June 14, 2020 - Rubin Report - Dave Rubin
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| That's one of the things I think that is if there's a silver lining at all that that's even to be said to come out of this is that people are realizing you have to take your security in your own hands and you're your own first responder. | ||
| I can't tell you how many people I've talked to also who have reached out and said, OK, I'm going to go get I'm going to get my first gun. | ||
| I need to know what to get and where to go and what kind of training to get, which is awesome to see. | ||
| And I think what is it? | ||
| It's like an 80 percent increase from this time last year in terms of the number of people | ||
| who have purchased guns, and a huge significant portion of that is women, | ||
| because people are watching what they're seeing on television, | ||
| and they're watching, you know, you can see peaceful protests during the day, | ||
| but then the sun sets, and you have all the skinny fat kids, | ||
| and all their black hot topic gear that come out to burn down buildings, | ||
| because that is protected speech, but disagreement is violence, and people see this. | ||
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| Joining me today is radio host, television personality, | ||
| Second Amendment advocate, and author of "Grace Cancelled." | ||
| Dana Loesch, welcome to The Rubin Report. | ||
| Good to be with you, Dave. | ||
| Thanks for having me. | ||
| My pleasure. | ||
| All right, so just to clear it up, because it's gonna be weird in about 10 minutes, we taped an hour-long interview about three weeks ago in the midst of the corona craziness, and we were stocking some interviews just because generally things have been a little nutty and you never know when you can get people. | ||
| But before we release that, I wanted to do a quick 10-minute follow-up with you that we're gonna post at the top of that interview and separately as a clip, just to kind of get us up to speed on everything that's happening with George Floyd, with the protests, the riots, racism, gun rights, the whole thing. | ||
| So, how's that for an open-ended intro? | ||
| Where do you want to start with all of this? | ||
| Oh my gosh, where to start? | ||
| It just feels like the world's on fire, kind of. | ||
| It does. | ||
| And even though... | ||
| It feels like there's a lot of discussion and a lot of people who are not listening. | ||
| Everybody wants to be heard and that's fine, but I also feel like there's no nuance and we can't have any... I feel like people are too afraid to have honest discussion. | ||
| I mean, really, I do. | ||
| I feel like people are too afraid to have an honest discussion because they don't want to be cherry-picked apart, nuance is dead, and people are going to take the absolute worst thing possible and they are going to apply that and misinterpret anything that anyone says So they can score a point. | ||
| And so real, genuine, honest conversation cannot be had. | ||
| We can't even agree on what the truth is anymore. | ||
| So I mean, where do we go from here? | ||
| Well, listen, if only two people that were perhaps talking right now had just released books that in many ways deal with all of these issues, wouldn't that maybe have perhaps possibly helped? | ||
| I think you are onto something, Dave. | ||
| I think you're onto something. | ||
| That's a really good observation. | ||
| You're right. | ||
| Okay, so let's start this way then. | ||
| What I've seen is that it seems to me that everybody across the political spectrum, almost with no exclusions, is completely disgusted by what happened to George Floyd. | ||
| They want justice to be served. | ||
| They want there to be a proper investigation. | ||
| All of that. | ||
| And that there could have been a moment where we could have come together here and instead I would say bad actors, mostly Antifa, sort of combined with Black Lives Matter have taken advantage and now we basically are seeing our country, and actually all over the world, cities that are on fire. | ||
| So to sort of turn this to your specialty, I'm noticing that even here in the People's Banana Republic of California in Los Angeles, that average people who never would have thought about having a gun are suddenly talking about getting guns. | ||
| I have a couple friends that just got guns this weekend. | ||
| You can't get it immediately, there's still the 10-day waiting period. | ||
| But that went to get guns this past weekend. | ||
| Are you at least enthused that people are gonna take some of their security into their own hands? | ||
| I am, especially now that we're being told that the police could be defunded or demilitarized or however they're trying to walk that back. | ||
| I mean, that's one of the things I think that if there's a silver lining at all that's even to be said to come out of this is that people are realizing you have to take your security in your own hands and you're | ||
| your own first responder. | ||
| I can't tell you how many people I've talked to also who have reached out and said, "Okay, | ||
| I'm going to get my first gun. I need to know what to get and where to go and what kind of | ||
| training to get," which is awesome to see. And I think, what is it? It's like an 80% | ||
| increase from this time last year in terms of the number of people who have purchased guns. | ||
| And a huge significant portion of that is women because people are watching what they're seeing | ||
| on television and they're watching. You can see peaceful protests during the day, but then the | ||
| sun sets and you have all the skinny fat kids and all their black hot topic gear that come out to | ||
| burn down buildings because that is protected speech, but disagreement is violence. And people | ||
| I mean, I've been talking to business owners, business owners who have sacrificed so much And they've been shut down for I don't know how many, like three months now. | ||
| They barely made it through the pandemic lockdown. | ||
| And now they have to shut down again if there's going to be riots in their area. | ||
| They don't want to have everything that they worked for destroyed. | ||
| And they're like, OK, what do I do? | ||
| I need to be able to get a fire. | ||
| I need to get a gun. | ||
| I need to get a, what do I get, a shotgun? | ||
| I've had so many people ask me this. | ||
| And I'm glad to see it. | ||
| I wish it wasn't under these circumstances. | ||
| I wish that people, even during times of total safety and security, would realize that this is a right that everyone should be able to exercise, no matter where they are or what side of the political aisle they fall on. | ||
| What do you make of the meme that we're sort of seeing out of the left these days that you sort of referenced there, which is that words are violence, but apparently now violence isn't violence. | ||
| So we're hearing this all over the place now, that violence against property is not violence. | ||
| I'm pretty sure that if someone burned down your house, you might consider it a violent act. | ||
| Am I crazy, Dana Loesch? | ||
| No, you're not at all. | ||
| And I'm pretty sure if one of the people saying that had their house affected or their business affected and burned down, they'd probably change their mind on that real quick. | ||
| That is violence. | ||
| That's the weird thing about it. | ||
| If you have disagreed with Antifa or the far left on anything, disagreement itself is so provocative that it's tantamount to violence alone. | ||
| But if you engage in the actual physical activity of violence, and whether you're assaulting people or setting fire to something, that's somehow protected speech. | ||
| And by justifying That's so dangerous. | ||
| I don't like speech being portrayed as violence. | ||
| It's not. | ||
| Physical violence is violence. | ||
| Speech itself is not violent. | ||
| now fabricating ways to justify their actual physical violence. | ||
| They wanna argue themselves a way out of it. | ||
| And that's so dangerous. | ||
| I don't like speech being portrayed as violence. | ||
| It's not. | ||
| Physical violence is violence. | ||
| Speech itself is not violent. | ||
| It's not anything but speech. | ||
| So I know we talked about the silver lining part of this, that people are thinking about their own personal security | ||
| and their family's security, and that's good. | ||
