Ben Weingarten Defends The Freedom Hut

pinch hitting for Buck. And even though it is spring training, I have to admit that that analogy sort of pains me as a Mets fan after what occurred yesterday, which we want to talk about a thirteen year, three hundred and thirty million dollar deal in our division. Well, Ben, you do know that I'm a huge Phillies fan. Well, yeah, I didn't want to get into it before this, and now I expect the show to be sabotage. So this should be an interesting few hours here live from New York.

As I mentioned, this is Ben Winegarden. If you haven't heard me before, I'm a senior contributor at The Federalist, a senior fellow at the London Center for Policy Research, and you can follow me on Twitter at bh wine Garden, where I do talk about baseball at night. During the day it's all business. Most of the baseball tweets have been as neurotic and upset as you might expect as a New York Mets fan blowing our window, blowing our window.

All right, if you're not a baseball fan, I will spare you with my sorrow here as the guys behind the glass laugh at my dismay. I want to open tonight first by thanking Buck because he does a vital job here, and that is to articulate the values and principles that we all share and then are not well represented. And you know they're not well represented when you see what the loyal adversary, the Democratic Party does on a

daily basis. And we're going to start tonight by talking about Democrats, and we're gonna close by talking about Republicans and conservatism and what the future holds. So this week, of course, the big story was Cohen Kabuki theater. Michael Cohen, the least credible person, a person who perjured himself in front of Congress. Now the red carpet is rolled out for him in Congress, of course, you know, just happening to coincide with the highest level nuclear negotiations with the

North Koreans that you could possibly have. By the way, there were some other big stories as well. Robert Whiteheiser was on Capitol Hill and he dropped some important information about the Chinese trade deal that there would actually be an enforcement mechanism, and there was news but the fact that incremental tariffs would not be levied on the Chinese as part of ongoing negotiations. We have the collapse of

a socialist regime happening in our own hemisphere. We have India Pakistan squabbles which are highly dangerous and potentially threatened many US national interests in that part of the world. But the media focus was on the least credible person you could possibly have. That was the media's focus. Oh and by the way, he was coached, it seems or

at least had communications with dubious representative Adam Schiff. Oh yeah, and speaking of Russia, by the way, this week it was revealed the Trump administration engaged in a cyber attack to completely take offline a Russian troll farm that was attempting another shoddy effort to post some garbage and influenced quote unquote the twenty eighteen midterm election worst collusion ever,

worst collusion ever, folks. Where Michael Cohen is important is not because of anything Michael Cohen said, although what he did show is that there is no collusion, once again for the million of time, after two committees showed it, after all the weeks from the Muller Special Council showed it. Not that Cohen has any credibility, but at this point he has nothing to lose. He's going to jail. Essentially,

no collusion, not one iota. This person who is so close to the president, this person who could read his mind based upon his testimony, Cohen isn't what's important. What Cohen represents is important, and that is that he is a precursor to what's coming for the next two years of every of endless coverage of every last iota of

Donald Trump's life being investigated by his worst enemies. So Axios's lead article this morning, which is sort of a good proxy for where the left establishment sees the world going, they write, whether or not Mueller is sitting on a grand finale, Democrats are picking up the Baton with a vast probe that already involves a half dozen committees. That's great use of taxpayered dollars and will include public hearings starring reluctant witnesses. So who are these witnesses they want?

The Democrats want to call Trump family members with subpoenas if necessary. The investigation will touch Trump's businesses, his foundation, because after all, his businesses and his foundation are so relevant into his presidency right now, and then they want to talk about his presidency. Oh and it could extend to twenty twenty. Top Democrats tell axios by coincidence. Besides Russia, topics include conflicts of interest, money laundering, and Jared Kushner's

security clearance and other White House clearances. Rep. Jamie Raskin, a Democrat from Maryland who's on the House Oversight Committee, says that the committee is zeroing in on the Moscow project. Yes, the famous Moscow building project which never got off the ground, where there were never any high level conversations which had no impact whatsoever on anything relating to this presidency, the Russia connection and the influence of oh other foreign actors

like Saudi Arabia. They've teased that for a while that they're going to look at basically every foreign connection because after all, we found so much collusion already, Am I wrong again? So many of these actions actually occurred before the presidency, so they're really irrelevant in context of anything resembling impeachment, which is what they ultimately want to get to. So and let's continue a little bit down that road.

I'll quote here from a Wall Street Journal article titled House Committee's planned to interview Trump organizations, CFO and others. Congressional investigators don't want to cross wires with mister Muller's probe into Russian interference in the twenty sixteen presidential election, which is expected to end soon, among other matters. Mister Muller's investigative, mister Trump, are members of the campaign concluded

with the Russians? And if the President has obstructed the progress of the inquiry by firing a subordinate By the way, they didn't put that in the article, but that's the reality. Firing a subordinate somehow, obstruction potentially declassifying documents somehow an impeachable offense. The article continues, mister Trump has repeatedly denied wrongdoing and call the investigation of which hunt. Some Democrats are concerned that not all of the findings from those

investigations will become public. By the way, if there is no indictment, then it should not become public. You're supposed to protect the innocent. Justice Department policy prevents the indictment of a sitting president, most legal experts say, and Democrats fear that evidence against that it may not be released if it isn't in an indictment. I thought this was supposed to be the party of criminal justice, but apparently

not so. Then there's a quote from Representative Raja Krishna Morti, from a Democrat from Illinois and a member of the House Oversight and House Intelligence Committee quote, we should just assume the worst and that we're never going to find out what any of these investigations reveal if they don't lead to an indictment. That's the worst. We're talking about a member of the House of Representative, someone who is supposed to at least feign interest in justice. And what

is he saying. He's saying we have to assume the worst. Ie, We're not going to get information that we can use to attack a president if it isn't used to indict someone. That's the worst, you know, if they want everything that Mueller did exposed. Congressman noonez today during SEPAK said something interesting. He said, and I agree with him. If this is going to happen, if we're really going to go down this road, Let's see every communication of the Mueller Special Council.

Let's see every last shred of evidence. Let's see it all. Let's see all the personnel. Let's see the background checks that were done into the personnel who comprised the special counsel. Let's have it all hashed out, and then let's declassify every last document associated with any investigation or President Trump. I don't think the investigators want us to look at the information that they use for their investigations. I want to go back and take a trip down memory land

with a quip here. And I'm not going to tell you when this clip occurred or who said it, but let's roll clip one. The effective impeachment is to overturn the popular will of the voters. We must not overturn an election and remove a president from office except to defend our system of government or our constitutional liberties against the dire threat. And we must not do so without

an overwhelming consensus of the American people. There must never be a narrowly voted impeachment, or an impeachment supported by one of our major political parties and opposed by the other. Such an impeachment will produce the divisiveness and bitterness in our politics for years to come, and we'll call into question the very legitimacy of our political institutions. You may have the votes, you may have the muscle, but you do not have the legitimacy of a national consensus or

of a constitutional imperative. This partisan coupe data will go down in infamy in the history of this nation. I'll give you a second to write down on a piece of paper who you think it was that made those comments and when those comments were made. All right, are you listening? That was Gerald Nadwer in nineteen ninety eight. You might remember Gerald Nadwer, Democrat from New York. He's still in the House today. Back then and today he would be the person, as the chair of the House

Judiciary Committee who would oversee impeachment proceedings. Back then, he was defending Bill Quinton against impeachment. Isn't it amazing how that exact argument could be applied today, but you will never see the left apply because it doesn't suit them, it doesn't support their political interests, because they aren't actually principled.

But you know what impeachment itself is actually besides the point. Yes, Democrats would love to impeach and remove if they could, they're not going to be able to get to the removal. And frankly, they recognize some of them, at least the more sober ones, the old guard, if you will, and we'll talk about the old Guard versus the Young Turks a bit later. The old Guard recognizes that impeachment is

a weapon that can lead to self destruction. They saw the Republicans do it, and with some of the folks, the more progressive folks in the Democratic House right now, they could be in big trouble if they actually go down that path. But impeachment, again is besides the point. It's not about that act. The goal of these investigations is to continue to create the appearance of smoke, but there's never any fire. There has never been a smoking gun.

There is no fire. You've had people who loathe the president take unpressed in an action to look into communications private documents, take away boxes and boxes full of the most private communicators with lawyers of the president and others. There's no there there, But the momentum is such that they can't stop. They have to feed their base, and

they are wedded to this narrative. And so again, it's about creating the appearance of smoke for as long as possible, and that's going to mean into twenty twenty and through the election. Clearly. Now the question is does that actually move the needle with you, the American people, And I would suggest that it won't. Those who believe this is essentially a hoax, we're gonna believe it's a hoax. Those who are on the other side and believe it's a

Russian spy, they're gonna believe what they're gonna believe. The people in the middle, those old Reagan Democrats turned Trump Republicans, I don't think that this is gonna play well with them. I really don't. But that said, you can bet the House committees are going to leave no stone unturned because they need to create a constant hysteria. This isn't about oversight. This is a political conviction in search of the appearance

at least of crimes. It's an investigation in search of a crime, and in a worst case scenario for the investigators, the process itself is the punishment. The process is the punishment. The whole purpose of this, this whole effort that started well before Donald Trump was elected president and we're talking June and maybe even earlier in twenty sixteen, the whole purpose was to sabotage and paralyze a presidency. And that's why we have four years of quote unquote investigation. This

is Ben Winegarden in four buck Sexton. Lines are open. Eight four four nine zero zero buck. That's eight four four two eight two five. Will be right back. Welcome back to the buck Sexton Show. This is Ben Weinarten in four buck Sexton. Thanks for joining us on this Friday night. Eight four four nine zero zero buck. That's eight four four nine zero zero two eight two five.

