2 POGs Save the World Podcast
Two Army veterans—one left, one right—unite for the ultimate mission: tackling real-world problems with common sense, logic, and a healthy dose of military humor. 2 POGs Save the World isn’t your typical political podcast. Hosts Kj Bradley & Lance O'Neil bring unfiltered discussions, sharp debates, and tactical solutions to the chaos of modern society.
From politics and national security to sports and pop culture, no topic is off-limits. With battle-tested insights and zero tolerance for BS, these two POGs (Personnel Other than Grunts) prove that you don’t have to agree on everything to find real solutions.
Join the fight every Sunday at 8:30 PM EST, where the only thing sharper than the takes is the wit. Mission: Common Sense. Execution: Hilarious. Victory: Inevitable
🎙️ Listen. Debate. Disagree. Laugh. Take Notes.
2 POGs Save the World Podcast
Celebrating 3 Epic Years of Outsmarting Cable: Celebrate POGs Day with Special Guest Gregg Easterbrook!
Season 3 kicks off with a bang as KJ, Lance, and special guest Gregg Easterbrook dive deep into journalism, politics, and the American experiment in 2025. The crew unpacks major ethical questions: what happens when journalists like Jake Tapper cover for political allies instead of telling the full story? And what about The Atlantic's Signal chat scandal — was it right for senior editors to stay silent?
They also revisit the early Trump Administration through Easterbrook’s sharp lens and debate the evolving realities of American prosperity versus Marxist ideals. KJ leads a spirited challenge to Gregg’s controversial "Marx Was Right" column, pushing back on ideas about free markets, collectivism, and the strength of U.S. living standards today.
Plus, Gregg gives an inside look at his latest work, including All Predictions Wrong, his exclusive Substack series tackling where experts and pundits have gone off-course.
Three years strong and still cutting deeper than cable ever could — welcome back to 2 POGs Save the World.
What do you want to do tonight?
Speaker 2:The same thing we do every night Pinky, Try to take over the world.
Speaker 3:Alright, yo let's get into it. Try to take over the world.
Speaker 4:You're preaching treating the cops. Try to take over the world.
Speaker 3:And bring this chaplain in the world. Mr larson, take over the world. What's up, what's up, what's up, world. We are back on this birthday sunday. Happy third birthday to the pokes. As you can see, we got some new background swag, chappy. How are you I'm doing? Well, I am here, I am here and if you guys haven't noticed, we have the esteemed Mr Greg Easterbrook here with us once again to celebrate our third birthday. How are you, Mr Easterbrook?
Speaker 5:I'm doing fine KJ.
Speaker 3:It has been a while. We are going to jump right into it today, ladies and gentlemen, because we were having an amazing conversation off stage. So we were talking about the 2020 election between Trump and Biden and we had a wrinkle that we wanted to present, and the wrinkle was Biden was on the ropes in the primaries and had it not been for the representative in South Carolina whose name escapes me and I don't know why, because he's my wife's favorite- James Clyburn.
Speaker 3:Clyburn. Had it not been for Clyburn saving Biden's butt, I don't know if Biden would have survived another race. So the question now we were talking about was where does Bernie fit in that situation? And had he won the primary, would he have won a potential race against Trump? Go ahead, guys, your thoughts.
Speaker 5:It would have been fascinating because you would have had left-wing populism that's hard to say versus right-wing populism and that's not a matchup we've seen in American politics at the national level anyway. But I'll tell you. What happened in 2020 and Biden suddenly going from his tail between his legs to the clear favorite for the nomination is, the Democratic Party was in a panic, not that Bernie would lose, but that Bernie would win. Because Bernie threatened the Democratic power broker base. He would have yanked the rug out from under them. They would have rather lost with Biden or anybody else than to have Bernie win and go to the Democratic Party's power brokers and say, okay, you can all go home, you're all out of here. Now your sweetheart deals and your taxpayer-funded summer homes are over, and they were panicked about it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's a. It's a Trump version of on the left.
Speaker 1:I think that's why so many so many GOP were so against Trump as well. I mean, I left when Trump was nominated in 2015 because I was worried about the same thing a lot of people were, and then I voted for him in 2020 because he was to me. He was three for three on Supreme Court justices, which is my. You know one thing I vote on, and so I think Bernie, I think Greg, you make a great point that you know, being the populist, I don't see Bernie going towards the middle, and we know Trump isn't going to move from whatever we want to call it Trumpism. So, yeah, I do think Trump wins in that situation, simply because Bernie doesn't big tent it enough. I think he, because he is such a leftist that in 2020, where we're starting to see, kind of now, that the polling is a little bit more people are more willing to accept some of the leftist, what is leftist ideas under progressivism.
Speaker 1:I don't think in 2020 we were at that point where they would. In America, progressive it's all relabeling, it's words, right. It used to be liberal and now it's progressive and leftist, but now liberal and leftist are not the same thing like they used to be 50 years ago, and so it would have been really interesting.
Speaker 1:I think the media, of course, would have fell in line right behind Bernie, like good little media do. And not to throw Greg into this, but just as media, I do want to say that Greg is a phenomenal sub stack. So if you haven't gone on to the sub stack and subscribed and become a follower of Greg, euston Brook and TMQ and all predictions wrong, so, by the way, any predictions that Greg's makes, guaranteed that you know they're going to be wrong, or at least can be wrong. I love it.
Speaker 5:I keep my promises. My predictions are always wrong.
Speaker 3:All right. So, speaking of that, I'm glad you guys you guys are amazing at segwaying. So here we go. First topic of the night Lance had brought up one of your columns where you was talking about Marx was right, and we had a little bit of a discussion about it. But I kind of wanted, lance, you can go ahead and take the lead on that and then just just kind of give us some feedback on that.
Speaker 1:Well, I think we should start with Greg's point from the article. Greg, why don't you tell us what Marx was right about? And then I'm going to push back a little bit on some of the things.
Speaker 5:The basic point of remember. During the debates, trump called Kamala Harris a Marxist. Yeah, she clearly is a Marxist. So is Trump. Marxism is the core philosophy of Western governments. In this sense, if you look at the Communist Manifesto from 1848, nine of the ten planks of the Communist Manifesto have been adopted by the United States and the European Union. We're doing what Marx wanted done with only one exception, and we're doing things that Marx would have considered close to inconceivable. Marx wanted a central bank controlled by federal government. We've got that. All the European nations have that now.
Speaker 5:Marx would have been stunned to discover that the capitalists and labor organizers were willing to sign a peace treaty, which we call organized labor. It's fundamentally a peace treaty. He we call organized labor. It's fundamentally a peace treaty. He thought there could never be peace between those two factions and now there is, and it's mutually beneficial in most cases to both of them. Marx thought that there would never be child labor laws. We've had child labor laws for 100 years.
Speaker 5:Marx was a Malthusian. He thought society would run out of food and that eventually we'd have to be drafting people into an army to try to improve soil. He didn't know high-yield agriculture was coming. So all these problems in a way that he didn't know could happen. The only plank of the communist manufacturing. Oh, and here's the key, what I got to remember. Be sure I don't forget this Marx hated immigration.
Speaker 5:He wanted immigrants put in prison and all of their property confiscated. He would have fit right in with Fox News. Marx could have had a Fox News show called Carl's Corner where he fulminates against getting rid of those immigrants and deporting them to El Salvador and locking them up. He was totally with Fox News on that. The one thing, the one plank of the Communist Manifesto that we didn't adopt was the abolition of inheritance. He wanted, on death, all property owned by an individual to forfeit to the state.
Speaker 5:And we kind of tax states here in the United States we tax them very lightly. Some of the European Union countries tax them very lightly. But basically you can still accumulate vast wealth through family generations and the fact that you can still accumulate vast wealth in family groups is one of the main sociological distinctions in the United States today. Because you look at the black-white gap, the education gap is declining, the pay gap is declining, marriage statistics have normalized, become about the same between the two groups. The one thing that's totally different is family net worth. Whites have much more family net worth than blacks do, and we're not taxing it, and so it's going to grow, not shrink.
Speaker 1:Yeah, KJ and.
Speaker 1:I have actually talked about that quite a bit. On the money and the black dollar being kept in the black community. He definitely educated me on that a few times. So, greg, what's your thought on? Is there a difference then between in the Communist Manifesto and Marxism, versus Leninism and Maoism, where the collective becomes the government and the collectivization of, let's say, farms is probably the easiest one, the non-land ownership because my understanding is Marx thought that was the way to go is that it would be the collective. And then we saw how the Leninists basically, for all intents and purposes, made that one of the largest death knells in the history of the 20th century.
Speaker 5:The three greatest killers in human history. One is Hitler, of course, the other two are Stalin and Mao, and they perverted Marxism into a philosophy of dictatorship and an anti-human philosophy, a rationalization for mass murder. Marx was not a violent person. He was pretty crazy, he had a lot of eccentricities and he turned out to be wrong about many things, most prominently food supply, but he didn't want violence. He would have been horrified if he saw what Stalin did to people in Ukraine in the 1930s, for example, or what Mao did during the Great Leap Forward. That would have horrified him.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think that's one thing that kind of gets lost to history is the difference between and this is not I am not defending Karl Marx by any stretch, but the idea that Marx was basically we're going to set up the government, we're going to set it up for each according to their need, and then humans are going to take over, and then the government is going to step back and eventually dissolve. That was the idea Marx had. And you saw Lenin. I don't think we have ever had a government that has willfully given up power once they've become a dictatorship. That they said yeah, this just isn't for me anymore, it's pretty damn rare.
Speaker 5:One of the reasons George Washington should be a hero to all of us is he was very rare in voluntarily surrendering great power. He could have been president as long as he wanted and he said nope, somebody else should take this job now. And it set a good precedent. That's mainly lasted.
Speaker 1:Well, didn't Washington? I thought they proposed that he would be the new King George.
Speaker 5:Isn't that correct? At one point there was a proposal to crown him, but he was never interested in wearing a crown.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I knew he wasn't interested, but I knew there were people that wanted to draft him into that position.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so yeah with Marxism. I think that that's part of the problem is, when you go into the philosophy of how things are versus how they actually are practiced, and to keep it a little more modern that was one of the biggest critiques that you saw in the Obama administration from the right is hey, we have all these college professors, we have these people that are based in philosophy and theory and they've never done this before, and so any any time things went wrong, it was an easy see.
Speaker 1:We have these people that are based in philosophy and theory, and they've never done this before, and so any time things went wrong, it was an easy see. They don't know what they're talking about. Meanwhile, you know, currently we have people that have experience that maybe not enough experience that seem to be shooting themselves in the foot every so often.
Speaker 3:Experience is such a very loose word but out of respect of our guests, I will not belabor that point. You know how I feel about that. But anyway, next topic how's your citizens and your judges?
Speaker 5:So, Greg, my esteemed, co-hosts don't like when I use the F word when.
Speaker 3:I talk about this regime, right, but when you start to take away journalistic rights, when you start to lock up you know citizens and hide them away in offshore prisons now you start to lock up judges it's starting to look real effy to me, and my co-host does not agree with me. So what are your thoughts in regards to the way the administration is behaving? I call it fascism light because we're not fully there, and my co-host says, well, because it's not traditional fascism. We're not there, and I'm like, well, yeah, they did it wrong the first time. So everybody learns from mistakes. That's why they're evolving and making it better. But what are your thoughts?
