This Never Crossed My Transom

Broadcasting live from the Abraham Lincoln Radio Studio, the George Washington Broadcast Center, Jack Armstrong and Joe Getty.

Armstrong and Getty, I know he Armstrong and Getty.

To the markets today, and would you be open to a pause in tariffs to allow for negotiation. Well, we're not look at that. We have many many countries that are coming to negotiate deals with US, and they're going to be fair deals, and in certain cases they're going to be be paying substantial tariffs. They'll be fair deals.

Okay.

Politico and others are reporting that. On the phone with various countries yesterday, Trump was saying, yeah, a pause is coming sooner rather than later, and that sort of thing. And that's the reason the markets are up today. Trump of course can't say out loud that you know, this tariff thing is winding or you know, you lose all your leverage. But anyway, that's that's kind of the zeitgeist today.

The markets are leaping upward like a gazelle.

Funny.

And the other unspoken thing that is remaining unspoken is that, Okay, no, I'm not driving towards some sort of isolationism. I just want much lower tariffs for US goods, that post World War two period is over. Let's get to something sane, which is really what I was hoping he was driving at.

And I hope it works.

So I've got some polling around tariffs, but I'm not sure they matter anymore, like as of an hour ago. But anyway, Uh, first, this high school level gossip and snark that we should be above.

And you know it good gossips.

What is the whole thing about? You know, successful people, low level people talk about each other.

What is that whole thing? Essentially, the.

Weak minds speak of people, Mediocre minds discuss events, great minds discuss ideas.

Okay, well I'm going to speak of people. So it probably fits in with where my mind is.

So over the weekend, Elon got into it with Peter Navarro. Peter Navarro is the trade advisor to Donald Trump, and you know, and on all the TV shows tauton the tariffs and why they're going to work and everything like that. I mentioned the tweet yesterday where Elon Musk said having a PhD in economics from Harvard is a bad thing, not a good thing. He was speaking of Peter Navarro.

Musk I'm reading here from the Daily Beast.

Musk who's openly expressed disdain for Ivy League institutions, commented yup under a quote from USA economist Thomas Sowel that read, in every disaster throughout American history, there always seems to be a man from Harvard in the middle of it. First of all, that's a fantastic quote. Secondly, it's fantastic that Elon retweeted that and attached it to Peter Navarro.

It continues on U with a variety of things.

Now Peter Navarro has shot back, and then there's a response from Elon after this.

But let's hear the Peter Navarro thing first. Commenting on Elon.

When it comes to tariffs and trade, we all understand in the White House and the American people understand that Elon's a car manufacturer, but he's not a car manufacturer.

He's a car assembler.

In many cases. If you go to his Texas plan, A good part of the engines that he gets, which in the EV case is the batteries come from Japan and come from China. The electronics come from Taiwan, the tires come what we want. The difference is in our thinking and elons On this is that we want the tires made in Akron, we want the transmissions made in Indianapolis. We want the engines made in Flint and Saginaw, and

That doesn't work for America.

It's bad for our economics, it's bad for our national security. We want them to come here with the Elon It's fine. He's a carbman. If he's a car person, that's what he does. And he wants the cheap foreign parts, and we understand that. But we want him home. We want them home. National security, economic sure, and everything's good with Elon.

So him calling Elon a car assembler, I guess, is seen by some as a shot. Elon responded to that, and this is like fifteen minutes ago. Navarro is truly a moron. What he says here is demonstrably false. So now He's just flat out called Peter Navarro, somebody that he has I'm sure been in the Oval Office with on multiple occasions over the last couple of months, as two of the top advisors of the president. Truly a moron. I don't know what Navarro was talking about there. I

But how about this follow up tweet from elon Tesla has the most American made cars. Navarro is dumber than a sack of bricks. I love this sort of thing, the ag Hamilton account on Twitter, which is one of my favorites. Navarro has no idea what he's talking about and doing substantial harm.

