American Greatness contributing editor Brandon J. Weichert joined Chris Buskirk on the radio to discuss his recent trip to San Francisco, foreign policy, Old Hollywood, “linguini-spined Republicans,” and a host of other topics. And they took calls! Listen and read the transcript below.
Chris Buskirk: All right. We’re back. Seth and Chris Show, you know why we like it so much. We’re going to start it a half a minute early. You want to know why? Because we can. That’s right. This is The Seth and Chris Show.
We’re going to keep taking your calls 602-508-0960. But in order to make it even better, even more fun, we are drawing by our guest, our friend, the one and only Brandon Weichert. Brandon, how are you?
Brandon Weichert: Oh, I’m okay. Been a very tough day, but okay, ready to—
Buskirk: Why, are you Al Franken’s communications director?
Weichert: No. Actually, I was unable to get much work done today, because a woman tried to break into our home today in D.C., so I had to deal with police.
Buskirk: Oh, wow. During the day or [crosstalk 00:00:49] or what?
Weichert: She’s an elderly woman. I think she has dementia, but she kept saying the house was hers, and that’s obviously not, so we had to …
Buskirk: Brandon, come on. Come clean.
Weichert: Well, you know [crosstalk 00:01:02]
Buskirk: This is the time. If it really is her house just come clean with us.
Weichert: No, it was really … I mean, I feel bad for her, but she started to get very irate when I said I was going to have to call the police. So, we were dealing with that since 1:00 PM East Coast time.
Buskirk: Oh gosh. Oh, my God. Oh God. It just [crosstalk 00:01:22] up the day and it kind of leaves you a little unsettled.
Weichert: It’s Washington D.C., it’s how it is.
Buskirk: Was she an elected official by any chance? Who was it Lisa Murkowski, Claire McCaskill?
Weichert: I’m not going to lie, it was Nancy Pelosi. It was Nancy Pelosi. Yeah. It was Nancy Pelosi. She was, you know [crosstalk 00:01:39]
Buskirk: Speaking of dementia. She looks like that might be her next stop. I mean, you see some of these press conferences Nancy Pelosi’s been giving lately.
Weichert: When I worked on the Hill I used to call her blinky, because she had this twitch she would do and she would just blink a lot. At least in person when I would interact with her, she would blink a lot. I don’t know if it was a nervous tick or what, but I used to kind of try not to laugh in her face when I would talk … The few times I would interact with her she would start to blink rapidly. So, she’s got some weird twitches there with her.
Buskirk: Yeah. I’m going with mental problem. If I judged her entire oeuvre, her entire body of work, I look at the things she says, the things she does, the things she believes, yeah, maybe not all there.
Weichert: Well, when I worked on The Hill, I’ll never forget, I was walking to Rayburn, one of the other offices. There’s all these tunnels underneath The Hill that all the staffers run between, and she would walk, she would have four or five staffers and she would literally walk in a wedge formation. She’d have two staffers to one side at an angle. I used to call her power walk, she used to think that she ran the … She tried to run the whole place. She was quite the little queen bee. This was when they were in the majority. But I always thought she was a very strange person.
I was actually in her backyard not long ago-
Buskirk: Where you trying to get into her house telling her it was yours?
Weichert: No, no. I was actually in Palo Alto last week talking with some people in Silicon Valley about space policy stuff, and they were … [inaudible 00:03:18] San Francisco. I was in San Francisco for one of the days, and then the next day I was actually in Palo Alto and I kept thinking, when I spent $8 for a Diet Coke, I knew I was definitely living in Nancy Pelosi’s district.
Buskirk: Did you got it on sale?
Weichert: Yeah. That’s right. Yeah. It’s insane.
Buskirk: Yeah. I’ve been out there a few times in the past couple of months, and I love San Francisco. It’s a beautiful-
Weichert: Oh, it’s beautiful.
Buskirk: It’s just a beautiful city.
Weichert: They ruined it.
Buskirk: Yeah. I mean, [inaudible 00:03:48].
Weichert: Ruined it. Nobody can afford it.
