Episode 898: Progressives Prevail in Michigan

I'll say Edwins in Michigan and Jason Ardey calls it quits. We'll discuss all this more on this edition of the editors. I'm Rich Lowry, and I'm joined, as always, by the right, Honorable Charles C.W. Cook, first-time guest Luther Ray Abel and Andrew Studaford. You are, of course, listening to a Nashville podcast, our sponsors. This episode are Varear, fast-growing trees, and the free of the economy podcast from CEI. More about all of them in due course. For some reason, you're not already following us on a streaming service. By the way, you can find us everywhere. on Spotify to Apple Podcasts. And if you like what you hear here, please consider giving us a glowing five-star review wherever you listen to your podcast. If you don't like what you hear here, please forget, I said. anything. So Charlie, much narrower race in the Michigan Senate primary than the polls had led us to expect. Everyone thought that El-Syad would run away with it. Polls were showing double-digit leads. Instead, a nail-biter of a night. He eventually prevails by a point. But a win is a win, and this is a big victory for the DSA, even though he's not formally a DSA candidate, but for the Bernie Sanders wing of the party, shows this phenomenon, has extended well beyond the urban areas where we first saw it in New York City, especially. El Cade wins a big, really important statewide. primary and does it in the same fashion that we've seen in other jurisdictions where he he wins young voters white voters educated voters and does poorly among working class and black voters what do you make of it well look we had a few months ago a debate about whether america is an idea or people. And I said I thought the answer was both, but that the idea is important. And as I've written in the magazine, I think this is a bit of a lacuna in the philosophy of those who hone in the idea argument. If you are going to have an idea that animates people in this country, then that idea has to be relatively static. It can't be whatever anybody thinks at any point. And my take on Al-Sayyad is that he fundamentally opposes that idea. I think Jim wrote about this. This is a fight for the meaning of America. And the movement to which I'll say it belongs, perhaps not formally, but at least informally, is openly and implacably opposed to what the median person would consider to be the norm.

in America. And as a result, I profoundly hope that he loses. The Democrats are at the moment in the midst of a revolt within their own party, and in some cases coming from outside their own party, but using it as a carapace, that is... similar in some sense to the Tea Party revolt and then to the MAGA revolt that shook the Republican Party. I am, though, loath to make that comparison too closely because, while I didn't agree with all of their views and they put up some stinker candidate, the Tea Party was sound fundamentally. The DSA is not. Now... One of the defenses that you will hear from moderate Democrats, many of whom are rather defensive at the moment, is that the right-wing critique of the supposed radicalism of the Democratic Party is unfair, that what they describe as a new red scare. is unfair because the candidates in question hail from cities and from already very left-wing areas. And so they say to tar the whole party with this brush is unjust. I think that... In some quarters, that argument has been true. It's true, for example, that Francesca Hong is from a part of Wisconsin that is about as left wing as it could be. It's true that Bernie Sanders is from Vermont. It's true that Zohran Mamdani got traction in New York City, not in Alabama. But this... rather challenges that assumption, I think. Michigan is not equivalent to Madison, Wisconsin or New York City or Vermont. Michigan is an interesting place politically. It's not a sunbelt state and its conservatives have a different affect than you might get in Texas or in Florida. But still, the fact that a DSA or DSA-aligned candidate has won, even less emphatically than was anticipated, should be a sign that at least until something dissuades them, or God forbid they win, this is growing, this is moving, this is spreading. that the Democrats have put this person up in Michigan, a state that Donald Trump won in 2016 and 2024, I think is rather telling about the current instincts and preferences and trajectory of the Democratic Party. So you have here a candidate who is extremely radical.

who doesn't make much secret of that radicalism, and that is now running not in an enclave, but for a statewide election in a Midwest state that is not quite a swing state, but is at least competitive. And Trump won it. And it should be said, Rogers, who's the Republican candidate, nearly won in 24. And the Republican candidate, I think it was John James, was 6,000 votes shy of winning in 2020 against the other Michigan senator, somebody who never seems to go out in public, Gary Peters. So it really is a moment in our politics that they have done this. And I suspect that the likelihood of other... DSA-star candidates being adopted in non-enclave places will hinge on the results of this election. Because if this guy wins in a good Democratic year, many people are going to conclude that this is the path to success. But if he loses while, for example, in North Carolina and Alaska, more moderate Democrats prevail. The opposite message will be received. Can we go back when you said he's opposed to what most Americans would consider norms of Americanness or the American idea? What do you mean by that? Well, he's a guy who wants to... reform, he would say, I would say, vandalize our institutions. He's against a filibuster. He wants to pack the court. He is uncomfortable with capitalism. He sees Jewish conspiracies behind much of American life. He wants to nationalize our health care system. Look, there are a whole range of views in America, and of course, the median voter does not line up with mine. But I don't think those are mainstream positions. And I suspect that he is holding back. And to give you a little example of how he's bit out there, there is actually a section. on his website explaining away 9-11 comments was privy to with Hasan Piker. I mean, Hasan Piker has helped him campaign. Hasan Piker is a bizarre person. It would be the equivalent of having Republican candidates openly campaigning with Nick Fuentes or something. I mean, this guy is completely comfortable with the weirdo left. in a way that his opponent, Mike Rogers, is not comfortable with the weirdo right. Yeah. So Luther is my contention that this guy, if he wins, he'll be the most radical member of the United States Senate.

