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Marco Rubio's Scathing Warning About Marxism · 3 Martini Lunch – Political Humor & Commentary

0:02
Speaker 1: Welcome to the Three Martini Lunch. Grab a stool next
0:05
Speaker 1: to Greg Corumbus of Radio America and Jim Garrity of
0:08
Speaker 1: National Review. Free Martini's coming up.
0:13
Speaker 2: We are so glad you're with us for the Friday
0:15
Speaker 2: edition of the Three Martini Lunch. We've made it to
0:17
Speaker 2: the end of the week once again, and so much
0:19
Speaker 2: to get to. And Jim, let's start with what I
0:21
Speaker 2: think was an absolutely remarkable speech yesterday by Secretary of
0:26
Speaker 2: State Marco Rubio. We'll get to the one from President
0:28
Speaker 2: Trump and our second martini, But Marco Rubio has always
0:32
Speaker 2: been very good about talking about the evils of communism.
0:35
Speaker 2: As the son of Cuban refugees, he certainly knows what
0:39
Speaker 2: it's like there, has certainly heard from his family members
0:42
Speaker 2: what it's like to grow up in that repressive society.
0:44
Speaker 2: And I think he's stayed very much true to his upbringing.
0:48
Speaker 2: But yesterday, talking about leftism, Marxism, socialism, communism, whatever label
0:54
Speaker 2: you want to give it, he talked about the evils
0:58
Speaker 2: that it brings, and it always brings the same thing.
1:00
Speaker 2: Two longer clips here, starting with this one.
1:03
Speaker 3: This is a distinctive and unique evil. It has always
1:07
Speaker 3: been driven by a hatred above all else, a hatred
1:10
Speaker 3: for civilization itself. It is a revolt of the worst
1:14
Speaker 3: against the best, a revolt of the weak and the
1:17
Speaker 3: cowardly against the strong and the good. It is perpetrated
1:22
Speaker 3: by those who cannot build, who cannot create, who cannot
1:26
Speaker 3: achieve great things, and take their revenge upon the world
1:30
Speaker 3: for their own inadequacy by seeking to destroy those who can.
1:35
Speaker 3: This is what radical leftism is. It may wear various
1:39
Speaker 3: different slogans and ideologies across place and time. They can
1:43
Speaker 3: call themselves anti capitalists or anti imperialists, or communists or
1:47
Speaker 3: anarchists or Marxist, but the fundamental character is always the same.
1:52
Speaker 3: It's always the same. It is a poisonous resentment cloaked
1:56
Speaker 3: in the language of equality and justice and liberation, an
2:00
Speaker 3: overwhelming need to tear down what greater men have built,
2:04
Speaker 3: to wreck what is beautiful and what is right on
2:07
Speaker 3: behalf of people who are only filled with ugliness and
2:10
Speaker 3: have nothing else to offer the world. Through violence and
2:14
Speaker 3: through terror, they once again seek to impose their ugliness.
2:18
Speaker 3: The old dogma was wrong. The old dogma was wrong.
2:22
Speaker 3: None of this is driven by idealism. It is not utopian.
2:26
Speaker 3: In fact, it is the opposite. One of the criticisms
2:32
Speaker 3: you sometimes hear of communism, for example, is that it
2:35
Speaker 3: sounds good in theory, but it never works in practice.
2:39
Speaker 3: That's actually not true. Communism does not sound good in theory.
2:44
Speaker 3: The world that envisions for all of us is small, flat, gray,
2:50
Speaker 3: leveled of all exception, drained of all that is good
2:53
Speaker 3: and noble in the human soul. The world that envisions
2:56
Speaker 3: is a world without courage, a world without creativity ambition,
3:01
Speaker 3: a world without heroes or glory or great causes to
3:04
Speaker 3: strive towards without a world without miracles, without myths, without
3:09
Speaker 3: men who rise above the rest to do incredible and
3:12
Speaker 3: extraordinary things. And the world communism and visions is a
3:16
Speaker 3: world without God.
3:17
Speaker 2: So Jemmy said it so well. I'm not sure how
3:19
Speaker 2: much is left for us to say. But when we
3:21
Speaker 2: see the left embracing further and further and further left,
3:25
Speaker 2: and they dress it up in ways that's about affordability
3:28
Speaker 2: and rising, you know, the people who are downtrodden and
3:32
Speaker 2: so forth, marc Ribio cutting right to the chase is
3:35
Speaker 2: very helpful.
3:35
Speaker 1: Greg.
3:36
Speaker 4: I try not to say this lightly because the term
3:38
Speaker 4: gets thrown around, way too common in our modern politics,
3:41
Speaker 4: particularly for those of a certain age like you and me.
3:43
Speaker 4: These were the most reaganesque comments I've heard from an
3:46
Speaker 4: elected official in a long, long time. And you can
3:50
Speaker 4: write up a reaganesque speech. You can get Peggy Unon
3:53
Speaker 4: or my late former mentor Tony Dolan, you can get
3:57
Speaker 4: the old speech writers, you can get the right words.