Buskirk: Yeah. Still beautiful, but politically, obviously, is a basket case.
Weichert: [crosstalk 00:03:56]
Buskirk: I took a photo, which I thought summed up San Francisco nicely. There’s a Gucci store, and I think right off of Union Square, and I was walking past it at night in the doorway of the Gucci store is a hobo, a bum sleeping there, bundled up inside the doorway. To me that just sort of summed it up. You’ve got the very wealthy and the very poor jammed into San Francisco.
Weichert: One of the times I talked to you referred to it as the plantation economy.
Buskirk: Yeah.
Weichert: Yeah. Well, I mean, when we were in Palo Alto we had a few … Actually, Seb Gorka, he was talking at the same event that I was in, so we actually, all of us went out and got breakfast, and my wife was with us. She and I kind of separated and went puttering around Downtown Palo Alto, which actually looks a lot like Old Town, Alexandria where we live. We were walking and there were all these hobos out, and I said to my wife, and I’m watching all these people, very well off people walking by, I was like, “These are all the liberals. You’d think they’d be giving them . . . Showering these helpless people with money, but they rather just redistribute wealth from hardworking middle-class Americans.” It was very telling.
Buskirk: You don’t expect them to actually do it themselves, do you? No, they’re working hard on, I don’t know, a petition or something in order to … Or maybe some legislation to force you to give your money to those people only after passing it through—
Weichert: Only after those people have hidden all their money offshore and they’re getting all the tax breaks, and then the rest of us are forced to.
Buskirk: Why actually give money of help, or assistance, or training, or whatever directly to these people who you see need it, when you could actually-
Weichert: Better to create a bureaucracy.
Buskirk: Right. Why not create a bureaucracy and run it through a massively inefficient sieve first.
Weichert: I mean, hey, it becomes a federal jobs program at that point, right?
Buskirk: Yeah. Yeah, exactly.
Now this lady like I saw, it was a lady who was sleeping in that Gucci store, now, sure, she’s hungry now, but just think, she might be able to get some type of assistance three or four years from now.
Weichert: That’s right. Yeah, that’s right, that’s right. She might do very well if the Democrats are able to take everyone else’s money away. But yeah, and California, it was a nice place. Unfortunately, I could … It was very pretty. I’d love to stay there longer, but just it’s very expensive.
Buskirk: I hope they were paying your travel expenses because it’s not—
Weichert: They did, oh yeah. That was all taken care of. But we can’t live large like that on our own, it was very nice to go out there. But no, definitely it’s very telling night and day how the blue states operate and how the red states operate. Obviously, where we live in Virginia is technically a blue state, but you go outside the Beltway and you’re back in Republican country.
Buskirk: Well, Alexandria not so much.
Weichert: No, no, we’re in the Beltway. I said if you go-
Buskirk: Oh, right, yeah, once you get a little further out.
Weichert: Actually, since we would—
Buskirk: Unfortunately, with Virginia, that’s where all the population lives.
Weichert: Oh, yeah, I know. Well, we live near the military base though, so we live in the one pocket of Alexandria that is, like, all conservatives. But they’re all transplants, everybody here in this neighborhood is from the South. But yeah. No, the Democrats are killing this country. I’m just going to put that out there. I’ve lived in red states, I’ve lived in blue states, and there is a clear difference, and God help us all if the Democrats keep changing the demographics the way they’ve been doing for the last 40 years.
Buskirk: Well, that’s the plan, right?
Weichert: Yeah. Right, right.
Buskirk: That’s the plan.
Brandon, before we jump into too much of the serious business of the day. Something that’s a little less serious I want to take care of, in the last hour I did an interview with Orson Bean. Does that name ring a bell with you?
Weichert: No, I caught the tail-end of it though, and it sounded very interesting.
Buskirk: Oh, it was great. He was just fantastic. Orson has been in Hollywood since 1953, almost 70 years in Hollywood, and he is a conservative. Orson was Andrew Breitbart’s father-in-law.