ever. So, and you look at radical Republicans like Charles Sumner, the foundation of their radicalism was basically wanting to make, end slavery and make black citizens. You look at Huey Long, you know, who freaked FDR out, real radical economics and didn't really care about constitutional constraints, but he wasn't into trans. He wasn't friendly to U.S. enemies. You look at the leftmost fringe of the Democratic caucus. in the 80s and the 90s, you know, it's Tom Harkin, it's Paul Wellstone. These folks from your part of the world who out there in Wisconsin and Minnesota and places like that, kind of Midwestern farmer type. progressivism that didn't have this cultural edge or this anti-American edge. And then you get to Bernie Sanders, and Bernie Sanders, you know, overlaps massively with Abdul El-Sayed. But I don't think it was really what, it's not what excites him. He adopted kind of the woke politics and the third worldism, Bernie Sanders, because he just saw that's where the left was going. What he cares about most is the economics, whereas Abdul El-Sayed is radical in all these dimensions. economic medicare for all you know he's he's uh all and on medicare for all cultural stuff you know every element of the trans agenda and this third worldism that has a hostility to the the american project and the west and is obsessed with israel as an expression of both of those things Yeah, he strikes me as just sort of fabulously performative as far as his leftism is concerned. And I think to Michigan Democrats credit, the fact that he won by so little indicates that the appetite for him is not what the DSA hoped for. And that this is more likely... the type of leftism we see out of East Lansing, Ann Arbor, that just carried him over the top. And what is that? What is that leftism? Well, it's the universities. So we have Michigan State, University of Michigan, where you're going to have a lot of your DSA core. And the thing is, Midwestern Democrats, and I'll say this for Wisconsin as well. They've become complacent. Haley Stevens is not a strong candidate. She was just dopey. It was embarrassing to watch her campaign. And she nearly pulled it off when people had given up on her. So I do think that when we get to the general, it may not be close. I think the Republicans will overperform. because what Al-Sai represents, what Francesca Hong represents in Wisconsin, is just so far beyond what the average voter can even recognize as a legitimate politician. Now, I could be proven wrong, and that would be horrific, and that's a real fear. But I think we may be bringing these names up in the future as signs of...

excess in the DSA. Yeah, crazy. It didn't work out. I hope you're right. I think a difference between Saeed and Hong is that he could clearly do the job. He could be a United States center. I mean, he would be a terrible United States center, I think would be horrible for the country. But he's a competent person or, you know, at least there's something going on there. He has political skills where Hong is just, you know, you wouldn't trust her to be the assistant. librarian, you know, at some librarian East, East Lansing. She is so bizarre and obviously unsuited for what's a real job, you know, governor of Wisconsin. Yeah, and I do blame the death of local journalism for either of these individuals having the run that they're on. We do not have a state newspaper anymore. And Hong would have been put to the side long ago if there was an institution in the state that was asking her anything close to critical questions. And now we're seeing, I mean, she can't even figure out if she likes Thanksgiving or not. This is the sort of incompetence that good journalism should militate against. And unfortunately, we don't have those institutions at the moment. And hopefully that will. repair. So, Andrew, Charlie mentioned Hasan Piker and Abdul El-Sayed is very much of the Hasan Piker ilk, not just ideologically, but also in terms of the persona. They both lift weights, pretty big guys, and they cultivate these kind of bullying, crap talking. personas the morning after he won the primary he was clapping back at rogers for not being able to say his name and you know saying get your name get get my name out of your mouth if you can't say it right refer to him to ricely as my guy called him a coward because he said he likely wouldn't accept his challenge for five debates and then said what i thought was really most notable in this riff said you know we're going to have these debates And we have this general election, and you're not going to be able to hide your crimes from the people. And I was like, what is he talking about? So Mike Rogers is a former pretty well-respected congressman. He was chair of the House Intelligence Committee. Presumably, he wasn't committing any crimes as chairman of a House committee. So I was wondering, does this go back to his military service and the fact that he was in the FBI? You know, he's in the military in the mid-80s. I'm not sure of any war crimes. The U.S. military is committing in the mid. 80s during the Cold War. And in the FBI, he was in an anti-corruption unit in the Chicago office. But this is a way, if that's what he had, El-Sayed had in mind, this is a, you know, this is a way our enemies think of people who serve in the military or in the FBI, a place like the FBI. It's not a very American view.

No, no. And I think that, I mean, obviously, unless there's something we know nothing about and seems to me and to you to be completely unimaginable, that, to say that, you know, that Rogers has anything to apologize for. I think that what else I eat, and, you know, his competence, I think you just mentioned that. I mean, he's, you know, he's an Oxford man, dare I say. What he is doing in his game is to de-legitimize his opposition. And there are two devils of debate. You can say, my opponent is wrong about, or you can say, my opponent is wrong. And what he is doing is the politics of demonization. And he's probably doing it preemptively because he knows that he is going to come under a lot of fire for some of the things he has said and also for some of the company that he keeps, which is, to put it, mildly, deeply disturbing. So X a question to you, Charlie Cook, looking ahead, in 2028, the Democratic nominee will be someone who calls Gaza a genocide. Yes or no? For president? Yes, sir. No, I think that that candidate will hedge. I think instead they will talk relentlessly about cutting AIDS to Israel and they will imply that that's the cause. But I think that they will be too cautious to use that word. Luther. It will be an individual who has said in the past in these days. that Gaza is a genocide. But in 2028, will, as Charlie says, avoid saying it so explicitly. Anders Stetterford. I think, no, I do not think that they will describe Gaza as a genocide. I'm not even sure that they would have done in the past. On the other hand, it would not surprise me if they deliver nods and winks in that direction. What they will not do is you will not get a, the nominee will not come out and say, no, I do not think that Gaza was a genocide. So I kind of the opposite of Luther. I think it will be someone who's not a DSA type. So it's not someone who's enthusiastically calling it a genocide now. But I think it will be someone who will feel compelled in the course of the campaign and under the Kleglites of various debates to reluctantly come around and call it.

