‘You're Wrong' With Mollie Hemingway And David Harsanyi, Ep. 190: The Warpath

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Welcome back everyone to a new episode of your wrong with Molly Hemingway, editor-in-chief

of the Federalist and David Harsani Senior Writer at the Washington Examiner.

Just as a reminder, if you'd like to email a show, please do so at radio at the Federal

ist.com.

We'd love to hear from you.

Molly, there's a war on a lot of negativity out there.

Have you noticed that about the war?

Am I misreading what's going on?

No, I think that we are taping this on day like 11 or something of the war.

It's in the early days.

It seems that there are debates about the war, but the war itself seems to be going fairly

well, as you might expect, given our overwhelming military might.

What are you hearing though?

You're hearing negativity?

Yeah.

Maybe I'm on Twitter or X2 too much because I think that's a place where negativity thrives.

The people are already kind of ringing their hands over how long it's taking over, you

know, the oil prices, legitimate concern, especially oil prices, even though they've

dropped today significantly from the other day.

But you don't know.

I can't predict what's going to happen there, and either can anyone else.

But I think the war is going spectacularly well, far better than perhaps any military

conflict we've engaged in.

In the sense that we have decapitated the enemy.

We are meticulously destroying their entire military infrastructure.

We have gone after their leadership, they are the revolutionary guard within the country.

I don't know exactly because we don't know exactly what all the aims are as far as getting

to certain kinds of nuclear material or whatever.

No war is perfect.

War is always going to have unintended consequences like we discussed.

But I think it's going incredibly well.

The messaging hasn't been great always, but even if we picked up and left today, we

would have accomplished a lot against a sworn enemy of the United States that has been

after us for 47 years in different ways.

Well, I was looking at there was a major effort to put forth polling showing that Republican

voters love the war.

And by and large, you do see very strong support among Republicans for the war.

And then you see much softer support among Democrats, but even independents who are

much closer to Democrats than they are Republicans on this issue.

I think if you look at that another way, though, these polls are showing basically what

do you think of Trump?

And even the way that questions will be asked, do you support President Trump's war in Iran?

Do you support President Trump's handling of the war in Iran?

And so people are just answering, do you support President Trump or not?

And it's hard to get a really good analysis of what those numbers mean, particularly

this early in.

If things continue to go as well for the Americans, as that's us, as they have thus far, I think

you will see even, you know, you will continue to see those high numbers from Republicans.

It is also true that if it goes on for a long time, if it's very disruptive to oil markets,

if it's where you're starting to see a supplemental, have to be put forth for a lot of money,

you will maybe see more diversity of thought among each group of those pulled.

But thus far, people trust Donald Trump to engage in war fighting better than his predecessors.

But part of that does mean that you're not going to do a big nation-building war that

continues, I believe, to not be as popular even among Republicans.

What do you think?

You make a very good point about polling because when you dive into those polls, it's not

just absolutely a lot of them tie it to Donald Trump, which is both the positive, probably

and a negative, depending if you're a Democrat or a Republican.

But they also, the sequences of questions, so essentially they'll say, like, Donald Trump

has started a war with Iran, you know, and the next question will, so it will be connected

to Donald Trump in some way.

And so you see the normal splits that usually happen.

So I don't really trust those polls, but again, I don't know, I am out of touch with the

American people in that way.

I don't, you know, I, for me, this seems like a very good thing to do, but I understand

why other people wouldn't feel the same way.

I get it.

Do you think if it was a different president that the polls would look completely different,

would more people before it, would more people be against it?

Like, is it just because it's Donald Trump that everyone's staking out these positions?

Or is there an American, you know, is there some kind of, do Americans have some kind

of belief in how we should use the military?

I mean,

it would be wildly different, but it's impossible to separate the two things right now.

If Joe Biden were doing this, it would be prosecuted in a very different way.

If George W. Bush were doing this, it would be, it'd be done in a very different way.

Who, who is leading the effort has everything to do with whether you support it or not?

Both good and bad.

So I don't, I don't even know how you would ask the question without having, you know,

if you're saying like, if this were a generic person prosecuting this war, would it look

differently?

But it's never an Eric person.

It's always someone in particular.

I totally get that, that, that who leads a war is part of why you, you would feel more

secure in it or not.

My point is that the argument that it's where Donald Trump is doing this, so don't worry.

Trust the plan.

All of that.

I don't love that.

I mean, you have to have some kind of idea.

Do you think it's right to eliminate Iran as a threat to the United States?

Do you think it's right to go in and take away their nukes?

I get that.

I don't, I don't think, you know, on that, I would be more curious to see how it breaks

down more by age than anything else.

You notice that people who remember 1979, which at this point is people who are, you know,

the old.

Yeah, I get it.

I don't remember 1979.

I do.

I, so yeah, people who are older are going to have had a longer history of disliking

Iran, much like people who are older are going to have a natural distrust of the Soviet

unions, you know, major state, which is Russia, you know, that, that plays in.

I do not think younger people in any way have the same idea about this war as older people

do.

Yeah, I'm sure you agree with that, right?

Overall, yeah, I mean, obviously you're background and your, your history in the world

and at what you've seen plays a part in that.

Do you think that when people get older, they become more open to this sort of thing or

less open?

I feel like when you get older, you have a longer-term view of history and you sort of change

maybe this is maybe a swishable thinking on my part.

I don't know if it's that so much as you are a product of the era in which you grew up.

And if you are an older person coming out of World War II, which was a dramatic success

for Americans working with allies, you will have a different belief about what's possible

with use of the military than if your only experiences are the Iraq war, the Afghanistan

war, Libya, you know, I mean, it's different, but now we have a little bit of a different

situation.

Donald Trump has had very successful military interventions and he's done them in a way

different than those other conflicts.

Usually it's very quick.

It doesn't have democracy building aspects to it that we saw in some recent efforts,

not just under Bush, but Obama and Clinton.

