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Joe Getty
This is an iHeart podcast.
Jack Armstrong
Guaranteed Human.
Lonhi Chen
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Jack Armstrong
Broadcasting live from the Abraham Lincoln Radio studio at the George Washington Broadcast Center, Jack Armstrong and Joe Getty. Armstrong and Getty. And now here's Armstrong and get. Coming up later in the show, a couple of intriguing and not too terrifying stories about AI plus some gender bending madness. But it's always a pleasure to talk to Lonhi Chen Lon. He is the David and Diane Steffi Fellow in American Public Policy Studies at the Hoover Institution and the Director of Domestic Policy Studies at Stanford University. Lonhi, welcome. How are you?
Joe Getty
Joe, a very good morning to you.
Jack Armstrong
Also among your credentials, you are a big Dodgers fan. And executive producer Mike Hansen is convinced the Dodgers are about to be sold and fall apart financially.
Joe Getty
He would be completely wrong in that assumption.
Jack Armstrong
Oh, everybody roots against the big dog. You have to put up with it.
Joe Getty
So, you know, in the words of the great. Who was it was it whoever it was that called the last game of the World Series? You know, to beat the champ, you gotta knock him out. And nobody's knocking out the Dodgers this year.
Jack Armstrong
They win three in a row. The revolution is coming from Major League Baseball, though. The proletariat are gonna rise up in the streets. All right, so let's talk a little politics. And you know us getting too far in depth into a primary election where 432 people showed up to vote. And trying to extrapolate that to some giant movement I think is just silly. But in the recent primaries there have been some kind of intriguing results. What do you think is the most significant one?
Joe Getty
Well, I still think it has to do with the nationalization of our politics, Joe. And the reason that we care about the Wisconsin governor's race or the Minnesota Senate race or races that otherwise probably wouldn't have a whole lot of impact for people who don't live in those states is because of what it means for our national politics. And I think, particularly on the left, if you look at the energy behind a lot of the progressive Democratic Socialist candidates, and I get it, not all of them self identify as democratic socialists, but in my book, if you're in favor of the government takeover of health care, you know, you're pretty much a socialist. And I think that that's what we've seen from people like Abdul Al said in Michigan or Francesca Hong in Wisconsin or others around those various Midwestern states. And again, the reason we care is because of what it says about where the energy is in the progressive movement and what these races tell us about national Democratic Party politics. So right now it does appear to be with the far progressive left. And I think that's the lesson. Even though, you know, Democrats, I think, dodged a bullet with Francesca Hong apparently losing last night, I do think that they. That's where the energy is. And if you look around, you know, that's where the success has been. And I think it'll be very interesting to see how much of that remains as we get past the 26 midterm cycle and start talking about 2028.
Lonhi Chen
Right.
Jack Armstrong
The Francesca Hong thing. And this is the sort of everyman analysis you get here as opposed to. In lan. He's world, if she hadn't been a half witch, she'd have won. I mean, she lost by a fingernail. She was an embarrassing candidate in a lot of ways. She was the left version of some of those MAGA candidates that were so terrible a couple of cycles ago.
Joe Getty
Yeah, well, she. It was interesting that she and Mike Lindell of. Of My Pillow fame were in the, you know, sort of running on the same day basically, and had elections on the same day. And, and they're both caricatures, I think, of whether it's the MAGA right or in. In Francesca Hogg's case, the far progressive left. But you're absolutely right about Hong. If she had, you know, basically gone underground for the last two weeks of her campaign, she might have won, actually. She would have. She would have been better off going underground than giving the interview she gave because what the interviews exp. The far left caricature in her case wasn't actually a caricature. It was actually the Truth, right. I mean, you have somebody who's talked about, you know, getting rid of Thanksgiving and you know, again, government takeover of health care, you know, being totally comfortable with all of the, you know, sort of politics of 2020, as I like to think about it, the woke politics of 2020, being totally comfortable with all of that. And the interviews just showed that she gave some disastrous interviews. And you're absolutely right. If she was even a tick better of a candidate, you know, she probably wins that election.
