Latest / Before You Speak / Before You Speak | Episode 31 | How Dems Can Destory a Blue Wave

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Before You Speak | Episode 31 | How Dems Can Destory a Blue Wave · Before You Speak

• Derek Peterson: What's up y'all? Welcome back to the Before You Speak podcast. I am your host, Derek Peterson, just processing the fire hose of my news feed with this ⁓ sky over here. Elwyn: What's up everybody? I am Elwyn and ⁓ Firehose of my newsfeed is filled with plea deals that are better than the one Pen Cax can Pen Caxton, let's just call him that from now on. Pen Caxton signed off on ⁓ Derek Peterson: Bad cast. That was my ⁓ that's my news bite for the day because this needs to be talked about all over Texas. I mean, the corruption of Ken Paxton is has been well noted for a long time, but this is what's blowing my mind about what's going on with the Republican Party at the moment, is that I I genuinely am struggling now with it like they're from like leadership down, there it feels like there's an obsession with pedophilia. Like it feels like that there this is like something that is actually kind of maybe even accepted in this group of people because this is ridiculous. I don't understand this at all. Other like how you can logically go through the process and be like, Yes, ⁓ like giving this guy a plea deal is a good thing. So attorney ⁓ attorneys from Ken Paxton's office struck a plea deal with Adam Hoffman. Who was initially facing life in prison for charges of sexually abusing a child ⁓ multiple times. The agreement that he came to ⁓ with Ken Paxton's office was to reduce the charges from ⁓ two misdemeanors, bypass the ⁓ sex offender registry requirements, and ⁓ no jail time, which the yeah, or one day. And the fucked up the most fucked up part about all of this, and the part that infuriates me. Elwyn: One day. Derek Peterson: Is that people that commit these acts are typically repeat offenders? Like this is an obsession. Like if you if this is something that you do, this is something that you typically obsess about. And this it these guys get out and then they do it again and they do it to somebody else. ⁓ grooming is not something that you just let go of, and these people should be in prison for the rest of their life. ⁓ so Ken Paxton put a child predator. who will likely do this again to somebody else at some point. ⁓ and yeah, I and it feels like the Republican Party has just been like, we're cool with it. Elwyn: Yeah, you know, whenever somebody makes a statement like that, like, ⁓ this must be party wide or system wide, I'm always like, Meh, I don't know if I'll go that far. But there's just an awful lot of it going on on the Republican side and and I'm gonna lump in yeah. Derek Peterson: All the J Sixers, all the all the the Trump administration that was all seen with Elwyn: Something like forty forty J Sixers have been rearrested, almost all of them s on some sort of sex crime. You have the pastors, all these pastors, they're not blue liberal Democrats. You know, the there's I think there's actually a website where you can track like the allegations of ⁓ sex crimes and inappropriate sexual conduct for Republican and Democrat Congress people. And it's like hundreds of entries on the Republican side. It is really bonkers. I mean this was the the judge was like in this case was like ⁓ I don't understand how the prosecution is coming to the steal. I'm gonna give you sixty days, which is the most I can do because it's two misdemeanors. I can't do anything more. The even the judge was like, guys, the fuck are you doing here? ⁓ you know and and on the other side, like right Derek Peterson: Yeah. And he pleaded guilty. Elwyn: Well, presumably that was but presumably that was part of the deal. Right? Right, you say, hey, we're gonna give you plead guilty in exchange, we'll give you these two misdemeanors and one day in jail, which is worse than like no tip. But that's like you're gonna leave a a a penny as a tip. You're you you have you you care enough to show your complete lack of ⁓ Derek Peterson: Keep bleeding guilty. That was pr well, okay. Yes. Elwyn: mor morality, your total disdain for everybody involved in the world by leaving one penny or saying, All right, fine, you gotta think this fucking guy should go to jail. How about a day? You know, leave your car running so the car doesn't get too hot and the AC is on when you get back. ⁓ yeah. Derek Peterson: Yeah, if Talarico can't win against this there we the systemic issues are run deeper than I had ever imagined. So I mean Elwyn: Also, like th the Talarico, he's out there with policy prescriptions. He he's out there trying to s it whether you agree with him or not, it it honestly doesn't matter. He is speaking about things that he could do if he were to be elected a senator. Right? Now you can to the extent we have any right leaning listeners, you can sit there and say that I don't like anything that he's talking about. I think it's all bullshit. You know, his You know, it's it's the the rich versus the poor and all that. Like I think that's all crap. I don't read the Bible the same way he does. You can disagree with every single thing he says. At least he is taking the the potential of being a US senator seriously for what it is, which is a top legislative individual, one of one hundred in the country and only one hundred in the country. Paxton's response to this and his his initial entry into the campaign is to call him Talafreco, to call him A a drag queen or like a tr he called him transgender. He said James Talerico is transgender. What what he's a vegan? What what the fuck are we talking about? Right? Like this is who the Republicans are running. They have there's zero policy or governance coming from the Pen Caxton complaint. I'm gonna keep calling him that because I like the word Caxton. It sounds terrible. there's zero seriousness. It's just Derek Peterson: Ha ha. Elwyn: culture war red meat terms and crap and yeah if Tal Rico can't win this, then we can't talk about Texas turning blue for fifty years. 'Cause we're not we're it's not a policy debate anymore. Derek Peterson: Yeah. Then we Yeah, and to be honest, I like what Talerico said about this because I I genuinely don't want like just like liberal policies everywhere. I don't think that that's healthy for the country. I genuinely believe in the in the ⁓ in the tug of war of Republican and and democratic values in a lot of situations. so like ⁓ having both represented in the state is actually a I believe a healthy thing. I think that actually represents the people, the constituents, right? Like you have a lot of Republicans, you have a lot of Democrats. The most healthy thing is a is a is a pairing of both and actual work on a bipartisan level with in most situations. The problem is is that our government just feels like it's way too far gone for it. And I it makes me sad that I I will we ever see it again in our life? Will we ever see a situation where Democrats and Republicans actually stop giving a shit about just Democrats and just Republicans and start working together for the betterment of people. Like things like universal health care, things like, you know, ⁓ not going to war, balancing the budget, you know, reigning in spending, like all of this stuff could be done. The problem is that the party that's not in power doesn't want the party in power to ever get credit for anything. Because then they look like they did a good job and it's a threat to the other party. So then they it it just doesn't work. And I this it's a shitty place that we've