The Democrats Are Still Living in 2021

twenty twenty one and it's twenty twenty five. A lot of them still think, believe very sincerely that the kinds of woke canceling, as much as I hate just mindlessly restating those terms, that the sort of woke canceling priorities that we're at there really at their zenith in twenty twenty one, that everyone believes in them, That the election of Joe Biden in twenty twenty signal that the American people had really embraced us, that they had won, and that they had won, just like the way they won

on gay marriage, they won on a bunch of other things. They won on the trans issue, they won on you know, defunding the police. They they have won, and they were able to sort of do their liberal thing where they declare victory by means of changing the language of things, artificially, getting the expert class to anoint a certain range of worldviews as true and correct, and thereby allowing the media to write about those things as if those things were

default true. All right, That's how they went about gay marriage. They won on the gay marriage fight by you know that basically, the force of media, the force of ten years of Modern Family being on ABC resulted in the American people sort of shifting their views and saying we're all okay with gay marriage, and then the media starts to write about it as if it's normal. Well, it's passed by the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court says gay

marriages is legal sea to shining sea. So therefore we just talk about marriage as if it's normal, and we declare victory. And they thought they could do the same thing with transgenderism. They thought they could do the same thing with biological boys playing women's sports, with biological men being in women's prisons. With well, they don't want to talk about biological men and women's prisons very much because that's where the rubber meets the road of the insanity

of their ideology. When actual biological women get raped by male cellmates. They don't want to talk about that anyway. But they thought that they could sort of declare victory. And the twenty twenty four election, they thought even maybe they could get around to the defund the police movement.

And the twenty twenty four election was a resounding reminder to them that Nope, not so when the most effective messaging Trump had, some of the most effective messaging Trump had was his messaging about hell for for you, she's for they them, you know, talking about transgender surgeries for inmates, blah blah blah blah blah. And we've shift. We've shifted

as far as the national conversation. There is a shift where a lot of these sort of intersectional ideologies about race, about sex, about transgenderism, we've now realized that at the very least these are hotly disputed topics, if not ideologies. The left's ideologies on these topics are being outright rejected. So we went from in twenty twenty one thinking this was just the new culturally accepted norm that everyone was gonna embrace, just the same way that everyone embraced game

marriage eventually, to today in twenty twenty five. Nope, a lot of people reject this stuff. They reject the defund the police. The defund the police movement is pretty much totally dead. Left wing criminal law enforcement basically, well, the common thread I feel like I'm rambling a little bit, but I think the common thread that has lost is the DEI principles, the idea of equity as our governing

moral compass. The idea of equity is that if outcomes don't match the share of the population as a whole, then there must be racism, sexism, homophobia, et cetera in the system, and therefore we need to change the system. That was the root of defund the police, that was the root of the criminal approach to left wing law enforcement.

It underlies a lot of stuff with pro transgenderism, where well the assumption that, like, they look at transgenderism and they look at the explosion in the number of kids identifying as transgender, and their conclusion is not, oh, well, this must be social contagion. The reason why this huge number of people are identifying as trans now all of a sudden is obviously social contagent. The idea has gone out and now a bunch of teenagers have convinced themselves

somehow that they're transgender. No, their interpretation of it was, we had millions of trans people for years and they were all closeted because of evil anti trans stereotyping within American culture. That's the conclusion they get to. So a lot of this DEI stuff fundamentally is grounding them. So they are losing that fight on a nationwide scale. But on the coasts, in the halls of power in state governments, on the coasts California, the Northeast, they're still living like

it's twenty twenty one. They don't. They have not had the kind of crushing electoral losses that the Democrats had in the twenty twenty election. Democrats are doing just fine. In Sacramento. Democrats still have three quarters of all the seats, so from their perspective, they're still living in twenty twenty one. They still think the principles and ideologies of twenty twenty

one are very much there. And this is applied to the controversy du jour in the state capitol over Shannon Grove's efforts to classify sex trafficking of sixteen and seventeen year olds specifically as a felony. And the Democrats are finding themselves because they have to remain true to their dei criminal law enforcement positions, they don't want to do it. Why why don't they want to do it? For two reasons.

