'You're Wrong' With Mollie Hemingway And David Harsanyi, Ep. 151: Poland

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Because when it comes to your business, it's not just about keeping the lights on. It's about keeping everything secure. Welcome back, everyone, to a new episode of You're Wrong with Molly Hemingway, editor-in-chief of The Federalist and David Harsany, senior writer at The Washington Examiner. Just as a reminder, if you'd like to email the show, please do so at radio at the federalist dot com.

Molly, let's just jump into it. The story is a few days old, but I was really upset about it. I mean, for obvious reasons, but for maybe deeper reasons as well. The murder of two. People called them diplomats, but there were two workers at the Israeli embassy by a leftist from whose name shall go unmentioned here by me from Chicago.

The victims were Jaron Loshinsky, a German-born evangelical Christian, and his American girlfriend, whose name was Sarah Milgram. They were murdered in front of the Capital Jewish Museum. I felt like sooner or later, I knew this was going to happen. And I don't think it's the last time it's going to happen. When you create a blood libel, which I think a lot of these people believe about Israelis and then.

many of them Jewish people, and you support terrorist groups like Hamas, people in your movement are sooner or later going to engage in terrorism themselves, and that's what happened. Well, it happened... As I was flying to Poland to visit Holocaust sites and so frequently we think of terrorism and things like this as mostly occurring in other countries and it's just...

horrific to see it happening, not just in our country, but in the city where I live. And all the details that have come out about it are also horrifying. I mean, sometimes they're a little contradictory, so I don't know exactly what happened. claims that he mingled with people beforehand or mingled with people after he committed the crimes, that he was so proud of himself for murdering two innocent people, that he's an American.

born and raised individual who learned to hate to the point of murder here. It's just sickening and awful. At the same time, it's not the most surprising, as you said. We have been dealing with a lot of people acting like this is justified, this type of behavior is justified, this type of political violence is justified.

and also i think the language about the war between israel and hamas has been so wrong like the the way that people talk about it as if Israelis are held to a different standard on war than like every other country on Earth, which is getting really disgusting. Even to talk about their war plans as genocide when, you know, just kind of need to say it again.

Hamas attacked Israel on October 7th. They killed 1,200 Israelis. They did it at a time of a peace fire. Israel has responded by attempting to eradicate Hamas. Hamas, which is not like they have free elections there, but is the generally supported political group in Gaza, has been engaged in horrific behavior, including not letting their people leave other regions.

probably should be doing a much better job of allowing other regions that border, like Egypt, should be allowing Gazans to go in there, particularly given the rhetoric of Egypt and other neighboring countries about the situation. But it just shows to me, it does show how important it is. War is awful and evil and what's happening to Palestinians, including innocent Palestinians who are.

basically trapped by the evil hamas i mean it's horrible and you want war to end which is why there should be a lot more pressure on hamas to unconditionally surrender

return all hostages and hostage bodies. And, you know, that's just not happening. Sorry, I'm kind of rambling, but it's just upsetting. Well, yeah, I mean, the talk of genocide in Israel. or that Israel's perpetuating a genocide against the Palestinian people is nonsense. But I just want to give you an example of the kind of blood libel I'm talking about. A few days before the shooting, NBC News reported... without a hint of skepticism.

A United Nations report that said 14,000 babies were going to die in Gaza from starvation in a 48-hour period. This is NBC News. They took someone's word at the UN and they put it up. Two days, 14,000 babies. Any... editor, any reporter with a with a brain would know that sounds really implausible, right? You know, let's look into this further. No, they just printed it. Because in this situation, you can print anything you want about Israel in this sense.

Anyway, it turned out it was untrue. The UN retracted the claim. The report that came out said that 14,000. Cases of malnutrition and children in general, not just babies, may happen over a year's time if aid did not reach Palestinians, which surely it would. And this is the kind of this is mainstream. It's not even like all these people online who say crazy things are.

Just not just this, but report anything the Hamas says about death tolls. Now, I'm not saying there aren't innocent people who die in this war. There are. It's horrible. Like Hamas in there. Death tolls make no distinction between fighters, Hamas fighters and civilians.

You know what I mean? Like the number because they embed their fighters in the civilian population because they apparently hate their civilians. The point that they don't care if they get killed. Yes. In war. I mean, the former head of Hamas is now dead, said.

that we have them right where we want them because of these death because fellow west you know fellow travelers in the west will use this they martyr their people on purpose but and the next sinwar who was running it another guy named muhammad sinwar was killed very recently in a tunnel under a hospital

right next to a hospital so it's very difficult for israel now i think they've made a ton of mistakes they should have wrapped this up a long time ago they should have gone full bore i mean maybe biden stopped them but no you know i don't know what's going on behind the scenes but obviously It's been 600 some days since October 7, 2023, and they're still at it. Can't go on forever this way. But yeah, I mean, when this happened, I just thought to myself, the Intifada is coming here.

There was BLM. Those riots were the most expensive in history. All many of those people just latched onto this new cause. They know nothing. I'm sure if I went down to one of these protests and spoke to these people, they would know nothing about the history or situation in any real depth. It's just, oh, white.

you know, a white colony has, you know, oppressed dark skin. You know, everything's identitarian. Everything is stupid. Everything is pushed and like into this mold in this argument that they make. So. Sooner or later, there's going to be some unhinged people who engage in real violence like this. I mean, this is this is assassination of two people on the streets of D.C. Hold on. On the identity thing, I was thinking about this like.

America really is unique in having an identity based on something other than like the most narrow ethnic claim, right? Like from the very beginning, even if we were all mostly almost, you know. like really beginning would be like all white europeans it was still people from you know a few different areas or countries and it grows quickly to being um

Just something where people are coming to escape religious persecution or otherwise. And all these other countries, including Israel, are very like identity focused. And. You mentioned BLM, which is a very big identity-focused movement, which seemed at odds, which is at odds with the American understanding of individuals. More and more, it just seems like we're in this collision course between identity and other values, doesn't it? Or no? Yeah. I mean, people, you know, critics of Israel.

