The Revolution Will Be Staffed by PhDs (w/co-host Peter Meijer) - #564

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Revolution Will Be Staffed by PhDs (The Fifth Column, Ep. 564)

Date: July 2, 2026
Hosts: Kmele Foster, Michael Moynihan
Co-Hosts/Guests: Peter Meijer (former Congressman, guest co-host)

Episode Overview

This episode dives deep into the growing influence of academic elites and ideologues—specifically PhD students and progressive activists—in American politics. The hosts explore the intersection of ideology, policy, and political machinery, referencing recent election upsets, the emergence of socialist politics in municipal government, and the effects of ideological purity on both left and right. Central themes include political disillusionment, the hollow promises of both the progressive left and MAGA right, the dangers of academic isolation in politics, and the transformation/conflation of working class and activist representation.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Academic Left Ascending

• Moynihan describes the new left-leaning political wave as increasingly led by PhDs and academics rather than traditional union machines (13:13–14:50).
• "They're academics that are in echo chambers. And now they want to bring that to government. And it's an incredibly bad idea because, as Peter said, we have done that before and it keeps failing." — Michael Moynihan (14:40)
• Meijer underscores how this shift—DSA candidates, activists with little real-world experience—intensifies polarization and populist “burn-it-down” politics.

2. New York Progressivism, Fiscal Gimmicks, and the Myth of 'Balanced Budgets'

• Extended riff on NYC progressive Zoran Mamdani, with Moynihan mocking the performative politics (pool-jumping and the “Mayor” title), and dissecting his dubious claims about balancing NYC’s budget (6:23–8:54).
• “Not a single word of that tweet is true. And to see the credulous buffoons retweeting it…they solved it.” — Michael Moynihan (8:54)
• Peter Meijer points out the emptiness of “taxing the rich” rhetoric, and the real role of state bailouts and pension deferrals in balancing city budgets.
• Discussion of the “pied-à-terre tax” and the illusion of soaking only the super-rich (5:01–8:03).

3. Socialist Policy, Ideological Abstraction, and Evasion

• The group listens to and analyzes Mamdani’s words invoking Friedrich Hayek, ridiculing the perceived lack of real economic understanding and the reliance on ideology over specifics (9:20–10:47).
• Great line from Meijer: “When the facts help your argument, you want specifics. When the facts hurt your argument, you retreat to the safety of abstraction.” (47:29)

4. History Repeated: Socialism's Failures, Accelerationism, and Political Amnesia

• Moynihan draws analogies to past socialist and communist catastrophes, linking Colorado DSA candidate Milot Kiros' pro-DSA platform to ideological denial (12:20–13:37, 36:01–41:53).
• Critique of progressive candidates’ refusal (or inability) to denounce leftist or anti-Semitic violence.

5. Colorado-1 Democratic Primary: Upset, Social Media, and Anti-Semitism

• Deep-dive into the upset victory of Milot Kiros over incumbent Diana DeGette in CO-1, focusing on polling, “prediction markets,” and vacuum of effective opposition (34:01–41:30).
• Notable quote: “It’s vacuous and idiotic policy and all that. It is pretty, it is compelling…vaporware from a policy standpoint, but it’s engaging.”—Peter Meijer (40:01)
• Clips aired of Kiros dodging questions about 9/11 and anti-Semitic Boulder firebombing; panel lambastes progressive equivocation on anti-Jewish violence.
• “None of these fucking people can give a yes or no answer to any of these things.” — Peter Meijer (42:55)

6. Political Violence, Ideological Double Standards, and the Dangers of Relativism

• Moynihan: “They support violence. They care about ideology.”
• The hosts highlight how left accelerationist and activist circles sometimes rationalize or excuse violence, provided it’s committed for the 'right' cause (48:35–51:18).
• Comparison of leftist equivocation and right-wing violence, noting a shared tendency to rationalize extremism.

7. The Myth of the Working-Class Revolution

• The trio teases the “worker’s movement” bone fides of modern DSA progressives, noting that few have ever held traditional working-class jobs; most are academics or activists (13:13, 73:43–76:56).
• “They're going to revolution fantasy camp. They don't know working people. They pretend to know working people.” — Michael Moynihan (73:43)
• Meijer cites UAW's academic/statistics: soon less than half of its members will be industrial workers, with academia rising within union ranks.

8. Right-Wing Populism, Manufacturing, and Tariff Promises

• Analysis of MAGA populism, Trump's tariffs, and the political/structural impossibility of “bringing back” 1950s industrial economies (24:17–26:08).
• “The promises of the MAGA movement have been false in almost every way. They don't like data centers, they don't like AI, they don't like automation. They have a dream vision of America that once was and is never coming back.” — Michael Moynihan (28:23)
• Discussion with Meijer on automation, supply chains, and how current investments don't equate to mass ‘good jobs’ (24:18–27:40).

9. Election Integrity, the SAVE Act, and the GOP Revolt

• Meijer explains current Capitol Hill chaos over the SAVE Act, early voting, ID verification, and the lack of practical, bipartisan solutions (56:04–62:58).
• “The proportional attention given to this issue by Republicans is wildly out of proportion to its actual function of election conspiracy as an issue...It's not based on reality. It's based on an instinct from Donald Trump.” — Moynihan (62:58)

10. Social Media’s Influence, Moral Intimidation, and Party Fragmentation

• Panel examines the shift from civil rights-style activism to aggressive moral intimidation within the left (67:30–69:31).
• Moynihan draws parallels with Stalinism—where ideological purity is enforced to absurd and dangerous lengths (66:44–67:30).

11. What Makes America Great (Fourth of July Reflections)

• Moynihan and Meijer reflect on what they value about the US: free speech, diversity, work ethic, and the freedom to criticize power (78:45–82:06).
• “Knowing that those people exist out there, and there's actually a large number of them—their silence is not their absence, it's just they are actually working.” — Peter Meijer (80:54)
• “The greatest thing about America is that what we did today is a job, and you don't go to jail for it.” — Michael Moynihan (81:00)

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Memorable Quotes by Timestamp

• Peter Meijer on abstraction and fact-dodging:
  “When the facts help your argument, you want specifics. When the facts hurt your argument, you retreat to the safety of abstraction.” (47:29)

• Michael Moynihan on the illusion of socialist budget claims:
  “Not a single word of that tweet is true. And to see the credulous buffoons retweeting it and saying, 'Look at what we have done. They solved it.'” (8:54)

• Moynihan on MAGA populism's hollow promises:
  “They have a dream vision of America that once was and is never coming back. And people will discover that soon enough.” (28:23)

• Meijer on why working Americans remain quiet:
  “Their silence is not their absence. It's just they are actually working. They are doing the job. And I am just so deeply thankful for the people who are just—they're not talking, they're not bitching, they're not sitting around, you know, complaining as I want to do. They're nose to the grindstone and they power this country.” (80:54)

• Moynihan on American political freedom:
  “The greatest thing about America is that what we did today is a job, and you don't go to jail for it.” (81:00)

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Important Segments (Timestamps)

• [06:23–10:47] — Critique of Zoran Mamdani and NYC progressive politics.
• [13:13–15:08] — Academic echo chambers, leftist ideology and bookish revolutionaries.
• [34:01–42:55] — Colorado-1 Democratic Primary and progressive candidate equivocations about anti-Semitism.
• [47:29] — Meijer’s “When the facts help...abstraction” axiom.
• [56:04–62:58] — SAVE Act, election integrity, and the manufactured crisis.
• [80:00–82:07] — July 4th reflections on American society and values.

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Concluding Notes

Throughout the episode, the hosts blend biting humor, political skepticism, and lived experience (with Peter Meijer’s congressional tenure) to dissect the oddities and perils of American politics in 2026. The trio warns against ideologues (on both left and right), examines the social dynamics that enable their rise, and closes with a candid—if wary—appreciation of American pluralism and freedom. The dominant message: America’s political future is uncertain, as both revolutionaries and reactionaries abandon nuance, but ordinary Americans and their everyday efforts remain cause for hope.

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Useful for those who missed the episode:
This summary captures the main arguments, political analysis, and cutting remarks that characterized this installment of The Fifth Column. For more, visit www.wethefifth.com.

Transcript

[Peter Meyer]

When the facts help your argument, you want specifics. When the facts hurt your argument, you retreat to the safety of abstraction. We know of new methods of attack. The Trojan horde, the Fifth Column

[Camille Foster]

will

[Michael Moynihan]

dust, old and no longer good.

[Peter Meyer]

Wow.

[Camille Foster]

He's still a top 15 player in the league.

[Michael Moynihan]

Anyone? Anyone?

[Camille Foster]

No, he's top 15 and we don't know who he's gonna play for. Yeah, we don't know who he's gonna play for. You just decided you informed the Lakers immediately after.

[Peter Meyer]

We'll start the show going back to

[Camille Foster]

Cavs greetings and welcome back to another exciting installment of the Fifth Column podcast. This is your weekly rhetorical assault on the news cycle. The people that make it, occasionally, ourselves. I'm Camille Foster. Michael Moynihan is here because he's doing his job. Matt Welch decided to move on one of the hottest days of the year, which is proof that God does not like him. If he needed further evidence of that. But we have a Michael Moynihan.

[Michael Moynihan]

Yeah, yeah.

[Camille Foster]

He has better hair. We just think in general, better human being. Peter Meyer is with us. Former congressman. Always a congressman in our hearts, and we apologize for.

[Michael Moynihan]

Except for in the heart of the people of your district. Well, you're not there, Congressman, anymore.

[Peter Meyer]

When Scott said that I could share in the economics for this as a co host, I just said absolutely. Get some of that never fly coach money.

[Michael Moynihan]

You want to do some economics right now?

[Camille Foster]

Let's do it.

[Michael Moynihan]

Let's do some economics right now.

[Camille Foster]

Okay.

[Michael Moynihan]

You see, these people have noticed that we drink this Maclo whiskey.

[Camille Foster]

Yes.

[Michael Moynihan]

And we have no deal with Maclo whiskey. We were just drinking the whiskey, and then we did do a little bit of a deal with them. Yeah. And this is fifth column whiskey. We got that in the shot.

[Peter Meyer]

Beautiful.

[Michael Moynihan]

Etched.

[Peter Meyer]

Beautiful.

[Michael Moynihan]

Look at that.

[Peter Meyer]

Amber numbered.

[Michael Moynihan]

There are 240 of them. This is number three. This is collector's edition. And that's for you, Peter. Oh, that's for you.

[Peter Meyer]

That's all you get in your hearts.

[Michael Moynihan]

30 in your hearts. And in the district, I mean, number

[Peter Meyer]

three is very good. Well, I lost by three points, by the way.

[Camille Foster]

We know. That's why this is number 23. And this one is for me.

[Michael Moynihan]

That's for you.

[Camille Foster]

It was Michael Jordan's number.