A genocide. With that, let's go to our first sponsor this episode. Our friends at Vair, we've spent a lot of time this year talking about terrorists where they're still actually possible to make things in America. Well, our sponsor today is putting that question to the test. Vair was founded in Los Angeles back in 2016 with a simple but very ambitious mission. to revive the American watch industry. Cut to today, Vera is proud to be the largest independent watch assembler in the United States, building watches in California, Arizona, Rhode Island, and Alabama, as well as manufacturing leather straps in Illinois and Florida. All of us here at theaters have been wearing our very watches for a while now, and I can tell you firsthand, they're truly amazing. I get comments to my Vera watch. all the time. Listeners wondering if it's a very watch and just random people saying, hey, that's a great looking watch. What is it? And it sure is a great looking watch. Truly enjoy it. MBD does or a watch guy, resident watch guy does as well. There makes some of the most durable well-built watches on the market. They use top grade luxury materials. They all come with a waterproof warranty. And they've earned over 10,000 5-star reviews. What's More Vair's classic analog approach. Timekeeping is not only sophisticated and refined. It's also a welcome departure for people who are tired of getting pinged on their smartwatches all day. If you want to support American craftsmanship and own a watch that's both rug and refined, check out Vair.com. That's V-A-E-R-Watches.com. Please check it out. I guarantee you won't regret it. So Luther. Who could have imagined that a months-long war in a contemporary context would require a lot of missiles and a lot of interceptors? We've had stories now that we are depleted in a big way in terms of our long-range precision missiles and also our interceptors. There have been leaks about this. There's been stories of Washington posted one. about a meeting in Camp David where Trump supposedly dressed down Pete Hegseth about these shortages and said, you know, why was I aware of this? I thought this was already fixed. The White House strenuously denies that story. Whether he dressed down Pete Hegseth or not, I imagine he's not very happy about this situation. I don't like these leaks. I don't think anyone should be leaking this kind of information, which is irresponsible and damaging. But these shortages are also just a matter of public record. The think tank see. SIS has been tracking our interceptors. And I don't know, we're, I think, above 2,000 Patriots when this started. And now maybe, you know, 500 or something. Thad missiles, we started with many fewer, but we've used about half of them. And the problem is you can't build these things. quickly. The Tomahawk cruise missile, I think last year we acquired less than 100. I think maybe I've seen 55, 55, and we apparently shot off half of our Patriot missile arsenal during the course of this war. And this has clearly been an element that's been constraining Trump in terms of going back and hitting Iran hard the way he threatens every other day. So how big a problem is this? What do you make of it?

Yeah, there are a few layers here. For one, I don't think much of the Washington Post story. It uses nameless sources familiar with the conversation between Pete Hegseth, and Feinberg, who's the undersecretary. And what caught my eye there with Feinberg is he's credited by many in and around the Pentagon for really leading the charge on improving the acquisitions process. bringing in commercial products, speeding the time to delivery, so that he was named, and there seems to be some attempt to create schism here between Trump, his secretary of war, and the undersecretary. Just an interesting note there. Munitions exist to be used. Smoke them if you got them. If I was shocked about... running through my 556 after a range day with Armalight Charlie here. everyone should point and laugh at me. Like, obviously, we're going to be using it up. Just strikes me as another example of White House camp sniping at one another through the press, and that annoys me. Yes, we should be producing Patriots and the newer-gen, precision strike missiles, dark eagle hypersonics, as quickly as possible. When you refuse to put boots on the ground, you have to have a lot of stuff to lob. And we didn't have that to begin with. And so we are going, we are paying the piper now. And it has to be fixed immediately. But this was known. It's nothing new or particularly interesting, except how it was presented to the public, tells us something about what's happening in the White House and the views on our foreign policy within. So, Andrew, this has been a problem decades in the making. We've just skimped on this for a very long time. It's always very easy to skim from the weapons acquisition accounts when the budgets are constrained, as they particularly were during the... sequester era, the Obama-Bainer budget deal that gave us the military sequesters and also the military and, you know, this is a human phenomenon. We've seen it in different countries and different periods of time. It's just very easy to rely on optimistic scenarios. We don't need that much, you know, because whatever war with fights is going to go real... really fast. It's going to be really rapid and really easy. And this Iran war is a sign that those assumptions oftentimes are flawed and wrong. If this had been, you know, four to six week affair and that was it, this wouldn't be such a dire problem. But we're really low. And the administration seems to have urgency about it, which is great.

It said all the right things. I hear very good things about the Deputy Secretary Feinberg, whom Luther just mentioned. But the fact, even if you're doing the right things, this is going to take years to recover from. And we've also learned that we've been much tilted towards sophisticated, expensive systems to deal with higher-end threats. You know, that's understandable. You need to do that. But we've neglected... kind of lower just good enough systems that you can produce more in mass at a much cheaper cost. And we're going to focus on that now. But a problem with the Iran war and one of the other problems is they shoot drones and we, you know, inexpensive drones on it costs tens of thousands of dollars to make and we shoot an interceptor that cost a couple million to make that we can't replace at least on the timeframe we were working with prior to this for for years. I think that the, I mean, I do think it is an extremely serious problem. And I think that it's been, you know, there's no, I wouldn't point any particular fingers. I think that as the product of a certain degree of, quite a lot of optimism, is that we always believed that everything was predicated that we were going to fight. two wars again, you know, be able to fight two wars at once. But those were the assumption was that they would be pretty much smaller opponents. Whereas now we face a challenge led by Russia and China. And the, I don't think that we are ready for it. We've already seen, we haven't, we don't only see the The problem is Iran and it does appear clear that we are being constrained by equipment shortages. One explanation, but partial explanation that I read about the equipment shortages is that, funnily enough, the unwillingness, which I totally understand, are backed to put boots on the ground or extends also though to risking pilots. So, because we don't want anyone falling into Iranian hands, and that has meant that the, you know... the missiles have been used at an even higher rate than would always be the cost, always be the core, the case. But it seems that we've been taken a bit surprised by the drones, and we've been taken surprise on the interceptors, and we're seeing in Kiev now, to put a very dramatic example of it, I mean, the place is more or less helpless. against the Russian interceptors. And I think part of the problem has been, and Luther will, I'm sure, should be down. And Flavis were saying this, that I think over-engineering, he won't shoot me down. I haven't the missiles. You haven't the missiles. Exactly. But the hazard engineering is a problem.

Not anticipating the drones is, I think, will be an enormous problem. But the other thing, I think that there is a psychology of buying the sexy or ordering the sexy toys. And the big battleship or the submarine, yes, of course, those things are important. And perhaps they attract. they go higher up, they look good on the presentation, they look good on the surprise, then the nuts and bolts, which is the, which is munitions of all descriptions. And I feel that they may have been neglected, but they've certainly, when they haven't been neglected, they have been over-engineered. And what is worrying me, I do worry intensely about this, is that there is a drone gap and there is a missile gap. and to use an old phrase. And what is interesting is that everywhere I've looked, they lie, but go ahead. Yes, yes, yes, true. But if you look at what people are talking about, what Ukrainians have done with, you can deal with the drones, I think, quickly with imagination. And for heaven's sake, don't over-engineer what you're doing first. first off, which is what the, you know, that's the lesson from the Ukraine. But what is worrying is that the Europeans and the Ukrainians are talking about developing their own interceptors. And they're still talking and they're involved, they've involved. the leading Ukrainian company in that. But even there, and this is a more cheap and cheerful model, now Lockheed, or Lockheed, I think it is, is saying that they are going to produce a cheap and cheerful model. Great, great, great. When I read about that, looked into that, and then you read how long it will take. And either case, we're still talking a couple of years. So I think we do have a dangerous vulnerability. So Luther, by the way, I was remiss. We should mention that you're the only one on this podcast with the military background. You're in the Navy. Yeah, I suppose I was. Carl Vinson, a carrier for three years. I was a naval cadet. People like shooting munitions? We did. Coming back from my first deployment, we got to run through all the ammunition that we didn't use on the deployment. So getting to rock the 50 and I think it was the 240 at the time. That was great fun. What are those? Where are those? Just machine guns. And thankfully... We didn't have to use any of our ammunition. We were shadowed by a Chinese destroyer in the South China Sea, and they went radio silent on us for a while. And the joke on the ship was our hull was so thin we hoped any missile incoming from the Chinese destroyer would just punch through the other side because there was no detectable metallic material for it to explode upon. And when was this? This was in 20...

