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Justin Haskins Weighs-In On The New Speaker, Presidential Race · Conversations: Special Guests with Preston Scott

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  All right, let's get to it. A busy, busy Tuesday on the
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  Morning Show with Preston Scott. I'm Preston, that's Grant and it's Show five
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  thousand and forty seven. Great to be with you this morning, and I
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  am thrilled to have back with us once again. He is Justin Haskins.
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  Justin his course with Heritage or sorry, Heartland Institute. He's also in charge
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  of the website stoppingsocialism dot com. How are we doing on that front?
• 0:36
  Justin? Are we stopping socialism? Yeah, it's all over. We want
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  That's what I'm here to tell you. Today's Today's Today. We finally beat
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  it. Congratulations, paid off, woo. All right, well we're done
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  doing the show. Thanks for joining us this morning. Justin, we predicted
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  that the seventeenth of November was going to come really, really fast. What's
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  your view before we talk in depth about the new house speaker Mike Johnson,
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  what's your view on giving him one continuing resolution to get himself in order and
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  to get his ducks in a row before tackling the real problems that are plaguing
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  Congress. Oh boy, I hate I hate to give anybody any continuing resolutions.
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  That's all we've ever had, right So, but but you know,
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  I guess you. I guess everybody gets one of those. I suppose that's
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  fair. I think that that Mike Johnson's plan here to do what he's calling
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  a laddered approach, where he's going to give essentially two deadlines, two different
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  deadlines, and that now we're going to have, instead of just one,
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  breaking them up a little bit by topic to try to see if we can
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  come up with a deal. Democrats don't seem to have a problem with it.
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  It looks like it's going to pass. At least at this point in
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  time. It looks pretty good for him, So I suppose that's a good
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  sign. I don't know if what he needs this early on is an actual
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  government shutdown. That probably would be the worst case scenario for him and his
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  credibility with the media generally. Now, maybe that's fine, it's probably the
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  right thing to do. But I can see why everyone around him is probably
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  saying, you just got to figure out a way to get through this,
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  and then we'll come January, we'll start actually solving the problem. So I
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  guess I'm okay. I don't love it, but I'm not gonna go crazy
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  over it either. My feeling was, before we knew Mike Johnson was going
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  to be the Speaker, and we knew a lot about him, my feeling
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  was, whoever the new speaker was going to be, there is no way
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  to articulate and win any kind of argument using the bully pulpit of the Speaker's
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  office. With Thanksgiving and Christmas looming, They're just it was, You're just
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  not going to do it. Yeah, And I think that I think,
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  generally speaking, the idea of government shut down, you know, during the
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  holidays in particular, where you've got people not getting paychecks the military, and
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  I mean, that's just not there's a reason why they've got it set up
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  this way, and it's just so difficult to actually have a government shut out
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  at that time. So even just shifting the deadlines to January and February,
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  which is what he wants to do, would probably be a win overall.
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  Now, new House Speaker, Mike Johnson, what are your thoughts? Well,
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  I mean, I think there's a lot of positives. I don't think,
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  you know, I'm skeptical that it's going to be a sort of transformative
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  speakership, just because I think there's so many institutional problems in Congress generally,
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  and the Senate I think is actually the bigger issue anyway. So the Speaker
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  of the House, how much can he even do with a Senate that's still
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  run by Democrats. But even if it wasn't being run by Democrats, I
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  don't know that you could get a ton of really important things done anyway.
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  So with all of that said, I think he's one of the better options
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  that we could have hoped for. I mean, he's, as far as
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  I can tell, about as conservative as some of the people who all the
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  conservatives wanted out of this, like Jim Jordan somebody like that. And I've
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  spoken to people behind the scenes that know him personally, that have worked with
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  him personally going back for several years, and they say he's unbelievable, absolutely
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  fantastic. They love him. And I'm talking about people who are not Washington
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  d C. People that I spoke with. These are people who are true
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  believers that really are fighting for the cause that I would absolutely trust their judgment
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  on anybody. They hardly ever say anything good about anyone in Washington, but
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  they had good things to say about him, and that was a really good
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  sign for me personally. Now most people don't have that advantage, but I
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  think, you know, that makes me feel really good about that. I
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  think that all of the stuff that happened with Matt Gates, i mean,
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  worked out about as good as anybody could have possibly hoped from a conservative perspective.
