'You're Wrong' With Mollie Hemingway and David Harsanyi, Ep. 209: Too Blasé About The DSA

Welcome back, everyone, to a new episode of You're Wrong with Molly Hemingway, editor-in-chief of The Federalist and David Arsani, senior writer at the Washington Examiner. Just as a reminder, if you'd like to email the show, please do so at Radio at the Federalist.com. We got good letters this week. We should talk about some of them later on in the show. How about this week we start? We are recording Tuesday, late afternoon. There's a primary today in... Michigan for the senatorial Democratic senatorial candidate between Abdul El-Sayed and what's her name Haley Stevens I love haley she's she's she's fun she's fun like her interviews are fun I wouldn't say I mean she's far left wing Oh, I don't like her politics at all. I just think her Chris Farley-like persona is delightful. But from what I've seen in the betting markets, they're saying that Abdul El-Sayed has like a huge chance of winning this thing. He's in essence, though, I don't know if he was ever a official member of the DSA. He is their candidate. I saw today he was hanging out with Hasan Piker at a pool party after voting or whatever. He is just this awful, awful person, in my view, at least. It's not just that he fuses all the things I hate, all the ideologies I hate. He fuses them together, just this rabid anti-Zionist, fine. But a conspiracy theorist. He blames APAC for not, you know, for schools not having money, you know, and like just everything is about Jewish people in some way with him. But he's also a DSA candidate. He believes in complete. socialistic governance. And it is amazing to me that I don't know what his chances are of winning in a general. Frankly, I assume that Republicans actually want him to win this primary. They probably feel like they have a better chance against him. I don't love that. I think we're degrading our politics with these kind of crazy candidates. But anyway, those are my impressions of him. What do you think of him? About the guy who's going to win the Michigan primary? I think it is disconcerting. It would not be the first terrorist-adjacent person to be elected to Congress or the Senate. Well, it would be the first for the Senate, right? Yeah, I think so. Yeah. But I think... In particular, his association with Hasan Piker, I've been very disturbed by how many people on the left treat Hasan Piker like someone it's okay to be friends with. You know, we have seen so much ink spilled over anybody who has any contact on the right with anyone who's a fringe character. And Hasan Piker gets very nice treatment by...

the New York Times and by other prominent left-wing propagandists and highly placed political people. And he is a full-on supporter of Hamas and Hezbollah and the Houthis and China. And he thinks that the fall of the Soviet Union was a catastrophe. The Soviet Union was one of the worst human rights abusers in human history. He is a complete and utter fraud in terms of his support for support. You know, he's always pitching his support for communism as support for the working class. And he himself is an incredibly wealthy person who lives high on the hog. Like most commies, frankly. I know. He supported what happened on October 7th, right? Yeah. He supported what happened on 9-11, or he said that. He deserved it. And then he's like, well, I kind of like overstated it, but he frequently says anti-American things. He has a front cover picture of the Twin Towers being hit by the planes in his office when he streams his podcast or whatever. And he just, he hates America. And. That's a, it's a huge problem. I worry about the future of the Republic about its ability to survive. And you have all these people on the, on the left in the Democrat Party that love their association with Hasan Piker, and they're endorsed by literal Democrat socialists of America who are for everything bad. You know, I was on Fox News Sunday a couple weeks ago, and Shannon Bream interviewed the woman who leads the DSA. And she just went down what it says on their website that they believe in and asked, do you believe in this or not? And that woman enthusiastically said they want to abolish the Senate. want to abolish all the constitutional protections of the republic like the electoral college. They want to end. prisons. I mean, I can't think of anything that would be worse for poor people than ending prisons. I just don't go back. You're understating what they said, not the electoral college. All the Democrats are against the electoral college. They want to undo, they want to, they want to get rid of the Supreme Court, the Senate, the presidency. They just want mob rule Congress of, you know, completely proportional direct democracy voting to run everything, which is. Third World Banana Republic stuff. Not even terrible European parliaments are that bad. But Shannon asked this woman, like, you don't even think people should be incarcerated if they rape, you know, child rape or murder. The woman is like, no, I don't. So this is, these are very bad. I appreciate her honesty. I have to say. I loved it. Yeah. I loved it. And also that same show, my senator.

