July 19, 2024 • 45 mins
Robert and Sophie infiltrate the private Heritage Foundation afterparty, and Gare talks with a conservative environmentalist group.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Alz Media America. Is Trump strong?
Speaker 2 (00:07):
Okay, it is so funny.
Speaker 3 (00:09):
Welcome to it could happen here a podcast recorded from
the Republican National Convention, specifically the hotel where the Idaho
and North Dakota delegates are gathered. Yeah, fascinating elevator rides.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
And we're thinking today about the memory of that guy
that Trump does not know the name of who got
shot to death, Corey k. They've definitely pronounced every time
they've said it wrong.
Speaker 1 (00:34):
Every single person who spoke the last few days pronounced
his name differently, And I was like, well, finally they
have somebody's name to pronounce more incorrectly than they do
Kabla Harris or Ramaswami.
Speaker 2 (00:46):
And it's look, folks, I'm not gonna laugh at his kids.
You know, that's a tragedy for them. But what I
will say is that objectively, it's really funny that this
guy died for Donald Trump. And Trump very obviously doesn't care, couldn't,
could not be less important to him, Like there is
nothing that matters less in this election the man who
(01:06):
took a bullet for him, And that's really funny. That's
really funny.
Speaker 1 (01:10):
Anyways, Uh, this is it could happen here. I'm Sophie Licht,
but we're, like Gara said at the R and C.
I have Garrisaid Davis with me and Robert Evans.
Speaker 2 (01:19):
Uh huh, very professional, Sophie, Thank you so much.
Speaker 1 (01:21):
I am your boss. Do you want to tell me
a little bit about this morning?
Speaker 3 (01:25):
Well, I think first's talk about some of our late
night escapades.
Speaker 1 (01:28):
Oh wait, I'm sorry, I'm sorry.
Speaker 2 (01:31):
Time travel cigar Bar.
Speaker 1 (01:34):
Yes, wow, I did not go with you to that event,
so I go call.
Speaker 3 (01:38):
I agree, that was a good call.
Speaker 2 (01:39):
I counted on the main floor of the cigar Bar
where the Young Republicans had their party, and six of
forty people had cigars. I had a cigar you did
you had acause I brought a selection of my finest Cubans.
Speaker 3 (01:51):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (01:51):
That was very, very kind of you, Robert.
Speaker 2 (01:53):
I had one of John F. Kennedy's favorite cigars that
I had been aging for two years waiting for this moment.
Speaker 3 (01:58):
I did like that you had the foresight to bring
cigars to the art, to.
Speaker 2 (02:01):
Bring extremely high quality. Our buddy Lenny had a three
year aged partias you had. But I've been drinking and
I had a lovely have you been quality the best
cigars there. I talked to everyone who happened to be
smoking a cigar, and they were all smoking trash like
(02:21):
a rowin and American garbage, because none of them had
any kind of look. I don't get into this often.
I don't want to be like some of our friends
in the in the far right and and use cigars
as a totem. I enjoyed my cigars privately, but we
were going to a cigar bar, so I brought my
nice cigars and oh was it a cigar bar?
Speaker 1 (02:41):
Were there cigars there? You're just at the word cigars seven.
Speaker 2 (02:44):
It was not lost on me that none of them
smoked good cigars because they're children, are you know what?
We had an interview with Rudy Giuliani, and Rudy would
have understood that man has nice cigars. I'll say that
about Rudy Giuliani. He knows the cigars, That's all I'm saying.
Speaker 1 (02:57):
Great.
Speaker 3 (02:58):
So we've been trying to hit the kind of the
after part already seen at the RNC, just to see
kind of what's up. This little cigar party was put
on by some of the young Republicans from.
Speaker 2 (03:07):
New York primarily in New York. They are very confident
of a victory, potentially a statewide victory in a national election.
And uh, you know what, the evidence doesn't make it impossible.
It doesn't look like it's going to happen from this cycle.
But twenty twenty eight, New York could be in play.
And one of the interesting things is that Florida also
seems to be tightening. Two poles recently show Trump just
(03:30):
four points ahead of Biden. He won by ten in
twenty twenty. That's a significant tightening and within kind of
swing state margins, And so it is kind of interesting
to conceive of the possibility that by twenty twenty eight,
both New York and Florida could be in play.
Speaker 3 (03:44):
Yeah. So I dressed like a nineteen fifties FBI agent
and trench coat and smoke well done one of these
cigars as best as I could.
Speaker 2 (03:52):
How'd you like it?
Speaker 3 (03:52):
It was fine.
Speaker 2 (03:53):
It was a nice cigar. It's no clove, good way, God,
oh my fucking so, give me a gun.
Speaker 3 (04:01):
It was it was. It was a nice little party.
We talked, We talked to some people. The best thing
about the party, though, is that there was a series
of speeches put on by these guys from New York
that kind of just kept going on. And the longer
that these speeches and like these fre diferent guys kept
going on, the music on the roof started to get
slowly louder and louder and louder, until it was completely
(04:25):
draining out the speeches, until they just stopped because like, okay,
the music's too loud now.
Speaker 2 (04:30):
Now and again there are heroes.
Speaker 3 (04:31):
So someone was on that dial just every every two
minutes it up a little bit.
Speaker 2 (04:36):
There's a guy I follow who has started who followed
me back in twenty twenty, who was like an election
poll analysis expert and was like, and it's not a
political guy, but was like, look, if you show up
at a convention after party to talk, fuck you like
people are there to drink, all you should say is
the bar is open. And I agreed with that, and
(04:58):
then you know what to skip. We had credit to
the Heritage Foundation. Nobody ever said anything but that we
could drink all we wanted.
Speaker 3 (05:05):
That is a Heritage Foundation party, that is right, which
we will get to later. We were up way too late,
way too late at some of these after parties. The
other night and then we had to get up pretty
early in the morning because we had an interview with
the CEO of the Texas Public Policy Foundation, which is
kind of like a mini version the Heritage Foundation, but
(05:26):
just for Texas. Yeah, the former guy who ran this
now runs the Heritage Foundation itself, so it's kind of
like a little bit of a training ground and they
kind of swap members often. We had a pretty long
interview that we will turn into some kind of future
piece of content, discussing everything from woke ideology to the
(05:46):
mortal rot infecting America to.
Speaker 2 (05:48):
Why mass shootings happened in this country.
Speaker 3 (05:51):
Yeah. Yeah, he was. He was very polished, very media trained.
Speaker 2 (05:54):
He easily the best interview subject in terms of his
like skill liet talking, yeah, that we've had.
Speaker 3 (06:01):
And similarly, I don't think he was quite prepared for
our line of questioning either, you know, so that he
got taken it back a little bit by some of
the questions we were lobbing him. Probably very different from
the rest of the interviews that he's been doing. I'm
trying to think if there's any anything specifically about that
interview that's worth mentioning. Now, you know, what really.
Speaker 2 (06:18):
Interests me because the shooting is so relevant, I will
bring up the shooting. We talked about why the guy
who tried to kill Trump had done it, and he
and I were kind of the same mind, the same
mind that you are, Garrison, which is that this was
a school shooter type thing and that was the primary
reason behind the ideology. And this is before now some
stuff has come out since that has made that seem
(06:39):
even more likely. But it was interesting to like, kind
of have that not be a controversial part of the conversation.
This was not a radical left shooting. There was no
sort of attempt by him to claim it as that.
He was like, yeah, this seems like a guy. We
have a deep sickness in this country, and we clearly
disagreed with him about the specifics of where the sickness
comes from. But the sickness leads to some people who
(07:00):
just want to do mass shootings that are not political.
And uh, that was interesting to me.
Speaker 3 (07:06):
No, And and one of the big things talked about
in terms of this moral rot is that there is
something lacking in our country, specifically with young men. There's
there is there is this lack of purpose among the
young men which makes them do these kind of violent acts.
Speaker 2 (07:18):
I don't disagree with that, sure, and I think I
think I disagree with.
Speaker 3 (07:22):
His solutions and some and some some of his diagnosis
in certain ways, right because he he'll attribute that lack
to certain things that we might.
Speaker 2 (07:30):
Not morality at the home, and sure, you.
Speaker 3 (07:32):
Know, all these all those kind of things, but you know,
that was that that was kind of his his take,
you know. And then we also talk about everything from
like the influence of billionaires on these right wing think
tanks and political candidates, Catholics versus Evangelicals. It was an
interesting conversation that I'm sure you'll hear in becoming weeks
and we'll kind of explain why we want you to
hear from this guy who's, you know, typically probably pretty
(07:54):
adversarial to the type of stuff that we talk about
on this show. But after this interview, I met up
with Sophie lichterman Hey and we talked to the people
at the actual Heritage Foundation booth who had many a
pamphlet and I collected all of the gender ideology pamphlets,
which will also be a future deep dive. Kind of Curiously,
(08:16):
they did not have a single pamphlet about Project twenty
twenty five. Nope, No, And they didn't like talking about
it either. They said that Project twenty twenty five is,
you know, a coalition effort between both Heritage and all
these other groups, but they're not really talking about it
here today because it's not Trump's policy platform. Trump has
his own policy platform. This is just a list of
policy suggestions for lawmakers once they get into office. So
(08:40):
they like to talk about a whole bunch of other stuff,
you know, certain things that are kind of a part
of Project twenty twenty five, but nothing about the actual
you know, document itself, partially due to the kind of
negative backlash that it has received, and you know, it
seems to be kind of widely unliked for various reasons.
So I think it was interesting that they weren't even
pushing it at an event like this.
Speaker 2 (09:01):
You know, again with the Texas Policy Foundation, gut we
talked about when we brought it up. He was pretty
open about the fact that it's not popular. Yeah, and
his attitude was that in the future, once we win,
we can try and build consensus around it. But he
didn't try to deny the fact that, like, it's widely
disliked by the electorate.
Speaker 3 (09:20):
And it is against a lot of things that are
on the Republican policy platform for the actual party. Sophie,
you had a wonderful conversation with some of they's heritage folks.
Speaker 1 (09:31):
Let's just say that my very blonde hair and the
pig tills that I or most of this week made
it very easy for these folks to talk to me,
which is unsettling.
Speaker 3 (09:43):
A little bit frightening, but useful.
Speaker 2 (09:45):
But very very very scary.
Speaker 3 (09:48):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (09:48):
A question I've been asking a lot of the folks
that I've talked to this week is mostly about their
opinions about education. And you know, if there is a
shift in power with Trump being elected in a v
what exactly they would want to do. And the overall
majority answer from these groups is that they want to
take away power from the federal government and bring it
(10:11):
to the states, and that would be universal school choice.
And so got a little bit of that from them.
They also mentioned something about one of the biggest roadblocks
being student loans.
Speaker 3 (10:23):
While also being very against student learned for forgiveness specifically,
So it's kind of a it was an interesting position.
I'll want to read some more of their pamphlets on.
Speaker 1 (10:31):
That but anyways that just talks with them more, got
more of their pamphlets, and Garrison and I asked them
about the states that they choose to operate in.
Speaker 3 (10:42):
And specifically for their lobbying group as opposed to just
like the think tank, they have this other thing I
think called Heritage Action, which operates differently because of certain
laws around lobbying.
Speaker 2 (10:53):
It's kind of where they try to train a lot
of new people up. They had a lot of advertisements
that they did something like fifteen.
Speaker 3 (10:58):
More on the ground activism type stuff.
Speaker 1 (11:00):
And Garret, what was the answer they gave? I thought
it was interesting you asked a question for why they
didn't go in certain states.
