Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Best show on cable news.
Speaker 2 (00:01):
It's called On Balance and it's weeknights at seven pm
Mountain Time.
Speaker 1 (00:06):
You might not know that.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
I think Leland is just an awesome person as well,
and I'm proud to call him a friend.
Speaker 1 (00:13):
And he's got a.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
New book out. We're gonna get to that. We have
so much stuff to talk about. And I generally have
Leland on two Wednesdays a month, supposed to be today,
and then they emailed me and said, he's really busy today,
he can't do it. And I thought, I've never had
more to talk with Leland about than I have today.
Speaker 1 (00:30):
And so somehow, magically, in the middle.
Speaker 2 (00:33):
Of why don't you just tell us, Leland, like what
you've done to accommodate us today?
Speaker 3 (00:39):
Ross When it's for a friend, it is not an accommodation.
Speaker 1 (00:43):
It is my pleasure, just for fun, tell us what
your day is, just for fun. I woke up in
New York City.
Speaker 3 (00:51):
I just recorded a two hour podcast with Barry Weiss
at The Free Press about the book Born Lucky, which
is available now for order on Amazon, Born luckybook dot
Com or on Amazon Fantastic conversation about growing up with autism,
the current debate with about autism and my dad's fight
(01:13):
to adapt me to the world rather than the world
to me, and the power of parental love to give
hope to families who have kids struggling and suffering with
all sorts of things, not just autism, but ADHD and
anxiety and everything else.
Speaker 1 (01:30):
So wrap that up.
Speaker 3 (01:32):
Took the subway up here, planned my show on the
subway and am now with you for about twenty minutes,
and then I've got to give a speech and then
I've got to hop on the asella back to.
Speaker 1 (01:44):
DC and do the show from DC tonight. Unbelievable.
Speaker 3 (01:47):
So just so your listeners understand, Yeah, I had asked
my staff to cancel everything today because I was so busy,
and that was a lot of things, and Ross emails
and say says, I've never had more to talk to
you about. Can you do twelve thirty three? So these
(02:10):
fourteen minutes where I was going to eat lunch, I said,
you know what, lunch can wait. Ross Kaminski and his
listeners cannot all be there.
Speaker 1 (02:19):
All right?
Speaker 2 (02:20):
And folks, I've mentioned this before. I've read Leland's book
Born Lucky. It's a remarkable read and you will not
want to put it down and you will find it
helpful either for yourself or your.
Speaker 1 (02:30):
Family or somebody. You know.
Speaker 2 (02:31):
One other thing I want to mention on Born Lucky Leland,
and then I got a bunch of topics to get
to with you. I've seen you and Bill O'Reilly talking
about a specially you guys were doing. I actually saw
you on Bill O'Reilly's show as well, and Bill O'Reilly
was on my show and mentioned it about a week ago.
Believe it or not, I don't know if you knew that.
So tell us about this special.
Speaker 1 (02:51):
So we're turning the tables right.
Speaker 3 (02:54):
Bill and I have done a number of specials about
his books.
Speaker 1 (02:58):
We are doing a special about my book. So this
time it's.
Speaker 3 (03:00):
Bill O'Reilly interviewing me. Which I thought this is going
to be a controversial book. It's already starting to have
a lot of different conversations about autism and how to
deal with autism, how to talk about autism, the victimhood,
mentality in America, everything else. And I thought the only
fair way to deal with it was to have somebody
who was really tough interview me. So Bill O'Reilly interviews
(03:26):
me in this special, Born Lucky. That's on Sunday night
on News Nation.
Speaker 1 (03:33):
Okay, let's see what do I want to start with.
Speaker 2 (03:36):
You know what, as long as we're talking about autism,
let's let's stick with that for a second. I did
see you talking with Jay Boticharia, and I saw you
talking with Ashish Jaw about this. I don't know what
you call it, press release statement report from RFK.
Speaker 1 (03:53):
Donald Trump got involved as well.
Speaker 2 (03:54):
Associating tail and All with autism. I got my own
thoughts on it, but I want to know what you
think about it, maybe even the bigger picture of the
conversation beyond just the tailent All thing.
Speaker 1 (04:07):
Look, I am not.
Speaker 3 (04:08):
A physician, which is something the President will not tell you. Therefore,
I don't give medical advice, which probably is a good
rule of thumb that medical advice given at press conferences
may not be as exacting, as precise, and as nuanced
as medical advice should be. That said, what I find
(04:28):
very telling is there is far more interest in demonizing
RFK and scoring political points against Donald Trump than there
is in the very necessary and long overdue focus on
finding an answer to why autism cases in America have exploded.
