In this episode of War Room, host Steve Kambach is joined by Ed Martin, the head of the De-weaponization program at the DOJ, and Ed Martin joins the show to talk about the impeachment of George H.W. Bush, and the loss of conservative icon Phyllis Schlafly.
00:02:55.000There was always a fight between the globalists and the big money guys and the eastern elites, the establishment, and people like Phyllis Schlafly.
00:03:02.000You covered this in that movie a few years ago where you were talking – you interviewed Phyllis in a documentary.
00:03:07.000And at the heart of it actually was the great divide in the 1960s and 70s.
00:03:13.000And Reagan was hanging by the balance.
00:03:16.000And he was going to go with the common kind of conventional wisdom what the big bankers and lawyers wanted in New York, which was to give the Panama Canal over the Panamanians.
00:03:26.000And Phyllis Schlafly was an army of one saying, what are you talking about?
00:03:47.000She had been a prominent kind of ally of his on social issues, conservative issues, although he was – he betrayed the conservatives by blaming the Birchers and everybody for all sorts of things.
00:03:57.000But still, she was an ally that night when she destroyed him in a one-hour debate on the Panama Canal where she showed he was in the tanks for the lawyers and the big bankers.
00:04:09.000When it was over, when it was over, the tradition was Buckley with a flourish would – especially for a woman – would take you to the curb in New York City and hail a cab.
00:04:18.000And Phyllis said to me – you can picture it, Steve, with a rueful smile.
00:04:22.180She said something like, he didn't even call a cab for me.
00:04:29.940The divide is, as you and I have talked about, is the globalists and the elites and the money that naturally corrupts systems and the people that are sticking to the Constitution and the values and everything else.
00:04:40.840And that was what made that split happen.
00:04:42.940And National Review has never really, I think, changed their stripes.
00:04:46.020They've always – they're always, you know, 60%, 70% correct, but the other 30%, they attack the good guys, and it's a real detriment often.
00:05:31.720I think right before Super Tuesday, sometime I think in March of 16, and Phyllis Schlaffy had the courage to be really the first movement conservative icon that came out and backed Trump and said,
00:05:45.460hey, this populism is going to be the – this populism is going to be the politics of the future, this nationalism I fully embrace, and it's really what I stood for.
00:05:55.920It was a monumental moment when she came out and backed him and never wavered.
00:06:00.520And on the campaign, when we are behind and every day Trump's doing 10 events, he said right off the bat when you guys offered to let him say a few words, he says,
00:06:12.040I'm going to Phyllis Schlaffy's funeral, and remember, he went and prayed.
00:06:17.560It was very moving, but we took time out because he said this is more important than the campaign, right?
00:06:22.800We owe this woman, and what the country owes her is tremendous.
00:06:30.120I'm going to play the entire debate sometime next week in one of the evening shows because she dismantles not just Buckley,
00:06:36.780but she dismantles, Ed, all the globalist arguments that are still prevalent today as President Trump tries to reassert our rights in the Panama Canal and for hemispheric defense, sir.
00:07:29.820And she's a lesson for us, but she also knew, Steve, last thing I'll say, I'll head it out to the airport, is she knew the stakes.
00:07:37.840One time she said to me about Trump, she said – and it was public – she said, he may be our last best hope.
00:07:44.020She saw the precipice we were on, and she knew – and when she was dying, she said to me – one of her last words to me was, keep going, keep going.
00:07:55.560Because as you know, Steve, and all of us, there's times where you just get tired.
00:07:59.080You're like, you know, I could do something else.
00:08:00.780I could be – and the message from her and all of us is, hey, keep going because of what's at stake.
00:08:04.520If it was a debate about, you know, should we have a marginal tax rate of 15 or 20 or whatever, this isn't – this is a civilization moment, and Phyllis knew it, and she knew.
00:08:15.200Last thing, Trump's a master in many ways, but he called her on her birthday, and I was at her house.
00:08:20.120Phone rings, picks it up, and she says, oh, hi, Mr. Trump.
00:08:22.060She always called him Mr. Trump, and they talked back and forth about five minutes, and she's laughing like a schoolgirl.
