‘You're Wrong' With Mollie Hemingway And David Harsanyi, Ep. 183: Abigail Spanberger

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This is disconcerting. It's scary, actually. It's downright. Yeah, it's down right. She, Abigail Spanberger is a weak politician in a lot of ways. Like, I don't find her very impressive at all. She won easily because Republicans did not run good candidates, did not run good campaigns here in Virginia. I do wonder, though, if they would. Here's the thing. Glenn Youngkin was actually a popular governor, Virginia, despite this being a blue state. I think he was popular because he could reach out and because he was, gave a moderate face to conservative ideas that I think are actually quite popular. And he could express them in a way that maybe like Josh Shapiro and Pennsylvania can do on the other end of it, you know, and these are popular governors. Abigail Spanberger is not going to be a popular governor. If she raises taxes on all deliveries that she's going to do, if she raises taxes on businesses as she's going to do on new businesses, if she has the abortion bill the Democrats are talking about. What was the governor's name who said that we should be able to kill babies after they're born? Ralph Northam. Yeah. This is like essentially going to make that reality. It's just incredibly radical. A lot of people have guns here in Virginia. Second Amendment is not an unpopular thing here. And there's a gun bill that's going to attack that as well. So I do wonder how if this will help Republicans. I mean, I don't, it doesn't really matter because they're going to ruin the state by that point. But. I don't know. I mean, this is pretty standard MO, and you can do a lot when you have corporate media at your beck and call, and she does. I mean, none of them are saying, we lied to you when we said she was a moderate, or she lied to you when she said she was a moderate. They're just acting like these radical positions aren't a big deal. And then when they take effect years later or when the effects are felt years later, they're not going to tie it to their lies. or political party differences. It's a very powerful thing that Democrats and the left have with control of nearly all the media. And I think this is no exception. Can I tie this into, I'm sorry, go on. I'm sorry. I was, go ahead. No, no, please, go on. I was talking to a friend we were driving in Virginia on Saturday and she's a. you know, very moderate, bushy type Republican. And she was saying that she feels like when Democrats are in power, they act like they will never lose power. And when Republicans are in power, they act like they're not in power. And I thought that, I mean, that's how I felt for a very long time, but that I was hearing it from her really spoke, I think, to the general frustration that a lot of Republican voters feel that Even if they do the hard work of winning elections, it doesn't seem to result in the type of change that Democrat voters get when they put the hard work into winning elections. Well, I know that that's a popular sentiment, but I think there are reasons for that beyond that Republicans are just more cowardly or something. It's that if you are still, and there are fewer of them, a small government conservative.

and with immigration, which is under the federal government's purview. You'll remember during the Obama administration, Obama went to the Supreme Court against Arizona to argue that border enforcement is a federal concern. But yet now, states simply ignore it. And I would love to ask Abigail Spanberger or someone like that, what does she want? us to do about illegal immigration. But we can never talk about that because ICE has been, you know, become villains in the eyes of all progressives. But we can never, I've never really heard someone get to the essence of that debate. What exactly do Democrats want to do about illegal immigration? How are we supposed to enforce those laws or do they think that we shouldn't enforce those laws? In my view, they don't think that we should enforce those laws at all. Well, Mark Hemingway, who I am related to by marriage, wrote. a piece on just that at the Federalist talking about how that is the crux of the issue. Democrats do not want to enforce any immigration law because they support completely open borders. And they get mad when you say, wait a minute, sounds like you support completely open borders. But if you ask them, okay, so what should be done? They literally think nothing should be done. And I think we talked about this a little bit, but when the shooting of that woman who was interfering with law enforcement in... Renee Good. Yeah. When that happened, people said, I've never seen anything like it. People have completely different viewpoints of what they're seeing with this cop shooting into the car. It's like sort of true. It's kind of a stupid point, but it's sort of true. Because if you think that immigration law is... is illicit or whatever, you know, like corrupted and you can't, you shouldn't have any of it, you see that cop enforcing immigration law as the worst thing in the world. And if you do believe in borders, and if you do believe countries have the right to police them, and if you do believe people shouldn't be here illegally, and if you do believe that police do have a monopoly on force in situations, you see something totally different because your view of the world is totally different. Yeah, Abigail Spanberger, who presents as a moderate and never was. She was always a left-wing radical. And she was smarter about how she ran it than some other people are in that she hid that. But the former CIA operative is a radical who does not believe, does not really care if I'm. assaulted by an illegal alien. She just doesn't care. She doesn't care if my kid gets in a car accident with a criminal illegal alien and has to go to the hospital. She doesn't care. And neither do any other Democrats. And like, I feel kind of crazy about it because to me it's so obvious you should care about the citizens of your state and how they are being hurt by a failure to enforce the laws. But she's just adding fuel to the non-enforcement fire.

