NO ONE EVER MOVES TO CANADA SAYS BREITBART’S JOEL POLLAK
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Summary
Breitbart's Joel P. Pollack explains why the left is not proud of America, and why Joe Biden is the worst example of a politician who could be seen as a true ally in the fight against it. He also explains why America is not worthy of being proud of.
Transcript
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Hello, everybody. I'm Lou Dobbs, and great to have you with us on The Great America Show.
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Disturbing developments in Europe tied directly to NATO's somewhat late effort to bring Finland
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and Sweden into the alliance, and the dangling prospects still of Ukraine joining as well.
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Putin isn't waiting to see what Europe is about to do. Instead, he has Europe worrying about what
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lies in store for them. Despite all the bravado from EU leaders, Russia is now holding a considerable
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advantage, and that is energy supplies. The Russians just shut down the main gas pipeline from Russia
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to Germany for regularly scheduled maintenance. So now the Europeans are asking themselves,
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when will Putin open up the pipeline once again? And what other hardships could he have in store
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for Europe? Putin wasn't being at all subtle last week when he put Russia's new so-called
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doomsday submarine on display. How's that for a name? Doomsday submarine. The submarine is capable
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of carrying six 80-foot-long torpedoes, each armed with a nuclear warhead of up to 100 megatons of
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destructive power. The Europeans are understandably anxious these days, while President Biden,
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in the judgment of Congressman Daryl Issa, is seemingly intent on giving Putin whatever he
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wants, that is, Ukraine. And remember, it was the Obama-Biden White House that allowed Putin to invade
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and annex Crimea without response from the United States or Europe. So who is Biden working for
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these days? Besides his puppet masters, he's destroyed the southern border with Mexico, he's given the
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Mexican drug cartel's control of both sides of the border. He's distributing illegal immigrants all over
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this country in the dead of night, so no one will know who's in the country, or doing who knows what. He's
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compromised with China, with Ukraine, and Russia. Will he turn over eastern Ukraine to Putin, or will he turn
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over all of Ukraine? His administration is going after parents, any who question left-wing indoctrination
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in our schools, CRT, ESG, going after January 6th demonstrators like they had burned down the same
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number of stores, tried to destroy federal courthouses, or assaulted dozens of police officers, just like
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Antifa and the BLM rioters and arsonists did in the summer of 2020. But of course, the left never
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prosecuted Antifa and BLM. And now the left is publicly displaying its contempt for America. It all
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marks a new low point for law and order and respect for this country. To take all of this up and more,
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our guest today is the senior editor-at-large for Breitbart News, Joel Pollack. Great to have you with us,
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Joel. Welcome back. The left, Joel, trying hard to take this country for their left. Hard left than
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would have been imaginable five years ago. Your thoughts? Well, it is not just the left,
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unfortunately, although I suppose for many national public radio would signify the left, but in theory,
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at least, it is a common resource for all Americans. And NPR decided to get rid of their annual reading of
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the Declaration of Independence on the 4th of July. They just had a panel discussion about equality
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instead of reading the Declaration of Independence. So whether attacking our country's founding or simply
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ignoring it, the left has decided that America is just not worth celebrating. And this goes back to
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the Obamas. When Barack Obama was elected, a lot of us with some experience, some exposure to the left,
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I had come from the far left at Harvard before I became a conservative. Those of us with some exposure
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to this were very worried about where Obama came from. He had a sort of moderate facade, but there were
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little remarks that he made and that Michelle Obama made. Remember when Michelle Obama said that once Obama
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was winning the Democratic primary in 2008, that she was finally proud of America, that for the first
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time in her adult life, she was proud of the country. Most of us are proud of our country.
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Right. Most of us are proud of our country, regardless of whether our favorite political
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party is winning or not. But for the left, it just isn't that way. They refuse to accept America as it
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is. The America they are proud of is the America they want to turn it into. They have this utopian
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vision that America would be worth loving if it did what all the left wing activists wanted to do,
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if this country could somehow follow that radical path. But as it is, they refuse to accept America.
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Obama would not defend American exceptionalism, for example, would not be proud of America.
