Disney is suing the state of Florida for the removal of their special privileges granted to them over the course of the last half-century in the state, including the creation of a special tax district for them in order to run their theme parks in Florida, and the establishment of a new board that was supposed to oversee the parks, but in reality was more of an attempt to influence the DeSantis administration in favor of his presidential campaign. Is this a good or bad move by the company, or is it just another example of corporate greed and short-term thinking gone rogue? Or is there something else going on here that needs to be said about this company? Or is this just the latest in a long line of strange political decisions they ve made in Florida over the past 50 years? Or are they just not getting what they bargained for, and want to get even more involved in politics? or do they just want to make a political contribution to a presidential candidate they ve been friends with for the past 20 years? Or do they simply have no idea what they re up to? Or maybe they just don t care enough to get involved in the political process at all? Well, either way, they re going to get what they want, and then they're going to lose it. And that's what we're here to fix it, right here in this episode of the Swamp Dweller! of course! . Welcome to the Swamp Thing Podcast, where we talk about all things Swamp Thing, and everything else in between. Welcome back to Swamp Thing. - The Swamp Thing podcast. ! with your host, John Rocha, your host and your host of all things swampy and swampy host, your friendly neighborhood Swamp Thing and everything you need to know about Swamp Thing and everything in between! , your host's place to find out what s going on in the swamp plus a whole lot more! Enjoy, bye bye! Cheers, bye. John John and his swampy little buddy, Cheers! - Tom - Jack . . - Jack - AKA the swampy swampy friend, Jack , the swamp rat, , Jon & the rest of the swamp monster ( ) Love you, bye, bye! - EJ - YA - P.S.
00:00:00.000Alrighty, so Disney apparently wants to make an in-kind contribution to Ron DeSantis' presidential campaign.
00:00:05.000They've now filed a lawsuit attempting to stop Ron DeSantis from stripping them of their magical special privileges that have been granted to them over the course of the last half century in the state of Florida.
00:00:14.000Remember, all of this began because Disney decided to insert itself, for no good reason at all, into the debate over the Florida Parental Rights in Education Act.
00:00:23.000Which was designed to simply prevent the sexual orientation and gender identity indoctrination of small school children K-8.
00:00:31.000It originally started K-3, now it's extended maybe K-8, K-12 here in the state of Florida.
00:00:37.000And Disney decided to sign into that debate.
00:00:39.000And then, after they were basically wrapped on the knuckles by Governor DeSantis and said, listen, stay out of this, this is not your purview.
00:00:46.000After they did that, they decided to double down on all of that.
00:01:03.000It was essentially just a giant tract of land, a huge tract of land that was owned by Disney and governed by Disney.
00:01:11.000And DeSantis and the Florida legislature, they said, listen, you do not get to act as sort of a Vatican inside the state of Florida in which you get to dispose, dispense of papal doctrines to the rest of the state of Florida.
00:01:24.000You are here to provide services to the citizens of Florida, but you are not here to essentially be your own political body in the state of Florida.
00:01:32.000You have a privilege no one else in Florida has.
00:01:33.000There are lots of theme parks in Orlando, Universal Studios in Orlando, SeaWorlds in Orlando.
00:01:38.000There's a lot going on in that particular area.
00:01:40.000You can just go back to being like any of the other competitive businesses over there and you don't get your special magical tax district.
00:01:47.000And so Disney now is saying that this is discriminatory.
00:01:49.000And no, no, they get they get to do whatever they want.
00:01:51.000They get to not only get the special tax.
00:01:53.000Exemptions and all of the all the abilities to run their own giant tract of land.
00:01:58.000Not only do they get to do that, they then get to insert themselves in every political controversy in the state of Florida, whether it affects their business or whether it does not affect their business.
00:02:07.000Now, listen, on a normal level, should businesses be able to speak out about politics whenever they want?
00:02:17.000And Disney, of course, has taken it on the chin in terms of the generalized market over the course of the last several years, in no small part because they've decided that the sexual indoctrination of children is apparently on their radar, something they need to do.
00:02:28.000Wokeness has overcome their better business sense.
00:02:31.000But there's something else going on here, too, which is that Disney was benefiting Again, a special arrangement with the state of Florida in which they were exempt from certain rules that all other businesses in the state of Florida were exempt from.
