00:05:36.220In terms of the process or in terms of the book length.
00:05:39.380Because it's got to be readable above all.
00:05:41.560And also because in the earlier biography that I wrote, I wrote about my mother-in-law,
00:05:46.260actually, who was a very prominent civil rights activist in South Africa.
00:05:51.480I wrote a long book because a lot of her writing, even though she was also famous as a writer, a lot of it hadn't been published.
00:05:59.420So I wanted to include excerpts of some of her writing.
00:06:01.960Whereas with Scott, he's written so much and he's actually told his own story so many times that we have the luxury, in a sense, or maybe the additional burden, if you want to look at it that way, of writing a shorter and more concise and direct biography.
00:06:18.760So that's what I'm working on right now.
00:06:36.060Alongside all the other things I'm doing, California Post and raising my family or trying to be there for the family as I divide my time between two coasts, really.
00:06:44.640So hopefully I'm barely hanging on to all that and making sure that the work gets done everywhere it needs to be done.
00:06:52.540We've got Little League season coming up.
00:06:54.280You know, we're all extremely busy and you have to basically schedule time for the things that really are most important.
00:06:59.040So I usually write the biography first thing in the morning.
00:07:02.960If you have something you really want to do and you don't want it to hang over you the whole day, just get it done as soon as you possibly can.
00:07:09.560So I'm usually up really early and I'm working on Scott's biography.
00:07:24.300I mean, the reception has been incredible.
00:07:25.920Everywhere I go, people who are familiar with it tell me that it's really changing their media diet and also changing the political landscape.
00:07:35.980Because people feel that there's finally an alternative voice within California that can reflect a variety of perspectives that isn't the usual liberal left perspective.
00:07:47.540That doesn't mean that everybody who reads or writes for the California Post is conservative or Republican.
00:07:52.700We had an opinion article a few days ago by the lead plaintiff in the case against Trump's tariffs explaining why he had sued Trump and why he had won.
00:11:11.800And I think that was a deliberate physical gesture.
00:11:15.760And I've written about that before, how there's never been a president who has used the room itself almost as a musical instrument.
00:11:24.820You know, if you go into a church with a pipe organ, the building is the instrument because you can actually see the pipes usually on the exterior of the building, sometimes inside as well.
00:11:35.740But the resonance that gives the organist sound is the building.
00:11:40.980And Trump is the organist in the chamber.
00:11:44.480He really uses the physical space, not just by projecting his voice, but by bringing people in and out.
00:11:50.660And then last night, a new technique he really drew attention to, which was standing versus sitting.
00:14:08.780She even said she would not redraw the congressional districts in Virginia.
00:14:12.800She has governed as a radical and she's redistricting Virginia from a six Democrat, five Republican state to a 10 Democrat, one Republican state.
00:14:21.540It's the most egregious partisan gerrymander in the whole country.
00:14:24.640So you wouldn't have her after the president because in a way she makes his case for him, at least to independent voters.
00:14:32.680Trump can point to her and say, listen, the Democrats are selling you some moderate candidates this year, but you're going to get radical.
00:14:38.880Look what she's doing in Virginia, raising all these taxes, taxes on dog walking.
00:14:45.040As he said last night, these people are crazy.
00:14:46.700But what a Democratic leader wants to tell the Democratic Party is, quietly, quietly, we're going to do all this radical stuff you really want.
00:14:57.940Just let us run the moderate candidates.
00:15:19.880But we're going to run some moderate candidates.
00:15:21.920Once they're in, they can do whatever you want.
00:15:23.820And the other thing that she did was she reinforced this idea that ICE is basically the Gestapo, that they're arresting citizens, that they're poorly trained.
00:15:35.780They're a bunch of thugs that come in.
00:15:37.600I mean, it's a terrible way to talk about American law enforcement.
00:15:43.000Some part of me is just repulsed by the whole thing.
00:15:46.080But that is the Democratic Party narrative.
00:15:48.540That's how they see their identity as opposed to the Republican Party.
00:15:52.580And so it was a good speech for Democrats because she reinforced the feeling that they're standing up against tyranny in some way.
00:16:01.320Now, Scott addresses this in his book, Win Bigly, where he talks about the absolute conviction of Trump's critics, that he was the new Hitler and that this horrible authoritarian regime was descending.
