The Great America Show - July 12, 2022


NO ONE EVER MOVES TO CANADA SAYS BREITBART’S JOEL POLLAK


Episode Stats

Length

37 minutes

Words per Minute

164.76144

Word Count

6,164

Sentence Count

399

Misogynist Sentences

1

Hate Speech Sentences

4


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

00:00:00.000 Hello, everybody. I'm Lou Dobbs, and great to have you with us on The Great America Show.
00:00:05.540 Disturbing developments in Europe tied directly to NATO's somewhat late effort to bring Finland
00:00:10.660 and Sweden into the alliance, and the dangling prospects still of Ukraine joining as well.
00:00:18.000 Putin isn't waiting to see what Europe is about to do. Instead, he has Europe worrying about what
00:00:24.400 lies in store for them. Despite all the bravado from EU leaders, Russia is now holding a considerable
00:00:31.040 advantage, and that is energy supplies. The Russians just shut down the main gas pipeline from Russia
00:00:37.780 to Germany for regularly scheduled maintenance. So now the Europeans are asking themselves,
00:00:44.620 when will Putin open up the pipeline once again? And what other hardships could he have in store
00:00:50.520 for Europe? Putin wasn't being at all subtle last week when he put Russia's new so-called
00:00:56.340 doomsday submarine on display. How's that for a name? Doomsday submarine. The submarine is capable
00:01:04.520 of carrying six 80-foot-long torpedoes, each armed with a nuclear warhead of up to 100 megatons of
00:01:13.120 destructive power. The Europeans are understandably anxious these days, while President Biden,
00:01:19.220 in the judgment of Congressman Daryl Issa, is seemingly intent on giving Putin whatever he
00:01:24.960 wants, that is, Ukraine. And remember, it was the Obama-Biden White House that allowed Putin to invade
00:01:32.260 and annex Crimea without response from the United States or Europe. So who is Biden working for
00:01:39.860 these days? Besides his puppet masters, he's destroyed the southern border with Mexico, he's given the
00:01:46.740 Mexican drug cartel's control of both sides of the border. He's distributing illegal immigrants all over
00:01:52.520 this country in the dead of night, so no one will know who's in the country, or doing who knows what. He's
00:01:59.180 compromised with China, with Ukraine, and Russia. Will he turn over eastern Ukraine to Putin, or will he turn
00:02:06.740 over all of Ukraine? His administration is going after parents, any who question left-wing indoctrination
00:02:13.700 in our schools, CRT, ESG, going after January 6th demonstrators like they had burned down the same
00:02:21.380 number of stores, tried to destroy federal courthouses, or assaulted dozens of police officers, just like
00:02:28.100 Antifa and the BLM rioters and arsonists did in the summer of 2020. But of course, the left never
00:02:35.600 prosecuted Antifa and BLM. And now the left is publicly displaying its contempt for America. It all
00:02:43.280 marks a new low point for law and order and respect for this country. To take all of this up and more,
00:02:49.700 our guest today is the senior editor-at-large for Breitbart News, Joel Pollack. Great to have you with us,
00:02:55.920 Joel. Welcome back. The left, Joel, trying hard to take this country for their left. Hard left than
00:03:02.480 would have been imaginable five years ago. Your thoughts? Well, it is not just the left,
00:03:08.940 unfortunately, although I suppose for many national public radio would signify the left, but in theory,
00:03:16.340 at least, it is a common resource for all Americans. And NPR decided to get rid of their annual reading of
00:03:23.140 the Declaration of Independence on the 4th of July. They just had a panel discussion about equality
00:03:28.280 instead of reading the Declaration of Independence. So whether attacking our country's founding or simply
00:03:35.340 ignoring it, the left has decided that America is just not worth celebrating. And this goes back to
00:03:42.960 the Obamas. When Barack Obama was elected, a lot of us with some experience, some exposure to the left,
00:03:51.700 I had come from the far left at Harvard before I became a conservative. Those of us with some exposure
00:03:57.520 to this were very worried about where Obama came from. He had a sort of moderate facade, but there were
00:04:03.120 little remarks that he made and that Michelle Obama made. Remember when Michelle Obama said that once Obama