2014. All right. So you really took the, if you got, if you got smoke, if you got them seriously, if you're firing off all your ammunition before you get home. Is that a policy? Generally for the small arm stuff, yes, because it's handed to you. The ammunition is exposed to the elements. They don't really want it back in the armory. So use it up and get everyone's gun Kendall Qualls all squared away. So, Charlie, this is another piece of data that's kind of damning on the decision to enter this war, at least on the basis on which it was made, because, you know, for decades, people would have warned, well, just you got to be careful in a conflict of Iran because they might close the strait of her moves and Trump brushed that aside. And there are a lot of skeptics of this war at the outset say, eh, don't do this because we potentially have a bigger problem with China and you're going to run low in your munition stocks. And here we are. Yes. Now, I don't disagree with anything that's been said, and I don't disagree with the implication of the question either. But I would say that not only does this highlight one of the problems without having gone into Iran, because... We are running out of munitions and have other threats. But it also highlights a problem that I've complained about from the beginning, which is that we don't seem to have been entirely sure what our aim was. And as far as I understand it, that's a big problem when it comes to supplies. Now, there is always going to be some degree of guesswork and ambiguity when a country is literally or mostly at peace. It's difficult to know what you might need when the world seems stable. But we seem to focus best. when the opposite is true. So if you look, for example, at the beginning of World War II, the British produced what they needed at each stage, or at least tried to produce what they needed at each stage, to deal with the particular challenge they faced, which at the beginning was a German attempt to knock out British air superiority, coupled with German... bombing of London and other cities, then an attempt to prevent an invasion, and then offensive weapons needed in North Africa and southern Italy and eventually France. The Americans, obviously a miracle story. became the arsenal of the world and knew what it was that they needed. And the same is true subsequently. Even in a non-hot war in the 1970s and 80s, Ronald Reagan had a specific plan as to what needed to be produced and maintained because he had a theory as to how we would beat the Russians in the Cold War. So I don't blame...

American leaders for being imperfect in their assessment of the global situation. But if you're going to start a war, you probably need to have a coherent view of what you're trying to achieve and how you're going to do it. And I don't think that we did. And I think that the administration is therefore in a difficult position because it's not... adequately weighing the goals which have been shifting in Iran against other considerations. For example, what we would have to do if China invaded Taiwan. It's probably not allying its munition supply chain with the aims in Iran because they're so fluid. And, you know, I don't know if this is true. But I read in the newspaper in the last couple of weeks that Trump had been asking around for ideas. So what the American forces should do in Iran? Well, if you are asking around for ideas, now, just a quick digression on that. There's nothing wrong if you have a very clear strategic goal with asking experts. the military and so forth, how to achieve it. And if you need to invade Japan in 1945, of course you would bring a whole host of people into a room and say, how do we do that? But if you're asking, as seems to have been the case here, all right, what next? Then you're never going to be able to come up with a policy that can be aligned. with your munitions production and maintenance needs. Because one day you're determined that you're going to take down the regime and you're going to drop as much ordinance as you can and they're going to give up. And then they don't and you say, well, now we need to reopen the Strait of Hormuz. Well, that takes a completely different set of material. So I think that this doesn't just underscore the problems of everyone else's. Highlight it. I think it underscores the problem with the vagueness of what we are doing in Iran. Of course you're going to end up in a situation where you have depleted resources and you're not quite sure what you need if you don't know what you're doing. Yeah. So I'm not pushing back against that point at all. In fact, this is a way of reinforcing it. But this is how Trump operates. I have a friend who's an expert in an entirely different. policy area has nothing to do with defense or security and military fares he was meeting with Trump sometime in February. And at the end of the meeting, Trump's like, should I bomb Iran? And this guy's like, I don't know. But he kind of asked everything about everything. But it's clearly a seat of the pants operation. So Charlie, I'm stick with you for the exit question. It's a non-sequador. Luther, sorry, did you want to get in there? Yes. So I'm going to be the Pollyanna here. I don't think we can understand Iran without understanding that everything I'm hearing out of third and seventh fleet, our westward facing Navy, is saying China 2027. Iran is, was the oil depot for China. And we're seeing similar strikes on production facilities in Russia. I don't think that's an accident.

The administration also cannot come out and say, all of this is because we are looking at China and kneecapping their ability to be on the offensive for months in and around Taiwan. Because they wouldn't have availability to, they wouldn't have fuel readily available? That's correct. And so China has enormous oil reserves for this very reason is because they're concerned that... their allies would not be able to supply them in the future. But I can't say for sure because the administration isn't saying for sure, because if they came out and said, this is all about you, China, that would have enormous ramifications for how our countries treat one another in public. So if I'm right, We are doing the correct thing. It may have been more costly in munitions than we expected it to be, but Carg Island is not exporting oil. So why wouldn't we then just bomb Carg Island? I mean, destroy the, we have bombed Carg Island, but destroy the oil facilities on Carg Island. I mean, I think part of the answer is Trump just values energy infrastructure so much. It's a little bit like, you know, if I handed you a hammer and said, you know, destroy this Rembrandt, you wouldn't be able to do it or be very difficult for you to do it. And he just seems to be very reluctant to. Yeah, because it could just as easily export to us in the future. Right. And so. To my hypothesis here, destroying the entire leadership structure, at least at the very top in Iran, also kneecaps China's ability to communicate with its Iranian allies because now they are fractured, which is very difficult for us to fight against, but is also extremely difficult for China to communicate with efficiently. and make plans for the future. So that's best case scenario for what we're seeing right now. All right, so Charlie, let me go X question to you, non-Secadora X question. I've been itching to discuss the Sophie Cunningham. controversy on this podcast, but other people who come on are not so into it. And when we have text exchanges about what we're going to talk about, like, no, you know, other things are more important or I haven't followed that. I'm going to force the issue by asking exit questions about here. And I use the plural because this is going to be double-barreled, fair warning. So first barrel, the Sophie Cunningham controversy shows that the fiercest critics of the WNBA for being a joke, woke league are correct. Yeah, broadly speaking, I would say so. Luther. Yeah, it's a page six league, and all of this indicates that's what they wish to be and what makes them the little money they do make.

