The Rod and Greg Show: Effects of Socialism in Wisconsin - Reality is Worse than Ideology

It's the Ron and Greg show. And it's the Wingman Wednesday edition on Utah's Talk Radio, 1059, K&RS. And everywhere on the IHeart Radio app, I'm Citizen Hughes. And I'm Rod Arquette. Good to be with you. A lot of talk all over the place today about the votes last night. And the progressives, big win for the progressives in the Democratic Party with Abdul El-Sayed, winning that Michigan Senate race is a lot closer. that a lot of people expect. One percent, less than one percent. Yeah, less than one percent because a few days ago the polls were showing him with a ten point lead. Maybe there were some Michiganders out there who started waking up and going, I don't know about this guy. Or you've got the people that are good at ballot harvesting and everything that wanted to just go ahead and, you know, there's still some ballots. They probably get mailed in that they get to count. Let's see, it's at less than one percent right now. And again, like you said. He was the foregone. He was like the winner in the favor by a lot. Well, we said yesterday on the show. He's probably going to win. Yeah. Well, I'll tell you what. He did, but not by much. Less than 1% margin of victory. And the third place candidate took, I think, I think, balance coming in. I think he's going to win, but it would be, I think finally the Democrats might pay attention to voter harvesting and election integrity. If I'll say in the days after the election got beat, I think all of a sudden they might care about how those votes get counted and collected and counted. Well, let's talk about the socialist win last night and the impact is having on the Democratic Party. Joining us on our newsmaker line to talk about that right now is our good friend, Scott McKay. He is the publisher of the Hayride, also contributing editor to American spectator. Scott, always great to have you on the show. Let's talk about what happened and are the lunatics gaining power, Scott? I don't think there's any question about it. We've always had a problem with, particularly on the left, lunatics who pursue political power and find... productive avenues to do that um like we've had crazy people uh running government in lots of places for a long time but it's definitely worse now than it's ever been i mean i don't think there's any question about that so here's my my dilemma when i look at what's going on here when i see this emerging socialist communist uh you know faction of the democrat party part of me smiles part of me says okay you guys have gotten so crazy look at who look at the Look what you've done to your own party. And look, they're so big now. You can't really do anything about it. And why interrupt them? Let them just make themselves irrelevant. But there's another side that says, be careful what you wish for because if they win certain elections, they can get stronger. And then we've got, as you point out, you know, the lunatics running the whole thing. So I feel like we're in a game of chicken. You got the normies in one car and you got the communists in the other car. And we're just driving towards each other. Who swerves first? Are we going to go and let them get their way? Or do highlighting them in a November race just amplify? They don't know what they want. And Americans are not going to go with socialism slash communism.

Well, okay, like, you know, last night you had Michigan. And so that's, that's top of mind. Yes. I think, I think that the first reaction is probably the one that works in Michigan because I don't see how that guy's going to be Mike Rogers. I just don't see it. I mean, I think the Republicans have likely, I'm not going to say locked up that Senate race, but if Rogers runs a good campaign, he wins that race. Yeah. And it may very well be decisive enough that, like, John James ends up the governor of Michigan as well. And there is the potential to actually turn Michigan red as a result. Like, I don't think that's pie in the sky based on where we stand right now. The problem is this with... And I don't even want to say establishment Democrats, maybe the better way to put it would be like the old liberals, basically falling away because, and it was different in Michigan because it turned in a big thing. But for the most part, these DSA candidates are winning low turnout primary races across the country. And mostly in districts, like particularly in the congressional races. Like, they're winning in districts where no Republican is even really running or, or, you know, has much of a chance to win. So, like, you don't, what you don't have is ordinary Democrats even bothering the turnout to vote. And so, you know, the DSA riles up all the college kids and the barrister at Starbucks and whatever. And, like, that's who goes out and wins. But. You know, if they're in a totally blue district where a Democrat is going to represent it, and now you have a whole bunch of DSA people, the problem that you get is, like, that's who holds political power, even if they're stuck in a minority situation, say, in Congress, like, they become the voice of one of the two big political parties in the country. And that mainstreams them for ideas which are not only they not mainstream, like you shouldn't be able to take the oath of office to be a member of Congress if you believe in the DSA's platform. How do you say that you're going to support and defend the Constitution when you want to change everything about the system of government the Constitution establishes? It's a great point. Good point. Yeah. Go ahead, Scott. Well, and so my whole point is, like, we've seen this movie before. Like, this happened basically all over Latin America in the last century. And what you were faced with was a choice between, you know, Daniel Ortega running your country for time immemorial or, you know, you're throwing people out of helicopters the way Pinochet's people didn't in Chile. Like, you know, you don't have a viable alternative between those two because.

