The Federalist Radio Hour

Molly Ball, politics writer for The Atlantic, joined the Federalist Radio Hour to discuss how the republican party is dealing with their nominee who is at odds with so much of the party and its leaders. Ball explains her understanding of how the Tea Party, conservative media, and other specific factions within the conservative movement should or should not take responsibility for the success of Trump. The Republican Party is divided and its seems unlikely that the future will see it uniting around Trump. It is hard to imagine this not being some kind of divorce, Ball said. I dont think were going to see Bill Kristol come around and start holding hands with Trump in the name of solidarity. Ball explained how the Tea Party was a coalition of resentment voters and ideological conservatives, but we didnt know that until Trump came along. Trump fundamentally redrew the battle lines of that old civil war and created a new one, she said.

Matt Battaglia is a designer, illustrator, and comic book enthusiast. Battaglia joined Ben Domenech in the studio to review Captain America: Civil War and to explain the ins and outs of the comic book industry. This latest superhero movie is adapted from an original story arc from the comic version of Captain America. The movie really fleshes out Captain Americans side and actually brings a lot of the political debates of personal and individual responsibility vs. the strong hand of government taking over for these heroes, he said. The comic book industry has experienced weird shifts and changes in recent years, from the rise of self-publishing to the politically correct character trends. Marvel and DC have turned there comics for the most part into weird political thought pieces, Battaglia said. While I think its fine to have a diverse cast, it seems weird when you force it in ways that arent really story driven or if its just done simply to do it. Later in the hour, Battaglia explains how entertainment and fandom have changed the market for comic books and characters. The focus has shifted where the fandom is the focus, rather than the actual product. Which is interesting in that being a fan of comics is now...has become the thing to be.

Caleb Brown, director of multimedia at the Cato Institute, joined the Federalist Radio Hour to discuss wealth and mobility in America, pop culture and King of the Hill it relates to politics, and using culture to bridge the gap between people and economics. Lessons about liberty and contrarian principles are less frequently found in pop culture, but there are few exceptional examples by actor and director Mike Judge. I think Hank Hill is a classic American character, Brown said. King of the Hill in particular presents an idea of an American, middle-aged, conservative man who has a lot of his own prejudices to deal with but hes not a bad guy. The great irony of populism is that a large dissatisfaction with the government often leads to giving the government more power. Get the government out of it is rarely every presented as a serious option and if it is, its not usually adopted, Brown said.

Jonathan Last, senior writer at The Weekly Standard, joined the Federalist Radio Hour to discuss the success of the Trump phenomenon, the politics of Captain America and Iron Man in Civil War, and why the Little Mermaid is the worst Disney princess. Trumps position as a life long New Yorker was a one point used against him but he has turned the insult on its head to drive media attention. It helps that hes a rich New Yorker, Last said. Being a guy who has spend 40 or so years in New York, going to all the cocktail parties where he knows all the anchors from the network news shows, they all shop at the same stores...he has access and good will built up with these people. Last explained how the original comic version of Captain America and Iron Man align with American schools of thought on foreign and domestic policy. Marvel really stacks the deck here in favor of the Captain America position, which is that these guys should be free, he said. How could liberal democracy function in a world where there were people who had the power to control thoughts? How could you trust that any election was a free and fair election? Later in the hour, Last ranked the best and worst Disney princess and explained his fascination with the Barbie Life in the Dreamhouse series. The Life in the Dreamhouse series is a send up of not just the entire Barbie culture, but all of American culture, consumerism, local news, media, and reality television. All at once. It is genius.

Dr. Matthew Mehan, teaching fellow at Hillsdale College, joined the Federalist Radio Hour today discuss how Shakespeare is still applicable to pop culture, the true meaning of Liberal Arts, and what Shakespeare can teach our statesmen and community leaders. Shakespeares understanding of public leadership was very practical, and through characters like the Prince of Denmark, he demonstrates how leaders must be citizens first. You actually need to go through the difficult work of rising in community with trust and growing in good faith and taking office, Mehan said. The willingness of leaders to actually suffer is a huge Shakespearean lesson. The trending darkness of American TV characters and story arcs are can be drawn from threads of Shakespeares cannon. From the Dark Knight to Game of Thrones, Shakespeare exploration of tragedy and anger remains influential. Despite existing in one of the most open-minded, engaging and technologically advance eras, the American people are angrier than ever with our leaders. Coming up with the artful, rhetorical way to lead people in stages, but not the kind of faux lead people in stages...but actually engaged with living people before they die...that requires real rhetorical imagination and real poetics, Mehan said.

