September 17, 2025 • 30 mins
Join Jim and Greg for the Wednesday 3 Martini Lunch as they rip into ABC News over its repulsive coverage of Charlie Kirk’s accused killer and slam Democrats for overwhelmingly embracing socialism. They also applaud former West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin for slamming his former Democrat colleagues who attacked our system of government in the pursuit of power.
First, they welcome Sen. Manchin blasting President Obama, President Biden, and Senate Democratic leaders like Harry Reid and Chuck Schumer for systematically trying to "weaken the very guardrails that have protected our democracy for generations—all in the name of advancing their agenda." This includes tactics like killing the filibuster on nominations and trying to kill the legislative filibuster. Jim says Manchin is right to point it out. But are any Democrats listening?
Next, they dig into the charges filed against the alleged murderer of Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk and torch ABC News reporter Matt Gutman for gushing about the “touching” text exchanges between the accused killer and his partner as the shooter seemed to confess. Jim unloads on Gutman and the entire mainstream media, which seem to have perfect clarity on right and wrong when someone on the right is accused. But when a lefty is charged, all of a sudden the media lose the plot and just find everything so confusing.
Finally, they're disgusted but not surprised to find that Democrats are overwhelmingly supportive of socialism. CNN is reporting that Democrats are now a net +36 on socialism and a net -13 on capitalism. This is now the mainstream position of the Democratic Party.
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First, they welcome Sen. Manchin blasting President Obama, President Biden, and Senate Democratic leaders like Harry Reid and Chuck Schumer for systematically trying to "weaken the very guardrails that have protected our democracy for generations—all in the name of advancing their agenda." This includes tactics like killing the filibuster on nominations and trying to kill the legislative filibuster. Jim says Manchin is right to point it out. But are any Democrats listening?
Next, they dig into the charges filed against the alleged murderer of Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk and torch ABC News reporter Matt Gutman for gushing about the “touching” text exchanges between the accused killer and his partner as the shooter seemed to confess. Jim unloads on Gutman and the entire mainstream media, which seem to have perfect clarity on right and wrong when someone on the right is accused. But when a lefty is charged, all of a sudden the media lose the plot and just find everything so confusing.
Finally, they're disgusted but not surprised to find that Democrats are overwhelmingly supportive of socialism. CNN is reporting that Democrats are now a net +36 on socialism and a net -13 on capitalism. This is now the mainstream position of the Democratic Party.
Please visit our great sponsors:
If your business can’t adapt in real-time, you’re in a world of hurt. Get the free e-book “Navigating Global Trade: 3 Insights for Leaders” from NetSuite by Oracle. Download today at https://NetSuite.com/MARTINI
Sleep on an award-winning mattress from Brooklyn Bedding. Get 30% off sitewide at https://BrooklynBedding.com with promo code 3ML, and don’t forget to mention our show after checkout!
Stop putting off those doctors’ appointments and go to https://ZocDoc.com/3ML to find and instantly book a top-rated doctor today.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
Welcome to the Three Martini Lunch Grab a stool next
to Greg Corumbus of Radio America and Jim Garrity of
National Review. Free Martini's coming up.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
Very glad you're with us for the Wednesday edition of
the Three Martini Lunch Man. We're already to the middle
of the week, but there's still no shortage of news.
We're going to be taking a close look at how
the Democrats are quickly embracing socialism, So tossing that out
there for Bernie Sanders or Ziron Mamdani not doing the
damage you think it does, at least in the Democratic primary,
(00:34):
as we already learned this year. We'll also take a
look at a very bad moment for the fourth estate
ABC News reporter Matt Gutman yesterday as he reported on
the formal charges against the murderer alleged murder of Charlie Kirk.
And we're also going to talk here in just a
moment about Joe Manchin's new book, the former West Virginia Senator,
longtime Democrat officially now an independent, taking some pretty intense
(00:58):
shots at his former party and his former parties leaders.
So Jim more popcorn that's always fun. But today is
September seventeenth, which means it's Constitution Day. Yeah, seventeen eighty seven,
this was the day it was voted out of the
Constitutional Convention. Of course, you know the States needed to
ratify it after that, and you know, by April of
seventeen eighty nine, we had George Washington sworn in as
(01:20):
our first president. Jim after yesterday's dust up about Pam
Bondi and her not quite understanding freedom of speech, and
you got the left, of course wishing away the Second Amendment.
And you've even got the New York Times and others saying,
you know, the Constitution is really impediment to democracy. I
think the whole thing's.
Speaker 3 (01:40):
Got to go.
Speaker 2 (01:41):
Everybody who has torn an oath needs to read this thing,
and read it now.
Speaker 4 (01:45):
When the Attorney General of the United States sees people
saying admittedly vile things about Charlie Kirk and feels like
I need to prosecute this, I need to regulate the
speech in the United States. Greg My first thought was,
all right, I know where the National Archives is. I
have a good sense of where the Department of Justice.
It's a short walk. She could go and check there.
(02:07):
But they have lots of copies of this. It's not
just the one that's under the glass that you have
to Are we allowed to do that? Let me go
you no, it's right there. Oh oh, Congress shall make go. Look,
I can't do that, Okay, I guess you know. And
and she doesn't have to do this anymore. So Pambondi,
I figure somebody in that office must have a copy
that you can check when you have these ideas pop
into your head.
Speaker 2 (02:28):
Yeah, you would hope so at the Justice Department. But
like I said, the New York Times and others have
called for basically getting rid of the Constitution and creating
a new one. The Atlantic earlier this week with an
article how originalism killed the Constitution? A radical legal philosophy
has undermined the process of constitutional evolution. So this radical
(02:49):
concept was figuring out what the founders meant instead of
having this living constitution, which is whatever the justices wanted
to mean.
Speaker 4 (02:57):
Living constitutions are made of Plato. Squeeze some squish them
and put them into any shape of what you want.
Living constitutions are like an airplane where they see, what
do you make of this?
Speaker 3 (03:07):
Well, I can make a hat. I can make a broach,
it can make a dirdactyl.
Speaker 4 (03:10):
You know. Living constitution are the shape shifter from T
one thousand. To continue my pop culture of reference, like,
there's nothing there. Living constitutions can be anything. So you
need a strict construction of the constitution, a clear sense
of what the founders intended and what's supposed to be
considered permissible under our constitution and what's not.
Speaker 3 (03:31):
Yeah, very well said.
Speaker 2 (03:32):
Basically, the left is like, it won't let us do
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they know that we sent you. All right, Jim, Let's
(05:02):
talk about Joe Manchin, the longtime Democrat governor of Voice Virginia.
Then he appointed himself senator after the death of Robert Byrd,
won reelection a couple of times, by most accounts, the
most moderate Democrat for pretty much the whole time he
was in the Senate, if not all of that, he
did not run for reelection. Ultimately last year he is
(05:25):
personing on grade inside the Democratic Party because he and
Kirsten Cinema did not go along with Democratic efforts to
change the filibuster when there was a fifty to fifty
and fifty one to forty nine Senate in favor of
the Democrats. But he's got a new book out. Of course,
he's an ex politician. Of course he has a new
book out. It's called Dead Center. I think he's trying
to say that he's in the dead center, not that
(05:46):
the center of his party is dead. But that's true too,
So maybe it covers both things, and he's tearing into It's.
Speaker 3 (05:51):
A metaphor, Greg. It works.
Speaker 4 (05:53):
It works on multiple levels. George Lucas used to say,
you know, it's like a poem. It rhymes.
