>> this afternoon, attorney general merrick garland testifies on president biden's 2022 budget request for the justice department life governor. ascended appreciation subcommittee begins at 2:30 eastern on c-span 3. you can also watch in our free mobile video app. c-span now. or, online at c-span.org.

the c-span is your unfiltered view of government. we are funded by these television companies and more. including buckeye broadband. ♪ ♪ ♪ giving you a front row seat to democracy. and we are back this morning, roundtable discussion on politics and campaign 2024. joining us this morning is jim antel, politics editor with the washington examiner. we also have chris layman who is the d.c. bureau chief with the nation. gentlemen, thank you both for being here >> let's begin, last

night the. former president held his first campaign rally of campaign 2024. he held the -- he talked about polls, and there is a no moment poll showing him getting a lead over the undeclared possible candidates, as well as those who have declared, he in the last month in this moment poll. he was at 33% tied with the governor of florida. now he's leading 41% over desantis with 27%. what do you make on this? >> i think a couple other things. one of them is trump's in emperor sorrow of culture war victimhood. and the talk about his pending indictment in new york a, i think, is really powerful lee rallied the republican base behind him. it's a very familiar kind of a litany in the senate during the washington investigation said after the 2020 election injury

sixth. he said it in the wake of january 26. this is by now a really strong familiar message to the republican base. the trump movement is in significant ways a cult of personality. they are rallying to the center of it. it's not that surprising. i think the other thing to note is the setting of the rally in waco. well and that symbolism i think is by no means accidental. >> jim antel, same question to you. >> i think part of it is that governor ron desantis is in a unusual position for a challenger because part of his appeal is that he is supposed to bottle up what republican voters like about trump, while discarding the distractions and the personal vendettas in the things that maybe they thought got in the way of trump doing some of the things that they wanted him to do. but that makes it difficult as

a challenger, because you can't really have the same over attack on the person who you are trying to defeat, because you have to show trump a certain degree of deference. and so trump has been able to basically behave one, like unconventional candidate, and to, like trump, which is anything but a conventional candidate, in terms of the length to which he will go to attack a opponent, whereas desantis has had to sort of hang back, and he hasn't really i think found his footing in terms of how you sort of perry with trump. >> he is being framed by the former president before he has a chance to frame himself, because he hasn't declared his candidacy. >> yeah, i think that's the other thing. essentially, as this undeclared but all but declared candidate, he's trying to wedge a national campaign with the remnants of his state reelection campaign, and augmented by some super pacs that he doesn't really fully control. and in some cases, he may not even be affiliated with them.

and so that is kind of challenging. and i think that trump has really found that a lot of things that could really and anybody else's political career, he has been able to figure out ways to use them to his advantage. we thought when he got into politics that his real estate and reality tv star mantra of, there's not just things by publicity, would be disastrous in politics. and while it has a times hurt him, for the most part, he has been right that he has been able to parlay that into a great deal of success. at least within the republican party. >> and then chris layman, on the democrat side, the president is considering another run in 2024, and you have this by the associated press. biden 2024, question mark, most democrats say, no thank you. >> yeah, i say that there is a lot of uncertainty surrounding biden reelection campaign. he's 81 years old, i think that is an issue, and i think it is

an interesting dynamic. i think the republican party is actually kind of afraid of its face, and i think the democratic party, speaking of the establishment, doesn't like its face. and so there is a great tension between a base on the democratic side that wants to pull the party leftward and seen the president go to the right on issues like immigration and on crime here in d.c.. he beat out a series of crime reforms in the district, and this already getting the democratic base generally about what might be the old biden, it kind of centrist immigrant who is not going to be a strong confident leader in the general election.

>> and you have this headline about his vp tethered together, biden here is move towards 2024 reelection run, but inside the article, they talk about her poll numbers are not high either. >> no, it's true. i think there hasn't been a breakout moment for the vice president. she hasn't really ceased any issue in the traditional role that vice presidents often half with specific policy concentrations. she's been given some, but they haven't really got much traction. and to be honest, her public speaking performances have been erratic. i don't think there isn't really a sense of an organic base behind the vice president. >> can the biden harris ticket beat president trump, the former president 2024. >> i got out of the prediction business in 2016. there are so many variables

