Latest / 3 Martini Lunch – Political Humor & Commentary / Abdul El-Sayed Backs Government Takeover of Companies

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Abdul El-Sayed Backs Government Takeover of Companies · 3 Martini Lunch – Political Humor & Commentary

0:02
Speaker 1: Welcome to the Three Martini Lunch.
0:04
Speaker 2: Grab a stool next to Greg Corumbus of Radio America
0:07
Speaker 2: and Jim Garritty of National Review.
0:10
Speaker 1: Free Martini's coming up.
0:13
Speaker 3: So glad you're with us for the Tuesday edition of
0:15
Speaker 3: the Three Tiny Lunch. Charlie Cook is the senior editor
0:19
Speaker 3: at National Review Online. He's also the host of the
0:22
Speaker 3: Charles CW. Cook Podcast and for Jim Garrity Today and Charlie,
0:27
Speaker 3: we've talked a lot about of Dulsied in Michigan ever
0:31
Speaker 3: since really the week's leading up to the primary, and
0:33
Speaker 3: certainly after he narrowly won the primary. I think he's
0:37
Speaker 3: going to be getting a lot of attention till election day.
0:39
Speaker 3: One of the reasons is because he keeps saying truly
0:41
Speaker 3: outlandish things, very much echoing things that Bernie Sanders might say.
0:47
Speaker 3: Bernie and some other folks have talked specifically about government
0:51
Speaker 3: having a stake or having control in some way over
0:53
Speaker 3: AI companies to.
0:54
Speaker 1: Make sure that that goes right.
0:56
Speaker 3: I would say, a government control and we make sure
0:59
Speaker 3: that it almost doesn't go right will be guaranteed. But
1:03
Speaker 3: on a recent podcast, this is what Abdul el Sayed
1:07
Speaker 3: just said in general about government ownership of corporations?
1:11
Speaker 4: Are you in favor of public ownership models like the
1:14
Speaker 4: one Bernie introduced?
1:15
Speaker 1: So I want to actually take it a step further.
1:17
Speaker 5: Okay, I agree that we need public ownership, but I
1:20
Speaker 5: also agree that we.
1:21
Speaker 1: Need some system of public control.
1:22
Speaker 6: Yeah, Like, what is the point of democracy if it's
1:24
Speaker 6: not to protect us from existential risk?
1:26
Speaker 3: What's the point of democracy if not to protect us
1:29
Speaker 3: from existential risk? I guess if you want an economy
1:31
Speaker 3: with no risk, you could go with Marxism. But I
1:33
Speaker 3: think we know what that guaranteed outcome would be and
1:36
Speaker 3: nobody's really going to like it. So, Charlie, it sounds
1:40
Speaker 3: so much nicer when they dress it up in certain language.
1:43
Speaker 3: But what's he really saying here And how big of
1:46
Speaker 3: a threat is it?
1:47
Speaker 1: Well, it's a huge threat if.
1:49
Speaker 4: He can get enough people on his side to do it, or, unfortunately,
1:56
Speaker 4: given the rise of presidential power recently, if he can
2:00
Speaker 4: get a president into the White House who can exercise
2:04
Speaker 4: a lot of the authority that has been delegated to
2:07
Speaker 4: him by Congress over the years. That reference to democracy
2:14
Speaker 4: has always annoyed me because I think it's a word game.
2:20
Speaker 4: The notion that because people, as they should be, are
2:25
Speaker 4: able to vote for their.
2:28
Speaker 1: Representatives, does not mean.
2:32
Speaker 4: That they should be able to control literally everything in
2:36
Speaker 4: the country via the democratic process. And yet that is
2:39
Speaker 4: a mainstay of democratic socialist thinking and has been for
2:43
Speaker 4: a long time. This has always annoyed me. This annoyed
2:46
Speaker 4: best back in England. The claim you hear this of
2:50
Speaker 4: course from Howard Zinn, that it is undemocratic that the
2:56
Speaker 4: public does not have control over enterprise. I think it's
3:03
Speaker 4: a category mistake. I think it's a word game that
3:08
Speaker 4: has never been in Anglo American societies. What democracy meant
3:15
Speaker 4: anymore than the fact that we have a democracy implies
3:19
Speaker 4: that people should be able to determine what you do
3:22
Speaker 4: in your house or how you run your family. There
3:25
Speaker 4: has always been a bright line between what the government
3:31
Speaker 4: did and what private industry did. Now, of course it's
3:36
Speaker 4: not always held. But the concept or framework that he's
3:41
Speaker 4: describing that I find terrifying because what it means in practice,
3:46
Speaker 4: what he's arguing for is a and I don't mean
3:50
Speaker 4: this in the sense that he would set up camps,
3:53
Speaker 4: but it is a totalitarian in the classical sense of
3:56
Speaker 4: that word government. That is a totalitarian framework where there
4:01
Speaker 4: is no private sphere whatsoever. So aside from the fact
4:05
Speaker 4: that I don't think that it would work, that I
4:08
Speaker 4: reject his premise that I'm not quite sure he means
4:12
Speaker 4: what he means when he says existential threat and so forth.
