'You're Wrong' With Mollie Hemingway And David Harsanyi, Ep. 152: Another Antisemitic Attack

Welcome back, everyone, to a new episode of You're Wrong with Molly Hemingway, editor-in-chief of The Federalist and David Harsani, senior writer at The Washington Examiner. Just as a reminder, if you'd like to email the show, please do so at radio at thefederalist.com. So, Molly, another week and another anti-Semitic attack in America, this time in Boulder, Colorado, your old stomping grounds up there in Pearl Street. Or did you go to Colorado? I forget.

My brother and sister went to CU Boulder and I went to CU Denver. So I'm very familiar with Pearl Street Mall, which is where this attack happened and Boulder. You're very familiar with it from having lived out there as well. Yeah. Pearl Street's nice. Well, it's nice. One thing I don't think people realize, CU Boulder has a reputation for being a very liberal school.

The town itself is actually much more liberal than the school. And, you know, I remember when I was in high school, their mayor was an abortionist, like a literal, like she ran an abortion facility. And they were known for wanting to import homeless people. You know, never mind that homeless people are smart enough to know that maybe Boulder is not the best place to endure a winter if you don't have a house. But it's a very left-wing city. But they apparently had been having a weekly march.

to call for the return of the Israeli hostages that were seized in the October 7 attacks by Hamas. And so that's when this attack happened, which you can tell us about. Yeah, Boulder is insanely left wing. Warren Hearn, I believe, had his office up there. Late term abortion. Yeah, just the worst person in America, probably. I mean, I can't think of anyone more evil than that guy. So just a terrible.

place in that sense it's it's a very weird thing because it's it's also quite rich you know um so anyway uh this guy who was he was a he built a flamethrower basically And he threw it at a bunch of people who are marching for the hostages. He was illegally here. He's an Egyptian. I just read today he has like five kids here. Well, he overstayed his visa. Yeah, he overstayed his visa.

With a visa and then he completely overstayed his visa. And then like after it had been overstayed for quite some time, then he was like, oh, I want asylum. And I think that was denied. And so he was still here. Well, the asylum claim has just become this kind of shortcut for people to try to, you know, for illegals to try to extend their illegality here. Yeah, exactly. I mean, the system needs reform and that's for sure. And honestly, I don't even.

I want to talk a ton about the attacker. Obviously, it's just this crazed anti-Semite. It's not going to be the last attack, unfortunately. As of now, I don't think anyone has died, and I hope that that's the case. He's charged with terrorism and a bunch of other things.

I want to talk about how the media covered this. Now, I'm going to be ranting and raving a bit, I think, today. So I hope people go for it. When NBC described this. Describe this attack. This is what they called the people there. And I'm not making this up. It's so Orwell, but I'm not making this up. Gaza hostage awareness marchers. Like, can you imagine?

I'm not even joking, Molly. And just imagine the like Zoomer editorial assistant person who had to find out a way to say this without calling those people Jews. It was definitely no easy task. And this is what they came up with. They're not Gazan. Like they're being held in Gaza. Gaza hostage awareness. They're Israeli hostages. Well, it's completely misleading. It's someone who's struggled in a ham-fisted way.

to talk about these people, not say maybe, you know, pro-Israel, pro-Jewish hostage or pro-hostages or whatever. I don't even know how you describe it. I just say, you know, whatever. The entire coverage of this is like it soft pedals what this guy did. It soft pedals what he's about. For instance. NBC News, lone wolf attacks, which should be lone wolves attacks in Boulder and D.C. highlight the difficulty in securing public spaces. So.

Quite literally, if it's a plural, it's not a lone wolf. OK, so let's say they're talking about separate incidents. But if if those string of incidents. share the same rhetoric, the same ideology, the same targets, the same kind of people doing it, then it's a movement. You don't have to have a meeting of everyone to get together and say, oh, we're going to shoot some Israeli, you know, some work, people who work.

the Israeli diplomatic offices in D.C. and we're going to throw flames at Jews elsewhere. I mean, God. And I mean, I hope people are remembering that the Democrat governor of Pennsylvania, who's Jewish, had his mansion. firebombed by a pro-Palestinian activist as well. Right. So there were a...

A slew of stories recently that had to be retracted that kinds of feeds the anger of Jewish people and the genocide myth. And this is a hoax. I'm not going to get too into that, but to say this, it reminds me a little bit of the Russia collusion hoax in this way. The media will say, oh, we made a mistake. We got it wrong this time. We're going to retract the story days after the damage is done. I'm going to give you some of those examples.

But it always skews in the same exact direction somehow. That's a miracle, right? When you're just making honest mistakes that every mistake you make skews in one direction towards Hamas in this point, in their point of view of the world. That seems problematic. David, are you talking about the story we discussed last week about how like the false report that there were going to be.