I don't want to say you've lost the center in your politics. I actually think Trump is a radical centrist. I've never really thought he was a conservative. Good point. And I think that the Republicans actually hold what passes for the center in American politics. And, you know, the problem is you look at that in the Senate, and you're like, yeah, we see what the center is. The center is you don't get anything accomplished at all. So, you know, there's a bit of dysfunction here that the DSA is taking advantage of. But the problem is, those guys are the very definition of dysfunction. Like, you can't find anybody who is a DSA candidate that outside of politics has been successful. Yeah. This guy, Al-Tai, might actually be the most successful of the bunch. At least somehow he made a lot of money. I don't really know how he's like a public health guy who made a lot of money. That kind of smells like corruption to me. But like I can't look at anybody else that they're that they're nominating or electing. And see, I mean, these are a bunch of theater kids that stayed in school until they were 45 years old. That's why they got such a great ground gaming campaigns. They don't have jobs. They can just do, they can campaign 24-7 because they don't have to go to work. Yeah. There is a ton to be said for that because, you know, these are the people who they know nothing about anything at all other than like all of the politics that they've ingested over their time not being productive. And so they live and breathe this stuff. And when there's a 10% turnout in the Democrat primary, that's who shows up at the polls. You know, and I mean, it takes Americans with jobs and things to do to actually, like, you know, come off that to defeat these people. I'm assuming that we'll do that this fall, but we're going to have to do it every two years from now on. Scott McKay, joining us on our newsmaker line talking about the loons have taken over. I think that's what Senator Robert F. Kennedy Jr. calls progressives, the loons. I think he does. I think he does, yeah. All right, more. Other words. Other words. Oh, yeah. All right. More coming up. It is the Rodden and Greg show, Wingman Wednesday edition right now on Talk Radio, Wingman, KNRS. Right and Greg with you, as we are each and every weekday from 4 to 7, right here on Utah's Talk Radio, 1059, KNRS, live everywhere. On the I heart radio app, I'm Rod Arquette. I'm wingman citizen Hughes. What was his wingman? What was his wingman in Maverick? Who was it? It wasn't Goose. No, Goose is the guy behind him. We learned this. The wingman is not your guy that's in the plane with you. It's the one that's flying next to you. Yeah. And he had, I think there were different ones that were there. But, you know, Iceman would be the best. It would be the best wing man. Val Kilmer. Yeah, Valcimer. That played that role in it. All right. All right.

Socialism. You and I have talked about it. A lot of people are saying, what would life be like if we lived in a socialistic world? Not that we want to, but we've been thinking about it. Well, we talk about it. And, you know, in history isn't, it's not, you don't have to go back very far to find the countries that went through this. So, you know, there's a lot of examples. History gives us a lot of examples of what happens next. Well, there's one happening right now, and of all places, Madison, Wisconsin, joining us on our any hour newsmaker line right now is Dan Lenington. He is a managing vice president and deputy council for the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty. Funny story about what is taking place in Madison. Dan, thanks for joining us. What, in fact, is happening in the Wisconsin Capitol. Well, on July 22nd, just a couple weeks ago, four Madison police officers attempted to arrest a career criminal in the middle of the street who was wielding a knife and lunging at officers. And during this confrontation, one of the officers shot and killed this career criminal. And in response, the areas around where he was... shot to death, it became what was called the Corey Ruiz Autonomous Zone. The protesters flooded into the area, put up barricades on all the roads, prohibited traffic and people from safely passing through the area. And the city responded by actually supporting this. of an autonomous zone, putting up garbage trucks and salt trucks and actually providing porta potties in this area. And so the issue that we're having here is that the rule of law has completely been abandoned that the police and the city were no longer going to enforce the rule of law. And that is exactly what you get when you get a socialist regime that comes into power. It's all about taking property and rights from one group and redistributed them to another. So I think the left, especially the socialists, they want to foment fear violence, which creates fear, and then the fear compels behavior. What's happened in Wisconsin sounds like the Capitol Hill autonomous zones that we saw pop up during the Floyd riot, the George Floyd riots back in 2020. Does this work? Ultimately, it seems like the Tesla takedown worked. That violence fomented fear and it compelled behavior. You know, they got what they wanted. Is this going to work?