Real critics of Israel call it like an ethno state, like it's problematic because it's an ethno state. Now, first of all, Israel is very diverse in other ways and including their religious population to some extent. But.

Every state's an ethno-national state other than the United States, as you mentioned. Like Germans make up, there's a German language, it's a German country. Yeah, you might let others in, but it's very difficult for others to become German. But here, yeah, we are allowed, you know, we...

There is an American identity and it's built on ideas, but it's also built on the land and the country and the people. But yeah, anyone could become an American if they accept embrace those ideas. I don't feel like. And this will, I think, segue us into the next thing that a lot of young, not young people, but a lot of the left and some of the right don't really feel that way about America anymore. Yeah. Or also maybe it's like we've I was thinking about this with regard to.

what happened with the 59 south african farmers who are facing a very targeted killing effort in south africa and they're getting disposed of their land and stuff and so 59 farmers came to this country and it was so weird to see like they come they're waving american flags they're very grateful that we're taking them in because of the situation that they're in in south africa and the left like lost its mind over this

They were so upset that South Africans might be considered refugees when clearly they fit every definition of a refugee. And then I can't remember if it was Trump or someone else. who was saying something about how a group like these white South African farmers will assimilate very well into the United States. And it's so obviously true. And people got really mad about that. Like, just language-wise, culture-wise.

Just like general values wise, it's clearly true. And then you realize like, oh, the left has not been caring at all about assimilation. Like they don't care about the cultural values held by people from. different parts of the world and how well that that will work in like a small town in Ohio or Nebraska. They just haven't cared about it at all. And it's enraging to see that. So sometimes I think we.

downplay that we do have a strong culture here with strong values that forms like an ethnicity of a kind. It's just not based on skin color. Yeah, exactly. I mean, Europe has this problem. They invite a bunch of mostly Islamic refugees. You'll notice, of course, that the Syrian refugees, we had this.

deep responsibility to bring them here and bring them there. But Palestinian refugees, they must stay in Gaza forever, you know, as a cudgel against Israel. But anyway. Can I talk a little bit about Poland, even though?

It might be a turn. So Mark and I went to Poland and visited Treblinka and Majdanek and Auschwitz and the scene of the Warsaw uprising. and lublin and it was a really heavy trip but we um but we also you know just traveling we were traveling by vehicle through poland and staying in places And it was really interesting because it's so close to Germany and in so many ways has a very similar feel as Germany, but is a much smaller population.

it does not seem to have been welcoming immigrants other than ukrainians to the country like it just you could just like look around and see like this is not a heavy immigrant entry population and

related, it was crazy how cohesive the culture was. How... everyone was just generally like following the same rules generally respectful it was clean it was um it was just really interesting i see the cover of the economist this weekend this week has poland um it's like poland rising or something like that because they're about to have a higher gdp than japan um or something i don't i haven't read yeah i think it's capita per capita but yeah yeah per capita and um

I don't know, it was interesting to see a country that does not have a ton of immigration from the Arab world or Africa like I saw one covered woman the entire time I was there and where I live you know in the DC area of course it's like every day you see women in full full dress full coverage Eastern European countries are less open to that kind of immigration, you know, including Hungary, which is a central European country. But like I wrote a book about this. The EU was built.

They even mentioned George Washington in their founding document. Like they were built to kind of ape the United States, both in trade and as kind of a cultural federalist kind of thing. But. The French and the Polish are not the same. You know, I can go to California and I will be fine there. I will understand the culture. We'll have the same stores. We have the same language. Yeah, there are, of course, regional differences and they're great. I love that. But.

Poland has a different history than England. You know what I mean? I think you're right about the South Africans. Of course, when you have Western cultural values, you can assimilate better and all that. So if you're moving from Poland to England, you probably assimilate better than when you're moving from Syria to England. And I don't believe there's genocide in South Africa, but it's definitely genocidal.

rhetoric against white farmers and they are definitely being pushed out off their land and the government definitely looks the other way. This happened in Rhodesia, which was an African country in the 70s and 60s, that its GDP per capita was up there with European countries. Then they. confiscated all the white farmers land.

It was a racist country for sure. But instead of integrating society and making it great, now they're one of the poorest countries in the world. And this is where South Africa is headed. I couldn't believe the crime rate in South Africa. The murder rate is the third highest in the world. It's incredibly dangerous to be there. I think like Honduras and maybe Jamaica have a higher murder rate in the world. So my country is heading downhill. I also this is totally random, but.

Do you know the Kifnis, the guy, the Kifnis? He did the song about where he took Trump's words about eating the cats, eating the dogs, and turned it into like a really catchy song. And he does this with all sorts of songs. He'll take, like, just weird things he hears and... Anyway, he's from South Africa, and so he has been going off on the attacks on the white people in South Africa. And he's very concerned about the situation there.

current political party and the leadership of the current political party. And it's just, um, it's also like, yeah, it's also, the history of south africa is not that easy though there was a lot of black immigration it's south africa the white people were there for a very long time whereas you know it's complicated and and one of my favorite movies breaker moranth is about this but um Yeah, these people see everything through race.

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I guess this would segue, for me at least, into a situation at Harvard, and I'm going to talk about NPR as well. Trump administration the other day pulled the rest of funding, kind of helped for Harvard. And also, I believe, suspended its ability to take foreign visas. I think the Trump administration is going to now vet them or their social media accounts, stuff like that. Harvard is suing and so on.

I guess I saw David French on MSNBC saying that the Trump administration, I don't have the exact quote, but something like the Trump administration is undermining sort of constitutionally protected. freedom of speech and this and that by targeting Harvard. I guess I would ask, I guess I would say a few things. One thing is that I just don't believe a private institution has any right to taxpayer funding.