00:03:13.000Filed in federal court in Tallahassee, it came in minutes after a new board that DeSantis named to oversee the district, covering the company's theme parks, declared null and void agreements that Disney struck in February.
00:03:22.000Right before this new government board was supposed to come in and oversee Reedy Creek, Disney signed a bunch of supposedly binding contracts that would essentially tie the hands of the new board in governing the area.
00:03:33.000And the new board came in, they're like, you know what?
00:03:44.000The suit alleges violations of several provisions of the US Constitution and names the five DeSantis-appointed board members and other officials.
00:03:50.000It says the board's action Wednesday was the latest strike against the company.
00:03:53.000The complaint says this government action was patently retaliatory, patently anti-business, and patently unconstitutional.
00:03:59.000But the governor and his allies have made clear they do not care and will not stop.
00:04:02.000Now, again, this is actually, what Sands did here is significantly less intrusive
00:04:08.000than what, for example, Mayor Thomas Menino is than the mayor of Boston did
00:04:11.000back when Chick-fil-A was essentially thrown out of the city.
00:05:10.000Again, first time the left has cited the Contract Clause in decades.
00:05:12.000Unlawfully taking Disney's property rights in violation of the Takings Clause.
00:05:16.000Again, you don't have a property right to a special privilege that you got from the government in the first place.
00:05:20.000And arbitrarily voiding Disney's agreements in violation of the Due Process Clause.
00:05:24.000Well, no, I mean, there was due process.
00:05:26.000You lost an election, essentially, and now you pay the price.
00:05:30.000That's not that's not the way this works.
00:05:31.000It argues the board also flouted the company's First Amendment rights by retaliating against it.
00:05:36.000Juan Carlos Plantes, former Republican lawmaker who has taught law school courses about Reedy Creek's legal structure, said the lawsuit makes some persuasive arguments.
00:05:42.000He said, I think Disney has an extremely strong case.
00:05:44.000They have an extremely impressive legal team, including Daniel Petrocelli, who's represented a host of high-profile clients.
00:05:50.000Republican State Representative Randy Fine, who last year filed one of the bills targeting Disney's district, said the company's sued in the belief it's entitled to special privileges, quote, to equate being treated in the same way as your competitors to punishment, shows a stunning level of arrogance that will not stand in the state of Florida.
00:06:05.000Again, the apparent trigger for the lawsuit was action on Wednesday morning by the Central Florida Tourism Oversight District Board of Supervisors, which now oversees Walt Disney World Resort.
00:06:14.000In February, DeSantis signed into law legislation renaming the district and ending Disney's control of it, and they criticized agreements cemented by Disney in February, and they came in and they just voided the agreement.
00:06:24.000So we'll see how this plays out legally.
00:06:26.000But one of the things that's fascinating is how this is sort of broken into the open inside of the Republican primary.
00:06:31.000And you can see how Republicans are lining up with sort of the old school Republican Party, which is very nervous about corporate power, and the new school Republican Party, which is like, no, I think that if you decide that you are going to poke your head up in areas where you do not belong, Especially being given government privileges, you will be clocked for it.
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00:07:54.000So, the reaction to Disney vs. DeSantis has been quite fascinating inside the Republican primary.
00:08:00.000So first of all, there is a new Harvard-Harris poll asking voters if they approve or disapprove of DeSantis' actions to limit Disney's self-government.
00:08:09.000Overall, 56% of Americans supported DeSantis' attempt to limit Disney's autonomy.
00:08:17.000Now again, it's all in the phraseology of the poll.
00:08:18.000So if you had phrased this as, do you approve of Ron DeSantis' attempt to crack down on Disney's free speech?
00:08:23.000Then presumably most Americans would be like, I never heard of anything like that.
00:08:26.000But if you actually turn it into what it is, which is Disney taking away special privileges that were given to Disney in the first place, DeSantis doing that.
00:08:35.000Then all of a sudden, the poll numbers jump.
00:08:58.000But what's fascinating is the dynamic inside the Republican Party.
00:09:00.000So, so far, a bunch of Republicans who are running for president have stacked up against DeSantis on this thing, presumably because they are trying to run against DeSantis, but also because they seem very uncomfortable with the idea of challenging corporate power in the political sphere.