| As a conservative, are you kinda surprised that the wake-up call to this was sort of amorphous mobs coming to people's property and businesses as opposed to overreaching government, right? | ||
| Because usually conservatives frame the, oh, I've gotta have a gun to keep government away from my property, but this is to keep citizens. | ||
| We thought we had police That could do that now we've got police kneeling in the streets. | ||
| Yeah, no, I think that's a good question. | ||
| I think some of it too is, I do think that some political parties bear some responsibility with us. | ||
| So in some regard, it is a little bit government, but yeah, that isn't that kind of what the second amendment has always been for. | ||
| It's that uncomfortable aspect of it that everyone whispers about while they all say that it's really just, it's only about hunting and self-defense. | ||
| Yes, but also it's to keep your government in check. | ||
| And that's why we're so different from every other country out there. And with this, you know, Antifa seems | ||
| with all the exposés going on about Antifa, I mean, they're now classified as a terror group. They're | ||
| sort of, they act kind of like this militant far-left arm of the Democrat Party. I don't, I can't see | ||
| any candidates being prevailed upon to denounce their violence. They, for so, it seems like they | ||
| just kind of pretend that they don't exist. In fact, I think some of them had said, oh no, this | ||
| is just, these are just like little It's not really an organized national effort, but it, but it is. | ||
| Yeah, but it is. | ||
| Well, you saw, you saw Keith Ellison's picture with the Antifa book from a year ago, right? | ||
| Let's not, he since deleted it, but this guy was almost in charge of the DNC. | ||
| He lost by a couple of votes and he's the attorney general of what state? | ||
| And he's, yeah, of Minnesota, yeah. | ||
| And he supports Antifa. | ||
| Look, I guess it was about two years ago, I cut a short just commentary about Antifa violence. | ||
| And this was at the height when everyone was rioting on college campuses, | ||
| and how dare they bring in a conservative to talk to anybody. | ||
| And they were setting trash cans on fire and busting up windows. | ||
| And I played footage of this video, and I was condemning the violence, and the far left, who engaged in it and defended it, turned around and said that I was calling for violence by condemning their violence, because condemning their violence by itself is a provocative act. | ||
| And we're in an upside-down world right now, where wrong is right, right is wrong, everything is awful, cats and dogs living together. | ||
| It's like that line that Bill Murray had in Ghostbusters. | ||
| That's where we're at right now. | ||
| All right, so I got one more for you and then we'll play the full hour interview. | ||
| For the people that are like my friends that I talked about this weekend who are getting guns for the first time, what would you want them to know? | ||
| What resources would you send them to? | ||
| For the people that have just their whole lives have been anti-gun or never thought ever, ever, ever that they would have a gun in the home that are now rethinking it. | ||
| What's sort of the most, what's the best piece of advice you can give them | ||
| as they enter into this world? | ||
| They need to get something that they feel comfortable shooting, first off. | ||
| And it also depends on whether or not this is something that they're gonna use for home defense | ||
| or if they're gonna go get their concealed carry license and if it's gonna be something that they carry. | ||
| I have a lot of different firearms for different purposes, whether it's, you know, my bedside, I hear something, you know, my alarm goes off in the middle of the night, or if I'm wearing a cocktail dress and I'm going to an evening event, you know, there's something else that, you know, it's like shoes, you know, you got to have, you got to have some variety. | ||
| But, you know, I always say you can't really ever go wrong with a shotgun. | ||
| You really can't. | ||
| If you don't have a rifle, if you've never shot a semi-automatic, if you don't have a handgun, shotguns are always, that's always like a really good first choice. | ||
| And the cool thing about gun owners is that they're so incredibly helpful. | ||
| Good law-abiding gun owners all across the country are so eager to share with you what they have found works for them and what doesn't, what kind of training works really well. | ||
| There's all kinds of, like, you know, you have the California rifle and pistol. | ||
| Association out where you are some really awesome people that do really good training. | ||
| They're like up to date with everything And they have really good recommendations as well As to where you can go what ranges you can go to I mean we people even get it down to you know ammo selections for crying out loud So there's there's so many resources out, but I always tell people if you're not you know if you if you've never been around firearms Shotguns always something really good to start with for handguns. | ||
| I like to recommend like a glock 19 Which is a personal preference of mine, you know, Sig Sauer P365, M&P. | ||
| I mean, there's a lot of good choices out there. | ||
| And a lot of these, a lot of the manufacturers out there, too, these all started, you know, a lot of them are American companies, American manufactured, American jobs. | ||
| And that's one of the other focuses, I think, of our issues today is keeping everything right here in the U.S. | ||
| of A. All right, Dana, thanks for doing this pickup. | ||
| And now I present everyone else with my interview with Dana Loesch. | ||
| Hey, I'm Dave Rubin, and this is The Rubin Report. | ||
| Quick reminder, everybody, to subscribe to our YouTube channel and click that little bell over there so that you're notified when our videos come out. | ||
| And joining me today is a wife, a mom, a radio host, and author of the new book, Grace Cancelled. | ||
| Dana Loesch, finally, welcome to The Rubin Report. | ||
| Thank you for having me. | ||
| I appreciate it. | ||
| It's good to be with you again. | ||
| This is like, what, twice and now one month? | ||
| This is the most we've ever spoken. | ||
| We had gone years not speaking or at least, you know, not in full sentences just through Twitter. | ||
| And then I was on your show a couple of days ago and we had booked you. | ||
| We booked you just as lockout began. | ||
| You were going to come to L.A. | ||
| and then lockout. | ||
| I dropped the book right at the start of a lockdown, which is perfect timing. | ||
| Publishers love that. | ||
| They love that. | ||
| So you and I both did the same thing. | ||
| We both released books in the middle of a lockout. | ||
| How's it going for you? | ||
| Did they try to stop you? | ||
| My guys really wanted us to push, but I was like, no, we're getting this freaking thing out. | ||
| I can't sit on it anymore. | ||
| What was that process like for you? | ||
| Well, it was a little daunting. | ||
| I had the first week press tour, which is always the craziest when a book is out that first week, and I was in New York for most of it. | ||
| This was right at the end of February, and then I went to D.C. | ||
| when they were having CPAC, and I had an event there, and then I was to go to Northern California, and then I was to see you in L.A., and then do a couple of other things in SoCal, and then I had to go to Minneapolis. | ||
| There were 22 dates that I had across the country and one by one they all started getting cancelled and the first one was in San Francisco and then Sacramento followed and then my publisher was like, I don't think that you, you might have like difficulty in getting home even if you fly out there at this point so maybe we should start cancelling some stuff. | ||
| So yeah, it was just that first week. | ||
| Yeah, and here we are. | ||
| All right, so we're going to do this on the Skype or whatever pipes or wires we're using. | ||
| I'm not even sure at the moment, but we'll go ahead and do it anyway. | ||
| So I know that most of my audience obviously knows who you are, but I think for the people that maybe don't or maybe know your name but don't know exactly what you do, I think they sort of think, oh, Dana Loesch, like that's the gun lady, like something like that. | ||
