The Daily Signal - #462: Sebastian Gorka Shares How He Thinks We Should Fight Socialism

Episode Date: May 15, 2019

"The most powerful thing is ... more people who have actually lived under these systems and escaped," Sebastian Gorka, a former White House aide turned radio host tells The Daily Signal, saying we need to share these stories. "People who've swam across shark-invested waters from Cuba, people who've, like the blind pro-life lawyer from China, escaped house arrest," he adds. We also cover these stories:•Alabama is banning most abortions.•Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S..C., introduces legislation to help alleviate the border crisis.•The birth rate hits another record low in modern America.The Daily Signal podcast is available on Ricochet, iTunes, SoundCloud, Google Play, or Stitcher. All of our podcasts can be found at DailySignal.com/podcasts. If you like what you hear, please leave a review. You can also leave us a message at 202-608-6205 or write us at [e-mail]. Enjoy the show! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is the Daily Signal podcast for Thursday, May 16th. I'm Kate Trinco. And I'm Daniel Davis. Sebastian Gorka had a front row seat to President Trump's decision-making for over a year at the White House. Now he's running his own talk radio show. Our executive editor, Rob Blewey, caught up with Gorka recently, and today we'll bring you that interview. Plus, women's athletics are in danger of eroding due to the rise of transgender athletes. Kate and I will sit down with Beth Stelzer, who's fighting to preserve women's sports.

By the way, if you're enjoying this podcast, please consider leaving a review or a five-star rating on iTunes. It helps us grow. Now, on to our top news. Well, Alabama is on the cusp of approving a sweeping pro-life bill that would make abortion illegal in almost all cases. The bill passed the state Senate on Tuesday by an overwhelming margin with one abstention. It now goes to the desk of Governor K. Ivy, who's expected to sign it. The bill would give Alabama the strictest abortion law in the country. It would make abortion a felony, including in cases of rape and incest, and would only allow an exception to save the life of the mother.

If approved, it would almost certainly run into legal trouble, since it runs a foul of standards established by Roe v. Wade. But many of the bill's supporters hope that such of a lawsuit would trigger a Supreme Court case to potentially overturn Roe v. Wade. The White House is fighting House Democrats push for records. Pat Cipollone, the White House counsel, wrote in a letter to Representative Jerry Nadler, the judge. Democratic chair of the House Judiciary Committee that the White House would not be handing over more documents right now. Quote, congressional investigations are intended to obtain information to aid in evaluating potential legislation, not to harass political opponents or to pursue an unauthorized due over of exhaustive law enforcement investigations conducted by the Department of Justice,

Cipollone wrote. He also suggested that House Democrats were trying to redo the Mueller investigation, writing, the appropriate course is for the committee to discontinue the inquiry. Unfortunately, it appears that you've already decided to press ahead with a duplicative investigation, including by issuing subpoenas, to review the same ground the special counsel has already covered. Well, the State Department has ordered all non-emergency staff at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad to evacuate, a move that comes amid worsening tensions between the United States and Iran, which borders Iraq. Non-emergency staff at the consulate in Erbil in northern Iraq were also told to evacuate. Last week, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said that the United States had received intelligence reports of an imminent threat to U.S. interests and personnel from Iran.

That provoked the administration to send a task force of bombers and ships to the region. Senator Lindsay Graham, Republican of South Carolina, announced on Wednesday a new bill aiming to keep the border secure but also keep migrant families together. quote, we have a perfect storm brewing at the border because of a series of broken and outdated laws related to asylum and children, Graham said in a statement. His bill would pay for 500 more immigration judges to allow cases to move faster. Plus, the bill would let parents and kids stay together for 100 days, not the current 20 days. In addition, Graham's bill would build centers for people to apply for asylum either in their native country or closer to it. Senator Elizabeth Warren, Democrat from Massachusetts, wants the military to abide by the Green New Deal. In a post published on Medium, Warren announced a bill that would enlist the military in the fight against climate change.

The bill would require the Pentagon to achieve net zero carbon emissions for all of its non-combat bases and infrastructure. She said, quote, we don't have to choose between a green military and an effective one. My energy and climate resiliency plan will improve our service members' readiness and safety. all while achieving cost savings for American taxpayers. But as the Daily Collar has pointed out, the military has already failed to implement an existing net zero carbon emissions goal set in 2008. The Government Accountability Office stated, Service officials told us they believe that fully achieving net zero is unrealistic and ultimately cost prohibitive.