00:09:24.000With that said, when corporations decide to become essentially tools of the Democratic Party, And when they do so, while having special tax districts, it is not out of bounds to take away their special privileges.
00:09:35.000Those special privileges do not come with no strings attached, obviously.
00:09:40.000And Democrats have been playing this game with corporations for literally years, where they take sort of quasi-control of corporations through threat of legislation.
00:09:51.000YouTube, all these companies decided they were suddenly going to start censoring people from saying things about five, six years ago.
00:09:56.000It's because Democrats in the aftermath of 2016 decided pretty openly they were going to threaten every major social media corporation with the prospect of legislation coming down on their heads if they didn't do the bidding of the Democrats.
00:10:07.000So to pretend that the Democrats are not already playing this game is silly.
00:10:10.000They've been playing this game for years and years and years, which is why corporate America has responded by moving in a left-leaning direction.
00:10:16.000If you wish to establish parity, there has to be equal and opposite pressure from the right.
00:10:21.000Donald Trump has already come out and said he doesn't understand why DeSantis is going after Disney, which is a very weird move for Trump.
00:10:27.000Again, Trump being the guy who's supposedly very in the know about business and a person who, as a real estate investor, has worked closely with local governments, he understands.
00:10:37.000He would say pretty openly, I know how the sausage is made, and so I'm the person who can essentially unmake the sausage because I know how it was made in the first place.
00:10:56.000However, her take on this is really peculiar.
00:10:58.000What's even more peculiar is the language she's using, and it's leading people to speculate today that Governor Haley is actually lobbying to be Trump's VP.
00:11:08.000The reason people are picking up on this is, listen to the language she uses here.
00:11:10.000So she goes on Fox News, and she essentially criticizes DeSantis for going after Disney.
00:11:16.000They're alleging that the Republican governor has waged a, quote, relentless campaign to weaponize government power over the company.
00:11:24.000What is your reaction to that as we still have yet to see him jump officially into the race?
00:11:32.000You know, as governor, I took a double-digit unemployment state and I turned it into an economic powerhouse.
00:11:52.000And if Disney would like to move their hundreds of thousands of jobs to South Carolina and bring the billions of dollars with them, I'll let them know.
00:11:59.000I'll be happy to meet them in South Carolina.
00:12:02.000And then she went on, and this is the key part of the clip, she went on to suggest that DeSantis was being quote-unquote sanctimonious.
00:12:09.000Now the reason that that is important is because that is the exact language of Donald Trump, right?
00:12:16.000That is his dumb nickname for DeSantis.
00:12:53.000When you say we partner with business, yes, government makes it easier for business to do business.
00:12:58.000But not when the businesses decide that they are going to deploy their resources against the voting will of the people of the state.
00:13:04.000It is one thing for a business to lobby for lower tax rates or to lobby if they want for higher tax rates.
00:13:09.000It's one thing for corporations to lobby for different labor laws.
00:13:12.000It is another thing for corporations to try to sign into a debate over whether kids aged seven should be forced in public school to learn that boys can be girls and girls can be boys.
00:13:22.000If corporations start to do that sort of stuff, then as a Republican, it is not your job to say, we partner with this business because this business creates jobs.
00:13:29.000It is your job to protect the children who you are supposedly elected to protect.
00:13:34.000It is very odd to me that you are going to allow allegiance to a sort of business mentality to overrule basic common sense and, you know, essentially your most important job, protection of the innocence of kids.
00:13:45.000And the fact that there are so many Republicans who are very awkward about this is one of the reasons why, by the way, Trump was elected in the first place in 2016, running as an outsider.
00:13:53.000One of the things that really is kind of phenomenal and interesting about what's happening in the 2024 election is that many of the people who signed on to the Trump train, very early adapters, Peter Thiel, for example, he was an early adapter on the Trump train.
00:14:07.000They said Trump is bringing something new.
00:14:09.000Trump is shaking up the nature of politics.
00:14:10.000He's breaking some of the boundaries with regard to sort of the corporate Republican matrix.
00:14:15.000Suddenly he's reaching out to blue collar people and he's saying corporations, you know, you guys take a backseat.