4:00
Speaker 4: You can practice that, you can put it onto the teleprompter,
4:02
Speaker 4: you can practice the delivery, and a lot of politicians
4:05
Speaker 4: try to do it and it never quite sounds right,
4:08
Speaker 4: It never quite sounds natural. You think back to all
4:11
Speaker 4: of Reagan's greatest speeches, there was a there's some fascinating
4:15
Speaker 4: combination of obviously, you know, sincerity, but also a sense
4:21
Speaker 4: of conversationalness that on the one hand, it spoke about
4:24
Speaker 4: grand and important, big ideas, but you never felt like
4:28
Speaker 4: he was coming down from a mountain with two stone tablets,
4:31
Speaker 4: that there was something you could eat. You could hear
4:33
Speaker 4: the exact same words coming from a neighbor across the
4:35
Speaker 4: back fence. There was just kind of this great relatability
4:39
Speaker 4: to it. So you look at Rubio and it's I'm
4:42
Speaker 4: kind of struck. This is the same guy who sounded
4:44
Speaker 4: like the malfunctioning robot on the debate stage in New
4:47
Speaker 4: Hampshire in twenty sixteen. And on the one hand, a
4:50
Speaker 4: lot of time has passed. Rubio was always a good speaker. Look,
4:53
Speaker 4: there's a lot of people who think Marco Ruby is
4:55
Speaker 4: going to run for president in twenty twenty eight. He
4:57
Speaker 4: keeps saying he's not interested if JD. Vance wants to run.
5:00
Speaker 4: JD Evans. Clearly at this point it certainly looks like
5:03
Speaker 4: JD Evans wants to run. He appeared on Joe Rogan
5:05
Speaker 4: earlier this week. Rubio is an absolute master when it
5:10
Speaker 4: comes to public speaking, and you look at that stuff
5:12
Speaker 4: and you're like, wow, exactly what the country needs. I'm
5:14
Speaker 4: gonna have one minute quibble with what he said in
5:17
Speaker 4: that section. He said that communism and these leftist ideologies
5:22
Speaker 4: represent the weak taking on the strong, and I actually
5:26
Speaker 4: don't think that's the case. If you look at the
5:28
Speaker 4: way these movements go. They might be weak at start,
5:31
Speaker 4: but if they all amount to wanting to grab the
5:34
Speaker 4: power of the state and then using the power of
5:37
Speaker 4: the state to take what they want and punish those
5:39
Speaker 4: who disagree, So really it's a philosophy of a bully.
5:42
Speaker 4: It's not a philosophy. Yeah, I see where he's going
5:45
Speaker 4: with that. This is some sort of sense of like,
5:46
Speaker 4: these are people who cannot accomplish in life what they
5:50
Speaker 4: want and want to use the power of the state
5:52
Speaker 4: to take what they want. But in the end, it
5:54
Speaker 4: is not like they're not weak, they're bullies. They are
5:57
Speaker 4: people who like hurting people, They like exerting their power,
6:00
Speaker 4: like exerting dominance over others. So one minute, quibble on
6:04
Speaker 4: that word choice, but otherwise, just a great speech. And
6:08
Speaker 4: I don't think there's any harm when the Democratic Socialists
6:11
Speaker 4: of America are the most loudest and growing and burgeoning
6:16
Speaker 4: movement within the modern Democratic Party. I don't think there's
6:18
Speaker 4: any harm in tying the difference the leftists overseas and
6:23
Speaker 4: leftists at home and pointing out that it is still
6:27
Speaker 4: illegal to immigrate to the United States if you are
6:29
Speaker 4: a member of a communist party, why would we want
6:32
Speaker 4: native born communists in US elected office?
6:36
Speaker 2: Not Jim, I think you said it well, and I
6:37
Speaker 2: think your point is well taken as well, and so
6:40
Speaker 2: Ribio saying it well. And I think it's important that
6:44
Speaker 2: the American people hear that as often as possible. Heading
6:46
Speaker 2: into this election season, I think the Democrats are finally
6:49
Speaker 2: spoke by the socialists because of what happened with Platner.
6:52
Speaker 2: But that was more electoral politics, I think, than what
6:55
Speaker 2: they actually want to accomplish. So we'll see what happens
6:58
Speaker 2: in Michigan and beyond. Like we're talking about, yes, so
7:01
Speaker 2: let let the warning go out, and Ribio said it
7:04
Speaker 2: about as well as could be. Sad, all right, Well,
7:06
Speaker 2: another thing that happens when the Communists come in is
7:10
Speaker 2: wealth doesn't happen anymore. You know, you got to share
7:13
Speaker 2: everything you know from your ability and according to your means.
7:16
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7:18
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8:28
Speaker 2: President Trump's speech last night on election security election integrity
8:33
Speaker 2: speech went for about twenty five minutes. The first few
8:35
Speaker 2: minutes we're kind of rattling through what he sees as
8:38
Speaker 2: his success since retaking office there in twenty twenty five,
8:41
Speaker 2: and then he got around to the issue of election
8:43
Speaker 2: security with this preface.
8:45
Speaker 5: Tonight, I'm announcing the immediate declassification and release of critical
8:50
Speaker 5: intelligence revealing shocking vulnerabilities in our election infrastructure. This evidence
8:58
Speaker 5: shows that the election system we have dangerously exposes and
9:03
Speaker 5: really exposes like levels never thought possible, the hacking, exploitation,
9:10
Speaker 5: and foreign interference. Just as disturbingly, this vital information has
9:16
Speaker 5: for many years been covered up and hidden from you.
9:20
Speaker 5: The American people are beautiful, are great American people. But
9:24
Speaker 5: that all changes right now.
9:26
Speaker 2: So here's the cliffs notes on this. He talked about
9:28
Speaker 2: five different areas of concern that are in this declassified
9:31
Speaker 2: trove of intelligence documents. Haven't seen the intel yet. But
9:35
Speaker 2: first of all, he says, China carried out what is
9:36
Speaker 2: believed to be the largest compromise of election data in history,
9:39
Speaker 2: resulting in China's illicit acquisition of two hundred and twenty
9:42
Speaker 2: million US voter files. He also says our intelligence agency,
9:46
Speaker 2: which he called the Deep State, work to actively suppress
9:49
Speaker 2: and downplay information about the extent of China's sinister election medaling,
9:52
Speaker 2: covering it up from both the president and the American people.
