Mark Hemingway - How The Left Coast Got Antifa-ed

You know America is hanging on? But yeah, I'm doing all right. You know one thing that I know you get very focused in on is all the school stuff. You've been on the board of a classical school for nearly eighteen years. Want to I want you to tell me about that, But then I also want to ask about you may have seen, you know, Biden is saying that it's cruel now to prevent gender transition surgery for kids. That's it's cruel to stop kids from getting surgery that

is going to almost certainly ruin their lives. But anyway, well we'll get to that first. Telling me what is it? What is this classical school You've been on the board of for almost twenty years. Yeah, my church has had a school in some form or another for you know, nearly one hundred years, like a lot of Lutheran churches. But you know, like I think a religious education in this country kind of suffered an identity crisis in the you know, in the sort of the late twentieth century,

and you know, our school have gotten very small. We were reciting what to do with it, and you know, you know, the school population have gotten so low, like do we close the school or something. So what we did, and this was you know, gosh, eighteen twenty years ago. Now, we basically doubled down on the religious emphasis of the school and we made it a classical school. Now twenty

years ago. It's kind of funny because you know, talking about classical education like like these days, you know, I talked to well educated parents and they know exactly what classical educationism and ask me questions like are you teaching Saxon or sing a poor math? And they have like very opinionated ideas about private schooling because they've had to

because of the collapse of public education. But at the time we did this, we didn't really know what we were doing, and we were taking a gamble, and obviously with you know, during the pandemic was sort of the culminations. I mean, you know, we have a very well regarded classical religious school in a Washington, DC suburb, and during the pandemic, when all the schools in the Northern Virginia were closed, we had to take the application off the

website at our school, which is crazy. And now like getting into private schools in DC in recent years has been absolute blood sport, which is just you know, amazing to me because you look at how many people in the DC area are in somewhere or another, you know, responsible for destroying public education, you know, via the Democratic Party or teachers unions or whatever it is, and you know they're living in an area where you know, nobody with any money feels good about sending their kids a

public school. So, you know, education reformancy has got to be a much higher priority than it's been. You know, I think that one one constant reality of the public school system. And I know there are people always they always played this game like we can't speak about this with any nuance or or you know, it's always oh, but you know I went to a great public school or they're great public schools, hear me, Okay, but there are also a lot of terrible public schools and they

never get better. And the fact that the DC public if you're right next to Washington, DC, you live right outside of DC, I know where you guys are, and I know that city pretty well, having lived there a couple of times. They've spent don't they spend something like in the twenty thousand dollars range per student. It's like the highest in the country. And the public school system there is is horrible. I remember there was a Washington

Post story. This is about a decade ago, and so I'm sure the figures are certainly much higher now, but Washington, DC was spending about thirty thousand dollars per kid. Wow, and Washington the Washington DC school district is by several objective metrics, the worst school district in the in the country. I mean, it's like constantly can eating with school districts, and in certain parts of New Jersey for like the absolute wrisk performance in terms of dropout rates and stuff

like that. You know, it's it's also a situation where there've been a number of high profile cases in the last twenty years of like teachers union corruption, like actual embezzlement like millions of dollars and things like that from the unions and schools in DC. So, I mean, it's

just just bad at every level. But what's also interesting though, in this area in particular, is that just outside of DC, in northern Virginia, you know, in Loudon County, in Fairfax County, you had, by some measures, some of the best public high schools in the nation. Fairfax County in particular. You know, it was always upheld as a model. And what happened.

