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Episodes Episode #2653 Segments
MainContent Politics as Persuasion

Back to episode — Episode 2653 CWSA 11/08/24

Context —

me in memory because we knew that winning the popular vote changed everything. I did not want to be in a situation where Trump won the electoral vote but not the popular vote. That was not where I wanted to be at all. And I think that some of the reason that Democrats are quiet is because there is no strategy that cleanly gets you past the fact that a majority of Americans who voted were on the o…

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Ford plant and some other plant and tried to keep American jobs here and it was just sort of brilliant because it gave you a first look at what a Trump presidency would look like. And you're like oh wow he's already on the job. He's definitely putting in the work. For me I like that.

So here he is again telling you what he has in store and he's very specific. That's ten things. Here they are. Immediately reissue his 2020 executive order restoring the president's authority to remove rogue bureaucrats. I didn't know he couldn't do that but apparently there must have been some employee protection or something but he can remove rogue bureaucrats. He wants to clean out all the corrupt actors in our national security and intelligence apparatus. I don't know how you do that exactly but I agree it has to be done. He wants to totally reform the FISA courts which are so corrupt he says that the judges seemingly do not care when they're lied to in warrant applications. I mean I think they do care but they act like they don't care because they grant pretty much anything.

Here's number four. Listen to this one. You ready for this? This is number four on his list. Expose the hoaxes and abuses of power that have been tearing our country apart. There it is. There it is. Yeah how about exposing the hoaxes. I remind you that the American debunkdc.com page is a really well done professional page of Trump hoaxes being debunked. So there is already a mechanism for that. He just needs to send enough eyeballs to it. And I love the fact that it's an enumerated top ten thing because if you don't take out the hoaxes and the abuses of power — the hoaxes are the part that I care about the most. If you don't take care of the hoaxes then the Democrats can build back their hoax-ocracy which has temporarily collapsed.

So at the moment there are a whole bunch of Democrats saying to themselves and each other did we get everything wrong? Charlamagne tha God for example is saying that Democrats read the room wrong. There must be a lot of voters who were saying the same things like did we read everything in the country wrong? And the answer is yes. Yes if they thought they were the majority and they were on the side of the angels yes they read the room wrong. Very wrong.

All right number five: launch a major crackdown on government leakers who collude with the fake news. I like that because that's again going after the hoaxes. Make every inspector general's office independent and physically separated from the departments they oversee. That seems like a pretty smart structural change.

Seven: ask Congress to establish an independent auditing system to continually monitor our intelligence agencies to ensure they're not spying on our citizens or running disinformation campaigns against the American people or that they are not spying on someone's campaign like they spied on my campaign. I like that he likes to work in the slip. His list of top ten. I think that's worth trying but isn't the whole point of a spy agency that you can lie even to people in your own country? I mean is the CIA supposed to tell people the exact truth all the time? I don't know how that works because I would think if you create an organization whose job is to lie for the benefit of the country then they could lie anytime they had an argument that it's for the benefit of the country. So I don't know how that works. So maybe there's a way to audit them. It's worth a try.

Number eight: continue the effort launched by the Trump admin to move parts of the sprawling federal bureaucracy to new locations outside of the Washington swamp. That feels like a solution that people who are smarter and more well-informed than I am would say that's a good idea. I guess if you just move them physically there's less swampy connections and I could see how that would be true. But I'd have to see it work to know it's a solution because I feel like the swamp can follow you. You know we have phones and Zoom and stuff. So I don't know. Maybe if you can't have lunch with the rest of the swamp it doesn't get to you but it's worth a try. It's worth a try.

How about number nine: work to ban federal bureaucrats from taking jobs at the companies they deal with and that they regulate. You know that's a tough one. I think everybody thinks that that makes the country at risk when the people who are doing the regulating are too cozy with the industry that they're regulating. On the other hand you want people who are so well connected that the pharma industry would want to hire them as soon as they could. So there's part of me that wishes there was some way to solve this without reducing the rights of people to work where they want to work. You know how non-compete agreements are usually — I think this is true — I think they're usually thrown out by courts. Your employer can't tell you not to work for the competition. I think it might depend on certain situations or states or something. But I don't love anything that limits where I can go to work. But on the other hand if the regulators are too cozy with the regulated then the whole thing falls apart. So I guess tentatively this would be one thing that I would also be in favor of.

But I would say that for having ten things on his list I'll get to the last one. Last one is push a constitutional amendment to put term limits on Congress. I don't think there's any chance of term limits but these are ten things which most of them look good at first look and several of them look like something that's worth trying. And then if it doesn't work adjust. That's how the whole country should work. Try something. It looks like a good idea. It looks like it solves the problem. If it doesn't work pull it back. Do it again. America is really good at canning the stuff that didn't work. It's sort of a superpower we have. So yeah let's try some stuff.

Trump also vowed separately to put on the first day to end gender affirming care. Now that's what the Democrats call it gender affirming care. Republicans call it mutilating young people. We don't need to get into that debate except to say that it was a very popular common opinion that children should be exempt from the transitioning. I think that the national approval for blocking children from transitioning is like 70 or 80 percent, 90 percent. It was way up there. It's like crazy popular. So yeah do that right away. So again this was something that Trump could do on day one literally that would look like he's really getting stuff done and the Golden Age is coming and things are working.

Mike Benz again. He had a really interesting idea because as you know he's described over the past few years the censorship network, the web of censorship non-government organizations. So there are all these entities that are not part of the government but in many cases our government as well as other entities fund them. So some of the things we fund are these disinformation censorship people that really are more like censorship. And so what Mike Benz says is that you couldn't totally dismantle that system but you could give it something like an almost lethal blow with one executive order that would prohibit funding by any government agency to any outside group involved in regulating, flagging or downgrading so-called disinformation. Because you know that turns into censorship.

Now how good an idea is that? Like really good. Now let me teach you something about the Trump administration. I'm going to say this with confidence without knowing yet if I'm right. Remember I always tell you that the person with the best ideas in charge, it's just always true. If you're the junior person at the meeting but when your turn comes to talk you have the best idea, well if people recognize it as the best idea I guess you were in charge even though you're the junior person. And this is one of those clean examples I think. And what makes it a clean example is that when you read it you say to yourself yeah of course. Of course. Yeah take the funding away from people who are trying to censor Americans. We have free speech. So this is just a plain good idea with a very specific mechanism which doesn't cost much of anything. An executive order. And it would be just a huge blow to a big part of the disinformation fabric.

Now here's my prediction. My prediction is because I've been saying this a lot that the Trump administration is better than probably any administration ever at reading the room and also accepting suggestions that come from good sources. So when Elon Musk says you know what if you let me I can take a bunch of money out of the government, what does Trump say? Does Trump say oh no that will be taking the limelight away from me. I can't have you getting in there. No he says really? Elon M

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usk the guy who took 80% of the employees out of Twitter and increased the number of features. He's willing to work for free. He has all the credibility of the public and he can do this thing which desperately needs to be done. Yes yes yes. You know the Democrats are talking to Beyonce. They can't even get Beyonce the same way. And Trump's got people like Naval and Elon Musk and a whole bunch of…

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