To begin with, I don't believe a private institution has a constitutional right or I have some kind of constitutional duty to fund speech I don't like. And third, I'd say that if Harvard had a race, racist. marches going on and black students were being targeted and made to feel like they couldn't be there anymore. I wonder if David French would be on MSNBC talking about constitutional rights. Now, I'm not saying that Harvard can have racist marches if it wants.

speech. But should I or you or anyone else have to fund that effort? And lastly, on this day. Harvard and places like that undermine American values. They undermine the assimilation that we were talking about. They prop up people who hate America. So why should the government of the United States? Let that place or help that place flourish in undermining what this country is about. I just don't see any reason for that. This second Trump term has been so.

revelatory for me in ways i didn't expect like learning how much my money funds the ngo environment that employs all of my neighbors you know to push left-wing ideas The funding of Harvard alone is just shocking to me. The number of contracts that we have with them, the money year after year that they get. And they like to claim their private university.

And that that gives them the right to discriminate against white people and men. They say that contra everything we know about the way the law is interpreted, they have the right to be racist and sexist and stuff. But then they say that they're basically a public university because they're so reliant on my funding of them and your funding of them for research. Research, which, by the way, does not really help anybody.

And it frequently harms people. Here's why transing your kid and permanently removing healthy body parts is good for them. You know, that kind of research. And then they also say that they need. Did you know what percentage of the Harvard class is foreign enrolled?

He's enrolled from foreign countries. I know I don't. Columbia is very high, almost half or some crazy number. Well, it's not that much, but it's more than a quarter. And it's like, OK, so you want to say that you're this great institution for America. Well, really. More than one out of four of your students, you are helping wealthy foreigners, basically, at the expense of Americans who would...

like that kind of supposedly premier education. And nothing I've heard from Harvard has made me more sympathetic to them. I would like them not to be the only school that the government... disinvests from, untangles itself from. if they're doing this kind of funding at public universities or other universities you know yes i i'm at hillsdale where we do not take any federal funding and we excel by the way but we do it with this unfair

Competing against all these places that are just getting massive amounts of taxpayer funds. Well, I do think there is some. good research obviously done at universities and if there was a way to funnel money into legitimate scientific concerns, that would be great, but they've left as appropriated science on climate, on gender stuff, on a bunch of other issues as well. There's so many dumb social science studies going on. It's mind boggling, you know? So I agree with that.

But I wanted to talk about the visas. I'm not against foreign students coming here, but I do think that maybe we should start. reforming that system to focus on maybe STEM degrees or doctorate and then maybe asking people who come here on visas to invest in this country in some sense to stay on for a certain amount. I don't I've never I haven't thought this through, but.

Having, you know, rich kids coming here from China and Abu Dhabi or whatever, paying full ride. All these students are here because they pay a full ride and it's good for the, you know, monetarily works for the school. Doesn't really help our country in any way.

I don't know. I've said this a million times. My parents are immigrants and they wanted to be here and they wanted to be Americans and they invested themselves in this country. And I don't know why we're letting so many people. So I want people here who want to be here, not people who just take from us.

I don't know how to fix that system, but there's something wrong when Colombia has, I think, around 13,000 foreigners on visas. How many of those people are marching, you know, in anti-American marches? I mean, there's no reason for that fifth columnist here. And yeah, the money, it's 2.2 billion that we were giving Harvard. And now it's another like 450 million.

I get that in the budget, in the gigantic budgets we have, that doesn't seem like a lot. But in the real world, that's a lot of money. And what does Harvard have? Like a $60 billion, it's a $60 billion hedge fund to begin with. Yeah, something close to that, yeah. So they could be paying every student there. Every student could go to school for free there for probably, what, 50 years. They could probably afford it or 100 years. I don't even know. That's not my thing. But.

also i agree with you why just harvard why not other former elite institutions that have just been completely subjugated by uh ideology now again i'm sure there are a lot of smart people you know, in scientific departments and these elite schools that we should be helping, but maybe it's Harvard's job now to, to write the ship and to earn our taxpayer dollars. They have no right to it.

And that they're suing makes me think like they're pretending it's some kind of First Amendment issue. But I just don't see it that way. Again, if Harvard had Klansmen marching every day, they wouldn't get money. You know, so I'm not sure why pro Hamas people marching there every day, targeting Jewish students that I should, you know, be funding that. And also NPR.

they're so just going to say npr also claims it has a first amendment right to taxpayer funding I think we spoke about this a few weeks ago. You know, I just the NPR. Here's my thing. NPR says in their suit that the law, the sudden loss of all federal funding would be catastrophic, catastrophic for NPR without federal funding. NPR would need to shut her. or downsize collaborative newsrooms and rural reporting initiatives, et cetera, et cetera. A few weeks ago, they said, you know,

NPR defenders are like, oh, it only takes, you know, only one or two percent of its budget. Now, all of a sudden, the whole thing is going to collapse. NPR is the second, I believe, largest radio network in this country. Again, I think some of their stuff is pretty good. It's well produced. They have a lot going on. Their newsrooms are completely leftist. It's their right. But again, why should you and I have to have to, you know, subsidize their.

leftism or anti-Americanism or whatever, or their social values. I just don't see why. And I think their claim and Harvard's claim is that they're being targeted over speech. Well. What other media institution gets money from the government? They're the only ones through one institution, right? So I watched this clip of Brian Stelter explaining the NPR case.

Because, you know, Sue is saying they have this First Amendment right to the federal funding from you and me. And he said, so the reason why they did that is because the Trump administration, when they announced the. stopping of the cessation of these funds, noted that NPR is very biased. And so NPR denies that they're biased, which is hilarious.