Some like insane number of children dead within 14,000 children. Babies are going to die in two days if Israel didn't do this and that. Forget that. After that, there was a story about a tank attack on on aid workers.

that killed a bunch of Palestinians. Well, there were cameras there, unfortunately, for the people who spread this story. It was untrue. Nothing blew up. No one died there. Now, I'm not saying no one dies. I'm just saying no one died there. The next day, BBC reported that the IDF had fired into a group of Palestinians. who were there at an American AIDS center in 31 had died. That was completely unfounded and untrue. It did not happen. The Washington Post ran with a story, that story.

Retracted in days after one of the reporters on that story, one of the bylines. Have you noticed that there's always like 10 bylines on every story? Does no one like write a story? Yeah. But anyway, she won. I believe that she won a Pulitzer Prize for their coverage of the Israel and Palestinian situation. Here's the thing, though. They'll go back tomorrow to quoting Hamas's. casualty numbers they'll keep doing it i don't know if you remember 10 days after the

October 7th attack in 2023, the New York Times ran with the story that the Israelis had bombed a hospital and killed like 230 people. It turned out it was Islamic Jihad had a misfired rocket that did it. you know so it's story after story that build like the russia collusion hoax build on to this narrative and then you forget how many of these stories are completely untrue and not based in any reality all you remember is this string of stories of how terrible

You know, Israel is now the Washington Post is one of the worst at this. And the you know, so they were sinned. They retracted this story, deleted the story, even though I saw it up there still. So I don't know how they did it. But the other day on their editorial page, which has former Qatari propagandists all over the place, a guy named Shadi Hamid. ran a tired propaganda piece based on Hamas' statistics saying that Israel had committed genocide in Gaza. So, you know, I mean, it's nuts.

It's nuts how misleading this is and how dangerous this is to people in America. Okay. Also, all war involves propaganda, like all sides in a war engage in propaganda. that is particularly true as we have witnessed with palestinian propaganda for many many many decades now so

Even understanding that this is kind of something you're actually dealing with all the time in war, whether it's Ukraine and Russia, Israel versus Hamas. Hamas has... A well-established reputation for just not telling the truth, as evidenced by what you just said with the hospital claims that Israel had purposely bombed a hospital to kill people who were in a hospital.

And none of it was true. So if you are a media person and you do anything other than basically shelve a claim from Hamas until and unless you can verify it independently. you're just part of a propaganda operation they know to check claims made from israel as you should any claim but they are going out of their way to accept and regurgitate false claims from the palestinians

And they'll do it again tomorrow. And you're right. I mean, I don't want, honestly, you know, I am pro-Israelism. I mean, I think Israel... does everything correctly or Israel doesn't make mistakes or that there aren't even bad people within, you know, the Israel IDF who would do something terrible. It happens in every country, every army. And the difference, of course, is that Israel is a democracy and has a system of checks and balances.

It has a media that is very critical of Israel. I mean, the Haaretz newspaper will run editorials about how Israel shouldn't even exist. You know, I mean, this is an open and free nation. So I certainly don't think.

that israel deserves a pass but i mean when you're you shouldn't also treat hamas a terrorist organization as you do israel with the same level with the same level of skepticism but anyway let's talk about yeah just on this We mentioned the attack on Shapiro's mansion, the assassination of the Israeli embassy workers, and then the firebombing of the peaceful rally to get people to... care about the hostages. And we also have a political

movement that's quite large that's pushing these things. We have the propaganda press that's pushing it. It's like a real problem. Americans are being attacked. Like one of the women who was attacked in Boulder survived the Holocaust. And then she comes to Boulder, which is such an idyllic, lovely place to live, and then has burns on her body from someone who wants to kill Jews. Does it seem that the media are...

giving this the attention that they would give it if like do you remember when a small group of like crazy um not crazy you know a small group of racists had that rally in Charlottesville that also included some people who just didn't want statues being torn down. And it became the main focus of media attention for like six years.

Yeah. Joe Biden said he ran, who's been running for president since 1987, said he ran for president because of the Charlottesville March and something that Donald Trump didn't say about it. Yeah. So I'm just saying we don't seem to be demanding that Hakeem Jeffries denounce his political party for how much they're doing to support this movement of...

You know, anti-Israeli rhetoric that's leading to this. I'm not one of these people who likes to blame. How can I say this? I blame the person who did it for what happened. But there is an environment that you create and there is especially when you're lying about stuff. So.

Everyone comes out on the, you know, within the Democratic House leadership and elsewhere and say, boy, this is horrific. This attack is horrific, you know, but never once do they ever say anything about the people within their party. And there are many who spread the genocide claim, who kind of bolster this kind of thinking. Like forget even Charlottesville. Think about like the Westboro Church, which is like two families, right? Wherever they show up. One family, yeah.

Whatever they show up, there's pictures and, you know, and immediately they want conservatives to take ownership of those people. By asking you to denounce them, like you say, you're essentially giving them ownership of it, like they're part of your movement. You literally have people part of your movement with elected officials and you don't denounce them at all. So.

The other part of this I wanted to talk about, and again, I'll go back to the Washington Post. Here's an editorial that they ran after the flamethrowing incident. Anti-Semitism does not respect national. This is a headline. Anti-Semitism does not respect national borders. Underneath it, it says Trump says the Boulder attack suspect should not have been here. He is missing the point.