right now. i mention the prospect about the pending indictment in new york, there's a grand jury in georgia that is going to hand out a decision at some point. they're the ongoing justice department investigations of the former president. and so there's going to be a lot of kind of distraction that trump doesn't want, or you can feed on, but at some, point if he's only talking about the fact that he is under indictment from all of these different jurisdictions, and the daily news cycle is driven by that, i don't know. we just have not seen anything like that in a primary cycle before. >> following up on chris layman's point, in the point that you made earlier, jim antle, the president, his numbers go up, and you're making that point chris, while all of this talk of indictment, but who, where, with which type of voter is he seeing the numbers go up, and what about independent voters? because we had a call earlier say, talking to republicans,

saying that the president can't win, the former president can't win with independent voters. >> well that is sort of the dilemma and that a lot of these arguments about the weaponization of the justice system against conservatives, they resident with republican base voters, but does it really get you anywhere? with the wider universe of voters, particularly independent voters, some softer republican voters, who didn't really help a lot of the more controversial republican candidates in the midterm elections, even though they voted in fairly large numbers for some of the more conventional republican candidates. and so that does become a concern and that a lot of the things that could benefit trump and the republican primaries, wouldn't really set him up to be and the strongest position in the general election. and that he may not be able to perform the same pivot that perhaps other candidates would, and maybe they wouldn't run on certain things in the republican primaries, and we go talk about something else if they were to win. trump does seem to be very much stuck on a certain set list,

and i think that's really what the whole theme of that race is going to be, is does trump's, and play his grace at his, but the fans really respond favorably to that? or does this material at some point get old, and that is when perhaps desantis gets his opening. >> all right, let's get to goals. john, in louisiana. democratic color, you are up first. >> can you hear me? >> yes we can. >> i have a question, [inaudible] all right, we are going to move on. malik in texas. -- today >> and became an independent i would never vote for donald trump but he has fascistic tendencies. he's more authoritarian, he has no platform to speak of in the republican party has no platform to speak of. they're banning books on betsy

coleman, jesse owens, it's obvious what they're trying to do is build some white ethnostate. there pope o in policies, there -- january six defendants who tried to overthrow the country which in my opinion is treated. there's something fundamentally wrong with these people, the majority of which came with the civil war. they've nothing in the end institution of democracy. that's why they coalesce around donald trump. he's some sort of version up there. white god. east christianity to build some moral high ground to mistreat people. it's a sikh dynamic in which planners of the country, no candidate is talking about the housing crisis. thanking to banking reform which eliminates pmi and unnecessary cost. i know the federal government often times taxes people out of oblivion. but it's the local government that taxes people a lot as

well. you have people in their late 60s who have paid for their homes all their lives, now they're being taxed out of those homes just with property taxes yearly. >> okay, malik, i'm going to jump in. a lot there. jim antle, what did he say? as an independent, you left the democratic party, but not happy what he's hearing with republicans. >> i'm not sure he's a prototypical swing voter exactly. clearly these are going to be some of the issues, if it's desantis that is the nominee. a lot, he is going to face a somewhat similar dilemma that trump does. a number of the things that desantis has done to really bond with republican base voters. to try to show that he can deliver on some of their concerns, particularly their cultural concerns. there is going to be some pushback against that. so a lot of the things he's done on education, for example, where he's trying to get greater parental control. it's clear that the counter framing of that is going to be book banning. not wanting to talk about slavery. not wanting to talk about the

black american experience. desantis is going to have to have answers for that if he is the nominee. i think in the republican primary he continue to make some of the arguments that he's already been making. and receive a receptive audience. but when he's in a general election, should he make it to a general election, should he even declare, he is going to have to have a new set of arguments. that is going to, i think, really be something that is going to demonstrate whether he has greater ability to reach beyond the republican place then former president trump. does >> chris lehmann, we were talking to republicans only the first hour. several of them mentioned they want the former president back in office because of the economy. what do you think, and if the economy is the number one issue, how does president biden fare? >> this is, it is a very interesting question. we are in a moment of historic high employment, nearly full

employment. the highest, lowest unemployment rates in 40 years. >> yeah. >> and wages are growing, not as fast as they should be. inflation is still something of an issue. the actual overall performance the economy is pretty robust. there is a school of political science that says, once you pass a certain threshold of full employment, lower inflation, that guarantees a presidents reelection. that does not seem to be the dynamic anymore. it's just another reminder of how on both sides of the partisan divide, our politics are fundamentally changing in ways that we don't fully understand or have yet to fully process. i think if barack obama was running on this kind of economic performance in 2012,

he would have blown out mitt romney by a far greater margin. it's a interesting, it speaks to the deeper structural problems in the economy that, you know, wages aren't going as fast as they should be. there is still a lot of apprehension around the suspension of covid support. there is a lot of, you know, the cliché in 2016, but it continues to be true, there is economic anxiety. it is hard to, sort of, map it clearly alongside the numbers. >> let's go to new york. jeff, and independent. >> yeah, if desantis runs. i heard him giving a speech on education and how great is schools are, if you really look at florida schools, they're not so great. they have county wide schools and a lot of the wealthier people send their kids to private schools. public schools aren't that great. the teacher turnover rate is unbelievably high.

