Latest / The Chuck ToddCast / Chuck’s Commentary - America Is Unraveling Under Trump + Echoes of “Bloody Sunday” In Minneapolis

Transcript

Chuck’s Commentary - America Is Unraveling Under Trump + Echoes of “Bloody Sunday” In Minneapolis · The Chuck ToddCast

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1:51
Speaker 1: Happy Monday, and welcome to another episode of the Chuck Podcast.
1:54
Speaker 1: I am going on advil and caffeine. Those of you
1:58
Speaker 1: that are in the sort of I guess the eastern
2:03
Speaker 1: half of the country slash southeastern half. Right, it's sort
2:06
Speaker 1: of about a third of the country under this massive
2:09
Speaker 1: winter weather storm. So I've got some good old fashioned
2:14
Speaker 1: back pain. I'm looking forward to. Good thing. I got
2:18
Speaker 1: going to hit the back doctor at some point this week.
2:21
Speaker 1: Good time for it right good time. It's nothing like
2:24
Speaker 1: doing all that snow shoveling here in Washington. What does
2:26
Speaker 1: that mean? Well, look, there's obviously a ton going on.
2:32
Speaker 1: I did something I rarely do, did a quick for
2:34
Speaker 1: those of you that do subscribe to the YouTube channel,
2:36
Speaker 1: and if you don't, please do, because when we do
2:39
Speaker 1: breaking news updates, we're more likely to do them on
2:41
Speaker 1: the YouTube channel before it makes it onto the audio channel.
2:45
Speaker 1: I am definitely more prolonged form, as many of you know,
2:48
Speaker 1: but sometimes moments call for some important reaction and sort
2:56
Speaker 1: of trying to I went up with a video sort
2:59
Speaker 1: of when we knew a lot, but when we didn't
3:01
Speaker 1: know anything everything and the important questions that needed to
3:06
Speaker 1: be asked of the government in there in the ways
3:09
Speaker 1: they were trying to explain what happened in the death
3:13
Speaker 1: of Alex Pretty in Minneapolis. Which is obviously going to
3:17
Speaker 1: take up a line and share this monologue, but let
3:19
Speaker 1: me go through a bit of my table of contents
3:23
Speaker 1: for this episode. It's going to be more than Minneapolis
3:26
Speaker 1: that I'm focused on. I think this has been a
3:28
Speaker 1: month that I'm calling it the Great Unraveling, and I'm
3:30
Speaker 1: going to get to that in a minute, because we're
3:34
Speaker 1: we've I know, we've had many moments similar to this
3:37
Speaker 1: in the Trump era, But when you really take the
3:40
Speaker 1: totality of the last thirty days and everything that has
3:43
Speaker 1: happened internationally domestically, we are at a tipping point. And
3:52
Speaker 1: I don't think, as many of you know, I'm no alarmist.
3:56
Speaker 1: In fact, I'm always looking to not sound in a law,
4:00
Speaker 1: to look for ways to not issue issue a sky
4:08
Speaker 1: is falling type proclamation. There are many people that have
4:13
Speaker 1: been preaching sky is falling for years now. Maybe some
4:15
Speaker 1: of them are saying I told you so, but I
4:17
Speaker 1: still don't believe in when you pull the fire alarm,
4:22
Speaker 1: you've got to be very very proverbally. Well that is
4:26
Speaker 1: very very judicious. But we're at a moment and I
4:30
Speaker 1: think anybody who doesn't see this doesn't want to see this.
4:37
Speaker 1: That's about the only way I can put it. So
4:40
Speaker 1: we'll get to that my podcast time machine. It is Monday,
4:43
Speaker 1: so you know I'm going to go into the time machine.
4:47
Speaker 2: I'm just going to give you.
4:48
Speaker 1: Two words, bloody Sunday. That's all I'm going to give you.
4:51
Speaker 1: Because it may invoke a few images in your head
4:55
Speaker 1: and that's exactly what I hope it does. We will
4:59
Speaker 1: get to that, and of course I will take some questions,
5:03
Speaker 1: but we're going to begin. We're going to begin with
5:09
Speaker 1: What I want to do is take a step back.
5:11
Speaker 1: This has been a horrendous month in the history of
5:15
Speaker 1: the Republic. Obviously, we've had worse months. The country that
5:20
Speaker 1: has had its own civil war has had worse months.
5:23
Speaker 1: More people have died. There's not equating that this month
5:27
Speaker 1: is worse in history. But this is the single worst month.
5:32
Speaker 1: And it's funny about what January seems to bring right January.
5:35
Speaker 1: We thought January twenty twenty one was the low point.
5:39
Speaker 1: Is it possible that January twenty twenty six is a
5:43
Speaker 1: brand new low point than even what we dealt with
5:48
Speaker 1: in and around January six. Historians like to say that
5:54
Speaker 1: history moves in decades where nothing happens, and then there
5:57
Speaker 1: are weeks where decades happen. And in some ways, January
6:01
Speaker 1: twenty twenty six hasn't just been a month. It's been
6:04
Speaker 1: a rupture. We began this year with one of the
6:06
Speaker 1: most audacious uses of American hard power in memory, the
6:10
Speaker 1: extraction of Nicholas Maduro from Venezuela presented as a bold
6:15
Speaker 1: reclaiming of US influence in the Western hemisphere. But if
6:19
Speaker 1: that was a sledgehammer meant to uphold order, what we're
6:24
Speaker 1: watching now is the collapse of consent. That order, once
6:28
Speaker 1: rested on the illusion of stability, legal, geopolitical, scientific is
6:34
Speaker 1: unraveling before our eyes, and all of it is happening
6:38
Speaker 1: in real time. This is not a time to avert
6:41
Speaker 1: your eyes. We're going to start in Minneapolis this month
6:44
Speaker 1: because federal agents being deployed as part of a massive
6:47
Speaker 1: immigration enforcement surge have now been involved in two fatal
6:52
Speaker 1: shootings in less than three weeks. On January twenty fourth,
6:55
Speaker 1: border patrol agents shot and killed Alex Pretty, thirty seven
6:59
Speaker 1: year old you nurse and a lawful gun owner, during
7:03
Speaker 1: an immigration operation in South Minneapolis. Federal officials initially said
7:08
Speaker 1: Pretty was armed and approached agents aggressively, claims that are
7:12
Speaker 1: now challenged by multiple videos showing him holding a phone
7:17
Speaker 1: and trying to help another protester before being tackled, attacked
7:21
Speaker 1: with pepper spray, beaten, and then shot ten times after
7:28
Speaker 1: he had been subdued, ten times after he had been subdued.
7:35
Speaker 1: This was an assassination. There's no other way to put it.
7:40
Speaker 1: This was intentional, may not have been premeditated, but these
7:44
Speaker 1: were trigger happy officers. They assassinated an American citizen. There's
7:51
Speaker 1: no other way to look at it. And they felt
7:54
Speaker 1: comfortable doing it because nothing happened to any ICE agent
8:00
Speaker 1: after the killing of Renee Good under questionable circumstances, and
8:07
Speaker 1: that decision by the federal government to not uphold the law,
8:12
Speaker 1: to not instigate an investigation sent two messages. I'm going
8:18
Speaker 1: to paraphrase my friend Robert George, longtime conservative columnists and thinker.
8:23
Speaker 1: I first got to know him when he was a
8:24
Speaker 1: columnist at the New York Post. And as he said,
8:27
Speaker 1: the decision not to do that sent two terrible messages
8:30
Speaker 1: that made a moment like this, the murder of Alex
8:35
Speaker 1: Pretty by federal agents inevitable. By not an opening an investigation,
8:42
Speaker 1: ICE agents were told, you have nothing to worry about.
8:46
Speaker 1: That's the message that was sent after Renee Good. And
8:49
Speaker 1: the second message that was sent to residents of Minneapolis
8:52
Speaker 1: is the federal government is not going to uphold the
8:54
Speaker 1: law or your constitutional rights. You're going to have to
8:59
Speaker 1: you might have to take matters into your own hands.
9:04
Speaker 1: So the decision by our federal government to not uphold
9:08
Speaker 1: the Constitution and the amount of constitutional rights violated on
9:12
Speaker 1: this man, Alex Pretty, let alone renee Good, is astonishing.
9:18
Speaker 1: It's fascinating. And you know, some of my friends on
9:20
Speaker 1: the right are laughing at those on the left defending
9:24
Speaker 1: Alex Pretty's Second Amendment rights. But that's the thing with
9:28
Speaker 1: the Constitution. You don't pick and choose. It's all there.
9:34
Speaker 1: And so conservatives that are going out there, or people
9:38
Speaker 1: like Todd Blanche or Scott Bessett. Boy to Scott Bessett,
9:42
Speaker 1: you we know what he's up to, right, Scott Besson
9:44
Speaker 1: is so desperate for the president listening to him the
9:46
Speaker 1: economy that he defends all this other bullshit in order
9:49
Speaker 1: to stay in Trump's good graces. But he really embarrasses himself.
9:53
Speaker 1: He knows so little about the law or the Constitution,
9:58
Speaker 1: and so when he goes out there, he'd be better
10:00
Speaker 1: off just saying that's not my lane, because he makes
10:03
Speaker 1: an absolute fool of himself. And now he wants to
10:06
Speaker 1: start a separate, a separist you know, he starts behaving
10:10
Speaker 1: like some sort of Russian propagandist with this Alberta secession movement.
10:14
Speaker 1: He's manufacturing. But my goodness, I mean, I'm thankful that
10:18
Speaker 1: Bessett is a rational actor when it comes to the economy,
10:22
Speaker 1: the Fed tariffs. But good god, sir, don't make a
10:26
Speaker 1: fool of yourself, because you really are making a fool
10:28
Speaker 1: of yourself. But as I was trying to warn you
10:33
Speaker 1: in the initial aftermath, specific questions had to be asked
10:37
Speaker 1: of DHS because they immediately said he was armed. Well,
10:42
Speaker 1: and I said, Minnesota is an open carrey state, they
10:45
Speaker 1: have permits. Be careful here, let's make let's find out
10:48
Speaker 1: what his legal status was as a gun owner. Well,
10:50
Speaker 1: it turns out he had all the proper paperwork to
10:55
Speaker 1: carry that weapon with him. And it's it's it's amusing
10:59
Speaker 1: to me to watch Donald Trump complain and others in
11:03
Speaker 1: his administration. They said, who brings a gun to a protest?