Now, I don't think he's missing the point at all. We are the rise in antisemitism. Yes, some of it is driven by domestic. And unfortunately, some people on the right as well. But it is often imported into this country. I can't do anything about someone who's an anti-Semite here. They could say what they want. But do I have to now import into the country people who will not assimilate or won't be assimilated by the left? Now.

I think that is the point. That's why we have a border. I can't do anything about anti-Semitism in Saudi Arabia, but I can do something about it here by not letting anti-Semites in here. Don't want to become part of the American. you know fabric of american life right for me this was a real wake-up call when the left got so angry that white south african farmers were granted refugee status and then i think it was marco rubio or someone said to the effect that

These are people who will do a very quick assimilation to this country. And even as they landed, they're flying American flags and kissing the ground and saying, thank you for letting us come here. Do you think any of them will ever throw flames at Jewish people who are marching? Do you think any of them are going to blow something up? I doubt it. Right. So that's what my point is. I understand that the country.

is it has like a difference from from a lot of other countries although i think even that is like overstated the idea that you can't think about who assimilates well and what culture values and norms assimilate well with what we with what our ancestors fought very hard to establish in this country. It's insane and stupid. Like people are pretending to be stupid when they say stuff like, do we really not understand that Islam has a component in it?

like that is legendarily hostile to Judaism, which is not the same thing as saying a Muslim can't live here, a Muslim can't be a good American or that a Muslim can't immigrate here. You know what I mean? Yeah, I agree. Yeah. But to not understand that there's.

quite a history of Islam not being a religion of peace when it comes to Jews and Christians. Like, you just have to pretend to be stupider than you are to say that. Yeah, I mean, I just want to say it. I'm not saying Muslims can't... be assimilated at all i'm saying that it's a concern that we should that's fair to talk about with some people and i would say this the person who executed the two uh workers at the at the israeli embassy that guy you know he was he was

I think he was a Mexican descent or whatever it was. You know, he was an American. And like the guy who I think firebombed the governor's mansion was also American. And to your point, we got enough problems with Americans. Exactly. No need to add to it with like importing problems. Exactly. And it's not just anti-Semitism. I don't want to bring anyone here who can't live with other people, can't respect other people's, you know, traditions, religion.

Points of view, whatever. We need to live together if we're going to have a diverse nation, obviously. Do you think you can afford your own car payment? The Watchdog on Wall Street podcast with Chris Markowski. Every day, Chris helps unpack the connection between politics and the economy and how it affects your wallet. Auto delinquency rates are at their highest level ever recorded. People are stretched as auto prices aren't coming down.

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Well, that's a good segue. Let's talk about this. Another Washington Post headline, OK, from their editorial page. Or no, this is a news story, and it just said the mysterious drop in fentanyl seizures on the U.S. Mexico border. They were completely flummoxed. They don't know what happened down there. All of a sudden there's there's less, you know, or fewer apprehensions of people, you know, bringing drugs into the country. How on earth did that happen, Molly, do you think?

Do you think you could crack the mystery? I think that maybe the administration did something about the border. Right. But. They're surprised or don't understand why people want to burn Jews alive. They're surprised and they don't understand why we need borders closed. I mean, it is just...

I don't know. I don't even know what to say anymore. That's what I'm saying. I was going to just be ranting. I'm reading all this this morning and I'm just like, you know, we have a media that is in the Washington Post. OK. One of the it's it's the premier one of the premier papers in the country is in our nation's capital should be one of our best papers and most reliable papers and.

They're a joke. They're an absolute joke. I mean, I've written for them in the past. I wouldn't I wouldn't even write for them now if they asked me, you know, I always feel so badly. They'll be like. You know, some writer at Reason who's like, I am proud to announce my first time being published in the Washington Post or New York Times. I'm like.

Oh, that's really sad that you think that's something to aspire to. And that might explain why you're so bad at your job already, is that you think that that's something that you would want to have. At some point, like after decades of The Washington Post being what it is, I actually just like.

get annoyed when people even pretend like it's a paper of prestige or anything like that but i would write for it if they let me rip into some of their own writers then i would write for it Or like my real favorite thing is when people are excited to be published in the New York Times, literally 95% of the time that someone who's not a leftist is allowed to publish at the New York Times, all they have to do.

is attack the right. That's all you have to do to get published in the New York Times. It's actually not even difficult to get published in the New York Times. You just have to attack the right. And if you are willing to do that, and a lot of people are so like desperate for love from the left that they'll do it.

You get published. Anyway, back to the immigration thing, though. I want to point out that Colorado has a policy of being hostile to immigration, federal law enforcement. This guy, as we noted, had overstayed his visa, was here illegally, and also with his wife and five children, by the way. not just like a random dude over here but had like moved his whole family here and i think had no intention of doing anything other than staying and colorado has a policy of making it difficult for

removal of people who are in the country illegally. They have many such policies. I'm sure Boulder and Denver sanctuary cities. And there are consequences to this. You have... A guy lobbying Molotov cocktails at a peaceful protest designed to make sure people don't forget the remaining Israeli hostages. He's here in part because of the policies of the Colorado governor and legislature, and they should be held accountable for it too.

