MK Ham - Inside the CNN Implosion

What's what's the title of the sub stack, mk, hammer, It's always hammer or something. It's always hammered time. So I want to start. We have we have some commonality,

we have some similarities. Um, we are both people who have worked in the past at CNN as people who are not willing to go along with the destruction of America, and therefore our time at CNN was limited, right, Like, there's a certain if you're only gonna go on there and a certain amount of times before you just start to say I'm not gonna play I'm not gonna play the game, guys, and then you get sidelined. Okay, we're

gonna get into all this. Don Lemon is he out at CNN as I speak to you right now or is that just the rumor and what happened? And are you surprised that mister Don Lemon, as I believe Tucker calls him, has come out to say that women in their forties should should just like give up basically, Yeah, I mean I should have packed it in a long time ago. Uh No, I thought what he said was appalling, And it shows how much he thinks he can get away with that. That just came out without his two

female co hosts. It's not a surprise to him that he's sitting next to two women. By the way, Poppy Harlowe is like forty something. I know, it's it's absolutely crazy.

Here's what happened in that situation. He thought he could say something horrible and personal and nasty and misogynistic about a Republican woman and that everybody would be like, that's cool, because often that's what happens, and so he thought he'd get that little thrill, and then it turned out, Oh no, I'm sitting here with two women, and they, at least one of them, thought I went a little far. By the way, had I been on set, like, I have no idea how exactly I would have reacted to that.

I think it would have been forceful. I think is the word that I would go for. But I don't. I don't know what his status is because I'm not on the inside track over at CNN right neither. I'm actually unofficially bet so. My co host Clay Travis on radio you Know Well, was officially banned from CNN for

talking about the First Amendment and boobs. I was unofficially banned from CNN by Jeff Zucker when he saw me and told me I wasn't welcome in the building, even though I was there to visit a friend after I was no longer in the employee of CNN because that she asked to extend a contributor contract for me there and I said no, and I had no job and no like no media job lined up, certainly no TV income of any kind. At the time, I was like,

I'm out. I can't do this anymore. So, and now your time at CNN, as people watch this will be at its at its terminus, which is a lot of fun. It's the best to get people right as they're exiting the death star, the death star of liberal lunacy. I want to ask you, though, did Jeff Zucker destroy CNN or did Donald Trump break CNN? Like who's more responsible for CNN becoming the dumpster fire? That it is? So obviously? Look,

I think Zucker has to take responsibility. He was in charge of CNN, like Trump's done in charge of CNN. You don't have to do his bidding. You don't have to do the twenty four seven pissing match? Am I allowed to say that? Yeah? Thing Trump? Trump wanted to break CNN, right, like that was his whole and I think that he succeeded. But you're saying Zucker should have prevented the breakage of CNN. That yeah, right, you indulged this like sort of yeah, it's like a Manhattan rich

guy pissing match in between these two. You indulged it. As an alleged newsman. He could have said, no, this is not what we're doing. But he chose to lean into it, right, which is why I'm persona non grata Like I I was not leaning into it. If you lean into it, you get on air. If you don't, you don't get on air. So we got to talk about what she did lean into the tuban situation or at least leading on Twitter with yeah, yeah, let's not

get confused. Everybody with with with Tuban, who I think if you're looking for an ignominious met a moment that was captured on video, right, I mean a lot of people do a lot of things. But if you're looking for somebody who's doing crazy things that their colleagues are actually able to see, that is I mean, that was amazing just for a review for everybody. Jeffrey Tubin was on I believe with The New Yorker, where he was

a long time yes, a long time contributor. He decided to contribute something else and which was his naked to form during that zoom call, and his colleague saw him and he was is it. I think it is a technically in flagrante delicto. I mean, is that what it is? That? Is that? Only for the other thing? You know what I mean? I mean stuff was going on. I don't know what the Latin whether that would uh auto erotica I think is actually perhaps so. But you got in

trouble because you tweeted about this. I mean they actually took action against you for pointing out some of the absurdity. Tell us what happened here with Tuban Gay. Yeah, well so Tuban was caught on tape doing this. This is

not disputed. There there are situations where a me too accusation or something that goes on in the workplace is alleged, but you don't actually know if it's real, and we should be cognisitive that and like way these accusations, this one was real, cut and dried, like we know what happened. It was on video people's faces. You could say, okay, so he so he ends up back on the network. I don't know, seven or eight months later, I believe it was. Now the incident did not happen at a

CNN meeting. It happened at this othern meeting. But I thought, you know, we've been talking about me too for like four or five years now, and we're just gonna we're just gonna welcome him back. Not just welcome him back.