Yeah, there was quite a bit of violence in Madison, just to put a fine point on that. There was a citywide concert going on at the time with thousands of people there, and protesters went over and took all over the concert and shut it down. They went to restaurants down on State Street, one of our commercial areas, and tried to shut down just the white-owned restaurants. There was all sorts of confrontations today. 17 people were arrested. protesting this. They've shut down the street now in front of the jail. And they have always tried to get concessions out of the city. They've said things like, well, why don't you pay for all the homeless people to have hotel rooms for the next year? Why don't you give us all money and make us go away? And so it's this extortion racket that's going on in Madison. And the far left to liberal and progressive and socialist political leaders. are just going to cave in and give them whatever they want. So it does work in local areas, which is the scary thing. And we're wondering, you know, is this going to work statewide in socialist-run states now? Dan, who's backing this group or how are they making their money? Who's providing the funding for this effort? Do we know? Well, we do not know. It's, you know, we have seen in some of these previous autonomous zones where, you know, things like pallets of bricks showed up or wooden pallets or things to construct barricades were just sort of conveniently, you know, placed in there. We're not exactly sure who funds this sort of thing. But it's all part of the left engine of turning our country into some sort of socialist regime that does not respect people's freedom of beach. Does that protect people's freedom of movement or their right to an economic liberty and run their businesses? A lot of the businesses down there couldn't make a rent for August. They couldn't pay their employees. because they had no customers coming in and out of their restaurants. So the victims of these tactics are actually the liberals and progresses that live in these areas that are suffering. And this is no longer a belief system that's a luxury. It just requires payment. So you saw some electoral success from the socialists in last night's primaries, Democrat primaries, they're cut from the cough of these rioters. Is this movement attracting maybe young people who might not subscribe to socialism by itself or even some of the tactics going on in Madison and have happened elsewhere? But they're not seeing crony capitalism or they're seeing something where they don't feel they have access to what we're calling a free market. They're seeing... buying a home further and further away, whatever their economic prospects may be, they might not be happy. Are there some that are legitimizing this movement just because they don't like the status quo? Yeah, and I'll tell you, that's a real risk for conservatives and Republicans because we actually did a study, a polling study a couple weeks ago at the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty, and we poopist-leaning GOP voters.