Speaker 2 (06:00):
Over at Free Beacon. They have some of the quotes
here with Mansion tearing into his own party and his
own leadership. Blasting woke ideology and so forth. Mansion says,
I don't say this lightly, but under the leadership of
President Obama and Majority Leader Harry Reid and later President
Biden and Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, Democrats have systematically tried
to weaken the very guard rails that have protected our
(06:23):
democracy for generations, all in the name of advancing their agenda,
he says. When also when the party pushes hard on
woke ideology, dei mandates, and other social agendas, it creates
unnecessary divisions, alienates everyday citizens, and moves us further away
from the common sense middle ground where most Americans actually
live their lives. And so what he's referring to, of course,
(06:45):
is Harry Reid changing the rules in the Senate during
the Obama years where you no longer had to get
to sixty votes to cut off debate, but a simple
upper down vote on every nomination except for Supreme Court
justices that later changed when Republicans got control in the
first Trump administration, and Chuck Schumer trying to kill the
legislative philibuster for specific votes allegedly during the Biden years,
(07:06):
and so Joe Manchin very resolutely in the face of
a lot of Democratic heat refused to change the filibusters.
So we're always grateful for that. Kirsten Cinema as well.
But Jim, good for him for pointing out this is
just the truth of how we got here. Obama and
Harry Reid played hardball and it blew up in their face, really,
and then Biden and Schumer tried to do it again
(07:26):
and would have gotten away with it if it weren't
for those meddling independent democrats.
Speaker 4 (07:31):
Greg, you and I have had some past beefs with
Senator Manchin, apparently to get him on board with what
is effectively, you know, another big spending green energy bill.
You just have to call it the Inflation Reduction Act, right,
presto change? Well if you wait, why don't you said,
tell me it was going to reduce inflation, which, by
the way, it did not reduce inflation. But you know,
(07:53):
by and large, you got the feeling that Joe mentioned
was a good faith negotiator, always wanted to figure out
how to get to the d was willing to compromise,
and recognized, you know that he was a Democrat who
represented a very culturally conservative state. That meant that he
was going to be on board with a large portion
of the Democratic Party's spending agenda, economic agenda, but he
(08:14):
was also going to be pro gun and by the
standards of Democrats, he was not a resolute supporter of abortion.
And so like, you know, that's somebody you could reach
a deal with.
Speaker 3 (08:24):
Now.
Speaker 4 (08:24):
Earlier in the week, we talked about John Fetterman. He's
probably the closest thing we have to a successor to
Mansion or Cinema. But just like the fact that a
guy like Joe Manchin got effectively driven out of his party,
would he have faced a very difficult reelection bid in
West Virginia? Yes, Would Senate Republicans have done their part
to beat the hell out of them?
Speaker 3 (08:44):
Yes?
Speaker 4 (08:44):
Was it going to be really tough to run for
reelection when Trump was running again?
Speaker 3 (08:47):
Yes?
Speaker 4 (08:49):
But all in all, yes, Senate Republicans who do they
like to have around, they probably missed the guy. This
was a guy who again was always trying to figure
out how do we get to yes? And he wasn't
going to line up with you and everything, And the
fact that is willing to point out that, like if
you look at our you know the intense partisan divisions
and why the Senate is not the world's greatest deliberative chamber.
And why it's not, you know that the founders had
(09:11):
argued that, like, you know, the House was where the
ideas were going to bubble up from, and the Senate
was where the tea was supposed to cool. It was
supposed to be where we were supposed to carefully consider
the idea and decide whether this is really good idea
to avoid any you know, sudden rush to judgment. You know,
if it's not like that anymore. A lot of it
has to do with Harry Reid way to Go, Nevada
way to go, And a lot of it has to
(09:33):
do with subsequent decisions made by Schumer and this idea
that you know but I don't.
Speaker 3 (09:37):
Greg.
Speaker 4 (09:38):
Have you heard for many Democrats calling for getting rid
of the filibuster since January twentieth.
Speaker 3 (09:42):
Wasn't this a.
Speaker 4 (09:43):
Tool of Jim Crow? Wasn't this Well, it's not. It's
not in the constitution. Therefore, all of a sudden, the
filibuster is good again. Go figure, we can all see this, right,
we could all remember this when you know, Amy Klobuchar,
I believe, was someone who said, yeah, yeah, maybe we retrospect.
Speaker 3 (10:00):
It's a good thing that we have the filibuster, you think.
Speaker 4 (10:03):
And Manchin was the kind of guy who, whether Republicans
control the Chamber or Democrats controlled the Chamber, seem to
get along with everybody enough. It was always trying to
fake all right, I'm not going to get everything I want,
but how can I get what I really need in legislation?
It just it would be nice to see more of it.
Congratulations on the book deal. I don't know how many
Democrats are still listening, but I'm just going to point out,
you look at the states that Biden won, and then
(10:24):
the Harris won doesn't add up to a Senate majority.
Maybe they'll be lucky and they'll have a situation like
Georgia where you know, egregious mistakes on the part of
Republicans end up, you know, handing them two seats. But
you can't count on that in a lot of red states.
A lot of red states are just going to vote
for Republican centers. So you need the Joe Manchins, you
need the John Fettermans, You need somebody who can get
(10:45):
elected in a state that isn't all that reliably Democrat,
and you know it sounds like Democrats just don't want
to hear it from Joe Manchen or from anybody else.
Speaker 2 (10:52):
And by the way, if at some point there's a
Democratic president, Democratic House, Democratic Senate, Ammy Klobashawer will completely
forget lesson she learned.
Speaker 3 (11:02):
That's the thing that.
Speaker 2 (11:03):
We shouldn't kill the filibuster once Democrats are in a
position to benefit from it, if they ever are, she'll
be right back in line. There's no way that she's
actually learned the real lesson there. So just a little tip.
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that's NetSuite dot com slash Martini. All right, Jim. Yesterday
(12:48):
was a pretty big day out there in Utah. The
charges were officially filed against the alleged murder of Charlie Kirk.
The suspected shooter will face charges of aggravated murder, two
counts of obstruction of justice, say felony, discharge of a
firearm causing serious bodily injury, two counts of witness tampering,
and commission of a violent offense in the presence of
a child. That should have been the biggest part of
(13:12):
the story that happened yesterday, but ABC News reporter Matt
Gutman just couldn't help himself because in addition to outlining
the charges, there was more evidence released by local authorities,
including a long list of text exchanges where basically the
accused killer confessed the crime to his boyfriend, who, of course,
(13:33):
is supposedly transitioning to a woman. It's pretty cut and dried, there,
I did it, you know that kind of thing. And
so Matt Gutman, you know, could have talked about the
clarity of the confession, could have talked about the severity
of the charges. But no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no no.
We're gonna humanize and sympathize the killer.
Speaker 5 (13:54):
We have seen an alleged murder with such specific text
messages about the alleged murder weapon, where it was hidden,
how it was placed, what was on it. But also
it was very touching in a way that I think
many of us didn't expect, a very intimate portrait into
this relationship between the suspect's roommate and the suspect himself,
(14:15):
with him repeatedly calling his roommate, who was transitioning, calling
him my love and I want to protect you.
Speaker 3 (14:22):
My love.
Speaker 5 (14:22):
So it was this duality of someone who the attorney said,
not only jeopardized the life of Charlie Kirk and the crowd,
but was doing it in front of children, which is
one of the aggravating circumstances of this case. And on
the other hand, he was speaking so lovingly about his partner.
So very interesting, as Pierre said, riveting press conference.
Speaker 2 (14:40):
David touching, cowboy touching, as Hans Scruber told us in Diehard,
So Jim, I mean. Charlie Kirk in the mainstream media
is out there being described as polarizing, controversial, and flammatory.
Everybody's got to get in their worst moments that they
think Charlie Kirk ever had in his ubiquitous media presence.
