Charting Economic Tides with Marc Goldwein and David Harsanyi on Israel's Geo-Political Realities
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The 2022 political field was intense, so don't get left behind in 2024. If you're running for political office, the first thing on your to-do list needs to be securing your name on the web with a yourname.votewebdomain from godaddy.com. Get yours now. Welcome to another episode of Breaking Battlegrounds with your hosts, Chuck Warren and Sam Stone.

Going to get right on with the show. Our first guest up today is Mark Goldwine. He is the senior vice president and senior policy director for the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, which, Chuck, makes him about the most bipartisanly ignored person in Washington, apparently. Sadly so. And we've got a lot going on right now with the debt and all that. So lead it away. So, Mark, the real question is how bad is our U.S. debt crisis?

Well, we're not in crisis yet, but it looks like we're headed there. Interest rates are now four and a half, five and a half percent, which is like double where they were before. The debt is projected to be at record levels within a couple of years. We have major trust funds, three of them running out in the next decade. Interest on the debt is now the second largest budget item. It's going to pass defense and Medicare bills.

this year. And all of this spells trouble if you're a worker, if you're a consumer, or if you just care about your country. So,

So, Mark, I'm a guy that believes in tackling problems as blocks or steps, right? And I think a problem a lot of times, both on the Democrat and Republican side, is they try to pass these grand sweeping bills, for example, on the border, right? Just propose a bill with just one item. Just go through them, one item at a time. Make a debate, get on it, make incremental approaches. If we were to attack the U.S. debt that way, what is the one issue you say, look—

We can really help ourselves if we attack this one issue. Is that entitlements? Is that discretionary spending? What is step one to start getting some sanity, sort of an upward trajectory of sanity in this?

Well, it's less like asking you to choose your favorite kid or your favorite parent. Well, don't force me to do that, but what would you do? But health care. Look, health care. It's got to be health care, health care, health care. That's the largest part of the budget in total. It affects households. It affects states. It affects businesses. And it affects our bottom line. And we have such an incredible amount of waste, such an incredible amount of overspending, that we can actually cut a lot without significantly reducing access or value to care.

So have you talked to David Schweikert, congressman in Arizona? I have. And he focuses on these issues, including on the tax side as well, by the way. Yeah. I mean, for what he's talked about, we we haven't we've had in the show a couple of times. He's a friend. Do you think he's making sense when he talks about what he's because he feels like this is a big part of the puzzle to take care of this?

I do. I think that there is a tendency sometimes to think that there's new investments we can make that are going to solve this problem. And while new investments are important, they don't replace the hard choices. And so my one critique about even a lot of people in Congress that really seem to get it

is that they want to look at, well, if we do more prevention, that's going to help. Maybe, but maybe it's going to increase costs. But yeah, he's rowing in the right direction, and there's actually a lot of Democrats and Republicans that do understand what needs to be done in the health care space.

One of the things that we've been seeing lately, Mark, and I would be interested to get your take on this, and I'm not even sure how accurate it is because I'm having to go with reports like the Kobiasi letter and others, but they're pointing to central banks buying up a large amount of gold all across the world, which kind of contradicts everything else that's going on in the economy. That's the kind of move that you would expect if they're building up for a panic. What's going on there?

You know, I'm not sure, but here in the U.S., our central bank is trying to unload its bonds, and it's got to replace them with something. I don't know if that's related to any of these gold purchases here. I think the world's become more uncertain, not just in terms of the massive amount of global debt, but geopolitically in terms of what's happening with Russia and the Middle East, with China. And so that may be a factor as well. How do they unload all those bonds? What's the main...

What is the mechanism that they're – what kind of things can they replace them with? So here's what happened. During the –

COVID crisis, the Federal Reserve was trying to make sure that there was liquidity out there. And so they bought trillions of dollars of U.S. Treasuries, which allowed us to borrow trillions of dollars to spend on things like your stimulus checks and your unemployment and your Paycheck Protection Program. But then their balance sheet got really big. And that really big balance sheet plus those really low interest rates is part of what's caused the surge in inflation that we've seen the last few years. And so now they're trying to kind of pull it back. And the main way they're pulling it back is raising interest rates.

But the other thing they're doing is trying to let their balance sheet gradually taper off. And they're sort of replacing the money with cash, effectively, bank reserves. And those bank reserves are pretty expensive for them. They have to pay interest on it now at 5.5%. And so our Federal Reserve has actually been losing money the last two years after basically profitability through its whole history. And that's another concern on the horizon. How

How long could they sustain that? Or how long is there any kind of time frame to get past that period? I mean, I think in theory forever, because remember, they print their own money. But in reality, at some point, it's just another form of debt. And it adds to these other problems that we're talking about that I think have serious repercussions for the overall economy.

Mark, going back to the debt problem. So we're conservative. I don't like taxes. I pay a lot of taxes. And people say I pay a lot of taxes. I literally pay a lot of taxes. But my question for you is this. Sam and I have talked about this. I don't see any way...

of getting our fiscal house in order without, A, real budget cuts, two, limiting the growth of government, and three, there's going to have to be some tax increases involved. Am I wrong? Am I smoking something? Tell me. That's right. We have this interactive tool on our website at crfb.org called the Debt Fixer, where you can try your hand at how to fix it. And there are people that come in and say, I'm going to do this all with spending cuts. Okay.

Or how many of us all with tax increases are rich? And guess what? It's really, really hard. You are going to need to look at all parts of the budget and both sides of the ledger. The good news on the tax side is you don't need to do drastic things. You can start by cleaning up the tax code. We have a lot of wasteful tax breaks.

that aren't helping our economy and are causing us to make bad decisions. So we should start there. But yeah, we're going to need revenue. One more question. What is that website again? Would you say that slowly so people can hear and look it up? Sure. CRFB.org. Okay. And folks, we'll post that on our social media. Yeah. What would be an example of what you're just talking about there?

This salt deduction. There's a deduction for state and local taxes. We capped it at $10,000. That's a good start. But this is basically just a windfall to rich taxpayers with big houses in a few states like Connecticut and New York and California. We ought to get rid of it altogether. We ought to close the workarounds that people are using to basically cheat the current cap. That's one example. I'll give you another example, the health care exclusion.