Your senator, Tim Kaine, was asked, like, do you want to say anything against these people? And he's like, no, we love the DSA. It's great to have them. It's wonderful. I mean, he's terrified of criticizing them. So this idea that there's some big daylight between Barack Obama. party people and the DSA. It's just not true. I think there was a big difference between the Bill Clinton era of the Democrat Party, which is all but banquished and the Barack Obama-led thing that's happening now. But it's not good. And I think people are way too blasé about it. The Hasan Piker has said that he loves Mao. He would never criticize Mao, who is, I would say, the greatest mass murder in history. I think he makes Hitler look like a bit of a Hasan Piker, but I have to say Mao had more time on his side. The idea, I've been incredibly, and I will continue to be critical of the right that lets people like Tucker Carlson or Candace Owens or many, many other types like that into their party. It's not like Fox is inviting. In what way are those people in the party? Well, a lot of conservatives, especially young conservatives like that sort of thing. It's pretty clear to me. They might listen to them, which in various ways, shouldn't be done. But I don't think that what I don't even know what my point is I've been critical of that but yet those people are not invited into the mainstream of the Republican Party so so But on the left, you have the podcast bros, the bulwark, the MSN now, inviting Hasan Piker or in the New York Times, like you mentioned, he had a piece up there, inviting this person, normalizing this person who, in essence, is... A fan would be a fan of someone who's akin to Hitler. Like there's really no difference there to me. I mean, there's some difference because my own family was killed because of Hitler. But what I mean is, as far as humanity goes, there's no moral or intellectual difference. These people should be ostracized and branded unhinged lunatics. They should be on the fringe. But they're not. And their power, he's a power broker. He has made candidates. From Zohran Mamdani, who he campaigned with, to this Abdul El-Sayed guy, who I just wanted to to say, the...

When you say he's terrorist adjacent, well, he's a fan of the Muslim Brotherhood. He is a fan of Hezbollah when a deranged Hezbollah person in Michigan tried to ram into a Jewish daycare to kill all the children in there. His response was that angry people do do things. Like he rationalized and justified it in a way. So he's a, you know, it was that member of Congress who said some people did some things. That was her description. Ilhan Omar said that some people did some things. And, but he also, when we killed Khomeini in Iran, he said, you know, you know, he didn't want to. He was critical of it in leaked emails or in a leaked conversation because he said that a lot of people in the Shia community, you know, in Michigan and also respect him. So, you know, another mass murderer. These are terrible people. I can't believe they're going to be part of the American government. And I can't believe that we're normalizing this. And oh, yeah, that's what I wanted to say. And you mentioned Democrats. They are massive cowards. How many people speak out against them? John Fetterman and maybe there's a handful in the whole country. They're not. Chris Murphy is the only elected official. I would say. I think there are some congressmen here or there, a Jewish congressman here or there, but not many. They're cowards, too. Don't get me wrong. And. And Chris Murphy says, we have a big tent. We let all kinds of people in. We let in all kinds of people. But if Donald Trump doesn't immediately jump out and condemn David Duke, do you remember this? David Duke said something nice about Donald Trump. And Donald Trump never asked for his endorsement, didn't agree with him, had nothing to do with him. But because he didn't condemn him within minutes, that was the end of the world. But Hasan Piker running around running the Democratic Party. Just insane. So I do believe there are two issues that are very structural that need to be addressed here. One is our immigration policy. You just said, I can't believe these people may be elected into office. We've already had quite a few bad people placed into office. And partly... It's not always the case because frequently it's these highly educated white losers who are electing these people. But it's also true that Michigan has had some major demographic changes in the last few decades that have resulted in a different type of person being active in the Democrat Party politics. And there are. The thing that is just amazing to me that our forebears didn't really think about when they were very excitedly flinging the borders open is that not everybody makes a great American. And I know there are people who still think like, yeah, there are some people who are just born American in various countries. And it's not really true that.

every culture is equivalent and that you have what is needed to appreciate rule of law or virtue. This can change wildly from one country to the next. And we put no thought into it. And then the other thing is that we've basically educated almost every living person in America into sick ideologies. The Educational institutions in America have taught hatred of America for so long that it's now multiple generations. And you see these. surveys showing people support full-blonesy communism. And it's not the most shocking when you think about how they were educated from kindergarten through college, through the media. People have lied about the effects of communism. It's been a massive campaign, a propaganda campaign to act like the market is the source of all that's evil and that central control of the economy is what... fixes what everything that ails us and we have hidden all of the victims of communism all 100 million victims of communism i was at a dinner on friday night and someone said that they had this idea which i think is a great idea that The Victims of Communism Organization, which is also a museum in Washington, D.C., should do a program where they have victims of communism go speak at public schools in the same way that when we were kids, you would have World War II veterans come and speak about fighting in that war. So you kind of felt a real connection to that effort. Likewise, we should have a widespread program of... putting the victim's face in front of these people who think it's cute to pretend to be or to support communism yeah i i'm for it though i i i just think it's more we need a more holistic we need more than that's a good idea but it has to be a holistic change and i just think we need to destroy the public school systems i i there's no The head of each of these unions are literally communists themselves, of teachers' unions. How are we going to change that environment if the people running it are communists? They're never going to allow this to happen. But can I go back to something else you said? Yeah. On immigration. Now, I have changed my. This is one of the issues I've changed my mind on. And it's not just that I changed my mind. I think that we've changed as a country. Muslims used to come here and they would assimilate far better here than anywhere else. At some point, we decided that assimilation was not only not an important thing for us to do or expect from newcomers, but the left literally works against assimilation. It teaches new people that we suck, that their culture is just as good, that they don't have any reason to give it up.