11:07
Speaker 1: Have you taken a look at the footage of January
11:08
Speaker 1: six So let me put the question right back to them,
11:14
Speaker 1: who carries a gun to a protest on January sixth?
11:17
Speaker 1: It's quite a few people that carried guns to that protest,
11:20
Speaker 1: quite a few.
11:25
Speaker 2: And I thought.
11:27
Speaker 1: The idea of the Constitution was that it's it's you know,
11:31
Speaker 1: it's there to serve those you like and those you
11:33
Speaker 1: don't like. The Second Amendment isn't just for the right
11:37
Speaker 1: wing and fear and this was always a point that
11:42
Speaker 1: my Second Amendment conservative friends will make in the past.
11:45
Speaker 1: You don't know when your government's going to turn on you. Well,
11:49
Speaker 1: there's a lot of progressives in Minneapolis finding out what
11:51
Speaker 1: happens when the government turns on them, because that's what
11:54
Speaker 1: this looks like. A government that's decided that the politics
11:59
Speaker 1: of communities they don't agree with deserve to have their
12:06
Speaker 1: constitutional rights stripped away from them.
12:10
Speaker 2: That's not America. That's fascism.
12:13
Speaker 1: I don't like throwing around the F word very often
12:16
Speaker 1: any of the efforts because it's one of those things
12:19
Speaker 1: you can't unwerring it. I view it like rape. You
12:21
Speaker 1: accuse somebody of being a fascist, you've accused him of
12:23
Speaker 1: being a Nazi. There's no going back, there's nothing else
12:25
Speaker 1: you can go to. But they're behaving like them, and
12:30
Speaker 1: I don't know what American wants to emulate them. Put
12:35
Speaker 1: it this way, if you're a human being that wants
12:36
Speaker 1: to emulate that, you're not an American. Stop trying to
12:40
Speaker 1: claim You're an American, because an American believes in liberty
12:44
Speaker 1: and believes in freedom.
12:48
Speaker 2: So here we are.
12:49
Speaker 1: We're not in a hypothetical debate about use of force.
12:52
Speaker 1: This is citizens versus their own governments agents. And it
12:54
Speaker 1: raises the elementary political question when the federal state treats
13:00
Speaker 1: the lawful exercise of rights as a pretext for lethal force,
13:04
Speaker 1: which is what DHS is claiming here. What remains of
13:07
Speaker 1: our social contract? And that's the question pressing itself on
13:11
Speaker 1: the streets of Minneapolis right now, and it's the conscience
13:16
Speaker 1: of the Republic. This unraveling, though, moves beyond Minneapolis. And
13:21
Speaker 1: I'm not steppy.
13:23
Speaker 2: I'm not.
13:24
Speaker 1: That isn't all I have to say about Minneapolis, But
13:25
Speaker 1: I kind of want to get at this theme of
13:28
Speaker 1: this January unraveling of America before our eyes and Donald
13:35
Speaker 1: Trump's leadership that is destroying everything.
13:38
Speaker 2: That we thought we knew about our country.
13:41
Speaker 1: Let's talk about the global fracture Canada Davos on the
13:44
Speaker 1: global stage press. No moment better signifies the erosion of
13:48
Speaker 1: the post World War tool rules based order than what
13:51
Speaker 1: folded at Davos last week. As I've mentioned earlier on
13:55
Speaker 1: this on earlier episodes. At the World Economic Forum, and
14:00
Speaker 1: Prime Minister Mark Carney delivered a blistering address declaring that
14:03
Speaker 1: the old rules based international order, centered on predictable alliance,
14:08
Speaker 1: collective norms and US leadership has fractured. In transition, Carney
14:13
Speaker 1: didn't just disagree with US direction. He openly said that
14:16
Speaker 1: the Middle Powers must build new frameworks of cooperation because
14:20
Speaker 1: the old one no longer protects. Then it's seismic. This
14:25
Speaker 1: is our closest ally for over a century. He's publicly
14:30
Speaker 1: reframing global geopolitics and urging peers to hedge against the
14:34
Speaker 1: unpredictability of great power behavior, particularly the United States. He
14:41
Speaker 1: has to live right next door to the United States,
14:44
Speaker 1: and the diplomatic repercussions have been immediate. President Trump rescinded
14:47
Speaker 1: Canada's invitation to join his so called Board of Peace.
14:51
Speaker 1: He simultaneously is threatening one hundred percent tariffs on Canadian
14:54
Speaker 1: products after Ottawa made moves on trade with China. The
14:58
Speaker 1: irony there is Donald Trump's response to Canada is to
15:03
Speaker 1: tax you in me.
15:05
Speaker 2: He wants to.
15:05
Speaker 1: Punish Canada by punished by punishing Americans with higher taxes.
15:11
Speaker 1: The rules based order isn't just praying it's visibly splintering
15:15
Speaker 1: before a global audience.
15:19
Speaker 2: Here at home.
15:19
Speaker 1: The unraveling isn't limited to force as we've seen on
15:23
Speaker 1: the streets of Minneapolis, or geopolitics as we saw at Davos.
15:26
Speaker 1: It's also just in our basic institutions. On the digital front,
15:29
Speaker 1: a highly politicized deal to restructure TikTok, which has sort
15:33
Speaker 1: of been buried under the obvious headlines, a platform used
15:36
Speaker 1: by nearly one hundred and fifty million Americans, was negotiated
15:39
Speaker 1: in ways that appeared defined less by national security imperatives
15:43
Speaker 1: and more by who the investors were politically aligned with.
15:47
Speaker 1: The algorithm remains under byt dance control, which means it's
15:51
Speaker 1: under control of the Chinese Communist Party, so I don't
15:54
Speaker 1: know what we've accomplished there, and the negotiating entity retains
15:57
Speaker 1: significant ownership, so I don't know how this still doesn't
16:00
Speaker 1: violate federal law. Remember they passed a law about TikTok,
16:06
Speaker 1: So this looks less like securing data from foreign influence
16:09
Speaker 1: and more like media alignment because of who the American
16:15
Speaker 1: buyers are and who will control this algorithm. And then
16:21
Speaker 1: there's in public health, an arena that for generations was
16:24
Speaker 1: an intellectual and moral high ground less immune from politics
16:29
Speaker 1: and just about every other institution that we have. And
16:31
Speaker 1: we're witnessing something remarkable, scientific consensus being openly debated as
16:35
Speaker 1: if we were just another opinion. A senior voice from
16:39
Speaker 1: the CDC's Advisory Pedal has publicly questioned whether the polio
16:42
Speaker 1: vaccine should be mandatory at a time when measles cases
16:46
Speaker 1: are spiking in more than a dozen states, numbers that
16:49
Speaker 1: we haven't seen in decades. Make America measles again. It's
16:56
Speaker 1: not a data glitch. This is institutional hesitancy in the
16:59
Speaker 1: faith of a resurgence. If foundational public health successes are
17:04
Speaker 1: subject to doubt, then what is it. This is the
17:08
Speaker 1: ultimate gaslighting of American It's going to kill Americans, just
17:14
Speaker 1: kill them. And now we're four days away from a
17:18
Speaker 1: government shut down, and believe you me, this government is
17:21
Speaker 1: shutting down. There is zero trust among Democrats with any
17:27
Speaker 1: of the Trump administration right now. There is no eight
17:31
Speaker 1: or nine moderate Democrats ready to play ball, not after
17:35
Speaker 1: the murder of two American citizens in Minneapolis, and they
17:40
Speaker 1: feel pretty comfortable doing this. President's approval ratings are at
17:44
Speaker 1: historic lows for him, and we're just in this. You know,
17:50
Speaker 1: he's literally stumbling us into a potential war if we're
17:53
Speaker 1: not careful, screwing up the NATO alliance making America let's secure.
17:58
Speaker 1: So I don't know how you can. And the only
18:03
Speaker 1: power Democrats have is the power of the person and
18:06
Speaker 1: what remains of the legislative branch. So I don't know
18:11
Speaker 1: how they can be a credible opposition party if they
18:15
Speaker 1: acquiesce at this point. So we're going to get a
18:18
Speaker 1: government check out.
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Speaker 1: different because it is different.
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Speaker 2: It's the sound of one hundred.
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Speaker 1: Years of consensus, diplomatic, legal, and scientific hitting the floor
20:18
Speaker 1: and shattering, just shattering. So let's go back to Minnesota.
20:24
Speaker 1: I'm going to walk through everything that happened because the
20:27
Speaker 1: details matter here so much. So it's the second time
20:31
Speaker 1: in a single month that a civilian has been killed
20:33
Speaker 1: by federal agents in Minneapolis during immigration enforcement operations.
20:37
Speaker 2: Two deaths. Two.
20:39
Speaker 1: We're not sure we're ever going to get real investigations,
20:41
Speaker 1: but we need them, and a growing sense among state
20:43
Speaker 1: and local officials that they have to be spectators and
20:46
Speaker 1: events unfolding in their own communities. This is not a
20:50
Speaker 1: policing question anymore. This is a constitutional one. Alex Pretty
20:55
Speaker 1: was a thirty seven year old I see you nurse.
20:58
Speaker 1: He worked with veterans, He lived in Minnesota. He legally
21:01
Speaker 1: owned a firearm and under Minnesota law, had the right.
21:04
Speaker 2: To carry it.
21:06
Speaker 1: And given the fact that American citizens in Minneapolis have
21:09
Speaker 1: been gunned down by ice, how should he would he
21:14
Speaker 1: had have been irresponsible not to protect himself. Federal officials
21:19
Speaker 1: say he was armed a fact, did he brandish his weapon.