One is, in general, Democrats in the California state legislature have for years just taken the posture of we're not increasing any criminal punishments for anything. We're going to decrease some criminal punishments. The ratchet only goes one way. We're not increasing criminal punishments. Sorry, not doing it. Why, Well, it's an equity thing. It's a dei equity thing, a racial equity thing for most kinds of criminal law, all

provisions punishments for criminal law. They will look at the stats of who gets arrested, charged, convicted, imprisoned, and they will find that some minority group gets arrested, charged, convicted, imprisoned for it at a disproportionate rate, often African Americans, but as we'll discuss, sometimes other groups like gay people, and because of that disproportionality, they assume that it's because

of racism that actually it's not. They assume it's pretty much a dogma that I don't know, has a ton of evidence behind it. They take it up, they take it kind of on faith. They dogmatically believe that it must be because of racism. So they take this sort of default approach of Nope, no increase in criminal justice punishments whatsoever. Now, the specifics the specifics of this, it's dei in general, but some of the specifics of this sixteens and seventeen year old thing goes to the LGBT cause.

All right, and now we bring in the worst politician in America. It's not Kamala Harris. The worst elected official, I should say in America. It's not Kamala Harris, it's not AOC, it's not anyone the man that I would almost I would practically campaign for a Democrat to stop him, Like there are rumors that he and Christine Pelosi are going to pursue Nancy Pelosi's seat in Congress when she retires. I would practically campaign for Christine Pelosi over him. And

that is California State Senator Scott Wiener. Scott Wiener, openly gay man who marches in gay pride parades as a sitting California state senator wearing leather bondage gear. Scott Wiener, who, in seeing certain provisions of California law that would basically punish gay men for child abuse but not heterosexual men, proposes to solve the problem by not punishing gay men for child abuse and certain or lessening punishments for gay

men for child abuse. Scott Wiener, who consistently supports some of the most depraved things humanly imaginable. Scott Wiener in the California State Senate is getting angry at Shannon Groves bill for categorizing sixteen and seventeen year olds as basically for increasing penalties on people who buy sixteen and seventeen

year olds for sex. So he's got this tweet or this is something you posted on blue Sky, which, for those who don't know, Blue Sky is like liberals who are so mad at Elon Musk owning Twitter that they created a new social media platform that's basically the exact same thing as Twitter, only it's just not owned by Elon Musk. So it becomes this insane liberal echo chamber, as opposed to x Today, which is actually fairly evenly

split between conservatives and liberals. Blue Sky is just one hundred percent of liberals anyway, he posts on his blue Sky account sending an eighteen year old high school senior to state prison for offering his seventeen year old classmate twenty dollars to fool around. Isn't smart criminal justice policy, yet that's what some people are effectively advocating in this misleading debate. You know what's a little prostitution among friends.

You know how high schoolers are. The kinds of things that Scott Wiener keeps revealing that he doesn't think are a big deal are astounding. Here's another clip from the Illustrious Senator. This is Scott Wiener discussing Shannon Groves bill talking discussing, well, I think this might be a different bill. He's discussing the Sex Offender Registry and how it quote unfairly targets the LGBTQ community.

know what I am gonna do. If I see two people having intercourse in a public park, I'm gonna call the cops. And frankly, I think I'm okay. If people having sex in a park, you know, get on a sex offender registry. You're in a public place. So what the heck are we doing? Like literally they're so it's not a great kids seed. But there was this Will Ferrell movie called The Other Guys where one of the

he has this Toyota Prius. It's Will Ferrell and Mark Wahlberg who are buddy cops, and it's a really funny movie and one of the running jokes is how not very manly Will Ferrell's character is and he has a red Toyota Prius. That's sort of a running joke throughout the series. The prius gets stolen and a bunch of homeless guys have group sexual activity in the prius, and they say, called a soup kitchen. It's winning a bunch of homeless guys. Pa. Anyway, go look up soup kitchen

the other guys. It's really really fun. Scott Wiener, apparently totally fine with a soup kitchen, doesn't think it should put you on the sex offended registry. Dirty Mike and the boys. That was the guys who were doing that in the in the Other Guys movie. Anyway. Now, first he's like, those aren't big deals. Oh, what's a little you know, what's a little sex in a public park? You're gonna say you're a sex offender for that? Hey, come on, boys will be boys. Huh. Hopefully we're not

talking about boys. Good God. Anyway. Uh. He then goes on to talk about the whole idea, well that the you get slammed onto the sex offender registry, that LGBT persons have been slammed onto the sex offender registry, that it targets them. Well, all right, nobody gets slammed onto the sex offender registry. It's not like people are just walking down the street and all of a sudden, bang,

you're on the sex offender registry. You get on the sex offender registry by being convicted of a criminal sex act, convicted in a trial as being guilty beyond a reasonable doubt by a jury of your peers, or that you pled to because clearly they had evidence for a lot more. No one's getting slammed. It's not like someone's walking down the street. You get on the sex offender registry when you're convicted of a sex crime. Do we really like

this idea? That? And so, of course the dei assumption the LGBTQ community, when probably it's just gay men are disproportionately convicted of sex crimes. Ergo, the only possible explanation, The only possible explanation, says the guy who apparently thinks having sex in a park is not a big deal and doesn't merit being on a sex offender registry, is that police prosecutors all up and down the state of

