Left Face
Join Adam Gillard and Dick Wilkinson while they talk politics and community engagement in Pikes Peak region.
Left Face
Cannabis SAGA Continues, and Global Diplomacy: Israel-Hamas Ceasefire Credit
The episode delves into the confusion surrounding Colorado Springs' cannabis legalization, revealing the challenges voters face when local officials attempt to manipulate political outcomes.
Who gets credit for the Israeli-Hamas Peace Deal?
• Update on the cannabis initiative results
• City council's confusing response to voters' choices
• Community sentiments and frustrations about representation
• The implications of low turnout rates in upcoming elections
• Connections to broader national topics, including Israel-Hamas
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We're good. Okay, hello everyone, and welcome to another episode of Left Face. This is the Military Veterans Podcast for the Pipe Peaks region, where we talk about current events from the political world. I am your co-host, dick Wilkinson, and I'm joined this morning with Adam Gillard. Good morning Adam. Good morning Dick. How you doing, bud? I'm doing great, as always. Thursdays is the day I generally take off from work stuff, so I have.
Adam:it's the days I get to do other stuff, and so this is really the only work that I do is right now. Oh yeah, well, fair.
Dick:But yeah, I'm always in a good mood on Thursdays. So, it's hard to catch me on the inside of that on Thursday.
Dick:So that's a good deal. Yeah Well, we had an episode last week where we started out with the cannabis initiative that has been cooking here in Colorado Springs, the legalization of recreational sales inside the city. The ballot initiative last year was a very close call but the decision from the voters was to allow the adult sale, you know, recreational sale, of cannabis. Now the city council had done some a couple of different efforts before the vote happened to try and muddy the waters a bit. From Adam and I's perspective. That was some of the intention there. That was some of the intention there. Last week we said that there would be a city council meeting where we knew that discussion around both confusion from the ballot era and some confusion around moving forward would be discussed and Adam was able to listen in or attend. And what's the update?
Adam:Adam. So I was trying to look up real quick to see how close the votes were. It wasn't really even that close. It was like 55 said yes, they wanted legalized recreational cannabis here, and then, like 45% said on the 2B question, said no, we don't want to change the city charter. So that one fell well below what it needed.
Dick:You know what I mean. Well, that's a good update, because the original numbers for the first, even two weeks or so after the, yeah, it was pretty close, it was pretty tight. But, like After the full count was done, yeah, the overall numbers More than 10 points.
Adam:Yeah, it's a pretty significant defeat, you know. And so what Councilman Donaldson says? He said he received one email and one complaint from a constituent. Okay, that they were confused. They said they either voted yes, yes, or they voted no, no, okay.
Adam:Because they thought they needed to do that, which makes sense. I think that would lead to confusion. But I was on the canvassing board, right, I? But I was on the canvassing board. I was the Democrat on the canvassing board. We had the recall. We have a risk-limiting audit first, which we saw, I think, just under 400 or not even that many ballots, and there was some yes, yes, no, no's, which makes you think some confusion. Sure, but we had that recall where we looked at over like 3,000 ballots and every time we looked at you know, that race we were watching, I always checked for the other one and there was not a significant amount of yes, yes, no, no's. Okay, there was a significant amount of Trump voters saying yes, they wanted legalized rec, which I thought was I pointed out every time to the Republican on the board there- I was like hey, look at that.
Adam:Republicans supporting that. You know like. I like to point that out to those folks Talk about how the sausage is made.
Dick:Adam's over here dropping knowledge on us.
Adam:So like. So for the councilman to say that he's got two complaints, clearly he didn't go like look at any facts or talk to anybody else. For him to say there's confusion. And now the city council has decided that they're going to have another election on this. Ask the question again in this April's election. That is historically at a 40% turnout rate.
Adam:But the folks that do turn out are the old white folks that are going to say the answer that they want to hear, mm-hmm Fair. And so that's where we're at now is that we have this $10 to $15 million in tax revenue a year just waiting. People want to spend this money here, want to let us do good in our community with this money, and we have a city council that's wasting a million dollars between last election and this coming one to try to get rid of create legal trickery in the ballot process. Yeah, and keep asking the question until they get the crowd the answer they want, right, and then lock it in forever, right, right, that's the language that they're trying to use as well it's like if we just keep asking it with this really harsh, you know definitive language, then that it can't be changed.
