Latest / The Hugh Hewitt Show: Highly Concentrated / Could the war in Iran drag on past the midterms?

Transcript

Could the war in Iran drag on past the midterms? · The Hugh Hewitt Show: Highly Concentrated

0:00
Speaker 1: Welcome to today's podcast sponsored by Hillsdale College. All Things
0:03
Speaker 1: Hillsdale at Hillsdale dot ed or I encourage you to
0:06
Speaker 1: take advantage of the many free online courses there and
0:08
Speaker 1: of course the listener to the Hillsdale Dialogues all of
0:11
Speaker 1: them at HF Hillsdale dot com or just google, Apple,
0:14
Speaker 1: iTunes and Hilldale.
0:18
Speaker 2: And there we are. Take a look at Washington, DC,
0:20
Speaker 2: take a look at the nation's capital where all kinds
0:22
Speaker 2: of things are happening every day. Chronicling things that are
0:24
Speaker 2: happening every day on the Hugh Hewitt Show, Mark Davis
0:28
Speaker 2: in for Hugh. Quite quite the week for me. I
0:30
Speaker 2: got Hugh today and tomorrow. Scott Jennings on Wednesday. I
0:34
Speaker 2: think I'm coming to your house to do the windows.
0:36
Speaker 2: I think on Thursday or Friday or something like that.
0:38
Speaker 2: Trying to be the renaissance man in an ever expanding industry.
0:41
Speaker 2: Salem Radio Networks, Salem News Channel. However you are listening,
0:44
Speaker 2: however you are watching, just however you are consuming the product,
0:48
Speaker 2: we are very very grateful to you and thanks for
0:50
Speaker 2: hanging out with us again. Follow me on Twitter at
0:53
Speaker 2: Mark Davis Mark Davis. If you're inclined to do that
0:56
Speaker 2: all things Hugh, of course, at Hugh Hewitt. So as
0:59
Speaker 2: we begin this Monday, this third day of August, it's
1:04
Speaker 2: one hundred degrees in Texas, which is going to be
1:06
Speaker 2: until Thanksgiving. It's what we do, it's how we roll.
1:09
Speaker 2: But it's hot all over the place in terms of
1:11
Speaker 2: hot topicality. Got some Trump cuts from the Oval Office
1:15
Speaker 2: in just the last hour, hour and a half. He's
1:18
Speaker 2: talking some Iran, He's talking some Spain. So many lessons
1:22
Speaker 2: to learn from that? Was it sixty thousand a football
1:27
Speaker 2: stadium filled with with battle age young men there where
1:33
Speaker 2: Morocco meets Spain. Are there lessons in that for the
1:37
Speaker 2: United States, for the Blue States, for any states? RFK
1:41
Speaker 2: Junior versus Dana Bash was fun on CNN State of
1:45
Speaker 2: Union over the weekend.
1:46
Speaker 3: That was.
1:48
Speaker 2: Say what you will about Bobby Junior. He just ain't
1:53
Speaker 2: having it. And in fact, that's Representative Rubio out of
2:00
Speaker 2: the President's cabinet, Governor DeSantis, Governor Abbott, my governor. The
2:07
Speaker 2: days of just laying out and being steamrolled by the
2:12
Speaker 2: narratives of the left, those days are over. It's not
2:15
Speaker 2: like Trump waived some magic wand and made that all happen.
2:20
Speaker 2: But with him walking the point, with this mindset, it's
2:25
Speaker 2: funny as with the flamethrower cranked up to the max
2:29
Speaker 2: every day from the White House. By comparison, anybody that
2:33
Speaker 2: just cranks it up a little bit in their governor's mansion,
2:37
Speaker 2: from their congressional office, from whatever office they hold, is
2:41
Speaker 2: going to look is going to look positively measured by comparison.
2:46
Speaker 2: So let me tell you the tools of the trade today.
2:48
Speaker 2: We got a lot of great folks that we are
2:50
Speaker 2: going to welcome. Noah Rothman from National Review, wonderful, James Lylacs,
2:55
Speaker 2: colonist and writer, extraordinary. They'll be with us this hour.
2:58
Speaker 2: You can be with us this hour or any hour
3:00
Speaker 2: as we talk about stuff from South Carolina to Iran,
3:04
Speaker 2: to Spain, to the mid terms to the DSA lunacy.
3:09
Speaker 2: Let me just give you the phone number. It's where
3:11
Speaker 2: you can hop on get staged. We'll screen your calls
3:14
Speaker 2: hot and intersperse your thoughts amid mine and some of
3:18
Speaker 2: our great guests today. And you know the Hugh Hewitt
3:21
Speaker 2: Show phone number, or you should. It's one eight hundred
3:23
Speaker 2: five too oh one two three four one eight hundred
3:26
Speaker 2: five two oh one two three four, grab that line
3:30
Speaker 2: or just shoot me something. In the world of Twitter.
3:32
Speaker 2: They're at Mark Davis and I will see that. The
3:34
Speaker 2: phone number is one eight hundred five to two oh
3:37
Speaker 2: one two three four. All right, let's go just a
3:40
Speaker 2: few within the last hour, hour and a half in
3:43
Speaker 2: the Oval office. This is going to be cut nineteen.
3:47
Speaker 2: The press gaggle was gathered. The idea. Usually when you
3:52
Speaker 2: gather the press sometimes there's a theme, and this theme
3:55
Speaker 2: was military spouses the theme. So there was so Pete
3:58
Speaker 2: Hegseth was there, Missus tag Seth was there. Emblematic of
4:03
Speaker 2: the home front, military spouses, the war at home. It
4:08
Speaker 2: is the person in uniform who puts on that uniform
4:12
Speaker 2: and walks toward global trouble spots and who might die.
4:18
Speaker 2: We had just a service this past weekend for nineteen
4:23
Speaker 2: year old Isabella Gonzales of Carrollton, Texas, twenty minutes from
4:26
Speaker 2: where I'm sitting. This beautiful nineteen year old young lady,
4:30
Speaker 2: she had just graduated from high school and was willing
4:34
Speaker 2: to put on the uniform of this country, died in
4:35
Speaker 2: the Iranian attack in Jordan. And it's not like any
4:42
Speaker 2: one life jumps out at you more than any of
4:44
Speaker 2: the others. But this young lady, her death, her life
4:49
Speaker 2: have resonated so deeply here in this community, and I
4:53
Speaker 2: know just about wherever you live, and really during any war,
4:56
Speaker 2: I mean it's not just this war, but obviously any conflict,
5:00
Speaker 2: the Gulf War, of the War on Terror, back through
5:02
Speaker 2: Vietnam and before. Communities are always impacted by the sons
5:06
Speaker 2: and daughters that they lose. So any you have the
5:10
Speaker 2: people who pack their stuff head off into the war zone,
5:14
Speaker 2: and then somebody's left at home to not just keep
5:19
Speaker 2: the home fires burning, as the familiar saying goes, but
5:23
Speaker 2: to keep the household operating to oh, I don't know,
5:27
Speaker 2: take care of the kids, make sure that the household
5:30
Speaker 2: is secure and functional. And in a way, I'll tell
5:35
Speaker 2: you the way that everybody in the military views this.
5:38
Speaker 2: A man in a war zone views his wife at
5:41
Speaker 2: home as a partner in the war effort. A woman
5:44
Speaker 2: in the war zone would feel the same way about
5:46
Speaker 2: a husband at home. That is, it's not just people
5:50
Speaker 2: who go off to war. Families are part of this
5:53
Speaker 2: war effort. And so today's White House event was about
5:58
Speaker 2: showing honor and showing some preciation for military spouses and
6:01
Speaker 2: I can't think of a more honorable and appropriate use
6:06
Speaker 2: of time. Needless to say, after a while, the president's
6:09
Speaker 2: best use of time is taking a bunch of questions
6:12
Speaker 2: from a bunch of reporters. This is cut nineteen where
6:15
Speaker 2: we could eat with Iran over the weekend. It was like,
6:20
Speaker 2: we've seen this short film before. We're gonna hit you.
