Left Face
Join Adam Gillard and Dick Wilkinson while they talk politics and community engagement.
Left Face
SecDef Austin Rescinded 9-11 Plea Deals and the Rise of Vet on Vet hate in Politics
Moving on, we shine a spotlight on a political candidate who exemplifies dedication and service. With a remarkable 24-year tenure in the National Guard while also serving as a teacher, this candidate has garnered immense respect within the veteran community. Despite facing political attacks, his honorable career and unwavering commitment to service stand out. We'll contrast his journey with historical figures like Dwight Eisenhower and John Kerry, exploring the unique non-partisan appeal veteran candidates bring to the table. Additionally, we'll delve into how Tim Walls' military background and effective communication style, influenced by his experiences as a senior non-commissioned officer and football coach, help him connect with voters and navigate the political landscape. This episode is packed with insights into how military service shapes political careers and fosters a unique connection with the electorate.
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Hello everyone and welcome to the All Things Military Veteran Podcast. My name is Adam Gillard. I am your host here and joining me is our co-host, dick Wilkinson. Dick, thanks for joining us again.
Speaker 2:Good to see you, adam, and welcome myself back as the co-host. Thanks.
Speaker 1:How has your week been, man?
Speaker 2:It's been good. Yeah, Been keeping an eye on the news. Doing this has kept, you know, shifted my mind a little bit to paying attention to some things that I was letting slide by before, so I enjoy that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I definitely unplugged for a bit after you know my candidacy there, just to kind of like take a breath and just kind of focus on getting some things done, Because so much of like candidacy is not really getting shit done you know, you're like, you're just you're talking to people, you're like I got plans, I can do things, yeah, and then you don't get anything.
Speaker 1:So, like, I've just been trying to, like you know, really focus on getting some things done. Um, but yeah, since we started doing this, I'm paying attention more and, you know, just trying to plug back into, you know where things are important. Um, one of the things that we started talking about was the SecDef, austin pulling back the plea agreement from the 9-11 folks.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Now SecDef Austin has been kind of a strange cat to me for a while. He had that I think it was earlier this year, like beginning of the year, where, like he was in the hospital.
Speaker 2:December. Yeah, it was right around Christmas time, yeah, and he didn't tell anybody and it's like dude.
Speaker 1:you know better.
Speaker 2:That was weird, yeah, and just his like direct, you know, staff member was kind of the only person that knew what was going on, chief of staff or something like that.
Speaker 1:Right, going on, chief of staff or something like that. Right, yeah, yeah, and you know who knows what could go down and when, when you need to be contacted and and you know, like, who's speaking for you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, when you're on the cut line for nuclear responsibilities, then yeah, you, you have to be accounted for. Yeah.
Speaker 1:And so you know he kind of did that. I thought it was kind of a weird thing for him to do, just kind of I don't know lazy, really Like tell your boss that you know you're going to be down for a bit, but then he does this, and you know he steps up kind of says like no, this decision is coming through this office. I was kind of surprised by it. What?
Speaker 2:are your thoughts on him making that decision? Well, I'll share with you that some of the feedback I got from other folks was what do you mean? 9-11 people Like they're still around and alive and in prison, like you know? Not that people forgot about it, but there's this assumption that the war's been over. All these wars, you know everything militarily was prosecuted, and the fact that they're still perpetrators of something that happened so long ago and they're still in prison was a surprise. So for me, I mean I think first, I like the decision, I agree with him. The fact that the whole legal process for these folks has been handled as a military tribunal kind of makes sense to me that the top military representative would, would weigh in on something like this so I mean, I think I respect that decision to keep it at his level and I'm glad that he did it.
Speaker 1:You know, even if it was an 11th hour decision, yeah, I'm glad he did it yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm uh, because I think once he does this, it's going to open up a lot of old wounds too, you know, because, like you know, these dudes got tortured.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:You know our enhanced interrogation techniques are going to come back and it's going to be put on full display again.
Speaker 2:That's true.
Speaker 1:You know, 20 years afterwards, where you know we're trying to move on past these things, yeah.
Speaker 2:There's some collateral there, for sure, yeah.
