‘You're Wrong' With Mollie Hemingway And David Harsanyi, Ep. 199: NYT Effs The Dog

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Welcome back, everyone to a new episode of Your Wrong with Molly Hemingway, editor-in-chief of The Federalist and David Harsani, senior writer at the Washington Examiner. Just as a reminder, if you'd like to email the show, please do so at Radio at the Federalist.com. We'd love to hear from you. Molly, how's it going? Going great. It's a beautiful spring here in northern Virginia. How's it going for you?

It's nice. It's nice out. Speaking of Virginia, I don't think that we ever spoke about the court overturning Virginia's state amendment to the Constitution that gerrymandered the state. And I at least think the most dramatic way any state has ever been gerrymander taking the seats from six, five Democrats to 10-1 Democrats. The Supreme Court found it illegal because it clearly is in the Constitution of Virginia that you have a process you go through and other laws actually in Virginia.

And Democrats ignored them. What's interesting to me is that there are other aspects of that, I think, that haven't even been discussed, for instance, the incredibly misleading language on the ballot, for instance, about fairness and so on. But in any event, it's been, it's, it's been found illegal. I believe they're going to appeal it to the Supreme Court of the United States, which makes really no sense to me because this is completely about, you know, Virginia law and has no real, you know, constitutional bearing, I don't think.

I could be wrong. I'm not a lawyer. That was exciting to see, wasn't it? It was unexpected because Democrats kind of control that court with their appointments and they serve not lifetime appointments, but I actually don't know if they serve lifetime appointments on the Virginia Supreme Court, but I know there's some aspect of it

where they serve at the pleasure of the legislature. So it was something of a miracle that this Virginia Supreme Court said, yeah, this just is clearly unconstitutional. I shouldn't say that, you know, but you just don't see so many Democrat appointed judges or justices being willing to say stuff. like that sometimes. And we've seen so much activism from various lower than Supreme Court

judges and justices. So I was not expecting that at all. I knew there were multiple constitutional challenges that might delay the implementation until such time as something else would happen in Virginia, but it was a real unexpected gift to a Republican Party that had not really invested what it should have in the ground game when that constitutional Amendment was up for a boat. It was a very narrow victory for the people who wanted to extreme gerrymandered the state. And, you know, putting more time, effort and energy would have killed it there rather than having to be rescued by a court, by one boat on the court. This is just something I suspect is that the initial polls showed such overwhelming support for it.

I think that maybe Republicans thought it was a lost fight, but obviously, I think it felt like at least I'm in Virginia as well as time went on that it was going to be closer and closer. And it was so ridiculous. And the ads were so dishonest. And the whole thing, I think, kind of fired up Republican base a bit, which has been terrible in Virginia, right? I mean, the Republican Party has been terrible in Virginia. Don't even know if you need to say in Virginia half the time. But yes.

I also thought it was interesting that Barack Obama, who broke a lot of. post-presidential norms in that he just never stopped being very involved in the goings-on in Washington, D.C. He did not move away from town. He, of course, was heavily involved in getting the Russia collusion lie started. It was all his people who did that work. He was holding meetings during the first Trump term. He then poured a lot of efforts into election administration, even beyond what Democrats had so, like, remarkably achieved over previous decades while Republicans did pretty much nothing with election administration.

And I think it was Eric Holder who was in charge. Air Colder, his wingman, remember? I love when people are like, how dare the current Department of Justice hold people who weaponize the DOJ accountable? If you do that, you're weaponizing the DOJ. And Barack Obama was out there saying, like, I always had a very independent DOJ. You don't even have it independent from you right now. It's still doing your bidding right now at the bureaucratic.

It's enraging because they hold her. And I'm not saying they're the first to politicize the office. It's not true. But they broke so many contemporary norms of how we at least pretend to operate in Washington. App that Obama's still around because we're still living in the world. He created in many ways. You know what I mean? I appreciate the honesty that that air colders,

more honest. Barack Obama will be like, I can, he'll think, I completely control Eric Holder, but I'm going to go on TV and lie to everyone in the world and say that he was independent. And Eric Holder is like, I'm his wingman. I do what he needs done. I like the honesty. But I mentioned all this because Eric Holder has been in charge of that totally non-political, nonpartisan Eric Holder has been in charge of all of the gerrymandering and redistricting battles that have been going on for years. And so Obama gets involved in Virginia and just reveals himself to be just not Democrat activists

so much as the most craven Democrat activist, willing to destroy democracy in Virginia for the sake of political power. And I love that he lost yet more political capital. This is nice. I remember during the debate, I treated out how, you know, Democrats will do this illegal thing. I called it illegal. And everyone, all these, you know, big accounts on the left are like, it's the will of the people. How can it be illegal? The reaction's always the same. We're going to do something completely unconstitutional. When a court stops us, even a Democratic majority court or a left-wing majority court, we're going to pretend that this is the end of democracy. And we're now going to come up with a plan to destroy that court. Did you see the story about all the ideas that Democrats were throwing around about essentially.

destroying the Virginia court one of them which made me laugh was that they would pass a law that I believe compelled all the justices to retire at 54 and then they can just replace all the justices and then overturn the the the the gerrymandering and move forward I mean this is the kind of thing they want to do and they have the gall to talk about how they are defenders of democracy It's just, yeah, I don't know. I do want to go off on that, but I really quickly want to say one other thing about Obama. So Laura Ingram tweeted about this very thing you're talking about, you know, that they're getting, when Democrats lose, they don't accept defeat. They just kind of go crazy.

She says, notice that when they lose, Dems will never stop to reconsider their radical policies that are failing everywhere. Instead, they rush to rewrite the rules. Watch closely for Obama's role in this, a coordinated effort to destabilize our entire system. Okay? And I just want to point out that Jonathan Martin, I don't know who he, he's a politico activist person. He says, one of the enduring two America's truisms of the decade, repubbs convinced Obama is behind every tree and Dems wishing he would show up in the forest at all. This is what passes for political commentary from the top Democrat political journals.

What is he even talking about? Does he not know any? Like, he clearly doesn't live in Virginia because if you lived in Virginia, you knew Obama. I'm too, every day here, right? I'm too, I'm too cheap to not, to pay not to have ads on my streaming services. and he was on my television every five minutes. Yes. Every five minutes.

No, no, I'm sorry. I think Jonathan Martin would tell you he hadn't shown up in the forest at all. I mean, the money, the organization, the physical, like putting his name behind this illegal effort. But Jonathan Martin says, oh, crazy Laura Ingram doesn't realize that he didn't show up to the battle at all. Why do people keep their jobs when they're this bad at understanding what's happening? Like in a state, like I assume he's in Maryland or D.C. because again, could not be in Virginia. But even that, don't you still get the ads

if you're in Virginia or Maryland? And also, if you're a political reporter, shouldn't you know the basics of what was going on in Virginia? How long do you think a political reporter keeps his job if he's ragging on Barack Obama, by the way, not very long? So he knows exactly what he's doing his job, you know, at wherever he works. I forget which one it is. It's political.