Yeah, I don't know about the computers and various things he mentioned there, but I know for fact the tires that I've purchased for my Tesla or American made tires from an American company I think actually an acron.

Which he just said.

So speaking of gossip, it was so good and I don't know what.

I did with it.

The barrow was truly a moron, dumber than a sack of bricks. There was a great Twitter thread from one of Elon's baby mamas calling him out as well his family life is at the outer one percent of crazy.

Yeah.

Yeah, Well, the separate topic.

I do not dig his view on a parenthood at all, as I'm saying many times, no, or a reproduction or marriage or whatever.

But yeah, you know, it's not.

While I enjoy snark and that sort of thing, it's not insignificant that.

And I can't believe.

I'm the guy saying this, but the world's richest man is jumping into this and calling like the brains of the whole tariff structure a moron and dumb as a sack of bricks.

Yeah, I would love to hear Donald Jay actually describe his relationship with Peter Navarro and how he utilizes his skills. I'm going to, you know, put that charitably. I think Navarro may be the crazed attack dog straining at the leash that Trump will put back in the kennel the minute that.

He's not useful.

But he he is acting out the pretense that yes, I am going to put up enormous trade barriers around the United States from now till the end of time, putting aside that that's impossible given our system where you get elected every four years, blah blah blah. But and Navarro is his attack dog, straining at the leash. But it's becoming more and more clear that no, Trump just wants sane levels of tariffs against the United States finally, which is admirable in a good goal.

How popular are these right now?

This polling was yesterday before stock market rebound, and all these rumors are going around that Trump is telling people on the phone no, no, no, no, you know, will negotiate and not sounding quite as an absolutist on this stuff. This is interesting to us, Joe and I. And you know, how much should we talk about this? How much have you been hearing about or paying attention to the tariff stuff? A lot? Fifty six percent, A lot. I don't know

Well, And I would suggest to you that in the universe of humans, who might be inclined to listen to the armstrong and Getty show that number is substantially higher because that's a random sample of humans.

That's fifty six percent.

If someone a lot adds up to you know, eighty percent would need my twe hundred there. Then when you get to support or oppose among that crowd, oppose fifty five support thirty seven, oppose fifty five support thirty seven. You break it down by party, it's somewhat predictable. For Democrats, ninety percent oppose independence, fifty two percent oppose. Republicans only twenty percent oppose hanging in there. So here's a question

The resistance We're back. That was a joke.

So is this all a giant art of the deal style negotiation? A important element of which and this is what always gets me with Trump, don't I don't like it, And maybe I'm wrong. That's fine, I've been wrong before. But a significant element of Trump's Art of the deal thing is to so con fusion and chaos, which he believes leads people to be more enthusiastic about making a deal.

I should have said this out loud.

The formula that they used for assigning the quote unquote reciprocal tariffs was a mess. I mean, just utterly indefensible, silly in a couple of different ways, and analysts all over the world were saying, this doesn't make any sense mathematically speaking.

Is that part of the sowing chaos?

Was that he just said throw a formula together with high tariffs against people or.

Or was that actual sloppiness. I don't know. I think it's.

Yeah, well, I suppose you could call it sloppiness, but I think it would be he would say, it doesn't matter, it doesn't matter what the how I came to the numbers.

That's not the point, right right, Let's sew a little chaos in the air. Everybody's going to come a run and negotiate sane, actually reciprocal tariff levels that we haven't seen since World War Two.

Well, a combination of so chaos and convince people that I'm serious about this exactly.

Yeah, which is why Peter Navarro is still straining at the leash, you know, barking at Elon Musk saying, no, We're going to have maximum millist tariffs for the rest of the history of mankind.

It's dumb as what a sack of bricks. Sack of bricks. He is truly a moron, according to Elon mask And that's so well. Quote. Oh, that's great, love that. Let me get that again, because that is that is that is too darn good. I'd never heard that before.

And every disaster throughout American history there always seems to be a man from Harvard in the middle of it.

