Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - Ep 549 | Voter Suppression Propaganda, Islamist Terrorism & Muscular Conservatism | Guest: Josh Hammer

Episode Date: January 17, 2022

Today we're talking to Josh Hammer, conservative commentator and opinion editor at Newsweek. Josh is here to break down a few of the stories that have taken over the news in the last few days, starting with the hostage situation that took place in a North Texas synagogue. Apparently, an armed Muslim extremist thought he could negotiate the release of a convicted terrorist by taking some innocent people hostage. Thankfully, no one lost their lives. However, since then, the media have been working overtime to hide any information about the case that runs counter to their narrative that says white supremacy is basically the only threat America is facing. Then, we discuss the heavy-handed speech Joe Biden gave in Georgia in support of the Democrats' "voting rights" bill. Josh explains how, despite the name, this bill would actually dilute the power of the average American's vote. Lastly, we talk about what the GOP should do and what issues it should focus on heading into the new year in order to capitalize on Democrats' failures and do right by their constituents. --- Timecodes: (0:00) Intro (9:30) Interview with Josh Hammer (10;00) Breaking down the Colleyville, TX synagogue hostage situation & the media/FBI's reaction to it (30:22) Voting legislation in the Senate - will it pass? (50:30) What should the Republican party be doing right now / doing better as we get into the midterms season & looking ahead to 2024? --- Today's Sponsors: Bambee was created specifically for small businesses — it provides a dedicated HR manager to craft HR policy & maintain your compliance for just $99/month! Go to Bambee.com/ALLIE right now to schedule your free HR audit! Patriot Mobile is America's only Christian conservative cell phone provider & they offer broad, nationwide coverage. They share your values & support organizations fighting for religious freedoms, constitutional rights, sanctity of life, & our Veteran & First Repsonder heroes. Go to PatriotMobile.com/ALLIE or call 972-PATRIOT to get free activation today! CBDistillery has over 2 million customers & if you haven't discovered the power of CBD, you're missing out! Go to CBDistillery.com & order online with no prescription required. Enter promo code 'ALLIE' for 20% off! --- Previous Episodes Mentioned: Ep 538: Conversion Therapy & Canada's Assault on Christianity | Guest: Dr. Joseph Boot https://apple.co/3tBpBVA Ep 126: Biblical Marriage https://apple.co/3FBv3Kp Ep 335: Understanding the Biblical Telos of Gender https://apple.co/3qxhIOW --- Show Link: Gov. Ron DeSantis' State of the State Address - January 11, 2022: https://bit.ly/3rtZyN8 --- Buy Allie's book, You're Not Enough (& That's Okay): Escaping the Toxic Culture of Self-Love: https://alliebethstuckey.com/book Relatable merchandise: https://shop.blazemedia.com/collections/allie-stuckey

Hey, this is Steve Day. If you're listening to Allie, you already understand that the biggest issues facing our country aren't just political. They're moral, spiritual, and rooted in what we believe is true about God, humanity, and reality itself. On the Steve Day show, we take the news of the day and tested against first principles, faith, truth, and objective reality. We don't just chase narratives and we don't offer false comfort.

We ask the hard questions and follow the answers wherever they leave, even when it's unpopular. This is a show for people who want honesty over hype and clarity over chaos. If you're looking for commentary grounded in conviction and unwilling to lie to you about where we are or where we're headed, you can watch this D-Day show right here on Blaze TV or listen wherever you get podcasts. I hope you'll join us. Hey, guys, welcome to Relatable. Happy Monday. Hope everyone had a wonderful weekend and that you're having a great start to your week. This episode, like all of our recent episodes, is brought to you by our friends at Good Ranchers.

They've got better than organic chicken, craft beef, all of them. American maid shipped right to your front door. We love our friends at Good Ranchers. Check them out, good ranchers.com slash All right, today we are talking to a new guest that we haven't had on before, but I've been following him and reading him for so long because he's so brilliant. His name is Josh Hammer. He has a Newsweek opinion editor.

He's a syndicated columnist. He is a fellow at the Edmund Burke Foundation, and he really is adding so much to conservatism right now with his insight. We're going to be talking about a few different. things today. We are going to be talking about the hostage situation that occurred at the synagogue in Texas over the weekend and how the media is reacting to that and why it actually matters that the media doesn't tell the truth about the actual statistical threats that are posed against the Jewish community in the United States. We are also going to be talking about this

big piece of voting legislation that you are hearing about so much. Joe Biden, our president, was in Georgia last week and basically said that if you do not support this voting legislation, then you are like a segregationist. You are like a supporter of Jim Crow. You are racist and a white supremacist. Of course, that's not very surprising. That's what Democrats like to do. If you don't support them, it is because you are an evil, vile person, not because you have any legitimate reason to disagree. But we don't care what they have to say. The fact of the matter is, is that there are many legitimate reasons to take issue with this voting legislation that they are trying to push through the Senate by getting rid of the filibuster. Probably not going to happen. But we'll talk about what's actually

in this bill. And is democracy really at stake because of some of the voting laws that have been passed in places like Texas in Georgia? You can probably guess my answer. But we will explain that. And then we'll also hear from Josh, like what should a winning GOP, a Republican Party, really look like. What kind of conservatism should Republican candidates and elected officials really be pushing? Is it economic policy? Is it culture war issues? What should that look like? We have some uncomfortable, I would say politically incorrect things to say, especially when we were talking about what happened at the synagogue. And it's never fun to talk about issues that have to do with race, that have to do with who is victimizing whom.

So just know walking into that that some of the things that we're going to say are simply factual, but they are generally covered up by a lot of people in the media because they are politically incorrect things to say. This, everything that we were talking about on MLK Day, there are a lot of nuances to MLK in his life and his theology and his philosophy. I really encourage you to listen. to Albert Mueller's the briefing. He really goes through the spiritual lineage, the theological lineage of MLK, talks about the goods and the bads of his philosophy. And I thought that was

very informative. I listened to that this morning. We won't get into all of that. But there was a lot of good that MLK obviously brought to the United States in the civil rights era. His focus on love and forgiveness on peaceful protests and civil means to push back against actual true injustice. I think a lot of his words, unfortunately, are co-opted by activists today to basically say we're facing the same problems that we were when MLK was fighting for civil rights. That is simply a historical nonsense. That's not to say we don't have issues today. But America today is not what it was in the 1960s.

we can give a lot of credit to the bravery, the courage of MLK for that. And so we can't allow, we can't allow people to either co-opt or to completely negate what MLK Jr. preached the good things that he preached in the 1950s and 60s for really a new form of divisive racism that we are seen through activists like Ibrahim Kennedy and Nicole Hannah-Jones. the purportors and the peddlers of critical race theory and other forms of racial division today. So just want to make a note on that. And I also want to say one more thing before we get into our conversation, C4 was a law that passed. It was a bill that became a law that was passed in Canada that bans so-called conversion therapy. I will link the conversation that I had with a Canadian pastor from a couple weeks ago where we talk about that law, what it actually means, why it's not actually a ban on so-called conversion therapy, certainly not a ban on just barbaric electroshock therapy.