A bunch of woke people got elected to the school board and like within a span of a few years, it's become a national news story what's happened with Loudon County schools with the trans bathroom stuff. And then in Fairfax County they had this famous magnet school for science and Technology, that Thomas Jefferson High School. It's when you know, it was an Ivy League feeder school and it was a public high school, and the day school board has

basically tried to destroy merit based admission to it. You had to test into it, right, But what happened was is because there were a ton of Asian immigrants in me in the Northern Virginia, you know, and again these are historically discriminated against immigrants. We're taking up all the spots in the STEM schools. So all of a sudden they had to do away with the merit based admission to the school. And that this has been a big fight. Um as that school gets, you know, fallow starts to

fall apart. Um. There's a recent scandal where they didn't inform several students because of what looks like because they were you know, white or Asian, that they had won national merit scholarships. You know, I mean like they're just they're just waging war on people. And it's it's it's absolutely sounding to me to watch this just implode and everyone's sort of standing around, powerless, you know, to do

anything about it. And I've been screaming for in the twenty plus years Republicans need to make an education reform a much bigger political priority. How do they do that? Well, for one thing, they need to start talking about it. Um. You know, obviously there's you know, a war are on meritocracy in this country, you know, right now in advance for an advance of what looks like there's a potential to the Spreme Court to basically, you know, take away

affirmative action in this country. Ivy League schools even have announced they're no longer going to be using SAT scores. You know, and I'm sorry, but SAT scores and standardized tasks. Look, we all have issues with them. You know, maybe we didn't enjoy them, but the fact of the matters is

SAT scores, for instance, we're a great equalizer. I mean, it was a you know, if you were an Asian immigrant who spends you know, I don't know, twenty hours a week or whatever outside of school, working in your family restaurant, you don't have time to burnish your resume doing all these fancy extracurriculous that look good on an Ivyleague school application. But if you go in and you know, you pull a fourteen fifty on the SAT, then you've

got a shot at getting in an Ivyleague school. Well, they do away with the SAT all of a sudden, What's all that's going to do is empower you know, the kids who have the money and time and resources go out and burnish their resume with you know, charity work and you know, higher education consultants and all that other nonsense you know, involving in schools these days. So

that's like one issue right there. You just talk about, like, you know, why are we doing away with merit based admission to you know, like STEM school, Stem high schools, now and colleges. You know, just go out there and talk about that. I wonder as well. You know, you're so you're on the board of this school having for a long time of your school attached to your Lutheran church. Are there parents who show up at any of the meetings? Now?

I know it's it's a pre selected group in so far as these are people that are choosing to go to this school and it's you know, Christian affiliated, But is anyone showing up and saying, hey, you know, I really think we need to expand gender ideology for the kids starting around the third grade? I mean, do you come up against that? Uh? I always I find it

remarkable trying to figure out where does this begin? Because we know what happens in a lot of different schools across the country where they start the very sexualized books for young kids and the LGBTQ plus indoctrination stuff at a very young age. Obviously in Florida that calls to Hughes fight a huge fight. Do you know, had you come across any parents who feel like there's not enough of the left wing stuff going on for the kids, do you know what I mean? I mean that they're

not being LGBTQ plus friendly enough or something. There's stuff like that, but it's very much confined to the margins. One reason why religious schools are good for this sort of thing, and if I were, you know, a parent, I'd be out there looking for religious that cares about these issues. I'd be looking at religious schools is because most religious schools are actually controlled by the church. In order to be on the board of the school or whatever,

you also be a member of the church. And then you know that board ensures that nothing that the school does is going to go against the doctrine of the church. And if the church that's running the school is you know, a solid, you know church with traditionally Christian, biblically centered beliefs,

you're not going to encounter any of that stuff. Because the moment the parents, the parents sort of raise these issues, then you know they can be you know, pretty much dismissed because you know, it's it's they don't have any sort of direct input in it. It's a private school. You can need to choose this in your kids there

are choose not to. And then the other thing that's happened simply is like I said, you know, it's become basically what supposed pandemic become blood sport in a lot of you know, fluent areas to get your kids into a private school, and the demand to get into private schools is really really high, so that for once, you know, if you if you have a private school where there isn't a lot of pressure to get kids into the school, and in fact, as is the case in a lot

