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Thanks!
Brian Kruger
Well hello, Rich, how are you? Welcome to Season 7, Episode 290! We’ve been at this since the fall of 2019, pre-covid. What are your thoughts on the thing as a whole?
Richard Helppie
Brian, it’s been an amazing run. The audience keeps growing, which is kind of cool, but now people are stopping me and going, hey, I caught your episode on this or on that. I was at a neighborhood party last Friday and people were saying, oh, I heard you on the radio, and I saw this, and have you ever thought about this guest, I’ve got a good guest for you. I ran into people on Saturday at the Michigan football game, people of note that everybody would recognize, and they were saying, hey, I’ve listened to your show, I follow you. And I’m like, awesome.
Brian Kruger
That’s cool. We didn’t anticipate this when we started, but it really comes at a time where legacy media is changing right in front of us. (Richard Helppie: Oh, yeah.) And so it’s kind of fun to be in this place. Just for giggles, I got online and asked one of the AI engines to summarize The Common Bridge. (Richard Helppie: Uh oh.) I asked it just to summarize the last year and here’s what this particular AI engine said. It said, “Over the past year, The Common Bridge podcast continued its fiercely nonpartisan approach, covering pivotal issues in policy, society and media. Highlights included discussions on healthcare’s frontier, education, global affairs, democracy, media, trust and high profile news like the Charlie Kirk assassination.” And then it talks about some of the guests we’ve had, like Dr James Baker, Dr David Harlan, Professor Rick Geddes, Jenna McCarthy - who we thought was great - as well as Dean Phillips. And Dean Phillips was on a few times at a very critical time, and it’s interesting to look at that in retrospect. It says the show expanded its format with segments like the Healthcare Bridge - we’re going to expand that even more this year, this season, which is exciting - delved into financial education and world affairs topics. And it says, “Through season six, The Common Bridge addressed the need for truth and shared understanding, tackling the erosion of media trust, partisan violence, health policy, college sports, economics and global landscape, all while steadily growing its readership up to around 7 million now,” which is great. So congratulations to you, Rich.
Richard Helppie
It’s just amazing that these AI engines can go pick all that stuff out. Well, yeah, we’re kicking off Season 7 here. Very excited about that.
Brian Kruger
Let me ask you a few things, and kind of go back through last season, but more so frame what’s going on now and what’s going on in the future. Let’s take a look at why we’re even here in the first place. We talked about being a divided country, but we can fix it. Are we more or less divided today than we were in 2019?
Richard Helppie
It’s interesting, Brian, because the people that criticize me from one side, they’re 100% convinced the problem is the other side and vice versa, and they can all stand on that. I like what the AI engine said about us covering it. I think that we are more dug in on the fringes. I do believe that there is a hunger for people to come together in the middle, and as an optimist, I’m always hoping to play to that audience. The problem has been that if you’re not an extremist, you’ve been kind of cowed about speaking up, because you might be deemed one of them or one of those. So my sense, again, is that we are about ready to break through but that could be my optimism. Look on the periphery. We used to all agree, hey, murder is wrong, but now people actually want to say, well, maybe that’s a good way to settle disagreements. That, to me, is very extreme. Over the weekend, I was reading this piece by a guy named Jonathan Albert in the New York Post. He was talking about how we’ve got to get past this victim mentality and stop justifying violence with this fantasy that the world would somehow be better off if a certain person weren’t in it. And he said, if you hear family members talking like that, don’t just let it go; ask them if they really think it’s okay to use violence against someone they disagree with. And then on the far-left side, you’ve got Robert Reich, and he kind of fesses up. He says, most of us are suffering a trauma of a different sort from - as this very moderate man puts it - “an abusive president and his lapdogs, and from the dark shadows of fear and hate they cast.” Now remember, this guy’s got an audience. He’s talking to his own people here saying, we’re disoriented, vulnerable, and anxious. Then he adds, “Trump apologists call it Trump Derangement Syndrome.” But in a classic bit of pivot and projection, he says, “the real derangement is in and around the Oval Office.” Now, look, I would never want anybody to say I’m deranged. I would say, well, okay, wait a minute, if I’m deranged, pull me back. The first comment says, “At 70, I am angry that Trump is taking up so much bandwidth in my life.” Like, yep, I got what people call TDS. And then in a magnificent self-own in the comments: “My youngest son voted for him and although we are once close, not anymore. And I told my son I would respect a heaping mound of dog excrement more than I would Donald Tump - T, U, M, P, all caps - I am not afraid and do not feel helpless as Professor Wright said in his post. I feel intense anger and hate toward President Trump.” So the question, are we more or less divided? There are folks that are dug in, but I hope that they’re on the fringe, and I hope we can bring them back in. I think we can do better.
