Michael Medved: America Is No Accident

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Speaker 5 Hello and welcome to the Bullard Podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller.
A quick update from yesterday's show on Nebraska.

Speaker 5 Bill and I were just getting a little concerned, gnashing our teeth over the possibility that the Nebraska legislature, with the encouragement of Donald Trump and Lindsey Graham and others, would change their allocation of electoral votes, which would have had major implications for Kamala Harris's path to victory.

Speaker 5 Luckily, after we taped, there was some very positive news in that regard. A state senator, Mike McDonnell, interesting character.
I might want to talk about more down the line.

Speaker 5 A former Democrat union guy who is socially conservative, switched the Republican Party.

Speaker 5 He didn't feel welcome in the Democratic Party because of some of his socially conservative views, held the line on this and said that he would not support a change at this late a date.

Speaker 5 And then my colleague Joe Perticone, in an interview with Senator Deb Fisher, Fisher told told him that this is over, it's dead, and the Nebraska electoral vote allocation will remain as it is, which is good news for Harris, which gives her the blue wall path of Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Nebraska too, that would get her to 270 electoral votes.

Speaker 5 So with that, today I'm just delighted to be here with, I think, the only nationally syndicated conservative talk radio host who maintained his integrity in the face of the Trumpian threat.

Speaker 5 It is Michael Medved. He's the host of the eponymous daily show that is available at medvedmedhead.com or on Apple Podcasts.

Speaker 5 His book includes The American Miracle, Divine Providence and the Rise of the Republic.

Speaker 5 And that book underpins the American Miracle podcast, as well as a film adaptation scheduled for release next year. I'm just delighted to have you on the pod, Michael.
Thanks for doing it.

Speaker 6 It's great to talk to you.

Speaker 5 You know, in the conservative talk radio space, as far as, you know, if you're going to pick the top 10 conservative talk radio hosts

Speaker 5 of my youth listening to in the backseat of my parents' car, you're basically the only one that held strong at the Trump takeover. And so

Speaker 5 I very much appreciate that. And it's a pleasure to be with you.
Why do you think that was?

Speaker 6 Basically, because people's careers were threatened, and people's careers were lost because they didn't board the Trump train.

Speaker 6 And there was this idea that in order to get advertisers, in order to get audience, you had to go along with Trump because he was dominating the conservative movement, the Republican Party.

Speaker 6 I've never thought that was true.

Speaker 6 In the process of dealing with the onset of Trumpism, we lost over 100 affiliates.

Speaker 6 And that's stations where some of them had been carrying our show for 20 years, and then they wouldn't carry it anymore because

Speaker 6 there was even stuff that I was supposed to sign with a syndicator about limits on what I could say. And I can't buy that.
This is not worth it.

Speaker 5 Limits are all you can say about Trump.

Speaker 6 Yeah.

Speaker 5 It's the free speech party, Michael. I'm sorry.
I can't believe that that's true. These folks are just committed to free speech, unadulterated.

Speaker 6 All right, yeah. I became a

Speaker 6 very early never-Trumper.

Speaker 6 First of all, I was part of that now infamous, career-wrecking article in National Review against Trump.

Speaker 6 And I was one of the people who put myself on the line there. And I said on the air that I could never support Trump back in 2015, really early.
You know why?

Speaker 6 Because of the birther crap. Right.

Speaker 6 Because anyone who clearly was promoting that lie that the President of the United States was born in Kenya

Speaker 6 when the evidence was overwhelming that he was born in Hawaii was just unacceptable. It's unacceptable if people knowingly lie in order to advance some kind of career or political goal.

Speaker 5 Aaron Trevor Barrett, it is, but, well, it's unacceptable to you, I guess. It turns out that it's much more acceptable than maybe we expected.

Speaker 5 I like kind of reviewing that against Trump magazine cover at times because it's really of non-current Bulwark staff, Bill Crystal and Mona, the late David Bowes, that he held strong, Russell Moore, our friend, and you.

Speaker 5 That's it. That's the list.

Speaker 5 So it was not really a career-ending cover, actually, because about two-thirds of the people on the cover ended up flipping and either saying for Trump or Trump-ish or Trump-maybe.

Speaker 6 Yeah, like Glenn Beck.

Speaker 5 Yeah.

Speaker 6 Well, Glenn Beck. I mean, what happened there? He was part of that Against Trump article with the National Review as well.
And he certainly, at least as far as I know, take that position.

Speaker 5 He's an enthusiastic Trumper, which takes us to why. I want to get into your career a little bit because I think it's interesting.

Speaker 5 But for folks that aren't familiar, we should start here, since we use that word enthusiastically.

Speaker 5 What had me reach out to you is I'd seen an article the other day where you indicated you'd be supporting Kamala Harris in this election over Trump.

Speaker 5 And in the green room, I just wanted to make sure I had it right. And your answer was that you're enthusiastically supporting Kamala Harris.
So talk about why that is.

Speaker 5 And is it just about the against Trump side of it? Or has there been something about Kamala that has appealed to you?

Speaker 6 No, I think that Kamala Harris is trying to build a broader coalition and is working with everybody on the conservative side who is willing to work with her.

Speaker 6 And I would not have said I was supporting her enthusiastically. I was supporting her as the only alternative until the debate.

