E (2:44)

Extreme heat or extreme cold drives people crazy.

A (2:47)

Happy. I'm perfectly happy to go to the America as a lunatic asylum argument also, but I didn't even see that.

D (2:52)

Which Florida Frost.

A (2:55)

Oh, oh, oh, Maxwell Frost. Right. At the Sundance Film Festival. That is a weird story. So Maxwell Frost was the same thing.

C (3:05)

Was over immigration too, right? The guy yelled something about deporting Maxwell Frost.

A (3:11)

Yeah, yeah. Back to Florida, Alejandro Frost. I'll have you know he wants you to have.

E (3:17)

Can we not get off the Elon Omar weird story? Because first of all, no one should attack a public official. I don't care if you're from the right or the left. This is bad. And those Capitol Police have reported to Congress now in the last few years, just the rising number of threats against a bunch of our elected officials. It's bad.

A (3:33)

Astronomically rising.

E (3:35)

Like, yes, really?

A (3:36)

It's terrible.

E (3:37)

And I will say this about Ilhan Omar. One of the reasons I think she went back to her constituency and is hammering on this ice stuff is in part because she herself is dealing with a growing scandal. We had reports that the Biden administration's Justice Department was investigating her for campaign finance abuses and potential financial fraud. She. There are all kinds of dodgy companies she's affiliated with that have gone from, you know, having $10,000 in their bank account to 5 million in the course of a year. There's a weird fake winery involved. And so there's a lot of questionable financial deal which surround her right now. And so this moment comes a lot of the hostility and violence happening with regard to immigration enforcement is something I'm sure she's happy to talk about, because she doesn't seem to want to talk about these investigations which. Which are ongoing.

A (4:28)

Look, this is an important point, and it should be said that the investigation into Ilhan Omar that was referenced earlier this week started during the Biden administration and not the Trump administration, which suggests that the evidence that was brought to the Justice Department was sufficiently powerful to get them to even consider taking a look at a sitting member of Congress, which is not something that you want to do at the Justice Department, particularly if it's a member of Congress of your own party. That is a discomfiting thing. It may not be entirely clear to people how, because our politics are so contentious now, how violative that is, of a kind of unspoken pact between the executive and legislative branches of Congress that, you know, they're supposed to leave each other alone to a certain extent and self police to a certain extent. So these matters are being taken seriously. Supposedly, the leaks favorable to Omar suggested that they have found. They haven't found anything yet, which you can assume is true because she's not been indicted. You know, if they found something, they would have indicted her or taken it to a grand jury or something like that. Okay, so. But the point, of course, is not her behavior. And the whole behavior of the Democratic Party on its back foot on immigration, trying to figure out an angle to move on Trump with righteous fury in a way that will stimulate Democratic and liberal outrage, has been a wild success. I think unquestionably, Trump's numbers on immigration have fallen. There is Democratic cohesion, if you listen to liberal podcasts over the last week, they have tipped in a way that really I haven't really seen since Charlottesville. They have tipped into the we are now living in a fascist state. We have to do whatever we can to save our country because Trump is going to cancel the 2028 elections and be president for life, or some variant of that idea. And they believe it. They're not saying it because they're playing games. They have talked themselves into the idea that what we are seeing here is a, you know, is incipient fascism and that therefore all forms of resistance are morally, maybe not all forms, but many forms of resistance are morally justified by the need to save the country. Which has, by the way, an interesting valence with classic conservative anti governmental thinking. Right, which is the Gadsden flag. And you know, they're coming at you. If they come to take your guns, you resist. You know, they, if they come to tax you unjustly, you resist. That's where the country comes from. So now it's, if they're coming to arrest Americans in a, you know, or to, you know, punish liberals or whatever it is, then you resist and you get the cosplaying and, you know, and confrontations that are partially responsible for the deaths of these two Americans in, in Minneapolis over the past to weeks. I just think as a psyop and as a. It is having exactly the effect that it is intended to have. It has gotten right into the Democratic and liberal bloodstream. It is going to keep their electoral enthusiasm to vote out Republicans at a very high level unless Trump can really change the subject. And I don't know anybody.

D (8:42)

Well, I just, I see it as less of a Democratic psyop than a Trump own goal. I mean, I think he's sort of done the work here more than they have or ICE has or Kristi Noem has or, you know, they have sort of made it so easy for Democrats and liberals to get this story, to give this story traction and let it rise and rise and rise.

A (9:16)

I think that's absolutely true. But it is the fact that a judge, a Democratic elected judge in Milwaukee, tried to abet the escape of an illegal immigrant from her courtroom where she was going to be hearing a case relating to his deportation. Hannah Dugan, who has been convicted of a crime and has resigned her judgeship, that, that is like, you could sort of see how that played in her head. Almost like a movie, right? She had this moment of choice. A person is being brought in by the thugs. What is she going to do? Is she just gonna Sit there. The law will oblige her to find that this person needs to be deported. So rather than have to apply this law, which she believes is unjust, she's going to open the back door and let him run out of her chambers into the street and therefore fulfill her understanding of the higher morality here. And that's going on every day in the minds of everyone who is not a paid agitator in Minnesota, which by the way, is probably quite a lot of people getting them, you know, getting the money, you know, from the NGOs and foundations and things like that. But it's not, you know, hundreds of thousands of people. That's thousands, probably close to thousands of people, but you know, who are, who are in this because it's now their career. But they are all part of a morality play that they are engaging in and the manipulation of their emotions, which is genuine, is been very effective.