00:16:22.580They were at best placed into a kind of cognitive dissonance where they would try to justify the opposite of what they were feeling or experiencing.
00:16:37.180And it's just interesting to see the reactions afterward.
00:16:41.320There wasn't two movies, one screen effect in the sense that you had Democrats with their talking points coming on and saying this was a terrible speech.
00:17:28.000There's always this moment when Trump really does well, when the other side doesn't really know what to do.
00:17:32.180And so they go with their talking points.
00:17:33.640There is a kind of cognitive dissonance.
00:17:35.080I mean, Pete Buttigieg on CNN was talking about how it was a terrible speech and the president lied, lied, lied, lied, lied, lied, lied, lied.
00:20:40.620But anyway, so I think that was a way of making this speech different and better and more effective than the other ones, was basically framing it as a victory speech.
00:20:50.460I'm not trying to make the case for you that I'm better or that I'm succeeding and that you should vote for my party in November.
00:20:56.300The case I'm making is we've all already won.
00:21:00.020And that was, I think, what made it very effective.
00:21:03.200And that's why people are upbeat about it today if they like the president and white Democrats are trying to find a better answer for it.
00:21:09.380And they may just try to forget about it and move on because they think they have the upper hand as the opposition party in the midterm year.
00:21:15.640I felt like he painted it, if I just summarized it quickly, as American, anti-American.
00:21:22.480And that's really how I saw the whole thing, you know, like not stand, like you can't stand when he says that your number one job is to protect Americans in the country.
00:21:31.820And they were like, oh, no, we're going to sit for that.
00:21:36.300You know, so I felt like, you know, even like some and some of the medals he gave out, like I was like, he's just given out medals and awards he's using.
00:21:45.600And then he said he wanted the Presidential Medal of Honor.
00:21:48.280And he's like, I can't give it to myself, but if they could change that law.
00:21:52.800And I'm just like, oh, my God, he was so funny last night and animated.
00:21:56.640And like you said, the room was part of his speech and he used the sitting and the silence as part of his speech.
00:22:04.140And those non-words and those moments and just gesturing were huge.
00:22:10.540And I'm glad that he also allowed so much space and time to happen for those moments.
00:22:16.160Like he didn't just make a point and move on.
00:22:17.880Like he let the Republican or the American side, I'm going to say, to applaud for I think it was like two minutes and 18 seconds when he said your first job is to protect Americans.
00:22:30.860And he let that go for well over two minutes of them just sitting there.
00:22:37.800You know, the remark about changing the law to give himself the Medal of Honor.
00:22:44.440It may have had to do with the fact that the gentleman who won the Medal of Honor right before he said that, whose name escapes me right now.
00:23:13.660And it had flown that mission, but it was a secret mission.
00:23:16.880And the reason that it was secret, Trump kind of alluded to the fact that it was secret, was that we did not want to acknowledge that the Soviet Union had actually been in combat with our troops.
00:23:28.800Because it would have had massive implications for the Cold War when both countries at that point had nuclear weapons.
00:23:35.260And so the rule for the Congressional Medal of Honor is you have to be nominated for it within three years of the event that causes you to win the medal.
00:23:44.940And the only exceptions that are allowed is if there's an act of Congress that actually says, OK, this individual should get it.
00:23:51.260That's why it's the Congressional Medal of Honor.
00:23:54.760And so they did actually pass an amendment in the National Defense Authorization Act that allowed Royce Williams to to receive a medal of honor.
00:24:03.980So that might have been what Trump was doing.
00:24:05.540But how did they even get to that point?
00:24:07.360It was because a bunch of his neighbors in Encinitas in in San Diego decided, you know what?
00:25:11.600But, you know, on the insider trading thing and the hockey team and there were probably three or four other times where at least a fair number of them stood up and clapped.
00:25:20.320Well, they stood up at one point, ironically, when he said they voted against all the tax cuts in the one big, beautiful bill.
00:25:26.820And then some of them stood up to applaud themselves.
00:25:30.500We voted against that because, you know, they're trying to make a point, which is that they don't like the one big, beautiful bill because it cuts funding to some of their favorite state programs.
00:25:38.780But that's just a sign of how much he broke their unity.
00:25:44.740I mean, it was also you can't really control hundreds of people.
00:25:48.660Did they ever really think they were going to get everybody to sit still?
