July 15, 2024 • 43 mins
In this episode, Tudor and Julian Epstein, a Democratic strategist, discuss the current political climate. Tudor addresses the recent assassination attempt on former President Trump, emphasizing the need for civil discourse and the dangers of divisive rhetoric. Epstein critiques President Biden's leadership and the Democratic Party's handling of various issues, including crime and progressive policies. They highlight media bias and the importance of honest reporting. The Tudor Dixon Podcast is part of the Clay Travis & Buck Sexton Podcast Network. For more visit TudorDixonPodcast.com
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Welcome to the Tutor Dixon Podcast. Today. I have a
podcast for you that I actually recorded on Friday, which
was obviously before the assassination attempt on former President Trump's life,
And oddly enough, in this podcast, it's really relevant because
Julian Epstein is on with me and he's a Democrat,
and we actually talk about the divide between the two
(00:25):
parties and within the parties themselves. And I had to
add this to the beginning of that podcast because of
what happened on Saturday night. And first of all, I
just want to say that we are praying for the
family who lost their family member at the rally and
the others who are hospitalized.
Speaker 2 (00:43):
I just.
Speaker 1 (00:45):
I am shocked that this is where we are as
a country, that this nasty rhetoric, this constant idea that
there's someone out there that is a threat to you
in the United States of America, could cause someone to
then go and commit se to horrendous act in an
attempt to assassinate the former president. But ultimately, we have
(01:06):
people whose families will never be the same today, and
I do believe that that is directly linked back to
all of these blowny garbage threats that life will never
be the same if Donald Trump gets into office. And
I think right now this should be a time of reflection,
and so I'm actually coming to you all and asking
(01:27):
you for prayer, Prayer for those of us who have
a platform that can speak, prayer for the right words
to speak. We've found out that words have so much power,
and we've heard so many negative words about conservatives lately,
and I'm telling you the one that is concerning me
most is telling people, especially young people and impressionable people,
(01:50):
that we as conservatives are a threat. During my campaign,
a group like I've experienced this and I feel like
I need to talk about this because having these people
say I was a threat, it's just so ridiculous. It's
so un American. And during my campaign there was a
group called Defend Democracy Project and they actually listed me
(02:12):
as a threat to democracy. It's like a group that
puts out a hit list on you. I mean, really,
this is like, these are the people that you should
be afraid of, these are the bad ones. And why
they said I took part in unprecedented attempts to overturn
the will of American voters. How, I mean, how what
was I involved in? Nothing? Nothing? There's nothing. The article
(02:36):
doesn't ever explain it. They never have to, because that's
how this works when you're a Republican. I've never been
a part of anything like that, not even remotely, but
I don't have to have been, because now they got
what they wanted, They got their headline, and they knew that.
As soon as people would hear oh, she's a threat,
she's on a hit list, she's a threat, they would
want to scare me, They would want to scare voters,
(02:56):
and maybe even they would want to hurt me. And
these groups get paid. I mean they talk about the grift.
They get paid to create a list of people who
are bad Conservatives, and then they distribute to this to
all their little lackeys who are going to go out
and say, Okay, this person's a threat, and that person's
a threat, and you have to be aware of this.
Well over the weekend, this went too far. You can
(03:19):
say what you want about conservatives, but we don't have
any groups putting Whitmer on a hit list. I mean,
despite her illegal orders, despite the fact that she threw
people in jail for no reason at all, She stole
people's business licenses, she robbed children of an education. We
didn't go out there and say she's a threat, said
vote against her. We have a system for this. The
(03:41):
system is not taking the person out. The system is
not putting the person in jail. The system is vote
them out. But you see, their policies are so bad.
Their policies are so so bad that they can't say
we don't like her policies because they're actually good. They
couldn't come after me for what I would saying that
would fix the state. They had to come after me
(04:03):
for something else. And they have to make their political
opponents inhumane. They wanted to so that people can't morally
support you. They want to label you in such a
way that there's no defense. I mean, if you think
about this, like their label for me was I was
an extremist, like you know everybody who's the right now,
I was an extremist. I was an extremist on abortion,
(04:24):
and their rights would never be the same. The funny
thing about it is I wasn't going to have any
choice in what happened on abortion, no matter what. And
the bizarre part about it is, no matter how many
times I said I don't know, I'm not actually choosing
what happens. The people of the state of Michigan, they're
choosing what happens on abortion. It's up to them to decide.
They're going to vote on this. I don't choose what happens.
(04:46):
And the governor Whitmer at the time, said, oh, she'll
change it. Shed she'll go in there. She's an extremist,
she'll change it. And I said, can't change the constitution.
This is a constitutional amendment. I am running for office
to abide by the law. Didn't matter. Do you think
a single media organization came out and said, actually, Tutor
(05:08):
Dixon will have no effect on abortion, and actually, if
you should vote one way or another, Tutor Dixon can
do nothing ever on abortion. Nope, because these media organizations
are responsible. They're part of it. They're part of the
hit lists. They're helping to put people on it. School
choice the same, she's going to take away education. How
(05:28):
bizarre this is after kids in Michigan have not had
an education in over a year, and the media they
go let right along with it, and they make me
into a monster on policy, but beyond on my own
personal belief system, if it doesn't line up with everybody
(05:49):
else's in the state, then somehow I'm going to change
the constitution. It's crazy. And don't get me wrong, I've
seen responses to this assassination attempt on former President Trump's life,
and they've been disgusting from both sides this weekend. Both sides.
I've seen these horrible responses from people who talk about
better aim and they wish that it actually happened, all
(06:11):
these horrific things. But I've also seen people on our
side who have immediately jumped on this DEI blowney, saying
women can't be in the Secret Service and this is
so dangerous, and we can't have women have these jobs.
Where are all the burly men, where all the marines?
I have news for you, and I'm serious about this.
(06:32):
These are what we call the hot takes. Those are
the people who are saying things that make no sense,
and they actually help nothing in the moment, in this moment,
when you see those things, when you see those people
who are like women's suck, get them out of any position.
Get those people off your social media feed. When you
see the people who are like, darn it, he missed,
(06:52):
wish they'd gotten him, Get those people off your social
media feed, because those people they're not there to actually
talk about something reasonable. Well, they're not talking about policy.
They don't know what training these women have gone through,
and they don't know what we as women go through
to have the jobs that we have. They aren't doing
it because they're trying to be constructive. They're saying these
(07:12):
things because they want to get clicks. It's their business.
They get more money, more clicks, more money. They're saying
something that is so unthinkable that you might go, oh, yeah,
maybe it was the women. I'll like that. They're wrong.
They're wrong. We are working so hard out here to
(07:34):
make sure that Americans just continue being Americans, that they
just continue to have freedoms, that these people who are
serving themselves that are just trying to become rich on
social media, that they are not the ones that are
controlling young people today. There are so many conservatives out
there that are like, listen, we want less government. We
(07:56):
want to make sure that you have your freedoms. We
want to make sure that you can worship where you
want to worship, that you can afford your groceries, that
your kids get educated. But these hot takes, they don't help.
They're not helping. They're simply not helping bashing people on
either side. And in this moment, this is the moment
when you go, WHOA, Wow, this got out of hand.
(08:18):
Now we have to think clearly. We have to be
careful with our words. We have to be intentional with
our words. We have to step back and ask God
to help us be intentional with our words. And I
would say, if you are someone who has a platform,
or even if you're just talking to your friends or
(08:39):
your neighbors, be intentional right now with your words. Make
sure your words mean what you want them to mean,
because we're all wishing that something could have been different
on Saturday night, that there wasn't somebody who had been
driven to this, that this disgusting message, this clickbait message,
(09:00):
this ratings message. That America is going to be better
than this going forward. And I say that the clickbait
message because these people who you see on social media,
it's not just them, my gosh, it's the people on
TV as well, the people on TV who have called
for President Trump to be eliminated. Let us get back
(09:23):
to fighting on policy and talking about what's better for
our kids, what's better for our seniors, what's better for America.
Let us fight on those principles. No more calling each
other a threat. There are no threats in this country
under the Founding Fathers government that they set up. They
made it so that there are no threats that if
someone terrible gets in, you can vote them out the
(09:44):
next time. That you fight on equal ground, on fair ground,
that you fight on policies, and you fight on truth.
You fight on truth because words matter, and because the
words that I've heard from the mainstream media, the constant
threats to democracy. Nancy Pelosi is saying that we have
to get rid of Donald Trump. You've got senators out there,
what's the same, Senator Goldman saying that he has to
(10:05):
be eliminated. If you've got Joe Biden saying you got
to put a bullseye on him. Because all those words
they mean something. And eventually you figure out that what
they're saying and what people are hearing is that they're
saying it's time to kill someone. They don't necessarily mean that.