The city of Boulder has formally declared itself a sanctuary city committed to fostering equity, social justice and protecting the human rights of all persons, regardless of immigration status. One of our editors went to high school near Boulder and she looked up what the Boulder official pages said and they were loathe to describe it as a terrorist attack or to be specific about who was targeted.

Or by whom. But so was the New York Times, you know? Many, many years ago, probably 20 years ago now, I went to a pro-Israel demonstration in Boulder. I could have sworn I wrote about it, but I can't find the column. And I was surrounded. I had said something and I was surrounded by people who were kind of trying to intimidate me. I think there were students or something like that.

And I wish I could find the column and maybe I just passed on it because I'd gotten personally involved in that way. So I don't know. But anyway, it is always such a weird place. But anyway, I'm not blaming. I mean, it's not just Boulder. It happened in D.C. It happened in Pennsylvania. It's, you know, it's something that unfortunately I think is going to happen again until we start really.

I don't know. I don't know what we can do with this. Well, I was glad to see like they'd rounded up the family member of the guy who was on video appearing to take credit for the. Firebombing of the peaceful march and Marco Rubio was like, if you're doing terrorist stuff, you and your whole family are going to be like quickly expedited out of the country. You know, speaking of immigration.

Do you see this story about a Chinese national, I believe it is, who teaches at the University of Michigan? It was caught trying to smuggle in a biological pathogen that could, if released, devastate certain crops, including wheat. I believe, though I might have the science wrong on that. And he said that he had brought it in for research for research. So.

This whole thing with like Mahmoud Khalil and these people, I don't want him here. I certainly don't want to give him citizenship, but we have to be careful about Chai comms as well. Now, I'm not the Chinese people. are fine and there are great Chinese Americans, but Chi-Com, you know, spies and Chi-Com people who want to bring in pathogens. I mean, something we have to be more vigilant about clearly.

Did you ever watch the TV show The Americans? Not really, no. It's so good. Are you seeing there are sleeper cells in here? Yeah, and I think one of the subplots involved. Am I confusing different TV shows or movies? Some movie or TV show I watch. There is a movie out there. About the Russians trying to hurt the weed or we were trying to hurt the Russian weed or something. I don't know. Yeah, and there are a lot. So the issue with the Chinese Communist Party.

is they demand things of their Chinese citizens who come to the United States that other countries don't, including like reporting back and basically being under the thumb of the Communist Party. And so we should be... much more careful yeah it's like pretty rampant amounts of immigration also there's just the issue of you know like when harvard they were getting penalized and with all of the like insane amounts of taxpayer funding they get

And they were saying, like, our foreign student base is the heart of our university. There's also this issue where we have people from hostile foreign countries coming in, receiving the best possible education. going back into communist environments and with state-controlled means of production competing against the United States. So you actually have Harvard and other institutions acting as agents of harm.

the united states like knowingly willingly happily claiming it's the heart of their institution like if that's true they should just actually be shut down because as as much good as you could possibly imagine coming from a harvard education for an american if it's

true that 20, you know, 25 percent of their student body is foreign and a lot of these are from communist countries and they're being educated in order to basically go to war against the United States. Like any institution harboring that should be shut down. Well, I mean, Harvard.

I believe I don't have a story in front of me. I mean, has trained Tricom officials. I mean, knowingly kind of, you know, in conjunction with the with the Chinese government, train them. Now, you know, I read somewhere that around. It seems like a high number. Fifty percent of students come here, stay here in some capacity. I don't know if that's true or not. But if these schools and it's not just China.

cutter or qatar as i say that uh spend you know billions not millions billions on these schools and uh and that's something to think about now i don't know what to do about it but bolstering these institutions that already get that money with taxpayer dollars well that's insane you know so so did you hear the big story like it's it's kind of crazy um

The Russia collusion hoax story keeps keeps occurring. But last week, Chuck Grassley put out a release about a document showing that Nellie Orr. who's the wife of Bruce Orr, who was like then the number three guy at Department of Justice, that she had lied to Congress dead to rights twice. And another couple of times she seemed to have lied to Congress. And so there was this document.

showing this and Chuck Grassley released it and everyone's kind of going through the document and they're like, oh, there's some really interesting stuff in this document. But in the document, it also reveals something that is like such a big scandal, it's almost hard to believe it's real, but it is real, which is... But the FBI has a database system called Sentinel where they put all their case files. Have you heard of that, Sentinel? Yeah. And...

Sometimes you are working on information and it's actually really sensitive and you don't want everybody in the FBI to know it. So they have a way that you can restrict access to those files while still putting it in the Sentinel system. And if you're...

flagging a search for something and it comes up that there's restricted access. There are ways that you can kind of like interrogate whether you can get access to it or not. Or let's say you were charged with providing the Brady material for something. You know what Brady material is where the Supreme Court has said that in a criminal case, the government has to supply any and all information it has on it, including anything exculpatory. Okay.

and so you have to do brady searches and those are really important and so like let's say you're doing a brady search and something comes up restricted access you you can like figure out a way to get that information or see if that information is responsive to your search well it turns out Unbeknownst to like even very high level people at the FBI, there was a third tier in which information was put in.