Page six, meaning what do you mean by that? Celebrity. Celebrity. It's the Bachelor. It's keeping up with the Kardashians, but on the court. Basketball is not the product they're selling, which is a shame because Caitlin Clark is a real talent. And I wish the league she plays for would try basketball for a change. Andrew. Yeah, my knowledge of basketball is limited, shall we say. But yes, I would agree that it shows the endless, you know, we keep saying that we passed Pete, Pete woke, but I've yet to see any evidence of that. Yeah, so what she said was so innocuous, and it was basically an aside and an ESPN profile. But then you have every antibody in the league trying to reject her for it from the fans, you know, in places like Portland viciously booing her to a couple of girls who showed up. I think this was also in Portland with Signs supporting her. notably, you know, near a court side. And the co-owner of this team, I think, again, it was Portland harassing these girls to the coaches all saying they support trans and they'd be totally fine with biological may help playing in the league. And one of the opposing coaches wearing trans people are real or trans people belong t-shirt in the game when they're playing. Sophie Cunningham's team, the fever. And then the announcers promoting this coaches. views. It's been an absurd spectacle. So second part of the question, Charlie, hypothetically, fortunately this is just hypothetically, you're stranded on a desert island and you have a choice. You can sit there in the sand looking out for lonely on the waves alone in your despair or watch a WNBA game, which do you do? Well, I think that I would watch the waves because if it all got too much, then I would be able to drown myself, which wouldn't be an option at a WMBA game. Leather. I may take the game so long as I could integrate Kalshi or some other sports betting app and thereby bring about my rescue. Andrew? Well, I wouldn't be watching the WMBA, and I'd be quite happy staring at the waves without suicidal thoughts. So very relaxing, very relaxing. So I go for the waves. So I'd watch the WNBA game. I'd be reluctant to do it unless it was an Indiana fever game. But I'd watch it. I'm pretty much, I can get into any sporting event, at least for a little while. College women's volleyball when it's on ESPN. two in the middle of winter. I'll sometimes watch curling at the Olympics. I can watch curling for a while. So I could put up with it, but I'd be genuinely interested in a fever game. I do occasionally check the box scores during fever games just to see how Caitlin Clark is doing. With that, let's go to our second sponsor this episode. Did you know fast-growing trees is the biggest online nursery in the United States with thousands of different plants and over two million happy customers?

They have all the plants your yard needs like fruit trees, privacy trees, flowering trees, shrubs, and so much more. Whatever plants you're interested in, fast-growing trees has you covered, find the perfect fit for your climate and space. Fast-growing trees makes it easy to get your dream yard. Order online and get your plants delivered directly to your door in just a few days without ever leaving home. They're alive and thrive guarantee. Ensure as your plants are happy and healthy. Plus get support from trained plant experts on call to help you plan your landscape, choose the right plants, and learn. how to care for them. We're fans of fast-growing trees here on the editors. The incomparable Sarah Shuddy has a fast-growing tree, lemon tree or trees. Same with Noah Rothman. Noah actually uses the lemons from these trees and is cooking and making drinks. So they both love this. product and right now fast growing trees has the best deal for your yard up to half off on select plants and other deals and listeners to the editors get 15% off their first purchase when using the code editors at checkout that's an additional 15% off at fast growing trees.com using the code editors at checkout fast growing trees.com Code editors. Now it's the perfect time plan. Use editors to save today. Offers valid for limited time. Terms and conditions may apply. So Andrew, Jason Ardeh is out at Cambridge. As soon as Cambridge announced an investigation, I was like, he's done. Because obviously there's nothing about this that could bear the slightest bit of scrutiny. And sure enough, he resigned shortly afterwards, a typically cliched self... pitting resignation letter. Some people on X say the AI detectors say it was 100% detected, created by AI. Who knows? Maybe that's true. Maybe it's not. But he obviously had a huge plagiarism problem. There were journals where he published that basically said this whole thing was copied, but just like in an editor's note after the fact. But he skated, and I should mention off the top for people who haven't. followed it. He's a young black guy, a professor at Cambridge University, youngest black professor ever at Cambridge, an academic and media sensation. And there have been concerns about his work for a very long time. There is a professor named Corfness, is that how you say his name, or wrote a substack pointing out these problems that got this story. rolling. His dissertation has a lot of copying as well. And then his biography was obviously just would make Walter Middy blush. He says he's a champion marathoner ran 300 miles in 10 days or something like that. Some of it with a broken leg. He had a brain tumor removed just. Two weeks before he was going to defend his dissertation. His memory was wiped out and he had to relearn everything apparently. And two weeks would actually wouldn't be that difficult given that there is no intellectual quality or substance to any of his work. But anyway, obviously highly doubtful. He says he's autistic, which may be true, but he says he didn't. He was mute until and couldn't talk. And I think use sign language until age 11.