One of the biggest drivers of our health care costs is the tax code, because we basically say to employers, if you pay someone in cash, it's taxable. If you pay someone with bigger health benefits, it's tax free. And that's hugely expensive to the government. But it also leads to this problem where we pay more and more and more in health care and less and less and less in wages. So paying that back would actually lift wages and raise revenue.

That would be something I would expect local governments would have a really hard time with because a lot of them have blown benefits through the roof as a way to avoid admitting how much they're really paying to employees. Well, look, the tax code should be neutral with regard to how you get paid, right? That's the job of – I hate to say it, but that's the local government's problem. That's the employer's problem. The tax code shouldn't be picking winners and losers in terms of type of compensation.

So, look, you said we're not in a crisis yet, but it's closer than it's not, right? $34 trillion in national debt just seems insurmountable. What do you think? Look, we're the strongest economy in the world, and the amazing thing is, as screwy as our fiscal situation is, we're still the strongest economy in the world. I don't think there's anybody comparable. Am I wrong on that?

No, I agree. Okay. So knowing that, knowing you're the big dog and probably always going to be the big dog. I hate when people say, well, yeah, I've been to China a dozen times. China's got a demographic. It's not the same. It's not the same. Okay. So my question, Mark, is, but what step, like how much do we have to reduce the deficit? How much do we have to reduce spending?

So the world markets interest rates see that we're serious about our fiscal house and that we get things under control. What is that number? Like, do you say, Chuck, we just need to we need to get it down to like 30 trillion and we just need to freeze spending? I mean, what I know you're guessing here to a degree, as much as someone like you guesses. But what is that? What is that number?

Yeah, so in part because we are the greatest economy in the history of the universe, we could probably bear a lot of debt. The risk is there's maybe like a bigger they all, the harder they fall scenario, where if things do turn south, it really melts on the global economy in a way that, you know, Greece didn't have as big an effect, even though that was reverberating. In terms of what we have to do, we don't have to pay down the debt at all. We just got to stop adding to it at such a fast pace.

Lenders are going to keep lending to us so long as they believe we have the capacity to finance the interest. And they're going to believe that so long as we don't keep taking out new loans rapidly faster than our ability to pay it, which basically means, in economist terms, that means stabilize your debt to GDP. Your debt can grow, but it's got to stop growing faster than your economy. We're at 98% of GDP now. In World War II, we hit the record 106%. I'd like to stay under that record. I don't want to be in uncharted territories.

What should it be at for someone like you that looks at numbers all the time that would make you feel comfortable about the growth of our country and our debt levels, be able to pay it? What is that number? Is it 70 percent, 80 percent? And explain to our audience what that means. We're talking numbers, but I don't think a lot of people understand it.

Right. So basically, debt to GDP is how big is your debt compared to how much your economy produces every year. And that's a useful measure because it allows you – think about it this way. If you make $20,000 a year and you have a $200,000 mortgage, you're in big trouble. But if you make $2 million a year with a $200,000 mortgage, no problem at all. Same thing for the government. The richer we are, the more debt we can have. Right.

But what we need is our debt to not be growing faster than our income on an ongoing basis. What would make me feel good? I think a starting point would be let's try to stabilize it on about the size of the economy. That's step one. Right. Just get it to stop rising.

Step two is let's put in a downward path, not because debt has to be way lower, but because I want to be able to actually borrow when we need to. Correct. If there's another pandemic, if there's a war, if there's a recession, I want to be able to borrow. And if we're stuck at 100 percent, that means the next borrowing would take us to 110 or 120. And I'm not super comfortable with that. So I think step two is let's try to get down towards, say, 60 percent.

And not overnight. Right. But just on a very gradual path. Yeah, we need to start doing a trajectory that shows that we're sane. We laid out a 20 or 40 year plan. Look, I've written about this. Sam and I have talked about this. So right now we have some flashpoints in the world. We have Haiti. We have Israel. We have Ukraine, China. Do you think we should go put a war tax on top earners to pay for these things?

I do. I mean, I think we ought to have a war tax on everyone. In other words, you know, I think we should have probably had an oil tax back when we were fighting abroad. I think that we ought to probably have a COVID tax. I think that...

um pay as you go these aren't sorry pay as you go we want to pay as you go it's pay as you go and these aren't for economic reasons they're sort of for democratic political reasons i think that people should understand these things have cost and we should all come together to pay them like it was good that we rescued the economy during covid we can argue what did we go too far i think we did but it was good we rescued the economy but that had a cost and we

And we should all be willing to pay a little bit more, understanding that, you know, we prevented a depression. Yeah, right. Mark, we're heading to break right now. Folks, we're going to be coming back with more from Mark Goldwine here in just a moment. Senior Vice President, Senior Policy Director, Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. Breaking Bad Around is coming right back.

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Welcome back to Breaking Battlegrounds with your host, Chuck Warren. I'm Sam Stone. Folks, you've been hearing us talk about YRefi for a while now. And while we're on the talk today about the economy, how's your personal economy doing? How would you do if you could earn up to a 10.25% fixed rate of return? That's right, up to 10.25% fixed. You're in a secure, collateralized portfolio. Check them out. InvestYRefi.com or give them a call at 888-YRefi24.

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I came across an interesting article this morning in Axios about, as you know better than anybody, that when Congress considers taxes or spending, it goes through a CBO or Joint Committee on Taxation Rating and talks about the fiscal and economic implications. And now there's three former Biden administration officials, which immediately gives me the willies, talking about we need to do this differently on how we do policymaking scoring. And they've done it through this entity called the Budget Lab at Yale.