C (11:03)

There's some kind of self fulfilling prophecy to this too, isn't there? I mean like there's some, some way that you tell people that they're in an existential struggle and an existential struggle emerges, you know, like prefab, you know, people. And then, you know, ICE officers start behaving as though, you know, they're being targeted by people who think they're Nazis and so start, you know, playing to form and whatever. There's a whole, there's a whole, you know, aspect of this that is you, you very quickly can become the mask you're wearing. And that's not a play on the ice masks, you know, and all that. But like there is a self fulfilling prophecy element to, you know, to pretending that you're in, you know, pre war Germany or Weimar Germany and you're, you know, it's up to you to save the world. You've gone back in time and you have to kill baby Hitler.

F (11:53)

Right?

A (11:53)

I mean, Eliana, sorry, I do think.

B (11:57)

Abe really has a point here. It is January 28 today and on December 28, the major national news story was the bonanza of welfare program fraud perpetrated mostly by members of the Somali community in Minnesota that was put on the national radar by City Journal story by Chris Ruffo and Ryan Thorpe and followed by the viral YouTube video by the MAGA YouTuber Nick Shirley. And that handed the administration an enormous opportunity to knock Minnesota Governor Tim Walz and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Fry on their heels. And indeed we. Tim Walls has since announced he will not run for a third term because of this. And what they did with that opportunity was announced this surge in immigration enforcement. They directly connected the two. And that appears to, they may, they may be right on the merits to enforce the immigration laws. But it has had the practical effect of, of pushing these headlines about the Somali public programs fraud out of totally off the radar. I mean, I think, I think that will not redound to the benefit. And in fact, that does not redound to the benefit of the administration. Nobody's talking about it anymore. And by the way, Ilhan Omar, who has been asked very few questions about any of this fraud, none of the mainstream media reporting. I read a line in the New York Times story that said that while Trump is connecting her to this fraud, there's no evidence to date that connects her to it. And that, you know, one could argue about that. But she did film a video inside the major site of the Feeding Our Future, the safari restaurant that was the main site of the Feeding Our Future fraud. And no mainstream reporters have asked her, what were you doing there? Why did you film that video? How well did you know the fraudsters? And this is now essentially out of the headlines.

E (14:28)

I just an interesting. Oh, go ahead.

D (14:30)

I just want to add one point to this, to the administration's own goal here. I think the really crazy, stupid aspect of this is that Trump himself, to some extent, number of his visors, Bavino types, whomever else, they get a thrill out of the accusation that they are fascists. They think that this is their sort of like, I don't know, it's almost like they're playing Nick Fuentes, you know, like they like to, they think this gives them an aura of power when they are accused of being stormtroopers and fascists and they play into it.

E (15:16)

So there's also a risk here for Democrats because as we saw with the last government shutdown negotiations where they focused on the affordability of healthcare, which a lot of Americans were open to this idea that it was worth shutting the government down. Now they're talking about shutting the government down over deficits, funding, ICE and border Patrol. And I think that's going to, that that's an area where they might overreach because affordability remains the main concern of voters heading into this midterm election this year. And this is not really an affordability issue. This is an ideological issue. And they're going to find themselves, I think, particularly pushed by their more extreme members of Congress into arguing for the open borders style, you know, no human is illegal kind of mindset if they want to push this in, into the debate about government shutdown. So there are Risks on the other side for Democrats as well, getting a little too entrenched and a little too enthusiastic about the media reporting about how upset people are about ice. So I'm watching that closely to see how it impacts the negotiations over, over the shutdown.

A (16:20)

Right.

B (16:21)

The hurdles is that ICE and Border Patrol are already funded exactly. Over this. And I think that will not play well.

E (16:30)

Right.

B (16:30)

Particularly a week out from a major snowstorm that has caused power outages all over the country.

A (16:38)

The own goal thing is very interesting because imagine a world in which all of the action is Hannah Dugan, the judge, letting the guy out the side door. Complaints by Democrats about the systematic enforcement of existing US Law regarding, regarding illegal immigrants or people who are in the country in violation of our laws. The rhetoric of the fascist tyranny, people being met by sort of calm deliberation on the part of the executive branch officials who will just say we are simply following the law, which taken to its logical limit, says there should be no illegal person ins our borders in the United States. That's why they're, that's why they're illegal. That's why they're, you know, and so you can play with vocabulary all you like and say, I don't want to call them illegal. I'll call them undocumented. If they're undocumented, they're also not allowed to be here legally. Handled with calm command and authority. You leave the people who basically are saying, I don't think anybody should, no one is born illegal or whatever, you leave them in the position of looking like the radicals. What the administration seems to have done is to be taking the radical, being the radical outside of the national consensus player in this moral pageant.

D (18:24)

They enjoy.

A (18:25)

That took some doing. That took some doing.

