The Daily Signal - #477: This Liberal Wall Street Trader Predicted Trump's Win. What He Learned Traveling Across US.

Episode Date: June 5, 2019

One day, Chris Arnade strolled into an area of New York City he rarely ventured into: the Bronx. That day began a journey, spent in McDonalds and churches, in drug dens and places where the homeless congregate, for the Wall Street trader. In his new book, "Dignity: Seeking Respect in Back Row America," Arnade highlights the America too many of our elites would rather ignore. He joins the podcast to share what he learned about politics (and why he correctly predicted Donald Trump would win in 2016), religion, addiction, and much more. We also cover these stories:•There were 144,000 migrants apprehended at the U.S. - Mexico border in May.•A teacher who is transitioning from male to female made a video he showed to his elementary school students to explain his new persona.•YouTube is tightening its censorship. 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, June 6. I'm Kate Trinko. And I'm Daniel Davis. Chris Arnadi grew up in a small town but left to go work on Wall Street, where he lived the high life for 20 years. But after the financial crisis, he decided to go back to his roots. And that experience led to his new book, Dignity, Seeking Respect in Backrow America. Kate had the chance to talk to Chris about his experience going back to Blue Collar America.

And today we'll play that interview. By the way, if you're enjoying this podcast, please. consider subscribing and encouraging others to subscribe so we can keep growing. Now on to our top news. In May alone, a whopping 144,000 migrants came to the U.S. along the U.S.-Mexico border, a large jump from the roughly 110,000 who came in April. Among the May group, 88,000 were families, and another roughly 12,000 were unaccompanied children.

Quote, we are in a full-blown emergency, and I cannot say this. stronger. The system is broken. Acting Customs and Border Protection Commissioner John Sanders told the media, according to the Washington Post. Well, the Trump administration is tightening restrictions on fetal tissue research. On Wednesday, the Department of Health and Human Services said that it would block scientists from using federal dollars to conduct research on material from aborted babies. The administration also canceled a multi-million dollar contract with the University of California, San Francisco that uses fetal tissue to test new HIV treatments. In a statement, Health and Human Services said,

promoting the dignity of human life from conception to natural death is one of the very top priorities of President Trump's administration. The federal government currently funds more than $100 million in research that uses fetal tissue. According to Liberty Council, a religious liberty legal group, A teacher in Wisconsin showed elementary age kids a video explaining his transition from being a man to being a woman. Quote, school administrators allowed a male science teacher in Madison Metropolitan School District to show a personal transgender coming out video to every class of K-th-5th grade children at A-Lis Elementary School, said Liberty Council on its website, adding, quote, as set forth on his personal Facebook, Mark Vincent Boosenbark, who claims to be transgender. transgender and or non-binary had long anticipated showing the video to every elementary grade child present at school on May 16th. Here's part of that video.

Let me introduce myself. You've known me as Mr. Bussonberg or Mr. B. You've known me as the person in the science room, as the person with the plants and the animals, as the person who builds and helps you build. Most of what you know is true. most of what you know won't change. But there is one truth that I've hidden from you, until about a month ago from my fellow teachers, from friends, from family.

I am transgender. Maybe you know what that means. Maybe you don't. Maybe you've only heard those words through the filter of those who hate and fear. And here's another segment where the teacher also talks briefly to his dog, who's briefly on his lap.

But I am going to take my wife Stella Steele's last name, and I am going to use not Mr. and not miss, but mix. So you can call me Mix Steel. Are you ready to go belly? This is my little dog belly. She's being a little good girl. Oh no, she just wants to lay down more. You can call me Mixed Steel, but really, don't worry.

Don't worry if you don't get that and you forget and you call me Mr. Bean. You've known me a long time as that name. That's going to happen. All I ask is that you try to use the new name. And for my pronouns, I'm using they, them, and there. I'm not sure why he was assuming his dog's gender there, actually. It's kind of weird. Well, YouTube is tightening its censorship, issuing a new policy that will result in removing

thousands of videos that push quote-unquote extreme views. On Wednesday, YouTube announced on Twitter, quote, We're taking additional steps to tackle hate on YouTube. The company said that the new policy would ban videos alleging that a group is superior in order to justify discrimination, segregation, or exclusion. They also said they would be cracking down on videos that make outrightly false claims, such as false miracle cures for illnesses or claiming that the earth is flat. In a statement, the company said, quote,

It's our responsibility to protect that and prevent our platform from being used to incite hatred, harassment, discrimination, and violence, end quote. Remains to be seen, though, where exactly YouTube will draw the line on a host of other more contentious issues. Well, if you're a smoker, don't hit up Beverly Hills. The California town is cracking down on smoking in a big way, banning any businesses besides hotels with a handful of exceptions from selling cigarettes. This reflects the values of our community. John Mearish, the mayor of Beverly Hills, said in a statement, per CNN, we are a city that has taken the lead on restricting smoking and promoting public health. Somebody has to be first, so let it be us.