Speaker 6 But what was so great about the debate is I've always said that the essence of winning that kind of televised encounter is to enjoy it and to look like you're enjoying it.

Speaker 6 And she was savoring her skewering of Trump with so much high spirits and so much positivity and so much good humor. That made me enthusiastic.

Speaker 5 Yeah. What about just kind of the tone? I mean, I do feel like she has made an effort to,

Speaker 5 in a couple of areas, maybe less on the actual policy specifics, but more on

Speaker 5 appeals to patriotism, kind of rejecting some of the worst parts of the identitarian side of the left and kind of embracing a more traditional, you know, kind of American view about identity and pluralism, maybe on foreign policy as well, America's role in the world.

Speaker 5 Like those are things that have jumped out to me, but I don't know. Did that strike you as well? Is there anything else?

Speaker 6 Very much so.

Speaker 6 I also loved the Democratic Convention, and I never thought I would say those words together. I went to my first Democratic Convention in 1964 as a page when I was a kid.
I was in high school.

Speaker 6 And that was a convention that nominated Lyndon Johnson and Hubert Humphrey. And I met Robert Kennedy there, and I was also part of the Kennedy campaign.
I took a leave of absence from Yale.

Speaker 6 And I was part of the Kennedy campaign in 1968. And not since that time has the Democratic Party put on a show that was so flag-waving.

Speaker 6 If someone had been asked which is the patriotic, positive, flag-waving party, the Republicans of the Democrats, comparing their two conventions, it wouldn't have been close.

Speaker 6 I mean, the Republicans had Hulk Hogan and Kid Rock,

Speaker 6 and of course every possible Trump relative. What they didn't have is any of the great people like Mitt Romney.
John McCain was unavailable.

Speaker 6 Mitt Romney or Lynn Cheney or Dick Cheney or President George W. Bush.
I mean, the idea that these people didn't even participate with the Republican Party. Instead,

Speaker 6 well, they had Mark Robinson,

Speaker 6 which is going well.

Speaker 5 He started some traditional values, depending on what tradition you're talking about.

Speaker 6 Right, exactly. What I love is the fact that

Speaker 6 he says he would like to go back to slavery because he would buy himself some slaves.

Speaker 6 Now, if that isn't a disqualifying remark, plus attacking Black Panther because it was made by, quote, atheist Jews. And this is the guy who President Trump says is Martin Luther King on steroids.

Speaker 6 It is profoundly insulting

Speaker 6 for the Republican nominee for President of the United States to say that Mark Robinson is better than Martin Luther King.

Speaker 6 What does that say about his real evaluation of Martin Luther King?

Speaker 5 Yeah, you'd say you'd probably put it in the dookie shoot, to borrow a phrase from Mark Robinson. I want to go back, though, really.
I want to get to Mark. We're going to get back to Mark.

Speaker 5 But you said something there that I didn't, well, I guess I knew about you that you had initially interned with RFK because you talked about that with Charlie the other time you were on this podcast a few years ago.

Speaker 5 What I didn't know about you that I think is an interesting, there's an interesting line potentially from your objection to birtherism.

Speaker 5 One of your first jobs was in the Bay Area, where I lived for a little while, as a campaign to recruit more minorities to the police force. And I saw that and I was like, no, that's

Speaker 5 noble effort and something that maybe was probably not the ethnic conservative POP in California at that, at that time.

Speaker 5 And so I'm just wondering, like, what was your journey from there to getting into being a conservative talker?

Speaker 6 Well, it's a long journey. And one of my books,

Speaker 6 I have 14 books, and one of my books is called Right Turns, which is about that progress from having been part of the Kennedy campaign. I was there the night of the assassination.

Speaker 6 I was just a couple of rows away from the front when Robert Kennedy made his last speech.

Speaker 6 And the police, and working with the police,

Speaker 6 this was a LEAA grant, Law Enforcement Assistance Administration.

Speaker 6 It was a federal grant to hire more black cops for the San Francisco, Berkeley, and Oakland police departments and Richmond, California too. So those four departments.

Speaker 5 Sounds woke almost.

Speaker 6 Well, I didn't know anything about cops at the time. I mean, I just knew.

Speaker 6 I once got arrested for camping without a permit when I was hitchhiking in San Clemente, California. But really, I had had very little to do with cops.

Speaker 6 And as part of this program, I spent two years working closely with cops, doing ride-alongs, producing these TV commercials, and

Speaker 6 they were great.

Speaker 6 And virtually all the cops I was working with were black,

Speaker 6 but they were some of the finest people I ever met. I mean, and I still believe that.
And that was a very big part of moving me to the conservative side of things, because

Speaker 6 they had about the same attitude toward the Bay Area left

Speaker 6 that, frankly, white cops did. And

Speaker 6 one of the guys I worked with, whose name was Harold, was a huge opera fan.

Speaker 6 And straight, by the way.

Speaker 6 Not everybody.

Speaker 6 But it was an eye-opening experience, and it was really very much part of my progress in a more conservative direction.

Speaker 6 One of the things that I found, and this is part of what has made me so skeptical of Trump, was during the time I was working in politics and working four years as a speechwriter and political consultant.