But there was a full interview about the incident as he was greeted back onto the air, right so shortly after that happened in January of I don't know what a year ago now, you ry of twenty twenty two, I guess I got into a fight with Andrew Kazinski my colleague on Twitter about some coverage at CNN did of the congressional baseball shooting. Because there I was like, no, it wasn't covered like it would have been covered if its Democrats. That's crazy to say, of course, Like let's

just let's just be honest about it. It faded in like within forty eight hours from what we were talking about. Wait, I'm sorry, just just kind of just just for review. The Bernie Sanders supporters screaming about how this is for healthcare, who tried to assassinate with a rifle and actually shot Steve Scalise, but tried to assassinate about a dozen specifically conservative members of Congress. That guy, that's who we're talking about, which I think when you let people go Wait, that

really was what. Yeah, he was screaming this is for healthcare while he's shooting it at members of Congress who he made sure were Republicans beforehand. That's what he doubled checked. He doubled checked that they were Republicans before he went

out to try to assassinate them en mass. Anyway, within twenty four to thirty six hours, CNN had kind of moved on from this story, and people were disputing this online last year over some argument, and I was like, no, no no, no, Look I was there twenty four hours later, less than forty eight hours later, the news fans were gone. I was on TV at the congressional baseball game where we're standing in front of the victims of this shooting and we were talking about wait for it, Mike Pence

got a lawyer. That was the story we were talking about. So I put this on Twitter and Andrew Kazinski argues with me about it, at which point I was like, why you're going pretty hard on me about this. I feel like you never said anything about like Tuban and Cuomo. And then it gets into like, well, this is why you should have said something about Tuban and I said it explicitly and I got suspended without my knowledge for

the next six to seven months. So who makes that decision within CNM, Like who does the who puts you in CNN jail? This was Zucker. It was Zucker right right from l Yeah Road Road to the defense of of Tuban. I really do think that there was a

there was a perception over there at CNN. It's kind of amazing because now I think I think that CNN it became such a to anybody who was being objective, including Democrats and leftists and liberals and other people that I know who are honest about this kind of stuff, that it just became it just became a joke because it kept holding itself out as some kind of gold standard of journalism, even during the Trump years. I mean, MSNBC, Yeah, they're like lunatic Marxists, I get it, But but everyone

knows that. I mean, there's not there's not this game of we're doing the you know, gold standard, straight down the middle journalism stuff, and CNN kind of pretends that that's still what it is. And it's such an obvious and laughable fraud that I wonder if it ever can recover, where does it go from here? Look, I'm not sure. I mean, I do think that the brand took a drubbing during those years that I'm not sure how you

come back from. Because you can you can sort of put on the face as if you're doing the work you're doing during the journalistic work. Look at us, we're seeing in but people have changed their habits and you're you're fighting this tide of people having decided like this doesn't feel like CNN used to feel when I turned to it for actual, you know, breaking news coverage, which is a thing that CNN can do well. It has bureaus all over the world and can do that kind

of stuff well. But it invested in other things during the Zuccer years, and those things were not serving people. And so now you've got cord cutters and everybody turning to online and alternative sources, and why would they turn back. I don't understand how you make the sale because there's already people who do hard left commentary perfectly, well, right, you don't. I'm not sure you need a substitute for that. Yeah, I just don't think it really has a place to go.

I think that Chris Lickt is the new guy, right, I don't know what he can what he can really do with that place other than try to make it. The real answer, I think would be to make CNN. Here, here's my theory, and I'll give this to them for free.

