Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
So please welcome back to the show my good friend
Leland Vindterd.
Speaker 2 (00:03):
He is the host of a balance on news.
Speaker 1 (00:05):
Nation weeknights at five pm Mountain Time, and also the
purveyor of the must read war Notes daily newsletter or
at least weekday newsletter that is essentially Leland's show prep
kind of deep dive and analysis into some of the key.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
Issues of the day. If you go to war notes
dot com.
Speaker 1 (00:27):
And I have no idea how that ur l was
still available for Leland when he decided he wanted it.
But if you go to war notes dot com you
can sign up for free and you definitely should. Hi, Leland,
you're moving your camera around a lot.
Speaker 3 (00:41):
Well, we're no raw.
Speaker 4 (00:43):
Breaking news requires desperate desperate measures.
Speaker 2 (00:47):
Uh huh?
Speaker 1 (00:48):
So is your your breaking news? Are you talking about fires?
Are you talking about politics? What are you working on?
Speaker 3 (00:53):
We're working We're working on fires a lot.
Speaker 4 (00:56):
I think the biggest problem right now in California is
there is no water.
Speaker 2 (01:02):
Elaborate.
Speaker 4 (01:04):
So the firefighters, which are already outgunned and behind the
curve on this fire, showing up to homes to try
and save them, and there's.
Speaker 3 (01:13):
No water in the fire.
Speaker 4 (01:15):
Hydrants and that's because Gavin Newsom has spent the past.
Speaker 3 (01:19):
Six years trying to capture.
Speaker 4 (01:21):
The flatulence of cows rather than building the reservoirs that
would hold the water that they could be using to
fight the fires right now. And that's not really an exaggeration.
Karen Bass, the mayor of Los Angeles, cut the fire
department's budget by.
Speaker 3 (01:38):
Nearly twenty million dollars.
Speaker 4 (01:41):
The Gavin Newsom spent nine billion dollars building a high
speed rail system that nobody will use, rather than.
Speaker 3 (01:48):
Bearing the power lines.
Speaker 4 (01:50):
So what we are watching in real time in California is, yes,
you can argue the effects of climate change, but be
the effects of gross mismanagement and focus on policies that
have no chance of preventing the catastrophes from climate change,
(02:12):
and all the intent of having Gavinism get hits out
of MSNBC.
Speaker 1 (02:19):
I actually saw that Donald Trump put out one of
his messages on his social media platform this morning blaming
Gavin Newsom for this, saying, some of what you just
some of what you just said, that's some ugly politics,
which is probably less important than the fact that all.
Speaker 2 (02:34):
These people are are are losing their homes.
Speaker 1 (02:37):
But are you so Trump said it, and you said it,
and I just want to ask you again it is
there really a causal connection between bad government and and
the the fact that or your claim at least that
there isn't water in.
Speaker 2 (02:54):
The fire hydrants to fight the fires with. Is that
is that real?
Speaker 3 (02:58):
Yes? It's real?
Speaker 2 (03:00):
Wow Wow.
Speaker 4 (03:02):
So hey, look, you know, I'm all for sitting there
and I watched, you know, these homes burn, and I
watched people scream that is they're heading to you know,
trying They headed to work this morn yesterday morning, and
then there there was in the evacuation order and they
can't get home to.
Speaker 3 (03:17):
Get their dogs.
Speaker 4 (03:17):
And I think about my dog, and I think about
if my house burned, what would happen to my grandfather's couplings.
Then I have all the sympathy in the world, but
at some point we have to start telling the truth
about these situations. And we goes, oh, now's not the time, Well,
then when is the right time? And if the fire
if the fire department Los Angeles Times wrote the story
(03:38):
there's no water and somebody needs to be held for
account to that. We need to tell the truth about
that rather than say, you know, now's the time for solutions. Well,
that's all.
Speaker 3 (03:49):
It's also the time for honesty.
Speaker 1 (03:53):
H Trump, I think, was also saying, and I haven't
You're the one who might know, uh that they don't
have or don't have access to the big fire retardant
dumping airplanes.
Speaker 2 (04:05):
Do you know anything about this? Is what Trump was claiming.
Speaker 4 (04:09):
Well, they can't fly right now because of how high
the wind speed.
Speaker 2 (04:15):
That makes sense.
Speaker 3 (04:15):
But this is the.
Speaker 4 (04:17):
Problem, and I think we're going to see this over
and over and over again. This was a predictable problem.
You know, we can all agree that climate change is real.