00:04:08.660 was winning the Democratic primary in 2008, that she was finally proud of America, that for the first
00:04:13.900 time in her adult life, she was proud of the country. Most of us are proud of our country.
00:04:19.200 Right. Most of us are proud of our country, regardless of whether our favorite political
00:04:23.460 party is winning or not. But for the left, it just isn't that way. They refuse to accept America as it
00:04:30.260 is. The America they are proud of is the America they want to turn it into. They have this utopian
00:04:36.260 vision that America would be worth loving if it did what all the left wing activists wanted to do,
00:04:41.640 if this country could somehow follow that radical path. But as it is, they refuse to accept America.
00:04:47.800 Obama would not defend American exceptionalism, for example, would not be proud of America.
00:04:53.360 And Joe Biden is not right. He was not. And Biden is not cut from the same ideological cloth,
00:04:58.600 but he's gone along with that. So I think it is striking. But this has been a long time coming,
00:05:04.320 almost 15 years now that we've seen the left move in this direction. And, you know,
00:05:09.140 you can't convince people to love something. So I don't know how we convince the left to change
00:05:12.560 their mind. But I do think we can make it unacceptable for people to bash America on the
00:05:20.040 4th of July. I mean, I think there's got to be a political price to pay for that.
00:05:23.360 Well, NPR, not to quibble, but it's left wing. It's structure, its purpose, its expression,
00:05:35.300 whether it's in news or whether it be in its programming. It's decidedly left. It's publicly
00:05:41.600 funded. And as you say, a common source, but most common in that source is the left and liberal
00:05:49.280 thought. It was anti-Trump, absolutely emphatically so. So I guess my question bears on
00:05:59.180 why you think of NPR as something, the inference was that you think of it as almost something
00:06:05.480 neutral rather than left wing. NPR is interesting because although it is left wing and its content
00:06:14.100 is very left wing and its donors are left wing, you know, they had me on NPR after Trump won in
00:06:19.840 2016. And they wanted to know about Steve Bannon at the time because people were very interested in
00:06:26.480 him. And I went on the air with Steve Inskeep on Morning Edition and I pushed back on some of
00:06:33.760 their questions and I raised an objection to one of the regular features they have on NPR called
00:06:38.520 Code Switch, which is a program almost exclusively devoted to race. And I said, why must my taxpayer
00:06:45.120 dollars fund racial programming? I said, you know, this is basically racist programming. So you're
00:06:50.200 accusing people like Steve Bannon of racism. You don't know anything about him, but yet you have
00:06:54.560 this racial programming here on NPR. Well, that threw a spanner into the works. And then the public
00:06:59.500 editor or the ombudsman of NPR recommended that after my interview, they never allow another
00:07:04.260 conservative to be interviewed live because they wanted to be able to counter whatever the
00:07:08.400 conservative said on the air. I mean, it caused such a stir among readers, the fact that I,
00:07:13.000 among listeners that I'd done that. And I haven't been on NPR since. But the weird thing about NPR is
00:07:17.980 that if you drive through rural areas of the country or you live in a rural community, the local public
00:07:23.340 radio station is actually a very important source of information. There aren't that many terrestrial
00:07:29.220 radio stations in large parts of the country. And so oddly, we have a conservative community in many
00:07:36.300 cases dependent on this liberal outlet for information about what's going on in the country.
00:07:42.560 Now, of course, with the Internet, people are less dependent on radio. But
00:07:45.140 thankfully, so always been. Yeah, it's always been difficult to defund NPR at the national level,
00:07:52.380 because there are so many rural communities that depend on their local public radio station. So
00:07:57.880 NPR is a very strange phenomenon.
00:07:59.880 Joel, I don't mean to be in a contrary mood here. But as an agrarian myself, I live on a farm. I
00:08:08.980 came from the agrarian West. And I have to say, the idea that somehow NPR is filling a void in the
00:08:20.140 airwaves, to me is, you know, that sounds like a week of fundraising for NPR or public television,