And they say that that shows that they are being punished for particular speech. And you can't do that according to the Constitution. So therefore, they have the right to the funding. And I just love this. How far would NPR take this approach? That because they cannot be punished for speech, they can start doing KKK marches and nothing could happen to them. Start advocating for KKK.

ideology and nothing could happen to them i mean they do already right they're very very racist and they're very supportive of um you know hamas and blm and all sorts of uh racist extremist and terrorist ideologies. But it was like, wow, that's quite the chutzpah of you guys. Well, the only reason they have money is because they're biased, honestly. I mean, right from the start, this was run by the left.

basically. And I'm going to sound like a paranoid right-wing guy right now, but even their shows that I watched growing up were filled with left-wing messaging, you know, from Sesame Street on. I'm sorry. And there's no reason for us to... I kind of think of it as like a subsidy for wealthy white people because they did used to do a lot of like British drama, you know, things that most people wouldn't like, but that like wealthy white people certainly like.

And to this day, you know, they seem like a wealthy white people. Of course. NPR is just a it's a radio network for for, you know, upper middle class and upper middle class white people for the most part. middle-brow British shows on PBS, why do I have to pay for them? You know, the whole thing, I was thinking about this, or maybe I wrote about, but, you know, they don't want their eyes sullied with, like, a Burger King commercial while they're watching, like...

down abbey you know what i mean so i they're like fine if it's like this was brought to you by lockheed martin you know and help from this found leftist foundation and that leftist foundation and i'm good with that you want to have that kind of programming it's fine And by the way, I wish that the Trump administration hadn't hung its entire case because the headline on the EO is bias, right? It matters the bias.

But we shouldn't be giving them money even if they weren't biased. There is no reason to be giving hundreds of millions of dollars to very successful private enterprises. And we should defund them. I mean, Congress should be doing this. Oh, my gosh. Can we just say that again? It's getting very frustrating why Congress is unable to do anything, including defunding

NPR and PBS, which is something they've talked about for decades. And it's not just this Congress. It's like every Congress has been such a failure. They're so weak, so cowardly. They don't know how to lead. Help people through a change like the defunding of NPR PBS. I mean, that budget that they just the house passes a monstrosity. I mean, the. Mike Johnson gave in to the assault faction, you know.

where we subsidize rich people in blue states and incentivize them to keep raising their taxes. And on the other hand, the fiscal conservatives got nothing. Now, I would call them a faction, but there's like two of them. Even Chip Roy voted for it, because what is he going to do? You know, he's going to sit there and stop the whole budget. One guy, he's not going to do it. Only person who voted against it was a libertarian guy's name. Thomas Massey. Massey.

I don't like those guys very much either. There's a lot of grandstanding and not enough coalition building. Like they need to pull together people in some sense. Like Massey just raises money, says no all the time. It's not going to do it. It doesn't do anything. You're not helping your cause, really. In my view, you have to like get involved in some way to try to like say, well, look at this program, look at come up with a plan that people can maybe join. I don't know.

I don't know. It feels like a lot of. But anyway, I just get annoyed at even that, though, there are like 80 loser Republicans for every one Thomas Massey. And people complain about Thomas Massey or Chip Roy when they're actually trying to do something to. protect our budget and nobody knows by name all the evil people who are like, I'm not going to vote for this. Yeah, I mean, you know, I don't know. I'm just saying that I am much angrier at the people who just pass all this stuff, but.

And I think Chip Roy is actually a more serious person, but the White House says we're not adding to the deficit. It's just nonsense. It's going to be probably going to add around $3 trillion to it in over 10 years. The highest ratio to GDP debt since World War Two. It's just unsustainable. I don't think anyone actually cares about it. It's just a lip service. No one ever wants. If people actually cared about politicians.

feel compelled to do something about it, but no one wants to actually cut anything. And here we are. And I'm sure it'll pass the Senate. We'll see. There's a lot of talk, but I don't think anyone will do anything.

Do you want to talk about James Comey for a bit? I know you always want to talk about James Comey. He was on MSNBC recently. Well. Let me take it even a step back from that. I think it was last week or two weeks ago where he was walking on the beach and took a picture of this. Eighty six, forty seven. Yeah. Eighty six, forty seven. So eighty six. But anyone who's worked in the restaurant business knows means, you know, kill it. And obviously, forty sevens Trump now.

What was his, do you know what his excuse was for that? Did he put those together or he said he just ran across it on the beach or what was it? Yes. I think he was like, my wife saw them and we were like, oh, what is this interesting number? There's numbers that we don't know what it means. And then we kept looking at it for a little while and then we...

I said, wait a minute. I think my wife worked in restaurants. And so she knew 86 meant you're out of shrimp and 47. That's the number of the current president. And so. We thought it was just a cute and whimsical thing that we happened to cross. I just want to say, I have to assume there's not a single person on earth who believes that they happened to cross this seashell formation, right?

I don't. I don't think like any person with a pulse thinks they happened across it. Like, do I think maybe the wife arranged it and not Comey? Possibly. But it was one of them. One of the two of them. And they had bought store bought shells because like I love to comb the beach for shells and they're very hard to find all the same color and size. And they were big and they were, you know.

They looked like they'd bought them at Michael's or Hobby Lobby. And arranged them, and they came across them, and he lies and says that they came across them. It's just an amazing... embarrassing like such a i if my children did that i'd be like do not even try to come at me with this week stuff um but we were all supposed to believe that he didn't know that the guy who used to prosecute mob criminals

for whom the lingo 86 means to assassinate or to kill. And the guy who was under all these different presidents didn't know how we number presidents, and it was just like such a mystery to him, and they just came across it. I guess the most charitable explanation would be he means like end his presidency, I guess. But anyway, he's he's such a weird and and guy, I think. Hold on. Of course.

that would be the most like charitable thing um but even that's not great right how do you end a presidency through another coup through another lie like the russia collusion lie that you perpetuated even though you knew it was false for years like that's a really disgusting evil like prosecutable thing to do like when someone does not deserve

to be out of the presidency and you're calling for him to be ousted like that doesn't that's not like oh it's charming he just meant end the presidency um but also the context here really really matters and the context is not that James Comey is some loser who's never read a book or seen a TV show, so he didn't know what 86 meant, the context is that James Comey is the former FBI director who knows full well what 86 means in that...

