August 5, 2025 • 27 mins
Hillsdale College Radio General Manager and Radio Free Hillsdale Hour host Scot Bertram fills in for Jim on Thursday’s 3 Martini Lunch. Join Scot and Greg as they discuss California Democrats having to accept the truth on energy, Sen. Elizabeth Warren enthusiastically endorsing the socialist agenda of Zohran Mamdani, and Jim Acosta "interviewing" the bot of a student killed in a school shooting.
First, they dig into California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s retreat from his aggressive green agenda. After years of vilifying oil companies and pushing to end fossil fuel use, Newsom is now trying to keep refineries open and even expand drilling. Scot and Greg explain the truth about the scope of our energy needs and the only realistic ways they will be met anytime soon.
Next, they react to Sen. Elizabeth Warren backing far-left New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani. She not only praises his socialist platform on housing, child care, and food prices but also claims his message is what Democrats should embrace nationwide. Scot and Greg unpack what “affordable” really means under progressive policies and how big government failures continue to pile up in America’s largest cities.
Finally, they recoil at former CNN anchor Jim Acosta’s podcast “interview” with an AI version of Joaquin Oliver, a student killed in the 2018 Parkland school shooting. Acosta used the bot to advocate for greater gun control. Scot and Greg discuss the many ethical problems with this disturbing spectacle.
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Support your health with Dose Daily. Save 25% on your first month when you subscribe at https://DoseDaily.co/3ML or enter code 3ML at checkout.
First, they dig into California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s retreat from his aggressive green agenda. After years of vilifying oil companies and pushing to end fossil fuel use, Newsom is now trying to keep refineries open and even expand drilling. Scot and Greg explain the truth about the scope of our energy needs and the only realistic ways they will be met anytime soon.
Next, they react to Sen. Elizabeth Warren backing far-left New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani. She not only praises his socialist platform on housing, child care, and food prices but also claims his message is what Democrats should embrace nationwide. Scot and Greg unpack what “affordable” really means under progressive policies and how big government failures continue to pile up in America’s largest cities.
Finally, they recoil at former CNN anchor Jim Acosta’s podcast “interview” with an AI version of Joaquin Oliver, a student killed in the 2018 Parkland school shooting. Acosta used the bot to advocate for greater gun control. Scot and Greg discuss the many ethical problems with this disturbing spectacle.
Please visit our great sponsors:
Talk it out, with Betterhelp. Our listeners get 10% off their first month at https://BetterHelp.com/3ML
Upgrade your skincare routine with Caldera Lab and see the difference. Visit https://CalderaLab.com/3ML and use code 3ML at checkout for 20% off your first order.
Support your health with Dose Daily. Save 25% on your first month when you subscribe at https://DoseDaily.co/3ML or enter code 3ML at checkout.
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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 Martinis coming up.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
Super Glad you're with us for the Tuesday edition of
the Three Martini Lunch. As you know, Jim Garrity is away,
and here in his place once again is Scott Bertram,
the general manager of WRFH Radio Free Hillsdale one A
one point seven on the campus of Hillsdale College, where
he also lectures in journalism, directs the Hillsdale College Podcast Network,
and hosts the Radio Free Hillsdale Hour, among many others.
(00:34):
Ben Scott, great to have you with us again.
Speaker 1 (00:36):
Hello Greg, good to be back.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
Great to have you again. As teased yesterday, Scott will
be giving us a brief review of the Naked Gun movie,
but today we're also going to be talking about a
number of things. Jim Acosta is back in the news,
and it's never for a good reason. He's not at CNN.
He's got his own little media deal now, and yesterday
he interviewed the bot of a teenager killed at Parkland
(00:59):
High schoo and that mass shooting back in twenty eighteen,
we're going to talk about a lot of the ethical
ramifications of that. We'll also talk about how the Democratic
Party is more openly embracing socialism, as Elizabeth Warren openly
endorses zoron Mom Donnie and what that means for the
larger political picture and Democrats smacked in the face with
reality happens a lot. So it's good to see policy
(01:22):
wise that sometimes they're saying reality too.
Speaker 1 (01:25):
There are effects for every cause, there are outputs for
every input, and occasionally they actually pop up in inopportune
places for politicians.
Speaker 2 (01:34):
Yes, yes, Gavin Newsom once again realizing that just not
liking Trump is not enough to get the job done
out there. He doesn't like to spend a lot of
time on policy, and it shows because the performative policies
are blown up in their face.
Speaker 1 (01:48):
Yeah, but it's a great podcast, guest, I mean, come on,
give you some credit.
Speaker 2 (01:53):
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(03:03):
percent off. All right, Scott, onto our good martini and
as we just said, it comes to us from California
and what Gavin Newsom and the other Democrats should have known,
but politics got in their way, and now reality is
biting back. This is from Politico Alex Nieves with the
story California Governor Gavin Newsom spent the last four years
(03:26):
provoking the big Oil boogeyman, and now it's haunting him.
Newsom's casting of big oil as the villain behind the
state's perpetually high fuel prices signaled the industry's waning influence
in Sacramento, but the plot took a dramatic turn for
the governor and his party when two refineries in the
state announced closure plans last month. Newsom said, quote refineries
all across the globe are struggling, as he unveiled a
(03:48):
suite of proposals to keep refinery solvent, including holding talks
with potential buyers and offering incentives to boost in state
oil drilling. Quote, We've got some challenges and so just
require some new considerations. Political says. The about face is
emblematic of the Democrats course correction on cost of living
issues in the wake of the presidential election and provides
a real time demonstration of the political risks of pursuing
(04:11):
an aggressive transition away from fossil fuels. Quote, the reality is,
if those refineries close and we have increased gas prices,
it's going to be a problem for everybody, said veteran
California Democratic consultant Andrew Acosta, not just Gavin Newsom, but
every Democrat running for office and Scott you know, it
makes me think of that clip that was out a
(04:32):
few months ago from the show Landman, where Billy Bob
Thornton's out there in the wilderness basically telling this kind
of environmentally enlightened person about what the realities are in
terms of everything we buy pretty much as petroleum in it.