Speaker 6 And I worked at one point for Ron Dillums, if you remember him,

Speaker 6 Bay Area congressman, very, very left,

Speaker 6 not pro-American. And

Speaker 6 that also pushed me to the right. But I had the sensibility, and I wrote about this in right terms,

Speaker 6 that

Speaker 6 people on the conservative side of things had better lives.

Speaker 6 And it wasn't because they were conservatives, it was that

Speaker 6 the level of happiness that part of the liberal idea, and this is very much was part of this idea in the 60s, was that the world is apocalyptic, it's almost over, that things are disastrous, we're going to be fighting in the streets.

Speaker 6 I always, even when I was an anti-war Democrat, the idea of the demonstrators who came to the convention in 1968

Speaker 6 and ruined the chance of a decent man named Hubert Humphrey to win the presidency, all of that

Speaker 6 experience and contrast. And then there was Reagan.

Speaker 6 And I joined Eldridge Cleaver, who supported Reagan, and Eugene McCarthy supported Reagan. in 1980.

Speaker 6 And the Morning in America idea, the idea of being more positive about this country, I think all the time

Speaker 6 about how blessed I am that my grandparents,

Speaker 6 on my mother's side leaving Germany and on my father's side leaving Ukraine, that they chose to come here. That's the golden ticket.
It's made in my life.

Speaker 6 I can't even imagine if

Speaker 6 my grandfather had stayed in Ukraine with his family. We probably wouldn't be alive today,

Speaker 6 medved at all.

Speaker 6 My grandfather came to this country originally in 1905 to earn enough money to bring six kids over to the U.S. And the kids didn't make it out before World War I.

Speaker 6 So they were stuck there. He lost five of his six children.
And then when he reunited with my grandmother, and they were both 50,

Speaker 6 my father was the American miracle because

Speaker 6 he was conceived when his parents were elderly. They had lost five children.
I have their names on my

Speaker 6 billboard right in front of me.

Speaker 6 They lost five children in the revolution in World War I, and then most of all, in that horrible civil war that most Americans don't know about, that was vastly bloodier even than our Civil War between the Reds and the whites.

Speaker 5 That is such a story.

Speaker 5 And the inverse back to something else you were saying in there, and what you're alluding to, just to put a finer point on it, like the inversion of now, it's the mega that is the apocalyptic, that is the view of a negative view of America as it actually exists in the world.

Speaker 5 And on the left, even on the left, it's we could do a whole cultural podcast about this, but despite the fact that the left is still, I think, in a healthy way pushing for change and supporting alternative family.

Speaker 5 I have a family that would have been considered an alternative family not that long ago with a husband and an adopted daughter.

Speaker 5 But the kind of happiness quotient that you're talking about, living a fulfilling life, caring about your community, lower rates of divorce, like all that stuff has flipped, right?

Speaker 5 Like you see that more among the kind of mid, middle and upper income like in Democratic communities now, and like the Republican community is more hollowed out.

Speaker 6 Well, again,

Speaker 6 you ended up seeing a lot of

Speaker 6 positive people, very patriotic Americans. And this is the one thing that I give Kamala Harris credit for, is

Speaker 6 they are determined to follow this Morning in America script where

Speaker 6 the Democrats are going to be more flag-waving and more pro-American and certainly more pro-American in the wider world. And this is not every Democrat.
And we can leave Alexandria Casio-Cortez off.

Speaker 6 Leave her. Leave her.

Speaker 5 AOC's been pretty good. I don't know.

Speaker 5 Maybe we'll leave Rashida Tlaib off. How about that? AOC's been pretty well.

Speaker 6 Well, Ilhan Omar, too.

Speaker 6 But then again, you hold them up against people like Matt Gates and Marjorie Taylor Greene, even though Marjorie Taylor Greene fighting with Laura Loomer is something I appreciate the Bulwarks coverage of.

Speaker 6 That's not King Kong versus Godzilla.

Speaker 6 Except they're more likable. The whole idea

Speaker 6 of

Speaker 6 America as a place of good fortune. In my book, The American Miracle, I talk about Lincoln when he was coming to Washington to take over the government.

Speaker 6 And in the midst of secession, there had already been eight states who had seceded of the 11 who eventually seceded.

Speaker 6 And Lincoln spoke to the New Jersey legislature in Trenton, and he called America the almost chosen people.

Speaker 6 And that, it seems to me, is very important to keep in mind, that

Speaker 6 what are we chosen for? And we're chosen for not special privileges, but special responsibilities.

Speaker 6 And right now,

Speaker 6 Democrats, at the moment, at least, are more likely to get that point. Reagan certainly got it.
George H.W. Bush and George W.
Bush certainly got it.

Speaker 6 Today's Donald Trump does not.

Speaker 6 And that, it seems to me, is a very real problem. The idea that America is a special country with a special mission, and that that's a mission that's been given by fate and history.

Speaker 5 Yeah, it's interesting. That kind of leads me to something else I wanted to talk to you about, which was there's this clip from Paul Ryan that was going around in May that I'm going to play for you.

Speaker 5 So it's a few months ago, so when you hear it, you can, he's referencing Biden being at the top of the ticket. But there's something he says at the end of it.

Speaker 5 about what he's going to do, which is different than what you're going to do this November, that I want to talk about. Let's listen to Paul Ryan.