of private schools, you know they're turning people away because they're waiting less in every grade. Then parents aren't in in a position whatever too, So I should say, parents who have ideas contrary to with the school wants in terms of values, you know, are not in position to tell schools what to do, which is very different obviously than public schools, where you know you have all these you know, massive political factors going in to things, and

it really sort of upsets things. Do you think that they because you're you're a Virginia resident. You mentioned Loudon County as well. That was clearly a big part of Governor Younkin's victory, right, the frustration with the schools because of COVID, but also the you know, trans student attacking the other student in the bathroom and the policies around a lot of this. Does that frustration continue and do you think that that'll play a role in how Virginia

goes just politically in general in twenty twenty four. I think it, honestly, you know, continues because it very much affects the Northern Virginia area where there are a lot of affluent people and in a huge population hub that determines a lot of the voting in the state essentially, And so what happened in Virginia, it's really interesting and instructive and why I think that Republicans need to go out there and talk about this a lot more because

you know, it really worked for young Ken. Basically, you have a situation where, yes, most of the residents in Northern Virginia are you overwhelming Democrats, and they vote overwhelming Democrat. But having said that, they're not like urban progressives. They're you know, like they tend to be much more moderate Democrats, unlike say, the voters that live in DC are big cities, and these are people that you know, care about certain things a great deal, you know. And with the pandemic,

basically two things happen. One is that DC completely fell apart as a city like a lot of other urban centers. It just it had been falling apart for a while, but it got really really bad. Now, like the homeless problem, all these other things are exploding in DC in ways

that wasn't before. And so young kid is running, you know, post pandemic, and the people in northern Virginia are looking over the bridge and they're seeing all this crime that they're worried about, you know, coming over into their neighborhoods. And then the other thing was Virginia had one of the worst pandemic responses of any state in the nation. I mean, it basically just completely shut down schools for eighteen months, you know, deferred to the teachers' unions on everything.

You know, these are high achieving parents with jobs, and they were frustrated beyond belief with you know, having to take care of their kids and you know, having all the problems that come with doing school from home and seeing what their kids woke curriculum was like for the first time, and all these other things. And you know, I'm sorry, you know, with a lot of Democrats are

on the country, especially the affluent ones. If you do two things, you know, if you threaten their property values at crime and you you know, ruin their kids ability to get into a top flight college because you're messing with their education, well then God have mercy on your political soul. I mean, it's just such a losing message for Democrats across the board, you know, those two things, and that's how young can one basically, I think messaging

very effectively on both of those issues. But education in particular was just huge because you had all those international scandals and Karen McCulloch just took for granted that the national press in Washington, DC was going to run interference for him, and it didn't work out that way because you know, Yunka was relentless about hammering the education issue and it resonated with enough Northern Virginia voters to peel them off. It was very effective strategy, as we saw.

I want to ask you speaking about how cities are doing. You are a native Portlander? Is that correct? Well, my mom I'm a native, or well my mother is. My mother grew up in Portland. I lived in Portland for a time. I've got a ton of relatives growing married. Yeah, we want to talk Portland and what has happened to that city specifically in just a second. But first I want to ask everybody who's listening, how's your energy level these days? Are you as fit and energetic as say

our friend Governor Ronda Santa. See that guy's lost like twenty pounds, man, he's doing chin ups with one hand. Well, you could benefit, like a lot of folks out there from Chalk. It's as easy as getting dialed into the right supplements that have been helping so many men and women already in this audience thanks to Chalk. I introduce you to their products last year. Here's how you spell it cchoq. They make the most effective supplements that bring

your energy levels back to optimum. They spend years looking for the right helpful ingredients and organize them into products especially made for men and women. If you're looking for an answer that's a little more sophisticated than that fifth cup of coffee in the afternoon, check out Chalk's Male Vitality Stack or the Female Vitality Stack. Each one is formulated to help maximize your everyday potential. Their website is simple,

easy to spell chalkcoq dot com. Use my name Buck when you make your first purchase on the site and get thirty five percent off. Any Chalk subscription for life, not just your first purchase for life thirty five percent off. Go to Chalk cchoq dot com. Use my name Buck. When you're setting yourself up. You'll receive these products every month.