Olivier Knox, Chief Washington Correspondent for Yahoo! News, joined the Federalist Radio Hour to discuss the latest news coming out of the White House and Obamas foreign policy advisors, the White House Correspondents Dinner and the future of relationships between the President and the press. In the area of foreign policy, more so than domestic, people who have experience working in foreign policy have up until this point been unwilling to work for Donald Trump. Despite what a lot of conservative writers and thinkers are arguing in public, I think there is going to be a Republicans-coming-home-to-Trump-effect, Knox said. As a board member of the White House Correspondents Association, Knox said he is concerned about the future of the first amendment and the executive administrations push for state-run media messaging. I dont want the first draft of history to be a photograph by the official White House photographer whose job it is to make the president look good, he said. I want news photographers to be at that event.

Frank Buckley, author of The Way Back: Restoring the Promise of America, joined the Federalist Radio Hour to discuss a theory of pursuing socialist ends through capitalist means and the issue of economic upward mobility across our country. Buckley reflected on the results of the 2012 election and the way American social classes have evolved since. We have grown a new class of aristocrats above the commanding heights of our economy a small group of people, not the one percent, so much as the two or three percent composed of academics...lawyers..trust fund babies... The problems effecting the white working class are of a different nature than some of the problems effecting the working class more generally, Domenech said. When it comes to the success of Donald Trump, it seems to me it is no accident that out of the states that have voted thus far, that are in the top 20 of recipients of federal disability aid, that Donald Trump won all but three of them, Domenech said. Buckley said the country is ready for a Machiavellian moment. We are to understand American politics today not in terms of a Right and Left continuum, but rather a virtue-corruption continuum, Buckley said. And that explains both the rise of Bernie Sanders and to some extent Donald Trump.

Robert Tracinski, staff writer at The Federalist, joined the Federalist Radio Hour to discuss the possibility of a third-party and an alternative candidate for those who cant bring themselves to vote for Trump or Clinton. They explored the logistics of such a party, what name or label they should adopt, and the potential candidates they could look to for leadership. Tracinksi said we need an alternative or parallel leadership for the right-wing coalition and for all the conservatives running down the ballot at state and local levels. A way for them to still be on the Republican ticket, because its too late to change that, but still be able to not be answerable to the freak show that is going to be going on in the general election, he said. The label liberal has now been dropped by the Left, in favor calling themselves progressives. There is a long history of the term liberal meaning pro freedom, pro free market, Tracinski said. I think what youre doing is youre piling on top of the creation of a third-party, the extra project of reclaiming a basic word in American politics. There are number of factions such as social conservatives, neoconservatives, Libertarians and others, who all have problems with Trump, but also all have problems with each other. Thats the way the system is supposed to work because its supposed to keep us from charging off a cliff with 20 percent faction that has its own special interest that may not be good for the rest of the country.

Matt Lewis, senior contributor at the Daily Caller and commentator at CNN, joined the Federalist Radio Hour to discuss the future of the Republican party, a general election between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, and the ways in which the media has an impact on both. The conversation across social media right now is around the resistance to back Trump and the #NeverTrump movement. I think that some of the so-called #NeverTrump people will become #NeverHillary people because there an invisible force that wants to make this a binary choice, that forces you to pick a side, Lewis said. Lewis said he thought the role that Fox News played in this cycle was significant, but its hard to indict the entire network. It matters more for Fox because they impact the Republican primary more than anybody, but its about ratings, Lewis said. I mean this has been great for business. Later in the hour, Domenech and Lewis discussed the courses of the last years campaigns, and what has surfaced as what conservatives really care about. I dont think they care about the Constitution. Ted Cruz could talk until hes blue in the face about being a constitutional conservative-- doesnt matter if youve lost your job or if someone is taking your job, Lewis said.

Andrea Tantaros, political commentator and author of Tied Up In Knots: How Getting What We Wanted Made Women Miserable, joined the Federalist Radio Hour to discuss some of the things that the feminist movements of previous generations got wrong. Later in the hour, author and blogger Donna Carol Voss joined to describe what she thinks the fourth wave of feminism should look like. Now you have women wanting these careers and kicking butt in the office, but they still have these female duties, Tantaros said. Women are doubly stressed out and unhappy... so its a long way of saying the genders are pretty confused. Domenech commented on Ted Cruzs last stand that will take place in the Indiana primary and what he expects to see happen. Cruz actually started out quite popular among Republicans, he said. But as the field shrunk and as Trump turned his attention toward attacking Ted Cruz for the first time, Cruzs negatives went up, because of the Lyin Ted meme that Trump was able to apply so effectively. andnbsp;