It really is an infringement upon Christianity, upon freedom of religion, upon free speech. And it truly is so dangerous and it's not going to end well for anyone there. link that past episode. The reason why I'm bringing it up is because yesterday, I think it was about 4,000 pastors in the United States and Canada honored a biblical sexuality Sunday, where they simply preached what the Bible has to say about biblical sexuality. I will also link a past episode that I did about biblical marriage and the definition of gender and all of that. as I have said, I love alliterations and basically the summation of the biblical perspective on male and female and the holy matrimony of male and female is rooted in creation.

It's reiterated throughout scripture. It's repeated by Jesus himself in Matthew 19. It is represented in, it is representative, I should say, of the gospel. and in that way, or it is, sorry, it is representative of Christ in his church and in that way is reflective of the gospel. So it is rooted in creation, reiterated throughout scripture, repeated by Jesus himself, representative of Christ in the church as we see in Ephesians 5, and is therefore reflective of the gospel. So biblical marriage between male and female who are not interchangeable, but are actually a fixed status that God created. We see it throughout scripture.

It doesn't just have physical significance, but it also has spiritual and eternal significance. And therefore, to compromise on that is to compromise on a lot. The definition of male and female, the definition of marriage is a Genesis 1 issue. So it is foundational. And if you are not even willing as a Christian to stand up for Genesis 1, as I've said, I have a hard time believing you will long stand up for the much more controversial message of scripture, which is the gospel that can be summed up in John 14, 6, that Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life, and that no one comes to the Father except through him. That's far more controversial, far more scandalous than God made the male and female and defined marriage as a union between male and female. So let's stand strong

there. Let's be a refuge of clarity and courage for a very confused in a chaotic world. I just wanted to mention all of that. Before we get started, in this conversation with Josh. Hey, this is Steve Day. If you're listening to Allie, you already understand that the biggest issues facing our country aren't just political. They're moral, spiritual, and rooted in what we believe is true about God, humanity, and reality itself.

On the Steve Day show, we take the news of the day and tested against first principles, faith, truth, and objective reality. We don't just chase narratives and we don't offer false comfort. We ask the hard questions and follow the answers wherever they leave, even when it's unpopular. This is a show for people who want honesty over hype and clarity over chaos. If you're looking for commentary grounded in conviction and unwilling to lie to you about where we are or where we're headed, you can watch this D-Day Show right here on Blaze TV or listen wherever you get podcasts.

I hope you'll join us. Josh, thank you so much for joining us. First, in case there are a few people who may not know, can you tell us who you are and what you do? I am the opinion editor of Newsweek around the op-ed section there. You can find our work every day at Newsweek.com slash opinion. I write a weekly syndicated column. I do a lot of law school and college talks and a lawyer by backwards. And I used to live in Dallas.

I was a blaze contributor for a little while. So definitely missed those days. But it was great to be back on there with you guys. Yeah. Well, thank you so much for taking the time to come on. I originally asked you to come on to talk about this voting legislation, which we're going to talk about. But I've seen you also talk a lot about in the past few days, the hostage situation that

occurred in Collieville, Texas, where a synagogue, people in the synagogue were held hostage by a man by the name of Malik Faisal, Akron. I guess that's how you pronounce it. He's a 44-year-old British national, presumably Muslim, who says that he was there holding people hostage to try to get his sister out of prison who is in prison for trying to harm, I believe, FBI agents. So tell us more about what went on there and tell us a little bit about the media reaction and how they've covered this. Sure. So it's a tragic story, obviously. Thank God that everyone managed to escape what was a legitimate hostage crisis. Okay. So, you know, thank

God that the FBI SWAT units, everyone did what they had to do. So there's so many elements of the story. So like I just mentioned, you know, like you, Alie, you know, I used to live in the Dallas area. You know, Connie Burden, who's the former state senator from there in Collieville in northeastern Tarrin County, I believe it is, in the Fort Worth area. It's a dear friend of mine. So, I mean, I know the area well. I'm actually friends with someone named Edomar Gelbman, whose Facebook post about this went viral. He used to be a congregant in that synagogue. Edomar ran for Congress in the Dallas-Fort Worth area years ago. And in his Facebook post, this was kind of really kind of bone-chilling stuff, actually.

He said that the rabbi there, as is often the case, with kind of these politically liberal, theologically non-Orthodox synagogues, the same way that kind of, you know, Protestantianity has a problem with its theologically liberal sex. So do we in Judaism have a massive problem with our theological liberal sex? So Edomar Gelvin was talking about how the rabbi at this reform non-Orthodox synagogue has said horrible things about Israel over the years. He has called it an apartheid state oppressing Muslims.

He has, he previously forbid his own congregants from concealed carrying in synagogue there. Wow. So, you know, I mean, I'll be honest with the alley. The very first time I, when I saw this happen, when I saw like the first headline, my very first thought was this is probably a non-Orthodox synagogue, honestly, because in most kind of theologically conservative and more politically conservative shules, especially in a red state like Texas of where I live now in Florida,

there's going to be armed security and or a lot of people carrying. So, you know, it seems like he took the easiest target there. And the actual story here, it's exactly what you said. It looks like it's a British-Pakistani national, a Muslim guy. It's unclear whether the person that he's referring to as a sister is actually his biological sister

or just his sister in Islam, sister, in faith or whatever. But the real story here, I think, as we're going to play out of the next kind of 36 to 48 hours, so the real story, I think, is going to start to focus on CARE, the Council in American Islamic Relations, because CARE as recently as a month and a half ago was hosting a fundraiser. They were doing these prolific events trying to free this prisoner,

this prisoner who this nutjob, who is now dead, went into a synagogue to try to take hostage Jews in order to free. So care, I think, you know, that organization of Ilan Omar, Rashida Taleb, all kind of the nut jobs in the squad and kind of, you know, the far left Democratic Party, they kind of sycophant themselves to care. Care has a very long and inglorious history. It was really founded if you go back far enough as a Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas operation on U.S. soil. So that's where I think the narrative is going to go here. But look, obviously, I mean, speaking very personally, Ali, you know, as a Jew who goes to synagogue pretty much every

week. I would never go to a shul. I would never, ever, ever step foot in a synagogue unless there were a armed security and or B I was concealed carrying. And I just hope that my fellow Jews pay attention and do the same thing. Right. Now, something that's interesting in this is that the FBI is saying, and of course the media has kind of echoed this, that there is no explicitly, explicitly antisemitic motive here, that this is something that just happened. It had nothing to do with the fact that this was a synagogue. Apparently, he was just going to hold anyone hostage. Are you buying that?