E (18:29)

Okay, but the, but Abe's point that they enjoy it is important because I think first term Trump, there were a lot, there were some MAGA supporters who always enjoyed that and wanted to see more of that from the administration. Second term Trump, they're in the administration and it's not just the cabinet level people. It's a lot of the hires that came in at the mid level and lower level support staff type, the younger Republicans. And you know, there's this recent story in the New York Times about some of the social media activity, particularly from Department of Labor, Department of Homeland Security, that seem to be signaling certain white nationalist messages. Now, I will never underestimate the New York Times ability to throw itself on a fainting couch about anything cultural regarding the right and their, their often misguided attempts to make a mountain out of a molehill. But in this case it's pretty clear and the signals are really loud about what whatever junior staffer is running some of these social media accounts hopes to be putting out there in the world, knowing that there are people on the right who will hear this message about the homeland and about re migration and they will know exactly what those words and songs and memes mean. And that didn't happen in first term Trump. And I think that's the point where the Bovino Stephen Miller types, they are very well aware of that audience. And so when they what seems like cosplay is in fact an appeal to that group, and that group is, as we've discussed many times on the podcast, really toxic. If you, if you're a conservative looking at that, you're like this, these people have no place in a conservative movement. But we're not talking about a conservative movement, we're talking about a populist right. So that's worth keeping an eye on as well. Especially as we think about who will emerge for 2028 as a presidential contender on the right.

F (20:14)

Look after the January that we've had with the cold and the snow and all of that, can anything sound more enticing than a wonderful pair of pajamas for you to get yourself all warm and cuddly in? I don't think so. And that's why I want to talk to you about Cozy Earth and its bamboo pajama set, which it is now offering on sale through February 8th. This is a classic Cozy Earth favorite, the sleepwear upgrade you'll love slipping into night after night. It's lightweight but cozy, effortlessly soft. Helps you fall asleep faster, stay comfortable longer. It's designed to drape beautifully and sleep cooler than cotton. Keeps your temperature just right without overheating. Thoughtful, comfortable and easy to love. Perfect for gifting someone special and for treating yourself to better rest. I mean, this is a way you can show love to people this month, particularly given how hard things have been. And it's a way of showing that your home can be a haven of love and care. The quality is exceptional, the comfort is undeniable, and the impact on your mood is lasting. A piece of luxury whether you're on the go or at home. It is a risk free purchase because it's a hundred night trial. You get to try it out. If you don't love them, return them hassle free. Trust me, you won't want to. And there's a 10 year warranty because once you feel this level of comfort, you'll want it to last a decade. So look, this is a deal only available from January 25th to February 8th. Head to cozyearth.com and use my Cozy Code commentary bogo to get these PJs for you and someone you love. And if you get a post purchase survey, be sure to mention you heard about Cozy Earth right here. So celebrate everyday love with comfort that makes the little moments count. With Cozy Earth.

A (22:13)

You know, colder days, New Year, it's.

G (22:16)

Been a cold winter. This is the moment your winter wardrobe really has to deliver. And if you're craving a winter reset, start with pieces truly made to last season after season. And you know I'm going to tell you that you need to talk to Quince. Quince brings together premium materials, thoughtful design and enduring quality so you stay warm, look sharp and feel your best all season long. Not only do I have a Quint's puffer jacket, but after I had such a great experience with the puffer jacket, I got my son Isaac the same puffer jacket.

A (22:46)

Isn't that an amazing thing?

G (22:48)

Isn't that an endorsement? That's what I call an endorsement. So look, I've had the sweaters. I now have the puffer jacket.

A (22:55)

Get them, trust me.

G (22:56)

Each piece made from premium materials by trusted factories that meet rigorous standards for craftsmanship and ethical production. And that outerwear really is especially impressive. Down jackets, wool coats, Italian leather outerwear that keep you warm when it's actually cold. Classic styles you'll love that hold up year after year. So refresh that winter wardrobe with quince. Go to quince.com commentary for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. Quince.com commentary now available in Canada too. That's Q U I n c e.com/comMENTARY.

B (23:37)

Often actually were around in first term Trump, but mainstream media coverage often had success in getting them pushed out. And I think that has changed in the second administration where the people were hired. Either the administration wasn't aware of their views or they were hired because of these views. But there's certainly much more acceptance. And I also think between the two administrations, these kind of white nationalists edgy views among young conservatives have taken a hold because it's considered transgressive. The Overton window has shifted and they're much more popular among young people on on the far right who are eager to serve the administration. It's considered cool and edgy in many circles. And by the way, this was not at all limited to it's not not especially a Trump Thing. It's a thing on the right. And we saw the DeSantis campaign be bedeviled by this as well.

C (24:45)

I mean, I mean, there was, there's an echo to this in, in the, in that first term with Dan Scavino, right? That was, there was, that first term was full of Dan Scavino trolling or trawling, I should say, the, you know, the far reaches of, of, you know, right wing online discourse and coming up with, you know, videos of, you know, supposedly of migrants doing something in London, right. And then posting it and then Trump getting into a fight with the mayor of London publicly over, you know, a video of, you know, this migrant stuff or whatever that he found who knows where. There was a lot of that. There was also, even during the campaign, it was like, you know, I assume the, this, that Jewish star slash sheriff star thing didn't originate with Trump necessarily. I think that, you know, his social media team were like, oh, post, we found this great image, use it and it, you know, it has a Jewish star. And it left Trump having to try to argue that it was a sheriff star or something like that. There's a lot less of the, of the explaining and defensiveness this time around.