They're really going to help you. You You can cancel anytime if you want to, but once you see all the benefits, you feel a lot of benefits, You're gonna love your Chalk. Go to cchoq chalk dot com. Promo code Buck. All right, Portland, Can I just tell you. I've been to Portland once. It was two and ten, and I remember thinking to myself, this city is amazing. It's beautiful, the food is great, it's got a really interesting vibe to it. Obviously great coffee,

like so much going for it. It wasn't very expensive then either. It was starting to get more expensive to city. But I remember also talking to people who were there, and I was like, when I'm in a place for the first time it's been They said, yeah, you know, the downtown and we got a lot of a lot of vagrants. That it was. It was just beginning to happen, right, and you could kind of see that the the Democrat left was becoming more assertive in its craziness, you know.

And I think this really happened to Austin in the last you know, five to seven years. You know, these cities go through, all these people moved there, they realize how great it is. But then also the Democrat reality starts to creep in more and more. What happened to Portland, man, I mean it is it is hemorrhaging people. It had I think in twenty twenty one a thousand shootings, which some some crazy number, which for a city of that size, just means that there are areas where there are shootings

going on all the time. What happened? What happened to and why isn't Why aren't Oregonians up in arms? Yeah, this is a good question. I mean the answer is Oregonians are up in arms, which is to say, um, business owners in Portland and almost everyone outside of the city are, you know, incredibly frustrated by what's going on?

And I'll sort of get to why that, why that is in the moment in a moment, but basically what happened is one of my favorite Portland anecdotes is is that, you know, starting in the late nineteen nineties, Portland became known as a very trendy city. And as evidence of that, I like the site that they didn't they didn't mark. They did this elaborate market research. I remember reading about

this New York Times. They were trying to pinpoint what started the Paps Blue Ribbon revival in the nineteen nineties, like why all of a sudden hipsters started drinking Paps

Blue Ribbon. And they found out that, for whatever reason, it started as an organic trend in Portland, Oregon, Like you know, like Portland was like hipster central, like that's where people, you know, they had a great music scene, it had, you know, this burgeoning restaurant scene that you mentioned that was like really sort of flowering and started in late nineteen nineties, and it became trendier and trendier until right around the time when you were there in

twenty and ten, that was the height of Portlandy of fame, remember the TV show about that or whatever. The sort of like made fun made sort of gentle fun of right about it. They didn't want to eat the chicken in like the chicken kebab or whatever until they knew the chicken's name and what the chickens hopes and dreams were and all I remember that from Portlandia. Yeah, right. Funny thing about that sketch was that Portlandia was like it was the reality of Portland at that was so

much actually crazier than the sort of sketch show. There was like an actual there was a local culinary competition right around the time I want to say, a year or two before the show aired with that sketch, and you just described about meeting the heritage Breed chickens where there was a local culinary competition where two chefs got into a fight and one of them had a fractured tibias result with mug shots because one of them wasn't

using locally sourced pork at some culinary competition. I mean, that's how crazy Portland was in terms of all that stuff. But it was right around that time that like, because it became trending the nineties, people started moving there and

moving there. And the situation with Oregon is it's like a lot of Western stay it's kind of this way, but Oregan is kind of an extreme example where Oregon has about four million people and it's it's a large state, you know, it's like the size of Germany and has four million people. But of the four million people, of just over about half those the population lives in like

two or three counties that make Portland metro area. So what happens is is that once there's this even greater influx of population into Portland, then all of a sudden, whatever is going on in that city, no matter how crazy it is, it's going to like basically ruin the