21:24
Speaker 1: They have no evidence of it, and there's no video
21:26
Speaker 1: showing that he did. They claimed that he posed a
21:28
Speaker 1: threat during a confrontation with Border patrol agents. But in Minnesota,
21:32
Speaker 1: being armed is not the crime. It's simply a status
21:35
Speaker 1: one regulated by permits and training, not suspicion. It's already
21:40
Speaker 1: a violation of his Second Amendment rights. And then here's
21:42
Speaker 1: where the legal line matters. There is a vast legal
21:47
Speaker 1: canyon between being armed and brandishing. One is lawful, the
21:50
Speaker 1: other is a crime. And unless that canyon has crossed
21:54
Speaker 1: clearly and demonstrably, the use of lethal force isn't just questionable,
22:00
Speaker 1: it's indefensible. And remember, this man was shot ten times
22:05
Speaker 1: after he was subdued. They killed him in cold blood. God,
22:13
Speaker 1: I can't believe the lack of empathy by our elected officials.
22:18
Speaker 1: This shouldn't have happened. I mean, you can't even perfect.
22:25
Speaker 1: These folks in charge, can't even lament this man's death.
22:30
Speaker 1: The videos tell everything, and boy, thank goodness their citizen
22:35
Speaker 1: video here, Because you can't trust your government right now.
22:39
Speaker 1: I can't believe I'm saying those words. Many of you
22:41
Speaker 1: know me, that know me a long time. No I'm
22:43
Speaker 1: an institutionalist. Ultimately, I do think most bureaucrats are trying
22:49
Speaker 1: to do the right thing. They sometimes are misled, but
22:51
Speaker 1: they try to do the right thing. So I mostly
22:53
Speaker 1: believe in our institutions they want to do the right thing.
22:57
Speaker 1: But leadership of these institutions can pervert things. And right
23:01
Speaker 1: now we're in a perverted state of mind because multiple
23:04
Speaker 1: bystandard videos up here to show Preddy just simply holding
23:08
Speaker 1: a phone, not a weapon, as he tried to intervene
23:10
Speaker 1: and record what was happening. Again, a First Amendment right.
23:15
Speaker 1: Whether that ultimately holds up under investigation is precisely the point,
23:18
Speaker 1: because right now Minnesota officials haven't even been fully inside
23:22
Speaker 1: that investigation. Anybody not calling for a thorough and independent
23:28
Speaker 1: investigation does not want to know the results of said investigation.
23:34
Speaker 1: And anybody that thinks DHS or the FBI can be
23:37
Speaker 1: trusted with this investigation needs to get their head examined,
23:40
Speaker 1: because cash Bitel and Christy Nome have zero credibility outside
23:44
Speaker 1: of the thirty to thirty five percent of the country
23:48
Speaker 1: that wants this behavior and is perfectly happy with this
23:52
Speaker 1: kind of behavior, or a free country people could want this.
23:57
Speaker 2: All they want.
23:58
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, thirty five son of our country sees the
24:01
Speaker 1: constitutional as constitution is sort of just an advice column.
24:09
Speaker 1: So here's what the changes the story. Local police chiefs,
24:12
Speaker 1: the governor, state investigators. They're being locked out of real
24:14
Speaker 1: time access to evidence in the achilling of their own
24:18
Speaker 1: citizens twice. If the federal government reserves the right to
24:24
Speaker 1: deploy agents in two states use lethal force, and then
24:28
Speaker 1: control the investigative process entirely, the consent that underpins federalism
24:33
Speaker 1: collapses completely.
24:35
Speaker 2: This is a total and.
24:36
Speaker 1: Complete violation of the tenth Amendment. It's amazing this one
24:40
Speaker 1: killing how many different I mean, there's a reason are
24:45
Speaker 1: the first ten amendments are called the Bill of Rights,
24:47
Speaker 1: and these federal agents violated half of them in that
24:51
Speaker 1: one incident in less than thirty seconds. So you don't
24:55
Speaker 1: need to decide whether the agents acted lawfully to understand
24:58
Speaker 1: this problem. If they did act lawfully, transparency would only
25:01
Speaker 1: strengthen the case. If they didn't, secrecy will compound the
25:05
Speaker 1: damage I'm reporting. I'll let you decide. Now here's the
25:11
Speaker 1: question you guys should set with if lawful behavior can
25:15
Speaker 1: be retroactively reframed as threatening and if local small d
25:19
Speaker 1: democratic institutions have no meaningful role in accountability. Then rights
25:24
Speaker 1: only exist on paper, not in practice. And once citizens
25:29
Speaker 1: believe that the social contract doesn't break all at once,
25:33
Speaker 1: it erodes quietly locally until trust is completely gone. Minnesota
25:40
Speaker 1: isn't an outlier. It's a warning flare. Now let's widen
25:46
Speaker 1: the lens, because what's happening domestically is being mirrored globally.
25:51
Speaker 1: Last week at Davos, something happened that would have been
25:53
Speaker 1: almost unthinkable a decade ago. The Prime Minister of Canada
25:57
Speaker 1: publicly questioned the viability of American leadership as a rival,
26:00
Speaker 1: but as an ally. And when allies stop speaking in euphemisms,
26:05
Speaker 1: it means something is fundamentally shifted. To Mark Carney's credit,
26:10
Speaker 1: he didn't rant. You might say I'm ranting a little bit,
26:13
Speaker 1: but he didn't.
26:14
Speaker 2: He didn't posture.
26:15
Speaker 1: He did something far more consequential. He's simply reframed the
26:19
Speaker 1: global order. He is reacting to the reality on the ground,
26:25
Speaker 1: not some sort of nostalgic belief.
26:28
Speaker 2: In the past, he.
26:29
Speaker 1: Called the so called rules based international system of fiction,
26:33
Speaker 1: not because rules don't matter, but because the system enforcing
26:35
Speaker 1: them no longer behaves predictably system in this case is
26:39
Speaker 1: doing a.
26:39
Speaker 2: Lot of work.
26:40
Speaker 1: It's really the Donald Trump led America. He argued that
26:44
Speaker 1: middle powers countries like Canada, Australia, parts of Europe can
26:46
Speaker 1: no longer assume that alignment with the United States guarantees
26:50
Speaker 1: stability or protection. Instead, they need independent frameworks, redundant alliances,
26:56
Speaker 1: and a lot of hedging strategies. Anti Americanism at this point,
27:02
Speaker 1: it's simply Mark Carney, central banker doing a little risk management.
27:11
Speaker 1: It's Canada, folks. This is like our brother or sister
27:17
Speaker 1: deciding the family union doesn't work anymore. It's not France
27:22
Speaker 1: or Turkey. This isn't a country flirting with autonomy. Canada
27:27
Speaker 1: has been the most reliable partner in the American system
27:30
Speaker 1: for a century, economically, militarily, culturally. When Canada stops organizing
27:37
Speaker 1: its foreign policy around Washington, that's not symbolic, it's tetonic.
27:44
Speaker 2: This is an earthquake, folks.
27:46
Speaker 1: And the response from Washington matters just as much. So,
27:49
Speaker 1: instead of reassurance, the reaction was sort of irrational retaliation.
27:54
Speaker 1: I say irrational because it makes no sense and it
27:56
Speaker 1: also violates multiple trade agreements. But rescinded imitations, tariff threats,
28:01
Speaker 1: public slights. Confirms the very concern Carni raised that alliances
28:05
Speaker 1: are now transactional, conditional, and personal. In some ways, this
28:10
Speaker 1: is Donald Trump trying to overturn the American the entire
28:14
Speaker 1: American order on how America uses its power. So when
28:21
Speaker 1: allies stop performing the rituals of deference, they're not rebelling.
28:26
Speaker 1: They're simply adapting. And that's what Canada's doing. This post
28:30
Speaker 1: war order wasn't held together by dominance alone. It was
28:33
Speaker 1: held together by trust. It was held together by restraint, predictability,
28:39
Speaker 1: and shared rules and mutual respect, not transactional respect. Once
28:45
Speaker 1: that trust goes, power doesn't disappear, but it does fragment
28:50
Speaker 1: and fragmentation is the defining condition of the world we're entering.
28:54
Speaker 1: A fragmented world is a more dangerous one, and Donald
28:57
Speaker 1: Trump has made the world more dangerous. This unraveling that
29:02
Speaker 1: I'm focused on today, that we're talking about, isn't just
29:05
Speaker 1: about force or alliances. It's also about authority who we
29:09
Speaker 1: trust to tell us what's real, what's safe, and what matters.
29:12
Speaker 1: And nowhere has that been more obvious right now than
29:13
Speaker 1: in public health and in media. Aken all of this
29:16
Speaker 1: has been happening in the month of January, so let's
29:19
Speaker 1: start with the CDC and the start of this year.
29:21
Speaker 1: We are having serious discussions inside elite public health circles
29:25
Speaker 1: about whether the polio vaccine should be mandatory. What we
29:30
Speaker 1: don't like that we nearly eradicated polio, so let's bring
29:33
Speaker 1: it back. Is that what make America great again means
29:37
Speaker 1: there's no science has changed on polio, mind you, just
29:42
Speaker 1: the politics around trust have changed. At the same time,
29:46
Speaker 1: measles cases are climbing across more than a dozen states.
29:50
Speaker 1: Diseases we had effectively contained are resurfacing, not because we
29:54
Speaker 1: lack tools, but because institutions are hesitating to defend their
29:58
Speaker 1: own successes. Actually it's not even and it's hesitating to
30:01
Speaker 1: defend successes. You now have people in charge of public
30:04
Speaker 1: health that are at war with those successes. There are
30:09
Speaker 1: at war with the troop.
30:10
Speaker 2: Robert F.
