Disney pulls the plug on a planned $1B development in Florida, and the media is covering it as an act of "woke corporate stand" against Governor Ron DeSantis and his "anti-business" agenda. But in fact, it's a corporate ploy to distract from the fact that the company is in a state of economic freefall and needs to find a way to get back on track, and that's why they're pulling out of a project that was due to be built in Lake Nona, Florida. And it's not even close to being a big enough project to justify such a massive loss of jobs and investment in the state, let alone a significant amount of money. It's time to take a look at what's really going on here, and why it matters to the bottom line of the company, and what it means for the future of Walt Disney World in Florida and the rest of the country. Today's After Show Was Hosted By: John Rocha, Sr. John is a regular contributor to the New York Times and has been a long-time friend of the Weekly Standard, and a frequent contributor to The Weekly Standard. Subscribe to John's new podcast, "The Ringer" wherever you get your news and gossip. Learn more about John's newest projects, including his upcoming projects, upcoming events, upcoming projects and more! Subscribe and comment on this episode of After Show. If you're looking for the latest in After Show coverage, be sure to check out our new show, "Behind The Scenes." Subscribe! Subscribe to our newschedules! and subscribe to our newest episodes on Apple Podcasts! Subscribe, Like, comment and subscribe! Subscribe on iTunes! Subscribe for exclusive bonus episodes only, and don't forget to leave us a review and review our podcast recommendations! Thank you for listening to our latest episode on your favorite streaming platform, The Ringer! - John s next episode will be out on Tuesday nights, Monday s, Wednesday s, Friday s, Thursday s, Saturday s, Sunday s, and next Monday s! and next Tuesday s, on Thanksgiving Day, on the 27th of Nov. 7th, November 7th. and so on so we'll have all the best of all the good stuff. - Tom's next episode out there! Tom's new album is out! -- Tom's review of the new music?
00:00:46.000There's just pure moral equivalence between all forms of sexual activity and all the rest.
00:00:50.000And Disney, Mickey Mouse is going to stand behind this particular form of morality.
00:00:55.000It was very, very important that Disney take a stand.
00:00:57.000And Ron DeSantis was like, well, so here's the deal.
00:01:00.000If you guys decide to use the special privileges that we, the state of Florida, have given you to get involved in ultra crepedarian pursuits, in which you decide that you are going to simply sound off on everything that affects the state of Florida, but nothing that affects your business, well, you know, you don't need that special tax district anymore.
00:01:28.000They are fighting back by pulling the plug on a $1 billion development in Florida.
00:01:32.000According to the New York Times, in March, Disney called Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida anti-business for his scorched earth attempt to tighten oversight of the company's theme park resort near Orlando.
00:01:40.000Last month, when Disney sued the governor and his allies for what it called a targeted campaign of government retaliation, the company made clear that $17 billion in planned investment in Walt Disney World was on the line.
00:01:50.000Does the state want us to invest more, employ more people, and pay more taxes or not?
00:01:53.000Said Robert Iger, Disney's chief executive.
00:01:56.000Now, there are a lot of people in the state of Florida who voted for Governor DeSantis, including people like me and my entire family, that say, well, hold up.
00:02:03.000So if the choice is between corporations that take special tax benefits and then use that largesse in order to press forward a bunch of social leftist garbage that undermines the standard of living in the state of Florida, keep your jobs in California, if that's the actual choice.
00:02:17.000But as it turns out, that's not really what's happening here.
00:02:19.000What's actually happening here is that Disney is now spinning the fact that they are in a state of economic freefall as a woke corporate stand.
00:02:29.000On Thursday, Iger and Josh Damaro, Disney's theme park and consumer products chairman, showed they were not bluffing, pulling the plug on an office complex that was scheduled for construction in Orlando at a cost of roughly a billion dollars.
00:02:38.000It would have brought more than 2,000 Disney jobs to the region, with $120,000 as the average salary.
00:02:43.000According to an estimate from the Florida Department of Economic Opportunity, the project near Lake Nona Town Center was supposed to cost $864 million.
00:02:49.000Recent price estimates have been closer to $1.3 billion.
00:02:52.000Disney had planned to relocate as many as 2,000 employees from Southern California, including most of a department known as Imagineering, which works with Disney's movie studios to develop theme park attractions.
00:03:11.000You remember, Chapek got his ass scanned.
00:03:13.000And then they brought back Bob Iger from retirement to try to get Disney out of the state of freefall that it was in.
00:03:20.000Demaro said in an email to employees on Thursday, he cited changing business conditions as a reason for canceling the Lake Nona project.
00:03:26.000He said, I remain optimistic about the direction of our Walt Disney World business.
00:03:29.000He noted that $17 billion was still earmarked for construction at Walt Disney World over the next decade, growth that would create an estimated 13,000 jobs.
00:03:38.000The memo did not even mention Governor DeSantis.
00:03:40.000But the company's battle with the governor and his allies in the Florida legislature figured prominently into Disney's decision to cancel the Lake Nona project, according to two people briefed on the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private deliberations.
00:03:51.000A spokeswoman for Mr. Iger said he was not available for an interview.
00:03:53.000So basically what happened here is that Disney does not have the money or the wherewithal right now to build a $1 billion project in Orlando.
00:06:12.000Then came the hefty activation fees, four line requirements, and of course, the binding contract.
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00:07:09.000So Governor Gavin Newsom thanked Disney, quote, that's 2,000 plus jobs that will be welcomed back with open arms to the Golden State.
00:07:15.000I love the fact that he has to rely on the largess of Disney just not to move the jobs in the first place.
00:07:21.000Disney, of course, is trying to suggest that this is an act of heroism.