6:24
Speaker 2: We're gonna hit you so hard you're not going to
6:25
Speaker 2: know what your name is anymore. But then somebody's on
6:28
Speaker 2: the phone saying, hey, there may be progress. Maybe we
6:31
Speaker 2: lay back for a little bit, and the President says, okay,
6:33
Speaker 2: let's lay back for a little bit. See what happens.
6:36
Speaker 2: It's a bargaining tactic. It's optics, it's positioning. Fine, that's
6:40
Speaker 2: all great. If it please Lord, let it all be
6:43
Speaker 2: advancing us toward something like a satisfactory resolution with a
6:47
Speaker 2: non nuclear Iran with no five dollars gas and this
6:54
Speaker 2: all wrapped up. It'd be really nice if it was
6:56
Speaker 2: by you know, the end of September, just saying you
6:58
Speaker 2: hate to run a war on a we're running a
7:01
Speaker 2: woe on o'clock. You don't ever want to do that.
7:03
Speaker 2: President Trump will say he's not running one o'clock. And
7:05
Speaker 2: I know if success, real success, takes till February, Okay,
7:10
Speaker 2: that'll be more That'll be more important than any intervening
7:14
Speaker 2: political event, even though the midterms are obviously huge. But
7:18
Speaker 2: when you look at the way America viewsed this war,
7:22
Speaker 2: and not just Democrats, you'all familiar with Matt Walsh, love
7:29
Speaker 2: him ninety percent of the time. Nobody better on gender,
7:34
Speaker 2: nobody better on all kinds of other things. He had
7:36
Speaker 2: a post earlier today that said, grocery prices are insane.
7:40
Speaker 2: Every Republican ought to be talking about affordability. Affordability, affordability,
7:44
Speaker 2: stop the stupid foreign wars and focus on that. And
7:48
Speaker 2: I read that, and I could see a bunch of
7:49
Speaker 2: people going, yeah, I feel the same way. I don't
7:53
Speaker 2: mean to get greedy, but is that a necessary binary choice?
7:59
Speaker 2: You mean to tell me that I could either have
8:01
Speaker 2: affordable eggs or a non nuclear Iran. I somehow believe
8:05
Speaker 2: that both are possible. I think it's possible for this
8:08
Speaker 2: administration to absolutely focus on affordability, show people in the
8:12
Speaker 2: midterms that Conservatism is the best path toward affordability, while
8:17
Speaker 2: also beating down the threat of a nuclear Iran. Call
8:21
Speaker 2: me crazy. I think both are possible. So we're at
8:24
Speaker 2: a pause right now. But as he will do, President
8:27
Speaker 2: Trump says, if things don't progress, the pause will end.
8:30
Speaker 2: This is cut nineteen with a hint from the President
8:32
Speaker 2: on what will happen now off and they're going on
8:36
Speaker 2: right now.
8:37
Speaker 4: It's an amazing thing. We have a little problem with
8:39
Speaker 4: iron because we have many talks that will say we
8:42
Speaker 4: have or we don't have, you know, straight about it,
8:45
Speaker 4: but they deny it. But they're not denying it now.
8:47
Speaker 4: They just put out a savement not denying it.
8:49
Speaker 2: But for some reason they.
8:53
Speaker 4: When they're talking, they don't like saying that they're talking.
8:56
Speaker 4: So I say, we're in talks, big deal, we're in talk,
9:00
Speaker 4: and they'll sometimes deny it, even though they spent hours
9:03
Speaker 4: and hours together talking. Now the talks are going along,
9:07
Speaker 4: we're going to hit them very hard. Yesterday, very very hard,
9:11
Speaker 4: harder than any attack I think I can say general
9:15
Speaker 4: from a point of knowledge, any attack since World War Two.
9:20
Speaker 4: That's pretty big. And we were set to go, and
9:23
Speaker 4: they called, and in addition, Sodi Arabia call and h
9:28
Speaker 4: u a E called.
9:30
Speaker 2: Guitar call.
9:32
Speaker 4: I call some numerous people. I don't want to use
9:35
Speaker 4: the word begging, but some.
9:36
Speaker 2: Let's go ahead and hop out little pick up on
9:38
Speaker 2: the other side, Mark Davison, for you.
9:44
Speaker 5: Out of the treat of life, I just picked me
9:48
Speaker 5: a plown. You came along and everything started to long.
9:58
Speaker 2: National events, world events come and go. But on only
10:02
Speaker 2: one day, and this is that day. Will we observe
10:05
Speaker 2: the one hundredth anniversary of the birth of Tony Bennett.
10:08
Speaker 2: So you're going to get some Tony Bennett today, Other
10:11
Speaker 2: artists to be sure, because when I come, I bring
10:13
Speaker 2: an entire vault full of chart history and other delightful things.
10:16
Speaker 2: Tony Bennett, the best is yet to come nineteen sixty two.
10:20
Speaker 2: Please let that be true on various fronts. Let's talk
10:24
Speaker 2: about how things are going well, not well, and everything
10:26
Speaker 2: in between with a great senior writer at National Review,
10:29
Speaker 2: Noah Rothman. Noah, welcome, How.
10:31
Speaker 6: You doing, sir, very Willmark? Thank you for having me.
10:34
Speaker 2: Nice to have you listen. I know you've been doing
10:36
Speaker 2: a couple of things in the last couple of hours,
10:38
Speaker 2: putting sort of some of the final edits on your
10:40
Speaker 2: most recent piece at National Review, which is thoroughly depressing.
10:45
Speaker 2: Were you also did you watch any of Trump over
10:48
Speaker 2: the last couple of hours and the barrage of questions
10:51
Speaker 2: he was bandying back and forth.
10:53
Speaker 7: Yeah, I had my head down for most of it,
10:55
Speaker 7: but I caught a couple of clips. I'm not sure
10:57
Speaker 7: where you want to go with that, but they were
10:59
Speaker 7: all new worthy.
11:00
Speaker 6: Yes, they typically are.
11:01
Speaker 2: They were, So I tell you what, let's do what.
11:04
Speaker 2: Anytime you have one of those multi topic combinations of
11:08
Speaker 2: President Trump making various pronouncements, jabbing at the occasional you know,
11:13
Speaker 2: twenty three year old reporter from MS now or anything
11:16
Speaker 2: in between, it kind of gives you an overall thought
11:19
Speaker 2: of where his mood is, where things seem to be going, war,
11:23
Speaker 2: mid terms, affordability, what's the broad temperature that you take
11:28
Speaker 2: here as August begins, and then we'll dig into some
11:31
Speaker 2: of what you say about the war and your just
11:34
Speaker 2: posted peace.
11:37
Speaker 7: That's an interesting approach to this question. Like a thirty
11:39
Speaker 7: thousand foot perspective, the president seems more imperturbable than I
11:43
Speaker 7: think Republicans would like him to be. I think they
11:46
Speaker 7: honestly want to see the president respond with some passion
11:51
Speaker 7: to what they regard as an existentially political calamity, the
11:56
Speaker 7: earth killing media that everyone can see from miles out
12:00
Speaker 7: is bearing down on the Republican Party ahead of November.