And you're right, you know, Islam is a religion, but it's also political philosophy. And when my parents came here, they were asked by the government. Are you a member of the Communist Party? Do you belong to groups that want to undermine the American way of life? Well, political Islam does that. And it's completely fair for us to ask about that to pick countries and to pick people who are going to come here and be good citizens if we want to continue having immigration. We have to think about student visas. It's taking us years and millions of dollars to get rid of someone like Mahmoud Khalil and the other people he associated there within Colombia. I mean, that is insane. So we just have to stop having visas from places that have large terroristic populations. Palestinians, you know, they're engaged in a lot. There's a lot of free Palestine terrorism. One of these people, and I think he was, I'm not sure if he was a citizen or not, or he was an immigrant or not, shot two Christians who worked at the Israeli embassy and executed them on the street in Washington. I'm just ranting and ranting today. Sorry, Molly. No, I actually agree with you on this, too.

When you see how immigration has changed the country over decades, and you also understand that it happened sort of slowly over time in a way that made it hard for people to process what was happening to the identity of the country. And I think we just actually started with some flawed premises about. what our standard should be for who is allowed in. And then I completely agree that when we started teaching people, it is evil to assimilate. That was a complete, full-on assault on the country. And it should have been treated that way. That is... was sick and it was wrong. And I remember being taught that in college and maybe even a little bit in high school and thinking it was wrong but not realizing quite how evil it was to tell people that and how important assimilation is for a country like ours and how insisting on it is the bare minimum. And even if we had high assimilation standards, I would still say that we should have very strict thinking about which. type of person is right to have in the country. And people drop this moral relativistic view of immigration on me all the time. Well, you know, Irish and Italians and Jewish people came and they changed the country too. Yeah, they changed the country. I think for the better. I think they assimilated really well. I think they strove to assimilate to American life. And yes, most Muslims are not violent and most Muslims probably aren't even that political. But no one ever yells Shalom and blow something up. No one ever yells, you know. God be with you in, you know, and blow something up. And no one ever yells, you know, that's a moray and blows something up. But when I, we only get that from one faith and we cannot sit here and pretend that that's not. Yes. Yes. Adults should be able to handle that conversation. I remember when I was at Get Religion, the media would put out these polls or they'd say, you know, pure. There was a Gallup, I guess, would do polls and they'd say, actually only 25% of global Muslims believe in terrorism. And they treat that. Like, it's only 25%, and in some countries up to 70%. It's not, you know, it's not as big of a thing as people are saying. And you're thinking numerically, when you're talking about the billions of Muslims that are out there, 25% is, you know, many hundreds of millions of Muslims who are admitting to an interviewer that they support terrorism. And you have to imagine there's a little bit of an understatement on that between people who are willing to admit it and people who believe it but are not willing to admit it. I saw a pupil where they asked Muslims, you know, do what they thought of Jews and Christians.

They are detestation of Christianity is very high. But the detestation of Judaism is at like 99% in most of these countries, including Indonesia. It's like super high where like two Jewish people live, right? Now, and they come here. Now, let me ask you, if we saw a poll like that, people hated black Americans. Would we think it was a really good policy to let them into the country? Would we be like, that's great. We should have more? You mentioned Obama, by the way. It wasn't just happenstance that this happened. He made sure. that we switched our focus towards Islamic countries to bring people here from Islamic countries. The argument that, hey, they just had a civil war and we have some kind of moral and ethical obligation to take those refugees. Oh, we have a moral and ethical obligation to take people who are constantly having civil wars and in turmoil and killing each other and killing Christians and killing Jewish people. I don't think so. Did you see the New York Times article? Using a gun to defend yourself, the right to kill is growing. Did you see that by chance? I did not. Oh, well, you're definitely going to want to check that out, David Harsani. But the whole article is saying that states are pushing to pass laws sanctioning more reasons to use lethal violence in self-defense, which they claim is a distinctly American tradition. And we were talking about this in the federalist chat. The idea that self-defense is not a universal right that people have, but this uniquely American view of things is contra all history. But we also thought it was funny that they get very mad if you say that America is unique in good ways. But they love to talk about how America is unique in these supposedly bad ways. Like only we care about self-defense, which, you know. As much as I do think we're better at self-defense laws than other countries, it's, again, not something that is not a natural human instinct for others. It's one of the foundational natural laws, and we got it from the British. And just because those people have abandoned this idea, it doesn't mean we should do the same, but I'll definitely look into this. Anyway, and here's just one last comment. You know, every time I see one of these Palestinian flags or Hezbollah flags or whatever it is, I know there's like a 99.9% chance that person hates America. You never see an American flag flying side by side with any of those flags. And I know because I grew up among amongst Italian people and Irish people and Jewish people that those people all loved America or a vast majority of them. Did you see this woman, Francesca Hong, who is running for, I believe, the governorship of, I don't know if she's won her, she hasn't won her primary yet, but I think she's in the lead. I think people assume she'll win. She's also a DSA candidate. And they asked her, about a past comment where she said that Thanksgiving was super painful for her. Now, I admit Thanksgiving is painful for me too, sometimes, but not for the, not for patriotic reasons. But, um, and she just unleashes this word salad about she couldn't even say no, you know, it's an old comment. I actually think Thanksgiving's great. Um, it's just amazing.

