Left Face
Join Adam Gillard and Dick Wilkinson while they talk politics and community engagement in Pikes Peak region.
Left Face
Geopolitical Tensions and Media Narratives: Ukraine, U.S. Strategy, and Space Command Headquarters Debate
What happens when Ukraine strikes deeper into Russian territory? Discover the escalating tensions and potential nuclear threats that have the world on edge. Join us on Left Face as we navigate the complex geopolitical landscape, analyzing Ukraine’s bold moves and the strategic responses from the U.S. Explore the volatile clash over the Space Command headquarters between Colorado Springs and Huntsville, a battle with far-reaching military and political consequences. Our commitment to supporting Ukraine against Russian aggression is unwavering as we dissect these critical global developments.
We turn our attention to the political chessboard, examining the Trump administration's choice of appointees through the lens of ideology versus qualifications. Pete Hegseth, a former Fox News host, emerges as a central figure, raising questions about military leadership and the Department of Defense's direction. Dive into the media's love-hate relationship with Trump, understanding how his headlines shape public discourse and perceptions of election integrity. Through the lens of media bias, we unravel the narratives that sway public opinion, painting a vivid picture of the shifting landscape of political discourse in America.
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Hello everyone and welcome back to Left Face, the podcast that discusses the veteran perspective on political topics in Colorado and the United States. I am Dick Wilkinson and I'm joined with my co-host, Adam Gillard. Hey, Dick, how you doing, bud? I'm doing great and, as we knew last week when we left off with that episode, that we'd have a lot to cover this week.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know, we were just sitting down talking about what we want to talk about today. One thing I forgot is we should talk about our prophetic skills, like some of the things that we talked about. That should happen. They're actually doing, starting with the Ukraine war. They've actually kind of lifted some of the restrictions on that and they're allowing them to strike further in.
Speaker 1:And nobody waited on that at all. Right, there was no thinking, or you know how do we want to tiptoe into this? That didn't happen, yeah.
Speaker 2:Because we saw like the Trump administration starting coming together and they started talking about plans and stuff like that. And you know they start, you know, drawing up DMZ areas and concessions of land to Russia. Yeah, yeah. Ukraine's over there, just like pounding on the button.
Speaker 1:Things got serious fast, yeah, and that's kind of been my punditry comment over the last week is if I'm Zelensky, I'm loading every round I've got and pointing it towards Moscow, and however close it gets is where it lands.
Speaker 2:You know yeah.
Speaker 1:Just keep shooting.
Speaker 2:Don't stop shooting. It's like when you have a traumatic injury and you're in the hospital and they give you that morphine drip and they let you hit the button every 15 minutes. But in between there, you just keep hitting that button yeah. He's over there just hitting that button as fast as he could.
Speaker 1:And yeah, because I mean he's on life support. So that's a great analogy there, because, yeah, there's an end date to this situation, yeah, the support is going away, yeah, and they know something's got to happen, right, there could even be I don't think anybody wants there to be a nuclear event, but there is benefit on the Ukraine side to drawing in and this is happening, like today the much more aggressive weaponry and the more aggressive tactics of Russia Russia has even said that there's a site in Poland that they're willing to strike wakes them up.
Speaker 2:Maybe it brings interest back into the war, versus like kind of going away quietly and just letting someone else decide your fate, right, yeah we have a lot that polish base, uh, we have a lot of folks staged there, uh, so if that, if they go after that, that would be a huge strike on us.
Speaker 1:oh, yeah, completely, yeah, yeah, yeah, he's going to be involved.
Speaker 2:Yeah, now it's a hot war, we're going right at it, but the threat of Putin using his nuclear weapons obviously is always there. The surety if they're going to work isn't yeah Well, and that is.
Speaker 1:The news story this morning is that Ukraine claims there was an intercontinental ballistic missile shot at just a closer range. I mean, of course you can always just put less fuel in the tank and shoot it up, and it just comes back down. It doesn't have to show that. Hey, just to remind people that we can do this when we decide to. And that seems to be the case. I think in the last 24 hours Russia is starting to take that posture.
Speaker 2:But I think he knows that if he puts that nuke on there, that's the end of all of it.
Speaker 1:Because their military is already severely depleted.