00:08:28.660 because it's really nonsensical, if I may be direct. There is nothing, nothing about the conservatives
00:08:39.440 in the West or the East or the North or the South that they will find uplifting in the programming of
00:08:46.920 public television or, or, excuse me, not the programming, but the news and editorial content
00:08:55.160 of NPR or public television. It just isn't there. And they are, we are spending taxpayer dollars to
00:09:03.900 listen to the to the likes of, you know, Nancy Pelosi, Joe Biden. These are not unique and fascinating
00:09:13.880 minds, uh, editorially on NPR. They're left-wingers.
00:09:20.620 Well, I'm going to reveal a little bit about my employment history here, but I first got my
00:09:25.620 job. I got my first, I got my first job in, I got my first internship, I should say, in journalism
00:09:32.960 at an NPR affiliate in Alaska. So I was way out in, in a very rural state where a lot of local
00:09:43.460 communities had one radio station or two. And there, there was an awareness among the NPR staff
00:09:51.580 in Alaska that their audience had different views than they did. Uh, one of the senior reporters at the
00:09:58.700 station told me, this was in the nineties. It was in the mid nineties. One of the guys there,
00:10:03.560 I think on my first day, the first day I showed up to work, he said to me, one of the phrases you're
00:10:09.320 going to have to learn to get used to hearing is the liberals don't want you to know that.
00:10:13.100 That's what you're going to hear a lot of. That's what he said to me.
00:10:18.220 Well, so there was this tension between the reporters and their audience, but there was a sense
00:10:23.140 in which people in Alaska, I think even on, on the conservative side of the spectrum, you know,
00:10:28.240 understood that NPR had some value, even if, as you point out, it wasn't on their side.
00:10:33.900 Well, I think people are, yeah. As they say in the craft, we're adrift here, but it's a fascinating
00:10:40.280 for you and for me because of our, you know, our history of journalism, uh, and, uh, because of our,
00:10:47.160 our fascination with media. But the fact is there is no reason in the world to put up with a
00:10:52.000 tension between the views of NPR and their communities they serve. There should be no
00:10:58.720 tension whatsoever. There should be a representation. Well, you know, the left always wants to talk
00:11:04.240 about diversity as pure nonsense. They never want to talk about the diversity of ideology
00:11:09.480 or philosophy. Uh, you know, they're palpable, uh, you know, frauds. Uh, and I think throughout,
00:11:16.860 uh, it's just, uh, NPR, I mean, think about this. Can you imagine this country having a public
00:11:26.140 conservative television network, uh, that's supported by taxes? Do you think the left would
00:11:32.420 tolerate that crap for one minute? It's, it's idiocy. It's madness. It is madness. So, you know,
00:11:39.580 I actually wanted to write a book about how NPR became so left wing and, you know, I was told by
00:11:46.780 a conservative publisher, we like your idea, but we think people already have an opinion about NPR
00:11:51.420 and they're not going to want to read more about it, but it is a fascinating story how it became
00:11:56.060 taken over by the left. It wasn't conceived that way. I think it launched in 1971 under the Nixon
00:12:02.780 administration. It really was not initially conceived of as a liberal project, but you're absolutely right.
00:12:09.380 I mean, one of the things that prevents NPR from reflecting the views of its audience more
00:12:15.600 accurately is that they are insulated from market pressures by the taxpayer money. The other thing
00:12:21.000 that taxpayer money does is it crowds out alternatives that might otherwise want to play the role NPR
00:12:27.420 plays, but provide a conservative editorial perspective rather than the liberal left one that NPR provides.
00:12:33.460 But I'm just saying it's a shame that a national, and sorry, the reason I brought it up was just,
00:12:39.560 it's so striking that they used to read the Declaration of Independence. Now even that
00:12:43.640 is unacceptable to national taxpayer funded public radio.
00:12:48.520 You talked initially about the utopian vision of, you know, of the left in public broadcast. To me,
00:12:56.840 it's a dystopian ideal that they have immersed themselves in, and which, you know, they peddle