Speaker 3 (11:07):
Yes, so they had this map of what states they
were active in, and there were certain states, you know,
like Oregon, Washington, or whole bunch of the New England states,
and they just weren't active in because they didn't think
they would be very effective. They weren't make any leeway.
It's just it's just not worth it. It's not going
to move towards actual electoral victories. But there was other
there's other states like Wyoming and a few others that
they weren't active in for different reasons because of specific
(11:30):
regulations regarding donor transparency that they were strongly against the
states that require there to be transparency for people who
donate to these kind of political groups, and in protest
of those regulations and laws, they are completely inactive in
those states, which is a funny way of saying, we
just want to hide whoever gives us money. And that
(11:50):
is that was a little interesting piece of information regarding
you know, there's just states they just don't operate and
because they do not want to see or have it
made public where their kind of money is coming in
and out of, at least for the Heritage Action part
of the group.
Speaker 1 (12:05):
Yes, it was overall just interesting that there was you know,
at this booth, there was about five different I would say,
twenty something.
Speaker 3 (12:14):
Women, twenty something died blonde to women.
Speaker 1 (12:17):
Yes, And they invited me to their Heritage social party
that they were having that was across from the main
convention where you needed an access code to get in,
and they gave you that flyer and.
Speaker 3 (12:31):
You will hear all about that. We took advantage of that.
At the end of the episode. You will get a
special inside look at the Heritage Foundation's private invite only exclusive.
Speaker 2 (12:42):
Part was off the record. Now does it count? No,
of course not. I promised that lady that what she
said to me was off the record, and I won't
say any more about that. But I didn't promise that
to anyone else.
Speaker 3 (12:52):
Do you know what's on the record, Robert, what you
said later?
Speaker 1 (12:56):
These products and service, the products and services that support
this podcast.
Speaker 2 (13:00):
That also that also is off the record. On the record. Whatever,
here's the ads.
Speaker 3 (13:14):
We are back, and don't worry. You will hear about
this special Heritage Foundation party in a sect. But first
I want to play for you a whole interview that
I collected. Just down the hall from the Heritage Foundation booth,
the American Conservation Coalition had at a pretty large section
of the RNC convention fest you know, list of vendors,
(13:36):
kind of more typical like you know, convention type stuff.
You know, like if you go to like a comic
on or something, it's a lot of like vendors and
booths that this kind of section of the r and C.
So they had this pretty big booth and it was
the only time I've ever seen anything mentioned about climate change.
So I was interested to see what conservatives talking about
climate change sound like what they're saying, and I'll just
(13:58):
play that interview here right now. Do you want introducing
yourself in the organization you're with. Sure.
Speaker 4 (14:04):
My name's Carl Matthews.
Speaker 5 (14:05):
I'm the vice president of Communications at the American Conservation Coalition,
which is the largest conservative grassroots environmental organization in the country.
Speaker 3 (14:14):
So the few things that interests me about your group,
I mean, especially if you look back in the last
one hundred years, like environmental conservation has been historically a
much more conservative standpoint. You can look at like presidents
in the nineteen twenties, there was a huge push for that,
and somewhere along the lines that's kind of been lost
for like a number of reasons. I guess what is
your main mission here with this organization?
Speaker 5 (14:37):
Yeah, well, it's interesting you bring up kind of the
history of conservative conservation because we have a timeline here
at the RNC showing all the Republican presidents who have
really engaged on this issue, from Ulysses Grant to Teddy
Roosevelt to more modern presidents like Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan
and even HW Bush. So what we're really doing here
with the American Conservation Coalition is building the conservative environmental movement,
(14:59):
specifically among young Americans who frankly feel kind of disenfranchised
by both parties on the issue of climate and the environment.
The left has taken a really doom and gloom approach
to these issues that isn't very inspiring for a lot
of young folks, and in the last thirty years, conservatives haven't.
Speaker 4 (15:15):
Engaged very productively.
Speaker 5 (15:17):
So we're here showing that conservation is conservative, those values
are inherently entwined, and it's okay to call for action
on environmental issues like climate change.
Speaker 3 (15:27):
I guess. Yeah. Let's start more on like the big topic,
which is which is climate change, and we can get
into like local conservation. What is your take on the
current climate scenario, because like ever since, ever since the
early two thousands, there's been this, you know, for a
lot of young people, slightly worrying trend of you have
the politicians just either either seriously downgrading, you know, the
scale of this problem or just thinking there is no problem.
(15:49):
What is your take both on I guess on that part,
and then how you see the climate you know crisis,
the climate issue that we are dealing with. Where do
you see it? Heaving?
Speaker 5 (15:59):
Yeah, so was founded because conservatives weren't engaging on this issue.
So for the last six seven years we've been really
pushing conservatives, especially conservative elected leaders, to re engage in
a productive way. And I think we've done that really effectively.
In DC where I live, the Conservative Climate Caucus in
the House, which is a group of Republican lawmakers interested
in tackling the issue of climate change, has eighty seven members.
(16:22):
It's the fourth largest in the Republican conference. So we're
seeing a big kind of shift in the Overton window there.
But yeah, I think young people want elected leaders who
recognize that we have an issue, recognize that we have
a challenge in climate change, and want practical solutions like
expanding clean, reliable nuclear energy, like pursuing permitting reform to
(16:43):
actually allow American energy projects to be built. So I
think we take a really kind of level headed, rational
approach to these issues that really resonates with young people.
Speaker 3 (16:52):
What's the main difference in how you view the climate
issue as opposed to someone like AOC right or like
these these more like progressive democrats of view, this is
a very existential crisis. You have to get fossil fuels
under control. These kind of timelines that we hear, you know,
by twenty fifty, by twenty seventy, by even like something
like twenty thirty, Right, how it becomes like a cascading problem.
How differently do you view the current situation than you know,
(17:15):
these progressive Democrats.
Speaker 5 (17:17):
Sure, like I said, climate change is a challenge. It's
certainly something that we need to tackle, but we don't
view it through kind of this doom and gloom lens
where we're going to die in twelve, ten, five years,
whatever the current timeline is on the left. But we
do see a need for all of the above energy.
So we recognize that energy demand is continuing to expand,
but we also need to protect our environment. So we
(17:39):
need to kind of consider that trilemma reliable, affordable, and
clean when we're looking at our energy portfolio in the future.
And I think that's what really kind of distinguishes us
from the left in that we're not calling for a
divestment of fossil fuels.
Speaker 4 (17:51):
We're calling for a.
Speaker 5 (17:52):
Rational, level headed energy strategy that will lower emissions. But
in kind of a more realistic way.
Speaker 3 (17:59):
Do you think that time land's gonna be more stretched out?
Because I mean, if if you look at you know,
the way current current levels are heading. As soon as
we hit like two point five degrees, not just that change,
but the level of cascading environmental effects, right, one thing changes.
Now everything gets worse because when stuff melts, then it
changes the way like thermal regulation of the whole planet works,
and then it becomes this kind of cascating problem. And
(18:19):
I feel like we're trying to get out in front
of it before it happens that every day that kind
of feels less and less likely, at least for a
lot of people like my age, and it can be
a very doom and gloom scenario because you feel like
no one's taking this problem seriously. Even Joe Biden's climate
policy is very inadequate according to like a lot of
a lot of the people that I talk to. I
guess seel like, how do you view like the scale
of this problem right now?
Speaker 5 (18:40):
Yeah, climate change is the kind of environmental challenge of
our time, right it should be what you know we're
thinking about and focusing on when it comes to environmental policy.
But I really think we need to kind of take
a step back, and that kind of push for urgency
hasn't gotten us anywhere to your point. You know, Joe
Biden is kind of branding himself as the Climate President.
(19:00):
You know a lot of young people are unhappy with
the platform that he's put forwards. So I think when
you're talking about the timeline, we're talking about what we
can do right now to kind of unleash American energy,
to reduce American emissions, but also global emissions.
Speaker 4 (19:14):
And really think of this on a global scale.
Speaker 5 (19:16):
So that urgency piece isn't quite you know, realistic, or
isn't quite what we want to focus on because I
don't think it.
Speaker 4 (19:22):
Leads to action.
Speaker 3 (19:24):
There's kind of two trains of thought in terms of
like climate policy stuff. There's taking like adaptation roots, right,
trying to adapt to a changing environment that we're going
to have to face it it's going to happen, versus mitigation.
Speaker 5 (19:37):
Right.
Speaker 3 (19:37):
For a while, we were trying to find ways to
mitigate the problem to kind of get ahead of it, right,
and that is feeling less and less likely, and we
are seeing more of these adaptive strategies getting adopted.
Speaker 5 (19:47):
Right.
Speaker 3 (19:47):
There's everything from like you know, people are trying to
develop better carbon capture, which has its own problems as
a technology. And you know, everything from like geoengineering even
to like solar blockage. There's a lot of things people
are thinking, like, if we don't get like emissions under control,
we're gonna have to go to similar more of as
extreme measures. How much of your focus is on adapt
developments versus just mitigation, Well, we definitely need both.
Speaker 5 (20:11):
To your point, we have to adapt to a change
in climate, but we also need to be reducing emissions
to kind of prevent future effects. So I think we
kind of set a balance between adaptation and mitigation, and frankly,
I think sometimes they can be really kind of connected
and entwined. So something we focus on, for instance, is
regenerative agriculture, which lowers emissions associated with agriculture but also
(20:33):
helps the land kind of adjust to a change in climate,
keeps the soil healthy, things like that. So I really
think when we're talking about climate we can talk about
adaptation and mitigation kind of at the same time.
Speaker 3 (20:43):
How do you try to do outreach to a vast
number of Republicans conservatives who simply don't think this is
a problem, who like just deny this as a problem.
I think this is like a scam in some way.
How do you try to tackle that as coming from
a like an also conservative position.
Speaker 4 (21:02):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (21:03):
So, I mean we're here at the Republican National Convention,
and it's been really interesting talking to a lot of
folks from diverse backgrounds about the issue of climate and
also environmental conservation.
Speaker 4 (21:13):
I really do think it matters how you start the conversation.
Speaker 5 (21:16):
We talked earlier about kind of our timeline of the
legacy of conservative environmentalism. Starting there and talking about how
we can carry on that legacy and how we can
tackle kind of this environmental issue of our time has
been really effective and we've gotten a lot of positive reception.
You know, there's always going to be disagreement, there's always
going to be detractors, but I do think that there's
more and more of kind of that acceptance that we
(21:39):
need to take care of our own backyard, and that includes,
you know, tackling climate change.
Speaker 3 (21:43):
How much stuff do you end up having to you know,
talk about our not necessarily focused on at least talk
about like actual fossil fuel emissions, for racking, these types
of things that are like mainstays of politics because of
how much money goes into them, but undeniably are a
massive contributing factor, and we do need to move to
probably some more nuclear options to forgive the expression, I guess,
(22:04):
and you know as well as like a like a
solar hydro, which are you know, less good than nuclear
on like a large scale. But like you know, especially
for the for the Republican Party, trying to trying to
point out certain things about how we will have to
scale back some degree of fossil fuels, if not you know,
a majority of it in the next twenty five years,
if we want to, if we want to not have
(22:24):
like a pretty bad scenario at least for not even
just for humans, but for like animals in other parts
of the environment.
Speaker 5 (22:30):
Yeah, well, I think that goes back to the all
of the above energy approach and really diversifying our energy portfolio,
which frankly is not only good for the environment, but
good for energy security. We've seen you know, hacking of
pipelines or other kind of cyber energy attacks. So by
diversifying sources, we're really setting ourselves up to have a
more secure energy grid. So I think there's other ways
(22:52):
that you can talk about you know, environmental actions, climate
actions that have co benefits, and we can talk about
that in a really productive way with Republicans.