And so I don't think it's that you get smarter or wiser as you get older, although we tend

to do that, even so much as how deeply do you understand the success that's possible

with the military?

We finally found a point to argue.

Maybe I completely disagree about World War II.

World War II, if we had the same kind of, if we had the internet during World War II

and people saw the massive casualties that the Americans took just to take a hill or

just to move forward by a few miles, I'm not sure that they would view it the same way.

And World War II was the biggest democracy building regime change war that has ever existed

in the history of mankind.

We literally demanded unconditional surrender of Japan and of Germany and instituted democratic

governments in those countries and rebuilt them.

They were huge successes in that regard.

We're talking about completely separate things right now.

I was talking about if you were a product of the World War II generation, you saw success

with your military.

If you were a product of the Gulf War, Afghanistan war era, you're going to have a different

view of it.

I'm not talking about whether any of those wars were right or wrong or justified or not

justified.

We, people who grew up in the post-World War II era were in a period of great optimism,

great patriotism, just different for different generations and I think it's worth contemplating

that.

Well, for sure, I agree with you on the aspect that we are prosecuting this war to win.

And for American interests and not for the interests of other people.

On that point, I actually think that's always been a real unifying theme for Americans.

They're not super jazzed about having our military everywhere.

But if we do have our military somewhere, they want to win.

They want people's lives and money to be treated respectfully.

And yeah, they wanted to also have like a strategy for success.

And so this is where we go back to those poll numbers for Trump.

If you don't trust Trump already, you might be more anxious about what are we doing there?

What are the goals?

Why have they not been communicated more clearly?

If you do trust Trump, you just think those questions are silly.

It's like, trust the plan.

He's always, he's always done it.

Well, thus far, it's going to work out fine.

Or if you have been wanting to bomb Iran for a long time, you're just happy about it.

You know, like this is something Lindsey Graham has really wanted for a long time.

He is very happy.

Gosh, the isolationist right, I'm not throwing you in there.

They are so lucky Lindsey Graham's around because he says ridiculous things all the time.

He pretends he's king of America and you can punish the Saudis, punish the Syrians.

I saw him on TV for not helping out.

But yet he's literally the only real Neocon out there.

I have literally not heard a single person talk about nation building

or talk about this in the way that he has.

He has a lone voice here.

I'm not a fan of him, but I don't think we should undersell how important he is.

Right?

The Wall Street Journal reported that he had personally been involved in crafting the conversation

with Israel about how they would convince Trump to get involved.

I mean, he's not an uninfluential figure.

He's someone who President Trump definitely talks to and you could like him or dislike

him, but I think it's okay to acknowledge that he has played a role in this conflict.

I don't believe that story for a second, but I will say this.

Yes, he has.

Well, I can tell you this.

He's definitely telling people that he played that role.

Yes, this, this administration has the Marco Rubio's and on the edge, the Lindsey Graham's,

but also has the vances and other people in the administration who are probably much more,

you know, who are less far less inclined to do that.

You should hear both sides.

Anyway, I guess.

I think Marco Rubio, from what I've heard from my reporting, probably was pretty similar

in his perspective.

In fact, I would say there hasn't been a huge diversity within the administration on whether

to do this or not.

This plan really is a Donald Trump plan more than a PTAG set or a Marco Rubio or a JD bands

plan.

Yeah.

Like they're serving him.

They're supporting him and they're serving him well, I think, but they're not the originators

of this based on my reporting.

I have no reporting.

I trust you're reporting, but I just don't believe that JD bands would ever do this

ever.

And I'm not sure that more what do you think he's like, what does that have to do with what

I said though?

Well, you're saying that everyone's on the same pages and it's just Donald Trump's plan.

Don't you think that?

I'm saying, okay, listen to what I'm saying.

They're not, they were not the originators of this plan, even as they are supporting Trump,

which I do believe each one is quite publicly supportive of Trump.

But they didn't, this plan did not come from a PTAG set or a Marco Rubio or a JD bands.

This was more a Donald Trump plan than theirs.

I guess that, but I'm just saying that I could see a president Rubio militarily

acting against Iran if it would not agree to limit its nuclear program or whatever.

I just don't see that happening with a lot of the other people in that administration.

That's what I'm saying.

I don't.

Well, like, I mean, I think with the Venezuela situation, that was, that was something

that originated out of the Pentagon, I believe.

So it was very successful.

And it was very successful.

Yeah.

And they worked very hard on coming up with a plan that would be achieved with.

I mean, just so remarkable.

That whole thing was done under, in under a day, just a few hours.

I mean, it's really impressive.

There are people who are comparing that operation to, to the Iranian thing, which is, it's just

very different.

Iran is a far superior military power in a way, far away.

There are other intricate things that you've dealt with.

Very different.

Ultraly.

Yeah.

Very different geographically.

We'll see.

You could, you could accomplish a lot in Venezuela, just by going in there and grabbing

Maduro.

You don't do that with this entrenched IRGC, doesn't really matter if you take out the

head.

There are many layers below it, right?

They're not rational actors in the way.

They believe they're rational in how they view the world, but they don't view the world

as someone who is trying to hold onto power in Venezuela, right?

Who is going to be more apt to work with Donald Trump, not to lose power, hopefully moderate

that country.

Maybe Cuba's next.

I mean, you hear a lot about that.

I think I just don't think countries like that should exist in our hemisphere, frankly,

who are our enemies and, but we'll see.

I saw some people when, I think it was Lindsey Graham, maybe, but maybe someone else who

said, and Cuba's next, and some people were like, oh my gosh, really?

But I think Cuba is a much greater or much easier to understand problem, not a greater problem

than Iran.

But it is insane that they have just been allowed to pose problems from such a close proximity

to our country.

They're right there.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I don't want to see an invasion and a regime change.

Iran style.

I would like to see what happened in Venezuela, happen to them, where maybe not even happen

to them.

