Ask Dr. Drew - Kamala vs. Trump vs. Cats: Who Won The Misinformation Debate? with Joel Pollak & Dr. Alex Balekian (CA30 Congressional Candidate) – Ask Dr. Drew – Ep 401

Episode Date: September 14, 2024

“The Springfield cat story turned out to be largely fiction,” writes Pedro Gonzalez, a reporter who investigated shocking claims of Haitian immigrants eating pets in Ohio. But somehow, the story was prominently mentioned in the most important presidential debate of the year. How was a former President baited with virally-manufactured misinformation – and why did Kamala repeat the long-debunked “fine people” hoax? Joel Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large and In-house Counsel at Breitbart News. Born in South Africa and educated at Harvard, he holds degrees in Social Studies, Environmental Science, and Law. Pollak served as chief speechwriter for the Leader of the Opposition in South Africa’s Parliament and completed an MA in Jewish Studies at the University of Cape Town. He’s the author of “The Agenda: What Trump Should Do in His First 100 Days“. Follow him at https://x.com/joelpollak Dr. Alex Balekian is an intensive care physician and candidate for California’s 30th Congressional district. Born and raised in Glendale, Balekian secured second place in the 2024 primary election, advancing to the general election. As a first-time candidate (often referring to himself as a “Deukmejian Republican”) he’s known for his unique profile: Middle Eastern, son of immigrants, pro-choice, and married to a man. Balekian’s platform focuses on public safety, tax reduction, and limited government. Follow Alex at https://x.com/AlexBalekian and learn more at https://alexforca30.com/ 「 SUPPORT OUR SPONSORS 」 Find out more about the brands that make this show possible and get special discounts on Dr. Drew's favorite products at https://drdrew.com/sponsors  • FATTY15 – The future of essential fatty acids is here! Strengthen your cells against age-related breakdown with Fatty15. Get 15% off a 90-day Starter Kit Subscription at https://drdrew.com/fatty15 • CAPSADYN - Get pain relief with the power of capsaicin from chili peppers – without the burning! Capsadyn's proprietary formulation for joint & muscle pain contains no NSAIDs, opioids, anesthetics, or steroids. Try it for 15% off at https://drdrew.com/capsadyn • PALEOVALLEY - "Paleovalley has a wide variety of extraordinary products that are both healthful and delicious,” says Dr. Drew. "I am a huge fan of this brand and know you'll love it too!” Get 15% off your first order at https://drdrew.com/paleovalley • THE WELLNESS COMPANY - Counteract harmful spike proteins with TWC's Signature Series Spike Support Formula containing nattokinase and selenium. Learn more about TWC's supplements at https://twc.health/drew 「 MEDICAL NOTE 」 Portions of this program may examine countervailing views on important medical issues. Always consult your physician before making any decisions about your health. 「 ABOUT THE SHOW 」 Ask Dr. Drew is produced by Kaleb Nation (https://kalebnation.com) and Susan Pinsky (https://twitter.com/firstladyoflove). This show is for entertainment and/or informational purposes only, and is not a substitute for medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

great show today in fact uh come your way is a candidate for california's 30th congressional district alex palikian he is also a physician and an intensivist he'll be with us in a while but first up joel pollack if you don't know his name you should senior editor at large and in-house counsel at breitbart news he's's from South Africa, educated at Harvard, degrees in social studies, environmental science, law. Joel served as chief speechwriter for the leader of the opposition in South Africa's parliament. And he completed a master's in Jewish studies at the University of Cape Town.

Author of the agenda, What Trump Should Do in His First 100 Days. We'll find out more about that. You can follow him on X, Joel Pollack, J-O-L-L-E-P-O-L-L-A-K. Yep, get that book, The Agenda. What Trump Should Do in His First 100 Days. You'll find out more about what that is after this. Our laws as it pertained to substances are draconian and bizarre.

The psychopath started this. He was an alcoholic because of social media and pornography, PTSD, love addiction, fentanyl and bizarre. The psychopath started this. He was an alcoholic because of social media and pornography, PTSD, love addiction, fentanyl and heroin. Ridiculous. I'm a doctor for f***'s sake.

Where the hell do you think I learned that? I'm just saying, you go to treatment before you kill people. I am a clinician. I observe things about these chemicals.

Let's just deal with what's real. We used to get these calls on Loveline all the time. Educate adolescents and to prevent and to treat. If you have trouble, you can't stop and you want help, stop it. all the time. Educate adolescents and to prevent and to treat. If you have trouble, you can't stop and you want to help stop it, I can help. I got a lot to say.

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That's what makes capsaicin so unique. In clinical trials, capsaicin has actually been demonstrated not to burn. I've been using Capsodent to relieve my pain in my hands and my wrist from carpal tunnel syndrome and arthritis. The results have been amazing. I use it every day during my show and I highly recommend it. Get the pain relief you need from various sources, even back aches, sprains, bruises even. Order now at capsidin.com slash drew to get a 15% discount plus free shipping. That is C-A-P-S-A-D-Y-N capsidin.com slash D-R-E-W. As I said, Joe Pollack joins us here today.

If you remember our friend Scott Adams, he's always quoting what Joel is saying on Twitter. And one of the things on X, and one of the things we're going to get into is Trump versus Katz. Who won the misinformation debate? We'll get into that. But first, please welcome Joel Pollack. Good to be with you, Dr. Drew. Joel, I don't know if you remember, but you used to, before your name was sort of more widely known,

you used to join me on a daytime radio show on KBC in Los Angeles. Yeah, yeah, a lot of fun. Terrestrial radio is a lot of fun. And I always appreciate it because you were always challenging and everything you said was smart. And I just love talking to you. So I appreciate you giving us the opportunity to spend some time with you, particularly the day after the debate. I'm guessing you're busy today. It's been a busy day, and it was an even busier night.

But we were up late into the wee hours of the morning doing fact-checking and all kinds of analysis. And people are still digesting this debate. The story of the debate isn't over. So it's interesting to see how your impressions of what happened change over time. It is interesting. There's your book, The Agenda, What Trump Should Do in His First 100 Days. We'll get to what is in that book in a few minutes. But it is interesting in the sense that the previous debates, I feel like this one's been percolating around in very interesting ways. Previous debates were like, oh, crap, there was a reaction and that was the reaction.

This one has waxed and waned for most people I've spoken to. Well, I think that's because the moderators were so clearly on one side. So that has given the losing side. And I do think Trump lost the debate. It's not a disaster for him. But it's given the losing side who were on the receiving end, Trump certainly on the receiving end of all the fact checking and intervention by the moderators. They never fact checked Kamala Harris once. It's given his side a way to fight back against impressions of the debate. And they've been going through one fact after another that

the moderators either fact-checked incorrectly or did not fact-check. And it's given this debate life beyond the 90 minutes that it took place. So I actually feel that over time, Trump supporters are feeling better about it than they may have felt in the immediate aftermath. When I do think that Kamala Harris did a better job of presenting herself, achieving what she needed to do. And Trump just didn't. It was a three to one debate where he was against not just his opponent, but also the moderators. But in the beginning, there were opportunities he just didn't take. Right. I thought he missed some easy shots on on goal and uh which i found kind of interesting and it it felt to me like he was so jacked up you know he was so emotionally like he's like he had

his you know he didn't his his tone didn't stop change the almost the entire debate it was sort of yelling it was just sort of yelling and it was way it looked, it looked like he was yelling at the moderators, which I can't blame him. Well, here's the problem. And I've been saying this for weeks. I've done a lot of interviews about my book, The Agenda, and I go on a lot of conservative media shows. And I was asked what I thought would happen in the debate. And that's an understandable question because there is only one debate of these so far. And the Harris campaign kept her out of the media, kept her away from voters even. They emphasized the importance of this debate. So the stakes were very high. And a lot of conservative radio hosts and podcast hosts were expecting her to crumble because she doesn't do well speaking off the cuff.