Speaker 3 (23:01):
Do you also focus on like local ecology efforts, like
you know, like some of the more like Roosevelt style
a conservation is that thing that you also kind of
try to like advocate for. Also, it's like an on
ramch talk about these like broader climate issues.
Speaker 4 (23:12):
Absolutely.
Speaker 5 (23:12):
I love that framing that you used as kind of
the entry point to climate issues. We have fifty thousand
young members across the country in about one hundred branches,
either on college campuses or in young professional communities, and
they go out and they plant trees in their communities,
They do park cleanups, they clean up a waterway, They
have educational speakers to learn more about these issues.
Speaker 4 (23:34):
And we found that that's really really.
Speaker 5 (23:36):
Effective in building this conservative environmental movement and showing that
these values are connected, they're compatible, and then that can
lead to advocacy on the national level for things like
we talked about nuclear energy or other clean energy sources.
Speaker 4 (23:50):
So that's been really effective for us.
Speaker 3 (23:53):
What would you like to see as a conservative climate
policy in like ten years, Like what would you hope
gets adopted to help curtail like you know, these more
catastrophic scenarios.
Speaker 4 (24:05):
Great question, and I would hope it perhaps a little
bit earlier than ten.
Speaker 3 (24:08):
Years absolutely, but I'm just based on how things have gone.
Speaker 4 (24:13):
Sure, So we have kind of a big three that
we're focused on right now.
Speaker 5 (24:16):
Permitting reforms, so getting the government out of its own way, frankly,
to fight climate change, and unleash American energy in the
form of clean energy, nuclear, solar, wind, geothermal, hydropower, and
really kind of expand what we can build in this country. Again,
nuclear energy is really one of the focuses for us
because it's a baseload energy source that can run twenty
(24:38):
four to seven, it's clean, and it's really secure. So
we're really focused on nuclear. And then the last thing
is American energy dominance. Here in the United States, we
produce energy safer, cleaner, and more efficiently, and we really
want to be a leader on the world stage when
it comes to energy.
Speaker 3 (24:55):
I think that there is a lot of people, both
like you know, progressive Democrats who really care about this issue,
as well as you know a lot of Republicans and
liberals who have a lot of skepticism about nuclear energy.
Right for some good reasons. There have been some unfortunate
events that have happened, and I know like fission and
fusion have been slowly getting better where I feel like
(25:15):
we're close to some kind of breakthrough, but we do
have like kind of a limited time. How do you
approach kind of talking to people who have a level
of risk in terms of nuclear energy and like the
possible dangers that it's had based on a few accidents,
even though a lot of a lot of these plants
are relatively safe.
Speaker 4 (25:32):
Yeah, I love this question.
Speaker 5 (25:33):
I grew up an hour south of Three Mile Island
in Pennsylvania, so I have a lot of experience with
nuclear skepticism. Look, I mean nuclear energy is the safest
and cleanest form that we have in our back pocket. Yes,
there have been some unfortunate incidents, frankly they're human error,
and we understand nuclear power a lot better now. We
(25:54):
have more safeguards in place since incidents like Chernobyl or
Three Mile Island, and we haven't seen a nuclear meltdown
that we were promised in the Simpsons or the China
syndrome or something like that. The fact is nuclear quote
waste is really nuclear spent fuel, and we can recycle
that and keep producing clean nuclear power. We have incredibly
(26:18):
well trained nuclear experts at all of our power plants
across the United States and they produce clean, reliable energy
for consumers all over the country. So we really need
to kind of get over those messaging hurdles with nuclear
and expand the industry here.
Speaker 3 (26:33):
What do you think will happen if your concerns go unheard?
Like if this just doesn't this just does doesn't work.
I think it's kind of continue at the scale and
like a timeline they have been. What worries do you have?
Speaker 4 (26:47):
Yeah, that's a really existential question.
Speaker 5 (26:52):
Yeah, I mean, I think we're in the seven years
since we've been founded, we're working really hard to build
coalitions with a lot of different stakes and be heard
by a lot of different folks in power, and frankly,
I'm hopeful that we will you know, pursue solutions to
climate change. That we will you know, for lack of
a better term, get our act together and pursue these solutions.
(27:14):
And really, I think the biggest thing that I like
to focus on when it comes to climate advocacy is
optimism and this idea that you know, the planet is
our one common denominator and we can unite around that
and you know, already in Congress, we've seen bipartisan legislation
in a really polarizing time that focuses on climate.
Speaker 4 (27:33):
Probably the last big package.
Speaker 5 (27:35):
In the one hundred and eighteenth Congress was a nuclear
package to unleash next generation nuclears. So, I know, I'm
not exactly answering your question, but I am extremely optimistic
about the future.
Speaker 3 (27:45):
Do you think there's a path towards some kind of
bipartisan advocacy not just in like the Senate, but also
like in terms of like environmental movements and like protests.
And obviously there's certain people who employ very theatrical tactics
that maybe don't correlate to much improved means, But do
you see there's a possibility of, like you know, a
larger public call for action on this issue? I mean mean,
(28:05):
something that we've covered on our show a while ago
is like will it take something like a general strike
to even like get people to like realize like we
need this to be done? Like not necessarily that option,
but like do you see like a route towards more
of bipartisan activism and advocacy of this issue.
Speaker 5 (28:25):
Yeah, that's a great question. We do a lot of
bridge building work. I was actually in Los Angeles earlier
this year with a group of conservative climate advocates and
progressive climate advocates and we talked about solutions where there's
common ground, and then we finished the day by doing
a beach clean up together. So I really do think
there's a lot of opportunity to kind of unite on
this issue, especially in younger generations. When I talked about
(28:47):
hope earlier, they're the ones who really give me hope,
and I think there's a lot of common ground that
we can pursue together.
Speaker 3 (28:53):
That's all I had, and less you have any other notes,
w or points you wanted to mention.
Speaker 5 (28:57):
If you want to find a ACC, you can find
us at a dot eco or ACC Underscore National on
social platforms.
Speaker 4 (29:04):
But that's it for me.
Speaker 3 (29:06):
Well, I hope that was slightly informative, and now we
will inform you about the Heritage Foundation's private exclusive party
after these messages. Okay, we are back.
Speaker 1 (29:28):
We are back, and we are ready to tell you, Oh,
five pigtails. Let us infiltrate famous hate group, the Heritage
Foundations social house party.
Speaker 2 (29:39):
We got all up in the first off, a lot
of microwave great food.
Speaker 3 (29:43):
It was the worst food we've had in all of
Milwaukee was the Heritage and Foundation Great Meals. Yes, that
is a very notable that the Heritage Foundation had the
worst food that we've had this entire week.
Speaker 2 (29:55):
Not shocked.
Speaker 1 (29:56):
First of all, they let you two as well as
another one of our friends come in off of my
access code, which is very funny, and that we took
one of the most hilarious photos we've ever taken together.
Speaker 2 (30:08):
And then we then we met with one of the
producers the Daily Wire and watched him try to figure
out who we are as I introduced him name he was.
He was just calculating and then some lady came up
and disrupted and we just fucking.
Speaker 3 (30:20):
You can see the little like thinking thing.
Speaker 1 (30:24):
Like third grade edition, and it wasn't the math was
not mathing.
Speaker 3 (30:28):
It was like that one BABC Sherlock scene. He was
trying to pull up. He was trying to pull up
the files. Didn't work, didn't work, didn't have enough time.
We stayed in that party, Robert, you seen that party
for like five straight hours.
Speaker 2 (30:38):
I was there for a long time. For every drink
I wanted to drink, I would order another and just
pour it out because I wanted I wanted to make
them spend the money.
Speaker 3 (30:46):
It was going to go somewhere free for us, but
not free for them. So as Robert was was schmooshin
with the Heritage Foundations, guys. Mean, so he went into
the Connection Center to hear some speeches, and them today
honestly pretty boring, and even even the notable ones were
also kind of boring. The one I guess we'll talk
about just very briefly is Don Junior's speech. First, he
(31:09):
brought out his daughter, Trump's granddaughter.
Speaker 1 (31:11):
Before you get to that, do you want to go
over what the theme of the day was.
Speaker 3 (31:15):
No, I mean, maybe we can, we can mention it.
I don't feel how relevant it was to any of
the speeches. It was just make America strong.
Speaker 1 (31:25):
It was strong once again, sorry once again?
Speaker 2 (31:29):
All right, interesting that they didn't want to sound out Massa.
Speaker 3 (31:32):
You know.
Speaker 1 (31:33):
Anyways, I guess I guess it's really not that relevant.
I just just to point out that on the previous
days for the different themes, there was very intricate backgrounds
that were up.
Speaker 3 (31:45):
They didn't anything too strong again, they were like they.
Speaker 1 (31:49):
Phoned it the fucking yeah, and there was no interesting
background Anyways, Garrett, what were you saying?
Speaker 3 (31:54):
So Donald Trump Junior's daughter, So Trump, the actual real
ones granddaughter gave this little, this little speechman to humanize her.
Speaker 1 (32:05):
Grand Grandpa is a nice guy, calls me and asks
me how I am.
Speaker 3 (32:11):
That was basically the speech, which is lovely. Is sure?
Why not?
Speaker 1 (32:16):
It was her first speech. I don't think any of
the other grandchildren have given speeches before.
Speaker 3 (32:21):
No, this is kind of the first appearance of one
of Trump's grandkids.
Speaker 1 (32:24):
Yes, And the way it was framed is Don Junior
came up and then was like she just called me.
It was very intentionally propaganda's.
Speaker 3 (32:33):
It was also the most happy I've seen Trump this
entire week, though.
Speaker 2 (32:37):
He might actually care about his granddaughter.
Speaker 3 (32:40):
Yes, definitely more than his son hard it would be
hard to care less.
Speaker 1 (32:43):
And I'm not sure how much they've they've shown it
on TV, but you know, I had a view of
him the entire night tonight right from where I was sitting.
I was an angle where I could see his face,
and they showed his face on the screen a bunch,
and he was genuinely stoic. I would say he smiled
for his granddaughter, definitely the most and maybe one stirring
(33:03):
Kimberly Gilfoyle's speech at the very end, but other than that,
I did not see much emotion from him today, and
it was pretty similar to the rest of the week.
Speaker 2 (33:12):
I think, you again, you have to keep in mind
with him whatever I mean, we hate him. He's a
bad man, he's a monster, would be the worst possible
president we could have. But he's also a person who
got shot and he's traumatized, you know, and like you
don't have to like make up excuses for that. Like,
he is a human being who was scared because a
(33:33):
man shot him in the head, and that's really not
not a complicated thing to diagnose.
Speaker 3 (33:40):
So after the granddaughter gave her a little spiel, Trump
Junior himself had a little speech that he was basically
just doing an impression of his father.
Speaker 2 (33:47):
For the entire time, dog shit impressing.
Speaker 3 (33:50):
It's not a very good impression, but compared to Vance,
it was still it was very impressive.
Speaker 1 (33:54):
We'll get to that in a sec I will say
the crowd did really really he.
Speaker 3 (33:58):
Seemed to like him. There was chance, so you know,
Trump Junior, twenty twenty eight.
Speaker 2 (34:03):
It reminded me of when I was at my first
Trump rally. This would have been in the late spring,
early summer of twenty sixteen, when fucking Chris Christie conceded
to Trump. There was a British naturalized citizen in the
crowd of the rally, and I was like, you want
them to be president for eight years? And he was like, well,
I wanted to do president for eight years to start,
(34:25):
and I was like, to start, what happens next? He's like, well,
he's got three kids, doesn't he? Then he like walked
through his basic plan for Trump to have a dynasty
like the royal family. And I wish I had said,
go back home, go back home to your fucking country
with your goddamn royal family. We don't have that here,
but we might. They wanted it.