The kind of dishonest trick media plays and the left plays with this issue is that they have an undue focus on alleged excessive force by ICE. So that becomes the main story rather than the suffering of, like you say, a normal citizen here. So that the whole debate is about, is ICE using excessive force rather than what do we do and how do we most effectively? fix this problem. The most effective way to fix this problem is for states to cooperate with federal agents and ICE to get illegal immigrants out of the country because they shouldn't be here. in a humane way, right? I'm all for that. But still, to enforce the law, there are states that do that and there are no problems there. And there are states like Minnesota and I guess now Virginia that are going to try to stand in the way of ice. And I bet you that that will lead to some kind of tragic circumstance somewhere, right? Well, that was another point that Mark made in his piece, which is ice does enforcement operations. in all 50 states. You're not hearing about horrific problems in Tennessee because the government of Tennessee cooperates with the federal government in the enforcement of our immigration laws and they don't encourage. insurrection against the federal government. It's happening all the time in Florida. Florida is actually kind of getting a name for itself in how well it is supporting the federal law enforcement officers. If anyone tries to obstruct them, the Florida system is on top of it. taking people out of the way who are trying to obstruct federal law enforcement. So yes, the problems are caused by confusing messages from Democrat politicians or out and out encouragement toward insurrection. And we see this, I think also with the terrifying thing we saw in. I think it was St. Paul, the Twin Cities in Minnesota this weekend, where a group of left-wing terrorists openly bragged about how they violated the First Amendment rights of Christians in the city by invading their worship space and taking over their worship. To this point, not a single elected... Democrat of note in Minnesota has condemned this violation of religious rights. In fact, the mayor of St. Paul sided with the people who went after the Christians. And their whole reason for doing this, which they bragged about, which Don Lemon had four knowledge of and participated in, was that one of the pastors

at that church during the week is a law enforcement officer. And they, I guess, have a weird religious view that Christians can't be engaged in law enforcement, which, you know, is something certainly that people have talked about. And I would say is not a view held by... literally any Christian of any note. And so they said that because they personally don't think that a Christian should be in law enforcement, that they had the right to terrorize a congregation in St. Paul. I mean, that's where we are. And nobody did anything. The police weren't there, even though they were like broadcasting what they were doing. The state government has done nothing about it. And still, I mean, as of the time of this taping, no one's been arrested for what they did. Yeah. It was called the city's church in St. Paul. Later, I saw Don Lemon was somewhere. What's that crazy? Jennifer Welch, is that her name? She's like some kind of off unhinged podcast or whatever. Isn't she? I think she's actually the grape Welch heiress. No, I don't know. Honestly, I can't take like more than. I can't take 10 seconds of that boy. Sorry. I know. Call me misogynistic if you like. But he said he basically called the people in their white supremacist, which is just insane. because, first of all, a lot of the people in that church weren't white, but moreover, they were worshipping. And even if they were white, it doesn't make them supremacists anyway. But yeah, I have a broader problem with protest culture in general. I think it's kind of un-American. But leftist protesters always seem to believe that their First Amendment rights trump the rights of other people's First Amendment protections. So they can just shout you down. prohibit you from speaking if you're a comedian if you're at a school wherever that they can just shut you down and they did that here where people were worshipping which is gross and i just would say don't trump This isn't a throat clearing thing. This is to make a point. But he does a lot of things a lot of people probably don't like. He speaks in a way a lot of people don't like. But when you see the other side storming a church, shutting down church services in defense of illegality, are you really surprised that people are going to vote for the Republican over whatever, you know, people who defend this kind of, this kind of? protests and not just, and it's not even a protest, it's just an act of criminality and not just here, but you have this happening in different ways across the country. Yeah, Heather McDonald had a piece about how refreshing it was to have a president just speak like a normal person when it comes to some of the horrific crime that has been taking place and how we'd gotten used to politicians having this weird, distant way of talking about it. And she was.