Speaker 2:So if they want to bring the US in full force it didn't go well for them against Ukraine in the start it's going to be bad, I agree. They know that.
Speaker 1:Nobody on the outside looking in wants that to happen and it's not an advantage to them if they do it. You're right, you're absolutely right. So I think that's the deterrent. More than a mutually assured destruction type situation, it's more of it's kind of a waste of playing your ace card. You know what I'm saying? He's throwing your ace of clubs out there and saying I got this and it doesn't matter you know.
Speaker 2:So I think he'll keep rattling these sabers and like he'll keep saying he's on that button until january 20th, and then, oh, trump saved us from a nuclear annihilation yes no, yeah, no, they were never gonna do it. Yeah, uh, so yeah, I don't think. I don't think they have any um wins coming. They wouldn't win anything by launching that. They would end their own government there if they did that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it would be a death knell for sure, and I guess I appreciate that. We saw where that was going and just the little eeks here and there of noise and just the little eeks here and there of like noise you know, especially from the actual Trump administration, made it pretty clear that something you know was going to change in the next, in the very near term.
Speaker 2:And it has.
Speaker 1:So good for them. I'm pro-Ukraine on this one, you know. I'll share my allegiances there.
Speaker 2:I'm never going to be pro-Russia.
Speaker 1:It's pretty sad how we need to be clear about that. Yeah, I figured it's worth stating out loud at least once on the show. Well, that brings us into speaking of near piers and big international conflict type situations. We've got the Space Command is headquartered here in Colorado Springs. That was a hard-fought situation for a couple of years on the political end of the deal. Where where will Space Force's headquarters be? Where will the Space Command be as far as the combatant command? And here it is.
Speaker 1:But the pull was between Huntsville, alabama and Colorado Springs, was between Huntsville Alabama and Colorado Springs, and there was consternation over the idea that, because Alabama is a red state loyal to Trump, that it would gain favor in future military basing decisions, and that came around in his last administration. So here we are again where we do have built-in infrastructure and personnel in Colorado Springs, but it would just be the wave of a pin to move a lot of that activity to Huntsville Alabama if there was any political interest or even just a favor that was considered to be owed or something like that, right? So what's your take on that?
Speaker 2:So there's been no movement on that and the Trump administration Really hasn't said anything. So everything that we talk about now Is just kind of based off of what they've done in the past and said in the past. Right, and it moving to Huntsville, it probably wouldn't be the worst thing in the world.
Speaker 1:Sure From the success of the military mission.
Speaker 2:And when you look at what would be moving there, it'd be 1,200 some forces or people, personnel, the big wigs, the four stars, things like that, the missions themselves. They're going to stay here.
Speaker 1:Yeah, because that's where the infrastructure is Right.
Speaker 2:And every command center needs their backups Right, and every command center needs their backups right. So, whether it stays here, if they say it's going to stay here right now or not, Huntsville's building the backup or somewhere's building a backup and it's going to have better capabilities for the headquarters, for that cadre of 1,200 big wig officers that when they show up on the ops floor it's just disrupt everything.
Speaker 1:So having them in.
Speaker 2:Alabama is not always a terrible thing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah, you want to know when they're coming. Get away from the flagpole is the term that we use, right? If you can keep your ops away from the flagpole, you tend to have better ops, right.
Speaker 2:Right, whether it moves during the Trump administration or in 10 or 15 years, when their full coop site backup sites, things like that, are built out and have the same capabilities. Because we did the same thing with CENTCOM yeah, centcom gets operated from Florida now, yeah, tampa, yeah, with that staying as the backup to keep continuity there. Yeah, like you'll have something similar here where, whether it's here or there, both sites are going to be building up a command center for the other to be the backup, and I mean that's just the natural order of how big military organizations get put together.
Speaker 2:Exactly, and so a lot of the huff over it right now is just noise, and long-term, I take very much on the political end of the spectrum more than on the actual military operational end. Yes, yeah, I think they understand a little bit more what's going. What the long-term ramifications? Um, but you know. So. Speaking of that, though, those long-term ramifications not so much much of the space command generals where they sit, but if they're sitting in Alabama making decisions on where to put the next systems not the ones that we have right now and things like that.
Speaker 2:And that's the long-term ramifications where we'll see more impact versus the missions that we have for Space Force right now.
