Latest / The Bob Lefsetz Podcast / Thom Hartmann

Transcript

Thom Hartmann · The Bob Lefsetz Podcast

• 0:08
  Speaker 1: Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob Left Sets podcast.
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: My guest today is progressive talk show host Tom Hartman,
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: who reaches seven million people a week. Tom, so great
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: to have you on the podcast. Great to be here
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: with you, Bob, Thank you for inviting me. Okay, you
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: talk to people all over the country every day, and
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: you even reach some foreign countries with your program. What's
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: the temperature of the country. Wow, that's a tough one.
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: I think that there's a uh, it's it's kind of
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: a confluence or a mixture of great dread and great hope.
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: I'm I'm seeing um and you know, given this is uh,
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: my biased perspective on things, but it certainly seems to
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: me that the GOP and the conservatives in the country
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: are doubling down on basically fear and and you know,
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: fear of other fear of immigrants, fear of black people,
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: fear of gay people, etcetera. UM, and and hate that
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: that is so often associated with fear at the same time,
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: and trying to block democrats from having any successes legislatively.
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: At the same time, we have, for the first time
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: in my lifetime, or at least not not in my lifetime,
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: but at least in the last forty years, we have
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: a president who is openly rejecting neoliberalism, and I think
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: that's a huge and important thing. Um that President Biden
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: is is calling out trickle down economics or economics, whatever
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: you wanna call it, and the damage that it's done,
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: the fifty fifty trillion dollar transfer of wealth from the
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: middle last to the top one over the last forty years,
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  Speaker 1: the loss of sixty factories overseas. I mean, you know, so,
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: I think there's a lot of hope that things can
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: be done to put this country back together. Um, it's
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: it's a it's an extraordinary time, uh, you know, a
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: time of great conflict and great potential. Okay, what we
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: learned in two sixteen is I hate you words use
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: the word elite because it's now become a pejorative. But
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: the elite news media, the New York Times, the Polsters
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: were completely out of touch with the sentiment of the country.
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: And in addition, people tend to live in their own bubbles.
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: Someone like you talks to people from both sides. So
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: the question becomes are the Republicans those on the right
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: just more vocal or how strong are their numbers. I
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: think that the the the hardcore uh conservatives within the
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: Republican Party are are probably a relatively small percent of
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: our population. What they have going for them that the
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: Democrats don't have is that over the last forty fifty years,
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: they have built out a massive media infrastructure. Um, you know,
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: Ruper Murdock and Fox News. Of course, you've got a
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: billionaire with a billion dollar, multibillion dollar company that reaches
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: millions and millions of people every day. Um, you've got
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: fifteen hundred right wing radio stations in the country. There
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: are now some three hundred Spanish language right wing radio
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: stations in the country doing Spanish language versions of Rush
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: Limbaugh as it were. Um. There are literally thousands of
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: conservative publications on the internet, in many cases hundreds of
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: them each coming from you know, single companies and individuals.
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: Um A. You know. The simple fact is, if if
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: you're a billionaire and you're interested in not paying taxes
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: and you want to you know, hang onto your wealth
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: and all that sort of thing, and you and you
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: don't your company to be facing consumer regulations or environmental regulations, um,
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: you know, going to the right or supporting the Republican
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: Party you're supporting this kind of stuff makes sense, it's
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: an investment. Um. And so there's uh, you know, and
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: and going back to the early days of Charles and
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: David Coke, there has become this really large network of
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: right wing funders for things that that amplify these voices.
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: So I think that the the appearance of right wing
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: is um as it were, in the United States is
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: probably larger than the actual existence of it among average people. UM.
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: But that's not to diminish its impact on our politics
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: or on our nation. Um. On the left wing. You know,
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  Speaker 1: it's it's a whole kind of different thing. It's you know,
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  Speaker 1: there's not a whole lot of billionaires out there who
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: are saying, yeah, tax me moore um. And although there
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: are a few, and God bless them, but you know
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: that's my sense of Okay. So, and I hear from
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: these people all the time to say we have the guns.
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: Just wait. Yeah. So the question becomes and really it's
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: centered around Trump over we can say that he tapped
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: into something in America. Is this something we must fear
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  Speaker 1: not only a vocal right, but an active right. Trump
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  Speaker 1: said last week that, uh, if he is penalized legally,
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: you better watch out as people are gonna be angry.
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  Speaker 1: Is that a paper tiger? Is that real? I think
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: it's both. Um, there's you know, a small number of
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: people who have a large number of guns. Um, when
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: you start looking at people on two or three more
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: more than two or three guns, the number becomes very small.
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: But the number of guns some of them on is
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: you know, like, uh, I get it that there has
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: been a stirring of the militia movement over the last
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: a few decades. When Tim they blew up in Oklahoma City,
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: it was supposed to be a call to arms to
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: these folks. He was running off the Turner Diary, which
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: continues to inspire that movement. The Turner Diaries is a
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  Speaker 1: book in which a patriot blows up the federal building.
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: In this case, I believe it was the FBI building
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: in the book, as I recall, it's been a couple
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: of decades since I read it. And in response to that,
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: the government clamps down on gun ownership and on the
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: right wing movement. And in response to that, the good
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: white patriots rise up and and and there's a civil war,
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: and they kill all the black people and all the
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: Jews and you know, everybody that the right likes to
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: hate on. And in the end, you know that it's
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: now a white Christian country and they're standing there in
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: the in the in the in the blood and the Mud.
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: But they've rescued their nation and that and campus Saints,
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: this French book you have become the Bibles of this movement. Um.
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  Speaker 1: Like I said, Tim McVeigh thought everybody was going to
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: jump in behind him. He badly miscalculated the time. And
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: in fact, for the next decade the militia movement really
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: took a hit because it was associated with Tim McVeagh. So, um,
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: then you know, after nine eleven it started, they started
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  Speaker 1: getting their mojo back. There was a common enemy, uh,
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: you know, Muslims and brown people and foreigners, and uh,
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  Speaker 1: that was a huge opportunity for the white racist, the
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: white supremacists to jump in and say, now we're the
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: ones who will save America, where the patriots will take
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: care of this. We're going to arm ourselves. And the
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: Bush administration kind of looked the other way, even though
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: their FBI came up with this extraordinary report in two
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: thousand eight on the right wing hate movement in the
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: United States and how dangerous it was becoming when that
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: report was issued in the first months of the Obama administration,
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: you recall by the FBI after they had issued during
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: the last year the Bush administration a similar report on
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: left wing through the Dangers of the left wing Extremism.
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: But when the one on the right wing extremism came out,
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: it's so inflamed the right and the Republican Party that
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: Obama pulled the report. Um so we've been kind of
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: flying in the dark, and I think it's just in
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: you know, basically since January six that the government you know,
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: certainly during the during the Trump years, there was no
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: support for anybody in the government who would be seriously
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: looking into this. The FBI had backed off, and uh so,
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: I think it's just really been the last year and
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: a half that our federal government is starting to take
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: seriously this this threat to America. Whether it's the kind
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: of threat that we should all be worried about, or
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: whether it's just the kind of threat that people like
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: you and I in the media, politicians, people the high
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: profile people need to worry about. I don't honestly know.
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: In the last the last killing in the media was
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: the America's number one progressive talk show house back in
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: the eighties. I believe it was Allen Burg, you know,
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: who was gunned down by a couple of skinheads in
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: the parking lot of his radio station in Denver. As
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: I recall, they made a movie about it called Talk Radio.
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  Speaker 1: Whether you know that kind of stochastic terrorism is going
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: to happen again, I think that that's what Trump is
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: trying to encourage his calls to arms. I'm certainly hearing
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: a lot of rhetoric that sounds not just from Trump,
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  Speaker 1: but particularly from Trump, that sounds like an open encouragement
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: of stochastic terrorism, of lone wolf terrorism. Um. But whether
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: it's going to materialize, and I mean obviously it already
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: is in many areas in many places, Whether it's going
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: to materialize in a way that you might call a
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: civil war, that you might call a you know, a
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: civil disturbance, I still think it's a very open question.
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  Speaker 1: But Okay, So, since there's been an ongoing analysis of
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: who really is making up the Republican Party, let me
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: go a little bit further. Yes, rich people who don't
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: want to pay taxes have historically been Republicans, not all
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: of them, but a great number of them. But at
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: first when Trump won, there was the belief that it
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: was the dispossessed and the disadvantage who had moved to
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: Republican Party from Democratic Party. Then the word came out, no, really,
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: it was people with money, and the analysis of January
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: six was no, these were middle and upper middle class people.
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: They had means. Then we have St. Louis, the people
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: with the guns on their on their porch during the march.
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: Needless to say, they were notorious litigants, but they were
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: also upper middle class. Who is really in control? Is
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: this a lower class movement or a middle upper class movement?
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: By movement you're talking about the GOP are you talking
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: about Yeah, well, you know there's the like you said,
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: the natural constituents of the very the more midley rich,
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: as I refer to them, um, you know, who want
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: to just stuff their money bens um who I think
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: you know, some of whom are probably suffering from the
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: mental illness O c D, A variety of O c
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: D that's called hoarding syndrome. You know, had had they
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: not been born um generally white and upper middle class
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: or even wealthy, uh, they might be living in an
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: apartment that's Florida ceiling newspapers and tin cans. Um, so
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: you've got that constituency. The Republican Party has done a
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: good job over the last forty years since Reagan, um
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: of branding itself Reagan, you know, on his horse and
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: all that sort of thing. Really Um, the you know,
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: bringing in Nascar and and and these kinds of of
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: totems almost for the Republican Party. Um, you know that
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: was that was the Democratic Party's brand in the fifties,
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: sixties and seventies, I would argue, Um, so you've got
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: a lot of kind of Joe six pack types across
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: the country. Part of that, I think is also the
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: fact that in most states in the United States there
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: literally is not a single radio station carrying progressive talk radio.
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: You have to get it off serious six and and
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: yet there is not a single part of the United
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: States where there's not at least one and typically two
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: or more radio stations carrying right wing talk radio. So
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: there's this is some hobby horse of mine for years,
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: and it sounds self interested, but um, it's really not that.
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: I think the Democratic Party has ignored this media disparity
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: for years to their disadvantage. And you know, when we
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: were on air, America Are America was carried on on
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: fifty four Clear Channel stations, and then Mitt Romney's company
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: took over Clear Channel, and suddenly Clear Channels ations of
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: dropping their America left and right until to the point
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: where America couldn't sustain itself any longer. UM. You know,
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: so there's that UM I mentioned earlier. Now there's these
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: Spanish language right wing stations there. There there's an aggressive outreach.
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: Ralph Reed's group, Americans for Faith and Freedom I think
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: it's called UM just today announced that they're spending over
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: fifty million dollars reaching out to Hispanics, specifically on the
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: issues of hating on gay people and on abortion because
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: so many Hispanics are Catholic that that's a natural topic
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: for them to flip them Republican. So uh. On the
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: other hand, I think on the on the Democratic side,
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: you're seeing you know, the growth of both Union movement,
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: you know, among young people, people under thirty, there's a
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: huge take up of the Democrats. But but it seems
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: to me like the Republican movement UM does not largely
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: clue the people we were talking about a moment ago.
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: You know, the militia movement types. Um, although you know
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: Trump is embracing them, I'm not sure that most other
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: Republicans are. I'm not sure if that's if that was
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: what you were asking, Bob. I think that I think
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: that ultimately covered enough. Let me go to the next topic.
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: You happen to mention Reagan. You and me live through
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: that era, and there was a conscious effort by the
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: Republicans to lionize him, canonize, rename everything he is God.
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: Now recently we've seen something, you know, it's nowhere near
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: the size of the effort to do the same thing
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: with Obama. And there's certainly nothing inherently wrong with Obama,
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: and he got the A C A past. But this
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: was a guy who was trying to compromise with a
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: party that did not want to compromise. And I think
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: that some Democrats are lost in the pass. What is
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: your view about the Obama administration in those years. Well,
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: first of all, with regard to the Legacy project, the
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: Reagan Legacy Project was well funded. I mean, you know
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: a number of very very wealthy people stepped up. Their
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: goal was to have a building named after Reagan or
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: a statue made to him in every county in the
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: United States, uh, Andy, in every country in the world.
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: And they've met that goal. Um from re rate you know,
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: renaming Washington's National Airport to you know, putting statutes and
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: all of the place, renaming buildings, um to the best
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: finaledge is not something comparable around Obama. There there may
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: be an effort to promote him as a as a
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: great president or something like that, but I'm sorry, we've
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: got f fifteen or firty fives or whatever they know.
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: But there's been a lot of that going on. These
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: military jets have really picked up in the last a
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: few months. I have a feeling that has something to
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: do with what's going on overseas. In any case, UM,
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: my sense of the Obama presidency was that he was
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: um so sensitive to being called the angry black man
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: that he was very averse to any kind of conflict.
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: And as a consequence of that, you know, a lot
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: of things that should have been called out never did
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: get called out. And like you said, you know, he
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: was constantly trying to compromise with Republicans. Um. He also
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: was unwilling to to reverse or call out neoliberalism, and
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: you know, which I think was a great tragedy because
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: I think certainly by the time that he was re
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: elected in America was getting very close to this tipping
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: point where uh, we were ready as a society after
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: after almost forty years of the Reagan experiment, of the
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: neoliberal experiment, to reject it. And and frankly, I think
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: that's what put one of the things, along with the
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: little help from Russia to put Trump at the White
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: House in was that he explicitly campaigned against neo liberalism.
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: Trump's Trump was lying through his teeth on most of
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: these things, you know, saying he was going to raise
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: taxes so much that he'd get a nose bleeding his
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: friends who refused to talk to him. That he was
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: going to bring back union labor, that he was going
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: to have a healthcare program that gave everybody in the
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: country better healthcare than they've got right now for free
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: or for very little costs. That he was going to
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: make college affordable again, That he was going to help
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: support union activity. That he was going to bring back
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: our jobs to overseas. Every single one of those things
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: were absolute wise, but people bought them in. And you know,
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: because Trump basically appropriated much of Bernie Sanders message. Had
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: Obama done that four or eight years earlier, I don't
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: know if he would have had success or if the
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: country wasn't quite cooked enough. You know, I hadn't seen
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: the results of liberalism enough to to go along with
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: the repudiation of it. And uh, and the issue of race,
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: you know, complicated. A tremendous President Obama. I think he's
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: a good person, a good and decent man, and I
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: have a tremendous respect for him. Um. You know, I
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: was there at his inauguration, in fact, just about fifty
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: feet away from him when he was sworn in. It
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: was a great honor, and uh, you know, visited the
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: White House afterwards. But I really think that Joe Biden
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: is going to be the guy who goes down in
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: history as the as the person who finally turned us
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: away from the direction we've been going in the last
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: forty years. Okay, for the uninformed, can you give us
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: a brief definition of neoliberals. Yeah, neoliberalism. First of all,
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: the word liberal is means a different thing in Europe
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: than it does in the United States. Here in the
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: United States, it means what we might call progressive in Europe.
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: Liberal means what you might call conservative here or even
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: libertarian neil or liberal economics in Europe is leslie ferrets.
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: You know, hands off government, hands off, low taxes, no regulation,
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: no labor unions, no no, basically no government support of
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: anything other than you know, the courts, the army and
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: the police. And so in the in the forties, a
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: group of economists, including one American Milton Friedman, led by
• 19:02
  Speaker 1: ludrig O Nisus and Frederick Hayak, got together in Switzerland
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: and thought, you know, they were trying to figure out
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: how to how to harden the democracies of Europe and
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: the United States all around the world, but particularly the
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: democracies of Europe, so that they would never again either
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: flip communists like Russia had done with the Soviet Union,
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: or flip uh fascists like Germany, Italy and Spain had done.
• 19:31
  Speaker 1: And being economists, they kind of fulfilled the old Abe
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: Maslow quote. You know, he said the famously said that
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: when the only tool you have as a hammer, every
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: problem in the world looks like a nail. Um. They
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: figured that economics would solve all things, and so they
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: came up with this idea of the new liberalism, the
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: neo liberalism, and basically here are the major bullet points
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: for it. Number one, that the market should be the
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: ultimate decider of basically everything. That is a billion decisions
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: being made in the marketplace every moment of every day.
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: As we're speaking right now, Bob, there's probably a thousand
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: people who are trying to decide which brand of orange
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: juice to buy. All those all that data, all that activity,
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: UM is something that is so far beyond the ability
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: of any politician or bureaucrat to understand or have or
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: know that they could. You can never you can never
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: replicate it. So therefore the market has the wisdom and
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: the market should be making the decisions number one. Number two,
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: because of that, a government regulation, which is an interference
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: in the marketplace, should be absolutely minimized to the point
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: of virtual irrelevance. UM. Deregulation is a massive part of neoliberalism.
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: One of the reasons that Reagan tried to gut the
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: Environmental Protection Agency by putting Neo Corsus just mother in
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: charge of it. I mean, she ended up in a
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: terrible scandal I think involved bribery or something like that. UM.
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: But you know going after that. Another is that labor
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: unions are an interference in the marketplace, inappropriate interference in
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: the marketplace, and therefore labor unions should be basically turned
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: into social clubs. Another is that corporations should be able
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: to seek the cheapest labor anywhere in the world rather
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: than just anywhere in the country, and therefore we should
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: not have national borders when it comes to the ability
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: of corporations to do that sort of thing, which is
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: generally known as free trade, so called free trade. Another
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: is the social safety net programs, medicare, social security, unemployment benefits,
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: that these are all interferences in the free market and
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: distortions of the free market, and therefore we should do
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: away with the social safety net. Another is that any
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: any function the government is doing outside of the military,
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: and even the military and police functions and court functions,
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: even those should be privatized the extent they can, which
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: is why today half of our defense budget goes to
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: private corporations. Privatize everything you can. Another is that monopolies
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: uh in business and that massive wealth inequality are actually
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: symptoms of an economy that's working the way it should.
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: They are signs that those who have made it through
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: the Darwinian process in the marketplace and proven their worth,
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: their brilliance, their competence, are succeeding. They should be congratulated.
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: And then the corollary to that is that taxes should
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: be very very low on those who are the winners,
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: the ones who have succeeded. And this is why today
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: the average billionaire in America is paying about three percent
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: income taxes, and you know, by half of your major
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: corporations in America paying nothing in taxes. These are all
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: the symptoms of forty years of Reagan and neoliberalism he
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: adopted that they started selling in the fifties. The major
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: sales person in the United States is Milton Friedman Um.
• 22:47
  Speaker 1: And Reagan was the guy in eighty one who basically
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: said we're going to reject Kanzie economics, Adams Smith economics,
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: and uh and we're going to go with with Milton
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: Freeman's neoliberalism. Okay, let's focus on one specific element, which
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: is globalization. Certainly under Clinton, that train left the station.
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: So what do we know. There's been proven time and
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: again that Americans are cheap. Okay, they'll buy the ticket
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: on Spirit airlines with no perks, and they'll run to
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: gain on the plane and they'll fight to put the
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: stuff on the top, and then they'll bitch about it.