Make CNN a place where they really are doing both voices, and I mean really do both voices, meaning that you're going to have you know, it can't just be all the hosts or Democrats and they have three out of four people on or Democrat pundits that you know, it would have to be No, you're gonna have real people, because if you had a place I think in the media now where people could have real debates, not the bullcrap CNN, Oh, you don't really get to say anything.

We're gonna go to this person the panel, and then we're gonna go to commercial and you're just there to get punched in the face as the conservative. I think that would be interesting. I mean, I kind of miss I love the Hannity and Combs days. Man, Like I remember back in the day, even on Fox, you saw a lot more debate than you do these days. But that was the medium, right, And when when I got into this business, I felt like that's what we were

signing up for. People like you and me were going to be there and there'll be some spirited exchanges and maybe even sometimes people get a little nasty and go crazy and that would go viral. And that's the way it is. That doesn't even happen anymore. I mean, it's unairlane, no offense. But if somebody goes in CNN at CNN and says the Republican, I'm like, oh, here we go, here's the like, there's a Republican. My party has lost its way and all of our principles are so wrong.

I can't believe I was pro choice all those years. I'm like, that's that's great CNN. That's really showing both sides. Yeah yeah, I um, that was not me. And you can sort of track the trajectory of my time there accordingly is that because I want I like to mix it up. I like to be a voice for people who are not in the room. Usually that's a Republican if you're on any station, any cable news network other than thoughts, right, I want to be a voice for

people who are not getting their side heard. And to do that makes you a skunk at the garden party. It really does. As you have experienced, oh totally. So it was funny because I had the experience of being at CNN. Initially, I really because there was a lot this is the Obama I was there for some of the Obama administration, right, and initially it was, oh, hey, wait, you actually did a lot of counter terrorism work or you know whatever intelligence work I guess would be a

better way to put it. You know, A rock Afghanistan in these places for the CIA, and I briefed the president a bunch of times the Ovel Office and things like that. It's like, so you can actually do terrorism analysis and I and the answer was yes, I could, and I was really good at that. Not to be immodest, but I knew that stuff backwards and forwards at the time in a way that a lot of their guys who had retired from the Air Force twenty years ago

just honestly didn't. But any way, um, and they were very cool with me going on to talk about that stuff. In fact, I remember I got an Ada boy once from Zucker himself after there was a Russian assassination of a dissident right near Red Square and I was dealing with it in real time because it had just happened. And then the Trump phenomenon came. And I'm telling you because then they're like, well, there's not really we're not

really talking terrorism. It's all Trump, all politics. And they're like, wait, you're a Republican. What do you think of Trump? And I'm like, yeah, I'm I'm gonna vote for Trump, but like a Trump a Trump supporter. And I'm telling you, it was just from then on, either and then on I was they looked. They looked at me from from the production assistance all the way up to Zucker with disdain, with disdain, which is such a shame because what kind of news network are you if you have basically fifty

percent of the voting public is unrepresented. Right Like, I didn't, I didn't vote for Trump. I was like a Trump critical but reasonable conservative who ever went full like democrat. I guess I didn't do that, and all during the Russia stuff. So that's how I sort of that's how I started on the network right like it was during the primaries, and I felt like we did have some

really good actual conversations between Trump supporters and myself. It was more critical, and then it came to the Russia stuff. And this is me for four years. I don't think this is what you guys are saying. It is man like, this doesn't I don't think this is going to pan out. I'll call me crazy, but it doesn't feel like we have the evidence for what you guys are alleging. Buller report comes out. Um, So I was right and like that that was what sort of made my downhill trajectory.

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the My Pillow two point zero. The pillow comes with a ten year warranty and a sixty day money back guarantee and your promo code Clay and Buck or call eight hundred seven nine two three two sixty nine to get your My Pillow two point zero now. YEA well, also, there was no there was no accountability for it. And in fact, I've often said about that that it's wrong. It was wrong when I say there's no accountability because people actually got promoted or careers were I mean someone

like Jim Acosta at CNN. By becoming this just little anti Trump, uh, you know, smurf running around freaking out about Trump all the time, Jim Acosta elevated his career and I'm sure it made more money, bigger contract and everything else. You know, there were others as well who were constantly doing the same thing, constantly building themselves up and saying things that were untrue, but they benefited from it. And I think CNN was an example of that for individuals.

