It's a Numbers Game: Does The New York Times Hate America?

Summary

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Podcast Summary: "It's a Numbers Game: Does The New York Times Hate America?"

Podcast: The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show
Host: Ryan Graduski (sub-hosting)
Date: July 1, 2026

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Episode Overview

In this episode, Ryan Graduski offers an in-depth, strongly opinionated breakdown of The New York Times’ 16-part opinion piece titled “It’s America’s Birthday. What Are We Celebrating?” released for the country’s 250th anniversary. Ryan critiques the NYT writers for what he perceives as a lack of genuine patriotism, focusing instead on America’s flaws and contentious issues. He contrasts their takes with his own vision of what makes America great and then transitions into his popular "Ask Me Anything" segment, discussing Republican prospects in deep-blue states and reflecting on bipartisan labor and immigration failures.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The New York Times' Independence Day Essays: Themes & Critique

(Begins at 02:49)

• NYT Project Summary:
  The New York Times commissioned 16 writers to contribute essays on what makes America worth celebrating at its semiquincentennial.

• Ryan’s Reaction:
  Upon reading the essays, Ryan says, “Trust me when I say this, I read this so you didn’t have to, but I need to talk about it because I was screaming into the void reading it half the time.” (03:45)

• General Critique:
  Ryan argues that, instead of celebrating American achievements or culture, most pieces dwell on America’s failings—racism, immigration, and its need to "do better" globally—rather than substantive praise.

Writer-By-Writer Breakdown & Memorable Quotes

(04:43–16:24)

• Thomas Friedman:
  Focuses on "brotherhood" and America’s role as global coalition-builder, arguing for more globalization.
  Ryan’s take: “This isn’t a celebration of America. This is another homework assignment for Americans that we need to do one more thing for the world that we have to sacrifice one more time.” (06:25)
  Notable quote (Friedman, via Ryan):
  “We need to be the first nation to prove that we can take our founder’s motto to forge out of many one and make it work… forging a continental scale, multiracial, genuinely equal democracy unlike any history has ever seen before.” (07:23)

• Jamal Bouie:
  Praises fugitive slaves as the most worthy American archetype, downplays mythic American figures.
  Ryan: “Only a liberal can wake up on any day of the week in America and say, you know what? We haven’t talked enough about slavery.” (09:27)
  Notable quote (Bouie, via Ryan):
  “In their determination to free themselves… fugitive slaves embodied some of the nation's highest values. They also stood and lived for as a profound challenge to what this nation actually was.” (09:37)

• Michelle Goldberg:
  Celebrates America’s history as a nation of refugees, blaming “white Republican men” for immigration limits.
  Ryan lampoons her perspective and questions the reality of assimilation, referencing the Boston bombers and politicians with divided loyalties.
  “Maybe the civic religion that you grew up learning was more of a cult and you chose to drink the Kool Aid.” (12:31)

• Frank Bruni:
  Cites PEPFAR (U.S. foreign aid to fight AIDS in Africa) as the nation’s most praiseworthy contribution.
  Ryan’s reaction: “That’s the most thing you’re… you’re proudest to be an American? How we funded other people? That’s what you’re most grateful for?” (13:06)

• Carlos Lozada:
  Celebrates naturalization ceremonies.
  Ryan points out, “Halfway through reading this 16-point opinion column and they mention immigrants, refugees and slaves at least half of the time. Kind of a big group you’re missing there.” (13:48)

• David French:
  Values “limits on presidential power.”
  Ryan quips, “Can’t imagine how what crossed his mind to make that his number one thing.” (13:57)

• M. Jessen:
  Links pride in American protest culture (AIDS activism, anti-Trump protest) to the right to free speech.
  “It’s all about the other. If you look at these writers… it’s not about the majority. It’s not about what brought us together.” (14:28)

• Bret Stephens:
  Despite being labeled conservative, also emphasizes gratitude for refugees.

• Maureen Dowd:
  Her essay drifts from personal anecdotes about her father’s sense of fairness to contemporary political gripes.
  Ryan: “Did you know what the assignment was at all?... At the start of reading these opinion pieces, I was mad. And at the end I was just like, I give up.” (16:20)

• One Exception—David Wallace-Wells:
  Is praised for “talking about our national ambition to cure diseases and to make strides that are better for humanity.” (16:37)

Summary Quote:
“Every other essay sounded like it came from a mentally ill person or from a 10th grader.” (16:41)

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2. Ryan’s Vision: What’s Worth Celebrating About America?

(20:03–28:52)

Ryan pivots to provide a counterpoint—his own list of what’s uniquely admirable about the U.S.:

• Protestant Work Ethic:
  Though Catholic himself, he credits America’s "Protestant work ethic" for shaping national character, distinguishing it from other immigrant groups and emphasizing its origins prior to mass immigration.
  “Our Protestant work ethic existed way before we took in millions of immigrants… Even though immigrants work very hard, they come to a pre-existing culture that demands a hard work ethic.” (21:07)

• Entrepreneurial Spirit:
  “We are naturally entrepreneurial as people… No one tells us no. We do this constantly in America in a way that no other country does.” (22:14)

• Capacity for Care and Generosity:
  America’s charitable giving, both financially and via service, far outpaces the rest of the world.
  “The US gives more money to charity than the rest of the entire world combined. A full 1.44% of our entire GDP goes to charity.” (23:56)
  He credits this spirit largely to "our Christian heritage."

• Inspiring Freedoms Rooted in Western Enlightenment:
  Emphasizes the deliberate constitutional structure, property rights, and gun rights—not simply the product of "magic dirt theory," but a very specific Anglosphere inheritance.
  “If we were a nation founded by Somalians, I promise you this country would not look the same. And I'm thankful that we live in a country founded by English people...” (25:17)

• Achievement & Heritage:
  America’s inventions, contributions to culture and society, and its descent from “those who accomplished unimaginable things.”
  “We are the collective descendants of greatness, the heirs of Neil Armstrong and Thomas Paine and Frederick Douglass and Georgia O’Keefe and Lucille Ball and Brigham Young and Billy Graham and Walt Disney and Steve Jobs. We are Americans.” (27:58)

• A Closing Patriotic Flourish:
  “We are the pinnacle of what humanity can provide. We are the greatest country that has ever existed because we are the greatest people who have ever existed.” (29:01)

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3. Ask Me Anything Segment

(32:41–41:40)

On the GOP’s Prospects in Deep Blue States

• Listener Question: Is it worth rebuilding the California GOP?
• Ryan’s Take:
  • Acknowledges California’s unique beauty, but highlights the high cost and difficulty of campaigning there.
  • Argues that Republican investments are better spent in swing states (e.g., AZ, NV, NC, TX, PA, MI, WI, GA) and then in second/third tier targets (e.g., NH, MN, NM, VA, NJ).
  • Quote: “The problem with California is it's so expensive to campaign there… and it's so deep in the hole as far as how left the state is… There’s nothing like California, just the richness of its geographical diversity, there's nothing like it.” (34:15–34:41)
  • Says top political talent flows to competitive states, leaving places like CA, NY, IL with "grifters" and poor party organizations.

