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The Marjorie Taylor Greene Majority

January 20, 2023
Notes
Transcript
This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors and omissions. Ironically, the transcription service has particular problems with the word “bulwark,” so you may see it mangled as “Bullard,” “Boulart,” or even “bull word.” Enjoy!
  • Speaker 1
    0:00:07

    Welcome to Begg to differ the Bulwark weekly round table discussion featuring civil conversation across the political spectrum. We range from center left to center right. I’m on a chair and syndicated illness and policy editor at The Bulwark, and I’m joined by our regulars, Bill Galston, of the Bookings Institute in The Wall Street Journal. Linda Chavez of the Nescannon Center and Dane Linker who writes the Substack newsletter eyes on the right. Our special guest this week is Ron Brownstein who is a senior editor at the Atlantic and a senior political analyst for CNN, and a two time Pulitzer prize finalist.
  • Speaker 1
    0:00:48

    So thank you, one and all, Ram. Thanks for joining us. Thank you for inviting me. Yeah? Alright.
  • Speaker 1
    0:00:54

    So just before we began today, we been informed that the United States has already reached its debt limit. Janet Yellen has said that she is going to take extraordinary measures, like cutting contributions to retirement funds or federal employees. For a while so that the United States can meet its obligations. This can only be for a limited amount of time, she said, It’s critical that Congress act in a timely manner well. That’s the big question.
  • Speaker 1
    0:01:31

    And, Ron Epstein, I’m going to start with you you know, we have a history of Republicans in congress trying to flirt with national default in order to achieve policy objectives. And what we don’t know is whether they will blink as they always have or whether this year is different because this Republican Party in the House is arguably more radical than any we’ve seen before? Howard Bauchner:
  • Speaker 2
    0:01:59

    Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think this is clearly a more radical caucus than we have seen for as exemplified by some of the committee assignments that Kevin McCarthy felt compelled to make that we’ll talk about shortly There is, as you know, a history of when there is divided government, Republican congresses trying to use the leverage of the debt ceiling. To force changes on a Democratic president. And, you know, if you look at the Obama experience, Mona, it really offers the two paths that are here. I mean, the first time this happened in twenty eleven, Alabama did negotiate with Republicans, and they did reach an agreement that raised the debt ceiling in return for a series of budget cuts and promises of future cuts, most of which did not come through, but there was an actual negotiation and there was something called the Vayner rule people may recall distantly that said essentially that for each dollar you raise the debt ceiling, you should have an offsetting dollar in cuts.
  • Speaker 2
    0:02:57

    But by the time it came around again in twenty thirteen and twenty fourteen in a multistep confrontation, Obama chose not to negotiate with Republicans the second time, and to take a hard line against them and essentially argue that they were gambling with the global economy to pursue an ideological agenda that was not supported by most Americans. If I had to bet, That’s where Joe Biden ends up. I think they are very comfortable holding a hard line against the idea that they should be forced to negotiate changes in programs, particularly Social Security and Medicare tied to the debt ceiling. I suppose we will see, but out of the two paths they have from the Obama years, I’m guessing they go toward the more confrontational one.
  • Speaker 1
    0:03:41

    Damon, is this any way to run a railroad? I mean, you know, when a party only controls one half of one branch of government as the Republicans do. Usually, a party in this position would stage, you know, show votes and things like that because they know they can’t get anything passed realistically, but they want their voters to know they’re in there, you know, pursuing policies. They would pursue if given control of more branches and so on. But this introduction of this kind of brinkmanship and saying, you know, yes, all of these debt obligations were undertaken by the United States Congress and President But we’re gonna blow it all up.
  • Speaker 1
    0:04:26

    We’re gonna risk national default in order to get concessions. I mean, that is a different way of doing business.
  • Speaker 3
    0:04:35

    Well, it is. Although, as we all remember, it isn’t unprecedented. We’re we’re sort of living through the second Farsical Act of the original Fars that was back in twenty eleven, twenty twelve, when this whole thing unfolded the last time and during the Obama administration, as Ron was just talking about, the problem is that the Republicans took not the ideal lesson from that experience, which is that, hey, Brink’smanship, it worked it’s good. We can exact concessions. And even if they end up not being that significant, they really, you know, rile up the base and get the GOP voters convinced that the House Republicans really mean business that they’re tough.
  • Speaker 3
    0:05:23

    They won’t back down. They stand up to those liberals. And by the same token, then the lesson learned I think by Joe Biden is very much the opposite or maybe it’s just the kind of inverse of that, which is, yeah, I don’t think we’re gonna do that again.
  • Speaker 1
    0:05:40

    I
  • Speaker 3
    0:05:40

    think the Biden approach to this is likely to be more hardball than Obama. I mean, you’ll remember the Obama administration went through a long process of thinking about maybe cutting some in titles are coming up with some way of trying to placate at least enough Republicans that they could peel them off and that they would go along with raising the debt ceiling and return for some trims in the direction of government spending that they can live with. And I frankly don’t think that Biden is gonna wanna give in even that much because I think he’s been convinced by that experience that in the end, all it does is get us where we are now, which is emboldening the Republicans to think that this is how they’re gonna run the country. Which is through a series of hostage taking exercises with the good faith and credit of the United States on the chopping block. So it’s a bad situation.
  • Speaker 3
    0:06:38

    I don’t know how it’s gonna work out, especially because this will be my final point. I don’t think the Republicans have the slightest idea what they even wanna ask.
  • Speaker 1
    0:06:48

    Do they
  • Speaker 3
    0:06:48

    wanna try to put Social Security in Medicare on big cuts put in there? Or do they wanna cut defense spending? Do they wanna screw over Ukraine and see Russia make suddenly huge advances on the battlefield in Ukraine? Do they wanna do any number of other cuts to domestic programs? Every one of which would hurt a constituency app there.
  • Speaker 1
    0:07:13

    Some
  • Speaker 3
    0:07:13

    of whom are their own voters. So I really throw my hands up and I don’t know how this is gonna play out. And frankly, I don’t think the Republicans in the house too either.
  • Speaker 1
    0:07:23

    You anticipated a question that I’m now going to present to Linda. Linda, if I recall correctly, and I and please Ron or anybody else who might remember this better. Please correct me if I’m wrong, but my recollection of that initial confrontation with Obama was that Obama figured he was gonna call the Republicans bluff on this sequestration thing, where if they didn’t come to an agreement, there was gonna be this automatic sequestration of funding, of all domestic spending, which included defense spending, he figured the Republicans were still the party that was hawkish on spending and wouldn’t want to cut defense. But the Republicans were willing to cut defense at the time because their principal motive was simply to be seen fighting Obama. Not anything else.
  • Speaker 1
    0:08:13