00:07:28.000Buried way down in this New York Times article is the actual truth.
00:07:31.000The Lake Nona campus, about 20 miles from Disney World, near the Orlando International Airport, had been championed by Bob J. Peck.
00:07:36.000Iger, who came out of retirement to retake Disney's reins, was much less enthusiastic about the project, even before the company became mired in its battle with DeSantis.
00:07:43.000As soon as he returned to Disney, Iger began telling lieutenants, for example, it made little sense to move Imagineering so far away from the Disney movie studios.
00:07:49.000As he is fond of saying, creative teams need to be together.
00:07:53.000And Iger has been systematically reversing Chapek's decisions since he joined.
00:07:56.000In February, he announced that Disney would restructure its inner workings, ending a framework put in place by Chapek.
00:08:01.000In March, as part of wide-ranging layoffs, Iger shut down a 50-person Metaverse project that Chapek had started.
00:08:06.000Disney is in the midst of cutting $5.5 billion in cost.
00:08:10.000In fact, Disney, just this week, ...announced that it would close an underperforming luxury hotel at Disney World.
00:08:16.000That luxury hotel was the Galactic Star Cruiser Experience, which lasted for about five seconds.
00:08:20.000It launched in March 2022, and its death date is May of 2023.
00:08:25.000That was... All it was, essentially, was a hotel that looked very much like the inside of a Star Wars ship.
00:08:32.000So if you like living on a submarine for $6,000 for a weekend, it was your kind of place.
00:08:37.000It was a place where, like, the pictures look cool, but you actually wouldn't want to shell out that kind of money just to stay there.
00:08:42.000And again, so is that also Ron DeSantis?
00:08:45.000Or is it possible that Disney is having serious, real issues, business-wise, and they are seeing a very convenient way of spinning this into Bob Iger being some sort of hero of the left?
00:08:55.000I think we all know the answer to this.
00:08:57.000In fact, there is an account on YouTube.
00:08:59.000All he does is basically cover what happens at Disney, his Mickey views.
00:09:02.000He explained the cancellation, pointed out, guys, this is just the economics of the situation.
00:09:08.000For those of you who don't know, the Lake Nona project was previous CEO Bob Chapek's plan to build a new Disney headquarters inside of Florida in Lake Nona.
00:09:19.000A very nice planned community that is up and coming that you have near the airport in Orlando.
00:09:24.000We made a video here on the channel about two years ago taking a look at where this office was going to go, the land that Disney acquired.
00:09:32.000The media is spinning this cancellation as being due to DeSantis and the hostile business environment which he helped to create with Disney.
00:09:41.000I've been hearing for months that this is just a JPEG era project that Eider wants nothing to do with.
00:09:46.000Look at how fast all these JPEG era projects are just crumbling, turning to dust.
00:09:51.000You know, the reality is that Disney has huge bills coming due on the streaming side.
00:09:56.000They're having issues on the earning side of things, paying to build a big new campus, a big new headquarters in Florida, making people move from California, which is very unpopular internally and part of why JPEG was so unpopular inside the company.
00:10:10.000Iger's wiping his hands clean of this whole thing.
00:10:19.000Now again, even if it did have something to do with DeSantis, and if the choice for conservatives was between corporations that require the largesse of government, like special corporate favors, in order to then take that money and turn around and club you socially in the halls of government, then the answer would be no.
00:10:34.000That is not a bargain that any conservative should stand for.
00:10:37.000Businesses are free to speak about whatever they want.
00:10:39.000They're free to speak about whatever they want in any realm.
00:10:41.000But they are not free to take my money and your money and get special tax benefits and then to use that large ass in order to involve themselves in areas of the economy that have nothing to do with them.
00:10:51.000Things that are not even economic in nature.
00:10:53.000I think most conservatives understand this at this point, that if you leave the field completely empty for the left, that basically, corporations get to become tools of left-wing governments, taking the benefits and then pushing left-wing policy.
00:11:04.000And meanwhile, the government is left-wing, pushing left-wing policy.
00:11:06.000Then there is no point of actual opposition that can be formed.
00:11:10.000And if the deal for Disney is, the minute that link is severed, the minute you lose the special tax benefit, and you lost it because you effed around and found out, That you all of a sudden are going to run some other state that's going to provide you with the largesse to be able to be as left-wing crazy as you want, including the transing of the kids, and you get the tax benefits, well then, good riddance.
00:11:47.000As of, like, February of 2021, it was trading at close to $200 a share.
00:11:53.000If you look at that, the height of that stock price, it is now trading at some historic lows since, like, 2018.
00:12:01.000In fact, apart from the brief period at the beginning of the pandemic, when all stocks crashed, what you see is that they're now at the lowest ebb in their stock price, on average, since, like, mid-2022, that they've been any time in the last five years.
00:12:31.000Do you think that this was Bob Iger looking at the fact that they have been bleeding money and saying, we're not spending a billion dollars on a campus that just moves some employees from one state to another.
00:12:53.000There was a time, it wasn't that long ago, it was like 2020, that Alexander Ocasio-Cortez, irrepressibly stupid representative from Brooklyn, you remember?
00:13:01.000That she almost single-handedly killed Amazon relocating a jobs headquarters in New York City.
00:13:07.000It would have meant somewhere between, not 2,000 jobs like Orlando, 25,000 and 40,000 jobs in the city of New York.
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00:15:07.000Donald Trump is now reacting to all of this. He has put out a statement. Here's
00:15:14.000The reason that his fans like him, like his uber fans like him, is because he will hit anybody with anything at any time.
00:15:19.000As I've said before, he's basically like a Warren Brothers cartoon character.