Hold on. You said it's Thanksgiving, but Greg Price showed that she hates every holiday. So he had various tweets from her. She says, I do not enjoy fireworks. Here's another. I miss working in a restaurant every day, except on V-Day. As if we weren't invisible enough to those who don't recognize the emotional and physical labor of service work, the worst of humanity comes out from folks celebrating on another day. Capitalism tells you how to show love. IT Bro, who was working on, quote, our, quote, computer remotely changed the background theme to snow and Christmas trees. I feel slightly attacked. And then, of course, famously a few years ago, she said, cancel Thanksgiving, should have done this in 1621. And people were finding that. She also has spoken against Halloween, which, you know, truth be told is not my favorite either. But it just was making me laugh. She just really hates. Oh, yeah, Valentine's Day, Mother's Day, Father's Day. July on Christmas. And Air Independence Day. Yes. You know, now that I see that, I have a little more respect for her. She's got more consistency here than I thought. But she also hates Culvers. She also has spoken against her son whose father is white. Yes. She said that puts her adjacent to. something bad. I can't remember. I mean, it's just the woman is sick. I think anyone who treats color, you've said how you don't even believe race races actually exist. And I'm close to that opinion in a way. The difference is so minute. It's a culture. There's cultural things that happen for sure. But her, anyone who treats whiteness or blackness as some kind of, is anything but immutable characteristic of person or some kind of ideological view or anything are idiots. They are either just completely vile bigots or idiots. Those are the only two choices. I don't know about this one because I haven't heard her enough. Maybe she's a little bit of both. Maybe she's a little bit of both. I don't know. It'll be interesting to see how Democrats continue to embrace these people or whether they will be. The silence of Barack Obama is deafening on this stuff. He loves. These are his babies coming. This idea that he was a moderate or that some of these people are more moderate, the point of this is they go as far. I think Lenin called it like tactical malleability or something. You go as far as you can each time with what in the environment that you're presented. And then they do this each time. And now we've accelerated this thing to the point where you just have open communists deciding who's running in the Democratic Party. I'm not even, this is not like some kind of hyperbole. It's not an exaggeration. These people are communist. DSA candidates are communist.

um you want to speak for a second about fouchy because we missed that last week so i don't want to call him a kami he's he's made a lot of money but uh so last week we spoke about it and we wonder we spoke before his testimony in front of the senate committee and Rand Paul and we spoke about. Oh, right. And I said I had very low expectations. Yes. And somehow even your low expectations he managed to swim under. Right. I wasn't, I have to say, and this is not new with me. I wasn't fully prepared when we had that conversation before he spoke because I hadn't actually thought through the Fifth Amendment question. And he took the fifth on every question. He was pardoned. Because you had mentioned, I think Britt Hume had said something about that he can't take the fifth. And he had been pardoned, pardoned preemptively for all the crimes he had committed. His taking the fifth was kind of like predicated on future crimes in the sense of lying to Congress. Right. So he took the fifth. And that's what people say, well, and he said in the letter, they're going to trick me. Rand Paul is going to. This guy has been. I think he has been, I think he was with for 50 years in the government. He's probably given thousands of speeches. He's probably been in front of Congress hundreds of times. If he can't answer questions and be transparent, who can? Who is supposed, how are we supposed to have any transparency about what happened if he can't do that? I think taking the fifth is. It's a constitutional right. You should do it. People can be tricked. You might be nervous in front of people in power. You can be intimidated. But Anthony Fauci, he's intimidated. He represents science, man. It was infuriating. I think you and I have disagreed before on presidential pardons. But I can't remember if it was you saying that they should be limited because they're just getting out of control. And I think I said that I didn't think there should be any action taken. But I was thinking about how when you pardon someone as monstrous as Anthony Fauci for crimes from 2014 to the... to the time of the pardon. And you foreclose any chance of real accountability. And then that person takes that pardon and just shoves everybody's face in the dirt by refusing to answer questions even about those crimes. It's enraging in a way that's not healthy for civic life. people need to be held accountable for crimes. And pardons really should be used for failures of the justice system, which do happen time to time, extreme situations. And I know we're going to see a ton at the end of the Trump administration. We're just going to see a ton, but it makes you feel like you're in a banana republic. And Bouchy...