Now the question is what do you do about it?
Do you do what Florida did and change their building
codes and make it so you can't build houses below
(04:38):
nineteen feet so that when they're storm surge, the water
goes under the houses rather than takes them away. Or
do you try to capture col flats and build electric
charging stations.
Speaker 3 (04:52):
Money's finite. Those are your options. What are you going
to do? And I think the real issue here is.
Speaker 4 (05:01):
This is a story that repeats itself across the country
in various ways. And I think about Colorado. I covered
a lot of fires in Colorado. Colorado has the same
choices to make as well, although they don't have nearly
the same kind of water issues that California does.
Speaker 1 (05:13):
Yeah, yeah, it's it's a terrible thing to see. My
dad lives near there, not near enough that the fire
is going to get to him, but pretty near.
Speaker 2 (05:21):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (05:21):
And you know, of course I feel bad when anybody
loses a house in a fire. I feel especially bad
for anybody who's going to lose a house in California
because it'll probably be every bit of three years before
they can get through just the bureaucratic process to be
allowed to start building again.
Speaker 2 (05:37):
So they're they're they're really hosed well.
Speaker 4 (05:39):
And they can't get insurance. Yeah, you know the insurance company.
Insurance companies are private entities. They understand there's no water,
they understand the power lines haven't been buried. They understand
that there's an out of control homeless population that starts
fires all the time to cook and to stay warm
(06:01):
and because it's fun. So this, this is the situation
we're in, and it's very easy to sit there and
watch these things and go, oh, you know, so terrible.
Speaker 3 (06:12):
We just need to focus on how terrible it is.
And yes, it is terrible, but we need to also
tell the truth about why it's happening.
Speaker 1 (06:19):
Yeah, Democrats seem to have this ongoing hope of Gavin
Newsom being a national political figure for them running for president.
Speaker 2 (06:28):
So and I've always been.
Speaker 1 (06:29):
Skeptical that that guy could sell whatever it is he's
selling on a national stage. But you might think that
this is the kind of thing that would be a
huge nail in a political coffin if it sticks to him.
Speaker 4 (06:41):
Well, number one, if it sticks to him, I think
you know, typically, as we have seen in presidential politics
in America, that the person who is out of central
casting whatever that means to be a presidential candidate, normally
falls flat on their face. Hillary Clinton, Jeb Bush, Paul
(07:05):
Songus need I keep going, John McCain and now I'm
showing my age here as I am blinking. John Kerry
yeah as well. Yeah, like all these people who are
like they were born to be president, doesn't work out
(07:26):
that way.
Speaker 2 (07:28):
We're talking with Leland Vinder.
Speaker 1 (07:31):
His show obviously going to be a must watch every night,
although I must watch tonight a though we watch it
every night. It's called on Balance since five pm Mountain
Time on the News Nation Network let me switch gears
with you for a minute. So I think it was
yesterday the House of Representatives passed the Lake and Riley Act,
pretty aggressive bill that would require federal immigration officials to
(07:56):
detain illegal aliens who are charged with some crimes that
are not violent crimes, burglary, theft, some other things. And
forty eight Democrats voted with Republicans on that. So and
there was an interesting piece over at Axios. I think
(08:17):
it was about Chuck Schumer trying to figure out how
to play this thing and whether to kind of let Democrats.
Speaker 2 (08:23):
Go along with it.
Speaker 1 (08:24):
So how are you thinking about the politics of this?
And I know you don't love making predictions, so I
probably won't ask you for one, but I'm just trying
to think about how this is going to play in
the Senate.
Speaker 4 (08:39):
Well, first of all, I don't make predictions because I'm
not that smart. I can tell you what's happening, and
sometimes I can tell you why it's happening.
Speaker 3 (08:48):
I don't tell you what's going to happen.
Speaker 2 (08:50):
All right, what's interesting?
Speaker 4 (08:53):
You know, I think Axios rightly pointed this out, that
you're seeing democratic defections. Diego of Arizona just that he
was going to co sponsor the Lake and Riley Act.
Then you had John Fetterman, Democrat of Pennsylvania already a
co sponsor, and Gary Gary Peters of Michigan up for
(09:13):
reelection next year, is going to support the bill. So
what are those three people all have in common?
Speaker 1 (09:18):
Ross swing states that Trump won that Trump won, right, Okay, yeah.
Speaker 3 (09:26):
Okay, So it's very clear.
Speaker 4 (09:31):
I think Democrats are realizing that opposed Trump at all
costs is a losing.