00:15:22.000There's a fight, Donald Trump reaches into his pocket, and you don't know whether he's going to take out a pincers, or whether he's going to take out a chainsaw, or perhaps a rubber hammer, or perhaps a fish.
00:15:33.000Okay, so, people who love him, love him for this.
00:15:36.000That he will hit anybody with anything, and that means that if he's on your side, he'll hit your opponent with anything.
00:15:40.000Now, half the time, he hits your opponent, might actually be with one of those, you know, like, dinky party giveaway rubber hammers that squeaks, like... Or, sometimes, he actually hits somebody with, like, a 2x4, and you don't know what's coming.
00:15:51.000But, that's what his fans like about him.
00:15:53.000What his detractors, or people who are skeptical of him, don't like about him is that he has no principles.
00:15:59.000So, When I say he has no principles, that doesn't mean that he won't do the right things from time to time or a lot of the time.
00:16:04.000He did a lot of the right things when he was president of the United States.
00:16:07.000But in this primary, because Ron DeSantis is presumably going to run to Trump's right on literally every issue, Trump has therefore been taking the positions that are mirror images of the Democratic positions.
00:16:21.000So here is Donald Trump's statement about Disney shutting down this project in Lake Nona.
00:16:26.000There are only two possible positions on this from a conservative perspective, truly.
00:16:30.000Position one, from a conservative perspective, is it's pretty obvious Disney did this for the money.
00:16:35.000Disney did this because they were losing money, they weren't going to do it anyway, and now they're trying to spin it into victory.
00:16:39.000Position two, from a truly conservative perspective, would be if the choice is between corporate cronyism that comes along with left-wing values and no corporate cronyism that comes along with no left-wing values, I choose B. Okay, so what is Trump doing?
00:16:54.000Especially Trump, who portrays himself as the enemy of corporate America, right?
00:16:59.000I mean, it was one of the things that won him the nomination back in 2016, was Donald Trump coming out and saying, listen, I know how big business works.
00:18:33.000Are you on the side of Ron DeSantis or are you on the side of Disney?
00:18:36.000Do you wish to have a president who's beholden to major corporations to the extent that they are allowed to get tax benefits like special tax districts while they promote leftism up to and including the sexual indoctrination of children?
00:18:48.000Or are you on the side of not doing that?
00:18:49.000Now again, I understand that for a lot of Trump supporters, they look at that and they're like, Trump doesn't actually believe that.
00:18:54.000Like the fact that he doesn't have centralizing principles is the thing they like.
00:18:58.000This is why it's so hard to run against Trump.
00:19:00.000Because a lot of the people who love Trump, what they are relying on is that he will instinctively react in the same way that they would to a serious attack on the right.
00:19:10.000And so if he's attacking DeSantis, it's because it's an attack of convenience.
00:19:13.000And he's the guy that you need at the time because he's going to... So the idea that you're going to attack him on principle and then he's going to attack in unprincipled fashion, that's actually a... That's the feature, not the bug.
00:19:22.000But for those of us who are trying to discern, you know, who is going to be more predictably conservative in fighting the left in a meticulous fashion, this is a pretty easy, this is a pretty easy and obvious solution, right?
00:19:33.000I mean, DeSantis has been perfectly consistent along the line on this fight.
00:19:37.000Trump originally was anti-Disney, then he was pro-Disney as soon as it became convenient for him to attack DeSantis over the Disney thing.
00:19:44.000And this, by the way, has been the pattern for Trump in this campaign.
00:19:47.000Trump has now sided with Disney at one point very early on.
00:19:51.000He seems to side a little bit with Bud Light.
00:19:54.000Whatever is convenient for him to do in order to attack DeSantis, he is doing.
00:20:08.000I just don't agree with the pitch because I don't think that that's actually a pathway toward victory.
00:20:12.000Now, as we'll get to in just one second, Ron DeSantis is planning on entering the race next week in all likelihood.
00:20:17.000And the pitch that he is making, which is that Trump is not particularly electable, I may agree with it, but I don't think it's a particularly appealing pitch.
00:20:22.000He's going to have to go in another direction.
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00:21:21.000And then he fell down on the job like a soccer- Anyway, different story.
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00:21:39.000Okay, so DeSantis is likely to enter the presidential race next week.
00:21:43.000He's already made the requisite filings.
00:21:46.000The polls right now show that Trump is the frontrunner and DeSantis is the guy trailing him.
00:21:50.000Now, how durable those polls end up being is anybody's guess.
00:21:52.000This is why I think that DeSantis' pitch to the donors, which again, I agree with it, is that Trump is a less sure candidate against Biden than DeSantis is.
00:22:00.000Mainly because virtually everybody in the United States already has an opinion about Donald Trump.
00:22:04.000Whereas there are a lot of voters who are undecided about Ron DeSantis.
00:22:07.000And what that means is it's very, very difficult to get people to vote for you in 2016, and then against you in 2020, and then for you again in 2024.
00:22:14.000Or, if you're trying to switch people who voted twice against you, against you in 2016, against you in 2020, for you in 2024.
00:22:21.000Also, I don't know how Donald Trump plans to solve the dilemma of he says the election was stolen from him in 2020 through sheer voter fraud and corruption in states run by Republicans, Arizona and Georgia.
00:22:41.000DeSantis has been telling a lot of the donor class that he is the most credible Republican to win, because if you look at the swing state polls, Trump is trailing in virtually all the swing state polls.
00:22:52.000I don't think that's going to have a lot of play in the Republican primary for the voters.
00:22:55.000The reason I don't think that's going to have a ton of play for a lot of the voters is because a lot of the voters are caught up in the fact that he won in 2016, Trump.