politics the entire state. And in this case, basically it was a whole bunch of Californians and you know, people from around the country that lived in urban environments that had gotten too expensive or you know whatever, they were just sick of dealing with, you know, the traffic and smog in La or whatever it was, all moved to Portland and they brought with them their progressive politics, thinking that while I can just have my progressive politics somewhere

where it's cheaper and easier to live, and then almost immediately started voting for all these you know, sort of radical ideas and progressive policies that you know, they basically completely ruined the city. Why is it the heartland of antifa? Like how did that have because that's even a level beyond you know, people say, oh, you know, they'll call them hippies. I'm like, these are not hippies. There's these

are people. There's a lot of white dudes with face and neck tattoos, putting black balaclavas over their heads, acting like they're fighting fascism by throwing rocks at cops and immigration you know, enforcement officers and like bad stuff going on. Yeah, that's actually a really interesting question. Um um, So, I don't you know how familiar with the history of this

sort of stuff. You probably are more so than most people, But you know, there's this issue of anarchism, which was an actual sort of you know, prominent current in the late nineteenth century. I remember, well the late nineteen I think you could say the late twentieth century when they did all that stuff in Seattle. Remember it went they went crazy and they shouted all the Starbucks windows right yeah right, yeah, no, no, that wasn't that was Seattle too.

It was the Pacific Northwest. But in the late nineteenth century, remember was the the person that assassinated was a McKinley was an anarchist, and there was all this anarchist violence in the early part of the twentieth century. Well, for whatever reason, the anarchists were actually you know, there was a there was a strong sort of bunch of anarchists enclaves that were in the Pacific Northwest. I mean it was always looming. I mean there are towns in Washington

State that existed this day. They were founded specifically as like anarchists, like communes or whatever. And so there was always that sort of current. And then you built on top of that with this sort of weird hippie fringe that was always attractive Pacific Northwest, you know, like there was like some extreme ideology, you know, in terms of

the hippies. There was a guy named John Zerzan that was a living in Eugene, Oregon when I was going to school there in the mid nineties, and he had a radio show, right, and he was this anti technology anarchist. He was a close associate of Ted Kazinski, the UNI bomber or whatever, and he was going around in Eugene, Oregon when I was there in the mid nineties, basically like reaching to you know, these gutter punks that were like homeless kids skateboarding on the streets and preaching anarchism

to them. And when I was in high school, when I was in college, there are all these stories of like the you know, these anarchists breaking into like city council meetings and all this other stuff and causing a ruckus and like all the local stuff in Eugene, Oregon

University of Organism. And then like three or four years after that, I turn on the television during the WTO riots and I look up and I'm like, oh my gosh, it's all the same gutter punks you know that I was seeing in Oregon um you know, uh, just a couple of years earlier. And so, I mean I really think that there was there was this sort of weird, underground ideological thing that had been happening for a long time in the state that sort of created this um.

But but it didn't really become a problem until it certainly grew around in twenty and ten with the with the Occupy Wall Street movements right gave some fuel to that. But what really happened would really change, was all of a sudden, with all these progressive anti politics, basically there was no longer any political will to reign any of these people in and all of a sudden, like Portland

became like an Antifa theme park. Basically, well, these people could go out, you know, and do all this stuff and they would never be um, you know, sort of attacked or you know, you know, he's going back ten years ago, and the cops were afraid to do too much or else they'd be, you know, accused of attacking you know, homeless kids. Um, never mind that they were

basically violent. They were organizing themselves into terror cells and they were just going around like on random Wednesday nights, breaking the windows and restaurants and this totally insane, and they just allowed this to continue to this day. I mean, you know, you may have seen this. Actually, Ted Wheeler, the mayor, who I think it's tough. There's some really bad mayors, but certainly one of the worst mayors in America in terms of our results. And it's kind of