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: Or certainly there are add ons with concert tickets, and
• 23:36
  Speaker 1: stub Hub experimented with a final price as opposed to
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: putting all these add ons at the end, and they
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: lost business. So the question becomes, you know, there's so
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: many items. Remember this first with VCRs, VCR was a
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: thousand dollar item, and then not long before their ultimate obsolescence,
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: there were less than a hundred dollars. So if you
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: tell people, you know, if you do all this manufacturing
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: in America, yes, that would solve theoretically if pay was
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: high enough the income status of those people working there,
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: we create jobs. But is the public willing to pay
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: that much more money for their products in order to
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: build local business. Well, it depends on you to find
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: that much more. I mean, you and I are both
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: old enough to remember what America was like before we
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: had neoliberal trade policies, and you know, Walworth was full
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: of cheap stuff. I remember in the early nineteen eighties,
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: we've moved to Atlanta, Georgia, and there was a brand
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: new Walmart down the street. And there was a giant
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: banner on it made in the USA. That was Sam
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: Walton's big selling point, and it was filled with cheap
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: junk that was made here in America. Labor is not
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: that much of the cost of most manufactured goods. Uh.
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: You know, it might add to three, four or five,
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: maybe as much as six or seven percent to the
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: cost of or be the you know, percent of the
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: costs of things. But but labor is typically not and
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: and and the costs are complying with environmental regulations is
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: not that great. The bottom line is that corporations, by
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: manufacturing over offshore or overseas and you know, using two
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: dollar an hour labor labor or whatever it may be
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: instead of fifteen or twenty or thirty an hour labor
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: here in the United States, have been able to massively
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: inflate their profits. But there's you know, I don't believe
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: that bringing manufacturing home is necessarily going to make American
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: enterprise is uncompetitive, although I do agree with Alexander Hamilton
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: that the way to and with the Chinese, that the
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: way to do that is and with the South Koreans
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: and the Japanese and the Europeans, is that the way
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: to do that is with a tariff based um global
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: trade system. You know, Alexander Hamilton's eleven point plan was brilliant.
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: It built America. It was abandoned, uh, you know the
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: nighties and and and you said, you know Clinton, with Clinton,
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: that train left the station. I think it's important to
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: note that it was Reagan who was advocating free trade
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: from the get go, because it's part of the neoliberal agenda.
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: It was under Reagan that the Gentel Agreement on Tariffs
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: and Trade was negotiated. I believe, um they produced the
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: gap that led to the World Trade Organization. It was
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: under the Reagan Bush administration. Ultimately, the George W. Or
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: hw Bush administration finished the negotiations, the negotiated NAFTA. That
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: was not Bill Clinton's invention. That was George Herbert Walker Bush. Um.
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: Clinton just signed on for it. And and in large part,
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: I think, frankly, he had no choice. I mean that
• 26:40
  Speaker 1: was that was the point at which the Democratic Party
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: had been defunded by Reagan's destruction of labor unions in
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: the United States. And so you know, there is an
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: interesting history there that we can get into if you want, Bob.
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: It's kind of a discursion, but um her digression. Let's
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: just stay on Clinton for a second. Did Clinton had
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: he no choice but to undercut the social safety ned
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: or was that just a choice he made for political advantage?
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: I think both really step back a little bit. In
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: In nineteen seventies six, the Supreme Court, in the Buckley decisions, said,
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: for the first time in the history of the United
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: States or any developed country, that if billionaires want to
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: owned politicians want to give politicians enough money that basically
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: those politicians are beholding to them, and those politicians vote
• 27:33
  Speaker 1: for things that the billionaires want, or even introduced legislation
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: on behalf of them. That's no longer called corruption or bribery.
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: That's now called free speech. And that money is no
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: longer considered to be money. Money is now considered to
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: be a form of speech. That was a radical decision.
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: Two years later, in a decision written by Louis Powell himself,
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: the first National Bank versus Frank Billatte decision, the Supreme
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: Court said that that also applied to corporations. So when
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: that happened, the Democratic Party was fat and happy. They were,
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: you know, a third of America was unionized. Roughly the
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: unions were washing cash and they were the major funders
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: of the Democratic Party. The Republicans not so much. So
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: the Republicans just jumped into that with both feet, and
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: Ronald Reagan floated into the White House on a tsunami
• 28:20
  Speaker 1: of oil industry and and and other big, big corporate money,
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: but particularly the fossil field industry. He then took an
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: axe to the unions and over the next twelve years
• 28:32
  Speaker 1: cut unionization in the United States so much that in
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: ninety two when Clinton was looking at running for president,
• 28:39
  Speaker 1: and al From writes about this in his book You
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: Know where he talks about him going down to Arkansas
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: and hooking up with Bill Clinton saying, let's let's figure
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: this out. When he was going to run for president.
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: There just wasn't enough money from the unions to support
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: that kind of thing. So basically Clinton, you know, the
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: Democratic Party was at a crossroads. The Internet was not around,
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: at least not the way it is today, so they
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: couldn't raise money on the internet. Direct mail would never
• 29:04
  Speaker 1: have worked to raise enough money to run for president.
• 29:07
  Speaker 1: So the Democrats decided at that point, okay, you know,
• 29:10
  Speaker 1: the unions aren't here for us like they used to
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: be we'll start taking money from corporations. We'll just do
• 29:14
  Speaker 1: it from the clean corporations. We'll get in bed with
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: banks and insurance companies and pharmaceutical companies, and we'll leave
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: the steel and the chemicals and the and the oil
• 29:23
  Speaker 1: companies to the Republicans. And you know, as part of that,
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: basically this whole new Democrat movement. The third way that
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: Clinton and al from came up with was that the
• 29:34
  Speaker 1: Democrats would embrace neoliberalism, they just make it a slightly
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: friendlier and neoliberalism than the Republicans were embracing. And so
• 29:42
  Speaker 1: you know, Clinton just also was promoting the that list
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: of tenants of neoliberalism that I gave to you earlier,
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: and obviously one of them is is dial back the
• 29:51
  Speaker 1: social safety net. He wasn't willing to kill it altogether.
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: He five year term limited essentially, which produced an explosion
• 29:58
  Speaker 1: in childhood poverty down the road. Uh. And but he did,
• 30:01
  Speaker 1: as as you point out, you know, declare, this is
• 30:04
  Speaker 1: the end of welfare as we know it, and this
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: is the end of the era big government. And you know,
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: these were the neoliberal statements. I think that at the
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: time Clinton believed that maybe neoliberalism actually wasn't. Maybe it
• 30:17
  Speaker 1: would work. You know, it really had only been tested
• 30:20
  Speaker 1: in Chile's Pinochet Pinochet's Chili, and that was you know,
• 30:25
  Speaker 1: everybody said, well, that's an aberration. The guys that dictator.
• 30:27
  Speaker 1: Of course, he's going to kill people to get his
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: thing going. So it was still unknown. Okay. Steve Jobs
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: famously had the distortion reality field such that he got
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: you to listen to him. You could see no other
• 30:44
  Speaker 1: way in your particular case, even someone who follows these
• 30:48
  Speaker 1: topics very quick closely. You have a very convincing way
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: of making the argument, illustrating it with points from history,
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: from points from books. Why is there no equivalent politician?
• 31:05
  Speaker 1: It certainly isn't. Schumer Pelosi is a little bit better.
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: AOC has been somewhat ostracized. Bernie's Bernie has been great
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: in terms of getting the message out, whereas on the
• 31:17
  Speaker 1: Republican side, whether they're saying truth or falsehood, they have
• 31:21
  Speaker 1: a whole narrative that we just don't hear. On the left, Yeah,
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: Sheldon white House actually is doing a great job of
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: exposing a lot of the structure on the right. But
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: I think that the whether this is the point you're
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: trying to make Bob or whether you're just awakening this
• 31:41
  Speaker 1: in me. I think that storytelling is the key to
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: the whole thing we are as human beings, We are
• 31:47
  Speaker 1: story machines. We love stories. We learned through stories. The
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: way the culture has been transmitted in human society's for
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: three hundred thousand years, as long as we've been on
• 31:57
  Speaker 1: this planet has largely been through stories. And before writing,
• 32:01
  Speaker 1: oral traditions were entirely story based. Um. You you go
• 32:05
  Speaker 1: back and look at some of the old Native American stories, like,
• 32:08
  Speaker 1: you know, the one from the Abenaki that I learned
• 32:11
  Speaker 1: when I was in her mad about you know, a
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: little boy who went out the woods and was going
• 32:16
  Speaker 1: to solve all the world's problems with a magic stick
• 32:19
  Speaker 1: and he ends up, you know, having an interaction with
• 32:21
  Speaker 1: a skunk. And there's all. It's a whole long story,
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: and I'm not going to go through it right now,
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: but the bottom line was that built into that story
• 32:27
  Speaker 1: was the idea that you must always know where you are,
• 32:29
  Speaker 1: how not to get lost, how to know directions, how
• 32:32
  Speaker 1: to you know what to do if you get sprayed
• 32:34
  Speaker 1: by a skunk. Um, I mean, there's just like all
• 32:37
  Speaker 1: these cultural stories built into it. And we have these,
• 32:41
  Speaker 1: you know, we've been passing them down for for a
• 32:43
  Speaker 1: long long time. The little boy who cried wolf that
• 32:45
  Speaker 1: you know, the little boy who I identified, the King
• 32:47
  Speaker 1: with no clothes. Um, these are the ways that we learned.
• 32:51
  Speaker 1: These are you know, story is just so important and
• 32:56
  Speaker 1: your Republicans have been pretty good at telling stories for
• 32:58
  Speaker 1: years and donk ats frankly, I think the need to
• 33:01
  Speaker 1: get better at it. Um. I tell a lot of
• 33:03
  Speaker 1: stories in my books on my show. UM, I think
• 33:07
  Speaker 1: that it's an important way. Anytime you can wrap a
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: lesson or a point in an example which is a story, um,
• 33:16
  Speaker 1: and and and expand that to the point that you
• 33:19
  Speaker 1: know it can be there's some ability to identify it.
• 33:22
  Speaker 1: I think you're going to do a better job of
• 33:24
  Speaker 1: communicating that, but not just communicating, and communicating in a
• 33:27
  Speaker 1: way that it will be remembered. Because people remember stories,
• 33:30
  Speaker 1: they very rarely remember data and details. Okay, what do
• 33:35
  Speaker 1: we know? The ratings for twenty four hour news channels
• 33:40
  Speaker 1: on cable are insanely low, despite all the publicity about them,
• 33:46
  Speaker 1: Network TV News, Appointment News, Although they're appealing to a
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: very elderly audience, although that audience does tend to vote
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: at a higher percentage rate than those who are younger.
• 33:59
  Speaker 1: So prior to the Internet, there was this incredible power
• 34:05
  Speaker 1: most noted although I've been forever most noticeably harnessed by
• 34:08
  Speaker 1: Rush Limbaugh. What is the power of talk radio today?
• 34:14
  Speaker 1: Less versus TV, but visa the the Internet. Well, on
• 34:21
  Speaker 1: the Internet, talk radio has been largely reinvented as podcasts,
• 34:25
  Speaker 1: And I mean, you know, this is the space that
• 34:27
  Speaker 1: you're that you're living in, and I think it's very powerful.
• 34:31
  Speaker 1: I think podcasts have become a major piece of our
• 34:36
  Speaker 1: of our cultural fabric in one of the ways that
• 34:38
  Speaker 1: people people will get a lot of information and learn
• 34:40
  Speaker 1: a lot of things. Talk radio itself, Uh, you know,
• 34:46
  Speaker 1: don't get me started. Um Limbaugh was was a genius.
• 34:51
  Speaker 1: I mean he was brilliant at doing talk radio. Michael
• 34:55
  Speaker 1: Savage is brilliant at doing talk radio. There's a there's
• 34:57
  Speaker 1: a there's a couple of people out there who are
• 34:59
  Speaker 1: Glenn batt is very good at doing talk radio, brilliant.
• 35:03
  Speaker 1: And they're all storytellers. That's what they do. They tell stories.
• 35:06
  Speaker 1: And when we started our show back in two thousand three,
• 35:09
  Speaker 1: we we spent a lot of time. I mean, you know,
• 35:13
  Speaker 1: dozens and dozens of hours listening to all the talk radio,
• 35:16
  Speaker 1: all the right wing talk radio we could find it,
• 35:18
  Speaker 1: and trying to break down, you know, every hour, what
• 35:20
  Speaker 1: are these people doing? How are they doing? And what
• 35:22
  Speaker 1: are they do? And and there's actually a formula to it,
• 35:26
  Speaker 1: and um, you know, and it's a it's a it's
• 35:29
  Speaker 1: a fascinating one. Um, but I'm not seeing I'm seeing
• 35:35
  Speaker 1: less and less good competent talk radio being done, both
• 35:40
  Speaker 1: on the right and the left, frankly, and more and
• 35:43
  Speaker 1: more because talk radio is such an interactive environment. It's
• 35:46
  Speaker 1: such a you know, I'm talking to you, it's like
• 35:49
  Speaker 1: a phone call. It's it's it's not. You know, television
• 35:52
  Speaker 1: is this cold medium. And Marshall McLuhan wrote about this,
• 35:54
  Speaker 1: Television is cold medium. It's like you're you're looking at
• 35:57
  Speaker 1: somebody's picture window. You know, you're it's warrior is in Essentially,
• 36:01
  Speaker 1: radio is not. Radio is a very hot medium. It's
• 36:03
  Speaker 1: right here, it's right in your ear. It's it's it's
• 36:06
  Speaker 1: it's I'm, you know, one person having a communication with another.
• 36:09
  Speaker 1: When I go on the air, i am I always
• 36:11
  Speaker 1: imagine I'm only talking to one person. That person changes
• 36:14
  Speaker 1: from minute to minute, you know, and call her to caller.
• 36:16
  Speaker 1: But I'm only ever talking to one person, and increasingly
• 36:21
  Speaker 1: I'm I'm hearing you know, people on the right talk
• 36:24
  Speaker 1: radio hosts who are just you know, doing polemics and
• 36:27
  Speaker 1: talking points, people on the left who are doing the
• 36:29
  Speaker 1: same or just doing the interview radio, which is not
• 36:32
  Speaker 1: talk radio. Interviews were great on podcasts, um, which is
• 36:37
  Speaker 1: a slightly different medium, but we talk radio. I think
• 36:40
  Speaker 1: that the the basic tenets of the medium which were
• 36:45
  Speaker 1: developed in the nineteen thirties by father Kauflin originally, and
• 36:50
  Speaker 1: that Limbaugh reinvented for the eighties after you know, the
• 36:54
  Speaker 1: death of Alan Berg, who kept him going through the
• 36:56
  Speaker 1: sixties and seventies. UM, those those talents of talk radio
• 37:00
  Speaker 1: are still very powerful. And if you do it well,
• 37:03
  Speaker 1: and you and you tell stories and you talk to individuals,
• 37:08
  Speaker 1: you can build a fairly powerful medium. And like I said,
• 37:11
  Speaker 1: i'd right wing talk station talk stations all across the
• 37:14
  Speaker 1: country and some very effective talk hosts on the right. Um,
• 37:19
  Speaker 1: don't don't underestimate the power of this to influence American politics. Okay,
• 37:24
  Speaker 1: let's take a snapshot today though, because Tesla's if I
• 37:29
  Speaker 1: haven't right, come without a M receivers. Although AM may
• 37:33
  Speaker 1: go away and everybody be on FM, but we have
• 37:37
  Speaker 1: a younger generation who wants everything on demand. And I
• 37:40
  Speaker 1: know in your case you have all your product on demand.
• 37:43
  Speaker 1: But it's talking specifically about radio. Is this a growing
• 37:50
  Speaker 1: or shrinking market? Does it have to be reinvented to
• 37:53
  Speaker 1: beyond demand or is it just old people listening to
• 37:58
  Speaker 1: real time talk radio? Well? I think that, you know,
• 38:01
  Speaker 1: radio has historically been a listen to it in the
• 38:05
  Speaker 1: car medium, and uh, an awful lot of talk radio
• 38:10
  Speaker 1: is moving off AM stations and onto FM stations, by
• 38:14
  Speaker 1: the way, Um, just you know, it's just happen. I
• 38:17
  Speaker 1: probably half the stations I'm on our FM stations and
• 38:21
  Speaker 1: and the same as happening, you know, even in the heartland.
• 38:23
  Speaker 1: Although uh, you know, most people in Wyoming are not
• 38:26
  Speaker 1: driving tests driving Ford pickup trucks and they've got AM radios,
• 38:31
  Speaker 1: I guarantee it. So I don't know if that answers
• 38:35
  Speaker 1: your question or if I mean speaking you know, if
• 38:38
  Speaker 1: we look talk about music, which is inherently short form,
• 38:42
  Speaker 1: and the days of DJ's telling long stories, creating theater,
• 38:46
  Speaker 1: the minor long gone. There are occasional exception. Okay, younger
• 38:50
  Speaker 1: generations statistically do not listen to terrestrial radio. They're used
• 38:55
  Speaker 1: to getting what they want on demand, and there are
• 38:58
  Speaker 1: a lot of advertisements. Is this a dying medium? And
• 39:03
  Speaker 1: if you have a voice, you ultimately have to segue
• 39:06
  Speaker 1: whether it be the podcast or some other means of
• 39:08
  Speaker 1: distribution on demand or is the marketplace irrelevant w R
• 39:14
  Speaker 1: to M ref M, is it still strong? And is
• 39:18
  Speaker 1: it only strong with older people or young people adopting
• 39:22
  Speaker 1: Those are all great questions, and I would, uh, first
• 39:26
  Speaker 1: of all, referring to Michael Harrison, who publishes Talkers magazine,
• 39:29
  Speaker 1: who's probably could cite chapter in verse and statistics right
• 39:33
  Speaker 1: at the top of his head. I don't have that,
• 39:35
  Speaker 1: but my sense of it is that talk radio took
• 39:39
  Speaker 1: a big hit with the advent of podcasts in the internet.
• 39:43
  Speaker 1: UM Limbaugh came out with his Rush Limbo dot com
• 39:46
  Speaker 1: website and his Limbaugh podcast. UM, I'd have to go
• 39:51
  Speaker 1: back and look. I don't recall when, but you know,
• 39:53
  Speaker 1: at least a decade decade and a half ago, um
• 39:56
  Speaker 1: and figured that out. And I think most people who
• 39:59
  Speaker 1: have any of an audience on talk radio or doing
• 40:02
  Speaker 1: the same thing. You know, certainly I do, UM so
• 40:06
  Speaker 1: that you can hit multiple markets. But I think you're
• 40:10
  Speaker 1: I think you're right that that radio has diminished as
• 40:13
  Speaker 1: a market overall. UM. That said, I've you know, our
• 40:18
  Speaker 1: our our audience, I think over the last few over
• 40:21
  Speaker 1: the last decades, certainly has been fairly stable, if not
• 40:24
  Speaker 1: grown significantly. UM. So you know where the industry is going.