Speaker 3 (09:37):
Proposition for them.
Speaker 4 (09:40):
And I think that that's what this the idea of
just being straight, straight up obstructionists, which was what the
Democratic playbook starting in twenty seventeen was. If Trump wants
to close the border, we want to open the border.
If Trump wants to stop the riots, we think the
riots are about peace and love.
Speaker 3 (09:59):
If Trump wants to meet with Kim Jong lun, that's bad.
Speaker 4 (10:04):
If Trump wants to kill the head of the Iranian
Revolutionary Guard that is sponsoring terrorism around the world, we think.
Speaker 3 (10:11):
We should give him the Nobel Peace Prize.
Speaker 4 (10:13):
That was Democrats' playbook in twenty seventeen, twenty eighteen, twenty nineteen.
Speaker 2 (10:18):
Yeah, it clearly blew up in their faces. This time.
Speaker 1 (10:21):
So I want to Okay, so I want to ask
you to explain to me and my listeners a little
bit some of the inside game of politics here and
so again, I'm not going to ask you to predict
whether seven or eight Democrats will go along with Republicans
and pass the thing.
Speaker 2 (10:38):
What I would like you to.
Speaker 1 (10:39):
Explain is how does Chuck Schumer as the Democrat leaders
As the Democrat leader, how does his decision about whether
to encourage Democrats to oppose the bill. He won't encourage
them to support it, but he could encourage them to
oppose it.
Speaker 2 (10:57):
Or he could say, you're.
Speaker 1 (11:00):
You, you have free reign on this.
Speaker 2 (11:03):
You can vote as you feel you need.
Speaker 1 (11:05):
Can you just tell us a little bit about how
that works and what in the importance of that dynamic?
Speaker 3 (11:12):
All politics is local. If you're Chuck Schumer, you need
to hold on to your leadership position. That's what's most
important to you. I think what we are seeing right
now is a realignment.
Speaker 4 (11:29):
And there's also a greater willingness as the party's fracture,
especially among Democrats, to buck the buck the party, and
that was something that was not available to them, I
think before Trump won, because you know, they controlled the Senate,
(11:51):
and because they controlled the White House, and there was
a thought Kamala Harris was gonna win, and you didn't
want to be the Democratic senator to Buck de Nor.
But now you're seeing Democratic senators the ones we just
listed saying effectively, look, I cannot adhere to the liberal,
the illiberal liberal orthodoxy anymore.
Speaker 3 (12:14):
And I would be surprised if you saw other senators.
Speaker 4 (12:19):
I mean, I'm thinking, I'm thinking about Colorado that certainly
turned blue. You and I sort of watched it turn
blue together when I was a reporter back at Katie
VR in two thousand and eight, nine ten.
Speaker 3 (12:30):
It was it was shifting at that point.
Speaker 4 (12:32):
There's a reason Barack Obama held the two thousand and
eight convention in Colorado in Denver.
Speaker 3 (12:37):
So we're seeing this shift.
Speaker 4 (12:39):
And I think you're now seeing a shift back in
a lot of these states and real fear.
Speaker 3 (12:44):
By Democrats that are going to be caught behind the curve.
Speaker 2 (12:48):
So okay, that's all.
Speaker 1 (12:50):
That's all great, and I want to ask you to
just hone in also on one other thing.
Speaker 2 (12:56):
How does it work? How is it that the leader, let's.
Speaker 1 (13:01):
Say, the Democratic leader in the Senate has so much
power that if he wanted to, he could probably tell
some Democratic senators don't.
Speaker 2 (13:11):
Vote for this, who, if left to.
Speaker 1 (13:13):
Their own vices, devices would vote for it. At the moment,
it seems like he's not going to tell them what
to do. But how does that work?
Speaker 4 (13:24):
When you're leadership and Senate you control, You control committee assignments,
and you control money, so that.
Speaker 3 (13:30):
Those two things carry a lot of stroke. Now, at the.
Speaker 4 (13:33):
Same time, I get I think the power of minority
leadership is quickly diluting in America, especially in the out
of power party, which Democrats clearly are. Yes, Chuck Schumer
can say, don't vote for this, and I wouldn't be
surprised if there's a lot of senators who are going
to be up for election in twenty twenty six.
Speaker 3 (13:56):
You say, I have to.
Speaker 4 (13:59):
You know the fact that even before Donald Trump has
taken office, there's Democratic senator's short way willingness to buck
one hundred and fifty nine Democratic votes in the House
against the Lincoln Riley Bill and against Democratic orthodoxy. That
tells you a lot uh, And I guarantee you uh.