Anthony Fauci should be answering for what he did. Not just that he secretly continued to fund the gain of function research after Obama banned it in the U.S., but also that he worked to conspire to cover up that role he played in the COVID pandemic. And then also the horrible stuff he did with the weaponization of the COVID pandemic response. There were people who were not. pardoned, like Deborah Birx, Francis Susan Collins, who also were engaged in some of this nefarious behavior. And I do think people should continue to try to seek accountability by going after them as well. I was happy to see that Utmire in Florida, the Attorney General said they're looking into going after Anthony Fauci down there. But also, Anthony Fauci didn't take the fifth. He read a profoundly dishonest opening statement and then took the fifth. Yeah. And I do think that's going to make it harder for his legal, you know, he will be challenged on this legally. I hope it moves through the courts quickly enough that he can be forced to answer some questions while we still have time. On pardons, I would just say that the long-term consequences of Biden's blanket pardons for his political pals is one of the most corrosive, if not the, I think it is the most corrosive pardons ever given by a president, at least in modern history. It's difficult to imagine anything that incentivizes criminality and abuse of power more than that, because now he's created this precedent where I assume every president will give these. pardons to people in their administrations. So knowing that, if you know that and you're prone to abuse power anyway, what stops you from doing it? Nothing. But I don't know what to do about it because I do think pardon the pardon power is actually not a terrible thing. And if we want to change it, we'd have to change the constitution and the chances of doing that. you know, minute so or tiny. So did you also see the news about Sophie Cunningham last week? Well, what's happened recently with that with the WNBA? I did. Now, you may be surprised to learn that I'm not a huge WNBA person, but Sophie Cunningham, I know. Because she plays with Caitlin Clark, that's her name, right, on the Indiana team, which I think is the fever. And this Clark woman came from college. I forgot where she went. Maybe Indiana. I forgot where she was. And she's like very good. And she's constantly being abused by other players. I watch these videos. It's like, You know, I can't believe what's happening. So you finally get a player. People might be interested in. And this is what you do. And Sophie Cunningham is kind of her bodyguard from what I gather where she really defends her out there. She's an attractive young woman, but she's, you know, she's big and she's strong. And she said in an interview, I think it was a podcast that she didn't think she only thought that biological, she didn't think biological.

males should be playing sports with girls she thinks she wanted to protect the she thinks the girl should be protected from that i have not looked at polls maybe you have this is likely the mainstream view of americans would you say or like i think it's like an 80 plus less than 20 issue yeah But yet every media, you know, media organizations like talking about this controversial statement. It's very funny. Their view of controversial is if you disagree with their opinion. Then it's controversial. Controversial means not liberal, not the left wing opinion. And. Yeah, I wanted to mention when Caitlin Clark was asked about this stuff, she refused to talk about it, which I think is fine. If you don't want to talk about this stuff, it's fine. But I would say this is not the Golden State Warriors coach spouting off about tariffs or something, right? This actually is something in what happens to young girls and a process they went through themselves. So I think it's a little more personal. I agree that it's a free country. People can talk about whatever they want to. But what first disappointed me with Caitlin Clark when she brought so much excitement to a game that was not very exciting and that is fully subsidized by the NBA, and she went up and. acted as a supplicant and said, I recognize that I am nothing and I exist only on the shoulders of my black sisters who created this sport. And I'm embarrassed that I'm taking anything because really all glory and honor goes to them. And I'm like, what the heck are you talking about? Like just. Don't be weird. Don't be racist and don't be like this race obsession. And then also the cowardice of bowing down to it. I'm so sick to death of it. And so I agree that you don't have to say anything. But I think it's from her, unfortunately, we've seen more cowardice than a lack of desire to talk about something. She. Again, I don't know much about the WMBA and I don't know much about her, but she seems like the type of person who would like to avoid controversy and is doing her best to do to do that. And I don't think you can in this world anymore, really. What made me laugh was, did you see this coach? I was point out saying that you have white privilege. I didn't see that comment, yeah. That was years ago. It was. I couldn't forget it. I don't remember. It was at least one year ago, maybe one and a half years ago. That is being political. And it's worse than being political. It's being Marxist. And if you're going to get out there and say, I'm a bad person because I'm white and everybody great is black, you can be condemned for saying stuff like that. And you should be condemned because it's un-American and it's not appropriate. And it's a horrible example for...