00:08:26.560And I get off, and I say, what did he say?
00:08:28.060And she said, he wished me a happy birthday.
00:10:44.780It's like Buckley came back from the grave for the payback for being humiliated in the Panama Canal debate, sir.
00:10:53.880Well, no, you're right about that, and I was certainly going to get into that.
00:10:56.460I mean, it really is just a Jeremiah that goes hammer and tongs against Schlafly for being a, you know, sophist and a propagandist.
00:11:03.180And the thing that really got me was she's described as a true virtuoso of the paranoid style, which, you know, the paranoid style has become almost a cliche in politics,
00:11:13.080but it's a reference to Richard Hofstetter's famous essay that was published in November of 1964 that was an attack on Goldwater Republicans,
00:11:21.100which, you know, one of Schlafly's biggest legacy was a choice, not an echo, but sold 3 million copies,
00:11:26.380that made the argument for the GOP to move in a more populist direction in 1964 and nominate Barry Goldwater for, you know, president,
00:11:33.300which, you know, had major consequences.
00:11:35.900You know, for one thing, it steered the party – you know, even though Goldwater lost badly in the general election,
00:11:40.020it steered the party in a more appropriately populist direction, which, you know, directly – well, most people, you know,
00:11:48.160acknowledge directly led to the election of Reagan in 1980, which, you know, was the greatest triumph of, you know,
00:11:54.520post-war movement conservatism at that point.
00:11:56.900So it is just shocking that you would embrace that, you know, attempt by Richard Hofstetter, a pseudo-Marxist, basically,
00:12:06.300you know, was a disciple of the Frankfurt School of Marxists, in his attempt to dismiss Goldwater Republicans,
00:12:12.320including Schlafly, in National Review for their 70th anniversary.
00:12:17.340I mean, it's just like a really, you know, offensive way to go about things.
00:12:22.340Let's go into the – it is their shot, don't you think, a little bit of payback for two things.
00:12:31.720Like I said, the never-Trump – they will never live down that cover, ever.
00:12:36.920They came out – that was during the – when it hadn't been totally decided in the primaries whether Trump is going to be the nominee or not.
00:12:43.560Now, you can argue, as I did, the thing was over, but it was kind of the last gasp of what I call conservative ink in that cover.
00:12:51.820And, of course, Phyllis Schlafly at that time and shortly thereafter was really Trump's biggest proponents
00:12:58.300and, quite frankly, the first icon of the right to really step up and endorse Trump.
00:17:18.160Number one, Trump is not in any of these races.
00:17:21.180In fact, he was basically told, you know, stay out of these races.
00:17:26.040In addition, the redistricting wars, which with Alex de Gras, we're the leader in, I can tell you right now, it's grinding a little bit to a halt.
00:17:38.160You know, the Mike Pence's of the world.
00:17:39.580While the Democrats rev it up, Prop 50 victory on Tuesday is going to send these guys next level.
00:17:49.440In Virginia, the Commonwealth of Virginia right now, they're talking about a 10-to-1 map.
00:17:54.860Spanberger Wednesday is going to move the primaries from June to August, a 10-to-1 map.
00:17:59.840Everything we've worked on, that great comeback, all of it.
00:18:03.540Hey, get ready to hit reset, because Tuesday night, they're coming in rolling hard.
00:18:08.180But, and they're putting the House in, they're putting the House in play, and when Hakeem Jeffries, he probably won't even be the Speaker, but when they take over the House, the day they do it, the next day they start impeaching President Trump, and they start sending subpoenas, and they grind the Trump revolution to a halt.
00:18:28.300Mark Hemingway, National Review, kind of the conservative ink's, you know, Bible.
00:18:35.700Viciously, viciously, viciously against a icon, a woman who was a true combatant, Phyllis Schlafly.
00:18:46.600Tell us why, why, and focusing on the debate of, and your focus on the debate of the Panama Canal, it's so current.
00:19:00.520Every argument she makes is the correct argument, and it's correct, I don't know, what, 60 years later, sir?
00:19:06.860Yeah, no, I think that's exactly right.
00:19:09.840I mean, you know, whether it was globalism or whether it was populism, Phyllis Schlafly was on the sort of, at least historically right side of it in terms of where we've ended up now.