And it was so restricted that you didn't even know it existed. Like it wasn't just restricted access. It was prohibited access. For who? Like just for normal agents and only like upper echelon people? Okay. And so and there's no way to know there's no like master file of prohibited access items.

And a whistleblower went to Chuck Grassley to kind of just basically let it be. You know, that was the actual big news that came out of Chuck Grassley's office, I think, was that the FBI has been harboring. really important information in a prohibited access area of Sentinel so that nobody even knew. And so the molar probe was stashing stuff into the prohibited access area.

it appears like we're digging into this story quite zealously right now but it appears that the durham investigation did not know about these files we had a story this week from margo cleveland showing that the guy who was tasked with like digging into Joe Biden corruption, did not know about the existence of this prohibited access area in which lots of key information was being stashed.

i don't think the inspector general who was supposed to dig into the russia collusion probe knew about this prohibited access area and this is where they were put you know so they were putting stuff in there about nelly or who should have been charged with a with crimes with felony crimes for lying to congress they were hiding stuff from congress so congress would ask for information and the fbi would come back and say we don't have anything responsive to that request or foya

searches would come in and they'd say oh we don't have anything responsive to that request and there was enough stuff where people knew there was information that um it kind of like i think led to these whistleblowers revealing the existence of this super secret area. But I mean, this is like... Gestapo communist party style, like hidden information. And they were using it not for any like good purpose, but to cover up their own crimes of the Russia collusion hoax. So we.

We know this tier of secret, you know, files existed. Do we know, have people seen the files or we just know that it exists and still we have to sift through it? One of the challenges is, again, like I said, there's no master list of what's in the prohibited access files. You basically have to know a file exists to begin to even like hope finding it.

in the prohibited access like the people who put it in there they know it's in there but if you're like trying to root out corruption you don't know what you don't know so it's very hard to find out but there were some again there was apparently some whistleblowers grassley is very good at working with whistleblowers whether they are um whether they're you know

helping out Democrats or Republican administrations. He's very good and consistent about that. And I think that paid off in this case. But this is really bad. I mean... Avoiding congressional oversight by hiding documents. That's. Pretty bad. Who is. I hope. Senator Grassley lives a long time, but he's always up there. Who is going to take over his sort of dogged investigative, you know, role once he retires? I've thought about this a lot because.

You know, he is like literally in his 90s and you need a guy who's as strong as he is to lead the shop. But he's always had really good. People working for him who care about the cause of whistleblower protection and government transparency. So I hope like when he moves on from the Senate that either he's replaced by someone who cares at the same level or.

that the people can like move that integrity unit to another Senate office. Cause it's very important to have it. I just want to also say that after this all broke, Margo was pointing out that, I don't know if you saw the interview with. uh by brett bear of cash patel no uh he says in it something about how like a lot is going to be coming out and brett is asking you know some questions about like when and how and

He basically alludes to the discovery of information that he didn't even know existed. And Kash Patel got his job as FBI director because he was the guy who unraveled the Russia collusion hooks. If there's a document to know about.

cash patel knew about it you know he's came from the fbi he um or came from the department of justice and he like understood the system and everything and If you rewatch that interview, it's pretty interesting to kind of realize like, oh, he just he just learned about this himself.

Democrats are going to frame all this as sort of vengeance or whatever. I don't really care about that. But I actually think someone has there has to be some sort of repercussion for what went on. Not because I want to punish those people, though. I think they deserve it. It's more like moving forward. Right. If no one ever has to answer for this sort of corruption, the corruption goes on and on. It'll happen next time. It'll happen now. You know what I mean? So I feel like.

That's the real good argument for why we need to uncover what happened. I mean, one of the things that's so evil about what they did with hiding this information.

is it's hidden past the point of the statute of limitations for a lot of the activity that you could engage in or might be and of course if you if no one's held accountable for one of them like One of the most insane, horrible things to ever happen in this country, which is the FBI trying to run a coup on a duly elected president, then you kind of cease to function as a legitimate country.

Once they started hiding things on third tier computer systems or whatever, that signals to me that they knew they were up to no good. It has to be some accountability. Margo was talking to different people like at very high levels at Department of Justice, and they had no idea that this was going on. I mean, you assume. Oh, also, actually, I had some questions when I was.

Like digging into this myself, like it was my understanding and still is that basically the FBI was all in cahoots with the Russia collusion hoax. So to have a whistleblower who knows about this system, revealing it.

to the Senate oversight, you know, that handles this or the Senate whistleblower guru, Chuck Grassley, must mean that there's at least one person within the FBI, like at a pretty high level. And I could be wrong about this, but I think what was going on is even while the Russia collusion hoax was going on, there were good and proper people trying to do their jobs of unraveling it.

