The Joe Rogan Of Waffle House Fights

Summary

Armstrong & Getty On Demand: Episode Summary Title: The Joe Rogan Of Waffle House Fights
Release Date: November 20, 2024
Hosted by: Jack Armstrong and Joe Getty
Produced by: iHeartPodcasts

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1. Government Spending and Accountability

Timestamp: [01:53] - [04:16]

Jack Armstrong and Joe Getty delve into the inefficiencies and lack of accountability within the federal government, highlighting alarming statistics about budget mismanagement. They reference Stephen Miller's concerns regarding the Pentagon's inability to track its expenditures effectively.

• Jack Armstrong: "The departments do not have any clue where the dollars are going... Nobody even asks the question right [04:07]."

The discussion emphasizes the repeated failures of Pentagon audits, with Miller asserting that "trillions of dollars" are wasted without proper oversight. Armstrong criticizes the federal government's sprawling bureaucracy, questioning how such an expensive entity operates without stringent safeguards.

2. Streamlining Federal Agencies

Timestamp: [11:19] - [18:44]

The hosts explore solutions to federal budget woes, referencing Andy Kessler's "cheat sheet" for reducing governmental inefficiency. They debate the merits of eliminating or shrinking various federal departments.

• Jack Armstrong: "The FTC already splits antitrust cases with the Justice Department. So move a few pro consumer competition lawyers there and then shutter it."

Agencies discussed include the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), Federal Communications Commission (FCC), Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Department of Agriculture, and others. Armstrong and Getty argue that many of these agencies are redundant or ineffective, advocating for their dissolution or significant reduction.

• Joe Getty: "The Department of Agriculture is a gigantic bureaucracy. And quite socialist."

They also touch upon the federal workforce, noting that "2.3 million Americans who worked directly for the federal government is less than 2% of the total U.S. workforce."

3. The Joe Rogan Of Waffle House Fights

Timestamp: [20:05] - [21:00]

In a lighter segment, Armstrong and Getty discuss the phenomenon of "Waffle House fights" gaining popularity on YouTube. They liken a budding enthusiast to becoming the "Joe Rogan of Waffle House fights," suggesting the potential to build an online empire around this unique form of entertainment.

• Jack Armstrong: "You become like the Joe Rogan of Waffle House fights... it's doable."

4. Transgender Congressperson and Bathroom Controversy

Timestamp: [32:07] - [37:17]

A significant portion of the episode addresses the election of Sarah McBride, the first openly transgender person elected to Congress, and the ensuing controversy over bathroom usage policies. Nancy Mace's resolution to restrict bathroom access based on biological sex sparks intense debate.

• Nancy Mace: "Biological men do not belong in private women's spaces, Period. Period."

Armstrong and Getty critique the resolution, labeling it as "very bigoted." They discuss potential solutions, such as implementing gender-neutral bathrooms, while acknowledging the societal and political tensions this issue has ignited.

• Jack Armstrong: "Women's spaces are for women, Period. End of sentence."

The conversation highlights the polarized reactions among lawmakers and the broader public, emphasizing the challenges in balancing rights and security.

5. Additional Discussions

Timestamp: [27:10] - [31:26]

The hosts briefly touch upon topics like the government's handling of COVID-19 treatments versus the opioid crisis, criticizing the prioritization and resource allocation.

• Joe Getty: "More of an uprise of making sure nobody took ivermectin or that hydrochloroquine stuff that Trump talked about. Then fentanyl."

They also mention societal shifts in perceiving good and evil, influenced by social media's simplistic binaries, referencing academic perspectives on dualism in modern discourse.

• Jack Armstrong: "The youngsters have now increasingly seen the world in that dualistic way... it's all good and evil."

6. Closing Remarks

Timestamp: [37:05] - [37:42]

The episode wraps up with promotional content for the upcoming Gladiator 2 movie, highlighting its star-studded cast and epic narrative.

• Nancy Mace (Promo): "Gladiator 2 only in theaters on November 22nd."

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Notable Quotes

• Jack Armstrong ([01:53]): "Efficiency. There you go."
• Joe Getty ([02:32]): "As tax, you know, the deadlines approach."
• Jack Armstrong ([04:07]): "Our brilliant plan we came up with a few years ago..."
• Nancy Mace ([32:40]): "Biological men do not belong in private women's spaces, Period. Period."
• Joe Getty ([31:00]): "Creating fear around it."