I just look at it. Because I did not know. But these people move around. I think he was somewhere. Like it's just one giant company that shuffles the pieces around. Like Natasha, whatever her name is, has been at like every company, right? Fusion GPS. Fusion GPS.

By the way, I thought that I coined that term and I looked up like the history. And I think I stole it from someone who had responded to me, Fusion Natasha. It's a good one. But I like to call it, you know, Fusion Kendallanian, Fusion Natasha. It doesn't even really work anymore because I'm sure Fusion GPS rebranded as Politico or whatever. So I don't, you know, but they were the group that orchestrated the PR campaign to falsely claim to lie that Donald Trump was stealing the 2016 election. Anyway, the situation with this burning down the court, it's a national, very big problem, I think. that people do not understand the importance of a judiciary that is not beholden to politics.

Our founders created our Supreme Court with lifetime appointments and put in the Constitution that you cannot dock their pay, of which firing would be an example of docking their pay and of violating their lifetime appointment, precisely so that the court could be independent from the political process that is completely over the legislature, the House, to some extent the Senate, and then also to some extent the executive branch. And the framers also set up the Virginia Constitution. It's clear that they understood the importance of this independence between the branches, trying to destroy that as Democrats are now openly doing. And as the New York Times praised, you know, they didn't say, well, by the way, Virginia,

Democrats are doing an insurrection. They said, well, here's an intriguing idea that the Democrats have. I mean, the posture they had toward it was way, was just, was crazy friendly given how destructive it would be. Well, I see that it's bled into, again, talk of destroying the American, the U.S. Federal Supreme Court. Ro Khanna, I saw, said, we need to pack the court. We need to put 13 judges in there. We need to. Okay. Let's do it right now. If it's okay, let, let Donald, Trump and let the Republican Congress do it right now. No, they don't see the world in any kind of neutral principle. They see it only as when they lose, something's wrong with the system. When the, when the, unfortunately, Republicans have joined this, but when the filibuster is working for

us, it's the most. Barack Obama said it was like the bulwark of our entire democracy. When it doesn't work for him, he gets rid of it. The court, we have to destroy it. Senators, it's unfair that Nebraska has two senators or whatever. You know, like, they constantly attack the system when things don't go their way i see Hakeem Jeffries has all has a bunch of ideas for virginia right where he wants to destroy this state because they didn't get their way on something that is just so blatantly partisan blatantly undemocratic in the way of you know that our republic works i do think that when they come back into power it's going to finally be things are finally going to probably fall apart

There's no real Democrat anymore that shows any spine. I mean, occasionally John Fetterman will stand up for some decency, but he's a progressive in the end. So I can't think of another one that even does as much as he does. Yeah, and to Laura's correct point, they're not revisiting political loss as anything other than an instruction to do more when they do get power through Republicans, annoying people to the extent that they give Democrats power. It goes back and forth.

People, I just don't think like politicians anymore in general. I don't think there'll be another popular or really popular president again, unless there's some tragedy maybe. And the problem with that, though, is that when Democrat... There have been so many times throughout American history where you've had one party have real dominant control. I don't know why people couldn't see that as a possibility, particularly with how bad democratic governance is at the federal and state level.

I mean, they're destroying cities. I have no expectation. Oh, sorry, go on. No, no, I'm just saying I agree that it could happen again, of course, and that things turn and people have self-interest, right? So if their cities are dying and all that. But when you start changing the system and you run the institutions and you're so embedded in it, it's almost impossible to dislodge you.

Unions, you know, this was the case in the 70s. cities were dying and Democrats still continued running them. Occasionally a Rudy Giuliani would pop up, but that was a that was an outlier. And he only did that because there were places like Statenham and Queens where there was still a working class, you know, group that could get rid of them. But in big cities, you have poor people and you have very wealthy people. And honestly, a lot of the very wealthy people are driven out of the left wing cities and going to red states. There's a huge movement. Obviously, everyone knows this from from blue to red to Texas and Florida.

Florida, that also just kind of solidifies the left wing rule and the left-leftism of New York. New York's going downhill a bit. It's not the 70s. And yet they just elected someone, a socialist, someone who was more socialist than the person who put them into that position. So to me, it just seems very difficult to imagine that dynamic changing in any real way. My husband calls this the socialist death spiral, that as the policies fail, the remaining people vote for even more extreme people.

He's seen it a lot in the Pacific Northwest where he's from. I just meant more, like, theoretically, a competent Republican Party, a free and fair media would probably lead to the complete annihilation of the Democratic Party. And we don't have either of those things. I'm not expecting it. But it's not outside the realm of possibility that... Yeah. in the day.

I think that's fair. I wanted to just touch on something that happened that maybe went under the radar for a lot of people. So Democrats came into power in Virginia and they immediate, you know, Abigail Spanberger ran as a moderate. She immediately embraced virtually every hardcore left wing position imaginable. I don't think there's much difference between her and Zohran Mamdani or someone like that. there's not but she did immediately sign national popular vote interstate compact which is this group of states that get together and promise each other that they will vote for whoever wins the popular vote in the national presidential election not do what their state has how their state

has voted now think about this she was out there talking about this direction democracy, gerrymandering thing, talking about the will of the people, while signing a bill that says during a presidential election, it doesn't matter how you vote Virginia, we're going to do what California and New York tell us. That's what this is. Now, one day, I think there are a few states away. They're going to have enough states to do this, and it will be immediately shot down by the Supreme Court. It's a complete circumvention of the electoral college that is written and explicitly written in the Constitution. And then they're going to have another meltdown that we've undermine the will of the people and so on.

And they're going to try to destroy the court again. It's going to give them another reason. Every time they do something unconstitutional and the court knocks it down, they gin up anger at the judicial system to the point now where I don't know how it survives if these progressives are the ones who actually take power. Yes. So the efforts to destroy the constitution are long running. We know that President Woodrow Wilson was quite open about his opposition to the Constitution,

how it limited the ability to have major government action. This national interstate compact that they call it, whatever, to destroy the electoral college, has multiple constitutional problems. It's not, it bypasses the constitutional process. for how we elect presidents, namely, like, that's enough, but then also violates, you know, the compact clause, which requires Congress to approve these types of interstate compacts. And also it's just an unhealthy anti-the-people approach to electing a president. We, in fact, need more state power in the election of presidents, not less, and more attention to the,

individual states, whether they are, you know, large or small. But this desire to destroy the Constitution without a really good plan for what to do when it's replaced. I think the left just sees if we control all the institutions, we have the power, we can just sort of figure it out as we go. And the right does seem to still have a healthy trust of the Constitution. But this is as shaky as we've ever been, this is a really silly way to even think about it, but I assumed that this year everything would be red, white, and blue because everybody loves our constitution and loves our country and loves our founding principles. And I have not been able to find the red, white, and blue gear that I am seeking or the America 250 gear. And I think this is because we've spent generations telling

our students to hate their country. And we've just murdered patriotism in the crib. And now it's very hard to get it back. But that includes like support for things that no American would have supported sometime back like destroying the electoral college. Yeah. Aggressive left hates America. Barack Obama started this.