But as as a network, the place is done. You know you and because of our history we both have been there. It's kind of like a This is a little bit of a little bit of a therapy session. So there's some other things I want to ask you about, but just you know, before we switched, we switched gears. Well one thing to put a put a button on this just so everyone knows, because I was curious. Tuban was benched for eight months for what he did, and I was on the bench for seven months for tweeting

about it. That sounds about right, That sounds about right now. It's a deeply unfair and honestly a grotesquely dishonest organization. Um that not a single one of their anchors would have the balls to have an unfiltered discussion with someone like me about how utterly full of full of crap they are. That's that's like, that's basically where we are at this point. Like they would know to stay away from someone like me. Um, you're a very You're a

very polite, nice person. I tend to get more angry about what I've seen in CNN do, but it depends on the subject. But I was gonna say, yeah, maybe maybe I'm you know, because they what they've done and the way that they've gone after people and the show also stuff that the showing up on you know, some woman's front lawn who was you know, part of a Facebook group and some Russian bod or something. I mean, just you know, going after the guy who did the

Nancy Pelosi is drunk meme. I mean, they became a nasty and vindict of organization of dishonest people with very few exceptions that I I just speaking about people's work. I mean, there're people that I know they're personally that I would say, Okay, they're a nice enough person. But in terms of the work that it right. But in terms of the work that was on air, no, no, it really. Yeah, the mission of the network felt like what you're talking about is what the mission felt like

as as opposed to individual personalities, which could be fine. Fine, I'll put it out there. Anyone at CNN who wants to disagree with me on this one, I would love to live my radio show on CNN's air. No, no pretaping, not like the time that Brad Stelter had me on to debate why is it Buck that you called this act of terrorism Jihada's terrorism before anybody else. By the way,

of course, it turned out that I was right. We taped an interview on this, They never aired it, never even told me they're working to air it, to scrap the whole because you look like such an idiot, because he is an idiot. I'm like, why are you doing well? Yeah, I'm like Stelter, first of all, why are you debating anything with me? Second of all, you're a debate this with me? Really, do you want to tell like, you know, you want to tell an NBA player how to do

is free throws? Like, what are you doing? Dude? It was just crazy, It was anywhere. Just there has to be accountability for when they're wrong or when they're deceiving people, and they're just isn't isn't I know, And so you're not serving the product that people need craziness. So something else that that I know you're you're a little fired up about. I mentioned my my good friend, our friend Clay before marching bands. Clay is a good sports guy

and he has some thoughts about marching bands. I will tell you before we get to the marching band's topic. It is a big secret among certainly my audience listeners. I am a classically trained musician. I do not share publicly what the instrument is just because it's funny. It's funny to hear because it's obviously not like the guitar, the piano or something cool or even like the violet. Like it's definitely something that and everyone's like the oboe,

the clarinet, the flu the piccolo. I always appreciate that, and I'm like, oh, somebody studied a little you know, classical music or likes it, um, but tell me this. To tell me this dispute. Clay thinks that there should be no marching bands to move through college football faster. You, as a marching band person, I think this is Yes, this is an outrage. It's an outrage. Okay. First of all, my guests would be bassoon. Second of all, good, good guess.

Second of all, yes. So Clay is arguing that because the college football gods are trying to change the game to be quicker, which, like, I'm not even sure that we need that, like unless it gets me more tailgating time, why why are we doing this anyway? So that needs to be quicker, So they're trying to make some changes. His argument is that you just chop out the ten to twelve minutes of marching band from halftime and we're done.