Once we have this situation, and if you look at
(15:02):
the text exchanges, they're not really all that sentimental. It's
just here's what happened all day long here. But apparently
ABC or Matt Gutman in particular, can't let the trans
advocacy get derailed here or we just somehow have to
empathize with the killer of a conservative. What in the
world is going on here?
Speaker 3 (15:23):
Greg?
Speaker 4 (15:23):
There are days I'm glad I write a morning newsletter
as opposed to an afternoon or evening one, because had
I written about this yesterday afternoon when these comments started
rocketing around social media, I was in full on Mugatu
from Zoolander mode of does.
Speaker 3 (15:39):
No one else see this? I feel like I'm kicking
crazy pails.
Speaker 4 (15:43):
First of all, like today's morning jolt is all about this,
and I kind of tried to put this into the
context of multiple cases of this, not just in the
horrible shooting of Charlie Kirk, but thinking back to Luigi Magngioni,
which by the way, it was a big rally in
New York last yesterday because they dropped one of the
charges and everybody is celebrating that, like it's you know,
you think it was New Year's Eve over there or something.
(16:03):
Is the ABC correspondent say something? A bunch of things
that are appropriate and accurate. Sure, I could almost even
see what a horrible tragedy this is for the family
who had to turn in their son and knowing that
this is a crime from which the prosecutors will seek
the death penalty. Yeah, I could almost see the argument
of like at one point from coverage of the Wall
(16:25):
Street Journal and other places, this kid did have his
head grown on straight. He seemed like a normal kid
like five years ago, and that all of a sudden
he's turned into this twisted, murdering assassin like that. If
you want to say, that's an unbelievably said start, okay, fine, touching.
I just was beside myself with this idea that this
was the angle that stood out to him that he needed.
(16:47):
Like was Romeo and Juliet on cable last night or
something like what put somebody in a mindset where after
that press conference laying this all up, that's the takeaway,
That's one of the points he feels needs to be
front and center in this coverage. Now he subsolutely apologized,
and I'm glad that he did. But I just in
today's newsletter, I just went through this, and I'm like,
why are you like this mainstream media when it's a
(17:08):
right wing criminal, When it's a right wing act of
political violence, they see it twenty twenty, They see it
with perfect clarity. In fact, sometimes they even go a
little bit further and kind of say that, you know,
the reason that a Caesar Sayak type guy is sending
out ticking time bombs is because the right wing is
full of ticking time bombs themselves, right, the idea that
there's something reflective of it, you know, now when it's
(17:29):
a left wing piece of violence.
Speaker 3 (17:31):
So we've seen for the.
Speaker 4 (17:31):
Past week, we get a lot of both sides do this,
which is true enough, but I don't see them quick
to emphasize that there are left wing cases of political
violence when a right winger does it, and it often
feels like, hey, well, what are you gonna do? Both
sides do this, you know, there's nothing that we can
necessarily like. It always has to be put in the
context of don't get mad at progressivism. Don't get mad
(17:53):
at the Democrats, don't get mad at the left. This
is just a thing that happens. There's nothing, you know,
no greater lessons to be learned here, and I it's maddening.
You kind of knew somebody was going to do what
Matthew Dowd did on MSNBC the other day. You knew
somebody was going to start talking about what a terrible
guy Charlie Kirk was. Right by the way, I recognize
(18:14):
that the discussion of Charlie Kirk since his assassination, certainly
there are a whole bunch of people who don't want
to think about the more controversial things Charlie Kirk has
ever said. Somebody dies, you don't necessarily talk about their flaws.
You don't talk about their worst moments. There's a reason
we say don't speak ill of the dead. So yeah,
maybe people are building him up into a saint that
he may not have been in real life. But you
(18:34):
know what, all these people just saw him get murdered
in front of their eyes, right, kind of a little slack. Okay,
I think it's okay. And know those of must go
say the Kennedy presidency, right when you get assassinated in
front of everyone suddenly and horrifically with your kids around, right,
Like they don't want to dwell on any mistakes or
misdeeds of the of the departed. Like, you know, I
(18:56):
don't think you can begrudge people for that. I think
there's a time, There'll be a time in a place
if you want to be critical of Charlie Kirk. This
is really not the best time. This is a really time.
You got to let people grieve and channel all these
emotions that they're going through.
Speaker 3 (19:09):
And as for the.
Speaker 4 (19:09):
Shooter, why did I How did I know somebody was
going to take a stance that was somewhat sympathetic or
romanticizing this? Why did I know somebody on CNN was
going to feel the need to romanticize Luigi Mangioni. Oh,
by the way, that special got nominated for an Emmy,
Right of course it did. Why did CNN feel the
(19:30):
need to say that the protests up in Kenni Show,
Wisconsin were fiery but mostly peaceful when it's the towering
inferno behind the correspondent live on TV at that point, Yo,
why do they do this? And so I kind of
ended this with like, it sounds like it's a bad
relationship mainstream media.
Speaker 3 (19:46):
Why are you like this? Who made you this way?
Who hurt you? Like? It's kind of a sense because this.
Speaker 4 (19:52):
Is not normal, This is not Why is there this
reflexive need to explain away, to romanticize, to justify left
wing violence, whereas right wing violence gets seen clearly and
denounced the way it should be. This is you know,
you and I are not a pro right wing violence podcast.
This is a bad don't go hurt people, don't shoot people,
don't do any of that kind of stuff. But why
(20:14):
is there How did I know somebody was going to
do this yesterday? And it is, you know, somebody's being
the argument. This is the culture within these news organizations,
and I I think that's the case that they just
can't see violence committed by somebody the left side of
the spectrum, which is why we saw it like for
you for the last couple of days, this insistence the
shooter had to be on the right wing. Somehow I
realized I'm not supposed to rant on this podcast, correct,
(20:35):
but sometimes it just erupts.
Speaker 3 (20:37):
Out of me like a volcano.
Speaker 2 (20:38):
Well, you're just the hypocrisy is so intense and you're
right to mention the Gutman apology. Towards the end, he says,
let me let to be zero doubt. I unequivocally condemned
this horrific crime and the painted cause, Charlie Kirk's family,
et cetera. But the first thing he said is yesterday
I tried to underscore the jarring contrast between this cold
blooded assassination of Charlie Kirk, a man who dedicated his
(20:59):
life to public dife dialogue, and the personal, disturbing text
read aloud by the Utah County Attorney at the press conference.
He didn't say touching this time, so I guess that's
an improvement. But Jim, that's not the story. The story
is is that this kid is accused of this horrific crime.
The evidence seems to be piling up in an incontrovertible way.
That's what you should be talking about, not trying to
(21:20):
romanticize it, which is exactly what Gutman did here.
Speaker 4 (21:23):
Yeah, you know, like you're speaking off the cuff, you're
on live television. You know, you try to cut a
little bit of slack in that category. But I just
can't believe that's where his mind went and that there
was this idea of like the shooter believed in his
mind that he was protecting his lover by shooting and
murdering Charlie Kirk. Well, that's crazy, right, Why would you
even imply, Well, you know, in his mind he was
(21:45):
doing right. Yes, every murderer is convinced they're doing the
right thing every go. It's the screenwriting.
Speaker 3 (21:50):
One on one.
Speaker 4 (21:50):
Every villainho believes he's the hero of the story. So like,
it's not surprising that this guy was convinced he was
a noble and awesome. The idea is that the rest
of us are not supposed to feed into these people's delusions,
and it doesn't happen when somebody goes on CNN like
Taylo Lorenz it says he's a very moral person. No
he's not.
Speaker 3 (22:06):
He shot somebody in the back. Just unbelievable.