• 40:31
  Speaker 1: I'm not sure, but uh and and I think that
• 40:34
  Speaker 1: you know when you're looking at UM, I think demographically
• 40:40
  Speaker 1: that slicing and dicing of it is really important that
• 40:43
  Speaker 1: that if you're looking at rural areas, radio is still
• 40:46
  Speaker 1: very very strong. If you're looking at urban areas and
• 40:50
  Speaker 1: suburban areas, probably radio is a much smaller factor outside
• 40:54
  Speaker 1: of the commute, outside of rush hour, and even there
• 40:58
  Speaker 1: you're seeing podcast. Take a take a good white out
• 41:00
  Speaker 1: of radio. Okay, let's talk about you specifically. Your distribution
• 41:05
  Speaker 1: is almost incomprehensible. You're on commercial stations, you're on serious
• 41:10
  Speaker 1: x M, you're on public stations. What is going on? Well,
• 41:15
  Speaker 1: when we started the show back in two thousand three,
• 41:19
  Speaker 1: we were on a little network that was owned by
• 41:22
  Speaker 1: the U a W. At the time was called uh
• 41:26
  Speaker 1: I e America Radio Network and we were on twenty
• 41:29
  Speaker 1: seven stations and Serious X down or a Serious at
• 41:34
  Speaker 1: that time, Serious Next Time we're competitors. And as they
• 41:40
  Speaker 1: that network went away after a couple of years. But
• 41:42
  Speaker 1: as the show grew, UM, we wanted to add the
• 41:46
  Speaker 1: ability of people to expand the ability of people to
• 41:50
  Speaker 1: hear the show, and so UM I think probably around
• 41:53
  Speaker 1: two thousand six or two thousand seven, UM, we started
• 41:58
  Speaker 1: offering the show to nonprofit station, community radio stations, community
• 42:02
  Speaker 1: TV stations, UM, uh NPR stations, whatever, you know, any
• 42:07
  Speaker 1: any nonprofit station who wants that. We bought a second
• 42:09
  Speaker 1: automation system for our studio so that we could have
• 42:12
  Speaker 1: a clean stream that didn't have any commercials in it.
• 42:14
  Speaker 1: We insert, UM, you know, nonprofit compliant content where the
• 42:19
  Speaker 1: commercials are so I at the top of the hour,
• 42:21
  Speaker 1: I do a book report for example, just read an
• 42:23
  Speaker 1: excerpt from somebody's book. Um, and while the commercials are
• 42:27
  Speaker 1: playing on the commercial side, and you know, we got
• 42:30
  Speaker 1: pretty good pick up. We got syndicated through the pacifica network,
• 42:33
  Speaker 1: which is substantial. It's got hundreds of affiliates. Were on
• 42:37
  Speaker 1: the Pacific Audio Ports. So that we're available to any
• 42:39
  Speaker 1: any Pacific station. UM. Then, as podcasts started picking up,
• 42:44
  Speaker 1: and this was maybe a decade ago, UM, we added
• 42:49
  Speaker 1: a staff person to chop the show up and put
• 42:52
  Speaker 1: it up as a podcast and and got on Apple
• 42:55
  Speaker 1: Podcasts and other podcast platforms. UM. About maybe fifteen years ago,
• 43:02
  Speaker 1: I'm not sure when um, the CEO of Free Speech
• 43:09
  Speaker 1: TV dropped by my studio to talk to me about
• 43:11
  Speaker 1: something completely unrelated and it was about a nonprofit that
• 43:16
  Speaker 1: he wanted me to be on the board of and
• 43:18
  Speaker 1: we had to talking and he said, uh, you know,
• 43:21
  Speaker 1: why don't we try stick in a webcam you know,
• 43:23
  Speaker 1: here in your studio and putting it on TV and
• 43:25
  Speaker 1: see what happens. And at that time, free Speech TV
• 43:29
  Speaker 1: only had one live show, which was Democracy Now with
• 43:32
  Speaker 1: Amy Goodman. Everything else was, um, you know, documentaries, and
• 43:36
  Speaker 1: it was a fairly small audience. And so we stuck
• 43:40
  Speaker 1: a webcam at my studio and suddenly caught an audience,
• 43:43
  Speaker 1: a TV audience, And then you know, free Speech TV
• 43:46
  Speaker 1: started growing and they added Randy Rhodes's show, and they
• 43:49
  Speaker 1: end and Stephanie Miller's show, and they added you know,
• 43:52
  Speaker 1: a bunch of other programs and so and the TV
• 43:55
  Speaker 1: network has grown and it's now on you know, Roku,
• 43:58
  Speaker 1: and it's on Hulu and it's on TV and it's
• 44:01
  Speaker 1: got its own web presence and it's ondish and it's
• 44:03
  Speaker 1: undirect and you know all satellite receivers and uh so
• 44:07
  Speaker 1: it's just it's just been you know, Bob, over the
• 44:10
  Speaker 1: over the over the nineteen years we've been doing this.
• 44:12
  Speaker 1: It's like every time it seems like, hey, there's a
• 44:14
  Speaker 1: market we should be in. You know, American Forces Radio
• 44:18
  Speaker 1: was looking for a balance to Rush Limbo because they
• 44:20
  Speaker 1: were getting complaints from soldiers who didn't want to hear
• 44:22
  Speaker 1: just right wing radio. And so you know, they carry
• 44:25
  Speaker 1: an hour right wing programming. They carry an hour on
• 44:27
  Speaker 1: my show and have for I don't know, well over
• 44:30
  Speaker 1: a decade um. So it's like, you know, you look
• 44:34
  Speaker 1: for opportunities and you know, it's it's a it's a business.
• 44:37
  Speaker 1: I'm running a small business. Okay, so let's a business.
• 44:41
  Speaker 1: Their economics of the business. What are your personal economics?
• 44:44
  Speaker 1: I mean, you know someplaces, you know, it's fascinating if
• 44:47
  Speaker 1: people listen to on a commercial station, they'll hear ads.
• 44:51
  Speaker 1: But if they listen to the streams after the fact,
• 44:54
  Speaker 1: certainly on public stations they won't hear at So what
• 44:57
  Speaker 1: are the economics of the business. Well, it's it's uh,
• 45:01
  Speaker 1: it's it's operating on a whole bunch of different levels. Obviously,
• 45:03
  Speaker 1: on the commercial side, you know, we make money selling advertising. Um,
• 45:07
  Speaker 1: that's probably half of our total revenue of how we guess.
• 45:12
  Speaker 1: On the nonprofit side, uh, with regarded free speech TV,
• 45:16
  Speaker 1: we we get a small percentage of the fundraising that
• 45:18
  Speaker 1: they do on our show that I do with the
• 45:19
  Speaker 1: pictures that I do for them. UM, so that's not
• 45:22
  Speaker 1: a loss to us that that you know. In fact,
• 45:25
  Speaker 1: we've got a full time video guy now that covers
• 45:27
  Speaker 1: you know that that covers so that we can provide
• 45:30
  Speaker 1: them with a television quality product. Um. With our podcasts,
• 45:34
  Speaker 1: we sell advertising on the podcast that's a revenue source.
• 45:38
  Speaker 1: Are nonprodud. The only area that we don't directly monetize
• 45:40
  Speaker 1: our the Pacific or radio stations because there's really no
• 45:44
  Speaker 1: way to monetize them outside of doing fundraising. And for those,
• 45:48
  Speaker 1: we've got a Patreon channel where you can get the
• 45:51
  Speaker 1: station to get the show and uh, you know, we've
• 45:54
  Speaker 1: got enough donors through Patreon and we explicitly say right
• 45:58
  Speaker 1: on it that this is this supports our ability to
• 46:00
  Speaker 1: deliver this show to our nonprofits radio stations, the Pacific
• 46:04
  Speaker 1: radio stations, and the revenue from Patreon covers those expenses
• 46:10
  Speaker 1: and a little more actually, which is great. So you
• 46:13
  Speaker 1: know we're able to pay our employees well and do
• 46:16
  Speaker 1: a good program. We're not you know, I'm not rolling
• 46:20
  Speaker 1: my money been here, but I'm not complaining. How many
• 46:24
  Speaker 1: Patreon subscribers do you have and how many people on
• 46:28
  Speaker 1: your payroll? I don't know how many Patreon subscribers we have.
• 46:32
  Speaker 1: I'm sorry. My my webmaster handles that, and I haven't
• 46:36
  Speaker 1: frankly even looked at the Patreon page probably two years. Um,
• 46:39
  Speaker 1: it's probably a couple of thousand. I just don't know.
• 46:42
  Speaker 1: Um with regard to uh or it might be over
• 46:46
  Speaker 1: a thousand. Frankly, I shouldn't even throw numbers out because
• 46:49
  Speaker 1: I'm so disconnected from that. Um. What was the other question?
• 46:52
  Speaker 1: How many employees? Oh? We have? I have three full
• 46:56
  Speaker 1: time employees who uh Sean who produces the show and
• 47:00
  Speaker 1: does runs the Audioboardinate who does the video production, and
• 47:04
  Speaker 1: me Um. I have a part time employee another producer
• 47:09
  Speaker 1: who works on guests and putting stuff up. We have
• 47:12
  Speaker 1: a couple of people who work force part time down
• 47:15
  Speaker 1: in Texas who cut the show up for the podcast.
• 47:18
  Speaker 1: I've got a web master in Tennessee who does the
• 47:21
  Speaker 1: technical end of the of the of this. Uh you
• 47:24
  Speaker 1: know that that we pay every month. We've got a
• 47:27
  Speaker 1: webmaster in London who is an old friend. He's worked
• 47:30
  Speaker 1: with me for over thirty years now. We used to
• 47:33
  Speaker 1: run forms and compy Serve together. Nigel Peacock who handles
• 47:37
  Speaker 1: all the content of our web and runs Tom Hartin
• 47:40
  Speaker 1: dot com and hartminer Court dot com. I've got a
• 47:44
  Speaker 1: person who publishes our daily newsletter, which has a list
• 47:47
  Speaker 1: of every story that I talked about on the air.
• 47:51
  Speaker 1: It's free, it's advertising supported. It's over at Tom Hartman
• 47:54
  Speaker 1: dot com. That's so. She lives in the UK. Also
• 47:57
  Speaker 1: she used to work with us and compu Serve and
• 48:00
  Speaker 1: and uh. And I've got an engineer who you know
• 48:03
  Speaker 1: who I pay. Um. All those people are basically part
• 48:07
  Speaker 1: time or or kind of a piece work kind of thing.
• 48:11
  Speaker 1: I'll early or whatever. But so that's that's our stuff.
• 48:21
  Speaker 1: It's been well established that most people are living in
• 48:24
  Speaker 1: silos today. Certainly the New York Times become a pejorative.
• 48:28
  Speaker 1: Even though the right tends to get all their basic
• 48:31
  Speaker 1: news from the New York Times. Tend the New York Times,
• 48:34
  Speaker 1: they won't read it, So everybody is listening to their
• 48:37
  Speaker 1: people will only read the New York Times. Do you
• 48:41
  Speaker 1: feel that you're preaching to the converted at this point
• 48:44
  Speaker 1: you've been doing in a long time or do you
• 48:47
  Speaker 1: see it as job? Do you ever feel like you're
• 48:50
  Speaker 1: banging your head against the wall. What's your personal viewpoint? Well, all,
• 48:56
  Speaker 1: welcome to our business right, but uh, no, I know
• 49:02
  Speaker 1: that UM largely on certainly on the Pacific stations, I'm
• 49:08
  Speaker 1: preaching to the convertaive, I'm talking to people who have
• 49:10
  Speaker 1: I've looked for a left wing outlet and are listening
• 49:14
  Speaker 1: to it. On Serious ex M, it's a very different animal.
• 49:17
  Speaker 1: I mean, you know there are there are two or
• 49:19
  Speaker 1: three conservative channels on Serious XM, and there's one liberal
• 49:22
  Speaker 1: channel and uh and then the Urban View, which largely
• 49:27
  Speaker 1: serves as an African American audience, which tends to be
• 49:30
  Speaker 1: more progressive. But UM, people are channel flipping on Serious
• 49:35
  Speaker 1: ex M and I get a lot of conservative callers there,
• 49:38
  Speaker 1: and it's been fascinating over the years how many of
• 49:41
  Speaker 1: them have stuck to me, have stuck to the show,
• 49:43
  Speaker 1: and some of them are still calling in and arguing
• 49:46
  Speaker 1: with me, which I love. My my favorite thing in
• 49:48
  Speaker 1: the whole world is debating conservatives. And uh, it's getting
• 49:53
  Speaker 1: harder and harder because increasingly the high profile conservatives are
• 49:57
  Speaker 1: no longer come on my program. They used to all
• 49:59
  Speaker 1: the time. You know, I get even more and and uh,
• 50:01
  Speaker 1: you know John Bolton and all these guys on the
• 50:04
  Speaker 1: you know, the last five seven years, they just won't
• 50:07
  Speaker 1: do it because they've got such a great echo chamber
• 50:11
  Speaker 1: of their own. You know, why bother trying to go
• 50:13
  Speaker 1: beyond that? UM on our terrestro radio stations, the AM stations,
• 50:17
  Speaker 1: it's it's a little bit of both, although it tends
• 50:19
  Speaker 1: to be more of a of a progressive audience. And
• 50:22
  Speaker 1: on the podcast, I'm assuming that I'm talking to people
• 50:24
  Speaker 1: who are more aligned with me, but I'm not really certain.
• 50:27
  Speaker 1: It's not a medium that gives you that much feedback. UM. So,
• 50:33
  Speaker 1: can you change somebody's mind? Or do you believe you're
• 50:36
  Speaker 1: changing anybody's mind? I I think I'm doing a couple
• 50:40
  Speaker 1: of things. Um. Number one, I'm providing people with validation.
• 50:44
  Speaker 1: You know, you know you're not crazy. Um, here you
• 50:47
  Speaker 1: know I agree with your worldview, and here let me
• 50:49
  Speaker 1: give you some some details to fill that. So number one,
• 50:52
  Speaker 1: I think a lot of people tune into my show
• 50:54
  Speaker 1: and to any podcast or radio show, but it's political
• 50:58
  Speaker 1: looking for validation of their world Um. The second is
• 51:02
  Speaker 1: I think I'm giving people ammunition to win what I
• 51:04
  Speaker 1: call the article or wars. Um. You know, they've got
• 51:06
  Speaker 1: the guy who sits next to them at work, who
• 51:08
  Speaker 1: listens to Limba all day, who wants to debate where
• 51:10
  Speaker 1: they've got you crazy Uncle Ralph who comes to the
• 51:13
  Speaker 1: Thanksgiving dinner and can't stop talking about politics. And they
• 51:16
  Speaker 1: want to have you know, the one liners to shut
• 51:17
  Speaker 1: them down, or they want to have the deeper understanding
• 51:20
  Speaker 1: of the issues so they can get into a meaningful
• 51:22
  Speaker 1: discussion with people, and and I try to provide that, um.
• 51:27
  Speaker 1: And then probably number three would be that you know,
• 51:30
  Speaker 1: I'm hoping to change people's minds. And I put that
• 51:33
  Speaker 1: at number three. I mean I would put it at
• 51:35
  Speaker 1: number one if I thought enough people who aren't progressives
• 51:39
  Speaker 1: who are listening to me. But I put it at
• 51:40
  Speaker 1: number three simply because you know, most of the conservatives
• 51:43
  Speaker 1: who listened to my show do so by accident, you know,
• 51:46
  Speaker 1: like I said, the channel flipping um and uh so
• 51:50
  Speaker 1: you know, the opportunities to change minds are much more limited. Okay,
• 51:54
  Speaker 1: you say you love arguing with conservatives, what do you
• 51:57
  Speaker 1: love about it? I find that debate is and and
• 52:03
  Speaker 1: and you know, let me just say right up front.
• 52:05
  Speaker 1: I I my favorite activity in high school was debate
• 52:10
  Speaker 1: class after the extracurricular debate um and and part of
• 52:16
  Speaker 1: that is my dad. My dad was a historian. He
• 52:18
  Speaker 1: wanted to be a history professor. I came along and
• 52:20
  Speaker 1: he had to drop out of college and ended up
• 52:22
  Speaker 1: working in a tool and die shop his whole life.
• 52:24
  Speaker 1: But he had twenty thousand books in Spaceman and most
• 52:27
  Speaker 1: of them probably a third and more history books. He
• 52:29
  Speaker 1: was a complete history junkie. And my and he was
• 52:33
  Speaker 1: a Republican. Told the day he died. In fact, when
• 52:36
  Speaker 1: he died, I was sitting with him in his living room.
• 52:38
  Speaker 1: And as he died and and and I looked at
• 52:41
  Speaker 1: over across him and there were these his two favorite
• 52:44
  Speaker 1: pictures on the wall, me shaking hands with Pope John Paul.
• 52:47
  Speaker 1: The second and George W. Bush on the deck of
• 52:49
  Speaker 1: the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln under a mission accomplished banner. Um.
• 52:55
  Speaker 1: My dad and I when I was a teenager, fifteen, sixteen,
• 52:58
  Speaker 1: seventeen years old. First of all, when I was fourteen,
• 53:00
  Speaker 1: we went door to door for Barry Goldwater. Well, I
• 53:02
  Speaker 1: guess I was thirteen in nineteen sixty four. Um. And uh,
• 53:08
  Speaker 1: my dad never left that world, you know, I did.
• 53:11
  Speaker 1: By the time I was sixteen, I had become an
• 53:13
  Speaker 1: anti war hippie and a liberal. UM. And my dad
• 53:17
  Speaker 1: and I used to get in these knockdown, dragged, knocked down,
• 53:20
  Speaker 1: drag out arguments when I was sixteen and seventeen. UM.
• 53:24
  Speaker 1: And through that because we both loved each other and
• 53:28
  Speaker 1: we're both well informed people who don't take debate lightly. UM.