Speaker 1:Yeah, sure, I mean that's fair, that there'll be pet projects and affinities that get drawn towards wherever the general officer sits, and yeah, that those things will get funded and get new shiny, build out stuff. And again, that's not even a political function, that's just what happens in the military.
Speaker 2:So that's fine, yeah, so that's fine yeah.
Speaker 1:So but let's think about it from the perspective of there. There will be some people here that would have to make a decision about moving their family. They're not necessarily active duty military personnel. Active duty military personnel understand that. You know, with the drop of a hat it may be time to move. And so if someone says, guess what you're? You're going to go be the you know first sergeant of this unit and it's time to go, you got to be there in three months. That's what you do, right? So that doesn't really matter to the active duty folks, you know. But the, the rest of the workforce, the civilians and the contractors that are very much a part of a headquarters element, right, I mean, that's usually. At least half of your personnel are civilian and those civilian folks.
Speaker 2:They are in such a hierarchical system. If, when they say that they're moving to Alabama and you work here and you have high seniority and you don't want to move, you can look down at the guy below you and be like, hey, I'm not going this billet's for you, yeah. I'm taking this one here.
Speaker 1:I'm staying here, you're going, and then it's a forced kind of situation of if your family doesn't want to move, can't move. Your kids are in some school situation. Whatever it is, there may not be the same compassionate reassignment rules that some of the military folks can use, and so it becomes a decision of do I keep this job or do I need to start looking for another job Right job or do I need to start looking for another job? And I think there's probably some of our listeners that are either directly in that kind of decision mode you know they're at least have to think about it or their, their coworkers or family and friends here are kind of focused on if those changes happen, will it impact their job?
Speaker 2:Yeah, and then you're talking about moving to Alabama, where women don't have the same rights. That is true. So there's more of those states.
Speaker 1:State by state. You know kind of pick your, choose your own adventure as far as your rights.
Speaker 2:Yeah, how terrible.
Speaker 1:There's an impact there to that decision has a different wrinkle in it. Now for sure, medical choices if you used to be, if you're in the United continuous 48 states, it didn't matter, right, like medical choices were, that wasn't huge impact on your decision to move. Now it is.
Speaker 1:And it's not the same. The factors that you bring into moving your family have changed. So if we'd like to kind of start to get a little more feedback from our listeners and we think this is a local topic that the folks that are listening to us might actually have some input on so we'd love to hear your opinion or, especially, we'd love to hear your story if you're facing any kind of decisions around base closures, bases moving and missions around from one place to another. If there's anything like that that's on your horizon and you'd like to communicate with us about that, we're going to try and start using Facebook a little bit more to look for comments and feedback. So, Adam, can you tell us about that?
Speaker 2:You know, as we see, yeah, we talked about doing the Facebook, so, yeah, I'll post this on Facebook, this link to this podcast. Yeah, leave your comments in there. But Blue Sky, too, we should probably start using that. I'll try to set up an account on there.
Speaker 1:So, yeah, we'll start using the socials better and you can always reach out at info at epccpvorg and that goes straight to me and we can respond that way too. Yeah, I know the email almost feels like the cumbersome route these days. It used to be that email was was the convenient way to communicate with somebody, but technology has moved so far past that now that it's like you know if you want me to write an email.
Speaker 2:It's almost like yeah, I asked you to go buy a stamp, exactly.
Speaker 1:Nobody's got time for that.
Speaker 2:I just want to talk to my phone and it's going to tell you what I said.
Speaker 1:Yeah, exactly so. Please consider, you know, reaching out to us to talk about this topic or any other topic that we've covered, but we know this one has some local implications, so we'd love to hear your story. Uh, if there's anything about space command or the future of the military units here, that is starting to kind of weigh on you, uh, we'd like to know what, what are you considering and how's it going to impact you and your family? So this brings us onto our next topic, which is the nomination for secretary of defense. Gentleman named Pete Hegseth. That came out within just a few days.
Speaker 1:Uh, when Trump started to name cabinet picks, he was one of the first two or three. Yeah, so he was top of the mind, top of list for Trump to, I think, set the tone for what his nomination sequence was about to look like. Um, and I don't know. I think he also saw what he believed at the time was probably an easy win as far as like Senate nomination type stuff. So get your first. Maybe you mixed it's a bit of mixed bag, but you know he knew there was. He was going to throw some curve balls out there and compared to the spin and ferocity of the curve on some of the other folks.