He was, I don't know if you remember, he had, I forgot what he called a new economic patriotism or whatever it was. He tried to reimagine what it meant. to be a patriot. And what it meant to be a patriot was to be a socialist, essentially. Just like the other day, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said that the revolution was fought against the billionaires of their time. And she had this Marxist revisionism of the founding of this country, which is insanity. There was no class warfare. We were the richest people on earth already at the time. Without billionaires like Robert Morris and George Washington, billionaires of their time, we don't even have a

revolution. They want to bring class warfare and racist. were identitarian warfare into our country, and those are un-American ideas. So I think they hate this country. I really do. They never show, I mean, they're heroes, the Hasan Piker, the whoever name and whoever,

Ro Khanna I was talking about him. He doesn't love America. He hates the Constitution. You would probably disagree on this whole creed, like is America a creedal nation or whatever? But let's say it is for a moment. Okay. But yet you hate the creed.

So what is America then, right? You hate the creed. The creed is in the Constitution mostly, and you hate that, you hate those norms. So then what do you love about America? What do you love about it? The government, that's un-American to think that way. On this issue of whether America is a creedal nation

or like a nation of people, I have been pretty annoyed by these debates, mostly because I think we're both, and I wish people could see that we are both. You have people just get to these extremes, and particularly with the people who are like, we're a creedal nation. What is the creed?

What happens if you don't believe in the creed? Is anyone not allowed in based on the creed or kicked out because of the creed? Like the creedalism peters out really quickly. Not for me. I, if I, you should be kicked out if you don't believe in the creed. I don't mean you're a citizen. You don't believe in the creed because there are people in every country that hate their country. But why would you ever let someone in who doesn't embrace the American norms and the American creed?

Even that. You say if you're a citizen, you won't be kicked out. So you're agreeing. We're not a creedle nation. Do you know what I mean? We're agreeing with it. I think we're a creed surrounded by borders and you can't force people to love the ideas. Libertarians speak this way.

Because it's not a race. So what are we? Where are we? Is it a racial? Where are the people in this? I understand. But is it a racial thing that makes us a certain way? It's not blood and soil.

Creed and borders. Like there is this. I think people have been talking. about it more because they realize we're not talking about the people herein. Even our creedal documents say that we are set up for ourselves and for our children. So that is a people. And also that they all acknowledge that we come from a certain stock. And I say that as someone who's not British in my own heritage. But we all kind of understood that that's where our rule of law came from, our people. Sure. Those are all creeds you're talking about. I love how

Justice Antonin Scalia talked about it, you know, where he's like as Italian as it, as they come. And he's like, but I'm, but I'm now British because we are this people. That's exactly right. Okay. I mean, that's exactly right. Sorry, I got. I don't know what we were talking about. Oh, yeah.

Actually, I don't know. But why don't we move on? On the progressives trying to destroy everything, it is something that people should be taking much more seriously than they are. And what alarms me in particular is what you just said about it being Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Hakeem Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer. You know, Chuck Schumer went to the Supreme Court and basically said, let's kill two of the justices.

And he was condemned for that. That is fair and true. But not to the point that he felt the need to step down from leadership or, you know, he refused to apologize and has refused for many, many years. and nobody punished him for it. So what does condemnation mean if it doesn't come with accountability for it? Like, oh, we don't like that you said that.

Please lead us now for another five years or however long it's been since he did it isn't really condemnation. My attestation for that man knows no bounds, but I'll tell you something, the next person's going to be probably much worse than him. Even though he's such a coward and so spineless that he essentially will do whatever the progressive wing tells him,

but they hate him too because he's, not comie enough and it'll be Graham Platner or you know i don't know who it'll be some unhinged nut next that's what that's what really um makes me nervous more even more nervous than Chuck Schumer could be wrong maybe things will go in a different direction but it just doesn't seem that way to me um and part of this the part of the problem here is the media like we we mentioned and i don't they're just propagandist the big outlet Let's America's debt crisis just hit a dangerous milestone. The Watchdog on Wall Street podcast with Chris Lisa Murkowski.

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with Chris Lisa Murkowski on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcast. And part of the propaganda has been this immense turn. And this is not about America, but in a way it is. It's about Jewish people. It's about who we ally with. It's about, I think, our values. To me, this is a moral IQ test when I see what people think about this and how they talk about this. But yesterday, a columnist named Nick Christoff at the New York Times,

Now, he's been there a very long time. He's written lots of stupid things. I'm sure he was all in on the Russia collusion stuff. Wrote a piece called The Silence that meets the rape of Palestinians. It was around 3,000, 4,000 words, I'd say. It was relegated to the op-ed section since the piece breaks literally every rule of objective journalism. And I want to say we are both. I would think you would consider yourself also an opinion journalist.

to some extent. I'm an opinion writer. I don't know. We still have to abide by the basic rules of journalism and truth and standards of evidence. Well, in this piece, which accuses Israelis and the government in essence of systemically raping Palestinian men, Palestinian women, abusing them and using dogs to rape. them, which is the thing that everyone has really fixated on because it's so demented. I think it was Orwell who said, you can tell an anti-Semite because they'll believe anything.

And this is a perfect example of that. Christoph hates Israel. The day after October 7th and the weeks after all his columns weren't about what had happened, which we'll get to in the second, because there was an actual report that came out with a lot of evidence that wasn't covered. every column was about how Israelis should not do anything, should not retaliate, they should give Hamas a state,

so on and so on. Can I give you one quick example of the story that just to show you, like, if you're teaching journalism, you would give them this paragraph, and you would tell them, this is what you don't do in journalism, okay?

Christoph talks about a 23-year-old Palestinian woman who says she was raped, strip-searched, all terrible things. The woman says they did this to crush, spirit. We don't have the woman's name. He doesn't offer a witness, not a complaint, not any medical evidence, not even from an Arab doctor, no photos of bruises, no time. We don't know where it happened. We don't know why it happened. We don't know what she was arrested for. Any competent journalist would have blaring sirens going off saying, boy, we don't have any evidence

this happened. Someone just told me this. I can't even look up to see if they were in prison. And yet he talks about this allegation as fact. It is anti-journalism. That is anti-journalism. I don't even know that 10 years ago any newspaper would run something like that. I can't believe someone put this in the newspaper. And we're not even up to the dog rape yet. And we're not even up to the people that he uses as witnesses who are all shady Hamas operatives.