And they were thwarted by this hiding of information. I think that's how it ended up coming out was that they like knew something was happening. They knew information was there that was getting disappeared. And they kept on trying to figure it out. And I think that's how we learned about this completely unconstitutional prohibited access area that is now being broken wide open.

I guess I should I should ask or play devil's advocate here and say now, when you're conducting investigations, when there are leaks within whatever department you're talking about, don't. People in charge need to have some kind of way to communicate with each other, to have some sort of system where they can talk about highly sensitive documents, things of that nature. I mean, there has to be some secrecy when you're.

investigative unit or whatever. That's what the restricted access area is for. So that's so that your investigation is not being compromised while it's going on. Prohibited access, which prevents discovery of even like the existence of certain information that is responsive to congressional query or FOIA. You know, that's the law. The law says there's Freedom of Information Act.

that has all sorts of rules governing like, yeah, you might not get the information, but if you're told we have nothing responsive to this, like nothing exists, that can seriously... derail outside investigation and oversight. If Congress says, hand us like your information on Nellie Orr or whatever, and they say we have no information on Nellie Orr, that can materially harm a congressional investigation.

As opposed to saying, we're not able to give you the information that we have right now. Do you understand what I'm saying? Yeah, yeah, I do. Okay, let's move on to culture.

I had one quick thing to say, just a correction from last week because someone sent an email about it. Yeah, we were talking another very fun topic. We were talking about the Holocaust, your trip to Poland. I'd said something like Hungary was resistant to. Nazis that came off like I had said that the Hungarians were protecting Jews from the Nazis. That's not what I meant at all. I meant that they had tried to make a separate peace with the West. You know, they were resistant to basically.

ending where the Germany ended up. You know what I'm saying? I wasn't talking about Jews. I think maybe that was a side effect that it was, they were the last taken, but they were. quite often quite enthusiastic participants in what happened to Jewish people. I just wanted to clarify that in case someone comes back like 10 years from now, it's like David said something crazy. So on that note of that conversation last week and how I'd been in Poland and got.

Man, we have a lot of Polish listeners, by the way. So that was fun to get email from people about my newfound love of Poland. But Poland had presidential elections this weekend. And the more right-leaning... That guy was elected in what was viewed by many as a pretty big upset over the Warsaw mayor, who was pretty liberal. And the guy who was elected, Carol, what is it, Norica or something? I forget the name.

He's very U.S. friendly. And so I think a lot of people in the U.S. and Poland are excited about a new front. Like, who's Ann Applebaum's husband? Ann Applebaum's husband was the... foreign minister of the liberal government maybe still is um radislaw sikorsky um and he's like

Trump deranged, as is his wife. And they have been... basically running like in fact even pushing like i wrote a piece about this many months ago how some of the people in the left-leaning polish government were pushing the russia collusion hoax at a very late date and the polish people have just kind of had enough of this and uh unseated

put in this new, more conservative president. They still have their prime minister. Okay, so we get this email from Daniel saying, Molly, David, whoever is monitoring this, as if we have like... A large staff of people monitoring our email. With all the disdain both you and David have had for the White House press correspondence over the years, it's kind of hard to believe you'd have the audacity to sit in on a press briefing.

and associate with all of those smug, uncurious, so-called journalists who are all about gatekeeping, prestige, and privilege. Anyway, perhaps this will be addressed in a future podcast. So... tell us what happened molly yeah well so first off the white house correspondence association has been neutered and made

marginalized under this White House. So the White House Correspondents Association, which really acted as a cartel and gatekeeping organization, no longer has the sway it used to. So they used to actually assign seats and... dictate who got to ask questions basically um or who would go first who would go last and where you got sat was all based on you know how much

power you had in the White House Correspondents Association. And this Trump White House just kind of said, we're no longer playing that game. So they handle one of the cool things that the White House Correspondents Association did that nobody wants to do is handled.

press rotation pool rotation so you can't have everybody who's a white house correspondent at every event so you pick certain people to be in the pool on a given day and like if that's the day that exciting news happens you get to be there And if it's a day that nothing happens, oh, that's your day. So now the White House handles its own pool rotation. And one of the changes they made was to create a new media seat.

And that seat is just right off. It's like right at the front. And if you're in the new media seat, you usually get to ask a question that day. And so. With my cough and my horrible illness and everything last week, they asked if, or, you know, I got it that day. Like, we put our name in.

Immediately when they announced the new media seat, like thousands of people put in their name for like, I'd like to be in the new media seat. It's kind of funny because as you know, David, we've been around since 2013. So we're not like all that new, but. new relative to a 200-year-old publication. And then you can ask what you want. And so I asked a question about...

The seeming lack of a plan that the White House has to respond to the judicial coup going on. And Caroline Leavitt, I don't think like had the, you know. most responsive answer to what I said, but I enjoyed asking the question. I even enjoyed asking a tough question. from the right. So you hear tough or hostile questions all the time from the left. Why do you eat babies? Or why do you kill grandmas? Or why are you so awful?

um but you rarely get to hear like tough questions from the right where you're saying why aren't you doing more here why are you letting this happen what's your actual plan you don't seem to have a plan to stop this judicial coup and so it was fun to ask from that side and i also like Even though I attacked the room when I asked the question, like I pointed out that a bunch of the people in the room had pushed the Russia collusion hoax or worked for media outlets that did.