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Key Takeaways

• Government Accountability: Persistent inefficiencies within federal departments, especially the Pentagon, highlight a dire need for comprehensive audits and accountability measures.

• Agency Streamlining: Proposals to dissolve or reduce various federal agencies could lead to significant budgetary savings and more efficient governance.

• Cultural Shifts: The rise of niche online phenomena like Waffle House fights and the election of the first transgender congressperson reflect evolving societal norms and the media landscape's influence.

• Policy Debates: The bathroom usage controversy underscores the complexities in balancing individual rights with societal comfort and safety.

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This episode of Armstrong & Getty On Demand offers a blend of serious policy discussions and lighter, culturally relevant topics, providing listeners with insightful commentary on current events and societal trends.

Transcript

[Jack Armstrong]

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[Jack Armstrong]

Lincoln Radio Studio, the George Washington Broadcast Center, Jack Armstrong and Joe Getty. Armstrong and Getty. And now he's Armstrong and Getty.

[Stephen Miller]

The departments do not have any clue where the dollars are going. How many audits has the Pentagon failed? Who has any idea how much waste and abuse there is in the trillions of dollars spent by this federal government? This government is not watching how your dollars are being spent. And President Trump has commissioned Elon and Vivek and many others across the government to get to the bottom of this. So the money that you earn as an American citizen will be jealously treasured and guarded and not wasted any longer.

[Caller or Co-host]

That's Stephen Miller, who's going to be the deputy something or other. What did he get named to the other day?

[Jack Armstrong]

I can't remember. He's one of the chief advisors certainly.

[Caller or Co-host]

Yeah, in the Trump administration, talking about doge, the Department of Government Excess or expenditures or waste or whatever.

[Jack Armstrong]

Efficiency.

[Caller or Co-host]

Efficiency. There you go.

[Jack Armstrong]

Yeah. And it's funny there a couple of things he said there that if you stop and think about it. And one of my, my themes lately has been number one, cut the crap. Which is closely related to my other theme. Remember your first principles. What are we doing here? Let's start at the beginning. And if you get down the road, two, three, four priorities. And those priorities start to interfere with and damage your first principle. What you are here to do, you need to take serious look at whether you've. You've been led astray. Anyway, having said that, Miller pointing out that this enormous, incredibly expensive enterprise, that is the federal government is practically never subjected to any sort of analysis assessing efficiency and waste and effectiveness. And the idea that something this incredibly expensive would exist without like serious safeguards and reign ins and fail safes, you know what I'm saying? Every American citizen should be familiar with the yearly audit that's done on the federal government and like wait with bated breath to see what it would yield. But no, it's the opposite. Nobody even asks the question right.

[Caller or Co-host]

Which is crazy.

[Jack Armstrong]

And oh yeah, and incredibly expensive, thank you very much. As tax, you know, the deadlines approach.

[Caller or Co-host]

Yeah, I was disappointed. I was listening to one of my favorite podcasts the other day and they were really yucking it up about how unlikely it is that Elon and Vivek can make any real difference on this, since the big drivers of our financial problems are the big entitlements and nobody's going to touch those. They could save maybe $250 billion a year out of this. After that, it's going to be hard. Like that's nothing. Like that's not the fact that every cent I ever pay in tax, my whole life gets wasted and you could stop that from happening is not worth doing, I find offensive.

[Jack Armstrong]

Yeah, it is. And even more than that, because you're 100% right. Elon, once again, is his idea, his philosophy of fail fast and learn faster. If this, excuse me, if this effort, the Doge thing, if indeed it yields some decent results in the discretionary part of the budget, which is, I can't remember a third of it or something like that. And that. And then people talk about and becomes household knowledge that, well, they can only do so much because most of our government is actually all these programs you've heard about that would be enormously important and educational. 90% of Americans could not tell you that. Or 75%, something like that. So anyway, I just, I like the effort to please do it, even if you fail completely. At least you tried. Anyway, a couple of interesting things about the Size of the federal workforce and the sprawling federal government. I found this interesting. Charlie Kirk tweeted this the other day. Did you know that 85% of the federal workforce works from home and only have to come in one day a month? On any given day, only 17% of the federal workforce is in a federal office building, blah, blah, blah. And I read that and I thought, wait a minute, is that right? No, it's not right. It's not right. According to the omb and they're fairly accurate, about half of federal workers are eligible for telework. And of those about 60% of the work is actually performed at a job site. So if you can do basic math, it's probably around 20% of the federal government that is working remotely with God knows what level of efficiency or accountability. But again, you don't need to go with the wild, extraordinary and inaccurate number to say, okay, maybe we start there. And I brought that up not to undermine my own point, but just to point out, and we struggle with this every day. There's so much out there that is untrue, but it's so good you want to believe it. So you just have to beware of that sort of thing in today's information environment. But this from the Wall Street Journal. 2.3 million jobs, the federal workforce in charts. And they go through the various hirings, growth and reduction in federal workforce the last four presidential administrations. And it's interesting, the Democrats definitely grew it way more than the Republicans year over year. But the Republicans grew it at times too, depending depending on their needs. Worth mentioning, 70% of civilian workers are in military related agencies. 70%. I did not know that.