Fetterman Peters Diego would not have said they were going
(14:23):
to vote for the Laken Riley Act before Donald Trump won.
Speaker 1 (14:27):
Maybe maybe Fetterman he was the one who was kind
of out there on the Democratic A d that's fair.
Speaker 3 (14:32):
I mean, he he has been. He's he's been an
unusually uh courageous guy.
Speaker 4 (14:41):
And I say that as somebody who was quite skeptical
of him after the debate. He's he's I think I
think he's unusually courageous because he's unusually aware of the
political dynamic in his own state.
Speaker 1 (14:55):
All Right, one more quick thing, uh, And we're talking
with Leland Vader. You should watch him every weeknight on
News Nation at five pm. A show is called on Balance,
and go to Warnoes dot com to subscribe to his
daily email.
Speaker 2 (15:07):
That is really a summary.
Speaker 1 (15:09):
Of some of his thoughts what he's gonna be talking
about on the show this evening. And I'm actually looking
at yesterday's war notes and I just want to ask
you real really quickly, how are you thinking about the
usual suspects heads exploding when Donald Trump refused to rule
out the use of force to take the Panama Canal
(15:31):
or take Greenland for the United States.
Speaker 4 (15:35):
I think what is very clear and we saw this
as the usual heads exploded when Mark Zuckerberg pulled.
Speaker 3 (15:41):
Fact checkers from Facebook.
Speaker 4 (15:44):
The Facebook in Instagram and then Twitter are individual men
who are business people who want to make money. Elon
Musk and Zuckerberg, they've seen the change in the American culture.
Speaker 3 (16:00):
And politics is downstream of culture.
Speaker 4 (16:04):
The corporate media, the liberal elite media, the anti Trump media,
whatever you want to call them.
Speaker 3 (16:09):
They haven't figured that out yet.
Speaker 4 (16:12):
And they have not figured out that simply opposing Trump
is not a winning strategy, which is what Facebook and
you know, Instagram and Twitter under Jack Dorsy and everybody
else or whoever the CEO was, when before that was
their strategy was Opposing Trump was the yellow brick road
(16:36):
to both acceptance and to riches.
Speaker 3 (16:38):
And we're seen now in America.
Speaker 4 (16:41):
Look, Jeff Bezos has figured it out too with the
Washington Post. That's not that's not where the American public are.
Speaker 1 (16:48):
So when when Trump starts talking about the Panama Canal
in Greenland, how much of and I know you don't
play psychologists any better than you play prognosticator, but how how.
Speaker 2 (16:59):
Much do you think I think he's just trying to make.
Speaker 1 (17:01):
People's heads explode because he's trolling them, And how much
do you think he's staking out something like the negotiating
position with Panama, indirectly with China, with Denmark, with whoever,
because he actually has some.
Speaker 4 (17:15):
Goals, I'll give you I think the latter number one,
but number two Ross over the past four years, America
has been seen around the world.
Speaker 3 (17:24):
This week why Donald Trump won.
Speaker 4 (17:28):
And Donald Trump has now said I am going to
project strength and you know, okay, is he gonna invade Panama? No,
we learned from the first term. As you point out,
he stakes out extreme negotiating positions and sees what happens,
and yes, the media's heads explode, and oftentimes he sort
(17:52):
of gets what he wants. And if what he wants
is a control from Denmark or willing this by Denmark
to give the United States access up into Greenland's Greenland's
Arctic shores and for minimal explanation in Greenland, and what
(18:12):
he wants is for the Panama Canal to start abiding
by its own rules and the agreements and stop kissing
up to the Chinese, then he might get it.
Speaker 3 (18:25):
And that'd be a really good thing.
Speaker 4 (18:27):
I mean, the.
Speaker 3 (18:28):
Flip side of losing your mind.
Speaker 4 (18:30):
That he said, I'm not ruling out the use of
fours is why is Donald Why does the incoming president
of the United States think it's so important for America
to expand?
Speaker 3 (18:42):
And there's some really good answers to that.
Speaker 1 (18:44):
We'll have to talk about that another time. I'm guessing
you might talk about it on your show as well. Folks,
check out Leland tonight and every weeknight News Nation five pm.
Speaker 2 (18:53):
Thank you, Leland, appreciate.
Speaker 3 (18:54):
It all the best.