Tom Rice is a 97-year-old veteran of D-Day. 75 years later, he dropped into Normandy once again in a parachute. On that day back in 1944, he landed safely, despite catching himself on the plane's exit and his parachute getting hit by a bullet. He called it the worst jump I ever had. Well, this time, according to Fox News, he landed with much less uncertainty with an American flag draped behind him

and NATO troops greeting him on the ground. What a great story. Well, next up, we'll feature my interview with Chris Arnotti about what he saw when he went to Blue Collar America. Tired of high taxes, fewer health care choices, and bigger government, become a part of the Heritage Foundation.

We're fighting the rising tide of homegrown socialism while developing conservative solutions that make families more free and more prosperous. Find out more at heritage.org. Joining us today is Chris Arnotti. He is the author of the new book, Dignity, Seeking Respect and Back Row America. Chris, let's start with how you came to write this book where you travel all over America and talk to people across the country.

You were a Wall Street trader in New York City for 20 years. So what made you start caring about the lives of Americans not living on Wall Street? It was caring. I guess I would say I started making me care again. I did come from a small town. I grew up in a small town in Florida. But I did what I would. What a lot of the book is about is what I ended up doing is basically leaving my town very quickly, getting a Ph.D. and going to Wall Street, which that is very similar for a lot of people.

I ended up being around and on Wall Street, people who've left their home. I called us the front row. People went off and kind of moved away from our town and got an elite education. But what prompted me to go back in some ways was, in a simple word, with a financial crisis. If you had asked me before the financial crisis, I would have told you what we did on Wall Street, what I felt was benign. but after the crisis I felt basically it was no longer benign that what I was doing was not necessarily benign. It was harmful. I was frustrated that us bankers seem to not change our views on the world after what happened. But really what I wanted to do in some ways was I had realized over the course of the following five years after the financial crisis that for like most of my life I'd been sitting in front of

computer screens looking at numbers flashing and making decisions based on that without really knowing the consequences of those decisions. You know, not the human consequences. I knew that kind of what the numbers would say, but not the human consequences. And I had always walked a lot up to 20 miles, you know, these long walks that reduced stress. And the walks started taking on more of a tenor of just wanting to talk to people, the people I met along those walks. and where I walked to kind of change. It started going to neighborhoods.

People told me not to go, what I would now call stigmatized neighborhoods, neighborhoods that might lead the statistics in the highest, highest in crime, or highest in poverty, or highest in drug use. And it was in those neighborhoods I started being drawn into more and more and where I started to see necessarily the consequences of kind of my actions on Wall Street, but also kind of how what I call us front row people, myself included, had really lost touch with both maybe where we came from or with the vast majority of people in the United States.

And how did people, you mentioned going to a Bronx neighborhood in New York, how did people respond to you when you started walking there? Did you stick out like a sore thumb? I mean, to be blunt, I was the only white person. So I did, but I was treated well wherever I went. That was, over the course of five years, I suck out like a sore thumb in many, many places, many different situations. But I was always greeted well. I was always, and I'll be a little more, I mean, the places I went were not, I went into drug, drug dens, I went into crack houses. I went into, underneath bridges where homeless people lived. As I got deeper and deeper into it, it wasn't just the neighborhood I walked in, it was kind of where where.

I went in the neighborhood. And during that period, over the course of those years doing that, nobody ever threatened me, nobody ever stole from me, nobody ever, you know. There might be some people who thought I was a cop, and I'd have to kind of, you know, use some tactics like, say, you know, if they're, I used to say like if the police are putting a white guy undercover in this neighborhood, they're not that dumb. But, you know, there's using humor to deflect the obvious. But there was other things I would do.

You know, I would just simply, I really believe that if you treat people with respect and trust, they'll do the opposite to you. And so I felt... You're in the same, I assume? Yes. I was sorry. I was like, whoa, that's a really dark view of human nature. Okay. No, they would treat you the same way, you know.

