Labor Day: Hardest Working & Laziest People in Politics

0:00Welcome to the 3 Martini Lunch. Grab a stool next to Greg Korumbas of Radio America and Jim Garrity of National Review. 3 Martini's coming up. So glad to have you with us for the Labor Day edition of the 3 Martini Lunch, a special edition today as Jim and I discussed who we see as the hardest working people and politics and maybe the media as well, the least hard working, and then we're going to share a couple of experiences from our own work experience over these many years. So Jim, I think we have a consensus pick for the hardest working person in politics, but I'll go ahead and toss it to you. Sure. Who is the hardest working person in Washington, DC? We know it from the memes, Marco Rubio. Look, everyone knows that he is the Secretary of State. He is the Simultaneously, the National Security Advisor. Is he still the archivist? Yeah, and there was one other job and that's how the meme gave birth and then every time there's an opening in the administration, he ends up doing it.

1:01I would know that one of the ironic duties that he does not handle as Secretary of State, slash National Security Advisor, and the two jobs have not been done by the same men since Henry Kissinger before Rubio stepped into this role early in Trump's administration. He's not doing a lot of the negotiating with Russia, Ukraine, and I run it with the Iranians, that basically a lot of that's been done by Whitkov or by Kushner, occasionally JD Vance, which is actually kind of what should figure the Secretary of State would be doing a lot of, but maybe he's got so many other things. Secretary of State, National Security Advisor, member of Manudo, all of these different roles that he's required, dancing with the stars, all the other roles that Marco Rubio played. No, I think Rubio undoubtedly is, I'm actually going to say the all star of the Trump cabinet so far in this presidency. He's the all star team because he handles so many of these different roles all at once. Leave so work for somebody else, let Bergen do one of these things or something like that. But no, I think it's pretty obvious that the one guy who's largely avoided embarrassing scandals,

2:05the one guy who always seems to be able to eloquently answer a question, solves more problems than he creates. It's Marco Rubio, so Secretary Rubio, keep it up. No, he does a great job. And of course, the meme is him on the couch there in the oval office and whether it's, you know, you need a new Venezuelan leader or you need a new football coach for whatever coach got just got canned, you know, the AI or the photoshopping puts him in that position. No, it's obviously doing both of those jobs is very difficult. And I can say, although I've never dealt with either one of them, that I would much rather get my daily briefings from Marco Rubio than Henry Kissinger. Mr. President, that is a problem in the Middle East. I think Rubio would be a little bit easier to take on that front. And I think you've got to give a nod to Trump when it comes to working hard. The guy works 20 hours a day. He hardly gets any sleep. Someone argue he should probably sleep a little bit more. But, you know, he's been able to accomplish some pretty big things when you look at the two terms, securing the border, tax cuts 2017, the Abraham Accords. There was more legislation that got done in the first term.

3:08I think that has gotten done in this term, although they did get a lot into that one big beautiful bill. And so when he's focusing on the big ticket items and put in that many hours, it's a good thing. Other times you're like, maybe he shouldn't be awake in working right now when you see some of the stuff that every once in a while shows up on true social. Yeah, do you need to be on true social at 3 a.m. sort of thing? You know, okay. Another person that I would say is a hard worker in Washington is Lee Zeldin. He doesn't show up all that often in public, but when he does, he tells you how many regulations they just roll back and how much waste of money that they just carved out of a budget. And so he's doing stuff. People just because they're not on camera doesn't mean they're doing stuff. In fact, the inverse is often true. And a guy up on the hill who's constantly dealing with the DOJ and is constantly digging into reports and working with the inspector general, the guy's going to be 93 later this month, Chuck Grassley, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Ron Johnson seems to be working a lot in that same realm as well. And so there's a lot of show horses up there on Capitol Hill.

