NYC as a Top Retirement Spot, Jim Beam Pause, AHA Alcohol Debate & CBS Pulls 60 Minutes | Filtered

Foreign. Announces it will no longer be distilling whiskey from its number one place in Kentucky. New health information coming out from the American Heart association about drinking alcohol. And it's a little surprising and confusing. And finally, there is a new number two place for four top destinations for retirees in the United States. And it's not where you think. All that and more today on Filtered. Welcome to Filtered with TJ Walker. If there's one thing we're told over and over again in pop culture in America, is that when you retire, you have to move to Florida. Well, I did move to Florida, not because I retired, but for a variety of reasons. And yeah, there are a lot of retirees here, but we're told that you've got to move to Texas. You have to move someplace warm. You have to move someplace where the taxes are lower. There's even the joke on Seinfeld that, you know, I didn't want to, but I'm of a certain age. I was forced, my parents were forced to move to Florida. Turns out that's not really true. There are new statistics out about retirement trends in America. And, yeah, Florida's still pretty big. There's no doubt about it. But hold on to your horses. Guess what? Came in as the number two most popular destination for retirement in the United States. According to a new report from Safe Storage or, excuse me, from Storage Cafe. The number two spot is. Drumroll, please. New York City. Now, some of you are scratching your head saying, oh, wait a minute, New York City, no one would go there. It's violent, wildly expensive, overrun with dangerous socialists. That's what we're told all the time. Turns out the people who can vote with their feet, who can go anywhere, especially affluent people who have been successful in life financially, not that that's the only metric. Turns out they just love New York City. Now a New York City real estate agent quoted in a story in the New York Times, citing the sources from Storage Cafe, says that people love the fact that they're doormen. You know, when you're retired, you don't want to deal with as many hassles. They like building staff. They like a low maintenance apartment living. It's especially valuable to older people who don't want to shovel snow, don't want to deal with repairs, want easy logistics. Also, New York City has many, many of the top doctors in the entire world. A lot of successful doctors want to live in New York City. So if you want to deal with top doctors, actually living in New York City is one of the best places to do it. So I'm not going to kid you. It's not because New York City is suddenly a lot less expensive. No, that's not the reason. But for many senior, let's face it, we live in a culture where so many public policies are skewed towards helping old people have more money. And hey, it benefits me too, okay? And if you are younger, if you are middle aged, it's very difficult to accumulate wealth. It's very difficult for many people to even afford a home. But for many senior citizens, especially if they've sold their home, had perhaps a nice return on their investment, have a nice nest egg. New York City is increasingly seen as the best place to live if they don't want to live in Florida. Again, this surprises a lot of people who think, oh, why would you want to be there? It's expensive. It's cold. Well, it's not cold if you're not out shoveling snow and you can be inside and look at beautiful things. If you can go to Broadway, if you can see the opera, if you can go to fashion shows, if you can go to any kind of professional sports event that you want, guess what? New York City has it all. Also, if you're a foodie, no offense to my friends who love Applebee's, and I've been to one before. New York City has the greatest concentration of fine dining in America. Some would say the world. Other things of interest, the life expectancy is longer in New York City. The average life expectancy is 80 years old. So some people move there because they want to live longer. Now, causation correlation doesn't mean causation. It's also the fact that relatively affluent people live longer. And New York City attracts more affluent people because poor people can't afford to live there. It also attracts people who like to walk. Walking is a healthier lifestyle than driving all the time or just sitting at home on the couch and looking at certain partisan TV newscasts and yelling at the TV screen. So that's. That's the issue. New U.S. news and World Report ranked New York city the number three among 150 best places to retire. Now, no one's saying that New York City is suddenly really inexpensive, but it is attractive to an awful lot of people. Now, I mentioned on the show just the other day, I love New York City. I lived there for 20 some years and I go back frequently. And I'm not going to say I'm going to retire there because I don't plan on ever retiring. But I may end up having a residence there again at some point. And I am going back a week from yesterday. I'm going to be there for a vacation for a week because I enjoy the culture as well. So here's why I bring this up and why I think it's so significant from a communications perspective and for someone who just wants truth about what's going on in the world. We live in a world where many, many political interests have an interest in scaring you into thinking New York City is a big, dangerous, scary place because it fits a political narrative that makes you want to sometimes vote a certain way. Now here on this show at Filtered, I'm here as a sane, sensible centrist. I'm not trying to convince you to just vote for one party or against one party, But I do want you to see how various political interests are trying to shape your worldview. And it never ceases to amaze me how many people buy into this narrative that because New York City has certain ethnic mixes and perhaps a wider variety of ideological backgrounds of people living there, it somehow makes it an awful and dangerous place. Let's look at the issue of crime. Some of you are saying, well, I would never live in New York City. It's crime ridden. Well, yeah, it was in 1970s and the 1980s. It was bad. As recently as the 1990s, there were almost 2,000 murders or a little over 2,000 murders. Today it's only a few hundred. You don't hear that talked about on certain political channels and certain tabloids in New York City, no one likes to talk. You don't get more clicks talking about murder down once again another year. You don't get more clicks for talking about that. And that's why so many people have a distortion. As recently