00:23:03.000That everybody said he was going to lose, including me, in 2016.
00:23:30.000Well, the pitch really should be That he is going to be a much more effective conservative who is able to take on the media in a much more meticulous fashion than Donald Trump.
00:23:40.000Now, that is wrapped up with electability.
00:23:42.000The idea that if you are meticulous in how you approach the issues, you're more likely to wrong-foot Democrats than you are to spend your days talking about horse-faced army.
00:23:50.000That's actually a pretty good electability pitch.
00:23:52.000But the thing I think that's going to appeal to conservatives is going to be him pointing out that, for example, Donald Trump actually blew it on COVID because Donald Trump did blow it on COVID.
00:24:01.000It was Donald Trump who was telling Ron DeSantis not to open up and Brian Kemp not to open up at the beginning of COVID.
00:24:06.000He gave the Medal of Freedom to Anthony Fauci and Dr. Deborah Birx.
00:24:10.000It was under Donald Trump that we were told the lie, I mean it was still the end of his administration, that we were told the lie by the CDC that those shots, I believe them because it was Trump's administration, why wouldn't you believe them, that the vaccine was going to stop transmission dead in its tracks.
00:24:25.000And so, you know, those are all rich areas for DeSantis to mine.
00:24:29.000And I assume that that is going to be the direction that DeSantis moves.
00:24:32.000Again, he has a lot to criticize Trump about over this sort of stuff.
00:24:35.000Trump has promised, for example, law and order.
00:24:37.000Well, in 2020, I saw mass riots in the streets and Donald Trump was supposed to be captain of law and order.
00:24:48.000So that's going to be the line that I think DeSantis is going to use.
00:24:51.000And that may be the area In which Trump's willingness to kind of throw everything up to, including the slop in the garbage pail at whomever he is fighting, actually does not benefit him.
00:25:00.000Because if DeSantis' whole shtick is, I'm running to his right and I'm consistent, and Trump's whole shtick is, I'll attack you with anything, again, for his super fans, that'll work.
00:25:07.000For everybody else, that opens some questions.
00:25:09.000I don't think this primary is over, not by a long shot.
00:25:12.000Meanwhile, We're approaching the most holy time of the year, of course.
00:25:26.000You'll go to the gas station, and you'll be told that LGBTQ plus minus divided by sign is the most important thing happening in public life.
00:25:32.000It is the most important thing for you to buy into the agenda.
00:25:35.000You'll go to Target, and it won't just be them giving out swimsuits to kids that allow your son to tuck his penis underneath his undergarage, which is literally the thing that Target is doing.
00:25:44.000You'll go there, and it'll be everything.
00:26:39.000What Americans have not made their peace with is the idea that you get to indoctrinate all children with the idea that all of these relationships are morally equivalent.
00:26:46.000You certainly don't get to indoctrinate the kids with the idea that boys can be girls and girls can be boys.
00:26:50.000Most Americans are not on board with this crap, but the entire media, like as a wave, as like just a wall, are in favor of this notion.
00:26:59.000And not just the media, this has now been infused into all of our government institutions up to and including the U.S.
00:27:04.000military, which I'm sorry, is just ridiculous and pathetic.
00:27:08.000So, according to Fox News, Representative Chip Roy on Thursday called for Republicans to drop support for a must-pass military funding bill after his office obtained an Air Force memo declaring June to be LGBTQ-plus Pride Month.
00:27:20.000Because, remember, the way that this works is that if you fly the gay pride flag, then you're truly American.
00:27:24.000If you fly the American flag, you might be a colonialist.
00:27:27.000The May 3rd memo, shared with Fox News, approves observance of Pride Month in June and empowers installation commanders to plan and conduct appropriate activities in honor of Pride Month, the most holy time of the year.
00:27:37.000Roy's office shared a flyer advertising Pride Month events at Robbins Air Force Base in Georgia, including a Pride game night on June 10th, a unity and diversity color run in June 16th, a panel discussion titled Our History, Our Time on June 28th.
00:27:49.000The memo says, each June, the Department of the Air Force recognizes Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer Pride Month.
00:27:55.000During this time, we celebrate the progress we have made toward inclusivity, commemorate the contributions of LGBTQ-plus-minus-divided-by-sign Americans, and recognize the obstacles they have faced and overcome.
00:28:04.000Along the way, Assistant Secretary of the Air Force Alex Wagner, and Diversity and Inclusion Director Marianne Melizia.
00:28:09.000So first of all, Diversity and Inclusion Director of the military is just the most Orwellian garbage I've ever heard of.
00:28:14.000They say this is a time to reaffirm our total commitment to equality and reinforce the importance of a cohesive and total and diverse total force.
00:28:22.000Yeah, nothing says one team, one fight like cramming down a version of morality that is widely disapproved of particularly by many members of the military.
00:28:32.000So our military is moving in that direction and again you can look That meme online, you know the one that shows like Republican administration's just a bomb falling over a foreign country?
00:28:41.000Democratic administration bomb falling over a foreign country but it has a gay pride flag on it?
00:28:46.000That's pretty much where we are right now.
00:28:47.000Meanwhile, the State Department has now required that people use the pronouns.
00:28:53.000The AP's Matt Lee actually asked a State Department spokesperson, why are you using, why are you
00:28:56.000like mandating that people put their pronouns in their questions?
00:29:01.000The State Department's internal email system, and I tested this so I know that it's true,
00:29:06.000has added pronouns to people's, not their signature, but to their, you know, where it
00:29:27.000This is something that has been just arbitrarily imposed, and I understand that People could have their pronouns attached, if they wanted them, to a signature before.
00:29:38.000But this is not something that anyone has a choice about.