And we found really troubling results that they are in favor of price controls. They are in favor of limiting corporate profits. And this is not just a left issue. This is a populist issue. And people are getting hit in the pocketbook and they are feeling real economic pain. And unless candidates can speak to the economic pain and to articulate a reason why they should vote for a conservative or Republican nominee, then it's going to be hard for them to win these elections. Dan, you're in Wisconsin, of course. You've got a socialist candidate running for governor in Francesca Hong. She's a chef. I don't know if you heard. She's a chef. By the way, have you heard anything about her involvement? Has she said anything on this so far, Dan? Yes, she went down to this autonomous zone, and she took out a bullhorn reminiscent of George W. Bush at Twin Towers, and she declared that this was a state sanction execution of this career criminal who was trying to stab police officers. And she basically riled up the crowd, and that led to all sorts of violence. So, yes, she's on the side of the violent protesters. Yeah, and this guy who was killed is no angel. Am I reading that right? Yes, he has got all sorts of, he has 86, he had 86 different crimes charged against him over 17 years, 11 charges of a resisting and obstructing officers, bail jumping, strangulation, vehicle theft, threatening judges, battery. He's, yeah, no angel is to put it mildly. He does not respect authority. That's something we're seeing a lot on the left right now as people pay in respect authority. Dan, thank you very much. Can you believe that this guy who was shot by police, 86 charges against him over 17 years? That's a record. It's got to be. Yep. Got to be a record. All right. Rally behind that guy. Yeah, that makes all the sense. More coming up on the Rod and Greg show. Let's get your news update right now. Here's Abby. Committee that Iran Paul chaired last week when Anthony Fauci got up there and took the fifth 111 times, meet tomorrow, and there's a possibility, Greg, they could hold Anthony Fauci in contempt of Congress. Even with the pardon, the presumptive pardon that Joe Biden gave him, may not fly. This could be a real legal question. Let's find out. Let's find out. I'm super curious. Let's find out. Let's find out. And it deserves scrutiny to see it. Well, I think a lot of us last week were disgusted by Anthony Fauci's performance before the committee. But is he a symptom of feckless politicians? Joining us on our Newsbank line to talk about that is political commentator. Ian Howarth? Ian, how are you? Welcome back to the show. What about Anthony Fauci and the feckless politicians that he dealt with?

Yeah, I mean, Anthony Fauci is just the gift that keeps on giving, isn't he? He just refuses to go away. He refuses to stop staring at himself lovingly in the mirror. Just a really great guy, you know. There's two layers here. I think one Anthony Fauci obviously deserves to face consequences for the damage he did to the country, for the lies he told, and also for the damage he's done before COVID. He's actually dig into his career. He's done some pretty terrible things, wasted an awful lot of money. He's a very good politician. My concern with these kind of things, though, is that we like to kind of almost personify things that happen in American life with just one person. And if we remove that one person or we punish that one person, then everything will be great. And the truth is that Anthony Fauci would have been meaningless had it not been for... city mayors, state governors, and two presidential administrations that embraced him as the expert, as the science, and really gave him the keys to the bus that he then drove off a cliff. You can't really blame him for political decisions that were made. You can obviously hold him accountable for giving terrible advice, for misleading the public on medical matters, things like that. But he didn't close the economy. He didn't close schools. It was state governors. It was the teachers union. screaming of the idea of teachers actually having to work. There were so many other people who were responsible for the damage that was done that now everyone's trying to almost put everything on Anthony Fauci when, don't get me wrong, he has a lot that he should be accountable for. But there are a lot of people who are trying to use him so that they get away with it too. And I'm hoping that people don't fall for it. Ian, you're right. A lot of useful idiots run around who had too much power in decision making that would take Anthony Fauci's dreams and what he wanted to have happened and see them be realized what's the what's i call them the regime at media what's the regime media's role in all of this you have you have the politicians which i think you've spotted but the does the media hold some blame to this is this what compelled the politicians to act the way they did Yeah, I mean, I don't think there's a problem in American life that doesn't have the media as at least some small part of it. I mean, for me, I think it's hard to kind of judge immediately because I think we all learn as time went on, right? It's very easy to look back at say March. 2020 and know what we would have done had we know what we know now. But it became very clear quite quickly that everything we were being told by people like that was not completely true, not completely accurate, not completely reliable. You know, there were other countries that were pursuing different policies and not everyone was dying. We saw Florida, which is, you know, the oldest state in terms of population in the country or one of the oldest states. And they had pretty much open policies after a few weeks. they didn't see any significant increases in the kind of things that we were promised.