And then then astonishingly, you know, rose to the top heights of academia. Clearly this was a DEI higher. Clearly this was a DEI looking the other way because all you need to do is examine one of these claims and the whole thing would have fallen apart. And to their shame, Cambridge's shame, when these concerns were first raised, they called a vile campaign against RDA. You had a lot of... folks at Cambridge and other respected people and British life signing letters in support of him because this is supposedly a racially, racially motivated attack on this inspiring kid with this inspiring story. What do you make of it? I think that it is, I mean, it has its, well, maybe has its sad aspects to it too, but it clearly has its humorous side to it. I mean, you know, I'm a, some say, child would say, a little old-fashioned. But if I was going to plagiarize something, would I have plagiarized something called dismantling power, well, his work is called dismantling power and privilege through reflectivity, negotiating normative whiteness, the Eurocentric curriculum and racial microaggressions within the academy. That's one of the things that he has written. And so we can see that the game that he was playing, he was checking all the boxes, and it shows something of the low of the way that this sort of, if you like, DEI orthodoxy, but more than that, an ideological orthodoxy is destroying standards within the academy. And I think that we see the longer term effects of that in the way that... Younger people are voting. I mean, that is part of it. The worst thing, I mean, there are so many actually quite, really quite bad things about this. The failure to challenge him, the unwillingness to challenge him by people who obviously must have known. He claimed, if I recall correctly, to have appeared in a very famous British documentary. TV, documentary film series, Seven Up series, and that began before he was born. I mean, he was hiding in plain sight, and I think he was hiding in plain sight either because he was a total fantasy or because he knew that no one would be bothered to look or would want to look. And then there is the other thing is that the... Somebody from the Times Higher Education corresponded. When he emailed Arde, a series of questions about everything that Arde was up to, or about his claims, the police told him not to contact the professor because of, the quote, the impact on his mental health. They then spent four months. investigating this journalist. What else do the British police do besides arrest people for social media posts and undertake the investigations by embattled fraudsters in academia? It's really amazing.

It is. So I think what the story shows, I mean, of course, it is. I mean, he is the greatest athlete since Kim Il Sung, who I think, not Kim Jong-un-il, who had, I think, 18 holes in one or something like that. But it does show the institutional rot within, and although Cambridge, Fortunately, this is audio only, so the sneer is invisible. You don't expect much from Cambridge, but you expect something. But more seriously, it shows that the institutional rot within the English establishment... And that English establishment is more than just academia. And is backed by an ecosystem. The letter was signed. There's this law group called You Law. There's a whole thing to make sure this sort of thing doesn't get through. And then, of course, the police are thrown at the people who ask a few questions. So I think this is a, you know, this is a. particularly grotesque boil that has erupted on an already rotten body. So we should note that Andrew went to Oxford, as Charlie did, so they'll have perhaps the appropriate level of contempt for Cambridge just built in here. But Charlie, as someone pointed out on X, it really all I needed to do, assuming he was lying about it, was lie about the autism and not speaking until age 11, right? That would have made him a star just on top of being black. He didn't need anything else. Perhaps the foremost example of the gilding the lily here and the pathological nature of this is our own Abigail Anthony the other day highlighted how he said he had a professorship at Ohio State. Now, you guys might have a dim view of Cambridge, but once you're a professor at Cambridge, you really don't need an affiliation at Ohio State to make you prestigious. It doesn't add anything. So why? Why would he tell that lie unless the lies were just... pathological and he got some perverse thrill from it. Well, I'm sure he did get a perverse sort of out of it. You said that this story was inspiring. It is inspiring. It's just not true. The book that it seems will be published on the 11th of this month. Thus far, hasn't been cancelled. It's an extraordinary font. of falsehoods. The Atlantic got hold not only of the book, but of his proposal for the book. There are some things in the proposal for his book that didn't make the final cut. The small matter of having testicular cancer and surviving, it didn't make it into his autobiography. He also seems to claim in this book that he had a brain tumor. And that he was in a coma for three months and was locked in. That is to say, he could hear everyone and was aware of what was going on around him. We're about to pull the plug on him. But he...

They heard them say they were going to pull the parkies. It's like a bad movie. Not only run marathons at an Olympic level, but done so with a broken leg that had swollen to twice its usual size. I mean, clearly he enjoyed lying and being fated for his lies. Now... The obvious point to make, because it is the story, is that he got away with this for so long because Cambridge was desperate to have a black professor who was young and to praise this person in public, which I believe, rather than being... an endorsement of diversity is racism. I think that if you treat people differently based on their skin color, especially in this case, if you infantilize them, fetishize them almost, then you're guilty of racism. It doesn't mean you're doing the same thing as Alexander Stevens would have, but it does mean that you don't treat people as human beings and regard them as being of equal worth. You are... establishing a different set of rules. Now, I don't know whether he personally enjoyed that element of this story, but I find it impossible to believe that he wasn't aware of it. Because at every juncture, Cambridge, the BBC, the Guardian newspaper, all of those who fated him, said it out loud. And he must, therefore, as a pathological liar, have recognized that he had an advantage that others didn't, that he was able to say almost anything and have it accepted, that pushback against him would be treated as a sign of prima facie bigotry as it has been in a way that it wouldn't be, for example, if I said it. So this is a story, ultimately, about people being treated differently based on their skin color, which is the thing that we are supposed to oppose. The famous John Roberts line that gets overquoted is nevertheless perfectly put. The way to stop discriminating against people on the basis of race is to stop discriminating against people on the basis of race. That includes propping up people who lie. and who cheat, and that's what plagiarism is. Last thing on this, I've said this before about others in his discipline. But we ought not to let the plagiarism and the fantasy life obfuscate what is the biggest problem here in my estimation. which is that he should never have been a professor in the first place, because the work that he didn't plagiarise and didn't lie about is garbage. There is no redeeming quality to what he did. Go online. Find a Twitter account of a man called Aaron Bastani, who has a video.