| How would you really, you know, I mentioned mom and wife and I took that stuff from your Twitter bio, but what do you really sort of consider yourself first at a professional level? | ||
| I think professionally, I mean, just radio host and author and TV commentator. | ||
| And I have been in politics for quite a long time. | ||
| Actually, I got started in college doing opposition research for Democrats. | ||
| And so that's how, uh, that's how professionally politically it started. | ||
| And I, I, I cover so many issues, but obviously the second amendment, I think is the one that I'm, that I'm most known for just because it's such a personal issue and it's something about which I'm so passionate and I know a lot about it and I shoot a lot and I have a lot of guns. | ||
| And so, um, it just, you know, kind of goes hand in hand, but I think most people sort of see me as sort of see me in that vein. | ||
| And maybe like the devil incarnate. | ||
| It just all depends, I think, on my political opinion. | ||
| Well, speaking of the devil incarnate, I am gonna read some of the blurbs on the back of your book because you did something actually pretty hilarious with the back blurbs, but we'll hold that for just a sec. | ||
| So before we dive into guns and we'll talk about all the hot topic stuff and all that, what's going on with you and lockdown? | ||
| How's life been? | ||
| What are you feeling about how the states are going about doing things? | ||
| As we're recording this right now, We are holding it for a little bit, but I just found out that it sounds like my state of California, or at least my adopted state of California, is now going to be closed for another three months, even though virtually nobody is sick and everyone's going bananas. | ||
| How's it been for you? | ||
| What are you hearing from your audience and the rest of it? | ||
| For me, it hasn't changed a lot because I'm kind of like you, I work from home. | ||
| But I have gotten busier, as weird as it is, because now my kids are home, my oldest son's in college and he's home, which is actually pretty awesome because he wants to go into constitutional law. | ||
| And so he has a lot of very politically charged classes. | ||
| And I just look at it as an excellent opportunity to set straight anything that he has unlearned while he has been in college and actually show him like this is This is how you approached balanced research, and this is where you go and you get a multitude of different viewpoints, and iron sharpens iron. | ||
| It's been a little hectic because the kids are home, but otherwise I'm kind of a situational extrovert anyway. | ||
| So on that end, it hasn't really affected me. | ||
| And I am really blessed in that regard. | ||
| But what has affected me is hearing so many stories of people and friends of mine who own businesses and they're terrified as to what's going to happen. | ||
| And the town in which I live, we've lost a number of businesses already. | ||
| I was talking to another friend of mine who owns a salon, and she's terrified about what's going to happen. | ||
| They can't get those paycheck protection loans because some of the banks won't call them back. | ||
| They go with Chase Bank. | ||
| They're not hearing back from Chase Bank. | ||
| And that's not like the exception. | ||
| That seems to be sort of the general rule with these situations. | ||
| It's really hard for some of these businesses to hear back from some of these banks. | ||
| When you consider that these people have had their ability to engage in commerce seized, it really is a quasi-imminent domain. | ||
| There's no other better way I can describe it. | ||
| And their ability to generate income and to engage in commerce has been seized. | ||
| And they're told, well, we'll provide for you for your needs temporarily, but then they're not able to even access that. | ||
| It's really rough. | ||
| And I don't think that people, you know, you're talking about LA County, maybe going under an additional three months of lockdown. | ||
| I don't think that that's going to happen. | ||
| People can't, they can't survive like that. | ||
| People cannot survive. | ||
| What do you make of our public officials, what I would basically say is like an inability to talk to us in a mature way? | ||
| Like even when I just heard this three month thing, which it sounds like it's still, we're not totally sure, but like they're floating out this idea. | ||
| It's like they don't tell us why they're doing things. | ||
| They don't say, oh, these things, these policies have worked here. | ||
| These policies haven't worked here. | ||
| They don't say, oh, we haven't found any cases that are killing people and people under 40 that are otherwise healthy, but we know it's affecting people over 80. | ||
| Like that there's just no sense making coming out of almost anyone at a political level. | ||
| And I don't mean everybody. | ||
| I think Greg Abbott in Texas is doing a pretty nice job. | ||
| There are a couple people doing it, but that's so many of our political leaders think that just because they say something that that sort of is divine right just then and there. | ||
| Yeah, and a lot of those orders that you mentioned, I mean, they're not law per se as one thinks of law. | ||
| I mean, they don't have the force or effect of law traditionally, something passed by state legislatures or something passed by Congress. | ||
| And Newsom is weird. | ||
| Your governor is weird because he started out kind of doing okay, and then he lost his senses and then he decided to punish Orange County. | ||
| And you're right, there is a little bit of nannying going on there. | ||
| In terms of the way that they speak to you about things, I feel like we're not kids. | ||
| We fund you. | ||
| We pay your salaries. | ||
| We're responsible enough to understand why it is you're telling us these things. | ||
| Similar to in the very beginning when they were telling folks, you don't need to wear masks. | ||
| Don't worry about wearing masks. | ||
| Definitely don't go and get those N95s or any surgical masks. | ||
| You guys don't need those. | ||
| It's not going to stop it. | ||
| Well, turns out they were just terrified that everybody was going to And after that, nobody wanted to believe what any of these leaders were telling us anymore, because if they're gonna lie about something like that, what else would they misconstrue? | ||
| And not only that, but if you were to put a video out right now, if we told people not to wear masks, our videos would be taken down on YouTube, even though the WHO was saying that very same thing just a couple weeks ago. | ||
| So I know we're like-minded on the liberty side of things, and we believe in the Constitution. | ||
| I mean, real political radicals here. | ||
| But for the liberty-minded people that do want to figure out a way to put food on their family's table that want to figure out a way to go to work again or or literally even I was just I was saying to David last night I was like I would like to invite friends over for dinner | ||
| Friends that I know have been in quarantine that are healthy RAs, not criminal activity, but we just have friends over for dinner. | ||
| But what do you think the liberty-minded people, what are the best tactics that we should be doing as we try to push on the government, as opposed to just running around and just masks off and the whole thing? | ||
| Do you see a way we can do this sensibly if the government's not gonna do it for us or something like that? | ||
| Yeah, no, I think that's a good question. | ||
| I love the story of Shelly Luther, the salon that's Maybe like 45 minutes for me. | ||
| She really had reduced the salon's capacity. | ||
| She was following all of the guidelines that all the medical professionals were putting out. | ||
| She wasn't doing it as a stunt. | ||
| I mean, she legitimately was another one of those business owners where she couldn't go and get any kind of loan, any kind of help. | ||
| She has three kids, single mom. | ||
| She had, you know, her rent to pay for her business. | ||
| I mean, she really needed to generate income the best way she could. | ||
| I love the civil disobedience aspect of it. | ||
| Here's one of the things that really bugs me about the the mantra from the house arrest people. | ||
| I can't even bring myself to call it lockdown anymore. | ||
| They think that it is that the law mandating everyone or what they profess to be law, | ||