[Michael Moynihan]

All of you reckless alcoholics out there are asking the same question. How do you get this? Well, first, never fly coachers, first dibs. So if you are a never fly coacher and Peter just mentioned it, so you're going to get an email tells you how to get this how much it costs? Yeah, super cheap. It's. It's a very. It's a beautiful premium.

[Camille Foster]

Premium.

[Peter Meyer]

You want to save this and refill it.

[Michael Moynihan]

Exactly. You want to refill it with the moonshine that Peter makes in his bathtub. That is hand etched.

[Camille Foster]

Yes.

[Michael Moynihan]

I don't know if it has a machine. Probably.

[Camille Foster]

Well, but hands at some point have touched them.

[Michael Moynihan]

But after the NFC folks, the Neverfly Coachers get their dibs, then it's open to the next tier of subscribers, right? Yeah. And if there's any left where there won't be, you freeloaders will add $100 to the price. We call it a tariff. We're going to tariff it and then maybe you can buy it for freedom. But that's one of the benefits of subscribing. You get the fifth column boost. And Peter, for coming on the show, you get one too.

[Peter Meyer]

And I'm also a Neverfly Coach subscriber. Are you? I am.

[Camille Foster]

Of course he is.

[Michael Moynihan]

Oh, my God, of course he is. How do you have the money for that? You lost the race. Oh, there's a grocery store.

[Peter Meyer]

Campaign finance. You can.

[Michael Moynihan]

And I also have.

[Peter Meyer]

There are people who are subscribers because of me.

[Michael Moynihan]

Who's that?

[Peter Meyer]

Ram in Canada. I'm looking out at you, Graham in Canada.

[Michael Moynihan]

You got a Canadian on board?

[Peter Meyer]

One. I know, I didn't know. Maybe asked a deal. You do the.

[Michael Moynihan]

From Alberta.

[Peter Meyer]

You do the live translation in French too, right? Okay, Just make sure you're.

[Michael Moynihan]

I do a separate French for the Quebec audience. Yeah, well, there's a lot to talk about beyond the fact.

[Camille Foster]

That whole lot to talk about.

[Michael Moynihan]

And by the way, I just. When you are a democratic socialist, we're gonna talk about them a little bit today. They really like to get involved in everything. And I saw a tweet this morning, woke up and it was like a Mamdani video of like, what to do when it's hot.

[Camille Foster]

This is him jumping into a pool

[Michael Moynihan]

in a full suit.

[Peter Meyer]

Again.

[Michael Moynihan]

No. Which I don't know if it was on the program that you guys go on on cnn, but there was somebody. Maybe it was on Bill Maher. No, it was on the CNN when it was like, he's just a man of people. Did you see him jump in the pool? Really? That's how we're judging our politicians.

[Peter Meyer]

Mar is pretty low. It's pretty low because the other one,

[Michael Moynihan]

the Mar one, was somebody on there saying, yeah, you know this Madani's great. Did you see his Knicks speech? And Bill Maher was great. And he was Like, I don't give a fuck about a nick speech which. But it was written by some flunky. Like, who cares? You don't live here.

[Peter Meyer]

No, but you hear a lot.

[Michael Moynihan]

You hear a lot. I encouraged you very foolishly, right before we started to buy an apartment here.

[Peter Meyer]

Pass.

[Michael Moynihan]

Which you would not live in all the time. And then you would have to pay an enormous pied a terror tax. Why do you hate poor people, Peter, and refuse to help them with this pied a terror tax?

[Peter Meyer]

Isn't it evident? I mean, come on. Like, you know the.

[Michael Moynihan]

You love the tax, don't you?

[Peter Meyer]

No, just depress. Well, the tax is smart politics. Like, there's no. There's no doubt about that. I mean, he's backing down from a maximalist commitment to one that would have a minimal economic impact on the city. I mean, I do love that, like, a millionaire's tax is like any property over a million dollars which find a property under a million dollars.

[Michael Moynihan]

Can't do that anymore.

[Peter Meyer]

Actually, you can find properties under a million dollars, but they're rent controlled and trading for pennies on the dollar because of that. And you will pay more in taxes on the building than you get in rent.

[Michael Moynihan]

Well, you can also find something under a million dollars in New York City. You just can't live in Manhattan. And you can't live in large swaths of Brooklyn now. And now increasingly large swaths of Queens. But, you know, if you want to

[Peter Meyer]

live in Kew Gardens, Staten island still has things.

[Michael Moynihan]

Yeah, but it's too maga. They don't have good coffee shops. I'm going to read you something. I was on Zoran Mamdani's Twitter feed this morning after I saw how to get out of the heat. Camille. I didn't know how to do that, but now I do. And the first thing I noticed was that his Twitter handle is NYC Mayor. That's passed on. But the name is Mayor Zoran Kwame. Yeah, Mamdani. I hadn't realized that he was named after the dictator Kwame Nkrumah. The Ghanaian dictator who imprisoned his opponent

[Camille Foster]

is authentically who he's named for.

[Michael Moynihan]

Correct. I was like, I know who his dad is. The post colonial guy from Colombia.

[Peter Meyer]

I took classes under him. Oh, you did? That's how he became a socialist.

[Michael Moynihan]

Is that right? Did he talk about your background and try to have you arrested?

[Peter Meyer]

I keep those things private.

[Michael Moynihan]

Yeah, except for it's a very particular name. Yeah, you hate when I bring this up, don't you?

[Peter Meyer]

But nobody has. Nobody knows how to.

[Michael Moynihan]

Okay. Now some people know how to pronounce it. No, that was a great line.

[Peter Meyer]

He's definitely spent a lot of time in Michigan grocery stores. But if you haven't spent time in the Midwest, there's no reason for you to be able to pronounce my name.

[Michael Moynihan]

Yeah, well, it's kind of like. Yeah, it's. If you know Dutch major.

[Peter Meyer]

Yeah, yeah. If you're familiar with Dutch pronunciation or the ij and how the Y was derived.

[Michael Moynihan]

You have a brother named Hjurt. Kwame and Kruma are mayor.

[Camille Foster]

Yeah.

[Michael Moynihan]

Who really did a number on Ghana, by the way. This is the tweet from today, and it's a long one, but it's worth reading. In January. It's very exciting. Our administration inherited a $12 billion budget deficit. A fiscal crisis greater than the Great Recession. Today, I'm proud to announce that our balanced budget has cleared the final step and passed the New York City Council. We balanced the budget by taxing the rich in making government more efficient. There's a bunch of other words.

[Peter Meyer]

It wasn't kicking some pension obligations down

[Michael Moynihan]

the road, gentlemen, was it? Kicking pension obligations and getting an $8 billion bailout from Albany, which the people in upstate New York are. You know, their tax money is being robbed to pay for the.

[Peter Meyer]

He never said how rich, to be clear. Yeah, just taxing the rich. The rich can be an expansive definition.

[Camille Foster]

That's actually a very good point. It's not. I was going to say he was lying, but that actually maybe you've just given him an out the 1%.

[Peter Meyer]

Maybe it's just the global one. You know, let's look at the denominator,

[Michael Moynihan]

the number of things that are wrong with this. But, you know, he is becoming a very adept politician in one way that he lies with such ease. And I've seen this over and over and over again. I mean, the number of things. Not mentioning the fact that you got a bailout from an enormous bailout. Enormous, you know, multi billion dollar bailout. The fact that, you know, your tax collection is because, you know, Wall Street's been doing well, you're gonna collect some taxes there because we raised tax on the mal. Not true. There's literally no tax receipts from him. The paneter tax goes into effect when? Today. To the first.

[Camille Foster]

Today's.

[Michael Moynihan]

The first. Today. Today. Today. And that is the new tax that, of course, people who are clever find ways around. And none of that is true. Not a single word of that tweet is true. And to see the credulous buffoons retweeting it and saying, look at what we have done. They solved it. I want to play a clip too and get your reaction to this. This is Zoran Mamdani two days ago,

[Peter Meyer]

and we raised taxes on the wealthiest

[Michael Moynihan]

New Yorkers instead of taking more from those with the least. Throughout this process, I have been reminded of the words of the Austrian economist Friedrich Hayek. If socialists understood economics, they wouldn't be socialists. These past months have shown us anything. It is that socialists not only understand economics just as well as the capitalists who came before, but that we can solve their years of mismanagement through an

[Peter Meyer]

embrace of our principles.

[Camille Foster]

You are an asshole. You're trolling me. He's trolling me. I don't like that.

[Michael Moynihan]

But first of all, I guarantee you he can pronounce Nkrumah, but he can't pronounce Friedrich. Friedrich. He's like Friedrich. Freddy Hajic, great Austrian. They solved it in six months. And that was because of the socialism of what happened. Anyone know? Peter.

[Peter Meyer]

It's because of the new ideas that he's bringing to the table. Bold old new ideas.

[Camille Foster]

Innovative experimentation.

[Peter Meyer]

They're listening, they're saying, wow. Rent control, nobody ever thought of that. Wow. Additional taxes, nobody ever thought of that. Wow. Fiscal mismanagement, nobody ever thought of that. But the reality is he can get away with a shit ton of things because when things go wrong, there'll be a boogeyman. I think we can all guess who some elements of the they are going to be in that. The Jews, the billionaires.

[Michael Moynihan]

Which is the polite, as I said, which is what you.

[Peter Meyer]

Yeah, you know, you say Jews after 9 o', clock, you say billionaires, you know, daytime.

[Michael Moynihan]

I say Zionists are exactly.

[Peter Meyer]

No, it'll be an easy thing to kind of kick that. But the challenge is like all of this because of the interdependence of our municipalities, states and federal government from a fiscal standpoint, and all burden sharing and strings attached and whatever on everything from kind of health care funding to, you know, various insurances. Look, no one's actually responsible. He can mismanage the fuck out of all of this and we'll still find somebody else to blame. Because trying to actually pin down and draw cause and effect on any of this, like we just don't have consequences in our politics, period. Like, it'd be great to just give the socialists their own little place. Not New York City, because they can't

[Michael Moynihan]

afford to lose Cuba.

[Peter Meyer]

Yeah.

[Michael Moynihan]

No, it's not working out. Jesus. But even that's our fault.

[Peter Meyer]

And the amount of Tired cliches where it's like, oh, you know, look at all the examples of where communists and socialists have failed.

[Michael Moynihan]

It's like.

[Peter Meyer]

But it's true. It is very true.