    And now they are saying, it’s so hard to figure out, like, what are their demands? What do they want? They want to cut the IRS employees, or I’ve heard rumors they want to reduce federal spending to that, which was appropriated for fiscal year twenty twenty two, which means that the increase in defense spending that just went through would have to be rolled back. That’s my recollection, and memory is well mona, but I stand to be corrected if Ron or
  • Speaker 4
    0:08:43

    anyone else wants to. Look, this is all performative art. They are involved in this contest with Biden. As a political matter. And I think it’s quite rich that people who didn’t see any problem with Donald Trump running up the debt some seven trillion dollars.
  • Speaker 4
    0:09:06

    Now in fairness to him, part of it was because of the pandemic, making the money that necessarily needed to be man, but it was also other reasons, including the fact that we weren’t bringing in as much money to pay for the programs that we had because, you know, pass this very large tax cut. But these folks who were all good with that, who were willing to raise the debt during the Trump years no problems, no questions asked, suddenly cannot stand the idea of raising the debt. The minute they take over the house and they are really playing with the full faith and credit of the United States and they are playing a very dangerous game. We were downrated by the rating agencies in two thousand eleven, as I recall. And if they keep playing this dangerous game, it could happen again.
  • Speaker 4
    0:10:02

    And our economy right now is relatively healthy, certainly compared to other economies around the world. But there still are problems, including inflation and other things that could set us into a recession. And playing around with the debt is I think really dangerous.
  • Speaker 1
    0:10:24

    Bill, I heard former senator Pat to me, asked about the debt ceiling. And by the way, we should clarify that these things get confusing, but there are government shutdowns that have happened because the parties and the branches couldn’t agree on passing a budget. But what we’re talking about now is not a government shutdown. We’re talking about possible default on the debt payments. If the debt ceiling isn’t raised, which would mean that we would be in danger of having our good credit compromised in the world when we don’t pay interest on our debts.
  • Speaker 1
    0:11:02

    Pat Tumi was poo pooing this. He was saying, oh, come on. You know, we bring in trillions of dollars in tax revenue. We can simply prioritize paying the interest on the national debt. We’re not going to go into default.
  • Speaker 1
    0:11:14

    That’s ridiculous. Nothing to see here. And I was surprised because I tended to think of Tumi as a pretty sober level headed guy. But non Liberals like Michael Strain of AEI or Desmond Lachman who wrote a piece for the Bulwark about this, have said, look, even discussing, possibly not raising the debt ceiling is very disruptive for the world economy and for our international standing. What do you think?
  • Speaker 5
    0:11:46

    Well, I had a conversation with a lot of people from the private sector just last week, and that’s certainly their view. Which they spell out in considerable detail. They point out that the last time this happened, although we didn’t go over the cliff. We got close enough to it so that confidence was rattled domestically and internationally, and the rating of the US debt was downgraded permanently. Which increased interest costs among other negative consequences.
  • Speaker 5
    0:12:18

    And they all think that the consequences right now with a much more fragile global economy could be significantly worse. And so their position is that legislators are always satisfied when they go right to the brink and then solve the problem at the last minute. That works for politicians, but it does not work for business people. And so I think many of them are prepared to apply a lot of pressure on the Congress to make sure we don’t get close to the break. Whether that’ll work or not, I don’t know.
  • Speaker 5
    0:12:48

    But there are a few other realities here. First of all, it’s an old adage that if you take a hostage,
  • Speaker 1
    0:12:56

    you have to
  • Speaker 5
    0:12:57

    be prepared to shoot that hostage. And I think it’s an open quest whether the Republicans in the end will be ready to shoot the hostage. On the other hand, it is a huge risk and I would rather not go there. Second, there is a lot of shadow boxing in kabuki theater here, but underneath that, there is a real problem. Put it as simply as possible.
  • Speaker 5
    0:13:21

    In the twenty years from nineteen ninety through two thousand and nine, the burden of debt on the economy known technically as the debt to GDP ratio did not budge. It was stable at around sixty percent. In the year since then, the debt has doubled as a share of GDP. And we could well be in a situation in which interest rates are going to be moving for the long term above the lows at which they stood five, six, seven years ago. If so, we are talking about an increasing burden on the economy and on the federal budget.
  • Speaker 5
    0:14:05

    And the question of when enough is enough, when you’re taking undue risks with the nation’s fiscal future really has to be faced now after to repeat a doubling of the debt burden. In a relatively short period of time. But finally, I think the Republican Party in confronting this issue will also confront its own identity crisis.
  • Speaker 1
    0:14:29

    In
  • Speaker 5
    0:14:30

    many circles in the Republican Party, an argument is being made that we have become the party of the working class. And we need to retool our economic agenda to make that political reality and economic reality in a long term. Reality. That is utterly inconsistent with a strategy of fiscal austerity that includes major cuts to social security and Medicare. So is the Republican Party in dealing with this issue going to be the Party of Paul Ryan?
  • Speaker 5
    0:15:06

    Or is it going to be the party of Donald Trump? Stay tuned.
  • Speaker 1
    0:15:10

    We’re
  • Speaker 4
    0:15:10

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  • Speaker 4
    0:15:26

    We’re not interested in question answers. You have questions? We have some answers. We are not your therapist. They’ll get to financialize of your turny butt.
  • Speaker 4
    0:15:33

    We are two smart brown girls when it comes to money, career, business, brown ambition, listen wherever you get your podcast.
  • Speaker 1
    0:15:42

    We also saw this week Kevin McCarthy who was forced to make many concessions to radical members of his caucus in order to get elected speaker, make committee assignments. So I’m gonna come back to you, Ron. He has put representative Marjorie Taylor Green who, by the way, had no committee assignments in the last Congress because the Democrats forbade her. But he says she’s gonna get better committees on it. So she is now on the House Oversight Committee along with Paul Gossar, Scott Perry and Lauren Beaufort.
  • Speaker 1
    0:16:19

    Question for you is, is that that important? I mean, the oversight committee is a staging ground and people can do a lot of, you know, sort of theatrics there. But is it important? What do you think? I
  • Speaker 2
    0:16:32

    actually do think it is going to be important because I think it plays into and reinforces what is going to be the central political narrative between the Biden administration and the House Republicans over the next two years. And what we saw in twenty twenty two by any historical measure was extraordinary. Not only did Democrats avoid the usual level of losses that the president’s party experience in the midterm. But they did so when the president’s approval was well under forty percent and somewhere between seventy five and eighty percent of people depending on the state, we’re saying the economy was in bad shape. That really should not be able to happen.
  • Speaker 2
    0:17:08

