06-09-25 - *FULL SHOW* Liberty Vittert drops UN; Rep Gabe Evans; I went to Boulder

Yesterday, a week after a cretinous anti-Semite illegal alien tried to firebomb mostly-elderly peaceful folks walking on Pearl Street Mall in support of bringing home the Gaza hostages, the Mall was the fullest I've ever seen it. Had to be at least a few thousand people between Broadway and 14th street including Jews and non-Jews, politicians, plenty of law enforcement, and just so many people showing their support for the hostages, for Jews, and for Israel.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
There's something beeping in my house and I can't figure
out what it is.

Speaker 2 (00:03):
I think it's in my office.

Speaker 1 (00:05):
Actually, it's the kind of beet Shannon that Shannon has
all kinds of gadgets, so Shannon will be experienced to.

Speaker 2 (00:12):
All kinds of beeps. It's the kind of beep.

Speaker 1 (00:14):
That you might get from some small electric or electronic
device that has its battery running down, and it's warning
you of the low battery by occasional beeping, the way
a smoke detector might do. But I'm pretty sure this
isn't a smoke detector. It's not beeping that loud, and
I just I can't isolate it. I can't figure out

(00:35):
where it is now. I didn't spend all that much time,
but anyway, that that was the one little fly in
the ointment of my weekend. It's very frustrating to have
something beeping in your house and not be able to
find it. So other than that, though, the weekend was great,
and we did spend some time just now talking with
Marty about Run for their Lives, and I actually see

(00:57):
some news footage of it right now on katv R
Fox thirty one, our news partners and shown a lot
of folks there and law enforcement and all this, and
it was.

Speaker 2 (01:08):
A wonderful event.

Speaker 1 (01:09):
And I'd just like to follow up on something I
said to Marty in case you weren't listening ten minutes ago,
And that is when you think about what this creepness
want to be Jihanna still legal alien was trying to
do trying to kill or maim people he must have

(01:29):
assumed were Jewish because and he said, he said he
wants to kill all Zionists. He injured some people, but
nobody died, and I don't think anybody even got very
close to dying, thank goodness.

Speaker 2 (01:46):
And what was the result. The result was.

Speaker 1 (01:49):
That an event that had maybe two dozen people last
week and is normally somewhere around two dozen people who
have been showing up every every week, had one hundred times,
not ten times, one hundred times as many people show

(02:11):
up yesterday. That guy could hardly have done more to
help the good guys and to hurt his own cause,
his own evil cause. He could hardly have been any
more effective at doing the exact opposite of what he

(02:34):
was trying to do. And that does bring a smile
to my face. That and the idea that he will
be in jail for a long time.

Speaker 2 (02:45):
I want to share with you.

Speaker 1 (02:46):
I'm going to do a couple of these over the
course of the show, a little bit of audio. And
as I was walking around Pearl Street Mall, I ended
up interviewing four people, and two of them you know
of or might know of, And two of them are
just ordinary folks, one of whom is a show listener

(03:09):
who came down from Fort Collins because she heard me
ask people to come.

Speaker 2 (03:16):
But I would like to start.

Speaker 1 (03:19):
Just given the context of what I said about the
crime that was committed a week earlier, I would like
to start with my conversation with Boulder County District Attorney
Michael Doherty, who is also a candidate for Attorney General
of the state of Colorado.

Speaker 2 (03:36):
Have a listen to this.

Speaker 1 (03:37):
Remember I'm standing on Pearl Street Mall recording on my phone,
so bear with me if the audio quality is slightly challenging.
All right, I'm still on Pearl Street Mall and I
just bumped into Michael Doherty, the district attorney here in
Boulder County, who was also a candidate for Attorney General
of the.

Speaker 2 (03:53):
State of Colorado. It's great to see you here.

Speaker 1 (03:56):
Michael, And obviously you have a law enforcement purpose with
what happened last weekend, But yes, I think there's a
lot more going on with why you're here today, And
I'd just like to hear from your heart why you're
here today.

Speaker 3 (04:06):
Well, you're absolutely right, Ross, and I'm so glad you're here.
And we're surrounded by hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of
people right now, and seeing this outpouring of love and
support for the Jewish community and a community that was
terribly and tragically harmed last week is just incredibly powerful,
and I'm glad everybody's coming together with such love and support,
not just for the victims and their family members, but
for the Jewish community and this community.

Speaker 4 (04:27):
As a whole.

Speaker 1 (04:28):
Regarding what happened last weekend. I don't know if there
already are or will be federal charges. Obviously there are
already state charges. Do you feel confident that the federal
government will allow you to do the prosecution or at
least the first one.

Speaker 2 (04:43):
Yes, definitely.

Speaker 3 (04:44):
We have a really strong working relationship forged over the
years between my office, Bolder Police Department, the Federal Bureau
of Investigation, but also the US Attorney's Office, and there's
a lot of trust there, and I will tell you
the response starting Sunday afternoon is exactly what it should be.
But it's somewhat unique to Colorado into Boulder County that
we have those relationships in place and that trust in place.
So we've been able to work really well together to

(05:06):
ensure that we're making really strong progress on the investigation
and also that we're going to do everything we need
to do to ensure justice is done in this case.
I'm confident that we're on the right track with a
state prosecution for attempted murder and related charges and the
federal prosecution on hate crimes charges.

Speaker 1 (05:23):
And then just a personal thing I wanted to say
to you rather than necessarily ask you, I'm very hardened
to see so many folks here who I think aren't Jewish.

Speaker 2 (05:31):
Right, Obviously, a lot of Jews.

Speaker 1 (05:32):
Will want to show up, and I'm Jewish and I'm here,
but it really means a lot to me when folks
who aren't Jewish show up to support our community.

Speaker 3 (05:41):
Well, quite frankly, it's exactly what one would hope would
happen today, right, and I would hope that support goes
beyond today and then we continue to come together and
support the Jewish community and one another. I've seen it
in Boulder County before, where we've had fires, floods.

Speaker 2 (05:55):
And a mass shooting.

Speaker 3 (05:56):
I've seen this community demonstrate such resilience and such strength
at times of trauma and challenge, and unfortunately we're being
called upon to do that again. But I feel really
fortunate to live and work in such a great community,
and the state of Colorado as a whole tends to
come together, and you see that here today, Ross and
I just I'm uplifted by looking around with all the
people around you and.

Speaker 1 (06:14):
Me right now, Michael Dougherty, thanks so much for spinning
a minute with me, of course, thank you.

Speaker 2 (06:20):
All right.

Speaker 1 (06:21):
So that was one of the conversations I had on
Pearl Street Mall yesterday. I liked that dude. I think
he should I think he should be the next Attorney General. Well,
we'll see how that all plays out. In any case,
it was it was a moving thing to be there yesterday.
And a lot of talk is about the walk and
so on, and I'll tell you more about this a
little bit later in the show, but the most moving

(06:43):
stuff was some of the some of the speeches. Some
of the comments to the assembled crowd from folks who
were there, from organizers have run for their lives, from
a rabbi and from a member of the family of
a hostage. And they played some videos and there was

(07:07):
this one video that I it's just one of these things.
I think I will never forget, and I think I'll
tell you about it right after this. Ross. Do you
have an auxiliary power unit in your house that's beeping you?

Speaker 2 (07:19):
I don't know.

Speaker 1 (07:19):
Is it the battery backup for your computer? Could be
I don't know. Can your dog zero in on the sound?
Not my dog? Is it a gun safe or ups backup?
I'll have to check the ups backup thing. I have
a gun safe, but not there. And Shannon, you had
some additional input.

Speaker 5 (07:37):
That's the machine that goes.

Speaker 1 (07:42):
Mighty. Python's meaning of life, the machine that goes bing.

Speaker 2 (07:49):
Oh, that's perfect. Ross.

Speaker 1 (07:51):
I had a similar beep. I couldn't find. It was
a dying smoke detector in my desk drawer that I
had thrown in there when we moved. Yeah, I have
a feeling it's something in box in my office. I'm
starting to sort of accumulate boxes in my office and
anticipation of moving out, moving to the other house after
the remodel is done.

Speaker 2 (08:08):
So so there you go. That's so funny.

Speaker 1 (08:12):
I can't believe how many texts I've got about that.
So I'm gonna just mention one more thing right now,
about the run for our Lives. So just after that
event of there are a bunch of different speakers, and
then in addition to the local speakers, there were videos
that were sent in by various members of the Jewish

(08:33):
community around the world, members of hostage families and so on.

Speaker 2 (08:37):
And then there was a video of a girl who.

Speaker 1 (08:44):
Looked to me to be two, and she's kneeling, I think,
in front of a small easel that has on it
a poster of, you know, bring back the hostages, a

(09:05):
poster of her dad, and she sort of reaches toward
she's standing just a few inches or kneeling just a
few inches from maybe she's standing, and she reaches out
as if to kind of give her dad's picture a hug,
and ends up and she's doing this on purpose, right,

(09:27):
but she just wrapping her arms around herself as if
her dad was there, and she's talking in Hebrew.

Speaker 2 (09:37):
She's talking about how.

Speaker 1 (09:40):
You know, when Daddy gets home from Gaza, he can
take me to kindergarten. It was I can hardly talk
about it without crying. It was one of the most
heartbreaking things I've ever seen in my life. And seeing
that video. This is going to be very, very politically incorrect, okay,
but seeing that video not only made me, as a

(10:02):
parent and as a human so sad, so sad, but
it also made me so angry. It made me wish
that I could take one of my so called assault
rifles and go shoot some people in Gaza. Not civilians,
you know who I'm talking about. I'm just I can't believe.

(10:25):
I can't believe there's anybody in the United States of
America or anywhere else other than a rabbit anti semi
who would do anything other than hope, pray, march, protest,
anything to support getting the hostages home and to oppose

(10:53):
terrorism everywhere, including Hamas. And instead we have all these
morons out there who are overtly anti Semitic, or they
claim their anti Zionists, but don't let them fool you.
Maybe one day in the past there had been some
difference maybe between anti Zionism and anti Semitism, and I'm
not even sure that that's true, but there definitely isn't. Now,

(11:18):
nobody who claims to be anti Zionist is anything other
than anti Semitic, And don't let them fool you. Let
me take one minute. It deserves a lot more than
a minute, but let me take literally one minute here
on what's probably the biggest national story right now, and
that is Donald Trump's calling the National Guards to California.

(11:41):
There are a lot of angles to take on this story,
and I'm going to touch on it a few times
over the course of the show, but I'll start with
this one. You've got protesters waving Mexican flags and burning
American flags, throwing rocks and pieces of cinder block and bottles,

(12:01):
and lit commercial grade fireworks at federal and state and
local law enforcement, blocking traffic, burning cars. Did you see
they burned some way moos self driving taxis. I'm sure
that's gonna help liberate Gaza or well, this one isn't
about Gaza, sorry, that's this one is about immigration enforcement.
I'm sure that's gonna that's gonna stop Ice from deporting

(12:24):
a illegal alien with an armed robbery conviction. Which kind
of people they were? They were after. And the one
point I'm gonna make on this now and I'm gonna
come back to.