(10:27):
This is just conversation. But that kid, he heard that,
he heard that and he was like, man, I got
to protect this country. There's nothing I wouldn't do to
protect this country. I got to do it. Because that's
what these people in power are telling me. There's no
other protection out there. Good grief, it's ridiculous. Only people
(10:47):
who are saying that Donald Trump can't get elected because
he's a threat are people who don't know how government works,
or they're so obsessed with being in control they're willing
to brainwash people to try to get there. If we
constantly go after people and say we've got a police,
(11:09):
we've got to police everybody, then everybody's going to be policed.
We've just got to get back to having normal conversations.
I mean, you look at what they've done to President Trump.
Speaker 2 (11:20):
Man.
Speaker 1 (11:21):
They're in trouble now. They've been saying, gosh, he's a
convicted felon, he's this threat to democracy. He's such a
bad guy. They created all of this, and now they
had someone on their side do the unthinkable. And so
the question is like, at this point do we go
back and we say man, hmm. I heard Joid Read,
I heard Joy Red say it. I've heard Caitln Collins
(11:42):
say it, heard Nancy Pelosi say it. I've heard all
of these people on the left of my gosh, I've
heard Morning Joe say it, heard all of these people
say you got to get rid of him, you got
to eliminate him. Do all of those people have to
go to jail or do we take a step back
and do we say we stop, we stop with this
crazy rhetoric. We'd stop with the threats. We stop saying
(12:04):
this because it's dangerous and it's coming directly from the media.
Like I said, I know because I was a candidate
and I thought the same thing I thought at that time. Man,
they're not asking me questions because they want to know
who I am. They don't want to know about my policy,
they don't want to fight on fair ground. They're asking
me these questions because they want to help Democrats make ads.
(12:27):
They're figuring out how to get that one SoundBite that
they can make me sound like a threat. A threat,
And there is nothing scarier to the people of America,
nothing scarier to this younger generation who has never had
a threat. They've never had to fight a war. They
didn't see nine to eleven up close and personal. They
never saw World War Two, they've never seen Vietnam. So
(12:49):
political threat, that's potentially the scariest threat they've ever seen
in their lifetime. And they have to eliminate it. Stop
talking like this. You hear me talk about policy, and
I'll say one more thing. Gretchen Woimer didn't want to
fight on policy. And you're probably going to see this
over the next few days, but I think she was
(13:09):
one of the original people calling for Donald Trump to
be eliminated because when we were in the midst of
the pandemic and she didn't like the way he was
handling the pandemic, and she felt like she had to
come out and go after him in some way. She
decided to put a little sticker in the back of
her media hit area so that every time she went
on TV, there was a sticker that said, eighty six
(13:31):
forty five. Eighty six forty five. You know what happens
when you're eighty six something, I mean, you go in
the kitchen, kill the onions. Eighty six. She knew what
it meant. She knew exactly what it meant. She called
for the assassination of a president. I think she's an idiot.
I don't think that she should go to jail for it.
I think she's an idiot. I think that we've gotten
(13:54):
too many people that are idiots out there that say
whatever they want because she's also obsessed with the clickbait,
obsessed with the social media. We as Michiganders, pay more
money for our social media team than I think anything
else because her social media runs over time. And she
thought that would be hilarious. She thought that would get
a lot of clicks. Go to the edge, be as
(14:17):
risky as possible. Say women shouldn't be involved in the
secret service. Go out there and say, man, we wish
she didn't miss. Go out there and threaten eighty six
forty five. It's enough. Be done. Start praying for people
to say the right thing, and I'm included in that.
Help me to say the right thing. Help me to
(14:40):
speak words that God wants me to speak to, have
the Spirit speak through me. Because it's time to stop
to run for office like normal people. Stop saying conservatives
are a threat. And I say this before you listen
to this, because it's interesting. I talked to Julian Epstein
(15:01):
about all of this, and I mean, oddly enough, we
talk about what it is to be a good Republican
and a good Democrat and speak together. And you're going
to hear in this interview a Democrat and a Republican
come together and say we don't always agree, but it's
at mean that we have to be mean to each other.
Doesn't mean that we can't talk. We can talk. And
(15:22):
so I sort of loved that this was the interview
because I just feel like that was a god thing
And I want you to listen to this with an
open mind and think about what it means for the
future and how we can come together. And before I
introduce this to you, I just want to say again
that my prayers are with President Trump, and my prayers
(15:42):
are with the family of the man out of Pennsylvania
and the people who are in the hospital right now,
and really for all of the people in this country
for the tensions, for the political fights. These are not
fair fights, but I'm praying for them, and I'm praying
for President Biden, and I'm praying for Gretchen Wimmer, and
I'm praying that we all get back to saying the
(16:05):
right things, fighting fairly, talking about policy, talking about what
we want for you, because these are the people who
are here to fight and serve. With that, I introduced
this interview with Julian Epstein, and I'm so glad that
you guys continue listening to me and I hope that
I can serve you well, and I hope that my
(16:26):
words will be positive and encouraging for you. Julian, thank
you so much for joining. We were just talking about
how things in both parties are obviously a lot different,
and you have been criticized in the past because you
came out. I think it was in November of twenty three,
or maybe it was even before that that you came
out and said you thought that Joe Biden should not
(16:47):
run again. And people really mad at you then, weren't they.
Speaker 2 (16:51):
Yeah, well, Tutor, First of all, it is a pleasure
to be back on with you. As I think I
mentioned on social media the other day, I always enjoy
our conversations because I always feel like I'm learn something
when we chat, which is more than I can say
about most conversations I have people in politics these days,
people are so dug in and not willing to sort
of consider the weakness of maybe their own views or
(17:14):
be open to being persuaded. So I really enjoy our conversations. Yeah.
I wrote the piece in March of twenty three actually
arguing that Biden shouldn't run, and I argue that for
two reasons. One is I didn't think then that he
had the mental capacity for a second term and all
of the evidence, I mean, the fact that the debate
(17:34):
was such a surprise to people is what the surprise is,
because the evidence has been on the table for so long.
I mean. The most compelling piece of evidence for me,
and when I turned was very early on in the
Biden administration in August of twenty twenty one, during the
withdrawal from Afghanistan, which was a horrible disaster for American
(17:55):
security and an embarrassment. But more importantly, Biden's generals all
thought that we could have stabilized the Afghani government by
maintaining a skeletal force of five six seven thousand advisors,
air force capability, a number of things that were spelled out.
When Biden was interviewed in late August about it, or
(18:16):
early September after the fateful withdrawal, he didn't know what
his general's positions were on that. He insisted that his
generals all supported the complete withdrawal and supported his position,
which they didn't, and they testified before Congress that they didn't.
And this to me was the canary and the coal
mine that indicated there was a big disconnect that would
(18:37):
have serious consequences for the country, and in this case
for national securities. You've seen Al Qaeda has now repopulated
Afghanistan and they committed an attack in Russia recently at
the theater, and Afghanistan is a pretty sad situation. I
had an event at my house actually last night and
met a young woman whose father was killed by the Taliban,
(19:00):
and she reports what an incredibly repressive, horrible situation it
is in Afghanistan and particularly for women. And you know,
we got into the conversation about what Gaza would look
like if Gaza, if Amas is allowed to prevail, and
she said, quite literally, you know, we are going down
(19:22):
the road towards the talibanization of Gaza, and the and
the sort of the Palestinian population has been radicalized by Gaza.
And so all of this is a long way of
saying that the disconnect on Biden onn Afghanistan has been
shown sort of in my mind elsewhere, I think the
(19:43):
Mid East policy has been incoherent and has hurt not
just our security, but has compromised Israel in particular sort
of the you know, the both sides. You know, sometimes
I'm behind Israel sometimes I'm criticizing Israel, which has been
an invitation for Iran and has been amaster just to
step up. And you know, you hear Democrats saying, well,
(20:05):
the only problem right now is that Biden, you know,
may not have the mental capacity for a second term,
but he sure has had a good first term. And
I say to myself, you know, what planet are you
living on? And again, in the same way that I
think Democratic elites lied to the country when they knew
Biden didn't have the capacity for a second term, and
I think the staff is cravingly holding onto power, and
(20:28):
there's been sort of a cultural rod on the left,
they similarly don't get. They have this elite fantasy that
if you pass the American Rescue Plan or the Inflation
Reduction Act or the Infrastructure Bill, that it's a successful
presidency because you can count legislation on your hand the
number of bills passed. Well, the problem with that is
(20:49):
that Americans don't care about the number of bills you passed.