    I’m right, those are a series of meteorological events that should not produce the outcome that they did. And the principal reason it happened was that a large number of voters who were dissatisfied with the way things are going, also viewed Republicans as too extreme to trust with power. It was what I called a double negative election. And after the election, I was able to find some of the data that quantify this, which might not surprise you. In the exit poll, an incredible number forty two percent of people who describe the economy as weak as only fair or poor.
  • Speaker 2
    0:17:45

    Forty two percent of them also said Republicans were too extreme. And they voted overwhelmingly Democratic. In fact, something like sixty percent of independent voters. Said they consider the Republican Party to extreme. And again, they voted highly democratic.
  • Speaker 2
    0:18:00

    And that was the margin between atypical midterm and what we saw, which is voters in districts that were slightly Biden or for that matter, states that were on the bubble in the senate races, more of them voted Democratic than you would have expect historically given the economic circumstances and the first midterm and all of that. And so here we are. Kevin McCarthy comes in with a diminished majority largely because too many voters think the Republican Party in the Trump era is extreme. And what does he do? I mean, he basically confesses to his weakness by putting so many extreme voices and not only just kind of generically, extreme, but people who were centrally involved, singled out by the January sixth committee for their involvement in Trump’s effort to overturn the election.
  • Speaker 2
    0:18:44

    He puts them all front and center on key committees. And of course, beyond those you mentioned, I mean, the most important of all is Jim Jordan, who is going to be leading this weaponization of the federal government committee, which is essentially, I think, by all indications, you know, designed to be a forum for the grievances of the most pro Trump furthest right Republicans that the deep state is conspiring against them. There are a lot of Republican donors and strategists and all of you, Linda, certainly probably, you know, talks to more of them than I do, came out of twenty twenty two saying, we have to put Trump in the rearview mirror, especially after his handpicked candidates for governor and senate lost in all five of the states that flipped in sixteen to twenty and was the side twenty four Michigan Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Arizona, and Georgia. There was this big rush toward that conclusion among kind of the leadership and elites in the Republican Party. It’s pretty clear that House Republicans did not get that memo.
  • Speaker 2
    0:19:45

    And are not going to be proceeding on that course on the next two years. And in fact, are going to be doing a whole series of things from both policy and investigation and style that highlights that branch of the party. And I think MTG is going to be as ubiquitous in Democratic ads in twenty four as AOC or Nancy Pelosi has been. In the past in Republican ads. Howard Bauchner: Okay,
  • Speaker 1
    0:20:08

    Linda, Jim Jordan, I mean, he’s a very serious guy. He’s he’s gonna conduct him self with
  • Speaker 4
    0:20:14

    — Oh, yeah. Oh,
  • Speaker 1
    0:20:15

    yeah. — with with great dignity. And by the way, let’s just note that among the people on this oversight committee that Scott Perry, who is now the head of the Freedom caucus, his phone was seized by the FBI as part of its criminal investigation of January sixth, He’s the guy who was texting to Mark Meadows in the period between the November election. And January six, saying that they needed to investigate Italian spy satellites that he said were affecting election outcomes flipping votes. This is the quality of people now who are gonna be on this committee.
  • Speaker 1
    0:20:53

    And, of course, Beau Bird and Gossar at I mean, who attended the white nationalist Nick Fuentes Nazi, really conference on Taylor Green. I mean, jeez. What do you say, Linda? Is it a mistake? You can’t even say it’s a mistake because McCarthy is so gelled that he has no choice.
  • Speaker 1
    0:21:13

    I mean, his mistakes are so old at point, but I mean, is this going to backfire as Ron was suggesting on the Republicans because these people are gonna be so prominent Well, we shall see, I guess. I mean, obviously, they don’t think
  • Speaker 4
    0:21:29

    so. Obviously, they think that they, you know, stand to benefit. And certainly, it makes it less likely that you’ll be primary if you get in with this crowd. And it’s
  • Speaker 1
    0:21:41

    not as if the Biden administration doesn’t have mulnerabilities. Right? I mean, when they start
  • Speaker 4
    0:21:45

    looking into things. That’s exactly right. There are some legitimate avenues of inquiry, including by the way, Hunter Biden, I don’t have
  • Speaker 1
    0:21:55

    a problem with them investigating. I beg to differ, Linda. Really, have you ever seen a congressional committee go after a president’s relatives as part of his business?
  • Speaker 4
    0:22:07

    No. No. No. Well, that’s true. But I do think it’s a sort of sad story.
  • Speaker 4
    0:22:15

    But, yeah, there is certainly room for oversight. The Biden administration in certain areas, I think, has played fast and loose and has pushed executive power to the limits but that’s not what these folks are going to do. And I don’t see how this will help them in the general election in twenty twenty four. I don’t see how having the Lauren Roberts and Marjorie Taylor Greens and Paul Gossar and all of these other jokers out there being the face of the party is gonna help the Republican brand. And, you know, time will tell whether that’s true or not.
  • Speaker 4
    0:22:58

    But, clearly, Kevin McCarthy made his piece We saw what happened on the floor of the house during that whole debacle of his having been chosen speaker. He clearly gave the people who were causing new troubles, what they wanted. And that’s how I got to be speaker. And that in Kevin McCarthy’s Mind is the single most important thing in his life. I mean, that is what he has always wanted.
  • Speaker 4
    0:23:28

    He’s always wanted to be speaker. Well, now he’s speaker. How long he? Remain speaker again is up in the air because just
  • Speaker 1
    0:23:35

    one
  • Speaker 4
    0:23:35

    member can raise an objection and essentially asked for no confidence vote, and he could in fact not last as speaker. So he’s sees it as in his best interest to appease the loontiest of the looney tunes.
  • Speaker 1
    0:23:50

    Speaking of which Damon Linker George Devaldor Santos, whatever his name may be in reality. He’s been assigned the Small Business Committee and the Science Space and Technology Committee But it seems like not a day passes that we don’t see something else crazy about him coming out I guess there is no bottom. McCarthy did not have to assign him to a committee. Right? I mean, he could have just said, you know, let’s wait and see how all of these things play out.
  • Speaker 1
    0:24:28

    Let’s see what the legal disposition maybe and so on. But no, he put him on two committees. Well,
  • Speaker 3
    0:24:35