Speaker 3 (34:44):
Yeah, late here the idea of the king's becoming increasingly popular.
Speaker 1 (34:48):
You have never told me that story. And I am, oh, well,
thank you.
Speaker 2 (34:52):
I got so much great audio of that guy, Thank
you so much.
Speaker 1 (34:55):
That is going to haunt me tonight. Garrison. What else?
Speaker 3 (34:57):
Yeah, I mean Trump and had a few funny lines
making fun of build back better, making some corn pop jokes,
a corn.
Speaker 1 (35:04):
Pop jokes in the bulbit, very funny.
Speaker 3 (35:09):
The One line I do want to mention is that
he talked about how the left wants to use the
First Amendment to show kids explicit drag shows, but they
want to put you into jail for making a meme,
something that has never.
Speaker 2 (35:23):
Happened, not a single time, not once. Not Why they
barely put people into jail for assaulting the capital.
Speaker 3 (35:30):
Yeah, so that was most of his speech. We then
heard from Vance's wife, who gave a typical vice first
lady speech. It wasn't notable. And then we heard from
Vance himself, the the the hopeful future vice president.
Speaker 1 (35:47):
What sorry, I was taking a nap.
Speaker 3 (35:49):
Wait, Sophie, Sophie, wake up, wake up, we're recording a
podcast here.
Speaker 1 (35:52):
Oh sorry that just the sound of JD. Vance's name
put me right to sleep.
Speaker 3 (35:57):
He gave what I would describe people have since described.
It's kind of a bad speech.
Speaker 2 (36:03):
You guys were in the stadium. I was sitting at
the Heritage finn Ocean party on an upper roof.
Speaker 1 (36:08):
Do Yeah, what'd they think?
Speaker 2 (36:09):
There were three people during most of it, and then
like four others filtered in when those guys left, every
single one of them was disappointed. The only guy who
liked it was a Fox News reporter, and when he left,
the people who had been like, well he was okay,
said well, I hate that I had to lie in
front of that guy, but he was media. I was
kind of just sitting on my phone pretending to be
(36:30):
texting and listening to them, so they didn't really notice me.
But the ultimate feeling that they expressed repeatedly was that
was really disappointing. It was really boring, It was really long.
He is not a great speaker. There was one guy
who repeatedly said, I don't like that his wife isn't white.
I wish his wife was white. And then there was
a guy who was kind of a more libertarian member
(36:51):
of the Republican Party who I had chatted with, who
came in and sat down to have a drink and
you know, was expressing that he liked Vance's speech. And
the guy said, what are you a Cuban And the
guy said no, and he's like, well, you're not white.
Speaker 3 (37:04):
So that was great, amazing stuff happening in the Heritage
Foundation private party.
Speaker 2 (37:09):
The Foundation party was a was a good time. Yeah,
so this is.
Speaker 3 (37:13):
Something I was even seeing in the convention people there,
you know, there was there was some like you know,
respectful clapping, but people weren't super into it, at least
of in the sections that we were at. The lady
sitting next to me he was, you know, just like
a Republican woman her maybe fifties or sixties, very very lucid,
kind of just like kept dozing off just because she
was so bored, not like because she was sleepy, just
(37:34):
because she was bored.
Speaker 2 (37:35):
Wasn't a good speech.
Speaker 3 (37:36):
No.
Speaker 1 (37:36):
She looks at me and she said, he's so dry.
Speaker 3 (37:40):
Yeah. So at a certain point, I just I just
kind of whispered to Sophie like, wow, Vance is a
really dry speaker, and she kind of she kind of
like nodded awake and started and started started like nodding
her head in agreement and repeated the same thing to us.
And I asked her, you know, like, well, who do
you think would have been a better pick? And she said, well,
(38:01):
I don't know. I just expected Advance to be a
better rhetorical speaker. And that was all she would say.
And I feel like that was kind of generally the vibe.
Like something else I noticed that he was like actually okay,
and you know, the certain things he was talking about,
you know, what he was actually saying. You know, there
were certain things that were interesting, it was more like
the way he was saying it. It was it was
specifically he had no ability to do crowd work. He
(38:24):
was just reading out the teleprompter and kind of doing
a slight smile every thirty seconds, and that's all was.
He wasn't actually really seriously engaging people.
Speaker 2 (38:31):
Make fun of the bits where Trump dances or whatever
his little moves, but those play those work.
Speaker 3 (38:36):
Even like pointing out people using gestures, kind of anything
to connect you to the audience. Vance was just so
was so dry, was so plain.
Speaker 1 (38:43):
I think the biggest action from his speech was just
the people in the crowd who liked to chant.
Speaker 3 (38:47):
They were just really into chanting.
Speaker 2 (38:50):
Ted Kruz gave him a great He like that he
kind of lost them early in his speech the night
before and won them back because he gave them a
chance to chair repeatedly went through they like that, they
like to chat, they're chanters.
Speaker 1 (39:03):
Want to give us some of the chanting highlights.
Speaker 3 (39:05):
Gar Yeah, so he was definitely leaning into his hillbilly
or faux hillbilly background.
Speaker 2 (39:11):
Motherfucker, sorry, your parents made one hundred and seventy five
thousand goddamn dollars a year speaking to somebody who grew
up in a fucking rural ass Oklahoma, like fucking carpetbagger.
Speaker 3 (39:21):
That was what he was using for most of his speech.
He was telling stories about the woman who raised him
when his own mom was dealing with addiction, who he
referred to as his mem.
Speaker 2 (39:32):
Uh huh, and fucking goddamn it.
Speaker 3 (39:35):
The first big chant I took note of is he
told a story about how he was hanging out when
he was like a kid or like a teen. He
was hanging out with someone who was known to be
like a local drug dealer, and his mem told him
that if she saw him hanging out with that guy again,
she was going to run him over in a truck,
run over the drug dealer, and no one's gonna find
(39:57):
out about it. And the crowd ate this up, chanting
me ma, me ma, So they were They weren't chanting
about killing this drug dealer, right, they were chanting about murdering,
murdering this drug dealer.
Speaker 2 (40:08):
G d Vance never met a drug dealer in his
fucking life, I'll tell you that one.
Speaker 3 (40:11):
So that was the first one, and the next little
Bema story he told is that when she was a
little bit older. He said that after she died, they
found nineteen loaded handguns all over her house and they
realized it's because she wasn't able to move very fast,
so she always wanted a gun no matter where she was,
(40:32):
she wanted to be in armslength the gun, whether that
be in the cutlery drawer, by the TV remote, under
the bed, because because she wanted to protect her family
even though she was old. And this this led into
another another chance. Specifically, the nineteen loaded handguns just again
went the crowd ate that up, and the crowd even
(40:52):
started just chanting about how good they were at chanting.
It became very self referential, very like patting yourself on
the back for chanting.
Speaker 2 (40:59):
Funny, these people love chanting.
Speaker 3 (41:01):
And yeah, that was that was That was most events speech.
It wasn't very good, it was too long. Almost unanimously,
people at the Heritage Foundation party did not like it,
so they did not get that reproval.
Speaker 2 (41:13):
One pseudo positive, which was the Fox News journalist.
Speaker 3 (41:17):
Who I'm sure is contractually obligated to like it.
Speaker 2 (41:20):
Yeah yeah, yeah, and who the people there made fun
of when he left.
Speaker 3 (41:23):
Yes, well, we talked to a campaign manager earlier at
the at the Heritage Party just regarding kind of the
race in general, mentioning stuff about the upcoming vice presidential debates,
which the Trump Badman put out a statement saying they
didn't want to lock down any details on this until
he actually know who the vice president's going to be.
That which is a good piece of propaganda. And so,
and we were talking about that and and bringing it
(41:45):
up to some of these people at the Heritage Party,
like who do you think actually is going to be
the Democratic nominee? Many of them did not believe it
was going to be Joe Biden. Many of them thought
that it either could be an unknown candidate at this point,
or more likely probably kamalaw And this is something that
I've been noticing is that every time in these speeches
(42:06):
where they're talking about Joe Biden's policies, they're not just
saying Joe Biden, They're saying Joe Biden and Kamala Harris's, well, well,
Kamala Kamala harris in one instance, Kamala Harris's policies. So
they are already preparing to start shifting their rhetoric onto kamalaw.
That's something that the opposition's already planning to do. And
you know, as as of today, which is which is
(42:28):
Wednesday night, we've heard that both Biden made announcements in
the same day that he would step down if he
was to face this serious medical diagnosis. And he also
got COVID the same So.
Speaker 2 (42:39):
The look on your face when we told you that
Joe Biden had COVID you were you were thrilled.
Speaker 3 (42:45):
Okay, well we shouldn't say that either. Anyway. That is
kind of a brief glimpse into the Heritage Foundation party.
I guess that the vibes were more similar to what
is I think well known now as the least a
good episode of The Boys, that that private tech night
party combined with like a frat, a frat bro bar hop.
Speaker 2 (43:07):
What I'll say about this is they had an EDM
track set to Country Road Take Me Home. I will
say that like if you were to if you were
to put that side by side with the plane crash
that killed the author of that song, I think he
would agree with you. This party was worse.
Speaker 1 (43:27):
One more thing I wanted to note was I did
not go to the party for seven hundred hours like
the two of you. I went home after all the
speeches home, I went back to the hotel after all
the speeches.
Speaker 2 (43:38):
Did that country road take you home?
Speaker 1 (43:39):
That country road took me home place you belonged. And
I had a very very very nice lift driver. Sir,
if you're if you buy a sub chance, listened to podcasts.
You were very nice.
Speaker 3 (43:48):
Thank you.
Speaker 1 (43:49):
After what was a very loud day, there was a
guy holding a rest in peace sign with the photo
of the guy who attempted to a set state the president,
with the caption.
Speaker 2 (44:01):
In American hero great stuff.
Speaker 1 (44:04):
Yes, I took a photo of it. And the amount
of people leaving the yards see that just shouted their worst.
Many slurs at him were countless. And I don't know
if anything else happened further after that, but very strange choice.
Speaker 3 (44:21):
That is an interesting move.
Speaker 2 (44:22):
All I know is that based on the last postings
of the victim of that shooting, Corey comparatour, he'll get
over it.
Speaker 3 (44:31):
The Japanese dead Well. Anyway, That wraps up our coverage
this week of the Republican National Convention. We will lead
next week with Trump's first public speech since the shooting.
That'll be dropping Sunday night.
Speaker 2 (44:46):
Maybe a little bit of mere rudy sprinkle of squeeze in,
some rudy as a tree, some squeeze in like like
he squeezed down some of that hair juice.
Speaker 1 (44:55):
That's Jesus Christ.
Speaker 3 (44:57):
Well, thank you for listening to our initial conver of
the RNC. We have more scripted episodes, more kind of
polished deep dives about the people and conversations that we
have had here in beautiful Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
Speaker 2 (45:10):
And remember, folks, if you're going to take a bullet
for somebody, Donald Trump does not care, not interested at us.
Speaker 3 (45:16):
Not making the funeral is not He is not going
to show up at your funeral.
Speaker 2 (45:20):
Wow, that's a loud chair, painfully loud chair. You know
what else is painfully loud? The Heritage Foundation party. Anyway,
we're done, goodnight, good night.
Speaker 1 (45:33):
It could Happen here as a production of cool Zone Media.
For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
cool zonemedia dot com, or check us out on the
iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
You can find sources for It Could Happen Here, updated
monthly at cool Zonemedia dot com slash sources. Thanks for listening.