You know, this makes me so angry. It literally makes, like, my blood, like, viscerally boil, right? So a friend of mine, a friend here in Miami, actually, a law school friend of mine, show me a Google Maps, like a satellite image of where this shul is in Hollywood, Texas. The media and the FBI, it's unbelievable, by the way, that we're conflating the mainstream media and the FBI, but they deserve to be conflated at this point. They are having us believe. They are suggesting, they are putting out there the notion that this synagogue was in like a random strip mall where he could have gone into the Walgreens. It could have gone into

the Walmart. He could have gone into like the Indian or Chinese restaurant or he could have randomly wandered into a shul. If you go on Google Maps and you look at where this synagogue is, It's in a heavily residential neighborhood. It is not in a strip mall. It is not surrounded by anything. So what this man did, this British Pakistani National, who very clearly is not particularly assimilated into our norms, our customs, literally what I think is going on here, okay?

And I think I'm probably pretty spot on on this. The culture in a lot of these kind of, you know, Islamist-centric countries, you know, I and Hersia, who grew up in Somalia, who grew up kind of inculcated in deep, deep anti-Semitism has spoken a great length about this. And a lot of these countries, they are really taught that, like, the Jews, you know, the elders of Zion, all these horrible kind of conspiracy theories really just control everything. And the Nutshop, who was in prison, this woman Siddiqui, who he was attempting to free, has basically said that.

She has said, and she was a neuroscientist of Brandeis University. I mean, this is someone who had some academic credentials to her name. But she has said that, like, the Jews control everything, the Jews are behind everything. So what I think happened was this British Pakistani guy probably actually believes that the Jews really control everything. And I think he really, he just went into a random synagogue to hold up a bunch of Jews, including the rabbi, obviously, and thought that he would use as a bargaining chip so that someone, I guess in his mind, like literally like the council members of the elders of Zion to go back to like these ridiculous conspiracy theories would then free this Siddiqui terrorist behind bar. That is my best guess as to what his thought process was, honestly. It's a remarkably stupid way to approach us, to put it mildly. It is dripping with anti-Semitic conspiracy theories.

But that is really the culture that I think a lot of these kind of Pakistani, Somali, whatever kind of cultures grow up in, frankly. Are you surprised at all that the media, some and the media, of course not all, seem to be more concerned with the potential of Islamophobia after this story than the blatant antisemitism. that was actually expressed. Like we saw a tweet by the telegraph saying, Breaking man with English accent holds rabbi and congregation hostage at Texas synagogue, the FBI saying that this had nothing to do with anti-Semitism. You have a lot of outlets just describing him as a British man. To me, that seems to, of course, bury the lead.

You're trying to hide the inconvenient fact that this person wasn't Islamist extremist. Does that surprise you at all or are you used to that? Look, the media after an event like this is going to gaslight, okay? They're going to try to refocus the narrative back on white supremacy, back on white nationalism, back on kind of the Biden White House's war on domestic terrorism, January 6th. I mean, we know all the talking points, okay? We know the narrative that they're going to try desperately to get it back to here. I thought that what happened, excuse me, I thought what happened this time was particularly egregious.

This was worse gaslighting than I think we've normally seen after an event like this. And I think that the median person kind of sees right through this. I mean, literally the front-facing person for the FBI who was there kind of on the ground, I don't remember his name, but the guy who was kind of organizing all the various units, he had a press conference there or a brief conference on Saturday night where he literally said, we are looking for the true motive still. I mean, are you kidding me? Are you kidding me?

Like a Muslim Pakistani British National goes into a synagogue yelling about freeing this, terrorist, other Muslim woman who's behind bars who care held an event to try to free a month and a half ago in a synagogue. And we're trying to find the true motive here. I mean, this is vicious, malicious stuff. But to your point, am I surprised? Look, Jew hatred is the oldest form bigotry in the world. Obviously, it goes back thousands and thousands of years. It is the bigotry that never has gone away, never will go away. And honestly, like, you know, as Jews, like, we have to deal with that fact. I mean, like, we just do, right? So, like, Again, like we need armed security.

We need to get more comfortable training with firearms, concealed carrying. I've been saying all this stuff for years and years here. But the notion that like the media and in this case, the FBI, would try to change a narrative. I mean, it's just very, it's malicious and it's vicious and it's also sad. I mean, if you look at kind of the FBI hate crime statistics in any given year, as far as religious-based hate crimes go in the United States, Jews comprise, I think it's about 55 to 60 percent of religiously based hate crimes. It's like five to six times more hate crimes than Muslims get in the United States every year.

Obviously, the media would prefer to focus exclusively on, you know, Islam-based hate crimes for various intersectional nonsensical reasons. But I'm not surprised because, you know, Jew hatred to this day is one of the last politically correct forms of bigotry in America. It really just is. And you just hit on, really, the reason I think that a lot of people in the media focus on what they focus on and obfuscate, what they try to obfuscate, and that is that intersectionality scale, which is totally irrational.

But they will simultaneously conflate or they will just say that Jewish people are just white. So they have all of the privilege of basically your average wasp. But when it's convenient for them, they will use anti-Semitism to try to speak out against what we're told is the main enemy in America. the biggest in America, and that is white supremacy. It's the same thing with the whole stop Asian hate hashtag that was going around last year. We were told that the real problem in the Asian community, the real enemy that they're fighting is white supremacy, when the vast majority of the violent crimes that were committed against Asians that we were seeing statistically throughout the years,

but in particular last year we saw with our own eyes, they were not white people perpetrating those crimes. But you're right when you say that it's one, it's intersectionality, which like I said, is irrational. And two, it's gaslighting in order to advance their agenda of intersectionality. And it actually makes the world, I believe, a more dangerous place because we are unwilling to call things as they are. People are too scared to tell the truth. And so they are unable to see threats as they are, which means that they can be unwilling in some cases to take the steps to try to protect themselves against these kinds of,

against these kinds of threats, don't you think? Totally. Look, it does a huge disservice to people's ability to recognize the threats that are actually happening out there. Now, I don't want to downplay, obviously, that there are, you know, there's an extremely, extremely small percentage of people in America who do have, you know, vile white supremacist neo-Nazi believes, okay? And they do not like, they do not like Jews.