30:11
Speaker 1: Kennedy juniors, at war with the truth, and he is
30:14
Speaker 1: appointed a bunch of people who are making us all
30:17
Speaker 1: more vulnerable to diseases that we had nearly eradicated. So
30:23
Speaker 1: when institutions stop asserting settled science with confidence, skepticism, of
30:29
Speaker 1: course fills the vacuum, and once public health becomes negotiable,
30:34
Speaker 1: the cost is not theoretical, it's biological. Welcome to Darwinism.
30:43
Speaker 1: Now we layer in media power. The administration has approved
30:46
Speaker 1: a TikTok restructuring that leaves algorithmic control largely intact, keeps
30:51
Speaker 1: a significant bite dance steak Ie the Chinese Communist Party
30:55
Speaker 1: influence on eighteen to thirty year olds, and shifts operational
30:59
Speaker 1: authority towards politically aligned domestic investors, people that just want
31:04
Speaker 1: the algorithm to do Donald Trump's bidding. That is not
31:09
Speaker 1: what the US Congress was trying to do with TikTok.
31:13
Speaker 1: That is not a clean national security firewall. This is
31:17
Speaker 1: simply a redistribution of influence. The most powerful content distribution
31:22
Speaker 1: system in American life, one that shapes attention, culture, and
31:25
Speaker 1: political discourse, particularly for those under the age of thirty five,
31:29
Speaker 1: is now being organized, reorganized not around independence or liberation,
31:34
Speaker 1: but alignment. So when scientific authority weakens and media infrastructures
31:42
Speaker 1: become politically entangled, truth loses its referee. And when truth
31:47
Speaker 1: loses its referee, disputes aren't settled by evidence, they're settled
31:51
Speaker 1: by power. Suddenly, the only amendment that's going to matter
31:56
Speaker 1: a lot might be the Second Amendment for too many people.
31:59
Speaker 1: That's the unraveling in its final form. Not chaos, but
32:05
Speaker 1: contestation everywhere all the time. So I've been calling this
32:10
Speaker 1: the Great Unraveling, not because everything is collapsing all at once,
32:14
Speaker 1: but because the threads that once held things together are
32:17
Speaker 1: slipping quietly in plain sight. In Minnesota, it's the idea
32:23
Speaker 1: that force can replace consent. In Canada, it's the assumption
32:27
Speaker 1: that American leadership is predictable. In our institutions, it's the
32:30
Speaker 1: belief that science and truth can stand on their own
32:33
Speaker 1: without being defended. History never announces these turning points. Right
32:40
Speaker 1: History simply leaves warning lights, and right now there are
32:44
Speaker 1: a lot of warning lights blinking at once. Here's the
32:49
Speaker 1: part that matters most though. Unraveling isn't destiny. It's a process,
32:55
Speaker 1: and processes don't reverse themselves. Every era that thought its
32:59
Speaker 1: order was eventually learned it wasn't. The world built after
33:03
Speaker 1: World War two work not because it was flawless, but
33:06
Speaker 1: because people believed it was worth standing up for. Belief
33:10
Speaker 1: was the glue, and Donald Trump has spent the last
33:14
Speaker 1: ten years questioning the belief of American power and superiority
33:19
Speaker 1: over the last seventy years, and he's unfortunately succeeding. And
33:22
Speaker 1: it's making us all more poorer, weaker, and more vulnerable,
33:29
Speaker 1: because when belief weakens, responsibility doesn't shift to someone else,
33:32
Speaker 1: it shifts to all of us. Doesn't mean we all
33:36
Speaker 1: have to believe the same thing, and it doesn't mean
33:41
Speaker 1: everyone has to do the same thing. But there is
33:44
Speaker 1: nobody else. You can't hope. Oh, maybe Senate Republicans, Maybe
33:47
Speaker 1: Mitch McConnell will realize how wrong he was about not
33:50
Speaker 1: convicting Donald Trump, the single biggest mistake any senator has
33:53
Speaker 1: made in over one hundred years in this country. Consider
34:00
Speaker 1: the damage we're facing this month. POI that decision was
34:03
Speaker 1: such a horrible decision. I assume he loses sleep at night.
34:10
Speaker 1: But the point is, you cannot rely on other people
34:13
Speaker 1: to do the right thing. You have to do it.
34:17
Speaker 1: For some of you. It just simply means vote for others.
34:21
Speaker 1: It's protesting. Speaking up matters, Flooding your elected representatives with
34:25
Speaker 1: calls to action matters, refusing to normalize what feels wrong matters.
34:32
Speaker 1: This is not just some period we're trying to survive.
34:38
Speaker 1: Although That is what we're all trying to do here, right.
34:44
Speaker 1: We are trying to survive, but we can't lose our country.
34:47
Speaker 1: And we're losing our country. I don't say it lightly.
34:52
Speaker 1: I don't say it for dramatic effect. It's a fact
34:55
Speaker 1: we're losing our country. We don't trust each other. FBI
34:58
Speaker 1: comes to my door right now, I leave. A single
35:00
Speaker 1: thing they had to say. IRS comes to my door
35:02
Speaker 1: right now. I wouldn't believe a single thing they had
35:04
Speaker 1: to say. Department of Justice. I know I'm not alone.
35:07
Speaker 1: I can't believe I'm saying that. I never thought that
35:09
Speaker 1: under any other administration. I didn't think that under the
35:12
Speaker 1: first Trump administration. But you can't trust anything they say
35:17
Speaker 1: about public health. They can't trust anything they say out
35:21
Speaker 1: of DHS about transparency and what their law enforcement agencies
35:25
Speaker 1: are doing. We can't trust anything the president. I mean,
35:28
Speaker 1: I got the President just lies just as easily as
35:32
Speaker 1: he breathes in all of his speeches, proclamations and there
35:34
Speaker 1: are true. You cannot believe anything out of this government.
35:38
Speaker 1: What doesn't work anymore is sitting out and assuming someone
35:42
Speaker 1: else is going to fix it. The media has got
35:44
Speaker 1: to do something. Republicans got to do something. Everybody has
35:49
Speaker 1: to do their part because when enough people choose inaction,
35:56
Speaker 1: irresponsible power fills the vacuum, and once that happens, rebuilding
36:00
Speaker 1: trust will get even harder. The order we inherited is changing.
36:05
Speaker 1: The question is whether we're willing to stand up for
36:07
Speaker 1: what comes next before standing up becomes impossible. All Right,
36:14
Speaker 1: I'm a sneak in a break and when we come back,
36:20
Speaker 1: another brave new world that we're entering the world of
36:24
Speaker 1: artificial intelligence. And my conversation with the documentarian who's just
36:28
Speaker 1: out with a new documentary, which you can see right
36:31
Speaker 1: now if you live in the Washington, DC area. I
36:33
Speaker 1: believe it's at the Tyson's Corner in the Tyson's Corner area.
36:38
Speaker 1: The movie is called Deep Faking Sam Altman. I'll sneak
36:41
Speaker 1: at a break. My conversation about that documentary is next.
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38:32
Speaker 1: the time machine today, which frankly, like I said, it's
38:36
Speaker 1: about bloody Sunday, and I know that invokes some of
38:41
Speaker 1: you may think, which where's he going? Is he staying
38:43
Speaker 1: in the Western Hemisphere? Is he going to Europe? Before
38:48
Speaker 1: I get to it. I do think it's interesting. One
38:51
Speaker 1: thing I didn't do the top is sort of what
38:55
Speaker 1: what is the near term political follow out here? I
39:00
Speaker 1: thought i'd quickly sort of get at the look fallow.
39:02
Speaker 1: Number one is this government shutting down right any sort
39:05
Speaker 1: of you know, there is no more distinction between those
39:09
Speaker 1: that want to abolish ICE and those that want to
39:11
Speaker 1: reform ICE. Right now, there is no interest in funding
39:15
Speaker 1: any part of VICE. You may have a Democratic party
39:17
Speaker 1: that is in favor of the idea of having an
39:20
Speaker 1: immigration enforcement law agency, but not under the leadership of Christino.
39:26
Speaker 1: What's fascinating to me on the politics side here is
39:29
Speaker 1: that you start to see you're seeing more elected Republicans
39:35
Speaker 1: get some distance from what Trump's DHS is doing. Here
39:40
Speaker 1: you have Kevin Stitt, the governor of Oklahoma, put out
39:43
Speaker 1: a joint statement, so he went on the record with
39:45
Speaker 1: the government, with the demo, with the vice chair of
39:48
Speaker 1: the NNGA National govern Association. Kevin Stid is the chair,
39:52
Speaker 1: Wes Moore is the vice chair. This is something that
39:54
Speaker 1: every year rotates between a Democrat and a Republican.
39:57
Speaker 2: This is a ray.
39:58
Speaker 1: That's why there's a Republican that's chair. This will rotate
40:01
Speaker 1: in a year, and whoever the vice chair is becomes
40:03
Speaker 1: the chair. And there's this whole thing. It's a very
40:07
Speaker 1: much designed to be a bipartisanal organization. And they put
40:10
Speaker 1: out a statement that essentially says the federal government needs
40:13
Speaker 1: to let cannot trample on the rights of state governments.
40:18
Speaker 1: He didn't quite it didn't use the word trample. It
40:21
Speaker 1: was definitely carefully worded, but it frankly, you know, before
40:28
Speaker 1: this month, I would assume most conservative governors would have
40:33
Speaker 1: been able to side with the statement that the NBA
40:35
Speaker 1: put out, which is that the federal government doesn't override
40:37
Speaker 1: states the right of state governments to find out what's
40:40
Speaker 1: happening to their citizens in their state, so it calls
40:43
Speaker 1: for a joint investigation. You've got a guy like Bill Cassidy, who,
40:46
Speaker 1: of course may feel braver speaking out against Trump administration
40:49
Speaker 1: now that Donald Trump has endorsed a primary opponent, but
40:52
Speaker 1: he has said that there is credibility issues with DHS
40:55
Speaker 1: and ICE and then the punditry class. And now a
41:00
Speaker 1: member of said punditry class is is Marjorie Taylor Green.