00:29:41.000And so I'm just wondering why and who made this decision.
00:32:05.000And isn't there's an irony here that for all the insistence upon equality, The very foundation for that equality in Western culture, i.e.
00:32:18.000the idea that human beings are made in the imago dei, in the image of God, has been lost, of course.
00:32:24.000So it's almost as if, because of the erosion of this foundation, The drive for equality is stressed all the more.
00:32:34.000That's exactly what Nietzsche claimed would happen when he wrote, particularly in Beyond Good and Evil.
00:32:41.000He said that would be an inevitable consequence.
00:32:45.000In addition to Douglas and Jordan, I sat down with a group of big thinkers from different backgrounds to explore one of the most seminal books in the Bible.
00:32:51.000All the episodes of Exodus are now available exclusively for DailyWirePlus members.
00:32:54.000If you haven't seen it, start at the beginning.
00:32:57.000Join now at dailywire.com slash subscribe to watch Exodus.
00:33:00.000Okay, meanwhile, while the woke brigade has, they've started a real battle and it's kind of fascinating because Who has the upper hand in this battle?
00:33:09.000The Democratic Party has not yet decided.
00:33:10.000They refuse to acknowledge that there's actually a conflict inside the Democratic coalition.
00:33:14.000So on the one hand, Democrats suggest that the most important part of their coalition is people of minority status.
00:33:20.000And by people of minority status, I mean racial minorities.
00:33:27.000Their chief focus since 2020 has been Black Lives Matter because the idea in 2012, this is true, is that Barack Obama got an extraordinary percentage of the black vote and huge turnout in places like Ohio and it made the entire difference in his election.
00:33:40.000And so they've been trying to duplicate that ever since.
00:33:42.000And so Black Lives Matter was largely about that in 2020 on behalf of Joe Biden.
00:33:45.000The fact is that without the black vote, Joe Biden probably is not the nominee in 2020.
00:33:52.000But then he cleans up in South Carolina, largely thanks to the heavy share of black voters who are fond of Joe Biden, not because they love Joe Biden, but because he was Barack Obama's vice president and because he was also endorsed by Particularly strong members of the legislature in South Carolina, who are black.
00:34:22.000And that battle is, quote-unquote, BIPOC people versus the radical left-wing gender agenda.
00:34:28.000These two things do not live comfortably together.
00:34:30.000If you poll black Americans about how they feel about transgendering the youth, not into it.
00:34:35.000If you ask black Americans how they feel about gay marriage, significantly less likely than the general population to be in favor of same-sex marriage, for example.
00:34:43.000The same thing is true among Hispanics.
00:34:45.000These are much more socially conservative populations than white progressive liberals.
00:34:49.000And by the way, those white progressive liberals are actually even more progressive on racial issues than black and Hispanic people are, by every available metric.
00:35:00.000Minority-majority coalition in which the values and and social ideas of people who are black and hispanic sort of lead the way, or is it going to be the social values of the people who are progressive leftists?
00:35:11.000Now, they've formed what they think is a durable coalition.
00:35:14.000That durable coalition theoretically is Well, you know, you scratch my back, I scratch yours.
00:35:18.000I'm in favor of Black Lives Matter, and you're in favor of transing the kids, and we'll all get together in the middle, and that will be our agenda.
00:35:23.000And Joe Biden has sort of papered over that because, again, he's an elderly figurehead for a party that's just anti-Trump.
00:35:28.000That is basically what the Democratic Party is at this point.
00:35:30.000They just don't like Donald Trump, and Donald Trump is the point of commonality for all of these groups.
00:35:35.000But if you were to suggest that the typical black voter in a Democratic primary in South Carolina has much in common with the typical white Democratic voter in Iowa, no.
00:35:44.000The way that you can tell this, by the way, is by the South Carolina primary results back in 2020 on the Democratic side.
00:35:53.000If you look at the actual South Carolina Democratic primary results there, Pete Buttigieg did not even chart.
00:35:59.000So Pete Buttigieg wins Iowa, and then Pete Buttigieg does fairly well in New Hampshire, and then Pete Buttigieg, in that South Carolina Democratic primary, He shows up at 8.2%.
00:36:09.000Elizabeth Warren, favorite of the far-left whiteys, 7.1%.
00:36:13.000Biden got 48% of the vote in that particular primary.
00:36:18.000Contrast that, by the way, with the results in Iowa, and you see that in Iowa, which is a very, very, very white state, Pete Buttigieg ended up with like 25% of the vote, 26% of the final vote.
00:36:33.000In New Hampshire, Bernie and Pete, again, very white candidates, They won 25% of the vote and 24% of the vote, as opposed to Biden, who won 8% of the vote.
00:36:42.000So, on the one hand, if you look to the future of the Democratic Party, you have Kamala Harris's side of the party.
00:36:48.000Kamala Harris's entire appeal is not the social left-wing appeal.
00:36:52.000Her appeal is basically, I am intersectional black woman.
00:36:59.000And on the other side, you have Pete Buttigieg, who is the representative of the college-educated white ladies who vote in Iowa primaries.
00:37:05.000And that's going to be, honestly, a fascinating Democratic battle.
00:37:09.000And it's starting to break out in the open now, and I don't think that that coalition is particularly durable.
00:37:15.000What's amazing about the Buttigieg versus Kamala sort of shadow battle that's happening behind the scenes in the Democratic Party is just how obnoxious both of them are.
00:38:06.000Well, because, you know, he went to Harvard, and then he worked at, like, McKinsey, and he was a Rhodes Scholar, and he learned Norwegian in very rudimentary fashion just so that he could read a book.
00:38:20.000And he likes to talk about how his gayness is a facet of his spirituality and it has something to do with Christianity or something.