4:09But when it comes to digging into some of these different issues, those guys seem to be able to roll up their sleeves pretty well. I'm looking at that. I'm also realizing if people said Jim Rubio's the easy one. Chris Wright as Secretary of Energy is also a guy who is again, and at the other side I'm pleasantly surprised with Mark Wayne Mullin at DHS. He's kind of early in his tenure. But you want to talk about the idea of you said, you know, being in front of cameras, I think it's safe to say, Christy Known, much more the show horse than the workhorse and it eventually did not work out too well. But thankfully she's spending more time with her staffer. But you're having, you know, Mark Wayne Mullin is managing to focus on getting results. And sometimes you don't need to turn everything into a dog and pony show and get attention. So there are some workhorse in the cabinet and they probably get, you know, deserved more credit. But the other hand, when you're a workhorse instead of a show horse, instead of a show horse, people don't notice you as much. Exactly. That's because you're working. Anyway, in a moment we'll be talking about some of the least hard working people. And Jim just mentioned what if mine, but we might talk about it a little bit more.

5:11In the meantime, let's take care of your teeth and, you know, you want to brush, you want to floss, do all those things your dentist tells you to do. But there are also ways to improve your oral health that could not be easier than that. And it's not like brushing and flossing are really hard work. But chewing gum is about as easy as it gets when it comes to improving your health. Lureneco is better for you chewing gum that uses the same mineral your teeth are made up to support daily enamel health. That is a hard working mineral. Jim, what is it? I was going to say, when I'm walking down the street, people recognize me and say, Jim, can we talk about nanohydroxyapatite? And I say, yes, yes we can because nanohydroxyapatite is the mineral your enamel is made of. Lureneco strengthens that enamel. It repairs the damage. It comes in tons of flavors, including mint, cinnamon, bubble gum and berry. And let's not forget that they have a great fluoride-free toothpaste as well. Yes, I use the toothpaste. Just use it this morning and it's fantastic. The gum is great. My daughter was just sneaking some yesterday. So on and on it goes. Lurene is great.

6:11So right now, Lureneco is offering our listeners up to 50% off at buylurene.com slash 3ml. That's buylurene. L-A-R-I-N-E dot com slash 3ml for up to 50% off. All right, Jim, the laziest people in politics or maybe media. As listeners and viewers probably know, I write the morning jolt Monday through Friday, other than a holiday, like today. I write the post column for the Washington Post. Like you have, I have a lot of, I write for the corner, I write magazine pieces for National Review. I have a wide variety of opportunities to write. And it can sometimes be tough to find things to write about. And I try to do a variety. People know that right about Russian Ukraine quite a bit. But you don't want to write about the same thing all the time. I think otherwise then you get boring. I checked Charles Blow of the New York Times wrote about Trump every column that he had in New York Times from 2017 to 2017. Now, the president of the United States is a big deal.

7:12I'm not going to dispute that. I'm not going to say, you know, like Trump does a lot of different things. Trump is a one man content generation machine. So I can't pick it up. But never there was no topic you wanted. There was nothing else going on in the world that was not related to Trump. It's almost like you had one idea. And you couldn't come up with any other ideas. And so you just kept recycling the exact same idea. My honorable mention is categories a little bit older, but I will not forget this. Gail Collins chose to write in a reference to Mitt Romney putting his dog in a cart on the roof on a family vacation. Which struck me as like the most Clark Griswald moment Mitt Romney had ever had. I don't find that, you know, but she thought this was like terrible animal cruelty or something like that. And I don't remember the exact numbers. It was something like 18 columns in a, you know, six months span or something. It was just just going over and over and over again. And I just kind of think, you know, like now that I mean, I write for a big newspaper the way they do. I know my editors want me to write about a variety of topics. They want me to not write the same thing over and over again.

8:14Readers don't want to read the same thing over and over again. Apparently at the New York Times, if you're left or center, you can just write the same thing. You know, oh, my column is do. Let me get a photocopier. And then photocopier, turn it in. Nobody notices apparently. At no point did anybody say, hey, Charles, do you want to write something? Is anything else going on? Anything overseas? Anything? No, it's took my, with a championship of what you're not supposed to do. And strike me as if you're the most lazyest or the least creative columnist in Washington in quite some time. Yeah, good choice. Good choice. You mentioned Kristie Nome in the last Martini. You know, she spent a ton of money doing these glossy promotional videos of herself when she came in as DHS secretary. She was one of those secretaries that loved the camera. And, you know, there was a lot to get done there. And she wasn't the most effective at getting it done in the right way. I think ice removals have gone much smoother, not without protest from the left, of course, but much smoother since she's been gone. And Tom Homan's been kind of running the show more after that, not to mention the soap opera with her and Corey Lewandowski and everything else.