00:13:04.740 daily. But the interesting thing is that used to be the argument that, you know, it was providing
00:13:09.880 something that wasn't available. But my God, you think back to 1972, Nixon, ABC, CBS, NBC, all were
00:13:19.140 left-wing in atmospherics and, in fact, in their newsrooms. They couldn't be as open. You talk about
00:13:27.340 attention, the attention of the left in that newsroom in New York and Washington, D.C., with the audience
00:13:35.320 that was the American public at that time. Think about it now. The NPR has to work hard to be more
00:13:42.320 left-wing than ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, MSNBC, and so forth, don't you think?
00:13:49.140 Yeah. Look, and also the public funding, as others have pointed out, keeps out competition. So, you
00:13:56.880 know, media ought to welcome competition, because more voices are always better than fewer voices.
00:14:02.600 That was Andrew Breitbart's philosophy. He always wanted more competition, more people in the space. He
00:14:07.400 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
00:14:15.160 say, we are far afield, I'm just astonished that there's so much acceptance, even among, again,
00:14:22.960 a taxpayer-funded organization like NPR. There's so much acceptance for the idea somehow that this
00:14:27.720 country and its founding are bad. And I think people are...
00:14:32.320 I mean, there comes a point where it's not even a philosophical discussion. We are dealing with a
00:14:37.060 group of Marxist Democrats who have taken control of the Democrat Party. This is one of the things
00:14:44.040 that kind of, I find bewildering, is that very bright, capable, experienced people don't want
00:14:53.220 to confront the reality that we face in this country. When you look at all of the newsrooms
00:14:58.460 in the country that are left-wing versus those that are right-wing, there are a handful that are
00:15:03.960 conservative. And the conservatives, Republicans and independents, make up the preponderance of the
00:15:10.240 voting and viewing public. This is not about competition, because competition doesn't exist.
00:15:16.940 We have an oligopoly in media, just as we have an oligopoly in big pharma. You go through the list.
00:15:24.300 We have to deal with the world we've got. And it's really important that everybody understand that.
00:15:30.300 These are Marxist Dems driving the entire Democrat Party and in league with the deep state,
00:15:36.820 the permanent bureaucracy, if you will. There's never been a point in our history where the FBI
00:15:42.400 and the Department of Justice were decidedly, pointedly, and publicly, and obviously
00:15:47.620 left-wing and in absolute league with one party. And here it is. What do you think?
00:15:55.440 No, I agree with that. And yet on the 4th of July, it just never ceases to be shocking that that's
00:16:03.640 where we are. So it is a bad place to be. And Jonathan Turley, who is a liberal, but often
00:16:12.400 features in conservative commentary because he has a very clear-eyed view of the Constitution,
00:16:17.960 he commented that what NPR was doing was hacking away at the few bonds that still unite Americans
00:16:25.640 left and right. When you start saying that the Declaration of Independence is not something
00:16:30.620 you want to recite anymore or share with listeners, then you're really damaging the country.
00:16:36.520 You're not damaging your political opponents. You're damaging yourself as part of the broader
00:16:40.980 nation.
00:16:41.540 You know, I'll just say it this way. To hell with those liberal selves. What I'm worried about
00:16:47.960 are our children. I'm worried about the education that is indoctrination toward the left. And people want
00:16:56.720 to blindly go about living their lives without attending to the realities that could ultimately be
00:17:04.980 determined in what kind of republic it is we have that we lose to the Marxist Dems, because that is
00:17:13.160 their end. I mean, it's taxpayer-funded destruction, if you will.
00:17:19.320 Yeah. Yeah. No, absolutely. And actually, NPR, interestingly enough, NPR has said privately...
00:17:28.080 I'm going to get you off this NPR, Jack.
00:17:30.800 Yeah. You know, James O'Keefe did that great sting about a decade ago where he recorded the
00:17:38.320 senior leadership of NPR. And one of the things they said in the undercover video was they admitted
00:17:43.920 they can get by without public funding, that they have actually begun to plan for a future