Speaker 2 (18:55):
Okay,
So please welcome back to the show my good friend
Leland Vindterd.
Speaker 2 (00:03):
He is the host of a balance on news.
Speaker 1 (00:05):
Nation weeknights at five pm Mountain Time, and also the
purveyor of the must read war Notes daily newsletter or
at least weekday newsletter that is essentially Leland's show prep
kind of deep dive and analysis into some of the key.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
Issues of the day. If you go to war notes
dot com.
Speaker 1 (00:27):
And I have no idea how that ur l was
still available for Leland when he decided he wanted it.
But if you go to war notes dot com you
can sign up for free and you definitely should. Hi, Leland,
you're moving your camera around a lot.
Speaker 3 (00:41):
Well, we're no raw.
Speaker 4 (00:43):
Breaking news requires desperate desperate measures.
Speaker 2 (00:47):
Uh huh?
Speaker 1 (00:48):
So is your your breaking news? Are you talking about fires?
Are you talking about politics? What are you working on?
Speaker 3 (00:53):
We're working We're working on fires a lot.
Speaker 4 (00:56):
I think the biggest problem right now in California is
there is no water.
Speaker 2 (01:02):
Elaborate.
Speaker 4 (01:04):
So the firefighters, which are already outgunned and behind the
curve on this fire, showing up to homes to try
and save them, and there's.
Speaker 3 (01:13):
No water in the fire.
Speaker 4 (01:15):
Hydrants and that's because Gavin Newsom has spent the past.
Speaker 3 (01:19):
Six years trying to capture.
Speaker 4 (01:21):
The flatulence of cows rather than building the reservoirs that
would hold the water that they could be using to
fight the fires right now. And that's not really an exaggeration.
Karen Bass, the mayor of Los Angeles, cut the fire
department's budget by.
Speaker 3 (01:38):
Nearly twenty million dollars.
Speaker 4 (01:41):
The Gavin Newsom spent nine billion dollars building a high
speed rail system that nobody will use, rather than.
Speaker 3 (01:48):
Bearing the power lines.
Speaker 4 (01:50):
So what we are watching in real time in California is, yes,
you can argue the effects of climate change, but be
the effects of gross mismanagement and focus on policies that
have no chance of preventing the catastrophes from climate change,
(02:12):
and all the intent of having Gavinism get hits out
of MSNBC.
Speaker 1 (02:19):
I actually saw that Donald Trump put out one of
his messages on his social media platform this morning blaming
Gavin Newsom for this, saying, some of what you just
some of what you just said, that's some ugly politics,
which is probably less important than the fact that all.
Speaker 2 (02:34):
These people are are are losing their homes.
Speaker 1 (02:37):
But are you so Trump said it, and you said it,
and I just want to ask you again it is
there really a causal connection between bad government and and
the the fact that or your claim at least that
there isn't water in.
Speaker 2 (02:54):
The fire hydrants to fight the fires with. Is that
is that real?
Speaker 3 (02:58):
Yes? It's real?
Speaker 2 (03:00):
Wow Wow.
Speaker 4 (03:02):
So hey, look, you know, I'm all for sitting there
and I watched, you know, these homes burn, and I
watched people scream that is they're heading to you know,
trying They headed to work this morn yesterday morning, and
then there there was in the evacuation order and they
can't get home to.
Speaker 3 (03:17):
Get their dogs.
Speaker 4 (03:17):
And I think about my dog, and I think about
if my house burned, what would happen to my grandfather's couplings.
Then I have all the sympathy in the world, but
at some point we have to start telling the truth
about these situations. And we goes, oh, now's not the time, Well,
then when is the right time? And if the fire
if the fire department Los Angeles Times wrote the story
(03:38):
there's no water and somebody needs to be held for
account to that. We need to tell the truth about
that rather than say, you know, now's the time for solutions. Well,
that's all.
Speaker 3 (03:49):
It's also the time for honesty.
Speaker 1 (03:53):
H Trump, I think, was also saying, and I haven't
You're the one who might know, uh that they don't
have or don't have access to the big fire retardant
dumping airplanes.
Speaker 2 (04:05):
Do you know anything about this? Is what Trump was claiming.
Speaker 4 (04:09):
Well, they can't fly right now because of how high
the wind speed.
Speaker 2 (04:15):
That makes sense.
Speaker 3 (04:15):
But this is the.
Speaker 4 (04:17):
Problem, and I think we're going to see this over
and over and over again. This was a predictable problem.
You know, we can all agree that climate change is real.