And, you know, in that environment and who has already been in trouble for trying to illegally oust the very same president. And this president. has been a victim of two assassination attempts. So in recent, in the last year. So it's not just like a, oh, best construction is he meant and the presidency. It's like the context really does matter here. And the context for James Comey could.

not be worse. I saw a story today that someone in the Biden administration The shadow government, let's call it, of the last administration said that they believe that undemocratic means were OK to stop Donald Trump because Donald Trump.

It was a fascist, essentially. Now, you and I have probably written about this for 10 years already that that government does this and this is their excuse and justification. But it just reminded me immediately of Comey and probably the reasoning that goes through his head. He was on Jen. Jen Psaki's show recently called Republicans, white supremacist adjacent. And I don't know if you've ever watched this Jen Psaki interviews, but they are.

The most they're all such softballs and she is just terrible at pretending to be a journalist. I just can't. I don't know how her ratings are or whatever, but I can't believe she has a show. Anyway, I want to add that. I don't watch MSNBC. Maybe I should. But yeah, when he went out there and claimed that the Republican Party was white supremacist adjacent.

It was just a great reminder of what we've gone through in the James Comey story going back a decade. And when I first started criticizing James Comey... Like 99% of the response I would get would be like, he's a Republican appointed by Republicans. Like if you're criticizing him, that must mean you're a real Trump sycophant. And I just want to say.

You know, eight years hence, I'm feeling pretty good about all the things I said early on about what a smarmy loser he is. It is embarrassing that anybody like him. has ever been in a position of authority like that guy is he's not bright he's conniving he's he has no like virtues that I can speak of. And he's displayed that throughout his career. I mean, the Martha Stewart thing being a great example, right? Where he wanted to get a high profile person.

related to insider trading and didn't get her and charged her anyway. And what did he charge her for? Lying to an FBI agent about how she hadn't done insider trading, meaning...

That he didn't find that she'd done any insider trading, but that he found that she'd been... deceitful because she said she didn't remember something that she surely would have remembered oh i don't know like claiming that you came across a bunch of shells that said 86 47 and that you just happened across them and you didn't put them on

put them down there yourself and that you had no idea how they got there, like that kind of lie. So I really wish that when the FBI talked to him that they had charged him with lying to them when he made that, when he presumably made that claim to them. Remember, also, like everyone around there around that time running our intelligence operations, running our institutions of law enforcement like John Brennan, like James Clapper, they were all just.

corrupt liars like John Brennan deserves to be in prison. James Clapper lied to the American people under oath, probably deserved to be punished in some way. And they all got away with it. None of them faced any kind of, I mean, James Comey, I saw, I was in a thrift shop looking at books and there's his thriller. He's writing books, probably making a ton of money. He was rewarded for it. He was rewarded for it.

Can we talk about your, if you're ready, can we talk about your trip to Poland a little more? Yeah, I don't know how much more to say, but it was a very quick trip left after last week's podcast and flew into Warsaw, which... Have you been to Poland? I have not. Okay, well, I'm going to highly recommend people visit Poland, but I can't say that Warsaw is the most beautiful place I've been.

It was destroyed in World War II, and then it was rebuilt by the Soviets who occupied the area. And so it's just a lot of that Soviet-style architecture, like the kind you see on the outskirts of Prague. you know, in Berlin and just really ugly, nothing remarkable to look at. But on the other hand, there's also a lot of new industry in Warsaw. And so high rises and it's just, it's pretty that way. And we saw the scene of the Warsaw Uprising, which I'd first, you know.

I don't remember when you learn about all this stuff, but I remember thinking about it a lot when I went to Yad Vashem, which is the Holocaust Museum in Israel. And they have an extensive... extensive area devoted to the Warsaw Uprising. Because a lot of people know that most Jews, when they showed up in concentration camps or death camps, they had no idea what was about to hit them. But...

Toward the end of the war, word had started to get out about what happened if you were taken by train to these camps. And so it... helped produce some uprisings, including the famous Warsaw uprising, where a lot of young people tried to get guns and bullets in order to fight back against the Nazis. You know, ultimately unsuccessful, but still kind of a highlight of that era when everybody else was just being marched into the gas chambers without knowledge. And then we went to Treblinka, which...

I think more than 800,000 Jews were killed in Treblinka, or under 900,000. And what's interesting about it, oh, actually, first we went to this town, I think it was called Tinkton, and... It was a good example of how the Holocaust began not with gas chambers, but by rounding up people in small towns, in shtetls, and taking them and just... putting bullets in them. So Holocaust by bullets. And so we saw three mass graves.

for the Jews of this town. And we also saw their synagogue, which was like a sizable synagogue. And I think they were the majority of this town, like a bare majority of this town. And it was interesting to see how many people... regularly come out to these mass graves, which are in the middle of a forest, like miles outside of this small town, to honor the people who were killed by bullets. And then we kept going. We went to...

Treblinka, sorry. And what was interesting about that is that was like a full gas chamber situation, but the Nazis had destroyed every single building associated with it. And so you can go and see where... Nearly a million people were gassed, but you don't see any buildings or evidence of it. And someone I know, his great-grandfather and other family members were killed there. So that was... interesting to be there at that site. And then we went to the town of Lublin, which was...

a really thriving, like, again, not predominantly Jewish, but a sizable Jewish population city. And right near there is this death camp called Maidonic, where... I think because the Nazis kind of ceased using it as a death camp before the Soviets came and took over the area. They didn't feel the need to destroy every building.