Speaker 9 Character is too too important to me.

Speaker 9 And it's a job that requires the kind of character that he just doesn't have. Having said that, I really disagree with Biden on policy.

Speaker 9 I wrote in a Republican the last time, I'm going to write in a Republican this time.

Speaker 1 You're going to write in? Yeah.

Speaker 9 A Republican. I don't know who yet.

Speaker 5 So I'm interested in your take on just the write-in choice altogether, but I'm interested in his phrasing in particular. I'm going to write in a Republican.

Speaker 5 Like, from my perspective, like, the Republican is just a party. It's not an an ideology.
It's a group of people. And this group of people have chosen Donald Trump three times.

Speaker 5 And so, like, this notion that there's like some true Republican out there from 20 years ago that he's going to write in, like, to me doesn't make a whole lot of sense.

Speaker 5 I think that's kind of playing pretend. But maybe I'm too, maybe I'm too cynical.
I don't know. What did you think about Paul Ryan's explanation about his choice this November?

Speaker 6 I'll bet he changes his mind before November 5th. Really? Yeah, I know Paul, and he's a terrifically good guy.

Speaker 6 He's one of those leaders I admire who wasn't at the Republican convention and wasn't really welcomed at the Republican convention, which is a shame.

Speaker 5 There were no prior Republican presidents or VPs at the convention. Palin would have been the only one that would have been welcomed, but I don't recall her being there.

Speaker 6 No, and

Speaker 6 that's another story.

Speaker 6 But I made the mistake because

Speaker 6 in 2016, I was so certain, as most people were, that Hillary would win and would win in a landslide that I didn't see any reason to vote for her.

Speaker 6 And because of policy disagreements, even though I've known her since law school. But in any event, I voted for Evan McMullen,

Speaker 6 which is,

Speaker 6 you know, seems like a good guy.

Speaker 5 Better than writing in Edmund Burke. At least Evan McMullen was alive.

Speaker 6 Right.

Speaker 6 But when that election happened and Trump actually won, I felt very guilty for not having at least voted for the alternative candidate. And I resolved that I would never do that again.

Speaker 6 I mean, it's stupid to basically say that, well, there is no choice. There's always a choice.
And even if you're in the state of Washington where Trump is not competitive anyway, it still matters.

Speaker 6 And every one of those votes matters because that's part of your legacy in defining who you are.

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Speaker 5 What about the point about just like what is, you know, the last true Scotsman element of this? Like, what is a true Republican?

Speaker 5 I mean, at this point, do you think there is something that is salvageable, that is, that there is a potential that it could return to something like what it had appealed to you before 2016?

Speaker 5 Or are we going through a time of just such change

Speaker 5 in the makeup of

Speaker 5 what each party represents that

Speaker 5 going forward,

Speaker 5 the Republican will just mean something different than it had in the past?

Speaker 5 That's not the first time that has happened.

Speaker 6 I don't want to simplify my answer, but I do believe that when Trump loses, and I think he will lose, and I don't think it's going to be excruciatingly close, and not as close as last time even.

Speaker 6 And Biden, which people tend to forget, won in the popular vote by 7 million votes. It was a good margin.

Speaker 6 Once he loses a third time in the popular vote, because he lost to Hillary by 3 million votes in 2016, once that happens, I think the fever has passed. And it may not heal immediately.

Speaker 6 We still may have J.D. Vance to deal with.

Speaker 6 But right now, if you look at the Republican Party, I think it's more viable to see non-Trumpy

Speaker 6 people who rise in the future than any of the potential Trump acolytes. I mean, it's not going to be Don Jr.
It's not going to be J.D. Vance.

Speaker 6 I'm sure Matt Gates would want to make a go of it. Maybe Tucker Carlson.
But again, their list of potential standard bearers for the Trump movement, for the MAGA movement, is not impressive.

Speaker 6 And there are people, people like Nikki Haley, who I think ran a good campaign. And one of the interesting things, and it's a point that I think Brett Stevens makes among others.

Speaker 6 If Nikki Haley had been the nominee, do you think she would be losing to Kamala Harris? I don't. I think she would be very much more competitive.

Speaker 6 And that would actually be kind of a fun election because

Speaker 6 there are two people who are bright and interesting. Now, who have you much of thought about this? Who do you think is the new standard bearer for the MAGA movement?

Speaker 5 I just think it's hard with the counterfactuals with Haley, for example, because

Speaker 5 she really didn't have a base within the party. I mean, she was getting 17% of the vote, but like half of those people were functional Democrats that were crossing over to vote for her.

Speaker 5 Maybe they were Republicans at one point, but like people that are voting for Joe Biden and voting for Kamala. And so, you know, what would MAGA have done? You know what I mean?

Speaker 5 Like, I just think that there's a lot of counterfactuals there. Look, if either J.D.
Vance or Ron DeSantis had a personality, they would be the obvious standard bearers, I think.

Speaker 5 I think it would be probably somebody that can bridge some kind of new fusionism, right?

Speaker 5 Like, that's what, that's what was all the talk, right, as you were coming up in politics, this fusionism between the libertarian wing and the social conservative wing.