Speaker 2 (12:33):
It later, is.

Speaker 1 (12:37):
That this is everything or this is a huge part
of exactly what got Donald Trump elected both times. Really right,
Donald Immigration was a huge part of Donald Trump's election
both times. And the second time was different because we
were just after four years of Biden intentionally opening the

(12:59):
border and letting millions of illegals into the country, and
now you've got people in California waving Mexican flags. By
the way, very few of the illegal aliens who came
into the United States during Biden's term were actually Mexican.
You know, there's a little bit of net migration into
the US with Mexico, but actually for the past twenty

(13:19):
five years, net migration with Mexico has been about zero,
About as many Mexicans has been going back as coming in.
So you had this massive migration through Mexico, but not
of Mexicans. But the Mexicans apparently are out there in
La waving Mexican flags, burning American flags, and giving Republicans
and Donald Trump a massive political win. And when Donald

(13:42):
Trump sends the National Guard there, whether or not it's legal,
how many people are really going to care?

Speaker 2 (13:48):
And if some of.

Speaker 1 (13:48):
These protesters, you know, catch a rubber bullet in the
side of the head or in the groin, how many
people are going to care. Donald Trump got elected specifically
to stand up to people like that, and they're giving
him exactly what he wants. Over recent days, I started
reading and then finished reading a fascinating new book, in fact,

(14:11):
fascinating enough that I asked the author if he could
send a copy of it to Admiral Stevritis, which he
kindly He kindly did, and the book is called A
Rage to Conquer Twelve Battles That Changed the Course of
Western History. Author is Michael Walsh, who joins us now
on KOA. Michael, thanks for thanks for joining us on

(14:32):
the show. Quite a fabulous and fascinating book, and so
you know, thank you right up front for that.

Speaker 5 (14:40):
Well, thanks for having me on Ross. I appreciate it. Uh.

Speaker 1 (14:44):
I'd like to actually start where you start in the book,
talking a little bit about about Klaus Wits and correcting,
and I don't know if you have if you have
a way to get a slightly better audio thing going
on there, No, there isn't, Okay, So.

Speaker 2 (14:59):
Klaus.

Speaker 1 (15:00):
It is often quoted, and I'll let you quote it
and then give the correct quote, but saying that war
is a continuation of So why don't you talk about
how it's how it's normally discussed, and what it really
is and why the difference is important.

Speaker 5 (15:16):
Well, it is important. It's the most famous thing clause
of It's never said. Actually, it's often quoted as saying
war is politics or policy by other means, and I
think that has been taken to mean over the years
that when all else fails, when diplomatic negotiations fail, then

(15:39):
and only then do you turn to actual combat. But
what Costs actually says in German, which I read, is
that war is politics or policy with other means. That
is to say, it's always always a tool in the

(16:01):
political arsenal. It may be the first tool, it may
be the last tool, but it is a subject to
the guidance of the political will of the country engaging
in war. And I think that little difference between the
word buy and the word with. In German the word
is mith mit. So it's very clear that it's with

(16:22):
makes all the difference in the world for closetics, and
it elevates warfare to something that Emmanuel Kant made that
point one hundred years earlier, which is that warfare is
the natural state of human beings and peace is the
aberrational state. So what we fuss about negotiations and negotiated settlements,

(16:44):
we've actually got to stick by the wrong end, I think.

Speaker 2 (16:48):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (16:48):
So again I'm fascinated by this because I studied I
studied foreign policy, nuclear strategy, and that sort of thing.

Speaker 2 (16:57):
It was what I majored in in college.

Speaker 1 (16:59):
And I you know, that's a long time ago now,
but I think I always heard close of its quoted incorrectly.

Speaker 2 (17:06):
Now that you've corrected me, or corrected everybody.

Speaker 1 (17:09):
Who reads a Rage to Conquer, And like you said,
it's one change in one small word, but.

Speaker 2 (17:18):
The change in meaning is massive.

Speaker 5 (17:21):
Well, I'm about to give a speech here in Washington,
DC tomorrow at the Institute of World Politics, which is
a graduate level school for people who want to be
in or already are in the intelligence business and the
diplomatic core. So it's very narrowly tailored to those particular

(17:43):
facets of American foreign policy. And I want to make
this very point at some length tomorrow, which is, look
for the little things. Don't get fooled by the big things,
because that's not necessarily where the truth lies. And I'll
give you a very quick example is that we're making

(18:04):
a lot of noise about China now and China as
our principal enemy, and all of which is true, except
that I don't think that we should fear the Chinese militarily.
They are they have never been any good at fighting wars.
They've lost every war they've fought, except the civil wars

(18:28):
they fight with each other, which are brutal. And their
whole policy of warfare is based on a book by
Sun Tzu which is called The Art of War, and
the main takeaway from that book is never fight unless
you absolutely have to. It's much better to win your

(18:48):
battles by deception of the enemy. And this is how
the Chinese fight through deception and misdirection rather than head
on military conference. It's the point I'm going to make
tomorrow to the people that diplomats.

Speaker 2 (19:03):
And spies interesting.

Speaker 1 (19:05):
Yeah, my audience slightly outside of the scope of a book,
but I'll stick with you on this for a minute.
So my take is that the Chinese seemed to be
doing a lot of things to remedy their failures as
a military power in the past, with hypersonic missiles and

(19:27):
a very large navy and doing everything they need to
do to be able to actually win a shooting war
if there is one. Which is not the same as
saying that they have the leadership or experience or skill set,
because hardware by itself is not going to win a war.
But I probably take the military threat there maybe a

(19:48):
little more seriously than you do.

Speaker 5 (19:50):
Well, I would say, just look at the North Koreans.
They tried to build a big fighting ship and it crashed,
and then if they launched it the other day, and
so obviously there will be some executions in the permit kingdom.
And the boat doesn't float, is the point.

Speaker 1 (20:06):
But China and North Korea are very are very different,
and China doesn't China is an incredible manufacturing power that
most people don't understand these days. They always think of
cheap Chinese junk. But that's not what's going on over
there anymore.

Speaker 5 (20:18):
Well, actually it is what's going on over there because
the Africans are finding out that. First of all, the
Chinese have come in to build lots of infrastructure for
the Africans. Now they're collecting on it, which the Africans
weren't expected because they're used to Western power is just
giving them stuff, right, and it's falling apart. That's that's

(20:39):
the part. The quality is not at all as good
as a Western manufacturing company can make. And I'm not
here to diminish the Chinese because it is outside the
scope of the book. But my point is, look at
the little things for us that sun Zou says, don't
fight fool them? How about that that goes back thousands
and thousands of years, that is deeply grained and the people.

(21:01):
So the reason I began ch to conquer with clauds
of it is that as a Prussian military officer who
had gotten walloped by Napoleon at the height of the
Napoleonic Wars in the first century of the first a
decade of the nineteenth century, he had first hand experience
with seeing a major army like the Prussian army absolutely

(21:23):
destroyed by the French army destroyed, and Clausibits was captured
and he was imprisoned in France or at the company.
He was a gentleman and an officer, and later he
came back into the fight and fought with the Russians
at Ordino against Napoleon. So he learned a lot of practical,
useful battlefield tactics and concepts. And that's why we still

(21:47):
read on war today, and that's why I started with
my book about war with Prosidants.

Speaker 2 (21:52):
We're talking with Michael Walsh.

Speaker 1 (21:53):
His really fascinating new book is called A Rage to
Conquer Twelve Battles that changed the course of Western history.
Just any interest of time, I'm going to probably skip
over Julius Caesar and and move up to Alexander the Great.
And there's a really interesting little little note in here

(22:14):
about the origin of the word cult.

Speaker 2 (22:18):
I wonder if you can talk about that a little bit.

Speaker 5 (22:21):
Well, the cult that comes up mostly in the I
think in the Constantine chapter about the cult of Christianity
or the cult of Jesus or the cult of Mary.
Cult is not a bad word. It has some unfortunate
secondary meetings now meaning something that crazy people are attracted to.

(22:42):
But all cult means is to cultivate. It comes from
the Latin root to grow, and it meant a sect
breaking away to be devotional towards some figures. So Christianity
at the beginning when it was a subsect of Judaism,
was known as the g Jesus Movement or the Jesus Cult.

(23:02):
And the Catholics will know their veneration of the Virgin
Mary not worshiped. That veneration is often misinterpreted by others
as a cult of the blessed Virgin Mary, which it is,
but it's not in the sense that Heaven's Gate, the
guys that killed themselves in California some years back, or

(23:23):
the People's Temple. It's not a cult in that sense.

Speaker 1 (23:27):
I'm just going to ask you a very broad question here,
because there are just too many things I could answer.
Tell us anything you want my listeners to know, to
give them a sense of Alexander the Great, and then
you know they can read the book for more.

Speaker 5 (23:42):
Sure well, Alexander the Great starts the Western tradition of warfare.
He inherits the throne from his assassinated father. He's a Macedonian.
He's not even a real Greek, but he's been educated
by Aristotle, who Philip had brought to Macedonia to teach
his precocious son. So he nor only thought I was

(24:05):
going to fight and co how to think? And he
told him to appreciate literature. And one of the things
that Alexander carried with him off his life short as
it was what was copy of the Iliad, which he
read and re read and reread and took into battle. That,
of course is the origin story of Western military action

(24:26):
the Greeks and the Trojans at Troy, which is now
in Turkey. So from Alexander comes everything. For example, since
Gaza is in the news today, Gaza was a problem
for Alexander in three hundred DC. He was trying to
get past Gaza. It occupies it like the right turn

(24:46):
from as you're coming down from Jerusalem and the Levant
and you want to go toward Egypt. So if you
have to take a big right there, well, Gaza city
is right in the middle of that, and they wouldn't
surrender an Alexander bought a very very difficult siege against
the Gazas, in which he was almost assassinated by a spy.

(25:08):
But his revenge on Gaza was terrible. He tore it down,
He killed everybody, and he took the commander and pierced
his ankles and put a thong through them and dragged
his body around Gaza. The same way that Achilles did
hector in the Iliad. So the larger point, which what's
kind of what we've started with, is if you know

(25:29):
the little things, you can see the big things coming.
But if you don't, if you miss the meaning of
the word with and buy, if you don't reat sun
Zu and know the Chinese don't want to fight, they
want to trick you into giving up. If you don't
understand that Gaza has always been a thorn in the
side in the conflict between West and East, then everything

(25:51):
seems to surprise you. And unfortunately, in many cases in America,
because we are not as attuned to these things as
the people who are live there, we don't know that.
So we come in, you know, the great American innocent abroad,
and say, well, why don't you fix this? Why don't
we negotiate this? And you go, dude, did you ever
read the Iliad? And the answer, of course is no,

(26:12):
we didn't, and that's why we have such problems with
sorting this thing out, sorting all of the things we
don't understand at first clans out.

Speaker 2 (26:22):
Excellent, fascinating answer.

Speaker 1 (26:23):
And for the record, if you asked me that question, Ross,
if you read the iliad.

