot

(01:02:50):
of fun. Right, You're pulled in, you're having a good time.
By the end of the math addiction, your teeth are
falling out, your life is ruined, but you still can't leave.
That's exactly what this show was to me. I started
watching it. It was interesting. So it has the life
of this family and it does flashbacks and forward of

(01:03:12):
the parents, you know, and it intertwines all their whole
life from when they're born. It's about these triplets. One
of the triplets, spoiler, passes away, so they adopt a
black child who was left there by his drug addicted parents.
They adopt them, and this is about their family, so
it goes into all their lives now then in the future.

(01:03:35):
It's really well done. But I forgot who it was.
Someone called it poignancy porn. So basically, you're supposed to
cry every five minutes watching this show. There's always something
horrible happening, always something horrible about to happen, always something
very emotional going on, you know, and you're just hooked.
And I hated it and loved it at the same time.
I watched the whole thing. I did not you know,

(01:03:56):
you would cry. You would cry many times. I think
watching this show, you're really a crier as far as
I know, But I think this show would do it
for sure. Anyway. That's how I describe it. I would
recommend it to women. I'm not sure about men.

Speaker 2 (01:04:12):
Wait, it's like math in that it destroys you and
you recommend it.

Speaker 1 (01:04:21):
Well, I mean, it doesn't have the physical toll of math,
But mentally, yes, it's similar to Math. I just I'm
trying to explain to you how you'll start watching it
and it'll be somewhat interesting, and then you'll be like,
this is too much. There's every episode, something horrible is
happening to these people. Every episode is an emotional whirlwind.
It's drenched, drenched in it. But then you can't get

(01:04:44):
out because it's really just a soap opera, and then
you're stuck to the end and you have to watch
the whole thing, even though your teeth are falling out
in your life is ruined. Seven episodes, seven seasons, I believe.
I have to say that the acting is fantastic. Not
mandymore but spoiler you know she you know, it's the

(01:05:05):
person's whole life, so she doesn't survived. It reminded me
of the and I've said this probably before on the
show of Joe Queenen's famous review of the movie Survive
or after I was called was where the plane crashes
in Peru and the people have to eat each other,
and he stood up and yelled, eat ethan hawk first,
because this performance was so bad. That's how I felt
about Mandy Moore all right. It was a weird episode.

(01:05:31):
We were all over the place, but you know, there's
a lot to cover, so I think it's going to
be a whirlwind every week. Janie Vance the other day
said that we're going to this is going to be
for four years. We're going to do this for four years.

Speaker 2 (01:05:43):
I want to say something about it really quickly. The
last two weeks have been so amazing and beautiful to me,
and I wonder if this is what it feels like
to be a leftist where you just actually win political
battles or you I mean, I was talking with a
family member and I was like, what were the Republicans

(01:06:06):
doing for the entirety of my life, like just in
two weeks reshaping some thoughts or saying what if we
didn't have to go along with like the genital mutilation
of children. You know, it's been beautiful and wonderful. And
I'm not saying by that that every single thing is
the best or that there's not a lot to do.
I want, by the way we talked about it with Dose,

(01:06:27):
you know, there's a limit to what the president can accomplish.
But I really hope Congress is learning some lessons about
what they need to do to reassert their article on
authority and to really be accountable to the American people,
and to focus on good governance. I know it's probably
not going to happen, but we're learning brand new things

(01:06:47):
about what's possible that you can do things. And it
has been absolutely beautiful to watch. And I also think
it's funny because I've been kind of critical of was
going after Project twenty twenty five, not the part where
he was saying he had his own plans, but just
that he was kind of trashing what I thought were
some you know, it certainly included good conservative ideas for

(01:07:10):
what to do when you take over the presidency, but
I did not realize that the trashing of it was
because he had so much more aggressive plans. I did
not think that he was going to be that way.
But it's a beautiful thing to see, and we have
a country to save. I feel patriotic in a way

(01:07:30):
that I have not since the eighties. Just America is great,
and we need to stop teaching our children to hate ourselves,
and we need to use our power for good, and
we need to care about the American people and things,
you know, I don't know. I just feel like an
early nineteen eighties kind of optimism that I haven't experienced

(01:07:52):
for a while.

Speaker 1 (01:07:53):
Yeah, I definitely like a lot of what's going on.
I don't like everything that's going on, and I do
I'm happy you meant, you know, governing through executive fiat
it's great. But if Democrats win the next election, they
can turn it all around just as easily. So this
is why we need legislation and Congress to take back
their powers that they've not just abdicated but aggressively handed

(01:08:17):
over to presidents because it's just easier for them. They're
not responsible for it. They don't have to do anything
that could just you know, chirp from the sidelines. It's really,
I think bad for America because it's very It creates
a lot of instability. Anyway, I think we talked about
that last week. We didn't even talked about RFK, who
I am very angry about.

Speaker 2 (01:08:34):
I quit to say on that too. Sorry, this is
very much out of order, and I apologize because we
need to reet this.

Speaker 1 (01:08:39):
We can do whatever we want.

Speaker 2 (01:08:41):
The level of emotion that some of my friends like
you are exhibiting over RFK and other things, it's just
not sustainable. And I would encourage you to just make
sure you're.

Speaker 1 (01:08:53):
I think you know that's not true. I think I
can sustain my level of disdain and anger over him
for a very long time. I I it's too late
to get into this discussion, but I actually think he's
an evil person. And I don't say that a lot
about other people. I don't say that about politicians. I
think the things that he's done, I've done more and
more research on the things he said and done. I

(01:09:14):
can't believe that any responsible conservative would vote for him.
I just it is mind boggling to me and offensive.
So I'm going to keep staying on. The people are
very angry at me for this, but I'm not going
to let it go.

Speaker 2 (01:09:27):
Well, the Maha movement was a big part of Trump's success,
and I would just ask you again, like, who would
you recommend run you know, the Maha movement for Trump
since you hate RFK.

Speaker 1 (01:09:44):
I don't know, get his name right now, the doctor
who has signed the Barrington Declaration or something. I mean,
I would just pick anyone over him. He is a
terrible person. I mean the Maha part. Of course, everyone
should be healthy. Again. I'm happy that people want to
be healthy, but that's not what he's about. And we're
normalizing an authoritarian, leftist, crazy pro abortion, irresponsible person who's

(01:10:12):
made millions of trial lawyers pushing you know, just a
very deviant, you know, agenda, and I think that's a problem. Anyway,
I don't want, you know, I don't think we should
debate this right now. We can debate it in the future.

Speaker 2 (01:10:27):
Really wish we had done it earlier because we got
to go. But people need to also email us at
radio at the Federalist dot com.

Speaker 1 (01:10:35):
Thank you so much for remembering that. Every week it's
supposed to be my job. You do it, and so
I appreciate it. Anyway, maybe next week Molly and I
will debate RFK. Un till then, be lovers of freedom
and anxious for the first that's great.

Speaker 3 (01:10:47):
It starts with the great birch Sake scenario.

Speaker 1 (01:10:51):
Way Lenny Bruce is not