Speaker 2:Pete is actually almost one of the most straightforward people in the mix right, but that's what you got to be careful too. You know, like when you skew the standard so much and you start putting people with like active ethics violations or investigations and not disclosing those things. You know, there's some of these appointees that are just like I don't know how they got to, where they are Any other circumstance that wouldn't even be in the room or considered.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but since they've bent the knee and they've kissed enough ass over the years, they're going to get these really high positions, yeah right. Yeah, there's Cheeto dust all over their lips, yeah, and so you have these really outlandish extreme ones. Some of these other ones that are not that bad will slide under, but they're still not really qualified for the position. I know you did some research on. He came from Fox News. It came from Fox News.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, I mean, that's what he's most recently like as far as name recognition and, of course, people that are in Trump's bandwagon, they know exactly who he is right Like. They like waking up on Saturday and watching Pete chop it up with the other hosts on the news. He's the weekend edition news guy. But here's the thing he was in the military. He was in the military, he was in the army. His last rank, when he separated, was major and he was the national guard. So he did do some deployments as an infantryman, but he was never an active duty service member. He was always a national guard.
Speaker 2:But he was an infantry officer.
Speaker 1:Yes, as far as I understand, that's what his job was. His entire time of service was infantry and he did a tour, at least one tour in Iraq and one tour in Afghanistan. National Guard troops usually went out for a year, so I'm assuming you know he had two to three years total of actual active duty time, maybe more. So he's he's had a little taste of both, not just a fully like drilling weekend warrior type dude. He had, you know, combat experience and he has a bronze stars with valor. So you know, as we always say on the show here, you got an honorable discharge.
Speaker 2:You know we're not here to take digs on your military career at all.
Speaker 1:So I think that there's always the argument around is someone, does someone have enough senior leadership experience in different places or positions to handle a certain role? That's not in trump's equation for picking someone at all right.
Speaker 2:Well, and he, you know he harps on that. So much about you know, you know, drowning the swamp and getting rid of the, the deep state and things like that. So like, yeah, you can't be a deep state if you've only been around for 10 years right, exactly so.
Speaker 1:So, like it's in his equation.
Speaker 2:Like you said you, it's built into his algorithm for how he peaks, picks people yeah yeah for sure.
Speaker 1:Uh, that also limits the um. It increases the loyalty factor of. You're not going to pick up your Rolodex and start calling people that I don't agree with and looking for like backup Right. You're not going to start trying to bring in a coalition of people that agree with you so that you can push back on me, because that's what happened in Trump's first administration was the same. People early on were like we kind of need to rally the troops and either get this guy kind of back away from the stage a little bit or put up some sort of resistance to some of these things that are happening as kind of a unified front, even though we're all here to help him. We kind of want to bring a little more sanity to the process.
Speaker 2:He's not about that at all, yeah because Matt is acting as his sec def.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's who I'm speaking of.
Speaker 2:That's a four-star general that has been in charge of hundreds thousands of people.
Speaker 1:Yeah, sitcom commander in the box Making decisions.
Speaker 2:And now we're stepping down to again thank you for your service, but down to a major the experience is totally different.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's totally different, totally different.
Speaker 2:And even when Trump got rid of Mattis and went with Tillerson, next Was it Tillerson.
Speaker 1:I don't remember.
Speaker 2:He had a businessman. Maybe Tillerson was Secretary of State, I don't know. It was such a revolving door for SECTA for a while. There he tried businessmen too. But you're right, he's looking for somebody that is, I don't want to say, not qualified. It's unqualified. He's unqualified for it but at this point in his life right. But he's given that opportunity to get there. But he knows that he owes his job and that loyalty to Trump.
Speaker 1:He knows that he knows his boundaries are set by Trump, right, and he's not going to try and flank Trump on anything. And here's the. You know, I think for Pete Hegseth specifically, it has been his mouthpiece against being the woke military. That's what Trump really loves is that he brings that up in his uh books and in his podcast appearances and even on fox news. You know he would just trash the idea of like the woke military, um, and that it, you know, reduces the lethality of the force, and he gets into all of those topics. He has the view of no women in combat and that there's a way. Oh, he wants to change the name of the department of defense back to the department of war.