Alz Media America. Is Trump strong?
Speaker 2 (00:07):
Okay, it is so funny.
Speaker 3 (00:09):
Welcome to it could happen here a podcast recorded from
the Republican National Convention, specifically the hotel where the Idaho
and North Dakota delegates are gathered. Yeah, fascinating elevator rides.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
And we're thinking today about the memory of that guy
that Trump does not know the name of who got
shot to death, Corey k. They've definitely pronounced every time
they've said it wrong.
Speaker 1 (00:34):
Every single person who spoke the last few days pronounced
his name differently, And I was like, well, finally they
have somebody's name to pronounce more incorrectly than they do
Kabla Harris or Ramaswami.
Speaker 2 (00:46):
And it's look, folks, I'm not gonna laugh at his kids.
You know, that's a tragedy for them. But what I
will say is that objectively, it's really funny that this
guy died for Donald Trump. And Trump very obviously doesn't care, couldn't,
could not be less important to him, Like there is
nothing that matters less in this election the man who
(01:06):
took a bullet for him, And that's really funny. That's
really funny.
Speaker 1 (01:10):
Anyways, Uh, this is it could happen here. I'm Sophie Licht,
but we're, like Gara said at the R and C.
I have Garrisaid Davis with me and Robert Evans.
Speaker 2 (01:19):
Uh huh, very professional, Sophie, Thank you so much.
Speaker 1 (01:21):
I am your boss. Do you want to tell me
a little bit about this morning?
Speaker 3 (01:25):
Well, I think first's talk about some of our late
night escapades.
Speaker 1 (01:28):
Oh wait, I'm sorry, I'm sorry.
Speaker 2 (01:31):
Time travel cigar Bar.
Speaker 1 (01:34):
Yes, wow, I did not go with you to that event,
so I go call.
Speaker 3 (01:38):
I agree, that was a good call.
Speaker 2 (01:39):
I counted on the main floor of the cigar Bar
where the Young Republicans had their party, and six of
forty people had cigars. I had a cigar you did
you had acause I brought a selection of my finest Cubans.
Speaker 3 (01:51):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (01:51):
That was very, very kind of you, Robert.
Speaker 2 (01:53):
I had one of John F. Kennedy's favorite cigars that
I had been aging for two years waiting for this moment.
Speaker 3 (01:58):
I did like that you had the foresight to bring
cigars to the art, to.
Speaker 2 (02:01):
Bring extremely high quality. Our buddy Lenny had a three
year aged partias you had. But I've been drinking and
I had a lovely have you been quality the best
cigars there. I talked to everyone who happened to be
smoking a cigar, and they were all smoking trash like
(02:21):
a rowin and American garbage, because none of them had
any kind of look. I don't get into this often.
I don't want to be like some of our friends
in the in the far right and and use cigars
as a totem. I enjoyed my cigars privately, but we
were going to a cigar bar, so I brought my
nice cigars and oh was it a cigar bar?
Speaker 1 (02:41):
Were there cigars there? You're just at the word cigars seven.
Speaker 2 (02:44):
It was not lost on me that none of them
smoked good cigars because they're children, are you know what?
We had an interview with Rudy Giuliani, and Rudy would
have understood that man has nice cigars. I'll say that
about Rudy Giuliani. He knows the cigars, That's all I'm saying.
Speaker 1 (02:57):
Great.
Speaker 3 (02:58):
So we've been trying to hit the kind of the
after part already seen at the RNC, just to see
kind of what's up. This little cigar party was put
on by some of the young Republicans from.
Speaker 2 (03:07):
New York primarily in New York. They are very confident
of a victory, potentially a statewide victory in a national election.
And uh, you know what, the evidence doesn't make it impossible.
It doesn't look like it's going to happen from this cycle.
But twenty twenty eight, New York could be in play.
And one of the interesting things is that Florida also
seems to be tightening. Two poles recently show Trump just
(03:30):
four points ahead of Biden. He won by ten in
twenty twenty. That's a significant tightening and within kind of
swing state margins, And so it is kind of interesting
to conceive of the possibility that by twenty twenty eight,
both New York and Florida could be in play.
Speaker 3 (03:44):
Yeah. So I dressed like a nineteen fifties FBI agent
and trench coat and smoke well done one of these
cigars as best as I could.
Speaker 2 (03:52):
How'd you like it?
Speaker 3 (03:52):
It was fine.
Speaker 2 (03:53):
It was a nice cigar. It's no clove, good way, God,
oh my fucking so, give me a gun.
Speaker 3 (04:01):
It was it was. It was a nice little party.
We talked, We talked to some people. The best thing
about the party, though, is that there was a series
of speeches put on by these guys from New York
that kind of just kept going on. And the longer
that these speeches and like these fre diferent guys kept
going on, the music on the roof started to get
slowly louder and louder and louder, until it was completely
(04:25):
draining out the speeches, until they just stopped because like, okay,
the music's too loud now.
Speaker 2 (04:30):
Now and again there are heroes.
Speaker 3 (04:31):
So someone was on that dial just every every two
minutes it up a little bit.
Speaker 2 (04:36):
There's a guy I follow who has started who followed
me back in twenty twenty, who was like an election
poll analysis expert and was like, and it's not a
political guy, but was like, look, if you show up
at a convention after party to talk, fuck you like
people are there to drink, all you should say is
the bar is open. And I agreed with that, and
(04:58):
then you know what to skip. We had credit to
the Heritage Foundation. Nobody ever said anything but that we
could drink all we wanted.
Speaker 3 (05:05):
That is a Heritage Foundation party, that is right, which
we will get to later. We were up way too late,
way too late at some of these after parties. The
other night and then we had to get up pretty
early in the morning because we had an interview with
the CEO of the Texas Public Policy Foundation, which is
kind of like a mini version the Heritage Foundation, but
(05:26):
just for Texas. Yeah, the former guy who ran this
now runs the Heritage Foundation itself, so it's kind of
like a little bit of a training ground and they
kind of swap members often. We had a pretty long
interview that we will turn into some kind of future
piece of content, discussing everything from woke ideology to the
(05:46):
mortal rot infecting America to.
Speaker 2 (05:48):
Why mass shootings happened in this country.
Speaker 3 (05:51):
Yeah. Yeah, he was. He was very polished, very media trained.
Speaker 2 (05:54):
He easily the best interview subject in terms of his
like skill liet talking, yeah, that we've had.
Speaker 3 (06:01):
And similarly, I don't think he was quite prepared for
our line of questioning either, you know, so that he
got taken it back a little bit by some of
the questions we were lobbing him. Probably very different from
the rest of the interviews that he's been doing. I'm
trying to think if there's any anything specifically about that
interview that's worth mentioning. Now, you know, what really.
Speaker 2 (06:18):
Interests me because the shooting is so relevant, I will
bring up the shooting. We talked about why the guy
who tried to kill Trump had done it, and he
and I were kind of the same mind, the same
mind that you are, Garrison, which is that this was
a school shooter type thing and that was the primary
reason behind the ideology. And this is before now some
stuff has come out since that has made that seem
(06:39):
even more likely. But it was interesting to like, kind
of have that not be a controversial part of the conversation.
This was not a radical left shooting. There was no
sort of attempt by him to claim it as that.
He was like, yeah, this seems like a guy. We
have a deep sickness in this country, and we clearly
disagreed with him about the specifics of where the sickness
comes from. But the sickness leads to some people who
(07:00):
just want to do mass shootings that are not political.
And uh, that was interesting to me.
Speaker 3 (07:06):
No, And and one of the big things talked about
in terms of this moral rot is that there is
something lacking in our country, specifically with young men. There's
there is there is this lack of purpose among the
young men which makes them do these kind of violent acts.
Speaker 2 (07:18):
I don't disagree with that, sure, and I think I
think I disagree with.
Speaker 3 (07:22):
His solutions and some and some some of his diagnosis
in certain ways, right because he he'll attribute that lack
to certain things that we might.
Speaker 2 (07:30):
Not morality at the home, and sure, you.
Speaker 3 (07:32):
Know, all these all those kind of things, but you know,
that was that that was kind of his his take,
you know. And then we also talk about everything from
like the influence of billionaires on these right wing think
tanks and political candidates, Catholics versus Evangelicals. It was an
interesting conversation that I'm sure you'll hear in becoming weeks
and we'll kind of explain why we want you to
hear from this guy who's, you know, typically probably pretty
(07:54):
adversarial to the type of stuff that we talk about
on this show. But after this interview, I met up
with Sophie lichterman Hey and we talked to the people
at the actual Heritage Foundation booth who had many a
pamphlet and I collected all of the gender ideology pamphlets,
which will also be a future deep dive. Kind of Curiously,
(08:16):
they did not have a single pamphlet about Project twenty
twenty five. Nope, No, And they didn't like talking about
it either. They said that Project twenty twenty five is,
you know, a coalition effort between both Heritage and all
these other groups, but they're not really talking about it
here today because it's not Trump's policy platform. Trump has
his own policy platform. This is just a list of
policy suggestions for lawmakers once they get into office. So
(08:40):
they like to talk about a whole bunch of other stuff,
you know, certain things that are kind of a part
of Project twenty twenty five, but nothing about the actual
you know, document itself, partially due to the kind of
negative backlash that it has received, and you know, it
seems to be kind of widely unliked for various reasons.
So I think it was interesting that they weren't even
pushing it at an event like this.
Speaker 2 (09:01):
You know, again with the Texas Policy Foundation, gut we
talked about when we brought it up. He was pretty
open about the fact that it's not popular. Yeah, and
his attitude was that in the future, once we win,
we can try and build consensus around it. But he
didn't try to deny the fact that, like, it's widely
disliked by the electorate.
Speaker 3 (09:20):
And it is against a lot of things that are
on the Republican policy platform for the actual party. Sophie,
you had a wonderful conversation with some of they's heritage folks.
Speaker 1 (09:31):
Let's just say that my very blonde hair and the
pig tills that I or most of this week made
it very easy for these folks to talk to me,
which is unsettling.
Speaker 3 (09:43):
A little bit frightening, but useful.
Speaker 2 (09:45):
But very very very scary.
Speaker 3 (09:48):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (09:48):
A question I've been asking a lot of the folks
that I've talked to this week is mostly about their
opinions about education. And you know, if there is a
shift in power with Trump being elected in a v
what exactly they would want to do. And the overall
majority answer from these groups is that they want to
take away power from the federal government and bring it
(10:11):
to the states, and that would be universal school choice.
And so got a little bit of that from them.
They also mentioned something about one of the biggest roadblocks
being student loans.
Speaker 3 (10:23):
While also being very against student learned for forgiveness specifically,
So it's kind of a it was an interesting position.
I'll want to read some more of their pamphlets on.
Speaker 1 (10:31):
That but anyways that just talks with them more, got
more of their pamphlets, and Garrison and I asked them
about the states that they choose to operate in.
Speaker 3 (10:42):
And specifically for their lobbying group as opposed to just
like the think tank, they have this other thing I
think called Heritage Action, which operates differently because of certain
laws around lobbying.
Speaker 2 (10:53):
It's kind of where they try to train a lot
of new people up. They had a lot of advertisements
that they did something like fifteen.
Speaker 3 (10:58):
More on the ground activism type stuff.
Speaker 1 (11:00):
And Garret, what was the answer they gave? I thought
it was interesting you asked a question for why they
didn't go in certain states.
Speaker 3 (11:07):
Yes, so they had this map of what states they
were active in, and there were certain states, you know,
like Oregon, Washington, or whole bunch of the New England states,
and they just weren't active in because they didn't think
they would be very effective. They weren't make any leeway.