of Jason Ardei giving a lecture for 40 minutes. This is not my take on it. It's not an academic quibble. It's just a video with a still camera where Ardei presents to a class for 40 minutes and says absolutely nothing whatsoever. That's the problem here. Yes, he got away with all the rest of the stuff and it's all very funny. But their king has no clothes. This guy, had he never touched anyone else's work, would have contributed nothing of value. The discipline in which he worked is Guff. Go on the Cambridge website. I think it's gender.com.ac.ac.uk. And read the other people in the department. And what they're doing. Look at the descriptions of their work. Look at the titles of their PhD. You can download them. It's nonsense. So yes, it is, of course, particularly amusing that this guy was a Walter Mitty. And it's particularly poignant that he plagiarized other talentless people. But the core issue here is that this isn't academic work. And he should have been called out for that, not just because he decided to invent a George Santos-style life for himself. So Luther, another big theme here that's been touched on a little bit is that it was the critics who were assumed to be the bad. people, this guy, Kauffness, if you go back and look at a substack, it was incredibly well done. It had chapter and verse on the plagiarism and highlighted the implausibility of most of the biographical claims as well, but because he is a famous or infamous, depending on your point of view, critic of DEI, a lot of people wanted to dismiss his case. And just because of where it was coming from, they thought, It didn't have any merit. It couldn't have any merit because it was coming from a critic of DEI. So what he was saying must not, by definition, be true. It's kind of the other side of the coin that everything Ardei said must have been true because he was the right race and represented the right political symbol. Yeah, it's ridiculous, of course. And it goes to show that... I mean, the lesson of Eden is even if we have everything going our way, we will still cross the line. We cannot help ourselves. And Ardei, Ibermax Kendi, Jesse Smollett, like, if I were running a search committee, I would have three stipulations. The candidate can't have lied about a pig's head being delivered to his parents' house, can't have lied about getting sub sandwiches at 2 a.m. in Chicago. during a polar vortex and should have produced some sort of academic research when handed millions of dollars by a prestigious school. It's embarrassing for the school for academia, but, you know, they made their bed a long time ago as far as promoting...

the worst academics in the worst disciplines and receiving adulation for it. And Cambridge going to bat for our day, every bit of egg on their face is well deserved. And I join the Oxford types on this call in chuckling at that. So, Andrew, let's stick with academia, but a different story for the exit question. University of Michigan is just going to note pass or fail for the first semester of first year students there in order to avoid all the mental health issues that would come from having a bad grade on their transcript. So exit question to you, what is the worst grade you ever received any class at any level of schooling? Please be honest. That would be my driving test in the UK, which I failed, should we say, a number of times. And I was also once failed my only attempt to do a typing course. But my paradoxical worst, in some ways, best grade were the same. And it was not for an individual subject, but the thing as a whole. When you left my old school, there was a scholarship given to help pay for your time when you were at university. So that is good. So that was a good grade to get that. But we had, my old school had quite a few distinguished alumni. And so one of my brothers got the same scholarship, and it was called the Winston Spencer Churchill Award because Churchill was one of the alumni. Pretty good. I got the Profumo Award, which was exactly the same. But Profumo, for those who don't know, was a British minister who was involved in a historical... very significant sex scandal because although Minister of Defence, he was sharing a mistress with a Russian attache, and that was only part of it. So that was my, you know, now I chuckle about it, but I remember saying, oh, I got my scholarship, hooray, hooray, good, great. They'd give me the perfumo? Not so good. Charlie? Well, I just have too many to choose from. really only got my act together very late. I was something of a wild child until I was 17 or 18, at which point I suppose knuckled under and got grades good enough to get in to Oxford. So most of my grades, if I'm honest, were not good up until that point. I could tell you instead what I'm the most proud of, Rich, and that is that... At my what you would call high school, the report cards that we would get had a letter and a number. And the number was for achievement and the letter was for effort. And most of the teachers were rather lazy in that they would just tie.

the number and the letter. So if you were a C student, they assumed that you must have put in that amount of effort, so you would get 3C. So 5E, 4D, 3C, 2B, 1A, and so forth. And very, very rarely did any teacher depart from this, except... for probably the strictest teacher in the school, who hated me, and with good course, because I was disruptive and annoying, who gave me in French a one E and wrote underneath it that Charles is a total pain in the butt. that he disrupts me and the other students in the class. He spends his time making stupid jokes. He's late. He doesn't do his homework. But very annoyingly, he speaks quite good French. And I was so proud of this one E that I actually framed it. Because I thought, you know, that's the dream. Look, this was not in a sea of academic excellence, as I say. I did very, very well when I hit 18. But before that, I did not. But to get a 1E was the dream, because essentially what he was saying is, you can speak French, but you're not trying. And I thought, well, it's better than the other way around. Luther. Yeah, similar to Charlie, I didn't. become a student until I realized my life would remain in a bilge quite literally if I didn't get my act together. So I have many trophies in the Hall of Failure, but my study hall before diorama for the book Rascal was used for several years after the fact as the example of what not to do. And I took some pride in that because... The assignments that received A's were relegated to the trash fairly quickly, but if you stopped in the eighth grade English classroom at Sheboygan Christian, you could see my all-blue rascal box up on the wall as... Quite an achievement. So I also wasn't very good student. I just didn't like people telling me what I had to learn or read at any given moment. So University of Virginia, I was quite distracted in fairness to me by working on the conservative magazine there. But I was such a bad student for quite a long stretch. I got a D-minus in Russian history. And I think that was generous on the part of this old Russian. professor and also D minus in astronomy. I took astronomy because it was the math science class that seemed easiest to get by in. And in the first semester, this was a new professor, a young guy. And I figured out I could do fine, not going into classes and just kind of studying up before the exams. I think I actually got an A minus that semester.

But the second time around, he started giving quizzes in class every day. So I missed all of those. And then the material got harder and more sophisticated. So it was much... harder to get up on it, you know, studying all night. So I think I got another very generous D-minus in astronomy. With that, let's go to our final sponsor of this episode. Our friends at the Competitive Enterprise Institute are back with new episodes of their breakout Free the Economy podcast. If you're not already listening, Free the Economy features host Richard Morrison exploring opportunities for financial success and self-fulfillment in a world with less government control. Think of the podcast as big. ideas meets real world application to make our economy happier, healthier, and wealthier. Check out free the economy, wherever you listen to podcasts or visit c.i.org slash podcast. With that, let's hit a few other things. Before we go, Andrew Stetterford, you've been reading a novel about the English colonizing hell. Yes, that has been my sort of fun thing for the week. It's a, it's been a Not particularly exciting week. It was redeemed by the fact that I did not. Burritos to me is just a packaged trough. So I don't care about the controversy. I'm a cassidia man. So I didn't eat the burrito, which was good. But this book is called, it's not yet out. It's called Notes on a Colonial Situation in Hell. And its premise, bear with me here, is that hell has been discovered. and it's sort of underneath us, sort of in a rather literal sense, and it was discovered in the 19th century, and naturally, as it is territory going sort of... there for the taking, the British Empire is there. And so it is a, I haven't finished the book yet. It has some pretty savage moments, I will say, but it is clearly written partly, it's not too heavy-handed, but partly as a critique of British colonialism, but I'm ignoring that bit and just enjoying the rip-roaring story of the British Empire establishing a foothold in hell. and building a little colony there, which is sort of flourishing. The demons have been kept to bay. However, and this is what I don't know how it's going to end, for various reasons they are moving into hell proper, and I have a nasty feeling that that is not going to end well. It's a good ring. So Luther, you've been refurbishing a sailboat. Yes, there is the only thing. that is better than a sailboat, is a free sailboat, at least until you have to start paying to refurbish it. But a friend was wanting to get out of the sailboat game, and he had the 55-year-old Columbia Mark 2. He asked if I would like it, and I said, absolutely. And so I've been going over it, sanding down all the teak fittings, and just having a ball. I haven't even taken it out on the water yet. It floats at its slip. That's pretty great.