we've driven ourselves into at the moment. But speaking of shitty ⁓ go ahead. I was gonna say, well speaking of shitty, we should we need to talk about Tom Kane too. Elwyn: Yeah, I mean I don't know if the Senate it yeah, go ahead. I'm he's not talking about himself. Like Tom Cain, Thomas Caine Jr., ⁓ he is a Republican Congress critter from New Jersey, kind of a a ⁓ real blue blood political family from New Jersey. His father was governor for a long time, ⁓ and actually quite a popular Republican governor, like by a lot of bipartisan support for Tom Cain Sr. But Tom Caine Jr. i is gone. He's disappeared. Like No one knows where he is. He hasn't been seen in like four months. He's missed every vote. He hasn't been seen in the House. He's not campaigning. He is running for re-election. ⁓ he's not campaigning. His campaign staff is flying to like Oregon and California with expense vouchers that he signed. He is alive. He appears to not be dead. He does exist. He's still trading stocks. He signed a an SEC disclosure form indicating some stock trades in the first quarter of this year. But He is nowhere nowhere to be found for four months and Trump today just endorsed him. Which is like you know, we're we're talking about Pen Caxton and his moral rot and his failure to have any sort of values or political prescriptions whatsoever. You know, the other option that the Republicans appear to be giving us is no one. Don't don't vote for the Democrat. Vote for no one. Vote f vote for a circle with a name next to it that ha appears to have no human body attached to it anymore. ⁓ it's it's kind of wild. Like and it's happened before, but for a couple weeks, Mark Sanford, when he was governor of South Carolina, he kind of disappeared for a couple weeks and then they found him like hide he was like hyping the F L H entrail with a mistress or something something crazy, but like Tom Kane. Derek Peterson: Yeah. Elwyn: New Jersey, just gone. ⁓ and this is a winnable seat for the Democrats. you know, it is one that they can flip. It's targeted, you know, by all their national committees as a flippable seat. Trump I don't know why Trump would have gotten involved in it at all. There's yeah, I don't think there's a primary challenge to it to the ghost of Tom Kane. But ⁓ yeah, I I just think people should start to know, like, ⁓ hey, there's a s there's a guy out there, there's a congressman out there who is just gone. Derek Peterson: If trump Yeah. They're ⁓ if Trump got involved, that probably means this dude has some crypto venture or something he's he might maybe he's in the Middle East working on some some something that's very corrupt and probably ⁓ very beneficial to the president 'cause that's pretty much the the only way ⁓ you know Trump pays attention to anything is that if it actually ⁓ benefits him in some way, shape or form, which ⁓ is Disgusting. ⁓ but let's t so today's episode, we're gonna jump into this really quickly because I have no idea how long this conversation can go. There's a ⁓ there's a lot of different rabbit holes we can go down here. ⁓ because our our overall conversation is ⁓ how can Democrats fuck up ⁓ a November blue wave? ⁓ which could be a myriad of different ways. And there's also a lot of very important races ⁓ coming up like Iowa, Maine, Texas. There's there's actually some seats that can that can flip that would be very beneficial, I think, to our country in general at the moment. ⁓ and so I think ⁓ I think I'd like to start here because ⁓ we can kind of connect some of this stuff through so like in general news one of the things that we've talked about before is just the general fight. Of Democrats and their ability to actually stand up to Republicans in a way that and fight fire with fire. ⁓ And so I wanted to read this. On Monday, ⁓ former Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters was released from La Vista Correctional Facility ⁓ in Colorado. Governor Jared Polis, Democrat, ⁓ commuted her sentence, according to the C Colorado Department of Corrections. Convicted in twenty twenty four for allowing unauthorized access to voting systems, Peters served one year and eight months of a nine year sentence before Polis reduced it, citing ⁓ an appeals court ruling on sentencing length. So after seeing how the DOJ has weaponized ⁓ and being and how it's being used against Democrats ⁓ and anybody that's come across Trump's radar, you know what are your thoughts on this story? Elwyn: I mean, this is just brain dead politics by Jared Polis, the governor of Colorado. Absolutely brain dead. You know, the the context of it is that her sentence was like the Court of Appeals in Colorado said that her sentence was too harsh given some stuff that happened in the trial. And they sent it back to the lower court for her to be resentenced. All right, fine. Democratic governor of Colorado, get out there and and say I I think the court's wrong. I whatever the court decides on this I'll abide by, but I believe this court ruling is wrong. ⁓ very disappointed, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. This woman is an election denier. She improperly gave out voting information to prove something that never happened. She is like front and center of the twenty twenty election denial scam. You know, she's one of these people that y i is just the worst of the worst because they can't simply accept the results of the election. And she actually broke some laws and she actually got tried and she actually got found guilty. And you know, th there's no political upside for polis to do this. This is like Gerald Ford, you know, and Nixon saying it's time for our long national nightmare to end. No. Fuck you. No. Tina Peters is an odious piece of shit who wants to steal the election. If the court reduces her sentence, let the court reduce her sentence. But the Democratic base knows who she is. This case was in that was national news. What the fuck do you gain by appeasing this and and you know basically putting your stamp of approval on the fact that she was going to be in jail for too long? You should be taking the position at the very least as a Democratic politician. That she deserves every day the jury got her. And if she's going to get less than that because she gets resentenced, she deserves every day that she's resentenced to. But don't commute the sentence. Don't give don't give some like bipartisan sheen of approval to what this woman did by saying that she was wrongly treated. Stand your fucking ground and fight the fight always on every hill. There is no bipartisanship to be had. And I'm not saying that because I don't wish there was. Of course I wish there was. I'm saying that because I know that the other side doesn't believe in that concept at all. And Tina Peters was like barely out of jail before she was screaming for retribution against everybody. She wasn't like I want to thank Jared Polis. We can all come together and heal and move together and I'm blah blah blah. I was so treated so poorly. Nope. She was like, fuck you everybody. That election was stolen. All the same shit. Right away. What on earth? It's been 10 years of Trump. How on earth does any Democratic politician make the mistake of thinking that there is any way to appease anybody who's like full on MAGA? There isn't. There isn't. And you and the Democratic base is just sitting there. I'm obviously apoplectic about this because it's just so fucking stupid. Fight for the Democrats. You are. Derek Peterson: Yep. Elwyn: A Democrat, if you're not seeing it, you're not paying attention to what's going on in the world. Derek Peterson: Yeah, it's just another situation where we see Democrats not reading the room, not understanding the the situation that we're currently in. And I'm not saying that this is the situation that we've ever been in. And to be honest, there is a world where I tend to agree with this. Like there's a world where I'm like, yeah, like in a bipartisan ⁓ world like where s something might feel like a sentence might feel like it was politically charged and maybe overdone considering the circumstances. I'm all about revisiting that normally. But in with what's going on and how our president has weaponized the DOJ very clearly for his own to attack his own ⁓ political enemies, like yeah, you th like this is not the moment to for an olive branch. And there there are moments for like that. ⁓ but the there has to be an opportunity to to find middle ground on those situations. So Then here's ⁓ I want to read this as well. So ⁓ talk about the Delaney Hall situation because this is another situation where I feel like Democrats might be missing the mark a little bit. So chaotic scenes intense intensified Thursday outside of Delaney Hall as a hundred ⁓ more than a hundred protesters blocked roads ⁓ and clashed with federal agents and state police and attempting to enter ⁓ the privately operated facility. activists believe there's roughly like 900 to a thousand people being held there. Earlier this week, New Jersey Democrat Mike ⁓ Mikey Sherrill ⁓ and several other other members of Congress tried to enter the facility following reports of a hunger strike. ⁓ but the all the most of them were denied at that time. But for me and then Following this, you know, I saw some videos where Mikey Cheryl had said, you know, masked men protesters were tearing down barricades and attacking, you know, un you know, unguarded police officers. And then a lot of the videos started to come out where, ⁓ it's actually police in riot gear that are walking forward with shields, knocking down these barriers. And So like I'm just like, what the what in God's name are we talking about here? Like and you know, ⁓ maybe the video I watched was not correct. You know, I I'm you know, I try to give the benefit of the doubt. This is why we process the firehoes of our news feed together is that some of the shit we see isn't accurate, or maybe it wasn't timed right, or maybe it was at a different location and somebody's trying to use it as evidence to prove something that's not true, but Based on everything I s I've seen thus far in red, yeah, she was full of shit. So like what's your take on this? Elwyn: You know, the we're talking about how Democrats can fuck up a blue wave, right? Jared Polis, Mikey Sherrell, the way that Democrats can fuck up a blue wave is to not recognize the anger amongst your democratic base and not recognize the inherent futility of trying to handle situations that involve ice. or in Colorado MAGA with ⁓ yeah in a manner that you feel like it's just impartial or or as anything other than pure politics. So what's happening in Delaney Hall is really not unlike kind of what happened in Minneapolis, a little bit smaller scale. ⁓ the conditions in Delaney Hall are apparently like awful. There's like maggots in the food and shit like that. Like really bad. ⁓ and we could dig into like maybe we should do for profit prisons as a as a topic. ⁓ You it's a for-profit company that's running that prison, ⁓ Trump donors, all these people, obviously corruption throughout the whole nine. ⁓ but Mikey Sheryl, man, like it's not even ICE that's attacking the protesters. It's the New Jersey state police that are pushing them into traffic, you know, pushing them into like in between the wheels of a moving truck. It and the the truck was going like one mile an hour, let's be fair, but it doesn't matter, right? And to to somehow to the point that you're making about her statement. So somehow think that every single second of this shit isn't videotaped. Sorry. Where where where and when do you think you live that every single protester isn't videotaping everything? The New Jersey Senator Andy Kim got pepper sprayed, trying to like it's an incredible picture of him getting pepper sprayed standing in front of a truck full of ice ⁓ goons, you know, in their masks and bulletproof vests. So Derek Peterson: Yeah. Yeah. Elwyn: J.B. Pritzker did it right in Illinois. Tim Waltz did it pretty well in in Minnesota, where they recognized one, what's going on in the ICE detention center, what's going on with ICE is fundamentally wrong. We have a moral high ground that we can occupy here, and two, politically to support ICE in their endeavors here is just wrong. It's just wrong. So the d me as a Democrat, I'm looking at this and I was like, I remember we to I talked about Mikey Sherrell winning and on affordability and how psyched I was that she was gonna like cap energy costs, ⁓ energy price increases as a first day in office, and what a great win it was in November, considering the swing from Harris, who barely won, to Mikey Sherrill is like a fifteen point swing, right? This is the type of shit that will turn Democrats off. Because the worst thing that you can be as a Democrat right now. Is someone who your voters and who your base feel is just same old, same old, running the same playbook over and over again. We all see that playbook is flawed and broken. So when she does this, that's exactly what she's showing me. The wrong playbook. Right. And when Jared Polis does this, it shows me that he's looking at a playbook from a different sport altogether, right? He's reading like seven-on-seven football there in the NFL. ⁓ so Derek Peterson: What Yep. Elwyn: This is that type of just sort of centrist Dem who got elected failing to recognize the the value of the fight. How much on the left people like me want the fight. We want to see the fight. Right? And yeah. Derek Peterson: Yeah. Agreed. Well, and so that brings me to the next topic I wanted to bring up with you a little bit, which is ⁓ I know you have mixed ⁓ well maybe not mixed, ⁓ I think ⁓ now you're pretty much out on Graham Platiner, but I wanted to bring up the the Graham Platner scandal here as well because so Graham Platner apparently sexed with ⁓ one or two different women. ⁓ which he disclosed to his campaign prior to I think starting to run. ⁓ and then one of his ⁓ one of the people working on his campaign left and reported this to the Washington Post and New York Times and, you know, Graham Plattner got defensive and attacked the media and did the thing that, you know I'm just like, why in the fuck would you do that? ⁓ Like why are you fighting that when the reporting is actually accurate? The New York Times ⁓ reporting is not bullshit, which so all of the ⁓ it's been confirmed as truth. And we've already accepted a lot about Graham Plattiner, which has been hard to accept, right? The the tattoo, the the tweet, the ⁓ there's there's stuff about the guy that we're like, yeah, this he's rough around the edges. But what made that work. The reason I bought into the Grand Platiner stuff early was that he didn't do that. He wasn't excusing it away. He owned it. So his initial his initial take on the the you know Nazi emblem ⁓ that tattoo that he had on him was, you know, like, yeah, I made some dumbass decisions in my life and I've grown from them and I've moved on. ⁓ and for some reason this was different. And again ⁓ another way to for a democrat to erode their potential, you know, their their potential ability to govern and actually show up in a meaningful way for people and not just be like what everybody else is