Speaker 5:I'm curious to hear I'm all in for deporting convicted criminals. Yeah, absolutely. If you're convicted of something, you should be deported. It's certainly possible that you can deport people who have entered this country illegally. Barack Obama deported almost a million illegal immigrants. It's a big change in the Democratic Party that now they love illegal immigrants they didn't used to. If you break our laws to enter the country, you've got no complaint if you're deported. But you've got some kind of normalized status here People with green cards or who are married to American citizens or who have received some kind of refugee status. They have to receive due process before anything happens to them. And if you can take away due process from disfavored people, how long until you take it away from the majority too?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think my argument is that you can't use the exception for the norm, right? So we're talking about the Maryland man. I know that that's how he's been labeled. I don't know. That's what we, yeah, that's what we, that's what he's become, the cause du jour. But then you have the Maryland senator who he gets, and he has all the people behind me he says, and his wife, his wife's here, and his wife was over here. He didn't know who the who the wife was was. So then it's like, okay, how sincere are you really? You know, yes, you might turn the wrong way, and I'm not saying there shouldn't be due process, I've never said that. But my whole thing is, if you're here at the, at the uh, as a guest of the United States government, at any point the United States government can say you're not welcome here anymore.
Speaker 1:If there's a cause or any real cause, people get mad at what's going on in Colombia and some of the Ivy League schools, those that are supporting the Palestinians. I remember not too long ago when if you were supporting a terrorist organization, you could get kicked out of the country because you were supporting a terrorist organization. And the last time I checked, hamas is still labeled as a terrorist organization, and I don't want to re-adjudicate what's going on in Israel and Palestine, but if you're blocking students, especially Jewish students, on a campus, like just last week we saw a video out of Yale where the Palestinian supporters and just for the record, this is my own personal thought If you're in any type of a protest and you're wearing a mask to hide who you are, you're not a good person. If you were proud of what you're doing, and that's why I think the what are the national front, the guys in the khakis and all that, I think that's a load of crap. I don't think that they're.
Speaker 1:I think it's a good likelihood they were federal. They were federal provocateurs, because they've pretty much gone away. But if you are here as a guest of the United States government and you do something that is supporting a regime that is goes against not only our values, but against one of our, and people can say, well, israel, just because they're against Israel, well, they should have that right. Yeah, you can absolutely have that right. You can have that right back in your country, where you have every right to have it. And so I yeah, go ahead.
Speaker 5:Well, I'd say that people who enter the United States, there's three ways to enter fully lawfully, on a temporary basis, as a student visa, tourist visa, work visa or illegally. People who enter illegally I don't care about it, I want to send them home. If I entered another nation illegally, they'd send me home, so we should be doing the same thing here. People who have entered lawfully on a temporary basis and green cards are temporary. They can't be revoked. They don't make you a citizen. They get due process.
Speaker 5:The Constitution is clear on that. If you do something bad, say, you become an anti-Semite at Columbia University, where they're practically handing out prizes for anti-Semitism. Now, you get a hearing before we send you home. That's really clear in the Constitution. 14th Amendment, one of its greatest. Yeah, due process sometimes is just stall tactics, but the 14th Amendment creating the due process right is one of the reasons. But the 14th Amendment creating the due process right is one of the reasons the United States became a better society and that right was extended to everyone who was within the borders of the United States, even to criminals.
Speaker 3:So I want both of you guys to kind of chime in on how that plays out with the. What's the Attorney Bundy going after the judge who allegedly I guess she snuck an illegal immigrant out the back door?
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:And they arrested the judge. What are your thoughts on that? I think that's a little. I understand it, but I think arresting judges is a slippery slope.
Speaker 5:It is a slippery slope and it's crossing a line that's only been crossed a few times in American history. A judge can commit a crime. A judge can do something unethical. Judges are not. Most judges, I think, are pretty virtuous, but if they commit a crime they should be prosecuted too. If they commit a crime, they should be prosecuted too.
Speaker 5:In the case of the Wisconsin judge, it is odd to think that we think of Wisconsin as this happy little state of dairy farmers. It's become the most politically tumultuous state in the country in recent years and I follow this pretty closely. My older brother is a federal appellate judge who has jurisdiction over Wisconsin, so he's also always handling these crazy cases. The judge who was arrested is a state judge, so her case probably will not end up in federal court. But you got to say if a judge commits a crime, nobody's above the law, a judge should be prosecuted. Now she's got to defend herself in court and show that she did not commit a crime. But it is crossing a line.
Speaker 5:By general agreement of both political parties you don't go after judges, in part because you don't want the judges to be angry at your party when you're caught in corruption. You want the judges to look the other way on you. If you go after them, they may not look the other way, but I'll tell you what this all builds up to. You've heard in the last two months. You've heard the phrase constitutional crisis used a lot. I'm not sure there is a constitutional crisis right now, but there could be one coming. If you look at the history of the White House and the federal courts, we think it's unprecedented that Trump is ignoring federal court orders. Actually, this happens all the time. We just don't pay attention to it because it's usually on minor procedural issues. Biden defied a lot of orders. Obama defied a lot of orders, which is procedural stuff. Nobody cared. Now suddenly everybody's decided to care. If push comes to shove and the Supreme Court tells Trump you must do X, y, z and Trump says no, I won't, then we'll have a genuine constitutional crisis.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and one of the points I've made with that is the irony of this is the legislature makes the laws, the judiciary interprets the constitutionality of the laws and the executive enforces the laws. So if the legislature passes law and the judiciary says it's constitutional, hey, you have to enforce this, and the executive goes no, what are they going to do? Who's going to go in and enforce the law and the enforcers?
Speaker 5:That's the big question of a genuine constitutional crisis. If the White House went to war with the Supreme Court, who would win? It's not clear who would win. The strongest hand is always held by Congress, because Congress can alter laws. The president can write executive orders, but the next president just tears them up. They're nowhere near as strong as laws are. Judges can issue injunctions and issue stays and things like that, but somebody else can just it's not the judge, you just tear them up. Congress is holding the trump card not to make a bad pun, and right now, so far, congress has been completely inactive. A lot of the things that the White House and the federal judiciary are arguing about Congress could resolve by simply clarifying the law, and they don't want to do it because they want to be able to blame somebody else for what's going on.
Speaker 1:Exactly Wait what?
Speaker 5:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Do their job.
Speaker 3:No, no, no, no. You are right on point. I am all for speaking of term limits. That brings up a good point. I mean, it's going to take us off a little bit, but how do you feel about term limits?
Speaker 3:We are, I am, definitely pro term limits at every level Scotus level, congressional level, obviously we have it for the potus, but I believe no one should be there forever. Be there forever, and then you start to see people whose net worths are continuously, you know, exploding during their time serving the people. It just further strengthens my point that, hey, man, you should not be there forever. Do some time, and then I need you to come out so we can get some fresh voices and generational takes. You know what I'm saying? Because every generation ages out right, and I think right now, what we have in Congress is we have everybody that's been there forever has generationally aged out, and the young people that we have in there are grifters who are looking. They saw, they saw the opportunity to cash in and they saw the Congress is the easy cash cow. So a lot of them aren't in there to serve the people. They're in there to serve their pockets. But I'll leave that to you guys. What are your thoughts?
Speaker 5:Just because Elon Musk says something doesn't mean it's wrong. So when Elon Musk points out the number of people who are long-serving members of the House and Senate, whose net worth has spectacularly increased even though they're on a public servant's salary and don't have any other visible source of income, you know there's corruption there and you ask yourself we're running up these fantastic federal debts. Spending keeps increasing, increasing. Where are the new bridges? Where are the new roads? Where are the new schools? Where are the new hospitals?
Speaker 5:A lot of that money is being stolen by members of Congress and that's why members of Congress try to keep their heads down all the time because, as Elon Musk says, they don't complain about criminals because they themselves are criminals. Now, I certainly don't mean every member of Congress. There are some people of very high ethical standing in both chambers of the United States Congress, but you look at Nancy Pelosi's net worth, you know, tell me, oh, my husband invested wisely. Come on, we weren't born yesterday. And I'll give you a statistic that blows me away 16% of the American public is at least 65 years of age. 80% of Senate committee chairmen are at least 65 years of age. The aging is wildly overrepresented in the United States Congress, and whose fault is that? Our fault. We should vote those people out of office.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, I saw somebody I don't remember which congressman said this or where. I read it, but it was almost identical to something I came up with. Read it, but it was almost identical to something I came up with. Shoot, greg, it might have been in one of your columns.
Speaker 1:I said about 15, 20 years ago I used to be against term limits simply because every election is a term limit. But then I realized that the American people and the electorate is stupid. So you need to have these term limits and it should be very simple. So you need to have these term limits and it should be very simple. In the House it should be six years, in the White House eight years, in the Senate 12 years and SCOTUS should be 18 years and they should be slotted in one every two years. So it doesn't matter who it is the number third. The third person in the Supreme Court is after six years and let's say that person passes away with still six years. Well, the nomination goes forward and that person gets slotted in right there to number three. So after three years they're out, and that way it just it's constantly going through. I think that would solve so many of the problems with the oh well, this person's a Democrat nominee, this one's a Republican nominee.
Speaker 1:And the turnover, because right now the money that's involved in in the elections as well, is just for a pun. It's criminal, but literally I think it's criminal as well. But not just the dark money, but even even the yeah, because if I wanted to run for, if I wanted to run for Congress, I simply couldn't. I don't have the money. I would have to have somebody immediately come in and say, ok, you're in Georgia, the Georgia 10th. I think I'm in the 10th district. We calculate you're going to need somewhere around $2 to $2.5 million. Well, great, who's going to give me two point five million dollars? And then the other side of it blows me. I don't know how many people know this. Let's say somebody came in and said OK, we're going to back you for two point five million dollars, and I say, great, I'm going to go run. And then I spend up. Let's say I spent fifty thousand dollars. You know what happens to the rest of the money? I get to keep it.
Speaker 5:And when you and Lance, when you get elected and I'm sure you'll get elected you're going to win handily. When you get elected, if you're like most current members of Congress, your first day in office, what do you start doing? Fundraising for yourself. You're not going down to listen to the debates, you're not studying the issues, you're fundraising fundraising, fundraising, yeah, fundraising, fundraising, fundraising, yeah.
Speaker 1:Kj and I have brought up. There's a movie, eddie Murphy, called the Distinguished Gentleman, where he ran because he had the same name as the representative who had died, and so Eddie Murphy is one of KJ's favorite movies. So that's the type of stuff that happens. And Eddie Murphy wins the election in that movie just based off a name recognition. Again, that tells you the stupidity of people. If I go in and I say I'm going to vote for now again, as a conservative I'm not a Republican, I am a conservative I am not voting for Mitch McConnell year after year after year. Now, people might not like, let's say, mike Lee. I like Mike Lee. He's a conservative, I see what he does. People don't like it because he is a conservative. Fine, cool, but I do, and that's how I'm going to vote. But once he starts going against what I think are my best interests as a constituent, I'm not voting for him anymore. Well, and I'm not in Utah anymore, so I'm not going to vote for him that way either, but it's ridiculous.
Speaker 3:Ok, all right, we got to keep the ball moving. Gentlemen, we can definitely have an entire episode on that, because that is, that is yeah. So here we go. Journalism in crisis.