E (25:51)

You know, it's also now officially on federal government social media accounts, which it wasn't in the first term. This was all going on, you know, at the staff level. This is being posted on the Department of Labor social media channel and on the Department of Homeland Security's media channel. And that is, I think that shows exactly what you're. What both Elian and Seth are saying, which is that that window has shifted the acceptance. It's actually now a positive in some, on some views of the right to do this openly rather than to keep it hidden.

C (26:21)

Yeah, exactly. It's no longer like, oh, Dan must have pulled that video from, from, from Reddit or 4chan. I'm gonna, I'm gonna go tell him not to do that.

A (26:30)

Look, the desire to say that I will not be governed by the left liberal cultural consensus or the domination of our cultural messaging on the part of young people on the right is real and understandable and dates back to my youth four decades ago. I think I've told this story before that somebody at the University of Chicago when I was there, and I've never found out whom, but I bet that person, if that person is still alive, might be a listener to this podcast. So email me and we can have a. We can, you know, we can reminisce about the Swift Building's coffee Shop and others. But somebody started putting up posters at the University of Chicago claiming to be a member of something called the bourgeois capitalist running dog lackey Society, you know, and said things like with a program like we should use the poor for firewood and stuff like that. So what was that? That was 1979, 1980. That was early anti PC, before there was. Before PC was even a term. And the idea that, you know, we were supposed to all bow and you know, pay obeisance to every liberal shibboleth, left wing sentimental appeal to our emotions and that we weren't. Not only are we. We were going to have none of it, but we would like spoof it, we would parody it. We would. And we would be like sort of Iago, like, if you're gonna treat me like a villain, very well, then I'll take the pleasure of being a villain and make fun of you and have fun with this. That's 45 years ago. So it's not like this anti left impulse to say, not only am I not gonna like go by the ideas in John Lennon's song Imagine or Barack Obama's book list or whatever, but I'm gonna. I'm going to go totally the other way because you don't get to have all the fun saying you're any gender you want to be and you can dress any way that you want to dress. And we're supposed to accept that you get all the cultural garlands and we get nothing. The problem is that transgression is a form of cosplay. But it starts to reflect on other people who are not transgressive, who share a lot of the ideas that you might have or are affiliated or associated with you. And then you have to spend all this time apologizing for them. Which again happened to me in the early 80s when as the founder of one of the first or second, the first or second conservative college publication in the United States, a magazine called Counterpoint, we were there and the Dartmouth Review was there. And the Dartmouth Review started getting all this incredibly negative attention for publishing articles about, you know, in ebonics, written in jive. And I ended up in my senior year in college going on the Today show with an editor from the Dartmouth Review. And we were in the Green room, and we were there to discuss this phenomenon of the young new conservative publications on campus. And we actually got into a fight in the green room, which I said, why are you doing? Like, do you understand that your nonsense. Like I have to go around apologizing for your nonsense. I'm trying to publish this highbrow, sophisticated publication. I have to answer for your, like, do you have any sense of responsibility that you're part of a larger project? And you know, he was like, ah, you have no sense of humor, whatever. That guy's now priest, by the way. So I don't know how he feels.

E (30:47)

There is, there is one difference I think now, and that's that all of us who fought the first round of the political correctness wars in the 80s and in the 90s and in the early 2000s, they, the current young radicalized right that Eliana was describing, they think we lost that battle and they have contempt for the institutions that we established to fight that battle. And they look at those institutions and they have two responses. Destroy them because they're just as bad as what they were fighting. Ideas don't matter. Or number two, take over those institutions, like say the Harvard Salient recently and turn it into a neo Nazi, you know, edgelord style institution itself. So they, they dislike us as much as they dislike the left. And that is a big shift, I think, in terms of bringing them back to some sort of argument where you can ha. Where you can sit across in the same room or in front of the same cameras and have a debate about the ideas. And the ideas matter seem to matter less to them than the edginess and the access to power. And those two things do not have long term positive impacts on movements. And I think there were a lot of failures on the part of those of us who were fighting. Yes, maybe we were too acquiescent and didn't radicalize the institutions enough on our side. Whatever. There are lots of ways to go back and look at it, but that strikes me as a real distinction from when those of us who got in the trenches decades ago. The idea we had was to rescue these institutions from themselves. They seem to want to destroy the institution.

