You're listening to Later with Moe Kelly on demand from KFI AM six forty.
Remember what we did with the rn C, Well, we're going to do the exact same damn thing with the DNC.
In fact, Night one heavy hitters.
Right now on the stage is former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Lists Drop in and see what she's talking about.
We're not just electing a president. We're uplifting our nation. We're opening the promise of America wide enough for everyone.
Together.
We put a lot of cracks in the highest hardest glass ceiling, and tonight, tonight so close to breaking through once and for all.
I want to.
Tell you what I see through all.
Those cracks, and why it matters for each in every one of us.
What do I see?
I see freedom.
I see the freedom to make our own decisions about our health, our lives, our loves, our families. The freedom to work with dignity and prosper to worship as we choose or not, to speak our minds freely and honestly. I see freedom from fear and intimidation, from violence and injustice, from chaos and corruption. I see the freedom to look our children in the eye and say in America, you can go as far as your hard work and talent will take.
You and mean it. And you know what, And the.
Other side of that glass ceiling is Kamala Harris raising her hand and taking the oath of office as our forty seventh President.
Of the United States.
Because, my friends, when a barrier falls for one of us, it falls, it falls and clears the way for all of us. So for the next seventy eight days, we need to work harder than we ever have. We need to beat back the dangers that Trump and his allies pose to the rule of law and our way of life. Don't get distracted or complacent. Talk to your friends and neighbors. Volunteer, be proud champions for the truth and for the contre.
That we all love of.
I want, I want my grandchildren and their grandchildren to know I was here at this moment, that we were here, and that we were with Kamala Harris every step of the way. This is our time, America.
This is when we stand up.
This is when we breakthrough the future's hair.
It's at our grass.
Let's go win it.
These former Secretary of State former presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, addressing the DNC, we'll be bouncing in and out the first night.
Well let me let me back up.
I remember when I was I think it was second grade, because yeah, it was second grade, because it was missus Cochrane's class, and she, bless her heart, to her credit, she was the one who made it a point of teaching basically government to second graders. We were learning about Carter versus Ford and how we would elect a president, and I remember thinking, wow, this is so interesting, at least in a second grader's mind.
But I can pinpoint that time. That was the moment I.
Think I started to fall in love with the American political process. Of course it doesn't look like that now, but I'm saying back then it sparked this interest in me and I because it was later that year during that same election, I was watching the DNC and the RNC for the first time. But I remember watching the DNC and I was mesmerized by the keynote speaker Night one. And the keynote speaker of Night one is usually someone who's really really talented as an orator, possibly a future
leader or presidential hopeful in the party. So the night one keynote speaker in a conventional cycle would have someone who's going to set the tone, and there was this speaker, the late Congresswoman Barbara Jordan, one of the best orators I have ever heard.
If I could do anything one tenth of.
What she did that night or what she did during nixon impeachment pre impeachment hearings, one of the greatest orators ever. But it sparked my interests in just following politics and how I fell in love with it to this day and I haven't missed an RNC or a DNC, at least on TV ever since. And this is a night, I think where we can actually celebrate, as we did a month ago, celebrate how we go about electing a president in this country. And I know it's real easy
to be partisan, it's real easy to be cynical. But if you take a step back and take your personal desires out of it, you should be just kind of like, oh, this is kind of cool how the country, regardless of your political stripes, is coming together to choose our next leader. It's not often it's not often that you have a sitting president who's not running for reelection. You usually have an incumbent or a two term president who's termed out. But this is where I said this earlier today in
my television hit. We're living through extraordinary times and if you don't realize it, then you don't grasp the enormity of the moment. I'll say the magnitude of the moment. And we are living through history. The idea of an incumbent president four months before the election stepping aside and VP stepping up. We had something similar in nineteen sixty eight with President LBJ and Humphrey, but not like this.
It was much more contentious the Democratic Party. They basically had a a fight, a war on the floor of the convention. As far as nominating someone else, that's not what's happening here in Chicago. But I would say, really pay attention to how this process is coming together, regardless of who you're rooting for, and we will be listening to some of the heavy hitters. Not often do you have three presidents or former presidents speaking at one convention.
It's just unheard of.