Americans care about real results. So when they see twenty
percent inflation, they think, no, this has not been a
good presidency. When they think when they see the borders,
you know, the floodgates have just broken on the borders,
and we've had ten million plus illegal migrants coming across
the border. That's chaos. When they see the crime spikes,
(21:11):
you know, you hear democrats say, well, crime went down
last year. Well it's not the point. The point is,
in particularly blue cities, since the summer of twenty twenty,
when we've had this real insane push for de prosecution,
you've seen huge crime spikes in the cities, in blue
cities where these prosecutors are calling the shots. And you know,
(21:33):
I live in Washington, d C. A good part of
the year and you see it here every day. Everyone
you know in this city has had been a victim
of some type of crime. So there's chaos. I think
people see the chaos. They don't like the economic results,
they don't like migrat problem, they don't like the crime problem,
and they don't like critical gender and critical race. It's
(21:54):
not to say that we shouldn't address those issues, you know, sensitively. If,
for example, and I'm probably going on a little along here,
if for example, a teenager has gender dysphoria, you treat
that teenager with kindness and care and sensitivity. But it's
a very very different argument, I think, to art to
(22:17):
say that that teenager should be coached towards gender transformation.
And as we know from the Hillary cast report, this
industry is maybe creating all kinds of really practices that
are aggravating and making worse the situation of these teenagers
(22:38):
who are in trouble. Uh. And it's an industry that
is driven in some part by profit and the fact
that the Democrats haven't been able to find a happy
place on that this is just an example. You know,
treat kids that have these problems with care and kindness,
but it doesn't mean you coach them to change their
gender before they really know what they're doing. Similarly, with
(23:00):
title nine, you and I have talked about this before.
You know, biological men playing in women's sports. Again, you
treat you know, everybody should be treated with kindness and
sensitivity and fairness and warmth, but it doesn't mean you're
letting biological men into women's locker rooms. And Democrats have
not been able to find that happy, happy center, that
(23:21):
common sense center on a whole range of issues, and
the fact that Democrats now think that they've had a
successful agenda is belied by all of the polling data,
which shows that they are underwater almost every issue except
for abortion.
Speaker 1 (23:35):
Stay tuned for more of my interview with Julian Epstein,
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a lot of control over the media narrative, and we've
seen that now. We've seen that they've they've given questions
to people. They're controlling what the media is saying. But
the media is also deaf, definitely biased toward the Democrats
(25:03):
and anybody who is in office. I mean, we've seen
it here in Michigan. But you talk about Afghanistan. I
have never heard anybody on the left talk about what
will happen to girls in Afghanistan now? And that, to me,
what you just said is something that because we don't
feel it every day, we think, well, it's not our problem.
It's funny to me because Ukraine is our problem, in
(25:25):
Israel is our problem, but Afghanistan and the girls there
are not our problem. And I don't understand how you
can be desensitized to that but oversensitized to the other.
It doesn't seem to make sense, but I can connect
it all back to how the media presents it because
the media has so much power. And it's the same
thing with constantly being told the Biden presidency has been
(25:47):
a success, It's been a success, so many great things
have happened. And you said, how could you not know
that Biden was in this situation? Well, the fact that
so many voters did not know makes me believe even
more so so that the media has that kind of power.
And yet I look at the polls and I think, Okay,
now people do know, and they're still neck and neck.
(26:09):
So I think it's just as much on the other side.
I mean, we are in a political climate right now
where there are factions that are so bought in for
their candidate and there's this group in the middle that
just doesn't know where they belong in.
Speaker 2 (26:23):
I think that's very well said Tutor. I mean, I
think that the problem that occurred with a Biden mental
capacity issue is one a narcissism on the part of
Biden and the family believing I'm the only person that
can save the country, and that is narcissism. He's probably,
amongst the candidates that are discussed, the worst position to
(26:46):
win of all of them. So there's a narcissism. There's
a cravenness on the part of the staff who misled
the public and all of us, although I don't know
how people could be so naive to be misled when
so much evidence on the table, but there's a cravenness
on part of the staff. There is a deception that
(27:07):
has occurred amongst Democratic Party elites for which there should
be an accounting. This is like the cordiers of a
royal court in sixteenth century Britain, where you just sort
of go out and tell people that it's the weather
is great when it's raining outside, and expect if you
repeat it enough, people will actually start to believe you.
And then there's a news media which you point out.
(27:29):
You know, there was an interesting article I don't know
if you saw it, tutor in the column in by
a conservative columnist in the Washington Post yesterday, Megan mccartal,
who argued that Fox News viewers were much more informed
about the president's mental condition and mental fitness than were
(27:50):
the viewers of the other networks and mainstream media. And
you know, so I sort of second that. I think
that's true, but I think you can also say that
was true about Afghanistan, they were more in the No
Afghanistan they were. They had a much better fix on
the fact that inflation was not transitory. They had a
much better fix that the public was really disapproving of
(28:10):
the migration mess and crime as well. And if you
track where the Democrats are behind on the major issues,
everything other than abortion, you will see and I argue
this to my friends all the time on the left,
you should pay attention to conservative media. You'll become a
lot smarter if you listen to conservative media, because you
(28:32):
would have had an early warning system on all the
problems we're facing on globally right now. You would have
had an early warning system on inflation, migration, crime, sort
of on down the line. And in fact, what we're
seeing in the polling, which again Democrats are not recognized,
is they're way behind on most issues. And if they
(28:57):
sort of listened to if they had listened to sort
of opposing opinions which you can get in conservative media,
I think they would have been a lot smarter on
this issue. And itt tracks. I think with groupthink authoritarian
mindset that's occurring on the left where they shut down
primaries because they didn't want debate they don't really listen
(29:18):
to talk to dissenting views on policy issues because there
is this really sort of there is this sort of
progressive orthodoxy that is that it is. It's so fragile
and such sort of you know, there's so there's such
chemophiliacs that they feel if they're criticized from the left,
the whole thing will fall apart, and it's what ultimately
(29:40):
makes you very stupid.
Speaker 1 (29:42):
I mean, it's interesting because I saw Joy read and
she was talking about like, I don't care who it is.
I mean, I think we should stick with Joe Biden.
If it's not Joe Biden, we have to go with
Kamala Harris. And if it's anybody else, we just have
to make sure it's not Trump because Trump will destroy
the country. And it's funny to me because you know,
I don't I'm not a Joe Biden fan. The progressive
(30:03):
left scares me, and I was very sad when he
won the election in twenty twenty, but there was no
part of me that was like it's all gone. We
can never get it back, because in my mind, I'm like, Okay,
in four years, we get an election again, and we
can shift things. This idea that they are telling the
(30:23):
American people it's the end of the country. He'll destroy
the constitution, democracy will be over, He'll take all of
your rights. I've never in my lifetime seen the media
feed this kind of belogna to the American people, but
they're so sensitive to it. They believe that's possible. And
our system is set up so it's not well.
Speaker 2 (30:45):
Look Tudor if to the point again about listening to
opposing views, I completely agree with you on the media.
I'm a Democrat. I voted for Joe Biden. I can't
say I'm happy with the results of his administration. I
don't think it's been a good administration. I would have
(31:06):
a hard time voting for him again. But to your
point about the news media, what we saw several years
ago is a seismic change in the institution of journalism.
Journalism is supposed to be about checks on the powerful, independence,
(31:28):
rigorous investigation, skepticism, asking the tough questions to hold the
powerful accountable. And that's the way it's supposed to work.
And what happened several years ago is they checked that
at the door, and they substituted it with activism in
the newsrooms and progressive activism. And I say this as
a Democrat, and you know, the honest journalists now are
(31:52):
recognizing that, yes, mainstream media is absolutely biased. There's just
no question. I mean, you can go down the list
Hunter Biden, laptop lab theory, all the things I sort
of got wrong, Jesse Smallett. There's just too much evidence
on the table right now, the mainstream media swooning to
a narrative because it fits a progressive, you know, worldview,
(32:13):
and finding out that what they've done they failed to
do is just you know, check their politics at the
door and do the honest of goodness investigation to get
to the truth.
Speaker 1 (32:24):
You know.
Speaker 2 (32:24):
And if we had done that on COVID, we would
have probably been in a better place in school lockdowns,
and we would have had a better understanding of what
happened in the lab, if we had had an honest
view of migration. You know, part of the reason that
the black working classes leaving the Democratic Party is because
there's a fair amount of evidence on the table that
uncontrolled migration leads to a depression of wages for working
(32:47):
class white, black and brown And you know, the elites
don't feel that because they're insulated from that in the
same way they were in Martha's Vineyard when the migrants,
you know, were shipped to ship to Martha's Vineyard, and
then they quickly found a way to've rit them from
their sites. Right, But elites don't feel it, but the
working class do. And so there is this, you know,
(33:11):
there is this disconnect between the college ed elites of
the left and the rest of the country, I think,
and the news media shares that same disconnect and really
thinks that they are sort of the arbitras of you know,
the ideological correct position, and that is not their job.