Now the question is what do you do about it?
Do you do what Florida did and change their building
codes and make it so you can't build houses below
(04:38):
nineteen feet so that when they're storm surge, the water
goes under the houses rather than takes them away. Or
do you try to capture col flats and build electric
charging stations.
Speaker 3 (04:52):
Money's finite. Those are your options. What are you going
to do? And I think the real issue here is.
Speaker 4 (05:01):
This is a story that repeats itself across the country
in various ways. And I think about Colorado. I covered
a lot of fires in Colorado. Colorado has the same
choices to make as well, although they don't have nearly
the same kind of water issues that California does.
Speaker 1 (05:13):
Yeah, yeah, it's it's a terrible thing to see. My
dad lives near there, not near enough that the fire
is going to get to him, but pretty near.
Speaker 2 (05:21):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (05:21):
And you know, of course I feel bad when anybody
loses a house in a fire. I feel especially bad
for anybody who's going to lose a house in California
because it'll probably be every bit of three years before
they can get through just the bureaucratic process to be
allowed to start building again.
Speaker 2 (05:37):
So they're they're they're really hosed well.
Speaker 4 (05:39):
And they can't get insurance. Yeah, you know the insurance company.
Insurance companies are private entities. They understand there's no water,
they understand the power lines haven't been buried. They understand
that there's an out of control homeless population that starts
fires all the time to cook and to stay warm
(06:01):
and because it's fun. So this, this is the situation
we're in, and it's very easy to sit there and
watch these things and go, oh, you know, so terrible.
Speaker 3 (06:12):
We just need to focus on how terrible it is.
And yes, it is terrible, but we need to also
tell the truth about why it's happening.
Speaker 1 (06:19):
Yeah, Democrats seem to have this ongoing hope of Gavin
Newsom being a national political figure for them running for president.
Speaker 2 (06:28):
So and I've always been.
Speaker 1 (06:29):
Skeptical that that guy could sell whatever it is he's
selling on a national stage. But you might think that
this is the kind of thing that would be a
huge nail in a political coffin if it sticks to him.
Speaker 4 (06:41):
Well, number one, if it sticks to him, I think
you know, typically, as we have seen in presidential politics
in America, that the person who is out of central
casting whatever that means to be a presidential candidate, normally
falls flat on their face. Hillary Clinton, Jeb Bush, Paul
(07:05):
Songus need I keep going, John McCain and now I'm
showing my age here as I am blinking. John Kerry
yeah as well. Yeah, like all these people who are
like they were born to be president, doesn't work out
(07:26):
that way.
Speaker 2 (07:28):
We're talking with Leland Vinder.
Speaker 1 (07:31):
His show obviously going to be a must watch every night,
although I must watch tonight a though we watch it
every night. It's called on Balance since five pm Mountain
Time on the News Nation Network let me switch gears
with you for a minute. So I think it was
yesterday the House of Representatives passed the Lake and Riley Act,
pretty aggressive bill that would require federal immigration officials to
(07:56):
detain illegal aliens who are charged with some crimes that
are not violent crimes, burglary, theft, some other things. And
forty eight Democrats voted with Republicans on that. So and
there was an interesting piece over at Axios. I think
(08:17):
it was about Chuck Schumer trying to figure out how
to play this thing and whether to kind of let Democrats.
Speaker 2 (08:23):
Go along with it.
Speaker 1 (08:24):
So how are you thinking about the politics of this?
And I know you don't love making predictions, so I
probably won't ask you for one, but I'm just trying
to think about how this is going to play in
the Senate.
Speaker 4 (08:39):
Well, first of all, I don't make predictions because I'm
not that smart. I can tell you what's happening, and
sometimes I can tell you why it's happening.
Speaker 3 (08:48):
I don't tell you what's going to happen.
Speaker 2 (08:50):
All right, what's interesting?
Speaker 4 (08:53):
You know, I think Axios rightly pointed this out, that
you're seeing democratic defections. Diego of Arizona just that he
was going to co sponsor the Lake and Riley Act.
Then you had John Fetterman, Democrat of Pennsylvania already a
co sponsor, and Gary Gary Peters of Michigan up for
(09:13):
reelection next year, is going to support the bill. So
what are those three people all have in common?
Speaker 1 (09:18):
Ross swing states that Trump won that Trump won, right, Okay, yeah.
Speaker 3 (09:26):
Okay, So it's very clear.
Speaker 4 (09:31):
I think Democrats are realizing that opposed Trump at all
costs is a losing.