Speaker 1:In all for the hopes that they might get the death penalty, like they're already spending their life in prison. They're not going anywhere. Yeah, um, I, I, I don't see the, uh, the value in in doing it, really, when it comes to, like, the long-term effects of this.
Speaker 2:Like, like, I get it, you want your name on some things, but uh, I, you know I haven't picked up that the pursuit of the death penalty is necessarily the only driving force, and definitely the news stories that I read didn't really make it clear not from Austin's position of why he made this decision and what it was motivated by. Now, remember, the fate of these people is tied to presidential politics as well. There's some optics associated with how these things get done. I guess you could say right, and I don't know that. You know there's no proof or news that Biden or anybody from his administration other than you know Austin was involved with this decision.
Speaker 2:But the headline is plea deal for 9-11 attackers, right, yeah, and that's a bad headline. I don't care where you sit in an administration, that's a bad headline, right. And if you're in an election cycle and a very highly contested election cycle, the last thing you need is the plea deal is done for those guys that blew up the Twin Towers, right. The last thing you need is the plea deal is done for those guys that blew up the Twin Towers, right. Like, there's a lot of optics associated beyond just the old stuff that you mentioned, like the torture and having to identify some maybe people that were involved or locations where this stuff happened, like that's a lot of its own risk. But I think if we want to use kind of the occam's razor of where did something like this come from?
Speaker 1:well, it's just bad timing it's bad timing for a plea deal so because it was instituted in 2019, I think what was on the plea deal happened, um, yeah, if it's all political, that that would just disappoint me. You know what I mean? Because, like, like you said, this has been a military thing from the beginning and like, we're supposed to keep our neutrality, sure you know, um, and if it was directed that he'd do this just because it was a a trump era thing and try to get rid of like a trump era thing, like like that, that would piss me off. Like that's just noise for noise these folks.
Speaker 2:I just think that comes from the level of visibility and hype around the actual prisoners, right Around the people that we're talking about. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed for the folks that are listening, if you don't know who that is, you've seen his picture and I'll describe him candidly he looks like a fat Saddam Hussein that they just pulled out of the rat hole. He looks like that. Right, you know that's Hussein that they just pulled out of the rat hole. He looks like that. That's the picture that we show. But he was the mastermind. He was the one that the US said he directed where these people were going to go as far as being cells within the United States and how they were going to pull off this attack. This was his idea.
Speaker 2:So that's pretty much next to Osama bin Laden. That's the top person associated with 9-11. That's got presidential level visibility and impact, no matter what, and so I don't take the position of. It was rigged politically like do this to create a political outcome, but it's so tied into that for multiple administrations. These dudes have been in prison for every since Bush. Every president since Bush has had some opportunity to weigh in and or do something about these people, right, so yeah like it's been 20 years.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you see what I'm saying. So there's a lot of.
Speaker 2:There's a lot of stuff, sticky political stuff stuck to that, and so I just think a plea deal, nobody ever wants to be associated with the idea that they got a plea deal right. I just I feel like that's I don't know.
Speaker 1:Well, at least the plea deal comes with like they have to admit guilt, don't they? Yeah, I guess it was a guilty plea yeah, um, but nobody doesn't.
Speaker 2:Nobody thinks they're innocent. You know what I'm saying? Like it's not much of a win. I don't know what would satisfy people at this point. Really, let's put it that way. It's been over 20 years and who knows what would satisfy the American public or the world in general for somebody like this, who knows, and are they still down in Guantanamo?
Speaker 2:They're in Guantanamo. They're in Guantanamo, yes, and really those people, I think, are the reason why President Obama was never able to close Guantanamo. It's because those tribunals were still open and there was no place else in the world you could take them.
Speaker 1:It's a weird no man's land kind of situation. We've had terrorists down in the. Supermax down in Florence. We've had some terrorists down there. Well, I think those are all domestic though.
Speaker 2:Well, yeah, that's the thing. If you want to keep it in military channels and you want a you know 06 to be in charge of the facility that they're in, so that they've got that type of whatever legal discipline built into the containment of the detainees, then you know, I think that's part of it and, again, that's you know, obama promised to close Guantanamo and he never did. And if it's because these guys had open cases like they, again you, we go and we're going back in time and bringing in a different president that's associated with this case. Yeah, so I just I think it's a very, very high profile case and I think Austin made his own decision, but he's in an administration that is, you know, it's the water he swims in as a fish, right?