12:03
Speaker 7: And there are plenty of Republicans who have different perspectives
12:07
Speaker 7: on how the GOP can write this ship, but all
12:10
Speaker 7: of them center on getting the president to focus on
12:13
Speaker 7: and talk more about economic issues and specifically what this
12:16
Speaker 7: Republican Congress has done to shape pocketbook narratives and pocketbook
12:21
Speaker 7: issues that the public is generally concerned about. That side
12:24
Speaker 7: affordability thing you're discussing, and that's where you get into
12:27
Speaker 7: the war. And I don't think it's possible to look
12:30
Speaker 7: at the president's job approval ratings at least the average
12:33
Speaker 7: is compiled by places like RCP and see no connection
12:36
Speaker 7: between the Iran war and the president's job approval ratings.
12:40
Speaker 7: Specifically the resumption of high tempole hostilities high temple combat
12:43
Speaker 7: operations earlier this month, which are on and off. You know,
12:46
Speaker 7: you could say that the war started again, but it's on.
12:48
Speaker 6: Some days, it's off some days. Either way.
12:50
Speaker 7: The public took notice because you can see in the
12:52
Speaker 7: visualization of that data the president's job approval rating declining
12:56
Speaker 7: even as his job disapproval rating declining, rather as his
13:00
Speaker 7: job approval rating remains stable, So it's tethered to the
13:05
Speaker 7: Iran War in the public's mind, and the public has
13:08
Speaker 7: just not bought in with this campaign. I think it's
13:11
Speaker 7: an pronounced national project, a very important national project. But
13:16
Speaker 7: Trump has not approached the public consistently, often and with
13:20
Speaker 7: sincere and genuine, observable deference to public opinion. What is
13:27
Speaker 7: expected of Americans, what we're supposed to absorb in the interim,
13:32
Speaker 7: and what we're going to get out of the Iran War.
13:34
Speaker 7: I can answer all those questions, I think, because I
13:36
Speaker 7: think the President has said this, but you know, it's
13:39
Speaker 7: not good enough to say it once.
13:40
Speaker 6: You have to repeat it.
13:41
Speaker 7: You have to say it so many times if becomes
13:43
Speaker 7: a mantra so that your voters can actually articulate it
13:46
Speaker 7: independent of you. And I don't think the President has
13:49
Speaker 7: done a very good job of that. He seems to
13:50
Speaker 7: not really trust the public with an accurate assessment of
13:54
Speaker 7: where we are in this conflict, and I think voters
13:56
Speaker 7: have repaid that mistrust in kind by withholding it from
13:58
Speaker 7: this presidency.
14:00
Speaker 2: That's an interesting sort of psychological observation. What does it
14:04
Speaker 2: look like to trust the public with the really daunting news,
14:08
Speaker 2: some of the details of which you mentioned in your
14:11
Speaker 2: brand new piece on the corner at NRO. When it
14:13
Speaker 2: comes to Iran, the Trump administration leaks like a sieve.
14:18
Speaker 2: So if you have a piece written that says this
14:21
Speaker 2: war's not going well and it may get worse before
14:25
Speaker 2: it gets better, that could come from a Democrat senator,
14:28
Speaker 2: or it could come from someone who believes in the goal,
14:32
Speaker 2: believes in the operation, and is frustrated that it hasn't
14:35
Speaker 2: gone better. Presuming you are the latter, give everybody a
14:38
Speaker 2: little of a summary of what you've what you described
14:41
Speaker 2: in that piece, of the various snippets of really daunting
14:45
Speaker 2: news that have come out into the public square.
14:49
Speaker 7: Well, I got one more for you. It could come
14:50
Speaker 7: from a Democratic senator who wants to undermine the war
14:52
Speaker 7: for it come from a well meaning Republican who wants
14:54
Speaker 7: the war effort to go better. It could come from
14:56
Speaker 7: somebody in the intelligence and military apparatus who does not
14:59
Speaker 7: want this war to go well, who did not want
15:00
Speaker 7: this war to begin in the first place. And there
15:02
Speaker 7: are plenty of those in the president's orbit who are
15:05
Speaker 7: suspicious and hostile to the extroverted presidence of the United States.
15:09
Speaker 7: On the world stage, certainly military activity like this against
15:13
Speaker 7: avowed American adversaries. I don't know where these leaks are
15:16
Speaker 7: coming from. I am suspicious of them, why because they
15:19
Speaker 7: all air in one direction. Maybe if we got one
15:22
Speaker 7: leak from the intelligence or military community that said, Wow,
15:26
Speaker 7: things are going kind of bad for Iran in this
15:28
Speaker 7: very specific way, but we never get those. All we
15:31
Speaker 7: get is how time is on Iran side. Everything is
15:33
Speaker 7: going their way, and this could not be going worse
15:35
Speaker 7: for the United States. Which is not to say that
15:38
Speaker 7: I don't trust the information that's being leaked. I mistrust
15:42
Speaker 7: the conclusions that are being retailed along with the information
15:46
Speaker 7: that's being leaked. Among some of these claims that Iran
15:51
Speaker 7: maintains roughly seventy five percent of its ballistic missile capabilities,
15:54
Speaker 7: that the United States only did cosmetic damage to the
15:57
Speaker 7: Iranian nuclear program, that they're digging out of the damage
16:00
Speaker 7: that they already that was done to the nuclear program,
16:02
Speaker 7: and the Ranian regime has the capacity to outlast the
16:05
Speaker 7: US blockade. Now we can argue about the particulars, and
16:08
Speaker 7: I think some of those particulars need to be argued with,
16:10
Speaker 7: but the conclusion that is bandied about along with them,
16:14
Speaker 7: that the US has no option but to engage in
16:17
Speaker 7: a humiliating retreat and surrender the strait of hormones to Iran.
16:22
Speaker 7: I don't think one follows the other. You could very
16:24
Speaker 7: easily say that all of this information suggests that the
16:27
Speaker 7: US should go full bore, because you know what, maybe
16:30
Speaker 7: Iran has seventy five percent of its ballistic missile capabilities.
16:33
Speaker 7: It had one hundred percent of its ballistic missile capabilities
16:36
Speaker 7: at the outset of Epic Fury. Those missile launches slowed
16:39
Speaker 7: to a trickle by early March, not because they didn't
16:41
Speaker 7: have the missiles, because they didn't have access to the missiles.
16:44
Speaker 7: And when they launched those missiles, they were interdicted by
16:47
Speaker 7: US assets or they were fired upon by offensive military
16:50
Speaker 7: operation offensive assets in the air. There's some concern over
16:53
Speaker 7: our defensive munitions, specifically these really high end ballistic missile
16:58
Speaker 7: interceptors that were running low on that's again classified information
17:01
Speaker 7: that should not be with the general public. But let's
17:03
Speaker 7: say it's true. You can compensate for a lack of
17:07
Speaker 7: defensive ordinance by using a lot of offensive ordinance. Now
17:11
Speaker 7: is that risky?
17:11
Speaker 6: Yes? It is. This whole adventure was risky.
17:14
Speaker 7: If we didn't have the heart for it, we shouldn't
17:16
Speaker 7: have started it in the first place. But you can't
17:18
Speaker 7: go back in history. We cannot go back to a
17:20
Speaker 7: world before this war started. The status quob is behind us.
17:23
Speaker 7: We have a new status quo in front of us,
17:24
Speaker 7: and it's up to us to shape it. So I
17:26
Speaker 7: just I don't see these leaks as serving the purpose
17:29
Speaker 7: that I think if they're in malign and intent, and
17:32
Speaker 7: they may very very well be, just because they want
17:34
Speaker 7: to force the president into a box from which he
17:36
Speaker 7: can't escape, that doesn't mean that we have no options
17:39
Speaker 7: available to us. The Pentagon has given the President a
17:41
Speaker 7: lot of options. He's reluctant to pull the trigger on
17:44
Speaker 7: them for a variety of I think very good reasons.