And I said, don't expect her to crumble. Look at how she did in 2020. She's actually a competent debater. She doesn't really defend her positions, but she presents very well. She's very calm and collected. She has a strategy. She carries it out. And I said, look, we have to stop thinking about this debate as some kind of contest where each side is trying to persuade voters to choose them over the other. Most people in the way our elections run at the moment, most people have already made up their minds. So Trump has to stop thinking about trying to beat her and use the opportunity to reach out to his own voters and make his own case, not only that he's the better

candidate, but that he can actually win in a system that many of his own voters doubt is fair. And so I think he missed that opportunity. And if I could just mention one case, which I thought was very important before the moderators had broken out all their ridiculous one-sided fact checks. In the beginning, they asked Kamala Harris the first question. It was a very fair question. It was, are you better off or are American consumers, are Americans in general better off economically than they were four years ago? And she completely dodged the question. It was a complete zero. And what Trump should have said is, I hope you notice she didn't answer the question and then say whatever else he wanted to say. But he got triggered by something she said about his tariff plan.

And he's very competitive. And I think he just had this competitive instinct. So he went for that. But really, he just had to talk to his supporters. Right. I agree. And you could even argue that really what he should be concerning himself with in that particular, maybe all the future debates, is Pennsylvania sort of independence. Because the

issue of fracking and drilling and sort of that industry in Pennsylvania could determine how Pennsylvania goes, and that could determine how the election goes. Well, I did think he made that point. So again, the debate wasn't a disaster for him. He did get several good shots in and he didn't make any terrible mistakes. It just wasn't as good as I think his supporters hoped it would be. He didn't make the overall case for himself and he certainly didn't land any knockout blows, but he did mention fracking and he came back to it. And when she denied that she had called for a ban on fracking he actually said no she did and she's opposed to fracking and people can look that up a lot of people are doing their own research

after these debates they don't trust the fact checkers and her record on fracking is very poor in pennsylvania i think pennsylvania is going to be pivotal you're absolutely right yeah fact checking has become a farce uh people do have to check. I don't know about doing your own research, but fact-checking has become a ridiculous endeavor, be that as it may, as has most of the sort of AI stuff that shows up on electronic media. It really is, you know, it's not good.

You know, the, I was going to say something, excuse me for a second while I get my train of thought back about, now I lost it, but I want to talk about layups and sort of missed opportunities in the debate. And one of them was the sort of under her breath comment that Kamala Harris, ah, I remember what I was going to say. Let me just say this quickly, which is that, you know, I get, I'm more comfortable with her points of view. They sound frankly like President Trump's.

They sound like him. It's just that how are we supposed to trust this person? Not only are they flipping and flopping, but man, she's been part of an administration that I have found egregious in its overreach. Why didn't she say something to that administration? Is it as simple as they were courting the far left back in the day, and now they're trying to court the independents? It's exactly what it was. And in 2019, when she took all of these hard left positions to the left of Bernie Sanders, she was competing with Sanders. She was competing with Elizabeth Warren. She was trying to come out on top in what was the most left-wing primary field in the history of the country, really. never had that moment that most party nominees have where they come back to the middle and try

to appeal to the American electorate. So she never had the opportunity to take positions in public that were different than what she had run on in the primary, or at least a little more mature, maybe more pragmatic. So now she is trying to revise all of those things. It hasn't gone well, especially because her campaign simply cut and pasted from Joe Biden's campaign website when they finally put up a page of policies. So I don't think voters trust her on policy. And even though I think she won the debate, so to speak, because she looks strong and that's what her supporters wanted her to project. I don't think she moved the needle with voters who haven't made up their mind if there are any such voters. And certainly she did not reach out across the aisle.

She didn't convince people on the economy. And I don't trust these after-debate polls so much, but CNN's poll had her winning the debate by something like a two-to-one margin. And even in that poll, Trump did better on the economy after the debate with the voters in that sample. They thought he made a better case on the economy than she did, even though they thought he lost overall. And if you want to weight the issues in this election, I think the economy is the number one issue. The border is very important for conservatives. Abortion is very important for liberals. But the economy is affecting everybody. And the Trump people are going to hammer that home. I don't think she did a good job explaining how her policies would help people. I don't even think she felt the urgency that many Americans feel as they've got mortgage payments coming up, as their credit card payments are starting to climb,

people are maxing out, they can't afford basic household expenses. So she's not there. And Trump's sense of fight might have actually helped him, even if I think overall he lost the opportunity to make a better substantive case. Yeah, I completely agree with that. You know, it's interestingnt weinstein today on his live stream with his wife was making the case that a lot of the strategy now is about creating traps that that the fact that he's framed it this way that the fact that the joe rogans and the brett weinsteins and maybe you and me even responded during COVID in such a way such as to reveal the truth

or at least our version of the truth and the excesses of that mess that they didn't expect that. They didn't expect this thing to sort of rise up. And now they're trying to trap people from that world into believing things that make them look foolish. He pointed out particularly something, one thought he thought was, for instance, the rumor that Biden had died and, you know, whatever. And then all of a sudden he shows up and looks pretty good.

You know, it makes people look foolish for sending stuff around that is, I would argue that the eating the pets thing might be in that same zone. Because when Trump kept emphasizing that, it looked like, don't, I felt like, don't do that. What do you say about the traps? And is there, am I right about the pets? Well, I don't know that that was a trap so much as a belief that some conservatives, not all, latched onto because it's a very visceral way of describing the way in which migration has overwhelmed not just big cities but small-town America. And people have a very physical connection to their own pets. And so when you tell them that something's happening to pets, people pay attention. Although really the problem is not that pets are going missing, and we don't know that pets. And so when you tell them that something's happening to pets, people pay attention. Although

really the problem is not that pets are going missing and we don't know that they are, but the problem is that people are going missing. There was a really riveting testimony on Capitol Hill this week from the mother of a girl who was murdered, a young woman who was murdered by a migrant who had been deported three times. And I actually pulled my car over to the side of the road as I was listening to that, and I had to sit for a few moments because it was so terrible. So somehow people often do feel a closer connection to stories about animals, and I think people were also having fun with the memes of Trump saving geese and ducks and cats and so forth. I do think it had an unintentional...

No, I thought that. Yeah, it had a weird effect on taylor swift well when taylor swift announced after the debate that that she was supporting kamala harris it was sort of a weird announcement and she posed with a picture of herself she had a photograph of herself holding a cat and because we had seen cat memes with trump for 48 hours i don't think it landed as well for tamra Swift because now we had just seen Trump with the cats. Anyway, but look, a lot of things that Kamala Harris said were also fallacious, you know, like the fine people hoax and the bloodbath hoax and all these other things.

The moderators did not correct her on that. In fact, they didn't correct her on anything. I would have thought they would have at least corrected her on one thing because then it would have made all the fact checks of Trump seem more credible, but they didn't really seem to be too concerned about their credibility. They just wanted to hurt him

and help her, I think. Well, one of the things that turned up under her breath, as I was saying, was she made a comment about President Xi and COVID origins. And all of us,

that was sort of a shocking. I don't know if there's much ink being spilled about this this morning, but let's quickly, or this today, let's quickly take a listen to it. For what he did during COVID, look at his tweet. Thank you, President Xi, exclamation point, when we know that Xi was responsible for lacking and not giving us transparency about the origins of COVID. Transparency about the origins of COVID. We could have bears repeating. So I heard that and I went, are you now saying that first of all,

that you can say that this administration can say, speculate COVID origins being a lab leak, or you're sort of matter of fact saying that it is so. What did you take from that? Nope. Well, look, she is a chameleon. And remember, she was saying that vaccines were terrible. She wouldn't take any vaccine developed under Trump. And then as soon as she and Joe Biden took office, it was everybody must get vaccinated. So this is one of those examples where at one point it was awful and xenophobic to question China's role.