quoting what Trump said when that Ukrainian immigrant was brutally slaughtered on public transportation in North Carolina and how he just was like, yeah, this is a monster. We can't have that. We can't let this type of stuff happen. And I think there is something very refreshing about someone just being like, yeah, these people are these people are acting crazy and we can't have it. So a lot of Americans do feel that way. Can I say one more thing really quickly? Of course. You said this wasn't ritual malediction or whatever. But I was on X this week and that Frank Fleming guy had tweeted something about. how so much criticism of Trump fails to acknowledge the context in which he is speaking. So they'll say that he's bad without noting. just how horrible some of our other leaders are. And I just agreed with him. I'm like, yeah, I frequently agree with criticism of Trump. But when you are like so focused on it while not acknowledging how horrible are all these other so-called leaders are, you just seem unhinged, right? And I just want to say people got so mad at me for saying that I frequently agree with criticism of Trump. And they were like, we knew you couldn't be trusted and you're the worst. And I was just like, wait, I thought we all agreed that, you know, like the thing that kind of comes to mind is after Rob Reiner was brutally murdered by his son and he's like, that dude's the worst. Do not agree with this. You know, and I say that as someone who was personally. personally targeted by Rob Reiner for destruction as part of his Russia collusion hoax because we were the publication that was doing the most to debunk that. But I just, because of my own code, I do not believe in that. But I didn't think it was like that controversial. And I was like, okay, everyone just calm down. I think I genuinely like Trump and his policies. You know that. It doesn't mean that I agree with everyone. It reminds me of that Ed Cock, is that I said his name? The mayor of New York. You're from Bill. Koch, sorry. Ed Koch, how he was like, if you agree with me on seven out of ten things, vote for me. If you agree with me on ten out of ten things, seek psychiatric help. Like, nobody should agree with any politician of all people on everything. Anyway, I've always found it very difficult when it comes to Trump. And maybe Obama had a similar kind of hold on people where you are either pro-Trump or anti-Trump. Never really makes complete sense to me. I mean, I get it.

I get what it, what's happening. But I just don't understand why I have to have any kind of loyalty to anyone other than my family or whatever friend. Tomorrow he could turn around and do a bunch of stuff. I even hate more than I hate what he's doing. I mean, like, I don't know what he's going to do. And especially someone as mercurial as Donald Trump, you can't say I am pro or anti-Trump. But there's a lot of this thing where, oh, I trust what he's doing here, even if he sounds crazy or he's off, off the hook or whatever. I don't know. I mean, I'm pro-Trump. I have no problem saying that. I am happier with him as president than I've ever been of any president in my lifetime. So that doesn't mean, again, that I agree with everything he's done. And I do understand a little bit of the defensiveness of him, which is because of, again, this cartoonishly hostile environment in which he operates, where you have people just act like it's okay and normal to do things like the Russia collusion hoax or multiple impeachments or... all the judicial um insurrection stuff like you people act like that's normal and so when when someone who they trust is also piling on they're like really can you not like think of the larger context so i get it but it just kind of But to be fair. Even getting it, it's like too extreme if you can't say, I do not agree with this approach he's taking here. But to be fair, Donald Trump himself is sort of cartoonish in the way that he conducts himself sometimes. So it's it's a weird world we're living in. But I saw someone. So someone at NR said, I forgot who it was, said like. He liked a lot of what Trump was doing or something and that we needed to, but we needed to elect people. We need to get back to electing people who are also sort of morally better, right? Whatever it was. Not one of these people will take even a moment to consider that these norms were destroyed by Barack Obama and later by Joe Biden, even though they used very polite rhetoric. I'm trying to avoid saying any bad words. They're the winiest little girls when... dealing with conflict and they backstab and they think they're so cute because they don't do it like men fight men fight by punching each other but they they fight like girls they're like i'm going to gossip about this person and and really hurt their reputation and Trump is definitely more just like, I'm going to say out loud that I don't like that person. And it's so unlike the way things are done in D.C. because he's not really a creature of D.C. that they don't know how to handle it. But hear the Commentariat class be like, I'm so preferred when we were acting like little girls about our political enemies. It just is impotent and embarrassing to me. Yeah. But, you know, I mean, shouldn't, shouldn't? the people who run this country like for instance i noticed this trend i'm sure you've noticed as well or maybe we even spoke about it where everyone and politicians curse now all the time and they do it as a shortcut to uh to exert some kind of earnestness but it's all fake right and