00:14:22.000A lot of those same people are very uncomfortable with the thing that actually drove Trump in 2016.
00:14:26.000What drove Trump in 2016 was not just that people were upset with sort of the corporate Republican matrix.
00:14:32.000One of the things that drove that is the fact that people thought that corporations were not just oriented against them in terms of international trade or something.
00:14:39.000They really thought corporations, correctly, are motivated against them in terms of the way they actually live.
00:14:45.000The dirty little secret of 2016 when it comes to the actual issues is that social policy drove as much, if not more, than economic policy.
00:14:54.000Everybody keeps trying to intellectualize the Trump movement in 2016 into an economic policy argument.
00:14:57.000It was not an economic policy argument.
00:14:59.000It was an argument of whether there were elites in our society who disdained the common man, who look at the people who go to church in Indiana and say, those people work at a factory, those people go to church, those people don't have my values on same-sex marriage, transgenderism, and woke race issues, and so those people are bad.
00:15:16.000And then Trump came along and said, I don't think you're bad.
00:15:19.000And a lot of those people resonated to Trump for specifically that purpose.
00:15:21.000So it's very weird to see a lot of the people who originally adopted Trump, apparently including Trump when it comes to this Disney issue, suddenly running away from that issue.
00:15:28.000That's not an issue you should run away from.
00:15:57.000Why would you possibly think that is a good idea?
00:15:58.000We'll get to more on this in just one second.
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00:17:04.000So again, this sort of divide that's emerged in the Republican Party between the people who are comfortable with the social conservatives and the people who are very uncomfortable with the social conservatives, that divide is going to be a real problem for the Republican Party going forward.
00:17:15.000Because the reality is that as the social left moves ever, ever more to the crazy left, as that happens more and more, there will be more people who now find themselves in the quote-unquote socially conservative box.
00:17:25.000You're now finding people who consider themselves socially conservative, at least to the extent they would vote Republican, simply because they reject the idea that boys can be girls and girls can be boys.
00:17:33.000See, right now, inside the Republican Party, there are a bunch of people who are kind of okay, for example, with same-sex marriage, but are really, really opposed to the hard left and their attempts to indoctrinate kids into the cult of gender identity.
00:17:46.000If Republicans run away from that, which is what they're doing when they run away from the Disney fight, I don't know what the logic is.
00:17:52.000And it's one of the things that has led to the rise of populism.
00:17:55.000So Tucker Carlson, last night, he finally put out his first statement after being fired.
00:18:00.000by Fox News. So first he was photographed. I mean, I got to say, Tucker's very good at
00:18:05.000this. And yesterday Tucker was photographed. He was kind of jetting around Boca Grande,
00:18:10.000which is in the other side of Florida from where I am in South Florida. And he was jetting
00:18:14.000around with his wife laughing, which is, you know, very Tucker and very typical and showing
00:18:20.000that he's not been broken by his firing.
00:18:22.000Now, Tucker put out a statement yesterday, like a spoken statement. Here he was talking.
00:18:27.000When honest people say what's true calmly and without embarrassment.
00:18:55.000And see you soon, obviously, is a threat to many of the people who fired Tucker in the first place.
00:19:02.000But the reason for Tucker's popularity now is the same as the reason for Trump's popularity back in 2016, which is he is not presumably going to let anybody prevent him from saying the things that he thinks are true, even if they are, quote-unquote, corporate interests.
00:19:18.000The reason for the sort of durable popularity of Tucker versus some other people who have sort of fallen out of the public view Is because he is channeling a feeling among many Republicans that they have been abandoned by the people at the top of their own party, that they've been abandoned by many of their leaders, that those people are more concerned with their own sort of priorities than they are with the priorities of their own voters.
00:19:41.000That's why many people were so angry at his firing, obviously.
00:19:45.000And so, you know, the fact that there are Republicans in the race who are playing sort of the other side of the Disney table, it's bewildering.
00:20:49.000We'll get to what Republicans are actually fighting, namely a doddering old man with the universal support of the mainstream media first.
00:20:55.000The Silicon Valley Bank failure, for people who didn't notice it, what actually happened there is that basically Silicon Valley Bank bet on the credibility of the U.S.