Speaker 5 And I think there'll need to be some kind of fusionism between Trumpism and like the old establishment that does take from some elements of Trumpism that I don't really like.

Speaker 5 Like, you know, and I think particularly when it comes to

Speaker 5 the nativism side of it and maybe not isolationism, but more restrained view of the U.S. and the world.
I think that stuff's here to stay, don't you?

Speaker 6 Well, U.S. retreat from the world.
I think that's here to stay for people like Ron DeSantis. It's certainly here for J.D.
Vance.

Speaker 6 I mean,

Speaker 6 the complete capture of J.D. Vance

Speaker 6 by Trumpian ideology, the anti-Ukraine ideas of people like J.D. Vance and Ron DeSantis.
Ron DeSantis, one of the biggest disappointments in recent American politics. And I think it's

Speaker 6 by the way,

Speaker 6 what is your understanding of how the abortion rights, so-called, measure is going to go in Florida? I mean, if it follows the pattern of the other 10 states

Speaker 6 where this is an issue, it could be a very big defeat for Governor DeSantis, no?

Speaker 5 I like that a classic three-decade radio host is taking over the hosting duties for me and turning it back on me of these questions. Yeah,

Speaker 5 please take the chair, Michael. Yeah, I think that the abortion rights bill amendment will pass in Florida.

Speaker 6 It's just when you look at some of the, and maybe you include Glenn Youngkin as part of the

Speaker 6 Republican future, but I think that once we get away from Trump and his immediate family and his aides and acolytes and sycophants and all of the rest of them.

Speaker 6 And I don't see if they lose a third time.

Speaker 6 That's William Jennings Bryan territory. But he didn't run three times in a row.

Speaker 6 He ran twice, then took a break to have a Democrat lose to Teddy Roosevelt, and then came back again in 2008 to lose to Taft.

Speaker 6 And losing to Taft is not

Speaker 6 something that

Speaker 6 you want to hold up as a glittering example.

Speaker 5 Yeah, unfortunately, Trump did have the one win in there. William Jennings Bryan didn't have the narrow Electoral College victory to offset it.
But

Speaker 5 well, look, I appreciate the optimism that you're bringing to this. It's needed around the bulwark.
Some of us are a little more fatalist about these things.

Speaker 5 I do, though, to go back to the Paul Ryan question, just one more time, and Stevens, who you mentioned.

Speaker 5 You know, Stevens has an article in the Times this week about what Harris must do to win over skeptics like me.

Speaker 5 And, you know, she's talking about how she hasn't given answers to Middle East foreign policy questions to the degree that he would like.

Speaker 5 And I'm just like, if the future that you're putting out, the optimistic future is true, right, where Trump gets defeated soundly and where some level of normalcy returns, God willing, to the party.

Speaker 5 Like that requires people like Brett Stevens and Paul Ryan trying,

Speaker 5 trying,

Speaker 5 doing what you're doing, doing what Michael Medved is doing. Like the thing that's been so dispiriting to me is that like there's been the like the people that know better.

Speaker 5 There's a lot of category of people that kind of,

Speaker 5 you know, they'll say the right thing sometimes and not other times, and they're wishy-washy.

Speaker 5 And there is not the effort that I would like to see to really put this man where he belongs in the dustbin of history. Doesn't that frustrate you?

Speaker 6 Yes. And

Speaker 6 I believe I know Brett and admire him greatly. I think he's a wonderful writer and he's a wonderful American.
And he's a great defender of the state of Israel and the Jewish people.

Speaker 6 And

Speaker 6 I

Speaker 6 happen to believe that Brett is setting himself up.

Speaker 6 So in the last two weeks before the election, he can finally come over and it'll be news because every week he does this thing with Gail Collins, which I find very entertaining, the back and forth they have in the New York Times.

Speaker 6 And she asks him every week, well, have you come around yet? And I think he is assuming.

Speaker 6 that it can have a deeper impact if he waits till the last moment. And at least I hope that is the case.

Speaker 5 I've invited him on.

Speaker 5 I'm hopeful he's on in the next coming weeks. There's no better place than the Bulwark podcast than to finally come around.

Speaker 5 Again, though, even the playing pretend of Willie or Woney, like, to me, I understand how maybe you could argue that that gives it more power. But to me, it's like, this isn't a close call.

Speaker 5 Like, as you said, like, this isn't a close call. Like, why are we pretending like it's a close call?

Speaker 5 Mitt Romney is in the Deseret news this morning, like, where he says that there's worry about, you know, if Trump comes in, that he'll go after foes. Like people like him.

Speaker 5 And like, if that is legitimate worry, like, what are we doing? Like, why aren't you out there in Nevada rallying Mormons for Kamala?

Speaker 5 Like, that's the thing that is missing for me, that it feels like you've seen

Speaker 6 the light on. I do agree with you.
And

Speaker 6 the one thing that I had read, there was a piece recently about Mormon organizations and Mormon leadership in Nevada, where it matters, where they have, I think together with Idaho and Utah and Arizona, they have the most substantial Mormon population, where there are people who are rallying to support Kamla.

Speaker 6 Because,

Speaker 6 again,

Speaker 6 the worst that could happen with Trump is so very bad. I mean, so incredibly terrible.
One of the things my wife was

Speaker 6 looking at recently was a list of people who have had their sentences commuted or basically been pardoned by President Trump and how many of them have reoffended and done horrible crimes since they were let out of prison.

