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Brian Kruger
Welcome back to The Common Bridge. This is part two of a two part interview with Justin Higgins. I think you're really going to like the second and final part, so we join Rich and Justin Higgins in conversation.
Richard Helppie
The infamous laptop of one Mr. Hunter Biden, and how that's being reported - I don't know what the view is from Washington, whether it's considered important or not, or just a cudgel - what's your take on this thing?
Justin Higgins
Yes. So I think - and this is a larger story about the Twitter files in general - maybe why they didn't receive attention, and in my opinion, shouldn't have. So essentially, what you had was the way the information was presented, I believe it was in the first one. It was implying major First Amendment rights violations. It was implying censorship of material in ways that didn't violate Terms of Services. Like I said, I listened to this Ben Shapiro podcast, anybody who's objective understands there was no violation of the First Amendment based on the documents that we saw. They also understand that the way that Taibbi positioned the information - a lot of the information that was taken down - it was revenge porn of Hunter Biden's penis that he did not want out there and violated Twitter's Terms of Service. So I think that it's really important to understand that the way these things were reported...it was very one sided and like an opinion column, as opposed to this objective fact finding journey.
Richard Helppie
I'm confused a little bit. You go back to the Twitter files, the ones that I read, didn't have anything to do with Hunter Biden. (Justin Higgins: The first one did.) It was a...okay, that was about the suppression of the story prior to the election and the...
Justin Higgins
Taking down of nude photos that were in violation of Twitter's Terms of Service.
Richard Helppie
It wasn't the nude photos, okay. I mean, that's, to me, bullshit; it just never should have been on there. But the things that said, ìten percent for the big guy,î clearly, when you look at where there's smoke...here's a guy that's obviously had a troubled life, no known qualifications, other than his last name. And then there were in this - Bobulinski, I think the fellow's name is - talking about yeah, those are real. I never quite believed the story of how the laptop got to Rudy Giuliani. But for people to come out and say it's Russian disinformation, when now Hunter Biden's coming out saying, yeah, that is mine, those are emails I sent, and that it was suppressed. The New York Post was kicked off the social media platforms prior to the election. Again, difficult calls to make. But to me, I'm thinking when I hear the words ìten percent for the big guyî that sounds like influence peddling to me. Am I missing something here?
Justin Higgins
I don't know who...I mean, the New York Post and the Twitter suppression, it happened for a day, and then everything was back up. So I think that that's important to understand. I think that in these examples that we're throwing around - the first Twitter file about suppression of information - there was one throwaway line; Trump's government also requested suppression of liberal accounts. So I think that my problem with this is not this information coming out, it's that all of this was already reported by mainstream outlets, that there's an internal investigation process for how Twitter handles their information. It wasn't really new information that we received; we received the internal communications from the organization before Elon Musk took it over. Ultimately, it was portrayed in a very, I would argue, dishonest way to imply that First Amendment violations - that only Democrats were doing this - and a whole host of other issues. To Hunter Biden though, I think that he should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law if there is anything allegedly true about potential tax evasion and whatever other charges he may ultimately receive. I believe there is a special prosecutor investigation of him ongoing. He's lived a very troubled life. I'm not here to malign people that have had to deal with addiction or anything of that sort. I think that he should be fully investigated. I think that wherever the investigation runs, the prosecutor should follow it and if that means indicting and charging, then that means indicting and charging. I don't think we have any major disagreements here. It's just very difficult for me to say "the big guy" is Joe Biden when all we have is that one email. I just...I need proof. I think it's just sad that we are maligning this very troubled person who clearly has had addiction issues in the past with crack cocaine and a bunch of other things. I just think it's really sad.