00:21:03.000They bought a bunch of bonds, then the U.S.
00:21:05.000government inflated, and they raised the interest rates because of the inflation to cut down on the inflation.
00:21:11.000And when they did that, all of the old bonds that Silicon Valley Bank had bought were now worthless, and so they caved in.
00:21:16.000All their assets were just worth nothing, basically.
00:21:19.000Well, that is the vault of the federal government.
00:21:21.000And this is what happens when you trust the federal government with regard to things like inflation and with regard to things like the dollar.
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00:22:05.000Meanwhile, all these Republicans who are competing to run against Joe Biden, they better understand their own base and the mood of the country.
00:22:12.000Joe Biden doesn't have to understand anything.
00:22:13.000He doesn't even have to understand where he is at any given time because the legacy media have decided to just defend him.
00:22:18.000Since 2008, the real shift in the country.
00:22:20.000You want to know one of the reasons why the country has split so far apart.
00:22:23.000One of the reasons is the legacy media used to at least bat an eye toward the truth.
00:22:26.000Then after Barack Obama was elected, they just decided it was now their job to defend the president.
00:22:31.000You saw the same thing in the world of comedy.
00:22:33.000Comedy and journalism in many ways mirror each other in terms of sort of their cultural feel.
00:22:37.000You remember, before 2008, SNL used to actually make fun of Democrats sometimes.
00:22:41.000Then Obama was elected, and comedians came out and they said things like, There's just no way to there's no way to make jokes about this guy.
00:22:56.000The journalists did the exact same thing after Obama was elected.
00:22:58.000It was their job to make sure that the great light bringer was always defended.
00:23:03.000Well, now they've just carried on that routine because it went straight from Obama's the great light bringer who must be defended to Donald Trump is Satan and therefore must be defeated.
00:23:11.000And now moving forward into 2024, they're maintaining the Trump is Satan and must be defeated.
00:23:14.000And they're also trying to hang very awkwardly that halo on a doddering old fool who doesn't know where he is at least 37% of the time.
00:23:23.000It's amazing to watch them try to turn Joe Biden into Barack Obama.
00:25:32.000And then it actually has like a transcript of her question.
00:25:36.000The reporter then asked, your top economic priority has been to build up U.S.
00:25:39.000domestic manufacturing in competition with China, but your rule is against expanding ship manufacturing in China that's hurting South Korean companies that rely heavily on Beijing.
00:26:23.000This is the President of the United States that we're talking about right here.
00:26:27.000So, the way the media are now dealing with this White House is Joe Biden refuses to do a press conference where he just answers open questions.
00:26:33.000When he does answer questions, he has a pre-approved list of journalists.
00:26:36.000I mean, he's betrayed this several times before.
00:26:38.000He keeps going in conference, being like, hey, tell me who I can call on, so I'm going to call on you.
00:26:42.000Bob, let me read the transcript of your question.
00:26:45.000And then the journalists just go along with this.
00:26:47.000They're totally fine with it, apparently.
00:26:48.000Now, what makes this significantly worse is the fact that the media give zero craps at all.
00:26:56.000So why has there not been, as far as I'm aware, a single serious question to Joe Biden about his handling of the situation concerning Evan Gershkowitz?
00:27:07.000So why has there been no serious question about this?
00:27:09.000So Gershkovich is, of course, the Wall Street Journal reporter who has now essentially been kidnapped and held in prison by the Russians.
00:27:16.000So now you have three different media outlets.
00:27:19.000This would be the Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal and the New York Times all putting out an ad with hashtag I stand with Evan.
00:27:28.000They are putting this ad in all three of their papers in full page color ad urging support of the Biden administration in fighting for the release of Gershkovich.
00:27:37.000The ad's running for free in the national editions of all three papers.
00:27:40.000They say we continue to be shocked and outraged over the wrongful arrest of Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, who was imprisoned by the Russian government for no reason other than news gathering.
00:27:47.000As editors and publishers of some of America's largest news organizations, we are united in calling for his immediate release.
00:29:12.000We might bump our heads together with him, but the collective IQ points that tally less than double digits over at The View, they say it's time to fall in line, gang.