Weichert: Okay, yes, yes. I do. Okay, I’m familiar with him.
Buskirk: Yeah. And he’s been in Hollywood so long. He was there during its golden days, or golden era, and continues working. He just had some great stories to tell about, you know, he was a regular on both the Jack Paar Show, before Johnny Carson took over, and then on the Carson Show, just to show how long he’s been there. But he had some great stories about Carson and it sparked, if you were listening you’ll know that it just sparks something with listeners. We’ve got some on the line, who still want to come. How do you feel about making this a party line?
Weichert: Yeah, go ahead. Feel good.
Buskirk: Let’s do it.
Excuse me, Mike, in Phoenix, you had something to add on the Carson front, how are you?
Mike: Yes, thanks for taking my call again.
Buskirk: My pleasure.
Weichert: Hi, Mike.
Mike: Hi, how are you doing?
Weichert: I’m okay. I’m okay. How are you?
Mike: Awesome, except for the lady that tried to get in your house, right?
Weichert: Yeah, well. Thank you.
Mike: Yeah. I think the funniest … Sorry.
Buskirk: Mike, you still there?
Mike: Hello. Yup.
The funniest thing that I’ve ever seen on Johnny Carson, and I still watch it on the old redos that they have on TV, it’s when the people come on with the animals. To me that is the very funniest part of it. And you asked who is the funniest person, I think Don Rickles was the funniest I’ve ever seen on there, he’s hilarious. And then, the funniest thing I’ve ever seen was back it was black and white and he had Ed Ames on there, and Ed Ames was on Daniel Boone, TV show Daniel Boone. He was the Indian, and he was teaching Johnny Carson how to throw an ax, and they had a big piece of wood with a person thrown on it, and they were throwing the ax at this piece of wood, and Johnny threw his ax and it went right between the legs of the man that was on the board.
Buskirk: Oh, my gosh.
Weichert: Wow.
Mike: It was hilarious.
Buskirk: It’s a different era, and a more fun era, I think too.
Weichert: Much cleaner, too.
Mike: Oh yeah, yeah, totally.
Buskirk: Yeah, perfectly clean. Now, anyway, Mike, thanks so much for the call. We got to run to our break. Brandon, we’ll be back with us when we come back on the other side of this break. Still taking your calls 602-508-0960. We’ll be right back with more of The Seth and Chris Show.
Hello, Harper Valley PTA, their comeback to The Seth and Chris Show. We’re joined by Brandon Weichert, he is a contributing editor to American Greatness, and a good friend of the show.
Brandon, thanks for sticking with us. Appreciate it.
Weichert: Happy to be here.
Buskirk: Brandon, we have struck a chord with the listening audience of The Seth and Chris Show. We’ve got a full board. Should we take some calls?
Weichert: Sure thing.
Buskirk: Yeah, we’re just going to roll with it here, right?
Weichert: All right.
Buskirk: All right. Rick, in Phoenix, welcome to The Seth and Chris Show.
Rick: How are you doing today? You sound great.
Buskirk: Dude, I’m doing fantastic. This is a lot of fun.
Rick: Well, you know, several years ago I had the opportunity to be at a live taping at a Carson show where Don Rickles was one of the guests, and he had the audience in stitches, however, as soon as they went to commercial Don broke character and walked around the audience shaking hands and talking to people, and was one of the nicest people you’d ever want to meet, and as soon as they called camera was back, he went right back into his character without a second of hesitation. I mean, it was just hilarious. The audience got more of a quick out of that than half of his jokes.
Buskirk: Oh, I’m sure. I’m sure. So many guys of that era had grown up in the business playing a lot of live audiences and were used to it, and they loved it, they really thrived on it. You don’t still see that much of it anymore, which I think is a shame. That sort of nature, that sort of aloofness.
Rick: It’s a real show of character and professionalism. I myself have been an actor for years, and I did what’s called guerrilla theater with wild west shows. To be able to jump in and out of character is not an easy thing. I’ve had employees who couldn’t do it. They could read a script, but if something broke their character, they lost it. He was a true professional and Carson always made his guests look great. In fact, one of the funniest things that I saw on the Carson show was when Don Rickles came out and was giving Johnny a back rub, and they both ended up in a hot tub.