>> okay, so jeff, you don't think he can run on that issue of education? >> oh, we lost. jim jim antle? >> clearly he's going to look at the line on can and his ability to win. in a purple trending, even blue state. using the education issue. but i think you obviously have to be careful. some of these things very much by local jurisdiction, i think there also was a general parental dissatisfaction with how schooling was handled during covid. that tied into a bunch of these other issues, than maybe those other issues weren't the primary drivers of some of that dissatisfaction. so if you focus on some of the secondary issues, maybe you are limiting yourself a little bit more to republican voters and would have seemed based on desantis's reelection and youngkin's victory the or before that. >> okay. >> what's interesting is that

both trump and desantis take up major issues that prove to be very unpopular in the 2022 midterms. a lot of republicans taken off of the example of youngkin, ran hard on plentiful control. critical race theory, panic in schools, and they did badly. tutor dixon, the republican governor terrell candidate in michigan ran almost solely on those issues and failed. meanwhile, a color earlier noted, election deniers. they fared really badly in 2022. this was an election that everyone was predicting would be a red wave. just because of the traditional dynamics of midterm elections. i think the republicans, you know, this is a big problem going into a general election. you have a rhonda santos, who has a state, most of his

governing record on this kind of draconian, in my view, crack down on racial honesty in the schools. a very top down. another thing to note about both desantis and youngkin, first of all, they ran against incredibly weak democratic opponents. -- campaign really poorly. charlie crist has been an also ran for a long time for florida. they benefited from that. desantis in particular has a supermajority in florida. he can just run up the score on his legislative agenda without any pushback. which is an interesting dynamic in and of itself. the conventional wisdom is that americans like to elect governors as president because they can govern in a bipartisan way. desantis isn't doing that. he's got a hard line

ideological agenda. it is all on this anti woke rhetoric. i am very skeptical this will be a strong platform to run on in 2024. >> did the democratic party play in florida? in the state of florida in 2022? what do you think they will do in 2024? >> the democratic party in florida is in my view one of the worst state organizations in the democratic party. new york being a close second. >> explain. >> it's just a -- instinctively centrist. it's running, again i, was describing earlier how our politics are fundamentally changing. their idea of running against a hard right republican incumbent for the governor was to nominate a former republican. to sort of say, will be the nice republicans. we know from, we run the trump experiment over and over again at this point. when you give voters a choice

between a really hard lined red meat trump figure, and, you know, a john kasich or a charlie crisp. they'll go for the real thing. every time. they need my view to run very confidently against the color earlier was saying. the republican party does support sedition. january 6th was an act of, a coup attempt. they heard democrats need to get in front of that message. >> let's go to tyler in griffin, georgia. republican. >> yes ma'am, good morning. i would like to point out that the democratic collar that wants to weigh on crisis, schools, abortions, whatever it is going on in the world. they wanted all to rest on the president. the president is not

responsible for making these changes in -- we have parties that handle crisis and things like that. they need authorization from the president. but on that, why don't they just get it right when they call into talk? and get their stuff straight as to what they're going to say. it's not appreciated [inaudible] that the president should handle this crisis, and he's not handling it right. this that and there. [inaudible] that's all i have to say. >> okay, all right, tyler. jim mantle? >> it's kind of one of those things, the quarterback gets all the glory when the team is winning. you get all the glory when the team is winning. that's also true with the president. it's going to be true with the economy. but obviously it's one of, it's an interesting dynamic. covid only marginally change

the results of the 2020 election. enough that, i think, it affected the outcome. but it wasn't a huge impact. 41 year inflation had a much more muted effect on the midterm election's than one might've expected historically. so my impression would be, given that president biden's numbers on the economy are low, with low unemployment and the economy growing, that if he's unable to stick the soft landing with regard to inflation, that would probably mean he can't get reelected. but i'm not as confident about that is i would have been maybe 15 years ago. there's quite a lot else that seems to drive elections now. besides even the objective conditions, the economy of the country. >> donna, reynoldsburg, ohio. independent. let's hear from you. >> yeah, i'm a true independent. the last time i voted for a democrat and a republican in our state elections. i like nikki haley.