    I did use the word farce in my last comment. So maybe I just go back to that. Mhmm. Yeah. I don’t even know what to say about the Santos
  • Speaker 1
    0:24:45

    story. There
  • Speaker 3
    0:24:46

    doesn’t appear to be any moved to, like, kick him out of the house. He’s there. He has his seat. He’s, like, Zealink, you know, the old Woody Allen movie. I mean, the guy who’s, like, the human chameleon and just he he’s not quite that.
  • Speaker 3
    0:24:58

    He’s, like, a blend between Zellie again, the invisible man. He’s, like, this cipher of a creature who nobody knows anything about him. We were having some chit chat before the podcast started and some of us were wondering, like, do we even know for sure that he’s an American citizen? Was he born in this country? Anything could be true.
  • Speaker 3
    0:25:20

    And that the the sad thing is is we really don’t no. Because every
  • Speaker 1
    0:25:24

    way you’re saying have to be born in the US, to be a member of Congress.
  • Speaker 3
    0:25:27

    No. But it still would be nice to know it. The truth of things. And with him, there appears to be I mean, you say there’s no bottom usually by that. We mean, like moral turbo tune.
  • Speaker 3
    0:25:38

    But In his case, it’s an epistemological problem. Like, we don’t know anything about what’s true about this individual’s background life experiences. And that’s kind of comical. I mean, there’s no ideology involved. It’s not that he’s in a certain faction of the party that’s aligned with Trump or aligned with DeSantis or has any track record in the house previously where, like, someone owes him a favor.
  • Speaker 3
    0:26:09

    It would seem like the easiest thing in the world to just try to ignore him, put him in the back row and just sort of let him fade away or the crazy scandal of his identity sort of fade in the news so that maybe a year from now, he can be brought up without being a laugh line. But instead, he puts him on committees where he’s gonna actually have least a little bit of leverage, a little bit of influence in the party, in the caucus. And as a fresh even house member who stepped in a big mess before he even took his seat. I I don’t know why he’s owed anything. So it’s baffling.
  • Speaker 3
    0:26:49

    It’s almost as if McCarthy is running a kind of a a piece of performance art where he’s trying to ask what can I do to demonstrate more thoroughly than any other person in American public life that I have absolutely no spine and no courage and a pushover on everything, so I’ll bend over backwards even when there’s no need to do it. The whole thing is perplexing to me. Kevin
  • Speaker 1
    0:27:15

    McCarthy. Step right up, ladies and gentlemen, pay your five cents, and see the man without a spine. Yeah.
  • Speaker 3
    0:27:21

    He’s like the jellyfish. Yeah. Will be his
  • Speaker 1
    0:27:25

    nickname. Yeah. Bill Galston, you weighed in in your Wall Street Journal column about the necessity for getting tanks to Ukraine. And I wanna ask you, you talked about these leopard tanks. So please explain the Germans who built them they have to give their approval, I guess, if another country that has them like Poland or Czech Republic or somebody else wants to then send them over to Ukraine.
  • Speaker 1
    0:27:52

    They have to give their approval because of the original contract. Is that the deal? That
  • Speaker 5
    0:27:56

    is the deal.
  • Speaker 1
    0:27:57

    You made a strong case for why we need to send tanks. I
  • Speaker 5
    0:28:01

    did. And, you know, although I thought I was breaking new ground on that day in the next twenty four hours, columnist after columnist weighed in with identical arguments. So either I have no imagination or break minds, think alike, or something.
  • Speaker 1
    0:28:19

    But
  • Speaker 5
    0:28:19

    there is a serious issue here, unfortunately. As
  • Speaker 1
    0:28:24

    of last
  • Speaker 5
    0:28:25

    week, it seemed that the Germans were going to give a kind of a tacit green light, not to send tanks to Ukraine themselves directly, but to allow countries that had purchased these tanks from Germany to do so.
  • Speaker 2
    0:28:42

    But that
  • Speaker 1
    0:28:43

    was
  • Speaker 5
    0:28:43

    last Thursday, And in Davos, chancellor Schultz apparently told a group of American legislators that no, that was not the case. And that unless the United States agreed to send M1 Abrams tanks to Ukraine, that Germany would not agree either to send tanks on its own hook or to commit other countries to transship from Poland to Romania or wherever. To Ukraine. This is all coming to the head on Friday of this week when a bunch of defense Ministers and others are going to be gathered at Ramstein Air Force Base in Germany to make what I believe will be the most important set of decisions for twenty twenty three about the equipment that Ukraine will have and the chances, therefore, that they will have to push the Russians back from the current stalled front lines. And I understand chancellor Schultz’s position, although I don’t accept it, But what I don’t understand is why the Biden administration continues to cite technical reasons like the amount of gas that m one Abraham’s tanks consume or the difficulty of maintaining these vehicles as a reason not to send them to Ukraine.
  • Speaker 5
    0:30:05

    If they’re such clunky vehicles, why are they the centerpiece of the workforce? It’s not the only clunky I really don’t understand.
  • Speaker 1
    0:30:12

    Are tanks supposed to be clunky. I thought that was part
  • Speaker 5
    0:30:15

    of the end. They’re not famous for their gas mileage neither. But however that may be, The tanks have now become a political issue as well as a military issue, and I hope very much that the Biden administration doesn’t stand on ceremony and agrees to send some tanks from our arsenal to Ukraine because that will remove the Germans’ last excuse for not doing the same themselves and even more important, allowing some of the two thousand that are now in use throughout Europe. To be shipped to Ukraine. This could be the ballgame.
  • Speaker 5
    0:30:51

    This could determine whether Ukraine wins the war in twenty twenty three or we end up with a stalled frontline at a frozen conflict and weakening Western support for continuation of the war.
  • Speaker 1
    0:31:04

    I just came across a quote that I can’t resist. I thought it was I thought it was very apt regarding whether Germany will give a approval for the the leopard tanks. Poland’s prime minister Matteos Morovitsky. I hope I’m good now to you, Matt. Said said, quote, I am moderately skeptical, moderately pessimistic because the Germans are defending themselves against this like a devil protects himself against holy water.
  • Speaker 1
    0:31:36

    So, anyway, just wanted to share that Damon, I believe that the Biden administration has generally been quite good on this matter. But one area where I think they are open to criticism is that they are always self inhibiting. You know, they’ll say, well, we’re not gonna send x weapons system because that would be escalatory. And as my son, Ben Parker, pointed out, who’s a student at the SICE School of Advanced and International Studies, that can be a self fulfilling prophecy. You know, and they say they can’t do it up until the moment that they do it.
  • Speaker 1
    0:32:12