Richard Helppie
I concur. He is a troubled man, he has had a troubled life. And the investigation is like, I don't...I mean, I hope he gets treatment and I hope that he finds a better path forward. I don't care about his pornography, I'm more concerned about corruption. When you can get 51 people - heads of agencies - to come out and say this is Russian disinformation without basis, that troubles me. We can't just paint that picture, it can't be part of the opposition, bingo, we're going to say this line without people going, oh, wait a minute, what are we actually talking about? But that's just from a simple guy here from the Great Lakes. So here are other stories that were covered, ad nauseam. It was about the committee assignments. We seem to have moved past [the question] is Kevin McCarthy going to be elected to the Speaker of the House, which seemed almost as inevitable as we're going to resolve the debt crisis. It was great theater, I suppose, or very terrible theater. But what about this noise about committee assignments? Let me just preface this by saying that from 800 miles away, it sounds like same old, same old; I am in charge so I'm kicking your guys off because when you were in charge you kicked my guys off. Is it really anything more than business as usual?
Justin Higgins
So just for the audience; usually for committee spots, with the exception of the Intelligence Committee, it goes through the legislative process of a resolution. It's not a bill, everybody votes on it and then the committee's assignments are ratified, so to speak. Each party determines who sits on what committee in what position, through a process called the steering committee - doesn't matter, internal elections within the GOP. So what we had happen was, the Intelligence Committee is selected by the House leadership, by the Speaker of the House. Hakeem Jeffries said that we want Adam Schiff and Eric Swalwell on the committee, and Kevin McCarthy unilaterally kicked them off. Now, what also happened was, Rep. Omar went through the committee process, they created a resolution, Republicans supported the resolution. So they voted her on the committee and then to make a political show of it, they held another vote and kicked her off the committee based on previous anti-Semitic statements that she had [made]. So that's the whole committee thing. I don't really care about either of it. I don't think it's that important. Adam Schiff will be running for Senate in California; I'm sure he will use it to fundraise, like any good politician would. I use that tongue in cheek, but also kind of seriously.
Richard Helppie
I hear you, exactly. Like, the emails are already out I'm sure. [Laughter.]
Justin Higgins
It's like, look at me, I'm fighting the big bad GOP. I'm so hated by them that they thought me a danger. So I mean, I don't know, I don't think it matters. I think they'll be replaced with two credible folks on the Intelligence Committee. I think it's a little unfortunate that the tit for tat did go into the Foreign Affairs Committee, even though I'm unequivocally opposed to most, if not [all,] of Rep. Omar's positions - we'll just leave it there and unequivocally condemn the stuff that she has said - I think that we're now getting into a little bit of a slippery slope. Where - to your point - does it stop?
Richard Helppie
One of the things that concerns me, again, [I'm] not an insider on this. We talked about some of the places for compromise and statecraft and coming together and actually dealing with issues. Is the environment so polarized now that we're stifling really strong voices who could be those leaders that we used to have that could forge an agreement? The Tip O'Neill, the Newt Gingrich, and Bill Clinton, for Pete's sake, setting down their partisanship and finding a way. I was having a discussion with some friends the other day and we were talking about Senator Gary Peters here, who's a decent man, and we are represented in this district by Debbie Dingell, who is a decent person. Our thought was they probably would be doing a better job if it wasn't necessary for them to be so party loyal. I believe Debbie Dingle's late husband, John Dingell, he said something to the effect that his first loyalty was to the United States of America, second to the people of his district that he represented in the US House of Representatives, and then his third loyalty politically, would be to his party. It just seems to me that we've got that kind of turned upside down. It's party first, and then maybe the district and then maybe the country, because it's hard to understand some of the behavior any other way. Again, I'm hoping there's a better story there. It's just getting covered up.