Buskirk: Because why wouldn’t they. Right, just another night on the Carson show.
Rick: We really miss good late night TV. All late night TV now, I haven’t even bothered to watch it, because all it is is political bashing.
Buskirk: Yeah, it’s unwatchable.
Rick: Yup.
Buskirk: It’s unwatchable. Even when somebody like Carson, and he would do political jokes here and there, but they were always, they were sort of ecumenical, they never had a date, they did not have a partisan edge, it was kind of like we’re all Americans laughing at the goofs at Washington, it was that sort of a thing. Today it’s just the opposite. Everything, you look at Jimmy Fallon, or Colbert, Sarah Silverman. God, everything is bitter and aggressive.
Rick: How are we ever going to get back to a civilization in this country that actually cares about the people that they’re around, and that they work with. It seems to me that we’ve lost a lot of that.
Weichert: You got to drain the swamp. You got to get rid of the DC establishment [crosstalk 00:15:27] that’s the problem.
Rick: A lot of the things that I’ve seen is we’ve got to drain our education swamp, because the kids that are coming out of the school have no idea what our government’s about, but they can tell you everything about the Kardashians.
Weichert: That’s right. That’s correct. I’ve actually written a series of articles comparing what our kids are going through today in terms of education and the rigors, or lack thereof of learning in America compared to China, and it is quite striking to see the kind of discipline and the level of educational attainment that goes on for many Chinese compared to what native-born Americans are going through. And the fact of the matter is that, unfortunately, better or worse, the knowledge economy is predicated on having knowledge, which means having a competitive educational system, and the Chinese are eating our lunch right now.
Rick: Oh, definitely. I’m with an organization that’s trying to put together a civics program that we can take into schools, and it seems impossible to get through to these schools to even approach the subject. They don’t want to hear about it. They don’t want it in the school. They don’t want to learn about government. They don’t want to teach it. They just want to, as one teacher was doing in her classroom shooting at pictures of Donald Trump, going pow pow pow, you’re dead, pow pow pow, you’re dead. That’s not a teacher in my opinion.
Weichert: Well, how about all the people my age who got degrees, useless degrees of feminist studies, or oppression analysis studies, these things that have no application to the real world and then they’re up a creek because they’ve got all these onerous student debts. In fact, [crosstalk 00:17:23]—
Buskirk: Meanwhile, the Chinese are turning up people with degrees in physics, chemistry, electrical engineering.
Rick: Exactly.
Weichert: Exactly. If you want to know the next batch of innovation leaders in the new economy, you’re not going to be looking to the United States, you’re going to be looking to somewhere between New Delhi and Beijing. In fact, when I was out in Silicon Valley this segues nicely, because when I was out in Silicon Valley I gave my presentation on basically how our space policies or lack thereof is a national security threat because of what China is doing in space. And I talked about, well, I just talked about with you, their educational system compared to our educational system.
And somebody in the Q&A asked, “What are we going to do?” And I said, “Basically, we need to spend the next 10, 15 years fundamentally rehabilitating the educational system in this country at the grassroots level, because no matter how much money we throw into the near-term, getting the next science, tech, engineering, math degree people in the fields that they need to contribute to the economy.” I said, “In the long-term, if we don’t have the young people who are willing to actually compete on a global stage to dominate these industries, we’re going to keep losing to China because it always goes to the group of people that get the innovation first and this time China is well positioned for that.”
Rick: Well, something that nobody ever brings up is the fact that all these innovations and all these things that have been invented in the last 20 years pretty much came from the people who were educated through the 50s and the 60s, and we need to get back to that type of an education. We need to update a lot of stuff, but we need to get back to the principles of that education system.