9:56
Speaker 2: Said the Chinese sought to identify business people as well
9:58
Speaker 2: as US journalists who had ported negatively on the US
10:01
Speaker 2: president and pay them large sums of money to write
10:03
Speaker 2: more negative articles about him. He didn't say if that
10:06
Speaker 2: actually happened. The third set of documents, he says, is
10:09
Speaker 2: about our election infrastructure, including electronic voting machines and ballot
10:13
Speaker 2: counting systems. He says, they're vulnerable and they're easily compromised,
10:17
Speaker 2: and people within our government knew that. As one assessment states,
10:20
Speaker 2: we judged that the United States adversaries, including at a
10:23
Speaker 2: minimum Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, as well as non
10:25
Speaker 2: state groups have the capability to compromise US election infrastructure.
10:30
Speaker 2: That might be the most significant claim that he made.
10:33
Speaker 2: He also talked about a twenty twenty plot in Michigan
10:35
Speaker 2: where canvassers admitted to FBI agents that they signed voter
10:38
Speaker 2: registration forms in other people's names, submitted fraudulent registration for
10:42
Speaker 2: people who did not exist, and received gift cards tied
10:45
Speaker 2: to their number of applications that they produced. And finally,
10:48
Speaker 2: he says, a Homeland Security review of state voter rolls,
10:51
Speaker 2: and I think that's only the states that cooperated, they
10:53
Speaker 2: found approximately two hundred and seventy eight thousand non citizens
10:56
Speaker 2: who are registered to vote in federal elections.
10:58
Speaker 1: And so he.
10:59
Speaker 2: Obviously used this as a push to have the Senate
11:01
Speaker 2: approve the save America Act, which the House has done
11:04
Speaker 2: on a couple different occasions already. So Jim, again, we
11:07
Speaker 2: haven't seen the intel. We don't know what the documents
11:09
Speaker 2: actually say. Maybe other people have had a chance to
11:11
Speaker 2: dig into that already. You are not impressed with this speech.
11:14
Speaker 2: That's the subject of your morning jilt today, so take
11:16
Speaker 2: it away.
11:17
Speaker 4: I found it extraordinarily frustrating. And it was not extraordinarily
11:21
Speaker 4: frustrating because it was all nonsense. It was extraordinarly frustrating
11:24
Speaker 4: because some parts of it were extremely legitimate and backed
11:27
Speaker 4: up by data and are well verified and known, and
11:30
Speaker 4: other parts are hyperbole and other parts are just unverifiable.
11:35
Speaker 4: I didn't get a chance to go through every one
11:36
Speaker 4: of the documents, but I went through quite a few
11:38
Speaker 4: of them this morning.
11:40
Speaker 1: But well, the.
11:41
Speaker 4: President says about china illicit acquisition of two hundred and
11:44
Speaker 4: twenty million US voter files. I believe the President referring
11:48
Speaker 4: to voter registration records. That's public information that is not
11:52
Speaker 4: necessarily something that is secret or classified or something that
11:56
Speaker 4: now it is sensitive. It does have your name, your
11:58
Speaker 4: phone number, your address. Sometimes so it says political party preferences,
12:01
Speaker 4: and it could be either which party are you registered with?
12:04
Speaker 1: Or which primary did you vote on?
12:06
Speaker 4: Can that data be sensitive? Yes, States spenually try to
12:09
Speaker 4: try to be careful about who they give this stuff
12:11
Speaker 4: to because they don't want to be used for identity
12:13
Speaker 4: theft or something like that. States also sell this information,
12:17
Speaker 4: and so if you're selling the information, it's not that
12:20
Speaker 4: hard for some foreign government to obtain this. So I
12:24
Speaker 4: wish the President could have been more clear about what
12:27
Speaker 4: he was talking about. And is the problem that we
12:30
Speaker 4: should no longer sell this information? Is that we should
12:33
Speaker 4: no longer we should have more restrictions on who can
12:35
Speaker 4: access this. I mean, if this stuff is for sale,
12:38
Speaker 4: you can't exactly be shocked that it would end up
12:40
Speaker 4: in the hands of the Chinese government. Now listen to
12:43
Speaker 4: this podcast. No, you and I are pretty aren't tough
12:45
Speaker 4: on the People's Republic of China. I do not trust Jijiping.
12:48
Speaker 4: I do not trust the regime in Beijing. And the
12:50
Speaker 4: idea is entirely rational to be concerned about the Chinese government,
12:54
Speaker 4: you know, obtaining this information. They said, all this information
12:56
Speaker 4: is on the White House website. Well, when they say that,
12:58
Speaker 4: there's like short little sections and then they have links
13:01
Speaker 4: that if you click on it, we'll download a ZIP
13:04
Speaker 4: file of PDFs of certain partially declassified documents. When I
13:08
Speaker 4: say partially declassified, there's still a whole lot in these
13:11
Speaker 4: documents that has redacted. And when I say, like, the
13:14
Speaker 4: black marker has gone over the words, so you can't
13:17
Speaker 4: see this. Some of them you can see a bunch.
13:19
Speaker 4: Some of them you can can't see much of anything
13:21
Speaker 4: at all, some of which are like, what are two sentences?
13:24
Speaker 4: And it becomes kind of hard to evaluate, well, what
13:27
Speaker 4: are these documents actually saying. One of the ones is
13:29
Speaker 4: from the Presidential Daily Briefing in June twenty fifth, twenty twenty.
