The Highwire with Del Bigtree - KENNEDY ON THE DECLINE OF FREEDOM

Episode Date: July 17, 2024

Fox News contributor, podcast host, and Freedom Fest emcee, Lisa Kennedy, joins Del live from the Freedom Fest to discuss why this event is so important right now. Hear her take on why personal freedoms in the US have declined since COVID and what it means to be a Libertarian in the current political climate.Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-highwire-with-del-bigtree--3620606/support.

Hi, how are you? It's Kennedy. We are here with Kennedy, America's sweetheart, TV and radio icon. Kennedy was one of the great faces of 90s alternative culture. Our old politically incorrect friend, Kennedy is back here with us. Your name is Kennedy? And you're a Republican? And you're on MTV? What?

Hi, I'm Kennedy. And in case you didn't know in the recent Rolling Stone Reader's poll, I was voted MTV's least favored VJ. And for those of you who voted, I'd just like to say. When I was voted the most hated VJ after just a couple months on the year. Damn, the moment. Yeah, and the Rolling Stone Readers. That was such a pivotal point because I'm like, okay, do I embrace the hate?

Or do I try and get people to like me? And I was like, now that takes too much work. And I can't be a phony. Yeah. So I was like, you know what? I'll be polarizing. And you all can eat a bag of a bit. It was sort of controversial to be, you know, in favor of the Republicans at the time.

No, it really was. And it was something that was cute until it became more serious. Hello, America. I'm Kennedy and this is Fox News Saturday night. Some could say that you were acting like Christopher Steele. That you were abstracting information and because- You gotta be kidding me. I was acting, I was acting like Christopher Steele.

That's what it sounds like when you look at the people- You better-you-better-ize for that. First of all, let's- Wait, wait, wait. Let's- I know, let's- Completely bastardized his position on the military. Let's deal with...

Wait a second. And he has increased military spending. It has doubled since 2000. I realized because the social conservatism was really bringing me down. And I realized as time went on, I wasn't a Bush conservative. I was really a libertarian. I think I was always pretty libertarian. He was small a libertarian.

I just didn't have a name for it. And it was really Kurt Loder at the time who had badmouthed both parties. And he opened my eyes to what it meant to be a libertarian. libertarian, that it's okay to fight against the status quo, but the status quo exists on both sides. I really felt at the time that both sides were being flung to these extremes, and the more extreme people became in their political thought, the less logical they grew. You know, when you're talking about freedom, for me, you got to be all in. You know, otherwise, you're just paying lip service to a word that becomes meaningless. Well, Freedom Fest wouldn't be Freedom Fest without

Kennedy. She joins me in now. Awesome. Nice to see you. It's really good to see you too. Thanks, ma'am. It's electric, the energy here. You've been such a big part of this. Why is Freedom Fest important? Why is this important in this country right now?

It's really funny. I was talking to Rob Schneider yesterday, the comedic actor, and he was saying, like, I didn't think we needed a Freedom Fest three years ago. And he's like, I thought it would be like a chewing fest or a tying your shoes fest. Like, these are things that we already do that we already have. But there are so much. many ways that our freedoms are being eroded. And it's something that, you know, a lot of libertarians have been talking about theoretically for a long time. But having lived through the

pandemic, you know, finally people are starting to see the issues that you've been screaming about. And they're like, oh, that's what you've been going on and on about. This really sucks. Like, I have less economic mobility and government has much more control over my life. And that is the antithesis of freedom. So people get here and they talk about economic freedom. They talk about political freedom. We've had a lot of discussions on the main stage today about foreign policy and how the world really works and how it should work. And are we doing enough is enough being done in this country to protect our freedoms as Americans?

I think that you could objectively and widely argue that the answer is no. Definitely not. I mean, it's a very scary time. We've been talking all day on the show just about censorship, the issues that we have. Anyone speaking out, if you're speaking out against the government, we've got this concept of disinformation, which is just information that's true, but doesn't put the government in the right light. I mean, as a journalist, I mean, I feel like that's exactly what journalism is supposed to be. I mean, you know. Yeah, you bring up a really good point.

And so any one of us who was objectively looking at the president for the last 40 years, and just, last four years. Yeah. Because, you know, he's been a gaff machine for a long time, and that's kind of charming and quirky. But we've seen a decline, and you could really see it in 2020, but it is just manifested and sort of exploded. And it's gotten worse and worse lately. Yeah. So, you know, I'm kind of laughing at all these journalists who were like, what's going on here? Oh, my God. What just happened? This is so shocking. Something's wrong with him? He was awesome yesterday. Yeah. It's like, no, he wasn't. You were propping him up because, He was the power vessel. Right.