Weichert: Well, something that you’re seeing a lot, and my wife and I are talking a lot about this with our kids, and it’s very big with the Christian community. We’re out here at a Baptist church and a lot of our fellow parishioners they’re very highly torqued people, they work in different fields in DC, but they’re homeschooling. Their kids are learning Latin. Their kids are doing things that public schools, even some private schools could only dream of doing.
Rick: Exactly.
Weichert: And it has a negative image because of how pop media has defined homeschoolers as not being cool, or whatever. But the fact is, if you look at the success ratio in terms of college admissions and college graduation levels, the homeschool kids generally tend to do better than their peers in more conventional schools. So, that can be one quick way of trying to make America competitive again.
Rick: Well, being an old radio guy, I hear the music, so I’m going to let you guys get back to your business.
Buskirk: Hey, Rick, before you go. Rick, hold on one second.
Rick: Yes.
Buskirk: I just want to tell you something with regards to that project you’re talking about with civics education. I want you, and anybody else who’s interested in this, take a look at an organization. I spoke to them in D.C. about a month ago called the Ashbrook Center, they’re part of Ashland University. This is their area of focus. They’re very, very good. Maybe there’s some collaboration there, I don’t know. But at least take a look at some of the work they’re doing because-
Rick: Ashbrook Center.
Buskirk: The Ashbrook Center. Yeah. Take a look at that.
Rick: I will look that up, and I thank you very much.
Buskirk: Thanks a bunch, Rick. We’ll be right back with more Brandon Weichert. We’ll be going back to the phones as well, 602-508-0960 is the number.
Hi, I’m Chris Buskirk, he is Seth Leibsohn. We’re joined by Brandon Weichert. He is a contributing editor at American Greatness, and a bon vivant, among many other qualities that recommend your company and your society Brandon.
Brandon, this wasn’t part of the plan, but you mentioned something that I found interesting at the end of the last segment, which was homeschooling.
Weichert: Yeah.
Buskirk: Yeah. I mean, educational attainment is an issue for this country in general. I think particularly when we look at the educational attainment of some other countries that are A, either strategic competitors, or B, outright adversaries. We just are not doing as good a job as we need to be doing in educating our kids. Parents are increasingly, I think, taking different approaches to educating their kids. In some states there are robust charter school regimes. Arizona is one of those states. We were early on the charter school thing, and there’s some great charter schools out here. But homeschooling is something that I think has actually gotten a lot better.
Weichert: Oh, it has. Well, my wife … I was the skeptical one, and was wife is the one that’s really pushing for homeschooling for our two girls. One of the reasons is because our oldest, Charlotte, she’s only two and a half, but she’s already doing … She’s basically, she’s operating, they say, at a 5-year-old’s level, and she’s very sweet and I’m just worried that we put her into a school, especially out here in D.C., and it’ll change her, it’ll make her, I don’t know, not as vibrant for life. I want to really focus on the educational aspect and less on the … Especially when they get older, less on the social aspect of wanting to fit in and all that stuff.
I remember in high school that so many kids get distracted with trying to fit in and be cool that their grades can suffer. And really especially in today’s world, for better or worse, your future is determined earlier and earlier and earlier in terms of your education, that’s just the system we’re living in, You need to be aware of that. I think one of the things for young people you can do is to constantly as a parent be heavily involved, not helicopter parents, certainly not, but in terms of making sure that their educational needs are being satisfied and that they’re not being weighed down by this extraneous cultural Marxism that weighs down so many young people today.
And so, I think homeschooling, I think charter schools, I think these are great elixirs to that negative trend. I always tell my wife that parents today, especially today are the first, last and only line of defense, not just for their children physically, but for their children’s spiritual and mental well-being as well.
Buskirk: My understanding that you guys either are or planning to homeschool?
Weichert: My wife really wants to, I’m coming around to it. Initially, I didn’t know much about it. Initially, I was a little skeptical, but I am increasingly … We found a program out here in Alexandria that actually, if we stayed long-term here, which is up in the air still. But if we do end up staying here we’ll put her in a hybrid program, which does … You go to [inaudible 00:24:30] school for two days of the week and it’s a small class and then, she can get involved with some extracurricular activities to help build some of the social interaction, but for the most part it would be three or four days a week you’re homeschooling and the curriculum is a classical education curriculum, so Latin, high intensity. My wife and I are both, we’re fairly well educated, so we feel comfortable being able to, if we decide to go this route, that we’ll be able to do this-
Buskirk: I think it’s a very good option. It’s not for everybody, and I think there are people who ought not to do it.