Before the break, I was talking about process as punishment when it comes to all of the investigations, first in both the Senate and House Intelligence committees, the Molar Special Council investigations that preceded them. I want to kind of summarize what has transpired because I continue to believe that this is probably the biggest scandal in American history, and only a small fraction of so called journalists are the

ones covering this. And that's a travesty. It's a travesty not because we care about media, but because we care about truth. And thank god we have the Internet. We would not have an informed citizenry without the ability of

anyone potentially to be a journalist. So the intent, first of all, when it comes to every step back, when you know, when the President talks about while Jim Comey assured him he's not a target, the president was always the target from probably even before or investigations or dossiers or anything else started. We're talking in earlier in twenty sixteen, when he was popular and it actually looked like, wow,

this guy is going to be competitive. So the first attempt was, let's destroy him during the press in the run up to in the elections in the primary season even but then as it advanced, let's start investigations as an insurance policy, you know, just in case the point zero zero one percent chance this guy actually triumphs over

Hillary Clinton, then what's spy on his associates? And let's use informants to try and entrap them in Russian collusion premised on a selacious and unverified dossier paid for by Hillary in the DNC and collected from shady Russian sources. That's an interesting way to try to and affect frame someone that's very It doesn't get any more Clintonian, really, it really doesn't get any more Quintonian than that. So

he gets elected before he's even elected. There are approaches, there's recordings of conversations, and does the intent of this to take out two people who were vital to the president? Number one, the Attorney General Jeff Sessions has to recuse himself because of Russia from the very start. So, in other words, the law enforcement bodies, FBI, Department of Justice, the person at the top who might be able to

control them, taken off the board. The national security advisor, who actually agrees with overturning what the foreign policy and national security establishment have done for decades, taken off the board. So two vital cogs pulled out immediately, taken off the playing field. Later on, as they're continuing these investigations, they use a firing letter that's drafted by one of their own, dag Rosenstein, to try to create a case of obstruction.

See Rosenstein wrote the letter on behalf of the President. The President fires Jim Comey. But isn't that interesting? It was sort of a trap in some way. It's kind of it'd be interesting to actually it will. Of course, Congress can interview Rosens because he's running out the clock. He's talking to favorable media offline, getting them to write favorable things about him in a war that he is having with McCabe. But Congress doesn't get to have any

oversight over something that really matters Dad Rosenstein. All of this is happening while Congress is throwing the president's agenda, and that's on a bipartisan basis. Courts are holding up policies under assinine universal injunctions. And then you have a molar Special Council which is not only squeezing anyone close to Trump but toxifying anyone around him, trying to get them to cough up something anything that will stick. So that's part of it. But then the other purposes to

cover up the needed investigation of the investigators. How do you have a team and not just their political inclinations of the fact that they were all pretty much pro Hillary people, but how do you have people who are the establishment of the establishment as the ones who are supposed to be independent. If you are a part of

the deep state, quote unquote, you can't be dependent. If your career was made, if you spent decades in these bureaucracies, in these institutions, your independent special counsel in name only. Many of the folks involved with wrongdoing which was never investigated the investigators probably very closely. No Robert Mueller. They might have gotten promotions from him at certain points during their career. He was the FBI director. How can it

possibly be independent? Oh yeah. And then in the middle of all this we find out about you know, perspective Kuda taz twenty fifth Amendment, literally deposing a president that is the stuff of police states. So who are the ones destroying the institutions? Who were the ones acting in true Russian if not Soviet fashion. You know, Vladimir Putin

is probably smirking about this whole thing. I have to say, And what is going on in Congress right now is merely the extension of one big, never ending effort to create the appearance of illegitimacy of crime. Tis said, even if President Trump isn't taken out by Congress, the voters will do their bidding, or very worst, he'll be a president not even able to stand on one leg, but

maybe standing on a pinky toe. You know, the gravest national emergency of all has been the rolling effort to fram the president as a national emergency that requires regime change, or maybe there never was truly a regime change in practice, the first peaceful non transfer of power in American history. This has been one garden in for Buck Sexton on The Buck Sexton Show eight four four nine zero zero

Buck A four four zero two eight two five. Why pay your hard earned money to join an organization that fought tooth and nail for a government run healthcare system? Well in that scripted portions of White House speeches behind closed doors to ensure the passage of the Affordable Care Act, the organization that stood against tax cuts for middle class Americans and small business owners. You know that's AA. Or

join AMAC instead. The conservative alternative AMAC offers the same kinds of money saving benefits of AARP without the liberal agenda. Become an AMAC member right now at AMAC dot us slash buck. AMAC fights for your values, protecting our borders by enforcing common sense immigration laws, supporting small business, and standing up for your individual God given freedoms. AMAC is the way to go. Stand with AMAC as they fight the good fight. By becoming a member today. The benefits

are great, but the cause is even greater. Join right now at AMAC dot us slash buck. That's am AC dot us slash buck. AMAC is better, better for you, Better for America. This is the Buck Sexton Show, and this is Ben Weinegarden in for Buck Sexton. Phone lines are open eight four four nine zero zero. Buck. That's eight four four nine zero zero to eight two five, and let's go to the phones, and let's go to first to Charlie in Maryland earlier on the Box Sex

and Show. This is Ben Weingarten. Hey, thanks for thaying McCall. Ben. I've been following this Mueller thing for some time now, and I am mad at the politicians for only one reason. They don't run this country. The bureaucrats run it, and they are openly about it. They are committing treason against this president and nobody is really saying much. I just find it absolutely amazing that we let just go. Charlie, thank you so much for the call and you know,

I agree with you. This really comes down to the administrative state. At the end of the day, regimes change, our administrations change, control of the House, control of the Senate fluctuates, but the bureaucrats are forever. They are always there, and many of them are almost possible to fire. In fact, if you actually look at the government's internal ratings of government employees, everyone gets like an A plus plus. It's

almost impossible to get downgraded. Probably the more corrupt or political acts that you make, you probably rank higher sad way in many agencies. And this has been reported and documented, though obviously not bandied about frequently by the political class. Not to say, of course that there aren't rank and file folks who do a great job. But if you're in a political bureaucracy and you are not political, it's

very tough to rise in advance. That's why someone like a Mike Flint, incidentally, was so amazing that he rose to the position as the head of the DA under President Obama. Amazing that he ended up at that point, given how impolitic he was. But it really does come down to the bureaucracy, the administrative state, and incidentally, Congress, Congress has seeded power to these agencies. These agencies technically fall under the executive branch, but it's clear they are

a fourth branch of government. I wrote a lengthy piece about this actually, and I just tweeted it out where I talk about the fact that we have created a fourth branch of government that is unelected, unaccountable, and it molds the powers of all three branches. So actually, if you look at how a federal agency works, literally, federal

agencies play judge, jury, prosecutor executioner. So if you are involved in some sort of legal action when it comes to an agency, you have a business, Your business is regulated by an agency. You flatter regulation. You want to litigate against that agency, you have to go in front of an administrative judge. So it's a government judge. You couldn't have a more rigged playing field. There's a great quote. I urge you to look it up. Look up Gary Lawson.

He's a law professor who's written about the administrative state and shows you that the administrative state is tyranny. If you have all three branches of government in one subset action of the executive branch, that's tyranny. The whole purpose of separation of powers was that you didn't have executive, legislative, and judicial functions all under one roof. That's why this is much bigger than any one particular president. It's much bigger than these last two years and maybe the six

years succumb It's fundamentally about who rules. We the people rule, or de bureaucrats rule. Congress has ceded its power to these agencies. They've delegated their own powers away. Sham on Congress for doing it. And it also allows Congress to never take responsibility for anything. And we wonder why does every pivotal decision end up at the Supreme Court. Well, it's because Congress is completely derelict in its duty. It's out to lunch. There's no courage among Congress to actually

do its job, which is to legislate. One other quote that I would urge you to look up and i'll paraphrase it here is from Harry Truman. Harry Truman talks about the fact and again here we're talking now seventy years ago, almost sixty seventy years ago, Harry Truman talked about the fact he thought he had power as president until he met the bureaucrats. He says something like, except for those damn bureaucrats, they run the show. That's a president.

So imagine, now you know, we're almost seventy years on from Truman, how much more entrenched and powerful government is, which is already so big and already has literally stacks. If you look at the Federal Register, we're talking hundreds of thousands of pages. And then when you look at the rules and the regulations, which is really where laws

are written, it's not written by a congresshman. A congressman says, here's sort of the broad policy, and it might be a thousand or three thousand page bill, but then every single part of that bill, all of the rules and regulations are then delegated out to these agencies. So the real laws come down to a bureaucrat. And by the way, if you're one of those bureaucrats and you want to go to the private sector, you might you might yourself

take it upon yourself to draft the rules. That they're really complicated and only you, as a regulator, know how to interpret them. So what do you do. You go work then in the industry that you were regulating, and what do you do there? You consult on the most complex regulations ever that you yourself drafted because you're the only one who can help that company avoid getting in trouble with a particular agency. And you make x times as much as you made while you were working in

the public sector. So it's a really perverse incentive system, and it's a perversion of limited government consent of the governed. They run the show, You don't run the show. All right, let's go to another call. Let's go to Bill in West Virginia. Bill, you are on the Buck Sexton Show.

Thanks for taking McCall. Hey, I believe in fighting fire with fireing at and they've been hounding Trump with over the twenty sixteen East election and he's had no, no proven collusion and buy him with the Russians in it.