4:15
Speaker 4: That is a philosophical approach that is at odds with
4:20
Speaker 4: the American system, and I would argue with the American
4:23
Speaker 4: Constitution and is alien to what the average voter in
4:28
Speaker 4: this country would expect.
4:30
Speaker 3: Unbelievable. You're so right about the word democracy. Democracy is
4:33
Speaker 3: at risk if the Democrats don't get something they want,
4:36
Speaker 3: and so if it's not the right election result, the
4:38
Speaker 3: democracy is at risk. We just had a Martine or
4:41
Speaker 3: maybe a Chaser a week or two ago with Gavin
4:43
Speaker 3: Newsom saying democracy is at stake this year. If the
4:45
Speaker 3: Democrats don't take back at least one House of Congress,
4:48
Speaker 3: democracy is going to die.
4:50
Speaker 1: No, it's not.
4:52
Speaker 3: And I think even some of the Democrats were saying,
4:55
Speaker 3: if we don't, we need to radically reform the Supreme
4:58
Speaker 3: Court to save our democ Christy, I'm like, if you
5:00
Speaker 3: want to perform the Supreme Court, elect more people that
5:03
Speaker 3: you like to the Senate, there's nothing about the Supreme
5:07
Speaker 3: Court that's necessarily democratic other than the people that vote
5:12
Speaker 3: yes or no on the confirmation. So it's well, not
5:14
Speaker 3: like a specific ruling is is democratic or anti democratic
5:18
Speaker 3: from the court right.
5:19
Speaker 4: And the Constitution is democratic, of course, because every provision
5:22
Speaker 4: in the Constitution by definition was ratified by a supermajority.
5:26
Speaker 1: But the reason that.
5:27
Speaker 4: We have judges with life terms who are not directly
5:31
Speaker 4: accountable to the public is it Upholding those democratic provisions
5:36
Speaker 4: within the Constitution can.
5:37
Speaker 1: Be really unpopular.
5:38
Speaker 4: And the example I always give, or the question I
5:41
Speaker 4: always ask people on the left who make that case,
5:44
Speaker 4: is all right, let's assume that in twenty twenty eight,
5:47
Speaker 4: Donald Trump says he's going to run for a third
5:49
Speaker 4: term and he wins, and let's assume he wins seventy
5:53
Speaker 4: percent of the vote. Now, of course we know that's
5:55
Speaker 4: not going to happen, given his unpopularity. But just in theory,
5:58
Speaker 4: the Supreme Court would be totally, utterly, unquestionably justified if
6:04
Speaker 4: it was a justiciable question, which I think it would
6:06
Speaker 4: be in saying he's not the president, he cannot ascend
6:09
Speaker 4: to the presidency again because the twenty second Amendment forbids it.
6:13
Speaker 4: So would you at that point say, well, this is
6:16
Speaker 4: undemocratic because seventy percent of the public would have voted
6:19
Speaker 4: for a third Trump term. Well, it is undemocratic in
6:21
Speaker 4: a sense. But that's why we have a Supreme Court
6:24
Speaker 4: that is able to take those positions without worry that
6:29
Speaker 4: it will have its authority destroyed. And I again, I
6:34
Speaker 4: find this misuse of democracy, which is a very important
6:37
Speaker 4: concept in many parts of our system, really alarming because
6:40
Speaker 4: what it really means is he personally wants to have
6:45
Speaker 4: control over a lot of things that he currently doesn't
6:48
Speaker 4: have control over. Well, I don't want him to have
6:50
Speaker 4: control over it, That's exactly it. And you're so right
6:53
Speaker 4: about the courts. You know, the job of government. The
6:55
Speaker 4: number one job of government. The politicians don't say this
6:58
Speaker 4: that often, but the number one job is to preserve
7:00
Speaker 4: our liberties. They have other jobs, of course, you know, protecting,
7:04
Speaker 4: you know, military and commerce and all that kind of thing,
7:07
Speaker 4: but the number one job is to protect liberty. And
7:10
Speaker 4: that's why, regardless of what the majority says in a vote,
7:14
Speaker 4: whether it's in Congress or at the ballot box, if
7:16
Speaker 4: it's not constitutional, the courts are there to say, I
7:18
Speaker 4: don't care that's not going to happen. So there's something
7:22
Speaker 4: way better than that, though. And if you're stressed out
7:24
Speaker 4: over what the Left will do if they get back power,
7:26
Speaker 4: say twenty twenty eight House Senate, White House, that that
7:29
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8:55
Speaker 1: All right, Charlie.
