Latest / Conversations: Special Guests with Preston Scott / Justin Haskins Discusses Charlie Kirk

Transcript

Justin Haskins Discusses Charlie Kirk · Conversations: Special Guests with Preston Scott

• 0:03
  Speaker 1: Welcome morning friends. Welcome, it is another Tuesday here on
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: the Morning Show with Preston Scott. Great to be with you.
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: He is Jose. I am Preston, and this is the
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: vice president of the Heartland Institute and senior fellow Justin Haskins. Hey, friend,
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: how are you.
• 0:27
  Speaker 2: I'm doing well, doing very well.
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: How are you awesome? Tell me about the new title
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: and the new responsibilities.
• 0:34
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's very exciting. I've been at the Heartland and
• 0:36
  Speaker 2: Student National free Market thing tank for over a decade now,
• 0:41
  Speaker 2: and very recently the leadership here asked me to step
• 0:45
  Speaker 2: up and start serving in a higher role. WHI I'll
• 0:49
  Speaker 2: be running public policy for the organization and working on
• 0:52
  Speaker 2: government relations projects across the country and helping do innovative
• 0:57
  Speaker 2: new research projects. And the left should be worried, the
• 1:01
  Speaker 2: left should be worried. I'm coming for all of them.
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: So I love it.
• 1:06
  Speaker 2: I love it.
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: You know. Our good friend doctor Bob McClure, president of
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: the James Madison Institute, says on this program almost every
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: time we visit that good policy is good politics. That
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: if you get it reversed, you have a debacle. You
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: can't let the politics define the policy. I take it
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: you are of the same mindset that good policy is
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: the fundamental baseline through which governance has to take shape.
• 1:34
  Speaker 2: Yes, a politician is only as good as the policies
• 1:39
  Speaker 2: that they actually put into place. And people have learned
• 1:43
  Speaker 2: not the hard way over many, many decades of watching
• 1:47
  Speaker 2: what goes on in Washington, DC and state capitals. So
• 1:51
  Speaker 2: I am actually not a big believer in politicians. I'm
• 1:55
  Speaker 2: a big believer in policies. Sometimes really bad politicians put
• 2:00
  Speaker 2: good policies into place, and vice versa. So the focus
• 2:04
  Speaker 2: should always be policy. That's the thing that actually impacts people.
• 2:08
  Speaker 2: Politics makes for good television, and you know, it makes
• 2:12
  Speaker 2: for good discussion and everything and it and it does
• 2:15
  Speaker 2: have an impact obviously because it affects policy. But at
• 2:18
  Speaker 2: the end of the day, if you're rooting for someone
• 2:20
  Speaker 2: just because they have the right letter next to their name,
• 2:24
  Speaker 2: then you're not paying attention. The reality is, if you
• 2:28
  Speaker 2: want America to be a freer, more prosperous place, you
• 2:30
  Speaker 2: need to focus on good policy, not on politics.
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: Justin you know, to paraphrase Woody from Toy Story, politics
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: poisons the water hole. And I really think that, you know,
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: I reflected on this while I was thinking about our
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: visit today, it was one month ago you and I.
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: You and I traditionally have our visits on the second
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: Tuesday of the month. One month ago, on the second
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: Tuesday of the month, Charlie Kirk had one day left
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: to live. And to bring those points together, we are
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: seeing now how politics poisons, how politics has caused a
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: devolution in social discourse and in civil dialogue and debate.
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: And I'm not quite sure how to recover from it.
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: But I'd love to get your thoughts on Charlie and
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: what's happened.
• 3:28
  Speaker 2: Yeah, obviously, what happened with Charlie Kirk was horrifically tragic,
• 3:34
  Speaker 2: and in a lot of ways, one of the most
• 3:36
  Speaker 2: tragic parts about it was that it really isn't all
• 3:40
  Speaker 2: that surprising that this happened because of the problem we've
• 3:44
  Speaker 2: had with politics and discourse in this country. The last
• 3:51
  Speaker 2: continues to believe that the right, regular people on the
• 3:55
  Speaker 2: right are fascists and Nazis and evil, and that they're
• 4:00
  Speaker 2: going to lock kids in cages, and that they're going
• 4:02
  Speaker 2: to do the most horrific things imaginable, and that they're
• 4:06
  Speaker 2: coming for regular people in a fascistic way. Like they're Nazis,
• 4:13
  Speaker 2: And because they use that language over and over and
• 4:15
  Speaker 2: over again, some people have come to believe it. Millions
• 4:19
  Speaker 2: of people, they really do believe it. And the right,
• 4:23
  Speaker 2: some parts of the right, use very similar language about
• 4:27
  Speaker 2: the left, And the reality is that in the vast
• 4:30
  Speaker 2: majority of cases, there is a lot more going on
• 4:33
  Speaker 2: here than that. Now. I have some really serious problems
• 4:36
  Speaker 2: with how authoritarian in certain respects the left has become,
• 4:40
  Speaker 2: especially when it comes to free speech and other things.