Dick:Well, that's discouraging, and we knew that the confusion around the topic would be discussed, but unfortunately, that outcome of well, let's just ask the question again when basically nobody's watching, right? What a terrible way to deal with that confusion.
Adam:You know 30 to 40 people show up. Uh, thank you to everybody that showed up. Uh, great stories, great. You know. There's a few different veterans that are up there speaking. Uh, people in the industry, people that didn't, you know, use cannabis but still recognize what it could do for us because we have shops closing downtown, like if people didn't land in our airport and immediately drive up the mountain if we got them to stay here for a night, like all that revenue revenue, you know comes down to our downtown area uh, yeah, I agree and you know the concept, the arguments of you know the stores are an eyesore or people feel like not in my backyard type.
Dick:you know complaints there's, those angles have been out there forever and that I guess we'll probably see that type of rallying cry If this does end up on a valid initiative again, which somebody please call a lawyer and like get that, get this sorted before that happens, and this is kind of what what I I talked to, you know.
Adam:I did my three minutes I think I only took like two at the city council when our founders wrote the declaration and they wrote the constitution. They did it based off the idea that a government for the people and by the people will be possible. Not that it's going to be easy. It's not going to take work every day because because that was another thing there was another issue about uh, donaldson wanted to repeal something before the question was even asked because he didn't want to do the work later. It takes work every day, buddy, like you put your big boy pants on, show up to work every day.
Dick:Well, and that's. I'm glad you said that Cause earlier I was going to say, hey, he talked to a constituent. Right Like this is progress. No shit.
Adam:Yeah, that was one thing. I was like, hey, I'm proud of you. Good job, man. You got two. But you know, when they did that, they gave us the right to elect people to do some of the small work for us and make the appointments and, you know, kind of like manage the day-to-day things. But when the citizens bring together a petition of 28,000 registered voters signing a petition, deliver that to you, put it on the ballot, you try to counter that with your own confusion and you know something outlawing it. The voters see through that and say yes to the good guys, no to the bad guys, and then you just want to overthrow that. That is a direct constitutional violation. They are not the nobility of this land that just needs to sit up there and tell us what the fuck we can do.
Dick:Absolutely. I see it as you started a hurdles race and as you run down the track, the hurdles get taller. Yeah, no kidding.
Adam:That's not how it's supposed to work. I'm trying to go under it and it's just wailing me in the head.
Dick:Yeah, yeah, I feel like we're jumping hurdles and they just keep clicking them up taller and taller, which is, like you say, 28,000 plus the successful ballot initiative. Those two things are pretty straightforward.
Adam:statements from the voters and the last election cycle. Again, not to get too nerdy with the canvassing board knowledge, but 75% of our electorate showed up. Wow yeah, 86% of registered Republicans. That's amazing. Only 60% of independents or unaffiliated.
Dick:That's still high.
Adam:It's disappointing.
Dick:Those are people that registered to vote, but basically, for the most part, don't always pay attention to politics. Even election might come and go, and they're like oh, I thought that was next year.
Adam:You know, I'm not knocking those folks, I'm good for you man, no problem, the turnout there, 60%, is still high and it was like low 80s for Democrats too, but this is going to be the biggest pool of voters.
Adam:It's a controversial presidential election 75 percent total turnout and now we're going to rely there's no truer sampling exactly, and now we're going to go to a 40 turnout race, if we get that, because people are burned out on all this shit. You know what I mean? Like agree, um, it is so exhausting, nobody's even gonna open that ballot in april there's. Why are these still coming right? Yeah?
Dick:the, the text from the. You know, all the politicians stopped, but I'm still getting this thing in the mail. What's this? You know so and you're right. I mean, there's the politics is uh, there's tactics and strategies, and it sounds like they've picked one. Yeah, and that's unfortunate.
Adam:Well, thank you for that. So something else about that city council meeting, though, is I think one person came up and said that she was running against Donaldson. I don't know who else. I didn't remember catching her name because I was on my way out, but the folks that show up to politic at these meetings crack me up. There was one dude that showed up with a camera and just like put it on the president's face there, uh, helms, um, just put it on his face and like tried to like ask him questions right there and stuff like that, and like eventually, one of the other councilmen was like you know, this is hostile, like shut this down, this is stupid.