I disagree because they deserve they deserve their moment. These these nerds, and I'm one of them, so I'm allowed to say it. They deserve their moment. They work very hard and please imagine college football the soundtrack of the marching band in the stands. Now, he will argue they should just be in the stands. Cave them in the stands. But no, they have served us well and they deserve Okay, fine, maybe you could cut it in a half. Do you like a seven minute show? But we're not getting rid

of marching bands. It's part of the Americana. The experience is not the same without them. Find another place. I do have to ask you now, as a as a wife mother, are you mother of three? How many kids do you have? Now? Four children? Four? As a mother of four and a woman who is who is herself likes the sports athletics, plays and watches, what is your take on cheerleaders at college football games? Do we are we fully supportive of this? Or is this out of use? Bro?

They're they're extremely good athletes. First of all, like the tumbling is a saying. And I have several family members who have been cheerleaders, so I can't I can't hate it. Was not my sport of choice. Uh, because I did play the fact that I was also in marching band, I was covering a lot of bases, Okay, fuck I was, I was. I was a well rounded high school student, okay, and uh, and so I was playing the clarinet, but I was also playing soccer. But no, I'm I'm pro

I'm pro pro cheerleader. Okay. See it's funny because when you say it, it sounds somehow empowering to women. But when I or Clay says we're pro cheerlead, urban's like, oh, yeah, of course you are. But anyway, you know, I experienced my first by the way, I have to I have to look this up, but I believe I tweeted in support of the First Amendment in boobs and I somehow didn't get benched for that one. Wow. Yeah, that's a that's a thing that that's the thing that can happen.

Apparently I remember that one either went maybe it went into the radar or Zucker actually secretly agree with me. I don't know. Ye rule Doll. Let's talk about role golf for a minute here, because you you draw this one of my attention I always think of. Well, actually, the one that I think I probably think of first is James and the Giant Peach, which is that that's

Roul Doll, right. I don't want to be this is like, this reminds me of because I took as an extra class, not part of the core curriculum or a main curriculum. But I took um like music theory and classical music when I was in college, as one does when they're applying a nerd instrument, that they'll never tell their audience

because they'll never they'll never live it down. But I do remember that the intro class for music was very and that there were there were members I'm I'm not trying, I'm not trying to cast aspersions here, but there were members of the football team who also because this was

a a gut class. Oh and that was right, So it was like not a hard class, so they're there were the nerds who were into the actual and you could just sort of sit in the back and like not really do anything, and it was almost like a music appreciation class. And there were a few of them who handed in an analysis of Pocabell's Cannon by Bach, which I thought was really, yes, the whole you know,

the whole thing. So I'm trying Roll Doll, I believe road Giant James and the Giant Peach, right, So you're correct, that is a good Yeah, you're not misnaming that one. So what is your favorite Your favorite Roll Doll book probably The Witches, which I found to be like the most frightening thing i'd ever written read When I was like nine years old, I was hiding in my room. I'm like, oh my god, this is that which I remember renting from Blockbuster because we are contemporaries, and that

is the thing I remember, those witches. This scared the crap out of me. I mean that it didn't scare me quite as much as like The Exorcist, which came along later, but that but it was pretty scary, right, So yes, it was horrifying. What's more horrifying is if you read it to your children and they're not horrified at all, which is what happened to me. I was like, girls, how can you not be concerned about this? But they were like, I mean it seems kind of light to us.

I was like, what kind of warriors have I created? But the point being that they're not snowflakes? But the way is and to own the rights to Roll Doll books, which if you've read any Roll Doll books you know are full of adults and villains who are disgusting and fat and ugly, and he makes it very clear that

these are their characteristics. And now, because that's considered problematic, the estate that owns the rights to his books, is now changing the books and editing them to take out words like fat and to take out descriptions that might be problematic. And it is very it's very super creepy and in fantaalizing. It's also just terrible writing because they take these lovely phrases like British hilarious, mean insults and

turn them into just mush to nothing. And of course this is not considered censorship or book banning by the left, but changing curriculum or having age limits for very adult material in school libraries. That is censorship of the highest degree. But actually changing this man's writing after he dies and then only publishing that and censoring it for everyone. Not a problem, Not a problem, guys. I gotta tell you know,

I wasn't. I've never read the Harry Potter books. First of all, what they're doing, what they're doing a role doll is completely insane. I think they've they've been going after a lot of I didn't, isn't. Doctor Shou's also problematic for some. There's there's something with Doctor SEUs books too.