Speaker 1:Like he cannot not be influenced by it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, you're right. Once you get there, you know every conversation is tied into something, you know. The other big news that we kind of wanted to talk about this week is Tim Walls, the new vice president's running mate for the vice president, I guess.
Speaker 2:What are your thoughts on Tim? You know my first take on him as the choice, as we mentioned in the last episode. I had a couple of other personal favorites, I guess, but I think I had the same mentality that you know. Let's see how he balances. The ticket was my first blush Right and then, like you, we talked about this week. The more I learned about him, the more I was endeared to him as a candidate as well. So I think he's a good. I think he's great on the ticket with Harris.
Speaker 2:Let me say that I think he's great on the ticket with Harris, not just because of any racial or gender things, but I think he is aligned enough policy wise, but from such a different part of the country and kind of cultural background that that's the kind of balance I'm talking about.
Speaker 1:so yeah, yeah, yeah, she mentioned, uh, whitmer um, who was kind of briefly considered there too for a bit, uh, but you know he's supposed to be that same type of draw for that that area. Yeah, you know, those big swing states that are up there. Uh, yeah, the more I listen to him speak like the dude is just spot on with things and like it's coming out, coming out he doesn't own stocks, he's not a big, rich, million dollar or billionaire type person. Did his 24 years in the National Guard concurrently with being a teacher too, doing things like that.
Speaker 1:I come from the reserve community where I was a, you know, full time, so I only wore the uniform. But all my folks they've had the two jobs you know they would, you know, go kill it at their civilian job and then work the you know, the weekends. And if you're a teacher working the weekends, man, yeah, it's a commitment, yeah, yeah. And so you know he retired as a command sergeant major. Yeah, so that's a pretty big deal right there. But you know, you and I both noticed, you know, some folks still kind of throwing some mud at him. Yeah, what are your thoughts on, you know, kind of some of the attacks that he's seen immediately and just. You know what we talked about earlier. Give me your thoughts on that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I found out that the attacks weren't new. They were just new on the national stage since he's been involved in politics pretty much since he separated. I mean he was running his campaign to run for Congress right when he retired. So there's always been a lot of attention to what his military service meant for his political status, right. So this story isn't totally new. But I think that you know, I applaud him for his service and I don't really understand the value of trying to paint somebody in a negative light or trash you know what was an honorable career for political means. I get why civilians might do that and I understand why Donald Trump as a candidate would jump on something like that. But in general and in the community I think people respect him for his service and I think the list of people who don't honor that is a lot shorter than the people that do.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. And like I mentioned earlier too, the other vice president candidate, also an enlisted person, you know Marine Corps veteran. You know he kind of said something about him trying to dodge. You know Tim was trying to dodge a deployment after 24 years and that's horse shit. He shouldn't have said that. But then somebody below that tried to call him out for being a PA guy in Baghdad in the 05-06 timeframe and that's bullshit. You can't call out a Marine that's in baghdad, right, you know. So, like it goes both ways, like like we can't be doing this to each other.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's extremely disappointing and it but it gets views, it gets likes yeah so, and public affairs for anybody that's listening, that's not a military lingo person. Pa is public affairs and you hear that term and think, well, what is that? That's like the guy that talks to the news, right? No, and not in the, not in the Marines.
Speaker 2:That's the guy that talks to uh, he's out on the street doing uh the the commander's bidding, if you will. Uh, he's out there with a squad of shooters and they're going out to meet with the senior people in the community.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think he was like an E3 or an E4. Yeah, but you know you've got a whole team of people and they're out there just interacting with the public.
Speaker 2:So in a war zone, the public that doesn't want you there. It's a little bit different than just walking downtown in your hometown and saying, like you know, this is what the governor thinks is cool, it's like that, but people want to kill you, yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's not like your local newspaper or something.
Speaker 2:We as veterans. You know there's always been candidates that have either caught a black eye or straight up been a candidate because of their fame associated with military service. Right, you know Dwight Eisenhower. But then you look at John Kerry, Right, Like you've had both types of political figures out there.