On U.S. Labor, Immigration, and Trade Policies

• Listener Question: How have bipartisan labor and immigration policies hollowed out American jobs and industry?
• Ryan’s Response:
  • Draws direct comparison between 1990s free trade/globalization sales pitches and current AI hype; sees both as full of false promises.
  • H1-B visas are oversold as bringing in uniquely skilled workers when they mostly serve to depress wages.
  • Illegal immigration, he asserts, is intentionally enabled to provide cheap labor and boost corporate profits.
  • “The way they oversell H1Bs is the way they undersell illegal labor… they bring up the worst with illegal labor, saying, you wouldn't want to do this. And they bring up the best for H1B workers and say, you would want this person in your country. But neither one's actually very accurate.” (40:00–40:42)
  • Conclusion: Trade with China was a mistake born of post-Cold War hubris and incompetence; current immigration and labor practices are more deliberately exploitative.

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Notable Quotes & Moments

• “Only a liberal can wake up on any day of the week in America and say, you know what? We haven’t talked enough about slavery.” (09:27 – Ryan, satirizing Bouie’s essay)

• “Every other essay sounded like it came from a mentally ill person or from a 10th grader.” (16:41 – Ryan summing up his reaction to the NYT essays)

• “Our Protestant work ethic existed way before we took in millions of immigrants… Even though immigrants work very hard, they come to a pre-existing culture that demands a hard work ethic.” (21:07 – Ryan on American work culture)

• “We are naturally entrepreneurial as people... No one tells us no. We do this constantly in America in a way that no other country does.” (22:14 – On entrepreneurship)

• “If we were a nation founded by Somalians, I promise you this country would not look the same. And I’m thankful that we live in a country founded by English people and not backwards people like the French. All right, that was just a joke.” (25:17 – Ryan, tongue-in-cheek, on American origins)

• “We are the collective descendants of greatness, the heirs of Neil Armstrong and Thomas Paine… We are Americans.” (27:58)

• “We are the pinnacle of what humanity can provide. We are the greatest country that has ever existed because we are the greatest people who have ever existed.” (29:01)

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Timestamps for Major Segments

• [02:49] — Show proper begins; NYT essays overview
• [04:43–16:24] — Individual NYT essay analysis and critique
• [20:03] — Ryan’s own list of what makes America worth celebrating
• [32:41] — Ask Me Anything segment: California GOP
• [38:01] — Ask Me Anything: U.S. labor policy, immigration, and trade

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Tone and Language

Ryan employs a sarcastic, sometimes caustic, and unsparing tone throughout his critique, often mocking the NYT writers’ earnestness with humor and strong language (“enjoys the smell of his own farts,” “mentally ill,” “I give up,” etc.). His own celebration of America is emotionally patriotic, assertive, and grandiloquent.

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This summary provides a comprehensive walkthrough of the episode, capturing the content and voice of the host while highlighting key arguments, notable quotes, and structural flow.

Transcript

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[Ryan Graduski]

welcome back to A Numbers Game with Ryan Graduski. Thank you guys for being here. I know that there are a ton of Supreme Court decisions that just came out. I'm recording this on Tuesday. I haven't had a chance to read the decisions yet.

[Co-host or Guest with Ryan Graduski]

I want to get a legal expert

[Ryan Graduski]

for Friday show to really discuss what's

[Co-host or Guest with Ryan Graduski]

going on with the Supreme Court, but I don't have the information Now.

[Ryan Graduski]

I have something else that I think

[Co-host or Guest with Ryan Graduski]

is interesting to my audience. We're quickly approaching Independence Day this Saturday, America's 250th birthday.

[Ryan Graduski]

And it's cause for celebration for a

[Co-host or Guest with Ryan Graduski]

lot of people over the weekend. The New York Times opinion section was

[Ryan Graduski]

a 16 part collection of the headline was It's America's Birthday.

[Co-host or Guest with Ryan Graduski]

What are we celebrating?

[Ryan Graduski]

And it was pieces of various opinion writers that looked at our national experiment, why it endures and what they're proud of. And trust me when I say this, I read this so you didn't have

[Co-host or Guest with Ryan Graduski]

to, but I need to talk about

[Ryan Graduski]

it because I was screaming into the

[Co-host or Guest with Ryan Graduski]

void reading it half the time.

[Ryan Graduski]

I just want to run down some

[Co-host or Guest with Ryan Graduski]

of the reasons these writers from the

[Ryan Graduski]

Times gave to, to why they love

[Co-host or Guest with Ryan Graduski]

America and, and you know, whether you love it or hate it, the New York Times is the most important paper in America right now.

[Ryan Graduski]

I'm not going to go over everything

[Co-host or Guest with Ryan Graduski]

that he wrote down, but just some

[Ryan Graduski]

highlights because people wrote things that I, I wouldn't necessarily agree with, but they weren't like wrong answers.

[Co-host or Guest with Ryan Graduski]

It is opinion. Like one guy wrote that libraries were why he was proud to be an American and why our national experiment endures.

[Ryan Graduski]

I wouldn't say that that's the best reason, but hey, you know what?

[Co-host or Guest with Ryan Graduski]

That's your thing.

[Ryan Graduski]

Go for it. Like it's not, it's not necessarily wrong, right?

[Co-host or Guest with Ryan Graduski]

To each their own.

[Ryan Graduski]

But there were other people who I

[Co-host or Guest with Ryan Graduski]

don't think understood the assignment. They were given a chance to write why they're proud to be an American by the times. And they used it to bash our

[Ryan Graduski]

country in a way that was maddening. So the first one came from Thomas Friedman.