[Caller or Co-host]

Wow. And are they needed?

[Jack Armstrong]

Right, right. And it's difficult to get through this topic without, you know, throwing in a million talent tangents. But as I've said for a long time, we need to have respect for our military, particularly our fighting men and women. We do not need worship of our military. Because if you're worshiping the military and worshiping the Pentagon, you're not constantly calling to calling for them to account for every dollar they spend. And it's an enormous budget. We need to.

[Caller or Co-host]

Yeah, you can get a lot closer to worship for our people in uniform. But no, well, I guess they all wear uniforms. Are fighting people, but no need to for their bureaucracy at all. It's no different than any other bureaucracy.

[Jack Armstrong]

Right, yeah, yeah. And it's subject to the iron law of bureaucracy. But the Journal points out that 2.3 million Americans who worked directly for the federal government is less than 2% of the total U.S. workforce. And you think, well that's not that significant. It's every dollar of your federal taxes except the ones that go to entitlement. So yeah, as long as the money's coming out of my paycheck, I care. They work as everything from nurses in VA hospitals and park rangers and Yellowstone to guards in federal prisons. And the 19 employees of the Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board, about 80% of them actually work outside of Washington D.C. i thought that was interesting.

[Caller or Co-host]

It is amazing that we don't value our tax money more as you already said, but so you go to work every single day and you make a living and the government takes a big chunk of it and you don't pay attention to how they spend it and they just waste it. They waste a lot of it. We should be outraged at that. Don't take my money if you're not going to spend it on something that I want or care about. Yeah, it's so annoying.

[Jack Armstrong]

Our brilliant plan we came up with a few years ago and this could be assigned at random because it doesn't matter and that would be an accurate way to do it. Anyway. You get a notice with your federal taxes at the end of every year on your final W2. You paid what, $10,000, $100,000, $800,000 in federal income taxes and it would say you built 1/100th of this bridge or you every single dollar you paid went to the department of wasting your money on education or something like that. And everybody. And that way everybody would think wow, wow. That or you know, a bridge is practically universally understood and accepted. But wait a second. This went to the Department of the. Whatever the hell the Department of the Interior. All of my tax money for their programs supporting indigenous art program. Oh okay. What is that program? How does it work? I wonder what their budget is. Is that money wasted? Is it just given out to cronies? And everybody would have a personal stake. But anyway, I don't want to get hung up on that. As much as I enjoy the discussion. Roughly 70% of civilian roles are military or security related agencies. VA the VA has the most civilian workers because it operates hundreds of hospitals and clinics. Homeland Security is now the third largest. Education Department is the smallest. Has 4,425 workers. Easily shut down. It should not exist. Which we'll talk about later on. Let's see. Yeah, that's kind of interesting. You got any other justice department has 117,000 employees. Civilian employees. Anyway, we could get deeper and could.

[Caller or Co-host]

They operate just fine with 10% fewer than that? I would guess that they could.

[Jack Armstrong]

Yeah, probably so. I thought this was great. Breitbart reporting. The Pentagon failed its seventh audit in a row, failing to account for its more than $824 billion budget in 2024.

[Caller or Co-host]

Do you remember that there was a famous Jon Stewart clip about that several years back where he grilled somebody on a stage from the Pentagon about the Pentagon failing their audit and where did those money go? And the person that ran it didn't have any idea. They don't care because there's no public, there's no political pressure on them to pay attention to where the money goes. Zero.