And now it's seen as common knowledge and you have to talk about China. And also, she cherry picked this tweet from Trump. The full picture of China's involvement wasn't clear when Trump tweeted that. And he was thanking China for their help, I believe, in sharing the genome once they had sequenced the genome of COVID. And, you know, China played this game where they would cooperate in some things and then hide other information. So she picks this one tweet out of context. Look, ultimately, the most important thing about COVID, aside from the Chinese role, was the lockdowns and the shutdowns. And she used another statistic that was false. She claimed that Trump left office with the highest unemployment rate since the Great Depression. That's just not

true. The unemployment rate in January 2021 was 6.4%, which is not as good as it is now, but it was pretty close to what economists used to consider full employment. It had spiked during COVID in April 2020. It was up at 14.8%, but the recovery began under Trump. So when she took office, she and Joe Biden inherited an economy that was already recovering. Then they passed the America Rescue Plan and all the other spending bills that kicked inflation into high gear. So she has talking points. Many of them are false or used out of context. The moderators didn't correct her. But I don't think any of that really mattered.

What mattered was her supporters saw her fighting, not crumbling like Joe Biden did. And Trump's supporters saw him fighting back, which I think is good, but they didn't hear him making the case. And I think what he needs to do, and this is what I tell people about when I explain why I wrote the agenda, he needs to talk about where he's taking the country. Where is he going? Because that's what his voters need to know. They need to have a vision of January 20th, 2025. What happens when Trump takes office?

And ironically, on the campaign trail, he's been doing more of that. He didn't bring that to the debate. We know he can do it. I think he just got so combative so early that he stepped on his own message a little bit. It is. Because when people look at Trump, they know that he has a record of achievement in office, but they do wonder what the next four years will be because he is a wild card. He is unpredictable. And when you see Kamala Harris get under his skin, it does raise the doubt factor a little bit about what he might do in office. So his best move is to be calm, collected. And look, I don't think she closed the deal either. I don't think she looks presidential. Strong is not the same as

presidential. I thought her smirks and her little facial expressions were unpresidential. I don't think she reached out to the middle of the country in any way. She didn't empathize with people who are going through hard times. She tried to pretend the hard times didn't exist really so i don't think either of them really closed the deal and in the long run this may just be a wash but i do think that trump has to think about ways to reach out to the american people and to his voters in particular and yes he's got to project an air of gravitas rather than the combative spirit people know he can fight he got up from a bullet wound now people want to know how is he going to govern there was an interesting little slip that she made um and i don't know if it's meaningful or

or whether it was a truly a freudian slip um but dd on our restream mentioned it now i did hear it and i thought it was sort of comical at the time. It was towards the end of the debate. She called the current president, President O'Biden, and then she said Biden again, but she opened with O'Biden, and I thought, Susan, I mentioned it to you. I don't know if you heard what I said.

She said O'Biden. That's hysterical. Yeah, and did you make note of that? And Caleb, I hate to have you fishing around for that, but did you, you know, it's sort of. It really was the only thing she did wrong. Like she is coherent. So we can't really make fun of her. No, no, no. She was, she showed some real serious smarts and ability. I'm standing up for the fact that I couldn't get through that speech the same way without an um and a maybe or an oh Biden. You know, but people are making some, we have ants here too.

People are making something of it saying, aha, the real, see the real, the Wizard of Oz behind the Biden administration is Obama. She's admitting it right there. What do you say? Well, that could be. Obama is very heavily involved in what's going on in the Democratic Party. He is thought to have been deeply involved in the push to get Biden out of the way to allow Kamala Harris to become the nominee without winning any votes and so forth. And I do think that a lot of the staffers that Obama brought

to the White House, who are now once again in the Biden administration, will also roll over into a Kamala Harris administration if she wins. It's just going to be like musical chairs. If you think that the people who are running the country right now are doing a good job, they're going to come back in a Kamala Harris administration. And she's bringing other people in who are more radical, more left-wing. If you look at her foreign policy team, it's much further left than the team currently working in the White House. And they are even too far left for my own personal taste, but that's the direction things are moving in. But largely it's the same group of people and they're just going to change positions, change jobs. And Obama is the common denominator. He recruited a lot of those people into politics.

They came along with his campaign. He installed them in the White House. Many of them have bounced around from one position to the other. And when Trump was in office, they moved to left-wing think tanks, but he's always been their patron. So I'm sure he's never far from mind in the Biden administration. And that's why the slip happened, if that was indeed a Freudian slip. Foreign policy, you mentioned that uh how did that oh what do you got here is this the obama thing about biden thing caleb i think this is important to remind the former president you're not running against joe biden you're running against me uh it could be it could be merging joe biden into one or it could be oh by a lot of people saw that a lot of people heard it as oh biden yeah it was it was it's not as clear lot of people heard it as O'Biden.

It's not as clear in that audio as it was what I heard last night. Maybe it's my brain doing it. I can hear it. I hear what you're saying. So nobody else picked that up? Only me? Well, thank you, Didi, on my restream. They picked it up.

Did you hear it last night, Joel? I thought she said Joe Biden, actually, now that you replayed it, but I might have been primed to think that because I wasn't imagining she would refer to Obama. But I don't think that worked, by the way. I don't think it worked. She was trying to say you're not running against Biden, and he came back to that point, which is that her policies are the same as Joe Biden's. She hasn't done anything that is any different. And what she as Joe Biden's. She hasn't done anything that is any different. And what she's promising to do, she hasn't done for three and a half years. That was his closing statement, probably the best part of the debate for him. So I don't think it works for her simply to say, you're not running against Joe Biden, you're running against me. Well,

what does that mean? I mean, she could have said, I am taking a different direction. I'm going to give you new policies and a brighter future. She did at the end say, I'm from a younger generation, which is not really the same thing. I mean, just saying you're younger than Joe Biden doesn't really move you past him. You know, Rob Schneider wrote a long YouTube, excuse me, Instagram post about not going back. You mentioned that that seems to be one of the growing sort of talking points for the Harris campaign. We're not going back. You're going to go backwards. We want to go forward. And Caleb, maybe after the break, we'll take a look at that. Before we go to break, a little bit about foreign policy again. Did that exchange excite you in any way?

I thought Trump answered very well. I thought she answered poorly. And that's one where I would say the moderators did the worst job of all. And again, I don't want to spend a lot of time blaming them, but there was not one question from the moderators about China. Probably the most important foreign policy challenge we face is the rise of China. Trump brought up China several times, and Kamala brought it up once in that clip that you played about the origins of COVID. But Trump mentioned China again and again, and the moderators never went there. They asked about Ukraine and Russia.