00:29:21.000Democrats, I don't know why you're talking about who's... The person to do the job is doing the job.
00:29:29.000You get behind him and we won't have a problem.
00:29:32.000The minute you start making inroads of maybe this person or maybe this person, we're done for.
00:30:13.000Again, Joy Behar and Whoopi Goldberg are exactly the same as the editors at the New York Times, Washington Post, and apparently members of the Wall Street Journal, at least the news gathering side.
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00:32:08.000People like AOC, Kamala, Tony Fauci, Chief, Elizabeth Warren, and of course, Sleepy Joe.
00:32:47.000But they also will ask no difficult questions of the Biden administration on subjects like the transing of the children.
00:32:51.000So the Department of Justice, the federal DOJ, is now directly challenging a Tennessee law that bans the hormonal sterilization and surgical mutilation of minors.
00:33:03.000This is what your federally elected, federally funded Department of Justice does.
00:33:09.000They've put out a press release calling this, quote, critical medically necessary care for transgender youth.
00:33:15.000They say the Justice Department today filed a complaint challenging Tennessee Senate Bill 1, a recently enacted law that denies necessary medical care to youth based solely on who they are.
00:33:38.000The complaint alleges that SB1's ban on providing certain medically necessary care to transgender minor violates the 14th Amendment's Equal Protection Clause, except for, again, this is a surgery and hormone treatment regimen that is not really medical.
00:33:51.000Not only is it not really medically necessary, it's medically damaging, very obviously.
00:33:55.000There is no evidence to suggest, none, any correlation between so-called trans-affirming care and reduction in suicidal ideation rates.
00:34:43.000But the likening of this to a civil rights action is amazing.
00:34:47.000SB1's blanket ban prohibits potential treatment options that have been recommended by major medical associations for consideration.
00:34:52.000Then they quote WPATH, which is a propaganda group that is completely disconnected from actual medicine or decency.
00:34:59.000Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clark of the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division says, quote, no person should be denied access to necessary medical care just because of their transgender status.
00:35:08.000So basically, you're now telling, I mean, honestly, I don't see the limiting principle here.
00:35:13.000So if you say that you're a drug addict, but your drug addiction is not a medical issue.
00:35:26.000Not only is it not a medical issue, it is your identity.
00:35:28.000Your identity is that you are a meth addict.
00:35:30.000You're a person who identifies as a meth addict.
00:35:33.000So this means that if the government says you cannot have meth, the government is now discriminating against you and the DOJ will step in to make sure that you get your meth.
00:35:43.000The right to consider your health and medically approved treatment options with your family and doctors is a right everyone should have, including trans children who are especially vulnerable to serious risks of depression, anxiety, and suicide.
00:35:54.000My goodness, the evil that is now emanating.
00:35:58.000We have the federal government activating itself to make sure that screwed up parents can shoot their small children full of hormones and then move them toward the carving of a false vagina into their flesh from either a colon or the inversion of their penile tissue is insane.
00:36:54.000I think it's very important, as you have heard from so many incredible leaders, for us at every moment in time, and certainly this one, to see the moment in time in which we exist and are present, and to be able to contextualize it, to understand where we exist in the history and in the moment as it relates not only to the past but the future.
00:37:49.000I think it's very important for us at every moment in time and certainly this moment to see the moment in time in which we exist and are present and to be able to contextualize it to understand where we exist in the history and in the moment as it relates not only To the past, but also to the future.
00:39:38.000I was testifying in the appropriations subcommittee explaining how our budget was going to help with things like railroad safety, air traffic control, and other transportation needs.
00:39:50.000And we had to take a break so that they could all go and vote on a bill to kick transgender teenagers off of sports teams.
00:39:57.000That was the priority for the House GOP that day.
00:40:00.000So these things really are getting in the way of our ability to get work done.
00:40:05.000We're literally building bridges and they're literally banning books.
00:40:11.000Oh, and there's the Comedy Central lady.
00:40:21.000I want to know why he thinks books about, like cartoon books, like they're the most, like why genderqueer has to be made available to five-year-olds so he can build a bridge.
00:40:43.000Meanwhile, our ATF director, I mean, again, this entire administration is just a bleep show.
