The Federalist Radio Hour

Rachel Greszler, senior policy analyst on economics and entitlements at the Heritage Foundation, joined the Federalist Radio Hour today to discuss and explain the challenges with social security, disability and welfare programs. She said disability has become more of an unemployment insurance program. “One of the big problems there is the eligibility criteria for disability insurance includes factors that are called medical vocational factors,” she said. “These are simply your age, your skill level, and your education.” Greszler offers some alternatives and solutions to these programs such as returning to the programs’ original purposes, preventing poverty in case of disability. “If we were to replace that progressive benefit structure instead with a flat benefit and anti-poverty benefit, you could actually solve social security’s short falls.”

Stuart Stevens, a political consultant and author, joined the Federalist Radio Hour today to talk about his new book, The Last Season. Stevens reflects on experiencing the Ole Miss football season he with his father as well as his time on the Romney 2012 campaign. For the 2013 season, Stevens and his 95-year-old father attended all the Ole Miss football games together, sharing a number of joys, disappointments, and life lessons on those autumn Saturdays. He explained how his Mississippi upbringing brought him into the world of politics. “I’d always been interested in three things in my life: politics, film and writing. I’ve kind of tried to pursue all three, at various time and to various degrees of intensity,” he said. Stevens said spent a lot of time thinking about loss after the 2012 campaign. “Loss is the key that we live in, the key which life is played in. I think it’s how we adjust to that and embrace it,” he said. “One of the things that politics gave me was a very easy way to keep score and compete. I embraced it with an obsession with winning and i think that was a way not to think about the larger question of loss.” Domenech and Stevens also discussed the 2016 campaigns and the elite analyst opinions. Stevens said he doesnt think an outsider, non-politician candidate will get the nomination because it’s never happened before. “Usually in politics whenever we say, ‘this time it’s going to be different,’-- it’s usually not different, it’s just a question of when it’s not going to be different.”

Obama rebuked ISIS today by talking about climate change. Joining the Federalist Radio Hour to discuss the President’s disaster of a foreign policy is Justin Johnson, a specialist in defense budget and policy at the Heritage Foundation. Later in the hour, Paul D. Miller,  associate director of the Clements Center for History, Strategy andamp; Statecraft at The University of Texas at Austin, joined the conversation on Syrian Refugees. As more critics from Obama’s own party begin to criticize his actions or lack thereof, he continues to demonize Republicans and simply ignore his own Democratic critics. “I think President Obama seems to be living in his own alternate reality or drinking too much of his own Kool-Aid,” Johnson said. Johnson explains the situation between Russia and the Middle East with the Russian plane that was shot down and the triangle that has formed between Putin, Obama and al-Assad. “I think the idea that Assad has to go, is really out of step with reality,” Domenech said. “There was a window there where you could have gotten rid of Assad if you really pressed your foot on the pedal. The American people didn’t support that direction so it ultimately failed.” Miller said that he is confident we are not going to have 100 percent success in vetting terrorists from Syrian refugees. “The American people need to make a decision. Are they willing to accept a small heightened risk of terrorism inside our country in exchange for welcoming tens of thousands of people who genuinely need help.” He also said that allowing refugees would allow for a more controlling government. “The more we open ourselves up to the world, the more the government will feel obliged to increase it’s ability to keep tabs on everyone.

The president of the Club for Growth and former congressman, David McIntosh, joined The Federalist Radio Hour to discuss Trump’s love of lawsuits, his expectations for Paul Ryan as Speaker of the House and some stories from his own career path. As leader of one of the top conservative groups, McIntosh has taken on Donald Trump and his not-so-conservative record. Trump has issued a “cease and desist” against the Club for Growth for their ads explaining his abuse of eminent domain and other liberal policies. “I’ve come to believe the best way to think about Trump is a reality TV show star and that he’s riding whatever the last 12 hours of the news cycle is all about,” McIntosh said. “It doesnt matter if four weeks earlier he had the opposite position because it’s all entertainment.” McIntosh said the Club for Growth doesn’t expect Paul Ryan to be a conservative champion as Speaker, but that he will focus on important issues like tax and entitlement reform. “He’s a fair-minded guy so I think he will allow everyone to have their day,” he said. “I think his leadership on the Ways and Means committee shows his ability to form consensus among his colleagues on the Republican side.” The conservative movement has changed in just the last decade and McIntosh explained what broader changes he sees in American society and politics relative to that change. “My hope is this new rising generation that is passionate about giving back will learn to be leaders in that regard,” he said. “They want to be successful and at the same time want to give back and that’s the right combination for our society.”