Speaker 3:So recently we saw a, an Atlantic and senior editor from the Atlantic and Atlantic, good Lord Resign, and then also Jake Tapper in his book on Biden, on why he, on how he revealed all these secrets but was astoundingly quiet during the administration. Some of it sounded extremely damning to the president, like falling asleep in meetings and that sort of thing. Like falling asleep in meetings and that sort of thing. I guess the question would be if you knew that information beforehand, don't you think, as a journalist, or how do you feel as a journalist, having the responsibility to put that information out in the best interest of people? Because if my president is falling asleep in meetings and is clearly deteriorating but the message isn't getting out there, I think I deserve to know, as a voter, that's going to affect the way I vote what do you guys think there. I think I deserve to know, as a voter, that's going to affect the way I vote. What do you guys think?
Speaker 5:Well, I think mainstream journalism and mainstream journalism is mainly left wing not entirely. Of course there's a Wall Street Journal and Fox News. Mainstream journalism is mainly on the left Performed astonishingly poorly in the last, really for a decade. They performed poorly with the Russia collusion hoax against Trump in 2017. In retrospect, it was totally a hoax and I think a lot of the big news organizations always knew it was a hoax and they pretended that it wasn't. They performed incredibly poorly with the relation on the story of the key story of the relationship between China and the outbreak of COVID. Two factors to that the relationship of China and the fact that the United States government was funding the experiments in China.
Speaker 5:They pretended all that stuff didn't exist. They pretended Hunter's laptop didn't exist and tried to retaliate against the New York Post, successfully retaliated against the New York Post, successfully retaliated against the New York Post for reporting that story because it didn't fit their agenda. And then it all built up to what, for the Democratic Party, was a calamity that they hid the truth about Biden's actual mental condition and physical condition too. Now, at his age, it's no surprise that he was declining Most people do at that age. But the fact that there was an elaborate cover-up run by journalists. The kind of people whose job it is to communicate the truth to the public were trying to prevent the public from knowing the truth. The journalism business deserves the decline of public respect that it's experiencing right now.
Speaker 5:I think that's why people are turning to alternative media. Well, I've got to say it's been great for Substack. Substack has only existed for five years and, as of about a month ago, many of your listeners may not even know what Substack is. It's a media alternative where you subscribe to an individual rather than to an organization. That's the big difference. You pick the writers or, in some cases, the artists that you like and you support them, not an organization. But, as of a month ago, substack has more paid subscribers than the New York Times and the Washington Post combined. And it's not a big corporation. There's a couple of guys in a small office building in San Francisco pressing the technical buttons. Subsec has 92 employees and it has already more reach than many of the main journalism organizations in the United States. And it's not the only alternative organization, but it's one that's, I think, pretty well balanced and pretty factual. And the big deal. Media types are amazed that we've pulled the tablecloth off the table without upsetting the glasses and the plates, because we're doing it every day, basically.
Speaker 1:Greg, I have a question for you. You wrote for the Atlantic for a long time.
Speaker 5:I did yes for 30 years, 38 years actually, sorry, 38.
Speaker 1:So the current editor-in-chief, jeffrey Goldberg, accidentally gets put onto a chat? Now we're not going to go into the legality of the chat itself. We're staying away from that. The legality of the chat itself we're staying away from that. But he knew he was mistakenly put on a signal group because he had the same initials as somebody in the administrative, so he knew he didn't belong in that. What are your thoughts on him sitting back and gathering? Now I don't mind him If he right up front had said I was included in the signal like immediately and I told him I'm not supposed to be in there. So that just tells you how messed up they are. They put me on this. But he sat back for three days and gathered information. Now, did he have a legal obligation to disclose he was there? No, did he have an ethical and journalistic? Uh, should he have stayed on?
Speaker 5:well, I'd answer this way and I and I'm someone who's disagreed with jeff about many things. I don't like the direction that he's taken the atlantic in I I don't like, so, some of the opinions he's expressed. I think he handled himself properly in this case. His explanation and I take him at his word was that he first started getting this chat stuff he didn't believe it was real. He thought he was being spoofed by somebody. If you or I started getting chats from the National Security Advisor, would we believe that it was real? It's some high school kid messing with me. Only when the bombs went off in Yemen did he say holy shit, this is real. And 24 hours later he disclosed everything. I think he handled himself just about right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so he wasn't the son of an NFL coach who was to a prospective quarterback.
Speaker 5:There's definitely nothing NFL about Jeff Goldberg.
Speaker 3:So what are your thoughts on the handling of the administration in the press pool, with being able to like kicking out the AP? I understand you can have disagreements with news outlets Right but I'm also a fan of free journalism. Just because I disagree with you and I know you're going to put out a hit piece, I don't think it's right to restrict access. That's just my own personal opinion. What are you guys' thoughts?
Speaker 5:Well, I don't like the fact that the Trumpsters are so hostile to the press, but I think that's their choice to make. Everybody knows that they're hostile to the press. I think it's healthy for the press to be intensely scrutinized. There's no right to sit in the White House press room. Each administration gets to pick who they admit and traditionally the administrations of both parties have admitted the primary power brokers. But if the Trump people want to admit independent web-based journalists, that's their choice to make. I think they've got to balance it by making sure there's always somebody from the press pool, whether Associated Press or Washington Post. The press pool has always got to have a representative near the president. That's just for democracy to function properly. But if most of the people who are near the president are independents who do podcasts, for example, that's Trump's choice to make. And if President Ocasio-Cortez is sworn in in 2029, she will get to choose who gets to be close to her.
Speaker 1:I don't have any problem with that and that's kind of where my argument has been is that you don't have a right to be in the White House press room, otherwise, where's my press pass? Yeah?
Speaker 5:there is no right. I think every president has an obligation to ensure that there is a press pool reporter nearby at all times. The president owes that to the public. As long as that obligation is being observed, the rest of it's up to him.
Speaker 1:Real quick. I guess my question with the AP is because the AP has pushed such a political agenda with things like calling males females and saying, hey, we're going to go by what they call themselves, and the Trump administration saying, well, no, I mean, if you're not going to be honest about the sexual, I don't even know how we're doing it nowadays. It's not gender, it's not, you know, whatever the anatomical genitalia somebody has. If you're going to lie about that, then why should I trust you about anything else? And I've seen plenty of stories, and especially from the right. I see that you know this trans person did this and she, she, she. And then I'll see in the comments going you mean he, he, that's a dude. And so to me I look at that and go I'm kind of like Jordan Peterson. Jordan Peterson has said if a student comes to me and says, hey, dr Peterson, I'd really appreciate it if you called me Jennifer, that's how I, that's how I identify, and so if you would call me that, I'd really appreciate it, and he says, yeah, absolutely no problem. His problem is when the law turns around in Canada and says you will say she, and that's how he came to. He came to the forefront of the intellectual dark web is by saying no as law. Why am I going to? You can't force me to do that.
Speaker 1:And I think that's where the problem becomes is the AP is saying, well, we don't give a crud what you're going to say in the White House. Otherwise, it says, okay, well, if you're not going to follow the very basic rules that we're putting out here, the AP just came out with one a couple of weeks ago. They will capitalize. When talking about racial, they'll say black is with a capital B, but white with a lowercase b. Well, why? Or I'm sorry, white with a lowercase w. Well, why, if you're going to be a news organization, puts things out and says this is how we're going to do it.
Speaker 1:And it might have been the AP you know the AP guidebook that did it instead of AP. And if I'm complaining to you, I'm sorry, but you know, if you're going to say we're going to do it one way for one group, a different way for a different group, why are we doing this? Like we not going to just have a standard, stick with the standard and go from there? And if the AP is not willing to do that, I have no problem with them losing their special place in the Pentagon. There's no right to that space in the Pentagon.
Speaker 5:There's a huge amount of groupthink at the top of journalism, and groupthink tends to veer to the left, and you don't want to be the person who says well, you know, jennifer, okay, I'm going to call that person who wants to be known as Jennifer. Fine, that's what Jennifer wants, that's what we're going to call her. But not just AP but many New York Times is this way. They want you to believe that if a man declares himself a woman, then the man becomes a woman, and that doesn't make any sense. I'm talking about adults, not minors. An adult male wants to dress as a woman. As long as you're not hurting anybody, that's your choice. You don't become a woman. That doesn't make any sense at all. So I take your point that if Associated Press or any other news organization is willing to confidently say something that they know to be a lie, what else are they lying about?
Speaker 3:I agree. The only thing I have an issue with is the vetting process. The Trump press pool has been caught several times with Russian state sanctioned reporters inside of their press point. Just recently, the influencer who was literally paid to put out pro-Russia propaganda was granted access to the presidency. And then the incident before that you literally had a Russian state media reporter sitting right beside the press secretary. I don't have an issue with who you let in there, but there has to be a vetting process. We can't allow why? Here's why I say why?
Speaker 1:Here's why I say why If Al Jazeera sends a reporter, should we not allow the Al Jazeera? Because Al Jazeera is clearly antagonistic towards the United States, but we shouldn't let them in.
Speaker 5:There was a period where the State Department was encouraging people in Washington to cooperate with Al Jazeera because they felt that Al Jazeera was making a legitimate attempt to present the American point of view. I was at the Brookings Institution for some time and our press guidance from Brookings said whenever Al Jazeera calls, treat them with respect and answer their questions, because we think they're trying to be a responsible news organization. And we all said, fine. Now, I think since October of 27,. That's changed. But until it changed I didn't have any problem working with Al Jazeera. And I'll tell you my knowledge of how the vetting works.
Speaker 5:I never held a White House press pass, so I don't know how that vetting works. But for 30 years I held the United States Congress press pass. There's a thing called the Periodical Press Gallery in the Senate where you have to go to apply for that pass. It was pretty damn rigorous. I had to disclose a lot about my personal life in order for them to issue me a press pass. If I had been up to anything, they would have figured it out. So the same level of scrutiny should apply to anybody who's getting a White House press pass.
Speaker 3:That's all I got. I completely agree. All right, Greg, we got you for a couple of minutes left, so we're going to do a rapid fire.
Speaker 5:Okay.
Speaker 3:What are your grades for the first 100 days? I think we're a little past 100 days now of the administration. What are your thoughts, your grades and where do you see this administration going?
Speaker 5:I like the fact that Trump is going after the deadwood in Washington and the entrenched assumptions about oh, just because we've always spent on this program, therefore we should spend even more on this program. I like the fact that he's doing that. I think he's shooting from the hip way too much and we're seeing him especially with tariffs. Tariffs are a terrible idea. There's like 11 economists in the entire world who want more tariffs. Tariffs have always harmed both countries and they're harming both countries here. He's got to pull back from it. He shot from the hip way too much with tariffs.
Speaker 5:Otherwise, I like the fact that he's streamlining government. I like the fact that he's laying. I don't like the fact that no one individual you want to see laid off. But you know the theory of management consulting that any organization can take a 5% staff cut. Any organization will be improved by a 10% staff cut. It's when you exceed 20% that you start to damage the organization. So if he gets like the State Department now is talking about a 15% cut, that's tampering with the area where you damage the organization instead of helping it. So he's shot from the hip too much. He's got to pull back. But I like the fact that he's been aggressive. Washington is designed to resist change on almost every level, and change is sometimes healthy.
