WRFH/Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM - Hart on the Hill: To Veep or Not To Veep

Episode Date: October 3, 2024

This week, Micah Hart discusses the 2024 vice presidential debate. He also talks about Iran and Israel.

Welcome back to Heart on the Hill. As always, it's great to be here with you. And as always, I'm Michael Hart here to talk about what's going on in politics right now. There is so much going on. And once again, we had another debate. So that's what this show is going to really be about, is talking about the vice presidential debate for the 2024 presidential election. So without further ado, let's get into things. we had our first and only debate between the two vice presidential candidate picks. For Donald Trump's VP, we have J.D. Vance. He's a senator from Ohio. And then Kamala Harris's pick for VP is Minnesota's governor, Tim Walz. And the first thing I want to say about this debate is I was shocked. I was stunned. I sat there watching this and I was absolutely stunned in a good way. I was so impressed with how civil this debate was.

It was something that we haven't seen in politics for a while. We have not seen this type of maturedness that we saw last night. We saw two adults in the room. We saw two men who have contrasting views of what our future should look like, but they were willing to discuss those things. rather than go into yelling competitions where the American people can't hear the answers that they need. The American people deserves answers.

And I think both these men understood that. So whether you agree with them or not, that's a different thing that I'm going to get into. But first off, we should recognize that this is a huge milestone in achievement in our country to have a conversation. We haven't had a conversation since I can remember. I'm 22 years old,

and I don't remember a time when political debates were normal, where it was just a conversation and a, in a debate, a normal debate about the issues. It always goes to identity. It's never about the issues. And we need to get away from that and get back towards the issue. So I was really impressed by the civility of this debate. And I really hope it does continue into the future.

I think that's what both campaigns needed is, look, here's where we are as a country. What are you going to do about it? That's what we need. We need leaders who lead, not leaders who just name call, attack each other, say this or that about their opponent. We just need to hear the answers as to what both candidates and their running mates will do. And I think we did hear that. So I think what was interesting to start this debate off is that both of these men aren't as known. So they had to show who they are.

neither of them were in the running in the 24 presidential election i mean the democrats had joe biden then it went to kamala harris as we've talked about and the right the republicans had a bunch of candidates but it came down to trump and jd vance was not one of those candidates who ran against trump this time around um he he hasn't run for president this is his this was his big moment and now he's vp candidate so it was really a moment i think they had to show who they are while also showing policy. And I think they did that. I think J.D. Vance did an excellent job at just showing who he is. I think I went into this debate, not knowing much about either of them. I knew a little bit more about J.D. Vance. And then I heard his story through that and through the policy, especially his

closing statement was beautifully done. And I want to play that for you right now. Well, I want to thank Governor Walts, you folks at CBS and of course the American people for tuning in this evening. And one of the issues we didn't talk about was energy. And I remember when I was being raised by my grandmother, when she didn't have enough money to turn on the heat some nights because Ohio gets pretty cold at night and because money was often very tight. And I believe, as a person who wants to be your next vice president, that we are a rich and prosperous enough country where every American, whether they're rich or poor, ought to be able to turn on their heat in the middle of a cold winter night, that's gotten more difficult, thanks to Kamala Harris's

energy policies. I believe that whether you're rich or poor, you ought to be able to afford a nice meal for your family. That's gotten harder because of Kamala Harris's policies. I believe that whether you're rich or poor, you ought to be able to afford to buy a house, you ought to be able to live in safe neighborhoods. You ought to not have your communities flooded with fentanyl, and that too has gotten harder because of Kamala Harris's policies. Now, I've been in politics long enough to do what Kamala Harris does when she stands before the American people and says that on day one, she's going to work on all these challenges I just listed. She's been the vice president for three and a half years. Day one was 1400 days ago, and her policies have made these problems worse. Now, I believe

that we have the most beautiful country in the world. I meet people on the campaign trail who can't afford food, but have the grace and generosity to ask me how I'm doing and to tell me they're praying for my family. What that has taught me is that we have the greatest country, the most beautiful country, the most incredible people anywhere in the world. But they're not going to be able to achieve their full dreams with the broken leadership that we have in Washington. They're not going to be able to live their American dream if we do the same thing that we've been doing for the last three and a half years. I think that it shows the humanity in our politics of like, look, his family couldn't afford the electricity on these cold Ohio nights. And I do know it gets cold.