13:32
Speaker 4: But remember all of this is going on during COVID,
13:35
Speaker 4: and so if you wanted to say that the Chinese
13:37
Speaker 4: interfered with our election by releasing a terrible contagious virus
13:41
Speaker 4: upon the world, yes, I'm perfectly willing to agree with that,
13:43
Speaker 4: But that really wasn't the focus of the president's remarks, right,
13:47
Speaker 4: And he talks about the One of these documents talks
13:49
Speaker 4: about China attempting to use blackmail against the US official
13:53
Speaker 4: and this from the Presidential Daily Briefing put together by
13:55
Speaker 4: the US intelligence community.
13:56
Speaker 1: We assess that this threat is credible.
13:59
Speaker 4: That sounds pretty serious, But we don't know which White
14:02
Speaker 4: House official they were talking about. We don't know what happened,
14:05
Speaker 4: We don't know which you know, to how do was
14:08
Speaker 4: this threat communicated? And this is about attempting to blackmail
14:12
Speaker 4: an official, which sounds like kind of the usual thing
14:14
Speaker 4: you'd expect from the world of espionage. This doesn't necessarily
14:17
Speaker 4: involve tampering with election results or voter frau. So if
14:20
Speaker 4: you want me to believe that the Chinese government is bad, yes,
14:23
Speaker 4: I totally believe you, mister President.
14:25
Speaker 1: I am on board with that. What do you want
14:27
Speaker 1: to do?
14:28
Speaker 4: Every time I see these things that are you know,
14:30
Speaker 4: they've been blacked out and redacted? Greg who controls the classification,
14:34
Speaker 4: I'd be the president right any of this stuff he
14:36
Speaker 4: could say to classify this an he would and it hasn't.
14:39
Speaker 4: So as you're going through these documents, you're like, look,
14:42
Speaker 4: if what's behind the black ink really is the smoking gun,
14:46
Speaker 4: and this is this important to the president, it's going
14:48
Speaker 4: to require a prime time you know, national address.
14:51
Speaker 1: Why are we not seeing this? Why you know so,
14:53
Speaker 1: why are we.
14:53
Speaker 4: Downloading this as a ZIP file? Why is on the
14:55
Speaker 4: White if this is really important. Why did you not
14:57
Speaker 4: lay out and say, this is this document, this is
14:59
Speaker 4: what it says, this is what it means. None of
15:01
Speaker 4: this is on the White House website though, just the
15:02
Speaker 4: documents right there. Download him, figuring him out for yourself.
15:05
Speaker 4: I don't think this. This all feels very ham handed,
15:09
Speaker 4: halfway done, sloppily rushed the whole nine thing. But let's assume,
15:14
Speaker 4: as I believe you know, I am completely convinced, mister President.
15:17
Speaker 2: Oh.
15:17
Speaker 4: First of all, he talks about the deep state. If,
15:19
Speaker 4: as the President alleges, the US intelligence community hid information
15:23
Speaker 4: from him about a plot to meddle in an election,
15:26
Speaker 4: I would be really angry at the Director of National Intelligence?
15:28
Speaker 4: Hey Greg Who is the Director of National Intelligence back
15:30
Speaker 4: in twenty.
15:31
Speaker 2: Twenty, Rick Cornell?
15:33
Speaker 4: John Greg earlier, John Ratcliffe? What's John Ratcliffe doing these days?
15:38
Speaker 2: Director of CIA?
15:39
Speaker 4: Yes, he was the guy Trump appointed at the beginning
15:43
Speaker 4: of his term. And who's still there. So what we
15:46
Speaker 4: think if this was such a terrible why is John
15:49
Speaker 4: Ratcliffe not fired? Why is this? In fact, he said
15:52
Speaker 4: he's directed the intelligence community to get to the bottom
15:55
Speaker 4: of this. I assume that probe would be directed run
15:58
Speaker 4: by John Ratcliffe who was the guy in charge last
16:01
Speaker 4: time that all these terrible things were happening. According to
16:03
Speaker 4: the President, all right, by fine, yeah, China's really bad.
16:06
Speaker 4: I'm totally If China's really bad, it would probably be
16:10
Speaker 4: a good idea for the President to stop praising Xijiping
16:12
Speaker 4: every chance he gets and talking about a great relation
16:14
Speaker 4: they have and how smart he is and how strong leader.
16:17
Speaker 1: Blah blah blah.
16:18
Speaker 4: I probably would you know, then have like banned TikTok
16:21
Speaker 4: as the law requires, instead of trying to get this. Oh,
16:23
Speaker 4: by the way, national security experts say that the algorithm
16:27
Speaker 4: is still controlled by by Edance, which is effectively controlled
16:29
Speaker 4: by the People's Republic of China.
16:31
Speaker 1: So there's that.
16:31
Speaker 4: I would not be selling China advanced chips to be
16:33
Speaker 4: used in ai. I would be making a very big
16:36
Speaker 4: stink about the lab league. I would be standing with
16:39
Speaker 4: the Japanese Prime Minister when she got into a fight
16:41
Speaker 4: with them last fall. I would be trying to work
16:44
Speaker 4: on this backlog of arms sales to Taiwan instead of
16:47
Speaker 4: delaying another fourteen billions worth that, depending on who you ask,
16:50
Speaker 4: is either because we need him for Iran or not
16:52
Speaker 4: because before him, I.
16:53
Speaker 1: Ran oh by the way.
16:55
Speaker 4: Late last year, the administration halted plans to impose sanctions
16:59
Speaker 4: on China and as Ministry of State Security over a
17:01
Speaker 4: massive cyber espionage campaign in order to avoid derailing the
17:06
Speaker 4: trade truce. President's Trump and Jijinping struck in October. Again,
17:10
Speaker 4: you can't do a presidential address saying how terrible it
17:14
Speaker 4: is that China is doing this, when just a couple
17:16
Speaker 4: of months ago you said we're going to take it
17:18
Speaker 4: oneasy these guys because we really want to excel them
17:20
Speaker 4: more soybeans. There's no coherence what the president is doing here.