| mandating that everybody stay home is just because it is a law or they perceive it to be a law. | ||
| And that it's not because it's right or because it's just or ethical or moral. | ||
| It derives all of its power from the fact that it is a law, which seems really ridiculously cyclical. | ||
| And I don't really think that they have a good understanding of that. | ||
| And so I like the civil disobedience aspect of it. | ||
| I was telling a friend of mine, I am totally into the speakeasy culture now. | ||
| I'm all about let's do it speakeasy style. | ||
| And I was telling, I was even telling a friend of mine who works with the governor here in Texas, I'm like, I'm gonna just do speakeasy. | ||
| Y'all can come at me. | ||
| Come and make me instead of, you know, come and take it. | ||
| Come and make me. | ||
| And just have like speakeasy salon. | ||
| I haven't had a hair trim in like 10, you know, 10 weeks. | ||
| I know it's first world problems, but you know, just to kind of get back to normal a little bit and also give people a way to, to earn some money. | ||
| But the state has been, they've actually been kind of clever in that they were threatening a lot of the hairdressers and cosmetologists with the removal of their licenses. | ||
| So they do have to be careful because you always have that I call it that one turn the punch bowl that always ruins everything. | ||
| They always want to go tell on the government, someone is cutting hair against the lockdown regulations. | ||
| We're going to go tell the police. | ||
| We're going to go tell the licensing office and we're going to have their license pulled. | ||
| It's ridiculous. | ||
| And so I like the civil disobedience, but I have to, I jokingly say that The more that the state pushes against the people. | ||
| I'm not saying that's how you get a boogaloo, but I'm saying that might be how you get one if you keep up those measures. | ||
| Yeah, well, speaking of shorter hair, I'm not saying that my hair is shorter than it was, say, three days ago, but maybe it is. | ||
| I'm just saying, I'm not really saying anything, but maybe it is, maybe it isn't. | ||
| What do you think this says about generally, like, You know, for those of us that are worried about authoritarianism, for those of us that are worried about governments run amok, how so many people sort of do take | ||
| What you just said there, that they hear a law, and then that in and of itself means it must be just or right or something, and then they just sort of acquiesce. | ||
| Do you think that is almost like a symptom of the success of the West? | ||
| That we don't even know now when tyranny is encroaching on our lives? | ||
| Like, okay, six months, we're all gonna sit in our house for six months, 40 million people will be unemployed, the economy will be tanking, and we're gonna all go, wait, did anyone get sick? | ||
| Did anyone get sick? | ||
| Yeah, no, I think that's a great point. | ||
| And I think some of it is. | ||
| There are a lot of people in this country, in our generation, who've never experienced a dictatorship. | ||
| They haven't experienced any kind of tyranny. | ||
| A lot of us Obviously, we lived through 9-11, but we've been really far removed, thankfully, from a lot of really bad stuff that previous generations have endured. | ||
| And so, we don't really have anything to compare it to. | ||
| And I think for some, they think, oh, well, it's just temporary. | ||
| And isn't that kind of how it always starts? | ||
| Oh, it's just temporary. | ||
| Just a little bit of our liberty for safety, which is a horrible trade-off that you never get a return on your investment. | ||
| And with this, they think, well, these are good people. | ||
| These are people we elected that are telling us we need to stay home and we need to listen to them. | ||
| And again, it goes back to just because it's an executive order or it's a regulation or it's a law, that doesn't mean it's just. | ||
| It doesn't mean it's right. | ||
| And there are a lot of conservatives, I have to say, that are kind of going along with this too, which really surprises me. | ||
| Because these are people who would complain against red flag laws and other forms of authoritarianism. | ||
| But with something like this, I mean, they don't even question what the trade-off is. | ||
| I mean, for instance, what is flattening the curve? | ||
| Didn't we already flatten it? | ||
| So now we've gone from flattening the curve to we have to stay indoors until there's a vaccine. | ||
| Well, no vaccine is ever 100% foolproof. | ||
| So what is the ultimate point here? | ||
| Yeah, there's so much here. | ||
| That's actually an interesting segue to your book because obviously you talk a lot about outrage culture. | ||
| It's one of the things that I talk about a lot too, and I think partly what it is With, say, the conservatives that seemingly are giving over a lot of their individual rights to the government right now, I think what it is is that they're honestly afraid of the outrage machine. | ||
| They're afraid to push a little bit on the liberty side of things or on the open up side because they don't want that mob to come for them. | ||
| They don't want to be seen as, oh, these, you know, the way the media frames it, that it's these fringe Racist, right? | ||
| That was what CNN was saying about the protesters in Michigan, as if people were protesting for racism. | ||
| They wanted jobs, basically. | ||
| They wanted to live. | ||
| But I think that's what it is. | ||
| You get these average conservatives, who I would agree on on a lot of things, but then they're just like, ah, I don't want to push it because I don't want the thing to come for me. | ||
| And that's rarely how it works, right? | ||
| Or that policy doesn't work for too long. | ||
| No, and liberty is not something that's supposed to be comfortable. | ||
| And that's the other thing. | ||
| I mean, it's not a guarantee of comfort and it's not a guarantee of happiness. | ||
| That doesn't mean that you're going to live a life completely without any challenge or any adversity. | ||
| That's not what freedom is. | ||
| I mean, freedom is the ability to enjoy the fruits of your labor and also the consequences of your decision and engage in free association. | ||
| Look, people were totally happy when we were initially told, look, two weeks, We would just like for you all to kind of lock down a little bit and help us flatten the curve so we don't overwhelm the medical resources and have another Italy on our hands. | ||
| Everybody was more than happy to do that. | ||
| It wasn't because we were listening to the government ordering us around. | ||
| It's because we generally care. | ||
| about the lives and safety and well-being of other people, regardless of what political | ||
| identity they have. | ||
| If you're going to call yourself a limited government person, I think part of that goes | ||
| with understanding that voluntary stewardship, good stewardship, goes hand in hand with that. | ||
| People didn't go out and protest until you had some of these tiny tyrants, I think as | ||
| they've been nicknamed across the country, really exerting authority that they didn't | ||
| have and they shouldn't have exerted. | ||
| And really getting into the weeds with it, like banning seeds and saying you could take a kayak out on a lake, but you can't take a boat with a motor because apparently gas and motors make the Rona grow. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| And instituting like curfews and all of this stuff and that's when people begin to rightfully question. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Wait a minute. | ||
| We've been doing all of this. | ||
| What is the point? | ||
| And then the two weeks went from two weeks to a month and then two months. | ||
| People just want to be told the truth, and they want to feel as though their elected officials are being forthright with them. | ||
| And all of this showcased something else entirely. | ||
| So that's when people started protesting. | ||
| And to point out, too, in Michigan, you always have, and as I understood it, there were a small group of people who came out and decided to be buttheads about it. | ||
| But that is not in any way indicative of all of the protests that have been happening across the country, even in California. | ||