Dick:Like and the guy was just being obnoxious.
Adam:He was from from a podcast doing something. Uh asked kind of not a random question, valid question. It was what about a great question? Just not the right time and opportunity for it. So if you're yeah, if you're going up and speaking, don't be an obnoxious asshole Like you. Just lose your whole message, man, it's just. It was funny to see.
Dick:It's like Parks and Rec. That shit is so legit I was going to say, man, that kind of cannon fodder. That's just what happens. We can preach all day about use the microphone time for something useful, but to the person who has been reading every conspiracy page on the internet for the last three years and they finally found out this topic's coming up at a local political setting they bring their book of notes and then just start flipping through it like a madman. Yeah, you know that you gotta.
Adam:That's part of it man, it cracks me up and I think overall it is kind of funny seeing like them just kind of get abused up there, you know, because like people will get up and just say shit and they can't respond to it. They'll be like, yeah, you suck, you suck, you suck. It's got to take a toll on them. So I do feel some sympathy there. But man, some of them really suck.
Dick:Well, speaking of political discourse, we'll shift gears on that note to the national topics that are happening and even international topics. With this first one, we're going to talk now about the Israel-Hamas potential ceasefire hostage deal. A little debate here about who, which presidential administration either, rightfully, can claim credit if that, if one, that doesn't matter as long as these hostages get released. This part is in is internal squabbling amongst american partisans and the israelis and and people in palestinian, you know, control, don't? They're not concerned with this internal squabbling. So let's just recognize that. But we are. This is what we do, like Adam said, this is the whole job today is to come and talk about this stuff. So, donald Trump, this was my lead on bringing it up with Adam yesterday. I said here's the narrative that I hear and whether we want to believe it or not, it sells and it's kind of airtight on its very superficial level.
Dick:Donald Trump has a press conference down in Mar-a-Lago about two weeks ago, and it was his you know, I'm going to be in office soon kind of press conference laying out a little bit of his expectations, for I don't know how the world's going to bend to his will. And so he said the situation in Israel and Gaza has to be resolved before I'm in office or all hell is going to break loose. And that was his statement. Chronologically thereafter, things really started to seem as though what had been in a sail mate started to move. And then, I'll you know, he's going to be inaugurated next week and all of a sudden, you know clock is ticking, we're in the 11th hour and hostages special deals. It seems like ink is starting to get, you know, used and maybe, maybe, something's going to happen.
Dick:So, adam, what's your take on this? I know that the easy thing there is. Trump said do it. Somebody, I don't know who, got scared or not scared, or just didn't know what the future would hold, and they took action. You do not think that's quite what happened.
Adam:No, so this drove such an emotional response for me when I read that text message from you, um, and like I don't text real fast because, like, when I text I have to be, like, grammatically correct, okay, but like and I hate doing the voice to text because that just butchers it and then I have to go back and correct things so it takes me a while to text.
Adam:It's usually short texts and things like that. Um, but like from like seventh grade, like grammar matters, like my seventh grade teacher, he was a like from south chicago, like meat packing plant guy, um, ended up being like a literature music teacher in a lutheran school. Okay, um, but he would always tell us about like, uh, the dumbing down of america starts with illiteracy and once people stop knowing the language and knowing how to communicate, they stop this. They don't know how to defend themselves and they don't know how to, like, learn information.
Dick:Right, sure, it's a disconnection right of certain populations.
Adam:So as, like one of the boomer hills that I will always die on, is like I try to be grammatically correct so I can't respond quickly. That is a boomer hill I was.
Dick:I was going to say a second ago tell me that you're old without telling me that you're old, Right.
Adam:But it's one that I just I've never written LOL in the text. I always say ha ha, ha.
Dick:I'm just stupid like that About three years ago I started using speech-to-text a little bit and then within a few months that was that I stopped typing. I just used voice to type. I let it be jacked up, it is all the time it just gets to me.
Adam:I know I need to change, but I want to die on that note. All that to say that is probably one of the stupidest things I've ever heard.
Dick:Because Trump had anything to do with the problem.