Anyway, it's just so despicable. I've never seen the Jewish community that I know, you know, in journalism and so on, be as, you know, just angered about a story. Because it is just, it's a blood liable. I was thinking when I saw this story first come out a couple days ago, it just exhausted me. I do want to talk about the situation for the Palestinian. and Israelis. Like, I am very open to talking about it. I care about the issue. I have visited Israeli and Palestinian communities. I pray about it. Like, I am so open to having a good conversation about what it's like to be Palestinian in the current place and what's the right answer for what to do.

This was so on its face absurd. And yet, I also knew that a bunch of people were just going to take it and believe it because it had the right victims and it had the right oppressors. Even with the absurdity of what was contained in this piece by Nick Christoph, and I don't think that being opinion means that you get to have, you get to like just regurgitate what operatives tell you. You still have to do reporting. And he says, I did. I talk to these people.

I'm sure you talk to people who said these things. You still have to be a journalist. You still have to think. Does this make sense? Is there any corroboration for this? What is the, you know, what have I done to make sure I'm getting the story right and getting other people in there? And the moment you get to the, just not to be too graphic, but when the claim is made that dogs are raping, that Israeli forces are having dogs rape Muslims.

We actually got a note from a reader that was pointing out that it would make sense as torture that a Muslim might think of more than a Jew might think of because of the relationship each religion has toward dogs and how debasing it would be. But just if you've had a dog or if you, you know what I mean? If you if you've met a dog, think that one through. Like what is Christoph saying? Sorry, I don't mean to be, like, I get disgusting to think about this. But it's not, no, it's actually humorous. I mean, it's horrible what he said about these people. But it is like, Nick Christop, have you met a dog?

Have you seen a dog? Have you ever known a dog to be engaged in rape of a human? Has that ever even seemed within the possible universe of things that could ever happen? How did these dogs become rapists? What breed of dogs are they? What was their training like? Like, it's so absurd. Well, let's take it further, just slightly.

There's literally no case of this. The Kennel Association or whatever of America says it's impossible to train a dog to do that. So a dog doesn't understand physiology. The dog doesn't know what they could hump your leg or something, but they don't understand what they're doing. So Christoph actually retweeted some study that said there are people, who have, you know, had problems with this. Yes, because some people are sick, okay, mentally ill, and have a very disgusting fetish.

None were attacked by a dog in rape. That is impossible. And any journalist... You're being so serious about it. Something a 12-year-old would be like, that's funny or that's so obviously not true. Like, why are you bringing out statistics? Because... Like, it didn't happen.

He's trying to make Israelis but Jewish people. people in general, I think, seem like the most evil people in the world. And you were right when you said or people say that, hey, this sounds like something an Islamist would come up with their in their twisted imagination. And it a thousand percent is. I have a list somewhere of every time some Islamic country says that Israel has trained animals to spy on them, sharks, dolphins, lizards, birds, Turkey arrested a hawk and did an X-ray. on it to look for spy equipment. Now I get it. Mossad's very good. So they think like they're up to shenanigans. But this comes is obviously something someone popped up. And by the way, there is

not a single shred of evidence has ever happened. It came from people who are, there's a one conspiracy theorist who was thrown out of a, what was it, UCLA for sending minors, naked pictures of himself. Okay. And others who are longtime Hamas, you know, advocates or whatever. Yeah, it's funny in a way. but it's also demented. And it shows, this is the New York Times we're talking about. It's not some blog.

It's not some podcast. I, it's supposed to be right there. The New York Times has been a joke for so long that I only mock people who think it's anything other than a midwit propaganda paper. You know what I thought about?

I thought about Brett Kavanaugh, right? And the stories that they were just regurgitated. And I have to say, they at least gave a name of someone. They were lying. But there was a name. name involved maybe? I don't even know. Were they any anonymous stories about him? Maybe there were. There were like by the end, which Carrie Severino and I wrote about in the book, Justice on Trial.

There were many dozens of allegations. Sometimes they had names. Sometimes they didn't. And Mike Davis, who was a staffer for the Republican Judiciary Committee, just started releasing all of the allegations because he realized they were so stupid that the more that were out there, the more discrediting all of them were. Like they worked really hard to come up with that unfalsifiable Christine Blasey one. And I do want to say, it's possible she wasn't lying so much as you could just say maybe something happened to her and maybe she believed it was this individual. Maybe she was lying. But we talked with a lot of memory experts, including people who thought something maybe had happened to her at some point in her life, including friends and other people. Just nobody believed it was Brett Kavanaugh.

Yeah. Including her family. But it was interesting to see his defenders at the Times come out because it gives you a glimpse into what a preposterous joke journalism has become. One op-ed writer at the New York Times. Listen, we think that I think that paper is garbage. But here's the thing. This woman, I forget her name, doesn't really matter.

She's an op-ed writer there. She is the brains behind the opinion of the institution. you know, New York Times. She says, well, if 14 people come forward, there's got to be something there. Because if 14 people say something, even if we have no corroboration, no evidence, nothing. We don't even know their names. We don't know their names. It's got it. There's got to be something there. 14 people. You know how many people are in the world? 14 people tell you something. I think, yeah, Mark Hemingway. If I found 100 people to tell me that an Ardvar could do differential calculus, would that make it true? No, it would not make it true. It is in. It is in,

saying that there's a person who's a journalist who I don't know I was an opinion writer you sort of had to work your way up to that in the old days and be a regular journalist first I don't know anymore if that's the case thinks that only if 14 people come forward like there aren't 14 hamas activists out there and tell you something it's got to be true I mean what what is going on there they got a these people got a the editorial page editor of the new york times fired because he ran a column by Tom Kahn and Republican about something that was clearly happening and he was clearly in the right to say. And that a majority of Americans agreed with him.

Yes. It was unacceptable for the New York Times. Yeah. I don't know. I mean, it's, I just want to say this story for some reason dispirited me more than any other story about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Oh.

Because it was so absurd and yet I knew there were people. There's just, it's demoralizing when smart people. fall for stupid, not smart people, but just like normal people fall for stupid things. And when they believe them and when they lose all critical thinking skills. And the idea, already this Israeli-Palestinian ongoing conflict is hard enough to talk about. When you poison it with this kind of discourse, it's even worse. And I say that as someone who would love peace in the region and who cares about the Palestinian Christians who are there. all that. Like this was a huge setback for that, you know, probably never happening effort anyway.

This dog thing's been popular online for a long time, but all the usual suspects have actually not even all the, it was so crazy that some of the usual suspects didn't even talk about it because I think they were smart enough like Tucker Carlson or someone like that to know that if you spread this, it will undermine the case that you're making. It sounds so stupid. We'll see what happens this week, though. Maybe Nick Christoff will be his next guest. A friend was saying that he thought maybe some of these stories about Israelis training animals were planted by Israelis themselves just as like a funny sci-op game.

People will believe anything. You can do anything. They can put lasers on sharks. We can have ardbarks do differential calculus, whatever. Listen, I'm not going to say that two things I wanted to actually say. I'm not going to say that Israel doesn't do some inventive spying or inventive stuff. Okay. Let me just take a step back.