right now, which is deflect, deflect, deflect. Elwyn: See I'm I'm I I think I'm zagging on this for you. ⁓ I don't really care about the sexting thing, you know, like it but like Derek Peterson: Yeah. ⁓ I don't care about it, but I I'm mad I'm l I less care about the scandal. I care about how I care about that he didn't just own it. Elwyn: ⁓ I think he and his wife kinda did, right? His wife got up and and you know, she I believe with his knowledge, like it's a little shitty how this came out, and this is where my zag is probably gonna be. You know, like she before they ran, or before certainly their campaign had had any head of steam, she disclosed this stuff to they they do opposition research on themselves. So she told The opposition research company, like, hey, we got these things. I don't know if they're gonna come out, whatever, but you've got them, now you have them. ⁓ and he would have known that she did that. And they got married in 2023, right? So this is a young marriage. ⁓ certainly she married him knowing all the stuff that had happened in the past and knowing his past in in ⁓ in theater in Iraq. ⁓ And the guy now, so then the the the person, the aide that used to work for them, who quit and was disgruntled or whatever, like he's the one who released it to the media. Like that's pretty shitty. Why is this guy who works for a democratic campaign, right, releasing stuff about that candidate who has a real shot to win to the media? Like that's pretty dark and that's the shitty thing. Right? Like Democrats, like to the like I if I'm gonna I don't know anything about this person. But if I'm gonna map what I suspect onto them, what I would suspect is they're more of an old school kind of centrist dem. Maybe they kinda like Janet Mills and that's maybe why they left before before she dropped out and they're kind of butthurt about all that, then this becomes the old guard Democrats simply not recognizing what a new compelling candidate looks like. They didn't recruit Grant Platiner. The the Democratic Party did not recruit Graham Platiner. It was, you know, a couple guys from the AFL CIO. Who came to his house and was like, hey, you know, we've seen you talk at some meetings. ⁓ and we think you should run. And Maine is a small state. You can do that still in Maine. ⁓ and the Democrats have fought him every step of the way. You know, that tattoo stuff, the the old Reddit threads from him, that shit came out when Janet Mills entered the race. That shit came out from the Democrats. Right? That's the Democrats eating their young. And Grant Plattin like, Look, I think he's I don't There's a lot of shit about him that I don't like, but w he knows how to fight. He knows when he speaks of the theory of power, when he speaks about what the Democrats do when they have power, and more specifically, what they have failed to do, how they failed to leverage power for the gain of their policies and their voters and what they think is right. That shit is spot on. Right? That's what Mikey Sherrill and Jared Polis are not doing. Right? He understands that very well. When you have power. You need to use it to pull the levers of government for you and your policies, not corruption, but like if you need to pull a lever of power, Nancy Pelosi, for as much as everybody hates her, she understood this very, very well, right? If you need to pull the levers of power to get your guy, your Supreme Court justice confirmed. You need to pull the levers of power to get your budgets passed. You need to pull the levers of power to exercise your agenda. And the Democrats fucking suck at that. Like Chuck Schumer. Derek Peterson: Yeah. Yeah. Elwyn: Sucks at that. They're awful at it. And it's why Democratic voters hate them all. Because every time they get into power, they're like, ⁓ I don't want to make the other side mad. Institutional integrity and filibusters. Fuck you. Fuck you. The other side doesn't care about that at all. You have power. Use it because in two years you're probably going to lose it. So Grant Platner understands that. And that's why he's popular. That's why he beat the tar out of Janet Mills. And for the Democrats who are like sneaking this shit off to the press, what the fuck are you doing? Don't you get it? Fall in behind the guy. Shut the fuck up and fall in behind the guy and let him beat Susan Collins. And then talk to him in the Senate about whatever it is you want to talk to him about, but listen to him at the same time. But don't try to kneecap his campaign with this crap. Derek Peterson: I I feel like that has to be some special interest group, right? Somebody you that that came in and g and, you know, gave that aid or somebody some money, enough to like try to bring this out. I ⁓ like for me a lot of it doesn't s make sense and unfortunately we live in a world where ⁓ people are paid to do some awful shit. So like, you know, whatever. That's the ⁓ but like all this whole conversation gets me fired up because in general, can you imagine If somebody actually used these levers of power to lever things for the benefit of our country rather than for their own fucking personal gain? Can you imagine if we had a fighter in office that was like, No, I'm I'm going to write every executive order, I'm going to do all of this in benefit to the people of the United States. We are going to actually push some shit through. that helps the working class and the middle class and not just all these rich people that are funneling a shit ton of money to my campaign to make it so that their businesses thrive and they don't have to pay as much in taxes or they're not regulated as hard or they're you know whatever the situation that they're in is but like yeah I'm like guy like it just I I wish and I the sad part is is somebody that was that was that would do this, I feel like they would have to run as a regular candidate and get in. And then really fuck some shit up. Then they would have to bike po Elwyn: I think I I I think your your point is well taken. I think that we have a guy who's doing it. And it's what makes Zoran Mamdani such a complex character for me as a Jew. But like take that aside for a second. You know, he ran as a Democrat. He beat old guard blue blood Democrat Cuomo family. Schumer wouldn't endorse him. The Clintons barely endorsed him. Hakeem Jeffries endorsed him like the night before the election. in the most lukewarm manner possible. ⁓ but and some of this is to be taken with a grain of salt, right? He's gotten Kathy Hokel, the governor of New York, to agree to pens spend more money so that they can have universal childcare. He has gotten bus only through lanes down thirty-fourth street so that people can get to work faster on buses. And that's something that Trump had fought against. He is Opening the supermarkets, which maybe you disagree with, but he's opening five over five years. It's a policy that's gonna get its shot, right? He's using the levers of power to in to get the agenda that he ran on through. And we can we can argue about that forever. We can argue about whether or not there should be taxes on ⁓ Ken Griffin's second home worth 238 million dollars. Or not. We can argue about whether or not he should take from the pension fund in order to pay for some of these. And we can argue about whether he really erased a $12 billion deficit in one year, or is it actually just accounting gimmicks? Let's have that argument though, because at least he's freezing the rent so that people can afford to to you know stay in their apartments. At least it it and it's worth nothing. At least he secured a thousand fifty