Pulling Back The Media's Veil of Deceit - In The Tank #487
Download MP3Welcome to the In The Tank podcast. Don't turn off the screen. I know Lynea is not here. You're gonna have to deal with Donald Kendall for this week. Lynea is out recording with John Stassel or something over in New York.
Donald Kendal:I'm not entirely sure, but we have got a good show for you. I've only been gone for a couple of months, but I swear the world has gone insane. Suddenly, the left is burning the most popular electric vehicles while a Republican president promotes them in the front of the White House. No, the world did not go insane. It was driven to insanity by an incredibly corrupt media system, a media system that has lied to us about virtually everything for the past, I don't even know how long.
Donald Kendal:We're gonna cover these topics and more on episode 487 of the In The Tank podcast. Yes. That's right. I said it during the cold open, but you're gonna have to deal with me this week. Donald Kendall returning as host of the in the tank podcast only for this week.
Donald Kendal:Don't worry. Lanea will be back. I already saw the numbers drop when, when you guys saw my face, but you're gonna have to bear with me. We got a lot of good topics that we're gonna be talking about. We're gonna get into it.
Donald Kendal:So this is kind of the normal crew. If you go back to 2024, we got Jim Lakeley, VP of the Heartland Institute. How are you doing today, good sir?
Jim Lakely:I'm doing just fine. You know, I'm a little I'm a little, well, I'm not cranky enough yet. So hopefully, well, we are talking about the media and that usually does get me pretty cranky. So, you know, which is where I need to be for this show. That's kind of my position here on that on that deal.
Jim Lakely:But, it's nice to have you back in very sharp eyed viewers will notice, I believe, Donnie, you are wearing the exact same top that you are in the intro video that we recorded years ago. It's pretty funny.
Donald Kendal:Yeah. And actually, you know, was gonna I wore this specifically because it's got a zipper down. I wanted to show off my shirt, 10 Internet points to anyone that could figure out the, what this is referencing. Jim and and Chris, you could stay quiet. I'll look in the comments for the winner for that one.
Donald Kendal:I'll give you one more good look at it. Anyone understand the reference? Yes. I don't know. We'll find out.
Donald Kendal:But, I do see some happy comments in there about me returning as host. I'm feeling a little bit under the weather, so I'm gonna be riding your people's enthusiasm, so keep the comments coming. Also joining us, we have Chris Talgo. He is the editorial director here at the Heartland Institute and and apparently losing in the, golf fantasy league that he's, in. So he's in a sour mood.
Donald Kendal:How are you doing today, Chris?
Chris Talgo:Well, Donnie, like you, I'm wearing a really cool shirt, so I'm gonna show the audience.
Donald Kendal:Oh, what is this?
Chris Talgo:I know, Jim. I know I know that Jim loves this one. First concert I ever went to. It's great.
Speaker 4:It was great night.
Donald Kendal:Great. There you go. There you
Chris Talgo:to go. Probably in, like, to this day, actually, almost.
Jim Lakely:So Yeah.
Donald Kendal:Yeah. So so, so like I said, Lanea is off gallivanting in New York City. She is going to be recording with John Stassel on some climate change, topics or something along those lines. Jim, is she gonna be back in time for the climate realism show tomorrow? That's the big question.
Jim Lakely:I think not, actually. So, you know, we do have, at least one special guest, maybe two special guests on tomorrow's the Climate Realism Show. Matthew Wyllicki will be joining us and perhaps even Steve Malloy. Lanea, yeah, she's this is actually really, really cool. I mean, John Staustel reached out to us and wanted to have Lanea featured in a video he's doing talking about, well, we presume environment and climate topics.
Jim Lakely:We're not really quite sure exactly what he's gonna be getting to, but it's it's pretty exciting. He has millions of fans. All the videos he puts out on these topics get million many millions of views. So this is fantastic opportunity for Linea and for the Heartland Institute. And thank you, John Stassel.
Jim Lakely:I can't wait to see what happens.
Donald Kendal:Yeah. Clearly, Linea is well Go ahead.
Chris Talgo:What can you say? Just real quick. John Stassel, he's from the town that I am from, so that's pretty cool. He went to the high school I went to. That's even cooler.
Chris Talgo:He also was one of the first, I'd just say, like, libertarian influencers that really kinda got me thinking down this path. I've read all his books. I used to watch his show on Fox Business. And even way back in the day, he was on 2020, and I remember that. So John Sussle is a great guy.
Donald Kendal:Oh, yeah. For sure. He's been a a speaker at our benefit dinner before. Actually, one of the first this is a little history lesson here. One of the first interactions that I ever had with the Heartland Institute was me going as, like, a high school student, maybe a college student, to a Heartland Institute event where they had John Stassel speaking about his book, no, they can't, I think it was called.
Donald Kendal:And, I think Jim yelled at me or something because I sat in the wrong chair, but that's that's for the history books to to decide. But, yeah, we got a lot to talk about. Oh, actually, you know what? I was gonna say one other thing is also to kinda promote our stuff that Linea is definitely, in the right mindset to do an interview like, Jim was describing because she, is the figurehead of our climate realism or climate at a glance videos that we've been putting out regularly on our YouTube channel. There is two, three minute short things on one specific topic, very easily consumable with a beautiful thumbnail in case you're looking at our YouTube page.
Donald Kendal:But those have been very popular and, probably one way or another kind of led to this opportunity with John Stassel. So good luck, Lanea, and, she'll be back next week. Don't you worry. But we got a lot of topics to get into, so let's go. Oh, I see some comments in the side there.
Donald Kendal:Wheelman says Atlas shrugged. You are right. 10 fake Internet points to you, Wheelman. Great job. Alright.
Donald Kendal:So let's get down to business here. Tesla vehicles, dealerships, and charging stations have been vandalized, suffering arson attacks, and faced protests since the company's CEO, Elon Musk, began his work with the Department of Government Efficiency or Doge leading to mass layoffs of federal workers, authorities said. So I am reading from an ABC News article, which is, an article that I found had a very nice outline of kind of all of these arson attacks and vandalism attacks on on Tesla vehicles in the past couple of months. So I'm just gonna run through a handful of these. This is just me reading from the article.
Donald Kendal:It says the latest suspicious incident occurred overnight in Dedham, Massachusetts, where three Teslas were vandalized according to the Dedham Police Department. Officials said words have been spray painted on two Tesla Cybertrucks with all four tires of the trucks and a Tesla Model s being reportedly damaged. Teslas were also damaged in Seattle on Sunday night where crews had to extinguish a fire involving four electric vehicles according to the Seattle Fire Department. Six Teslas were also vandalized at a Tesla dealership in Lynnwood, Washington on Saturday where one black Tesla Cybertruck was graffiti was swastikas according to that police department. A Tesla charging station in South Carolina was targeted on Friday where an unknown individual spray painted an expletive directed at president Donald Trump along with long lived Ukraine on a group of red paint, on the ground with red paint and threw homemade Molotov cocktails at the station according to that police department.
Donald Kendal:Similarly, seven Tesla charging stations sustained heavy fire related damage in Massachusetts on March 3 according to the Littleton Police Department, that that the officials determined that the fires were deliberately set. Shots were also fired at a Tesla dealership in Oregon where several bullets damaged three cars and shattered windows on March 6. On March, second, another Tesla deer dealership was spray painted in Maryland with no musk was written in in red spray paint on the windows, and another incendiary event occurred in Colorado where a woman was arrested on February 27 after police caught her with explosives at a Tesla dealership according to Loveland Police Department. I will note that I found the listing of all of these kind of interesting because usually with, like, media reporting, you kinda start with, like, the bigger deal stuff first and then kinda get, like, less important as you go down. I felt like this got more important as we went because, yeah, a lady found with explosives at a Tesla dealership, I feel like that's kind of the lead of the story, not spray painting swastikas, but what hat?