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And Joe Biden is not right. He was not. And Biden is not cut from the same ideological cloth,
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but he's gone along with that. So I think it is striking. But this has been a long time coming,
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almost 15 years now that we've seen the left move in this direction. And, you know,
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you can't convince people to love something. So I don't know how we convince the left to change
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their mind. But I do think we can make it unacceptable for people to bash America on the
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4th of July. I mean, I think there's got to be a political price to pay for that.
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Well, NPR, not to quibble, but it's left wing. It's structure, its purpose, its expression,
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whether it's in news or whether it be in its programming. It's decidedly left. It's publicly
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funded. And as you say, a common source, but most common in that source is the left and liberal
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thought. It was anti-Trump, absolutely emphatically so. So I guess my question bears on
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why you think of NPR as something, the inference was that you think of it as almost something
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neutral rather than left wing. NPR is interesting because although it is left wing and its content
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is very left wing and its donors are left wing, you know, they had me on NPR after Trump won in
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2016. And they wanted to know about Steve Bannon at the time because people were very interested in
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him. And I went on the air with Steve Inskeep on Morning Edition and I pushed back on some of
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their questions and I raised an objection to one of the regular features they have on NPR called
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Code Switch, which is a program almost exclusively devoted to race. And I said, why must my taxpayer
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dollars fund racial programming? I said, you know, this is basically racist programming. So you're
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accusing people like Steve Bannon of racism. You don't know anything about him, but yet you have
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this racial programming here on NPR. Well, that threw a spanner into the works. And then the public
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editor or the ombudsman of NPR recommended that after my interview, they never allow another
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conservative to be interviewed live because they wanted to be able to counter whatever the
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conservative said on the air. I mean, it caused such a stir among readers, the fact that I,
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among listeners that I'd done that. And I haven't been on NPR since. But the weird thing about NPR is
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that if you drive through rural areas of the country or you live in a rural community, the local public
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radio station is actually a very important source of information. There aren't that many terrestrial
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radio stations in large parts of the country. And so oddly, we have a conservative community in many
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cases dependent on this liberal outlet for information about what's going on in the country.
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Now, of course, with the Internet, people are less dependent on radio. But
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thankfully, so always been. Yeah, it's always been difficult to defund NPR at the national level,
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because there are so many rural communities that depend on their local public radio station. So
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Joel, I don't mean to be in a contrary mood here. But as an agrarian myself, I live on a farm. I
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came from the agrarian West. And I have to say, the idea that somehow NPR is filling a void in the
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airwaves, to me is, you know, that sounds like a week of fundraising for NPR or public television,
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because it's really nonsensical, if I may be direct. There is nothing, nothing about the conservatives
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in the West or the East or the North or the South that they will find uplifting in the programming of
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public television or, or, excuse me, not the programming, but the news and editorial content
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of NPR or public television. It just isn't there. And they are, we are spending taxpayer dollars to
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listen to the to the likes of, you know, Nancy Pelosi, Joe Biden. These are not unique and fascinating
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minds, uh, editorially on NPR. They're left-wingers.
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Well, I'm going to reveal a little bit about my employment history here, but I first got my
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job. I got my first, I got my first job in, I got my first internship, I should say, in journalism
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at an NPR affiliate in Alaska. So I was way out in, in a very rural state where a lot of local
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communities had one radio station or two. And there, there was an awareness among the NPR staff
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in Alaska that their audience had different views than they did. Uh, one of the senior reporters at the
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station told me, this was in the nineties. It was in the mid nineties. One of the guys there,
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I think on my first day, the first day I showed up to work, he said to me, one of the phrases you're
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going to have to learn to get used to hearing is the liberals don't want you to know that.
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That's what you're going to hear a lot of. That's what he said to me.
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Well, so there was this tension between the reporters and their audience, but there was a sense
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in which people in Alaska, I think even on, on the conservative side of the spectrum, you know,
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understood that NPR had some value, even if, as you point out, it wasn't on their side.