Because it wasn't like currently in use at the time that the Soviets were coming. And so it's like a remarkably well-preserved camp. But one of the things that's interesting about it is that there weren't that many people killed there, by which I mean only like 80,000 people were killed there. But you can see the gas chamber and you can see like the blue from the Cyclone Z. What is it called? Cyclone B on the walls.

You can see where they cremated the bodies and where executions happened also. That was... Being inside those buildings is one of the worst experiences I've ever had. I mean, I just haven't felt that kind of evil around you. Like there's no eradicating it. And it's just horrific to see. Just thinking about the industrialization of killing people is just so mind-bogglingly evil, you know?

And you can't help when you're there, but just imagine you're the one who's in the camp or you are trying to protect your children and how helpless you would be and how awful. We also walked around Lublin and we went to this theater. It sounds like, as Mark said, if you'd told me I was going to experimental theater today, I would not have been happy. But it was really well done. They just took little vignettes, stories, and did it to a violin.

and a base and it was so moving and touching uh stories like from scraps of paper that people had found in these sites and it was really beautifully done and nice because like Lublin, which used to have so many Jews, now has basically one. And this theater is done by Poles just in honor of their former... Like not that they were alive when this happened, but and then we went to Auschwitz and that was we got to go in early before anybody else was in to Auschwitz one.

which is, you know, it has all these barracks, barracks, barracks, full of people. And that was more the work camp of Auschwitz. Auschwitz II is the death camp where they killed more than a million. And... the torture that they were engaged in and also it was so weird to see these like sort of beautiful brick barracks it had been it had been polish barracks before the nazis took it over and to see what they did to in these buildings and the torture

that they did and uh we got to see this cell where maximilian colby was he was the They used to do this thing like if someone escaped, then someone else from the unit would have to be killed. And they chose that person randomly. And they chose someone who had a wife and kids and he was begging for his life.

And Maximilian Kolbe said, well, I don't have any wife or kids, obviously, and I'd be happy to take his place. And so he took his place and they just tried to starve him in the pit of one of the barracks for weeks and he didn't starve. And so they ended up injecting him with Fent.

They injected something into his heart, I can't remember what it is, to kill him. And, you know, so you see these like, just stories like that are the sites where they would execute people. And then we went out to Auschwitz too, which is sort of the famous... that everybody sees in movies. And that was also just horrific to see.

you know, some of the gas chambers there, how big they were. We did go into a gas chamber at Auschwitz, which was the first place that they used it, figured it out, but it was much smaller than the ones at Auschwitz too. I don't know. It was just, I would highly recommend going on a tour like this where you see these places and.

You know, it's not that long ago. Like I kept thinking my mom was born in 1946. She has an older brother who was born earlier. Like if they had been in Poland, this could have been them. My my grandfather was in Auschwitz work camp. Um, who is my step, like my step grandpa, he brought up my dad, my actual grandfather died in Austria, probably, you know, a slave labor. They're not sure he sort of just disappeared.

My grandmother was on a train. She escaped somehow and was hidden by a Catholic family in Budapest. They were sort of... It's very, very weird to say that someone's lucky during the Holocaust, but the Hungarian Jews were maybe the last great big population taken. So.

They probably would not have survived if they had been one of the first. And Eichmann was famously, you know, in Hungary doing that. So anyway, I've never been to these places. I probably we tried. I went with my dad years ago to try to track down where his dad had died in Austria.

veil, but I would, I don't think I'd ever go to Auschwitz or any of these places. Was Hungary the last because they kind of not switched sides during the war, but they'd been kind of with the Nazis early on. And then when the Nazis began losing, they kind of.

dropped away. Is that why? Yeah, I think there was some actually, and don't get me wrong, there are plenty of, unfortunately, in Poland as well, plenty of people who were happy to go along with this kind of thing. But I think they were somewhat resistant to it initially.

And then, yeah, as the war turned, they lost. It was it's just to think about the evil. Obviously, Nazis are so evil. It's almost like, you know, we just say it. But think about this, the war. They know now that they're probably going to lose the war. So they accelerate their. extermination project. Once they realize that things are going very badly rather than try to figure out a way to...

like lose in the best way or possibly even win. They just devote all their resources to being like, no, we've got to eradicate the Jews. To me, like you mentioned, these mass... shootings that they did out in the woods and in shallow graves to me there's almost more horrific because it's just more the the

It's the industrialized thing. It's hard to wrap your mind around it or your morality around it. Right. But when you actually someone has to walk up to you, shoot you, shoot your children that, you know, they stopped doing that because a lot of soldiers, I think, couldn't really do it anymore. So they want.

That's sort of, yeah, anesthetize the whole thing. So anyway, it's a horrific thing to think about. And honestly, I mean, this is why I think Israel is so important. So for me, like the Warsaw Ghetto, I always say, you know, that it would it would have been different.

The Holocaust would have been different if Jews had had been armed like they are. Let's say they can be here. Now, I'm not saying it wouldn't have happened in the end, but those Warsaw ghetto fighters held out, I think, from over two months. And they only had a like a handful of rifles and stuff. Do you know what I mean? It's not.

that easy to kill people when they're armed. And I people, you know, I get such blowback when I say stuff like this. But even now, I think Jews, everyone, I think, but Jews should arm themselves if they can. I don't remember who wrote it, but Tablet Magazine, which is a great magazine, had an article that basically says that. Like the number one thing Jews in America can do right now is arm themselves and get firearms training.

Yeah. I don't know how to pronounce his first name. Leo Lebowitz wrote that or Lyle Lebowitz. It's an excellent piece. Yeah. It says, I think it's arm yourself or something like that. Nope. They do.