Jack Armstrong
So let's look next door at Minnesota. I was surprised that the Lieutenant governor, Peggy Flanagan, beat a pretty solid centrist Democratic candidate, Angie Craig, because Minnesota become a laughingstock essentially for their horrific levels of fraud per capita. California will make them look like amateurs when all the accounting is done. And she was sitting at Tim Walsh's side as all this was going on. You know, my analysis is if you're a progressive and you blame everything on either white people or capitalism or whatever, you never look in the mirror. But I was surprised that the lieutenant governor of such a scandal plagued, I mean, Tim Waltz was gonna run himself, but he couldn't. Cause he's so scandal plagued. I couldn't believe she won.
Joe Getty
Well, again, we have to think about the, where the energy is in the Democratic Party. And I think particularly in Minnesota, that was the center of a lot of, I mean, not just the fraud stuff, but you know, all of the, the police involved shootings and all the things that we've seen over the last couple years. Minnesota was the epicenter for that. And I think in some ways what it did was to galvanize the left to move even farther left rather than trying to come back to the middle and trying to say, look, how can we address some of the challenges that have been created by the failed Walls administration? Instead of that, they went further left. And actually I'm not surprised that Flanagan was able to win there because I do think again, it's where the energy is. And the movement in Minnesota was particularly acute because they sort of see themselves, you know, with all due respect to California, they sort of see themselves as the center of the anti Trump resistance. And I think that's why that electorate moved even further left.
Jack Armstrong
So I want to talk about the Republicans in a second. But how seriously do you take the prospect of Abdul Al Said winning in Michigan, winning a United States Senate seat?
Joe Getty
You know, I wouldn't underestimate the guy. I mean, if you look at his ability to articulate a message in a very, you know, I don't happen to agree with the message. But I think that he can articulate a message in a pretty compelling way to people who, you know, otherwise don't follow politics as closely, let's say. You know, I think that Mike Rogers, who is the Republican Senate nominee in Michigan, is probably very excited to run against Abdul Said because of his positions particularly I think he's particularly vulnerable on his positions with respect to taking away health care by replacing it with this government run system. I do think that is a particular vulnerability for Al Said, not to mention his association with people like Ilhan Omar and AOC who might be appealing again to the progressive left. I don't think they're appealing to the vast majority of Michiganders. So I think Mike Rogers has is definitely in a much better position because he's running against Al Said. But I would not underestimate the Democrat in that race just because, you know, he's good on TV and he's compelling and knows how to articulate a message.
Jack Armstrong
Mom. Donnie, ask in a lot of ways, I want to talk maybe next segment after we bid you goodbye, Lonhi about the whole Medicare for all and how that's really a fraud, how it will eliminate private insurance to be covered. It's utterly fraudulent. We'll explain why in a second. But let's take a look to the right. Does the Republican Party have any idea what it is?
Joe Getty
Yeah, I mean, for all the challenges that the Democratic Party has, I think that one of the challenges on the Republican side is that, you know, we have for the last, I don't know, as a movement, probably at least for the last decade, certainly been been a party that's been very closely associated with a single person and that's Donald Trump. And I think the question becomes what does the party and the movement look like as we start to think ahead to 2028 and you know, when they'll be a new set of candidates. And I think that's a question that we've got to grapple with now. I've always maintained that the movement, the Republican conservative movement, whatever you want to call it, is at its strongest when we're thinking about a series of ideas about how to improve people's lives. And what I worry about a little bit is that we've fallen too much into the politics of personality versus the politics of ideas. And I would hope that whoever the next nominee is, whoever wants to compete for that nomination and I don't, I don't have a particular view on, you know, where that's headed. But I'll just say that whoever does it? I really hope that they focus on, you know, what are the ideas that are going to make this movement durable for the years to come. I mean, that, that, that's where I think the, the party needs to go.