Their targets aren't just, you know, black and brown people, but they are viciously anti-Semitic as well. Yeah, of course. I mean, the person who attacked the Khabad of Poway, California outside San Diego, I think it was in April 2019, if I believe it was, well, almost three years ago now. That's crazy. I remember that like it was yesterday. He was a neo-Nazi, you know, the person at the Tree of Life Synagogue and Pissue.

Pittsburgh, I think had neo-Nazi or neo-Nazi-esque beliefs. But, yeah, if you look at the majority of anti-Semitic attacks in America, it's actually not, it's not coming from white people. It's just not. I mean, it's literally coming from people of color prominently in the black community. This is a deeply, non-politically correct thing that I'm about to say. But if you look at historic polls that trace the levels of kind of viewpoints that kind of, you know, any mainstream Jewish organization, the ADL, whatever, would.

consider it to be anti-Semitic. If you look at that, those beliefs do happen in a larger percentage from the black community than most communities in the United States. And, you know, we saw that, you know, in Jersey City, New Jersey in December 2019. We're in a kosher supermarket. You know, I think it was one or two people were killed from kind of a black Hebrew, was Israelite, which is basically like a black nationalist terrorist organization. The machete attack in Muncie, New York, later that same month was from like a similar kind of black nationalist type. Obviously, So you can go back to the early 90s with the pogrom, the actual pogrom that Al Sharpton started in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, leaned to the death of an Australian Jew named Gankle Rosenbaum,

for which Al Sharping to this day has literally never apologized for starting that literal program. So look, this is not a new thing. You know, I think Jews who have been around long enough who will follow this know that the threat more often than not, at a basic statistical level, actually does happen from the Muslim community or the black community. These are not kind of easy things to say, but they still must be said here. And again, that's not to play down the abhorrent and vile neo-Nazis, but as a basic percentage of who was actually committing these hate crimes.

And to your point, Allie, by the way, those hate crimes really not just against Jews, but against Asians too. When we saw all those attacks against Asians in New York City, in particular, in the Bay Area in California, really did not seem like it was all that many white people. I mean, I'm sure some, obviously, were doing terrible things. but a lot of the anecdotes that kind of were caught on camera really did seem to be blacks or sometimes perhaps Hispanics. These are not easy things to say, but I mean, we kind of have to say it because you need to recognize what you're facing and be ready to act on that.

Yeah, it's not easy to say, and no one really wants to talk about that. It'd be a lot easier not to talk about it. And of course, it's not saying anything about any innate characteristic in any group of people, and you're not painting with a broad brush. statistically, the Bureau of Justice statistics says the same thing about Asian Americans and who they are most likely to be murdered by if they are murdered. And that's actually very different from every other race in which a white person is most likely to be killed by a white person. A black person is most likely to be killed by a black person. That's actually not true only for Asian Americans. So just interesting. I do think it's important to talk about and to note even if it is super

uncomfortable and it's something that I don't like to mention. But when you are told by the government that the biggest threat of violence, the biggest threat of, quote, domestic terrorism in the United States is white nationalism and white supremacy, I mean, knowing the things that we do know that we just talked about, I mean, we should, that should cause people to take a step back and say, well, why? Then why are they saying that where are these threats coming from? How are they so pervasive and yet we don't have a whole lot of anecdotes about those happening frequently. And your estimation, like, what is the motivation behind Joe Biden, this administration, talking about the biggest threat to the United States?

I'm not saying that it's not a threat, but the biggest threat to the United States we hear is white supremacist domestic terrorism. What is the motivation behind that when that just doesn't seem to be factual? So it's a fantastic question. Look, I think if I had to kind of armchair quarterback or maybe even kind of like armchair psychiatrists as to like what's really going on here, I think we're seeing kind of the intergenerational kind of downstream symptom, the downstream effect of decades and decades of thought in the American Academy and the Western Academy and the University at large that has basically said that America and Western civilization for that matter is inherently kind of racist, colonialist, obviously kind of, you know, you know, you and I both both on the narrative, right? I mean, these white European colonialists came there. You know, they conquered Squanto and the Indians. You know, every person of color was subjugated.

So that, I think, ultimately, is kind of the narrative here. Obviously, that's a large part of what's going on with 1619 project from the New York Times in particular here. That's very much a part of this narrative. So I think it kind of at a philosophical level, what Biden is kind of implicitly doing, maybe not explicitly on database, but the sentiment that he's implicitly channeling. is he's basically trying to say kind of mea culpa. He's trying to say like my bad as a white person. Like I like my people.

And again, this is, you know, this is me trying to imitate him. This is not like what I think. But he's basically trying to say, my bad, you know, my people, the white people have kind of come here, they've invaded, they have conquered this country here. And now I recognize that we are to blame. So let all the, you know, let all the intersectional Olympics, you know, people of color of all various stripes, do your thing, try to have your country back. on the margins. I think it's kind of a broader, kind of higher level. That's probably what's going on here.

Obviously, a kind of a narrower level, a kind of a bread and butter, crass tactics of modern 22 politics level. I think what's happening here is the Democratic Party obviously knows that it is hemorrhaging voters very badly with working class whites in particular that obviously has kind of become the voting base, the crux of the voting base of the Republican Party. And the Democratic Party recognizes that it has to massively kind of try. drive huge turnouts among the black community, among the Hispanic community, although obviously the polls show the Hispanic community is much more split nowadays than they were just a couple of years ago. But I think the thought is that like you have to kind of just appeal. You have to

kind of just throw kind of carrots out there to all the various kind of intersectional groups to drive out margins at the polls because Democrats know that with their crazy kind of woke nonsense, not to mention some of their like insane, you know, bread and butter kind of fiscal taxation policies. They are really just kind of losing white Americans at the polls at a very basic level, I think. Speaking of trying to let's see, I'm trying to think of the transition. Speaking of trying to gain power through dishonest means, let's talk about this voting legislation. Let's transition into that subject. Speaking, I guess, of all the racial things that we were just talking about, Joe Biden,

And I think we have the clip to play out. Joe Biden gave a speech, a scandalous speech in Georgia, basically saying if you don't support Democrats voting legislation, then you are a racist like Bull Connor. So let's play that if we have it. Do you want to be the side of the side of Dr. King or George Wallace? Do you want to be the side of John Lewis or Bull Connor? Do you want to be the side of Abraham Lincoln or Jefferson Davis? This is the moment to decide. All right. So that was pretty stunning to me. And apparently it was stunning to a lot of Democrats. They were trying to kind of walk it back.