8:56
Speaker 3: Just last week, Jim and I were talking about the
8:58
Speaker 3: challenges that Ken Accident and the Republicans have and what
9:01
Speaker 3: should be a red state and should be a Republican victory,
9:04
Speaker 3: but Ken Paxton is making it a lot closer than
9:07
Speaker 3: it should be. But one of the reasons he might
9:09
Speaker 3: still win. James tallerco is the Democratic nominee, and I'm
9:13
Speaker 3: like I said last week, I'm not sure there's ever
9:15
Speaker 3: been a nominee in Texas statewide who's been more ill
9:19
Speaker 3: suited to the state that he wants to serve but
9:23
Speaker 3: that's the case with James Tallerrico. Also another podcast situation here,
9:28
Speaker 3: and I think the overarching theme Charlie, as I said
9:30
Speaker 3: in our email exchange today, is that James Tallerico pretty
9:34
Speaker 3: much thinks black people are helpless. In a couple different
9:36
Speaker 3: ways here. First of all, he's staunchly opposed, as is
9:40
Speaker 3: every Democrat pretty much, to the Save America Act, which
9:43
Speaker 3: will require voter ID and when you register to vote,
9:46
Speaker 3: to prove you're a citizen of the country. And so
9:48
Speaker 3: he says, ah, that's just too much. It's repressing again democracy,
9:53
Speaker 3: And of course it's gonna hurt black people.
9:56
Speaker 6: Most we as human beings, have the right to shape
9:58
Speaker 6: our own destinies do that through the vote. And so
10:02
Speaker 6: many brave Americans, so many brave Black Americans, have fought
10:05
Speaker 6: and died for that right. And so for politicians in
10:09
Speaker 6: Austin or in Washington, as they're now doing with this
10:11
Speaker 6: Save Act, they are trying to rob our neighbors, particularly
10:16
Speaker 6: our Black neighbors, of those God given rights. So I
10:19
Speaker 6: have a track record of using every tool in my
10:22
Speaker 6: toolbox to protect voting rights.
10:24
Speaker 3: Another way, he's supposedly standing up for minorities and black people,
10:27
Speaker 3: in particular opposing school choice and vouchers, and.
10:31
Speaker 6: Then I led the fight against this private school voucher bill,
10:34
Speaker 6: which has its roots in school segregation. The first voucher
10:38
Speaker 6: bill was proposed in Texas in nineteen fifty seven, which
10:41
Speaker 6: was just a few years after Brown v. Board and
10:43
Speaker 6: it was a deliberate attempt to allow white parents to
10:47
Speaker 6: take their kids out of newly integrated public schools and
10:50
Speaker 6: send their kids to wide only private schools. And so
10:53
Speaker 6: I fought tooth and nail to prevent that voucher bill
10:57
Speaker 6: from passing because it would hurt our our students, but
11:00
Speaker 6: it would particularly hurt our black students across the state
11:03
Speaker 6: because we know that public education is underfunded in Texas.
11:06
Speaker 3: Charlie, that's just epic gas lighting. I don't think anybody's
11:09
Speaker 3: going to benefit more from school choice and particularly vouchers
11:12
Speaker 3: the money to go to a different school than black families,
11:16
Speaker 3: which in so many different parts of the country are
11:19
Speaker 3: trapped in failing schools, which is the whole point of
11:21
Speaker 3: this movement.
11:21
Speaker 4: Yeah, let's go backwards on those who start with school choice.