9:20Another guy I think, I'm pretty sure he's lazy. And I think this was proven last week is House Democratic leader, Hakim Jeffries. He's nowhere near as good as he thinks he is in front of the camera and in front of the mic. But he's also not great at knowing where his conference is. Just last week, he was shocked and blindsided by two members who voted for the GOP rule, which allowed votes to proceed on everything from, you know, a continuing resolution so that there won't be a stoppage before the midterm elections. There was this non-binding vote on condemning socialism, which put a lot of Democrats in a very awkward position. But 192 of them still refuse to condemn socialism. So remember that when you go to vote in November. And, you know, he's just unimpressive in many different ways. He's not good at articulating his position. He's not good at knowing where his members are. So, you know, he's not what he was cracked up to be when they first made him leader, I don't think. I've had arguments with other, let's say mainstream journalists who cover Congress, who insist that Nancy Pelosi is a world historical leader in that chamber, right up there with, you know, Rayburn and all of them.

10:30And I'm like, and I say, all right, why is it, you know, it's like, well, she knows where the bodies are buried. Okay. All right. Like, some of that is longevity, but like I always was like, but what street, you always got Obamacare passed. Like, yeah, but she had like a 60 seat majority. And that's worth noting, like, when you have very large majorities getting stuff passed is a lot easier. So the question is, it's like, you know, in a very strange way, degree of difficulty, we should be putting my Johnson on our hard working category. Because like, he's never got a lot to spare. You know, he's always operating on, you know, the Olympic judges used to give you more points for degree of difficulty. And my argument was always that Nancy Pelosi by usually having large house majorities, you know, so like, so yes, it was good to count the votes. And now, everybody was going to vote, but you could afford to lose 15 of them on any given vote and something like that. So I've always felt like, you know, the Democratic leaders in the house are wildly overhyped, wildly overrated, wildly overestimated. And you see the moment things get hard, they fall apart and they're always complaining about their press coverage and things like that. Your mileage may vary, but my suspicion is a key. It's probably just a matter of time until we hear Hakeem Jeffries strategic chess master.

11:34And I'm also a point to the media who loves their content based entirely on tweets. And we have martini's based on crazy tweets that people do. But you know, go into the truth social page is a pretty lazy way to do journalism. There's a lot of us going out. Well, well, well, let's, you know, that's not criticized that too much crack. I look back at all the corner posts and all the things that've written. You can do it. But I mean, some of these people go wall to wall with this. Yeah. In the end, like what really the first term, there was a tone to the coverage of you won't believe what the president just said yesterday. Like, actually, I think I'm going to believe it. There's very little he could say that reciting the Declaration of Independence from memory, that would surprise me. But the idea that he said, you know, we're going to ban root of big is that does not, that does not surprise me. I actually took a picture one time of it was Jake Tapper and I'm not exactly sure what Trump had said or done. But they were heading to a commercial break and the chiropran at the bottom of the screen said just said coming up outrage. And I'm like, this sums up the entire left wing when it comes to the Trump administration.

12:38That would be a good name for a cable news show outrage. And just, yes, we've got outnumbered, but we don't have outrage yet. All right. And just a moment we'll be talking about some of the jobs that we've had over the years and a couple of interesting stories from from that. But in the meantime, how you feeling? You know, new school year getting ready to change seasons here. Make sure you are in tip top shape. And if you're behind schedule and getting those appointments in, Zock-Dock is your answer. Zock-Dock lets you search and compare local in network doctors. If you've been putting off that optometrist, that dentist, that any any time a doctor, it's just so hard to find one. No, it isn't. And Zock-Dock can make it exceptional easy. So easy, you really can't procrastine anymore. You don't have any more excuses. Zock-Dock has more than 150,000 providers within 200 specialties, actually more than 200 specialties across all 50 states. Their website has tons of reviews from real patients and detailed doctor profiles to help make sure you choose the right one. And appointments happen fast. Usually within 24 to 72 hours, but sometimes you can even score same day appointments.