Speaker 3 (09:37):
Proposition for them.
Speaker 4 (09:40):
And I think that that's what this the idea of
just being straight, straight up obstructionists, which was what the
Democratic playbook starting in twenty seventeen was. If Trump wants
to close the border, we want to open the border.
If Trump wants to stop the riots, we think the
riots are about peace and love.
Speaker 3 (09:59):
If Trump wants to meet with Kim Jong lun, that's bad.
Speaker 4 (10:04):
If Trump wants to kill the head of the Iranian
Revolutionary Guard that is sponsoring terrorism around the world, we think.
Speaker 3 (10:11):
We should give him the Nobel Peace Prize.
Speaker 4 (10:13):
That was Democrats' playbook in twenty seventeen, twenty eighteen, twenty nineteen.
Speaker 2 (10:18):
Yeah, it clearly blew up in their faces. This time.
Speaker 1 (10:21):
So I want to Okay, so I want to ask
you to explain to me and my listeners a little
bit some of the inside game of politics here and
so again, I'm not going to ask you to predict
whether seven or eight Democrats will go along with Republicans
and pass the thing.
Speaker 2 (10:38):
What I would like you to.
Speaker 1 (10:39):
Explain is how does Chuck Schumer as the Democrat leaders
As the Democrat leader, how does his decision about whether
to encourage Democrats to oppose the bill. He won't encourage
them to support it, but he could encourage them to
oppose it.
Speaker 2 (10:57):
Or he could say, you're.
Speaker 1 (11:00):
You, you have free reign on this.
Speaker 2 (11:03):
You can vote as you feel you need.
Speaker 1 (11:05):
Can you just tell us a little bit about how
that works and what in the importance of that dynamic?
Speaker 3 (11:12):
All politics is local. If you're Chuck Schumer, you need
to hold on to your leadership position. That's what's most
important to you. I think what we are seeing right
now is a realignment.
Speaker 4 (11:29):
And there's also a greater willingness as the party's fracture,
especially among Democrats, to buck the buck the party, and
that was something that was not available to them, I
think before Trump won, because you know, they controlled the Senate,
(11:51):
and because they controlled the White House, and there was
a thought Kamala Harris was gonna win, and you didn't
want to be the Democratic senator to Buck de Nor.
But now you're seeing Democratic senators the ones we just
listed saying effectively, look, I cannot adhere to the liberal,
the illiberal liberal orthodoxy anymore.
Speaker 3 (12:14):
And I would be surprised if you saw other senators.
Speaker 4 (12:19):
I mean, I'm thinking, I'm thinking about Colorado that certainly
turned blue. You and I sort of watched it turn
blue together when I was a reporter back at Katie
VR in two thousand and eight, nine ten.
Speaker 3 (12:30):
It was it was shifting at that point.
Speaker 4 (12:32):
There's a reason Barack Obama held the two thousand and
eight convention in Colorado in Denver.
Speaker 3 (12:37):
So we're seeing this shift.
Speaker 4 (12:39):
And I think you're now seeing a shift back in
a lot of these states and real fear.
Speaker 3 (12:44):
By Democrats that are going to be caught behind the curve.
Speaker 2 (12:48):
So okay, that's all.
Speaker 1 (12:50):
That's all great, and I want to ask you to
just hone in also on one other thing.
Speaker 2 (12:56):
How does it work? How is it that the leader, let's.
Speaker 1 (13:01):
Say, the Democratic leader in the Senate has so much
power that if he wanted to, he could probably tell
some Democratic senators don't.
Speaker 2 (13:11):
Vote for this, who, if left to.
Speaker 1 (13:13):
Their own vices, devices would vote for it. At the moment,
it seems like he's not going to tell them what
to do. But how does that work?
Speaker 4 (13:24):
When you're leadership and Senate you control, You control committee assignments,
and you control money, so that.
Speaker 3 (13:30):
Those two things carry a lot of stroke. Now, at the.
Speaker 4 (13:33):
Same time, I get I think the power of minority
leadership is quickly diluting in America, especially in the out
of power party, which Democrats clearly are. Yes, Chuck Schumer
can say, don't vote for this, and I wouldn't be
surprised if there's a lot of senators who are going
to be up for election in twenty twenty six.
Speaker 3 (13:56):
You say, I have to.
Speaker 4 (13:59):
You know the fact that even before Donald Trump has
taken office, there's Democratic senator's short way willingness to buck
one hundred and fifty nine Democratic votes in the House
against the Lincoln Riley Bill and against Democratic orthodoxy. That
tells you a lot uh, And I guarantee you uh.