Speaker 1:Real quick with tariffs. If the point of the tariffs with China specifically are to try to force China to be an honest broker, is it worth at least the attempt, even if it hurts in the short term are to try to force China to be an honest broker, is it worth at least the attempt, even if it hurts in the short term?
Speaker 5:Yeah, if there's a plan, if he's not just doing whatever pops into his head, if the plan is to get China to bargain seriously for true free trade between the United States and China, then there'll be a huge success and everybody will be really happy about it. Is that really the plan? I don't know.
Speaker 3:I think they're calling it 5D chess now. Yeah, the supporters are saying he's playing 5D chess. Mr Easterbrook, as always, man, it is an absolute pleasure and honor to have you on the show. We wanted to cap you at 45 minutes, so we are right at that 43.30 time frame. So thank you so very much for.
Speaker 5:You mentioned the name of my sub stack. It's called Fiction's Wrong.
Speaker 3:Absolutely. Please do Anything you want. I was just going to say anything you want to promote. You got the last minute. It's all yours, brother.
Speaker 5:Well, I urge people to look for my last name on substack it's. It's a quirky subset. Half of the of what I publish is public policy and, actually, theology commentary. I'm big on the latter. The other half is football. If you, many of your of your uh audience would know the name tuesday morning quarterback. Tuesday morning quarterback back, and it's on Substack. Right now the football isn't being played, but once the season starts it'll be every Tuesday on Substack. Again, it's a quirky product but a lot more people than I ever thought are paying for it, so it's going pretty well. You're going to have a post-draft TMQ correct On Tuesday. Yeah, I'm finishing it right now.
Speaker 1:I'm looking forward to it. I can't wait to see what you think about or what you say about Sanders, because you didn't draft him in your mock draft.
Speaker 5:Well, I didn't draft any real players in my mock draft they were all made up. I know I like Sanders as a college player. He's going to be a success in the NFL. I think he's the first example of a reverse Nepo baby. He was penalized for having a famous father Instead of being Shader Sanders. If his name was Sam Johnson, he would have gone in the first round. I agree.
Speaker 1:As a BYU fan who watched BYU defense absolutely destroy Colorado, I had my doubts. So we'll see who's right in five years.
Speaker 5:Okay, we will.
Speaker 3:Mr Easterbrook, thank you so very much for hanging out with us, man.
Speaker 5:Thank you guys.
Speaker 3:All right, till next time, brother. Thank you Okay. Bye-bye, all right here we go?
Speaker 1:We're going to keep going, though, just in case anybody's wearing it Like we're only going to play.
Speaker 3:We are rocking it.
Speaker 1:We were just letting Greg go after 45.
Speaker 2:Hey KJ, oh, yep.
Speaker 1:Let me see, there we go.
Speaker 3:Oh, I guess what is it called? Administrative pick, the secretary of defense of the United States who cannot seem to keep his antics out of the news cycle. What are your thoughts? I know, initially, when we first heard about his pick, I was like, hey, man, the guy's not ready. And then so far he is acting like a captain who's never been in command. I mean, his nose is he's focused on. He's focused on enlisted stuff, you know, worried about the fitness of the troops, worried about uniform stuff like that. That's not a commander's responsibility. And he's getting his, he's getting his hand slapped too much for this.
Speaker 3:This signal that every week, it seems, is another incident with signal. Every week, it seems, is another incident with Signal. This last week was he had a gray line ran to his computer in the Pentagon because the cell signal was shot. What do you? I don't know if he's going to survive the entire term, because Trump doesn't like chaos, trump does not like messiness. Right, like low back, yeah, and hexf just cannot see. Everyone else kind of rolls with the flow and, and you know they have their hiccups here and there, but hexf, just he's that one friend that you always have to be like hey, I'm going out with so and so and your wife kind of gives you that look like are you okay? You know what I mean?
Speaker 1:He just, he just gives me frat boy mentality for a 50 year old, and that's not. I don't mean that as a compliment. Um few thoughts on him Now. I am not as focused on him as you are, so I I honestly, if you say he did something, I'm not going to say, oh, why he didn't? I don't know thing. I'm not going to say, oh, what he didn't, I don't know. I will say this the idea that they put a nipper line into his office so he could use whatever kind of strikes me as not real, not a real story. I was stationed at the NSA as a chaplain with an intel unit for three years as a chaplain with an Intel unit for three years Now.
Speaker 1:Before that, if you don't know my background, I was an Intel analyst for 10 years before that. I've had a TSSCI since about 2000. Well, I first applied in 2005 when it switched over, so I think it was originally granted in like 2006 or something. So I'm going to misrepresent, but during that time as an Intel analyst, I saw one piece of live TSSCI. That's it, One piece. I was at Air National Guard in Alabama during drill. They had a drone footage going. I was like, oh look, oh, it says top secret SCI up there. Oh, that's real top secret stuff. Oh, I mean, it was nothing, it was. It was a drone footage from you know three thousand feet up to circling some little outpost in Afghanistan. Footage from you know 3000 feet up to circling some little outpost in Afghanistan. So didn't really mean anything.
Speaker 1:And then, as a chaplain, when I finally got onto the NSA side, I walked in and I go to my desk and like, all right, here's your nipper computer, here's your TSSCI computer, your top secret computer, here's how you switch. I went what do you mean? What Like? There's like I literally can click a button, log in and put Iran and it will say you know, here, here's the search. And I probably I probably should have learned how to, how to manipulate the search engine better than I did, but I could see stuff right off the bat. Here's TSCI stuff, no foreign, and all these different things. It's like oh wow, you know, I've I've lived in Taiwan for two years. What's Taiwan and China and some of these things? But I did have the nipper line right there. So I don't think that that's the case, that he didn't have a, a nipper line in his office. I have a hard time believing that that. That would be like somebody saying hey, he had a satellite dish put onto the Pentagon so he could watch Fox news.
Speaker 1:All those guys have TVs.
Speaker 3:Right, the issue isn't that he had a green. The issue is he had the gray line put on his computer to type on signal and then text his mother. Uh, top secret plans. Like he, for whatever reason, he cannot grasp the concept of who needs to know, right? So so far he's tried to get his wife a secret clearance and then now it comes out that he's texting his mother. Like his brother has some kind of leeway because he is a director of, like he's in the Department of Homeland Security.
Speaker 5:So, yeah.
Speaker 3:So to text him on to text top secret information on signal is a no go, first and foremost. But when you're talking to your brother who is also in the Intel know, intel adjacent, all right, cool, but the the problem I have is when you're texting your mother and your sister and your cousin, people who have absolutely no business with this information, and you cannot seem to stop it that. So the first time I'm like, okay, cool signal gate on the plane. Whatever I got it, he put in the wrong guy. Then it's like yo, now you're texting your wife and your brother.
Speaker 1:That wasn't Hexeth, though. That was somebody else who set up the wrong one.
Speaker 3:Yeah, somebody set it up, but it was Hexeth who was doing the texting of the top secret plan.
Speaker 1:I think, that.
Speaker 3:Hold on. Let me finish that first one. All right, cool, I got it. Accidents happen. He thought the line was secure because somebody else said look cool. Then you find out that he's now had a separate signal chat after the fact with his brother and his wife, who has absolutely no security clearance. She doesn't even have a role in government. And you're like all right, secdef, you really got to chill out, bro. What's the problem? And then a week after that you find out he's texting his mother Top secret Like what the hell man?
Speaker 1:I think you have a better argument with the texting his mom, who does not have a clearance and doesn't have need to know, than some of the others and the reason I say that is there's a.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you should have known better. I get that part right. The argument is well, if we're talking about this stuff, it's not classified, it's not top secret until it is. Who classified all that stuff? Right? So if the question becomes who authorized Signal?
Speaker 1:Apparently that was the Biden administration that said you can use Signal to have these cross conversations within the government, and there's definitely a should have known, like, hey, that's what spillage is by taking and everybody that's in government, everybody that deals with classified materials, has to take these classes. Now, to be fair, a lot of people go click, click, click through classes. I would hope that somebody in his staff, who's the S2 guy, is going into and saying hey, look, we need to really have a real death side conversation about this stuff. Um, I, I do wonder, and and again, this is not just justifying I don't know I do wonder how much of these were. Um, all the same incident that is now being recycled two or three times like is, or if they're different, and if they're different and if they're different, again, there needs to be yeah, they've already cleared that it was different.
Speaker 1:It was literally different. These were different. These were different, not in this past.
Speaker 3:So initially, no, initially we had the Signalgate thing. That was one incident, right, but that was the Houthis, that was the bombing of the Houthis, right. So then you had the, then you had the Elon trying to get in on the China mission, which was all right, on the China briefing. What did Hexeth have to do with that one?
Speaker 1:Because he said it was Hexeth, yeah, this is Hexeth.
Speaker 3:Hexeth set up the meeting with Elon. He didn't clear it with President Trump. Trump didn't know that Elon was supposed to attend the brief. So Hexeth invited Elon to attend the top secret brief on China without informing the president, because I got to believe that the president would be like nah, nah, he don't need to be in there. All right, but that's I don't know if that's true. Well, no, it's true, because it's true, because they've already reported and vetted it.
Speaker 1:So that's two no, that's not what I. What I mean is I don't know. Do you think, do you think that if if hex had gone to trump and said, hey, I want to invite I I assume you want elon in on this meeting don't you think trump at that point goes?
Speaker 3:well, yeah, of course well, no, I can only go by what trump said and the potus said he didn't know, and if he had known, he would have told him not to invite him.
Speaker 1:No, not that. Oh. Did Trump follow it up and say if I had known.
Speaker 3:Yeah, the POTUS was asked about it and he was like no, I didn't know. But all right, cool. So you know, that may just be.
Speaker 1:Okay, sorry.
Speaker 3:But that's two. I got you, but that's two right, so that's two separate incidents. Yeah, then you get to the third incident of him texting his brother and his wife about Intel meetings and some stuff that's going on. They didn't get into specifics on that, but then they released the fourth one with his mother. They just released those text messages.
Speaker 1:So you got four separate incidents where it's like hey, man, what were the contents? Was it released? What the contents of third and fourth were, because I thought it was something where, like with the wife or whatever it was that same information as the Houthis stuff. Is it different? It could have been the same information, just in a different thread after it came out, and so that's kind of where I wonder how much of this is getting recycled, because I read something about whistleblowers and they were saying hey, he also set this one up, but it was the same incident. So I don't know.
Speaker 1:But I will say this as far as Trump goes, a Trump seems like the type of person because we have talked about his wanting to be the end-all, be-all right. He needs to be the one in charge. And so if they ask him and say, hey, did you authorize Hegseth to say this? And Trump going well, no, of course not, is Trump then like oh, I never would have allowed Trump being Trump. I don't know. It wouldn't surprise me if Trump at that point would go. No, of course not. I don't know it wouldn't surprise me if Trump at that point would have said no, of course not, I wouldn't have let him. And, realistically, if they had, would Trump have gone? Well, yeah, sure, of course.
Speaker 2:So I don't know.
Speaker 1:It's just. But when you got, if this becomes enough of a story and obviously so far it hasn't enough of a story, and obviously so far it hasn't but when it becomes enough of a story that Trump starts looking at Hegseth, going dude, you're making me look bad that's when Trump will cut him loose. Because as long as Trump believes that and I think Trump has shown this as long as Trump thinks that Hegseth is still good enough because I think there's also that idea of Trump, I think is a pretty loyal person as long as he feels like he's getting the loyalty back, His pick cost him a lot of political capital.