00:38:27.000Pastor Pete likes to lecture everybody else who's been apparently misreading the Bible for the last several thousand years.
00:38:33.000He has discovered new realms of imagination inside the Bible, inside his voluminous mind.
00:38:38.000So here is Virginia Heffernan writing about Pete Buttigieg.
00:38:41.000Quote, the curious mind of Pete Buttigieg holds much of its functionality in reserve.
00:38:45.000Even as he discusses railroads and airlines, down to the pointless data that is his current stock and trade, the U.S.
00:38:50.000Secretary of Transportation comes off like a Mensa black card holder who might have a secret go habit, or a three-second Rubik's Cube solution, or a knack for supplying off the top of his head the day of the week for a random date in 1404, along with a non-condescending history of the Julian and Gregorian calendars.
00:39:30.000As Secretary Buttigieg and I talked in his under-furnished corner office one afternoon in early spring, I slowly became aware that his cabinet job requires only a modest portion of his cognitive powers.
00:39:39.000Other mental facilities, no kidding, are apportioned to the Iliad, Puritan historiography, and Nowskards at Spring, although not in the original Norwegian.
00:39:49.000Fortunately, he was willing to devote yet another apse in his cathedral mind to making his ideas about three mighty themes, neoliberalism, masculinity, and Christianity, intelligible to me.
00:40:04.000He, in all of his great wisdom and intellect, has emerged from the cathedral apse of his mind in order to bestow upon us all of his wisdom, all of his wisdom.
00:40:14.000By the way, what is the wisdom of Pete Buttigieg?
00:40:17.000So the wisdom of his cathedral mind includes the notion that the right is defined by two things, lowering taxes and stopping legal access to abortion.
00:40:31.000Quote, those are kind of the two greatest pillars of the mainstream right now.
00:40:34.000They're now the dog that caught the car.
00:40:36.000And to switch metaphors, they rode a tiger to get there.
00:40:38.000They made a lot of distasteful bargains in order to get there.
00:40:43.000Wait till you get his take on masculinity, Pete Buttigieg.
00:40:46.000I mean, should go back on paternity leave where he belongs.
00:40:49.000Here's what he says, quote, Fears about masculinity are a way into the fear of displacement.
00:40:54.000Masculinity establishes a default place, and that place is being shifted and threatened by modernity.
00:40:58.000A man is the head of the household, the only one who earns income, the default leader in any social or political organization.
00:41:04.000The politicization of masculinity is code for nothing in your life has to change.
00:41:07.000The problem is, of course, lots of things has to change, either because there was something wrong with the old way or because even as the old way seemed perfectly fine, it's not an option.
00:41:16.000This is true with the reality of climate change.
00:41:18.000If you can't face that change, you might retreat to the default place of masculinity.
00:41:24.000So if you think that an entire political movement declaring that boys are girls and girls are boys, and that men have no place in the family structure, that single mothers are just as good for a child as a man and a woman, or that two men is the same thing as a man and a woman, you don't think that.
00:41:43.000This is basically just a dumbed-down version of Barack Obama's bitter clinger's remark from like 2007-2008 where he declared that all of his political opponents were clinging to God, guns, and religion because they feared change.
00:41:52.000It's the same exact crap that all of these pseudo-intellectuals on the left believe and it's just ridiculous.
00:43:14.000Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, and I want to thank the Austria World Summit for inviting me to say a few words today.
00:43:21.000And I want to recognize all of the leaders who are gathered here for your continuing commitment to addressing the global challenge of climate change.
00:43:29.000It's clear to all of us by now that climate change is a major threat to security and prosperity everywhere.
00:43:36.000Now, stories of climate disaster have always been on humanity's mind in some fashion, dating back to ancient legends and scriptural traditions in nearly every faith, telling of floods, fires, and other calamities.
00:43:50.000But the climate challenge in front of us is not some prophecy of cosmic doom.
00:45:02.000And then about 10 minutes later, my son goes over there, opens the pen, starts making strange noises designed to get Happy to charge around the house at top speed.
00:47:03.000So she's terrible at this, but there is a So there are two, again, the Pete Buttigieg narrative is gay Americans are being victimized by the evil Bible thumpers.
00:47:19.000Pete Buttigieg will vindicate them and their interests against the evil white superstructure.
00:47:24.000He is a member of a victimized minority.
00:47:26.000The other narrative is Kamala Harris is a member of a victimized minority.
00:47:30.000She is a black woman who is only vice president because she's a black woman, but that's just evidence that America is a deeply racist and terrible place.
00:47:37.000in the repeated incidents that we are seeing literally every day online in which some random white person becomes the villain of the day for no reason that anybody can discern.
00:47:48.000For no reason that literally anybody can discern.
00:47:50.000So the latest example of this is there is a Bellevue Hospital employee who apparently rented a bike from City Bike and then a young black man tried to take the bike from her.
00:48:10.000And this turned into an example on social media of white people being quote-unquote Karens.
00:48:16.000Meaning they're casually racist for no reason just because they're white.
00:48:20.000Ben Crump, who is a racial ambulance chaser, all he does is he finds tragic situations or non-tragic situations to jump into the middle of and then pretend that America is a deeply racially biased and horrible place that he can get those big checks.
00:48:33.000He started tweeting out about all of this, suggesting, of course, that this white lady is super duper terrible.
00:48:41.000A white woman was caught on camera attempting to steal a city bike from a young black man in New York City.
00:48:45.000She grossly tried to weaponize her tears to paint this man as a threat.
00:48:49.000See, when white women cry because they're being victimized, it's not because they're actually being victimized, it's because they're weaponizing their tears.