Fetterman Peters Diego would not have said they were going
(14:23):
to vote for the Laken Riley Act before Donald Trump won.
Speaker 1 (14:27):
Maybe maybe Fetterman he was the one who was kind
of out there on the Democratic A d that's fair.
Speaker 3 (14:32):
I mean, he he has been. He's he's been an
unusually uh courageous guy.
Speaker 4 (14:41):
And I say that as somebody who was quite skeptical
of him after the debate. He's he's I think I
think he's unusually courageous because he's unusually aware of the
political dynamic in his own state.
Speaker 1 (14:55):
All Right, one more quick thing, uh, And we're talking
with Leland Vader. You should watch him every weeknight on
News Nation at five pm. A show is called on Balance,
and go to Warnoes dot com to subscribe to his
daily email.
Speaker 2 (15:07):
That is really a summary.
Speaker 1 (15:09):
Of some of his thoughts what he's gonna be talking
about on the show this evening. And I'm actually looking
at yesterday's war notes and I just want to ask
you real really quickly, how are you thinking about the
usual suspects heads exploding when Donald Trump refused to rule
out the use of force to take the Panama Canal
(15:31):
or take Greenland for the United States.
Speaker 4 (15:35):
I think what is very clear and we saw this
as the usual heads exploded when Mark Zuckerberg pulled.
Speaker 3 (15:41):
Fact checkers from Facebook.
Speaker 4 (15:44):
The Facebook in Instagram and then Twitter are individual men
who are business people who want to make money. Elon
Musk and Zuckerberg, they've seen the change in the American culture.
Speaker 3 (16:00):
And politics is downstream of culture.
Speaker 4 (16:04):
The corporate media, the liberal elite media, the anti Trump media,
whatever you want to call them.
Speaker 3 (16:09):
They haven't figured that out yet.
Speaker 4 (16:12):
And they have not figured out that simply opposing Trump
is not a winning strategy, which is what Facebook and
you know, Instagram and Twitter under Jack Dorsy and everybody
else or whoever the CEO was, when before that was
their strategy was Opposing Trump was the yellow brick road
(16:36):
to both acceptance and to riches.
Speaker 3 (16:38):
And we're seen now in America.
Speaker 4 (16:41):
Look, Jeff Bezos has figured it out too with the
Washington Post. That's not that's not where the American public are.
Speaker 1 (16:48):
So when when Trump starts talking about the Panama Canal
in Greenland, how much of and I know you don't
play psychologists any better than you play prognosticator, but how how.
Speaker 2 (16:59):
Much do you think I think he's just trying to make.
Speaker 1 (17:01):
People's heads explode because he's trolling them, And how much
do you think he's staking out something like the negotiating
position with Panama, indirectly with China, with Denmark, with whoever,
because he actually has some.
Speaker 4 (17:15):
Goals, I'll give you I think the latter number one,
but number two Ross over the past four years, America
has been seen around the world.
Speaker 3 (17:24):
This week why Donald Trump won.
Speaker 4 (17:28):
And Donald Trump has now said I am going to
project strength and you know, okay, is he gonna invade Panama? No,
we learned from the first term. As you point out,
he stakes out extreme negotiating positions and sees what happens,
and yes, the media's heads explode, and oftentimes he sort
(17:52):
of gets what he wants. And if what he wants
is a control from Denmark or willing this by Denmark
to give the United States access up into Greenland's Greenland's
Arctic shores and for minimal explanation in Greenland, and what
(18:12):
he wants is for the Panama Canal to start abiding
by its own rules and the agreements and stop kissing
up to the Chinese, then he might get it.
Speaker 3 (18:25):
And that'd be a really good thing.
Speaker 4 (18:27):
I mean, the.
Speaker 3 (18:28):
Flip side of losing your mind.
Speaker 4 (18:30):
That he said, I'm not ruling out the use of
fours is why is Donald Why does the incoming president
of the United States think it's so important for America
to expand?
Speaker 3 (18:42):
And there's some really good answers to that.
Speaker 1 (18:44):
We'll have to talk about that another time. I'm guessing
you might talk about it on your show as well. Folks,
check out Leland tonight and every weeknight News Nation five pm.
Speaker 2 (18:53):
Thank you, Leland, appreciate.
Speaker 3 (18:54):
It all the best.
Speaker 2 (18:55):
Okay,
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