as literally yesterday, I'm on the pickleball court here in Florida and casually mentioned to people I was playing with that I was going to be in New York City in the next week. And one of them said, oh, boy, you better bring your gun. Well, that's horrible reasons. That's. That's horrible advice for many reasons. One of them is New York City has very strict rules against carrying guns, especially unlicensed. You can get mandatory, a couple of years in prison for that. So I'm not following that advice. But the motivation for this friend telling me this was he was genuinely concerned for my safety. And here he is living in Florida, Palm Beach County. Let's look at some of the statistics. So again, New York City in 2024 had 377 murders. Okay? Way too many. This is out of a population of 8,478,000. So that's 4.45 murders per 100,000 people. Again, way too many. But there used to be thousands. Compare this with Miami. Now, how many times have you heard in the media about all these people in New York City leaving to go to Miami? Turns out the murder rate there is 5.87 people per 100,000. So Miami is actually much more dangerous. Now, there's other stats you need to be aware of. It's not just Miami. It's. It's other cities as well. So Florida City has a very violent rate. 22.9% of violent crime per 1000 people. In Florida City, Daytona Beach, 10.54 out of 1000 people, victims of violent crime. Jacksonville, 5.5 people per 1000 victims of violent. Orlando, home of Mickey Mouse, Disney family friendly. Boy, you sure don't think of crime when you go to Orlando. I certainly know many people say, oh, I would go to New York. I wouldn't go to New York City with my family. It's too dangerous. But of course I have to go to Disney. Well, you're being irrational. If you care about facts. And to quote one of my favorite conservative commentators, Ben Shapiro, facts don't care about your feelings. You are, in fact, endangering your life more. I'm not saying you shouldn't go to Orlando or live your life with. In fear, with sheets pulled over your head in bed. But Orlando has 5.62 incidents per 1,000 people of violent crime, which is lower than New York City. So I realize it's unpopular to say this. New York City has seen an 80% drop in its murder rate since 1990. No one believes me or did you get those statistics? Some of you are going to leave. It's. It's all publicly available. Look at the governor's office. Look at, look at, look at the New York City's own crime stats from its own police department. You can look at FBI statistics if you want. And before you say, well, TJ, cite your statistic. I just did, number one. Number two, Google it. Use ChatGPT. Because there is an unfortunate reality. All of us are guilty occasionally of confirmation bias that we. We only want to process new stories that confirm our bias. And that's why when you see someone pushed off a subway, which is unfortunate, rushed by a train in New York City, it's splashed everywhere, and it gets people nodding their head. This confirms the bias I have that New York City is this wild, crazy, dangerous place. Forget retiring there. I better not even go visit there. Well, you owe it to yourself to look at the facts. And fortunately it looks like a lot of people are looking at the facts, namely senior citizens. People, you would think they're more concerned about safety because they're frail. Perhaps some are not saying all senior citizens are. They're frail and they're looking for quality of life and they want low taxes and low cost. Low cost, yes, some do. I get that. But look at the statistics which I'm sharing with you. New York City now number two in the country as a destination site for retirees. So think about that. You know, we live in a. A culture where conservatives especially says, respect your elders. There's wisdom in life, in living life. Okay, why is it I never see any conservatives actually respecting the fact that so many seniors who have accumulated decades of experience of their life actually enjoy New York City and are voting with their feet by moving to Manhattan. What can be more American than Jim Beam or whiskey? Well, bad news if you're a huge fan. Now, I'm not saying you'll never be able to get it again, but Jim Beam, which is owned by Suntory Global Spirits, is pausing distillation at its main Clermont, Kentucky campus for 2026. Now they're keeping open a visitor center and I guess that's interesting. I have gone to factories, museums, places like Guinness, so it is interesting to see how things are manufactured. But the shutdown comes as the bourbon industry faces a whiske glut softer demand and export headwinds, including major disruption in Canada. This is because of the trade war with Canada and various tariffs. So what does this really mean, folks? It's, it's nice to get sucked into platitudes of America first. Wow. What could sound better than that? Who could argue with that if you're an American, America first. Let's put up terrorists for these other countries taking advantage of America. There's only one problem with that theory, and that is companies. Good old fashioned American companies like this one, like Jim Beam, like to sell their products to people in other countries. Turns out a lot of Canadians like Jim Beam are. They used to, but they're saying, no, thank you. The government is putting retaliatory, retaliatory tariffs, just as we do to them. And now it's hurting. It's hurting American companies because what do you know that now they're being polite about. They're saying excess inventory because they don't want to point a finger at you know who and the tariff taxes they don't want to pick fights, but this is a part of the whole trade wars. You know, it's fun to say, let's have a trade war and we know we're going to win. Guess what? Other countries can fight back. They can slap tariffs on our products. Plus a lot of their citizens can say, hey, we're tired of you telling us we're worthless. We're tired of you telling us that you're going to take over. We're tired of you mocking us as a 51st state. That appears to be what's happening here. So Canadian provinces pulled U.S. alcohol off shelves after the March 202025 tariff escalation. It created an immediate demand for American distillers that rely on that export channel. This is according to Business Insider. And it's causing a real problem now. Even when tariffs don't fully kill demand, they create uncertainty. Will the tariff rate change next quarter? Will the retaliatory ban expand? Will distributors ship shelf space permanently? All of this means that distillers have to freeze hiring, delay capital expenditure, reduce production. This is the last