Can you tell folks a little bit about what they're thinking and what are your thoughts on this? Yeah. Well, look, these are three of the good ones in the Biden administration. I've worked with all of them. You know, we work with members of both administrations, of all administrations and both parties. And they're trying to build a new system.

outside tool to kind of estimate policy. And one, I think, helpful innovation is that unlike the Congressional Budget Office, which really is focused right in the budget score, they're also looking at other parameters like economic growth, like distribution, things like that. Of course, it also comes with risk because it lets everybody tell their own story. And we do really need that neutral scorekeeper. So this should absolutely not be a way to replace the Congressional Budget Office. We need that neutral scorekeeper. But more information is always better than less.

It seems like lately the Congressional Budget Office has had a hard time estimating the fiscal impact. We're getting a lot of very major revisions coming out a few years into these programs.

Is there a way to fix that to make their analysis more accurately predictive? I mean, what's the thing? Predictions are hard, especially about the future. The truth is, the conventional budget office is always going to be wrong because they're going to be too high or they're going to be too low because it's just an estimate based

based on a huge amount of uncertainty. And what's really important, first of all, is that if it's too high or it's too low, at least we know it's unbiased, right? We know they don't have a dog in the game. They're not there trying to cook the book. And that's importance number one. Thing number two we could do is that some of these recent developments

bad estimates, you can call them that, were partially driven by the fact that they were stuck using old budgets because the budget rule said if this is through reconciliation, you need to use your old numbers. So CBO was kind of using its old numbers because it had to. So we can fix those rules. The other element of this is that

And I think specifically your point to the Inflation Reduction Act, which the tax credits ended up costing a lot more than we thought. Part of the reason was the administration decided to use its regulatory authority pretty liberally. And so some of this is on Congress, I think, to be tighter in its legislative language, to be more limiting in what the administration can do and explain what is allowed and not allowed. And a nice addition to that,

would be to start putting some caps and triggers, right? So if they said, here's our vision for a tax credit, and it can cost no more than X, and even if X is 20% more than they thought, that's a limiting factor that can at least help. So there are things we can do there, but I really don't put any of the blame at CBO itself. It's doing the best it can in a hard situation.

This morning it was announced the U.S., the Biden administration, plans to hike the cost of oil drilling on federal lands. I bring this point up because the Biden administration, I almost call it the Obama administration, but the Biden administration, their Green Deal plans, their Inflation Reduction Act, it seems to me that this has helped exaggerate inflation in the United States. Am I incorrect on that? Am I missing something?

I think overall the Inflation Reduction Act is probably pretty close to neutral in inflation because, remember, it's got these new spending, but it also has prescription drug controls and some taxes. But I think the rest of their agenda has been very inflationary.

The American Rescue Plan, I think we put $2 trillion in an economy that only needs $300 billion. Huge mistake. The student debt cancellation, I think, is adding to inflation and the pauses. A lot of the rules they have about Buy America that I think are well-intentioned are actually driving up prices. So I think this administration has actually done a lot to exacerbate the inflation problem, but I don't put Inflation Reduction Act on that list. I kind of put that in more of the neutral category.

Yeah, I was at a dinner last night where one of the discussions was how we contain China going forward. And one of the points that somebody made was that Reagan and our government in that era really managed to gain the upper hand over the Soviets by flooding global commodity markets and reducing the price of commodities to radically reduce their ability to fund their military buildup. If we...

Is that something we should be consciously looking to replicate at this time, given our global challenges? Yeah, I don't think we can do that with China. China is a massive economy and they're a huge producer. We're in deficit to them, right? So I just don't think the same dynamics are at play here. There are a lot of ways we need to get tough with China, but I don't think that we're going to solve this in the commodities market.

Um, taking a step away from our fiscal conversation, have you been surprised? Sam and I are disappointed and disgusted by the anti-Semitism we see pop up in cities. And again, I don't think most Americans are anti-Semitic at all. I think a great majority of us are not. But have you been surprised in just the airtime they get and the lack of repercussions for their pure hatred?

Yeah, I mean, this is outside, obviously, of my professional area, but as somebody that's Jewish, obviously, you know, it's something I'm affected personally, and I see, you know, as I'm walking down the street, I see, you know, a curse word,

written on a mailbox on the subject. And it's really disappointing here in America in the year 2024 that we're still seeing stuff like this. We got a little over two minutes left here. How is inflation right now going to continue to affect interest mortgage rates and home buying? Do you see? I mean, this has real ramifications for working people. Yeah, so what I think people don't really...

people in my profession don't understand is inflation's not over. Right. So we had some good months last year and people were ready to put up the mission accomplished banner. But the truth is the second half of the year is always lower inflation because price increases happen in the first half of the year. And now we're seeing it come right back. And just to get inflation down from that 7% to 3%, 3.5%, which is still way too high, we had to raise interest rates a lot. The Fed raised interest rates to 5.5%. A mortgage is 7.5%.

And the longer inflation persists, the longer the Fed is going to have to keep those rates higher. And that means it's going to be harder to afford a home, harder to afford a car, harder to start a new business. Actually, student loans are going to be more expensive. And so this is really costly. Add to that the federal debt, and that continued borrowing also pushes up interest rates. And we're just making it so much more expensive for people to live their lives.

Mark, we have just about a minute left. How do folks follow you and the work of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget?

Well, if you're on X or on Twitter, we're at BudgetHawks or I'm at Mark Goldwine. But I'd also recommend checking out our website, CRFB.org. We have a lot of really in-depth analysis, but we also have a lot of really cool interactive tools that anybody can play. You can fix Social Security or fix the debt or figure out what to do about all these expiring tax cuts. So, again, check out CRFB.org. There's a lot of cool stuff there. Has anybody submitted a reasonable plan yet that you guys all looked at and said, oh, my goodness, he has the secret recipe? He or her?

Well, one cool thing about our Social Security plan tool is that, like, everyone from a member of Congress to a high schooler can use it, and they can all come up with their own results. The high schoolers are probably better. So you get all the way down to the member of Congress. Yeah. Mark, thanks so much. We appreciate you coming on, and we hope you'll join us again real soon. This is an issue we're very concerned about and talk about all the time. Thanks for having me. Folks, Breaking Battlegrounds will be back with more. Our next guest up, David Harsanyi, in just a moment.