• 4:43
  Speaker 2: There's been a real problem there, I believe. But the
• 4:47
  Speaker 2: fact of the matter is there is we have not
• 4:52
  Speaker 2: come anywhere near close a level where people should be
• 4:55
  Speaker 2: shooting other people in the streets. That is just absolutely insane.
• 4:59
  Speaker 2: It's being than by false perceptions that both sides have
• 5:02
  Speaker 2: of the other side because of politics. If we stayed
• 5:06
  Speaker 2: focused on the actual issues, not only would we get
• 5:09
  Speaker 2: more things done and live in a better country, but
• 5:13
  Speaker 2: I think the temperature in the room probably would come
• 5:15
  Speaker 2: down a bit. But the reality is politicians are capitalizing
• 5:20
  Speaker 2: on the situation. They're capitalizing on social media, they're capitalizing
• 5:24
  Speaker 2: on the twenty four hour, seven day a week news
• 5:27
  Speaker 2: media in order to score political points. And the best
• 5:31
  Speaker 2: way to do that for them is to drive hatred
• 5:33
  Speaker 2: of the other side. It helps with fundraising, it helps
• 5:37
  Speaker 2: with them getting re elected over and over and over again,
• 5:39
  Speaker 2: and it keeps the focus off of our things actually
• 5:41
  Speaker 2: getting better. And because of that, until people wake up
• 5:46
  Speaker 2: and realize that's the situation and that you shouldn't pay
• 5:49
  Speaker 2: so much attention to those kinds, that the rhetoric, and
• 5:51
  Speaker 2: you should spend more time focusing on what are the
• 5:53
  Speaker 2: actual solutions here, forget about the rhetoric. Until that happens,
• 5:57
  Speaker 2: we're going to continue to see this escalating. And unfortunately,
• 6:02
  Speaker 2: I don't think Charlie Kirk is going to be the
• 6:04
  Speaker 2: last person who's going to lose his life because of politics.
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: We have talked justin even even today about the fact
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: and the difference that when there's violence political or otherwise,
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: if it's acted out by people quote on the right
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: side of the aisle, we never celebrate that, We don't
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: rejoice over that, and it, to me is one of
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: the big distinctions between the two sides of where we
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: are ideologically in our country right now. So let me
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: ask you the question I have asked everybody in the
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: week's subsequent to Charlie's assassination. What was worse that Charlie
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: Kirk was killed or that we have millions of people
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: celebrating it.
• 6:52
  Speaker 2: Oh, it's one that they're people celebrating it, and I
• 6:57
  Speaker 2: think it's because it is a better indicator of how
• 7:02
  Speaker 2: broken our society is. That that's really the issue. There's
• 7:06
  Speaker 2: always situations where you could have, even the most you know,
• 7:10
  Speaker 2: United country, you could have an assassination where someone gets killed.
• 7:13
  Speaker 2: It's just a crazy person goes and kills someone. It
• 7:15
  Speaker 2: doesn't necessarily mean anything about where society is as a whole.
• 7:21
  Speaker 2: But in this particular case, the celebration of it is
• 7:25
  Speaker 2: sort of or even just in a lot of cases,
• 7:27
  Speaker 2: not celebrating but just saying, well, you know, he shouldn't
• 7:31
  Speaker 2: have gotten killed, but you know, he kind of deserved it.