    And it’s a little fresh trading that, you know, once again, here we are with the matter of tanks, which Bill points out, could be a real game changer, could mean winning this war. This whole business about the Abrams tanks using too much gas. I think that’s a pretext. I mean, I think they’re worried about the escalatory thing again. Yeah.
  • Speaker 3
    0:32:31

    I actually am gonna come down mildly on the Biden side of this argument. I mean, this sometimes can seem frustrating in the flow of time as we go from point a to b throughout the last almost full year since the end of February when this began.
  • Speaker 1
    0:32:49

    But I
  • Speaker 3
    0:32:50

    guess part of my analysis here flows from the fact that I don’t really think this is gonna end with a decisive victory for Ukraine. It probably will end up as a kind of grinding stalemate of some kind, the model probably closer to the Kurarian Peninsula than the end of World War two. Now we could argue about that, but I do think that a decisive victory in which Russia withdraws entirely back over the border and runs away with its tail between its legs and Ukraine can say, uh-huh, we kicked their butts. I don’t think that’s gonna happen.
  • Speaker 1
    0:33:28

    And
  • Speaker 3
    0:33:29

    I do worry about escalation. I do think it’s something to be concerned about. And I think actually in effect,
  • Speaker 1
    0:33:35

    We don’t
  • Speaker 3
    0:33:36

    know what’s pretext and what isn’t. Do they really care about the gasoline and all that? I
  • Speaker 1
    0:33:41

    think that the
  • Speaker 3
    0:33:42

    end result has been pretty positive in containing the real respiratory risk here. And here I’m following a very good Twitter thread by Dmitry Alperovitch, who I’ve cited on here before, has a really shrewd smart analyst of Russia. You may recall, I actually pointed to a tweet thread of his in mid February where he gamed out exactly what was gonna happen with the start of the war, and he turned out to be pretty much vindicated entirely. So I I trust his accumen on all of this, and he, of course, speaks the languages to follow the news very closely. And his argument is that there really are escalatory risks of nuclear exchange, but that we’ve been able to contain that risk by getting China to signal to the Kremlin that nuclear escalation is unacceptable But Russia knows that it could get out of this if there is a very provocative leap and the weaponry that we send to Ukraine, and Ukraine can very quickly start using those weapons to decisively shift things on the battlefield.
  • Speaker 3
    0:34:56

    And the fact that we’ve gone so agonizingly slowly over months and months and months. We seem to drag our feet. And again, it’s frustrating. It’s led to higher casualties on the part of Ukraine. It’s led the conflict to drag out much longer than we would like.
  • Speaker 3
    0:35:13

    But the end result is that Russia has ended up kind of in a box on this. Because it can’t save a rattle too much when it’s this kind of incremental snail’s pace increase of Ukraine’s formatability of their weapons in a way that they would be able to escalate if suddenly we shipped them very powerful offensive weapons that they begin using right away. They could say, look at this. This is basically NATO and war with us right now. They have shipped these weapons and now the battlefield has shifted dramatically and we’re on the defensive we have to defend ourselves and that requires deploying tactical nukes and perhaps other things.
  • Speaker 3
    0:35:58

    So if our goal is to lead Ukraine to defend itself and come something in the vicinity of actually prevailing in this and pushing Russia back, getting Russia to regret that it’s done all of this without ending up in a nuclear conflict or a direct military battle between NATO forces and Russia. Then we seem to be sort of threading the needle. Again, whether it’s entirely from the point of view of of tactics and strategy by the Biden administration or just the kind of the way it’s ended up by the fact that they’re very cautious. It seems to be working pretty well. So that’s my best attempt to kind of get Biden’s back and defend the way they’re going about all of Well,
  • Speaker 1
    0:36:45

    that’s a great defense of a position that I don’t share. Excellent. That was
  • Speaker 3
    0:36:50

    my goal. Yes. Victory. I think
  • Speaker 1
    0:36:54

    the Russians are deterred from using nuclear weapons by the fact that they would be an international pariah even more than they are now and fear of allegation. And so I really don’t think that slow rolling the kind of weapons we sent to Ukraine is the way to go. But okay. Let us turn now to the president’s changing position on immigration. I’m gonna rely heavily here on Linda.
  • Speaker 1
    0:37:20

    Linda, it’s clear that the president feels he has to change something. There is a huge surge of people coming to the border. There were Let’s see, apprehensions soared from one point seven million in the first year of his term to two point four million in the second year of his term. He is getting pressure even from Democrats like mayor Adams of New York City who is saying, look, Our shelters are getting overwhelmed, but, Linda, I don’t understand what he’s doing. He’s claiming that Title forty two.
  • Speaker 1
    0:37:56

    Now he’s going to extend even though he’s been in court arguing that Title forty two should be disbanded. I mean, there is no longer a COVID emergencies. So where are we in all this? Well, it is all very confusing. Title forty two right now is still being used, and that’s
  • Speaker 4
    0:38:15

    largely because even though a district court said there was no longer a health emergency that could justify its use, and the way in which it is used is that those coming across claiming asylum in the United States under our existing asylum laws are now turned back under title forty two or can be turned back under forty two. But the problem is what the Biden administration is trying to do is to lessen the number of people who were showing up attempting to cross into the United States and claim asylum and or just sneak into the United States as illegal immigrants have done for a century. And he’s having difficulty with that because the Congress refuses to act. The fact is he came up with the plan, which had I thought some very good ideas in it, one of which was that the real problem right now are the asylum seekers. There are some eighteen million plus individuals in the Western Hemisphere who have been to placed from their normal living places in South America and Central America.
  • Speaker 4
    0:39:27

    That’s according to the United Nations, high conditional on refugees. Among
  • Speaker 3
    0:39:34

    those
  • Speaker 4
    0:39:35

    are seven million Venezuelans, there are an enormous number of Venezuela’s Hazians, Cubans, and Nicaragua’s, who are showing up claiming asylum at our southern
  • Speaker 1
    0:39:48

    border. And all
  • Speaker 4
    0:39:48

    of them would under normal circumstances have some chance of a claim of asylum based on the fact that they are political refugees, if you will. They are trying to
  • Speaker 1
    0:40:02

    escape persecution in their countries because of politics. Well, can I interrupt for one second and just ask because, you know, that I’m incredibly sympathetic to people wanting to flee political persecution. But is that really the right measure? I mean, people who are fleeing Venezuela, many, I would say, are fleeing, not the political oppression, but the fact that the economy has collapsed. And that it’s collapsed.
  • Speaker 1
    0:40:27