Jack Armstrong
Yeah, I'm a big Marco guy, which we'll be talking about next half hour, I think. But you know, it's funny, I was just going to say, I heard recently that the difference between a hack and a writer is a hack writes what he thinks his audience wants to read and writes what he actually feels and thinks. And I was just going to ask you, and you partially answered this, but. And I have talk show host privilege. I can spout high minded ideas and principles and quote Thomas Jefferson, but I never have to win an election. Okay. You know, I'm not tasked with winning election and if we don't, I lose my job. So it's easy to be high minded. But having said that, is the road back for the Republican Party to coherence and relevance in persuading people to come over? Is it less about being a hack and more about a set of ideas? I think hackery always ends badly. Pandering always ends badly, although it'll always be a part of politics.
Joe Getty
Yeah, I mean, I think the best combination is ideally you have great ideas and a great way of talking about them. And you know, I mean, for all of the, the, the sort of discussion about Newt GINGRICH in the 90s, I mean, this is like well before the time of maybe some of your listeners, but if you go back to the Contract with America and you know, Newt had a way of really talking about those ideas and all of those ideas were, you know, sort of solid conservative ideas, if you will. But he was, you know, he managed to package them up and talk about them in a way that I think a lot of people found compelling. And when you combine good ideas with a good message, that that's sort of the holy grail of politics and policy. And so that's really where we've got to go. It's not just about having good ideas because I think good ideas are great. But to your point, good ideas alone are not enough to win an election. They just, they're just not. In this day and age, you have to be able to communicate. And that's why if you look at the left, for all of the bad ideas that the far, far progressive left is talking about, Medicare for all, free grocery stores, you know, getting rid of basically elements of private enterprise, the reason why, you know, those are ideas and the reason why People have really given the far progressive left another look is because they've been able to communicate those ideas. And so whatever it is that Republicans and conservatives decide to do next, the one thing I hope they'll do is I hope they'll marry strong ideas with, in some ways, what, what President Trump has been able to do, which is to communicate effectively. And now he's communicated his own agenda. But I guess I would say the lesson learned from that is you can communicate about these ideas in a way that is very compelling and powerful to people. So you've got to figure out how to combine all these different forces. And whether it's Marco Rubio or J.D. vance or whoever it might be next, that's going to be their challenge. That's going to be the fundamental challenge of the next couple of years.
Jack Armstrong
Lonhi Chin of the Hoover Institution, Stanford University Lon he it's always enlightening. Thanks a million for the time. Good to talk to you.
Joe Getty
Sure, Joe, good to talk to you.
Jack Armstrong
More to come. Stay with us. Armstrong and Getty. You know, we don't get into a lot of policy wonkiness around here because it's a little dullish and would put us out of business. But I did want to touch on this really quickly because I found it enlightening. For what it's worth, my wife and I are just short of Medicare age. We'll be there soon, God willing. I'm only dimly aware of how it works. And a lot of the folks falling for socialist chic, whether they're Abdul El Sayed and his followers or whomever, are running around talking about Medicare for all, among other things like free child care and an 8% wealth tax on billionaires and stuff like that. And some of the goals that they speak of, good housing, good healthcare, affordable food, basic dignity of life. Okay, nobody disagrees with any of that
Joe Getty
stuff,
Jack Armstrong
but it's worth mentioning that this guy who earned a doctorate in public health from Oxford, for God's sake, and his wife is a practicing psychiatrist, which means she has a medical degree and refuses to take Medicare, which is hilarious. He knows all this stuff. He says he actually authored a book, Medicare for All A Citizens Guide, and it said it would eliminate private insurance. But the catchphrase Medicare for all is misleading. What he proposes isn't universal Medicare, but a single payer system with no premiums, deductibles or cost sharing and no alternatives. And Medicare has all of those things. All seniors who don't also qualify for Medicaid have to pay a monthly Medicare Part B premium starting at a couple of hundred dollars in tied upward income. Seniors who enroll in traditional Medicare fee for service also have a about a seventeen hundred dollar deductible for inpatient hospital care, steep cost sharing requ and no limit on out of pocket spending. They also have to purchase separate prescription drug plans whose monthly premiums range from nothing to about 240 bucks depending on income. That's per month. Another 40% of seniors in traditional Medicare buy supplemental insurance policies to cover benefits like dental and vision care that are not provided by the government and for protection against catastrophic costs. Because again, there's no out of pocket limit. There's all sorts of of private insurance involved in Medicare to make it worth an s. It's a good thing for seniors, no doubt. But the idea that hey, we're gonna have Medicare for all, which means you don't have to have private insurance, just a lie. We would end up with British style universal health care where you have to wait, you know, six months to get your cancer treatment started. And that's as nightmarish as it sounds. Not that our current healthcare system isn't screwed up. It is. It's so screwed up. We're gonna talk to crai healthcare guru about that I think tomorrow. But Medicare for all is a, it's a canard, it's a sham, it's a scam like virtually everything they they do. I mentioned casually to Lon Hee Chen that I'm a Marco Rubio guy until talked out of it. He did an interview the other day that was really something. We're going to play you a couple of bits of that and then squeeze in whatever else we can. As always, if you can't stick around, grab it via podcast. Armstrong and Getty on demand.