• 7:33
  Speaker 2: That kind of attitude is just it's indictive of where
• 7:38
  Speaker 2: we're at as a country. And again, I think it's
• 7:40
  Speaker 2: indictive of where the left is when they hear the
• 7:44
  Speaker 2: rhetoric over and over and over again that Charlie Kirk
• 7:46
  Speaker 2: was a fascist, he was a you know, Nazi sympathizer,
• 7:50
  Speaker 2: he was a white supremacist, he was you know, these
• 7:53
  Speaker 2: are the kinds of things that were said about him
• 7:55
  Speaker 2: over and over and over again. None of it was
• 7:56
  Speaker 2: even remotely true, but that kind of language for people
• 8:01
  Speaker 2: who aren't really paying attention or who are sort of
• 8:04
  Speaker 2: radical in their views, it made things even more radicalized
• 8:09
  Speaker 2: and turned the temperature up in the room for really
• 8:13
  Speaker 2: what the past two decades. This has been going on now,
• 8:16
  Speaker 2: and I think you have a whole generation of people
• 8:20
  Speaker 2: who are now voting age, you know, millennials and gen
• 8:24
  Speaker 2: Z who really do have extremely radical views. And I
• 8:29
  Speaker 2: think that problem is not going to go away overnight,
• 8:33
  Speaker 2: and it's a massive, massive one because as more younger,
• 8:39
  Speaker 2: as younger people take over a greater share of the electorate,
• 8:43
  Speaker 2: things are going to get uglier over time because the
• 8:47
  Speaker 2: differences between the average millennial conservative and average millennial liberal,
• 8:52
  Speaker 2: and the average gen Z conservative and the average gen
• 8:54
  Speaker 2: Z millennial gen Z liberal are so extreme now, so extreme,
• 9:01
  Speaker 2: and their positions are so diametrically opposed to each other
• 9:05
  Speaker 2: that the conflict and is just going to be exacerbated.
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: I want to get your reaction to a story we
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: talked about yesterday, and I'm not sure it's getting a
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: whole lot of attention, but big picture. What is the
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: impact of dominion voting systems now being owned by an
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: American who is vowing that it's going to be one
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: hundred percent American owned, operated and audited.
• 9:32
  Speaker 2: Yeah, this is a great story because even it's sort
• 9:36
  Speaker 2: of everyone should be in favor of this. It's sort
• 9:39
  Speaker 2: of like, even if you don't think there are any
• 9:41
  Speaker 2: problems with the voting machines, and there are reasons to
• 9:43
  Speaker 2: think that there are issues with voting machines, even if
• 9:46
  Speaker 2: you don't believe that, though, wouldn't you rather have someone
• 9:51
  Speaker 2: who wants to be very transparent and regularly ought at
• 9:54
  Speaker 2: them and make sure that there isn't anything going on
• 9:57
  Speaker 2: behind the scenes and opening all of that up to
• 10:00
  Speaker 2: the public so everyone can have trust in them. Because
• 10:02
  Speaker 2: that's fundamentally regardless of whether an election is full of
• 10:08
  Speaker 2: problems or not, when it comes to devoting machines, if
• 10:11
  Speaker 2: people believe that there's a problem, then it taints the
• 10:14
  Speaker 2: outcome of the election, regardless of whether there was one
• 10:17
  Speaker 2: or not. Right, And so this is a really good thing.
• 10:20
  Speaker 2: Regardless of whether you think voting machines were a huge problem,
• 10:24
  Speaker 2: and obviously a lot of people think that, but regardless
• 10:27
  Speaker 2: of whether you think that this is great because we
• 10:29
  Speaker 2: need more transparency so that people have greater trust in
• 10:32
  Speaker 2: our elections, because that's a huge problem right now.
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: I want to bring up another issue, and that is
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: the government shut down and the I'm getting a lot
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: of email from people saying, how is it possible that
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: in a government shut down, the people that will never
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: be affected are the people responsible for the shutdown?
• 10:51
  Speaker 2: I e.
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: Congress justin how is it possible that we are in
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: a place where they get paid but a bunch of
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: other people aren't.
• 11:01
  Speaker 2: Well. I've been asking myself that question for a long time.