thing any business wants. So I've said it before, I'll say it again. I am an equal opportunity offender here. I think the Democrats are frankly, really, really stupid in the way they've handled this issue. They talk about tariffs, they should specifically talk about tariff taxes. That's what it is. And conservatives are in fact right. When you tax something, you get less of it. Well, they're taxing, in this case, Jim Beam whiskey, and you're going to get less of it in terms of sales. That's exactly what's happening. It's happening again and again and again throughout our economy. And Democrats, they never lose an opportunity to botch a branding opportunity. They should consistently be referring to this as a tariff tax. And they, if they were really smart, they'd be calling it a job killing tariff tax because that's what is happening, folks. It's true. We're not seeing massive, massive unemployment, although it is ticking up. Unemployment is slowly going up because of things like this. If it weren't for the massive AI spending boom and, you know, building data centers, I think we would see really high unemployment. But I play by the facts here. Unemployment has not hit 5% yet. It's still in a range considered acceptable to most economists. But some people are losing their jobs at the Jim Beam distillery, that's for sure, because other countries want to retaliate. Here's the bigger problem with, with all of these tariffs is so many American made Companies have to import pieces of their product, raw materials to build their products in America. And those are facing tariffs. So those, those taxes are passed on to you, the American consumer. It's also tacked on to the end price regardless of where it's shipped around the world, making American products less economical, less valuable. So it's, it's hurting it a lot of different ways because trade is really complex. It just is. And anytime someone tries to tell you it's really very simple, they're either lying or they don't understand it themselves. Okay, let's look at how this is affecting other industries because the whiskey distillery business, that's only one business. Some bigger businesses that are being hurt by tariffs. General Motors, according to Reuters reported a $1.1 billion tariff hit and reiterated a potential 4 billion to 5 billion full year impact. This is what is being reported by Reuters. Ford has been navigating major policy driven headwinds. Reuters reporting. T Ford's strategy, financial moves to the tariff environment and broader policy shifts. So if you travel all over the world as I do, you see General Motors cars everywhere, you see Ford cars everywhere. And you also, if you, if you look at how things are built for any car, they have to import all kinds of pieces for these cars, not to mention rare earth minerals, especially for the battery operated cars from all over the world and places like China. And it is causing massive, massive disruption. Look at Harley Davidson again. According to Reuters, it pulled its 2025 outlook and Warren tariffs would really hit their bottom line. Caterpillar, not run by communists in New York City. The last time I checked, the Caterpillar company estimated tariffs would cost roughly 1.5 to $1.8 billion to their company in 2025. John Deere, the tractor company, last time I checked, they didn't have a big major outpost in New York City. They are in the heartland. They are in, they're big in rural areas. The executives discussed a tariff bill expected to double from 600 million to $1.2 billion. That's how much they're going to lose in 2026, 600 million in 2025. This is based on an earnings call earlier this year. Boeing said it may need to resell aircraft as tariffs disrupted deliveries into China. Nike said that tariffs are expected to cost $1.5 billion because guess what? Nike, great American company, they like to sell their products worldwide. Stanley, Black and Decker. There's a manly company for you. A manly product. They repeatedly cut profit outlook this year like large tariff imports and mitigation cost again According to Reuters, Whirlpool forecast a nine figure tariff dent and discussed ongoing tariff cost in recent calls with analysts Jack Daniels so it's not Jim Beam is the only one. They cited a Canadian boycott as a factor hurting sales and the trade dispute environment really hurting them. So folks, we're kind of getting a lucky break with this massive, massive, massive spending on artificial intelligence. It's kind of propping up the economy because there are many things trying to bring it down. And it's one thing to say I'm going to shut down the Democrat cities, I'm going to send troops to la, I'm going to send troops to Democratic cities like Chicago and think, well that doesn't affect me. I live out here in the heartland. Well, the heartland is being affected by these extremist, arguably socialist policies emanating from Washington D.C. i can't think of any companies that seem like they're more a part of the heartland than Caterpillar, John Deere, Harley Davidson and General Motors. And they're all hurting because of the Trump tariff tax. That's alliterative. Why don't Democrats say that Trump tariff taxes are hurting American businesses? Don't listen to me. Listen to these conservative companies in the private sector. Talk about actual real numbers. They're seeing sales go down because as conservatives say, and they're right, when you tax something, you get less of it. And America with its tariff tax is now getting less of sales and it's reducing in factory shutdowns and loss of jobs thanks to the Trump tariff tax. Yet another study has come out about the health effects of moderate alcohol drinking. And just like all the others that have come out in the last couple of years, it says actually no, it's not like all the others. Here's a new study from a reputable organization the the American Heart association that suggests that light drinking one to two drinks per day is not associated with higher cardiovascular risk and may lower the risk of some heart outcomes. Reviving the long debated J shaped curve. So a little background. For decades now there have been a lot of reports out there. It's been conventional wisdom that women could drink one alcoholic beverage per day, men up to two, that would be considered more moderate alcohol consumption. And that was perfectly fine healthy unless you had some other underlying health issue. And then in fact the moderate drinkers lived longer than teetotalers. That was the accepted conventional wisdom. And then a lot of studies started coming out in the last couple of years saying no, this was wrong, that it, it's associating correlation