Speaker 2 (26:27):
My answer would be yes, so.

Speaker 1 (26:30):
And I just want to tell listeners right, this book,
A Rage to Conquer is a fascinating read. And we're,
you know, sort of intentionally and unintentionally not going to
do it full justice here because I want you to
just go buy it and read it. So I'm gonna
have to skip over a bunch of things like Constantine
and uh, but I want to I want to spend
a little time with you and and the and your

(26:51):
stuff about the uh, the Crusades. It is some of
the most fascinating history I've I've ever read. What's the
guy's name, bow him on or something like.

Speaker 5 (27:01):
That, Yes, Beaumont of Toronto. We don't think much about
him today, but he was the lead commander the two
most important first two big battles of the first group,
said and had the Crusaders lost either of those, that
crusade would have been over. But instead, in just a
span of a few years, from the Pope Urbans the

(27:23):
second speech at Clairval in ten ninety five ninety six
to the capture of Jerusalem in ten ninety nine, the
Europeans without a central command, but without even countries really
at this point there were various little duchies and principalities
amounted this mass invasion of the Middle East and accomplished

(27:45):
their objective, which was to storm Jerusalem and besiege it
and take it.

Speaker 6 (27:50):
And they did.

Speaker 5 (27:51):
And Bohemont is one of the lesser known to the
general public commanders in that in that war. But he
was a massive man. It's a big Norman, you know,
another little thing. It's always the little things for us.
Why was a Norman general going to the Holy Land? Well,
he was born in Italy. And the reason that he's

(28:13):
born in Italy was because the Normans conquered England, if
we remembered correctly, in ten sixty six, turning England into
what became England, really the mis mixture of French and
Anglo Saxon. They also conquered all of southern Italy and
North Africa and Sicily. They had big kingdoms there, so
a lot of Norman knights came and Beaumont, who was

(28:36):
you know, he must have got a big man, especially
for the time, maybe six seven sixty, huge muscles and
an iron will not to be defeated by the brand
new tactics that the Turks, the Turkish mounted horsemen with
art the bows and arrows used against them. I've always
found him a fascinating figure. He's just well worth the

(28:57):
space I was devoted to him.

Speaker 1 (29:00):
I've got about four minutes left, and I'm just gonna
say to listeners, you just need to buy the book
A Rage to Conquer, because I mean, the chapter on
Napoleon is worth buying the book just for that one chapter.

Speaker 2 (29:13):
It's just incredible.

Speaker 1 (29:15):
And then the stuff about American generals in World War
One and World War Two, and maybe we'll mention patent
in the context of the last thing that I want
to ask you about. Michael, you are not shy with
certain opinions and and and actually found that made the

(29:37):
book more interesting than some history books. And you say
at the beginning and at the end that America has
lost what it needs or lost what it needs to
understand when it comes to war. And this sort of
ties in in a way to a listener text I

(29:58):
just got. Can you ask mister wall to comment on
nine to eleven, the Battle of nine to eleven and
how we lost it?

Speaker 5 (30:07):
Yes, well, that is the last chapter. It's a short chapter,
it's an afterward. But what I and it's the most
controversial So what I said was we failed in our
response to nine to eleven because we did not hold
the proper parties responsible. We fought it as a police action. Effectively,

(30:28):
we did not go after the people who plotted it
and who financed it. And everybody in Washington knew who
they were, the Saudi Arabians. Now, whether the official government
sanctioned this or whether it was a wink wink, we
failed to remember they're all cousins. We failed to remember
that they're all family. We huzzled their family out of

(30:52):
the country with the building still burning, and we did
not put Saudi Arabia in its place. And what I
said is what would Caesar have done? What would Alexander
have done? What would Caesar have done? What would Napoleon
have done? And we know the answers that it was
very clear in warfare that you fought it till you won.

(31:13):
You did not fight it with an exit strategy in mind,
and you did not fight it to be ended at
the bargaining table if you were negotiating your losing. And
that's the takeaway from that chapter.

Speaker 1 (31:27):
Give me one minute here on how you would compare
or rather contrast George S. Patton versus current US military leadership.

Speaker 5 (31:39):
Well, there's the current US military leadership. It's, of course,
a lot of it is political. And remember that during
the Civil War we had political generals fighting on the
Union side very much at the beginning, and they were terrible.
They were buddies of congressmen and senators from the president whoever.

(32:00):
It wasn't until Grant, who had been a professional soldier,
a graduate of Westboyne, comes into the fight and Sherman,
who is his sidekick. Once they take over, the Union
army completely changes and Grant hates these political generals because
they don't know how to fight them. They don't know
how to win. And what Grant, very early in the

(32:21):
Civil War was confronted by the Confederates saying, what terms
do you wish us to surrender? Grant said, unconditional surrender period.
That's it, guys, you lose. It's what Reagan said to
the Soviet Union. And I was in the Soviet Union
when I fell apart. He said, we win, they lose.

(32:44):
That's what happened. We do not fight that way anymore.
And we have these army guys, big tubs of lard,
like General Milly with a chest full of fruit salad,
who's never done a damn thing in his life to
win a war. Why, that's why we lose.

Speaker 1 (33:02):
That's why we haven't won anything of significance since World
War Two. I mean, as you noted your book like
we won Grenada. Okay, great, right, So I think that
was an incredibly powerful part of your part of your
book as well. Last quick thing, I'm just about out
of time, but I need to mention this. It took
me a while to figure it out. I was doing
a little more reading on you, and it's I'm like,

(33:24):
how the heck does this dude know so much about
classical music? Throughout this book You've got references to Caesar
in this opera and Alexander in that opera and Napoleon
in this concerto, and it's really quite incredible.

Speaker 2 (33:40):
I like classical music, but not to degree that you do.

Speaker 1 (33:43):
And then I found that you were the classical music
critic for Time Magazine.

Speaker 5 (33:48):
I was, yes, it was a classical music for twenty
five years, two newspapers and at Time Magazine.

Speaker 2 (33:54):
Unbelievable.

Speaker 5 (33:55):
And what I want to do in this book, real
quick is to show people that it's not You can't
look at these things in a da thank you. Yeah,
that Napoleon was wanted to be a novelist before he
conquered the world. He Beethoven wrote the third symphony, Heroica
Symphony about Napoleon. And if you don't understand the cultural context,
you don't understand the man, and you don't understand the subject.

(34:17):
So I try to be as broad as possible in
placing these guys in their historical perspective.

Speaker 1 (34:22):
It's one of the most interesting and dare I say,
intellectual books I've read in a long time. There were
moments that it made me feel a little dumb. There
were moments that it made me break out the dictionary
and look up words, which I almost never do.

Speaker 2 (34:35):
And I appreciate that very much.

Speaker 1 (34:37):
The book is called A Rage to Conquer, A Rage
to Conquer Twelve battles that changed the course of Western history.
The author, Michael Walsh, thank you for a fabulous book,
Thank you for a great conversation.

Speaker 5 (34:48):
Thank you, Ross. I appreciate it very much.

Speaker 1 (34:51):
We'll be right back on KOA our trip to Eastern
Europe next year again. Rosstrip dot com and I said Budapest,
and that is how Americans typically pronounce it, but it
would it should be it should be Budapest like sht,
even though there isn't an h in there when you're
writing it in English or when you're writing it in
Hungarian Buddha Peste. Anyway, I'm so excited, so excited for that,

(35:13):
for that trip rosstrip dot com if you want to
travel with us.

Speaker 2 (35:18):
I want to come back for.

Speaker 1 (35:19):
A moment to.

Speaker 2 (35:21):
Something that my last guest said.

Speaker 1 (35:24):
And this book again it's called A Rage to Conquer,
is one of the most interesting books I've read in
a long time. And just because somebody is incredibly intellectual
and and has a lot of knowledge and all, this
doesn't mean they're right about everything. And I just want
to take another moment to push back more. And I

(35:47):
already did push back on him when he was on
the show with me. We got into this conversation that
was outside of the scope of the book because the
book is about twelve major battles in the twelve battles
changed the course of Western history. It's a great book, again,
A Rage to Conquer. But he said that he's not
very worried about China because Sun Sue, which is he

(36:11):
the art of war is really the it's not quite
the military manual for China, but it's darn close, and
it's been around a long time, and very very much
of Sun Sue is about deception and how to do
things to make your enemy surrender or not want to fight,

(36:31):
at least as much as it's about how to fight
and how to win a battle and how to bring
overwhelming force and all this stuff. And you know, he
said that he thinks we're too worried about China as
a military threat, and I think that's wrong. I think
it's wrong for two reasons. I think he made a

(36:52):
couple of mistakes. So first of all, I said, cheap
Chinese junk is not really what's going on there now. Now,
I want to be clear, China still makes plenty of
cheap Chinese junk, and you can buy lots of it
on these websites that have come up in conversation during discussion.

Speaker 2 (37:09):
Of the Trump tariffs.

Speaker 1 (37:09):
Okay, there is plenty of cheap Chinese junk out there,
but the difference is that they also make incredibly high
quality stuff. Look at these BYD cars that you cannot
buy in the United States right now, but everything I'm
reading and you can buy them in Europe I've seen them.
Everything I'm reading says that BYD electric vehicles are better

(37:33):
and cheaper than anything in the United States.

Speaker 2 (37:36):
And sure they've stolen.

Speaker 1 (37:37):
A lot of the technology, but that's irrelevant for this conversation.

Speaker 2 (37:40):
I don't care how they got there.

Speaker 1 (37:42):
I mean, I do care how they got there, but
not for the purposes of discussing them as a military threat. Right,
if you're a military threat, it doesn't matter how you
became a military threat.

Speaker 2 (37:53):
It only matters whether you are one.

Speaker 1 (37:56):
And the Chinese are developing hypersonic missiles and air carriers,
and they are building so many ships. I saw this day.
I saw this data point. Oh my gosh, I don't
have it in front of you. It's something like one
one Chinese shipyard, and they have many of them, or

(38:16):
at least several of them. But one Chinese shipyard built
more ships in the past year than America has built
in the last twenty five years. It's something insane like that.
And here's the thing. It might be that China doesn't
have much of an expansive, aggressive, adventurous military policy in

(38:41):
its history, right, military militarism in its history, right, not
the same way that Japan.

Speaker 2 (38:47):
Does for example.

Speaker 1 (38:49):
But that doesn't mean they never will. It doesn't mean
they never will.

Speaker 2 (38:55):
And and maybe.

Speaker 1 (38:56):
They didn't have that because they didn't have the tools.

Speaker 2 (38:58):
I don't know.