Jensaki was saying, oh, that's not really what he was saying. Is that true? Is it true that opposition to this voting legislation is opposition to black Americans being able to vote? I mean, you, Ellie, you and I both know that the answer that is obviously no. You know, the word for this is very straightforward. The word for this is demagoguery. Okay. A demigod kind of going back to Plato and Aristotle and kind of the Greeks who originated this term. It refers to demigod, the root there is demos, the people. It refers to someone who kind of, it's a political figure who rises up by stirring the passions of the people, trying to rile them up. Oftentimes, if they're very worst, trying to kind of put them against themselves and pit them against themselves. This was Joe Biden's probably most demagogic speech to date. And already in his one year in the Oval Office, there was a large sample size there to choose from. He has had many demagogic speeches about the so-called pandemic of the unvaccinated and kind of hitting the vaccinated against the unvaccinated.

So there's a lot to choose from there. But this was his, this was demagoguery at its very worst. So look, what happened as far as voting laws are concerned here in the year 2020, obviously, you know, back when COVID was, you know, at its, at its fiercest, when we really didn't know quite how serious or, as the case, maybe with Omicron, non-serious, the virus actually might be when everyone was locked down. All these states kind of unilaterally, not all of them, but a lot of them unilaterally change their voting laws. Oftentimes, actually, via unconstitutional means, the Constitution is actually quite clear that if a state wants to change kind of the times, places, manners, and regulations of its voting regime, its voting laws, then must happen through the legislature. A lot of states, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and others actually passed them through executive fiat. So shame on the Supreme Court for not having fixed that at the time.

It was flakling unconstitutional all the time. But what they did so, kind of holding aside the law and focusing on the policy, what they were doing here is they were really trying to make kind of a one-off dispensation, an exception, like a one-time 2020 election exception. And again, hold aside whether that was even necessary. I think usually it was not. but they were trying to make one-time exceptions because of this, what we at the time of thought was this novel, once a century, pandemic that kind of shut down all society. The Democrats' arguments is that in states where we are trying just to return to the status

quo ante of two years ago of, you know, January, February, 2020, just before COVID started, that returning to that status quo ante now makes you tantamount to Bull Connor, you know, and the fire hose is down in Montgomery, Alabama. that is literally their stance. This is, it is just so shameful. I mean, like, this is such an insult to the legacy, you know, of Marlon Luther King, of all the people who did march in Selma, Alabama, of all the people who did kind of fight against the horrific Jim Crow regime in the southern United States.

It's really just galling stuff. I mean, it kind of reminds you the same way. I mean, this, you know, this weekend here in Florida, Nikki Fried, who's running the Democratic primary and might challenge Ron DeSantis. You know, she compared Ron DeSantis to his. I mean, like, this is such an insult to people, you know, who have relatives who die in the Holocaust, the same way that what's happening with Joe Biden is an insult to people whose families, you know, suffered into Jim Crow, maybe died in some of these marches from vicious police officers.

I mean, it is demagoguery at its very worst. And it's also just, it's flagrantly a historical as a basic matter of constitutional law, too. Voting of the United States is predominantly a state issue. That is kind of like a Conlaw 101 Red and Butter matter. There are various constitutional amendments, specifically, I guess it would be the, let's see, the 15th, the 19th, the 24th, and the 26th amendments, or the four amendments that kind of carve out kind of federal exceptions. But the point is, historically speaking, with the exception of like the voting rights out in 1965 and those four amendments, voting is really a state issue.

It is up to the states to do this. So what's really happening here is it's a naked federal power grab. Is the Democrats recognizing that they are in deep, deep, deep, do-do, that they are going to get slacked. fall at the midterms, and they're trying to kind of effectuate a very quick power grab to put in policies that will get them slightly better or at least less bad at the polls. That's really what's actually going on here. It's deeply cynical, demagogic and shameful stuff. And I want to get into some of the specifics in just one second, but I want to read a little bit of Nancy Pelosi's reaction to the speech when she was asked about it, going back to my point about Democrats kind

of seem to be walking this back, which I think is actually rare. They usually just double down, but Nancy Pelosi said nobody knows who Bill Connor is. You know, if we're going to make the case to say, we're going to be with Martin Luther King or Bill Connor, who's that? And she probably doesn't realize the point that she's making, but that's actually exactly what I was thinking. The fact that most people don't know who Bull Connor is, most people don't know the racist that he was contrasting to the civil rights heroes.

That actually says a lot about our nation and the people that we lionized, the people that we have put up on a pedestal. and made heroes. They're the civil rights leaders, not the racist. Those people have gone to the dustbin of history. Most people probably in his audience didn't even know who the racist were that he was listing. And yet we're supposed to believe, like you said, that ridiculous notion that if you just simply want the states to control their own elections, if you want to go back to pre-pandemic rules and regulations about elections, then you are some. It's awful segregationist and racist. It's just absurd. Now, let's get into some specifics about this power grab. As you argued, they're trying to protect themselves from losing more elections. What exactly?

I know there's a lot, but just a few things. What are some of the biggest things that are in this bill that are so dangerous? Okay. So as far as I'm aware, there's two kind of major pieces of federal legislation. There's the freedom to vote act, if I have the name correctly there. which would basically kind of federalize various regulations, referring to kind of early voting and mail-in-balloting and things like that. And then there's the John Lewis Advancement Act, again, if I have the name right there,

which basically would kind of put in, so basically what happened there is in 2013, in the Shelby County versus Holder case of the Supreme Court, the Supreme Court basically threw out the so-called coverage formula from Section 4B of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, because they basically said that Congress had not updated this, you know, at the time, I guess it was 48 years. It was basically a half century. And the way that the Voting Rights Act works, there are two major components there. But Section 4 basically has a so-called coverage formula that relying on literally 1965 data, what Congress did was, it said, like if you were in a certain jurisdiction here, predominantly, obviously in the South, I think, you know, some places like out in Arizona, but mostly really in kind of the old South, if you were in a certain jurisdiction that has a history.

of discriminating on voting rights. And I don't want to downplay that. That actually was totally legitimate. That really happened, of course. But if you were in a certain jurisdiction here, of course, then in order to make changes to your voting laws, to your policies, you had to get federal preclearance from the Department of Justice. The issue is that they, that may have,

and quite possibly was justified at the time due to the horror that was Jim Crow. But as a basic matter of constitutional law, like I was explaining earlier, that kind of flips federalism on its face. Okay, voting rights, voting regimes really are historically kind of a state issue. And again, like there were various amendments. There is the voting rights act that kind of make exceptions to that. But as a general rule, it kind of flips on its head federalism.