Weichert: I agree.
Buskirk: Because I don’t think that they have the ability to do that, I’ve seen that. But I’ll tell you what, it is a great option for a lot of people. I have a lot of friends who either are currently homeschooling or did homeschool their kids earlier in life. Very accomplished people. The portrayal of homeschoolers is always negative.
Weichert: Yeah, it is, yeah.
Buskirk: Right. And that is completely contrary to my actual experience with people who do it.
Weichert: Oh, it is. I agree.
At our church, we’ve got … Our church is the First Baptist Church of Alexandria, which is pretty well known in this area. We have lawyers, lobbyists, we have all kinds of people who are doctors, who are very successful. Mike Pence comes to the church occasionally. It’s a good congregation and I would say the bulk of our congregants homeschool their kids, and the kids are brilliant, the kids are smarter than I ever was at that age.
Buskirk: Well, people don’t get about homeschooling the way it’s done today, is it’s not like parents in the back teaching their kids that books are bad. What it is is often very highly motivated, highly accomplished parents who they do things at home, but then there’s also coops and things.
Weichert: That’s right. Exactly right.
Buskirk: There’s a stance of curricula. Kids get together. It’s-
Weichert: And it’s good for the family. It’s good for the family. You got to rebuild that family unit which is under siege all the time.
Buskirk: Could not agree with you more, Brandon. We’re going to go a quick break, when we come back I want to go back to the phones. We got some people holding. Be right back with more of The Seth and Chris Show.
This is not WKRP, this is KKNT 960 AM, and our guest is Brandon Weichert, contributing editor to American Greatness.
Brandon, let’s go to the phones, what do you say?
Weichert: I’m for it. Let’s do it.
Buskirk: Sounds good. All right, Hal, in Prescott, thanks for holding. Hal, I appreciate it, welcome back to the show.
Hal: Hey, thank you. I appreciate you guys taking the call.
I have a question. Hey, Mr. Weichert, how are you doing?
Weichert: I’m OK, thanks for coming on.
Hal: Excellent, thank you.
You know there’s an editorial today in the Wall Street Journal that was basically cautioning restraint when it was talking about second independent counsel, and they said, “Listen, if we do this, then Trump is definitely going to be impeached.” And I was reading that and I said, “Well, I think Trump’s going to be impeached anyway, number one, if the Democrats take control of Congress.”
Weichert: That’s right.
Hal: Number two, I see that as the voluntary acquiescence to the potentially illegal behavior of the Clintons combined with not trying to reestablish deterrence, and by that I mean, I think [inaudible 00:28:00] kind of spoke about this, wrote about this. He says, “Listen, if you guys are going to throw people to the wolves because they talk to a Russian at some point in their life. This is not going to be tolerated.”
Weichert: Well, Joe Biden should be in irons now then, because he talked a lot to the Soviets in the 80s.
Hal: Yeah, and Kennedy.
Weichert: Yeah, that’s right.
Hal: Who was trying to collude with them against Reagan.
Weichert: That’s right.
Hal: And so, I think that … I guess that the root of my question, or my thought was what do you guys think about this? Do we need to basically say, “Okay, if you guys are going to go there, we’re going to go there. We’re going to do to you what you do to us because we’re simply not going to tolerate this one-sided abuse anymore.” And I think, in my mind, it’s hey, Bill Clinton didn’t sign the independent council law when it came up for renewal because he had experienced the joy of being investigated. Is there any room for this old fashion, and I think that our current attorney general is an exhibit of this, is exhibit A, this old-fashioned restraint on the part of Republicans.
Weichert: Well, Chris, if I can take this one.
Buskirk: Oh no, yeah, please do.