Obviously, it's true that we're very plausible that there could be Israeli soldiers doing terrible things. You saw the Israeli soldier smashing that cross in Lebanon, who was, you know, punished and all that. It is not the norm, of course, and it is frowned upon in that society because it's a moral society. But it is a society like any other. There are bad people in it. There are, you know, really bad people in it. There are criminals in it. and all of that.

So it's not implausible. Just because a Marine rape someone, and I looked it up, it happens quite often and they go to jail. It doesn't mean that the U.S. Marines are evil. It doesn't mean that there's a systemic government-approved rape program going on or any of that. But it is a reminder that war is very difficult on people. And we've got a lot of wars going on throughout the world. And, you know, sometimes I think speaking of things, like people not talking about things because it just undermines their approach, I think there are so many near pacifists who are unsurious about the reality of conflict that sometimes there's this overreaction to it of not caring at all about how monstrous war is, how it does destroy life.

I mean, it ends lives, destroys lives, displaces people. and we shouldn't speak lightly about them. And for me, this is related to the current Iran War, which I saw like the New York Times had a piece out saying that we didn't really touch their ballistic missile capabilities. And I think the Washington Post had reported that earlier in Reuters. And I don't actually know what the truth of it is, but I do know that we definitely. had some extensive bombing that had to have, you know, killed a lot of people and caused a lot of strife in the country. And, I mean, that's what war is. Like, that's what happens. But we should never be cavalier about it, too.

I want to get to that in a second. I just, I'm sorry. One thing I wanted to say tack on to the last conversation just before I forget. That Christoph column came out when it did specifically to focus the news on that rather than a big report that was coming out, a big study on October 7th attacks and what happened there and what was involved. And it's horrifying to read. And this report, which I don't even, it's upsetting to read the things that happened, about I was just going to give you one quick taste. I'm sorry, you know. This is from the New York Post talking about it. Hamas for sexual torture between family members on October 7th, the investigation found.

You hear the screams and then you hear the silence. Like that is horrifying. So what is the proportional response for that? What was Israel supposed to do? I always want to hear from people, what exactly is a country supposed to do? What would we do? You know, forget about the proportional number of people, which would be 50, 60, 70,000 people. But what would we do of 1,100 people?

Young women were tortured and killed like that. I think we would respond. And that's why this came out now. I don't know if Christoph knew that. I don't think he's very bright, honestly. I think it's actually quite stupid. We should mention he was fooled in the, in the aughts, I think it was. and another sexual assault story.

He had to apologize for it. He's just a terrible reporter and a ridiculous person. But this was meant to... He also got personally scammed somehow. Didn't he tell that story? Was that Krugman? Like he had like kitty porn?

Sorry. New York Times has a lot of interesting people there. Is Charles Blow still there? Ross do that. Sorry. It's good. Yeah, he's a serious person. I don't always agree with what he says.

He's a serious thinker. does Charles Blow a serious think you can barely write a sentence? Or who else? I don't even know what other column. David Brooks, right? Who's hate, like, I was just thinking about Crystal, Bill Crystal, David Brooks, these people, or Tim Miller at the bulwark, another one of these. They literally have no principles. I mean, they have no principles. You can hate Trump. All you want, the idea that you would abandon everything you believe in over Trump is just mind-boggling to me. And it shows a lack of intellectual discipline and moral discipline. Is that?

Thinking about this. Sorry, we're like going on tangent, be on tangent. I'm in a mood and I want to rip on people is what I want. I was thinking about this because I obviously have done a lot of public speaking about, you know, Trump not being awful, which makes me unique in my, in my sphere. But I haven't loved a lot of what's happened in the last couple of months. and at no point did I become Trump deranged. I'm skeptical of some of what he's doing,

and I'm not Trump-drenched. And now I feel even better than I did already about how I am versus these Trump-drenched people. Like, it's possible to disagree quite strongly with the president and not lose your mind. Can I tell you something funny? That's the first time in 10 years that you're the one who cleared your throat on Trump

and said, I don't agree with him, but. And I didn't even say that. Do you know what I'm saying? I didn't even like point out that I obviously don't like a lot of what Trump does either. I think here's a secret. It was relevant to the point. I know. I disagree.

And I'm not crazy. So I don't do what one listener called ritual malediction, which it just stayed with me for 10 years. You don't need to clear your throat and be like, well, of course I don't agree this before you say why what he did was good. Well, of course I don't agree with Trump on a lot. And I haven't over the years. and I don't like his style in many ways. I'm not a populist. I don't like it.

But I think the way around this is if you detest all politicians in general, you're going to be fine when another one comes up. Like for me, Trump's just another politician. Yeah, he's different in many ways, you know, in ways I don't like. But in other ways, I do like that he's not a coward all the time, that he doesn't couch his words all the time.

I think that's admirable. I don't care. I don't think he's worse than any other president. in that regard. I don't know why I'm off on a tangent. But I think if you treat all politicians with skepticism and you don't treat them with hero worship and all of that, then you're not going to be pulled into this. I have to say it was hard in the beginning for me to fight that instinct to just oppose Trump on things because I didn't like him in general, just oppose him on things I even cared about because he was the wrong vessel. I don't know.

He's a wrong leader for it or whatever. I don't think everything he's done in Iran is great. But I appreciate that he, you know, he's doing something that he said he would do. So in other things as well. I don't know. I don't know even know why I gave that speech. I don't know what's going on. It's early.

It's early in the morning. What were we were talking about? Oh, Iran in general. It's a tough situation, right? And the idea, first of all of a sudden, everyone loves intelligence assessment reports. Like sometimes it comes out. They don't like what it says. They're all up in arms.

Sometimes when they do lie everyone, we don't really know what's going on there. on the ground, in my opinion, or maybe we do, but we're not, you know, I doubt that these selective leaks, it just has like the earmarks of one of these selective leaks to try to make it look like Trump has lost. I think we control the air there. Make it seem like he needs to return to bombing. Okay. I mean, I think we should if they don't make a deal. I'm basically agreeing with you. I don't trust these things because I think they're always designed to achieve a particular outcome. And unless you know what the outcome they're trying to achieve is it's hard to, you know, that's like a bare minimum of what you should know, but also I just

don't trust leaks like this. Yeah. I mean, my view hasn't changed very much on it. I am starting to feel like public pressure, political pressure, maybe people in the administration have convinced Trump that the military phase is over no matter what. I hope that's not true. I don't mean that I want military, you know, more bombing, but I do think that the threat has to be there. We're not. never going to get an agreement from them, a real threat. So we'll see. I don't buy. I think we have really harmed them. I don't, I think we control the air. And I'm not sure that in the long term, they won't be regime change. I know people like kind of attack me and laugh at this. But when you really weaken a country economically and you destroy their leadership in this way,

it might not happen overnight. And there's already a restless population that dislikes the regime. It could fall at some point. It's been how many months, four months since the, starter or something like that. You know, it's actually a short time in history or three. Yeah. I mean, it's not a long time. I know people don't like it. But if we're there, shouldn't we finish it in a way that's positive for us in the

end? I think we should. So I hope that Trump can make a deal. And we're going to talk about he's going to China today. Yeah. So I was thinking about mostly about China right now. if you remember when Donald Trump first ran for president in 2015, and really the years leading up to that, he was kind of a lone voice talking about the threat posed by China and Chinese expansion. He was talking about how much of our supply chain they controlled, how much they were meddling in South America and Africa, how we needed to constrain them.