I can't write there aren't there They're racist or something, right, There's like tropes in them that they there's there's problematic portrayals in them, and so there are so longer published and uh like you know these are these are the kinds of things where, by the way, when books are actually banned, what you have to do is you go have to find them, like on a black market or on eBay or something right, and that that's what you

have to do. Now with the old versions of Rold Dull and Doctor SEUs, the uncensored versions, it's so funny too, because you know you'll see these. You'll see these leftists who will tweet out a photo that this is my bookshelf of band stuff and it's like hypersexualized content that they were giving to first graders, and they don't understand that that's that's not being banned. That's just like, don't

be a sick weirdo. But as a conservative or as somebody who's just a rationalist, a reasonable person, you could create a whole bookshelf. Now, when you think about it, who's canceled Doctor SEUs, Road, Rudyard Kipling. You know, go, you go down the list, and depending on what you're looking for, you can find Shakespeare, come on that guy, lots of stuff you do real no super problematic. Yeah, he was not woke at all. It's gonna be an issue.

Do you think woke people are all miserable? It's something I always think about. I really think that they're even if they no matter how good looking, wealthy, successful, whatever, if they truly believe this stuff, if they're truly woke, there they lead a life of misery. This is my belief. So it depends on how much joy they're getting out of the pack comes from the victimhood they're claiming, right,

because that's the whole game. So if you enjoy that sort of power, and I think a lot of people, particularly during COVID with the signaling and being able to boss everybody around, if became apparent to me that a lot of people really enjoy that in a way that I do not. I don't have any interest in telling you what to do, but a lot of people do,

and so there is some enjoyment there. But it seems like such a a terrible existence to me to spend all of your time thinking about this hierarchy of victimhood and where you claim your power by claiming that victimhood and just reacting to everything in the most hysterical way. Possible, not a life I want to live. I have four, you know, irrational human beings I'm trying to raise, like I got. I'm really they've cornered the market on my

ability to deal with that stuff you mentioned. There are a few things that I think get me more fired up than the COVID restriction stuff. Just because I was in New York City for all of the pandemic, I mean, you know, would leave occasionally. I would escape to Florida, where I now live, Yes, because I just couldn't couldn't deal with it anymore. And I was also very early, and this is all a matter of record, thanks to things like Twitter. I was very early, meaning April, I

wanted to reopen for full reopen and forget everything. By Easter of twenty twenty. I was like, this is crazy. I don't know what anyone thinks we're doing here. This is and it was, oh, you're a grandma murderer. And so just extrapolate from that, masks don't work, which I was saying earlier. I've gotten. I've gotten, you know, YouTube and Twitter and all these things. I was getting banned and suspended and all the time for these things they

were wrong about absolutely everything. I just got back from honeymoon, which is great, by the way, fantastic. Yeah, oh yes, congratulations to you, thank you very much. Yeah. Married. Now I gotta I gotta catch up. You got four kids that we're you know, we're we gotta we gotta make some some some babies happen here. But I'm working on it. I'm working on it. Um. But you know, you you look at LAX for example. I mean, I just I

just came through LAX. I'm not going to pretend that it's everybody, but because obviously it's a it's a small group. I'd say five percent of LAX. When you're walking around, one out of twenty people are still wearing a mask, And I honestly think that they're emotionally they been emotionally traumatized by their own tribe, and that's what's really happened. I'm like, they can't turn it off now. No, I

think that's where a lot of people are. And it's very sad because myopically, protecting yourself from very small physical risks at the loss of your emotional well being and the fulfillment of your life its purpose is really really bad. You shouldn't do that, and your government shouldn't do that to you, which is what it attempted to do for three years, and there were people who spoke out about it.