Brian Kruger
I think so too. But I also think a lot of this is being driven by third parties out there that want to keep us really mad at each other, because it drives ratings.
Richard Helppie
I think that trade is getting long.
Brian Kruger
All right, let’s move on a little bit. Let’s take something that’s really very topical now - it depends on how you look at it anyway - government shutdown. What’s your thought about the government shutdown? How does it impact Americans now, and how will it impact them going forward?
Richard Helppie
I think the reaction to the government shutdown has been really interesting, because basically nobody cares. Who cares? You’re in New York, you’re in Washington, you’re trying to publish something to blame one side or the other, and it’s like, look, you got one job: keep the doors open. And they’re saying, well, this side won’t do it and they’ve got more numbers, and this side won’t do it. Well, in the Senate, you need both. In any case, it’s a continuing resolution, and you’ve got people on both sides of the aisle recorded taking a position 180 degrees different than the one they’re taking today. And that’s why I think that we’re reaching this peak of it doesn’t matter what someone’s saying or doing, it matters who it is. (Brian Kruger: Right.) It’s crazy beyond belief.
Brian Kruger
This sounds like more of a summary, but we’ll go back to it. Are you optimistic? You’ve always been optimistic. In the last few years, I know there’s been some crazy stuff that’s gone on and you’ve been opinionated, and you’ve gone after both parties pretty strong, I think. Are you optimistic?
Richard Helppie
Look, I’m an entrepreneur, right? We always have one more idea. I’m a philanthropist. It’s like, is that a spot we can help? So, yeah, I always look for a place where we can be optimistic. Let me talk a little bit about the government shutdown and a little bit about a really positive event, or I’ll say, a hopeful event. In the government shutdown, you hear the sound bites: they’re taking Medicaid away from people. Well, guess what? There are enough news sources that say that’s not true. They’re going to cut Obamacare subsidies. What’s really behind that — and I think most people know this — is that in the Inflation Reduction Act, the subsidies for the health insurance exchanges, which were meant to get us through the back end of COVID, got extended through the end of 2025. They’re set to expire then. Okay, so they’re going to expire, that’s just how the legislation was written. But now it’s like, let’s hold the government hostage over it. Why don’t people believe what they’re being told? Well, remember, this is the same group that once told you, you can keep your doctor and you’ll save $2,500. And as we’ve talked about before, when it comes to healthcare, both parties share the blame. But anyway, Bari Weiss is going to take control of CBS News’s editorial vision. Her company, The Free Press, has been acquired, and The Free Press was a pioneer in new media. Bari Weiss, a left of center writer, extensive credentials with New York Times and elsewhere, finally threw in the towel and said traditional media has failed in its message. But now you look at the reporting coming out of CBS; these are the actual words, Brian, they’re going to aim - aim - for “news that reflects reality.”
Brian Kruger
They’re going to aim for that, are they? [Laughter.]
Richard Helppie
Which is a tacit admission - you know this unrealistic thing we’ve been doing and lying isn’t working. And in fact, their new CBS News president, guy named Tom Cibrowski, said the status quo just doesn’t work. He said that Bari Weiss coming in shows how important news is to the company and we’re going to take full advantage of that.
Brian Kruger
Do you think Edward R Murrow stopped spinning in his grave, yet? [Laughter.]