So I also wanted to mention that we flew out of Krakow and Krakow is a magically beautiful city. It's the opposite of what I said about Warsaw, where it was like ugly architecture. Krakow has beautiful architecture from many hundreds of years ago, many, many hundreds, and a castle with a dragon's lair, which is pretty awesome. I had to get my godson a little dragon toy.

for that. And beautiful people, beautiful everything. Now, when I was in the central square of Krakow on Sunday, after leaving Auschwitz, there was a small pro-Palestinian March and it was not like it was it was not a welcome site it was small but it was still just like really people here of all places and I went on the trip with Guy Benson and Mary Catherine Hamm and Kennedy.

and Emily Campagna, all from Fox News. And it was, they definitely had the same reaction. I wasn't with them at the time, but they were saying when they saw the Palestinian marchers, they were like screaming at them. Yeah, Eastern European countries, you don't really see a lot of this pro-Palestinian stuff because a lot of it's driven by Islamic immigrants there, I think, and politicians who have to now kowtow to them in places like Britain and France.

Anyway, hard to segue from the Holocaust to culture. There was one more thing I was going to say. One of my problems, I always try to understand different arguments that I can better combat them. It's such a... basic part of discussing with someone is that you try to understand where they're coming from. And I have struggled so much to understand anti-Semitism. It just doesn't make sense to me.

I never grew up in a way that it would have made sense. It's not something that would make sense in my family or anything like that. But there was this little thing that kind of... There was a little thing I picked up in Poland that I just wanted to ask you about. So even now, like if you go to Auschwitz, they will separate out the groups of people that were killed. They'll be like, it was this many Jews, this many Roma. this many Soviets, this many Poles.

And by the way, Poles are like the second biggest group. And it was a lot of anybody who was part of a Polish resistance was killed, which was a lot of people. And so they lost a significant percentage of their population as well. But they separate out Jews from Poles. So it's like Jew, whether you're from Poland or Hungary or Germany or Czechoslovakia, you're in the Jew camp, right?

And then also like, so when you're talking to Poles, they will speak this way. When you're talking to Jews, they will speak this way. And I was thinking about that and about how to preserve. the Jewish ethnicity requires a certain degree of separation from the larger community, right? I have no problem with this, by the way, because as a Lutheran, we feel the same way. Like I was brought up to believe like I'm Lutheran.

We live in America. We're very proud or happy to be American and we're very patriotic, but we're first and foremost Lutheran Christian. But it was such a pronounced thing. I don't even quite know what I'm asking here. I think they were viewed as like separate from the political community in a way that was dangerous. For like the Nazis, obviously. Well, we talked about this before. It's like here.

It's different because I can be Jewish and I'm American and it's perfectly acceptable and fine. But in Poland, it's not the same, especially when you were the only group that's different. Right. And people and Jews who convinced themselves that they were that they were Hungarians like my. They were in for a rude awakening when things went south. And so, yeah, there was a separation, but it was often...

instituted against Jewish people by the ruling class. Now, honestly, this is not an attack on Lutherism or you, but Martin Luther wrote a book that was wildly anti-Semitic about Jews because he viewed, he was, I think, I'm not.

lecturing you on this I might be wrong but he viewed them he thought they would come into the fold with you know with him So I think a lot of people in Europe, if you read the Bible, I mean, the Jews don't, the New Testament, the Jews don't come off well, you know, and I think that that's part of the. I mean, actually, what's funny is in the Old Testament, they don't come off well. They're always described as like hard headed or stiff necked. Yeah.

Yeah. Immediately rebelling against God. Yeah. Martin Luther wrote a book called On the Jews and Their Lies. So you can kind of pick up from the title there what the general. take his. And it was his belief that Rome had so obscured the gospel that once Jews heard the gospel purely taught, they would, of course... immediately all convert in mass and so he's like at the beginning of the his you know ministry or whatever when he

really just things like Jews. The problem is they haven't heard the gospel. They haven't learned about Jesus. They haven't had it been clearly taught from how Jesus is the promised Messiah. And so he starts out like really eager to preach to them. And then when they refuse. like the message or when they reject jesus even after learning about it then he just turns and he's like well these people are very

Like, it's not just that the Catholics had suppressed the gospel, it's something worse. And so he had some very bad things to say. And then that was used, I mean, that was really, it was like a theological argument, as was so many things that... Luther did. But then the Nazis ended up using that literature as a way to say, like, see, there's a long history, even sainted Martin Luther, you know, felt this way. When, of course, Martin Luther never would have supported killing.

Anyone for faith reasons. And, you know, in medieval times or whenever you had a king in a kingdom or whatever, and it was intricately tied to faith. It mattered a lot. And it's a theological idea, right? You know, you had wars fought constantly over between Catholics and Protestant nations and so on.

between Orthodox nations, between Islamic nations, and Jews were never a power. So if you had to blame someone for being a fifth columnist or undermining the nation, like Hitler did, for instance, in World War I, he blamed Jewish banks, officials, whatever. On the banking thing, I love this, that the laws would be set up so basically Jews were the only people allowed to do banking. And then they get blamed for being bankers.

Do you know what I mean? They would be like, oh, well, we'll let them do the U3 because we're not supposed to do it. And then they do it. And then they're like, and look at these people with their banks and their finance. It's like, well, you did set up a system where that's how it was going to work. Well, anyway, so you think about the Ukrainian.

the pale in Ukraine and all these people, they were like very poor, you know, but they were part of blamed and kind of in a collective way for what like rich German bankers were doing or Jewish. Have you heard those quotes from Lord Rabbi Jonathan Sachs, which are kind of about this, like the Jews will be blamed for being poor and for being wealthy, for being communist and for being capitalist. You get blamed on both sides of the things.

That's awesome that you went. It sounds like it was really enriching in a way. I would highly recommend like the two things. One would be visiting death camps and concentration camps like. You can read about it so much, and I have. And it's not like I really learned anything totally new, but to go through it and experience it is something altogether different, and it's well worth it. It's not that long ago. People should be worried about something like this happening again.

And also, like, I think people should approach it with the idea of how is it happening again right now? You know, what are the things that we do in our own lives to look the other way or to not fight as much as we should? And then secondly. Highly recommend Poland as a country to visit. It is beautiful. The people are wonderful. The culture is great. And I would just say, get Krakow on your list.