now that i know more about desantis, in my opinion he's probably most independent. january six really did it in for me on trump. although i was never in favor of having liked to call people names and all of that. i think it's very immature for a leader of this country. so my vote goes to nikki haley. >> chris lehmann, mickey halle, is she a formidable contender? >> not according to the polls. the big caveat here is that it's early. all polls are just snapshots. conditions will change dramatically. it's interesting, nikki haley would be on paper, a great republican candidate. she is a former governor. she does have, you know, a great resume. she is a great personal story. you know, for a president --

for a party that at times has struggled to get the support of women and non-white voters. there is a real sound basis for appeal there. she's also a conventional republican. again, we keep saying this, the base doesn't want. that we saw her in the cpac conference last month. she tried to flow to some trump style rhetoric. this is the other problem. it's a problem desantis will face two. only trump can be trump. [laughter] we saw in 2016 these won efforts to impersonate him in the head of the primaries. marco rubio is making really terrible jokes. it just doesn't land. this is a real program -- problem for people going up against. trump >> jim antle, your take? >> nikki haley, if you are

going to design a candidate in the lab. she would be the candidate. but it doesn't seem to resume yet. this really does look like a trump, desantis, race. it would take something really large to alter the dynamics of the race for anybody else. to really be able to be in a position to win the nomination, i think. certainly, when you have somebody who might be indicted, somebody who might not run. they are clearly a couple of obvious things that could also, alter the shape of the race. but where these brands become detrimental to trump, and to desantis, they might protest arguments that might be more effectively used by the other candidates down the line. in particular, i think the dynamic of the race that could affect desantis's, you have trump on the one hand saying this guy is an imitator of me. don't vote for him. vote for me, the real thing. and the other candidates are going to say, yeah, he's just an imitator of trump. why would you vote for him if you want to move beyond trump? then how does desantis thread that needle at that.

point nd what ab >> and how is mike pe threading the needle? what is his strategy? >> well, i think mike pence has a version of the trump problem. his campaign, even though he has himself said that elections are about the future and not the past. it is going to be very difficult for him to run a forward-looking campaign because it is all going to be about re-litigating 2020, january 6th, his decision to behave as a normal vice president under these circumstances. and trump attacking him for that. so that is an area, i think, what pence is going to try to do is run a traditional evangelical campaign. not directly attack trump, but try to draw a contrast with trump in terms of how to behave. and certain moral standards, but i think pence's role might be helpful to desantis in that it could create a trump, pence, feud. and allow desantis to position

himself as the more forward-looking candidate. >> all right, daniel, franklin, new york. republican. daniel, question or comment? >> i have about six comments. >> okay, we'll choose two of them plays. [laughter] >> i'll be fast. i just want to respond to the comments on economy. i don't care if you're a democrat or republican. it's important to know the facts of inflation. inflation was 0.1% may 2020. in may 2021 it was 5%. it has gone up a factor of 50. then it went up to nine. what people don't know, because it's not reported, it's censored. is since july, inflation was 0.0 in july. since then, we've averaged 2.7%. that is the average inflation in the past seven months. keep the charts, i keep the records.

it's not recorded on tv. it's not reported. but averaging 2.7%, i go to the store, i see peppers down 80 cents. >> daniel, we understand the point of inflation. >> the second point i want to make, we've added over 10 million small businesses. america gives small businesses. the third point i want to make, unemployment, although he did make it, is 6.6%. we have averaged over -- we've added over 12 million jobs in two years. we've been averaging over 400,000 new jobs. >> can i ask you, what's your larger point about the economy? >> we have an incredible economy. >> so does that mean that -- so does that mean that president biden should be reelected? you are a republican. >> i look at it and you ask me, republican? i'm looking at kristen uno, i'm

looking at asha hutchinson. they get no coverage. they get no coverage. >> but can they beat the current president? >> i look at nikki haley. >> can they beat the current president with the economic numbers that you just touted? >> if the numbers aren't reported, and they aren't, it doesn't matter, fox. >> we'll take that point, chris lehmann. >> it goes to whatever you're saying earlier, the economy is at a historic, it is performing historically really strongly. you know, again, in the old model of presidential elections it would be game over. but, i agree in part. the reporting on the economy has not been good. it's not been historically informed. it's just sort of, you know, the release of a job reports month to month. so in all of these debates, i