Adam:Yeah, just because we don't know that things are going on. In the media there's always things going on. It is just disrespectful to even put that out there. They're just sitting around waiting for Trump to say something before all these State Department workers and this is the things that people don't know about. They see the heads of the office and things like that. There's a whole administration that put this together and worked on it, and not just the biden administration.
Dick:But like egypt, qatar, like there's all these other countries over there that are trying to solve this shit.
Adam:Um, and biden's like literally like walking out of the oval office Office, flipping off the light switch oh yeah, I got you a peace deal. And they're like, yeah, you didn't do shit. Get out of here, man. Get like, how can you just like? The dude has delivered so much for us in his four years? You know from you know the Infrastructure Act, the Chip Science Act, inflation Act like great bipartisan support, until Trump steps in and says something and shuts down bipartisan agreements, his administration, all these people that worked on this. Get it done on the way out the door, because in a couple of weeks, all these folks are going to be fired. Well, that's true, yeah, so, like all these folks that just are about to lose their jobs, get all this shit done at the last minute. And people are like good job, trump.
Dick:You're my buddy. I'll want to dig into that part about people were leaving. Yeah, this stuff is personality driven, like there's no way around that Right, like believing how much you can coerce somebody is really what the international diplomacy is.
Adam:You know politics 101.
Dick:Yeah, influential, yeah, and in this case I say coerce because of the violence and you know military outcomes are involved, right, so with that I can definitely. It gives me a little bit of insight to look at the Trump argument and say, well, if you can get to this, that one layer down right, and know that the personality driven relationships that got whatever has been agreed to so far up to that limit, maybe that was a stronger motivation for the people on the other side in either Israel or Hamas leadership. If those folks saw, basically, deals that they had constructed based on personality relationships walking out the door and then there's no telling how the chessboard gets shaken up, they lose their advantage in that situation as well. If Tom's not going to be the guy in the room a month from now, we have to start all over. I can't explain everything that's happened over the past year.
Adam:So maybe we do have to do this now. If you look at the players that are there, Netanyahu would be the one that's been thrown off the most roadblocks recently. I heard that argument in other punditry, you know on CNN and so he was waiting for Trump to get in because the few restraints that we had on him, like they were coming off, I mean.
Dick:I heard Trump saying we're going to start shooting. You know, like you know, our ships are just going to start dropping bombs in places that still have anything left to drop bombs on.
Adam:Yeah, so like Netanyahu was waiting for Trump so to get him to sign it, that came from the Biden administration Fair. Like that relationship was developed there in order for that to happen, because they were the ones that were stopping it from happening.
Dick:Yeah, I can see that. Do you think that it? I mean again, this is down to the level of the details that we just aren't going to know but do you think that it got to a point where and I don't know if Netanyahu or anybody over there would care about this, but where it became it was laid bare basically that if this deal is not agreed to, it's clearly on you, right? Like, do you feel like there was that level of pressure in the situation of, like, everybody has agreed to everything except you keep doing? You know X, y and Z.
Adam:So I think there is something to the diplomacy that we've chosen. Like we're choosing that idiocracy path right now and so like people know kind of what's coming, so that might drive some decisions from folks, but I don't think we should celebrate that.
Dick:No.
Dick:You're right, and our internal politics Right, you know, just just because you've got it done with, like the wrong tool or the wrong method, getting it done is one thing, Right, and then you know we wish for a better, we wish for better ways to get it done. Sometimes, well, fair, well, my devil's advocate position was that Trump. Trump slammed his fist on the table and said take care of this. The thing is that the logical disconnect there is who would that have scared? Right, it's Israel, not nothing. Right Like that means basically nothing to them.
Adam:They've been able to prosecute the war.
Dick:However, they wanted to, almost you know, and so that didn't matter to them. And I think again, you know Gaza and anything that Hamas was in control of is almost all rubble now, so I don't know how you can scare people that are living under piles of rubble with more military force.
Adam:Here's one. That's the part where that story falls apart.
Dick:on the devil's advocate side, is Trump yelled at somebody? Who did he yell at and who cared about that?
Adam:so here's a little uh end round um. When Trump comes in, the Ukraine thing's gonna get solved one way or the other.
Dick:We have discussed that, you know. Uh, he like that he's gonna push for them.