It's it's crazy. I was born less than 30 years after the Holocaust. Right. And I'm still around. And my dad was born in 1952. So when you 1942, I'm sorry. So when you say it's like near it's. It's crazy how near it seems so far, but it's things that we did not very long ago as, you know, as humans is kind of nuts. But I heard a rumor that you watch like a lot of movies. So I'm really excited to hear.

what you have seen so you know it's very long flight there and a very long flight back so i have seen so many movies it's ridiculous and i'll just start i'll just go in order conclave you saw that right I did not. I heard bad things. Oh, I thought it was pretty good, actually. Okay, good. From, like, Catholics, I heard bad things. That's funny, because, like...

Catholics that I and my children know were recommending it. Oh, okay. It does, I mean, it ends with something really, like, stupid, basically. But the whole process itself. I think did an accurate job of showing how politics inside the church works. And I have a little bit of knowledge of that from Lutheran side of things. And I liked it and good acting. Okay. Then I'm still here.

Did you see that movie, I'm Still Here? I'm Still Here. Remind me. It sounds so familiar. It was from last year. It is. Oh, my gosh. Sorry. I don't know if it was it was so good. I would I would just say it is a really beautiful movie about the disappearance of a Brazilian. congressman like in the 70s and how his family endures this so he was a communist or communist adjacent to use james comey's parlance um but it's a beautifully done film

Beautiful cinematography, wonderful acting, and gets a little rushed at the end. But other than that, it is... It earns a 97 on Rotten Tomatoes, which is a very high score. Okay. It was... Check that out. Fun to watch. And, you know, I'm not like the biggest fan of subtitled movies or anything. Not like I don't like them, but it just was gripping the whole time. Okay. Then I watched A Better Man.

which is the Robbie Williams biopic. Oh, where he's a like chimpanzee or something. Yeah. And I have to say it kind of worked. I don't really know who Robbie Williams is. And I think that's the problem with why it didn't do well in America. He's a pop star. I was like, why would I watch this movie? Like, it's an interesting concept, but I don't know anything about this man. I couldn't name you a song he sings.

I wonder, he was in a boy band. Must have been a long time ago, right? The songs themselves actually seemed familiar. Like rock DJ. Okay. And angels and all sorts of, I mean, it was, but anyway, it was a well done movie. And. It is really about the demons that affect pop stars. Okay. Then I saw a real pain. A real pain. Also a movie from last year. Sorry. It was about these cousins. Oh, I saw that. Yeah.

Who two are Poland. Poland, yeah. Her grandmother dies. And it just seemed like the right thing to watch because I had just done it. And it was actually very interesting because, like, they start off in Warsaw and then they go to Lublin. and my donic and so like they're standing in exactly the same places where we had just stood and it was kind of funny to watch that did you like it i thought it was okay but kind of i don't know i felt a little empty after like

I did like it. I thought it was well done. I went in assuming it was going to be bad because I'd heard a lot of bad stuff about it, and I thought it was actually really good. What's got Kieran Colt?

Culkin is that how you say his name and Jesse Eisenberg who directed it and it's they're both pretty good in it yeah then I watched a Chris Farley documentary oh nice and I did not think it was good it was like done by some tv network i don't remember which one it was and it just was it just did not bring him out in a way that i found very moving or anything but it did talk a lot about all of his drug and food addictions and stuff

I was legitimately sad when he died because he was just he put him out himself out there so easily. And it was always just so funny to watch him on SNL when I was younger. Yeah. Yeah. I love him. And then finally, I watched Pig. Oh, I want to see that. Yeah. Nicolas Cage. And that was also very good. Yeah, I've been wanting to watch it. I think it's like for months.

When we do culture, I'd be like, I have not watched anything, seen anything, read anything because I was just as heavy on the book. And now I'm like, I watched six movies since last week. How long was this flight? It must have been so long. Well, there were two flights, right? So it was like seven hours over to Frankfurt. And then it was, I think, nine hours back. So there was just a ton of time.

I went once time I went to Brazil and it was a long flight and they only had one movie playing and I watched it like four times. It was the King's speech. I knew I could recite the whole movie to you. Well, I did not do as much as you. I watched a show, a new show on, uh, on Apple TV called murder bot. And it sounds.

Like, sounds like something it's not. It's actually a science fiction show with Alexander Skargard. Is that how you say his name? Skarsgard. Really funny and good. One of my children tells me she read the books on this. It is a good show. So if I see a book on any kind of like music or celebrity, I usually will read it really quick. So I read a whole book on James Gandolfini that just came out, which was...

If you liked it, it was good. And then on Appalachia, I also watched something called Fountain of Youth with Natalie Portman and Krasinski. What is his first name from The Office? John. John Krasinski. What was it called? Fountain of Youth. Huh. I was not a fan of it. It's kind of derivative of Raiders of the Lost Ark and that Nicolas Cage movie where I forgot what it's called, where he's kind of chasing down all the.

signs in the Declaration of Independence and stuff, national treasure. So I was excited by this thinking that this might be a movie I could take my children to, but I see it's directed by Guy Ritchie, so that makes me nervous. It is perfectly family-friendly, I think, as far as I remember. I don't think it's in the movie theaters. I think it's just streaming on Apple. It is terrible, in my view.

My wife thought it was OK, so maybe it's just me. I just I just I just thought there was no real. I think Natalie Portman might not be a good great actress. I'm starting to think she's very pretty. She's pretty. And there was no real chemistry there. And I guess the outcome in the first five minutes, who's going to be the bad guy and this and that. So I don't know. Do with that what you will. Okay.

If you'd like to email us, please do so at radioatthefederalist.com. We'd love to hear from you. And we'll be back next week. Until then, be lovers of freedom and anxious for the prey.