think historical awareness is really crucial. and accurate reporting is, as we were saying. it is true that, you know, inflation is nowhere new the point it was earlier. you know, the question really is, does it matter? one would like to think that it did because this is a crucial issue that affects the livelihoods of us all. but, as i was saying earlier, we have a republican feel that is exercised by culture war issues. jim mentioned mike pence running as a and evangelical candidate. i think one thing that is really important to note is that trump is also running as an evangelical candidate. he doesn't have the sort of person oh religious observance record that pence does, but he

has been leaning into qanon themes which are very closely aligned with the evangelical movement at this moment. as i said earlier, the symbolism of the waco rally is a direct message to the hard-line evangelical base. trump is already trying to outmaneuver desantis on education, his first major policy announcement was on this laundry list of, quote, anti woke federal law education initiatives. he was going to undertake them. they, republican's will be running hard on his culture issues. in part because the economy is so strong >> they know how, democratic color. >> good morning to the distinguished guests. i've just got two questions. and while america keeps debating trump and desantis, all desantis is a younger trump. --

americans have been going on doing this forever and ever, they need to get rid of all the old people in congress. put some young people in their like i said. because we've been divided, we're going to stay divided just like overseas. they've been fighting before b.c. america is never going to get it together, but they need to get together. >> but gary, there's a couple topics there. jim antle, let's just talk why doesn't trump be desantis? >> right, it's really hard based on the polls to talk about anybody else. i think most of the other candidates don't break 10% on any consistent basis. i think the hope of some of these candidates would be if for whatever reason desantis doesn't run. i think there's very little to indicate that he won't, i think there's every reason to believe that he will. by some stroke of luck for them if he didn't, they would inherit some sort of base of support by simply being not trump. perhaps that's true, but i think that might be a little optimistic. i think in terms of age there

are a lot of people beginning to make the generational change argument. that is a subtle argument among republicans against trump. and also, wanting to capitalize on advantage of running against an octogenarian incumbent. which is a little bit more difficult if you're doing that with a candidate who is almost the same age. but if you have a candidate who is substantially younger, perhaps that helps. then in the democratic party, there is a big push for a generational change in leadership. they've started to have that happen in the house. but you have this dynamic of a very young party in terms of its voters. it's appeal to younger voters, that is led by a gerontocracy. at the presidential level, there doesn't even really seem to be any serious pushback against that. there don't seem to be any, even though people say they don't want biden to run again, or that they would prefer a different candidate, there is no obvious alternative. marianne williamson is probably not that. >> chris lehmann, you are

agreeing over here. he's absolutely right. the democratic party is a gerontocracy. there has been, as you noted, movement on the house side. but it's noteworthy that the activist base, the democratic party clung to an insurgent candidate, bernie sanders, who is now also 80. so it is a real problem in the republicans. one thing i will say is they have been very ruthless about getting rid of all the leaders. and bringing on, bringing in young blood into positions of influence. i think the democratic party would benefit greatly to any of that. >> speaking of bernie sanders in the progressive movement. has president biden done enough to get support from progressives? >> yeah, as i mentioned earlier, i think there's some anxiety already around these issues.

accused test driving a version of family detention and immigration policy. as i said, he has reversed these d.c. crime reforms. those are all very conventional, you know, in part because he's not facing a primary challenge. biden is also talking towards a general election strategy. he has done a lot. he has done much more than i would have thought possible given the dynamics in congress. he has been, as he promised, a strongly pro labor president. which counts for a lot, i think. i think he has, you know, he was famously moved to run after the aftermath of charlottesville. he has signaled in his state of the union that he wants to do more on police reform. it's not enough. but it's -- so yeah, i think right now the

progressive wing of the democratic party is a bit apprehensive. >> well, we are going to talk with democrats only. coming up here on the washington journal at 8:45 a.m. eastern time. we will talk with democrats only, we talked with republicans only in our first hour this morning. so democrats only, as a president biden or someone else in 2024? ray in pleasantview tennessee, let's hear from you next. >> yes. and the first color you had on that was talking about the people like him. saying they're going to do some white thing and all this. this is exactly what the democratic party is. they're trying to divide this country. this guy, he just exposed himself. he is taking the bait. we are all in this together. ain't nobody trying to divide

us. people like that or not -- they're not gonna help, they're part of the problem. >> all right, ray. let me go to trend in louisiana, independent, hydrant. >> i'm really struggling with this one. i'm thinking, i'm asking about the weaponization in cancel culture. i've been thinking about this for the last few weeks. well i think inside the liberal socialist mind, they really think that trump probably doesn't -- the people don't view themselves [inaudible] in the 30s, if you could've stopped hitler, wouldn't you have done it? i think that the west, help me here, i think they think that white christian male heterosexuals have been on top for so long that white is