It's just it's just not worth it. It's not going
to move towards actual electoral victories. But there was other
there's other states like Wyoming and a few others that
they weren't active in for different reasons because of specific
(11:30):
regulations regarding donor transparency that they were strongly against the
states that require there to be transparency for people who
donate to these kind of political groups, and in protest
of those regulations and laws, they are completely inactive in
those states, which is a funny way of saying, we
just want to hide whoever gives us money. And that
(11:50):
is that was a little interesting piece of information regarding
you know, there's just states they just don't operate and
because they do not want to see or have it
made public where their kind of money is coming in
and out of, at least for the Heritage Action part
of the group.
Speaker 1 (12:05):
Yes, it was overall just interesting that there was you know,
at this booth, there was about five different I would say,
twenty something.
Speaker 3 (12:14):
Women, twenty something died blonde to women.
Speaker 1 (12:17):
Yes, And they invited me to their Heritage social party
that they were having that was across from the main
convention where you needed an access code to get in,
and they gave you that flyer and.
Speaker 3 (12:31):
You will hear all about that. We took advantage of that.
At the end of the episode. You will get a
special inside look at the Heritage Foundation's private invite only exclusive.
Speaker 2 (12:42):
Part was off the record. Now does it count? No,
of course not. I promised that lady that what she
said to me was off the record, and I won't
say any more about that. But I didn't promise that
to anyone else.
Speaker 3 (12:52):
Do you know what's on the record, Robert, what you
said later?
Speaker 1 (12:56):
These products and service, the products and services that support
this podcast.
Speaker 2 (13:00):
That also that also is off the record. On the record. Whatever,
here's the ads.
Speaker 3 (13:14):
We are back, and don't worry. You will hear about
this special Heritage Foundation party in a sect. But first
I want to play for you a whole interview that
I collected. Just down the hall from the Heritage Foundation booth,
the American Conservation Coalition had at a pretty large section
of the RNC convention fest you know, list of vendors,
(13:36):
kind of more typical like you know, convention type stuff.
You know, like if you go to like a comic
on or something, it's a lot of like vendors and
booths that this kind of section of the r and C.
So they had this pretty big booth and it was
the only time I've ever seen anything mentioned about climate change.
So I was interested to see what conservatives talking about
climate change sound like what they're saying, and I'll just
(13:58):
play that interview here right now. Do you want introducing
yourself in the organization you're with. Sure.
Speaker 4 (14:04):
My name's Carl Matthews.
Speaker 5 (14:05):
I'm the vice president of Communications at the American Conservation Coalition,
which is the largest conservative grassroots environmental organization in the country.
Speaker 3 (14:14):
So the few things that interests me about your group,
I mean, especially if you look back in the last
one hundred years, like environmental conservation has been historically a
much more conservative standpoint. You can look at like presidents
in the nineteen twenties, there was a huge push for that,
and somewhere along the lines that's kind of been lost
for like a number of reasons. I guess what is
your main mission here with this organization?
Speaker 5 (14:37):
Yeah, well, it's interesting you bring up kind of the
history of conservative conservation because we have a timeline here
at the RNC showing all the Republican presidents who have
really engaged on this issue, from Ulysses Grant to Teddy
Roosevelt to more modern presidents like Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan
and even HW Bush. So what we're really doing here
with the American Conservation Coalition is building the conservative environmental movement,
(14:59):
specifically among young Americans who frankly feel kind of disenfranchised
by both parties on the issue of climate and the environment.
The left has taken a really doom and gloom approach
to these issues that isn't very inspiring for a lot
of young folks, and in the last thirty years, conservatives haven't.
Speaker 4 (15:15):
Engaged very productively.
Speaker 5 (15:17):
So we're here showing that conservation is conservative, those values
are inherently entwined, and it's okay to call for action
on environmental issues like climate change.
Speaker 3 (15:27):
I guess. Yeah. Let's start more on like the big topic,
which is which is climate change, and we can get
into like local conservation. What is your take on the
current climate scenario, because like ever since, ever since the
early two thousands, there's been this, you know, for a
lot of young people, slightly worrying trend of you have
the politicians just either either seriously downgrading, you know, the
scale of this problem or just thinking there is no problem.
(15:49):
What is your take both on I guess on that part,
and then how you see the climate you know crisis,
the climate issue that we are dealing with. Where do
you see it? Heaving?
Speaker 5 (15:59):
Yeah, so was founded because conservatives weren't engaging on this issue.
So for the last six seven years we've been really
pushing conservatives, especially conservative elected leaders, to re engage in
a productive way. And I think we've done that really effectively.
In DC where I live, the Conservative Climate Caucus in
the House, which is a group of Republican lawmakers interested
in tackling the issue of climate change, has eighty seven members.
(16:22):
It's the fourth largest in the Republican conference. So we're
seeing a big kind of shift in the Overton window there.
But yeah, I think young people want elected leaders who
recognize that we have an issue, recognize that we have
a challenge in climate change, and want practical solutions like
expanding clean, reliable nuclear energy, like pursuing permitting reform to
(16:43):
actually allow American energy projects to be built. So I
think we take a really kind of level headed, rational
approach to these issues that really resonates with young people.
Speaker 3 (16:52):
What's the main difference in how you view the climate
issue as opposed to someone like AOC right or like
these these more like progressive democrats of view, this is
a very existential crisis. You have to get fossil fuels
under control. These kind of timelines that we hear, you know,
by twenty fifty, by twenty seventy, by even like something
like twenty thirty, Right, how it becomes like a cascading problem.
How differently do you view the current situation than you know,
(17:15):
these progressive Democrats.
Speaker 5 (17:17):
Sure, like I said, climate change is a challenge. It's
certainly something that we need to tackle, but we don't
view it through kind of this doom and gloom lens
where we're going to die in twelve, ten, five years,
whatever the current timeline is on the left. But we
do see a need for all of the above energy.
So we recognize that energy demand is continuing to expand,
but we also need to protect our environment. So we
(17:39):
need to kind of consider that trilemma reliable, affordable, and
clean when we're looking at our energy portfolio in the future.
And I think that's what really kind of distinguishes us
from the left in that we're not calling for a
divestment of fossil fuels.
Speaker 4 (17:51):
We're calling for a.
Speaker 5 (17:52):
Rational, level headed energy strategy that will lower emissions. But
in kind of a more realistic way.
Speaker 3 (17:59):
Do you think that time land's gonna be more stretched out?
Because I mean, if if you look at you know,
the way current current levels are heading. As soon as
we hit like two point five degrees, not just that change,
but the level of cascading environmental effects, right, one thing changes.
Now everything gets worse because when stuff melts, then it
changes the way like thermal regulation of the whole planet works,
and then it becomes this kind of cascating problem. And
(18:19):
I feel like we're trying to get out in front
of it before it happens that every day that kind
of feels less and less likely, at least for a
lot of people like my age, and it can be
a very doom and gloom scenario because you feel like
no one's taking this problem seriously. Even Joe Biden's climate
policy is very inadequate according to like a lot of
a lot of the people that I talk to. I
guess seel like, how do you view like the scale
of this problem right now?
Speaker 5 (18:40):
Yeah, climate change is the kind of environmental challenge of
our time, right it should be what you know we're
thinking about and focusing on when it comes to environmental policy.
But I really think we need to kind of take
a step back, and that kind of push for urgency
hasn't gotten us anywhere to your point. You know, Joe
Biden is kind of branding himself as the Climate President.
(19:00):
You know a lot of young people are unhappy with
the platform that he's put forwards. So I think when
you're talking about the timeline, we're talking about what we
can do right now to kind of unleash American energy,
to reduce American emissions, but also global emissions.
Speaker 4 (19:14):
And really think of this on a global scale.
Speaker 5 (19:16):
So that urgency piece isn't quite you know, realistic, or
isn't quite what we want to focus on because I
don't think it.
Speaker 4 (19:22):
Leads to action.
Speaker 3 (19:24):
There's kind of two trains of thought in terms of
like climate policy stuff. There's taking like adaptation roots, right,
trying to adapt to a changing environment that we're going
to have to face it it's going to happen, versus mitigation.
Speaker 5 (19:37):
Right.
Speaker 3 (19:37):
For a while, we were trying to find ways to
mitigate the problem to kind of get ahead of it, right,
and that is feeling less and less likely, and we
are seeing more of these adaptive strategies getting adopted.
Speaker 5 (19:47):
Right.
Speaker 3 (19:47):
There's everything from like you know, people are trying to
develop better carbon capture, which has its own problems as
a technology. And you know, everything from like geoengineering even
to like solar blockage. There's a lot of things people
are thinking, like, if we don't get like emissions under control,
we're gonna have to go to similar more of as
extreme measures. How much of your focus is on adapt
developments versus just mitigation, Well, we definitely need both.
Speaker 5 (20:11):
To your point, we have to adapt to a change
in climate, but we also need to be reducing emissions
to kind of prevent future effects. So I think we
kind of set a balance between adaptation and mitigation, and frankly,
I think sometimes they can be really kind of connected
and entwined. So something we focus on, for instance, is
regenerative agriculture, which lowers emissions associated with agriculture but also
(20:33):
helps the land kind of adjust to a change in climate,
keeps the soil healthy, things like that. So I really
think when we're talking about climate we can talk about
adaptation and mitigation kind of at the same time.
Speaker 3 (20:43):
How do you try to do outreach to a vast
number of Republicans conservatives who simply don't think this is
a problem, who like just deny this as a problem.
I think this is like a scam in some way.
How do you try to tackle that as coming from
a like an also conservative position.
Speaker 4 (21:02):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (21:03):
So, I mean we're here at the Republican National Convention,
and it's been really interesting talking to a lot of
folks from diverse backgrounds about the issue of climate and
also environmental conservation.
Speaker 4 (21:13):
I really do think it matters how you start the conversation.
Speaker 5 (21:16):
We talked earlier about kind of our timeline of the
legacy of conservative environmentalism. Starting there and talking about how
we can carry on that legacy and how we can
tackle kind of this environmental issue of our time has
been really effective and we've gotten a lot of positive reception.
You know, there's always going to be disagreement, there's always
going to be detractors, but I do think that there's
more and more of kind of that acceptance that we
(21:39):
need to take care of our own backyard, and that includes,
you know, tackling climate change.
Speaker 3 (21:43):
How much stuff do you end up having to you know,
talk about our not necessarily focused on at least talk
about like actual fossil fuel emissions, for racking, these types
of things that are like mainstays of politics because of
how much money goes into them, but undeniably are a
massive contributing factor, and we do need to move to
probably some more nuclear options to forgive the expression, I guess,
(22:04):
and you know as well as like a like a
solar hydro, which are you know, less good than nuclear
on like a large scale. But like you know, especially
for the for the Republican Party, trying to trying to
point out certain things about how we will have to
scale back some degree of fossil fuels, if not you know,
a majority of it in the next twenty five years,
if we want to, if we want to not have
(22:24):
like a pretty bad scenario at least for not even
just for humans, but for like animals in other parts
of the environment.
Speaker 5 (22:30):
Yeah, well, I think that goes back to the all
of the above energy approach and really diversifying our energy portfolio,
which frankly is not only good for the environment, but
good for energy security. We've seen you know, hacking of
pipelines or other kind of cyber energy attacks. So by
diversifying sources, we're really setting ourselves up to have a
more secure energy grid. So I think there's other ways
(22:52):
that you can talk about you know, environmental actions, climate
actions that have co benefits, and we can talk about
that in a really productive way with Republicans.