Speaker 6 I mean, the prospect of basically pardoning or commuting the sentences of 1,000 January 6th rioters. Are you kidding me?

Speaker 6 And there's that whole thing of we don't take him seriously, seriously, but we take him literally. Or is it that we take him literally, but we don't take him seriously?

Speaker 6 I think we should take this literally and seriously

Speaker 6 and say no.

Speaker 6 The fact that Trump has said, he's said very clearly that he will not support squishes like Jeff Sessions, remember.

Speaker 6 No more Mike Pompeo, I don't think.

Speaker 6 The possibility of horrible consequences to NATO, which is

Speaker 6 that again, because of my family's background.

Speaker 6 The idea that we would

Speaker 6 betray the Ukrainians and in the process betray the Brits and the Germans and everybody else in NATO is so appalling.

Speaker 6 And

Speaker 6 I do believe that bringing real indignation to these issues is appropriate.

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Speaker 5 We've covered the foreign policy side of this, the constitutional side, character. But even on the economic side, there's the seriously but not literally question.
I have another clip.

Speaker 5 This is just Trump earlier this week on what he plans to do with tariffs.

Speaker 11 I've spoken with some economists about your proposal for tariffs, and they say they don't see how it will not make items cost more in the United States.

Speaker 12 They'll approve.

Speaker 12 They'll approve. And number one, I don't need them.
I don't need Congress, but they'll approve it. I have the right to impose them myself if they don't.

Speaker 5 Unilateral tariffs without Congress.

Speaker 5 Where is the Wall Street Journal editorial board on this?

Speaker 5 I don't understand why fiscal conservatives aren't freaking out about this.

Speaker 6 When did he make that comment?

Speaker 5 It was either yesterday or over the weekend. It was a last couple of days.

Speaker 6 It's unbelievable. He is such a deep constitutional scholar.

Speaker 6 I don't need them. It's just mind-blowing.

Speaker 6 you're right, in terms of the stock market, investments, the help of the economy, jobs, the potential for a real disaster. And by the way, I don't think Stephen Mnuchin is coming back.

Speaker 6 I think the number is that of the 44 people who held cabinet-level positions with President Trump, four of the 44 are supporting him.

Speaker 6 And we have on the radio all the time people,

Speaker 6 Secretary Esper, John Bolton, people like that, whose entire lives

Speaker 6 are marred by the fact that they thought they could make things work by working for Trump, going over to the...

Speaker 6 It is the dark side.

Speaker 6 And now one of the things that is most appalling to me of all is President Trump saying that it is harsh words about him that have produced the assassination attempts.

Speaker 6 When his words about his opponents, who are vermin, he has used that term, and who are trying to destroy the country and will do anything they can to wreck the United States. I mean, really.

Speaker 5 Trevor Burrus, Jr.: Speaking of Trump's terms, I'd like to hear your take on the eating of the cats and dogs, but

Speaker 5 there's one news story this morning that I just had to share with you. I don't know if you've seen this yet.
I'm hoping I can surprise you. It's in The Guardian.

Speaker 5 Kevin Roberts, the president of the Heritage Foundation,

Speaker 5 who has led the MAGA Trumpy turn of the Heritage Foundation, used to be a history professor at New Mexico State University.

Speaker 5 Several sources at New Mexico State University told The Guardian this: He was discussing in the hallway with various members of the faculty that a neighbor's dog had been barking relentlessly and was keeping the baby and his wife awake, and he kind of lost it and took a shovel and killed the dog.

Speaker 5 End of problem.

Speaker 5 Three separate sources on that, that Kevin Roberts is a dog.

Speaker 6 That's terrific. Maybe he was part of the Christy Noam Coalition.
I mean, the dog-killing coalition.

Speaker 5 The Haitians are eating the dogs in the camps, allegedly. We have no evidence of this.
Christy Noam and Kevin Roberts, two prominent MAGA officials, are known dog murderers.

Speaker 5 Every accusation is a confession, I guess.

Speaker 6 This is extraordinary. No, I hadn't heard this.
Thank you for sharing it with me. Speaking of the Heritage Foundation, one of the

Speaker 6 most laughable lies of the daily diet of lies that we get from that other camp is the idea: what's Project 2025? I've never heard of it. I have nothing to do with it.
I have no idea what's in it.

Speaker 6 I'm not associated with it at all. I also think it's kind of strange that Kamala is putting so much emphasis on Project 2025.
There's so much other material you can focus on.

Speaker 6 You don't really need to go there. But

Speaker 6 it is truly bizarre that they got together, put this entire thing together, had, I believe, J.D. Vance wrote the introduction to Kevin Roberts' book, right?

Speaker 6 And he did. And of course, I know nothing.
I mean,

Speaker 6 what is this?

Speaker 6 It's laughable

Speaker 6 because

Speaker 6 it so utterly lacks even a scintilla of credibility.

Speaker 5 Indeed. I promise you that we'd get back to Mark Robinson.
And with J.D. Vance, I do have one more clip for you that we got to play before

Speaker 5 we close down the recent news. It's sort of like a low-light reel.
You know, it's like the opposite of the Sports Center top 10 we're doing.