00:48:54.000This is exactly the type of behavior that has endangered so many black men in the past.
00:48:58.000Right, when women cry because they're being abused, if the woman is white and the man is black, that's her weaponizing her tears and that could end with the death of the black man or something, says Ben Crump.
00:50:14.000Now, as it turns out, according to the New York Post, the lawyer for a Manhattan hospital worker accused of taking a city bike from a young black man who claimed that he paid for the two-wheeler provided receipts that he says show she was the one who purchased the ride at the center of the viral incident.
00:50:26.000The Bellevue Hospital employee who was branded a Karen.
00:50:28.000OK, so again, in America, the way that this works is that we are allowed to have racial terms for white women.
00:50:35.000Who are apparently just guilty of being... They are Karens now.
00:50:40.000She rented the bike first, according to her lawyer.
00:50:42.000He provided two city bike receipts from May 12th, which were time-stamped just minutes apart.
00:50:47.000The first receipt, reviewed by the Post, shows the bike being taken out before it was re-locked one minute later, which Marino said is the bike seen in the video.
00:50:52.000The second receipt shows another bike being taken out a minute later from the same docking station, and was the bike Marino said his client used to get home after being heckled and pressured to find a new bike by the group.
00:51:01.000The hospital employee, who Marino says is a six-month pregnant physician's assistant.
00:51:11.000By New York City Health and Hospitals this week.
00:51:13.000After her heated encounter with the men emerged online on Saturday and has been viewed tens of millions of times.
00:51:18.000Marino called the caught on tape interaction incomplete and lacking.
00:51:20.000By the way, even in the tape, what is she doing that's so wrong?
00:51:22.000She's holding the bike, she's crying, and she's calling for help.
00:51:26.000That's, that's the thing she did that's super duper wrong?
00:51:29.000By the way, if all the youths were white and the lady was white, I don't think anybody would have any trouble identifying exactly what was going on.
00:51:35.000Or if the lady were black and all the youths were black, nobody would have any trouble identifying what is going on.
00:51:38.000It's a bunch of young men who are larger than the woman grabbing a vehicle from the woman.
00:51:44.000Normally, this would fall under believe all women, would it not?
00:51:48.000A six-month pregnant employee at a hospital versus a bunch of young men who are trying to grab the bike and filming her while doing it and she's crying.
00:51:56.000But because she's white and they're black, this obviously changes everything.
00:52:01.000According to her lawyer, he said, after the healthcare worker wrapped up her 12-hour shift, she got on an available bike, which no individuals were on or touching, and paid for it through the City Bike app on her phone.
00:52:09.000As she backed up from the docking station, a group of five people approached her and claimed the bike was theirs, he said.
00:52:13.000One or more individuals in that group physically pushed her bike, with her on it, back into the docking station, causing it to relock.
00:52:19.000One of the individuals then covered the bike's QR code, stopping her from paying for it again, so she could leave.
00:52:24.000In blocking the QR code, the individual's arm was touching my client's pregnant stomach, a condition of which she had made them aware.
00:52:28.000Throughout this time and for the remainder of the video, roughly five individuals were telling her to get off the bike and heckling her.
00:52:34.000The fact that anyone would treat another person like this is tragic, especially a visibly pregnant woman, he said.
00:52:39.000The roughly 90-second clip that begins mid-confrontation shows the woman dressed in hospital-branded scrubs screaming for help as she tugs at the bike.
00:52:45.000The young man kept his grip on the bike's handlebars and repeatedly told the woman he had already paid to use that particular bike and it wasn't yours.
00:52:53.000Some social media users called the interaction racist.
00:52:54.000And others compared it with the situation when Amy Cooper called the police on a black bird watcher in 2020 and lost her job over that.
00:52:58.000By the way, that incident was also a bunch of crap, as it turned out.
00:53:00.000a hospital worker appears to start crying as another man in the same scrubs approached the melee
00:53:33.000If you're a white person, then I guess the idea in the mainstream media and in social media spheres is that you have an obligation to be victimized by people of color.
00:53:40.000By the way, this also ties into the Jordan Neely case.
00:53:43.000Jordan Neely was actively threatening people on the subway.
00:53:47.000And a white person put him in a submission hold, and then he died.
00:53:52.000And the idea was that Jordan Ely apparently had a right to threaten people on the subway system.
00:53:57.000Because no one could stop him, certainly not a white person.
00:54:01.000So these are the dual moralities that the Democratic Party is going to have to choose, and they are mutually exclusive.
00:54:09.000The upper class progressive mentality that says Pete Buttigieg ought to be your nominee is not the mentality, largely, by the way, not pushed by black Americans, largely pushed by progressive white people, that the way to victory is to racialize pretty much everything.
00:54:23.000That story is insane and it demonstrates the, oh man, the pathetic nature of our politics.
00:54:45.000But if you're a whistleblower and you are not in favor of left-wing positions, then this means that you are super duper bad.
00:54:52.000So there was a hearing, an FBI whistleblower hearing yesterday at the House Select Committee on the weaponization of the federal government.
00:55:01.000in which three suspended FBI agents, Garrett O'Boyle, Steve Friend, and Marcus Allen,
00:55:05.000testified to detail the alleged abuses of power by the federal government,
00:55:09.000ranging from discrimination against conservatives to inflation of domestic terrorism statistics.
00:55:14.000Democrats immediately started ripping into these agents and suggesting, of course, that they are corrupt.
00:55:19.000So here's FBI Special Agent Garrett O'Boyle saying that the FBI is, in fact, systemically designed
00:55:26.000to crush people who try to expose the truth.