And you would have had four if President Carter wasn't on his literal deathbed. So that's something something can be historic, and you don't have to like it. Just know that we are living through history some of the big heavy hitters. Tonight in day one, Sean Fain, president of the United Auto Workers Union. Of course you heard Secretary Clinton, the first lady, Joe Biden will be speaking and the keynote, which is really odd.
You don't have a sitting president do a keynote.
Usually the sitting president is the person that you're renominating, which on the final night, which is customarily Thursday. But to have Joe Biden speaking the first night tells you how unusual all of this is. And we'll bring that to you later on. I have some other thoughts about our political process, where we are at this time in America, and so much more. I don't get to talk as much politics here or later with Mo Kelly. I usually do it for my other properties. You might have seen
me on Spectrum. No, you didn't see me on Spectrum because you were all asleep. I was on Spectrum in sixth fifteen, six thirty in the morning, bleary eye.
It's just woo. This day cannot end soon enough. That was only like twelve hours ago. Were just getting started. What are you talking about?
I know, I know, we'll help more, just a moment. It's Later with Mo Kelly caf I AM six forty. We're live everywhere on the iHeartRadio app.
You're listening to Later with Moe Kelly on demand from KFI AM six forty.
Yes, the DNC is going right now. Just in case you didn't know, KFI is owned. Gary and Shannon are broadcasting live all this week from the city of Chicago covering the DNC. I'm just playing around the periphery. We will drop in and out of the convention. But it got me nostalgic for when I was growing up and fell in love with the American political process, before we had all this partisanship or the different type of partisanship that we have today. It was a much more civil time.
It was a much more conventional time. That's the word I would use. And you got to learn the process. As far as how in a party sense, we go about choosing our eventual president, and oftentimes I hear from people sie, we need to have more parties. We need to have more than a two parties system. We've always had more than two parties. You don't think the Green Party is a party? Do you remember the Constitution Party? What about Peace and Freedom? Oh Ross Perot when he
was running as an independent. He was for a while he was part of the Reform Party. And if you really want to go back Strom Thurman and the Dixiecrats, of course, the Libertarian Party, the Alliance Party, if you really want to dig in the weeds. My point is we've always had other options. So why did we always end up with a Republican or a Democrat. Well, it's
pretty simple. It's because those parties have infrastructure. Those parties have people on the ground who are working to get people elected at off levels in government other than just president. You know, you've never heard about a Green Party candidate for governor. You never heard about a Green Party candidate for mayor or, I don't know, comptroller, insurance commissioner, because they're not a functioning party on that level.
They will have their convention air quotes.
Well, they'll go to I don't know, a holiday inn somewhere in San Diego on a Friday night. They'll get liquored up, have a rage and Keiger, and then they'll come out Sunday and say, Jill Stein is our nominee. You have noticed that they don't have an actual primary. Why, because parties get to choose their nominees. However, they want the whole primemary system. A lot of people don't know
what they don't remember. It didn't even include It did not include all fifty states until well until the nineteen seventies, and it wasn't even both parties at that point. The primaries are just a marketing survey. For a lot of the twentieth century, they just had, you know, a few states. They would just say, hey, you very important states, what do you think about this person or that person?
Then they come up with a nominee.
Now the selection process is much more comprehensive. You got all fifty states, and then they start tweaking the rules about who's allowed to vote in the primaries. Well, it's a closed primary, so you have to be a registered Republican. It's a closed primary. You have to be a registered Democrat. You independents, you can't vote in these primaries, like in California, it's a closed primary. I'm an independent, I can't vote in the presidential primaries.
So you know, they don't want to hear what I have to say. But it's evolved and it's a marketing survey.
And I've used the analogy before, but I think it still holds. It's like these parties are private corporations. Call it McDonald's, call it gravenus missile McDonald's. They do what they sell hamburgers. Now, they may ask you, you know, they may email you and say, hey, what do you think about us selling I don't know, hot dogs. And they'll go around and they'll ask Mark Ronald, they'll ask Steph, and they'll ask me, they'll ask to all of they
may even ask Chris Little. Of all people, they may ask Chris Little, hey, what do you think about selling hot dogs at McDonald's. And let's say, hypothetically, all of us say, you damn right, I want to eat hot dogs at McDonald's.