• 11:04
  Speaker 2: I mean, we have these government shutdowns or threats of
• 11:07
  Speaker 2: government shutdowns every year. Every year this is something like
• 11:12
  Speaker 2: this happens or almost happens, sometimes multiple times in a year,
• 11:16
  Speaker 2: and at the end of the day, the elites who
• 11:19
  Speaker 2: are making the rules are going to be taken care of,
• 11:22
  Speaker 2: and it's everybody else who hangs in the balance. And
• 11:25
  Speaker 2: it's completely insane. And all of the stems from the
• 11:28
  Speaker 2: fact that they just can't pass regular budgets like every
• 11:31
  Speaker 2: other functioning organization in the world. Why is that because
• 11:36
  Speaker 2: they ultimately are playing politics and they're not doing the
• 11:39
  Speaker 2: right thing for people, and until the voters stand up
• 11:43
  Speaker 2: and say, we're just gonna you need to pass an
• 11:46
  Speaker 2: actual budget. Get together and pass an actual budget, do
• 11:49
  Speaker 2: it every single year, or you're gone until that happens,
• 11:54
  Speaker 2: and until we have a sustainable path for you know,
• 11:57
  Speaker 2: reducing the national debt and things like that, which is
• 12:00
  Speaker 2: also a huge part of this conversation. This is going
• 12:03
  Speaker 2: to continue to happen forever, and politicians fees on the
• 12:07
  Speaker 2: so called crisis that they're manufacturing to accomplish other goals
• 12:12
  Speaker 2: that have nothing to do with making people's lives better
• 12:14
  Speaker 2: or not. And that's the problem. This is just a
• 12:16
  Speaker 2: big political game that happens every single year, sometimes multiple
• 12:20
  Speaker 2: times a year, and it's the voters who are allowing
• 12:22
  Speaker 2: it to happen and have to stand up and say
• 12:24
  Speaker 2: we're done with this.
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: That circles back to my long standing complaint that we
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: just don't have adequate messaging on the right to inform
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: people that we don't have to do it this way.
• 12:36
  Speaker 2: No we don't, we don't have to do it this way.
• 12:39
  Speaker 2: We don't have to play these games. And I think
• 12:42
  Speaker 2: sometimes we do need to allow the kamfermant to just
• 12:45
  Speaker 2: shut down for a while that's what it takes to
• 12:47
  Speaker 2: get a permanent deal in place, a permanent process that
• 12:51
  Speaker 2: prevents this from happening in the future. Just let it
• 12:53
  Speaker 2: get shut down and let's solve the problem permanently. Instead,
• 12:57
  Speaker 2: we're always worried about trying to win the next news
• 12:59
  Speaker 2: cycle instead of just do the right thing for the
• 13:02
  Speaker 2: long term good of the country.
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: I'm curious if Congress wasn't paid during a lockdown, do
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: you think we'd have them a shutdown rather?
• 13:12
  Speaker 2: No, No, I do not think that. I don't think
• 13:15
  Speaker 2: we would have I don't think so at all. No.
• 13:18
  Speaker 2: I think there are a lot of self interested people
• 13:21
  Speaker 2: in Washington, DC, not just the actual members of Congress themselves,
• 13:25
  Speaker 2: but their staff and other people who would make sure
• 13:28
  Speaker 2: that those these shutdowns don't happen.
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: It just seems to me that there are just a
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: few members of Congress in both the House and the
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: Senate that this would be the perfect time to strike.
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: While the attention is on the shutdown and it grows
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: with every day the shutdown lasts to say we're going
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: to put forth legislation that Congress doesn't get paid in
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: a government shutdown, I think it would have an immense
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: impact on, if nothing else, the public perception of these things.
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: If they took advantage of this opportunity. But am I
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: asking too much?
• 14:04
  Speaker 2: Well, they'll they'll be surely punished for doing that. They
• 14:08
  Speaker 2: will be retribution from leadership. That's kind of how these
• 14:11
  Speaker 2: things work. Is you know, if you hold if you
• 14:14
  Speaker 2: hold your own side accountable too too accountable, then you know,
• 14:18
  Speaker 2: you you risk losing out on committee spots, you risk
• 14:21
  Speaker 2: you risk losing funding in the next election. Uh, it's
• 14:26
  Speaker 2: you know, it's a dangerous game to do something like that.
• 14:29
  Speaker 2: But is that what should happen? Yeah, that's probably what
• 14:31
  Speaker 2: should happen because it would signal to the American people
• 14:34
  Speaker 2: what's really going on here.
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: I love it. Justin, congrats on the on the bump
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: at Heartland Institute Vice President now policy and I can't
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: think of anybody better to put it all in the
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: hands of. So thanks very much for your time again,
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: Thank you, sir.
• 14:48
  Speaker 2: Take care all right.
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: Justin Haskins with us this morning here in the Morning
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: Show with Preston Scott