Maybe just threaten them and see what they're amenable to some sort of agreement to reform

in some way.

We'll see.

You want to move on?

Maybe.

I was going to ask.

There was something you said that made me want to ask a question about, you're not entirely

sure what all the goals of this war are.

But also you said that you think it has been so successful that even just with what's

been accomplished thus far, you could kind of call out a day and, or say, you know, take

the wind and move on.

What are your thoughts on that going forward?

Do you want them to articulate more clearly specific goals?

Do you want them to just kind of wrap it up and get out?

Do you want to?

Does that make sense?

But I'm asking.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I think they need to clean up the messaging.

I think it should be simpler.

I think it's been better lately, but still not great.

I think, like I said last time, there are an array of possibilities.

The best case scenario is regime change.

I went back to see what Donald Trump said about that and listen.

I'm not here to defend Donald Trump's rhetoric.

I think it's a very messy.

But he didn't, when he was talking about regime change, he was talking about the people

rising.

We, we, because of what we're doing for ourselves have allowed and given the opportunity

for Iranians to rise up against their regime.

I think that's a long shot regime change is incredibly hard through just air, you know,

an air war.

So I don't know if that's going to happen.

I think that's the best case scenario and that's what they're hoping for it.

The idea that Donald Trump has to go out there while a war is raging and let everyone

know exactly what he wants to do and let the enemy know exactly wants to do is not the

norm.

He, they have, I'm sure, operations that are happening right now to procure, for instance,

the nuclear, you know, the enriched uranium, I'm sure they know what they're going after.

I'm sure there's a plan.

People who pretend there's no plan don't understand how military works and we've shown that

we are very competent military right now.

So I hope, I think we've weakened them tremendously or will probably take them decades, but if

we have allowed their nuclear program to survive in some way, I think that's a big problem

because then you have to go back again and I hope that we never have to go back again.

So I don't exactly know when I said I don't know is because I don't know what these operations

entail, but it's still a victory for us to weaken them tremendously in their military

and their ability to undermine American interests.

I think there's still work to be done because they could still obviously create problems

in the streets of our moves and, you know, in oil delivery for the whole world, which

matters.

It's a fungeable commodity.

It's not that simple though.

We use very little Gulf oil, frankly.

I mean, we get most of our oil from Canada and Mexico and we make it ourselves.

So I don't know.

I don't know.

I'm a lot of tangent.

Yeah.

On that point though, it's true that we don't get bunch oil through the streets of our

moves, but Europe does a lot of their products are able to be made because of that oil coming

through there.

And this is why we were targeting the putis in Yemen because they were making shipping

difficult in the streets of our moves.

So we are clearly doing this war in conjunction with Israel.

And I have thought that Israel isn't giving away what they're doing there, but they've

done a pretty good job of messaging.

Part of that I think is because Iran is an existential threat to Israel.

Everyone understands in that country.

You know, even if you see it in the support that Netanyahu has in his country for what

he's doing with this war.

Everyone understands Iran wants to wipe Israel off the map.

And they seem to have a clarity of explaining that that would be good, I think, for the

Americans to follow in explaining why they're doing this, what the general plan is, getting

that messaging out to people is important because part of, you know, this is using our

money and our boys.

And so you do want to have broad buy-in from the public.

You do have a lot of that among Republican voters already.

They're enthusiastic about this war or at the very least supportive.

And I would just even understand that we have different interests than Israel.

We should be communicating in a way similar to what they're doing in terms of just getting

that message to the people.

Is that makes sense?

Yeah, but it's very difficult because we have a former complex case to make voters

about the long-term problems that a nuclear Iran would pose to us.

And though I think we share many of the same interests as Israel, we also have broader

interests that include China, where Israel's interests are more narrowly focused on proxy

armies that are literally bombing their people.

So it's easier case to me, you know what I mean, like, like, like, Hezbollah.

But if the Iranian regime...

I agree.

It's still good to do that kind of communication.

They have done a lot better military planning, the messaging planning, I think, in the White

House.

I think Rubio has been the best, but even his words can be taken out of context sometimes

and have been.

So they should clean it up.

But it is tough to explain a lot of it.

It's tough to explain a preemptive war that maybe saves, you know, it's tough, like,

the line of immunity where Iran has these ballistic missiles and it makes it into a far

more dangerous war.

That's difficult to explain.

It's maybe it's not difficult.

Maybe they don't give the American people enough credit.

I don't know.

But it is to message that in a sound bite when you're on Fox News or wherever you are making

the case super, super difficult, I think.

And then the other thing I would just say, and I mentioned this on Fox News Sunday, was

that Republicans are supportive of President Trump pretty much across the board, whatever

the issue is, they tend to be supportive.

It's also true that there are a lot of things that need to be done to fix America and a

lot of people voted for Trump, believing that he alone could really fix some of these

problems in America.

A lot of work has been done, closing the border, beginning the deportations, but the Trump

administration should not neglect that domestic policy agenda if they want to have any

shot at some wins in the midterm elections.

Yeah, well, I almost think it's, I don't make predictions anymore, but that the midterms

were going to be very difficult, no matter what, in my opinion.

And even with the wind, once we talked about this last week, once you win, everyone's

moved forward to something else.

It's incredibly difficult in this environment, especially where I don't know, I was thinking

about this the other day, I don't know, it's ever going to be a popular president again.

Like we're so divided on partisan lines that's difficult for me to think that there's

going to be a president with like 60, 70% approval rate, even in the midst of a war, like

we're in.

Usually you get that bump for like a week or two.

Trump wasn't even given that bump.

And like you say, Biden did this.

I don't think he would have been given that bump either.

And maybe it's those personalities.

I don't know.

Absolutely.

From Fox News Sunday, Senator Mark Warner was there and he's on the Senate intel committee.

He had some critiques of Trump with the war, but they were all procedural.