Joe Getty
Armstrong and Gettysburg adopted RFK's diet of red meat.
Marco Rubio
This is a crazy diet. This is a diet that consists of eating sauerkraut and meat. Now you understand, like this is not a sustainable thing. Like you can't just walk into it.
Jack Armstrong
Well, he sustains it because he does.
Marco Rubio
Can you imagine if he has to travel with coolers of sourdough? I'm not going to travel the world with a cooler full of sauerkraut. It's ridiculous. I can't do it. It's not sustainable.
Jack Armstrong
That is Marco Rubio commenting on RFK Jr. S wackadoodle diet. And the interviewer followed up with the next clip.
Joe Getty
Michael, are you Maha?
Marco Rubio
I'm in favor of Maha. Like I think people should be healthy. He is not. But I think ultimately he is completely not.
Lonhi Chen
I.
Jack Armstrong
What's he eat, Pop Tarts?
Marco Rubio
No, I don't eat Pop Tarts every day.
Jack Armstrong
Okay, you eat sweets.
Marco Rubio
The Pop Tart is one of the great American innovations in history. If you think about it, it comes with beautiful foil.
Jack Armstrong
All the things you should not be eating. Every single thing. That is his wife, Jeanette, sitting in on the interview with Marco Rubio, calling him out. That is hilarious. Jack is. Is fond of repeating the absolutely undeniable wisdom that with few exceptions, in an election, the person who is more comfortable in their skin wins. They beat the person who seems to be trying to be something, because that's so hard to pull off. Hillary was the ultimate example of that. I mean, look, no matter what you think of her, crazy smart, tough, mean as a snake.
Joe Getty
Yes, yes, yes.
Jack Armstrong
Secretary of State. I mean, credentials. But she always acted like she was. She always seemed like she was putting us on or trying to be something she wasn't. So, anyway, a little more with Marco Rubio. And hey, I'll. I'll admit it's. It's true. I. I would like him to be president. I wanted him to be president for a while. Maybe you disagree, but he is a very likable chap. Let's see what. I don't want to do too many of these. Let's do 32.
Joe Getty
You said to Lara Trump, if you had a day off, that you would
Jack Armstrong
watch football all day.
Marco Rubio
I answer the question completely wrong.
Joe Getty
Why?
Marco Rubio
Well, first of all, the true, the right answer is I would spend it with my wife going, oh, yeah, okay.
Jack Armstrong
What a beautiful answer.
Marco Rubio
But the true answer is, and this is why I messed up that answer. Okay? Because here's the thing. The day would actually start much earlier. The greatest show on television today in America is College Game Day. Great show. Starts around 10 or 11, and that leads you to noon and then the noon game, and then there's a 3:30 game, and then there's a. So I, I messed. And then the idea, like, this is a crazy weekend, it would never happen. So I'm just putting this out there, there. But you could start at 10am on Saturday, you know, run the whole college football day, sleep for a few hours, then you wake up and then you're into NFL game day. Then you've got the one o' clock game, the four o' clock game, the NBC game that night. That is an incredible weekend, in my opinion. In my view, obviously, I don't believe that will ever, I will ever achieve this. Certainly not in the next two and a half years or what have you. But. And your audience probably doesn't care anything about what I just said, but I'm just telling you that that would be a crazy day. But that's never going to happen, right?