I got like a very nice reception in the room. So even like people were joking that I a lot of the people who's in that new media seat ask questions that are sort of like. How awesome is it to work for Donald Trump? You know, they're very friendly questions. And so a bunch of people were teasing me that I didn't get the memo that I was supposed to ask a puffball question or stuff like that.

You know, just going back to that email the guy sent, I don't really have a problem with gatekeepers. The word gatekeeping doesn't really bother me. I just want it to be gatekept so that there are real reporters in there who are attack dogs, who are asking real questions. who are and I don't mean gatekeeping like keeping out a certain kind of

ideological person or anything like that. I just want people who are doing their jobs in there and letting someone to come and sit and say, oh, isn't it great to work for Donald Trump? That's a waste of time. You want people. Listen, most of my attacks. I guess, against Trump or I won't call them a criticisms are from from the right, I think. And, you know, that's important, too.

You need both. But it's like it doesn't exist. If you're critiquing from the right, it doesn't count in the minds of a lot of like Trump deranged individuals. And yeah, every time what I find funny about is, first off, in. Normal people like a normal Fox viewer, for instance, if I offer a critique from the conservative perspective, nobody is like, why are you being so mean to Donald Trump? Or not nobody, but almost nobody is like, why are you being mean? Because they probably have this.

Similar thought, you know, themselves, like, why isn't this getting done or why isn't that getting done? But people who are Trump deranged, unless you adopt their criticism of Trump, your criticism doesn't count. And not like I think my job is to be critical, per se. Like my that's, you know, that's just as silly as being reflexively positive. But.

It's hard for people to understand. Like the media environment is so left wing. They only understand criticism from the left. They never really hear it from the right. But I will say my mom was like, I thought your question was kind of tough. Because she loves Caroline Leavitt. So she just thought maybe that was mean to ask a tough question. And I had to explain to mom that Caroline Leavitt and I have different jobs. And her job is to articulate on behalf of the president. Mine is...

to ask questions for the Federalist. And those are different jobs. They don't need to be completely hostile, but they're not necessarily anywhere near the same objective. I get mad. I mean, I write a column criticizing Donald Trump on tariffs or protectionism, right? And then some left winger. likes it or whatever it just makes me mad do you know what i'm saying because they're nowhere to be found

Like, I don't feel like it's brave or anything. Trust me. I think it's fun to be able to criticize people in power, but they're nowhere to be found when Biden's around. You know what I mean? And they're they're a little like just annoys me. It doesn't make me happy whatsoever. Anyway, congratulations. I think that's cool. Yeah, it was fun. I just wish I didn't have a cough. I had to really focus on not coughing, as you've heard in this podcast as well.

By the way, I think maybe a Chinese scientist imported a virus that has been given to me. I'm sorry. You'll get over it soon. Just joking to all our communist Chinese listeners. Culture?

you want to talk about it yes i don't know how much you go okay i watched a few shows department q oh didn't a listener recommend that to us Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. He did. He did. And another show called Death Valley, which I haven't been able to track down yet. A British show. Yeah, this is a guy named Matthew Goode, I think is how you pronounce it, is in it.

He was like a British actor, I believe. And then a bunch of Scottish actresses and actors are in it. It happens in Scotland. It's like a detective show. I think it's pretty good so far. I've only watched, I think, an episode and a half. I enjoyed it. The other thing I finished watching is Mobland, which I really have to recommend. Tom Hardy is in it. I mean, this is a Guy Ritchie show, but it's not like the movie I recommended last week. This is...

Guy Ritchie as you, as people like Guy Ritchie stuff, you know, it's a mob, mob show. And then I finished watching the best, I think what I would call the best. Star Wars show, I guess, made Andor. I loved the first season. I thought it was just fantastic. This one I found not as great. Still interested enough. interesting enough to hold my attention through the whole deal. So that's it for me. Okay. Well, I have almost nothing, but I saw a Netflix movie called known as I watch that.

You did last week. I forgot to mention it. Yeah. I mean, I watch anything Vince Vaughn is. And I think I'm just a fan. So that's kind of where I am. I love Vince Vaughn. It was PG. I was traveling with my kid. And so we were just like trying to decompress. And so it's like, I'll watch it. And I thought it was fine, but.

I do have a complaint about it. So it's about this guy whose mom dies and he's struggling with that. And then he decides to open up a restaurant where Nona's like Italian grandmothers make their favorite. And it's like a new restaurant. And then it struggles to work. And there are all these subplots. And it's like star. dotted cast like Vince Vaughn, Susan Sarandon, Lorraine Bracco, Talia Shire. Did you realize that was Talia Shire? Linda Cardellini, you know, just...