Speaker 1:What was the big thing against John Kerry with the Swift Bowl? What was that situation out there? What was the big thing against John Kerry with the Swift Bowl? What was that situation?
Speaker 2:There was claim that he just exaggerated the level of danger or the level of responsibility that he had in his service, but then we got to remember that John Kerry was one of the people that was. He went to the Capitol or the White House and threw his medals over the fence, essentially rebuking the fact that he served in the war but, then later on, wanted credit for, you know, being a war hero yeah and so I think later in his career, when he was running for those national level uh seats, that's, that's what bit him was.
Speaker 1:You know, you can't be both right, yeah, but I mean you gotta kind of empathize and like watch him grow too as a person like you. You just came out of the bush and got spit on being called all sorts of names and everything like that. You're going to be emotional still at that point. Sure, yeah, 20, 30 years later you're going to remember some good things. Hey, you know what? We'll be proud of you.
Speaker 2:I can get behind that idea, but that's not how partisan politics works. I know it's so sad, but that's actually what we. What we're trying to make a point about here is we should be giving we as veterans, should be giving other veterans more than just the benefit of the doubt. Right, like we trusted them with our life at some point in time, right, we, we trusted them to make decisions on our behalf. You know, in ways that we didn't even know about, right. So the fact that you know you would, you would bag on sergeant major that served for 24 years, even if he retired as an E-8 as his pay grade. He was at this senior level of responsibility where our sons and daughters as we say, our troops were under his responsibility to keep alive, keep trained and be ready to fight. So I'm going to respect that.
Speaker 2:And I'm not going to worry about the crap that comes out of partisan machinery.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you know, yeah, yeah, and the same thing you know on JD Vance's side. You know you're a Marine in Baghdad during some pretty hot times, Like he earned his paycheck.
Speaker 2:And he earned my respect, yeah.
Speaker 1:You know, and like we got to give that to each other. Yeah For that.
Speaker 2:And I think you know up and down the ballot local races, national races, it doesn't matter. And honestly I would encourage, I want to go a diehard Democrat or a diehard Republican and somebody starts running for a state office in your local area, look at that candidate as a veteran first and see if you can support what they're talking about, regardless of their affiliation, because those veteran candidates are much less likely to be diehard partisan people Absolutely Right, not just necessarily centrist or having a progressive or conservative view. I'm not talking about that, but I'm talking about achieving policy. We don't want to go to work and do these jobs and not achieve policy changes, right? So we're going to reach across the aisle, we're going to look for the coalition opportunities, because that's what we had to do in our jobs in the military, right, and so we have that natural tendency to bring together a group of people and build a team and if it's about a policy that affects veterans, I'm going to find anybody, regardless of party affiliation, that can care about that.
Speaker 2:If I'm running for office or if I'm in office, right, and I think that extends to any other veteran that's seeking office. I'm in office Right, and I think that extends to any other veteran that's seeking office. So I just want to encourage veterans that don't pick up your red flag or your blue flag and say I can't vote for you or I can't support your campaign. Put that flag down first. Look at the American flag.
Speaker 1:Pick up that veteran status first and say I think this person is here to do me and my family some some good and I want to help. Yeah, the uh, yeah, yeah, the partisanship. Like by far the uh military is like the most diverse culture that the world has ever seen. So like, we do have all that experience to go back on. Um, but we have seen some veterans like lose out on the republican side for not falling in, like Adam Kinzinger. Yes, how can we support people that? Because Kinzinger, cheney, I don't agree with them politically but they were still fighting for what they thought was right on the right side of the Constitution. Yeah, yeah, like, how can folks they were aligned with our values and what their side of the Constitution?
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. Like how can folks they were aligned with our values and what their efforts were Exactly? Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:Like I think we're all going towards the same ends. Our means to get there are just kind of different, you know. So how could veterans like help folks, like you know Kinzinger, and like I mean he's still doing all right for himself?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I on Kinzinger and like I mean he's still doing all right for himself, like, but I just saw him on TV, you know, last week, right, yeah, yeah, but for those local vets like like, what are ways that they can help support local vets?
Speaker 1:you know getting involved in these things.