13:43Jim and I have both used Zock-Dock and have had great results. Your health matters and taking care of yourself shouldn't be complicated. Find and book the right doctor with Zock-Dock. Head to Zock-Dock.com slash 3ml to get started and check that appointment off your to-do list. That's zoc.com slash 3ml. All right, Jim, you and I have both been in the working world for years and roughly about the same I think. And we've had different jobs obviously over those times. So what's one of the craziest stories from your years of hard labor? Well, you're right for a living. People jumped at conclusions about you. And they're always... First of all, I had a member of Congress say, well, you're guaranteed you're Irish. You must have like a big Irish family with like, you know, one's a cop, one's in the mob, one's a priest. And I'm thinking of all the, you know, 1980s ABC dramas he probably was thinking of. And I just... Yeah, Congressman, let's go with that. Sure.

14:44That's not actually. Not if I have one brother. He's not a cop or in the mob or a priest. But people will say, oh, you've probably never worked, you know, a blue collar day in your life. I've been blessed. I have mostly worked in white collar environments, but come from college after freshman year. Looking for summer work need to make some money. And I go to a temp agency and I'm hoping office clerical work what I ended up doing on my first couple interns. If you know, making copies, refilling the toner into the printer, going for coffee, the entry level stuff. No, don't know. They have warehouse work, backstair healthcare. If you've ever, you know, if you've gotten medical treatment in a hospital, there's a very good chance at least some of the equipment that was used in that was from backstair healthcare. They had a big warehouse in central New Jersey. Shift started at 4 p.m. and went all the way, you know, till the work was done, till the last ship was done, shipment was out. Which on a good night could be midnight, but most likely it was going to be one o'clock, two o'clock, or all the way to four o'clock. You know, there were some weeks I was putting in 60 hours to give you a sense of 18, 19 years old and just came home from freshman year.

15:51Because I was there so late, this is a member of this is, okay, I'll let you be able to know this, this is summer of 94. My dad was concerned and came to the workplace. So you're working with blue collar guys. You're the college kid. A fresh face, you know, 18 going on 19 year old and your dad shows up to work to show how cool you have to make sure you're okay. He talks to the foreman. The foreman was actually not that bad. He's just like, I was just another warm body that could, you know, help load stuff onto trups. I got to use a foreclift that was, you know, that was my experience in blue collar America. That was, you know, if it's not glamorous work, it was hot work. The warehouse was not air conditioned. It was summer. And like I said, there were some times where it was like, you know, like 60 hours a week was not. The good news is that I worked, you know, I think within like six, seven weeks I made pretty much all the money I wanted to make that summer. And on the last, last couple of days that I was there, Greg, did you hear that OJ Simpson's wife got killed? My goodness. Yeah. So the last night that I'm there, and it's worth, you know, the Mrs. Guarantee and I started dating freshman year of college. So we're talking on the phone. Are you watching this on TV? There's a white Ford Bronco and stuff like that. So that's why not only I, I was at least remember where you were when the OJ Simpson chase happened.

16:59That was my last night of working it or what last day of working it back to healthcare collected it and it's like, okay, look, I've blessed these guys were there. There were, there was some crude locker room humor and comments and stuff like that. And let's just say none of them were all that impressed with me and my ability to load a truck all that well. But you know, it was one of those my one of those things where I was like, you know what? I really want to work in white collar as much as I can for the rest of my life. No, that's great. I mean, I've had a number of jobs over the years. I've basically been working to some extent since I was nine. That's when I got my paper route. And then in high school, I started writing for the paper covering, you know, sports games, girls basketball, boys basketball, football volleyball. It was really nice back then. Nobody was confused about who belonged on the girls basketball team. And then that, you know, led to sports reporting in college and then out to DC and more new stuff. One job I had the last summer I was home in the UP of Michigan before I came out to DC for internships. I was a tour guide and an iron mine, not an operating iron mine, but one that had operated and had become a tourist attraction.

