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

Harmful content

Misogyny

1

sentences flagged

Hate speech

4

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

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

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
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 0.59
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 0.99
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 0.59
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 0.60
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 0.84
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.