I think the twenty eighteen election should be investigated because the Democrats seem to want to keep the border open, and Trump and Republicans should call for an investigation of the Democrats and in any possible collusion that they're using to aid the Mexican drug cartels by wanting to keep the borders open. Thanks for the call, Bell, And you know it's interesting they never want to talk about foreign influence when the foreign influence might actually help democrats. But

let's look at the facts. I've talked about this on a prior episode where we went really deep into the weeds on the census citizenship question. What's that all about. Well, non citizens, including illegal aliens, get counted in the census. The census, the population numbers count everyone citizens and non citizens. So that includes the you know, the kind of range of ten to twenty million illegal aliens or maybe more in America as households are counted in the census. And

what are those census numbers used for? Total population is used to determine the apportionment of seats in Congress and local seats as well. In other words, those places that have more illegal aliens, they get more political power than those places that don't have a lot of illegal aliens. And naturally, the places that are magnets for illegal aliens, well,

of course they're naturally blue places, sanctuary jurisdictions. And then hundreds of billions of dollars of federal funds are dulled out based upon population numbers from the census, population numbers inflated by illegal aliens. So you want to talk about foreign influence in Meadowing. It's right there. Democrats encourage it, they incentivize it, they protect illegal aliens. They probably give illegal aliens in some ways more rights than you have

as a US citizen. That's foreign influence in Meadowing. And that's not even to mention, by the way, a little tidbit that Democrats are loath to talk about. And we'll get to this a little bit later tonight. Chinese foreign influence.

According to Vice President Pence in a landmark speech that he gave at the Hudson Institute last year, the Chinese were running ads, for example, in Midwestern states that were impacted by the tariffs the Trump administration put on them to essentially try and lobby against those tariffs and also use them against the Republican Party for their own political interest.

That's foreign influence. And it's not just then. If you look in the papers today, Huawei, massive Chinese tech company which the US government has been clamping down on, telling our allies in Europe and elsewhere, don't use Huawei technology for five G because it's going to create a backdoor

and allow the Chinese to spy on you. Guess what they are running marketing literature lobbying American citizens in our newspapers today telling you how great a company Huawei is, and they don't pose a threat and they come in peace. So you want to talk about foreign influence, that's foreign influence.

And this is not even to get into if we applied the same logic applied to Donald Trump, to Barack Obama, and Victor Davis Hanson has written a great piece on this, I urge you to read, well, would we start looking at Iranian influence? How could a president ever make those sorts of decisions towards the Iranians? The appeasement of all appeasement, Neville Chamberlain. Peace in our time? What if we started

looking into that? If we're going to make decisions, investigatory decisions on the basis of hunt, these policies are kind of sketchy, and maybe they're helping our adversaries or not, as the case may be. In this case. Actually, when it comes to Trump, the foreign policy establishment has scuttled an attempt to reach out to Russia, to split off Russia from China. And oh, by the way, our own intelligence services have now said Russia and China are closer

than they've been in decades to our great detriment. But what if we applied that foreign collusion meadowing standard to anyone else. I don't think it's a road we want to go down, but the genie is out of the bottle. Let's take a quick break. This is Ben wine Garden in four buck sexton eight four four nine ers or a buck eight four four zero zero two eight two five. Welcome back to the buck Sexton Show. This is Ben Weingarten in four buck Sexton eight four four nine zero

zero buck. That's eight four four nine zero zero two eight two five. We were just talking a bit before the break about foreign influence meadowing, the broader scope of all this, and the broader context for all of this, which comes down to legitimacy of our government, whether there's consent of the governed, whether the investigators themselves need to

be the ones who are investigated. And this is in some sense and elaborate cover up of a plan that they never expected would be revealed because they never thought Trump would win. But let's look ahead to twenty twenty and I noticed an article. It didn't get a lot of press, but I think it's gonna be the first data point that we may be able to point to in terms of trying to delegitimize at the very beginning

a potential Trump win in twenty twenty. So Politico had an article came out on the twentieth titled sustaind an ongoing disinformation assault targets dem presidential candidates. A coordinated barrage of social media attacks suggests the involvement of foreign state actors. And I want to read a little bit from this because it's critical to note that they are getting this information out now, that foreign powers are using social media

to try and destroy democratic candidates. So it starts A wide, raging disinformation campaign aimed at Democratic twenty twenty candidates is already underway on social media, with signs that foreign state actors are driving at least some of the activity. The main targets Senators Kamala Harris, Elizabeth Warren, and Bernie Sanders, and former Representative Beto Cultural Appropriation O'Rourke, four of the

most prominent announced or prospective candidates for presidents. A political review of recent data extracted from Twitter and from other platforms, as well as interviews with data scientists and digital campaign strategists, suggests that the goal of The coordinated barrage appears to be undermining the nascent candidacies through the dissemination of memes, hashtags, misinformation, and distortions of their positions, But the divisive nature of many of the posts also hints at a broader effort

to sew discord and chaos within the Democratic presidential primary. Where have we heard this narrative before, dissemination of memes, hashtags, misinformation, and distortions of their positions. Well, if that's going to swing the election, why didn't we lose the Cold War like sixty years ago? I mean, if it was just literally let's put out some memes, hashtags, misinformation and distortions.

I mean, wouldn't the Soviet Union of one? They could have flooded Aerican news with all sorts of memes and hashtags. This isn't to discount the fact that foreign adversaries use misinformation and disinformation for their ends. They absolutely do. If you want to see that, look no further than the

Kashogi caper. Look at how they created this narrative about Jamal Kashogi that actually has completely influenced US foreign policy, pushing us away from the Saudi is trying to attempt to undermine a block against Iran, the number one threat in that region of the world. Foreign influence is real. Misinformation and disinformations are a fact of life, and they are massively powerful because when you change people's minds, you

ultimately change their activities. And in politics it's obviously paramount. But let's put in context what Russia did last election. If you look at the they spend a few hundred thousand dollars on some crappy social media ads that, yeah, there may have been several million impressions, But do you think that anyone changed their mind based upon any of the garbage that was put out by the Russians? You think that that caused discord and influence the election and

swung votes. There was never any proof that anything that the Russians did swung votes. In fact, if you look back, if you even look back at the DNC emails that were leaked, the poll numbers didn't really shift after that leak. So when we talk about influence, swinging elections, leaking emails, that could be devastating, obviously, But memes, hashtags, misinformation and distortions.

If you have people that are making videos where they're making it seem like candidates are saying things and they're fake videos, and the technology is there to do that sort of thing. Yes, that could certainly swing things. It could certainly cause discord. And if you're an evil actor that wants to do America harm, you can come up with some pretty substantive ways to cause a lot of casks in our system, especially with the media that we have, which is willing to run with this stuff and rarely

does their homework, but memes, hashtags, misinformation, and distortions. And it's only the Democratic Party that's been subject to this. So it continues. The cyberpropaganda, which frequently picks at the ross most sensitive issues in public discourse, is being pushed across a variety of platforms and with a more insidious approach than the twenty sixteen presidential election, when online attacks designed to polarize and mislead voters first surfaced on massive scale.

Recent posts of widespread dissemination include racially inflammatory memes and messaging involving Harris Arooric and Warren and Warren's case, and it goes on and on, and they say not all of the activities organized. Much of it appears to be organic or reflection of the politically polarizing nature of some of the candidates. And on, guess what, the candidates are going to destroy themselves by themselves. It doesn't take social media memes and hashtags. You know, only Democrats think that

hashtags can defeat evil adversaries. I mean, come on, come on, a kid in their basement could do this again. But when real influence operations actually impact us, the media hoaxes, the Kashogie caper, the Jesse Smollette story, Russia Gate, confucious institutes, as we'll talk about a little bit later. What is this really about again? Number one, delegitimizing a potential Donald Trump victory in advance and propagating the narrative the meme

of foreign influence boogeyman. But two, ultimately, this is about hyperregulating political speech, which means killing conservative speech on social media. The left wants to have a monopoly on political thought, and that's traditional media, social media, academia, the whole bureaucracy. That's the reality. This is ultimately going to be about regulating political speech, and regulating political speech is not going to be to the benefit of protecting all First Amendment speech.

Political speech of which is the most important and conservative speech, of course, which is quite valuable. This has been onegar in for Buck sex in eight four four two eight two five will be right back, And I read it and I was like, you know what, I don't care anymore. I don't care anymore because again, I'm at least trying and they're not. So the power isn't the person who's trying, regardless of the success. If you're trying, you've got all

the power. You're driving the agenda, you're doing all this stuff like I just introduced Green New Deal two weeks ago, and it's creating all of this conversation. Why because no one else has even tried. Because no one else has even tried. So people are like, oh it's unrealistic. Oh it's vague, Oh it doesn't address this little minute thing. And I'm like, you try, you do it right, because you're not because you're not. So until you do it,

I'm the boss. How about without in respect to miss Ocasio, qute, she's not the boss on this program. This has Ben Weingerten in four Buck Sexon on the Buck Sexon program, and that was Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio Cortez saying that she is the boss, although I think Nancy Pelosi would beg to differ. But it brings up an important point, and that is that when Democrats aren't warring to try to bring down Donald Trump, there's a war going on, a

Democrat civil war. You know, we've heard for years Republican civil war. There is a Democrat civil civil war for the soul of their party. It's the old Guard versus the young Turks, because now we live in a world where the likes of Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer and Diane Feinstein they aren't sufficiently radical. And that video of Finstein with the kids, I don't even know where to start with that, except to say that it is scary

that progressives start that young. And we've talked about this before. Their whole idea is to indoctrinate from day one so that everyone is woke. I think you're going to see

though the Dems. The Dems cannot get out of their own way, whether it's the Green New Deal, fake fake rollout, actually the Rio rollouts where we're talking about slaughtering cows and no more air travel and transcontinental railroads and the like, a cross oceans, railroads, high speed fout in California, or we're talking about Congresswoman Omar's anti semitism, where basically every single week she racks up another point on the anti semiboard,

or Rashida tayeb insinuating Mark Meadows as a racist. It was pretty blatent by the way she was calling him a racist. Mark Meadows is a better man than I because he apparently went up to her and hugged her after the fact and forgave her. But while the left is going to overreach, and I think you're gonna see in these hearings that they're gonna be clown themselves. They're

not going to be able to help themselves. Because for the younger ones, the more impressionable ones, the more naive ones, the ones you don't know about how Washington works, they are so energized and animated. Their trumped arrangement syndrome is so deep it's gonna shine through and people aren't gonna

like what they're gonna see. And then for the others, you kind of have to tag along because if all the energy is with the progressives, you need to take up the most progressive causes possible because that's votes, that's fundraising, that's media airtime. I mean, look Acasio Cortez and media darling. They like her not just because she says insane things, but because the media actually agrees with a lot of

those things. Democrats right now, if you look at the presidential candidates, and we're going to go through a little bit of the horse race and just a bit, it's a party of infanticide. It's a party of socialism, including socialized medicine. It's a party of the mass slaughter of cows and the grounding of all plans. As I mentioned, it's a party of abolish ice. It's a party of border walls are immoral. It's a party of anti Israel, pro Iran deal. Orange man Bad is one of the

only things that unites all of them. I would suggest that they've failed to learn something from Barack Obama, who I think agrees with all of these progressives, and he's sort of their leader, even though he's been very quiet because he's making millions of dollars at Netflix and elsewhere, but I guarantee you he's playing a role in this election. The Democrats, the progressives have regressive progressives. I like to

call him regressives, We'll see if that catches on. They failed to learn from Barack Obama that, to paraphrase Van Jones, you have to drop the radical pose to achieve the radical ends. What does that mean. It means you need to wrap your radicalism in a non threatening, non offensive, non left wing, tinfoil hat wearing sort of robe garb.