Speaker 1 (04:49):
Okay, and I.
Speaker 3 (04:50):
Find it as someone who went through a personal hell
as a child and inborn Lucky is the story of
my parents. In the second week of school in seventh grade,
the principal saying to my parents after they called them
in most people at this school think Lucky is very
weird arrow number one, arrow to number two. She followed
(05:12):
through with, and I do too, which is now permission
for everyone to stop all over me. So I find
it personally offensive that people in the medical community, in
the scientific community can't even preference their remarks by saying, hey,
finding a reason for the explosion of autism cases from
(05:34):
one in one thousand to one in thirty six three
times hire for boys higher important minority communities.
Speaker 1 (05:39):
Is a worthwhile cause.
Speaker 3 (05:42):
Every part of this discussion should that should happen, because
you know what, nobody's been willing to talk about that
until now, and talk about it honestly, it's been one
of these things, well just the way it is.
Speaker 1 (05:52):
And I got to tell you, you.
Speaker 3 (05:54):
Know, if I was given a choice right now, if
my wife were pregnant Rachel, and was given a choice, hey,
you can have an autistic child or not, I would
choose no. Now, the autism community'll you know, say, oh,
you're not being celebratory of neurodivergent people enough. Sorry, everybody
has enough challenges in life. If we can figure this out,
it would be the scientific answer of our time. We
(06:16):
figured out, as we figured out a lot of cancers,
we can build bionic people. We figured out diabetes. Now
is the time to pay attention to this.
Speaker 2 (06:24):
Yeah, and I look, I obviously you went through that
hell and I didn't. And I cannot imagine what well
I can imagine a little bit what it was like
because I read your story in Born Lucky. So that's
the extent to which I can I can imagine it.
And these are hugely important and legitimate questions. And part
of me is concerned that by Trump and RFK doing
(06:45):
what they're doing, especially with this tilen All thing, which
I suspect, I don't know, I suspect is wrong, they
might actually be hurting your cause and their own claimed cause.
Speaker 3 (06:57):
Well fine, but that's because the media and people who.
Speaker 1 (07:02):
Hate Trump are using that as the excuse.
Speaker 3 (07:04):
In twenty seventeen, tailand All put out a tweet saying,
if you're pregnant, don't take tailand off. So the science
is not quote unquote settled. Okay, And I'm old enough
to remember when the science was settled that said that,
you know, if you got the vaccine, you didn't get COVID.
And these are the same people now who are saying, hey,
take tailand all by the bucket fall. And there's all
these TikTok women who are pregnant, you know, dancing around
(07:28):
chewing tailand aw as a way to own the president. Okay,
And I'm sorry that the science is not settled. I've
talked to doctors on all sides of this. There is
a lot of different evidence out there. You know. Again,
I'm not I love the we're gonna make perfect the
enemy of great concept here, but it is very It
(07:49):
is so telling that somehow it's Donald Trump and rfk's
fault for looking for an answer, right, And look, I
think they should be looking for answers. I just I'm
very skeptical of the first thing they came out with here,
But that's not that important. Folks were speaking with Leland Viddert.
You got to watch his show. It's called on Balance
(08:11):
weeknights at seven pm. It plays again at ten pm
here in the Mountain time zone. And of course his tremendous.
Speaker 2 (08:17):
Daily newsletter daily when he has a show is called
war Notes, and you can go to warnoes dot com
to subscribe there for free and it'll make you smarter,
and you will you will enjoy it. It's kind of
his show prep you kind of get inside Leland's brain.
I watched exclusively your coverage of the Charlie Kirk memorial,
(08:38):
and I think there is something interesting about, you know,
having a friend covering this and trying to imagine what's
going through your mind. And I wanted to ask you,
you know, on the air, what that experience was like
for you. I don't want you to really report. I'm
not asking you to function as a reporter here. It's
more of a personal question. What was it like for
you and what do you feel like you learned.
Speaker 3 (09:02):
I learned that the intersection of faith and politics in
America have merged in a way that is greater than
Donald Trump. How do I know that? Because when Erica
Kirk aught, there was a emotion in that stadium unlike
(09:22):
anything that I've ever felt at any event I've ever
been at in my whole life, and I've been to
a lot of things. Probably the next closest was the
roar from the crowd in Taprier Square when Mubarak resigned
during the Egyptian Revolution.