Speaker 1 (38:59):
But at the bottom line is and I would think
that Michael Walsh is a conservative guy, and he writes
for National Review from time to time, and he's clearly
a big fan of Ronald Reagan, and Ronald Reagan believed
in peace through strength, and the United States sure as
bleep better be strong if we are going to deter China,
who is getting strong from doing stuff that's going to

(39:23):
drag us into war. And so I do think he
was quite wrong on that. I would very very much
disagree with him. But in a way this feels a
bit like a sort of military Pascal's wager, by which
I mean, if you set your policy based on an

(39:46):
assumption that China is not a military threat and doesn't
want a fight, and you end up being wrong, you've
got a huge problem. If you end up basing your
policy on the possibility that China may indeed be calm,
an adventurous and capable military threat and you end up

(40:10):
being wrong. All Right, you spent some money on some
hardware and software and soldiers and sailors and so on
that you didn't end up using, which is good. But
I think that's how we need to think about China.
And I think he makes a I think he makes
a mistake.

Speaker 2 (40:27):
I'm on on that.

Speaker 1 (40:28):
But still the book itself, the book itself is just
absolutely fabulous.

Speaker 2 (40:34):
All Right, I have so much stuff still to do.

Speaker 1 (40:36):
Got one more guest is going to be a super
interesting guest later in the show, Liberty Vivertert actually have
two guests, Liberty Vintert, who's Leland's big sister, and Representative
Gabe Evans is coming up at the top of the
eleven o'clock hour. Still a ton of stuff to do,
keep it here on Kowa.

Speaker 2 (40:50):
The country of.

Speaker 1 (40:51):
Columbia has had a long troubled political history, although it's
been pretty good, relatively good lately. Similar to Peru, which
was much worse in the past, they are both overrun
by cocaine gangs and so on. Things have been a
little bit better now recently, but Colombia has a presidential

(41:11):
election coming up and on Saturday, the center right candidate
named Miguel Uribe or Miguel Uribe tourbe Turba. Why He's
a thirty nine year old senator, was talking with supporters
in Bogata and he was shot twice in the head

(41:33):
once in the knee by a fifteen year old probably
put up to it by some either a gang who
likes the ongoing corruption and is afraid that this guy
is going to try to reign in corruption, or by
some leftist organization that doesn't want a center right person
to become president of Colombia. I will I will say

(41:54):
I there's not much information now about how he's doing.
He didn't die yet, at least he he got through
the first surgery. Obviously, if you get shot in the head,
it depends where you're shot in the head, you know,
kind of just near the skull. Did it really penet you,
you know what I mean. So someone could get shot
in the head and be be dead, be brain dead,

(42:15):
be very severely cognitively damaged or not, and could end
up being basically okay, and you know, have a bad scar,
or even a not so bad scar. So I have
no idea right now, but I will say if somehow
he comes out of this seeming to be cognitively intact,

(42:39):
let's say, you would think it would give this guy
a pretty big chance of winning the election when he
was a modest underdog before he got shot. Right, he
wasn't a wild underdog. It wasn't impossible that he could win,
but he's something of an underdog in any case. I
just wanted you to be aware of that. The other
international story that I wanted to share with you is

(43:02):
that the the climate activist, the climate activist, Greta Tunberg,
just a terrible little anti capitalist troll, was on a boat,
some people are calling it the selfie yacht, trying to

(43:23):
go into the Gaza Strip to you know, theoretically deliver
some stuff. And the Israeli stopped her. And they knew
the people on this boat knew that Israel wouldn't let
them in, So the Israeli stopped the boat and then
gave them some food and gave them some water, and
took them off the boat and took them somewhere, and
they're going to deport them back to their own countries.

(43:46):
And that's fine, and don't forget that. You know, Greta
became famous when she was a teenager for believing all
the lies about climate change and trying to get other
people to believe the lies about crimeate climate change. Very
very useful idiot, one of the most useful idiots that
the political left has probably ever seen. What she proves

(44:09):
now is the incredible overlap between the political left, like
climate radicals and.

Speaker 2 (44:18):
Anti Semitism.

Speaker 1 (44:19):
And I'm not gonna go into all this again, but really,
the major threat to Jews these days is from the
left rather than from the right. There is still a
threat from the right, but it's a much bigger threat
from the left. So Greta, now, where's these terrorist rags,
these cafeas and so on to support the terrorists? And
she's on this boat and Israel stopped her. And here's

(44:40):
the part of the story that I wanted to share
with you because it makes me so happy. How raise
your hand if you've seen the movie A Clockwork Orange?

Speaker 2 (44:48):
All right?

Speaker 1 (44:49):
Good number of hands? Not everybody a rod? Have you
seen A Clockwork Orange?

Speaker 2 (44:55):
I've seen the scenes. I don't think I've seen the
movie entirely. All right, you need to have you seen
the scene where eyes open?

Speaker 1 (45:04):
Yeah, So Israel is going to require all of the
people on that boat to watch footage of the Hamas
attacks From October seventh, twenty twenty three, before they let
them leave the country. And I really want to see
Greta in a chair like Alex from a clockwork Orange,

(45:26):
with her eyes being held open and lubricating drops going
into her eyes because she can't blink, being forced to
watch it and to scream at the horror of the
people she is there, the horror caused by the people
she is there to support. She won't admit that she
was there to support them, but of course she was.

(45:46):
That's what these people are. And I just love that
part of the story that Israel is going to make
them watch that then.

Speaker 2 (45:54):
We'll see what Greta has to say.

Speaker 1 (45:56):
I am so pleased to welcome back to the show
Liberty Vitter Liberty or now she's married, like I think
she wasn't married the last time she was on the show.
So doctor Liberty Vitter Capito.

Speaker 2 (46:07):
And she is a professor.

Speaker 1 (46:08):
Of the Practice of Data Science at the Olin Business
School at the Washington University in Saint Louis. And that
means she's a big time data and statistics and probability
nerd like me, but better. And she's also a senior
fellow at.

Speaker 2 (46:21):
Harvard and m I T. And she's probably one of
the only.

Speaker 1 (46:26):
Great statisticians and data scientists who also has a degree
from one of the best cooking schools in the world,
which is probably why we maintain a slight difference of
opinion on Hagis, even though she has a degree from
school in Scotland as well, High Liberty.

Speaker 7 (46:44):
Hey, Ross, what's up before.

Speaker 1 (46:46):
We talk about your interesting piece for the Free Press.
Your little brother got married and he's going to be
a guest on the show.

Speaker 7 (46:55):
Your big brother.

Speaker 2 (46:57):
You're big brother.

Speaker 1 (46:58):
I know your big brother. Sorry, your big brother got married.
He's on the show quite a lot, and he'll be
on the show on Wednesday. But going as far as
you can tell us without having to kill us, how
was the wedding? It was good.

Speaker 7 (47:14):
She didn't run away.

Speaker 8 (47:15):
He was able to sort of fool her long enough
to get her to marry him.

Speaker 2 (47:19):
So we're happy, all right. Do you like her?

Speaker 7 (47:23):
I love her.

Speaker 8 (47:24):
I think I like her more than him.

Speaker 1 (47:27):
We'll talk with him about We'll talk with him about that.
On Wednesday. You wrote a great piece for the Free Press.
I wanted to help refugees. I didn't sign up for
anti americanism and the subtitle and I guess you usually
columnists don't write their own titles, so you might not
have written that, and the sub had my family dedicated
itself to helping refugees. After October seventh, we learned that

(47:50):
the UN was not the place to do that. So
tell us a little bit of just begin at the
beginning with what your dad did, and then we'll get
into you know, sort of you taking over and what
you've learned.

Speaker 9 (48:04):
Yeah, So there's an organization called UNHDR, and I apologize
for all the acronyms, but it's the United Nations High
Commissioner for Refugees, which is in effect the United Nations
Refugee Agency.

Speaker 8 (48:15):
It's who's tasked with helping refugees all over the world.

Speaker 9 (48:19):
And after a stint volunteering there, my father in nineteen
eighty nine started USA for UNHDR. So the US the
North American arm of the UN refuge Agency, which is
really tasked with fundraising and has raised hundreds and hundreds
of millions of dollars for refugees around the world through
the United Nations.

Speaker 7 (48:39):
And I I, you know, nepotism at its finest.

Speaker 9 (48:42):
I took a seat on the board for about ten
years and really sort of dedicated what is now, you know,
really my entire adult life to this cause, obviously fully
volunteer work. And you know, I, you know, maybe shame
on me for not understanding early enough. But after October seventh,
the you know, the anti Semitism that I think clearly

(49:04):
had been in the United Nations, and I just you know,
hadn't paid attention or hadn't seen it really just wasn't able.

Speaker 7 (49:10):
To be kept secret any longer.

Speaker 9 (49:12):
And the things that happened and the anti Semitism that
was just rampant. It was almost like it was free
reign after October seventh in the United Nations, and it
was a really eye opening experience for me.

Speaker 2 (49:26):
And it's interesting because.

Speaker 1 (49:29):
U NHCR, as you said, they deal with refugees around
the world except for the Palestinian territories. There's a whole
separate organization where that deals with the Palestinian territories, and
that organization actually appears to have terrorists and terrorist sympathizers
working within the UN organization.

Speaker 9 (49:50):
Absolutely, so, the UN Refugee Agency was created to help
every single refugee except for Palestinian refugees. There's another UN
organization called UNRUN that is tasked solely with helping Palestinian refugees.
And the clear evidence showed that almost ten percent of
these UNRAW employees, this un organization, so twelve hundred employees

(50:15):
have links to MASS. I mean they some of them
participated in October seventh. You know, ENRA has in UNRA
offices in Gaza. Hostages were held and a huge I
think US is the biggest, the biggest funder of UNRA,
just as it is you know all these what was
of all these un organizations. So American tax dollars actually

(50:38):
went to pay people who participated in October seventh and
who are folding hostages in captivity right now.

Speaker 2 (50:45):
This is somewhat tangential, but I'm going to just share
this with you.

Speaker 1 (50:50):
There's a person named Francesca Albanese or alban As you
I might know of her. United Nations Special Rapporteur on
Human Rights in the Palestinian Territories. And she was asked
to comment about Greta Tunberg's ridiculous publicity stunt getting on

(51:11):
that boat going towards Gaza, and she said that she said,
the boat's journey may have ended, but the mission mission
isn't over. Every Mediterranean port must send boats with aid
and solidary to Gaza.

Speaker 2 (51:28):
Now, obviously the.

Speaker 1 (51:29):
Reason that there's a blockade of Gaza is not because
Israel is trying to starve people there. It's because that's
how weapons get to terrorists. And now you've got this
UN person like trying to defeat a blockade of Gaza
that exists for a real reason. It's it's it's pretty shocking,
even for those of us who have long mistrusted the UN.

Speaker 9 (51:50):
Absolutely, And I mean she's been quote she actually quote
said America is subjugated by the Jewish lobby, and they
quote Hamas says the right resist this occupation.

Speaker 7 (52:01):
And I mean, she's a very big deal at the UN.

Speaker 8 (52:04):
This isn't just like some random and you know, one
of the thousands and thousands of employees.

Speaker 7 (52:08):
She's a special appointment for the Human Rights Council.

Speaker 2 (52:12):
Unbelievable.

Speaker 1 (52:13):
So was there was there a particular aha moment for
you when you realized I just can't be involved with
the UN anymore?

Speaker 2 (52:22):
Or was it sort of a.

Speaker 1 (52:23):
Steady drip, drip drip after and at some point you
just like I can't take it anymore.