They asked Trump if he wanted Ukraine to win, which is also a silly question because, as Trump pointed out, when you're facing off against a nuclear power, you don't really talk about victory. And they don't ask if Kamala Harris wants Israel to win against Hamas. So, you know, winning is the standard in one war and not in another. I think the moderators did a terrible job. I thought Trump answers, Trump's answers were very good. Hers were not convincing. They were better, perhaps, than they've been in the past. On Israel, I think she gave a more pro-Israel answer than she has previously given to questions about Israel. But she didn't answer the question that was asked, which was, what are you going to do differently to bring about a solution? And she simply repeated Joe Biden's position, which comes again to the point that she really isn't different from him on policy. mike benz our our friend that uh helps us give get insight into the blob uh the the intelligence blob so-called he said that she is very much a neocon and my question is if that's true is that that this incredible preoccupation with russia just it's just it just never ends people are just

obsessed with it she i would, doesn't have a clear idea of America's role in the world. And when you don't have a clear idea, you know, you can disagree with Trump or agree with him, but he has a very clear idea of the role America should play. He calls it America first, and it means having a strong military, but not getting involved everywhere, making sure everyone else is paying their way and so forth. She's basically an empty vessel when it comes to foreign policy. And when the quote-unquote neocons in Washington, basically the nexus of military companies and lobbyists and so forth, the people who want an aggressive interventionist policy because it does generate income for domestic defense industries and all kinds of other constituencies, when they see an empty vessel, they fill that vessel and they will fill it with their foreign policy. Trump does not

listen to them. He has his own ideas. And that's what makes him dangerous to the Washington establishment. I don't know if she's a neocon. I don't even know if she has strong convictions on anything, frankly. We know that she will change her positions if she feels it helps her electoral challenges, her chances, excuse me. And I think that's the case with her foreign policy as well if she feels like the positions are changing the winds are shifting she'll change the book is the agenda what trump should do in his first hundred days we're going to get more into that after the break of course i don't know i'm such an apolitical person but i watched it actually watched the whole thing for a change um i asked my uh daughter what she thought i

didn't feed her any information she said that um she thought that kamala is going to help the middle class abortions won't be banned and it's not what trump runs it's who he empowers project 2025 is who he will be letting in the door now to me i'm like okay but what about international relations and what about putin and what about like she didn't even think about that like she doesn't she doesn't even go there because that's really not in her wheelhouse um very intelligent daughter super well written well read went to columbia university super smart but isn't a political person but she loves these things that kamala put out there and i agree but what about the rest 20 it's interesting that you didn't know to fact check your own

daughter in 2025 because i didn't because i'm not that's not because the the moderators didn't really make an issue of that right i? I mean, that was crazy. What are you thinking, Joel? Well, that's what he said. Joel, you're referred your brow. Go ahead. I have a question, which is, is your daughter married or single? Single.

One cat. Yeah. But she has a long-term boyfriend. So there was a question missing from the debate as well, which I think a married woman would have picked up on, which is that there was nothing about education, not one thing about education. And I think a big worry for American parents right now is what's happening in the schools. And again, if the moderators don't bring it up, the candidates can. Trump could have brought it up like he brought up China when they didn't bring up China. But I think that many, many people are upset about the COVID lockdowns. They're worried about the transgender stuff. And they're just generally worried about

what we're teaching kids. Are we preparing kids for the next challenges, the global economy, whatever, and the teachers unions have a stranglehold on democratic states. It didn't come up. So I think that for single women, abortion is a very important issue. Again, I may not agree with Kamala Harris's position, but I thought that was her best answer of the night on abortion. Trump's answer was actually very good. And when he got to the really good part, they cut him off. So even when he was doing well, they couldn't do it. Yeah. I'm a woman, so, you know, I have a vote. I'm also pro-life. But the Trump 2025 thing, he said, I'm not a part of that. I'm not, you know, she bought it.

She totally bought it. What is it? Well, let's hang on. That's a whole thing. Hey, Joel, hold your breath. We'll talk about 2025 and where it came from and what it is. If people don't know about that, I thought everyone knew. And we'll talk about the book and what he should do in the first 100 days right after this.

Joel Pollack. I'm excited to bring you a new product, a new supplement, Fatty. I take it. I make Susan take it. My whole family takes it. This comes out of, believe it or not, dolphin research. The Navy maintains a fleet of dolphins, and a brilliant veterinarian recognized that these dolphins sometimes developed a syndrome identical to

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Yeah, I see. At my doctor's appointment. Part of our life. I had a beef stick today too. Yeah, I see. At my doctor's appointment. Part of our life. I like the jalapeno one. It's pretty good. So Joel Pollack is our guest. You can follow him on X at Joel Pollack, P-O-L-L-A-C-K. The book is The Agenda,

what Trump should do in his first hundred days. There it is, what Trump should do in his first 100 days. There it is, what Trump should do in his first 100 days. We'll talk about that in a second. But before we do, if there are people that don't know what Project 2025 is and was and Trump's relation to it, maybe you can just frame that very quickly so we can dismiss that. Sure. Well, I wrote my book before I had actually heard of Project 2025. But Project 2025 was an effort by hundreds of authors coordinated by the Heritage Foundation to try to create a office in 2017 with a small group of people he had opposed and had opposition from the Republican establishment. And he had to rely on holdovers from the Obama administration and some never Trump Republicans to staff his administration. So he was driving an agenda that didn't really have a lot of meat on the bones.

And he had some priorities everybody understood, everybody knew, like border security and so forth. But there wasn't a general plan for what he wanted to do when he got into office. And so to address that weakness, the Heritage Foundation created this manual. Nobody has read it. It's 922 pages long. It's basically what we used to call a telephone book when people had telephone books. And the idea was that people knew what they were. Yeah. You know, when you come into office and you're some junior staffer in some department and you don't know what the conservative policy is on X or Y, you open up this project 2025 and you go to page 583 and you see, OK, this is what the guys at Heritage came up with, the guys and gals, and that's what we're supposed to do. So it was a way of coordinating policy so that a future Republican administration could have some coherence. It's very ambitious. A lot of what it talks about is not achievable without help from Congress. And it was kind of a long, long list to Santa Claus. If we were able to wave a magic wand

and create this conservative set of policies, what would we want on the list? That's what Project 2025 was. It was also a way of gathering resumes. People uploaded their resumes to the Heritage Foundation website if they wanted to be in the future administration, and it was also a fundraising tool.

You know, they could tell their donors they're working on this amazing project. So that's what it was. I think it was harmless at worst and probably useful at best, because I do think there was some incoherence in the first Trump administration. But because nobody read it, it was so easily defined by its opponents. And so now Democrats are saying things all the time that if you look them up, you actually go to the Project 2025 document. They're not in there, but Democrats claim they are. So one of them, for example, I fact-checked this in the debate, Kamala Harris says Trump wants to appoint an abortion monitor. I've never heard him say that. So I went to Project 2025 to look

up if it was something in there. And what Project 2025 says on page 400 and something, I forget which page, what they say is that we need better data from the states on abortions and miscarriages. Right now, the data reporting is voluntary. We need to make sure other states are reporting their data so we can monitor women's health. Nothing about an abortion monitor. I think that's a figment of her campaign's imagination. But they imagined, probably not incorrectly, that if you're collecting the data, someone's in charge of collecting the data. Let's call that fictitious person or hypothetical person an abortion monitor. Trump wants the abortion monitor. So they go through all these leaps, and that's how they get to it.

And it's fake, but it's unfortunately easy to fake because nobody's actually read this thing. Yeah. fake because nobody's actually read this thing yeah it's um and it's it's a conservative sort of manifesto and and is would it be inaccurate to say trump isn't really conservative not classically trump is not trump is not conservative he is a nationalist and a populist and he's also an american archetype. He's the individual who fights against all odds. He's almost like the sort of frontiersman who is saving the town, but whom the town folk aren't so sure they like. You know, he's a classic feature in a lot of Western films. You know, the guy who comes in wearing a black hat and gets rid of the outlaws,

but might also be a little bit of an outlaw himself that's that's that's the classic western figure that's who he is and i wrote the agenda interesting because i you know i do think he has to tell people what he's going to do project 2025 is completely unworkable and as i mentioned easy to fake but the agenda is a list of things he can do in each policy area in the first 100 days and I think it's important to create a sense of where he's taking the country because as we mentioned earlier he does get very combative and people are worried that he could be erratic so he's got to have at least something that tells people where he's going and something achievable

he doesn't have to wait for congress to do anything in my book he doesn't have to wait for Congress to do anything in my book. He doesn't have to wait for the right people to be appointed to the right jobs. None of what Project 2025 wants to do. This is all stuff that he can do himself sitting in the Oval Office. Give me your top five, and then we'll make sure people read the book for the other 95 days, whatever.