You know what McDonald's is gonna do.
They're gonna say, Okay, thank you for you know, you're filling out the survey, thank you for your time. Here's a free coupon for a file of fish. But since we're McDonald's, we're going to just go ahead and stick with hamburgers. Maybe we'll even sell some chicken nuggets and even say what you asked us. Yes, but it's just an opinion survey. That's what primaries are. That's how they can change the rules. That's how they can have someone
like Joe Biden be forced out and step aside. And then Tamala Harris talking about tonight, can step right in and he said, oh my gosh, you've undermined democracy. No, it is a private marketing survey. It's not a public election. People don't understand how their own country works, or their own party works for that matter. That's why the Democrats can do what they've done. No, you can't sue because they've already written this into the bylaws for the eventuality
just like this. You can say delegates, super delegates, whatever. You can say it's rigged, you can say it's fixed. No, it's actually a private corporation working in its own best interests, and its own best interests were to win the election. And they knew that if we have Joe Biden in November, we're going to get our asses kicked. So they made a corporate decision and said, Joe, we need you to step aside for the good of the party. But I don't want to step aside.
Joe.
We need you to step aside for the good of the parties, not just you. It's about down ballot races. We're going to lose the House, We're going to lose the Senate, We're going to lose the Oval office. If your old ass is on the ballot in November. That's why we are here where we are. And it's not very different. I was talking about the Green Party how they went to the hotel Holiday Inn and San Diego for the weekend. It's not very different from that. Parties
get to choose their candidate however they see fit. The rules for the Republicans are not the same as the rules for the Democrats. And when you opt in as in you register as a Democrat or you register as a Republican, then you.
Know you're going to like the rules or you're not going to like the rules. But the rules are the rules.
Them as the rules, as they say, and they created them for the benefit of the party. And remember how they pushed Hillary Clinton aside when Barack Obama was running and seeing like he was going to win. But it was it was neck and neck down to the end. It could have been a contested convention. And then the party leadership went to Hillary and said, Hills, Uh, for the good of the party, we need you to step aside.
Because we need to have a unified convention. And Hillary said, I don't want to step aside a chance I can still win this.
No, but it will.
Create party friction and we'd have a broker convention and we can't have that going into the election. There are all sorts of examples like this, Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton. They said, Bernie, we need you to step aside. It's got to be Hillary. Gotta have a united party. This is not unusual. The only thing unusual is you had a sitting president four months before the election.
And they pushed him aside. But that's how parties work. These aren't public elections. It's not like you're saying you're making my vote not matter. It never did matter.
It's it's it's it's McDonald's. It's der venus missile.
Now. On the other other hand, you can say Dervenus sstil. They try to sell everything.
They try to sell hamburgers, they try to sell hot dogs, they sell corn dogs, chili dogs, I think, chicken fingers, and it never.
Gets them anywhere. Hey, did they still have that Jerina nutsil across the street? Are they still open?
Yeah?
I think so. Someone to go because I'm hungry now.
If polypsyde classes were more tube steak based, like the explanations that you're giving right now, everybody would have gotten better grades.
All I'm saying is if you put it in terms that people kind of understand and relate to, it makes it all better. Now, Stefan, I know you got to work, but during this break, I would like two corn dogs and a chili cheese dog.
Please, I'll pay for it. You don't. You don't like chili cheese dogs. Oh, I know I'm gonna know.
If I had that, I would pay for it, and actually, oh, y'all would pay for it too.
But it would taste good going down. Oh my goodness, it's so good.
Don't you eat stuff every now and then because you have a taste for it, and then it reminds you why you don't eat it all the time like that.
No, but I guess I understand what you're saying. Place is like, you'll never forget that I have.
A taste for I do have a taste for jernastcil all the time. I pass it every single day and I tell myself no every single day. But there's going to come a day in which I'm going to be weak and I'm going to get into temptation. Stay strong, So Rina stcil is good. I don't care what anyone says. That stuff tastes good.
I have never once eaten what never once? Wow? You half black men have never eaten it? As that's how is this a black thing? Come on, dude, well you got to explain it to Okay, let me just say, okay, have you ever eaten at church Is Fried Chicken? No? Have you ever eaten at pop Eyes? Once?