And so one of the things I would do is to gain trust, to show people I trust them. If I felt that somebody wasn't necessarily sure of my motives, like if I'm in a, you know, one in the morning in a crack house with, you know, I have a camera which is worth like $3,000. And I would hand it to them and say, excuse me, I've got to go back to my car, get something, just hold this for me. Just to show them that I trust them. And then I'd come back and the camera was always there. Nobody ever stole from me. It's really interesting. It's making me think about leaving laptops and coffee shops.

I should rethink my approach. I wasn't necessarily, there was a little bit of introduction before that happened. Okay, okay, okay, it wasn't quite just so have at it. So one thing I wanted to talk to you about is you bring up McDonald's constantly in your book. Why did you go to so many McDonald's and why did it become, I guess, such a pivotal part of this journey you went on? Because the people I ended up spending a lot of time with, initially spent time with was homeless addicts.

That's really where the walks took me to the Bronx. It took me to the South Bronx. And that's where for the three years I spent time dealing with homeless addicts. And in a neighborhood that has had a lot of problems, been stigmatized. I think the poverty rate in the neighborhood is 60%, 50%. But one of the few functional things. I went there because the people I was talking to went there. And they went there because it was one of the few functional institutions.

You know, it was one of the few functional institutions that worked, but also was kind of let people go into it on their own terms. It weren't a ton of rules. You go into public library, which are wonderful places, but there's all these rules about what you have to follow. You go into nonprofits, which are also wonderfully well-intentioned, but there's all these rules you have to follow. People don't necessarily want to go into a nonprofit and be told they have to eat a certain way. They don't eat the way they want to eat, man. And the thing about McDonald's is it's just it's just it's it's non-judgmental in that sense. It's a space that allows people, especially people on the extreme margins, to rejoin society on their terms and maintain a little bit of dignity to sit there and just, you know, just be part of society again.

You know, it might mean you go into the McDonald's and grab a newspaper out of the trash can and a soda a soda cup so that you could look like you belong. But whatever, you know, once you do that, you're, you fit in. just interact with people. And then as I took this project away from the Bronx and started driving across the country, I saw that this wasn't true just of the McDonald's in the Bronx. It was true of the McDonald's in so many different communities, especially in communities that had been really decimated or stigmatized. McDonald's served as effectively what I call the Ad Hoc Community Center.

You would have these old men groups who got together or old women groups as well. It wasn't just old elder who get together every day and have a lot. meetings and hang out. I saw bingo games at McDonald's. I saw I saw church groups, you know, Bible studies. I saw people playing chess, people playing poker, you know, all sorts of things. It became in many ways a community center. That's fascinating. I have never seen a bingo game at McDonald's, but I would love to see that. Actually, it's not far from this studio in an African-American neighborhood. I spent some time in a McDonald's area where people come together to play chess. Okay. You need to tell me the one after we're

So you also mentioned that you went to a lot of neighborhood churches across the country. What did you see there and what experiences stuck with you? I think it's important to say that when I started this project, I was an atheist and a very adamant one. Not a yelly one, but one who was very firm in my beliefs. And I would say I ended up going, I started going to churches for the same reason I was in the McDonald's. The people I was talking to was going to churches. And it would be—I wasn't such an adamant atheist that I'm not—I'm so close-minded to say, wait, this is working. This is working for people.

Just like McDonald's, sometimes the only functional institution in these neighborhoods with the churches. And I also felt that if I was going to, you know, learn, so to speak, from the people I was hanging out with, I had to do the full experience. They're going to church on Wednesday and Sunday? I'm going to church on Wednesday and Sunday. And it made me rethink a lot about the role of faith. Certainly my own personal view on it, but also my broader view on how faith operates and what the role of faith is and society

in a much more positive way. I can't say particularly religious individual now, but I certainly respect the value of religion, and it's even more than that, I think that it's not just I don't respect it just as a utilitarian thing. That means it's good, it's useful. But I think it's actually, as I write in the book, it's as true as, you know, religion is as true as anything can be true. So it's wrong for me just to say, as a scientist, you know, that's a dumb thing, you know. I mean, I look back at the time I used to how I viewed religion, I feel really bad.