But look, I went to a children's museum with my kids today, and the protocols before I went because I don't take my kids to places they can enjoy, right, and it says, oh, that they are going to enforce masking on unvaccinated people over five, And I'm like, is this real? So I took I took them by the museum and realized, Okay, this is not enforced at all, and then I told them, you need to take this off your website because I don't want to if this

is on yours. What I've realized is that they only hear from the Karens on that side, and I need to be a Karen for my own side, like I need to be saying children are not supposed to have their enjoyment taken away from them for no reason at this museum, and you need to stop advertising that you're going to do that. LifeLock by Norton provides you and me with something essential in this digital age, online identity

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but it's easy to help protect yourself with LifeLock. Sign up today and save twenty five percent off your first year with my name as the promo code. Buck Call one eight hundred LifeLock, or go online to LifeLock dot com and use promo code buck for twenty five percent off. It always has reminded me to city. By the way, do you know who? I mean? Obviously you know who, because that's why I'm telling you the story. I in my New York City apartment building I lived in I

used to live in. It's like a sixty five story building and you know, huge building, and so it had a pretty big gym in the building. Even after the all clear and the gyms were open and everything like that. I mean, not the all clear, but you know, even after they're reopened and you don't have to wear masks anymore. Basically, when the vaccine rollout happened, they left all the you must mask up signs even though the policy changed. So they sent out an email saying, you don't have to

mask up anymore, but all the signage stayed up. And I walked around, and there are people that do it. I literally pulled down, one after another all of these signs and threw them in the trash. And I was walking around like, hey, who pulled down the signs? Man? That's all those Like? Why were the It's like, because the whole point of the exercise was the psychological control. The whole point of the exercise was compliance training based on whatever the apparatus decided at any point, and so

I refuse it. It was you know, even to this day, you see, and I was coming through I went through a bunch of airports because I was in the South Pacific, I was in French Polynesia. It's very nice, highly recommended. But even in the airport in uh then Papiette, which is the main city in French Polynesian Tahiti, and even the airport you'll see you know, must wear a mask signs all over the place. To me, it's like the I don't know if you ever see these. I've seen

these before because they have them in New York. They used to have these old, weird things, like a little symbol that you would see on some buildings. And I learned one day these are nuclear fallout shelters. Okay, they're nuclear fallout and they're still they're still sitting there. You're just in case. And I kind of want to tell everybody, if they ever have to really get you in the nuclear fallout shelter, you probably want to go in the

first wave. Like it's probably too late, right, right, what's your philosophy on that. No, I my uh, I think I would. I was probably a little later than you to the game on the lockdown stuff and like this, don't everybody was, but yes, yeah, but I think by it was in April of twenty twenty that we're sending out questionnaires to parents about whether you'd send your kids to school, and I was like just mashing every button,

like yes, yes, my children can go to school. Yes, I will sit in them in person, Yes I will do this. And it made absolutely no difference because they weren't interested in a person like me who had a rational assessment of whether this was dangerous to my children and figured out very quickly that it seemed not to be and that school might be the better option than oh,

I don't know. Keeping most every metro areas millions of children out of a regular schools schedule for more than a year eighteen months in some places it was appalling. And to watch Randy Wine Garden, you know, the head of what is it the American Federation of Teachers or is it the other one? I always so there's the two big tea. Yeah she's yeah, she's at So to watch Randy Winegarden go around and act like she want recently in the last six months that she was an

advocate for schools opening. Look, I think this is a problem that that Trump is going to have to deal with now in the primary, which is that YE twenty twenty was absolutely mishandled. From a COVID perspective, things were wrong in the beginning. Fine, I just want to say to everybody, you got a sixty day window, which I think is pretty generous to just be like, look, this is crazy. You know how many people are gonna die.