Speaker 5 You know, the bottom five clips from the last couple of days of Mega World. Here's J.D.
Vance talking about what he thinks about Mark Robinson.

Speaker 13 A sex scandal in North Carolina is between the lieutenant governor and the people of North Carolina. They're going to make their decision and we support them.

Speaker 6 I mean,

Speaker 5 what is this? I was talking to Bill Kristo about this yesterday. Just kind of this post-modern nihilism of the J.D.
Vance mega world. It's like, there's no right and wrong.

Speaker 5 There's no, this is good or bad. He should or should not do this.
It's, well, let's just kind of let it play out in the court of public opinion.

Speaker 6 Yeah.

Speaker 6 The J.D. Vance phenomenon is very, very strange because one of the things that I think is true about Trump is I don't think he's all that bright.

Speaker 6 I mean,

Speaker 6 he just doesn't seem to have

Speaker 6 a background, despite the fact that he went to the Wharton School, as he brought up in the debate. But J.D.
Vance obviously is very bright.

Speaker 6 And he said worse things about Trump early on than I did.

Speaker 6 And

Speaker 6 the idea that he has turned around so completely on the other side and is backing this ludicrous

Speaker 6 charge about they're eating the dogs, they're eating the cats, they're eating the pets of the people who live there. I think it's made a great song.

Speaker 6 That's true.

Speaker 6 But

Speaker 6 it's so ludicrous. And then Mike DeWine.

Speaker 5 It's kind of worse than ludicrous, really, though. It's like depraved.
I mean, it goes back to the birth or stuff. It's racist.
It's like just, it's wrong.

Speaker 6 And especially, this is one of the things that I try to stress on the air.

Speaker 6 These Haitians in Springfield, Ohio are not illegal.

Speaker 6 They are legally authorized.

Speaker 6 And again, Mike DeWine in a piece in the New York Times, the governor of Ohio, former U.S.

Speaker 6 Senator from Ohio, lifelong Republican, solid Republican conservative, he actually wrote a moving piece about how much this was damaging the city that he grew up in and that he loves.

Speaker 6 And it's very sad.

Speaker 6 If there were any justice in the world, this malpractice, political malpractice, would make Ohio competitive again. I remember the days it was considered a swing state.

Speaker 6 Wouldn't it be terrific if things were more competitive in Ohio and in Florida as they once were?

Speaker 5 Or maybe for Sherrod Brown at least, I do think that's a more competitive phrase potentially. But yeah, Trump thing, just one more thing on the Haitians being legal.

Speaker 5 Trump at a rally last night, I don't have this clip, but started talking about sending them back.

Speaker 5 And there was a crowd chant at the event last night in Pennsylvania, send them back, send them back, about the legal Haitian immigrants. I mean, it's really sick.

Speaker 6 This is to me

Speaker 6 the very center of why the idea of writing someone in or not voting to make sure Trump doesn't become president. He is talking about deporting 20 million people.
He's used that figure.

Speaker 6 There are only at most 11 million undocumented immigrants in the country. So he's going to find a bunch of other immigrants who are legal, like the people in Springfield, Ohio.

Speaker 6 And he wants to build detention camps where you would take people, people, take them away from their American-born children in many cases, and people

Speaker 6 who are doing jobs and part of the community. Part of being on the radio, we had a situation where I'm sort of very well known, particularly here in Seattle, where we're based, for a pro-immigrant.

Speaker 6 position. I like to say my position on immigration is the same as President Reagan's, which is all four of my grandparents were immigrants.

Speaker 6 And I think it's been a great source of strength and vitality and goodness for the American experiment. In any event,

Speaker 6 we were contacted. There was a family that was picked up after living in America

Speaker 6 for 20 years. They had four American-born children.
They were from Guatemala. The guy was a president of a church.

Speaker 6 And he had a car business where he had like six employees and the idea of taking people away from their lives and putting them they had a this holding pen in tacoma washington and it's nightmarish this the fact that our government

Speaker 6 is perpetrating that kind of hardship on people who are building lives, going to church, basically employing other people, building the economy, raising their children who are in public schools.

Speaker 6 And by the way, don't really speak that much Spanish because they've grown up here.

Speaker 6 The idea of expending tens of thousands of dollars to arrest these people, to hold them in detention, and then to transport them to countries that don't want them.

Speaker 6 And by the way, this is one of those things where I do think Kamala has to be more rigorous.

Speaker 6 Trump says all the time, they're taking people from mental asylums, from insane asylums, and from the jails, and they're deliberately taking all those people.

Speaker 6 And that's why, supposedly, according to Trump, the crime has gone down so much in Venezuela and elsewhere. None of this is true.

Speaker 6 And

Speaker 6 really, there has to be more of an ability

Speaker 6 to

Speaker 6 educate the American people to the extent that many of the things that Trump has been saying repeatedly over and over and over again are just things that he knows very well to be lies.

Speaker 5 Yeah. All right.
Well, I have to do one last thing for you. I just, that I've just been dying to ask you before I let you go.
You just now look back on it, three decades of the talk radio.

Speaker 5 I was re-listening to your interview with Charlie where you talked about the callers that you had, and you have these relationships and how some of the callers have broken up with you.