But what, when you were talking to people and you said they went every Sunday and every Wednesday, why did you sense that it was so important to them? What kept them coming back, do you think? A lot of it is, and a theme that runs in my book, is just, it's community. You know, I think the classic scientific role is community and regulation. And those are two things that, I mean, the community you see definitely. I mean, I was like, I can, you know, just all these experience I had in different and trying to like choose which one to talk about because there's so many of them.

It was just just how important and how meaningful it was, especially because I was hanging out with people who, who are addicted often. And there, in that community, you know, I had walked in assuming everybody, if you're an addict, and the rule has been really cruel to you, you can't believe this stuff. You know, if you had looked at it,

I was like, how can they believe this? Like, the world's kicking him in the gut. But actually, it's one of the most religious groups of people I know. It may not be traditional religion. Some of it's superstition, some of it's, but it's a very sense, there's a real core sense of faith there. And it really, you know, for them, for many people, it's the only path out.

The community is the community that religion provides is, you know, the stability is often the only way out of addiction. But it's also, I think, you know, when you're living that far down, that stigmatized, I think it's much easier to understand that we're all sinners and that we're all fall. and the kind of the ego and the arrogance of atheism just kind of strikes you as kind of being that exactly that, the arrogance that somehow you have it all figured out. Yeah, that's really interesting. There's a book from the 1940s, Brightshead Revisited, that ends with, spoiler alert,

a pivotal character essentially being a drunk who lives at a monastery and keeps crawling back. And it's always struck me as one of the most interesting depictions of faith because you really sense that this character gets it because of what he's gone through and what he is going through. He can't seem to master this addiction, but in a weird way, it's made him more spiritual. But throughout your book, you know, you talked about encountering, I mean, well, you just mentioned going to crack dens, et cetera, like the role of drugs. And of course, we talk about that a lot with the role of opioids in America. How, why do you think people are

falling into addiction? How are they coexisting with it? What does that seem like? I'm kind of in the minority camp in terms of people who look at addiction. I see it is entirely about demand, not supply. There's a need there. Drugs are popular because drugs works. They work in two ways. One is they kind of numb the pain. A lot of what I write about in the book is a lot of certainly in the Bronx,

a lot of people who are lifetime addicts who are on the streets have suffered intense trauma through their childhood. And this is a way to kind of cope with that trauma, to kind of numb it. But trauma isn't just, you know, about physical necessarily. It's about, you know, the trauma of being stigmatized. And I think a lot of these communities I go to, one of the things I write about is if you are kind of grow up in a small town or less big city or kind of a neighborhood that's been stigmatize as poor or minority or crime-ridden or backwards. People look down on you. People mock you and you know it. People in the big cities, you know, the elites, they kind of look at your religion as backwards. They look at your maybe staying in their hometown as kind of provincial.

They look at you, you know, your dedication to family is kind of also kind of backwards and kind of provincial. And I think that stigma, you know, hurts. And I think in that sense, sense drugs provides, kind of placates some of the pain, an escape. But also one of the things I talk about in the book is I think a lot of people don't understand well. When you walk into a drug den, it's a community. It's a bit like a bar. It's their version of a bar. You know, it's where people get to, everybody knows your name.

They're not completely dissimilar. You know, and so I get a lot of pushback. But then I'm careful about saying that because drugs is, you know, I don't want to encourage people to use drugs. I just, you know, I want the reckless and nothing good comes from them. But there is a community there. And that's especially for people who are on the margins who've always been kind of feel rejected. You know, it's their people. You know, they can walk into a drug house and there are people like them there.

People who don't necessarily judge them. people who don't mock them. As long as they take the drugs, you know, they're all good. They're all the same. And so I think there's a lot of, you know, one of the things I say in the book is, you know, everybody kind of wants to feel

to be part of a, be part of something larger, a value member of something larger than themselves. And so many of those things that used to play that role are kind of being eroded. And, you know, I think a lot of people are searching for what that is to replace that. In some cases, it's the church.

That's what provides them a kind of a sense of membership, a valued membership in something greater than themselves. Sometimes it's a local community, but that's what's fallen apart many times. Maybe it was a labor union that's falling apart. But in some senses, the drug den provides them that. It gives them a community. So did you meet anyone who was able to become sober? And if so, I mean, even now, in a weird way, almost made a compelling case for drug addiction. Why would they be able to turn away from that?