It comes off like they're being, I do think Donald Trump does not think much before he speaks. And if he has a problem with someone, he says it and maybe, you know, he overstates it. And sometimes I think it's kind of disgusting. But I think a decorum, a certain level of decorum is something we should have. from our leaders i'm not i agree with you it doesn't need to be this like you know this uh what is like tip o'neill and reagan meeting for breakfast type of thing all the time and you hate each other then you can you don't need to hide that but we should treat each other with a certain level of respect i say that as you know everyone always tells me it's a christian country i agree i mean we need to have a certain amount of respect for each other everyone is always running around I think picking the worst moment their enemy has and defining him that way and it makes us kind of hate each other and what in this coarseness and how we speak of each other. I like a good debate. I like a good insult. Like I'm not against any of that. But I think it there's this ugliness that isn't really about debate anymore. It's like so personalized that it's weird to me. I don't even see anyone debating policy anymore left right. It's right on the right people might debate right wing policy on the left. But. I never see that crossover. I don't know. I don't even know where I'm going with this. It just seems like it is too coarse. One other thing about this, which is... It's just, this is a topic that I'm personally conflicted on. You look at something like the radical trans movement, which involves people denying reality, farming bodies, removing healthy body parts, forcing everybody into like a fantasy realm where you get to change your sex, even though sex cannot be changed. It's innate and unchangeable. And. What happened is a lot of people in this country, probably based on Christian heritage and not belief, but that background, were very polite about the whole thing. polite to the point of destruction and polite to the point that children were being mutilated, permanently sterilized, and having their lives destroyed. And there is this issue of how far do you take being polite? I do agree we should treat each other with respect and love. And then I also think that people... are taking advantage of that to destroy the republic to the point that we are going to be vulnerable to war, civil war, massive amounts of conflict, and that we should be.

loving, but much more forthright about how unacceptable some of these positions are. Like, communism is unacceptable. And much of the Democrat Party is just embracing it fully and thinking that if they call it democratic socialism, that people will be nicer to them. And then they are because a lot of this stuff is very damaging to the lives of Americans. What people are doing to our cities is horrific. the taxes, the crime, the like complete lawlessness happening in many cities. And we should be more forthright about opposing it, I think. And that does mean being like being intense and sometimes mean, probably. No, I think that's fine. I don't exactly know where the line is. I mean, at how minimum attacks I don't like. And you see them all the time now as a kind of way to. dismiss someone, you know, mocking them for whatever. And even that's okay sometimes if the person's really evil. I think you need to be able to call someone evil. You need to be able to call what is wrong, wrong, what is truth, truth. Like 10 years ago, I wrote a column for the Federalist where I said something like, we have to start calling people who lie, liars, not call, because all these euphemisms. And NPR had me on. And it said, like, conservative columnist says, you know, we need to start people, calling people liars. Like it was some kind of. revolutionary act to just say what things are now maybe I'm wrong you know you can disagree but there is a kind of ugly underlying ugliness to a lot of this and it and it I don't know I don't know that that I think harms the case that maybe people are trying to make sometimes

Will Washington's housing fixes backfire? The Watchdog on Wall Street podcast with Chris Lisa Murkowski. Every day, Chris helps unpack the connection between politics and the economy and how it affects your wallet. Trump plans on purchasing billions in mortgage-backed securities as well as allowing people to use retirement to make down payments. Does adding more cash bring down the price or add fuel to the fire? Whether it's happening in D.C. or down on Wall Street, it's affecting you financially. Be informed. Check out the Watchdog on Wall Street podcast with Chris Lisa Murkowski on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcast. Let's talk a little bit about Greenland. Okay. Now, we've mentioned this in passing, I think, a few times. And I am actually a fan of trying to obtain Greenland for the United States for geopolitical reasons. I don't want the Chinese there. I don't want the Russians there and all of that. Donald Trump has made this something of, I call it an obsession. I mean, he tweets about it a lot. He'll tweet about it in the middle of the night. He'll have memes where there's. You know, the green lens of this American just puts American flag over the whole thing. What, I mean, every poll shows me, and you can believe in polls or not, that like 75% of Americans have zero interest in any kind of military expedition there. Yes. And I agree. And I think today in Davos, Donald Trump says that he would not take it by force. This is just like, the way he wheels and deals. I think he's trying to exert pressure and leverage and all of that. I think he's thinking about Greenland too much. Like, let's make an offer. Let's make it if you want. I saw a lot of people complaining that, you know, we're suffer here and American suffer. Now we're going to give $10,000 to every person in Greenland, you know. Oh, but that would be such a deal. Yeah, yeah, I think it would be good for the United States. Though I should, and if people don't know, Denmark, Greenland is Dane territory. But we have carte Todd Blanche basically to do what we want there. We have military there. We signed a deal, I believe, in the 50s that the Danes allows to do essentially whatever we want there. So I feel like he's just the obsession with this place. It just does not. comport with its importance i don't know what do you may i'm just mentioning this because it literally like dominates the news it's like he talks about this 90% of the time so okay first off i'll just say that Obtaining Greenland has been on the wish list of presidents going back like 100 years. It's geopolitical significance is massive relative to like what it is, which is a country with not many people that's very icy and poorly named as Greenland.