Speaker 5 And I just wonder, like, is there anything that you wish you would have done differently? Is there anything that you look back and you think, man,

Speaker 5 the conservative radio movement, you know, maybe got caught up in something? I don't know.

Speaker 5 Any life lessons from this kind of strange trajectory we've been on?

Speaker 6 Yeah,

Speaker 6 I think that

Speaker 6 I stayed with the same syndicator. longer than I should have given their shift in emphasis and their attempt to dictate content.
It's hard though.

Speaker 6 Yeah.

Speaker 5 Hugh Hewitt's doing a great job over there, I should just say, just doing exactly what the bosses are looking for. But I just wanted to interrupt.

Speaker 6 No, and it's sad too. I mean, because I know you forever.
I was with Salem before you was.

Speaker 6 And I recommended him to come join us at Salem. And the difficulty is he did a column, terrific column, and this was at the time of the Republican Convention in Cleveland in 2016.

Speaker 6 Hugh did a column about we're heading toward a crash and we have to seize control of the plane and we have to take the plane. Because basically what he was saying in the column was,

Speaker 6 if we stay with Trump, we're going to lose and the party will be lost.

Speaker 6 And it's a terrific column. And he was pressured to retract it and did.

Speaker 6 And the next day, I think two days later, had another column talking about how Trump was a bold new path for the Republican Party. And do you remember when Hugh, they had a debate in Las Vegas?

Speaker 5 You asked him about the triad.

Speaker 6 Right. And you remember what Trump said to him?

Speaker 5 He didn't know what the triad was. I forget what his exact quote was.

Speaker 6 No, Trump said, I don't know. I don't care.
And I don't care about that kind of question from a third-rate disc jockey with no ratings.

Speaker 6 I don't know about you, but the most painful thing has been sort of the strain on and the end of some friendships. I mean people who have been

Speaker 6 friends in my case for tens and tens and tens of years. And the worst thing is when some of those people write about never Trumpers, they just want to be invited to the Washington cocktail parties.

Speaker 6 They want to be part of the... I don't think I've ever been to a Washington cocktail party.

Speaker 6 I mean, it just isn't on my social calendar. This is a deeper issue than that, as you very well know.

Speaker 5 Well, hopefully at least some positives, though, some people that surprised you or some, you know, meaningful relationships, some listeners that you stuck over. Did you win anybody?

Speaker 5 Would you win any of those callers over?

Speaker 6 Yeah.

Speaker 6 Yeah, a few. I get, particularly because of my last two books, God's Hand on America and The American Miracle.

Speaker 6 There have been a lot of individuals that we've won, a lot of listeners and people who write in and appreciate the books. And we're doing a podcast of American Miracle podcast, which basically

Speaker 6 the subheading for the American Miracle is America is No Accident. That there is such a thing as fate and a blessing.

Speaker 6 And the blessing is not to reward Americans, it's to impose responsibilities on us as the, as Lincoln says, the almost chosen people.

Speaker 6 And this ends for me with one of my favorite quotes, which I use in the book. And it's not from an American politician, not from a Republican, it's from Otto von Bismarck.

Speaker 6 And Bismarck once said, It is the job of any statesman to listen for God's footsteps in history

Speaker 6 and then to grab his coattails and hang on.

Speaker 6 And I believe that in the last weeks of this election cycle, you can kind of hear God's footsteps in history and they're not going in a Trumpy direction.

Speaker 5 Your lips to God's ears. That's a great place to end.

Speaker 5 Michael Medved, it is, I think, tells you everything about the devolution of the movement and the party that your slot was replaced by Sebastian Gorkha.

Speaker 5 I don't think God's footprints were involved in that one.

Speaker 6 By the way, who calls his show?

Speaker 6 Do you know what he calls his show?

Speaker 5 I'm happy to say I don't know. Please share.

Speaker 6 America First.

Speaker 6 So Henry Ford and Charles Lindbergh can be very, very proud. The idea that more people don't know about the heroic resistance to isolationism.

Speaker 6 And you have

Speaker 6 people like that Darrell, who was on with Tucker Carlson, who thought that Winston Churchill was the big villain of World War II.

Speaker 6 In any event, there will be brighter days. And I do think we will all feel a sense of liberation, relief, maybe even exhilaration at the results, God willing, on November 5th.

Speaker 5 Hope you're correct. Thank you so much to Michael Bedved for joining the Bullwork podcast.
Let's stay in touch. We'll be talking to you soon.
And we'll be back here to do it all again tomorrow. Peace.

Speaker 6 Oh, my name, it ain't nothing.

Speaker 6 My age, it means less.

Speaker 6 The country I come from

Speaker 6 is called the Midwest.

Speaker 6 I started butt up there,

Speaker 6 the laws to abide,

Speaker 6 And that the land that I live in

Speaker 6 has got on its side

Speaker 6 Oh the history books tell

Speaker 6 it

Speaker 6 They tell it so well

Speaker 6 The cavalry's charged

Speaker 6 The Indians fell.

Speaker 6 The cavalry's charged.

Speaker 6 The Indians died.

Speaker 6 Oh, the country was young

Speaker 6 with God on its side.

Speaker 5 The Bullard podcast is produced by Katie Cooper with audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.

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