Speaker 7 (52:29):
We're both I think that there were there.

Speaker 9 (52:31):
Was certainly a steady drip, and you know, there's always
the hope. You know, you're you've been a part of
an organization for so long. I'm obviously trying to honor
what my father started. And you know, it means a
lot to me that he started it, and I grew
up thinking that this is sort of something that's really
important to do. But you know, uh, the U NHDR
for an entire month after October seventh, not a word

(52:54):
on the rape, murder, taking of hostages, which, okay, you know,
if you want to stay out of it, it's one decision.
But you know, a month afterwards, they retweeted a statement
by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees which basically
called for a ceasepire and an end of the Israeli
occupation without any mention of the hostages.

Speaker 7 (53:17):
And you know that coupled with you I wrote an
op ed and I write out that a lot.

Speaker 9 (53:20):
You know, I didn't think this one was particularly in
any way controversial, except clearly was controversial at this organization
I volunteered for and have been on the board of.
I wrote a column traising universities for prohibiting students and
faculty from intimidating Jewish students, which I didn't think was
a controversial concept, and I, you know, they really questioned

(53:41):
my suitability as a board member. They said that I, I,
you know, the views I had, I had asserted, which
were that you shouldn't intimidate Jewish students, was at odds
with their quote, you know, standing as a humanitarian organization.

Speaker 7 (53:55):
And I just finally, you know, after hearing this and really.

Speaker 9 (53:59):
Again sort of on me for not understanding this earlier,
the really rampant anti semitism, I finally said, I have
to resign.

Speaker 7 (54:07):
You know, at some point you have to give up.

Speaker 1 (54:09):
We're talking with doctor professor Liberty Vitert about her piece
for the Free Press.

Speaker 2 (54:15):
I wanted to help refugees.

Speaker 1 (54:16):
I didn't sign up for anti Americanism, where her dad
basically funded significant refugee organization. And they have just become
so anti Semitic, anti everything, really that Liberty can't be
involved anymore. I'm curious, actually sticking with the thing you
wrote about students, any feedback, pushback, compliments from people who

(54:42):
matter at your university where you teach, Yeah, you know, the.

Speaker 9 (54:47):
University of Washington, University in Saint Louis the chancellor and
the board and the dean have really done an incredible
job trying to, you know, help Jewish students and make
sure that they're not, I mean, they're not sort.

Speaker 8 (55:00):
Of scapegoats, intimidated and really harmed.

Speaker 7 (55:04):
In a lot of ways simply for being Jewish. So
I'm really proud of wash you and what they did.

Speaker 9 (55:10):
You know, a lot of other universities did not take
the same route here, which is a really sad thing
that happened.

Speaker 1 (55:16):
Well, I've been I've told this story a lot, but
I don't know if I've mentioned it to you. My
dad and I both went to Columbia, and starting probably
twenty five years ago, my dad likes to give them
a little bit of money from time to time. He's
not rich, but gives him a little money. And for
at least twenty five years, I've been telling him, please don't.

(55:36):
That place is a haven for anti Semitism, anti Americanism,
anti capitalism. My dad's a US Navy officer as well
as being Jewish, and I told him Columbia is a
haven for everything you oppose, and you should stop giving
them money. And it took until fairly recently for him
to do for him to agree with me, but he

(55:58):
stopped giving him money a few years ago. Let me
ask you another personal question. So I think until the
October seventh thing happened, I don't recall even ever hearing
your brother talk about any Jewish heritage in your family,
and I didn't know there was some. But there is some,

(56:21):
and he has been quite explicit about that on the show.
He doesn't talk about it all the time, but from
time to time he mentions it.

Speaker 2 (56:30):
And in a sense these days.

Speaker 1 (56:32):
I actually think it's kind of a courageous thing to do.
It shouldn't need to be a courageous thing to do.
But what about you, through your life growing up and
then now recently since October seventh and all this, how
Jewish do you feel? And maybe tell us a little

(56:52):
of your background. It's more of a personal question than
a genealogy question.

Speaker 7 (56:57):
No, I mean, it's not just Jewish heritage.

Speaker 9 (56:59):
Our father is Jewish, we are half Jewish, and both
both feel I think a strong identity to that. I think,
I don't know, I don't know how other people who
are maybe not practicing, but are you know.

Speaker 7 (57:12):
Half Jewish or whatever? Around and Jewish?

Speaker 9 (57:14):
You are a feel I'd say after October seventh, I
became a lot more Jewish.

Speaker 8 (57:18):
I think I'd never really thought.

Speaker 9 (57:19):
About it before, since we don't practice, but I think
I feel a much stronger identity to being Jewish, because
you know, you sort of I don't know how that happens.
You got to ask a psychology professor there Ross.

Speaker 7 (57:30):
Yeah, But you know, I think both of us are
really proud.

Speaker 9 (57:33):
Of it, and we're really proud of our father and
our grandfather, and I think it's actually almost even more.
What's so shocking is that our father, who's Jewish, started
this organization that you know, has raised hundreds and hundreds
of millions of dollars for refugees, and now it's so
anti semitic, and which goes against every value that he
started this your organization with, and it's so anti Semitic

(57:56):
that we can't be a part of it anymore.

Speaker 1 (57:59):
I get to send and I haven't asked Leland directly,
and maybe I will on Wednesday, but I have a
sense he's with you, and with lots of other people who,
you know, even if genealogically, whether they're one hundred percent
Jewish or ten percent or whatever, feel more so now
which doesn't necessarily mean more likely to go to synagogue,

(58:21):
but maybe maybe the increase is even more in Zionism
than in Judaism, like support for Israel.

Speaker 2 (58:30):
That's a tough one.

Speaker 7 (58:31):
Yeah, I mean, I.

Speaker 9 (58:32):
Guess you got to think about it this way, that
you know, whether you feel Jewish or not, Hitler would
have killed you. So it's almost like you don't have
a choice whether you want to be Jewish or not.
The people that don't like you, you know, believe, you know,
see you as Jewish, so you better embrace it.

Speaker 1 (58:47):
Last question for you, in the short to medium term,
do you think there's anything that can be done to
fix the UN as far as rich it of this
virulent anti Semitism. I mean, it's been a place for
a long time that would do things like put Libya
or Iran on the.

Speaker 2 (59:07):
Human Rights Council. So I don't know if they're.

Speaker 9 (59:10):
Fixable, you know what, I I wish with my whole
heart that they would be, and I have so much
hope and so much sort of desire for them to be,
but I don't see it as being possible.

Speaker 7 (59:23):
And I think, you know, the the only you know,
money talks.

Speaker 9 (59:27):
At some point, I think the only hope that anybody
has would be the US no longer funding it.

Speaker 7 (59:34):
And I I, you know, it's a horrible thought, and
it's a it's a.

Speaker 9 (59:37):
Really sad thing for people who have really good people
who have dedicated their lives to the United Nations and
to the work that you know, the good work that
it has done.

Speaker 7 (59:45):
But I think it's time for something new.

Speaker 9 (59:47):
And I think it's time for the United States to
put their money to helping people in some other organization
than the United Nations.

Speaker 1 (59:53):
Liberty venters piece for the Free Press. I wanted to
help refugees. I didn't sign up for anti americanism THEFP
dot com. Thanks for writing that, Thanks for spending time
with us. Next time we talk, you'll probably be a mom.
That's exciting and and I can't wait to see you
then and meet the new progeny me too.

Speaker 8 (01:00:15):
Hopefully I'll be a little bit less of a bloated whale.

Speaker 7 (01:00:18):
The next time we talk.

Speaker 2 (01:00:20):
Usually usually there's less.

Speaker 8 (01:00:21):
It'll be a cute little baby out there and less of.

Speaker 7 (01:00:24):
A whale right here.

Speaker 2 (01:00:24):
Yeah, maybe I'll have your brother's hair.

Speaker 7 (01:00:28):
We can only hope.

Speaker 2 (01:00:29):
Thanks for being here, Liberty, talk to you all right,
all right.

Speaker 1 (01:00:33):
Gosh, that's a fascinating conversation and a fascinating person. She's
I love the fact that what she does for a living,
which we didn't even really talk about, but data science
and statistics and probabilities, and she'd probably be an incredible
guest to have on about about artificial intelligence, which I'll
probably talk about a little bit more later in the show.
All right, let's do a couple other things here. Uh oh,

(01:00:56):
here's a speaking of nerdy stuff. So you are well
aware of the Ukrainian drone attack on five or six
Russian air bases, destroying a bunch of Russian airplanes. And
again we talked about this on the show the other
day with Admiral Stavridis, and I suggested to him that
I thought that the attack was much more important psychologically

(01:01:20):
and demonstrating that there is Russian vulnerability. Then it would
be important in any strategic or even tactical way, by
which I mean Russia still has all the planes it
needs to do whatever it wants to do if it
wanted to do something with planes. But still very important attack,
and we'll see if it ends up changing the dynamics

(01:01:42):
in the war. It's too soon to tell, but a
really interesting story came out. And by the way, this
is all up on my blog.

Speaker 2 (01:01:48):
I've got an.

Speaker 1 (01:01:49):
Immense amount of stuff on my blog today, including pictures
I took yesterday at the Run for Their Lives event
and the Bolder Jewish Festival up in Boulder yesterday, and
I hope you'll go take a look at that, and
including pictures of how intense the security was.

Speaker 2 (01:02:02):
Yeah, I've got some remarkable pictures there too.

Speaker 1 (01:02:05):
But anyway, back on the Ukrainian thing, here's a headline
from four oh four media dot com. Ukraine's massive drone
attack was powered by open source software. Oh my gosh,
is this cool? In fact, I posted this thing on
my blog. Let me see if I can go find
this here. So I want to be able to just

(01:02:25):
read the text to you, or read the tweet to you.
So yeah, here's a tweet from a guy named Chris
Anderson and it says eighteen years after and then he
names two other people and I created URDU pilot, so
a RDU capital pilot. But all is one word, our

(01:02:45):
do pilot. Eighteen years after we created our do pilot.
Here it is destroying large parts of the Russian air
force crazy. So this guy and his friends created the
software that Ukraine and it's open source software, so anybody
can now. Let me just also make another point here.

(01:03:05):
This software is not attack software. It's open source drone
control software that is based on the Arduino platform, thus
Urdue Pilot. And since it's open source and is designed
to control these drones and you know, control the flight
of the drones and all this stuff, you can build
on it. Because it's open source. Open source means you

(01:03:28):
have all the code. You see exactly how it's written.
It's not like you've gotten the compiled code or the
binary code or something that you can't understand.

Speaker 2 (01:03:36):
But you can run. You can run it, but you
can't really read it.

Speaker 1 (01:03:39):
This you can read it, and so you can adapt it,
and you can modify it, and you could add the
codes you need, the code you need for your own
particular drones to either drop bombs or if they are
laden with explosives themselves, and you make kamikaze drones, you
could do that. But this is open source software created

(01:04:00):
by Americans, and I just think that's pretty.