Welcome back to Breaking Battlegrounds with yours, Chuck Warren. I'm Sam Stone. Our next guest up today, David Harsanyi, senior editor at The Federalist, nationally syndicated columnist, a happy warrior columnist at The National Review, and author of five books, the most recent, Euro Trash, Why America Must Reject the Failed Ideas of a Dying Continent. We've talked about that before. It's a great book, folks. If you haven't, get to Amazon, get your copy right away. Thank you so much once again for joining us. David Harsanyi, we appreciate your time.

I appreciate you having me. Thank you. David, first, you also have a podcast now called You're Wrong with your Molly Hemingway. How's the podcast world treating you? We like it. We're longtime friends, so we have fun just talking about politics and culture, and it's been fun. So I hope people tune in if they're into the podcast thing. That's fantastic. Just like they would be. That's fantastic. All right. So...

Being 2024, we now are hearing that Israel is going to face an unprecedented attack this weekend from Iran within 48 hours. Intelligence agencies are saying it's going to be hundreds of armed drones and missiles that would overwhelm Israeli defenses. First of all, do you give a lot of credence to this? Second of all, if this does happen, what should the United States response be versus probably what coward Biden will do?

Um, I, I don't know how much credence to put into it. Uh, we've, you know, our intelligence sources have been wrong. I don't know if it's a, you know, a deflection. I don't, I don't know, obviously. Um,

I don't, you know, if it happens, obviously, I don't think Israel would be overwhelmed. I think it would obviously be a massive escalation. Israel has, you know, quite advanced weaponry. It is also a nuclear power, probably. They've never admitted it. I think most people realize they are. And, yeah.

You know, and how we should react, I don't know. I would say this. Israel has – we've been helping Israel since – especially the 1973 war and some in 1967. But Israel has never asked us to fight for them. I think what they would need from us and what would be right to do is to help them, obviously, with weapons. They're a longtime ally.

They didn't ask for this war. They didn't invade anyone. And they were attacked. And there are American citizens being held still probably unless they're dead by Iranian proxy armies. And the Iranians themselves have been attacking Americans for a very long time. So I don't know. It depends on the scale of the attack and it depends –

and how much danger Israel really is. I hope it doesn't happen. But if it does happen, I also hope that if Israel can, they use this opportunity to try to take out some of the Iranian nuclear program

stuff that's going on that would be i think helpful as well but you know who really knows uh it almost seems like that's kind of the basis of a potential deal with the u.s is just to say look we'll support you we won't give you any trouble if iran launches this attack but we want you to erase iran's nuclear capability and program yeah it just might be difficult because they've sort of burrowed underground and there's all kinds of uh

problems from what I've read. You know, who knows? Again, a lot of this stuff is not really knowable right now, but it's not a good situation because the Russians are also right there in Syria, and you know, it's just a

It's just a really terrible situation. David, you had a piece. Joe Biden is now chasing the death to America voter, which we've seen pretty clearly. What's going on there? And then how does that affect this situation? Because obviously Iran is the home of the death to America chant. Yeah. Yeah.

Well, you know, I don't think much of Joe Biden in the sense that I don't even think he is particularly anti-Israel or anti-Semitic. I think he's just a feckless, weak man surrounded by people who are anti-Semitic and anti-Israel. And we saw it in the Obama administration that there were many people in the State Department and elsewhere who wanted to lift Iran up.

as a kind of buttress against Israel or counterweight against Israel there. And we see how that's worked out. So why did that change? I mean, the foreign policy establishment in the United States, if you go back 20, 30 years, was very strongly in Israel's corner. And then now I would say that the establishment is very split, maybe even leaning in an anti-Israel direction overall. What drove that shift?

Well, I think, you know, in the past there was always a contingent of people in the Pentagon and elsewhere who were, I would call, Arabist, you know, felt like Israel was more trouble than it was worth. But that changed. And I think it's changing the other way for different reasons. I think there's just a progressive worldview out there.

that is much more inclined to be sympathetic to the Palestinian cause, even though I think they don't see it correctly in historical terms, but whatever, and are more sympathetic to the Arab world, and that they see Israel as this sort of colonial capitalist place. Yeah. Yeah.

Folks, we're going to be coming back here with more from David Harsanyi in just a moment. Make sure you check out our website, BreakingBattlegrounds.vote. Check us out. Make sure you're following us on social media and wherever you get your favorite podcasts. Sign up, subscribe, and get our newest episode in your mailbox every week, plus lots of extra great content. Breaking Battlegrounds coming back in just a moment.

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So, David, yesterday, Catherine Herridge, formerly of CBS News, former Fox News, who was let go by CBS News, testified on a bill which would prohibit the federal government from compelling journalists to disclose information on their sources. What do you make of this whole Catherine Herridge problem? I mean, it seems very alarming to me that CBS was forced to let her go because she was digging into things.

that the Biden administration didn't want. Am I wearing aluminum foil or what do you make of all this? I don't think she I think I think most people view her as a very, very good reporter, both left and right. If they're object. I mean, she's just she breaks stories. She has good sources. The last real reporter. So, you know, are Sam and I just wearing aluminum foil or what's going on there?

Well, I don't know the whole story, but I agree with you guys. I mean, I think she was one of the last sort of old fashioned reporters who would go after anyone who was just digging into digging her nose into places that people in power didn't want her digging her nose. So, I mean, that is exactly what reporters have always done. The idea that they, you know, that you're not supposed to break rules to, you know, to get a story is nonsensical. It's the only the

the biggest stories are being hidden by people in power. You have to do things to get, you know, they're never going to hand it over to you. And, you know, being a polite journalist is like being a bad journalist, just like being an unskeptical journalist is being a bad one. So I don't exactly know what happened with her. I'm sure we'll find out. But I mean, you know, it does not bode well for major media that one of the few reporters out there willing to, for instance, look into the Biden campaign,

you know, the Biden family Inc stories, you know, it's just chucked out of her job and all her, her information is taken away. So yeah, I mean, there were very few people like her left and this does not bode well for the future at all because it takes a lot of money, you know, and time to report. And these big organizations have that kind of power and money that smaller ones don't. So at the Federalist, we do the best we can, but you know, CBS is a,

multimillion dollar outfit. And it's a shame that none of them will do the work or most of them won't do the work. It's a travesty. I mean, it really is damaging, I think, to this country and to the national discourse. You had a column in the Detroit News this week