And this is why if you look back to the original regressive progressives, the Angela davis Is of the world, or the Bill Airs of the or the radicals of the sixties, they stopped throwing bombs and they started fighting wars for the minds of young people. They put on suits, some of them, at least most of them, shaved and showered, and they went into the institutions. They became teachers, they became bureaucrats. They needed to drop the radical pose to

achieve the radical ends. And Barack Obama did the exact same thing. He covered the radical leftism in a seemingly non threatening, common sense, every American, every man kind of way. It did shine through at times, but not enough to imperil his eight years. Although Democrats did lose at every level because people actually hated the policies they liked the person.

So while on the one hand, Democrats are being shifted to the left, far to the left, and the Overton window perhaps itself is shifting as they stake out the most radical positions, and those positions over time become more mainstream because political shifts happened faster over a wider birth than they ever have. If you look at what was considered radical five or ten years ago, that becomes routine now in a lot of respects, unthinkable things become the norm.

In fact, hundreds of years of human history and teaching and practice have become overturned in recent years. But there's a whipsaw effect that's occurring because while on the one hand there's the impeach and remove at any costs caucus, they're also so called moderates in hotly contested seats going into twenty twenty, folks in purple district districts that you know,

we're probably suburban, middle upper middle class. You might even have Republican majorities, but they don't like Trump, and Republicans, to their credit for once, are actually playing political hardball. So you have Republicans in the House that are making amendments to legislation and forcing Democrats to actually take hard votes. So here's the latest one. There was gun legislation that came out in the House. And what did Republicans do. Well.

It was a bill to expand federal background checks for gun purchases. This is out, It's described in the Washington Post. So I'm going with the left interpretation of what happened here, and they write, twenty six moderate Democrats join Republicans in amending the legislation, adding a provision requiring that ICE be notified if an illegal immigrant seeks to purchase a gun. Talk about a poison pill. Democrats can't vote for that. Well, actually,

twenty six so called moderates did. This not only incensed the Occasio Cortezes of the world, it actually incensed Nancy Pelosi too, because her job is to keep order within her party and make sure they all stick together. So again, I give Republicans credit. They actually played hardball once. Amazing. They should do it more often. They should do one of the things that we care about. So what is the reaction of Speaker Pelosi and the Occasi zero Cortezes

of the world. When we come back from this break, I'm going to go through the sort of gulag politics that you're about to see from the left. This is Ben Winegarden in for Buck Sexon on the Buck Sexon Show. I'll explain what I mean by gulag politics in just a minute. Eight four four nine zero zero Buck. That's eight four four nine zero zero two eight two five. Welcome back to the Buck Sexton Show. This is Ben Weinegarden in four Buck Sexton. Phone lines are open eight

four four nine zero zero Buck. That's eight four four nine zero zero two eight two five. During the break, I was scanning my Twitter feed and came across this great tidbit that sort of exemplifies exactly what we were talking about earlier when it comes to bureaucrats. This is exhibit a of bureaucrats cashing in. And I believe this is from Politico Annals of Speculation. I'll quote from this

one on't note. How much could Robert mull Or make if he decides to head to a law firm as he wraps up his investigation as special counsel washington Ians Marissa Kashino asked around quote as high a number as the market has available, says Jeffrey Lowe. The Washington managing partner of legal recruiting firm Major Lindsay in Africa, quote firms that can pay five million dollars while for five

million dollars. If they can pay between five million dollars and ten million dollars, that can be the number two unquote. To be clear, this is Politico writing. We're talking about annual compensation, so five to ten million bucks a year. Another quote five million. I think that's the starting point, says the McCormick Group's Stephen Nelson. At least several millions, says Garrison and Sissons Dan Binstock, though he adds it could be significantly higher at certain firms exhibit A of

bureaucrats cashing in. But let's actually look at the more substantive point, which is if Politico is writing right now, and I believe it's Poetico about how much Mueller stands to make in the private sector before the report is even delivered, this really must be a nothing burger of a report. I mean, you're talking about compensation for Robert Mueller before this report that we've been waiting for with these breathless bombshow report after bombshow report, day in, day out,

every news cycle. Now the story that they want to focus on is how much Robert Moore is going to make when the Special Council concludes. Let's go back to what I was talking about before, which is the Democratic civil war and the sort of AOC versus Speaker Pelosi, old guard versus young Turk split. Well, in this case, AOC and Pelosi are standing together against their so called moderates in their party, who of course are a minority

within their party. So the Washington Post headline is House Democrats explode in recriminations as liberal as lash out at moderates. I'm kind of surprised that the article didn't read Republicans pounce on House Democrats explode in recriminations as liberals lash out. Well,

they'll probably do it now. So that article says, and remember this is dealing with legislation that twenty six moderate Democrats in the House went along with Republicans on where in expanding federal background checks for gun purchases, Republicans added a provision requiring that ice be notified if an illegal

immigrant seeks to purchase a gun. Democrats hate that. Now, it's absurd that they hate that, But Democrats hate that so the article reads in part and I quote in a closed door session, a frustrated speaker Nancy Pelosi lashed out at about two dozen moderates and pressured them to get on board. Quote, we are either a team or we're not, and we have to make that decision unquote, Pelosi said, according to people present but not authorized to

discuss the remarks publicly. But Ocasio Cortez, the unquestioned media superstar of the freshman class. That's aw. Let's see when a Republican is described as an unquestioned media superstar in a supposed we straight news article on the Washington Post, the unquestioned media superstar of the freshman class up the anti admonishing the moderates and indicating she would help liberal

activists unseat them in the twenty twenty election. So Kazio Cortes, this twenty nine year old with no power in Congress whatsoever, but a massive social media following and a press that loves her. Clearly self evidently she's talking about primarying moderates. Corbyn Trent, a spokesman for a Kazio Cortez, said she told her colleagues that Democrats who side with Republicans quote unquote are putting themselves on a list. You're on a list if you cross Alexandra Kazio Cortes. So now we're

talking about blacklisting within the Democratic Party. Isn't that fascinating? Who are the ones acting like authoritarians? So Corbyn Trent, this spokesman goes on. She said that when activists ask her why she had to vote for a gun safety bill that also further empowers an agency that forcibly injects kids with psychotropic drugs. You seriously can't make this stuff up. They're going to want a list of names, and she's going to give it to them, Trent said, referring to

US Immigration and custom Enforcement. You're on a list, you're a moderate, you vote your conscience, you vote probably in line with what you're moderate. Supposedly constituency says, you're on a list, and you'll get primaried. Now, I encourage Acazio Quartz to try to primary these people, because if they get primaried and they're quote unquote moderate districts, that means Republicans are going to sweep those districts. Queen I'll be back in a majority in the House. But seriously, that

takes some nerve. First of all, again, who is Alexandro Acazio Quartz to be the one coming up with these litmus tests? But then, even more importantly, Democrats are drawing lists. You know, I'm just I'm reminded of the Seine Fight episode where a land Venice. You know, she's on the list. She can't get the Chinese food. She's been blacklisted by the Communist Party. So when I talk about Gulag politics, that's where I'm going. You're on a list, You're out.

It's a Kazio Quarte as his way or the highway. Is that where the Democrats want to be. They want to systematically pick off anyone who dares dissent from what progressivism demands. Again, please do that, Representative Acazio Quartz, Please, I beg of you, name and shame every single moderate who votes along with the Republican on something rational. Illegal aliens going to buy a gun? H Maybe that should concern us a little bit. In fact, it's an issue

in her home state. MS thirteen runs rampant here. Acazio Cortes knows full well who they are. What if you're a law abiding citizen in one of these places, What does a Kazio Quartes say to you when a kid is out playing in the street and illegal alien buys a gun, kid gets shot, accidentally buy a gang member, What does she say to those parents? You know, being a leftist means never having to grapple with the consequences

of your policies, Republicans. When the policies work out, Democrats will say, well they didn't work out well enough, or they'll try to find the anti silver lining, the fool's goal of lining in it. Democrats, it's all about feelings, what feels good, what seems compassionate. It's never about getting thrown off your healthcare plan. It's never about never being able to see the doctor that you liked for your

entire life. It's never about being freed from joblock quote unquote, ie, let's celebrate people getting fired because now you can go find better benefits somewhere else. AOC never has to grapple with the reality of anything that she says, because the media will never Where are the fact checkers going line by line, word by word through every last thing that Alexandrea Kazio Cortez says. And I hate to harp on her because on the one hand, she's a side show.

It's sort of embarrassing. On the other hand, though she is a representative of where her party is going at the very least ideologically. I'm sure there are going to be more seasoned people that are going to follow in her footsteps, although of course Democrats might not like someone who's more season They think that she's authentic quote unquote, she's a bartender quote unquote. In fact, I would say that AOC is just the new age version of Bernie Sanders.