with, with causation. And that's not what is making people live longer. That in fact, many people who didn't drink at all is because they had other health issues that were killing them and it was unfair to mix that in basically the situation. So what we've been hearing from study after study after study for the last few years is there's no such thing as safe alcohol consumption, which has been frankly, a little bit of a bumper. If you're like I am in a lot of people and you enjoy an occasional adult beverage, you enjoy occasional glass of wine, it's been frankly, a little depressing. Now, I'm not going to commit confirmation bias and say, great, now here's a study I agree with that lets me drink. So I'm just going to listen to that one and none of the others. I want to unpack this because I think it's important from a health perspective. But it's also important for you to realize how we're all guilty of allowing certain biases to control our thoughts and influence our behavior. So let's walk through the specifics. Now, the review contradicts recent research, as I mentioned, and even the American Heart Association's own guidance that favors limited or no alcohol consumption. Now, it's prompted some criticism over a study selection conflicts of interest, the danger of implying benefits amid known cancer risk. Okay, so again, what this new study found was no increased risk of coronary disease, stroke, sudden death and possible heart failure from light drinking. That's good news. The American Heart association still has not changed its fundamental guidelines. It says if you don't drink, don't start. Many public health groups have been arguing, especially in the last couple of years, that any amount of alcohol raises health risk, including cancer. The center for Disease Control and Prevention notes even moderate drinking may increase death and other harms versus being a teetotaler abstaining from alcohol. Now the debate resurfaces as US Dietary guidelines are due for an update. And we've certainly heard all kinds of frankly bizarre health updates coming from Washington lately. A September decision withdrew a report linking alcohol to at least seven cancers, including oral and esophageal cancer, starting at one drink a day. Another government cited report found lower heart attack risk and all cause mortality among moderate drinkers but higher breast cancer risk for women. Now the critics say the American Heart association review overweighted observational studies in underplayed contrary audience the As a reminder, the classic J shaped curve dates to the 1920s. Heavy drinkers fare the worst. That's still true no one is seriously considering or suggesting, yeah, go out and drink a bottle of wine a day or a bottle of Jim Bean or Jack Daniels and you'll be fine. So there's no serious evidence to suggest that heavy drinking is healthy for anyone. The issue is the light drinkers versus the abstainers. Again, the classic review has said that the light drinkers live longer than abstainers. That that has widely been disputed and essentially knocked down in the last couple of years. So what's the real solution when it comes to making an informed decision about your own health and drinking alcohol? So I'm here to tell you, I'm not a medical doctor. I don't Play 1 on TV or on YouTube or the Internet, and I don't really know. What I do know is that we are all guilty of letting various biases and having that shape our reality. So I want to isolate this issue through the lens of bias. First of all, the most obvious one, confirmation bias. If you like to drink an occasional glass of wine or the occasional martini, it's very easy to be a victim of confirmation bias. You see 10 studies, nine of them say, don't drink any alcohol. One of them says, hey, moderate alcohol consumption is fine. It's very natural to just glom onto that one. Well, that's confirmation bias. All of us are guilty of it from time to time. So in this case, if you enjoy alcohol, headlines hinting at benefit can feel validating. You may overweight supportive findings and discount cancer risk. Okay, but that is only one form of bias. There is something known as moralization bias. The abstainers, the teetotalers. If you see drinking as fundamentally immoral or harmful, you may in fact be guilty of dismissing any evidence of benefit as just, well, that's industry propaganda. Well, something. Two things could be true at the same time. People in the industry, whether they work for a winery or a distillery, it is in their own self interest to promote the idea that you should drink. So that can be true. It could also be true that moderate alcohol consumption is healthy for you. Again, that's not what I'm saying, but I'm simply pointing out that there is such a thing as moralization bias. There's availability bias, dramatic cancer warnings, or conversely, viral wine is good for you. Takes crowd. Those things can crowd out nuance. So just listening to the last thing you heard can be a part of it. There is selection bias, blind spot. Many readers miss how abstainer groups can include people already ill. So if you already have brain cancer and you're not drinking for the last year of your life and then you die. That's not because you weren't drinking alcohol. It's because you have brain cancer. So that's a part of the selection bias that can skew people's perspectives. There's authority bias. Endorsement or perceived endorsement by a respective body like the American Heart association carries outsized influence even when it's not necessarily a guideline. There's motivated reasoning. People seek studies that align with lifestyle choices to reduce cognitive dissonance. Now, this is obviously related to confirmation bias as well. Framing effects. One to two drinks may help. Can feel very different. That lands differently than no safe level. Despite overlapping evidence, there could be conflict of interest, suspicion. Prior industry ties can heighten skepticism. Sometimes it's appropriate, but sometimes it can be just knee jerk, sort of. All corporations are bad. Therefore, if wine or liquor is made by a corporation, it must be bad. Well, that's a little too simplistic. I mean, corporations bring broccoli to your grocery store. To your grocery store is a corporation, it's run by a corporation. Doesn't mean eating broccoli is bad for you. So there's all kinds of biases that affect all of us. So what's the bottom line? What should you do? I wish I could tell you. So I'm going to commit one of the cardinal sins of a news pundit and simply conclude this conversation with. With I don't know. The American right wing is in absolute turmoil. Things have played out