RFK Jr. is right about Joe Biden. The thing about Joe Biden I always tell my uncommitted friends or Democrat friends is Joe Biden says, Joe Biden does everything he accuses Donald Trump of doing. I mean, I really believe that. It would be interesting to just put a comparison chart and mail it to every voter. But talk to people how RFK Jr. was right about Joe Biden and regarding he's really an enemy of democracy in many ways. Yeah. You know,

I am not a huge fan or really a fan of Donald Trump at all. But the truth of the matter is, is that I believe RFK is right in saying that Joe Biden is a much bigger threat to democracy. And by democracy, I don't mean what liberals mean. I don't like to call them liberals. I don't, you know, not what leftists mean. They, you know, they do not are not talking about the constitutional order. That's our democracy, not the rest of it. You know, this malleable thing where you just make up whatever you want. So,

So when it comes to the constitutional order, I care about the Supreme Court, which I think is one of the last functioning, really still functioning institutions in American life. And, you know, he's going to probably do the right thing, Donald Trump, when it comes to that. Joe Biden, what is he doing? He's trying to destroy that institution. He breaks norm after norm. This whole thing, for instance, with college programs.

loan so-called forgiveness. First of all, the policy itself is just, I don't want to know if I should call it authoritarian, but you're just breaking private contracts and making taxpayers pay money. But on top of that, you're ignoring the Supreme Court, which already told you it was unconstitutional.

You know, right. This is a blatant abuse, a lawlessness. And it matters. And so say whatever you want about Trump. You don't have to like him. You could hate him. But that doesn't mean that Joe Biden isn't engaged in this sort of thing. And obviously, I can give you a litany of stuff he's doing that I think is unconstitutional. I mean, that's, you know, so, yeah. So just overall, I think RFK is right when he said that.

David, there was a column – you retweeted actually a tweet by David Marcus but on a column from Sourabh Amari. He wrote, the new racist right are uniquely dangerous and I thought your tweet on that was very good. You said, I agree with a lot of this though we can't dismiss one anti-Israel left as former power and influence in culture and institutions.

And two, the right's anti-Semites are often progressive and identitarianism, not conservative in any meaningful way. You added that you agree with a lot, just not the main contention. I found myself agreeing 100 percent with what you said. I think one of the things that we on the right and particularly the populist right that has embraced the Donald Trump's message need to do is.

is to very clearly separate themselves from that contingent of far-right actual racists. And I don't think they do a good job of that. Is that fair or is that something you feel like they also need to be more aggressive about?

Well, yeah, I mean, I do think that the right needs to be more aggressive about that. There's this thing that happens where, you know, you're constantly told you're constantly called a racist. You know, your friends are called racist. People you like are called racist and you get sick of it.

And because they're not, but then sometimes they are, they are, and you don't feel like giving in anymore. Right. So I think this, there's this kind of reaction where you're like, well, whatever, you know, they're, you know, so they're seeing some bad stuff. I'm going to be a contrarian. I don't care, but there's some ugly stuff going on right now on the, on the, on the, on sort of among right-wing influencers or whatever. So anyway, so that's one thing, but, uh,

Sourabh Amari makes the argument that that is more dangerous than what's going on with the anti-Israel left. On that, I disagree because there are anti-Semites in Congress, very few right-wing ones, but there's the squad. And they're...

And then there are people in the State Department. And then there are people in the administration itself who do functionally do things that are much worse for Jewish people than someone spatting off on Twitter. Now, I don't want to dismiss the thing that's happening on social media as nothing. I think it does matter.

But right now, who holds power? It's the person who holds power that is more dangerous. That's all I was really arguing there. I think you made a great point because one of the things that I've always said is that the difference between the racists on the left and the racists on the right is the racists on the right have been, at least historically, a fringe group dismissed by most of the right, whereas the racists on the left are apparently, from what we can see, infiltrating all their levers of power.

Yeah. I mean, and yeah, so, you know, there's the racism that, you know, inherent in DEI policies or whatever. There's also the anti-Semitism, which is now pretty much in the open, you know, in the progressive left. And that's, you know, since Marx, you know, the left has been anti-Semitic. It's not a new thing, sadly. And, you know.

I hate to say it, but I think many people in the Jewish community, I'm Jewish myself, have abandoned what matters to them and taken up partisan politics instead as a religion. And that is destructive for any political faction, I think. And so, yeah, I mean, you know, and these are the people right now who, you know, who pushed Israel to stop going after Hamas that, again, has American hostages. Yes.

You know, that raped and murdered and kidnapped American hostages. And if you don't care about that, the only thing I can think about is that you don't care because they happen to be Jewish and they happen to be in Israel. I mean, I keep pointing to China's actions against their Uyghur population and asking why these same people that are so offended about Israel don't seem to care about that at all when that is an actual genocide taking place. Correct.

There's tons of stuff going on in the Islamic world that's terrible for women, for any identity politics you want to come up with, right? And, you know, people are being gassed. They're only obsessed with one country that is fighting back against something. Now, obviously, there's a situation there, the West Bank and Gaza, that

it is very difficult. But, you know, again, even with that, they have no historical conception. It's all emotion. It's all, oh, brown people, white people against brown people and all these ridiculous tropes.

Marxist tropes usually not about class here, but about color and about, you know, the powerful and, you know, this and that. And, you know, and these are the classic tropes that have been used against Jews forever. I'm not saying you can't criticize Israel or anything. I mean, of course, Israelis criticize Israel, you know, they have elections all the time. But if that's your obsession, if you never mentioned China, if you never mentioned any

any of these theocratic regimes, and let's face it, there's not a free Islamic country in the world. If you don't even care about what Palestinians do to their own people, what Hamas does, puts their people in this kind of situation, then it tells me something about you. Someone made a point the other day, I thought, Chuck, was accurate. They said Hamas is the best, and they are perplexed embedding themselves in the civilian population to maximize civilian casualties. But yet when you look at it, our offensive, the U.S. offensive in northern Iraq,

killed more civilians versus combatants than Israel has done. Our ratio was worse. And I didn't hear anyone here throwing a fit over that at that time or since particularly. It seems like this is very clearly an expression of anti-Semitism in foreign policy, the way we're treating Israel's attempt to eliminate Hamas, because there's no way to conduct urban warfare without

without civilian casualties. That's been true for hundreds of years.