I don't know what's going on. We're all scared. After that, you're responsible for the decisions you're making because you have data here in America. And Fouci was able to Fouci, and Lenski was able well not Lenski. Game later, who's the other one? Burks? Burks was able to Burs and Randy Weinarden was able to dictate and whether schools would open. I mean the stuff that was allowed to happen, and

I'm not willing to let this stuff go. I guess that's kind of I would have a hard time at this point being spending spending a lot of time around somebody, for example, who isn't embarrassed by the notion of masking, who doesn't realize what a sham the whole thing was, Like I would, I would have a difficult time being around that person for an extended period of time. Now,

I think you're right. There are policy differences that will be hashed out in a primary on this, and there are records to talk about on this, and so I think that's going to be interesting, and it's interesting to see how you do that because I'm with you where I'm like, people need to admit that they were wrong or else we're just going to do this again. Yes, it's very obvious to me that that's what's coming. However, how do you run a political campaign where you adjudicate

that don't look backwards looking versus forwards looking. That's what I'm a little worried about with Republicans because I think that I think they're need a reckoning about this, and I'm not sure how you do it without sounding two backwards looking as opposed to the opposite. Yeah, I also worry that Republicans I have, well, I have a lot of worries. There's a whole other podcasts we have to do about the things I'm concerned about when it comes

to the Republican Party right now. I feel like we are not learning the lessons we should learn from from painful election losses in the last two cycles. What do you think about that? Yeah, yeah, Look, it's I've never had a lot of faith in politicians in general, even the ones that I tend to like, so I'm not terribly surprised when they don't learn from these things. But I think, look, we have seen in several cycles that there's a bunch of people. Oh, let's just take Yunkin

in Virginia for instance. Right, He's a guy who runs in Virginia and appeals to basically the demographic that I am, not to be too self referential, but a like pretty normy,

suburbandicated mom who's mad about school closings. But maybe he doesn't go towards a more trump a line candidate, right, And Younkin walked this very skillful line where he ended up bringing out plenty of rural voters but so brought out people in northern Virginia who wouldn't otherwise vote for Republicans, and like, if you can't do that, you're not going

to win in these purple areas right. But I think that I think that you can walk that line and you can be smart about the facts you're marshaling, which he was on schools, which Ronda Santis has repeatedly on dealing with COVID. He's marshaling facts. He's telling people, look, this is the way, this is where the data points. And I think that smart approach instead of a more I don't know, brash like bullying approach which desile right.

I think can people in my demographic do you think that the Democrat Party and this I like to remind people Joe Biden the White House, they have officially weighed in on gender transition for kids. I mean, this is White House policy. This is this is not just activists. This is from the absolute top of the Democrat Party on down. Do you think the men can get pregnant phenomenon from Democrats? Could cost them if Republicans explain that this it's just part of a broader campaign of crazy.

I think that can matter a lot. And I think it matters in Northern Virginia getting some of those folks as an example, because I was close to it and

it had a lot of these issues at play. But these policy for folks, and there are a lot of people out there who are not haters, who are nonetheless unwilling to believe that their daughters are sons or their sons are daughters just because a school counselor said so, Like that's not a thing that most voters are okay with, and having that pushed via their public schools that they're paying for, which buys down for a year, like it makes they're not learning to read, but we're doing this. Yeah.

I think the radical agenda of the left as it pertains to kids in school and as it pertains to equity and inclusion is if the Republicans just get it together and really message properly on this. I just think the Democrats, one, I think they can't win on those arguments, and I think that they're sixty forty maybe even seventy thirty issues. Well, actually, the kids and the gender thing is more like a ninety five five issue, But the

equity and inclusion stuff, I mean affirmative action. Really. For example, affirmative action in America is an eighty twenty issue at this point, meaning about eighty percent of the country's like, you really shouldn't be doing this stuff anymore. Yeah, but the press remarkably has no concept of that. None. None, But the school does think. I pitched people on stories about how this school closing stuff is really going to matter in this governor's race in Virginia, and several publications

are like, now, I don't really think that's a thing. Wow, yeah, okay, we'll see. Yeah. They could probably go work at CNN. Mary Katherhem everybody, mkh hammer, go check out Getting Hammered her podcast. Mary Catherine Hamm Yeah on sub stack. She's gonna be letting it fly as she is now a we're sued to be a totally free agent in the world media. We look forward to our next stuff. Please come back and hang out this again. There's a lot of fun. We could have covered a whole lot more stuff,

and next time around we will. Thanks for hanging out, of course, glad to be here.