Weichert: First of all, I worked on the Hill for almost three years, so it doesn’t sound like a long time but you learn the ropes pretty quickly, and everybody knows that regardless of party, almost all of the old establishment folks who’ve been here for a while, the Clintons have something on these people. So, when I hear a lot of the linguini-spined Republicans coming out and kind of self-deterring any future capabilities to investigate the Clintons for, clearly, what is clearly misconduct, criminal misconduct. Some of that’s because they’re, yes, just cowards and they don’t want to give any fuel to the Trump movement, but some of it’s also because the Clintons probably have something over them, and they’re hesitant to completely act out and risk the Clintons ire. The Clintons are still very powerful, irrespective of whether they’re going to run for office again or not. Obviously, they’re not going to.
And then also, to the point about Republican cowardice, I mean, we see this time and again. The Republican Party, and it pains me to say this, but without Donald Trump the Republican Party would have gone the way of the Whig Party, and if they have their way that’s exactly what’s going to happen in another couple of years. The Wall Street Journal, I still read it, I enjoy it, they’re a great publication, but there is an implicit bias there toward democratic globalism, and that’s a bipartisan belief. So, Trump, and the movement that he represents is a threat to the corporate and political class special interests. And so, The Wall Street Journal is always going to urge caution when it comes to Republicans standing up for themselves and their candidates. [crosstalk 00:31:01]
Buskirk: And for the interest of their base of voters.
Weichert: That’s right. That’s right. That’s right. Absolutely. And so, what I would say is Jeff Sessions it was … I love Sessions. I actually know him a little bit. I think he’s a wonderful man. But it blows my mind that he completely stepped away from anything pertaining to Hillary Clinton. That’s like a police officer saying, “I can’t enforce the law because I actually know the person who committed the crime.” And I’m sorry. That is my one big problem with Jeff Sessions, is that he unilaterally during his confirmation said, “I won’t prosecute, I won’t look into anything, I won’t head an investigation to Hillary Clinton.” When we know, and this was before Trump was even sworn in, going back to Peter Schweizer’s book about the Clinton scandals. We know that the Clintons violated a retinue of laws.
I have a good friend of mine who works at the Pentagon, he was irate that Clinton was even the nominee of the democrats. He said, “If I did even one third off what this woman did with my classified clearance.” He said, “I’d be in prison right now for 25 years to life.” And frankly, that guy, my buddy does a lot more for this country than Hillary Clinton ever did. And so, the Republican weakness, some of it is because they’re just cowards, and some of it is because they don’t like Trump and what he represents and he’s a threat to their little system here in D.C., and some of it is because some of the older people that have been there for a long time, the Clintons have stuff on them, or they’re doing business with the Clintons on some level. And so, there’s this kind of inertia.
I would not expect anything different from the Wall Street Journal‘s editorial page. Again, I like the Wall Street Journal, but I just wouldn’t expect anything different from them and I would take it with a grain of salt.
Hal: So, we need to deputize the Institute for Justice or some other very rough and tough lawyers that really think this is disgusting.
Weichert: Yeah. It’s tough. I don’t know what we’re going to do. This was a common theme in my lectures last week in Palo Alto. People were basically asking, “What’s the solution?” And I said, “Well, there’s no easy fix.” I mean, this is an institutional problem that’s going to take years to fix. Donald Trump wasn’t the end of the movement, his victory did not end our fight, it’s just the beginning. And my concern is that some, if not many, people who supported Trump do not understand that just because he’s in the White House doesn’t mean that the swamp creatures are going to be slain on their own. In fact, right now I’d argue that those swamp creatures that he ran against are actually winning, and it’s very deeply disconcerting to me, because it’s going to require a concerted and consistent effort on the part of not just Trump and his people in the White House, but it’s going to be on our part as voters to hold, the republicans in particular, their feet to the fire.