I mean, can you even imagine after 9-11 someone telling us that we couldn't go after Al Qaeda, you know, or that we shouldn't? Israel is the only country that's supposed to worry, take care of their own civilians and the civilians of the other country and feed them and all that. Well, Hamas just wants to create more martyrs. They want dead civilians. I know this is hard for Westerners to, you know, to understand or to accept, right?

But you saw the other day the Hamas leader lost his kids and his grandkid, and he was like, you know, thank God, you know, they were martyrs or whatever he said. Well, the wife gave the victory sign from the bed, hospital bed. I mean, who thinks that way? Well, yeah, exactly. Right? Yeah, it's a difficult kind

kind of people to make peace with or to fight wars against, especially if you value human life. And yeah, you mentioned that the Israeli ratio is very good because they're used to fighting this kind of, doing this kind of thing, unfortunately. And the ratio is probably one-to-one with Hamas fighters or something like that.

Pretty close. I mean, if you look at the numbers from the Hamas, what is it? Well, but that also tells me that the other response. But the other thing that ticks me off about this, David, is the irresponsibility of the press. They keep quoting the Gaza health ministry on numbers. I mean, that is so irresponsible and evil. I don't have words for it. And they keep quoting these folks that are truthful about anything.

Yeah. Again, imagine quoting Al Qaeda casualty numbers in American media. Yeah. Yeah. Go. No, go ahead, David.

Now, I just could say Hamas actually walked back those numbers now to 22,000, not 32,000, which means it's probably more like 12,000. Listen, every civilian death is a tragedy, but whose fault is it? Who hides behind civilians? I'll tell you, Israeli soldiers don't do that. American soldiers would never do that. They don't do that sort of thing. And my understanding is the Gaza Health Ministry's numbers do not.

they conflate both Hamas fighters and civilians in that one number. Well, and Hamas leadership is distinctly evil for one simple reason. They did this attack on Israel where they took hostages, where they raped, where they killed innocent people. And they knew it was like bringing a knife to a gunfight because they knew Israel would come back and respond heavily. And they knew the civilian deaths is exactly what they wanted. I don't believe they're surprised by what's happening at all. This is what they wanted. And it's pure evil.

I mean, you know, I've been pointing this out and everyone, you know, who pays attention knows this. They target civilians on purpose. Israel defends civilians and targets terrorists who hide behind civilians. You could the moral calculus of that is easy for anyone to understand. So, you know, but again, it's the same debate over and over. And it's in now in America, the left is moving to the side of, you know, being independent.

you know, almost wholly anti-Israel. And that's going to be a problem for Israel, I think, in the long run. A very big problem. David, how do folks follow you and your work and stay in touch with everything you're doing?

Most of my work's at TheFederalist.com, and you can find me on there, and they can find me on Twitter, being snarky at David Harsanyi. Fantastic. David Harsanyi, thank you so much for joining us, folks. Stay tuned for our podcast segment if you're downloading, and if you're not, why aren't you? Go to BreakingBattlegrounds.vote, sign up. We've got extra content for you every single week. We will be back on the air next week, and thank you so much for tuning in.

The 2022 political field was intense, so don't get left behind in 2024. If you're running for political office, the first thing on your to-do list needs to be securing your name on the web. With a yourname.votewebdomain from godaddy.com. Get yours now. Welcome to the podcast segment of Breaking Battlegrounds with yours Chuck Warren. I'm Sam Stone. Of course, first up today, the irrepressible Kylie Kipper.

I haven't been called that in quite some time. Bostonian Kylie Kipper. She's remote now. So we have lots going on in the world this week, Kylie, including OJ Simpson passed away. He did. And, you know, now...

We'll never know. And the White House issued a statement, you know, calling for the, you know, give the family room to grieve and blah, blah, blah. They don't mention the victims. They don't mention any of this. This White House is just so bad at that. Everybody in the world knows the guy was guilty. Do you remember where you were when he had the big chase in the Bronx? Oh, yeah, sure. So I was at a baseball game and it was a AAA baseball game, Salt Lake Bees. Everybody walked up the concession area because they had it on the TV's.

So I think there's, as a matter of fact, it'd be fun to find a picture because I doubt there are many peoples in the stands watching the game. Everybody walked up by the hot dog stands and the beer gardens and were watching it on this rush on TV. I mean, everybody was memorized. As a matter of fact, I wonder what the ratings were for that then. Oh, it had to be insane. Can you look up ratings? What were the ratings for the OJ Simpson Bronco Chase? My friend Matt, I walked into the apartment we were sharing at that time. My friend Matt is like, you've got to come over here and see this. He was from LA, right? Right, right, right.

He was he was not over the thing. And everybody, that's all they talked about for weeks. So a quick Google search. So Jenna here. Yeah. Go ahead. What'd you say? I just said 95 million people watched that chase that night. Yeah. Jenna just pulled up one from New York Times said 118 million people. Oh, no, that's a Persian Gulf War.

Oh, there it is. 95 right there. Yep. 95 million people watch that. I mean, it was mesmerizing. Can you imagine what the viewership would be on social media day? Everybody on their phones. Remember that that was more than a third of the country at that time. Yeah. No, it's incredible. All right, Kylie, give us some positive news. What's going on?

Yeah, I was going to say, I'm feeling in a positive mood today. So I have two feel good stories. All right. It's been a while. Yes. But so 18 years ago, there was a in 2006, there was a world record duck race that was taking place in Dublin. OK, we're talking about actual like they're racing rubber duckies, rubber duckies. Oh, rubber duckies. You know, yes. Little rubber duckies. OK, because I was going to be impressed that people can train actual ducks to race. Yeah.