[Jack Armstrong]

So the DoD's Office of Inspector General, the DoD OIG EIEO, said auditors, quote, could not obtain sufficient appropriate audit evidence to support an opinion. The audit, performed by an independent public accounting firm, looked at 27 different DoD components. And in a statement, the Inspector General, Robert Storch, said there has been little progress since 2005, almost 20 years ago. Quote, Although the DoD, DoD made some progress in improving financial management during the fiscal year. Financial audit statements, blah, blah, blah, many of its identified weaknesses have not improved since 2005.

[Caller or Co-host]

Yeah, I guess you just accept that we do get the government we deserve and people don't care. Of course, part of the reason, I was going to say part of the reason is half the country doesn't pay federal taxes, so they don't have any reason to care. But the half that does pay taxes doesn't care much either because there's not supporting any party that's super fiscally concerned.

[Jack Armstrong]

So if that was discouraging. Some encouragement coming up in a minute. The cheat sheet for the DOGE people. Where to look at first. I think you'll enjoy this after a word from our friends at SimpliSafe Home Security. Best deal of the year. It's spectacular. Rather 60% off. New SimpliSafe security system. Their best deal of the year, 60% off. And it includes this incredible technology they've been working on.

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[Jack Armstrong]

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[Caller or Co-host]

Diary. You see there was, there was a cybertruck in Trump's motorcade yesterday going over to the rocket launch, first time ever. So the Biden administration who tried to pretend that Tesla doesn't exist because they're not part of the auto workers union. Trump is embracing, of course, the only successful really electric car company in history. Boy, politics makes for strange bed fellows all the way around. We got a lot more on the way. Stay here.

[Jack Armstrong]

Armstrong and Getty.

[Caller or Co-host]

Biden said yes to the rockets and today has said yes to landmines. Two things that had been no goes in Ukraine up until this week. More on that later.

[Jack Armstrong]

And the first sexually confused oddball has been elected to Congress. Some transgender person. So now there will be willies in the women's bathroom and folks are not happy about it. We'll discuss that as well. Stay with us. Love, Andy Kessler, columnist. He wrote what the Doge people should look at first. We're talking about these sprawling obscene federal budget and all of our tax dollars and like the California homeless programs. Nobody even asks the question if any of this stuff is working. Not only can they not answer the question, nobody asks the question. So we need to hone in on efficiency and not squandering people's damn money. And it's amazing that more people aren't fired up about this. I just, I think they're defeated anyway. Uh, Andy says here's, here's a handy cheat sheet on how Mr. Musk can toss, shrink or squeeze departments, commissions and agencies. The ftc, the Federal Trade Commission. Toss it. The current FTC under Lina Khan has a worse record than the Chicago White Sox. The FTC already splits antitrust cases with the Justice Department. So move a few pro consumer competition lawyers there and then shutter it. The fcc. Toss it. The FCC caused the dot com boom and bust. Net neutrality killed broadband in Europe, yet was still reinstated here. Under the Biden administration, three economists in a back room can create and maintain a set of rules to keep access competitive. Toss it.

[Caller or Co-host]

So don't need the FCC at all?

[Jack Armstrong]

No.

[Caller or Co-host]

Well, we're in a business regulated by it and I Have seen no use for it.

[Jack Armstrong]

Securities and Exchange Commission. Toss it. The SEC missed the Bernie Madoff Ponzi scheme. Allowed crypto and SPAC pump and dumps. Missed the FTX fiasco. Free trading requires setting and enforcing simple rules. Could be not my area of expertise. U.S. department of Agriculture. Toss it. This will finally end corn subsidies for Iowa. We can move food stamp administrators and funding to the states. The Department of Agriculture is a gigantic bureaucracy.

[Caller or Co-host]

And quite socialist.

[Jack Armstrong]

Right? Exactly. All those free meals for everybody all the time. Now that's the Department of Agriculture who voted on this. You're no longer in charge of feeding your children. The government will do you. Do it for you. That won't cause massive societal sociological change. Interesting. Federal Reserve. Shrink it. The central bank Missed Biden inflation. Dart throwers could do better than its 400 PhDs. Cut its funding.

[Caller or Co-host]

Dart throwers.

[Jack Armstrong]

I love that. The Defense Department. Squeeze it. Reallocate spending to drones, ships and defense systems such as Patriot missiles. Anti missile defenses can be a giant export business as well. U.S. postal Service. Toss it. End its monopoly on first and third class mail. Go private. Amazon trucks already come to most neighborhoods every day.

[Caller or Co-host]

You're right.