He didn't disagree that Iran was a very serious threat that needed to be taken seriously.

I thought that was interesting.

He didn't like that he didn't come and get approval before the war.

He didn't believe that that was the right way to do things.

He said because it wasn't, you know, he chose to go to war rather than do again, because

there was some imminent threat, even though the Trump administration says there wasn't

imminent threat.

Whereas Tom Cotton says they have been an imminent threat since 1979, but can I say something

about that?

Well, Warner was, I'm just saying Warner was supportive and he's a big Democrat.

So I just thought that was interesting.

Well, did you see the George Will column about how he argued that Trump doesn't need any

congressional approval for this war?

I'm quite interesting.

I might agree with it, but what was his, what was, I don't think the war power's act

is very good, but go on, what was George Will's argument?

You'd have to go read it.

I mean, I don't know if I agree with it, but essentially he argued that the founders

never envisioned having to go and ask Congress to engage in military action when you need

the surprise to do it when you need to move very, very quickly and all of that.

I don't know if I agree, but it was interesting and unexpected for me to read him defending

Donald Trump, but also saying that.

So it's something to think about, right?

Oh, so surprising all the people who suddenly support Donald Trump worked hard to get

him out in 2016, including some publications that did some pretty dramatic stuff to try

to thwart Trump now being very supportive.

George Will was not a big, he's not a big neo-con type, though.

He did initially support Iraq, but he quickly worked columns saying it was a mistake and

stuff like that.

You know, I just, if Congress wants to say something, they control a lot through the budget

and that's where they should show their power, right?

And they don't have an opportunity to do that here fairly soon, if the reports that this

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You checked to move on?

Yeah.

Speaking of mid-earms, did you follow the Texas situation?

I did follow the Texas situation.

You're speaking of the Democrat James Telerico winning against Jasmine Crockett in the primaries

there.

I am obviously not a Christian, but I wrote a column on this.

But to me, he speaks with the moral authority of the 1980s, like Televangelis, but he has

the intellectual depth of a freshman gender studies major at Oberlin.

That's basically how I think of him.

When you listen to him speak, it's vapid.

Because I know many social conservatives, and I could say not all of them are perfect

and this or that, but I think that their views aren't formed by their faith.

Their political views aren't formed by their faith, which is completely normal and expected.

This guy's faith is informed by his politics.

I feel like the whole thing is reversed.

He comes up, starts talking about trans kids, flips through, you know, Paul's, you know,

Apostle Paul's letters or whatever, and comes up with some sentence that allows him to rationalize

some kind of insane view of abortion or whatever it is, right?

So I cannot, I find the guy just insufferable.

Let me ask you, what are your thoughts on him?

Well, again, I'm thinking back to some stuff from Fox on Sunday, a Wall Street Journal reporter,

Annie Linsky was saying that Democrats were in a very good situation in Texas because

they had been able to dominate this moderate James Tallerico over Jasmine Crockett.

Who said this?

I think her name is Annie Linsky.

Okay.

Just make that up.

In fact, that is the general consensus, right?

You saw it with the Stephen Colbert conspiring with Tallerico to not help out Jasmine Crockett

and make a big production out of it so it would gain money and recognition for Tallerico.

The Democrats were very focused on that and they did consider it a big thing that they

could run him instead of Crockett.

In part because the big Democrat operation now is to take the most left wing person who

presents the least left wing as your ideal candidate.

And so they think Tallerico is their most left wing, but presents his not left wing.

In part because the media keeper saying that he's moderate, there is, it reminds me of

when the media were saying that Democrats had cracked the code with Pete Buttigieg and Tim

Laws.

These are the men that they don't want to work for, they don't want to work.

And it's, it's just clear that Democrats aren't talking to any actual men.

These men are very effeminate and do not appeal to men or many women and yet the media

keep going with this line.

So Tallerico is, his views are radical.

He led the effort to trans children at the state legislature and he said that God wanted

you to do that.

He said that he wanted abortuaries in every federal courthouse in America and that abortion

nists should be federal employees.

He said that there were six genders that God is non-binary.

This is a guy who would come off like a cook in Portland, well, maybe not Portland.

He would have trouble getting elected in California.

The idea that he's going to be this like, miracle candidate in Texas, I don't really

buy at all.

He proves, yeah, he proves that they're trying to prove that progressivism is compatible

with traditional notions of faith.

But what they're proving is that modern progressives are bigger quacks than average social

conservatives have ever been, that they are willing to believe anything, that they

are willing to believe there are six genders you can choose from, that they're willing

to believe.

You don't even talk about his racial stuff during black lives matters or maybe you did.

But he talks about how your skin is white.

It's a virus.

It's like he speaks like a clansman from the thirties, but in reverse, right?

Like he thinks being white is that does he really believe that Christianity, that don't

speak for Jesus, but that Jesus believes that your skin color defines you, that you don't

have any kind of free will that you're a hater because of who you were born to.

I mean, this kind of stuff is radical and using faith to hide it and to justify it,

I think is really just gross in a way and I can't imagine voters won't see through

it.

I don't know.

Well, I think that many voters will see through it.

It is also true that this kind of stick does work on a certain type of individual and

we saw this, the New York Times has, you know, they are engaged constantly in propaganda

operations.

And so one of their long running propaganda operations is to have David French as their

in-house, like anti-Christian critic, basically, but again, much like James Talleriko, under

the guise that he is actually the most Christian of them all.

And so every Sunday, he does a sermon, column.

And I think it was this Sunday, he did a column praising James Talleriko as the best Christian

in America, vis-a-vis other Christians.

And did you read it?

Yeah.

What do you think of it?

Christians are involved in debates that are not in my business, you know, just over all

I'm just going to say.

But it seems like he puts a lot of importance on tone, you know, how you sound, not what

you do.

And it's not just on judgmentalism, but of course, it's just judgmentalism a different

way.