| And for the media and others to focus on that one incident as a way to invalidate the other protest is a really disingenuous way of evaluating the concerns of real people. | ||
| And it just forces that chasm between the sides apart further. | ||
| Just to be clear, so the incident you're referring to, are you talking about all the guys that were doing the open carry in the state capitol? | ||
| Is that what you're referring to specifically? | ||
| Show up and they had like some signs and then there was one that was a plant where they had like | ||
| What was it a Nazi flag and it turned out it? | ||
| Incorrectly reported or whatever. I mean it it it's The all of that the theatrics and and and the messaging and | ||
| everything aside The fact that people were focusing more on the protesters | ||
| instead of here you have elected officials that are doing certain things | ||
| that they have no authority in their state constitutions to do and | ||
| To have the the press which is supposed to be the watchdog of the people not adequately or accurately | ||
| Reporting on things for the people they claim to care about so much. That's a little frightening | ||
| which is why I'm thankful for citizen journalism, but that But-- | ||
| That was frightening and that's a problem and I think it just continues to feed this distrust that people have of authority, ultimately. | ||
| Yeah, that's a good segue also for something that's in the book that you are always hitting, you know, very much in line with what I'm hitting on. | ||
| Let's talk about the press a little bit, sort of mainstream. | ||
| Everyone's watching it collapse. | ||
| Everyone's watching, you know, the quote-unquote journalists destroy journalism. | ||
| Does this thing just need to flame out? | ||
| You know, if you would have asked me maybe six months ago, I was still on the, oh, this thing can be fixed wagon, or at least that we should still be trying to fix it. | ||
| And now after Corona, I'm just like, and after what Chuck Todd did in the last couple weeks with Bob Barr, and just like watching the rest of it, it's like, you know what? | ||
| Maybe just let it crumble. | ||
| And while I think there's major risks on the other side, if we have nothing that's mainstream, it's like, what gives us national cohesion? | ||
| It's like, why are we saving this thing? | ||
| Are you in that space or do you think there's something worth saving or some mix maybe? | ||
| Yeah, I think it's kind of a mix. | ||
| I don't ever think that the press has been unbiased, ever, even since its inception. | ||
| I mean, I think of the funny little ways that they used to, like during the days of our founding, that folks would go after each other. | ||
| Politicians would write nasty editorials, which were so much more scandalous than some of the stuff that we see now. | ||
|
unidentified
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He's got syphilis and a whole bunch of crazy stuff. | |
| Real colonial housewives come to life. | ||
| That's what it seemed like. | ||
| It was crazy. | ||
| I don't think that they've ever been unbiased. | ||
| I do think that they maybe perhaps have been a little bit more attentive to the needs of the people, because at one point the press was the people. | ||
| The press and the people kind of were hand in hand, and the press was the people's way to keep check on their government. | ||
| It's dissolved into party allegiances. | ||
| And a lot of the press, and there have been surveys, the majority of them identify politically one way as opposed to the other. | ||
| And I don't even have a problem with that. | ||
| The problem that I have is the egos of so many of these individuals who seem to think that the byline is the most important thing on a piece, as opposed to the information that the piece is sharing or supposed to share. | ||
| And so many of these Q&As with the president turn into some kind of footage for a reporter to aggrandize themselves and make a story out of themselves, or it's political propaganda. | ||
| And it's frustrating because I always feel a free press is a sacred thing. | ||
| And I will defend that to the end. | ||
| But are they free, though, when they cannot report on things outside of that political filter, when everything has to run through that party affiliation? | ||
| Is that really free reporting? | ||
| And I also think that criticism of the press seems to be taboo now. | ||
| But a lot of people in the press don't seem to understand that a free press and a free people's right to criticize their free press. | ||
| These are things that go hand in hand. | ||
| You can't have one without the other. | ||
| And you can't criticize our criticism of you without kind of ultimately betraying your principles. | ||
| So I wish, I don't, like I said, I don't mind bias when it's honest. | ||
| But I don't want people to report something and have it be politically, you know, one-sided and then try to rely on the credit earned by a previous media generation back when they at least attempted to not place so much emphasis on the byline or who was anchoring the news at that particular point. | ||
| And really just, I wish that they would just focus on the information. | ||
| And if they want to do editorial, do editorial. | ||
| Like, I'm not a journalist. | ||
| I'm not a hard- I am an editorialist, a commentator, an analyst. | ||
| I am so biased, it's crazy. | ||
| But I admit it, and I'll be honest with people about it. | ||
| But just, I want them to do the same as well. | ||
| Just be honest about it. | ||
| Do you think people get confused when people attack the media? | ||
| There seems to be this idea that if people like you and I attack the media, that somehow we're part of the problem. | ||
| Or the other version of this is like when Trump fights with everyone at CNN, he's fighting with Jim Acosta, and people are like, he's attacking the press. | ||
| And it's like, well, I actually have no problem with that. | ||
| He has First Amendment rights, too. | ||
| Now, if he was using the power of the government, obviously, to silence them, well, now we got a problem. | ||
| But he, as far as I know, he's not doing that. | ||
| Yet they love to play the victim, too. | ||
| And it's like what happens in America constantly, is that everyone is exercising their free speech all the time. | ||
| I mean, we could get to the big tech problem maybe in a moment, but the way it actually is working, Trump fighting with them, them attacking Trump, us attacking them, you may not love the whole game, and it may be something that burns too hot so it's eventually gonna explode or something, but everyone's free speech is being protected, basically. | ||
| No, I think that's a good point. | ||
| I mean, isn't that what it's all about? | ||
| I mean, America has always been kind of like a big giant family arguing at the dinner table. | ||
| And it makes it infuriating but also amazing. | ||
| I mean, I wouldn't change it for the world. | ||
| And that's what it's supposed to be like. | ||
| But this idea that There are numerous examples of bad reporting. | ||
| There are entire media entities on the right that exist to document legitimate cases of biased reporting. | ||
| That's not attacking anyone. | ||
| They act like they're on a battlefield and as they're trying to eat their MRE, they're being hit with missiles from the president or from a Republican or whatever because they dared to write a bad story. | ||
| And that's the point of it. | ||
| We also, in addition to keeping our politicians honest, we have to keep our press honest. | ||
| And I feel like that was a bad sale. | ||
| We were supposed to have them as an ally. | ||
| Really, there are a lot of people in the press, and I know you would agree with this, that have really abused their position of power. | ||
| And it is a position of power. | ||
| I will never forget the story of this elderly lady, and I wrote about it in my book, this elderly woman who had a Facebook group that was a pro-Trump Facebook group. | ||
| I mean, she can do whatever she wants. | ||
| She can play Farmville. | ||
| She can do a pro-Trump Facebook group. | ||
| And CNN showed up at her house. | ||
|
unidentified
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Oh, yeah. | |
| Oh, yeah. | ||
| Her address was displayed on camera and she ended up getting threats. | ||