    Hungary of the
  • Speaker 4
    0:40:28

    politics. Right? That’s true. That’s true. But they can’t do anything about it.
  • Speaker 4
    0:40:33

    In their country because they try to, they won’t be, in fact, politically persecuted. But I absolutely agree that we need to rethink our asylum laws. The current law, which requires you to step foot on US oil in order to claim asylum isn’t working. And so one of the good things that the Biden plan came up with was a way to be able to apply for asylum without actually showing up at the US
  • Speaker 1
    0:41:00

    border.
  • Speaker 3
    0:41:01

    And
  • Speaker 4
    0:41:01

    they put in place essentially. It’s an app that people can use to put in a claim and they then are not supposed to show up until they are given a date for a hearing. And that does a number of things. It makes the flow easier. It also deals with the problem that when you’re seeking asylum, you’re not supposed to go through a bunch of different countries in order to get to the United States and claim asylum there.
  • Speaker 4
    0:41:28

    Normally, you claim asylum by going to the very first country. That you land in and try to get asylum there. So part of the talks between Obrador and Biden in Mexico City
  • Speaker 1
    0:41:44

    a
  • Speaker 4
    0:41:44

    week or so ago, had to do with trying to get Mexico to be more welcoming, to accept Venezuelan and other
  • Speaker 1
    0:41:54

    asylum seekers.
  • Speaker 4
    0:41:54

    So that’s one thing. But the other thing that Biden did, which is also a good thing, is to create a thirty thousand person per month system of parole into the United States. For these folks. And it’s from specifically those countries, Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua, and Haiti, so long as the person had family or others in the United States who would accept responsibility for them and who could be vetted. Can
  • Speaker 1
    0:42:27

    you explain what parole
  • Speaker 4
    0:42:28

    means in the immigration context? Well, it essentially says you can live here. And at a certain point, you’re even given authorization to work. And that’s why you await determination of your eventual status. Okay.
  • Speaker 4
    0:42:44

    So it’s not permanent residents. It isn’t assuming that you’re actually going to be immigrating to the United States, but this kind of gives you a breather. So that’s going to affect, you know, thirty thousand per month from those four countries. You know, you do the math. It’s three hundred and sixty thousand for the year.
  • Speaker 4
    0:43:02

    That’s a significant number of people. So some of the immigration activists, however, have objected because what will happen now is if people don’t abide by these new rules if they don’t come in through the parole system or they don’t come in through this application system that the administration is putting into place and they try to come anyway without going through those procedures. They then will not be eligible in the future to be paroled or to be able to seek asylum. And so that’s some of the objections to that. But the bottom line is he doesn’t have a whole lot of authority here.
  • Speaker 4
    0:43:42

    We have laws in this country that need to be changed. You know, we cannot get around the fact that we are not admitting enough people legally through our normal immigration system to satisfy our needs as a country, for labor. And by the way, for growth — Yeah. — for population, we are, you know, we are shrinking now. You know, we saw the numbers out of China.
  • Speaker 4
    0:44:08

    Their demographics are going in the wrong direction. Well, so are ours. Yeah. And one of the ways we fix it is by not just letting in immigrants who obviously boost the numbers, but those immigrants are more likely to have children at least in the first and maybe second generation than the native born. So this is good for the country.
  • Speaker 4
    0:44:27

    So I’m giving Biden at least a b plus on what he’s trying to do. It’s not gonna satisfy everybody and if there is not, you know, some enforcement on the part of Mexico and other countries who need to agree to either take people back or to give them the chance to seek asylum in those countries, it won’t be a huge escape valve for the United States, but I do think it is a step in the right
  • Speaker 1
    0:44:56

    direction. Thank you for that. Ron Epstein, clearly Biden has felt political pressure to do something different about the border. And I am extremely pro immigration, but you were saying earlier, you know, that the Republicans risk being seen as extreme as by giving these prominent committee spots to the crazies. But is there a danger for Democrats of being seen as to radical law on immigration?
  • Speaker 1
    0:45:26

    Sure. You know, we’ve seen consistently through the Biden administration that most Americans
  • Speaker 2
    0:45:30

    and not only Republicans, have given him poor grades for handling the border. As an electoral matter, this tends to be an issue that matters much more to Republicans than to other voters, and to some extent, it’s kind of making the ruble bounce with people who are very unlikely to vote for him. Anyway, I mean, the real point is where Linda ended up, which is that we have been in a situation for at least twenty years where politically The only way to do all of the things that have to be done to try to get this under better control is for both parties do it together because neither side can manage the coalition politics that reflects all the complexities of this issue. And look, this is like a lot of issues that touch on foreign policy, it is a problem you manage, you don’t solve. There is no solving of this problem in terms of people feeling border is too porous or we have too many people coming.
  • Speaker 2
    0:46:29

    But the core paradox is what Linda said. We’ve just gone through the decade that twenty ten through twenty twenty was the second slowest growth in the population in American history, you know. And this is happening as the baby boom is aging into retirement. And we are going to see a radical, maybe radical is too strong, but a steady deterioration of the balance between working age population and senior population. And we also know from Pew Research Center and others that literally all of the growth, the net growth in the working age population in the coming decades are immigrants and their children already.
  • Speaker 2
    0:47:10

    So, you know, there is actually a enormous self interest argument to the older white voters who are core anti immigrant constituency, the core kind of fox that are coming to get you constituency, that in fact, it is in their economic self interest to bring in more working age people and to invest for that matter and more kids of color in general because they are the people who are going to fund your retirement. They’re gonna fund your social security, and Medicare. You just can’t get there with one party. You can’t increase the legal integration, rethink the asylum process, have some stronger enforcement and provide the rational response of some pathway to legal status for all the people who are here illegally and are unlikely to be removed. We’re not going to deport them.
  • Speaker 2
    0:47:57

    We saw in two thousand and six a bipartisan filibuster proof majority pass this in the Senate, including Mitch McConnell. We saw it in twenty thirteen, again, a bipartisan filibuster proof majority pass this in the Senate, including Marco Rubio. Each time the House Republicans would not take up the bill that was passed, the first one under Republican president, the second under the Democratic president. So we’re just gonna keep I think shadow boxing and scoring political points until we reach and I don’t know how we do that sweet spot where there is enough buy in in both parties to do the combination of things that have to be done together, that no party can do alone that would at least give us a better handle on this problem even if not solving it altogether.
  • Speaker 1
    0:48:42