Jack Armstrong
Well, you never know.
Marco Rubio
You never know.
Jack Armstrong
I should say he's on the Katie Miller podcast, though, and I'm enjoying it. It's a good interview. Solid interview. And Katie does a nice job. One more. I like the looks of this 33, Michael.
Marco Rubio
So I have a dog.
Jack Armstrong
We have two dogs.
Marco Rubio
And then we have one that's really smart. You know, these are golden doodles, but this one's more poodle than doodles than golden retriever. Very smart. Knows how to open the door. So one day, I think Pete and his family were just sitting around watching television, and they keep their front door open because they have cats, which I never took Pete for a cat guy, but oh, my God. And anyway. And my dog just walked into their living room, looked around, realized I'm in the wrong house, and turned around and walked out.
Lonhi Chen
But yes.
Jack Armstrong
So our dog does open the door. Many doors. Pete Hegseth. Cat guy. I would not have guessed that. Huh. Okay. Well, that's. You're right, handsome. That was. That was nice. It was endearing. Does he want the job? I know political professional political pundits would say, well, he pledged if J.D. vance runs, he will support him, as Barack Obama had the guts to say. And this is one of the few things I credit him with. After having said he wouldn't do something, he said, yeah, I changed my mind. There you go. That was hard. Which is why I laugh at so many professional political pundits. They are so locked into their habits, and they're just repeating what the rest of the herd says. It's just absolutely silly. A couple of other political notes for you, Abdul Al said. The newly minted Democratic nominee for the Senate in Michigan has promoted over and over again a book entitled Let this Radicalize you. He's plugged it at least 10 times on his podcast, and they stopped counting after 10. So he thinks of this book like I think of James Lindsay's Pinnacle Theories, for instance, or Tim Sandifer's Proclaiming Liberty. Just so good. I want everybody to know about it. Not getting paid. I'm not making any money. It's not because anybody's my friend. It's. I think it's super great that you read these books. So. Al Said feels that way about a book called Let this Radicalize you. His podcast is called America Dissected by the way. It's an interesting title. So the full title of the book is Let this radicalize you. Organizing in the Revolution of Reciprocal Care. Authored by Kelly Hayes and Marguerite Casey, foundation scholar Mariam Kaba, it's an unabashedly anti American book published in May of 23, promises readers rather a practical and imaginative resource for activists and organizers building power in an era of destabilization and catastrophe. Chapter six, Violence in Social Movements the authors dismiss peaceful protests as submissive to the state and argue that violent protesters should not necessarily be considered bad. And I quote, fetishizing distinctions between violence and nonviolence can lead to the indulgence of rhetoric about good and bad protesters, where peaceful protesters are celebrated and violent protesters, for example, those who engage in properties destruction that disrupts profit are viewed as disposable and disreputable. And when they refer to peaceful protests, they're talking about cooperative protests that obediently stay within the lines drawn by the state. They're against that quote. This licenses people to care about the cause being protested without caring about what happens to the bad protesters. For example, even as significant numbers of people supported the uprisings following the racist murder of George Floyd, it wasn't many fewer people vocally defended the rights of protesters who were arrested for acts of property destruction and funneled into the racist carceral system. Meaning people did not defend protesters who burned cities to the ground and ended up jailed. They rationalize all this by saying there's no greater purveyor of violence in the world than the US government. From war to policing to incarceration to border violence to the slashing of the national safety, social safety net, the US government kills untold millions. The violence of rebellion is infinitesimal by comparison. Meaning it's justified. The maintenance of global capitalism necessitates mass death. Good Lord, there are times I'm disturbed by these people. Not their philosophy, although that's plenty disturbing, but the fact that they could believe it. Speaking of great books, read Steven Pinker's Enlightenment now, which is absolutely fantastic, particularly the first section, which outlines how many billions of people, billions, the free market has lifted out of poverty, misery and disease and death into some pretty good standards of living since the Enlightenment especially. And how liberty, political and economic, have saved billions and billions of lives, and how centrally planned systems inevitably end in mass death and jailing and political dissidents and torture and the rest of it. And so to hear somebody say with a straight face, the maintenance of global capitalism necessitates mass death, you know, you're dealing with a crazy person. Anyway, I'm going to read on. I'm going to tell you a little bit more of what they're advocating in Hassan or Abdul Al Said's favorite book, the Islamianist. But first, a word from our friends at Blue Collar$. You're a working woman, a working man. You bust your ass, you get it done. 