pretty roughly at the Turning Point convention. Over the last week, J.D. vance has tried to paper over an internal Republican civil war by urging a big tent coalition that avoids moral red lines. Even as his party openly fractures over anti Semitism, racism and conspiracy culture, he clearly refused to condemn extremists. And it's showing a lot of contradictions among the conservative right. So let's look at the players here. J.D. vance wants to be the next president. He started getting endorsements from Erica Kirk last week. He's framing these divides as a distraction. And he's basically trying to make everybody happy. And it's very hard in politics to make everybody happy. A little backstory. I brought this to you late last week. A distillation of Ben Shapiro's speech before this conference where Ben Shapiro, one of arguably the top one or two conservative commentators in America today, wildly popular podcast, His Daily Wire has its fingers in everything. News services, books, popular culture. He went head to head with Tucker Carlson condemned him, essentially Candace Owens, Nick Fuentes for their extremism, their endorsement, their coddling. Of either extremists like Nick Fuentes or things that Nick Fuentes have said, and, and being grifters and putting forth absolute nonsense about conspiracies to kill Charlie Kirk, which is one of Candace Owens favor. So I give Ben Shapiro a lot of credit. I did then and I do now. He's, he's trying to, at least some of the time, inject some moral clarity, intellectual honesty into the conservative debate. This is famously what William F. Buckley did from the time he started national review in 1955 until his passing a decade or so ago. He, he did all he could to get rid of the John Birchers and the anti Semites, the avowed racist, the clans from being a part of the modern conservative movement because he wanted to make it respectable for Republicans to embrace conservatism and appear to be mainstream. And it was wildly successful. Ronald Reagan gave William F. Buckley in 1980 credit for creating an intellectual coalition that made it possible for Reagan to get elected. So there's that tradition in history. Well, Buckley is no longer with us. He's been gone for more than a decade. And the right wing has splintered into many, many factions. So Tucker Carlson has become a lightning rod recently because it's not that he just interviewed Nick Fuentes, an avowed racist, avowed Hitler lover, someone who openly mocks Jews, non Christians, Indian people, openly mocked J.D. vance's wife and children, for example. And Tucker Carlson was nice and warm and friendly. Didn't really call him out on anything. And that felt many people, that made many people feel like Tucker Carlson was really guilty of coddling an anti Semite. Vivek Ramaswamy, you may remember him, he ran for president last year. He's running for governor currently. He's there at the conference and he's writing op EDS for the New York Times. So he's outraged, shocked that in the conservative movement people are somehow racist. Who knew? Who would have ever thought that? So there is a, a new body of intellectual thought, if you want to call it that, among certain conservatives that says heritage Americans are really the real Americans. Heritage Americans, that's just sort of a code for white people who have been here a while. They should be the real Americans. They're the higher priority. And that's what American governance should be about, is old white people, or at least people who have parents, grandparents, preferably great, great, great grandparents who came over on the Mayflower, that those are the real Americans and people who come here now, or their parents or grandparents did, with funny names and darker skin or don't just worship Jesus. They're not really the real deal. That's the basic sort of mindset of the heritage American. And Vivek Ramaswamy is like, this is awful. Where did these people come from? Didn't know any of these were in the Republican Party because he's saying he's routinely attacked vilified people, attack his wife, his children, the children's names, their religion. And he doesn't like that. Okay, I'll speak in a moment as to why he perhaps shouldn't find this surprising. Now, Ben Shapiro is also. You know, Ben, between Ben Shapiro and Vivek Ramaswamy. They both remind me of Claude Rains and Casablanca. I'm shocked, absolutely shocked to find that there's racism or sexism or bigotry or anti Semitism in the Republican Party. You know, Ben Shapiro does strike me as a pretty sharp cookie. You know, he graduated from Harvard Law School near the top of his class when he, I think it's before he even shaved. He still looks extremely young, but he brings a certain intellectual heft to his arguments. So it always surprises me when someone like that is surprised when they see fellow Republicans and conservatives saying anti Semitic things. Now, Ben Shapiro is widely popular among conservatives and the MAGA crowd and Republicans, but he always talks about, you know, the Judeo Christian tradition America and America is a Judeo Christian America. I got news for you, Ben. I happen to know a lot of conservatives. I grew up with conservative. I grew up in the south as a white male. As a white male who grew up in the Christian church. I was a Baptist. I can tell you no conservative white male I've ever met, unless they're running for office, has ever used the phrase Judeo Christian. Sorry, Ben, it's just not a thing. Conservative white men, especially in the south, talk about Christians and all the others. They talk about Christians and people who don't believe in Christ, who they happen to believe or are going to rot in the warm place down under for eternity and be tortured in the bad place in hell for eternity. That's what every conservative Christian white male I ever met happened to think about. Jews and Muslims and everyone. They were all put in this category of not a Christian, therefore not really our kind. And according to their book, people who would be cast into eternal damnation. So Ben, I hate to tell you this. You know, you like to rail against political correctness and wokeism. Any concern. Any time I've been around, you know, two or more white conservative males in the south talking about religion and politics. Nobody uses the phrase Judeo Christian. They say it's Christians and other people. And Ben, you're not a Christian based on your own admission, and that's okay. I'm not asking you to convert. I don't think your religion is any worse than any other religion. Okay? I'm here as a sane, sensible centrist and I'm not pushing any religion. But it's shocking and surprising to me