Adam:Annexations things like that. So Russia's gonna stop focusing on that, so Russia can turn their attention back towards Syria and towards other things. Egypt, knowing that Qatar is neutral in that area a lot of the times, but, like these, middle Eastern countries, knowing that when Trump gets into power, and you know, I think he's going to kind of pull out and let people do whatever the hell they want, and then Russia is going to fill some power vacuums.
Adam:If they don't have to focus on Ukraine. I think there's a lot of shifting pieces there that people know are coming. That makes them, you know, like you said, dry the ink on some paperwork.
Dick:Yeah, uncertainty alone could be a driving factor. It's that if you take the deal you can get today, the devil you know, the a driving factor, right, it's that if you take the deal you can get today, the devil you know is better than the devil you don't know, right, and I do believe that's pushed some diplomacy efforts to shift in the last couple of months. And, like you said, the the belligerent tactic is not the best form of diplomacy. But uh, the argument from the other side is but what works works, man, don't question it you know okay, because, like, they're still trying to do it with canada.
Adam:You know just, you're the 51st state. You know, uh, dreamland, that's belligerent diplomacy for sure, right, and it's not gonna go well for us. Uh, like, when we start throwing up all these, you know threats of tariffs and we're gonna take over your stuff. People don't't understand that a tariff is a good thing if you target it. If we targeted the auto industry and really started jacking up the prices on the Toyotas and the Hondas so that people would find Chevys and Fords more pricey and you make them buy that item, but then we talk about all the items that go into the things to make those Fords and Chevys. If you throw a blanket tariff, their prices are going to go up too. It's got to be very targeted and very strategic when you do these things, which the Trump administration does not abide by. Any kind of strategic they are. Shoot from him.
Dick:It's all big hammers.
Adam:We just drop big hammers If it messes up, you claim bankruptcy and move on to the next thing. He's done that six times, that's true.
Dick:That's true. I mean and there is a you know, let's pause on that for just a minute that is a leadership mentality that I have seen in other folks and in other settings, both in government and in private industry, where the concept of the more money you're moving, the better, everything must be right, like don't pay any more attention to it than that. How many commas are in this number?
Adam:right.
Dick:And that's all that matters. And it doesn't matter if you're losing money in the process, as long as money is moving through something that you're standing beside, but it's all make believe it is and just you know, push it. Push it as far as you can be outrageous, and if it falls apart, it wasn't your money in the first place.
Adam:Exactly, and the people that are going to suffer are all the people that were working those jobs or doing, you know, working for those companies. The folks that are making under $20 an hour. You know that are essential workers during a pandemic, but get tossed aside whenever they fuck up on their ledgers.
Dick:So that's that big hammer mentality is that things will fail sometimes when you do that. And almost this is a unique thing to Donald Trump the concept of I've never lost. I'm only a winner and I've never lost anything.
Adam:I hate that smug look on his face when he wins elections.
Dick:I've never. I'm only a winner and I've never. I hate this, but just bankruptcy is in a lot of terms, a loss, you know and if you were the CEO, founder or whatever of a company and it was your as your name on it, so you cannot blame other people when you put your name on the building and it goes out of business yeah, that that is a loss, right I?
Dick:mean and that was a failure. Um, now, does that mean you shouldn't keep doing whatever it is that you've been doing, like sure, keep trying, keep making businesses, whatever, but don't do it with the hubris that I've never lost right, yeah, because then your decision making is is very skewedwed.
Adam:There's no consequence. Right once you decide that there's no consequence, I don't see how people can relate to that, though yeah, nobody else lives lives like that.
Dick:Well, some people do. That's the thing you're at the very edges of the extremes right like so. We can talk all day about how Donald Trump, his leadership style, could be picked apart. I'm sure there's a college class that'll be done on that sometime in about 30 years.
Adam:That's so scary Anthropology of some sort In 80 years, what they're going to be saying about us.
Dick:It'll be interesting. Well, let's talk about another interesting topic that's related to Donald Trump Confirmation hearings at start. They are contentious. They are and we knew they would be, and there's never been a lack of opportunities for grandstanding. Politicians really enjoy that. There are some junior, brand-new, five-day-old senators that are out there trying to cut throats to make a name for themselves.
Adam:Oh, really yeah.
Dick:So that was going on.
Adam:I haven't heard any of the new folks out there. I did hear the one on Hegseth Duckworth when Senator Duckworth was and she's not new.