Speaker 2 (22:09):
Yeah, boy, this letter from this serial killer, it's very deranged,
but his penmanship is lovely. He writes, really well, no, no,
keep your eye on what matters here. So some of
you people need to see a doctor, and ZocDoc is
definitely the way to go for that. Jim and I
have both you ZocDoc mine was after having a not
good experience with a specialist and then a friend recommended
(22:31):
a different specialist in that field. It was an ent
did the research on ZocDoc bade the appointment. Been going
to her ever since. It's it's been a great fine
and ZocDoc could not have made it easier.
Speaker 4 (22:41):
Why do people, in particular guys not go to the doctor. Well,
it's inconvenient, we say. Also, we're indestructible and we're immortal,
and we never have anything to worry about, and that's
just ordinary back pain. You know, Well, I need an optometrist.
My old optrometrist was back where I used to live.
Speaker 3 (22:55):
It's a while away.
Speaker 4 (22:56):
I'm like, eh, go into ZocDoc and I find ones
like five minutes away.
Speaker 3 (23:00):
Like I no longer have that excuse.
Speaker 4 (23:02):
I no longer can explain away, Oh I don't need
to get my eyes checked. And you know, thankfully my
check up was pretty good. Now on ZocDoc, you can
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Once you find the right doctor, you see their actual
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(23:23):
and you can click to instantly book a visit.
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Yeah, ZocDoc is a free app and website where you
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m L ZocDoc dot com slash three m L. All right, Jim,
(24:00):
on to our final Martini. Are crazy Martini now, and
you're not going to dissuade too many Democrats these days
from voting for crazy radical candidates by calling them socialists.
That's because the label socialist is now extremely popular inside
the Democratic Party. Harry Enton Over at CNN has demonstrated
(24:21):
through polling just how much this positive mindset towards socialism
has changed just since twenty ten. Listen to these numbers.
Speaker 1 (24:28):
Socialism is not a four letter word in Democratic primaries,
not among Democratic voters. It's a five letter word in
the minds of a lot of Democrats. That five letter
word being great. Look at this net popularity of socialism
among Democrats.
Speaker 3 (24:41):
You go back to twenty.
Speaker 1 (24:42):
Ten, it was plus seven points. Look how high it
is now up like a rocket, up to plus thirty
six points. That's a jump of nearly thirty points on
the net popularity scale among Democrats in just fifteen years.
Speaker 2 (24:54):
So Jim, I mean plus thirty six in the Democratic Party.
This is a party that is literally in racing socialism.
He also had numbers showing that since twenty ten, Democrats
have gone from plus eight on capitalism, which means they
were roughly the same in positive territory with capitalism and
socialism back in twenty ten, but now it's minus thirteen
for capitalism. The only good news here is that among
(25:16):
all adults, socialism is still in the hole at minus
twelve and capitalism is plus eighteen. So the more the
Democrats run with this, it's going to work with their people,
But at least for now, it's not going to work
with the general electorate.
Speaker 4 (25:30):
So there are a bunch of reasons this is our
crazy martini since the Trump era. Right back at the
twenty sixteen Democratic Convention in Philadelphia saw Chuck Schumer insisting
that because people ask you aren't you worried about Trump
picking up votes amongst you know, blue collar whites. And
Schumer said, well, for every one blue collar white that
he picks up in you know, rural America, we're going
(25:53):
to pick up two white collar whites in suburbia. Well,
the math didn't work that well for Hillary Clinton. You
could argue they went back the House in twenty eighteen,
so maybe there was a value to that. Twenty twenty
shook out the way it did. Biden won, and you
can make it very much an argument that your parties
have shifted key demographics, right, that the effectively Republicans have
picked up a lot more blue collar, working class voters.
(26:16):
What we use characterist is Reagan Democrats. So it's not
the first time these folks have been interested in the
Republican Party, much higher percentages of Latinos, blacks, minority groups,
et cetera. And along the way they've given up some
of those white collar suburbanites, the you know, some of
the little old ladies, some of the folks who were
probably Romney and McCain Republicans have looked at Trump and said,
I can't vote for this anymore. And so they're either
(26:37):
independent or democratic, I would not expect those demographics to
be pro socialism. To me, socialism is a loser's philosophy.
Socialism is I want everybody fair because I can't compete,
because I'm never going to make a lot of money.
I'm never going to own a home. I'm never going
to have all these things that the American dream is
supposed to have. It's not that I've failed myself, It's
(26:58):
that capitalism and America has failed me. Ergo, I need
Bernie Sanders and AOC and I need all these people
who are I completely trust to make the system fair
for me. You know, Elizabeth Warren knows what's best. If
she gave Greg Corumpus that much trouble over his mailbox,
she's gonna know. You know, I find this all nonsensical.
(27:19):
But the other thing I want to point out here
is that I'd really love to ask these people. You know, Ah,
so you're a supportive of socialism, has true socialism ever
been tried? My guess is a significant chunk would say
correct that it's never been tried.
Speaker 3 (27:31):
You know. Now here's the thing.
Speaker 4 (27:32):
The reason they say this is because all kinds of
things are Socialism get tried, and very very often it's
a disaster, very very often it ends in gulags and
death camps, and you know the wiggers being you know,
put up into concentration.
Speaker 3 (27:46):
You know, Chinese Communist Party.
Speaker 4 (27:47):
Now you can make an argument they're not that communist anymore,
that they're basically authoritarian capitalist or you know, willing to
give people some economic freedom as long as they can
still squash them like a bug the moment you speak
out against the government.
Speaker 3 (27:57):
But you know, best case.
Speaker 4 (27:58):
Scenario with socialism, it's something like the European social democratics parties.
And if you're looking at Norway as a success story,
you know how you can be a country like Norway
have a lot of oil and gas reserves. Right when
you're sitting on a giant pile of money, low go figure,
all of a sudden it becomes easier to make your
country's finances work and you can be kind of socialist
or have a big, you know, expensive, extensive social safety net.
(28:22):
Very often with social sometimes you get North Korea, right.
Sometimes you get systems that are really unfree, really unprosperous,
really spreading around the misery. And the worst part is
like if socialists generally when they get power. They never
look at the disaster and say, oh, that's terrible, that
that didn't work.
Speaker 3 (28:38):
Let's go back.
Speaker 4 (28:39):
It's often, ah, we have saboteurs, the capitalists running dog pigs,
have you know, infiltrated us and our web foiled our
latest five year plan all that stuff. So like it
is really a bad sign. It's a little counterintuitive considering
the demographic changes we have. And again, I think, you know,
somebody has pointed out that Mamdami up in New York,
his most ardent supporters are people who have successful, wealthy
(29:02):
parents and they themselves are not successful and wealthy, and
they don't look at it and say, hmm, I haven't
done a good enough job.
Speaker 3 (29:09):
The system has failed.
Speaker 4 (29:10):
Because couldn't possibly be that they're flawed, right, Greg, No,
not at all.
Speaker 3 (29:15):
It doesn't be their fault. Yeah, just utterly ridiculous.
Speaker 2 (29:19):
And so yeah, so, and then the media is gonna
fan girl because remember it's kind of like one of
those issues where no, no, no, it's not socialism. Okay, well
actually it is socialism, but it's good. And then when
Obama gets elected I can't remember his time or Newsweek
we're all socialists now.
Speaker 3 (29:32):
Newsweek's coming.
Speaker 4 (29:33):
Yes, we are all socialists now and a whole bunch
more like, where are we? I don't remember that memo?
Speaker 3 (29:38):
Wait when yes?
Speaker 2 (29:39):
And so you know, you gotta have people insisting, oh
that the Democratic Party as a whole is not socialist,
and then by next year twenty twenty eight, well actually
they are. But it's it's totally the right direction for
the country.