Justin Higgins
Well, there are many ways we could attack this. I think that Kevin McCarthy is in a bind, because he's - based on the speaker fight and the deals made - there is a concern that he's beholden to the Trump Republicans, and that's what they are in the House - those holdouts, those, I like to call them not affectionately, "those freaks" who don't put the country first, who are just bad. (Rich Helppie: They're not even loyal to their own party) they're not even loyal to their own faction within their own faction within their own party. The five or ten of them couldn't stay together. I lived through it, watching my boss be one of these people that ultimately was responsible for removing John Boehner as speaker. I have a lot of firsthand experience, pent up energy...John Boehner called them, quote-unquote, "legislative terrorists" and I think that that is the term for these folks. But anyway, positively, Rich, from my perspective, the Republicans are setting up a bunch of different committees. I think most of them are going to be farces, like the Committee on the Weaponization of Government. It's going to be to create political momentum heading into the 2024 election, similar to previous committees in the past, and this is business as usual. I do think, though - and you can see this by the press around these issues and specifically by the members who are on these committees - why committee assignments matter. The Special Committee on China is a place where there can be significantly productive working experience between Democrats and Republicans. Mike Gallagher from Wisconsin is the Republican chairman of this committee. Raja Krishnamoorthi , he's an Illinois representative, he is the Democrat who was announced and put on this committee. Immediately, Mike Gallagher applauded that Raj was put on this committee, said he's a serious member, knows the issues surrounding China and he looks forward to a productive bipartisan working agreement. I think that that's really where our focus, Rich, should be is China, for good and bad, but also the media should be focusing more on this. You've had, over the past couple of years, I would argue, the bipartisan Infrastructure bill is a way to get our own house in order, a way to prime our economy to be more efficient moving forward, it is way to deal with China. You have the CHIPS Act, which is a massive spending bill to re-shore domestic manufacturing of vital products to the United States, away from overseas, and specifically China; semiconductor chips being what it was named for. That was bipartisan in the Senate; in the House it passed. You have other examples where there is agreement on China. Nancy Pelosi was going to Taiwan, the Chinese government said, the hell you are, and then all of a sudden you had Republicans and Democrats stand up together, unified voice - she's going. So she went to Taiwan. I think that that is a great foundation for bipartisanship and potentially a path forward and a model for creating more goodwill on other issues between the parties.
Richard Helppie
That's good to hear about. We had this unprecedented pandemic that hit - unprecedented in our age, I don't think there are very many people around that remember the Spanish Flu. (Justin Higgins: Of 1918 or whatever?) Yeah, it's 1918, 1908, whenever it was - see that's how little I know about it. It seems to me that we almost have a political and media climate that won't allow us to examine it, because I think there are legitimate questions. What were the origins of the virus? What were some of the mistakes made in public policy? What are some of the things that worked in public policy? Did we do the right things by the schools? Did we do the right things by the therapeutics that were kind of late into the game? Where do we stand today with the vaccines? What's going to be the impact going forward? Obviously, there's the masks thing which really are ineffective for COVID - pretty good for colds and flu but not very good for COVID - it's just like we can't examine this without it going to one extreme or the other. You have people who said, well, nothing happened. Well, that's not true. I mean, a lot of people are dead from a "nothing" and you have other people who said well, this is the thing that [means] we have to change our whole life for the rest of eternity, which is not true either. How do we get to a point where we can just like talk about this stuff?
Justin Higgins
COVID? We can't. [Laughter, cross talk] So there's a social media site, Reddit, and they have a sub-Reddit, which is basically a blog for politics. There are 8.3 million subscribers, and I was one of the subjects that did an "ask me anything." People could ask me any questions, I responded. I just did this Friday. Somebody asked me, my relatives are Trump supporters and they believe in Q-anon stuff - I don't need to explain what that is, it's just conspiracy theories that are wild - and they asked me, how do you talk to people like this? And I said, if you care about them and you love them, you don't; you just simply avoid the topic because ultimately, what has happened is a lot of folks have wrapped up their self-identity, their worth, the way that they view the world, into their partisan view on politics. So even if, for example, there's some factually false thing, like the Q-anon stuff, people are more willing to say that their loved ones are crazy and blind than say, oh, maybe I'm wrong here and then re-evaluate their whole belief system. I think that ultimately, using that analogy of COVID-19 for the extreme on both sides - the vaccines are killing people, giving people 5G or we need to always mask-up and we can't have social gatherings - I think that that has happened with this disease. Now, there's a lot of room in the middle, Rich, and I would argue and I probably think you agree with me, there's been a lot of great reporting. Josh Rogen at The Washington Post is a columnist, he's published State Department cables from when the virus first came out, he's really been a driver in looking at the conflicts of interests that a lot of these doctors have that were trying to say it didn't come from a lab in China. And he's taken a level headed approach saying in his estimation, that it probably did come from a lab in China, but it probably also wasn't intentional bio warfare. So I think there are some areas in the middle where we can discuss this. Similar to...I just worry, Rich, the committee that we have in the House, it's not going to be bipartisan, it's going to be a lot of Marjorie Taylor Greene, nobody needs that in their life. We need serious members of Congress. We need, for example - folks that I don't agree with everything on - but Westerman from the right side, Michael Waltz a former Green Beret is a Republican conservative; we need these folks to work in a bipartisan manner to set up these committees and investigations. Maybe that's out of the public eye during the work so that they can actually focus on the work, like the 9/11 Commission, and then we can get into why closing schools down wasn't appropriate and maybe we shouldn't do that in the future, we can get into all of these things. But if it's going to be partisan, and I don't see any way it won't be, then we're all going to suffer.