00:19:20.140I mean, and I think to some extent, you know, a lot of the hostility being, you know, exhibited against her in this National Review article is a direct result of the fact that there are elements of the establishment that don't like the fact that this is where the party has ended up.
00:19:33.100And they want to, you know, punish this and then say that, like, this was, you know, always wrong from the beginning.
00:19:52.440And then three quarters of the way through the piece, it's, it's, there's a line in there about, is it all surprising that Schlafly's last significant political act just before her death in 2016 was to give her blessing to Donald Trump?
00:20:04.260And all of a sudden, everything becomes clear.
00:20:06.240It's like they start with this premise, which is just assumed that Donald Trump is bad, which, by the way, you know, even to this day, I don't think 90% of the actual subscriber base agrees with.
00:20:17.500And then they reason backwards from there.
00:20:19.420You know, Donald Trump was swept into power by populism.
00:20:22.160One of Schlafly's biggest legacies was moving the GOP in a more populist direction in 1964 with a book of Choice Not an Echo that convinced voters and grassroots to support Barry Goldwater for president.
00:20:32.800And Ergo, the woman that introduced populism in 1964, is responsible for the bad orange man in 2024.
00:20:43.160I mean, a lot of things happen in the 60 years between then and now.
00:20:47.080And populism influenced a lot of things in the meantime, very much for the better.
00:20:53.400It moved the party in a much more socially conservative direction, say, if you're pro-life, which is a huge component of the Republican base.
00:22:07.220And these people – it's not – you're not going to sit up in a salon in the Upper East Side and have a debate over some, you know, tea and champagne and convince these guys they're wrong and, oh, we're going to beat you at the polls.
00:22:48.160I think honestly a lot of it though is this – you know, these people do exist in, you know, a – well, I mean I hesitate to call it, you know, intellectual world.
00:22:57.180But they do, you know, exist in this world where they get paid to talk about ideas.
00:23:00.960And I think that is in large part, you know, over time insulated a lot of people from the consequences or understanding the stakes for ordinary people, which is one reason why they don't understand, you know, populism.
00:23:11.820Populism is, you know, very much a reaction from ordinary people responding to real forces in their lives, I think.
00:23:18.040You know, and they're simply not in touch with that.
00:23:24.100And, you know, I agree with you about the stakes 100 percent.
00:23:29.140But it's really shocking to me to see these people, you know, come out in – my former boss, I was a writer of the Weekly Standard for a number of years.
00:23:39.620Bill Kristol came out and recently endorsed, you know, Mamdani for, you know, mayor of New York.
00:23:45.560You know, he endorsed a literal communist Islamist to be the next mayor of New York.
00:23:50.260And this is a man who has spent the last, you know, however many years trying to tell other, you know, other conservatives that they are unprincipled for supporting Trump.
00:23:59.880And yet he's the guy that, you know, used to be a big conservative pundit who's now going out and endorsing communists.
00:24:05.860And I think that ordinary people are pretty sick of this situation here where there are these elites that are telling them what to think when they're simply responding to the things that they see, the changes in values around them, the economic forces that have undermined their way of making a living.
00:24:25.060I mean, there's so many obvious things to these people as voters, you know, and maybe you don't agree with the solutions that these people have, you know, seized upon, and that's fine.
00:24:36.400But it's at least your job to at least try and persuade people instead of sneer and exhibit contempt.
00:24:42.040And that seems to be all that they can do.
00:24:44.280And the Schlappi article is a very good example of that.
00:25:33.660Once the Working Family Party and the DSA get their hands on the apparatus of the New York City government, the global, the financial capital of the world, they're not going to, you're going to have to pry it out of there.
00:25:44.660They're not going to, they don't play by the marquee of Queensbury's rules.
00:25:57.360Mark Hemingway, social media, where do people get you, your coordinates, and more of your writing, sir?
00:26:02.080I am at Heminator on X, H-E-M-I-M-A-T-O-R.
00:26:08.840That was a stupid college nickname that I chose in 2009, because I didn't think this social media thing would be serious, but it's now a professional moniker, unfortunately.