00:17:48.160 without it. So, look, maybe there's potential for that in some future Republican...
00:17:52.860 But again, I say to you, I don't care. Our audience doesn't care. If NPR withered, died,
00:18:00.380 and just simply crumbled to ashes right now, assuming... I'm not talking about the people,
00:18:06.540 I'm talking about the enterprise. You know, they wouldn't give a wit. And there is no reason to,
00:18:14.920 because there is no redeeming value in what they do editorially. They could exist as a programming
00:18:21.240 unit, which would have a great, you know, cultural still bias. But that's acceptable to me if it is
00:18:29.520 intellectually rewarding and educationally. But the rest of it, that's nonsense. And we've got to
00:18:37.400 accept that. I want to turn to, if we may, that turn to the left that we're hearing when, you know,
00:18:45.920 you know, people are saying, you know, all sorts of profanities around Independence Day, the 4th of
00:18:53.400 July, when they, when the left again is bemoaning a Supreme Court decision, that on its face,
00:19:01.260 intellectually, they understand intellectually, I'm sure, that textualists are the rationalists in law,
00:19:09.280 and they are the activists and acting outside the law. Don't you agree with that?
00:19:19.000 They do. They understand that originalism is a more legitimate view. And that's why even some of
00:19:28.460 the smarter people on the left have tried to put their arguments for abortion or climate change
00:19:34.260 regulation when it comes to the court, if tried to put it in originalist terms, they just understand
00:19:39.980 it's a much more convincing argument than simply saying, we want liberal justices to legislate from
00:19:46.440 the bench and act as a super legislature that can merely bring about our desired left-wing policy
00:19:54.160 priorities. So the smarter ones are in agreement that originalism is a better philosophy. They have
00:20:00.000 no alternative. And yet they're saying that the Supreme Court has somehow undermined America by
00:20:07.480 ruling the way it has and several recent rulings. I see a lot of these comments around, you know,
00:20:11.960 and they ignore the cases where the Supreme Court went the other way. The Supreme Court did not agree
00:20:16.140 with conservatives for whatever reason. I mean, look at the case involving the remain in Mexico policy.
00:20:21.220 The Supreme Court upheld Joe Biden's decision, like it or not, they upheld his decision to end Trump's
00:20:28.560 remain in Mexico policy. They said, look, this is something that's within the executive power to do.
00:20:33.340 I think the outcome is wrong. I think Biden should have kept the remain in Mexico policy.
00:20:37.960 It's a matter of policy, not a matter of law.
00:20:42.200 Right. I don't think it makes the court illegitimate because they went the wrong way,
00:20:45.920 but that's how the left views it. And I think they're at odds with themselves.
00:20:50.140 But they're at odds with themselves in another way, Lou, which is that they aren't moving to other
00:20:55.520 countries. This is the best country in the world to live in easily. It's not even close.
00:21:01.860 And for all the talk that we hear every four years that if some Republican fill in the blank wins the
00:21:08.640 presidency, they're going to move to Canada. Nobody ever moves to Canada. And they don't move to Canada
00:21:13.820 unless they're, you know, avoiding the draft in the 1970s or something. But nobody ever moves to Canada
00:21:19.180 because America is amazing. You know, you can you can get a lot of the same stuff in Canada, but
00:21:24.380 Canada is not as free as the United States. And, you know, if you go to Canada, what's that?
00:21:32.240 I said it's not even close.
00:21:34.200 Not even close. Right. So, look, people who are bashing this country do so from the position of
00:21:41.640 comfort and luxury. You know, it's like George Orwell used to say the same thing about
00:21:46.020 British pacifists. He said, well, you can be a pacifist if you're wealthy enough to avoid having
00:21:52.900 to live in a bomb shelter. And if you're far enough away from the fighting that someone else has to do
00:21:58.520 it for you. Yeah, you can be a pacifist. You have that luxury. You're enjoying the security and comfort
00:22:03.280 that other people's sacrifices are giving you. But if you're close to the fight and you have anything