Even if you wanted to switch away, we take decades
and decades and decades. And so this whole idea of
(04:53):
Newsom and Biden and everybody else that, oh, we'll just
take a decade to get rid of the internal combustion
and just move away from fossil fuels entirely, it's pie
in the sky. And that's finally dawning on them that
it was never based in reality.
Speaker 1 (05:07):
Even California, Even California, I am, I guess surprised by
how high a percentage of California vehicles now are EV
hybrid Among new sales new automobile sales in California, it's
about forty percent that are EV or hybrid in some way,
shape or form. And more about one point three million
(05:28):
vehicles overall registered are evs alone, not including hybrids. That's
a lot. And even California can't make this work without
sufficient supplies of energy and oil and refine and refineries.
And it should not be a surprise. We live and
die on energy, as the Landman example sort of tells us,
(05:51):
and that's why the Trump's strategy and energy has been
so successful. I think cheap energy powers everything, and California's
finding out is afraid they'll find out what happens when
energy is very expensive for everyone. It's things like this
that make me at least semi curious if California actually
(06:12):
follows through on their threat to match Texas's redistricting with
their own redistricting, which by the way, would take a
lot that have to repeal a law, go back to voters,
but it could happen. I do wonder if they are
overplaying their hand in that. Things like this, you know,
energy getting expensive the mismanagement of the wildfires, not just
(06:34):
the wildfires, but the fires in Malibu and the cities
out there, and the lack of rebuilding since that occurred,
and people sort of seeing what liberal governance looks like
if they are over projecting their possible support in various
areas of California, because people are beginning to feel what
it's like when policies have consequences. Same thing very quickly
(06:58):
in Illinois, where five six years ago a lot of
green energy mandates went into effect, and manufacturers warned and
others worn, hey, it's going to drive up prices, drive
up prices, drive up prices. This summer, their stories all
over the place about keep people getting their energy bills
and finding that one hundred and one hundred and twenty
dollars more expensive than it was a couple of years ago,
and they're freaking out. And they were warned. Everyone was warned,
(07:22):
there are consequences for various activities and consequences for policies,
and people find it out and then well sometimes vote accordingly.
Speaker 2 (07:30):
One of my favorite Gavin News some Moments in a Nutshell,
is a couple of years ago, and of course was
pushing the ev mandate. We're gon we're gonna make it
pretty much all ev within a decade. You're going to
save so much money on gas. This is going to
be great. And then they had the rolling blackouts. In
the first order was you know, as long as this
is happening, let's not plug in the EV's. So you're
pretty much stuck without transportation or power at all in
(07:52):
some cases, depending on how the blackouts rolled along. So
it should have been a clue. Then maybe they're getting
a little bit more of a clue now.
Speaker 1 (07:58):
Yeah. And by the way, when it comes cheap energy too,
there's celebration in some quarters on the left among the
Greens when nuclear plants were shut down. And now what
do we find out, Hey, those things are pretty effective.
They made a lot of energy, we need them, and
they're coming back online. At least one in Michigan, the
Palace Aged power plant, which was shut down a couple
of years ago, is now deep into the steps of
(08:21):
actually powering back up. So maybe that's not so bad either. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (08:24):
Lefty reimagining is usually just running headlong into reality, and
most of their reimagining has already happened, as we'll talk
about in the second Martini and flopped miserably. You know,
California residence. I realized the ones that are totally fed
up with Gavin Newsom have probably already left California. But
when you think about the massive homelessness problem, the poop
(08:45):
on the streets, the sky high was a thirteen percent
state tax out there. If you do have an internal
combustion engine, you easily have the highest gas prices in
the country, at least in the contiguous forty eight states,
And at its worst, I think it was up to
like seven eight dollars, but it's always way more than
the rest of the country. It's amazing that even people
who are pretty dyed in the wool blue voters don't
(09:07):
get fed up with this compilation of horribleness that they
have to deal with on a daily basis.
Speaker 1 (09:12):
I think for so much the price of doing business,
of living in a beautiful state, I've heard that, ok, like,
oh yeah, but it's so pretty out here. I guess
there's a price to pay for that.
Speaker 2 (09:23):
Yeah, A steep price to pay for a lot of
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code three m L. All right, Scott onto our second
martini now and definitely a bad martini. You know, a
lot of Democrats, especially before the New York City mayor primary,
(10:48):
were kind of hedging their bets on Zoom Mamdani. Nobody
really wanted Andrew Cuomo back, but Mamdani's comments from defunding
the police to directly quoting Carl Marx about each according
to their ability and each according to their new and
all this stuff his anti private property views. Most Democrats
saw that as a bridge too far until he won,
and won handily, and the poles still look good for
(11:10):
Mom Donnie, and so the unease with Mom Donnie seemed
to be clearly that they didn't know that he could
win and that he might be a drag on future Democrats.
But now that he seems to be in pretty good
shape in New York City, they're coosing up to him.
He's on Capitol Hill. A few weeks ago, a lot
of people wanted their picture with him. Now he's getting
flat out endorsements from the likes of Elizabeth Warren, who
was standing right alongside of him yesterday and basically endorsing
(11:34):
his socialist agenda not only for this particular race, but
as the future of the Democratic Party.
Speaker 3 (11:40):
When someone stands up and says, I will lead this
city by making it more affordable. And here are my plans,
real plans. Plans to deliver on childcare, plans to deliver unhousing,
plans to deliver gon experiment. We're going to try things
on groceries. That is the democratic message.
Speaker 2 (12:01):
That's the Democratic message. So the reporter good question here
follows up and makes it very clear what Elizabeth Warren thinks.
Speaker 3 (12:08):
Is this what the party should look like?
Speaker 2 (12:10):
Yes, Credit Party, you bet, you bet. We are going
to embrace this. And and Scott it's almost like they're
breathing a sigh of relief. I mean, Elizabeth Warren's more
on the far left and some in the party, but
the party's been drifting pretty hard left for a long
time now. And again, I don't think it was the
ideas of son, mom Donna, if they were so upset
(12:30):
with it was just about electability, and once he seems
more electable, they're going to go along with it. What
do you make of that? And just the way that
that Mom Donnie's going about this and the way that
the Democrats are approaching this issue.