[Michael Moynihan]

That is a. You know, if you have that number of failures, right, we're going to get to Colorado race in a second. But the woman in Colorado was born in Ethiopia, and she was born in the 90s in Ethiopia before her opponent was in Congress, when she was. When she was born in Ethiopia and Ethiopia was destroyed by Mengistu, a Marxist dictator, and it was sold to everyone in the 80s during Live Aid as a lack of caring from the west and crop failure and femme. That's true, that did happen, but it was compounded by rebel groups fighting internal civil war and the fact that they had mismanaged the economy and mismanaged all the crops and the crop yields and the rest of it. And that woman comes from Ethiopia and is running on the DSA platform, which, by the way, when Caitlin Collins says the other day, democratic socialism is not communism. Okay, fair enough. But why is it that they will not, Most of these people will not denounce? I mean, you know, Hassan Piker is the big kind of idiot figurehead of this stuff, and he's posting pictures of himself on Instagram. Is true. On a train, reading Lenin's what is to be Done? A real quick, you know, PC read that is. And they love Cuba, right? They put the democratic in there to say we're not them. But when you ask them if they are them, they say, we are them.

[Camille Foster]

Although in that clip, he calls himself a socialist. But do you think that the mention, the invocation of hype in that context is him kind of deliberately trying to provoke people to criticize him? Especially that, combined with the mispronunciation, feels positively Trumpian in some respects.

[Michael Moynihan]

Because the thing about it is that what was interesting when you had the Marxists and the Stalinists in Alcove 1 and Alcove 2 at City College in the 30s, famously, is that they knew the other side. They knew their enemy. These people live in academic cloisters. And I don't think it's a weird thing that he can't pronounce Friedrich Hayek because he knows Hayek kind of concept. He's never read him, he's never engaged with the ideas. But I do think it's interesting, to your point, that there is an ideological war being waged. Eric Adams was not waging an ideological war. If you disliked him, fine. And if you didn't think he was a great mayor. Fine. Ed Koch was not waging an ideological war. These people are like up to their necks in ideology. They're in post colonial studies, as his father is a post colonial professor. They're all getting PhDs. The woman in Colorado is getting a PhD. Darieliza getting a PhD. They're academics that are in echo chambers. And now they want to bring that to government. And it's an incredibly bad idea because as Peter said, we have done that before and it keeps failing. And I think there's more, there's more opportunity for failure now than there was in 1930.

[Camille Foster]

I do find it a little surprising that he's so willing to talk about this balanced budget knowing that he was bailed out to a substantial degree and that it is not necessarily something he could repeat next year. You're going to have to do this again and again as your mayor and you just can't do that.

[Michael Moynihan]

Look, there's no coincidence. The first of his. I guess they have another one now, but the first of his grocery stores, the socialist grocery stores, which will open just to keep in the theme of social, with nothing on the shelves, is opening at the end, the very end of his first term. Yeah, in 30. 30, right. 20. 30.

[Camille Foster]

Because it takes a really long time to open a grocery store.

[Michael Moynihan]

Takes Lidl 20 minutes. How long does it take the Meijer grocery stores to open a new grocery store?

[Peter Meyer]

We're starting from a greenfield site. I mean, what is the. No, you move into an existing facility, I mean, that's like a six month max fit out in a place like New York, depending on permitting, which I assume the city can resolve itself.

[Michael Moynihan]

Yeah, they don't pay taxes, they don't have that permitting. And also what makes it a longer build, they guarantee it's going to be a good union job, which means. Oh, good union wage.

[Camille Foster]

We'll take our time, slick.

[Peter Meyer]

No, but I'm sure they'll be vigorous in policing cost overruns and everything else

[Michael Moynihan]

in that governments always are. But this whole.

[Peter Meyer]

But to me, the question when we're talking about these ideologues, the academics, the PhD candidates coming in, who are they displacing? I mean, they're displacing the kind of union based machine politics of old. I mean, maybe Eric Adams wasn't really in that mold, but Bill de Blasio sure as hell was. A lot of the folks who were getting beaten were folks who rose up through the machines of various cities who had entrenched themselves in those places. And what do they have to show for it. I mean, you can talk about maybe some ARPA dollars. You came, you got convinced the Biden administration to put through. But this kind of, again, shows the ideological disconnect between where the passions are and where you can actually deliver policies. And that's what kind of scares the shit out of me, is every time you elect somebody to replace the person who wasn't getting the job done, this person's gonna go burn it down. They're gonna be the revolutionaries on the left or the right. And then they fail because they aren't equipped to do that. Or they just are elected position where they cannot do that, cannot do that. Just constitutionally, fundamentally, you know, practically, it just continues to exacerbate that polarization and that feeling of disillusion, dissatisfaction, until at a certain point, it becomes, I think, a threat to the body politic on an ongoing basis. Like, how do you convince people to keep voting if every single time they've been. They've been either lied to explicitly or implicitly and just have these continuing points of dissatisfaction? I mean, the DSA did a survey of some of their members in terms of how they identified. And socialist was like a very large component of it, obviously. Anarchists was close to 40%. Like the burn it down component. You have accelerationists on the left and the right, and all it takes is a couple of matches to be lit. I mean, the kindling is there. That's.

[Michael Moynihan]

I mean, if Steve Bannon wasn't the most frequently cited person in the Epstein files, we'd probably be hearing from him. And he's somebody who has.

[Peter Meyer]

He's keeping quiet now that Miles go is.

[Michael Moynihan]

Yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah. Gwa Wengwe. Miles Kwok. He's got like, five minutes.

[Peter Meyer]

You need that when you're running.

[Michael Moynihan]

I've been to his house. Yeah. $68 million house.

[Peter Meyer]

Not the floating one that he was arrested.

[Michael Moynihan]

No, not the floating one the Banner was arrested on, but his one and Central Park. And he asked for a correction. And he asked for a correction that the house was more expensive. He's like, no, it was actually million with all the taxes and all the fees. And I'm like, I'm not.

[Camille Foster]

I mean, look, if you. If you paid the price, you kind of wanted to get signed, you want to get.

[Michael Moynihan]

You want to get credit for it. But Bannon is a guy who has, you know, expressed to me, when I talked to him his appreciation for AOC in this kind of insurgent politics. He told.

[Peter Meyer]

I don't even think AOC is an insurgent at this Point, not at this

[Michael Moynihan]

point now, she's like the moderate, but she'll get in line. But. Or up against the wall.

[Camille Foster]

Right.

[Michael Moynihan]

But that is the thing that Bannon said to my old pal, historian Ron Radosh, former leftist guy said, I'm a Leninist. It was 2015 or 16 at a party. He said, I'm a Leninist because he wants to burn the system down. Which is precisely what Lenin did. Right. These people are. It's an incredible thing because they need the wealth creation engines and they want them all destroyed. And they're in this position because, remember, Bernie Sanders was on Bill Marsha. And you can like Bill, you can hate Bill, you can love his politics. You can hate it. He has a way in those opening interviews of just getting to the point pretty quickly. And he asked Bernie Sanders, how are you going to pay for this? And he said, well, you'll know. And it's like you've been doing this for 50 years. And he didn't have an answer. He kept on trying to walk around. He said, well, how are you going to pay for it? They don't care about that stuff. They expect it will always be there. And they say, and how many GSA people I've heard say, oh, they're not going to leave, they're not going to. Wall Street's not going to leave. It's like, try them, try them. A lot have left. A number of people have left. But. But turn that die a little more. And what do you have to fund this city with Albany forever. Not gonna happen.

[Camille Foster]

You know, last time we talked about this, we talked about the Democrats and the establishment Democrats and how much of a difficult time they were having with this. This revolt that's taking place amongst their own. But this morning I was reading some coverage from our friend Alex Thompson, specifically about the former vice president reaching out to Mamdani to have some conversations. And apparently she's kind of been in his DMs for a little bit and then reached out to have a formal meeting.

[Michael Moynihan]

What'd you think it was? Willie Brown.

[Camille Foster]

And it's not. I mean, it's not at all surprising that she's reaching out, but certainly reading the reporting on this, she seems incredibly thirsty.

[Michael Moynihan]

Yes.

[Camille Foster]

You know, lost the race. No one really has any belief in you as a national politician anymore.

[Michael Moynihan]

Well, she certainly polling as the number one potential candidate, but that's now the name of the.

[Camille Foster]

That is not anything particularly credible. But I wonder about how Mamdani receives that. I also wonder about just Kamala Harris as a Candidate and as a politician who has both been someone who is more aligned with more radical progressive politics, who ran away from that when she was running for office and is now apparently running back to these people who seem to be in vogue. Is there any chance that this works out for her? Cause I can't imagine it actually helps her from a national political standpoint.

[Peter Meyer]

General election. No. But there's a certain degree to which those ideological cohorts, they don't necessarily care so much that you've believed this in your bones all the way. If you genuflect before them, if you bow down and recognize them, that matters a lot.

[Michael Moynihan]

Yeah, it really does.

[Peter Meyer]

I mean, remember that it's Brad Lander in a nutshell.

[Michael Moynihan]

That's Brad Lander in a nutshell, who's like, tries to dial a few things back since his victory. And he tried to a little bit during the campaign, which is why Mamdani's psychotic wife refused to actually mention him in her endorsements on Instagram. I can't believe I'm even saving that sentence. Her endorsements on Instagram. She also endorsed on Instagram October 7th. That was her other endorsement on Instagram. But good Lord.

[Peter Meyer]

Well, unlike Chevalier, she wasn't at a rally the day after.

[Michael Moynihan]

Oh, yeah, she endorsed it in person. But she was like, yeah. And her excuse was the best. She's like, I knew what was coming. I'm the Nostradamus. Because the Israelis always do this. Which was a. Was quite a. Quite an argument. But remember that Biden, you know, runs as a kind of centrist, sensible guy versus all these other people. And then his first two weeks in office, you're like, oh, wait, that was a total head fake. And I guarantee you that those are the. The smoky backroom conversations are. Look, I can't say a lot of this stuff publicly internationally, but trust me, I'll work with you when I get into power. I mean, that's what in. What does it do for Madani? Good lord. He's going to, you know, on the gas of that steamroller, because he's like, they're all coming to me. And now we're winning in these other elections. And that's, you know, and it's true to a certain extent, but they're like winning graduate elections in the graduate student senate or something. Because how many people come out for these things? Not many. In a general. Yeah. In a deep blue place. Yeah, that's right. That's going to happen. And that's a huge, huge problem. But nationally, look to what you Were saying about this stuff doesn't work and people come back to it. I've been saying this for a while about Trump and tariffs. You know what you promised factories like Metropolis. There's steam coming out. None of it's coming back. And people. None of it's coming.

[Peter Meyer]

Significant Manufacturing Investment Index ism.

[Michael Moynihan]

Look, the investment.

[Peter Meyer]

A lot of that is data centers, granted. But there is a tremendous amount of reshoring.

[Michael Moynihan]

No, but I've been saying this.

[Peter Meyer]

It's not gonna be everything and it's gonna be lower employment because it's gonna be more highly automated and roboticized.

[Michael Moynihan]

Yes. And that's what they don't wanna talk about.

[Camille Foster]

But is there a connection to tariffs?

[Michael Moynihan]

There's no.