17:24
Speaker 4: And it's frustrating because while I don't think the scale
17:26
Speaker 4: of election fraud, certainly it's not on a scale large
17:28
Speaker 4: enough to switch in a presidential election. Probably not large
17:31
Speaker 4: enough on a scale to a statewide election. I guess
17:34
Speaker 4: if you have a congressional election, or I suppose you
17:36
Speaker 4: have a you know, Bush by Gore two thousand situation
17:39
Speaker 4: where it comes down to five hundred votes, maybe it's
17:41
Speaker 4: on that scale that hasn't been proven yet. But you know,
17:43
Speaker 4: the Heritage Foundation puts together it's list of people who
17:46
Speaker 4: get convicted for voting illegally. Anyway, It's just there are
17:50
Speaker 4: real issues here, And it would be nice if we
17:51
Speaker 4: had a president who took this stuff seriously and talked
17:54
Speaker 4: about this coherently and talked about the specifics instead of
17:57
Speaker 4: just you know, deviating from the teleprompter and could lay
17:59
Speaker 4: out a like a prosecutor. And instead we got another
18:02
Speaker 4: Trump rally. Just this one is you know in the
18:04
Speaker 4: Oval office. It's it's you know, Donnie from Queen's on
18:08
Speaker 4: the car phone once again.
18:09
Speaker 2: Well, I think Mark white Mellon, the Homeland Scarity Secretary,
18:12
Speaker 2: is supposed to dig into this more today or soon.
18:15
Speaker 1: Jim.
18:16
Speaker 2: The one thing that could shift vote tallies that he
18:20
Speaker 2: mentioned anyway, is whether our infrastructure has compromised electronic voting
18:24
Speaker 2: machines and that sort of thing. Is there anything you
18:26
Speaker 2: saw on the documents that directly address that.
18:28
Speaker 4: No. First of all, they like, they very like they
18:30
Speaker 4: have the discussion about potential vulnerabilities, but not this has happened,
18:35
Speaker 4: this has been hacked, or something like that. If you
18:37
Speaker 4: have potential vulnerabilities, yes you should do that. I also
18:39
Speaker 4: want to put it like Trump's closing message was that
18:42
Speaker 4: we have an election system so broken and so vulnerable
18:45
Speaker 4: that no one can possibly defend it. It is not defensible,
18:48
Speaker 4: and he talks about, you know, voter files in the
18:50
Speaker 4: hands of foreign governments. As I said, this is you know,
18:52
Speaker 4: public information. Our machines and ballot counting systems are exposed
18:56
Speaker 4: to hacking and manipulation and corruption. So the whole message
19:00
Speaker 4: is everything is at minimum potentially compromised. If not compromised,
19:05
Speaker 4: everything is corrupt, everything is rigged. If you're the NRCC,
19:09
Speaker 4: the NRSC Republican Governments Association, is that the message you
19:13
Speaker 4: want to send out to Republican voters a couple months
19:15
Speaker 4: before a midterm everything's rigged.
19:17
Speaker 1: No, No, this is how you end up.
19:18
Speaker 4: With two Democratic senators from the state of Georgia. So
19:21
Speaker 4: I am infuriated with this president about how every time
19:24
Speaker 4: we loses it's rigged, all his wins are legitimate. He
19:27
Speaker 4: does this over and over again. And my suspission is
19:29
Speaker 4: that this is preemptive setting up excuses. So what's probably
19:32
Speaker 4: going to be a rough midterm election for Republicans. Trump's
19:35
Speaker 4: going to come out and say, yeah, you know, well,
19:36
Speaker 4: the whole reason we lost was Chinese hacked, trying to
19:38
Speaker 4: hack the elections, blah blah blah. But also, look at
19:40
Speaker 4: a great job we're doing selling soybeans to them.
19:42
Speaker 2: Well, the midterm elections are now less than four months away,
19:45
Speaker 2: and the main Senate race is still one of the
19:50
Speaker 2: key focal points and is one of Jim's specific focal
19:53
Speaker 2: points for the twenty twenty six midterms. And we'll talk
19:55
Speaker 2: about the debate that happened among the Democratic perspective candidate.
20:00
Speaker 2: It's last night in just a moment, But in the meantime,
20:03
Speaker 2: let's talk about your business. If you get a Democrat
20:07
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Speaker 2: No missed calls, no missed customers, All right, Jim. As
21:15
Speaker 2: we mentioned earlier in the week, there is a scramble
21:18
Speaker 2: up in Maine to be the new Democratic nominee to
21:21
Speaker 2: replace Graham Platner in the US Senate race against Susan Collins.
21:24
Speaker 2: They've got till really July twenty sevenths, the official day
21:27
Speaker 2: that the nominee has to be presented by the party.
21:29
Speaker 2: But they're going to decide all this next Saturday, July
21:32
Speaker 2: twenty fifth, So yesterday was the first debate. And Jim,
21:36
Speaker 2: this feels a little bit like a shrunken version of
21:39
Speaker 2: the California recall and the whole cavalcade of insane candidates
21:43
Speaker 2: from back in two thousand and three when Schwarzenegger became governor.
21:46
Speaker 2: And so a lot of these people were on stage
21:49
Speaker 2: last night, including the people who are considered to have,
21:51
Speaker 2: you know, a decent chance of actually becoming the nominee.
21:54
Speaker 2: And then there were some gadflies as well. We'll have
21:56
Speaker 2: a couple of clips of the gadflies in just a second.