Speaker 1 (12:42):
There's a little bit of a split, I guess among Democrats,
because there's a there's a wing that sort of says,
we just need to be louder and fight harder. And
maybe you could classify these Warren comments as another another
strategy which is well changing strategies right, embracing some of
the socialist, communist tendencies of the candidate for New York
(13:07):
mayor talking about, you know, trying things with groceries, you know,
city owned grocery stores which don't work, proven over and
over again. And affordability, this idea, and I think we
even talked about this, you know, affordability in New York City.
The lowest income voters didn't choose Mom Donmie, they chose
someone else. It was the upper income people that really
(13:30):
drove Mom Donnie's victory in New York City. So who
are we making it affordable for more affordable for those
who need it the most, or more affordable for those
who are comfortable but just wish that things were slightly
less expensive. Perhaps in certain places, I think people look
and think the policies likely won't work for those who
need the most help. In New York City. It's an
interesting NBC piece two days ago. Now, I think about
(13:53):
some of the Mom Donnie's advisors saying, don't become Brandon Johnson.
Chicago mayor. Brandon Johnson, who is not at a vowed socialist,
but is close enough in terms of policy prescriptions. Also
as a stew of the labor unions in Chicago, you know,
teachers in union specially, and he's got in a lot
of trouble. Actually, fresh off of the printer this morning, Greg,
(14:17):
the new public opinion poll for Brandon Johnson in Chicago.
Overall favorability at twenty one percent. Oh overall, Yet you
say ooh, because that's an improvement for Branson considerably. Congratulations
to him. Overall unfavorable at seventy two percent, and those
who say they have a strong unfavorable bull opinion is
(14:38):
a majority of voters at fifty five percent. That's where
Brandon Johnson finds himself right now. And he has made
a lot of enemies. He's not friendly with GiB Pritzker,
the governor and future presidential candidate. He has made enemies
even among some of the more progressive city council members
in Chicago. There are massive monetary issues in Chicago to
(14:59):
the city. He's got a one point one billion dollar
deficit for next year. Chicago public schools have a quarter
of a billion dollar deficit for the next fiscal year.
This is what Mam Donnie wants to avoid. Because the
answer now is Brandon Johnson literally going to the press
and listing things he wants to tax workers. He wants
a head tax attack on every worker in Chicago. He
(15:20):
wants to tax congestion, liquor, restaurant meals, bottled water, checkout bags,
sports betting. He also wants to have a voluntary tax
on hospitals, churches, and universities operating inside the city of Chicago.
When your policies drive your municipality, your city and do
extreme financial difficulty, those are the options. And so I
(15:42):
think Mamdanni wants to or at least his advisors are saying, hey,
let's try to avoid those types of things. Brandon Johnson
is not popular, Brandon Johnson likely is heading to defeats
in a potential reelection bid. Brandon Johnson literally listing off
various things random things to potentially tax in the city
of Chicago. Go They don't want to go that direction.
(16:02):
And yet many big city mayors and who are espousing
policies similar to that of Mom Donnie as exactly where
they find themselves very quickly.
Speaker 2 (16:10):
What do you make of the Democrats latching on to
the word affordability. I think most people remember that the
nine percent inflation happened on Joe Biden's watch, while those
same Democrats denied that it was a problem. Mind you,
there was, of course that infamous chart that the Democrats
tweeted out about a week or two ago, where they're like, oh,
it's Donald Trump's America with the record price of groceries,
(16:34):
when it's obvious that the vast majority of the climb
happened during Joe Biden's presidency. And so I don't think
Americans have that short of a memory. And if their solution,
their plan to get to affordability is just government control
of everything, you might get cheap groceries for a little
while until there's nothing left on the shelves. Just what
you get a communist guy.
Speaker 1 (16:55):
That's exactly where I was going. So affordability means three things.
In this case, it means subsidies, government subsidies, so it's
you know, transferring money, transferring wealth. It means price controls. Certainly, okay,
you can only charge well, I mean New York City certainly.
You know, rent control is an example of that, but
price controls on almost everything. I had to go back
(17:17):
to Illinois, but that you know, I know things. State
Farm just announced it like a twenty nine percent increase
in home insurance rates in Illinois, and the response by TB.
Pritz current Illinois Democrats is, maybe we should kind of
take over that industry. Maybe we should. We should tell
State Farm exactly the price they can charge for homeowners insurance.
So you're gonna, you're gonna you're gonna have price controls.
(17:37):
And then, as you point out, you're gonna have scarcity.
You know. One way uh to make things more affordable
is you can't buy them anymore. They're not available whatsoever.
You don't have to pay anything because you can't get
it for any price whatsoever. They like the word they
think is effective, but I don't think they know exactly
how to make it happen.
Speaker 2 (17:55):
No, I'm not just stay as vague as possible because
they know their means of getting there, which won't actually
get you there, is going to be horrifically unpopular. But
it's right that you go back to Illinois because they
followed this exact same pattern as New York as California,
especially because they've got huge problems with their insurance companies
out there as well. And it's because they keep running
(18:16):
themselves into this same problem with policies that these insurance
companies are saying, Look, if you're going to do this,
we've got to charge through the roof. And then the
politicians pretend that the insurance companies are the bad guys.
On and on it goes, rinse and repeat. All right,
it's got onto our crazy martini now. And it's been
a while since most of us paid any attention to
(18:38):
Jim Acosta since he left CNN, but especially since really
the end of the first Trump administration, where he preamed
and posed and.
Speaker 1 (18:45):
He paid enough attention to himself for all of us.
He takes care of it, okay.
Speaker 2 (18:51):
Exactly so trying to basically start a fight with Trump
or whoever was at the podium on any given day
at the White House. But now he's doing his substack thing.
He's got his own podcast, and he gained more attention
for himself last night, which is what I'm sure the
goal was. And the fact that we're talking about it
on some level, even though we're going to be ripping
him stem from Stern probably feeds his ego a little bit.
(19:13):
But he held an interview with an AI version, So
basically a bot of a Parkland High School student from
Florida who was murdered in February of twenty eighteen in
order to push the gun control agenda. Now, Acosta did
not create this bot. This kid's parents created this bot,
which is twisted on a whole other level. This kid's
(19:34):
name was Joaquin Oliver. And here is a clip of
Acosta quote unquote interviewing Joaquin Oliver. I would like to
know what your solution would be for gun violence.