Richard Helppie
Yeah, right, like, can you imagine the meeting: Hey guys, what if we just reported the news instead of trying to cover up stuff? And someone says, that’ll never work. [Laughter.] But look, the risk here, Brian, is this: we can’t go backward. This notion, like, well, back in the day we had this - yesterday’s over. We’ve got to go from where we are to what makes sense in today’s times; politically, technology wise, communication wise and also be wary. Because one of the other elements of this story is that people can connect dots - call them conspiracy theorists if you want - they’re saying, well, wait a minute, did this promotion of Beri Weiss and the acquisition of her firm by Paramount CBS, was that because of some business deal that the Trump administration wanted to do with Larry Ellison? Again, I think that’s worth reporting on. We need to keep an eye on this. But I just like the idea that maybe we don’t politicize the news. That might be very helpful if we had places people could go and not get mad about stuff.
Brian Kruger
Just tell us what’s going on. (Richard Helppie: Yeah, exactly right.) Do you want to talk a little bit about ICE and migration?
Richard Helppie
Look, we’re not a country that should have federal troops coming out. We’re not a country that should have armed agents going in, looking for people. It’s ugly, it’s sad, and if one party gets away with it, another party is going to get away with it on some other pretense. First of all, how did we get into this might be a better question. It’s that we have this widely rejected and wildly unpopular policy of open borders and let everybody come in. Guess what? With the people that are just trying to get to a better place, we’ve got bad apples, we’ve got violent criminals that are here. And what did they do? They embedded with good people because they want to use those folks as shields. Now, how do you go about getting them? Well, you’ve got to go get them, and they’re embedded with other folks, and you’ve got to sort them out. And then, when the Trump administration said they were going to rectify that wildly unpopular policy, they picked the wrong metric. They said, Well, how many people that are here illegally are we going to deport? And so who are the easiest people to get to and deport? Non violent criminals. They don’t know how to disappear into the woodwork. They don’t have armed units protecting them. So we’ve got abuse of law enforcement in an attempt to rectify a policy. Now, by the way, this is not just in the Trump administration, because in the administration between the two Trump administrations, we had Tulsi Gabbard being tailed by federal marshals. And now it’s coming out that there were at least two congress people also being tailed. What we all need to come together on is this; with the tools that are available, technology wise, the digital footprint we put down, we need to tell everybody in power, you’ve got limits. I want everybody, no matter what political persuasion you are, to understand that abuses of power lead to other abuses of power, and it’s not okay if your team’s doing it. We need to find our way out of this.
Brian Kruger
I was reading in the last few weeks about Comey being indicted, and there are a lot of calls of hypocrisy and reverse hypocrisy. What are your thoughts about this and about Comey? Maybe you can go back and do a recap of what happened at first with Comey and what’s happening to him now.
Richard Helppie
First of all, one of the policies that was rejected, that - in my estimation - caused the election of Donald Trump in 2024, was law-fare. I can tell you personally, that’s what did it for me. I’m like, okay, that’s enough. I find it interesting that the nomenclature says, well, Trump’s up for revenge and retribution. I’d encourage people go find your favorite three dictionaries, look up revenge and retribution, and in 100% of the cases, it’s doing something to someone that caused you harm. Now look at the data that’s been revealed; Matt Taibbi has done some really good reporting on this. It’s in the records of the people doing it that they had an intelligence committee assessment that says there was no Russian influence. There was a meeting in the office of President Obama with Joe Biden, with Hillary Clinton, with James Clapper, with John Brennan, with James Comey. And after that, the intelligence community assessment changed, and there are memos from Clapper saying, hey, this is the story we’re going with, and we’re all going to stick together on this story. Just for grins, I went back to one of our early episodes. It was 46, 47, 48. We interviewed Barbara McQuaid, who is an MSNBC legal analyst today, and at that time, Roger Stone had been arrested. Basically it was like, well, we have the goods on the guy. When you lay it side by side with Comey, it’s like, oh, there it is, same thing, except they didn’t use 24 armed people, a helicopter and an armored vehicle to bring Comey in. So it’s a dangerous situation. Also, by the way, I asked her on that podcast, was Adam Schiff saying that they had oodles of information or proof, evidence that Donald Trump was commuted with the Russians. I said, is that a crime? And she said, it’s not necessarily a crime, but Trump could sue Schiff for defamation. I only went back and looked because I just thought it was instructive; who’s doing it versus what’s being done. Again, I don’t want James Comey to be unfairly prosecuted at all. I want him to have his day in court, and I also think he needs to testify under oath about what he did, and someone’s going to have to be accountable, because this stuff didn’t just fall out of the sky.