Speaker 2 (01:04:02):
Fabulous, pretty fabulous, all right, let me do.

Speaker 1 (01:04:05):
Two minutes on another story I talked about this briefly
late last week, I think it was Thursday, when the
Supreme Court put out a few different rulings, and one
of them was a ruling about a guy named Melanie Ames. Ames,
who had worked for the government in Ohio for about
thirty years and she I'm quoting from the Free Press

(01:04:28):
now began as an assistant and moved her way up,
worked her way up to program administration administrator. She then
applied for a bureau chief position, but according to her
appeal papers, her supervisor, a gay woman, gave the job
to another gay woman instead. Ames was demoted to her
original job as an assistant at a substantial pay cut,
and replaced as program administrator by.

Speaker 2 (01:04:50):
A gay man.

Speaker 1 (01:04:52):
And multiple courts, including the first appeals court to hear
this case, said that since she's straight, and since straight
people or the majority, they have more to prove. They
have to cross a higher bar in order to be
able to bring a discrimination lawsuit, whereas people in quote
unquote minority groups or groups that have been historically discriminated against,

(01:05:13):
whether gay or black, or female or whatever, have a
lower burden of proof to be able to make a
claim of discrimination. And the Supreme Court in a unanimous decision,
unanimous right. So all three liberal justices, along with all
six conservative justices overturned the appeals courts and said no
discrimination is discrimination. And if you're discriminated against based on

(01:05:36):
your sexual orientation, whether you're gay or straight or based.

Speaker 2 (01:05:40):
Right, then it doesn't matter.

Speaker 1 (01:05:42):
It doesn't matter that you happen to be part of
a majority group in this case, you you don't have
a higher burden of proof or higher burden of anything
to be able to bring that lawsuit. And so I
shared that story with you. It's a very interesting thing,
and I'm going to tie it into something else here quickly.
There's a piece at Axios the job market is brutal

(01:06:04):
for women executives.

Speaker 2 (01:06:05):
This is a really interesting piece, And.

Speaker 1 (01:06:08):
The short version is they talk about how in the
rise of DEI and over the previous maybe half decade
or a little bit more, at least before Trump's reelection,
many companies were hiring women, hiring minorities, hiring LGBT whatever,
because of quotas and in order to be able to say, well,

(01:06:33):
we have a woman on our board now, and it
did in fact increase the number of women and others.
I shouldn't I'm not calling women a minority group because
women are the majority, but it increased the women were
a minority group as far as representation at senior management
in major companies, and they still are, but it increased

(01:06:54):
the number of women a lot. And what's been interesting
in what they talk about in this article is that
in twenty twenty two, at they use Meta as an example,
the parent company of Facebook and Instagram and so on
and Snapchat. Just three years ago, forty four percent of
the members of their board of directors forty four percent

(01:07:15):
were women.

Speaker 2 (01:07:17):
Now it's twenty three percent.

Speaker 1 (01:07:19):
Over the past year, no women CEOs were recruited into
Fortune five hundred firms. Ones who did become CEOs of
Fortune five hundred firms were all ones who were internal
hires and already at the company already. And what this
article is talking about is that, and I'll quote this
is Axios. After a surge of appointments in twenty twenty

(01:07:40):
and twenty twenty one, companies are now naming fewer women
and people of color to their boards. And I am
not going to say and I don't think that that's good.
I also don't think it's inherently bad. What I think
is bad is that to the extent that it is

(01:08:01):
so hard for businesses for boards of directors to find
and then you know, fill in the blank, there a woman,
a black person, gay person, not that I give a
rats behind about that to be on a.

Speaker 2 (01:08:14):
Board of directors.

Speaker 1 (01:08:16):
The problem is how society is not properly preparing these
people to be on boards of directors. Boards of directors
should not go out of their way to hire people
who aren't the best people just because they have some
other immutable characteristic. So to the extent that the number
of people who are not qualified to be on boards
are getting off of boards, that's good, But it's not

(01:08:39):
good that so many of them appear to be women
or minorities.

Speaker 2 (01:08:44):
That is an indictment of some other part of our society.

Speaker 1 (01:08:47):
We're following up, I think in the vein of the
conversation we just had with Liberty Vindard about her leaving
her important role at the United Nations because of all
the anti semitisms she found there. And it does seem
like there's anti senmmatism in places you might not typically
expect it, and things that end up being controversial that
really shouldn't be. And one is a new resolution in

(01:09:12):
the House of Representatives, and it's entitled denouncing the anti
Semitic terrorist attack in Boulder, Colorado, and it was introduced
by Gabe Evans, who is actually not the member of
Congress for Boulder. Gabe introduced this and the headline at
Axios now tensions erupt in Congress over vote to condemn

(01:09:36):
Boulder attack, joining us to talk about why something that
seems so ethical and obvious as denouncing the anti Semitic
terrorist attack in Boulder, Colorado, why would that cause tensions?
The man himself, Gabe Evans, Republican representing Colorado's eighth Congressional district.

Speaker 2 (01:09:52):
Gabe, welcome back to the show.

Speaker 10 (01:09:54):
Plays good to be on with you.

Speaker 1 (01:09:55):
So, Gabe, first just briefly describe what your resolution and does,
and then describe why this would cause tensions in Congress.

Speaker 6 (01:10:06):
Well, you pretty much described it.

Speaker 10 (01:10:07):
It does two things. It says that throwing Molotov cocktails
at the Jewish community while shouting Free Palestine is anti
Semitic speech and obviously action which should be condemned. And
then it also acknowledges tacitly. So you know my background.
I joined the military a few years after September eleventh.
One of the big things that happened after September eleventh

(01:10:29):
was this thing called the nine to eleven Commission, which said,
how do we prevent terrorist attacks from happening again in
the United States? And one of the takeaways of that
was federal, state, and local law enforcement need to be
able to work together and share information because they're all
going to have different pieces of the puzzle, and if
you can't get all of the pieces together, it's hard
to be able to solve that puzzle and interdict acts

(01:10:49):
of terrorism before they occur. And so then the second
thing that the resolution says is that we acknowledge that
we should have that cooperation between federal, state, and local
government to be able to identify and interdict these things,
hopefully before they happen. This individual that threw the molotov
cocktails illegally present in the United States. So Immigration and Customs,

(01:11:10):
being one of the federal law enforcement entities, is mentioned.
Thank you for your work in being keeping a violent
terrorist like this individual illegally present in the United States.
Thanks for keeping them out of the country. And unfortunately
that's something that apparently some of my colleagues across the
Aisle in Congress also can't get behind is praising law
enforcement for their work at all levels to be able

(01:11:31):
to identify and interdict things like this before they happen.

Speaker 1 (01:11:35):
A couple of quotes in this Axios piece are are remarkable,
even though I'm used to them by now. They quote
one senior House Democrat who they don't name, saying it's
sheer politics, and another senior House Democrat says it's unfortunate
that they're using a serious anti Semitic terrorist attack as
a wedge opportunity to divide Democrats. They knew what they

(01:11:58):
were doing adding something like that in there. So first
of all, Gabe, were you, in fact clever enough to
realize that you are putting something in this resolution that
might cause a little political pain for Democrats.

Speaker 2 (01:12:10):
I'm hoping the answer is yes.

Speaker 10 (01:12:13):
I spent twenty two years as a cop and a soldier,
raised my right hand three times US Army, Colorado Army,
National Guard, or at a police department to take care
of my country, my state, my community, which by the way,
includes Boulder on more than one occasion, because I've mobilized
aircrews to go fight wildfires and boulders in Boulder, Colorado.
That's my crew, is my helicopter. That's me stand up
all night to put together those rosters to make sure

(01:12:35):
that we can put out fires in Boulder. So this
isn't my first time being involved in a tragedy in Boulder.
But what I bring to the table is solutions. How
do we make sure this doesn't happen again, Because thoughts
and condolences if we don't actually identify the problem and
work to solve the problem by saying things like federal,
state and local law enforcement need to be able to
work together. Colorado is a sanctuary state that does not

(01:12:58):
allow their state and local law enforceman to work with
the federal government when immigration is implicated, which it was
in this particular case. Because we know that this guy
that threw the Molotov cocktail, in addition to being illegally
present in the United States and having made multiple public
statements in support of the Muslim Brotherhood, which is an
organization with known Jihattist tendencies, he also tried to buy

(01:13:19):
a gun last year, which was denied by the state
agency that handles that is GDI Colorado Bureau of Investigations.
That's literally what the takeaway of the nine to eleven
commission was around this information sharing was if you have
somebody that's a sympathizer of the Muslim brotherhood at a
time of heightened anti Semitism, which by the way, is

(01:13:42):
up over eight hundred percent over the last several years,
known jihadist sympathizer time of heightened anti semitism has overstayed
two visas illegally present in the United States and trying
to buy a gun, maybe that should raise some red flags.
But for these sanctuary laws in Colorado, we got about.

Speaker 1 (01:14:01):
A minute left. You did not answer my question, and
I'm going to ask you again, did you do some
of this or much of this or a little of
this with a specific intention to put Democrats in a
very tough spot.

Speaker 10 (01:14:14):
I did this to solve the problem. And if they
can't get on board with trying to at least talk
about policies to solve the problem, they're the ones that
have put themselves in that tough spot by being unable
to acknowledge basic policy solutions to prevent something like this
from happening again.

Speaker 1 (01:14:30):
I will again say to listeners that when you read
Gabe's resolution, and this is all linked on my blog
right now. To me, it all reads like pretty obvious,
common sense stuff that most people are thinking, and suddenly
it becomes it becomes a kind of thing that causes
a problem for Democrats in Congress, because, as Gabe is

(01:14:53):
just describing, they are unable to say as clearly as
they should that they stand against terrorism. They are unable
to say that they stand against illegal immigrant criminals and
much less illegal immigration generally. And you know, again, Gabe,
I suspect you did this a little bit to put

(01:15:15):
them in a bad spot, and you just don't want
to admit it. And I hope and I hope so
because they deserve to be in that bad spot.

Speaker 2 (01:15:21):
I'll give you the last seventeen seconds.

Speaker 10 (01:15:24):
Well, I think you hit the nail on the head
right there. This is one hundred percent the doing of
the Democrats. They have put themselves in this position with
their inability to be able to condemn anti semitism. I mean,
you had elected Democrats from Boulder County at a fundraiser
with ilan Omar an hour after this attack happened.

Speaker 1 (01:15:43):
Yeah, that's on the one hand, you could say that
bad luck, bad timing for them. On the other hand,
nobody should ever be supporting ilhan Omar. She's one of
the two most egregious anti Semites in Congress, and the
fact that anybody would host her for anything is.

Speaker 2 (01:16:00):
Staying on those people.

Speaker 1 (01:16:01):
Congressman Gabe Evans is a Republican representing the eighth Congressional
District in Colorado. His new resolution in the House of
Representatives is entitled denouncing the Anti Semitic terrorist attack in Boulder, Colorado.
Thanks for being here, Gab, and thanks for bringing forward
that resolution.

Speaker 10 (01:16:17):
Paul, He's good to be on with you.