Speaker 4 (19:48):
Great question. I believe in a mix of stronger gun
control laws, mental health support, and community engagement. We need
to create safe spaces for conversations and connections, making sure
everyone feels seen and heard. It's about building a culture
of kindness and understanding. What do you think about that?
Speaker 2 (20:03):
I think that's a great idea, Joaquin Scott. This is
so dystopian on so many different levels. The fact that
Acosta is treating this like an actual interview of the
teenager who died seven years ago. Now, the parents who
are putting this out there as part of a gun
control agenda. I mean, if you want to put your
child's face out there, I guess you could do that.
Other parents have done that. But to act like this
(20:25):
is what this person is really thinking and doing from
the afterlife is just twisted on a number of different levels.
And I certainly hope it's not the future of journalism,
but I have a feeling we haven't seen the end
of this.
Speaker 1 (20:37):
Yeah, let's talk about the grossness of it first. It
is I've seen technology now where you enter a picture
of a loved one and AI is able to animate
that into a short film like a little movie. So
(20:58):
pre cam quarter days, you can have a picture of
from nineteen sixty something you and your mom, who per
raps has passed away, and now you can see your
mom giving you a hug. Which, man, just very uncomfortable
with all that. It is so easy to get sucked
into a whole this alternate, fake reality that you're more
(21:22):
comfortable and than dealing with the real world. You know
stories of people who are continuing relationships with dead loved
ones through AI technology at are stuck. I mean, you
just talked about mental health. Man, there's a whole world
about to open with AI. Technology and what they can
do to us, literally to us. So that's one level
(21:46):
that you sort of get stuck inside this loop that
you can't escape from, and trying to bring back this person,
this loved one, in some way, shape or form. And
now as we put it out for public consumption in
an interview with Jim A Costa, this is you know,
this is a nightmare journalistically right to sort of fake
(22:07):
and pretend like it's some sort of real interview for
a Costa. It's perfect because this this greg is the
ultimate echo chamber. It's AI technology. It only reacts to
the input you give it. You can make it say
anything that you want with the right inputs. And trying
to pretend and say, oh, this is what he would
(22:31):
have said if he were still with us today, and
then taking that seriously. These are the same people who
are so concerned about deep fakes and cheap fakes and
people will see something and not know if it's real
or not. And bringing out an AI you know, not
a hologram, but you know, AI representation of this person
and trying to have pretending to have the serious conversation.
(22:52):
It's a total nightmare. It's it's the ultimate in fake news. Right,
You're presenting an interview with an AI generated person, having
AI generated thoughts as if it's some sort of real
thing and representative of what that person might or might
not have said. Totally gross and totally unacceptable from a
(23:14):
journalistic perspective.
Speaker 2 (23:16):
Oh, absolutely no question about it. And like you said,
you don't know what this kid would have thought about
anything at this point. Maybe he would have agreed with
his parents, maybe not. They're basically programming what he's going
to say here, and Acosta, like you said, is basically
feeding him where Acosta wants the conversation to go. And
so you could easily, as the technology improves over time,
(23:39):
have people who you know believed exactly the opposite, but
you can trot them out and have them commenting falsely
about what they would have really thought about that issue.
I mean, you could have a Democrat trotting out Reagan,
you could have a Republican trotting out some Democratic president
and having them say nothing that they would have actually
said in their actual life. I'll tell you who was
at the cutting edge of this in a smart way.
(24:00):
Robin Williams, before he died, basically said in legal papers,
you can't use my image. You can't use my voice.
You can't do anything that artificially creates something that I
didn't actually do. And I think all of us are
going to end up having to do something like that
sooner rather than later.
Speaker 1 (24:16):
It's a whole new definition for name, image and likeness
college athletes, but for your own name, imaged life. Don't
make me say stuff I didn't believe when after I'm dead,
like you have to write that in your will.
Speaker 2 (24:29):
Now, yes, yes, exactly, all right, before we exit real quick.
Scott mentioned yesterday that last night he was going to
go see the new Make a Gun, starring Liam Neeson
as the son of Frank Dreben, of course, was classically
played by Leslie Nielsen. What do you think?
Speaker 1 (24:45):
What did? I think? It exceeded my admittedly very low expectations,
but I thought it was nowhere near as good as
some of the reviews you might have seen out there
really praising it as a high quality comedy. It was.
It was was in the middle. I think that it
was the right recipe with the wrong ingredients, meaning the
new filmmakers understood the assignment. They knew the shape the
(25:08):
movie should have and how it should move and where
it should go. The jokes just aren't good enough to
carry the day for me, and something I was worried
about from the trailers. The trailers make it seem like
a very dark movie, like literally a dark movie, and
it is like it's oddly very dimly lit, a lot
of shadows. If you remember the Naked Gung movies, everything
(25:31):
was California bright like sunshine. You know, the whole baseball
scene of course, being outdoors at a baseball park, it's
all very indoors and shadowy, and the tone is not
quite right. Liam Neeson's okay decent. Someone said in writing
about this film, you know, one difference is when when
Leslan Nielson, his face was was this comic instrument even
(25:53):
if the rest of him was dead pair, and that
aspect is kind of missing here with Liam Neeson playing
that role. There are good moments, you know, there are
laugh moments that My particular favorite is one where I
won't spoil the joke, but it's one where Frank Dreben
Junior is going to watch some security footage that has
been caught at a bar and something happened. It's very fun.
(26:17):
So there are funny moments I don't doubt. I'm a
giant Airplane, you know, zazz fan. I think Airplane has
an argument as being perhaps one of the great comedies
of all time. Love making it, so my standard might
be a bit high, but I thought that this was
probably not even as good as thirty three and a third,
which is kind of a middling entry into that series,
(26:38):
and this was probably somewhere near that but not quite
as good. It's okay, you'll laugh a little. I don't
think it was. It doesn't embarrass the franchise. I wouldn't
say that, but it's not as good as some of
these great reviews that I've been seeing.
Speaker 2 (26:50):
In my opinion, I appreciate that that should give folks
some good insights on whether to put the money down
at the theater, maybe wait for it to come out.