Speaker 3 (29:48):
When it's your.
Speaker 4 (29:49):
Election, he's a centrist. Then he gets elected. Hey, guess
what you voted for?
Speaker 3 (29:52):
Socialism? Right? Credit to Bernie. At least he you know,
he's open about it, you know exactly.
Speaker 2 (29:58):
We tried to tell you people to tell you, and
you still have time, New York, but it's not looking great. Jim,
have a great Wednesday, see tomorrow. See tomorrow, Greg, Jim Garretty,
National Review. I'm Greg Corumbus of Radio America. Thanks so
much for being with us today. Please be sure to
subscribe to the Three Martini Lunch Podcast if you don't already,
and tell your friends about us as well. Thanks also
for your five star ratings and your kind reviews. Please
keep those coming. Huge help to us. Get us on
(30:19):
your home devices. All you have to say is play
Three Martini Lunch Podcast. Follow us both on X He's
at Jim Garretty, I'm at Greg Corumbus. Have a terrific Wednesday.
Please join us again Thursday for the Three Martini Lunch
Welcome to the Three Martini Lunch Grab a stool next
to Greg Corumbus of Radio America and Jim Garrity of
National Review. Free Martini's coming up.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
Very glad you're with us for the Wednesday edition of
the Three Martini Lunch Man. We're already to the middle
of the week, but there's still no shortage of news.
We're going to be taking a close look at how
the Democrats are quickly embracing socialism, So tossing that out
there for Bernie Sanders or Ziron Mamdani not doing the
damage you think it does, at least in the Democratic primary,
(00:34):
as we already learned this year. We'll also take a
look at a very bad moment for the fourth estate
ABC News reporter Matt Gutman yesterday as he reported on
the formal charges against the murderer alleged murder of Charlie Kirk.
And we're also going to talk here in just a
moment about Joe Manchin's new book, the former West Virginia Senator,
longtime Democrat officially now an independent, taking some pretty intense
(00:58):
shots at his former party and his former parties leaders.
So Jim more popcorn that's always fun. But today is
September seventeenth, which means it's Constitution Day. Yeah, seventeen eighty seven,
this was the day it was voted out of the
Constitutional Convention. Of course, you know the States needed to
ratify it after that, and you know, by April of
seventeen eighty nine, we had George Washington sworn in as
(01:20):
our first president. Jim after yesterday's dust up about Pam
Bondi and her not quite understanding freedom of speech, and
you got the left, of course wishing away the Second Amendment.
And you've even got the New York Times and others saying,
you know, the Constitution is really impediment to democracy. I
think the whole thing's.
Speaker 3 (01:40):
Got to go.
Speaker 2 (01:41):
Everybody who has torn an oath needs to read this thing,
and read it now.
Speaker 4 (01:45):
When the Attorney General of the United States sees people
saying admittedly vile things about Charlie Kirk and feels like
I need to prosecute this, I need to regulate the
speech in the United States. Greg My first thought was,
all right, I know where the National Archives is. I
have a good sense of where the Department of Justice.
It's a short walk. She could go and check there.
(02:07):
But they have lots of copies of this. It's not
just the one that's under the glass that you have
to Are we allowed to do that? Let me go
you no, it's right there. Oh oh, Congress shall make go. Look,
I can't do that, Okay, I guess you know. And
and she doesn't have to do this anymore. So Pambondi,
I figure somebody in that office must have a copy
that you can check when you have these ideas pop
into your head.
Speaker 2 (02:28):
Yeah, you would hope so at the Justice Department. But
like I said, the New York Times and others have
called for basically getting rid of the Constitution and creating
a new one. The Atlantic earlier this week with an
article how originalism killed the Constitution? A radical legal philosophy
has undermined the process of constitutional evolution. So this radical
(02:49):
concept was figuring out what the founders meant instead of
having this living constitution, which is whatever the justices wanted
to mean.
Speaker 4 (02:57):
Living constitutions are made of Plato. Squeeze some squish them
and put them into any shape of what you want.
Living constitutions are like an airplane where they see, what
do you make of this?
Speaker 3 (03:07):
Well, I can make a hat. I can make a broach,
it can make a dirdactyl.
Speaker 4 (03:10):
You know. Living constitution are the shape shifter from T
one thousand. To continue my pop culture of reference, like,
there's nothing there. Living constitutions can be anything. So you
need a strict construction of the constitution, a clear sense
of what the founders intended and what's supposed to be
considered permissible under our constitution and what's not.
Speaker 3 (03:31):
Yeah, very well said.
Speaker 2 (03:32):
Basically, the left is like, it won't let us do
what we want. All right, Well, let's talk about something
way better than the less hatred of the Constitution, and
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Speaker 3 (04:01):
It's a great mattress.
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they know that we sent you. All right, Jim, Let's
(05:02):
talk about Joe Manchin, the longtime Democrat governor of Voice Virginia.
Then he appointed himself senator after the death of Robert Byrd,
won reelection a couple of times, by most accounts, the
most moderate Democrat for pretty much the whole time he
was in the Senate, if not all of that, he
did not run for reelection. Ultimately last year he is
(05:25):
personing on grade inside the Democratic Party because he and
Kirsten Cinema did not go along with Democratic efforts to
change the filibuster when there was a fifty to fifty
and fifty one to forty nine Senate in favor of
the Democrats. But he's got a new book out. Of course,
he's an ex politician. Of course he has a new
book out. It's called Dead Center. I think he's trying
to say that he's in the dead center, not that
(05:46):
the center of his party is dead. But that's true too,
So maybe it covers both things, and he's tearing into It's.
Speaker 3 (05:51):
A metaphor, Greg. It works.
Speaker 4 (05:53):
It works on multiple levels. George Lucas used to say,
you know, it's like a poem. It rhymes.
Speaker 2 (06:00):
Over at Free Beacon. They have some of the quotes
here with Mansion tearing into his own party and his
own leadership. Blasting woke ideology and so forth. Mansion says,
I don't say this lightly, but under the leadership of
President Obama and Majority Leader Harry Reid and later President
Biden and Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, Democrats have systematically tried
to weaken the very guard rails that have protected our
(06:23):
democracy for generations, all in the name of advancing their agenda,
he says. When also when the party pushes hard on
woke ideology, dei mandates, and other social agendas, it creates
unnecessary divisions, alienates everyday citizens, and moves us further away
from the common sense middle ground where most Americans actually
live their lives. And so what he's referring to, of course,
(06:45):
is Harry Reid changing the rules in the Senate during
the Obama years where you no longer had to get
to sixty votes to cut off debate, but a simple
upper down vote on every nomination except for Supreme Court
justices that later changed when Republicans got control in the
first Trump administration, and Chuck Schumer trying to kill the
legislative philibuster for specific votes allegedly during the Biden years,
(07:06):
and so Joe Manchin very resolutely in the face of
a lot of Democratic heat refused to change the filibusters.
So we're always grateful for that. Kirsten Cinema as well.
But Jim, good for him for pointing out this is
just the truth of how we got here. Obama and
Harry Reid played hardball and it blew up in their face, really,
and then Biden and Schumer tried to do it again
(07:26):
and would have gotten away with it if it weren't
for those meddling independent democrats.
Speaker 4 (07:31):
Greg, you and I have had some past beefs with
Senator Manchin, apparently to get him on board with what
is effectively, you know, another big spending green energy bill.