dollar tickets to the World Cup games. That are going to be held in New York so that normal people, so then thousand normal people can go to one of those games instead of paying thousands of dollars for a ticket. He's using the levers of power to enact his agenda. So, like to me, when I think about a guy like that, I'm like, man, you know, like sometimes he's he just makes me a little uncomfortable with how much he hates Israel and you know, but he has also, you know, increased by like 800% hate hate. crime funding. ⁓ you know, and he has put in some rules about protesting near synagogues, but he didn't put those rules around day schools, which there are a lot of Jewish day schools. So there's a lot of stuff that's like a little bit mixed about him to me. But the idea that he is using the levers of power that he won in a free and fair election to enact his agenda is what makes him popular. And it's what the Democrats, the old school Democrats Don't see, they just don't get it. And it's what Plattiner seems to understand, at least in how he talks about that stuff on the campaign trail. Derek Peterson: Yeah. There's dude, there's b there are ⁓ some Democrats that I but seem like they've gotten they've gotten the memo and they've they've actually read it and they're they're following through. So look I wanted to talk a little bit about ⁓ El Said in Michigan as well because you know like there is you know I saw ⁓ I've seen him speak a number of times through just clips and videos and he seems to be a incredibly intelligent, ⁓ compelling guy and somebody that looks like they genuinely have a shot to to win it. there is but similarly to you, he's very clear about his position as ⁓ an anti Zionist while also claiming I'm he's not an anti Semite. And so like toe that line for us. What are your thoughts here? Elwyn: So, you know, this ⁓ this would fall into the how Democrats can can lose a blue wave. It's like I don't know i El Sayed is is pretty far to the left for a Senate candidate. Like he's further to the left than Platiner is, for sure. He's further to the left than ⁓ Talerico is for sure. You know, and can someone who's that far to the left and and this is stupid but it's true. Whose name is Abdul El-Sayed win a general election in the state of Michigan, ⁓ you know, f running from the far left. And I don't know. You know, I don't know. And there's a where where I think this is another place where Democrats kind of get screwed up is when because they've lost such ⁓ control, you know, the old guard, the Chuck Schumer wing of the party, has just lost touch. with what's going on on the ground to such an incredible extent, they leave the space for, you know, an unvetted Graham Platinum to come in. Now maybe they would have found Grand Platinum anyway, or maybe they would have found someone just as good. I don't I have no idea. But they don't get caught off guard by his his tattoo and his Reddit threads and his sexting because they know about it, because they've been in touch with what their voters want and with the political where the wit political winds are blowing. El Cyed's kind of the same thing. You know, they have the the the centrist Ms, again Schumer, have so misjudged where their party is and now where the country is when it comes to support for Israel, that they leave the space open for a guy who as a Jew makes me really nervous, you know. And I'm open to criticisms of hypocrisy because, you know, I speak highly or or I give momdani a little bit of of room on this. And I'm gonna give Syed less, but that's in part because I think there's a difference between being mayor of a city and being a senator, ⁓ and in how what levers of power are available to you and how you exercise them and the direct effects you can have on people's lives in those two roles. But you know, by by sleeping on this, by failing to recognize where their party is, the Democrats have created this opening from the far left, from the really you know, virulently anti-Zionist wing, which does not, I think, truly understand how close anti-Zionism comes in its very nature, in its very definition, to being anti-Semitic. Right? So now you start to open the door to this stuff that makes a lot of Jewish people quite nervous. And I feel like the Democrats could have there was a space for them to very quickly And I don't know if I would have agreed with them in like November of twenty twenty three after October seventh. I probably wouldn't have, to be f to be fair. But there was a space for them to very quickly say, We no longer support a blank check to Israel for offensive weapons. Israel gets special treatment, they get like most favored nation status or whatever it's called for arms sales. We sell arms all around the world, but Israel gets different terms than basically everybody else. The Democrats could have said, you know what? We really hate what's going on in Gaza. You know, we think that when they stopped when they said we're not allowing any food in anymore, at that point this was immoral and we no longer support offensive weapons to Gaza. And we can maybe say, maybe there's a debate on the Democratic side about s the interceptor missiles that ⁓ Israel needs for the Iron Dome. Iron Dome is Israel's property, it's their thing, right? So we can't say we're not going to supply them with the Iron Dome. But maybe we say, you know what, we are going to give them the right to defend themselves with these interceptor missiles and you know, but we're not going to give them the ability to blow up buildings anymore with our weapons. And then the whole left can have a a a debate. And I heard this debate happen and it was somewhat interesting, where it's like, well, the defensive missiles give Israel license to be more aggressive offensively because they can't be hurt and it's unfair. Great debate. Interesting policy. Hash it out. But the Democrats didn't see it. They just said fund, fund, fund, fund, fund, fund. And now you have like ninety percent almost of Democratic voters who are anti-Zion, who are against the state of Israel. And you have over fifty percent of the country for the first time is against the state of Israel. And the Democrats have created the space because on the far right, the people they don't really hate Israel. They don't care. They hate Jews and they hate our money going to ⁓ weapon to to foreign aid to any foreign country, including Israel. They think that money should be spent here on whatever awful policies they support. On the left, though, they start to say, no, we are anti-Zionist. And if you look around the world, you know, anti-Zionist means I don't believe that Israel has the right to exist as a Jewish state. Well there's a there's a lot of history. There's thousands of years of reasons why Jews around the world feel like, no, no, no. Derek Peterson: Yeah. Elwyn: We absolutely do need a Jewish state. History has shown us every opportunity that it gets why we need a Jewish state, and we allow other religious theocratic states and Israel's not a theocratic state. You can quibble with its democracy, but it is not a theocratic state. So why why not this one far left? Why is this ethnostate wrong? But Syria as an ethnostate isn't. Why is it wrong to attack Muslims after nine eleven, right? And and why is it correct after nine eleven to say, no, not all Muslims ⁓ represent this jihadist component of their ideology? Why is it wrong during COVID to fucking attack Chinese restaurants because of the Wuhan wet market? But it's not wrong. You know, but but we we we don't allow all those things, right? We say don't attack Chinese