Speaker 1 (26:58):
By the way, I'm all four more common Hollywood stopped
making comedy, So I'm trying not to rag out it
too badly, because at least there's a funny movie in theaters.
But I do wish it were a bit.
Speaker 2 (27:08):
Better, much more to talk about tomorrow, I have no doubt. Scott.
Thank you for being here today. We'll see tomorrow. Thank you,
Greg Scott, Bertram is the general manager of WRFH Radio
Free Hillsdale on the campus of Hillsdale College one on
one point seven FM. He's also the director of the
Hillsdale College Podcast Network, host of the Radio Free Hillsdale Hour,
and of course, the co host of Wasn't That Special?
Fifty years of Saturday Night Live. I'm Greg Corumbus of
(27:30):
Radio America. Thanks so much for being with us today.
Please be sure to subscribe to the Three Martini Lunch.
If you don't already, tell your friends about us as well.
We'd love to have them listening. Thanks also for your
five star ratings and your kind reviews. Please keep those coming.
Get us on your home devices. All you have to
say is play Three Martini Lunch podcast. Follow us all
on x Scott is at Scott Bertram one tea in Scott,
(27:51):
Jim of course at Jim Garritty. I'm at Greg Corumbus.
Have a terrific Tuesday. Join us again Wednesday for the
next 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 Martinis coming up.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
Super Glad you're with us for the Tuesday edition of
the Three Martini Lunch. As you know, Jim Garrity is away,
and here in his place once again is Scott Bertram,
the general manager of WRFH Radio Free Hillsdale one A
one point seven on the campus of Hillsdale College, where
he also lectures in journalism, directs the Hillsdale College Podcast Network,
and hosts the Radio Free Hillsdale Hour, among many others.
(00:34):
Ben Scott, great to have you with us again.
Speaker 1 (00:36):
Hello Greg, good to be back.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
Great to have you again. As teased yesterday, Scott will
be giving us a brief review of the Naked Gun movie,
but today we're also going to be talking about a
number of things. Jim Acosta is back in the news,
and it's never for a good reason. He's not at CNN.
He's got his own little media deal now, and yesterday
he interviewed the bot of a teenager killed at Parkland
(00:59):
High schoo and that mass shooting back in twenty eighteen,
we're going to talk about a lot of the ethical
ramifications of that. We'll also talk about how the Democratic
Party is more openly embracing socialism, as Elizabeth Warren openly
endorses zoron Mom Donnie and what that means for the
larger political picture and Democrats smacked in the face with
reality happens a lot. So it's good to see policy
(01:22):
wise that sometimes they're saying reality too.
Speaker 1 (01:25):
There are effects for every cause, there are outputs for
every input, and occasionally they actually pop up in inopportune
places for politicians.
Speaker 2 (01:34):
Yes, yes, Gavin Newsom once again realizing that just not
liking Trump is not enough to get the job done
out there. He doesn't like to spend a lot of
time on policy, and it shows because the performative policies
are blown up in their face.
Speaker 1 (01:48):
Yeah, but it's a great podcast, guest, I mean, come on,
give you some credit.
Speaker 2 (01:53):
All right, Well, we'll get to all that in just
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percent off. All right, Scott, onto our good martini and
as we just said, it comes to us from California
and what Gavin Newsom and the other Democrats should have known,
but politics got in their way, and now reality is
biting back. This is from Politico Alex Nieves with the
story California Governor Gavin Newsom spent the last four years
(03:26):
provoking the big Oil boogeyman, and now it's haunting him.
Newsom's casting of big oil as the villain behind the
state's perpetually high fuel prices signaled the industry's waning influence
in Sacramento, but the plot took a dramatic turn for
the governor and his party when two refineries in the
state announced closure plans last month. Newsom said, quote refineries
all across the globe are struggling, as he unveiled a
(03:48):
suite of proposals to keep refinery solvent, including holding talks
with potential buyers and offering incentives to boost in state
oil drilling. Quote, We've got some challenges and so just
require some new considerations. Political says. The about face is
emblematic of the Democrats course correction on cost of living
issues in the wake of the presidential election and provides
a real time demonstration of the political risks of pursuing
(04:11):
an aggressive transition away from fossil fuels. Quote, the reality is,
if those refineries close and we have increased gas prices,
it's going to be a problem for everybody, said veteran
California Democratic consultant Andrew Acosta, not just Gavin Newsom, but
every Democrat running for office and Scott you know, it
makes me think of that clip that was out a
(04:32):
few months ago from the show Landman, where Billy Bob
Thornton's out there in the wilderness basically telling this kind
of environmentally enlightened person about what the realities are in
terms of everything we buy pretty much as petroleum in it.
Even if you wanted to switch away, we take decades
and decades and decades. And so this whole idea of
(04:53):
Newsom and Biden and everybody else that, oh, we'll just
take a decade to get rid of the internal combustion
and just move away from fossil fuels entirely, it's pie
in the sky. And that's finally dawning on them that
it was never based in reality.
Speaker 1 (05:07):
Even California, Even California, I am, I guess surprised by
how high a percentage of California vehicles now are EV
hybrid Among new sales new automobile sales in California, it's
about forty percent that are EV or hybrid in some way,
shape or form. And more about one point three million
(05:28):
vehicles overall registered are evs alone, not including hybrids. That's
a lot. And even California can't make this work without
sufficient supplies of energy and oil and refine and refineries.
And it should not be a surprise. We live and
die on energy, as the Landman example sort of tells us,
(05:51):
and that's why the Trump's strategy and energy has been
so successful. I think cheap energy powers everything, and California's
finding out is afraid they'll find out what happens when
energy is very expensive for everyone. It's things like this
that make me at least semi curious if California actually
(06:12):
follows through on their threat to match Texas's redistricting with
their own redistricting, which by the way, would take a
lot that have to repeal a law, go back to voters,
but it could happen. I do wonder if they are
overplaying their hand in that. Things like this, you know,
energy getting expensive the mismanagement of the wildfires, not just
(06:34):
the wildfires, but the fires in Malibu and the cities
out there, and the lack of rebuilding since that occurred,
and people sort of seeing what liberal governance looks like
if they are over projecting their possible support in various
areas of California, because people are beginning to feel what
it's like when policies have consequences. Same thing very quickly
(06:58):
in Illinois, where five six years ago a lot of
green energy mandates went into effect, and manufacturers warned and
others worn, hey, it's going to drive up prices, drive
up prices, drive up prices. This summer, their stories all
over the place about keep people getting their energy bills
and finding that one hundred and one hundred and twenty
dollars more expensive than it was a couple of years ago,
and they're freaking out. And they were warned. Everyone was warned,
(07:22):
there are consequences for various activities and consequences for policies,
and people find it out and then well sometimes vote accordingly.