17:46
Speaker 7: But that doesn't mean that we won't have options that
17:48
Speaker 7: we can't execute.
17:49
Speaker 2: Indeed, and some of the exact details of what I
17:51
Speaker 2: was talking about is in his brand new piece there
17:53
Speaker 2: at Nationalreview dot Com. When it comes to Iran, the
17:56
Speaker 2: Trump administration leaks like a sieve, he writes in there,
17:59
Speaker 2: to the tails, great to talk to you, Thank you
18:01
Speaker 2: so much for being on the program. Mark Davison for
18:03
Speaker 2: you Hewitt, we cruise through the bottom of the hour,
18:05
Speaker 2: we pop back out. Let's talk a little bit about
18:08
Speaker 2: what this all means, what it's like to run a
18:09
Speaker 2: war on a clock, what the options are, and how
18:13
Speaker 2: the American people may or may not have a stomach
18:15
Speaker 2: for what's necessary. Mark Davison, for you stick around, much
18:18
Speaker 2: more to come. You may be asking yourself, why would
18:31
Speaker 2: I do this to you? If I try to usually
18:33
Speaker 2: bring in some cerebral collection of musical birthdays and chart history.
18:39
Speaker 2: What in the world am I doing destroying your day
18:41
Speaker 2: with Los del Rio the Macarena? Because it is chart history.
18:46
Speaker 2: This kid's was the number one record in America thirty
18:50
Speaker 2: years ago today. I did not plan this, but this
18:54
Speaker 2: happens to be the segment where we do a little
18:55
Speaker 2: bit of a palette cleanser away from everything depressing and
18:59
Speaker 2: say hi to one of my favorite writers who I
19:00
Speaker 2: don't think I've ever had the chance to say hi to.
19:03
Speaker 2: Let's let's let's head to the Land of ten Thousand
19:05
Speaker 2: Lakes or whatever the count is up to right now.
19:07
Speaker 2: James Lylex is here. How you doing, sir?
19:10
Speaker 6: I'm doing fine, and it's a pleasure. Mark.
19:12
Speaker 8: I used to listen to you back in d C
19:14
Speaker 8: in the nineties when I was working out of the bureau.
19:16
Speaker 2: Get out of town. That it is. It's a real,
19:18
Speaker 2: real pleasure, thank you very very much.
19:20
Speaker 8: And also in the nineteen nineties, of course, I was
19:23
Speaker 8: at a political convention when the macarena was very popular.
19:25
Speaker 8: Jack Omen, my friend who was the cartoonist for one
19:27
Speaker 8: of the papers, and the syndicate in a hilarious cartoon
19:30
Speaker 8: of Al Gore doing the macarena, which just consisted of
19:33
Speaker 8: very six still pictures of Gore not moving Higgs and.
19:38
Speaker 2: I would expect, I would expect nothing like that, you.
19:41
Speaker 6: Know, very that very that.
19:43
Speaker 8: But that very night Gore got up on stage and
19:45
Speaker 8: did the same thing himself, not moving to parody himself
19:49
Speaker 8: and my friend's eyes, entire syndicated cartoon.
19:51
Speaker 6: Go up in ashes, and there was not that he
19:52
Speaker 6: could do. Oh the nineties.
19:54
Speaker 2: That it is the feeling of powerlessness. So in taking
19:57
Speaker 2: a look at the various things that James is up to,
19:59
Speaker 2: you're always in good shape. Spending a segment on see
20:01
Speaker 2: if I have this list complete food, film, pets, and
20:05
Speaker 2: sci fi. So I've been taking a look at some
20:07
Speaker 2: of the things I've been writing about you and I.
20:08
Speaker 2: Everybody else has, but you and I have not done
20:11
Speaker 2: sixty seconds on the Odyssey. What do you make of
20:14
Speaker 2: the film and the talking sport that it has become.
20:18
Speaker 8: The talking sport that has become is great because you
20:21
Speaker 8: can get a good quick view of where somebody is
20:23
Speaker 8: politically depending on what the object to or what the
20:25
Speaker 8: objections of the object to.
20:27
Speaker 6: It's great that we're talking about it.
20:28
Speaker 8: I mean, here's something fundamental piece of Western civilization and
20:31
Speaker 8: we're arguing about it, which is great. Everybody gets to
20:34
Speaker 8: have their opinion on racial casting and the rest of it.
20:37
Speaker 8: We can have that argument. I was discussing actually with
20:39
Speaker 8: somebody at the other day why some people actually have
20:42
Speaker 8: an objection to race swapping and historical dramas, and it
20:45
Speaker 8: was news to this guy. I mean, it was a
20:47
Speaker 8: sort of way of looking at it that he'd never
20:49
Speaker 8: considered before. So good conversations come out of it. And
20:53
Speaker 8: of course there's that great tie in. Apparently you can
20:55
Speaker 8: get approach and horse bucket where you dig the popcorn
20:58
Speaker 8: out of the belly of the thing. That'll be a
21:00
Speaker 8: collective collectable on eBay for at least three dollars and
21:04
Speaker 8: fifty cents ten years.
21:05
Speaker 2: Hence, so let's say, let's do I knew that every
21:08
Speaker 2: answer would give my next question. I could not care
21:11
Speaker 2: less that Helen of Troy was black, could not have
21:16
Speaker 2: possibly cared less. I am the most activist person you'll
21:20
Speaker 2: find on trans lunacy and how that cult must be defeated.
21:23
Speaker 2: But I didn't mind three on screen minutes of Elliott Page.
21:27
Speaker 2: I just don't care. Now that having been said, help
21:30
Speaker 2: me square this. Do I need Idris Elba or anybody
21:33
Speaker 2: else to be black James Bond? I do not make
21:36
Speaker 2: him a cool black British spy, make him double O
21:39
Speaker 2: eight is are those? Is it possible to feel both
21:44
Speaker 2: of those ways at the same time?
21:46
Speaker 6: Absolutely so.
21:47
Speaker 8: Matter of fact, I agree, there's no there's no problem
21:50
Speaker 8: with think having a black James or a black secret
21:52
Speaker 8: agent working for MI five with a license to kill.
21:54
Speaker 8: But what people object to is the notion that you
21:57
Speaker 8: don't get to have the stories of yourture. Now, you
22:00
Speaker 8: can't do anything with the stories of these cultures because
22:02
Speaker 8: that would be colonialism, appropriation and all the rest of it.
22:05
Speaker 6: But you have to have all of your stories an
22:08
Speaker 6: adults rator.
22:09
Speaker 8: And if you said, okay, so we can't do Woody Harrelson,
22:13
Speaker 8: it is not your Ralph Abernathy.
22:15
Speaker 2: No, you don't.
22:17
Speaker 6: You can have a black Hell and Detroy. So I mean,
22:20
Speaker 6: I don't care either except what people get behind. This
22:23
Speaker 6: is the message as a great YouTuber who talks about
22:27
Speaker 6: these things is.
22:28
Speaker 8: And unless they're giving you the message, somehow they feel
22:31
Speaker 8: as that they've failed on the responsibility to educate you
22:33
Speaker 8: on what's necessary to think. So but again, Elliott Page
22:36
Speaker 8: in the movie, I couldn't care less. So yeah, but
22:40
Speaker 8: the idea of just al but going to work with
22:42
Speaker 8: the James Bond theme in a tuxedo and doing the
22:45
Speaker 8: work of the West, I'd pay good money to see that.