And Trump seems to be that president who does what everybody says they're going to do but doesn't do or that takes action that everybody else just talks about. And so I'm not surprised he was talking about this during the first administration. And when he presented it, everybody acted like it was the craziest idea. But it really is something that Americans have thought about for a long time. I do not believe. I need to study more, but like just, you know, cursory. I'm glad he's saying he doesn't want to use force because if you subscribe to just war theory, I don't see the case for, at least at this point, of a war of expansion that would involve the loss of life and all that. But I do see a reason why we could have a good alliance here. You know Bjork from the sugar cubes? I do. So my brother and I were talking about her because he, for some reason, didn't realize that she had been in the sugar cubes. And I remembered the first time I saw her, which was on Saturday Night Live in 1988. And I was babysitting and I was very young. And I immediately went out and bought the tape, the cassette tape for Life's Too Good. And I've always just kind of liked her. I think she's got a really great vibe and voice and all that. And so I was just looking into her because of this conversation. And I saw that she was encouraging Greenlanders to throw off all of the colonialism and become independent. And I was like, wow, does she have a death wish for Greenland? Like if they didn't have support of Denmark or the U.S., they'd be done, right? Like, it would be so easy to take them over if they were just independent. Like the whole reason why this is a challenge is because of the Danes. I just want to say, I don't think there would be a single person would lose their lives if we wanted to take Greenland. We would take it very easily. There's 30,000 people there. Here's a thing. You know, Donald Trump's out there. He's threatening the Danes and others with all kinds of massive tariffs if they don't go along with this and that. You're just pushing these people towards China. It is not worth it's backfiring in a way. I just think the over like this is a sort of thing that you should be doing quietly, not embarrassing another country. The Danes can't be like, oh, we got bullied into this and we have to do it. You're going to create a kind of, and I'm not this pro-NATO guy. I actually think that Europe needs to take care of itself far better. The Danes actually aren't bad. I mean, they have withstood the immigration or migration stuff there. Their tariffs aren't very high. They're a good country in a lot of ways. I just don't get. how this benefits the United States to, you know, push on this to such a degree. But yeah, I agree with everything you said other than that. I do think that people don't give credit to Donald Trump's, just his negotiation strategy has worked really well for him over the course of his life. And it usually does begin with some great outsized threat followed by completely reasonable negotiations. He wrote about it.

You magnificent bastard, I read it in your book. Like he put it in the book what his whole negotiation style is. And everyone acts like it's the craziest thing in the world every time they see it. And it's getting kind of blame. I saw, oh my gosh, I saw someone say that because of what he'd said about Greenland needing to like, you know, bow down to us and come our way, that it was 25th Amendment time. I think anyone who says... that we should be looking at the 25th Amendment for Donald Trump should themselves be institutionalized. Like they are losing grasp on reality to such an extent that their loved ones should care for them and put them in a safe place. Particularly when you see people who are ostensibly on the right or who previously claimed to be on the right, who said word zero about Joe Biden and the 25th Amendment. And then they're out there. reupping it. It's embarrassing. I feel badly for them. I feel bad for them. I feel like they should get help and that their loved ones should get them out of public life. Well, everybody who talks about the 25th Amendment is engaged in kind of wishcasting for any, at any point, it's just never probably going to happen unless there's a president who has, you know, who literally runs naked through D.C. You know what I mean? Like, there's just, it's never going to happen. People talk about it. You could literally be Joe Biden and nobody brought it up. Exactly. Exactly. And he didn't know when his friends had died. I mean, he. I do think, though, like his letter and text or whatever it was to the Norwegians, I mean, he's just, I don't know why he does stuff like that. Like, it's so, to say that Donald Trump is egocentric is a massive understanding. I don't, we need a better word than that. The Norwegians didn't give him the Nobel Peace price. So now he's angry about that. Like this is the kind of stuff that I think probably turns off a lot of people because it's not about America. Yeah, we'll see what happens. Yeah. This is to me, I mean, we can't, we cannot pretend that this is normal, right? Nothing about Donald Trump. And also, I just want one, I'll let you talk, but one thing, you mentioned the book. I get the book. I get what he does. Running a country is not the same as running a business. The Danes are not looking for profit here. The Dan Sullivan. Greenland is a welfare state for Denmark. And it's been that for a long time. It's a prestige thing. So you probably need to approach it a little different than you would a hostile takeover of another company or whatever he wrote about in his book. It's different. Sorry. Okay.