[Peter Meyer]

It's a connection to. Yeah, there's a connection to tariffs. Less so on the price side. More so just on the uncertainty side of the House and combined with a lot of domestic incentives, some DPA, Title 3, Defense Production Act, Title 3 funding that's coming in and just obscene amounts of money that is being reallocated. A lot of the foreign direct investment commitments that have been made by foreign governments and sovereign wealth funds. There's a real thing happening there. It's not going to be the employment numbers that folks want it to be, but it's significant.

[Camille Foster]

Although investments don't add up to much.

[Michael Moynihan]

It's also. That is a totally separate thing for what Donald Trump has been selling. You go to Youngstown and you're putting tariffs on aluminum, on steel, on the stuff that is the Industrial revolution. These Rust Belt cities that are kind of burned out, you know, husks of what they once were. It's coming home. No, it's not that concept. Data centers is an issue that I think people are misinformed on on both the left and the right. That's a. That's a pretty bipartisan dislike.

[Peter Meyer]

Sloppy.

[Michael Moynihan]

Yeah, it's sloppy as bait. It's exactly what it is. And it's like they don't want Amazon jobs. We were not problems with Amazon jobs. We don't get them here because of aoc. They don't want those jobs. They want the old job. And what is sold is the vision of the 1950s. Right. Is that we had communities before and we worked at the factory and came home and we had together families, all this stuff. What you're saying is, I think true to a certain extent, but it's not exactly what Donald Trump has been selling on tariffs. It was like, we are gonna bring manufacturing home. We've already had a very robust manufacturing base in this country for a very long time with far fewer people. I say this over and over again. The numbers bear it out. But he's not talking about that. He's talking about people. He's talking about jobs. Are these gonna create the jobs that he's promised? Absolutely not.

[Peter Meyer]

Well, but the thing you also have to understand, that factory may not employ as many people. I mean, why did the factories leave? Left. They left in the first place because other places had a competitive labor advantage from a pricing standpoint. Why are they coming back? That labor advantage is getting eroded. Both because in places like China, labor costs are going up. You also have to factor in the transatlantic shipping. Throw on the tariffs as well. That's another thing that is going to start shifting that cost equation. But when those things come home, we're solving for that. Labor hasn't gone down in the US and actually it's a kind of uncomfortable reality that a lot of the inflation we've had has been because the price of labor has gone up pretty significantly. That's obviously good for the people who are earning more money, but that is also going to have an inflationary impact. But those factories are going to have fewer people. But what they'll also create is more downstream opportunities. Every factory that's being built that's employing electricians, carpenters, steel workers, folks who are or kind of, you know, prepping the foundation, wiring the electricity, it is also then creating opportunities for downstream companies. Because a lot of what we lost, and this is why our industrial base is in such a challenging position. You know, you can go to places in Shenzhen, you can have a custom screw made in a matter of hours. You know, there is one or two companies in the US that do that, and the turnaround time is going to be in weeks. So there's all of those things where when you start to. The ecosystem has a network effect all of its own, and trying to replace that ecosystem, that network effect has to be rebuilt. And it's going to be a lot more challenging to rebuild that rapidly.

[Michael Moynihan]

How much is that costing? We had Senator Chris Murphy in here and we didn't get to this part because it was in his book and he talked about how everybody has to get off Instagram or something. I was like, yeah, the Democratic Party has to get off of Instagram, number one.

[Peter Meyer]

And TikTok.

[Michael Moynihan]

The thing he had, He. He cited this woman who had. I think it was. It must have been Murphy. I don't know who else it would have been at a furniture factory or something in South Carolina and how long did it take me to look into that and see how much each of those jobs cost? It was like $300,000 for like $100,000 job in subsidies from the state.

[Peter Meyer]

Oh, that's actually pretty efficient. Michigan. Michigan is multiple millions per job per job.

[Michael Moynihan]

And it's like, yeah, you can do what Mamdani does. You can balance the budget, you can make jobs, you can have, as the old saw goes in economics, you can have one person dig a hole and another person fill it in and create two jobs. Right. There's a lot of bullshit numbers here. The promises of the MAGA movement have been false in almost every way. They don't like data centers, they don't like AI, they don't like automation. They have a dream vision of America that once was and is never coming back. And people will discover that soon enough. And they'll also discover to the inflationary labor prices go up, the prices of goods go up, they want the cheap stuff. I was interviewed somebody one time who is a union guy in a thing about tariffs. And his wife came in during the interview with like 10 bags on each arm from Walmart. And I was like, yeah, you have all this shit because of trade. I'm sorry, that if that's going to go up significantly in price, you're going to have half the number of bags that you have. And that will affect people. People realize that.

[Peter Meyer]

But that hasn't been the fault line on the right.

[Michael Moynihan]

No, it has not.

[Peter Meyer]

And just I will say the Trump administration has hewed a very interesting line when it comes to AI data centers, because on the one hand, they're very responsive to that populist surge of anger and all the bullshit around water usage and all that.

[Michael Moynihan]

And they also, because they can make crypto in the world. Is there. Can they? Can they mine Trump coin in them? So that one billion that he just got, or one and a half billion, how much was it? One and a half billion?

[Peter Meyer]

It was like 1.2 billion or something.

[Camille Foster]

A lot of that is like administrative fees too. So it's not even mining that stuff anymore.

[Michael Moynihan]

The winners and it's just like Trump

[Camille Foster]

and the losers straight up pump and dump.

[Peter Meyer]

I mean, I think those losers in many cases were intentional losers.

[Michael Moynihan]

And this is where I'm sure that that's true. But I never thought that we would be intentional.

[Camille Foster]

For whom?

[Peter Meyer]

For the people who are trying to route a payment. And I think there's. There's some dupes in all of this, but at least my theory behind a lot of crypto is there's it's fewer people getting rug pulled than it is a means of avoiding KYC and other, you know, potential challenges around dubious funding.

[Camille Foster]

So just routing money to particular parties.

[Peter Meyer]

But I'm always skeptical when it comes to the kind of financial and the trading disclosures and this is a big annoyance of mine around like the Nancy Pelosi stock picker and like unusual whales. The amount of just kind of bullshit garbage that's in those because you're supposed to report, you know, trades by volume and also by, you know, how much you made. But they're in these wide brackets of like $1,000 to 15,000, 15 to 50,000, 50 to like 250. 250 and above like you. And so the assumption is always, oh, it was 250 to you know, 5 million or whatever. Great, we're going to peg everyone at 5, even if it's 251. And that's setting aside the fact that ETFs are not counted. From this I can go into this, but I'll just say ETFs aren't counted

[Michael Moynihan]

listeners, so don't get too deep.

[Peter Meyer]

But the idea that all members of Congress are sitting there actively on E trade is just bullshit. Like you have a financial advisor and because it's not in a blind trust or an etf, do you have to report it? And that's just the way most things work.

[Michael Moynihan]

Well, if you are, this is the progressive dream. And I'm very excited about this because I think I might change my politics because Ro Khanna, who really enjoys cameras, did you notice that he's like, are you a friend of Rokhanna? You look uncomfortable, Peter.

[Peter Meyer]

There's a lot of folks that I've had lovely conversations with.

[Camille Foster]

Me too.

[Peter Meyer]

But I also look and say, what

[Michael Moynihan]

the fuck are you doing? I've had multiple lovely conversations. Rukhana, I interviewed him one time in his office and he emailed me like two weeks later about a book we were talking about. And I was like, what a nice guy. And then all of a sudden this guy, who the hell is this guy? But I just want to say I am on his side because I think like a chicken in every pot, we all should have 12 year olds that own golf courses, right? That's the American dream. Every kid should own a golf course. Did you know this?

[Camille Foster]

What is the backstory there?

[Michael Moynihan]

There's an incredible story at the Free Beacon about his financial disclosures and his kids who are both under 12 have golf courses. I think in Ohio. Is that where it Is Ohio in their names. Oh, so the kid, his kids own golf courses.

[Camille Foster]

Nice.

[Peter Meyer]

Theoretically.

[Michael Moynihan]

I didn't check this because it's what we call too good to check, but.

[Peter Meyer]

Yeah, so you'd have to. Yeah. Whether there's, like a complicated trust behind that or if it's like, outright. They hold the title. No, it's.

[Michael Moynihan]

Even if he owned two golf courses, it's like the progressive guy who owns the golf. Okay, well.

[Peter Meyer]

And you've had members of Congress who've had a fiance or a girlfriend that they are employed as lobbyist under some other role. If that was a spouse, you would have to declare all those assets and the income you have to declare on the children's side, too, over a certain dollar amount. Primary residence is exempted, but it doesn't.

[Michael Moynihan]

So get divorced and.

[Peter Meyer]

Or, you know, just, you know, find a guma.

[Michael Moynihan]

Whatever that is.

[Peter Meyer]

Yeah, sure.

[Camille Foster]

Watch the Sopranos.

[Peter Meyer]

I know what a goomba is.

[Michael Moynihan]

No, a goomba is the. No, yeah, it's a girl on the side.

[Peter Meyer]

That is a very unappealing word to use for.

[Michael Moynihan]

They're usually not very appealing themselves.

[Peter Meyer]

I feel like the French, you know,

[Michael Moynihan]

have a. Yeah, no, they probably do better. The guys in New Jersey aren't like. Is there a French term for this?

[Camille Foster]

Should we get to Colorado, suggest that.

[Michael Moynihan]

Yeah, It's not mid. It's America madness. America's gone completely insane. Okay. And we're gonna look at Colorado 1, which. All the.

[Camille Foster]

All the rage last night.

[Michael Moynihan]

Yeah, about four months ago. There was no question that the. How many terms.

[Camille Foster]

Term.

[Michael Moynihan]

She's been in Congress for 29 years. 15. Turning 15. 14. Diana Degetti. Have you ever. Is that the E is silent. Oh, that's pretentious. She should have baguette. Yeah.

[Camille Foster]

Okay.

[Michael Moynihan]

All right. It's French.

[Peter Meyer]

Yeah.

[Michael Moynihan]

Did you have any interactions with her in Congress?

[Peter Meyer]

Yeah, I think we co sponsored some legislation. I mean, she was not like a middle of the road problem solver. No, it's the deny aid to the Palestinian.

[Michael Moynihan]

Exactly. Specifically deny aid to the Palestinians.

[Peter Meyer]

No, she had, you know, she was not a problem solver's caucus. Not sort of the middle of the road, squishy kind of moderate person. She was left of the center of the Democratic House caucus, but, you know, she worked on 21st century CARES act, some kind of healthcare legislation around. And she's pretty progressive, right? She's very progressive. Like nobody could question the progressive bona fides of dying to get.

[Michael Moynihan]

Yeah.

[Peter Meyer]

Which is the thing.

[Michael Moynihan]

It's not Joe Manchin, right? No. Well.