I'm in Michigan. And it gets really cold here. And he was like, people should be able to afford that. They should put food on the table. They should do this. They should do that. Right now, they can't afford that. And I think that was a great way to put it where he was able to throughout to weave in his story while talking about policy. And it showed why he believes what he believes.

It's not just some random statements he's saying. It's this is why I believe this because look what happened to me. Look what I've experienced. Look how I've dealt with this as well. And obviously, I think it did a pretty good job for him. And I think also just his temperament throughout. He really was well spoken and he stayed calm and he knew his facts. And that was something I appreciated.

Tim Walz, I think also he stayed calm. He explained a little bit about his story. He was a teacher. He was a coach. He did all these things. So he did, I think, a good job. also doing that. Now, what I think was difficult about this debate was that both of them had to stand behind their candidate too have been very high in very high offices before. I mean, President Trump

was president before Joe Biden. And so he has that whole history. And then Kamala Harris is the current vice president. But what I notice, and I don't know if people really talk about this, and I don't know if it's much of a point, but I want to make it, is that to me, Tim Walls kept going back to Kamala Harris on California. He'd say, well, I'm in Minnesota, Kamala in California. Kamala Harris is the current vice president. He needs to answer questions on what she's done now. That's what I think matters. When you have those highest levels in politics, those highest leadership positions, what did you do?

And I think that's something that J.D. Vance kept pushing back on on Tim Walls was, what has Kamala Harris done in the economy? What has she done for the immigration issue? What has she done on all of these things that are leaving Americans with less money in their pockets and feeling less safe? And I think that Tim Walz had to kind of deflect that. That was his thing throughout the night is he needed to deflect the attachment of Kamala Harris to Joe Biden. He needed to say, this is a new slate, a clean slate. We're moving forward. We're not going back as Kamala Harris said that's what he needs to do is show moving forward, not attaching to Joe Biden or anything at all. And I think that was a really hard thing because J.D. Vance did a really good job

pointing out that the Biden border crisis is the Kamala Harris border crisis. The Biden economy failure of Bidenomics is also the Kamala Harris failure. The failures in our foreign policy are also Kamala Harris foreign policy failures, not just Joe Biden. And I think that J.D. Vance did a good job at showing that. Vance had to also show that he could work with Trump and get things done and that he would also be mature and serious and thoughtful and make sure that he's a balance. I think he has to show he's a balanced to Trump. There's a lot there. And I think that's when Tim Wills started to do better in the debate.

I think his whole first half of that performance was rocky at best. He was a little shaky. His answers weren't great. His answer on Tiananmen Square was absolutely horrible. He just went right around the question, did not answer it. I think you need to answer the question. That's what I actually liked about. Judy Vance is he was like, I want to go back to the question and answer that.

He would say that and he would answer the question. So I did appreciate that about him. But what he has to do with now is like 2020 is where Tim Walls did well. He was trying to show, look, what happened in 2020 was horrible on January 6. And he really did well there. And I think that is because he was able to attack Donald Trump and say, look, do you remember this? You remember this. You remember this.

That's why he did well there. If you're just looking at it, not saying look at it politically, but just looking at how he did throughout the night. He started getting more focused and clear-eyed on what his goal was throughout the night and what he wanted to present, which is why Donald Trump was a bad candidate. And he started getting to that goal of saying, this is why. And I think that the 2020 question was probably his best way of doing that. But I do think J.D. Vance did a great job answering that question as well of saying we need to look forward. And I think that is a really smart answer in since not looking at this politically. As I said, we're not going to focus on that.

But let's just look at this from a rhetorical sense of what did he do. Why did he make those choices and what he said? And he said, we need to move forward. Great. That's a really smart choice to say we do need to move forward. It's time to move past 2020. and I've been saying that we, Republicans need to stop looking at 2020. They need to stop bringing up the election and saying it was rigged.