And look where Bernie Sanders is. Bernie Sanders would would have been dismissed as a total kuk socialist, goes on his honeymoon to the Soviet Union, and if you haven't seen those videos, you have to see the videos of him celebrating, looking like the useful idiot that he is, taking shots of vodka in the Soviet Union in the

Cold War, celebrating with these folks. But that guy would have been competitive in a general election last time around, and he's one of the favorites in the Democratic primary this time around. In fact, if it hadn't really been rigged on the Democratic side with the super teligates last time around, he probably beats Hillary Clinton. Acazio Cortez is just an inexperienced version of Bernie Sanders. So we can dismiss her, we can mock her, we can ride her.

But the reality is she has built up a following in the public, and not only that, she has shifted the Overton window. I said it before. These policies they may seem nuts, and they are nuts, and they are disastrous, and you can look at world experience, example after example, but the lesson has to be constantly retaught. That's what Reagan taught us, freedom never being more than one generation away.

What democrats are talking about right now are the worst possible ideas, the most regressive ideas you could ever have. They've been tried over and over again. Look at East and West Germany, look at North Korea and South Korea. Examples are plentiful. They need to be taken seriously, and they need to be fought day in and day out. We're gonna talk a little about that democratic field and what is to come. This has Ben Wagaran in for Buck Sex and on the Buck Sexton Show. A four

four zero two eight two five. That's a four four nine zero zero two A two five we'll be right back talking the horse race, democratic radicalism, Overton Window and much more. Welcome back to the buck Sexton Show. This is ben Wine Garden in four buck Sexton. In just a short while, we're going to pivot to what's going on in international affairs and we'll talk a little bit

about China and North Korea. And you know, in some ways it's funny to talk about the left and then you're talking about China and North Korea and these other places where that's where the socialist dream is. And you know, maybe the best depiction of it is you look at a world map of different places at night, and then during the day, North Korea is just dark. There's no activity, there's no commerce. It's a very telling thing when there is no light, and literally you have a gulag nation.

And I go back to again East Germany and West Germany. If you ever look, that is maybe the greatest controlled experiment of all time in terms of here you have the same people they started out, the same infrastructure, the same level of talent, the same traditions, values, principles, literally the same families. Look at where East Germany and West Germany were at the end of the Cold War, and even today if you look at many measures, East Germany is still behind West Germany in a lot of economic

measures and other measures as well. That is the human toll of terrible ideas, terrible ideas that there may be claims of good intentions behind, but imposing your view of what's moral and just, which requires mass wealth redistribution and dramatically altering the way that you conduct your lives. That's tyranny, even if it ended up with good outcomes, quote unquote, it's tyranny. And none of the socialistens in anyway will ever explain how it is that the stuff will be

created that they then redistribute. Under a system where there's only reading distribution, who's going to create in that system? You're just going to be sharing a shrinking, shriveling, dying pie with everyone because there's no incentive to create, to be dynamic, to pursue your dreams. If you look at what the Soviet Union was like, and you wonder in part today, why is the Soviet Union? If you look

at the alcoholism rates, they're just off the charts. I would pause it that one of the reasons probably is human capital was destroyed by socialism and you're still seeing the effects of it today, Which brings me to the Democrats twenty twenty. Field. I see a major challenge for

the Democrats in twenty twenty. And it isn't just that I think Trump is going to have a great agenda to run on, or perhaps that the economy is going to be continue to be rip roaring, and financial markets and all the other things that all the pundits always say or what people vote on. To be the Democrat that wins your nomination, you have to be sufficiently woke. You have to demonstrate social justice, warriordom to the death.

You also have to check the identity politics boxes. And then you still have to attempt to win a state like a Florida, arn Ohio, or a Pennsylvania or a Michigan. Now, while they won't make the same mistake as Hillary Clinton of not campaigning in a place like a Michigan, it is very tough to try to sweep out in a primary where everyone is so far left and everyone is trying to outdo each other on the left, and then seem reasonable enough to win in those places where that

are completely intolerable of that insane leftism. So I just want to take off the names. These were kind of my initial thoughts on a handful of names today. Okay, Joe Biden, what has Joe Biden been running on? Well, he took back a nice comment that he had for Vice President Mike Pence on social media because he got attacked by social justice warrior and failed candidate in New York,

Cynthia Nixon. Took back his nice words for Mike Pence because god forbid, you're actually ennuy towards someone of the other party. Oh yeah, and Uncle Joe went overseas in front of a European audience in the last couple of weeks and badmouth America. One of the first rules of one of the seminal rules of politics that a quote unquote elder statesman like a Joe Biden would acknowledge always is you don't go overseas and attack America. You just

don't do that, period full stop. Okay, we have Spartacus. Spartacus kicked off his campaign by violating rules in Congress while grand standing during the shameful Kavanaugh hearings, and go look up his friend t Bone. That's a laugher. Elizabeth warned, what Folcahontas is the defining aspect of her career. Kamala Harris, her own paramour, admitted how she made her way to the top in San Francisco politics. Hint it wasn't based

on merit. She called for abolishing private insurance compared eyes to the KKK, lied about her drug usage and attempting to quense the fact that she's now pro drug after being anti drug as a prosecutor. Lied about the music she was listening to while smoking pots. So was she lying about the pot usage? Was she lying about the music she was listening to? Was she lying about her

position altogether? Beto is the Robert Francis O'Rourke, I should say, is the cultural appropriation candidate and sort of the EMO candidate. He's also a white male and tries, he might to call himself Beto. White male is a dangerous thing to be in the Democratic Party, doesn't check off the identity politics box, try as he might, and of course frames himself as Beto when he's running against somewhat of actual

Cuban descent. But let's leave that aside. Amy Quobachar I thought that Amy Quobachar could potentially be competitive because she kind of comes off as you know, reasonable. She had all these moderate Republicans fawning over her in articles, but you cross Amy Quobachar and she'll throw a stapore at your head. I mean literally, it's like a character and office space, like a violent Milton or you know, her ridge is more than Hillary Clinton's rage at Bill Clinton

based upon the descriptions that we've seen. And then today we had the announcement that Washington Governor Jay Insley would be running, and he is running as the climate change candidate, fighting the climate. So his platform when we talk about fighting climate change is let's massively reorganize our daily lives over a hypothetical issue where the scientists have been persistently wrong.

And oh, by the way, their funding is generally tied to proving the consensus is what they claim the consensus is about global warming that justifies all manner of wealth redistribution. And oh, by the way, the worst offenders in the world won't go along with whatever their scheme is anyway, So we're going to sacrifice our position as the pre eminent capitalist world power. But China and all the rest

of the countries are going to keep trucking along. I would say the field is set tremendously for Donald Trump in a lot of ways. But long term, the Woke crew is going to triumph over the Democratic Party again. I think the Overton window is shifting. The most radical positions have now been put out there by multiple candidates. They're all signed off on the Green New Deal. I'm going to talk about that in a second. They are directionally where the party is going. They may have staked

out the positions too orally. Those positions may be losers in twenty twenty, they might even be losers in twenty twenty four. But where's the country going? Well, their view, the progressive view, is the view that dominates in popular culture, in our schools, everywhere in the bureaucracy itself in a lot of ways, and worth noting. Incidentally, Democrats are out there working to kill the electoral college right now. Colorado was the most recent state to enter an interstate compact

that needs a majority. It needs I think two hundred and seventy electoral votes for this legislation to pass, where essentially you would have a national popular vote that determines where all the electoral votes in a given state go so a state might vote Republican, but if the country majority votes Democrat, all those states electors go Democrat. And it appears, at least right now that it's constitutional. You

have twelve states and the District of Columbia. I forget if they're included in the twelve over they're incremento to the twelve states one hundred and seventy two electoral votes by the latest count covered here. See, they want to actually have direct democracy, which is tyranny. All of these politicians love to talk about democracy the greatest thing ever. The Founders hated democracy. The Founders talk about democracy as tyranny of the majority, where fifty percent plus one vote

can vote away the rights of everyone else. Just because you have free voting doesn't mean you'll end it up in tyranny. And let me just say why the Greens, why are they going with green Jay Insley the most recent one, and the Green New Deal and the rest of it. I would suggest that it's because science is the only way that they can justify socialism. The Green movement is socialism masquerading as science. They have to create a crisis they can justify by something that is unimpeachable,

that you cannot argue against or your anti science. So if the science demands the totalitarian response, only a Neanderthal could oppose it. Worst case, if the green agenda fails, they get their friends rich through chronyism. We have cylindras add infinitum, in perpetuity forever. That's what the green thing is really about. It's about they can't win based upon the actual evidence, so they need to go science. Aha. This is Ben Winegarden in for Buck Sexton on the

Buck Sexton Show. A four four nine zero zero two eight two five A four four nine zero zero two eight two five. Welcome back to the Buck Sexton Show. This is Ben Weinegarden in four Buck Sexton eight four four nine zero zero Buck. That's eight four four nine

zero zero two eight two five. All right. In a past episode of this program, I went into great detail into what I think is the most vital, underestimated, underappreciate it, and potentially most significant of all policies that the Trump administration has undertaken, and of course not gotten nearly the credit it deserves for it, in part because it is in some way as a rebuke of everything the experts quote unquote have told us for almost fifty years, and

that is the fact that China is a competitor more than that it's an adversary. And while the administration may catch its terms somewhat diplomatically at times, it's very clear

that there has been a market change. Now, why should we care about China as a major geopolitical competitor beyond the fact that it's a world's second biggest economy, it has nuclear weapons, it's a massive population and landmass, massive natural resources, and all the other knock on effects of having this behemoth that's adversarial with the communist run government facing US in a vitally important strategic region of the world. I always go back to the question why should we care?