Donald Kendal:Whatever. So all of this, you know, is obviously a pretty sane and well adjusted response to Elon Musk wanting to cut government waste in a system that spends trillions and trillions of dollars a year. What are your thoughts on on this spat of, political violence and, you know, property damage and all of that, Jim?
Jim Lakely:Well, you know, we're part of what we're talking about here is the media's coverage and reaction to it. And, I'm reminded in a phrase that's uttered, it's not original to me, but we've said it a lot on this podcast, the left's violence is speech and the right's speech is turned into violence. Here we have you know, lefties going absolutely insane and violent and destructive, and the media basically just shrugs or celebrates it. We Chris, you're the one who who we don't force you to do it. You're the one who watches CNN and MSNBC on behalf of the program to keep us informed.
Jim Lakely:And I know I've seen clips on x of the democrat commentators, but the the most viral one that always goes is what's that guy's name? Scott something on CNN. It's him versus seven other lefties, and he and he kicks their butt every week. But, know, they're they're downplaying the violence. They're or or even celebrating it.
Jim Lakely:You know, I'm trying to imagine if, say, Trump supporters were, I don't know, destroying solar installations across the country in protest of,
Chris Talgo:you
Jim Lakely:know, the green agenda or in protest of China, whatever, for any reason whatsoever, how that might be covered and what might happen to those people that were inflicting that criminal violence not criminal violence, criminal destruction of property and perhaps even violence. I mean, I'm I'm reminded that, you know, the the the idiots who did the j six committee kept referring to j six as the equivalent of nine one of nine eleven and Pearl Harbor all wrapped into one and the worst act, in The United States since the civil war or maybe or maybe the war of eighteen twelve. Who knows? But they completely ignored, another pretty insurrection y incident when Donald Trump was president when don't you guys remember during the summer of love, I believe it was, when the White House was under attack from a leftist mob. And dozens of cops, not a couple, dozens of cops were, assaulted and injured, and, the media didn't give a crap about that.
Jim Lakely:And then they ended up going across the street and almost burning to the ground a historic church across the street from the White House. And that was celebrated by our media as just a vigorous expression of speech by people who are righteously angry. And frankly, you know, I'm just really tired of the the left being able to get away with this sort of violence morally. They more they get away with it morally in our media. And frankly, they tend to get away with it with no criminal charges whatsoever.
Jim Lakely:I mean, how many people in the during the riots all across the country during the summer of love in 2020 actually faced any criminal charges? What happened to all those people that set up Chaz in Seattle? Remember that, Donnie? That was a lot of fun. Oh, you were the regular host of this show.
Jim Lakely:We make quite a bit of fun of Chaz, the an an autonomous zone in the city of Seattle. Nothing happened to those people. And somebody was actually murdered in that utopian city of Chaz in Seattle. The the police station in Portland, I believe it was, that was attacked by leftist rioters and even set on fire. That wasn't, described as anything other than, frankly, righteous anger by people who have a right, you know, who are right to to express themselves in such ways.
Jim Lakely:But you're right, Donnie. It's quite a weird world we live in when the same left that was demanding that we all get into electric vehicles and celebrating Elon Musk as maybe the greatest entrepreneur and maybe greatest American, you know, immigrant to America in history is now characterized as a Yahtzee. I don't want to use the word. Have enough. Have bad enough time on this channel getting demonetized.
Jim Lakely:I'll just say that. You know, it's it's a weird world. Yeah, and Republicans celebrating Elon Musk and the Tesla while the left is now burning trying to burn Teslas and all this stuff. It's it's crazy. And it's all why It it's why because, you know, as you said, all he's trying to do is use Doge to identify enormous amount of waste, fraud, and abuse in our federal government, and, apparently, that is a bridge too far for the American left.
Donald Kendal:Yeah. We'll get to the Trump's response too. But, Chris, I'm I'm curious of your your thoughts on the spat of political violence and also your thoughts on, on some people going out and calling this, you know, domestic terrorism. I think Marjorie Taylor Greene mentioned that. I think Trump even made reference to that.
Donald Kendal:Marjorie Taylor Greene on Twitter posted, quote, these attacks, which seem to involve coordinating acts of vandalism, arson, and other acts of violence seriously threaten public safety. What is your thoughts on on just this in general and the idea that it's, like, being labeled by some as domestic terrorism?
Chris Talgo:Okay. First couple things. I did watch about forty five minutes of Anderson Cooper last night just to see how they would, you know, frame all this because knew that we'd be talking about a lot of this stuff on the, you know, on the show today. I also even watched, about 15 of Chris Hayes. So I was kinda flipping back and forth.
Chris Talgo:I can guarantee you needs a raise. No. They did not they did not mention this one time in that entire hour. However, what they did mention was how the economy is on the brink of an all out collapse like we haven't seen since the Great Depression. So they were really going over the top on the economy's about to crash, and this is all Trump's fault and all that stuff.
Chris Talgo:So they're trying to, you know, hype that up while they are completely ignoring, you know, and and not even mentioning this stuff. You know, Jim kinda touched upon this at the very end of his answer, and I think this is really, really, really important to emphasize and underscore. Why are they doing this? It's because Elon Musk is finally actually going after the fourth branch of government. Elon Musk is actually going after the bureaucracy.
Chris Talgo:He's going after these NGOs. He's going after the swamp. He's going after the deep state, whatever you wanna call it. Because what's happened over the past, you know, fifty, sixty, seventy, eighty years is congress passes bills and then they give all this money and all this authority to these departments, to these agencies who then, you know, use those funds for NGOs. And it's all just like a big scam.
Chris Talgo:It really is. It's just a giant scam. He is finally, you know, enlightening the American people of how deep this goes, how deep the rot and corruption is in Washington DC and the democrats because generally speaking, this is not a partisan thing at all because Republicans are just as guilty as this as Democrats are. They want all this spending. They want it because it's not only gives them, you know, a ribbon cover a ribbon cutting ceremony for some stupid bridge in their district or whatever it is.
Chris Talgo:They are they are addicted to the spending. We do not have a revenue problem in this country. We have a spending problem. Elon Musk is finally addressing that, and it's almost like I gotta pinch myself every single day seeing, oh my gosh, the Department of Education's gonna lay up half their workforce. This is the greatest thing ever.
Chris Talgo:Of course, CNN, MSNBC, and the, you know, liberal mainstream media is saying that this is gonna, you know, destroy education and all this stuff. We know that that's not the case. So I make that abundantly clear. These people are upset and are, you know, are hyperbolic about Elon Musk simply because he is finally, finally, after so long, he is finally getting to the root of the problem. And that is this just giant, you know, overspending, corruption, waste, fraud, abuse that is so rampant and widespread throughout this gigantic federal government.
Chris Talgo:Just one last quick quick statistic. So, you know, I I do also watch a lot of Fox Business because I love to see how they are, you know, talking about this stuff like this terrorist or anything else and they had a really interesting statistic plus that just jumped out to me. Nineteen twenty nine, our federal government's, spending was 3% of GDP. What is it today? Twenty five percent.
Chris Talgo:What what Doge is trying to do is get it back to about 20%. That is not that big of a, you know, of a of a we're not talking about slashing the gut the the federal spending to 1% of GDP. We're talking about going back to the basically, to the pre COVID levels. And, also, you know, in the meantime, just getting rid of a lot of waste, fraud, and abuse. This is just this is what the American people voted for.
Chris Talgo:This is what we want. And I think that all these, you know, crazy leftists who are, you know, going and burning down, you know, charging stations and, you know, burning, you know, Tesla vehicles, you know, on these lots, It's not resonating with the American people. The American people are not sure.
Donald Kendal:Of course.
Chris Talgo:American people think this is, you know, atrocious, which it is. So I think they are actually just, you know, their overreaction is showing how political they are and how not in line and in tune with the American people and what the American people want for the future of this country.
Donald Kendal:Yeah. Just one quick note. I have a comment on that, but one quick note. Our producer Andy says all of our international viewers are confused due to the daylight savings time. I apologize.