California are just a bunch of homophobes. There is, of course, another conclusion to draw, namely, and by the way, I'm not saying it about all gay people. Maybe, though, there's another conclusion to draw that if they're being convicted at a higher rate still today in the enlightened halcyon Days of twenty twenty one, that the California state legislatures still living in that maybe they're getting convicted more because they're doing it more. I mean, logically speaking, you would have

to acknowledge that those are the two options. It's either homophobia that they're being persecuted, or they're just doing it more. I don't know. I guess I just don't necessarily think that in the state of California, with California judges and California lawyers. By the way, you know, you hang out with people in the Fresno County DA's office, it's not like all a bunch of right wingers, and Presne County's DA office probably much more conservative than a lot of

other counties. I don't think there are all these prosecutors' offices from Seed, from all up and down this Golden State that they're all a bunch of raging homophobes. Just don't believe it. When we return more on State Senator Scott Wiener that's next on the John Jrwardy Show. The one person watching this debate in the state legislature between Democrats who apparently don't think we should make it a felony to purchase sixteen or seventeen year olds for sex

and Democrats who are apparently okay with it. Clearly, Gavin Newsom has made it known that no, I am not okay with sixteen seventeen year olds being pover sex, and I'm not okay with Democrats in the legislature's stone walling it. So Newsom has kind of made it clear he wants he is tired of the rest of his party's positioning

on law enforcement. Why because Gavin Newsom is like the only Democrat in California who's actually living in twenty twenty five and actually responding to the signs of the times. Why Well, because he's the only Democrat right now in California other than Kamala Harris who wants to run for president. That's why Newsom has his sights on a national prize ergo. He has to be responsive to these massive nationwide trends

in a way that Scott Wiener doesn't have to. Scott Wiener his political ambitions are he wants to run for Nancy Pelosi's seat in the House of Representatives, that's what he wants, or he wants to run for some maybe California statewide office at some point someday. He doesn't need to moderate, he doesn't need to stop living as if

it's twenty twenty one. He can keep living in twenty twenty one as long as he wants, because until it's politically painful for Democrats, they're going to keep doing it.

And that's the thing, like the Democrats still, you know, why is the governor of Maine still stubbornly insisting the biological men play women's sports and fighting the Trump administration tooth and nail well, Because she's the governor of Maine, and she kind of feels like well, which is surprising because Maine is a bit more of a swing state than most Northeast Blue Democrats stronghold. They've had Republican governors before, like Paul la Page, not Paula Paige, Paul la Page.

But she's just like, well, I'm not I'm almost certainly not going to face a political repercussion. And some of

these people, they're still true believers. And I think for a lot of Liberals in the Northeast, especially liberals in d C, they view Trump winning and coming into town, coming into d c and upsetting their whole apple card is like, how dare they well, he rejects all these principles of equity, Like they view it as this illegitimate storming of the castle, in part because they don't realize that the country has shifted its views, or you know,

maybe there's this maybe the country didn't really shift its views much. I think the country was never on board with this trans stuff. Joe Biden got elected in twenty twenty more so I think because people were you know, Trump had had a lot of stuff piling up, a lot of media narrative scandals piling up. The economy wasn't doing well, and we were in the midst of COVID and so, and they were getting tired of him, and

so they voted for Joe Biden. Then under Joe Biden, they realized the economy stunk and a lot of this woke stuff is silly, so they elect Donald Trump again. There was never, I think, some great nationwide embrace of the zenith of woke nonsense that again reached its peak in twenty twenty one. But a lot of Democrats are still living there all right. When we return the Rorshach test of Trump is Trump funny or is he not so totally depends on kind of how you feel about

him politically. That's next on the John Girardi Show. There's a news story that's a real Rorshach test. It's among Catholics, where a Rorshack test is basically the thing, this thing where it's kind of a I guess, a tool for psychoanalysis or psychiatry where you present someone with a kind of ink blot image of a kind of ambiguous shape, and you ask the person what does this look like? And different people, allegedly with different kinds of issues look

at it, and we'll see different kinds of things. And I guess the idea is that this can be revelatory about certain aspects of their mental state. So being presented with the same image, you get multiple outcomes, multiple responses