And you just wanted to hold on to it. You didn't really care about him. He doesn't necessarily have ideals or a philosophy. He's just the guy in power who's surrounded by a bunch of people who will do whatever they can to keep him standing just long enough to keep themselves in proximity to power. I mean, you're definitely seeing it. You're seeing articles coming out now.

Basically, it doesn't matter if he is cognitively impaired. There's enough people around him that are really, running our country. I mean, you're actually seeing this being admitted by people. Like, it doesn't really matter. Dr. Jill will pick up the phone. Right. We got it. We got it covered. Don't worry about it. There's an attack or a terrorist attack in the middle night. Dr. Jill has an animal. It's like, well, we actually didn't elect her. So that's not okay. Right. Like, you know, we have decided that the president essentially gets his own branch or our own branch. But we get to decide who the president is, who's in control of that. And it's not her. It's not a bunch of people by proxy.

And I'm just shocked that journalists have abdicated their responsibility to really ask important, skeptical questions as people were at the beginning of the pandemic who were silenced and de-platformed and fired and ridiculed and canceled. And their lives were essentially ruined. So journalists should have learned from that and realized the questions they were asking, the truth. truth seekers, they were right. So where were those people? Where were the truth seekers when we really needed them two years ago and four years ago? Right. In your journey as a journalist, I mean, you know, you start out in music television, right, like getting into music being there, but you were expressing conservative views there, which tends to not very go, like rock and roll and conservatism don't necessarily go well together. What sort of shifted in you? Because why did you, you know,

What made you go from being conservative to now calling yourself a libertarian? Because I always say, you know, I've said I was a Democrat my whole life. Then I, you know, got to be where I would say politically marooned. I guess if I was asked, I would probably say, I guess I'm a libertarian. There's a lot about it that makes sense. Yeah. But what is the journey from your direction? So for me, it's the most consistent name for the set of beliefs that I hold.

And, you know, some of those things have evolved. in some ways, and I think we all do this, like your beliefs are sort of refined over the years, especially if you are really interested in issues, and the more you learn and the more you read and the more you challenge yourself, you know, some things broaden out. And sometimes you really narrow focus on the issues that are most important to you. And, you know, I consider myself to be a conservative, like a limited government conservative when I was younger. And, you know, like you showed in the video, It was people like Pendelet and Frank Zappa and Kurt Loder, who showed me what a libertarian philosophy really looked like. And that sort of squared with my beliefs.

And as I told Catherine Mangy Ward, a reason a couple of years ago, since then, it's just been a series of confirmation biases. You know what's weird for me is, you know, as a Democrat grew up in Boulder, Colorado, which is like the Crystal Cathedral, I think, of liberal thinking, right? I mean, we don't really, we didn't really have any, you know, black kids in my school. No, I mean, it is as white as it could be. But they would preach how we all have to be, you know, interconnected with each other and work together. It just felt like, as I got out in the world, it's like, oh, my God, the rest of the world is much more diverse than what I just grew up in. But I was the think tank of diversity where we were, you know, had one perspective. But my friends that would leave, you know, and I remember Ron Paul is a big part of it.

My friends would leave being Democrats. They would go over and jump into being libertarians. which I always thought it meant that like libertarians was sort of like center, like, you know, conservative public and Democrats and somewhere in the middle was libertarians. Then when I got into the vaccine issue, I got asked to give a talk in Dallas, Texas at this. There was like, it was like, it was called like the conservative women's breakfast of, you know, Texas or something. And I was sitting there and I was like telling, you know, talking about all my stuff. They loved the whole issue.

I was talking about freedom, body autonomy. And when I sat with them, They call themselves libertarians, but they said we're the most conservative group in the most conservative county of the most conservative state in the nation. And I thought so libertarian see themselves as more conservative than conservatives? Is that true? Yeah. Because it really blew my mind because why are Democrats jumping to be ultra-conservative? Because I think the political spectrum is more like a circle than a line.