A (32:22)

And I have more sympathy for the idea that some of these institutions should be destroyed, that they cannot be reformed and rescued. And there were people who certainly thought that they should be destroyed back then. But just to give you an idea of how odd that impulse was in the 80s when the, when the boundaries of American political, you know, sort of like what was in bounds could be the Heritage foundation, which was then sort of like a young scrappy Washington player only 10 years old. One of the big fights that Heritage decided to take on was the idea that the State Department was hopelessly compromised was basically the deep state, what we would now call the deep state. It was run by People who had a permanent understanding of American interests and foreign policy that were hostile to the Reagan administration's belief that we needed to confront the Soviets and fight for the contras and various other things. And their determination was that they made a huge case out of Ronald Reagan firing Secretary of State George Shultz. That was Heritage's position, was that Reagan should fire Schultz because he was at the top of this deep state bureaucracy. Schultz was one of the four or five greatest secretaries of state in the history of this country with an astonishing record. He had not been secretary, say for that long when this happened, when the war on Schultz happened, from the Heritage Foundation. But far from being a kind of quiescent get along to go along guy with the liberal consensus, he was a cold warrior. He was. He articulated, in a series of speeches overseen by the late Peter Rodman, articulated a view of American foreign policy and how it could be transformative for the world. Bringing freedom to the world, securing America's interests and the effort to fund the contras and fight communism in Central America came under his aegis in the Latin American bureau of the State Department, then being run by my brother in law, Elliott Abrams. So I'm bringing this up only to say that the project of dealing with a permanent bureaucracy that might be hostile to conservative interests was there four decades ago, but it can be run wrong like that. You can get it wrong. And, you know, saying you needed to destroy the, you know, the state, you needed to take on the State Department by taking out George Shultz was exactly the wrong approach to revolutionizing the State.

C (35:26)

Department, especially because Schultz wasn't. Schultz wasn't the Foreign Service officer who worked his way up through. He wasn't like a representative of the culture of the State Department.

A (35:36)

He came in from the outside, the Secretary of Labor.

C (35:38)

Beheading the State Department when Schultz was there would have done nothing to the internal culture.

A (35:43)

Right. Anyway. But my point is that you can have the right idea, which is that institutional hostility to conservative ideas became a really major problem beginning in the late 1960s. And how to deal with that phenomenon has been one of the most complicated aspects of being on the right in the course of my adult lifetime. And nobody has the answer. There is no answer. But the idea that because we didn't have all the answers that we contributed to the problem is a very interesting thing that happened on the right in 20, and I think probably exacerbated by the fact that people like us looked at January 6th and said, this is a terrible thing. This was a terrible thing. And Trump behaved wildly, irresponsibly, and I certainly believe that he should have been convicted in an impeachment trial and all of that. And so the people who are inclined to look at January 6th and say, you see, they were, they're fighting against the deep state, look at this and say, well, then we're actually active. They're active enemies, and we should be taken down along with them. I'm sure Stephen Miller believes that. Loves to throw people under the bus, it turns out. So he wanted to throw us under the bus, and now he wants to throw DHS under the bus because he issued a statement last night saying he had been given bum information. When he said that, you know, that Mr. Preddy was a, was an assassin, that wasn't his fault. Of course it was his fault. I don't care whether, whether he got information from on the ground in Minneapolis that said that Preddy was an assassin. He should have kept his mouth shut. He had no reason to believe in an hour after the shooting that they had any firm knowledge of what Preddy was or was not doing. But now that, now that there's real trouble and Trump is clearly putting people in the crosshairs to say, what have you done to me and why, why have you screwed up my number one issue? Miller's like, wasn't me, it was them. I didn't do it. Very courageous, very. Just really solid manly behavior on the part of Mr. Testosterone with no Hair.

D (38:13)

I think on this question of reforming or destroying institutions, I fear we're giving certain aspects of the new ride, whatever you want to call them, we're taking them more seriously than we should. And what I mean by that is, I think what's really happening here or what has happened is that for so long, the right and conservatives could make no inroads into the popular culture. It's like it was so dominated by liberals and anything around the sort of liberal world. There used to be attempts at like, like right wing comedy shows, and they were terrible. They were exactly what you would think they would be. And then.

A (39:06)

They figured out, people on.

D (39:08)

The right figured out transgression. Be transgressive, be transgressive. And that in combination with new media and new forms of media, suddenly they had inroads straight into the popular culture. And that became a sort of runaway phenomenon, the transgression. And it's like still going on. It's no longer about capturing eyes and ears through media. It's sort of infected policy and messaging and everything. It's become like, finally we found purchase We've got something. We've got something sexy. The left had everything sexy up until now. What did we had? We have tax cuts and, you know, now we've got this sexy thing. And they can't. They don't want to let that go at any cost.

E (40:07)

And with. Along with that, as our former colleague Noah Rothman wrote about at book length, they embraced some victimology, which was also a very effective tool on the left that now has been embraced on the right to. To obvious detriment for those of us who think this is not the way to go about winning. Winning a cultural war. But, yes.

C (40:27)

And can I go back to the narrative thing? The, the, the somebody on the ground told me he was an assassin, that that is, you know, at the center of a lot of the fights within, you know, these agencies. Now, the, the, the. I want to call back to this New York Times story recently about, you know, where they talk to agents about what happened after Charlie Kirk was shot, on the day that he was shot. And they describes a, a, a, a. An A source describes to the Times what a call was like on the day that Charlie Kirk was shot in Salt Lake City. And he says this, and then it turns surreal. He and Bongino, this, Dan Bongino, start talking about their Twitter strategy. And Cash is like, I'm going to tweet this. Salt Lake. You tweet that. By Salt Lake, he means the federal agent in charge of the. On the ground in Salt Lake City. Salt Lake. You tweet that, Dan, you then come in with this. Then I'll come back with this. They're literally scripting out their social media, not talking about how we're going to respond or resources or the situation. He's screaming that he wants to put stuff out, but it's not even vetted yet. That, to me, is. Was, you know, maybe he's not telling the truth about that call, but, boy, doesn't that sound convincing. To everything we've seen from them so far, which is something big happens, and Cash Patel or somebody at his station gets on the horn and says, let's talk about Twitter strategy and what we're going to say. And the focus is on immediately getting something out there, right? Even if they're planning the Twitter strategy, even if they're. They're scripting out. You know, I say this, and then the, you know, Salt Lake City branch of the FBI Twitter account says this. And then Dan Bongino, you say that even if it's all scripted, the whole point is to get stuff out Right away, something happens, and the first voices heard need to be the somebody from the administration casting judgment and trying to set the narrative. And that instinct has been everywhere with them lately, and it has bitten them in the rear every time.