00:40:46.000The ATF director, a person named Steven Dettelbach, he was asked about the fact that you are the director of the ATF, and it turns out that the president's son obviously violated gun laws.
00:40:57.000Should the president's son be turned over since he violated I think that's been publicly reported that that is an ongoing investigation.
00:41:06.000Again, I am not going to comment on any ongoing investigation.
00:41:11.000So you don't take a position on we should have equal justice, we should not have a two-tier system of justice?
00:41:16.000I'm not able to comment on any ongoing investigation, whether it's the undercover operations that you referred to or any particular case.
00:41:24.000I just can't comment under long-standing Department of Justice policy under Both parties' administrations on pending investigative matters.
00:41:44.000She was a terrible governor of Michigan, and then they thought she was going to run for president, but she had the crazy arms at the DNZ back in, I think it was 2008, and that kind of ended her.
00:41:52.000Well, now she's back, but she says that she supports, I kid you not, all electric vehicles for the military.
00:41:59.000We're gonna put the charging stations, lady.
00:42:04.000I'm gonna need a chart for you to explain how it makes our military readiness better to move away from fossil fuels that are durable and easily transportable What's the grid like in Afghanistan?
00:42:20.000Seriously, what's the power grid like?
00:42:23.000How are you going to build the Tesla power wall in the middle of nowhere, which is mostly where American vehicles are?
00:42:30.000Here is our idiot Secretary of Energy saying that within seven years, the entire fleet of military vehicles will be electric.
00:42:38.000Again, I'm not against electric vehicles, but you want to talk about lack of actual, practical, real-world understanding, this would be it right here.
00:42:46.000Do you support the military adopting that EV fleet by 2030?
00:42:51.000I do and I think we can get there as well and I do think that reducing our reliance on the volatility of globally traded fossil fuels where we know that global events such as the war in Ukraine can jack up prices for people back home.
00:43:05.000It does not contribute to energy security.
00:43:07.000I think energy security is achieved when we have homegrown Clean energy that is abundant like you see in Iowa.
00:43:16.000We think that we can be a leader globally in how we have become energy independent.
00:43:22.000We are energy independent through fossil fuels.
00:43:30.000It doesn't matter, no one's going to ask her any of those questions because they're all in her pocket because she works for Joe Biden.
00:43:34.000And again, must protect the doddering elderly fool in the presidency.
00:43:39.000Alrighty, in just a second, we'll get to the new civil rights cosplay hero that is being dropped by the Democrats.
00:43:44.000Once again, we'll get to that momentarily first.
00:43:46.000Gents, you hate going to the doctor, I know.
00:43:48.000You have to make an appointment, spend half your day sitting around the waiting room, and often endure those uncomfortable conversations about, you know, what's going on with another dude you hardly know.
00:43:56.000RexMD is FDA approved and the most trusted leader in men's telehealth.
00:45:42.000Like you can't do that, you can't sort of break down me as a person into little pieces and you're like, okay, this is okay, this is okay, that's not, that's not.
00:45:51.000It's pretending to be supportive on some level, but in reality it just, it sort of falls flat.
00:45:58.000You can't break me down into little pieces!
00:46:02.000That's not possible, I'm too large for that!
00:46:13.000And if you refuse to, then they will break you on the wheel.
00:46:16.000That is the cultural battle in which we now find ourselves.
00:46:19.000And the fact that the media are on the other side of that cultural battle should say to Republicans, perhaps should stop kowtowing, not only to the media, but to corporate interests who continue to maintain positions that are untrue, that are absolutely false.
00:46:30.000Meanwhile, the debate over the debt ceiling continues.
00:46:34.000Republicans have now passed a bill that would raise the nation's borrowing limit in exchange for cuts in government spending, aiming to jumpstart talks with President Biden ahead of an approaching deadline for the federal government to avoid default, as according to the Wall Street Journal, the bill. The razor thin margin underscored the complicated
00:46:52.000politics expected to roil the debt ceiling debate. The Republicans limit save grow act of 2023,
00:47:24.000Well, I mean, under what conditions the debt limit is extended, that would be the question, is it not?
00:47:30.000After the vote, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said in a statement, Republicans quote, must act immediately and without conditions to avoid default.
00:47:37.000Or, or you should probably stop with the crap where you just get to dictate terms.