[Peter Meyer]

And the funniest thing this cycle, Joe Manchin got so much shit from the left, despite the fact that he, you know, people talking about primary in West Virginia just dragging him over. Compare that to like the right with, with Susan Collins up in Maine. The College Republicans group just posted a photo of like, this is us and Susan Collins and it was a picture of, of a rhino protected by like anti poacher militants, you know, on either side. Like, she's our rhino. We will look out for her.

[Michael Moynihan]

And a poacher meme.

[Peter Meyer]

But, but, but the, the fact that, you know, and basically everybody who lost in New York every, you know, and then Diane, like again, these are, these are not whatever the Democratic equivalent of like a rhino is. These are not dinos. These are. Yeah, these are folks who are very much in steps, if strongly so with the mainstream of the Democratic Party. But that's not where the voters are. The dogs don't like the dog food.

[Michael Moynihan]

Yeah, well, it's, yeah, it's a small number of voters obviously in primaries. Right. I mean, obviously in deep blue districts, the Republicans not gonna compete.

[Peter Meyer]

But there's tens of thousands of votes.

[Michael Moynihan]

Tens of. And the woman who won is Milot Kiros. And we've been 29 years old. 29 years old. She born in like. Yeah, it's like in the 97 90s. Yeah. And she was a nobody three months ago. And so the polling on this, there's not a lot of great polling is a data for progress, which is one of these communist international groups. The earliest number I could find was Deget. Like Baguette was leading KIROS 40 to 7. And that was in mid March. Right. And we're getting polymarkers. I'm even paying attention to this. It's kind of a low volume race. Not a lot of it ends up at a $330,000 volume. But if you notice this 54, 27. Right. And this is just pretty steady. It starts narrowing and then, and then 60, 29. And then the victories in New York happens and it's right there. So if you look at this stuff, Politico a couple of days ago, and this is funny because this is from npr, the NPR station in Denver. A recent political article reported that internal polling showed Kiros and Deget were statistically tied and prediction markets strongly favored Kiros. With speculators on Kalshi and polymarket maybe cut out that other one with speculators collectively giving the challenger 86% odds of victory. So we've given Polymarket a hard time for missing a few things. You Know what? This one is exactly right. So the, the polls are narrowing. There is one other poll In June, like 11, it was polled between 11th and 15th June and Kira said 41 to get 36. So it's a pretty narrow. It's a small sample size, It's a small race. It's a partisan poll too. So yeah, this statistically tied makes a lot of sense. If you were paying attention to this, you would have known because one of the things that we've talked about with this is are the prediction markets is poly market reflecting Twitter in the excitement. Right.

[Peter Meyer]

But look at that blue dip. I think that was when, and I don't know if you have this clip, but that was when the challenger, when she gave just an awful interview talking about comparing October 7th and saying this is the expected result.

[Michael Moynihan]

Let's watch it. We have a couple of clips of this interview. The first one, let's look at the one where she is asked by the local NBC station a decent interview, asked about 9 11.

[Peter Meyer]

Do you believe that the 911 terrorist attacks on America were the inevitable consequence of American foreign policy?

[Michael Moynihan]

Inevitable in the sense that we destabilized a lot of the Middle east that forced people to believe that another act of violence was the only response. And again, just like I said before, our responsibility is to getting rid of those conditions that lead to violence in the first place.

[Camille Foster]

Hmm. Hmm.

[Peter Meyer]

Peter, we should have never based our troops in Saudi Arabia during the Gulf War, you know. No, I mean it.

[Michael Moynihan]

She's literally making bin lads, which if

[Peter Meyer]

you see all of a sudden her odds dip down after these interviews where she says dumb things because people are like, oh, nobody could ever elect somebody who says something like that. My God, the odds just right themselves. Yeah, but the challenge is, and this is why you want to be that sleeper candidate rising from below, is because you're ignored, ignored, ignored. You're not going to get negative attack ads because if you're not known, all that negative ad is going to do is build up your profile, your name id, things like that, help build that name id. Then all of a sudden it's holy shit, we might be able to win this thing. That's when the enthusiasm starts ticking off. That's when you're a candidate like this. You start to layer on, burst out whatever you've raised in especially digital ads and some of their content. I mean, it's vacuous and idiotic policy and all that. It is pretty. It is compelling, you know, I mean, it is, it is vaporware from a policy standpoint, but it's engaging. That's when you start to see, you know, those moments when you're kind of left for dead or it's like, she's not serious. This person could never win. That's when you have to worry. Not that I know anything about that.

[Michael Moynihan]

Yeah, you have not. You know, nothing about the weirdness of primary politics. It is odd that, you know, we remember the Dean Scream, we remember Mike Dukakis in a tank. These kind of visuals that were bad. And now we have a woman effectively saying we brought it on ourselves.

[Peter Meyer]

But how do you clip that? You know, I mean, that's the challenge is you have to say, oh, she says we're responsible. And then somebody's like, oh, let me find that. Oh, now they're exaggerating. Oh, this must be just another one of AIPAC's lies. This must just be. This proves. Because all these people are attacking her and she has the right enemies, she's on the wrong, right track. That's a person we need to double down on. Because if the establishment is that afraid, that means she can really do damage.

[Michael Moynihan]

Well, there's enough in that interview to make me want to join Al Qaeda. But I'm going to play you one more clip about the terrorist attack in Colorado. And this was her response to a

[Peter Meyer]

question about it in the Democratic Party and elsewhere about what is anti Semitism and what is anti Zionism. That firebombing attack in Boulder on the

[Camille Foster]

group of peaceful protesters there that were

[Peter Meyer]

protesting in support of the Jewish hostages being held by Hamas. Was that firebombing attack on them an act of anti Semitism?

[Michael Moynihan]

I don't know what was in the heart of the perpetrator. All I know is that he went and attacked innocent people because of what they might have believed. And I don't even know what the people that were at that protest believed too. In fact, most of them were probably just there to, you know, ask that the people who were kidnapped during October 7th be returned home to their families. That's not a political statement in and of itself.

[Peter Meyer]

But you would, you would not describe it as anti Semitism.

[Michael Moynihan]

I don't. I don't know. I don't know what his intentions were.

[Camille Foster]

None edited in there.

[Peter Meyer]

None of these fucking people can give a yes or no answer to any of these things. You know, do you consider Hezbollah a terrorist organization? Would you condemn them? Well, you know, it's important to look at the broader context. It's important to understand these are complicated issues. You know, would you. The chevalier, when she was asked, like, would you put somebody who committed murder in prison? Well, you know, our goal is like it is. Honestly, this scares the hell out of me because what could you not justify? What could you not figure out a way to make salable and condone type of just unmoored perspective?

[Michael Moynihan]

I'm going to give our listeners and viewers some homework. Post it over at the substack if you find this. Do you think that she would have said the same thing or made a statement about George Floyd? Was that a racist act by Derek Chauvin? I don't know what his was. In his heart, he was doing policing. Maybe he was trained that way. Do you think that she would say that?

[Camille Foster]

I can't imagine she didn't say that.

[Michael Moynihan]

But I also have two. I have a beef with. Actually the guy, the interview, he did a pretty good job.

[Camille Foster]

Well, in both cases, he's kind of giving her the answer.

[Michael Moynihan]

He's kind of giving the answer. But he makes two errors there. I mean, first of all is a minor one saying the Jewish hostages, they were Israeli hostages and a lot of them were people who weren't Jewish. There were people from Thailand, hostages of a terror organization. But he missed something in that. And I want to say that the people at the Wall Street Journal usually do a decent job. Missed something too, and this pisses me off. Kiris has been criticized for refusing to say in a recent local TV interview that a firebombing that targeted a group advocating for the release of Israeli hostages held by Hamas in Boulder last year. That's also wrong. They were not held by Hamas in Boulder. That's a bad sentence. They were held in Gaza last year. Was anti Semitic. According to FBI affidavit, the attacker had previously said he, quote, wanted to kill all Zionist people. He has been sentenced to life in prison. Kiris told the Journal that her comments had been misunderstood. I did call it a hate crime. Okay, what is wrong with this piece and what is wrong with this question? There's something missing from it. And what is missing is they say a firebombing attack that targeted blah, blah. There was a woman murdered. No, she was burned alive and she was in her late 80s. An old Jewish woman was killed. This guy in the Wall Street Journal. Forget that in the story. There was an arson attack. Oh, maybe a building burned down. No human burned down and died as a result of this. And it is not mentioned there and it is not mentioned in the Wall Street Journal. And I think that is incredibly shitty because we forget the victims of this stuff. Because it's been this. It's like this academic argument, and the argument is amazingly stupid from the perspective I don't know what is in the heart. And then she does the fucking tell that they always do, which is, well, I don't know what those people believed. What does that mean? Does that mean that if they believed what you believed, that they were, you know, students for justice in Palestine, which, by the way, supported this attack. A Colorado chapter made a post recently supporting this guy who's in prison in supporting this attack. I'm not joking. You can look this up. I wish it weren't true. But when you say, I don't know, it was in their hearts either. Not just the attacker, the people that are protesting. Meaning maybe they didn't have such bad ideas. Right, because the implication is they might have had bad ideas that I disagree with. No, no. The point here is a terror attack in Colorado against people who are peacefully protesting. Not Netanyahu. Not the war about hostages, babies, young people underground for months and months and being tortured and raped and the rest of it. I shouldn't say rape, because then you get all the things like, oh, that never happened, too. This is a psychosis that has taken over these people, and this is a psychotic answer you cannot say. I guarantee you that anything that is even remotely racist in a way that aligns with her principles, she would say it in a heartbeat if there was evidence or no evidence. But this, I don't know what's in the guy's heart who threw a petrol bomb at a group of Jews, killing one of them. And having said kill all the filthy Zionists. But he did say Zionists. He didn't say Jews. Very clever of this murderer.

[Peter Meyer]

And you won't say Molotov cocktail. I mean, come on, we're talking about socialists here, too.

[Michael Moynihan]

No, I'm watching the world. Yeah, so we're talking. We say petrol bombs.

[Peter Meyer]

When the facts help your argument, you want specifics. When the facts hurt your argument, you retreat to the safety of abstraction. There was the 1976 live Twitter account. It's like, oh, on this day, hijackers took over Israeli. It's like, oh, so we're naming the victims here, not the perpetrators.

[Michael Moynihan]

Yes, interesting.

[Peter Meyer]

Okay, those moments where the death of that woman was severely burned, died in the hospital a day or a couple days later. Well, it's a little bit removed enough that how can we say that it was because of those burns and not something else? Yeah, you have these things that you can kind of pull people back from, and it I mean, even Luigi Mangione being like, oh, I have to plead temporary insanity on this. And like, oh, all your supporters and the people who are justifying it thought that it was a very righteous and well thought out act that was necessary because of all these, like, at least that slick of wishiness. You know, it's the balloon where you think you got it and you squeeze and say, ha. Look at how bad this is. They're like, well, actually, hey, over here.

[Michael Moynihan]

But it's what you realize about this is they don't care about violence at all. They support violence. They care about ideology. Right.