Richard Helppie
Well, to your earlier point about the origins of the virus, it was presented as definitive. A guy went and ate this bat, although apparently there are no bats of that type around so maybe it was this pangolin; we have to have an answer that it wasn't a lab. But then the other part was the people that were highly qualified, that were skeptical of the origins were all shut down. There's a paper trail that points right at Anthony Fauci's involvement with the social media platforms, and very highly qualified people kicked off those platforms. As for the vaccines, people need to understand we're still in the early stages of this. We don't know how well they work because we haven't had enough time to really study them. And we all know people that have had four and five shots that have had really bad cases of COVID. I mean, both presidents of the United States got COVID and they arguably have the best health care and are the most heavily monitored people in the world. Why can't we have that discussion? We've got the experience of Sweden not closing down their country and Florida, and yet, it's like, oh, we can't say that something good may have happened there because that's not politically responsible or politically in the right bucket, I suppose. But we need to be able to talk about this stuff. I guess another one, the Ukraine war. Again, at the beginning, it seemed fairly clear, cut and dried, the Russians were going in to invade Ukraine and Ukraine needed help and we were supplying help and now, effectively, we're in a proxy war. I don't really know enough about this, but is it the right thing to do? I'd like to hear a pro and a con about that.
Justin Higgins
Unequivocally. It's always been a form of a proxy war from day one. Unequivocally, I think that this is one of the most important things that the media should be focusing on. Unequivocally it is the right thing to do. I think that largely speaking, you only have these type of freaks on the right and on the left that are against supporting Ukraine. But ultimately, why? Why does this matter? Number one, it's a flagrant violation of international laws, international norms, whatever, violations happen all the time. Let's put that aside. Why does it matter to us as taxpayers, as Americans? Because ultimately, what you have is a world power saying that they are going to just take land from a smaller world power because they have nuclear weapons. And because they have - they thought - an overwhelming monopoly on the capacity of force, they could just easily roll over Ukraine. Now, the reason why this matters is for a variety of important issues but number one is nuclear proliferation. If you just say because Russia is a nuclear power they can do what they want, what you're going to ultimately have is a lot of countries pursue nuclear weapons so that they can do what they want. They can expand and go back to this imperialistic mentality. Number two, it's important to show China, another world power with a nuclear weapon, that ultimately when Russia does - or another country does, like potentially China and Taiwan, violate these international norms and laws - they're not able to just hide behind their vast amounts of wealth, power, in nuclear weapons. Just boxing in Russia and providing Ukraine with the ability to defend themselves, then creating an international coalition to show these authoritarian regimes - which believed that the United States and West were on the decline - it shows the opposite. If this type of flagrant violation were to happen in the future, the West would be united, sanctions will be strong, arms would be flowing, and there would be massive consequences for this action. I think that those are two of the main reasons. The third is obviously it helps the United States on the global stage, weakening one of our greatest competitors. But not only weakening a competitor, Rich, we are now unequivocally the world leaders in this effort. Germany is looking to us, the UK, France, everybody; we've gotten South Korea and Japan on board. It's truly a global coalition. It's not like the war on terror. There's some actual teeth behind this and weakening Russia strengthens the United States.