On the radio today, David Harsanyi, senior editor at The Federalist, and Rebecca Berg, reporter at Real Clear Politics, discuss the day’s news including: Donald Trump’s stance on a Muslim database, the CNN reporter suspended for tweeting her bias, and Adele’s decision to not stream her music. Berg said Trump is now clarifying that he personally did not suggest the idea of a national database tracking American-Muslims, but that he simply acknowledged a reporter who suggest it. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard him say ‘no’ outright to a question,” she said. “This is the problem we have with Donald Trump: It’s tough to pin him down because he’s constantly evolving and changing what he’s saying.” Harsanyi and Berg explore the idea of bias media and whether unbiased reporters exist. “I’ve long argued that everyone in the media should simply be honest about their biases because every person is biased,” Harsanyi said. Later in the hour, Brent Scher from the Washington Free Beacon joined to discuss different artists’ approach to selling their music, like Adele and Justin Bieber, as well as the Apple Music CEO’s comments about women having difficulty selecting music. “It seems like [women] will play whatever pops up on their Spotify and whatever is playing like 100 times a day on whatever radio stations they listen to,” Scher said. “Going back to Adele--everybody likes that Skyfall song. She literally just shrieks ‘skyfall’ over and over again.”

Aaron Renn, senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute for policy research and founder of the Urbanophile, is on a mission to help American cities thrive and find success in sustainability. The Urbanophile joined the show today to discuss issues, from bike lanes to gentrification, that urban residents and local governments are finding in the 21st century. Renn said that in order to understand cities, we have understand their diversity and how the radical differences between cities create radically different problems. “One of things I don’t think people realize is the extent to which New York really cleaned up the police department,” he said. “The Chicago police didn’t go under nearly the amount of reform.” Later in the hour, Renn shares about his father, a retired resident of rural southern Indiana, who offers an explanation for why the Republican base hates the GOP establishment and loves Donald Trump. “It seemed to me that so much of the Republican establishment seems completely mystified by things like the Trump phenomenon, and the anger of the base and they certainly haven’t found an answer to it,” he said. “He’s all in favor of Trump basically destroying the Republican party.”

Thought crimes, safe spaces and political correctness are at their apex, especially on college campuses. Our guest today is Robby Soave, a staff editor at reason magazine and a columnist at the Daily Beast, who has been covering students’ outrage across the country. Rich Cromwell, senior contributor at the Federalist, also joined to explain why porn stars are furious with Charlie Sheen. Soave said these offended students have a lot more power than anyone thought. “They’ve redefined safety or danger or violence, in a way such that it’s still a threat to them. They’ve redefined it to be words are now a literal act of violence to them,” he said. “Grievances can be seen as just as justified as escaping refugees and people being gunned down on inner city streets.” In light of the nearing one-year anniversary of Rolling Stone’s cover story about a campus rape case that proved to be false, CNN is soon to premiere the so-called documentary, The Hunting Ground. Soave suggested the film is a work of activist propaganda. “It’s just stunning that when it comes to campus crime, it should be handled this way by administrators,” he said. “How many of these of high profile accusations have to fall apart or be far more complicated than they seemed when presented by their activist narrative?”

Daniel Drezner, professor international policy at Tufts University and a regular contributor to the Washington Post, discussed Obama’s strategy against Syria and ISIS, the American erosion of trust in institutions and government, and understanding the source of the refugee controversy. Drezner said there is a disconnect between what Americans are willing to do and the outcomes that they are seeing as a result. “They don’t want to see troops sent to Ukraine. They don’t want to see infantry sent into Syria,” he said. “That being said, when you ask [Americans] about foreign policy outcomes, they don’t like those at all.” As state governors speak out against accepting refugees and close their borders, the U.S. refugee policy has become one of the more polarizing headlines of the week. Ben Domenech explores the risks involved in allowing significant numbers of people from the Middle East and how elites refuse to acknowledge those risks. “The question is not, ‘Do you want to help these refugees?’, it is, ‘Do you want to help these refugees at the risk of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of American lives perishing in a terrorist attack from among this refugee population?’”