Well, that's the problem, right? That's why I say drug addiction is such a problematic thing because it's not easy escape. I, again, I'm hanging out with very hardcore users. These are people who, I've seen a few successes on the margins, but it's not people close to me. the people I got very close to, I mean, the only way out for them has either been death or in jail. Or, you know, hopefully church. Well, on another really fun topic, racism. You talked to a lot of people across the country.

You mentioned some African Americans you interviewed in your book. How is racism playing a role in today's America? Well. I know. We're just hitting all the upbeat ones. It's, I think the problem is, first of all, there's a great deal. One of the things that struck me I came away with is within the black community. And almost half my book is set in minority communities.

Within the black community, there's a feeling amongst, especially the elder members, is that things haven't necessarily gotten better. They've gotten different, but they haven't gotten better. And so as part of my book is set in Selma. And one of the things that I kind of explore is the idea that we celebrate Selma for these great victories, civil rights victories. But here on the ground, the lived reality of Selma is bad. And certainly residents there don't necessarily feel things have gotten all that much better. I think someone said racism is just dressed up differently now.

You know, I get lots of – I don't want to be as a white person. I don't want to be there making broad statements about the way the black community feels. But the people I interviewed, there was a undercurrent of, I'd say, about half. Things haven't gotten all that. I mean, they've changed a little bit better, you know. But it seems like only symbolic victories. I think one of the things that worries me is when I book, I talk about, again, this lack of meaning, this kind of, if you're not an elite, it's harder and harder to have something that's meaningful to you that doesn't require you. Because everything that, everything we value these days is economic and everything we values these days tends to be, tends to be required credentials, get the right resume, go to the right school. And for people who don't have the ability to do that, because that's very hard to do, or don't necessarily want to do that because that's not what their strength is, there is these other, you know, I call non-credential forms of meaning that are appealing.

Faith is one of those. It doesn't require credentials. You just walk into a church, and it's accepted as long as you play by the rules. You don't need to, you know, you don't need to go away to go to school necessarily to be a good member of the church. place is another one. You're born into a place. You're gifted that place as part of your legacy, and you can make that very valuable to you.

Another one is race. And I fear that it can be very appealing, especially to the majority, to identify through race. I worry that kind of white identity politics, as you call it, as people call it, or kind of white racism, can be appealing to people.

I don't want to have that taken out of context. You know, it's an awful thing. But I worry that it can draw people in who are otherwise trying to find a way to find meaning. You know, I say in the book that identity, meaning through identity, is one of the few unique freedoms we provide minorities. You can, as a member of a black, you can celebrate racial identity. and I believe you should be able to. I think that's positive, but we don't allow that to whites.

And the problem is, and I understand why we don't do that as society, because it's gone very bad places in the past, very, very bad places. I worry that that stigma, even though it's stigmatized, people will be drawn to it because in many ways it's a very easy way to feel you're a member of something, a valued member of something. Right. And I think that's, yeah, why it's so important to give people a way to feel a member of something. in a different way than race.

Right. That's, again, I think that's, you know, I say that very carefully because the topic these days is so touchy, but I think you've got to be very careful about, I differ from liberals. I'm a liberal. And I differ from most liberals in the sense that I think that racism doesn't, isn't this static thing that just is always there. It ebbs and flows. And if you want it to, if you want it to diminish, you have to, you have to, you have to, you

You have to figure out what you need to do to diminish it. And I think you have to provide other alternatives. Well, we certainly appreciate you as a liberal coming on the Daily Signal. I was going to say, am I the only one to have come here? No, we've got a couple. One of the few, though. Well, speaking of politics, President Trump's election has unleashed a whole lot of coverage about forgotten Americans, what's really going on the country, etc. How did your experience reporting and talking to these people across the country?

Did it inform how you think about how the U.S. is going politically or no? Very much so. I fell into the – I mean, I kind of got this book partially because I got notoriety, I guess, within the left for predicting Trump's victory. And I predicted it because I was out there talking to people. and I thought I was giving them a warning. I mean, as a leftist, I'm like, hey, this isn't good for us, you know. But the reason I saw it coming is because I was talking to people. And it was so clear to me that, and again, politics wasn't my primary thing.

It's still not my primary thing. My primary thing was addiction and poverty. But the places I went, the white communities I went, Trump was resonating. like you wouldn't believe. And it really was frustrating because here I was on the ground. And I'd go on to Twitter or look at social media or look at CNN or whatever or MSNBC, and they had no clue. They didn't understand that this guy was popular.