I was gonna say, Pioneer he barely at KFC for the first time? True, I really, Oh my goodness, that's right because we had to introduce you to soul food.
It's shameful, isn't it. I got a lot of learning to do.
Okay, Stephan, do you need like my card or what it's Later with mo Kelly? Can't I answers forty We're alive everywhere the iHeartRadio app.
You're listening to Later with Moe Kelly on demand from KFI AM six forty And.
Let me ask you this. Do you think Jimmy is roaming around the White House tonight trying to find a meat loaf to warm himself up?
On.
I don't think the cod is the neat loaf.
Who the hell today?
Erodicman Georgia.
Let me tell you something.
I am so shiit of Washington and Orleans whites and all them politicians down there, and them congressman.
And the congressman.
Boy, I bet you will find none of them congressman signing down their electric blackest tonight. Of course, if they did their secretaries to get up and go home. Oh readers, the Democrats is doing the whole of the Democratic and you put him in there. It's the place sha head on you when you come back in the polls. But the Democrats way or running. This car used to go tell us all how we ought to make sacrifices.
God dig great that night stuff.
But they're all gonna have us over the hill to the poorhouse. We ain't gonna be able to drive over there because we ain't got no guess. We're gonna have to walk it. Well, the reader Digest says walking is very good for you. That ain't that lovely to read us? Die just can always put a little joy into poverty, can't h.
Then we're gonna tell her alive everywhere on the iHeartRadio app and I was talking with Mark Ronner during the break and just to let you know, Mark Ronner, I have seen just about every episode of every Norman Lear show there is. I wouldn't say I have an encyclopedic memory of them, but I remember certain sentiments and episode and storylines. And I just remember that soliloquy from Archie Bunker. So I just said, oh, I got to go find it. And it was, Thank goodness YouTube it was there.
That's off, brilliant cut, that's off, and it's so aproa po It still fits today if you if you if I played more of it, he goes into his conspiracy theories.
It was press yet it was almost it was it was almost like predicting the future on steroids.
Oh Lear was a genius.
Absolutely, question, But we're talking about the DNC and politics more generally. Will drop in and out if it warrants it. What's going on in Chicago? Something else I want to talk about with regard to Chicago. Kamala Harris, vice President, hasn't had any missteps as of yet, but this is still a I wouldn't say a dangerous moment, but I would say it is a delicate moment for the Democratic Party.
Given the protests which have already started in Chicago. Yes, they're going to be protests, and it's not going to be clear whether it's protests just about Gaza, or if it's anti Israel, or is it anti Joe Biden with respect to policy on Israel and Gaza.
How that's all going to shake out.
But it's more a question of how it's going to be covered and whether it starts to take away any real emphasis on the DNC. If the story becomes more about the protests than the DNC itself, then the Democrats have a huge issue. And there's no real prediction out there as far as which way it will go. You know, protests are unpredictable. Of course you're gonna have provocateurs. Of course you're gonna have agitators. But the only thing I
can like it it too. When I was working in my previous radio gig, we went to both the DNC and RNC in two thousand and eight. In two thousand and eight it was in Denver, and there are a lot of protesters out there for this, that and the other. But what they did was the protesters could not get within half a mile of the arena. I mean, yeah, you could protest, but you are so far away from the press and the goings on of the convention it
didn't matter. Now, without seeing the lay of the land in Chicago, I'm pretty sure that they probably did the same thing where you're not getting anywhere near the convention center.
Do you not get the impression from some of the coverage that we've all seen that some in the press are kind of rooting for something like the sixty eight convention.
Absolutely, no, they want to be part of that. Yes, they want to be able to cover it.
They I think every reporter, and I'm going to generalize every reporter, every news person wants to have their own historical moment where they get to be a voice of history in some way.
But they're committing that quantum physics observational fallacy thing by you know, observing it and being a part of it.
You affect the outcome, right, You're not supposed to be part of the story. And I think part of it is what is it wish casting? Maybe yeah, yeah, I think that's part of it. But it is I think fair to acknowledge that that is a component of the story. We just don't know whether it's going to be a major part of the story or nothing at all.