41:07
Speaker 1: She's been out of Congress now twenty days. I thought
41:09
Speaker 1: her statement and I'm going to read I want to
41:12
Speaker 1: read it here. I thought it was interesting because she
41:14
Speaker 1: makes the small C conservative point that I've been making
41:19
Speaker 1: quite a bit. Marjorie Taylor Green writs, I impeach Biden,
41:22
Speaker 1: Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandra Mayorchis. Those were my articles
41:25
Speaker 1: of impeachment that passed in the House of Representatives. I
41:28
Speaker 1: unapologetically believe in border security and deporting criminal illegal aliens,
41:32
Speaker 1: and I support law enforcement. However, I also unapologetically support
41:36
Speaker 1: the Second Amendment. Legally, carrying a firearm is not the
41:38
Speaker 1: same as brandishing a firearm. I support American's First and
41:42
Speaker 1: Fourth Amendment rights. There's nothing wrong with legally peacefully protesting
41:46
Speaker 1: and videoing MAGA. Consider it like this, and then she adds,
41:51
Speaker 1: we lost our minds when we watch Biden's FBI tracked
41:53
Speaker 1: down and aggressively carry out home invasions, her words, and
41:57
Speaker 1: arrest on peaceful J sixers who walked in the Capitol
42:01
Speaker 1: through open doors. Imagining if one of our MAGA independent journalists,
42:07
Speaker 1: or even just a MAGA supporter stood in the street
42:10
Speaker 1: outside a J sixer's house while Biden's FBI carried out
42:14
Speaker 1: a law enforcement operation home invasion and arrest. Then Biden's
42:19
Speaker 1: FBI guys goes to the MAGA guy videoing at all
42:22
Speaker 1: and shoves a woman with him to the ground and
42:24
Speaker 1: sprays them with bear spray. Then throws the MAGA guy
42:28
Speaker 1: to the ground as Maga guy was trying to help
42:30
Speaker 1: the woman off the ground. Then Biden's FBI beats Maga
42:33
Speaker 1: guy on the ground, disarms Mega guy, and then shoots
42:35
Speaker 1: him dead. What would have been our reaction in her
42:38
Speaker 1: hypothetical scenario. This is a hypothetical scenario, she pace, because
42:41
Speaker 1: guess what, this didn't happen under Biden's FBI, right, Yes,
42:44
Speaker 1: they did go and arrest people on January sixth, and
42:47
Speaker 1: not all of you are going to agree to the
42:49
Speaker 1: language she used to describe January six or those that
42:51
Speaker 1: were arrested under lawfully issued subpoenas and indictments. But she
42:59
Speaker 1: has a point here. What would have been the reaction
43:02
Speaker 1: had those FBI agents took a citizen who decided to
43:07
Speaker 1: videotape everything that was happening. So then she both sides
43:10
Speaker 1: it here. She says both sides that you to take
43:11
Speaker 1: off their political blinders. You are all being incited into
43:13
Speaker 1: civil war. Yet none of it solves any of the
43:15
Speaker 1: real problems that we all face, and tragically, people are dying.
43:18
Speaker 1: So that's the reaction from Marjorie Taylor Green. And you
43:21
Speaker 1: can say, well, she's already been breaking from Trump, but
43:23
Speaker 1: she does not break from her own ideology. She is
43:27
Speaker 1: seeing things as a small sea conservative and a memo
43:32
Speaker 1: to my conservative friends who say they're conservative and support
43:36
Speaker 1: this administration. This administration is the furthest thing away from
43:39
Speaker 1: traditional conservatism. It's not even close, couldn't be further. That's
43:47
Speaker 1: why there's you know, and I follow I follow all.
43:51
Speaker 1: I look, I am constantly consuming both MAGA conservatism. So
43:55
Speaker 1: the crazy guys like Roger Stone, who, by the way,
43:58
Speaker 1: is going on his radio show advocate invoking the Insurrection Act,
44:02
Speaker 1: and that should concern us. There are a few people
44:05
Speaker 1: in the president's circle advocating us, and he's a weak
44:10
Speaker 1: mind at the moment. There are people that are trying
44:15
Speaker 1: really hard to keep him from doing the craziest shit.
44:18
Speaker 1: There may not be enough people doing it, but there
44:20
Speaker 1: are people trying to do that, right, Even kat I
44:23
Speaker 1: always love it. My favorite attempt at this is like
44:26
Speaker 1: Kevin Stitt went on one of the Sunday shows and
44:28
Speaker 1: he said, you know, he's getting the president's getting bad advice.
44:31
Speaker 1: You know, nobody ever wants to criticize Donald Trump. It's
44:34
Speaker 1: his advisors. Well which advisor he wants to say, Steven Miller,
44:38
Speaker 1: but he can't bring himself to stay Stephen Miller. But
44:40
Speaker 1: it's clear that's what Kevin Stitt is saying. But the
44:43
Speaker 1: point is this is chipping away. This is becoming a
44:46
Speaker 1: massive political problem. There are true libertarian conservatives who would
44:50
Speaker 1: never vote for Kamala Harris, would never vote for a
44:53
Speaker 1: Democrat that cannot sit here in stomach what Donald Trump
44:56
Speaker 1: is doing and what this administration is doing, trampling on
45:01
Speaker 1: the Bill of rights. I mean just up and down
45:03
Speaker 1: the Bill of Rights, full on trampling. So this is
45:07
Speaker 1: a real political impact. This is a political disaster. Look,
45:12
Speaker 1: it is a disaster for all of us. But if
45:15
Speaker 1: you want to look at it just through the prism
45:16
Speaker 1: of politics, it's bad and everybody knows it's bad, even
45:20
Speaker 1: those that attempt to defend some part of what they're doing.
45:24
Speaker 1: Eric Erickson somebody I've known a long time. He's a
45:27
Speaker 1: very decent individual. We don't agree on everything, and he's
45:33
Speaker 1: somebody that sort of tries really hard to have a
45:36
Speaker 1: conversation with mega keeps one foot in the sort of
45:40
Speaker 1: the I'd say, i'd call him a skeptical skeptic of Trump.
45:46
Speaker 1: So it's interesting.
45:47
Speaker 2: He is not.
45:50
Speaker 1: Ready to say DHS shouldn't be in Minneapolis, but he
45:55
Speaker 1: is acknowledging that DHS is making stuff up and they
46:00
Speaker 1: have to stop doing that. So he puts out this
46:03
Speaker 1: one tweet, which I think, again, this is I think
46:06
Speaker 1: it's important to highlight this because this is how various
46:09
Speaker 1: folks are trying to get to the President in different
46:13
Speaker 1: ways to try to let him understand this is a
46:15
Speaker 1: political disaster. So he wants to blame this on democratic
46:21
Speaker 1: policies and the sanctuary city policies. He says, we are.
46:24
Speaker 1: He says he believed the only message that they should
46:27
Speaker 1: be saying is the following, we are at this point
46:29
Speaker 1: because the state of Minnesota and the city of Minneapolis
46:32
Speaker 1: continue to harbor illegal aliens. The American people want to
46:35
Speaker 1: port it. The deaths of American citizens are tragic and
46:38
Speaker 1: made more tragic by the governor and mayor whipping activists
46:40
Speaker 1: into a frenzy to stop the federal government from enforcing
46:43
Speaker 1: the laws of Minnesota and Minneapolis that they refuse to enforce.
46:47
Speaker 1: Neither Miss Good nor mister Pretty would be dead and
46:50
Speaker 1: the border patrol would not be roaming the streets of
46:51
Speaker 1: Minnesota if the state government cooperated with the federal government's
46:54
Speaker 1: efforts to deport illegal aliens. We will not cease enforcement
46:58
Speaker 1: of federal law because of a mob. So that's his
47:02
Speaker 1: way of defending what they're doing, and then because he
47:05
Speaker 1: can't he knows what they're doing is wrong. He also
47:09
Speaker 1: then adds this he said he believes and he's trying
47:13
Speaker 1: to separate the blame. What it really is is he's
47:15
Speaker 1: trying to give an off ramp to the West wing,
47:17
Speaker 1: which is maybe you can stop the bleeding here literally
47:23
Speaker 1: and figuratively if you do the following, and then he
47:25
Speaker 1: writes this, A lot of what is happening now is
47:27
Speaker 1: christinom marginalized Tom Holman, the guy who took that fifty
47:31
Speaker 1: grand bag of cash, so is kind of questionable legitimacy
47:35
Speaker 1: on his own. But I will tell you plenty of
47:40
Speaker 1: people Ali may Orchis and Jay Johnson will tell you
47:42
Speaker 1: Tom Holman very good things about Tom Holman, that he
47:45
Speaker 1: is a professional first who's allowed himself to be whipped
47:48
Speaker 1: up into a political frenzy a bit. But Eric Erickson
47:51
Speaker 1: is arguing that Tom Holman, not being marginalized is why
47:54
Speaker 1: we're here, and that the head of Border Patrol, because
47:58
Speaker 1: Christino prioritize deportation of excuse me, is he right? He
48:03
Speaker 1: goes a marginalized Tom Holman and the head of Border
48:05
Speaker 1: Patrol because those two prioritized deportations of criminals and gang
48:09
Speaker 1: menger gang members. Eric Erickson puts the blame on Christy Noman,
48:12
Speaker 1: Corey Lewandowski, her political advisor, who has some sort of
48:17
Speaker 1: status as a as a federal government worker, and he
48:19
Speaker 1: said no, and Lewandowski wanted broad public roundups without prioritizing
48:24
Speaker 1: the illegal aliens. They bypassed Homan and the head of
48:27
Speaker 1: Border Patrol and elevated Greg Bovino because they want the
48:30
Speaker 1: public confrontations and displays. It's a feature, not a bug,
48:33
Speaker 1: folks to put this sort of this Greg Bovino, he's
48:37
Speaker 1: some sort of want to be I mean, he comes
48:39
Speaker 1: across as some sort of like like he came out
48:42
Speaker 1: of the movie The Matrix, you know, him and his
48:45
Speaker 1: long leather coat. Some people want to say he's a Nazi,
48:48
Speaker 1: like I'm always you know, I'm trying not to go
48:51
Speaker 1: down that road because once you go down that road,
48:52
Speaker 1: you don't unring the bell. But the guy clearly is
48:56
Speaker 1: trying to invoke violence in the way he dresses. But
49:00
Speaker 1: it's like video game violence. It's stupid violence. It's matrix violence. Right,
49:04
Speaker 1: It's ridiculous. Virans ericson goes on and that's not the
49:08
Speaker 1: progressive press reporting this. That's the conservative Fox News, New
49:11
Speaker 1: York Post in Washington Examiner, and he said it's not
49:15
Speaker 1: just Tim Walls and Jacob Pride driving tensions. It is
49:18
Speaker 1: a policy choice made by the Secretary of All Landsecurity
49:21
Speaker 1: and those around her because they thought it would make
49:23
Speaker 1: for great coverage. The point is, look, Eric Herritson wants
49:29
Speaker 1: to defend the policy. It's hard to defend this policy
49:33
Speaker 1: when the people implementing the policy have no regard for
49:36
Speaker 1: the Constitution. This is no longer about the policy. This
49:41
Speaker 1: is about the use of force and the Constitution, and
49:44
Speaker 1: DHS has violated all of it. But the bigger happening
49:49
Speaker 1: here is that as I sort of, as I wrote
49:53
Speaker 1: two months ago on my sub stack, I know I'm
49:57
Speaker 1: gonna pull a muscle padding myself on the back. This
49:59
Speaker 1: coalition that Trump put together is fracturing. Well, it is
50:03
Speaker 1: breaking left and right, and he is And look, and
50:06
Speaker 1: I know you some of you follow erk ers are like, well,
50:09
Speaker 1: he's bolted on Trump and come back before. Yeah, because
50:11
Speaker 1: he's a conservative and he doesn't want us. He's not
50:14
Speaker 1: crazy about you know, just because you know. And this
50:17
Speaker 1: is what liberals have to sort of accept. If you
50:21
Speaker 1: find a conservative critic of Trump, don't then criticize them
50:27
Speaker 1: if they if they turn out not ready to vote
50:29
Speaker 1: for liberals, they may not, okay, But the point is
50:32
Speaker 1: that these folks are gettable. If you go out, if
50:37
Speaker 1: you tackle this from a from a bit more of
50:42
Speaker 1: a dispassionate rule of law, ground yourself in the Constitution.