everybody and God bless Sophie Cunningham at least for saying what she said and I want to remind people she said I love everybody but men shouldn't be playing women's sports and then people were like why are you mean and she said telling the truth is nice you know we should tell the truth did you just sorry No, no, go on. Truth is good, yeah. Good things to say. And for that, she has every Lesbo coach in the league and every, like, awful player or other people, horrible fans who are full of seething, demonic hatred, screaming at her and screaming at her supporters and pushing to have men play in the WNBA. If men play in the WNBA, it will be a disaster for women and physically there's no match. I always love how the 14-year-olds, I think we talked about that last week. The 14-year-olds boys beat the women's soccer team, women's national soccer team. Men are physically stronger than women. No matter how many movies, pretend that a little 5-foot-1 98-pound lady is beating everybody up. That's not how it works, and we should be truthful with women. And if we're going to have women's sports, they should be women's sports. letting men play women's sports. I mean, the patriarchy wins again. I don't even understand what these people are thinking. But I did laugh because the coach of a team called the Valkyries. I don't know where they're from. Maybe L.A. was said that she said, sports is about belonging. I'm big on that. Just because I've been criticized for my height and my ethnicity. And I had to point out that sports is definitely not about belonging, especially professional sports. It is literally about selecting a number of athletic freaks, paying them insane amounts of money so they can destroy your regional, you know, generational foes that you hate. And then you get to have Schadenfreude in looking at their suffering. That's what that's what sports is about. It's not for everyone. The argument for women's basketball is, in fact, that it is... So with the men's teams, they all can dunk with the women's teams, very few can. So you end up having sort of a more old school feel to the basketball game. So there's something to be said for the. It's like I enjoy watching women's tennis more than men's tennis because they ace so often and they hit it so powerfully and women volley more and it's just more interesting. They're more just exciting. On that note, did you see the WTA, the Tennis Association, is instituting.

A sex test now? No. And Arena Sabalenko was asked about it. She's, I believe, the number one tennis player in the world. And she said she supports it. So they're going to do what trans activists say is a horrifically invasive process. But what sane people would say is a cheek Eric Swalwell to test whether the person playing is male or female. And Arena Sablanca was like, right, because men are much stronger than women. So. women, to make it fair, women should just be competing against women. Well, I forgot who was, what's his name, Clay, Buck Sexton's partner? Clay Travis. Clay Travis, right. He said that he would put up $10 million and then make a bet with that $10 million, that if he had a team of transgendered women, quote unquote, that they would win. every game or I forgot what it was. I think that that is probably how it works. It works that way in cycling when you see it. It works that way in track and field when you see it. It is not fair at the very least. And it is, it undermines truth in a way. And it puts, I think it puts, especially girls in danger. God, I hate watching those videos where there's one of these people. I think they have a mental illness, honestly. It's not like I detest them or hate them or wish bad things to happen to them. But then you see this girl who works so hard to get there getting a bronze medal or a silver medal. It's ridiculous. All right. Is that all with the politics? Yeah. Let's talk culture. I got a few things. Good. I got a few things. Gosh, I feel like I was yelling at you that whole time. I'm so tired. I have to tell you, I think I broke my foot and I couldn't sleep last night. Not good. Yeah. Hey, wait a minute. Do you have anything? Do you want to start? Do you want me to start? I don't really have much. I went to Jackson, Wyoming, the town right near Jackson Hole, Wyoming. And I always love beyond words going to Wyoming. And I think it might be because it's the first place I ever lived. So I just feel very much at home. And that has got to be one of the most beautiful settings in the world. This morning, we had an early flight back, or I had an early flight back. And driving to the airport, there was this mist over the river. And it was kind of like a river with all this marsh and reeds and these huge teetons.

waterfowl and it was just gorgeous. And I wish I could live there year round and be there year round. And I also was realizing that for 30 years, I have wanted to move back west for 30 years. And I just keep enduring this humid swamp of D.C. And I know that my work is here. But I also feel like... My life is, you know, have that much more time. It's so weird because when I lived West, I was always thinking about moving back home east. Like I missed the trees. Like to me, it just see the world without trees is just kind of depressing. And I get it. There's beauty in prairies in Colorado and all that in the mountains. But I just always missed it. I guess where you're born is where you always feel at home. But I really enjoyed being in Jackson. Man, Wyoming is beautiful. Well, then where I lived growing up was Kemmer, which I don't think would be on anyone's list of most beautiful places in the world, although it has its own beauty. I should say, I've only been to beautiful places in Wyoming. I met someone who grew up on a ranch that was right near Kemmer, and so we've had fun talking about that, too. And Jackson Hole itself is, or Jackson, the town of Jackson is also very nice and it was great. And you don't know the magazine Cowboys and Indians, do you? It's vaguely familiar, but no, I have never read it to my knowledge. So. I remember the first time I realized that my parents were reading weird magazines. And one of them was Cowboys and Indians. And it would have real stories about Cowboys and Indians and also amazing ads, including a lot of ads for turquoise or Westernware, which my mom and my sister and I are very much into. But one of the first big ads that you'll always see in Cowboys and Indians is Pearls by Sherry. And it's there are these. gorgeous pearls, exquisite pearls, very beautifully designed. And she's the model and the designer. And I went into and she has her store in Jackson. That's the flagship store. Although she's also located, I mean, she's got her product in all of the Bloomingdale's and that type of stuff. But I went in there and I got to meet her and I was so starstruck. I was very excited. She's even more beautiful in person. And I guess try on some pearls and they were just so beautiful. That's my, that's my, and I learned a lot about pearls by being in there. And she's a remarkable woman and has such an eye. You go into, like she put some stuff on me that was that I would have never picked out myself and that were just beautiful. So there was that and I'm trying to think if there's anything else. Love Jackson Hole would love to go back. Went to church there. And the funny thing. So in the Lutheran church, we follow a lectionary. So we can follow either the one year or the three year lectionary. So if you follow the one year lectionary, your readings are.