Senator Jeff Merkley, Democrat of Oregon, is reintroducing legislation that would ban selling gas-powered cars by 2040 and require that, half of all cars sold by 2030 are not gas powered. Right now, fewer than 2% of new cars bought are zero emissions per auto alliance. Several top liberals are co-sponsoring the legislation, including Senators Bernie Sanders, Kamala Harris, and Brian Schatz. Well, the strong economy is producing lots of jobs, but it appears not enough babies. The Associated Press reports that despite the vibrant economy, the U.S. fertility rate remains low. In fact, it's at the lowest rate in 32 years. Last year, the U.S. saw 3.78 million births and the fertility rate dropped by 2% down to

1.7%, which is well below the replacement level. Next up, we'll feature Rob's interview with Sebastian Gorka. Do conversations about the Supreme Court leave you scratching your head? If you want to understand what's happening at the court, subscribe to Scotus 101, a Heritage Foundation podcast, breaking down the cases, personalities, and gossip at the Supreme Court. We're joined in The Daily Signal by Sebastian Gorka. Sebastian is great to see you again. Great to be back, Rob. Thank you. You have been quite busy on a daily basis with your new radio program.

It's great to be a guest on the program. Thanks for having me and others from the Heritage Foundation and Daily Signal on. Tell us what it's been like to be in the media world and how people can listen. Yeah, it's funny. I went back to the White House this week to meet the president, and I had to use the media entrance. I used to work for the president. So weird, is the whole people don't really?

there's a whole separate entrance to the White House for journalists. I guess I'm not a journalist, but I'm in the media world. But I've always loved talk radio. From a child growing up in the UK, I used to listen into the wee hours of the night to talk radio. I think talk radio belongs to conservatives now after the last 20, 30 years of Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, my colleagues at Salem, Dennis Prager, Hugh Hewitt, Larry Elder. So it's an incredible place to be at right now and to be given three hours a day on the Salem channels.

It's called America First 3 to 6 on the East Coast. You can listen to it at Seb Gorka.com. It's on iTunes, look for America First. But look, I had cigars with Dennis Prager a week ago and he said, you know what our job is, Seb? Our job, we get paid to tell people what we think, three hours a day. And it's fun. It's a lot of fun.

It is great. Well, thank you for doing it, Because as you noted, talk radio is really so important in terms of getting the message out there. I know that you have been focused on that. It's obviously something that we do at the Daily Signal. What would you say in terms of where we are in today's world with the media? After Post-Muller report, kind of in this period where Democrats seem to be talking about impeachment, you have a whole host of ideas coming out from the 20 candidates who are running for president.

How do you feel the media is treating President Trump today? Right, let's look at the media types of platforms for a second, because maybe the daily signals. I mean, I didn't know this until I worked in the White House because we'd be booked as presidential surrogates based upon audience size. And, you know, I'd go into the bookers room and you'd see, you know, all the big shows, Sean Tucker, how big their audience is, and that's how they prioritized it. Sean and Tucker have the most popular TV shows in America. If you look at their new shows there between 4 and 5 million a night, CNN is 600,000. Let me just add that. And it's a good boy who's hate to when I say that.

So but even the champions like Sean and Tucker, five, six million, Rush Limbaugh has 24 million. So if you underestimate the role and people look at the glitz of TV, but radio and podcasts, you have your great podcast. They are just as powerful, if not more powerful than the visual media. Now, with regards to what happened with the Mueller Report, I was literally upstairs when you called writing an opinion piece for American greatness. And it starts with this question. I feel like we live in a surreal world. I think it's like living in a Tim Burton movie sometimes,

where you see Rachel Madder, who has an evening show that until recently, until the Mueller Report, was relatively popular. And this woman is tearing up online. camera. She's about to cry because her president is not a Russian traitor. And you go, how did we get to this place where people are hoping for the worst case scenario? How has he been treated? I asked the president this week, did decades of being in the media spotlight in New York as a billionaire, as a real estate developer prepare you for your life in the White House? He said, nothing. Nothing could prepare him and his family for the way he's been treated.

I mean, look at what's happened to him. This is a man who is still, this week with the Biden announcement, this man is still called a bigot, a racist, and an anti-Semite, when his chief advisor is his Orthodox Jewish son-in-law, when this man moved our embassy to Brazil, to Jerusalem after 23 years of broken promises, when one of the first pardons he gives is to that black heavyweight boxer

who was prosecuted purely on racial lines, that African-American grandmother who went to prison for drug dealing. So the media is out of control, Rob. And I'd ask you, because you know, you're in the thick of it, I don't see getting any better. I think the president said to me, I asked him, is it going to get worse? You know what his reply was? He said, how could it get worse?