Speaker 2:Well, um, you know, unfortunately, the path into this is partisan doors. Right, you have to knock partisan doors, and that you know that's that's what we're doing. That's why we're in this room, cause we, we knocked on the blue door and um, but it gave us, it gives us a platform and and a team of people or resources that um just gives us a chance to be more effective in the things we want to work on, right, um, so you know, I, I'll encourage people that that is. That is one way to do. It is just get involved in your local preferred party and find out, you know, if there's any groups, if there's already elected people that are veterans and they're approachable right, I mean, everybody in these groups are approachable. And as soon as you say I want to talk about veteran stuff, you're going to get some kind of reception.
Speaker 1:Right, yeah, yeah. So I think it's a great way to build those bridges.
Speaker 2:And then be on the lookout. For I guess the flip side of that is that's if the person is personally motivated to go knock that door. But we as candidates or within the party, you know, we put together these groups that are outreach and advocacy groups. So those are all over the place. That's not just in places like Colorado Springs, where we have a very high veteran population. The veterans live everywhere, and so there's folks out there in any community that want to pick up veterans' issues and do something about it politically. So it's, you know, if you look for it, you'll find it, and the advocacy groups are there.
Speaker 1:One of the things that you pointed me on, too, is that program with Syracuse. You know they offer something for veterans to actually like get you know campaign training and stuff like that and actually like, uh, it's online and then there's some in-person and like the deliverable at the end of it's a whole a campaign plan. Yeah, you know, I did you go through that program, I did.
Speaker 2:Yes and uh, that's a great example. Um, there's all kinds of resources. I didn't even think about that. Uh, yes, there's a lot of resources available, but that one is focused specifically on veterans. The Maxwell School or the Maxwell Institute at Syracuse, they have a menu of different things that are specialized for veteran training and that one is just specifically veteran politics and civic engagement. But I don't want to shortchange it, but they have at least like a dozen different programs that are all specialized and I'd say they kind of operate at the graduate certificate kind of level of engagement. You know there's going to be some work for you, but there's a lot of lecture and there's a lot of guest speakers and that one is specialized to help veterans. And that was the great thing about it.
Speaker 2:No, partisan, nothing in that.
Speaker 2:You know everybody was in different levels of politics, that you had somebody running for County commission, you had somebody running for Congress, you had red, you had blue.
Speaker 2:Um, so the way that we, you know you get through a program like that when you're all there as veterans, is that we did bring that diversity mindset and we were all focused on what's going to be effective in my area. The thing that I really enjoyed was. You could hear that like for me, I knew that the way to get stuff done in New Mexico was to work through Democrat coalitions. That's just the party of popularity there, so that's the best way to get some stuff done. But you could hear other people that had the exact same desires to achieve the exact same things for their community, but they were on the Republican side of the ticket, because that's how you know if you're in North Carolina or wherever they were located. That was a more effective way for them to get what they needed to get done. So the partisanship took backseat because, using our veteran skills and kind of the soft skills that you learn from the military how to talk about that without sounding arrogant or other than from the voters.
Speaker 2:That's what you get out of that program. That's cool and it just helps you achieve your goals. That's really cool All right.
Speaker 1:So, to swing it back to Tim Walls, you know one of the first speeches I heard from him, he was talking in front of a union and you know, being part of the teacher's union for so long, and his wife's I think she's still a DuPain member that type of mentality is just such a like, a more wholesome, like what we've seen recently from a lot of these candidates, wholesome like them, what we've seen recently from a lot of these candidates. Um. So his strong support for the unions, uh, his strong support for the, for the military, like what is tim wall is going to do? You know, having that, you know, enlisted background for us in the military, uh, what's he going to do for us? Like, at this level?
Speaker 2:um, uh, again, I'll kind of clarify for some of our listeners that you know, the being enlisted in the military is considered the you know, you're the worker, you're the laborers.