I think it will go out on Lake Michigan and survive. Do you need chat GPT to help you in any way or you just know what to do or it's very basic? I've been sailing since I was eight years old and I suppose I'm arrogant enough to believe that I know most of it. But if you do get a call from me with coordinates to somewhere in the middle of Lake Michigan, know that things did not go as I expected them to. Did you follow the story about the guy who was sailing across the Pacific on his own and got... His mask got destroyed in heavy weather and then was bobbing out there for weeks. Yeah, it seems to be an annual event. I don't think people realize just how many things can go wrong when you're at sea. And it's a gutsy move to do that kind of sailing, but I certainly wouldn't recommend it. So are you handy enough if Noah Rothman needed help with his rider mower? Do you think you could... Do it without looking anything, just fix it on your own? So one of the many roles, I suppose my hats at NR, is tech support, specifically mechanical support. So I've assisted in lawnmower, maintenance and troubleshooting, as well as air conditioning, a few other odds and ends. It's a lot of fun. Some of these DMs I get, and we figure it out together most of the time, and I think I've only broken something once. So Charlie, you watched the movie Gettysburg. I did. I had a long flight back from California, and I needed it because this movie, I believe, is the longest movie ever released. It's four and a half hours long. I'd never seen it. I thought it was absolutely terrific. The performances are excellent. But what I got from it, above all else, was a conception of what the battle was like. that I had always struggled with. I don't know why. This is probably my limitation. But if I read about a battle in a book, I struggle, especially older battles, to conceive of the scale, the pace, the aesthetic. Even watching documentaries, I have the same problem. I've watched through Ken Burns' a Civil War documentary twice. But this movie, I think perhaps because it's so long, gives you a proper insight into what happened in that battle and how, and how brutal it was and how rudimentary it was in one sense. And I am not a military expert, and I know that this is wrong. in that there were many innovations between the two battles. But it seemed to me, at least relative to modern wars, that there wasn't a huge amount of difference between the tactics employed at Gettysburg and the tactics employed at Agincourt. That is to say, it still involved long lines of people standing in the open field with clear uniforms. walking towards each other. Yeah, you can also do it the other way around. Like the last day of Gettysburg isn't that different from the Battle of Assam. We're going to undertake a massive artillery barrage and then get up in charge. Well, that's right. And I think those two wars were similar in one sense. And then it changes. World War II is not like that. But this movie really did get...

to the core for me of what happened over those three days. Leave aside the drama of it. Just watching it, it clicked for me. And I found that very, very moving. I've struggled to stop thinking about it. So I've been reading the first volume of the Golden Thread. This is the two-volume massive book project from James Hankins and our friend Alan Gelsso. Alan wrote the second volume. Hankins did the first year, which starts with the Greeks, goes all the way a little bit past Charlemagne. And I have had this book on my desk for months and months, so occasionally look at it. It's so heavy. I swear it must be like 12 pounds. So I like having handy books. You can stick them in your back pocket if you need to or a pocket of a winter coat. That's emphatically not this book. But I took it up. A couple months ago now probably, and it is so good. It is astonishingly good. It's meant as a textbook. And usually these kind of books that cover so much ground, they're too simplified. They're too much a summary. They're too generic. But this is so brilliantly done with wonderful details and brilliant judgments every other page. And the folks that encounter books have published, it also just a beautiful job with maps and illustrations. photos. It's a tremendous achievement. So if anyone's interested in Western civilization and, you know, you're willing to lug around a book, a big book for a couple months, I cannot recommend this one highly enough. With that, it's time for our editor's picks. Andrew Staddeford, what's your pick? My pick is a piece by Mike Gonzalez about the Smithsonian. And basically he's saying that, you know, I don't think he would. I certainly don't like the idea of political control of cultural institutions. But when cultural institutions have themselves become... which have been paid for by the taxpayer at some level, they have become politicized, then, you know, politicians do have to step in. And the Smithsonian has a board of regents, and it has clearly taken the museum into territories where it should not go. which is essentially rewriting, often with bogus history, America's past. Luther, what's your pick? Noah Rothman's Hasan Piker is a symptom, not the cause. Hasan Piker, like Candace Owens, is a profoundly unserious individual who must be taken seriously. because of his following and just how anti-American he is. And I think Noah does us all service by making this very point that he isn't just some podcast or he's not just some guy streaming online. He has a following. He has influence within the DSA and therefore the Democratic Party. And we should want him as far away.

from those in power as possible. And I'd also just like to give Noah and many of the other writers at NR a shoutout. It's just how phenomenal his output is. It's something I envy that he can write so capably so often on a great many subjects. It's fantastic. And I love that NR has brought so many writers like that here. You're here. Try. I'm going to take a short corner post by John Perry asking why is food more expensive? There's a simpler answer and he concludes that it is the money supply. Over the last six years, he says we have blown up the money supply by 50% dished out money like candy. And now we're shocked to see inflation. So my pick is another Josh Trevino piece. I picked one earlier in this week, but a real thoughtful entry into the debate over whether America is an idea or people and a culture. And his post was titled, America is More. than an idea. So that's it for us. You've been listening to a national view podcast and rebroadcast, retransmission, or account of this game without the express written consent of National News. It's strictly prohibited. Thank you, Joey. Thank you, Andrew. Thank you, Luther. Thanks to Vera, fast-growing trees and the free-the-economy podcast from CEI. And thanks especially to all of you for listening. We're the editors. See you next time.