funny to see him. I remember during the pandemic where he went down to talk to Antifa and they just started, you know, f bombs and you know, you're the worst. They they they just spot him, just like they despise everybody else because they're spiteful, angry little idiots who aren't accomplishing anything other than just destroying property and making people's lives, you know, more difficult and miserable, um, you know, the

surrounding community. But but I think it's interesting is that finally now Portland has started to have a little bit of a conversation about, hey, maybe we can't just have the whole downtown be an open air homeless shelter, Like maybe maybe that's actually a bad idea. And Ted Wheeler has started to try to move in that direction. And there are there is still this left wing vanguard there that is like that the city has been destroyed, and they're like, how dare you try to turn things around?

They're still they're still pushing Oh no, yeah, I mean as bad as Ted Wheeler is, and he's horrendous. He very nearly lost the Democratic primary in the last election to a woman who was literally Antifa. It's like publicly declaring she was Antifa and he won like a few percentage points over this one. I mean, so, I mean

that's the political reality that you're you're dealing with. But you're right, they don't make any distinctions between say, you know Ted Wheeler, the guy that you know constantly is attacking the police unions on their behalf and the overall you know, sort of fascist structure or whatever they're fighting. He's just part of it. But but part of the reason why that you know, they're able to do this is because they have a demonstrated history of pushing Ted

Wheeler around. Portland has this you know events, the city of Roses, they have a Rose Parade every year or whatever it was. This goship was, like I want to say, it was about four years ago they Ted Wheeler canceled like the entire Rose Parade because Antifa threatened violence against the parade anonymously, by the way, and the reason why they were threatening violence was because the Multnoma County Republicans

wanted to march in the parade. Like, if he's going to cancel an entire parade because you sent him an anonymous threatening letter about this, why wouldn't you keep pushing it? I mean, he's just you know, a read in the wind, you know, as far as you know, ending fascism in America, so you know, why not push him until he breaks.

It's also fascinating because in the case of Portland Antifa, you had people who were trying to burn down a federal courthouse who you could see were almost all white guys.

There were some women, but they were white, and they were doing this in the name of BLM, and the whole thing just struck me as, Oh, so they're just you just choose whatever cause suits the moment, so that you can throw your Molotov cocktails and act like you're some kind of hero against fascism, right, And they'd already burned like a police facility and a bunch of other stuff around town at the time that happened, and they,

you know, they weren't even doing anything there. The wheeler was joining the protests, and the national media was basically one hundred percent behind it, like, oh, well, this is just a peaceful protest with a few agitators. I mean it was. It was totally insane. Seattle's just just as bad, right pretty much. I Mean that's Seattle had the chatz or the chop or whatever they were calling it a

Capitol hill zone. Are they turning things around? I just under I haven't spent much time to the Pacific Northwest. I told you, I've really just been out there that one time. I went to Cannon Beach, which is beautiful though, and it strikes me as it should be this great place. But you've got two cities that should be the jewels of the Pacific Northwest that are just turning into crappy places to spend spend too much time, certainly in the downtowns.

Oh yeah, I know right now. Seattle is actually there was just a big story recently about Seattle's facing a ton of lawsuits from business owners in the Chazu as they should. Basically, they just completely surrendered law and order and you know, left these business people and people that lived in an area at the mercy of these you know,

like literal war lords, you know, running the city. So, yeah, they're still dealing with that Amazon and Amazon is going to occupy an entire skyscraper in downtown Seattle, and they just moved the whole project outside of the city because they weren't going to begin to deal with that. And you know, these things keep happening, and yet somehow, you know,

there isn't the political reform movement that you'd think be happening. UM. In the last mid term, right, UM, Phil Knight, the founder of Nike, dumped millions of dollars into the candidacy of a tough on crime independent candidate and then later switched to dumping millions of dollars into the Republican in the Oregon governor's race, and in a three way race, Republican came very close to winning, UM but ultimately didn't.