Brian Kruger
And it would be nice if the government could get out of the business of weaponizing the Department of Justice. Seems like that’s been going on for 16 or 20 years now. It just... I don’t know why it started.
Richard Helppie
Well, we’ve got to speak up. Every citizen needs to be speaking up. And when you’re speaking up, please be like The Common Bridge, don’t say, well, it’s because of this guy and we’re going to go get [him], that guy’s a bad guy. Nobody cares. Is the government abusing its power, and is there a justification for it? This country is founded on the notion that the powers of government are restricted. You can’t just do what you want. You can’t just spy on us. You can’t take our stuff, you can’t stop us from talking. You can’t stop us from defending ourselves. You can’t make us self-incriminate. You can’t come into our house. You can’t make us quarter soldiers. These are things that are very precious, and if we don’t defend them for everybody, then they will be defended for nobody. And don’t let them divide us.
Brian Kruger
What are your thoughts about how that applies with the Epstein case going forward?
Richard Helppie
It’s not who you are, it’s when you are, because the players have changed positions. Hey, keep that data locked up now. Hey, where is it? Where is it? You mean the stuff that you asked to be [released]? They’ve completely flip-flopped positions. I’m of the mind, get it all out there in a way that protects the victim. I don’t care who you are, if you were involved in the trafficking of women or men, I guess, or boys or girls, whatever, you need to be held accountable for it. We need, as a society, to say that is wrong. You will be accountable. We are going to find you, and you need to stop doing that. And just today, by the way, the Supreme Court ruled that Ghislaine Maxwell will not be granted any kind of relief on appeal. She’s got to serve her 20 year sentence. I looked at that and said, okay, so she was trafficking all these young women and trafficking them to one guy? Okay, bud, you did all that evil by yourself? I find that hard to believe. Now, without you asking the question - this will, I know, enrage half my audience, but I’ve got to say it - is Donald Trump involved in a nefarious way? All signs point to, no, and I’ll say it on the following basis. First of all, the victims have all said they never saw anything that involved Donald Trump, period, full stop. They were looking for it. Number two, imagine in the 2016 election that you’re the Democratic Party, you’re the Hillary Clinton campaign, and you’ve got all that... remember Obama’s FBI and they had all this data, honesty, and they had Donald Trump dead to rights on trafficking, rape, whatever, they had it. And then they said, you know what? Let’s not go with that. Let’s make up this story about Russian collusion and pee tapes instead. It makes no sense. If they had something on Trump, we would have heard about it years ago, and Donald Trump would never be president today.
Brian Kruger
All right, moving on. When Trump was elected, there were a lot of folks - half the country - who said that democracy was over and the economy would collapse. Now you’ve forgotten more about finance than I’ll ever know. Why is the stock market doing so well? And do you think that there’s any parallel of the stock market doing really well in September of 1929 and what happened in October of 1929? I read something about that recently, so that’s not my idea. But why is the stock market up?