22:47
Speaker 2: In a second, I want to tell you what I
22:49
Speaker 2: would pay. I'd do a house payment to see what
22:52
Speaker 2: Doy Haroldson has talked to. Ralph Abernathy. So, speaking of
22:55
Speaker 2: the culture and things like the Odyssey that can be
22:57
Speaker 2: high minded and popcorn munching entertainment, you wrote a piece
23:02
Speaker 2: called from Concertos to Cage Matches. It seemed to celebrate
23:05
Speaker 2: America's comfort zone mixing high and low culture. I've always
23:10
Speaker 2: mixed high in low culture in my brain and found
23:12
Speaker 2: ways to enjoy both. I don't see how that is
23:15
Speaker 2: even a disconnect.
23:17
Speaker 6: No, now that do I.
23:18
Speaker 8: And unfortunately you're referring to something that I wrote probably
23:21
Speaker 8: a month ago, which I have absolutely no memory whatsoever.
23:23
Speaker 8: You write this much, your brains just sort of goes
23:26
Speaker 8: terms like an etches sketch upside down and wipes it out.
23:28
Speaker 8: But I seem to recall that the great thing about
23:30
Speaker 8: the country was, yes, you can have this American celebration
23:33
Speaker 8: that Trump had in the White House that has kid
23:35
Speaker 8: rocked at all, And that's as much of America as
23:38
Speaker 8: the high blown Leonard Bernstein works that we found, which
23:42
Speaker 8: found a new way to express Western civin American tenalities.
23:44
Speaker 8: I mean, so that's what I love about this country
23:46
Speaker 8: is the way that we've always done that and the
23:48
Speaker 8: way we've also had a middle brow culture. But the
23:50
Speaker 8: middle brow is going away. It's being squeezed. We have
23:53
Speaker 8: less high brow than before because people are suspicious of it.
23:56
Speaker 8: Middlebro seems to be evaporating, and unfortunately we're getting able
24:00
Speaker 8: a little bit too dominating, I think by the lowbrow
24:02
Speaker 8: culture that swamps the gun Wales, and I wish we
24:04
Speaker 8: had a little bit more of the middle brow aspiration
24:07
Speaker 8: to cultural goodness.
24:08
Speaker 2: But what would be I agree with you, what would be?
24:10
Speaker 2: I could certainly give you an example of high brow
24:12
Speaker 2: and lowbrow, ten examples each. What would be what is
24:15
Speaker 2: your go to middle brow cultural taste?
24:21
Speaker 6: Well, perfect example Norman Rockwell.
24:24
Speaker 8: When I was growing up, of course, everybody had to
24:26
Speaker 8: sneer at girl Norman Rockwell because it was just oh
24:28
Speaker 8: so American, an obvious and cliche and a magazine cover.
24:32
Speaker 6: And then later in life you realize the technique the manhad,
24:35
Speaker 6: and his ability to tell.
24:35
Speaker 8: His story so simply, and the wonderful ability to inhabit
24:39
Speaker 8: American culture.
24:41
Speaker 6: Rockwall is perfect middle.
24:42
Speaker 8: Brow, but it's the middle brough of an era when
24:45
Speaker 8: artistic standards were still in place.
24:47
Speaker 6: The middlebrow aspiration of the fifties and sixties was.
24:50
Speaker 8: I'm going to get that boxed set of the greatest
24:52
Speaker 8: things pieces of Western literature. I'm going to get those
24:55
Speaker 8: forty five records that tell me the five symphonies I
24:57
Speaker 8: need to do. I'm going to get this serious mega
25:00
Speaker 8: see that explains modern painting to me. All of these
25:02
Speaker 8: things had required work. They required work and talent, and
25:07
Speaker 8: were simply somebody doing graffiti on a wall or putting
25:11
Speaker 8: a bucket of vomit on the you know, in the
25:14
Speaker 8: museum biennial and saying this is O No, there was
25:18
Speaker 8: still something that required actual talented technical ability.
25:22
Speaker 2: So I knew I would have fun, and I hope
25:24
Speaker 2: you all did too, and it's always great. His substack
25:26
Speaker 2: Twitter feed is at Liles l I L e K s.
25:29
Speaker 2: Best to your great state of Minnesota, filled with great
25:32
Speaker 2: with crazy people, but beautiful things of beautiful people as well.
25:36
Speaker 2: Former Star Tribune legend and now somebody you should read
25:39
Speaker 2: every day, the great James Ilex, Mark Davison, You Hewitt
25:42
Speaker 2: back in a moment, back into issues of the day
25:44
Speaker 2: and more of your calls to hear. Thanks Mark Davis.
25:46
Speaker 2: Will you glad you're here in for Hugh Hewitt today
25:49
Speaker 2: and tomorrow? And we're keeping track of anything going on
25:52
Speaker 2: in the days, continuing breaking news, taking a look at
25:56
Speaker 2: large thematic things as we work towards the midterms, and
25:59
Speaker 2: in this particular case, as we begin this half hour,
26:02
Speaker 2: looking at a question that a lot of people are
26:04
Speaker 2: asking with a gentleman who wrote a piece that I
26:06
Speaker 2: saw over the weekend that I went to Danielle and
26:09
Speaker 2: I said, hey, let's see if we can find this guy,
26:11
Speaker 2: and we have succeeded. I'm very very pleased about that.
26:13
Speaker 2: If there is anything that Democrats are curious about, it's
26:18
Speaker 2: the question what in the world is going on in
26:20
Speaker 2: the Democrat Party. If there's anything Republicans are interested in
26:24
Speaker 2: and talking about, it's what in the world is going
26:27
Speaker 2: on in the Democrat Party? It is listen, obviously, Republicans,
26:30
Speaker 2: we got issues on Tapa issues, you know, how do
26:33
Speaker 2: we message how do we fend off disaster? November third?
26:37
Speaker 2: But just as as MAGA and the Tea Party started
26:41
Speaker 2: as sort of insurgencies within the Republican sphere, what is
26:46
Speaker 2: this DSA thing? What is this multi headed serpent? And
26:51
Speaker 2: it is that the proper metaphor? Or is it the
26:54
Speaker 2: kind of thing that can inject energy into the party
26:56
Speaker 2: and give them even more success? So it's calling through stuff.
26:59
Speaker 2: In there with the wallstre Journal from a gentleman named
27:01
Speaker 2: Terrell Wright was an article called these Democratic voters are
27:07
Speaker 2: battling over what their party stands for. And I talk
27:10
Speaker 2: to people who are discussing that every day. So I
27:12
Speaker 2: figured let's see if we could get mister Wright, Terrell
27:15
Speaker 2: Mark Davison for you. You it is a pleasure to see.
27:17
Speaker 2: How are you doing, sir.
27:19
Speaker 9: Markham?
27:20
Speaker 6: Good? How are you?
27:21
Speaker 2: Absolutely great? Give me a little bio on you. How
27:23
Speaker 2: long what is a news associate? And how long have you
27:26
Speaker 2: been at the Wall Street Journal?
27:29
Speaker 9: So the news associated is I'm basically a reporter with
27:31
Speaker 9: the Wall Street Journal, just early career here reporting out
27:35
Speaker 9: of Washington on our politics coverage. So I've been covering
27:39
Speaker 9: the midterm elections for the past few months in the
27:42
Speaker 9: run up and all of the exciting, crazy chaotic moments.
27:46
Speaker 2: Only more adventures lie ahead. And where are you're from?
27:49
Speaker 2: Where'd you go to school? What's your story?
27:52
Speaker 9: Yeah, I'm from Georgia. I'm from Walton County, Georgia. If
27:55
Speaker 9: any of your listeners know where that is, that's right
27:58
Speaker 9: outside of Atlanta. Went to school in Connecticut and graduated
28:03
Speaker 9: and lived here in DC currently Connecticut College and studied economics.