that people like Vivek Ramaswamy and Ben Shapiro are just shocked that the modern Republican Party is embracing people who avowedly can't stand non Christians and non white people. Because that's what conservatism has been about. You want to conserve the way things have been. Dwight Eisenhower didn't have an Indian wife, okay? I'm not saying there's anything bad with having an Indian wife, but apparently there are a lot of people now in the Republican Party who are not, not particularly excited about the fan the fact that J.D. vance has an Indian wife and his wife doesn't practice the same religion as the so called heritage Americans. Now a little more of the backstory here. So Ben Shapiro, again to his credit, is saying we got a real problem in the Republican Party. We have all these grifters like Alex Jones pushing conspiracy theories that are not based in fact. We have people like Nick Fuentes openly and invalidly saying nasty things about Jews, about Indians, about anyone who does not appear to be white and which is. It's always the people who are not that thing themselves who are trying to be pure. Fuentes doesn't sound like a Mayflower name, okay? I believe his grandparents came from Mexico. So I'm not kicking him out or I'm not saying Nick Fuentes is less American than anyone else, but it sure seems like he's very happy to say someone like with a last name like Ramaswamy isn't real American. And that Fuentes is, which seems odd. Now the one thing we hear again and again from the Ben Shapiro's other conservatives is that somehow the modern Republican Party and conservatism has always been about Martin Luther King Jr's nostrum. That you should judge people by the content of their character, not the color of their skin. Their reworking, their rewriting of history is that conservatism has always been colorblind and that they've always had a soft spot in their heart for Martin Luther King Jr. Who is held in high esteem, high esteem by most Americans. But here's the part that you've not been told that you've been lied about. And it is this, that when Martin Luther King Jr. Was saying, let's judge people by the content of their character, not the color of their skin, we want to be your brothers, not your brother in law. When he was actually alive, before he was assassinated, saying these things, he was in fact embraced by centrists, by liberals, by progressives of the time and conservatives, you know what they did? They denounced him. Don't take my word for it. Let's just go to the records. Here's from Jesse Helms. Martin Luther King is, quote, a communist. He said some things even worse than that, but I won't repeat them here. He did not want to support a Martin Luther King holiday, which is okay. I'm not saying you're a racist. If you don't want to give somebody a national holiday, okay, you can think someone was great and not want another national holiday. But his reason was he was a man who consorted with communists. So let's not kid ourselves. Conservatism for most of American history was about conserving things the way they were. We had slavery, let's conserve slavery. We had it where, you know, white men owned all the property and no one else did. We want to conserve that. So when Martin Luther King Jr. Was making the radical far left at the time, it was considered far left to say that black people should be able to eat at a lunch counter. To say that black people shouldn't sit in the back of the bus. That was considered a lunatic left idea by conservatives back in the 60s. So it's a rewriting of history to suggest that the modern conservative movement somehow was always in favor of race neutrality. Again, Jesse Helm saying, we're not going to honor a man who was a communist dupe. To suggest that black people should be treated as equal human beings, have civil rights in America, be able to drink from a water fountain. That in the eyes of one of the leading conservative lights, Jesse Helms, was to make you a communist. And I hope you're seeing a pattern here when, when people offer sensible moral positions in America quite often there's often a 20, 30, 40 year period where they are denounced as being a part of the lunatic left or as a communist, a communist dupe. Ronald Reagan said that Martin Luther King had communist sympathies and predicted the truth would come out one day strong. Thurman said that Martin Luther King was basically lawless, that if you give him a holiday, it will promote lawlessness. So giving a national holiday to a man who fought for civil rights for black people was promoting lawlessness John Ashcraft, former senator and attorney general, said, basically, Martin Luther King Jr. No good bunch of communists. Trent Lott, not a fan of Martin Luther King, certainly didn't want a holiday. So there's a long, long tradition of conservatives saying something that most decent people would consider obvious morality. Human beings deserve to be treated equally. Where they spent about 40 extra years denouncing that as lunatic left. That's communist thinking. And now it's almost comical to see that someone like a Ben Shapiro, Vivek Ramaswamy and JD Vance are shocked and surprised that people are saying negative things about Jews and Indians and people with darker skin. So this is ugly business, folks. But Nick Fuentes, I won't even tell you the terms he used. He used derogatory ethnic slurs aimed at South Asians to describe Usha Vance, the second lady, I guess you would call her. It's J.D. vance's wife. Fuentes mocked J.D. vance for having an Indian wife and made insinuations about the children's names and identity and basically portrayed Vance as a disgrace to his race. Okay, clearly I'm not endorsing these views, but these are the views of Nick Vuendt Fuentes, whom Tucker Carlson, the leading conservative light, played footsie with on his podcast for hours. Acted like they were just great, friendly, buddy, buddy, buddy buddies, didn't call him out on this at all. So Fuentes basically is saying JD Vance is a race traitor. Again, not my words. Fuentes labeled Vivek with not really American doesn't belong here kind of rhetoric. Now, Vivek Ramaswamy was born in the United States. He's lived in the United States his whole life. And apparently he gets just constant abuse online with people saying, you know, go back to India, go back to India. Fuentes has sort of positioned the argument of saying he was an anchor baby. You may recall debates about that and has less legitimate claim to the United States because of his ancestry. Now, multiple, multiple watchdog groups have labeled Nick Fuentes as being openly anti Semitic. He's denied the Holocaust. He said he loves Hitler. He has