You just have to call it the Inflation Reduction Act, right,
presto change? Well if you wait, why don't you said,
tell me it was going to reduce inflation, which, by
the way, it did not reduce inflation. But you know,
(07:53):
by and large, you got the feeling that Joe mentioned
was a good faith negotiator, always wanted to figure out
how to get to the d was willing to compromise,
and recognized, you know that he was a Democrat who
represented a very culturally conservative state. That meant that he
was going to be on board with a large portion
of the Democratic Party's spending agenda, economic agenda, but he
(08:14):
was also going to be pro gun and by the
standards of Democrats, he was not a resolute supporter of abortion.
And so like, you know, that's somebody you could reach
a deal with.
Speaker 3 (08:24):
Now.
Speaker 4 (08:24):
Earlier in the week, we talked about John Fetterman. He's
probably the closest thing we have to a successor to
Mansion or Cinema. But just like the fact that a
guy like Joe Manchin got effectively driven out of his party,
would he have faced a very difficult reelection bid in
West Virginia? Yes, Would Senate Republicans have done their part
to beat the hell out of them?
Speaker 3 (08:44):
Yes?
Speaker 4 (08:44):
Was it going to be really tough to run for
reelection when Trump was running again?
Speaker 3 (08:47):
Yes?
Speaker 4 (08:49):
But all in all, yes, Senate Republicans who do they
like to have around, they probably missed the guy. This
was a guy who again was always trying to figure
out how do we get to yes? And he wasn't
going to line up with you and everything, And the
fact that is willing to point out that, like if
you look at our you know the intense partisan divisions
and why the Senate is not the world's greatest deliberative chamber.
And why it's not, you know that the founders had
(09:11):
argued that, like, you know, the House was where the
ideas were going to bubble up from, and the Senate
was where the tea was supposed to cool. It was
supposed to be where we were supposed to carefully consider
the idea and decide whether this is really good idea
to avoid any you know, sudden rush to judgment. You know,
if it's not like that anymore. A lot of it
has to do with Harry Reid way to Go, Nevada
way to go, And a lot of it has to
(09:33):
do with subsequent decisions made by Schumer and this idea
that you know but I don't.
Speaker 3 (09:37):
Greg.
Speaker 4 (09:38):
Have you heard for many Democrats calling for getting rid
of the filibuster since January twentieth.
Speaker 3 (09:42):
Wasn't this a.
Speaker 4 (09:43):
Tool of Jim Crow? Wasn't this Well, it's not. It's
not in the constitution. Therefore, all of a sudden, the
filibuster is good again. Go figure, we can all see this, right,
we could all remember this when you know, Amy Klobuchar,
I believe, was someone who said, yeah, yeah, maybe we retrospect.
Speaker 3 (10:00):
It's a good thing that we have the filibuster, you think.
Speaker 4 (10:03):
And Manchin was the kind of guy who, whether Republicans
control the Chamber or Democrats controlled the Chamber, seem to
get along with everybody enough. It was always trying to
fake all right, I'm not going to get everything I want,
but how can I get what I really need in legislation?
It just it would be nice to see more of it.
Congratulations on the book deal. I don't know how many
Democrats are still listening, but I'm just going to point out,
you look at the states that Biden won, and then
(10:24):
the Harris won doesn't add up to a Senate majority.
Maybe they'll be lucky and they'll have a situation like
Georgia where you know, egregious mistakes on the part of
Republicans end up, you know, handing them two seats. But
you can't count on that in a lot of red states.
A lot of red states are just going to vote
for Republican centers. So you need the Joe Manchins, you
need the John Fettermans, You need somebody who can get
(10:45):
elected in a state that isn't all that reliably Democrat,
and you know it sounds like Democrats just don't want
to hear it from Joe Manchen or from anybody else.
Speaker 2 (10:52):
And by the way, if at some point there's a
Democratic president, Democratic House, Democratic Senate, Ammy Klobashawer will completely
forget lesson she learned.
Speaker 3 (11:02):
That's the thing that.
Speaker 2 (11:03):
We shouldn't kill the filibuster once Democrats are in a
position to benefit from it, if they ever are, she'll
be right back in line. There's no way that she's
actually learned the real lesson there. So just a little tip.
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Speaker 4 (11:49):
You know, Greg, because the New York Jets give me
so little cheer for on most Sundays, I've gotten into
the habit of looking at the rest of the league
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against the point spread. And I do pretty good past
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that's NetSuite dot com slash Martini. All right, Jim. Yesterday
(12:48):
was a pretty big day out there in Utah. The
charges were officially filed against the alleged murder of Charlie Kirk.
The suspected shooter will face charges of aggravated murder, two
counts of obstruction of justice, say felony, discharge of a
firearm causing serious bodily injury, two counts of witness tampering,
and commission of a violent offense in the presence of
a child. That should have been the biggest part of
(13:12):
the story that happened yesterday, but ABC News reporter Matt
Gutman just couldn't help himself because in addition to outlining
the charges, there was more evidence released by local authorities,
including a long list of text exchanges where basically the
accused killer confessed the crime to his boyfriend, who, of course,
(13:33):
is supposedly transitioning to a woman. It's pretty cut and dried, there,
I did it, you know that kind of thing. And
so Matt Gutman, you know, could have talked about the
clarity of the confession, could have talked about the severity
of the charges. But no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no no.
We're gonna humanize and sympathize the killer.
Speaker 5 (13:54):
We have seen an alleged murder with such specific text
messages about the alleged murder weapon, where it was hidden,
how it was placed, what was on it. But also
it was very touching in a way that I think
many of us didn't expect, a very intimate portrait into
this relationship between the suspect's roommate and the suspect himself,
(14:15):
with him repeatedly calling his roommate, who was transitioning, calling
him my love and I want to protect you.
Speaker 3 (14:22):
My love.
Speaker 5 (14:22):
So it was this duality of someone who the attorney said,
not only jeopardized the life of Charlie Kirk and the crowd,
but was doing it in front of children, which is
one of the aggravating circumstances of this case. And on
the other hand, he was speaking so lovingly about his partner.
So very interesting, as Pierre said, riveting press conference.
Speaker 2 (14:40):
David touching, cowboy touching, as Hans Scruber told us in Diehard,
So Jim, I mean. Charlie Kirk in the mainstream media
is out there being described as polarizing, controversial, and flammatory.
Everybody's got to get in their worst moments that they
think Charlie Kirk ever had in his ubiquitous media presence.
Once we have this situation, and if you look at
(15:02):
the text exchanges, they're not really all that sentimental. It's
just here's what happened all day long here. But apparently
ABC or Matt Gutman in particular, can't let the trans
advocacy get derailed here or we just somehow have to
empathize with the killer of a conservative. What in the
world is going on here?
Speaker 3 (15:23):
Greg?
Speaker 4 (15:23):
There are days I'm glad I write a morning newsletter
as opposed to an afternoon or evening one, because had
I written about this yesterday afternoon when these comments started
rocketing around social media, I was in full on Mugatu
from Zoolander mode of does.
Speaker 3 (15:39):
No one else see this? I feel like I'm kicking
crazy pails.
Speaker 4 (15:43):
First of all, like today's morning jolt is all about this,
and I kind of tried to put this into the
context of multiple cases of this, not just in the
horrible shooting of Charlie Kirk, but thinking back to Luigi Magngioni,
which by the way, it was a big rally in
New York last yesterday because they dropped one of the
charges and everybody is celebrating that, like it's you know,
you think it was New Year's Eve over there or something.
(16:03):
Is the ABC correspondent say something? A bunch of things
that are appropriate and accurate. Sure, I could almost even
see what a horrible tragedy this is for the family
who had to turn in their son and knowing that
this is a crime from which the prosecutors will seek
the death penalty. Yeah, I could almost see the argument
of like at one point from coverage of the Wall
(16:25):
Street Journal and other places, this kid did have his
head grown on straight. He seemed like a normal kid
like five years ago, and that all of a sudden
he's turned into this twisted, murdering assassin like that. If
you want to say, that's an unbelievably said start, okay, fine, touching.