longer. And if you follow the three-year lectionary, you kind of get more variety over the course of three years. But we follow the one year. Anyway, I was in Jackson Hole four years ago. There's this one passage of scripture from Luke where you hear like, no man can serve two masters, the God and Mammon passage. It's a very confusing passage. And I think some years I think, I'm... I think I get it, and then I just forget it right away like a dumb sheep. But we went to church at Redeemer Lutheran, which is in downtown Jackson. I mean, the piece of real estate must be worth an amazing amount of money. They don't have stained glass because they just have a huge glass front where you can just look up and see the beautiful mountains in God's creation. But the passage, the gospel reading this time we went was from Luke. that passage, which was the exact same thing when we went four years ago, apparently on the same week of the year. So I've heard this pastor preach twice on this difficult passage. So I feel like I have a very close bond to him now. But that was beautiful. And I guess that's it. I thought I had something else. No, that's enough. It's beautiful. Going to Wyoming is a lot better. Oh, you do have something else? Yeah, I do have one more thing, but what were you going to say? No, I was just saying going to Wyoming is better than just sitting and watching TV like I did, which I'm about to tell you about. I was going to tell you, I am reading a book which you probably already read, and which I was already familiar with, but it is so good. I highly recommend it. And I'm only probably 10% in. And it's called Reformation by Carlos Air. No. Do you know this? No. He teaches at Yale. He's a known, he's himself Roman Catholic, but he's a highly respected Reformation era historian. And this is one of the most readable histories. And it is so generous and balanced. And. I hate when people, and you get this sometimes, historians will get a bee in their bonnet about something and then they just try to press it. And he seems to be more the type of historian who says, so this thing happened and let's look at all the different things that contributed to it. We've talked about that book, Sleepwalkers, about the entry into World War I. Love that book. I do too. I love how it's, it's not like, here's the answer for how we got into that war. It's a very complicated story that. doesn't really resolve everything, but it teaches you so much about the moment. Because I think he goes further back and gives you the real long view of how things can start breaking apart. And, you know, it's just, it's just really a smart book. You're going to love that that is exactly what I would say about reformations, even beginning with how it's called reformations instead of the reformation, because he's looking at. all the different streams that came down for hundreds of years or in some cases thousands of years.

And then at that moment, you know, made things happen the way they are. But it's so readable and it's so conversational. So reformations, the early modern world, 1450 to 1650 is the name of the book. The reformation book I read was by, I don't know how to pronounce it right, but maybe Darmade McCullough or something. Do you know that guy? He had this huge book on Christianity and a book on Reformation. And it was good, but this sounds like something I'd like. We'll see if I can get that done. Okay, TV. What did you watch? Well, actually, I have a few things here. So. We had a question. This is what we're going to answer. What was the first album you bought using your own money? And I have to be honest with you, I was unsure about this. Now, do you remember it was called like the Columbia Club or something where you joined and they would send you records and then you had to buy one every month? I believe I joined that. I don't remember what records I have. And that was a disaster because they didn't have anything I liked. So. I'm slightly embarrassed. I'm not slightly embarrassed about this, but I think the first thing I ever bought was a tape of squeeze singles, a cassette tape of squeeze, the band squeeze singles and 45s. Right? Then I, yeah. How about you? Okay, so I always remember that my first album was purchased for me by my parents, and I was Heartbeat City by the cars. Great album. I do not know the first album I bought for myself, but I do distinctly remember watching the sugar cubes on Saturday night live and going maybe the next weekend or the next day down to the record store and buying Life's Too Good. by the sugar cubes. I can figure that out based on when they... Yeah, I... Yeah, that was 1988. So that's probably 13, 14. Someone's birthday was a few days ago. Yes. Happy birthday. Thanks. Yeah, so that was it. I, my parents, I remember my parents bribing me to go somewhere with them. Oh, God, I was such a spoiled kid probably. And they bought me and they said, you can buy two tapes. And I bought Susie and the Banshees like a best of thing and the sex pistols, never mind the bollocks, which my dad was not very happy about at all. I think it was like eighth or seventh grade. It's a great album. I have that.