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Well, I think people are, yeah. As they say in the craft, we're adrift here, but it's a fascinating
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for you and for me because of our, you know, our history of journalism, uh, and, uh, because of our,
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our fascination with media. But the fact is there is no reason in the world to put up with a
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tension between the views of NPR and their communities they serve. There should be no
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tension whatsoever. There should be a representation. Well, you know, the left always wants to talk
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about diversity as pure nonsense. They never want to talk about the diversity of ideology
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or philosophy. Uh, you know, they're palpable, uh, you know, frauds. Uh, and I think throughout,
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uh, it's just, uh, NPR, I mean, think about this. Can you imagine this country having a public
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conservative television network, uh, that's supported by taxes? Do you think the left would
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tolerate that crap for one minute? It's, it's idiocy. It's madness. It is madness. So, you know,
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I actually wanted to write a book about how NPR became so left wing and, you know, I was told by
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a conservative publisher, we like your idea, but we think people already have an opinion about NPR
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and they're not going to want to read more about it, but it is a fascinating story how it became
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taken over by the left. It wasn't conceived that way. I think it launched in 1971 under the Nixon
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administration. It really was not initially conceived of as a liberal project, but you're absolutely right.
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I mean, one of the things that prevents NPR from reflecting the views of its audience more
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accurately is that they are insulated from market pressures by the taxpayer money. The other thing
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that taxpayer money does is it crowds out alternatives that might otherwise want to play the role NPR
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plays, but provide a conservative editorial perspective rather than the liberal left one that NPR provides.
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But I'm just saying it's a shame that a national, and sorry, the reason I brought it up was just,
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it's so striking that they used to read the Declaration of Independence. Now even that
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is unacceptable to national taxpayer funded public radio.
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You talked initially about the utopian vision of, you know, of the left in public broadcast. To me,
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it's a dystopian ideal that they have immersed themselves in, and which, you know, they peddle
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daily. But the interesting thing is that used to be the argument that, you know, it was providing
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something that wasn't available. But my God, you think back to 1972, Nixon, ABC, CBS, NBC, all were
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left-wing in atmospherics and, in fact, in their newsrooms. They couldn't be as open. You talk about
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attention, the attention of the left in that newsroom in New York and Washington, D.C., with the audience
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that was the American public at that time. Think about it now. The NPR has to work hard to be more
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left-wing than ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, MSNBC, and so forth, don't you think?
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Yeah. Look, and also the public funding, as others have pointed out, keeps out competition. So, you
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know, media ought to welcome competition, because more voices are always better than fewer voices.
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That was Andrew Breitbart's philosophy. He always wanted more competition, more people in the space. He
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didn't see it as a threat to Breitbart.com. He thought it was a boon to media as a whole. And look, as you
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say, we are far afield, I'm just astonished that there's so much acceptance, even among, again,
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a taxpayer-funded organization like NPR. There's so much acceptance for the idea somehow that this
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country and its founding are bad. And I think people are...
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I mean, there comes a point where it's not even a philosophical discussion. We are dealing with a
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group of Marxist Democrats who have taken control of the Democrat Party. This is one of the things
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that kind of, I find bewildering, is that very bright, capable, experienced people don't want
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to confront the reality that we face in this country. When you look at all of the newsrooms
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in the country that are left-wing versus those that are right-wing, there are a handful that are
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conservative. And the conservatives, Republicans and independents, make up the preponderance of the
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voting and viewing public. This is not about competition, because competition doesn't exist.
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We have an oligopoly in media, just as we have an oligopoly in big pharma. You go through the list.
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We have to deal with the world we've got. And it's really important that everybody understand that.
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These are Marxist Dems driving the entire Democrat Party and in league with the deep state,
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the permanent bureaucracy, if you will. There's never been a point in our history where the FBI
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and the Department of Justice were decidedly, pointedly, and publicly, and obviously
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left-wing and in absolute league with one party. And here it is. What do you think?
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No, I agree with that. And yet on the 4th of July, it just never ceases to be shocking that that's
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where we are. So it is a bad place to be. And Jonathan Turley, who is a liberal, but often
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features in conservative commentary because he has a very clear-eyed view of the Constitution,
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he commented that what NPR was doing was hacking away at the few bonds that still unite Americans
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left and right. When you start saying that the Declaration of Independence is not something
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you want to recite anymore or share with listeners, then you're really damaging the country.
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You're not damaging your political opponents. You're damaging yourself as part of the broader
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You know, I'll just say it this way. To hell with those liberal selves. What I'm worried about
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are our children. I'm worried about the education that is indoctrination toward the left. And people want
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to blindly go about living their lives without attending to the realities that could ultimately be
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determined in what kind of republic it is we have that we lose to the Marxist Dems, because that is
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their end. I mean, it's taxpayer-funded destruction, if you will.