Speaker 2 (07:30):
One of my favorite Gavin News some Moments in a Nutshell,
is a couple of years ago, and of course was
pushing the ev mandate. We're gon we're gonna make it
pretty much all ev within a decade. You're going to
save so much money on gas. This is going to
be great. And then they had the rolling blackouts. In
the first order was you know, as long as this
is happening, let's not plug in the EV's. So you're
pretty much stuck without transportation or power at all in
(07:52):
some cases, depending on how the blackouts rolled along. So
it should have been a clue. Then maybe they're getting
a little bit more of a clue now.
Speaker 1 (07:58):
Yeah. And by the way, when it comes cheap energy too,
there's celebration in some quarters on the left among the
Greens when nuclear plants were shut down. And now what
do we find out, Hey, those things are pretty effective.
They made a lot of energy, we need them, and
they're coming back online. At least one in Michigan, the
Palace Aged power plant, which was shut down a couple
of years ago, is now deep into the steps of
(08:21):
actually powering back up. So maybe that's not so bad either. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (08:24):
Lefty reimagining is usually just running headlong into reality, and
most of their reimagining has already happened, as we'll talk
about in the second Martini and flopped miserably. You know,
California residence. I realized the ones that are totally fed
up with Gavin Newsom have probably already left California. But
when you think about the massive homelessness problem, the poop
(08:45):
on the streets, the sky high was a thirteen percent
state tax out there. If you do have an internal
combustion engine, you easily have the highest gas prices in
the country, at least in the contiguous forty eight states,
And at its worst, I think it was up to
like seven eight dollars, but it's always way more than
the rest of the country. It's amazing that even people
who are pretty dyed in the wool blue voters don't
(09:07):
get fed up with this compilation of horribleness that they
have to deal with on a daily basis.
Speaker 1 (09:12):
I think for so much the price of doing business,
of living in a beautiful state, I've heard that, ok, like,
oh yeah, but it's so pretty out here. I guess
there's a price to pay for that.
Speaker 2 (09:23):
Yeah, A steep price to pay for a lot of
people out there, unfortunately. So all right, well, let's talk
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code three m L. All right, Scott onto our second
martini now and definitely a bad martini. You know, a
lot of Democrats, especially before the New York City mayor primary,
(10:48):
were kind of hedging their bets on Zoom Mamdani. Nobody
really wanted Andrew Cuomo back, but Mamdani's comments from defunding
the police to directly quoting Carl Marx about each according
to their ability and each according to their new and
all this stuff his anti private property views. Most Democrats
saw that as a bridge too far until he won,
and won handily, and the poles still look good for
(11:10):
Mom Donnie, and so the unease with Mom Donnie seemed
to be clearly that they didn't know that he could
win and that he might be a drag on future Democrats.
But now that he seems to be in pretty good
shape in New York City, they're coosing up to him.
He's on Capitol Hill. A few weeks ago, a lot
of people wanted their picture with him. Now he's getting
flat out endorsements from the likes of Elizabeth Warren, who
was standing right alongside of him yesterday and basically endorsing
(11:34):
his socialist agenda not only for this particular race, but
as the future of the Democratic Party.
Speaker 3 (11:40):
When someone stands up and says, I will lead this
city by making it more affordable. And here are my plans,
real plans. Plans to deliver on childcare, plans to deliver unhousing,
plans to deliver gon experiment. We're going to try things
on groceries. That is the democratic message.
Speaker 2 (12:01):
That's the Democratic message. So the reporter good question here
follows up and makes it very clear what Elizabeth Warren thinks.
Speaker 3 (12:08):
Is this what the party should look like?
Speaker 2 (12:10):
Yes, Credit Party, you bet, you bet. We are going
to embrace this. And and Scott it's almost like they're
breathing a sigh of relief. I mean, Elizabeth Warren's more
on the far left and some in the party, but
the party's been drifting pretty hard left for a long
time now. And again, I don't think it was the
ideas of son, mom Donna, if they were so upset
(12:30):
with it was just about electability, and once he seems
more electable, they're going to go along with it. What
do you make of that? And just the way that
that Mom Donnie's going about this and the way that
the Democrats are approaching this issue.
Speaker 1 (12:42):
There's a little bit of a split, I guess among Democrats,
because there's a there's a wing that sort of says,
we just need to be louder and fight harder. And
maybe you could classify these Warren comments as another another
strategy which is well changing strategies right, embracing some of
the socialist, communist tendencies of the candidate for New York
(13:07):
mayor talking about, you know, trying things with groceries, you know,
city owned grocery stores which don't work, proven over and
over again. And affordability, this idea, and I think we
even talked about this, you know, affordability in New York City.
The lowest income voters didn't choose Mom Donmie, they chose
someone else. It was the upper income people that really
(13:30):
drove Mom Donnie's victory in New York City. So who
are we making it affordable for more affordable for those
who need it the most, or more affordable for those
who are comfortable but just wish that things were slightly
less expensive. Perhaps in certain places, I think people look
and think the policies likely won't work for those who
need the most help. In New York City. It's an
interesting NBC piece two days ago. Now, I think about
(13:53):
some of the Mom Donnie's advisors saying, don't become Brandon Johnson.
Chicago mayor. Brandon Johnson, who is not at a vowed socialist,
but is close enough in terms of policy prescriptions. Also
as a stew of the labor unions in Chicago, you know,
teachers in union specially, and he's got in a lot
of trouble. Actually, fresh off of the printer this morning, Greg,
(14:17):
the new public opinion poll for Brandon Johnson in Chicago.