18:03It had operated from 1870 to 1945. And Jim, I don't know if you're a history buff, but there was a reason that iron demand dropped in the end of 1945. So we didn't need to build the arsenal of democracy quite as feverishly then. So the iron mine closed at that point, late 50s, it turned into a tourist attraction. And I knew the owner and his son who ran the joint and they were great people. And so they gave me a job for the summer. And so I gave tours of the iron mine. You went through the little museum part with the pieces of equipment that you needed for mining. And then you drove a train into the side of the mountain and took them down the tunnels and showed them how the different equipment worked inside the mine. You know, about a quarter mile into the mountain and then you walked around for probably a third of a mile before loop to get back to the train and take them back out. And so most of the people were lovely. Most of the people were great and respectful and ask good questions. If you ever had a former miner on the tour, you're just like, you're not better than me on that tour. Yeah, yeah, exactly. But one day we're going through the museum part out front. And they've got all sorts of things hanging there.

19:12And one of them was a big saw. And this lady's there with her husband and she says, oh, did they use that saw to get the iron out of the mine? And I'm like, well, no, they use those to cut down the trees so they can drill, you know, create the shafts into the mine. And he could hear her husband kind of exhaling. And then we went to the different drills. And one was called the diamond drill. So it had a diamond tip drill to drill through the mountain. And her next question was, oh, this was also a diamond mine. Like, no, no, this was just the drill iron ore is what we're after here. And so behind me, husband's like, no more questions. Yeah, my favorite joke on the tour is because one of the earliest drills, it was not powered. You just had like this sharp tipped rod that you would then have guys sledge hammering with only candle light and making themselves about seven cents an hour at the time. So it was this long like metal bar. And so this is not used to injure figure skaters was my big joke of the time when people generally see. Again, dating ourselves for, yeah, yeah, exactly. For the young kids, what Google Nancy Carrigan.

20:15Yeah, yes, and Tony Harding. So that's that's that's one of my fun stories. Any job where you're dealing with the public, you just never know what you're going to get. But that was mostly delightful people from all over the country all over the world. And it was a great experience. So so you when you would kind of grown going out the door back to the salt mines, it was really an iron mine was kind of the secondally that I'm sure that husband and wife somewhere they're listening right now. And then like, oh my god, remember that time. Murna, I told you those were dumb questions. No, why are you always giving me grief about that? You know, so first of all, you did this when you were what how old were you? So after my freshman year college, yeah, okay, so you were not quite a minor as a minor. And then secondly, you the you didn't have any emergencies, nothing what wrong in the news. Okay, then yeah, no, the one thing that would freak people out is because at one point, you know, you talk about their dynamite blasts when you're when you're using that rod, you're basically creating like six different holes and then you stick six sticks of dynamite in there and light the fuse and and these huge gusts of wind end up going down the tunnel.

21:15And again, all you have is like a candle on your helmet. And so all the time these guys lights would be going out underground. There's no light whatsoever. And so we would mimic that in one part of the tour where you would turn out the lights and then just have a candle so they can see what that was like. And then you would blow it out, but I was trained you always ask before you blow out the candle. Is it okay if I blow out the candle for just a few seconds and you see what total darkness says you would be amazed how many adults more than kids would say no, no, no, no, you can't. Wow, wow, I treat you. So I was going to say if God forbid there had been an emergency while you're showing the diamond tip drill, you know, say everyone we have to get out. This is not a drill and they'd say yes it is. It's a good airplane joke right there. There you go. That's fantastic. This is work. I hope everyone's enjoying not doing it or if you really don't like organized labor, you can work on Monday. Enjoy your long weekend. Hopefully all of you have a long weekend and we will be back with our normal format on Tuesday. So Jim, have a good one.

22:23Think about it this past Sunday was the last Sunday without NFL football until February. That's amazing. That is amazing. Enjoy and none of our teams have any losses yet. So enjoy. Yeah, enjoy it for the moment. Jim Garrett, a national review. I'm Greg Carumbus, a radio America. Thanks so much for being with us today. Please be sure to subscribe to the podcast if you don't already and tell your friends about us as well. We would love to have them listening. Thanks also for your five star ratings and your kind reviews. Please keep those coming. Get us on your home devices. All you have to say is play three martini lunch podcast follow us both on X. He's at Jim Guarady. I'm at Greg Carumbus and follow three martini lunch on Facebook and Instagram. Have a great Labor Day. Join us again Tuesday for the next three martini lunch.