And it's one of these areas where when he started talking about it, people thought it was insane. I mean, the pundit class in D.C. They're like, what do you mean? Our relationship with China is great. It's a wonderful, you know, both sides benefit from this, and we've been able to lower costs of manufacturing by outsourcing everything to China. And, you know, it's my perception that many people in the United States

now understand what he was talking about and they share a lot of his concerns. So when you look at what has happened globally in this administration, You have the initial attack on Iran followed by the war-ish, the war-type action against them more recently. You have the complete removal of the Maduro family from Venezuelan politics. Fifty-first state, he said it's going to be the fifth-fifest state. And you see that, you know, China was able to assert a lot of control through its relationships with Russia, Iran, and Venezuela.

And in each case, those are somewhat constrained, or they're like on the table, you know, they're being, things are happening with each of them in a way that I do think has hurt China and we don't talk enough about it. Even, you know, I think I always enjoy talking to you about your love of the Iran war,

but you know, it's not a secret that I'm more skeptical than probably you and most of our listeners on it. But I try to understand the benefit of it. And this is going to start as a benefit and then it's going to turn back into a criticism. But you look at how the Strait of Hormuz, that's not our shipping route. We basically police all shipping routes in the world, whether they benefit us or not. But that one's clearly not a shipping route that we primarily benefit from.

This is it, you know, very important to Europe and other countries in the region of the Strait of Hormuz, but not really us. and even like India. And yet we're frequently responsible for keeping the peace there in a way that European countries are not. I like how it's kind of squeezing Europe a bit. On all of these things, they've just benefited from us being their backstop so they can socialize and import the third world

and destroy their countries. And then we do all the work of protecting them, you know, handling their, you know, being the big dog. who handles defense and who protects their shipping routes. And they've just kind of assumed they were always going to be taking care of. So I kind of like the pressure that's on them. I like the economic pressure. But when you think, and then I also like how it's constraining China.

But when you think about what it takes for this to succeed, it really is a long-term commitment. And at no point have I felt that the current administrations case for this war was being made in terms of long term, certainly didn't work to get commitment from people long term. And then if it's not long term, how does it work out? Like, I'm still very confused about the goals and how we see this ending. And when I asked these questions, when we started in the Ukraine, in the Russia-Ukraine war, everyone was like, this will be over in a matter of weeks or months and Vladimir Putin's about to collapse and he's about to die actually.

We think he's crazy from the cancer drugs, you know, and here we are, I don't even know how many three, four years later, still giving them so many billions of dollars a month. And it's just continuing without clear objectives that makes sense for me about how we're going to end it. And then likewise with this with Iran, like I don't understand what the game plan is. You know, you might say you don't need to understand. what the game plan is. But there is an election coming up.

Gas is insanely expensive. And summer is coming up. And what's the plan? Like, do we need to make a six-year-long commitment on this? Or is it going to be over in weeks? Well, first of all, I don't love the Iran war. I want to go back to the first thing you said. I don't love any war.

Sometimes war is necessary against evil. or people who undermine your interests in the world. And the Iranian regime is one. We can't let them have nukes. Because as much as we don't like it, and you're right, the Strait of Harmuz is much more important for Europe. Though I think what's happening or what I've been reading, I'm not an expert on it, is that because of what's going on there,

the Saudis and others are figuring out ways and pipelines to get around it. So it might not be that important for anyone at some point soon. You know what I'm saying? So we'll see about that. Totally agree on Europe. Yes, you know, after the war, after their humiliation, we did something no one has really ever done. We lifted them up and we protected them for, I don't know how many years during the Soviet era. But now they should take on that responsibility themselves.

I don't think they're in any real danger. Germany is the fourth, I think, biggest economy in the world. They pay like, I think they spend like 2% or something of their GDP on military stuff and we do like 13%. So they need to pick it up. I would love to leave NATO or reimagine that. relationship everyone's like oh we have forward bases there trust me we can make friends we can make friends in you know other countries and they will help us we could if we want as far as things like i don't know there's this i never bash americans but i think

americans like like they like a movie to end neatly right where they want a story to have a beginning and an end but there is it doesn't work that way this is not iraq or afghanistan no one's blowing us up there aren't american soldiers dying. We're not occupying any land. Don't you think we deserve more than three months to try to figure out how to end this problem once and for all? I agree that this is not war like the Bush, Iraq wars are wars. To your point, we're not losing a ton of people. We have definitely had some serious death and casualty losses, but we're not losing the numbers that you normally would see in a war,

although maybe that's just a function of the modern warfare. And I would argue that this is why you go to Congress and get a declaration of war. You have clear understanding of what the goals are. You have the people buy in and understand what they're signing up for because we are the ones who pay for it. We are the ones who, you know, not just pay for the actual war fighting, but also the things like the increased cost of gas, which becomes increased cost of everything. and also can decide, like, is it worth it for what it's going to cost us in terms of what we can't do domestically if we're doing this? That never happened. And it's not the American-

What can we do domestically because of this? Hold on. Well, let me- Okay. I don't want to forget this one point. Oh, yeah. The American people didn't say this would last for a few weeks. That was their president who went to war without making the case to Congress.

So you can't blame people for being like, well, he said it was a good. going to be done in a couple weeks. But it keeps saying it's going to be done in a couple weeks. And then that becomes a little bit of a punchline too. Just two weeks to slow the spread becomes some of the worst years of our lives. And sorry, what was your question then? No, I keep hearing how we're not going to be able to do things domestically because of this war. They're completely separate issues. I've talked to people in the administration who just say, you know, when you're in a presidential administration, there's a certain amount of attention and focus that must be applied from the top to get things done.

And so it's not that things aren't getting done. It's just the focus is changed. You can either be really dug into what you want to accomplish with your foreign policy, or you can be really focused on your domestic policy. But to get that, to have that passion and intensity, it just helps to have the principle right there with you. And so even people who are very supportive of the war, against Iran, they will say like this puts other things on the back burner,

whether it's mass deportations or going after the left's criminal syndicates or, you know, things like that that can just require more energy from more high level people. Well, the last time we declared war on a country was formally was like 1942, right? So I get, I think he should. I think that's the normal process. But the, you know, I'm sorry. No one no president does it anymore. I wish he did.