A (42:36)

I have no problem with the idea that when a national crisis ensues or that unexpected moment of horror ensues, that we need to hear from people in authority that they are on the job, which they can do by saying, we are on the job. We are not going to rest until we find the killer. And we are going. We are taking this as seriously as anything can be taken. Help is on the way. The American justice system will prevail. Assassins will not win. That's all trying at that point.

E (43:19)

Our government's being run by the people who are going to find the real killer, John. That's the difference.

A (43:23)

See? Okay, that's exactly right. You don't need to spin it then. You can. It's okay to have a little patience. You have a placeholder, right? You have a. You say the thing that needs to be said so that it's there. And it's not like, where's the administration? They're not saying anything. They're not doing anything. You want to go on the. You want to go aggressive and say, Charlie Kirk was assassinated because the left has gone too far and has made him. Made him a target and all of that. You can do that 24 hours later. You can say stuff about even Alex pretty 24 hours later. The impulse to say the thing first on social media that will be the most viral is a bizarre one because you're the administration. It's going to go viral. It's a statement from the President or his people, and millions of people are going to see it. Even if it's just the word test, you know, just a mistake, like, you're just making sure that this MIC is on. 20 million people are going to hear you say, is this thing on? So you don't have to be provocative. You already have control of the microphone and you have a place in the debate. And they continue to behave as though they are struggling to get attention. And it is as though they would prefer to be on the outside looking in rather than being on the. On the inside, where you know what you have to show results, which, of course, they did or they didn't. I don't know who. I don't know who exactly was responsible for, you know, arresting Tyler Robinson, but, I mean, if they had just kept quiet and then waited, and the first major thing they said is we got him. We've gotten the assassin. Boy, what an interesting fact pattern it is to see that we've uncovered with this assassin. And then you wouldn't have all this garbage that you have to clear out of the way so that the actual thing that happened is the subject rather than your response to the thing. Does that, does that make sense?

C (45:48)

Yeah, I mean, the narratives, the instinct to set the narrative is, is, is understandable, but it's for political operatives and political animals to do that. It's, that's their roles for different people in politics. And they're upset that they feel the left is able to, better able to jump on things and set the narrative. In part because outside of social media, the media ecosystem is, you know, still favors, they, they feel. Still favors left, but they, but they're, they were outside the government. They were just Cash Patel doing stuff like that. And now he's FBI Director Cash Patel. And that's the huge difference is that it's fine to, you know, when you're not the FBI director, you want to argue with people immediately on Twitter.

G (46:33)

Yeah.

C (46:33)

In an attempt to stop the, the blame from immediately being put on conservatives. I mean, this was the fight over Jimmy Kimmel. Right. He, he went out there and he said, well, it's, it's got to be one of these Nazi conservatives, whatever. That's what they don't want. That's what bothers them. But they are now FBI Chief Cash Patel, not guy on Internet Cash Patel.

A (46:56)

Okay, but roll back the tape to Jimmy Kimmel because it's exactly analogous to things that are happening in Minneapolis. If you roll back the tape, you say, we're going to get the guy and this is a horrible tragedy and we're all heartbroken. And he was a great man. And you know, look at the children. He's left his chill. You know, his children have been left fatherless and his wife has made a wit, you know, and the conservative Charlie Kirk, not Jimmy Kimmel, no Charlie Kirk. And the woman will never be the same. It's like, what's happened to Jimmy, I'm sorry, and the world will never be the same. And then Jimmy Kimmel gets up and says, oh, it's got to be a right wing lunatic. And then your response, rather than saying the FCC chairman is going to say he should be destroyed and we're going to make sure that he never gets on the air again or anything like that, the response is, I can't believe that anybody would do, say something so repulsive and irresponsible. How, how can this be? How ashamed should Jimmy Kimmel be of his petulance and how, how blinded he is by his own hateful ideology and let him hang by, you know, be hung on his own petard like, you don't have to go and then punch him in the face. He just punched himself in the face. He just did himself enormous damage. They don't appreciate the prospect that the American public will be able to, you know, like, make its own, come to its own proper conclusions. And they turned him into a free speech martyr.