| And I'm thinking, because you don't like her political affiliation, you decide to abuse your authority as a way to really intimidate people into not engaging in a right that they have. | ||
| That's bothersome. You know, I've been the victim of press bias. You've been the victim of press bias | ||
| I don't think there's anyone that is in this industry that hasn't been affected | ||
| But the idea that any kind of criticism of them means that they are being persecuted | ||
| I would have to say well you know there there is a definitive history as to who | ||
| react who who started what and it wasn't it wasn't the people who attacked an unbiased press. | ||
| It was the people who started pointing out some really unfair and nasty articles that had been written. | ||
| So I don't give a lot of credence to, and when they're unfairly attacked, | ||
| I'll definitely speak up. | ||
| But not every one of those attacks are unfair or criticisms are unfair. | ||
| So that's actually a perfect segue to the outrage part of this. | ||
| So as I'm doing all my press for my book, one of the things that people are asking me constantly is when did the outrage thing start? | ||
| Is there a moment that you can point to that it started? | ||
| I have a couple different answers for it because I think there's a few things that led up to it. | ||
| But do you see like a moment or a political movement or a person that sort of got us into this mess that now we all see? | ||
| Oh, that's a good question. | ||
| Because it feels like people have been outraged for so long. | ||
| Even since the George W. Bush years, even maybe even going back to Reagan, people have been outraged for a long time. | ||
| I remember going the first time I was ever at the Reagan Library. | ||
| And I was looking at one of the exhibits, and it was about some of the media bias towards Reagan, and those headlines were nasty. | ||
| And he would say one thing or look one particular way, and there were headlines about it. | ||
| I do think that it's grown to include almost every aspect of life. | ||
| So instead of it just being a reaction, it's now a culture. | ||
| And when that occurred, I think I don't know. | ||
| Maybe sometime after George W. Bush. | ||
| It's one of those things where it's been around for so long, we don't realize that we are in it. | ||
| We haven't, we don't realize how long we've been in it. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I, when do you think it started? | |
| So I have a couple different answers on this, but I think, you know, you know my story. | ||
| So as a lefty, I was very much in like the progressive thing and I think it was sort of The first time Bernie came around, he ignited, although I don't think he himself was realizing what he was doing exactly, he ignited this thing that was laying underneath, like there was Tinder basically underneath, that he ignited that sort of everything in America was bad. | ||
| And that once you do that, you couple that with identity politics, you couple that with You know, 20 years, or almost three decades, maybe, of kids being told that they can never lose, and their feelings matter, and participation trophies, and basically all of these things that then, as we became more hyper-partisan, and then you finally, you throw Trump onto it, which I think he was just a symptom of it, not the cause of it, but that, I think, is why the last five years, oh, and then, of course, you throw social media into it. | ||
| So I don't know that there's an exact moment, but it was like hyper-partisan leftiness, Coupled with sort of the collapse of the decent liberal, you throw in social media, you throw in trolls, you throw in bots, you throw in Trump who wants to play that game, you throw in the dishonest media, and we just, it was almost like we summoned this thing. | ||
| We all sort of did it together. | ||
| I don't point to like, oh, it was April 25th, 2007, you know? | ||
| We summoned a monster. | ||
| It is very much a Frankenstein's monster kind of story. | ||
| And you're right, social media intensifies it. | ||
| It's the magnifying glass through which the sun's rays are leveled at some of our fellow ants. I mean, that's | ||
| really ultimately what it's like. | ||
| I definitely think that the Bernie thing ushered in the whole outrage as a culture, because it | ||
| existed as a tactic. And I remember even seeing it during the Occupy Wall Street days. But | ||
| definitely with the introduction as not just a Bernie Sanders, but of socialism as now, | ||
| kind of like a legitimate spring off of the Democrat Party, or really ultimately with | ||
| what the Democrat Party is now, it really has taken over. | ||
| And there isn't a good, what happened to the liberals? | ||
| Where did the liberals go? | ||
| Where did those liberals that were Democrats, like even the Joe Manchin's kind of, I mean, he seems like a decent guy. | ||
| I disagree with him on a number of policy issues, but he seems like a decent guy, right? | ||
| He's not a nasty person. | ||
| He really focuses on policy, but he's like a dinosaur in the Democrat party. | ||
| It's not cool to be kind, really. | ||
| I mean, it really isn't, it's not. | ||
| I mean, that's true. | ||
| As I said to you on your show the other day, they basically executed Order 66 on the liberals. | ||
| The progressives saw the soft underbelly of liberalism. | ||
| Liberals are nice, liberals are tolerant, liberals are decent. | ||
| That's the good stuff about liberalism. | ||
| But what comes with that is this open-mindedness where we'll let anyone in. | ||
| And the progressives were like, oh, we're gonna do it in the name of tolerance and decency and diversity, but actually destroy the whole thing. | ||
| They turned into the biggest Puritans also, ironically. | ||
| All their belief systems are this weird dichotomy, and it makes for that. | ||
| It's very inconsistent, which makes me question the authenticity. | ||
| It's the anti-racists who are the racists. | ||
| It's the people who say... | ||
| Yeah, they flip everything on its head. | ||
| It's sort of bananas. | ||
| One of the things that I like that you do when I follow you on Twitter, you're on the short list of people who don't make me completely insane on Twitter, but you get a lot of hate. | ||
| We all get hate. | ||
| Okay, we subject ourselves to it. | ||
| But sometimes people will say quite horrific things about you, your family, your kids, your husband, the whole thing. | ||
| And you'll just retweet them and say, God bless, or I don't agree, or something like that. | ||
| Do you think that ultimately that is the key to winning this thing, so to speak, if there's a win, which is sort of just be a little better? | ||
| That's kind of the message that I try to push to college students. | ||
| I know it's not easy, because it sucks, and nobody wants to be called these things, but just be a little bit better. | ||
| It's not easy, and it's not rewarded with clicks or likes. | ||
| Really goes, um, you won't get it. | ||
| You don't get anything out of it. | ||
| Everybody likes treating politics like it's a gladiator. | ||
| It's like a gladiator event. | ||
| And I used to not always be that way, admittedly. | ||
| I mean, I, um, have always kind of been a brawler. | ||
| Uh, even when I was a Democrat, I was always kind of a brawler and I was the person who would crash protests in college. | ||
| And I, I would just, even if it was just myself, I would go and crash protests and do all kinds of stuff. | ||
| Uh, but. | ||
| I also think, too, at a certain point, you ask yourself, why are you doing what you're doing? | ||
| Are you out here to win just this argument? | ||
| Or are you out here to plant a seed into someone's mind? | ||
| Because you really, truly want to change something. | ||
| And I think for the people who really want to and truly want to change things, And do have the best interests of others at heart. | ||
| They realize that this is not going to be an immediate thing. | ||
| No one is going to ever have their minds changed on Twitter. | ||
| No one's ever going to have their minds changed on Facebook or in a five-minute cable news discussion where people are yelling over each other. | ||
| It's just entertainment. | ||
| It's infotainment. | ||
| That's all it is. | ||
| The real heavy work comes from repeated interaction and not just through the keyboard either. | ||
| And I used to Well, my friend, and I used to work for him, Andrew Breitbart, before he passed away, he would retweet all the hateful stuff. | ||