That was exactly. And so, you know, it's like if the- further you go on the spectrum, the more likely you are to end up in a completely different place than when you started. But that also happens when you look to be consistent and authentic. Right. You know, then you're no longer towing the party line. And I think that's where a lot of people are. And a lot of people like they don't, they don't necessarily want to call themselves the libertarians. They don't want to be members of the libertarian party. But they do feel a kinship with others who want less government and less intrusion in their life.

And also, both major political parties tend to be very hypocritical. And, you know, they're both status. They want more control. They want government to be bigger. They want to take more money. They want to take more tax money. And as we go on with that system, we have less and less return on our investments. And we go deeper and deeper and deeper into debt, as Robert Tiazaki was saying just a little while earlier,

Love that guy. Someone was asking me, you know, how would you describe Freedom Fest? And I said, if I was like to make a cartoon, I would put, you know, a tie-died hippie, tie-died t-shirt, treads, you know, with a big joint hanging out of their mouth. And across from him is like a Texan with a big buckle and a 10-gallon hat and a gun on his side. It would say, you know, I won't touch your weed if you don't touch my guns. And they're like, deal. Yeah.

I mean, it's, you know. And then the hippies go to a shooting range. You're like, oh, this is really the best of both worlds. Right. I mean, it's like when we talk about coming together as a nation, which really has to happen, I think that that's what I love about Freedom Fest. Like, you cannot pigeonhole the people that you're seeing here. They come from all walks of life.

The one place they seem to agree is what I think our founding fathers agreed on, which is, you know what I mean? You know, do what you want to do. Stay out of each other's business. Live freely. Raise your kids the way you want to. As long as you're not killing your neighbor, as long as you're not hurting them, you know, live and let live.

Yes, absolutely. And the gold maxims of liberty don't hurt people and don't take their stuff. But the government is hurting people. And taking our stuff. And they're confiscating everything, not just through taxation. Yeah.

And yeah, people are sick of it. But what I like about it here is people listen to other people's ideas. And it's okay to disagree with people. Right. And it's okay to challenge them. But have the respect to listen to one another. And that's one of the things that we've lost.

It is walling yourself off with a group of people who will believe in exactly what you believe. And if they don't believe that, if they don't live in your intellectual ghetto, then you have to kick them out. You have to cancel them. And, you know, that has been the push in our society for the last four years, you know, arguably longer than that. But we've seen it manifest the most in that amount of time where it's like, oh, you voted for Trump.

I hate you. You're a Nazi. We can't. We can't communicate. Right. We have nothing in common. Well, that's what I mean, and you worked at Fox News. You come from media.

I worked at CBS. You know, when you look at the world now, I mean, to me, to me, media is the biggest problem. It's certainly mainstream media. Yeah. For exactly what you're talking about. We live in a point now where we can't have a disagreement. Yeah. If you voted for Donald Trump, that's the end of democracy.

If you voted for Joe Biden, that's the end of the republic. I mean, they're using these talking points as though world ending, every decision. that your decision is world ending. No, your decision's world ending. And it just feels like spinal tap, right? The news has just turned everything to 11. Oh, yeah. It's all at 11.

But after the debate, I was like, this is perfect. Absolutely. Like, we've gotten so addicted to political chaos. I'm like, yes. Like, Joe Biden had to have a freak out meltdown to show the world exactly what he was working with. And it's not good. It's not good.

Yeah, we look at that. And I know your friend Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., He has been the beneficiary of that debate performance because there are a lot of people who are very unhappy with the status quo. And, you know, they're looking at his candidacy with very fresh eyes since that debate. Yeah. Well, I mean, look, all you can ask for in a country that's free is information. Yeah. Censorship is just, as we've said earlier, is not just not being able to speak.

It's not being able to hear, not being given the information. We are only seeing one side of all the stories. If I'm watching conservative television, I'm only getting that. perspective. What is it going to take to get this country back to a place where we can just call it a disagreement? Like, you know, let's agree to disagree, but let's have the conversation. But we can still love each other. We can still be family, right? It's interesting because, as you know, during COVID, if you were a doctor or an academic, if you were a virologist, anything, and you gave any credence to the lab leak theory, you were, you were kicked off of

every social media platform. But now, it's interesting because people, and I, you know, I thought the same thing was going to happen with Joe Biden. You know, once doctors came forward saying, you know, I treat people with dementia, I treat people with Parkinson. So it's like, that conversation is happening out in the open.