Speaker 2:It's the blue collar side of the military. And then being a commissioned officer is the white collar side, where you're an administrative leader. So the credential of being, you know, a career enlisted service member brings with it the same type of credential as being a union member, right, like. It's the same kind of mentality of, like, you're doing the work, yeah, and you being part of a big team is what makes the work really effective, right? So, um, I think that it makes him, um, it takes those veteran credentials and kind of makes it valuable to an even greater population, right, yeah, which is great as a candidate, that's a good thing for him. But then it brings back his affiliation to what I think a lot of military people would see as probably further left than they are, just in the general kind of consensus of the military, and I'm not really sure how people are going to react to that. The rest of the race is all about his policy stuff, right, like the character piece is already done right.
Speaker 2:We understand what character you are. Right, we know what defines you as a person and as a candidate right, it took us five days and now we're there, right Now, like you said, what are you going to do with this opportunity and I think, the enlisted credentials, as far as the veteran side makes him maybe I don't know the mentality of take care of the troops right, Like that's what a senior enlisted, a senior non-commissioned officer is there for is to take care of the troops hands on right.
Speaker 2:Hands on the problems, shape that life and mentor those folks. Yeah, I think that's an excellent quality to have as a vice president Right Hands on the problems, shape that life and mentor those folks yeah, I think that's an excellent quality to have as a vice president Right, right and and the opportunity to influence policy at places like the VA. The vice president can do that, right. They can put together a task force, they can put together working groups and crank out. Crank out policy that actually affects the way these places work, policy that actually affects the way these places work, yeah. So if he brings that take care of the troops mentality and, you know, tries to make, make time and make priority for the veteran community, I think he can get a lot done have you seen any of his uh I don't know if they're tiktoks or youtubes with his daughter?
Speaker 1:no, so like they do a couple funny ones where like uh, because he he uses, or like uh, they passed a law to like hands-free driving and stuff like that, okay, and so like his daughter who's like just getting her license yeah, um was doing like a ad with them and like they're it's kind of like an outtake ad. They're just being goofy and silly and stuff like that. But like between that and a few other things that he said, like I see the senior nco in him when he talks. You know what I mean. Like he, he just has a confidence to him and kind of a smart assness that he just kind of says what's on his mind because he's right. I think that's that football coach piece.
Speaker 2:That too, yeah, right. Yeah, being comfortable around young people, right. Being comfortable in that position of mentorship and authority, right that you have to have some kind of appeal to your personality, or you're not going to make that, those relationships and those connections to those people, right.
Speaker 1:So I think that's maybe what you're, what you're seeing there, yeah, and like there's always that mentality that we bring to your training, your replacement, all the time too, and I think both parties have gotten away from that where everybody's trying to cling to their own power, right? So nobody's trying to train their own replacements and I think having somebody with his mentality and, like he said, mentorship in that arena just kind of like guiding people on making sure that you have somebody that can do your job at all times yeah you know I'm really excited for him as a candidate.
Speaker 1:What do you hear in general now for like the, the hope for the race, the, you know, just the, the general excitement, because you know I definitely need a lot more left and progressive. So, like, we're psyched, we're stoked for this. You know, like what, what's going on in the more center of the, the spectrum uh, I think, well, I think the uh.
Speaker 2:When you get a really loud boom in RF, in radio frequency stuff, the noise floor, the whole noise floor jumps up right. That bottom line of sound just goes boom. That happened across the entire political spectrum right. With the resignation of Biden's candidacy, with Kamala hitting the street real hard, you know, and then with the announcement of Waltz all of that made the noise floor jump, so everybody's paying a little bit more attention. Of course, the media was already stuck on this like a pit bull, so there's more blood flowing out of that now.
Speaker 2:But I think, no matter where you sit in the political spectrum, you had to reevaluate how you were going to behave when it came time to vote. Of course, a lot of people have just picked, they already knew what party they were going to vote for. But if you were in any way either, like we said, considering staying home, considering third party, those decisions probably have changed now, or at least they have a lot of different factors.
Speaker 1:Right yeah, the always old factor is gone now like you can't use that as an argument.
Speaker 1:Um, I was, I I was really concerned about, uh, you know, harris, just jumping into the nomination because, like I'm so kind of pissy at the dn, like I've been independent my whole life, I'm not, yeah, but like I don't even like really being like affiliated, you know, like I would just prefer to stay independent, yeah, um, but you know, when they, uh, when they fiddled around in the 2016 elections between, in the primaries, with hillary and bernie, that caused a lot of division, that caused a lot of strife within you know, this party, that it's still being felt, yes, and like here, locally, like I still hear about it all the time.