Richard Helppie
There's a great compelling argument that we're on this right course, all I would say is I'd like to have discourse from people that might have a different point of view, learned opinions, not people shouting from the side. And I've said it on my show before, when the President used the term "Armageddon" I was glad he did, because those are the stakes that we're playing for, and people were going to criticize him for using the word. It's like, no, that is what we're talking about here. Justin, it's been a great conversation and as we wrap up, just for fun, let's talk about the 2024 presidential election coming up. I don't believe it'll be Joe Biden versus Donald Trump. I think that's just name recognition. But if it is Biden, is it Biden and somebody, given Senator Warren coming out and saying, if he runs, we need to pick a different VP. I like Elizabeth Warren, I wish she was president. Then on the Republican side, you have anyone but Trump. The Koch family have said that they're going to fund other candidates during the primaries. It's a pretty deep bench. I mean, Nikki Haley, Mike Pence, Ron DeSantis, Mike Pompeo, they're all very qualified to be president of the United States. I don't know what the Democratic bench looks like at the moment. But what do you think? Is it going to be President Biden, will he pick a different VP? Who do you think is coming up from the Republican side?
Justin Higgins
I think President Biden-Harris will be on the Democrat side. Rich, we got the State of the Union coming up this Tuesday so that'll be an interesting, big news event. I think that he's scheduled to announce end of February, March; these things change. That's my assumption. I think the more interesting...I also think the Democratic bench is deep. You have folks that are more moderate. You have Josh Shapiro who won the Pennsylvania governorship, or you have Secretary Pete Buttigieg, who is getting to go around the nation and has done over, I think, 350 local news interviews, telling communities how he's giving them tens of hundreds of millions of dollars from the bipartisan Infrastructure bill - that doesn't hurt your prospects being the bearer of good news and he is more moderate. But I think really what's interesting is the Republican side. My argument is still it's going to be Trump. I think the dynamics in the House really hurt him, which shouldn't be intuitive after he ruined Republican electoral chances in the 2022 election by choosing all of these freaks like Blake Masters and folks that just aren't normal people and don't resonate with the electorate. A lot of the blame for under-performance should be pinned, rightly so, on Trump but what you have happened, with the dynamic in the House and voices like Marjorie Taylor Greene, Matt Gaetz, Lauren Bovard legitimately having power, it takes five of them to sink anything, to create a debt default, if McCarthy isn't willing to work with Democrats - only five of these crazy voices. I think what we're going to see is, as these legislative fights happen, they're going to be the ones that have all of the attention of the national media because they will largely be controlling Kevin McCarthy, and it just makes it hard to pivot away from Trump. I also think, Rich, my theory of the case - we discussed with former NBC news producer Mark Caputo, he's a Florida expert - Ron DeSantis, is, in my opinion, a paper tiger. He's not charismatic, having dealt with him personally. All of his interviews have been largely friendly media and they've been curated speeches so it's been tightly controlled. The genuine criticism of DeSantis is - unlike Trump, who is naturally charismatic, regardless of whatever we think of this guy; he is captivating in a certain sense of the word - DeSantis really doesn't have that. Then lastly, you mentioned some candidates; I would argue Chris Sununu from New Hampshire, who I personally like a lot, is going to run. He's a moderate governor. I think the field is going to fill itself out. And when we look at polling when it's just Trump and DeSantis head to head, DeSantis right now is leading. When we look at polling though, and it's Trump in a field of eight and Ron DeSantis, Trump comes out on top.
Richard Helppie
Yeah, kind of what he did in '16. It was like he was picking up 18 to 20% because there is a loyal core there. But if Donald Trump is the nominee, I don't care who he's running against, I think you're looking at a landslide of Goldwater or McGovern proportional type losses. He's...I mean, think about it, you're a political guy, Donald Trump has not expanded his base, and he's done everything he can to repel people. Even in the most charitable light, he was attacked unfairly, undermined, obstructed, etc, on things that just weren't true. The guy, you'd never hire somebody to be an executive that operates by the seat of their pants. Then in the peaceful transfer of power, indisputable, he refused to facilitate that and meet the incoming president at the White House. He was a childish little bitch, is what he was. [Laughter.] But I think that the Democrats have got a dilemma, because if it's Biden-Harris, Harris, of course, I don't think anybody wants to see in the Oval Office - Democrat or Republican. So you'd have to make the case she's ready to lead. I don't think that can happen. And if you look at a reasonable person on the Republican side, it's probably going to be a Republican year. Nikki Haley is eminently qualified. She did a great job as a governor of South Carolina, she handled the Confederate flag issue very well. She got her ticket punched to international relations and she's got a great personal story. I think she'd make a great president. But let's see.