But, you know, so, and he likes the tonal value of someone like this who, who says that,

you know, abortion and gay marriage are not the most important things in the Bibles.

But he, but David French, then, doesn't care that he uses the Bible to justify having

an abortion mill in every federal building.

So is, he, like, is, he only is seeing half of the equation, I don't know, I, that's

what it seems like to me, like, to him the tone is more important than the substance

of this sort of candidate.

I don't know.

What do you think?

I don't read David French, but I have enjoyed some of the anti-David French pieces that

have come out in reaction to his column.

And Chris Bray, who's very similar to you in, like, not the most religious person or

doesn't come off that way, although he has Christian, the, the, the, the Tarrico guy annoys

him like any red-blooded American man.

And also David French's little stick that he does annoys him quite a bit did a great

take down of all of the logical fallacies in the David French column, including how he

rewrites Maga and Trump as Christian leaders and Christian, as a Christian movement, which

is just not accurate, right?

Donald Trump does not prepare to be a Christian leader, Maga is a political movement, not a religious

movement, even if it contains quite a few Christians, it also contains people who aren't,

you know?

But he rewrites these things so that he can compare.

Albert Moller had a response to David French, where he was saying, in his column, David

French states that Tarrico is one of the few openly Christian politicians in the US who

acts like a Christian.

And by acting like a Christian, he reveals a profound contrast with so many members of

the Maga Christian movement that's dominated American political life for 10 years.

A few paragraphs later, he cited Tarrico as saying, I'm tired of being pitted against

my neighbor.

I'm tired of being told to hate my neighbor.

And then Moller writes, who told him such a vile thing?

To state my frustration clearly, I am tired of being told about people who told him to

hate his neighbor.

Who told him that?

To be even more clear, we know what he is doing here.

He is a talented politician who is running as a faith-forward candidate, while condemning

conservatives for running as faith-forward candidates.

And he condemns evangelical Christians for attempting to influence politics while he

seeks to establish his own religious liberalism as law.

Tarrico wants to divide voters just as much as Donald Trump, but on different grounds

and along different lines.

That was a good point.

That's a great point.

Of course he does.

And what about the hypocrisy of secular urban liberals who constantly, you know, yelling

at social conservatives not to bring God into politics and so forth, but when a candidate

comes, like this comes along, you know, he's on Stephen Colbert, he'll be on the cover

of GQ for all I know, like beta or work, it's a massive hypocrisy.

I have no problem with people bringing God into politics because those are the beliefs

that help dictate our choices in life.

But he's a hypocrite.

Yeah.

He's a talented politician.

People say, I guess so.

I think I'm immune from those charms in general, but I don't, you know, especially

with him.

But we'll see.

I don't buy it.

I don't buy that he's going to beat either of the Republicans who move forward.

I don't understand why.

I mean, David French mentions cornering him, but you know, if you're that put off by

Paxton, because I was named Paxton, then you have a candidate there, a milk toast

for public and you could support it, right?

Why put your, who I'm fine with, but why do you have to put your support behind that

person who is attacking other Christians in essence, right?

He's constantly telling other Christians how to think, but other Christians aren't allowed

to say anything.

I don't know.

I don't know why I'm going off on this.

This isn't my business.

None of our business.

It is my business that a guy who thinks it's okay to mutilate young children in schools

is going to be in the US Senate.

That's my business.

I'm against that.

A guy who thinks your skin color dictates that you're going to be a racist.

I'm against that.

And you know that people who believe those two things believe a whole menu of crazy things

too.

And the guy is super motivated about trans children.

I saw this clip where he was asked, who's someone you care about other than family

and friends?

And he's like trans children.

He's so cool.

He's so cool.

He's trans.

Again, do you see this as being a winning message in Texas?

I was wondering.

You know, even Abigail Spanberger was running away from the trans thing of children when

she was pretending to be moderate, but this guy's on video way too online, way too much

video.

We don't mention her name.

We don't mention that woman's name in this house.

Oh, sorry.

I'm in this house.

We're trying to.

Yeah.

They're going to put that aside.

They're trying.

She's trying to or Democrats are trying to pass a AR band in Virginia right now.

Let's talk about the media.

Usually I think you're the media critic, right?

But I have a beef.

I have three beefs.

This one is, did you see the story of Zohar Mamdani's wife, Rama Dawaji, who liked on

October 7th, liked a bunch of posts on Instagram celebrating the mass murder of 1,200 innocent

civilians in Israel?

And then liked it, liked an Instagram post calling the rape of women that day, a hoax.

Well, she is now, and that's bad enough.

I would say that that's one of the least surprising things I've ever read in my life,

just to be honest about that.

But did you see the coverage of that?

Did you see the reaction to the article that investigated a report into her likes?

Yes.

They seem to defend.

They seem to go after the reporter and defend Mrs. Mamdani.

Yes.

One of the headlines in the New York Times reads,

Mamdani defends wife amid criticism of her support for the Palestinian cause.

Now, either the person who wrote that believes that the Palestinian cause entails hunting down

terrified unarmed young women who are at a music festival and killing them, or they're

a lot, or they're trying to be evasive, right?

Or obscure what that was really about.

Knowing the New York Times, I'd say both are very possible and maybe both happened at the

same time.

The thing I couldn't get over is that the New York Times, the New York Times was doing

this.

Do you remember the New York Times thinking that it was inappropriate to go after the wife

of an influential figure when they ran multiple stories about Martha Ann Alito's habits

with flags?

Yes.

You know, she likes flags and she had to dispute with a neighbor and she had a flag flying

upside down and they made that a front page story.

She tried to get Alito to be forced out of the Supreme Court or to recuse himself from

all sorts of cases related to various, you know, law fair that the left was doing.

And then they kept it going.

She had a, she had an appeal to heaven flag up at her beach house, which is a great flag

that everybody should fly a flag that has been flown by left and right.