50:48
Speaker 1: But what is important here is that no Republicans want it.
50:53
Speaker 1: There are very few Republicans. There's a hand there's a
50:56
Speaker 1: handful who only care about the thirty five percent that
50:59
Speaker 1: seem to be okay with this behavior, because as we see,
51:02
Speaker 1: there's a consistent the number keeps showing up is thirty
51:04
Speaker 1: four to thirty five percent. Now you've got to trust
51:07
Speaker 1: that it's it's it's Ice are the good guys. Everybody
51:10
Speaker 1: else is the bad guys, etcetera, et cetera. So that
51:13
Speaker 1: is your your core. You see there that you know
51:15
Speaker 1: it's ICE's behavior justified. It's always about thirty five percent.
51:19
Speaker 1: But the problem is that's not a winning coalition for
51:22
Speaker 1: the right. All they have left is that thirty five percent.
51:24
Speaker 1: And there are some that are only going to worry
51:26
Speaker 1: about that thirty five percent because that all they have.
51:28
Speaker 2: To worry about is primary.
51:31
Speaker 1: But anybody at all dealing with swing voters is suddenly
51:34
Speaker 1: realizing this is wildly unpopular and.
51:39
Speaker 3: Terrible politics, let alone terrible for the country.
51:49
Speaker 1: All right, And with that, it's time for the podcast
51:52
Speaker 1: time Machine. So, as you know, every week in this segment.
52:02
Speaker 1: I like to step back to this week in history,
52:05
Speaker 1: and this week includes one of those phrases that carries
52:07
Speaker 1: multiple meanings depending on who you are and when you
52:11
Speaker 1: came of age. For some Americans, bloody Sunday means Selma
52:14
Speaker 1: and the Edmund Pettis Bridge. For others, it means Northern Ireland.
52:19
Speaker 1: And for a lot of people, especially of a certain age,
52:21
Speaker 1: the phrase may first registered simply through a song Sunday,
52:25
Speaker 1: Bloody Sunday by you two. By the way, It's a
52:28
Speaker 1: song that opens not with poetry, but with a with exhaustion.
52:35
Speaker 1: I guess you could say, I can't believe the news today. Boys,
52:41
Speaker 1: this ring true. Huh. There's some echoes here, that's the point.
52:44
Speaker 1: So tonight though, I am talking about January thirtieth, nineteen
52:48
Speaker 1: seventy two, Bloody Sunday in Dairy and why more than
52:53
Speaker 1: fifty years later it still echoes. Let me set the
52:56
Speaker 1: scene for you. It's Northern Ireland before the shooting. By
53:00
Speaker 1: the early nineteen seventies, Northern Ireland was already simmering with
53:04
Speaker 1: political dis if you call political disruption. The Catholic minority
53:10
Speaker 1: faced systemic housing discrimination, unequal voting power, and routine harassment
53:16
Speaker 1: by security forces. Civil rights marches had begun years earlier,
53:20
Speaker 1: modeled consciously on the American civil rights movement. And here's
53:26
Speaker 1: the critical point. These were not revolutionary marches. They were
53:30
Speaker 1: demand simply for equal treatment within the United Kingdom. This
53:35
Speaker 1: was not about overthrowing the king or overthrowing the Prime minister.
53:41
Speaker 1: But the British government had grown increasingly alarmed. Marches were banned.
53:46
Speaker 1: Can you imagine that happening here? Internment without trial was imposed,
53:52
Speaker 1: and the British Army, initially welcomed by many Catholics as protection,
53:57
Speaker 1: turned into an occupying force. So here's what actually happened.
54:01
Speaker 1: On January thirtieth, nineteen seventy two, several thousand protesters marched
54:05
Speaker 1: in the bog Side neighborhood of Darry. They were unarmed,
54:08
Speaker 1: many of them were young. Some of them were even teenagers.
54:12
Speaker 1: Not surprising, right, it's the youth that has the energy
54:16
Speaker 1: and the motivation to march. But the march was illegal,
54:22
Speaker 1: but it was also peaceful. But because it was illegal,
54:26
Speaker 1: the Brits deployed paratroopers. Tensions rose and within minutes soldiers
54:33
Speaker 1: opened fire. By the end of the day, thirteen civilians
54:36
Speaker 1: were dead. One more would later die of his wounds.
54:39
Speaker 1: None were armed. Let me say repeat, none were armed.
54:43
Speaker 1: Several were shot while running away, Others were shot while
54:45
Speaker 1: trying to help the wounded. Not crossfire, not chaos. It
54:50
Speaker 1: was state violence against civilians. Almost immediately, the British government
54:56
Speaker 1: claimed the following that soldiers were fired upon they weren't.
55:01
Speaker 1: Nail bombs were present, fiction force was necessary. Those claims
55:09
Speaker 1: were widely reported and for years those claims stood. But
55:15
Speaker 1: the damage wasn't just to the deaths. It was a
55:19
Speaker 1: collapse of trust. Bloody Sunday didn't just kill civilians. It
55:22
Speaker 1: killed the belief that the state could be neutral. I
55:27
Speaker 1: know it's hard for you, some of you, to believe
55:28
Speaker 1: that the United Kingdom would behave this way in nineteen
55:32
Speaker 1: seventy two. I know some of my older Irish friends
55:35
Speaker 1: know this no differently, but I'm sure plenty of you
55:38
Speaker 1: are going this can't be the UK. Yes, it was,
55:42
Speaker 1: so Guess what this did IRA, which was the group
55:48
Speaker 1: that was supporting the rights of the abused Catholic minority.
55:53
Speaker 1: IRA recruitment surged. The moderates who were trying to preach
55:58
Speaker 1: calm were silenced. Radicalism flourished, sounds familiar, doesn't it. So
56:06
Speaker 1: here's my lesson from this time machine. When the state
56:08
Speaker 1: lies about violence, it radicalizes the people it claims to protect.
56:16
Speaker 1: It took thirty eight years for the official truth to
56:19
Speaker 1: catch up with the reality of Bloody Sunday in nineteen
56:21
Speaker 1: seventy two. It was in twenty ten the Seville Inquiry
56:26
Speaker 1: concluded that the victims posed no threat, the shootings were
56:29
Speaker 1: unjustified and unjustifiable, and that the soldier's accounts were all false.
56:35
Speaker 1: The British Prime Minister at the time formally apologized, Okay,
56:41
Speaker 1: you know, we've had presidents apologize for slavery.
56:44
Speaker 2: It's better than not.
56:47
Speaker 1: But it's not like we can rewind history. Northern Ireland
56:51
Speaker 1: had already endured decades of bloodshed. Bloody Sunday didn't start
56:55
Speaker 1: the fire, but it poured fuel on it. There's a
57:00
Speaker 1: reason this moment did not get stay. He did not
57:03
Speaker 1: get buried in the history books thanks to our friends.
57:11
Speaker 1: Hey you too, Bono. And here's what I'm going to
57:16
Speaker 1: do with that annoying bono who one time called me
57:23
Speaker 1: a radical centrist. I'm not sure he was paying me
57:25
Speaker 1: a compliment, but he was kind of trying to pay
57:27
Speaker 1: me a compliment. I think I've mentioned this once or twice,
57:31
Speaker 1: but it was one of those weird moments, and I
57:33
Speaker 1: was telling him how much I just love the There
57:35
Speaker 1: was this one throwback album that I loved her. It
57:37
Speaker 1: was a small salon dinner and all he wanted to
57:41
Speaker 1: do was talk about the media.