Overall favorability at twenty one percent. Oh overall, Yet you
say ooh, because that's an improvement for Branson considerably. Congratulations
to him. Overall unfavorable at seventy two percent, and those
who say they have a strong unfavorable bull opinion is
(14:38):
a majority of voters at fifty five percent. That's where
Brandon Johnson finds himself right now. And he has made
a lot of enemies. He's not friendly with GiB Pritzker,
the governor and future presidential candidate. He has made enemies
even among some of the more progressive city council members
in Chicago. There are massive monetary issues in Chicago to
(14:59):
the city. He's got a one point one billion dollar
deficit for next year. Chicago public schools have a quarter
of a billion dollar deficit for the next fiscal year.
This is what Mam Donnie wants to avoid. Because the
answer now is Brandon Johnson literally going to the press
and listing things he wants to tax workers. He wants
a head tax attack on every worker in Chicago. He
(15:20):
wants to tax congestion, liquor, restaurant meals, bottled water, checkout bags,
sports betting. He also wants to have a voluntary tax
on hospitals, churches, and universities operating inside the city of Chicago.
When your policies drive your municipality, your city and do
extreme financial difficulty, those are the options. And so I
(15:42):
think Mamdanni wants to or at least his advisors are saying, hey,
let's try to avoid those types of things. Brandon Johnson
is not popular, Brandon Johnson likely is heading to defeats
in a potential reelection bid. Brandon Johnson literally listing off
various things random things to potentially tax in the city
of Chicago. Go They don't want to go that direction.
(16:02):
And yet many big city mayors and who are espousing
policies similar to that of Mom Donnie as exactly where
they find themselves very quickly.
Speaker 2 (16:10):
What do you make of the Democrats latching on to
the word affordability. I think most people remember that the
nine percent inflation happened on Joe Biden's watch, while those
same Democrats denied that it was a problem. Mind you,
there was, of course that infamous chart that the Democrats
tweeted out about a week or two ago, where they're like, oh,
it's Donald Trump's America with the record price of groceries,
(16:34):
when it's obvious that the vast majority of the climb
happened during Joe Biden's presidency. And so I don't think
Americans have that short of a memory. And if their solution,
their plan to get to affordability is just government control
of everything, you might get cheap groceries for a little
while until there's nothing left on the shelves. Just what
you get a communist guy.
Speaker 1 (16:55):
That's exactly where I was going. So affordability means three things.
In this case, it means subsidies, government subsidies, so it's
you know, transferring money, transferring wealth. It means price controls. Certainly, okay,
you can only charge well, I mean New York City certainly.
You know, rent control is an example of that, but
price controls on almost everything. I had to go back
(17:17):
to Illinois, but that you know, I know things. State
Farm just announced it like a twenty nine percent increase
in home insurance rates in Illinois, and the response by TB.
Pritz current Illinois Democrats is, maybe we should kind of
take over that industry. Maybe we should. We should tell
State Farm exactly the price they can charge for homeowners insurance.
So you're gonna, you're gonna you're gonna have price controls.
(17:37):
And then, as you point out, you're gonna have scarcity.
You know. One way uh to make things more affordable
is you can't buy them anymore. They're not available whatsoever.
You don't have to pay anything because you can't get
it for any price whatsoever. They like the word they
think is effective, but I don't think they know exactly
how to make it happen.
Speaker 2 (17:55):
No, I'm not just stay as vague as possible because
they know their means of getting there, which won't actually
get you there, is going to be horrifically unpopular. But
it's right that you go back to Illinois because they
followed this exact same pattern as New York as California,
especially because they've got huge problems with their insurance companies
out there as well. And it's because they keep running
(18:16):
themselves into this same problem with policies that these insurance
companies are saying, Look, if you're going to do this,
we've got to charge through the roof. And then the
politicians pretend that the insurance companies are the bad guys.
On and on it goes, rinse and repeat. All right,
it's got onto our crazy martini now. And it's been
a while since most of us paid any attention to
(18:38):
Jim Acosta since he left CNN, but especially since really
the end of the first Trump administration, where he preamed
and posed and.
Speaker 1 (18:45):
He paid enough attention to himself for all of us.
He takes care of it, okay.
Speaker 2 (18:51):
Exactly so trying to basically start a fight with Trump
or whoever was at the podium on any given day
at the White House. But now he's doing his substack thing.
He's got his own podcast, and he gained more attention
for himself last night, which is what I'm sure the
goal was. And the fact that we're talking about it
on some level, even though we're going to be ripping
him stem from Stern probably feeds his ego a little bit.
(19:13):
But he held an interview with an AI version, So
basically a bot of a Parkland High School student from
Florida who was murdered in February of twenty eighteen in
order to push the gun control agenda. Now, Acosta did
not create this bot. This kid's parents created this bot,
which is twisted on a whole other level. This kid's
(19:34):
name was Joaquin Oliver. And here is a clip of
Acosta quote unquote interviewing Joaquin Oliver. I would like to
know what your solution would be for gun violence.
Speaker 4 (19:48):
Great question. I believe in a mix of stronger gun
control laws, mental health support, and community engagement. We need
to create safe spaces for conversations and connections, making sure
everyone feels seen and heard. It's about building a culture
of kindness and understanding. What do you think about that?
Speaker 2 (20:03):
I think that's a great idea, Joaquin Scott. This is
so dystopian on so many different levels. The fact that
Acosta is treating this like an actual interview of the
teenager who died seven years ago. Now, the parents who
are putting this out there as part of a gun
control agenda. I mean, if you want to put your
child's face out there, I guess you could do that.
Other parents have done that. But to act like this
(20:25):
is what this person is really thinking and doing from
the afterlife is just twisted on a number of different levels.
And I certainly hope it's not the future of journalism,
but I have a feeling we haven't seen the end
of this.