The San Francisco, the city hall or whatever used to fly it for decades until this story

came out where the New York Times said again, because Martha Ann Alito likes flags and I

can verify this, Sam Alito is not a big flag waiver in any way.

Martha Ann loves flags, has a ton of them, loves to fly them.

And New York Times made it a really big story, it was a massive story.

You had Senate ethics investigations, you had all sorts of drama happening.

But then they get mad when their own mayor's wife is caught liking tweets that are politically

difficult to justify.

How many stories has the times and pro-public and other outlets run about Justice Thomas's

wife and what her political opinion is, right?

Here's.

And then when Mom Donnie said, you know what, my wife's her own person, this is her business

not anyone else's, everyone's like, well, case closed.

Justice Thomas or Justice Alito or Justice Roberts or anybody on the court who's a Republican

appointee says that.

People make fun of them.

The New York Times said that when Alito, anyone who knows him knows he's not a flag person.

When he said, those are my wife's flags, she's her own person, she has first amendment

rights.

They said, this is despicable.

He is using his wife so that he can protect his career.

There were other media outlets that said their marriage is probably in trouble because he's

throwing his wife under the bus.

But none of this from Mom Donnie.

Interesting.

I mean, she's a title to her opinion, I don't want to stop her from saying what she wants

to say.

But if you, Mom Donnie said that she's a private person, well, if you pose for magazine

photos, you give interviews to New York magazine, to the New York Times, to one of, I think

it was Vanity Fair or whatever it was.

You offer your political opinions on social media, then your positions are fair game for

public to scrutinize A.

But I looked up how many stories the New York Times did on this private person before.

And just like last week, there was a story called the complete, his headline, the complicated

politics of Raman Dawaji's style.

Saying the New York lady is sent into the spotlight, you know what complicated as a euphemism

for in the New York Times?

It means that you have, I must cursed, you have insane positions that it's an extremist

views that are too nuanced for you, polls to understand.

We're going to layer it with all tons of context, what she really means when she's like,

yeah, people weren't raped, you know, rape, there was a rape hoax.

And that's what they do.

And I believe this is driven not only because she's a, the wife of a socialist because

people, they have internalized the idea of Islamophobia, these young reporters and these

people in New York Times, and they simply can't get themselves to ever be honest or say

anything about someone who is Muslim.

It's part of it for sure for me because there are two other stories that the New York Times

participated in that show this.

I was about to mention there was an event where two ISIS inspired terrorists through

homemade bombs.

They were duds, but they were packed with like nails and things like that.

At a peaceful protest, some anti-Muslim protestors, I want to kick all the Muslims out of

the country, whatever.

They were peaceful.

These people threw bombs at them.

Here's the New York Times headline, smoking jars of metal infuses thrown at protests near

mayor's house.

Now, if you read that headline, would you know who was involved in throwing those bombs?

You wouldn't even know.

The subhead says six people were arrested after anti-Islamic protestors led by the right-wing

activists Jake Lang, clash with counter protestors near Gracie Manchin.

You could read the subhead and you wouldn't know who actually threw the bomb.

You have to go pretty deep into that story.

You know what smoking jars and metal infuses are, they're called bombs.

That could have just said bombs, right?

And it's incinerated.

In Germany, they always tell you, use 14 words that obscure the truth when a single word

that would say it clearly should not be used.

I'm happy you brought that up because this is anti-journalism.

Journalism is supposed to synthesize information, bring it clearly and as truth to people who

read it or see it.

I mean, that's like the core job, I think, of a journalist.

This literally leads you away from the truth on purpose.

Like that's anti-journalism.

It's propaganda.

I don't know what you want to call it.

Can I read you CNN's lead from that day, from their story on that?

Two Pennsylvania teenagers crossed into New York City Saturday morning for what could have

been a normal day enjoying the city during abnormally warm weather.

Their lives would drastically change as the pair would be arrested for throwing homemade

bomb.

During an anti-Muslim protest outside mayor, Zoran, Mamdani's home.

That is insane.

It reminds me of the cover of Rolling Stone when they put the Boston Marathon bomber on

and made him into like, what was a teen magazine idol or something?

These people are insane.

Something wrong with them.

Just nod in your head.

You know it.

I don't know what to do.

It's horrible.

I saw some funny parodies of this where they were rewriting, you know, the Ted Kaczynski

as a promising Harvard student or MIT student, whatever he was, who had some interesting

ideas about technology and writing skills, then his life took a turn.

But it's not funny because it's so bad.

You just said, I don't know anything about this group that was protesting.

So I literally don't know what they're called or who they are.

The name of the individual didn't match for me.

But it does concern me that we are whistling past the, in some cases, literal graveyard when

it comes to difficulties having a pluralistic society with people who support killing those

they don't agree with.

And we're not answering those questions because they're very difficult.

And we are importing massive numbers of people who don't necessarily have a problem with

this type of violence, who have religious justification for it.

And because it's a difficult conversation to have, we just don't have it.

And you see this on left, right, media we can make fun of.

But you know, I keep on thinking about how after 9-11, the big mantra from Republicans

was that Islam is a religion of peace.

And now the worst thing would be if there was any like blowback on Muslims for the Muslim

terrorism that had killed so many thousands of Americans.

And I would like to see better conversations there, acknowledging that there are varieties

in Islam and also acknowledging that the percentage of Muslims globally who support

violence as a means to accomplishing political and religious ends is way too high.

That's all fair enough.

I mean, someone made the joke that there was a protest to say that Muslim Islam was incompatible

with Western society and a couple of people showed up and threw bombs to prove them wrong.

But I think it's important to note, it's not the most important thing, honestly.

But it's important to note that there are many Muslim people who are peaceful and all

of that.

And they live in America and their citizens and we should want to secularize them and

bring them into the fold.

But it's also not that we shouldn't obscure the truth that there are Islamic people who

cannot abide by someone disagreeing with them or saying something they don't like.