I just, back to the, you didn't give me the Peace Prize, so why should I care about peace? To me, that reads as obvious humor. And also, I don't know, I mean, does that not strike you as funny or no? A lot of the crazier things he says strike me as very funny. I just don't know if I want my president doing it. I don't know if that was a joke. I feel like probably not, but I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. Sometimes I don't know. I do not know. Listen, it's not a 25th Amendment thing, no. It's just a bad, bad text or letter. Okay. Let's talk a bit about, if you like, about Josh Shapiro. I don't know if you saw this story. He's a book coming out. It's called Where We Keep the Light. God, is there anything worse than political memoirs? I mean, I would say 90% of them are just, it's sufferable, just so difficult to read. He, in that book, which I have not read, I've just read excerpts, he tells the story of his vetting process. for the Democratic Party's vice presidential nomination in 2024, where he had a meeting with a woman named Dana Remus, I guess, is her name. And she was with the Obama administration who. was, quote, unnecessarily contentious with him and then asked him if he was a double agent for Israel or whether he communicated with an undercover agent of Israel. A lot of Jewish people, including myself, immediately took notice because the dual loyalty smear is not new. In fact, it's quite, it's an old trope. It's been around forever. But hearing this happened to him, makes all the sense in the world because there was no reason that he shouldn't have been the VP taking the VP not unless he didn't want it which it seems to me he did He was, his approval rating, again, these are just polls, but it matters. His approval rating at the time of this interview, I looked it up, in Pennsylvania was between 57 and 59 in all polls. He won 56% of the state in 2022. Pennsylvania was won by Donald Trump. Walls, on the other hand, who eventually got the nod, was pretty unpopular in his own state of Minnesota, which has not gone to a Republican since 1972 when Richard Nixon won it. Meaning like Pennsylvania is a very important state. It is in many ways the pivotal state in the last election, and they did not go with him. I believe they didn't go with him because he was Jewish.

I'm not saying that Kamala Harris is an anti-Semite. I'm not even saying the people who ask them these questions are anti-Semites. I think they're actually trying to chill when people do this, they're trying to chill your. your pro-Israel views, which they asked him if you would apologize for speaking out against these pro-Hamas protesters. But he was a better candidate in every way. Walls was one of the worst vice presidential candidates, probably in history, certainly in modern history. There was no reason not to pick him that I could see. So. I think it's fair for him to be offended by these questions. I just want to say I don't think he's any kind of hero because at the time, and I again, I was at the federalist and I wrote about this, he cowardly walked back. You know, his pro-Israel positions, he was a coward. He apologized for a column he wrote when he was 20 years old in college where he said that the Palestinians could never have a state because they were a warlike people and didn't weren't up to it, which history has proven him correct, his 20-year-old cell. And so he clearly wanted to be the vice presidential candidate. Today, when it's financially expedient for him, when it's politically expedient for him because the stuff is. subsided somewhat now he speaks out so i am just thinking about this in the context of he has a book coming out that he's trying to sell and so he when you do that you take things that are juicy and you you go with them and it sounds like what he went through was what when it's in the federal judiciary, you call an SDR, sex, drugs, and rock and roll. Is that what they call sex drugs or rock? It's like an interview where that we've written about, that I've written about a few times as it relates to Supreme Court nominees. Before someone nominate you. They want to find out what is going to come out during the campaign. And so you get asked all sorts of sensitive questions. Have you ever paid for an abortion? Have you ever cheated on your wife? Have you taken any illegal drugs? And the reason why is because you might remember that under Reagan there was a nominee who... was had to have his name pulled because he had smoked marijuana with his graduate students or like law students and uh it's a common occurrence like do you have any tax problems do you have anything like that and so i could see them asking questions like have you ever had any dealings with any foreign agents what were they um

you know, being more specific about it. And it not necessarily, I know that, I know that Kamala Harris has some issues and the Democrat Party has some issues with anti-Semitism, but I could also see a case for this just being a due diligence that they were performing. Do you believe, first of all, I want to say. It is completely legitimate to ask someone, do you have any financial entanglements with this other country? Have you ever lobbied for this other country? Do you see any conflicts of interest? That's not what they asked him. They literally asked him if he had been a traitor, right? Do you think that, you know that Walls went to China in 1989 when Tianan Square happened when the protesters were killed? He went there 30 times. He was a fellow at a Chikam University visiting fellow. He had a lot of ties to China. Now, by the way, where was? Where was all their vetting on all the fraud and everything else? He's probably been involved in. Do you think they asked him if he was a Chinese spy? No, but I don't know. I doubt it very highly. Now, the reason supposedly that they asked Josh Shapiro whether he was an Israeli agent, a guy has been in government forever. is that he had, when he was a kid, he went to Akibbutz and learned there and there was IDF there and he had done something with the IDF. Like supposedly this was the impetus for it. I don't know. Looking at what was going on in the summer of 2024 within the Democratic Party, the pro-Hamas faction that they were scared to insult, the other questions they supposedly asked him, I think if someone asked me, well, this is why I'm mad at him. If someone asked me if I was a traitor, I would not go campaign for them after. I would speak up for myself. He said nothing until now when he can make some money. But I don't know. Well, Republicans should think they're stars that... He was not chosen because he would have been much more difficult to beat. Maybe Trump would have won no matter what, probably so, but he would have been more difficult. I wondered if you saw that, I think it was last week, within a few hours, all sorts of leaders on the progressive left started tweeting against anti-Semitism. Yeah. And I had to imagine that they just like brought everybody into a room and said,