00:47:42.000Now again, all debt ceiling debates rely on the allegiance of the media.
00:47:46.000If the media ever at any point actually recognized the fact that Democrats should negotiate with Republicans in good faith over this sort of thing, then the pressure would be on Democrats because Republicans passed a bill that does in fact increase the debt ceiling.
00:48:00.000But instead, the media presumably will turn Republicans into the baddies on this one.
00:48:04.000This is the pitch being made by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer.
00:48:07.000He said the speaker should drop the brinksmanship, drop the hostage taking, come to the table of Democrats and pass a clean bill to avoid default.
00:48:12.000So in other words, come here and do exactly what we want.
00:48:16.000Meanwhile, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell urged talks between McCarthy and Biden.
00:48:21.000So Democrats are playing a dangerous game here because they're just going to continue moving forward on the premise that they will have to sacrifice nothing, not even negotiate on any of this stuff.
00:48:31.000And then they have, it's amazing, they have the gall to quote President Reagan, quote, The United States has a special responsibility to itself and to the world to meet its obligations.
00:48:39.000It means we have a well-earned reputation for reliability and credibility.
00:48:42.000And then Joe Biden says, we must pay our bills.
00:48:44.000Congressional Republicans must do that.
00:49:04.000are upset and annoyed that Anthony Fauci and Randy Weingarten are now trying to walk themselves back from the ledge where they have spent the past three years trying to mandate masks, mandate social distancing, mandate shutdowns.
00:49:21.000The reason they're trying to walk this stuff back is because they lost.
00:49:24.000So Anthony Fauci, who spent the last three years declaring that he himself is the science, While simultaneously saying things like every single person should mask and be mandated to, and that VAX, maybe we should have mandates, and that small children should take the VAX.
00:49:41.000After recommending school closures for years on end, after recommending extraordinary restrictions on businesses, now he has the temerity to say, listen, I only made recommendations, man.
00:50:05.000Yeah, you weren't directly responsible for Prattville Elementary School closing or whatnot, but because of the recommendations that came from you and other top public health officials, those are decisions that you saw school administrators make, governors make, and you understand the influence that your recommendations had on decisions like that, right?
00:50:22.000Well, that's true, Caitlin, but the point that I made in my response to the reporter in the New York Times article was that what it is is that there was a personification of me as a person who essentially closed everything down.
00:50:36.000Those were public health recommendations that came from the CDC, and I have always been very supportive Of the CDC.
00:50:44.000I was not trying to shun away from responsibility.
00:50:48.000We made a public health recommendation based on sound public health principles.
00:50:56.000Oh, so now you're just recommending guy.
00:50:59.000Oh, but I thought you were the science.
00:51:02.000I mean, if you're the science, then your recommendations should be taken as like the only thing that matters, right?
00:52:16.000And what we were simply looking for was clear scientific guidance.
00:52:25.000No, you were not a believer that, for example, schools should reopen.
00:52:31.000In fact, A couple of years ago, it was Randy Weingarten who was saying, this is in July of 2020, that it would be reckless, callous, and cruel to reopen schools.
00:52:45.000So I could be angry, or we could just all acknowledge that they lost.
00:52:48.000Now, here's the thing for Republicans.
00:52:50.000If you want to nominate somebody who's going to run against this stuff, perhaps you should nominate somebody who's like a reopening person.
00:53:51.000Okay, so for those who can't see, Dylan Mulvaney is now putting on the Maybelline and has transformed himself into a rather garish drag queen.
00:53:59.000Trying to mimic the look of Audrey Hepburn but failing incredibly badly and in quite scary fashion.
00:54:04.000Maybe it's Maybelline, maybe it's a d**k. That's the actual slogan of Maybelline.
00:54:11.000You can't declare yourself a public figure and the face, the actual face of the men can be women movement and then not expect people to actually sound off on that.
00:54:32.000You're the ones who are going to pay the price when men start cosplaying as women and winning all the prizes and stuff.
00:54:36.000So at a certain point, maybe you should stop shopping with the brands that mock you and treat you as fools and pretend that that your sex is some sort of cosplay sexual fetish.
00:54:49.000All right, guys, the rest of the show continues right now.