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Yeah. Yeah. No, absolutely. And actually, NPR, interestingly enough, NPR has said privately...
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Yeah. You know, James O'Keefe did that great sting about a decade ago where he recorded the
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senior leadership of NPR. And one of the things they said in the undercover video was they admitted
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they can get by without public funding, that they have actually begun to plan for a future
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without it. So, look, maybe there's potential for that in some future Republican...
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But again, I say to you, I don't care. Our audience doesn't care. If NPR withered, died,
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and just simply crumbled to ashes right now, assuming... I'm not talking about the people,
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I'm talking about the enterprise. You know, they wouldn't give a wit. And there is no reason to,
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because there is no redeeming value in what they do editorially. They could exist as a programming
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unit, which would have a great, you know, cultural still bias. But that's acceptable to me if it is
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intellectually rewarding and educationally. But the rest of it, that's nonsense. And we've got to
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accept that. I want to turn to, if we may, that turn to the left that we're hearing when, you know,
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you know, people are saying, you know, all sorts of profanities around Independence Day, the 4th of
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July, when they, when the left again is bemoaning a Supreme Court decision, that on its face,
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intellectually, they understand intellectually, I'm sure, that textualists are the rationalists in law,
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and they are the activists and acting outside the law. Don't you agree with that?
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They do. They understand that originalism is a more legitimate view. And that's why even some of
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the smarter people on the left have tried to put their arguments for abortion or climate change
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regulation when it comes to the court, if tried to put it in originalist terms, they just understand
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it's a much more convincing argument than simply saying, we want liberal justices to legislate from
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the bench and act as a super legislature that can merely bring about our desired left-wing policy
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priorities. So the smarter ones are in agreement that originalism is a better philosophy. They have
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no alternative. And yet they're saying that the Supreme Court has somehow undermined America by
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ruling the way it has and several recent rulings. I see a lot of these comments around, you know,
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and they ignore the cases where the Supreme Court went the other way. The Supreme Court did not agree
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with conservatives for whatever reason. I mean, look at the case involving the remain in Mexico policy.
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The Supreme Court upheld Joe Biden's decision, like it or not, they upheld his decision to end Trump's
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remain in Mexico policy. They said, look, this is something that's within the executive power to do.
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I think the outcome is wrong. I think Biden should have kept the remain in Mexico policy.
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Right. I don't think it makes the court illegitimate because they went the wrong way,
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but that's how the left views it. And I think they're at odds with themselves.
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But they're at odds with themselves in another way, Lou, which is that they aren't moving to other
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countries. This is the best country in the world to live in easily. It's not even close.
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And for all the talk that we hear every four years that if some Republican fill in the blank wins the
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presidency, they're going to move to Canada. Nobody ever moves to Canada. And they don't move to Canada
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unless they're, you know, avoiding the draft in the 1970s or something. But nobody ever moves to Canada
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because America is amazing. You know, you can you can get a lot of the same stuff in Canada, but
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Canada is not as free as the United States. And, you know, if you go to Canada, what's that?
00:21:34.200
Not even close. Right. So, look, people who are bashing this country do so from the position of
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comfort and luxury. You know, it's like George Orwell used to say the same thing about
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British pacifists. He said, well, you can be a pacifist if you're wealthy enough to avoid having
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to live in a bomb shelter. And if you're far enough away from the fighting that someone else has to do
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it for you. Yeah, you can be a pacifist. You have that luxury. You're enjoying the security and comfort
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that other people's sacrifices are giving you. But if you're close to the fight and you have anything
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at stake, there's no way you're a pacifist. All of us would like to avoid war, but we have to fight this
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war to be a free country. And it's the same thing when it comes to America. The idea that
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America is bad and that we have to fix it with all of this identity politics or redistribution
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or renewable energy or whatever the cause of the day is. Those are beliefs that are the luxuries
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of prosperity. You know, I tried to explain to somebody why I'm not a socialist. I said,
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I'm not wealthy enough to be a socialist. You can only indulge certain views if you don't have to
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worry about who's paying the bills. If you're so wealthy that there's no consequences.