Speaker 1:Trump and Hegseth together would like to change that name and redefine some of the roles of what the secretary for that cabinet position does. Yeah, so those are. It's the ideology, right, it's not the qualification, it's the ideology that spoke Trump's language. It's, you know, listen to Trump at a rally and then go on a podcast and repeat what Trump said, but in your own words. And now you've got a good friend. You know, you've got your path to victory. If you're trying to get the favor of Trump Right, it's just repeat a lot of what he says. Or you're even better if you say something and then Trump starts repeating you. You're like I got it, I'm on message Right and I think that's been his key to what we could call success. I think landing in the secretary role most people would call that success.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, that's a win, you know.
Speaker 1:And so I think that he figured out the math right. He figured out the math, he had the right platform with Fox News to get Trump's attention often, and he's going to have an opportunity to enact ideals regardless of experience and qualifications, because those ideals align with Trump. All right, like.
Speaker 2:Has he made any comments on like the border issues and like the military use down there?
Speaker 1:No, he hasn't. And like the military use down there? Yeah, no, he has. Pete Hegseth has not talked about anything, both operational or policy-wise, since he's been nominated. That I've heard, other than a little bit of the repeating of like we're going to wash out woke and we're going to get rid of some generals, maybe.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I heard that one. I said a lot of generals have to go.
Speaker 1:Not even no new statement a recent statement about his position of where women should and shouldn't serve in the military but he made those comments and his book just came out back in like June or July, and it's totally that's. The entire message of the book is that men are responsible for being the military force, and this is where we need to get back to. Is that it's men shed blood on behalf of patriotism is basically what he's booking.
Speaker 2:It's kind of sad that that's the goal. That's what their focus is is just dying.
Speaker 1:Conservatism is about going backwards in time in some ways, right, I mean from a cultural perspective. The culture wars are an overt intention of trying to roll back the clock on certain things. Right, and this is an example of that. In my mind, this is an example of that. And we're going to go back to the Department of War. We're going to say women need to be in the Women Army Air Corps, and they're going to, you know, work at the flight line but never fly out. You know into theater and they're going to work at the. You know these facilities and handle administrative stuff, but we're not going to put them in admin jobs in the in the damage you know danger zone. Like that's not. We could do it Right, I mean, it's technically it's possible, but um yeah, I mean other countries do it, but it's just.
Speaker 2:But why?
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:I think it was, I think it was Bill Gates was given a statement in like Iran or Saudi Arabia or something like that, and you know he talked about how to advance as a culture or, you know, civilization, whatever he's like well, you have to start using more than half your population. Yeah, in general everybody follows kind of a bell curve and like 2% of our population is geniuses. Like it doesn't matter, white, black, man, woman, 2% of our population is geniuses. Like so we're just going to throw away that 2% because there are women.
Speaker 1:We're going to discount the opportunity to Right, right, right To change the world For that person.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, just because they're women or they're black or you know whatever. Yeah, yeah, just because they're women or they're black or whatever. It's just ridiculous to me that that's a mindset that we still have in this day and age where we've seen, we have so many recorded instances of great things coming from everybody. Yeah, and we want to say no, white dudes, that's it, we're in charge again.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, I mean that's back into the replacement theory. You know, this is a little. It's a symptom of right or kind of a shadow of that mindset. Maybe, like you're saying there, the white guys need to be the ones, like, carrying the guide on into battle. Yeah, and that will restore us to glory, or something. You know and he's never made a comment in a racial sense by any means, but Trump in general has that tone to everything he does, you know.
Speaker 2:And just knowing a lot of infantry guys like that is like an overarching sentiment is you know that there is a huge not I won't say huge there is a movement towards the Christian nationalists, you know, within the military, Sure, and that generally falls under the white supremacist flag. Also, you know, it's one of those things where, like, not all Trump supporters are racists, but all racists are Trump supporters.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you know what I are Trump supporters. Yeah, yeah, you know what I mean. Yeah, yeah, it depends on which part of the Venn diagram you're trying to focus on.