• 53:34
  Speaker 1: Through that we learned, both of us, and my dad
• 53:38
  Speaker 1: taught me this, and we used to watch the Joe
• 53:39
  Speaker 1: Pine Show together. We used to watch Fire in Line
• 53:41
  Speaker 1: together with William F. Buckley. Um. We learned how to
• 53:45
  Speaker 1: have debates where there was not blood on the floor
• 53:48
  Speaker 1: when we were done, you know, debates that you could
• 53:50
  Speaker 1: walk away from and shake hands. And it's a it's
• 53:56
  Speaker 1: almost an art form as much as a skill as
• 53:59
  Speaker 1: much as a science, and I've been able to bring
• 54:04
  Speaker 1: that to my show, and I think fairly uniquely. I
• 54:06
  Speaker 1: don't think that there's a lot of liberals out there
• 54:08
  Speaker 1: who who go out of their way to try to
• 54:10
  Speaker 1: debate conservatives. I mean, it was the hallmark of my show,
• 54:13
  Speaker 1: probably for the first ten years of the show. Three
• 54:15
  Speaker 1: days a week, I'd have conservatives on and we'd get
• 54:17
  Speaker 1: into long, long form debates. I probably said it's gotten
• 54:20
  Speaker 1: much much more difficult to get anybody who is wanting
• 54:23
  Speaker 1: to come on the program anylonger. But um, I just
• 54:28
  Speaker 1: I love it. I you know, part of it probably
• 54:31
  Speaker 1: echoes back to my childhood with my dad. Um. But
• 54:35
  Speaker 1: I do think that if you want people to understand issues,
• 54:41
  Speaker 1: spectators to understand issues, listeners to understand issues, one of
• 54:45
  Speaker 1: the best ways to highlight issues is to have a debate,
• 54:49
  Speaker 1: to have both sides present everything they can bring, all
• 54:52
  Speaker 1: their ammunition to the table, present all their arguments and
• 54:56
  Speaker 1: all the history for their arguments, and and then you know,
• 55:00
  Speaker 1: the let the audience decide who won the debate. I'm
• 55:02
  Speaker 1: not so interested in whether I win or lose. My
• 55:05
  Speaker 1: My interest is in informing people educating people and and
• 55:09
  Speaker 1: you know, not that I'm some high flute educator here,
• 55:12
  Speaker 1: but that's my goal. My goal is for people to
• 55:15
  Speaker 1: walk away from listening to a debate that I've had
• 55:18
  Speaker 1: or an argument, whether it's with a caller, which happens
• 55:21
  Speaker 1: more and more of these days, as opposed to guests,
• 55:23
  Speaker 1: sadly or a guest you know, with more information, um
• 55:29
  Speaker 1: so that they can then you know, bring that into
• 55:32
  Speaker 1: their lives in a way that's useful. Okay. When we
• 55:35
  Speaker 1: were growing up in the sixties and seventies, the issues
• 55:39
  Speaker 1: were really debated. Whereas Trump we can see with the
• 55:44
  Speaker 1: Latitia's filing just the other day, he's just lying, lying
• 55:49
  Speaker 1: and lying, and the people who are aligning with them
• 55:52
  Speaker 1: are lying. So what are you doing a debate If
• 55:55
  Speaker 1: the person is just telling untruths, you call them out
• 56:01
  Speaker 1: just to say, I'm sorry, that's bs, you know, back
• 56:04
  Speaker 1: that up, give me, give me, give me something to
• 56:06
  Speaker 1: to to to, you know, to believe that what you're
• 56:10
  Speaker 1: saying is true, because it doesn't make sense to me.
• 56:13
  Speaker 1: That's pretty straightforward. But okay, so let's go back. The
• 56:16
  Speaker 1: problem is that the people who rely onlines, you know,
• 56:19
  Speaker 1: the Trump's, they will not engage in it, They will
• 56:21
  Speaker 1: not participate. I mean, you know, Trump goes out of
• 56:23
  Speaker 1: his way to have any any protesters removed and beating up.
• 56:27
  Speaker 1: It's like it's the antithesis of debate. Okay, but let's
• 56:30
  Speaker 1: say we're in that uh classic situation you referenced earlier.
• 56:34
  Speaker 1: It's a family dinner, it's Thanksgiving, You're gonna be around
• 56:37
  Speaker 1: each other a few hours. What do you tell your
• 56:41
  Speaker 1: listener how to debate and engage that uncle. Now, for
• 56:46
  Speaker 1: years and a lot of people say no politics on Thanksgiving,
• 56:50
  Speaker 1: but certainly there are people go there anyway. So assuming
• 56:53
  Speaker 1: someone from your audience is encountering that situation, what would
• 56:57
  Speaker 1: you tell him? I would tell him that family is
• 57:00
  Speaker 1: more important than than politics, and that and that love
• 57:05
  Speaker 1: is more important than winning an argument. Um that. Uh,
• 57:10
  Speaker 1: you know, when I debate politics with neighbors or with family,
• 57:15
  Speaker 1: because people are constantly trying to bait me. Basically, Um,
• 57:20
  Speaker 1: I'll make my point, I'll make it gently, and uh
• 57:25
  Speaker 1: if they go on a rant trying to knock down
• 57:28
  Speaker 1: my point, and it's a b S rant or whatever,
• 57:31
  Speaker 1: or it's a rant that I don't think has much
• 57:32
  Speaker 1: of validity, rather than humiliating them by pointing that out
• 57:37
  Speaker 1: or embarrassing them, I'll just say, you know, I guess
• 57:40
  Speaker 1: we're gonna have to agree to disagree on this, and
• 57:43
  Speaker 1: you know, from time to time I'll even do that
• 57:45
  Speaker 1: on the air. Again, I'm trying to to to role
• 57:49
  Speaker 1: models for people as well as I can. Okay, my experiences,
• 57:53
  Speaker 1: no one will change their viewpoint during the debate, but
• 57:58
  Speaker 1: they might go home and think about it and change
• 58:00
  Speaker 1: their opinion. As you said, the majority of your listeners
• 58:04
  Speaker 1: lean left. But if you had the experience with anybody's
• 58:07
  Speaker 1: debated on the year, whether it be a politician or
• 58:10
  Speaker 1: someone who calls in where they you connect with them later.
• 58:13
  Speaker 1: So who you know, I've really thought that, you know,
• 58:15
  Speaker 1: maybe you're right. I have a handful of regular callers,
• 58:21
  Speaker 1: probably a dozen or two who over the last a
• 58:25
  Speaker 1: couple of years. Uh, three of them I can think of,
• 58:27
  Speaker 1: just in the last three or four months who called
• 58:31
  Speaker 1: in because they were listening to right wing radio on
• 58:33
  Speaker 1: Serious ex M. In most cases, one of them was
• 58:36
  Speaker 1: on our Chicago affiliate and um, you know, looking for
• 58:40
  Speaker 1: right wing stuff, they found my show. Um, they found
• 58:43
  Speaker 1: it interesting. They called me up to argue with me. Um,
• 58:46
  Speaker 1: you know, I had debates with them that were respectful.
• 58:50
  Speaker 1: I mean, occasionally somebody will just be so offensive that
• 58:53
  Speaker 1: you just slapped them down, but generally not And um,
• 58:58
  Speaker 1: and now they call the show regularly. A number of them,
• 59:00
  Speaker 1: i'd say, all but one of them no longer call
• 59:04
  Speaker 1: themselves conservatives or Republicans. I've you know, I've seen them change,
• 59:10
  Speaker 1: and I'd like to think that it's because the information
• 59:14
  Speaker 1: that I'm presenting is actually factual. I will not go
• 59:18
  Speaker 1: into a debate unless I really know what I'm talking about.
• 59:20
  Speaker 1: I'm not going to present information. I mean, maybe this
• 59:23
  Speaker 1: is the author in me. You know, I get editors
• 59:25
  Speaker 1: who are you know, your line editor goes through your book,
• 59:28
  Speaker 1: and you know, every single point I make, I have
• 59:30
  Speaker 1: to back it up or the publisher will not put
• 59:32
  Speaker 1: it out. And and uh so you get pretty rigorous
• 59:36
  Speaker 1: about those things. Um. But you know, I I will
• 59:42
  Speaker 1: hope that they are becoming regular listeners and are changing
• 59:46
  Speaker 1: their politics, not just because I'm very persuasive, but because
• 59:50
  Speaker 1: I've actually marshaled truth or what they've perceived is truth. Okay,
• 59:56
  Speaker 1: let's talk about party affiliation. There's certainly die in the world.
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 1: Democrats died in the world Republicans. But I have found,
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 1: certainly since the rise of the right wing, that the
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 1: vast majority of people who call themselves independent are really Republicans.
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 1: They just don't want to be in the debate. What
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 1: has your experience been, It's been the same as yours, Bob.
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 1: Of the people who calling to my show and say,
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 1: I'm in the parade, I just vote for the person.
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 1: I don't vote for the party. I don't damn about
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 1: the Republican partyment, but them damn immigrants and yeah, yeah, absolutely,
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 1: they're they're bashful Republicans. Yeah the when was the last
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 1: time you voted for Democrat? And they go, they can't
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 1: think of one. You've led quite a peripatetic life and career.
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 1: How did you end up in talk radio and staying
• 1:00:52
  Speaker 1: with talk radio, because if you look at your career,
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 1: you tend to jump, you know, from advertising, therapy to
• 1:00:59
  Speaker 1: all kinds of things. Yeah, I'm I'm a probably because
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 1: I'm an a d h D person, I said. I
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 1: wrote a couple of books about it. Actually, I have
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 1: been a serial entrepreneur throughout my life, I Louise, I
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 1: have started a number of businesses, five of them that
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 1: were you know, consequential and did fairly well. And uh
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 1: because back when we were first married, uh, we were
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 1: reading the novels of John D. McDonald's at the Travis
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 1: McGee Novels, and you know, his whole thing was, I'm
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 1: not going to wait until I retire to enjoy my life.
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 1: I'm going to take my retirement while i'm young in
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 1: pieces and so are. The agreement that we had and
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 1: we got married was that, you know, every five years
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 1: or so, we would take a year off and and
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 1: explore the world. And you know, thank god, we've been
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 1: able to do that. We build a business up, we
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 1: sell it off, we live off that for a year
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 1: and there's enough left over to start another business. And
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 1: you know, we did that up until ninety seven. And
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 1: in ninety seven I sold an ad agency in Atlanta,
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 1: and Louise and I had built and on a seven
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 1: year buy out and so we had a real cushion,
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 1: you know, a seven year cushing plus some retirement funds.
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 1: And I figured that's a bit. You know, I'm retired now,
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna write books and just have a good time.
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 1: And then George Bush became president, and by two thousand three,
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 1: I was convinced that he represented a threat to our democracy.
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 1: That his policies, you know, his his going after Iraq
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 1: and Afghanistan, on inappropriately unnecessarily lying US into the war
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 1: in Afghanistan. Um, torturing people, Um, you know, just breaking
• 1:02:37
  Speaker 1: American law. Just it just maybe nuts. And so I
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 1: wrote this piece. I wrote this article in the in
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 1: early either late two thousand two or early two thousand three,
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 1: and published it on Common Dreams. I had started publishing
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 1: op eds on Common Dreams starting around two thousand and one.
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 1: Common Dreams is a well known progressive website, common Dreams
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 1: dot org. And um, you know these these short op
• 1:02:58
  Speaker 1: eds rants as it were. And in two thousand three
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 1: I wrote one called talking back to talk radio and
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 1: it was about how you know half the country is democratic,
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 1: half the country's republican, all of the radio stations are republican.
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 1: Why is nobody programming uh democratic radio? And um uh
• 1:03:20
  Speaker 1: showing you need to drop me who were venture capitalists
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 1: in Chicago called me up and said, hey, uh, this
• 1:03:25
  Speaker 1: is an idea. This is great. We would like to
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 1: use your article as the initial business plan for a
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 1: new radio network that we want to call our America
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 1: Radio can you come out to Chicago and talk to us. Well,
• 1:03:36
  Speaker 1: a little bit slower because a lot of people say
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 1: it just happened. Just to be clear, you just published
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 1: one article, someone tracks you down, that's it. You were
• 1:03:48
  Speaker 1: not putting out feelers. You did not say in the article,
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 1: I want to be in the radio game. Just somebody
• 1:03:53
  Speaker 1: called you out of the blues. That the way it
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 1: really went down that act. Actually, yes, Now in the article,
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 1: I did point out when I was young, I did radio.
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 1: I I when I was sixteen, I was you know,
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 1: I started in radio at sixteen in commercial radio on
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 1: w I t L on Lance and I was a
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 1: DJ at a country Western DJ for a couple of years.
• 1:04:10
  Speaker 1: I did rock and roll, I monster around a few
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 1: radio stations. I ended up doing news back at w
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 1: I t L for seven years until and so I knew,
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 1: I know radio, I knew the business. I know how
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 1: it works. And I said that in the yard, and
• 1:04:25
  Speaker 1: uh so, you know, it wasn't like I was just
• 1:04:28
  Speaker 1: some guy who wrote a piece. I mean, there was
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 1: some credibility there. But anyhow, they came to me and
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 1: they you know, and I flew out to Chicago and
• 1:04:35
  Speaker 1: I told him that I had some problems with their
• 1:04:37
  Speaker 1: business plan, and uh, but they were looking for proof
• 1:04:40
  Speaker 1: of concept. So Louise and I called the all fourteen
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 1: or so of the radio stations in Vermont. We were
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 1: living in Mont period at the time, and said, uh,
• 1:04:52
  Speaker 1: you know, wait, wait just one second. As someone who
• 1:04:54
  Speaker 1: went to college Vermont, spent a lot of time in Vermont,
• 1:04:57
  Speaker 1: why Montpulier, we just wanted to live there. Those are
• 1:05:06
  Speaker 1: Mont Peelier is its own backwater in Vermont. It's the
• 1:05:10
  Speaker 1: capital city. You know, it's in the north. You know
• 1:05:15
  Speaker 1: what you you just I mean mont Pelier. If you
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 1: think about living Vermont, that would not be the first
• 1:05:20
  Speaker 1: place most people would choose. Well, actually, we first moved
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 1: we bought an old B and B in Northfield, way
• 1:05:26
  Speaker 1: back in the woods, had a half mile long driveway
• 1:05:29
  Speaker 1: up the side of a mountain. There was dirt road. Um.
• 1:05:33
  Speaker 1: And then we sold that after a couple of years
• 1:05:35
  Speaker 1: and moved into into into town in aunt Pelier because
• 1:05:38
  Speaker 1: we were just missing, you know, being able to walk
• 1:05:39
  Speaker 1: to a restaurant or something. And the winners they are
• 1:05:42
  Speaker 1: pretty pretty brutal. But anyhow, so we called, you know,
• 1:05:45
  Speaker 1: all the radio stations in Vermont and we we found
• 1:05:48
  Speaker 1: this one station in Burlington that where the guy said, yeah,
• 1:05:50
  Speaker 1: I'll give you. I'll give you two hours on a
• 1:05:52
  Speaker 1: Saturday morning if you want to do a test runt
• 1:05:54
  Speaker 1: on progressive talk radio. I mean, that was my pitch.
• 1:05:56
  Speaker 1: I you know, I'd like to I'd like to prove,
• 1:05:58
  Speaker 1: you know, this proof of concept and if it works,
• 1:05:59
  Speaker 1: you know, you can carry the show. And if it doesn't,
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 1: you know, nothing ventured, nothing gains. You can still adds
• 1:06:04
  Speaker 1: on the show and maybe I can get your audience
• 1:06:06
  Speaker 1: for you. And so he put us on. Bob written
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 1: his last name. He put us on after the after
• 1:06:13
  Speaker 1: the swap meet. So about half the calls I'd get
• 1:06:15
  Speaker 1: were you know, is that John Dear three twenty still available? Um?
• 1:06:19
  Speaker 1: But it was good practice and uh and ed Asner
• 1:06:26
  Speaker 1: was kind enough. We had a mutual friend and uh.
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 1: In fact, he blurbed my book on healthcare a little
• 1:06:31
  Speaker 1: while ago, um before he died. Um. Ed Asner did
• 1:06:36
  Speaker 1: an interview with me and we took that and some
• 1:06:40
  Speaker 1: of my rants and we sent it off to that
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 1: network that I was telling you, I America Radio Network,
• 1:06:44
  Speaker 1: and they picked up the show. And that was when
• 1:06:45
  Speaker 1: we went from being this little tiny thing on this
• 1:06:47
  Speaker 1: one station in Burlington, Vermont that had probably thirty five
• 1:06:50
  Speaker 1: people listening, who half of whom were piste off at
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 1: the swap Meeat wasn't still on to actually be in
• 1:06:57
  Speaker 1: a radio show. It took Air America a couple of
• 1:06:59
  Speaker 1: years to get their act together and get their network going.
• 1:07:02
  Speaker 1: And during that period of time, I was just building
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 1: my show. So that's you know, and it started. It
• 1:07:09
  Speaker 1: wasn't we we funded the entire thing ourselves for the
• 1:07:12
  Speaker 1: first four years. We didn't. We didn't break even until
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 1: about the third or fourth year, um and and and
• 1:07:19
  Speaker 1: you know, over the years we've made that money back,
• 1:07:21
  Speaker 1: but that was coming out of our retirement money and
• 1:07:25
  Speaker 1: or what was intended to be our retirement money, because
• 1:07:27
  Speaker 1: I thought it myself was retired and I didn't expect
• 1:07:30
  Speaker 1: it to last more than four or five years at
• 1:07:32
  Speaker 1: the very most. I you know, I was just trying
• 1:07:34
  Speaker 1: to prove that it was possible to do if you
• 1:07:37
  Speaker 1: follow the rules of talk radio, and they're not complicated,
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 1: and they've been around since the nineteen thirties. If you
• 1:07:43
  Speaker 1: follow the rules of talk radio, you can be just
• 1:07:45
  Speaker 1: as successful as a Democrat as you can as a Republican.
• 1:07:48
  Speaker 1: Given there's enough radio stations to carry you. And that's
• 1:07:51
  Speaker 1: the big kicker right now, is that the big networks.
• 1:07:54
  Speaker 1: I had I said at the office of the United
• 1:07:56
  Speaker 1: States senator with the billionaire owner of one of the
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 1: big three radio station conglomerates, you know, the owner of
• 1:08:05
  Speaker 1: about nine d radio stations, and the senators said, you know,
• 1:08:10
  Speaker 1: why don't you put some progressive radio on your stations.
• 1:08:13
  Speaker 1: You've got three stations that are carrying right wing radio.
• 1:08:16
  Speaker 1: And the guy said, uh. And I've never seen a
• 1:08:19
  Speaker 1: senator literally had their mouth fall open. And when somebody
• 1:08:22
  Speaker 1: says the guy says, I'm never gonna put anybody on there.
• 1:08:25
  Speaker 1: I wants to raise my taxes, just like It's just
• 1:08:28
  Speaker 1: that simple. And yeah, So you know, we've got a
• 1:08:33
  Speaker 1: we've got a structural problem in terms of progressive or
• 1:08:37
  Speaker 1: democratic talk radio. But there's no there's no question that
• 1:08:41
  Speaker 1: you can successfully do progressive talk radio. I've been doing
• 1:08:45
  Speaker 1: it for nineteen years and I'm making money. Okay. If
• 1:08:57
  Speaker 1: one looks at your website and follows through, you're doing
• 1:09:02
  Speaker 1: three hours of radio a day, You're writing opinion columns,
• 1:09:07
  Speaker 1: you're writing books. What is your schedule such that you
• 1:09:11
  Speaker 1: can accomplish all that well and let me have the
• 1:09:15
  Speaker 1: pandemic has helped. Um. My schedule is Louise and I
• 1:09:19
  Speaker 1: get up at five thirty in the morning and we
• 1:09:22
  Speaker 1: put together that day's show between five thirty and roughly seven. Um.