Donald Kendal:It is a weird system that we've got over here. And, if it caused the show to come out seemingly an hour early, we gotta adjust our clock. So, that's just the way it's gonna be until about November when we come back with whatever. I don't like daylight savings time, but that's a topic for a different day. I think that a lot of this is just like the media kind of pulling these extremist types and kind of radical types just by the nose.
Donald Kendal:Because, like, some of the things, and this is what I pointed out in the introduction of this episode, are just like patently contradictory. We're like, we've always talked about this idea that the the green new deal. Right? Let's go back to the green new deal for a minute. The idea that, like, the green new deal also had to do with, universal health care and job guarantees and all of this stuff.
Donald Kendal:And it's just like like, why would you spend a penny or a second dealing with any other things other than what you claim to be as the end of the world, the imminent end of the world that is climate change? To me, it's just it's just patently contradictory. It's just incredibly, hypocritical because if the world's coming to an end, who cares if people have, you know, good education or whatever? Save the world first, then deal with education. And I feel like the same thing has, you know, we could bring that up in regards to this where it's like, so what what's what's more important that, you know, Elon Musk cutting waste in the government or, you know, trying to get everybody to save the planet by getting a, electric vehicle.
Donald Kendal:It seems like it's just whatever the outrage that the media wants to conjure up is the most important thing of that month or week or day or year. And like now, climate change is and and dealing with climate change and getting people on electric vehicles is just put to the side while we deal with the Yahtzee that is that is Elon Musk. It's an absolutely insane, but that is the clown world that we find ourselves in.
Chris Talgo:I gotta make one little correction. It's not the green new deal. It's the green new scam.
Donald Kendal:Oh, there you go. There you go. So now I wanna talk about the other side of the coin. So to counter these acts of violence and property destruction targeting Elon, Donald Trump went out of his way to support Elon Musk even going as far as hosting a pro Tesla media stunt outside the White House. Donald Trump was joined by Musk in an assortment of Tesla vehicles where Donald Trump picked out one of the more popular Tesla electric vehicles to buy, calling Tesla a great American company.
Donald Kendal:During this event, Elon even pledged to double the electric vehicle production in The United States. So just think about this for just one minute. We're sitting in the year 2025. Liberals are vandalizing and torching the by far most popular electric vehicle out there on the market, making them out to be Yahtzee cars. Simultaneously, you have a Republican president doing an advertisement for electric vehicles outside of the White House.
Donald Kendal:I'm not sure what's on your 2025 bingo card, but I would not have predicted this even a year ago. And clearly, the intention of the media stunt, in front of the White House was to make Tesla EVs more attractive to Republicans and conservatives despite the fundamentals of EVs not changing. They're still very largely impractical to most drivers. They still require far more rare earth material than their gas powered alternatives. They're still more likely to explode into uncontrolled fires and everything else that we talk about electric vehicles.
Donald Kendal:But it's just I I I've been gone for, like, two months. The world has changed. It's just it's just too bizarre to try to keep up with. Jim, what's your take on all those?
Jim Lakely:Well, Donald Trump himself was was making fun of electric vehicles. And, you know, his policies early on when he was when before he was elected, he talked about getting rid of the it was a cornerstone of his environment and energy policy was to get rid of the electrical veal electric vehicle mandate, which he has done. And right from the very beginning, Elon Musk goes, that's fine with me, because he knows he's the number one electric EV maker in the country. He's the only company that is able to make a profit on EVs. We on this podcast, me especially, would criticize Elon Musk, you know, building his business on the backs of taxpayers with all the subsidies and tax breaks that he was able to get to build that company.
Jim Lakely:You know, and as you said, electric vehicles are not for everyone. But the idea of Donald Trump and Republicans now embracing you know, everything the world seems it really does seem flipped upside down because literally a year ago, the same people burning know, trying trying to burn all of the the Teslas down and attacking Tesla dealerships were the same people that would mandate that you can only drive an electric vehicle. And now here you have it. Instead of mandating that everyone drive them, they're trying to destroy all of them.
Donald Kendal:So Yeah. Right. There is somebody
Jim Lakely:fit in in a fit of, you know, you know, just throwing a tantrum.
Donald Kendal:Right. There there so there are people out there that right now are, like, simultaneously, like, crying over the idea of subsidies for electric vehicles being taken away while spray painting a swastika on an electric vehicle. It's just clown world that we're in, folks.
Chris Talgo:You know, a couple of things here. So first of all, I remember right after Trump got elected and, know, Musk had a prominent role in the White House that people like Sheryl Crow were, you know, selling their test laws and making such a big deal about it. So I just thought that was, you know, funny in and of itself. But I think there's a couple things here. So I don't think Republicans by nature are anti EVs.
Chris Talgo:What we're against is the government saying you have to do this. Fair. If someone, I mean, like, I have I have a couple friends and they live in the city and they have EVs and they say, hey, it works for me and I'm like, okay, that's fine. It's it's not like I have some antipathy towards EVs in general. If it's a right fit for someone, that's totally fine but it's when, you know, the Biden administration tried to mandate and also ban the internal combustion engine.
Chris Talgo:That's when it's, I think it starts to become a problem. I agree with you on the subsidies. I don't like em. They are still in place. So those aren't going away anytime soon as far as I know.
Chris Talgo:But you know, it's just so striking to me how Elon Musk, who's a brilliant businessman, we all know that, is losing money. Tesla stock is down way down. He was asked by Larry Kudlow on Monday, how are you able to run your businesses right now while doing this? And he basically was like, Larry, I can't run my businesses. My businesses are struggling big time.
Chris Talgo:So this whole narrative that the that the laughed in the, you know, mainstream media is saying that Elon Musk is really in this just to make all this money. It makes no sense. Right. He's losing money. He's not in this to make money.
Chris Talgo:He's not in this. This is not a grift at all. He's doing this and he's making huge sacrifices, not only to his, like, you know, to his persona and his, you know, reputation, but also to his businesses. And I think that he's putting his money where his mouth is, and we should actually really, you know, look up to him for doing that. You know?
Chris Talgo:I mean, I was I'll be brutally honest with you guys. I was not the biggest fan of Elon Musk before he made this kinda, you know, transition and, you know, was more about free speech and all that. But I do agree with him on most things. I don't think he's a hardcore libertarian. I don't think we agree with he probably doesn't agree with me on, you know, 80% of things.
Chris Talgo:But I think on, you know, on on some of the big things like, you know, government corruption and just getting this, you know, spending under control, that is something that, like, 80% of Americans agree on. And Elon Musk is doing that. And he's, you know, a brave person, and he has a lot of courage for doing it and sticking with it. And it's an idea that, like, the president can't have people like that in his, you know, in his orbit is just ridiculous. George Washington had Benjamin Franklin in the White House because Benjamin Franklin was a very good businessman and innovator and an entrepreneur.
Chris Talgo:And he he he, you know, he could help. So this is not, you know, like, of the ordinary. This this is actually quite ordinary.
Donald Kendal:Right. Right. Yeah. I think that's a good point about the the idea that conservatives aren't necessarily by definition against electric vehicles. It's about, the government force and subsidizing of that.
Donald Kendal:I will put a little bit more nuance onto that, just to kind of counter it a little bit. But generally, I agree with you that, this whole EV system and infrastructure is built up with tons of government spending. I mean, we just talked about the inflation reduction act and all the billions of dollars put towards building charging stations and all of that. None of those things are, because of the free market. It's all government interference, that sort of stuff.
Donald Kendal:But in principle, I agree with what you're saying. Let's move on. You mentioned the Larry Kudlow thing. That's a good transition to our second topic because apparently, Elon Musk announced on the Larry Kudlow, interview that he wants to destroy Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. So, I'm reading from an article.
Donald Kendal:This is from, MSN, MSN website, whatever. It says the headline is Trump will protect entitlements despite Musk's elimination talk according to the White House. The paragraph the the introduction to the paragraph says president Donald Trump has been unequivocally clear regarding his promise to protect Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid according to the White House despite Elon Musk describing entitlement spending as the big one in terms of cutting and the federal government. So this is how the article is framed, and this is how much of the mainstream media coverage of Elon Musk's remarks have been framed. Elon Musk wants to eliminate Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.