Justin Higgins
So just to even out the balance, the scorecard here, I don't want Kamala Harris, Vice President Harris, to be president. I think that - this was probably a year ago now, Rich, at this point - last October there were reports coming out and it sounded very Trumpian about Harris where she wouldn't do the work of the briefings. She wouldn't read the material, she would go out, she would say stupid things because she didn't do the work and then she would come back and excoriate her staff - berate them, yell them down - when they were the ones that told her to do the work. So it's an example of the Trumpian style of management, which is: I'm the boss. I'm always right, I don't have to do the work, I'm going to go out there, everything's going to be fine. I think she's a political liability. I think that it would be great to replace her. I just also think, Rich, that throughout...we were talking about this about Mike Pence leading into 2020; was Trump going to replace him. It's just a very popular topic. I also think that obviously President Biden's age is of great concern. I like a lot of the policy work he's done. I like where the US is back on the world stage, but I really wish he was ten years younger. I think he's too old but his accomplishments speak for themselves. In a head up against Trump I would hope that he'd be able to squeak by.
Richard Helppie
I don't think Donald Trump can beat anybody. (Justin Higgins: I hope you're right.) It would only be the abnormalities of a primary system that would provide that opportunity. His fundraising is not going well. You have powerful people like the Koch brothers - not the Koch brothers anymore, David's passed, of course - basically saying, anybody but Trump. But I think that - and I said this months ago - Trump is not as popular as Trump thinks Trump is; he's just loud. Again, I think he is a figment of our current media system, that if you write something about Trump, you get attention. I can't wait for him to leave the stage, I would expect him to not be statesman like. The right thing to do would be to say, it's a serious time and I think your best available choice is whomever from the Republican side. He could say that about a Democrat, things change. But I think that both parties have problems, and neither one of them, I don't think, is doing a particularly great job right now.
Justin Higgins
Here's my prediction for you Rich, the hot take.
Richard Helppie
By the way, which is subject to change, because long time, on February 5, 2023.
Justin Higgins
Yes, and I may be wrong. I'm going out on a limb here and it's not flip flopping if you get more information, right, you can change your mind. But here's my, here's...[laughter] well, it's true, right? Like...
Richard Helppie
I've been using that line, trust me, I love it.
Justin Higgins
Maybe the Chinese balloon was a weather balloon, I don't believe it but they're going to show us more information. [Laughter.] So here's my prediction. Number one - and this is partially driving my prediction - if Trump were to lose the primary - I think he's going to win ñ but if he were to lose, like you said, he's a little bitch, and he's not a professional person, he's going to be a sore loser. I bet you he tells his supporters to stay home and not vote for the Republican nominee that ends up beating him, number one. Number two, I think because of that dynamic, because Trump has a cultish following of around 35% of the GOP base and because of everything else we discussed - about what I mentioned about DeSantis...and I didn't even get to it; he's a paranoid individual who only trusts his wife according to Mark Caputo, the reporter, he has a very small inner circle - I don't think DeSantis is actually going to run. So that's my prediction. I could be wrong. I've disagreed with a lot of people in DC about this. So I want to leave you with that and we'll see if it comes out.
Richard Helppie
Well, that's fresh thinking and I think it's a great place to end. We've been visiting today with a great discussion with Justin Higgins. He, of course, hosts Politics and Media 101, look it up on your favorite podcast outlet. We're going to also have him on video on YouTube here on The Common Bridge and of course, the transcript will be available at Substack. Please join The Common Bridge on substack.com and look up The Common Bridge, register, there is no cost. We're happy to see you on our podcast outlets, YouTube and Substack. With our guest today, Justin Higgins, this is your host Rich Helppie, signing off on The Common Bridge.
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(Watch, Listen or Read) Part 2 of A Random Walk Through Politics and Media