That's a good point. No, I mean, I think you're absolutely correct in that respect. I don't know necessarily, but I do know we're in store for over the next 18 months, certainly a lot of drama, and we know that the media loves controversy, and so I think that there, you know, if it doesn't get any worse, it's certainly probably not going to get better. But let me ask you this, and you're meeting with the president, so obviously you had the opportunity to work in the White House as a special advisor to him. What is his mood and how is he feeling having this have the opportunity to see him?

This is the stunning thing about the president, because the last time I was there, I was with some radio show hosts. We went there during the government shut down. And now it was just me and my producer there for a visit regarding my new book. And if he's ever off his game, it's incredibly transitory. And he's back to his finding self. What I saw this week was he was totally back to his finding form, ready to roll. He's really, he's unstoppable.

I think he made, I was on the plane here and I was listening to the comments he made about something challenged him about his age and the comparison to how old Joe Biden would be who was elected. And I've said it many times. I'm 48 years old. If I had a quarter, if I had one fourth of that 72 year old man's energy, I would be very, very happy because I've never seen him flag. I've never seen him say, hey, guys, I'm going to take a nap now. Give me a triple espresso. So I can't go on. I guess, what is it, the German, what has he got, German, Scottish genes? I guess it's a good combination.

Yeah, it is, it is truly remarkable to see the energy that he has. And I think that must keep those White House staffers on the go at a lot of times. Oh, yeah. You know, you have been such a strong voice against socialism, and I thank you for that, because not only have you seen it firsthand in the devastating consequences, but you've helped, I think, Americans to understand what the grave consequences are. We heard the president talk about this in his state of the union this year. The issue has gained attention, in part because you see so many on the left who are embracing it.

What is your message about socialism? What do conservatives need to know? And what can they do to inform others, their friends and neighbors, about the dangers that it poses to this country? I'm so glad you asked that, Rob. It was actually the first question I asked the president. So I asked them a series of questions for my next book. said, as the child of parents who suffered under communism, my father being persecuted by a socialist regime, it was very moving for me to have him stand in front of the joint session of Congress and make that statement, which I actually, I closed my radio show every Friday with that 18 second segment where he says, America will never, ever be a socialist state. But I asked him, did you ever

think as an American born in America that any American president would have to make that statement. I mean, it's really quite shocking that we'd have to make that statement. How do we push back? Well, look, under K. Cole, James, this is a key issue for the Heritage Foundation. I'm very grateful to the panel I was invited on with Marion Smith at the President's Day event last year. We have to keep banging the drum on the truth of the last, what are we? What year are we? The last 102 years of communism in the world. And the most effective thing is, look, the left has a lion's share of the control of academic colleges.

That's why Turning Point USA is so important in pushing back on the political correctness and the distortions of history. But I think the most powerful thing is maybe people like me, but more people have actually lived under these systems and escaped people who've, you know, swam across shark-infested waters from Cuba, people who, like the blind pro-life lawyer from China who escaped house arrest. If you talk to those people who are escaping these systems now and find out that the political persecution isn't just in history books, Rob. It's going on now as you speak. Yeah. Yeah. But here in in this country, though, we see the left make proposals like the Green New Deal and Medicare for

all, which would exert more government. control over our lives. The kind of government, and this made the left go crazy. When I spoke in CPAC, I said, this level of government control is something Stalin would have dreamt of having. And, yeah, look, Stalin didn't try and ban cows. He didn't try and ban air travel. He would have been laughed at in the Politburo.

But Accio Cortez, with her green news scam, is actually, for all of the denials of the FAQ was not an official one. Yes, it was. We know. or we can go back in the way back machine. They want to get rid of internal combustion engines, air travel, cows because they're too flatulent. They literally want to demolish and rebuild every building in America so that it is more environmentally friendly. Mao didn't even do that, Rob. Mao didn't.

And they want to do it here. It's a serious, serious threat. One of the issues that's getting a lot of attention recently is Jared Kushner, who you mentioned earlier, and the immigration plan that he's putting together for this president. We live in a time when Congress is perhaps as divided as it's ever been, at least in recent history. Do you see any possibility of the president having some traction on border security or immigration reform?

Well, I think he has traction with the American people. Oh, absolutely. Whether he has traction on the hill is another question entirely. And look, let's be honest here, this is a problem. that left and right have punted for about 30, 40 years. This isn't, you can't just say, okay, this is, you know, Acacio Cortez's fault. No, it's been Capitol Hill for decades.