How does this actually our daily life? And the first thing right off the bat is, besides trade that we have with China, there's also the fact that literally trillions of dollars worth of goods traffic through areas seas that

are in China's sort of near abroad. And if that were to change, if that relationship were to somehow fundamentally change, or those seas were not to be able to be patrolled freely by the US, you can imagine the economic calamity that would occur if China actually took aggressive measures there. And by the way, the Chinese military has threatened US

ships in this region. So this is a real threat and it really does impact actually the day to day and we're not just talking stock prices, but we're talking about costs of goods when you go down to your local Walmart or any other store in America for that matter, overshadowed in what I've termed sort of the kabuki theater of the Cohen hearing and all the rest that we're

about to see over the next couple of years. Over the last two weeks, there were three major development, three major stories relating to China that have nothing to do with the trade deal that may or may not ultimately end up being negotiated. What are those three stories. Well, one of them starts in all places in Cincinnati, Ohio.

I doubt that you saw this story. A local news source there, WCPO nine Cincinnati, a local television station I believe, wrote an article the titled Chinese spies covet Cincinnati's corporate secrets was October arrest an isolated incident. And here's how that article starts. It says, to anyone who has startled when an alleged Chinese spy who targeted ge aviation was arrested in October twenty eighteen, here's an even more alarming fact.

It wasn't an isolated incident. Cincinnati companies are regular targets of Chinese spies, hackers, counterfeiters, and business partners. This news source has learned from court documents, government records, and interviews with business and federal law enforcement officials. And then they go on to quote a US attorney for the Southern District of Ohio, quote, economic espionage is a very significant threat, said Benjamin Glassman. It could cost people their jobs, It

could destroy companies. With the destruction of companies comes the destruction of communities and really a radically different place for

the United States in the world. And the article goes on to talk about all the sorts of economic espionage that has involved companies just in Cincinnati, Ohio alone, and you can bet that their investigations into this sort of espionage everywhere, because, as the article laighs out, there have been indictments, numerous indictments that the Trump administration under this FBI and Department of Justice have ramped up to bring Chinese nationals to justice, and in the particular case when

it comes to ge aviation and involved what's termed the first Chinese intelligence officer to be extradited to the US for prosecution. And by the way, he's not the only one. News broke just before we came on tonight that Canada is set to begin proceeding as the will allow Huawei CFO Manguanzo to be extradited to the US per an announcement from the Canadian Department of Justice on Friday. So

this is ramping up. We are starting to ring Chinese actors who violate sanctions, potentially allegedly or engage in economic espionage. We're actually taking the fight to them. We are applying justice. We are not acting fearful in our response and proving that we're a paper tiger, as the Chinese may have assumed for say the last eight years, and really probably the last twenty eight or thirty eight or forty eight years.

It's one story Cincinnati. Another story. A report out from the US Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship that's chaired by Senator Marco Rubio, who has come out as one of these staunchest China Hawks joining the Trump administration and encouraging the Trump administration's actions against the Chinese. His committee put out a report called MAIDE in China twenty twenty five and the Future of American Industry. A MAIDE in China twenty twenty five is all about Chinese dominance

in manufacturing and industry. And of course the way they do that is, in part is by cheating when it comes to trade, is by economic espionage, is by enforcing terms. When it comes to our dealings with them, they're completely

one sided and go in their direction. And what this report lays out, and I'll quote in part from it, is the MAIDE in China twenty twenty five Industrial Plan targets ten high value industrial sectors for global dominance, demonstrates that the Chinese government is doing more than merely breaking the rules. It is seeking to set new terms for international economic competition. Evaluating the MAIDE in China twenty twenty five Plans should contribute to the American policy framework in

two ways. First, assessing the plan's particular goals and progress toward them can identify areas for defensive action. Second, comparing areas of China success to America's relative decline can help identify areas for creative reform. China has a direction that they're going when it comes to manufacturing and industry. We're playing defense right now. We're just starting to identify the scale of these Chinese efforts and their intent, which is

ultimately to undermine us. Last point I'll point out, Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations just released a report that I urge you to look at. It's called China's Impact on the US Education System and represents perhaps the most extensive investigation to date of confucious institutes. What are confucious institutes?

Will their Communist Party backed educational so called cross cultural exchange programs, backed with Chinese money, oftentimes with Chinese Communist Party approved professors who go to US universities and they teach, and of course, naturally, when you look at what they teach, it's a completely one sided pro Chinese Communist curriculum. And actually FBI Director Ray has indicated that there may be espionage associated with these so called educational programs, including spying

on Chinese nationals who are here. So it's not just necessarily collecting information that might be useful from US universities, but it's even inspiring on what they consider their own people and threatening them. And this report goes into great detail about the size, scope and sale of these activities. And we're talking hundreds of these across the US. We're also talking hundreds of millions of dollars that China has

put into this. This is real foreign influence. This is foreign meadowing in US society when you have a foreign path, our adversarial putting millions of hours into our academic institutions to advocate for literally the party line, the Chinese Communist party line. When we come back, we'll talk with Stephen Yates about China, North Korea, and a whole bunch of other goings on in the region. This has been weangarten in four Buck Sex and eight four four nine zero

zero Buck. That's eight four zero zero two eight two five. They wanted the sanctions lifted in their entirety, and we couldn't do that. They were willing to denuke a large portion of the errors that we wanted, but we couldn't give up all of the sanctions for that. So we continue to work and we'll see, but we had to walk away from that. I think we'll end up being very good friends with Chairman Kim and with North Korea. And I think they have tremendous potential. I've been telling

everybody they have tremendous potential, unbelievable potential. But we're going to see. But it was about sanctions. I mean, they wanted sanctions lifted, but they weren't willing to do an area that we want. That was President Trump talking about his negotiations with North Korean leader Kim Jong un, and clearly to the disappointment of many in the media who wanted to say that Trump made a horrendous deal, as sad as it is to say, but you could see

that in their reactions. Trump, in my view, rightly walked away from the table from a horrible deal when it comes to the US national interest. Today, we're going to speak with Steve Yates about both North Korea trade negotiations and more broadly, the Trump administration's China policy. And Steve joins US now. He's an expert on Asian politics, geopolitics, and perhaps most notably, the former deputy National Security advisor to Vice President Dick Cheney from two thousand and one

to two thousand and five. You can follow him on Twitter at Yates d CIA. Steve, thanks so much for joining us. A pleasure to be with you. Well, let's start in North Korea. And the vital question when it comes to all of these negotiations is what does Kim Jong un actually want to achieve? So I asked that

question to you, what does he want? It's a fair question, but I think before you even get to that, I think there's a couple of things that are long term issues where people are experts, pundits and sometimes foreign leader's mistake, where our president thinks he wants to go and how

he's going to get there. And I think we've seen in this instance another example of people making long term assumptions based on short term tactics by our president, and just as they have been in for several years now, they're likely to be wrong. And so the on again, off again summits and walking away from the table. It's part of what this president does in his negotiations, and sooner or later people will figure it out. North Korea, the best we can tell, this is one of the

most isolated parts of the planet. It wants some sense of connection with the outside world, but too much in its own country, still has total control, and it wants easing of sanctions which affect its ruling class more than its people. And it wants the US to remove its forces from the Korean Peninsula, somewhat lessening the security threat

it perceives. So those have been basic elements that they've been talking about for three two term US presidents of Clinton, Bush and Obama in different ways, and all of those conventional approaches to diplomacy, and those administrations failed to change the direction North Korea was going. Hence we have it Donald Trump and a different approach to these talks. Kim Jong UN's predecessor, his father, Kim Jong il, left a last will and testament, at least parts of which have

been disseminated publicly. And in that last will and testament, he laid out a strategy to essentially use nuclear weapons as in some sense a bargaining chip, with the ultimate goal of reunification of the Korean Peninsula, presumably under communist role, So a Korean peninsula where North Korea is the dominant power there. Obviously, in South Korea we have an administration which is somewhat more favorably disposed towards the North Koreans

than those in the past. Do you think that Kim Jong un ultimately wants reunification as his number one goal? I think that is their dream, and I think in the North Korean propaganda world, they believe their dream, but it only takes a few seconds of awareness of what reality is in North Korea. Even some skeptical journalists have been able to go from time to time, and some health ministries like the Graham Ministries have been able to go to hospitals get a glimpse, and it's so different.

It's the most pulverized polity on the planet. There's no way there's going to be any meaningful unification like East and West Germany at the end of the Cold War

anytime soon. And so they do have that dream. They do see themselves as on the winning side of this, and South Koreans, for the most part, they for many decades had the same dream, but with them on top of it, and in recent decades they've kind of come to the conclusion of this would be extremely costly, extremely risky, and just because we're technically all Koreans were totally different

than these people now. And so I think there's been this desire to give piece a chance on the South, but not necessarily wanting unification and having to deal with the cultural and economic deadweight that North Korea would be

for them. Absent the credible threat of a real imminent attack to Kim Jong Gun's regime or a sanctions regime that is so airtight that it is literally completely starved for capital, how are we not to assume that Kim Jong gun will continue to try to play us off with negotiations and bite his time because he knows the reality that at most Donald Trump has six years left, whereas Kim Jong gun is leader for life absent some

sort of coup. Well, I think there's a heavy, heavy reality in what you described, and you know, sort of. When I first went into government, I was told that the easiest answer for a government lawyer to give when asked the question is no, and the easiest assumption when wondering about changes in fundamental policy or direction of the countries is also know that these regimes linger longer than

anyone would like, and sometimes are even forecast. In the nineteen nineties, I was on the receiving end of some public but also some internal government reports that forecast the imminent collapse of North Korea. Tons of evidence, very high confidence, and obviously we're two decades later and they're still there. So I think the odds are he stays in this, and so I think somewhat rationally, the president's strategy is to do what is necessary to mitigate the threats that

get beyond the peninsula. So his approach to this, whether by coincidence, dumb luck, designed, whatever it is, have resulted in many viewers. In other words, none of the provocations that occurred during the Obama administration when they were not engaging in talks, and he's still avoided the major concessions with a lot of money and other kinds of changes that were put forward under the Clinton and Bush administrations. So for now I think he's been threading that needle.