They need to move on, move to 2024. We don't win elections by bringing up the elections of the past and continuing to dwell on them. That's not going to win you independent voters. So I really think that it's time to move on, move for it. Obviously, you can talk about what happened in the past, but don't dwell on it so much so that it becomes your whole campaign and absorbs your life. That's ridiculous. I want to now also talk about the ordering of the questions because I think it wasn't a great idea to have the second question B about climate change.

And now I think that talking about the hurricane, the current hurricane that was going on and the horrible destruction that was left there is important. We have to talk about that. That should have been one of the first questions. So I'm glad it was. But the connection to climate change was just a little off for me. I would rather just heard about what would we do in a disaster like this one. And before I go any further with this, I want to just say my thoughts and prayers are with every family who's been affected by this horrible hurricane, this horrible natural disaster that we are seeing. And I want us to continue to pray for them and support these families as much as we can.

But I don't think that the question should have been just rooted in climate change. It should have been, what would you do? what is true leadership? What does true leadership look like when disaster strikes? What do you do? What is your go plan? And we can talk about climate change at points, but I don't want it to be the whole thing at the beginning of it.

So I really wanted a little bit more there. Overall, though I think the moderators did a pretty good job. I think they were pretty fair. I will say J.D. Vance did fact-check them, and it was a good time to fact-check on the CBP-1 app when it was on the immigration issue. He tried to correct the record on it. His mic was muted.

Look, I know people say, oh, his mic was muted, and they get upset about that. Look, that was part of the debate rules. Eventually got muted. He was able to get a little more in, but it was muted. But I'm happy he did fact check them.

I think that needed to happen because, at least in my opinion, a lot of the time, when there are these live fact checks, it just seems like it's one way. Or the candidate will answer a question and they'll say, actually, like, blah, blah, blah,

on whatever given issue. They'll say, this, this, this, this, I don't like that. I think that it shows there's a clear narrative. So I would rather just hear from both sides and go to the research myself. Obviously, they can't be spewing crazy, crazy stuff. There should be stops to that. But like, it clearly shows the bias when we're saying, oh, this is fact checked, this is fact checked in real time.

Like, like people can do that for themselves. Also online websites do that. And it just makes it look so, so, so, so, so biased. and I don't want that in my debates. But overall, I think the moderators did, they did a great job. Now, one last thing before I am probably going to move on from the debate is, I think it was interesting to mention, like, the political people supporting the Kamala Harris, Tim Wall's campaign of Cheney's, Taylor Swift, all of these people. But I don't think they'll change anything. I don't think that it matters much who these people are voting for, quite honestly.

And I talked about this before, the Taylor Swift endorsement. It doesn't matter. What should matter is how people get their gas at the gas pump, how much it costs them, how they go to the grocery store. Can they afford their food? Can they provide electricity for their family on those cold winter nights? Can they go out and maybe have a family fun night with their kids? Parents can have those things and have that ability. just honestly a part of the American dream where can you go out with your kids? Can you go out with

your family and have fun and be able to just live a normal life? Because nowadays it just doesn't seem like you can do any of that because it's so expensive. Those are the things I think that do matter to voters more. And we'll see obviously as we closer with exit polls and surveys and stuff. But I really don't think that endorsements do as much as people think. Maybe some political ones do from certain political people, but for the most part, I don't think these endorsements are doing that much to move the needle. And I don't think the debate did terribly much. I do think it should restore a lot of optimism in people. As I said, I think it should make people really be excited for the future. I know I am. I mean, whatever the case may be, we'll have this election and we'll move

forward. Whatever that looks like, whether I agree with it or not, doesn't matter. But I do think It's good that we can know we're going to just go forward. We're going to have this election and it will be okay. It will be okay. And that's something I want to really stress right now is that no matter what happens, it will be okay. I don't care. I don't care whatever happens happens. We obviously all people want somebody to win.