I just was beside myself with this idea that this
was the angle that stood out to him that he needed.
(16:47):
Like was Romeo and Juliet on cable last night or
something like what put somebody in a mindset where after
that press conference laying this all up, that's the takeaway,
That's one of the points he feels needs to be
front and center in this coverage. Now he subsolutely apologized,
and I'm glad that he did. But I just in
today's newsletter, I just went through this, and I'm like,
why are you like this mainstream media when it's a
(17:08):
right wing criminal, When it's a right wing act of
political violence, they see it twenty twenty, They see it
with perfect clarity. In fact, sometimes they even go a
little bit further and kind of say that, you know,
the reason that a Caesar Sayak type guy is sending
out ticking time bombs is because the right wing is
full of ticking time bombs themselves, right, the idea that
there's something reflective of it, you know, now when it's
(17:29):
a left wing piece of violence.
Speaker 3 (17:31):
So we've seen for the.
Speaker 4 (17:31):
Past week, we get a lot of both sides do this,
which is true enough, but I don't see them quick
to emphasize that there are left wing cases of political
violence when a right winger does it, and it often
feels like, hey, well, what are you gonna do? Both
sides do this, you know, there's nothing that we can
necessarily like. It always has to be put in the
context of don't get mad at progressivism. Don't get mad
(17:53):
at the Democrats, don't get mad at the left. This
is just a thing that happens. There's nothing, you know,
no greater lessons to be learned here, and I it's maddening.
You kind of knew somebody was going to do what
Matthew Dowd did on MSNBC the other day. You knew
somebody was going to start talking about what a terrible
guy Charlie Kirk was. Right by the way, I recognize
(18:14):
that the discussion of Charlie Kirk since his assassination, certainly
there are a whole bunch of people who don't want
to think about the more controversial things Charlie Kirk has
ever said. Somebody dies, you don't necessarily talk about their flaws.
You don't talk about their worst moments. There's a reason
we say don't speak ill of the dead. So yeah,
maybe people are building him up into a saint that
he may not have been in real life. But you
(18:34):
know what, all these people just saw him get murdered
in front of their eyes, right, kind of a little slack. Okay,
I think it's okay. And know those of must go
say the Kennedy presidency, right when you get assassinated in
front of everyone suddenly and horrifically with your kids around, right,
Like they don't want to dwell on any mistakes or
misdeeds of the of the departed. Like, you know, I
(18:56):
don't think you can begrudge people for that. I think
there's a time, There'll be a time in a place
if you want to be critical of Charlie Kirk. This
is really not the best time. This is a really time.
You got to let people grieve and channel all these
emotions that they're going through.
Speaker 3 (19:09):
And as for the.
Speaker 4 (19:09):
Shooter, why did I How did I know somebody was
going to take a stance that was somewhat sympathetic or
romanticizing this? Why did I know somebody on CNN was
going to feel the need to romanticize Luigi Mangioni. Oh,
by the way, that special got nominated for an Emmy,
Right of course it did. Why did CNN feel the
(19:30):
need to say that the protests up in Kenni Show,
Wisconsin were fiery but mostly peaceful when it's the towering
inferno behind the correspondent live on TV at that point, Yo,
why do they do this? And so I kind of
ended this with like, it sounds like it's a bad
relationship mainstream media.
Speaker 3 (19:46):
Why are you like this? Who made you this way?
Who hurt you? Like? It's kind of a sense because this.
Speaker 4 (19:52):
Is not normal, This is not Why is there this
reflexive need to explain away, to romanticize, to justify left
wing violence, whereas right wing violence gets seen clearly and
denounced the way it should be. This is you know,
you and I are not a pro right wing violence podcast.
This is a bad don't go hurt people, don't shoot people,
don't do any of that kind of stuff. But why
(20:14):
is there How did I know somebody was going to
do this yesterday? And it is, you know, somebody's being
the argument. This is the culture within these news organizations,
and I I think that's the case that they just
can't see violence committed by somebody the left side of
the spectrum, which is why we saw it like for
you for the last couple of days, this insistence the
shooter had to be on the right wing. Somehow I
realized I'm not supposed to rant on this podcast, correct,
(20:35):
but sometimes it just erupts.
Speaker 3 (20:37):
Out of me like a volcano.
Speaker 2 (20:38):
Well, you're just the hypocrisy is so intense and you're
right to mention the Gutman apology. Towards the end, he says,
let me let to be zero doubt. I unequivocally condemned
this horrific crime and the painted cause, Charlie Kirk's family,
et cetera. But the first thing he said is yesterday
I tried to underscore the jarring contrast between this cold
blooded assassination of Charlie Kirk, a man who dedicated his
(20:59):
life to public dife dialogue, and the personal, disturbing text
read aloud by the Utah County Attorney at the press conference.
He didn't say touching this time, so I guess that's
an improvement. But Jim, that's not the story. The story
is is that this kid is accused of this horrific crime.
The evidence seems to be piling up in an incontrovertible way.
That's what you should be talking about, not trying to
(21:20):
romanticize it, which is exactly what Gutman did here.
Speaker 4 (21:23):
Yeah, you know, like you're speaking off the cuff, you're
on live television. You know, you try to cut a
little bit of slack in that category. But I just
can't believe that's where his mind went and that there
was this idea of like the shooter believed in his
mind that he was protecting his lover by shooting and
murdering Charlie Kirk. Well, that's crazy, right, Why would you
even imply, Well, you know, in his mind he was
(21:45):
doing right. Yes, every murderer is convinced they're doing the
right thing every go. It's the screenwriting.
Speaker 3 (21:50):
One on one.
Speaker 4 (21:50):
Every villainho believes he's the hero of the story. So like,
it's not surprising that this guy was convinced he was
a noble and awesome. The idea is that the rest
of us are not supposed to feed into these people's delusions,
and it doesn't happen when somebody goes on CNN like
Taylo Lorenz it says he's a very moral person. No
he's not.
Speaker 3 (22:06):
He shot somebody in the back. Just unbelievable.
Speaker 2 (22:09):
Yeah, boy, this letter from this serial killer, it's very deranged,
but his penmanship is lovely. He writes, really well, no, no,
keep your eye on what matters here. So some of
you people need to see a doctor, and ZocDoc is
definitely the way to go for that. Jim and I
have both you ZocDoc mine was after having a not
good experience with a specialist and then a friend recommended
(22:31):
a different specialist in that field. It was an ent
did the research on ZocDoc bade the appointment. Been going
to her ever since. It's it's been a great fine
and ZocDoc could not have made it easier.
Speaker 4 (22:41):
Why do people, in particular guys not go to the doctor. Well,
it's inconvenient, we say. Also, we're indestructible and we're immortal,
and we never have anything to worry about, and that's
just ordinary back pain. You know, Well, I need an optometrist.
My old optrometrist was back where I used to live.
Speaker 3 (22:55):
It's a while away.
Speaker 4 (22:56):
I'm like, eh, go into ZocDoc and I find ones
like five minutes away.
Speaker 3 (23:00):
Like I no longer have that excuse.
Speaker 4 (23:02):
I no longer can explain away, Oh I don't need
to get my eyes checked. And you know, thankfully my
check up was pretty good. Now on ZocDoc, you can
filter for doctors who take your insurance, if they're located nearby,
if you're a good fit for any medical need you
might have, and see if they're highly rated by verified patients.
Once you find the right doctor, you see their actual
appointment openings, choose a time slot that works for you,
(23:23):
and you can click to instantly book a visit.