[Co-host or Guest with Ryan Graduski]

He reflected on the song America the

[Ryan Graduski]

Beautiful, especially the lyric, the word in the lyric brotherhood, and how the US

[Co-host or Guest with Ryan Graduski]

at the time the song was written was dealing with mass urbanization and reeling from the Civil War and the strife

[Ryan Graduski]

that that had caused the country and, you know, the time for national healing post Civil War. Naturally, you could look at America today

[Co-host or Guest with Ryan Graduski]

and look at our alienation, our social alienation, how we've become a low trust

[Ryan Graduski]

society, how social media has alienated people and really kind of put up a lot of fake news for people, how people have lived more lonely lives and

[Co-host or Guest with Ryan Graduski]

need to connect with one another.

[Ryan Graduski]

But Friedman, the genius that he believes he is, the man who, by the

[Co-host or Guest with Ryan Graduski]

way, once said that the free market and democracy could wipe away not only geographical borders, but also human ones. He said globalization can turn friends and enemies into competitors. As if, you know, globalization alone was like Jesus Christ turning water into wine.

[Ryan Graduski]

And he said in his piece for

[Co-host or Guest with Ryan Graduski]

the Times, the role of America as

[Ryan Graduski]

brotherhood is to really double down on globalization and corral as many nations in

[Co-host or Guest with Ryan Graduski]

the world as possible into a global

[Ryan Graduski]

coalition, a brotherhood designed to ensure that we maximalize the benefits and cushion the

[Co-host or Guest with Ryan Graduski]

worst impacts of the great planetary scale challenges that we now face together as a species. From managing AI to climate change, human migration, and nuclear and biological weapons. Okay, stop with Friedman's opinion.

[Ryan Graduski]

There are a million of these, not a million literally, but there are a lot of organizations, agreements, treaties, you know, inter international collections, call them whatever you like, that their purpose is to do this and they in fact do nothing. This isn't a celebration of America. This is another homework assignment for Americans that we need to do one more thing for the world that we have to sacrifice one more time.

[Co-host or Guest with Ryan Graduski]

So China or India can increase their

[Ryan Graduski]

CO2 emissions and one country can take all the all the blame for climate change and other countries can completely ignore it, and we in the end always seem to have to end up like

[Co-host or Guest with Ryan Graduski]

the European Union, like taking in mass migrations and living as poor as possible

[Ryan Graduski]

to someone else's benefits. He writes, quote, but. But America needs to be first today and another way. We need to be the first nation to prove that we can take our

[Co-host or Guest with Ryan Graduski]

founder's motto to forge out of many one and make it work.

[Ryan Graduski]

In a country where the many are so much more diverse than the original 13 colonies, what is required is nothing

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less than forging a continental scale, multiracial,

[Ryan Graduski]

genuinely equal democracy unlike any history has ever seen before. The world is v diverse empires, but it has never known a democracy this

[Co-host or Guest with Ryan Graduski]

diverse, large and deeply interconnected. If America can be the first to make it work, it can be a model, a mentor for radical pluralism.

[Ryan Graduski]

Mr. Friedman, pluralism is the opposite of e pluribus unum instead of out of many 1.

[Co-host or Guest with Ryan Graduski]

The mass assimilation of everyone. You're calling For a complete opposite of that.

[Ryan Graduski]

You're calling on people to live separately but equal. That doesn't create brotherhood. He concludes the piece by saying, so, quote, so that is my version of America. First to crown our good by cementing brotherhood at home and abroad.

[Co-host or Guest with Ryan Graduski]

From sea to shining sea.

[Ryan Graduski]

You can tell by the way this

[Co-host or Guest with Ryan Graduski]

man writes he enjoys the smell of his own farts.

[Ryan Graduski]

I'm just going to say he believes

[Co-host or Guest with Ryan Graduski]

that he is the genius that other people have said he is. Probably believed at first, actually. I promise I'm not going to wax

[Ryan Graduski]

poetically like these writers do, but this man and cover all these opinions like this.

[Co-host or Guest with Ryan Graduski]

But this man's first one was a complete doozy.

[Ryan Graduski]

Second one is Jamal Booley. He wrote that. He started his article, like all good New York Times writers do, by bashing Trump because Trump used images of settlers and cowboys and astronauts and soldiers at

[Co-host or Guest with Ryan Graduski]

an America's 250th celebration.

[Ryan Graduski]

Images that what he called were archetypes of masculine conquest. But Jamel says the figure we actually need to celebrate has never received the

[Co-host or Guest with Ryan Graduski]

attention they deserve in pop culture.

[Ryan Graduski]

The fugitive slave. Apparently, Jamel is the only person in

[Co-host or Guest with Ryan Graduski]

the last decade who has not seen

[Ryan Graduski]

a single Hollywood movie dedicated at all

[Co-host or Guest with Ryan Graduski]

to slavery or heard enough about it.

[Ryan Graduski]

I mean, it's not like we've created

[Co-host or Guest with Ryan Graduski]

movies like Harriet and the Underground Railroad miniseries and Race to Freedom and Django Unchained.

[Ryan Graduski]

Only a liberal can wake up on any day of the week in America and say, you know what?

[Co-host or Guest with Ryan Graduski]

We haven't talked enough about slavery.

[Ryan Graduski]

That's.

[Co-host or Guest with Ryan Graduski]

We really haven't covered slavery enough in this country.

[Ryan Graduski]

He writes, quote, in the determination to free themselves, in their heightened awareness of the fundamental importance of autonomy, agency, and individuality, and in their determination and to realize for themselves and others a broad

[Co-host or Guest with Ryan Graduski]

and egalitarian freedom, fugitive slaves embodied some of the nation's highest values.

[Ryan Graduski]

They also stood and lived for as

[Co-host or Guest with Ryan Graduski]

a profound challenge to what this nation actually was.

[Ryan Graduski]

Okay, I'm not dismissing the struggle of

[Co-host or Guest with Ryan Graduski]

black Americans who fought for freedom from slavery 150 years ago.

[Ryan Graduski]

However, if America's stories only boil down

[Co-host or Guest with Ryan Graduski]

to slavery as progressives see it, why not celebrate the movement to free slaves?

[Ryan Graduski]

Talk about Quaker abolitionists, the founders of

[Co-host or Guest with Ryan Graduski]

the Republican Party, millions of men throughout the country who fought for the freedom

[Ryan Graduski]

of millions of men and women that they never knew because those people were

[Co-host or Guest with Ryan Graduski]

largely, almost completely white.