They want their person to win. But at the end of the day, I do think that our country is strong enough to go through four years of whoever. I think we can get through it. I think the American people are strong. I know that our founding documents are strong. I know our laws. Our constitution is strong. It can stand the test of these people and that we can get this done. Whatever happens. I'm very confident in the American people and who we are and that American people will make the choice that they see best fit. That's the thing too is what I know is that this is who the American people want, whoever wins. Like, it's who they want. It's who they trust to lead us forward. That's what should

matter. It should be the people who they want us to have leading us forward as we look into our future, which I think will be a chaotic few years. I mean, we say all the chaos right now that needs to be fixed. We see our economy is still struggling a bit. We see an open border crisis that has left so many dead, so many hurt, and just so much chaos and division in our. country. We need to heal as a country come together. We can agree to disagree. And I think that debate really showed that we can agree to disagree, but let's at least have this conversation. Let's at least talk to our friends. We should not get to the point where we don't talk to people because of their politics. We should not get to the point where we cast people off because they're a Republican,

a Democrat or an independent. I don't care who you are, where you're from, who you vote for, who you voted for, whatever you do. That doesn't dictate my friendships. It doesn't dictate if I talk to somebody because we should want to learn from people. We should want to be pushed. We should want to be challenged in what we think and what we believe and why we believe what we believe. We should want to hear people's stories.

People have fascinating and sometimes heartbreaking stories to hear. And when you hear them, you're like, that makes sense why you believe that. like I don't I never had that but you did and that experience makes me realize why you are voting the way you are but also why you are the way you are who you are those are things we have to really consider I think we always have to remember there's people behind their politics there are people behind policy there are people with opinions and lives and things that have happened to him behind everything and that's why people believe what they believe is they've had this thing happen to them or they have these experiences and sometimes those things

really do impact what you believe and obviously we should want to learn from each other through that and continue to grow one thing i want to just talk about before i end the show is just i ran in israel uh iran launched a ballistic missile attack at israel um the other day and i think everyone's really saying that i've seen is like stand with israel stand with israel stand with israel And I agree 100%. That is what needs to happen. And Israel has been strong. They've been able to defend off a lot of these things, a lot of these attacks, and they are doing great stuff in that regard.

They are able to be very strong. And we must always remember who our allies are. We must always stand with our allies. That's something I think we always need to remember is Israel needs to do what they need to do. We need to let them do that. They're a country. We are not the country of Israel. Okay?

We're not. So we shouldn't tell them what to do, nor should anyone tell us what to do. We should not be telling other countries what to do. We should be supporting our allies and helping when they need help, okay? But we're not telling other countries what to do. So when people want to go after Israel for what they're doing, just stop. It's their country. Let them do as they need fit. Obviously we don't, you don't have to support countries you don't agree with, but you don't tell countries what to do. That's not how politics works. countries have sovereignty and are able to do what they need to do. I think Israel needs to do this. They have to do this. They have every right to stand up for their country. They have every right to stand up for their people. They have every right to exist as a nation. And people who tell you otherwise are ridiculous, in my opinion, of trying to say Israel doesn't need to exist or Israel is being horrible. Israel was attacked on October 7 and Israel is defending herself and she has every right to do that. And no one should say otherwise. Absolutely no one should say otherwise. She has a right to protect her people. That's the job of the government. A government in a nation, their job, their first job is to protect their people and make sure their people can live their lives.

How can you live your lives if your country doesn't exist and all your people are being killed by a terrorist organization? Israel has rights. And we need to recognize that and we need to stand with our ally Israel through and through 100%. Thank you for listening to today's episode of Heartland. on the Hill. As always, it is great to be here with you. I am so excited. We're getting closer and closer to election day. It is October now. It is so close. And I am so excited to see how all this plays out. And I know we're getting closer and closer. So people are getting really riled up about this election. But always remember, it's okay to take a second to take a break, take a deep breath,

have a good time and just not worry about politics for a second because it seems like it engulfs all of our lives. And I am in a lot of political stuff. So I feel that sometimes. But I always have to remember sometimes you have to take a step back, take a breath, let things happen and know that it will be okay at the end of the day. So please do remember that. I am really hoping that it's something you can take away from the show is that no matter where we go, we'll be okay. We'll get through it. I do believe that we will get through it. I know there's a lot of fearmongering going on, but I do think we are going to be just fine. We are a nation that is strong. We are a nation built on strong and resilient people, and we can get through this.

We can get through the division, and we can come together and learn from each other and move forward. You're listening to Radio Freehillsill 101.7 FM, and this has been Hard on the Hill. Thank you. Have a great day.