Speaker 2:Right, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:I understand, yeah for sure, the idea of undoing woke generals and undoing woke policies. I think that's going to be the maybe the most visible change. I think a lot of the rest of it is going to be almost invisible to the American public. Definitely, the internal policies, for the most part, are just going to fly completely under the radar. Most people in America are not paying attention to the military like that. I think if a handful of high profile three or four star generals get schwacked in January and then they all go write a book, or you know they all do some big news press tour and talk write a book, or you know they all do some big news press tour and talk about whatever it was you know that happened yeah, that's going to get some high visibility.
Speaker 1:Um, and I I mean, if anything, it won't matter this is a good segue it won't matter what their message really is, uh, and, and no matter how justified these folks are in sharing whatever, you know whether it's a good thing, bad thing, that they separated or whatever they do, right, but the, the media and this is our kind of transfer into this next topic the media can put these folks on a road show and show everybody what happened and they can explain it in their own words, and it will bounce off of the trump administration like water off of a duck's back. Yeah, it just doesn't matter. Yeah, you know. So they can. They can just slaughter those senior ranks and it will. The train will pick up speed and not care. And I mean they can be sued. They could. There could be legal action. It doesn't matter, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 1:Like they, they're going to bust right through it.
Speaker 2:They've already set that up. Anything that Trump decides in the duty or in his official capacity can't be second guessed.
Speaker 1:Right Period, yeah, and so there's nothing to be said. That's what I'm saying. Is there's nothing to there's a lot to be said. There's nothing to be said that will do anything.
Speaker 1:And so that brings us to. We'll look forward to Pete Hicks' term of service and see how it goes, see if he gets through confirmation, which I think he will See. If the first year or two completely upends the military or if recruitment numbers shoot through the roof, We'll see right, I think the National Guard, like the more blue states National Guard, might see some numbers increase. Oh yeah, you know what I mean Governors trying to juice that. Let's get a little more people trained up. Yeah.
Speaker 2:And they could catch some of those people that are getting chased out by the harsh policies.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, that's true, you know what I mean. Yeah, from the federal level to a state. Yeah, continue your service. Yeah.
Speaker 2:If active duty kicks me out for being gay, like, yeah, I'll go serve underneath. You know, Governor Polis, I think he'll be cool with it.
Speaker 1:Correct. Yeah, it'd be interesting to see how that plays out.
Speaker 1:So the first year or two is going to be a pick a card, any card on policy changes Unpredictable I think. But Adam and I wanted to spend a few minutes talking about the media pre and post election. How they have talked about both the federal level all the way down to some local topics right, how coverage has been taken in hand in very much biased ways from what I see. I haven't seen a middle-of-the-road unbiased media outlet at all in the last election cycle. Really.
Speaker 2:I mean people picked sides super hard I've never looked at al jazeera's like uh, world, world politics, but. But I'll be kind of interested to go because I've I've had experience with al jazeera. You know, being around the world, you know you sit and sit in other countries and like that's what's on tv, yeah, and like they're pretty clear and honest on what's going on.
Speaker 1:There was two. There's Al Jazeera English, which went out of business and only operated for a few years two years, three years and then there's the Arabic Al Jazeera. And actually I don't know the state of the Arabic Al Jazeera right now as far as how popular it is. But yeah, thanks for the reminder. Since I retired, I had completely forgot about that.
Speaker 2:But I used to watch Oz's Zero all the time, because I'm a mental guy, right, yeah, yeah, but we don't have something like that. That's going to just be honest with both sides up front. Right now, our media is focused on division and scare just to get people worked up over it, so they tune in again.
Speaker 1:And yet BBC used to be kind of what a lot of Americans would go to as that, like arbiter if you will. I don't think that's been. I don't know that that would have been useful in this last year and I used to live in the UK and would watch BBC and consume their news, where they would cover a lot of American stuff. Um, it was generally less biased than the U? S but um, still, BBC still tends to come down kind of like NPR, right when it's.
Speaker 1:It's still going to have more of a little bit of a left socially kind of lean, you know.
Speaker 2:So they're a little more right in what they say. More correct, I should say.