And hopefully what comes as a result of the debacle,
(33:36):
the debate debacle, is that the news media has a
come up and they because you see them all covering
their ass now. The New York Times editorializes in George
Clooney writes his up ed and sort of, you know,
all of these, all these reporters are not you know,
Chuck Pod. You know, I can't believe he ran again.
(33:56):
You know, this is an act of narcissism. He should
have been take Garretty and you see all this of
you know, and I sort of want to cry bullshit
on called bullshit on it because why didn't you say
that that.
Speaker 1 (34:10):
I mean, as as someone who ran for office on
the Republican side, I didn't have any idea how bad
it was until I ran for office. And there was
never a time when I was sat down in an
interview where the media was like, we really want to
hear your plan on this. It was you are a
(34:31):
force further tell us about abortion. Your for no abortion,
You're going to ban abortion. It's like, I never got
to talk. You could never. They weren't asking me, they
were defining me. They weren't interviewing me. They didn't want
the public to know who I was. They wanted to
tell the public I was a certain person and I
was never going to get my story across. And then
(34:51):
they totally protect the other side. And like just last
week and we just talked about this over the weekend,
we had a situation in Michigan where, to me, the
this is protecting Gretchen Whitmer. And maybe I'm wrong, but
we had two mass shootings in the last three weeks.
One was at a Rochester Hills splash pad, a very wealthy,
very white area. The New York Times wrote about everybody
(35:12):
wrote about it. Whitmer tweeted about it. It was devastating
last weekend. Last weekend, we had the largest mass shooting
in the state of Michigan's history in the city of Detroit.
The governor doesn't mention it, doesn't tweet about it, no
national stories. She's on a book tour in New York
right now. She has had interviews every single day. Not
(35:34):
a single question, what are you going to do about
crime in Detroit? You had the largest mass shooting in
the history of Michigan and the second largest was last year.
What are you going to do about these mass shootings
that you're having that have risen two and a half
times since you took office. No one mentions it. How
is this possible?
Speaker 2 (35:52):
Nor do they mention the carnage that goes on the
south side of Detroit. And look, there is a there.
There is a massive failure. And I say this again
as somebody sort of in the political center who has
traditionally voted Democrat, who was very disenchanted with the Democrats.
(36:13):
Now there is a massive failure on the news media.
There is sort of, you know, this tendency to go
for the dopamine highs that you get from vilifying one
side versus the other. It sells copy, it gets viewers,
all of that stuff. It's not their job. Their job
is to do honest reporting and to check the politics
at the door, and they have, for the most part,
(36:34):
they failed to do that. But now you see them
all covering their ass. Oh, we're honest reporters. We're going
to sort of hold you know, we're gonna we're gonna
hold Biden accountable. We're gonna ask the tough questions. Now, well,
you know, where were you and to your point about
you know, when I wrote the piece in the Wall
Street Journal in March of twenty three, you know, it
was sort of either crickets or it was you know,
(36:55):
how could you be such a heretic? And you know,
at the end of the day, you're just hurting yourself
because the stupidity of group think, that the failure to reflect,
the failure to think about where your own position might
be right or wrong, the failure to listen to the
other side. You know what you're describing when the media
(37:18):
is coming it to you, it's sort of like, you know,
it's argument by epithet. You know you are you know,
if you're opposed to migration, you're a racist. No, you're
not a racist. You don't think the country can handle
ten million, you know, uncontrolled migration. You don't think the
cities can handle it. You don't think we have the
public resources for it. You look at what's happening in Europe.
(37:39):
You see just it's not a manageable situation. It's a
completely respectable position. If I if I'm you know, I'm
pro choice. But if you're pro life, I don't think
you're anti woman. I don't think you're trying to take
over anti r I don't.
Speaker 1 (37:55):
Think that's the thing. I'm like my per and I
can have person I've said before. You know, I could
be a Christian, and that doesn't mean I think everybody
has to be a Christian. But I think you should
know how I am and what I believe, and you
should have an idea of that. And that's the frustrating part.
And I've had the same experience you've had because I've
criticized people in my party because I think that we're
(38:15):
allowed to. I think when someone says something outlandish and
it's it's far to the right and it's something that
the country doesn't believe in, you're allowed to go, hey, hey, no,
I don't agree with this, but it's the same thing.
I got the call that was like, you won't be
invited to these things. You're not going to be you
got to stay in line. I'm like, guess what if
it takes me agreeing with this viewpoint, I don't care.
(38:39):
That's not who I am. And I'm not gonna tow
the party line if that's the party line, which it's not.
It's not.
Speaker 2 (38:45):
It's a Soviet mentality. And ultimately we know what happens
to Soviet union. You implode because nobody's doing the thinking
but one person. If everyone thinks the same thing inside
the room, only one person is doing the thinking, and
that's inevitably going to lead you to a much lower
intellectual level and a much lower level of understanding. And
(39:07):
as I say, you know, you can be pro life
and I can be pro choice, and I can still
say I think your pro life position is completely honorable,
completely respectable. I understand the integrity of a position where
you are protecting the life of an unborn I may
have a different point of view, but I don't think
(39:28):
there's anything in that position that makes you a bad
person or means that you're trying to control anybody's body
or anybody's rights. I just think it's an area where
people can have honest, you know.
Speaker 1 (39:39):
Different conversation too, saying.
Speaker 2 (39:42):
Without saying like you're a bad person, and I may
learn something, you know, I may learn something from that conversation.
Speaker 1 (39:47):
And just to talk, we don't talk anymore. Stay tuned
for more of my interview with Julian Epstein, But first
I want to take a moment to tell you more
about my partners at IFCJ. Since the start of the
Swords of Iron bore Israel on October seventh, we've seen
death and destruction in the Holy Land. For more than
forty years. The International Fellowship of Christians and Jews has
(40:08):
been on the ground in Israel, and within hours of
the war starting, and every day since, they've been feeding
the hungry and protecting the vulnerable. The attacks continue in
the north and south of Israel, but there are resilient
survivors who bravely share their stories. In a new series,
The Fellowship calls Faces of Iron survivors like Shuki. On
(40:29):
October seventh, Shuki saved herself and eight others when Hamas invaded.
Shuki and eight others ran to a bomb shelter. All
that stood between life and death was the door of
that bomb shelter. Shuki held that door closed for nearly
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you support Israel through the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews,
(40:49):
and it's this support that helps these survivors remain steadfast
and strong. To hear more stories like this one and
show your support for Israel. Visit support IFCJ again. That's
support IFCJ dot org. Now stay tuned because I will
have more with Julian Epstein after this. Before I let
(41:11):
you go. There's been all of these people who have
been jockeying for the presidential position. They think that if
Joe Biden gets off the ticket, it'll be a Gretchen
with Maro Toubia, Gavin Newsom or Kamala Harris. You have
come out and said you'd love to see a Josh Shapiro.
Tell us really quickly, why well.
Speaker 2 (41:29):
Because all of those candidates that you mentioned other than
Josh Shapiro will double down on the policies, the mostly
progressive left policies in the last four years, which are unpopular.
Josh Shapiro is a Mott, is a centrist, and as
is Andy Basher. Josh Shapiro supports things like school choice.
You see, you know, the recent data on math and
(41:51):
English proficiency in high schools is atrocious. It's just it's
mind boggling that this is not considered a national crisis.
And to your point about the media, we're not covering
this every day. Okay, So Josh Shapiro supports things like
school choice. He is very strong pro Israel, unambiguously the
way you don't see with much of the moral confusion
on the left on Israel, and he sort of similarly
(42:13):
on down the line, argues for not just moderate points
of view, but also to our earlier point about listening
to the other side, you know, trying to find bipartisan consensus.
Stop arguing if you disagree with somebody that you think
they're a terrible person, you think they're trying to kill democracy,
you think they're racist, you think they're this it's just
(42:34):
argument by epithet. It's the most anti intellectual approach you
can take to anything. It's the amost You know, Plato
and Socrates would would would would just roll over in
their graves at the discourse that we have. You disagree
with me and I have to call you a bad name.
We have to stop that nonsense. We just have to say, Okay,
if you and I have a different point of view, Tutor,
(42:56):
give me the data, give me the empirical data that
backs it up. I'll give you I empirical data that
backs it up and let the best argument win without
us calling names. And that's what we have to get
back to. But unfortunately, I think we're going to the
opposite direction.
Speaker 1 (43:09):
I agree, but it's see. I'm hoping that this latest
title wave will kind of start to push people, more
rational people toward discussion. And I think that discussion is
the best way, and we have now the ability to
have discussions openly in ways we did it before. So
I appreciate you coming on today to have a discussion
with me. Julian Epstein. I always enjoy the conversation.