Steve Hilton, former advisor to David Cameron and now CEO of CrowdPack, joined the Federalist Radio Hour to share his experiences trying to implement a reformed conservative agenda in the UK and how it has shaped his view of American politics. His book, More Human: Designing a World Where People Come First, explores fundamental changes that governments can make beyond policy. The underlying reason for anger and frustration that you see in this presidential election is the systems and the structures weve built to run the modern world have just become too big and bureaucratic and distant from the human scale, Hilton said. Corporations, businesses, and lobbyists are an inevitable roadblock to fundamental change. In the end it comes down to a leader or a group of leaders...you just have to have people elected to positions of power who really want to do this, and who are pretty demented about it because the barriers are so great, he said. Hilton described the challenges the conservative movement in the UK faced coming out of a period of wilderness and how it may compare to what the GOP may be preparing to face after 2016. It is important to craft everything based on an understanding of peoples real lives, he said. I think too often this conversation gets too ideological, too impractical and too distant from the reality of peoples daily lives. andnbsp; andnbsp;

Deirdre McCloskey, an American economist and long time professor, joined the Federalist Radio Hour to discuss inequality, free markets, and her latest book, Bourgeois Equality: How Ideas, Not Capital or Institutions, Enriched the World.  McCloskey explained how much better off the world is now compared to our ancestors, despite our desire for the nostalgic good old days. From 1800 to the present, world income has increased by a factor of 10 in real terms, and if you allow for a quality change, its more like a factor of 100, she said.  The scope of a modern life is dramatically larger...because the attitude toward the Bourgeois changed. Later in the hour, McCloskey shared her development as an economist and how her thoughts on socialism, Marxism, and equality evolved over time. If youre the child of a Harvard professor as I was, you have no idea where productivity or income comes from, she said. Economics in the material sense cannot explain the modern world, how rich we got. andnbsp;

Senior Editor David Harsanyi joined Ben Domenech in the studio to discuss Carly Fiorina’s addition to the Ted Cruz ticket, Donald Trump’s attempt at a foreign policy speech, and some of the best and worst TV shows currently offered on streaming services. Harsanyi said he doesn’t think naming Fiorina as Cruz’s running mate will have any significant benefit in Indiana or California. “I think she competent and would do a good job, but there’s not one poll number in any polling that I’ve seen that tells me she’s going to change anything,” he said. “I think Boehner calling [Cruz] ‘Lucifer in the flesh’ probably helps him more.” Ted Cruz is often toted as the most hated man in Washington by elites, and as the Zodiac Killer by teenagers. Harsanyi and Domenech discussed how Cruz’s likability has both helped and hurt him. “I’m not sure I’ve seen a politician as prominent as him, since Richard Nixon, that had that level of personal awkwardness in all of his relations with humanity,” Domenech said. Later in the hour, Harsanyi shared some of his takes on the newest season of Silicon Valley, Daredevil and The Walking Dead. “What’s great about Silicon Valley, not just that it’s incredibly funny and it mocks Silicon Valley and people in that industry, but you also learn a little bit about building a company,” he said.

Senior Editor Mollie Hemingway joined Ben Domenech in the studio to discuss Donald Trump’s sweep in the Northeastern States’ primaries, the recent death of Prince and make to make of the loss, and her reports from the most recent congressional hearing on the trafficking of aborted baby parts. “If he had never sung a song, he would still be one of the world’s best guitar players,” Hemingway said of Prince. “That’s how talented he was.” Hemingway said since Prince’s death, many journalists have attempted to characterize him as gender bending and queer. “For one thing he was a man who dressed in a feminine way frequently,” she said. “But this was a guy who did more for female self-esteem than anybody by recognizing and praising female sexuality.” Last week, the House Select Panel on Infant Lives heard testimonies from witnesses about evidence of a widespread market for for unborn baby parts. Hemingway recapped the hearing and what the witnesses had to say. “The first thing they showed is that federal prohibits profiting from the sale or transfer of fetal parts,” she said. “Then they showed that abortion clinics don’t actually do any work to get these aborted baby parts. Other people come into a clinic and they do everything.”

Bre Payton, staff writer at The Federalist, joined Ben Domenech in studio today to debate about whether Beyonce’s new album is a marketing ploy, the differing definitions of beauty according men and women, and the firing of Mizzou professor Melissa Click. Many have asked about the racial and political undertones in “Lemonade” and the mantle Beyonce has taken up for the Black Lives Matter movement. “I’m almost wondering if there is pressure within the music industry to comply with the Black Lives Matter movement,” Payton said. In other celebrity news, People Magazine recently declared actress Jennifer Aniston the most beautiful woman in the world, and many men are surprised. “I’ve been saying for years that there is a huge difference between what men think is pretty and what women think is pretty,” Payton said. Domenech argued that there is a middle ground, as in a type of appearance that both men and women find attractive. “I would argue that’s what you see 90 percent of the time on TV… It’s trying to be what both men and women will find attractive without being over the top in sex appeal,” he said.