Speaker 1:I don't know they, but they put more effort into balancing viewpoints and balancing coverage. They do definitely put more effort into that than any US outlet that I've seen, but it still ends up with a bit of a left lean. So what's your take on the US media pre and post-election? I want to talk about bias a little bit more, but did you see?
Speaker 2:so what I thought was funny was, uh how, leading up to the election, you really started hearing about how unsafe things were, and you know everything was gonna be. You know it's gonna be a another shit show and you know they're already trying things.
Speaker 1:And then, as soon, as talking about the function of the election itself voting and and counting the votes and all that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, all those things. There's a lot of questions being called about the election integrity and things like that and since then, since Trump got declared the winner, nothing. Everybody's just kind of cool with it now.
Speaker 1:It was a beautiful election, yeah nailed it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, everybody's just kind of cool with it now. It was a beautiful election, yeah, nailed it. So that was kind of. One of the big things I saw about the media is that it was they were prepping Everybody for some noise and then, when they got the results that they wanted and make no mistakes the media wanted Trump to win left and right Because he's a headline every second of the day.
Speaker 1:Oh sure, yeah, you can just hire half your editorial staff Because you know that all you wanted Trump to win, like left and right, because like he's a headline every second of the day. Oh sure, yeah, you know what I mean. Yeah, you could just hire half your editorial staff, because you know that all you're going to talk about is Trump all day. Yeah, right, yeah, you just need one or two guys. You don't have to go. Look at his stories.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so this is a good thing for the media industry in general because they will have business. He's a TV show celebrity, yeah, sure is, but yeah. So it's just interesting how they were kind of guiding the narrative and then when it changed, they were just like never mind. Yeah, yeah, democracy's at stake here. Oh, never mind.
Speaker 1:Yep, I saw, I think it was Jake Tapper. Ask or no, excuse me, it was somebody else on CNN. But they asked Jim Jordan what about all the election noise? What about that? You know how is it free and fair this time, but it wasn't last time, and you know, speak to this because, even up to even the actual vote counting process, you know, in all the early, early voting, your party and you specifically were like hey, everybody, this is, this is going to be a stolen election and now you won't even talk about it. Right? And he was like last time was all messed up and he just went right into bulldog mode about how 2020 was unfair and stolen and that's all we should ever talk about. And this current election he it's almost like he didn't want to admit it even happened. He was like we're going to talk about how 2020 was all messed up since you brought up the topic and it was hard to watch, man.
Speaker 2:Well, I mean, if there's one thing that Jim Jordan has proven, is that he's really good at ignoring horrible things happening around him.
Speaker 1:Yeah, he's always been. When he well, when any politician does that, when they just completely put the blinders on and say I'm going to repeat this one thing over and over and over again. Yeah, that's hard to watch, man.
Speaker 2:It's unprofessional. You know you're not answering the question, You're not.
Speaker 1:Your job is to communicate your intentions. Right, that's what politicians do, yeah, and if you can't sit down and do that or answer questions directly, what's the value there?
Speaker 2:Right. That's why I really appreciate. I think he's attorney general now in North Carolina. He was, I think, the representative Okay, I can't remember what his name is, but he would sit down and do TikToks YouTube videos and just talk to you and explain it very calmly and listen to him talk Mayor Pete Buttigieg, I think is how he pronounced his name.
Speaker 2:He's another one where, like when you listen to him talk, like you're engaged and you're just waiting for his next word, when you know, because he's like he just knows how to talk to you and like keep you engaged in the conversation.
Speaker 1:Completely agree yeah.
Speaker 2:It's just refreshing to have people like that that'll talk to you like an adult and not dance around the subject and like challenge you. When they're like, if they don't know the answer, they'll be like well, this is how I'm thinking about it. Not you know. Like you said, get stuck on a talking point for four years.
Speaker 1:Yeah well, here's the sound bite I rehearsed all morning, Right.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:I can't stand to see that, but I mean for me, I think the there's a lot of crying wolf and like the sky is falling. That I see in media outlets right now, especially over all these picks for cabinet positions, and it's it's hand wringing with no substance is what I see right now, reminding us repeatedly that someone has an allegation of a sexual assault charge or an allegation of a criminal activity and then just saying that over and, over and over again, like it's somehow going to influence their nomination or tell the american people how terrible they are. It doesn't matter, right? Yeah, it doesn't matter.