It has to be fixed. Look, I'll say one story, and I think you're talking to Dan Crenshaw later today. Dan was on my show a couple of weeks ago, and he's told this story that if this doesn't make you want to build a wall, nothing will. irrespective of who you vote for, an 18-year-old Mexican girl, I think she's naturalized now, came to his office on Capitol Hill. She had been smuggled into America at age of 13.

The coyotes had promised her the life of a princess in America, her family paid the whatever it was, $15,000. They smuggled her across the border illegally. She ended up in New York in a locked room being raped between 20 and 30 times a day at the age of 13. And then she goes now at the age of 18 to Representative Crenshaw to say, we need to stop this, how can I help? Whether it's fentanyl, whether it's the exploitation of children, of women like this young lady,

we have to fix it. I mean, the national security is the easiest argument for me to make. But for the sake of humanity, Bob, we've got to do it. We've got to do it. Forget about cheap labor for your strawberry-picking farms. Forget about the Chamber of Commerce needing undocumented workers. for the sake of people like that woman, we need to fix this. Yeah, yeah, no, a tragic story.

I mean, I think it's through telling stories like that and exposing Americans to the real tragedies that are happening as a result. I mean, it's something that we're committed to doing at The Daily Signal. I know you are sharing those as well. Sebastian Gorka, thanks so much for joining the Daily Signal. You're going to come in studio for me on America First? I would love to.

Let's do it. Let's do it. Thanks, Rob. Thank you. Are you looking for quick conservative policy solutions to current issues? Sign up for Heritage's weekly newsletter, The Agenda. In the agenda, you will learn what issues Heritage Scholars on Capitol Hill are working on, what position conservatives are taking, and links to our in-depth research. The agenda also provides information on important events happening here at Heritage that you can watch online, as well as media interviews from

our experts. Sign up for the agenda on heritage.org today. Okay, we're joined today by Beth Stelzer, founder of Save Women's Sports. So you got into powerlifting in your 30s. Tell us about that. And first of all, for someone like me who hates gyms, what is power lifting exactly? Powerlifting is a sport where we compete at three different lifts, the deadlift, the squat, and the bench press. We get three chances at competition to do each. The best ones are added to a total, and that determines the winner. Okay. And why did you get into this? So I started in CrossFit and decided that I didn't didn't want to exercise so much. I really liked the weightlifting aspect of it. And there is just in a massive amount of empowering that happens when you can lift that much weight off the ground.

And so once that happened with me, I had enough doing burpees and setups. It was weightlifting from then on. And how much can you lift? Right now I can deadlift over 330 pounds. I'm not quite sure. I haven't tested it for a bit. But let it be known. There are women can almost do twice as that that are my size right now. Wow. Wow. And I think the five pound weights. I think I'm considered like a moderate amateur lifter. So what kind of training are we talking about? You change your diet and exercise every day. It can be intense and grueling depending on how competitive you want to be. I am at the gym usually one to three hours a day for five to six days a week. It includes counting every calorie and macronutrient. So that's your fat, your carbs,

and your protein, and also timing when you intake that food. So it's a pretty intense lifestyle, and balancing it with family is very tough. A lot of protein shakes? Lots of protein, lots of chicken, lots of tuna for me. Yeah. So you mentioned that you've had some tragedies in your life that you felt powerlifting really helped you cope with. Could you speak a little bit about that? Certainly. Certainly. It's been a tough year for me.

There is a lot along this journey. I almost lost my dad. He had an infection that was complicated by diabetes, but I helped nurse and back to health. I lost my grandma. I unfortunately lost a child in an unexpected miscarriage. And then my son had his appendix out the night before the competition. So it was a tough call to even make it to the meat. And you felt that the same.

powerlifting helped you deal with all that? There is an overwhelming sense of empowerment that comes from powerlifting and being a strong woman, both mentally and physically. Powerlifting does that. So tell us about the competition that first made you look into the issue of transgender athletes. Sure, sure. I had no idea about the transgender agenda until I signed up for the USAPL Minnesota Women's

state championships this past February. I found out that a spot opened up that I was able to take because of transgender rights kind of controversy happening. The federation that I joined decided to make a policy to preserve women's sports and not allow biological men to compete with women. During my first event, transgender rights activists protested because the USAPL does not allow men to compete as women. This was all very new to me and I took a deep dive and fell down the black hole and here I am. It's just a scary subject. Okay, so you said the group that you compete with does not allow biological men to compete as women, but the protesters sort of made you think about this issue. Are you worried that your group could change its position? I am slightly worried. They have been unwavered so far,

but there is a big rally of these people trying to change these rules in the National Goverting Board meeting in May. We've seen transgender athletes kind of making incursions into other sports, women's sports, but I would imagine in powerlifting it would be particularly, it would particularly affect the competition. It's unsettling to me. The average performance gap between men and women is about 10, 12%. but when you look at powerlifting, you're looking at up to 30 or more percent average. Wow. When you take into consideration that my 8-year-old son can lift 30 percent of the weight that I can lift already,