Donald Kendal:Of course, this has been echoed throughout social media, the left wing talking head circuits. On Twitter. Many people are sharing a clip of Elon Musk saying, quote, most of the federal spending is in entitlements. So that's the big one to eliminate. So that's not a deepfake.
Donald Kendal:This is a clip from an actual interview with Larry Kudlow. So there you have it. Elon Musk wants to eliminate Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid. Well, turns out not the truth. And if people read more than just misleading headlines and watched more than just five seconds of out of context video, you would know that the media is lying to you.
Donald Kendal:So we have a video. It's more than five seconds. It only takes you about thirty seconds. So let's go ahead and play this video that's got just a little bit more context into Elon Musk's remarks. Go ahead and play that video, please.
Speaker 4:Here? Yeah. I think so.
Chris Talgo:I final report middle of next year?
Speaker 4:Well, we're we're we're just getting things done as opposed to writing a report. Like I say, reports don't mean anything. You just you gotta actually take action. Yes. So the, I mean, the the waste report in in entitlement spending, you know, which is all of the which is most of the federal spending is entitlements.
Speaker 4:So that that's that's, like, the big one to eliminate. You know, is that that's the sort of half trillion, maybe $6,700,000,000,000 a year. That that is also a mechanism.
Donald Kendal:So, I mean, there you have it. There it goes on a little bit further to explain some of the other kind of implications of the gargantuan entitlement systems that we have. But he's talking about the waste report. He's talking about Doge waste report and identifying waste spending in these entitlement programs. And he's talking about that's the big one to eliminate is the waste, not the program itself, the waste.
Donald Kendal:And if people would just looked for one second, I mean, I I I'll I'll say that a lot of people are just echoing this point. Probably just saw the five second clip, just saw the headlines, and just kind of went with it. But there are certainly people that should know better that are propagating this idea that Elon Musk is saying, yep, nope, we're gonna take a take a take a, you know, a chainsaw to these entitlement programs and get rid of them completely. It is absolutely not the case. So Jim, thoughts on the media's handling of this story seems to
Jim Lakely:be par for the course. Well, the media's job is to parrot, the well, the the diminishing power of the legacy media is good to see, but their job for a long time has been to parrot Democrat talking points and attack any, Republican anywhere in public, and and do it in this way. I'm actually reminded of, at the end of, George w Bush when he was reelected in 02/2004, he had his first press conference, and he talked about he had a lot of political capital and he was going to spend it. And what he was going to spend it on was trying to reform social security to make sure it was solvent for future generations. And that lasted one of the ideas he was just kicking around some ideas was like partial privatization.
Jim Lakely:In other words, younger workers could take a portion of their social security contributions and put them into the private sector in a four zero one ks and eventually kind of wean that off. That would still sustain the program going into the future. That was considered destroying Social Security, and so it never went anywhere. Just think about how much more stable, even
Chris Talgo:if
Jim Lakely:you included all of the it's not just waste, Donnie. It's fraud. All of the Social Security fraud, if you even if you were still included all that and didn't touch it at all, which is what Elon Musk is trying to do. If we had moved to at least partial privatization for younger workers, the program would be very much still solvent for those at retirement age and almost at retirement age today because that was twenty years ago. But we didn't make those kind of make those kinds of, you know, reasonable reforms because the Democratic Party wanted to attack George W.
Jim Lakely:Bush and Republicans for destroying Social Security. And now here we are today where Elon Musk, with the wonders of new technology, of AI and with Doge, has been able to very quickly identify an enormous amount of fraud in the Social Security system. Now, did every was every example of Social Security fraud that Donald Trump brought up in his address to Congress the other day accurate? You know, was it investigated to make sure that that was actually true? Who knows?
Jim Lakely:But the idea that there is no fraud and no waste and no abuse of the social security system, is robbing it of its solvency and taking money out of our pockets. I'm Gen X. I've never thought for my entire working life that I would have social security there for me when I retired. And I still actually don't think it'll be there unless reforms like this actually end up coming true. One of the things that Doge has really identified is not just wasteful programs and foolish spending, But the enormous amount of absolute fraud and theft that is going on that has never been investigated.
Jim Lakely:It has never been we have never tried it. He said it in that clip with with Kudlow. He's like, you know, another report. We don't need another report. You know, I'm old enough to remember when we have reports on how to balance the budget and how to do this and another report on that.
Jim Lakely:And then a blue ribbon commission would come out with another report on how to how to do this to fix the country. Elon Musk is right. The time for reports is over. The time for action is now. And the action that needs to happen is that people who should not be there's obviously money going out of the Social Security system to people who don't don't deserve it.
Jim Lakely:And who are either stealing it or it's finding its way offshore. Who knows? But our federal government has never once in my lifetime, I'm 54 years old, has never once that I can remember actually tried to find out if social security system has any fraud in it at all. We've never even looked. And so now we're looking and we're seeing that not only is the Social Security system filled with fraud, but so is Medicaid and Medicare, obviously.
Jim Lakely:And so are so many other government programs that are set up that we can we've talked about this on this podcast a few times and also on the Climate Realism Show that this whole, you know, NGO system where Democrats are in government and they're connected to their politicians in Congress And then they form an NGO outside the government that is funded by the government. Round and round they go staffing that NGO to being in a in a government agency and taking the money and going around and everybody gets rich except you and me. We get poorer because our tax money is taken away. And so this I don't think it's actually going to work, you know, but part of the you know, we're leaning into the idea that the legacy media is, you know, be clowning itself as it always does. But the larger picture here is that the people are not listening to this.
Jim Lakely:I know Chris watches CNN and MSNBC for us, but their ratings have never been lower. The circulations of the major newspapers in this country have never been lower in our lifetimes. We just learned this week that The New York Times has laid off half of its editorial staff and more layoffs are to come. The Washington Post is laying off reporters left and right. And so these leftist propagandists can go start their own substack somewhere that will be not read by anybody important.
Jim Lakely:The American people have their eyes opened and those eyes are not going be shut again. We see the world now finally for how it is. And Elon Musk sees the Social Security system for what it is, which is a necessary program for a lot for every American, but one that is not sustainable in long term because the amount of fraud and crime and stealing out of that is that system that we have.
Donald Kendal:Yeah. I just don't know how many examples of this, like, I can take anymore of, like, the media taking some little sound bites, removing all of the context, and then parading that as truth. I mean, the most the most insane example to this day is, them the the Donald Trump, you know, they're very fine people comment or whatever, where they were saying that the neo Yahtzee is we're gonna get like Yahtzee is gonna become like the new thing that that just is not allowed in society because of you, Jim, because of this. But but, yeah, when when you watch the actual clip, he says, no. Except for those guys, they're the worst.
Donald Kendal:Like, they should be contempt entirely. You've just cut all of that out. Just save the very fine people, and that's the truth for the rest of the the rest of the, you know, time. But, you know, I I don't know. Like, I get it.
Donald Kendal:The media, the legacy media, that's not what it used to be, but, like, it still seems to be where all of this stuff kinda flows through all of these other channels that people watch. I mean, so frequently, a family member or friend will come to me and they'll ask me something like, like, in in regards to this story. Oh, what do you think about Elon Musk's comments about eliminating Social Security? So then, you know, the issue, because I always hear it from them first, it's just like it I know that it's coming from a broken premise. Like, I can't comment on Elon's comments because I don't trust the media is accurately relaying that information to you to ask me about it.
Donald Kendal:So then it becomes a homework assignment where I have to go and find the truth. Then I have to like, you know, go back to them and respond that the whole thing was a broken premise. It's tiring, but it just seems like old hat for the media. So, Chris, the media lying aside, what are your thoughts on the idea of tackling entitlement spending to get government spending under control? I mean, you've you've told me a million times that the entitlement programs are kind of the big elephant in the room when it comes to this stuff.