Speaker 2 (43:32):
I do too, And as I said the other day,
I always learned something every time we chat, so I
really appreciate it to do and I'm well, thank you.
I'm glad that we have this new friendship as well.
Speaker 1 (43:41):
Me too, Me too, and thank you, thank you so much,
and thank you all for joining us on the Tutor
Dixon Podcast. Make sure you head over to the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts and join
us next time on the Tutor Dixon Podcast. Have a blessing,
Welcome to the Tutor Dixon Podcast. Today. I have a
podcast for you that I actually recorded on Friday, which
was obviously before the assassination attempt on former President Trump's life,
And oddly enough, in this podcast, it's really relevant because
Julian Epstein is on with me and he's a Democrat,
and we actually talk about the divide between the two
(00:25):
parties and within the parties themselves. And I had to
add this to the beginning of that podcast because of
what happened on Saturday night. And first of all, I
just want to say that we are praying for the
family who lost their family member at the rally and
the others who are hospitalized.
Speaker 2 (00:43):
I just.
Speaker 1 (00:45):
I am shocked that this is where we are as
a country, that this nasty rhetoric, this constant idea that
there's someone out there that is a threat to you
in the United States of America, could cause someone to
then go and commit se to horrendous act in an
attempt to assassinate the former president. But ultimately, we have
(01:06):
people whose families will never be the same today, and
I do believe that that is directly linked back to
all of these blowny garbage threats that life will never
be the same if Donald Trump gets into office. And
I think right now this should be a time of reflection,
and so I'm actually coming to you all and asking
(01:27):
you for prayer, Prayer for those of us who have
a platform that can speak, prayer for the right words
to speak. We've found out that words have so much power,
and we've heard so many negative words about conservatives lately,
and I'm telling you the one that is concerning me
most is telling people, especially young people and impressionable people,
(01:50):
that we as conservatives are a threat. During my campaign,
a group like I've experienced this and I feel like
I need to talk about this because having these people
say I was a threat, it's just so ridiculous. It's
so un American. And during my campaign there was a
group called Defend Democracy Project and they actually listed me
(02:12):
as a threat to democracy. It's like a group that
puts out a hit list on you. I mean, really,
this is like, these are the people that you should
be afraid of, these are the bad ones. And why
they said I took part in unprecedented attempts to overturn
the will of American voters. How, I mean, how what
was I involved in? Nothing? Nothing? There's nothing. The article
(02:36):
doesn't ever explain it. They never have to, because that's
how this works when you're a Republican. I've never been
a part of anything like that, not even remotely, but
I don't have to have been, because now they got
what they wanted, They got their headline, and they knew that.
As soon as people would hear oh, she's a threat,
she's on a hit list, she's a threat, they would
want to scare me, They would want to scare voters,
(02:56):
and maybe even they would want to hurt me. And
these groups get paid. I mean they talk about the grift.
They get paid to create a list of people who
are bad Conservatives, and then they distribute to this to
all their little lackeys who are going to go out
and say, Okay, this person's a threat, and that person's
a threat, and you have to be aware of this.
Well over the weekend, this went too far. You can
(03:19):
say what you want about conservatives, but we don't have
any groups putting Whitmer on a hit list. I mean,
despite her illegal orders, despite the fact that she threw
people in jail for no reason at all, She stole
people's business licenses, she robbed children of an education. We
didn't go out there and say she's a threat, said
vote against her. We have a system for this. The
(03:41):
system is not taking the person out. The system is
not putting the person in jail. The system is vote
them out. But you see, their policies are so bad.
Their policies are so so bad that they can't say
we don't like her policies because they're actually good. They
couldn't come after me for what I would saying that
would fix the state. They had to come after me
(04:03):
for something else. And they have to make their political
opponents inhumane. They wanted to so that people can't morally
support you. They want to label you in such a
way that there's no defense. I mean, if you think
about this, like their label for me was I was
an extremist, like you know everybody who's the right now,
I was an extremist. I was an extremist on abortion,
(04:24):
and their rights would never be the same. The funny
thing about it is I wasn't going to have any
choice in what happened on abortion, no matter what. And
the bizarre part about it is, no matter how many
times I said I don't know, I'm not actually choosing
what happens. The people of the state of Michigan, they're
choosing what happens on abortion. It's up to them to decide.
They're going to vote on this. I don't choose what happens.
(04:46):
And the governor Whitmer at the time, said, oh, she'll
change it. Shed she'll go in there. She's an extremist,
she'll change it. And I said, can't change the constitution.
This is a constitutional amendment. I am running for office
to abide by the law. Didn't matter. Do you think
a single media organization came out and said, actually, Tutor
(05:08):
Dixon will have no effect on abortion, and actually, if
you should vote one way or another, Tutor Dixon can
do nothing ever on abortion. Nope, because these media organizations
are responsible. They're part of it. They're part of the
hit lists. They're helping to put people on it. School
choice the same, she's going to take away education. How
(05:28):
bizarre this is after kids in Michigan have not had
an education in over a year, and the media they
go let right along with it, and they make me
into a monster on policy, but beyond on my own
personal belief system, if it doesn't line up with everybody
(05:49):
else's in the state, then somehow I'm going to change
the constitution. It's crazy. And don't get me wrong, I've
seen responses to this assassination attempt on former President Trump's life,
and they've been disgusting from both sides this weekend. Both sides.
I've seen these horrible responses from people who talk about
better aim and they wish that it actually happened, all
(06:11):
these horrific things. But I've also seen people on our
side who have immediately jumped on this DEI blowney, saying
women can't be in the Secret Service and this is
so dangerous, and we can't have women have these jobs.
Where are all the burly men, where all the marines?
I have news for you, and I'm serious about this.
(06:32):
These are what we call the hot takes. Those are
the people who are saying things that make no sense,
and they actually help nothing in the moment, in this moment,
when you see those things, when you see those people
who are like women's suck, get them out of any position.
Get those people off your social media feed. When you
see the people who are like, darn it, he missed,
(06:52):
wish they'd gotten him, Get those people off your social
media feed, because those people they're not there to actually
talk about something reasonable. Well, they're not talking about policy.
They don't know what training these women have gone through,
and they don't know what we as women go through
to have the jobs that we have. They aren't doing
it because they're trying to be constructive. They're saying these
(07:12):
things because they want to get clicks. It's their business.
They get more money, more clicks, more money. They're saying
something that is so unthinkable that you might go, oh, yeah,
maybe it was the women. I'll like that. They're wrong.
They're wrong. We are working so hard out here to
(07:34):
make sure that Americans just continue being Americans, that they
just continue to have freedoms, that these people who are
serving themselves that are just trying to become rich on
social media, that they are not the ones that are
controlling young people today. There are so many conservatives out
there that are like, listen, we want less government. We
(07:56):
want to make sure that you have your freedoms. We
want to make sure that you can worship where you
want to worship, that you can afford your groceries, that
your kids get educated. But these hot takes, they don't help.
They're not helping. They're simply not helping bashing people on
either side. And in this moment, this is the moment
when you go, WHOA, Wow, this got out of hand.
(08:18):
Now we have to think clearly. We have to be
careful with our words. We have to be intentional with
our words. We have to step back and ask God
to help us be intentional with our words. And I
would say, if you are someone who has a platform,
or even if you're just talking to your friends or
(08:39):
your neighbors, be intentional right now with your words. Make
sure your words mean what you want them to mean,
because we're all wishing that something could have been different
on Saturday night, that there wasn't somebody who had been
driven to this, that this disgusting message, this clickbait message,
(09:00):
this ratings message. That America is going to be better
than this going forward. And I say that the clickbait
message because these people who you see on social media,
it's not just them, my gosh, it's the people on
TV as well, the people on TV who have called
for President Trump to be eliminated. Let us get back
(09:23):
to fighting on policy and talking about what's better for
our kids, what's better for our seniors, what's better for America.
Let us fight on those principles. No more calling each
other a threat. There are no threats in this country
under the Founding Fathers government that they set up. They
made it so that there are no threats that if
someone terrible gets in, you can vote them out the
(09:44):
next time. That you fight on equal ground, on fair ground,
that you fight on policies, and you fight on truth.
You fight on truth because words matter, and because the
words that I've heard from the mainstream media, the constant
threats to democracy. Nancy Pelosi is saying that we have
to get rid of Donald Trump. You've got senators out there,
what's the same, Senator Goldman saying that he has to
(10:05):
be eliminated. If you've got Joe Biden saying you got
to put a bullseye on him. Because all those words
they mean something. And eventually you figure out that what
they're saying and what people are hearing is that they're
saying it's time to kill someone. They don't necessarily mean that.