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  So I don't know, it looks pretty good to me. Eleven minutes
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  past the hour. Besides bearing an uncanny resemblance to Dave in the Kevin Klein
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  movie about a presidential stand in a new House, speaker Mike Johnson is to
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  me, justin one of the very few that I've ever heard in a public
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  position that I'm not embarrassed by them when they try to articulate and offer the
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  apologist defense of being a Christian. He knows how to do it. Yeah,
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  there's no doubt about that. And I was told again I had mentioned
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  to you before that, you know, I'd been told by people behind the
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  scenes that know him personally that he was a great pick, and that was
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  one of the things that they pointed to. They said, the guy really
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  does believe that he's doing God's work by taking this by taking this position,
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  and uh, he's gonna he's gonna act that way, he's going to behave
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  that way. You can you can count on it, and that obviously is
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  a great thing. I mean, I think we even if you're not even
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  if you're not a Christian and you're listening to the show right now, I
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  mean, you got to admit having somebody in Washington in a position of power
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  that has Christian values and are living them out is probably a good thing at
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  this point in time with all of the corruption and the immorality and everything else
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  that's going on. When I look at what Matt Gates did, at first,
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  justin I thought terrible timing. But as I thought about it and reflected,
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  I thought, no, something's got to rip the band aid off and
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  start to do something differently up there. And then I learned about Kevin McCarthy
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  working behind the scenes to scuttle the bids of Scalise Jordan, and then he
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  tried to do it to Johnson to get the speakership back. Matt Gates in
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  all of this, isn't he a massive winner with Mike Johnson now a speaker?
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  Yeah, I mean I think it was one of the biggest political gambles
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  we've seen in a long time, especially from a regular member of the House
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  rather than someone in house leadership or something, because it could have gone really
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  badly. And I guess that's my only criticism at this point, is because
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  there was no plan. It could have ended very badly. We could have
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  had the worst case scenario was really bad. But at the same time,
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  yeah, I mean, if you don't make bold moves, nothing changes.
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  Everything is the same. And so on the one hand, you know a
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  lot of people say that he was doing it for petty reasons and stuff like
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  that there was no plan. I think those are all valid criticisms. On
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  the other hand, if we just play everything the way it always plays out,
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  you're never going to get different results because that's the way Washington is set
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  up. And so why do we have look in my lifetime, Okay,
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  I'm in my mid thirties. In my lifetime, I'm not old enough to
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  remember a good Speaker of the House. Like I'm not old enough to remember
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  anybody. I just care. Every single Speaker of the House that I can
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  think of, Republican or Democrat, I thought was a total joke. Yep,
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  even as a teenager. So it's you know, you've got to do
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  something different. I guess, yeah, And see, I think that if
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  the reason was as petty as hey, Kevin McCarthy lied to us, I'm
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  good with that. Hold him accountable, and I'm now I personally think that
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  that's been almost now proven. And that's why you know Johnson won unanimously in
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  the in the caucus is because it was demonstrated that McCarthy was working behind the
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  scenes. So you know, all right, now, moving forward, I
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  want to get to next the piece you wrote recently on the GOP candidates first,
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  before we get to the ESG thing, because we got to break in
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  about a minute and a half here. What are your thoughts on the status
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  of the race right now? Is this Trump's to lose? Is this a
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  foregone conclusion Donald Trump's going to be the nominee. I think it is absolutely
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  looking like Trump is going to be the nominee. He is the only presidential
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  candidate running in a decade, decades, maybe one hundred years. Who there's
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  really no bad news that could come out about this man at this point in
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  time between now and the end of the primaries that would stop anyone who wants
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  to vote him, vote for him, from voting for him. There's almost
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  nothing. There's very few things, and so it's hard to imagine that he
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  loses given that. In fact, I would argue he's got built in boosts
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  for support because of all of the insane prosecutions against him and all this stuff,
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  which is going to ramp up over the next several months. You're going
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  to have more of the trial talk and more of the you know, investigative
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  stuff, and as they continue to progress forward trying to prosecute him, which
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  is obviously an attempt by the Democrats to use the court system to attack a
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  political opponent, which is something you only see in banana republics typically not in
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  the United States of America. The more solidified his support's going to be Donald
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  Trump. So I don't see how he loses at this point unless this race
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  gets down almost immediately or at least before the first primary, to two people.