Chris Talgo:Yeah. A couple of things here. So, I think your comparison to Charlottesville was spot on, and I've heard a lot of other people make that same comparison where they're just obviously taking it out of context on purpose. I mean, that that that is intentional. That is not just we're trying to, like,
Donald Kendal:fit in the Malicious.
Chris Talgo:Combat. It is. It absolutely is. Okay. So first, I do wanna comment on that.
Chris Talgo:Couple other things. Ever since I've been following politics, you know, for the past twenty something years, the entitlements have been the third rail, the taboo topic. You can't talk about them. And whenever there's a government shutdown or anything, you know, like that, what do the Democrats know in the mainstream media always do? This is going to affect your Social Security payments and Medicare when that's never ever been the case, will never be the case because those are on autopilot.
Chris Talgo:Those are going to go out whether there's a government shutdown or not. So I've seen this happen again and again. Okay. Yes. That is, you know, just that is fact.
Chris Talgo:Now, the entitlement programs, how much of the federal budget do they encapsulate? 70%. That's a huge amount. These programs are completely unsustainable. They were put in place in a time when, you know, the population, especially the baby boomers, were able to make up the difference between the silent generation.
Chris Talgo:But now that the baby boomers are retiring, there's not enough of us to keep the promises that have been made. And gee, last time I checked, congress did not put all that money that's supposed to be in social security into a trust fund. They spent it. It's gone. It has been gone for a very long time.
Chris Talgo:The only way to get out of this situation is a pro growth economic agenda. And that is exactly what Donald Trump is trying to do. The media, instead of saying, you know what? This is not gonna happen in a day or a month. It's gonna take, you know, a couple of years probably because if, you know, companies are gonna rebuild factories here, they can't just do that in a week.
Chris Talgo:It's gonna take a long time. So that's what this is about. This is about a pro growth economic agenda that Donald Trump is trying to embark upon because the only way that we can solve this problem is to have an explosion of economic growth. We've been, you know, in this 1% growth model for a very long time. If we do, you know, actually pass the, Tax Cuts and Jobs Act extension, the deregulation goes through, drill by be drill and all this stuff, we will, I strongly believe, get back to 3%, maybe even four or 5% economic growth.
Chris Talgo:That would make all of these things moot because economic growth is the only way to solve these problems. We cannot cut our way. We have to grow our way. Elon Musk knows that, most economists know that. So, you know, it's like, it's just so disingenuous when they're saying that he's trying to cut, you know, social security payments to, you know, like the little old lady who, you know, survives on social security.
Chris Talgo:It's not true. What he's trying to do, as Jim said earlier and has been, you know, said many, many, many times across the mainstream media, These programs are rife with fraud. Even the New York Times, I just, I was quoted on this for the healthcare news article a couple weeks ago. Even the New York Times admits that there's 500,000,000,000 in annual fraud in Medicaid. I pointed that out and I got a email from someone of course saying, well, you just wanna take away Medicaid and and you don't wanna deny healthcare to people.
Chris Talgo:No, actually I don't. No, not one bit at all. But I read stories all the time about rampant fraud, about, you know, double billing, about, you know, just so much stuff going on because it's, you know, there's no incentive in place to check that this is on the up and up. And what, you know, Elon Musk is trying to do is basically trying to audit these programs, just like he's also trying to audit the Department of Defense and the Department of Education and all these other departments. But these these departments and these programs have been operating without any sort of accountability for so long that when it actually finally comes time to, you know, implant that accountability, there are people who are going to, you know, pull their hair out and you know, then smoke's gonna come out of their ears.
Chris Talgo:I say, let that happen. Let that happen. American people are gonna realize, wait a second, my benefits are not being cut. And, you know, the only once again, the only way we can actually solve this problem is a pro growth economic agenda, and that's what Donald Trump is trying to do. And the media, instead of actually just giving him, you know, a little bit of time, fifty days into his presidency, they're already saying the economy's been crashing, Trump recession, all this stuff.
Chris Talgo:But you know what's so funny? For years, for two or two, maybe three years, when Biden's economy was a complete and utter mess and inflation was through the roof, what was the what was the, media's what were the media saying, and what were the Democrats and the leftists all saying? Oh, well, first of all, it's not. You know, the first time that they tried to gaslight us, then they were saying, oh, it's only transitory. And then they're saying, well, it wasn't even Donald it wasn't even, Biden's fault in the first place.
Chris Talgo:So just think of the the the dichotomy, the contrast between how the left gives the I mean, I hate to make this so political, but I feel like we like, it is political at this point in time. And I hate I'm not trying to be like a partisan person because I'm not saying that all the democrats are, you know, for wasteful spending and all the republicans aren't. That's not true, obviously. But generally speaking, the democrats and Chuck Schumer is is, you know, doing this right now with this stop gap spending bill saying, we're gonna we're gonna hold it up because we do not want this, you know, the CR to go through, and we do not want these, you know, tax cuts to be extended. And that's a very bad state of affairs.
Chris Talgo:You would think at this point in time that the Democrats would say, you know what, we wanna do what's good for the American people. What's good for the American people is to put these programs back on a sustainable, you know, trajectory. In order to do that, of course, you need to cut the waste, fraud, and abuse which we all know is widespread throughout these programs but you also need to stop the fear mongering and I don't just, you know, I I hope I'm not, you know, blabbering here, but this I I see such a a comparison and parallel between the fear mongering they do on entitlement programs, the fear mongering they do on climate change, and the fear mongering they do on COVID, and all the fear mongering. That's what it is. It's trying to scare the American people.
Chris Talgo:I think the American people are smarter than that. I think that they have seen through this and you can't just keep crying wolf again. You just can't. At a certain point, people say, you know what? We've heard this before.
Chris Talgo:You have already, you know, played that card and they're just not buying it. I think that that is making them more nuts.
Donald Kendal:Right. Yeah. It's just I think, it's hard for me to compare, just because this has been, like, the reality of the last eight to ten years, however long Donald Trump's been in kind of the political spotlight. But, like, that's just the political rhetoric. It's just gotten so lazy where it's just people have just held up Donald Trump as the political north star that we align with him completely or we align against him completely.
Donald Kendal:And if they say they're gonna cut $1 in waste when it or or fraud when it comes to Social Security or entitlement programs, that's that just means he wants to get rid of all of it. When you can go back not that far, Jim was talking about this with me just the other day where you could find clips from 02/2008 where Bernie Sanders and, like, Nancy Pelosi are talking about how there's a lot of fraud and waste in Social Security that needs to be dealt with. So we're all of a sudden there MAGA before? Were they MAGA back in 02/2008? Like, it's just so ridiculous that you could literally you could literally read a Bernie Sanders quote from 02/2008 right now and be accused of being some right wing extremist.
Donald Kendal:Like, that's how lazy everything has gotten. This is the clown world that we find ourselves in, and this is how ridiculous the media system has become. Jim, I'm gonna give you first swing on this next topic because this is a topic that you suggested while we were coming up with ideas for the show. And originally, I didn't really wanna do this topic, the topic of COVID five year anniversary. But then I found this pretty interesting article from The Federalist that I thought would make a pretty good jumping off point, for this conversation.
Donald Kendal:So the article is from The Federalist is titled COVID taught Americans to stop trusting a government that puts them last. So it's a really good article. You should go check it out. But generally, it talks about the double standards that were in place for average people and the politically connected. People banned from going to church while joy George Floyd protesters were being encouraged.
Donald Kendal:Children getting their education stolen from them while Nancy Pelosi got special treatment at an at a hair salon. Everything when it came to COVID divided down political lines eventually with the media carrying water whenever possible for the left side of things. You're hesitant about taking the vaccine while you're killing grandma. You think this originated in a Chinese lab? You're a racist conspiracy theorist.
Donald Kendal:You point out the hypocrisy of people being treated different. You're a right wing extremist. So five years since COVID lockdowns, I think the most lasting effect of all of this, five years later, is the complete and utter severing of trust in the media and other institutions from many Americans. Jim, what's your thoughts on this?