I think it's smart. But to say that he hasn't made the case, he's been talking about Iran forever. The case is simple. They can't have a nuclear weapon. That's the case. I mean, I think they continue to be to try. Okay. So just even that.

People generally do not like Iran and have been paying attention to Iran being a problem for many decades now. It's also true that that's a little bit of a like in my own. own mind, I have to think that Trump actually cares more about restructuring global relationships than he does Iran having a nuclear weapon. But he says that the case is Iran can't have a nuclear weapon because it's pithier. But like even that, what does that mean? How do you achieve that? What incentives does that create for other countries to get nuclear weapons? Why can't Iran have a nuclear weapon. I know that sounds like, you know, in D.C. people just say, of course, they can't have a nuclear weapon. And there's a truth to that, right? But actually explaining why not because of what they

would do with it. It's not like a weapon that could reach us, but it could reach allies who are very close or Europe. So they're a problem, but the big problem I think most people are feeling right now, and I hear it truly all the time from even people like family members who are supportive, of the Iran war is that gas is a major problem. And it's not just gas, obviously. Gas contributes to the cost of literally everything. So it's... There's a tradeoff when you're in war.

It's 100%. This is the price. When you have only 30% approval for the war and you have elections coming up. Yeah. But a president, I'm sure he wants... You said a lot of stuff there. I just want to say that it's not that simple

to say, oh, they don't threaten us with a nuclear weapon right now. Once they have a nuclear weapon, they can engage in any program they want. We saw they have intercontinental ballistic missiles already that go thousands of miles, which no one knew existed. And tomorrow they can build one that goes even farther. So that's one thing. But the other thing is... David, I totally agree.

I don't disagree with that. I just mean, like, you have to kind of spell it out, too. Yeah. The communication has not been great, other than from, I think, Marco Rubio makes a very good case, but most of the time, but maybe he doesn't. But another thing about nuclear weapons, allowing them to have nuclear weapons, that's what will have a dramatic effect

on how other countries think, because Saudi Arabia will immediately want a nuke and other countries nearby will want nukes. Because Iran is a, you know, a terrorist regime that involves itself in the business of everyone. But I want to go back to something you said about China. I think it's very important to think about, yeah, you're 100%.

I don't, I actually think Trump doesn't want Iran to have nukes, by the way. I think that's the main reason. That's just what I feel. You know them better than me for sure. But yet we have shown that Chinese weaponry is garbage for the most point in not just here, but in Venezuela. Iran supplies like 90, a very high percentage of its oil to China. And now that is cut off right now. That hurts China a bit.

It's not all its oil for sure. And maybe now they'll turn to Russia more or whatever. But it is something that hurts China. And I just saw some reports on the Chinese. economy. I mean, it is in a really bad shape. The Chinese economy is in really bad shape. The idea that they're nipping at our heels is something a lot of Americans I see believe, but it is just simply not true. Not to say they have a very powerful military, but economically, they cannot compete with us. So that's how Donald Trump should view China as a weaker negotiating partner.

Over the part where he made them that way. Yeah, he helped for sure. This hurts them. Venezuela hurts them. I'm always like, like nah, he won't do this or that. Like Cuba, he's constantly talking about. I would not be surprised if Cuba's free soon, right? And he's done it in a way, which I love, is that we don't have this need to gain approval from France when we do something anymore.

We don't need this. We go and we must curse. We fight a war for short periods of time and we do it to win. It's still difficult. War is always difficult. So we'll see where Iran goes. I am getting more and more nervous about the idea that we're going to capitulate to them again.

I hope that's not the case. And since we already are there and we engaged in this, we should really win this. Let's talk about culture. We're always, you know, our segue into culture are speaking about something terrible. So I think we need to like try to come up with something happier. But anyway, culture, did you do anything? Let me just first say that I have been. so busy for so many years that I'm doing things that I should have done literally seven or eight years ago.

Yeah. I bought a curtain rod and curtains for my front window. We have lived here for many, many years. And then I have like a 1950s pink bathroom and I decided to lean into it. If anyone has any ideas for, it's like pink accents gray tile, bluish gray tile, like pink ceramic, what porcelain bathtub. I'm just leaning into the pink.

And then I'm still doing a lot of travel for the book. I will be speaking out in California. Samuel Alito is the book. Sorry, the book Samuel Alito. And I will be speaking out in California, but I'm also very excited to be speaking at the issues, etc. conference in Chicago. on June 12th and, sorry, June 12th and June 13th.

I think I'm speaking on the 12th, but it's just a two-day conference at Concordia University, Chicago. It is my absolute favorite, favorite conference of the year for Christians who are interested in politics. I will be talking about my book, Samuel Alito. Also speaking will be Aaron Josh Hawley of Alliance Defending Freedom, Robert Spencer of Jihad Watch and Megan Basham of the Daily Wire,

who I've known for decades and who is a wonderful speaker. But if any of our listeners want to go, you should go. It's great. It's a wonderful group of people. It's my favorite thing ever. Learn more and register at Issuesetc.org, and it's June 12th and 13th. You know, you should come, David. It would be really fun.

Robert Spencer is a guy I've been reading a long time. He's a very smart critic of Islamism and the threat it poses Christianity and Jews and modernity, I guess. So he's a brave writer, I think. I've been reading in many years. Everyone else you mentioned is I've read as well. And it sounds like a good conference. I don't know that I can go. I'm a little busy.

I'm writing a book myself right now and stuff. So, but maybe next year. You know, I need an invite. Someone has to invite me. Also, I'm not Christian, so not yet, right? So on that book note, too, I've been having fun with now people are actually reading it and they'll like send me pictures or, you know, on Twitter of what part they've read and what they like about it. They've pulled from it. And it's like so disparate what people are pulling and I love it.

It's, I always assume, I don't know how you feel about this when you're writing a book that like, no. Nobody will read it. And I love that people actually read it and then react to it. So that's great. On that note, if anyone wants to leave an Amazon review, that would be great. I forgot to in any way ask anyone to do it. So this is my first time. But I did see a movie.

Sorry, that was a long buildup to. Oh, again. In a movie in the theater? Went to a movie in the theater. Highly, highly recommend this. It's called the sheep detectives.

Oh, I was going to go see that, actually. I mean, I loved it. I wanted to see it. I thought the premise sounded delightful. It's about a group of flock of sheep who solve a murder, actually, of their shepherd. And that's totally my speed. But it was so well done. It sounds very stupid, but one of my kids told me that it was great,

and they had a lot of fun seeing it. Yeah, I think I'm going to go back and see it just that delightful. And I went with one of my kids and their friend, their friend who I find utterly delightful. And we all just thought it was great. It is heavy on the, it is a completely secular movie, but it's heavy on the Christian themes, unsurprisingly, since it's a movie about sheep and a shepherd.