[Peter Meyer]

And they're frustrated at the folks who ambushed law enforcement down in Texas outside that ICE facility, that they were given 30 year sentences for what is functionally a domestic terrorist attack. Like, out and out.

[Michael Moynihan]

As I mentioned today, they were wearing Kevlar. Yeah, I mean, maybe they were just going to.

[Peter Meyer]

I mean, Texas is an open carry state, but at the same time, it's

[Michael Moynihan]

an open where plates state, too. But, you know, you're probably going to get into something when you're armed going to the ICE facility. But no, this thing about violence is. Darieliza. More tweets came out from the K file at cnn. Who is the great digger. It's like, that guy's probably going through my trash right now. So, like, just in case. But she had a tweet about Mao and, like, the North Koreans and Cuba and all this stuff, and of course, Assata Shakur, Joanne Chesimard, the cop killer. They're fine with that. They pretend that it never happened and she was innocent, but they keep on lining up with these people that do great violence to the people that they're supposed to serve. Because it's righteous violence. It's violence in the name of something. That's why the Mangione thing, you can have an exchange between Taylor Lorenz and this other doofus on CNN where they're chuckling about Luigi Mangione like, I was in a heartthrob company, killed a father in Midtown, and the kids that will never, ever know their dad. And you're laughing about it on cnn, you pieces of shit. Fuck you. Honestly, fuck you. Like, this stuff is insane. You should not. If there was anyone on the right right now, and there are people, and you give. You know, you expend all this energy. You were there in your fucking, what, fourth day in Congress or something? On third day in Congress on January 6th. These are bad people. We denounced at the time, denounced the fact these people were pardoned, you know, the violence was people punching cops and the rest of it. They weren't shooting people. But it's still bad. Right. That was denounced. It should be denounced. The President should denounce it. He doesn't. Right. But the fact that on this end of the left, and I don't want to lump a lot of Democrats in here who do not support this stuff at all, but there is a rising tide of this psychopathic view of the world that there's a cleansing power of violence. Right. Well, you know, 9, 11 happened, because what were they supposed to do? Right. They were supposed to fly two planes into buildings, one into Shanksville Field and one into the Pentagon. Yeah, that makes perfect sense to a psychopath, not to a normal person.

[Peter Meyer]

So no, Chevalier excused Russia invading Ukraine saying that we had bullied them.

[Michael Moynihan]

We bullied them.

[Peter Meyer]

Like, is there no act of atrocity or horror that cannot be rationalized and of absolve the guilty party of having done something terrible?

[Michael Moynihan]

The low number, low number of young Russian men and now older Russian men and criminal Russian men who have been killed because of that bullying is low numbers. 350,000. 350,000. That's astonishing. How many people died in Vietnam? 58,000Americans died in Vietnam. 58,000. And it was a trauma that we never got over in a lot of ways, and we shouldn't have.

[Peter Meyer]

War two fatalities.

[Michael Moynihan]

That's World War II fatalities for America. Yeah. As 350,000. And the Soviet Union came unglued because of 19,000 casualties in Afghanistan. Right. And that was over a very long period of time. This is psychotic behavior. You're defending that stuff. Well, I don't defend it. I'm just trying to explain the root causes. Root causes theory is a way of apportioning blame to the people in the world that you, you don't like. And none of these people like the country that they're in. And I, I have been reluctant to say it. I'll say it again. I always feel like I don't like saying that, that they're anti. Like they just, they can't say a nice thing about. Like on July 4th, do you think that these people are going to be waving the flag or is it going to be upside down talking about all the oppression? And, you know, and I, I saw some quote from this woman in Colorado of. I can't remember the exact. I should get it before I quote it, but it was something to the effect of, you know, no country in history talking about Israel has done this terrible thing. And I was like, when you start saying no country in history, stop yourself because you're an illiterate. Right. That these are the people that think that slavery happened in one country in the United States, which war happened in one country, and it was Israel.

[Peter Meyer]

And I'm incredibly cynical about the way that the west, liberals in the west, the progressives, the socialists, all that have reacted to Gaza, partially because I spent a lot of time in places where there were vastly worse atrocities that were not covered at all. But even just. And setting aside the amount of times that there'd be an image where it's like, look at this terrible thing happening in Gaza. No, that was actually in fucking Syria.

[Michael Moynihan]

Yes. And you will back answer. Jesus. They're always proving the point, but just

[Peter Meyer]

over a three day period, I believe it was in October in Sudan, the rapid strike forces probably killed as many civilians, potentially far more as have died in Gaza since October 7th.

[Michael Moynihan]

Three days. Yeah. I mean, fucking peep. Yeah. I mean, you're reading a Lenin book

[Peter Meyer]

and that's by the way, just like literally genocidal, like lining people up in pits, not, oh, this was collateral damage in a strike, you know, in an urban conflict. Like, Jesus Christ, guys.

[Michael Moynihan]

Yeah, no, it is. It's weird too, because, I mean, you would have to be a different type of psychopath and sociopath to say that what has happened in Gaza is not an enormous human tragedy. It is about the apportioning of blame, how this could have been prevented. And you can also be very, very open, as people in his own coalition have been critical of Netanyahu and in a lot of ways the American government, that is all fine. The elevation of this to the number one issue in congressional primaries in Colorado is lunatic stuff. And this is, you know, we go from Epstein obsessions to this obsession and like jumping around in the conspiracy theories that, that, that build up around it. You know Anna Kasparian, who's on the show about the deal that the Israelis temporarily made with the Lebanese government about Hezbollah, and she tweeted something about, you know, these are the only people, Hezbollah, who are fighting the genocidal occupiers. And it's like we have really gone off the deep end at this point. I just don't even. It is absolutely stunning to me that we're coming up on the 25th anniversary of 9 11, and this is the conversation of the politics we're having for the midterm that will be right after the anniversary of 9 11. I mean, absolutely bizarre place to be.

[Peter Meyer]

The insane thing is you have former members of Al Qaeda, who wouldn't say that about 9, 11 and Osama bin Laden's motivations. Like Jelani, the president of Syria. He's not saying that. He's like, well, you know, we all have youthful indiscretions.

[Michael Moynihan]

Yeah. Like me being a member of Farm Team, then isis.

[Peter Meyer]

But then he sold a lot of them down.

[Michael Moynihan]

Yeah, like, well, Al Nusra wasn't quite isis, but they were pretty good at the killing and kidnapping of people who. I know some. I know somebody's kidnapped. He's a wonderful guy.

[Camille Foster]

Peter, we'd be remiss if we didn't talk to you about some of the. I don't know what to call it. The headline I keep seeing over and over again is GOP revolt. But there is something happening on Capitol Hill amongst your former colleagues. Can you tell us what is going on there? Is it in fact a full blown revolt?

[Peter Meyer]

Which revolt? There's like three separate ones that may be occurring. There are some moderates who are threatened to tank some of the supplemental funding for the Department of Defense because they want more explicit support of Ukraine. They're the folks who have been objecting to some of this provisions in the National Defense Authorization act about Israeli cooperation, which now, like the, the Democratic side is backing away from a million percent. I mean, even Hakeem Jeffries is like, oh, do you think the Democratic platform should have support for, you know, the existence of the state of Israel? And he's like, well, every person who's

[Michael Moynihan]

in a primary has said, we're coming for you, Jeffries.

[Peter Meyer]

Like, oh, okay, wow, this is. Okay, turn it on dime here. And then there's also just the SAVE act, you know, kind of shenanigans too. So you got to be. And then there's also Marjorie Taylor Greene apparently starting a new party, but now she's no longer part of the gop, so that probably wouldn't count as a GOP revolt. But you could say a former.

[Camille Foster]

Let's talk about the state.

[Michael Moynihan]

Did she name the party yet?

[Peter Meyer]

She just said it'll be actually America First. Yeah. No, really?

[Michael Moynihan]

Really, this actually America First?

[Camille Foster]

No, I'm thinking specifically about the SAVE act because the president has been talking about that as well. He's been withholding his signature. And essentially they've decided not to advance the housing bill that there seemed to be some bipartisan agreement on, despite the fact that I was not excited about some of the stuff that's in there. But the SAVE act is the particular

[Peter Meyer]

concern housing affordable in the country. All right, you know, chassis law Seems important.

[Michael Moynihan]

Well, the Inflation Reduction act worked. Yeah, exactly.

[Peter Meyer]

It reduced inflation. Yeah.

[Camille Foster]

But the SAVE act would focus on what it's early voting, some curtailing of that perhaps giving us some sort of nationalized role of voters at least encroaching somewhat on state's prerogative there. And the President desperately wants this passed. I suppose also ID verification is another thing. President wants this passed. Some members of Congress want this passed. There's some concern about whether or not it would actually, actually survive in the Senate. What is happening there.

[Peter Meyer]

And I think no boys in girls sports is also gets lumped in there from time to time. There have been several different iterations of this that there are strong elements of the SAVE act that could be widely supported, would not get any Democratic support or you could maybe tweak it in a way to get some Democratic support. Maybe a year ago, definitely two years ago, definitely not now. But things around ballots have to be received by election day. Putting that into statute not postmarked by received by. There are things that you could do around some of this. We had the Motor Voter act now over two decades ago. Congress can have a role in elections setting some standards that is fully constitutionally supported.

[Michael Moynihan]

It.

[Peter Meyer]

The SAVE act would go into effect immediately. It would have a number of restrictions on the upcoming election that would just be probably flatly unworkable. It would probably immediately run into constitutional headwinds because it would violate sort of this kind of Purcell notion of you can't have dramatic changes to elections in ways that would upset the processing and thereof. I'm at a loss. I don't get sort of the logic here. I mean, unless the logic is to 100% blow up the filibuster in the Senate, which seems to be the only theoretical way that you could do that and there's not the votes to blow up the filibuster. Cuz you're gonna need. You're gonna need Tillis, you're gonna need Cassidy, you're going to need McConnell, you're going to need Collins, you're going to need Murkowski, you're going to need Cornyn, you're going to need a bunch of people that you've either endorsed against, have caused to lose or cause to retire. All of whom I don't want to see them intentionally sabotage and do a 180 from things they previously believed now because they feel liberated. But they're definitely not going to fall in line for what. So if you're looking for any insight, I mean the prevailing notion is just like how do we just kind of get past this thing. I'm pissed off because there were a lot of ways you could have actually made progress on some of these things if done in a smart way. There is room for bipartisan cooperation. A lot of Democrats are embarrassed by the way California runs their elections. There are ways that you could pair additional federal funding with tighter standards, or you could probably pass this through reconciliation. You wouldn't need 60 votes in the Senate. You could tie funding to the states on things like transportation funding, not fully, but up to about 10%. You could tie that into compliance with these certain components.