And this is that.

And I just want to say CNN retracted that lead.

Not really, they didn't, I mean, they took away the tweet and then the story stayed basically

the same.

They tweet the lead.

But also the New York Times changed one of its headlines.

There are still, I think, some older leftist editors in these places who will reign in this

craziness.

But at some point soon, the nuts are going to be in charge and I wonder what's going

to happen then.

I think it's going to be a lot worse.

The last story on this, I could quickly say, is that there was also a obituary in the

economist, which was once kind of like the house magazine of neoliberalism in the world,

right, in the Western world.

It was a serious concern.

It has become a joke, you know, there are no, there are no bylines on it.

So you don't even know who writes this stuff.

But they decided to write an obit about Ali Khameini who is dead, told to the prism

of his own eyes with a downplay, that he is basically was some kind of Nazi in essence

to his own people, the misogyny, the murder, the destitution, and, you know, the executions.

And talks about how he believed he had divine right on his side and had countless reasons

to hate the West, especially the United States, the tip of a phalanx of morally corrupt

countries.

I mean, this is just outrageous.

It would be like writing an obit of Hitler through his own eyes.

He had good reason to hate the Jews, blah, blah, blah, blah, right, like it's just unbearable.

But then I thought about it.

We've been seeing this forever.

You remember the infamous Washington Post a little bit on al-Baghdadi where they called

him, but they led with calling him an austere religious scholar, not a person who brought

back white slavery or, you know, buried people, you know, by the thousands.

It's just something.

I thought that the New York Times had started responding to critics of its favorable obituaries

for dictators and murderers.

And they said, you know, we try to present people in all of their complexity.

And I don't hate that idea at a time of death to just describe their importance and put

the best construction on it, except for two things.

One, if you're a conservative, they lead with the worst thing they can say about you, and

it's in the headline, and they take things that they took out of context when you're

alive, and they lead with that at the time of your death.

So no offense, but screw these people, they're not painting a, you know, picture of their

full life.

And then secondly, there is a difference, you know, if you are angrier at a cartoonist

who supported Trump, then a guy responsible for untold bloodshed and calamities, there's

something wrong with you.

To quote, to quote George W. Bush, you know, remember how he was like, if you're a critic

of the Iraq war, he said, you're either with us, you're with the terrorists.

But I just think the New York Times is basically with, with bad people.

They write positive, or you know, the economist or the Washington Post, they write these

positive things about these people because they agree with them in their fight against

America.

What do you think?

Hey, I think that's harsh and true sometimes.

I think it, you know, a less, less harsh way to put it was that they sympathize with them

more than a normal person should, maybe, but I, you know, you mentioned, you're talking

about Scott Adams and that, oh, bit, right?

But think Rush Limbaugh, I think this was in New York Times, it might have been the Washington

Post, like it led with like radio personality who weaponized AM radio against Democrats.

Like they always pick the worst, where they put the worst formulation on it.

I don't, I think what Rush Limbaugh doing that was good, actually for America, but I understand

that it has a negative connotation for them.

Yeah, something's wrong with these people.

There is something wrong, like you could, I was thinking about, uh, Mrs. Momdani, you

could stake out a position that you think that Israel is a moral and the way they acted

towards Gaza and not celebrate the wanton murder, the taping, the laughter of mass murder.

But they have a problem doing this.

There's something wrong with these people and I just, I think there's an evil there.

I'm sorry, there's a bloodlust when you are liking something like that that is not normal

for, for a person in, in Western society to do.

I don't know where this all goes, but it's not great.

You want to talk about culture, but it's so funny when we turn to culture after talking

about such horrible things.

You know, I just wanted to add one more thing about the Momdani wife, which is I definitely

judge people by their wives.

And I think that if you want to know if you've got a good like justice or judge, just look

at who their wife is that will tell you more than, more than a lot of questionnaires.

And Momdani having this woman as his wife, I think it's just, it's informative.

Tells you a lot about who he's trying to please when he goes home at night.

It's not like a perfect metric, but something I like to do.

But yes, for culture, I have two things.

First off is there's this documentary on Mel Brooks.

Have you talked about this previously?

I have not watched it, but I want to get it.

So it's called 99 year old man and a riff on his 200 year old man record.

And it's actually really well done.

I'm watching just like a little bit at a time, so I've made it through one episode.

And then I still say on Mel Brooks, like I like Mel Brooks as a person.

I think he's funny.

I like interviews with him, but I'm not as big a fan of his movies as a lot of people

are.

I've always found them too slapsticky for me, especially, you know, I think some of them

are better than others, but I've not, I just don't think he's this great talent

that other people do not trying to put him down.

He's still alive.

So I could say some bad stuff about.

Well, a fan like do you love blazing saddles?

Do you love space balls?

I do love blazing saddles.

I think the rest of his movie output is pretty bad.

I think he's interesting because comedians I like love him.

I want to know more about why do they love him so much.

For me personally, yeah, I mean, I should say I like the producers as well, quite a bit.

I like blazing saddles, but that's a reveal to Mark.

I hadn't seen that and he was mortified.

So cue all the letters from people angry when I say that I haven't seen something.

I am working on it, but I don't, I don't know if people understand how radical

that movie kind of is because it was only 20, 20 something years after World War II,

where there's a story of two Jewish people putting on a play celebrating Hitler

because they wanted to go bankrupt.

It's a hilarious premise and the songs are funny and the movies are very good.

And Gene Wilder, Gene Wilder, who's who's wonderful always in my opinion.

Yeah.

Okay.

So the other thing I watched, which I loved, is Tron Legacy.

The 20.

Wow.

Ron movie.

Have you seen that?

I have not.

Which one?

Is this the latest one?

No.

Okay.

Mountain 2010.

It's the first sequel to Tron.

I think there are several now.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Mark thought that it lacked a plot, a coherent plot.