Speaker 2 (01:16:18):
We'll take a quick break.

Speaker 1 (01:16:19):
We'll be right back talking about my experience in Boulder
yesterday going to the Run for Their Lives walk.

Speaker 2 (01:16:26):
It's you know, it's it's called a run, but really
it's a walk.

Speaker 1 (01:16:29):
And then this the Bolder Jewish Festival was there as well,
and then there are a whole bunch of speakers and
it was really an incredibly moving thing.

Speaker 2 (01:16:38):
I also interviewed a few people.

Speaker 1 (01:16:39):
Earlier in the show, I played audio of my conversation
with Boulder Districtorney Attorney Michael Doherty, who I saw there
and interviewed, and I just want to I want to
share this one with you. With this is This is
a lady who tapped me on the shoulder as she
was walking by.

Speaker 11 (01:16:55):
All right, I'm on Pearl Street Mall with Anne and
we just wish the short walk for run for their
lives and Anne as a show listener.

Speaker 1 (01:17:05):
And well you said you came down because you heard
me talking about it.

Speaker 12 (01:17:08):
Absolutely yes, and I'm.

Speaker 1 (01:17:10):
Really glad, particularly glad to speak with you because you're
not Jewish, but you're here. Correct and tell me why this.

Speaker 2 (01:17:17):
Is important to you.

Speaker 12 (01:17:18):
It's humanity, it is do unto others as you would
be done by. It is love your neighbor. It is
all the awful things that have gone on a right
And I think I mentioned to you one time when
I called in the show. I lived in the south

(01:17:40):
of France for a while during the Six Day War
and we saw the Israeli jets coming around doing their
circles with the war, and it was just my roommate
at the time was Jewish from South Africa and got
very much into why it's important that Israel be free.

Speaker 5 (01:18:03):
Do it.

Speaker 2 (01:18:03):
Well, I'm really glad you're here. Thank you for listening
to the show.

Speaker 1 (01:18:06):
And it's a pleasure to meet you in.

Speaker 12 (01:18:07):
Person, pleasure to meet you too.

Speaker 2 (01:18:10):
What a fabulous accent and what a lovely lady.

Speaker 1 (01:18:14):
By the way, she was born in New Zealand and
then moved to England while she was young, and that
was why I had a very hard time placing her accent.
I knew it wasn't Australian. I knew it wasn't South African.
I knew there was a lot of British, but I
could tell there was something else. I couldn't tell what
it was. She explained it to me. There were so
many just ordinary folks and lots of law enforcement in

(01:18:36):
Boulder yesterday. I bet you there were a few hundred
law enforcement, swat bomb squad, ordinary cops up on the
buildings on either side, on top of the courthouse, and
on top of a building on the other side of
Pearl Street Mall.

Speaker 2 (01:18:54):
I don't call what the building was.

Speaker 1 (01:18:56):
There were snipers with long guns that appeared to have
suppressors on them, and especially on the top of the
courthouse because as much taller, there was a guy with
a spotting scope and I could see him. He looked
quite small to me because he's pretty far away at
the top of the building. But a guy with a
with a spotting scope just looking around the crowd and

(01:19:17):
law enforcement was very very serious, and of course they
should be.

Speaker 2 (01:19:21):
The other thing that I noticed as soon as I
got there. Actually, so.

Speaker 1 (01:19:26):
If you've been to Pearl Street Mall, or even if
you haven't, just imagine one long pedestrian street that does that.
No cars are on that, but it has small cross streets.
And in Boulder, these are the numbered streets right Broadway, thirteenth, fourteenth,
and so on, and those cars normally do go on

(01:19:48):
right to get from the south side of Boulder to
the north side of Boulder, and they cross Pearl Street
Mall and there's traffic lights there, so people don't walk
into the street and all that.

Speaker 2 (01:19:57):
So it's pretty common kind of set up.

Speaker 1 (01:20:00):
And what I noticed was the streets that ordinarily have
traffic that were near where all the people were gonna be.
They weren't just you know, blocked off with cones or something.
They were blocked with giant snowplow trucks as not just
you can't come through here like, not just oh this

(01:20:20):
is closed, like no, you can't come through here like
And it was clearly designed to keep out anybody who
might have a thought of driving a vehicle into the crowd,
and I'll tell you I felt very very safe yesterday.
I was armed.

Speaker 2 (01:20:40):
I did have one of my carry pistols with me,
but I didn't need it.

Speaker 1 (01:20:46):
I knew I wasn't gonna need it, but I it
just made me feel better to have it in a way,
in a situation like that with so many members of
law enforcement around.

Speaker 2 (01:20:56):
Actually, even if.

Speaker 1 (01:20:57):
Something bad was going down, it probably would have been
exceedingly dangerous for me to draw my own firearm, because
that could have gotten me shot by the police. So
you know, in retrospect, might even have been better if
I didn't have it with me. But I did, and
nothing happened, and I didn't see any kind of security
incidents at all, and everybody was just enjoying themselves, but

(01:21:21):
also moments of really being somber and thinking about the
hostages who are still there and the hostages who are dead,
and of course the hostages who have been released. If
you get a chance to go onto YouTube and just
look at any of the videos of the speeches yesterday,
and I don't have that on my website, but you
can go find them.

Speaker 2 (01:21:39):
I encourage you to what I do have at Roskaminsky.

Speaker 1 (01:21:41):
Dot com is some of my own pictures from the event,
and I hope you will check those out.

Speaker 2 (01:21:45):
We'll be right back.

Speaker 1 (01:21:46):
Let me do a little bit on AI, and if
I have time, I'm gonna share a little bit more
audio with you. But I want to do a little
bit on AI, and then we might have Paul Lundin
joining the show and he'll tell us why in a bit.
But I saw a couple of worries about AI that
I thought were real interesting. So this one is from
actually a couple of weeks ago from the Associated Press.

(01:22:06):
So there is a wrongful death lawsuit that was filed
in in Tallahassee, Florida regarding a fourteen year old boy
who ended up getting involved psychologically obviously in would you

(01:22:28):
believe this, I'm and I'm quoting from the Associated Press
and emotionally and sexually abusive relationship with an AI chat bot.
This kid is fourteen, and the particular thing that he
got involved with is called character dot Ai. And in

(01:22:52):
this lawsuit, they argue that character dot Ai got to
sexual with this kid and told the kid that it
loved him and eventually urged this teenager to quote, come
home to me. As soon as possible, which perhaps the

(01:23:15):
teenager took as well. This thing isn't alive, so to
come home would be to be not alive to go
be with this thing. And the kid shot himself, killed himself.
And this lawsuit now is about whether the character dot

(01:23:40):
ai chatbot has First Amendment free speech rights and so far,
and this is again a couple of weeks ago now,
but a federal judge rejected arguments made by the artificial
intelligence company and I'm quoting from the ap that its
chatbots are protected by the First Amendment, at least for now.
The developers behind Character dot ai are seeking to dismiss

(01:24:03):
a lawsuit alleging the company's chatbots pushed a teen boy
to kill himself. The judge's order will allow the wrongful
death lawsuit to proceed, in what legal experts say is
among the latest constitutional tests around artificial intelligence. So I think,
separate from the horrific tragedy of this story, it's also

(01:24:27):
a very interesting question. But because you can also you
can imagine other situations in which chatbots might say, quote
unquote say things that might, let's say, cause somebody to
do something they shouldn't do, even if it doesn't result
in death. Well, do the developers of that chatbot have
any legal liability.

Speaker 7 (01:24:47):
For that or not?

Speaker 1 (01:24:50):
All right, we'll come back to all that in a minute.
I want to do something else here. So I saw
a rather shocking press release an hour ago or so
from my good friend and fellow leadership program of the
Rockies graduate Paul Lundein State Senator Paul Lundein minority leader
in the Colorado State Center, meaning he is the leader

(01:25:11):
of Republicans in the state Senate. And well, Paul joins
us on the show because I'm a little bit speechless.
Although you only had a year to go because you're
a term limited but dude, what are you doing?

Speaker 9 (01:25:26):
Yeah?

Speaker 6 (01:25:27):
Absolutely, Ross, It's always good to be with you. And
what I'm doing is you correctly pointed out I'm term limited.
I only had a few more months to go in
any case, and what I'm doing is pressing forward. I
have the opportunity to open the aperture of the fight
that I've been fighting for freedom, common sense, conservatism and

(01:25:49):
market principles and shad of collectivist government control over our lives.
I've done that as a legislator, and now I'm going
to do it as a president and CEO of a
policy foundation that has a couple advocacy arms, and we're
going to press the case on a bigger scale. I can,
as I said, open the aperture, move from Colorado. I'll

(01:26:10):
stay in Colorado. I'll stay focused on Colorado. But I
can also now work to press forward the great common sense,
market oriented solutions that have made America spectacular. Exceptional is
the word I use, and we need to press those forward.
And that's what I'll be doing at the American Excellence
Foundation as president and CEO.

Speaker 1 (01:26:32):
Okay, the American I was wondering what the name was,
American Excellence Foundation. So is this is this a new
organization being founded.

Speaker 2 (01:26:40):
By you or because of you?

Speaker 1 (01:26:43):
Or is this an existing thing? Tell us a little
about the organization.

Speaker 6 (01:26:47):
That's a great question. It's a little of both. It's
existed and it's done a little bit. But the idea
is I'm going to jump in the saddle, spur the steed,
and away we're going to go. We're going to really
lean in and move diligently. And it's critically important because
each year, tens of billions of dollars are spent shaping
the perceptions people Americans have about the laws and policies

(01:27:11):
under which they live, and for decades, decades and decades,
the progressives and the progressive causes have had the lion's
share of that funding. In the twenty twenty election cycle,
of a two year cycle, thirty five billion dollars was
spent influencing the way people think about the decisions they make,

(01:27:32):
the politics they play, and how they engage in that
Ninety one percent of that thirty five billion dollars was
spent by progressive causes, Earth First Justice, the George Soros crowd,
and others like it. My goal, my job is to
lean in and write or begin to write that imbalance.
It's a critically important role, and it's an opportunity for

(01:27:54):
me to do what I've been doing on a bigger
stage and hopefully any more power full way.

Speaker 1 (01:28:00):
You know something that you understand better than most, You
understand much better than most. I understand a little better
than most, and I want listeners to understand is that
as a politician you have to spend a fair amount
of time raising money. You personally don't have to spend
as a politician as much time raising money as members
of the House of representatives the Federal House of Representatives

(01:28:22):
do they're dialing for dollars like every every week.

Speaker 2 (01:28:24):
It's pretty nuts.

Speaker 1 (01:28:27):
But as a as the president, if that's going to
be your title of a think president, CEO president and
CEO of think tanks are that's very very much fundraising
job in addition to however much policy you want to
be involved with. But and I know you as a
thinker and a policy guy, but are you ready to

(01:28:47):
be out there like as a as a at least
fifty percent of your job being raising money? Yeah?