said things that they're not intimating anti Semitism. They're about as clear cut as it possibly gets. So here are some of the other things. Again, you can't dismiss Nick Fuentes because he's apparently wildly popular among conservative Republican staffers on Capitol Hill. Fuentes went, this is according to the Daily Beast, Fuentes went after Usha Vance with a South Asian slur and treated Vance as interracial proof that he is a race traitor. And it's the same ecosystem that traffics and anti Semitic conspiracy narratives. Exactly. The stuff that some conservatives say must be pushed out. This is according to the Washington Post. So here's why this is fascinating. At some point, Donald Trump's not going to be around anymore. I personally am not convinced he will leave the White House ever while he's alive. And I'm not wishing anyone ill health. But Trump does occasionally speak the truth and he did say his only regret from his first term was leaving office. So the tide, especially in the last couple of months, has shifted in the sense that more and more people think Trump is kind of a done deal. His approval ratings are so low, I'm not so convinced he cares or that he will leave office. But putting all that aside, there's absolutely no doubt that he will no longer be with us. At some point, the Republicans will have have to face other leadership choices. And so there's a lot of jockeying for position right now. So again you have Ben Shapiro saying we got to get rid of these kooks, these grifters like Steve Bannon who make a lot of money doing PR for Jeffrey Epstein. Which is true. These grifters and conspiracy theorists like Alex Jones who embarrass us. That's true. And these racists and anti Semites like Nick Puentes. And we got to get rid of the people who coddle them like Tucker Carlson. So that's clearly one major strand of thought with a lot of appeal in the Republican Party. And now we have JD Vance trying to straddle that. That's a tough thing to straddle. JD Vance yesterday speaking at the Turning Point conference like, let's all get along. I'm sorry, it doesn't work that way. J.D. you can't say you love your wife and your children and respect them and then say, yeah, and I want to be in a party where everyone just openly embraces Nick Fuentes who's calling my family nasty names and calling me a race traitor. And being a part of a party where the Tucker Carlson's of the world seem to have absolutely no standards, as long as you're a racist and anti Semite saying despicable things. Now, if you want to question capitalism or if you want to say something that in any way suggests, oh, let's have a, a city run grocery store, well then you can condemn all day long, but you can't condemn someone because they say nasty, vile, racist, anti semitic things. That's the Tucker Carlson position. J.D. vance seems to want to have it all different ways. It's going to be interesting to see how this battle plays out because there are a number of formidable players here. And Tucker Carlson is a gifted, skilled communicator and so is Ben Shapiro. And for that matter, J.D. vance isn't bad either. And Nick Fuentes is an incredibly good communicator. I'm not going to have him on my show. I don't want to give him more attention. But I did watch him the other day when he was condemning Donald Trump for being too extremist and too hateful in his comments about the murder of the Reiner family. So there's a lot of compelling characters here, all of them jockeying for position, all of them with ideological positioning that is very much against each other. I don't think J.D. vance is going to just be able to say, let's all get together. It's not quite that simple. Politics quite often is about making hard choices. If it were easy, we'd all be president. You were warned, you and I were warned that if CBS hires someone who has zero television experience, but lots and lots of experience playing patty cake with mega forces and only pointing out excesses of the so called left, that censorship would occur. And it has occurred. CBS News abruptly pulled a fully vetted 60 minute news segment this past Sunday. It was about a Venezuelan man, Venezuelan men deported to a brutal El Salvador prison after intervention by a new CBS News editor in chief, Barry Weiss, prompting the show's own correspondent Sharon Alfonsi to call the decision political. The last minute move came despite the story being cleared by lawyers and standards and practices and heavily promoted to viewers. Critics say the episode looks like right wing pressure shaping newsroom decisions at a flagship broadcast undermining its independence. So if you're not familiar with 60 Minutes, I know we have a lot of viewers from around the world that that is considered kind of the gold standard of television journalism in America. It's been around since about 1968. I grew up watching it. I'm not a regular watcher anymore. I'm certainly not going to watch anymore now. But it was seen as the hardest hitting form of journalism. Some of the biggest, most famous journalists ever worked there, from Dan Rather to Leslie Stoll, Andy Rooney, not a hard hitting journalist, comedian. But some of the most respected names in journalism worked there and they hit people on all sides, politicians, Democrat, Republican, you name it, leaders around the world. 60 Minutes was coming for you. You knew there was going to be trouble generally. But now apparently there's a new rule in town. The hard hitting questions only go to those who are not critical. Dear Leader in Washington, the hard questions can go to the left, whatever that is, the radical left, whatever that is. But if you want to do a story that somehow might not make Donald Trump look good, it's not enough to go through fact checkers five times and lawyers five times, as this story did, and then have standards and practices, no, you still have to go through one more gatekeeper. And that gatekeeper is Barry Weiss, whose shown she's good at one thing in life. She's good at pointing a finger, saying here's something excessive that somebody left of center is guilty of. And you know what? People left of center are occasionally guilty of things they do occasionally make stuff up or say stupid things, as do people on the far right and the right and the center. But when you can only see problems from one side, it really causes a massive distortion. And anyone who's looked at or followed her career as I have and reads her newsletter as I have, knows that there's a pattern. In the same way that if all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. If the only tool in your toolkit is looking for somehow an excess, an extremeness that