Andrea Mateo, who I really like. Brenda Vaccaro was big when I was a kid. She was in a lot of movies. She was in it. Do I know her? I mean, I know who she was. She was. Yeah, yeah. She was in a lot of movies in the 70s and even in the 80s, I think. So. My complaint was there's like this scene where Susan Sarandon, who plays the part of like, I have a derisive word for who she is, an unmarried woman who chose to not be married.

Can we talk about her for a moment? She looks fantastic for her age. Am I wrong about this? How old is she? I don't know. Take a guess how old she is. 70. She's 78 years old. Whoa. I mean, she looks like she's in good shape. She looks younger. She's really doesn't. Her bosom plays like a. I didn't want to mention. In this. Yes. Okay. So Susan Sarandon plays this like.

intentionally unmarried hairdresser who's also the pastry chef and she has the other nonas over for like a makeover and they're talking about things and Lorraine Bracco who also like I mean, it was like the equivalent of when they put the glasses on the teenage girl and then she takes them off and she's actually really pretty. They kind of did that with Lorraine Bracco's character. And then...

But the Talia Shire one annoyed me. Oh, my God. Yeah. So they're all talking and like about, you know, she's she left them the nunnery to come work at the restaurant. And then she reveals that she did have a love of her life. And his name was Isabella. So she's like, in no way does being gay match in any way with her character. And it was so obviously like put in there just to.

achieve some kind of diversity inclusion so they can be you know so they won't get like kicked off the air or whatever and it was so stupid and annoying and it made me hate everybody

I thought the movie sucked, really. I'm just going to be honest. I wanted to watch it. I love movies where people are making Italian food. My wife's Italian, big Italian family. I like it. I feel... a bit of you know sort of through through proxy part of it you know what i mean but the movie was just first of all just weak Yeah, it was just weak. That was that whole Talia Shire nun thing was shoehorned in and annoying. The way the, how can I say?

They were cartoonishly Italian in a way that really Italians don't act like she's spitting on the floor because this one's from Sicily. And this I'm not saying there's no like, you know, tension there, but the way they did it was just nonsense. And. Vince Vaughn didn't seem Italian at all to me. So when we were in Poland, we went to some quote unquote Jewish restaurants and they were joking, like our group was joking that they.

were like accidentally bigoted Jewish restaurants. Like it was all these caricatures of what a Jew is and caricatures of Jewish music. And like, that's what this movie seemed like. Yeah. I mean, there were a lot of Italian movie. Yeah. Yeah. That's what it felt like. I mean, I thought I wanted to give it a slight pass because I think that like the heart of the movie, the intention was nice. You know, these older people have nothing going on, get to cook for people. It's a nice.

I also just have to say, I kind of have the hots for Linda Cardellini. So like if she's in a movie or a TV show, she's very pretty. So I like to watch her. And so she was the love interest. And I liked that subplot. I liked everything about it. You know, she's pretty for sure. I don't get in trouble. The. Yes.

Also, did you notice this weird thing that happened in the movie where the the flashbacks happen like in the 60s and then they're supposed like Vince Vaughn's a kid in the 60s and he's supposed to be like in his 50s. Like it didn't it didn't add up to me. So I never saw it dated. Like if it said the 60s, I missed that. To me, it looked like the 70s. Okay. But even then, yeah, I don't know. I was trying to figure it out. Wait, wait. I want to say further.

the song that was their prom song what was that oh i forget but it was was it out it was out of it was out of time as well no it was from 1986 oh okay so there you go Anyway, whatever. I mean, I wish it was better. I wish it was a better movie. All right. Did you watch anything else? It's so hard to find a movie where you can watch it with your kids, honestly. I know. My kids are like in their 20s and I still won't watch.

I won't watch anything with them that's not G-rated. I do want to mention one thing, too. We have this listener who texted me a picture of his church, like a church building, a Lutheran church building. that has a jerusalem cross on it do you remember um A couple months ago, someone was like, oh, when when Pete Hegseth had a Jerusalem cross and he was trying to say that it was this like completely obscure symbol. And Pete was like, it's just Christian white supremacist symbol.

And this guy was like, I've never seen one in my life. And anyone who says they've seen one is a liar. And so this listener texts a picture of the church building. or building of the church that has the Jerusalem cross like in in the brick and I was in Tennessee this weekend because one of my kids became a godmother to a baby who was baptized at a different Lutheran church. And of course, like on the altar on the right, there's a Jerusalem cross like mosaic.

And I just thought it was funny that. Yeah. People keep seeing them all the time. Like they're so common that you almost forget how often you see them. I know someone who has that same tattoo who I've worked with in the past, who is in the world right now. Right. I won't give away names of people because they might not want people to know. who has that tattoo a rather large one on their arm so I've seen it my whole life I think and it was just one of these hit

pieces against a Republican that has become the norm over the last 30 years in the media. All right. That's great. Okay. Yeah, hopefully keep sending the recommendations. Maybe that's where I got Department Q. I appreciate it. We'll be back next week. Until then, be lovers of freedom and anxious for the fray. Bye.