00:22:06.940 at stake, there's no way you're a pacifist. All of us would like to avoid war, but we have to fight this
00:22:10.840 war to be a free country. And it's the same thing when it comes to America. The idea that
00:22:15.840 America is bad and that we have to fix it with all of this identity politics or redistribution
00:22:21.700 or renewable energy or whatever the cause of the day is. Those are beliefs that are the luxuries
00:22:28.480 of prosperity. You know, I tried to explain to somebody why I'm not a socialist. I said,
00:22:33.320 I'm not wealthy enough to be a socialist. You can only indulge certain views if you don't have to
00:22:37.500 worry about who's paying the bills. If you're so wealthy that there's no consequences.
00:22:42.040 Right, right. So this is the issue with the left. They say all this horrible stuff about America,
00:22:51.800 but they love living here. They won't admit it. They may not even know it consciously, but
00:22:57.020 this is the place that is best for them to live where they can make a living even. Look at that
00:23:02.360 fellow who writes about anti-racism. His name escapes my mind for the moment, but he gets paid tens of
00:23:07.180 thousands of dollars every time he speaks at a college about how racist we are. What a country
00:23:11.420 where you can get paid by these supposed racists to tell them how racist they are.
00:23:18.740 We're talking about some of the policy quandaries that this nation and crises that we find ourselves in,
00:23:27.600 none more so really than planning for a future. We were talking earlier about utopian ideals.
00:23:34.780 There are in utopian ideals always a corollary, and that is dystopia itself. And it looks to me
00:23:42.560 like in many ways, whether it's energy policy or whatever, that's what we may be headed for,
00:23:49.560 unintended consequences.
00:23:52.820 We are not a serious country. We are not having serious conversations about how to plan for our
00:23:59.240 future. And in South Africa, which I just returned from, I saw a little glimpse of our possible
00:24:05.220 future. South Africa has run out of electricity, and they're years away from a solution because it
00:24:11.580 takes time to build power plants. But in the two decades since they had the cheapest power on earth,
00:24:18.140 which was just 20 years ago back in 2000, 2001, in those two decades, instead of investing scarce
00:24:25.200 capital resources in building more power plants, they were investing that same capital in economic
00:24:31.580 redistribution. They were allowing the ruling party to appoint its cronies to keep positions in the power
00:24:38.240 company and other utilities. They were using aggressive affirmative action policies to push out
00:24:44.780 qualified engineers. And they're reaping, unfortunately, the consequences of doing all that.
00:24:53.880 Now, here in the United States, we don't have quite the same issues, but we're also seeing
00:24:58.120 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
00:25:10.200 the solar energy and the wind energy failed during overcast and calm conditions that happened also to
00:25:17.480 be in the middle of a heat wave. So people had the air conditioning on, but the wind wasn't blowing
00:25:21.560 and the sun wasn't shining and we ran out of electricity. We also had a natural gas plant
00:25:25.660 that was offline and we don't have enough backups. In Texas, just six months after that, there were
00:25:31.160 those infamous blackouts when the wind turbines froze in the middle of a cold snap. We need to have
00:25:37.700 fossil fuel as part of the mix. Biden is shutting it down. California is shutting it down. And even
00:25:43.820 conservative states like Texas are investing heavily in green energy without providing the same
00:25:50.220 or necessary investments in fossil fuels, which we still have a lot of, especially coal and things
00:25:56.380 like that. We are pursuing this green agenda at the cost of power. And I have to tell you,
00:26:01.760 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.
00:26:20.100 And I had to leave my family through the parking lot and out the door through the diesel smoke. I mean,
00:26:25.420 that stuff is much worse than burning coal at a distant power plant. And South Africa has made that
00:26:32.260 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
00:33:40.240 absolutely trashing America.
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.
00:36:59.060 God bless you too, Lou.
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.