better, christiane ado was the top religion, males were the top gender, heterosexuality was the best sexuality. the final thing is, i think they realized that the trumpian's, and especially the evangelicals, have one hole in total view of reality. -- it's hatteras, right down the line from a dizzy. and these people don't mean to e dangerous. but they really are that's why we have to weaponize and cancel him. can you help me with that guys? thank you. >> chris lehmann, are you following? >> a little bit. first of all, i am a skeptic about the existence of cancel culture. i think it, like the prescriptive ideology of wokeness is, you know, a caricature. what happens a lot in politics is the other side gets caricature. i certainly will acknowledge that on my comments on the left

will at times character republican voters and the issues that drives them. i don't think it's helpful. i do, you know, again, i mentioned earlier the need to think historically. so jim probably doesn't have my advantage. i lived through the 90s when there was a whole uproar about political cleric tennis. structurally identical to the wokeness cancel culture furor we are seeing now. it was focused on elite universities, this idea that there was this crazed leninist mindset. a foot in the country. what i like to do is say, well look, let's grant all the premises of this critique. historically, in the early 90s. whatever leninist said taken the universities, the media, et cetera. what happened?

in the wake of this furor. i i i can tell, most of the college students enrolled at that time were business majors. they became investment bankers. there's a way that we rhetorically overinflate these issues passed the point of contention will reality. it is true of the school panics as well. going back to the john birch society. they ran a campaign against sex education in the 70s. anita bryant in florida had a whole furor about gay teachers that actually, ronald reagan smoke down because he thought it was wrong. so again, i think it really is important to understand that our discord gets convulsed by these issues at key moments when maybe we can't figure out issues of economic inequality. so we focus on these, sort of, paste board cultural animated's to hammer away at. so we can't sit down and say,

well look, let's really build the full employment economy. less let's bring back american manufacturing. let's figure out a way to make globalization less grossly unequal. >> jim antle, your take? >> i think a couple things. number one, as much as there is disagreement on a variety of issues that animate the culture war. i think the number one disagreement people have is, who is the aggressor in the culture war? each side believes that the other side is in fact the aggressor. and that there is a defensive posture. secondly, i think a big distinction between the cancel cultural controversies of today and the political correctness discussions of the 19 90s was, in the 90s it was purely a campus and academic, a college phenomenon. a person can, sort of, fake while their business majors, they can repeat the party line for four years. go be an investment banker and never think of any of this

stuff again. rightly or wrongly, normal people outside of college now feel like they have to sort of jen you flecked in front of various politically correct or walk or whatever the current phrase is. they have to be responsive to these sorts of cultural pressures the hr departments of their committees, even if they are an investment banker, are going to hold them to the certain standards. whether that's true or not, that certainly changes the debate. because if you are a grandmother posting on facebook, and your posts are getting taken down for whatever reason. that is sort of a little different than, i have this one course i have to take and the professor doesn't like my political views. but if i just say the right thing, i can pass the class and move on with my life. >> can i just push back a little bit on that? >> sure. >> i mentioned the campus controversies, but there were also a whole -- there were committees in the 90s just like now saying we

can't things that are politically correct. >> the smothers brothers were saying the same things. >> right, it's all true. there was also a great deal of -- had a whole anti pornography from the right. i'm just trying to make the broader point. that the substance of these issues often is, how can i put it? a little off the topic of how our institutions actually operate. we mentioned, feeling agreed by hr departments. the reason hr departments have these dei an initiatives, which i agree, they often have terrible language. they're badly implemented. but it's all an exercise in pushing liability on two employees. right? and not making management

accountable for acts of discrimination. so again, that in my mind, is an economic issue ultimately. we just don't think of it that way. we prefer to have this fantasy that somehow hr departments across the country have simultaneously moved in lockstep, taking orders from abraham kennedy or someone. it's just not true. >> jim antle, final thoughts? then we'll have to wrap. >> there's an element of it that is a corporate shake down. you do have people who are writing on these progressive cultural themes that are going to get paid big money to go in and lecture. i do take the point that, hr departments are sort of lawsuit avoided departments internally within a company. and so anything you can do to shield management of the company from any kind of liability, you're definitely going to do. there definitely is a case that people feel aggrieved in certain ways that they didn't in the 90s. >> jim antle, politics editor with the washington