That's awesome, That's hilarious. Yeah, and probably true.

Oh yeah, you take the combination of I'm one of the nation's leading intellectuals. Therefore I espouse ideas that the average working person would find idiotic, which is true. Secondly, look at my status. I have graduated from the most elite of the elite institutions. Thou shalt listen to me, right, you take those two things in concert, please between economic ideas or you know Vietnam and Iraq, which had a lot of Ivy League people behind it, And yeah, there's

They'd be right dumb as a sack of bricks.

Okay, we got a lot to get to, including de extinction this Hourie. Mainstream media does such a bad job of covering stories like the de extinction of the dire wolf with only.

Isn't this cute? Look at these white.

Puppies and know of the any interesting intellectual discussion about bringing back extinct spink species from ten thousand years ago?

So that will get to that coming up.

Gigantic wolves send ten footed shoulder with the teeth like steak knives, no problem. Uh, so we'll have that for you in just a couple of minutes. Brace yourselves in listening to this clip. It is awful, but I have a particular reason for asking for it. Go ahead, Michael, I would like to.

See all Republican women or a new woman who vote voted for Republicans or Trump to be gang raped on national television. I think that would be just very cathartic for us normal humans to see these. I guess humans just absolutely destroyed on national television. New mind for me.

He appeared to be in his mid twenties something like that, And that's just not nutpicking to illustrate that progressives or monsters, although some are a couple of things leap to mind. First of all, disturbing new report reveals that violent political rhetoric online, including calls for the murder of public figures like Donald Trump, Elon Musk, and other things, is becoming increasingly normalized, particularly on the left.

Yeah, I would say, specifically, what is the justification the justif is their justification for the murder of Elon Musk and Donald Trump.

All respondents, Let's see some at least partially justified. Is thirty one percent? Well for Elon Musk first, left of center, it's forty nine percent.

A lot of it is what I have been talking about.

It's the coin of the realm of you have to be just so over the top, you have to be so over the top online to feel like you cut through this just the way everybody talks. I mean we were talking about this the other day, with the stuff we get. I mean just just ridiculously, you know, angry, just beyond anything that makes sense at a radio show, because that's.

The way people talk online.

And then there's one hundred percent ratio of you write them back and say you seem really upset, here's what's going on. They're like, hey, I'm so sorry. I flew off the handle. I was out of line, So yeah, you were, You act like an idiot. So I think a lot of these.

People who want to gang repe Republican voters or kill Elon Musk would be the same way.

But you can't normalize that kind of talk. You just can't.

Left of center Folk says the murder of Donald Trump at least partially justified fifty five percent.

Yeah.

How about to destroying Tesla dealerships is at least partially acceptable fifty eight percent.

Yeah, you can't.

Most of them, Like I said, most of them don't mean it at all. But you can't. You can't pretend like that because there are enough crazies that will do this stuff. Yeah, the whole maniacs or people with terrible, terrible ideas getting in reinforcement online. Because if your idea is so effing stupid, only one person out of seventy five thousand would.

Agree with you.

You could find hundreds or thousands of people who agree with you online, but that's still a dumb effing idea. How do we deal with this as a society? Can we the reinforcement of lunatics online and lunatic movements and ideologies?

Will it never not be the way we talk online to just be like incredibly over the top, I don't know. You have to be a major cultural change where to be said on this, and I'm sure we will. Bringing back to life ancient species? Is that a good idea?

Armstrong and Getty.

Visit the.

Running So I.

Never watched Game of Thrones, so I didn't know the dire wolf was a.

Thing on Game of Thrones.

I'm not sure I'd never even thought about a dire wolf for a second in my life till yesterday.

One of the many extinct beasts that used to roll the countryside.

Jack, I'll take your word for it.

For whatever reason, this had never crossed my uh transom or whatever I was unaware of the dire wolf. But so I watched the news last night.

It's funny. We're just we're just a dumb people.

We're just so comfortable and happy in our news gives us dumb news, so we can float through the day and.