• 1:09:27
  Speaker 1: You know, uh, Sean may have booked a guest, if
• 1:09:30
  Speaker 1: we've got a guest, and you know, we'll do the
• 1:09:32
  Speaker 1: research on that. But basically we're going, you know, we
• 1:09:34
  Speaker 1: just will read ten or twenty news sites and come
• 1:09:36
  Speaker 1: up with what are the what are going to be
• 1:09:38
  Speaker 1: the main themes for each hour and you know, what
• 1:09:42
  Speaker 1: are we going to talk about? And I, you know,
• 1:09:45
  Speaker 1: I go into the studio and we go on the
• 1:09:47
  Speaker 1: air at nine. This is all Pacific time. We go
• 1:09:49
  Speaker 1: on the air at nine and we're on until noon. Um,
• 1:09:52
  Speaker 1: you know. For the next half hour, I do you know,
• 1:09:54
  Speaker 1: I'll read ads for sponsors and just do whatever needs
• 1:09:57
  Speaker 1: to be done, you know, to to clean up the
• 1:10:00
  Speaker 1: the business. And then I leave the studio. Sean and
• 1:10:03
  Speaker 1: Nates stay there and Nate produces all of our stuff
• 1:10:06
  Speaker 1: for YouTube and everything, and Sean puts together stuff for
• 1:10:09
  Speaker 1: the podcast. I come home and from one until five
• 1:10:12
  Speaker 1: every day I write my bed that we published at
• 1:10:14
  Speaker 1: heart and report every morning. Um and uh. And then
• 1:10:20
  Speaker 1: my I write books on weekends, Um, all day, all
• 1:10:23
  Speaker 1: day Saturday, all day Sunday. Uh. You know, I'll take
• 1:10:25
  Speaker 1: a break for meals or to visit a family and
• 1:10:28
  Speaker 1: things like that. Um and and you know I've written.
• 1:10:31
  Speaker 1: I've been writing all my life, and I've been writing
• 1:10:35
  Speaker 1: for publications since the mid nineties, and so I'm pretty
• 1:10:39
  Speaker 1: good at it, and it, you know, it works. I've
• 1:10:43
  Speaker 1: been I've been these this new series of books, the
• 1:10:45
  Speaker 1: Hidden History series. The new one is the Hidden History
• 1:10:47
  Speaker 1: of Neoliberalism. There are thirty five th word books, that's
• 1:10:50
  Speaker 1: half the size of a normal book, and so banging
• 1:10:53
  Speaker 1: one of those out of every six months is kind
• 1:10:55
  Speaker 1: of the equivalent of writing one real book, one major book,
• 1:10:59
  Speaker 1: you know, a nine hundred thousand word book a year,
• 1:11:02
  Speaker 1: which is what I used to write, and I've always
• 1:11:05
  Speaker 1: been able to produce one a year kind of in
• 1:11:06
  Speaker 1: my spirit time. Okay, you talk about writing your O
• 1:11:10
  Speaker 1: bed from one to five? Hey, how much is that
• 1:11:14
  Speaker 1: as research? And I consider research just reading the news.
• 1:11:18
  Speaker 1: You know, you might also ultimately go to check facts
• 1:11:20
  Speaker 1: or to find certain information out. And to what degree
• 1:11:25
  Speaker 1: is it a chore to write every day or every
• 1:11:28
  Speaker 1: day you say, you know, I got a formula, get
• 1:11:30
  Speaker 1: myself in the right mindset, and I can just bang
• 1:11:33
  Speaker 1: it out, you know, I I have to. This is
• 1:11:37
  Speaker 1: kind of one of our our rules of life for
• 1:11:40
  Speaker 1: for my wife and I is that you know, we
• 1:11:41
  Speaker 1: do what we love doing, and when we stop loving
• 1:11:44
  Speaker 1: doing it, we don't do it. It's just um and
• 1:11:48
  Speaker 1: and so it's the same way with the writing. I mean,
• 1:11:50
  Speaker 1: I've got to write about stuff that I really am
• 1:11:52
  Speaker 1: inflamed about, that I really care about. And I think
• 1:11:55
  Speaker 1: that that's you know, just wise anyway, because otherwise you're
• 1:11:58
  Speaker 1: not going to produce something that lights anybody else, you know.
• 1:12:02
  Speaker 1: So when I come home, Louise and I have lunch,
• 1:12:04
  Speaker 1: you know, typically a twelve thirty and um, and then
• 1:12:08
  Speaker 1: I come up here to write at one and you know,
• 1:12:12
  Speaker 1: our job during that thirty minutes just to figure out
• 1:12:14
  Speaker 1: what the topic is going to be for my op
• 1:12:16
  Speaker 1: ed that day. We have a little uh web based
• 1:12:20
  Speaker 1: uh wiki page on which we keep all of our
• 1:12:22
  Speaker 1: ideas for future op eds, and we still see articles
• 1:12:25
  Speaker 1: and stick come on there, We'll have a conversation and
• 1:12:28
  Speaker 1: we'll stick that on there, you know, on our smartphones, um,
• 1:12:32
  Speaker 1: And so we'll refer to that page and we'll look
• 1:12:34
  Speaker 1: it over, and we'll look over the news because we've
• 1:12:35
  Speaker 1: been doing that all day with the show, and figure out,
• 1:12:38
  Speaker 1: you know, what's the rent today going to be about.
• 1:12:41
  Speaker 1: And then I come upstairs and typically the first hour
• 1:12:44
  Speaker 1: or so before I start right, you know, I'll outline
• 1:12:46
  Speaker 1: my piece, what are the major points I'm gonna make,
• 1:12:49
  Speaker 1: and then I know what I need to know to
• 1:12:51
  Speaker 1: back up the points that I'm going to make. And so,
• 1:12:53
  Speaker 1: you know, from one to two, basically I'm doing research, um,
• 1:12:57
  Speaker 1: you know, bouncing around the Internet or looking through books
• 1:12:59
  Speaker 1: that I've got or whatever whatever sources I need to find.
• 1:13:02
  Speaker 1: And sometimes that takes two hours. Sometimes it only takes
• 1:13:05
  Speaker 1: twenty minutes. It depends on the topic. There are a
• 1:13:07
  Speaker 1: lot of topics that I can write literally off the
• 1:13:09
  Speaker 1: top of my head. There are others where I really
• 1:13:11
  Speaker 1: have to do a lot of research. I did a
• 1:13:12
  Speaker 1: piece three or four weeks ago about how militious are
• 1:13:16
  Speaker 1: illegal at every state and the Union and have been since,
• 1:13:19
  Speaker 1: uh you know, the eighteen eighties, and nobody's enforcing those
• 1:13:24
  Speaker 1: laws and private militias, and that took probably three hours
• 1:13:29
  Speaker 1: of research and that day I was writing until six o'clock.
• 1:13:32
  Speaker 1: I missed Chris As show. So oh and then you
• 1:13:36
  Speaker 1: know the rest of the day, you know, after after
• 1:13:37
  Speaker 1: I get done writing, I go downstairs. Louise usually has
• 1:13:40
  Speaker 1: dinner ready at five, and we'll watch chriss As on MSNBC,
• 1:13:43
  Speaker 1: and then you know, Alex or Rachel after that, and
• 1:13:47
  Speaker 1: then we knock off. We go upstairs and we'll watch
• 1:13:49
  Speaker 1: some show on you know, Netflix or something, or or read,
• 1:13:54
  Speaker 1: uh you know, or or visit people and uh, you know,
• 1:13:58
  Speaker 1: it's just you know, I turned off my phone. I'm sorry,
• 1:14:01
  Speaker 1: I didn't turn off my watch. I don't know how
• 1:14:03
  Speaker 1: to do that. Um, so that's our day. Any uh
• 1:14:08
  Speaker 1: specific Netflix or other streaming show you're hot on. Uh,
• 1:14:14
  Speaker 1: we just finished watching The Sopranos, because there's you know,
• 1:14:16
  Speaker 1: the old Sopranos, which you never saw because we didn't
• 1:14:18
  Speaker 1: have a TV back then in the in the late nineties,
• 1:14:21
  Speaker 1: um in early two thousand's, and and because I guess
• 1:14:25
  Speaker 1: there's a sequel coming out that we were curious about.
• 1:14:27
  Speaker 1: But you know, I've got a list of this on
• 1:14:29
  Speaker 1: my phone here that I can my binge watching. In
• 1:14:34
  Speaker 1: the last year and a half, or two years. We've
• 1:14:36
  Speaker 1: watched the Sopranos, Silent Witness, mcguyber FBI One, n C
• 1:14:41
  Speaker 1: I s I, Yellowstone, Snow Piercer, Monk, Yellowstone, Hawaii five O,
• 1:14:45
  Speaker 1: the Original, Uh, Colombo, McMillan and wife. We went back
• 1:14:48
  Speaker 1: and watch those. Um what we do in the Shadows,
• 1:14:51
  Speaker 1: Person of Interest, Bones, Secession, Silent Witness, Good Fight, Billions,
• 1:14:56
  Speaker 1: Father Brown, Death in Paradise, The Finder, C s I, Miami.
• 1:14:59
  Speaker 1: I mean it's kind of Game of Thrones, Outlander Killing Eve,
• 1:15:03
  Speaker 1: Magic City, Dot Martin, Blacklist. Yea, we get an idea
• 1:15:07
  Speaker 1: of your taste. Going back to books, Although you get
• 1:15:11
  Speaker 1: a certain amount of publicity, except for the huge bestsellers,
• 1:15:16
  Speaker 1: historically books sell very few copies. What is your experience been?
• 1:15:22
  Speaker 1: Is more of a labor of love? What's the motivation?
• 1:15:26
  Speaker 1: I uh, that's a really good question. Bob I ernest
• 1:15:33
  Speaker 1: him anyway once said, ah that I don't remember the
• 1:15:39
  Speaker 1: exact quote. It's been so many years since I even
• 1:15:40
  Speaker 1: thought about it, but he once said, basically, UM, as
• 1:15:44
  Speaker 1: an author, you gained a certain little bit, tiny little
• 1:15:48
  Speaker 1: bit of immortality. UM. Sometimes I think about my writing
• 1:15:54
  Speaker 1: as the stuff I hope my grandchildren will discover. They
• 1:15:59
  Speaker 1: probably won't, but you know, I mean I used to.
• 1:16:03
  Speaker 1: After my dad died, I discovered some of the letters
• 1:16:05
  Speaker 1: that he wrote home when he was in the army
• 1:16:07
  Speaker 1: during World War Two, and it just tore me up,
• 1:16:11
  Speaker 1: and I realized how much I had lost. I wish
• 1:16:14
  Speaker 1: I had had those kind of insights into my grandparents
• 1:16:16
  Speaker 1: and even great grandparents. So, you know, in a way,
• 1:16:19
  Speaker 1: I think I'm I'm writing for posterity, as it were.
• 1:16:23
  Speaker 1: In a way, I've got things that I want to
• 1:16:25
  Speaker 1: say that I think are important, and writing a book
• 1:16:29
  Speaker 1: is a great way to do that. Um. You know,
• 1:16:32
  Speaker 1: it's it's provided me with some income over the years.
• 1:16:35
  Speaker 1: A couple of books have done very very well. Um.
• 1:16:38
  Speaker 1: You know, I've got a couple of books that have
• 1:16:39
  Speaker 1: been print for literally decades. One of them is in
• 1:16:42
  Speaker 1: print in nineteen different languages. Um. You know, it's sold
• 1:16:46
  Speaker 1: a lot of copies. Um. So, uh, you know, it's
• 1:16:50
  Speaker 1: something I like to do. It's something I'm good at.
• 1:16:52
  Speaker 1: My mother was an English major at m s U.
• 1:16:55
  Speaker 1: And she was a frustrated writer. She tried to write
• 1:16:58
  Speaker 1: children's books when I was young and kind of modeled
• 1:17:01
  Speaker 1: for me the self discipline of writing and um and
• 1:17:05
  Speaker 1: I often think of her, you know, sometimes I think
• 1:17:07
  Speaker 1: I'm writing to her, um so and and In fact,
• 1:17:11
  Speaker 1: my parents gave me a portable typewriter when I was
• 1:17:14
  Speaker 1: ten years old, and my dad, when I was thirteen,
• 1:17:19
  Speaker 1: first year of junior high school, demanded that I take
• 1:17:23
  Speaker 1: a typing class because my typing was so atrocious. And
• 1:17:26
  Speaker 1: I was in this class with like twenty eight girls
• 1:17:29
  Speaker 1: in me, which was just humiliating, embarrassing. Um you know
• 1:17:34
  Speaker 1: it was, and but it was the best skill I
• 1:17:40
  Speaker 1: ever learned. I'm so grateful that my father forced me
• 1:17:42
  Speaker 1: to do that. So now I'm much more effective. You know,
• 1:17:46
  Speaker 1: I can write, I can type really fast, and I
• 1:17:48
  Speaker 1: can write better. But I just love doing it. I
• 1:17:51
  Speaker 1: really love writing, just like I love doing radio. I
• 1:17:55
  Speaker 1: had the same experience with typing. I mean, especially computers
• 1:17:58
  Speaker 1: came in knowing how to type some believable So in
• 1:18:01
  Speaker 1: our conversation you've mentioned it asner, You've talked about politicians.
• 1:18:07
  Speaker 1: Are you okay? In Los Angeles? It's a world of networking.
• 1:18:14
  Speaker 1: Traditional fiction authors tend to be isolated. Where do you sit?
• 1:18:19
  Speaker 1: Do you like the incoming people track you down? Or
• 1:18:23
  Speaker 1: do you go out of your way? To have relationships
• 1:18:26
  Speaker 1: with Ed Asner, You famously have a relationship with Leonardo DiCaprio.
• 1:18:31
  Speaker 1: With politicians, where do you sit on that. I'm an
• 1:18:36
  Speaker 1: odd duck, although I think that I'm probably the norm
• 1:18:39
  Speaker 1: for radio, but I'm definitely the exception for television, and
• 1:18:42
  Speaker 1: that is that I'm an introvert. I'm basically a shy person.
• 1:18:47
  Speaker 1: I don't speak up. I'm intimidated by crowds. I get
• 1:18:51
  Speaker 1: panic attacks in in cocktail parties. I hate cocktail parties. Um,
• 1:18:56
  Speaker 1: you know, you put me in a room with thirty people,
• 1:18:58
  Speaker 1: I can't deal with it. Put me out of stay
• 1:19:00
  Speaker 1: in front of five thousand people. I have no problem.
• 1:19:02
  Speaker 1: I can do that well. I have learned how to
• 1:19:05
  Speaker 1: pretend to be an extrovert. Um, But if I've got
• 1:19:08
  Speaker 1: to make small talk, I don't know how to do it.
• 1:19:10
  Speaker 1: We went to an h O A meeting here in
• 1:19:12
  Speaker 1: the neighborhood where I live a couple of nights ago,
• 1:19:14
  Speaker 1: and I basically ran out of there as soon as
• 1:19:16
  Speaker 1: it was over. And I'm on one of the committees.
• 1:19:18
  Speaker 1: I should have stuck around and played politician. I can't
• 1:19:21
  Speaker 1: do that. I make a lousy politician. I don't know
• 1:19:23
  Speaker 1: how to shake hands with people and and and do that.
• 1:19:27
  Speaker 1: It frightens me and intimidates me. So and I think
• 1:19:31
  Speaker 1: that that's common in radio. I got to know Larry
• 1:19:33
  Speaker 1: King before he died, and he was another, you know,
• 1:19:36
  Speaker 1: in an introvert who knew how to pretend he was
• 1:19:38
  Speaker 1: an extrovert. And I've heard that Russia Limbaugh was like that.
• 1:19:42
  Speaker 1: I know for a fact that Michael Savage is like that.
• 1:19:45
  Speaker 1: I don't know him, but I know we have friends
• 1:19:47
  Speaker 1: in common. Um. So, my my social circle is really
• 1:19:52
  Speaker 1: quite small, and I have never tried to network with anybody,
• 1:19:55
  Speaker 1: you know, to advance my show or my books or
• 1:19:57
  Speaker 1: anything else. The friendships that I've made over the years
• 1:20:01
  Speaker 1: that might appear to the high profile, you know, like
• 1:20:03
  Speaker 1: Ed Asner or Leo DiCaprio or whatnot, Um, we're kind
• 1:20:08
  Speaker 1: of accidental things that that. You know, Leo read one
• 1:20:11
  Speaker 1: of my books and his mother reached out to me,
• 1:20:13
  Speaker 1: for example, and uh, you know, I invited him on
• 1:20:17
  Speaker 1: my show and and and we just kind of hit
• 1:20:19
  Speaker 1: it off, just the two of us, you know. So
• 1:20:22
  Speaker 1: I'm probably to my detriment that I'm that incompetent in
• 1:20:26
  Speaker 1: that area of being, you know, the gland handing networker.
• 1:20:30
  Speaker 1: Let's talk about Ed or Leo. You have a moment
• 1:20:33
  Speaker 1: of connection. They're doing the show where there's a project.
• 1:20:37
  Speaker 1: Do you have any social contact beyond maybe once a year?
• 1:20:42
  Speaker 1: How you doing? That's that's largely it. I mean, you know,
• 1:20:46
  Speaker 1: Leo and I have worked together on I think six projects,
• 1:20:51
  Speaker 1: three three or four short little ten fifteen minute uh
• 1:20:57
  Speaker 1: YouTube videos that live, you know, little movies that on YouTube,
• 1:21:01
  Speaker 1: and three or four larger longer you know, full length.
• 1:21:08
  Speaker 1: These are all about climate change, um. And so you know,
• 1:21:12
  Speaker 1: when you collaborate on those things, you get to know
• 1:21:14
  Speaker 1: people a little bit better. UM. But mostly it's you know,
• 1:21:17
  Speaker 1: if I'm in town, hey, how are you. I've become
• 1:21:19
  Speaker 1: very close friends with his father. I think of George
• 1:21:23
  Speaker 1: DiCaprio is one of probably my ten best friends, you know,
• 1:21:27
  Speaker 1: in the world. And you know, like I said, my
• 1:21:30
  Speaker 1: social circuit was very small. George and I talked regularly, UM,
• 1:21:34
  Speaker 1: which has nothing to do with Leonardo UM, just because
• 1:21:38
  Speaker 1: you know, we we have We're kind of really similar
• 1:21:42
  Speaker 1: people in a lot of ways, and I just you know,
• 1:21:45
  Speaker 1: sometimes you just strike it off with people, and you know,
• 1:21:48
  Speaker 1: with Ed um when he was married to Cindy. You know,
• 1:21:51
  Speaker 1: we used to get together when I come to Los Angeles,
• 1:21:53
  Speaker 1: you know, for business whatever I had to do. Um,
• 1:21:56
  Speaker 1: But you know, I don't think we've probably had dinners
• 1:21:59
  Speaker 1: together more than I don't know, ten or fifteen times.