Speaker 1 (20:37):
Yeah, let's talk about the grossness of it first. It
is I've seen technology now where you enter a picture
of a loved one and AI is able to animate
that into a short film like a little movie. So
(20:58):
pre cam quarter days, you can have a picture of
from nineteen sixty something you and your mom, who per
raps has passed away, and now you can see your
mom giving you a hug. Which, man, just very uncomfortable
with all that. It is so easy to get sucked
into a whole this alternate, fake reality that you're more
(21:22):
comfortable and than dealing with the real world. You know
stories of people who are continuing relationships with dead loved
ones through AI technology at are stuck. I mean, you
just talked about mental health. Man, there's a whole world
about to open with AI. Technology and what they can
do to us, literally to us. So that's one level
(21:46):
that you sort of get stuck inside this loop that
you can't escape from, and trying to bring back this person,
this loved one, in some way, shape or form. And
now as we put it out for public consumption in
an interview with Jim A Costa, this is you know,
this is a nightmare journalistically right to sort of fake
(22:07):
and pretend like it's some sort of real interview for
a Costa. It's perfect because this this greg is the
ultimate echo chamber. It's AI technology. It only reacts to
the input you give it. You can make it say
anything that you want with the right inputs. And trying
to pretend and say, oh, this is what he would
(22:31):
have said if he were still with us today, and
then taking that seriously. These are the same people who
are so concerned about deep fakes and cheap fakes and
people will see something and not know if it's real
or not. And bringing out an AI you know, not
a hologram, but you know, AI representation of this person
and trying to have pretending to have the serious conversation.
(22:52):
It's a total nightmare. It's it's the ultimate in fake news. Right,
You're presenting an interview with an AI generated person, having
AI generated thoughts as if it's some sort of real
thing and representative of what that person might or might
not have said. Totally gross and totally unacceptable from a
(23:14):
journalistic perspective.
Speaker 2 (23:16):
Oh, absolutely no question about it. And like you said,
you don't know what this kid would have thought about
anything at this point. Maybe he would have agreed with
his parents, maybe not. They're basically programming what he's going
to say here, and Acosta, like you said, is basically
feeding him where Acosta wants the conversation to go. And
so you could easily, as the technology improves over time,
(23:39):
have people who you know believed exactly the opposite, but
you can trot them out and have them commenting falsely
about what they would have really thought about that issue.
I mean, you could have a Democrat trotting out Reagan,
you could have a Republican trotting out some Democratic president
and having them say nothing that they would have actually
said in their actual life. I'll tell you who was
at the cutting edge of this in a smart way.
(24:00):
Robin Williams, before he died, basically said in legal papers,
you can't use my image. You can't use my voice.
You can't do anything that artificially creates something that I
didn't actually do. And I think all of us are
going to end up having to do something like that
sooner rather than later.
Speaker 1 (24:16):
It's a whole new definition for name, image and likeness
college athletes, but for your own name, imaged life. Don't
make me say stuff I didn't believe when after I'm dead,
like you have to write that in your will.
Speaker 2 (24:29):
Now, yes, yes, exactly, all right, before we exit real quick.
Scott mentioned yesterday that last night he was going to
go see the new Make a Gun, starring Liam Neeson
as the son of Frank Dreben, of course, was classically
played by Leslie Nielsen. What do you think?
Speaker 1 (24:45):
What did? I think? It exceeded my admittedly very low expectations,
but I thought it was nowhere near as good as
some of the reviews you might have seen out there
really praising it as a high quality comedy. It was.
It was was in the middle. I think that it
was the right recipe with the wrong ingredients, meaning the
new filmmakers understood the assignment. They knew the shape the
(25:08):
movie should have and how it should move and where
it should go. The jokes just aren't good enough to
carry the day for me, and something I was worried
about from the trailers. The trailers make it seem like
a very dark movie, like literally a dark movie, and
it is like it's oddly very dimly lit, a lot
of shadows. If you remember the Naked Gung movies, everything
(25:31):
was California bright like sunshine. You know, the whole baseball
scene of course, being outdoors at a baseball park, it's
all very indoors and shadowy, and the tone is not
quite right. Liam Neeson's okay decent. Someone said in writing
about this film, you know, one difference is when when
Leslan Nielson, his face was was this comic instrument even
(25:53):
if the rest of him was dead pair, and that
aspect is kind of missing here with Liam Neeson playing
that role. There are good moments, you know, there are
laugh moments that My particular favorite is one where I
won't spoil the joke, but it's one where Frank Dreben
Junior is going to watch some security footage that has
been caught at a bar and something happened. It's very fun.
(26:17):
So there are funny moments I don't doubt. I'm a
giant Airplane, you know, zazz fan. I think Airplane has
an argument as being perhaps one of the great comedies
of all time. Love making it, so my standard might
be a bit high, but I thought that this was
probably not even as good as thirty three and a third,
which is kind of a middling entry into that series,
(26:38):
and this was probably somewhere near that but not quite
as good. It's okay, you'll laugh a little. I don't
think it was. It doesn't embarrass the franchise. I wouldn't
say that, but it's not as good as some of
these great reviews that I've been seeing.
Speaker 2 (26:50):
In my opinion, I appreciate that that should give folks
some good insights on whether to put the money down
at the theater, maybe wait for it to come out.
Speaker 1 (26:58):
By the way, I'm all four more common Hollywood stopped
making comedy, So I'm trying not to rag out it
too badly, because at least there's a funny movie in theaters.
But I do wish it were a bit.
Speaker 2 (27:08):
Better, much more to talk about tomorrow, I have no doubt. Scott.
Thank you for being here today. We'll see tomorrow. Thank you,
Greg Scott, Bertram is the general manager of WRFH Radio
Free Hillsdale on the campus of Hillsdale College one on
one point seven FM. He's also the director of the
Hillsdale College Podcast Network, host of the Radio Free Hillsdale Hour,
and of course, the co host of Wasn't That Special?
Fifty years of Saturday Night Live. I'm Greg Corumbus of
(27:30):
Radio America. Thanks so much for being with us today.
Please be sure to subscribe to the Three Martini Lunch.
If you don't already, tell your friends about us as well.
We'd love to have them listening. Thanks also for your
five star ratings and your kind reviews. Please keep those coming.
Get us on your home devices. All you have to
say is play Three Martini Lunch podcast. Follow us all
on x Scott is at Scott Bertram one tea in Scott,
(27:51):
Jim of course at Jim Garritty. I'm at Greg Corumbus.
Have a terrific Tuesday. Join us again Wednesday for the
next Three Martini Lunch
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