00:55:29.000If one of your really good friends, your former colleagues, came to you and said,
00:55:33.000I have this thing that is being covered up, and I think the American people need to know about it,
00:55:44.000I would tell them first to pray about it, long and hard.
00:55:48.000And I would tell them I could take it to Congress for them, or I could put them in touch with Congress, but I would advise them not to do it.
00:55:55.000So you would legitimately try to protect one of your colleagues from doing what you have done?
00:56:01.000And how do you think that solves being able to shine light on corruption, weaponization, any kind of misconduct that exists with the American people?
00:56:22.000Well, Democrats came in like a hammer here.
00:56:24.000So Democratic Representative Plaskett, Stacey Plaskett, I believe her name is, she suggested that even investigating the weaponization of the FBI is a form of defunding the police.
00:56:37.000It's important, according to Democrats, that you now trust the FBI.
00:56:41.000Less than two months ago, former President Trump, facing mounting investigations into his many alleged crimes, declared that, quote, Republicans in Congress should defund the DOJ and the FBI until they can come to their senses.
00:56:59.000And we all know that when Trump says jump, the Republicans in the House say, how high?
00:57:06.000So here we are, on Police Week, watching House Republicans jump to lay the foundation to defund law enforcement.
00:57:18.000My colleagues on the far right are on a mission to attack, discredit, and ultimately dismantle the FBI.
00:57:25.000This is defund the police on steroids.
00:57:35.000According to Democratic Representative Sylvia Garcia, these are all political pawns if you're a whistleblower against the FBI.
00:57:41.000More than that, this hearing is an insult to the brave whistleblowers out there who do risk their careers for the good of their country.
00:57:48.000This circus of embedded secret accusations puts at risk the critical role whistleblowers play in holding the powerful accountable.
00:57:56.000Most whistleblowers aren't interested in being political pawns in Congressional Republicans' games.
00:58:02.000Playing politics is holding up the scheme as whistleblowers will make other public servants fearful of coming forward out of fear they'll just be used.
00:58:30.000The basic premise of the movie is that Jake Gyllenhaal is a soldier in Afghanistan, and his team is ambushed in a firefight, and his translator, his interpreter, an Afghan guy, saves his life.
00:58:41.000And then he goes back to the United States as Jake Gyllenhaal, and his interpreter is now being hunted down by the Taliban.
00:58:45.000He has to go back in and save his interpreter.
00:58:47.000The whole thing is very clearly a metaphor for the situation that occurred because Joe Biden decided to, in cowardly fashion, empathetic fashion, not only withdraw from Afghanistan, but do so in disorganized, chaotic fashion that left tens of thousands of American allies to be slaughtered by the Taliban.
00:59:01.000That's what the movie really is about.
00:59:42.000I am gonna have to get him out myself.
00:59:45.000By the way, that's exactly what ended up happening in real life, is that you literally had ex- You had marine veterans and army veterans who were literally going to Afghanistan during the withdrawal from Afghanistan and having to set up, without the approval of the U.S.
00:59:57.000government really, ways to get people out who would help them while they were soldiers in Afghanistan.
01:00:03.000The great untold story of the 2024 election, if anybody has the balls to tell it, is going to be that Joe Biden's cowardly withdrawal from Afghanistan is the single sickest thing I've ever seen a president do in my entire life.
01:00:29.000This, of course, is considered a supposed disaster by members of the left because it was much better when Jerusalem was divided down the middle and when Christians and Jews were barred from visiting holy places.
01:00:38.000It is, again, an amazing thing that it should be in any way contentious that Jerusalem should be united and under the auspices of a government that allows people of all faiths to pray where they want.
01:00:47.000Unless, apparently, if you're a Jew, you're not allowed to pray on the Temple Mount full-time.
01:00:51.000Okay, time for a couple of quick things that I hate.
01:00:58.000Well, the hypocrisy of the left knows no bounds.
01:01:00.000If you're a well-connected lefty, the rules just don't apply to you, which is why the Washington Free Beacon reports that a California city is now going to make an exception to its natural gas ban for world-famous chef Jose Andres after the landlords for the chef's planned restaurant warned Andres may pull out over the regulation.
01:01:15.000So just to point out the hypocrisy here, the entire media that is suggesting that Ron DeSantis is bad for business because he says that if a corporation takes tax benefits and then tries to trans the kids, that's bad, Ron DeSantis is bad?
01:01:28.000It's left to the Washington Free Beacon to report on the fact that Palo Alto tried to ban gas stoves, but then Jose Andres was like, guys, I can't open a restaurant here, because guess what?
01:01:35.000Gas stoves cook better than electric stoves.
01:01:39.000We'll let you, Jose, you get the exception.
01:01:42.000After the owners of the mall where Andres is set to open the restaurant threatened to sue the city, Palo Alto administrators will allow Andres' Mediterranean restaurant, Zaytina, to use natural gas lines, despite a new law this year that bans them in construction.
01:01:54.000The restaurant relies on traditional cooking methods that require gas appliances to achieve its signature complex flavors, said Anna Shimko, a lawyer representing the group that owns the shopping center.
01:02:02.000The lawyer argued the building's plans were approved in 2019, years before the gas ban was actually imposed.
01:02:07.000Now Andres not only has he earned Michelin stars, but he's also a wild leftist.
01:02:12.000He actually got a medal from President Barack Obama.
01:02:15.000He appeared as a guest on Michelle Obama's food show for kids on Netflix.
01:02:18.000He's also a frequent advocate for fighting climate change, and he started a billion-dollar fund to fight climate disasters and teamed up with politicians to create other climate initiatives.
01:02:25.000But apparently, that doesn't apply to him.
01:02:27.000He's got to cook with the natural gas.