Jim Lakely:Oh god, I mean, yeah, I'm gonna get triggered here again just because COVID does tend to drive me a little bit crazy, you know, but yeah, it's the I I mentioned it's the five year anniversary. I think it was March 11. There was an NBA game. I know Andy Singh, our producer's big NBA fan. I believe it was a Utah Jazz.
Jim Lakely:Rudy Gobert was the the first NBA player to be diagnosed with as positive for COVID, And then all hell broke loose. They canceled the game, I think, in the middle of the game, and then, suddenly, universities and sports sporting events were being canceled all over the place. And it was just it was just really weird. The NCAA tournament was going on. I think they played one day worth of games and realized, you know, people sweating and breathing in each other's faces when we're telling everybody that there's this new disease that will kill everyone.
Jim Lakely:It's probably not a good idea. And then we were told, hey, guys, just two weeks to stop the spread. Let's all do our part. Let's all pitch in. And I did so and everybody around the world did so.
Jim Lakely:And but we were lied to from the very beginning. And really, I think COVID I was already kind of, well, just constitutionally I'm very skeptical of government and distrusting of government and authority anyway. I mean, that's why I'm a conservative or a libertarian, however you want to label me. But COVID really exposed the utter corruption and frankly evilness of governments in the West that we thought, you know, we couldn't get that bad. And I remember on this podcast telling you and Justin and Chris that I really didn't think that it was going to last very long and by last I mean the lockdowns and all the restrictions on our liberties.
Jim Lakely:I thought the American people were not going to stand for that and boy was I disappointed and boy was everybody disappointed because we did accept basically living in a totalitarian state for a long, long time. And, you know, COVID was the totalitarian model. It was the test case. The Western governments use China as the example, not as something, you know, not as a cautionary tale, but as an example of how they needed to run societies. And everything they told us about COVID turned out to be false, either intentionally false because they were lying to us to control us or I would not I'm not even going give the benefit of doubt.
Jim Lakely:There were no mistakes. Okay, there were no mistakes. It was all intentional lying, gaslighting and totalitarian control over the people. See how far and how how far they could push it, how much they could get away with. Were the American people really going to wave goodbye to their grandma through a window at the old age old age home because you're not allowed to be in there and hold her hand as she passes?
Jim Lakely:Are they really not going to allow people to have proper funerals for those loved ones that were were left to die alone? The answers to both those questions were yes, we lived through that. That is what we had to endure. Thank goodness nobody actually in my family had passed away or gotten sick or was in the hospital during that time. But, you know, we still had to remember the arrows on the ground.
Jim Lakely:You could only walk this way down this aisle in the grocery store. And if you saw something and you missed it, you can't go back because, oh my gosh, my breathe on somebody. All the mask nonsense, all the separation nonsense, it was all arbitrary. None of it was real. And the topper of all of that, of course, is that anybody who just entertained something outside the government line on the cause of COVID, the origins of COVID, the dangers of COVID, anything of the government under Joe Biden shut you down, silenced you, tried to get you canceled.
Jim Lakely:I remember being on on what was then called Twitter, and I was accused by people of wanting to murder people because I wasn't taking COVID seriously enough. And so, yeah, I think it's the five year anniversary. I
Chris Talgo:think a lot
Jim Lakely:of us just kind of don't want to remember how traumatic and terrible the COVID regime that was put in place in this country and in governments all over the West. We just want to forget it happened. It is really it's easier to not remember than it is to remember. And I think we should always remember what our government is capable of, even on this level, even in The United States, and that it could and could get a lot worse, a lot worse than that. And just one last, you know, everybody's got their own COVID stories.
Jim Lakely:You know, mine is that I had to go on an international trip. I had to get the vaccine and a booster in order to leave the country. And then before I could come home, I had to take a COVID test on camera with a government bureaucrat, and I had to remain on camera so they didn't so that I didn't cheat on the test. And I had to sit there with that person for fifteen minutes waiting for my test results. And then we opened them up together and I showed it on screen.
Jim Lakely:If that was an error, if there was an if that was a bad test, if there was some mistake in it and it said I was positive, too bad. I would have had to stay in that outside of my own country for another week at my own expense. And this is that's just one little example of how insane the world got over COVID, and we must not forget it. We have to remember it. You may not want to get this triggered as I do.
Jim Lakely:And a lot of it is quite silly, but a lot of it is very serious because we cannot go through that again because I don't think if the government is able to do all of that again, I don't think they're going to give it up ever again and we will live in a complete totalitarian state.
Donald Kendal:Yeah, Chris, I mean, think like just kind of anecdotally, think that there was a lot of people around me, whether it's friends or family, kind of getting like red pilled during the whole lockdown thing or the way the media was treating, everything, the way that they're reporting on everything. I remember specifically, if we're gonna go through these these kind of stories or whatever.
Chris Talgo:Well, that I remember one. Can I just go in a completely different direction here?
Donald Kendal:Well, I'm gonna let you go in a different direction.
Chris Talgo:Because I've got I've got something that I really wanna get off my chest about this.
Donald Kendal:Absolutely. That's totally fine. But I remember that there was, like, one moment where there was this glimmer of hope in the heart of the lockdowns where there was like, oh, this there might be this this thing that's effective for treating COVID. It's called, I forget what it even called. Evermectin.
Jim Lakely:Oh, don't say it. Oh, jeez.
Donald Kendal:Oh, no. No. No. Sorry, guys. Yeah.
Donald Kendal:So so it was like that. I was like, oh, great. Like, that's fantastic. Some low cost thing that's already out there.
Jim Lakely:We can
Donald Kendal:start treating people with it. It was like before anyone could even, like, decide whether or not it was truly effective, the media came down like a hammer on anyone that would even suggest agree
Chris Talgo:with you. Okay. But why did they do that? But why? You know why?
Chris Talgo:This goes back to 2016. It was all because of Donald Trump. And I'm not trying to say that Donald Trump is this, like, infallible figure. He's a very flawed man. But you know what he may is so different from Donald Trump in all the years that I've studied American history and especially since I've been engaging in this world.
Chris Talgo:He's an outsider. He's not a politician, and he says it like it is. And I think that in 2016, when the left just assumed that, of course, Hillary Clinton's gonna take over for Barack Obama and the transformation of America is just gonna keep going forward. And it was such a, you know, like a seismic blow to them that let's let's think back for a second. Twenty seventeen, twenty eighteen, twenty nineteen, all they tried to do was, you know, was, you know, get rid of him.
Chris Talgo:And then in 2020, or I should say late twenty nineteen, it was November 2019, when this stuff started happening in China, what did they do? They realized, oh, here's here. This is how we can do it. So what did they do? And by me, by they, I mean, you know, Fauci and the mainstream media and big pharma and just, you know, the usual suspects.
Chris Talgo:They tried to make it seem as if Donald Trump is personally responsible for COVID nineteen, which is just ridiculous on its face. Okay? So they tried to use it as a cudgel to get rid of him. They knew they knew, and I I will go to my death believing this, that Fauci and Birx and all those people knew that it was not nearly as contagious or well, I shouldn't say contagious because it was contagious, but not especially from child to adults. So the whole school thing was a total joke.
Chris Talgo:And they knew that early on. We know that. But it was not nearly as deadly. We know that. And what did they do?
Chris Talgo:They went out of their way to make it appear as bad as possible. So I I remember writing about this stuff because I was just in I was in total shock when I was watching this happening in real time. Wow. Someone died of a car someone died in a car accident, but they had COVID. So now they're narrowed their COVID death.
Chris Talgo:Like, that doesn't make any sense. So what they try to do is they try to manipulate. They try to spin and skew all of it. So it looked like it was as bad as possible thinking now we can get rid of this guy. And you know another well, and it it kinda worked unfortunately.
Chris Talgo:Unfortunately, it did. But you know what? Another thing. So Jim, Donnie and I, you know, we experienced COVID in Illinois. Illinois was terrible.