[Jack Armstrong]

My neighborhood. Between Amazon and UPS and FedEx and a couple of other lesser players. They're. They're omnipresent.

[Caller or Co-host]

Yeah. It's a constant.

[Jack Armstrong]

Know the drivers. Hey Joe. Hey, Jim. Yeah. Others to toss. Fracking happened despite the Energy Department. Do we need it? Trump tariffs will curtail imports so we can shrink the Import Export bank by at least half. Close the Small Business Administration. And what does the Commerce Department even do? Even more to toss the Labor Department Union puppets. That is absolutely true. Shrink it by 80%. I know I'd have important work. Shrink it.

[Caller or Co-host]

I know I'd be accused of being an ignoramus by people who know more about this. But God, I feel like you could get rid of so much of the government and everything would just be fine.

[Jack Armstrong]

A few more. Even more to toss. Labor Department union puppets. Transportation Department. Its mileage and electric vehicle mandates killed Detroit. Although Mr. Musk may want to run the department himself. The EPA. Reduce its carbon footprint. Housing and Urban Development. It's not the 70s anymore. Get rid of it. Interior? Outsource the parks to Disney? No. They're too much into grooming right now. Veterans Affairs Can't. Can't they use the same hospitals as the rest of us? No matter who pays? That's an interesting question. I would not be too smug about that since our veterans deserve the care they were promised. But the idea that you get a voucher and can use it anywhere you want, as opposed to waiting 15 months for an appointment at a VA hospital. I'm fully in favor of that. More competition. More.

[Caller or Co-host]

Yeah, we're going to have our first trans congressperson. How are they going to handle the bathrooms?

[Jack Armstrong]

Among other things, Armstrong and Getty, the.

[Nancy Mace]

Restaurant chain ihop, announced this week that it is the official breakfast partner of Xbox, while Waffle House remains the official breakfast partner of Method.

[Caller or Co-host]

I used to go to Waffle to.

[Jack Armstrong]

Throw my headphones on. Was it funny?

[Caller or Co-host]

I used to go to Waffle House a lot and I was not on meth. I was just drunk like a lot of the other people.

[Jack Armstrong]

Just good old fashioned drunk criticizing my hobbies.

[Caller or Co-host]

Good old fashioned, run of the mill drunk. It doesn't have to be meth.

[Katie]

Yes, Katie, Good time Killer Waffle house fights on YouTube.

[Caller or Co-host]

Oh, really?

[Unknown Host or Co-host]

Oh, yeah.

[Katie]

Chairs flying, syrup everywhere.

[Jack Armstrong]

Way, way more entertaining than Tyson.

[Caller or Co-host]

Jake, Paul, I, honest to God, half dozen, at least. Really good Waffle House fights with my own eyes. So back in the day, that's your new thing.

[Jack Armstrong]

You become like the Joe Rogan of Waffle House fights. Like the. Well, you, the MMA announcer and, you know, kind of an impresario and all. I don't know exactly how you turn that into a. An online empire, but it's doable.

[Caller or Co-host]

Have you seen the trailer for the new Martin Scorsese project?

[Jack Armstrong]

What is it again?

[Caller or Co-host]

The Saints?

[Jack Armstrong]

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, I have.

[Caller or Co-host]

It's a series or several episodes. Four different religious saints. Joan of Arc, John the Baptist, and then two others that I didn't quite know as well. But anyway, it looks like, well, it's Martin Scorsese level depiction of what it was like for Joan of Arc to, you know, be what she was and lead crusaders against what she thought were evildoers and be caught and tortured and burned at the stake in all your Scorsese glory. It looks pretty dramatic, right?

[Jack Armstrong]

Yeah, the John the Baptist one is super intriguing.

[Caller or Co-host]

Yeah, yeah, no kidding.

[Jack Armstrong]

But they all look interesting.

[Caller or Co-host]

Yeah, we'll check that out.

[Jack Armstrong]

Yeah, why not? Why not? What was I going to say? I had something I wanted to bring up real quickly and it flitted out of my mind because I'm old and easily distracted.

[Caller or Co-host]

Happy birthday to Joe Biden. I just saw up on some news thing where it said Joe Biden is the oldest president to ever be in office. Exclamation point. That's kind of a weird thing to have an exclamation point about, given the fact that he's quitting because he's so old. I mean, right. You just emphasized the thing that drove him out of office with an exclamation point like yay. Thought that was weird.