Speaker 2 (23:26):
Yeah, ZocDoc is a free app and website where you
can search and compare high quality in network doctors and
click to instantly book that appointment. So stop putting off
those doctors appointments and go to ZocDoc dot com slash
three mL to find and instantly book a top rated
doctor today. That's zoc d oc dot com slash three
m L ZocDoc dot com slash three m L. All right, Jim,
(24:00):
on to our final Martini. Are crazy Martini now, and
you're not going to dissuade too many Democrats these days
from voting for crazy radical candidates by calling them socialists.
That's because the label socialist is now extremely popular inside
the Democratic Party. Harry Enton Over at CNN has demonstrated
(24:21):
through polling just how much this positive mindset towards socialism
has changed just since twenty ten. Listen to these numbers.
Speaker 1 (24:28):
Socialism is not a four letter word in Democratic primaries,
not among Democratic voters. It's a five letter word in
the minds of a lot of Democrats. That five letter
word being great. Look at this net popularity of socialism
among Democrats.
Speaker 3 (24:41):
You go back to twenty.
Speaker 1 (24:42):
Ten, it was plus seven points. Look how high it
is now up like a rocket, up to plus thirty
six points. That's a jump of nearly thirty points on
the net popularity scale among Democrats in just fifteen years.
Speaker 2 (24:54):
So Jim, I mean plus thirty six in the Democratic Party.
This is a party that is literally in racing socialism.
He also had numbers showing that since twenty ten, Democrats
have gone from plus eight on capitalism, which means they
were roughly the same in positive territory with capitalism and
socialism back in twenty ten, but now it's minus thirteen
for capitalism. The only good news here is that among
(25:16):
all adults, socialism is still in the hole at minus
twelve and capitalism is plus eighteen. So the more the
Democrats run with this, it's going to work with their people,
But at least for now, it's not going to work
with the general electorate.
Speaker 4 (25:30):
So there are a bunch of reasons this is our
crazy martini since the Trump era. Right back at the
twenty sixteen Democratic Convention in Philadelphia saw Chuck Schumer insisting
that because people ask you aren't you worried about Trump
picking up votes amongst you know, blue collar whites. And
Schumer said, well, for every one blue collar white that
he picks up in you know, rural America, we're going
(25:53):
to pick up two white collar whites in suburbia. Well,
the math didn't work that well for Hillary Clinton. You
could argue they went back the House in twenty eighteen,
so maybe there was a value to that. Twenty twenty
shook out the way it did. Biden won, and you
can make it very much an argument that your parties
have shifted key demographics, right, that the effectively Republicans have
picked up a lot more blue collar, working class voters.
(26:16):
What we use characterist is Reagan Democrats. So it's not
the first time these folks have been interested in the
Republican Party, much higher percentages of Latinos, blacks, minority groups,
et cetera. And along the way they've given up some
of those white collar suburbanites, the you know, some of
the little old ladies, some of the folks who were
probably Romney and McCain Republicans have looked at Trump and said,
I can't vote for this anymore. And so they're either
(26:37):
independent or democratic, I would not expect those demographics to
be pro socialism. To me, socialism is a loser's philosophy.
Socialism is I want everybody fair because I can't compete,
because I'm never going to make a lot of money.
I'm never going to own a home. I'm never going
to have all these things that the American dream is
supposed to have. It's not that I've failed myself, It's
(26:58):
that capitalism and America has failed me. Ergo, I need
Bernie Sanders and AOC and I need all these people
who are I completely trust to make the system fair
for me. You know, Elizabeth Warren knows what's best. If
she gave Greg Corumpus that much trouble over his mailbox,
she's gonna know. You know, I find this all nonsensical.
(27:19):
But the other thing I want to point out here
is that I'd really love to ask these people. You know, Ah,
so you're a supportive of socialism, has true socialism ever
been tried? My guess is a significant chunk would say
correct that it's never been tried.
Speaker 3 (27:31):
You know. Now here's the thing.
Speaker 4 (27:32):
The reason they say this is because all kinds of
things are Socialism get tried, and very very often it's
a disaster, very very often it ends in gulags and
death camps, and you know the wiggers being you know,
put up into concentration.
Speaker 3 (27:46):
You know, Chinese Communist Party.
Speaker 4 (27:47):
Now you can make an argument they're not that communist anymore,
that they're basically authoritarian capitalist or you know, willing to
give people some economic freedom as long as they can
still squash them like a bug the moment you speak
out against the government.
Speaker 3 (27:57):
But you know, best case.
Speaker 4 (27:58):
Scenario with socialism, it's something like the European social democratics parties.
And if you're looking at Norway as a success story,
you know how you can be a country like Norway
have a lot of oil and gas reserves. Right when
you're sitting on a giant pile of money, low go figure,
all of a sudden it becomes easier to make your
country's finances work and you can be kind of socialist
or have a big, you know, expensive, extensive social safety net.
(28:22):
Very often with social sometimes you get North Korea, right.
Sometimes you get systems that are really unfree, really unprosperous,
really spreading around the misery. And the worst part is
like if socialists generally when they get power. They never
look at the disaster and say, oh, that's terrible, that
that didn't work.
Speaker 3 (28:38):
Let's go back.
Speaker 4 (28:39):
It's often, ah, we have saboteurs, the capitalists running dog pigs,
have you know, infiltrated us and our web foiled our
latest five year plan all that stuff. So like it
is really a bad sign. It's a little counterintuitive considering
the demographic changes we have. And again, I think, you know,
somebody has pointed out that Mamdami up in New York,
his most ardent supporters are people who have successful, wealthy
(29:02):
parents and they themselves are not successful and wealthy, and
they don't look at it and say, hmm, I haven't
done a good enough job.
Speaker 3 (29:09):
The system has failed.
Speaker 4 (29:10):
Because couldn't possibly be that they're flawed, right, Greg, No,
not at all.
Speaker 3 (29:15):
It doesn't be their fault. Yeah, just utterly ridiculous.
Speaker 2 (29:19):
And so yeah, so, and then the media is gonna
fan girl because remember it's kind of like one of
those issues where no, no, no, it's not socialism. Okay, well
actually it is socialism, but it's good. And then when
Obama gets elected I can't remember his time or Newsweek
we're all socialists now.
Speaker 3 (29:32):
Newsweek's coming.
Speaker 4 (29:33):
Yes, we are all socialists now and a whole bunch
more like, where are we? I don't remember that memo?
Speaker 3 (29:38):
Wait when yes?
Speaker 2 (29:39):
And so you know, you gotta have people insisting, oh
that the Democratic Party as a whole is not socialist,
and then by next year twenty twenty eight, well actually
they are. But it's it's totally the right direction for
the country.
Speaker 3 (29:48):
When it's your.
Speaker 4 (29:49):
Election, he's a centrist. Then he gets elected. Hey, guess
what you voted for?
Speaker 3 (29:52):
Socialism? Right? Credit to Bernie. At least he you know,
he's open about it, you know exactly.
Speaker 2 (29:58):
We tried to tell you people to tell you, and
you still have time, New York, but it's not looking great. Jim,
have a great Wednesday, see tomorrow. See tomorrow, Greg, Jim Garretty,
National Review. I'm Greg Corumbus of Radio America. Thanks so
much for being with us today. Please be sure to
subscribe to the Three Martini Lunch Podcast if you don't already,
and tell your friends about us as well. Thanks also
for your five star ratings and your kind reviews. Please
keep those coming. Huge help to us. Get us on
(30:19):
your home devices. All you have to say is play
Three Martini Lunch Podcast. Follow us both on X He's
at Jim Garretty, I'm at Greg Corumbus. Have a terrific Wednesday.
Please join us again Thursday for the Three Martini Lunch
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