Speaker 3 (23:01):
Do you also focus on like local ecology efforts, like
you know, like some of the more like Roosevelt style
a conservation is that thing that you also kind of
try to like advocate for. Also, it's like an on
ramch talk about these like broader climate issues.
Speaker 4 (23:12):
Absolutely.
Speaker 5 (23:12):
I love that framing that you used as kind of
the entry point to climate issues. We have fifty thousand
young members across the country in about one hundred branches,
either on college campuses or in young professional communities, and
they go out and they plant trees in their communities,
They do park cleanups, they clean up a waterway, They
have educational speakers to learn more about these issues.
Speaker 4 (23:34):
And we found that that's really really.
Speaker 5 (23:36):
Effective in building this conservative environmental movement and showing that
these values are connected, they're compatible, and then that can
lead to advocacy on the national level for things like
we talked about nuclear energy or other clean energy sources.
Speaker 4 (23:50):
So that's been really effective for us.
Speaker 3 (23:53):
What would you like to see as a conservative climate
policy in like ten years, Like what would you hope
gets adopted to help curtail like you know, these more
catastrophic scenarios.
Speaker 4 (24:05):
Great question, and I would hope it perhaps a little
bit earlier than ten.
Speaker 3 (24:08):
Years absolutely, but I'm just based on how things have gone.
Speaker 4 (24:13):
Sure, So we have kind of a big three that
we're focused on right now.
Speaker 5 (24:16):
Permitting reforms, so getting the government out of its own way, frankly,
to fight climate change, and unleash American energy in the
form of clean energy, nuclear, solar, wind, geothermal, hydropower, and
really kind of expand what we can build in this country. Again,
nuclear energy is really one of the focuses for us
because it's a baseload energy source that can run twenty
(24:38):
four to seven, it's clean, and it's really secure. So
we're really focused on nuclear. And then the last thing
is American energy dominance. Here in the United States, we
produce energy safer, cleaner, and more efficiently, and we really
want to be a leader on the world stage when
it comes to energy.
Speaker 3 (24:55):
I think that there is a lot of people, both
like you know, progressive Democrats who really care about this issue,
as well as you know a lot of Republicans and
liberals who have a lot of skepticism about nuclear energy.
Right for some good reasons. There have been some unfortunate
events that have happened, and I know like fission and
fusion have been slowly getting better where I feel like
(25:15):
we're close to some kind of breakthrough, but we do
have like kind of a limited time. How do you
approach kind of talking to people who have a level
of risk in terms of nuclear energy and like the
possible dangers that it's had based on a few accidents,
even though a lot of a lot of these plants
are relatively safe.
Speaker 4 (25:32):
Yeah, I love this question.
Speaker 5 (25:33):
I grew up an hour south of Three Mile Island
in Pennsylvania, so I have a lot of experience with
nuclear skepticism. Look, I mean nuclear energy is the safest
and cleanest form that we have in our back pocket. Yes,
there have been some unfortunate incidents, frankly they're human error,
and we understand nuclear power a lot better now. We
(25:54):
have more safeguards in place since incidents like Chernobyl or
Three Mile Island, and we haven't seen a nuclear meltdown
that we were promised in the Simpsons or the China
syndrome or something like that. The fact is nuclear quote
waste is really nuclear spent fuel, and we can recycle
that and keep producing clean nuclear power. We have incredibly
(26:18):
well trained nuclear experts at all of our power plants
across the United States and they produce clean, reliable energy
for consumers all over the country. So we really need
to kind of get over those messaging hurdles with nuclear
and expand the industry here.
Speaker 3 (26:33):
What do you think will happen if your concerns go unheard?
Like if this just doesn't this just does doesn't work.
I think it's kind of continue at the scale and
like a timeline they have been. What worries do you have?
Speaker 4 (26:47):
Yeah, that's a really existential question.
Speaker 5 (26:52):
Yeah, I mean, I think we're in the seven years
since we've been founded, we're working really hard to build
coalitions with a lot of different stakes and be heard
by a lot of different folks in power, and frankly,
I'm hopeful that we will you know, pursue solutions to
climate change. That we will you know, for lack of
a better term, get our act together and pursue these solutions.
(27:14):
And really, I think the biggest thing that I like
to focus on when it comes to climate advocacy is
optimism and this idea that you know, the planet is
our one common denominator and we can unite around that
and you know, already in Congress, we've seen bipartisan legislation
in a really polarizing time that focuses on climate.
Speaker 4 (27:33):
Probably the last big package.
Speaker 5 (27:35):
In the one hundred and eighteenth Congress was a nuclear
package to unleash next generation nuclears. So, I know, I'm
not exactly answering your question, but I am extremely optimistic
about the future.
Speaker 3 (27:45):
Do you think there's a path towards some kind of
bipartisan advocacy not just in like the Senate, but also
like in terms of like environmental movements and like protests.
And obviously there's certain people who employ very theatrical tactics
that maybe don't correlate to much improved means, But do
you see there's a possibility of, like you know, a
larger public call for action on this issue? I mean mean,
(28:05):
something that we've covered on our show a while ago
is like will it take something like a general strike
to even like get people to like realize like we
need this to be done? Like not necessarily that option,
but like do you see like a route towards more
of bipartisan activism and advocacy of this issue.
Speaker 5 (28:25):
Yeah, that's a great question. We do a lot of
bridge building work. I was actually in Los Angeles earlier
this year with a group of conservative climate advocates and
progressive climate advocates and we talked about solutions where there's
common ground, and then we finished the day by doing
a beach clean up together. So I really do think
there's a lot of opportunity to kind of unite on
this issue, especially in younger generations. When I talked about
(28:47):
hope earlier, they're the ones who really give me hope,
and I think there's a lot of common ground that
we can pursue together.
Speaker 3 (28:53):
That's all I had, and less you have any other notes,
w or points you wanted to mention.
Speaker 5 (28:57):
If you want to find a ACC, you can find
us at a dot eco or ACC Underscore National on
social platforms.
Speaker 4 (29:04):
But that's it for me.
Speaker 3 (29:06):
Well, I hope that was slightly informative, and now we
will inform you about the Heritage Foundation's private exclusive party
after these messages. Okay, we are back.
Speaker 1 (29:28):
We are back, and we are ready to tell you, Oh,
five pigtails. Let us infiltrate famous hate group, the Heritage
Foundations social house party.
Speaker 2 (29:39):
We got all up in the first off, a lot
of microwave great food.
Speaker 3 (29:43):
It was the worst food we've had in all of
Milwaukee was the Heritage and Foundation Great Meals. Yes, that
is a very notable that the Heritage Foundation had the
worst food that we've had this entire week.
Speaker 2 (29:55):
Not shocked.
Speaker 1 (29:56):
First of all, they let you two as well as
another one of our friends come in off of my
access code, which is very funny, and that we took
one of the most hilarious photos we've ever taken together.
Speaker 2 (30:08):
And then we then we met with one of the
producers the Daily Wire and watched him try to figure
out who we are as I introduced him name he was.
He was just calculating and then some lady came up
and disrupted and we just fucking.
Speaker 3 (30:20):
You can see the little like thinking thing.
Speaker 1 (30:24):
Like third grade edition, and it wasn't the math was
not mathing.
Speaker 3 (30:28):
It was like that one BABC Sherlock scene. He was
trying to pull up. He was trying to pull up
the files. Didn't work, didn't work, didn't have enough time.
We stayed in that party, Robert, you seen that party
for like five straight hours.
Speaker 2 (30:38):
I was there for a long time. For every drink
I wanted to drink, I would order another and just
pour it out because I wanted I wanted to make
them spend the money.
Speaker 3 (30:46):
It was going to go somewhere free for us, but
not free for them. So as Robert was was schmooshin
with the Heritage Foundations, guys. Mean, so he went into
the Connection Center to hear some speeches, and them today
honestly pretty boring, and even even the notable ones were
also kind of boring. The one I guess we'll talk
about just very briefly is Don Junior's speech. First, he
(31:09):
brought out his daughter, Trump's granddaughter.
Speaker 1 (31:11):
Before you get to that, do you want to go
over what the theme of the day was.
Speaker 3 (31:15):
No, I mean, maybe we can, we can mention it.
I don't feel how relevant it was to any of
the speeches. It was just make America strong.
Speaker 1 (31:25):
It was strong once again, sorry once again?
Speaker 2 (31:29):
All right, interesting that they didn't want to sound out Massa.
Speaker 3 (31:32):
You know.
Speaker 1 (31:33):
Anyways, I guess I guess it's really not that relevant.
I just just to point out that on the previous
days for the different themes, there was very intricate backgrounds
that were up.
Speaker 3 (31:45):
They didn't anything too strong again, they were like they.
Speaker 1 (31:49):
Phoned it the fucking yeah, and there was no interesting
background Anyways, Garrett, what were you saying?
Speaker 3 (31:54):
So Donald Trump Junior's daughter, So Trump, the actual real
ones granddaughter gave this little, this little speechman to humanize her.
Speaker 1 (32:05):
Grand Grandpa is a nice guy, calls me and asks
me how I am.
Speaker 3 (32:11):
That was basically the speech, which is lovely. Is sure?
Why not?
Speaker 1 (32:16):
It was her first speech. I don't think any of
the other grandchildren have given speeches before.
Speaker 3 (32:21):
No, this is kind of the first appearance of one
of Trump's grandkids.
Speaker 1 (32:24):
Yes, And the way it was framed is Don Junior
came up and then was like she just called me.
It was very intentionally propaganda's.
Speaker 3 (32:33):
It was also the most happy I've seen Trump this
entire week, though.
Speaker 2 (32:37):
He might actually care about his granddaughter.
Speaker 3 (32:40):
Yes, definitely more than his son hard it would be
hard to care less.
Speaker 1 (32:43):
And I'm not sure how much they've they've shown it
on TV, but you know, I had a view of
him the entire night tonight right from where I was sitting.
I was an angle where I could see his face,
and they showed his face on the screen a bunch,
and he was genuinely stoic. I would say he smiled
for his granddaughter, definitely the most and maybe one stirring
(33:03):
Kimberly Gilfoyle's speech at the very end, but other than that,
I did not see much emotion from him today, and
it was pretty similar to the rest of the week.
Speaker 2 (33:12):
I think, you again, you have to keep in mind
with him whatever I mean, we hate him. He's a
bad man, he's a monster, would be the worst possible
president we could have. But he's also a person who
got shot and he's traumatized, you know, and like you
don't have to like make up excuses for that. Like,
he is a human being who was scared because a
(33:33):
man shot him in the head, and that's really not
not a complicated thing to diagnose.
Speaker 3 (33:40):
So after the granddaughter gave her a little spiel, Trump
Junior himself had a little speech that he was basically
just doing an impression of his father.
Speaker 2 (33:47):
For the entire time, dog shit impressing.
Speaker 3 (33:50):
It's not a very good impression, but compared to Vance,
it was still it was very impressive.
Speaker 1 (33:54):
We'll get to that in a sec I will say
the crowd did really really he.
Speaker 3 (33:58):
Seemed to like him. There was chance, so you know,
Trump Junior, twenty twenty eight.
Speaker 2 (34:03):
It reminded me of when I was at my first
Trump rally. This would have been in the late spring,
early summer of twenty sixteen, when fucking Chris Christie conceded
to Trump. There was a British naturalized citizen in the
crowd of the rally, and I was like, you want
them to be president for eight years? And he was like, well,
I wanted to do president for eight years to start,
(34:25):
and I was like, to start, what happens next? He's like, well,
he's got three kids, doesn't he? Then he like walked
through his basic plan for Trump to have a dynasty
like the royal family. And I wish I had said,
go back home, go back home to your fucking country
with your goddamn royal family. We don't have that here,
but we might. They wanted it.