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Right, right. So this is the issue with the left. They say all this horrible stuff about America,
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but they love living here. They won't admit it. They may not even know it consciously, but
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this is the place that is best for them to live where they can make a living even. Look at that
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fellow who writes about anti-racism. His name escapes my mind for the moment, but he gets paid tens of
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thousands of dollars every time he speaks at a college about how racist we are. What a country
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where you can get paid by these supposed racists to tell them how racist they are.
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We're talking about some of the policy quandaries that this nation and crises that we find ourselves in,
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none more so really than planning for a future. We were talking earlier about utopian ideals.
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There are in utopian ideals always a corollary, and that is dystopia itself. And it looks to me
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like in many ways, whether it's energy policy or whatever, that's what we may be headed for,
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We are not a serious country. We are not having serious conversations about how to plan for our
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future. And in South Africa, which I just returned from, I saw a little glimpse of our possible
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future. South Africa has run out of electricity, and they're years away from a solution because it
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takes time to build power plants. But in the two decades since they had the cheapest power on earth,
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which was just 20 years ago back in 2000, 2001, in those two decades, instead of investing scarce
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capital resources in building more power plants, they were investing that same capital in economic
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redistribution. They were allowing the ruling party to appoint its cronies to keep positions in the power
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company and other utilities. They were using aggressive affirmative action policies to push out
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qualified engineers. And they're reaping, unfortunately, the consequences of doing all that.
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Now, here in the United States, we don't have quite the same issues, but we're also seeing
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a shortage of power generating capacity because we're in this headlong rush toward green energy
00:25:03.860
before it is ready. Here in California, two summers ago, we had rolling blackouts because
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the solar energy and the wind energy failed during overcast and calm conditions that happened also to
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be in the middle of a heat wave. So people had the air conditioning on, but the wind wasn't blowing
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and the sun wasn't shining and we ran out of electricity. We also had a natural gas plant
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that was offline and we don't have enough backups. In Texas, just six months after that, there were
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those infamous blackouts when the wind turbines froze in the middle of a cold snap. We need to have
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fossil fuel as part of the mix. Biden is shutting it down. California is shutting it down. And even
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conservative states like Texas are investing heavily in green energy without providing the same
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or necessary investments in fossil fuels, which we still have a lot of, especially coal and things
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like that. We are pursuing this green agenda at the cost of power. And I have to tell you,
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when you don't have power, when you don't have electricity, the fuels you have to turn to are much
00:26:07.360
worse for the environment than coal. I mean, we went to the mall in Johannesburg, just as an example,
00:26:14.500
and they lost power four o'clock on a Friday afternoon. They had to start their diesel generators.
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And I had to leave my family through the parking lot and out the door through the diesel smoke. I mean,
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that stuff is much worse than burning coal at a distant power plant. And South Africa has made that
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choice. This was predictable. It was predicted. Here in the United States, we are sitting with similar
00:26:37.160
problems, not just with electricity, but with water. We're in the middle of an extreme drought here in
00:26:41.280
California. And Colorado River is in all kinds of trouble. Lake Mead is about 150 feet away from
00:26:46.920
being what they call a dead lake, basically. A dead pool. You know, not dead biologically, but yes,
00:26:54.420
it's a dead pool. It's basically not going to be able to power the turbines for Hoover Dam. Now,
00:27:00.460
they're blaming climate change, but that's a cop-out. That's an excuse for planners who have failed
00:27:05.980
to provide adequate infrastructure for our water needs. Here in California, we haven't built a major
00:27:11.160
reservoir in 40 years. We are turning down desalination plants when they're proposed.
00:27:16.300
The California Coastal Commission rejected a desalination plant in May because they didn't
00:27:20.700
like the idea that a private company would own the water. Well, let me tell you something. When
00:27:25.180
you run out of water, the only way to get it is privately. You have to sink a borehole in your
00:27:28.720
backyard and hope that you can afford what it costs to do that. So you have to become your own water
00:27:33.800
supplier. And that's the irony. I don't think people are taking the cost of these decisions into
00:27:40.500
account when they decide to go for green this and green that, and they decide they don't want a
00:27:43.960
dam and they don't want a reservoir and so forth. We have to be a serious country. We have to be
00:27:48.960
adults, being human and surviving in the comfort to which we've become accustomed. And really,
00:27:54.520
it's not just about comfort. It's about providing, in some cases, for basic needs. I mean, when the
00:27:58.700
power goes out, what do you do at hospitals? What do you do in emergency services or home security?