[Ryan Graduski]

And that is really against Jamel's gimmick. He has to only talk about the suffering of.

[Co-host or Guest with Ryan Graduski]

Of non whites, not the aspiration of

[Ryan Graduski]

freedom from Americans across different racial Profiles following Jamal Boule's conversation about fugitive slaves was Michelle Goldberg who said, what she's proud of about America is refugees. If you don't know what Michelle Goldberg looks like, by the way, she looks

[Co-host or Guest with Ryan Graduski]

like Ms. Swan from Mad TV back in the 2000s.

[Ryan Graduski]

Like she's got a bob that. That doesn't really fit her head quite well.

[Co-host or Guest with Ryan Graduski]

And she's always kind of squinting and

[Ryan Graduski]

she always sounds like she's on the

[Co-host or Guest with Ryan Graduski]

verge of a nervous breakdown.

[Ryan Graduski]

She weaves together the words of George Washington, Alexis of Toqueville, Emma Lazarus and Zoro Mandani. After acknowledging that we put restrictions on immigration and blames white Republican men because, you know, there's nothing white men have

[Co-host or Guest with Ryan Graduski]

ever done for America.

[Ryan Graduski]

She writes, quote, by the time I

[Co-host or Guest with Ryan Graduski]

was being taught American history in school,

[Ryan Graduski]

Lazarus's words had become part of our civic religion, the catechism of what a

[Co-host or Guest with Ryan Graduski]

time seemed like a consensus faith.

[Ryan Graduski]

Republicans and Democrats alike were proud that anyone could become American and that almost

[Co-host or Guest with Ryan Graduski]

the whole of humanity was represented in our country. Here's the problem, Michelle. They didn't.

[Ryan Graduski]

Millions of people who moved into this country had no intention of assimilating. They never did. They chose to live their own in

[Co-host or Guest with Ryan Graduski]

their own ghettoized versions of America where

[Ryan Graduski]

it was ethnic enclaves. Their.

[Co-host or Guest with Ryan Graduski]

Some of their children learned to hate America.

[Ryan Graduski]

You could look at the children, the Boston bombers.

[Co-host or Guest with Ryan Graduski]

I mean, they were immigrants themselves.

[Ryan Graduski]

But you could look at recent elected

[Co-host or Guest with Ryan Graduski]

candidates from the dsa. They do not like America at all.

[Ryan Graduski]

There are things about America they have, more things they dislike about America than they like. There are members of Congress who say that their first loyalty is to a foreign country. Ilhan Omar said that she's Somalian first. Maybe the civic religion that you grew up learning was more of a cult

[Co-host or Guest with Ryan Graduski]

and you chose to drink the Kool Aid.

[Ryan Graduski]

Frank Bruni followed up saying that he. He is thankful for America because of pepfar. For those of you who don't know, PEPFAR is the program George W. Bush

[Co-host or Guest with Ryan Graduski]

created to slow the spread of HIV AIDS in Africa. We spent $100 billion and they estimate we saved 25 million lives. That's so good, great and fine. Not a bad program money wise. Certainly better than other programs we spent money on.

[Ryan Graduski]

But that's the most thing you're.

[Co-host or Guest with Ryan Graduski]

You're proudest to be an American.

[Ryan Graduski]

How we funded other people, that's what

[Co-host or Guest with Ryan Graduski]

you're most grateful for. Free medicine to Africa.

[Ryan Graduski]

It makes perfect sense in the eyes

[Co-host or Guest with Ryan Graduski]

of the New York Times, though, because

[Ryan Graduski]

America is a hotel for the world's migrants. It's a Military for the world's conflicts and it's a welfare program for the world's poor. That's all were really good for. Carlos Lozada said he was grateful for naturalization ceremonies of new citizens. Nothing, well, nothing wrong with that, but I was halfway through reading this 16 point opinion column and they mention immigrants, refugees and slaves at least half of the time. Kind of a big group you're missing there that they just in the New

[Co-host or Guest with Ryan Graduski]

York Times mind, don't really matter.

[Ryan Graduski]

David French, who made his entire recent

[Co-host or Guest with Ryan Graduski]

career about hating Donald Trump, said he was grateful for limitations on presidential powers.

[Ryan Graduski]

Can't imagine how what crossed his mind

[Co-host or Guest with Ryan Graduski]

to make that his number one thing.

[Ryan Graduski]

M. Jessen, who looked back on his

[Co-host or Guest with Ryan Graduski]

former formative years and said that protesting

[Ryan Graduski]

the AIDS virus in the 90s was one thing that he was proud of and that he linked that to people

[Co-host or Guest with Ryan Graduski]

protesting Donald Trump

[Ryan Graduski]

right to freedom of speech is important. That's kind of an interesting way to put it. It's all about the other.

[Co-host or Guest with Ryan Graduski]

If you look at these writers, you

[Ryan Graduski]

know, if you haven't caught up yet, it's not about the majority. It's not about what brought us together. It's about those who at times have

[Co-host or Guest with Ryan Graduski]

felt otherized and chose to fight against

[Ryan Graduski]

it, which once again is fine. But there are 16 articles, 16 articles, and it is almost constant references to how shitty we are and how people

[Co-host or Guest with Ryan Graduski]

had to protest to stop us from being so shitt.

[Ryan Graduski]

Brett Stevens, he's supposed to be the conservative at the Times, conservative opinion writer at the Times. Well, he was thankful for refugees because, you know, you can never have enough

[Co-host or Guest with Ryan Graduski]

opinion pieces talking about refugees.

[Ryan Graduski]

Ironically, this was about how our national experiment endures. And it was all, I mean, this is the point. How does this national experiment of America endure? And it was all about how other people come into our country and never glanced at the idea that some of them or a lot of them have watered down the very concept of what

[Co-host or Guest with Ryan Graduski]

it means to be an American.

[Ryan Graduski]

And last but not least was Maureen Dowd. She started off talking about her father and how he was a fair man

[Co-host or Guest with Ryan Graduski]

who believed in fairness and fought for fairness.