    Yes. You know, this is maybe not so nice to say, but for those elderly Fox viewers, in addition to having immigrants come in and pay into the Social Security system, which is very important to them. Personally, I mean, they also would be the home health aid who would help them with their catheters and all the rest of it. So that’s something else that they might want to consider. But Bill Gallston, one of the incredibly frustrating trading things again about this problem and and Ron sort of summed up what I think as well that, you know, we absolutely are gonna be chasing our tails continually about this.
  • Speaker 1
    0:49:17

    But when you’ve got Eric Adams and and, of course, all the republican governors talking about, you know, humanitarian burden of people coming in and and the shelters are full. That is a real issue. But part of the problem is that we forbid these people who come in asylum seekers from working for six months or something like six months. I mean, if we just let them work, We wouldn’t have them in shelters. On and off, is that crazy?
  • Speaker 5
    0:49:44

    Look, in a structurally crazy system,
  • Speaker 1
    0:49:48

    It’s
  • Speaker 5
    0:49:49

    hard to locate sanity. And I am totally in agreement with Linda on this point. The problem is not the discretionary policies that presidents may choose to adopt from time time to to deal with the surface of this problem. We have tried and failed, as Ron pointed out, to enact needed immigration reform on a bipartisan basis now for decades. Now we’re reaping the fruits of that.
  • Speaker 5
    0:50:19

    Someone once told me that he had demonstrated that if you followed the New York City building code to the letter, you could never build a building in New York City. And I think we now have an immigration policy where if you follow the law as written, your hands are completely tied. Yeah. So I’ve spent decades coming up with policy proposals for this, that, and the other thing. And I’ve probably crafted more policy proposals for immigration reform than any other issue and I sort of thrown out my hands.
  • Speaker 5
    0:50:55

    You
  • Speaker 1
    0:50:55

    know, it’s not a question
  • Speaker 5
    0:50:56

    of ideas. Everybody sort of knows what needs to be done. But in the end, the political system as a whole is incapable of producing that result. And so We’ll keep on marching from one crisis to another, one legal controversy to another one jury rigged regulation that may or may not be consistent with the president’s executive authority to another — Yeah. — without end until we do what we’ve failed to do for so many years.
  • Speaker 1
    0:51:27

    It really is the definition of dysfunction. Well, okay, Damon, there’s one good thing that I saw this week on the subject. I don’t know if you saw this story, but the state department has adopted something that’s gonna call the welcome core. Which is private organizations that want to sponsor refugees can do so. They get together and they provide assistance and support and promised to do so that they can actually bring in more refugees that way.
  • Speaker 1
    0:51:57

    That seems like a positive development.
  • Speaker 3
    0:52:00

    Sure. I mean, that’s a good example of the kind of thing that a former Republican like yourself Reganite would get excited about. Bring the private sector in here — Yeah. — that’ll make it more
  • Speaker 1
    0:52:10

    popular. And
  • Speaker 3
    0:52:11

    there might still be some Republicans around this country who would be happy to think, oh, okay. Like, if a private company is sponsoring it, then maybe it’s not so bad. I mean, for Republicans, the real issue is securing the border. It feels like chaos, no one’s in charge here. And to the extent that you can get private organizations, companies to actually step up and have a role in the process.
  • Speaker 3
    0:52:37

    I think that could ease some minds. It sounds a little like a drop in the bucket of a huge, huge problem. But but it but it’s encouraging. Any encouraging sign? And it’s not
  • Speaker 1
    0:52:49

    just companies, Damon. It’s also churches and, you know, civic groups and so on. Oh, yeah. Well, exactly like the
  • Speaker 3
    0:52:54

    civil society. This side the conservatism
  • Speaker 1
    0:52:56

    I was
  • Speaker 3
    0:52:57

    a part of before I both it from the right back in the nineteen nineties and early two thousands. It’s the conservatism of Gertrude Hemmelfar, That’s right, which I can still largely affirm and and have a lot of respect for. So that’s good. If that can contribute, to finding some kind of solution, then absolutely good idea. Now
  • Speaker 1
    0:53:20

    with that, let us turn to our highlight or low light of the weekend. Damon Linker, I’ll start with you. Okay. It might
  • Speaker 3
    0:53:28

    seem like a relatively small thing, but it’s actually a list of out ten things in a Pew Research Center series of polls. It’s actually most of them are not really new. It’s polls that they’ve conducted over past year or so. Periodically, they send out an email with a bunch of them together under theme, and this one is titled. Power Republicans view their party and key issues facing the country as the hundred eighteenth Congress begins.
  • Speaker 3
    0:53:58

    And I wanna highlight one particular point in this list of ten. All of them are very interesting, so it’s definitely worth listeners seeking this out, just about a paragraph for each one. Most of them have a very helpful little chart to illustrate what that data point is telling us about. But this is an old hobbyist of mine. Long time listeners won’t recall.
  • Speaker 3
    0:54:19

    I break it up from time to time. Having to do with the challenges, of trying to keep a healthy liberal democracy when trust levels have sunk so low. And this is especially a big problem on the right, just as in the sixties and seventies, it was more a problem on the left. So number five in this list of few items as Republicans have soured on many national institutions in recent years. And the poll results show this that colleges and universities roughly forty five points below what Democrats feel about colleges and universities and labor unions or down to thirty six.
  • Speaker 3
    0:54:58

    Both of those definitely labor unions for forever have skewed left in the minds of most peoples, so that’s not really that surprising, but k to twelve public schools only trusted by thirty seven percent of Republicans But then we get to technology companies, only forty percent banks and other financial institutions, thirty eight percent trust large corporations, twenty five percent. You know, so there we really see an illustration of this phenomenon. It got brought up earlier in the pod today of this question of, like, is the Republican party gonna become a working class party? Well, I’m extremely skeptical that that’s gonna happen, especially given the priorities of the current house majority. But This certainly shows that at the level of public opinion, Republican voters seem to have increasingly hostile and negative attitudes toward big business and financial institutions as well, tech companies, that’s a big change and something that is sure to have implications on policy priorities in the party.
  • Speaker 3
    0:56:08

    I should add briefly that the institutions that Republican like are limited to small businesses, the military, and churches, and religious organizations, other than that pretty much negative across the board.
  • Speaker 1
    0:56:22

    Interesting. Okay. Bill Galston. This falls
  • Speaker 5
    0:56:27

    under the heading of a low light. On February twenty seventh of last year, chancellor Schultz of Germany announced a Biden vendor. That is a turning point in history and that Germany would reorient its defense and foreign policy in the face of the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the threat of that pose to the west. To implement this policy, he chose a defense minister with absolutely no experience in defense policy who turned out to be one of the most hapless ministers in the history of the post World War two Democratic, German,
  • Speaker 1
    0:57:16