My first priority, and this is because I wrote it after watching Trump get convicted in Manhattan on these ridiculous charges. My first priority, and this is because I wrote it after watching Trump get convicted in Manhattan on these ridiculous charges. My first priority is restoring the rule of law. I think there are political prisoners in America today. We have to commute their sentences or pardon those sentences, especially people who were not violent and who served jail terms for simply showing up on the lawn of the Capitol on January 6th. We need to correct the impression that there's a two-tier justice system in this country. That's number one. Number two, the border. Trump has to

restore a lot of the policies that he had, the remain in Mexico policy, building the wall, and so forth. Absolutely get border security right. He's got to do that. You've got inflation as well, major concern for Americans. Trump is not the Federal Reserve. He can't raise or lower interest rates, but he can stop some of the out-of-control government spending. He can end some of the holdovers from COVID, like the student loan forgiveness program, which is inflationary. He can do a lot of things and undo a lot of things that Biden has done to raise inflation. You've also got foreign policy. I do think he can end the war in Ukraine on day one by calling a peace conference. Imagine Joe Biden came in

promising diplomacy is back, diplomacy is back, but we never hear him calling for peace talks, calling for some kind of settlement. Ukraine has some Russian territory now. Russia has some Ukrainian territory. They have bargaining chips. Get them to the table and get them to stop the war. And finally, I talk about faith. I do think that not Trump himself necessarily, because he's a complicated figure when it comes to faith and religious observance, but I do think a Trump White House can encourage Americans to do little things like focus on their spiritual development. Go to church, kick off White House meetings with a little invocation or

a moment of reflection and remind Americans that this can be a really centering discipline, whatever your belief is, but acknowledging that there's a force greater than yourself. It's something many addicts do when they're getting over addiction, and I do think our kids need it in school. So I think that Trump can lead the way on faith as well. And there are a whole bunch of other issues, but you asked me for my top five, and those are the five. Yeah, obviously I've been working with spirituality much of my career, and it's very easy to see that there's been a spiritual vacuum in this country. It's also easy to see what people gain from getting out of their own head and letting go and not controlling and understanding.

The world does not revolve around them. Whatever your concept is of things higher than yourself, bigger than yourself, important. I mean, I think about this a lot these days where you look at sort of religious practices and the great scriptures from whatever religion. A lot of it starts with, remember you're a POS. Remember you're not really anything. Remember you're sinful.

Remember you're, you know what I mean? Just to keep that in mind always that you're not really anything. Remember you're sinful. Remember you're, you know what I mean? Just to keep that in mind always that you're not so great. And we've gone the exact other way with this self-esteem movement and build everybody special. You're you and therefore nobody's you and you're great because you're you.

Great, well, I don't gotta do anything. This is perfect. My life is perfect because I'm me. What do I need to do? And that was a huge, huge, huge mistake and the opposite of what religion has usually taught. Yeah, and the other thing that we were missing because we don't have spirituality in our lives

is an opportunity to connect to other people. I do think that some of the loneliness epidemic in this country is because people aren't coming together and going to church and synagogue and that sort of thing. Or whatever, go bowling or, you know, that Bowling Alone book from years ago. You whatever, go bowling or, you know, that bowling alone book from years ago, you know, we don't go to clubs, we don't gather with things.

And when we do, we derive great benefit. So you mentioned the inflation and you kind of brushed past the deficit. I thought that Kamala Harris was fairly effective in going at that a little bit last night. And I don't think he really responded. Did you notice that? Yeah, I don't know what her idea really is on the deficit. And we've heard so many times that Democrats in particular have claimed that such and such policy won't increase

the deficit. It'll cut the deficit. It never happens. Trump has stayed away from deficit issues because he knows that politically, most of the things you have to do to close the deficit, it'll cut the deficit. It never happens. Trump has stayed away from deficit issues because he knows that politically, most of the things you have to do to close the deficit are political losers. Republicans like to argue, and I have some sympathy for this argument, that lowering tax rates brings in extra revenue. It does, but it doesn't close the deficit unless you cut spending. And Paul Ryan, Mitt Romney, these are politicians who failed when they tried to outline ways to cut spending or reform entitlements. Trump knows that is not going to work with voters and so he stays away from it.

So he has never been very strong on this particular issue. Having said that, I don't think Democrats have been strong on it either and I do think again that some of the excessive spending at the beginning of the Biden administration is what caused the inflationary spiral.

How could it be other than that? It's just somebody proposing that $6 trillion or whatever it was, $4 trillion was not inflationary, that somehow that had nothing to do with it. It followed immediately on the heels of it, immediately. Yeah, and also, you know, Trump, as he left office on his way out the door, he signed another COVID relief bill. I think it was two trillion dollars. So there was really no need for Joe Biden to come in. But again, we've seen Democrats do this before. The Democratic political model is very much a patronage model. So when Democrats get elected, they like to spend money on interest groups, on state and local governments that are controlled by democrats i saw a statistic that was something like 73 percent of the infrastructure spending has

gone to blue states and so forth democrats really use government to pump money to their supporters and so when they get into office they pass big spending bills and republicans want to cut spending but it's never popular because you can instantly find people who are going to suffer from the end of this program or that program. Trump stays away from all of that. We can't stay away from it forever, but I think eventually when it comes to the point where we have to handle the deficit, both parties are going to have to hold hands and jump off the cliff together. I don't think we have the pieces in place for that yet. I don't think Kamala Harris is the one to do it. Trump may be able to do it. I think Obama might have done it if he hadn't been such a divisive president because he did have such

political capital when he came into office. It still awaits the right combination of leaders. When it comes time to do it, aren't we well past that? Yeah, exactly. I mean, look, we are in a serious problem. And given where inflation is, and given how high interest rates have had to climb to try to fight inflation, we're going to be stuck with this for a while. And again, what we're seeing on a national level is also happening at the household level. People talk about prices at the grocery store, but I'm convinced that the silent killer is interest rates on personal debt, household debt, car debt, home loans. I mean,

people are struggling with surprise costs and they have to move more cash out the door just to pay off the credit card companies and so forth. So I think that it's, of course, long past the time when we should have dealt with this. But again, politically, we're not ready for it yet. Paul Ryan proposed some ideas and Joe Biden laughed at him and won the vice presidential debate in 2012. And that's the reality that exists in our politics. And until perhaps we in the media get a little more serious about tackling this issue and holding candidates accountable, we're not going to see good proposals. So it's really all our fault. Elon Musk thinks that his robots will grow the economy so massively this will be able to grow our way out of this problem uh what do you say 700 trillion dollars in in

robots but who knows i mean maybe something incredible does happen but i would not bet on that and speaking of betting um i thought the debates were good. I thought that compared to the Biden-Trump debate, I thought this was much more palatable, interesting, substantial, whatever you want to call it. I wish you could respond. I don't mean that one. I mean the original Biden debate. The original

one where they were just yelling at each other and Biden was screaming, look at that clown! I was like, oh, this is really, this is a presidential debate. I don't know if you remember that. It was like, oh, this is really, this is a presidential debate. I don't know if you remember that. It was terrible. But go ahead, respond to what I said. I didn't think this was an enjoyable debate simply because of the interjections of the moderators.