(10:27):
This is just conversation. But that kid, he heard that,
he heard that and he was like, man, I got
to protect this country. There's nothing I wouldn't do to
protect this country. I got to do it. Because that's
what these people in power are telling me. There's no
other protection out there. Good grief, it's ridiculous. Only people
(10:47):
who are saying that Donald Trump can't get elected because
he's a threat are people who don't know how government works,
or they're so obsessed with being in control they're willing
to brainwash people to try to get there. If we
constantly go after people and say we've got a police,
(11:09):
we've got to police everybody, then everybody's going to be policed.
We've just got to get back to having normal conversations.
I mean, you look at what they've done to President Trump.
Speaker 2 (11:20):
Man.
Speaker 1 (11:21):
They're in trouble now. They've been saying, gosh, he's a
convicted felon, he's this threat to democracy. He's such a
bad guy. They created all of this, and now they
had someone on their side do the unthinkable. And so
the question is like, at this point do we go
back and we say man, hmm. I heard Joid Read,
I heard Joy Red say it. I've heard Caitln Collins
(11:42):
say it, heard Nancy Pelosi say it. I've heard all
of these people on the left of my gosh, I've
heard Morning Joe say it, heard all of these people
say you got to get rid of him, you got
to eliminate him. Do all of those people have to
go to jail or do we take a step back
and do we say we stop, we stop with this
crazy rhetoric. We'd stop with the threats. We stop saying
(12:04):
this because it's dangerous and it's coming directly from the media.
Like I said, I know because I was a candidate
and I thought the same thing I thought at that time. Man,
they're not asking me questions because they want to know
who I am. They don't want to know about my policy,
they don't want to fight on fair ground. They're asking
me these questions because they want to help Democrats make ads.
(12:27):
They're figuring out how to get that one SoundBite that
they can make me sound like a threat. A threat,
And there is nothing scarier to the people of America,
nothing scarier to this younger generation who has never had
a threat. They've never had to fight a war. They
didn't see nine to eleven up close and personal. They
never saw World War Two, they've never seen Vietnam. So
(12:49):
political threat, that's potentially the scariest threat they've ever seen
in their lifetime. And they have to eliminate it. Stop
talking like this. You hear me talk about policy, and
I'll say one more thing. Gretchen Woimer didn't want to
fight on policy. And you're probably going to see this
over the next few days, but I think she was
(13:09):
one of the original people calling for Donald Trump to
be eliminated because when we were in the midst of
the pandemic and she didn't like the way he was
handling the pandemic, and she felt like she had to
come out and go after him in some way. She
decided to put a little sticker in the back of
her media hit area so that every time she went
on TV, there was a sticker that said, eighty six
(13:31):
forty five. Eighty six forty five. You know what happens
when you're eighty six something, I mean, you go in
the kitchen, kill the onions. Eighty six. She knew what
it meant. She knew exactly what it meant. She called
for the assassination of a president. I think she's an idiot.
I don't think that she should go to jail for it.
I think she's an idiot. I think that we've gotten
(13:54):
too many people that are idiots out there that say
whatever they want because she's also obsessed with the clickbait,
obsessed with the social media. We as Michiganders, pay more
money for our social media team than I think anything
else because her social media runs over time. And she
thought that would be hilarious. She thought that would get
a lot of clicks. Go to the edge, be as
(14:17):
risky as possible. Say women shouldn't be involved in the
secret service. Go out there and say, man, we wish
she didn't miss. Go out there and threaten eighty six
forty five. It's enough. Be done. Start praying for people
to say the right thing, and I'm included in that.
Help me to say the right thing. Help me to
(14:40):
speak words that God wants me to speak to, have
the Spirit speak through me. Because it's time to stop
to run for office like normal people. Stop saying conservatives
are a threat. And I say this before you listen
to this, because it's interesting. I talked to Julian Epstein
(15:01):
about all of this, and I mean, oddly enough, we
talk about what it is to be a good Republican
and a good Democrat and speak together. And you're going
to hear in this interview a Democrat and a Republican
come together and say we don't always agree, but it's
at mean that we have to be mean to each other.
Doesn't mean that we can't talk. We can talk. And
(15:22):
so I sort of loved that this was the interview
because I just feel like that was a god thing
And I want you to listen to this with an
open mind and think about what it means for the
future and how we can come together. And before I
introduce this to you, I just want to say again
that my prayers are with President Trump, and my prayers
(15:42):
are with the family of the man out of Pennsylvania
and the people who are in the hospital right now,
and really for all of the people in this country
for the tensions, for the political fights. These are not
fair fights, but I'm praying for them, and I'm praying
for President Biden, and I'm praying for Gretchen Wimmer, and
I'm praying that we all get back to saying the
(16:05):
right things, fighting fairly, talking about policy, talking about what
we want for you, because these are the people who
are here to fight and serve. With that, I introduced
this interview with Julian Epstein, and I'm so glad that
you guys continue listening to me and I hope that
I can serve you well, and I hope that my
(16:26):
words will be positive and encouraging for you. Julian, thank
you so much for joining. We were just talking about
how things in both parties are obviously a lot different,
and you have been criticized in the past because you
came out. I think it was in November of twenty three,
or maybe it was even before that that you came
out and said you thought that Joe Biden should not
(16:47):
run again. And people really mad at you then, weren't they.
Speaker 2 (16:51):
Yeah, well, Tutor, First of all, it is a pleasure
to be back on with you. As I think I
mentioned on social media the other day, I always enjoy
our conversations because I always feel like I'm learn something
when we chat, which is more than I can say
about most conversations I have people in politics these days,
people are so dug in and not willing to sort
of consider the weakness of maybe their own views or
(17:14):
be open to being persuaded. So I really enjoy our conversations. Yeah.
I wrote the piece in March of twenty three actually
arguing that Biden shouldn't run, and I argue that for
two reasons. One is I didn't think then that he
had the mental capacity for a second term and all
of the evidence, I mean, the fact that the debate
(17:34):
was such a surprise to people is what the surprise is,
because the evidence has been on the table for so long.
I mean. The most compelling piece of evidence for me,
and when I turned was very early on in the
Biden administration in August of twenty twenty one, during the
withdrawal from Afghanistan, which was a horrible disaster for American
(17:55):
security and an embarrassment. But more importantly, Biden's generals all
thought that we could have stabilized the Afghani government by
maintaining a skeletal force of five six seven thousand advisors,
air force capability, a number of things that were spelled out.
When Biden was interviewed in late August about it, or
(18:16):
early September after the fateful withdrawal, he didn't know what
his general's positions were on that. He insisted that his
generals all supported the complete withdrawal and supported his position,
which they didn't, and they testified before Congress that they didn't.
And this to me was the canary and the coal
mine that indicated there was a big disconnect that would
(18:37):
have serious consequences for the country, and in this case
for national securities. You've seen Al Qaeda has now repopulated
Afghanistan and they committed an attack in Russia recently at
the theater, and Afghanistan is a pretty sad situation. I
had an event at my house actually last night and
met a young woman whose father was killed by the Taliban,
(19:00):
and she reports what an incredibly repressive, horrible situation it
is in Afghanistan and particularly for women. And you know,
we got into the conversation about what Gaza would look
like if Gaza, if Amas is allowed to prevail, and
she said, quite literally, you know, we are going down
(19:22):
the road towards the talibanization of Gaza, and the and
the sort of the Palestinian population has been radicalized by Gaza.
And so all of this is a long way of
saying that the disconnect on Biden onn Afghanistan has been
shown sort of in my mind elsewhere, I think the
(19:43):
Mid East policy has been incoherent and has hurt not
just our security, but has compromised Israel in particular sort
of the you know, the both sides. You know, sometimes
I'm behind Israel sometimes I'm criticizing Israel, which has been
an invitation for Iran and has been amaster just to
step up. And you know, you hear Democrats saying, well,
(20:05):
the only problem right now is that Biden, you know,
may not have the mental capacity for a second term,
but he sure has had a good first term. And
I say to myself, you know, what planet are you
living on? And again, in the same way that I
think Democratic elites lied to the country when they knew
Biden didn't have the capacity for a second term, and
I think the staff is cravingly holding onto power, and
(20:28):
there's been sort of a cultural rod on the left,
they similarly don't get. They have this elite fantasy that
if you pass the American Rescue Plan or the Inflation
Reduction Act or the Infrastructure Bill, that it's a successful
presidency because you can count legislation on your hand the
number of bills passed. Well, the problem with that is
(20:49):
that Americans don't care about the number of bills you passed.