11:26
Speaker 4: I don't know what he says about nineteen fifty seven
11:30
Speaker 4: is true, could be certainly the case that there was
11:35
Speaker 4: a backlash against brown and integration efforts, and if at
11:41
Speaker 4: the time school choice was a means by which racist
11:46
Speaker 4: white people could try to get away from African Americans,
11:50
Speaker 4: then that's gross.
11:53
Speaker 1: The idea that now that.
11:55
Speaker 4: Is the function of school choice is absurd. If you
11:59
Speaker 4: look at Flow, Florida, where I live, in twenty eighteen,
12:03
Speaker 4: when Ron DeSantis won by I think it was thirty
12:08
Speaker 4: thousand votes, close enough for a recount. The difference was
12:14
Speaker 4: black women in South Florida who liked DeSantis's universal school
12:21
Speaker 4: choice proposal because it would get their kids out of
12:25
Speaker 4: failing public schools. So maybe at some point in the
12:30
Speaker 4: past there was a nefarious intent, but there isn't now.
12:34
Speaker 4: You could do this with anything. If you want to
12:38
Speaker 4: refuse to debate the merits of a given policy and
12:41
Speaker 4: instead talk about how in the past it was used,
12:45
Speaker 4: you would have to, for example, make a strong case
12:48
Speaker 4: against the minimum wage, which in the nineteen thirties and
12:52
Speaker 4: forties was widely used as a means by which to
12:56
Speaker 4: exclude African Americans from the labor market. Now, I'm not
13:00
Speaker 4: in favor of the minimum wage, but I don't think
13:03
Speaker 4: that those who are in twenty twenty six are doing
13:06
Speaker 4: so because they're cryptose segregationists.
13:10
Speaker 1: I think they believe.
13:11
Speaker 4: That the minimum wage would be good for the economy,
13:14
Speaker 4: and if I were to respond to their arguments by saying, well, presumably,
13:18
Speaker 4: then you're a racist, they would look at me askew.
13:20
Speaker 4: And I think we should do the same with Tallarica.
13:23
Speaker 4: On the voting point, I give you this caveat.
13:29
Speaker 1: I don't think the Save Act's going to pass, and I.
13:31
Speaker 4: Don't want to abolish the filibuster to enable its passage
13:35
Speaker 4: because I think the filibuster is a really useful tool.
13:39
Speaker 1: And I also think, just as a.
13:40
Speaker 4: Practical matter, if Republicans were to abolish the filibuster to
13:45
Speaker 4: pass the Save Act, then when the Democrats next have
13:48
Speaker 4: a trifector, which could be in just over two years,
13:51
Speaker 4: they'll use that same abolished filibuster to get rid of
13:54
Speaker 4: the Save Act and also pass a whole bunch of
13:56
Speaker 4: stuff that I don't want. But that argument to one side,
13:59
Speaker 4: The voter ID provisions within the Save Act are pretty
14:03
Speaker 4: much uniformly popular. I can't think of anything in American
14:07
Speaker 4: politics that is as popular as voter ID across every
14:10
Speaker 4: single demographic group, including the very African Americans that James
14:14
Speaker 4: Tallerica says that he's protected. The poll that I saw
14:17
Speaker 4: this week had voter ID at over eighty percent among
14:21
Speaker 4: African Americans. I don't think that the Republicans should break
14:26
Speaker 4: the Senate to get it, but I do think that
14:28
Speaker 4: the argument that Tallarrica is making there that he's somehow
14:31
Speaker 4: helping African Americans is.
14:34
Speaker 1: Belied by the fact.
14:35
Speaker 4: As you say, it's also deeply infantilizing. It presumes that
14:41
Speaker 4: African Americans is somehow different than anyone else in this country,
14:46
Speaker 4: and they're not.
14:47
Speaker 1: They are equal fellow citizens. They are no.
14:50
Speaker 4: Less capable of getting an ID card, which I should
14:54
Speaker 4: note they need as everyone else does for lots of
14:59
Speaker 4: others circumstances like getting on a plane or picking up
15:03
Speaker 4: a prescription, participating in American life. So that is it's
15:08
Speaker 4: not just patronizing, it's also wrong. I mean, eighty to
15:12
Speaker 4: ninety percent of the people who's talking about a fine
15:14
Speaker 4: with vote right, Everyone is fine with vote D. If
15:17
Speaker 4: there is a means by which to pass it, the
15:20
Speaker 4: States and the federal government should absolutely do so, and
15:22
Speaker 4: do so without any pangs of conscience, because it's about
15:28
Speaker 4: as close to a universal culture so.