[Jack Armstrong]

Driven out of office. And he was so delusional. He tried to run for president again in his own party after he got a certain amount down the road. Said, joe, you can't do this. You're too senile. So, yeah, so a little uncomfortable.

[Caller or Co-host]

So at the G20 after some big gathering they had today, he took no questions and all the other leaders did. And it was pointed out yesterday he has not taken a question or said anything since the election.

[Jack Armstrong]

Oh, wow.

[Caller or Co-host]

At all. I wonder if he's going to write it clear to January 20th like that.

[Jack Armstrong]

Well, and do we have the clip? We had it the other day. We didn't use it where they were trying to take some sort of group picture, but he'd wandered off behind a palm tree and they couldn't find him or something.

[Caller or Co-host]

It happens.

[Jack Armstrong]

Yeah. Well, he's old. He's very, very old and senile, but just great for another term. As recently as four or five months ago. Anyway, came across peace. Speaking to Joe Rogan about the left. Keeps saying this is kind of a hot topic in, you know, online lefty circles. We need our own Joe Rogan that would win the next election and why there's never going to be one. But I thought this was. This was Joe Rogan, a very popular.

[Caller or Co-host]

Podcaster, from what I understand.

[Jack Armstrong]

Does he need an intro, an explanation at this point? I don't know either. I'm not, I'm not quibbling with you. I just, I wonder. Yeah, Anyway, yeah, super, super popular podcaster has these like 3 hour long conversations with interesting thinkers, many of whom are very, very out of the box. But more on that to come.

[Caller or Co-host]

You know, Joe Rogan almost certainly doesn't need any sort of introduction since any grown up who takes in spoken word has at least heard of him. And when I did career day at my son's high school the other day, that was one of the few people I could mention that the 14 to 17 year olds had heard of. And they all recognized the name Joe Rogan as children. And that's something.

[Jack Armstrong]

Yeah, yeah. Honestly and seriously, you need to recalibrate now and again. ABC News, ABC Nightly News needs more of an explanation for a lot of humanity.

[Caller or Co-host]

Absolutely.

[Jack Armstrong]

The big podcast.

[Caller or Co-host]

Absolutely.

[Jack Armstrong]

So before we get to the Joe Rogan thing, which I think you'll find interesting, I was reading a great piece that I mentioned about how the University of North Carolina has started a new college within the university, which is kind of a big tent that has colleges underneath it. But it's all about free exchange of ideas and balanced faculty and no censoring of controversial opinions. It's a return to academic freedom and it's wonderful. But the guy who wrote the article and I could talk all day about the main point of the article, but this was kind of just thrown in in the middle. He mentions that a friend, a professor of literature at an elite university, recently observed something he's noticed about his students over a couple of decades. They seem to think of social and political problems as simply matters of good and evil. Good people take the right view, evil people take the wrong view. Does that remind you of how you were treated when your brother in law found out you voted for Trump? I mean, for instance. Anyway, he says, he writes, I liken it to Manishm, the third century philosophy, holding that the world consists of spirit good and matter evil. But anyway, this guy they're quoting, he mentions Plato and Hebraic law. It's all about, there's good and evil, um, but that dualism. It's a constant temptation in human affairs, but it has been heightened in recent decades. Social media is a great ratchet. There's a like button and a dislike button. No, maybe button. But he says the youngsters have now increasingly seen the world in that dualistic way. Not, oh, interesting, you see the world differently than I do. Or, gosh, I wonder if my idea and your idea overlap in a way we can talk about which is the way mankind moves forward. No, it's all good and evil.

[Caller or Co-host]

Or even that I'm 60, 40 or 70, 30 on this topic.

[Jack Armstrong]

Right. That's just not allowed. And who it was, said James Lindsay, who pointed out first of all that no, it wasn't. It was. But Jonathan Haidt, who talked about how the most savage attacks are within your bubble. If you're in a college student liberal bubble and you say, you know that conservative speaker, you know, whoever it might be who came to campus, I don't think it would do any harm to hear him out. You will be savagely attacked within your circle. And that's the worst censorship.

[Caller or Co-host]

Sure. Plus with the fact that you care what those people think, you don't care if you're being attacked by the other side, but if you're attacked by your own friends or bosses or teachers, you know, that's uncomfortable.

[Jack Armstrong]

Yeah, you'll quickly be kicked into submission. So Rich Lowery, who's a terrific writer, wrote a piece for the New York Post. There's a reason progressives don't have their own Joe Rogan. Because that's been kind of a big conversation lately in those circles.