    Republic.
  • Speaker 5
    0:57:17

    She finally resigned in disgrace and offered this opportunity for a fundamental change, of course, chancellor Schultz chose as the new defense minister a provincial official, pause, with absolutely no defense experience. We all know the famous definition of madness. I ask you, is this not an instance of that definition?
  • Speaker 1
    0:57:45

    Wow. Okay. Thank you. Linda Chavez, Well, Mona, it’s straight off. The wires, the supreme court,
  • Speaker 4
    0:57:55

    has said that it cannot identify. The person who leaked the opinion having to do with reversing rosy wave. And you may recall that after the opinion was leaked,
  • Speaker 1
    0:58:07

    I guess,
  • Speaker 4
    0:58:08

    he’s the marshal who oversees security for the Supreme Court was tasked with interviewing an doing a study of, you know, who it might possibly have been. Apparently, he conducted a hundred and twenty six interviews of ninety seven employees and said he was able to find no evidence of who might have leaked and that study included looking at computer devices, networks, printers, and available call and text logs. What it doesn’t say, and I have to claim ignorance to this, was, did they ask on drug each of the supreme court justices and their clerks? Who might have leaked it, but it doesn’t say they did that. So I don’t know that we’ll ever get to the bottom of it.
  • Speaker 4
    0:58:51

    It is a low light because as we know,
  • Speaker 1
    0:58:53

    it’s one
  • Speaker 4
    0:58:54

    of the few times in history when we’ve gotten that kind of not just advance notice of what the actual opinion was gonna say, but actually how individual justices ended up voting and it has helped to take away some of the authority and trust from the American people for this US supreme court.
  • Speaker 1
    0:59:20

    I cannot imagine the investigators sitting justices down and asking justice gorsets, did you leak this? I mean, just can’t see that happening. Me either, but it’s too bad. Yeah. Well, it is I mean, it is a shame that it happened and it does.
  • Speaker 1
    0:59:38

    In addition to all the things you said, I would also add that it cannot have helped the interpersonal relationships on the court, you know, among the justices and among the clerks, you know, that must have ratcheted the anxiety and the and the suspicion so much, which isn’t good. Okay.
  • Speaker 2
    1:00:00

    Ron Brownstein, Well, I’m going with, I guess, it’s either a highlight or a low light depending on your point of view, and I’m going to go back to Kevin McCarthy’s appointments of the far right members who participated in the Trump effort to overturn the election to such prominent committee roles because McCarthy has In case there was any doubt, maybe there wasn’t that much doubt to begin with. He has provided us a service and that he has essentially let us know at this point exactly how the next two years are going to unfold. I think that after these decisions, I mean, they they pretty much tell you everything you need to know about the balance of power in the caucus. I can’t believe, as I said, this was something he would have done if he felt he had any leeway at all not to do it.
  • Speaker 1
    1:00:44

    Because he has
  • Speaker 2
    1:00:44

    ensured that all of the high profile investigations will now be shadowed by the role of members whose own performance in the past has caused serious question. I don’t know if the image of extremism that we talked about will cause Republicans control of the house. They have redistricting in Ohio and North Carolina, they could fortify them by adding more seats after changes in the State Supreme Court. In those states. But I do think that overall, the House Republicans are on a trajectory where the overriding image that was such a problem for Republicans in twenty twenty two, particularly in white collar suburbs around the country that once voted Republican is still going to be a problem in twenty twenty four.
  • Speaker 2
    1:01:26

    And I think that looms as a huge obstacle, particularly in the five states that decided twenty twenty, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Georgia, and Arizona, and are almost certain to decide twenty twenty four again. So I think McCarthy has, in his own way, done what he could to make that tougher on Republicans in two years. Interesting.
  • Speaker 1
    1:01:48

    Thank you. I want to highlight a piece that appeared in the Desirate News. Now in general, I am not sympathetic to complaints by Republicans about big tech and, you know, supposedly, you know, conspiracies to silence, conservative voices, and so on and so forth, and I think most of that is ridiculous. Certainly, their voices are not being squelched. But I do think that in the realm of the role of social media on children and teenagers, there is an important policy point here.
  • Speaker 1
    1:02:22

    And this is a piece that appears by Brad Wilcox and Riley Peterson called time to treat big tech like big tobacco. And they point out that in the past decade, anxiety depression and teen suicide have surged especially among girls since the mass adoption of smartphones right around twenty ten and depression has more than doubled from twelve percent in twenty ten to twenty six percent for teenage girls, emergency room visits for self inflicted injuries, almost doubled over the same period again for teen girls. And teen suicide among girls has risen to a forty year high. And they are praising a move by governor Spencer Cox of Utah and the Utah legislature where they are going to require that tech companies age verify their users, get permission from parents, for users younger than eighteen. Give parents access to kids social media accounts and take other steps that will get parents more involved.
  • Speaker 1
    1:03:30

    It’s not a ban, but it is an aid to responsible parents to protect their kids from the content that is on these platforms. And I think this is very necessary and a good step forward So, recommend this piece by Brad Wilcox of the Institute for Families Studies and Riley Peterson about handling Big Tech. And with that, I would like to thank our guest, Ron Brownstein, and our regular panel Also, our sound engineer today was Joe Armstrong, and our producer is Katie Cooper. And most of all, I want to thank our listeners who are fantastic. And thank you for all your comments, but I would now want to do a little bag and ask that you Put the word out, please rate and review us.
  • Speaker 1
    1:04:22

    Give us five stars. If you don’t wanna give us five stars, please don’t rate us. But that really makes a difference. And as always, your comments are more than welcome. And with that, we will say goodbye and we will return next week as every week.
  • Speaker 5
    1:04:48

    Former Navy SEAL Sean Ryan shared real stories from real people, from all walks of life. On the Sean Ryan show, wealth strategist, Rob Luna. If you could
  • Speaker 3
    1:04:58

    solve a problem in this world, better than anyone else, you’re gonna make a lot of money. And that’s really what a business’s ultimate goal is whether it’s your business or a man factoring business, it’s about solving a problem, making a bigger impact in people’s lives than anyone else on scale. But I’ve been trying to scale my doses, but I can’t find somebody that pinned up these interviews. Yeah. The Sean Ryan
  • Speaker 5
    1:05:18

    Show on YouTube or wherever you listen.
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