for what this means. There's been a news story among US Catholics that I shouldn't say news story, stupid Twitter controversy among US Catholics that I think is very revelatory though about the broader viewpoints of the American public with regard to Trump, and that is this silly AI image that somebody produced and that Trump retweeted or posted on truth Social and then it made its way to the Internet. A silly AI image someone made of Donald Trump as

the Pope. It's wearing the white pope outfit. He's got like a bishop's hat on. Donald Trump as the Pope. Someone made a silly AI image of Donald Trump as the Pope. The Pope Francis passed away. The cardinals, starting on Wednesday, are gonna begin the process to elect a new pope. And oh, Donald Trump as the Pope. All right,

it's a real rorshack test. A bunch of liberals and liberal leaning Catholics, Catholics and non Catholics have looked at this with deadly seriousness, including embarrassingly the National Catholic reporter that did this whole thing. It's not even theoretically possible for Donald Trump to be pope, which is like, we all know he's not a Catholic. Oh no, it's because

he's not in his right mentals. He's he's clearly insane and therefore, like like this whole like almost serious article about how Donald Trump wouldn't be eligible to be pope because he's not compost mentis or something. It's like, all right, first of all, kind of a bold claim to say Trump is senile after what we had the prior four years. You say what you want about Trump, I I he's

compost mentis like, he's clearly directing things. He's clearly pretty sharp for a seventy eight year old guy, like, you know, for all his flaws whatever. Anyway, and all these left wingers are taking this super seriously.

that's his stick is. He plays into this grandiose idea that he's he's Donald Trump, He's the coolest, you know, blah blah, blah blah blah. So I I mean I thought it was mildly funny. I mean it's again. The problem is that anyone can generate these AI images now anytime they want. People made jokey images of a gorilla being elected pope. You know, people have made jokey images of all kinds of People are making all these jokes

lately about Marco Rubio. So Mike Walls, the National Security Advisor, got demoted basically to be the UN representative, the UN ambassador for the United States, and the role of the role of National Security Advisor got given to Marco Rubio,

even though he's Secretary of State. So people have joked that Marco Rubio is now currently the Secretary of State, the National Security Advisor, the Archivist of the United States, and the administrator for USAID, like he's personally overseeing administration for USAID. So people are joking that Marco Rubio, now all of a sudden he has all of these roles within the president's administration. Oh well, why don't we make Marco Rubio the pope too? You know, hey, he's a

Catholic male. Jd Vance made that joke. I kind of viewed the Trump AI pope images sort of along those lines. I don't know, it's not like the idea that it's, oh, this is a grave offense against the Catholic Church. Calm down. First of all, Pope Francis died like two weeks ago. And you know, look, I recognize that news cycles change, and that the duration of what an appropriate news cycle or period of mourning for a pope should be that

has changed a lot over the ages. Maybe you know, in Italy one hundred years ago, everyone would still be going around dressed in black when the pope had passed away two weeks prior. Okay, well that's not Donald Trump doesn't have to do that. Donald Trump went to the Vatican, He went to the pope's funeral. He ordered all American flags to be at half staff for the pope's funeral. He and Vice President Vance said very complimentary things about

Pope Francis. You know, I think they were perfectly respectful. And he's not talking about Pope Francis as dead. He's talking about, hey, well the Catholic Church needs a new pope. Like it's a prospective thing. So I did not at all take it as like, oh, this is you know, Donald Trump trying to, you know, throw dirt on Pope Francis's grave. No, it's a joke. It's a silly jokes. Is it the funniest joke in the world? Now, isn't it the funniest joke in the world? Is it a little? Like?

I thought it was a little boomery, like baby boomery, sort of cringey a little bit, but whatever, I mean. I saw it and I was like, yeah, okay, well Donald Trump posted a picture of himself as Pope whatever. I moved on immediately. But there are all these left leaning Catholics who are like, this is this is outrageous. This is that we are still mourning Pope Francis and

he is whoa And I think all it is. More broadly speaking, people on the left have a refusal to it at this stubborn refusal to admit that Donald Trump is actually pretty funny. He is intentionally funny, sometimes he is more often than not unintentionally funny. I just think he is hilarious the way that he reacts to things. Now that doesn't that is different from my views on Donald Trump and policy. I have certain things where I

substantively real disagreements with Donald Trump. I think his promotion of IVF is a terrible idea, and now how that will actually express itself in actual policies he promotes remains to be seen. But I mean, I was very consistently critical of President Trump during the campaign for his sort of turn, his moderating turn on the abortion issue and moderating turn on IVF. I have plenty, and these are coming from my Catholic priors. By the way, I'm not