And, you know, the rule was they were supposed to have their mics off, but then somehow the mic went on. Kamala Harris was interrupting Trump when he was talking about abortion. So they didn't enforce that very well. And although I think CNN is just as biased against Trump as ABC is, I thought the CNN moderators did a better job of letting the conversation flow and keeping the microphone rule and so forth. Maybe I like that debate better because Donald Trump did better and Joe Biden did very poorly. I haven't yet seen a debate where I thought that the American people got a really good look at what the candidates

believe and it was a fair exchange of ideas. And maybe in that format, it's just not possible. But look, I think that Trump did not use the debate to communicate to his voters. Kamala Harris did. And that was the difference. It wasn't even who won on style or substance. It was that she understood she had to communicate to her supporters that she's strong and she's fighting this guy. And Trump communicated to his supporters that he's a fighter, but they knew that already. What Trump supporters still need to know is that he can win despite the impression many have that the entire process is rigged. Unfortunately, the ABC moderators played into that sense of things being rigged. Unfortunately, the ABC moderators played into that sense of things being rigged. But it did give the Trump people a bit of a way to push back.

And again, they're still fighting some of the fact checking. They're still fighting some of the issues. Overall, I think it's going to come down to who can inspire their voters most and who can speak to the sense of urgency that Americans have, particularly around the economy. It's cliche already to say it's the economy is stupid, but I do think when you've got a situation, a third of American households are maxed out on their credit card debt. They can't borrow anymore. They can't pay for groceries. They've got nowhere to turn. That's an emergency situation. I didn't hear that sense of urgency from Kamala Harris. Trump can go out there and win this election, but he's got to sharpen his message.

So I would love to look at some future predictions from you. I'm not going to go all the way to who's going to be elected, but will there be more debates? There won't be more debates, but let me give you a fun prediction. And I'm saying this not so much because I think it's absolutely going to happen, but just because it's a lot of fun, maybe not. But I think that, look, Kamala Harris is not going to win any states that Trump won in 2020. She's not going to expand the map. Maybe North Carolina is in play for her, but she's defending most of the states that she and Joe Biden won in 2020. I think Trump can pick off a couple of those. He won't win all of them. But it is possible with the new post-2020 census map that if Trump wins in

Pennsylvania and he wins in Michigan and she keeps all of the other states that Biden won, you will have a 269 to 269 electoral college vote tie, which then means that the fate of the presidency will be decided on January 6th, 2025, when the House of Representatives meets and the House of Representatives cast the deciding vote in the event of no one having a majority in the Electoral College. We could find ourselves back on January 6th, the next January 6th, waiting to see who the new president is going to be, which means this election is going to have a sort of after party or extra innings into late November, December, early January. So I think because it's the most entertaining outcome, as Elon Musk likes to say,

is probably one that we should think about. He would say it's the most likely, maybe not the most likely, but fun for those of us who anticipate some of the drama yet to come. If that happens, I'm sending you a pizza. We'll see. That's remarkable. All right, last thing. Caleb, I don't know if you found that Instagram

or had a chance to look for that Instagram post from Rob Schneider. Did you have a chance to see that? I couldn't find it in time. I'll see if I can. Oh, shoot. Well, Susan, maybe you can find it and read it to us. Just Rob Schneider, like yesterday or today,

when he put up a post, essentially he was saying in that post, I can paraphrase it, which is, we're not going back. Please, let's go back. Let's go back to a place where my kids can get educated. Let's go back to a place where I can walk safely down the street.

Let's go back. He just lists all these things that we've come, because the frog has been boiled so slowly and consistently, there's so many aspects of life we have come to take, I don't want to say take for granted, but we've come to tolerate because of how this has happened. And he was just listing all the things that really are out of line. And yes, we'll take that back.

Do you think that the we're not going back slogan is going to become a major focus or strategy of the Harris campaign? And if so, is that a way for Trump to respond to it? countries has begun by looking back to the history of that nation for inspiration. When Frederick Douglass or Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. looked to revolutionize civil rights in this country, they always looked back to the founding. And they said, look, we've got to get back to the founding values and actually make them real. So I think that's what Rob Schneider is talking about, because there are such great things in our past that we can use in the future. The we're not going back slogan, I think, evolved almost organically. Democrats have said this in many elections. They caricature Republicans as, you know, the leave it to beaver family from the 1950s.

You know, Donna Reed in the kitchen while the husband goes to work. You know, they look at things they didn't like about the past and they say, oh, Republicans want to take us back there. But I think Trump at his best moments has said, we want to get back to American innovation. So it's back to the future. That's the Trump response. Joel, excellent.

It's a great place to stop. I appreciate you being here. Anything that we should be looking out for in the near-term horizon? Well, I have to say, I'm a little excited about the baseball season, and it was interesting to know that as the candidates were brawling on stage in Philadelphia, there was actually a brawl on the field in Philadelphia where the Phillies were playing. I think it was the Tampa Bay Devil Rays. They had a brawl, and my Chicago Cubs are making a

late run for the playoffs, which is exciting. So I think, you know, to some extent, we're all very concerned about this. I'm deeply concerned about this election. Maybe I'm sounding a little more sunny and optimistic today than I was last night. I'm very concerned. But it's also important to take the time to enjoy some of the fun things about fall and to enjoy family and friends. And here in California, you know, I went for a run on the beach before the debate and that was really fantastic. Swam in the water, came back and then did my job, but it's important to enjoy each other.

But trust me, they, they could take that away from you here too. They have no problem with that. They closed the beach. Oh my God. They sure, and they arrested anybody who dared to lie down.

Yeah, lie down or for a while they'll even walk on the beach. It was just ridiculous. We were supposed to talk to somebody

about that yesterday and also Rob Schneider and I found the thing. It's an Instagram post by Rob Schneider. I am Rob Schneider. He did, that's where he read it.

It's pretty good. Yeah, and I wish our internet didn't go down yesterday. I know Rob Schneider. That's right. He did, that's where he read it. It's pretty good. Yeah, and I wish our internet didn't go down yesterday. I know, we're doing a good show, but we'll get back to both those guys.

But in the meantime, go Cubbies. We'll get them back in the World Series. It's, you know, took a while to get there. Maybe they can come on back

around this time. Be fun. Joel, thank you so much and hope you'll stay in touch and we'll see you again soon. Thanks so much, Dr. Ju. Always great to be on your show. All right thank you so much. And hope you'll stay in touch. And we'll see you again soon. Thanks so much, Dr. Ju. Always great to be on your show.

All right. You got it. I appreciate it. Joel Pollack, everybody. So our next guest is going at some of these issues here in California a little bit. We got Alex Balikian. He's, I'm pronouncing his name correctly. He's an intensivist.

So he's somebody that dedicates his time to hospital-based care in the intensive care unit. He's a pulmonologist by training, which is what many intensivists are. He is a candidate for California's 30th congressional district. He was born and raised in Glendale. He got a second place in the 2024 primary election, went to the general election. And he is the DuMagajian republican he calls himself he's known as um he's a son of immigrants himself pro-choice married to a man balikian's platform focuses on public safety tax reduction limited government you can follow him at alex balikian b-a-l-e

k-i-a-n uh and also alex4ca30.com Alex, appreciate you being here. Thanks, Dr. Drew. Appreciate you having me on. So what is this like? I'm so concerned about the California voters. I don't trust them.

The fact that they put our governor back in office when he was recalled or nearly recalled was just so shocking to me that I really worry about what's going on out there and how we get people in office that are worth governing. Well, what we've found is it's really about the messaging. It's about keeping the messaging simple and also acknowledging two things. Number one, all politics are local. And number two, all voting is emotional. So you were talking earlier about hitting on these visceral points

about appealing to people and their love of their pets, for example. We found that voting is emotional and you really have to find those one or two issues that really get these people jazzed up. Otherwise, they're not going to participate. They're not going to vote. And is this the 30th? Is that Glendale and Pastina, part of Pastina? So, yeah, it's Glendale, Burbank, Hollywood, West Hollywood, Sunland, Tujunga, a slight sliver of Pasadena, and also Silver Lake Echo Park areas. And this was, what's his name's area?