And then they ended up with yet another like crazy progressive UM governor and Oregan's governor prior to that, Tina cootech I think, wait now, Tina Gotech's the current governor, Cameron Brown Brown. Yeah, Um, she she had the lowest approval ratings of any governor in the country. And first and you still can't get rid of these you know, progressives. They just elected basically an acolyte of Brown essentially to run the state. UM. It's it's like so far gone.

I don't know what it's going to take to fix it. Part of the problem is is that you know people, Um, you know all of the people that are sick of what's going on. Portland are just moving to Boise, and this is you know, I think a big warning for everyone else. Um. You know, Boise is the only big population anchor in Idaho. And you know, twenty five years ago Boise was one of the most provincial cities in America. Now there's got a tech sector in a microburry in

every corner. I wouldn't be surprised, you know, if the Idaho isn't careful that that state goes the way of Oregon in another twenty years. Um, So people really need to be thinking hard about this. I think the good news is after people saw what happened to Portland and Austin in particular, people are a lot more wary about, you know, people moving into your state. Um, you know, they'll just necessarily see it as an unalloyed economic good.

They have to understand that there's a culture that's very much they're worth preserving. And let me tell you, you know, as a third generation Oregonian, I am really really sad. I love that state. I mean it was gorgeous. I mean it was a real privilege to grow up there in terms of like just an unreal natural beauty of the place, and not just that, like a wonderful local culture.

You know, for years growing up it was run by a bunch of liberal rockefellow Republicans, but they're mostly libertarian leaving me a loan types who did a really good job of managing competing interests. And more than that, they were just competent people. You know, they balanced budgets, they did the right thing. They were good on environmentalist issues in a very positive way that I unfortunately, I think the Republican Party is a little too captive to special

interests on you know, nationally. It was just it was a it was a good state to be from, and I was really really proud of it. And like now you mentioned, oh from Oregon, people literally roll their eyes in your face because Portland is that bad. I mean, I've got whatever, people, I guarantee you whatever you heard about Portland, it's worse. I mean it's it's downtown is a really really scary place. And it's not just downtown.

All of the violence and all the antife and all the crazy homeless people, you know, yelling obscenities in the street corner that's spread that basically the entire city and anyone that tells you different is lying to you. Yes you can live there. Yes it's not always violent. You know, you can get around this. But like people that live there and say, well it's not so bad and they have Stockholm syndrome, they don't know what like an actual

functioning city looks like. I mean, I was I was in Baghdad for a while during the war, and there were people who were going out and you know, getting like milk and eggs. But it was bad, right, I mean, it's you know, people are still living in these places that just bad things are happening, So you know that's they're they're quiet there. You can find quiet in any place at any time if you look for it. But if there's too much of the other stuff going on,

that's real problem. I want to ask you about elections, by the way, in election security. I know you've done a lot of research into well the most important thing, which is how do we fix things for twenty twenty four instead of people just walking around screaming at me and others, we won I look at them and I'm like, not not really, I don't know what else to say. Like,

you know, we can sit around and talk. You can tell me that they cheated, and but we got to fix the cheating, not just stand here and scratch out that we won, right. I mean, it's like if the other team goes home with the trophy. You can say the ref fix the game as much as you want, but you got to figure out how you're gonna win the next game. Let's talk about that in a second. Though. You know, there's no company out there more focused on delivering the goods you need for a great night's sleep.