Chris Talgo:Blue state, it made it as difficult as possible. My brother at the time was living in Georgia. Totally different. Georgia actually was ahead of the curve. They were even above Florida and saying, no.
Chris Talgo:We're not doing any of this stuff. I went down to visit my brother. I wanna say Memorial Day weekend of 2021, maybe 2020. And it was like, I entered like a different universe down there. It was like, people don't wear masks everywhere and you can actually, like, like, like, go into store.
Chris Talgo:Like, this is just blowing my mind right now. So I think that we, us three might have been just a little bit biased or not shouldn't say biased, but, you know, like, we were you know, we see it through the prism of the Illinois model, but that was not the case in all the states. You know? So I
Donald Kendal:just Imagine if we were living in Australia.
Chris Talgo:Well, yeah. New Zealand for that matter or even in Europe or in Germany where it was, you know, 10 times worse. Yeah, exactly. So I do wanna, you know, put that out there. And, you know, as a former teacher, I pay very close attention, nation's report card.
Chris Talgo:And just so you know, it's like statistics like coming out. And when I see that at the most recent nation's report card that our eighth graders are proficient at reading at a twenty eight percent rate and math is I think thirty one percent. That is really really sad. And you know what? I'm not saying that it was totally due to COVID, but without a doubt, without a doubt, I mean, I was a teacher, I know how this stuff works.
Chris Talgo:If you tell kids don't come to the classroom for a year and a half to two years, they're gonna they're they're gonna go backwards. They're gonna go backwards big time. Not only intellectually in terms of math and science and history and all that stuff but also socially and you know, I mean, I, this is anecdotal. This is, you know, this but I have seen a lot of studies, you know, that show this, but this is just my little anecdotal, you know, world. I see kids now who are 15, 16, 17 years old.
Chris Talgo:They're not as normal as I would expect them to be in terms of, you know, interacting with people, in terms of looking at me in the eye when I'm speaking to them, like that kind of stuff. I cannot help but wonder if locking them in their rooms for a year to a year and a half, ruining, you know, one of the best times of their life, whether it's going to prom or what whatever it is, graduation. I mean, that stuff matters. I remember that stuff in my life, and it was a great time in my life to just say, no, you don't get that because of because we have some political, you know, aim that we are trying to achieve and using them as pawns, that to me is just beyond the pale. So, that's why I'm I I view these people in a very negative light.
Chris Talgo:I view them literally and you know, I don't use this word lightly, evil. Doctor Fauci, evil. Totally evil. Because they were sorry. Go ahead.
Jim Lakely:No. No. I'm just gonna yeah. And you're right. And the upshot of this, the only really good outcome of all of this is the absolute destruction of the trust of institutions in this country that never earned them in the first place, and we're just kind of using them, and you abuse that authority, the whole public health authorities.
Jim Lakely:Who's who who can trust them again?
Donald Kendal:Yeah. That's what I was gonna say. Like, generally speaking, people didn't have an opinion. Your average person didn't have an opinion on the World Health Organization. The average person didn't have an opinion on the National Institute of Health.
Donald Kendal:The average person didn't even know who Anthony Fauci was. You know? But, like, all of this just, you know, it just tore down the the the the the general, like, perceived integrity of these institutions just tore it down. So
Chris Talgo:Yeah. It did. It did. And you know what? I mean, I almost feel like I was kinda guilty of that.
Chris Talgo:Like, you know, before this, I just generally trusted FBI. They generally do the right thing. Yeah. They're not perfect, but generally, like, f FDA, yeah, generally, they do the right thing. They're looking out for, like, you know, my best interest.
Chris Talgo:Wow. Has that changed? Especially when I saw what they did with the definition of a vaccine and how they gave these vaccine makers who remember this, it's not a vaccine. It never was and never is. Blanket immunity.
Chris Talgo:What is that about? Right. So the media to take it, and then you say, if something bad happens to you, which we know bad things did happen, you know, heart conditions and all that kind of stuff, we know that that did happen saying, well, you have no recourse. Like, what what is that about?
Donald Kendal:Yeah. No. Thanks to you for bringing up the education stuff too because that's also like a very long lasting effect that might have generational impacts too. So, yeah, I definitely can't forget about that. We're at an hour mark, but we gotta get to our last topic here.
Donald Kendal:This is, this is a pretty important one. So JPMorgan Chase has agreed to update their code of conduct to protect against religious and political discrimination in what activists are calling a major win in the fight against debanking. So political debanking is an issue that we've talked about for a while. I know that we've done a few episodes of this show talking about it specifically. This was an issue that we, took on here at the Heartland Institute after we got really involved in the, you know, combating ESG.
Donald Kendal:Banks refusing services to people based on their political beliefs or to protect from, to, you know, to to protect their ESG rankings, that sort of thing. So with a republican controlled White House and congress, we were really trying to increase the pressure to that you know, for policymakers to do something about this issue. So Justin Haskins, who you've, you know, seen on the show shortly, has been flooding the zone with op eds and notable publications about this issue. In just the last month, he had a piece in town hall titled a new bill would crush banks that discriminate against conservatives and Christians. In the federalists, he had an article titled fair access bill would finally stop activist banks from discriminating against conservatives.
Donald Kendal:And in the blaze, he had a piece, titled mister president stop woke banks from targeting conservatives and Christians. Well, it turns out we didn't have to wait for legislative action. JPMorgan Chase went ahead and amended their code of conduct to introduce language that would stop the banking giant from debanking people based on their political beliefs. So considering JPMorgan's role in the larger banking sector, this is a big win. The group Alliance Defending Freedom, who has been really at the forefront of this particular issue, put out a press release in light of JPMorgan Chase's announcement saying in part, quote, this is a major victory for free free speech and religious freedom in the marketplace.
Donald Kendal:So, you know, we'll just go through this real quick because we're already over an hour. But this is a a great thing. This is something that we've been wanting to happen. The idea that these banks would kind of take this action by themselves without, you know, government mandates is a fantastic thing. So let's just take one second to celebrate.
Donald Kendal:Woohoo. Alright, but back to reality. This there's a little bit of a, what's the opposite of a silver lining of a dark cloud? Because there's an opposite. We've got a nice we got a nice sunshine, but there's a little glimpse of something bad, which is the question of whether or not this kind of takes the pressure off of kind of codifying this into law.
Donald Kendal:So now is there pressure for lawmakers or the president to mandate this and do, like, some sort of fair access type thing that would prevent banks from doing this in the future? Because it seems like the pressure is off. These banks have already doing it. But what's stopping these banks from undoing this code of conduct switch when, you know, the next president takes over or, you know, people with d's in front of their name take over congress or something along those lines. So I don't wanna just like, alright.
Donald Kendal:Great. We're done. Let's stick a flag in this and move on to the next topic because I feel like the progress that we've made on this issue could easily be walked back in just a few short years. Jim, what are your thoughts on this one?
Jim Lakely:Well, we have talked about the debanking and it's all tied in with ESG and and it's tied in with, you know, so called social credit scores and all of that stuff, you know, that they have in China and that was kind of slow walked or softly imposed in the West. I saw today that I think the Trump organization, so not the president himself, but his company sued who is it? They they sued Capital One Bank over the them being debanked. You know, this is this is really evil. And yes, you are right.
Jim Lakely:There needs to be a law passed that bans what should be upheld in courts. But there ought to be a law just to make it easier because it's expensive and difficult if an ordinary person is debanked because of their political views. A friend of ours and who's been on the show, the Climate Realism Show, us, Jason Isaac. This is similar to this. Jason Isaacs, he's head of the American Energy Institute.
Jim Lakely:Formerly he was with the Texas Public Policy Foundation. And his insurance company, The Hartford, canceled him. They said, We cannot insure the American Energy Institute, which is a nonprofit organization, because you guys advocate for the drilling and use of fossil fuels, which we cannot support as a company. And it's part of our DEI and ESG and all the other stuff that we do here in this company that has nothing to do with making money or providing services, but has to do with a political agenda because you do not align with that. Jason Isaac, you are out.