I'll tell you what it reminds me of is all the hack journalists that we heard predicting a recession because it would have given him something, something exciting to report on, and it never happened.
Well, it was a prediction of recession for more than one presidential election cycle. Now it is fair to say that we are due for one, and we if we were to use history as a guide, Yeah, if we didn't have a pandemic and we didn't have other factors to artificially prop up our economy for an extended period of time, I think possibly would have hit recession.
I actually thought there would have been one.
But is I believed based on you know, the voluminous stuff. I consumed that a lot of reporters were rooting for a recession because they thought that'd be sexier to report on than good news.
Well, let's think about this.
There was a time near the end of the Trump administration when when back when the Dow Jones and a stock market actually mattered. It doesn't matter now as an economic indicator, but back then its supposedly mattered. Where we had dropped down to eighteen thousand, and that was one point I thought, Okay, we might be heading that way. But then, you know, but that was also running parallel
to the pandemic. So we had interest rates frozen at zero, which never happens, I mean never, So you had things working against the working for a recession.
If that makes sense, it does.
My point is that I just I'm seeing more than I ever really have noticed in my life of mainstream, big time journalists trying to put a thumb on the scale because it will benefit them.
Well, I think big time journalists these dates are usually connected to a cable news network, and that I think clouds the issue where it's less about journalism and more about the individual, not the outlet.
Yeah, them becoming journalism stars, selling books, getting access to people they didn't have access to before.
It's really quite a wonder to behold, and not in a good sense.
Tough if I'm wrong, But I don't remember in the nineteen eighties or nineteen seventies in which every major journalist had a book that they were selling. No you reported the news wood Word in Bernstein. I don't think they did their book until way down the road.
I can't answer that I don't know that. I don't.
Well, put it this way, every major reporter anchor has a book now, every single one.
Yeah.
I mean there's the whole generation of journalists who were inspired by Woodward in Bernstein. Me it was Carl Koleshe at the Nightstalker. What we all have our journalism models. Mine was Coleshak.
Well, honestly, for me, I was always a Cronkite fan.
Oh of course, if only because he was. And also.
Jim Gray, because I remember very faintly his his call for the Munich Olympics with the Israeli athletes and that how he handled that live in the moment, and those are the things that just stick with me, is like, that's a prob.
Do you remember that call?
Only in the most skeletal way, but I mean, just what he said, they're all gone, Okay, so you're talking about the kidnapping, yes, yes, the Munich Olympics.
Okay, okay, right right right, Yeah.
That type of journalism where you're you're dealing with news as it's happening in front of you, and you're trying to put some sort of perspective on something, which is it's just completely unprecedented, completely unheard of, and you're trying to keep it together yourself and trying to explain seemingly the inexplicable.
Yeah, historic, for sure. It's Later with Mo Kelly.
We're waiting around to see when President Joe Biden is going to speak right now. I believe Ashley Biden is on the stage right now, and we know that Joe Biden is going to close out this first night of the DNC, and we will have his remarks live when they come.
You're listening to Later with Moe Kelly on demand from KFI AM six forty.
It's Later with Mo Kelly.
We're live everywhere on the iHeartRadio app as we're I guess monitoring the DNC right now. Senator Raphael Warnock of Georgia is speaking that a long way before, long way to go before we get to President Biden, so we'll just keep monitoring it. I've made a mistake last segment, I said Jim Gray regarding the Munich Olympics. I met Jim McKay, but you know, it gets all garbled in
my mind. We're talking about broadcasts, anchors, journalism, how it's changed our expectations of what is news, how we figure out what to believe what not to believe, an ongoing conversation we've had as far as misinformation disinformation. Now, when you throw in social media AI and the intentional attempts to mislead the public with a lot of these videos, these memes, even Google ads and so forth, it makes it real, real, difficult for anyone to be able to
separate truth from fiction. And part of it, that's that's the design to keep people confused and unsure. It's like, wait minute, is that allegation true or is that rumor true? Or did that really happen? Did so and so really do that fifteen twenty years ago? And so you just
have a confused, overall uninformed populist. And I'm sorry that it's gotten to this point because I started tonight talking about when I first fell in love with the American political system as a child, and I remember clearly, distinctly what it was like then. Yes, you had some partisanship, but there was still a spirit of unity moving the
country forward. And I'm not romanticizing, and I remember what it was like when you had Speaker of the House Tip O'Neil and President Ronald Reagan who vehemently disagreed in a policy sense, but they weren't disagreeable, and they were able to get some sort of legislation through. It seems like now if you don't have a president of a certain party and total control of both houses, the country can't move forward. And it didn't use to be that way.