28:07
Speaker 2: And well, this is a really, really fine piece of
28:11
Speaker 2: journalism because you found out now, was this you compiling
28:15
Speaker 2: conversations that a lot of people did, or from Michigan
28:19
Speaker 2: to New Jersey? Were you actually talk at all these
28:21
Speaker 2: people yourself? Because you certainly curated it in a way
28:24
Speaker 2: that was a really nice snapshot of how various Democrats
28:27
Speaker 2: are feeling.
28:29
Speaker 6: Yes.
28:29
Speaker 9: So I went to Detroit to talk to a few voters. Particularly.
28:34
Speaker 9: I followed around Donovan McKinney, who is a Democratic Socialist
28:37
Speaker 9: running for a seat in Detroit. His race is actually tomorrow.
28:42
Speaker 9: He's running against Representativestry on Indoor, and I just went
28:48
Speaker 9: on door knocking, sort of went on a door knocking
28:50
Speaker 9: campaign with him and and tagged along and I interviewed
28:54
Speaker 9: several voters who said they were supporting him.
28:57
Speaker 6: I also talked to voters in.
28:59
Speaker 9: Primary throughout the country in New York, Colorado, and then
29:03
Speaker 9: some voters who are close to some of the epicenters
29:05
Speaker 9: of where democratic socialism is really having a moment.
29:08
Speaker 2: Right now, gotcha. So some of the examples you found
29:12
Speaker 2: and the people used to they're wonderful pictures of all
29:14
Speaker 2: of them, and it made me want to have conversations
29:16
Speaker 2: with them myself. A lady named Christine McClellan, she's from Detroit.
29:20
Speaker 2: She's seventy two, so she's seen some things done, some
29:23
Speaker 2: voting in her life, and she says she is supporting
29:26
Speaker 2: mister McKinney, the Democrat socialist, because he wants to end
29:31
Speaker 2: American wars overseas. Other people say they're supporting the socialists
29:36
Speaker 2: because of their what that strikes them as better messaging
29:39
Speaker 2: on affordability, and those are things that mainstream politicians can feel.
29:43
Speaker 2: I'm guessing that mister McKinney at no point began his
29:49
Speaker 2: conversation by saying I want to do away with the
29:51
Speaker 2: Pentagon and have no borders and no prisons. Is it
29:55
Speaker 2: because he doesn't feel that way? Is there's not one
29:58
Speaker 2: cut and paste democratic socialist. What's what's your thought?
30:03
Speaker 9: I think, like President Trump, one thing that's really interesting
30:06
Speaker 9: is that these Democratic Socialists candidates are seen as insurgents.
30:09
Speaker 9: They're not running on track records per se. They're running
30:12
Speaker 9: on sort of promises and ideas that are very popular
30:16
Speaker 9: among a lot of voters. For example, Christine McClellan, that
30:20
Speaker 9: seventy two year old her nephew is abroad right now,
30:24
Speaker 9: and she's incredibly worried about what's going on in the
30:27
Speaker 9: Middle East and in the the Iran US War. And so,
30:31
Speaker 9: you know, McKinney, not once when he was campaigning, when
30:34
Speaker 9: I was with him, did the word socialism come out
30:37
Speaker 9: of his mouth. But what came out of his mouth
30:39
Speaker 9: was talking about ending wars abroad and stopping sort of conflicts,
30:44
Speaker 9: and that was what really sold her. So I think,
30:47
Speaker 9: like President Trump, sort of this insurgent message of you know,
30:50
Speaker 9: we're going to change the party. We're here to fight
30:54
Speaker 9: for people, rather than sort of, you know, the party,
30:58
Speaker 9: the GOP itself. The message is actually the selling point.
31:02
Speaker 9: It's not necessarily a detracting attribute to a lot of
31:07
Speaker 9: these candidates, and it's why we see them winning, specifically
31:10
Speaker 9: in heavily democratic districts where Democrats we are going to
31:14
Speaker 9: win anyway. But these are Democrats who are sick of
31:17
Speaker 9: the party because they don't feel that the fight against
31:19
Speaker 9: President Trump is hard enough.
31:23
Speaker 2: Your article, also for balance, features of some voters who
31:27
Speaker 2: are alarmed by this leftward lurch, not thrilled with the
31:30
Speaker 2: whole socialist vibe, concerned about anti semitism, and it would
31:35
Speaker 2: seem like I'm describing maybe an older traditionalist jfk Era voter.
31:39
Speaker 2: The one I'm looking at is an eighteen year old
31:41
Speaker 2: from New Jersey who you identify as a moderate, who
31:44
Speaker 2: says the rise of Democrats socialism has pushed him farther
31:47
Speaker 2: away from the Democrat Party. He's Jewish, he says, Democrats
31:51
Speaker 2: aren't doing enough to curb anti Semitism. And again he's eighteen,
31:56
Speaker 2: so it's not just the older folks who remember the
31:59
Speaker 2: can Eddies, the Humphries, the LBJs who are raising an
32:03
Speaker 2: eyebrow at this trend of the moment.
32:07
Speaker 9: Absolutely not. And I think one fascinating thing about the
32:10
Speaker 9: entirety of this piece is that a lot of the
32:12
Speaker 9: voters that we talked to were of different age ranges,
32:15
Speaker 9: and they had kind of surprising views. You know, for example,
32:18
Speaker 9: like a seventy two year old is supporting a Democratic Socialist.
32:21
Speaker 9: That's a little confusing even for me when I was
32:24
Speaker 9: interviewing these voters. But yeah, Sam Kaine, who was an
32:27
Speaker 9: eighteen year old in New Jersey, one thing that was
32:30
Speaker 9: really important to him was moderation and not really having
32:35
Speaker 9: sort of this sort of combative spirit and attitude that
32:38
Speaker 9: Democratic Socialist had. He was someone that really valued American
32:42
Speaker 9: sort of principles like like free markets and whatnot, and
32:46
Speaker 9: said that, you know, these Democratic Socialists are taking the
32:48
Speaker 9: party further away from the principles that it should be
32:53
Speaker 9: far more focused on, and kind of jolting in a
32:56
Speaker 9: direction that is Unamerican, as he described, and his representative
33:01
Speaker 9: Josh Gottheimer, who has been rather combative with the Democratic.
33:04
Speaker 3: Socialists on social media, said that, you know that socialists
33:11
Speaker 3: are not representative of the Democratic parties and uh and
33:14
Speaker 3: he actually felt that way as well.
33:16
Speaker 9: He said that, you know, I don't share sentiment with
33:19
Speaker 9: these people. They don't They don't believe in the same
33:21
Speaker 9: things that that I believe in. And as a Jewish American,
33:26
Speaker 9: I think that they've been rather combative of the Israeli government,
33:30
Speaker 9: which is one thing, but he feels that they've gone
33:32
Speaker 9: a little bit too far and making Jewish voters feel uncomfortable.
33:37
Speaker 9: So there's there's you know, there's a lot of different
33:40
Speaker 9: perspective from a lot of different age ranges. It's it's
33:43
Speaker 9: not just you know, one size fid all that this
33:46
Speaker 9: group supports socialism, this group doesn't support socialism.
33:49
Speaker 6: It's it's far.
33:50
Speaker 9: More sort of chaotic of a fight going down in
33:53
Speaker 9: the Democratic Party than one might assume, I.
33:56
Speaker 2: Want to say, And everybody to the Wall Street Journal,
33:57
Speaker 2: Terrell right, and the title is these Democratic voters are
34:01
Speaker 2: battling over what their party stands for. Yes, they are,
34:03
Speaker 2: and how that fight goes is important to Democrats and
34:07
Speaker 2: pretty important to Republicans as well, mister Wright. Pleasure to
34:09
Speaker 2: meet you and congrats on the great work and thanks
34:11
Speaker 2: for being with us on my friends.