15:30
Speaker 1: We have in America outside of Super Bowl Day.
15:34
Speaker 3: I think that's right, and I think Joe biden'sproudy and
15:36
Speaker 3: slipped from several years ago where he said poor kids
15:39
Speaker 3: are just as smart.
15:39
Speaker 1: As white kids.
15:40
Speaker 3: Basically, the idea of a lot of these people who
15:43
Speaker 3: may genuinely believe that they're helping and that they're a
15:46
Speaker 3: leader in advancing, you know, improvement in the lives of
15:50
Speaker 3: these people. Their general idea, though, is that you can't
15:55
Speaker 3: do it unless I do it for you, and that
15:57
Speaker 3: is more patronizing than just about anything.
16:00
Speaker 1: Now.
16:00
Speaker 4: I think that the opponents of voter idea are split
16:04
Speaker 4: into two groups. One of the groups contains people with
16:07
Speaker 4: the view you've just described, which is a genuine feeling
16:13
Speaker 4: that they are obliged to help the inferior minorities. This
16:21
Speaker 4: is a condescending view. It's also a view that refuses,
16:25
Speaker 4: inexplicably to me to accept how much progress has been
16:28
Speaker 4: made in the United States over the last sixty or
16:30
Speaker 4: seventy years. Then I think you have people who are
16:32
Speaker 4: genuinely cynical want to cheat. And I'm not suggesting that
16:36
Speaker 4: the cheating has swung too many high profile elections.
16:42
Speaker 1: But I do think that.
16:44
Speaker 4: If you look, I think we discussed this yesterday at
16:47
Speaker 4: California and the way that it conducts its elections. California
16:51
Speaker 4: is set up to in every case privilege voting over elections, security,
17:01
Speaker 4: with ballot harvesting, with the three weeks that they provide
17:07
Speaker 4: to cure vote. It turns voting into a deeply bureaucratic
17:11
Speaker 4: process where the presumption is on the side of the
17:16
Speaker 4: person who's cast the ballot, and voter ID requirements would
17:21
Speaker 4: undermine that system.
17:23
Speaker 1: And I do think there.
17:24
Speaker 4: Are people in California, which is deeply democratic and which
17:27
Speaker 4: will probably remain so, who are aware that it would
17:32
Speaker 4: limit their margins, and so I think there's an unholy
17:37
Speaker 4: alliance between those two groups.
17:39
Speaker 1: And on the other.
17:39
Speaker 4: Side, you've got ninety percent of the America public, which
17:43
Speaker 4: I very rarely say this because I think the differences
17:45
Speaker 4: between people politically are usually in good faith. But who
17:48
Speaker 4: literally can't understand the argument. If you talk to people
17:52
Speaker 4: across America, black, white, gay, straight men women about voter ID,
17:58
Speaker 4: you very rarely meet someone who says, on the other hand,
18:01
Speaker 4: they just go yeah.
18:03
Speaker 1: So it is a very weird debate.
18:05
Speaker 3: Absolutely, and James Tallerico is very weird. So if Ken
18:09
Speaker 3: Paxton is going to end up winning this thing, it's
18:11
Speaker 3: going to be because of moments like this and just
18:14
Speaker 3: the litany of other things that James Tallerico has said
18:17
Speaker 3: long before this, during COVID and some of the some
18:21
Speaker 3: of the woke one point zero eras AOC would say
18:23
Speaker 3: that he's now trying to backpedal away from but the
18:27
Speaker 3: Internet remembers. The Internet lives forever, so anyway, we will
18:31
Speaker 3: see what happens there. But tall Rico is just living
18:34
Speaker 3: in a dream world or he's trying to gaslight people,
18:36
Speaker 3: and I think it's probably the latter. All right, Well,
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Speaker 1: All right, Charlie.
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Speaker 3: Reagan walked away because Gorbachev wanted him to give up
20:15
Speaker 3: SDI in addition to all the nuclear weapons they were
20:18
Speaker 3: actually in the brink of getting rid of all nuclear weapons,
20:20
Speaker 3: or at least agreeing to I'm not sure that Soviets
20:22
Speaker 3: necessarily would have done that, but nonetheless Sdi was where
20:25
Speaker 3: Reagan refused to budge. So Jeff Daniels and one of
20:28
Speaker 3: his co stars here appearing on CBS Saturday morning, and
20:33
Speaker 3: they're talking about the point of the movie. What's the
20:36
Speaker 3: takeaway here? You know, here is his co star first here.