00:25:52.040I mean, Ilhan Omar and her heckling and, you know, I mean, did they ever think they were going to get everyone to behave?
00:25:56.520It's hard enough to get, you know, a few of them to do the same thing.
00:26:01.040I mean, it's just anyway, he did very, very well.
00:26:05.320And he has this technique that Trump that Scott talks about, which is using an anchor.
00:26:12.300So he'll mention a number or a figure or or an individual person.
00:26:17.860And I tried looking for a number that was an anchor in the speech.
00:26:58.540I think there were some opportunities Democrats missed to to show some unity.
00:27:05.580They did stand up a little bit, but really, I just think the country is watching.
00:27:11.580And, you know, my 10 year old was watching it this morning and he was in bed already by the time the speech happened last night, but he was watching it in the car and went to school.
00:27:18.080And he just couldn't believe anybody would sit down for the hockey team or for the the Medal of Honor winners.
00:27:23.500He was just looking at me like, why do they sit down, Dad?
00:27:35.520Yeah, well, I think, you know, we all see these events differently through Scott's eyes.
00:27:42.100I think once once you once Scott sort of showed you what's behind the curtain, it's very it's very difficult not to see it.
00:27:49.600I also think Trump did a good job of just staying on like the 80, 20 or 90, 10 type issues where almost all Americans agree that we want these things.
00:27:58.300And so he was really painting Democrats into a corner by just focusing on all these things where they're really popular in terms of what he's doing or really unpopular in terms of what the Democrats are doing.
00:28:08.320And so I think he's doing a good job of focusing on the right issues going into the midterms rather than some of the more controversial things that might be more split down the middle.
00:28:17.200Can I make an observation about that very quickly?
00:28:20.600I got an advanced copy of some of the excerpts of the speech.
00:28:23.640They circulate it to journalists, you know, five or six paragraphs.
00:28:27.840And I looked through it briefly and he went after the fraud in Minnesota.
00:28:32.960And in the excerpt that was released, it was something like fraud in the Somali community or something like that.
00:28:38.940And I kind of said, that's not going to land very well.
00:28:42.120I mean, even though it's really what happened, people don't like to hear a community singled out.
00:28:48.560He must have changed the text or he ad-libbed something in the actual delivery of the speech.
00:28:53.120Because instead of Somalis or Somali community, he said Somali pirates.
00:28:58.380OK, that's like, oh, yeah, nobody likes the Somali pirates.
00:29:47.020And I like the flow like he was hypnotizing us because like like Joel said, he kept on bringing people into the hockey team, the different people.
00:29:57.980And but it was like he was an orchestra director, like directing everything.
00:30:05.200The Dems not standing at the same time go pointing as if he's he's doing a musical, like a like a musical piece of America.
00:30:17.360So it felt short because I tend to like, oh, I mean, I tend to get bored if it's like almost a two hour speech.
00:30:29.180But for me, it felt like bam, bam, bam, bam, bam.
00:30:45.100It had like and I don't know if Joel wants to talk about that.
00:30:49.860Well, I think your impression was widely shared because my wife who watched the whole thing said she couldn't believe it was two hours long.
00:37:59.200They're like all characters in this multi-dimensional play that we watched last night.
00:38:04.340And I loved every fricking minute of it.
00:38:06.160And I loved watching Ilhan, Il, Il Han Omar, you know, you dah, dah, dah, dah, dah.
00:38:15.820I mean, I'm like, Oh, you only get upset when we're talking about the land you love, Somalia, because it's not America.
00:38:24.460And a lot of them really showed their disdain for our country and for their constituents.
00:38:31.500And I was like, there's all the advertising you need.
00:38:35.140And so for me, um, I went to bed, like, I'm proud of people that are pro America and put Americans first.
00:38:42.800And I can clearly see by their own demeanor and their own inactions, who hates this country and does not care about us.
00:38:53.060So that being said, like, I'm going to toss to you first, Owen.
00:38:57.660What was your grand takeaway from last night?
00:39:01.240Well, I thought it was a great speech.
00:39:02.600It sounded kind of like a rally speech to me, um, which I say that is a good thing because I think that's what gets people really going.
00:39:09.640And I think he definitely, um, was appealing to his base.
00:39:13.240I think he, he did appeal to independence, I think, and, and call for unity in many ways.