21:59
Speaker 2: But the New York Times even said that this was
22:01
Speaker 2: a brutal debate. They said, first of all, there were
22:04
Speaker 2: halting answers, convoluted responses, and stilted deliveries. Former State Senator
22:08
Speaker 2: Troy Jackson, Secretary of State Shenna Bellows, and Jordan Wood,
22:12
Speaker 2: a former congressional aid, all struggled to match the force
22:14
Speaker 2: full message and rhetorical prowess of mister Plattner, whose rallies
22:18
Speaker 2: electrified voters over the last year. They also were not
22:22
Speaker 2: impressed with doctor narov Shaw. And so those are the
22:25
Speaker 2: four people who are considered kind of the main candidates there.
22:28
Speaker 2: So they are seem like they're not ready for prime time,
22:30
Speaker 2: but compared to some of these other folks, maybe they are.
22:34
Speaker 2: There's a guy on stage there that goes by Ashley Webb.
22:37
Speaker 2: He's a big guy, but a dress and I think
22:40
Speaker 2: he's identifies as a woman here. But they asked some
22:43
Speaker 2: of these candidates, Hey, tell us about yourself a little bit,
22:45
Speaker 2: and why you think you're qualified to be a senator as.
22:48
Speaker 3: What qualifications do you have to serve in the US Senator?
22:52
Speaker 1: Oh, I ran for office several times, didn't.
22:54
Speaker 6: Win, but they didn't run. And then I'm a songwriter,
22:59
Speaker 6: and then my own books, and then I suppose my
23:03
Speaker 6: transparent and see, I wouldn't lie to the people, and
23:07
Speaker 6: I wouldn't deceive the people like we're being deceived right now.
23:10
Speaker 2: And how would Ashley Webb cut spending?
23:12
Speaker 6: Jim, I believe they called it pork bellying. By cutting
23:16
Speaker 6: out the pork belly and from all the bills, I'm
23:18
Speaker 6: sure I would save a lot of money as well.
23:20
Speaker 2: But I think pork barrel spending is where you want
23:23
Speaker 2: to go there. Pork belly's are something you can invest in.
23:26
Speaker 2: Jim susan pretty good, But.
23:28
Speaker 1: I had the spelling. Ashley may have had a pork
23:31
Speaker 1: belly or two. But then.
23:34
Speaker 2: What do you make of it?
23:35
Speaker 4: Well, first of all, Greg, before we get any further,
23:37
Speaker 4: when you've referred to that New York Times reference to
23:40
Speaker 4: gram Platner, you know who else electrified audiences while rising
23:43
Speaker 4: to power.
23:46
Speaker 1: I gotta get one last Hitler joke in there.
23:48
Speaker 4: It's not the last one who we can No, it's
23:50
Speaker 4: not only it's only the most recent. So as I
23:54
Speaker 4: was like, so I people were discussing this last night,
23:57
Speaker 4: I start watching the clips and it started out funny
24:01
Speaker 4: and then it turned kind of sad. And the way
24:04
Speaker 4: I thought about it, Greg, is that if I said
24:07
Speaker 4: to you today, you know, Greg, I love doing the
24:09
Speaker 4: podcast with you, I love writing, but like, i really
24:11
Speaker 4: want to play in the NBA and I'm gonna I'm
24:14
Speaker 4: gonna drop everything I'm doing and I'm going to dedicate
24:16
Speaker 4: my life to playing in the NBA. And you probably
24:20
Speaker 4: would say, Jim, I know you want to do this,
24:23
Speaker 4: and I want to be supportive, but you are only
24:27
Speaker 4: six to two in a league where lots of people
24:29
Speaker 4: are closer to seven feet, Your two hundred pounds and
24:33
Speaker 4: your vertical is about two inches, and you're fifty one
24:35
Speaker 4: years old, and you're pasty compared to you. You're not
24:39
Speaker 4: going to be an NBA player. This is not what
24:41
Speaker 4: you should be doing with your life. And I felt
24:44
Speaker 4: bad for some of these gadfly candidates who apparently don't
24:48
Speaker 4: have friends who are willing to say this is not
24:51
Speaker 4: a good idea. You are not ready to do this,
24:54
Speaker 4: You are not Like, running for Senate is hard. Running
24:58
Speaker 4: for Senate against an is hard. Running for Senate against
25:02
Speaker 4: Susan Collins, who's been elected many many times and always
25:05
Speaker 4: does way better than her poling numbers is really really hard.
25:09
Speaker 4: Running for Senate replacing Graham Plattner with only a few
25:12
Speaker 4: months to go, when Susan Collins has eleven million dollars
25:15
Speaker 4: in the bank and I'm assuming most of these candidates
25:17
Speaker 4: have very little in the bank in terms of their.
25:19
Speaker 1: Kid Like, that's really really, really really hard.
25:22
Speaker 4: You probably should not do this if you do not
25:24
Speaker 4: believe that you have a serious path to victory. Apparently
25:27
Speaker 4: none of these candidates had anybody willing to say say
25:29
Speaker 4: that to them, and that the result was what we
25:32
Speaker 4: saw on stage, a bunch of people who really seem
25:35
Speaker 4: to think that writing their own songs is a qualification
25:39
Speaker 4: to be.
25:39
Speaker 1: In the U.
25:40
Speaker 4: Like, I just wanted to take Ashley aside and say,
25:45
Speaker 4: do you know what a senator does? Are you familiar
25:48
Speaker 4: with the US Senate? Are you familiar with what the
25:51
Speaker 4: job entails? Because generally other than like the quartet, the
25:56
Speaker 4: barbershop quartet that Trent Lott was in.
25:58
Speaker 1: There's not a lot of singing.