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  If it can get down to two people and the other person is a
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  viable candidate for both, it has to be both sort of establishment leaning type
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  Republicans and conservatives too. That's the only way there's even a shot if there
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  are three candidates in the race. Even if the third one isn't a good
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  candidate. I don't think there's any way he loses. So it basically has
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  to become a one on one race before the first primary or very close to
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  that period of time. And right now there's just too many people in the
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  race for that to happen. Justin stand by, We got to stop real
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  quick. Seventeen pass more with Justin Haskins on the Morning Show with Preston Scott
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  on your phone with the iHeartRadio app and on hundreds of device is like Alexa,
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  Google Home, Xbox and Sonos. Yes, and Ihearts Radio station twenty
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  two past the hour with me for just a few more minutes. Justin Haskins
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  from the Heartland Institute Stoppingsocialism dot com and Justin, you wrote a piece about
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  the candidates running for office that are opposed to ESG. But does that calculus
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  take into account that the odds of any of them winning are really slim?
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  No, this just looks at their policies, that's all it is. The
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  article is based on our report that we did at the Heartland Institute where we
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  graded all the candidates based on their ESG policies, and so we're not taking
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  into account anything having to do with whether they have a chance of winning or
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  not. It's purely based on what do their policies say. So we look
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  at people like, you know, we look at people have no chance of
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  winning. You know, we had Asa Hudginson in there, example, and
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  Bergham and people like that. So it's just looking at their policies. But
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  you know, ultimately this this thing is all going to come down to maybe
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  three or four people, right pretty much it no one else really has a
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  shot at this point. How much of a factor is Robert F. Kennedy
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  Junior and all of this? Yeah, I mean I was telling you in
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  the break I saw a poll, a Quinnipiac poll from yesterday or the day
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  before that showed that R Junior in the race when you actually poll people with
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  him included in the poll, and a lot of polls don't do that.
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  They just include Trump and Biden or DeSantis and Biden or whatever. RFK Junior
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  got twenty two percent of the vote. Twenty two percent of the vote,
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  and in the poll Biden barely won. I think he had thirty nine percent
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  or something and Trump had like thirty six It was something like that. But
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  one of the really interesting things was that it appeared, based on the way
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  that the voter ideology broke down in some of the other polling data, that
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  of our most of the voters RFK Junior took were coming from Trump or Republican
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  voters, And so he was hurting Trump by being in the race more than
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  he's hurting Joe Biden, which a lot of people wouldn't necessarily think because he's
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  a Democrat. He's a very liberal Democrat in a lot of ways too,
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  So I don't think we know what his impact is ultimately going to be.
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  But if he actually gets something or like twenty percent of the vote, it's
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  going to determine who wins the race one way or the other. Do you
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  believe that he pulls more from Trump? And if so, why, I
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  think it's possible he does. And I think the only reason why is because
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  he's an outspo an outspoken critic of certain really egregious government policies, and he's
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  endeared himself, especially COVID nineteen, lockdown on vaccine mandates, the weaponization of
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  government and things like that, and those things have endeared him to a lot
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  of Republicans and a lot of conservatives who might not like Donald Trump for whatever
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  reason, and so to hear this guy talking and they say, well,
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  I'm not going to vote for Joe Biden, and this guy sounds like he's
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  really going to take on the establishment, and they like that. The problem
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  with our kid, Junior is when you look at the rest of his record
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  on any number of issues that conservatives care about, whether it's abortion, or
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  it's government spending, or it's the military or environmental policies. He's a far
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  left wing climate change alarmist who at one point said that corporations that have engaged
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  in fossil fuels are guilty of treason and should be treated like they're guilty of
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  treason. He said that they should give the corporate death penalty to many fossil
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  fuel companies, including and think tanks and public policy organizations that have advocated for
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  pro energy policies that involve fossil fuel. I mean, he's a radical,
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  but he on certain things is aligned with conservatives, and that's the only thing
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  anyone talks about, and I think that's the problem. Wow, Justin is
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  always thanks very much for your time. We will visit again, hopefully next
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  month, and until then, take care, be well, and have a
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  great Thanksgiving. Thank you, Happy Thanksgiving everybody, Thank you very much.
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  Justin Haskins with us this morning from the Heartland Institute and the website Stoppingsocialism dot
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  com. That's his baby as well. He's also author of several books with
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  Glenn Becker, at least one and I know another one's coming out, maybe
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  two, but yeah. Good friend of the program and always good to get
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  his insight here on the Morning Show with Preston Scott