Speaker 3:He had to grease a lot upon to get Hegseth.
Speaker 1:Yeah, he did and, and the irony of that is matt gates I, I think he had to pick between him and matt gates and matt gates decided to go nope, pop smoke, I'm gonna go, I'm gonna go sit down and I think matt gates honestly, I think he thought he was gonna get that senator seat in yeah, yeah, yeah and then sandus went nah, I'm good. Yeah, I don't need somebody who's been accused of pedophilia as a senator.
Speaker 5:Just the accusations.
Speaker 1:enough for me to say I don't think that's a good idea. So good on good on DeSantis, by the way, for thinking that even if again, even if it's not true, there's a point where you go and I've been accused falsely of stuff too but there's a point where it's kind of like, depending on how bad it is, you kind of go with what came out when you have Matt Gaetz going. Well, no, I'm not a pedophile. Well, yeah, I paid prostitutes, but I'm not a pedophile.
Speaker 1:It's like oh dude okay, so time out, you what now? So when Hegseth and you know, I think the other part of Hegseth is he, because he did use so much capital, he's under that spotlight, that keg light on him. And so even you said, look, during that meeting he, he had his drink and you know, during the he used something, he took a little sip and it looked like and I'm going everybody does like you always see what. I assume that Now, if you're able to come back and say, hey, that was vodka, I would have been like, oh, you got to cut this dude loose.
Speaker 1:I don't know what his sobriety has been like.
Speaker 3:There's been there's been some reports that he has been having more celebratory drinks because of the stress.
Speaker 1:And listen, man whatever you're comfortable doing it to that.
Speaker 3:Yeah, whatever you do, which is fine, you're a grown man and I get it you had to say what you had to say to get confirmed. Nobody believed that you would stop drinking once you got confirmed. But when, when it starts becoming more than a rumor that you're conducting interviews, you know I'm saying like squeaky wheels after a while you'd be like all right, bro. The first time it's like ha ha yeah. Yeah, he used to be a drunk. But when you're starting, when Fox News starts to be like hey, pete, are you okay? Something should be pinging in your ear. You're probably a little too far into the juice.
Speaker 1:I'll say this Unsubstantiated, unsubstantiated, completely unsubstantiated there are a lot of people on the right who believe that Kamala Harris Liked her vino quite a bit. I agree On Saturday Night Live. So I agree, when you're talking about anybody who is in a position of authority, that you have to worry about Inebriation, because inebriation is something. That alcohol is basically evil in a lot of ways. I'm not a fan. I've said before. I think alcohol is one of the most evil substances in the world. It doesn't do any good. And if you have to worry about your secretary of defense or any senior leader, I mean this could go like realistically as a chaplain if, if I had a company commander who soldiers, came to me and said, hey, chaplain man, you know, or a first sergeant comes to me and goes, my commander man, I you know, I came in.
Speaker 1:I remember certain first class this was back when I was an E5, first class. I found out he had a bottle in his drawer and he would invite other E7s to drink after hours-ish. It may have been one or two shots in before the bell rang and for me I'm going, and I was the Intel guy going. Really, I mean that's at what point do I take this to the command? I didn't, because it wasn't necessarily in my place and from what I understood it wasn't affecting his his job but um. At the same time, a few months later he got charged with solicitation of a prostitute while he was tdy. So my guess is he wasn't overtly sober when that phone call happened. So when you're talking about an E7 doing, if it's not okay for an E7 to be doing this, it's probably not okay for you. Know, the GS scale for civilians goes to GS-15. I think the Secretary of Defense is like a GS-37. Yeah, or whatever. The defense is like a gs37. Yeah, like or whatever. The number is um. But again, until, until it becomes either hexeth becomes unloyal to trump or there is enough splashback that trump believes hexeth is making him look bad.
Speaker 1:I think he will stick with him because even though what you said was Hegseth shouldn't be worrying about the ACFT and shouldn't be worrying about height, weight and all that, I would argue the exact opposite. That is what you want. Now. The difference is normally you get that from the command sergeant, major of the army is who's the one who's saying, hey, we need to make these changes? But the army, I think, as a whole.
Speaker 1:Now and I will be very clear here, I am not in contact with a lot of soldiers on post at the moment because I'm in I'm in the retirement frame. I am not dealing with soldiers, but my guess is most soldiers who see this are probably pretty supportive of him still because he's still talking a good game about, only about taking care of soldiers. Soldiers don't generally care about the politics of things. They want to look up and say they want to see somebody going. We need to take care of this soldier Now. They also don't really recognize a lot of times when that leader who is saying that is at the same time saying turn around and stabbing him in the back before they kick him out the door. So I don't know, but I think in general, I think soldiers probably like that he is trying to be the frat guy buddy.
Speaker 3:I don't think he's long term. You're not in the threads, my brother. Let me tell you.
Speaker 5:No, I don't do anything online.
Speaker 3:Yeah, as someone who has his ear to the ground, they are very upset that they keep changing the APFT. That's not something a set dev should want you, and again, that comes with experience. He hasn't served anything higher than company grade.
Speaker 1:He was field grade. No, he was acting field grade. I thought he was a major. He never got major. He was field grade. No, he was acting field grade and he was an acting field grader.
Speaker 3:I thought he was a major. I thought he was a major. No, he never got major. He was a captain and a major, yeah. So I mean, remember we gave the sergeant major VP pick shit for that, right, that's why I said my bad, that's what I'm saying. So you know, as long as we keep it, yeah, as long, keep it. Even he never served in anything higher than the company grade position. So his thinking is company grade stuff, right, you don't have the garrison commander. Yeah, you don't have the garrison commander coming down to the unit level saying, hey, we got a problem with fatness and fitness and this and that, hey, we got a problem with fatness and fitness, and this, that and the other.
Speaker 1:They're not there. They're not there, Chappy, Did we never?
Speaker 3:have a battalion commander coming through the motor pool. That's not what I said, though that's not what I said. A battalion commander is supposed to care about the fitness of his troops because it directly impacts him. When you have the the garrison commander, when you have the post commander coming to your unit, okay yeah. When you have a post commander coming to your unit saying, hey, we have a problem with fitness, you got a whole bunch of levels of commanders saying hey sir, we appreciate it.
Speaker 3:But, um, yeah, check, and roger, I need you to go worry about the post, right, because we got this here. So when you have the secretary of defense, who is supposed to be on a strategic level, coming down to the operational level, that's an issue and it shows his inexperience and his inability to serve at that capacity. I'm all for shaking things up, but he lacks the experience to serve and it's showing and it's only going to get worse. He's making you can say what you want, but he is making captain level, he's making lieutenant level mistakes. Right, as a platoon sergeant, I have to tell my lieutenant hey sir, don't text our conduct plan. Don't text our conduct plans on signal. That's a bad idea. Hey, sir, don't use your phone when we're in the field. Hey sir, you need noise and light, discipline, right.
Speaker 3:So now I have a secretary of defense who's acting like a lieutenant who doesn't have NCO support, right, because if he had NCO support, if he just listened to his NCOs, they would probably tell him hey, sir, that's not a comment you need to make, you need to stay in your lane, focus on, and he's not listening to it. It's one thing to be inexperienced for a position. It's another thing to be inexperienced and not listen to your leadership. Every commander has a sergeant major for a reason. Right, they have a sergeant major for a reason and right now the sick death is flying by the seat of his pants and he's not taking. He's not taking wise counsel and it's making everybody look bad.
Speaker 1:That's my point, that's yeah, and that's what I was just about to say is what greg was saying. Um, that trump is flying by the seat of his pants. I think hegs hegseth probably is doing that a little bit as well. Um and like, for me, I mean, I tell you right now and this is this is a a drama of continuing to bang. If you're going to change the ACFT and you're going to make these stupid little changes, why, until you get rid of the two-mile run, I don't need a change. Get rid of the. You know what it's like when we talk about. If Trump gets rid of the term limits, then he will be the best. If Hegseth gets rid of the two-mile run and makes it a one-time 400-meter run with a kettlebell that simulates an ammo can or a 200-yard run, I will say best tech to FF.
Speaker 3:That's the same thing that other soldiers on the ground. They're like yo, dude, you got rid of the wrong stuff, you're taking away stuff, you're adding stuff, but you still got a mile run left in why. You know. I'm saying like, what are you doing?
Speaker 1:yeah, well, and like you just said, though, I mean I don't know how much that's heg seth going down and saying, hey, you guys need to figure something out, change it. But that's been happening. I mean, how many times since we first came into the military? You know, we both came in right around 2000 how many times has the acft, prt, aft, acft? I mean, how many times has the ACFT, prt, aft, acft? I mean, how many times has this dumb thing changed?
Speaker 1:Like I get evolving with the science in terms of, hey, sit-ups are actually pretty bad for your neck and back. I can personally attest to that. I'm hoping the VA recognizes how bad they are for my neck and back, because 25 years in, I think sit-ups and push-ups did more to my back than just about anything, along with loaded down ruck marches and things like that. And I was never even in Afghanistan with the guys who were going on the full-on rucks the actual reason you train for a ruck march. But again, I think that Hegseth is I don't want to say he's bulletproof. Again, I think that Hegseth is I don't want to say he's bulletproof I think he's Teflon.
Speaker 3:Until the Teflon wears off and once it starts sticking and Trump sees that it's sticking, he'll get replaced with a new pan. Yeah, it's almost like you have the Joint Chiefs there. You're not listening to them Like you're not doing. It's just. I don't like the inexperience at that level and I'll give you I'm not really a fan of I can't really say that I'm a fan of any pick so far. I mean Cash is kind of like half and half Like Cash. I'm like all right cool so far-ish. Still not cool with arresting judges, but I got it. I understand why. You know you, it was political, but it was also. I mean it was political but it was also pointed right like she broke the law.
Speaker 1:So I look at like this if she was driving down the street doing um 85 in a 45, she should have been arrested, yeah I got. You or I get arrested for that.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's what I'm saying.
Speaker 1:So on the surface, I'll say this Sorry about the administration, Real quick. The cabinet, I think Rubio's done really well. I think, more than not. They've actually been pretty solid, simply because you're not seeing much about them. Like you, you're not supposed to know what is going on in the, in the HUD department, or what's going on in the. You know what I mean. Yeah, I'm not really. Yeah, I'm with you, I am with so.
Speaker 1:So the squeaky wheel is going to get the noise. So the squeaky wheel is going to get the noise, and right now I don't know about the other cabinet members, but if I was a cabinet member, I'd be like keep Hegseth, Keep him, because he's going to be the guy that's taking every I mean every mistake he makes and everything they are. All it's all going to him, and so I can just do my job and just kind of not have to worry about it. I can still show up in DC restaurants, and and nobody's going to know who I am, Cause, like I, I can't pick out. I know who Linda McMahon is. I watched WWE 20 years ago. I know who she is now, though, If I saw Linda I seen pictures of her. I went the first time I saw her. This last one I went. Is that what Linda McMahon looks like? Oh, OK, I mean.