So in 2013, the court basically said, okay, Congress has not updated this coverage formula in 48 years now. We're going to throw it out. So the John Lewis Advancement Act would basically seek to put in a new coverage formula in Section 4. The issue with that is twofold. One is that, again, you know, as horrible as Jim Crow was, and it was obviously horrible, we're now, you know, 55, 60 years after the Voting Rights Act, query whether we still need

this extremely heavy-handed policy in place that kind of, from a con law one-on-one perspective, flips federalism on its face, especially when in the case the Voting Rights Act, there's actually other kind of litigation avenues. There's Section 2, which is kind of a pre-enforceding mechanism, but not worth getting into. But the point is, purely whether we even need this. And I haven't actually looked into the granular data, but based on what I have read, it does seem like the Section 4 coverage formula that Democrats want to put back into this statute, basically just copies and paste, more or less what was the case 55, 60 years ago.

So the data does not support that. The data in today's day and age simply does not support the proposition that Georgia and Alabama and Mississippi, whatever, are discriminating on the basis of race at the polls any more than Indiana, Minnesota, whatever. This is nonsensical stuff. So it is farcical on its face and it flips federalism. The other legislation, the Freedom to Vote Act, same thing. I mean, like they're basically just trying to federalize election.

They're trying to make a national power grab here as to what under a constitutional order is quite emphatically and quite clearly a state issue. A lot of this is probably unconstitutional. face because again, historically speaking, we had to have those four amendments, the 15th, 19th, 24th, and 26th, in order to kind of take away from the states to the federal government these kind of voting rights mechanisms because the default, the default presumption is that voting is a state issue. So it's probably unconstitutional on its face. And second, again, we just don't need this.

Like these policies were in place in 2020 as like a one-off pandemic era exception to the norm. But as a basic matter of policy, you know, mass mail-in balloting, early voting for 20, 30 days, whatever, these are bad policies on their face. I mean, early voting is problematic for any number of reasons that I've, you know, I've written about for years now. So they're bad policies and it's not, it's a facially unconstitutional power graph. These are state issues that are trying to federalize for sheer cynical purposes to drive out the numbers of the ballot box. Yep.

And not to mention that a lot of the provision. in the bill are very unpopular among the American people. Of course, if you ask people, are you for democracy? Are you for voting rights? The vast majority of people, of course, are going to say yes. But if you break it down what's actually in this bill, for example, banning state photo voter ID laws, well, most people are going to be against that. There was a Pew Research poll that showed, I think it was upwards of 78 percent. they're about Americans who support voter ID laws.

And like I said, in general, people want people who are qualified to have access to voting, of course. But I do believe that most Americans also care about voter integrity. And they can see, just common sense tells us that there are some vulnerabilities in the election process if the rules and regulations don't make sense. And if they're not localized, every state is different. the requirements should be different based on what the voters there want and what is actually needed. There's also a requirement for states to allow, this is the main piece of legislation that we were hearing about, the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, but a requirement that states to allow online voter registration not tied to an existing state record on any individual giving election officials, no time to verify the accuracy of the registration and the eligibility of the voter to anticipate the number of ballots and election workers needed at polling places if you allow same day registration requires states to automatically register individuals to vote from state and federal databases.

And so there's a lot in here that simply makes it seem like what they want is not just a federal power grab, but also to make it easy to cheat. And look, I'm not saying that voter fraud either is some. big rampant problem that is manipulating every election that we've had in the past. But again, I think common sense tells us that this would make it easier to take advantage of our system, to manipulate the voting process by a bad actor. Of course, this opens the door to illegal immigrants voting, which if you want to talk about true voter suppression, allowing non-citizens, especially illegal immigrants to vote, well, that waters down. The voting power. of Americans, Democrat or Republican, black, white, Hispanic, it doesn't matter. The more illegal

immigrants or non-citizens are allowed to vote, the last your vote counts as an American. That's true voter suppression. And yet they don't seem to care about that at all. Now, what's the likelihood at this point since they're not abolishing the filibuster? It doesn't, seem. And they don't have probably the votes to pass this. What's the likelihood before the midterners that this gets through. Well, real quick, I mean, kind of just kind of emphasizing the point that you made, Allie. Voter ID in particular is remarkably popular among basically any subset of the population. There has been so much polling on this for so long now.

And majorities of every population subgroup, if I'm aircraftly, white, black, Hispanic, you know, literally whatever kind of intersectional demographic, whatever, you know, rainbow kind of coalition that you want to carve out there. A majority supports voter ID because it is so commonsensical. I mean, the same way that you need an ID to get a prescription from the pharmacy, to walk into any government building, to get out an airplane, you need an ID to do so many basic things in life, you probably should need an ID to verify who you are before trying to alter the course of our democracy, before trying to alter the course of our republic, if we can keep it, the kind of channel the Ben Franklin line from, you know, 250 years ago, whatever.

So the Democrats, you know, Stacey Abrams, Biden, Harris, whoever is on this side that voter ID equals Jim Crow is so far out of touch with the median voter of any kind of subgroup. They're basically also, as far as the poem that I've seen, they're way out of touch with even the median Democrat. So this is a pure panzer play. And again, to use the word that I used earlier, it really is kind of this demagogic fundamentally. But to your latter question, what of the odds that this pass is? I mean, the odds are, you know, basically zero at this point. I mean, now that kind of occurs in cinema and Joe Manchin are, you know, admirably standing firm on the filibuster. And by the way, you know exactly what they're trying to do on the filibuster here.