I'm blanking on his name. Adam Schiff. Adam Schiff, yes. Susan, we must vote for Alex. He represents our district. So we are part of that little sliver of Pasadena. So we are here to serve. And do you work at one of the hospitals here locally?

I work in the community. We have had some far left crazies dox us. So I am not at liberty to discuss exactly where because phone calls came into my hospitals.

Yeah, so it's, you know, being a civilian, being somebody who hasn't run and encountering this phalanx of sycophants, far-left sycophants who are willing to dox people and call their place of work simply for trying to exercise their civic duty, simply because they don't agree with them. It's definitely been a wake-up call. Well, frankly, that's disgusting.

And that's a big piece of what's wrong with uh california politics that they listen to those a-holes that these people are they are murderers they are responsible for the people dying on our streets they are responsible for that same same bs same playbook uh the homeless that are not being cared for began and are protected from care by their activism uh they should be let's call that what it is. It's at least advocates for negligent manslaughter. I mean, I got called a hateful, anti-environmental, anti-LGBT extremist

by one of my city council members with whom I didn't agree about something as simple as a bike lane. He's like, I'm not a homophobe, neither is my husband. Why are you calling me anti-LGBT? But they just throw everything, including the kitchen sink. And again, calling me an extremist for what? I told him, I said, if you were on life support in my ICU, do you know what I would do? I would do my job and I would save your life. Does that sound hateful

to you? Yeah. Well, why isn't it hate what they threw at you why is that not hate why is that i don't get it it's foolishness and it's trying to uh score political points and i'm i'm not going to play that game i'm just going to stick to the issues and i'm gonna stick to the facts and figures and the bike lane thing i'm disgusted by also uh adams adams uh boulevard adams avenue in los angeles is the only way i could get to Culver City from Pasadena because the freeways don't work here. And they put a bike lane in there and a street that was already impossible to navigate

went down to two lanes. And I stood there and watched a ambulance unable to get through because of what they had done. And I've been up and down that street 20 times. I haven't seen a single bike. What are they doing? It's 110 degrees outside this week, or it's raining. We have to go huge distances in this part of the world.

We're not going to be riding bikes. And my opponent, Laura Friedman, she authored a bill in Sacramento, not only to mandate bicycle lanes in every single assembly district, but also to bypass the customary public comment period in order to make them quick billed. And so her reasoning is, if I simply was able to shove it down your throat, I'm sure you would love the taste. And people, I call her a psychopath. She's a psychopath because their whole point is we're going to put it in and then we're going to do one to five years worth of data.

And if people don't like that, we'll go ahead and reverse it. The problem is, as you were saying, what about emergency response? What about response times? You know, in California, in LA County, the average response time to take a person from their home to the hospital is 19 minutes. And so as you know, as well I do, with strokes, minutes matter. And if an EMS, an ambulance is not going to be able to get there, oh, I'm sorry, your mother is now going to be paralyzed

because we needed a bike late. So the fact that they've taken away the local control. By the way, do we trust them in five years to come back with the data? No, they never do that. They just move on to something else. They've already forgotten about it. It just stays. Right, until people forget about it yeah and then we suffer and then we wonder the the frog is successfully boiled as they keep they keep doing uh so yeah it is um

well how's it going how's this experience been for you i'm sure it's eye-opening but susan wouldn't let me do this. So do you tell us what it's like? We'll live through your eyes and support you. Susan, you are absolutely correct. Are your partners the same? Yeah, no, he's been the very reason why we've gone so far. So yeah, I'm born and raised in Glendale.

I'm a practicing physician in the community. And I am running because we need better public safety. I save lives for a living. I epitomize public safety, and we need better public safety. The homelessness crisis, it's a mental health and drug addiction issue. It's not simply a housing issue. They cannot take care of themselves. How are they going to take care of a home? The crime, right? Criminals need to be prosecuted and punished. I support Nathan Hockman for DA. My opponent supports the re-election of George Gascogne. The fentanyl epidemic, right? We need to secure the border. Don't defund the police. Fund Customs and Border Protection. Intercept those packages, those 5,000 pounds of crystal meth

that are coming across the border. Instead, my opponent declares California a sanctuary city so that local police and sheriffs cannot cooperate with Customs and Border Patrol. She's authored a law to give them clean needles and safe injection sites, a law that was so bad, even Gavin Newsom thought it was bad and vetoed it. So there are many, and again, even these bicycle lanes, something as benign as a bicycle lane that's going to increase response times is going to be a threat to public safety. She extended Medi-Cal, she extended health coverage to 1 million illegal immigrants. Yes, expanded health coverage is great, but if you're not increasing the number of practitioners, the number of physicians to see them, then your wait times are going to get longer. Your basic health screenings, mammograms, colonoscopies, those

are going to get delayed. So people are going to die of preventable cancers because of a lot of the moves that she's made so because of her threats her multiple threats to public safety that is why i'm running i decided i i said i'm tired of waiting for the good candidate i'm going to be the good candidate and here i am well and gascon is part of the uh public safety problem i can't imagine why somebody would want him back but but yeah i know that feeling, my God, somebody's got to do something. If somebody doesn't do it, I got to stand up and do it. My wife told me to sit down,

but I know the feeling. I know the feeling. I get it because it's just so nutty, cuckoo, out of control here, particularly out here in this part of Los Angeles, San Gabriel Valley. And I thought it was interesting. You mentioned she authored a clean

needle policy or program, which now we've actually abandoned the term needle exchange because the reality is it was never a needle exchange. The fact is that it was just handing out needles, which it was never intended to be. You have

to ask addicts to do something or they die. If you don't have them do something, I will give you a clean needle, you bring your needles back. You're going to have a dead patient and you're going to have needles all over the place and you're going to have people exposed

to various infectious diseases. It's just, it's so contrary. Everything about this is, look, you said you wanted, for instance, let's try the, the,

the bike lane and see how it goes. She said she wants to try it and then collect data. The data's in you guys. The data is in this. These are egregious, disgusting failures that are literally killing people. What do we, how far do we need to go for people to wake up to this?

And it's just, it's, it's not even that I'm against the bike lanes. I'm actually for bike lanes. Where our bike lanes are on Brand Boulevard in Glendale, there are two quiet residential streets, one to two blocks over. And I say, if you want to decrease bicycle accidents, then you separate the bicycles from the cars. You shunt the bicycles to the quiet residential streets. And then the people will then more often use the large, big boulevards. Now what's happening is people are avoiding these boulevards with fewer lane spaces and they're bypassing towards the quiet residential streets, which are no longer quiet. So it has achieved the exact opposite of what they want to do. They've actually increased the interface between bicyclists and cars. And this is the problem. Neighborhoods locally, people locally know where things should go. They know the identity of their streets.

And so the problem is politicians like her are centralizing these decisions. They're taking away local control. They're shoving their culture, their ideas down our throats, not to say that we wouldn't be amenable to those ideas, but if you allowed more input locally, if you gave more control locally, these ideas would flourish rather than flounder. Yeah, I'm all for bikes and bike lanes. It's just not realistic. When I lived in Boston, I went everywhere on my bike and if I couldn't get somewhere, I'd bring it on the train with me. And of course,

it was not winter because I wouldn't ride the bike in the middle of a New England winter. I mean, they're not even like using their brains. They're just supposed to happen all the time. Cyclopats. That's why they're cyclopats. Yeah, there's a lot of pathology in the thinking.

Caleb, you wanted to ask about Prop 47 for Alex. Yes, yeah. What's your opinion on Prop 47 and would you work to get that repealed in Los Angeles? Prop 47's terrible. Prop 36 is now on ballot to repeal Prop 47 and replace it with more stringent measures. I strongly approve of prop 36.