• 1:22:03
  Speaker 1: But you know, we keep in touch. You know, there's
• 1:22:06
  Speaker 1: a few other people who are real high profile. I'm
• 1:22:08
  Speaker 1: not big into name dropping, but you know that I
• 1:22:10
  Speaker 1: that I stay in touch with largely because they reach
• 1:22:13
  Speaker 1: out to me from time to time. How about politicians,
• 1:22:17
  Speaker 1: same story, Yeah, yeah, I mean Bernie was on my
• 1:22:21
  Speaker 1: show every Friday for eleven years, and uh, you know
• 1:22:26
  Speaker 1: I got to know him well as a consequence of that,
• 1:22:29
  Speaker 1: but we were never social friends. Bernie is all about business,
• 1:22:32
  Speaker 1: you know. Uh, and God blessing for it's I think
• 1:22:35
  Speaker 1: it makes him effective right now. Ro'canna and Mark pokaner
• 1:22:39
  Speaker 1: on my show regularly. They you know, we have conversations
• 1:22:43
  Speaker 1: and email from time to time, but you know we're
• 1:22:45
  Speaker 1: not I'm not networking with them or nor are they
• 1:22:47
  Speaker 1: with me. I don't think. Um, we're all about the mission,
• 1:22:51
  Speaker 1: as it were. Okay, so you do your show very frequently.
• 1:22:57
  Speaker 1: You know who your audience is. Anybody who's in doing
• 1:23:02
  Speaker 1: a performance that frequently tends to know what their audience wants.
• 1:23:07
  Speaker 1: To what degree or you beholden, which I know is
• 1:23:10
  Speaker 1: a strong word to your audience, or to what degree
• 1:23:13
  Speaker 1: do you say, Man, it's my show. I'm gonna do
• 1:23:16
  Speaker 1: whatever I want. Where do you sit there going this
• 1:23:19
  Speaker 1: maybe a little much from my audience or and then
• 1:23:21
  Speaker 1: I'm not gonna want to hear this. Are you talking
• 1:23:24
  Speaker 1: in terms of topics or are you talking in terms
• 1:23:28
  Speaker 1: of you know, styles slash uh production. I'm talking topics.
• 1:23:35
  Speaker 1: Oh okay, well you have I mean, you know, the
• 1:23:40
  Speaker 1: basic rule of any any kind of media is never
• 1:23:43
  Speaker 1: violate your audiences expectations, or if you do, do so
• 1:23:47
  Speaker 1: in a way that is ultimately satisfied with them. So
• 1:23:50
  Speaker 1: i'd say in that regard, you know, I'm i'm largely
• 1:23:54
  Speaker 1: you know nine well over holding to my audience inasmuch
• 1:23:57
  Speaker 1: as if I lose my audience, I'd have a show.
• 1:24:01
  Speaker 1: Um that said, my audience is largely ah, thinking the
• 1:24:08
  Speaker 1: same way I am. They're just looking to me for
• 1:24:11
  Speaker 1: data and entertainment, presumably, um and uh yeah, I mean
• 1:24:21
  Speaker 1: there are times that I'll bring topics up. For example,
• 1:24:24
  Speaker 1: I'm I'm fascinated by spirituality. I was really into spirituality
• 1:24:30
  Speaker 1: when I was young. Um. I took acid when I
• 1:24:34
  Speaker 1: was fifteen, and it changed my life. I mean it
• 1:24:37
  Speaker 1: just And I got real into into this one particular
• 1:24:41
  Speaker 1: church in my later teenage years in early twenties, and
• 1:24:45
  Speaker 1: even got ordained in that church. I I just you know,
• 1:24:51
  Speaker 1: I was into the esoteric philosophers, into um kind of
• 1:24:57
  Speaker 1: New age stuff. I went through a aread of meditation,
• 1:25:01
  Speaker 1: transcemental meditation. I still meditate, you know, I although now
• 1:25:04
  Speaker 1: I use a uh near feedback headband to meditate. Um.
• 1:25:11
  Speaker 1: But it's a big deal for me. It's a big topic.
• 1:25:13
  Speaker 1: It's a big part of my life. I literally pray
• 1:25:15
  Speaker 1: every morning. And you know, occasionally I'll go off and
• 1:25:19
  Speaker 1: ran about that on the air, and in particular on
• 1:25:22
  Speaker 1: my affection for Jesus's words in Matthew, you know, the
• 1:25:27
  Speaker 1: parable of the sheets and the goats and the and
• 1:25:29
  Speaker 1: the Sermon on the Mount and uh. And I love
• 1:25:33
  Speaker 1: it when, particularly when some conservative will call in and
• 1:25:36
  Speaker 1: try to promote their vision of Christianity has been consistent
• 1:25:41
  Speaker 1: with Donald Trump or something like that. And and I
• 1:25:44
  Speaker 1: can I've read the Bible four times cover to cover
• 1:25:47
  Speaker 1: I did it, frankly, as a way of getting to sleep.
• 1:25:50
  Speaker 1: I've always had trouble sleeping my whole life. And I
• 1:25:53
  Speaker 1: if you got these through the Bible in a year Bibles,
• 1:25:56
  Speaker 1: you know where it's predivided into three sixty five slices
• 1:25:59
  Speaker 1: and you read one every night. And I found that
• 1:26:02
  Speaker 1: they just put me to sleep. I mean, you know,
• 1:26:03
  Speaker 1: it's it's just perfect for me. It unwinds me. And
• 1:26:07
  Speaker 1: so for four years in a row back in the
• 1:26:08
  Speaker 1: in the in the eighties and the early eighties, I
• 1:26:11
  Speaker 1: read the Bible cover to cover, so I can I
• 1:26:14
  Speaker 1: can argue those things pretty effectively. Um. So you know
• 1:26:19
  Speaker 1: that's not progressive talk radio at all, although I think
• 1:26:23
  Speaker 1: Jesus was the original progressive so arguably it is, I suppose. Um.
• 1:26:27
  Speaker 1: You know, I don't talk very much about my drug
• 1:26:29
  Speaker 1: experiences as a young person on the air, although I
• 1:26:32
  Speaker 1: acknowledge them. I'm not ashamed of it. In fact, I think,
• 1:26:35
  Speaker 1: you know, it was a good thing for me. Um,
• 1:26:37
  Speaker 1: but I'm not recommending it to anybody else who's certainly
• 1:26:40
  Speaker 1: the age I was done. Um. So you know, I
• 1:26:44
  Speaker 1: guess my answer is kind of wishy washing your bob.
• 1:26:46
  Speaker 1: But um, but I think that you have to keep
• 1:26:51
  Speaker 1: your audience in mind. Certainly, it's not just you know,
• 1:26:54
  Speaker 1: this isn't I don't have a radio show just so
• 1:26:56
  Speaker 1: I can, you know, yell into the into the void.
• 1:27:06
  Speaker 1: Let's go back to some of the issues. Let's talk
• 1:27:09
  Speaker 1: about the war in Ukraine. Needless to say, many people
• 1:27:13
  Speaker 1: thought that uh Putin in Russia would just run right
• 1:27:17
  Speaker 1: over your Ukraine. That did not happen, however, And these
• 1:27:22
  Speaker 1: scenes change every day, so it'll be a week before
• 1:27:26
  Speaker 1: people will hear this, and you never know something major
• 1:27:29
  Speaker 1: could happen. But I mean, is like Putin literally losing power.
• 1:27:34
  Speaker 1: We saw how these things happen overnight, and there have
• 1:27:37
  Speaker 1: been all these protests and he's conscripting people now. But
• 1:27:42
  Speaker 1: Putin historically doesn't want to lose face. So relevant of
• 1:27:48
  Speaker 1: Ukraine's cap capabilities and successes, one might say Putin is
• 1:27:56
  Speaker 1: never gonna tuck his tail between his legs and say,
• 1:27:59
  Speaker 1: I love, how does this play out? I don't know.
• 1:28:04
  Speaker 1: I mean, I'm very concerned about this. My my sense
• 1:28:07
  Speaker 1: of it is that Putin, very much like every other
• 1:28:11
  Speaker 1: dictator run who runs on narcissism um, knows that if
• 1:28:18
  Speaker 1: he loses or if he's seen as being weak. Basically,
• 1:28:21
  Speaker 1: the thing that keeps him in power is that everybody's
• 1:28:23
  Speaker 1: afraid of him, and that he's and that he's perceived
• 1:28:25
  Speaker 1: as being essentially infallible. Um. This was the engine on
• 1:28:30
  Speaker 1: which Mussolini ran, Hitler, ran Franco ran To, Terita ran
• 1:28:34
  Speaker 1: are Towan is running right now. Um. I mean this,
• 1:28:37
  Speaker 1: this is the dictator's playbook. Is You've got to have
• 1:28:40
  Speaker 1: people afraid of you. You know, they can love you
• 1:28:43
  Speaker 1: and respect you, but fearing you is the most important thing.
• 1:28:46
  Speaker 1: And people only fear you if they see you as
• 1:28:48
  Speaker 1: essentially omnipotent or or you know, unbeatable and so Putin
• 1:28:53
  Speaker 1: I think has already passed the point where the image
• 1:28:59
  Speaker 1: of him as as this uh invincible man on horseback,
• 1:29:04
  Speaker 1: bear chested, has been shattered. And I don't think he's
• 1:29:08
  Speaker 1: going to recover from this, whether his own government, you know,
• 1:29:12
  Speaker 1: whether he's going to face a palace coup, whether he's
• 1:29:15
  Speaker 1: going to decide okay, it's time to check out and
• 1:29:18
  Speaker 1: I'm just going to retire to my datcha with by
• 1:29:20
  Speaker 1: mistress and had a billion dollars, or whether something you know,
• 1:29:25
  Speaker 1: far more terrible is going to happen to him, or
• 1:29:27
  Speaker 1: whether he's gonna like Hitler did in his last days.
• 1:29:30
  Speaker 1: I wrote an not bet about this. Actually a couple
• 1:29:32
  Speaker 1: of weeks ago. Um a good friend of mine, a
• 1:29:36
  Speaker 1: dear friend of mine, armand Lehman Arman and I m
• 1:29:38
  Speaker 1: back when Louis and I own an ad agency. I
• 1:29:41
  Speaker 1: used to travel the world teaching advertising and marketing in
• 1:29:44
  Speaker 1: the travel industry, and Armand was doing that. We both
• 1:29:48
  Speaker 1: worked with the same company. And uh, you know, we've
• 1:29:52
  Speaker 1: probably been to twenty countries together and spent a lot
• 1:29:55
  Speaker 1: of time on airplanes and hotels. And one day and
• 1:29:58
  Speaker 1: Arman had this German accident. And he's about fifteen years
• 1:30:03
  Speaker 1: older than me. And one day Armand uh It took
• 1:30:06
  Speaker 1: me aside and said, I'm I think I'm thinking about
• 1:30:09
  Speaker 1: it writing a book about my experience as a young person,
• 1:30:11
  Speaker 1: and I wanted to tell you about it. I haven't
• 1:30:12
  Speaker 1: talked to anybody about it, So what is it? And
• 1:30:15
  Speaker 1: he said, well, when I was sixteen years old, I
• 1:30:17
  Speaker 1: was drafted into the Hitler Youth and it was and
• 1:30:22
  Speaker 1: I was the courier who hand delivered the note to
• 1:30:25
  Speaker 1: Adolf Hitler that the war was lost. If you've seen
• 1:30:29
  Speaker 1: the movie Downfall, that little kid who comes in, a
• 1:30:31
  Speaker 1: sixteen year old kid who hand that was my friend
• 1:30:32
  Speaker 1: Armand and and and and that began a whole brand
• 1:30:38
  Speaker 1: new kind of conversation between arm and. Armand wrote his book.
• 1:30:42
  Speaker 1: You can find it on Amazon right now. It's called
• 1:30:44
  Speaker 1: In Hitler's Bunker. And Armand has now passed away. But
• 1:30:49
  Speaker 1: m Armand told me those stories of the Hitler's final days,
• 1:30:53
  Speaker 1: and that Hitler in the you know, when it became
• 1:30:56
  Speaker 1: evident to him that he was losing maybe a few
• 1:30:58
  Speaker 1: weeks or a few months out, he actually welcomed the
• 1:31:01
  Speaker 1: Allied destruction of Germany. He felt that the German people
• 1:31:04
  Speaker 1: had let him down. He at that point he hated
• 1:31:07
  Speaker 1: the German people because they had failed him. He hated
• 1:31:09
  Speaker 1: the German army because they had failed him. He had
• 1:31:13
  Speaker 1: ordered his army to blow up Berlin. You know, at
• 1:31:16
  Speaker 1: least a cording to army. I mean, I haven't checked
• 1:31:19
  Speaker 1: this with history, although years you know, we lived in
• 1:31:22
  Speaker 1: Germany for a year in the eighties, and I've read
• 1:31:25
  Speaker 1: the Assurer's book The Rise and Fall the Third Reich.
• 1:31:27
  Speaker 1: I just don't remember the details of that. But um,
• 1:31:31
  Speaker 1: I'm concerned that Putin might have that same mentality of
• 1:31:35
  Speaker 1: I'm going down in flames and I'm going to take
• 1:31:37
  Speaker 1: somebody with me. You know, this is this is what
• 1:31:39
  Speaker 1: you see with these people who go out and kill
• 1:31:41
  Speaker 1: ten people and then commit suicide. I'm going to go
• 1:31:43
  Speaker 1: out and blaze of glory. Um. You know the kid
• 1:31:47
  Speaker 1: in Newtown. It's the same mentality. It's this, it's this
• 1:31:50
  Speaker 1: deep psychopathic narcissism. And if Putin decides that he's going
• 1:31:55
  Speaker 1: to go down in flames and bring a whole lot
• 1:31:57
  Speaker 1: of people with him, that might mean nuclear war. And
• 1:31:59
  Speaker 1: that's the thing that makes that wakes me up at night.
• 1:32:02
  Speaker 1: That's the thing that concerns me the most. Okay, recently
• 1:32:07
  Speaker 1: there have been elections and the right made as they
• 1:32:12
  Speaker 1: used the term populus, which many people used to think
• 1:32:15
  Speaker 1: was a left term. It is now certainly a right
• 1:32:17
  Speaker 1: wing term. In Sweden, they've made progress. In Italy they
• 1:32:22
  Speaker 1: made progress. They're threatening in France. Certainly, we have our
• 1:32:26
  Speaker 1: own situation in America. What do you think explains this?
• 1:32:32
  Speaker 1: And are we going to come out the other side?
• 1:32:34
  Speaker 1: Never mind Orbon and Hungary, but what's happening here? Well,
• 1:32:40
  Speaker 1: I think actually Orbon and Hungry is instructive because Orbon
• 1:32:43
  Speaker 1: built his political empire. I was in Hungary the the
• 1:32:46
  Speaker 1: year that Orbon came to power. Um Orbon built his
• 1:32:50
  Speaker 1: political empire on trashing brown Skian immigrants coming to Hungary.
• 1:32:54
  Speaker 1: His slogan was, you know, build the wall, make Hungary
• 1:32:58
  Speaker 1: great again, and a campaign down building a wall on
• 1:33:01
  Speaker 1: the southern border to keep up the Syrian refugees. And
• 1:33:03
  Speaker 1: by the way, he did, he built that wall and
• 1:33:05
  Speaker 1: it's heavily militarized right now. So uh, I think you
• 1:33:09
  Speaker 1: know the like for example, about Sweden, most people don't realize. Um,
• 1:33:14
  Speaker 1: just day before yesterday there were three bombings in Sweden.
• 1:33:18
  Speaker 1: That's there have been more than five hundred bombings now
• 1:33:21
  Speaker 1: in Sweden in the last in the last five years.
• 1:33:24
  Speaker 1: It is a crisis in Sweden. And almost and and
• 1:33:28
  Speaker 1: and shooting. Sweden now has more shootings than any other
• 1:33:31
  Speaker 1: country in Europe. And almost all of this is coming
• 1:33:34
  Speaker 1: out of the immigrant community that was welcomed when when
• 1:33:37
  Speaker 1: you know, the Arab spring happened and then you know, uh,
• 1:33:42
  Speaker 1: what's his name, bushsher Al Assad was you know, well,
• 1:33:45
  Speaker 1: actually what started the whole thing was climate change drove
• 1:33:48
  Speaker 1: all these farmers off their land in northern Syria. They
• 1:33:51
  Speaker 1: came into Damascus, started demanding food, assad started shooting at them.
• 1:33:55
  Speaker 1: Suddenly you've got a civil war, and now you've got
• 1:33:57
  Speaker 1: this refugee crisis going into Europe. The ability of a
• 1:34:01
  Speaker 1: society to absorb people who are not recognizable by other
• 1:34:06
  Speaker 1: people in that society, either because of how they look,
• 1:34:09
  Speaker 1: or how they speak, or or how they how they
• 1:34:11
  Speaker 1: dress and live is limited. I mean, there's been a
• 1:34:16
  Speaker 1: lot of good research on this. You know, a society
• 1:34:18
  Speaker 1: can absorb one or two percent a year of people
• 1:34:21
  Speaker 1: who are quote not part of the society and integrate
• 1:34:25
  Speaker 1: them into the society. But when you start absorbing three,
• 1:34:28
  Speaker 1: four or five, the society starts to reject that that
• 1:34:31
  Speaker 1: you get this backlash, and that backlash takes the form
• 1:34:35
  Speaker 1: of what looks like racism, and in many cases it
• 1:34:38
  Speaker 1: is it's just playing all avert racism or xenophobia. But
• 1:34:41
  Speaker 1: you know, it might not have been there had there
• 1:34:43
  Speaker 1: not been or it might not have been taking that
• 1:34:45
  Speaker 1: form had there not been that that influx of new people.
• 1:34:50
  Speaker 1: And I don't think that we're any in close to
• 1:34:54
  Speaker 1: those kinds of threshold numbers here in the United States
• 1:34:57
  Speaker 1: of refugees and migrants. But Fox News and the right
• 1:35:00
  Speaker 1: are doing their best to try to convince people that
• 1:35:02
  Speaker 1: were at that point. You know, there's a caravan coming right.
• 1:35:06
  Speaker 1: Every election, every two years, there's a border crisis because
• 1:35:10
  Speaker 1: it will stir up you know, fear and hate, and
• 1:35:12
  Speaker 1: fear and hate are great motivators to get people to
• 1:35:15
  Speaker 1: the to the to the polls. So I think that
• 1:35:19
  Speaker 1: there is um a crisis that has to do with
• 1:35:23
  Speaker 1: this issue, this immigration issue um or the refugee issue.
• 1:35:28
  Speaker 1: I think it's going to get a hell of a
• 1:35:30
  Speaker 1: lot worse over the next five years as climate change continues.