E (48:47)

Well, and they even at, at a small level, and Eliana brought this up when we were right before we started recording the New York Times story about the social, the sort of right wing nationalist winking in the Trump social media accounts. The Times reporter called DHS spokesperson and asked, you know, look, here's this, here's this Instagram reel you're playing, this song you're doing. These are obviously, you know, what do you have to respond to that? And she said, no, we didn't, no we didn't. Even though, so this is, it struck me as being so reflective of how the Biden administration responded to questions about things it was doing. It's like, no, we didn't do that when it's right in front of us. And so they start to look like they're gaslighting themselves, they're gaslighting the public. When we can see, we can look at that and find that. And then they took it down, which again, another, another pretty common tactic in these, in these PR type campaigns. But this is the federal government and they're putting stuff on a taxpayer funded account that is supposed to represent our entire country. They absolutely have to answer questions about what the purpose of those posts was, whether they knew all these things. And it might seem like a tiny little nitpicky thing in the Times going after Trump, blah, blah, blah, but it's not. It actually does matter how they respond when they're questioned about their motivations, when, when it comes to spending our money and representing us as Americans in federal institutions.

A (50:09)

Look, the person that you're referring to is Trisha McLaughlin, the spokesman at DHS, who is a very nice person. I was on Halperin's, you know, Two Way with her a couple of times. Very, very nice person. Twice this week she has gone in front of the cameras or whatever, gone in the world and said things that were turned out to be wildly untrue. This was one right where she said, no, it's not happening. And they're like, what?

G (50:40)

Oh.

A (50:42)

Let'S watch this together and you'll see that, you know, the white nationalist song is playing in the background of the ad with the slogan from the white nationalist song. Prior day stories are coming out that, that Kristi Noem, her boss, has been sidelined and that Greg Bevino has been cashiered. And she goes on social media and says, this is not true. No one has done it. Nothing has changed. Everything is the same either because Noem said you go out there and you say nothing has changed, or Corey Lewandowski said you go out there and say nothing has changed. And she like obediently typed into Twitter that nothing had changed. So she then becomes an embarrassed person when an hour later Trump brings Noam and Lewandowski into his office and says, you're out. Tom Wartime Consular, I'm Homan.

B (51:37)

Yeah, look, the Beacon has had its disagreements with Trisha McLaughlin when she was repping Vivek Ramaswamy on the campaign. I will say when she came to the, I'm not sure she was coming to defense of Bovino, but I think she was trying to parse claims that he was going to be fired from the claim that he was being removed from Minnesota and sent to California. And you know, play around with that and say he, it is, you know, it's wrong. He's not being fired to create the impression that he is not being demoted by being pulled from Minnesota.

A (52:21)

Okay. But even that is a false impression because he was being demoted and he is retiring apparently. So he was, he is being correct.

B (52:29)

But I don't think it's not crazy. That is like the job of the spokesman for DHS to be like, everything is fine here. And that, that's not a lie. You know, that's like play. If I was doing the job, I would play the same word games. And look, she, she did say BS when she was working for Ramaswamy and we classed with her. So yeah, I'm not beyond calling her out, but I get it. I would have, I would have done the same thing in her position. And, and yes, like the Times caught her. She was caught red handed with the Times and they went and deleted the post. And, and yikes.

A (53:06)

Okay, I do disagree with you. I think it's not her fault because she is a spokesman. It's not her fault because she's a spokesman and she does what she is. She goes out and phrases things that she is told to put out. There, there is a, there is a cleanup on aisle four.

B (53:26)

What's her job to figure out how to phrase the Things.

A (53:28)

Yeah, well, okay, I'm not sure that the way. I'm just saying it goes to the general credibility and this question of. Absolutely, you don't have to say any. This is, the point is, yeah, you can say everything. You don't have to say anything when the picture is muddy. Don't muddy it more. You're gonna, it's, you're gonna lose credibility if you muddy it more. And then now the claim would be by the people who want to defend her, defend this strategy like it's not being muddied. And you're only saying that because you're part of the UNI party and you want to destroy all of our transgressive, wonderful new talent in favor of your old, stupid, losing ways, which is sort of like what Christine was saying. You guys all sucked at this and you let the left take everything over. And now we're going to come in and show you how it's done. Okay, you're showing me how it's done. Great job, everybody. You're really showing me how it's done. I'm really, you know what? If you were doing great and Trump was at 55% approval rating and everybody was just really enjoying the way that all of this was going, then I would probably have to be silent and say, you know what? I really, we got it wrong. We were too careful, we were too cautious, and we're too responsible and too sober and all of that. And, you know, this is what people want, freewheeling craziness. And you got to participate in it. I don't think the record is showing that this is a particularly good PR communications or general approach. Whether or not it's moral or immoral is a different question. But of course, power is amoral. And so, you know, the exercise of power to advance your aims, if it works, it works. And there's no arguing with success. But there's also, there's plenty of arguing with failure. And what we have here is a, seems to be a semi systemic failure. When you can create a timeline, as I've been trying to do here on the show of the last year, in which Trump's immigration policy is an unalloyed success, that changes the entire way that everybody talks about this issue for a generation to come. And in the last month that has been totally upended.

B (55:53)

The person who's been a really excellent communicator, and I'm repeating myself because I said it yesterday on this is Tom Homan. And he was out front talking about Minnesota and reporting publicly on his reports on meetings with Minnesota Governor Tim Walz and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Fry. And he sounded sober and responsible. And it does seem like the administration is now getting things back on track in Minnesota or 24 hours in. And it is notable that Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Fry came out of that meeting and his public statement was, no, we will not enforce federal immigration law in Minneapolis. And so by contrast, we had Homan sounding sober and the Minneapolis mayor sounding like a lunatic. And I think that is where the administration wants things to be.