I'd like to actually mention a book myself since you brought it up. It's really good. Like, again, I'm really into ancient history. So if you are, this is a good one. But it's called Proto. It's about Proto-Indo-European language family and how it, how. Basically, almost all our languages come from that. It's almost like a Tower of Babel thing, like to me, right? Where there was this one language where Latin comes from, where people in, you know, throughout Asia speak it, you know, in India and elsewhere, where the Welsh speak it. And it all comes from the same route. And she goes through, I think her name's Laura Spiney or something like that. And she goes through the what we know about it, the kind of the science of how we. think about languages and how we know what came first and later and all that. And it's just super interesting. And I think a really, really interesting book. And on that note, I have a podcast recommend, which it's if you're into ancient history, which it's called the ancients. It is hosted by again, I'm Tristan Hughes. And he has on top experts in the ancient world talking about. everything from like i listened to an episode at the gem on on the Pharisees like who were they where did it come from this and that just like one episode after the next i just love it i can't get enough so great that's good that's a recommend that reminds me of something that's not cultural really but my uncle mike my mom is one of six and her younger brother michael lives kind of off the grid Or very much off the grid is probably a better way to put it. But he got caught up in those fires in Washington. He does own property in Washington, and it was completely destroyed by those fires. And did you see one of them was set by an arsonist at least? But yeah, he was in the Sinlahican fire. That's like, I think, Central North Washington. And it's just horrible. I don't know. I mean, it's so bad. The fires, I think people out east, they get very East Coast focused and they forget what's happening in the rest of the country. And Washington State is burning. Yeah. I, that's just been on the periphery of my, you know, I haven't really even thought about that story. I'm sorry for those people. It must be horrifying.

So there's two other things. I watch a show called Whitechapel, which is a British show where it's a detective story. It's like a murder mystery. There's this serial killer copying Jack the Ripper in the next season. They're copying the craze, someone from, you know, the famous mobsters from the 50s, I think. So they saw these crimes, and that's a good show. But I wanted to talk to you about something. And I don't know if I'm going to get his name exactly right. But it's his name is Derek del Guadio, I think. And the show was called In and of Itself. And the guy, it's like a one man show that they filmed. It was on Hulu. I don't know how I ran across this, but my wife was watching it and we watched it. And he is like an illusionist, but he also talks about his life. And some of it was meth to me, but some of it kind of blew my mind. So my wife brought up this quote. I think he's from, I forgot what magician said it because it goes some people are really just enjoy magic and some people are obsessed with figuring out how magic works. And I am definitely in the latter camp there. You know what I mean? But. So I'll give you two of the things he did. I'm not going to spoil it. But one of them is he calls up someone from the crowd. And he asked him a bunch of questions. And then he takes out all these letters and he lets them pick any letter he wants. And the people open the letter. And he's like, this is going to change your life. They open the letter. And there's literally a letter in there written by the relative they, he asked them to mention a relative, literally written by the relative they mentioned. to them personally from and it's just kind of like how did they do that I'm not going to tell you does he get into how they do it I looked it up he doesn't give it away but people have theories I mean I could tell you that they that the producers probably know who's coming ahead of time because this is a show that's been sold out for a long time and they contact relatives Another thing is that there are just a bunch of tickets when you go in and each ticket will say, like, I am a warrior. I am a dad. There's a million of these. And you pick anything you want. And they all take it. And when they, the last part of the show, he goes through each person and tells you a ticket you picked and he gets it right for like 100 people. So it's that kind of thing. But it's also kind of melancholy and sad. And he talks about his life a little bit. I don't know. I didn't love it when I first saw it. But then, like two days later, I was still thinking about it. He was directed by Frank Oz. You know, that guy who used to do the Muppets? The Muppets? Of course I know Frank Oz. So he did. I think it's the last thing maybe he's done if he's still alive. Okay. Sorry. I don't know if I wouldn't I don't know kind of like hesitant to recommend it because you're going to come back and go that was the worst thing I ever saw my life and mock me for years like you did with my Norwegian uh thriller show but um but it might be of interest to some people okay all right

Well, we'll be back next week with more of everything and we'll know what happened in these primaries. You can reach the show at Radio at the Federalist.com. And we'll be back next week. Until then, be lovers of freedom and anxious for the fray. I met her in the ballroom. Her name I didn't catch. She looks like something special.