Speaker 3 (34:44):
Yeah, late here the idea of the king's becoming increasingly popular.
Speaker 1 (34:48):
You have never told me that story. And I am, oh, well,
thank you.
Speaker 2 (34:52):
I got so much great audio of that guy, Thank
you so much.
Speaker 1 (34:55):
That is going to haunt me tonight. Garrison. What else?
Speaker 3 (34:57):
Yeah, I mean Trump and had a few funny lines
making fun of build back better, making some corn pop jokes,
a corn.
Speaker 1 (35:04):
Pop jokes in the bulbit, very funny.
Speaker 3 (35:09):
The One line I do want to mention is that
he talked about how the left wants to use the
First Amendment to show kids explicit drag shows, but they
want to put you into jail for making a meme,
something that has never.
Speaker 2 (35:23):
Happened, not a single time, not once. Not Why they
barely put people into jail for assaulting the capital.
Speaker 3 (35:30):
Yeah, so that was most of his speech. We then
heard from Vance's wife, who gave a typical vice first
lady speech. It wasn't notable. And then we heard from
Vance himself, the the the hopeful future vice president.
Speaker 1 (35:47):
What sorry, I was taking a nap.
Speaker 3 (35:49):
Wait, Sophie, Sophie, wake up, wake up, we're recording a
podcast here.
Speaker 1 (35:52):
Oh sorry that just the sound of JD. Vance's name
put me right to sleep.
Speaker 3 (35:57):
He gave what I would describe people have since described.
It's kind of a bad speech.
Speaker 2 (36:03):
You guys were in the stadium. I was sitting at
the Heritage finn Ocean party on an upper roof.
Speaker 1 (36:08):
Do Yeah, what'd they think?
Speaker 2 (36:09):
There were three people during most of it, and then
like four others filtered in when those guys left, every
single one of them was disappointed. The only guy who
liked it was a Fox News reporter, and when he left,
the people who had been like, well he was okay,
said well, I hate that I had to lie in
front of that guy, but he was media. I was
kind of just sitting on my phone pretending to be
(36:30):
texting and listening to them, so they didn't really notice me.
But the ultimate feeling that they expressed repeatedly was that
was really disappointing. It was really boring, It was really long.
He is not a great speaker. There was one guy
who repeatedly said, I don't like that his wife isn't white.
I wish his wife was white. And then there was
a guy who was kind of a more libertarian member
(36:51):
of the Republican Party who I had chatted with, who
came in and sat down to have a drink and
you know, was expressing that he liked Vance's speech. And
the guy said, what are you a Cuban And the
guy said no, and he's like, well, you're not white.
Speaker 3 (37:04):
So that was great, amazing stuff happening in the Heritage
Foundation private party.
Speaker 2 (37:09):
The Foundation party was a was a good time. Yeah,
so this is.
Speaker 3 (37:13):
Something I was even seeing in the convention people there,
you know, there was there was some like you know,
respectful clapping, but people weren't super into it, at least
of in the sections that we were at. The lady
sitting next to me he was, you know, just like
a Republican woman her maybe fifties or sixties, very very lucid,
kind of just like kept dozing off just because she
was so bored, not like because she was sleepy, just
(37:34):
because she was bored.
Speaker 2 (37:35):
Wasn't a good speech.
Speaker 3 (37:36):
No.
Speaker 1 (37:36):
She looks at me and she said, he's so dry.
Speaker 3 (37:40):
Yeah. So at a certain point, I just I just
kind of whispered to Sophie like, wow, Vance is a
really dry speaker, and she kind of she kind of
like nodded awake and started and started started like nodding
her head in agreement and repeated the same thing to us.
And I asked her, you know, like, well, who do
you think would have been a better pick? And she said, well,
(38:01):
I don't know. I just expected Advance to be a
better rhetorical speaker. And that was all she would say.
And I feel like that was kind of generally the vibe.
Like something else I noticed that he was like actually okay,
and you know, the certain things he was talking about,
you know, what he was actually saying. You know, there
were certain things that were interesting, it was more like
the way he was saying it. It was it was
specifically he had no ability to do crowd work. He
(38:24):
was just reading out the teleprompter and kind of doing
a slight smile every thirty seconds, and that's all was.
He wasn't actually really seriously engaging people.
Speaker 2 (38:31):
Make fun of the bits where Trump dances or whatever
his little moves, but those play those work.
Speaker 3 (38:36):
Even like pointing out people using gestures, kind of anything
to connect you to the audience. Vance was just so
was so dry, was so plain.
Speaker 1 (38:43):
I think the biggest action from his speech was just
the people in the crowd who liked to chant.
Speaker 3 (38:47):
They were just really into chanting.
Speaker 2 (38:50):
Ted Kruz gave him a great He like that he
kind of lost them early in his speech the night
before and won them back because he gave them a
chance to chair repeatedly went through they like that, they
like to chat, they're chanters.
Speaker 1 (39:03):
Want to give us some of the chanting highlights.
Speaker 3 (39:05):
Gar Yeah, so he was definitely leaning into his hillbilly
or faux hillbilly background.
Speaker 2 (39:11):
Motherfucker, sorry, your parents made one hundred and seventy five
thousand goddamn dollars a year speaking to somebody who grew
up in a fucking rural ass Oklahoma, like fucking carpetbagger.
Speaker 3 (39:21):
That was what he was using for most of his speech.
He was telling stories about the woman who raised him
when his own mom was dealing with addiction, who he
referred to as his mem.
Speaker 2 (39:32):
Uh huh, and fucking goddamn it.
Speaker 3 (39:35):
The first big chant I took note of is he
told a story about how he was hanging out when
he was like a kid or like a teen. He
was hanging out with someone who was known to be
like a local drug dealer, and his mem told him
that if she saw him hanging out with that guy again,
she was going to run him over in a truck,
run over the drug dealer, and no one's gonna find
(39:57):
out about it. And the crowd ate this up, chanting
me ma, me ma, So they were They weren't chanting
about killing this drug dealer, right, they were chanting about murdering,
murdering this drug dealer.
Speaker 2 (40:08):
G d Vance never met a drug dealer in his
fucking life, I'll tell you that one.
Speaker 3 (40:11):
So that was the first one, and the next little
Bema story he told is that when she was a
little bit older. He said that after she died, they
found nineteen loaded handguns all over her house and they
realized it's because she wasn't able to move very fast,
so she always wanted a gun no matter where she was,
(40:32):
she wanted to be in armslength the gun, whether that
be in the cutlery drawer, by the TV remote, under
the bed, because because she wanted to protect her family
even though she was old. And this this led into
another another chance. Specifically, the nineteen loaded handguns just again
went the crowd ate that up, and the crowd even
(40:52):
started just chanting about how good they were at chanting.
It became very self referential, very like patting yourself on
the back for chanting.
Speaker 2 (40:59):
Funny, these people love chanting.
Speaker 3 (41:01):
And yeah, that was that was That was most events speech.
It wasn't very good, it was too long. Almost unanimously,
people at the Heritage Foundation party did not like it,
so they did not get that reproval.
Speaker 2 (41:13):
One pseudo positive, which was the Fox News journalist.
Speaker 3 (41:17):
Who I'm sure is contractually obligated to like it.
Speaker 2 (41:20):
Yeah yeah, yeah, and who the people there made fun
of when he left.
Speaker 3 (41:23):
Yes, well, we talked to a campaign manager earlier at
the at the Heritage Party just regarding kind of the
race in general, mentioning stuff about the upcoming vice presidential debates,
which the Trump Badman put out a statement saying they
didn't want to lock down any details on this until
he actually know who the vice president's going to be.
That which is a good piece of propaganda. And so,
and we were talking about that and and bringing it
(41:45):
up to some of these people at the Heritage Party,
like who do you think actually is going to be
the Democratic nominee? Many of them did not believe it
was going to be Joe Biden. Many of them thought
that it either could be an unknown candidate at this point,
or more likely probably kamalaw And this is something that
I've been noticing is that every time in these speeches
(42:06):
where they're talking about Joe Biden's policies, they're not just
saying Joe Biden, They're saying Joe Biden and Kamala Harris's, well, well,
Kamala Kamala harris in one instance, Kamala Harris's policies. So
they are already preparing to start shifting their rhetoric onto kamalaw.
That's something that the opposition's already planning to do. And
you know, as as of today, which is which is
(42:28):
Wednesday night, we've heard that both Biden made announcements in
the same day that he would step down if he
was to face this serious medical diagnosis. And he also
got COVID the same So.
Speaker 2 (42:39):
The look on your face when we told you that
Joe Biden had COVID you were you were thrilled.
Speaker 3 (42:45):
Okay, well we shouldn't say that either. Anyway. That is
kind of a brief glimpse into the Heritage Foundation party.
I guess that the vibes were more similar to what
is I think well known now as the least a
good episode of The Boys, that that private tech night
party combined with like a frat, a frat bro bar hop.
Speaker 2 (43:07):
What I'll say about this is they had an EDM
track set to Country Road Take Me Home. I will
say that like if you were to if you were
to put that side by side with the plane crash
that killed the author of that song, I think he
would agree with you. This party was worse.
Speaker 1 (43:27):
One more thing I wanted to note was I did
not go to the party for seven hundred hours like
the two of you. I went home after all the
speeches home, I went back to the hotel after all
the speeches.
Speaker 2 (43:38):
Did that country road take you home?
Speaker 1 (43:39):
That country road took me home place you belonged. And
I had a very very very nice lift driver. Sir,
if you're if you buy a sub chance, listened to podcasts.
You were very nice.
Speaker 3 (43:48):
Thank you.
Speaker 1 (43:49):
After what was a very loud day, there was a
guy holding a rest in peace sign with the photo
of the guy who attempted to a set state the president,
with the caption.
Speaker 2 (44:01):
In American hero great stuff.
Speaker 1 (44:04):
Yes, I took a photo of it. And the amount
of people leaving the yards see that just shouted their worst.
Many slurs at him were countless. And I don't know
if anything else happened further after that, but very strange choice.
Speaker 3 (44:21):
That is an interesting move.
Speaker 2 (44:22):
All I know is that based on the last postings
of the victim of that shooting, Corey comparatour, he'll get
over it.
Speaker 3 (44:31):
The Japanese dead Well. Anyway, That wraps up our coverage
this week of the Republican National Convention. We will lead
next week with Trump's first public speech since the shooting.
That'll be dropping Sunday night.
Speaker 2 (44:46):
Maybe a little bit of mere rudy sprinkle of squeeze in,
some rudy as a tree, some squeeze in like like
he squeezed down some of that hair juice.
Speaker 1 (44:55):
That's Jesus Christ.
Speaker 3 (44:57):
Well, thank you for listening to our initial conver of
the RNC. We have more scripted episodes, more kind of
polished deep dives about the people and conversations that we
have had here in beautiful Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
Speaker 2 (45:10):
And remember, folks, if you're going to take a bullet
for somebody, Donald Trump does not care, not interested at us.
Speaker 3 (45:16):
Not making the funeral is not He is not going
to show up at your funeral.
Speaker 2 (45:20):
Wow, that's a loud chair, painfully loud chair. You know
what else is painfully loud? The Heritage Foundation party. Anyway,
we're done, goodnight, good night.
Speaker 1 (45:33):
It could Happen here as a production of cool Zone Media.
For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
cool zonemedia dot com, or check us out on the
iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
You can find sources for It Could Happen Here, updated
monthly at cool Zonemedia dot com slash sources. Thanks for listening.
It Could Happen Here News
Hosts And Creators
Robert Evans
Garrison Davis
James Stout
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