Molly Ball joined the Federalist Radio Hour today to discuss news from Europe, the President’s strategy against ISIS and her work on Bill de Blasio’s fight against inequality. Ball, a staff writer at the Atlantic who covers politics, said she thinks that the outsider candidates like Carson and Trump bolster the case that extreme times call for extreme measures. “You have these outsider candidates proposing outsider solutions to the problem that may be viscerally appealing to the people who elevated them in the first place because they wanted something that felt more extreme,” she said. Ball said her piece based on Bill de Blasio and the Left grew out of her fatigue in covering the Republican civil war. “I wanted to take a look at the future of the Left and the issues dividing the Democratic party,” she said. According to Ball, de Blasio’s term as mayor so far has been ironic. “You can make a strong case that he is waging a multi-front war on income inequality, at the same time, where he’s fallen down is on the politics...on the ability to respond to public opinion,” she said. Later in the hour we are joined by John Schindler, national security columnist at the Observer, to discuss Obama’s press conference about ISIS and the recent calls to close U.S. borders to Syrian refugees. Schindler said that it’s easy for world leaders to say the wrong thing, but Obama’s ability to say so many wrong things in a single press conference is a work of art. “The Obama administration has been search for a strategy on Syria and I’ve strongly criticized the lack of any strategy,” he said. “That said, I’d rather the White House have no strategy toward Syria and ISIS than have him adopt Putin’s strategy, which is deeply at odds with Western interests.”

Today on the Federalist Radio Hour, senior editor Robert Tracinski is covers all sorts of recent headlines from Trump’s 9-minute attack on Carson on Thursday to Ted Cruz’s Princess Bride impression. Jay Cost, staff writer at the Weekly Standard and author of What’s So Bad About Cronyism?, helps analyze the 2016 candidates and voters. Cost said he thinks Trump has more or less peaked as far as polls go. “When you look more closely at the polling data, it’s really hard to envision him getting more than he’s getting right now,” Cost said. Asawin Suebsaeng, deputy social media manager at the Daily Beast, gives his perspective on the free speech unrest at American universities. Suebsaeng said in comparing these protests to the civil rights and radical leftism protests of the ‘60s, we should find these Millennials protests over political correctness more refreshing. “In one way you could look at it and say we’ve made a lot of progress with college kids. They’re less violent student-organized protests than they used to be,” he said. Rachel Lu, senior contributor at the Federalist and resident philosopher, talk about the value of a degree in philosophy in light of Marco Rubio’s recent comments dismissing the study. “Among the things that philosophers value are the ability to understand abstract ideas, make clear arguments, to express thoughts in concise and precise ways,” she said. “Even people who aren’t going to working on academic philosophy professionally, there’s a lot of value to the study of philosophy.”

For weeks now, the internet has been flooded with arguments surrounding Star Wars in expectation of the franchise’s latest movie. Today on the Federalist Radio Hour, we discussed some of those arguments with the very writers who made them. Sonny Bunch, Jonathan Last, Lyman Stone, and David Harsanyi weigh in on the Jedi and the Empire. Bunch, executive editor at the Washington Free Beacon, said that we can expect to be disappointed by The Force Awakens because life is nothing but a series of escalating disappointments until you die. “You are never going to recapture that first thrill of Star Wars--that’s never going to happen again. Certainly not in the Star Wars universe,” he said. Bunch and Lyman Stone, contributor at the Federalist, argued whether the destruction of Alderaan and mass murder was justified. “Sonny’s argument that this is somehow a legitimate military target, that these people can be viewed as combatant, is nonsense on it’s face that comes from, I would say, not simply watching the movies enough times,” he said. Jonathan Last, a senior writer for the Weekly Standard, explains why the Jedi are actually the bad guys, what feminists should find problematic about the Jedi mind trick and why Empire is not actually that evil. “For one thing, the Jedi, they love slavery,” he said. “You never once see any example, in any of the six movies, of the Empire enslaving anybody.”