20:41
Speaker 3: But Jeff Daniels somehow believes that the lesson of Reagan
20:46
Speaker 3: at Raikovic is that maybe one day John Lennon's dream
20:50
Speaker 3: will come true.
20:52
Speaker 2: This film arrives at a time when there are a
20:54
Speaker 2: lot of high stakes negotiations happening around the world. If
20:58
Speaker 2: a world leader were to watch this, what would you
21:02
Speaker 2: want them to take away?
21:03
Speaker 7: You know, you think about why these two people, who
21:07
Speaker 7: the heads of these two countries chose to meet in person,
21:10
Speaker 7: and you realize it is all personal. You know, you
21:14
Speaker 7: have to sit down with the players you need and
21:17
Speaker 7: see if you can form a relationship.
21:19
Speaker 5: We're all one person, we're all one world, and you know,
21:22
Speaker 5: John Lennon one wrong in his song imagine I hope
21:26
Speaker 5: world leaders plural all around the world we'll see it and,
21:31
Speaker 5: as Jared says, get in the room and talk about
21:34
Speaker 5: and maybe we can learn something from what two great
21:36
Speaker 5: leaders did back in nineteen eighty six.
21:39
Speaker 3: John Lennon wanted communism and Imagine No Possessions. It's just
21:43
Speaker 3: kind of a bleak existence if you really think about.
21:46
Speaker 3: It's my least favorite song, probably of all time. So
21:49
Speaker 3: Jeff Daniels plays Ronald Reagan and that's his takeaway.
21:52
Speaker 4: Charlie, Well, first off, I'm thrilled to see the strange
21:56
Speaker 4: new respect has extended to that degree to Ronald Reagan,
21:59
Speaker 4: who's being discret as a great leader by Jeff Daniels,
22:04
Speaker 4: who is by no means a conservative.
22:07
Speaker 1: So that's a win.
22:09
Speaker 4: Obviously, Ronald Reagan was in no sense committed to the
22:13
Speaker 4: agenda espoused in the song Imagine, which contains the lion
22:19
Speaker 4: Imagine No Possessions. But I will give Daniels one element
22:25
Speaker 4: of this, and that is that Reagan was a paradox
22:28
Speaker 4: in one sense, and that he believed correctly that the
22:33
Speaker 4: United States would beat the Soviet Union by building up
22:38
Speaker 4: its armed forces and essentially scaring them into submission. He
22:45
Speaker 4: also did want to abolish nuclear weapons quite sincerely I
22:51
Speaker 4: used to dream.
22:53
Speaker 1: About nuclear war.
22:55
Speaker 4: I think he described it as being a kin to
22:59
Speaker 4: the Book of Revelation, his dreams, and this infuriated a
23:04
Speaker 4: lot of other Hawks, including National Review, And of course
23:07
Speaker 4: I wasn't there at the time. Most of that time,
23:10
Speaker 4: I hadn't been born yet. But National Review loathed it
23:14
Speaker 4: when he would say that the United States should work
23:17
Speaker 4: toward getting rid of all of its nuclear weapons, because
23:21
Speaker 4: National rethought as I think that mutually ashured destruction works.
23:25
Speaker 4: So I suppose, in a very narrow sense, Reagan did
23:31
Speaker 4: envision a world without those weapons, even though he was
23:35
Speaker 4: the guy who was the architect of the build up.
23:40
Speaker 4: But where Daniels is completely wrong and naive, of course,
23:44
Speaker 4: is that it was not two guys sitting in a
23:47
Speaker 4: room being nice to each other. It was not people
23:51
Speaker 4: understanding one another. It was not the adoption of a
23:54
Speaker 4: one world standard that ended the Cold War. It was
23:58
Speaker 4: our total victory in our ability to create an economy
24:03
Speaker 4: that could outspend the Soviet Union to the point at
24:08
Speaker 4: which it collapsed and they realized they just couldn't compete anymore.
24:12
Speaker 4: And that is a really important distinction, because it's just
24:16
Speaker 4: far too many people. I'm afraid in politics who believe
24:20
Speaker 4: in this comby on nonsense. And I think that if
24:24
Speaker 4: you sit down and get on with your adversaries globally,
24:27
Speaker 4: that is that you will persuade them with nice words,
24:32
Speaker 4: and that's just not how it works.