Speaker 1 (09:38):
But it's a distant second.
Speaker 3 (09:41):
And I also learned that when Donald Trump got up
and started politicking and talking about how he didn't forgive
his enemies and he hated his enemies and on and on, half.
Speaker 1 (09:50):
The crowd walked out.
Speaker 3 (09:52):
So that's why being a report and being in the
room is really important.
Speaker 1 (09:56):
Yes, if you read Bardos, if you'd read more notes,
you would have seen that. But you see. But the
second part.
Speaker 3 (10:07):
That I learned is that the Republicans right now are
overplaying their hand hell because they are trying to do on.
Speaker 1 (10:21):
To others what has been done on to them.
Speaker 3 (10:24):
And that's not what Charlie Kirk was about and the
power of his movement, and it's a subtle nuance, but
was how positive he was, how he didn't demonize his enemies.
It is a remarkably powerful message, even for someone like
me who does not subscribe to the same religious views
(10:46):
as he does, or views religion in the same way
that he did. But Republicans now using this as a
license to sort of do on to others what has
been done on to them to me is a is
a bad playing to their hand.
Speaker 2 (11:01):
Yeah, I agree, and just generally I think that politically
and in other ways, the public is much more open
to and accepting of a happy warrior than an angry
person who might have roughly the same message. And Charlie
Kirk was most of the time, not that I was
a close follower, but most of the time seemed like
(11:22):
a happy warrior, and certainly when he was on college campuses,
he seemed like a happy warrior. And you get all
these people, as you say, you know, angry, bitter, vengeful,
I think would be a good word in using in
Charlie's name, And.
Speaker 1 (11:38):
I agree with you.
Speaker 2 (11:39):
It's probably not going to work out very well, do you?
Did you get a better sense? So you and I
are both not really Charlie Kirk type people, but I thought,
just by watching you interviewing these people that that you
were getting a much better sense of what they're like.
I don't know very many people like that, And you
(12:01):
know what you came to understand about them as people.
Speaker 3 (12:06):
Number One, that mocking them and ridiculing them as the
Left is doing is enormous mistake, and much of that
comes from the fact that the media that they consume
doesn't understand Middle America dot dot.
Speaker 1 (12:23):
There was a writer for The Atlantic.
Speaker 3 (12:25):
The Atlantic, for those of you who don't know, is
like a Bible for the elite, in the same way
a Bible is what a priest looks at.
Speaker 1 (12:33):
It's that type of relationship.
Speaker 3 (12:35):
And the Atlantic writer put up pictures of the Charlie
Kirk memorial and said, I would feel more at home,
and I feel like I understand Greece more than I
understand the folks at that service. Says everything about The
Atlantic and it's writers and nothing about the people who
are at Charlie Kirk's memorial.
Speaker 1 (12:57):
Look, Donald trumple loves to talk about crowd sizes.
Speaker 3 (13:00):
Charlie Kirk filled the football stadium. Donald Trump never fill
the football stadium ever covered him for a long time.
Speaker 1 (13:09):
What we saw.
Speaker 3 (13:10):
On Sunday was unlike anything we've ever seen in American politics,
modern American politics. And to not understand the nuance of
that message for both sides, and I think for Democrats
who are ridiculing if the same thing applies, is a
colossal strategic error.
Speaker 2 (13:27):
Folks watch Leland Venter Show on Balance tonight and every
weeknight at seven pm at replays at ten pm. Go
to Warnotes dot com and subscribe, and go to born
luckybook dot com. The book is coming out in less
than a week now, and you will be very glad
you read it, and you will want to read it
and share.
Speaker 1 (13:44):
It with other people.
Speaker 2 (13:45):
Born luckybook dot com and then NewsNation this Sunday evening,
Bill O'Reilly will be interviewing Leland Ventered about the book
in a very special episode that I will be watching
against Sunday evening on NewsNation. Leland, thank you so much
for making time. I really appreciate it.
Speaker 1 (14:03):
Ross for you and your listeners always. You know, I
keep thinking about just how I'm going to get back
to Denver some time. Well, we'll see you when you do.
Speaker 2 (14:10):
Enjoy the rest of your time in New York and
get home safely.
Speaker 1 (14:12):
Thanks buddy, all right, we'll see you