34:14
Speaker 1: You've probably seen the headlines are worse. Your latest bill,
34:17
Speaker 1: Big Wireless is raising rates again. That means you could
34:19
Speaker 1: be paying more for the same service or getting pushed
34:22
Speaker 1: into a price there plan you simply.
34:24
Speaker 6: Do not need. That's not right.
34:26
Speaker 1: You can switch to consumer sellulor right now and save
34:28
Speaker 1: an additional fifty dollars When you go to consumer sellular
34:32
Speaker 1: dot com slash u and use the promo code Hugh
34:35
Speaker 1: fifty and if you happen to be over the age
34:38
Speaker 1: of fifty.
34:38
Speaker 2: Listen to this.
34:39
Speaker 1: You can get a single line with unlimited talk, text
34:42
Speaker 1: and data for just thirty five dollars a month. Remember
34:45
Speaker 1: their numbers eight hundred and four to one one forty
34:48
Speaker 1: four to fifty four, eight hundred four one one forty
34:50
Speaker 1: four to fifty four, eight hundred four one one forty
34:53
Speaker 1: four to fifty four. Consumer Cellular ranks number one for
34:56
Speaker 1: network coverage and for customer satisfaction according to ACSI. And
35:00
Speaker 1: when you switch, you'll talk to an actual human being
35:03
Speaker 1: based right here in the United States. No long term
35:05
Speaker 1: contracts no indent fees. You can keep your phone or
35:08
Speaker 1: choose a new one. Get an additional fifty dollars off
35:11
Speaker 1: when you switch today using promo code Hugh fifty and
35:14
Speaker 1: do not forget. If you are over fifty, you get
35:17
Speaker 1: a single line unlimited talk texting data for thirty five
35:21
Speaker 1: dollars a month. Visit consumer sllular dot com slash Hugh
35:25
Speaker 1: and use promo code Hugh fifty or call one eight
35:28
Speaker 1: hundred and four four fifty four and use promo code
35:32
Speaker 1: Hugh fifty.
35:34
Speaker 10: Half a century later, Watergate still shapes how Americans view power,
35:39
Speaker 10: scandal and trust.
35:41
Speaker 8: This weekend, the.
35:42
Speaker 10: America two fifty film series presents Watergates, Secrets and Betrayals.
35:48
Speaker 10: Revisit the investigation through archival footage, interviews, and new arguments
35:54
Speaker 10: about what happened. Launch Saturday and Sunday at seven pm
35:58
Speaker 10: Eastern on Salem News Channel.
36:03
Speaker 1: The images coming out of Venezuela are heartbreaking. Powerful earthquakes
36:07
Speaker 1: have left entire community in rubble. Families are already struggling,
36:10
Speaker 1: suddenly lost their homes, apartments, even access to clean water,
36:14
Speaker 1: the necessities needed to survive. Right now, children are sleeping
36:17
Speaker 1: and makeshift shelters. Parents are searching for food, clean water,
36:20
Speaker 1: basic safety for their family. That's why Food for the
36:23
Speaker 1: Poor is responding immediately, working through trusted local partners already
36:27
Speaker 1: serving these communities. They're providing emergency food, drinking water, hygiene supplies,
36:31
Speaker 1: other life saving insistence. Relief can't wait. Every hour matters.
36:35
Speaker 1: The people of Venezuela need our prayers and they also
36:37
Speaker 1: need our help. From your mobile phone, text Hewitt Hwitt
36:42
Speaker 1: to five to one five five five. Again, text Hewitt
36:45
Speaker 1: Hwtt to five one five five five. If you send
36:50
Speaker 1: a text, you'll receive a reply with a secure lik
36:53
Speaker 1: where you can make your emergency gift to help the
36:55
Speaker 1: people of Venezuela. Together, we give you the hands and
36:57
Speaker 1: feed of Christ, bring hope, relief, God's love of the
37:00
Speaker 1: families who've lost so much.
37:02
Speaker 2: I'm mean, Hewett, and I thank you for you. It's
37:04
Speaker 2: a pretty usual drill. I know we're going to talk
37:06
Speaker 2: about stuff on a play, some clips, talk about stuff
37:08
Speaker 2: in the news, take some calls. But I also know
37:10
Speaker 2: that I'm going to try to find things that are
37:11
Speaker 2: of interest, to find pieces that people have written that
37:14
Speaker 2: raise my eyebrow. And one of them was by a
37:16
Speaker 2: gentleman named Connor Boyak and the Washington Examiner, and it's
37:19
Speaker 2: about these flock cameras. Piece is called you never approved
37:22
Speaker 2: this camera, so why is it watching you? Connor is here. Welcome, Sarah,
37:26
Speaker 2: nice to meet you.
37:28
Speaker 6: Thanks for having me. Mark look forward to chat with you.
37:30
Speaker 2: So you're the president of something called Libertas. What's that?
37:35
Speaker 11: So Liberta's institute actually our statue of liberty. Her name,
37:39
Speaker 11: the Roman goddess of liberty, is Libertus, so we take
37:42
Speaker 11: our name from her, and our institute is a think
37:45
Speaker 11: tank that works on a variety of policy issues dealing
37:48
Speaker 11: with free markets and education, but also privacy, and so
37:50
Speaker 11: a topic like these flock cameras is of interest to
37:53
Speaker 11: us as we're trying to figure out how state legislators
37:56
Speaker 11: can better protect the privacy of Americans and make sure
38:00
Speaker 11: that law enforcement does not just allow these devices to
38:04
Speaker 11: create a surveillance drag at society that nobody, or I
38:07
Speaker 11: should say few people in America wants. So we focus
38:10
Speaker 11: on how can we change the laws to better protect
38:13
Speaker 11: privacy and that's what we're working on with Fluck.
38:16
Speaker 2: The very first paragraph of your watching of your Examiner
38:19
Speaker 2: piece jumped out of me because it's a visual from
38:22
Speaker 2: right down the road for me, Connor writes, on the
38:24
Speaker 2: morning of July fourth, someone in Houston cut two surveillance
38:28
Speaker 2: cameras in half and draped an American flag over the wreckage.
38:32
Speaker 2: That might be the most Texas thing that happened on
38:34
Speaker 2: the fourth of July. I totally get it. I get
38:37
Speaker 2: the privacy concerns. I also get if a law enforcement
38:41
Speaker 2: officer tells me, you know how many child rapists we
38:44
Speaker 2: might find, you know how many drug dealers we might find,
38:47
Speaker 2: you know how many escape convicts we might find. There
38:50
Speaker 2: is a balance here. Tell me how that balance looks
38:54
Speaker 2: to you, And do you while you come down on
38:56
Speaker 2: the privacy side, and I don't come down against that side,
38:59
Speaker 2: can you see? And how some people might think these
39:01
Speaker 2: cameras are pretty awesome?
39:04
Speaker 11: There's no question, And in fact, in my op ed,
39:06
Speaker 11: I concede that these types of technologies absolutely do enable
39:09
Speaker 11: law enforcement to better be able to investigate crime and
39:14
Speaker 11: find and punish criminals, and that, on its face.
39:17
Speaker 6: Is a good thing.
39:17
Speaker 11: However, the job of citizens and their citizen legislators is
39:21
Speaker 11: not to make the job of law enforcement easy. By contrasts,
39:24
Speaker 11: their job is supposed to be difficult. The Fourth Amendment
39:27
Speaker 11: in particular makes it difficult. One might imagine the British
39:31
Speaker 11: Red Coats two hundred and fifty years ago saying, oh,
39:33
Speaker 11: but it's so easy for us to write our rits
39:34
Speaker 11: of assistance and search wherever we want for those rabble
39:37
Speaker 11: rousers who are breaking into law and violating the King's edicts.