Americans care about real results. So when they see twenty
percent inflation, they think, no, this has not been a
good presidency. When they think when they see the borders,
you know, the floodgates have just broken on the borders,
and we've had ten million plus illegal migrants coming across
the border. That's chaos. When they see the crime spikes,
(21:11):
you know, you hear democrats say, well, crime went down
last year. Well it's not the point. The point is,
in particularly blue cities, since the summer of twenty twenty,
when we've had this real insane push for de prosecution,
you've seen huge crime spikes in the cities, in blue
cities where these prosecutors are calling the shots. And you know,
(21:33):
I live in Washington, d C. A good part of
the year and you see it here every day. Everyone
you know in this city has had been a victim
of some type of crime. So there's chaos. I think
people see the chaos. They don't like the economic results,
they don't like migrat problem, they don't like the crime problem,
and they don't like critical gender and critical race. It's
(21:54):
not to say that we shouldn't address those issues, you know, sensitively. If,
for example, and I'm probably going on a little along here,
if for example, a teenager has gender dysphoria, you treat
that teenager with kindness and care and sensitivity. But it's
a very very different argument, I think, to art to
(22:17):
say that that teenager should be coached towards gender transformation.
And as we know from the Hillary cast report, this
industry is maybe creating all kinds of really practices that
are aggravating and making worse the situation of these teenagers
(22:38):
who are in trouble. Uh. And it's an industry that
is driven in some part by profit and the fact
that the Democrats haven't been able to find a happy
place on that this is just an example. You know,
treat kids that have these problems with care and kindness,
but it doesn't mean you coach them to change their
gender before they really know what they're doing. Similarly, with
(23:00):
title nine, you and I have talked about this before.
You know, biological men playing in women's sports. Again, you
treat you know, everybody should be treated with kindness and
sensitivity and fairness and warmth, but it doesn't mean you're
letting biological men into women's locker rooms. And Democrats have
not been able to find that happy, happy center, that
(23:21):
common sense center on a whole range of issues, and
the fact that Democrats now think that they've had a
successful agenda is belied by all of the polling data,
which shows that they are underwater almost every issue except
for abortion.
Speaker 1 (23:35):
Stay tuned for more of my interview with Julian Epstein,
But first I want to take a moment to tell
you about my partners at bond Arms. As everyone knows,
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bond arms this month and tell them I sent you
get bondarms dot com. This is an administration that has
a lot of control over the media narrative, and we've
seen that now. We've seen that they've they've given questions
to people. They're controlling what the media is saying. But
the media is also deaf, definitely biased toward the Democrats
(25:03):
and anybody who is in office. I mean, we've seen
it here in Michigan. But you talk about Afghanistan. I
have never heard anybody on the left talk about what
will happen to girls in Afghanistan now? And that, to me,
what you just said is something that because we don't
feel it every day, we think, well, it's not our problem.
It's funny to me because Ukraine is our problem, in
(25:25):
Israel is our problem, but Afghanistan and the girls there
are not our problem. And I don't understand how you
can be desensitized to that but oversensitized to the other.
It doesn't seem to make sense, but I can connect
it all back to how the media presents it because
the media has so much power. And it's the same
thing with constantly being told the Biden presidency has been
(25:47):
a success, It's been a success, so many great things
have happened. And you said, how could you not know
that Biden was in this situation? Well, the fact that
so many voters did not know makes me believe even
more so so that the media has that kind of power.
And yet I look at the polls and I think, Okay,
now people do know, and they're still neck and neck.
(26:09):
So I think it's just as much on the other side.
I mean, we are in a political climate right now
where there are factions that are so bought in for
their candidate and there's this group in the middle that
just doesn't know where they belong in.
Speaker 2 (26:23):
I think that's very well said Tutor. I mean, I
think that the problem that occurred with a Biden mental
capacity issue is one a narcissism on the part of
Biden and the family believing I'm the only person that
can save the country, and that is narcissism. He's probably,
amongst the candidates that are discussed, the worst position to
(26:46):
win of all of them. So there's a narcissism. There's
a cravenness on the part of the staff who misled
the public and all of us, although I don't know
how people could be so naive to be misled when
so much evidence on the table, but there's a cravenness
on part of the staff. There is a deception that
(27:07):
has occurred amongst Democratic Party elites for which there should
be an accounting. This is like the cordiers of a
royal court in sixteenth century Britain, where you just sort
of go out and tell people that it's the weather
is great when it's raining outside, and expect if you
repeat it enough, people will actually start to believe you.
And then there's a news media which you point out.
(27:29):
You know, there was an interesting article I don't know
if you saw it, tutor in the column in by
a conservative columnist in the Washington Post yesterday, Megan mccartal,
who argued that Fox News viewers were much more informed
about the president's mental condition and mental fitness than were
(27:50):
the viewers of the other networks and mainstream media. And
you know, so I sort of second that. I think
that's true, but I think you can also say that
was true about Afghanistan, they were more in the No
Afghanistan they were. They had a much better fix on
the fact that inflation was not transitory. They had a
much better fix that the public was really disapproving of
(28:10):
the migration mess and crime as well. And if you
track where the Democrats are behind on the major issues,
everything other than abortion, you will see and I argue
this to my friends all the time on the left,
you should pay attention to conservative media. You'll become a
lot smarter if you listen to conservative media, because you
(28:32):
would have had an early warning system on all the
problems we're facing on globally right now. You would have
had an early warning system on inflation, migration, crime, sort
of on down the line. And in fact, what we're
seeing in the polling, which again Democrats are not recognized,
is they're way behind on most issues. And if they
(28:57):
sort of listened to if they had listened to sort
of opposing opinions which you can get in conservative media,
I think they would have been a lot smarter on
this issue. And itt tracks. I think with groupthink authoritarian
mindset that's occurring on the left where they shut down
primaries because they didn't want debate they don't really listen
(29:18):
to talk to dissenting views on policy issues because there
is this really sort of there is this sort of
progressive orthodoxy that is that it is. It's so fragile
and such sort of you know, there's so there's such
chemophiliacs that they feel if they're criticized from the left,
the whole thing will fall apart, and it's what ultimately
(29:40):
makes you very stupid.
Speaker 1 (29:42):
I mean, it's interesting because I saw Joy read and
she was talking about like, I don't care who it is.
I mean, I think we should stick with Joe Biden.
If it's not Joe Biden, we have to go with
Kamala Harris. And if it's anybody else, we just have
to make sure it's not Trump because Trump will destroy
the country. And it's funny to me because you know,
I don't I'm not a Joe Biden fan. The progressive
(30:03):
left scares me, and I was very sad when he
won the election in twenty twenty, but there was no
part of me that was like it's all gone. We
can never get it back, because in my mind, I'm like, Okay,
in four years, we get an election again, and we
can shift things. This idea that they are telling the
(30:23):
American people it's the end of the country. He'll destroy
the constitution, democracy will be over, He'll take all of
your rights. I've never in my lifetime seen the media
feed this kind of belogna to the American people, but
they're so sensitive to it. They believe that's possible. And
our system is set up so it's not well.
Speaker 2 (30:45):
Look Tudor if to the point again about listening to
opposing views, I completely agree with you on the media.
I'm a Democrat. I voted for Joe Biden. I can't
say I'm happy with the results of his administration. I
don't think it's been a good administration. I would have
(31:06):
a hard time voting for him again. But to your
point about the news media, what we saw several years
ago is a seismic change in the institution of journalism.
Journalism is supposed to be about checks on the powerful, independence,
(31:28):
rigorous investigation, skepticism, asking the tough questions to hold the
powerful accountable. And that's the way it's supposed to work.
And what happened several years ago is they checked that
at the door, and they substituted it with activism in
the newsrooms and progressive activism. And I say this as
a Democrat, and you know, the honest journalists now are
(31:52):
recognizing that, yes, mainstream media is absolutely biased. There's just
no question. I mean, you can go down the list
Hunter Biden, laptop lab theory, all the things I sort
of got wrong, Jesse Smallett. There's just too much evidence
on the table right now, the mainstream media swooning to
a narrative because it fits a progressive, you know, worldview,
(32:13):
and finding out that what they've done they failed to
do is just you know, check their politics at the
door and do the honest of goodness investigation to get
to the truth.
Speaker 1 (32:24):
You know.
Speaker 2 (32:24):
And if we had done that on COVID, we would
have probably been in a better place in school lockdowns,
and we would have had a better understanding of what
happened in the lab, if we had had an honest
view of migration. You know, part of the reason that
the black working classes leaving the Democratic Party is because
there's a fair amount of evidence on the table that
uncontrolled migration leads to a depression of wages for working
(32:47):
class white, black and brown And you know, the elites
don't feel that because they're insulated from that in the
same way they were in Martha's Vineyard when the migrants,
you know, were shipped to ship to Martha's Vineyard, and
then they quickly found a way to've rit them from
their sites. Right, But elites don't feel it, but the
working class do. And so there is this, you know,
(33:11):
there is this disconnect between the college ed elites of
the left and the rest of the country, I think,
and the news media shares that same disconnect and really
thinks that they are sort of the arbitras of you know,
the ideological correct position, and that is not their job.