[Caller or Co-host]

It's hilarious, the idea that came out of the election that the left doesn't have enough of the media. What are you talking about?

[Jack Armstrong]

You're right. You really ought to take a moment to smell the roses of the hilarity of that notion. We need. We need liberal media to fight back. What? Yeah, it's hilarious. And one of Lowry's questions is, could the left really tolerate its own Joe Rogan? Where is that? Anyway, let me skip ahead to these. Okay, so Elie Mistahl of the Left Wing Nation declared, liberals need to build their own Joe Rogan. I remember Air America, that great experiment in liberal talk radio that we saw and some of our sister stations took part in, and the company invested in all of those. Place came and it went. But Lowry writes, progressives are correct about the power of, you know, podcasters, the bro podcasters, the new media, the intellectual dark web, whatever you want to call it. But they don't understand how thoroughly anathema their ideology and cultural sensibility are to this kind of programming. This is the point. They could, like the Harris campaign, have a billion dollars to spend and still not be able to create one semi popular bro podcaster. How is the party of policing what people say to ensure that the discussion always stays within a narrow set of guardrails going to create or even tolerate the freewheelingly heterodox media voices? If they did, if the left did manage to create a progressive Joe Rogan in a lab, as soon as he said something controversial out in the wild, he'd be anesthetized and subject to cancellation or anathematized, which is a word I don't often see. That's exactly what happened to, well, Joe Rogan. Before he was a Trump bro, he was a Bernie Bro. He's socially liberal, he's mocked religion, and is in no way a traditional Republican. But the left turned on him with a vengeance because he expressed controversial views on Covid and had a rogue viralist virologist on the show, as we did, too.

[Caller or Co-host]

That's a good point.

[Jack Armstrong]

They don't get it over here. We disagree with each other all the time, and it's okay and it's interesting and it's fun and we learn and we. We grow big pop talk shows, even though, you know, as we've joked for the longest time, we get done with a segment and get a Dozen emails saying, you suck. I'll never listen to you again. You're too pro Trump and you suck. I'll never listen to you again. You're too anti Trump based on the same, you know, screed. But that's fine. That's how you get what we do. So good luck growing it in a lab, ye far lefties.

[Caller or Co-host]

Speaking of the COVID views some people had, I came across this tweet yesterday. A bit of a throwback. Just remember, the government did more to stop the distribution of ivermectin and hydrochloroquine than it did to stop the distribution of fentanyl. It does feel that way, doesn't it, that there is more of an uprise of making sure nobody took ivermectin or that hydrochloroquine stuff that Trump talked about. Then fentanyl.

[Jack Armstrong]

If you want to talk about marshaling up public opinion to resist something and.

[Caller or Co-host]

Creating fear around it.

[Jack Armstrong]

Yeah, I don't know if it's literally true with the DEA and the Border Patrol and stuff like that, but. No, I see the point. Absolutely.

[Caller or Co-host]

Another tweet I came across that I liked. Prank idea. Give every person access to all the information in the world, but don't teach them how to discern what's true.

[Jack Armstrong]

I get it. I get it. Ooh. So, coming up, there's a poor, confused individual, calls themselves transgender, elected to Congress, and a number of the ladies in Congress are saying, don't want no wangs in our locker rooms, et cetera. Our audio sheets here that have all the clips that we might play during the show today. That section cleverly labeled by Mike Hansen as no trans in the can. The new transgender congressperson. That controversy coming up a little later on.

[Caller or Co-host]

Yeah, the rubber is going to meet the road on the whole bathroom thing. They're going to have to figure something out, and it might end up being the national policy. Yep, that on the way.

[Jack Armstrong]

Armstrong and Getty.

[Nancy Mace]

Congresswoman Nancy Mace, a Republican from South Carolina defending legislation she introduced to try to change House rules to prohibit transgender women and girls from using women's bathrooms and facilities on Capitol Hills. This is less than two months before Congresswoman elect Sarah McBride, the first openly transgender person ever elected to Congress, is scheduled to be sworn into office.

[Adam Smith]

It is. You know, it's just disgusting. I don't understand why Republicans are so obsessed with people's private parts. She's going to do these exams herself. I mean, it is absurd. We have real work to do here in the United States Congress.

[Jack Armstrong]

I think it's a very bigoted approach to the issue.

[Caller or Co-host]

Nobody in this place is threatened by.