25:59
Speaker 4: There's generally musical theater is not a huge part of
26:03
Speaker 4: being a senator.
26:04
Speaker 1: And I, like, I just felt sad.
26:07
Speaker 4: I just got like that, this is not what our
26:10
Speaker 4: elective process is supposed to be. Yes, you know Collins was,
26:13
Speaker 4: you know, always likely to win another term. But this
26:16
Speaker 4: just like, these are people who I think are troubled.
26:20
Speaker 4: These are people who want attention, These are people who
26:22
Speaker 4: want to feel meaningful. And the great irony is that, like,
26:25
Speaker 4: there's no shortage of elected offices in this country. There's
26:28
Speaker 4: no probably no shortage of elected offices. There are lots
26:30
Speaker 4: of ways you can participate in the process. You don't
26:33
Speaker 4: have to decide, well, in order to feel meaningful about
26:36
Speaker 4: my life, I'm going to run for I'm going to
26:38
Speaker 4: make this really, really long shot bid for senate. I
26:42
Speaker 4: would also point out that somebody else on that stage
26:44
Speaker 4: was asked, you know, uh, what are your national security qualifications?
26:47
Speaker 4: And they immediately start ranting about Trump, and then the
26:50
Speaker 4: moderator what what are your military you know, uh, national security,
26:55
Speaker 4: and they why I haven't served in the military. I
26:58
Speaker 4: why are you blindsided by that question? It's as if
27:01
Speaker 4: they grabbed people off the street and just said, hey,
27:03
Speaker 4: you're running for Senate now, good luck, and that's that's how.
27:05
Speaker 1: It went last night.
27:06
Speaker 4: So it was kind of funny but kind of sad.
27:09
Speaker 4: We should also point out that, like, this was a debate,
27:12
Speaker 4: like a primary debate without the actual you know, primary,
27:16
Speaker 4: in that nobody's going to vote other than six hundred
27:19
Speaker 4: and one delegates of the of the main Democratic Party.
27:22
Speaker 4: So you kind of left at this question, and there's
27:23
Speaker 4: another debate coming up on CNN and people are asking, like, wait,
27:26
Speaker 4: we're of it, nationally televised debate for decisions gonna be
27:28
Speaker 4: made by six hundred delegates really, so summer programming, Greg.
27:33
Speaker 2: Well, well, say, and I'm trying to make an in
27:35
Speaker 2: kind contribution to the Democrats, but if they performed like
27:37
Speaker 2: they did last time, it might be.
27:39
Speaker 1: That's help.
27:40
Speaker 4: With Collins, She's like, please put these people on on
27:42
Speaker 4: screen as much as possible.
27:44
Speaker 2: Yeah, definitely. Well, like you said, a lot of questionable
27:46
Speaker 2: decisions being made, but you make better decisions when you
27:49
Speaker 2: get all the proper nutrients. And I'm not promising that
27:52
Speaker 2: if these people drank ag one, they would have made
27:54
Speaker 2: a different decision, but I would hope they would. And
27:57
Speaker 2: ag one is so simple to use, Jim, you know
27:59
Speaker 2: this as well as I do. One scoop, You put
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Speaker 2: it in the water, you add some other stuff if
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Speaker 2: you want to change the flavor a little bit, but
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Speaker 2: it's fine the way it is, and then you know
28:06
Speaker 2: you've got all the nutrients you need for that day.
28:09
Speaker 2: Ag one helps to maintain energy, support gut health, and
28:11
Speaker 2: support immune health. Could not be simpler to do, especially
28:15
Speaker 2: in our busy lads. We're always on the go.
28:17
Speaker 4: Greg, It's very hard to eat healthy. It's very hard
28:20
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Speaker 4: of food that's tempting us, like you know, pork bellies.
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Speaker 2: one dot com slash three m L. All right, Jim,
29:08
Speaker 2: it was just a couple of months ago, maybe April.
29:10
Speaker 2: I guess that Eric Swalwell was exposed through CNN and
29:16
Speaker 2: other reporting that he had sexual advances, unwanted sexual inappropriate conduct,
29:22
Speaker 2: let's say, in a number of different ways with a
29:24
Speaker 2: variety of women, forced him out of the California governor's race,
29:27
Speaker 2: and you know, his very best friend on Capitol Hill,
29:30
Speaker 2: Ruben Gego, came out and gave a press conference where
29:34
Speaker 2: he didn't look real comfortable, as you'll recall, but insisting
29:37
Speaker 2: that he didn't know anything about it. He felt as
29:39
Speaker 2: betrayed or even more betrayed by Eric Swalwell than anyone else,
29:42
Speaker 2: and promised that no, no, I don't have anything in
29:45
Speaker 2: my background like this. Well, the good news, at least
29:47
Speaker 2: for now for Reuben Diego is that no one is
29:49
Speaker 2: accusing him of any crimes in that department. However, The
29:53
Speaker 2: New York Post reporting with sources that including one that
29:57
Speaker 2: says that Diego admits this is that Gego had sexual
30:02
Speaker 2: relationships with two different Hill staffers, not from his office,
30:05
Speaker 2: but from the office of a Texas Member of Congress.
30:09
Speaker 2: Both were consensual, and allegedly both happened while he was unmarried.
30:13
Speaker 2: He was married when he came to Washington, divorced his
30:16
Speaker 2: wife while she was nine months pregnant. Then somehow this
30:19
Speaker 2: stuff supposedly happened not at all during that time, but
30:22
Speaker 2: in between, and then four years after his divorce he
30:24
Speaker 2: got married again. So I don't think there's necessarily any
30:29
Speaker 2: comparison directly to Eric Swawell here, but this for a
30:32
Speaker 2: guy who wants to be president, this is potentially a
30:35
Speaker 2: significant revelation.