And hopefully what comes as a result of the debacle,
(33:36):
the debate debacle, is that the news media has a
come up and they because you see them all covering
their ass now. The New York Times editorializes in George
Clooney writes his up ed and sort of, you know,
all of these, all these reporters are not you know,
Chuck Pod. You know, I can't believe he ran again.
(33:56):
You know, this is an act of narcissism. He should
have been take Garretty and you see all this of
you know, and I sort of want to cry bullshit
on called bullshit on it because why didn't you say
that that.
Speaker 1 (34:10):
I mean, as as someone who ran for office on
the Republican side, I didn't have any idea how bad
it was until I ran for office. And there was
never a time when I was sat down in an
interview where the media was like, we really want to
hear your plan on this. It was you are a
(34:31):
force further tell us about abortion. Your for no abortion,
You're going to ban abortion. It's like, I never got
to talk. You could never. They weren't asking me, they
were defining me. They weren't interviewing me. They didn't want
the public to know who I was. They wanted to
tell the public I was a certain person and I
was never going to get my story across. And then
(34:51):
they totally protect the other side. And like just last
week and we just talked about this over the weekend,
we had a situation in Michigan where, to me, the
this is protecting Gretchen Whitmer. And maybe I'm wrong, but
we had two mass shootings in the last three weeks.
One was at a Rochester Hills splash pad, a very wealthy,
very white area. The New York Times wrote about everybody
(35:12):
wrote about it. Whitmer tweeted about it. It was devastating
last weekend. Last weekend, we had the largest mass shooting
in the state of Michigan's history in the city of Detroit.
The governor doesn't mention it, doesn't tweet about it, no
national stories. She's on a book tour in New York
right now. She has had interviews every single day. Not
(35:34):
a single question, what are you going to do about
crime in Detroit? You had the largest mass shooting in
the history of Michigan and the second largest was last year.
What are you going to do about these mass shootings
that you're having that have risen two and a half
times since you took office. No one mentions it. How
is this possible?
Speaker 2 (35:52):
Nor do they mention the carnage that goes on the
south side of Detroit. And look, there is a there.
There is a massive failure. And I say this again
as somebody sort of in the political center who has
traditionally voted Democrat, who was very disenchanted with the Democrats.
(36:13):
Now there is a massive failure on the news media.
There is sort of, you know, this tendency to go
for the dopamine highs that you get from vilifying one
side versus the other. It sells copy, it gets viewers,
all of that stuff. It's not their job. Their job
is to do honest reporting and to check the politics
at the door, and they have, for the most part,
(36:34):
they failed to do that. But now you see them
all covering their ass. Oh, we're honest reporters. We're going
to sort of hold you know, we're gonna we're gonna
hold Biden accountable. We're gonna ask the tough questions. Now, well,
you know, where were you and to your point about
you know, when I wrote the piece in the Wall
Street Journal in March of twenty three, you know, it
was sort of either crickets or it was you know,
(36:55):
how could you be such a heretic? And you know,
at the end of the day, you're just hurting yourself
because the stupidity of group think, that the failure to reflect,
the failure to think about where your own position might
be right or wrong, the failure to listen to the
other side. You know what you're describing when the media
(37:18):
is coming it to you, it's sort of like, you know,
it's argument by epithet. You know you are you know,
if you're opposed to migration, you're a racist. No, you're
not a racist. You don't think the country can handle
ten million, you know, uncontrolled migration. You don't think the
cities can handle it. You don't think we have the
public resources for it. You look at what's happening in Europe.
(37:39):
You see just it's not a manageable situation. It's a
completely respectable position. If I if I'm you know, I'm
pro choice. But if you're pro life, I don't think
you're anti woman. I don't think you're trying to take
over anti r I don't.
Speaker 1 (37:55):
Think that's the thing. I'm like my per and I
can have person I've said before. You know, I could
be a Christian, and that doesn't mean I think everybody
has to be a Christian. But I think you should
know how I am and what I believe, and you
should have an idea of that. And that's the frustrating part.
And I've had the same experience you've had because I've
criticized people in my party because I think that we're
(38:15):
allowed to. I think when someone says something outlandish and
it's it's far to the right and it's something that
the country doesn't believe in, you're allowed to go, hey, hey, no,
I don't agree with this, but it's the same thing.
I got the call that was like, you won't be
invited to these things. You're not going to be you
got to stay in line. I'm like, guess what if
it takes me agreeing with this viewpoint, I don't care.
(38:39):
That's not who I am. And I'm not gonna tow
the party line if that's the party line, which it's not.
It's not.
Speaker 2 (38:45):
It's a Soviet mentality. And ultimately we know what happens
to Soviet union. You implode because nobody's doing the thinking
but one person. If everyone thinks the same thing inside
the room, only one person is doing the thinking, and
that's inevitably going to lead you to a much lower
intellectual level and a much lower level of understanding. And
(39:07):
as I say, you know, you can be pro life
and I can be pro choice, and I can still
say I think your pro life position is completely honorable,
completely respectable. I understand the integrity of a position where
you are protecting the life of an unborn I may
have a different point of view, but I don't think
(39:28):
there's anything in that position that makes you a bad
person or means that you're trying to control anybody's body
or anybody's rights. I just think it's an area where
people can have honest, you know.
Speaker 1 (39:39):
Different conversation too, saying.
Speaker 2 (39:42):
Without saying like you're a bad person, and I may
learn something, you know, I may learn something from that conversation.
Speaker 1 (39:47):
And just to talk, we don't talk anymore. Stay tuned
for more of my interview with Julian Epstein, But first
I want to take a moment to tell you more
about my partners at IFCJ. Since the start of the
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(40:08):
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and it's this support that helps these survivors remain steadfast
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support IFCJ dot org. Now stay tuned because I will
have more with Julian Epstein after this. Before I let
(41:11):
you go. There's been all of these people who have
been jockeying for the presidential position. They think that if
Joe Biden gets off the ticket, it'll be a Gretchen
with Maro Toubia, Gavin Newsom or Kamala Harris. You have
come out and said you'd love to see a Josh Shapiro.
Tell us really quickly, why well.
Speaker 2 (41:29):
Because all of those candidates that you mentioned other than
Josh Shapiro will double down on the policies, the mostly
progressive left policies in the last four years, which are unpopular.
Josh Shapiro is a Mott, is a centrist, and as
is Andy Basher. Josh Shapiro supports things like school choice.
You see, you know, the recent data on math and
(41:51):
English proficiency in high schools is atrocious. It's just it's
mind boggling that this is not considered a national crisis.
And to your point about the media, we're not covering
this every day. Okay, So Josh Shapiro supports things like
school choice. He is very strong pro Israel, unambiguously the
way you don't see with much of the moral confusion
on the left on Israel, and he sort of similarly
(42:13):
on down the line, argues for not just moderate points
of view, but also to our earlier point about listening
to the other side, you know, trying to find bipartisan consensus.
Stop arguing if you disagree with somebody that you think
they're a terrible person, you think they're trying to kill democracy,
you think they're racist, you think they're this it's just
(42:34):
argument by epithet. It's the most anti intellectual approach you
can take to anything. It's the amost You know, Plato
and Socrates would would would would just roll over in
their graves at the discourse that we have. You disagree
with me and I have to call you a bad name.
We have to stop that nonsense. We just have to say, Okay,
if you and I have a different point of view, Tutor,
(42:56):
give me the data, give me the empirical data that
backs it up. I'll give you I empirical data that
backs it up and let the best argument win without
us calling names. And that's what we have to get
back to. But unfortunately, I think we're going to the
opposite direction.
Speaker 1 (43:09):
I agree, but it's see. I'm hoping that this latest
title wave will kind of start to push people, more
rational people toward discussion. And I think that discussion is
the best way, and we have now the ability to
have discussions openly in ways we did it before. So
I appreciate you coming on today to have a discussion
with me. Julian Epstein. I always enjoy the conversation.
Speaker 2 (43:32):
I do too, And as I said the other day,
I always learned something every time we chat, so I
really appreciate it to do and I'm well, thank you.
I'm glad that we have this new friendship as well.
Speaker 1 (43:41):
Me too, Me too, and thank you, thank you so much,
and thank you all for joining us on the Tutor
Dixon Podcast. Make sure you head over to the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts and join
us next time on the Tutor Dixon Podcast. Have a blessing,
The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show News
Hosts And Creators
Clay Travis
Buck Sexton
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1. Stuff You Missed in History Class
Join Holly and Tracy as they bring you the greatest and strangest Stuff You Missed In History Class in this podcast by iHeartRadio.
2. Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations.
3. Crime Junkie
If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people.