• 1:35:33
  Speaker 1: I mean, we're seeing Guatemalan refugees on our southern border
• 1:35:36
  Speaker 1: because you know, a measurable and significant percentage of that
• 1:35:39
  Speaker 1: country has desertified in the last decade, has turned in
• 1:35:42
  Speaker 1: from farmland into desert because of climate change, and people
• 1:35:46
  Speaker 1: are being pushed off subsistence farms and there's no place
• 1:35:48
  Speaker 1: to go, and they go into the cities, and the
• 1:35:49
  Speaker 1: gangs just you know, make mins need out of them,
• 1:35:51
  Speaker 1: and so they flee to the United States or they
• 1:35:53
  Speaker 1: flee into Mexico. Mexico is dealing with a huge influx
• 1:35:56
  Speaker 1: of crisis level influx of migrants from Central America. So
• 1:36:02
  Speaker 1: I think that this is this is going to be
• 1:36:05
  Speaker 1: a longstanding issue, in a longstanding crisis. I don't see
• 1:36:08
  Speaker 1: any easy solutions to it. It fractures societies, and it
• 1:36:13
  Speaker 1: plays into right wing narratives and stimulates because it frightens people,
• 1:36:18
  Speaker 1: it stimulates uh, you know, right wing political movements which
• 1:36:22
  Speaker 1: are typically based on fear or on hate and uh
• 1:36:27
  Speaker 1: and and very often hands victories to right wing movements
• 1:36:30
  Speaker 1: as it just didn't sweep. Okay, the Republicans are all
• 1:36:36
  Speaker 1: on the same page. They line up. We certainly have
• 1:36:40
  Speaker 1: seen this with Trump. People said Trump was the worst
• 1:36:43
  Speaker 1: and then cow tow to him. Democrats they say, it's
• 1:36:46
  Speaker 1: a big tent. So we have a president who is
• 1:36:53
  Speaker 1: essentially eighty okay, uh, not even a boomer pre boomer.
• 1:37:00
  Speaker 1: And on the other extreme we have someone like AOC. Now,
• 1:37:03
  Speaker 1: of course we have to look at AOC is elected
• 1:37:06
  Speaker 1: as a representative in a district in the state of
• 1:37:09
  Speaker 1: New York. But she is very verbal and vocal. In
• 1:37:13
  Speaker 1: the last major election cycle, she said, if you leave
• 1:37:17
  Speaker 1: me in control, I know how to deal with the Internet.
• 1:37:22
  Speaker 1: I know how to stimulate the younger generations to vote. Now,
• 1:37:26
  Speaker 1: not all the examples were in her favor. What do
• 1:37:31
  Speaker 1: you tell because we have traditional Democrats, as I mentioned earlier,
• 1:37:34
  Speaker 1: Schumer and Pelosi, who are trying to go to the center,
• 1:37:37
  Speaker 1: and the narrative created wherever is you must run to
• 1:37:41
  Speaker 1: the center. Never mind, the center is further right than
• 1:37:45
  Speaker 1: it's been in our lifetimes. But do we follow AOC
• 1:37:51
  Speaker 1: is it about the youth? Do we move to the
• 1:37:53
  Speaker 1: center or what are your thoughts? I think it's important
• 1:37:57
  Speaker 1: to do both. I think that we have to acknowledge
• 1:38:01
  Speaker 1: that there are people in what might be called the
• 1:38:04
  Speaker 1: middle who are concerned about crime, who are dealing with homelessness.
• 1:38:09
  Speaker 1: I mean, we're certainly we've got this problem here in
• 1:38:12
  Speaker 1: Portland right now, and it's it's radicalizing the city. Um,
• 1:38:16
  Speaker 1: the homeless crisis and which has become now a crime crisis.
• 1:38:20
  Speaker 1: I've even seen it. You know, we had homeless people
• 1:38:22
  Speaker 1: try to break into our house. Um, this is something
• 1:38:27
  Speaker 1: that you can't deal with with slogans. You've got to
• 1:38:29
  Speaker 1: deal with policy. And and that policy isn't oh, you
• 1:38:34
  Speaker 1: know you poor people were going to uh, We're gonna
• 1:38:37
  Speaker 1: let you do whatever you want. Um, which could be
• 1:38:42
  Speaker 1: perceived by some people as kind of a right wing position.
• 1:38:45
  Speaker 1: I think it's a little more pragmatic. Um. And I'm
• 1:38:48
  Speaker 1: not offering specific policy instructions here other than to say,
• 1:38:52
  Speaker 1: it's just you can't have people camping on the streets
• 1:38:54
  Speaker 1: of cities. UM. So we've got to come up with
• 1:38:57
  Speaker 1: something better than that. But there are people out there,
• 1:39:00
  Speaker 1: oh no, no, almost rights, right, And I agree almost
• 1:39:03
  Speaker 1: people should have rights, but not to camp in the
• 1:39:06
  Speaker 1: city or in the streets of the city, and and
• 1:39:09
  Speaker 1: and crap them on the curb. So you know, that's
• 1:39:14
  Speaker 1: that's about as far right as I But you know,
• 1:39:17
  Speaker 1: we have to acknowledge that, um, and and that you know,
• 1:39:21
  Speaker 1: there are those kinds of concerns. And then on the
• 1:39:23
  Speaker 1: other h on, you know, on the left, I think
• 1:39:26
  Speaker 1: that um, you know, issues of civil rights and women's rights,
• 1:39:32
  Speaker 1: human rights, I think right across the board. Uh, I
• 1:39:36
  Speaker 1: think broadly speaking, often these are winning subjects. The Republicans
• 1:39:42
  Speaker 1: have found little niches that they can amplify into great
• 1:39:45
  Speaker 1: big things. Um. You know, so called critical race theory um,
• 1:39:50
  Speaker 1: which just got blown all out of proportion. Um. The
• 1:39:54
  Speaker 1: very very small number of trans kids who want to
• 1:39:57
  Speaker 1: compete in girls sports, trans you know, trans girls who
• 1:40:01
  Speaker 1: want to compete in girls sports. Um, that they're exploiting.
• 1:40:06
  Speaker 1: And I would not argue that the Democratic Party should
• 1:40:11
  Speaker 1: put those issues front and center. They still need to
• 1:40:14
  Speaker 1: stand up for the rights of those people. But you know,
• 1:40:18
  Speaker 1: the Republicans are going to be campaigning on those things,
• 1:40:20
  Speaker 1: so you know, we have to figure out how to
• 1:40:21
  Speaker 1: deal with that. I don't see easy answers, Bob. I.
• 1:40:26
  Speaker 1: I think that Alexander Cassio Cortez is is her generations Bernie,
• 1:40:32
  Speaker 1: and she's going to go a long, long way, and
• 1:40:34
  Speaker 1: she's got a lot of good people with her, you know,
• 1:40:36
  Speaker 1: the other members of Congress squad um. But there's others
• 1:40:39
  Speaker 1: in addition to that. But you know, there's also you know,
• 1:40:43
  Speaker 1: you've got Bernie and Elizabeth Warren and some you know,
• 1:40:45
  Speaker 1: some very older people, people their sixties and seventies who
• 1:40:49
  Speaker 1: also have, you know, things to say and things to
• 1:40:50
  Speaker 1: contribute to the conversation that are not inconsistent or incompatible. UM.
• 1:40:56
  Speaker 1: I'm very pleased that the Democratic Party seems to be
• 1:40:59
  Speaker 1: coalescing around basically four issues around abortion, guns, the environment,
• 1:41:04
  Speaker 1: and the threat to democracy that the Republican Party represents.
• 1:41:07
  Speaker 1: I think those are winning issues that from the far
• 1:41:10
  Speaker 1: left within the Democratic Party to the to the neoliberal
• 1:41:14
  Speaker 1: right within the Democratic Party. The Josh Gottheimer's and the
• 1:41:17
  Speaker 1: Democratic Party. Um, there's a there's an agreement, a spectrum
• 1:41:22
  Speaker 1: of agreement, and and that's a good thing. Okay. I'm
• 1:41:27
  Speaker 1: someone who voting absolutely every election, although I've had some
• 1:41:32
  Speaker 1: hope with recent events. Certainly we have this Kennon decision
• 1:41:36
  Speaker 1: that was just overturned by an appeals court. Two of
• 1:41:39
  Speaker 1: the judge were Trump appointees. But we know the Supreme Court.
• 1:41:44
  Speaker 1: I'll make it very mild leans, right, So what do
• 1:41:49
  Speaker 1: we know? The Republicans are willing to do things. It's
• 1:41:53
  Speaker 1: so far the Democrats have not. So if you undermine
• 1:41:58
  Speaker 1: the system, it is hard to succeed. Why should I
• 1:42:04
  Speaker 1: have hope? You know, we talked about this little bit,
• 1:42:06
  Speaker 1: you know. You know, I look at this. The electoral
• 1:42:10
  Speaker 1: power is balanced to the advantage of right. The Senate
• 1:42:14
  Speaker 1: is balanced to the advantage of right. Never mind jerrymandery,
• 1:42:18
  Speaker 1: and I want to go deep into that. Look what's
• 1:42:20
  Speaker 1: happening in North Carolina. Look at the ultimate arbiter is biased,
• 1:42:27
  Speaker 1: you know. And all I hear from politicians is vote, vote, vote,
• 1:42:33
  Speaker 1: And it's hard for me to get excited about that.
• 1:42:36
  Speaker 1: You know, I just don't see it that way. That's enough.
• 1:42:40
  Speaker 1: I'm not sure where your question is. My question is
• 1:42:43
  Speaker 1: to those of us who've been in the system for
• 1:42:46
  Speaker 1: a long time and the young people, how do we
• 1:42:51
  Speaker 1: have hope that there's gonna be systemic change? Oh? Yeah, well,
• 1:42:57
  Speaker 1: I I am hopeful that the Democrats. I I thought
• 1:43:00
  Speaker 1: that the Chuck Schumer should have blown up the filibuster
• 1:43:03
  Speaker 1: on day one. There's been so much good legislation that
• 1:43:06
  Speaker 1: came out of the House that could have passed the Senate. Um,
• 1:43:10
  Speaker 1: Chuck Schumer has been a big disappointment in many ways.
• 1:43:13
  Speaker 1: Now that said, he's running the Senate and I'm not.
• 1:43:16
  Speaker 1: And I'm willing to assume that he knows things I
• 1:43:19
  Speaker 1: don't know. But UM, I'll leave it at that. UM.
• 1:43:28
  Speaker 1: I think that you either have faith in democracy or
• 1:43:30
  Speaker 1: you don't. You either believe that in the end, the
• 1:43:33
  Speaker 1: good guys you're gonna win, or you don't. And I'm
• 1:43:36
  Speaker 1: just not willing, and I have never been willing in
• 1:43:38
  Speaker 1: my life to embrace the level of cynicism necessary to
• 1:43:42
  Speaker 1: say screw it. You know, we're doomed. It's not going
• 1:43:45
  Speaker 1: to work. Um. I I realized that the Democratic Party
• 1:43:50
  Speaker 1: moves slower than I would like. Um. You know I've
• 1:43:52
  Speaker 1: been banging on their doors since uh two thousand three,
• 1:43:56
  Speaker 1: on the radio and in print since the nineties. UM,
• 1:44:00
  Speaker 1: railing about it. I used to, you know, beat up
• 1:44:04
  Speaker 1: Harry Read on there all the time, make jokes about how,
• 1:44:07
  Speaker 1: you know, they should steal Arnold Arnold Schwarzenegger. This is
• 1:44:10
  Speaker 1: when Schwartzenerger was governor of California. How somebody should stand
• 1:44:13
  Speaker 1: outside his house, you know every month when the testosterone
• 1:44:19
  Speaker 1: mail delivery arrives and steal it and go shoot up
• 1:44:23
  Speaker 1: Harry Read with it. You know, come on, Harry, get
• 1:44:25
  Speaker 1: a spine, you know, fight back. Um. He was always
• 1:44:27
  Speaker 1: so nice and so friendly and oh, we can't do that,
• 1:44:31
  Speaker 1: and that would be too far. Um. Yeah, he was
• 1:44:34
  Speaker 1: a good man in retrospect. And you know, I don't
• 1:44:37
  Speaker 1: want to speak ill of the dead, but um, the
• 1:44:42
  Speaker 1: Democratic Party has, all throughout my lifetime, has always been
• 1:44:46
  Speaker 1: the party that says we're going to do things the
• 1:44:48
  Speaker 1: right way, We're going to do things the appropriate way.
• 1:44:51
  Speaker 1: We're going to do things, UM carefully and and and
• 1:44:55
  Speaker 1: in so many cases slowly, to make sure that the
• 1:44:58
  Speaker 1: outcome is strong and all it and that there's a
• 1:45:00
  Speaker 1: consensus around this. We're not just going to grab power
• 1:45:03
  Speaker 1: for the sake of power. The Republican Party is pursuing
• 1:45:07
  Speaker 1: that ladder, grab power for the sake of power and
• 1:45:09
  Speaker 1: get whatever you can done quickly. And now they've overreached,
• 1:45:13
  Speaker 1: you know, particularly with abortion, but I think they've overreached
• 1:45:16
  Speaker 1: frankly with neoliberalism as well over the last forty years,
• 1:45:19
  Speaker 1: although Democrats have their fingerprints all over that too, and
• 1:45:23
  Speaker 1: um and I think it's going to blow up in
• 1:45:25
  Speaker 1: their face. I don't know if it's going to blow
• 1:45:28
  Speaker 1: up in their face in this election or over the
• 1:45:30
  Speaker 1: next few years. But I really think that the era
• 1:45:34
  Speaker 1: of Republican dominance of American politics, or more appropriately to
• 1:45:39
  Speaker 1: say conservative dominance and now neo fascist or as Biden
• 1:45:43
  Speaker 1: was say, semi fascist dominance of our of our politics.
• 1:45:47
  Speaker 1: I really think that's over. I think there's something to
• 1:45:49
  Speaker 1: be said for you know, Stanley church In's notion of
• 1:45:52
  Speaker 1: these forty year cycles within the context of Strausson House
• 1:45:56
  Speaker 1: eighty year cycles in politics, and I think that we're
• 1:45:59
  Speaker 1: at the end of a forty year conservative cycle and
• 1:46:02
  Speaker 1: we're going into our beginning a far more progressive cycle. Okay,
• 1:46:09
  Speaker 1: Biden gets an office, first six ten months are great.
• 1:46:13
  Speaker 1: Then the works are gummed up and the approval ratings
• 1:46:17
  Speaker 1: go down, and his whole party does not rally around him.
• 1:46:21
  Speaker 1: The right has been on this program from the beginning.
• 1:46:24
  Speaker 1: He's old, he's senile, all this other stuff. The left
• 1:46:28
  Speaker 1: was silent. And now two years later, Biden has some victories,
• 1:46:33
  Speaker 1: his numbers are going up, but the people in Washington
• 1:46:37
  Speaker 1: are still not supporting him vocally. What do you think
• 1:46:41
  Speaker 1: is happening here? I've been hearing a fair amount of
• 1:46:44
  Speaker 1: support for Biden, you know, recently, particularly going into the election.
• 1:46:48
  Speaker 1: Maybe some of its pro forma, but but I think,
• 1:46:51
  Speaker 1: you know, a lot of it is it's Sincere Um. Yeah,
• 1:46:55
  Speaker 1: when he when he couldn't Yeah, you know, I think
• 1:46:58
  Speaker 1: I was piste off about this. I think at the
• 1:47:00
  Speaker 1: Democrats were when he couldn't get um Joe Mansion and
• 1:47:05
  Speaker 1: Kristen Cinema to go along with freaking voting rights for
• 1:47:08
  Speaker 1: God's sake. Um, you know, at that point, I just
• 1:47:13
  Speaker 1: can't imagine Lyndon Johnson doing that as president or as
• 1:47:16
  Speaker 1: as in Chuck Schumer's position as leader of the Senate,
• 1:47:19
  Speaker 1: the Democrats in the Senate. I mean, you know, Lynnon
• 1:47:22
  Speaker 1: Johnson would have gone in there and and picked picked
• 1:47:25
  Speaker 1: Joe Mansion up by the by the throat and slammed
• 1:47:29
  Speaker 1: him up against the wall and said, okay, buddy, here's
• 1:47:31
  Speaker 1: what you're gonna do for me, And here's what I'm
• 1:47:33
  Speaker 1: gonna do for you, and no, and advanced. You know
• 1:47:35
  Speaker 1: what he was gonna what he was. You know, you're
• 1:47:37
  Speaker 1: gonna get a bridge named after you and a brand
• 1:47:40
  Speaker 1: new power plant, and you're gonna give me this goddamn bill.
• 1:47:43
  Speaker 1: I mean, you know that That's what Lyndon Johnson would
• 1:47:45
  Speaker 1: have done. And and Frankly, that's what Franklin Roosevelt. And uh,
• 1:47:50
  Speaker 1: you know there's a lot of us who would very
• 1:47:52
  Speaker 1: much like Joe Biden like that and a Chuck Schumer
• 1:47:55
  Speaker 1: like that, but that's not how these guys are whired.
• 1:47:57
  Speaker 1: So you know, we've got what we've got. I guess, okay,
• 1:48:01
  Speaker 1: let's talk about Newsom. I live in California. I've certainly
• 1:48:05
  Speaker 1: met him. Thought he was an empty suit. I mean,
• 1:48:08
  Speaker 1: I you know, like my grandmother would be fine if
• 1:48:11
  Speaker 1: Roosevelt was president forever. I felt that Jerry Brown could
• 1:48:15
  Speaker 1: run the state forever, but needle to say the law
• 1:48:17
  Speaker 1: does not allow him to. However, Ever, since the incident
• 1:48:22
  Speaker 1: during uh lockdown when he went to the restaurant and
• 1:48:25
  Speaker 1: a couple of other faux paws, he has become very aggressive,
• 1:48:29
  Speaker 1: not only in his own state but with deciantis, etcetera.
• 1:48:34
  Speaker 1: This is sort of a three part question or as
• 1:48:36
  Speaker 1: many parts I'm gonna whip out here. Is Biden gonna run?
• 1:48:40
  Speaker 1: Could Newsom win? And his Newsom the of the candidate.
• 1:48:46
  Speaker 1: I'm assuming the Biden is not going to run just
• 1:48:50
  Speaker 1: because of his age. O. Wait, so that's but that
• 1:48:53
  Speaker 1: is your belief that he's not going to run. That's
• 1:48:56
  Speaker 1: my belief. I mean, I don't talk about it much
• 1:48:59
  Speaker 1: on the air because I know that once a president,
• 1:49:03
  Speaker 1: once it's clear that the president is not going to run,
• 1:49:05
  Speaker 1: he starts losing power and becomes lame duck. And that's
• 1:49:08
  Speaker 1: why Biden's not going to acknowledge that. But I'd be
• 1:49:11
  Speaker 1: surprised if he runs again. And I think his age
• 1:49:14
  Speaker 1: would be a a problem for him if he runs again. Um,
• 1:49:19
  Speaker 1: with regard to Newsom, I you know, whether he is
• 1:49:22
  Speaker 1: the kind of Justin Trudeau, of of of the United States,
• 1:49:27
  Speaker 1: because there's been a lot of comparisons there. Um. You know,
• 1:49:30
  Speaker 1: time will tell I don't live in California, so I
• 1:49:32
  Speaker 1: don't know him as well as you know I know,
• 1:49:35
  Speaker 1: for example, politicians in Oregon. And I'm not talking about
• 1:49:38
  Speaker 1: personally knowing, but just you know in the in my
• 1:49:40
  Speaker 1: newspaper every day. Um. But the thing that I Knewsom
• 1:49:44
  Speaker 1: has figured out, which I think is brilliant. Uh. And
• 1:49:48
  Speaker 1: and it's you know, something that most good politicians know
• 1:49:52
  Speaker 1: is that it is a lesson that I learned when
• 1:49:57
  Speaker 1: I wanted to write novels. I've written probably seven or
• 1:50:00
  Speaker 1: eight now was two and more published. They're just terrible.