Speaker 3:So if I was a captain member I'd be like please keep him yeah whatever you do, keep Hegs at it, because he is, he is like, he is the shield for everyone. No, liberty, liberty, that's my point. I was saying she broke the law. So I understand why why Director Patel arrested her. She did break the law. I don't have an issue with that. But what I'm saying is two things can be true at the same time. He arrested her because she broke the law. He also arrested her because he knew that her arrest would score huge political points, because he arrested her based off of a hot button issue she was shuffling an illegal immigrant out the back door. So who arrested her? H was, it was the HHS.
Speaker 1:Nome's department. Do you think Okay, so, so DHS Homeland Security arrested her, or Okay, and I don't know? So my question is like do you really think it went up to that where where they called up and said, hey, fbi Director Patel, we want to arrest this judge because she had an illegal immigrant in her courtroom? She actively shuffled him through the courtroom and, on her way out, basically signed that he's innocent of all charges, without like. From what I read, even the prosecutors were like, wait, what? Now she was arrested by the fbi.
Speaker 1:Oh, she was arrested by the. Okay so, but on the way out she's getting shuffled through, you know she's. It's kind of like the other judge that just got arrested for for harboring gang members. Now the judges might go well, you know, I saw something in these young people. I just think with the right kind of, but at the same time it's like, dude, you're a judge.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Did you really have a gang member living in your house? It's a bad look.
Speaker 3:at the very least, that's what I'm saying Like I said, I'm not against her being arrested, but again, I also understand that the opportunity of the FBI arresting the judge will score huge major political points and it'll look good in the cycle, right, it looks good Iting her in the courthouse. Right, that was. That was that was for the theater.
Speaker 1:That was the answer. Yes, right, and going in, going in and arresting her house, you know. Say, hey, you know what? We've got this warrant for your arrest, you know come on, let's do it.
Speaker 1:That probably. But, like you just said, it's part of the show. And when you say one of the biggest hot button issues and I don't think this is an understatement Illegal immigration got Trump elected, I think it was probably the number. So if Trump turns around and Patel turns around and says this is going to make Trump look really good, see, we're even going to get the judge and she's guilty. If you read that now, allegedly, but if you read what she did, if what the indictment says is true, I mean holy crap, but why? You know, if you're, if you're Patel, why wouldn't you feel like, yeah, we're going to, hey, let's make, if we're going to do this, let's make it look good, and so you can say it's not good. I don't think that's banana republic or fascist type stuff. I think, by the same token, when you put yourself, it's almost the exact opposite of. You and I were discussing judgment in Nuremberg which, by the way, I'm guessing you didn't have a chance to watch yet. I didn't know.
Speaker 1:I just you know I think there is a difference between a judge who is actively going out of their way to break the law and a judge who kind of makes a bad decision. There was one in Utah a few weeks ago, a month, month or two ago, where it turned out that one of the, the judge and like the county prosecutors were sharing child porn with each other. You know, I'm not going to have a lot of sympathy for the FBI coming in and arresting either of those, you know, and if anything, I want them perp walked, like there's a point where, yeah, these guys need their faces. They should be embarrassed, they should be shunned, they should go, if the charge is true, they should go to federal federal prison saying look, judges, if you're not going to follow the law, then you're going to pay the price and we're going to make it blatantly. Everybody's going to see it. This is not going to be hey, we're just going to be quiet. So if you're going to do this stuff, especially when Just last year what was?
Speaker 1:the phrase of democrats no one is above the law. The ex-president is above the.
Speaker 2:He's not above the law and now, all of a sudden, it's like how dare you adjust?
Speaker 1:the arrested judge. Just because she broke the law, I mean she should have she, they should be giving her.
Speaker 1:It's like wait no no, you don't get this both ways. And this goes back. I'm going to go old school. This goes back to the Harry Reid lessons on politicizing. If you change the rules and you set a new set of rules, like Harry Reid did with the nuclear option of lowering, how many votes needed to be done, or Harry Reid absolutely lying through his teeth about Mitt Romney and his taxes when you do that, you don't get to call foul later on when the other side does it, and so would I hope that the Republicans would be better than that, of course Do I think they are. They're in politics. No, they're going to use everything. So none of this surprises me. I do think that, as far as the optics go, I'm against you in terms of. I think that there is much more. Yay, go get this evil judge, not evil.
Speaker 1:yay, go get this judge who is supporting illegal immigrants more than hey the president, arresting a judge that might be fascist, whoever it was. You know, we don't like this judge because she, she was freeing these, these, not detainees the suspects who we think, you know, we, the, the court had had come on the docket and instead of, instead of putting them in jail for the five to 10 years excuse me, five to 10 years we were expecting, she was consistently releasing them on their own recognizance. So coming in and arresting the judge for doing that, I think is very different than this lady snuck somebody out because she wanted to protect them when she knew ICE was coming to detain this suspect alleged of a felony. So, yeah, I mean, and I get going all the way back.
Speaker 1:Thad was saying, you know, hey, everybody, due process, and I get that. And I think that it's tough because the Trump administration I don't know who said when he was first deported, the Maryland man oh, he was accidentally deported, it shouldn't have happened, okay. But the minute you say that, I don't think whoever said that had the authorization to say it, because he never should have said it.
Speaker 3:Yeah, he shouldn't have said it, but it was true though it might be true, sure.
Speaker 1:But you don't say it, yeah, and, but it was true, it might be true, sure, yeah. And the other problem is now now becomes a problem. You guys, you and I have talked about this. Ok, this guy, first of all, the Maryland death. He is only going to be brought back to America if El Salvador says we're going to let him go back. A, b, the El Salvador president has said, nope, he's not coming back. But at the same time he let the senator have drinks with him and it didn't look like he was all the worse for wear and I don't mean to downplay the.
Speaker 3:They've since transferred him from the max security prison to a version of Club Med, which is good for him, I guess.
Speaker 1:I mean all things considered but so and that's my point is that that I think that you may have a situation where the el salvador president starts to go okay, well, I'm going to send him back. Uh, because it's covering my bases and Trump's going to be here. Maybe in this case, it would be better to send him back. And if he gets sent back don't think that it's going to be sent back and he's going to be released immediately to his family. The first thing that happens, he hits the ground. I can write the script right now they send him back, he's brought back on a military plane. He's taken from the military plane at Reagan or BWI or wherever the local air force they decide to land. He's put into a vehicle, he's driven up, driven over to the courthouse. The immigration judge is right there ready to go with the file.
Speaker 1:Where's your lawyers? They're going to warn the lawyers. The lawyers are going to be there. They're going to say okay, we're going to fast track this docket. So what have you had to say? They're going to do it in a day or two and the judge is going to make a decision. And my guess is they're going to rescind the hold order that was issued in 2019. And the judge is going to say well, look, let's see your knuckles, let's see if there's tattoos there. Let's see. Hey, is this a legitimate report that you abused your wife? Yeah, I find there probable cause to revoke your green card. Revoke, he's on a plane right back out. Sure, now, you could have that. I think that's probably what happens if he's brought back and then the Trump White House goes see, we were just trying to save the American people. Yes, he should. Obviously, we should have done this first. And it won't be Trump, of course, it'll be somebody.
Speaker 3:Not a set up at all Sorry.
Speaker 1:Hey, me and Colba, we should have done this. But hey, me and Colba, we should have done this. But look, he's obviously from El Salvador. We sent it back to El Salvador. Now, what El Salvador does. Okay, this is very different than in the old days.
Speaker 1:I think I've told you my Gitmo story about this. Right, I had a senior officer who was the investigator for when they I was down in Guantanamo, oh 203. And around 04, there were some accusations that 04 or 05, there were some accusations that some soldiers had been flushing the Koran down the toilet. So he was the investigator. He was a former police officer and so he went down there, he was tagged to be the investigating officer, went down. Sure enough, he came back completely unfounded, because if you know the toilet's down there, you couldn't have flushed a Koran. It's a circle, you would have had to rip it up and it never happened, right?
Speaker 1:He was telling me about a story that, while he was down there, one of the detainees had been authorized for release and so, ok, because he was there and because of his, what he was doing, they were like, hey, can you, you do the flight back? You know, can you be basically the OIC on the flight. Sure, you know, just because they fly out, he says we took him, we took him down. You know, just for custody they fly out. He says we took him, we took him down. The Not him, but the MPs. They took him down to the base of the stairs, handed him off, he signed or whatever, and they're walking back up the steps of the plane when the shot went off. So he was handed off to the government of an ally who took this detainee who had been sent back and instead of a trial they did what they do. You know they don't believe in a lot of due process. Yeah, that was, the due process was a bullet to the back of the head and he went. You know, I went up the stairs and we shut the door and we took off five minutes later. I mean, they didn't even spin down the head and he went. You know, I went up the stairs and we shut the door and we took off five minutes later. I mean, they didn't even spin down the engines. So it's a little bit different when you know this guy's taken and I think part of the argument you see from the right and this is a meme, so you know. Take it for what it's worth.
Speaker 1:The number of deportations by George Bush was two point five million. By Obama was three million, by Biden was you know one point five million. And by Trump has been you know one hundred thousand. How many injunctions? Zero, zero, zero. Trump has five. And so what's changed? Like even in his first tour, first time, his first presidency? You didn't see that. So that's where you start to see people worry about the political, political politicalization as well by some of the judges. I have a hard time understanding and I understand people say it's checks and balances, it's checks and balances, but when you have a federal judge, let's say from the state who's over the northeast Montana and I'm not saying exactly, I'm just using this in a different way the Montana federal judge in Montana and a federal judge in Montana writes an order that says the Trump administration cannot deport anybody at all simply because they believe that they are, you know, a gang member, ms-13. Judge, in that case really have the power of the jurisdiction to do that, because you've seen so many times where they, and maybe it is.
Speaker 3:But I think the short answer is the short answer is yes because it's unconstitutional, like we we've we've clearly established it the process of due process. Now, if you have, if they have been, if they've been, you know, into immigration and they found out that they are a member of MSN, ms-13, then that wasn't the issue at hand. The issue was not the deportation of gang members. The issue was randomly snatching a bunch of people who look like gang members or who you perceive to be gang members, throwing them on a plane, getting them to Venezuela and then trying to figure it out once you get to Venezuela.
Speaker 1:But even the Supreme Court was split on this right. No, the.
Speaker 3:Supreme Court was 9-0 on it. Like hey, no, stop. On one of the things the most important thing was hey, don't send people over without due process. That was the most important thing. Everything. Don't send people over to our due process. That was the most important thing. Everything else is circumstantial. Stephen.
Speaker 1:Miller. That's not what Alito said, though that's not what I read.
Speaker 3:Yeah, he had a dissent, of course, but the vote was still 9-0. No, this was a different one.
Speaker 1:Okay, he's talking about something else, yeah. So Alito and Thomas basically said so there was this At 1 am in the morning, supreme Court signed a temporary restraining order that basically said TRO. That said, hey, you can't keep doing whatever you're doing with immigration, right, I don't think it was necessarily the Venezuelan one, but it was something like that. Yeah, other one, but it was something like that, yeah. And and what alito was basically saying was well, hold on, we've always this has always gone through the process before it gets to the supreme court and we've always waited for it to go through the process. So so think about somebody like who's on death row. It just doesn't get to the supreme court. Death row has to go through so many layers of the judge, the appellate judge, the, you know, the, the federal, all that stuff, right. It goes all the way up through like 15 different and 30 years before it gets to the Supreme court. And so Alita was like we're breaking our own rules here because this is being filed on on behalf of people that haven't been wronged.