Here's the polling. You're going to say something right now. You've got to do it. Like we have got to change this image of the Democrat Party as embracing anti-Semites. Did you see that or no? Like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was one of the people. Yeah, I mean, because the wording was almost exactly the same on all those tweets, it's obviously that some group told them to do it. They probably see what's going on with some of the. people, you know, and I hate to call them far right because I don't even think that that's true, but these podcasters that are popular now and they want to admit, you know, the juxtaposition would be, it's difficult for them to hang those people on the Republican Party or tether them together if they themselves are acting a certain way. But for me, the Democratic Party is still far worse because they've elected officials who act in this way, not just a podcaster for young people. It's going to be crazy. Let's talk. Do you want to talk about culture now or do we have anything else? You do. Oh, it's the excitement there. What did you watch? So first off, I just wanted to say because I was thinking about it at the start of the new year that we have so many generous donors at the Federalist and a lot of listeners even of this podcast who came through end of year giving. gifts becoming monthly givers and it means so much to us and we are able to we're able to accomplish a lot through that generosity and I just want to thank those who have joined with us and encourage anyone who has not yet joined with us to do so it is greatly appreciated um That is nothing to do with culture. So I will also tell you, I forgot last week to tell you about a movie I had watched the previous week. Okay. Again, I should say, which is Umbrellas of Sherburg. Sherborg. Is that how you say it? I don't know. I don't know this movie. It's like one of the most famous movies out there. It's a musical, but it's French. The cinematography is... Unbelievable. Like I would just like to have it on in the background all the time. You just look at any shot and the shot is composed perfectly. And Catherine Deneuve is in it. You've not seen it? I have not seen it. Okay, well, I mean, it's a musical, so I'm not like going to encourage you to necessarily watch. Well, just pulling it up on the internets here, it is obviously, it has been, it was nominated for five Academy Awards. It's considered like one of the great films of all time. I don't even think I have ever heard of this movie, which is weird because I'm really into film and movies. So I will probably go watch it, even though it's a musical. Yeah, Catherine Deneuve is great in it, but my favorite was the woman playing her mother, Anne Vernon, who just turned 102 this movie. And it's a love story of a sort that is so, you know, just like touching. Like I keep thinking about it, about the complexity of love. And again, it's all sung.

And then it also, who did the, the score, you will know the song. I think it's I will wait for you because it's been recorded by many, many artists. Okay. Yeah. So that was good. I would just recommend it. Okay. And then I have seen a bunch of other stuff in the last week as well. I saw, I rewatched Room with a View. Hmm. I saw that years and years ago. So I liked it a lot. I thought it was well done. Although I definitely have that problem. Like the older I get, the more movies fail to work with me because I start siding with the wrong people. You know, like, how young love is frequently so stupid. You're just like, these people are stupid. Like Romeo and Juliet, when you're a teenager reading it, it's very different when you're an adult. And you're like, oh, gosh, get it together, guys. And I felt a little bit that way with room with a view. Who's the guy that was in my left foot? Daniel D. Lewis, yeah. He's in this. He's in this movie as a very young, like, evil guy. But I was like, ah, maybe she should have gone with him instead of. Of course. Of course she should have. And there's a scene that is the only scene I remember from when I watched it when I was a teenager for understandable reasons where three men are enjoying a swim naked and things are just flopping everywhere. And Mark was like, this is ridiculous. It's just ridiculous to see this many. naked parts on men just flopping around. And it's not sexualized or anything. It's just they're playing in a spring. But it was kind of like, okay, here we go. Men are always getting naked and jumping into springs together. But it's not really sexualized. And he's like, Molly, anytime. He's like maybe in UK. And we know like all we need to know about their boarding school system. He's like, let me tell you in America. Men don't get naked and wrestle each other. Like, just not what we do. We're quite puritanical in that sense, for sure. And then we watched a Netflix movie that I can actually recommend. I think the first time I can truly give a recommendation for a Netflix movie. And I can't remember what it's called, but I think it's called The Cut. And it's with Ben Affleck and Matt Damon. It is not called The Cut. It is not called the cut. It is called The Rip. The Rip. Thank you. It's okay. You liked that movie? I did not like it. Oh, really? Really. There are a number of reasons. The whole one is it felt like like an expensive episode of like Law and Order or something like and but more than that, the implausibility. First of all. I just found it in the whole story is just ridiculously implausible. I don't want to give it. I'm going to give away some of it, but that the cops show up and that no, there's no backup and they have to kind of like it's Fort Apache the Bronx there and they have to fight off all these other forces. It's just kind of, I just never bought it. But more than that, I just felt like I actually don't dislike Matt Damon and Ben Affleck. And I just didn't feel like it just didn't feel like there was much.