[Ryan Graduski]

And that was, it was great beginning. And then out of left field, talked about ice shootings of Renee Good and Alex Preddy, talked about tax breaks for billionaires, talked about Jeff Bezos buying the Washington and CEOs making too much money once again. Did you know what the assignment was at all? I mean, it was like all of Maureen Dowd's other articles, but this one referenced her father at the very beginning. It was it was mind numbing, I can't tell you. Like, at the start of reading these opinion pieces, I was mad. And at the end I was just like, I give up, I give up all these people. I thought that maybe there would be

[Co-host or Guest with Ryan Graduski]

a bow, there would be a knot,

[Ryan Graduski]

there would be something to make it

[Co-host or Guest with Ryan Graduski]

all kind of fit.

[Ryan Graduski]

Now there never was.

[Co-host or Guest with Ryan Graduski]

It was all just rage at America.

[Ryan Graduski]

A few people, one of them, one writer really, I think nailed it, which was David Wallace Wells. He talked about our national ambition to

[Co-host or Guest with Ryan Graduski]

cure diseases and to make strides that are better for humanity.

[Ryan Graduski]

It was a nice essay.

[Co-host or Guest with Ryan Graduski]

It was the only nice essay. Every other essay sounded like it came from a mentally ill person or from a 10th grader.

[Ryan Graduski]

Like, you know, when you're in 10th

[Co-host or Guest with Ryan Graduski]

grade, they ask you to read a book and you don't. So you need to fill in as many words as possible because there's a, you need like a thousand minimum words that would, that's what 90% of them

[Ryan Graduski]

were like, mentally ill people or I

[Co-host or Guest with Ryan Graduski]

needed to write something.

[Ryan Graduski]

So next up, thinking I really did actually get something out of this, the 16 part series, because I really thought to myself, well, what am I thankful for? You know, looking back at being an

[Co-host or Guest with Ryan Graduski]

American on our 250th anniversary, why am I celebrating outside of just, you know, getting burgers and beer, what about our national identity endures for me?

[Ryan Graduski]

That's coming up next.

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[Ryan Graduski]

So the New York Times writers believe that pepfar refugees, immigrants and fugitive slaves are features of America's character that they're most thankful for.

[Co-host or Guest with Ryan Graduski]

As we celebrate our 250th anniversary.

[Ryan Graduski]

I obviously wouldn't have put those in

[Co-host or Guest with Ryan Graduski]

my list of of what I'm proud of.

[Ryan Graduski]

So what about being American am I celebrating?

[Co-host or Guest with Ryan Graduski]

And what about our national character indoors?

[Ryan Graduski]

I think it's a really actually very

[Co-host or Guest with Ryan Graduski]

thoughtful question to pose, even if the answers were all insane.

[Ryan Graduski]

Well, first I I'd say our Protestant work ethic. I'm not Protestant.

[Co-host or Guest with Ryan Graduski]

I'm Catholic.

[Ryan Graduski]

My family is goes back being Catholic

[Co-host or Guest with Ryan Graduski]

generations on both sides.

[Ryan Graduski]

I know at one point there was a few Protestants because someone on my

[Co-host or Guest with Ryan Graduski]

dad's mom's family was on the Mayflower.

[Ryan Graduski]

But aside from that, we have been

[Co-host or Guest with Ryan Graduski]

Catholic for a very long time.

[Ryan Graduski]

And yet I can appreciate that I grew up in a country that had a Protestant work ethic and not a Catholic work ethic, especially a Catholic, European or Latin American work ethic. And by the way, I say Protestant

[Co-host or Guest with Ryan Graduski]

and not immigrant because there is a distinction.

[Ryan Graduski]

Our Protestant work ethic existed way before

[Co-host or Guest with Ryan Graduski]

we took in millions of immigrants, both from Europe and then from Latin America and then from the whole world.

[Ryan Graduski]

And even though immigrants work very hard,

[Co-host or Guest with Ryan Graduski]

they come to a culture, a pre

[Ryan Graduski]

existing culture that demands a hard work ethic.

[Co-host or Guest with Ryan Graduski]

It is part of our common culture that doesn't exist everywhere in the world. We are not like Europe, we are not like Asia.

[Ryan Graduski]

Europeans don't work hard enough and Asians, they have no semblance of work and pleasure. America gets it right, which makes us significantly happier than Asian countries and significantly

[Co-host or Guest with Ryan Graduski]

wealthier than European countries.

[Ryan Graduski]

Americans aren't dying by the thousands every

[Co-host or Guest with Ryan Graduski]

year for lack of air conditioning.

[Ryan Graduski]

Next up I would say is our

[Co-host or Guest with Ryan Graduski]

rugged individual vigilism and our willingness to take risks. The United States. I'm a small business owner. I, I, I took a risk to build a business and I employ more than a dozen people now.

[Ryan Graduski]

I am one of 33 million people

[Co-host or Guest with Ryan Graduski]

in this country who have started my own business.

[Ryan Graduski]

We are naturally entrepreneurial as people naturally wanting to, you know, forge ahead and

[Co-host or Guest with Ryan Graduski]

do things and accomplish things and break barriers.

[Ryan Graduski]

No one tells us no. We do this constantly in America in

[Co-host or Guest with Ryan Graduski]

a way that no other country does.

[Ryan Graduski]

If you are somewhere with a dream

[Co-host or Guest with Ryan Graduski]

and the willingness to work and a

[Ryan Graduski]

little bit of luck, you want to be in America more than any other

[Co-host or Guest with Ryan Graduski]

place on the planet.

[Ryan Graduski]

Another is our capacity to care not just about strangers, but also about each other.

[Co-host or Guest with Ryan Graduski]

And not in an international sense, but

[Ryan Graduski]

also like about how we treat each other, which is very high in comparison

[Co-host or Guest with Ryan Graduski]

to other parts of the world, even

[Ryan Graduski]

though we are a low trust society. And I'm not just talking about a government program. You know, the Times likes to make a big deal about this government program or that government program to achieve sometimes very minimal returns. In some cases they're large returns. But that's possible when you're dealing with the government because there's no profit motive,

[Co-host or Guest with Ryan Graduski]

there's really no bottom line.

[Ryan Graduski]

Like that's when he's talking about petfar, he's talking about like, oh, look at

[Co-host or Guest with Ryan Graduski]

these 25 million people.

[Ryan Graduski]

If you want to talk about the government program, back from our personal, what

[Co-host or Guest with Ryan Graduski]

we do personally, but what the government program did to save the most lives.