57:42
Speaker 2: We had a good conversation.
57:45
Speaker 1: But when you two released Sunday, Bloody Sunday in nineteen
57:48
Speaker 1: eighty three, it wasn't a protest anthem in the traditional sense.
57:51
Speaker 1: It was a lament.
57:53
Speaker 2: Right.
57:56
Speaker 1: The song is not an angry song. It's weary, right.
58:00
Speaker 1: How long must we sing this song? Right?
58:03
Speaker 2: Broken bottles under children's.
58:05
Speaker 1: Feet, It's sad. It's not a call to arms either.
58:11
Speaker 1: It's expressions of moral fatigue. It's probably why the song resonates,
58:18
Speaker 1: and it was important for it to happen because the
58:22
Speaker 1: song actually doesn't pick sides. It just simply condemns the
58:27
Speaker 1: cycle of bullshit and violence. It captures what happens when
58:31
Speaker 1: violence becomes normalized and when everyone insists they're acting defensively.
58:38
Speaker 1: It's my great fear of what's going to happen in Minneapolis.
58:40
Speaker 2: Right.
58:40
Speaker 1: Each side believes the behavior of the other only means
58:45
Speaker 1: they've got to They've got to dig in more. We
58:48
Speaker 1: need real leadership at this moment to de escalate with
58:51
Speaker 1: the President of the United States. It's the only person
58:54
Speaker 1: that could play that role effectively, and he's refusing to deescalate.
58:59
Speaker 2: I appreciate that jd.
59:00
Speaker 1: Vance used calm tone, but he clearly failed because the
59:06
Speaker 1: biggest problem that took place there was not opening an
59:13
Speaker 1: investigation on Renee Good and we now understand the fallout
59:18
Speaker 1: from that. But back to my time, as you could see,
59:21
Speaker 1: it's hard. It's hard to disentangle anything these days from
59:24
Speaker 1: what's happening on the ground of Minneapolis. But let me
59:28
Speaker 1: be precise here. I don't want to say that history
59:32
Speaker 1: is repeating itself, but we should recognize the patterns, and
59:35
Speaker 1: that's what the point of Bloody Sunday is. Bloody Sunday
59:38
Speaker 1: shows us that what happens when governments refine redefined protest
59:42
Speaker 1: as inherent disorder. You've heard many of these propagandas do
59:46
Speaker 1: that on the Sunday morning shows. They're trying to treat
59:49
Speaker 1: whole communities as suspect. Again, all of Minneapolis is the problem.
59:55
Speaker 1: If you believe Stephen Miller and they went to rely
59:57
Speaker 1: on force first and an explanation later. When modern leaders
1:00:03
Speaker 1: talk about dominating cities, or when immigration enforcement rhetoric shifts
1:00:07
Speaker 1: from law to punishment, history reminds us of something essential.
1:00:12
Speaker 1: States almost never see themselves as crossing a line in
1:00:15
Speaker 1: real time. They tell themselves they're restoring order. They tell
1:00:20
Speaker 1: themselves that restraint has failed. They tell themselves forces temporary.
1:00:26
Speaker 1: Bloody Sunday tells us how permanent the consequences can be.
1:00:32
Speaker 1: There's a reason bloody Sunday as a phrase still resonates.
1:00:36
Speaker 1: It's a shorthand for a moment when the state lost
1:00:39
Speaker 1: moral authority by the way. That happened in Selma, that
1:00:45
Speaker 1: happened in Dry, that happened in Minneapolis.
1:00:50
Speaker 2: Legitimacy has collapsed.
1:00:53
Speaker 1: That happened in the South in the sixties, that happened
1:00:56
Speaker 1: in Northern Ireland in the seventies, and that's happened right
1:01:00
Speaker 1: now in the ground in Minneapolis, and truth took decades
1:01:05
Speaker 1: to surface. I hope that's not the case in Minneapolis,
1:01:11
Speaker 1: but it has been the case with civil rights in
1:01:14
Speaker 1: the sixties and what happened in Northern Ireland in the seventies.
1:01:19
Speaker 1: But this is why that phrase survives in history books,
1:01:22
Speaker 1: in memory, and in music. So when we look back
1:01:26
Speaker 1: later this week on January thirtieth, nineteen seventy two, the
1:01:30
Speaker 1: lesson isn't simply about Northern Ireland. It's about restraint, It's
1:01:34
Speaker 1: about truth. It's about how easily governments convince themselves that
1:01:37
Speaker 1: force will solve what legitimacy already had lost, or, as
1:01:44
Speaker 1: you two put it, without offering any answers, only a warning,
1:01:50
Speaker 1: the battles just bego. All right, let's do some question, ask, Chuck,
1:02:07
Speaker 1: I know what more is there to say or ask?
1:02:10
Speaker 1: At this point, I'll admit I'm mentally exhausted from all
1:02:15
Speaker 1: of this, but this podcast, everything I'm doing is meaningless
1:02:21
Speaker 1: without your contributions, and I'm not going to let an
1:02:25
Speaker 1: episode go without taking a few questions, and so uh
1:02:29
Speaker 1: with that, I'll start with this, Chuck. I heard you
1:02:32
Speaker 1: say that the ICE agents in Minneapolis were untrained newbies.
1:02:34
Speaker 1: But the one who killed Renee Good was reportedly a
1:02:36
Speaker 1: ten year veteran and the one who shot the ICU
1:02:38
Speaker 1: nurse had six seven years of experience. That's actually more troubling.
1:02:41
Speaker 1: Those aren't rookies, and they were likely trained under more
1:02:43
Speaker 1: constitutionally aware policies. I just wanted to share that nuance
1:02:46
Speaker 1: in case it hadn't come across your red area and
1:02:48
Speaker 1: keep up the good work. Corey B Hey, it's fair,
1:02:52
Speaker 1: you know. I think it goes back to are there
1:02:54
Speaker 1: going to be consequences for bad actions?
1:02:56
Speaker 2: Right? You know?
1:02:57
Speaker 1: Ultimately, why are there laws? Why do we have these
1:03:00
Speaker 1: laws against bad actions when sometimes bad actors are going
1:03:04
Speaker 1: to happen no matter what. Because I do think in
1:03:06
Speaker 1: some circumstances somebody who there are people who who, if
1:03:12
Speaker 1: there are no consequences, don't have their own moral center.
1:03:18
Speaker 1: But it takes consequences for them to have a moral
1:03:20
Speaker 1: center or at least behave as if they have one.
1:03:25
Speaker 1: So these are important facts. They're even more troubling, but
1:03:31
Speaker 1: there's no doubt that this is top down. They are
1:03:35
Speaker 1: the message that it's been sent is that there will
1:03:39
Speaker 1: be tolerance for violence, and that has allowed plenty of
1:03:46
Speaker 1: those who are of a weak mind and maybe don't
1:03:50
Speaker 1: have a moral or ethical center that is filled with
1:03:54
Speaker 1: empathy or even has an ounce of empathy, they can
1:03:58
Speaker 1: then also do bad things. You know, I still stand
1:04:02
Speaker 1: by that. Look, the training videos, the advertisements for ice
1:04:06
Speaker 1: agents tell you what they're They're not looking for law
1:04:09
Speaker 1: enforcement officers who practice restraint and de escavatory, so there's
1:04:13
Speaker 1: no doubt. And perhaps these guys were picked because they're
1:04:18
Speaker 1: more likely to be thugs in their behavior, not less likely.
1:04:24
Speaker 1: Next question comes from Kenny from Massapequa. I just wanted
1:04:27
Speaker 1: to be able to prove I could say, Massapequa, I
1:04:29
Speaker 1: appreciate your take on the Minnapolis shooting and agreed to
1:04:31
Speaker 1: nearly all of it. One thing I'd add The video
1:04:33
Speaker 1: shows the agents escalating quickly, no sign of de escalation,
1:04:36
Speaker 1: and it looks like the young man was trying to
1:04:37
Speaker 1: protect another protester who had just been shoved. That level
1:04:40
Speaker 1: of aggression suggests deeper issues than just lack of training.
1:04:43
Speaker 2: Fair point. It's also clear now that the Trump administration fully.
1:04:46
Speaker 1: Supports these tactics, and I worry about the feedback loop
1:04:48
Speaker 1: that creates. Are you hearing anything different behind the scenes. Also,
1:04:51
Speaker 1: even though I'm pretty far left politically, I listened regularly
1:04:54
Speaker 1: appreciate the honest conversations you bring to the table. Thanks
1:04:56
Speaker 1: for helping me step outside my own echo chambers. Stay warm.
1:04:59
Speaker 1: Kenny from Mespeaka, Well, look, I mean I think at
1:05:03
Speaker 1: this point the fact that you're starting to see folks
1:05:08
Speaker 1: that will support this more aggressive policy going to get
1:05:11
Speaker 1: anybody that's in this country that's undocumented and deporting them immediately.
1:05:19
Speaker 1: Those that support the policy are starting to get uncomfortable
1:05:23
Speaker 1: with the tactics. So it is the tactics that to
1:05:26
Speaker 1: me are the eighty twenty issue here. The policy is
1:05:29
Speaker 1: not eighty twenty right, And I think we've all of that.
1:05:32
Speaker 1: You know, I do not, you know, believe although at
1:05:36
Speaker 1: this point ICE feels in its current form, DHS and
1:05:39
Speaker 1: ICE feel you know, they may feel irredeemable to you,
1:05:44
Speaker 1: but I would look, the FBI has been irredeemable at times,
1:05:47
Speaker 1: and then fix CIA same thing. So you know, to me,
1:05:52
Speaker 1: it's not institutions that fail, it's the people in charge
1:05:56
Speaker 1: of them that make them fail. But yeah, I mean,
1:06:02
Speaker 1: you know, there's no I do think that. I I
1:06:09
Speaker 1: want to align myself with what Robert George said, like
1:06:11
Speaker 1: I said, a long time conservative columnist, and you know,
1:06:15
Speaker 1: just sort of I guess more of your old fashioned
1:06:18
Speaker 1: free market conservative right and very much limited government conservative
1:06:24
Speaker 1: who says, look the the You know that this was
1:06:27
Speaker 1: the mistake not investigating, not not acceding to a full
1:06:32
Speaker 1: investigation of what happened to Rene Good because what the
1:06:36
Speaker 1: un and maybe this was an intended message, so I
1:06:39
Speaker 1: don't want to say, but the message it's sent to
1:06:41
Speaker 1: ICE agents was you're not going to be held accountable.