24:34
Speaker 1: Hopefully you never have to go to war.
24:35
Speaker 4: But you do want to have all the aircraft carriers
24:37
Speaker 4: and weaponry so that they don't touch you.
24:41
Speaker 3: That's exactly right, and your point is spot on that
24:44
Speaker 3: you know, the Soviets weren't being magnanimous. They were put
24:46
Speaker 3: in a position by Reagan because of his policies where
24:49
Speaker 3: they absolutely could not compete and they had no choice
24:53
Speaker 3: to do what they did. And so you know, one
24:55
Speaker 3: of the other things that I would also point out
24:58
Speaker 3: is that you talked about the strange numerous In fact,
25:00
Speaker 3: the left and the media love dead Republicans and Republicans
25:05
Speaker 3: who are so old you know they're not coming back
25:07
Speaker 3: because those people are no longer a threat. It's either
25:09
Speaker 3: the current guy or the next guy. If the election's
25:13
Speaker 3: far away, the current guy. If the election's getting close
25:16
Speaker 3: and the current guy is not running for reelection, it's
25:19
Speaker 3: the next guy, who's even worse.
25:21
Speaker 1: I remember there.
25:21
Speaker 3: Were articles right after the twenty twenty two midterms, when
25:24
Speaker 3: DeSantis mopped up in the re election fight in Florida,
25:28
Speaker 3: and I think Trump immediately jumped in, but everybody knew
25:31
Speaker 3: DeSantis was going to run too, And there were articles
25:33
Speaker 3: out there going, oh, you think Trump was bad, Ron
25:35
Speaker 3: DeSantis would be way worse. So whoever is you know, competitive,
25:39
Speaker 3: whoever's viable, that's who they're going to demonize. They said
25:44
Speaker 3: the exact same thing about Reagan. He's a nuclear cowboy.
25:46
Speaker 3: It's going to be a nuclear holocaust, massive protests on
25:49
Speaker 3: the mall. I'm not sure they called him hitler, but
25:51
Speaker 3: it wasn't good. But once he was off the scene,
25:54
Speaker 3: Oh if only today's Republicans were like that.
25:57
Speaker 4: Oh, you know, it's going to happen with Trump. And
26:00
Speaker 4: I'm of the view that a lot of the criticisms
26:02
Speaker 4: that the Democrats have made of Republican presidents for fifty
26:06
Speaker 4: years are correct when it comes to Trump, but they're
26:08
Speaker 4: accidentally correct. They say it every single time. In ten
26:11
Speaker 4: years time, it's going.
26:13
Speaker 1: To be Wow.
26:14
Speaker 4: You know, he wasn't religious, he was moderate on social security.
26:19
Speaker 1: And you know, he never did this or that.
26:22
Speaker 4: But you've got to watch out for the next guy,
26:23
Speaker 4: because he's really blood this, you know, he's really ideological,
26:26
Speaker 4: and he believed, Oh god, it's going to be so messic.
26:30
Speaker 3: All the time, all the time. They'll always use them,
26:32
Speaker 3: the previous one to try to bring down the current one.
26:36
Speaker 3: So and yes, don't ever pine for what John Lennon
26:39
Speaker 3: was talking about. There additional possessions. No heapen why would
26:42
Speaker 3: you not want any heaven? I mean more?
26:44
Speaker 1: Yeah, No religion.
26:45
Speaker 4: Ronald Reagan, the guy wrote in the Human Life Review
26:48
Speaker 4: against abortion while he was president on religious grounds.
26:52
Speaker 1: Come on, unbelievable.
26:53
Speaker 3: Anyway, in a moment, we'll be talking about Alaska politics.
26:57
Speaker 3: And it's not very often, surely that the previous presidential
27:02
Speaker 3: nomine of your party endorses you and you reject it.