39:42
Speaker 11: But the founders did not like that. They said, in
39:44
Speaker 11: the Fourth Amendment, we have to have what's called particularity,
39:46
Speaker 11: which means we have to suspect an individual of an
39:49
Speaker 11: actual crime, none of this blanket searching and fishing expeditions.
39:53
Speaker 11: They said, you need probable cause, which means that you
39:56
Speaker 11: need judicial review right, and you have to get a warrant.
39:58
Speaker 11: And so these are the basic requirements that law enforcement
40:01
Speaker 11: have had to operate under. The problem with FLOCK and
40:04
Speaker 11: other technologies like it is they create this massive database
40:08
Speaker 11: that law enforcement has easy access to. No judicial oversight,
40:12
Speaker 11: no warrant, no probable cause, no individual suspicion of crime.
40:16
Speaker 6: They can just go on.
40:16
Speaker 11: These broad fishing expeditions. And so our balancing test has
40:20
Speaker 11: already been achieved by the Founding fathers. That is to say,
40:23
Speaker 11: databases and cameras and the like are okay on their face,
40:27
Speaker 11: but if law enforcement wants to use them, if they
40:29
Speaker 11: want to access people's private information and be able to
40:32
Speaker 11: quote unquote spy on people, they just need to go
40:35
Speaker 11: through the proper steps, which the Fourth Amendment lays out.
40:38
Speaker 2: So in describing what they have to do to get
40:40
Speaker 2: into our house, to get into our businesses, you're completely right,
40:43
Speaker 2: and I obviously that resonates with me as a Fourth
40:45
Speaker 2: Amendment fan. But everybody driving, you're not in your house,
40:48
Speaker 2: The flock cameras aren't looking at you in your living room.
40:50
Speaker 2: Everybody is out on the public streets. So what are
40:53
Speaker 2: the negatives? What's the downside of?
40:55
Speaker 6: Again?
40:55
Speaker 2: I guess I can imagine in my own head the
40:58
Speaker 2: notion of finding a license plate of note, everybody knows
41:03
Speaker 2: where you are, they are able to track you all
41:05
Speaker 2: over the place. We presume the benevolence of a praiseworthy
41:09
Speaker 2: law enforcement effort, but in the wrong hands, all that
41:12
Speaker 2: information can come back and bite you hard in the butt.
41:16
Speaker 11: Yeah, you actually raised a very important question mark. And
41:20
Speaker 11: I might offer another example other than the one that
41:22
Speaker 11: you cited, and that is January six Everyone remembers January sixth,
41:26
Speaker 11: and what happened. FBI literally drew a map around the
41:29
Speaker 11: Capitol and they handed it to Variezon and Google and others,
41:32
Speaker 11: and they use what's called a geofence search, which allowed
41:35
Speaker 11: them to say, hey, cell phone companies, we want to
41:37
Speaker 11: know anyone who happened to be within this radius during
41:41
Speaker 11: this period of time so that we can go investigate them.
41:44
Speaker 11: And so it just creates a problem when you have
41:46
Speaker 11: these huge databases full of information. So I'll answer your
41:49
Speaker 11: question more acutely, why should we be concerned if we're
41:51
Speaker 11: out in public? You rightly point out that the Fourth
41:53
Speaker 11: Amendment was primarily concerned with people's papers effects in their home,
41:57
Speaker 11: in their private spaces. But when we have new technologies
42:01
Speaker 11: that give a step change of new functionality for the government. Right,
42:05
Speaker 11: license plate readers have been around for years and years
42:07
Speaker 11: and years, and when it's just tracking your license plate,
42:09
Speaker 11: that's fairly benign. So, yes, you have a reasonable expectation
42:12
Speaker 11: of privacy in your home, do you really have one
42:15
Speaker 11: if you're out and about, well, when the government now
42:17
Speaker 11: has an easy ability to map everywhere you've gone, including
42:20
Speaker 11: potentially controversial places, embarrassing places. When they have a massive
42:25
Speaker 11: database where your ex spouse or enemies or others can
42:29
Speaker 11: go on a fishing expedition and find that information out
42:32
Speaker 11: about you. When they can create a fingerprint of the car,
42:35
Speaker 11: as they call it, which isn't just your license plate,
42:38
Speaker 11: what's the make, what's the model, what bumper stickers does
42:40
Speaker 11: it have, they're basically creating a surveillance system to track
42:44
Speaker 11: you're everywhere about. This is very different than decades or
42:47
Speaker 11: centuries ago when the government would you know, a policeman
42:49
Speaker 11: would be standing on the side of the road and
42:51
Speaker 11: happen to him or herself observe something. We're now talking
42:54
Speaker 11: about a dragnet society. And I think there has to be,
42:57
Speaker 11: because of these new technologies, a different balancing test, and
43:00
Speaker 11: that is to say, people do have a reasonable expectation
43:03
Speaker 11: of privacy when they go about their day, they go
43:06
Speaker 11: to their church, they go to their work, to not
43:08
Speaker 11: have this constant or willy in society documenting their every move.
43:12
Speaker 11: And so I think that's a balancing test or a
43:16
Speaker 11: conversation that needs to be had so that the courts
43:18
Speaker 11: can better catch up with what these new technologies are
43:21
Speaker 11: empowering the government to do when it comes to tracking us.
43:23
Speaker 2: In our last minute or so. Nobody's going to condone
43:26
Speaker 2: the vigilante destruction of these cameras, But you have a
43:28
Speaker 2: great sentence. A nation's law breaking, like its laws, can
43:32
Speaker 2: be informative. Americans defied the fifty five mile an hour
43:35
Speaker 2: speed limits so universally that it had to go away.
43:38
Speaker 2: Prohibition era juries often refuse to convict bootleggers, sending a
43:42
Speaker 2: clear message about their perception of the laws in justice.
43:45
Speaker 2: Do you think that is the fate of the flock camera?
43:47
Speaker 2: People will look at the wreckage of them on street
43:50
Speaker 2: corners and say, we got to dial this back.
43:54
Speaker 11: I think the fact that we are seeing this lawlessness,
43:57
Speaker 11: as many would call it, is emblematic of the fact
43:59
Speaker 11: that the pendulum has swung too far, that we've gotten
44:02
Speaker 11: ahead of ourselves. That law enforcement agencies, however excited they
44:05
Speaker 11: are to solve crimes, have adopted and introduced into their
44:09
Speaker 11: communities technologies and surveillance capability that the citizens were neither
44:14
Speaker 11: aware of nor consented to. And so what that suggests is,
44:17
Speaker 11: while you've got these law breakers out there cutting them down,
44:20
Speaker 11: Hey lawmakers, you're a city councilor a mayor a state legislator,
44:24
Speaker 11: maybe we need to have more awareness, more oversight, more transparency,
44:27
Speaker 11: more conversation to say, is it right that law enforcements
44:31
Speaker 11: set these up in the community without there being a
44:34
Speaker 11: discussion or awareness by citizens. And so I just think
44:37
Speaker 11: what we're seeing by people cutting down those polls, what
44:40
Speaker 11: they're doing is reflective of the fact that law enforcement
44:42
Speaker 11: has gotten ahead of their skis a little bit. We
44:44
Speaker 11: got to pull it back and we got to have
44:46
Speaker 11: a better conversation as a people about what do we want. Yeah,
44:48
Speaker 11: we could if we lived in a surveillance state have
44:50
Speaker 11: no more crime. In theory, I don't think that's really true.
44:53
Speaker 11: But what is that balance and have we achieved it?
44:56
Speaker 2: Just spectacular segment. Sure, thank you Connor Boyak C boyag
45:00
Speaker 2: b O y A c K on the old ex
45:02
Speaker 2: Twitter there. I knew that would be great and it
45:05
Speaker 2: was