With today’s release of the “Fallout 4” videogame, The Federalist Radio Hour was joined by Ashe Schow and Brandon Morse to talk about video game culture, escapism, the looming “reset culture”, and the game itself. Schow is a commentary writer at the Washington Examiner and Senior Political Columnist at the Observer. She shares her story, interests as a gamer and her love of video game characterization. “A lot of the games I play and enjoy are the ones where the hero doesnt have so much of a personality,” she said. “I like being able to choose the personality for them.” Morse is political editor at EveryJoe and a contributor at The Federalist. He explained the storyline and excitement around “Fallout 4,” and discusses some of the political feedback he’s received on his review of the new game. “For Fallout, I think for a lot of people it brings out their inner libertarian. No government there. You are your own government,” he said. “You protect yourself. I think deep down it resonates with everyone else too.” They also discuss the “reset culture” created by video games as a culprit for Millennials attitudes and instances like the ones at Yale, Mizzou, many universities. “People have this mindset that, ‘If things are going bad for me in a video game, I can just hit the reset button or I can go to my last save, I can do this the right way or the way that I want it to go, as opposed to deal with this adversity that set me back’,” Domenech said. Domenech said it seems that if this is the mindset that Millennials have adopted, either from video games or from other experiences, then it’s a good explanation for why these instances are happening more often on college campuses.

Author of Being Nixon: A Man Divided, Evan Thomas, joined the Federalist Radio Hour today to share what complex layers he found in the thirty-seventh president. He tells the Federalist some of the more telling anecdotes he found while researching Nixon and explains some of the difficult moments of his life and presidency. “He’s a difficult guy to pin down ideologically,” Thomas said. “He’s confusing because on one hand he’s appealing to conservatives, his rhetoric is conservative, but he’s passing a lot of liberal legislation.” Thomas and Domenech discuss some of quiet good that Nixon did--his effort to integrate schools in the South, his opening of the door to China, and being the first president to visit Moscow and personally negotiate an arms deal. Thomas explained how he found that Nixon resisted any analysis of himself. “I’m doing what people have done for thousands of years--I’m studying hubris and power,” he said. “I’m trying to human him and make him a human being. Not a stick figure. Not an ogre. Not the Hollywood version. But an actual person.”

Chris Moody, senior reporter for CNN politics, gives the Federalist Radio Hour his insight on the 2016 race after seeing many candidates up close on the campaign trail. He also shares some of his latest not-so-political reports, called Being Moody, about the base jumping festival in West Virginia and the Pawn Star who endorses Marco Rubio. After visiting Iowa and seeing some of the conservative voters in person, he said they have a lot of options when it comes to candidates and if they feel like they need to leave Ben Carson, Ted Cruz has been working hard in Iowa since 2012 and is standing by. “Ben Carson has peaked now and he’s going through this whole vetting process,” he said. “Don’t discount Ted Cruz because I think he has those people’s ear.” Pawn Stars’ star Rick Harrison received a lot of negative fan mail after announcing his endorsement for Marco Rubio. Moody said he decided to stop by and talk to Harrison about it when he was in Las Vegas for the Democratic debate. “Anytime you see somebody in the spotlight supporting a Republican, that’s interesting because their on not many in popular culture,” he said. Finally, Moody offers his proposal to fix the controversial debate system implemented by the RNC. He said that while debating about debates is nothing new and it’s something that has always been complained about, which is why the RNC really took the reigns this year. “There were not supposed to be big problems in the debate process this year, but then you have 15 candidates that are running and it’s really difficult,” he said. “I think I would still stick with what we have now, but I would also love to see one-on-one debate match-ups.”

James Rosen, Chief Washington Correspondent for Fox News, joins the Federalist Radio Hour to talk about his new book, his conversations with Vice President Dick Cheney, his media career and his Beatles obsession. In Rosen’s book, Cheney One on One, the journalist interviews Dick Cheney over the course of several days about his life and political career that spans across decades. Rosen covered the Bush-Cheney White House for Fox News and traveled the world with Dick Cheney as vice president to the Middle East and elsewhere. Rosen wrote about unique elements of Cheney’s administration that show he was not the Darth Vader so many people assume he is. One example being the arrangement between his staff and President’s staff. “Cheney had all to often seen how vice presidential staffs were not linked up with the presidential staff, were isolated and it led to political problems and misunderstandings and tensions,” he said. “So as a deliberate measure he integrated his staff into President Bush’s staff and that doesn’t strike me as empire-building.” Later in the hour, he discusses the season of upheaval journalism and how it’s another function of the digital revolution--that may just be in its infancy for all we can tell. “It’s never been easier to get information, but you have more sources throwing it at you and it’s not easy to tell whom to trust, and that’s the burden of the so-called digital natives,” he said.