Speaker 1:We used to say it was all if, if somebody didn't have standing, then you don't get to sue. You have to be like if. If I try to go and I say, okay, I don't like that. Um, I don't like that utah isning black teachers, which is not the case, obviously, yeah. So I'm going to sue, right, I'm going to sue in Georgia. I'm going to say I think it's in federal court. I think it's absolutely wrong that Utah is going to stop letting black teachers. It would get to the courthouse here and they'd say you have no standing. How does this affect you? And I go. Well, I just think it's wrong, it doesn't matter, it doesn't affect you.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I saw a video earlier that explains just that and I'm glad I saved it. I figured it would come up, but let me play it and then hopefully we can see, and then we'll talk about it afterwards. All right, I can get this thing to work right, I can get this to work right.
Speaker 1:You know, if you can ever hire an engineer for five cents, five cents an episode, it would be good.
Speaker 3:I'm telling you All right, let's see if I can get this thing to work. Here we go. Sound off.
Speaker 4:Yeah, all those pesky activist judges are really getting on my nerves. The Supreme Court agreed to hear this. Yeah, they took it on as an emergency case.
Speaker 5:And I'm not exaggerating.
Speaker 1:If I win.
Speaker 4:I can do literally anything I want, but not like override the Constitution. No, no, no, I would definitely be able to override the Constitution with an executive order. No, that's not possible. You're clearly exaggerating, like you do, I'm not. Do you remember when I signed that executive order ending birthright citizenship? Yeah, it was challenged by, like, a whole bunch of states and watchdog organizations. Right, there were several cases that ended up being heard in federal courts and some of those judges issued national injunctions. But also, to be clear, one injunction alone, that still would have been enough. Yes, an injunction says that nationwide, this executive order is unconstitutional and unenforceable.
Speaker 4:So the birthright citizenship case, this is the emergency case that the Supreme Court is hearing. No.
Speaker 4:I was just explaining how those pesky activist judges have been keeping me in check. The emergency case is actually us trying to strip them of the power to issue national injunctions at all. Wait, so if you win and judges can't issue injunctions, then who would fight back against a clearly unconstitutional executive order like ending birthright citizenship? Anyone that was impacted personally by the executive order would have to sue us individually. Stop it. You're saying that if I was born here and my parents weren't citizens, I would have to sue you to get my citizenship back. Yeah, and here's the kicker If you win in a federal court, that doesn't mean dick for anyone else, holy shit. What about the states that sued you? This is where it starts to get interesting, because states can sue on behalf of their residents. So every state would have to sue to reinstate birthright citizenship and win Right, and some states might not. But then they could appeal it to the Supreme Court, who could give a nationwide ruling.
Speaker 4:Sure, you see how fast I can move on tariffs. Scotus already gets petitioned for 8,000 cases a year and they only have time to hear 60. All I have to do is sign a piece of paper. You have to fight an incredibly expensive and time consuming legal battle. So you can just flood the zone with executive orders and we can't even rule them unconstitutional until judges rule on them individually. Oh yeah, I can disrupt supply chains. I can determine what medical procedures you can get, procedures you can get. I can take your firearms away and until you win a case, your state wins a case or the Supreme Court rules on something, in a couple of years my executive order stands. Oh my God, and you're still thinking like a good person. I've already signed executive orders crippling law firms. I could cripple all of them. Holy shit, this is the biggest case of your sad little life, but you're still not bringing a break. Oh garcia, I don't actually have the power to do that. You're suing all of the federal judges, all those pesky activists um, a little bit of background.
Speaker 3:I found this guy's page a couple of days ago and I've been watching. He does definitely left-leaning, but he does at least a pretty good job at explaining this, the strategy and the process right, taking all the bias out. The strategy, pretty much is is the same right scoters can't do anything unless they rule on and based off of the executive order.
Speaker 3:it it's an individual, it's a case-by-case basis. If the injunction goes through which is, I think, what you were talking about the injunction on the federal judges, you would literally have to apply on a case-by-case basis, whether immigration or, for this video, birthright, citizenship, whatever the case is. This is what it is, I think. Yeah, it's a slippery slope man. I'm not really a fan of it. I dig the strategy. I understand why and how Brilliant, actually Smart, but not good for the coming man at all. I don't, I don't this, this.
Speaker 1:This goes back to what greg said and what I've said for a while, and we've agreed on this. The legislature isn't doing their effing job absolutely, but I mean you.
Speaker 3:So you have. You have this threat. I I think Murkowski was the one. Did you see that Murkowski interview where she was like, hey, we understand behind closed doors. Senators have talked about how we recognize the perception of what it is, but we have this albatross in our head called Elon Musk, threatening to financially support and primary anyone who disagrees. So for a lot of who, that's what I'm saying, but I mean you got to understand. They are addicted to the money and the power. So the threat of them being the threat of them being primary and possibly losing out on their grifting gig has a lot of our congressmen and women in a choke. Them. They refuse to act.
Speaker 1:And the irony of that is murkowski should be primary because of making that statement like if you're, if you, if you truly believe that me speaking up means I'm going to lose my gig as a senator, well, so I better not speak up. Yeah, you should be out. She should have like I didn't. I didn't hear that she should have resigned after saying that but that I mean if you it's not.
Speaker 1:I think that happens much more. Yeah, well, whoever it was. But I think you see that in other countries too a lot more, where it's almost like hey, this is so embarrassing that one of two reasons Either A I did something wrong and it came out, so I'm going to resign. Or B, this goes so much against my beliefs that the government would do this.
Speaker 2:I got it. Sorry about that. I'm going to try to pause it and start it over. I got it as carefully as I can, sorry about that.
Speaker 3:I'm going to try to pause it and start it over. I got it. I'm going to break it up so we can see it. But yeah, it is definitely a. I've never. I never thought I'd see the day where Congress would just be like you know what? Hey man, we love scraping our money off the top. We're not going to get involved and I'll let you hear it from her mouth and then we'll talk about it.
Speaker 2:Let's see. Come on, that didn't work. There we go. Part of what I've been doing with my team is just trying to listen as carefully as I can to what is happening and how it is happening and the impacts it is having on the ground, and we're honest up front in saying we don't know all the answers, but we're trying to unlock at different opportunities and in different ways, as much as we can, and it is as hard as anything that I have been engaged in in the 20 plus years I've been in the Senate. You know, say to people who are afraid, or people who are afraid, we are all afraid, okay, okay. So I'm sorry. I'm sorry, but we are.
Speaker 2:We're in a time and a place where I don't know, I don't know, okay, okay, I'm a foot lady and I've never played here before, and I'll tell you, I'm often times very anxious myself about losing my voice, because retaliation is real and that's not right. It's really a mess. But that's what you asked me to do and so I'm going to use my voice best. Sometimes it will be viewed in a way that will ask for a confrontation and other times it's going to be using my mother's charm that I learned as a young girl and in direct communication with those that I've made relationships with and able to fix some change that way. So I've changed that way, no-transcript yep.
Speaker 1:Did she say somewhere else that the retaliation was from with? I missed that within her own party.
Speaker 3:I yeah, so the, she, the. That was only two minutes. I didn't want to play the whole. It was like seven and a half minutes. So they have to be explained about. And they said well, you know, you have a guy in the White House who's threatening the primary, every Republican, and then, behind closed doors, we have, we're able to have candid conversations, but it always comes back to well, who's going to say something? Because you know what's, you know, you know what's lying on the other side. And she was like it's just, it's a really difficult position to be in and I'm like that's your fucking job do your job exactly.
Speaker 1:Do your job like, like, realistically do your job and you know what. If they want a primary, okay. So I look like this one of two things is going to happen if she gets primary right. Okay, either the people are going to say I appreciate that you stood up for us and you did what your job was, you showed integrity and you showed that you are a true leader, or people are going to go Well, yeah, you deserve to be out, but let it be up to the people. Who cares if you're primary? Like to me, that is an absolute spineless position and, don't get me wrong, it's, it's just as bad by the democrats. It's not like the democrats have a lot of steel backbones in their party either, um, but, like again, if, if the whole thing is, if you're in power to stay in power, you should get kicked out of power.
Speaker 3:I don't know. The threat of being taken off the government is very it's enough to make people say you know what? Hey, you're right.
Speaker 1:What do you think? I'm curious. I don't know what the number is. I wonder what the poorest, the least net worth senator is and what that number is my guess for senators. Now, maybe the House is a little different, the House, my guess, is lower, but my guess is I don't believe that there would be a senator that is under eight figures of a net worth that's at least $10 million. I'd be surprised. And if it is, it's a brand new one, for somehow Like yeah, but I'd be curious, but it's rare, you know it's going to be rare.
Speaker 3:I'm looking at it now to see. Hopefully I can get through.
Speaker 1:Networkofsenorscom.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 1:No, this is always in 2012.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it doesn't show it. But in talking about that, have you heard about Go ahead?
Speaker 1:Oh, I was just going to say, you know it's going to be regardless, whoever it is, it's still going to be More than you or I'll ever see in our lifetimes. Oh, absolutely, whoever makes the least amount? Absolutely.
Speaker 3:I'm trying to find the name of. So there was a representative who says that they I think she's out of Michigan she has a way to save the Democrats Michigan. She has a way to save the Democrats Slotkin. She's the. She made news this week about saying that she has a way of saving the Democratic Party, and the way to do it is to adopt the alpha energy of the Detroit Lions coach, Dan Campbell, and to get away from the wokeness. First time I heard it and I listened to her, and then I realized that they are using it and I listened to it and then I realized that they are using it again, that I don't think they understand what that word means. Right, I think they're using the word wokeness as a pejorative for being Black, because Well, they're using it Well.
Speaker 3:I don't think that's true.
Speaker 1:I think woke has become a.
Speaker 3:Yeah, the Democratic Party didn't lose because of wokeness.
Speaker 1:They didn't lose because of wokeness. I think in part they did.
Speaker 3:Absolutely not.
Speaker 2:And I can show you where.
Speaker 3:So the biggest issues coming out of the dip, out of the election, were what? What were the biggest issues? The post post immigration, immigration, immigration no immigration economy wasn't wasn't a conversation until the Trump admin came on board and brought it up.
Speaker 1:I might have here senators.
Speaker 3:Slotkin, slotkin, slotkin. I don't know who that is. She's out of Michigan, she's a senator. Elissa Slotkin, mm-hmm.
Speaker 1:So the numbers that are showing Wikipedia list of current members of the United States Congress by will. This is on Wikipedia. Now they only have like 49 lists and this is from House and Senate. But the least well-off as of 2019, I think it's because of the reporting open secrets there's a Democratic House, the person with making the least amount of money. The net worth is $10.7 million.
Speaker 3:Oh man, how can you survive off of that?
Speaker 1:Well, this is just Wikipedia, I put in net worth of senators 2024. If you want the richest by 2025, rick Scott, it says here, is worth $550 million. Oh my, goodness. He's number one, number 10. Oh, I like number nine. Number nine Senator Mitch McConnell estimated net worth of $52 million, so there's a big drop off after that. And then the number 10, utah was $31.72 million.
Speaker 5:Cool.
Speaker 2:But you remember.
Speaker 1:John Kerry. John Kerry is a billionaire. Yeah, I told you.