• 1:50:02
  Speaker 1: I'm a lousy fiction writer. But um, I attended a
• 1:50:06
  Speaker 1: workshop in Hawaii back in the seventies on how to
• 1:50:10
  Speaker 1: write novels. And this this famous New York Times bestselling
• 1:50:14
  Speaker 1: novelist got up and he said, your hero is not
• 1:50:19
  Speaker 1: the most important character in your book. Your hero is
• 1:50:22
  Speaker 1: not where you need to spend most of the time.
• 1:50:24
  Speaker 1: And this is the biggest mistake that people make, is
• 1:50:26
  Speaker 1: spending all their time on their hero. He said, Uh,
• 1:50:29
  Speaker 1: your hero is only as good as your anti hero.
• 1:50:33
  Speaker 1: You're good guy can only be as good as your
• 1:50:36
  Speaker 1: bad guy, and the goodness of your good guy is
• 1:50:38
  Speaker 1: literally defined by your bad guy. Clarice, you know, in
• 1:50:42
  Speaker 1: the FBI would have been just another FBI agent if
• 1:50:45
  Speaker 1: it wasn't for Hannibal lector Superman would have just been
• 1:50:49
  Speaker 1: a guy who stops robberies at the seven eleven, if
• 1:50:52
  Speaker 1: it wasn't for the Joker, or you know, you filling
• 1:50:55
  Speaker 1: the the anti anti hero. So the you know, and
• 1:50:59
  Speaker 1: this this is true in storytelling, but it's also true
• 1:51:02
  Speaker 1: in politics that you know, you can only be as
• 1:51:05
  Speaker 1: good as your opponent is evil. And so I think,
• 1:51:10
  Speaker 1: you know, if Newsom has picked out the most evil
• 1:51:12
  Speaker 1: Republican out there who actually has a chance of playing
• 1:51:16
  Speaker 1: in the political game for some time, I think Trump
• 1:51:18
  Speaker 1: is out of the picture now, and that's de Santis,
• 1:51:22
  Speaker 1: and I think that that's a proper evaluation. And then
• 1:51:25
  Speaker 1: has decided, Okay, I'm going to pick a fight with
• 1:51:27
  Speaker 1: this guy, and I'm gonna I'm gonna beat him because
• 1:51:32
  Speaker 1: and I'm going to use him as my foil to
• 1:51:34
  Speaker 1: demonstrate my goodness against his evil. Then I think that's
• 1:51:39
  Speaker 1: brilliant politics, and I encourage him to do more of it. Okay,
• 1:51:43
  Speaker 1: to Sciantis, just siantis evidences his education. He seems to
• 1:51:48
  Speaker 1: be thinking about what he's doing, as opposed to even
• 1:51:51
  Speaker 1: somebody like Ted Cruz has elite degrees but is not
• 1:51:55
  Speaker 1: in touch with reality. Everybody who deals with on the
• 1:51:59
  Speaker 1: inside said, he's not unlikable, as you did. If you
• 1:52:03
  Speaker 1: take Trump off the table, is the Santis a viable
• 1:52:07
  Speaker 1: winning candidate in urans? I think it's possible. I don't
• 1:52:15
  Speaker 1: you know. Again, I don't live in Florida, but you know,
• 1:52:17
  Speaker 1: I've certainly been observing to Santis a lot lately. My
• 1:52:21
  Speaker 1: understanding is that he's a little bit of a of
• 1:52:23
  Speaker 1: a kind of an aspect kind of character that you know,
• 1:52:29
  Speaker 1: he doesn't pick up social cues very effectively. He's not
• 1:52:32
  Speaker 1: socially very competent. Um, he's brilliant. He lives in his head.
• 1:52:37
  Speaker 1: He's got a super high i q. Um and that
• 1:52:41
  Speaker 1: therefore he's not doing what he's doing out of a
• 1:52:44
  Speaker 1: fire in his belly. That he's doing what he's doing
• 1:52:47
  Speaker 1: out of carefully constructed calculation. And UM, I'm not sure
• 1:52:54
  Speaker 1: how far that can take you. I I think it
• 1:52:56
  Speaker 1: will get you someplace, but I'm not sure how long
• 1:52:59
  Speaker 1: it will last. Um. Trump did a really good job
• 1:53:02
  Speaker 1: of adopting or or holding you know, his racist rants
• 1:53:07
  Speaker 1: and stuff about immigrants and things like that, black people, etcetera. Um,
• 1:53:11
  Speaker 1: he had the fire in the belly. Bernie Sanders has
• 1:53:14
  Speaker 1: the fire in the belly. Um. Gavin Newsom, I'm assuming
• 1:53:17
  Speaker 1: has the fire in the belly. He certainly seems like it.
• 1:53:19
  Speaker 1: Although like I said, I haven't been paying a lot
• 1:53:21
  Speaker 1: of attention to him until the last year. Um, So
• 1:53:26
  Speaker 1: you know, whether to Santus it's just a cipher, you know,
• 1:53:30
  Speaker 1: whether he is just the the robot du jour. I mean.
• 1:53:34
  Speaker 1: Part of the problem is that a lot of the
• 1:53:36
  Speaker 1: right wing policy positions, outside of the ones on race
• 1:53:39
  Speaker 1: and immigration, which are both really a whole about race,
• 1:53:43
  Speaker 1: Outside of the racist fire in the belly stuff on
• 1:53:45
  Speaker 1: the right, most of their policy positions don't make any
• 1:53:48
  Speaker 1: sense or are so unpopular they don't want to talk about,
• 1:53:51
  Speaker 1: you know, ending abortion, more tax cuts for billionaires, more
• 1:53:55
  Speaker 1: deregulation of industry, more air air pollution from from fossil fuel. Um.
• 1:54:00
  Speaker 1: You know, they literally don't make sense. On top of
• 1:54:05
  Speaker 1: being unpopular, and so you know, the fire in the
• 1:54:10
  Speaker 1: belly races and stuff sells really well, and you know,
• 1:54:13
  Speaker 1: ever since Richard Nixon declared a Southern strategy, that's been
• 1:54:16
  Speaker 1: the go to place for the gop um and and
• 1:54:20
  Speaker 1: that'll carry you a long long way. Um Whether to
• 1:54:24
  Speaker 1: Satis is doing this because he really feels that or
• 1:54:26
  Speaker 1: because he just thinks that's what he has to do,
• 1:54:28
  Speaker 1: that's what he has to say, and hey, you know,
• 1:54:30
  Speaker 1: we'll pick up some immigrants and brownskin people in Texas
• 1:54:33
  Speaker 1: and send them to Martha's vineyard. Uh. I don't know,
• 1:54:37
  Speaker 1: but my sense of it is that he's running a script,
• 1:54:39
  Speaker 1: that he's that he's that he's running a program, as
• 1:54:42
  Speaker 1: it were, and that I think is a is a
• 1:54:45
  Speaker 1: weakness of fallibility and a vulnerability. And I guess we'll
• 1:54:54
  Speaker 1: have to wait and see if if my my analysis
• 1:54:56
  Speaker 1: is right. Okay, let's talk about Trump. Trump's in trouble
• 1:55:00
  Speaker 1: in Georgia. Trump is in trouble about the classified documents
• 1:55:04
  Speaker 1: a maral Lago. There's January six. It's civil uh information
• 1:55:10
  Speaker 1: which is quite damning that was released by New York
• 1:55:14
  Speaker 1: just recently. But that's not criminal. Is he indicted criminally?
• 1:55:21
  Speaker 1: Will he be convicted? Will he ever serve a day
• 1:55:24
  Speaker 1: in jail? And what will be the result of all
• 1:55:28
  Speaker 1: those things come true, I think the answers are yes, yes, no,
• 1:55:33
  Speaker 1: and nothing. Um. I do believe that Donald Trump will
• 1:55:38
  Speaker 1: be indicted criminally. I do believe that he will be convicted. UM.
• 1:55:43
  Speaker 1: And I would be very surprised if he goes to jail. Um.
• 1:55:47
  Speaker 1: We have a real reluctance in this country to send
• 1:55:51
  Speaker 1: wealthy or powerful people to prison. It happens very rarely.
• 1:55:55
  Speaker 1: And when it does happen, um, you know, like Martha Stewart,
• 1:55:58
  Speaker 1: who was not all that powerful or that rich. Um,
• 1:56:02
  Speaker 1: it tends to happen way down on the food chain
• 1:56:04
  Speaker 1: of rich and of wealth and power. And so frankly,
• 1:56:11
  Speaker 1: I I think Trump is just going to fade into obscurity. UM.
• 1:56:15
  Speaker 1: I could be wrong, but I I think that, you know,
• 1:56:19
  Speaker 1: the jig is up. Okay, so we have the primary
• 1:56:23
  Speaker 1: with you know, primaries are long off, but starting in
• 1:56:27
  Speaker 1: the spring, people start to run, and many prognosticators, many educated, say,
• 1:56:36
  Speaker 1: if he runs, he gets the nomination. You do not
• 1:56:40
  Speaker 1: agree with that, Trump, Yeah, uh, yeah, I don't. I don't.
• 1:56:48
  Speaker 1: I don't think that. Well, let me let me recalibrate
• 1:56:52
  Speaker 1: that answer. If he was running in a Republican primary,
• 1:56:56
  Speaker 1: that where the entire Republican Party be on just the rabid, fanatic, racist,
• 1:57:03
  Speaker 1: neo fascist base was voting. I think that, you know,
• 1:57:07
  Speaker 1: there are a couple of politicians to Santa's at the
• 1:57:10
  Speaker 1: top that list who could give him a run for
• 1:57:12
  Speaker 1: his money. I think to Santa's can still give him
• 1:57:13
  Speaker 1: a run for his money. Um. The way that are
• 1:57:18
  Speaker 1: the way that our primary system is set up. Um.
• 1:57:21
  Speaker 1: And you know, particularly given the primary elections typically don't
• 1:57:25
  Speaker 1: happen in the in a in a in an environment
• 1:57:28
  Speaker 1: where anything else of consequences on the ballot. Uh. Thus
• 1:57:33
  Speaker 1: only the real true believers and the the hardcore fanatics
• 1:57:36
  Speaker 1: show up. Works the Trump's benefit. But I would be
• 1:57:42
  Speaker 1: astonished if he runs. I think that, um, he's he
• 1:57:48
  Speaker 1: would have to in order to comply. I mean, this
• 1:57:50
  Speaker 1: guy is raised a half a billion dollars since he
• 1:57:52
  Speaker 1: left office. He's got all these routes who are just
• 1:57:55
  Speaker 1: throwing money at him, um, many of them, probably most
• 1:57:59
  Speaker 1: of them really, and he's just draining their banks, bank accounts.
• 1:58:03
  Speaker 1: It's the most successful, profitable grift he's probably ever run
• 1:58:07
  Speaker 1: in his entire life. And he would have to stop
• 1:58:10
  Speaker 1: doing that if he runs for president. He would have to.
• 1:58:12
  Speaker 1: He would have to clean up his act. He'd had
• 1:58:13
  Speaker 1: to start being accountable to the federal to the Federal
• 1:58:16
  Speaker 1: Elections Commission. Um, you know, there are rules, there are laws,
• 1:58:19
  Speaker 1: there are things you have to comply with. He got
• 1:58:22
  Speaker 1: away with not complying with them last time, in large
• 1:58:24
  Speaker 1: part because nobody took him seriously. The Obama administration wasn't
• 1:58:28
  Speaker 1: prosecuting him for his FEC violations. Early and then throughout
• 1:58:34
  Speaker 1: his presidency, he basically controlled, you know, the government, and
• 1:58:38
  Speaker 1: the Federal Election Commission has three Republicans on it that
• 1:58:41
  Speaker 1: are so hardcore that they just, you know, they just
• 1:58:43
  Speaker 1: froze the FEC throughout that four years, they were incapable
• 1:58:47
  Speaker 1: of doing anything. And I'm not sure to what extent
• 1:58:51
  Speaker 1: that that's still the case. But um, you know, I
• 1:58:56
  Speaker 1: I just don't think he's willing to give up his
• 1:58:58
  Speaker 1: grift to run for president. I think he's going to
• 1:59:00
  Speaker 1: continue to talk about it because it gets him money.
• 1:59:03
  Speaker 1: But I think that that that by by the end
• 1:59:06
  Speaker 1: of next year, and certainly by by early uh, we
• 1:59:12
  Speaker 1: will know whether my analysis is right. But I just
• 1:59:15
  Speaker 1: don't think that he's going to be the guy. Okay,
• 1:59:19
  Speaker 1: Nate Silver famously called the election accurately. Since then, despite
• 1:59:26
  Speaker 1: their protestations, the polls have been wildly inaccurate. Someone will say, well,
• 1:59:31
  Speaker 1: it was in the margin of error even though Biden
• 1:59:34
  Speaker 1: one there was stronger support for Trump than the polls said.
• 1:59:38
  Speaker 1: We've been listening to this canard that the party in
• 1:59:41
  Speaker 1: power always loses seats in Congress in the mid term.
• 1:59:46
  Speaker 1: Yet we have the a portion. Now they're saying, well,
• 1:59:50
  Speaker 1: you know, the polls are accurate. What is you were
• 1:59:53
  Speaker 1: feeling about the mid term elections, primarily in the House
• 1:59:58
  Speaker 1: and Senate. My sense of it is that it's going
• 2:00:01
  Speaker 1: to be a Democratic blowout, in large part because of
• 2:00:04
  Speaker 1: because of abortion, and because of a large number of
• 2:00:06
  Speaker 1: women and young people who are signing up to vote
• 2:00:08
  Speaker 1: right now. Um, with the head of polls, you know,
• 2:00:12
  Speaker 1: I know that polls had faced a real challenge. Um.
• 2:00:15
  Speaker 1: You know, my phone, I have it just set so
• 2:00:18
  Speaker 1: that if somebody calls, it's not my contact, it just
• 2:00:20
  Speaker 1: doesn't ring. I mean, you know, it's getting harder and
• 2:00:23
  Speaker 1: harder for pollsters to do their business and uh and
• 2:00:27
  Speaker 1: and find you know, a genuinely representative cross section. And
• 2:00:33
  Speaker 1: so you know, I get it that they're they're kind
• 2:00:36
  Speaker 1: of in a crisis. But my but you know, no
• 2:00:41
  Speaker 1: analyst for polse But but I do think that the
• 2:00:43
  Speaker 1: Democrats are going to do really well as fall knock
• 2:00:46
  Speaker 1: good and finally, and you know, it's amazing power of
• 2:00:49
  Speaker 1: one person who challenges the legitimacy of the presidential election.
• 2:00:55
  Speaker 1: There's been all these voters suppression laws and you know,
• 2:01:00
  Speaker 1: taking away the rights of the people as we don't
• 2:01:02
  Speaker 1: have to delineate them one by one, but not every Republican.
• 2:01:07
  Speaker 1: There was a story in the New York Times two
• 2:01:09
  Speaker 1: days ago. It was a little confusing. They said these
• 2:01:11
  Speaker 1: Republicans would not guarantee they would accept the results, although
• 2:01:15
  Speaker 1: some literally just didn't respond. What do you anticipate happens
• 2:01:22
  Speaker 1: when Republicans lose in this cycle? Well, they walk away
• 2:01:26
  Speaker 1: like the Democrats did historically did in Virginia last cycle.
• 2:01:32
  Speaker 1: Or is this become a big war. Well, we've seen
• 2:01:37
  Speaker 1: several candidates now that are doing the sort of loser routine. Um,
• 2:01:41
  Speaker 1: you know, I would expect more of that, But I
• 2:01:43
  Speaker 1: don't think it's going to be consequential, Bob, I you
• 2:01:45
  Speaker 1: know the problem. I think it's going to be more
• 2:01:51
  Speaker 1: with the election officials who are who are coming in office.
• 2:01:55
  Speaker 1: Who are clear partisans, and they're basically saying, if our
• 2:01:58
  Speaker 1: party doesn't win, then there was cheating in we're gonna
• 2:02:00
  Speaker 1: we're gonna refuse to validate the election. I'm I'm far
• 2:02:04
  Speaker 1: more concerned about UM, you know, the Secretary of State
• 2:02:08
  Speaker 1: of Arizona or the local election officials in the various
• 2:02:12
  Speaker 1: counties than I am about Carry Lake, you know, pouting
• 2:02:16
  Speaker 1: if she loses the election. So, assuming that those fears,
• 2:02:21
  Speaker 1: do you think if those fears are real, well, will
• 2:02:24
  Speaker 1: those fears activate and become consequential. I think it's possible.
• 2:02:29
  Speaker 1: I think it's very possible. I don't think it's going
• 2:02:31
  Speaker 1: to be a national crisis. I think it's going to
• 2:02:34
  Speaker 1: be hyperlocal. I suspect it's going to happen and probably
• 2:02:38
  Speaker 1: four or five states and maybe more. UM and Uh,
• 2:02:43
  Speaker 1: there's gonna be a lot of pushback, and I think
• 2:02:45
  Speaker 1: ultimately it's going to work to their disadvantage in a
• 2:02:47
  Speaker 1: big way, much like the Dodd's decision. It's going to
• 2:02:50
  Speaker 1: be you know, the visible overreach, the clear sort of
• 2:02:54
  Speaker 1: losersm UM is over time going to harm them and
• 2:03:01
  Speaker 1: tarnish their brand rather than help them. I mean, you know,
• 2:03:03
  Speaker 1: they'll do well with their true believers, their small base
• 2:03:06
  Speaker 1: of true believers. But uh that basis I believe shrinking
• 2:03:09
  Speaker 1: right now rather than growing. Tom. I want to thank
• 2:03:13
  Speaker 1: you for taking the time. You've certainly made me think
• 2:03:16
  Speaker 1: and we're aligned politically and great to hear who you
• 2:03:19
  Speaker 1: are underneath the surface. I know you have to write
• 2:03:22
  Speaker 1: your opinion piece. You have another radio show tomorrow, so
• 2:03:26
  Speaker 1: thanks again for taking the time to talk to me
• 2:03:28
  Speaker 1: in my audience. Bob. It's been a pleasure and and
• 2:03:32
  Speaker 1: it's rare that that I'm interviewed by somebody who has
• 2:03:36
  Speaker 1: the insights, the thoughtfulness and the depth that you have.
• 2:03:40
  Speaker 1: And I've enjoyed it. I hope it's useful for the
• 2:03:43
  Speaker 1: people who listen to thank you. I'm sure it will be.
• 2:03:46
  Speaker 1: Until next time. This is Bob left sets