| And he would engage with a lot of it, too. | ||
| But he had fun doing it. | ||
| And initially, I retweeted it because it did make me mad. | ||
| And I wanted to hurt the other person. | ||
| And I wanted to make fun of them. | ||
| And I wanted to just destroy them on a public level, where they would just be nothing but a smoking pile of ash. | ||
| And then after a while, I'm like, what's the point of that? | ||
| For real, what is the point of it? | ||
| Because one more person that I'm able to break through to and actually have a conversation with and maybe get them to agree with me on 80% of the stuff, that's like one less person that I have to fight or that is going to make bad policy, you know, when my kids get older and they're going to have to deal with it. | ||
| And then I started thinking, I don't want my kids to have to deal with a Frankenstein's monster that I participated in creating. | ||
| So what can I do to make that different? | ||
| And it just was, it wasn't one certain thing that changed my thinking on dealing with the | ||
| hate aspect of it. | ||
| It was a bunch of stuff. | ||
| And then when I, you know, when I tell people, God bless, it may look like I'm being smart | ||
| aleck, but I'm really not. | ||
| I mean, I'm really not wishing ill will towards any of them because who knows? | ||
| I mean maybe some of them would have been me like 15 years ago and they just haven't had that moment where they figured out how to really get in there and really truly engage and advocate for what they believe in and I think that that's a journey that every single person is on and people come to different realizations about it at different times. | ||
| Yeah, so you've probably loved the fact that I haven't really brought up guns with the gun lady, but let's do a little bit. | ||
| Let's do a little bit on guns. | ||
| I'm sure I'm not the first person to refer to you as the gun lady, right? | ||
| Gun lady, it seems like. | ||
| They probably have different adjectives before gun lady. | ||
| There's probably some other adjectives they put in there. | ||
| And lady also is interchangeable. | ||
| Touche, touche. | ||
| Okay, so we actually don't have to do a ton on it because you do so much time, you spend so much time talking about this stuff, but could you, could we do like two or three things that you would love to explain to say anti-gun people or two or three things that are like the memes that are just misunderstood about our laws or about the Second Amendment? | ||
| Just a couple things that we could maybe clean up because I think you've had to spend a lot of time doing that sort of thing. | ||
| There was that infamous CNN Town Hall after Parkland, and that was just an absolute fiasco. | ||
| But maybe just a couple of the things that people should know that maybe they don't fully grasp, or something like that. | ||
| Yeah, no, I think that the biggest thing is a lot of people think that they're anti-gun, but they're not. | ||
| They're really not. | ||
| They are anti-you having a gun because they don't trust themselves. | ||
| And because they don't trust themselves and they don't have confidence in their ability to handle it, they project that onto other individuals. | ||
| I always tell people, if you're anti-gun, then you really don't believe, I mean, you shouldn't believe in calling the police to come with their guns if you have a need where firepower is required as a solution. | ||
| You shouldn't hire private security if you're anti-gun. | ||
| And I think that the idea of, well, I'm okay with guns so long as private security has them or police have them. | ||
| And there was a guy who, actually this was a couple of weeks ago, who on Twitter was telling me, oh yeah, I work for the firm that, you know, Moms Demand hires whenever they have events. | ||
| And I've had Moms Demand and Everytown confirm this to me separately from this. | ||
| But you're hiring private security for you, but you don't want other individuals to have that access I don't want to outsource the carrying of my firearm, and that seems really classist. | ||
| If we're to have a discussion about legitimate class warfare, I would think the idea that only people wealthy enough to hire private security to protect them, that is incredibly classist, because not everybody has Bloomberg money. | ||
| Not everybody is in that position. | ||
| And so if you're truly anti-gun, then you would believe that for police and military and everything else. | ||
| It's not a little bit of a position. | ||
| That's one of the areas that I think is either or. | ||
| And there are very few areas where there really isn't a lot of nuance. | ||
| I think that an abridgment of a natural right is a denial of a right. | ||
| So, that would be the first thing. | ||
| And the second thing is that we've always had firearms. | ||
| And we have more laws now than we ever had. | ||
| And we have seen only in terms of youth acting out in ways where they shouldn't and accessing firearms. | ||
| I think that we're ignoring a really serious problem in our society with younger people, with young males particularly. | ||
| I know you've talked about this before on your program. | ||
| A lot of people have discussed this. | ||
| Jordan Peterson has talked about this. | ||
| This is not getting enough attention. | ||
| I'm a boy mom. | ||
| And I can see how easy it is for young men to go off the rails. | ||
| And young women can too, but there's something different with young men. | ||
| And it's really easy for them to go off the rails. | ||
| And it's almost, we're in a society that is, in my opinion, is hostile towards young men and all young men. | ||
| And then it gets into varying degrees of severity, depending on different boxes checked. | ||
| And all of that is just making a kindling for this problem. | ||
| And until we deal with that, we're always going to have these problems, but you're not going to solve it by punishing law-abiding people who are not the fuel for this problem. | ||
| And then I guess the last thing, all of the laws that people keep saying that we need, we have. | ||
| That was the one I really wanted you to hit. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Every single day, I see somebody propose something, and they're like, oh, well, we shouldn't have crazy people that can buy guns. | ||
| Okay, well, you can have someone committed, or you can request—there's a whole way to go about this that preserves due process and protects innocent people. | ||
| The red flag law terrifies me, because it's a removal of due process. | ||
| Red flag laws aren't even about guns. | ||
| Red flag laws are a complete removal of due process. | ||
| Guns are a variable in this situation. | ||
| And when people realize that, that a firearm is a variable, and when you set this precedent of completely obliterating someone's ability to have that protection of due process, you are going to be able to accuse people and convict them before a trial on any number of things. | ||
| This isn't just about guns. | ||
| Think of an issue. | ||
| And that to me is a terrifying beginning to full, that's a terrifying concept. | ||
| And the fact that some are so incredibly lackadaisical about it, they're willing to under, to remove that pin of our republic just to what, because they think they're gonna cancel out Second Amendment? | ||
| That's a horrible way to do it. | ||
| Do you think that the real tough part is well you got to explain some truth okay so that that's tough but the left generally is much better at the bumper sticker answers and that is usually what people who aren't really thinking want to swallow i mean the easiest version of this is when i go to my local supermarket there is a sign on the outside and has a gun and it's crossed out and says this is a gun-free zone and if you're an average | ||
| Lefty, I think you walk in there and you're like, you feel good. | ||
| You're like, oh, well, there'll be no guns in here. | ||
| That's fantastic. | ||
| And of course, all you have to do, like most things, unfortunately, that come out of the left these days, is think about it for about six to eight seconds. | ||
| And usually what you'll find is, oh, you know, the bad guys, they probably don't pay attention to the stickers. | ||
| But to do what you just did there takes a lot more time, takes more attention, takes more work and knowledge, rather than here's a sticker on the door, I feel good about it. | ||