00:28:04.720
I mean, these are essential services. We need electricity to run them. We need water. Water
00:28:10.260
is the essence of life. We have to be adults and recognize there are environmental costs to some
00:28:15.280
of these things, but the cost of not having them is so much worse.
00:28:18.960
It is, and it's clearly so. They've been warning about in California for at least a half century
00:28:25.120
about the prospect that is at hand right now. And that is the Colorado River no longer being able
00:28:33.560
to support the population that has grown up around it. And by around it, I'm referring,
00:28:38.140
of course, to Nevada, to Arizona, to California primarily. And when you go upriver, those people
00:28:45.740
are not going to give up their water for the benefit of a glitzy Malibu village or Pacific Palisades
00:29:00.560
or wherever it may be. It's just not going to happen. They're going to keep their water.
00:29:05.440
And then there will be court battles and everything else. But those battles are already, they're really
00:29:11.620
already fought and won. Upriver wins. Downriver loses. And that includes Mexico, by the way.
00:29:20.080
Right. And yet, you know, we have a situation right now where the drought is natural, but the
00:29:25.860
scarcity is human. We could have more water. We could have enough water for our needs if we
00:29:32.000
understood that, yes, this is an arid climate or a semi-arid climate. These are dry states.
00:29:39.580
Historically, over many centuries, we've had a very dry climate here. It was different.
00:29:44.760
The century between the mid-19th and early 20th century was wetter than usual. And maybe that led
00:29:49.960
to some expectations that turned out not to be true. But whether you think it's climate change or not,
00:29:53.360
we have to plan for a better future. That doesn't just mean imposing conservation on households,
00:29:58.240
and it doesn't mean turning almond fields into just empty, fallow fields. I mean, we can't continue
00:30:04.960
to do that. We have to expand the supply of water. We have the technology to do it. We have desalination.
00:30:10.420
We have reservoirs that can be environmentally friendly. We can do all this. Instead, we're
00:30:14.040
pursuing this green agenda, and nobody is being honest with the public about what it means.
00:30:18.900
It's not green not to have electricity. When you don't have electricity to heat your home,
00:30:22.660
you'll heat it with wood. You'll heat it with diesel. You'll heat it with things that are much
00:30:26.180
worse for the environment than the natural gas-fired power plant that Eric Garcetti is trying to phase
00:30:32.180
out here in Los Angeles, or the nuclear power plant that Democrats want to get rid of up in Diablo
00:30:38.040
Canyon. I mean, we need these things to keep ourselves going, and we have the technology to do it. This
00:30:44.440
is all preventable. But somehow, our leaders, particularly in the blue states, but also in other places,
00:30:49.780
our leaders are not taking seriously the task of remaining the world's leading economy. And really,
00:30:55.900
they're not being honest with us about what our needs are going to be in the future.
00:30:59.620
You know, I have to say I'm shocked to hear you say that you don't have serious leaders. You've got
00:31:04.340
Gavin Newsom as governor. You've got George Soros' prosecuting attorneys, district attorneys in San
00:31:12.180
Francisco and Los Angeles. So the boon is great, and the positivity just has to, the vibes have to be
00:31:20.920
powerful there in California. It's a farce that is, that produces this, these unserious leaders,
00:31:30.420
as you were saying, because you can afford it. You're talking about the fifth largest economy in the
00:31:36.460
world. You can afford to have play toys like George Soros and his prosecutors and Gavin Newsom and his,
00:31:45.720
you know, narcissistic ambitions. I mean, but the reality is California is on the brink,
00:31:53.900
and it lives on the brink, whether it's natural disasters or whether it's man-made, it seems.
00:31:59.400
California lives on the brink, and we can't do anything about earthquakes yet. So, okay,
00:32:06.840
that's part of the risk of living here. You can get earthquake insurance. You can have the right
00:32:10.820
kind of engineering. But we don't need to be short of water every few years. And there's a failure of
00:32:17.340
leadership here. I mean, Gavin Newsom, let's take another problem, wildfires. We have these wildfires,
00:32:21.740
some of which are natural, but we have wildfires partly because of bad infrastructure and partly
00:32:26.280
because people have built homes deep into forests. And okay, but Newsom promised that he was going to
00:32:31.920
invest some huge amount of money in clearing dead trees and clearing fuel from some of these forests.