[Michael Moynihan]

But to pull the camera back out a little bit, I mean, there's actually,

[Peter Meyer]

look, I had Democratic conversations or bipartisan conversations in 2021 about this because there was some room and then it just became so incredibly toxic on either side of the aisle where if you talk about election integrity, you must implicitly be supporting the election as opposed to how do we avoid this happening again?

[Michael Moynihan]

Mechanically, there are real issues, but the kind of umbrella is a fake issue. Right? I mean, this is the result of Donald Trump's. This is not something that was happening in 2012. And you know, like this level of everything we have to get this election stuff solved is based on the idea that MAGA voters believe that there are legals voting, that the election was stolen. All of this stuff, which are fake issues. There are real election issues.

[Peter Meyer]

There are, there are non citizens who do vote. It's not in numbers that'll change, but

[Michael Moynihan]

it's also, voter ID is very popular. That's a perfectly. No logical.

[Peter Meyer]

In Michigan, we had at least a half a dozen folks, some of whom, the majority of whom were only found out because they were like, oh shit, like I actually cast my ballot. I thought, and I didn't realize and all this, it's like, can you like remove that? It's like, no, we can't.

[Michael Moynihan]

Now.

[Peter Meyer]

Those are low numbers. They're not going to make a difference, you know, statewide normally. But that becomes a huge issue from a confidence standpoint and because it's non falsifiable. Yeah, our elections are secure. I had people push back and be like, well, prove it. It's like, well, do you have evidence of the absence? It kind of puts you into this rhetorical position where it's a lot easier when you don't have states that just mail out ballots to everyone and somebody receives six different ballots. And sometimes those are ballot applications. But if that ballot, like what is that doing to your perception of the competence of the government that you were then Entrusted.

[Michael Moynihan]

There are things that are much worse than the competence of government. But I would say also that the proportional attention given to this issue by Republicans is wildly out of proportion to its actual function of election conspiracy as an issue. I mean, it's not. Not an issue. But the fact that this is the thing that has to blow up any bipartisan legislation or whatever it might be going forward is that it's not based on reality. It's based on an instinct from Donald Trump. And he saw that as an issue that worked with people because it's so important to him that to get a job in the fucking administration, you have to say to the person interviewing you that Donald Trump won the 2020 election. And that is widely reported. And I even Talked to someone 6 months ago who is working, and I. And I said, did they ask you? And I said, yeah. And he said, yeah. You gotta lie. You gotta say, yeah, sure. It's like, if you want the job, you gotta. L. That is a litmus test. To get a job in the administration means that something has gone horribly wrong in that way. I mean, the administration has an obs. The administration. Trump has an insane obsession with this. We all know that. And it kind of filters down. And you mentioned six people in the Senate who can now be free. I wish they'd do a 180. I wish they would do a 180 and start talking as.

[Peter Meyer]

I don't want them to do a 180 for the purposes of sabotaging things that they otherwise believe.

[Michael Moynihan]

No, I. No, no, I agree. I agree. But I think that almost everything that I see half these guys say is like, you'd be Tillis if you were. If you were at the door tomorrow. If you had a. If you had a Ben Sasse actuarial table.

[Camille Foster]

I think the issue is that so many of them who were conventional conservatives before maga, like, became something else after maga. And now, to the extent there's a reversion after the president terms of. On turns on you, you're actually reverting back to where you were before. That was the average. It's pretty much what people would have expected from you all along the way.

[Peter Meyer]

I did like Cassidy's kind of Senator Cassidy's blow up with Trump about Iran.

[Michael Moynihan]

Yes.

[Peter Meyer]

And then I was just like, oh, man, this is not smart. They're getting into a shouting match. And then later that night, the White House was like, hey, come briefing, we'll answer your questions. Yeah, like, that was smart. That was something. I'm like, this is good. All around like, let's please have more of this. But to your point, on sort of the stolen election, stuff like that in 2022, the stolen election was very much a litmus test from an electoral politics standpoint. Obviously, litmus tests work in the administration for a while. I was comparing the stolen election rhetoric in 2022 to Gaza genocide in 2026. I think Gaza genocide is way more salient at this point from a primary standpoint among Democrats than stolen election ever was on the Republican side. Because there were plenty of folks who were just like, well, you know, know, what we really need to do is ensure election integrity. Like, they would kind of dance around it. They would be able to do it. It was not like, say the words, say the words.

[Michael Moynihan]

And I think the Gaza thing is interesting because it is a. We have a long history in this country of engaging in military conflict, ourselves in it being forgotten about within six months. Yeah. I mean, Iran is basically. Do people pay attention to Venezuela? Venezuela people don't pay attention to Grenada People hadn't heard of by 1985. Right. I mean, this is something Vietnam was forgotten about. All this stuff is forgotten about. And yet they. I'll give these nutbags credit for, you know, just making that. I think it's insane and insane politics. But for like walking, you know, behind people at trans rights rallies in San Francisco, Scott Wiener, and saying like, like, you know, you haven't done enough for. I don't even know what was. What was said.

[Camille Foster]

I mean, that was certainly one of the things.

[Michael Moynihan]

I mean, that was the nicest. Screaming in his face.

[Camille Foster]

Yeah.

[Michael Moynihan]

And it's like Democrats who are sympathetic to the progressive cause on msnbc and I've seen a few, by the way, to be fair, have to come out and say, this is getting to nutty territory. This is cult behavior, following people around and screaming at them for not being. I mean, this. It's. What is it? It's Stalinist. Stalinism was about. There was no ideological thing that was much different than Leninism. Stalinism, the component of it, why we talk about it the way we do, was because it was that you did the slightly wrong thing, you blinked the wrong way, and you. The guy who did the executions are now being executed. There's a million examples of that. And that is like, you did the right thing, Scott, but you didn't do it exactly right.

[Camille Foster]

The way voters who have this sense of kind of moral authority related to any of the most salient issues in our politics, or at least the ones that get people the most animated, the Way it manifests itself today versus, like, the 1960s is pretty extraordinary. Like, if you had the moral authority on issues related to racism, segregation, something like that, you're on the lines. You're kind of putting your body on the line. You are being visible. You're getting seen, you're getting press today. It manifests itself in this aggressive, assertive, violent sort of way, which is necessarily a turnoff to so many moderate independent voters and thinkers who are observing these politics from abroad. And it is clearly not bringing the Democratic Party together.

[Michael Moynihan]

It's not the most.

[Peter Meyer]

I mean, the point is to cow. The point is to frighten and have somebody watch that and be like, I want to avoid finding myself in that situation. And in some cases, that may be, I won't run for office, or I'm gonna sort of leave this alone. In other cases, it'll be, what do I say? How do I preemptively avoid that type? And the more confusing thing for a lot of them is, like, it's not like Scott Wiener's out there being like, I'm a Zionist and we need to go settle. You know, I support the Golan Heights annexation. He's not going into detail about any of this. It's just not enough. Full throat of condemnation. I've actually had a lot of. I've been forced to kind of look back four years ago and really gain an appreciation for a lot of the Republican primary voters who hated my guts. I never had that shit. I never had a single moment that was that degree of just like. Of bandwagoning, harassment of somebody coming. Like, people said mean things. There were nasty moments for sure. Nothing on that level of just now. You fear for your safety in this moment.

[Michael Moynihan]

It. If you're. That's the second time with Scott Winter that's happened in a week.

[Peter Meyer]

Yeah. No, there was the person sitting down from him recording across at the restaurant. I mean, you just see the fear in that person's eyes.

[Michael Moynihan]

He looked terrified.

[Peter Meyer]

But the goal is you make an example of a person. You make an example of a couple of people. People. And then you see who doesn't fall in line. And then you go after them.

[Michael Moynihan]

But also, if you're him. That first video, I kind of recoiled from it in two levels.

[Peter Meyer]

Yeah.

[Michael Moynihan]

One was the people hunting him. And the second was, you're such a Bay Area political animal that you can't stand up for yourself. No, you can't say, go yourself. Get your camera out of my face. Because people would respect that more than kind of shrinking in the Corner. I mean he looked like a, like a, like a raccoon. It was like, I get it. But at the same time, I don't know how much of that is fear and how much of that is the political brain saying, I don't want to say the wrong thing here.

[Peter Meyer]

I don't want to come off as confrontational.

[Michael Moynihan]

I don't want to come as confrontational.

[Peter Meyer]

I don't want to dying to get

[Michael Moynihan]

him alienate the sort of pro Palestinian movement. But the thing that you said about the civil rights movement, I've been thinking about this a lot because I'm impressed by what they've done. And what they've done is organized PhD students, the, you know, people with art degrees that, you know, what's her name that won, Claire Valdez, they're actually getting into politics because the 60s example, this is pretty interesting because the civil rights movement in the non violent form, one, right, And Bayard Rustin, the great Bayard Rustin, one of great, forgotten about American, wrote about this in the 70s in commentary. He wrote about black nationalism and how it was like just a stain on the civil rights movement. He was very, very much opposed to it. But then I was thinking the other day that was that it took Edward J. Epstein, the writer, to write a piece in the New Yorker about how everyone in the media had been gulled by these fake numbers of Panthers who had been killed by the cops. And he went through them and it was like none of it was true. There was like Fred Hampton and a couple other people. There's like this completely inflated numbers because the people in media. There was a lot of people in media that were kind of sympathetic to it, but it was their sympathetic. There's people in the universities that are sympathetic to it. There's the activists. But the Democratic Party was, you know, daily at the 1968 convention in Chicago. They were not assimilating any of them that at all. There's a couple of people, you know, who are extreme in the Democratic Party. There's a couple people are very extreme in the Republican Party too. But now they're kind of closing that circle in a pretty interesting way, which is all of these people that I'm like, oh, you look like the lady at the coffee shop every morning who's working on her screenplay, right? You know, with the paint on her jeans because she's telling you she's a painter. This. These people are now in politics, you know, and I gotta say good on them because, you know, if you really want to take over, then do it. The electoral way, and then become Kwame Nkrumah and put all your opponents in jail, which he did within a year of taking power in Ghana, by the way.

[Peter Meyer]

But they've also never had any experience that has forced them to reckon with cause and effect in a non insulated environment.

[Michael Moynihan]

Yes.

[Peter Meyer]

I mean, that's the challenge with somebody who's only understood the world through an academic lens and doesn't. And maybe, you know, working as a barista in a, you know, gentrified neighborhood, like your struggle to pay off your student loan debt. Okay, I'm sorry that, you know, maybe you were given promises. But comparing that to the challenges of how do you make sure that Social Security is solvent for the people who are counting on that.

[Michael Moynihan]

Yeah.

[Peter Meyer]

How do you not have, you know, runaway deficits that lead to debt that lives, leads to a fiscal crisis or an inflation spiral? Like how do we avoid all these potential scenarios that you are convinced through your intellectual and ideological brainwashing are solely going to be the cause of the millionaires and the billionaires and the 1% and ellipse. Ellipsy. Ellipse. I have no confidence or my confidence is rapidly declining that when we reach that point of kind of challenge and austerity, that it will not just devolve into confiscatory policies that have a highly anti Semitic undertone to them. And that scares the out of me.