And they didn't understand the reasons he was popular. And for me, the reasons he was popular was pretty clear, which was it's the, you know, it's the stigmatized form of meaning, which is he came into their communities. And, you know, I jokingly say about my party, the Democrats, is that we go into these communities and say, your job's obsolete, your lifestyle's icky, you should move, now vote for me. You know, and or they go into these communities and say, your job's obsolete.

And then here's 500 pages of proposals of what I'm going to do about that, and when people's eyes glaze over. But, you know, I went in these communities, kind of that person. person. And, you know, after about the 15th time, 20th time of sitting in McDonald's and telling me someone literally pointing to an empty field and said, that's where a factory used to be. It's gone now. What's replaced it? Or pointing to a lot surrounded by barbed razor wire. Or an empty building surrounded by barbed razor wire saying, you know, that's gone. You know, um, we're, we're What do you can do about that? And Trump went in there and said, he's the first person went in there and said, I hear you.

Everybody else went in there and said, well, actually, you know, it's complicated. It wasn't complicated. Their communities are falling apart. Yeah. And it's interesting, you know, you say the Democrats didn't hear you. Well, I think, you know, frankly, as we've seen in Trump's presidency, a lot of, you know, Washington bubble Republicans are similarly struggling to understand. Well, again, my view was, again, when I talk about the front row and the political side, there's, you know, George Bush is Hillary Clinton. I mean, Jeb Bush. No, but yeah. I mean, it's the same thing. They all went to the same schools. They all believe the same thing. There's variations on the theme. Like, you know, I worked on Wall Street for 20 years. The Clintons were very good for Wall Street. You know, liberals don't like to admit that, you know. But I don't want to mean, but he was the first person to go in there and say, I hear you. Now, as a leftist, I think his solutions are crazy. But you know what? He went there and said, I hear you. And that goes a long way for people who are frustrated. I also say that the other way I think about it is it's a bit like the voters were knocking over the checker board.

They kept playing checkers with the elites for 50 years and they kept losing. And the elites kept saying, oh, no, don't worry. And the elites kept saying, oh, the game's not rigged. the games aren't rig? What do you mean? Eventually the voters are like, the game is rig, man. And they just knock the checkerboard over. It's their version of, you know, volatility. And I think in some ways, Barack Obama was their version of that too. Here's this guy, an outsider with a crazy name who was kind of, he was another gamble. And so I think in many ways, I went to a lot of what I called, I ended up realizing I had gone to a lot of what I call O-O-T-K

counties, Obama, Obama Trump counties. Ah. Places, I hadn't intended to do that. But because I, because where I was, my focus on, on basically addiction and poverty was taken me and kind of desperation and frustration, places that had lost a lot of community, they ended up being a lot of the OOT counties. And I think what you, what you realize is that voters are just kind of just, they just want try something, man.

Nothing's working. Nothing's working. We're just going to try to knock over their chess checkerboard in some ways. And in some ways, Obama was that for them, too. In many ways, it didn't work for them. And if Trump doesn't work for them, they'll just knock them over and go over somebody else. That's really interesting. A Daily Signal, we covered in Obama to Trump County back in 2017, that's how we looked at the opioid crisis in New Hampshire.

And it was, yeah, it's interesting. I don't think it's a perspective, frankly, that people in D.C. understand. But, you know, you again mentioned that you were Wall Street trader. What would you say to the elites? How do they learn about the rest of America? Are there particular lessons that you learned that you think they really need to get through their heads? I mean, how do we change things? Number one is you have a lot of privilege, man.

You have to realize that. And I'm not saying you, you, you, I'm saying. I mean, it's okay. The elites, the elites, myself included. If you have a, if you're in D.C. and you have a degree from Ivy League school. For the record, I do not. But yes.

I know the type. You know the time. You have a lot of privilege. And you have a lot more privilege than you realize. And one of the things that was most frustrating to me, and I say that that's true, I think it's more true of your party than is my party. But, you know, we'll put that aside. I don't want to get into that game. Conservatives have plenty of issues with the GOP.

So the centrist elite. are the same in aggregate. They both went to the same schools. They go to Princeton, Harvard, Yale. They believe in the same things. And it's a very, it's a very, it's a very quantitative way of looking at things. You just look at, you look at models. Economists provide you models and you're like, oh, that says it's going to be good for the economy.