Speaker 3:Don't get me wrong but still it's the biggest legal grift that you can get into right now. So the issues, the issues that the voters said mattered the most to them post-election Inflation and the cost of living Jobs in the economy yeah. Immigration and the border Threats to democracy. Abortion Project 2025. Corruption in government, social Security and Medicare Pause for a second.
Speaker 1:Okay, the first one was what?
Speaker 3:The first one was inflation and the cost of living. Okay, I'll say that's both parties.
Speaker 1:Second one Jobs and the economy Both parties Next one.
Speaker 3:Immigration and the border Republicans Threats to democracy. Democrats Abortion.
Speaker 1:Democrats.
Speaker 3:Project 2025.
Speaker 1:Democrats. Corruption in government. Probably both.
Speaker 3:Both Security and Medicare Social Security and Medicare.
Speaker 1:Probably because it's older, older people so, and they they run both parties, so probably both uh Supreme court appointment. Um, red team, probably red team. Yeah, I was going to say probably more Republican climate change in the environment Democrat.
Speaker 3:National security and foreign policy probably more Republican. Climate change in the environment Democrat. National security and foreign policy Republican.
Speaker 1:Health care Probably both, but more leaning Democrat.
Speaker 3:Democrat, seven Republicans, one.
Speaker 1:Oh seven. I didn't even know it had that breakdown. That's interesting.
Speaker 3:Federal budget deficit.
Speaker 1:Probably Republican.
Speaker 3:Six to one Voter fraud and election security. Republican Six to one. You know what's not on here, dei, dei, because it wasn't a thing until January 20th.
Speaker 1:Nothing. There's no racial.
Speaker 3:There's nothing on there about woke or social.
Speaker 3:It says late deciders who were more concerned about Democrats being too extreme than Republicans. That's the closest we can get to woke is the Democratic candidate being too extreme was minus 86 with Democrat voters, plus 58 with Republican voters, minus 50 with Blacks, minus 4 with Hispanics, minus 11 with Whites and then plus 9 on late deciders as a whole. So that is the. That was the second lowest issue between late deciders. The next lowest issues were the Republican candidate being too extreme at minus 24 and Republicans in general being too extreme with minus five differential it's all minus five yeah, and that's, that's in, that's from navigating the bad, uh, navigating the battlefield, navigatorresearchorg.
Speaker 3:I'll post a link in it, but what I'm saying is so, yeah, dei wasn't a thing until it was a thing um, and then woke. Like I said, woke. This pejorative of woke is now being used as everybody's too woke, everybody's too woke.
Speaker 1:Woke has become the new N-word Everybody's being too Well so and the reason I kind of I don't know if it's just my thought process or pushback or whatever when you have, when you have like Saturday night live, for example, go all in on anti-Trump and pro gay, pro trans, pro leftist and Saturday night live just a small, small example. I think that's kind of the idea, without naming and saying it's about wellness or it's about D. I think that's kind of where the All of those other things get mixed up.
Speaker 3:It's very tough to say Does, but remember I told you liberals, liberals will take a word from the black community and adopt it to their, adopted to their policies, wrongly. And then once you catch yeah, once it catches on nationally, you know it's automatically assumed that, oh, everything woke is bad. I mean, they did the same thing with Black Lives Matter. You know, black Lives Matter was a small grassroots movement. Once the liberals got a hold of it, it became national and then we came into all lives matter and all that. It's the same thing, same thing with Wokeness, same thing with DEI. And what we found out, you know, is nine times out of 10. Even though society tries to make it a black issue, it's not really a black issue, because most of the policies they believe are dominated or affected by black people generally aren't. Because the Democrats didn't lose because of a walk issue 92% of black women voted for Democrats. 83% of black men voted for Democrats. It's not a black issue, but Black people, once again, always at the crux of of blame, right? Oh, we?
Speaker 3:just if we, if we get away from, if we get away from trying to appeal to everybody if we get away from from, you know, trying to trying to give everybody welfare and all this other stuff, then then maybe we can get back to the middle and all this other stuff, then maybe we can get back to the middle. Well, sure, but that's not hurting the Black community, because by far and away the Black community isn't the greatest benefactor of government benefits.
Speaker 1:But again, you can also look at statistics damn statistics and statistics.
Speaker 3:Even if you look at that, it's still not Blacks Right.
Speaker 1:but it's still not. It's still not black, right well, but that it's when you twist this. When you twist this statistic, you can make perception reality. Um, and so the thing about woke though. Um, now you know woke really, has woke's been around what? For five to eight years, no Woke has been in the no. No, no, I'm not talking in the Black community, I know the Black community.
Speaker 3:Liberals have taken it over here in the last decade yeah, that's what I mean.
Speaker 1:So in the last ten or less years, because language evolves, right, and so woke to me I never once ever heard woke in terms of woke meant anything having anything to do with the black community, like I didn't know that's what it meant. So, liberal woke eight years, perfect, yeah, that exactly. Woke eight years, perfect, yeah, that, exactly that. And that's kind of my point is that when you're talking about woke now, because you go back far enough and you can see the, the changes in how things are are set like it used to be that, um, you know, when you talk about controlling, like abortion, it was pro-rights, oh, it's pro-rights, we're not. We're not pro-abortion, we're pro-rights, oh, it's pro-rights, we're not pro-abortion, we're pro-rights, and that's why you know pro-life. And then the Democrats went oh no, we need Ours, sounds bad, you guys are just pro-birth, you're not actually pro-life.
Speaker 1:So it's all this battle about words. So, like woke, I never thought of woke as being a black or white word. To me it was a left or right word. And so when you start seeing in conventional verbiage, especially like that said in the last eight years, wokeness, yeah, it didn't have anything to do with race. Now DEI, yeah, DEI has always been been shown as race, even though you and I have both seen that it was actually white women that got more advantage from dei than in real um and and like welfare and all that stuff.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it seemed. You know, anybody looks at the numbers. They realize that there's more poor white people getting welfare than poor black people. Yeah, it absolutely is a bastardization, and so you know when you're looking at these things, when you have the words as well, instead of making the, I think this is part of the problem with with the left, the right, not so much because the right the right don't really care. The right just says what we think common sense is Right. There's kind of that. You know what I mean. I'm not trying to make that sound dumb.
Speaker 1:But but the right's kind of like conservatives, are kind of like this and for all I don't even want to say conservatives, I want to say the right, because yeah, we, yeah, we have to.
Speaker 3:We have to be clear that there is two separate branches. Right, there's conservatives and then there's the right wing, which is our video just died.
Speaker 1:Ok, you bet, you bet. Yeah, so are you? Yeah, I think, when it comes to this, the Republicans and the right are better at using simple words and simple phrases like MAGA.
Speaker 3:Oh, we know, I mean, I mean we know, we know. We know what the black community, the, the, yeah, they are they they love to stick to simple words and and try to use them. Yeah, oh sure.
Speaker 1:And the left, because the left, especially in academia, is. We're going to start talking about what it really means to be an American. What does it really mean to be somebody of African descent in America? And I, as an intellectual on the left, I'm going to tell you all what it means to be an African-American in this country, instead of going, hey, kj, what's it like to be an American? Like on the right, it's hey, what do you think, dude? Like I think most, I think most white conservatives are more like dude, I don't know what it's like to be a black person in America. How would I know that, dude? I don't know what it's like to be a black person in America. How would I know that? But you have this pretending on the left, and we've talked about this. Malcolm X of you know there's nothing worse than a liberal, a white liberal, trying to say, yeah, the allies, I'm your ally.
Speaker 3:I know what you're going through. Know the fuck you know.
Speaker 1:No, and that's what kind of drew. This is what kind of drew me bonkers over the last few years is I'm post-racial, I don't see race, what? Like, seriously, like now, do I think it's okay if I say, hey, sergeant Johnson, I need to talk to Sergeant Johnson and they go which one? And I say the black one, the what I'm like. What do you mean? One of our Sergeant Johnson is black and one of them is white. If it was a male and a female Sergeant Johnson.
Speaker 1:I was like the dude, they'd go. Okay, no big deal. Or the girl okay, go get her. But if they're black or white.
Speaker 1:It'd be like, oh, you can't say that. I'm like, why not, I need Smith, which one? The redhead? Okay, I'll go get him, you know. But the funny thing is, if it's like, hey, I need Smith, which one? The redhead? Or the black hair, it's like you mean the black guy, Like black hair, what? But you get this pushback. That is just so stupid, oh for sure. Oh well bad, let alone the stigma of sounding white and being a sellout. We talked about Glory. We can go back to one of my favorite movies Glory. Hey, Snowflake, you know.
Speaker 5:Denzel.
Speaker 1:Washington going off. It doesn't matter. If you walk white, you talk white, you ain't never going to be white. Oh, you don't like that, do you? You don't like that. You want to hug me, you know. But in the black community you had the the paper bag test. Yeah, you do If you're. If you're lighter skin than this, oh, you're good to go. If you're dark, I don't want you in my house. You know you're a parent. You're not marrying my daughter.
Speaker 3:Well, that wasn't, that was, that was a. That was an adapt, an adoption into the black community based off of what was culturally accepted. You know that was post, yeah, I just knew. Yeah, community based off of what was culturally accepted. You know, post, yeah, post reconstruction, right. So it was like, hey, all right, we gotta be, we can be around you, but you gotta be a certain complexion, like the darkies. The darkies guys who look like me, didn't stand a chance, right but um, they kind of got away from that 1% nigger blood thing and got into it more.
Speaker 1:Oh, that was the white people saying. If you're lighter than a paper bag, you're good to go yeah.
Speaker 3:No, no, no. Black people just adopted it as a way of acceptance, because, again, it was that mindset of the closer we can assimilate to whiteness, we will, but I mean, but that'll take us into a whole different episode and we really don't have time. And the assimilation of whiteness and why some races are able to get ahead and why black people just tend to lag behind, despite you know everything.
Speaker 1:But all right, we got Okay. Final thought, final thought To go with what we're going on. There was a Japanese individual who sued to be claiming whiteness.
Speaker 3:Yes.
Speaker 1:In the late 19th century. He lost, but he was whiter than I am, so racial. You know, it's not really about race, it's about where you come from. So even today that's probably true to some degree. Like, honestly, you know, my one of my best friends married an African, first generation African girl, and she's great. I wouldn't have a problem if I was ever going to date somebody who was now I'm married, but if I was going to date somebody who was black, no, no, I was just going to say if I was going to marry somebody, if I was going to date somebody who was black and they were from Africa, I'd have no problem with that. I love African people. African American people have the stigma and you even have that from people from Africa. Go, yeah, this is tough, you know, like I don't want to be associated with the people that were born here.
Speaker 3:Yeah, we can definitely get into the disassociation of Africans with African-Americans and man, I mean we can just, it's just way too much. Our final thought is yo, we have guests lined up for the next three months. Please tune in, Please stay attentive to the, to the notes. We'll see you guys. Same bat time. Same bat channel, Lance. We are out of here. Got it time.
Speaker 1:Same bat channel, lance we are out of here. What do you want to do tonight?
Speaker 2:the same thing we do every night. Pinky, try to take over the world all right, yo let's get into it.
Speaker 3:Try to take over the world you're preaching.
Speaker 1:Try to take over the world.
Speaker 3:They're preaching freedom. Take over the world and brings chaplain in the world. Take over the world.