[Michael Moynihan]

Well, I mean, there is a video I saw this morning of the woman in Colorado sitting on a couch with Hassan Piker, the congressman from Florida that we interviewed, who's. I'm old Maxwell Frost. Maxwell Frost, Yeah. And one other, in front of of these DSA posters and it was one of the funniest things because they were all lying back on this couch and she was mics in their hands. They're talking about the working class, the guy who lives in the Hollywood hills, the fucking PhD students and all stuff. You know, you gotta say, at least the Soviets did have some workers on their side, right? It's like this. There it is. Going to baseball fantasy camp. They are going to revolution fantasy camp camp. They don't know working people. They pretend to know working people and they go to neighborhoods where they're heavily immigrants. Okay. You could probably play some, some immigrant politics there. Pretty easy to do. And try to go to Youngstown, right? Like there's working people in this America who in this country who have nothing but contempt for you and the type of life that you lead and you pretend to be, you know, leading this country kind of workers revolt and none of them ever worked. I mean, that's kind of a thing that. That I can imagine. My dear departed father, who was in a union, worked his whole life, didn't go to college. And I can't imagine putting my father in front of these people as they're talking about working people and watching him with his lucky strike unfiltered go, excuse me. Like, it's just like, the politics are so bizarre to me is that you have no connection. It's. It's like when Steve Cohen, Congressman Steve, who I love personally, I think is one of the sweetest guys in the world, his politics are nuts. But when he wanted to join the Congressional Black Caucus, and they're like, you're not black. And he's like, well, I represent the most black district in America. And that was his argument. And it's like, I have the interest. And it's true. And they were like, no, no, you're not one of us. And it's like, if there's a working man's caucus and nobody works and nobody has had a job in any particular. I'm sorry, I know it's a lazy argument to make in a lot of ways, and I understand that, but it is frustrating to see the United Auto

[Peter Meyer]

Workers, probably, within the next two years will have a minority of their members actually working in manufacturing. I mean, at this point, the. What is it like, because of, you know, professors and grad students and adjuncts and all this that have, like, risen into those ranks, they make up like 44%, I think it is, of United Auto Worker membership.

[Michael Moynihan]

Wow.

[Peter Meyer]

Like, and so that's where you have UAW taking stances on Gaza. Like, yeah, the guys on the Ford assembly line don't give a shit. It's the folks at Ann Arbor.

[Michael Moynihan]

They're probably saying, we need to just put more bike lanes everywhere to the moon.

[Peter Meyer]

Which, by the way, is going to be the inevitable sort of consequence of this kind of weird forced realignment. I mean, Trump, he. There was a. I don't think it was calculated, but the shift was he mobilized a lot of low propensity voters.

[Michael Moynihan]

Yeah.

[Peter Meyer]

In the process, lost a lot of high propensity voters. That's why, you know, midterms used to be great for the Republican Party because you had more college educated, white suburban voters on the GOP side. Now those are all incredibly Democratic. And so with that shift, though, that has really done a number on where the unions stood in terms of their traditional affiliations.

[Michael Moynihan]

And

[Peter Meyer]

with the way the DSA elements are going, I mean, they're repping a lot of things theoretically supportive of unions from a mouthpiece standpoint. But culturally it is just night and day differences between the union membership as it's conceived of in Bernie Sanders idea and the union membership. That'll be the reality when the UAW is mostly academics.

[Michael Moynihan]

Yeah, they all support countries that don't have free trade unions, by the way, like Cuba.

[Camille Foster]

Before we go, we should probably talk a little bit about July 4th, which is three days away now. Semi quincentennial, which is fun to say. I know you have to get out of here because you're headed down to D.C. i imagine for the great American, what are we calling it? Circus Fair ground.

[Peter Meyer]

Is that still going until like the 10th state fair?

[Camille Foster]

Yes, I think that's right.

[Michael Moynihan]

Is Vanilla Ice still the only guy left?

[Camille Foster]

I don't know who is Tone Loki. All of the video I've seen is of sparse crowds outnumbered by the number of people on stage. It's really, really bad. But maybe it'll pick up over the weekend. I'm not sure.

[Michael Moynihan]

But that's not what you're going down for. We can.

[Camille Foster]

I was kidding.

[Michael Moynihan]

Oh, I don't know.

[Peter Meyer]

Going to camp on the Mall, you know, want to see the flyovers.

[Camille Foster]

Well, we can ignore that at the moment debacle, which maybe it'll get much better. Oh, my God. To perhaps reminisce a little bit about what makes America great. And I'd love to perhaps hear from you, Congressman, about your thoughts on America, your thoughts on its prospects for the future. Are you bullish?

[Michael Moynihan]

And also in the world of politics right now, if you could follow that by talking about what makes the Netherlands great too, because you have to give a little hat tip to not secure the native countries.

[Peter Meyer]

One of something that I actually really enjoy doing was going out and just door knocking. Right. Because when, if you're out in public as like an elected official, you're getting people who approach you and it's going to be. Some of it's positive, some of it's negative, but it's a little bit more forced as opposed to just kind of meeting folks at the doors. And some of the people who kind of inspired me the most were the folks who were like, listen, I don't really do politics because honestly, I don't feel I have enough time to really understand it. And if I'm going to get. Get involved in something, like I want to be making an informed decision. And I just, I don't. I'm like, you're absolutely the person who should be Involved because of the degree of humility and understanding that you're showing right now. But folks like that, people who are kind of small business owners or members of the community for a long time, you're just like, holy shit. Like, the amount of weight you're carrying just from like an inspirational standpoint for your community, for this country, is incredible. Now, the challenge is those people are oftentimes not active on social media, or if they are, they're not active on political social media because they have actual jobs to do. Knowing that those people exist out there, and there's actually a large number of them, but they may not be a majority, but they are very much. Their silence is not their absence. It's just they are actually working. They are doing the job. And I am just so deeply thankful for the people who are just. They're not talking, they're not bitching, they're not sitting around, you know, complaining as I want to do. And we are all doing, you know, their nose to the grindstone, and they power this country.

[Michael Moynihan]

The greatest thing about America is that what we did today is a job, and you don't go to jail for it.

[Peter Meyer]

I get free liquor.

[Michael Moynihan]

Yeah, you got free liquor.

[Camille Foster]

So long as you say the right thing, you don't go to jail.

[Michael Moynihan]

Yeah, yeah. You don't go to jail for it is a very positive thing. Right. Bad tweets, opposing the party in power that sucks and is doing all sorts of terrible things. But we can talk about it every day. So that's a good cliche. But. Yeah, but. And I've never met somebody who. There's always a reason that you realize that Paul McCartney lives in New York and Ringo lives in LA and Keith Richards lives in Connecticut. Right. It's like, it's a pretty good place to come, you know, exile on Main street and be here.

[Peter Meyer]

Honestly, driving in here from the airport and just seeing at 8 in the morning throngs of folks going to their jobs, going. Just active, working, hustling, striving. They're not sitting around there with like a bongo drum and free Luigi signs. Like, you see those people?

[Michael Moynihan]

Yeah.

[Peter Meyer]

That's not the majority.

[Michael Moynihan]

No. The greatness of America is that you have time to do that. Yeah, right.

[Peter Meyer]

Well, that's.

[Michael Moynihan]

I mean, it's. It's, it's, you know, a negative and a positive. It's the fact that every. The New York Post exists because you just find out the name of the people in line getting their fake press passes for Luigi, and then you just find out that their parents have a $9 million house in Bridgehampton, and it just writes itself every time. And it's like. That's what's great. That's what's great is you. You can do this.

[Peter Meyer]

I saw Hassan Piker kill all the landlords. Oh, by the way, your mom's a landlord. There might be some deeper Oedipal.

[Michael Moynihan]

Yeah. Do we take your powder blue Porsche, or is that in the later stage of the revolution? Yeah, but. Yeah, all right.

[Camille Foster]

Okay.

[Michael Moynihan]

Peter Meyer, you did a great job filling in for Matt. I will send him his. His notice now. Thank you. He has two weeks left. And. And then you'll fill in for.

[Peter Meyer]

I. I'll give my. My ach. Info for the.

[Camille Foster]

No, no, that's. That's all you get is.

[Michael Moynihan]

That's all you get. Yeah, but you can sell it. That's a fancy bottle.

[Peter Meyer]

It's a fancy bottle and it's number three. So now they'll know if I sell

[Michael Moynihan]

it, and that's fine, but, like, we'll understand if stop and shop or whatever the fuck it is that you guys get if that goes out of business. If you can't, you know, rip off the consumers with your. What do they call it? Shrinkflation.

[Peter Meyer]

What's the one Shrink inflation? Greedflation.

[Michael Moynihan]

Greedflation. Well, you're just price gouging, I guess.

[Camille Foster]

Of course.

[Michael Moynihan]

That's what I think is happening over there. I think it's price gouging.

[Peter Meyer]

By the way, the narrative in the mid to late 2010s was that driving down lower prices was incredibly unfair for some of, like, the producers who were selling in. It's like, you're selling these eggs for too low a cost. You're selling these things for too. The pickles are too cheap right now.

[Michael Moynihan]

That was the Walmart thing.

[Peter Meyer]

The pickles, the big pickle chicken, the Vlasican. The amount of times I'm like, can you guys just have, like, a consistent stance for five years?

[Michael Moynihan]

Yeah.

[Peter Meyer]

I'm not saying not even a decade.

[Michael Moynihan]

Five years. Yeah. Anyways, well, if you live in the Midwest, go to the Walmart or whatever it is you guys get. What is it called? Meyer, Myers, go to madgers.com. what did Trump say? Guy?

[Peter Meyer]

Me.

[Michael Moynihan]

Who the hell knows how to pronounce? Who knows? He's a meer. He's a meer, but he's a phony. He's a fraud.

[Peter Meyer]

He actually pronounced my name. He's said my name twice that I'm aware of on stage one. He nailed it.

[Michael Moynihan]

Yeah. And then the next time the next time he. He deliberately, deliberately didn't nail. All right.

[Camille Foster]

Later.

[Michael Moynihan]

Thank you, Peter.

[Peter Meyer]

Thank you.

[Michael Moynihan]

Bye.

[Peter Meyer]

We know of new method of attack.

[Michael Moynihan]

The Tr. Trojan Horse.

[Peter Meyer]

The Fifth Column.

[Michael Moynihan]

The Fifth Fifth.

[Peter Meyer]

The Fifth Column. Fifth Column.

[Michael Moynihan]

Fifth Column.

[Peter Meyer]

Fifth Column. Spies, saboteurs and traders. These dividing forces are undiluted poison. They must not be allowed to spread in the new world as they have in the old. Our moral and our mental defenses must be raised up as never before against those who would cast a smoke screen across our big.