Another killer storm raging across the country every damn night.

And I don't know why we're all treated like idiots. Maybe because we act like idiots.

But so look at the headlines from today dot Com. Extinct dire wolf seen on Game of Thrones has been revived on ABC News, which we're gonna.

Well, let's play the ABC News clip. That was not the dire fol clip.

That was chicken jockey from the Minecraft.

Yeah, Minecraft, where's our dire wolves? ABC News? This is going well? Is not going well.

In a first for science biotech company Colossal Bioscience, it says it brought the extinct dire wolf back to life, species that hasn't walked the earth since the Stone Age.

We've taken a gray wolf genome, which is already genetically ninety nine point five percent identical to dire wolves, and we've edited those cells at multiple places in its DNA sequence to contain the dire wolf version of the DNA.

The company tells us they're not stopping there. They plan to have wooly mammoths roaming the earth again by twenty twenty eight, but critics argue that this de extinction could harm fragile ecosystems.

Back to you, So I played this for my son last night, and he's super into evolution and all this. I mean, he spends so much time like watching YouTube videos and reading about this. He's really into this for one thing, so I knew he would like this. So I play him this new story and he puts his hands on the side of his head and he starts.

Walking around the room like this said, I have so many problems with this. There's so many problems.

First of all, dire wolves are not wolves, so this doesn't make any sense. And the then he went to his computer and was googling things and everything like that.

Stright.

So, as I pointed out, our domestic news coverage is all. They've brought back the dire wolf for the first time in thirteen fast and five hundred years, but an a real news source, Unfortunately, like Al Jazeera, their headline has the dire Wolf come back? No, it hasn't, or you know, other other news outlets that are like real news point out that that scientist you just heard from there, she works for a company that is somehow trying to profit off of pretending to bring back extinct animals.

Now, I don't know is exactly correct. That is what they're doing.

Do you remember a few weeks ago we brought you the story they're trying to revive the wooly mammoths. No, they're trying to make hairy elephants. Well, right, they tweetd the jeans of elephants to make them harry.

That's what they did here.

They they made a white, slightly bigger gray wolf. Now her saying dire wolves and wolves share ninety nine percent of the genetics or whatever what they developed it. Well, you've probably heard before. We're ninety nine percent the same as a chimpanzee. But that don't mean we're the same thing.

But ABC reports it breathlessly with a smile, and the little puppies, and then one sentence about critics say it could harm fragile ecosystems. Yeah, good report. May you dumb? You should be ashamed of yourselves. You can't call it news, well right, not news. It's eye candy for dopes. Eye candy for dopes.

So they used crisper technology, which has been around for quite a few years now and is interesting and highly troubling in the way that you can get there in their genetically modified genes, and for animals or people, they transferred the genetic material from a from a gray wolf to a domestic dog. What they really wanted was white wolves, white gray wolves.

That was their main thing, and and and got where they wanted to be.

These three genetically engineered wolves may resemble the extinct dire wolf, but they are just flat not according to actual scientists who aren't trying to profit from us. They're going to be pretty big. So what is their game here? Though, this company, Colossus, I think it's called what is their game? Are they going to have a I'll use Jurassic Park but sort of park and charge a bunch of money for people to go in and watch look at dire wolves?

Wooly mammoths whatever else they claim they brought back. Is that the deal. It's got to be a for profit thing or sell them to people.

Yeah, yeah, I suspect it's one of those two things.

Yeah. Huh.

So I said that the dire wolf stood ten feet at the shoulder and had teeth length of steak knives. Turns out no, it's about one hundred and thirty two pounds one hundred and fifty pounds maybe, but significantly big eyes of the largest modern gray wolves. Yeah, your average male is bigger than the average male wolves that exist on Earth currently.

And their biting power is like greater than a lion or anything like that. So that's what they're really amazing at.

I didn't know.

The skull of the thing is really impressive. Yeah, so my son told me this.