I think that kind of proves that the male advantage isn't even puberty. It's there from the beginning. Your 8-year-old can lift 100 pounds? My 8-year-old can lift over 120 pounds right now. Oh, my gosh. He's a power lifter in training. Yes. And for another example, there's a world-class athlete.

She's been training for over 20 years. She recently competed with her 15-year-old son, and they tied for squat records. For a 44-year-old woman who's been training for over 20 years, her 15-year-old son tied her squat record. So what are these competitions like? Do hundreds of people compete? Is it a few dozen? Is it like hard to get in them? How does that work?

Sure. Powerlifting is an excellent sport. There's lots of opportunities. Local gyms put on competitions. There are many different federations locally. state, national, international level, there are a lot of opportunities. There's a length of time in between competitions to allow your body to rest. So you can't just go from one competition to the next. You have to pick and choose. And in my state, power lifting has become so popular that some of the

events have filled up within minutes of the registration opening. So you've been increasingly vocal about this issue of transgenderism in sports. And you've said that you're concerned about women who do speak out being kind of, you know, labeled as transphobic. What's happened to you? Basically, when I got home from this competition, I went on to the social media page and said, look, guys, I admire you. I have been waiting to do this for years. And I didn't like this ambush protest, not even that I didn't like trans individuals competing,

just that I was upset in the ambush. And that alone labeled me as a transphobic, bigot, and racist. And did you even get a death threat, I think you said? Recently after founding this, yes, someone found my website and sent me a very gruesome death threat to tell me to drown in my own blood for trying to save women's sports. Oh my gosh. And have you talked to other women who power lift? How do they feel? Are they afraid to speak out?

Powerlifting is a very tight community. And many of them are in support of trans inclusion. And the ones that aren't are very afraid to speak up because they're going to lose their relationships with these people that they've spent many years. competing with. Not only are they going to lose their relationships, but they could lose their sponsorships and other opportunities. And this affects them both in their sports life and their personal lives. Well, right now here in Washington, we've got the Equality Act being proposed in the House of Representatives, which would have effects on women's sports. Definitely. Can you speak to that? How do you feel about that proposal? The proposal of including gender identity with sex would basically

eliminate women's sports. Not only are we erasing the definition of men and women, but we're erasing any definitions we have of their separation. So not only are women going to have to compete with men, we're going to have to share our locker rooms and other private spaces, and that's just not fair. That's eliminating all the efforts of Title IX. So tell us about the group that you started. What kind of support have you seen? What are you trying to accomplish with that? So I started Save Women's Sports as just a website in the beginning to compile information, videos, articles so that people could access it because the media is so censored lately. It spurred on to inviting others to join me. Unfortunately, many are afraid and they're behind the scenes.

Do you think they have good reason to be afraid? I mean, do you think that the people who disagree with them aren't going to just say, like, let's disagree? There is no let's just disagree with this argument. It's either accept men as women or be harassed. And how would your life change if biological males are allowed to participate in powerlifting? How would that affect you? I would no longer compete. There would be no point to train as hard as I do to lose out to men on the platform.

Well, Beth Stelzer, you're a founder of Save Women's Sports. Where can our listeners find your group? I would love for them to join me on the right side of history by visiting www. savewomenesports.com. Savewomenessports.com. All right, Beth Stelzer, thanks so much for joining us. Thank you both. And that's going to do it for today's episode.

Thanks for listening to the Daily Signal podcast, brought to you from the Robert H. Bruce Radio Studio at the Heritage Foundation. Please be sure to subscribe on iTunes, Google Play, or SoundCloud, and please leave us a review or rating on iTunes to give us feedback. We'll see you again tomorrow. You've been listening to the Daily Signal podcast, executive produced by Kate Trinko and Daniel Davis. Sound design by Michael Gooden, Lauren Evans, and Thalia Rampersad.

For more information, visit DailySignal.com.