And I recommend anybody who's listening in California to vote yes on prop 36. That's what I wanted to hear. Campaign is going well. We are in the home stretch. We are, I'm knocking on doors despite the heat. We're still raising funds. So if people want to support the campaign they can go to alexbeleckian.com or alexforca30.com and support our

campaign um but we are the underdog um we are the dark horse candidate and i love it the la times today endorsed uh laura friedman they also uh in the same weekend previously endorsed her with george gascon so i love it that all that all of these people, press who supposedly have their finger on the pulse, are betting on the favorite. And I love being the underdog. So things are going great. Anytime I talk to people and they find out that I'm a reasonable centrist, they brighten up.

They say, oh my God, this is great. I mentioned the homelessness. Oh my God, it's horrible. I hope you fix it. I say, yes, I can fix it from Congress because it's going to be more of a federal issue rather than a local issue. So everybody I meet, Democrats, Republicans,

independents alike, they are happy. And so that just kind of eggs me on more to go do it. Like I said, everybody loves a David and Goliath underdog story. I think the Armenian community needs to be mobilized on your behalf. I don't know if you're having trouble with that or not, but that seems like what should happen.

I don't know if it's going to happen, but you tell me. We're trying. We're definitely getting ballot harvesting up. You're absolutely right. You hit the nail on the head. Armenians, I say 100% of Armenians complain, but only 20% vote, which is not terribly close to the truth. Oh, well, that should be, nope, let's get on that

then. So there's something right there we can do. Get your Armenian friends who live in the San Gabriel Valley to vote. That's easy, I would think. Okay, there's one thing. What else would you like people to do? Again, I would love, just go to our website, volunteer. So simple things like making

phone calls just to remind people to vote and just putting bugs in their ears, like, hey, there's this guy, Alex. He's a doctor. He saves lives for a living. He thinks we need better public safety. So from the comfort of your own home, people can volunteer. Just get on our website, alexforca30.com or alexbelichen.com. You can volunteer your time, volunteer your money. But from the comfort of your home, you can call people and remind them and say, hey, look, Alex is on the ballot. Alex is a reasonable, moderate person. He wants to clean up all the problems that are affecting us daily. So that's the kind of help we want.

So votes, contributions, and introductions. If you have introductions to more media, more podcasts that I can go to. And again, thank you very much for having me on this podcast. Anybody at home watching, we would love to get up on there. Any medium is fine. I will go on CNN and MSNBC. I am not afraid of the hard hitting questions. And I'm more than

happy to explain my stances because I represent the 80% of us in the moderate middle. Maybe you should embrace the mail-in ballots for the Armenian resistance. Maybe that would get them to get the vote on, get vote, just to go vote.

We are. I've definitely, so I speak Armenian, I speak Spanish. So we have Spanish language ads. We have Armenian language ads. So I'm definitely digging into my multilingualism and trying to appeal to them. And really most importantly, you touched upon it earlier. For the Armenians, what's really important is the indoctrination that's occurring in the

schools. Yes, the prices are high. Yes, the crime is high. But really what matters most to them are their children. And people ask me, is it hard being a gay candidate in the Armenian community? Yes, it's hard. Yes, there's some reflex homophobia that's there. But when I show them, when they see how hard I'm working, you cannot disrespect hard work. And I have so many people turning around. And really what they say is we want somebody to make sure that our kids are getting a quality education. I'm a proud product of Glendale Public Schools. Back when a public school education could get you into UCLA, could get you into medical school. Now, only 24% of the graduating seniors of my alma mater, Hoover High School in Glendale,

are able to do basic math. So you have school districts like LAUSD saying queer all year. Our curriculum is queer all year. I say, as a gay man, what about math all month? What about multiplication Mondays? What about focusing on basic skills that will make American children innovative, which we used to be, but now we're getting run around circles by Taiwan and China and India. So to the Armenian committee, again, voting is emotional and we are appealing to their emotions because what is most important to them are their children. People who don't have children, what is most emotional to them is I'm paying through the nose $2,500 a month for a studio apartment in Hollywood. And I come out and there's a bum sleeping on the street.

So we are finding the different messages, the different buttons to push on people. And as I keep saying, this is not a sledgehammer strategy. It is a scalpel strategy. And that's why we're going to win. Yes. Somebody said contact John Phillips. That would be a good show for you to go on to here at KBC.

Maybe that's already happened. Okay, good. All right. I figured that already happened. All right. Listen, we'll help you out any way we can. We appreciate you being here.

And we have loads of Armenian friends, so maybe we can sort of get them sort of mobilized. That would be great. And you, Dr. Drew, you are in my district, so please don't forget to vote. Oh, don't you worry. I'm in. You just got it.

And for those around the country that don't know, there are more Armenians in Glendale than there are in Armenia. And, uh, and they are not a, um, they're not a force to,

they are forced to reckon with, uh, it reminds me of silver. You get premium, you know, them. We'll get Silva to get, get on his team.

Let's do it. All hands on deck. We need them. How about Mark Gergas? Oh, you don't, don't, we'll get to it. Yes, please. We need them. How about Mark Gergas? We'll get to it.

Yes, please. If you can arrange the interview, that would be great. If you can arrange the introduction, that would be great. Excellent. Alex, thank you so much for being here. Keep it up. Appreciate it. Thank you. Alex Bleckian, those of you around this area, those of you that can vote for him, please.

It looks like somebody that'd be well worth your while to vote. Okay, so let's get the list of upcoming guests up here for us. We have lots of, it's really an extraordinary backlog now because we missed Rob and Michael Gates yesterday. Jimmy Dore tomorrow making a comeback

and he was going nuts today. It's very interesting talking to him. And Mike Catherwood, my Loveline co-host, will be here as well. Susan has her show. And Zach Voorhees from the... Facebook whistleblower. He was Project Veritas for a while, I think.

Google whistleblower. Yeah. Google. Google whistleblower. Oh, it's a Google. I thought it was Facebook. That's right. Dr. Macri will be here with Brian, Dr. Hooker.

We have Laura Trump with Greg Lucchiano from the FIRE organization. Matt Walsh, Penelope Ann Miller. She is the co-star of the movie on Reagan with Dennis Quaid. And she has a lot of interesting insight into what it's been like to just perform some of the weird feedback she's getting and pushback,

but it'd be interesting to talk to her. And so do be here tomorrow. Are we, let's see, what day of the week is it? I'm so screwed up. Our schedule is such a mess. Tomorrow, I will be in at noon for the show with Jimmy Dore and Mike Cathwood. And then Susan will be in the afternoon with Zach Voorhees. Anything topically coming up for you, Susan, tomorrow on the show with Jimmy Dore and Mike Cathwood. And then Susan will be in the afternoon with Zach Voorhees.

Anything topically coming on for you, Susan, tomorrow on the show? I'm sorry? Topics on your show tomorrow? Oh, tomorrow. We're going to talk about Trump's ear with Zach Voorhees. Zach's ear? Trump's ear? Yes.

Yeah. Okay, you have to tune in. I'm intrigued. You have to tune in I'm intrigued a lot of theories about that ear and the direction of the blood and if he was actually hit if it was all a hoax

there's all sorts of that sounds like political stuff I'm sure Zach could dig into that I have psychic rebel Colby on so we're going to see where it goes with Zach Zach has a lot of stuff in his brain that I love. All right, excellent. He's a little bit conspiratorial

in everything he does. Right, very much. And he's willing to come on the show and get a psychic reading, I think. So we'll see. And then we're also going to take some of our fans who have emailed us

at callingoutatdoctordrew.com. We have four people coming on the show to get a psychic reading. All right. Wonderful. Thank you, Caleb. Thank you, Emily,

for all the booking and all the hard work. And we will see you all tomorrow. I'll be there at noon. Susan at three. Pacific. Ask Dr. Drew is produced by Caleb Nation and Susan Pinsky. As a reminder,

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