[Ryan Graduski]

It was the American military from freeing more than 200 million people who were

[Co-host or Guest with Ryan Graduski]

behind, you know, the iron curtain and losing their lives to communism to the tens of millions of Venezuelans who see

[Ryan Graduski]

for the first time in decades some chance at maybe having an Opportunity towards freedom. Now that Nicolas Maduro is captured, freedom

[Co-host or Guest with Ryan Graduski]

from communism and fascism has been America's greatest government program towards the lives of other people living abroad.

[Ryan Graduski]

But when I'm talking about our, our willingness to care, I'm talking about our charitable giving. The US gives more money to charity

[Co-host or Guest with Ryan Graduski]

than the rest of the entire world combined. A full 1.44% of our entire GDP goes to charity.

[Ryan Graduski]

And if you look past what we give financially, you can look at what we do just personally, you know, the energy we give.

[Co-host or Guest with Ryan Graduski]

People who volunteer, people who give to

[Ryan Graduski]

food shelters whenever there is a disaster

[Co-host or Guest with Ryan Graduski]

from Hurricane Katrina to Hurricane Sandy. And just two things that came to my mind. The amount of Americans willing to travel

[Ryan Graduski]

thousands of miles to help people rebuild

[Co-host or Guest with Ryan Graduski]

their homes and do whatever it was

[Ryan Graduski]

go back to even just a few

[Co-host or Guest with Ryan Graduski]

years ago, two years ago in North Carolina when they had those hurricanes or the storm rather the flooding.

[Ryan Graduski]

The amount of people willing to give,

[Co-host or Guest with Ryan Graduski]

to give helicopters, to go search for survivors to help those people who are homeless and displaced within our own country.

[Ryan Graduski]

And a big part of that comes

[Co-host or Guest with Ryan Graduski]

from our Christian heritage.

[Ryan Graduski]

People who are practicing Christians give more to charity and both in money and

[Co-host or Guest with Ryan Graduski]

in time than non Christians.

[Ryan Graduski]

That's just a statistical fact. And I thankful also for our freedoms

[Co-host or Guest with Ryan Graduski]

which are rooted in Western enlightenment.

[Ryan Graduski]

You know, liberals like to imagine that this incredible country with this deep sense

[Co-host or Guest with Ryan Graduski]

of work ethic and our right to property and our right to protect our property with gun rights and our right

[Ryan Graduski]

to speech and assemble and participatory democracy that is, you know, ever expanding is mere coincidence. It's like we got this magic dirt where you land in this country and all these wonderful things happen. But that's just not true. You know, if we were a nation founded by Somalians, I promise you this country would not look the same. And I'm thankful that we live in a country founded by English people and not backwards people like the French.

[Co-host or Guest with Ryan Graduski]

All right, that was just a joke.

[Ryan Graduski]

I mean, that was just a joke. But look at the colony that. Look at the countries that emerge from British colonies. The U.S. canada, Israel, India, Australia, Hong Kong, South Africa. Every place that you would want to live in any regional, respective part of the world is a former British colony. What is the most successful French colony?

[Co-host or Guest with Ryan Graduski]

Lebanon? Or how about Spain?

[Ryan Graduski]

Mexico? I mean, you would rather come from

[Co-host or Guest with Ryan Graduski]

English stock than any other group of people.

[Ryan Graduski]

We are so blessed to be a descendant of the Crown of England. And I am thankful, by the way, on that same trope for our collective ancestors. Not just the slave, not the refugee, not the Immigrant. Not just those who have been otherized

[Co-host or Guest with Ryan Graduski]

by history, but all the millions of nameless faces who tamed the wilderness and built intercontinental railroads and skyscrapers and cities

[Ryan Graduski]

and conquered diseases and fought for a more perfect union, even in the face of untold odds. When our founders and, you know, took on the British crown, there was no

[Co-host or Guest with Ryan Graduski]

guarantee what they would achieve, let alone

[Ryan Graduski]

what we have built since. And even though we are a. A vastly diverse country and our immigration levels are way too high, still over

[Co-host or Guest with Ryan Graduski]

180 million Americans can trace part of their ancestry back to the American Revolution.

[Ryan Graduski]

Yes, we, you know, we share.

[Co-host or Guest with Ryan Graduski]

We're supposed to share a.

[Ryan Graduski]

A spirit with our ancestors. But a majority of Americans do share

[Co-host or Guest with Ryan Graduski]

a bloodline with our ancestors going back

[Ryan Graduski]

to the revolution, and that is important. We are the people. We are the collective descendants of people who achieved unimaginable things, went to the moon and flew across the ocean and fought for freedoms of hundreds of millions of people and brought culture, American culture, to the world. We brought everything from the great American musical to hip hop and jazz. We gave the world friends. We cured polio. We are the collective descendants of greatness, the heirs of Neil Armstrong and Thomas

[Co-host or Guest with Ryan Graduski]

Paine and Frederick Douglass and Georgia o'

[Ryan Graduski]

Keefe and Lucille Ball and Brigham Young and Billy Graham and Walt Disney and Steve Jobs. We are Americans. And I think it's important to understand we can never give back all this

[Co-host or Guest with Ryan Graduski]

country gave to us. The opportunity and the wealth and the

[Ryan Graduski]

freedom and the security and the kindness. But remember, there is nothing the world can give back enough that this country has given the world, this country has given the world more than the world can ever give back to us. It's easy to be cynical. It's easy to look down on what our country has become and our infighting

[Co-host or Guest with Ryan Graduski]

and the toxicity in our culture and our politics.

[Ryan Graduski]

But if somewhere in humanity's history there is written like a day of books of our future possibilities, the name at

[Co-host or Guest with Ryan Graduski]

the top would be an American name.

[Ryan Graduski]

We are the pinnacle of what humanity can provide. We are the greatest country that has ever existed because we are the greatest

[Co-host or Guest with Ryan Graduski]

people who have ever existed.

[Ryan Graduski]

Anyone who says otherwise can get a one way flight out of Dodge.

[Co-host or Guest with Ryan Graduski]

That is my opinion, including a lot of New York Times writers.

[Ryan Graduski]

Okay, next up is Ask Me Anything.

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[Montucky Cold Snacks Host]

you ever found yourself craving a cold snack?

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Yep.

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Do you even know what a cold snack is?

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I do.

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Well, some of you may have noticed I've been wearing a Montucky shirt on the video version of the podcast. And that's because Montucky makes my favorite cold snack. That's right. It's a cold, snackable beer. And summer is the best time to enjoy it.