The notion that they were trying to make on this like one-off exception to kind of put in a voting rights poll to the filibuster rule is totally nonsensical. That's not how this works. Obviously, once you make a one-time exception, there'll be a second-time exception, a third-time exception. And they know that. And that's exactly what they're trying to do. piece of legislation that they push is always what they say democracy is writing on. It's never just like, okay, this piece of legislation isn't that important. I mean, of course, it's ironic that while they are trying to upend democratic norms, they are saying that they are advancing

the cause of democracy, but that's kind of what they do. But yeah, you're absolutely right. This is not an exception. Yeah, no, exactly. It's not an exception at all. But as far as kind of making like an actual prediction. I mean, the odds of this passes muster before Republicans presumably retake the House and why possibly the Senate this November are effectively zero. I mean, it's just not going to happen at this point. I mean, look, it's possible. If Joe Biden really wants to go into like YOLO mode, I mean, it's possible that he could, that he could like purport to issue some kind of wildly unconstitutional executive order trying to change this, you know, laterally. I mean, there's no chance that would pass, you know, Article III, federal judiciary court muster.

some court wouldn't join that pretty quickly, but he could try if he gets frustrated enough just to kind of show his base that he's trying to do something to save our democracy. But as a basic matter of kind of the legislative process, you know, it's quite clearly not getting past the Senate at this point. Yeah. It's just amazing how much we heard while Trump was in office that he was the demagogue and that democracy was at stake and that Trump was divisive that he is trying to ignite some kind of civil war when we've seen, I mean, at least in my estimation, a lot more, not just

demagoguery in rhetorical form, but actual attempts at actual movements that can be described as authoritarian. I won't go so far as to say that Biden is himself an authoritarian, but trying to, for example, put a moratorium on evictions through the CDC, despite what the Supreme Court said, constantly trying to subvert what the... the Supreme Court and the Constitution say about the policies that he wants to enact, that is far less democratic and far more authoritarian than, in my opinion, anything that Donald Trump did. And yet they are, you know, positioning themselves as the guardians of democracy. And it's just, it makes me sad that some people fall for it.

But I think you're right. I think most people don't. I think most Americans see through this kind of stuff, this kind of propaganda. And what do you think, just to kind of close us out, what do you think the Republican Party should be and do going into the midterms, going into even the next presidential election, crazy that we're already starting to talk about that. But I've read a lot of your pieces recently on where you think the Republican Party can do better, what you think the conservative movement should look like. What do you think a winning GOP looks like, not just when they're running campaigns, but when they're actually governing? Great questions. This is like my favorite topic of the moment, obviously. You know, it's so fascinating. You know, Trump came in in 2016 like a wrecking ball and he blew up so much. And as like as an Oberton window shifting mechanism, he was very useful and very helpful, obviously. But he didn't necessarily leave kind of a thorough kind of A through Z kind of policy manual or, you know, a philosophical roadmap or anything in his place. So this is like, it's a very fun space to be in right now. And I, you know, I'm trying to do my little part to contribute to it. So look, my, my basic. thesis here. I definitely side with the so-called kind of common good conservatism camp.

You know, I think what I would call the national conservatism. And what I basically mean by that is it is a philosophy of governance, a philosophy of conservative governance that recognizes that the time for kind of 1980s kind of, you know, Reagan-Bush-era bromides about how like the only thing we can do is slash taxes, cut regulations, free trade, open borders. It's kind excessive focus on neoliberal economics as an end unto itself has to stop. The current threats that are happening in the United States and the year of 2022 are to an extent happening from big government. That's what we're just talking about for sure.

That's what we're talking about with the Biden administration's various excesses, administrative overreach, trying to carve out and change the filibuster. These are changes. But I think most fundamentally, the biggest issue that we on the right, that we is kind of sane Americans who just want to go to church or synagogue and, you know, live our lives on a free day, day basis without kind of, you know, COVID hysteria, without kind of legal aliens, kind of of running a mock, without crimes and anarchy and BLM, Antifa, looting in the streets. What we really face as a basic threat is kind of the woke ideology. I think the woke ideology

and it spread and it is spread through all the institutions of high society. It is there in big tech. They are censoring us. They are kind of kicking us off the town square. It is there all across the Fortune 500, all across Woke Capital. You know, Chris Rufo has done investigation after investigation, kind of showing how every major corporation, you know, is basically treating its employees to effectively hate white people and hate conservative viewpoint. So it's happening across the corporations. It's happening across the big tech oligarchs. It's obviously happening on the American University campuses where having so much as a vaguely right-of-center viewpoint gets you shut down, if not outright banned from polite society here. So in order to fight back against kind of the spread of this current threat, you know, whether it's, again, critical race theory, you know, biological men competing at women's sports, this kind of crazy woke notion that has spread, which is fundamentally different from kind of the issues of oppressive taxation and whatnot that kind of motivated the conservative movement of 40, 50 years ago.

It necessarily requires an update to our policy manual and our actual approach to the art of politics. So the kind of former conservatism that I've been pushing a lot of my articles and speeches and whatnot is a much more, what I would say, muscular kind of hands-on version that is not just willing to settle for just kind of slashing taxes and tweaking around the edges of kind of economic policy, but it's really trying to get in there on the culture war that's going to fight the culture war with the aim of victory over our opponents. that recognize that we are in a civilizational fight with people that want to tell us that women are men, that men are women, and that white people basically are racist due to the fact they were born white. That is an evil, toxic, and pernicious ideology.

And we have to be willing to not just kind of plead to live and let live to kind of say, like, let us do our thing in our own space. We have to actually put out there a substantive vision of what America is as a just society, grounded in the Constitution, the Declaration, our founding documents.

and basically be unapologetic about that there. And we have to kind of actually wield the levers of power to institute that. Yep. I agree with you. And I have been heartened. My husband and I both have been heartened to kind of see this push within conservatism. I mean, I have been a fan for a long time of a lot of things that Ronald Reagan did. But I've also been able to look at his presidency and his actions objectively to see that his actions, the actions of George H.W.

also kind of got us in the position where we are with China. And kind of the grand vision of globalizing liberal democracy just doesn't seem to be in alignment with reality or even potential reality, in alignment with possibility. And the focus on only economic prosperity and tax cuts and corporate tax cuts and things like that, well, they do have their place and I do think that they can be important discussions to have. In my opinion, they come so far below the importance of the culture war that you were talking about. And a lot of people like to brush the culture war off to the side that, you know, that's divisive.

You certainly have libertarians tried to like redefine what it means to be based and to say, oh, no, we're not going to worry about those cultural moral issues. We're just going to worry about, you know, free market capitalism. I'm just not there. I'm not saying that I don't care about free market capitalism. I just care so much more about the culture wars because in my opinion, that's what's going to affect my kids the most. It's going to affect what they're learning, the kind of life that they can lead, what is seen as normal, what is seen as good and right and true. That to me is a much bigger battle. And I agree with you. I would like to see conservatives pushing that a lot more than they currently do. But I'm not sure that. We're not sure that we, We have many elected officials who are willing to do that.