They also can't train rubber ducks either. But during the race, they released 150,000 ducks. They did not break this world record, which because the ducks went in the wrong direction. However, just the other day, 423 miles away,

Again, 18 years later, one of the ducks washed ashore on a Scottish island. And it was still in good shape. Still in completely good shape. It had all its coloring still on there. It had its number written on there, too. So it was number 59,933. Yeah.

So they did not break that world record that day because the ducks went in the wrong direction. That record was actually broken in 2009 where 205,000 plastic ducks were floating down the river of Thames. So it wasn't the fastest duck, but I think it was a rubber duck that did go the furthest. Kylie, I feel there's either a children's book in this or a Pixar picture on it. What was this duck doing for 18 years?

What was he doing? Yeah. Who did he play with? Yeah. Who do you play with? I mean, he had whales probably visited him. Birds probably saw me. What did he do? What friends did he make? But what amazed me is how his number or, you know, any of the anything on him didn't wash off. That's amazing. Saltwater, saltwater. Yeah. That is truly astounding. Maybe maybe enough to make me question it. But OK. Hey, there's photos. We'll post them on our social media. Post them. So, OK. Next story.

Five sorority sisters from the University of Georgia were leaving campus on St. Patrick's Day. They were going to celebrate with their friends. They decided to take a little detour to one of their favorite lunch spots. This is unusual, Kylie, because five sorority sisters is usually not a good start to one of these stories. No, it's not. I know. Well, I'm sure at the time they're probably still traumatized from this incident. However, they did become heroes this day. Yeah.

When they were coming back, they got back on the road, they were going to a party and they were coming across this bridge and they saw this white smoke coming from under the bridge and there was water under there. So they decided it was enough for them to pull over to see what was going on. They had then seen a car that recently just went into the water, wasn't fully sunken. It was still kind of halfway out and they scream over, are you okay? Do you need help?

And they just said they heard this woman frantic yelling like my kids are in the car help help just yelling for help. The mom in the car had gotten out through the broken sunroof, but she had an eight year old son or eight or nine and then a four year old son in there. The girl said that she was so frantic. They had no other choice but to dive in and try to help them. They were able to get her oldest son out.

Pretty easy. But the four-year-old was stuck in his car seat. They couldn't figure out how to get him out. He was under the water for about four or five minutes. They were able to free him. But at the time they got him to shore, his lips were purple. His eyes were closed. He wasn't breathing. One of the girls had just remembered CPR from when she was a lifeguard in high school. So she started performing CPR and was able to revive that four-year-old son. It's amazing. Everyone somehow survived. This is University of Georgia sorority?

Yeah. You could not expect this from an Ivy League. No, no. That family would have been in danger.

Oh, that's a wonderful story. Good for them. I know. That is really cool. I love that. So most people don't know, Chuck and Kylie, cars are actually designed. One of the design considerations and requirements in cars is for what happens when they go in the water. And people do not realize there is a built-in escape mechanism from your car. It is your rear window.

Not your side windows, not anything. It's the rear window. Don't try to roll down your windows because that won't work. The force of the water coming in will contain you. Cars are designed so that they float. The back end floats up. That's correct. You always see the bottom up. Yes. And so you go back there and the back glass in every car is designed to be able to be very easily kicked out from the inside. So you want to go to your back windshield, back window, kick it out.

and exit that way. Oh, that's fascinating. I had no idea. Well, look at this. Wow. We're saving lives today. Informing and educating today. We're going to save lives on this. This is a great Kylie's Corner. Yes, it is a great Kylie's Corner. And now to put a bummer on it.

Sam, why don't you explain to our audience what happened in Arizona this week? And then as a result, I went and paid for a poll from the Tyson group. It is Ron DeSantis, Marco Rubio and so forth. Let's let's talk about this for a minute. Yeah, obviously, folks, we're talking about abortion, which is really the Democrats number one weapon in this election cycle. And Arizona is.

And obviously pre-Roe v. Wade had a law in the books, a pre-territorial or what they call territorial pre-statehood law. We weren't even a state yet. No, we weren't a state when this law came into effect. I think it was 1845. I may be wrong about that. Don't quote me on that one. But it was the 1800s when that came into effect. Yeah.

It was basically not enforced in the 50s, 60s, and 70s. So it was on the books, but there's very little record of enforcement. Then, obviously, you had the Roe v. Wade court ruling that overruled it, right? And then as the Obergefell case came down, the Arizona legislature passed a law

to limit abortion to 15 weeks except with certain exceptions, rape, incest, life of the mother. Unfortunately, the way that bill was written, it did not repeal the pre-territorial ban. And in fact, some legislators may be squirming about this, but it had language that specifically suggested that if Roe v. Wade was overturned, that this 15-week ban would disappear and it would return to the territorial ban.

That was deliberately written into it by pro-life activists here. So then, of course, when Obert fell overturned Roe v. Wade, it instantly became a question of whether the 15-week law the legislature had passed a couple of years ago or this pre-territorial or pre-statehood ban would come into effect. There's been a long legal running case around this for a couple of years. It was actually carried forward. I mean, this is what I think a lot of our side is not getting here.

The timing of this case, the carrying of it forward came from the Democrat Attorney General Chris Mays. Correct. She wanted to make sure that this case did not die and we didn't end up with the 15-week law in place. And, of course, Republicans are not smart enough to do a FOIA request about their communications on this, but we'll maybe have somebody else do it. But leaving that aside—

The court then just ruled that the 15-week law was not in effect because the pre-statehood ban was still on the books and was still law. Now, there's a lot of contention against the members of the court that it was their timing. No, no, this was the AG, the Democrat AG's timing. There's a lot of contention that they've ruled a lot of conspiracies around why they made this ruling. But the fact of the matter is the ruling was –

The ruling was entirely in line with the law as it was written. They did what they're supposed to do as judges. Follow the law. Right.