some far woke left organization or individual did, then that's the only story you're ever going to find interesting. Nothing else seems to matter. It's important to note the segment was pulled just three hours before ERA. That's an extremely rare thing to happen for 60 Minutes because they typically work on these stories for months. Alfonsi, the reporter, the correspondent, said it was screened five times, fact checked five times, cleared by CBS attorneys. CBS had already promoted it. Again, the subject matter, deportations tied to Trump ERA policy, is politically sensitive. But you know what else should be sensitive is the idea of a seemingly real news organization spiking stories because it's not politically convenient for powers that be for the White House. Apparently Weiss requested numerous changes after the first viewing that were incorporated and it still was rejected. And apparently she's reaching out, trying to get approval from the Trump administration. She wanted Stephen Miller added into the show. Now Alfonsi's team sought comment from the Department of Homeland Security, the State Department and the White House and was refused. So this is common among authoritarians, where they refuse to be interviewed and then they spend all their time attacking the media for being biased. Well, the media is trying to get your perspective and you won't talk to them. They're left with nothing but their other sources for quotes in the story. So again, for those who haven't Been paying attention. CBS was bought by an Ellison Ellison and the company he owned, Paramount. His daddy is big buddies with Donald Trump. Larry Ellison is, depending on the day of the week, one of the top or top five wealthiest people in the world and in America. So buying a TV network and movie companies for his son is like you or me buying our child a lollipop. It's something you do with pocket change. And he was able to do this. And the, the Ellisons have been very clear that part of their agenda is helping their buddy. Now I have friends, I've helped my friends from time to time. This is different. This is supposed to be something that is central to the running of democracy, of a free and fair press and to selling a journalistic tradition and a national treasure like 60 Minutes, that's a real hit. So more comments from the correspondent herself. If the administration's refusal to participate becomes a valid reason to spike a story, we have effectively handed them a kill switch for any reporting they find inconvenient. I don't know who can argue with that. She says when it fails to air without a credible explanation, the public will correctly identify this as corporate censorship. I think she's right. We are trading 50 years of gold standard reputation for a single week of political quiet. I care too much about this broadcast to watch it be dismantled without a fight. And Barry Weiss says, well, holding stories that aren't ready happens every day in every newsroom. Not like this, Barry. Not like this. Okay, CBS News correspondence. I feel sorry for you. At some point you got to ask yourself, are you still doing journalism or are you just a cog in state run media? Time for question of the day. This comes from Grace. She's a student in my course, the Complete Communication Skills Masterclass for Life. The question is, how can stepping outside your comfort zone strengthen your communication and personal growth? Well, Grace, the only way to grow in anything, not just communication but any skill, is to go outside your comfort zone. If you want to be a world class tennis player, you can't just stay in your comfort zone of playing in your own little club against the same 10 people where you always win. At some point you have to go to a city tournament, a regional state, a national tournament. You have to constantly test yourself to beat better players. If you really want to become a world class professional tennis player, it's the only way you don't get there by just playing with your friends. When it comes to communication, if you only speak to groups of five people or fewer, because that's what you're comfortable with, you'll never grow. You have to actively seek opportunities to speak to larger groups. If you are used to doing a podcast, for example, you may want to test yourself by going live doing a live show that tests you in a different way. If all you've ever done is interview other people and put a spotlight on them, you might test yourself, expand yourself by doing your own commentary for a whole show. And not even having a guest is one way. You don't have to do it that way, but I want you to always look for more opportunities, whether it's speaking to a larger audience than usual, whether it is going from being a guest on a podcast to launching your own and hosting your own. Maybe you thought the most you could ever do was a once a month podcast or a once a week podcast. For you, going outside your comfort zone may be saying, let me try doing a daily podcast. I urge you. Think of stretching yourself. It doesn't have to be about more money or more power or becoming obsessed with fame, but I do want you to be obsessed with improvement. The way to do that is just a little bit further. Ask any great weightlifter or bodybuilder. You can't just lift the same amount of weight after three years of training that you did the first week. You've got to up the weight gradually. You've got to strengthen the muscle so that you can continue lifting more weight. Maybe not every day, maybe not even every week, but once a month. If you're not increasing the amount of weight you're lifting, your muscles aren't getting stronger or bigger. So Grace, I wish you luck and I hope you continue challenging yourself and looking for more opportunities in every aspect of your life so that you continue to grow your own personal development and your own communication skills. Thanks for writing. I want to thank you for watching today and listening. If you are new to the podcast, thanks so much for joining us. Please leave Comments subscribe if you are on YouTube, sign up for notifications. Subscribe and leave comments on every single video you watch. We love participation. I read every single comment. I try to answer every single question. If you are listening on our podcast, thanks so much for doing it. We're relatively new in the whole audio podcasting game, so please, please, please take a moment and follow us on your favorite podcasting platform. Subscribe to us. There's no charge and if you liked anything about this show, please leave a review. Preferably one with this many stars and I'm holding up five fingers. Thanks so much. See you tomorrow.