Speaker 2:I mean, I feel like that is what created the division between the progressive wing of the Democratic Party and the more populist moderate wing. Yeah, I mean that action is what said you're different than us and we're going to make choices that you're just going to have to get in line with Exactly.
Speaker 1:You're different than us and we're going to make choices that you're just going to have to get in line with Exactly, and so you know when they you know the powers that be just kind of like selected. You know, vp Harris, for this, you know, I was kind of worried, like because I was on board with Joe Biden, like because I don't need like somebody out there like talking smack and like doing cartwheels, like just give me a direction and we'll go forward and we'll get shit done. Yeah, you know what I mean. So, like I was okay with Biden, so I was kind of like one of the last clingers on to him because, like, sure, because I don't need charismatic, like I just need direction. Tell me where to go and I go. Yeah, but with the change, like everybody kind of coalesced around it, has there been much grumble from anybody on the right side about the process? And, like you know, did they skip the process and things like that. Have you heard anything?
Speaker 2:I absolutely heard it and I feel it myself a little bit personally that there could have been an opportunity for due process or some execution of a selection process Unprecedented. Sure, maybe it would have been window dressing anyway, yeah. But you know, I think there was an opportunity to do something different than what happened. And what I think is I went and saw a fortune teller and you know, I played the tarot cards and they said Donald Trump's not going to accept the results of this election, right? And I was like no, you're kidding me.
Speaker 1:And I wanted my money back afterwards because it wasn't really that surprising.
Speaker 2:But the thing, the takeaway there is you know, if Trump wins in a landslide, he'll accept that. If Donald Trump wins in a marginallide, he'll accept that. If Donald Trump wins in a marginal win, he might still be upset, even as he's walking into the door of the White House. He'll be like I'm not so sure about that last election, but you know he won. If he loses by one vote or a million votes, this may be the thing that he picks up and says the whole thing was rigged.
Speaker 2:I should have been against Biden. He's an old dude. I built my whole campaign around. But, yeah, him or the voters. You know his legal call-out would be that the voters have voted for Biden, didn't vote for Harris and that's. For whatever reason, the primary process is illegal or invalid. She shouldn't be on the ballot. Blah, blah, blah. Right, like you know. You know what the readout or a legal complaint is going to be already. Yeah, and someone's writing it right now. Right, just waiting to issue it to some district federal court somewhere. Yeah, you know, and I think that's happening and it's unfortunate. But what was the alternative?
Speaker 1:So I think, with them picking Harris or like for her, just kind of like flowing into the way it happened, yeah, I I think that was like the the perfect situation. I was really concerned that they were going to try and like handpick and like drop newsome in there or something and like that would have been a shit show. Yeah, yeah, like to take it away from the vp who like who we've already voted for to be a parent.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we've like she's cool to be next in line. Yeah, yeah, so I was really worried about that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, she's been in that position for the last three and a half years already. Anyway, right, like truly the era parent, Like everyone no, not everyone, a lot of people didn't vote for her, but all the people enough people voted that America has agreed this person has this responsibility, and so, while it's a campaign and the campaign is different than official duty yes, it made sense, right. And if that's not a legal defense, though, that's the problem, right, like for whatever trickery that comes out of a legal argument, um, even if it makes perfect sense that maybe that demand for the convention should have done something, or whatever you know, I don't know, but, like I say, what was the?
Speaker 2:alternative Right. I mean, was it really chaos?
Speaker 1:Yeah, right, yeah.
Speaker 2:So um, the path got picked and, and you know, stuff got executed.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. Now we just got to sit back and wait to see what they do. Yeah, and that's going to do it for the show Uhune in next week. But before we go, quick shout out to our sponsors. Native Roots, them and the Cannabis Council here in Colorado Springs was able to get enough signatures for the recreational cannabis push, so we're going to keep pushing forward with that. You're going to see it on your ballots in November, so make sure you keep spreading the word and talking about all the good things that we can do with recreational cannabis. Again, tune in next week. It's great talking with y'all. Stay safe.