We went to the If you've never been to the Libre of Tarpits in La oh my gosh, you should do that sometime.

So fascinating.

I'd wanted to go there my whole life, and my thirteen year old and I went there last summer. But they have an entire wall of wolf skulls. There, thousands of wolf skulls. Wow, from you know, fifteen thousand years ago whenever it was. And my son pointed out last night, those are all dire wolf skulls, that's what those all are. And they would they would get stuck in the tar pits trying to get other animals that were stuck there and think, oh, cool of free meal.

Then they'd get stuck in the dark bit and then eventually die.

And there's so many direwolf skulls there and they're quite large. But the main point being, well, I guess my main point is a journalism. Why do we live in a world where ABC and Today want to say, look, they brought back the dire wolf from extinction with no caveats or any deeper thought that. Why why are we.

Like this David Muir with his serious face and serious voice and big giant weightlifting arms bringing you the news every evening, not even bothering to verify.

The simplest of facts.

And I'm not trying to just be like a cynic poo pooing things.

You just told me something that's not true, is the thing?

Well, right, we pretending like it was, and you know it's not. That's what bothers me, you know, it's not they care enough to know it's not. If you scratch the surface, you know that it's not exactly true.

So why why do we do this? And who cares about the dire wolf? But it factors in with all our other.

Stuff, our economic re porting, in our political stories and all the other stuff.

Why do they treat us like we're morons?

It's their business plan. Why does it work? I guess although it's not working there as well.

As it used to No, indeed, well it's not nearly as good as it used to be. I would like to know. To get inside the head of the media elite would be very difficult because they are, as we've said a thousand times, a very very small and very strange subculture. They live lives totally foreign to the vast majority of Americans. They have attitudes that are just bizarre to the vast majority of Americans. They believe things that practically nobody believes out in the country, and yet they

Mit Technology Review, which sounds like a you know, more serious publication.

Game of Clones.

Colossals New Wolves are cute, but are they dire and then they explain how they're not dire wolves. But like I said, Today dot Com, which is NBC, the extinct dire wolf is back, as seen on Game of Throne. So I mean, that's just for the dumbest befo. Same company that runs Today dot Com though, is NBC, and their headline was a much more reasonable scientists genetically engineered wolves with white hair like the extinct dire wolf, so making no claim whatsoever other than we changed the.

Air color of gray wolves.

Wow.

Okay, so this is getting more interesting to me. So like back in the day when General Motors had and I don't remember this specific order, but they intentionally had a buick for entry level car buyers.

Then is your salary group. Perhaps you would move up to.

A Pontiac and then eventually you're gonna buy yourself a Cadillac, but they are all GM cars. So NBC News division evidently has a series of offerings for the half wit, the third wit, and the tragic quarter wit. I mean, you're true paste eating morons, and that would be Today dot Com or the ABC Nightly News. Yeah, that's for the true knuckle deep nose pickers.

Yeah, because what they did is they altered gray wolves to make their hair white. That's almost the end of the story.

Well, let's akin to the Chinese zoos shaving a show and calling it a panda and saying the Chinese welcome to new Panda.

No they didn't.

It's Michael uh oh that that is really funny.

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My son, in a really weird way, is stumping around the bedroom, his hands on his head. The dire wolf is more related to a Hyaena. It split with the dog a million years ago. It's not even all this sort of stuff. But then he said, but ultimately, why why are we doing this? And I thought that is

Oh right, Yeah, well, I think the current state of things is you have well meaning people who think these species are extinct. That's very sad. Let's make them unextinct, which is fine, And then you've got the people who could actually do it, and they're just at this point based on profiting from halfwitz I think.

But that's a weird view of the world.

If you're concerned about species going extinct today because you know, they turned a big chunk of the rainforest into a mall and you lost a beast, I.

Can understand being sad about that, But.

Things that went extinct tens of thousands of years ago, that sounds like that was nature's plan to me.

So you're sad. What if they're.