But like there's an actual recreation of that agnose. Day, you know, famous art. Or no, not Agniz Day, but like the, you know, shepherd carrying the lamb. Mm-hmm. Isn't it like Hugh Jackman or is the shepherd or? Yeah, it's a real star-studded cast. Oh, okay.

Hugh Jackman. And then the voices are also. Yeah. Your players. Anyway. Nice. It works for kids, certainly. It's a little, there's some dark, you know, some like scary parts,

but it works on a completely different level for the, adults on grief and loss and, you know, just silly murder. It's not like the world's most, it's not the world's deepest movie, but it had some good deep themes. All right. Well, I watched a couple of things that I had here. One is a, this is a, you know, I watched the first episode of this and I was like, oh, I'm going to recommend this highly on the podcast.

But then the second episode slowed down a little, still very good. It's called Legends. It's on Netflix. It's a British show. Stars Steve Coogan. I love him. I love so much. From 24-hour happy people.

I don't know if you've ever seen that movie. I've seen that. I've forgotten that that was him. Yeah. Such a great movie. It's like 20 years old now. But it's a story from the 1990s about the drug trade in Britain and these people who go undercover. So it sounds very, you know, like just a traditional.

kind of like cop thing but it's it's it's better than that it's well done we we already talked about the trip right with Steve Coogan that and all the uh yeah such a good old TV series there's like four of those movies I think oh I think they like go to Italy they go to Spain I forgot the guy I don't know the comedian's name the British guy he's on there with but he's very funny as well I see him around bride and right yeah Then I watched and I did not finish, but it was good. What I saw was the documentary about Martin Short. He was on Netflix.

And man, man, he has had a lot of loss. He dates that awful woman, too. Who does he date? Merrill Streep. Oh, are they? Now we're just calling Martin Meryl Streep off. I've had enough of her. I don't wish any harm on her or anything,

but I just, I can't anymore. I think he's just wonderful. So funny. And you see, first of all, they talk about his early life. He had some tragedy. I won't give that away. But the SCTV, when you're watching the scenes from,

it's like a Canadian Saturday Night Live for people who don't know that was around in the early 80s and late 70s. Every single person on that cast went on to become famous. or whatever, were well known. But they were also talented, Eugene Levy, you know, John Candy, Martin Short, what's her name, Catherine O'Hara, on and on. And even the bit players, like Rick Moranis,

like it's just on and on. It was so excellent. But it's, you know, I had just started watching SNL when Martin Short was on it. And I remember Ed Grimley in that character, but do you remember the character? I forgot his name, The Lawyer, who's so defensive and he's always smoking.

I forgot the character. character's name. It's so, so funny. So anyway, you should watch it. It's like a two hour long. You know, it really gets into it. And I like that. I hate documentaries. Just give me stuff I know. I want to go deeper. Usually they're too long or too short. But two hours seems okay. Yeah. It's like an hour, 45 minutes, actually, I think. And I'm only half through it. And, you know, there's a lot of sadness in it. But he's just such a delightful and funny and optimistic person in real life, it seems to me. I'm not big on the celebrities, but he's the one guy like I'd actually want to meet. Thinking about this driving the other day, immediately like sobbing over my dad being gone.

And then I was like, how do people walk around with this much pain? Like everybody out there has some serious loss, probably, a spouse. I mean, watching my mom, who's like so happily married to my dad for so long be without him. Now I'm like, I don't want that. You know, I don't, I don't want to ever be without Mark. And then you realize like, oh, literally hundreds of millions of people do this or have done this. Yeah. I mean, I might as well give it away.

Or like, you know, Martin Short lost a child. Like, I cannot even imagine that. He lost his brother at 12, his mom at 17, his dad at 20, his wife, you know, and his daughter. Like, I don't know how you even get out of bed. And then I think about divorce. Like I have a bunch of divorced friends. That's like the worst part of death and the worst part of not death together to me. I choose divorce over death, I think.

But not that I want either. I'm saying like it's like you had a spouse die, but they're not dead. So you don't even get the benefit of being like people being like, oh, I'm sorry. You're not lost or whatever. So it just blows me away how much emotion there is out there. Or how many people have hurt. Anyway, that's not. I mean, I'm at an age now where I think about that quite a bit.

I went to the, I went for my yearly checkup the other day. And my, for the first time, my cholesterol was a little high. And I assumed that I was going to be dead the next day of a heart attack. Like, I'm ready to go. So now I'm like eating all, I'm having oatmeal all the time. I'm eating vegetables, which I hate. I am trying to be healthy. You get to a certain age and you think about mortality quite a bit.

And it's never like, oh, I'm going to be dead. that's horrible. It's like I'm not going to see the people, my family, my friends again. Okay. So that, I think this has been my main way of coping with my grief over my dad's death. I decided, well, if he died, that means I'm about to die because that's my dad. So I'm the next, you know, I'm the next to go. And I have never, I think this is pretty obvious for people who've seen me or know me. I have never thought about what I'm eating for a moment in my life. and I had the body to prove it. You know, I love bread. I love pasta.

I love pasta. And so I, like for the last two months, have done major dietary restriction. It's the worst. It's okay. But I mean, what's funny is I just did it through diet, right? So I've definitely seen changes. But everyone who comments, there are people who comment on your appearance. I always have really nice comments, and I've appreciated that.

Very few people are mean. But then people have been like, oh, she's on Ozmpic. And I do not begrudge people for being on Ozmpic. It's just not something I would ever want to do. And I'm like, I'm not going to respond to them, but no. I just, you know, you say eat your grief. I think I didn't eat my grief. But in a very doctor-controlled, healthy way, hopefully.

I mean, I think if you're like morbidly obese or something and you need to take a drug to help you, I'm for that. I think it's better for you in the end. But there are sometimes people who only need a little willpower, right? And they're doing it too. And that to me seems unhealthy, right? When you can just do it without a pill or a however of an injection. Yeah. Again, I don't care what other people do.

I think that's their business. I just personally don't know enough about the long term. effects of those drugs. It's like cocaine is another thing you can do. And I certainly have had friends who've done that. It's a lot more fun way to lose weight. It was a Gen X, you know, way to. But I just never wanted to do that.

I don't like drugs that way. Like, I don't, you don't know about the long-term effects. And I've certainly seen enough from other drugs, you know, whether they're controlled or not or whatever. It seems like people undervalue what the bad long-term effects can be. I hate I hate pills Like when I broke all those bones in my arm Early in the last summer

They gave me like opioids and stuff I never took one I mean if you can get through pain You should do it without that much help I get that some people need it And there's pain you can't handle But I'm just I have an addictive personality I would say I'm an obsessive

So if I start doing something I'm scared that it's going to take over Anyway We'll be back next week Unless you have anything else Are you done? No, I'm good. All right.

We'll be back next week. Email to show at Radio at the Federalist.com. Talk to you soon. Until then, do lovers of freedom.