[Jack Armstrong]

Whatever bathroom our new member from Delaware.

[Caller or Co-host]

Chooses to walk into.

[Jack Armstrong]

All right, so it's Republicans who are obsessed with people's genitals. And that's a bigoted approach. Says a man. No one is threatened by a sch in the girls room. Thank you for pronouncing that and lecturing those stupid women to keep their mouths shut. That's Representative Adam Smith of Washington.

[Caller or Co-host]

What? First of all, I can't believe there'd be a very large percentage of women nationwide who are okay with, you know, call yourself what you want, but if you have a penis being in the women's restroom, I gotta believe that polls pretty overwhelmingly one direction.

[Jack Armstrong]

So to speak. What I tried so hard. Wow. Really did.

[Caller or Co-host]

Wow.

[Jack Armstrong]

Katie, feel free to weigh in if you want. I mean, you're a woman. Always welcome.

[Caller or Co-host]

Does it bother you to be in a women's room to know there's a guy next door?

[Katie]

150%, without a doubt. Because you don't know if that is a person who is actually mentally ill dealing with this whole trans thing or if it's a predator in the women's restroom where guys usually do not belong. As far as I know, I suppose the.

[Caller or Co-host]

I'm trying to steal man. The other side, I suppose the argument would be, well, you do know who this person is. It's not. Not just anybody can go into the congressional bathrooms. And there's just one person, you know, they. They're an elected congressperson. They're not some, you know, nobody predator that you have to wonder about.

[Katie]

Right? I was speaking just in general.

[Jack Armstrong]

Yeah, sure, but yeah, but again, I tell you what, let's let this dude in because he's wearing a dress and says he's a girl now. So, hey, come on, girls, just shut up and take it. You don't want to be a bigot, do you? No, I'm with J.K. rowling and other people. No, women's spaces are for women, Period. End of sentence. And the Wall Street Journal, of all places, the journalists Kathy Stetch Ferric and Xavier Xavier Martinez falling into the trap that so many people do. Using the terminology of radical gender theory in this article, you know, it would prevent people whose birth sex was designated as male. No, it wasn't designated. It was observed. If you produce sperm, you're male. If you produce ova eggs, you're a female. Period. And again, you want to present any way you want, that's fine. But don't Fall into the trap of using the radical left's terminology.

[Caller or Co-host]

What bathroom do you want this person to use?

[Jack Armstrong]

Well, that's where you get into if you're going to go down the road as far as, okay, transgender is a thing as opposed to for, you know, a lot of human history. That was an issue to be worked out. You gotta go with, like, unisex. One little unisex restroom like you see in all the airports.

[Caller or Co-host]

Yeah, well. Well, that's what's gonna happen. I was gonna say, I know how this is gonna be solved. All the bathrooms are gonna be, you know, one whole bathrooms. That's. That's what sucks. So instead of having a bathroom where you can have eight guys go in there at once and speed things up, you have to have everything be unisex and one person at a time. And that's the way it is at your Starbucks, your McDonald's or your library or wherever you go. That's how they get around this problem and don't get sued.

[Jack Armstrong]

So Nancy Mace of South Carolina proposed a resolution to prohibit House lawmakers and employees, quote, from using single sex facilities other than those corresponding to their biological sex. Quote, biological men do not belong in private women's spaces, Period. Period. I'm such a zealot on this topic. I don't even use the term biological men because that employee implies that there are other sorts of men. There aren't. It's. There are men and there are women. Of course, it's defined by biology. There's no need to say that.

[Caller or Co-host]

Well, they're going to solve this by going gender neutral bathrooms. So you can use whatever bathroom you want. And then girls. Good, good. Get. You get to enjoy the filthy, filthy male. Now you're used to clean bathrooms because you girls are cleaner. Now you get to enjoy dirty bathrooms because there's going to be guys going in your bathroom.

[Jack Armstrong]

Sweet. Marjorie. MTG is down with Nancy May saying, women in women's bathrooms, period. I'm glad this discussion is going to be had. I'll just say that.

[Caller or Co-host]

Yeah, I. Like I said, I think. I think I know how they're going to solve it. It's going to be the way they solved it at most of the places I go. And it sucks because it's just harder to get into the bathroom. Now they won't eliminate bathrooms like they've done. A lot of places I go where they just plain eliminate the bathroom to stay away from the problem.

[Unknown Host or Co-host]

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