Hunted to extinction by man, for instance? Is that a different case?

That seems like a weird anti man bias for some reason. I mean, thirty five thousand years ago, you don't think that that that's Are we not part of nature?

Mankind?

That's great question. Yeah, yeah, I was not arguing a point. I was just curious to know you're a point.

I don't know where you cut it off.

I'm pretty if animals are big, slow, lumbering, and delicious, I are not going to last and delicious, right, And there are plenty of beasts that went extinct without mankind being involved at all.

All your dinosaurs. You're sad about that, and they need to be brought back. I just I don't even understand the theory on that anyway.

The three great threats facing the United States of America, I have identified them for you begin fighting them in a moment.

Oh boy, on the way DARPA. Do you think DARPA's behind bringing back the dire Wolf? Like we're gonna release it on the Chinese or something?

Oh maybe maybe?

A certain commentator texted me privately, never mind the dire Wolf, bring back free market Republicans.

And make them wooly. I said, why not make them wooly?

Uh? So, oh, these are odd times, speaking of which, so we could easily have done an hour or two or three on what I'm going to hit you with. But we're up against a heartbreak, So it's going to be very brief, and we can elaborate through the hours and days and weeks ahead. But I'm scanning all of the news stories have assembled in various groups to talk about today or later on in the week, and they really fall into three distinct threats to the United States

Yes, I was talking about you.

I didn't want to be too hurtful, but yes, no, no, As a society, we are very, very soft.

Decadent is the right word.

We are so comfortable and wealthy that we have lost the ability to fend for ourselves. And how that works itself out is anybody's guests, the you know, the unbreakable cycle of civilizations that hard times make for tough people, Tough people make for good times, good times make for soft people.

Saw people make for hard times, don't. I don't know how you get out of that.

But the number two threat is call it the neo Marxists, the woke, the postmodernists that want to tear down Western civilization. And the thing I want to say about that, and this one I could bring you all sorts of details, is that there's a feeling even I get it now that partly because of what's Trump's doing, Rain and in the universities and corporations like hitting reverse on the DEI programs in a liminating those offices. It feels like progress

I agree with Lincoln. No external threat could bring us down.

China's getting fearsome enough that it could be a serious problem. But the internal threat Lincoln spoke of is our educational systems.

Yeah, it's interesting.

I remember when Jordan Peterson said our university system is now a net negative for the country, and I thought, wow, that's a pretty strong statement.

But right, yeah, I agree with them.

And then the third fund of mental threat I think to our beloved Republic is Islamism, fundamentalist Islam, Shariasm, whatever you want to call it, which is on the march all over the world. We talk about it among the Palestinians and Hamas and how they're willing to see as many of their own children slaughter to bring the glory

It's impossible. And Iran's trying to get the bomb, which would not be good. Yeah, And.

Hundreds of millions of people around the world, certainly not all Muslims, but many, many of them, their fondest goal, their most beautiful dream, is that Islam conquers the world and we all live under Sharia law. And post post nine to eleven, I think a lot of us in the West thought, well that's over.

Thank goodness.

Osama bin Laden is gone, and you know we've battered Hamas and Hezblas. Oh, okay, we're done. We're done. We're not within a thousand years of being done.

Well, they certainly don't think so. In Europe, No, Germany, France, Great Britain.

Yeah, where they bought the argument that multiculturalism is wonderful and that these people just want to assimilate and love Germany and we can all.

Live side by side. No, you can't have people with fundamentally.

Incompatible cultural beliefs, political beliefs, leturgous beliefs mixing Happily, it doesn't happen. I mean, it could conceivably happen in certain settings that are strictly controlled, but it's a dangerous thing anyway, more on all those things to come.

We are so lucky that Joe almost went to life school, law school, and life school, that Joe almost went to law school, so he can tell us what the Supreme Court ruling meant yesterday around the whole immigration thing.

Oh yeah, I've read like three books about the law too, So I'm ready to go cool.

We'll get to that hour three.

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