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So where was I? Oh, that's what these what El Said's favorite book advocates. So the maintenance of global capitalism necessitates mass death. And of course if you're causing mass death, I am willing to kill you for it. And they are willing to kill us for it too. And disobedience to Sharia law, the other side of his act. But anyway, I'm going to quote the book now directly. If you choose to disrupt these capitalist systems passively, destructively or by way of extending mutual aid, the concept of violence may be stretched and manipulated by the powerful to encompass your work. That is why we must not allow the frameworks of the powerful to define the bounds of our morality in our politics and our action. In other words, commit violence, it's justified. And they talk about defunding the police and all sorts of related quote unquote woke stuff. But yeah, interesting. Yeah, El Said has also raised eyebrows for his consistent refusal to denounce the 911 terrorist attacks or his top surrogate Hasana Piker who said America deserved 9 11. Now they are kind of disavowing it just because they know they have to. But on the eve of the primary vote Elsa joined Piker at an influencer pool rally in pool party in Detroit. Shortly after his election win, Piker dismissed Haley voters, his opponent, as Islamophobic pieces of s. Okay, that's how they try to get you to sit down and shut up. Sorry, guys, not gonna do it. Not around here. More to come. Armstrong and Getty. Very beginning of the show. I was wrong about Jackie the eagle. I was right that eagles don't have names. But Katie, I believe you have the transcript of what I said yesterday and for which I need to apologize.
Marco Rubio
Yes.
Jack Armstrong
How long is it?
Lonhi Chen
Maybe like a minute.
Jack Armstrong
All right, go ahead.
Lonhi Chen
Jackie has passed. I believe in balance and that sort of thing. But look, there is no crueler on earth than mother Nature. Pardon my frank terminology. While there aren't that many bald eagles, I'm just back from Alaska where I can report that they're like crows. There are a lot of them, a hell of a lot of them. So if eagles did what eagles do and Jackie's dead, that's just the way that it goes. The eagle is dead. I'm sure I'll get angry emails about how insensitive I am. No, I just, I just like nature and I understand human beings. You don't get to tell nature how to be nature.
Jack Armstrong
That wasn't terrible. So we did get a couple of emails from people who were hurt at my lack of sensitivity to the dead eagle. And I will tell you this. I reflected upon my words and realized two things. Number one, I have been an enthusiastic consumer of a raptor cam that focuses on some nests by my house. And I have rooted for the eagles for their eggs to hatch and for them to have babies and the babies to be healthy and successful and that sort of thing. And so I thought, well, wait a minute, then why was I a little bit cynical about the reaction? And there are two reasons. This is not an excuse, it's an explanation. Two reasons. Number one, some of the crazy people who plagued the veterinarians and like went in and were trying to insist that they save Jackie. And the people are like, we're trying to do it. Would you get out of here? There were crazy people involved. But secondly, and this is the key point, I realized what, what queered me to the whole thing, what poisoned my attitude, is how much I hate David Muir, the anchor of ABC News, the bent nosed jackass who will report that. Well, first of all, he reports that there's severe weather every single day. But he uses the same self serious low voice tone whether he's reporting two baby Ducks flew away from the nest or an earthquake killed 100,000 people in Detroit. I mean it just. And he's such a lefty and he's so happy with himself. I hate him. And he's really been hammering the Jackie the Eagle story in like a syrupy dopey way. And it, it prejudiced me and it made me cynical about not David Muir, bent nosed jackass, but about the people who are into the eagles. And I apologize for that. I love nature. I love watching raptors and shorebirds and that sort of thing. I spend more time than is normal doing it. But I hate David Muir, you know, so that's it.