Speaker 6 (01:28:54):
Absolutely, And let me take your question and adjust it
just a little bit. American Stones Foundation is not a
think tank. It's a get it done tank. We are engaging.
We are convening legislators and helping educate them. We are
in fact connecting and building relationships as we shape the

(01:29:16):
groundwork upon which policy is developed. One thing we're leaning
into right now, and I'll be leading. As a former journalist,
I'm coming back to journalism in a meaningful way. The
legacy media in very significant ways has blown up its
credibility over the last number of months and years, and
a new media is beginning to arise, and we will

(01:29:37):
we have a Policy Platform News is the name of
the organization. Already has a vertical that talks about energy
and the environment in a way that follows the facts
instead of the herd, in a way that follows the
facts instead of the predominant narrative. And we are building
media that will tell the whole story so that people

(01:29:58):
can have the ability to make proper judgments. We'll lean
into and our audience will principally be policymakers. We're just
recently launched Health platform dot News. It will do the
same thing, lean into an understanding of what is health
and all the aspects of it, again with the idea
of following the facts, not the herd, not the narrative

(01:30:21):
that the legacy media has become captive to art.

Speaker 1 (01:30:24):
Are you likely to restrict your activities to policy versus
getting involved in elections or primary elections or anything like that.

Speaker 6 (01:30:36):
Absolutely, my role will We'll move from elections, which I've
participated in obviously as the minority leader. I will move
to a policy and the precursor to policy. What's going
on in the general conversation with the public and with policymakers,
how do they understand the facts and the realities of

(01:30:57):
the circumstance making sure that they have access to information
that previously has been absent, and I would argue leading
to some judgments that have been non beneficial, that have
been a threat to common sense, that have been a
threat to marketplace ideas, that have been a threat to
innovation and the development, that have been a threat to

(01:31:19):
the sorts of things that have made America exceptional. And
that's the lonely mind of a man or a woman
creating something new and innovative that may change the way
we live, the way we think, the way we work.
And that's something that has been clamped down on. The
progressive collectivist side of the world wants to make everything

(01:31:40):
controlled true government. They see government is the arbiter of
all that is good. That's a mistake, and that's a
way that leads us away from the great traditions of America.

Speaker 1 (01:31:49):
So first I'll just say the listeners you can understand
why it is based on what Paul just said. We'll
be so sad to not have him in the state legislature.
He was going to go, oh anyway, term limited. But
Paul Lundine just an absolute champion for clear thinking and principle,

(01:32:09):
and it's not going to be easy, Paul, to find
another Republican leader that can live up to your standards
on those things.

Speaker 6 (01:32:20):
Well, you're very kind, you're too kind. In fact, we've
got a great team. There are many people that are
each putting their shoulder on the wheel and pushing us
forward together. This gives me an opportunity to have a
little bit bigger platform. I've have a little bit of
a bully pulpit as the minority leader, but my bully
pulpit gets a little bit bigger. And the platform on
which that bully pulpit sits is nationwide in nature, until

(01:32:43):
it gives me the ability to expand and make these
arguments to a larger audience.

Speaker 1 (01:32:47):
Okay, one more time. The organization's name, and does it
have a website?

Speaker 6 (01:32:51):
American Excellence Foundation. Yes, it does, aef HQ dot org.
A f HQ dot org is the quickest way to
get there.

Speaker 1 (01:33:03):
And are are you raising money already? And is it
a C three such that their tax deductible tax deductible
contribution sy C three?

Speaker 6 (01:33:14):
It is tax deductible. And no, I have not raised
a nickel. And that's part of why I have to
move on from the role of Senator, it would have
been something that I wouldn't want to do. I never
want a since or a hint of impropriety I would
not wanted to have. I would not have wanted to
raise money for something when I was still a sitting
senator for the state of Colorado. So when I make

(01:33:36):
this transition, then I will be able to lean into
that wheel and start raising money for these causes. And
anybody who hears my voice, likes that idea, wants to join,
please track me down through a e F HQ dot org.
I would love to talk with you.

Speaker 1 (01:33:50):
I guess the folks who who hired you know what
they've got. They might not know it as well as
as well as I know it, but they're very lucky
to have you. And we've been very lucky to have
you in the state Senate, and I guess we'll we'll
continue being lucky to have you with whatever you're going
to exactly with whatever you're going to do next, and
we'll I think, probably have you on the show quite

(01:34:11):
a bit talking about policy going forward.

Speaker 6 (01:34:14):
I look forward to it. Love Colorado, stand in Colorado,
fighting for Colorado first, but going to fight for nationwide
arguments as well.

Speaker 2 (01:34:22):
State Senator for a little bit longer. Are you out now?
Are you officially done the day? Today?

Speaker 6 (01:34:28):
Night tonight?

Speaker 1 (01:34:28):
All right, night tonight, State Senator for another twelve hours,
Paul Lundin.

Speaker 2 (01:34:32):
Thanks for everything, Paul, and we'll keep in touch.

Speaker 6 (01:34:36):
Thank you, Ross, Thank you to all your listeners.

Speaker 2 (01:34:39):
All right, wow ae FHQ dot org. If you want
to learn more about what Paul is doing.

Speaker 1 (01:34:43):
I had no idea about any of that until I
saw the email come through this morning. You know what,
just because I did the work, I want to to
share a little bit more audio with you from my
couple of hours yesterday in Boulder going to the Run
for Their Lives short walk actually, and then hearing some

(01:35:06):
of these incredible presentations, these speakers of folks who have
been to Israel many times since October seventh, and a
family member of a hostage and so on. And while
I was walking around, I saw a couple people, and
I interviewed a couple people.

Speaker 2 (01:35:22):
Earlier in the show, I shared with you audio from
the Boulder.

Speaker 1 (01:35:25):
District Attorney Michael Dougherty, who I hope will be the
next Attorney General of this state because jenneral Griswold should
never be near elected office.

Speaker 7 (01:35:34):
Again.

Speaker 1 (01:35:34):
I also shared with you audio from a listener named Anne,
who was there because she heard me talk about it.

Speaker 2 (01:35:40):
Let me share one more little.

Speaker 1 (01:35:42):
This is only seventy five seconds or so conversation from
yesterday in Boulder, all right here on Pearl Street Mall,
just at the end of the Run for Their Lives
short walk and before a presentation, and I'm standing with
Phil Wiser, the Attorney General of the state of Colorado,
and for governor as well. Hi Phil Ross, thanks for
being here. Thanks for encouraging your listeners to come. This

(01:36:04):
is an incredible turnout.

Speaker 8 (01:36:06):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:36:06):
Someone told me, and I guess I read in the
news too, that this is normally twenty thirty forty people.

Speaker 2 (01:36:11):
This looks like many thousands.

Speaker 1 (01:36:13):
And I don't think I'm doing a Trump crowd exaggeration.

Speaker 4 (01:36:16):
This is an extraordinary turnout. It's probably one of the
largest of any of these walks. Every week people walk
here in Boulder basically making a stand. There are people
still in Gaza who are held hostage, who are suffering,
families who are incomplete and this week we have in
solidarity with the people are attacked last week. Like you say,

(01:36:36):
I'm going to say hundreds of people which could well
be thousands, and singing Jewish songs, saying we stand together,
whoever you are. We're against hate. We're for a community
where people can peacefully assemble. This is how we respond
to hate crimes. We don't be intimidated. The bolder police
is here showing a great support. I'm so grateful for
people here.

Speaker 1 (01:36:57):
Me too.

Speaker 2 (01:36:58):
It's good to see you, Grazie.

Speaker 4 (01:36:59):
You, thanks for being Thanks to everyone for coming. It
means a lot when attacks like this happened on any
of us, When others come to say we're here with you.

Speaker 1 (01:37:06):
It speaks values, all right. So that was phil Wiser.
I did see John Hickenlooper there, Senator hicken Looper. I
did not talk to him. I saw Mike, Senator Michael Bennett.
I said hello to him, and he got away from
me as fast as he possibly could.

Speaker 2 (01:37:22):
I will say this is gonna.

Speaker 1 (01:37:23):
Sound a little bit unkind, but I promise you I'm
only saying it because it was my immediate reaction to
seeing him. He he looked at I don't know. He
gave off this vibe and this appearance that was kind
of older and frailer, more frail than I have known

(01:37:45):
or expected. I haven't been around Bennett a lot, but
I don't know that the dude he just came. I
don't know how old he is. I'm not gonna bother
go and look it up right now, but he just
struck me as he looked old.

Speaker 2 (01:37:58):
It was very weird. It was very weird. Again, I
guess i'd go. I guess I could go look.

Speaker 1 (01:38:05):
It up here.

Speaker 2 (01:38:06):
I don't want to do this. How old is Senator
Bennett with one T sixty?

Speaker 7 (01:38:12):
Gosh?

Speaker 2 (01:38:14):
Oh my gosh.

Speaker 1 (01:38:15):
So the dude is only a little bit older than
I am. But I am telling you, if you put
me next to him, you would think he's ten years older.

Speaker 5 (01:38:20):
Thannya.

Speaker 2 (01:38:21):
At least it was odd. I also had the chance
to say hello for.

Speaker 1 (01:38:26):
The first time to Congressman Joe Nogose, who of course
represents Boulder in this second congressional district. I very much
enjoyed my conversation with Joe. He seems like a very
affable fellow. I'm going to try to get him on
the show.

Speaker 2 (01:38:39):
Obviously. I'm sure he and I.

Speaker 1 (01:38:40):
Don't agree on too much, but he's actually become in
a very short time, a very important player in democratic politics.
In the House of Representatives, and it would be I
think great for you for the show, for KOA listeners
if I could get him on the show from time
to time to have, you know, deeper conversations about issues

(01:39:04):
than for example, a regular news interview might.

Speaker 2 (01:39:07):
Have time to get into.

Speaker 1 (01:39:08):
That's the kind of stuff that I like to do
with these folks, So I'm going to try to get
Jonah Goose to agree to come on the show from
time to time and talk about stuff.

Speaker 3 (01:39:17):
It was.

Speaker 1 (01:39:19):
It was a heartwarming experience being there on Pearl Street Mall.
At the same time, it was somber and emotional, especially
for me. The video they played of a girl who
seemed to me to be maybe two years old, looking
at a sort of a poster of her dad who's
a hostage in Gaza, and she kind of leans towards
the poster and moves her arms like she's hugging her dad,

(01:39:41):
but of course her dad's not there, and she ends
up wrapping her arms around herself, and she's talking in
Hebrew and answering questions presumably from her mom in Hebrew,
and she said, when Daddy comes back from Gaza, he
can take me to kindergarten, and I was just, you know,
almost in tears, almost in tears just recounting it to
you now, And it was a moment of intense emotion

(01:40:03):
for me and for everybody there. It was quite a
combination of sadness and anger, I have to say. But
my main feeling for the day was what a wonderful
thing to see a few thousand people show up to
support goodness and truth in the Jewish community and to
oppose terrorism, and to remind bad people like that idiot

(01:40:26):
want to be Jahada st illegal alien who wanted to
kill mostly elderly Jews by lighting them on fire. To
remind him and everybody like him that we're not going
anywhere