30:37
Speaker 1: Yeah.
30:37
Speaker 4: So there was a time earlier in this cycle where
30:39
Speaker 4: I was looking at the you know, teeming masses of
30:42
Speaker 4: Democrats who thought they could be the twenty twenty eight nominee,
30:44
Speaker 4: and I thought Reuben Gego was one of the stronger
30:46
Speaker 4: options for Democrats. Latino military veteran comes from an important state,
30:51
Speaker 4: talked about how every young Latino man wants to own
30:55
Speaker 4: a big butt truck. I'm cleaning up the language a
30:57
Speaker 4: little bit, and that the idea. He talked a little
31:00
Speaker 4: bit about entrepreneurship, like, oh, okay, it's just a little
31:02
Speaker 4: bit different from a democrat. But the schewness rating keeps
31:08
Speaker 4: inching up higher and some part problem number one obviously,
31:11
Speaker 4: is like, look, it's not just Eric Swallbow's buddy. There's
31:14
Speaker 4: the shirt of the two of them shirtless on one
31:16
Speaker 4: of those codels. I believe they were, you know, somewhere
31:18
Speaker 4: in Egypt or so on camels. You know, his whole
31:22
Speaker 4: argument of oh, I had no idea that my best
31:23
Speaker 4: friend was like this. People are going to be more
31:26
Speaker 4: than a little bit skeptical of that, you proclamation of innocence.
31:31
Speaker 4: And then there was the issue, as you mentioned, of
31:32
Speaker 4: the leaving his wife and she was pregnant. You know, okay,
31:34
Speaker 4: lots of people have messy divorces. Then there's the factor
31:38
Speaker 4: that during this Swallowll thing, he was asked directly, have
31:41
Speaker 4: you ever had a relationship with his staffer? And he
31:44
Speaker 4: denied it vehemently. He's like, what on earth are you
31:47
Speaker 4: talking about? I have no idea what you're talking about.
31:49
Speaker 4: Now this comes out and he gets reached and he says, well,
31:52
Speaker 4: I'm not gonna I'm not going to discuss rumors. Well,
31:54
Speaker 4: wait a second, wait a second, that's that's not you.
31:57
Speaker 4: You went from this is absolutely not true to no,
32:00
Speaker 4: I'm not going to discuss this, which feels kind of
32:03
Speaker 4: like a okay, that one is true. Now is it
32:06
Speaker 4: a you know, how bad is it for a member,
32:08
Speaker 4: for a senator to be dating staffers of other offices? Yeah, asument,
32:12
Speaker 4: these are consensual relationships. He's not married at the time.
32:16
Speaker 4: People date, people have relationships, and so On the other hand,
32:20
Speaker 4: there's a reason that people get very you know, corporations
32:23
Speaker 4: get nervous when bosses and subordinates start dating. And these women,
32:28
Speaker 4: you know, probably were they ever interested in working for
32:29
Speaker 4: Ruben Diego? Did Ruben Diego ever think about hiring them? Like,
32:34
Speaker 4: there's a reason that these things get kind of complicated. Anyway,
32:37
Speaker 4: throw in insisting he never knew about swallwell messy divorce
32:42
Speaker 4: now on this stuff where like, yes, I had relationships
32:45
Speaker 4: with staffers on Capitol Hill, but I and I lie,
32:48
Speaker 4: I basically lied about it. But now I just you know,
32:50
Speaker 4: this is starting to come up with a point where
32:52
Speaker 4: if he runs the Democratic presidential primary, you know exactly
32:55
Speaker 4: how everybody's going to go after him, And you kind
32:58
Speaker 4: of wonder you could say oh, you know, it's post
33:00
Speaker 4: Trump politics and all that, none of this stuff is
33:03
Speaker 4: going to Let's also point out that like he was
33:05
Speaker 4: one of the first to endorse Graham Platner, and it
33:08
Speaker 4: just becomes a question of, like how much accumulated skivie
33:12
Speaker 4: behavior can you sustain before you stop being the best
33:16
Speaker 4: option for the Democratic Party. We'll see how it goes,
33:18
Speaker 4: but I kind of feel like this is this is
33:19
Speaker 4: death by a thousand cuts. This is you know, a
33:21
Speaker 4: steady drip, drip drip of less than noble behavior that
33:26
Speaker 4: I think would be easy, you know, like particularly when
33:28
Speaker 4: you're running in a party that's full of feminist particularly
33:30
Speaker 4: when you're running in a party full of that you know,
33:32
Speaker 4: has more.
33:32
Speaker 1: Women than men.
33:33
Speaker 4: At some point, does Reuben Diego start to come across
33:36
Speaker 4: like a creep to them? And you know, I guess
33:38
Speaker 4: we will see, but Geegas had a really lousy couple
33:41
Speaker 4: of months.
33:42
Speaker 2: Time will tell. But like you said, with the drip, drip,
33:44
Speaker 2: drip and the thousand cuts, I don't think this is
33:45
Speaker 2: the last revelation that's going to come out. But I
33:49
Speaker 2: hope I'm wrong. I don't want to see any more
33:51
Speaker 2: tawdry behavior. But you got to you gotta look at
33:53
Speaker 2: the past to suggest what might become a next So Jim,
33:56
Speaker 2: have a good weekend. I will talk to en Monday.
33:58
Speaker 1: See you Monday, Greg, Jim.
33:59
Speaker 2: Garretty now review. I'm Greg Corumbus of Radio America. Thanks
34:02
Speaker 2: so much for being with us today. Please be sure
34:04
Speaker 2: to subscribe to the Three Martini Lunch Podcast. If you
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