restaurants and don't attack mosques. But we're sure willing to accept attacking synagogues. You know, we're sure willing to accept, you know, not letting Jewish people into restaurants or or into places of business. And what's going on around the world is much worse than what's going on here. It's not as bad in the United States as it is around the world, but in places like Belgium and in Montreal and Toronto, the Jews are leaving because they are scared. Because if you wear a Star David around your neck there, something bad is gonna happen someday and probably someday soon. And that space where those bad things happen, that's the space between being anti Zionism and anti and and not recognizing how close that is to anti Semitism. And the Democrats have left that door open. And guys like Syed may or may not actually hate Jews. I have no idea, but I'll bet you a bunch of his supporters do. And they are kicking that door wide open in the space that the Democrats have left. And it's you know, it can what will happen, how this will cost the Democrats the wave, and I'm sorry, I'm going on for a bit. How this will cost them the the wave is that everybody will see the hypocrisy. The rest of the country knows if there's Jews that are being kept out of their synagogues or kept out of businesses, independence will recognize. No, I don't fucking support that. Derek Peterson: Yeah. Elwyn: Right? I don't want that. That's wrong. And that leads to chaos. And people vote against chaos. They vote for civic order. It's why after twenty twenty it didn't matter that a lot of those riots were in were actually infiltrated by the Proud Boys and the Boogaloo Boys and all these right wing groups that and that Kyle Rittenhouse was a right-wing nutjob shooting people. Didn't matter. People blanched at the lack of law and order. And they want civic order. And if you have purple-haired progressives, you know, setting up on college campuses and and preventing just normal Jewish people from doing their thing, people are gonna vote against the Democrats. And it's gonna outweigh all the other shit. Because what people want more than anything else is to be able to walk down the street safely. And if a Jewish k person can't do it, they're gonna feel like they can't do it. The Democrats better fucking figure that out because they will lose elections. That beats inflation, that beats the Iran War, that beats Trump's corruption. That feeling that I want to live in a space that is safe will always shoot right to the top of people's ⁓ ticket list, bucket list on on on voting. Derek Peterson: Yep. Yeah, and I can't speak to the to the to that line because I you know, the line of drawing between, you know, somebody being an anti Zionist and and how quickly that can become ⁓ somebody being an anti Semite. I I'd I can't speak to that part of this, but ⁓ the videos I have seen of ⁓ El Said said that, you know, he's an anti Zionist, but He's and he's very anti APAC, ⁓ which is becoming ⁓ very big on the progressive side. ⁓ APAC has shown itself. And to be honest, you know, APAC has done this to themselves with what what they've used their money for and ⁓ who they've supported, ⁓ and who they continue to support to try to and who they continue to try to oust as well. ⁓ but you know, the video clips I've seen of El Said was like, you know, ⁓ like I wanna walk you know, hand in hand essentially with my Jewish brothers and sisters but and my Amer the American Jewish family while also recognizing that, you know, he doesn't believe Israel should just be a Jewish state and he doesn't think A Sha APAC should be involved in US politics, which ⁓ you know, part of that I could probably what's it? Elwyn: See, I I I disagree with you know, so the APAC, like we've talked about this. APAC has the right to exist just like any other lobbying group, right? There are people who who want to pool their money and put it into APAC so that they have more purchasing power in in our elections. You know, the the thing that Mamdani has said, and I'm gonna give it this, you know, giving him too much credit, what I'm about to do, but I think it's worth it because he has said it over and over again, is he doesn't say Derek Peterson: ⁓ sure. Yeah, yeah. Elwyn: He says, I don't think Israel should exist as a Jewish state. I'm not Zionist, but I don't think any state should exist as an ethnostate or as a as a religiously based state. You know, so at least he he has drawn like a a a top line to explain, and and I'm not fully sold on it, but at least he's out there doing it. He also has a record now. Like by now he has a record that he can start to lean on where I can start to weigh things. Now El Sayed is running in Michigan in a primary. Would I vote for him in the primary? No. I wouldn't. I would vote I'm a little sad that Mallory McMorrow has fallen off so much. I would probably vote for Haley Stevens. Would I vote for El Sayed in the general? I wouldn't vote for Republican, because I think we need the Senate, but like the I would I would wanna know, like, okay, do you believe that that ⁓ any of these states should exist as Muslim theocracies? All you know, how do you feel about that? Are you consistent Derek Peterson: Yeah. Elwyn: in that and you know that line that you talked about and and I appreciate that it's hard to hard to understand but it's like the the line between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism is so blurry because in the definition of Zionism is Jewish. It is support for a Jewish state. Right? So if you're anti-Zionist, you're saying I'm well I don't support a Jewish state. And it's like, well why not? You know, okay, cool. Tell me why. Right? Well, 'cause, you know, I believe in a two state solution or whatever. It's like, okay, well, you know, do you believe that Jews have the right to represent themselves in in a democracy? You know, blah blah blah. It's like it's just man, it's like centimeters before it becomes about being Jewish, not about Benjamin Netanyahu and the policies of this state. ⁓ and that's you know, so that's where it gets really complex and You know, I've talked about this before. Jewish values align way more with Democratic values than they do Republican values. It's why American Jews vote two thirds plus for Democrats. I don't think it's too much to ask for old guard Democrats to understand this line a little better, and I'm gonna shit on Chuck Schumer and a little bit on Mom Donnie now. Like there was a the the Israel Day Parade this weekend in New York City. And Mamdani like the first mayor ever to not go to it. And he said, I'm not going to it. I don't believe, you know, I don't support Israel. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. ⁓ man, I get it. It's consistent with his campaign message. And it would be really weird if he did go, given how he's spoken about Israel. But it's the kind of thing where he's been so vocal about it that I don't love it. But Chuck Schumer's on stage with like a bunch of really far ring, far right crazy Israel politicians like Bezalil Smotric, who, along with Ben Gavir, is like Chuck Schumer's on stage with like a bunch of really far ring, far right crazy Israel politicians like Bezalil Smotric, who, along with Ben Gavir, is like Fucking worst of the worst in Israel right now. These guys are why every fucking Smotrich and Ben Geer are why everybody hates Israel. Period. Like full stop. Them and the and the parties they represent, the ideology that they represent are why the United States has turned as a country against Israel, and fucking Chuck Schumer is on stage with them. God damn it, Schumer. Don't you see what this does to support for the Democrats? Fucking worst of the worst in Israel right now. These guys are why every fucking Smotrich and Ben Geer are why everybody hates Israel. Period. Like full stop. Them and the and the parties they represent, the ideology that they represent are why the United States has turned as a country against Israel, and fucking Chuck Schumer is on stage with them. God damn it, Schumer. Don't you see what this does to support for the Democrats? for from Jews? It's like, no, I fucking hate Smotrich. You, Chuck Schumer, have to get away from him. Period. He can spe you can he didn't Schumer didn't organize the Israel Day Parade. It happens every year. Great. Have Smoltrich speak an hour before you and have him get the hell out of New York before you step on that stage. Don't stand next to him and alongside people like him. Because the rest of the country sees that. And now you have the Democrat, the the head Democrat, the most powerful Democrat in government, standing next to the worst Israeli official. And everybody sees it. And they're like, Why the fuck are the Democrats supporting Israel? I'm either not gonna vote for them or I'm gonna vote for the fucking worst I don't I I don't I'm gonna vote for the guy who hates Israel and I don't care that he hates Jews or maybe he doesn't hate Jews. I don't know, give Sayat a chance if he wins. ⁓ It's just another way where, man, the Democrats they don't get it. And they don't get that so Schumer in the centrist wing doesn't get it. The people on the far left they don't get it because they don't see how, you know, civil disorder rub people so dramatically the wrong way. And this is the type of shit that can cost them the Senate, the House. Derek Peterson: Yeah. Well, dude, and fuck Chuck Schumer. I to be honest, I'm I'm relatively new to the political sphere. Like, you know, I've dabbled throughout history, but I've never paid that much attention to it because I was always focused on something else. ⁓ but now that I'm in it, ⁓ my mind is blown in seeing some of these old guards. I'm like, how in God's name did you get this far? Elwyn: Fuck Chuck Schumer. Derek Peterson: Like it's just like name recognition, like people aren't paying attention. And granted, like the polarization of our our government at the moment has ⁓ showed a lot of these cracks and a lot of people's characters. It should basically showed us who's going to actually fight and who's gonna write a strongly worded letter. ⁓ and so you know, like I I I understand that that's a relatively new dynamic, but it's also one that I'm like, yeah, like like fight. for your constituency. Like like make this make sense for us because the values need to align and people are are more in that and than ever before. The other part of this and I wanted to just kinda say in general is you know, in a culture of clips, the clip culture that people get our most of their education from now, I don't think people understand the relationship of Jews and and their connection to Israel as much as you might think they do. And I think that a lot of the ⁓ I think a lot of young people particularly saw what happened in Palestine and knowing little to nothing about the the history of these two countries, ⁓ basically just bought into everything that was going on and basically, you know, it looked like, you know, somebody started a fight and then somebody eradicated, you know, everybody that that person that has ever known, you know, as as a result of it. And you know, like and I I so I don't think that people actually understand the long history of of Israel and Palestine and Israel in the Middle East and and to be honest, even ⁓ the Holocaust and kind of what drove a lot of, you know, Jewish culture in the first place and and to get us to where we're at now. So I will give some people grace on some of that. But at the same time, and I say that because I'm one of them. You know, if I didn't have Jewish friends like yourself, I would be completely oblivious to a lot of the things that we're talking about now. ⁓ and these are important things. It's important to to understand these things well enough to ⁓ at least if if you're going to have a strong opinion about it, my my view is that you you need to dig into it a little bit. It's like If you have a friend going through a divorce and they're just shitting on their spouse the whole time and you're gonna take a side and you're if you're friends with both of them, like you're you're you're like it might be good to get the other side of the story for ⁓ like just reference on something to make sure you have context for everything. And I feel like that's kind of like where we're at at the moment is just there's a general hatred for for Israel at the moment because you know, the US went to bought into a war and in large part they feel like it's Israel's fault. And so if that's how you feel, I can understand why you'd be mad at Israel. But my then my suggestion would be like, hey, go a little deeper and actually dig through some of this stuff before you come to a conclusion. and you know, I I'm not gonna argue with somebody that says, you know, Benjamin Netanyahu's not a good person. because I think most of the Jewish people I know would say the same and have largely disagreed with the handling of ⁓ everything since you know ⁓ October seventh. So Elwyn: The the ask I would make there, if I if I were to make an ask, it would be I'm not asking to support Israel and I'm not asking to to support the the the policies of the state of Israel. And I'm not asking for people to become, you know, like half-baked experts on Middle Eastern politics. And what I'm asking is for ideological consistency. Because the thing that I don't think you need to oops, that I don't think you need to really Have a lot of knowledge about any of this to be and still be able to do is to say, am I holding Jews and the state of Israel to the same standard that I hold other countries? You know, the Chinese are are kill all the Uyghurs. The Chinese government like is is committing a genocide against the Uyghurs. I think pretty much everybody agrees about that and and is horrified about that. Well, do you hold Chinese people responsible for the action for that? Like are you not eating at Chinese restaurants? Or when you see Chinese people in the street, are you, you know, shitty towards them or or suspect towards them? If you're not, then why are you that way towards Jews? Right? If if if you feel like Russia has, you know, like Putin ha has committed a grave, you know, innumerable war crimes in attacking Ukraine. Derek Peterson: Yeah. Elwyn: But you're not mad at the Russians that you know, but you are mad at the Jews. Why? Why? Because that's the that's the double standard that I don't think you need to support the state of Israel to understand, that I don't think you need to understand Zionism to understand. But that's the double standard that jumps out at me, which is that, you know, we've had any number of countries around the world do terrible things to their own people or to their neighbors. You know It happens all the time. But the only time that, you know, diaspora citizens in a sense, I'll call the diaspora Jews citizens for just ease of argument here. The only time that the diaspora citizens really seem to be held accountable for the actions of that government is when it comes to Jews. And that shit's not fair. And that shit is why, like, this sort of heavy lean into anti Zionism. makes everybody really, really nervous to to some extent. ⁓ and I don't think it takes