some unqualified Trump cheerleader. I think if Trump's wrong, I'll say that he's wrong. So it's not like I'm this obsessive Trump fanboy where I think I firmly believe that every single thing President Trump has ever said and ever done is one hundred percent right and wonderful and the

greatest thing ever. You know, I don't know that his tariff sort of or the way he's applying tariffs, or the rates at which he's applying tariffs and against whom he's applying tariffs, I don't know that that's been entirely successful. I'm a little lear to talk about that stuff too much. Just I don't feel like I'm I've got a firm enough hold on economics all that to say, though I

can disagree with Donald Trump while still acknowledging he's pretty funny. Like, I don't know, I still use I use Donald Trump memes as jokes with my friends all the time. Wow, you're telling me that for the first time. He has so many little things he has said and done that I just think are funny that have entered the lexicon, saying things like how many such cases like that? There are all these little phrases, you know, there are all these little phrases that have entered the lexicon fake news

because he said them. Objectively speaking, he's very funny, i'd say, and people on the left just have this really stubborn refusal to acknowledge that, and they just wind up interpreting everything he says as like this shocking thing. I mean, even the stuff about Canada and Greenland. I've mostly thought all that stuff was hilarious and all these people are

super serid. Well, if he's gonna militarily invade Greenland, it would be an unauthorized active He's not gonna militarily invade Greenland. What are you talking about. No one's invade No one's invading Greenland. Sound like Tony soprano, Hey, Tony Soprano. There was one scene where Tony sopranos someone suggested that another character in the show, a mob boss who was revealed to be a homosexual. Someone suggested he had AIDS, and

Tony Soprano said, nobody's got AIDS. Nobody's invading Greenland. And then but then sometimes here's the thing with Trump, like the Greenland thing. When you go one surface level deeper, it would be massively beneficial to the United States if we owned Greenland, like enormous national resources, would be a huge boon national security wise, to the United States of America, if not to own Greenland, but to have some kind of relationship with whatever, and it's you know, it's in

our hemisphere like anyway. But the idea that we are going to militarily invade Greenland and march the Danish citizen residents of Greenland on a you know, by the way, the entire island of Greenland has a population less than Clovis, So it's about like half of Clovis. It's like less than Maderra practically, you know, it's like fifty thousand people who live in Greenland. I think, don't hold me to

that I'll look it up during the break anyway. Again, I think so much of our politics is being governed by just what is your attitude towards Trump. If you just decided you just hate him and all of his works and all his pomps and all of his empty promises, then the way you react to him is just going to be a certain way. If you either like Trump or feel like you can actually be sort of objective

about it, you react a different sort of way. And so, I mean, I am just inclined to think he is funny, and again, in spite of the fact that there are many things that I just don't agree with, but I think I'm at least able to acknowledge that he's funny when we return. Why are Catholics getting upset about that? When you know one state just passed a law to abolish the Seal of Confession that's next on the John Girardi Show. All these left leaning Catholics, they're all upset

about Donald Trump posting a picture of himself as the Pope. Hey, the Catholic Church needs the new pope? How about Trump? They're all angry and upset about that, and it's I think they're being ridiculous. It's a joke. Is it the worst joke in the world, even if you think it was inappropriate, which I don't know that it was that inappropriate. It's like the idea that people are getting their knickers

in a not over. It is ridiculous to me, especially for Catholics to get upset about it when literally right now, the state of Washington just passed a bill that would require priests to violate the Seal of Confession, basically to tell something that they hear during the Catholic Sacrament of Confession, which, by the way, the Orthodox have the Sacrament of Confession, certain kinds of Anglicans and Episcopalians have the Sacrament of Confession,

and religious groups of all kinds enjoy under most states most forms of American law, a clergy penitent confidentiality privilege that you can't force a pastor who, in a one on one setting with someone is counseling them or whatever, and that person reveals to them some kind of crime they made. You cannot compel a pastor in that of any faith, not just a Catholic priest, to testify about

whatever that criminal activity was. The State of Washington altered basically its mandatory reporter laws to say that if priests hears something like that, they have to report it, which would violate the Catholic confessional seal. You notice that they're not making lawyers break attorney client confidentiality. This is just targeted at Catholicism, targeted at religion. This is a violation

of the First Amendment. I believe it has consistently been true in America that religious groups have this confessional function to it. To violate that violates our free exercise. This should be fought. That'll do it. John Girardi Show, See you next time on Power Talk