Lonhi Chen
I, and I, my, I had just kind of a bad taste in my mouth for David Muir for a while and now I think I'm on your level. And it started with the LA fires when he had the fire jacket on and they turned and he had a fashion clip clap clasp on the back of the jacket to make him look
Jack Armstrong
more fit, slim and manly as he's
Lonhi Chen
standing in front of homes burning to the ground.
Jack Armstrong
Yeah, he's right.
Lonhi Chen
He's so full of himself.
Jack Armstrong
Well, that reminds me, among the other many things that we're probably not going to be able to squeeze in, maybe we'll try tomorrow. But the, the trial or the legal proceedings against that confused, dopey leftist piece of crap who actually set some of the disastrous fires in Southern California. It's underway and it is utterly clear he did it in the name of socialism and leftist politics. There have been reams written about how those fires are the product of climate change. Yeah, right, and fossil fuels and the evil, evil conservatives and how climate change threatens us all. Oh, they're about to air a big climate change episode of Sesame Street.
Lonhi Chen
Oh good, that's necessary.
Jack Armstrong
Yeah, that's what they get. You terrify the little kids. Terrify the little kids who can't understand any of this, you monsters. Anyway, so you got reams written about climate change and you will be unsuccessful if you go to LA Times or any of the major publications to try to find information about leftist inspired arson and the disaster, the, the utter devastation caused by that leftist violence. Because setting a massive wildfire is an act of violence. I mean, my God, it's, it is perhaps the greatest mass destruction an individual can unleash. And it was leftist violence. But you will not get a word on that. So anyway, enough said. I'm preaching to the choir here. You all know what I'm talking about. Jack is going to check in from the Vacation Road to kick off next hour. I believe he is still in Canada, America's hat, soon to be our 51st state, but looking forward to that also. Well, I haven't decided 100% if I'm going to do this, but I want to talk about that fake academic academic, Jason Arday at Cambridge, who's now been exposed as a plagiarist and a liar and a fabulist and just half a dozen kinds of crackpot. And it was easily, easily seen for a long time. But because academia is so desperate, so feverishly needing to show how enlightened they are and how woke they are, they let this guy scam continue for four years. And it just, it's a real head scratcher. Like I said before, it makes you think these people are so nuts there might not be any reaching them. And I'll bring the receipts, as they say these days, and the particulars for you next hour. We'll talk to Jack and I think we'll, we'll have for you our conversation with James Lindsay from earlier, which I will explain. If you're listening via podcast and you're like, I already heard that. I'll explain why we're probably going to do that again. But hope you can stay tuned. And if you can't, as always, maybe you don't get our four on your beloved local radio station, just grab it via podcast later whenever it's convenient via Armstrong and Getty on Demand. If you subscribe it auto downloads. It's super easy. Thanks for being here, Armstrong and Gettysburg.
Armstrong & Getty On Demand (iHeartPodcasts) — August 12, 2026
Guests: Lonhi Chen (Hoover Institution)
Key Themes: Progressive politics, the Republican Party’s identity crisis, "Medicare for All," leftist activism, and media cynicism
This episode dives into the recent swing toward progressive and socialist-aligned candidates in Democratic primaries, the fate of centrist versus leftist candidates, the Republican Party’s own identity struggle ahead of 2028, and the misleading rhetoric around "Medicare for All." Hosts Jack Armstrong and Joe Getty are joined by Lonhi Chen for a frank, lively discussion that touches politics, ideology, and notable news personalities—plus lighter moments with Marco Rubio commentary.
This episode stands out for its candid, no-holds-barred analysis of current American political trends, skepticism over "socialist chic," and reflections on authenticity in politics. Whether left or right, Armstrong & Getty (alongside Lonhi Chen) press for vigorous debate about ideas instead of caricatures, and they poke holes in misleading progressive slogans.
For those seeking a grounded yet entertaining look at U.S. politics with plenty of quotable moments and a dash of humor, this episode delivers.