I don't think it's been a mistake to try to hold out the Vietnam economic development model as something for a North Korean to possibly understand and maybe aspire to, because they're not going to become sole They could march in the direction of a reformed communist economy, and that's what Vietnam has been. If you accept the premise that North Korea is in some sense a proxy of China and probably does not make any major decision without serious

consultation with Shia's regime. Given that background, do we believe that stepping away from the table impacts talks with China and She? I believe it does. But I also believe

that was the president's intent. It was conspicuous that he made direct mention of the trade talks and the fact that what he was doing and annoy by getting together and meeting and putting cards space up on the table, saying publicly how much positive rapport there are is between the two leaders, and yet they had demands that we couldn't accept and so it's a bad deal. I'm going

to walk away. And he made a direct reference to the coming conversation with Shijingping that is supposed to be at Mara Lago soon and that he would be prepared to take this same approach. She's got fabulous rapport, was she temping? Supposedly something that I find hard to understand, given that I don't believe that communist leaders have a soul with which to have rapport, But the President is playing that part, and I think it was a strong positive signal. Now we have to see what he does.

But best I can tell, the administration is looking for a framework for long term negotiations on trade, not believing that they're going to get a quick hit on China trade that's going to solve the problem. And in that regard, it's the same as North Korea goes without saying how vital trade is between the US, the number one economic

power in the world, and China at number two. Do you see the trade negotiations as I do, as one part, one facet, albeit a very big one, of a much more comprehensive pushback in some sense, overturning almost fifty years of US policy visa each China pushing back on both when it comes to law enforcement, and that is indictments over espionage and other malign acts of the Chinese in the US, a military build up, rhetorical and then also

substantive policy issues where we are comprehensively pushing back. Is trade just one facet of a comprehensive plan in your view? So I deeply hold that view that the trade negotiations are very important. They're fundamentally much much more important to China than the art of the United States, And I think we might have the first administration in my lifetime that fully understands that, or at least partially understands that. But China's economic dependence on the United States is a

sizable proportion of its total GDP. For the United States, our interaction with China is like half a percent of GDP, and you know, we don't want to lose that. Willy nilly, that kind of a change matters. It will be felt, but it's far from fundamental. And so we have a negotiating position of strength, and it's good that we have

some sense of that and engage in the conversation. But whether it's beginning with Vice President Pence's speech at the Hudson Institute last October, but I've had interactions with Australian senior leaders and Japanese senior leaders, and even some European senior leaders, and now even our friends in the Great

White North in Canada. There's a fundamentally different conversation about China today because we don't just look at the threats that are happening inside their country or international relations, but they, under the Communist Party's rule, are interfering with the fundamental institutions of our nations. Our education, systems, our media, and our political systems, and I think for the first time in most of my career, they're not getting a complete pass.

Nothing big has really been done to change it. Yet they've been called out on the Huawei technology issues and five G and sanctions busting when it comes to Iran. So we're at the beginning of this law conversation, and I'm very very heartened that the conversation is taking place beyond just the usual lobbying halls about trade or no trade.

It's a bigger strategic issue, and it's kind of bothered me that people have talked about the Cold War being over in the early nineteen nineties when a very large

communist party plays a furious role in global strategy. Today, there's a substantial challenge for the administration, which is that long term, China, I think clearly does represent the biggest geopolitical threat to America, But in the short term, financial markets and many in the business community hit the sort of punitive policy that the Trump administration has taken to

develop the leverage to actually have hopefully beneficial negotiations. If you were counseling the president, how would you suggest that he deals with the competing tensions of needing to keep the pressure on China, which has had real impact internally in China, but also dealing with the fact that financial markets don't necessarily like it, and he's going to be the ballot in two years, you know. I think that the administration's team at the at the highest levels are

very sensitive to this and very aware of it. Now. I wouldn't mislead to say that I have been brought into multiple inside conversations and this is what I hear firsthand in those multiple conversations. But but my dealings with them, uh indicate that they that they basically have somewhat of a divide and conquer communications strategy, which is hard in this day and age that everything goes out into different

medium and blurs together. But they've been They've been messaging to Wall Street their intent, which they mean to try to make some real progress and rebalancing the US China economic relationship. And I think that they have worked into their communications somewhat an element that I believe strongly in that I have a great respect for the history of China and for the people of China. Don't think that

the policies we stand for, our anti China. That's what the Communist Party wants to parlay out there to keep us from being able to do anything to protect our own interests. It's the Communist Party that's the problem. That's the one percent of China that dominates the ninety nine

percent of the rest of the Chinese. And that one percent is the one that has denied their culture and their heritage and broken their fundamental institutions of family and faith and other things that were valuable parts of the historical Chinese experience. And so well, that's a big nugget to get out there in the public. There are elements,

I think of the administrations. They understand this. So they speak to the Wall Street which they're familiar with, and they have people on the team that talk every day with leading influencers up there to try to make sure that they understand we are going to try for outcomes. This isn't just an all out war for the sake of war. When it comes to talk of trade, it's a rebalancing with a purpose, and we should benefit from it,

and so should the Chinese people. It's done right. And secondarily, they so far have remained committed to keeping elements of pressure in place. There's some of you know, they've delayed the escalation of earths from from ten and fifteen percent up to twenty five. But that's for a time and I think if as the President has to walk away from the next round of talks about meaningful progress, those things will come into play and he'll keep the leverage

going into the election cycle. He can't afford to go soft on this, in my estimation, and hold the electoral college coalition he had in the rust belt states. That was a big change in twenty sixteen and it made a strategic difference politically. Steve, we're gonna have to leave it right there. Thank you so much for coming on. We've been speaking with Steve Yates. You can follow on Twitter at Yates DCIA. Thanks so much for coming on, my pleasure. Thank you. This is Ben Weingarten in for

Buck Sexton on the Buck Sexton Show. Eight four four nine zero zero. Buck, that's eight four four nine zero zero to eight to five. Lines are open, all right.

We just spoke with Steve Yates, former deputy National Security advisor to Vice President Dick Cheney and someone who I would say has a tremendous grasp on the situation in Asia, this battle that's going on right now between the Chinese and their proxies, namely North Korea and then all of the other nations, and the US has been working to align itself with these other nations and start to comprehensively counter China. And you know, for years, for decades and decades,

we were told about China's peaceful rise. This relationship was open with Richard Nixon back in the seventies, and the idea was that China would get rich alongside the US. This would be in both of our interest. Economic liberalization quote unquote would lead to political liberalization. Well, everything that we've seen since Tianamen Square in nineteen eighty nine proves that that was pure folly. And guess what, the Chinese

Communist Party doesn't necessarily want to be a peaceful trade partner. Essentially, what we have helped to do is build China's economy. And it's not just through anything resembling free trade or fair trade. It's through stolen intellectual property and the parts

of the Chinese. It's your economic espionage, it's unfair trade dealings, it's your cyber attacks, it's through them killing out our intelligence officers, literally, it's through the biggest attack in US history, cyber attack in US history, the Office of Personnel and Management, where essentially China stole the files of more than twenty million supposedly government employees, the most sensitive information, the documents they fill out to try to get a government job

when there's a national security implication, there's an investigation, a substantial background check, and we're talking hundred plus pages background check. China hack that information and it gave them a tremendous advantage. Trump has challenged this notion of China's peaceful rise. It's said in his National Security Strategy in twenty seventeen economic liberalization has not led to political liberalization. We're actually a strategic competitor of China, and it's maybe even more ramped

up than that. And we've seen a comprehensive effort by the Trump administration to start to push back on this. And with my next guest, we'll talk about some more things that the Trump administration has pointed out about the failure of our elites and how detrimental it's been to our national interest. This is Ben Weingarten in for Buck Sexon on The Buck Sexton Show eight four four nine zero zero Buck. That's eight four four nine zero zero two eight two five Back in just a moment, Welcome

back to the Buck Sexton Show. This is Ben Weinegarten in four buck Sexton lines are open eight four four nine zero zero Buck. That's eight four four nine zero zero two eight two five. Or We've talked a lot this evening, in particular an hour one about the deficiencies on the Democratic side, both ideologically and tactically, but at the same time the world is in some ways also

going their way now. In January, Tucker Carlson set the Republican intellectual world ablaze by articulating in a sense why Trump won, namely that he called out a failed intellectual elite, a failed ruling class, starting with Mitt Romney, and this was in response in part to Mitt Romney's anti Trump editorial in the Washington Post, and what Tucker rays were many failings of the elite, starting with the fact that they're not really ruling for the common good anymore so

much as the good of third world nations or feel good policies that make them feel as if they're virtuous and compassionate people, regardless of the outcomes for their supposed beneficiaries while they continue to enrich themselves and a crew more power. Doctor Matt Peterson has written extensively about this. He's the vice president of Education at the Claremont Institute and editor of the American Mind, and he wrote the piece at that new website, The American Mind, where he

argues Tucker Carlson is right now. Full disclosure before we jump in. I'm a publious fellow at the Cremin Institute, and I continue to do work with them because I think they're a great institution that's doing God's work and trying to restore America's founding principles. Doctor Peterson, thanks so much for joining us. Thank you so much for that introduction. Then thanks well, it's my pleasure and thank you for

writing this piece. Let's start at the highest level, which is how, in your view, have our elites found us? Oh gosh, so there's so many ways. I mean, I would start, though, with a misunderstanding of American principles and purpose. The first failing you'd have to talk about is that the education of our elites fails to understand and distinguish what is distinctive about America and what American the American principles of government aren't therefore what we ought to be

aiming at. What's the purpose? And so what you have what you see in elite society is an unwillingness or an aura culture that is very reluctant to embrace something distinctly American. And it's much more apt to say what's wrong with America? Right, And it's the suspicious of patriotism. I would start there. And then the problem is that outside of that, if you don't have a way to be a patriotic elite, or you're not taught what the principles and purposes of your government are, you then descend

to self interest. Right. The only other thing you have in the academy is self interest or some form of then social justice woke doctrine. Right. So this is an enormous problem. It's been going on for a long time. It's been building for a long time. But what you see now are people like Tucker talking about it explicitly on the right in ways that really no one has

for some time. There's a political element, of course, but if you believe that politics is downstream from the culture, part of what comes out of our elites are sort of norms governing practices for how to live your life, and that comes well before we talk about policies. Charles Murray, whose work I'm sure you're very well familiar with, talks about in one of his books the idea that the

elites don't preach what they practice. In other words, they sort of promote and anything goes progressive utopic sort of worldview where they reject the traditional values and principles on which our entire civilization is based. But then in their own wives they live very conventionally and they really do a disservice when they exhibit certain behavior in their rhetoric and other behavior in their private life. Do you think that factors into the sort of Tucker thesis and your

view as well. Oh? Absolutely, I think Tucker is one hundred percent writer about this, And obviously Charles Murray has spearheaded that the proof of this in very real and damning social science. So what you see is that when you are a member of the elite, you're reluctant to adopt any policy that actively promotes the health of the family. At the same time that you know, because of your station, you know that getting married is a good idea of

staying married is a good idea. Marriage is much healthier among elites than it is among the rest of society. And so this is where Tucker really made his mark. This is why Tucker's monologue resignated throughout the country. What he said was this is quote, culture and economics are inseparably intertwined. Certain economic systems allow families to thrive, and thriving families make market economies possible. That's what he said.