It was really, I think the media's failure for me was the refusal to look at the whole picture, the refusal to ask honest questions about what was working, what wasn't working. They were fully on board with the messaging that if you didn't wrap yourself in three, four, five masks, if you didn't get endless booster shots that were increasingly ineffective, then you were not only part of the problem, but you were the enemy. You were killing grandma. You were individually responsible for a virus that... came from China, and if you said that it came from China, you were anti-Asian or xenophobic, any of these names. They really fueled, I'd say, the dishonesty and the complete lack of interest in actually getting to the bottom of this. But you could say that in the media about really anything, unfortunately. It's like a never-ending problem. Ian, why did more people speak out? I mean, there were some scientists who raised questions, a few politicians out there who were saying, wait a minute, and is it because the way they were treated that others who did want to say something, all of a sudden said, I'm not going there because of the treatment they're being given? Yeah, I think it's a few things. I think there was definitely like a mob mentality of there is a fear of someone coming, you know, in some cases literally to you and blaming you or attacking you or criticizing you. There are a lot of people who lost their jobs. There was an awful lot of political pressure. But there was also moral pressure. There was media pressure. And I think with issues like life and death, especially in the field of politics, People don't want to be wrong in any situation, any scenario. But when people's lives are at stake... And people don't like to be told the reality that we are all mortal. And it was going to be impossible for any kind of pandemic, any kind of epidemic, any kind of disease that some people would not suffer and some people would not die. But politicians don't exist in a world where we want to be told the truth. And so I think it was like a perfect storm of politicians not wanting to make the wrong decision. And in their mind, the right decision was to try and avoid death. You know, if we all wrapped ourselves in plastic bags, none of us would catch a cold, but, you know, we'd suffocate. There are payoffs of quite literally everything. And I think politicians just looked at trying to reduce the number of deaths no matter the cost, no matter the economic cost, no matter the educational cost, or the mental health suffering that they imposed upon tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of people. They looked at one statistic, which was, you know, death from COVID. And that's all they're focused on. And so it was, I think, a perfect storm of the problems in our society. You know, Ian, you got a great take. You're a great observer of American culture, politics, how they all combine or how they merge. Mark Halperin, who used to be, I would call part of that regime media, but then kind of got canceled himself and maybe came with a new perspective. Well, he posted just recently that he is shocked that the media, even if they were in, even if they love Anthony Fauci and they love the, you know, the.

talking, you know, the orders that were given or whatever they were supporting to see what he was writing and to be able to see what his, Anthony Fauci's observations were at the time. He is shocked that they are not reporting this more accurately or showing the contradictions. They're actually defending him and a guy like Mark Halperin is shocked by this. Are you shocked by this? Because I think that, and I guess my larger question is, are the American people understanding what happened here because you have a media that's trying to say this is a mostly peaceful protest as the building behind the person is burning to the ground? I think the reason, one of the many reasons the media don't really want to cover this is because they're implicated in all of this because they made Anthony Fauci famous. You know, they put him on magazine covers. They put him in endless interviews. They held him up as a patron saint of the science. And so they're implicated really in all of this. And so I'm not surprised that they don't want to. kind of admit they were in any way wrong. But I think also Anthony Fauci still represents something to them. I think he still represents the kind of elitist class of experts that they really don't want to question. You know, don't get me wrong. I think there's still room for expertise. There's still room, obviously, for true scientific studies, true medical study, objective science and objective education, things like that. I'm not going off the deep end. But the idea that you cannot question someone simply because they're wearing a white coat and giving you a line that changes every three seconds. Again, I think that's fundamentally un-American too. I think we're a country of people who question what we're told, and I think that's a good thing. Sometimes it can go a little too far, but the idea that... You cannot question what a politician, and Anthony Fauci is a politician says to you is absurd. But the media like those people because they tend to believe precisely the same thing. So I think it's kind of a circular problem with Anthony Fauci lifts the media up. Anthony Fauci tells the media what they want to hear. And then the media lifts Anthony Fauci up as the star of what they want to be true. And it's – I don't see this changing any time soon, unfortunately, because – There will be another issue like this, whether it's a pandemic, whether it's a political scandal, something. And it's just the same stuff over and over again. I find it disheartening, but it doesn't mean we shouldn't call it out and we see it. That's for sure. Ian Howarth, joining us on our newsmaker line. More coming up on the Rod and Greg Show.