00:32:39.180
And he hadn't done it as of last year. And this is not being reported by me. It's being reported by
00:32:45.320
public radio, you know, to come back to where we were at the beginning. The local public radio
00:32:50.480
reporters dug into this and found that Newsom was breaking his promise to deal with the fire problem.
00:32:56.280
You are intractable. You are absolutely relentless on public radio.
00:33:01.920
And poor public radio. Now you're blaming them. I can see the headlines. Joel Pollack on NPR. It's
00:33:12.560
going to be a rough time. It's been a fascinating conversation, Joel, as always. Thanks for being
00:33:18.520
here. We always give our guests the last word and you can choose any subject you wish,
00:33:23.320
any thoughts you would like to share on whether it be NPR upon the 200 to 500 year drought,
00:33:32.040
it seems, at least at this point, maybe longer or perhaps shorter, or a left wing that is
00:33:43.160
Well, let me say this. I think that around the world, there's a sense people have that things
00:33:50.960
are falling apart, that there's no leadership. And when a tragedy happens, really tragedy is the
00:33:57.100
wrong word, but when something like the mass shooting at Highland Park happens, and I grew up
00:34:00.720
near there. I grew up in Skokie, which is just down the road from Highland Park. When something like
00:34:05.740
that happens, we're told that if you offer thoughts and prayers, that that's somehow insulting because the
00:34:10.220
left thinks that legislation and regulation and gun control are what solve the problem.
00:34:15.780
We mock thoughts and prayers at our peril because prayer is the one thing that we have that reminds
00:34:22.320
us, number one, that there's a higher authority to whom we all have to answer, and number two,
00:34:26.280
that we have things in common, that even if we worship differently and so forth, there's a
00:34:31.560
commonality we have as Americans that we can express, even if it's not in prayer, in a moment of quiet
00:34:38.100
reflection or whatever. And we've lost that. We've eliminated it from our schools. We've eliminated
00:34:44.100
it from a lot of public events. And I think that this country needs that. Again, I think that we need
00:34:50.860
that moment of prayer. You know, Donald Trump understood that. And it was one of the nicest
00:34:55.640
things he did. One of the most important things he did was call for a day of prayer early in the
00:34:59.660
coronavirus pandemic. The left, they didn't want to listen. They didn't listen. But we need that
00:35:04.480
shared ritual to be able to function again, I think, as a society. And I think we're not alone.
00:35:10.980
I think many others around the world are suffering this sense of disunity and the lack of leadership.
00:35:16.640
I think prayer is part of expressing our basic values, but also expressing a clear sense of who
00:35:22.480
we are, of our small place in the universe, which I think puts into perspective all the troubles we have
00:35:28.240
and reminds us we need to work with one another, even if we don't like each other. We need to work with
00:35:32.220
one another. We can't run this country down. We can't trash its independence. We have to admit
00:35:37.580
and acknowledge those common things that allow us to be free and prosperous. And I think if we can
00:35:41.860
restore some of that to public life, I think we can move ahead.
00:35:45.300
I agree. And when you talk about the tragedy in Highland Park, it's also important to remember
00:35:50.840
that in the 80s, under the Reagan administration, a budget cut back on mental institutions and mental
00:35:58.240
health care was, some argue, the incipient point for these horrific tragedies that have befallen this
00:36:07.860
country. There is cause and effect. These consequences perhaps were not unforeseen by all, but they should
00:36:16.800
have been at least taken into account some 10 years later. But here we are in 2022 and people do not want
00:36:23.760
to talk about public mental health and the importance of it with all of our institutions, whether it be in
00:36:32.260
education, whether it be with our municipalities. We have to do better for those who are in desperate need
00:36:41.660
of mental health assistance and support. Joel, with that, I want to just say thank you so much.
00:36:51.520
It is good to have you back on Terra America. We appreciate you being with us as always. God bless you.
00:37:00.620
Joel Pollack, Great American. Thanks, everybody, for being with us today. Tomorrow, our guest will be former
00:37:07.540
Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Mark Morgan on the crisis at the Mexico border and why the
00:37:14.500
Biden White House is only making it worse. Please join us tomorrow right here on the Great America
00:37:20.400
Show. Till then, God bless you and God bless America.