Speaker 2:It's like the whole UFO UAP conversation. Sure, like you can sit there and say there's all this stuff, the truth is out there. Until it's in my hand, I don't give a shit. Yes, like we need to actually like have facts and have things.
Speaker 1:Yes, and that's what the Senate confirmation process is for Right, yeah, and so the way that the media is trying to throw out what they see as like oh, this should be the thing, and they're right. And, like we said earlier, in any other situation that news story would be a disqualifying mark on the record of whoever. But the media has got to figure out that they can just give up that ploy for the next couple of years, right.
Speaker 1:Like it doesn't matter how bad a person was, what they did or didn't do. How much you think your readers should hate this person?
Speaker 2:zero impact on their what they're going to do, Because we saw Taylor Greene come out and say like hey, if you guys release his ethics report, I'm going to release my sexual harassment report against you know, one of you guys, and all the other things. It's like like take away like the blackmail factor, Like you have evidence that your people working around you are not good people and you're just everybody's okay yeah everybody's okay with that, like that's what I care about.
Speaker 2:Where it's like, there's a lot of these things like why are, why is there? He's not the anomaly like what?
Speaker 1:the sad state of affairs? I will go in on that. For sure I'm sad, don't get me wrong. I don't want to poopoo away somebody's like sexual assault, the allegations charges, criminal activity or not, I don't. I want to know about that. But at the same time, if you think that you're going to just keep digging up dirt on any of these nominees and it's going to tip the scale, just stop. Just stop. Find something else to write about. It's a waste of time, know. So that's my take on it is you're not going to bias or scare anybody that has any kind of um uh sway in this decision. They do not care, right, it doesn't matter. So, uh, it's just for your readers and your, I think, the readers. We're all just here to like buckle in and get ready for what's coming Right, so we can stop. We can stop hashing up all the other stuff.
Speaker 2:We'll just stop talking about it. What's crazy is, like I already get. I'm getting back into that same rhythm where, like you wake up thinking like, well, what's the next headline? Like who did he piss off today? I'm already kind of getting into that rhythm to see what nonsense is next. It was nice to have four years of like not really knowing what the president was doing every second. You know what I mean. Like you could tell when Trump was on the shitter, because you'd get like six tweets in a row.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's true, that's true. Or when he was going to go walk out on the balcony and tell everybody he's cured from COVID. You know, like Biden got COVID like three times and like we almost didn't know about it.
Speaker 2:You know what I'm saying. Remember when he walked up those stairs? Yeah right, when he walked up the stairs to the White House and he was winded and huffing and everything like that. It's like dude, just sit down, man.
Speaker 1:And then he turned around and stood in grand form and was like I'm healed. It was the craziest thing.
Speaker 2:I've ever seen.
Speaker 1:And nobody cared. I mean, we care or you're not, and like that's it back then. Right, you know whatever. And as soon as we knew he wasn't going to die, then it was like all right, you know, he's going to get better and he's going to go back to work. We don't need you to walk back into the white house.
Speaker 2:Like you know, like you're King Trump, it doesn't matter, you know.
Speaker 1:So that's what Biden got. You're absolutely right. Biden had COVID at least twice during this administration and it was just literally. Hey, he's not going to do any kind of news spots for the next week. Took a couple extra naps. Yeah, moved on. And it wasn't. No one needed fanfare and trumpets to welcome him back to the White House so yeah, you're right, but, like you said, the TV shows and the newsrooms worldwide, you know, can all just kick back and go into autopilot for the next four years and go what happened today?
Speaker 2:They can just watch.
Speaker 1:Truth, social and X and say what did Elon say today? What did Trump say today? Hey, that's three news stories right there and we'll all read it and listen to it and talk about it. Yeah yeah, we're all suckers.
Speaker 2:Yeah Well, we'll wrap read it and listen to it and talk about it. Yeah, yeah, we're all suckers, yeah.
Speaker 1:Well, we'll wrap it up then. Thanks everybody for listening to another episode of Left Face. Please do reach out to us through our different social media platforms and email and we'd love to maybe review some of those comments in one of these episodes coming up, or if somebody really has an interesting story, maybe we'll bring you on the show. So thanks for listening and we'll catch you next time. All right, Thanks everybody.