Hal: Probably generation, when I think [crosstalk 00:33:49]
Weichert: It is. The generational thought. It took 80 to 100 years depending on who you read. Micheal Walsh talks a lot about basically get the progressive movement in your victory to fundamentally change our culture and I would say it’s probably going to take at least as long, and we have to start now and not stop fighting. It’s going to take about as long just to get back to where we were before the rise of the far Left.
Hal: And we cannot disarm unilaterally.
Weichert: That’s right. That’s right. That’s right. Vote for the populist.
Hal: Yup. Yeah, right on. Listen, hey, thank you for taking the call.
Weichert: Thank you.
Hal: And always a pleasure. You guys have a good night.
Weichert: You too.
Buskirk: Thanks, Hal, appreciate it, have a good one.
The way I like to frame this, Brandon, is that Donald Trump’s victory was it a victory? Yes. But more than that it was an opportunity. It was not a final victory. It gave us a little bit of breathing room, a little bit of time to get some breathing room to start to win some significant battles. This is a long war. It’s been a long time coming for us to get here, and I think, I hope that our friends on the right and some maybe even of our friends who maybe had been drawn to the left are waking up to that this isn’t a battle over policies, is not a battle over a tax rate of 39 percent, or 32 percent. This is a battle over who rules.
Weichert: It’s a battle for the soul of our country.
Buskirk: That’s right. Who is going to rule here? The demos, the people, or is it going to be the rule of the few, the oligarchs.
Weichert: And I worry right now the oligarchs are winning.
Buskirk: On that note, we will be right back.
I am Chris Buskirk, he is Seth Leibsohn, our special guest this hour has been Brandon Weichert, he’s a contributing editor at American Greatness, you can catch up with Brandon and all of his work at www.amgreatness.com.
Brandon, just got a couple of minutes here. I’m going to let you have the final word, what are you working on, what should we be paying attention to?
Weichert: I would be paying attention right now to Iran and the global price of oil. Particularly, I just gave a lecture at the Institute of World Politics about this. Basically, North Korea is going to go quiet, probably for the next 18 months, and the big issue is going to be what we’re going to do with Iran, because Congress has to make a decision on whether to honor Trump’s de-certification of the nuclear deal, and any action we take that’s aggressive against Iran will cause a spike in global prices of oil, which will directly disproportionately positively affect Russia, and only at that point, when Russia feels a little bit of a juice from the increase of oil wealth will they become any kind of threat.
Right now, they’re the Ottoman Empire in decline, but with them tethered to the petro-economy in Russia the way they are, if we do something too much against Iran, it’ll cause a global spike in energy prices, which will disproportionately assist Putin’s more aggressive tendencies, especially now that we’ve basically pushed Russia away and have isolated them. When you isolate an angry and sick dog like that they’re going to eventually lash out because it’s all they have left.
Buskirk: Where do you think American policy vis-a-vis Russia should go? Brandon’s the secretary of state, that’s where we want to be, by the way. I like that situation better than what we’ve got now. But what’s the odd, what would you council a president to be working to achieve?
Weichert: The president needs to go and form a coalition. The Russians will never join the West. They’re in opposition to the West. So, what we need to do is offer them an alternative paradigm looking at the global north. Joining a northern alliance, an economic, military, trade alliance of the United States, Canada, the European countries and Russia. Together we form a … 27 percent of the world’s oil resources are up in the global north, I think something like 29 percent of the world’s natural gas. You’re talking about a huge GDP, we’ll be able to out-compete China. China would never be able to keep up with us. We need to basically offer a sweetheart deal to the Russians, something positive, rather than letting them constantly go against us. Show them the respect that they want, which is to be treated as equals on the world’s stage by the U.S., and then offer them an in, not to the West, because they don’t want that, but into this new northern alliance.
Buskirk: Interesting. Reformulate east versus west into . . . Use different cardinal directions.
Weichert: That’s right.
Buskirk: Right.
Weichert: Right.
Buskirk: Brandon, thanks for sticking with us, appreciate it.
Weichert: Thank you, Chris, for having me.
Buskirk: We’ll have to have you back again real soon. Brandon, have a good night.
Weichert: Please. I’d love to. Good night.
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