I do feel like we are in a bit of a shift and the pendulum is writing itself. It's sort of swinging back the other way. Like, I noticed this when I go out on the road and talk to people, they want to hear dirty jokes. They want to laugh. They want to say things

that you've been told not to say. And it's not because people are racist or homophobic or ableist. It's because, you know, there are certain sacred cows that we have to poke and make fun of in order to make ourselves laugh. And, you know, in a lot of ways,

comedy will be the thing that saves us. And I hate when people go, oh, the office couldn't be made today. Blazing saddles couldn't be made today. And it's like, well, if you look, look at them, they're still funny. And there's a reason that they're funny. But if we have to go through this purity test every time we create something new, we are going

to suffer as a society. And I said to Rob Schneider exactly that. I know he talks about it. That was probably the scariest part of all of it is the loss of the sense of humor, that we couldn't joke about anything. We lost the ability to do what, you know, you had Eddie Murphy joking about race, all races, all classes, is all of that. And we went through this time. It feels like we're coming out of it.

I just went to see Tim Dillon recently at a comedy night. And I would say that the jokes were getting racy again. We're talking about sexuality. We're talking about race. It's coming around. Making fun of how uptight we are about these conversations. Yeah, it's not going to a clan rally.

Right. It's right. And I toured with Jimmy Fallow last year and he's like, they're just jokes. Like I'm just making jokes. And the audience is starting to, They don't only accept it. They long for that because they've had too many people for too long standing next them going, you can't say that. You can't say that. You can't say that. You can't say that. And it's like, eat a bag. Yeah. What is your hope for the future? I mean, obviously we all have to get up in the morning. They're really scary times. I mean, I think you could argue we're as close to World War III as any time in my lifetime. Maybe as close we've been since the Cuban missile crisis. I mean, you have missiles from America, now going into Ukraine. And we're saying, yeah, go ahead and fire them into Moscow.

that's okay. Yes. You have tensions in Israel. I mean, all these have implications. China and Taiwan, you know, you feel like that's on the precipice in the middle of all of this and, you know, an incoherent media that is like clearly only giving us little fragments of the reality we're in. They're giving us fragments they're told to give us. And that's my worry with the Biden White House. Right. is that, you know, they play favorites with members of the media, and they tell them the questions that they want to get at the podium, and they're told, like, and I see this.

When I watch MSNBC and CNN, I see them saying the exact same thing. And at some of the same talking points, a Democrat talking heads used on Fox News. And I always challenge them. And I say, I know you're smarter than this. So come up with your own thought. Right. If there's something that you believe in that I disagree with and you're passionate about it, you can make a logical case, you might change my mind.

But when you are just farting out someone else's talking points, bullet points I heard by 20 other reporters. No respect for you. But that's what journalism has become. Is it money? Think for themselves. Why are journalists doing it? Like, I asked myself, like, didn't you?

Self-preservation. I'm so fascinated by a great conversation. Why I'm a journalist? I've been asking, since I was like three years old, I've just been sitting at the adult table asking every question, I'm fascinated by people. where is the fascination of people? Where did journalists stop?

Like, oh, okay, we may differ, but I'd really love to know why you think what you do. They can't do it. No, it's in genuine curiosity requires work. Right. And it's much easier to just chase a quote from Donald Trump and make that news and clutch your pearls and say, oh, my God, the world is ending

as opposed to going out and doing your own research, you know, finding your own sources, vetting people. And again, you know, curiosity is the harder path. What is the hope, though? What gets you up in the morning? What is the light? Is there a light at the end of this tunnel? Yeah, I have two teenage daughters,

and I knew they were going to be okay when they started watching South Park. And that's what I knew, like, you know, they realize that there's so much absurdity in the world. And I really hope that the anti-war capitalists kind of get back leading us and writing. the ship because we're listing right now. And I am a big fan of mindfulness. And so I hope people mindfully examine their own lives and make choices and take risks and invest in things that

better their lives, their families, and other people around them. And once people let go of the fear of being canceled and start doing that kind of thing, again, we're going to be just fine. I agree. I think we're going through some birth pangs here. I think, you know, I always think, like Octo Mom. Yeah. Oxto is true. Serious birth pangs. It just keeps on coming, but somewhere at the end of this is a beautiful family. Just going to be a baby. Look, I want to thank you for taking the time. I know you're just running to another stage. Keep up the great work. It's really, we're so excited to be a part of Freedom Fest. Thank you. It's so important. This is awesome. All right.