Dick:No, no, no, no.
Adam:Yeah, and she was lighting him up.
Dick:And we knew that was coming. Yeah, I mean, we talked about her a couple months back when she went on just a hate campaign Right after he was nominated. She got out there and was like who will listen to me talk? Crap about this dude.
Adam:I did hear some of her questions. I did, yeah, yeah because she talked about the one partnership or alliance that we have.
Dick:Yes, it was a gotcha question. Yeah, oseum or something like that Nobody knows what that is.
Adam:He's going up for secta. You should know some things about the area that you're going to be in? Yes, but you can't show up to the table like you guys, Chinese or Japanese. That's exactly what he did.
Dick:I know that, yes, but here's the thing For our listeners and for folks that even when you're in the military, this is some of the things that we just don't realize. Africa, the continent of Africa. You think we're not at war there, maybe a little bit of global war on terrorism, like little hot spots here and there, but there's no campaigns in Africa. Wrong, there are 13,. This was a few years ago. This was a few years ago 13 named military operations and campaigns on the continent of africa on average for the entire three years that I was stationed there.
Dick:Yeah, um, I didn't know what any of those names, 13 names, and I mean, you know, I was concerned about the, the commander's intelligence requirements, and then that would be associated with one of those campaign names. But I wasn't the type of Intel analyst that was like watching the story. I wasn't an all source guy or a human guy, so for me it was all just popping bits of information into the pipeline. So I'm right there, hands on with this problem set, and there's 13 named operations that I could name five of them on any given day. So you know, I'm just. I'm not.
Dick:I'm not defending Pete Hexeth, but I am calling out Senator Duckworth and saying, like that was a gotcha question. First of all we all saw your hate campaign Right and then we knew that you were going to do something in the confirmation hearings. But there was an opportunity to shine or to play the fool a little bit, and gotcha questions is not professional.
Adam:But how's that a gotcha question when it was directly related and it was a pretty basic question, it was directly related to our alliances that our military deals with. How's that a gotcha question for the sec def, not for a Fox News?
Dick:analyst. I gotcha, I gotcha. I would almost expect, well, not Fox News, but a journalist, excuse me. I would almost expect a professional journalist, which Pete Hankseth is not, but I would expect a journalist to maybe know those things. I don't know what that acronym is myself, so that's.
Dick:all I can offer is that I don't know who knows what that acronym is, so that's why it's a gotcha question, because nobody knows what that acronym is unless they're directly assigned to that mission, and even then they're like don't know all the moving parts is what I'm trying to say.
Adam:But this is one of the reasons why we have elected officials to get into these things, and when you're going up for the top elected official position for the SECDEF, you need to know these things. You should know these things. This isn't a learn-on-the-job type of thing. This is the conversation we had a couple weeks ago.
Dick:That's the problem with civilian appointees in some. I mean not overall, no, no, but I'm saying in any job you're going to have a civilian appointee at the top of some of these agencies that are. This has happened throughout a lot of administrations where they're just, they have no background in that thing. You know what I'm saying. And yet there they are because they're the political appointee, right?
Adam:I agree, I don't want sec def to be in that category of people yeah, like any administration, because you know, when he did it with Devos there for education and I think she like lasted his whole presidency, she was there the whole time.
Dick:Yeah, so, like you know, she works out the brain surgeon was in charge of housing and urban development. You know the pediatric brain surgeon. Like that doesn't make sense. Right charge of the health care system. Right yeah, picking your friends, picking your friends.
Adam:This stuff needs to stop. There's no stopping it really.
Dick:I guess we've moved the conversation back into the fact that just the nominees in general are a stretch often.
Adam:Did you say the Attorney General one?
Dick:I can't remember what her name was. Pam Bondi is her name. No, I didn't watch that one at all.
Adam:One of the Senators asked her about the Instruction Act or something. I can't remember what the question? Was but she was like well, I'll study it when I get appointed. He's like you're getting appointed to Attorney General and you need to study the 14th Amendment.
Dick:Yeah, that appointed to attorney general and you need to study the 14th amendment.
Adam:Yeah, that's a problem. Wow, yeah, and, and you thought that was a good idea to say too yeah right, yeah, yeah.