And which means they weren't Democrats. Right. OK. I mean, because if they were Democrats, they would have done what was politically convenient, which is just ignored it. Right. Yeah. They would have said, no, the 15 week ban, you know, 15 week limit is in place. Or even worse on just not even worse on Democrat judicial philosophy. I just don't feel good about this. Right. Yeah. Yeah. So that's what would happen. And obviously it didn't. They ruled.

This has completely roiled the races here in Arizona. We knew immediately Arizona may be still a barely purple center right state, but it is very much a battleground. And abortion is the singular issue that Democrats have that weighs very favorably for their side. All they can talk about abortion on January 6th. Right. They have no other ideas. Well, nothing else they do is working. Nothing else they do is functional. So this is what they've got.

And so now there's a question what the legislature will do. The Republican led legislature will do. Will they repeal the pre-statehood ban? And then that would bring the 15 week law back to 15 week, which they all agree to recently. Yes. Yes. I mean, so we're not creating something new. This is what would this is what's the original agreement as of a couple of years ago. Right.

And there's a lot of question about whether they'll be able to do that or not. Sure. You know, in two fronts. One, you have a lot of Republicans in the legislature saying they won't vote. You know, they're comfortable with this ban. On the other side, you have Democrats saying, well, we don't think the 15-week bill went far enough, so we won't vote for it. I think that's a more dangerous position on the left than it is on the right because you're –

You're letting it be illegal and leaving it in the case of the ballot initiative, which is still up in the air, obviously, for months. So that's I think that's a more dangerous play. But at the end of the day, you and I know and a lot of people understood by our guts that this would be an incredibly dangerous ruling for our candidates, for our ability to continue to hold the Arizona legislature accountable.

And for our statewide candidates and federal office. And let's be blunt about this. The pro-life groups in this country have no ability to carry an election.

Well, they've proven that many times. They have no ability. So what they're going to do is yell and scream about this, but they have no ability to defend these voters. They'll pocket the money. But they won't do anything on it. So, folks, so we had a poll done. We issued it by the Tyson Group. They do Ron DeSantis, Marco Rubio, a lot of national campaigns. They are spot on. They're a very good pollster.

And here's some reading and everything in it, by the way, is perfect. I always look at this stuff very carefully. 600 sample. Here's what it is on the presidential ballot. They have Trump up plus six in Arizona on the Senate ballot. Gallego over Cary Lake plus five. Fifty four percent of Arizonans believe the current abortion laws are too strict in Arizona. OK, so.

The territorial ban, which they said was the rule of law here, only 24% of Arizona support it, 62% oppose it. When we asked the question, do you support returning to 15 weeks...

that we had previously, 59% support that, 24% oppose it. So obviously that wins, it has substantial support. And the same thing, Democrats are pushing an initiative that allow abortion up to 24 weeks, and that has 54% support. But...

There are some vulnerabilities in their bill because they say 24 weeks, but it's not 24 weeks. But again, Sam, you're depending upon people to be smart. Right. No, no. I don't expect us to be smart. Right. Right. But it does have vulnerabilities. If there was a good campaign, because the same poll points out, for instance, that it allows gender, sex-selective abortions. It allows race-selective abortions. Right.

All the way through to the end. Yeah. All through the third. Absolutely. All of that would be with a normal, rational people running the campaign and truly educating voters. I think that gets defeated in those numbers on those issues are clearly. Pull those up, Sam. I keep talking about it. OK, so.

So we also asked a question basically split down the middle. When is a reasonable time to have an abortion? Arizona voters say 19 percent say never. There's never a good time for abortion.

16% said six weeks. So basically six weeks or less, you've got 35%. 22% say 15 weeks, 17% say 24 weeks. And there are 11% of people in Arizona who are absolutely evil, who believe you can have abortion up to a birth. Those 11% just avoid. They're pining, smiling faces on the canals. So Sam, what are the numbers? And by the way, with the Supreme Court ruling,

It encourages Arizonans to vote Democrat, then Republican. It's a plus three Democrat now based on this ruling. Nothing's changed. Right. It shifted it by about four points in Democrats' favor, which is enough to swing every competitive race here in Arizona. Correct. Right? So the measure that Democrats are seeking to put on the ballot obviously would allow sex-based, gender-based abortions. Those 69 percent of people oppose that.

Only 15% think that that is right. Likewise, the measure would allow race-based abortions. 71% think that's wrong. 16% think that's okay.

So, quite frankly, and then here, another question in it, which I thought was good. Donald Trump recently expressed the opinion that Arizona has gone too far with the recent ruling, suggesting that the Democrat governor will likely reinstate a more reasonable abortion law, blah, blah, blah, and pushing the legislature to do so. Right. Do you agree or disagree with what he said? Sure.

But 56% of voters agree with what he said. Only 16% disagree with what he said. So, folks, if you're watching Arizona, really how this plays in the general election is what the Arizona legislature, specifically the Senate President Peterson and Speaker of the House Tomah, if they're able to go and bring this up for a vote and have it on the floor for a vote. Right now, they seem not willing to do it. And so if they go bring up the vote, yes, it may not pass.

It won't be surprising if Democrats just all vote against it because they like this for political reasons. So you're about ready to see rank hypocrisy on this on the floor probably. I think that's very dangerous for them if they do it. I agree. I agree. But I think you're about ready to see rank – But sometimes they – Look, these are the same people that voted against giving life in prison for child traffickers. Well, yeah. I mean here in Arizona, they literally – every Democrat in the House voted against a bill –

a referral to give life and present for child trafficking. I want you to think about it. That's the type of people walking around. For-profit child sex trafficking. Yeah, for-profit child sex trafficking. So anyway, on a final note, Kyle, I have a question for you. Were you surprised by the divorce of the Goldman Bachelor couple, Gary Turner and Teresa Nist? Uh,

Well, I did not watch that season. However, when I did watch the current season, they came on to just kind of talk about their experience on the show and giving advice. And you could definitely tell that was not lasting. And with that note, we're going to leave folks. Thanks for joining us for breaking battlegrounds. We can follow us at breaking battlegrounds. Vote or wherever you get your podcast. Have a great weekend.