Jim Lakely:You What? Correct. And so we'll see if The Hartford, which I believe actually well, I I think I've had some dealings with The Hartford. Let's just say that. So I might be getting a phone call or a letter pretty soon.
Jim Lakely:But this is all of the same thing, Donnie, that there are companies that are putting politics and canceling people, canceling insurance, debanking them. One of Trump's lawyers, John Eastman, was debunked and tried and disbarred and destroyed. The American Bar Association tried to make it so that any attorney who ever represented any Trump affiliate or official or somebody adjacent to Trump would be harassed and and, you know, to the to the end of their life and disbarred and all this sort of stuff. So this it's debanking is part of the weaponization of both the private sector and government against perceived political enemies. We are seeing that there is a cost to that on the left now, too.
Jim Lakely:And hopefully there will be a truce on this sort of thing. And it cannot happen in America that you are quote unquote debanked or uninsured or or run out of your profession and not allowed to hold, say, a medical license. They did that. They were trying to go after the medical license. Gosh, all these things come back to your head during COVID of Jay Bhattacharya.
Jim Lakely:They tried to get him his medical license revoked. I mean, these are the sorts of things that when the left thought they would be in control forever, we're happily engaging in. And now they are starting to see that the the tables have turned, that these are actually not good ideas and that Americans in a free country like America should not even think about abusing their power, be it public or private, in such ways. Hopefully, we can go back to living like that, which is how we've lived our lives and run our society for hundreds for more than two hundred years.
Donald Kendal:Yep. Yep. Yep. It's it's insane. Yeah.
Donald Kendal:And you're right. It's like as I'm, like, thinking about this stuff, all of these memories that we've been covering this for, like, you know, a couple of years now. It's just like, oh, yeah. This this happened and that happened too. It just comes comes kinda pouring back.
Donald Kendal:But, Chris, I'm gonna give you final thoughts on this topic or any topic that we talked about on this this episode before we wrap up the show?
Chris Talgo:Well, as much I would love to talk about the up and smoke tour in February, I'm gonna put that for another day, and I'm gonna talk about this because this matters a lot. And I take what Jamie Dimon said, the head of JPMorgan Chase, with a boulder of salt. Because I don't think he really means it. I think he's only doing this because Donald Trump won the election, and it looks like there's been a sea change, you know, not only in, the the political landscape, but also in the cultural landscape. So I think he's just looking at the political wins and saying, okay, better do this because that's gonna be good for business.
Chris Talgo:I don't think this is a principled stand on behalf of Jamie Dimon whatsoever. I think Jamie Dimon is totally, totally, you know, doing this for political reasons. I also think it was stupid in the first place because why would Jamie Dimon and Bank of America and all these other, you know, city whomever, you know, Wells Fargo, why would they want to restrict their clientele? It just doesn't make sense. But then you think, oh, well they did it because they wanted to, you know, stay in good with the Biden administration and all the ESG stuff and all the crony stuff that was going on there.
Chris Talgo:So I don't think that this is enough. I saw and I think I posted it in our little Slack thread that Tim Scott, one of my favorite senators had proposed a bill that would actually codify this into law and I think that's great. Here's what I think would apply mostly to reputational risks. So it'd be like firearms dealers and stuff like that. But I think every single person in The United States, you know, has a right to have a, you know, financial service provider.
Chris Talgo:Now, I'm not saying that JPMorgan Chase has an obligation to offer services to every single American, but I don't think that it's okay for them to say, well, we're just not gonna we're not gonna work with you because we just don't like what you say, what you do, or what you believe in. That's what I think this is truly about. You know, and I've been, you know, I'm kind of a hypocrite on this. I do have accounts at Chase and I do have accounts at Bank of America and the reason why is because of convenience. They have lots of ATMs.
Chris Talgo:It's easy for me to move funds and just do all that kind of stuff. But at the same time, Donnie, I think I told you like years ago when I was like, hey, my Bank of America, they're like giving me this thing called an ESG score and they're kind of telling me like, hey, we want you to invest more in this kind of stuff. And that definitely rubbed me the wrong way. Now I have, you know, with BofA and I still have an account with, you know, Chase. However, I'm not changing my investments one iota that can, you know, make me do that.
Chris Talgo:But I do think that this is something that is not an institutional change, it's not permanent. It's basically they are trying to, you know, stay on the good side of, you know, the the new administration and they know that the new administration does not look kindly upon banks that discriminate against people based on their political views or whatever else. So, yeah, I mean, I think this is a it's a good step, but by no means should we be, you know, celebrating the streets yet. I think we gotta get this codified into law, and, you know, that's what I think is the real solution here.
Donald Kendal:Yeah. You know what's the craziest thing? And this kinda goes back to the first topic that we were talking about. Is that, like, this, you know, potential legislative solutions to this idea of, you know, these banks discriminating against people based on their political beliefs pretty much divides down ideological lines or, you know, left versus right lines where you have the left defending banks, with their right to discriminate against people. This is the world that we live in now, folks.
Chris Talgo:Well, let's also let's also remember that, you know, in in in in the the the, February when the big banks were, you know, not exactly behaving, you know, perfectly, although I don't blame them solely, what happened? They got bailed out and Barack Obama and Tim Geithner, you know, two people who I am not a big fan of these days, they basically empowered them like never before. And this whole notion of too big to fail. I mean, I think that's really, you know, like the the genesis of a lot of this, you know, bad stuff where Bank of America and, you know, Chase and Citi and Wells Fargo have way too much market share. They're way too big for their own bridges.
Chris Talgo:I would love to see, you know, a more decentralized banking system. I just don't know if that's gonna happen in the foreseeable future, but that would be, that would be my my dream.
Donald Kendal:Yep. Well, stay tuned because these are topics that, we will continue to talk about on the Inletank podcast with your regular host, Lenea Lucan, who will be joining the show back next week. So you'll be able to look at her instead of me, which is a net positive for the intake podcast for sure. Let me let me see if I could do this outro because I haven't done it in a couple of months, but I wanna thank everyone for joining the show, every Thursday at noon central time where we are live streaming on Facebook and YouTube and Rumble and X. Join the conversation.
Donald Kendal:Throw your comments and questions in the chat. Maybe we'll show your comments in the screen. Maybe we'll address your questions on the fly. You cannot support us monetarily on YouTube through Super Chats because we've been demonetized, but you can still go to heartland.org/inthetank and donate directly that way. And that way, YouTube doesn't take a 25, 30 percent cut or anything like that.
Donald Kendal:If you are listening to the audio only version, leave a review on iTunes. That would be greatly appreciated. You can consider joining us live on Thursdays at noon central time like I said. And if you are watching us live, you could help out the show not by spending a dollar, but by spending a couple of seconds hitting that like button, sharing this content, subscribing if you haven't already, or just leaving a comment under the video, all those things help break through those big tech algorithms that prevent content like this from being shown to more people. If you have any comments or questions for the show, feel free to email us at inthetankpodcast@gmail.com, and feel free to follow us on x at in the tank pod.
Donald Kendal:Jim Lakeley, where can the fine people find you?
Jim Lakely:At j Lakeley on x at heartland inst on x, and always visit heartland.org.
Donald Kendal:Fantastic. Chris Talgo, what do you have to pitch today?
Chris Talgo:I'm gonna pitch the country because I just wanna make this just abundantly clear. I've been watching this stuff for twenty five years now and, you know, I've never been more optimistic. I've never been, you know, more, you know, positive. I've never been, you know, more proud. And, you know, they're gonna be this is not gonna be perfect.
Chris Talgo:They're gonna be some, you know, hiccups along the way, but America's back on the right path, and that just makes me so proud.
Donald Kendal:Fantastic. And, for everyone that wants to, make sure you tune in to the Climate Realism Show, which will be taking place on all of these same channels tomorrow, Fridays at noon central time. Thank you all for tuning in, and we will talk to you next week.
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