Dick:No, you should bring that little book that they have with the constitution yeah, exactly like you know, bring it with you.
Adam:You know, take your bible to church, take the constitution down to the capital.
Dick:There will be a test at the end, right, so well, so well, let's stick with Hegseth, though. So okay, tammy Duckworth, I mean gotcha question or not. I feel like she just did not. She was aggressive. The point that I'm trying to make is everybody expected her to be obstinate and she just played the part, and I don't know that any of her questions like I don't think the people that we're admitting that it was. This is all a lost cause and that pretty much everything that Democrats complained about it wouldn't have mattered. You know for the most part.
Adam:Now.
Dick:I want to talk about Tim Kaine and his line of questioning, which was about so this? This is why I think it's interesting, because he was taking a very legalistic approach to try and deliver a point and Pete Hexeth wasn't playing along. But what Tim Kaine said was okay, you're going to have to take an oath to support the Constitution when you become the Secretary of Defense and we have to believe that, basically, you have very high integrity and that what you say and do are truthful and you're reliable and that, if you, what you say and do are truthful and you're reliable. And then he brought up personal concerns that were documented, aspect meaning you, when you this incident that happened at a hotel that's now become part of this campaign to keep you from becoming getting into this job that included a sexual encounter. Did it? Yes or no? Yeah, you know. And he was like I was cleared of all wrongdoing, etc. Etc. And so then tim kaine said listen, you admitted to having a sexual encounter with this person, yes, and he said I'll let your words speak for themselves.
Dick:And he says okay, so that's a yes, and then he said now I want to remind everyone of the conditions in your life when you had this sexual encounter. You were married, you had just fathered a child with a woman who was not your wife but who is now currently your third wife. But in both situations you had sex with a different woman and would have been breaking the trust of either of those women, to include your wife. So let's ask this when you got married, did you take a vow to be faithful to your wife? Was that an oath? And he said you know what are you talking about. And he's like you took an oath to behave a certain way. What do your words mean to you? And you have been married more than once, had documented affairs in every marriage. What does an oath mean to you? Right, and that was his point. Yeah Well, pete never engaged.
Dick:Pete just tip-tap, tappity-tap, danced around and was like why are you asking me this question? Now, here's my biggest takeaway. I understood exactly what Tim Kaine was getting at. Right, you just the one person. You take an oath and you can't maintain that promise. Right, how are you going to maintain a promise to millions of soldiers and civilians that work for you? Right, so that I got it tracking 100. Now. My real biggest problem, though, was the spin and the punditry outside of that line of questioning on every media situation. When people brought that up, anybody on the right was like tim kaine sounded insane. Tim kaine sounded like a sex pervert. Tim Cain sounded like he was so concerned about Pete Hegseth and what he does with his body, and I'm like no, why are you saying that? That was obviously not what he wasn't like how hot was that woman? Or like how many women did you cheat on you know? Like he didn't ask gross questions.
Adam:How are people taking C-SPAN and turning it into some like fanfic porn?
Dick:Yeah, it was not that at all. Right, it was a very clear-headed line of questioning to expose that this gentleman doesn't take promises very seriously. And it was. That's fine. And all the people who wanted to defend Pete outside of that room just went really bizarro with their defense and I just it.
Dick:It fell flat for me completely and I didn't understand. You know, to me Tim Kaine did exactly what I wish a bunch of other senators would have done, which is challenge his integrity, challenge things that are really on the record and don't let him back out of it. Right, Because basically what he did was back out of anything that wasn't fully on the record, and Tim K managed to use the things that were on the record to get you know, get him to at least be exposed and caught up in his own lives. Yeah, so I appreciated that. I feel like the Democrats did what they both said they were gonna do and what they felt like their job was. But, as Adam and I both agree, the takeaway is Mr Hankseth will be the secretary of defense in a week or so.
Adam:Yeah, right, so yeah, and we'll lose a lot of good state department workers who worked out a good agreement to force ceasefire. Oh yeah, that's true.
Dick:Yes, a lot of administration officials will be leaving and not getting a medal. Yeah, that's true. Well, thanks everybody for listening this week. Please check us out on Blue Sky. Feel free to leave comments and communicate with us and we'll try to bring those topics up in future episodes. Thanks for listening to Left Face.