And so what he did is do something different. He said, no, no, no, you can't just treat policy is is it's separate from the promotion or the denigration of the family. Economics is it used to be called used called political economy. Economics is necessarily tied to morality and to promote certain kinds of behavior and rewarding it and punishing other kinds of

behavior or discouraging it. And I don't really think that this should be controversial, but unfortunately a lot of rhetoric on the right that we're just used to, that we've adopted over the last few decades, makes it controversial to

say these things. I think it's kind of a truism that an economy derives from a culture and Embedded in that, to your point, is the idea that morality matters, and it clearly functions in a free market, and a capitalist system doesn't just arise out of nowhere otherwise, you know, the people who had claimed that China, for example, would become economic would become politically liberal and socially liberal because it's economically liberal, they would have been proven right if

it was that economics decided. But actually it's the other way around, and it starts with people and their own voluntary actions. Now, the criticism of Tucker's piece, and you deal with this in your piece as well, is that if the free market leads to certain disasters in society, creative destruction implies both not only creation but also destruction,

and there's real societal costs to that. Then is Tucker arguing, and are folks like you who support his argument then arguing that we should sort of rebel against the free market in some ways because there are societal losses in free market systems as well. I think it's a matter

of priority. I think I think the best way to understand it is that even make sure it does desire a free market in a sense that we do have a drive within us right to be creative, to take initiative to buy and sell things amongst ourselves, the fourth and so on. But in order to do that, we need a governmental structure around it some way, but that the establishes kind of rules of the game and points

us in certain directions as opposed to others. So let me give an example, because I understand absolutely why many people might be listening saying I'm not sure what this guy's talking about, or I don't know if I quite agree with Tucker. This sounds like, you know, some kind of socialism kind of you know, great society typed out, And this is not what we're talking about. It's not

what Tucker's got talking about. Carlson said that our leaders should speak out against the ugliest parts of our financial system because not all commerce is good. Uh, some commerce is in fact harmful. And so what are the questions he asked, was why is it why is it defensible to loan people money, poor people money that they can't possibly repay, So take payday loan outlets and poor neighborhoods, right,

four hundred percent annual interests. This is this is this is a practice where you might raise a question mark might I say, why is this commerce good? And in fact, in American history, Abraham Lincoln, when he first ran for office, said, you know, loaning money to poor people at exorbitant rates

of interest. In that idea, Noah Webster during the ratification debate, said, look, you can't separate the morals of the people from the influence of money on men's sense of justice and moral obligation. The law, you know, influences our habit, and we should restrict credit to people who won't be able to pay money back in order really to encourage them to save and to be responsible. Now, I think that's a matter

of common sense. But when you when you have a kind of a brittle conservative rhetoric, it really is libertarian in a way, right, that says, well, there's no connection. I mean, that's that's why people were upset with what Tucker was saying. But I think no Webster was right. Right laws to credit the poor people, they help encourage good behavior. So that that leads to a fundamental question, which is is it government's job in some way to

promote virtue. People instantly sort of recoil when you talk about should government be promoting certain moral as values and principles and not others. Do you believe that it is the fundamental job of government to do so well? I think that the first instinctual reaction of many older conservatives would be to say, what are you talking about? The Taliban had a department of virtue and vice, and the last thing we do is last thing we want is

to increase the power of the administrative state. And there are certainly a lot of truth to that. In a way, I agree with that one hundred percent. At the same time, we can't neglect what law is. And here the American founders can help us out because they did not promote a kind of great society where government interfered in every part of people's lives. On the other hand, they did not lie to themselves and think that law and policy on matters of numbers, right on matters of economic policy,

we're just kind of morally neutral. They knew that law either encourages or discourages certain kinds of habit and certain kind of kinds of behavior, and they didn't pretend otherwise. So the way I put it is, of course government and law can't reach inside people and make them virtuous. That certainly is not something that law him do directly. In fact, other institutions to be doing that much more

directly than government. On hand, I mean to reward certain kinds of behavior and encourage it right, certain kinds of habits and ways of life, And it is to discourage other kinds of habits and ways of life, and to pretend otherwise, I think is very dangerous. Where does Trump factor in in this thesis? I mentioned in my open that in some sense what Tucker was explaining as why Trump won while the elites failed, he called them out on it. What is the takeaway in terms of what

the future of conservatism looks like? Is there something within Trump that recognizes the problem and you can say, here are the sorts of policies that we might want to push for based upon what he saw in the electorate. So I guess one question, what does the future of conservatism look like? Too? Well, the Republican rank and file simply reject this out of hand and take the sort of view that, well, look, this was a blip in

US history. This president actually rejected everything that we show it in our twenty twelve autopsy of why Mitt Romney lost and the status quo will ultimately prevail again, well, I certainly have the view that even though there are many people in Washington and elsewhere in power, you President Trump. I mean, they think that once President Trump leaves the scene, and of course they hope to force him out off the scene, force him off the stage, they hope that

things will go back to the way they were. And I think this is a dangerous delusion as well. I don't think things are going to go back to the way they were. I think that what we're having is, or what we should be having, is a very serious debate about what is a matter of principle and what's a matter of policy. So principles should be the things that don't change, right, that that dictate what kind of policy we should propose given the circumstances. But policy changes

over time because we find ourselves in different circumstances. So, you know, to give an example of I think what Trump understands and what Trump can actually teach us, the federalis papers. Let's go all the way back to the you know, the ratification of the US Constitution. Our founders are very clear about this. Justice is the end of government. And Charles Kessler, the editor of the Claremont Review Books

warned of this twenty years ago. He said, conservatives avoid arguing about questions of justice whenever possible, And by then I think he meant, you know, they like to argue about numbers in GDP and utilitarian kind of arguments of efficiency, and they don't want to argue about justice. In the meantime, the last talked about justice all the time, right, Social justice is their mantra. And so if we avoid arguing about questions, of arguing about political questions and talking about justice,

we really are are essuing politics. Kessler said, a central issue is justice, and that's the problem. So the example I would give is a matter of rhetoric when it comes to economic policy. Whatever the policy should be, we can debate about. We can debate about right with evidence if we if we know Paris as an example, will this lead to the ends that we will think about the arguments that are going to win that resonate with people. Trump's argument economically, over and over again is I care

about our people. My purpose is to make their lives better. And he's very clear about that. He's very very simple and stark language. Whereas conservatives are still in a way fighting the Cold War in their Mind. You know they're fighting is the Soviet Union, and they'll say things like, well, you know this is good because it's it's free, it leads to freedom and it's part of the free market. Well, freedom is good, right, but freedom needs to be justified

because ultimately justice is the end of government. The name of the piece is Tucker Carlson is right. You can find it at the American Mind and we've been speaking with its author, my friend, doctor Matt Peterson, vice president at the Clermont Institute and also the editor of the new website, The American Mind. Doctor Peterson, thanks so much for joining us. Thank you so much for having me, and we'll be right back. This is Ben Winegarden in for Buck Sex and on the Buck sexon Show eight

four four nine zero zero buck. That's eight four four nine zero zero two eight two five. All right, So we're about to round out our three here on the Buck Sex and Show. And this has been Ben Winegarden in four Buck Sex and follow me on Twitter at bh Winegarden. Check on my website at ben Winegarden dot com. In our last interview, we spoke about one thing that was very fundamental and it extends beyond any single presidency.

It's bigger than Donald Trump. It's bigger than Democrats and Republicans. Really, we talked about the fact that our elites have failed us, our ruling class has failed us, and that extends beyond

any one party. This outrage, this resistance, it extends beyond any one party, because really, what Donald Trump represents is a threat to the power of that failed, largely progressive, bipartisan elite and a representation of what the American people want and the American people being fed up with a so called group of representatives that don't actually represent them. So Trump, in my view, is a living, breathing symbol that they've failed. He's constructed a massive Trump Tower in

their collective heads. Again, this goes beyond any one presidency, and it goes to the core of what our nation is built on, and that is the idea of consent of the governed. That is how our republic works. The resistance, the outrage, the intransigence of our political class is in direct proportion to how strong his punchback has been against them.

They hate him, they hate what he represents, because he represents their failure, and he represents you, you, deplorable Americans, anyone who doesn't agree, anyone who dissents from the prevailing progressive orthodoxy. Finally, I just want to thank Buck sex and for having me on tonight. It's been a real honor and privilege. Hope you have a great weekend. Again, this is Ben Weegarten. Follow me on Twitter at Bhwinegarden

and online at Benwegarden dot com. Thank you so much and have a great weekend.