[Montucky Cold Snacks Narrator]

You're right, Ters. Montucky is a light American Lager from Bozeman, Montana. It's snackable, shareable, and perfect for all occasions.

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[Ryan Graduski]

Now it's time for the Ask Me Anything segment. If you want to be part of the Ask Me Anything segment, namely ryanumbersgame

[Co-host or Guest with Ryan Graduski]

podcast.com I know I have a few in the back burner. People have been waiting for a few weeks. I will get to you.

[Ryan Graduski]

Some people ask me like really hard

[Co-host or Guest with Ryan Graduski]

questions that involve actual deep research and

[Ryan Graduski]

I'm like, I gotta get to that. I promise I'll get to that. But I need like an hour to do this much research. So if you haven't heard from me

[Co-host or Guest with Ryan Graduski]

and you've asked a very interesting question, I promise I'll get to it.

[Ryan Graduski]

First question today comes from Trevor.

[Co-host or Guest with Ryan Graduski]

Trevor writes, as we know, California is a one party state today because of the changing demographics.

[Ryan Graduski]

However, anytime I listen to a conversation

[Co-host or Guest with Ryan Graduski]

about California state politics, one point that comes up often is the California GOP is a joke and woefully incompetent.

[Ryan Graduski]

Donald Trump won 48% of Hispanic vote

[Co-host or Guest with Ryan Graduski]

and 40% of the Asian vote nationwide in 2024.

[Ryan Graduski]

In certain states he won the majority

[Co-host or Guest with Ryan Graduski]

of the Hispanic vote outright.

[Ryan Graduski]

The shift from blue to red is

[Co-host or Guest with Ryan Graduski]

especially stark when you focus on heavily Hispanic counties in South Texas and South Florida. I've been doing some reading and found that around 2018 Republicans began making heavy investments and doing year round voter outreach and registration in these areas and their efforts have clearly paid off.

[Ryan Graduski]

With all that said, do you think

[Co-host or Guest with Ryan Graduski]

it'd be worth to rebuild the California GOP party infrastructure and bring competent leadership amount serious efforts to take back Californ?

[Ryan Graduski]

Don't get me wrong, it would probably

[Co-host or Guest with Ryan Graduski]

be at least a decade long project. Maybe after two terms of Xavier Becerra, California will be finally hit rock bottom and maybe ready to change. Perhaps the strategy could be applied to other states as well. California is such a beautiful state and the culture is iconic. It kills me that we've totally surrendered to the left. What are your thoughts?

[Ryan Graduski]

I agree with you that California is incredible. I mean, there is no.

[Co-host or Guest with Ryan Graduski]

California is like, the most beautiful state in the country.

[Ryan Graduski]

I mean, I love, like, other places,

[Co-host or Guest with Ryan Graduski]

like Vermont, I like North Carolina.

[Ryan Graduski]

But like California, just the richness of

[Co-host or Guest with Ryan Graduski]

its geographical diversity, there's nothing like it.

[Ryan Graduski]

The problem with California is it's so

[Co-host or Guest with Ryan Graduski]

expensive to campaign there, it's so expensive

[Ryan Graduski]

to invest there, and it's so deep

[Co-host or Guest with Ryan Graduski]

in the hole as far as how left the state is when you have other states that are much more easily ripe for the taking.

[Ryan Graduski]

Like, I mean, if you were to create tiers of states that the Republicans

[Co-host or Guest with Ryan Graduski]

need to invest in, you obviously go into the swing states. Arizona, which they have invested in Nevada, North Carolina, which they've obviously invested in Texas, to keep investing in Texas. Texas is just changing so frequently, and

[Ryan Graduski]

they still don't register voters by party in Texas.

[Co-host or Guest with Ryan Graduski]

I don't know why. And it makes me want to scream into the night.

[Ryan Graduski]

But those, I think would be the top tier. The second tier would be places that are.

[Montucky Cold Snacks Narrator]

Are.

[Co-host or Guest with Ryan Graduski]

Are the swing states.

[Ryan Graduski]

So Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, they should actually

[Co-host or Guest with Ryan Graduski]

be up there with the Texas one.

[Ryan Graduski]

So I'll include those ones with the Texas ones. The second tier would be states that Republicans can win if they do just slightly better.

[Co-host or Guest with Ryan Graduski]

So New Mexico, Minnesota, New Hampshire, Maine, they would be, I guess, second tier.

[Ryan Graduski]

And then tertiary would be places that Republicans really need to make sizable inroads. But it's not a complete lost cause.

[Co-host or Guest with Ryan Graduski]

New Jersey, I'm thinking of. I'm thinking of New Jersey would definitely a top one. Oregon may be a little too far, too far gone, but definitely New Jersey, I think would be like the top church.

[Ryan Graduski]

Virginia, that would be another one.

[Co-host or Guest with Ryan Graduski]

Virginia, New Jersey, Connecticut seems like a bit of a lost cause as well.

[Ryan Graduski]

But those are the ones that I

[Co-host or Guest with Ryan Graduski]

would put in together. Virginia and New Jersey as the third tier.

[Ryan Graduski]

Second tier would be states are a

[Co-host or Guest with Ryan Graduski]

little harder to reach. New Hampshire, Minnesota, New Mexico. And then the top ones would be the swing states. Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Georgia, North Carolina, Texas and Arizona and Nevada.

[Ryan Graduski]

And then after that, you get to the other states, the hardest states, unless

[Co-host or Guest with Ryan Graduski]

I get it from New York. I would love the New York GOP to be better than it is, but it's just not.

[Ryan Graduski]

And the problem is, is because all

[Co-host or Guest with Ryan Graduski]

the talented people and the talented organizers have gone to the more important states, which have left us a lot of grifters. And that's, I think, the bigger problem at places like California or Illinois or New York have.

[Ryan Graduski]

But I wish the best.

[Co-host or Guest with Ryan Graduski]

I hope someone can magically come in and solve the issues of California and Get that state to be a two party state. I would. It would be great.

[Ryan Graduski]

Okay, last question on the show comes from Mary. Mary writes, first of all, love your show.

[Co-host or Guest with Ryan Graduski]

A newsletter.

[Ryan Graduski]

I have a newsletter, but it's not for the show. I was trying to do it with the show, but it's so much work

[Co-host or Guest with Ryan Graduski]

to try to do both at the

[Ryan Graduski]

same time and I just could never

[Co-host or Guest with Ryan Graduski]

kind of get it together.