1:06:45
Speaker 2: Don't worry. And the same message was sent to protesters.
1:06:49
Speaker 1: These guys are not going to be held So, you know,
1:06:55
Speaker 1: I have a feeling, you know here, here's here's a
1:06:57
Speaker 1: question that I'm going to be curious about. Are we
1:06:59
Speaker 1: going to see a surge in people that have never
1:07:05
Speaker 1: registered by a gun before suddenly registered by a gun
1:07:09
Speaker 1: because they're fearful of their own government. Next question comes
1:07:17
Speaker 1: from David in Highland Park, Illinois. Right, hey, Chuck, really
1:07:20
Speaker 1: appreciate your voice during moments like these. It's been a
1:07:22
Speaker 1: port in the storm. Thank you for saying that someone
1:07:24
Speaker 1: who's family fled pilgrims in the villages south of Kiev.
1:07:28
Speaker 1: I now find myself wondering how naive is I to
1:07:30
Speaker 1: believe it can't happen here? Yeah, I know you and
1:07:32
Speaker 1: me both, brother. The ICE killings have shaken that belief,
1:07:35
Speaker 1: and I worry we're nearing a tipping point historically and
1:07:37
Speaker 1: socially with so much at stake for so many of us.
1:07:39
Speaker 1: How do we navigate this moment without descending into unrest
1:07:41
Speaker 1: or unraveling what's left to the American experiment? Well, look,
1:07:44
Speaker 1: this is I tried to end with that sort of
1:07:49
Speaker 1: like what needs to happen? Right, everybody needs to do
1:07:53
Speaker 1: their part. Some of their part is simply voting. Some
1:07:57
Speaker 1: of their part is simply protesting. Some of their hard
1:08:00
Speaker 1: is calling your member of Congress, calling your senator. You know,
1:08:03
Speaker 1: I teach a class called how Washington Works, and it's
1:08:07
Speaker 1: I got thirty eight students this semester, so it's the
1:08:10
Speaker 1: largest class I've taught. And about half of them have
1:08:16
Speaker 1: internships on Capitol Hill. And all of them said that
1:08:18
Speaker 1: they're phones, whether they're answering phones for Democrat or somebody
1:08:22
Speaker 1: else Republican. They've all been flooded about complaints about Ice
1:08:26
Speaker 1: and the behavior of Ice, et cetera.
1:08:28
Speaker 2: You know that.
1:08:30
Speaker 1: It it is. It's all of these things, right. It's
1:08:35
Speaker 1: protesting in the streets, it's calling your member of Congress,
1:08:38
Speaker 1: it's voting for some of you, maybe running for office
1:08:41
Speaker 1: for some of you. May be donating money for some
1:08:43
Speaker 1: of you, may whatever it is, But I will say
1:08:45
Speaker 1: this the real the most effective actions are going to
1:08:51
Speaker 1: come from Republicans who who believe who may believe in
1:09:00
Speaker 1: and their conservative politics, who realize that Donald Trump is
1:09:03
Speaker 1: destroying the conservative movement. And you know if just just
1:09:09
Speaker 1: through cynical political lens here you're going to get You're
1:09:17
Speaker 1: not to my conservative friends who are uncomfortable with what
1:09:21
Speaker 1: Trump's doing but are afraid of speaking out. Take your
1:09:27
Speaker 1: party back. You can't hope the liberals do it for you.
1:09:31
Speaker 1: They're not going to do it for you. You can't
1:09:32
Speaker 1: help people like me and the media. We can only
1:09:35
Speaker 1: tell you what's happening. We can tell you how this works.
1:09:40
Speaker 1: Fight for the conservative movement. Stand up, say something. This
1:09:44
Speaker 1: is my friend Jack Danforth, who I had in this
1:09:47
Speaker 1: podcast a few weeks ago. Is this who we are?
1:09:50
Speaker 1: Is this who you want to be? Do you want
1:09:53
Speaker 1: to align yourself with a movement that celebrates the brown Shirts?
1:09:58
Speaker 3: Right?
1:10:00
Speaker 1: So you got to You got to use all your tech,
1:10:05
Speaker 1: all your build all your rights, your constitutional rights. But
1:10:10
Speaker 1: just raining at homemade isn't enough. Right, everybody's got to
1:10:14
Speaker 1: do their part. You know, my job as a journalist
1:10:17
Speaker 1: that has I you know, has has has some opportunity
1:10:21
Speaker 1: to just simply try to help other colleagues of mine.
1:10:26
Speaker 1: Say what you see, don't round the edges, say what
1:10:30
Speaker 1: you see. Report what they're saying. Okay, but be careful
1:10:39
Speaker 1: how you report what they're saying. Say what you see.
1:10:45
Speaker 1: They claim they're seeing something else. We can't verify what
1:10:52
Speaker 1: they're seeing. There is no facts to back up what
1:10:54
Speaker 1: they've seen. That's the part I feel like I can play.
1:11:05
Speaker 1: Everybody's got to speak up.
1:11:08
Speaker 2: It is okay.
1:11:11
Speaker 1: And if you're a conservative and you don't like what
1:11:13
Speaker 1: you're seeing, speaking up doesn't mean you've become a Kamala
1:11:17
Speaker 1: Harris supporter, and and and and I and if you
1:11:22
Speaker 1: are good for you, that's democracy. That's that's the American way.
1:11:27
Speaker 1: But you don't have to you don't. You don't even
1:11:30
Speaker 1: have to regret your vote. You can simply say I
1:11:32
Speaker 1: didn't think Donald Trump was going to behave this way.
1:11:33
Speaker 1: I thought he was going to behave like Trump one point. Oh,
1:11:40
Speaker 1: you don't have to stay I understand, right, It's it's
1:11:44
Speaker 1: human nature to stick to your guns as long as
1:11:46
Speaker 1: you can.
1:11:49
Speaker 2: Right.
1:11:49
Speaker 1: And you've seen these interviews and people are going, wow,
1:11:52
Speaker 1: I wanted them to get rid of these undocumented immigrants.
1:11:55
Speaker 1: But but man, I like this guy who runs the
1:11:57
Speaker 1: restaurant down your here. He's a wonderful member of this community.
1:12:00
Speaker 1: I didn't that he wasn't who I was thinking of.
1:12:03
Speaker 2: Right. The point is is that.
1:12:07
Speaker 1: It's okay to say I thought I was getting something
1:12:11
Speaker 1: else and I don't like what I'm getting. If enough
1:12:15
Speaker 1: of folks on the right don't stand up and do that,
1:12:19
Speaker 1: you're going to lose the entire conservative movement for a generation.
1:12:26
Speaker 1: And maybe it's earned. I mean, this decision to go
1:12:28
Speaker 1: down this Donald Trump lane has totally Anybody who is
1:12:35
Speaker 1: trying to claim what Trump is doing as conservative literally
1:12:40
Speaker 1: doesn't know the definition of conservative. I don't think there's
1:12:47
Speaker 1: a single thing he's done that meets the definition of conservative. However,
1:12:52
Speaker 1: whatever definition you want to come up with, he's nowhere
1:12:58
Speaker 1: near it. So look, I think I think that that you, David,
1:13:09
Speaker 1: can can tell people. Hey, I I let me tell
1:13:11
Speaker 1: you what happens overseas. Let me tell you what I
1:13:13
Speaker 1: thought America was. Please don't let America become what I
1:13:17
Speaker 1: just had to deal with with the Russians. Right, So, David,
1:13:21
Speaker 1: your stories are important to share. So share your stories
1:13:25
Speaker 1: with fellow Americans. So they can understand and let them
1:13:29
Speaker 1: know why you came here and why you're why you're
1:13:31
Speaker 1: wondering what is this place now? But the point is
1:13:38
Speaker 1: silence new.
1:13:42
Speaker 2: Sort of.
1:13:47
Speaker 1: Acquiescence, you know whatever. I think, you know, I think
1:13:51
Speaker 1: Trump eventually assumes he'll wear people down. That's the other thing.
1:13:55
Speaker 1: Don't don't get discouraged. And this is what I've tried
1:13:58
Speaker 1: to be very careful here. I don't want to just
1:14:00
Speaker 1: coourage people that the system is broken and it's unfixable.
1:14:04
Speaker 1: Human beings, we can we can restore. We can do this.
1:14:08
Speaker 1: We recovered from a civil war. We've done a lot.
1:14:12
Speaker 1: We're we're capable of a lot. We just have to
1:14:16
Speaker 1: put our we have to put our minds to it.
1:14:18
Speaker 1: And it is time to eradicate this country of this virus,
1:14:24
Speaker 1: of this of this virus that is running through a
1:14:29
Speaker 1: small portion of the country that is now empowered some
1:14:34
Speaker 1: radical folks. And we've all got to do our part.
1:14:39
Speaker 1: And and the more we can do it within the
1:14:41
Speaker 1: framework of the constitution, the better off will be in
1:14:43
Speaker 1: the future. I understand people questioning whether any of this
1:14:48
Speaker 1: is going to matter, But in the overly quoted words,
1:14:58
Speaker 1: I think it's ben Franklin. But we can all decide
1:15:00
Speaker 1: if it's somebody else that's at it, it's a republic.
1:15:03
Speaker 1: If we can keep it, let's try to keep it
1:15:06
Speaker 1: because we have forces that are trying to lose it.
1:15:10
Speaker 1: I'll see you in forty eight hours.