Richard Helppie
Well, I like the quote from a fellow named Jonathan Bush that was running a company called Athena Health, and he said a butterfly can fart in South America and change the stock market. [Laughter.] And he’s right about that, so any administration saying, hey, that’s us that made that happen, that’s not it. Time does not afford us. But look, the stock market’s not the economy. Where we get away from this is what are we measuring? And so, for example, Brian, if we produced poisonous foods and a lot of them with chemicals and dyes in them, and we sold a bunch; hey, GDP is up, employment is up, and pharma is now up too, because we’ve got to produce a drug to deal with the effects of that. What the economy is really about is can a family or an individual person go to work, trade-in their hours and get a decent standard of living? Can they be educated? Can they have some recreation? Can they have clean water, clean food, etc? It’s all about affordability. It’s all about employment. And right now the stock market - you mentioned 1929, I’d say 1999 - in every cycle that there is a new technology - most recently 1999, first internet - it gets over hyped. Happened with automotive 100 years before this, right? There are too many players in the game, and then it gets sorted out to a few players. AI right now is driving this. People are making assumptions about AI’s impact, and they’re wildly aggressive. It reminds me of the days when mobile phones were new, and you looked at what was going on with those stocks, and then you looked at the analysis of it: wait a minute, this says every man, woman, child, newborn on the planet, is going to have a smartphone. Because that’s what was baked into the stock market. And having spent time there, I can tell you the fear that they run on exceeds the greed that is reported. The fear is being the last one into a trade or the last one out of a trade. They’re all egging each other on right now. We’ve got exuberance. I don’t think we’ve thought this through. Again, everybody should have their own individual investment advice. My sense is the following: stay diversified, hang on, if you’re just starting out, live on less than you make. Find a way to do that. And so you’ve either got to start making more or you’ve got to start spending less. Every generation’s had to do that. Those will go. What you didn’t ask about, Brian, okay, I’m surprised, or maybe you were going to, is tariffs. And if you notice the news cycle, that’s all quieted down. A couple of things here. One is that tariffs had to get digested. Every source I’ve been able to talk to said, just tell me what the rules are, and we’ll play the game, but you can’t be changing the rules. A big deal has been made out of, for example, exports of US liquor, particularly to Canada. Canada’s not drinking our booze anymore. Well, first of all, they make really good stuff themselves - maybe in bourbon, they’re good at this stuff - but also in their largest province, you can’t buy liquor except through a provincial store and in most of the other provinces, that’s also true, some of them are public-private. The Canadian government can literally shut down American imports of liquor by deciding what to put on the shelf, and they’re doing that. And no, we’re not bootlegging the stuff across the Detroit River in a reverse of prohibition times; that will not happen on our watch. And I am not doing winkedy-wink at you.
Brian Kruger
From where I live, I can see the Hiram Walker factory across the lake.
Richard Helppie
Can you smell it though, that’s the point. [Laughter.]
Brian Kruger
Let’s get back into into politics. I’m reminded of the Tea Party, 25 years ago or so, and it was the extreme side of the Republican Party, and it was said to have been the demise of the Republican Party at the time. Now they’re saying that the extreme side of the Democratic Party, and even the Democrats, are talking about how that’s going to be the end of the Democratic Party. We all know this is cyclical but which of the two parties do you think at this point are most in trouble?
Richard Helppie
Oh, clearly it’s the Republicans and the Democrats. [Laughter.] I mean, the Republicans are a little easier to explain. Because we’re no longer right and left, we’re no longer conservative or liberal at all. It’s either Trump or not Trump. Frankly, Trump likes it that way. In the run up to 2016, you’ve often heard me say, the only good thing about Trump getting nominated - which I didn’t think would happen - would be he would destroy the establishment of the Republican Party. Then I said, the only good thing about him getting elected - which I did not think was going to happen - is that he would destroy the establishment of the Democratic Party. It took longer than I thought for the second part of that to come true, but here we are. So if you’re the GOP right now, your biggest challenge is what comes after Trump because you’re basically rallying around a transformational president - whether you like him or don’t like him - but you’re going to have to answer that question at some point. And I guarantee you all politicians are going to try to find a way to parse that; they didn’t like his personality but they like his trade policy. I don’t know how they’re going to do it, but they’ve got a real problem with an identity. The Democrats have got a more basic problem. They need to find answers to things like, is the open border that we had and promoted a good policy? Are we going back to that? You’ve got a party that can’t answer the question what is a woman? Let’s start there and explain to American voters why it’s okay to have children taken away from their homes if they don’t affirm their gender distress. That’s where the Democrats are stuck. How far into that muck can they come without losing it? Now, by the way, I’m actually pretty optimistic for them, because the attack plan they’ve been running... you know what it is, Brian — racist, misogynist, transphobe, homophobe, fascist, literally Hitler, all that stuff they use until it wears out and then they reload - whatever they pick next isn’t going to get hit with that same playbook. But there’s got to be a voice of sanity rising up among Democrats who are willing to say, guys, let’s get back to reality. Where my optimism lies is in the fiercely nonpartisan way; if you take a guy trying to escape the lunacy that’s become the fringe on the Democrat side, and you look for a guy that’s trying to redefine the Republican Party post-Trump, maybe they have middle ground. And maybe it’s not about Washington DC games but about the people that are just trying to make a living in the Midwest of the United States.
Brian Kruger
I want to take this otherworldly and we’ll wrap it up on the otherworldly.