supporting Netanyahu or, you know, supporting what they've done in Gaza to say, wait a second, am I treating this issue the same way that I treat every other issue? ⁓ because I don't think people are. Derek Peterson: Yeah, I would agree with that. I think that people latch on to something in the moment and make a stand on something that they don't actually that they're not consistent with and it just tends to be, you know, the thing that's that's driving, especially with younger people. Younger people there's more emotion and you're I think in general feel like you can actually change the world. And then you get to our age and you're like, We're just gonna get grumpy and fucking talk about it a bunch 'cause we're mad. So that's how it goes. Speaking of mad, we're gonna the we'll ⁓ we'll wrap our blue wave ⁓ conversation there for today 'cause we're running out of time. But ⁓ who are we telling to shut the fuck up today, Elwyn? Elwyn: CrossFit headquarters should shut the fuck up. So probably a little inside bake. Derek Peterson: Yes. Did I have a long standing hatred for this, just FYI. I can go on for hours about this. Elwyn: Probably a long s yeah, they've really gone off the off the rails. So probably a little inside baseball if you're not into CrossFit, but like you know, CrossFit started as a very, very open source fitness methodology. When you could pay, you could you could open a gym like I have a couple of times now, and you could pay three thousand, now forty five hundred dollars a year, and you get to call yourself a CrossFit gym, you get to use their logo, you get to use their tagline Forging Elite Fitness and The you're on their map, you know, their website, ⁓ affiliate map, and that's kinda it. That's what you got, and that's why I'm not affiliated anymore. But what they talk about, like what CrossFit purists talk about, is the methodology, right? This idea of constantly varied movements performed at high intensity and you know, functional training and you know, AMRAPs and MECCons and and all this shit, right? Whatever. What it is is exercise movements done with a clock running. That's what it is. That's all it is. Okay. Now, it was very, very effectively named and very, very effectively marketed and and the name CrossFit. Most people have probably heard of it. Like I'd be surprised if if somebody's like, ⁓ what the fuck is that? Never heard of it. ⁓ so they've spent the last five years just taking an absolute flamethrower to any goodwill that they've had amongst their affiliates and the public. ⁓ their original founder said some stupid racist shit in 2020. They did a terrible job at their championship, the CrossFit games, and a guy died, and they fucking fumbled that as bad as you could fumble it. So they're just taking a flamethrower to the place. And they came out the the new they have a new CEO and he came out last week and he said that he wants to go after all deaffiliated gyms, meaning a gym like myself that decided we I don't want to pay the affiliation fee anymore. And I had to scrub the word CrossFit from my website, from everything that I do. ⁓ And they called me on it, like they made they were watching. They want to go after us, a gym like mine, for using the methodology of CrossFit. Right? Now you can't do that. You can't trademark an idea. You can't say, and this is what somebody in support of this has said you can't say, well, we didn't invent the squat and we didn't invent the pull up, but you know, the idea of snatches and muscle ups done for time, we did invent that. Fucking no, you didn't. No, you didn't. People have been working out with clocks on for the entirety of human history. And the the the hypocrisy and the stupidity and the galaxy brain nature of this is just amazing to me. So I'm telling them to shut the fuck up, but I kind of wish they wouldn't. Because for them to make this work, they would have to sue people like me. Like, why do I deserve to be sued? I don't. Gold's gym, who does CrossFit style workouts, and you know, all these companies that have started selling programming. Derek Peterson: That's debatable. Elwyn: run by their legends, guys like Rich Froning and Matt Frazier, people who everybody in the CrossFit game know and worship. They'd have to sue all those people, right? They'd have to show impossibly that somehow the methodology is something they could trademark. ⁓ and they give their shit away for free every day on their website. They publish a CrossFit workout every day for free on their own website. And now they're out there like, no. You can't use our methodology. You have to pay us for the methodology because people understand like this is what a CrossFit gym is. Like shut the fuck up and go away with this if you want to salvage any bit of goodwill or any sort of future. Otherwise, keep going because I got like the big ass four gallon movie bag of popcorn to watch this shit go down. I am in for it all. So there you go. Derek Peterson: Mm. Okay. Dude, I love it. And ⁓ I think we should do maybe we should do an entire episode on CrossFit. That would actually be something I could I could rail on for I mean, I will say this. CrossFit was some of the best years of my life, and I I the reason I'm so mad at CrossFit is because I love it. So the it is the most missed mismanaged ⁓ business that I have ever seen in my life. Elwyn: That would be fun. Derek Peterson: And ⁓ yeah, I would love to talk about that. I could talk about CrossFit for I have talked about CrossFit for an hour. Elwyn: You know, the the crazy thing about like them saying they want to sue for the methodology is like in effect they were too successful. The name CrossFit was too good. Right? They gave rise to a whole style of gym that didn't really exist, like mine, you know, industrial spaces, rubber floors, rigs for pull-ups, barbells, Olympic lifting, like this shit didn't really exist in the mainstream vernacular until CrossFit came around. And The name itself is just so good and strong and punchy and identifiable that people walk in and be like, ⁓ this is a CrossFit gym, because they see it by looking at it. Well, that's legally a real big problem for them because if something becomes too familiar, you can't protect it anymore. Like Kleenex or Velcro. You know, these are terms where like 3M can't say, no, we own Velcro because it it's too known. Everybody knows Velcro's just that hook and loop thing that fucking can Shoes have. ⁓ they don't know it they can't 3M can't take it back and say this is ours and everybody needs to pay us for it to use it because it was too successful. And that's kind of what CrossFit's looking at. They're like, fuck, had we done all this ten years ago, then something, right? They're affiliate agreements. They don't say anything about the methodology because it wasn't what they were paying attention to. They were paying attention to the trademark, the the name, the the font, all that. So Derek Peterson: Ha ha ha. The name of Yep. Well, shut the fuck up. Cross CrossFit. And also and also maybe the topic of one of the podcasts in the next two weeks. So ⁓ I think we might ⁓ you also mentioned what else did you mention earlier in this podcast? There was another ⁓ yeah. John Oliver did a good one on ⁓ last week tonight on those ⁓ a while ago. But ⁓ yeah, dude, I think ⁓ we got a few that Elwyn: Yeah. Come at me, bro. For profit prisons. Derek Peterson: few things we could talk about because that's definitely one of them now too. So well ⁓ we'll call it there. ⁓ to all of our loyal listeners, thank you and ⁓ we'll see you next week. Elwyn: See you next week. Thank you.