Then My Pillow, the pillows, the mattress covers, the sheets, the Geeza dream Sheets exclusively from My Pillow are amazing. They're still in stock, by the way, even though they're at their lowest price ever. The sheets come in as low as twenty nine ninety eight one. When you use my name Buck as the promo code, it's time to update your sheets. Got a couple of pairs of them? Buy a Geeza Dream Sheets set right now with the

world's best cotton. Geeza cotton comes from a region of Egypt of the same name, where incredibly soft cotton is grown. My Pillow products come with a ten year warranty and a sixty day money back guarantee. You get eight weeks of every night sleeping on the sheets. To make sure your purchase is a great one. You're gonna love them. Go to my pillow dot com. Click on radio list or specials. Check out this flash sail on the Geeza

dream sheets. Remember to use my name as the promo code Buck or call eight hundred seven nine two three two six nine. That's eight hundred seven nine two three two six nine. Get some Geeza dream sheets, all right? Mark the election in twenty twenty four. He's going to be hard for Republicans to win in terms of processes, vote counting, and tactics unless we do what how do we fix this thing? That's that's really tough. But I mean there are two sort of basic things here I

think need to be addressed. One is that I was somewhat heartened to see that Trump came out and sort of, you know, moderated his position on vote by mail. To be clear, I think vote by mail is terrible. It's obviously more rife for fraud than almost any other form of voting, and I'm not a fan of it. I wish we could all come together society vote you know, from sun up to sundown on a single day. And know the results right away. I think that is the

way that democracy should be run. But the fact of the matter is is that's not the way it's been run for a long time. And even a lot of Republicans are really you know, accustomed to vote by mail. So public's need to come up with a strategy to

sort of address that. So we don't have you know, two months of Democratic organizers running around, you know, maximize vote totals, where Republicans are sitting back on their hands, as we saw on the last mid term, basically hoping that Republicans turn out big on election day to overwhelm that effort. Again, I'm not a fan of vote by mail.

I think it's righted by fraud. But as a friend of mine put it, you can't have arms control unless both sides have news, right, and so intel Republicans prove that they can sort of you know, equalize the playing field in terms of organizing for vote by mail or whatever, they're not going to be in a good position or whatever to sort of push back against a lot of these other sort of you know, dodgy ways that they're trying to sort of expand the vote in it, open

it up to the hoping up the process to abuse. So that's one thing I think that needs to happen.

And the other thing is that one of the things that came out when I worked with my wife on her last book on election security issues called rake ye have a copy of, and one of the things that really sort of shocked the heck out of me was, and I think most people don't even realize this, which was that there were some shenanigans in a gubernatorial election in New Jersey in like the early nineteen eighties, and a federal judge put the entire Republican Party under a

consent decree, which basically meant they couldn't do any sort of election day monitoring or other in all the traditional activities the party would do on election day. And that federal judge literally he retired from the bench and he kept senior status. I don't know if you know what that is. That's like a way for retired judges to sort of like stay active in the profession while actually

being retired. And he kept senior status just for for for like decades, just to just to keep this injunction in place, basically, and that injunction wasn't lifted until that judge died and an Obama pointed, judge looked at what he had done is basically hamstring the Republican Party for forty years and keep them from doing any election day

you know, monitoring another activity. And in twenty twenty was the first election where the Republican Party since it was nineteen eighty or eighty two, the Republican Party had you know, the ability to go out there and send organizers out in the field or whatever and do poll watching and all that stuff that the party would normally do the

first time in nearly forty years. And so the party itself didn't have a lot of muscle memory in terms of like how to go about doing those things, having the trained lawyers out there that do that sort of thing. So I think what needs to happen now that like your pug and party can go back and do this. You know, we need people at the ground level. You know, we need party precinct people you know, going in and

volunteering to do the election day stuff. We need the and we need the party apparatus to go in and you know, make sure that there are people in place to like watch these things and prevent any sort of Shenanians that are going on, because I guarantee there are Shenanions going on making accusations about widespread fraud or anything like that. But people are very much abusing the process in all sorts of ways and get away with it. And we need to be much more sort of vigilant.

And that comes down to the listeners. You know they'll volunteer. He is hem and Nature on Twitter. Highly recommend you follow him Mark Hemmingway everybody, and also look for his work on real Clear investigations and over at the Federalist dot com market. Has been an honor, a privilege, and a privilege, my friend. Thank you for being here with this. We hope you come back. It's great to be on here.