Richard Helppie
Not UFOs, I don’t want the UFOs. [Laughter.]
Brian Kruger
We’ve all agreed that they’ve been around for a long time now. Nobody seems to be worried about that. NASA warns that in 2032 there’s going to be an asteroid impact risk that’s much higher than we’re all comfortable with, raising debates on planetary defense. I’m always of the opinion that if that was actually true, and it really was going to be a problem, we would never know about it because everything, society, would break down. There would be no point. Any thoughts how that might play out seven years from now, in 2032?
Richard Help pie
Here’s how it’d be played, Brian, in the beacon of the free world, the United States of America. If Trump wants to stop that asteroid, there’s going to be an “I’m going to the streets” with the same formula as “Palestine has got to be free, queers for Palestine.” I’m saying “ending asteroid abuse” that Trump’s going to put on it. [Laughter.] I’m sure that the Republicans would say blue states have invited an asteroid into the country and it’s their fault and their problem, or some stupid thing like that. [Laughter.]
Brian Kruger
Well, okay, all right.
Richard Helppie
I mean, like, I hope it doesn’t hit us and if the news comes out, that’s how it would be: can we blame Trump for this, or can we blame the other side for it. That’s how it’d be played. [Laughter.]
Brian Kruger
Well, Trump will be long gone by then, but that’s funny.
Richard Helppie
Or will he?
Brian Kruger
Or will he, right, yeah.
Richard Helppie
You know he’s poking people with the... I want to kick him in the crotch, frankly. But it’s like, his... the Gulf of Mexico is the Gulf of Mexico. It’s the Department of Defense. I don’t want to call my president a dumb ass, but just knock it off and quit twisting tails and act like an adult, Mr. President, please. Try to bring the temperature down.
Brian Kruger
So you don’t think he should go all FDR and go, not for a third term, but go for a third term and a fourth term and just keep running?
Richard Helppie
It would divide the country horribly. I would be opposed to it. You got your two terms. When he says stuff like that people need to recognize it, don’t take the bait.
Brian Kruger
Even if you don’t like the guy, he’s got a hell of a sense of humor. And sometimes, I swear, that guy says stuff just to see it hit the news cycle that night, and he probably sits there and eats junk food and laughs at it.
Richard Helppie
Yeah, exactly, right. Well, actually, I think he’s more strategic about that. I think his first term, I think it was everything off the seat of his pants, whatever popped into his head, but now he seems to be a little bit more disciplined. Again, I’m not saying that that means you need to like him, because he’s a sharply divisive person. I think people need to step back and let’s talk about the what, not the who. Are tariffs a good trade policy or are they not? Have we been on the wrong side of them for a long time or have we not? Is what we’re applying: the right thing or not the right thing? You can do that policy by policy, but when you’re in the opposition, all of a sudden you want to paint yourself as you’re this high moral ground person - you’re not. And really, it cracks me up when they try to say, well, you can’t be a Christian if you believe this or that. Like, no, you suck at politics and you’re worse at theology, so just shut up. [Laughter.] Argue the policy.
Brian Kruger
That’s right, that’s right. All right, we’ll wrap this up. Any words of wisdom going into Season 7 that you can impart upon or to our audience of viewers, listeners and readers, and especially our Substack audience. I think now’s a really good time to remind our audience, too; thank you for all the comments you have coming in. In Season 7, let’s steer them to Substack, because Substack is growing and all the tools are really cool. You can get your voice heard through our Common Bridge Substack page by commenting there. And once a quarter - as a lot of you know who’ve been with us for a long time - we do a mail bag and we pick a lot of the things that our viewers, listeners and readers have said, and we bring them up in the podcast. Rich, is there anything you’d like to say to your audience as we go into our 7th season?
Richard Helppie
Yes, two things. Number one, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you. And number two, please tell your friends and family to sign up for The Common Bridge, free or paid. Paid would be nice, but free is great. Also, a third thing would be, let’s meet each other in the middle. Nobody wins in the tribalism. Nobody wins in the polar division. I’ll do the sign off, Brian. With our producer, Brian Kruger, this is your host, Rich Helppie, signing off at the beginning of Season 7 on The Common Bridge.