What do you think? The test case right now is Glenn Yonkin. Glenn Yonkin is kind of the test case for this because he just wanted, he won a campaign in a light blue state effectively running on this platform. I mean, he made obviously critical race theory, kind of education, kind of parental role over kind of woke educational bureaucrats. That was his issue of all issues here. So I think, you know, what we've seen right out of the gate from Governor Yonkin and his attorney general, you know, attorney general on day one when sworn and kind of fire the entire existing civil rights division in the attorney general's office in Richmond, Virginia, pretty high energy stuff. So that's going to be

the test case there. I think, I think let's see what he does in office. Look, I mean, not to like show for my young governor, but I mean, here in Florida, you know, I think Governor DeSantis has been a pretty decent model of that here. I mean, he hasn't, look, I mean, look, as far as vaccine mandates, he has banned kind of private sector vaccine mandates, a lot of, I think, kind of more like libertarian-leaning Republicans might say like, oh, let every business decide for itself. But again, that mistakes the nature of the threat. The threat is not kind of like an individual free enterprise threat right now. The threat is this is this ideology that allows people to subjugate the unvax, to allow people to subjugate on the basis of biomedical tyranny.

Exactly. So, you know, whether it's critical race theory again here, he's kind of been like a great example as to I think at a state level what that agenda can look like. But personally, I'm going to be paying extremely close attention to what happens with Glenn Yonkin in Virginia because he literally won a stunning victory in a light blue state, a state that Joe Biden won by, I think it was like 11 or 12 points in 2020. He won running on this platform. He literally ran on a culture war platform. So let's see what he does in office there. But right out of the gate, it's looking pretty good there.

Yeah. You know, I was obviously excited about his victory for a lot. lot of reasons. I was also a little bit, I was a little bit wary. Just looking into his background, the Carlisle group is very liberal itself. I mean, it pushes the tenants of critical race theory very fiercely within its corporation. And so I, you know, I was like, you know what? Maybe he just did what he had to to win. But when it comes to action, once he gets in, he's going to be far more moderate than we want him to be as conservatives. But you're right, right out the gate. So far, He has taken a lot of bold action.

And I think it is completely fair to give credit to Ron DeSantis for kind of setting the standard of really what conservatives want their governance to look like. And when I look at, so Kevin McCarthy, GOP leader in the House, he says that when Republicans regained the House, we'll get America on track by stopping the flow of drugs and human trafficking on our border. That's a good thing. I think that's great. Making it easier to start and grow a business in America. also great. Reestablishing America's energy independence. Great. Passing a parent's bill of rights. I think that's excellent. I would love a parent's bill of rights. But there are a lot of things missing there. There are a lot of things missing. I think one of the biggest things that conservatives are concerned about are these vaccine mandates and the biomedical tyranny that you just talked about.

And I'm like, okay, did he just leave that off the list? Do they not care? Are they scared about that? I mean, what do you think is going on there? So my good friend and podcast co-host, Rachel Beauvart, had a fantastic piece at the Federalist kind of explaining where she thought Ken McCarthy went off the rails in this talk, in this kind of talking points or bullet list here. And I think, you know, I don't remember the exact phrase, but if I can kind of paraphrase of Rachel said, she said that Ken McCarthy was just reiterating kind of the GOP's talking points for her entire life. I mean, look, the parental bill of rights thing maybe is like a little responsive to the critical race theory national phenomenon. That's, that's kind of getting a little closer to what Glenn Young can went on in the Commonwealth of Virginia.

But Kevin McCarthy, you know, look, I mean, I remember when Kevin McCarthy was one of the GOP, quote unquote, young guns. I mean, like, they have this, like, they had this young guns program. Didn't he, like, co-write a book, if I recall, with Paul Ryan and Eric Cantor, or it was a three of them. They had to co-wrote a book together. They were on the cover book together. They kind of came up together, right? And, you know, Paul Ryan, you know, not exactly kind of the front-facing spokesperson of the kind of conservatism that you and I are talking. about to put it mildly. I mean, he obviously is focused on these set of issues that I think you and I are talking about kind of putting to a second or tertiary concern there, those kind of economic

policy, Wall Street Journal editorial board style issue. So I don't think that Kim McCarthy in his core kind of intuit where the base of the party is or where the movement kind of as a matter of policy or political philosophy, frankly, needs to go. I think that that's what's happening here at a higher more abstract level. What I would encourage kind of the viewers of your podcast to do is to check out what Governor DeSantis said in his state of the state address in Tallahassee last week here. Because he, it was a pretty kind of fulsome, you know, 35 to 45, maybe even a little longer, 50, 60, whatever minute speech, where he kind of went through all the lany of issues talking

about a lot of the issues that it seems like really do kind of motivate conservatives more of them than kind of these stale 1980-style talking points in how McCarthy is talking about. I mean, in his speech last week, Desanis talked about kind of the imperative. to fight urban anarchy and crime and looting and homelessness in the streets. He talks about kind of the needs kind of put like a right of action for someone who has been banned from big tech to kind of get that platform access back yet. He obviously talked about his signature issue a lot, which is kind of COVID and the biomedical security state.

So I would encourage the listeners or viewers to kind of go back to his address and kind of do a little side-by-side comparison because I think it'll be quite telling. But Kevin McCarthy, look, I've never met the guy. I don't pretend to know him, but I mean, he's never struck me as someone who is kind of a core Republican voter. I mean, you know, not to like play that car, but he is like from California. You kind of have to wonder at least a little bit, whether he's deeply in touch with kind of like the proverbial kind of like heartland, median American voter.

But at a bare minimum, it to give him like a modicum of credit, look, the parental bill of rights thing is encouraging at least. But a lot of those other talking points are just, you know, I mean, energy independence. I mean, look, I want America, I want America to be energy. independent, okay? I mean, I pay a lot at the pump for gas like most Americans do these days. But, I mean, come on. Like, that is just seriously not like a top five issue right now. And it's utterly, it's ludicrous to suggest that it is. Yeah, I'm in agreement with you, of course. While we've talked a lot about Ron DeSantis, so if you had the choice between Ron DeSantis and Trump in a

primary, who you're going for? I'm obviously on Ron's team. I mean, I don't know if he's going to challenge Trump, obviously. My guess is as good as yours. But if that's the mono-a-mono matchup, I'm going to vote for Governor DeSantis. Yeah, you know, I see a lot of people kind of going in that direction. We'll see. We'll see. It's going to be a very interesting couple of years, as it has been. I mean, it's just been nonstop for the past several years and it's not slowing down anytime soon, which is why I'm very thankful for you and your voice. And thank you so much for taking the time to come on. I really appreciate your insight. Thanks so much, Allie. It was a pleasure. Thank you. Hey, this is Steve Day. If you're listening to Allie, you already understand that the biggest

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