[Ryan Graduski]

So once in a while the newsletter

[Co-host or Guest with Ryan Graduski]

and the show do match, but it's not all the time.

[Ryan Graduski]

I really enjoy your entries of gubernatorial

[Co-host or Guest with Ryan Graduski]

Canada from Iowa, Zach Lane.

[Ryan Graduski]

He was amazing. He was so good. I really hope he wins. By the way, I've said we have some great interviews coming up in, in July. I think we have Ken Paxton on

[Co-host or Guest with Ryan Graduski]

the list of interviewees. Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan for their new book about the first Trump year, said they're going to come on the podcast.

[Ryan Graduski]

So I've been working to try to

[Co-host or Guest with Ryan Graduski]

get some big interviews coming up.

[Ryan Graduski]

So if you've liked my interviews so far, you know, like and subscribe because

[Co-host or Guest with Ryan Graduski]

I have some other big ones coming.

[Ryan Graduski]

You say. I have to say I really don't understand how American people have tolerated the labor policies from the elites on both

[Co-host or Guest with Ryan Graduski]

sides for the last 20 years or so. Tell me about it.

[Ryan Graduski]

You say one, we allowed China into

[Co-host or Guest with Ryan Graduski]

the WHO, the World's Health Organization. I think you meant the World Trade Organization, the wto.

[Ryan Graduski]

They steal our intellectual property and hollow

[Co-host or Guest with Ryan Graduski]

out our manufacturing center. They did.

[Ryan Graduski]

And if you go back to Thomas Friedman, who I wrote who I talk

[Co-host or Guest with Ryan Graduski]

about at the very beginning of the

[Ryan Graduski]

podcast episode, what they promised was that not only were American industries not going to go abroad, but Chinese industries were

[Co-host or Guest with Ryan Graduski]

going to relocate domestically and that we

[Ryan Graduski]

would have no trade barriers. It was what, I mean, what the, everything that the open trade people said

[Co-host or Guest with Ryan Graduski]

in the 90s is what the AI people are saying now. And that's honestly what scares me the most about AI is the overselling of promises. Because I see, I've seen that, I've seen the movie of the overselling of promises and it didn't work out in America's favor.

[Ryan Graduski]

Secondly, you said we bring in H1B workers to take all our high paying

[Co-host or Guest with Ryan Graduski]

jobs in the tech sector.

[Ryan Graduski]

Yes. And here's how they sell that. They sell that by saying, do you

[Co-host or Guest with Ryan Graduski]

want high skilled, trained, college educated workers?

[Ryan Graduski]

Well, of course, I mean, who wouldn't want a nuclear physicist?

[Co-host or Guest with Ryan Graduski]

That's one, one of a kind.

[Ryan Graduski]

But that's not what H1B workers are.

[Co-host or Guest with Ryan Graduski]

H1B workers are for the most part fairly Subpar workers that you could find in America. But the thing is that they're chained to their job. It's their only way of staying in the country.

[Ryan Graduski]

So that's how they sell it, but it's not. It's not accurate. And lastly, so we open the borders, so any job that we could be

[Co-host or Guest with Ryan Graduski]

done by Americans are done by cheap, illegal labor.

[Ryan Graduski]

Yeah. And they. And the. And once again, the way they sell it is. And the way they oversell H1BS is

[Co-host or Guest with Ryan Graduski]

the way they undersell illegal labor.

[Ryan Graduski]

So they'll say, do you want to really pick corn?

[Co-host or Guest with Ryan Graduski]

No, of course I don't want to really pick corn.

[Ryan Graduski]

There are machines that could do that,

[Co-host or Guest with Ryan Graduski]

though, that you can mechanize.

[Ryan Graduski]

But it's not just people working in the agricultural lobby. Agricultural industry, because agricultural workers don't have a cap on the number of H2A

[Co-host or Guest with Ryan Graduski]

visas you could bring into the country.

[Ryan Graduski]

There was a famous case in Chicago.

[Co-host or Guest with Ryan Graduski]

It wasn't that famous, but I remember it because that's why my crazy brain works.

[Ryan Graduski]

But there was a case in Illinois where a black worker was working at a pastry company, and she noticed that there were a lot of illegal labor there.

[Co-host or Guest with Ryan Graduski]

And she finally called, I guess ICE or whatever it was, Department of Labor Relations on her boss, and they replaced

[Ryan Graduski]

all those illegal labor workers with black workers. And they all got a job, they got a bump in pay, and the company's still in business. So, yeah, they bring up the worst with illegal labor, saying, you wouldn't want to do this.

[Co-host or Guest with Ryan Graduski]

And they bring up the best for H1B workers and say, you would want this person in your country. But neither one's actually very accurate.

[Ryan Graduski]

You go on to say, what did these people think American citizens would be working? What jobs did these people think American

[Co-host or Guest with Ryan Graduski]

citizens would be working?

[Ryan Graduski]

Government jobs. These policies in tandem have been a disaster for this country. Do you believe this was done intentionally

[Co-host or Guest with Ryan Graduski]

or in sheer incompetence?

[Ryan Graduski]

I think it was done both. I think that the overselling of free

[Co-host or Guest with Ryan Graduski]

trade to China was done out of incompetence. They really believed that this.

[Ryan Graduski]

I mean, it was the 90s.

[Co-host or Guest with Ryan Graduski]

They were high on the end of the Soviet Union. They were thinking that was the end of history, that the world was going only in one direction. They really misjudged the moment.

[Ryan Graduski]

I think that even if you can

[Co-host or Guest with Ryan Graduski]

go back, they probably would have changed things, knowing what they know now, but obviously can't.

[Ryan Graduski]

And then the other thing of. Of intentionally.

[Co-host or Guest with Ryan Graduski]

Yeah, I think the illegal immigration stuff is done intentionally, 100%. They want illegal aliens there. They want illegal aliens to work lower

[Ryan Graduski]

wage working jobs and they want to

[Co-host or Guest with Ryan Graduski]

displace Americans for those jobs because it increases the bottom line for them.

[Ryan Graduski]

That's it for this episode. If you like this podcast, please like and subscribe on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts and on YouTube and if you're really generous, please give me a review. It helps the podcast be seen by other people. Thank you guys. Have a great Wednesday.

[Co-host or Guest with Ryan Graduski]

See you guys on Friday.

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