acting there in a way. There was no real... I don't know. It just... It bored me, kind of. I don't know. Why'd you like it? I know it's gotten good reviews, so I'm probably on the outside here, but... Well, I... I just enjoyed... I thought it was, I don't know. I just thought it was pretty good. Like it's a mystery, what's going on? Or what do you call it? Kind of a mystery. There is. It's a mystery thriller. Things aren't as they seem. And you don't know who to trust. You don't know who the good guys or the bad guys are. And I. I'm going to talk about another thing I saw where that was not really the case, although there was finally an ultimate twist, I guess. And I just like it when you're kind of like, I'm not sure exactly what's going on and I'd like to figure it out. Yeah, it wasn't. It was okay, I guess. Maybe my expectations were higher because people were saying how good it was. I don't know. Likewise, maybe my expectations were extremely low. I was like, Netflix movie, they do such a horrible job. It's not worth it. And then I was like, oh, I'm kind of into this. So there's that. And it was also fun to see Matt Damon and Ben Affleck together. I have a friend who worked with them on a project and like many, this is like 25 years ago. And at the time Matt Damon was seen as the brilliant one and Ben Affleck is kind of the cute, good looking but stupid one. And she had said that's not entirely accurate. Like Ben Affleck is brilliant. Do you ever see the family guy thing where it depends to Met Matt? Damon, he's type in a way writing Goodwill Hunting and Ben Affleck's just smoking a joint laying on the couch. And it goes, why don't you throw that my name on that thing? That's how people viewed it. But when I saw, you know, longer interviews with them, it's clear that Ben Affleck is kind of maybe even a more creative force. Like I think Ben Affleck is a very good director. I've liked the movies. He's directed quite a bit. I find him as an actor, though. I think Matt Damon's probably a better actor. I just think Matt Damon has more range as an actor, but I don't know. I don't think about it too deeply. What else? And then my final thing is that we watched the limited series seven dials. Oh, the Agatha Christie thing? It is also Netflix. Yeah. So it's one of Agatha Christie's lesser works and they do a really good job with it. Like I thought it looked great, really enjoyed the lead actress in it.

It was scary in parts, you know, it was violent in parts in all the good Agatha Christie ways. But I didn't like how it was like so obvious what was going on for the longest time. There was a little bit of a twist at the end but not enough to satisfy the who done it. The lack of a who done it because you know who did it. Yeah, I've been debating whether to watch that or not, but you think it's like on the whole worth seeing. I do. Okay. I'll report back. I guess it was Helen and Bonham Carter weekend or whatever because I do. Oh, yeah. She was in a room with a view, right? Yeah. I like how unique she is in her approach and how that's worked for her for so long. She's great. She's never boring to watch. I mean, she was in like fight club, I remember, right? And she was, but she was also in the queen. Like she, yeah, she's great. She's got range. Yeah. There are those people who like everyone loves Meryl Streep. But to me, she's always Meryl Streep in whatever she does. And I kind of like that Helena Bonham Carter just, she's talented. Yep. I, the only thing other than the rip that I watch, I've been. I've been binging this show that's old called The Closer that I saw on Netflix with Kira Sedgwick, Kevin Bacon's wife. And I like it. I think I would. Each episode has not every episode, but many of the episodes are quite well done as far as a murder, you know, procedural murder mystery thing goes. It's nothing revolutionary here. But she's good and the show's pretty good. And I've been binge watching it. I hate when I get pulled into something like that. I'm like, how many seasons are there? Oh, seven. I'm like, I'm in it for seven seasons. Anyway, if you'd like to reach the show, please do so at Radio at the Federalist.com. We love to hear from you. And we will be back next week. Until then, be lovers of freedom and anxious for the fray. If it takes forever.

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