00:39:18.340I think it probably would be appealing to anyone who actually is open-minded that, you know, I don't know if it's 2% or 5% that'll actually swing one way or the other.
00:39:26.240But, um, you know, he was just taking victory lap after victory lap.
00:39:29.860And I don't, I don't think the Democrats were prepared for that.
00:39:32.100I think they were expecting him to come in like wounded from Epstein files and all these other, you know, the Supreme Court ruling against him and all these other things.
00:39:49.300Um, you know, I did post a story about some of the political strategists that gave grades and some of them were like A++ and some of them were F.
00:39:59.660So I do think it's going to be very much two movies on one screen that I'm sure anyone who's Democrat aligned would have just hated everything coming out of his mouth.
00:40:07.740But I think anybody who is an independent probably would have liked it.
00:40:11.540I think they would have said this is the right type of messaging and the right type of things.
00:40:14.900And also that he didn't make it all about himself.
00:40:18.000You know, when Trump does his rallies, it's usually all about what he's going to do and all his plans and how he's so important to fixing everything.
00:40:25.060And in this case, he brought in all these other heroes and all these other victims and all these other people.
00:40:31.120But he also gave credit to Rubio and he gave credit to, you know, all these other people, um, in his administration.
00:40:38.180And so I think it was very much like we've got a great team and we're all doing things in the right direction.
00:40:44.020And we're trying to push these things that are really important to move things forward in the right way.
00:41:00.300The speech and, you know, you just hit on it very well because his speech was about, um, showcasing the wonderful wins that America has, but also giving us a vision of the future.
00:41:16.820Because he talked about at the very end of the speech, it was very inspiring.
00:41:21.360He said, there's no challenge an American cannot, Americans cannot overcome.
00:41:25.800Um, there's no, there's no horizon too distant for us to claim.
00:41:30.440And he talked about the golden age of America is upon us.
00:41:36.040And he also indicated the revolution that began in 1776 has not ended at all.
00:41:43.100Um, and it's still going, um, and I think that's what could grab independence because it wasn't something where it's like, oh, me or Republicans.
00:42:01.420And I think the way that he made that happen where we were thinking he was going to go very, um, very party oriented, like us Republicans, we do everything and you Democrats suck.
00:42:19.280You know, so he didn't do it in that manner.
00:42:21.920He did it in this, this beautiful way of doing it, you know, sort of, you know, but it was more about, Hey, this unites us.
00:42:31.280And, um, and then he went on, uh, with litany of the 80, 20, um, issues.
00:42:40.040Issues like the save act, like, Hey, have an ID to vote.
00:42:43.880Uh, no driver's license for illegals because it could cause people to die, uh, $1,000 for every child, uh, insider trade and insider trading.
00:42:54.980Um, which I love because I thought of Erica because he called out, I don't know if this is when he called out Nancy.
00:44:51.280It's like, it's like a rally for the base first to show, you know, this is how we're going to start the year and we're going strong here.
00:44:58.600We're not going to, we're not, uh, uh, I was going to say a word, but, uh, you know, we're not very cat pudding, you know, very careful walking through this.
00:45:22.840He didn't say like, okay, let me tell you some things, you know, he just went for it.
00:45:26.960That feeling that everybody has right now that saw the rally can, can be transmitted to other people and that's the effect.
00:45:35.900It's not going to be about, um, there's no effect for the Democrats today on this, uh, speech, you know, it's just, uh, they're going to use it for their own purposes.
00:45:44.960With good editing, they can make Al Green look like a hero, right?
00:47:23.960And then for anyone who is an independent who might've been flipping back and forth between the state of the union and the counter programming that Democrats put on.
00:47:31.960I don't, I assume all of you have seen all the people in the frog suits.
00:47:51.960You know, yesterday they were asking people at a campus, students, what they thought about the, the, the state of the union the day before, which it hadn't happened yet.
00:47:59.960And they were already saying that it was horrible, that he was divisive.
00:48:04.960The point is that the left is not watching this at all.
00:48:07.960They're all going to be watching because I used to date somebody on the left and I didn't have even permission.
00:48:52.960Robbie Starbuck talked about the frogs and he was like, this reminds you of Batman where like the evil Joker, uh, press or whatever had like different, like crazy outfits.