And I would agree that it struggled a little bit in that area, but I loved the soundtrack.

I thought the concepts that it introduced were great, lots of Christian allegory.

And it looked beautiful.

So I enjoyed all of those things.

I love that you see Christian allegory in all movies.

Like, I remember you're like, girls is the most Christian show ever.

It's like what David's talking about.

No, I didn't say it was Christian, but I did think that it was a morality play.

You know, male of like what goes wrong when you accept feminism.

And I still think that I'm just kidding, but it's just truth.

You know, a good, good art is truthful.

And so sometimes people who don't want to reveal truth still do it accidentally.

I agree with that actually quite a bit.

Did you, I know as we discussed, I think before the show, I am older than you,

but did you see Tron the original when it came out?

I did.

Well, I liked it a lot.

What did you think?

I loved it when I was a kid.

I thought it was, it was kind of innovative first time.

It had kind of a cartoonish quality to it that I liked in a video game quality.

Obviously, I might have seen that one.

I will rewatch it because I'm into Tron.

So wow, that's a strong recommend for you on Tron.

I didn't think that, you know, you're not real sci-fi type.

So I just also need to reiterate that Mark didn't think it was as good as I did.

And he's pretty good at movie reviews.

I forgot that I also rewatched LA Confidential.

Oh, I love that movie.

Yeah, I like it too.

It's funny.

You know the guy who plays the model who is like the gay hustler who has killed the blind guy.

I was watching a show with him called the mentalist.

That was not terrible for a few episodes.

I mean, I think he's Australian, Simon, something or other.

I'll just point out too that Jerry Goldsmith did the score for LA Confidential and I really

like him.

If you can't get John Williams, you get him.

I would.

He does like every movie.

Prefer jury Goldsmith, but go on.

That's an insane thing to say, oh my lord.

John Williams, the guy who did Raiders of the Lost Ark, you think that Jerry Goldsmith

is a better composer than he is?

No, I'm not.

I just said I would prefer.

I, some of my favorite things have been done by Jerry Goldsmith, including one of my

very favorite movie soundtrack, ever, which is the Russia House.

Whenever I'm in a, I'm in a record store.

I'm always, I always go to the soundtracks to look if they see that.

It's a surprise because you have mentioned it so often.

And I'm starting to think maybe it never came out of my vinyl.

I've never seen it in any form.

And his colleagues does have it, but they're so expensive that they're only in foreign

countries.

So thank you for letting me know.

I appreciate it.

Yeah.

I'll keep at it.

I, I have a strong recommend, and it's, it's a topical in a way.

It's called Tehran.

It's a show on Apple Plus about in Mossad woman who, a spy who is a younger, not a young

woman, maybe youngish woman.

Not to me, 30, let's say, who, who has parents from Iran, who speaks the language, all

of that.

And she is dropped in there and gets stuck in Iran and is being chased by the person who

is the head of the revolutionary guard, you know, anti-Mosad squad.

It's very well done.

It's an Israeli show, but the second season has going close.

The third season has, Hugh Laurie, like, really well made, doesn't, it's not cartoonish

and how it portrays human beings, they're complicated.

I liked it a lot until the last episode of the first season has, has something that I

think is quite implausible in the real world.

But overall, I don't want to spoil it, but overall, it's a really good show.

I think it's a really good show if that's your thing.

And I, I would recommend it.

Great.

The other show I watched was Young Sherlock, I started watching, which is a Guy Richie

show on Amazon, I think.

And I don't know, it has all the markings of a Guy Richie directed show.

It's fun.

I like that.

I like Guy Richie.

Yeah, I do too.

It's, it's nothing deep, but it's fun.

I would say it's fun, it's crackling, it's alive.

The way he films, the dialogue, all that.

Pretty good show.

I've only, I've only watched a little bit of it.

That's all I have.

Okay, great.

Oh, I did, I did want to, I am, I am, I have an event coming up where I'll be speaking.

So I wanted to mention it in case people wanted to come.

It's in Virginia, if you live near Richmond, or even if you don't, and you want to come

to it, you can.

It's at the Virginia Forum on April 1, I'll be talking about the history of American

guns.

I think we called it forged in freedom.

So if you're interested in that, you can go online to Virginiaform.com, I think it

is.

And scroll to the bottom.

You'll see events.

I hope you talk about ammunition.

I was going to talk more about kind of the most, the biggest innovators and industrialists

who did a lot.

I think people don't know, or maybe they do, but many people might not, how innovative

gun makers were, in the larger context of mass producing things and manufacturing and

other mechanical innovations, but yeah, I can mention ammunition too, I mean to ammunition.

Should I mention that I did, you remember I mentioned that I was going to get a concealed

carry gun, and people had a lot of suggestions, and I went with the Springfield Hellcat Pro.

And when I went to pick it up at the local, what's it called, Bass Pro Show, the guy made

fun of me and laughed at me, said it was a terrible gun.

I've never experienced something like this, gun people are so opinionated that they will,

when you're buying from them, in the store that they are managing the area of, will mock

you for your selection.

I think it's a great little gun, I got an extended mag, so my hand fits around it really

well.

Why did he mark it?

He thinks it's a bad gun, I don't know.

Not that friendly, so once he mocked me, I sort of like, stop paying attention to him,

and he appreciates that at all.

If Abigail Spanberger and the other Democrats successfully banned the AR weaponry, what

happens to people who already have, say, an AR 15?

I think they keep it, I believe the law, it's kind of like, if you have it, it's grandfathered

in or whatever.

I mean, I'm loading up like the Soviets are about to invade Red Dawn style, like I think

people should buy as many guns as possible in Virginia, because I don't know what's

going to happen.

That's just me.

All right.

Great.

If you want to make fun of my gun, you can email us at radio at thefederalist.com, we

look to hear from you, and we'll be back next week, and until then, be lovers of freedom

and anxious for the free.

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