A (56:53)

Right, exactly.

C (56:55)

And also they're getting pleas from the party too, which is the other thing, is that Mike Lawlor is writing, writes an op ed. Mike Lawler was a New York congressman fighting to keep his seat, writes an op ed in the New York Times saying, we got to do something else here. Thom Tillis, who, at least for now, represents the kind of seat that would be, you know, a swing. I mean, Tillis himself is not, you know, in the fight that Lawler is in, obviously, but he represents the kind of seat that anybody, any Republican who holds that and would be running for reelection would be nervous about this, you know, and he's going off on Kristi Noem and the leadership and stuff like that. And you have a Republican, Republican candidate for, for governor in Minnesota. Not a high profile guy. I'm not, you know, it wasn't an earthquake. But a Republican candidate for governor in Minnesota ended his campaign two days ago and said, I can't, I can run in this environment. I can't run as a Republican for, you know, for governor of Minnesota. Amid all this, they've made it literally impossible. So, you know, that, that, that is, that is the sort of thing that those conversations start having privately. But then it's like, you know, people are dropping out of, you know, races. And we've watched people, you know, also Republicans do have a retirement problem in Congress that's not specifically about ice, but it is connected to the larger problem of the positions that they keep getting put in.

A (58:26)

I should say, by the way, that while Fry sounds like a lunatic, he's right on the law. The localities are not obliged to enforce federal immigration law. There's a court decisions in 2021 have made that evidently the case. They don't, they are, they're not obliged.

B (58:47)

He just should in this case.

A (58:50)

Well, that means he doesn't have to make a local arrest for a federal crime in this circumstance. In other words, this is a federalism issue. However, that doesn't mean he can say, I'm not going to enforce immigration. I'm not going to enforce federal immigration law.

E (59:12)

But he's not enforcing local laws. He's not enforcing the local laws.

A (59:16)

Right. Against blocking streets and against, against, you know, harassing. Harassing law enforcement, law enforcement, or harassing anybody. You're not allowed to, you know, individual citizens aren't allowed to harass other individuals. Citizens or, you know, impede their access to things.

B (59:33)

And I also believe that Walls and Fry want these violent confrontations to continue. I believe that they believe it redounds to their political benefit. And the Trump administration has said that if Walls and Fry cooperate with ice, if they end the resistance, ICE will pull out of the state. And they've said no, which leads me to believe that they. That they believe the mayhem and the chaos that is funded by the ford foundation, the MacArthur foundation, they've got all these activists on the ground there and coordinated by them is a political boon for the left.

A (60:16)

I just don't think there's any question that that's right, and it's incredibly irresponsible. But you've summed it up, you know, in a. In a nutshell. So quick, Christine, you thought you might have a recommendation.

E (60:32)

I do. I'm almost done with it. Yeah, I. So, because we're 250th anniversary, I've got one for tomorrow.

A (60:39)

Okay.

E (60:40)

We have this 250th anniversary coming up, and there's a lot of discussion of the founding and our founding principles and the American Revolution. And they're wonderful. There are many wonderful books about the American Revolution. You all were talking about Gordon Wood last week. I, you. Everyone should read everything Gordon Wood has written. But there is a book that I found useful because it was much more. It's much more brutal, but it also adds a. A particular chapter to the story of the revolution that I think we forget, which is that it was a bloody war and that there was a lot of violence and there was a lot of difficulty post war integrating the former Loyalist into the new American nation. And it was a really difficult struggle. And I think we often err on the side of a sanitized version of that history because the founding principles are so important to us. But it's also important to understand what a real war looks like and what a real battle in one's own country looks like. We spent a lot of time historically looking at the effects of the Civil War, but there's a book that actually does this for the revolution. It's called Scars of Independence, America's Violent Birth by Holder Hook. I think you pronounce his name H O O C K. And it came out of, I don't know, more than 10 years ago now. But I went back. I had. I had skimmed it when it first came out, but I went. My old history professor recommended looking at it again. He's teaching a class on the revolution this semester, and he reread it, and he's like, you got to reread this. You got to get. Americans need this reminder of just how violent and difficult and challenging this revolution was so that we stop pretending like revolution is something we cosplay and something. That's me editorializing. He didn't say that. But it. It really brought to mind, given how much we're discussing political violence these days, that we really never want to get back to a position where we're fighting each other in this. In this way. And so this book is.

G (62:36)

It can.

E (62:36)

It can be difficult reading.

A (62:38)

It's.

E (62:38)

It's. Does not spare any descriptions about what a bayonet does to a human body, for example, But I would recommend it for people who are trying to round out their view of the history of the revolutionary period. If you've read all the Gordon Wood and you've read all of the, you know, biographies of George Washington, those are great. But you should also probably read Scars of Independence by Holger. I guess it's Holger Hook. H O O C K. It's worth. It's worth revisiting that part of our past as well.

A (63:08)

Great. Okay. We'll be back tomorrow. For Christine, Seth, Eliana, and Abe, I'm John Podworth's Keep the Candle Burning.