It's going to be good for efficiency. Then we'll do it. But you don't look at the downsides of those. the loss column. The loss column is the destruction of communities. And when a community is destroyed, into the vacuum comes drugs. The other thing I say is I don't think,

where I may disagree with, where I don't, I haven't made the next step into cynicism where I believe that those elites are well-intentioned. I actually think they think they're doing the right thing. I don't think their heart's in the wrong place. I think the problem is that privilege has made them not understand the people they advocate for.

They think they're actually helping these communities. I think, you know, I voted for Hillary Clinton. I still kind of like her. Sorry. I think she really, really, really, really believes she's doing the right thing. I'm not cynical enough to think that she's, you know, she's doing this for own personal wealth or whatever. I think she really believes in her heart she's doing the right thing.

And I think a lot of people in the front row are like that. but they are so detached from the people they advocate for. It's a McDonald's test. To go back to McDonald's, how do people view McDonald's? Do you view it as a place that serves awful food? And it's just where kind of, you know, losers go. You know, and it's fascinating you bring that up because people in D.C. cannot forgive Donald Trump for liking McDonald's.

You know, I can tell you, he knows what he's doing. I mean, you know, when he does that, he's making the front row scream. He's making the elite scream, which is 95% of his, which is a huge win for him. That's because, you know, how you view McDonald's tells me a lot about, so in my party, leftists don't like McDonald's. They don't like it for the wage issue. they don't like it for the health issue. They don't like it for, you know, a bunch of reasons. And I get those.

I understand those. I wish the wages were higher. But that's not the issue. The issue is if you're in a small town and you're poor, McDonald's is very good. McDonald's provides cheap, good food. I mean, I get my coffee every day there. I love it. It provides a community.

It's an important part of your life. That's especially true of, minorities. You know, McDonald's is big in the minority communities because an average minorities have less money. And I think, you know, the Democrats are often mocking their own base. You know, elites mock, not just Democrats, elites, mock their own base. When you mock McDonald's, you're kind of mocking the people who you're asking to vote for you. Whereas another one of those is Walmart. I don't particularly like Walmart for a variety of reasons, but, you know, for the same reasons it destroys the community and all that. But you know what?

if I go into a town and want to find an immigrant community, I go to the Walmart. That's where they are. That's where they're shopping. That's where they're working. That's where they're interacting with the other members of the community. In Lewiston, Maine, where there's a large Somali population. One of the few places where the Somalis and the Quebequa interact is a Walmart because both of them use it.

Both of them shop there. The parking lot is where people often, unfortunately, sleep in their car to live. I mean, Walmart is in some ways like McDonald's Hotel and Center. So when you have this mocking, you know, it's big on the Internet to mock people like people who go to Walmart, right? That's your voters. Why are you mocking your voters? Why aren't you learning from them? Why aren't you asking why they go there?

Why aren't you asking what are they getting from there? Why are you making fun of them? I don't get it. Yeah. No, and I would say, you know, probably in Washington, D.C., that it's more socially acceptable to get drunk, to take drugs than go to McDonald's. I jokingly said, I said once on Twitter jokingly, the elites would rather eat a 12-course curated meals of insects. If the New York Times suggested it, then eat at McDonald's.

And everybody made fun of me saying, oh, that's crazy. And then an article came out that in Brooklyn, there was somebody who was doing like a five-course tasting menu of insects, and it was having a waiting list to get in. And I would actually say in D.C. and I believe it's run by a prominent chef who has had his back in force with Trump, there's grasshopper tacos at a douchey restaurants. So there you go. Look, I've eaten grasshopper tacos because it's big in Mexico. But you know.

Yeah, but this is not Mexico. But I get your point's the same, right, which is that how we think about food, right, is very much a very social issue. And I think it very much explains the gap between. So the emphasis I would say is that to the question is the gap between the elites, the front row and the back row, is huge. And as I said before, it's almost like it is. I think there's two different languages, the way they think about things. What they value, how they think is just so fundamentally different. And I think our ruling class, the elites, just don't get it.

Unfortunately true. Well, Chris, thank you for joining us. Again, the name of your book is Dignity. respect in back row America. And one thing that we obviously can't get into in a podcast is there are a lot of really great photos in it. So I encourage you to check it out. All right. Thank you very much for having me. And that'll do it for us today. Thanks for listening to the Daily Signal podcast brought to you from the Robert H. Bruce Radio Studio at the Heritage Foundation.

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