| it to you? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Well, and the stickers don't create this invisible force field. | ||
| That Star Trek technology does not yet exist in our world. | ||
| Maybe it does, and we just don't know about it. | ||
| Maybe that's what those UFO videos are about. | ||
| But it doesn't prevent bad guys from coming into the area. | ||
| They're not going to show up illegally in possession of a firearm. | ||
| And I hate the phrase illegal guns. | ||
| It's always illegal possession. | ||
| They're not going to show up with an illegally possessed gun and go, "You know what? | ||
| I was gonna go in here and do some really shady stuff. | ||
| But this sticker. | ||
| The sticker. | ||
| The sticker. - Totally not the sticker. | ||
| That doesn't, yeah, that's never happened. | ||
| And John Lott, who is a walking encyclopedia, he's done a lot of research on this. | ||
| And I think what is it, like the vast majority of mass casualty incidents, | ||
| these mass shootings that have taken place from the period of 1953 till the current time | ||
| have been in gun-free zones. | ||
| And a lot of these gun-free zones, they don't even have, | ||
| they don't even have armed security to protect, or at least try to protect the people | ||
| that they allow to come in. | ||
| So that is-- | ||
| like Linus's blanket, right? | ||
| It's a safety blanket. | ||
| This idea of a gun-free anything, why don't you just put a sign out that says crime-free? | ||
| Would some crime acceptable to you? | ||
| Just put a crime-free zone sticker. | ||
| It's never worked. | ||
| We live in a reality where, and this is why I think freedom scares, | ||
| some freedom scares people. | ||
| Some people cannot handle freedom because they don't, I think, trust themselves | ||
| and they don't trust other people. | ||
| And there are going to be people that are going to abuse their freedom. | ||
| And even after they have been caught and they have faced justice and they have been punished, they're still going to reoffend and they're still going to choose to do bad things with their free will. | ||
| You're never going to be able to legislate evil away because you cannot legislate that away in each individual. | ||
| The solution isn't to remove people's ability to defend themselves. | ||
| The solution is to make criminals afraid with more severe penalties instead of, I mean, I could sit here and talk to you about our justice system on and on and on because I think we have a massive problem and we have too many felonies and some of the nonviolent, it just goes on and on. | ||
| But for the serious offenders, there need to be penalties that really are adequate deterrents and quit punishing the law-abiding for what these people | ||
| choose to freely do. | ||
| And I always tell people, there are no such thing as loopholes. | ||
| It's like if someone is caught driving under the influence, they have their license | ||
| suspended, and they continue going and driving a vehicle, they get caught. | ||
| That's not a loophole. | ||
| They're breaking the law. | ||
| That's a criminal act. | ||
| So these loopholes that people keep talking about, there's criminal acts and non-criminal acts. | ||
| There's no nuance there. | ||
| The ATF has things covered to the point of being overcovered. | ||
| So there's a criminal act and then there's a non-criminal act. | ||
| There's no loophole. | ||
| But we always hear about the gun show loophole. | ||
| I know, the gun show loophole. | ||
| Because, you know, you always have gang members, Dave, going out there and buying super expensive collector's guns, and then going out and committing all of these crimes with collector's items. | ||
| And even that is even, even private sales are regulated to a point, and the penalty on that is incredibly high. | ||
| But that's not how, I mean, gangbangers, they've done surveys on this. | ||
| People who are committing crimes are getting this off the black market. | ||
| And if you think you're going to eradicate the black market, I mean, look how well the war on drugs has gone. | ||
| You think that this is going to be Are you hopeful for America at this point? | ||
| We can talk about all the scary stuff and the frustrations, and young people have problems, and the media is collapsing, and it feels like our institutions are crumbling, and COVID, and we don't have trusted sources, all of this stuff. | ||
| But I sense that underneath that is some hope or some grace. | ||
| Market myself as a perpetual cynic. | ||
| And I think it just comes by way of being like, you know, young Gen X. I just am a cynic. | ||
| And that's like the Gen X thing is to be cynical. | ||
| But I have a supreme appreciation and fondness for that crazy American spirit. | ||
| The spirit that drove people to go, Hey, let's just take a wagon and go way out in the wilderness. | ||
| We have no idea what's going to happen, but we're just going to just create something out there. | ||
| It is an animating spirit of liberty and it makes people courageous and it has made this country in such a short period of time, this beacon on the hill, this amazing thing. | ||
| And I'm hopeful because of that. | ||
| And I even think, even with some of the progressives out there, you'll notice, they're critical of, even though they're leftists and some of them are socialists and some of them say that they're communist, They're all pretty critical of communist China. | ||
| They're pretty critical of Xi Jinping. | ||
| So there is still something in that American DNA that is making them rebel against, at least somewhat against authoritarianism. | ||
| The news looks bad. | ||
| I just know that media likes selling you bad news. | ||
| So I don't really pay any attention to that. | ||
| But I'm hopeful because of the stuff that I see in little bits that doesn't get reported. | ||
| You know, the story of, you know, the guy who goes around and cuts, you know, the elderly people's yards because they don't have the means or ability to do it themselves. | ||
| And I see little bitty things or, you know, even like the kids in California, when the city dumped sand in their skate park and they went out and they cleaned the sand out of the skate park was one of the most awesome things I've ever seen. | ||
| I'm like that, you know, that kind of stuff. | ||
| That stuff, that's what brings me hope. | ||
| And the smart aleckness of those kids, that's what brings me hope. | ||
| I love that. | ||
| The idea, you know, the two women who got busted in Laredo, and they ended up also getting freed by Texas Supreme Court order. | ||
| They were cosmetologists doing services in their homes. | ||
| They're doing speakeasies. | ||
| I mean, that's like a prohibition era kind of thing. | ||
| I love it. | ||
| They were creative. | ||
| And they were going around the man. | ||
| That's an awesome thing. | ||
| So I, and the fact that Greg Abbott now says we can have home delivery of liquor kits. | ||
| That's amazing. | ||
| I think I've sent his office like a couple of emails saying, that's cool. | ||
| Make this go away. | ||
| You know, there's a little thing. | ||
| I thought you were going to say a couple of cases of whiskey, just a couple of emails. | ||
| Oh man, no, you can go and get, um, what is it? | ||
| One's a bourbon bloom kit. | ||
| And then you can actually get like frozen margaritas now, which, and he's like, yeah, we may not ever have these regulations come back in. | ||
|
unidentified
|
God bless Texas. | |
| So I, you know, there's little goofy things that I can point to, but ultimately, you know, I am hopeful. | ||
| It's, it's, it's hard to be a cynic when you see that kind of stuff. | ||
| And I am hopeful. | ||
| And I know that there's enough rabble rousers out there and smart asses out there who really just, uh, they give me hope. | ||
| You know, I don't know how else to put it, but they do. | ||
| All right, well, everyone can follow you on Twitter, at Dana Loesch, and in the words of Dana Loesch, God bless. | ||
| There you go, God bless. | ||
| If you're looking for more honest and thoughtful conversations about politics instead of nonstop yelling, check out our politics playlist. | ||
| And if you want to watch full interviews on a variety of topics, watch our full episode playlist all right over here. |
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