27:05
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Speaker 3: Today's primary day in a number of states, including where
28:22
Speaker 3: Charlie goes down there in Florida. We'll see if Corey
28:24
Speaker 3: Mills survives the Republican primary. We'll see who emerges in
28:26
Speaker 3: some of these other key contests. Alaska is also voting today,
28:30
Speaker 3: And as Charlie and I have discussed earlier this year,
28:32
Speaker 3: Alaska probably has the worst voting system in the country
28:36
Speaker 3: in terms of this rank choice nonsense. They allow four
28:39
Speaker 3: people to advance from the primary to the general election
28:42
Speaker 3: and then rank choice will choose the winner from there
28:46
Speaker 3: in November as well. But also it's gonna be a
28:49
Speaker 3: very competitive Senate race. Dan Sullivan, the incumbent Republican, not
28:53
Speaker 3: only has to run against former Democratic Congressman Mary Peltola,
28:56
Speaker 3: who in some polls is actually leading right now. He
28:59
Speaker 3: also has to run against Dan Sullivan, a guy by
29:02
Speaker 3: the same name who's still in the ballot. But hopefully
29:05
Speaker 3: there's not too much confusion. I think it either says
29:06
Speaker 3: senator or incumbent next to the real Senator Sullivan. But
29:10
Speaker 3: the funny thing here is that Kamala Harris sent out
29:13
Speaker 3: a fundraising email for Mary Peltol last week, and Mary
29:16
Speaker 3: Peltola says, you know, I don't really want Kamala Harris's endorsement.
29:21
Speaker 3: We reject this. This was not something we coordinated. And
29:24
Speaker 3: you know, this is a red state, basically is the subtext.
29:28
Speaker 3: And Kamala Harris is like poisoned to my candidacy, so
29:30
Speaker 3: I don't want to be seen.
29:32
Speaker 1: As that close to her.
29:33
Speaker 3: They said there were again no coordination, but according to
29:36
Speaker 3: Yasher Ali, source directly familiar with this situation, there was
29:41
Speaker 3: coordination that Peltola's campaign had actually asked Harris's political operation
29:45
Speaker 3: to send a fundraising email. So I don't know what
29:48
Speaker 3: the truth is here, but the rejection of an endorsement
29:52
Speaker 3: by your own party's previous presidential nominee, that's a first
29:57
Speaker 3: for me.
29:57
Speaker 1: Charli.
29:58
Speaker 4: I don't know about you, and you couldn't have and
30:00
Speaker 4: to a nicer former presidential candidates. You know, I am
30:04
Speaker 4: the world to number one Karmala Harris hater, and I
30:09
Speaker 4: enjoy anything that embarrasses Karmala Harris. If I were her
30:17
Speaker 4: and I were thinking of running again, I know you
30:19
Speaker 4: don't think she'll do it. This would give me pause.
30:23
Speaker 4: Alaska is, as you say, a red state, but this
30:27
Speaker 4: race is competitive, and that means that, given the right circumstances,
30:32
Speaker 4: it's indicative of how the middle of American politics is thinking.
30:37
Speaker 4: And if the moderate Democrat in Alaska has decided that
30:45
Speaker 4: a Kamala Harris endorsement is a drag, wouldn't you if
30:50
Speaker 4: you were Kamala Harris think or I just need to
30:52
Speaker 4: go and do something else with my life. I mean,
30:55
Speaker 4: the candidate is going to win in twenty twenty eight
30:58
Speaker 4: would presumably be someone who the moderate Democrat and Alaska
31:02
Speaker 4: would want to be on their side. So I have
31:07
Speaker 4: no tears what's for Kamala Harris, But this would make
31:11
Speaker 4: me reconsider.
31:12
Speaker 3: I think the smart play here is to just say nothing.
31:14
Speaker 3: I mean, people's inboxes are flooded with fundraising pitches all
31:18
Speaker 3: the time, so you just kind of forget it and
31:21
Speaker 3: move on and talk about the other thing. The fact
31:22
Speaker 3: that you would actually go out there and make a
31:24
Speaker 3: statement or release a statement of no, no, no, I
31:29
Speaker 3: don't want her endorsement is just if that's if you're
31:33
Speaker 3: looking for a hint Kamala twenty eight, I think you've
31:37
Speaker 3: got it, but will she actually read it? Anyway? Charlie,
31:40
Speaker 3: great to have you the last couple of days. I
31:42
Speaker 3: look forward to chatting with you down the line.
31:44
Speaker 1: Yeah, thanks for having me.
31:45
Speaker 3: Charlie Cook is a senior editor at National Review Online.
31:47
Speaker 3: He's also the host of the Charles C. W. Cook
31:49
Speaker 3: Podcast and for Jim Garty, who will be back on Wednesday,
31:53
Speaker 3: I'm Greg Corumbus of Radio America. Thanks for being with
31:55
Speaker 3: us today. Please subscribe to the podcast. If you don't already,
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