Now.
Whether we'll ever get back to a functioning government, I don't know. Probably not in my lifetime. Mark Ronner's a little younger than me. He might live long enough to see it. Definitely stefan, but I'm not going to be here to see it. My plan is to go out before you. I'm working on it. I try to tell people all the time I am a confirmed cynic, and being a confirmed cynic, I can't put too much faith in anybody or anybody's party, elected official or anything like that.
Now there are some deal breakers, there's some politicians I can never support under any circumstances. But I don't limit myself. I vote for Republicans and Democrats. But I am a person who's really big on decency, dignity.
And decorum. What I know.
Imagine that respect for the office and put it this way. I hold people of higher office to higher standards. Why, because the responsibilities are greater. I'm not want to judge a presidential candidate as on the same level that I would someone who's running to be fry cook at McDonald's. Sorry, I know that sounds really dismissive and condescending, but it's true.
I don't look at those positions equally.
I have to choose my words very carefully here, So let me focus on what you said about history. You were talking about the sixty eight convention and LBJ stepping down to your point about how much things have changed, and what you implied was how far through the looking glass we are right now? Just think about Watergate, how little that was a couple break ins in a cover up. Compare that to what's happened in the last half dozen years.
Well, think about the cover up talking about Richard Nixon, and it wasn't the cover up. Well it was a cover up, but it wasn't until we knew that there were a White House tapes that everything fell apart, because up until that point the cover up was covering.
Right.
But what I'm saying is that compared to what we've seen just recently, that's like a hangnail.
Oh yeah, and that happened over the course of many months and years. A political news cycle now could be five or six minutes what we were discussing last week, Like, for example, a month ago, we were talking about a presidential assassination attempt and how that was leading into the RNC and how seemingly at that point all the momentum was with former President Trump. That was just a month ago, and here we are in the world looks completely different.
Doesn't mean that Kamala Harris is gonna win, absolutely not.
I'm just saying how the political process has evolved in such a such.
A short time. It's just ridiculous. Yeah, I mean, we've always had dirty politics. Let's not be under any illusions here. I mean, we remember that Nixon played a role in delaying peace in Vietnam to put a thumb on the election.
Well, we always talk about Nixon and we kind of skip over for Spiro Agnew.
Who well you know who was convicted on completely.
Unrelated bribery charges while he was in office.
And people think like he had to do a Watergate. No, he had nothing to do with Watergate. No, no, no, he was dirty all in his own right.
Right on his own having nothing to do with Nixon, and because I guess you know, we had two different vice presidents in one administration because of Nixon.
And not having to do with Nixon.
But think about how Nixon stepped down after Goldwater told him, if you don't, you're gonna get it. That is a different universe than we live in today.
Yeah, I don't know if there's anything even comparable to think that you have a sitting president there was a scandal, and then the Republicans went to him and said, if you do not resign, we will impeach you and then remove you from office. Because there was enough support back then on both sides of the aisle for.
This unethical, probably illegal thing that you just did, instead of like, well, just brazen it out.
We got this, just ride it out.
And then to think, all this time later, we're debating air quotes presidential immunity, when if not for the pardon of Gerald Ford, most likely Richard Nixon would have been prosecuted.
Historians that I have been reading say that that was one of the biggest mistakes in US history pardoning Nixon.
Well, you know, Jerald Ford was saying, and the same argument which is being made today with former President Trump.
It was quote unquote for the good of the nation.
And I don't know if the nation benefited because they didn't prosecute Richard Nixon. Because I think it's set forth a dubious precedent that we're seeing where it's head today.
It's like how you know, if you don't rub your dog's nose in something right afterwards, they think it's okay to keep want it.
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